Clandestine Communications from Tristan to Twelfth Night
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University of Connecticut OpenCommons@UConn Doctoral Dissertations University of Connecticut Graduate School 8-21-2015 ‘Misticall Unions’: Clandestine Communications from Tristan to Twelfth iN ght George W. Eggers University of Connecticut - Storrs, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://opencommons.uconn.edu/dissertations Recommended Citation Eggers, George W., "‘Misticall Unions’: Clandestine Communications from Tristan to Twelfth iN ght" (2015). Doctoral Dissertations. 902. https://opencommons.uconn.edu/dissertations/902 ‘Misticall Unions’: Clandestine Communications from Tristan to Twelfth Night George William Nordholtz Eggers III, PhD University of Connecticut, 2015 This dissertation argues that important modes of self-definition in the Renaissance draw on the linguistic uncertainty in medieval literary constructions of lovers. Just as in Renaissance texts, medieval lovers such as Tristan and Isolde fashion themselves as a “misticall union”: a conglomerate self that shares one mind and erases all distinctions between sender and receiver as well as grammatical subject and object. This unity expresses itself in the lovers’ inexplicable ability to interpret correctly the most arbitrary of messages from one another while misleading those around them. Considering Shakespearean lovers in this context suggests how deeply this model of self-definition and self-abnegation – as well as its foundation in language – penetrated into Elizabethan England and eventually into the work of John Donne. This dissertation explores the social and theological roots of the idea of mystical connections between lovers, as well as the generic conventions that stem from these roots. ‘Misticall Unions’: Clandestine Communications from Tristan to Twelfth Night George William Nordholtz Eggers III B.A., Occidental College, 1988 M.A., University of Connecticut, 1999 A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut 2015 ii Copyright by George William Nordholtz Eggers III 2015 iii APPROVAL PAGE Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation “Misticall Unions”: Clandestine Communications from Tristan to Twelfth Night Presented by George William Nordholtz Eggers III, B.A., M.A. Major Advisor _______________________________________________ Robert Hasenfratz Minor Advisor _______________________________________________ Fiona Somerset Minor Advisor _______________________________________________ Thomas Recchio Minor Advisor _______________________________________________ Jean Marsden University of Connecticut 2015 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 On the Edge of Reception 39 Obscure Sender, Obscure Meaning 92 “We Two Being One”: One Body, One Soul, One Language 139 Constructing Senders, Constructing Meanings 205 Coerced Consent 233 Appendix: Tristan Dates 257 Bibliography 258 Eggers Misticall Unions 1 INTRODUCTION I wish that you knew that when I said two sugars I actually meant three. – Kate Nash “Nicest Thing” (2007)1 “Rið braut héðan, þú ókunni riddari,” segir hún, “ok fá þér herbergi ok dvel ekki vára ferð.” En sem Tristram sá gullit, kendi hann ok undirsoóð. [“Ride off strange knight,” she said, “find yourself lodging and stop holding up our journey.” But when Tristram saw the ring, he recognized it and understood her meaning.] – Norse Tristan (13c.)2 Marie de France’s Chevrefoil opens with Tristan exiled by his uncle King Mark for love Queen Isolde. Missing her terribly, Tristan looks for an opportunity to meet with Isolde. Discovering that she will be travelling to Tintagel, Tristan hides in the woods along her route in the hopes of meeting with her. Tristan faces the challenge of communicating his love for her and his desire to meet without alerting any of the queen’s travelling companions. To communicate secretly, the knight chooses a code they have used in the past, the carving of his name on a twig. From this one word, Isolde gleans a complex message that includes the metaphor of their love as 1 Kate Nash, “We Get On.” Made of Bricks. Fiction Records, Cherrytree Records, and Universal Music Group. Release date August 5, 2007. CD. 2 Brother Robert. Norse Romance I: The Tristan Legend. Ed. and Trans Marianne Kalinke. (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2012), 200. Eggers Misticall Unions 2 the intertwined branches of chevrefoil and honeysuckle.3 How does she make this seemingly miraculous interpretive leap? Is it realistic for him to expect her to understand him that completely from such a minimal message? As only Isolde properly unweaves the message, how much meaning is produced by her, rather than Tristan? How is it that the lovers take advantage 3 Queunges ot ilex esté E atendu e surjuné Pur espier e pur saver Coment il al peüst veer Kar ne pot nent vivre sanz li; D’euils deus fu il [tut] autresi Cume del chevrefoil esteit Ki a al codre perneit: Quant il s’i est laciez e pris E tut entur le fust s’est mis, Ensemble poënt bien deserver, Li codres mueri hastivement E li chevrefoil ensement. “Bele amie, si est de nus: Ne vuz sanz mei, ne mei sanz vus.” Marie de France. “Chevrefoil.” Marie de France’s Lais. (Gallimard, 2000), 53-4. Citations are from the edition bilingue de Philippe Walter of Marie de France’s Lais. [He had been there a long time He had waited and remained To find out and to discover How he could see her, For he could not live without her. With the two of them it was just As it is with the honeysuckle That attaches itself to the hazel tree: When it has wound and attached And worked itself around the trunk, The two can survive together; But if someone tries to separate them, The hazel dies quickly And the honeysuckle with it. “Sweet love, so it is with us: You cannot live without me, nor I without you.”] Marie de France. The Lais of Marie de France. Trans. Robert Hanning and Joan Ferrante. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1995). 63-78. Eggers Misticall Unions 3 of the ambiguity of language to communicate one messate to one another and a different one to others? The lovers make unrealistic yet correct interpretive leaps – precisely the sort of communication that has become such an important way of talking about love.4 The queen – presumably Isolde – encounters a message from her lover Tristan. The entirety of the message consists of his name carved in the branch of a honeysuckle tree. None of the others in Isolde’s party understand or even acknowledge the message, but Isolde gleans sixteen lines of verse from that one word. Perhaps even more remarkable is that she is correct; one word offers enough information to establish a secret meeting in the woods. This scene will be discussed in detail in a later chapter, but for now the important element to take from it is the incompleteness of the message and the unrealistic nature of the interpretation. Within the lai, only two characters participate in this elevated communication: the queen and Tristan. Even the audience is left in the dark as to how the one word became so full of meaning because the text of the lai offers only the text and the interpretation without offering any Rosetta Stone. To some extent, we have no evidence that the specifics of her interpretation are correct save the fact that the two lovers do, in fact, meet. Perhaps most interestingly, the lai presents the emotional content that Isolde finds in the message without any of the nuts and bolts of how the assignation’s details are established. The motivation for excluding these mundane details would seem clear; it makes for bad storytelling when the lai is primarily focused on emotions. The lai’s emphasis on such emotional connections at the expense of the actual details of day to day communication, however, teaches readers that such details are less important than feelings; in fact, it suggests that a sufficiently strong emotional connection will substitute for linguistic clarity. 4 Marie de France. “Chevrefoil.” Marie de France’s Lais. (Gallimard, 2000), 53-4. Eggers Misticall Unions 4 What is remarkable about this understanding is not that relational semantics are used. It is now an academic commonplace since Ferdinand de Saussure’s 1916 On the Nature of Language that all communication has always been relational.5 What is remarkable is that a twelfth-century writer has consciously constructed her text in a way that shows a working knowledge of what we would call relational semantics. Exploration of relational semantics in early works is limited, perhaps because the Middle Ages offer us few clear examples of theoretical articulations such as Saussure’s. More recent scholars, however, have challenged the notion that medieval writers had no knowledge of the relational qualities of language. Recent scholars, including Stephen G. Nichols, have made this point by emphasizing that the lack of a formal articulation does not exclude a conscious use of relational semantics.6 Richard Waswo, for instance, in Language and Meaning in the Renaissance (1987) argues that Renaissance English writers had a clear sense of the relational qualities of language due to the Reformation and the attendant expanded translation of formerly Latin texts into the vernacular.7 Waswo argues that the dualistic sign/referent model, whereby a sign has a stable relationship to the referent, was replaced in the Renaissance by a model where meaning is always contextual and triadic – including the signifier, signified, and receiver. Waswo points out that 5 Ferdinand Saussure, “Nature of the Linguistic Sign.” Course in General Linguistics. Ed. Charles Bally and Albert Reidlinger. Trans.Wade Baskin. (New York: Philosophical Library, 1959). 6 Nichols, Stephen G. “Writing the New Middle Ages.” Neohelicon XXXIII (2006) 1, 141–169. 7 Waswo, Richard. Language and Meaning In The Renaissance. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987). Eggers Misticall Unions 5 Renaissance literary practice raced far ahead of theory, as the rhetorical texts of the period do not reflect this change8 Waswo’s ideas have come under pressure from Marcia L.