UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Fairies, Kingship, and the British Past in Walter Map's De Nugis Curialium and Sir Orfeo Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8zh4b6x4 Author Schwieterman, Patrick Joseph Publication Date 2010 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Fairies, Kingship, and the British Past in Walter Map’s De Nugis Curialium and Sir Orfeo by Patrick Joseph Schwieterman A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Maura Nolan, Chair Professor Jennifer Miller Professor John Lindow Fall 2010 Fairies, Kingship, and the British Past in Walter Map’s De Nugis Curialium and Sir Orfeo © 2010 by Patrick Joseph Schwieterman Abstract Fairies, Kingship, and the British Past in Walter Map’s De Nugis Curialium and Sir Orfeo by Patrick Joseph Schwieterman Doctor of Philosophy in English University of California, Berkeley Professor Maura Nolan, Chair My dissertation focuses on two fairy narratives from medieval Britain: the tale of Herla in Walter Map’s twelfth-century De Nugis Curialium, and the early fourteenth-century romance Sir Orfeo. I contend that in both texts, fairies become intimately associated with conceptions of the ancient British past, and, more narrowly, with the idea of a specifically insular kingship that seeks its legitimization within that past. In Chapter One, I argue that Map’s longer version of the Herla narrative is his own synthesis of traditional materials, intended to highlight the continuity of a notion of British kingship that includes the pygmy king, Herla and Henry II. In Chapter Two, I contend that the two fifteenth-century versions of Sir Orfeo are likely descendants of an intermediary version that was copied from the Auchinleck text after it had been mutilated; therefore, the conflation of Thrace with Winchester in the Auchinleck version is unlikely to be an interpolation by a scribe. In Chapter Three, I examine the Orfeo poet’s manipulation of his sources, both actual and ostensible. I assert that through the substitution of insular fairies for the Classical gods, the poet audaciously claims for the story of Orpheus an origin in the British past. Similarly, he implies that his poem, rather than being a translation of a now-lost Lai d’Orphey, is instead the English “original” of that work. In Chapter Four, I examine the depiction of the fairies in Sir Orfeo. Drawing on a range of medieval fairy narratives as a basis of comparison, I argue that the Orfeo poet seemingly invites the use of conventional aspects of fairy alterity as an interpretive paradigm early in the poem, only to dissolve boundaries between the fairy and human realms later in the work; in this manner, he prepares the way for the climax of the narrative, in which the fairy king, Orfeo, and the steward are all figured as types of a virtuous British kingship. 1 Table of Contents Chapter One: Walter Map and the Tale of Herla 1 Chapter Two: Manuscripts and Editions of Sir Orfeo 32 Chapter Three: Sir Orfeo, Classical Mythology, and the Lai d’Orphey 93 Chapter Four: Reading Fairy Difference 120 Bibliography 169 i Chapter One: Walter Map and the Tale of Herla The Anglo-Welsh secular cleric Walter Map was probably born in the first half of the 1130s in the Welsh Marches – most likely in Gloucestershire or southern Herefordshire – and his family may have been well-connected (Map xiii-xiv). He was in Paris by 1154 as a student of the canonist and theologian Gerard la Pucelle (Map xv and n. 4), and some years later he seems to have enjoyed the patronage of Gilbert Foliot, bishop of first Hereford (1148-63) and then London (1163-87) (Map xvi). By 1173, however, Map was a royal clerk in the court of King Henry II, and he appears to have held that position until the latter’s death in 1189 (Map xvi-xvii). He was appointed royal justice in England in 1173, and in 1179 he represented Henry II at the Third Lateran Council (Map xvi-xvii). Concurrent with his service to the king, Map was granted a number of other appointments; in 1173, Gilbert Foliot made him a canon of St. Paul’s and awarded him the prebend of Mapesbury, the first- recorded of a number of benefices Map would accumulate throughout his life (Map xvi-xviii).1 Map became a canon of Lincoln by the early 1180s; in 1186 he was appointed chancellor there, but had moved to the precentorship by 1189 (Map xvii-xviii). In 1196 or 1197 he was made archdeacon of Oxford, a position he probably held until his death on 1 April in either 1209 or 1210 (Map xvii). Map seems to have enjoyed great renown as a prolific literary artist in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. C. N. L. Brooke and R. A. B. Mynors, his most recent editors, note that “a large quantity of the best Latin secular verse of the late twelfth century was attributed to him,” and the Queste de Saint Graal and the Mort Artu in the Prose Lancelot cycle claim him as their author (Map xx). However, twentieth-century scholarship has stripped Map’s oeuvre of all the romances and Goliardic poetry; outside of some “odd scraps of verse” (Map xxiii n. 2), only the De Nugis Curialium remains (Map xx).2 The title of the De Nugis Curialium (hereafter, DNC) is often translated as “Courtiers’ Trifles,” and Map appears to have composed the bulk of the work during the early 1180s, when he was in fact a member of the Henrician court (Map xxvi). The book comprises a curious and nearly indescribable mixture of court satire, jokes, personal anecdotes, history, pseudo-history, and folklore. Map tells us that one section of the larger book, an antifeminist tract entitled Dissuasio Valerii ad Ruffinum philosophum ne uxorem ducat, had circulated as an independent work before the compilation of the DNC (Map 312-3); more than four dozen copies of that text survive today (Map xlvii). Strangely enough, however, the lengthy De Nugis Curialium itself seems to have been unknown to Map’s contemporaries; the book is not mentioned or alluded to in any other medieval work, and only one text survives; it is included in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 851 (3041), a manuscript copied in the late fourteenth century and later supplemented in the fifteenth (Map xlv-xlvii).3 Brooke and 1 The prebend of Mapesbury in what is now northwest London was probably named for Walter Map (Map xvi). 2 A thirteenth-century manuscript (Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 32) includes a couple of brief anecdotes labeled “From the sayings of W. Map” (Ex dictis W. Map); Brooke and Mynors offer the text and an English translation as an appendix to their edition of the DNC on pages 515-6. 3 In recent years, Bodley 851 has achieved a good deal of fame for its inclusion of the Z text of Piers Plowman by William Langland. 1 Mynors state flatly that the DNC “did not circulate at all” in the Middle Ages (Map xx).4 Like his friend and colleague Gerald of Wales, Walter Map seems to have straddled the racial and cultural boundaries between Wales and England in the late twelfth century. Gerald comments that Map was “of English origins” (ab Anglia oriundus) (Map xiii), but Map’s own identification with the Welsh in the De Nugis Curialium cannot be doubted. He calls them “my compatriots” ([c]ompatriote nostri) (Map 182-3), and he says that Thomas Beckett – then the royal chancellor – once asked him his opinion about about their trustworthiness because Map himself “[was] a dweller on the marches of Wales” (marchio sum Walensibus) (Map 194-5). And as Brooke and Mynors note, Map’s surname “is a version of the Welsh ‘Vab’ or ‘Mab’ or ‘Ap’ meaning ‘son of’; Map was very likely a nickname which was attached by the English to some of their Welsh friends on the border” (Map xiii).5 The precise degree of Map’s familiarity with Welsh culture remains uncertain, however. Brynley F. Roberts opines that even if Map had a claim to Welsh origins, “his education and career placed him firmly on the Anglo-Norman side of the geographical and cultural divide” (“Melusina” 283), and he concludes that Map and Gerald were both “observers of Welsh life without being part of it” (“Melusina” 284). Juliette Wood similarly sees Map as distanced from traditional Welsh culture, but she is willing to entertain at least the possibility that he had more than a passing familiarity with the Welsh language: We know he spoke Latin and Anglo-French. These would have been necessary for a cleric and a courtier. He includes a few words of Welsh and English, but in contexts which reveal that to him they were foreign languages. Whether he had any fluency in these languages is unclear from the text. It seems doubtful but is not beyond the realms of possibility. (“Walter Map” 93) Wood calls Map’s observations on the Welsh “extremely valuable,” but she cautions that they “are a mixture of first and second hand information, more so than has previously been supposed” (97). On the face of it, Map’s own attitudes towards the Welsh would appear to be clear-cut. Brooke and Mynors note “the low opinion [Map] seems to hold of the Welsh,” and many of his comments on his “compatriots” are less than flattering.