UC Riverside UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title (Dis)arming the Middle Ages: Chivalric Materiality in Medieval Romance Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9px882f9 Author Eastin, Schuyler Ejay Publication Date 2017 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE (Dis)arming the Middle Ages: Chivalric Materiality in Medieval Romance A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English by Schuyler Ejay Eastin September 2017 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Andrea Denny-Brown, Chairperson Dr. John Ganim Dr. Heidi Brayman Hackel Copyright by Schuyler Ejay Eastin 2017 The Dissertation of Schuyler Ejay Eastin is approved: Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside Acknowledgements I would like to thank all of my dissertation committee members at the University of California, Riverside for their help and guidance throughout this project: Dr. John Ganim for his enthusiasm and encouragement, Dr. Heidi Brayman Hackel for challenging me to rethink my assumptions about literature, and especially Dr. Andrea Denny Brown, whose immense knowledge, careful guidance, and honest feedback have been absolutely invaluable. iv To Jane Bukaty who taught me to read, to Denise Eastin who first opened the wardrobe door, and to Zena Ajou, without whom this project would never have been possible. v ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION (Dis)arming the Middle Ages: Chivalric Materiality in Medieval Romance by Schuyler Ejay Eastin Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate program in English University of California, Riverside, September 2017 Dr. Andrea Denny-Brown, Chairperson This dissertation studies the imagery of armor and its materiality in medieval romance, and in so doing maps the early history of one of our culture’s most powerful and sustaining cultural conceits. In medieval romance, armor is used to structure narrative; it is used to create formal aesthetic effects; it is even used as a kind of literary character, outperforming––outshining––even the beautiful maiden as the focus of the knightly quest. While scholars have studied medieval armor from a variety of perspectives, notably its metallurgy and as a manifestation of gendered identity, armor’s effectiveness as a literary apparatus has yet to receive a thorough treatment. This project attempts to mediate two heretofore-unconnected critical conversations. The first concerns established theories of gender and fashion that have already thoroughly explored the role of clothing and fashion in crafting identity. I relate these treatments of the performative and material identity of medieval chivalry to the specific material realities of knighthood. This approach incorporates historical and archaeological studies of medieval metallurgy into literary readings influenced by Thing Theory. The overabundance of armor in vi medieval narrative, I argue, articulates the medieval knight as an assemblage, an object that attains its most significant meaning only when it has been combined with all of the elements that make it whole. This wholeness, moreover, is, only temporary since the violent labor of knightly combat often leads to the destruction, disintegration, or disassemblage of the chivalric body and its armor. The fact that this state of dissassemblage can be repaired, rescripted and repeated presents a fascinating material modularity to medieval chivalric identity. My work also participates in a vein of materialist studies seeking to bridge a gap between a new critical interest in manuscript materiality and established scholarship in early modern material culture. vii Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Mail Armor and Chivalric Disassemblage in the Romances of Chrétien de Troyes 14 Appendix: Inventories of the Dis/arming Acts of Chrétien’s Primary Protagonists 73 Chapter 2: Productive Labor and Armorial Discourses in the Gawain Romances 78 Chapter 3: Rendundancy, Stability, and the Chivalric Corpus in/of the Auchinleck Manuscript 136 Chapter 4: The “Brastyng” of Armorial Discourse in Malory’s Le Morte Darthur 182 Conclusion 225 Bibliography 229 viii List of Illustrations Figure 1: A mail-clad knight in the Westminster Psalter 5 Figure 2: Sir Geoffrey Luttrell wearing early plate armor in the Luttrell Psalter 6 Figure 3: the Knight from Caxton’s Chesse 7 Figure 4: Meleagant delivering his initial challenge at Arthur’s court in 18 Princeton, Garrett MS 125 Figure 5: David disarming in the thirteenth- century Morgan Picture Bible 19 Figure 6: A Sine Wave 23 Figure 7: A smith working on a great helm in the Codex Manesse 69 Figure 8: the Smith from Caxton’s Chesse 84 Figure 9: Gawain armed in Cotton Nero MS A.x 110 Figure 10: Two swordsmen holding bucklers 129 Figure 11: bifurcated leaf in Amis and Amiloun 133 Figure 12: stub in Sir Orfeo 134 Figure 13: miniature in King Richard 136 Figure 14: opening littera notabilior in Sir Beues of Hamtoun 136 Figure 15: lacuna in Horne Childe & Maiden Rimnild 137 Figure 16: Stub of the couplet Guy’s first leaf 159 Figure 17: Reinbroun fighting Amys 162 Figure 18: ee5v from STC 801, Caxton's 1485 printing 218 Figure 19: ee6r from STC 801, Caxton's 1485 printing 218 Figure 20: from STC 802, Wynkyn de Worde's 1498 printing 220 ix List of Tables Table 1: An inventory of arming/disarming acts in Erec et Enide 73 Table 2: An inventory of arming/disarming acts in Le Chevalier au Lion 74 Table 3: An inventory of arming/disarming acts in Cligés 75 Table 4: An inventory of arming/disarming acts in Le Conte du Graal 76 Table 5: An inventory of Lancelot’s arming/disarming acts in Le Chevalier de 77 la Charrette Table 6: An Inventory of the Metallurgical Imagery of Combat in Gologras 98 Table 7: An Inventory of Biblioclasms in the Auchinleck Manuscript’s 143 Romances Table 8: An Inventory of Malory’s Armorial Vocabulary 204 x Introduction The medieval knight is one of the most potent and recognizable symbols of medieval culture, due in part to the persistent popularity of characters like Lancelot and King Arthur. Even in 2017 Hollywood continues to trade on medieval characters and imagery with the recent release of Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword and Michael Bay’s Transformers: Last Knight. From Sir Gawain to Iron Man, modern cultural consciousness has been saturated with images of armored heroes imbued with ideals of heroism, moral certitude, and social cohesion. This study seeks to examine just how much our understanding of the knight is lodged not with the man beneath the shining armor but in the armor itself. Within the romance genre, the medieval knight is lauded as the highest example of social, romantic, and martial manhood, setting forth to strike down the enemies of his king and to aid fair maidens in peril, all the while covered head- to-toe in metal. This description is admittedly hyperbolic; the historic realities of medieval knighthood are far more violent, morally ambiguous, and entrenched in the politics of the times. The fact remains that an exaggerated image of the knight has descended into modern cultural consciousness from the popular medieval romance, the genre of literature largely responsible for immortalizing knighthood. This study explores a critical space between readings of performative identity and material culture in order to understand the ways that literary representations of chivalric armor structure narrative, articulate the linkage between social classes, interact with book materiality, and most importantly establish a foundational framework for the medieval romance genre. My 1 overarching argument is that this meaning has largely been forged into and by the hard materials of chivalric identity. Armor completely covers the knight’s body, and in doing so it becomes a canvas onto which cultural ideals are projected. This is not to say that armor is in any way a passive medium. In fact, armor interacts with the knight and shapes his ability to perform the various deeds that populate his chivalric résumé. I term these interactions between armor, knighthood, and literature armorial discourses. My examination of armorial discourses shares a great deal in common with studies of medieval clothing. Scholars like Susan Crane, E. Jane Burns, Monica Leigh Wright, and Andrea Denny-Brown have made valuable contributions to studies of fashion, textile, and accoutrement in the Middle Ages, but few studies to date have focused specifically on the metallurgical contributions to medieval chivalric identity.1 By drawing upon principles of identity, assemblage, and embodiment I examine metal armor’s role in crafting the chivalric body and the narratives that contain it. The primary texts of this study are a small canon of French and English vernacular texts that exemplify the medieval romance genre. Romance shares a great deal in common with the medieval chronicle in its celebration of warfare and the exploits of kings. King Arthur himself, also a dominant figure in later medieval romances, was first 1 I refer to Crane’s The Performance of the Self: Ritual, Clothing, and Identity During the Hundred Years’ War (2002), Burns’ Courtly Love Undressed: Reading Through Clothes in Medieval French Culture (2002), Wright’s Weaving Narrative: Clothing in Twelfth- century French Romance (2009), and Denny-Brown’s Fashioning Change: The Trope of Clothing in High- and Late-Medieval England (2012), each of which I consider seminal contributions to scholarship on medieval