Women's Power in Late Medieval Romance

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AMY N. VINES

Amy N. Vines is Assistant Professor in the Department of English, University of

North Carolina at Greensboro. Cover: Paris BN MS Arsenal 3142, fol. 1r.

Studies in Medieval Romance G EN ERA L EDITOR

Corinne Saunders, University of Durham

An imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge IP12 3DF (GB) and 668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620-2731 (US) www.boydellandbrewer.com

Women’s Power in Late Medieval Romance

The cultural and social power of women in the Middle Ages is hard to trace, and evidence for it is scarce; here Vines explores medieval romances as a source of examples of such power. She considers how women functioned as models of cultural and social authority in medieval literary texts through an examination of the influence exerted by female characters in both intellectual and chivalric contexts, and in the exercise of patronage. Women learned methods of influence from the books they read, in addition to examples set by family connections and socio-political networks. In texts like Troilus and Criseyde and Partonope of Blois, the female reader encounters an explicit demonstration of how a woman’s intellectual and financial resources can be used to inspire cultural and literary works; literary representations of women’s cultural power also reveal a variety of examples of authority from nonmaterial effects to material sway in the medieval patronage system, an influence often unacknowledged in historical and extra-literary sources.

Women’s Power in Late Medieval Romance

AMY N. VINES

Women’s Power in Late Medieval Romance

Studies in Medieval Romance ISSN 1479–9308

Series Editors Corinne Saunders Editorial Board Roger Dalrymple Rhiannon Purdie Robert Allen Rouse This series aims to provide a forum for critical studies of the medieval romance, a genre which plays a crucial role in literary history, clearly reveals medieval secular concerns, and raises complex questions regarding social structures, human relationships, and the psyche. Its scope extends from the early Middle Ages into the Renaissance period, and although its main focus is on English literature, comparative studies are welcomed. Proposals or queries should be sent in the first instance to one of the addresses given below; all submissions will receive prompt and informed consideration. Professor Corinne Saunders, Department of English, University of Durham, Durham, DH1 3AY Boydell & Brewer Limited, PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk, IP12 3DF

Previously published volumes in the series are listed at the back of this book

Women’s Power in Late Medieval Romance

Amy N. Vines

D. S. BREWER

©â•‡ Amy N. Vines 2011 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner The right of Amy N. Vines to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 First published 2011 D. S. Brewer, Cambridge ISBN╇ 978 1 84384 275 0 D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mount Hope Ave, Rochester, NY 14604, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Papers used by Boydell & Brewer Ltd are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests

Printed in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

For Martijn, Jasper, and Alex

Contents List of Illustrations

viii

Acknowledgements ix Abbreviations xi Introduction 1 1 Prophecy as Social Influence: Cassandra, Anne Neville, and the Corpus Christi Manuscript of Troilus and Criseyde

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2 The Science of Female Power in John Metham’s Amoryus and Cleopes

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3 A Woman’s “Crafte”: Sexual and Chivalric Patronage in Partonope of Blois

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4 Creative Revisions: Competing Figures of the Patroness in Thomas Chestre’s Sir Launfal

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Conclusion 141 Bibliography 149 Index

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Illustrations 1 Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 61, fol. 1v (the Troilus frontispiece). By permission of the Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

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2 Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 61, fol. 143v. By permission of the Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

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3 Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 61, fol. 144r. By permission of the Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

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Acknowledgements I have been fortunate to have the patronage and support of many wonderful scholars throughout the years it took to write this book. In particular, I want to thank Elizabeth Johnson Bryan for her unflagging generosity, advice, and friendship; her guidance and detailed readings of all the early iterations of this project were invaluable and her excellent mentorship has been one of the driving forces behind my development as a medievalist. I will always be grateful for her patience, her kindness, and her constant encouragement of this detail-oriented mole to see the larger picture. My thanks also go to the other professors with whom I was fortunate enough to work in graduate school: Michel-André Bossy, Geoffrey Russom, Coppélia Kahn, and Joseph Pucci at Brown University, and Bruce Holsinger and Elizabeth Robertson at University of Colorado at Boulder. Their help and inspiration have been invaluable over the years. I would also like to thank my many friends and colleagues from the formative years of my graduate work for their support, their perspective, and their camaraderie: Kate Crassons, Helga Duncan, Jana Matthews, Wes Yu, and especially Jamie Taylor, whose friendship has meant more to me than I can express. Here at UNC-Greensboro, I have been fortunate to find incredible friendship and inspiration from all of my colleagues, particularly Risa Applegarth, Anthony Cuda, Chris Hogkins, Mark Rifkin, Kelly Ritter, Annette Van, and Anne Wallace. For reading so many versions of this monograph, I would like to thank my dear friends Elizabeth Bucar, Michelle Dowd, and Jennifer Keith, and my friend and mentor, Denise Baker. Your generosity and intelligence continue to astound me and your companionship makes me happy to have found a home here. I cannot possibly thank Jennifer Feather enough for all of her love and support over the years; first as graduate students and now as colleagues, each day confirms for me how we are soul-friends in so many ways. Other colleagues and friends throughout the academy have been integral to my success and happiness in academia. My heartfelt thanks go to Rebecca Krug and Joyce Coleman, for their support and inspiration, and to Seth Lerer, Myra Seaman, Candace Barrington, Robin Norris, Brantley Bryant, Alex Mueller, George Shuffleton, John Sebastian, and all the other Chaucer Campers with whom I spent a fun-filled and stimulating two weeks at the “Chaucer: Past, Present, and Future” Summer Institute in Literary Studies held at the National Humanities Center in 2008. Our conversations and debates during the seminar aided in my revisions of Chapter One immensely. I am also grateful to the very helpful librarians and staff at the ix

Acknowledgements archives where research for this book was conducted: the Bodleian Library in Oxford and the British Library in London. Caroline Palmer at Boydell and Brewer deserves special thanks for her support of my manuscript and her incredible patience during this entire process; the anonymous reader for Boydell provided many helpful suggestions and clarifications on the manuscript. Their careful readings have made the book far better than it was at the beginning of this process. While writing this book, I received financial support from the English Department at UNC-Greensboro in the form of the Marc Friedlaender Faculty Excellence Award; from the University, I received a Scholar’s Travel Grant (2007) and an International Travel Fund Grant (2008), which allowed me to travel to conferences both here and abroad to present portions of the project. An earlier version of Chapter Three appeared as “A Woman’s ‘Crafte’: Melior as Lover, Teacher, and Patron in the Middle English Partonope of Blois,” in Modern Philology 105.2 (November 2007), pp. 245–270 (© 2007 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved); a version of Chapter Two previously appeared as “Fictions of Patronage: The Romance Heroine as Sponsor in John Metham’s Amoryus and Cleopes,” in the Journal of the Early Book Society 13 (2010), pp. 139–168. [Copyright © 2010 by Pace University Press. All rights reserved]. Finally, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to my parents, Lee Vines and Linda Huff, for their unwavering encouragement and love; to my wonderful husband, Martijn van Hasselt, for his sense of humor and endurance; and to our sons, Jasper and Alexander, for simply being born.

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Abbreviations EETS e.s. n.s. o.s. PMLA TEAMS

Early English Text Society Extra Series New Series Original Series Publications of the Modern Language Association The Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages

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Introduction This storie is also trewe, I undertake, As is the book of Launcelot de Lake, That wommen holde in ful greet reverence. Geoffrey Chaucer, The Nun’s Priest’s Tale

Chaucer’s now-famous reference to the romance of Lancelot and its enthusiastic audience strongly connects medieval women readers with the genre of romance.1 Taking their cue from this and other medieval references, medievalist critics have for decades pursued the connection between women and romance in the Middle Ages with little regard for how these narratives represent female characters as sites of female authority. Although there are undoubtedly many reasons for the association between women readers and medieval romance, such as the popularity of vernacular literature, including hagiographies, chronicles, and romances, for women readers in the Middle Ages, some scholars have relied on the connection between women and romance to support stereotypical notions about medieval women’s reading tastes; the potential escapist and wish-fulfilling content of these narratives is viewed to be geared particularly for a female audience.2 However, I suggest that romances have more to tell us about the narratives’ appeal to female readers. Of medieval genres, none provided more narrative possibility and agency for female characters and, in turn, their female readers.

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The Nun’s Priest’s Tale is, of course, not the first and only medieval reference to women as a particular audience for romance narratives. See Carol M. Meale, “‘gode men / Wiues maydnes and alle men’: Romance and Its Audiences,” in Readings in Medieval English Romance, ed. Carol M. Meale (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 209–225. In this article, she outlines the “scattered and fragmentary” evidence of women’s readership of romance: “ranging from internal references in literary texts, including the romance themselves, to inscriptions made in surviving manuscripts and (on rare occasions) citations within probate records and inventories” (p. 209). See, for example, Lee C. Ramsey, Chivalric Romances: Popular Literature in Medieval England (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983). I discuss further Ramsey’s assertions about women’s readership of medieval romance later in this Introduction. There are various interpretations of which aspects of the romances’ content appealed most to medieval women; more recent critics suggest that women readers would have found “complex and often ambiguous portrayals of female subjectivity that seem to mirror women’s paradoxical position in courtly culture, where they were both privileged centers of attention, and marginal players in a game whose rules were written by men” (Roberta L. Krueger, “Questions of Gender in Old French Courtly Romance,” in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance, ed. Roberta L. Krueger [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000], p. 137). Medieval romances, Krueger suggests, “cast women more often as desired objects rather than as active subjects in chivalric adventures or quests” (p. 137).

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Women’s Power in Late Medieval Romance

This study asserts that medieval romances are a central and under-explored site of evidence about representations of women’s cultural and social authority – if not always historically enacted, then certainly culturally central – in the Middle Ages. Because it is a didactic as well as an entertaining genre, medieval romance provides influential patterns for female agency. In particular, romance is the chief literary genre for both reflecting and producing chivalric codes. Female characters in these narratives function in many ways as the arbiters of the chivalric ideal and it is within those codes of conduct that the romance heroines make a place for significant acts of social and cultural influence. This site of female agency enacts a range of influential possibilities, from specific interventions in chivalric development through specialized knowledge to comprehensive influence of knights and other powerful men through the patronage system. Thus, in seeking to understand how women learned patterns of literary and cultural power in the Middle Ages, Women’s Power in Late Medieval Romance reframes a question that has thus far resulted in a range of historical answers as a literary and cultural question that exposes the particular significance of the romance genre. Previous studies of literary and cultural influence exercised by both men and women almost exclusively focus on actual historical persons represented in the historical record or in extra-literary sources, such as book inventories, testamentary evidence, manuscript marginalia, or authorial dedications. For example, Jambeck’s “Patterns of Women’s Literary Patronage” relies primarily on authorial dedications to female sponsors in medieval literary texts, using this evidence to re-construct the critical “relationships and linkages”3 among these women that perpetuated their literary endeavors. Carole Meale’s contribution to Women and Literature in Britain, 1150–1500 looks to testamentary documents for evidence of women’s ownership and readership of books.4 These and similar studies are indispensable to our understanding of the kinds of women – both aristocratic and gentry – participating in literate practice5 in the Middle Ages and the variety of texts 3

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Karen K. Jambeck, “Patterns of Women’s Literary Patronage: England, 1200–ca. 1475,” in The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women, ed. June Hall McCash (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1996), pp. 228–265 (p. 228). See also Susan Groag Bell, “Medieval Women Book Owners: Arbiters of Lay Piety and Ambassadors of Culture,” Signs 7.4 (Summer 1982): pp. 742–768. Carol M. Meale, “… alle the bokes I haue of latyn, englisch, and frensche’: Laywomen and their Books in Late Medieval England,” in Women and Literature in Britain, 1150–1500, ed. Helen Wilcox (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 128–158. This term is drawn from Rebecca Krug, Reading Families: Women’s Literate Practice in Late Medieval England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002). The term “literate practice,” Krug suggests, “avoids the sense of stasis associated with ‘literacy’” (p. 7) and allows her to examine a wide range of “text-based practices” (p. 7), such as literary patronage, readership, and recitation. Krug’s concept of “literate practice,” which is predicated on a broader notion of what texts meant in the lives of late medieval women, is very useful in my own characterization of medieval patronage as a multi-valent act, one not wedded solely to financial or tangible intervention.

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Introduction they read and sponsored; yet even these critics acknowledge the fact that medieval historical and extra-literary sources provide at best a piecemeal picture of women’s cultural and literary engagements. Women are far less frequently represented in these records than men and, in particular, acts of influence and sponsorship are not often recorded.6 However, textual models of culturally and intellectually influential women had the opportunity to reach a much broader audience than the individual historical examples of female patrons, whose activities might only be well known in their family groups or immediate communities. Thus, the literary study presented here fills in the inevitable gaps in the primarily historically based studies of women’s literate activities in the Middle Ages. Women’s Power in Late Medieval Romance examines what medieval romances convey about the possibilities for female social and cultural influence in the Middle Ages. By re-assessing female characters’ influence in a spectrum that includes both intellectual and chivalric aid and, in some cases, patronage, this book considers how female characters functioned as models of cultural, intellectual, and social authority in medieval literary texts. This shift in focus from historical and extra-literary to literary or narrative sources affords us a better understanding of how women learned practices of literary and cultural influence in the Middle Ages. In addition to examples set by the family connections, socio-political networks, and textual communities in which they lived,7 this study argues that women could also have learned methods of influence from the books they read. If, as Patricia Stirnemann suggests, acts of female power and patronage in the Middle Ages “excite[d] imitation,”8 then the women’s networks of cultural and intellectual influence that scholars like Jambeck and Bell outline provide an important illustration of one of the ways this female authority was perpetuated.9 However, 6

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June Hall McCash offers a detailed outline of the possible sources of evidence for women’s patronage, which include the mention by the author of payment, records of payment, praise of the patron directly as a patron, and the existence of a presentation copy or an illumination representing the author giving the book to the patron (“The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women: An Overview,” in The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women, ed. June Hall McCash [Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1966], pp. 1–49, [p. 2]). The most common form of evidence – the literary dedication – is also the least concretely indicative of sponsorship. D.€H. Green asserts that, while a dedication “may conceal and act of sponsorship, it is not itself enough to establish it” (Women Readers in the Middle Ages [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007], p. 204). McCash surmises that “to poet and patron alike, such clarification [of the patronage relationship] may have seemed unnecessary” (“The Cultural Patronage,” p. 3). For a discussion of this mode of learning, see Krug, Reading Families, Susan Groag Bell, “Women as Arbiters of Culture,” and Jambeck, “Patterns of Patronage.” Patricia Stirnemann, “Women and Books in France: 1170–1220,” in Representations of the Feminine in the Middle Ages, ed. Bonnie Wheeler (Dallas.TX: Academia, 1993), pp. 247–252 (p. 251). For example, Loveday Lewes Gee notes distinctive similarities between the seals of prominent women in the fourteenth century. The seals of both Mary of St. Pol, Countess of Pembroke (c. 1304–1377) and Queen Philippa of Hainault (1314–1369) show the women standing under a similar tripartite canopy with shields of arms on either side of the figures. The design of these two

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Women’s Power in Late Medieval Romance

the learning of various forms of cultural agency, such as patronage, while ultimately an act of mimesis, relies not only on social and familial imitation, but on textual or narrative imitation as well. Like the actual political appointments influenced by powerful women or the devotional manuals and illuminated display manuscripts they endowed in the Middle Ages, literary characterizations of female sponsorship served as models for other women who sought social and cultural prominence through influence, especially through conveying knowledge or specific acts of patronage. Unlike devotional manuals and display manuscripts, however, these fictionalized depictions outline the intellectual and social process of influence rather than simply presenting the audience with a finished product, such as a manuscript already completed or a funerary monument already purchased. In these texts, the female reader encounters an explicit demonstration of how a woman’s intellectual and financial resources can be used to impact cultural and literary productions. The literary representations of women’s cultural power expose a continuum of influence from non-material effects to material sway in the medieval patronage system, an influence often unacknowledged in strictly historical and extra-literary sources.10 This book focuses specifically on fourteenth- and fifteenth-century romances written in England, not just because they are a source for women to learn patterns of influential behavior, but because they are, in each instance, revisions of earlier romance narratives; the alterations to these earlier texts are both literary and linguistic, but they are also ideological revisions that open up new opportunities for female readers to consolidate and enact social and cultural power. The Prologue to William Caxton’s Blanchardyn and Eglantine (1489) offers an excellent example of the didactic potential of the genre and of a medieval woman deliberately seeking out a text that provides these lessons. Recent criticism on medieval translation and women’s readership and patronage in the early days of the printing press has found in many of Caxton’s prologues fertile ground for discussion.11 In particular,

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seals, with their distinctive “pointed oval shape” appear to be “unique amongst women’s seals in England” (Women, Art and Patronage from Henry III to Edward III, 1216–1377 [Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2002], pp. 132–133) during the fourteenth century. Gee suggests that, although this style was not popular in England at this time, the design continued to be used on the Continent in France and Flanders. Notably, in the 1320s, Queen Philippa’s mother, Jeanne de Valois, countess of Hainault and Mary of St. Pol’s aunt-in-law, Beatrice de St. Pol both had seals of the same design (p. 133). Although the correspondence in the design of the women’s seals indicates an English interest in the fashions of official representation in fourteenth-century France, the similarities also suggest that the women in their extended family networks influenced Philippa’s and Mary’s unique choice of seal design. See Anne Clark Bartlett’s article, “Translation, Self-Representation, and Statecraft: Lady Margaret Beaufort and Caxton’s Blanchardyn and Eglantine (1489),” Essays in Medieval Studies 22 (2005): pp. 53–66, where she discusses the resistance of scholars to acknowledge appropriately “the participation of women in late medieval English diplomacy, strategy, and conflict” (p. 55). See Jennifer Summit, “William Caxton, Margaret Beaufort and the Romance of Female Patronage,” in Women, The Book, and the Worldly: Selected Proceedings of the St. Hilda’s Conference,

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Introduction the Prologue to Blanchardyn and Eglantine represents not only a continual patronage relationship between Caxton and Margaret Beaufort – he is translating into English a romance he previously produced for her in French – but it also suggests the function a romance should serve in the life of the reader. Blanchardyn and Eglantine is a chivalric romance, a tale of “noble fayttes and valiaunt actes of armes.”12 As Caxton has translated the text previously for Margaret Beaufort, he can attest to the fact that the story is “honeste & Ioyefull” and appropriate for both men and women “to rede therin as for their passetyme” (p. 105). More important than the virtuous entertainment value, however, the romance provides a learning experience for its reader. For men, it offers a model of “walyauntnes for to stande in the specyal grace & loue of their ladyes” (p. 105). Thus, for its male readers, the text provides a chivalric model of proper behavior, which in turn leads to successful courtly love. For young women readers, however, the romance teaches the virtue of being “stedfaste & constaunt in their parte to theym that they ones haue promysed and agreed to suche as haue putte their lyues ofte in Ieopardye for to playse theym to stande in grace” (p. 105). Blanchardyn and Eglantine emphasizes women’s fidelity to their lovers, particularly knights who perform acts of chivalry for them. Rather than studying “ouer moche in bokes of contemplacioun” (p.105), Caxton suggests that young readers study romances instead. Although we cannot underestimate the personal and professional benefits Caxton enjoys by simultaneously extolling the virtues of reading romances and providing one for public consumption, the didactic potential of the genre – particularly for women – is unmistakable.13 By reading romances like Blanchardyn and Eglantine and those I discuss in this book, women discover how to facilitate the success of the men in their lives through acts of intellectual and social influence and, in some cases, financial patronage and how to remain faithful to them once they achieve it. Thus, the heroines in medieval romances both produce and reward the knights’ “walyauntnes” (p. 105). This study examines late medieval romances not only because of their popularity (with both female and male readers), but also because much more than in other traditional genres, such as hagiographies, the female characters demonstrate a specific, detailed process of achieving social and cultural prominence. This comprehensive modeling – which often includes

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1993; Volume II, ed. Lesley Smith and Jane H. M. Taylor (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1995), pp. 151–165; Tracy Adams, “‘Noble, Wyse and Grete Lordes, Gentilmen and Marchauntes’: Caxton’s Prologues as Conduct Books for Merchants,” Parergon 22.2 (July 2005): pp. 53–76; and Russell Rutter, “William Caxton and Literary Patronage,” Studies in Philology 84.4 (Fall 1987): pp. 440–470. William Caxton, The Prologues and Epilogues of William Caxton, ed. W. J. B. Crotch, EETS o.s. 176 (London: Oxford University Press, 1928), p. 105. Bartlett characterizes Caxton’s text as both a mirror for princes “and princesses,” which offers “an idealized self-portrait of its patroness [Margaret Beaufort] and a covert political manual for its politically-engaged aristocratic, noble and gentry women readers” (“Translation, SelfRepresentation, and Statecraft,” pp. 57–58).

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the deployment of social and chivalric advice, financial counseling, and intellectual and religious instruction – does not represent a woman’s general influence over a man (whether an author or a knight).14 Rather, these characters illustrate practical steps for consolidating and securing a woman’s intellectual and cultural power. In his discussion of female reading practices in the Middle Ages, D. H. Green notes that women’s literate activities “risk[ed] being expunged from the record” and that their participation in systems of social and cultural influence, such as patronage, was a “real but unquantifiable factor.”15 Not only is actual or historical women’s sponsorship perceived only indirectly (if at all) in modern scholarship, but this expunging of influential examples tends to plague the representation of female literary characters as well, particularly in medieval romances. Joan Ferrante explores this aspect of romance heroines in her article on the discrepancies between public and private behavior in chivalric texts. Female literary characters, she suggests, must find “subtle or hidden ways to exercise … power, to manipulate people and situations, and to spin out fictions which suit them better than their reality, fictions by which they can, or hope to, control reality.”16 Although these characters possess great skill and ingenuity – most commonly in the form of “words and magic” – their talents must be used to “manipulate without the object’s being aware of it.”17 The silence and passivity that characterize many late medieval romance heroines, their inability or unwillingness to speak or act openly, is actually an integral part of the process of gaining cultural power they model, as shown in the following chapters. These female characters, who operate largely behind the scenes in the romances, find ways of communicating with and influencing the men they intend to aid and sponsor regardless of the social circumstances that restrain them. Further analysis of these narratives shows that, despite the heroines’ show of silence and submissiveness, the audience is always aware of the actual circumstances of their behavior. Whether the woman’s advice will not be believed or heeded because of external factors, as is the case in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, or because the woman must deliberately dissemble in order to act appropriately in public, as in Partonope of Blois, the reader 14

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Consider the examples of women’s influence found in Chrétien de Troyes’s Lancelot. Marie de Champagne, the ostensible patron of the piece, provides only the general subject matter and meaning for the romance (a text that Chrétien abandons to be finished by Godefroi de Leigni); within the romance, Guinevere provides both distant and capricious inspiration during Lancelot’s battles, remaining high within a tower and instructing the knight through a go-between to fight poorly or well according to her will. See Le Chevalier de la Charrete, ed. Mario Roques, Classiques français du moyen âge 86 (Paris: Champion, 1978). Green, Women Readers, p. 208. Joan Ferrante, “Public Postures and Private Maneuvers: Roles Medieval Women Play,” in Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1988), pp. 213–229 (p. 213). Joan Ferrante, “Public Postures and Private Maneuvers,” p. 216.

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Introduction understands the true extent of the character’s power and, thus, can receive the benefits of the model of influence provided by the heroine.18 In each of the romances discussed in this book, almost immediately after the private scenes of influence – scenes in which the women’s actions often seem frustratingly contradictory to their public performance or inaction – the men they support engage in open and successful chivalric activity based in large part on the advice they receive from the heroines. Thus, even though the women themselves seem to operate secretly or passively, the chivalric scenes, which many critics view as detracting from the rest of the romance, actually corroborate the strength of the women’s influence in the narrative.19 In these scenes, the knights put the many lessons they learn from their female supporters into action immediately after receiving the information. In the following chapters, I thus seek to refine our understanding of the romance genre, particularly late medieval English translations of continental romances, by demonstrating that the romance heroine is presented not as a realistic figure, but as a mimetic figure whose cultural influence and importance is in keeping with the popularity and predominance of the romance genre for both men and women readers. This study revises traditional readings of the romance heroine, which gravitate toward regarding the characters as passive and vulnerable figures, as fairy mistresses exempt from human expectations and emulations, or as distant and haughty objects of courtly love.20 Instead I demonstrate how the romance heroine’s public silence and private actions can represent a means to negotiate and understand better the role of women in the systems of cultural power in the Middle Ages. While this study takes as its primary object of study the fictional models of female influence provided by chivalric romances, the historical fact of 18

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Holly Crocker’s concept of “performative passivity” in Chaucer’s Merchant’s Tale relates to the transparently false submissiveness of the romance heroines I discuss in this study. Crocker suggests that medieval romances depict “grades of masculine empowerment [which] depend on the different ways feminine agency passes itself off as passivity in public displays” (“Performative Passivity and the Fantasies of Masculinity in the Merchant’s Tale,” The Chaucer Review 38.2 [2003]: pp. 178–198 [p. 182]). Crocker distinguishes between the romance of Chaucer’s Merchant’s Tale, which obviously constructs masculinity as “dependent upon femininity for its intelligibility, stability, and perpetuity,” and most other chivalric romances, which ignore powerful female figures “by continually reading women as passive players who exert no decisive control in competitions that are supposed to take place only between men” (p. 183). This study, however, challenges that reading of women’s agency in romance narratives; in fact, it is the overtly “performative” aspect of the “performative passivity” Crocker discusses that makes women’s agency impossible to ignore in even the most traditional chivalric romance. See Chapter Two of this book for my discussion of what some scholars consider to be extraneous tournament and dragon-slaying scenes in John Metham’s Amoryus and Cleopes and Chapter Four for my discussion of the critical importance of the tournament and battle scenes to Thomas Chestre’s Sir Launfal. Even Ferrante, who is invested in broadening our understanding of women’s literary and cultural influence, particularly in secular genres, such as romance and history, focuses on the binary of “women in charge” or “damsel in distress” in her discussions of female romance characters. See Ferrante’s “Courtly Literature,” in To the Glory of Her Sex: Women’s Roles in the Composition of Medieval Texts (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), pp. 107–138.

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Women’s Power in Late Medieval Romance

female readership plays a role in all of the texts discussed in these chapters. Therefore, I will address briefly the kind of medieval female reader and reading process I envision for the romance texts I examine in this study. Although a full examination of medieval literacy and readership far exceeds the scope of this study and, indeed, the scope of a single volume,21 it is useful to outline briefly several of the primary ways in which women interacted with texts in the medieval period. Twelfth- and thirteenth-century women’s engagements with literature – as either readers, writers, or patrons – centered primarily on the court or the convent and those who “enjoyed access to education and scholarly circles in which comprehensive literacy and considerable learning could have been acquired.”22 However, beginning in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in England and on the Continent, literacy rates for both men and women increase and the minor aristocrats, gentry, and merchant classes begin to affect significantly the production and consumption of texts.23 Perhaps because they are more easily acquired than in previous centuries, books become prestige objects; a keen interest in the acquisition and transmission of literary works is often reflected in the late medieval documents and wills of both the aristocracy and gentry.24 Women played a prominent role in the burgeoning literary and textual activities of the late Middle Ages.25 Though scholars such as Jambeck, Bell, and Meale have questioned whether women’s reading and patronage tastes in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were predominantly devotional or secular, both the textual and testamentary evidence that remains from this 21

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M. T. Clanchy’s formidable From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307 (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1993) and Joyce Coleman’s Public Reading and the Reading Public in Late Medieval England and France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) come close. For a brief overview of both medieval literate activities and modern critical work on literacy and readership in the Middle Ages, see Laurel Amtower, “Chapter One: The Reading Public,” in Engaging Words: The Culture of Reading in the Later Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave, 2000), pp. 18–43. Julia Boffey, “Women Authors and Women’s Literacy in Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century England,” in Women and Literature in Britain, 1150–1500, ed. Carol M. Meale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 159–182 (p. 160). Most recent scholars agree that women also participated in this late medieval increase in literacy, which belies Ramsey’s suggestion that “literacy among women, after all, was a kind of sociological accident, only becoming a deliberate aim of society at a much later period” (Chivalric Romances, p. 109). See Susan Hagen Cavanaugh’s comprehensive dissertation, “A Study of Books Privately Owned in England 1300–1450.” University of Pennsylvania Dissertation, 1981; Meale, “‘…alle the bokes’”; Bell, “Medieval Women Book Owners”; Josephine K. Tarvers, “‘This Ys My Mystrys Boke’: English Women as Readers and Writers in Late Medieval England,” in The Uses of Manuscripts in Literary Studies: Essays in Memory of Judson Boyce Allen, ed. Charlotte Cook Morse et al. (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publication, Western Michigan University, 1992), pp. 305–327; Sylvia Thrupp, The Merchant Class of Medieval London, 1300–1500 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989); and Carol M. Meale, “Patrons, Buyers, and Owners: Book Production and Social State,” in Book Production and Publishing in Britain, 1375–1475, ed. Jeremy Griffiths and Derek Pearsall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 201–238. Bell, “Medieval Women Book Owners,” p. 152.

8

Introduction period indicates that women formed a large portion of the audience both for works of lay piety, such as mystical texts and hagiographies, and secular material, such as histories and romances.26 However, it is women’s readership of romances that relates to the current study and, thus, the various ways in which women formed the audience for these texts is what concerns me here. In his book-length study of chivalric romances, what he considers to be the “popular literature” of medieval England, Lee C. Ramsey promotes a traditional view of women’s readership of romance texts, one that has been hard to dislodge in subsequent criticism: “its specific function is to fill idle time in a way that satisfies the preexisting desires or needs of its audience. It is escapist.”27 Aristocratic women who possessed ample leisure time for reading, Ramsey continues, were “especially vulnerable to the appeals of romance fiction.”28 As they were subservient in society, he suggests, they found solace and satisfaction in the subservient fantasy heroines they read about: “since their social identity would be achieved through marriage or through some other type of association with men, a satisfying fantasy identification must also have been this type.”29 Contrary to Ramsey’s conclusions about women’s motivations for reading romance, this study argues that women readers were finding strategies for cultural and social influence in the romance heroines they encountered precisely because these heroines were exemplary not simply fantastic. That is, women read romances not only for entertainment – to indulge escapist fantasies or otherwise – but also to deploy what they learned from the texts in productive ways in their own lives.30 Understanding better the reading and learning practices of the female members of the audience 26

27 28 29 30

Both Jambeck, in “Patterns of Women’s Literary Patronage” (pp. 228–229 and 242), and Bell, in “Medieval Women Book Owners” (p. 165), suggest that women’s literate activities were most prominently displayed in the patronage and readership of devotional material. Meale, however, cautions against taking the historical information found in wills and other documents – ones which suggest that women were reading and bequeathing religious more than secular literature – at face value; not only were secular texts usually more modest productions (“‘… alle the bokes’,” p. 130), and, therefore, less likely to survive in the medieval manuscript record, but the formal nature of the testamentary document, Meale suggests, means that were are given an indication of only “one aspect of the testator’s life” rather than a complete picture of their book collections or reading tastes (p. 131). Though Meale’s caveat is well taken, the majority of manuscript and testamentary evidence remaining from this period records women’s ownership and transmission of religious material and, thus, most current scholarship focuses on this body of literature in their discussions of female literary engagement. See Anne M. Dutton, “Passing the Book: Testamentary Transmission of Religious Literature to and by Women in England 1350–1500,” in Women, the Book, and the Godly: Selected Proceedings of the St. Hilda’s Conference, 1993; Volume I, ed. Lesley Smith and Jane H. M. Taylor (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1995), pp. 41–54. Ramsey, Chivalric Romances, p. 6. Ramsey, Chivalric Romances, p. 9. Ramsey, Chivalric Romances, p. 9. Jennifer Goodman, for example, suggests that women read chivalric romances with their daughters as a teaching tool for morality (“‘That Wommen Holde in Ful Greet Reverence’: Mothers and Daughters Reading Chivalric Romances,” in Women, the Book, and the Worldly, pp. 25–30. See also Meale “Romance and Its Audiences,” p. 221.

9



Women’s Power in Late Medieval Romance

suggested in Caxton’s Prologue to Blanchardyn and Eglantine, for example, furthers my particular examination of the textual models they encountered in literature. In particular, Rebecca Krug outlines an interesting model of women’s engagement with written texts, one that I presuppose to a certain extent in this study. Krug notes that medieval noblewomen, like Margaret Beaufort, interacted with written texts as part of a patriarchal system that “helped create the sense that women’s participation in literary pursuits was a socially prestigious act of public service.”31 This textual beneficence, Krug suggests, is in large part connected to acts of female patronage, which profit not only women’s own intellectual and social standing, but also the larger community as well. But beyond the element of service implicit in acts of cultural and literary influence, Krug also discusses women’s literate activities as acts of “self-inscription” or an “imaginative insertion of one’s own person and interests in the words of the text.”32 In this “inscriptive impulse” of female literate practices, a woman engages in a “creative positive action … to process and evaluate evidence and apply it to her own situation.33 I apply the notions of service and self-inscription Krug explores from the perspective of the medieval female reader to my discussions of literary patterns of women’s social power in the following chapters. A desire to serve is one of the core concepts of the act of influence or patronage, and it is through the process of self-inscription in reading romances that the desire to serve – in this case the literal act of intellectual, social, and financial sponsorship – is enacted. The women readers of chivalric romances simultaneously inscribe themselves into the positions of the heroines and female patrons depicted in the narrative and are then encouraged to become cultural agents themselves through various acts of service and sponsorship. This study investigates a wide range of ways in which women establish themselves as holders of power via intellectual, material, and cultural expertise. The trajectory of this book moves from a discussion of romances depicting specific kinds of intellectual and social influence (those not including material sponsorship) to romances portraying comprehensive female patronage (examples of influence that include not only broad-based knowledge and advice but also tangible and financial components as well). The first two chapters of this study examine the authors’ depictions of heroines whose harnessing of various academic discourses constructs detailed examples of the wide-ranging social and cultural opportunities available for women. Basing each of the heroines’ interventions on a single discourse reinforces the depth of knowledge both appropriate and necessary for women to consolidate and 31 32 33

Krug, Reading Families, p. 83. Krug discusses Margaret Beaufort as one of many examples of women engaged in this kind of literate activity rather than as an isolated, unique reader. Krug, Reading Families, p. 67. Krug, Reading Families, pp. 75–76.

10

Introduction deploy cultural power in the Middle Ages. Indeed, these romances suggest to female readers that they need not know everything to claim cultural authority provided that they know one subject thoroughly. For instance, in the first chapter, on Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, the characterization of Cassandra as the intellectual and social advisor of her brother, Troilus, demonstrates how a specific body of knowledge – in this case, Latin historiography – can be employed to the ostensible benefit of the heroine and those she seeks to help. In my discussion of Amoryus and Cleopes in Chapter Two, I examine another heroine’s use of an academic discourse – natural science – to initiate the relationship with her knight, to facilitate his chivalric success, and even to transition them both into a life of Christian service. In each of the two subsequent chapters, I discuss texts in which the representations of female influence are rendered as comprehensive acts of patronage, incorporating a significant degree of financial or tangible support, such as money, battle gear, and horses or attendants.34 Loveday Lewes Gee notes that historical acts of patronage by medieval women can be seen as “investments of one sort or another; in the hope of spiritual rewards, in comfort and material assets, in respect of a position in society, or as insurance against harder financial times.”35 While it is undoubtedly true that female as well as male patrons sought to leave their mark on posterity through patronage, Gee’s description of the motivations that underwrite women’s patronage expose the tendency of scholars to define patronage primarily, if not exclusively, as tied to money or social influence and political power that has tangible and quantifiable benefits.36 This narrow conception of patronage excludes most women from a vital aspect of medieval culture; only the most wealthy and, to some extent, independent aristocratic women could afford to sponsor literary, architectural, and cultural productions in the Middle Ages through strictly financial means. Medieval romances, such as Partonope of Blois and Sir Launfal, I suggest, counter the inadequacy of this limited definition of patronage by offering various models of women’s cutural and social sponsorship, which include both financial and non-financial support. 34

35

36

Although Chapters Three and Four are concerned primarily with literary representations of social and cultural patronage, recent studies in historical accounts of women’s patronage greatly inform my readings and provide a basis for my revision of traditional notions of primarily economically based sponsorship in medieval literature. Loveday Lewes Gee, Women, Art and Patronage, p. 72. See also Erin L. Jordan, Women, Power, and Religious Patronage in the Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) for her account of two politically influential, thirteenth-century women patrons: Jeanne and Marguerite, Countesses of Flanders and Hainaut. See, e.g., Karl Julius Holzknecht, Literary Patronage in the Middle Ages (New York: Octagon Books, 1966) and Joel T. Rosenthal, “Aristocratic Cultural Patronage and Book Bequests, 1350– 1500,” John Rylands Library Bulletin 64 (1981–1982): pp. 522–548. These influential studies of medieval patronage have been valuable but also restrictive because of their attention to material elements such as the exchange of money or prestigious political appointments; they privilege such materiality at the expense of a broader continuum that encompasses both tangible and intangible support.

11



Women’s Power in Late Medieval Romance

Many of the more recent scholars of medieval female sponsorship, such as June Hall McCash, D. H. Green, and Karen Jambeck,37 understand the patronage relationship as transcending economics. These critics affirm a more varied concept of medieval women’s intervention in the literary sphere in particular – Joan Ferrante, for example, refers to their engagement as “urging” male authors through “intellectual and emotional support”38 – but confine their examples of such patronage to historical examples. The last section of my study takes Ferrante’s understanding of extensive female patronage further, considering evidence of this support in literary texts, whereby the models of female patronage assert social and cultural roles for women at a time when earlier chivalric models are under revision. In the final two chapters of Women’s Power in Late Medieval Romance, I consider the act of patronage by medieval women in a broad, interdisciplinary sense, including the direct sponsorship of literature and art as well as the exertion of social, cultural, and political influence. I read the act of patronage not just as a system of financial exchange, but more broadly as a system of religious, social, and intellectual support which may or may not include an element of financial remuneration. While I seek to expand the concept of patronage in the Middle Ages to include acts of influence which are not monetarily based, I remain conscious of the risks of expanding the notion of patronage beyond critical usefulness.39 With this more expansive concept of patronage in mind, Chapters Three and Four, on Partonope of Blois and Sir Launfal, respectively, investigate 37

38

39

See June Hall McCash’s The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1996), and D. H. Green, “Chapter 4: Women’s Engagement with Literature,” in Women Readers, pp. 179–255. Green specifically counters the narrow representation of patronage espoused in K. M. Broadhurst’s “Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine: Patrons of Literature in French?” Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 27 (1996): pp. 53–84. Broadhurst, Green asserts, confines herself to the “restrictive sense of ‘the remuneration bestowed by the patron on the author,’ to the exclusion of any other encouragement” (p. 204). Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski also set out to “broaden … the conventional understanding of power as public authority” (“Introduction,” in Gendering the Master Narrative: Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. Mary C. Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski [Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003], pp. 1–17 [p. 2]); I would suggest that part of that broadened understanding is a rejection of financially based discourses of power. Joan Ferrante, “Whose Voice? The Influence of Women Patrons on Courtly Romances,” in Literary Aspects of Courtly Culture: Selected Papers from the Seventh Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society, ed. Donald Maddox and Sara Sturm-Maddox (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 3–18 (p. 4). In her article on the medieval cult of St. Margaret, for example, Wendy R. Larson employs the term “patronage” to refer both to the behavior of those who belong to Margaret’s cult – i.e., “the full range of practices and the artifacts those practices produced that were associated with promoting or drawing on the subject’s sanctity and efficacy as an intercessor” – and to the act of intercession by St. Margaret herself (“Who is the Master of this Narrative? Maternal Patronage of the Cult of St. Margaret,” in Gendering the Master Narrative: Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. Mary C. Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski [Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003], pp. 94–104 [p. 95]). Larson’s definition, while laudably moving away from more traditional notions of patronage, is so far expanded as to become confusing, failing to differentiate meaningfully between the acts of the cult’s adherents and those of the saint.

12

Introduction acts of female patronage that include money as well as chivalric, spiritual, and intellectual advice. In these last chapters, the tangible bequests do not outweigh the intellectual, social, and emotional acts of support provided by the women patrons. By starting with a text in Chapter One that depicts a less tangibly expressed idea of women’s influence, this book seeks to understand the romances discussed in later chapters as offering equally broad examples of female agency. Thus, the often excessive financial largess depicted in the final two romances is shown to be only one facet of a complex system of women’s cultural and social influence in the Middle Ages. All the romances discussed in this book capitalize on the medieval interest in translating and revising earlier romance narratives; one of the ways this occurs, I suggest, is through a revision of the romance heroines to emphasize their roles as intellectual, cultural, and financial agents. Chaucer revises Boccaccio’s Il Filostrato (c. 1335–1340), particularly in the character of Cassandra. In turn, John Metham’s Amoryus and Cleopes (c. 1449), the anonymous Partonope of Blois (c. 1450), and Thomas Chestre’s Sir Launfal (late fourteenth century) all revise earlier narratives to exemplify this kind of female influence and patronage. These specific alterations made to the female characters in these late medieval English romances may or may not be the primary focus of the authors’ revisions; however, the late Middle English revisions of earlier continental romances not only made these popular narratives more socially palatable to the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century audiences for which they were produced, but, I suggest, they also reflected the more prominent role of late medieval women in the literary and cultural spheres in England. The first chapter, “Prophecy as Social Influence: Cassandra, Anne Neville and the Corpus Christi Manuscript of Troilus and Criseyde,” examines Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, a romance that portrays women as both readers and scholars of history. Chaucer specifically depicts Cassandra as a repository of the extensive secular knowledge of classical Latin histories and as the intellectual and emotional supporter of Troilus. This chapter begins with a discussion of the famous manuscript of Chaucer’s text, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 61, which shows evidence of female readership and contains a well-known frontispiece illumination in which a man – possibly Chaucer – offers a recitation or reading to a noble audience. I argue that this illustration and the several lengthy portions of the original narrative omitted from this manuscript predispose a specific reading of the romance, one that mitigates to an extent the depiction of Criseyde as a betrayer of Troilus’s love through Cassandra’s secular knowledge and prophetic ability. The partial alleviation of culpability provided to Criseyde by Cassandra’s reading forges a critical connection between the two heroines in terms of the function of female influence in the romance. These two characters, I argue, taken together represent a comprehensive model of female sponsorship, one which will be exemplified in a single heroine in later romances. Although 13



Women’s Power in Late Medieval Romance

Cassandra’s attempt to inform and influence others is divinely ordained to be ineffective – for example, Troilus’s refusal to believe her interpretation of his dream contributes to his downfall – the female audience of the Corpus Christi manuscript nevertheless encounters a persuasive model of women’s intellectual authority and interpretation that is founded more on a thorough knowledge of Latin historical texts rather than Apollo’s divine retribution. Given the desperate situation in which the doomed Trojans find themselves, Cassandra’s seemingly failed act of prophetic influence actually enables the young knight to die with honor rather than shamefully refusing to fight because of lovesickness. Additionally, while Criseyde’s role as a betrayer of Troilus has long been the primary focus of critical discussion about her character, it is the beneficial consequences of her love for Troilus’s chivalric development that I examine in this chapter. Thus, although the lasting effectiveness of the women’s influence over Troilus is compromised in many ways by the vicissitudes of war and by his own immaturity and anger, Chaucer’s depiction of Cassandra and Criseyde and the particular manuscript context in which Anne Neville would have read the romance demonstrate the consequences of failing to heed a woman’s good counsel. In Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer depicts his Cassandra as a well-read historian who marshals her intellect in the ultimately doomed service of her brother and the city of Troy. John Metham’s Amoryus and Cleopes (c. 1449) represents a heroine with a similar specific knowledge that will be used to negotiate the value of pagan science and the contemptibility of classical polytheism. Chapter Two, “The Science of Female Power in John Metham’s Amoryus and Cleopes,” examines the role of women who provide support and influence textual production through knowledge of both preChristian scholarship and Christian theology. The historical reader and co-patron of Amoryus and Cleopes, Lady Katherine Stapleton, witnesses in the romance not only a resurrection and conversion involving the main characters but also a Christian Â� dislodgement of a pagan belief system. Alongside this Â�Christianization, however, Metham continues to validate two types of discourse in the romance: scientific treatises and feats of chivalry, both of which are made possible through the heroine’s encouragement of her lover, Amoryus. The romance offers a steady trajectory of the status of secular knowledge and chivalric activities, which moves from their alliance with pre-Christian religion and culture to a compatibility with Christianity. The transformation of the dominant discourse from pagan to Christian – or the “conversion” of the secular – forges a link between Christianity, scientific knowledge, and chivalric pursuits, and locates the embodiment of that connection in the figure of the romance heroine, Cleopes. Moreover, Cleopes’s knowledge of medieval science – one which she deploys successfully on Amoryus’s behalf – is reflected in the manuscript context in which the romance appears and in other works by Metham sponsored by Katherine Stapleton and her husband. Given the solid evidence of an historical woman’s 14

Introduction readership and patronage of this text, we can see more readily how the kinds of sponsorship modeled by fictional romance heroines reflect and, perhaps, teach actual women’s patronage in the later Middle Ages. While the example of female influence in Amoryus and Cleopes is defined largely in terms of scientific discourse, which aids the hero in his chivalric quest, in the third chapter, “A Woman’s ‘Crafte’: Sexual and Chivalric Patronage in Partonope of Blois,” I explore how the fifteenth-century romance Partonope of Blois foregrounds chivalry, religious education, and the tenets of courtly love as the focus of the heroine’s patronage. Although Melior’s education is described as combining the classical sciences with Christian theology, this scientific knowledge is not the basis of her influence, as it was with Cleopes. Rather, Melior’s main contribution to the narrative is the chivalric lessons and financial patronage she provides for her lover. The heroine’s enemies in the romance – Partonope’s mother and the Bishop of Paris – attempt to portray a significant conflict between the worldly love and lifestyle that Melior offers Partonope and the strictly religious life that precludes the possibility of worldly pleasure. However, the comprehensive education Melior provides includes a mandate for good Christian piety in addition to knightly prowess and bravery. Therefore, when Partonope eventually chooses his love for Melior over an exclusive devotion to God, he chooses a relationship that will provide him with the best of both worlds: love and chivalric success as well as a life of Christian piety and service, all of which are to be had only through Melior’s patronage. In Chapter Four, “Creative Revisions: Competing Figures of the Patroness in Thomas Chestre’s Sir Launfal,” I return to the consequences of failing to follow the beneficial guidelines of a female sponsor I discussed in Chapter One. Unlike Troilus in Chaucer’s text, however, the young knight in Thomas Chestre’s late fourteenth-century romance Sir Launfal is afforded the opportunity to choose which model of female influence he will follow: the evil Gwennere or his lover, Tryamour. Without being hampered by the divinely inspired curse of disbelief, the hero in Sir Launfal is free to explore fully two different types of sponsorship, and the audience, in turn, is presented with a meticulous description of both processes of women’s social and cultural influence. The decision of which sponsor to choose is, thus, collaborative. Launfal learns through a series of mistakes and social blunders which woman will provide him with the best advice and support in his chivalric and personal development; by the same token, the female readers of Sir Launfal are also invited to choose on which woman’s example they might pattern their own behavior. The alternatives Chestre constructs in his romance – more than in any other romance I discuss in this book, in fact – demonstrate the importance of female patronage to social interactions and cultural advancement in the late Middle Ages. In a wholly original conclusion to Chestre’s revision of Marie de France’s twelfth-century romance Lanval, the hero returns to Arthur’s kingdom once a year to joust with all knights who wish to hone 15



Women’s Power in Late Medieval Romance

their chivalric skills. Were it not for the timely intervention of Tryamour in the ruined knight’s life and her subsequent and rehabilitating patronage, Launfal’s continued contribution to the chivalry of Arthur’s kingdom would be impossible. This episode, and several others in the romance, emphasize that female sponsorship is indeed a gateway of sorts into the sphere of social influence. Sir Launfal teaches women specific patterns of successful and unsuccessful patronage and, more broadly, the posterity that can be achieved through an initial act of sponsorship; the romance teaches its male readers how to reap the social and chivalric benefits of the patronage system, and to engage in acts of sponsorship themselves, by seeking the support of powerful, intelligent women.

16

1 Prophecy as Social Influence: Cassandra, Anne Neville and the Corpus Christi Manuscript of Troilus and Criseyde

I

n a late twelfth-century French chanson de geste, Raoul de Cambrai, the hero engages in a vicious and, ultimately, self-destructive feud with his former closest friend and ally, Bernier. Raoul’s lack of moderation – in matters of revenge and in the desire for political and chivalric advancement – has placed him in this position. To a great extent, his immoderation is worsened by his resistance to accepting his mother’s sage counsel. Beginning in stanza 48 of the poem, the Lady Aalais chides her son for failing to fight for his own birthright, which was given to another knight to hold in trust until Raoul reached maturity: “Toute la terre Taillefer le hardi, / Le tien chier pere qe je pris mari, / Te rendist ore, par la soie merci, / Car trop en a Mancel esté servi. / Je me mervelg qe tant l’as consenti, / Qe grant piece a ne l’as mort ou honni.”1 Raoul ignores his mother’s advice that he pursue his own just inheritance and, instead, informs Aalais that he has been granted the lands of the recently deceased Count Herbert by the king of France, a gift that will dispossess Herbert’s four sons and cause them to seek revenge on Raoul and his men. When she hears this news, Aalais begins a lengthy emotional campaign to dissuade her son, stating “longement t’ai norri; / Qi te donna Peronne et Origni, / Et S. Quentin, Neele et Falevi, / [Et] Ham et Roie et la tor de Clari, / De mort novele, biax fix, te ravesti. / Laisse lor terre, por amor Dieu t’en pri.”2 Not only does she warn Raoul of the danger this feud poses to himself, but also to the lands and people of Cambrai: “Toute 1

2

Raoul de Cambrai: Chanson de Geste, ed. P. Meyer and A. Longnon (Paris: Librairie de Firmin Didot, 1882, reprint, 1956) [hereafter Meyer and Lognon], lines 976–979. “[King Louis] ought to give you now of his own free will all the land of Taillefer the bold, thine own father and my husband. The knight of Mans has had possession of [the fief] too long, and I am amazed that thou hast consented to it for so long, and hast neither killed him nor brought dishonor upon him” (Raoul de Cambrai: An Old French Feudal Epic, ed. and trans. Jessie Crossland [London: Chatto and Windus, 1926], p. 27) [hereafter Crossland]. Meyer and Longnon, lines 986–991; “I have watched over thee many a year and these are my words: He who has given thee Péronne and Origny, St. Quentin, Nesle and Falévy, Ham and Roie and the tower of Clairy, has invested you with a deadly gift, my son. I implore thee, for God’s sake, let their land be” (Crossland, p. 28).

17



Women’s Power in Late Medieval Romance

ma terre iert mise en estencele.”3 In her suggestions to Raoul about how he should conduct himself in battle – “Fix, ne destruire chapele ne mostier; / La povre gent, por Dieu, ne essillier”4 – the reader is given to understand the impending bloodshed and general suffering that will occur if Aalais’s advice is not heeded. Seeing that her son is not moved by such images, however, Aalais graphically predicts that Herbert’s sons “le cuer soz la coraille / Te trairont il a lor branc qi bien taille.”5 But the legitimate warning only angers Raoul and he condescendingly dismisses his mother, saying Maldehait ait, je le taing por lanier, Le gentil homme, qant il doit tornoier, A gentil dame qant se va consellier! Dedens vos chambres vos alez aasier: Beveiz puison por vo pance encraissier, Et si pensez de boivre et de mengier; Car d’autre chose ne devez mais plaidier.6

After this final rejection, Aalais curses her son. Despite all the opportunities and benefits he has enjoyed throughout his life, she concludes that, because Raoul intends to “Or viex aler tel terre chalengier / Ou tes ancestres ne prist ainz .j. denier; […] Cil Damerdiex qi tout a a jugier, / Ne t’en ramaint sain ne sauf ne entier!”7 I relate this episode of Raoul de Cambrai in full not only because it demonstrates the dangers inherent in failing to heed good advice, particularly that of an educated and knowledgeable woman, but also because this interaction outlines an important trajectory of influential female speech. Aalais begins this lengthy conversation with her son with strategies for advancing his chivalric career by claiming his rightful inheritance. Her guidance is characterized by both motherly concern and a keen understanding of which actions will bring her son the loyalty of the men who serve him and which behavior will alienate the knights and noblemen on whom Raoul relies. When she realizes that the overly proud Raoul is unmoved by her counsel, she turns to a kind of prophetic discourse, warning him that his decisions will certainly 3 4 5 6

7

Meyer and Longnon, line 1011; “All my land will be set on fire by this war” (Crossland, p. 28–29). Meyer and Longnon, lines 1034–1035; “My son, never destroy either church or chapel, and for God’s sake, never make the poor homeless” (Crossland, p. 29). Meyer and Longnon, lines 1073–1074; the sons of Herbert “will cut thy heart out of thy body with their sharp swords” (Crossland, p. 31). Meyer and Longnon, lines 1100–1106; “Let that knight be accursed and held for a coward, who takes counsel of a woman before going into battle! Go to your apartments, lady, and take your ease; drink pleasant draughts to fatten your body. Think out for your household what they shall eat and drink, and meddle not with other things” (Crossland, p. 32). Meyer and Longnon, lines 1129–1133; Raoul intends to “claim a land from which no ancestor of thine ever took a penny … may the Lord God, the judge of all, never bring thee back safe and sound and whole of skin” (Crossland, p. 32).

18



Prophecy as Social Influence

bring about his own death and the destruction of his lands and family. Finally, failing to dissuade Raoul with the promise of evil things to come, Aalais can only resort to a curse to express her anger and frustration, though she regrets these words as soon as she utters them. Thus, we see a woman’s increasingly thwarted attempts to help her son rendered in the development of her speech from motherly advice, to prophecy, to curse. Prophetic ability is traditionally given to humans, such as biblical prophets and classical oracles, by divine figures. When considered in the context of the Raoul de Cambrai episode, however, we may also understand prophecy as a discourse (one of many) accessed by women to influence others.8 Like Raoul’s mother, Chaucer’s Cassandra in Troilus and Criseyde harnesses the discourse of prophecy to influence and aid someone close to her: her brother, Troilus.9 Although she originally received her gift of foresight from the god Apollo (a fact not mentioned in Chaucer’s text), Cassandra is rarely read as a prophetess in the traditional sense. Unlike her counterpart in classical mythology, the figure of Cassandra in Troilus and Criseyde brings her talents to bear on the challenge of textual interpretation more than true divination.10 Indeed, Cassandra’s analysis of her brother’s dream and the important conclusions she draws from that reading are an interpretive practice in 8

9

10

Joan Ferrante comments on the interaction between Raoul and his mother, citing it as an example of how female literary characters often manipulate through the use of words and magic. Aalais, Ferrante notes, relies on the power of persuasive prophecy, which is “often a woman’s gift” (“Public Postures and Private Maneuvers: Roles Medieval Women Play,” in Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1988), pp. 213–229 [p. 214]). For a discussion of how prophecy functions as a discourse rather than a specific genre in the Middle Ages, see Lesley A. Coote’s Prophecy and Public Affairs in Later Medieval England (York: York Medieval Press, 2000), pp. 13–42. Although Coote’s study focuses on political prophecies and their popularity in medieval chronicles, I suggest that most prophecies which appear in medieval texts, particularly those I discuss in this chapter, can also be construed as a kind of discourse, or, as Coote puts it, “a particular range of language, which provides a specific and exclusive way of talking about and viewing a subject” (p. 13). Cassandra, a well-known figure in Trojan myth, was the daughter of the Trojan king Priam and sister to Troilus, Paris, and Deiphebus. Apollo, who wished to gain her love, offered to teach her the art of prophecy. When she had learned it, however, she refused to grant the god her love. As punishment, Apollo allowed her to keep her prophetic powers, but deprived her of the ability to persuade others of the truth of her visions. For example, Cassandra predicted that Paris’s love for and capture of Helen would destroy the city of Troy; she also warned that an army of Greeks was hidden inside the Trojan horse. See Aeschylus’s Agamemnon in The Oresteia, trans. Robert Fagles (New York: Viking Press, 1975) and The Iliad of Homer, trans. Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967). Cassandra’s interpretive ability occupies the attentions of most critics. See, for example, Laurel Amtower’s Engaging Words: The Culture of Reading in the Later Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave, 2000), pp. 149–162; Valerie Ross, “Believing Cassandra: Intertextual Politics and the Interpretation of Dreams in Troilus and Criseyde,” The Chaucer Review 31.4 (1997): pp. 339–356 (p. 343); and Lee Patterson, Chaucer and the Subject of History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,1991), especially pp. 84–164. Adding another interesting observation to the formidable amount of criticism on Cassandra’s interpretation of her Theban sources, Matthew Giancarlo notes that not only does Cassandra interpret Troilus’s dream correctly, but “she does so by providing an account of history’s structure, an outline of events like the scaffolding or

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which anyone with a thorough knowledge of history could engage. Why, then, would Chaucer create Cassandra as a Sybil almost completely shorn of any divine or supernatural source? Her prophetic discourse, as I argue in this chapter, provides a way for Cassandra to engage in acts of social influence. Specifically, the use of prophetic dream interpretation legitimates acts of intellectual and emotional support – such as the deployment of political and personal counsel and women’s historical knowledge – that are not automatically imbued with authority through the concomitant giving of gifts, battle gear, and other accoutrements in more traditional acts of social influence, such as patronage. Beginning this book with an examination of less tangible depictions of women’s influence in medieval romances provides a better understanding of the broad intervention of women in the cultural and literary spheres of the late Middle Ages; not limited merely to the dissemination of money and political appointments, women’s influence could be felt in far subtler ways, particularly when couched in powerful discourses like prophetic and historical knowledge. This chapter examines Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, a late fourteenthcentury romance that depicts women as readers, scholars of history, and cultural agents. Chaucer’s text provides an example of prophetic counsel as a form of intellectual and social influence. Unlike the treasonous Calchas, whose reliance on augury, casting lots, and consulting oracles leads him to abandon Troy and betray his daughter, Cassandra’s prophetic interpretations are the product of careful historical and textual study. Indeed, Chaucer specifically renders Cassandra the repository of an extensive secular knowledge of classical Latin histories in his romance. However, it may seem that Chaucer’s Cassandra only demonstrates the numerous obstacles faced by women who attempt to influence social events through personal interventions and advice. Cursed by the scorned god Apollo, Cassandra is placed in the position of giving true prophecies – spoken publicly and often with great agitation – while facing a disbelieving audience. Even though Cassandra primarily speaks openly, unlike the other romance heroines examined in this study, her prophecies and interpretations are effectively silenced because they are ignored.11 Troilus (and, indeed, all the Trojans) refuses to heed Cassandra’s prophetic counsel; he is destined to die and to be betrayed by his love, Criseyde. Thus, it appears that Cassandra is destined to fail as well. However, considering the divine handicap under which Cassandra labors, her prophetic and intellectual support in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde is successful on several fronts.

11

skeleton of a building” (“The Structure of Fate and the Devising of History in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 26 [2004]: pp. 227–266 [p. 249–250]). As I will discuss further below, Chaucer’s Cassandra is actually far more restrained and discreet in her prophetic readings than either her classical or Boccaccian counterparts.

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First, the audience is perfectly aware of the truth of her interpretations. As is the case with the heroines I discuss in the following chapters, who must operate behind the scenes and often speak contrary to their own desires and self-interest in public, Cassandra and the audience of Chaucer’s text reach an understanding that circumvents any dissembling and disbelief; the readers’ awareness of Cassandra’s legitimacy ultimately reflects poorly on Troilus and the other Trojans.12 Thus, Troilus and Criseyde demonstrates the consequences of not following the advice of a female counselor, a theme I will return to in Chapter Four, “Creative Revisions: Competing Figures of the Patroness in Thomas Chestre’s Sir Launfal.” Second, Cassandra’s interpretation of Troilus’s dream enables her brother to make his betrayal and grief productive. As the result of his sister’s prophetic reading, Troilus dies with honor on the field of battle, secure in his masculine prowess, rather than with shame, wasting away from love sickness behind the walls of Troy. Chaucer figures Cassandra’s act of prophecy in Book V as a merciful and effective completion of the beneficial influence begun by Criseyde in the earlier books of Troilus and Criseyde. For Troilus, Cassandra and Criseyde function as two facets of an influential female figure that will be embodied by a single heroine in the later romances discussed in this book. Cassandra offers emotional and intellectual assistance in the form of historical information and Criseyde offers military and social motivation through love and physical pleasure. Both of the women inspire Troilus to great behavior, such as chivalric deeds and acts of generosity, even though those acts are the product of anger and grief as well as love and happiness.13 Thus, although Cassandra only appears briefly in Chaucer’s text, the composite embodiment of female intellectual and chivalric influence remains prominent throughout the romance. In addition to operating as consecutive sponsors of Troilus, Cassandra and Criseyde are also connected through Cassandra’s own prophetic methodology: interpretation, whether of dreams or of texts. Similar to Troilus’s more experienced Sibyl sister, Criseyde is herself a careful and perceptive reader of letters, of books, and, in a more oblique way, of her own dreams. Moreover, linked by their reading of Theban history, Cassandra is the prophetess who “reads” the character of Criseyde when she interprets Troilus’s dream in Book V; the Latin summary of Theban history that is inserted into her assessment of her brother’s vision lends Cassandra’s interpretation of the dream – and of Criseyde – the air of scholarly authority. Through the juxtaposition of the two

12 13

See Ross, “Believing Cassandra,” p. 344. Lee Patterson notes that Troilus’s chivalric activity continues after Criseyde departs for the Greek camp, but fails to note that the female characters in Chaucer’s text – Cassandra and Criseyde – provide the motivation of love and hate that encourages Troilus to enact “a heroism that is admirable” and, thus, “historically worthy of record” (Chaucer and the Subject of History, p.€106).

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seers, Cassandra and Calchas, and the consequences their prophetic readings hold for Criseyde, Chaucer most effectively affirms Cassandra’s successful sponsorship in Troilus and Criseyde. Although she is unable to save Troilus (or her own city, for that matter), Chaucer demonstrates how Cassandra’s prophetic interpretation can “save” Criseyde’s reputation to a certain extent, mitigating some of the personal and social damage Criseyde will be forced to endure and that makes it necessary for Chaucer to redeem his portrayal of women with The Legend of Good Women.14 This beneficial effect is represented most prominently in the only Troilus and Criseyde manuscript of the sixteen extant that includes specific evidence of female readership: Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 61.15 The Corpus codex eliminates the most condemning evidence of Criseyde’s infidelity by omitting Troilus’s dream in Book V. It also includes the so-called Troilus frontispiece, a luxurious illumination that depicts a speaker reciting outdoors in front of a richly dressed audience of both men and women.16 The Corpus Christi manuscript is an early fifteenth-century manuscript, written in a single hand, containing only the text of Troilus and Criseyde. One of the few names recorded in the Corpus manuscript is found in a fifteenthcentury inscription in the upper left margin of fol. 101v: “neuer Foryeteth Anne neuyll.” There are two likely possibilities for Anne’s identity: Anne Beauchamp Neville, daughter of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick (1426–1492) and Anne Neville Stafford, daughter of Joan Beaufort and Ralph Neville, Duke of Westmorland (c.1410–1480).17 The first Anne is a potential identification because the manuscript was handled at some point by John Shirley (1366–1456), whose primary patron was Anne’s father, Richard Beauchamp. A couplet, which appears on fol. 1r, is written in Shirley’s own hand: “Lord god preserve vnder þy mighty handes / Oure kyng oure qwene

14

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16

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In the F Prologue to Chaucer’s The Legend of Good Women, the god of Love rebukes the author for his representation of Criseyde in Troilus and Criseyde: “of Creseyde thou hast seyd as the lyste, / That maketh men to wommen lasse triste” (The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson [Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1987], F Prologue, lines 332–333). Cupid’s observation seems to go to the heart of the problem with Criseyde’s representation: her behavior and reputation are maligned, and the consequences for the relationships between men and women in the audience are disastrous. Men no longer trust women, even those who are “as trewe as ever was any steel” (F Prologue, line 334). Hereafter referred to as the Corpus Christi manuscript. For further information about the other manuscripts of Troilus and Criseyde, see The Manuscripts of Chaucer’s Troilus, ed. Robert K. Root (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co., 1914; rpt. Johnson Reprint Company, 1967) and A Catalogue of Chaucer Manuscripts: Volume I; Works Before The Canterbury Tales, ed. M. C. Seymour (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1995). For an excellent recent analysis of the historicity and potential source of the frontispiece iconography, see Joyce Coleman’s “Where Chaucer Got His Pulpit: Audience and Intervisuality in the Troilus and Criseyde Frontispiece,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 32 (2010): pp. 103–128. These two possible identifications are first mentioned in The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. Walter W. Skeat, vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894), p. lxix.

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Prophecy as Social Influence

þeyre pepul and þeyre landes.”18 The second candidate, Anne Neville Stafford, is, in my opinion, a more probable identification, as there is internal evidence within the manuscript to connect her to the text. On fol. 108r the name “Knyvett” appears in a hand similar to the Anne Neville signature. One of Anne’s five daughters, Joanna Stafford, married as her second husband William Knyvett (1440–1515), a Norfolk knight.19 Although M. B. Parkes questions whether Anne Neville Stafford would have signed the manuscript as “Anne Neville” after her marriage to Humphrey Stafford by 1424, there is no reason to believe that she did not own and/or read the book before her marriage.20 She may have owned the book before John Shirley owned it, or he could have written the couplet for her after she acquired the text.21 Based on this corroborating evidence in the manuscript, I believe that Anne Neville Stafford is the most likely candidate for the inscription.22 These marginal names suggest that the book was at some point in the second decade of the fifteenth century acquired by this Anne Neville and then, after her daughter’s

18

19

20

21

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See M. B. Parkes’s and Elizabeth Salter’s excellent introduction to Troilus and Criseyde: A Facsimile of Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS 61 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1978) [hereafter Parkes and Salter], pp. 1–23. Parkes remarks that the couplet’s reference to both a king and a queen can help to establish a date for the inscription; the possible dates are 1403–1413 (Henry IV and Joan of Navarre), 1420–1422 (Henry V and Katharine of France), and after 1444 (Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou). Parkes suspects that the couplet was entered after 1444, but offers no explanation for this assertion (p. 11, note 30). Because of the connection between the Beauchamp family and Shirley, Parkes favors the first Anne as the identity of the Anne Neville recorded in the Corpus manuscript. William Knyvett was a councilor to Anne Neville’s grandson, Henry Stafford (d. 1483), 2nd Duke of Buckingham and her great-grandson, Edward Stafford (d. 1521), 3rd Duke of Buckingham. See the Complete Peerage, ed. George E. Cokayne, vol. II (London: The St. Catherine Press, 1910–1959), p. 63. I do not assert that Anne Neville was necessarily the patron of the manuscript, but at the very least a reader and/or owner of it at some point; for a brief discussion of the various candidates for patron of the Corpus codex, see Coleman, “Where Chaucer Got His Pulpit,” p. 106. It is quite possible that Anne Neville owned the book before Shirley wrote his couplet, if indeed it was written after 1444 as Parkes suspects. If Shirley wrote the inscription earlier, Anne still could have acquired the book before her 1424 marriage to Humphrey Stafford. Anne Neville Stafford also owned and commissioned many other books, such as the splendidly illuminated Wingfield Hours (New York Public Library, MS Spencer 3). For more on volumes owned by Anne, see Parkes and Salter, p. 23, note 30. Although I suggest here that the Anne Neville referred to in the inscription is Anne Neville Stafford, Margaret Connolly has offered persuasive evidence that the inscription refers to Anne Beauchamp Neville. In addition to the close ties between the Beauchamp family and John Shirley, Connolly suggests that the “plaintive tone of the inscription, ‘neuer foryeteth anne neuill’” might reflect Anne Beauchamp Neville’s desire to have her estates and holdings returned to her after her husband, Richard Neville, died in 1471 (John Shirley: Book Production and the Noble Household in Fifteenth-Century England [Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998], p. 110). Until 1487, the late Richard Neville’s estates were divided between her two daughters and their husbands; during this time, Anne Beauchamp Neville was kept in custody and excluded from her possessions. Connolly also notes that the name “Knyvett” might also be connected to Shirley through his second wife’s family (p. 110).

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Figure 1.╇ Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, fol. 1v.

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Prophecy as Social Influence

marriage to William Knyvett, either read by the Knyvetts or passed to their household.23 The Corpus manuscript was planned on a fantastic scale of luxury, with space left for ninety-four miniatures throughout the text.24 The intended program of illustrations represented by the manuscript layout indicates a level of ambition not often seen in medieval manuscript-making.25 Although the illustration program in the manuscript was abandoned after the text was completed, the first lavish miniature in the book was included and is now referred to as the Troilus frontispiece (Fig. 1).26 This illustration depicts at the bottom of the page an outdoor scene in which a speaker addresses a group of standing and seated men and women in varying postures of attentiveness; some chat with each other, others lean on tree trunks with head in hand, still others look directly at the speaker. Separated from the recital scene at the bottom of the page by a diagonal rock wall, the top scene depicts a meeting between two noble or royal retinues. One of these processions exits a castle gateway while the other advances from tower-crowned peaks.27 The frontispiece is an important part of the Corpus manuscript’s ordinatio; the text of Troilus and Criseyde begins on the facing folio and both pages are part of the same quire. Thus, any owner or reader of the manuscript must simultaneously gaze upon the ornate recital scene, which depicts an audience of both men and women, and the beginning of the text of “the double sorwe of Troilus” (I. 1).28 The scene depicted in the Troilus frontispiece has 23

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Thus, as in the case of the fifteenth-century romance Partonope of Blois (discussed in Chapter Three of this book), one probable passage of the manuscript can be traced from mother to daughter. The spaces left in the Corpus manuscript are framed but unruled, indicating that the spaces are for decoration or illustrations rather than text. Parkes notes that the scribes apparently ruled every page in the course of their copying, as the pages with blanks left for illustrations are only ruled in the section where text is written (Parkes and Salter, p. 3). The blanks vary in size from stanzasized spaces at the beginnings of sections, obviously to accommodate major initials, to full-page spaces. On fol. 2r, beginning “The double sorwe…” another (later?) hand has drawn an initial “T” with a woman’s face in it. This is the only initial supplied in the text. See Parkes for more on the manuscript’s layout. Salter remarks that “even the copy of Troilus and Criseyde made for Henry V while still Prince of Wales has nothing comparable” (Parkes and Salter, p. 15). She speculates that the Corpus manuscript’s illustration program might be similar to those which had been developed in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries for manuscripts of Benoît de Ste. Maure’s Roman de Troie (Parkes and Salter, p. 15). Parkes speculates that the frontispiece might have been completed “for display purposes, to show to the patron or to prospective purchasers” (Parkes and Salter, p. 11). There is no record of why the manuscript’s illustration program was not completed, but the death of the original patron or financial hardship is a plausible explanation. Salter suggests that the relationship between the two scenes is that of companion-pieces rather than background and foreground (Parkes and Salter, p. 17). She also notes that the retinue scene might be based in part on some version of the famous Itinerary miniatures by the Limbourg brothers for the Duc de Berry’s manuscripts. These early fifteenth-century miniatures, she writes, were done to “accompany prayers for [the duke’s] safe journeying” (Parkes and Salter, p. 17). Stephen G. Nichols characterizes the practice of both “reading texts and interpreting visual signs” as the “double literacy” in which most medieval readers became proficient (“Introduction:

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Women’s Power in Late Medieval Romance

become a much debated topic of speculation about Chaucer’s audience, his patronage, and even about the physical appearance of the poet himself.29 However, two main readings of the scene emerge. Some scholars, such as Aage Brusendorff and Margaret Galway, believe that the scene depicts the historical moment when Chaucer first read Troilus and Criseyde to the court of Richard II and Anne of Bohemia; others, such as Elizabeth Salter and Derek Pearsall, believe that the scene represents a poet reciting work to an unidentified noble audience.30

29

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Philology in a Manuscript Culture,” Speculum 65 [1990]: pp. 1–10 [p. 8]). Nichols’s notion of “double literacy” is excellently represented by the first two pages of the Corpus Christi manuscript. Martha Dana Rust, however, pushes Nichols’s concept further, considering how “double literacy” can be used to “evoke a liminal dimension: one associated with books [i.e., the material text] but constituted by a reader’s cognitive realization of the interplay among diverse semiotic systems that is only in potentia on the physical page” (Imaginary Worlds in Medieval Books: Exploring the Manuscript Matrix [New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007], p. 9). Rust’s discussion of the reader’s imaginary participation in “double literacy” – a mental creativity that is predicated on but moves beyond the physical text – is helpful to my discussion of the reader’s insertion of themselves into the audience of Troilus and Criseyde visually depicted in the Corpus Christi codex. In addition to Salter’s section of the facsimile’s introduction, “The Troilus Frontispiece,” in Parkes and Salter, see Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Corpus Christi College Cambridge, ed. M. R. James, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1912), vol. I, pp. 126–127; Derek Pearsall, “The Troilus Frontispiece and Chaucer’s Audience,” The Yearbook of English Studies 7 (1977): pp. 68–74; Aage Brusendorff, The Chaucer Tradition (Copenhagen, 1925; reprinted Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), pp. 19–27; Margaret Galway, “The ‘Troilus’ Frontispiece,” Modern Language Review 44 (1949): pp. 161–177; and George Williams, “The Troilus and Criseyde Frontispiece Again,” Modern Language Review 57 (1962): pp. 173–178. The first reading of the frontispiece, dubbed by Pearsall “the frontispiece theory” (“The Troilus Frontispiece,” p. 68), is based on the supposed identification of the audience members in the scene, such as the king and queen, John of Gaunt, and Thomas Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester. The central speaker in the scene, Brusendorff suggests, represents Chaucer. While he does not go as far as Brusendorff or Galway, even Pearsall allows that identifications of Chaucer, Richard II, Anne of Bohemia, and John of Gaunt are possible (p. 69, note 3). For comparisons of other Chaucer portraits, see M. H. Spielmann, The Portraits of Geoffrey Chaucer (London: The Chaucer Society, 1900). Brusendorff cites as proof for these identifications the probability that Anne Neville Stafford eventually owned the book that supposedly depicts her grandfather and uncle in Chaucer’s audience: “it may be inferred with a fair degree of probability that the countess of Westmoreland [Joan Beaufort, Anne’s mother] had the Corpus manuscript transcribed from a family copy of Chaucer’s Troilus” (The Chaucer Tradition, pp. 22–23). The lost original copy, Brusendorff assumes, was probably executed for John of Gaunt and the blank spaces left for illustrations in the Corpus manuscript were “no doubt” (p. 23, note 2) found in the original. While it is tempting to read the Troilus frontispiece as a portrait cache of “fourteenthcentury celebrities” (Galway, “The ‘Troilus’ Frontispiece,” p. 161), it is necessary to remember that all of these identifications are highly speculative. Although some physical similarities may exist between extant portraits of these historical figures and the portrayals of the frontispiece, there are no identifying features in the illustration, such as heraldic arms or insignia, that might unquestionably establish any identifications (Pearsall, “The Troilus Frontispiece,” p. 70). Readings such as Brusendorff’s and Galway’s serve an underlying purpose: the desire to get back to an original text, if not penned in Chaucer’s own hand, then at least a contemporary manuscript. Toward this end, Galway concludes that the miniature is “a gateway to untraveled parts of the truth about what Chaucer as a writer was trying to do” (p. 177). For more critical discussion of the frontispiece, its patron, and the artist, see Kathleen L. Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts, 1390– 1490, 2 vols. (London: Harvey Miller Publishers, 1996) and “Limner Power: A Book Artist in England c.1420,” in Prestige, Authority, and Power in Late Medieval Manuscripts and Texts, ed.

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Reading the frontispiece as an historical event and identifying the famous people present at the inaugural reading of Troilus and Criseyde is not only predicated on tenuous observations, but also obscures the role of the illustration as a gateway to the Corpus manuscript. Most of the detailed investigations into the frontispiece, such as Brusendorff’s and Galway’s, only extend as far as the identification of the figures in the painting. However, once the need merely to name the historical figures is abandoned, we can begin to understand the picture’s function as part of the individual manuscript in which it appears. Even if several of the figures are based on the likenesses of historical individuals, such as Richard II and Anne of Bohemia, this does not preclude a formal reading of the frontispiece as well.31 I follow Salter’s and Pearsall’s opinion that, rather than representing an exact image of the original audience of Troilus and Criseyde, the frontispiece helps readers of the Corpus manuscript to imagine themselves in the particular setting it envisions, that is, a noble audience that includes both men and women, an audience with which Anne Neville Stafford would have been very familiar.32 Anne was not a stranger to the fifteenth-century English courts; her sister,

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Felicity Riddy (York: York University Press, 2000), pp. 55–75; Phillipa Hardman, “Interpreting the Incomplete Scheme of Illustration in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 61,” in English Manuscript Studies 1100–1700, vol. 6, ed. Peter Beal and Jeremy Griffiths (London: The British Library, 1997), pp. 52–69; John H. Fisher, “The Intended Illustrations in MS Corpus Christi 61 of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde,” in Medieval Studies in Honor of Lillian Herlands Hornstein, ed. J. B. Bessinger Jr. and R. R. Raymo (New York: New York University Press, 1976), pp. 111–121; and Anita Helmbold, “Chaucer Appropriated: The Troilus Frontispiece as Lancastrian Propaganda,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 30 (2008): pp. 205–234. An exception to the tendency toward polarized interpretations of the frontispiece – as either historical moment or poetic symbol – is Coleman’s “Where Chaucer Got His Pulpit.” In this article, Coleman offers a highly nuanced and fresh reading of the frontispiece, ultimately asserting that historical and formal readings of the illumination are not mutually exclusive. Rather, she suggests, it represents “a vision of mutually reinforcing literary and social value, an evocation of Chaucer in his prime set within a locus amoenus and invoking, even literally in the king’s costume, a sort of golden age” (p. 107). The reading that the frontispiece mirrors the social status of the manuscript’s owner also supports the possibility of Anne Neville Stafford’s ownership. Given the luxury of the Corpus manuscript, scholars should look to families like the Beauchamps, the Beauforts, the Nevilles and the Staffords for the commissioners of the book (Parkes and Salter, p. 23). Regarding the audience of the manuscript, Pearsall suggests that we should expand our definition of the “court” when considering the audience for Chaucer’s works. Such an audience most likely extended to the households of knights, diplomats and other officials. See also Barry Windeatt, Oxford Guides to Chaucer: Troilus and Criseyde (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), pp. 12–19. Pearsall suggests that the frontispiece could be a “reflection of the judgment of the manuscript’s editor, publisher, or buyer that such a picture would be stylish and appropriate” (“The Troilus Frontispiece,” p. 69). He asserts that the picture is a variation of a presentation picture that does not represent a “real” scene, but rather “the myth of delivery that Chaucer cultivates so assiduously in the poem” (p. 70). In addition to the recital or preaching scene at the bottom of the picture, we can see the retinue scene as an adaptation of the late fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century pictorial convention of the author composing among the events about which he writes (Parkes and Salter, p. 22). The connections between the meeting of the two retinues and the exchange in Troilus and Criseyde of Antenor for Criseyde are striking. In the case of the Corpus manuscript, then, the poet/preacher could be reciting the tale to an audience while the event he is relating occurs in the backdrop. See Parkes and Salter, p. 22, note 28, for several examples of an author composing

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Cecily Neville, was the mother of both Richard III and Edward IV. Salter also notes that Anne was “frequently in the company of other noble ladies such as Jaquetta, Lady Rivers and Alice de la Pole, Duchess of Suffolk, at the court of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou.”33 Therefore, the Troilus frontispiece, which depicts a gathering of nobility not unlike the gatherings the duchess Anne and her husband, Humphrey Stafford, would have held, is an apt opening to a manuscript of Troilus and Criseyde probably owned and read by Anne Neville Stafford. It represents a scene in which women of her own status listen to a tale, a mixture of relaxed entertainment and moralizing or religious edification, while scenes from the story are elaborately played out above the heads of the listeners. A frontispiece like this provides enough narrative enticement and flattering commentary on the owner’s social status to ensure that the book will be read. In the same way the Troilus frontispiece imagines and allows readers to imagine an audience for the literary text that follows, so the work itself imagines an audience for Chaucer’s romance. As with my reading of the illumination in the Corpus manuscript, my concern here is not to extrapolate a “real” or “actual” audience for Troilus and Criseyde, nor to speculate on the general presence of women in Chaucer’s audience.34 Rather, I would like to explore the ways in which Chaucer’s implied female audience in Troilus and the representations of women’s reading and interpretation in the Corpus manuscript might have affected how this book’s audience – Anne Neville – gleaned models of intellectual and emotional influence from Cassandra and Criseyde. Paul Strohm lists many of the fictional audiences of Troilus and Criseyde: “lovers, scoffers, historians, those unsophisticated in history, ladies and gentlewomen, and young people on the brink of love.”35 These audiences, he suggests, exist to orient the author’s discourse; their attitudes “stand in some tactical or referential relation to attitudes characteristic of the audience of the poem.”36 From the beginning, Chaucer addresses his audience as “ye loveres” (I. 22 and II. 1751), those who are now lucky in love and “bathen in gladnesse” (I. 22). Chaucer also figures himself as the scribe or clerk of his audience of lovers; he is “At reverence of hem that serven the [i.e., Venus],€/ Whose clerc I am” (III. 40–41). At the end of the poem, Chaucer addresses

33 34

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against a backdrop of the events that he narrates. Pearsall also notes that the picture “can be recognized as fully explicable from within the poem” (“The Troilus Frontispiece,” p. 70). Parkes and Salter, p. 23, note 30. According to Richard Firth Green (Poets and Princepleasers: Literature and the English Court in the Late Middle Ages [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980]), Gervase Mathew (The Court of Richard II [London: Murray, 1968]), and Paul Strohm (Social Chaucer [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989]), Chaucer’s probable audience consisted primarily of men. Mathew and Green both remark that Richard II’s own household was devoid of women; all of his servants appear to have been men. Strohm, Social Chaucer, p. 62. Strohm, Social Chaucer, p. 62.

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Prophecy as Social Influence

the “yonge, fresshe folkes, he or she” (V. 1835), a mixed-gender audience of young men and women who can personally relate to the poem’s theme of tortured and passionate lovers.37 At the end of Troilus, Chaucer addresses the specifically female portion of his audience. After urging his readers to “Rede Dares” (V. 1771) in order to hear of Troilus’s “batailles” and noble feats of arms (V. 1767), Chaucer quickly turns his attention to “every lady bright of hewe, / And every gentil womman, what she be” (V. 1772–1773). He anxiously beseeches that, although “Criseyde was untrewe, / That for that gilt she be nat wroth with me. / Ye may hire gilt in other bokes se” (V. 1774–1776). Chaucer further addresses the women in his audience who “bitraised be / Thorugh false folk – God yeve hem sorwe” (V. 1780–1781). The female portion of Chaucer’s imagined audience, therefore, is not only identified as young, fresh lovers, but as women who might be betrayed by the men in their lives and who will find a sympathetic person in Chaucer.38 Women are thus a significant portion of both the imagined audience in Troilus and Criseyde and of the actual audience of the Corpus manuscript. But what were these women, both literary characters and probable owners, reading in the narrative? Indeed, the act of reading preoccupies all of the characters in the romance. Men read Criseyde, Criseyde is a reader herself, and, finally, other women read Criseyde. Much of the critical work on Troilus has focused on the male characters as readers of the “text” of Criseyde. Catherine Cox identifies a “masculine triumvirate” of Troilus, Pandarus, and the narrator as readers and manipulators of Criseyde, while Elaine Tuttle Hansen suggests that it is “reading, an activity … controlled by men, that directs love and fuels desire” in Troilus and Criseyde.39 But not only is Criseyde 37

38 39

This invocation of an audience of young men and women might have had particular resonance for a young Anne Neville if she owned the manuscript before she married and became Anne Neville Stafford. The language used to describe the audience members as “young” and “fresshe” also recalls the description of the audience of The Nightingale, an anonymous poem dedicated to Anne Neville Stafford, Duchess of Buckingham sometime after 1444. In this piece, the audience is comprised of “hyr peple,” or courtiers, who are “in lystynesse / Fresschly encouragyt” (Lydgate’s Minor Poems: The Two Nightingale Poems, ed. Otto Glauning, EETS e.s. 80 [London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co., 1900], lines 10–11). Later in the poem, the audience members are classified as “lusty gaylauntes in youre adolescens” (line 267). This address is similar to Chaucer’s pleading for mercy from his female audience in his portrayal of Criseyde, a woman who was betrayed by her father, uncle, and even Troilus. Catherine Cox, Gender and Language in Chaucer (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997), p. 45; Elaine Tuttle Hansen, Chaucer and the Fictions of Gender (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), p. 168. Cox’s reading of Criseyde as a text is influenced significantly by Carolyn Dinshaw’s chapter “Reading Like a Man: The Critics, the Narrator, Troilus, and Pandarus,” in Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), pp. 28–64. Dinshaw sees reading “like a man” as the act of defining “the disruptive Other in, and of, the text as feminine … [the act] limits it, turns away from it, in order to provide a single, univalent textual meaning fixed in a hierarchical structure” (pp. 28–29). While Dinshaw’s work on male readers of Criseyde and, in particular, the possibility of alternative female readings in Chaucer’s works has informed my present study, I would like to note that my project in this chapter does not attempt to gender the reading practices in which women engage both in and out of Troilus and Criseyde. I do not speculate that Cassandra and Anne Neville “read as women” in the sense that

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figured as a text to be read by men, she is also characterized as a reader herself. The beginning of Book II includes one of the most often cited and discussed scenes with regard to Criseyde’s readership, medieval women’s readership, and even the nature of oral reading practices in the Middle Ages. This moment of reading also acts as the first in a pair of significant references to the siege of Thebes in Troilus and Criseyde; these references not only bracket and influence the ill-fated love affair, but also connect the two women readers and social agents in the test: Criseyde and Cassandra. In this early scene, Pandarus finds Criseyde in her palace with “two othere ladys sete …, / Withinne a paved parlour, and they thre / Herden a mayden reden hem the geste / Of the siege of Thebes” (II. 81–84). When Pandarus asks her if the tale is about love, Criseyde replies that it is the “romaunce” of Thebes (II. 100). She not only relates the portion of the story they have already read (Oedipus’s murder of his father), but also demonstrates a clear awareness of a book’s ordinatio or reading design. She explains to Pandarus, “here we stynten at this lettres rede – / How the bisshop, as the book kan telle, / Amphiorax, fil thorugh the ground to helle” (II. 103–105).40 Some interesting connections can be drawn between Criseyde’s choice of reading material and her own life. After all, she reads about a city under siege while she occupies the besieged city of Troy; thus Criseyde is, in essence, reading about herself.41 The story of Thebes, a city that is “associated in the medieval imagination with an unending cycle of violence and familial transgression,” relates the ancestry of the Greek warrior Diomede, who is Criseyde’s future lover.42 In Book V, Diomede offers Criseyde a brief account of the more salient parts of his ancestry in order to woo her. If his father, Tideus, had lived, Diomede claims, “ich hadde ben er this / Of Calydoyne and Arge a kyng” (V. 933–934). However, he continues, Tideus “was slayn … / Unhappily at Thebes al to rathe, / Polymyte and many a man to scathe” (V. 936–938). The story of Tideus, who fought in support of Polynices (“Polymyte”) with the seven against Thebes, is related in Statius’s Thebaid, the probable source for Criseyde’s “romaunce” of Thebes in Book II, if not the actual book she reads. Thus, Criseyde, in reading about the ancestry of

40

41 42

Dinshaw uses the term. Rather, I will outline some ways in which female characters and women in the audience of the Corpus manuscript were reading Criseyde. Barry Windeatt notes that Criseyde’s specification of the “romaunce” of Thebes probably means that she is reading a vernacular version, which was available in Chaucer’s time in the form of the late twelfth-century Roman de Thèbes. Pandarus’s later and “rather superior reference to ‘bookes twelve’” suggests that he is familiar with Statius’ twelve-book Latin Thebaid (Troilus and Criseyde: A New Edition of Chaucer’s The Book of Troilus [London: Longman, 1984], p. 157), cited in notes below as Windeatt, Troilus and Criseyde. Catherine Sanok, however, suggests that it is “worthwhile to consider what kinds of meaning are opened up in Chaucer’s poem if we entertain the possibility that Criseyde’s book is identified as the Thebaid” (“Criseyde, Cassandre, and the Thebaid: Women and the Theban Subtext of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 20 [1998]: pp. 41–71 [p. 49]). Dinshaw, “Reading Like a Man,” p. 52. Dinshaw, “Reading Like a Man,” p. 52.

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Prophecy as Social Influence

her (future) lover, is also reading about events of death and betrayal that will parallel her own story.43 In addition to her own acts of reading, Criseyde remarks on women’s perceptions and readings of her. In Book V, after she betrays Troilus with Diomede, Criseyde refers to her own narrative, which women will read with scorn: Allas, of me, unto the worldes ende, Shal neyther ben ywriten nor ysonge No good word, for thise bokes wol me shende. […] And wommen moost wol haten me of alle. Allas, that swich a cas me shold falle! Thei wol seyn, in as muche as in me is, I have hem don deshonour, weylaway!â•… (V. 1058–1066)

It is significant that this lament, given shortly after she grants her favors to Diomede, does not mourn for Troilus’s loss, but for her own. Criseyde already conceives of her actions and her choices as a narrative, one that will be written, sung, and read unfavorably by others.44 Although Criseyde is correct in assuming a negative future reputation for herself,45 within the test Criseyde already stands at the center of the prophetic readings of both Cassandra and Calchas, Criseyde’s father and Cassandra’s foil. In her straightforward dream interpretation in Book V, not long after Criseyde expresses her fears, Cassandra (perhaps unwittingly) helps alleviate the negative reputation Criseyde’s betrayal of Troilus has forged. That mitigation, however, depends upon the audience’s comparison of the methods and motives of both seers, an exercise that will inevitably promote Cassandra’s process and ensure her successful influence of Troilus via her reading of Criseyde’s new attachment to Diomede. Although the prophetess does not appear in the romance for long, by reading her character in contrast to Calchas, we know what she is not. 43

44

45

Sanok offers an interesting reading of the moment of Criseyde’s interruption in Book II and the effect of that interruption on her reception of Diomede in Book V. Because Diomede is linked so often with the patronymic, if Criseyde had been allowed to read further in the Theban story, she may have understood Tideus’s notorious bloodthirstiness and, perhaps, would have read Diomede’s character differently. As it stands, Pandarus “unwittingly furthers Diomede’s love suit as well as Troilus’s when he tells Criseyde to ‘do way’ her book” (Sanok, “Women and the Theban Subtext,” p. 53, note 27). Criseyde’s lament recalls the narrator’s fear that the women in the audience will indict him for his depiction of Criseyde (V. 1774–1776). In this passage Criseyde, already speaking as a text, fears the same thing. We may recall the debate between Chaucer and the god of Love in the Legend of Good Women (see note 14 above). For a comprehensive consideration of Criseyde’s representation in medieval literature, see Gretchen Mieszkowski’s The Reputation of Criseyde, 1155–1500 (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1971).

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Chaucer is careful to describe the process of the two seers very differently, though both, according to legend, draw their knowledge from the same source: the god Apollo. In the opening lines of Troilus and Criseyde, the reader is introduced to the reasons behind Calchas’s treachery and his defection to the Greek camp. This wicked “traitor” (I. 87), the narrator asserts, is a “gret devyn,” an expert in “science” through which he concludes that “Troie sholden destroied be” (I. 66–68). Though Calchas is a proponent of astrological “calkulynge” (I. 71) and other medieval sciences, the narrator is also quick to emphasize the role of the god “Daun Phebus or Appollo Delphicus” (I. 70) in his prophetic conclusions. When Criseyde’s father reappears in Book IV, the narrator once again emphasizes the hybrid methodology underpinning Calchas’s prophecy of Troy’s imminent destruction: “Appollo hath me told it feithfully; / I have ek founde it be astronomye, / By sort [casting lots], and by augurye ek” (IV. 114–116). A crucial blend of science and pagan religion, Calchas’s seemingly comprehensive and fully corroborated conclusions cannot be separated from his cowardly and surreptitious abandonment of his daughter. Once his deductions are made, the “forknowynge” man “departen softely” and “ful pryvely / … stal anon” to the Greek camp (I.€78–81). Unlike Cassandra, however, Calchas does not attempt to warn his countrymen of the danger. Calchas’s actions create a backdrop against which Criseyde’s tenuous social and physical position in Troy will unfold. Without the traitor himself to punish, the Trojans turn their anger on Criseyde, “a widewe … and allone / Of any frend” (I. 97). As Calchas’s only relative, she is “worthi for to brennen, fel [skin] and bones” (I. 91). Left as she is in these dangerous circumstances, Criseyde begs for and receives Hector’s protection; her safety, for the time being, is assured. It is not until her father reappears in Book IV and demands that his daughter be exchanged for the captured Trojan Antenor that Criseyde’s situation grows precarious once more and her relationship with Troilus begins to suffer as a consequence. Although Henry Peyton might declare that Cassandra is a “prophetess of evil,” whose “divination is delivered with the diabolical intensity of a harpy,”46 it is clear that it is in reality Calchas who acts as the harbinger of the lovers’ as well as the city’s doom. His demands precipitate Criseyde’s exchange and her betrayal of Troilus with Diomede. By far the most significant difference between Cassandra’s and Calchas’s methodologies is Chaucer’s suggestion that the process of divination Calchas espouses is open to interpretation, even though the audience knows that he is correct. It is not so much the truth that is at issue in the comparison between Calchas and Cassandra – the audience knows the seers predict the truth because they are most likely familiar with the source material about the

46

See Henry H. Peyton III, “The Roles of Calkas, Helen, and Cassandra in Chaucer’s Troilus,” Interpretations: Studies in Language and Literature 7 (1975): pp. 8–12 (p. 12).

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Trojan War circulating in the Middle Ages.47 Rather, it is Cassandra’s and Calchas’s methods of achieving and conveying their prophecies and the way others receive them that make these two figures so distinct. For example, before she departs for the Greek camp, Criseyde and Troilus discuss possible strategies for her quick return. “Every day,” Criseyde claims, “more and more, / Men trete of pees” and “purposen pees on every syde” (IV. 1345–1350). However, should the possibility of peace not be enough to return Criseyde to her lover, she will turn to subtler methods: “I shal hym so enchaunten with my sawes” that “for al Appollo, or his clerkes lawes, / Or calkullynge, avayleth nought thre hawes” (IV. 1395–1398). Ultimately, she predicts, it will be Calchas’s opportunism – his “desir of gold” (IV. 1399) – that will enable her to manipulate her father into allowing her to return to Troy. If these tactics fail, however, Criseyde will resort to reinterpreting Calchas’s prophecy rather than simply redirecting his attention toward gold. She promises Troilus, And yf he [i.e., Calchas] wolde ought by hys sort it preve If that I lye, in certayn I shal fonde Distorben hym and plukke hym by the sleve, Makynge his sort, and beren hym on honde He hath not wel the goddes understonde; For goddes speken in amphibologies, And for o soth they tellen twenty lyes. Ek, ‘Drede fond first goddes, I suppose’ – Thus, shal I seyn – and that his coward herte Made hym amys the goddes text to glose, When he for fered out of Delphos sterte.â•… (IV. 1401–1411)

Amidst her promise to distract her father by tugging at his sleeve while he attempts to perform his augury, Criseyde also suggests that the gods’ messages are always open to interpretation; indeed, they are couched in falsehood – twenty lies to one truth – and they play on the fears and insecurities of the mortals who visit their temples and oracles. If one already possesses a “coward herte,” Criseyde asserts, it will adversely affect one’s judgment. However, Criseyde’s proposal at this point conveys more than just her “good entente” (IV. 1416) to Troilus. Her statements also expose prognostications and attempts to understand divine “amphibologies” as a tenuous process, one that can always lead to multiple, largely incorrect, conclusions.

47

See for example, Guido delle Colonne’s Historia destructionis Troiae, trans. Mary Elizabeth Meek (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1974) and Benoît de Sainte-Maure’s Roman de Troie in The Story of Troilus: as told by Benoît de Sainte-Maure, Giovanni Boccaccio (translated into English prose), Geoffrey Chaucer and Robert Henryson, trans. R. K. Gordon (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1964). We must also remember that the outcome of the Trojan War provided the beginnings of English history; medieval chronicles, from Geoffrey of Monmouth, to Wace, to the Middle English prose Brut, designate the Trojan Brutus as the founder of Britain.

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Women’s Power in Late Medieval Romance

In contrast to Calchas’s “calkulynge,” the process of Cassandra’s dream interpretation in Book V is seemingly above reproach. Not long after Criseyde expresses anxiety about the way future women readers will interpret her actions, her behavior is scrutinized by a woman in the very same romance: Troilus’s sister, Cassandra. Although Cassandra reads out the ostensible evidence of Criseyde’s transgressions as it appears in Troilus’s dream, her interpretation is not condemnatory. Rather, Cassandra’s evaluation of the dream simply absorbs all the facts and reports them to her brother without drawing any conclusions.48 Cassandra’s interpretation, however, constitutes an act of intellectual and emotional encouragement of her brother. Although Troilus is doomed to ignore the larger implications of her warnings (namely that the dream signals not only a betrayal of his personal affections, but also the destruction of Troy), the force of Cassandra’s prophetic influence is apparent to readers of Troilus and Criseyde who are aware of the tragic accuracy of her gifts. Before Cassandra appears in the narrative to read Troilus’s vision of Criseyde’s behavior, however, Pandarus makes a scathing commentary on what he considers to be the human failings and prejudices involved with dream interpretation: “A straw for alle swevenes signifiaunce! / God helpe me so, I counte hem nought a bene!” (V. 362–363).49 Pandarus dismisses the whole enterprise as fit only for “olde wiues, / And trewliche ek augurye of thise fowles” (V. 379–380). Old women and screeching birds may chatter over such nonsense, he claims, but “so noble a creature / As is a man shal dreden swiche ordure [filth]” (V. 384–385). For Chaucer’s Pandarus, dream interpretation is just a ridiculous pastime of women, something to be scorned 48

49

Cassandra’s evaluative process has much in common with Criseyde’s reading of Troilus’s letter in Book II, and, thus, provides another point of comparison between the Sibyl and Criseyde. In counterpoint to Troilus’s interpretation of Criseyde’s letter is her own careful examination of Troilus’s first written communication to her. Criseyde is reluctant to enter into an exchange with Troilus because she fears that it will jeopardize her social standing: “To myn estat have more reward, I preye, / Than to his lust” (II. 1133–1134). Despite her misgivings about the situation, however, Criseyde chooses to read the letter, which her uncle has unceremoniously thrust into the front of her dress, in the privacy of her own chamber. Unlike Troilus’s selective interpretation of her response, Criseyde simply “Avysed word by word in every lyne, / And fond no lak, she thoughte he koude good” (II. 1177–1178). She absorbs every word as it is written and from this first impression of the text, infers that he knows how to present himself well in writing. Yet Criseyde comes to no conclusion about Troilus’s feelings or about the meaning behind his words. As Dinshaw asserts, Criseyde also brings similar reading practices to bear on Antigone’s song about love in Book II. Again, the emphasis is on Criseyde’s attention to every word, “without any excisions or occlusions” (Dinshaw, “Reading Like a Man,” p. 54): “But every word which that she of hire herde, / She gan to prenten in hire herte faste” (II. 899–900). Pandarus also offers a relatively extensive summary of the scholarly dream-types, which one would find in “bokes” (V. 375). Windeatt, however, notes that Pandarus’s summary is “skeptical”: “somnium coeleste (dreams with a supernatural cause); somnium animale (dreams with a natural, psychological cause); and somnium naturale” (Windeatt, Troilus and Criseyde, p. 467), which is caused by a “physiological disturbance through the melancholic humor” (p. 465). This “confusion of dream lore,” suggests that dreams are subject to incorrect interpretation (Peggy Ann Knapp, “Boccaccio and Chaucer on Cassandra,” Studies in Philology 56 [1977]: pp. 413–417 [p. 416]).

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by noblemen. Perhaps it is fitting, then, that Cassandra is called in to interpret Troilus’s next dream rather than Troilus’s attempting to read the dream himself, as Troilo does in Boccaccio’s Il Filostrato, the source text for Troilus and Criseyde.50 However, far from corroborating Pandarus’s dismissal of dream analysis as the “fals and foul” (V. 383) business of superstitious women, Chaucer portrays Cassandra as a scholarly prophetess, a woman whose classical and textual knowledge will be brought to bear on the issue of reading Troilus’s dream; he makes no mention of the supernatural source of Cassandra’s psychic abilities, which are both a divine blessing and a curse. Further comparison of the interactions between Cassandra and Troilus in Troilus and Criseyde and Boccaccio’s Il Filostrato illustrate the extent to which Chaucer’s revisions of Cassandra’s character effect the way women’s reading and interpretation – the staples of female intellectual and social influence – are valued in Troilus and Criseyde. Chaucer emphasizes Cassandra’s scholarship and thus prompts readers of his text as to how they should read her character and her reading of Criseyde’s behavior. Because medieval readers would be familiar with Cassandra from the many famous tales of the Trojan War available during the Middle Ages, Chaucer did not need to reiterate the legend of how Cassandra received her gifts for those circumstances to remain in the minds of his readers.51 Although the knowledge that Cassandra’s predictions are never believed helps to explain Troilus’s immediate dismissal of her interpretation, the audience knows from other sources that her prophecies are always true. However, the supernatural aspect of her talents remains merely implicit throughout Troilus and Criseyde. What Chaucer chooses to make explicit is her historical, Latinate knowledge. It is her erudition that is shown to be the source of her true prophecy, not the jilted god Apollo. Therefore, the true model of women’s intellectual authority, which includes the reading and interpretation of dreams or texts within the romance, features perceptive scholarship and a thorough knowledge of history, not the gossipy ramblings of old women. Cassandra’s role in the scene stands in striking contrast to her depiction in Il Filostrato. Boccaccio’s Cassandra offers her unsolicited advice and she taunts her brother for his love of an unfaithful woman. Rather than depicting Troilo consulting his sister for her learned knowledge, Boccaccio represents Troilo as angered by Cassandra’s interference and by the public embarrassment he faces when his lover is openly accused of being unfaithful. Troilo 50

51

Giovanni Boccaccio, Il Filostrato, ed. Vincenzo Pernicone, Robert P. apRoberts, and Anna Bruni Seldis (New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1986), line V.32.5. All quotations from this source will be cited according to book, stanza, and line number. See also Barry A. Windeatt’s excellent dual edition of Boccaccio’s and Chaucer’s texts (Windeatt, Troilus and Criseyde). In Social Chaucer, Strohm notes that the “difficult paganisms” (p. 61) in Troilus and Criseyde are glossed, such as “Thesiphone … thow goddesse of torment” (I. 6–8), but that “Chaucer feels no need to gloss the first appearance of major figures like Hector (I. 110)” (Strohm, p. 61). I would argue that the same logic applies to Cassandra, a major figure in Trojan myth.

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suggests that Cassandra merely guesses at other people’s secrets “with her imaginings [con (sua) ‘maginazioni]” (VII.89.3) not with the true gift of prophecy. He indicts Cassandra for her “talkativeness [soprabbondare]” and her “display of foolishness [bestialita mostrare]” (VII.90.1–3). As does Chaucer’s Pandarus in his earlier, more general criticism of dream interpretation, Troilo equates Cassandra’s prophetic readings with the rantings of a “silly woman who takes a bite at every person [donna baderla, / che dai di morso a ciascuna persona]” (VII.100.3–4). As such, Cassandra should keep to menial, feminine tasks. Troilo tells her to “spin, and reform [her] moral ugliness [filate, / e correggete la vostra bruttura]” (VII.101.2–3).52 Ultimately, Cassandra is only a mad woman who “through her vanity wishes to abuse what is to be praised [per sua vanitate / quello ch’é da lodar riprender vuole]” (VII.101.6–7). Thus, in Il Filostrato, Cassandra’s prophetic gifts, although privately acknowledged by Troilo, are publically reduced to the jealous snipings of an unbalanced woman. In Chaucer’s text, however, Troilus voluntarily asks Cassandra to interpret his dream, which includes Criseyde in the arms of a giant boar with huge tusks. Before proceeding with her reading, she “gan first smyle” (V. 1457). A. J. Minnis suggests that this brief, slightly condescending gesture affirms that Cassandra is aware of her “elevated status as a prophetess.”53 Rather than launching immediately into her dream analysis, however, Cassandra gives her “brother deere” (V. 1457) a history lesson. If he wants to know the “soth” about his disturbing vision, he “most a fewe olde stories heere” (V. 1458–1459). Only then “wel this boor shalt [Troilus] knowe, and of what kynde / He comen is” (V. 1462–1463). To underscore the source of these “olde stories” which provide her with the key to understanding the dream, Cassandra adds the tag, “as men in bokes fynde” (V. 1463). Cassandra then relates a story of the Caledonian hunt from Ovid’s Metamorphoses to outline Diomede’s history. She begins with the goddess Diana, who is angry with the Greeks’ refusal to “don hire sacrifice” (V. 1465).54 As retribution for this affront, she sends “a boor as gret as [an] ox in stalle” to “up frete hire corn and vynes alle” (V. 1469–1470). Among the hunters who attempt to kill the boar are “a mayde [i.e., Atalanta]” (V. 1473) and Meleager, the lord of that country who loved her. To prove his manhood and affirm his love for Â�Atalanta, Meleager kills the boar and sends the head to his lover. Because of 52

53

54

We are reminded in this scene of Raoul de Cambrai’s angry response to his mother’s prophetic advice: she should keep to domestic tasks, such as deciding on the household’s food and drink, rather than meddle in the more serious affairs of men. A. J. Minnis, Chaucer and Pagan Antiquity (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1982), p. 77. Minnis asserts that Cassandra’s interpretation of Troilus’s dream forges a closer bond between the two siblings. Peyton, on the other hand, notes that, with her “diabolical” smile, “Cassandra speaks truth and evidences humor at a point in the tragedy when neither truth nor humor is appropriate” (“Roles,” p. 12). For the story of Meleager and the boar, see Book VIII of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (P. Ovidi Nasonis Metamorphoses, ed. R. J. Tarrant [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004]).

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this gesture and Meleager’s success in killing the beast, a great conflict arises between Meleager and the other hunters. Cassandra finally concludes that from this lord Meleager is “descended Tideus [Diomede’s father] / By ligne” (V. 1480–1481).55 Cassandra emphasizes her textual sources for Tideus’s and Diomede’s ancestral history twice in this stanza – “as olde bokes tellen us” (V. 1478) and “or ellis olde bookes lye” (V. 1481) – which reinforces the importance of written, scholarly knowledge over intuition. Cassandra even alludes to the fact that she could continue to tell the rest of Meleager’s history, but that “al to longe it were for to dwelle” (V. 1484). Continuing her historical narrative with the death of Tideus, Cassandra switches her written authorities from Ovid’s Metamorphoses to Statius’s Thebaid, a twelve-book epic chronicle on the seven kings who besieged Thebes.56 The narrator emphasizes the breadth of Cassandra’s textual knowledge, mentioning that she can recite “alle the prophecyes by herte” (V. 1494). From lines V. 1485–1510, Cassandra summarizes in English the last eleven books of Statius’s work (II–XII).57 Her summary includes, among other events, how Diomede’s father, Tideus, fought and died for Polynices and the other kings against Ethiocles, the ruler of Thebes; how the prophet, Amphiarus, was swallowed by the earth (a portion of the story referenced earlier by Criseyde); and how the two brothers, Polynices and Ethiocles, killed each other in battle. At the conclusion of her summary, Cassandra connects all of these historic events, of deaths in distant lands and sieges of other cities, to the situation at hand. Not unexpectedly, it is a textual tradition that ties it all together: “And so descendeth down from gestes olde / To Diomede” (V. 1511–1512). Ultimately, the purpose of Cassandra’s speech on history is to emphasize Diomede’s ancestry and his connection to the story of Meleager and the boar. Before turning to Cassandra’s interpretation of Troilus’s dream, for which the history lesson is a preamble, it is important to note that during Cassandra’s English summary of the Thebaid,58 the manuscript includes an interruption, one that further corroborates Cassandra’s role as a scholar as well as a prophetess in Troilus and Criseyde. After line V. 1498, most of the sixteen Troilus manuscripts include a “very sketchy” twelve-line Latin synopsis of the last eleven books of the Thebaid, which Cassandra is in the midst of summarizing

55

56 57 58

Windeatt, Troilus and Criseyde, notes that Chaucer is mistaken on this point. Ovid states that Meleager is actually Tideus’s brother and is, thus, the uncle of Diomede rather than a direct ancestor. It is at this point in the narrative that Cassandra’s history lesson coincides with the “romaunce” of Thebes that Criseyde and her ladies were reading in Book II. We may recall Pandarus’s mention of the “bookes twelve” (II. 108). For a discussion of the critical debate about whether Cassandra’s summary of the Thebaid is an interpretation or just a summary, see Sanok, “Women and the Theban Subtext,” p. 57, notes 35–37.

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in English, with roughly one Latin line for each book.59 Francis P. Magoun notes that although Cassandra’s English summary does correspond in several places with the twelve-line stanza included in the manuscript, her English rendering of Statius’s work draws to a large extent on longer Latin summaries of the Thebaid or even the Thebaid itself. It is natural, Magoun acknowledges, to assume a direct relationship between the English summary and the Latin section.60 However, while Magoun fails to pursue the significance of this relationship, I believe that the two sections are complementary rather than repetitive. After all, to receive the fullest account of the siege of Thebes and Tideus’s performance in that battle, a reader must consult both the English and Latin summaries.61 Although the presence of a Latin text in the Troilus manuscripts might entice us to draw some tentative conclusions about the ability of Chaucer’s audience to read Latin, I am hesitant to suggest that Anne Neville could read the Latin and understand the relationship between the narrative content of both sections. However, the placement of the Latin stanza almost in the middle of Cassandra’s speech does have significant implications, even for an audience reading in the vernacular. Indeed, the stanza’s important position in the narrative is often overlooked by modern editors of Troilus and Criseyde. Both Walter W. Skeat and Robert K. Root remove the Latin section from its context, as does the Riverside Chaucer, which merely notes its appearance in the text with an asterisk and relegates the Latin and an English translation of the stanza to a footnote.62 This editorial choice, however, obscures the stanza’s deliberate placement within the main part of the English romance. With the extra section placed properly, the effect is a seamless narrative of both Latin and vernacular text, as it was no doubt intended to be.63 A medieval reader of the Corpus manuscript, such as Anne Neville, could be following Cassandra’s English synopsis, which pauses at the bottom of fol. 143v (Fig. 2), and then begin to read the Latin summary at the top of fol. 144r (Fig. 3) with no visual tags in 59

60

61 62

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The exceptions are London, British Library MS Harleian 2392 and Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson Poet. 163. For more on the incorporation of Statius’ text in Troilus and Criseyde, see Francis P. Magoun’s “Chaucer’s Summary of Statius’s Thebaid II–XII,” Traditio: Studies in Ancient and Medieval History, Thought and Religion XI (1955): pp. 409–420 (p. 409). Windeatt notes only one exception, the Harleian manuscript (Troilus and Criseyde, p. 541). Magoun, “Chaucer’s Summary,” p. 418. Sanok also remarks on this intertextual relationship between Chaucer and Statius: “Cassandra’s summary depends closely on precisely the kind of Latin argument that interrupts it” (“Women and the Theban Subtext,” p. 55). One such detail is the boasting cry that angers the gods and leads to Capaneus’s death in Book X of the Thebaid, which is noted in the English summary, but not in the Latin stanza. See Skeat’s The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer and The Book of Troilus and Criseyde, ed. Robert K. Root (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1926). Windeatt, Troilus and Criseyde, however, includes the Latin text in its position in between stanzas 214 and 215 (after line 1498) with an English translation provided for convenience in his notes. Sanok, however, notes that the “strangeness of its placement in the text” is “undeniably enigmatic” (“Women and the Theban Subtext,” p. 55).

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the manuscript, such as extra spacing or a header, to indicate the change in language.64 Although the Latin stanza appears slightly differently on the page – twelve lines versus the traditional seven-line stanza of Chaucer’s English verse – the formal, neatly written script is identical in both sections. Thus, it is as though Cassandra has simply digressed in her narrative from English rhyme royal to Latin hexameter. She has already indicated that she is capable of offering tangential information about the extended family history of Diomede. At this point, the audience can rightly assume that Cassandra does so, quoting directly from the “olde bookes” to which she so often refers. The result is an elevation in the status and authority of Cassandra’s interpretation; she not only recites the history “by herte” (V. 1494) in her own language, but also quotes easily from her Latin source texts as well. Therefore, when Cassandra finally arrives at her interpretation of Troilus’s dream, it is with the full force of a thoroughly documented and authoritative classical education behind it. Cassandra may have already convinced the audience of the truth of her readings, yet the characters in Troilus and Criseyde are doomed to disbelieve her. Cassandra’s preamble to the interpretation of Troilus’s dream reaches sixty-seven lines,65 yet her actual reading of the situation totals only seven lines. While this single-stanza prophecy might initially seem rather anticlimactic, I suggest that Cassandra’s succinct and straightforward reading of the dream serves to temper the audience’s indictment of Criseyde’s adultery. Here is her verdict: This ilke boor bitokneth Diomede, Tideus sone, that down descended is Fro Meleagre, that made the boor to blede; And thy lady, wherso she be, ywis, This Diomede hire herte hath, and she his. Wep if thow wolt, or lef, for out of doute, This Diomede is inne, and thow art oute. (V. 1513–1519)66

Rather than pass judgment on Criseyde’s behavior in exchanging Troilus for “a bor with tuskes grete” (V. 1238), Cassandra simply reads the dream without indignation or anger. The boar Criseyde kisses “bitokeneth Diomede” 64

65 66

Although there is a Latin catch-phrase of the first two words on fol. 144r (“Associat profugum”) in the bottom margin of fol. 143v, it is the signature that indicates the beginning of the final quire in the book rather than a means of setting apart the Latin text. Quire signatures appear regularly throughout the Corpus Christi manuscript. This number includes the twelve-line Latin summary. Pandarus, for all his criticism of dream analysis, suggests that the boar may “signifie / Hire fader … / … [who] lith o poynt to dye, / And she for sorwe … / … kysseth him, ther he lith on the grounde” (V. 1283–1287). Given the erotic position of Criseyde and the boar in Troilus’s dream, this reading seems ludicrous; it might also suggest a certain incestuous feeling in Pandarus for his niece, Criseyde.

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Figure 2.╇ Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, fol. 143v.

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Figure 3.╇ Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, fol. 144r.

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because it was a boar that his uncle, Meleager, made “blede” (V. 1513–1515). No matter what emotional reaction Troilus will have, she informs him, “Diomede is inne and thow art oute” (V. 1519). Her reading is removed and professional – almost callous – when she tells her brother, “wep if thow wolt, or lef [leave it]” (V. 1518). Cassandra simply hears the details of Troilus’s vision (“al his drem he tolde hire er he stente” [V. 1452]), and gives her evaluation of the facts – conclusions that only someone with a knowledge of classical history and scholarship would draw. Criseyde is not the example of female weakness and inconstancy that she fears she will be, at least not to Cassandra, her first female reader. Although Cassandra’s reading refuses to pass judgment on Criseyde’s behavior,67 the dream itself is a significant indictment of her moral and social transgressions. Even Chaucer’s version of the dream (in comparison to Boccaccio’s) presents Criseyde’s actions in the worst possible light. In Il Filostrato, Troilo dreams of “a great and unpleasant crashing; at that, when (Troilo) raised his head, he seemed to see a great charging boar [un gran fracasso e spiacevol sentire; / per che, levato il capo, gli sembiava / un gran cinghiar veder che valicava]” (VII.23.6–8). In contrast to the stampeding beast depicted in Boccaccio’s text, Chaucer’s Troilus dreams of a docile boar: “he saugh a bor with tuskes grete, / That slepte ayeyn the bryghte sonnes hete” (V.1238–1239). Criseyde’s role also transforms considerably from Il Filostrato to Troilus and Criseyde: Boccaccio’s Criseida is trampled underneath the boar’s feet during his destructive rampage. Troilo observes that the boar removes her heart with his tusk while she is pinned beneath him. Criseida does not mind the boar’s aggression, however, “but almost took pleasure in what the animal did [ma quasi piacere / prendea di ció che facea l’animale]” (VII.24.5–6).68 In Troilo’s dream Criseida is thus a passive but willing victim of the boar’s overpowering desire. By contrast, in Chaucer’s rendition of the dream the identity of the sexual aggressor is open to question; it is not clear who is doing what to whom in this passage. While the boar lies sleeping in the “bryghte sonnes hete” (V. 1239), next to this beast, “faste in his armes folde, / Lay kyssyng ay his bryght, Criseyde” (V.1240– 1241). Although it is possible that the boar might be “kyssyng ay” his new love, Criseyde, the initiator of this affection could just as easily be Criseyde

67

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Unlike Pandarus, who cries “I hate, ywis, Criseyde; / And, God woot, I wol hate hire evermore!” (V. 1732–1733). Also, Troilus, upon waking up from his dream, immediately outlines Criseyde’s trespasses: “Criseyde hath me bytrayed, / In whom I trusted most of ony wight / … / … what subtilte, / what newe lust, what beaute, what science, / What wratthe of juste cause have ye to me?” (V. 1247–1256). This scene is a possible source for Criseyde’s earlier dream in Book II, where a white eagle “under hire brest his longe clawes sette, / And out hire herte he rente …” (II. 927–928). As with the boar’s act in Il Filostrato, Criseyde feels no pain: “she nought agroos ne nothyng smerte” (II. 930). Criseyde’s dream of the eagle does not appear in Boccaccio’s story.

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herself; the boar lies recumbent on the ground, basking lazily in the heat of the bright sun and bright Criseyde. The dream’s intimate images of Criseyde and the boar and their immediate effect on Troilus certainly serve to cement the audience’s opinion against Criseyde’s licentious behavior. Indeed, Troilus’s dream must function as the primary evidence of her betrayal, for the actual moment of her physical surrender to Diomede’s advances, if she does so at all, is obscure. The narrator relates Diomede’s almost constant attempts to woo Criseyde verbally. Eventually, “so wel he for hymselven spak and seyde / That alle hire sikes soore adown he leyde; / And finaly, the sothe for to seyn, / He refte hire of the grete of al hire peyne” (V. 1033–1035). After his ostensible success, Criseyde gives Diomede the “faire baye stede” and “ek a broche” (V. 1038–1040) given to her by Troilus. Although giving away Troilus’s brooch is a highly symbolic act, the narrator is not explicit about the precise nature of the understanding between Diomede and Criseyde here, at least not as explicit as is Troilus’s dream. Diomede’s accomplishment in relieving her of most of “hire peyne” could be read simply as helping her to overcome her lovesickness and sadness over leaving her home. The betrayal of Troilus at this point in the narrative could be Criseyde giving only her heart to another man, not necessarily her sexual favors. Indeed, Chaucer’s narrator is careful to cast a shadow of doubt even on her emotional betrayal of Troilus; he notes that “the bet from sorwe hym to releve, / She made hym were a pencel [pennon] of her sleeve” (V. 1042–1044). Criseyde grants Diomede a personal article to be worn as a badge of love, but the narrator suggests that she does this more out of pity than genuine affection: “to helen [Diomede] of his sorwes smerte,” adding that “Men seyn – I not – that she yaf hym hire herte” (V. 1049–1050). With this brief aside, the narrator cautions the reader not to take all versions of Criseyde’s betrayal at face value.69 In every manuscript of the romance but one, it is Troilus’s dream, with Criseyde’s supposedly wanton behavior with Diomede overtly depicted, that could confirm the audience’s simultaneous disgust for Criseyde and pity for Troilus. However, the entirety of Troilus’s dream and his ensuing indictment of Criseyde’s character do not appear in Anne Neville’s Corpus Christi manuscript.70 Indeed, the Corpus Christi manuscript is the only one of the sixteen extant versions of Troilus and Criseyde that omits the derogatory dream description. This missing section does not seem to have been accidentally omitted and it is not the result of a lost leaf. The missing portion should

69

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A bit later the narrator again adds a caveat. Lest the reader assume that Criseyde’s favoring of Diomede occurred immediately after her arrival in the Greek camp, the narrator cautions, “Take every man now to his bokes heede, / He shal no terme [i.e., specified period of time] fynden, out of drede. / For though that [Diomede] began to wowe hire soone, / Er he hire wan, yet was ther more to doone” (V. 1089–1092). The missing portion includes six stanzas (V. 1233–1274).

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have begun in the middle of fol. 140v; there is no space left to accommodate this text and no notation of the missing lines is included.71 It is also most likely not the result of an eye-skip, for there are no similar words or phrases in the stanzas (either in the missing portion or at either end) that could easily cause an accidental omission.72 Perhaps the scribe’s exemplar did not contain the section or perhaps the stanzas were deliberately left out of the Corpus version alone.73 Whatever the reason for the omission, the absence of Troilus’s dream is unique to Anne Neville’s manuscript, and the excision has consequences for the way we read Criseyde’s betrayal. When reading this portion of Book V, Anne would not perceive any indications in the form of marginal notations or empty spaces on the page that part of the narrative is omitted. Therefore, the first mention of Troilus’s dream is when Pandarus again chides Troilus for believing in dream analysis. He mentions a “boor” (V. 1282) and suggests that it most likely signifies Calchas, Criseyde’s possibly dying father, who has defected to the Greek camp. The first allusion to Criseyde’s interaction with the beast in the Corpus manuscript is when Pandarus explains away her actions, painting her as a sorrowful daughter rather than an unfaithful lover. The Corpus audience must piece together the events in the dream from scattered references and offhanded interpretations of an unknown “boor.” They have not been exposed to the firsthand account of the dream as it took place, nor to Troilus’s condemnation of Criseyde. Thus, they cannot interpret the dream for themselves, and must rely on either the dismissive ramblings of Pandarus (a man who has already criticized at length the validity of dream interpretation) or the scholarly, straightforward reading of Cassandra, whose non-judgmental analysis to some extent alleviates Criseyde’s culpability. Criseyde exchanged one love for another, just as she herself was exchanged for the Trojan prisoner, Antenor. As the new resident of an enemy camp, Criseyde’s decision is self-serving and strategic, but not without regrets. In reality, her behavior is a far cry from the heartlessness with which she

71

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One of the other three lengthy omissions occurs on fol.100v and encompasses IV. 491–532. Immediately after line 490, a scribal notation appears that records the omission: “deficiut [for deficiunt] VI baletts.” The other missing sections are I. 890–896, IV. 708–714, and IV. 1388 (second half)–1409 (first half) inclusive. There are also lacunae in fols. 22r, 65v, 80v, and 83v that are noted with “deficit.” For example, the missing section of IV. 1388 (second half) to 1409 (first half) is probably caused by an eye-skip. The first half of line 1388 reads “Thus shal I seyn…” and the first half of line 1409 also reads “Thus shal I seyn…”; the scribe might have paused after writing the first part of IV. 1388 and then simply continued copying the wrong line from his exemplar. Parkes asserts, on the basis of paleographical evidence, that the Corpus Christi manuscript is contemporary with the earliest dateable Troilus manuscript, New York, Pierpont Morgan Library MS M817 (also known as the Campsall manuscript). The Campsall manuscript is dated between 1399 and 1413 because the arms of Henry V as Prince of Wales appear on fol. 2r of the text (Parkes and Salter, p. 2). Thus the Corpus Christi manuscript appears to be one of the earliest surviving copies of Troilus and Criseyde.

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is depicted in Troilus’s dream. The fact that Anne Neville never reads this inflammatory section and does not have to contend with this unsavory representation of Criseyde enables a more tolerant reading of the Trojan woman for whom Troilus grieves. Not only does Cassandra’s reading and its appearance in the Corpus Christi manuscript engage the readers’ sympathies for Criseyde, it also functions as Cassandra’s attempt to encourage and influence her brother. While some critics read the consequences of Cassandra’s dream interpretation as “devastating,”74 other scholars remark on the salutary effects of her prophecy: “Truth,” Knapp suggests, “though it may not please, does cure.”75 After delivering her reading, Troilus not only condemns Cassandra as a “sorceresse, / With al thy false goost of prophecye! / Thow wenest ben a gret devyneresse!” and a “fool of fantasie” (V. 1520–1523), he also attempts to offer his own commentary on Cassandra’s talents based, like his sister’s, on what “the bokes telle” (V. 1533).76 Cassandra, Troilus claims, lies about good women, such as Alceste, who “was of creatures” the “kindest and the beste”: “whan hire housbonde was in jupertye / To dye hymself but if she wolde dye, / She ches for hym to dye and gon to helle, / And starf anon” (V. 1528–1533). The parallel Troilus calls on here suggests not only that Cassandra’s interpretation has no basis in fact and is malicious against women, but that the Sibyl has placed her own spiteful motivations before her brother’s, unlike Alceste, who chooses to die in place of her husband. Cassandra’s reading of the dream, however much Troilus dislikes it, proves to be the medicine her brother needs to cease his languishing and find a productive outlet for his frustrations and anxiety. After Cassandra departs, Troilus Foryat his wo, for angre of hire speche; And from his bed al sodeynly he sterte, As though al hool hym hadde ymad a leche. And day by day he gan enquere and seche A sooth of this with al his fulle cure; And thus he drieth forth his aventure.â•… (V. 1535–1540)77

74 75 76

77

See Henry H. Peyton III, “Roles,” p. 11. Knapp, “Boccaccio and Chaucer on Cassandra,” p. 416. Ross notes that, at this moment, Troilus is “disenfranchised and discursively unseated … by the interpretive agency of his own sister” (“Believing Cassandra,” p. 343). Although Troilus’s angry counter does seem like a feeble reply to Cassandra’s interpretation, this anger will soon be channeled into productive action. Troilus’s process here has parallels with the process of disenfranchisement and reconstruction of Sir Launfal’s chivalric character through the intervention of a female patron in Thomas Chestre’s Sir Launfal. See my discussion of this romance in Chapter Four of this book. We may compare this with Boccaccio’s depiction of the scene in which it is the ministrations of the lovely Helen as well as his own mettle that restores Troilo to health; thus, in Il Filostrato, Cassandre is “neither prophetess nor physician” (Knapp, “Boccaccio and Chaucer on Cassandra,” p. 415).

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His anger and doubt about Cassandra’s prophecy literally acts as a healthful catalyst for his physical and, to a certain extent, mental recovery. When he moves about Troy once more, searching for the “sooth of this,” Troilus believes that he is finally discovering the truth about his dream, though what he really finds is corroboration of Cassandra’s prophetic interpretation.78 However, her painful reading diverts her brother’s “fulle cure [attention]” enough so that he may bear his sad situation more easily and more productively. It is Troilus’s return to appropriate behavior that makes Cassandra’s prophecy such a necessary and effective act of intellectual influence in the romance. Before she is called in to decipher his dream, Troilus wallows in melancholy and jealousy seemingly interminably. In a grotesque alteration of his former physical beauty, the lovesick Troilus “so defet was, that no manere man / Unneth hym myghte knowen ther he wente; / So was he lene, and therto pale and wan, / And feble, that he walketh by potente [with a crutch]” (V. 1219–1222). The former flower of Trojan chivalry, second only to Hector, is now virtually unrecognizable in his despair. The changes in Troilus’s appearance not only emphasize the sorrow the young man experiences for the sake of love (and heighten the pathos of Cupid’s retribution against the one who initially criticized the acolytes of love so vehemently), but it also depicts a Troilus divested of his chivalric and heroic reputation; no one can perceive his former achievements through his wan exterior and, by walking only feebly with the aid of crutches, Troilus is bereft of the strength necessary to re-establish his reputation through acts of military success. Cassandra’s reading of her brother’s dream, then, restores Troilus’s health and places him back within the narrative of chivalric opportunity. In the last days of the conflict, after Hector’s death, Troilus rises to take his brother’s place to a degree; we read that “in many a cruel bataille, out of drede, / Of Troilus, this ilke noble knyght, / … / Was seen his knyghthod and his grete myght” (V. 1751–1754). In addition to his recovered hostility toward the Greeks in battle, Troilus is able to fight with Diomede himself, regaining a measure of the pride he lost during his long lovesickness and betrayal. The narrator writes that Diomede and Troilus often met in battle “with bloody strokes and with wordes grete, / Assaying how hire speres weren whette” (V.1759–1760).79 Although Fortune has not destined that the combatants will kill one another, Troilus redeems his previous idleness (for which even 78

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Troilus eventually concedes the truth of Cassandra’s interpretation of his dream, although he does not acknowledge her by name, of course. After receiving a “straunge” (V. 1632) letter from Criseyde and witnessing Diomede’s cloak being dragged through Troy with the love token – a brooch – Troilus gave to Criseyde attached to the lapel, Troilus laments, “the goddes shewen bothe joie and tene / In slep, and by my drem it is now sene” (V. 1714–1715). One cannot mistake the slight ironic humor inherent in Chaucer’s phrasing here; the two rivals literally test one another’s spears, but also, symbolically, their phalluses, both vanquished and victorious, in the battle for Criseyde’s love.

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Pandarus regularly criticized him) and dies with his martial reputation not only intact but augmented: “Of Troilus the Grekis boughten deere, / For thousandes his hondes maden deye, / As he that was withouten any peere” (V. 1801–1803). The Trojans are destined to lose the war, but Troilus performs excellently even until the moment of his death. In Book III of the romance, Chaucer begins to develop the influential relationship between Troilus and women with his depiction of Criseyde’s acquiescence to love rather than with Cassandra’s prophetic interpretation. Although a love affair is not in itself a signal of sponsorship, the initial interactions between Troilus and Criseyde bear some of the marks of the relationship between female agent and male recipient/client that will be developed further in the romances discussed in later chapters. For example, in the lovers’ first intimate moments together (Pandarus’s ubiquity notwithstanding), Criseyde outlines the parameters of their relationship with little sentimentality: ‘… this warne I yow,’ quod she, ‘A kynges sone although ye be, ywys, Ye shal namore han sovereignete Of me in love, than right in that cas is; N’y nyl forbere, if that ye don amys, To wratthe yow; and whil that ye me serve, Chericen yow right after ye disserve.’â•… (III. 169–175)80

Criseyde’s prefatory remarks to Troilus are, of course, informed by the tradition of amour courtois in the Middle Ages;81 she asks him to act with “trouthe and gentilesse” (III. 163) and “myn honour with wit and bisynesse / Ay kepe” (III. 165–166). However, in combination with the immediate consequences of the love affair for Troilus, the parameters Criseyde establishes and her attempt to retain control over the relationship, albeit unsuccessfully, begin to reflect an interaction where a woman seeks to gain social agency through the men they inspire. Even before their relationship reaches fruition, Pandarus’s mere promise of Criseyde’s imminent love is sufficient to incite Troilus to notable acts of martial prowess: “Troilus lay tho no lenger down, / But up anon upon his stede bay, / And in the feld he pleyde tho leoun; / Wo was that Grek that with hym mette a-day!” (I. 1072–1075). Furthermore, Troilus displays the 80

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We may compare Criseyde’s prelude here with Tryamour’s blunt rehearsal of her particular rules of love to Launfal before their relationship is consummated in Thomas Chestre’s fifteenth-century romance Sir Launfal; see my discussion of this text in Chapter Four. See Andreas Capellanus’s twelfth-century De Amore, which, although likely a satire on the tradition of amour courtois, attests to the prevalence and popularity of these conventions in the Middle Ages (Andreas Capellanus, The Art of Courtly Love, trans. John Jay Parry [New York: Columbia University Press, 1990]).

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battle wounds he receives in order to entice Criseyde to love. Riding by her window, in battered armor and with his horse bleeding profusely, “swich a knyghtly sighte trewely / As was on hym, was nought, withouten faille, / To loke on Mars, that god is of bataille” (II. 628–630). This scene is carefully choreographed by Pandarus, of course, and will lead to Criseyde’s nowfamous response to the display of chivalry beneath her window: “Who yaf me drynke?” (II. 651). Once love is achieved between Criseyde and Troilus, however, we see Troilus continuing to contribute proactively to “the townes were [war]” (III. 1772); he is always “the firste in armes dyght,” with “this encrees of hardynesse and myght / Com[ing] hym of love, his ladies thank to wynne, / That altered his spirit so withinne” (III. 1773–1778). Thus we see how Criseyde and “hire wommanhede” (III. 1740) influence Troilus’s military success even before she agrees to enter a love affair with him. Later in Book III, after the consummation of their love, Troilus and Criseyde live for “a tyme … in joie” and “suffisaunce” (III. 1714–1716); indeed, it is a happiness that almost “may nought writen be with inke” (III. 1693). Amidst the regular, blissful encounters with his love, Troilus also demonstrates a facet of his personality not often emphasized either in Chaucer’s text or in the critical responses to the romance. The narrator remarks that the young prince spendeth, jousteth, maketh festeynges; He yeveth frely ofte, and chaungeth wede, And held aboute hym alwey, out of drede, A world of folk, as com hym wel of kynde, The fresshest and the beste he koude fynde; That swich a vois was of hym and a stevene, Thorughout the world, of honour and largesse, That it up rong unto the yate of hevene.â•… (III. 1718–1725)

Similarly, he engages in the courtly pastimes appropriate to his rank during times of truce between the Trojan and Greek combatants: “on haukyng wolde he ride, / Or elles honte boor, beer, or lyoun; / The smale bestes leet he gon biside” (III. 1779–1781). Troilus’s behavior does not correspond either with his previous anti-social lovesickness or with his gregarious and condescending criticism of any members of his entourage who might have fallen victim to love in Book I. Rather, Troilus’s personality becomes generous and expansive, demonstrating his new-found benevolence not with kind looks and words, but with tangible gifts and encouragement of those around him. Indeed, he becomes a patron himself as a direct result of Criseyde’s amorous influence. He continues to cultivate his social and martial reputation with jousting, feasting, and the conspicuous spending of money on new clothing. This “largesse” not only emphasizes his immediate renown, but also reaches as high as heaven’s gate, ensuring that Troilus’s relationship with Criseyde, 48



Prophecy as Social Influence

though doomed to worldly failure, will recommend him as a worthy beneficiary of love even in death. Thus, the emotional influence of Troilus begun by Criseyde, which has critical social and chivalric benefits for the young knight, is completed by Cassandra’s prophetic interpretation of her brother’s dream toward the end of the romance, which allows him to rehabilitate his martial reputation before his death. It is actually the time spent between the influences of these two women that connects their acts of support most prominently in the narrative. After Criseyde departs for the Greek camp but before Cassandra intervenes is shown to be the time of true sorrow and failure for Troilus. It is at that point that he is under the influence of his friend and “first teacher,” Pandarus.82 Relying solely on Pandarus’s advice or his own inexperience, Troilus’s mental and physical well-being deteriorates during these periods of suffering away from Criseyde’s beneficial influence. Both of these women provide the Trojan prince with the necessary focus and motivation to achieve honor and, more specifically, to perform well in battle, whether out of anger or happiness. Troilus’s achievements, aided by these two heroines in the last days of the Trojan War, are no small testament to the power of women’s cultural, emotional, and intellectual influence in this romance; their positive contributions to Troilus’s character and enduring reputation ensure that the acts of female authority and support in Troilus and Criseyde will succeed, even when the Trojan cause has failed. Although Cassandra’s attempt to inform and influence others is divinely ordained to be ineffective, her interpretation of Troilus’s dream is given authority by the Latin historical text she cites.83 By offering Troilus a straightforward reading of the dream, shorn of any emotional delicacy or the cruel mocking of her Boccaccian counterpart, Cassandra seeks to educate her brother on the vicissitudes of military history; tragically, the male characters in the romance consistently attempt to “dismiss martial history even while they participate in war.”84 The “olde stories” she tells him illustrate how “Fortune overthrowe / Hath lordes olde” (V. 1460–1461); even Boccaccio’s Cassandra worries about Troilo’s “accursed love by which we must be undone” (VII. 86). In Chaucer’s text, she encourages Troilus to accept the reality of Criseyde’s betrayal, possibly in a futile attempt to stop the hand of Fortune, which has begun to “pulle awey the fetheres brighte of Troie / 82

83

84

See Knapp, “Boccaccio and Chaucer on Cassandra,” p. 416. Although Knapp here focuses specifically on Pandarus’s attempts to educate Troilus on the vagaries of dream interpretation, I would expand her description of Pandarus as Troilus’s “first teacher” to accommodate much of their relationship throughout the romance. Indeed, Pandarus begins the narrative as a kind of love patron, using learned authorities, “olde ensaumples” (I. 760), and practical knowledge to persuade Troilus to repent his previous coldheartedness and become one of “Loves servantz” (I. 912). “The inclusion of the argument of the Thebaid,” Sanok suggests, “offers strong evidence that Chaucer intended his reader to understand Cassandre’s interpretation in terms of its source” (“Women and the Theban Subtext,” p. 55, note 31). Sanok, “Women and the Theban Subtext,” p. 63.

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Women’s Power in Late Medieval Romance

From day to day, til they ben bare of joie” (V. 1546–1547). In offering the historical prelude to her reading of Troilus’s dream, Cassandra does more than simply document how she arrived at her identification of the boar as Diomede. She inextricably links Theban history with Trojan destiny through Diomede and his ancestry. Also implicit in her lesson is the human consequence of military violence; Cassandra relates how six of the seven champions who besieged Thebes met with horrible deaths, including drowning, gory battle wounds, and even being struck by a thunderbolt.85 Cassandra concludes her historical prelude with the figure of Argia, Polynices’s wife, weeping before the burning city of Thebes. This poignant image of a single widow, alone amongst the devastation of war underscores the larger implications of Criseyde’s exchange for Antenor, the event which paved the way for Troilus’s dream.86 Unlike Criseyde’s father, Calchas, another “gret devyn” (I. 66) who knows “by calkulynge” (I. 71) that Troy will be destroyed and seeks only to save himself, Cassandra’s interpretations of the signs in Troilus’s dream attempt, however futilely, to warn her brother and the other Trojans of their impending destruction. Yet even with Cassandra’s poignant warning, Troilus condemns his sister as a “false goost of prophecye” (V. 1521). At the end of the tale, seemingly tacked on to the conclusion of the Trojan narrative, are Troilus’s realizations about the transitory nature of the world. Before these musings are reported, however, Chaucer includes his now famous address to his text: “Go litel bok, go, litel myn tragedye” (V. 1786). He asks his book to be “subgit … to alle poesye” (V. 1790), and then sends it to kiss the steps which “Virgile, Ovide, Omer, Lucan, and Stace” (V. 1792) occupy.87 Given the indebtedness of both Chaucer and Cassandra to classical historians throughout the narrative, the company Chaucer wishes for Troilus and Criseyde is quite apt. However, as Troilus’s soul advances through the heavenly spheres, he looks back at the “litel spot of erthe that with the se€/ Embraced is” (V. 1815–1816). Now that he has achieved a kind of divine perspective on the “litel spot,” Troilus recognizes the transitory nature of the world and, thus, “fully gan despise / This wrecched world, and held al vanite€/ To respect of the pleyn felicite / That is in hevene above” (V. 1816– 1819). His criticism rests in particular on the “blynde lust, the which that 85 86

87

See Troilus and Criseyde, V. 1485–1505. According to the historical sources from which Chaucer draws the majority of his information about the Trojan War (the “Troian gestes” of “Dares [Dares Phrygius]” and “Dite [Dictys Cretensis]” [I. 145–146]), Antenor was the traitor who opened the Trojan gates to the invading Greek army and arranged for the theft of the Palladium, without which Troy could not survive. See Sanok’s “Women and the Theban Subtext” for an excellent discussion of the human and emotional costs of war for women in the Thebaid and Troilus and Criseyde. “Lucan” refers to the first century AD writer of the Pharsalia, a history of the Roman civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompey. In his Filocolo, Boccaccio addresses his little book and mentions Virgil, Lucan, Statius, Ovid, and Dante (Riverside Chaucer, Explanatory Notes, p. 1056). Chaucer substitutes “Omer” for Dante perhaps because it is more appropriate to the subject of Troy.

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Prophecy as Social Influence

may nat laste” and the “false worldes brotelnesse [undependability]” (V. 1824 and 1832). Although Troilus’s remarks on the inconstancy of love and the secular world soon become a miniature sermon to the “yong, fresshe folkes” (V. 1835) who read the text, his posthumous perspective also implicitly bears out the truth of Cassandra’s historical lesson. In counterpoint to Cassandra’s warnings that the hand of Fortune is stacked against Troy, Troilus comments on “this worlde that passeth soone as floures faire” (V. 1841). Regardless of Troilus’s refusal to believe Cassandra’s prophecy, however, the female audience of Troilus and Criseyde, and particularly of the Corpus manuscript, encounters in Cassandra a persuasive model of women’s intellectual influence and interpretation that is founded more on a thorough knowledge of Latin historical texts, which are literally the kind of “poesye” (V.€1790) to which Chaucer desires to subject his work, rather than Apollo’s divine retribution. Even the character of Criseyde – rehabilitated to an extent by Cassandra’s reading and the omitted portions of the Corpus manuscript – plants the seeds of sponsorship behavior that will be more fully cultivated later in the romance by Cassandra. Women’s readership plays an important role both in the historical reception of the Corpus manuscript and within the narrative of Troilus and Criseyde itself. The characters of Criseyde and Â� Cassandra are both transformed in Chaucer’s version of the story. Criseyde’s faults are made much more explicit in Troilus’s dream and Cassandra’s prophecies are delivered in terms of confident scholarship rather than out of spite or a raving mania. Indeed, we might say that Chaucer’s Cassandra is not so much a psychic as she is simply well-read. She confirms Troilus’s worst fears about Criseyde’s change of heart, but she does so in order to spare him the emotional and physical deterioration that will lead to his downfall and, perhaps, to convey an important (if futile) lesson on the consequences of war. Furthermore, the omission of Troilus’s dream, which leaves Anne Neville and the readers after her without a record of Criseyde’s infidelity to interpret, makes Cassandra the model of female readership as well as the repository of historical knowledge in the Corpus manuscript. Thus, Cassandra teaches the audience how a woman should read, and how a woman should read another woman.

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2 The Science of Female Power in John Metham’s Amoryus and Cleopes

T

he previous chapter considered literary examples of women’s social influence in the least likely of contexts: the final days of the doomed city of Troy. Cassandra’s prophetic discourse, based entirely in historical and textual rather than supernatural knowledge, is incapable of altering the course of the city’s fate or even the death of her brother. However, the female reader of this text is still offered in the character of Cassandra – and even of Criseyde – a pattern of influential behavior that succeeds in ameliorating a hopeless situation to an extent. Troilus still dies, but he dies well thanks to the productive anger his sister’s dream interpretation fosters; Criseyde still becomes an archetype of female betrayal, but the sting of this reputation is alleviated to a degree by Cassandra’s candid and uncritical reading of Criseyde’s actions and the manuscript context of Chaucer’s romance in the Corpus Christi codex. Yet however much Chaucer distances his character’s talents from divine capriciousness in favor of historical study, Cassandra’s prophetic interpretations are not given with practical application in mind (although they do ultimately encourage beneficial action in Troilus). Indeed, Apollo’s curse on Cassandra makes a truly functional deployment of her knowledge impossible: she will simply never be believed. However, thorough specialized knowledge – in Cassandra’s case, the capacity for accurate historical analysis – is often the primary means by which romance heroines engage in sponsorship. Romances in which these heroines appear provide the audience with a much more overt and systematic pattern of women’s influence; the characters actively convey their particular body of knowledge, but they also offer specific instructions for how that knowledge should be used to promote the chivalric careers of the men they advise. In John Metham’s romance Amoryus and Cleopes (c. 1449),1 the goddess 1

Metham informs his audience that he is writing his romance in “the sevyn and twenty yere of the sext Kyng Henry” (line 2177) or 1449. All line number citations from the romance and the other texts (cited by page number) in MS Garrett 141 are taken from Hardin Craig’s edition, The Works of John Metham, EETS 132 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1916). Stephen F. Page’s TEAMS edition of the romance alone, Amoryus and Cleopes (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1999), updates Hardin Craig’s textual apparatus and offers a

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Venus appears to the pagan priest in her temple and offers this ominous prediction: “Alas! … we goddessys may say, for sone to us / Is schape an uttyr exile; for here [i.e., the temple] qwere we were wunt to abyde, / A crucyfyid man schal take possessyon and us put asyde” (lines 665–667). Venus’s prophecy of the pagan deities’ usurpation by a “crucified” man provides a (not very) subtle allusion to the Christian conversion of the citizens of the Persian city Albynest, where Metham’s romance takes place. As with Â�Cassandra’s prophetic discourse discussed in the previous chapter, Venus’s prediction is not initially believed by the city’s ruler, Palamedon, but is proven true in the wholly original conclusion to Metham’s version of the Pyramus and Thisbe myth. Much of the critical work written on Amoryus and Cleopes has focused on Metham’s great narrative and stylistic debt to Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde;2 indeed, in depicting the enormous cultural and personal influence of medieval women, Metham fashions his heroine, Cleopes, from similar cloth to Chaucer’s Cassandra. However, whereas Chaucer positions his heroine as both prophet and arbiter of social influence, Metham distinguishes between these two gifts. Although Venus’s predictions of destruction echo Cassandra’s, it is Cleopes and her encyclopedic scientific knowledge that most closely parallels the intellectual advice and encouragement offered by Chaucer’s heroine. In addition, Metham’s romance begins to introduce us to the more immediately tangible benefits of women’s influence. For example, Cleopes will give Amoryus several small, but important, gifts to ensure his success in battle. Although these items – gleaned from the medieval herbals and lapidaries on which her knowledge is based – do not compare to the lavish wealth and war gear the female patrons will give their knights in the romances discussed in later chapters of this book, with Metham’s text we can begin to understand even more how female knowledge (whether historical, scientific, or otherwise) has practical applications in the life of a sponsored knight and the readers of the romance as well. Metham’s text illustrates an aspect of female patronage not often explored in medieval romances where women are depicted as the arbiters of cultural influence. The success of the relationship between the lady and her knight, as

2

transcription of the final ten erased lines of Amoryus and Cleopes, parts of which are now visible under ultraviolet light (lines 2213–2222). Any reference to these recovered lines will be taken from Page’s edition. See, for example, Stephen F. Page, “John Metham’s Amoryus and Cleopes: Intertextuality and Innovation in a Chaucerian Poem,” Chaucer Review 31 (1996): pp. 201–208 and Roger Dalrymple, “Amoryus and Cleopes: John Metham’s Metamorphosis of Chaucer and Ovid,” in The Matter of Identity in Medieval Romance, ed. Phillipa Hardman (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2002), pp. 149–162. See also Jamie Fumo, “John Metham’s ‘Straunge Style’: Amoryus and Cleopes as Chaucerian Fragment,” The Chaucer Review 43.2 (2008): pp. 215–237. Fumo comments on the prevalent critical view that Metham almost exclusively assimilated Troilus and Criseyde (pp. 216–217). While Fumo acknowledges the prominent “Trojan intertext” (p. 217), her article refreshingly considers the impact of the Squire’s Tale and the Franklin’s Tale on Metham’s romance.

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The Science of Female Power in John Metham’s Amoryus and Cleopes well as his chivalric development, is predicated on Cleopes’s proaction and the deployment of her scientific expertise, yet there is also a collaborative valence to their interactions, particularly toward the end of the romance when the more traditional chivalric narrative transforms into a tale of religious conversion. At this point, Cleopes learns along with Amoryus of the Christian truth taught by the hermit and the resurrection miracle he performs. Unlike Venus, however, who ominously predicts her own downfall, Cleopes’s intellectual influence remains valid even after the conversion takes place; indeed, her new status as a Christian makes her support much more potent and persuasive for the audience of Metham’s romance. This element of collaborative as well as individual learning and influence is overtly mirrored by Metham’s actual patrons, Miles and Katherine Stapleton. Indeed, as I will discuss later, Amoryus and Cleopes themselves are but thinly veiled characterizations of Miles and Katherine. Although we might read Katherine’s influence over Metham and his romance as diminished because she acts in tandem with her husband,3 the individual praise and attention Metham affords Katherine, both within the romance and in other texts, indicates that he considers her to be an influential patron in her own right. The romance survives in a single manuscript located in the Princeton University Library: MS Garrett 141. At the conclusion to his text, Metham reveals to his audience the reason he began the business of “ryming”: “To comforte them that schuld falle in hevynes / For tyme onocupyid, qwan folk have lytyl to do, / On haly dayis to rede, me thynk yt best so” (lines 2210– 2212). Metham’s unorthodox suggestion, that the “tyme onocupyid” on holy days depresses people, could give many devout readers pause. Even more boldly, Metham suggests that the cure for this dismal lag time can be found Â� inspired romances, such as Amoryus and Cleopes, rather than in classically a strictly devotional text or the Bible.4 But for all the entertainment value 3

4

Several scholars have discussed the increased patronage and literary activity of medieval women after they become widows, as they have greater financial and social freedom to pursue these activities. For example, Anne Neville Stafford (c. 1414–1480; see Chapter One of this book for a discussion of her patronage) and her daughter-in-law, Margaret Beaufort (1443–1509) both became active literary sponsors after they were widowed. See June Hall McCash, “The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women: An Overview,” in The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women, ed. June Hall McCash (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1996), p. 3; D. H. Green, Women Readers in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 206; Karen K. Jambeck, “Patterns of Women’s Literary Patronage: England, 1200–ca. 1475,” in The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women, p. 245; and Rebecca Krug, Reading Families: Women’s Literate Practice in Late Medieval England, especially Chapter Two, “Margaret Beaufort’s Literate Practice: Service and Self-Inscription,” (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002), pp. 65–113. We may also turn to an example found in William Caxton’s Prologue to the chivalric romance Blanchardyn and Eglantine (1489). This English translation was undertaken at the behest of Margaret Beaufort (he had previously produced it for her in French); in his Prologue, Caxton suggests that a tale of the “noble fayttes and valiaunt actes of armes” is better than studying “ouer moche in bokes of contemplacioun” (William Caxton, The Prologues and Epilogues of William Caxton, ed. W. J. B. Crotch, EETS o.s. 176 [London: Oxford University Press, 1928], p.

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contained in Amoryus and Cleopes, it is not a traditional romance either. The text draws heavily on scientific treatises and religious material in addition to the chivalric episodes.5 Thus, Metham’s suggestion for holy day reading, placed strategically after the audience has read his unique romance, is not as inappropriate as it first appears; the romance is designed both to entertain and to provide spiritual inspiration for the reader.6 Furthermore, as I discuss more fully later in the chapter, this romance and the other texts owned by and dedicated to the Stapletons offers insight into fifteenth-century reading tastes, particularly those of a female patron. The romance offers a steady trajectory of the status of scientific knowledge and chivalric activities, which moves from their alliance with pagan religion and culture to a compatibility with Christianity. It is this transformation of these activities from pagan to Christian – or their “conversion” – that this chapter in part investigates. I will also consider several of Metham’s lost

5

6

105). See my discussion of this Prologue in the Introduction to this book. For more on Margaret Beaufort’s patronage of Caxton’s translation, see Jennifer Summit, “William Caxton, Margaret Beaufort and the Romance of Female Patronage,” in Women, The Book, and the Worldly, ed. Lesley Smith and Jane H. M. Taylor (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1995), pp. 151–165 and Anne Clark Bartlett, “Translation, Self-Representation, and Statecraft: Lady Margaret Beaufort and Caxton’s Blanchardyn and Eglantine (1489),” Essays in Medieval Studies 22 (2005): pp. 53–66. While this chapter considers primarily the non-romance sources used in Amoryus and Cleopes, Metham does draw significantly from the romance legends of Alexander the Great, which were popular in the late Middle Ages. Not only does Metham claim to have written a (no longer extant) story titled “Alexander Macedo” (Craig, Works of John Metham, line 2143) for Miles Stapleton, but the narrative of Amoryus and Cleopes shows signs of this tradition’s influence as well. For example, Craig suggests that Palamedon’s and Dydas’s marriages to Persian wives “off the lynage / Of Daryus” (lines 43–44) establishes a link between Metham’s text and the Alexander legend (p. xiv). For further connections between Amoryus and Cleopes and other traditional materials, such as Lydgate’s Troy Book and popular English romances, see pp. xiii–xix, and Page, Amoryus and Cleopes, pp. 8–15. This combination of narrative elements serves Metham’s purposes, but has not recommended the romance to modern literary criticism. However, Amoryus and Cleopes’s low status in the eyes of modern scholarship is not the result of the many different kinds of material included in its narrative, a combination of which is often found in medieval romances, but rather the long translations of scientific treatises and Metham’s metrical ineptitude compared to other contemporary authors, such as Lydgate. In several of his works on fifteenth-century English literature, Derek Pearsall pauses briefly to criticize Amoryus and Cleopes, for its “metrical chaos” (“The English Chaucerians,” in Chaucer and Chaucerians: Critical Studies in Middle English Literature, ed. D. S. Brewer [Huntsville: University of Alabama Press, 1967], p. 206) and the “technical …incompetence [which] make[s] it almost unreadable” (“The English Romance in the Fifteenth Century,” Essays and Studies n.s. 29 [1976]: p. 69). Lee Ramsey chooses to indict the author for his “unskilled but serious-minded” attempt to write “a sentimental, pathetic love story” and “plunder … traditional romance for a jousting contest and a dragon fight to enliven the action” (Chivalric Romances: Popular Literature in Medieval England [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983], p. 226). Technical inadequacies and generic looting aside, Metham’s text is undoubtedly bookish, a fact that leads Ramsey to declare that he was not “a romance writer, but rather a translator” (Chivalric Romances, p. 225). Indeed, the long and seemingly unnecessary digressions into secular scientific material on astronomy and natural philosophy, which already appear incompatible with the more traditionally chivalric episodes, are particularly at odds with the resurrection and conversion narrative that concludes the tale. The text’s objectionability for critics, however, lies not in its fusion of various secular and devotional genres, but in the inelegant way they are combined.

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The Science of Female Power in John Metham’s Amoryus and Cleopes works, mentioned only in Amoryus and Cleopes, and the work’s manuscript context, MS Garrett 141, which situates the romance amongst other scientific texts written by Metham for his patrons, Miles and Katherine Stapleton. These works, among which Amoryus and Cleopes are found, suggest that the scientific portions of Metham’s romance were not simply tedious digressions into scholarly learning, but that Katherine and Miles valued these parts of the romance, for it is this scientific material that is reflected in the rest of the works in their manuscript. In Amoryus and Cleopes, the audience witnesses not only a resurrection narrative and a moralized ending, but also a Christian displacement of an older, pagan belief system. In conjunction with this displacement, Metham maintains a continuity in his representation of two aspects of secularity in the romance: scientific treatises and feats of chivalry. These narratives are redefined or “converted” along with the characters in Amoryus and Cleopes. The pagans’ conversion breaks the connection between classical paganism and science – a connection in which Metham is inititally invested in the romance – and forges a link between Christianity, scientific knowledge, and worldly pastimes. While R. M. Lumiansky claims that “clearly, [the author’s] chief interest is religious,”7 I contend that Metham asserts the possibility of coexistence between science and salvation in Amoryus and Cleopes. Most importantly, I argue, the character of Cleopes is the site at which natural science, the cultivation of knighthood, and new-found Christianity converge in Metham’s romance. After the conversion, Cleopes’s rehearsal of natural science, which enables Amoryus to succeed at worldly chivalric feats, is not condemned along with the pagans’ idol worship. Rather, her secular knowledge and his chivalric victories are rendered as elements of a good Christian life; the actions and values of female patrons – both Cleopes and Katherine – remain consistent throughout Metham’s romance. Thus, the scientific information remains as valuable after the conversion as before, and valorous pursuits, those that bring the knight honor and respect, are not scorned by the newly baptized lovers and their fellow citizens. With Amoryus and Cleopes, Metham illustrates how Christians can enjoy the scientific and chivalric benefits of the world while not jeopardizing their souls with pagan religion. Cleopes’s recitation of her natural scientific discourse, while at first glance a bit of a distraction or digression from the love narrative,8 is part of a broader 7

8

R. M. Lumiansky, “Legends of Alexander the Great,” in A Manual of the Writings in Middle English; Fascicule I: Romances, ed. J. Burke Severs (New Haven, CT: The Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1967), p. 112. Fumo reads Cleopes’s rehearsal of dragon lore as “extravagant … distracting and largely unintegrated” (“Metham’s ‘Straunge Style’,” p. 224). Furthermore, the jousting and dragonfighting scenes, she suggests, not only distract from the love story (they are “mood-killing”), but they also seem to be “indulged merely as romance necessity” (p. 224). However, judging from

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engagement with science both in the romance and in the manuscript in which it appears. It is clear from Metham’s literary corpus that his patrons, the Stapletons, and probably Metham himself, held a fervent interest in scientific texts. Metham augments the more conventional elements often found in medieval romances, the chivalric episodes of jousting and dragon-slaying, with scientific treatises drawn almost entirely from classical sources.9 This scientific information enhances Metham’s scholarly image, provides narrative authority to his heroine, and functions as the foundation of her acts of influence in the romance. Very little is known about John Metham himself, although he signs most of the works in the Garrett manuscript. With the aid of ultraviolet light, Stephen Page recently deciphered the last ten erased lines of Amoryus and Cleopes, which offer some biographical information on Metham. In this excised section of the romance, Metham asserts not only his connection to the north of England, where he found patronage in the Stapleton family, but his northern aristocratic ancestry as well.10 He also

9

10

the centrality of the scientific material and chivalric pursuits within the romance and within the Garrett manuscript Metham prepared for his patrons, Cleopes’s act of intellectual patronage at this point in the narrative is highly appropriate and timely. The term “science” in the Middle Ages often referred to a general body of knowledge or, more specifically, to book-learning. In Chaucer’s Parliament of Fowls, for example, the narrator writes of the organic nature of written knowledge: “Out of olde bokes, in good feyth, / Cometh al this newe science that men lere” (Geoffrey Chaucer, The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson [Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Co, 1987], lines 24–25). Science was also part of the seven liberal arts (or sciences): grammar, rhetoric and dialectic or logic (the trivium) and arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music (the quadrivium). After the large-scale translation of GrecoArabic scientific texts into Latin in the second half of the twelfth century, the primacy of the seven liberal arts altered somewhat as they became “pathways to philosophy … which consisted of natural philosophy, metaphysics, and moral philosophy” (Edward Grant, “Medieval Science and Natural Philosophy,” in Medieval Studies: An Introduction, ed. James M. Powell (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1992), pp. 353–375 (p. 354–357). Grant’s article offers a comprehensive outline of the development of all branches of medieval science and its place as a critical source for the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. Natural philosophy, metaphysics, and mathematics comprised the theoretical knowledge of Aristotle and his followers; Aristotelian learning became very influential in England and Europe after the twelfth century (“Medieval Science,” p. 357). Metham lists Aristotle as the primary source for his palmistry and physiognomy treatises. In the Middle Ages, the three philosophies and the arts in the quadrivium were related to worldly knowledge, although they were not necessarily defined as specifically “secular.” These sciences, or domains of knowledge, were contrasted with religious or divine learning in the same way the categories of secular and sacred were contrasted. Early Christian writers, such as Augustine, Cassiodorus, and Jerome, debated the issue of incorporating classical, secular learning into a Christian education. For example, see Tertullian’s famous quote against importing secular ideas into Christian teaching: “Quid ergo Athenis et Hierosolymis [What has Athens to do with Jerusalem]?” from his De praescriptione haereticorum (Chapter 7.9) in Quinti Septimi Florentis Tertulliani Opera, vol. 70 (Vindobonae: Hoelder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1942). For more on Augustine’s views on the value of pagan knowledge, see John Goyette, “Augustine vs. Newman on the Relationship Between Sacred and Secular Science,” in Faith, Scholarship and Culture in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Alice Ramos and Marie I. George (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2002), pp. 202–218 and Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine, trans. D. W. Robertson (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1958). The poet claims that he was born in “The toune of Camberig, toward the este of Englond. / But hys fadyr fully in the north born was he” (lines 2216–2217). Page suggests that the location

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The Science of Female Power in John Metham’s Amoryus and Cleopes emphasizes his education throughout his works; at the beginning of the treatise on physiognomy, for instance, he couches his assertions of education in a traditional modesty statement: “I Jon Metham, skoler, thus rudely I begynn in Englysch …” (fol.€58r). He concludes the essay with “Quod Jon Metham, scolere off Cambryg” (fol. 75v).11 Although, there are no external records of John Metham, either in the documents of the Cambridge colleges or elsewhere,12 his insistence on his own scholarly background explains the extensive lectures on astronomy and natural science in which either Metham or his characters continue to cite their sources. He is as concerned with bolstering his image as a legitimate Cambridge scholar as he is with providing practical information to his readers.13 Scientific authority is overtly privileged throughout Amoryus and Cleopes and the rest of Metham’s corpus more than literary or even religious authority. Although Metham briefly compares the literary talent of Chaucer and Lydgate with his own modest ability at the conclusion of the

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12

13

is probably in Yorkshire where the town of Metham is located (Amoryus and Cleopes, p. 2). Metham’s father, the poem further asserts, is “be ryght consangynyté, / Decendyd fro the fyrst Alyscounder Metham, the knyght” (lines 2218–2219). As almost all of his extant work is dedicated to Sir Miles and Lady Katherine, as well as the lost works he claims to have written, it seems likely that Metham spent the majority of his time in the “north cuntré” (line 2213) of his father’s birth. For more on Metham’s aristocratic heritage and place of residence, see the Introduction to both Craig’s and Page’s editions. Metham also begins the guide to palmistry with a similar assertion of his scholarship: “Jon Metham, sympyl scoler of philosophie, [who] tran[s]latyd yt in-to Englysch” (fol. 1r). At the end of the text he again asserts “be the skoler Jon Metham” (fol. 11v). Because Metham records that he was born in Cambridge, perhaps his reference to himself as a “scolere off Cambryg” simply indicates his birthplace rather than suggesting he was attending the university (Page, Amoryus and Cleopes, p. 3). See pp. xi–xii of Hardin Craig’s “Introduction” for a list of the records and libraries through which he looked for information on John Metham; Frederick Furnivall, in Political, Religious, and Love Poems, EETS o.s. 15 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Trübner & Co., 1903), pp. 301–308, notes that no record is found in the Cambridge Registrary (p. 308). Page reports that a John Metham was a “resident of Cambridge in 1418 when he was ‘ill-used’ by the clerics of the university. His relationship to the poet, if any, has yet to be determined” (Amoryus and Cleopes, p.€3). See also Charles H. Cooper, Annals of Cambridge, 5 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1842–1853), vol. I, p. 162. Craig assumes that, while living in Norfolk, Metham “wrote in comparative isolation from books and libraries” (Works of John Metham, p. xi), often recollecting with difficulty his scholarly sources and mangling or confusing the Latin quotations he includes in the scientific treatises. While I doubt that a bad memory is to blame for the unpolished Latin any more than a poorly translated exemplar, his separation from the centers of academe in Cambridge and Oxford could be one cause for his seeming anxiety about his credentials. However, Metham was not operating in complete isolation from books on the frontier of northern England. Metham’s patrons, the Stapletons, were part of a flourishing literary circle, which included the Paston family and Sir John Fastolf. These groups actively sponsored the most prominent fifteenth-century authors in England; their libraries, including selections from Chaucer, Lydgate, translations of Christine de Pizan, and many humanist texts, would certainly have been available to the Stapletons if not to Metham himself. For more on the literary circles in fifteenth-century Norfolk and Suffolk, see Samuel Moore, “Patrons of Letters in Norfolk and Suffolk, c.1450,” PMLA 27 (1912): pp. 188–207.

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romance,14 a large portion of Metham’s discussion of astronomy and natural science is dedicated to the loyal recapitulation and naming of his sources. But what does scientific expertise offer Metham that literary or religious authority does not? Scientific discourse in the Middle Ages signified general scholarly knowledge as much as the seven liberal arts and the three philosophies. It gave an impression of broad-spectrum wisdom and discernment that was not marked in the literary or religious curriculum. Furthermore, scientific knowledge, as Metham presents it, is observable and objective rather than subject to the vicissitudes of personal opinion or belief. Indeed, Metham not only quotes the learned clerks as the sources for his information, he encourages the audience to look up at the heavens for themselves or to carry the medicinal remedies for venomous bites along with them while traveling. The narrative authority afforded to Metham through his intense citationality is transferred to his heroine as well; as I will discuss further below, Cleopes engages in a similar intertextuality to Metham’s when she rehearses the dragon lore for Amoryus’s benefit. The scientific material Metham adds is only partially relevant to his story; in fact, the mere mention of the stars or a serpent incites both Metham and his heroine to interrupt his narrative and offer a lecture on astronomy or natural science. As I mentioned earlier, two main sections of scientific narrative are included in the romance: astronomical or astrological information and dragon lore. Metham refers to the pantheon of pagan gods and the planets throughout the romance, but nowhere is the rehearsal of astronomy more detailed than in the section on the sphere in the temple of Venus (lines 507–625).15 Page notes that “astronomical [and] astrological treatises of classical origin were increasingly common in Christian libraries from the ninth century on, abetted in the twelfth century by Arabic works.”16 Perhaps the Stapletons’ library contained such works, or Metham was commissioned to provide them with a work that incorporated the scientific texts. Metham’s text offers the reader a short but comprehensive crash course in astronomy and astrology. In the midst of his description of the sphere, 14 15

16

Although Metham often plagiarizes lines from Chaucer’s writing, he does not cite Chaucer as a source with the same conscientiousness he affords to his scientific sources. After the temple in the city of Albynest is destroyed in an earthquake (the same one that causes the crack in the stone wall through which Amoryus and Cleopes communicate), it is rebuilt by Palamedon, Amoryus’s father, who intends to provide “for a rememberauns off owre goddys alle a spere [sphere] … / Off pure gold … off the fyrmament [the heavens]” (lines 446–450). The construction is a perfect reproduction of the various courses of the planets, stars, and constellations. In this description, Metham draws on the work of Albohazen Haly (the Latinized name of Alí ibn Abí al Rajjál), an eleventh-century Arab astronomer; Metham most likely knew Haly’s work from Latin translations of his popular The Distinguished Book on Horoscopes from the Constellations. Metham also draws on John Trevisa’s translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s encyclopedic De Proprietatibus Rerum; for example, lines 266–267 and 522–527 of Amoryus and Cleopes. See On the Properties of Things: John Trevisa’s Translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus “De Proprietatibus Rerum,” ed. M. C. Seymour, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975). Page, Amoryus and Cleopes, p. 104.

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The Science of Female Power in John Metham’s Amoryus and Cleopes Metham hints at why he includes an astronomical treatise in a romance. After all, the section offers a related preface to the love story in that Metham, when he describes the sphere, is also describing the location where Amoryus and Cleopes will first meet. Rather than explain outright his reasons for incorporating the material, Metham offers a brief digressive apology to the audience: “But for that this matere ys obscure and to [the] onletteryd nought delectabyl,€/ I pase schortly” (lines 563–564). By excusing, in mock humility, his long rehearsal of astronomy as an “obscure” field of knowledge that would be unappealing to an “onletteryd” or uneducated audience,17 Metham advertises himself as “lettered,” a scholar. After this interruption and Metham’s assurances of brevity, however, the audience must still wade through sixty more lines of dry astronomical narrative. Indeed, he sacrifices a more detailed description of the “goddys” (line 567) themselves, the clothing of whom is “sylver and sabyl, / Asure, gold, goulys [red] and verd” (lines 565–566). Rather, Metham will simply relate the “resydu” and “pray yow of pacyens” (lines 568–569). Omitted is the color and luxuriousness of the astronomical figures, details which would surely make the “obscure matere” more “delectabyl” to an uneducated audience. Metham writes as a “lettered” individual who ostensibly keeps his scientific treatise brief for those who do not share his interests in astronomy, but who separates the “kernel” of the astronomical lesson (in this case, the tedious lists of planets, constellations and zodiacal signs) from the “chaff” of the frivolous depiction of the robes and vestments of pagan gods. By claiming that he will skip over the more technical elements of his astronomical treatise, and then rehearsing them anyway, Metham figures his patrons – who are, after all, the romance’s primary audience – as possessing an erudition and scientific interest somewhere between his own university learning and the meager knowledge of the “onletteryd” masses who would rather read pretty descriptions than scientific fact. Much more significant to this chapter’s discussion of female patronage is the other component of scientific discourse in Metham’s text: the herbal and zoological information which comprises Cleopes’s dragon lore. Rather than represent the knowledge in his own voice, Metham constructs his heroine as the agent of this scientific information. Unlike Metham’s long and largely unprefaced digression into astronomical lecture, however, Cleopes’s scientific monologue can be understood as the culmination of a comprehensive set of interventions in Amoryus’s life. In her discussion of the relationship between Amoryus and his father, Fumo mentions Palamedon’s “concern for his son’s development, which mirrors the relationship between Chaucer’s Knight and Squire in the General Prologue.”18 Indeed there are significant 17

18

Metham is most likely referring to an audience that is unable to read Latin, rather than those who are unable to read at all. Implicit in the concept of “lettered” is the kind of clerical, university education Metham ascribes to himself. Fumo, “John Metham’s ‘Straunge Style’,” p. 228.

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parallels between these two sets of figures – Palamedon’s knightly experience lies in stark contrast to Amoryus’s frivolity and youthful rambunctiousness – but it is not clear that the father in Metham’s romance is truly concerned with and supportive of his son’s chivalric development. The question is, then: Who really teaches Amoryus? Palamedon is doubtless an excellent source of knightly lessons; describing him as a true flower of chivalry, Metham notes that Palamedon’s “prudent poyntys of were [skills of war] wer so dyvulgate [well known] / That is the chauncys of Mars he stode makeles [matchless] laureat” (lines 90–91). Similarly, his son exhibits every bit of this chivalric potential. Not only is he “manful and strong wythalle” (line 96), but “fulle of norture and curtesye; / And be hys wysdam, [he is] abyl an hole reme to gye” (lines 97–98). Metham goes even further in his laudatory description of Amoryus, “of home [whom] this story in especyal / Makyth mencion” (line 94): And in hys governauns so demure and dyscrete was he, That iche creature he coude reverens be norturyd jentylnes Aftyr ther degré, that of pore and ryche yn the cyté.19 The fame of hys manhod and of hys lovlynes Was in ryfe[.]â•… (lines 99–103)

Despite this chivalric promise – which extends beyond physical strength to include the subtle discernment and appropriate treatment of social rank – Metham is keen to remark that Amoryus was “makeles [matchless], / Hys age consydyrryd” (lines 103–105). Still a young man, Amoryus continues to act frivolously with his friends. As Palamedon, Amoryus, and their retinue ride to Albynest for the dedication of the newly constructed temple of Venus, one of Amoryus’s young friends begins a discussion about love and fidelity. After elaborating on the perils of loving before one is certain of being requited, the friend shakes off the serious tone of their discussion and states, “lete yt pase, and syng now sum songe for this sesunne” (line 377). As these “fresch galauntys” (line 409) continue to sing their Maytime song, Palamedon notably “rode forth stylly, / Thynkyng alle but vanyté and foly” (lines 407–408).20 During the tournament, Palamedon reaches a similar conclusion when he sees the strange “kerchyf” Amoryus wears emblazoned with the same textual conceit Cleopes had pointed out to him earlier: “‘Qwat,’ quod he, ‘hath he yondyr? Yt ys sum nyseté.’ / As he come nere – ‘Qwat have ye ther? 19

20

Page provides a helpful explanatory note for this passage: “That he could treat each person with respect according to their rank because of [his] educated nobility” (Amoryus and Cleopes, p. 34, note 1). Craig notes that this song is very similar to one included in the Squire’s Tale, which provides another parallel between Chaucer’s serious Knight and his courtly son (Works of John Metham, p. 160). See also Fumo, “Metham’s ‘Straunge Style’” for more on the parallels between Chaucer and Metham in the depiction of the father–son relationship in these texts.

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The Science of Female Power in John Metham’s Amoryus and Cleopes qwat maner jape or foly?” (lines 871–872). When Amoryus explains that this badge will guarantee him victory, Palamedon dismissively and perhaps skeptically says “God yeve grace … yt be so” (line 877) and rides away. Finally, when Amoryus is faced with the challenge of fighting the dragon, Palamedon emphasizes the dangers inherent in the task, but does not offer his son much encouragement: “dare ye take this thyng? / Be wele avysed, for yt ys no chyldys pleyng / To fyght wyth sqwyche a devyl; for yf yowre wepyn brokyn / Were in fyght, ye were but ded” (lines 1193–1196). Thus, Palamedon does not display so much a concern with his son’s development as with his ability to maintain the seriousness and maturity necessary not only to succeed in but to survive knightly challenges such as jousting and dragon slaying.21 Both of the young lovers in Metham’s romance reflect their fathers’ most notable attributes; while Amoryus demonstrates an undeveloped chivalric potential similar to Palamedon’s, Cleopes mirrors the nurturing capacity of her father, Dydas. As co-ruler of Albynest, Dydas excels at negotiating the domestic and religious needs of the people, whereas Palamedon protects their interests in martial activities. Indeed, Metham describes Dydas as the people’s patron; after a terrible earthquake strikes the region and destroys the temple of Venus,22 “the cyteceynis for fere fled to Dydas palyse – / Bothe prest and seculerys, women and alle – / For socoure and comfort and to here hys avyse” (lines 121–123). In response to their complaints about the loss of both the city’s revenue and its main place of worship, Dydas reassures his people: Frendys, be noght abaschyd for this soden case. I schal a new tempyl reedyfye to owre goddes dere, And yt as rychely aray as the elde tempyl was. And eke as myche tresur as ye lest, more or las, I schal of my fre wyl restore that ye no los schal have.

(lines 135–139)

Channeling the people’s fear and dismay into productive action, Dydas provides a rallying point for the citizens of Albynest after the devastating disaster. The people not only praise their benefactor and patron “on kneys … as thei aucte to do” (lines 141–142), they begin the process of rebuilding the city, beginning with the construction of a “pyler [pillar] to Dydas Juno” (line 144). 21

22

Fumo also discusses these three scenes in her article “Metham’s ‘Straunge Style’” (pp. 228–229), concluding that Palamedon’s reactions to Amoryus’s behavior constitute both an active interest in the young knight’s chivalric progress and “the most substantial obstacle – albeit a symbolic and unintentional one – to the protagonist’s otherwise seemingly unobstructed love” (p. 229). Rather, I read Palamedon’s influence on his son as negligible. This is the same earthquake that opens up the convenient crack in the wall between Amoryus’s and Cleopes’s gardens, allowing the lovers to communicate with one another.

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Like her father, Cleopes stands as a beacon of inspiration to those around her. In addition to her beauty, she was “so benygne to yche creature, / That lusty yong knyghtys gret parte wold make / To breke huge sperys fersly for Cleopes sake” (lines 152–153). Cleopes has the power to channel and instigate acts of chivalric prowess, an ability she readily applies to her relationship with Amoryus. Thus, it is Cleopes and not Palamedon who takes control over Amoryus’s knightly education; after meeting his lover, Amoryus re-dedicates himself to chivalry, setting aside his earlier childish songs and idle banter. The young man’s success in love, jousting, and dragon slaying are based almost entirely on Cleopes’s textual knowledge and ability to communicate her knowledge, desires, and intentions even when she cannot speak to or influence her knight overtly. The active role Cleopes plays in the romance is well illustrated in three scenes: the lovers’ first meeting, Amoryus’s tournament, and their meeting at the wall before the dragon fight. These acts of influence are based almost exclusively on a woman’s broad textual knowledge that becomes a catalyst for male chivalric excellence; Cleopes recognizes the importance of texts as intellectual resources as well as physical objects that can function as a means of communication. At the dedication ritual for the sphere, Amoryus and his coterie of “fresch yonge knytys” (line 732) had been wandering through the temple of Venus when Amoryus’s “eye began sodenly / To be set on one [i.e., Cleopes], abaschyd in maner of that soden chauns” (lines 740–741). After this first glance, Amoryus feigns prayer in order to hide his love and circles the temple while forming a plan to approach Cleopes. His advance is hindered, however, because he is concerned about “the starerrys [those who stare]” (line 762) and his “fere of tungys [gossips]” (line 764).23 When Cleopes notices his attention, she believes initially that he only loves her “in frendly maner” (line 771). Amoryus circles her several more times and she begins to “consyder hys stature” and to “comend … hys semlynes” (lines 782–783) until finally “lovys fyre had percyd here hert” (line 784). Although both Amoryus and Cleopes feel the same for each other, Amoryus only comes close to look at her “in hope that he comfortyd schuld be yf he myght her behold” (line 787). Rather than remaining satisfied merely to gaze longingly at one another, however, Cleopes establishes a way “to make in love an entré” because “womannys wytt ys [ready] yn soden casys of necessyté” (line 796–797). She uses an illumination in her prayer book to convey her feelings, hoping only that “yf he wyse be, my menyng he schal perseyve in more and les” (line 811).24 In this scene, the picture enables the lovers to pursue a relationship 23

24

The parallels between Amoryus’s feelings of sudden love in this scene and the temple scene in Troilus and Criseyde are striking and suggest that Metham knew Chaucer’s text well enough to imitate even the smallest of details in his account of the lovers’ first meeting. See note 2 above. Metham’s use of a textual device at this key point in the narrative is interesting. At the beginning

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The Science of Female Power in John Metham’s Amoryus and Cleopes together rather than to love one another from afar. Indeed, without Cleopes’s use of her book, the narrative could not continue. Metham describes the textual illustration she uses to communicate with Amoryus in detail: “an hynde lying as yt had bene on stonys, / Holdyng an hert that bordyryd was wyth trw lovys, / Beforn qwyche depeyntyd was a knyght knelyng, / Holdyng in one hand an hart, in the odyr [a] ryng” (lines 803–806). While Page describes the subject of the illumination as a conventional medieval love allegory, where the female deer is the object of a knight’s hunt, the traditional dynamic of hunter and hunted is actually altered somewhat in Cleopes’s picture. Here, the hind is reclining rather than fleeing from the hunter and she holds the “hert,” or her male counterpart, already in her grasp. Moreover, it is the hunter who kneels submissively before his prey and presents her with his h(e)art (a simultaneous symbol of his love and his masculinity) as well as a ring, to prove his faithfulness and devotion to the lady. Thus, in this configuration, the female holds the power, reserving the option either to accept or reject the knight’s offer. It is to this picture that Cleopes gestures animatedly, “wyth her fynger demonstracion / Askauns [As if to say], ‘Constrwe now, for my menyng this ys the entencion” (lines 826–827). Cleopes creates a way for the lovers to communicate; it is very specifically through the medium of a text and the specific conceit it depicts (of which she has a thorough knowledge) that their relationship can progress. While it is not uncommon to represent lovers using a book as a go-between to declare their feelings for one another in late medieval literature,25 it is significant that it is Cleopes who proactively solves the problem of their inability to convey their feelings. Cleopes’s knowledge of her devotional text facilitates this communication and sets the tone for their future interactions. Indeed, her textual knowledge, whether devotional or scientific, enables Amoryus to succeed in his chivalric errands. After Cleopes shows him the illustration in the temple, Amoryus adopts the mode of communication she established and deploys it to his chivalric benefit. Amoryus commissions a painter to “steyn wyth colourys in a kerchyf of a qwarter brede [breadth] / The same conseyt that in Cleopes boke he sey”

25

of the romance, Metham pauses in his preface to the romance to describe why he is translating Amoryus and Cleopes: “noqwere in Latyne, ner Englysch, I coude yt aspye; / But in Grwe Y had yt wrytyn lymynyd bryght” (lines 58–59). Rather than simply dismiss a manuscript written in a language he cannot read, Metham asks “letteryd clerkys” (line 62) about the content of the book and takes advantage of a Greek’s arrival in Norwich to procure a Latin translation of the romance. His interest, he explains, is entirely piqued by the “lettyrrys off gold that gay were wrowght to the ye” (line 60). The manuscript’s beautiful illuminations, he continues, “causyd me to meruel that yt so gloryusly / Was adornyd, and offten I enqwyryd … / Qwat yt myght be that poyntyd was wyth so merwulus werkys” (lines 61–63). Metham’s detailed description of his own interest in manuscript illumination is recalled in the specificity he affords the depiction of Cleopes’s picture. The character of Cleopes, like Metham and, hopefully, Amoryus, recognizes the impact and utility of illuminations as much as written text. Page, Amoryus and Cleopes, p. 113.

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(lines 858–859) and wears it openly at the tournament the following day. By replicating her textual sign, Amoryus may respond to Cleopes’s expression of love and dedicate himself to her; in essence, Amoryus adopts Cleopes’s ad hoc heraldic device, becoming her knight and accepting the relationship (which incorporates both love and advice) that she has begun to forge. Not only does the badge serve to contact Cleopes, it proves to be the token that will ensure his success in the tournament, a talisman to protect the young knight from physical harm or social embarrassment. When Palamedon interrogates his son as to “qwat maner jape or foly” (line 872) he is wearing, Amoryus replies, “this nyght for a specyal tokyn of vyctory, / Venus apperyd, schewing this fygure to me, / Byddyng me the symylytude to forme, wyth the qwyche wythowte fayl / I schuld have vyctory in every tornyament and bateyl” (lines 873–876). Amoryus’s explanation to his father, while cagey because of his reluctance to reveal the real reason for the badge, is not entirely untrue. By declaring that Venus motivated him to create the emblem, Amoryus appeals to his father’s piety and gains his approval without denying the fact that Venus, the goddess of love, was the inspiration behind the drawing itself and Cleopes’s choice of the picture as an intermediary for the lovers.26 The miniature Amoryus wears, inspired by Venus and chosen by Cleopes out of the many illustrations in her text, serves the knight well throughout the eight-day tournament. Because he fights only “for hys lady[’s] sake” (line 915), Amoryus is able to unseat over forty challengers and win the “laure of Marcyan vyctory” (line 1004). The subsequent fame and adulation Amoryus enjoys is due as much to Cleopes’s industriousness as to his own physical prowess. The “lady sovereyn” (line 1008) for whose benefit Amoryus fights provides him with more than distant chivalric inspiration; Cleopes’s assurance that his affection for her is requited (in the form of the textual symbol through which she establishes their relationship) fosters a confidence in the knight that enables him to succeed in the tournament and to bolster his reputation. After these initial interventions by the heroine in Amoryus’s chivalric development, Metham arrives at the second prolonged discussion of scientific information in Amoryus and Cleopes: the dragon lore that Cleopes offers her lover. As with the earlier astronomical information, the reader is taken through over one hundred lines of little more than lists of dangerous serpents and the “remedyis of erbys and stonys” (line 1268) for their venom. In Book III, after Amoryus and Cleopes have fallen in love, word comes to Palamedon that a dragon is plaguing a neighboring city. When Amoryus tells Cleopes that he has accepted the challenge to fight the dragon, she immediately asks, “but 26

It is apt that Amoryus credits Venus for his chivalric badge, as it is in the temple of Venus that he first sees Cleopes. During the ceremony, Amoryus uses the procession of the goddess’s statue as an excuse to kneel in mock obeisance and examine the picture Cleopes shows him (lines 818–821).

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The Science of Female Power in John Metham’s Amoryus and Cleopes qwat serpent ys yt? qwat do thei yt calle” (line 1241)? Before Amoryus can reply, however, Cleopes launches into almost ten stanzas of general information on the various venoms of serpents, such as “cokatrycys [basilisks]” (line 1251), the “draconia” (line 1253), and the “jaculus” (line€1259). Cleopes even offers information on other poisonous animals that can counteract serpent venom: the “tode” and the “aramy [spider]” (line 1258). Her practical, though obscure, remedies are helpful to the reader as well as to Amoryus, for those who “fere thise chauncys to endure, / That in desertys must walke, thei purvey wysely [travel prepared]” (lines 1266–1267). For example, if one should meet an “aspys [asp]” (line 1270), which can spit its venom forty feet (line 1279), they should drink “jacyntys and orygaun [hyacinth and wild marjoram]” (line 1284) to counteract it. For sea monsters, such as the “chyldrynys [water adder],” the “ydrys [hydra],” and the “ypotamys [a sea horse with teeth]” (line 1290), victims may be cured by applying the “egestyon of bolys [dung of bulls]” (line 1291). At the conclusion to her long lecture on venomous creatures, Cleopes reaches the dragon that is “in specyal most foo / To alle lyvyng thing” (lines 1292–1293), the serra cornuta. Finally, Amoryus interjects an answer to the question Cleopes posed fifty lines previously: “O! … lady, that same dragun yt ys / That I schuld fyght wyth” (lines 1296–1297). In a move similar to Metham’s interruption during the astronomical information, Cleopes selfconsciously reins in her lecturing and says apologetically, “I schal noght gab at alle, but telle yow the trwthys” (line 1299). At this point, Cleopes’s intervention shifts from purely informational to practical, bestowing on the young knight the “charmys” (line 1300) he will need to defeat the dragon: In the begynnyng, loke that yowre harnes be sure for onything, And abovyn alle curyd wyth rede. And on sted of yowr helme, set a bugyl gapyng;27 A bryght carbunkyl loke ther be set in the forhed. And in yowr hand, halde that ylke ryng Wyth the smaraged [emerald] that I here delyveryd yow this odyr day. Loke that the stone be toward hys eyn alwey.â•… (lines 1310–1316)

Furthermore, Amoryus must drink an elaborate concoction of wine, herbs and ground stones or jewels because “alle venymmus thyng[s] fleyth fro her breth [their aroma]” (line 1329). Thus, we witness in Cleopes’s actions here not just a deployment of helpful knowledge (as it is with the historical background and dream interpretation Cassandra provides in Troilus and Criseyde), but

27

Page suggests that this could refer to heraldic helmet crests which became popular in the late Middle Ages. Also, an ox-like animal is the crest of the Metham family in Yorkshire (Amoryus and Cleopes, p. 120).

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also the “Medea-like”28 giving of functional gifts. Drawing on the extended natural science lecture she has just given, Cleopes distills the encyclopedic information into a few key points that directly apply to the situation at hand. She further acts as Amoryus’s sponsor when she presents him with the necessary tools to succeed in his chivalric endeavor.29 Craig suggests that Cleopes’s knowledge of herbs and medicine “belonged to the education of a young lady in the Middle Ages and it is not surprising that it extended itself to all sorts of magic and sorcery.”30 However, Cleopes’s text-based education, while probably gleaned from English translations of Latin, Greek, and Arabic sources rather than the originals, goes far beyond the practical, quotidian medical skills of the average young medieval woman.31 Her knowledge of dragon taxonomy and the remedies for venomous bites are only practical because she is speaking with a knight who is about to combat a hundred-foot serpent. Cleopes repeatedly refers to her sources as the more obscure encyclopedic texts of “clerkys” (lines 1245 and 1295) rather than the household knowledge of the medicinal benefits of local herbs and minerals passed down from mother to daughter. 28

29

30 31

Fumo, “Metham’s ‘Straunge Style’,” p. 224. Metham, Craig notes, draws considerably from the depiction of Medea in John Lydgate’s Troy Book (Craig, Works of John Metham, pp. 161–162). The women share comparable learning, and Medea offers a similar assurance that Jason will be killed in his endeavors without her help: “For noon but I may helpen … / In þis case.” John Lydgate, Lydgate’s Troy Book, Part I, ed. Henry Bergen, EETS e.s. 97 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1906), lines 2580–2581. Most significantly, however, Cleopes’s gifts almost directly parallel Medea’s. The “riche ymage of siluer” that works against “magyk and al enchauntemente” (lines 2998–3002) is similar to Cleopes’s “bugyl gapyng” (Craig, Works of John Metham, line 1312), and the “oyntement, / To enoynte hym with, þat he be nat brent” (Lydgate, Troy Book, lines 3015–3016) is analogous to the potion Cleopes gives her love to protect him from venomous beasts. Finally, Medea gives Jason an agate ring (assuring him that “who-so-euer in his hond hit holde, / By vertu þat was infallible” [Lydgate, Troy Book, lines 3028–3029]), which closely parallels the emerald ring Cleopes instructs Amoryus to hold in his hand during the battle (Craig, Works of John Metham, line 1314). The giving of enchanted gifts, such as rings and other accoutrements, to knights is a commonplace in medieval romance. See, for example, the Breton lay Emaré, where two separate women give the hero a magical ring and two magical hunting dogs, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, where Lady Bertilak bestows upon Sir Gawain the infamous green girdle that she claims will save his life. The difference between instances such as these and the gift-giving and acts of sponsorship I outline in this chapter is that Cleopes’s offerings are part of a larger program wherein the romance heroine deploys comprehensive knowledge and influence over the knight’s chivalric identity and success. Craig, Works of John Metham, p. 162. Most medieval women did have some sort of training in the art of healing, such as basic first aid, setting broken bones, midwifery, and using herbs to combat illness. Two women in particular, Trotula of Salerno and Hildegard of Bingen, wrote books on medicine about and for women. For more on the role of medieval women in medicine see Monica H. Green’s works: The Trotula: A Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine, ed. and trans. Monica H. Green (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001); “Documenting Medieval Women’s Medical Practice,” in Practical Medicine from Salerno to the Black Death, ed. Luis Garcia-Ballester (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 322–353; and Women’s Healthcare in the Medieval West: Texts and Contexts (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2000). Out of the three Trotula texts, only one – the Trotula Minor – seems to have been actually written by a woman.

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The Science of Female Power in John Metham’s Amoryus and Cleopes By the same token, Cleopes’s expertise does not stray into the realm of sorcery any more than it remains in the domestic sphere. Metham is quite clear about his depiction of sorcery or “nygromancy” (line 471) in the character of Venus’s secretary, the craftsman employed to create the sphere. Rather than the innocuous “erbys and stonys” (line 1268) Cleopes uses, the secretary combines “gold, sylver and precyus stonys” (line 487) with a “multytyde of mennys bonys” (line 489). With this concoction, he conjures the “damnyd spyrytys” (line 491), seven hundred thousand to be exact, that will power the constantly moving sphere, performing an abomination to gain demonic power. Although Cleopes is a pagan throughout much of the romance, there is no indication that her scientific knowledge has its basis in the occult. As Metham does in the astronomical section, Cleopes invokes authorities for her knowledge of dragons and natural remedies. At the beginning of her lecture, she notes that of this particular wisdom “clerkys wryte, of gret and smal, / [Their] namys and naturys, and qwerein they noy [do harm] be kend natural [according to their nature]” (lines 1245–1246). Cleopes returns to these unnamed scholars when she discusses the most harmful dragon: “And serra cornuta yt ys namyd be clerkys” (line 1295).32 Although Cleopes’s intervention is often rife with encyclopedic references to obscure scientific facts, the heroine plays a critical role as the facilitator of Amoryus’s chivalric career when she advises him on the correct way to slay the “serra cornuta.” Amoryus accepts the challenge because, if he succeeds, “of Amoryus men wryte schal / That he a dragon dyd sle be hys manhed in specyal” (lines 1203–1204). While his father merely expresses the skeptical hope that the challenge will not result in the young knight’s death, Cleopes offers a guarantee that Amoryus’s specific desire for renown will be realized. If he follows her directions, she asserts, “I dar sey savely [safely] / That ye schal come hole and sound wyth victory; / And aftyr qwyl ye lyve, be had the more in reputacion. / Thys ys the fulle sentens of my counsel and conclusyon” (lines 1335Â�–1338). After claiming victory over the dragon, Amoryus returns to Albynest, where Cleopes’s predictions prove true: “[the people] must nedys hym magnyfy wyth alle her myght, / And hym excellent 32

While Metham identifies no particular sources for Cleopes’s encyclopedic knowledge, Page claims that Metham must have been familiar with texts such as medieval bestiaries and Trevisa’s translation of De Proprietatibus Rerum, both of which discuss and describe poisonous animals at length. Metham could also have gathered his knowledge of stones and medicinal plants from comprehensive works like Trevisa’s or medieval lapidaries and herbals. For examples of a medieval bestiaries, see Bestiary: Being an English Version of … MS Bodley 764, with all the Original Miniatures Reproduced in Facsimile, ed. Richard Barber (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell, 1993); A Medieval Bestiary, ed. and trans. T. J. Elliott (Boston, MA: Godine, 1971); and The Mark of the Beast: The Medieval Bestiary in Art, Life, and Literature, ed. Debra Hassig (New York: Garland, 1999). For medieval lapidaries and herbals, see English Medieval Lapidaries, ed. Joan Evans and Mary S. Sergeantson, EETS 190 (London: Oxford University Press, 1960); “Here men may se the vertues off herbes”: A Middle English Herbal (MS. Bodley 483, ff.57r–67v), ed. Pol Grymonprez (Brussels: Scripta, 1981); and A Medieval Herbal, ed. Pol Grymonprez (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1994).

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weryour and most hardy knyght / Ever to name qwyl that her lyvys wold endure, / To love hym beforn yche erthly creature” (lines 1539–1542). Thus, it is not only by his manhood but also by Cleopes’s expertise that Amoryus triumphs over the dragon. Indeed, she warns him “but ye be reulyd be me, / Thow ye were as myghty as Sampson, ded ye schuld be” (lines 1301–1302). Ultimately, Amoryus’s hopes for a distinctly masculine achievement and renown are somewhat compromised. When his story is written by Metham, the headnote to the romance in the Garrett manuscript gives credit where it is due: “Thys ys the story of a knyght, howe he dyd many wurthy dedys be the help of a lady, the qwyche taught hym to overcome a mervulus dragon” (Headnote, lines 1–2). Both Amoryus and the audience of Metham’s romance witness the extent to which chivalric success depends upon the timely and thorough intervention of a female agent and lover.33 Thus, the scientific material in Amoryus and Cleopes provides more for Metham’s narrative than a tinge of the exotic or erudite. The long treatises on astronomy and natural science, only loosely tied to the romance narrative, afford authorial credibility to both Metham and his heroine, allow Cleopes the opportunity to bring about genuine change in the life of her young knight, and function as a kind of reference book, a steady scientific background on which the religious conversion will take place. Whatever Amoryus and Cleopes may lack in technical finesse, it makes up for in its wholly original Christian ending to a classical narrative: the story of Pyramus and Thisbe. This new ending emphasizes both religious conversion and the mitigation of paganism, and is arguably the best example of Metham’s considerable literary ambition in the romance. Throughout the Middle Ages, the tale served as an Ovidian archetype of ill-fated love.34 Metham appropriates the majority of the Ovidian version for Amoryus and Cleopes – including the lovers’ communication through a fortuitous crack in the wall and the double suicide at the well – but ends his romance with the lovers’ resurrection and conversion rather than their deaths. Despite the inspiration Metham draws from his classical source, Book IV of Amoryus and Cleopes is wholly original, supplying a Christian ending to the tragic conclusion of Ovid’s Pyramus and Thisbe tale. Ultimately, this new ending confirms that the scientific material which is so important to Metham’s text and Cleopes’s mode of influence remains compatible with 33

34

In a testament to the importance this increased knightly status holds for Amoryus, when the young man commits suicide toward the end of the romance, he enumerates the loss of each part of the chivalric lifestyle Cleopes helped him attain, seeming to mourn the individual trappings of knighthood – “auenturys new,” “myry cumpany,” “fame and vyctory” (lines 1711–1713) – more than his lover. Ovid’s story of Pyramus and Thisbe was one of the most widely disseminated works from the Metamorphoses after becoming a popular subject of Latin rhetorical exercises in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. See Robert Glendinning, “Pyramus and Thisbe in the Medieval Classroom,” Speculum 61.1 (1986): pp. 51–78 (p. 54). See also Stephen Page, “Intertextuality,” p. 207. The most popular was the fourteenth-century French allegorical interpretation, the Ovide Moralisé.

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The Science of Female Power in John Metham’s Amoryus and Cleopes Christianity. It also introduces a new aspect to Cleopes’s participation in the romance; she not only sponsors Amoryus intellectually and tangibly, she also learns alongside her new love. They learn about Christianity simultaneously rather than maintain a relationship where the woman teaches and directs the development of a young man. This collaborative learning, however, does not overshadow or replace the influence Cleopes has in Amoryus’s life; rather, it mirrors the kind of equal and joint literary sponsorship of Katherine and Miles Stapleton, the actual patrons of Metham’s romance. As the lovers commit suicide because of a mistaken reading of the bloody handkerchief, a Christian hermit living nearby hears Cleopes’s death cries. When the hermit continues praying, he has a divine revelation that he “was ment for the soulys savacion” (line 1826) of the people of the region. Upon seeing the dead lovers, the hermit prays to both Jesus and Mary that they “wold / Hem turne to lyfe yf thei krynsnyd wold be” (lines 1837–1838). As he prays, the hermit lifts the lifeless bodies and declares, “yowre soulys into yowr bodyis / Entyr may ayen, fro the powere of the fend” (lines 1864– 1865). Amoryus and Cleopes return to life singing, “Salve … regina mater misericordye” (line 1876), a famous medieval antiphon, for it was Mary who saved their souls from hell. They beg the hermit: “Make us Krystyn and teche us the wey ryght” (line 1892). Following their baptism, the hermit leads Amoryus and Cleopes back to Albynest and finds the people praying to the pagan sphere for the children’s safe return. The hermit chastises the people for their idol worship and performs an exorcism on the temple, banishing the demons that were locked in the sphere. The people of Albynest witness the exorcism and, seeing the lovers’ scars, which are “the tokynnys of ther woundys” (line 1969), they cry “Anone us krystyn make, wythowte delay, everychone” (line 2029). Before returning to his life in the wilderness, the hermit marries Amoryus and Cleopes in a Christian ceremony and establishes priests to remain in Albynest and teach the people the tenets of their new religion.35 Throughout the majority of the romance, the scientific information is introduced in conjunction with pagan ritual (with the temple sphere) or the chivalric acts, such as jousting and dragon slaying, that Cleopes’s influence abets. Whereas the conversion narrative severs the connection between paganism and science (by condemning one and leaving the other intact) it does not 35

Although the bulk of the Christian material added to the Pyramus and Thisbe legend is confined to the final book of Amoryus and Cleopes, Metham integrates the new narrative into the rest of the romance through an undercurrent of asides and personal commentary on the paganism in Albynest. Page suggests that Metham is not guilty of an “endless amplification or condemnation of the pagans” (“Intertextuality,” p. 203), but Metham refers to their religious beliefs constantly in either a matter-of-fact tone or an understated sadness at their misguided faith. See also Fumo, “Metham’s ‘Straunge Style’,” p. 217. Indeed, Metham’s discussion of the paganism in Amoryus and Cleopes seeks to engender a feeling of pity in the audience, or at least to neutralize any feelings of condemnation the Christian readers might have toward the Albynestian pagans.

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necessarily eradicate science altogether. Instead, Metham links science with Christianity, suggesting that the two categories can profitably co-exist. Thus, the focus of the heroine’s sponsorship remains an important part of Amoryus’s new identity as a fully matured Christian knight. Book IV of the romance illustrates Metham’s “conversion” of science from the pagan to the Christian realm. Although the doctrine of Christianity officially supplants paganism, it does not undermine the validity of secular activities or the scientific information Metham has so conscientiously provided for his audience throughout the text. Both aspects of secularity in Amoryus and Cleopes are ultimately represented as part of a good Christian life. The hermit’s instruction of the two lovers just after their resurrection notably connects their previous religion with worldliness rather than the more egregious worship of false gods. Before the hermit agrees to baptize Amoryus and Cleopes, they must vow “to forsake alle the custum and governauns / Of paynymys secte” (lines 1902–1903). Rather than imposing the Christian prohibition against idol worship – the first of the Ten Commandments and one of the primary elements of doctrinal instruction in the Middle Ages – the hermit begins an indictment of the transitory nature of the world.36 During his lesson, the hermit reminds the lovers that “this world faryth as a feyre [fire], ever onstabyl” (line 1906) and if they “sofyr [i.e., endure] … thise transytory thingys” (line 1909), they will reap the “joys incomperabyl” (line 1908) of Heaven. “For Cryst seyth,” the hermit continues, “that ful streyt [difficult] yt ys / A wordely wyse man to entyr hevyn blysse” (lines 1910–1911). Rather than insisting that Amoryus and Cleopes ask for forgiveness and perform penance for their suicides and idol worship, the hermit merely encourages them to turn their attention away from the impermanent world they now occupy and to concentrate instead on the everlasting world after death. Too much of their attention, he suggests, Â� available to Christians has been turned toward worldly pursuits like tournaments, building temples and slaying dragons.37 These activities, conducted in large part to increase Amoryus’s personal fame, seem to be the elements of pagan worldliness which must give way to Christianity. Their most extreme trespass, the one Metham counters explicitly with the hermit’s teachings, is their total focus on the transitory world and personal advancement rather than the eternal one. For the rest of the doctrinal information essential for newly converted Â�Christians, Metham simply notes in passing that “of alle odyr thingys necessary, / Thys ermyght enformyd them fully in the feyth” (lines 1912–1913). In this episode, the hermit appears to condemn all worldly activities as incom36

37

For an example of how the Commandments were used to teach the laity in the Middle Ages, see The Lay Folks’ Catechism, ed. Thomas Frederick Simmons and Henry Edward Nolloth, EETS o.s. 118 (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co., 1901). Shortly after the lovers’ conversion, the reader will also witness the wholesale conversion of paganism in Albynest during the hermit’s exorcism of the temple.

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The Science of Female Power in John Metham’s Amoryus and Cleopes patible with Christianity. Soon after the hermit’s lesson, however, Metham demonstrates that chivalric activities and worldly love – the very things Cleopes’s influence cultivates – are acceptable as long as they are part of a Christian culture. In the final book of Amoryus and Cleopes, the misguided classical paganism the audience has pitied throughout the romance is demonized briefly and then eradicated and supplanted by Christianity. Once he has resurrected and converted Amoryus and Cleopes, the hermit does not expect that a love of a Christian God will supplant their love for one another. Rather, he expresses regret that two “so semly [attractive] personys” should have committed suicide (line 1920) and inquires, “is [your] love … as gret now as yt was before” (line 1924)? Amoryus claims that his feelings for Cleopes have never been greater and Cleopes answers that she is “wyth hert, wyll, and body, / Goddys and this knytys” (lines 1930–1931; emphasis mine). Although they have been converted to Christianity, they still share an earthly but virtuous affection for one another. Prior to their deaths, the two lovers intended to spend the day in “lovely dalyauns … / Of that sqweete and plesaunt observauns” (lines 1572–1574); their clandestine meeting is planned while they are fueled by the “flame of veneryan dysyre” (line 1549). Indeed, the sinful tryst is stopped just short of completion; Cleopes spills the “roseat blod of [her] pure maydynhede” (line 1764) when she stabs herself rather than when she consummates her relationship with Amoryus as she had intended. After their religious conversion, however, Cleopes still dedicates her soul and body to both Amoryus and Christ. In his Christian conclusion to the lovers’ tribulations, Metham endeavors to reconcile caritas, or a love that transcends the secular world, with cupiditas, or passion.38 Earthly love is not entirely supplanted by religious love; it is only placed within and legitimized by the structure of Â�Christianity. Thus, the pagan passion they almost indulged in the woods becomes a pious marriage sanctioned by God. While the hermit strictly chastises the people of Albynest for their worship of demons, even ordaining “prestys and clerkys” (line 2074) to continue the Christian teachings after he is gone, the lessons he offered to the lovers – to avoid concentrating on earthly things – seem much more negotiable. Metham reports that Amoryus and Cleopes share a life of “long felycyté” (line 2087), in which Amoryus rules Albynest with “ever encresyd in goode fame” (line 2080). Amoryus receives the personal renown he craved before his conversion, not only through the acts of jousting and dragon slaying – acts that were facilitated through his lover’s influence – but by governing his country “in joy, honour, and tranqwyllyté” (line 2081). The couple also have many “beuteus” children who “rychely / were beset” (line 2085–2086). When 38

Dalrymple, “John Metham’s Metamorphosis,” p. 155.

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their long lives are complete, Amoryus and Cleopes simultaneously “yeld … ther spyrytys to God” (line 2088) and are buried “in a tumbe of marbyl gray, / Platyd wyth ymagys of gold” (lines 2089–2090). They are entombed with as much wealth and luxury as they enjoyed during their lives. Even if the hermit’s lifestyle – living alone in the woods, “expendyng in prayere solytary” (line 2077) – is offered as a way to “eternal felycyté” (line 2079), Metham illustrates how good Christians may reap the benefits of both the worlds. Indeed, Metham’s story never suggests that the hermit, a solitary, chaste, religious recluse, lives the better Christian life. Rather, the conclusion to the romance suggests that a Christian can enjoy both earthly pleasures and eternal ones. Thus, Metham signals to his readers that natural science, chivalric pursuits, and Christianity are not mutually exclusive, but are equally important to the lives of his patrons. Amoryus and Cleopes is quite unique among the romances discussed in this book in that both the romance and the manuscript in which it appears have an unquestionable identification of the author’s patrons: Lady Katherine and Sir Miles Stapleton. In order to understand the extent to which the Stapletons’ patronage and their specific literary interests influenced Metham’s work, I will begin with a discussion of the various other works (both extant and not) Metham wrote for his sponsors. With almost each text, Metham sings their praises and reinforces the notion that the scientific material in Amoryus and Cleopes – the core of the knowledge base Cleopes deploys – is a valued and appropriate part of the romance narrative, rather than an awkward digression from it. Amoryus and Cleopes is copied with a variety of other scientific texts in MS Garrett 141, including several practical scientific pieces, primarily translations of Latin texts.39 The treatise on palmistry is the first text in the manuscript, for which Metham’s most immediate source is the Summa Chiromantiae. In the introduction to the work, Metham places himself fourth in the list of esteemed scholars who translated the treatise; there is “Thales Mylesyes” who first wrote the work in the “the langage of Parce,”40 to Aristotle, who translated it into Greek, a “doctor Aurelyn,” who translated it into Latin, and finally “Jon Metham, sympyl scoler of philosophye,” who translated the piece into English as a young man in the “xxvti wyntyr off hys age” (fol. 1r). While Metham modestly refers to himself as a “sympyl scoler,” he places himself in very respected company; anyone reading the text would see the treatise as only three steps removed from its original. The responsibility, therefore, falls to Metham to translate it from its ancient languages and make the treatise available to an English-reading audi39 40

All references to the texts other than Amoryus and Cleopes contained in the Garrett manuscript are cited by folio number, as Craig has published the works without continuous line numbers. Refers to Thales of Miletus in Asia Minor (c. 624–548 AD), who was a philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer. He is credited with developing the scientific method and is a possible source for Aristotle. See The First Philosophers of Greece, ed. Arthur Fairbanks (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1898). The “langage of Parce” is Persian (MED, “Perse”).

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The Science of Female Power in John Metham’s Amoryus and Cleopes ence. The treatise, which takes the reader step by step through an interpretation of the hand’s topography, includes readings for both men and women, lay and religious. The work is geared toward as wide an audience as possible, so that readers with both worldly and religious concerns can take advantage of the guidance it contains. A treatise on physiognomy appears after Amoryus and Cleopes in the Garrett manuscript. The sources for the piece are the treatise attributed to three authors, Loxus, Polemon, and Aristotle and the chapter on physiognomy in the Secreta Secretorum, a tenth- or eleventh-century pseudo-Aristotelian work of Arabic origin.41 However, Metham himself claims that he takes his work directly from a treatise written by “the excellent philysophyr Arystotyl for Kyng Alysaunder” (fol. 59r). As with Metham’s rehearsal of astronomical information and dragon lore in Amoryus and Cleopes and his outline of the scholarly chain of translation in his palmistry treatise, the citation of legitimate learned sources is an important characteristic, bolstering his scientific and literary authority. Two copies of the Esdras prognostications also appear in the Garrett manuscript; verse and prose versions of these predictions, beginning either on Christmas Day or New Year’s Day, were very popular throughout the High and late Middle Ages. The earliest versions are in Greek, but these were quickly translated into Latin, French, and Old and Middle English. The prophecies included in the Garrett manuscript are attributed to the Old Testament prophet Esdras (or Ezra as he was known in Hebrew).42 Whereas the Esdras prophecies in the biblical apocrypha concern the Apocalypse, those found in the Garrett manuscript deal primarily with the weather and a few agricultural details. However, in the midst of such quotidian predictions as “the somyr schuld [be] pesybyl and drye” there are also prophecies of more dire things to come: “Iff Crystemes day falle up-on the Tusday, many women schuld dey” (fol. 78r). In the Middle Ages, the Esdras prognostications were widely believed to have been authored by a religious prophet who also predicted signs of the apocalypse. Metham, however, does not mention Esdras as his source, but claims, “I rede in olde storiys this matere folwyng … off experte men” (fol.€78r).43 At the end of the prognostications, he writes that they are “conclusyonnys labouryd and drawyn be calculacion” (fol. 78v). Thus, these predictions are 41 42

43

Craig, Works of John Metham, p. xxx. There are two Old Testament books written by Esdras, the second is referred to as the Book of Nehemiah in the Latin Vulgate. The third and fourth books of Esdras are usually included as appendices in the Latin Bible; although they are not technically part of the sacred Scriptures, they are taken almost entirely from canonical sources. The fourth apocryphal book of Esdras was widely known in the Middle Ages and was often quoted by the Church fathers. The prophecies included in Esdras’s fourth book deal primarily with signs of the end of the world and helped to form medieval conceptions about the Apocalypse. Craig identifies this collection of predictions as a version of the Esdras prognostications; Metham himself does not mention the prophet at all.

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not overtly based on inspiration from God, as Esdras’s prophecies were,44 they are reached through scientific calculation. Given that Metham adamantly cites all his scholarly sources for the other texts in the Garrett manuscript with the general term “clerkys” if not by name, the absence of a source for these prognostications is striking. Metham replaces the Old Testament prophet with his “experte men” and, in effect, makes the predictions quotidian, erasing any hint of a divine rather than scientific source.45 Thus, the prognostications Metham includes in the Stapletons’ manuscript undergo a similar downplaying of the Christian resonance as Amoryus and Cleopes does. Although readers like the Stapletons would likely be familiar with the popular religious source for the Esdras predictions, Metham is careful to emphasize the scientific aspects of the text. In addition to the texts extant in the Garrett manuscript, the concluding envoy of Amoryus and Cleopes mentions other works he wrote for the Â�Stapletons which have now been lost. These texts further corroborate the Stapletons’ interest in a variety of scientific and adventurous romance Â�material. More significantly, each piece Metham mentions seems to say something about the tastes and greatness of Miles and Katherine. During his praise of Sir Miles, for example, Metham recommends to his audience texts “qwere I alle hys [Miles’s] notabyl dedys bryng to remembrauns, / Done wurthyly of hym in Englond and Frauns” (lines 2141–2142). For those readers who are interested in hearing more about Miles, Metham suggests that they seek the information in “kyng Cassyon” (line 2139) or “in the begynnyng of Alexander Macedo, / Or in Josue, or Josephus” (lines 2144–2145). By claiming that he will, in the present piece, “spare yow” (line 2147) from hearing more about “Mylys Stapylton and hys lady bothe” (line 2146), Metham engages in a kind of cross-referenced self-promotion; he not only spreads the praise of his patrons exponentially, but advertises his other works to cultivate a larger readership. Unfortunately, the texts to which Metham refers are now lost and so their contents cannot be specified in detail. Craig and Page, however, offer a good indication of the sources and subject matter of these lost books in their editions of Amoryus and Cleopes and Metham’s other works. The first work Metham lists, Kyng Cassyon, is a story in which Metham records the capture of “Corbellyon.” This text could relate the story of the city of Corbeil (in Latin, Corbolium), a city in northern France taken by King Louis VI (1081– 44 45

Esdras’s apocalyptic predictions were revealed to him by the Angel of the Lord. The secularizing of religious predictions is an interesting reverse from the prediction made by Venus’s secretary in Amoryus and Cleopes. The secretary wishes to know how long his pagan sphere will endure. After praying to Venus all night, he has a vision where the goddess appears to him and reports, “sone to us / Is schape an vttyr exile; for here qwere we were wunt to abyde,€/ A crucyffyid man schal take possessyon and vs put asyde” (lines 665–667). Thus, the pagan gods predict their own imminent downfall at the hands of the “crucyffyid man,” or Christ, and the Christian religion that the hermit brings to the pagans of Albynest.

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The Science of Female Power in John Metham’s Amoryus and Cleopes 1137) from the rebel Hugo of Puiset.46 It is also possible that Metham’s work “dealt with actual campaigns of Sir Miles Stapleton in the Isle de France,”47 or that he uses the martial exploits of Louis VI as a vehicle for praising the military achievements of his patron.48 Corbeil was occupied by English forces during the Hundred Years’ War, and Miles may have served there. The next series of texts Metham lists seems to continue a similar tendency of praising Miles in works that relate the exploits of great and adventurous men. Alexander Macedo refers to Alexander the Great of Macedon, and could be an Alexander romance.49 Amoryus and Cleopes is heavily influenced by medieval Alexander romances, which were among the most popular and widely spread literature in the late Middle Ages.50 Josue, one the other hand, is most likely based on the life of Joshua, Moses’s successor, who led the IsraelÂ� ites into the Promised Land.51 While the precise contents of Metham’s work Josephus are more difficult to establish, Page suggests that it could “refer to any number of medieval romances or histories, including the story of Joseph of Arimathea,”52 who is credited with founding the first English Church at Glastonbury and with bringing the Holy Grail to England.53 Judging from the brief inventory he provides in Amoryus and Cleopes, Metham chose to praise Miles Stapleton in several different genres and in texts stemming from both classical and Christian sources. References to these works by Metham perpetuate Miles’s reputation and advertise his facility with many different kinds of literature. The last of Metham’s lost works is titled simply Crysaunt, to which Metham refers readers interested in hearing more praise of Katherine Stapleton. Page speculates that this text is a translation of De Omnibus Agriculturae Partibus et Plantarium, an encyclopedia of farming and animal husbandry written by Petrus de Crescentiis (1233–c. 1320).54 He writes that “although such a work 46 47 48 49 50

51 52 53

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Craig, Works of John Metham, p. 163. Craig, Works of John Metham, p. 163. Metham also does this with the character of Amoryus and Miles; Amoryus’s deeds provide a segue into praising Miles’s qualities and accomplishments. Page, Amoryus and Cleopes, p. 131. Chaucer mentions “Alixandre Macedo” in the House of Fame (Riverside Chaucer, line 915). For more on this romance tradition in the Middle Ages, see The Medieval Alexander, ed. George Cary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967) and The Romance of Alexander, trans. Dennis M. Kratz (New York: Garland, 1991). See Exodus 17:9, Numbers 27:18–23, and Joshua 1–24. The title could also refer to a translation of the Old Testament Book of Joshua. Amoryus and Cleopes, p. 131. See R. F. Treharne, The Glastonbury Legends: Joseph of Arimathea, the Holy Grail and King Arthur (London: Oresset Press, 1967); Joseph of Arimathie, ed. Walter W. Skeat (New York: Greenwood Press, 1969); and Joseph of Arimathea: A Critical Edition, ed. David Lawton (New York: Garland Publishers, 1983). His works include the History of the Jewish War, Antiquities of the Jews and Against Apion, all written in Greek. See Josephus: Works in English and Greek, eds. H. Thackeray, R. Marcus, and L. H. Feldman, 10 vols. (New York: Putnam, 1926). See Ruralia Commoda, ed. Will Richter and Reinhilt Richter-Bergmeier (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 1995).

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would have been useful for a large landowner like Stapleton, it is unlike the other narratives that Metham claims to have written.”55 Page does not elaborate on his assessment of Crysaunt, but if it is indeed a translation of de Crescentiis’ text, its uniqueness in the body of Metham’s work probably derives from its practicality, its departure from the scientific treatises and prognostications or the classically inspired romances that comprise the rest of Metham’s corpus. However, I would suggest that the practicality of a treatise on farming and livestock indeed dovetails with the other texts Metham wrote for the Stapletons. The scientific pieces, such as the treatise on physiognomy, and the sets of predictions (both for the year and for each day of the lunar cycle) provide practical, routine information to the reader. These works, on the whole, do not provide larger conclusions about the future of mankind; rather, they establish the best times to engage in everyday tasks, such as plowing the fields, or give instructions on assessing the peculiarities of the local Norfolk laugh. Furthermore, the kind of practical scientific discourse represented in a farming treatise is similar to those scientific discourses Cleopes marshals in her teaching of Amoryus; thus, praising Katherine’s practicality and knowledge with Crysaunt easily recalls the praiseworthy practicality and knowledge of Cleopes. When we consider the pieces in Metham’s surviving literary corpus (a romance, scientific manuals, and prognostications) and the probable source material and subject matter of the pieces now lost (historical romances, religious histories, and a farming encyclopedia), we see that the rest of the Stapletons’ library reflects the various material represented in Amoryus and Cleopes.56 Since almost all Metham’s works, both extant and lost, are dedicated to the Stapletons, we can assume that he spent a significant portion of his literary career under their patronage in Norfolk.57 Although Metham’s praise of each of his patrons is equally fulsome in Amoryus and Cleopes, the characteristics he emphasizes in each and the specificity with which he enumerates them varies significantly. Most critical treatments of Amoryus and Cleopes, 55 56

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Page, Amoryus and Cleopes, p. 132. The Stapletons also owned two other extant manuscripts. The first is Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 758, a copy of the Vita Christi written by Michael de Massa; the Vita Christi is described by Page as a “biblical harmony of the Gospels” (Amoryus and Cleopes, p. 22). The second book is a version of The Privyté of Privyteis by the unknown translator, Johannes de Caritates (p. 21). The Privyté takes the form of a series of letters between Alexander the Great and Aristotle; it is a “mirror for princes” or a “handbook for governing and self-governance,” but also containing medical information, a physiognomy, and an alchemical treatise (p. 21). For an edition of the Privyté, see Secretum Secretorum: Nine English Versions, ed. M. A. Manzalaoui, EETS 276 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. 114–202. In addition to the glowing praise of the couple in Amoryus and Cleopes, the Garrett manuscript boasts two examples of the Stapleton–de la Pole coats of arms, one at the beginning of the romance (fol. 17r) and one on the first folio of the manuscript, which opens the treatise on palmistry. The arms are Stapleton impaling de la Pole: Stapleton, or, a lion rampant sable; de la Pole, azure, on a fess between three leopards’ faces, or, a mullet sable (Craig, Works of John Metham, p. viii).

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The Science of Female Power in John Metham’s Amoryus and Cleopes including Craig’s and Page’s editions, consider Miles’s and Katherine’s patronage together. Indeed, both patrons are mentioned in the encomium section of the romance and Metham’s “Go now, lytyl boke” envoy asks the text to “Enterly me comende to my lord and mastyr eke, / And to hys ryght reverend lady” (lines 2179–2180). As I discuss above, Amoryus’s and Cleopes’s simultaneous introduction to the tenets of Christianity corroborates the notion that women patrons may act and grow collaboratively while still maintaining their individual influence. Despite the joint praise of the couple, Metham’s praise of Sir Miles remains somewhat vague. Metham begins his tribute by “mervelyng gretly that noght nowe, as in eldtyme, / Men do noght wryte knyghtys dedys nowdyr in prose ner ryme” (lines 2106–2107). He ascribes the dearth of knightly tales either to the “encresyng of vexacion” (line 2108) in late medieval politics or to a lack of talent in medieval authors. Apparently, however, one modern English knight living in “este Ynglond” (line 2118) springs to Metham’s mind. Like Amoryus, who lived his life as a “flowre of knyghthod” and as a “defensor of the cuntré, [and] keper of pes contynwalle” (lines 2094–2096), Miles Stapleton lives a life of “gret prosperyté” (line 2117) with a “prudent porte of governans” (line 2118) and success in “Marcys chauns [battle]” (line 2119). Amoryus’s father, Palamedon, is described in the romance as the most devout and powerful Roman warrior and a close confidante of emperor Nero; his mother was a descendent of Darius, who was the former Persian emperor. Similarly, Miles is “nobyl of lynage / The qwyche decendyth of a gretyd aunsetré / Of nobyl werrourrys that successyvely, be veray [true] maryage,€/ The t[w]o and fyfty knyght ys computate to hys age” (lines 2123–2126).58 Metham does not elaborate further on Miles’s “gret aunsetré,” choosing instead to refer the audience to his other works and insisting that “of hys [Stapleton’s] dedys” he still has “many to wryte; / I purpose in odyr placys in specyall them endyghte” (lines 2148–2149).59 Although both she and her husband were Metham’s patrons, his praise of Katherine in Amoryus and Cleopes shows much more detail and specificity in honoring her admirable qualities. Throughout the several stanzas dedicated to praising Miles, Metham refers to him primarily as a modern-day “knyght” and a “wurthy werryur” (line 2134). Only after advertising his other texts does Metham give a name to his “champyon” (line 2137). When he turns to Katherine, however, she is named immediately and all his comments are geared to cultivate and cement her patronage. Metham begins his encomium to the Lady Katherine as he does her husband’s, with a reference to her 58 59

In other words, Miles Stapleton is the fifty-second in direct descent. This statement not only confirms the Stapletons’ past patronage of Metham but assumes their future sponsorship of his work. Page speculates that Metham was probably regularly compensated by the Stapletons either in the capacity of a “sometime-poet living in Norwich, or perhaps, more likely, [as] a member of the Stapleton retinue, perhaps the family secretary” (Amoryus and Cleopes, p. 5).

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lineage. Whereas Miles’s “gretyd aunsetré” (line 2124) is not named or traced specifically, Katherine has “decens be ryght lynage / Of wurthy and excellent stok lyneally / That Poolys men clepe” (line 2151–2153). Her legitimate family pedigree is as important as Miles’s; after all, the Stapleton family maintained their position only by “veray maryage” (line 2125). Metham goes a step further in detailing Katherine’s lineage by naming one of her powerfully connected relatives: her cousin, William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk (1396–1450).60 The Duke of Suffolk was a patron of John Lydgate, one of Metham’s greatest influences,61 and it is not by chance that Metham pauses to remark on a specific relative of Katherine’s who is, in particular, a wellknown literary patron. Perhaps by referring to Suffolk Metham is reminding Katherine that she comes from a family that supports literature; perhaps he is even attempting to secure the patronage of the de la Poles as well as the Stapletons. Whether the ultimate goal is to reaffirm Katherine’s support or to procure the sponsorship of her family, Metham’s concentration on Katherine in the final section of Amoryus and Cleopes indicates that he considers her key to his success. When Metham indicates how he would like his book to be passed down to future readers, the Lady Katherine is implicated in his wishes for the romance. For those readers, he writes, “the qwyche be nowe onborne,” who “qwan this lady ys pasyd, schal rede this story, / … thei for her schal pray on evyn and morne” (lines 2157–2159). Not only will Amoryus and Cleopes continue to be read after his patron’s death, the story will place the future reader in immediate remembrance of Katherine. Even strangers who were not acquainted with the lady during her life will know enough about Katherine’s character from the romance to pray for her after she is gone. This suggestion provides Katherine with an excellent reason to continue Metham’s patronage; the more biographical encomia he writes for her, the more prayers she will receive. Although the patronage relationship between Katherine and Metham likely includes some aspect of financial compensation, the currency referred to in this passage goes beyond the monetary, outlining instead a connection predicated on esteem and poetic inspiration. Thus Katherine’s comprehensive acts of intellectual and financial patronage during her lifetime extend well beyond her death, transcending any initial economic investment she or her family have made in Metham’s work.

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William de la Pole became one of the most powerful men in England in the mid-fifteenth century. He engineered the marriage of Henry VI to Margaret of Anjou in 1445; in 1430, he married Alice Chaucer (c.1404–1475), the granddaughter of Geoffrey Chaucer. Because Metham does not mention Duke William’s beheading in 1450, Amoryus and Cleopes was likely written before then. See The Complete Peerage, ed. George E. Cokayne, volume 12: pt. 1 (London: The St. Catherine Press, 1910–1959), pp. 443–448. At the end of Amoryus and Cleopes, Metham comments on Lydgate’s “halff chongyd Latyne” and “craffty imagynacionys off thingys fantastyk” (lines 2195–2196).

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The Science of Female Power in John Metham’s Amoryus and Cleopes In addition to securing prayers for Katherine’s soul, Metham grants her a certain amount of immortality in his dedication, which he calls “this memory” (line 2160).62 His memorialization of Katherine reads like a blazon of womanly perfection: sche was namyd communly Modyr of norture, in her behavyng usyng alle gentylnes, Ever redy to help them that were in troubyl and hevynes. So beuteus eke and so benyngn, that yche creature Here [Her] gretly magnyfyid, commendyng her womanhede In alle her behavyngs, ireprehensybyl and demure And … sche toke gret heede To the necessyteys of the pore, relevyng them at every nede. (lines 2161–2168)

Metham’s extended praise of Katherine encompasses not only the standard womanly characteristics of beauty, virtue, and gentleness, but also her more specific role as a common nurturer of all those she knew, her ability to help others in “hevynes” (line 2163),63 and her generosity toward the poor. As with his depiction of her husband, Metham refers the audience to one of his other works for more about Katherine: “Of her beute and vertuys, here I sese; for yt ys so, / I hem declare in Crysaunt, and odyr placys mo” (lines 2169– 2170). Having ceased in his direct praise of Katherine’s attributes, however, Metham continues indirectly by comparing her to well-known literary figures. He regrets that he lacks the talent to represent his patron’s qualities faithfully, wishing that he possessed “as gret a style … / As Chauncerys” (lines 2172–2173). Metham lists the exemplary female characters about which Chaucer writes: “qwene Eleyne or Cresseyd,” and “Polyxchene, Grysyld, or Penelopé” (lines 2173–2174).64 The Lady Katherine, Metham claims, is “as beuteus, as womanly, [and] as pacyent as thei were wunt to be” (line 2175). 62

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Metham’s overt references to memorializing Katherine and to remembering her after death leads to some speculation about the state of Katherine’s health during the romance’s composition. Metham claims that “thys lady was, qwan I endytyd this story, / Floryschyng the seuyn and twenty .xxvij. yere off the sext kyng Henry” (lines 2176–2177). While this statement establishes the date of the poem’s composition, it also suggests that she was alive during the composition, but not afterward. However, Katherine did not die until 13–14 October 1488 having remarried after Miles Stapleton’s death in 1466. This particular description recalls Metham’s desire for Amoryus and Cleopes to comfort those who “falle in hevynes” (line 2210) on holy days. “Qwene Eleyne” is Helen of Troy; Chaucer mentions her in several of his works, such as The Book of the Duchess, the Parliament of Fouls, and the Legend of Good Women. Her great beauty is a commonplace in the Middle Ages. “Cresseyd” is Chaucer’s heroine in Troilus and Criseyde; this is a dubious flattery considering how maligned Criseyde is in literature from the classical period through the Renaissance. She is, however, undoubtedly beautiful and one hopes, for the sake of his future patronage, that this is the comparison Metham is drawing. “Polyxchene” is Polyxena, one of king Priam’s daughters and the lover of Achilles. She is also mentioned in The Book of the Duchess and the Legend of Good Women. “Grysyld” is the heroine of The Clerk’s

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Just as Metham connects Miles with the character of Amoryus, highlighting his military accomplishments and noble ancestry, so the parallel Metham meticulously establishes between his lady patron and Chaucer’s literary heroines begs the reader to consider the connections between Katherine and Cleopes. After all, Amoryus and Cleopes is a memorial text to her, one which will remind future readers of Katherine’s virtues even after her death. However, aside from Cleopes’s noble family and her surpassing beauty, what aspects of Cleopes’s character might parallel most interestingly with the Lady Stapleton? Not only is Katherine beautiful, generous, and patient, she is the patron of a text which combines elements of the traditional chivalric romance, a genre often characterized as women’s reading, with a practical knowledge of herbs, dragon taxonomy, and astronomical treatises.65 Lee Ramsey asserts that “there are really only two kinds of heroines in romance: the vacuous and inactive object of the hero’s desire and the lady in distress.”66 Metham’s heroine, however, plays neither of these passive roles. As I discussed earlier, Cleopes is the guardian of much textual knowledge, she is the problem-solver in her relationship with Amoryus, and she stands as the main influence in his chivalric career. Metham specifically makes his heroine’s contribution to the narrative extend far beyond the vapid object of the hero’s desire; it also exceeds both of Craig’s categories of an educated female character: a purveyor of homespun remedies or a sorceress. Rather, Metham characterizes Cleopes as a savvy scholar, one who uses her knowledge of religious and secular scientific texts to facilitate a relationship with the man she loves and to keep him alive during his solitary masculine errands. Furthermore, she is converted to Christianity along with her lover and then embarks on a life of spiritual and earthly success secured in large part by her intellectual and practical influence. With the listing of Chaucer’s major literary heroines, future readers of Metham’s text – perhaps even Katherine herself – could reflect upon the patroness’ beauty, patience, and virtue. By reading about Cleopes, they could reflect on Katherine’s intelligence and the value placed on the scientific texts she and her husband commissioned. It is telling that Metham wrote such a

65

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Tale; she is a model of beauty and patience. “Penelope” is the wife of Odysseus and appears in several of Chaucer’s works, such as Anelide and Arcite, Troilus and Criseyde, and the Legend of Good Women, as a model of fidelity. For more on the notion that medieval romance audiences were at least partly comprised of noble women, see W. R. J. Barron’s English Medieval Romance (New York: Longman, 1987), pp. 231–235; Lee Ramsey’s Chivalric Romances, p. 9 and pp. 109–115; and Carol M. Meale, “‘gode men / Wiues maydnes and alle men’: Romance and Its Audiences,” in Readings in Medieval English Romance, ed. Carol M. Meale (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 209–226 (p. 220). Ramsey suggests that the majority of the audience for romances was comprised of “women of rank … not only because medieval women of rank had plenty of leisure time for reading, but more than that, because the position of women in medival upper-class society made them especially vulnerable to the appeals of romance fiction” (Chivalric Romances, p. 9). Chivalric Romances, p. 177.

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The Science of Female Power in John Metham’s Amoryus and Cleopes romance for a woman patron; the tale is entertaining, moral enough to read on holy days, and provides comprehensive information on astronomy and natural science. Considering that the other text Metham explicitly dedicates to Katherine is “Crysaunt,” most likely a translation of a farming manual which treats of, among other subjects, animal husbandry and winemaking, Amoryus and Cleopes is not a metrical failure or an incongruous collection of scientific translation and fragments of romantic episodes. Rather, it is a carefully selected and highly appropriate work for his female patron. Metham’s negotiations between science and Christianity, between the desire for martial prowess and the deployment of intellectual and social influence, and even the negotiation between male and female patrons, persuasively demonstrate that a woman need not act alone to act at all.

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3 A Woman’s “Crafte” Sexual and Chivalric Patronage in Partonope of Blois

T

he models of female agency depicted in medieval romances illustrate the difficulties a woman faces in extending her influence to the prominent men in her life and to the spheres of cultural and intellectual authority they more easily occupy; disbelief, hostile resistance, and potential social stigmatization by disapproving parents or relentless gossips are only some of the challenges that the heroines in romances like Troilus and Criseyde and Amoryus and Cleopes confront. However, these literary models also provide detailed examples of how to negotiate the obstacles to women’s sponsorship, mapping a process whereby the deployment of a single branch of knowledge – such as history or science – can yield manifold social and cultural rewards. Thus far, this study has centered on specific acts of influence conducted by female characters; the final two chapters of this book consider instances of comprehensive patronage where the heroine’s engagement with the man she supports moves beyond individual moments of timely intervention and becomes an exertion of influence across an entire curriculum, including lessons in chivalry, social customs, political negotiations, and romantic loyalty. Included in these comprehensive programs is also the financial component largely lacking in the examples from the first two romances examined in this book. In Partonope of Blois and Sir Launfal, which I discuss in Chapter Four, the monetary support and chivalric gifts provided by the heroines align more readily with traditional notions of patronage; however, I argue that the financial provisions made by these women characters are merely one facet of their sponsorship rather than the defining element. Yet with a more comprehensive and influential patronage profile comes greater difficulty in performing those acts of sponsorship. The heroines in these romances find their public reputations and their personal dignity under almost constant assault; thus, they operate in self-imposed secrecy, often seeming to provide conflicting models of female behavior and influence. The fifteenth-century English romance Partonope of Blois (c. 1450) is one such text; Melior, the magical queen of Byzantium, becomes the chivalric and financial patron of her lover, Partonope, grooming the talented young man 85



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to be a husband, a co-ruler, and a knight who can rid France of its Saracen threat. The audience tracks Melior’s painstaking cultivation of Partonope, observing as the knight develops from an untutored youth into a victorious king and co-ruler. Unlike the brief but important acts of female influence depicted in other medieval romances, Melior’s investment in Partonope’s training must be long term, not tied to any single episode or specific intervention. Perhaps paradoxically, at the heart of Melior’s powerful influence over Partonope’s chivalric and sexual education is her ability to harness several of the misogynist conventions of medieval romance: performing the role of a sexually timid woman, enduring public humiliation for her sexual misconduct, and abdicating to her male advisors her royal right to choose a husband. Melior’s performance of what Lee Ramsey suggests is the ultimate powerlessness of a conventional romance heroine,1 however, is revealed only to the audience of the romance, which includes women.2 While Melior’s feigned acquiescence to male authority – and even aggression – seems to undercut her agency within the narrative, her behind-the-scenes influence and personal motivations would have been apparent to the women who were reading the romance.3 Thus, Melior functions not only as a traditional exem1

2

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Lee C. Ramsey, Chivalric Romances: Popular Literature in Medieval England (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), p. 146. Ramsey reads Melior’s presence in the romance primarily as a defrocked representative of the fairy world. However, Laura Hibbard, in Medieval Romance in England (New York: Franklin, 1960), describes Melior as a “rationalized fée” or an adaptation of the fairy mistress character of Celtic folk-tales (p. 211). There are several points within the Middle English text where the poet specifically addresses the female members of his audience; during these interruptions of the story, the narrator often asks rhetorical questions which invite the audience to consider the sufferings of the female characters; the readers are depicted as lovers, just as Melior is, and are asked directly to sympathize with the situation (Barry Windeatt, “Chaucer and Fifteenth-Century Romance: Partonope of Blois,” in Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honor of Derek Brewer, ed. Ruth Morse and Barry Windeatt [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990], pp. 62–80 [p. 68]). For example, When Melior lies in bed with Partonope, she frets over “howe sh[e] myghte endure / Euer of hym to haue plesauns; / For she wyth-owten varyauns / Purposyd euer to ben hys” (lines 1227–1230). The narrator interrupts Melior’s musings and asks the audience, “what say ye loueres, was hyt not thys / A gentylle herte of here þys was” (lines 1231–1232)? Not only does the narrator possess an understanding of the plights of women who cannot be with their lovers, he identifies a large portion of his audience as female lovers and enlists their sympathy for his heroine. This invitation for women readers to identify with Melior as a frustrated lover also has implications for her status as an exemplum for women. Women in the audience are not specifically asked to identify only with Melior the lover; they are also free – and perhaps encouraged – to relate to Melior as a scholar and as a sexual being. For more on women as readers of romance in the Middle Ages, see Joan Ferrante, To the Glory of Her Sex: Women’s Roles in the Composition of Medieval Texts (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), pp.107–135; Joan Ferrante, “Whose Voice? The Influence of Women Patrons on Courtly Romances,” in Literary Aspects of Courtly Culture: Selected Papers from the Seventh Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society, ed. Donald Maddox and Sara Sturm-Maddox (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 3–18; Jennifer Goodman, “‘That Wommen Holde in Ful Greet Reverence’: Mothers and Daughters Reading Chivalric Romances,” in Women, the Book and the Worldly: Selected Proceedings of the St. Hilda’s Conference, 1993, volume II, ed. Lesley Smith and Jane H. M. Taylor (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1995), pp. 25–30; Karen K. Jambeck, “Patterns of Women’s Literary Patronage: England, 1200–ca.1475,” in The Cultural

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plum of “good” female behavior, but as a model for women who would attempt to engage in acts of patronage and to maintain control over decisions about marriage and sexual expression while still operating publicly within the bounds of “good” female behavior. All aspects of Partonope’s education fall under Melior’s purview: physical love, and both the secular and religious elements of chivalry. However, though Melior ultimately wields most of the influence over characters and events in the story, she is not an uncompromised figure of female agency. Melior’s narrative is structured by three crucial choices she refuses to make public; as Joan Ferrante observes, Melior’s public decisions are almost constantly at odds with her private thoughts and desires.4 While the romance does not portray Melior as a conventionally weak or passive romance heroine, she consistently acquiesces to male authority and masculine will for reasons of political and social interest. Rather than exercise her royal prerogative as a queen, on several occasions she relinquishes her choice to take a lover or to choose a husband.5 The audience, which included women readers, is aware of Melior’s private desires and yet also witnesses the public denial of those desires. The exemplum of female behavior provided by Melior, therefore, is partly one of proper public performance: a woman may be highly educated and sexually emancipated as long as she placates male desires for mastery over women’s decisions – ostensibly if not in reality. Though Melior’s character does not present an absolute figure of public female autonomy, she does function privately throughout the romance as her young lover’s chivalric, sexual, and financial patron. The depiction of Melior as Partonope’s private patron and mentor who also acquiesces to the desires of her male political advisors – and even to Partonope’s own desires – seems to construct a problematic exemplum of female behavior for women readers of the romance. Yet we can see Melior emerge as a realistic representation of medieval women’s ability to access the sphere of chivalry and political warfare through implicit acts of sponsorship. The truth behind Melior’s choices, the enactment of her sexual desires, and the record of her significant education might only be revealed in private, but she operates within that private space to enact public change, to influence the course of politics, and to secure the hand of a worthy knight. Thus, because the model of female influence Melior provides to the reader is more complex than those discussed

4

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Patronage of Medieval Women, ed. June Hall McCash (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1996), 228–265; and Carol M. Meale, “‘gode men / Wiues maydnes and alle men’: Romance and Its Audiences,” in Readings in Medieval English Romances, ed. Carol M. Meale (Cambridge: D.€S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 209–226. Joan Ferrante, “Public Postures and Private Maneuvers: Roles Medieval Women Play,” in Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1988), pp. 213–229 (p. 213). While such an individual privilege would most likely not have been afforded even to a queen in fifteenth-century culture, Melior’s sister Urake refers to Melior’s ability to make personal choices several times in the romance.

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in previous chapters, the need for the heroine to negotiate between medieval standards of appropriate female behavior and individual desire through performance is far greater. It is crucial to understand how this “performative passivity”6 does not compromise but actually facilitates women’s patronage in chivalric romances like Partonope of Blois where the heroines have traditionally been read as weak figures. The major portion of Partonope of Blois can be read as an exemplum that provides both good and bad examples of self-governance.7 The Prologue to the narrative begins with an exhortation to read the “olde stories” that teach the audience “how we moste gouerned be.” 8 All books, the Partonope poet assures us, contain “good and euelle bothe in ffere [together]” (line 40), and it is a good reader who “can ffynde / In folys tales sum-tyme wysdame” (lines 53–54) and “drawe wysdam owte of ffoly” (line 58). In Partonope, the narrator concludes, “shalle ye fynde wrytte / Both goode and euelle. I do yow to wytte: / The goode taketh, the euelle leve” (lines 60–62). Matilda Bruckner asserts that the distinction made in the romance’s Prologue is not “the difference between truth and fiction, but rather our ability and desire to learn, acquire knowledge, and exercise choice.”9 From the beginning, then, Partonope of Blois is put forth as containing examples of good and evil behavior, and the poet assumes that his audience is capable of recognizing and separating the two.10 In addition to the discerning abilities of the romance’s potential audience, there is manuscript and testamentary evidence that women formed a signifi6

7

8

9

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Holly Crocker, “Performative Passivity and the Fantasies of Masculinity in the Merchant’s Tale,” The Chaucer Review 38.2 (2003): pp. 178–198 (p. 182). See my discussion of Crocker’s concept and its broader applicability to this project in the Introduction to this book. Sandra Ihle, “The English Partonope of Blois as Exemplum,” in Courtly Literature: Culture and Context, ed. Keith Busby and Erik Kooper (Philadelphia, PA: Benjamins, 1990), p. 305. See also Ramsey, Chivalric Romances, pp. 139–150 for more on the romance’s representation of good and bad kingship and knighthood. The Middle English Versions of Partonope of Blois, ed. A. Trampe Bödtker, EETS e.s. 109 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1912), lines 1 and 16. All quotations from the Middle English romance are cited parenthetically within the text by line number (and occasionally by editor’s name and line number where necessary for clarity). Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner, Shaping Romance: Interpretation, Truth, and Closure in Twelfth Century French Fictions (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), p. 115. Brenda Hosington notes that the Middle English version of the romance expands the statement that books teach good and evil by example from its Old French source text; the Middle English version consistently emphasizes the importance of self-governance (“Partonopeu de Blois and its Fifteenth-Century English Translation: A Medieval Translator at Work,” in The Medieval Translator II, ed. Roger Ellis [Exeter: Short Run Press, 1991], pp. 233–234). The kind of discretionary reading process that the Partonope poet presupposes for his text is very similar to the one suggested by William Caxton in his Prologue to the late fifteenth-century romance Blanchardyn and Eglantine. As in Partonope, Caxton suggests that both men and women should “rede therin as for their passetyme” (The Prologues and Epilogues of William Caxton, ed. W. J. B. Crotch, EETS o.s. 176 [London: Oxford University Press, 1928], p. 105) because they will find excellent lessons in appropriate behavior.

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cant portion of the actual readership of both the Old French and Middle English versions of the romance. Hans-Erich Keller suggests that the French source text, Partonopeu de Blois, was written at the request of Alix of France (1151–1195), the youngest daughter of King Louis VII and Eleanor of Aquitaine and wife of Thibaut V of Blois.11 The French Partonopeu was composed around the years 1182–1185 and was “surely written on commission for the House of Blois – very likely at the request of Alix of France – with a concomitant goal of enhancing the prestige of this dynasty.”12 Not only was Alix’s mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, a literary patron in her own right, but it is possible that the romance was transported from France (perhaps from Alix’s court) to England during Eleanor’s reign. The French text could have been read in the French-speaking English court until the fifteenth century, when English had already become the primary language of statecraft. The possibility of female patronage of the French Partonopeu and of its travel, through a kinship between two women, from France to England, suggests a much longer history of women’s patronage and readership of the romance story than has been previously suggested.13 For the English version of the romance, Partonope of Blois, London, British Library MS Additional 35288 is the most complete manuscript of the couplet form of the romance; this codex is the only extant English manuscript that contains both of the sections where the narrator addresses the audience as lovers and ladies. According to Gisela Guddat-Figge, the last two folios of London, British Library MS Additional 35288 contain several signatures of possible owners; among those are the names of “Dorythe Couper” (fol. 153v) and “melady babasin” (fol. 154v).14 Although no further information about the identities of “melady babasin” and “Dorythe Couper” is available, the signatures of women comprise almost half of the names recorded in the manuscript.

11

12

13 14

Hans-Erich Keller, “Literary Patronage in the Time of Philip Augustus,” in The Spirit of the Court: Selected Proceedings of the Fourth Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society, ed. Glyn S. Burgess and Robert A. Taylor (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1985), pp. 196–207 (p. 197). Hans-Erich Keller, “Literary Patronage in the Time of Philip Augustus,” p. 197. While there is no extant textual evidence to support the assertion that Alix of France commissioned the romance, Keller offers a convincing reading of several narrative elements in Partonopeu that suggest it was written for the Capetian courts in existence during the reign of Philip Augustus, Alix of France’s half-brother and king of France from 1180 to 1223. One of several connections between the court of Alix of France and the royal court of England, where the book was later translated into the English Partonope of Blois, coincides with the time Partonopeu is thought to have been composed. Alix was the daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine, who married King Henry II of England in 1152 and ruled as queen of England from 1152 to 1189, when Henry II died. For more on women’s patronage of French courtly romances, see Joan Ferrante’s “Whose Voice?” pp. 3–18. Also on fol. 153v is the signature of “ffrauncissi babisonis,” perhaps a male relative of “melady babasin.” The signature of “Robarte Gascoyg[ne]” appears on fol. 154v.

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Another segment of Partonope’s female readership is identifiable not from the extant manuscripts, but from a late fifteenth-century testamentary record. I relate the circumstances of this bequest in full because the example offers a rare opportunity to consider how a gentry woman reader might have gleaned models of behavior and even sponsorship from the romances she owned and passed on to other women. In 1490–1491, a woman named Isabel Lyston of Norwich, “wedowe late þe wyfe of Robert lyston squier,” bequeathed to “margery london my dowghter my best rynge of gold such as sche will chese[,] an englyssh boke called partonope and myn englyssh boke of saynt margarets lyfe.”15 Isabel’s will is the only known example of a woman bequeathing a specifically English romance; several women’s wills from the Middle Ages note bequests of romances, but none specify the language as English and we must allow for the possibility that these books were written in French.16 The actual manuscript of Partonope that Isabel mentions in her will has not been identified, but Meale speculates that the book, owned by a gentry family like the Lystons, was probably similar to the neatly produced but not overly luxurious extant manuscripts of the romance.17 However, we are left with some details of Isabel’s and Margery’s lives in the historical records of Norwich. Robert Lyston, who died twelve years before his wife, left Isabel his interest in manors in Suffolk and Norfolk so that she could support his son, John, and provide dowries for their five daughters.18 When Isabel died, however, she does not mention a son in her will, only her daughters and grandchildren, providing legacies for them from among her clothes and household goods.19 Isabel’s daughter, Margery, married 15

16

17 18 19

For Isabel Lyston’s will, see the Norwich, Norfolk County Council Register Wolman, fols. 171r– 172r (fol. 171v). Carol M. Meale quotes from this will in “‘gode men / Wiues maydnes’” (pp. 222–225). See Susan Hagen Cavanaugh, A Study of Books Privately Owned in England, 1300–1450, diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1980 for a collection of these records. For example, the will of Matilda del Bowes, Lady of Dalden, dated 16 January 1420, who bequeaths “unum librum yat is called Trystram” to “Elizabethae filiae Whitchestre” (p. 117). Matilda’s will can also be found in Wills and Inventories Illustrative of the History, Manners, Language Statistics, etc. of the Northern Counties of England from the Eleventh Century Downwards, ed. John William Clay, Part I, Surtees Society, vol. 2 (London, 1835), pp. 63–65. Cavanaugh also records portions from the will of Margaret Courtenay, Countess of Devon, whose will, dated 28 January 1391, bequeaths to “ma fille luttrel … mon liure appelle Tristram” and to “ma fille Dangayne … un liure appelle Artur de Britaigne” (p. 213), which is possibly an Arthurian romance. Elizabeth Darcy (11€August 1412) wills to Sir Thomas Grey de Heton a “librum voc’ Lanselake [Lancelot?]” (p. 230); Johanna Hilton (1432) leaves “unum librum de Romanse” to her sister Katherine Comberworth and to her niece, Margaret, “unum librum de Romanse de Septem Sages” (p. 430); Elizabeth la Zouche (w. 1380) bequeaths to her daughter, Elizabeth Basyng, her “books called Tristrem and Lanchelot” (p.€954). Even Isabella, queen of Edward II (d. 1358) left several “libri romanizati” to her daughter Joan, Queen of Scotland, including a book on the “gestis Arthuri” and “unis liber de Tristram et Isolda” (p. 458). Carol M. Meale, “‘gode men / Wiues maydnes’,” p. 223. Robert Lyston’s will is recorded in Norwich, Norfolk County Council Register A. Caston, fol. 231r. Carol M. Meale, “‘gode men / Wiues maydnes’,” p. 223.

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William London, Alderman and twice Lord Mayor of Norwich. A wealthy member of the “merchant elite,” London owned property throughout Norfolk and provided for his wife well upon his death in 1493–1494, leaving her their house and garden in the parish of St. Peter Mancroft, various lands and tenements and several pieces of gold and silver jewelry.20 Although Isabel Lyston had five daughters, it is specifically to Margery that she leaves her books, which indicates that Margery liked to read, perhaps more than her sisters. In addition, Meale notes that Isabel’s interest in the romance co-existed with “more pious concerns, as represented by a life of St. Margaret, and by a number of charitable, if conventional bequests” to local churches in her will.21 Partonope of Blois is a romance that portrays its heroine as intelligent and sexually willful, if not promiscuous, despite her tendency to perform acquiescence in the presence of male company; The Life of St. Margaret represents a female protagonist who embraces torture and martyrdom rather than succumb to paganism and sexual temptation. Although both texts figure women prominently in their narratives, they represent drastically different exempla of female power and influence. For Isabel Lyston, however, this did not seem to pose a problem; her will suggests that she believed both books to be appropriate reading material for her daughter. Isabel’s bequest of only two books – a secular romance and a devotional saint’s life – also indicates the extent to which a medieval woman’s reading tastes could incorporate various models of female behavior and how those eclectic literary preferences could be passed down from mother to daughter.22 Although it is not part of a traditionally didactic genre, as is The Life of St. Margaret, Partonope of Blois provides a detailed picture of women’s social and political power not through religious self-sacrifice, but through various acts of patronage (both tangible and intangible) in the characters of Melior and, to a lesser extent, her sister, Urake. Much like in the fifteenth-century romance Amoryus and Cleopes, it is Melior, rather than Partonope’s older male relatives, who instructs the young man on the expectations of knighthood, complete with a keen insight into its social and financial requirements. Melior’s intervention in Partonope’s life is particularly timely in the Middle English version of the story. Whereas the Old French Partonopeu is depicted as only thirteen years old (“treze ans”23), the Middle English Partonope is

20 21 22

23

Carol M. Meale, “‘gode men / Wiues maydnes’,” p. 223–224. Carol M. Meale, “‘gode men / Wiues maydnes’,” p. 224. The mother–daughter connection outlined here is particularly significant if we remember the possibility that Alix of France commissioned the French Partonopeu de Blois and that the text came to England during her mother, Eleanor’s, reign. Years later, the English translation of the romance is willed from a mother to a daughter. Partonopeu de Blois: A French Romance of the Twelfth Century, volume I, ed. Joseph Gildea (Philadelphia, PA: Villanova University Press, 1967), line 543. All references to the Old French version are cited parenthetically within the text by line number (and occasionally by editor’s name and line number where necessary for clarity).

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eighteen years of age, “neyther more ne lesse” (line 521). Gretchen Mieszkowski notes that this discrepancy could be a scribal error; the Middle English version gives the Roman numeral “XVIIJ” (line 521) and could easily have been a misreading of the Roman numeral thirteen in the Old French exemplar.24 It is also possible that the Middle English translator changed the hero’s age deliberately to avoid the uncomfortable implications of Melior’s sexual seduction of a young boy.25 Penny Eley and Penny Simons, however, note that the “internal logic” of the Old French narrative requires that the hero be thirteen at the beginning of the story because “his secret life with Melior has to take place before he reaches the age of knighthood,” which occurs around the age of fifteen or sixteen.26 Indeed, the more advanced age of eighteen ascribed to Partonope in the Middle English version is certainly notable given the circumstances under which Partonope leaves France for Melior’s country. The action of the romance begins with a boar hunt led by the king, Partonope’s uncle. In the mêlée, Partonope performs well, killing the boar “lyche a manne” (line 550). As if to emphasize Partonope’s surprising resemblance to an adult, the king, impressed with Partonope’s valor, notes that he is “ryghte lyke to ben a man” (line 559). However, when the king sends Partonope after a second boar, he realizes he has sent his nephew on an errand that is beyond his abilities at that time. Too late, the king and his retainers discover that the “chylde ys go / And loste for euer” (lines 633–634). It is not clear whether or not the Middle English translator subtlely criticizes Partonope’s upbringing and education in Blois (or perhaps the young man’s own abilities) by altering the hero’s age since the audience learns almost nothing of the hero’s chivalric instruction – outside of the boar hunt – prior to his arrival in Chef d’Oire. We can say that the translator’s revision (deliberate or not) of Partonope’s age from thirteen to eighteen, however, renders Melior’s appropriation of the naïve and inexperienced young knight’s education a crucial intervention. If Partonope has not received adequate chivalric instruction previously, then this woman’s involvement is necessary; thus, Melior does not kidnap the young knight when she brings him to her country, but rather saves him from a seemingly stalled development in France. Melior begins to exert her influence in the romance before she actually enters it. After becoming lost during the ill-fated boar hunt with the King of France, Partonope arrives in her country by means of an enchanted boat and is served by invisible servants, who seem to anticipate his every need. The poet spends over 250 lines describing the richness of the land (lines 914–1165), from the grandeur of the city’s architecture down to the opulence 24 25 26

Gretchen Mieszkowski, “Urake and the Gender Roles of Partonope of Blois,” Mediaevalia 25 (2004): pp. 181–195 (pp. 182–183). Mieszkowski, “Urake and the Gender Roles,” p. 182. Penny Eley and Penny Simons, “Partonopeus de Blois and Chrétien de Troyes: A Re-Assessment,” Romania 117 (1999): pp. 316–341 (p. 320).

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of the dinner tables. This dense description might seem to be simply an example of authorial occupatio so popular in medieval romances and other secular genres, an ostensible rhetorical understatement or dismissal designed to emphasize the wealth of Melior’s city.27 However, the detail, I assert, not only underscores Melior’s affluence but, more importantly, her hospitality. These resources are not present merely to be admired or wondered at, but are marshaled for Partonope’s pleasure and use. From his earliest encounters with Melior’s magical kingdom, Partonope is treated like the noble eighteenyear-old he is rather than the “chylde” he was in France. For example, when Partonope enters the castle, the poet notes specifically that “he sawe þer laye boþe cloþe and borde, / [As] Þoȝe hyt had ben a-fore a lorde” (lines 1002– 1003). The knight is encouraged to imagine himself as an adult and, more importantly, as the ruler he will one day be.28 Thus, the initial welcome the young knight receives at these invisible hands – hands that are literal extensions of Melior’s own – function as an important prelude to her more direct acts of patronage and lessons in chivalric development later in the narrative. His refreshments complete, Partonope eventually finds himself in bed with a woman he cannot see. What follows is an awkward discussion between the two young people and, finally, a staged rape scene. It is only later, after their first sexual encounter, that Melior reveals that she chose him for her love even before he was brought to her country. A. C. Spearing concludes that “rape” in Partonope is the “intended outcome of Melior’s enterprise.”29 While this reading of Melior’s ultimate intentions is eventually proven true, I would like to explore why her choice must be initially figured as a rape and how that choice effects the representation of Melior as at once an overt exemplum of proper female behavior and an implicit patron. Bruckner discusses the level of the audience’s awareness in the Old French Partonopeu de Blois (c. 1182–1185), noting that, as the hero enters the magical city of Chef d’Oire for the first time, “we see it as if through [his] eyes … we know only as 27 28

29

Indeed, the poet does begin this long passage with a phrase commonplace in examples of occupatio: “harde hyt was for to deuyse / The curyous makynge þat þer-on was” (lines 911–912). Along these same lines, the poet includes an interesting and lengthy passage about Partonope’s initial fears of eating and drinking the repast laid before him in Melior’s castle. Although suffering greatly from hunger and thirst, he worries that “in drynke … be resone / Myghte welle be herberowed poysone” (lines 1058–1059). However, upon seeing the enticing wine and food selections served in the “vessell[s that] were all of golde” (lines 1073), he overcomes his fears and partakes. Finding only refreshment instead of death, Partonope “sowpethe [i.e., sups] alle in ese / And maketh hym-selfe welle at ese” (lines 1100–1101). Partonope warms to the role of nobleman this elegant dinner and attentive service constructs. This episode, which records Partonope’s thought process in such detail, highlights the supernatural nature of the situation in which he finds himself; but it also signals the beginning of Partonope’s maturation process, which Melior’s patronage – depicted here through the medium of invisible servants – cultivates. A. C. Spearing, The Medieval Poet as Voyeur: Looking and Listening in Medieval Love-Narratives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 143. Spearing offers an interesting extended reading of the bedroom scene in Partonope, which concentrates primarily on the lack of sight and the emphasis on hearing and touching.

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much as Partonopeu”;30 indeed, this shared viewpoint of audience and hero holds true for most of the first part of the romance. In the Old French text, the audience’s limited perspective is maintained until after the consummation scene. However, in the Middle English version, the audience is given hints that Melior has had a hand in arranging the circumstances of their meeting even before the act; afterward, such suspicions are confirmed. The audience of the Middle English text is taken into Melior’s confidence much sooner than readers of its Old French source; this revelation severs the connection between Partonope and the reader and forms a “delightful complicity between audience and heroine.”31 Thus, the performance of rape, particularly in the Middle English version, is for Partonope’s sake rather than the audience’s.32 When Partonope finds himself in bed with the invisible woman, he is terrified, believing that “hyt were Illusione / Off þe deuylle and of conivrysone” (lines 1284–1285). At one point, Melior extends “streyghte forþe here legge, and happed to ffele, / … þe hele / Off þys wofulle Partonope” (lines 1298– 1300). After this brief physical contact, Melior first orders him angrily out of her bed – “Owte! allas þen!” (lines 1301) – and then continues to question him softly: “Hoo may þou be? What doste þou here?” (lines 1315). Melior promises that if “hyt were wyste of my men, / Thowe sholde not skape, þou shuldeste be dedde” (lines 1318–1319). Partonope narrates his adventures and begs Melior to take pity on him by letting him remain in bed. After several hours, “plesaunce had hym ouer-come / Þat all hys wyttes were fro hym nome” (lines 1539–1540); he touches her arm. Again, she rebuffs him harshly, but does not call out to her guards; Partonope, duly chastened, does not press the matter. Thus, “alle þe nyghte tylle on þe daye / Thys laye þey stylle be on a-corde” (lines 1548–1549). In the morning, however, Partonope acquires the courage once more to cast “hys arme ffreshely … ouer her” (line 1558). Rather than throw his arm off, as she did earlier, Melior “hyt suffered pasyentlye” and only says to him “full mekely: / ‘For þe loue of Gode, I praye yowe lette be’” (lines 1559–1561). As he continues to embrace her, she “fulle softely” says “Allas!” (line 1564). It is at this point in the scene that Partonope’s treatment of her becomes aggressive rather than merely fumbling. The narrator describes their interaction:

30 31

32

Bruckner, Shaping Romance, p. 121. Eley and Simons, “Partonopeus de Blois and Chrétien,” p. 336. See Mieszkowski’s discussion of the Middle English translator’s re-ordering of events in this scene (“Urake and the Gender Roles,” pp. 182–183). Spearing inexplicably reads the rape scene as humorous; he suggests that the narrator’s use of the descriptors “pacyentlye” and “mekely,” “jokingly attribute ‘feminine’ virtues to her desire” (Medieval Poet as Voyeur, p. 148). Furthermore, when Melior cries “Syr, mercy” (Bödtker, line 1567), Spearing writes that the “ambiguity of her remark is amusing: it could equally mean ‘Please don’t!’ or ‘Thanks very much!’” (p. 148).

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A Woman’s “Crafte” her legges sh[e] gan to knytte, And wyth hys knees he gan hem on-shote. And þer-wythall she sayde: “Syr, mercy!” He wolde not lefe ne be þer-by; For of her wordes toke he no hede; But þys a-way her maydenhede Haþe he þen rafte, and geffe her hys.â•… (lines 1565–1571)33

After the encounter, Melior is “alle dysmayde” (line 1574) and bemoans the fact that she is “sore and also wery” (line 1581). She assures him that “had I had strenghte or ells myghte, / … In all þys fflyghte / Ye shulde not haue had þat now ye haue” (lines 1583–1585). Their first encounter is, thus, outwardly depicted as a rape. However, just after Melior climbs into bed with Partonope, the audience is made aware of her inner musings about the situation. She worries that “yeffe I make hym chere [i.e., have sex with him] … / I am a-ferde leste he wolle wene, / And here-efter of me deme / Other-wyse þen godely were” (lines 1261–1264). If Partonope were to believe that she “wolle be wonne€/ As lyghtely” (lines 1268–1269) by any man and leave her, she would be in “endeles sorowe for euer-moo, / Then were my Ioye for euer goo” (lines 1270–1271). Judging from this internal monologue (to which the reader alone is privy), Melior does desire Partonope, both physically and emotionally, but is concerned about what he would think of her sexual advances.34 To eliminate the possibility that Partonope will think she can be won “lyghtely” (line 1269), Melior behaves as though she is insulted by his presence. However, even as she threatens that she will “crey and make a-ffray” (line 1321), the narrator specifically states that her protests were “not lowde. / Hyt semed welle for soþe she cowde [cry] / Mykelle goode, and þer-fore she / Spake fulle softe, for þer shulde be / No grette a-ffray, ne no sterynge” (lines 1304– 1308). Although the Partonope poet suggests to the audience that Melior is merely performing her resistance to Partonope’s sexual advances, it is only after their encounter that she reveals that Partonope is in her country as the result of her “crafte.” She relates that she is the queen of Byzantium; at her nobles’ behest she sent envoys around the world to find a husband. They returned from France with word of Partonope’s nobility, youth, and beauty. When Melior hears about him, she claims that “myn herte fferde / As [thoȝe] 33 34

The Old French description of this scene is quite similar: “Flors i dona et flors i prist [A flower (of virginity) is given and a flower is captured]” (line 1305). See Hosington’s comparison of how Melior’s concern about her reputation are represented in the Old French and Middle English texts (“Partonopeu de Blois and its Fifteenth-Century English Translation,” pp. 235–236). She remarks that the Old French narrator records Melior’s fear of losing her reputation in only 18 lines while the Middle English poet expands that description to 111 lines.

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hyt hadde ffully be / For euer rauesshyd [awey] fro me” (lines 1624–1626). Rather than trust her envoy’s description of Partonope, however, she goes to France with three of her ladies-in-waiting to see the young man for herself. After fifteen days of observation, she falls in love with him. Melior quickly explains to Partonope that, instead of informing her nobles that she had found a possible husband, she “þorowe … crafte” lured him into the woods “tylle I hadde yowe frome [his uncle, the king] rafte” (lines 1659–1660). It is interesting that Melior, not the narrator, describes Partonope’s Â�reputation as “rauesshy[ng]” her heart before he “rafte” her maidenhood; Melior’s description reinforces her performance of the sexually passive rather than proactive woman. With the revelation of how Partonope came to be in Byzantium, however, we learn that Melior also “rafte” the young knight away from his home and family, brought him to Byzantium, and led him to her bedchamber by means of her own invisible servants. After describing her maneuverings, she discloses that “thys crafte I dyd, yette more I can” (line 1673).35 Melior is careful about releasing information in these initial scenes. Indeed, the controlled dissemination of information and knowledge is a “crafte” she deploys throughout the romance as part of her patronage program. Giving the young knight only the information he needs at the moment, Melior reveals that she is the Empress of Byzantium before the consummation (making his potential conquest of her more appealing); afterwards, she admits that she brought Partonope to Chef d’Oire through her necromancy (setting the stage for her future influence over his chivalric development). Swiftly on the heels of this revelation, however, Melior reverts back to the persona of a subservient lover; she expresses to Partonope the fears to which the audience became privy before the rape scene: “I yowe praye / That ye neuer here-after þynke ne saye / That I shulde euer to hasty bee / To loue lyghtely, in no degre, / To parforme any other hys plesyre, / Allethowe I suffer yowre desyre” (lines 1677–1682). Her prayer to Partonope betrays more than just her fears that she will lose her love. Melior asks him never to think “ne saye” (line 1678) to others that she loves lightly. Her honor and reputation are as much at stake as her heart. Rather, Melior assures him that she will submit only to his sexual desires (“I suffer yowre desyre” [line 1682]) and will not “parforme” (line 1681) for anyone else. Buried in Melior’s pledge, however, is the reality of their first encounter; she promises not to have sex with another man, but she also implicitly promises that she will not “parforme” that sex act as a rape as she did with Partonope.36 35

36

The hint Melior gives here – that she is capable of even greater “crafte” – is not given in the Old French source text. Indeed, the Middle English version emphasizes her “crafte” much more in this dialogue, referring to her magical agency three times (lines 1659, 1672, and 1673) versus only one reference to Melior’s “engien [craft or cunning]” (line 1385) in the Old French. Judith Butler’s theories of gender performativity are particularly relevant to this scene. Melior desires for Partonope to see her as an acquiescent and demure woman so that he will not think she

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Melior “suffers” Partonope’s sexual aggression in a performance of submission reserved only for him. After protesting her meekness and devotion to his needs, however, Melior is free to express her own sexual desires: “Offte sh[e] was In porpose hym to wake / To haue more plesauns of hym þat ys her make. / Wyth hym to play was all her moste delyte” (lines 1923–1925). As it is no longer necessary for Partonope to initiate sexual intimacy, Melior becomes proactive, indulging her desires at every opportunity: “For here Ioye and here delyte€/ Ys hym to make Ioye and playe / … bothe nyȝth and daye” (lines 2300– 2303). However, once it becomes obvious that Melior’s physical needs equal and, actually, pre-exist Partonope’s, the reader is still left with the question of why the initial encounter between Partonope and Melior was constructed as a rape. Although the audience may have had suspicions that Melior desired Partonope, this is not confirmed until after the rape scene, when Melior reveals that she has engineered the entire meeting. Partonope, however, is left completely in the dark (so to speak). What requirement, then, does a rape serve in the romance that a mutual sexual experience would not? And how does this inauspicious encounter affect Melior’s model of female influence? The answer lies in the one for whom Melior “performs”: Partonope. The audience is privy to the heroine’s private thoughts and realizes much sooner than Partonope does the extent of Melior’s agency. Throughout the beginning of the romance, and even until just before their consummation, the narrator refers to Partonope as a “chylde” (line 1526). After the rape scene, however, he is called a “yonge man” (line 2071). Kathryn Gravdal considers how sexual violence can be coded in ways that make it socially and culturally acceptable. Of the many different expressions for rape in Old French, one term – esforcer (to force) – is also used in medieval French romances to indicate the hero’s “striving” or “great effort” to “realize his full knightly valor.”37 But this effort in battle and chivalric activities, such as jousting, soon gets transferred to the bedroom as well. Gravdal writes that “from the notion of strength, manliness, and bravery, we move to the knight’s striving after heroism, and then to the idea of forced

37

“loue[s] lyghtely” (line 1680). However, when Melior confesses that she orchestrated Partonope’s arrival in her kingdom by means of her magical powers, she reveals (if only for a moment) that her subservience is merely a fantasy of passive womanhood. The ease with which Melior first discontinues and then resumes her act corroborates Butler’s assertion that the behavior and gestures that supposedly constitute gender (in this case, passive femininity) are performative “in the sense that the essence or identity that they otherwise purport to express are fabrications manufactured and sustained through corporeal signs and other discursive means” (Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, [New York: Routledge, 1999], p. 173). Kathryn Gravdal, Ravishing Maidens: Writing Rape in Medieval French Literature and Law (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), p. 3. Gravdal notes that Old French “favors periphrasis, metaphor, and slippery lexematic exchanges, as opposed to a clear and unambiguous signifier of sexual assault” (p. 2). Some of these expressions include faire sa volonté (to do as one will), faire son plaisir (to take one’s pleasure), and faire son buen (to do as one sees fit).

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coitus.”38 Gravdal’s observation establishes a trajectory of masculine force; there is a progression from general manly strength to an expression of that strength on the battlefield and then to an expression of it on the body of a woman. The rape in Partonope, then, is part of that trajectory, a rite of passage for the young male hero. Because Melior exercises her supernatural powers to construct the “rape,” however, it is also a way for Melior to fulfill her sexual desires and still maintain her reputation in a world where female honor is so intimately connected to chastity. Melior denies that she has a choice to sleep with Partonope by performing the role of a rape victim; this refutation, in turn, facilitates his passage into manhood, which is a critical first step in her patronage program. At this point in the narrative, however, the audience is able to glimpse the extent of Melior’s magical abilities and realize the true nature of her performance; we are left wondering how Melior could ordain an enchanted ship to transport Partonope from France to Byzantium, could entertain him in her castle with the help of unseen servants, and can even maintain her own invisibility throughout their interactions, but could not have had the “myghte” (line 1584) to deflect Partonope’s fumbling advances if she chose. By performing the role of a raped woman, Melior simultaneously gives her protégé the power of masculine aggression (a power that will serve him well on the battlefield and in matters of chivalry) and undermines it. Despite the rhetoric used to describe the rape scene that seems to place the control firmly in Partonope’s hands – he “rafte” her virginity and then “geffe” her his – Melior has ultimately orchestrated the entire encounter. The newly initiated young man, however, does not realize the significance of this subtlety; he experiences the “rape” exactly as Melior intends him to. The trajectory of masculine force that Gravdal identifies – battlefield to bedroom – is reversed in Partonope of Blois. Here, Partonope’s act of rape precedes his excursions into the tournaments and battles that will win him wider fame: an act of private force paves the way for an exhibition of public force.39 Melior deliberately begins Partonope’s chivalric “training” in the bedroom. By initiating his aggression on her own body rather than on the body of a male

38 39

Gravdal, Ravishing Maidens, p. 3. Penny Simons and Penny Eley note the unique positioning of the consummation scene in the Old French version, which corresponds to the Middle English poem as well: “in no other romance text of the period does the relationship between hero and heroine begin with a sexual encounter, without any prior acquaintance or narratorial preparation” (“Male Beauty and Sexual Orientation in Partonopeus de Blois,” Romance Studies 17 [1999]: p. 42). They compare Partonopeus with other twelfth-century French romances, such as Jean Renart’s L’Escoufle, Floire et Blancheflor, and Chrétien’s Erec et Enide (see especially p. 54, note 10). The placement of the scene early in the narrative is uncommon in later Middle English romances as well. One of the few other examples of a sexual encounter that occurs early in a Middle English romance narrative is Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale; in this case, however, the rape is genuine rather than staged and the knight and the young lady do not pursue a relationship.

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competitor, Melior controls Partonope’s progress and can guide him toward any valiant expression of force she chooses. Thus, Melior offers the women in the audience an example of how to maintain control of their sexual choices by appearing to relinquish them; yet she still urges Partonope into a full realization of his masculine power, a power that is based in large part on the subjugation of enemy armies and women’s bodies. After the bedroom scene, Melior abandons her performance of passive victim and begins to behave openly toward her lover as a teacher and chivalric patron. Now that Partonope has been initiated into manhood, Melior reminds him that he descends from Hector’s lineage: “ye be come of gentylle blode, / Off Ector of Troye” (lines 1849–1850). Like his famous ancestor, Partonope should “sewe forþe þat no-belle blode, / And sette yowre herte euer in cheualry” (lines 1852–1853). This pedigree, she informs him, is also what attracted her to Partonope in the first place: “Off Ectorys blode ye be þat worthy knyghte, / … / Þys was on cause, my dere herte, þat I / Chesse yowe to be my lorde and eke my loue” (lines 1841–1847). Thus, it is Partonope’s chivalric potential, rather than the skills and experiences he already possesses, that intrigues Melior and initiates her interest in becoming his patron. It is significant that Melior inaugurates her new function in the relationship with a rehearsal of Partonope’s ancestry, which recalls the “long genealogy”40 that concludes the Prologue in both the French and English versions of the story. The succinct reminder to the hero and the audience of Partonope’s noble lineage emphasizes the importance of Melior’s actions regarding him. Rather than wait for the “chylde” to become a grown man under the tutelage of his male relatives, Melior abducts Partonope and undertakes his education herself. Simons and Eley suggest that Partonope’s Trojan genealogy (with its possible homoerotic associations) outlined in the Old French Prologue and later reiterated by Melior “must surely have planted a few seeds of doubt in [the audience’s] minds about the young man’s sexual orientation.”41 Melior’s intervention, they assert, and the graphic detail of the

40

41

Bruckner, Shaping Romance, p. 115. The genealogy in the Middle English version extends from line 72 to line 479 and traces the story of Troy and its fall, the taming of the wild state of France (“ther-in was neyther Cyte, castell, ne berowe” [line 318]) by one of Priam’s surviving sons, Marcomiris, and, finally, of his descendants who rule France thereafter. King Clovis, Partonope’s uncle, is the latest in this line of rulers who may trace their ancestry back to Troy. “Male Beauty and Sexual Orientation,” p. 43. Simons and Eley note that the genealogy section of the Prologue in the Old French Partonopeus de Blois (lines 7271–7280) draws on texts that are part of the romans d’antiquité, such as Eneas and the Roman de Troie. Both the audience and the poet, they suggest, had a “shared knowledge” of this tradition. In particular, the Partonopeus Prologue makes use of the Lavine episode from Eneas in which Lavine’s mother accuses Trojan men of having a predisposition to homosexuality (p. 43). See Penny Simons and Penny Eley, “The Prologue to Partonopeus de Blois: Text, Context and Subtext,” French Studies, 49 (1995): pp. 1–16, and Eneas, ed. Jean-Jacques Salverda da Grave (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1975), lines 8567–8595.

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initial bedroom scene are an attempt to “test out the hero’s sexuality”42 and ultimately to dispel the audience’s and the heroine’s suspicions. However, the thorough description of the hero’s beauty, which, in the Old French Prologue (Gildea, lines 543–578), emphasizes the “implicit homosexual dimensions”43 of Partonope’s Trojan lineage, is not included in the Middle English version. Though the Middle English Partonope is undoubtedly handsome – it is his “semelyhede” (Bödtker, line 12006) that finally wins him the tournament and his lady’s hand – the initial description of the hero, which Simons and Eley believe contains “a subversive, feminizing undercurrent suggestive of a homoerotic dimension to the hero’s physical perfection,”44 is not present for the Middle English audience. Melior’s intercession in the English text reads more as a desire to undertake the young man’s chivalric development and transmit her own significant knowledge than as an effort to settle the question of his sexual orientation. The Middle English Melior also does not bring the young man to Chef d’Oire merely to construct her own perfect lover, but also to ensure that Partonope fulfills his noble destiny, one which will have political ramifications that go far beyond the magical bedchamber the lovers initially inhabit. Thus, Melior’s brief reminder of Partonope’s lineage underscores her role in a history that began with the fall of Troy and the founding of France by Partonope’s ancestor, Marcomiris, and will end with Partonope himself becoming the lord of Blois and ascending to the throne of Byzantium. Melior’s patronage of Partonope begins sexually, but continues with thorough lessons in chivalry. For twelve months, Partonope enjoys all the luxuries of Melior’s kingdom (including herself) and perfects his skills at the leisure activities of a young nobleman: hunting, hawking, and fishing. When Partonope wants to return to France to visit his family, Melior grants him leave to go but also informs him that his father and uncle have both died in the time he has been gone, and that Saracens have invaded his country. The news Melior delivers, while tragic, also acts as a catalyst for Partonope to begin the next stage in his education. When he returns to France, he will no longer be a child or the apprentice of the older men in the country; with his training complete, Partonope is now their only hope to withstand the invaders. However, before he can put theory into practice, Melior must teach Partonope all he will need to know about successful knighthood: Drawe yow to armes and knyghthode, And loke there lacke ynne yow no manhode. Loke ȝe be large and geuyth faste. Where to haue goode be not agaste; 42 43 44

Simons and Eley, “Male Beauty and Sexual Orientation,” p. 49. Simons and Eley, “Male Beauty and Sexual Orientation,” p. 53. Simons and Eley, “Male Beauty and Sexual Orientation,” p. 46.

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A Woman’s “Crafte” Ye schalle haue y-nowe of me. And [yf] ye canne aspye ther be Any worthy knygthtys thorow the londe, In alle the haste loke that ye fownde, There as they bene yn armes bolde, Wyth gode y-now hem to wyth-holde. Loke thatt ye be gentyll, lowly, and meke, And geuyth to hem gode clothys eke. Alle-so of speche beyth fayre and lowlyche As wele to the pore as to the Reche. Affter my cowncel loke thatt ye wyrke, And louyth welle God and holy chyrche. Ye mowe notte fayle of hye cheualrye, Yff ȝe loue God and owr lady. (lines 2405–2422)

In her capacity as Partonope’s sponsor, Melior gradually distributes information to the young knight, presenting him with new activities and challenges as he becomes ready to face them. Though she begins the period of schooling with a review of an ancestral history Partonope already knows, Melior concludes with an opportunity to apply the new lessons of chivalry she teaches him to a real situation. Melior’s chivalric lesson is comprehensive; it includes instructions to show “manhode” in battle, to be “lowlyche” or gracious and humble in his speech and bearing, and to be generous or “large.”45 Unlike the influential heroines in Troilus and Criseyde or Amoryus and Cleopes, which I discuss in the previous two chapters, implicit in Melior’s directive is another aspect of her role toward Partonope: financial patron. After telling Partonope to be generous, she quickly assures him, “Where to haue goode be not agaste; / Ye schalle haue y-nowe of me” (lines 2408–2409). Melior not only instructs him in the ways of knighthood, but will also sponsor his attempts financially. She controls every aspect of Partonope’s new life as a young knight. Partonope is also encouraged to pay attention to the knights around him; if any are particularly worthy and bold, he should retain them “wyth gode” (line 2414) and “geuyth to hem gode clothys eke” (line 2416) to garner their loyalty and services. The lessons Melior gives Partonope are not only suggestions 45

Melior’s sponsorship and program of education for Partonope shares certain similarities with other medieval romances. For example, the heroines in Marie de France’s lai of Lanval, the Breton lai Graelent, and Thomas Chestre’s Sir Launfal, which I discuss in Chapter Four, provide their lovers with the accoutrements of warfare and chivalric success, such as money, clothing, and horses (Hibbard, Medieval Romance, pp. 208–209). Bruckner notes similarities with the Lady of the Lake’s abduction and education of Lancelot in the thirteenth-century romance Lancelot en prose (p. 248, note 34). In John Metham’s Middle English romance Amoryus and Cleopes, the heroine provides her love with a thorough lesson in dragon lore and natural science in addition to giving him magical objects that will keep him safe during his battle with a poisonous serpent (The Works of John Metham, ed. Hardin Craig, EETS o.s. 132 [London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co., 1916]). See Chapter Two of this study for my discussion of Metham’s romance.

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on how to be brave and successful in battle, but are instructions on how to be a noble leader. Partonope will need to be able to rally “worthy knygthtys thorow the londe” (line 2411) to fight for him because he will one day be the emperor of Byzantium, not just the ruler of Blois, the portion of France he inherited from his father. Melior grooms Partonope to be a knight, a husband, and a king; thus, the time he spends in Chef d’Oire can be read not as a “term of stasis” or “knightly inaction,” as some critics have suggested,46 but as a crucial element of Partonope’s education where his patron and lover provides him with the personal experience and chivalric lessons he needs to succeed. Later in the narrative, Melior gets the opportunity to make her private decision – to win Partonope’s heart and take him as her lover – a valid, public choice. It is at this point in the romance, a crucial moment for the heroine, when her honor is under public scrutiny, that the women readers in the audience are given two examples of female sponsorship to follow: Melior and her sister, Urake. Unlike tales in which two female characters are rendered as easily identifiable opposites – one good and the other bad, one exemplary and the other evil – the characters of Melior and Urake are figured simply as two different options, both with advantages and drawbacks.47 Urake’s intervention in the narrative is twofold: first, she attempts to act as her sister’s conscience when Melior’s and Partonope’s love affair is discovered, and second, she accommodates the knight and heals his illness after he is cast out of Melior’s palace. Urake attends to all the knight’s needs, including any cosmetic adjustments needed to restore Partonope’s famed beauty, such as washing his hair regularly with “a certeyn asshe” to “amende” the color of his newly acquired grey hairs (lines 7596–7598). However, Urake’s ministrations during Partonope’s convalescence go far beyond the physical. She takes over for her sister’s suspended patronage when Melior banishes Partonope from the kingdom because of his betrayal of her conditions of secrecy, ensuring that the young knight will never be without female sponsorship, particularly at so critical a point in his learning process. In fact, Urake’s patronage is so 46

47

Claire Jackson, “The City as Two-Way Mirror in the Middle English Partonope of Blois,” Mediaevalia 25 (2004): pp. 197–207 (p. 204). Jackson reads Partonope’s sojourn in Melior’s kingdom as offering the knight no opportunity for “personal (and particularly chivalric) development” (p. 204). See also Mieszkowski’s discussion of Partonope as a “powerless dependent” during this period (“Urake and the Gender Roles,” p. 184) and Eley’s and Simons’s assertion that the process of Partonope’s maturity in the Old French version (though their argument would apply to the Middle English translation as well) does not begin until the young knight violates his agreement with Melior and is exiled from Chef d’Oire (“Partonopeus de Blois and Chrétien,” p. 329). R. W. Hanning asserts that Melior and Urake represent “two models of romantic artistry”: Melior’s is characterized by magic and romance, while Urake’s is less sensational and more realistic. The text moves from one mode of artistry to another when Partonope becomes an “active participant” in the romance and shines the lantern on Melior (“Audience as Co-Creator of the First Chivalric Romances,” Yearbook of English Studies 11 [1981]: pp. 1–28 [p. 18]). For a more clear-cut example of good and bad female characters in the romance Sir Launfal, see my discussion of Tryamour and Gwennere in Chapter Four.

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successful, his rehabilitation so complete, that Melior’s sister and her assistant, Persewis, are in danger of falling in love with Partonope themselves. The character of Urake has received much critical attention in recent years. For example, she is read alternately as one more in a series of female authority figures from whom Partonope must escape in order to gain personal autonomy;48 as a “realist” figure or “debunker of male fantasies” who forces Partonope and Melior to face the genuine social and political challenges that obstruct their relationship;49 and as an example of the female “go-between” figure in medieval romance who facilitates the social and psychological development of both hero and heroine and reconciles the lovers to a relationship more in line with traditional gender roles.50 Hosington describes Urake’s love for Partonope as “restorative” compared to Melior’s “destructive” love of the hero, and suggests that Urake’s engin or subtle manipulations of the situation succeed where Melior’s “crafte” or necromancy do not.51 Yet while Urake’s methods of influence certainly differ from those of her sister, Urake actually continues the patterns of patronage and encouragement of Partonope’s chivalric development begun by Melior. The spheres of influence each sister inhabits should be read as complementary rather than competing stages within the larger experience of Partonope’s development.52 The hero’s education, though interrupted for a time, resumes and is maintained by women’s influence, which is represented in the romance primarily by Melior and Urake.53 Therefore, female audience members may profitably follow the example of sponsorship offered by either woman. When Partonope betrays his love by using an enchanted lantern to see her against her will, Melior mourns the loss of her honor and the fact that all of her people will “knowe a-pertely / Þat I haue kepte yowe for my loue” (line 6040). Her sister, Urake, begs Melior to forgive her untrue lover, offering a way for Melior to have Partonope and to rehabilitate her honor. She counsels Melior: “thynkethe of whatte estate ye be / … / Þynkethe ye ar[e] quene and 48 49 50 51 52 53

Eley and Simons, “Partonopeus de Blois and Chrétien,” p. 329. Joan M. Ferrante, “Male Fantasy and Female Reality in Courtly Literature,” Women’s Studies 11 (1984): pp. 67–97 (p. 67). See Mieszkowski’s “Urake and the Gender Roles” for a discussion of Urake’s interaction with both Melior and Partonope as a go-between. Brenda Hosington, “Voices of Protest and Submission: Portraits of Women in Partonopeu de Blois and its Middle English Translation,” Reading Medieval Studies 17 (1991): pp. 62–65. See Bruckner, Shaping Romance, p. 113. To a lesser extent, Persewis and Armant’s wife continue the pattern of female influence and patronage of Partonope. Persewis is Urake’s assistant during Partonope’s rehabilitation and aids her lady in preparing him for the tournament in which he will compete. Like her sister, Urake provides the knight with armor, weapons, and battle gear (lines 8304–8334). Armant is a tyrannical knight who imprisons Partonope and his squires before he can participate in the tournament; taking pity on the noble man, Armant’s wife paroles Partonope on the condition that he pledge to return to prison before her husband arrives home. As do Urake and Persewis, Armant’s wife supplies Partonope with all the accoutrements of battle: a war horse, arms, and a silver shield (lines 9322–9337).

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lady of þys londe. / No man may be any bonde / Yowe restrayne fro yowre desyre” (lines 6235–6245). Urake reminds Melior that she has been operating under her lords’ sense of propriety; it was the noblemen of Byzantium who decreed that she should marry. Melior, however, chose a young “chylde” in secret and herself undertook to make him a man before notifying the people in her kingdom that she had found an appropriate candidate. Because Melior believed she must exercise her will clandestinely, she imposed strict limitations on Partonope (such as the prohibition from seeing her or anyone in her kingdom for two and a half years)54 that are based on male expectations of appropriate female behavior. Urake’s solution, however, involves Melior publicly owning her desires. Melior must gather all her lords together immediately and “tellyth [them] playnely a lorde and a make [i.e., mate] / Ye haue I-chose yowre husbonde to be. / And lette hem þen the person se” (lines 6288–6290). When they behold such a handsome knight, Urake continues, “what mowe yowre lordes sey þer-to? / For to your luste they moste a-gre” (lines 6296–6297). Thus, Melior will first inform them that her decision is already made and then reveal the man she has chosen. Her nobles will agree to her “luste” because she is their queen; they will be happy about it because Partonope is a handsome knight. The remedy Urake provides deflects attention away from the fact that Melior took a lover before marriage and consolidates all of Melior’s political power. Urake advises, “thus may beste be hydde your shame, / For none of þem may yowe blame” (lines 6301–6302). Melior’s shame must be hidden, not by denying that she made the choice herself – or even by claiming rape – but by pre-empting gossip and exercising her royal prerogative. Urake suggests this course of action so that her sister can obtain “fully [her] plesyre” (line 6304) and can “rule hem alle ryghte as ye luste” (line 6307). Thus, Melior’s honor can be regained, her desire for sexual “plesyre” can be validated, and she can rule her country according to her own wishes rather than those of her lords. Urake’s suggestion offers Melior a solution to all her problems, including the loss of her honor and her autonomy in choosing a husband, but the solution is predicated on Melior’s willingness to forgive Partonope. This, however,

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Partonope violates this mandate when he uses the magical lantern provided by his mother to penetrate Melior’s enchantments and “see” his lover for the first time. The restrictions Melior places on the relationship have their source in the fairy-mistress characters of Celtic myth: “some form of taboo is almost universally characteristic of stories in which supernatural beings enter into relations with mortals” (Hibbard, Medieval Romance, p. 209, note 20). As is the case in Thomas Chestre’s Sir Launfal, the Partonope poet’s adaptation of this Celtic plot element transforms the prohibition placed on a human lover of a supernatural being into a “test of love between humans” (p. 209). But there is another level of interpretation available in this scene: Partonope, when he prematurely exposes his lover’s body with the lantern, violates the patronage agreement between himself and Melior. After this infraction, Melior’s love, and the financial and chivalric perquisites he received, and even her wisdom and guidance, are all rightfully withdrawn. See also Bruckner’s discussion of the “humanization of the Celtic model” (Shaping Romance, p. 123).

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is precisely what Melior is not willing to grant her lover, even though she “shalle full ofte bere blame, / [And] Hyt shalle fulle fowle a-peyre [her] name” (lines 6311–6312) when she takes another husband. Melior refuses to forgive Partonope and thereby salvage her reputation because Partonope must be taught a final, crucial knightly lesson: how to remain true to one’s lady. Included in the lesson is the knight’s duty to keep his word, particularly to the woman he loves. Partonope must be punished because he betrayed not only his lover but his teacher and patron, the one even Partonope credits with all his martial success and the liberation of France from the Saracens: “Þorowe hur ys pes come in-to þys lande. / She hath made me to take on hande / Þys batayle, þorowe wyche I haue þe pryce” (lines 5780–5782). In order for Partonope to learn this final lesson in her chivalric curriculum, Melior must publicly sacrifice rather than restore her honor. At the crucial moment, Melior simply does nothing and Partonope is exiled from the kingdom. Melior’s unwillingness to act begins Partonope’s trials, his rejection of his family in France, his insane wanderings in the wilderness, and finally his return to health under Urake’s care. The decision to reject Partonope also commences Melior’s own trials. Not only must Melior live with the grief of losing her beloved, but her refusal to exercise her royal will, and to make known her “desyre” and “luste,” subjugates her to the Byzantine lords again. Â� and Partonope’s sexual relationship is discovered, the nobles After Melior’s redouble their efforts to bring about a marriage for their queen; Melior must comply. Thus, Urake offers Melior (and the women readers of the romance) a second template for female behavior, one that involves a public acknowledgement of her decisions. Urake’s option, however, is appropriate for a queen, but not for a female chivalric patron. In order for Partonope to learn from his betrayal of Melior’s trust, she must refuse to be reconciled with him, even if it means enduring social excoriation. Much like Melior’s internal monologue during her first critical “choice” in the romance, Urake’s counsel, known only to her sister and the audience, exposes some of the logic behind Melior’s seemingly weak decision. While neither option is portrayed as overtly “correct,” Melior’s choice to suffer public humiliation rather than to exert royal power will ultimately enhance Partonope’s chivalric education – and Melior’s status as his dedicated sponsor – more than marrying the young knight immediately would have done. The tournament, which takes place at the end of Partonope of Blois, provides the venue for Melior’s final opportunity to make a public choice. This event, ostensibly a way for her to choose a husband, develops, much like the previous opportunities Melior is given, into a compromise of her right to choose. This scene has become the focus of a recent critical discussion of Melior’s character development; it is cited as proof of both Melior’s continued and compromised authority in the romance. Mieszkowski, for example, remarks that there is “the temptation … to argue that [Melior] retains [her] 105



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self-confidence and power as the romance progresses,”55 but Mieszkowski sees Melior’s counter-intuitive public choice of the Sultan during the tournament as signaling her complete resignation to authority figures.56 Similarly, Jackson reads Melior’s behavior in the tournament scene as an indication that “her autonomy is lost forever.”57 Readings such as these, however, depend upon the belief that Melior’s power is based primarily on her magical abilities. While these are undoubtedly the most spectacular of her powers, her necromancy should be seen as part of a larger body of knowledge, one that includes science, theology, chivalry, and the ability to use performance to overcome social obstacles. Though Melior may lose her magical abilities, the audience realizes that Partonope’s eventual success in the tournament – and the happy conclusion to their troubled love story – is accomplished primarily through Melior’s teaching and patronage of the young knight and through her seeming capitulation to the demands of others. As Bruckner aptly observes, “Melior’s deceptive hiding of her true feelings is the new form her invisibility … takes.58 The heroine’s final performance of submission begins even before the tournament. After Partonope’s exile, Melior reveals to Urake that the lords of her land have met to discuss her marital situation and “of all her counseylle þis [is] þe accorde / Þat I moste algate haue a lorde” (lines 7952–7953). While they agree that she must marry, however, they cannot agree on a choice. A knight named Armelus remarks that “eiche man [of the company of lords] for his avauntage doþe chese, / Full litill heede take they of my ladies ease” (lines 8005–8006). Rather, Armelus suggests, Melior “hir soueraigne lorde chose she sholde” (line 8022). In order to get a lord who possesses “manhode and prowesse” (line 8024), however, he suggests that they stage a huge three-day tournament. Of all the knights who will compete, a panel of judges can chose six or seven “of þe worthiest, / And which my lady liketh best / Hym she moste take for his souerayne” (lines 8087–8089). Melior informs Urake that “I am assented to her entente” (line 8106), even though “to love Partonope I haue more skill / Then any of þo þat they wole chese” (lines 8114–8115). Thus, the last “choice” Melior will make is not really a true choice. She does not have the right to choose not to marry, nor can she choose any man she likes. Although he is the staunchest advocate of Melior’s right to choose a husband, Armelus still believes that the lords should be involved in the process as well. If left to her own devices, he implies, Melior might “chese a lorde for richesse” but who “lak[s] manhode and prowesse, / This myght be mysschief to vs all” (lines 8023–8025). A tournament would dispose of the undesirable candidates. The lords, therefore, limit and guide her choice, 55 56 57 58

Mieszkowski, “Urake and the Gender Roles,” p. 189. Mieszkowski, “Urake and the Gender Roles,” p. 193. Jackson, “City as Two-Way Mirror,” p. 207. Bruckner, Shaping Romance, p. 138.

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only allowing her the pick of pre-approved candidates. Thus, it is the nobles rather than the queen who will make “þe rightfull Iugement, / Who þat shall haue þe gree of þe turnamente” (lines 8081–8082). Melior laments her predicament to Urake, who expresses the situation succinctly: “They shull chese, but ye moste love” (line 8259). If she had asserted her royal prerogative when Partonope was first discovered with her, Melior would not now be subject to the decisions of her advisors. However, Partonope would then not be in a position to participate in the tournament without Melior’s influence and guidance (and, indeed, without her knowledge for most of the event). Partonope will win Melior’s hand according to the standards set by the men of Byzantium, but with the skills and means provided by his lover and patron. His independent success in the tournament will prove that he has learned his final chivalric lesson: loyalty to one’s love. Even though Melior’s choice is significantly circumscribed by her lords’ involvement, there are two competitors at the end of the tournament from whom she will pick a husband: the Sultan of Persia and Partonope. Most of the judges choose the Sultan, who has promised to convert to Christianity for Melior’s sake; one of the lords even goes so far as to deny Melior a choice altogether. The Lord Clarin says, “moste ye / Giffe hym [i.e., the sultan] your love and take hym for lorde” (lines 11717–11718). It is Armelus, however, not Melior, who reminds the panel of judges that it is the queen’s decision. After realizing on the second day of the tournament that Partonope is one of the knights competing, Melior insists upon seeing the two winners without their armor. Finally, she asserts that her opinion will rule: “I ame your lady and your queen, / My choice lieth in þe semlyhede of [þe] two” (lines 12005–12006). When the two men are inspected by the crowd without battle gear, all the judges agree that Partonope is the best candidate. Her lords’ unanimous approval of her lover should only make Melior’s public choice of Partonope the more joyous and certain; it is the exact fulfillment of Urake’s previous suggestion. Months before, when Partonope was discovered in the queen’s bedchamber, Melior could have announced her decision to marry him; after the nobles had seen how handsome he was, Urake asserted, they would happily support Melior’s royal decision. Now that another situation in which Melior could publicly declare her choice of Partonope presents itself, however, she dissembles. As in the previous instances where Melior has faced the crucial decision of whether to make her desires public, the narrator pauses and gives the audience an intimate look at the contradiction between the heroine’s private desires and her public actions. When Melior hears the nobles unanimously agree that Partonope is the best knight, the narrator carefully outlines Melior’s feelings: “though gretely trespassed hath he [i.e., Partonope], / Hir herte was full of mercy and pite” (lines 12088–12089). With her next breath, however, Melior contradicts what is in her heart and feigns a preference for the Sultan. She says, “myn own choise ye haue put me fro. / For my will was to haue 107



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had þe Soudan. / Ye haue yove me to anoþer m[an]” (lines 12091–12093). Melior allows the judges to believe that they have persuaded her to accept their choice, even though the audience is again reassured that “þis lady in herte was gladde / Of his Iugement; yite she made / As though she had no deynte / That to hir was Iuged Partonope” (lines 12098–12101). As with the choice to allow Partonope to “rape” her, Melior again performs as a passive woman acted on by men. However, the reading audience of the romance is aware more than ever that Melior’s acquiescence is just an act. Her behavior reinforces the notion that women’s influence must often be exerted behind the scenes, and that even the most controversial of desires, such as the freedom to take a lover before marriage, can be accomplished with the right public performance.59 Melior’s submissive behavior throughout this series of choices not only shields her sexual proclivities from public scrutiny but also protects her role as Partonope’s teacher and patron. However, at critical moments when Melior’s suitability as Partonope’s lover and educator are under attack, her compliance and compromising in public decisions is shown to be a façade. At these points Melior not only defends her guidance of Partonope’s path to maturity, but also the comprehensiveness of the lessons she gives him. The audience not only meets the confident and intelligent woman behind the acquiescent damsel once more, but learns of the thorough classical and religious education behind Melior’s “crafte.” In a struggle to win Partonope’s loyalty, Melior is pitted against the Bishop of Paris and Partonope’s own mother, who believe that she will taint the young knight with her witchcraft.60 Indeed, the life of chastity and religious devotion espoused by the bishop seems to be placed in direct opposition to the physical love and knightly instruction offered by Melior. However, the poet provides the audience with an example of how the two ways of life – worldly and religious – can be successfully combined: through Melior’s patronage only. The knightly 59

60

Roberta L. Krueger discusses the various performances depicted in the romance – public and private, oral and written – in her article “Textuality and Performance in Partonopeu de Blois,” in Assays: Critical Approaches to Medieval and Renaissance Texts, volume III, ed. Peggy Knapp (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985), pp. 57–72. Krueger reads Partonope’s endurance of Melior’s performances throughout the text as dramatizing “the dilemma of the reader seeking meaning in an elusive text” (p. 60): both attempt to interpret the “signs” of Melior’s behavior that are perceived but not understood (p. 59). However, as I discussed above, the moment that Melior allows the audience into her private thoughts about the staging of the bedroom scene – a performance to which Partonope is never entirely privy – the bond between the audience’s and Partonope’s perspectives is broken, and Melior’s performances (one for the audience and one for her lover) multiply. After Melior’s final duplicity in her third “choice,” the various “modes of transmission and reception conflate” (p. 64). The bond between Partonope and his mother is represented as much stronger in the Middle English version than in the Old French text; the Middle English knight also condemns his mother far more vehemently for her hand in his betrayal of Melior (Hosington, “Voices of Protest,” pp. 65–66). Hosington also notes that, with the introduction of Partonope’s maternal grandmother in the Middle English text, the antagonism against Melior is increased, which “elevate[s]” the debate about Melior’s wickedness beyond that of simple “maternal possessiveness” (p. 66).

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lessons Melior gives to Partonope, drawn from her own vast repository of both secular and religious learning, specifically include instructions both on worldly prowess and on spiritual devotion. During Partonope’s initial campaign to rid France of the Saracen threat, his mother contrives to keep him there once she hears Partonope has a lover whom he is forbidden to see. She complains to the king that she has lost her son “by þe deuyllys Enchauntemente” (line 5056). Melior is described to the king by the mother as “a þynge of ffeyre, / As þowe hyt has ben a woman or a ladye” (lines 5072–5073). She claims that Melior, whose magical talents and invisibility are immediately associated with the “deuellys dawnce” (line 5087), will jeopardize Partonope’s soul. After an unsuccessful attempt to keep Partonope in France, his mother enlists the help of the Church. On her son’s second visit, she sends for the Bishop of Paris, for “he ys a clerke, and þer-to ryghte wysse, / And can goode skyll of sermonynge” (lines 5643– 5644). As she did to the King of France, the mother claims to the bishop that Partonope “ys taken wyth ffendys of ffayre” (line 5656) who will “hys body and sowle brynge / In-to some myscheffe” (lines 5668–5669). Although the bishop’s good “sermonynge” is recruited to counter Melior’s supposed fairy magic, the reader soon realizes that the Church is the mother’s own witchcraft. Bruckner has persuasively shown that the relationship between Melior, Partonope, and his mother draws on the narrative model of Adam’s expulsion from Paradise. In the Partonope poet’s adaptation of this model, the role of God is assigned to Melior and Eve is recast as Partonope’s mother.61 The mother tempts her son with illicit knowledge when she offers him the lantern to expose Melior’s body and thereby reveal the truth about their relationship to her people; this is precisely the knowledge that was forbidden to him by Melior, the constructor of the lovers’ private, idyllic “garden.” Though both Partonope’s mother and the bishop work in the name of Christianity, both actually incite Partonope to betray his lady and his patron, forcing him to choose between the seemingly opposed earthly and Christian love. As the bishop “pleyed [his] wyles” (line 5691) with Partonope, he appeals to both the young knight’s vanity and his religious beliefs. The bishop tells Partonope to thank God for his world-renown reputation of “gentylnes, / Off curtesy and off hye prouesse” (lines 5696–5697). He suggests that it is from God and not Melior that these talents come, “for wytte well ye / Off yowreselfe hyt may not be” (lines 5700–5701). The bishop’s “sermone” (line 5729) to Partonope outlines the sharp distinctions between secular and sacred: “Alle tho graces comethe fro hym; / Fro yowe cometh no-þynge but fowle synne. / Ther-fore sette alle yowre entente / To fulfyll hys commaundemente. / Serue

61

Bruckner, Shaping Romance, p. 133. Partonope himself compares his situation to Adam’s: “Adame loste paradyse þorowe hys folye, / Butte yette a gretter losse haue I” (Bödtker, lines 6471–6472; Gildea, lines 5229–5235).

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not a-nothe[r] wyth hys yefte” (lines 5706–5710).62 The bishop underscores the point that Partonope cannot have both God and Melior as his master; if everything that comes from humans is “fowle synne” (line 5707), then love between two people is a foul sin as well. The bishop’s sermon contradicts the concept that Melior is the source of Partonope’s gifts and a worthy recipient of Partonope’s love; the knight’s affection and service must be rendered only to the true source of the gifts, God. The bishop, as though fearing that the sermon might not be sufficient to convince Partonope to forsake Melior and the earthly love she supposedly represents, switches genres and recites a religious saint’s life to Partonope in the form of a chivalric romance: “Þen he tolde hym a nobell story / Off holy wrytte, and howe þe vyctory / Off þe deuylle seynttes hadde / In olde tyme, and bade hym be gladde, / And on þe deuylle showe hys knyghthode, / Sythen in batayle he lacked no manhode” (lines 5736–5741). The bishop holds Partonope’s attention by relating a subject from “holy wrytte” as a “nobell story” of “vyctory” over a fierce enemy. Just as the saints triumphed over the devil, so has Partonope’s “knyghthode” overpowered his opponents in “batayle.” The Old French version, however, does not include the bishop’s “romance.” Rather, the young knight is persuaded to confess his “pechié [sin]” (Gildea, line 4435) on the basis of the cleric’s initial sermon alone. By incorporating the narrative into his already persuasive sermon, the bishop in the Middle English version sets the secular and divine worlds more directly at odds. The cleric invites Partonope to re-conceive of all his chivalric deeds as sacred rather than worldly tasks; Partonope must prove himself worthy of God’s patronage, not Melior’s. Partonope thus receives conflicting instructions on how to be a Christian knight; it is from this inconsistency in his knightly curricula that his troubles arise. The bishop’s sermon and hagiographical romance encourage the young man to fight only for God and to “loke none erthely loue yowe suppryse” (line 5723). Partonope’s rewards, the bishop suggests, will be enjoyed in the next world. Both of the clergyman’s discourses attempt to ascribe Melior’s love and influence to the secular realm alone. But the audience must remember that Melior’s lessons to Partonope not only emphasize fighting for personal honor and a woman’s love, but learning to “louyth welle God and holy chyrche.” Melior tells Partonope, “Ye mowe notte fayle of hye cheualrye, / Yff ȝe loue God and owr lady” (lines 2420–2422). Partonope assures the bishop that his lover “euer conselleth me to drawe / Hym [God] to serue and eke to please” (lines 5763–5764). Melior’s characterization of knighthood provides a way for the hero (and the couple) to have the best of both the secular and sacred 62

While the bishop in the Old French text does caution Partonope not to follow the influence of anyone other than God – “ne servés pas del sien autrui” (line 4399) – he does not specifically mention “fowle” human sin. Thus, the bishop’s sermon in the Old French text does not emphasize the difference between secular and sacred, or the explicit dangers of choosing the world over God.

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worlds. The ecclesiastical representative in Partonope of Blois advocates a strictly devout way of life, one that allows only for spiritual love. The church sets its “romance” of religious love and knighthood in opposition to the “fowle synne” (line 5707) of worldly and sexual love. Thus, the religious knighthood the bishop recommends to Partonope is not a deleterious way of life. However, the Bishop of Paris is also the co-conspirator of Partonope’s mother, a malicious and manipulative woman, and the narrator subtly informs the audience which choice Partonope should have made. Partonope is told to use the enchanted lantern (graciously provided by his mother and the bishop) to view Melior and discover whether she is truly an unholy “fowle þynge” (line 5800) as they claim. Even before he commits this betrayal, however, the narrator condemns Partonope’s behavior: “Fulle preuely he hyd þys fals werke, / As a traytowre fals and felle” (lines 5831–5832). Melior’s standard of knightly behavior and the love she offers him (both for her and for God) is the correct choice for Partonope; it is the option that combines the full range of chivalric values rather than setting some of these values at odds. The patronage program and chivalric instruction Melior offers Partonope is a reflection of her own education, one which joins classical knowledge with training in Christian divinity.63 While Partonope’s mother and the bishop attempt to demonize Melior as a “ffendys of ffayre” (line 5656), Melior reveals that her magical powers actually stem from a scientific and religious education.64 A closer examination of Melior’s upbringing, which she outlines for Partonope in great detail, yields a picture of the true balance between religious and secular learning. After the magical lantern reveals that Melior is “þe ffeyreste shape creature / That euer was formed þorowe nature” (lines 5864–5865), Melior relates her history more fully to Partonope. She is the daughter of the emperor of Constantinople, a ruler who was driven out of his kingdom by the lord of Persia. As Melior was her father’s only heir, “off me þer-fore grette hede toke he, / And me to scole a-none dyd sette, / And grette clerkes a-none lette ffette / To lerne me clergy and grette wysdome, / And þat I myghte þe better gouerne þe kyn[g]dome” (lines 5913–5917).65 Rather than

63

64

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Bruckner refers to Melior’s knowledge in the Old French romance as the “entire encyclopedia of twelfth-century learning” (Shaping Romance, p. 123). The description of the stages and subjects of Melior’s education are almost identical in both the Old French and Middle English versions. The irony, of course, is that the lantern Partonope’s mother offers her son is made with “the crafte of Nygromancy” (Bödtker, line 5850). This is sanctioned by the Church, but is the same “crafte” for which the mother condemns Melior for practicing on her son. Hibbard notes that the Partonope poet imbues the fairy-mistress character with orthodox Christianity in his depiction of Melior (Medieval Romance, p. 205). Melior offers this circumstance as the reason for her father’s attention to her education even though she has a sister, Urake. Ferrante speculates that Melior’s education as the sole heir to her father’s throne fits a pattern of only (or oldest) female children who receive instruction in science, letters, and necromancy. This group of “exceptionally educated women” includes the heroine of Le Bel Inconnu, Isolt in Tristan und Isolt, and even the historical figure of Heloise (Joan M. Ferrante, “The Education of Women in the Middle Ages in Theory, Fact and Fantasy,” in Beyond

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anxiously attempting to find a husband for his daughter, as Melior’s nobles do, the emperor raises his daughter to rule the kingdom after he is gone. Toward this end, she embarks on an education usually reserved for male clerics and soon proves that she is blessed with natural talents and intellect. From her over “c. [one hundred] mastres” (line 5918), Melior learns þe VIJ. sciens … parfyghtly. And after þat þen lerned I To knowe þe Erbe and here vertu, And eke þe rotes where euer they grewe, Where þat in kynde were colde or hote, All maner of spyces I knewe by rote, Howe in phisike þey haue here worchynge. The seke in-to hele I can well brynge.â•… (lines 5920–5927)

Beginning with the seven liberal arts, Melior advances through the knowledge of natural remedies to medicine.66 After she had mastered the whole of secular education, Melior continues, “I lerned Diuinite, / To knowe þe personys of þe trinite” (lines 5928–5929). Her education in the secular sciences and in divinity goes far beyond basic doctrine; these fields are taught to her by many clerks, who ensure that their young student has a thorough and “parfyght” knowledge of both. Eventually, although her masters “were boþe wyse and sage, / In alle the vij. artys [she] dyd hem passe” (lines 5931–5932). To challenge her mind further, Melior asserts, “[t]hen I lerned Enchawntemente[s], / To knowe þe crafte of experimente[s]” (lines 5933–5935). This final training, which emerged from the comprehensive education she had already received, does not conflict with her religious training at all. Melior simply needed further intellectual challenges than her previous tutors could provide. Magic is represented as the next legitimate stage in her education rather than something she pursues on her own. She reports to Partonope that it was at the behest of her masters and her father that “to Nygromancy sette I was” (line 5933). Melior conducts these experiments “in [her] chamber often preuely / … / For oponly I wolde no-þynge done, / My konynge shulde haue be kydde [known] a-none” (lines 5936–5939). There is no explanation for this secrecy in the Middle English text; the Old French version states that she had no wish “estre escrïee [to be disparaged]” (Gildea, line 4628). Perhaps she learned early in life that

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Their Sex: Learned Women of the European Past, ed. Patricia H. Labalme [New York University Press, 1980], pp. 32–33). The systematic nature of Melior’s education, and, by extension, the comprehensiveness of her influence, surpasses that of even Cassandra and Cleopes, discussed in Chapters One and Two of this book. Whereas Cassandra and Cleopes master a single subject – history and science – and use this specialty as the basis for their sponsorship, Melior becomes proficient in every possible facet of formal medieval education, extending even to necromancy and divinity.

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a woman must obscure her true abilities and feelings in order to perform acquiescence to others’ perceptions of appropriate feminine behavior and education. Whatever the reason for the concealment of her magical ability, Melior makes it clear that her father and her teachers approved of her training in necromancy. She notes that “when hyt lyked þe Emperowre / To se my craffte, þen In a towre / Or In a chamber þus preuely / Hym to dysporte[,] þen wolde I / And my mastres at hys commawndemente, / Pley craftes …” (Bödtker, lines 5940–5945). At this stage in her learning, Melior’s talents equal those of her “mastres”; they all perform for the emperor together. The results of Melior’s experiments are benign illusions rather than the spiteful magic that Partonope’s mother uses to create the lantern. Melior can make the room seem to grow “in largenesse a myle a-boute / To alle thoo that wythinne were” (lines 5949–5950); she can make night seem like day, and she can create illusions of knightly tournaments or of wild animals.67 It is through this learning and “þe wytte þat Gode haþe sente me” (line 5966) that Melior drew Partonope to her country, and it is from this knowledge that she teaches her young lover to be a brave, amorously devoted, Christian knight. 68 Melior’s role as an exemplum for women’s patronage, then, is not limited to the performance of submission but includes a rehearsal of her own comprehensive education. Melior’s three choices (or four if we consider her choice to bring Partonope to Byzantium) are more than simply the behavior of a woman in love; they are also the means to gain access to and participate in the “all-male club[s]”69 of chivalry and of higher, inclusive education. Partonope of Blois is a romance more structured by the choices of its heroine than the knightly exploits of its eponymous hero. Melior’s character is consistently caught between her own desires and her performance of the desires of others. In the midst of the tournament which will end in her marriage to the winner, Melior expresses her dilemma: a woman “moste kepe counseylle, leste she fall in blame, / Hir privey thoughtes for blemysshyng of hir name” (10749–10750). Men, on the other hand, “mowe speke and sende 67

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Hanning offers an interesting reading of the enchantments Melior conjures to entertain her father; when she produces the jousting and hunting scenes, he suggests, “Melior’s art is here clearly equated with that of a composer of chivalric romances, and her father functions as its commissioning patron” (“Audience as Co-Creator,” p. 18). By the same token, Partonope is also the audience (though not the conscious patron) of Melior’s magical productions. Thus, Melior functions as both artist and patron in the romance. There is a small, but significant, omission in the Middle English version’s description of Melior’s magical abilities. When Melior reveals how she would use “nigremance et enchantement” (Gildea, line 4612) to entertain her father, the Old French poet adds: “Par ce fist Mahons les vertus / Dont il fu puis por Deu tenus [That too is how Mahomet pulled off his marvels, for which he was later reckoned a god]” (lines 4621–4622). The reference to the figure of “Mahomet,” which could potentially associate Melior’s necromancy with the taint of paganism or devilry, does not appear in the Middle English version. I would like to thank Michel-André Bossy for his input on the translation of these lines. Elizabeth Archibald, “Women and Romance,” in A Companion to Middle English Romance, ed. Henk Aertsen and Alasdair MacDonald (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1990), p. 166.

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with penne and Inke / What they wole, and women mow but þinke” (10783– 10784). It is the sublimation of Melior’s desires that enable her to perform so well for Partonope and her nobles; yet this performed subservience seems at first glance not to recommend her as a powerful model of female patronage. However, the “privey thoughtes” that Melior strives to keep concealed from the men around her and, more importantly, that are shared in detail with the audience, ensures that Melior’s character is not only an influential but also a realistic sponsor of her knight. The narrator takes pains to construct an audience for his romance that is sympathetic with the text’s female characters. Women readers of Partonope of Blois encounter several models of female behavior: Urake, who both facilitates Partonope’s personal and physical rehabilitation and entreats Melior to publicize her desire to marry Partonope; Partonope’s mother, who employs the “crafte” of necromancy and the rhetoric of the Church to convince Partonope to betray his love; and, finally, Melior, who must appear to acquiesce to male desires in order to fulfill her own and become a successful patron. In addition to providing an example of sponsorship through persuasive public performance to women readers of the text, Melior embodies another important set of qualities: the successful combination of secular and sacred knowledge. Melior’s education includes the seven classical liberal arts and divinity training; by the same token, her patronage and education of Partonope emphasizes the importance of secular knightliness and prowess in worldly challenges and encourages the young man never to forget his loyalty to God and the Church.

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4 Creative Revisions: Competing Figures of the Patroness in Thomas Chestre’s Sir Launfal

A

s I discuss in my Introduction, one of the larger contributions of this study is its revision and rehabilitation of the traditional reading of the romance heroine as a passive and vulnerable figure.1 I contend that these characters and the romances in which they appear actually modeled a particularly far-reaching and powerful form of cultural agency in the late Middle Ages through various interventions in social and political systems such as patronage. However, in tracing the active forms of intellectual and financial influence demonstrated by the heroine in late medieval romances, we must avoid reading the male figures in these texts – those who are patronized – as passive recipients of female sponsorship. The knights who benefit from women’s influence in these texts may be incorporated into the process of patronage without their initial consent, as in Partonope of Blois, and often must struggle to get a word in edgewise, as in Amoryus and Cleopes. However, the lessons provided by the influential models in these romances are not only for the benefit of the female readers in the audience; male readers of these texts may also glean productive models of behavior as well.2 In order for the patronage system to be successful, men must both recognize and value the counsel and support of the women who seek to advise them. Moreover, they must understand that the system is predicated on the need for acts of sponsorship to be perpetuated; what they learn from their female sponsors they must enact in their own chivalric careers. We have witnessed the continuation of these systems of influence, to a degree, in the romances discussed in previous chapters. For example, in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, Troilus indulges 1

2

For an example of this kind of interpretation of romance heroines, see Lee C. Ramsey’s Chivalric Romances: Popular Literature in Medieval England (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983). William Caxton’s belief that chivalric romances offer crucial models of behavior for both men and women in the Middle Ages is particularly salient to my discussion here. See The Prologues and Epilogues of William Caxton, ed. W. J. B. Crotch, EETS o.s. 176 (London: Oxford University Press, 1928), p. 105 for this assertion in his Prologue to the late fifteenth-century romance Blanchardyn and Eglantine.

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in generosity toward others when he is at the height of happiness in his relationship with Criseyde; in Partonope of Blois, Melior specifically instructs Partonope to spread his wealth and influence widely, if strategically, in order to secure the loyalty of the men who will help him liberate France from the Saracens. However, in Thomas Chestre’s late fourteenth-century romance, Sir Launfal, we encounter a truly collaborative example of patronage, and, arguably, one of the most realistic depictions of the relationship between a female sponsor and her knight.3 Chestre represents the heroine as a continually active and influential presence throughout the narrative; but in addition, he also emphasizes the hero’s discernment and choice of one female patron over another as critical to his success. Thus, Sir Launfal proliferates the models of influence offered to the audience; like Launfal, they must decide which pattern of women’s agency they will follow and understand fully the consequences of their choices. In a rare assertion of medieval authorship, Sir Launfal closes with these lines: “Thomas Chestre made þys tale / Of þe noble knyȝt Syr Launfale” (lines 1039–1040). Despite his desire to attach his name to this particular romance, however, Chestre’s text is actually drawn from a long history of Lanval narratives, made most popular by Marie de France in her twelfth-century Old French lay Lanval.4 Although there is no indication that Chestre knew Marie’s tale directly,5 his version of the Lanval story indicates a particular interest 3

4

5

Chestre’s text is classified by most critics as a Breton lay, or one of a group of short poems produced roughly between 1150 and 1450 “which claim to be literary versions of lays sung by ancient Bretons to the accompaniment of the harp” (The Middle English Breton Lays, ed. Anne Laskaya and Eve Salisbury [Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1995], p. 1). Although there are difficulties in defining the genre of the Breton lay (as indeed there are for defining any medieval genre), John Finlayson concludes that “the lay is generally considered to be both a sub-genre of romance, with its own definitive characteristics which separate it from romance, and to stand in much the same relationship to romance as the short story does to the novel” (“The Form of the Middle English Lay,” The Chaucer Review 19.4 [1985]: pp. 352–368 [p. 352]). Although I will discuss the Celtic affiliations between Sir Launfal and other Breton lays further below, my primary interest in this chapter lies not in the generic discussion of the lay except insofar as the Breton lay can be considered a short sub-genre of romance. Thomas Chestre is also thought to have written two other romances – the ‘Southern’ Octavian and Libeaus Desconus – both of which share similar linguistic and stylistic components with Sir Launfal and both of which are found in British Library, MS Cotton Caligula A.ii with Sir Launfal. For more on these connections, see Libeaus Desconus, ed. M. Kaluza, Altenglische Biblikothek, vol. 5 (Leipsig, 1890) and Kaluza’s “Thomas Chestre, Verfasser des Launfal, Libeaus Desconus und Octavian,” English Studies 18 (1893): pp. 168–184; A. McI. Trounce, “The English Tail-Rhyme Romances,” Medium Aevum 2 (1933): pp. 189–198; Dorothy Everett, “The Relationship of Chestre’s Launfal and Lybeaus Desconus,” Medium Aevum 7 (1938): pp. 29–49; Maldwyn Mills, “The Composition and Style of the ‘Southern’ Octavian, Sir Launfal, and Libeaus Desconus,” Medium Aevum 31 (1962): pp. 88–109; and Octovian Imperator, ed. Frances McSparran (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1979), pp. 55–58. Chestre most likely drew his knowledge of the Lanval story from an early fourteenth-century Middle English translation of Marie’s lay, Sir Landevale. He also follows the anonymous twelfthcentury Breton lay Graelent for certain episodes. See William C. Stokoe, Jr. “The Sources of Sir Launfal: Lanval and Graelent,” PMLA 63 (1948): pp. 392–404. Myra Seaman notes that “every element of Marie[’s text] that we see in Chestre can be found also in either Graelent

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in pulling the fairy lover out of the realm of “Faerye,” making her character easier for a female reader to relate to, learn from, and, perhaps, emulate. Chestre also revises the character of Arthur’s queen, Gwennere, casting her as the proponent of the patronage system in Arthur’s court rather than the king. Thus, he juxtaposes the two most prominent female characters in the romance as opposites on a continuum predicated on the system of largess, constructing two competing, earthly models of female patronage rather than emphasizing a tension between the fairy world and Arthur’s realm, as Marie’s Lanval does. Through the character of Launfal and his relationships with Tryamour and Gwennere, the audience witnesses how a knight may lose retainers and other social connections because of a detrimental sponsorship system and, then, how to construct a new retinue once he is incorporated into a beneficial system. This new environment enables Launfal’s own participation in the patronage process by allowing him to return to joust once each year after his departure from Arthur’s court. Through the knight’s annual reappearance, Tryamour’s initial act of patronage is perpetuated by the man she sponsors. Thus, Sir Launfal, more than any other romance discussed thus far in this study, emphasizes that the larger social structure of patronage (which includes both women and men) is self-sustaining if deployed correctly; discrete acts of sponsorship can have infinite cultural and social resonances. Sir Launfal ultimately asserts that successful participation in the medieval system of sponsorship by both patron and patronized requires discernment, evaluation, and an awareness of the risks involved in choosing the wrong patron. Much has been said about the “Englishing”6 of this romance and its revision of Marie de France’s Lanval for a supposedly less sophisticated, insular audi-

6

or Landevale” (“Thomas Chestre’s Sir Launfal and the Englishing of Medieval Romance,” Medieval Perspectives 15 (2000): p. 105–119 [p. 109]); ultimately, she suggests, we should read Chestre’s text more as an adaptation rather than as a true translation of Marie’s lay. In a more recent article, Seaman advocates reading romances “rhizomatically,” or in terms of the potential variant, multi-valent, non-hierarchical connections between manuscripts rather than the arboreal model represented by Lachmannian stemmatics, which privileges a single, originary, often authorial version or manuscript (“Tugging at the Roots: The Errant Textography of Middle English Romance,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 39.2 [Spring 2009]: pp. 283–303 [p.€296]). Although Seaman discusses this alternate methodology specifically in terms of manuscript versions of the early fourteenth-century romance Bevis of Hamptoun, the caveats she outlines may also be fruitfully applied to the comparative work done in this chapter. My discussion of Chestre’s romance focuses on several of the important narrative and characterization differences between his Middle English text and Marie’s Old French text; however, we must remember that Chestre was not necessarily deliberately revising Marie’s lay, but more likely the intervening Sir Landevale, which is much closer to Marie’s version. Thus, the comparison offered in this chapter between Chestre’s and Marie’s texts should be considered as an investigation of two “rhizomatically” connected versions of the larger Lanval story, rather than of Marie’s original and Chestre’s redaction, a relationship that can too easily fall into a valuing of one over the other as a “purer” and more perfectly realized version of the narrative. For a discussion of this particular term, see Seaman’s “Englishing of Medieval Romance.”

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ence. This assessment, however, has often been used to posit a value judgment about Chestre’s text and, thus, a great deal of the critical energy spent on Sir Launfal has focused on either indicting or excusing the text for what are perceived to be grotesque stylistic and narrative shortcomings. Beginning with Maldwyn Mills’s resounding condemnation of Thomas Chestre as a “literary hack who made uncritical use of any material that presented itself to him,”7 Sir Launfal has endured a good deal of critical censure for what many saw as its preoccupation with rhyme, its substandard revision of an original French tale, and its narrative eccentricities.8 B. K. Martin’s article rehearses these earlier indictments at length, finally suggesting that “many of the features of Sir Launfal which critics find most disagreeable may be explained as the conventions of a specific style, the style of the folktale.”9 Rather than re-evaluating the assessment of the romance’s mediocrity, however, Martin’s work merely excuses it as an adherence to the less sophisticated style of the folktale.10 It is only recently that scholars have begun to consider Chestre’s work on its own merits, suggesting that “the conclusion that his text is a ‘disaster’ or a failure results from unnecessary assumptions about audience and authorial intent.”11 Rather than examining Sir Launfal constantly through the lens of Marie’s text, courtly audience, and culture, Seaman advocates for an understanding that Chestre operates with a different set of standards, one which responds specifically to the late fourteenth-century English cultural and social milieu within which he worked.12 Building on these recent readings of Chestre’s romance, this chapter suggests that the narrative and character revisions in Sir Launfal – those stylistic differences that have been the subject of so much critical debate on the poem – can be best understood as the author’s response to increased late medieval interest in women’s literary and cultural influence, particularly through the system of patronage. 7 8

9 10 11 12

Maldwyn Mills, “Composition and Style,” p. 109. In addition to Mills’s “Composition and Style,” see also Maldwyn Mills, “A Note on Sir Launfal 733–744,” Medium Aevum 35 (1966): pp. 122–124; Michael J. Wright, “The Tournament Episodes in Sir Launfal: A Suggestion,” Parergon 8 (1974): pp. 37–38; and, more recently, A. C. Spearing’s The Medieval Poet as Voyeur: Looking and Listening in Medieval Love-Narratives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 97–120. Even in the introductory material to his edition of Sir Launfal (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd., 1960), A. J. Bliss engages in a less than glowing comparison between Chestre’s and Marie’s texts, asserting that Chestre’s work is “highly derivative” and that “only a few stanzas can be considered entirely original” (p. 41). B. K. Martin, “Sir Launfal and the Folktale,” Medium Aevum 35 (1966): pp. 199–210 (p. 200). Martin notes that “folktales are abstract sketches without depth” (“Sir Launfal and the Folktale,” p. 208). Seaman, “Englishing of Medieval Romance,” p. 108. “Englishing of Medieval Romance,” p. 109. Seaman reads these values as a greater “acceptance and appreciation of the material, secular world” (p. 110) than in Marie’s text. Dinah Hazell suggests that Sir Launfal responds to “the socioeconomic, political, and ideological shifts that accompanied the fading feudalism in England, and speaks for a sector of the populace often muted by more elegant, courtly poets” (“The Blinding of Gwennere: Thomas Chestre as Social Critic,” Arthurian Literature 20 [2003]: pp. 123–143 [p. 124]). See also Seaman, “Tugging at the Roots,” p. 290.

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Chestre’s response to these concerns in his narrative may offer more information about the audience of late medieval chivalric romance than has been previously considered. Despite scant and often contradictory evidence about the audience of romances more broadly, the readership of Sir Launfal is described almost uniformly as mixed-gender, but the stylistic and narrative comparisons with Marie de France’s lay have ascribed an unrealistically humble character to the audience of Chestre’s romance. Whereas Marie’s audience has most often been associated with the court of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, the translation of the Lanval story into English almost two hundred years later is seen by Bliss as catering to a “mixed audience of no more than average intelligence.”13 Bliss’s assessment is tempered somewhat by Anne Laskaya’s and Eve Salisbury’s suggestion that Sir Launfal’s English audience, while not necessarily high aristocracy, is “potentially wider and somewhat more varied … perhaps not peasant, but certainly mercantile.”14 In addition to the formal characteristics of Chestre’s lay, the manuscript context of the piece provides some indication of its readership. Sir Launfal is extant in only a single medieval manuscript: British Library, MS Cotton Caligula A.ii.15 The texts in the Caligula miscellany were compiled between 1446 and 1460;16 among the over forty pieces included in the codex are a Latin chronicle, and vernacular scientific, medical, astronomical, and historical texts as well as several religious lyrics and didactic pieces.17 The Caligula manuscript is also one of the largest collections of tail-rhyme romances surviving from the Middle Ages.18 Miscellaneous manuscripts such as these accommodated the literary and practical interests of a large and diverse group of readers, serving as “imaginative and recreational rather than purely factual or spiritual” reading.19 The provenance of the Caligula manuscript is virtu13 14

15

16

17 18

19

Bliss, Sir Launfal, p. 32. Laskaya and Salisbury, The Middle English Breton Lays, p. 203. The fact that Sir Launfal is written in tail-rhyme rather than octosyllabic couplets, suggests that it is “a more popular and less aristocratic poem than the highly crafted Lanval by Marie de France” (p. 202). Hazell corroborates Laskaya’s and Salisbury’s assumption: the “style and cultural indications … suggests a non-courtly audience and author, probably middle class/bourgeoisie” (“The Blinding of Gwennere,” p. 124, n. 3). The MS Cotton Caligula A.ii codex is comprised of two originally independent manuscripts – MSS Cotton Vespasian D.VIII (fols. 1–141) and Vespasian D.XXI (fols. 142–210) – that were bound together sometime before 1654 and given the new shelf mark Caligula A.ii. Gisela Guddat-Figge, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Middle English Romances (München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1976), p. 67. For a complete list of the contents of MS Cotton Caligula A.ii, see Guddat-Figge’s Catalogue, pp. 169–172. In her survey of the kinds of manuscripts in which medieval romances appear, Guddat-Figge remarks on the rarity of entirely secular miscellanies containing romances (Catalogue, p. 25). For more on the tradition of the English tail-rhyme romance, as opposed to those written in the more continental octosyllabic couplet, see Rhiannon Purdie, Anglicising Romance: Tail-Rhyme and Genre in Medieval English Literature (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2008) and Laskaya and Salisbury, Middle English Breton Lays, pp. 1–12. Bliss suggests that the English tail-rhyme romances “clothe their borrowed materials in a native dress” (Sir Launfal, p. 2). Julia Boffey and John J. Thompson, “Anthologies and Miscellanies: Production and Choice of Texts,” in Book Production and Publishing in Britain, 1375-1475, ed. Jeremy Griffiths and Derek

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ally unknown, with only two personal names included: “Donum Jo. Rogers” and “Thomas Cooke” (b. 1541) of Milton, Cambridgeshire.20 By the same token, the Caligula scribe’s “name, rank, gender and precise geographical origins” will most likely remain a mystery.21 Although it is impossible to conclude who is responsible for the commission or production of the manuscript, it might have been compiled in a print shop, due to the care with which it was made.22 The nature of this codex – constructed with care and a deliberate eye toward the inclusion of a variety of popular and pragmatic texts – suggests that it found a readership among a family, perhaps in a “pious middle-class household.”23 For example, in addition to short treatises on the Ten Commandments, poetry on the Crucifixion, and the Long Charter of Christ,24 family and friends leafing through the pages of this manuscript would also see recipes against colic and the plague as well as several didactic texts for children, including Lydgate’s Stans puer ad mensam and the anonymous Urbanitatis.25 Although there are no specific women’s names associated with MS Cotton Caligula A.ii, as there are with the Troilus and Amoryus and Cleopes manuscripts, which I discussed in Chapters One and Two, it is certain that women would have formed a part – perhaps a significant portion, in fact – of the audience for this miscellany. Furthermore, the inclusion of the romance in a manuscript with popular, and especially practical, texts implies that Sir Launfal may have had particular use value for its readers. Much like Caxton’s fifteenth-century translation of Blanchardyn and Eglantine, which I discuss in the Introduction to this book, Sir Launfal is a text that provides

20 21

22

23

24 25

Pearsall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 279–315 (p. 279). Boffey and Thompson discuss the growing interest in miscellaneous anthologies in the second half of the fifteenth century, around the time when the Caligula manuscript was produced (p. 280). Guddat-Figge, Catalogue, p. 172. John Thompson, “Looking Behind the Book: London, British Library, MS Cotton Caligula A.ii, Part 1, and the Experience of its Texts,” in Romance Reading on the Book: Essays on Medieval Narrative Presented to Maldwyn Mills, ed. Jennifer Fellows, et al. (Cardiff: Wales University Press, 1996), p. 171–187 (p. 172). The Caligula manuscript is written in the hand of one main scribe; only the medical recipes on fol. 13v and the continuation of the chronicle through the reign of Richard III on fols. 109r–110v are added later in different hands (Guddat-Figge, Catalogue, p.€169). Guddat-Figge, Catalogue, p. 172. Not only has the scribe imposed some uniformity on the Caligula codex in the form of formal headings, running titles, and explicits, but he generally began each item on a new page. Laskaya and Salisbury, Middle English Breton Lays, p. 12. Boffey and Thompson, who suggest that the Caligula manuscript might have been produced as a “family collection” (“Anthologies and Miscellanies,” p. 297), note the difficulties in understanding the exact use to which mercantile or bourgeois lay readers were putting miscellaneous anthologies in the late fifteenth century: an examination of these manuscripts “highlights the inadequacies of our knowledge about the multifarious nature of fifteenth-century reading habits and tastes,” and reveals a rapidly “expanding reading audience who were requiring the written word for a complex of informational, devotional, and leisure-time purposes” (p. 292). British Library, MS Cotton Caligula A.ii, fols. 58r–64v and fols. 77r–79r. See The Middle English Charters of Christ, ed. Mary Caroline Spalding (Bryn Mawr, PA, 1914). MS Cotton Caligula A.ii., fols. 14r–15r and fol. 88r. See Early English Meals and Manners, ed. Frederick Furnivall, EETS o.s. 32 (London: Oxford University Press, 1868).

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entertainment and also useful lessons for women on how to deploy their influence correctly through the patronage system and for men on how to choose the right female sponsor. What would female readers have encountered upon reading Sir Launfal, however? What models of conduct and courtly behavior would they have found in a romance included among so many other didactic and practical texts? To a certain extent, all courtly, chivalric romances in the Middle Ages provide an element of wish-fulfillment to their audience. Many critics have suggested that Chestre’s narrative constructs a particularly rich fantasy environment for male readers, with the knight finding himself at the center of a heated competition between two beautiful, royal women for both his love and his person.26 While the conflict between Tryamour and Gwennere is, ostensibly, a struggle for dominance over the knight, we see many of the critical treatments of this text concluding with a reading of masculine possession of the female lover. For Launfal, “success in love also implies the splendour of ownership – the possession of the most beautiful mistress in the world.”27 Furthermore, Timothy O’Brien collapses any differentiation between the two female characters, asserting that Gwennere and Tryamour “represent, simply, different perceptions of the same entity, Tryamour being the imaginative, wishful, safe form in which Launfal can have [Gwennere], or any woman for that matter.”28 But interpreting the dynamic between the women in the narrative merely as typical feminine competition for a man fails to recognize the potency of Chestre’s commentary on the patronage system and the impact that representation could have on female readership of the romance. Laurie Finke and Martin Shichtman believe that the extreme largess of the mistress in Marie’s Lanval represents “a model of empowerment (even if it is only a fantasy) for women in medieval society.”29 However, Chestre’s more down-to-earth depiction of Tryamour and her specific deployment of wealth and other forms of patronage make the model of empowerment much less a 26

27 28

29

Although the final “dramatization of feminine conflict,” with Tryamour blinding Gwennere, is apparently Chestre’s own (Peter J. Lucas, “Towards an Interpretation of Sir Launfal with Particular Reference to Line 683,” Medium Aevum 39 [1970]: pp. 291–300 [p. 292]), Roger S. Loomis notes that female competition is often a characteristic of stories about fée (“Morgain la Fée and the Celtic Goddesses,” Speculum 20.2 [1945]: pp. 183–203 [p. 196]). Loomis also remarks that the dynamic between the two women in Sir Launfal is “simply the jealous rivalry of Guinevere and Morgain so prominent in Lancelot romances, except that the roles of the ladies are reversed” (p. 191). Bliss, Sir Launfal, p. 44. Timothy D. O’Brien, “The ‘Readerly’ Sir Launfal,” Parergon 8.1 (June 1990): pp. 33–45 (p. 43). Interestingly, O’Brien also offers this reading of Tryamour’s character when he discusses the etymological meaning of her name: Tryamour means “both ‘choice love’ and ‘three loves,’ or ‘third love’ … Tryamour is choice; she is the object of many a man’s wishes. She is not chosen, however. She chooses Launfal” (p. 41). Laurie Finke and Martin Shichtman, “Magical Mistress Tour: Patronage, Intellectual Property, and the Dissemination of Wealth in the Lais of Marie de France,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 25.2 (2000): pp. 479–503 (p. 495); emphasis mine.

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fantasy for a late medieval English audience. Thus, in addition to the undeniable attraction of the Lanval story to male readers, we may also explore its appeal for women readers, “who recognized their own wishes and desires (‘lur volente’) therein.”30 In order to understand fully the significance of the competing systems of female patronage in Chestre’s romance, this chapter will compare his depiction of Gwennere and Tryamour with that in Marie de France’s earlier version.31 Chestre’s revision of the original Lanval story offers a forceful commentary on the power and influence of women’s cultural sponsorship. A good system of patronage can maintain the circulation of wealth and knowledge, sustain any number of knights and their attendants, alleviate debt, engage in the charitable support of monasteries and churches, and continue long after the initial patron has departed. A bad system, on the other hand, can pollute the morality of the court, dispense wealth according to individual caprice rather than merit, and cause the ruination of knights and even kings. The unsuccessful patronage system in Arthur’s court is arguably the most significant alteration Chestre makes to the earlier narrative. In Marie’s Lanval, it is Arthur rather than his queen who forgets to offer Lanval patronage: Asez i duna riches duns E as cuntes e as baruns. A ceus de la Table Runde (N’ot tant de teus en tut le munde) Femmes e tere departi Par tut, fors un ki l’ot serui. Ceo fu Lanual: ne l’en souient.32

Despite his noble lineage, “Pur sa ualur, pur sa largesce, / Pur sa beuté, pur sa pruesce, / L’enuioent tut li plusur” (lines 21–23).33 Lanval is a foreigner 30

31

32

33

Karen Jambeck, “‘Femmes et tere’: Marie de France and the Discourses of ‘Lanval’,” in Discourses on Love, Marriage, and Transgression in Medieval and Early Modern Literature, ed. Albrecht Classen (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2004), pp. 109–145 (p. 123). Jambeck here discusses the interest that Marie’s Lanval held for both male and female audience members, but I believe that the interest produced by the Lanval story extends to Chestre’s late Middle English audience as well. While it is unclear whether Chestre knew Marie’s text directly (see n. 3 above), my discussion of Chestre’s text in this chapter centers on his revision of the original narrative, the earliest of which is Marie’s lay, whether via Sir Landevale or otherwise. I have noted specific comparisons between Chestre’s Sir Launfal and Sir Landevale and Graelent in my discussion. Bliss, lines 13–19. This edition of Marie’s Anglo-Norman text of Lanval is taken from Bliss’s Appendix to Sir Launfal. It will be quoted by line number within the text. The modern English translation of Marie’s lay provided in the footnotes is quoted by line number from The Lais of Marie de France, ed. and trans. Robert Hanning and Joan Ferrante (Durham, NC: The Labyrinth Press, 1978): “[The king] gave out many rich gifts: / to counts and barons, / members of the Round Table – / such a company had no equal in all the world – / he distributed wives and lands, / to all but one who had served him. / That was Lanval; Arthur forgot him” (lines 13–19). “For his valor, for his generosity, / his beauty and his bravery, / most men envied him” (Hanning and Ferrante, lines 21–23).

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in Arthur’s land, far from his financial resources and family members; ostensibly a member of the king’s household, Lanval is generous to others (as is expected of a knight), but soon expends all his wealth, “kar li reis rien ne li dona, / Ne Lanual rien ne li demanda” (lines 31–32).34 It is clear that, although Lanval has every right to expect patronage for his loyalty and good service, Arthur’s system of sponsorship has failed. Forgotten by his king and unsupported by his men, Lanval wanders away from the court to take his mind off of his troubles. Karen Jambeck comments on Arthur’s mode of sponsorship and consolidating power in Marie’s Lanval: “as the locus of public power, the king grants ‘femmes,’ ‘tere,’ and ‘riches duns’ as recompense for service.”35 Because the granting of favor may be arbitrary, resulting in “tenuous personal connections and uneasy alliances,”36 Arthur’s seemingly unintentional neglect of Lanval takes on a disturbing valence in Lanval. The king’s system of patronage is designed to intensify the jealousy already felt among the knights; while there might be enough money to provide some support for all those who serve the court, there are certainly not enough women and nor sufficient land. This competition for limited resources is perhaps why the other knights do not draw their king’s attention to Lanval’s lack.37 Arthur’s problematic sponsorship system stands in sharp contrast to Lanval’s lady, whose intensely generous spirit and loyalty to the knight becomes far superior to Arthur’s treatment of his retainer. However, Marie’s text, in placing the lady’s sponsorship against Arthur’s, risks changing the circumstances of comparison: “the love that Lanval would owe to Arthur – if the king were a reliable patron – is transferred to a mysterious fairy mistress, and issues of economics become issues of courtly love.”38 Although Finke 34 35

36 37

38

“For the king gave him nothing / nor did Lanval ask” (Hanning and Ferrante, lines 31–32). Karen Jambeck, “‘Femmes et tere’,” p. 130. Jambeck notes that in the twelfth century, “control of marriages not only prevented alliances between king’s enemies, but it allowed for the granting of rich heiresses as rewards to the king’s men. Thus, it was through marriage to aristocratic women, especially heiresses, that men could, and did, rise in status and wealth. Given the finitude of the royal demesne, granting heiresses as wives was also an important feature of royal patronage, and it was by such means that Henry I was said to have raised several of his men ‘from the dust’” (p. 134–135). Finke and Shichtman also note the importance of marriage to patronage, a system which “opened up spaces through which men disinherited and disadvantaged by birth might advance” (“Magical Mistress Tour,” p. 481). Jambeck, “‘Femmes et tere’,” p. 141. This troubled social situation in Arthur’s court extends even beyond his patronage to the judicial system depicted both in Marie’s Lanval and in Chestre’s text. Dinah Hazell discusses the motivation of the judges at the end of Chestre’s tale: “their behavior is tantamount to accepting bribery; by delivering the condemnation the lord desires, they will gain his favor, which inevitably includes gifts of personal and real property, as well as social status” (“The Blinding of Gwennere,” p.€136). In Sir Launfal, the fact that Launfal is made a member of Arthur’s court rather than a stranger from a foreign land, as he is in both Marie’s text and Sir Landevale, suggests that the judges’ perfidy is even more insidious, indicting them for their willingness to “sacrifice a valued community member in order to fulfill their own political agenda” (p. 137). Finke and Shichtman, “Magical Mistress Tour,” p. 489.

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and Shichtman do assert that the lady is “a patron in her own right and not simply a vehicle for the patronage of wealthy men,” as are the women in Arthur’s “femmes e tere” bequest, they read the patronage system fundamentally as a male–male interaction only mediated by women’s involvement.39 Such depictions of the dominant (and, ultimately, unsuccessful) patronage system in Marie’s Lanval pits Arthur against the lady, rational and organized sponsorship versus virtually unconditional emotional generosity without strategy or method. In the end, Finke and Shichtman suggest, Lanval and his lady must leave Arthur’s court for the land of Faerye because “a female sexuality unrestrained by a masculine sexual economy that requires the continual circulation of women and wealth cannot be maintained for long within the Arthurian world without becoming subordinate to the sexual economy of feudalism.”40 Thus, the woman’s system of patronage is steeped in magic and mystery, a sexually tantalizing fantasy that is incompatible with the real world. In Chestre’s Sir Launfal, however, the detrimental patronage system that the knight experiences is depicted specifically as bad female patronage. In a narrative revision not found in his sources,41 Chestre introduces the queen within the first few stanzas and names her “Gwennere,” or Guinevere. This early introduction not only places Gwennere in a position of greater responsibility for what follows in the narrative,42 but it also depicts her as the model for patronage in Arthur’s kingdom. On the day Gwennere and Arthur are married it is the queen rather than the king who engages in largess: To alle þe lordes þat wer þeryn, Wyth chere boþe glad & blyþe. Þe quene yaf yftes for þe nones, Gold & seluer & precyous stonys, Her curtayse to kyþe; Euerych knyȝt sche ȝaf broche oþer ryng, But Syr Launfal sche yaf noþyng: Þat greuede hym many a syde.â•… (lines 66–72)

Although Gwennere’s gifts are moveable goods rather than the grants of land and women Arthur makes in Marie’s Lanval, her acts of generosity (while unevenly distributed) are in keeping with her status as a queen. In this case, it is the symbolism of the bequest and not the specific gifts bestowed that attempt to cement the knights’ loyalty. In Chestre’s romance, however, the 39 40 41 42

“Magical Mistress Tour,” p. 491–492. “Magical Mistress Tour,” p. 500. See Earl R. Anderson, “The Structure of Sir Launfal,” Papers on Language and Literature: A Journal for Scholars and Critics of Language and Literature 13 (1977): pp. 115–124 (p. 118). Lucas, “Towards an Interpretation,” p. 292. See also Myra Seaman, “Englishing of Medieval Romance,” p. 112.

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queen deliberately passes over Launfal because the young knight “lykede her noȝt, / Ne oþer knyȝtes þat wer hende, / For þe lady bar los of swych word / Þat sche hadde lemmannys vnþer her lord” (lines 44–47). As a result of this slight and the queen’s obvious hostility, Launfal manufactures an excuse to leave Arthur’s court: his father’s death. Similar to his counterpart in Marie’s text, from the beginning Launfal “gaf gyftys largelyche, / Gold & syluer & clodes ryche, / To squyer & to knyȝt” (lines 28–30). Before and even after the marriage, there is no indication that Launfal’s own generosity is untenable;43 indeed, Launfal’s decade of liberality and excellent service to Arthur garners him the honorable place of king’s steward. Even as Launfal prepares to leave the court, Arthur cries after him: “Tak wyth þe greet spendyng! / And my suster sones two” (lines 81–82). Thus, Gwennere’s action at the wedding does not leave Launfal destitute, as does Arthur’s disregard in Marie’s story. Rather, it is an indication that critical changes have occurred in the patronage circumstances of Arthur’s court. Arthur, who always gave liberally to Launfal (enabling his own largess), allows his wife to exclude Launfal from the system of sponsorship; Launfal wisely chooses to remove himself from the potentially deleterious patronage situation of which Gwennere is the instigator.44 This decision by Launfal to leave the realm of Gwennere’s influence (if not to seek a better patron) underscores the necessity for men’s active participation in the patronage system put forth in Sir Launfal. Unlike the young knight in Partonope of Blois, who is taken by force from a potentially substandard program of chivalric development when he is still a “chylde,” Chestre’s text places the responsibility for recognizing a bad female patron on Launfal’s own shoulders. Thus, the romance offers a critical lesson to the male readers in Chestre’s audience as well as the female: a knight cannot passively wait for a good female patron to present herself, but must be proactive in creating a positive environment in which potential future sponsors may flourish by rejecting a damaging situation. Despite his proactive choice, Launfal’s departure from Arthur’s court marks the beginning of a necessary devolution of knightly persona the likes of which appear nowhere in Chestre’s sources.45 To begin, Chestre’s knight is snubbed by the mayor of Karlyoun, who scorns his departure from the king’s service. Upon his arrival at the mayor’s house, Launfal is honest – perhaps too much so – about his circumstances: “J am þepartyþ fram þe kyng, / And 43

44

45

See Shearle Furnish, who suggests that “Arthur’s spending is inexhaustible, a condition of the poem suggested by the contrast between Launfal’s powers before Arthur’s marriage and after” (“Civilization and Savagery in Thomas Chestre’s Sir Launfal,” Medieval Perspectives 3.1 [Spring 1998]: pp. 137–149 [p. 138]). Later, of course, Gwennere’s status as a destructive patron is confirmed when she attempts to re-enter a patronage relationship through her failed seduction of the knight. See Finke and Shichtman, “Magical Mistress Tour,” p. 493. See James Weldon, “Jousting for Identity: Tournaments in Thomas Chestre’s Sir Launfal,” Parergon 17.2 (2000): pp. 107–123 (p. 113).

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þat rewyth me sore; / Neþer þar noman, beneþe ne aboue, / For þe Kyng Artours loue / Onowre [Honor] me neuermore” (lines 101–105). Responding to Launfal’s own claims that he will receive no further honor for his service to Arthur, the mayor refuses to offer Launfal and his men better accommodations than an orchard barn. Here the young knight gets his first true taste of life without a patron; doors that had been open to him before, both literal and figurative, are now shut. Brought so low by this insult, Launfal piteously cries to his two attendants, “Now may ye se – swych ys seruice / Vnþer a lord of lytyll pryse!” (lines 118–119). His remark speaks to more than just an indulgence in self-pity, however. In his lament, Launfal exposes the consequences of attempting to exist outside the system of chivalric sponsorship; by not serving a worthy lord, he cannot himself become a lord worth serving. Swift on the heels of this realization, Launfal begins to spend the money Arthur gave him so “sauagelych … / Þat he ward yn greet dette, / Ryȝt yn þe ferst yere” (lines 130–132). Soon after that, Arthur’s nephews decide to leave Launfal’s meager service, claiming “Syr, our robes beþ torent, / And your tresour ys all yspent, / And we goþ ewyll ydyȝt [are ill-equipped]” (lines 139–141). Upon their departure, Launfal begs them “tellyd noman of my pouerté” (line 143), entreating them to lie to Arthur and Gwennere rather than reveal his destitute circumstances. Eventually, Launfal cannot even attend mass “for defawte of clodynge / Ne myȝte y yn wyth þe peple þrynge” (lines 202–203), and it is under this cloud of shame – with “hys hors slod[ing] & fel[ling] yn þe fen” (line 214) – that Launfal sets off into the wilderness “forto dryue away [the] lokynge” (line 218) of people’s condemning eyes. Launfal’s fall from grace in these scenes has been of great interest to critics, spawning a number of different interpretations. Bliss, for example, reads the knight’s gratuitous spending as an unsubtle bid for the attention of the “peasant listener,” as opposed to the more sophisticated audience of Marie’s Lanval.46 O’Brien dismissively characterizes Launfal as one who is “not particularly virtuous” and who “stumbles onto good fortune in spite of himself.”47 In the end, he concludes, “right does not win out; a rather unaggressive, even self-destructive character ‘lucks out’.”48 Although Launfal’s savage spending is even more detrimental to his character and reputation (to say nothing of his purse) than his departure from the Arthurian court, O’Brien’s wholesale indictment of the knight seems a bit gratuitous itself. Furnish identifies the change that takes place after Launfal leaves the urbane surroundings of Arthur’s court as a psychological one: “the ‘savage’ mood 46 47

48

Bliss, Sir Launfal, pp. 44–45. O’Brien, “The ‘Readerly’ Sir Launfal,” p. 43. On the question of whether Launfal’s post-Arthurian spending is recklessness or largess, Dinah Hazell suggests that his acts are a “combination of generosity, political pragmatism, and extravagance” (“The Blinding of Gwennere,” p. 131). See also Carol J. Nappholz, “Launfal’s ‘Largesse’: Word-Play in Thomas Chestre’s Sir Launfal,” English Language Notes 25.3 (March 1988): pp. 4–9. O’Brien, “The ‘Readerly’ Sir Launfal,” p. 43.

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… in which he lay[s] waste to what Arthur had given him” is completely opposed to Launfal’s “loveable generosity which made him a favorite at court.”49 It would seem, then, that a knight is only civilized when properly patronized. Although this change marks a kind of deconstruction of Â�Launfal’s knightliness, separating him from his narrative predecessors, it also outlines exactly what Tryamour’s patronage must rebuild. We may compare Tryamour’s involvement in Sir Launfal with Melior’s in Partonope of Blois, which I discuss in the previous chapter. Melior intervenes in the life of a young knight, one who has not yet become an adult or entered into his chivalric training. Because of her early meeting with Partonope, Melior is able to guide his knightly education as she sees fit, literally to build her knight from scratch. Tryamour, on the other hand, encounters Launfal when he has lost everything and chosen to leave his previous social and economic environment of his own accord; thus, she must rebuild her knight from the ground up, countering his negative courtly and patronage experiences with her own. The figure of Launfal’s lover is not necessarily given a more prominent role (as was Gwennere) in Chestre’s text than in Marie’s. However, her character undergoes some important, if subtle, revisions in Chestre’s Middle English version. In Marie’s Lanval, the knight’s unnamed mistress is unabashedly connected with the supernatural realm; her powers are striking and seem to appear out of nowhere. The mistress is introduced in much the same way in both versions: Launfal lays down beneath a tree in an attempt to forget his troubles and is approached by two beautiful women (one carrying a gold basin and one a towel) who lead him to their lady’s richly appointed tent. In this exotic setting, the knight meets the scantily clad mistress, who declares her love for him and establishes the terms of their relationship: in return for the limitless wealth and physical bounty with which she will provide him, the knight must never reveal her identity or even her existence to others. As many critics have noted, the fairy mistress in all versions of the Lanval story is drawn almost exclusively from Celtic legends, specifically the Celtic geiš, which is “a taboo or prohibition placed upon heroes in Irish narratives.”50 In Marie’s Lanval, however, the supernatural aspects of the knight’s introduction to his mistress are heralded by the crossing of a more significant boundary than the expensively embroidered tent flap, for which not even the Emperor Octavian could have paid.51 Before Lanval lies down beneath the 49 50

51

“Civilization and Savagery,” p. 139. Jambeck, “‘Femmes et tere’,” p. 118. See also B. K. Martin, “Sir Launfal and the Folktale,” and Loomis, “Morgain la Fée.” Finke and Shichtman suggest that “the fairy mistress’s magic and the secrecy required of Lanval as an initiate into her supernatural world may provide some insight into the anxieties of Marie and her audience about the competition for patronage and the circulation of intellectual property within the Anglo-Norman court” (“Magical Mistress Tour,” p. 495); thus, magic enables the female author to monopolize her own intellectual property. There is a similar prohibition against revealing the lover’s identity in Partonope of Blois; see my discussion of this romance in Chapter Three. “Ne l’Emperere Octouien / N’esligasent le destre pan” (Bliss, lines 85–86).

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tree, “sur une ewe curaunt descent, / Mes sis cheual tremble forment” (lines 45–46).52 In many medieval romances, particularly those drawn from Celtic sources, the crossing of a body of water holds supernatural significance; these barriers often mark the boundary between the natural and supernatural worlds.53 The horse’s reaction to this boundary, while subtle, underscores the mistress’s association with a primarily paranormal, fairy world; she inhabits the realm on the other side of the stream which causes the horse such fear. Not only does Marie’s fairy mistress occupy a place almost completely separate from the real, Arthurian world in which the romance’s action takes place, she is purely fantastical because she operates “outside the system of exchanges of land and women by which aristocratic men perpetuated their class privilege.”54 Unencumbered by any male relationships, she is beholden to none of the social and cultural constraints of a real medieval woman. Some critics persist in reading Chestre’s Tryamour as a Celtic fairy figure, much the same as Marie’s unnamed mistress in Lanval. Furnish, for example, identifies Chestre’s heroine as a fée, who “represents primitive power because no Christian decorum dwells there, no society and no law but desire”;55 Dinah Hazell argues that any modification of the character on Chestre’s part does not serve to “negate the fairy tale operation of the poem.”56 However, the boundaries in Sir Launfal are quite blurred, with the real and supernatural worlds existing simultaneously within the same plane.57 Whether the revision of the mistress’s character is interpreted as a source of criticism or a point of laudable innovation in Chestre’s version, overwhelmingly Tryamour’s character provides a noticeable rationalization or “humaniz[ing of] the previously mystical figure of the fairy lover.”58 In part, the heroine is shorn from her mystical context by simply naming her – Dame Tryamour – and providing her with an earthly history and back52 53

54 55 56

57 58

“He dismounted by a running stream / but his horse trembled badly” (Hanning and Ferrante, lines 45–46). Jambeck, “‘Femmes et tere’,” p. 116. For example, see Partonope of Blois and Marie de France’s Guigemar, where both knights are brought to their lovers’ lands in an enchanted boat across a body of water. Instead of a watery boundary between worlds, the Breton lay Sir Orfeo portrays the hero passing through a rock in order to enter the fairy kingdom in search of his lost wife. Finke and Shichtman, “Magical Mistress Tour,” p. 495, n.15 Furnish, “Civilization and Savagery,” p. 141. Hazell, “The Blinding of Gwennere,” p. 139. Seeming to suggest that Tryamour’s character is abstracted even to the point of being a pointless cameo role, Martin notes that the lady has “the air of being one of those ‘isolated’ supernatural creatures of the folktale who appear from nowhere and act without reference to anyone or anything but themselves” (“Sir Launfal and the Folktale,” p. 205). See also Lucas, who notes that at “no point in Launfal has there been mention of a division between the ordinary world and the Other world” (“Towards an Interpretation,” p. 293). Seaman, “Englishing of Medieval Romance,” p. 113. See also Dieter Mehl, who believes the fairy-tale world of Marie’s text is “brought into closer contact with the day to day experience of the audience” (The Middle English Romances of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries [New York: Barnes and Noble, 1969], p. 47), and Finlayson, who suggests that the fairy connection is not “integral to the work” (“Form of the Middle English Lay,” p. 363) at all.

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ground; she is “þe kynges douȝter of Olyroun, / … / Her fadyr was kyng of Fayrye, / Of occient [i.e., the west], fer & nyȝe, / A man of mochell myȝte” (lines 278–282). Although a single reference to her fairy ancestry remains in Chestre’s description, Tryamour is placed within the familial connections of a royal human (if exotic) lineage. Chestre locates the kingdom of “Fayrye” in “Olyroun,” which refers to the island Oléron off the northern coast of France, making the romance’s setting more familiar and concrete within a late medieval English context. As Seaman suggests about Chestre’s text, the “terrestrial connection erases [Tryamour’s] disassociation from the world, which is vital to the value system of Marie’s Lanval.”59 Seaman argues that this earthly depiction places Tryamour’s sexuality and her monetary cachet at the forefront of the romance. I contend further that it also has broader implications for how we read her character; Chestre’s heroine provides a model of female behavior that is easier for readers to identify with and emulate than Marie’s unnamed fairy mistress. Making Tryamour’s accessibility to the audience even greater is the detailed enumeration of her gifts to Launfal and the terms under which their relationship must proceed. The rewards offered to the destitute knight in Chestre’s romance are almost exclusively related to recreating and enhancing his chivalric success. As in Marie’s version, Launfal receives a bottomless purse: J wyll þe ȝeue an alner [i.e. purse] Jmad of sylk & of gold cler, Wyth fayre ymages þre: As oft þou puttest þe hond þerjnne, A mark of gold þou schalt wynne, In wat place þat þou be.â•… (lines 319–324)

In addition, he is also given “Blaunchard, my stede lel [loyal], / And Gyfre, my owen knaue” (lines 326–327).60 In Lanval, after a mutual declaration of love between the two characters, Marie writes that the mistress Vn dun li ad duné apres: Ja cele rien ne uudra mes Que il nen ait a sun talent; Doinst e despende largement, Ele li trouerat asez.â•… (lines 135–139)61 59 60

61

Seaman, “Englishing of Medieval Romance,” p. 113. Loomis notes that “the gift by a fay of a wonderful steed to her lover or protégé was evidently a stock motif, employed very early” (“Morgain la Fée,” p. 189). Chestre’s inclusion of Gyfre, the dwarf attendant, is drawn from the Old French lai Graelent. “Afterward […] gave him a gift: / he would never again want anything, / he would receive as he desired; / however generously he might give and spend, / she would provide what he needed” (Hanning and Ferrante, lines 135–139).

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Chestre is much more detailed in the enumeration of the heroine’s gifts. Although Marie’s mistress assures the knight that she will fulfill his every desire – leaving the audience to fill in the specifics of her generosity on their own – Tryamour’s specific gifts of unlimited gold, a warhorse, and an attendant comprise a thorough recipe for chivalric success. Perhaps thinking more of Marie’s version of the story, Hazell suggests that Tryamour deploys her “inestimable wealth” with no strings attached; the gifts are “freely given and enable the knight to resume his generosity. Nothing is expected from him in return but fidelity and trouthe, a seemingly easy exchange.”62 However, Tryamour’s patronage is hardly given without conditions. Chestre actually outlines precisely what is expected of Launfal; indeed, these requirements precede almost all else in Tryamour’s first speech. After telling him briefly of her love, Tryamour acknowledges his sorry state, begging him not to be ashamed of his position: “Syr knyȝt, gentyl & hende, / I wot þy stat, ord & ende: / Be nauȝt aschamed of me!” (lines 313–315). As in Partonope of Blois, there is an awareness of the knight’s potential (she knows of his “gentyl” background), but in her reference to his “stat” and the potential shame associated with it, there is also the acknowledgement of how far he has fallen in his knightly reputation and (ostensibly) how much must be rebuilt.63 Before outlining the rewards he will receive, Tryamour delineates the terms of their relationship, stating “Yf þou wylt truly to me take, / And alle wemen for me forsake, / Ryche I wyll make þe” (lines 316–318). Lucas offers a detailed reading of the verb “take” in this context. When he leaves Arthur’s court, Launfal is a wayward knight with no ties of allegiance until he meets Tryamour and makes a vow of service to her. Rather than reading the verb “take” as “become a lover,” Lucas interprets it as “‘attach oneself (to),’ meaning that Launfal is now bound to Dame Tryamour.”64 Whereas Lucas reads the rendering of the lord and vassal relationship between a man and a woman in Sir Launfal as a way to make an aristocratic relationship more palatable and popular to a less sophisticated audience, it is actually quite an appropriate representation of a female patron. The potentially dry and emotionless prelude to the couple’s consummation of their love – speaking the terms of a contract rather than terms of endearment – highlights what is 62

63

64

Hazell, “The Blinding of Gwennere,” p. 133. Furnish similarly suggests that Tryamour offers her “love, riches, and prowess for nothing in return except, presumably, his love” (“Civilization and Savagery,” p. 141). In this assertion, I expand on Hazell’s suggestion that Tryamour’s motivation is primarily emotional and moral, wherein she “offers her love based on innate attributes rather than outer accoutrements” (“The Blinding of Gwennere,” p. 134). While Launfal undoubtedly possesses a good moral foundation (despite his issues with pride and rash behavior), Tryamour’s intervention at this critical moment in his journey down the ladder of chivalric success suggests that she takes advantage of the opportunity to re-create the knight and incorporate him into her system of patronage. Lucas, “Towards an Interpretation,” p. 295.

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arguably one of Tryamour’s most significant gifts to Launfal. After offering him a horse and her attendant, the lady states that … of my armes oo pensel [a small pennon] Wyth þre ermyns, ypeynted well, Also þou schalt haue. Jn werre ne yn turnement Ne schall þe greue no knyȝtes dent, So well y schall þe saue.â•… (lines 328–333)

The heraldic device on the banner with which Tryamour provides him signifies both a promotion in status for Launfal (he begins the romance as a “bacheler” [line 25], only one of many knights in Arthur’s court) and a permanent transfer of his loyalties from Gwennere’s deleterious patronage system to a beneficial sponsorship relationship with Tryamour. Weldon notes that Launfal not only carries the lady’s personal pennon and crest into battle with him in the following tournaments, but he also wears the colors and furs specifically associated with her. Although she is scantily clad when Launfal meets her, Chestre is careful to note that Tryamour is “Jheled [covered] wyth purpur bys [linen]” (line 284).65 Later, Launfal is dressed in Tryamour’s livery: “Launfal yn purpure gan hym schrede [clothe], / Jpleured wyth whyt ermyne” (lines 416–417). Launfal adopts the colors of purple and white, which “anchor … the knight’s identity in hers.”66 Even further, however, the colors signal her official status as his chivalric patron. Despite Tryamour’s strictures on the relationship and the promise of secrecy he must make to guarantee that her identity and their affair remain concealed, Launfal displays himself as someone’s knight, wearing the marks of his allegiance to a patron other than Gwennere and Arthur. Most importantly, of course, Chestre’s audience is aware of the heraldic and patronage connections between Tryamour and her knight.67 The terms of monogamy and secrecy imposed by Tryamour – traditional requirements in romances drawn from Celtic fairy legends – provide the grounds for only one of the lessons Launfal must learn from his patron and lover: the need for discretion in love and in spending. Indeed, discretion is one of the knight’s greatest challenges, even before he begins his relationship with Tryamour. However, it is prudence and good judgment, broadly 65

66 67

At the conclusion of the romance, Tryamour re-appears in Arthur’s court “clad yn purpere palle, / … / Her mantyll was furryþ wyth whyt ermyn” (lines 943–946). Weldon also notes that the armor she presents to Launfal “þat was whyt as flour, / Hyt becom of blak colour” (lines 742–743) when the knight breaks his word to the lady. Weldon, “Jousting for Identity,” p. 118, note 30. We may compare this to the way Melior operates behind the scenes in Partonope of Blois; when Partonope returns to France with armor, money, and a retinue to fight the Saracen invaders, he does it under the auspices of his own status as a prince. Launfal, however, displays himself as Tryamour’s knight both in the tournaments he attends and back at Arthur’s court.

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conceived, that the young man’s patroness will teach him. Much more than in Marie’s Lanval, Chestre’s Sir Launfal outlines precisely the things on which the knight spends his new-found wealth. After accepting Tryamour’s terms and, thus, enjoying the fruits of this new bond, both culinary and sexual (“for play lytyll þey sclepte þat nyght” [line 349]), Launfal not only repays his debts, but also begins his own course of sponsorship: All þat Launfal hadde borwyþ before, Gyfre, be tayle & be score, Ȝalde hyt well and fyne. Launfal held ryche festes, Fyfty fedde pouere gestes [guests], Þat yn myschef wer; Fyfty bouȝte stronge stedes, Fyfty yaf ryche wedes To knyȝtes & squyere; Fyfty rewardede relygyons, Fyfty delyuerede pouere prysouns, And made ham quyt & schere; Fyfty clodede gestours: To many men he dede honours Jn countreys fer & nere.â•… (lines 418–432)68

In this passage, we see quite clearly how Launfal re-enters the patronage system after his voluntary exile from the negative model offered by Gwennere in Arthur’s court.69 As the young knight does in Partonope of Blois, Launfal spends and supports others both strategically, by clothing other knights and squires in “ryche wedes,” and generously, by aiding prisoners, poor guests, and minstrels alike. His gifts span the spectrum of both chivalric and religious recipients, ensuring that Launfal may operate successfully in all realms of life through the direct intervention of his lover and patron Tryamour. Perhaps the most noticeable narrative addition Chestre makes to the original Lanval story is his inclusion of tournament scenes immediately after the knight’s re-entry into society. These episodes cement the success of 68

69

Marie’s version notes only that Lanval “donout les riches duns [gave rich gifts],” “aquitout les prisuns [freed prisoners],” “uesteit les iugleurs [clothed performers],” and “feseit les granz honurs [offered great honors]” (lines 209–212). Sir Landevale enumerates the specific recipients of the knight’s generosity, but does not specify the number as “fyfty” of each, as does Chestre. For a discussion of this passage, see Julian Harris, “A Note on Thomas Chestre,” Modern Language Notes 46.1 (Jan 1931): pp. 24–25. Finke and Shichtman observe a parallel between Launfal’s renewed sponsorship program and actual knights in the Middle Ages, whose “success is measured primarily by success in tournaments, which is heavily rewarded by their patrons, often so much that they are themselves able to support clients of their own, bachelor knights less fortunate than themselves” (“Magical Mistress Tour,” p. 483). What we see in Sir Launfal, however, is a woman’s initial facilitation of the knight’s success in tournaments; they are not just the reward for but the instigators of these accomplishments.

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Tryamour’s patronage as much as Launfal’s various acts of generosity do; the reader not only witnesses the knight’s successful engagement in his own sponsorship activities, but observes him putting the gifts he receives from Tryamour into successful chivalric action. In celebration of Launfal’s beneficence and to test his valor, Alle þe lordes of Karlyoun Lette crye a turnement yn þe toun, For loue of Syr Launf[a]l (And for Blaunchard, hys good stede), To wyte how hym wolde spede Þat was ymade so well.â•… (lines 433–438)

After winning the tournament, Launfal holds a two-week feast to celebrate his victory; hearing of his recently displayed prowess, Sir Valentyne of Lombardy “to Syr Launfal hadde … greet enuye” (line 506) and challenges him to “come wyth me to juste, / … / And elles hys manhod schende” (lines 526–528). Establishing a date for the joust within a fortnight in Lombardy, Launfal is assured by Tryamour, “Dreed þe noþyng, Syr gentyl knyȝt, / Þou schalt hym sle þat day!” (lines 551–552). During the tournament, Launfal not only slays Valentyne, but also the “greet [h]ost” (line 562) of Valentyne’s knights who attempt to avenge his death. Thus, in these two brief episodes, we see that Launfal is able to perform well not only against multiple participants in the simulated battle situation of a jousting tournament, but can also defeat a more serious challenger to his chivalric prowess. Throughout these martial demonstrations, however, Tryamour’s influence rings like a refrain; her gifts of battle gear and even her personal assurances to Launfal enable his success as much as (if not more than) his own abilities. These tournaments have been variously discussed by critics as examples of Sir Launfal’s “bloodthirstiness,”70 as having no importance whatsoever to the story,71 as constitutive of the knight’s identity,72 and as both undermining and reinforcing his prowess in battle.73 Rather, I read these scenes as adding two important elements to Chestre’s romance: first, they allow the audience the opportunity to see Tryamour’s patronage immediately and successfully deployed in the chivalric rehabilitation of her knight; and second, the tour70 71 72 73

Bliss, Sir Launfal, p. 3. Finlayson, “The Form of the Middle English Lay,” p. 363. Weldon, “Jousting for Identity,” p. 113. See Weldon, who reads Gyfre’s intervention as compromising the knight’s performance (“Jousting for Identity,” p. 115), and Seaman, who sees the tournament scenes focusing our attention on “the hero’s abilities in battle rather than on his courtliness or spiritual growth” (“Englishing of Medieval Romance,” p. 115). Perhaps unconscious of the slight humor of his reading, Martin asserts that “it is no more necessary to think of Launfal as being unsporting in his tournaments than it is to think of him as being a kept man” (“Sir Launfal and the Folktale,” pp. 208–209); for all intents and purposes, Launfal is precisely a kept man.

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nament scenes function as the crucial bridge between the two systems of female patronage in the romance. Though the significance of these narrative elements has largely eluded critics or been dismissed as a sign of mediocrity in Chestre’s romance, it is only through these tournament scenes – and particularly their placement after Tryamour’s conferral of support – that the audience may truly understand the extent to which female sponsorship creates and perpetuates her knight’s success. During both tournament scenes, Gyfre, the attendant provided by Tryamour, acts without being seen (“Noman ne segh wyth syȝt” [line 582]) to aid Launfal when he is either unhorsed or has lost his helmet and shield. In what has been referred to as “unsportsmanlike”74 activity in the competitions, Gyfre first rides away on the Constable of Karlyoun’s horse so that he may not re-mount and continue jousting (lines 466–468), and then “hys lordes helm he on sette” (line 584) and “þe scheld vp hente” (line 592) when Launfal is nearly beaten in his joust with Sir Valentyne.75 While this aid may seem to undermine the knight’s individual accomplishments by making Launfal too dependent on Gyfre, Tryamour’s attendant and her representative in the battle, we can also read this as a reinforcement of the collaborative connections between Tryamour and Launfal. Like his mistress, Gyfre operates invisibly in the tournaments to assist Launfal at his moments of greatest need; functioning as an extension of Tryamour, the dwarf’s acts are a means through which the heroine can participate more directly in the chivalric duties her patronage has enabled. Furnish notes that Tryamour’s powers specifically “pertain to combat and chivalry but have nothing to do with contrived shows of greatness requiring the communal respect of men: rather with inward, private resources of brute power, so private that Launfal must be warned, on pain of losing everything, not to boast of them.”76 Thus, with Gyfre’s help unknown to the audience within the romance, Launfal’s knightly reputation is only reinforced by his performance in the tournaments; however, with Gyfre’s help obvious to readers of the romance itself, Launfal’s dependence on the sponsorship and virtually direct intervention of his patroness is clearly demonstrated. The success Launfal enjoys in the tournaments becomes the enticement Arthur needs to invite his prodigal knight back to court so that he once more may be “st[e]w[a]rd of halle / Forto agye [control] hys gestes alle, / For cowþe of largesse [i.e., because he knew all about generosity]” (lines 622–624). Ironically, Arthur asks Launfal not only to take up his old Â�position in the household as steward, but also to deploy his now-famous abilities at

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Bliss, Sir Launfal, p. 43. Weldon offers an informative discussion of how this intervention by the dwarf potentially violates the actual rules of jousting in the mid-fifteenth century (“Jousting for Identity,” p. 115, n. 24). Furnish, “Civilization and Savagery,” p. 143.

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Â� sponsorship and charity to keep the members of the Arthurian court happy. His return to Arthur’s domain forces the system of patronage in which Launfal has recently thrived – one predicated on good spending, merit, and (at least thus far) loyalty and discretion – into direct conflict with the system he deliberately left behind, one dominated by a weak king, who turns his patronage endeavors over to a capricious, adulterous woman. As in Partonope of Blois, the final lesson the hero learns is that of avataunce, or discretion in love.77 Sir Valentyne attempts to bait Launfal about his lover during his official challenge to the young knight: “And sey hym, for loue of hys lemman / (Yf sche be any gantyle woman, / Courteys, fre oþer hende) / Þat he come wyth me to juste” (lines 523–526). Although Launfal feels “neuer so moche schame” (line 578) when Valentyne unhorses him during their joust, this comment about the knight’s lady does not effect him adversely; Launfal merely lets it be known that “he wold wyth hym play” (line 543). However, upon returning to Arthur’s court, Launfal allows himself to be provoked by Gwennere very quickly. In response to Gwennere’s protest that she has loved him “wyth all my myȝt / More þan þys seuen ȝere” (lines 677–678), Launfal at first replies calmly, “J nell be traytour, [d]ay ne nyȝt, / Be God þat all may stere [rule]” (lines 683–684). Launfal’s initial statement to the queen demonstrates the kind of discretion and restraint he seems to have learned under Tryamour’s tutelage and which he displayed during his fight with Sir Valentyne. He would be a “traytour” if he broke his oath either to Tryamour or to Arthur, whose court he has just re-entered. Launfal’s reply is sufficiently vague to cover both, ultimately mutually exclusive, pledges. Gwennere’s spite at being rejected is immediate and harsh, although no accusations of homosexuality are made as in Marie’s version:78 … Fy on þe, þou coward! Anhongeþ worþ þou, hye & hard! Þat þou euer were ybore, Þat þou lyuest, hyt ys pyté! Þou louyst no woman, ne no woman þe: Þow wer worþy forlore!â•… (lines 685–690)

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Hazell notes that “boasting of one’s lover in the Middle Ages was the enactment of a specific branch of pride that appears in literature throughout the period. This sin is avataunce, the failure of a man to protect his female lover through the exercise of secrecy, and to commit this sin is a breach of trouthe that could have serious consequences” (“The Blinding of Gwennere,” p.€128). As the repetition of this theme in medieval literature would likely have “kept it in the consciousness of the literary-minded,” readers “would have recognized it as one of the facets of pride, and the ramifications of committing such as sin” (p. 130). “Asez le m’ad humme dit souent, / Que des femmez n’auez talent: / Vallez auez bien afeitiez; / Ensemble od eus vus deduiez” (lines 279–282); “people have often told me / that you have no interest in women. / You have fine-looking boys / with whom you enjoy yourself” (Hanning and Ferrante, lines 279–282).

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The queen responds in this way not only because her vanity has been attacked, but also because she realizes that the control she enjoyed over Launfal previously – her ability to bestow and withhold gifts and favors on a whim – has been subverted.79 Launfal is no longer dependent on Gwennere’s system of support and sponsorship, but that does not mean he cannot be influenced adversely by it. The knight, “sore aschamed þo; / To speke ne myȝte he forgo” (lines 691–692), reacts as “sauagely” as he once did in Arthur’s court, expending boasts with the same lack of regard for the consequences as he used to spend money: I haue loued a fayryr woman Þan þou euer leydest þyn ey vpon, Þys seuen yer & more! Hyr loþlokste [loathliest] mayde, wythoute wene, Myȝte bet be a quene Þan þou, yn all þy lyue!â•… (lines 694–699)

Similar to the magical lantern provided by Partonope’s mother in Partonope of Blois, which literally exposes Melior’s body to her lover and those around her, Launfal’s boast exposes Tryamour’s existence, her beauty, and her ability to “bet be a quene,” or to support and rule over a knight. The negative consequences of this boast, of course, are manifold; Launfal loses Tryamour and all the bounty she provides, he must endure a trial and the possibility of a death sentence, and, finally, Tryamour must also reveal her body to the view of Arthur’s court, which culminates in Gwennere’s blinding and Launfal’s salvation. Ultimately, Launfal must risk losing his love and her largess permanently in order to recognize (and for the audience to recognize) the consequences of making the wrong choice between the two sponsorship systems represented by these women. After this revelation, when Launfal seeks out Tryamour “for solas & plawe [amorous play]” (line 729), rather than bemoaning the loss of his love initially, Chestre lists the trappings of Tryamour’s largess that have vanished: He lokede yn hys alner, Þat fond hym spendyng, all plener, Whan þat he hadde nede, And þer nas noon, forsoþ to say, And Gyfre was yryde away Vp Blaunchard hys stede. All þat he hadde before ywonne, Hyt malt as snow aȝens þe sunne […] 79

Indeed, Finke and Shichtman read the true insult in Marie’s text as a claim that the queen is no longer “the most successful patron in the land” (“Magical Mistress Tour,” p. 494).

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Creative Revisions Hys armur, þat was whyt as flour, Hyt becom of blak colour.â•… (lines 733–743) 80

Thus, when Launfal cries out “How schall J from þe endure” (line 746), we are left wondering if he is mourning over love or patronage lost.81 It is at this point in the narrative when the romance heroine’s role as sponsor seems to overshadow her status as lover. The lesson in avataunce which Launfal must learn not only completes his training as a good knight and lover, it encourages the female readers of Chestre’s romance to compare and evaluate Gwennere’s and Tryamour’s systems of social and chivalric support directly. The audience, as well as Launfal, must recognize that these two types of female sponsorship cannot co-exist, and that the choice is, actually, an obvious one. In the trial scene that concludes Sir Launfal, Tryamour herself enters Arthur’s court and confronts his accusers and Gwennere on his behalf: “… J com for swych a þyng, / To skere [acquit] Launfal þe knyȝt: / Þat he neuer, yn no folye, / Besofte þe quene of no drurye [illicit love]” (lines 992–995). Though it does underscore her capacity for mercy even after Launfal betrays the terms of their agreement, Tryamour’s action is simply a fulfillment of Launfal’s realization immediately after all the goods he received from his mistress disappear: he made the incorrect choice, and that choice has tangible consequences.82 His subsequent emotional and psychological suffering for over a year until his trial – “Gladlyche hys lyf he wold a forgon / Jn care & in marnynge” (lines 824–825) – offers no further revelations for either knight or reader. When Gwennere and Tryamour do finally encounter one another, Tryamour’s victory is a forgone conclusion; the queen is to Tryamour “As ys þe mone ayen þe sonne, / Aday whan hyt ys lyȝt” (lines 989–990). Even when Tryamour “blew on [Gwennere] swych a breþ / Þat neuer eft myȝt sche se” (lines 1007–1008), she is only enacting the punishment the queen had earlier asked for herself if she was found to be a liar: “Ȝyf he bryngeþ a fayrer þynge / Put out my eeyn gray!” (lines 809–810).83 80

81

82

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Lanval’s reaction in Marie’s lay is markedly different, emphasizing his emotional rather than material losses: “En une chambre fu, tut suls; / Pensis esteit e anguissus: / S’amie apele mut souent, / Mes ceo ne li ualut neent. / Jl se pleigneit e suspirot; / D’ures en autres se pasmot, / Puis li crie cent feiz merci, / Que ele parlot a sun ami” (lines 337–344); “He was all alone in a room, / disturbed and troubled; / he called on his love, again and again, / but it did him no good. / He complained and sighed, / from time to time he fainted; / then he cried a hundred times for her to have mercy / and speak to her love” (Hanning and Ferrante, lines 337–344). Seaman aptly remarks that Tryamour is “metonymically equated with the gold, for when he loses her love through his betrayal, Launfal finds his purse empty for the first time” (“Englishing of Medieval Romance,” p. 114). My reading contrasts with that of critics such as Pam Whitfield, who suggests that “it is not until the Lady forgives him that he learns his lesson” (“Power Plays: Relationships in Marie de France’s Lanval and Eliduc,” Medieval Perspectives 14 [1999]: pp. 242–254 [p. 246]). Hazell suggests that the blinding of the queen, although a common penalty associated with treason in folk tales, is apt “considering the grave social and political consequences to the court of

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The final scene is significant to the romance, not only in that it resolves the conflict between the two women, as I suggest, but that it is a public recognition of Tryamour as Launfal’s patron. Although it is her body that is exposed and evaluated, momentarily obscuring, perhaps, the extent of Tryamour’s influence in Launfal’s life, a physical comparison of the women is all Gwennere called for: who is fairer? However, at this point, the audience of Arthur’s court within the narrative reaches the same understanding that the extra-literary audience of Chestre’s romance has had all along; as Tryamour’s supremacy is confirmed by all, each of the gifts of her largess are restored to Launfal. Preparing to leave, “þe lady lep an hyr palfray,” and “wyth þat com Gyfre allso prest [immediately], / Wyth Launfalys stede, out of þe forest” (lines 1009–1013). Finally, we are left not with the image of Tryamour’s beautiful, exposed body, but of her riding away “wyth solas & wyth pryde” (line 1020) at the head of her large retinue, those who, like the maidens, Gyfre, and Launfal, owe their livelihood, their hearts, and their fidelity to Tryamour. In the closing lines of the romance, Chestre also demonstrates his final departure from Marie’s narrative, a departure that has critical implications for the representation of Tryamour’s far reaching patronage. Although the two lovers “rod dorþ [through] Cadeuyle / Fer unto a jolyf jle, / Olyroun” (lines 1021–1023), ostensibly leaving the tainted example of Gwennere’s sponsorship behind, Euery [y]er, vpon a certayn day, [One] may here Launfales stede nay, And hym se wyth syȝt. Ho þat wyll þer axsy justus, To kepe hys armes fro þe rustus, Jn turnement oþer fyȝt, Dar he neuer forþer gon; Þer he may fynde justes anoon Wyth Syr Launfal þe knyȝt.â•… (lines 1024–1032)84

As with the tournament scenes included earlier in Chestre’s Middle English version, Launfal’s departure from and periodic return to Arthur’s court has been the source of much critical debate on the romance. Because of the similarity in phrasing between Valentyne’s challenge to Launfal to joust with him and “kepe hys harneys from þe ruste” (line 527), O’Brien interprets Launfal’s return as adversarial rather than supportive, characterizing the knight

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the queen’s misdeeds” (p. 142). For more on the significance of this scene to the function of the romance as a guidepost of ethical and moral behavior, see Hazell’s “The Blinding of Gwennere.” Marie’s lay concludes with this simple statement: “Nul humme n’en oi plus parler, / Ne ieo n’en sai auant cunter” (lines 645–646); “No man heard of him again, / and I have no more to tell” (Hanning and Ferrante, lines 645–646).

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as a menace to others rather than a mentor.85 Similarly, Laskaya and Salisbury read the yearly visitations as a challenge by Launfal’s spirit to Arthur’s “unmanly or ‘soft’ court.”86 However, a more compelling interpretation of these events, one in keeping with the critical role played by Chestre’s heroine in the cultural and social milieu of his romance, casts Launfal’s return as a perpetuation of Tryamour’s patronage. Within these last few lines, Chestre demonstrates how the positive system of sponsorship begun by a woman effects not only men in a contemporary court or society (as it does when Launfal uses the good he receives from Tryamour to enact his own patronage scheme), but also how it can extend chronologically and geographically to influence later generations in distant lands. In commenting on the continuing “utility of chivalric tales” like Sir Launfal, Furnish suggests that Launfal’s perpetual availability to a younger generation of jousters and warriors parallels the recollection of famous knights “whose names survive in poems.”87 As I have discussed in this chapter, the critical revisions Chestre makes to the characters of Tryamour and Gwennere and the systems of women’s patronage they represent, assures that these models of both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ female cultural and social influence will continue to offer guidance to future generations of women readers as well. The patterns of women’s sponsorship in Sir Launfal offer guidance and advice for male and female readers alike; the same could be said in varying degrees for all the romances I discuss in this study. Not only must a woman learn how to deploy her intellectual, emotional, and financial resources in ways that will enable her to extend her influence into the male-dominated cultural realm, but male readers of these popular texts must learn to acknowledge and value female advice and patronage in all its various forms. Whereas Troilus’s divinely ordained refusal to follow his sister’s counsel demonstrates the consequences inherent in simply ignoring women’s intellectual influence, Launfal’s awareness of the differences between good and bad patronage and his choice of one over the other confirms an even greater responsibility on the knight’s part. A man cannot afford to be blind – willfully or otherwise – to the importance of women’s influence and patronage, and he cannot merely be a passive recipient of that sponsorship either. Rather, he must actively participate in the process, assessing the options available to him, and choosing the patron who will provide him with the resources and intellectual and emotional lessons (often through his failures as much as his successes) he needs to develop into a successful knight.

85 86 87

It is more likely, however, that “ruste” simply creates a convenient rhyming couplet with the main term of this phrase: “juste.” Laskaya and Salisbury, The Middle English Breton Lays, p. 204. Furnish, “Civilization and Savagery,” p. 148.

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Conclusion This study has considered fictional models of female social influence and patronage in late medieval romances; these characters, I argue, offer women readers thorough examples of the ways in which many different skills and forms of knowledge not limited to material wealth can be marshaled to influence the cultural and political realms they inhabit. By making a deeper inquiry into alternatives to the limited conceptions of social influence and patronage espoused by many scholars, this book re-evaluates a system based primarily on masculine power and property to consider the impact of women’s particular knowledge and talents on that system. Yet all of the romances discussed in this study were written by men.1 Might not this fact of authorship undermine the influential feminine portrayals I have outlined in the previous chapters? Are these representations of culturally significant acts of female inspiration and sponsorship compromised if we consider that male poets might be creating the perfect patroness in the same way that Melior and Tryamour create the perfect knights through their acts of intellectual and financial support?2 Although we cannot read these fictional female agents and patrons completely divorced from their textual context, authorship alone does not explain the compelling characterizations of women’s influence found in these romances. I suggest that there is an interdependence between the male authors of the romances I discuss and the women who read them. As many authors, such as Metham, relied in large measure upon the support provided by women sponsors, it was in their best interests to depict their female characters as influential figures or patrons whose various acts of generosity (both social and financial) enabled their knights’ success. Yet the depiction of romance heroines as sponsors need not only be based on the (potentially self-serving) creativity of the male poets. The literary models employed by these authors also attest to the fact that there was a strong cultural presence of these kinds of influence and patronage by women in the Middle Ages. Thus, 1 2

Although we do not know the name of the Partonope poet, it is likely that the author is a man. Questions such as these are pursued more broadly in Judith Fetterley’s classic feminist, readerresponse study The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American Fiction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978). Fetterley questions whether female readers can resist the “immasculation” – i.e., the acceptance of the value systems and gender perspectives of the male author – that she must undergo in order to participate in a literary discourse so dominated by male authors (p. xx). Although Fetterley focuses on American literature, the same caveats may be applied to women readers of medieval romances as well. For discussions of the dynamics between male writers and potential women in their audience, see Anne Clark Bartlett’s Male Authors, Female Readers: Representation and Subjectivity in Middle English Devotional Literature (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995).

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the instructive and influential figure of the heroine in medieval romance is a collaboratively produced model, one deployed creatively by male authors in their compositions, but also drawn from examples of actual female sponsors in the Middle Ages. The patterns of cultural and intellectual influence modeled by the female romance characters I have discussed in the previous chapters also provide a foundation for broader speculation about the secular category and its relationship to the sacred in the Middle Ages. Recent scholarship on medieval secularity has sought to question the misleading binaries constructed around the categories of secular and sacred, such as laity versus clergy and earthly life versus spiritual life. These dynamics often represent the two concepts as mutually exclusive with the secular defined as anything not religious. Alastair Minnis discusses the inability of binary thinking to adequately represent medieval cultural and literary reality: “competing interests there frequently were, but in many cases and circumstances the secular and the religious must be seen as complexly interwoven, operating in relationships of complementarity, mutual support, or even interdependence.”3 Lawrence Besserman, on the other hand, identifies what he calls the “cross-pollination between secular and sacred realms,” focusing in particular on the secularization of pagan religion in the medieval period.4 Whether we define the secular as pagan (classical or otherwise) or worldly, the specific forms of knowledge conveyed through acts of influence and patronage by romance heroines offer an example of how the two categories can profitably co-exist. Building on the interpretive model employed by Minnis, Besserman, and other critics, I read medieval secularity as a combination of religion and worldly knowledge, focusing particularly on the genre of medieval romances, their manuscript context, and female characters depicted within the narratives. Women’s literate activity in particular offers a productive lens through which to study the blending of sacred and secular literature in this period; not only did medieval women read and bequeath religious material, such as Psalters or Books of Hours, on a large scale, but many romance authors particularly entreat their female audience members to look kindly upon their 3

4

Alastair J. Minnis, “The Biennial Chaucer Lecture: ‘I Speke of Folk in Seculer Estaat’: Vernacularity and Secularity in the Age of Chaucer,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 27 (2005): p.€28. See also his work on secularity in medieval literature rather than social and political thought in “Standardizing Lay Culture: Secularity in French and English Literature of the Fourteenth Century,” in The Beginnings of Standardization: Language and Culture in Fourteenth-Century England, ed. Ursula Schaefer (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2006), pp. 43–60. Lawrence Besserman, “Preface,” in Sacred and Secular in Medieval and Early Modern Cultures: New Essays, ed. Lawrence Besserman (New York: Palgrave, 2006), p. xv. He remarks in the Introduction to this volume that there was an “interpenetration of the pagan sacred and the erstwhile secular” in the Christian Middle Ages (p. 4). See also Thomas G. Duncan’s contribution to Besserman’s collection, which discusses the secular in terms of classical and Germanic paganism: “‘Quid Hinieldus Cum Christo?’: The Secular Expression of the Sacred in Old and Middle English Lyrics,” in Sacred and Secular, pp. 29–46.

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Conclusion work. The female characters in romances read and sponsored by medieval women often represent the blending of the sacred and the secular, both in the learning they possess and in the way that their educations influence the behavior of their male counterparts. In turn, the female audience of medieval romances often sought to acquire texts that depict heroines who are as well versed in the secular disciplines of natural science, history, chivalry, and courtly love as they are in the tenets of Christianity. The genre of medieval romance is often considered to be “the major secular genre from the time of Chrétien de Troyes in the late twelfth century to at least that of Sir Thomas Malory three hundred years later.”5 Remarking that this diverse body of literature continues to puzzle critics in many ways, Lillian Herlands Hornstein notes that, “[a]lthough the [medieval] romances have never been considered difficult to understand, no one has been able to tell us exactly what they are.”6 Yet, however slippery the category of romance remains, the romance genre’s status as secular literature is rarely called into question. Attempting to impose some order onto such a broad literary category, Reiss identifies at least four different generic forms that are represented in the corpus of Middle English romances: epics and histories, such as the alliterative Morte Arthure and King Alexander; exemplary works, such as Amis and Amiloun; hagiographies, such as the Eustace–Constance group; and folktales and ballads, such as The Marriage of Sir Gawain. Thus, the romance genre is a deliberate mix of these various forms, dissolving the distinctions between them and often making use of several simultaneously.7 While these texts may provide more entertainment for their audience than most sermons or religious texts, romances are on the whole didactic. Almost all of them in effect encourage spiritual devotion, redemption, and repentance while at the same time advocating worldly success and renown.8 Indeed, rather than separating romance from other, more overtly religious, genres, “we might more accurately note that the didactic and the religious are the warp and woof of romance.”9 5 6

7

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Edmund Reiss, “Romance,” in The Popular Literature of Medieval England, ed. Thomas J. Heffernan (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985), p. 108. Lillian Herlands Hornstein, “Middle English Romances,” in Recent Middle English Scholarship and Criticism: Survey and Desiderata, ed. J. Burke Severs (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1971), p. 64. The term “romance” in medieval England has been said to refer to anything we might today classify as “a good story” (Reiss, “Romance,” p. 109, note 8). It is precisely their amorphous nature that has caused some scholars to suggest that the category of medieval romances should be considered a “mode” rather than a “genre” (Reiss, “Romance,” p. 109). Velma Bourgeois Richmond, The Popularity of Middle English Romance (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1975), p. 20. Reiss, “Romance,” p. 115. Even though he does not return to or interrogate the category of the “secular” directly in this article, by characterizing the romance genre as the flagship of secular literature and then describing how it can function simultaneously as a religious, devotional, and entertaining text, Reiss is asking those questions which can be used to redefine all medieval literature categorized as secular. His argument is actually only one step away from doing so.

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Not only does the romance genre itself reflect secular–sacred hybridity, but the manuscript contexts of many of the romances also attest to the compatibility of worldly and religious categories; we will recall that the codices in which John Metham’s Amoryus and Cleopes (Chapter Two) and Thomas Chestre’s Sir Launfal (Chapter Four) appear include both secular and religious material. Princeton Library Garrett MS 141, for example, contains not only Metham’s romance, which offers a Christianized conclusion to a tale of classical paganism, but also scientific works on palmistry and prognostications on both worldly and religious matters. British Library MS Cotton Caligula A.ii is a massive volume that includes Chestre’s Sir Launfal as well as historical, scientific, and devotional material.10 Most importantly, however, the bodies of knowledge and the value systems conveyed in the romance heroines’ acts of influence and patronage integrate Christianity and secular elements, such as science and chivalry. While this fusion of secular and sacred appears to some extent in each of the romances I discuss in this book, I will confine myself here to two brief examples, one in which the secular category appears in the form of classical paganism, and one in which secularity is more broadly construed as worldliness. In both cases, the female characters and the knowledge they deploy in their acts of influence function as the site at which romance authors attempt to negotiate the tensions between the secular and the sacred. In Troilus and Criseyde Chaucer struggles with the value of pagan narratives, separating good pagan literary and historical texts from bad pagan religion. The character of Cassandra, Troilus’s intellectual and social advocate, mediates the tension between pagan texts, which provide the basis for her prophetic influence, and the pagan theology, which Chaucer denounces at the end of his romance. In his discussion of Troilus and Criseyde, Paul Strohm writes that the text presupposes an audience that is able to “view ardent secular love both as admirable and as rather foolish; to believe that only divine love as embodied in God’s sacrifice is stable and trustworthy, but that there are many paths to Rome and we have much to learn from pre- and non-Christian attempts at understanding.”11 One of the “paths” an astute audience is asked to follow in Troilus and Criseyde is the fine line between classical knowledge and pagan religion; the audience must learn to appreciate the former while discarding the latter.12 The character of Cassandra is the pre-eminent example 10

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Selections in the Cotton Caligula A.ii manuscript include The Ten Commandments (fol. 58v), a copy of the Long Charter of Christ (fol. 77r), a Cronica, or list of kings extending from Brutus to Edward IV (fol. 109r), and several recipes against colic (fol. 13v) and against the plague (fol. 65v). See Gisela Guddat-Figge’s Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Middle English Romances (München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1976), pp. 170–171 for a full listing of the manuscript’s contents. Paul Strohm, Social Chaucer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 63. Many scholars, such as D. W. Robertson and to a lesser extent A. J. Minnis, have endeavored to read Troilus as a religious allegory or as an historical commentary on virtuous (and less than virtuous) pagans. See Robertson’s A Preface to Chaucer: Studies in Medieval Perspectives (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962) and Minnis’s Chaucer and Pagan Antiquity

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Conclusion of the appreciation of classical, secular texts in Chaucer’s romance. Minnis suggests that there are two important aspects to the character of Cassandra: her science and her paganism. Chaucer, he continues, “accepts the former and places the latter in its historical context.”13 While Minnis’s treatment of Cassandra’s “good” paganism versus Calchas’s “bad” paganism no doubt raises important questions about the role of pagan prophets in the text,14 I am more interested in pursuing the first part of Minnis’s observation. Far from merely accepting Cassandra’s “science” or knowledge, Chaucer relies on it to help justify his own valuing of classical histories and poetry at the end of the romance. As I discuss in Chapter One, Chaucer deliberately downplays Apollo’s traditional involvement with Cassandra’s gifts and instead emphasizes her education and training in Latin, the liberal arts, and classical history. Her knowledge is depicted as secular but not necessarily pagan. Thus, at the end of his tale, Chaucer can offer a commentary on the inadequacies of worldly love and pagan cults without indicting the classical texts on which he draws and which he admires. In this conclusion, Troilus and Criseyde becomes a warning or a cautionary tale that depicts the traps of the secular world and its emphasis on variable human love. But the indictment of earthly love seems to be merely a segue to a more detailed interrogation of pagan culture and religion. Not only does the narrator denounce the “wrecched worldes appetites” but also the “payens corsed olde rites” (V. 1849–1851). The classical pagan gods “Jove, Appollo, [and] Mars” are characterized as a “rascaille [i.e., worthless mob]” (V. 1853) as opposed to the likes of Virgil, Ovid, and Homer amongst whom Chaucer’s work should be placed. The narrator also offers a seemingly contradictory indictment of pagan poetry. At the end of the long list of bad paganisms, he writes “Lo here, the forme of olde clerkis speche / In poetrie, if ye hire bokes seche” (V. 1854–1855). While it might seem logical to include his reference to pagan poetry in the condemnation of pagan religion that comes before, we must remember that it is to the “poesye” (V. 1790) of classical authors like Virgil and Ovid that the narrator recommends his “litel bok.” This last entry on poetry in the list of pagan failings is not depicted with the venom used to discuss pagan worship. Their religious rituals are “corsed,” their worldly appetites are “wrecched,” even their gods are “swich rascaille,” but the “forme” or style of their poetry is also represented in Troilus and Criseyde. While the essential principle of worldly corruption could be referred to in the word “forme,” it seems to be deliberately vague. After all, the narrator tells

13 14

(Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1982). Minnis reads Chaucer as a “Christian historian” (p. 24) whose depiction of paganism is taken from the writings of medieval clerics, such as Robert Holcot’s early fourteenth-century commentary on the Book of Wisdom and the Old French Ovide Moralisé, who wanted to show how pagan “science, history, and mythology could serve and support Christian doctrine” (p. 11). Minnis, Chaucer and Pagan Antiquity, p. 74. See Minnis’s discussion of these roles in Chaucer and Pagan Antiquity, pp. 74–78.

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his “fresshe” audience to turn away from worldly vanity and secular love (V. 1835–1841), but, in line V. 1854, he asserts that reading pagan poetry is not immediately condemnable. The readers, if they examine classical texts (“if ye hire bokes seche” [V. 1855]), will simply notice and perhaps value, as the narrator obviously does, the formal and stylistic similarities between these works and Troilus and Criseyde. Although the narrator condemns the pagan religious practices, he desires his work to be in the company of the great classical auctores; his work, the audience is asked to observe, is worthy of occupying these venerable steps. Thus, the Corpus Christi manuscript ends much as it begins, with the noble and sophisticated audience listening to a moral sermon. However, sandwiched in between is a tale not only of doomed and fleeting secular love, but a perceptive use of valued classical scholarship by a female reader. It is these secular texts, the Latin and vernacular histories of Thebes read and quoted by Criseyde and Cassandra, which remain the kind of “poesye” to which Chaucer will subject his work. Indeed it is not Cassandra’s virtuous paganism but her secular knowledge that makes her character an important model for female influence in this romance. Anne Neville and the readers after her are reminded that women’s reading (of texts or people) and the deployment of that knowledge in Troilus and Criseyde is based on this worldly scholarship and an adherence to its hermeneutics – not, that is, on the gifts of pagan gods nor on the Christian viewpoint that Troilus gains after his death. The Partonope poet also spends a good deal of energy discussing the relationship between sacred and secular categories in his romance; while he does not employ those exact terms, he discusses the two categories using the terms “holynesse” and “worldly loue.” The poet expresses his views on the subject in periodic asides throughout the romance and, finally, combines the two categories together in the knowledge of his heroine, Melior. The narratorial interruptions serve not only to figure the audience of Partonope of Blois as at least partially female, as I discuss in Chapter Three, but to propagate the belief that the categories of sacred and secular are mutually exclusive only when indulged to an extreme extent. One lengthy digression in particular renders the distinction between sacred and secular – figured as the difference between chivalry and holiness, earthly love and spiritual love – as a conflict that women in particular must face.15 This section appears in the midst of the tournament when Melior is impressed by Partonope’s chivalric performance. During the competition, Partonope “wenyth to wynne faire Meliore. / He is yonge, and darre wele 15

Whereas Sandra Ihle reads the narratorial asides as a distancing technique, which draws the audience away from the romance’s action (“The English Partonope of Blois as Exemplum,” in Courtly Literature: Culture and Context, ed. Keith Busby and Erik Kooper [Philadelphia: Benjamins, 1990], pp. 301–311 [p. 303]), I argue that these narrative asides actually guide the readers’ attention toward the aspects of women’s character that the narrator would like to emphasize: secular or worldly love is as important as religious devotion in women.

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Conclusion fight, / Stronge, lusty, and a semely knyght” (lines 9659–9661). At this point, the narrator begins a reminiscence about “þo dayes” when men were able to win “her ladies in dyuers degre” (lines 9664–9665). Some were won through “manhode and chevalry,” “beaute and curtesy,” “faire speche and richesse,” or “þrow strength” and “largesse” (lines 9666–9669). In the present, however, the narrator claims “all þat is go with-outen nay, / The worlde is turned a-noþer way” (lines 9670–9671). A young man can no longer successfully employ these methods for winning a lady’s heart because women are “so sore a-ferde to synne / … / … for holynesse / Hath so caught hem in his service, / Of worldly lustes now in no Wise / Take they hiede, but only to wyrche, / Þat they may please God and his chirche” (lines 9675–9681). Modern women have replaced love with “dame chastite” (line 9685) as their master; they shun worldly lust and seek spiritual satisfaction instead. Indeed, their attention is so set on church services that “from knelyng hem luste not ones to Rise” (line 9687) and they will not notice the noble deeds men conduct for their sakes. Much like with the women to whom Caxton refers in the Prologue to Blanchardyn and Eglantine – those who “studye ouer moche in bokes of contemplacioun”16 – over-zealous religious fervor here destroys a woman’s desire to be a lover. These women reject the joyous aspects of daily life: “to go to her dyner haue they none haste; / … / Of ffresshe array take they none hiede” (lines 9688–9690). Rather, fifteenth-century women are cold to their admirers “compleynt[s]” (line 9701) and the narrator believes that “chastite hath made hem defe” (line 9705). The dynamic the poet outlines in this digression figures religious devotion as the enemy of secular love. The two cannot seem to co-exist; one may destroy the other. As does Chaucer in Troilus and Criseyde, the Partonope poet represents the struggle to negotiate between good pagan knowledge and bad pagan religion in his depiction of Partonope’s mother’s and the bishop’s reaction to Melior. Both characters assume that Melior’s pagan knowledge – her ability to perform a variety of enchantments – is akin to devil worship, which is often associated with pagan religion in the Middle Ages.17 We also cannot help but note Melior’s slight defensiveness when she outlines her childhood curriculum for Partonope, as if she attempts to pre-empt any future objections to her education. In the midst of her initial act of patronage toward Partonope, swiftly on the heels of the revelation of her magical abilities and secular scholarship, she protests that she is a Christian and always has been: Off my persone haue ye no ffere. Demythe me not to be an euell þynge 16 17

The Prologues and Epilogues of William Caxton, ed. W. J. B. Crotch, EETS o.s. 176 (London: Oxford University Press, 1928), p. 105. For another example of this, see the depiction of the Albynestians and their devil-infested sphere in my discussion of Amoryus and Cleopes in Chapter Two.

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Women’s Power in Late Medieval Romance That shulde be crafte yowre sowle In synne brynge, Hytte to departe frome heuen blysse. […] … For soþe I am Borne and broghte for-þe a trewe crysten woman, And my lefe ys fully In Crystes lore.â•… (lines 1882–1889)

As I discuss in more detail in Chapter Three, Melior’s comprehensive patronage of her knight includes lessons in earthly love, spiritual development, and political and chivalric success. Thus, the program of sponsorship put forth by Melior provides a corrective to the dangers of religious zealotry posed by the poet in his narrative digression and personified by the Bishop of France in the story itself; she truly offers him the best of both worlds. Thus, we may see medieval romances as a rich site where the affiliation between secular and sacred is reflected in the heroines’ knowledge and their acts of social and intellectual influence. The heroine’s patronage will ensure that her knight’s earthly success is not achieved at the expense of his spiritual security, but is nurtured alongside it. More generally, the compatibility of sacred and secular in the supportive acts of the romance heroines I have discussed in this study suggest that the potential avenues for women to intervene in the cultural and literary spheres of the Middle Ages may be even more numerous than has been previously suggested. Not only do we see these fictional patterns of female influence and patronage moving beyond financial or tangible support to include acts of intellectual or emotional sponsorship, but they may, more broadly, complicate our understanding of medieval literature as purely secular or sacred.

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Bibliography Moore, Samuel. “Patrons of Letters in Norfolk and Suffolk, c. 1450,” PMLA 27 and 28 (1912 and 1913). 188–207 and 79–105 Nappholz, Carol J. “Launfal’s “Largesse”: Word-Play in Thomas Chestre’s Sir Launfal,” English Language Notes 25.3 (March 1988). 4–9 Nichols, Stephen G. “Foreward,” The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women. Ed. June Hall McCash. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1996. xi–xix. ——. “Introduction: Philology in a Manuscript Culture,” Speculum 65 (1990). 1–10 O’Brien, Timothy D. “The ‘Readerly’ Sir Launfal,” Parergon 8.1 (June 1990). 33–45 Page, Stephen F. “John Metham’s Amoryus and Cleopes: Intertextuality and Innovation in a Chaucerian Poem,” The Chaucer Review 31 (1996). 201–208 Parr, Johnstone. “Chaucer and Partonope of Blois,” Modern Language Notes 60.7 (November 1945). 486–487 Patterson, Lee. Chaucer and the Subject of History. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991 Pearsall, Derek. “The English Chaucerians,” Chaucer and Chaucerians: Critical Studies in Middle English Literature. Ed. D. S. Brewer. Huntsville: University of Alabama Press, 1967. 201–270 ——. “The English Romance in the Fifteenth Century,” Essays and Studies n.s. 29 (1976). 56–83 ——. “The Troilus Frontispiece and Chaucer’s Audience,” The Yearbook of English Studies 7 (1977). 68–74 Peyton, Henry H. “The Roles of Calkas, Helen, and Cassandra in Chaucer’s Troilus,” Interpretations: Studies in Language and Literature 7 (1975). 8–12 Purdie, Rhiannon. Anglicising Romance: Tail-Rhyme and Genre in Medieval English Literature. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2008 Ramsey, Lee C. Chivalric Romances: Popular Literature in Medieval England. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983 Reiss, Edmund. “Romance,” The Popular Literature of Medieval England. Ed. Thomas J. Heffernan. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985. 108–130 Richmond, Velma Bourgeois. The Popularity of Middle English Romance. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1975 Robertson, D. W. A Preface to Chaucer: Studies in Medieval Perspectives. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962 Rosenthal, Joel T. “Aristocratic Cultural Patronage and Book Bequests, 1350–1500,” John Rylands Library Bulletin 64 (1981–1982). 522–548 Ross, Valerie. “Believing Cassandra: Intertextual Politics and the Interpretation of Dreams in Troilus and Criseyde,” The Chaucer Review 31.4 (1997). 339–356 159

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Bibliography lotte Cook Morse et al. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publication, Western Michigan University, 1992. 305–327 Thompson, John J. “Looking Behind the Book: London, British Library, MS Cotton Caligula A.ii, Part 1, and the Experience of its Texts,” Romance Reading on the Book: Essays on Medieval Narrative Presented to Maldwyn Mills. Ed. Jennifer Fellows, et al. Cardiff: Wales University Press, 1996. 171–187 Thrupp, Sylvia. The Merchant Class of Medieval London, 1300–1500. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989 Trounce, A. McI. “The English Tail-Rhyme Romances,” Medium Aevum 2 (1933). 189–198 Weldon, James. “Jousting for Identity: Tournaments in Thomas Chestre’s Sir Launfal,” Parergon 17.2 (2000). 107–123 Whitfield, Pam. “Power Plays: Relationships in Marie de France’s Lanval and Eliduc,” Medieval Perspectives 14 (1999). 242–254 Whiting, B. J. “A Fifteenth-Century English Chaucerian: The Translator of Partonope of Blois,” Mediaeval Studies 7 (1945). 40–54 Williams, George. “The Troilus and Criseyde Frontispiece Again,” Modern Language Review 57 (1962). 173–178 Windeatt, Barry. “Chaucer and Fifteenth-Century Romance: Partonope of Blois,” Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honor of Derek Brewer. Ed. Ruth Morse and Barry Windeatt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. 62–80 ——. Oxford Guides to Chaucer: Troilus and Criseyde. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992 Wright, Michael J. “The Tournament Episodes in Sir Launfal: A Suggestion,” Parergon 8 (1974). 37–38

161

Index Page numbers in bold type refer to illustrations and their captions. Adamâ•…109 Adams, Tracyâ•… 5 n.11 Aeschylus, Agamemnonâ•… 19 n.9 Alexander the Greatâ•… 78 n.56 medieval romance legends ofâ•… 56 n.6, 77, 143 Alliterative Morte Arthureâ•…143 Alix of Franceâ•… 89, 91 n.22 Amis and Amilounâ•…143 Amoryus and Cleopes see Metham, John Amtower, Laurelâ•… 8 n.21, 19 n.10 Anderson, Earl R.â•… 124 n.41 Andreas Capellanusâ•… 47 n.81 Anelida and Arcite (Geoffrey Chaucer)â•… 82 n.64 Anne of Bohemia, Queen of England 26–27 Antenorâ•… 27 n.32, 32, 44, 50 Apolloâ•… 14, 20, 32, 51, 53, 145 Archibald, Elizabethâ•… 113 n.69 Aristotleâ•… 58 n.9, 75, 78 n.56 Arthur, Kingâ•… 122–123, 134–135 audience Chaucer’sâ•… 26–29, 44, 53, 144, 146 of Partonope of Bloisâ•… 86 n.2, 87–91, 93–94, 108, 114 of Sir Launfalâ•…118–121, 122 n.30, 125, 134, 137 Augustine, Saintâ•… 58 n.9 Barron, W. R. J.â•… 82 n.65 Bartlett, Anne Clarkâ•… 4 n.10, 5 n.13, 141 n.2 Beatrice of St. Polâ•… 4 n.9 Beauchamp, Richard, Earl of Warwickâ•…22

Beaufort, Joan, Countess of Westmorlandâ•… 22, 26 n.30 Beaufort, Margaret, Countess of Staffordâ•… 5, 10, 55 n.3 Bell, Susan Groagâ•… 3 n.7, 8 Benoît de Ste. Maure Roman de Troieâ•… 25 n.25, 33 n.47 Bevis of Hamptounâ•… 117 n.5 Besserman, Lawrenceâ•… 142 betrayalâ•…14 in Amoryus and Cleopesâ•…53 in Partonope of Bloisâ•…104–105, 109, 111 in Sir Launfalâ•…135–137 in Troilus and Criseydeâ•…31, 42–43 Bliss, A. J.â•… 118 n.8, 126, 133 n.70, 134 n.74 Boccaccio, Giovanni Il Filostratoâ•… 13, 20 n.11, 35–36, 42–43, 45 n.77, 49 Boffey, Juliaâ•… 8 n.22, 119 n.19, 120 n.23 book inventoriesâ•… 2–3 Book of the Duchess, The (Geoffrey Chaucer)â•… 81 n.64 Breton laiâ•… 116 n.3 Broadhurst, K. M.â•… 12 n.37 Bruckner Matilda Tomarynâ•… 88, 93, 99, 101 n.45, 106, 109, 111 n.63 Brusendorff, Aageâ•… 26–27 Butler, Judithâ•… 96 n.36 caritasâ•…73 Cassiodorusâ•… 58 n.9 Caxton, William Blanchardyn and Eglantineâ•…4–5, 163

Index 10, 55 n.4, 88 n.10, 115 n.2, 120, 147 Cavanaugh, Susan Hagenâ•… 8 n.24, 90 n.16 Chaucer, Aliceâ•… 80 n.60 Chaucer, Geoffrey Anelida and Arciteâ•… 82 n.64 audienceâ•… 26–29, 144, 146 Book of the Duchess, Theâ•…81 n.64 Knight’s Tale, Theâ•…61 Legend of Good Women, Theâ•…22, 31 n.45, 81–82 n.64 Nun’s Priest’s Tale, Theâ•…1 Parliament of Fowls, Theâ•… 58 n.9, 81 n.64 Squire’s Tale, Theâ•… 62 n.20 Troilus and Criseydeâ•… 6, 11, 13–14, 17–51, 81–82 n.64, 115, 144 Wife of Bath’s Tale, Theâ•… 98 n.39 Chestre, Thomasâ•… 118 Libeaus Desconusâ•… 116 n.4 Octavianâ•… 116 n.4 Sir Launfalâ•… 7 n.19, 12–13, 15–16, 115–139, 144. See also Lanval under Marie de France chivalry and lovesicknessâ•… 43–49 as a code of conductâ•… 2, 5, 62 associated with Christianityâ•… 72 boar-huntingâ•…92 dragon-slayingâ•… 63, 66–70 rape characterized asâ•… 93–98 See also tournaments Chrétien de Troyesâ•… 143 Erec et Enideâ•… 98 n.39 Lancelot: Le Chevalier de la Charetteâ•… 1, 6 n.14 Christianityâ•… 11, 15, 109–110, 112, 144, 147 associated with chivalryâ•… 72 Bishop of Paris andâ•… 15, 108–111, 114, 147, 148 conversion toâ•… 55, 70–73, 82 Clanchy, M. T.â•… 8 n.21 Clerk’s Tale, The (Geoffrey Chaucer) 81 n.64

Coleman, Joyce,â•… 8 n.21, 22 n.16, 23 n.20, 27 n.31 Connolly, Margaretâ•… 23 n.22 Coote, Lesley A.â•… 19 n.8 courtly loveâ•… 5, 7, 15 establishing boundaries within 47, 102, 104, 127, 130 Cox, Catherineâ•… 29 Craig, Hardinâ•… 56 n.5, 62 n.20, 75, 76–77 Crocker, Hollyâ•… 7 n.18, 88 n.6 cupiditasâ•…73 Dalrymple, Rogerâ•… 54 n.2, 73 n.38 dedicationsâ•…2–3 de la Pole, Alice, Duchess of Suffolk 28 de la Pole, William, Duke of Suffolk 80 didacticism (in romance)â•… 2, 4–5, 55–56, 87–88, 91, 143 dream interpretationâ•… 19–21, 31, 33–36, 39–42, 44–46, 49–50, 53 Dinshaw, Carolynâ•… 29 n.39, 30€n.41–42, 34 n.48 Duncan, Thomas G.â•… 142 n.4 Dutton, Anne M.â•… 9 n.26 Eleanor of Aquitaineâ•… 89, 91 n.22, 119 Eley, Pennyâ•… 92, 98–99, 102 n.46 Emaréâ•… 68 n.29 Erec et Enide (Chrétien de Troyes)â•… 98 n.39 Erler, Maryâ•… 12 n.37 escapism (in romance)â•… 1–2, 9, 121 Eustance-Constance group of romancesâ•…143 Eveâ•…109 Everett, Dorothyâ•… 116 n.4 fairy mistressâ•… 7, 123–124, 127–128, 131 Fastolf, Johnâ•… 59 n.13 Fetterley, Judithâ•… 141 n.2 Ferrante, Joanâ•… 6, 7 n.20, 12, 19 n.8, 87, 111 n.65 164

Index Finke, Laurieâ•… 121, 123–124, 127 n.50, 132 n.69 Finlayson, Johnâ•… 116 n.3, 128 n.58, 133 n.71 Fisher, John H.â•… 27 n.30 Floire et Blancheflorâ•… 98 n.39 Fumo, Jamieâ•… 54 n.2, 57 n.8, 61 Furnish, Shearleâ•… 125 n.43, 126–127, 128, 130 n.62, 134, 139 Galway, Margaretâ•… 26–27 Gee, Loveday Lewesâ•… 3 n.9, 11 Geoffrey of Monmouthâ•… 33 n.47 Giancarlo, Matthewâ•… 19 n.10 Goodman, Jenniferâ•… 9 n.30, 86 n.3 Goyette, Johnâ•… 58 n.9 Graelentâ•… 101 n.45, 116 n.5, 122 n.31. See also Breton lai Grant, Edwardâ•… 58 n.9 Gravdal, Kathrynâ•… 97–98 Green, D. H.â•… 3 n.6, 6, 12, 55 n.3 Green, Monica H.â•… 68 n.31 Green, Richard Firthâ•… 28 n.34 Guddat-Figge, Giselaâ•… 119–120 Guido delle Colonne Historia destructionis Troiaeâ•…33 n.47 Guigemar (Marie de France)â•… 128 n.53 Gwennere see Sir Launfal under Chestre, Thomas Haly, Albohazenâ•… 60 n.15 Hanning, Robert W.â•… 102 n.47, 113 n.67 Hansen, Elaine Tuttleâ•… 29 Hardman, Phillipaâ•… 27 n.30 Harris, Julianâ•… 132 n.68 Hazell, Dinahâ•… 118 n.12, 123 n.37, 128, 135 n.77, 137–138 n.83 Hector of Troyâ•… 99 Helen of Troyâ•… 81 n.64 Helmbold, Anitaâ•… 27 n.30 Heloiseâ•… 111 n.65 Hibbard, Lauraâ•… 86 n.1, 101 n.45, 104 n.54, 111 n.64 Hildegard of Bingenâ•… 68 n.31

Historia destructionis Troiae (Guido della Colonne)â•… 33 n.47 Holzknecht, Karl Juliusâ•… 11 n.36 Homer Iliad, Theâ•… 19 n.9 Hornstein, Lillian Herlandsâ•… 143 Hosington, Brendaâ•… 88 n.9, 95 n.34, 103, 108 n.60 Ihle, Sandraâ•… 88 n.7, 146 n.15 Iliad, The (Homer)â•… 19 n.9 influence see patronage Jackson, Claireâ•… 102 n.46, 106 Jambeck, Karen K.â•… 2, 9 n.26, 122 n.30 Jaquette, Lady Riversâ•… 28 Jeanne de Valoisâ•… 4 n.9 Jerome, Saintâ•… 58 n.9 John of Gauntâ•… 26 n.30 Jordan, Erinâ•… 11 n.35 Joseph of Arimatheaâ•… 77 Kaluza, M.â•… 116 n.4 Keller, Hans-Erichâ•… 89 Knapp, Peggy Annâ•… 34 n.49, 45, 49 n.82 Knight’s Tale, The (Geoffrey Chaucer)â•…61 Knyvett, Williamâ•… 23–25 Kowaleski, Maryanneâ•… 12 n.37 Krueger, Roberta L.â•… 1 n.2, 108 n.59 Krug, Rebeccaâ•… 2 n.5, 3 n.7, 10, 55 n.3 Lancelotâ•…1 Lancelot en proseâ•… 101 n.45 Lancelot: Le Chevalier de la Charette (Chrétien de Troyes)â•… 6 n.14 Lanval (Marie de France)â•… 15, 101 n.45, 116, 122–124, 127–128. See also Sir Launfal under Chestre, Thomas. Larson, Wendy R.â•… 12 n.39 Laskaya, Anneâ•… 119, 139 Lay Folks’ Catechism, Theâ•… 72 n.36 Le Bel Inconnuâ•… 111 n.65 165

Index Le Roman d’Enéasâ•… 99 n.41 Le Roman de Troieâ•… 99 n.41 Legend of Good Women, The (Geoffrey Chaucer)â•… 22, 31 n.45, 81–82 n.64 L’Escoufle (Jean Renart)â•… 98 n.39 Libeaus Desconus (Thomas Chestre)â•… 116 n.4 Life of Saint Margaret, Theâ•…90–91 lineageâ•… 36–37, 39, 50, 99–100, 128–129 London, Margeryâ•… 90–91 London, Williamâ•… 91 Loomis, Roger S.â•… 121 n.26, 129 n.60 Louis VII, King of Franceâ•… 89 Lucas, Peter J.â•… 128 n.57, 130 Lumiansky, R. M.â•… 57 Lydgate, Johnâ•… 80 Troy Bookâ•… 56 n.5, 68 n.28 Lyston, Isabelâ•… 90–91 magic see necromancy Malory, Sir Thomasâ•… 143 Manuscripts Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 61â•… 13–14, 22–28, 24, 37–39, 40–41, 43–44, 53 missing sections inâ•… 13, 22, 43–44 ownership ofâ•… 22, 26 n.30, 27, 120 London, British Library MS Additional 35288 marginal signatures inâ•…89 MS Cotton Caligula A.iiâ•… 116 n.4, 119–120, 144 contents ofâ•… 120, 144 n.10 marginal signatures inâ•…120 Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Library MS Garret 141â•… 55, 74–76, 78 n.57, 120, 144 marginaliaâ•… 2–3, 89–90 Marie de Champagneâ•… 6 n.14 Marie de France Guigemarâ•… 128 n.53 Lanvalâ•… 15, 101 n.45, 116,

122–124, 127–128. See also Sir Launfal under Chestre, Thomas Marriage of Sir Gawain, Theâ•…143 Martin, B. K.â•… 118, 128 n.56, 133 n.73 Mary of St. Pol, Countess of Pembrokeâ•… 3–4 n.9 Mathew, Gervaseâ•… 28 n.34 McCash, June Hallâ•… 3 n.6, 12, 55 n.3 Meale, Carol M.â•… 1 n.1, 2, 9, 90–91 Medeaâ•…68 Mehl, Dieterâ•… 128 n.58 Melior see Partonope of Blois Metamorphoses (Ovid)â•… 36–37, 54, 70 Metham, Johnâ•… 58–59, 61 n.17, 74, 141 Amoryus and Cleopesâ•… 11, 13–14, 53–83, 115, 144 influenced by Chaucerâ•… 54, 59, 60 n.14, 64 n.23, 81 influenced by Lydgateâ•… 59 lost worksâ•… 56–57, 76–78, 81 Middle English prose Brutâ•… 33 n.47 Mieszkowski, Gretchenâ•… 31 n.45, 92, 105–106 Mills, Maldwynâ•… 116 n.4, 118 Minnis, Alastair J.â•… 36, 142, 144 n.12, 145 miscellaniesâ•…119 Moore, Samuelâ•… 59 n.13 Morgain la Féeâ•… 121 n.26 Nappholz, Carol L.â•… 126 n.47 necromancyâ•… 69, 82, 95–96, 103–104, 111–113, 147 invisibilityâ•… 92–93, 98, 104, 106, 109, 111 read as evilâ•… 108–109, 111 Neville, Anne Beauchamp, Countess of Warwickâ•… 22, 23 n.22 Neville, Cecily, Duchess of Yorkâ•… 28 Neville, Ralph, Duke of Westmorland 22 Neville, Richardâ•… 23 n.22 Nichols, Stephen G.â•… 25 n.28 Nightingale, Theâ•… 29 n.37

166

Index Nun’s Priest’s Tale, The (Geoffrey Chaucer)â•…1 O’Brien, Timothy D.â•… 121, 126, 138 occupatioâ•…93 Octavian (Thomas Chestre)â•… 116 n.4 Ovid Metamorphosesâ•… 36–37, 54, 70 Ovide Moraliséâ•… 70 n.34, 145 n.12 paganismâ•… 56–57, 63, 69, 71–73, 144–146 Page, Stephen F.â•… 58, 65, 67 n.27, 71 n.35 Parkes, M. B.â•… 23–28, 44 n.73 Parliament of Fowls, The (Geoffrey Chaucer)â•… 58 n.9, 81 n.64 Partonope of Bloisâ•… 12–13, 85–114, 116, 125, 131 n.67, 146–148 as exemplumâ•… 88, 91 enchanted boat motifâ•… 92, 98 source text Partonopeu de Bloisâ•…89 and female patronageâ•…89 compared to Middle English versionâ•… 92, 94–96, 98 n.39, 99–100, 108 n.60, 110, 112, 113 n.68 Partonopeu de Blois see source text under Partonope of Blois Paston familyâ•… 59 n.13 patronage advice as a form ofâ•… 7, 11, 13–14, 19–21, 34, 45–51, 144 as a systemâ•… 2–4, 10, 11–13, 123 n.53 as self-sustainingâ•… 48, 117, 125–126, 132, 139 chivalricâ•… 3, 87, 99–102, 105, 127, 129–130, 133–134, 139, 141 collaborativeâ•… 55, 79, 83, 142 financialâ•… 4–5, 11–12, 80, 85–87, 101, 129, 131, 141 generosity as part ofâ•… 48, 93, 123, 125, 126–127, 132 negative representations ofâ•… 15, 117, 123–125, 131, 135–136, 139

sexualâ•…94–99 Patterson, Leeâ•… 19 n.10, 21, n.13 Pearsall, Derekâ•… 26–27, 56 n.6 Peyton, Henry H.â•… 32, 36 n.53, 45 n.74 Philippa of Hainaultâ•… 3–4 n.9 prophecy as discourseâ•… 18–20 Cassandraâ•… 14, 19–20, 35, 49–51, 53, 144 Calchasâ•… 20–22, 31–34, 44, 50 disbelief inâ•… 14, 20–21, 34, 35, 45, 46 n.78, 50–51 Purdie, Rhiannonâ•… 119 n.18 Pyramus and Thisbe legend see Metamorphoses under Ovid. Ramsey, Lee C.â•… 1 n.2, 8 n.23, 9, 56 n.6, 86 Raoul de Cambraiâ•… 17–19, 36 n.52 rapeâ•…93–98 Reiss, Edmundâ•… 143 Renart, Jean L’Escoufleâ•… 98 n.39 Richard II, King of Englandâ•… 26–27, 28 n.34 Richmond, Velma Bourgeoisâ•… 143 n.8 Robertson, D. W.â•… 144 n.12 Root, Robert K.â•… 38 Rosenthal, Joel T.â•… 11 n.36 Ross, Valerieâ•… 19 n.10, 21, n.12, 45 n.76 Rust, Martha Danaâ•… 26 n.28 Rutter, Russellâ•… 5 n.11 Salisbury, Eveâ•… 119, 139 Salter, Elizabethâ•… 23–28 Sanok, Catherineâ•… 30 n.40, 31 n.43 Saracensâ•… 86, 100, 105, 109, 116, 131 n.67 scienceâ•… 58 n.9, 60 animal husbandryâ•… 77–78, 83 astronomy and astrologyâ•… 60–61, 70, 82 bestiariesâ•… 69 n.32 dragon loreâ•… 60, 61, 66–69, 82 167

Index Esdras prognosticationsâ•… 75–76, 144 medical treatises see Trotula of Salerno and Hildegard of Bingen herbalsâ•… 54, 68–69, 82 lapidariesâ•… 54, 68–69 palmistryâ•… 58 n.9, 59 n.11, 74, 144 physiognamyâ•… 58 n.9, 75 Scott, Kathleen L.â•… 26 n.30 Seaman, Myraâ•… 116–117, 129, 137 n.81 Secreta Secretorumâ•… 75, 78 n.56 secularâ•…141–148 seven liberal artsâ•… 58 n.9, 60, 112, 114, 145 Shichtman, Martinâ•… 121, 123–124, 127 n.50, 132 n.69 Shirley, Johnâ•… 22–23 Simons, Pennyâ•… 92, 98–99, 102 n.46 Sir Gawain and the Green Knightâ•… 68 n.29 Sir Landevaleâ•… 116–117 n.5, 132 n.68 Sir Launfal (Thomas Chestre)â•… 7 n.19, 12–13, 15–16, 115–139, 144. See also Lanval under Marie de France Sir Orfeoâ•… 128 n.53 Skeat, Walter W.â•… 38 sorcery see necromancy Spearing, A. C.â•… 93, 94 n.32, 118 n.8 Spielmann, M. H.â•… 26 n.30 sponsorship see patronage Squire’s Tale, The (Geoffrey Chaucer) 62 n.20 Stafford, Anne Neville, Duchess of Buckinghamâ•… 14, 22–23, 26 n.30, 27–28, 38, 44–45, 55 n.3, 146 as patron of The Nightingaleâ•…29 n.37 Stafford, Joannaâ•… 23 Stafford, Humphrey, Duke of Buckinghamâ•… 23, 28 Stapleton, Katherineâ•… 14, 55–56, 57, 59 n.10, 71, 74, 77–83 interest in scientific textsâ•… 57–58, 61, 74, 76, 78, 82

Stapleton, Milesâ•… 55–56, 57, 59 n.10, 71, 74, 76–77, 79, 81 n.62 interest in scientific textsâ•… 57–58, 61, 74, 76, 78 Statius Thebaidâ•… 30, 37–39, 40–41 Stirnemann, Patriciaâ•… 3 Stokoe, William C.â•… 116 n.5 Strohm, Paulâ•… 28, 35 n.51, 144 Summit, Jenniferâ•… 4 n.11, 56 n.4 Tarvers, Josephine K.â•… 8 n.24 Tertullianâ•… 58 n.9 Thebaid (Statius)â•… 30, 37–39, 40–41 Thebesâ•… 30, 37–39, 50 Thibaut V of Bloisâ•… 89 Thompson, John J.â•… 119 n.19, 120 Thrupp, Sylviaâ•… 8 n.24 tournamentsâ•… 129 n.60, 146–147 in Amoryus and Cleopesâ•…62–63, 65–66 in Partonope of Bloisâ•…105–108, 113 in Sir Launfalâ•… 131–134, 138 Treharne, R. F.â•… 77 n.53 Trevisa, Johnâ•… 60 n.15, 69 n.32 Tristan und Isoltâ•… 111 n.65 Troilus and Criseyde (Geoffrey Chaucer)â•… 6, 11, 13–14, 17–51, 81–82 n.64, 115, 144 Troilus frontispieceâ•… 22, 24, 25–28. See also Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 61 under Manuscripts Trotula of Salernoâ•… 68 n.31 Trounce, A. McI.â•… 116 n.4 Troy Book (John Lydgate)â•… 56 n.5, 68 n.28 Tryamour see Sir Launfal under Chestre, Thomas Urakeâ•… 87 n.5, 91, 102–107, 111 n.65, 114. See also Partonope of Blois. Venusâ•… 54–55, 60, 63, 66, 69 Waceâ•… 33 n.47 168

Index Weldon, Jamesâ•… 125 n.45, 131, 133, 134 n.75 Whitfield, Pamâ•… 137 n.82 Wife of Bath’s Tale, The (Geoffrey Chaucer)â•… 98 n.39 Williams, Georgeâ•… 26 n.29 willsâ•… 2–3, 8, 88, 90–91 Windeatt, Barryâ•… 30 n.40, 34 n.49, 37 n.55, 38 n.62 women and historical knowledgeâ•… 11, 20–21, 34–42, 49–51, 144–146 and readingâ•… 1, 5, 8–10, 21, 29–30, 34 n.48, 103, 121, 146

and scientific knowledgeâ•… 11, 54, 57, 66–69, 82 and textual communicationâ•… 62, 64–65 as textâ•… 29, 31 education ofâ•… 15, 87, 106, 108–109, 111–113, 147 performanceâ•… 6–7, 86–88, 91, 93–98, 106–108, 113 sexual independence ofâ•… 87, 91, 95, 97–98 Wright, Michael J.â•… 118 n.8

169

Volumes already published The Orient in Chaucer and Medieval Romance, Carol F. Heffernan, 2003 II: Cultural Encounters in the Romance of Medieval England, edited by Corinne Saunders, 2005 III: The Idea of Anglo-Saxon England in Middle English Romance, Robert Allen Rouse, 2005 IV: Guy of Warwick: Icon and Ancestor, edited by Alison Wiggins and Rosalind Field, 2007 V: The Sea and Medieval English Literature, Sebastian I. Sobecki, 2008 VI: Boundaries in Medieval Romance, edited by Neil Cartlidge, 2008 VII: Naming and Namelessness in Medieval Romance, Jane Bliss, 2008 VIII: Sir Bevis of Hampton in Literary Tradition, edited by Jennifer Fellows and Ivana Djordjević, 2008 IX: Anglicising Romance: Tail-Rhyme and Genre in Medieval English Literature, Rhiannon Purdie, 2008 X: A Companion to Medieval Popular Romance, edited by Raluca L. Radulescu and Cory James Rushton, 2009 XI: Expectations of Romance: The Reception of a Genre in Medieval England, Melissa Furrow, 2009 XII: The Exploitations of Medieval Romance, edited by Laura Ashe, Ivana Djordjević and Judith Weiss, 2010 XIII: Magic and the Supernatural in Medieval English Romance, Corinne Saunders, 2010 XIV: Medieval Romance, Medieval Contexts, edited by Rhiannon Purdie and Michael Cichon, 2011 I:

spine 21mm A db 22 06 11

AMY N. VINES

Amy N. Vines is Assistant Professor in the Department of English, University of

North Carolina at Greensboro. Cover: Paris BN MS Arsenal 3142, fol. 1r.

Studies in Medieval Romance G EN ERA L EDITOR

Corinne Saunders, University of Durham

An imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge IP12 3DF (GB) and 668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620-2731 (US) www.boydellandbrewer.com

Women’s Power in Late Medieval Romance

The cultural and social power of women in the Middle Ages is hard to trace, and evidence for it is scarce; here Vines explores medieval romances as a source of examples of such power. She considers how women functioned as models of cultural and social authority in medieval literary texts through an examination of the influence exerted by female characters in both intellectual and chivalric contexts, and in the exercise of patronage. Women learned methods of influence from the books they read, in addition to examples set by family connections and socio-political networks. In texts like Troilus and Criseyde and Partonope of Blois, the female reader encounters an explicit demonstration of how a woman’s intellectual and financial resources can be used to inspire cultural and literary works; literary representations of women’s cultural power also reveal a variety of examples of authority from nonmaterial effects to material sway in the medieval patronage system, an influence often unacknowledged in historical and extra-literary sources.

Women’s Power in Late Medieval Romance

AMY N. VINES