Wylde and Wode Wild Madness in Middle English Literature
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Sede Amministrativa: Università degli Studi di Padova Sede Consorziata: (da indicare solo se l’attività di ricerca è stata svolta presso un sede consorziata) Dipartimento di Studi Linguistici e Letterari SCUOLA DI DOTTORATO DI RICERCA IN : SCIENZE LINGUISTICHE, FILOLOGICHE E LETTERARIE INDIRIZZO: Filologie e Letterature Classiche e Moderne CICLO: XXVI Wylde and Wode Wild Madness in Middle English Literature Direttore della Scuola : Ch.ma Prof.ssa Rosanna Benacchio Coordinatore d’indirizzo: Ch.ma Prof.ssa Annalisa Oboe Supervisore: Ch.ma Prof.ssa Alessandra Petrina N.B. firma obbligatoria del Direttore della Scuola e del Supervisore, firma facoltativa del coordinatore d’indirizzo Dottoranda : Beatrice Mameli Table of Contents Acknowledgements ..........................................................................................................5 Preface ..............................................................................................................................7 List of Abbreviations and Bibliographical Notes ........................................................15 List of Illustrations in Appendix ...................................................................................17 Chapter 1: The Corpus .................................................................................................19 1.1 Ywain and Gawain 1.2 Malory's Le Morte Darthur 1.2.1 Tristan 1.2.2 Lancelot 1.3 Partonope de Blois Chapter 2: Symptoms of Wild Madness ......................................................................35 2.1 The Wild Setting 2.2 The Wild Food of the Wood 2.3 Clothes Chapter 3: Madness and Medieval Medicine ..............................................................63 3.1.1 Demonic Possession 3.1.2 Phrenitis (Frenesia) and Lethargy 3.1.3 Melancholy and Amor Heroicus 3.1.4 Mania 3.2 Remedies for Madness and the Role of Women Chapter 4: Madness and its Causes .............................................................................97 4.1 Divine Intervention 4.2 Grief, Dishonour and Courtly Love Chapter 5: Madness in Medieval Society ...................................................................117 5.1 Madness and the Community 5.2 The Wild Knight and the Community 5.3 Madness and Medieval Laws Chapter 6: Wild Knights and Wild Archetypes ........................................................145 6.1 Nebuchadnezzar: the Wild Mad King 6.2 The Berserkir: the Wild Warriors from the North 6.3 The Hermit: the Wild Holy Man 6.4 Wild Men and Wild Knights 6.5 A Classical Madman: Ajax Telamonius Conclusion ....................................................................................................................185 Appendix 1: Medieval Literary Wild Madmen ........................................................191 Appendix 2: Images .....................................................................................................195 Bibliography .................................................................................................................207 Acknowledgements This thesis marks the completion of my Ph.D. program at the University of Padova. Although incontestably true, this statement might be not sufficiently expressive of the many steps necessary to reach the end of this long and beautiful journey, of the hundreds of mokas of coffee required, but, above all, of the many people without whose help and support this dissertation would not have been possible, and to whom I wish here to express my gratitude. My first and deepest thanks go to my tutor, professor Alessandra Petrina, who has believed in this project from the beginning and has tirelessly assisted me in carrying it out throughout these three years. Without her help, her advice, her friendship and sense of humour, her constant encouragement and her patience, not only this thesis would not be here, but my experience as a Ph.D. candidate would certainly have been much less pleasant. I could not have asked for a better role model and I will always be proud of having been her student. I gratefully acknowledge the University of Padova for its financial, academic and technical support, and I would like to express my gratitude to all the people from Palazzo Borgherini, the former Anglo-Germanic department. Even though the work of a researcher is done mostly in the silence of the library and nowadays is much more a question of online sources and digitized manuscripts than paper catalogues and microfilms, the presence of passionate scholars, good librarians, competent and reliable staff, but above all of a welcoming environment still makes the difference. Of all the people of the department who have helped me, I owe a special thank to Alice Equestri, Elisa Pastorello, Monica Santini, and Katarzyna Kacka, who have always been present whenever I needed a hand or an opinion, or simply the right question at the right time. 5 They have proved invaluable colleagues, especially Elisa and Alice. The first has always found the time to help me finding a solution when a problem arose or simply to convince me that all would end well, the second stood by my side, often literally, in almost every new challenge I have undertaken during these last years with a friendly companionship I shall certainly miss. There have been also other people who gave me precious suggestions for this thesis, like Denis Renevey and Ian Johnson – who have kindly accepted to be my external reviewers – Brenda Hosington, Catherine Batt, Luuk Houwen, many of the participants of the Natio Scota 2011 , of the Oxford Graduate Conference 2012 , of the Studientag zum Englischen Mittelalter XV , of the Research Day in Medieval English Studies , and of the Medieval Translator 2013 . I would also like to thank the University of Leeds for the months of fruitful research I was able to spend there, and the Bodleian Library, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and the Archives Nationales de France for letting me consult their documents. Finally, I wish to express my gratitude to my family and to all the friends who have understood and encouraged me, most of all to Paolo Zoccante, who was always there to provide loving support and motivation, and to rekindle my optimism. To these wonderful people I owe much of what is good in this work; for anything incorrect, inadequate or simply boring, I am afraid I am the only one to blame. 6 Preface In 1384, after a long legal procedure, Emma de Beston was found to be not in possession of her mental faculties and consequently unfit for the administration of her lands and possessions. 1 In the mind of the modern reader, this information might evoke dark and isolated cells in cold towers, inhuman methods, very close to torture, to test the poor woman's sanity, appalling therapies to cure her, and maybe even stakes and accusations of witchcraft. In the case of Emma, even though the whole process took a long time, the matter was settled in much more modern and less dramatic terms. She was asked some simple questions in order to assess whether she was able to use her reason and common sense and was assigned a tutor who was to look after her and her lands. Since the decision was believed to be unsatisfactory, after further investigation about her state of mind, a new arrangement was found. Despite modern stereotypes about medieval culture, being mad in the Middle Ages had more complex, even though less “Gothic”, implications than one might expect. This is certainly not the first work which addresses the theme of madness; the abundance of studies about medieval insanity in literature and culture somehow mirrors the multifaceted nature of this subject. The undisputed milestone in this field is certainly Michel Foucault's Histoire de la Folie à l'Âge Classique (1972); 2 the work was the result of the re-elaboration of his doctoral dissertation “Folie et Déraison: Histoire de la Folie à l'Âge Classique” (1961), 3 where the theme of insanity is explored from the late Middle Ages to the modern age. Similarly, Judith S. Neaman's Ph.D. thesis “The 1 For a complete analysis of the case see David Roffe, Christine Roffe, “Madness And Care In The Community: A Medieval Perspective”, British Medical Journal , 311, 1995, pp. 1708-1712. 2 Michel Foucault, Histoire de la Folie a l'Âge Classique , Paris: Union Générale d’Éditions, 1964. 3 Michel Foucault, “Folie et Déraison: Histoire de la Folie à l'Âge Classique”, doctoral diss., Université de Paris, 1961 . 7 Distracted Knight: A Study of Insanity in the Arthurian Romances” (1968) 4 was the starting point for her monograph Suggestion of the Devil: the Origins of Madness (1975); 5 both her works focus on the Anglo-Norman area and on the medieval period, but while in “The Distracted Knight”, she analyses the many forms of madness which occur in Arthurian Romance, in Suggestions of the Devil she explores the medieval juxtaposition between the theological visions about madness and the medical theories of the time. In the same years, Penelope B. R. Doob published her monograph Nebuchadnezzar's Children: Conventions of Madness in Middle English Literature (1974) 6 which deals with medieval archetypal representations of madness. All these works present, to some extent, an interdisciplinary approach and cover different aspects of medieval mental illnesses and lunatics. This methodology was maintained also in most later studies, both in generic works about insanity in the Middle Ages, such as Muriel Laharie's La Folie au Moyen Âge (1991), 7 or Le Discours du Fou au Moyen Âge (1992) 8 by Jean-Marie Fritz, and in