The 13 -Century “Constance” Tales

THE 13 TH -CENTURY “C ONSTANCE ” TALES A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY THOMAS R. LEEK IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ANATOLY LIBERMAN , ADVISOR DECEMBER , 2009 © THOMAS R. LEEK , AUGUST 2009 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS As a doctoral student, I have been supported and encouraged by many. Chief among those to whom it behooves me to give thanks is my advisor, Anatoly Liberman, who spent many hours reading and commenting on my drafts. If it is not too poorly reflected, one can trace in the following work the intellectual influences of many with whom I have come into contact at the University of Minnesota, foremost that of my advisor and Professor Jack Zipes. I have learned much from Professors James Parente, Evelyn Firchow, Ray Wakefield, Kaaren Grimstad, and Rebecca Krug. My experience as a language teacher and teaching assistant has been invaluable, for which I must thank Professor Charlotte Melin, Ginny Steinhagen and Elizabeth Kautz of the University of Minnesota, Professors Michael Hasbrouck, Isolde Müller and Sharon Cogdill of St. Cloud State University and all those with whom I have worked over the years. I am indebted to Hella Mears Hueg for her generosity. The outreach work I completed with Anne Wallen while supported by her fellowship has been of decisive importance for my career in higher education. My wife, Ekaterina Valerevna, who for many years has patiently supported my studies, has my gratitutde. My wife, children, parents, and siblings have contributed to my life and work in quantities that cannot be measured by the scientific equipment currently available. i DEDICATION I dedicate this dissertation to the memory of my late grandmother, Marjorie Debeque Leek, and to her academic work. In retirement she earned a Bachelor’s in Anthropology from CSU Bakersfield and nearly completed her Master’s thesis on the founding and development of Shafter, California, a farming community in the vicinity of Bakersfield. ii ABSTRACT Four texts from the 13 th century make up the first attestations of the “Constance” plot, a version of ATU 706 “The Father who Wanted to Marry his Daughter.” This dissertation harmonizes a comparative investigation of these tales with an analysis of the cultural milieu of the Middle Ages. The figure of the sexually persecuted and exiled daughter comes to the forefront of popular culture as discourse on repentance centers around the correction of monstrous sins. In the “Constance” tales, the daughter reconciles her repentant father and husband, between whom power is transferred on account of the heroine’s suffering. A thematically similar anecdote in the Chronicle of Morea points toward an international motif of an errant daughter benefiting the man she marries against her father’s initial wishes. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES V LIST OF FIGURES VI 1 SECTION 1 Introduction to the Sources and the Scholarship Chapter One: The Individual Texts 4 Chapter Two: History of the Scholarship 35 Chapter Three: Romance, Historiography, and Wondertales 60 SECTION 2 73 The Motifs and Structure of the “Constance” Group Chapter Four: The Persecuted Queen under the Threat of Incest 83 Chapter Five: Themes and Functions 107 SECTION 3 130 The Historical Context Chapter Six: The Historical Purpose of the Individual Versions 135 Chapter Seven: The Persecuted Queen and Roman Identity 163 REFERENCES 174 Primary Material 175 Secondary Material 180 iv LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Plot Comparison of the Four 13 th -Century “Constance” Tales 76 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Gough’s Genealogy of the “Constance Saga” 42 vi Section I Introduction to the Sources and the Scholarship 1 Since the latter half of the 19 th century, a tale type has been forged by students of folklore and medieval literature that early on was named for the heroine of one version: Constance, of Trevet’s version (in Sources and Analogues of the Canterbury Tales 2005, 297-329). The topic of this dissertation centers on the 13 th -century attestations of this tale type (ATU 706), this title will be retained for the sake of convenience and brevity even though the name “Constance” did not appear until the 14 th century. The driving question behind the following work is informed by the observation that the first four versions of the “Constance” group were created within a few decades of each other with little or no apparent literary exchange between the authors. This situation implies the popularity of an early form of the “Constance” story in French and German speaking lands. However, it is misleading to speak of a single form of the tale, for the “Constance” group was almost certainly distributed orally. It is not unlikely that Constance’s story was recorded in works now lost. The prologue of the Austrian Mai und Beaflor indicates that the author’s material originated in a chronicle. This is an unverifiable claim on the part of the author, but the tale came from somewhere and spread throughout Western Europe. A lost chronicle is a plausible source; it is conceivable that a chronicle also stands behind La Roman de la Manekine , in which case our tales may share a direct literary antecedent. That the “Constance” group originated from oral story telling is uncontroversial. Indeed, the majority of non-scholarly medieval literature has roots in oral traditions. However, since the Grimms first described German folktales as the 2 remnants of Germanic mythology ( KHM 1985, 4), there has been a tendency for scholars to search for the origins of the “Constance” group in antiquity instead of in the immediate context of the 13 th century. This dissertation does not dispense with the traditional approach. Persecuted queens were popular fodder for storytellers in medieval literature, and the tradition of wronged women is old. The “Constance” group is a distinctive variation on this long-lived theme. The question is not whether the “Constance” group has its origins in the environment of 12 th - and 13 th -century Europe. That is taken for granted. Our exploration of these tales seeks to find if the characteristic features of the “Constance” group can be attributed to any cultural, social, or political developments in the period of the High Middle Ages. To address this question entails in the first section a description of the individual extant versions of the “Constance” group, an exploration of the scholarship on these texts, as well as a look at larger questions on the historical study of folklore and their application to the “Constance” tales. The second section is dedicated to an examination of the motifs of persecuted queens from the 13 th century and earlier, so that the “Constance” group may be placed in the context of other persecuted queen tales and differentiated from them. Through an analysis of the ends toward which each author molded the common material, section three attempts to offer an explanation of the “Constance” cycle’s sudden appearance. 3 Chapter One The Individual Texts The “Constance” group is made up of a series of romances, histories, legends and folktales that all share a general plot type. Their attestation stretches from the 13 th to the 20 th century. Recent adjustments in the dates of composition for the stories have revealed that the earliest of them were likely recorded within two to four decades of each other. With some caveats, it is also safe to say that the first four attestations arose independently of each other. With this situation, the opportunity is available to describe and compare the four 13 th -century variants without resort to diachronic arguments. The synchronic analysis of a plot’s structure does not exclude the consideration of historic developments within a tale; but the analysis of form is, as Propp held, a prerequisite for historical and critical inquiry (Propp 1984, 78). The following is a description of the four 13 th -century works central to my study of the “Constance” group: Philippe de Remi’s Le Roman de la Manekine , Matthew Paris’s “Life of Offa I,” the anonymous Mai und Beaflor , and Jans Enikel’s “The Daughter of the King of Russia.” Le Roman de la Manekine As is often the case with particular works of medieval literature, the time frame for the composition of La Manekine is uncertain. Scholars working with the “Constance Saga” (as it has traditionally been labeled) before the 1980s followed Suchier’s dating of the text to ca. 1270. In 1981 Bernard Gicquel published an article 4 linking the work of the German poet Rudolf von Ems to the verse romances composed under the name of Philippe de Remi Sire de Beaumanoir. In doing so, Gicquel made a distinction between Philippe de Beaumanoir père , who late in life became Sire de Beaumanoir (prior to this he was “de Remi”), and Philippe de Beaumanoir fils , who inherited his title. The implication was that the verse romances should be attributed to the father, while the legal works belong indubitably to the son (Gicquel 1981, 310). Sargent-Baur, though rejecting the link to Rudolf von Ems, confirmed Gicquel’s attribution of the romances to Philippe père , dating the text to 1230-1240. But the dates are still disputed (in Philippe de Remi 1999, 90-91), because linguistic and poetic differences between the first and the second half of the 13 th century are not reliable differentiators. The lone manuscript in which the text is found, Paris BNF fr. 1588, was copied at earliest in 1278, but more likely ca. 1300. The decoration of the manuscript, according to Roger Middleton, “corresponds to work done at Arras in the last decade of the 13 th century or the first decade or so of the next” 1 (in Philippe de Remi 1999, 42).

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