The Pen and the Pennon: Political and Social Comment
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THE PEN AND THE PENNON: POLITICAL AND SOCIAL COMMENT INSCRIBED WITHIN CHIVALRIC ROMANCE A DISSERTATION IN English and History Presented to the Faculty of the University of Missouri-Kansas City in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by LARRY MICHAEL MCCLOUD B.A., Iowa State University, 1997 MLA, Baker University, 1999 Kansas City, Missouri 2016 © 2016 LARRY MICHAEL MCCLOUD ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THE PEN AND THE PENNON: POLITICAL AND SOCIAL COMMENT INSCRIBED WITHIN CHIVALRIC ROMANCE Larry Michael McCloud, Candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree University of Missouri-Kansas City, 2016 ABSTRACT Study of the Medieval English romance has burgeoned in recent years, with a focus on the world outside of the texts being central to the resurgence. I offer in this dissertation a reading of four of these works (Athelston, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sir Cleges, and Sir Gowther) that considers each of them in the environment in which they are presented. Utilizing the contexts of manuscript placement, contemporary social and legal issues, and sociological changes affecting the audience, this work explores an analytical reading of each work that establishes possible meanings for each romance and possible motivations for their unnamed authors. Each work is ascribed its own chapter, focusing on a particular issue of English knighthood being interrogated. Chapter three suggests that Sir Gawain and the Green Knight repurposes the character of Gawain to observe the importance of oath taking and the bonds formed by knights from the practice of such. Chapter four focuses on the message of Athelston and argues that the work repositions the power of the crown beneath iii that of a regularized judicial system in which knights function as jurists. Chapter five engages Sir Cleges and the economic lesson of creating bounds for the practice of largesse in the knightly social structure. Chapter six looks at Sir Gowther and supposes a reading of the work that inscribes lessons regarding legal inheritance and social mobility amongst the knightly class. iv APPROVAL PAGE The faculty listed below, appointed by the Dean of the School of Graduate Studies, have examined a dissertation titled “The Pen and the Pennon: Political and Social Comment Inscribed Within Chivalric Romance,” presented by Larry Michael McCloud, candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy degree, and certify that in their opinion it is worthy of acceptance. Supervisory Committee Virginia Blanton, PhD., Committee Chair Department of English Linda E. Mitchell, PhD Department of History Carla Klausner, PhD Department of History Massimilliano Vitiello, PhD Department of History Jennifer Frangos, PhD Department of English v Contents ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................. iii 1. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................ 1 The Power of the Pen ........................................................................................................ 1 The Middle English Romance Tradition as a Genre ......................................................... 4 Major Aspects of Genre Development, 1100 to 1500 .................................................... 11 The Story as Mirror ......................................................................................................... 22 The Society and What the Romances Meant .................................................................. 24 Chapter Overviews .......................................................................................................... 41 2. THE PERIOD AND THE MANUSCRIPTS .................................................................. 46 The Manuscripts and their Historical Context ................................................................ 46 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight .................................................................................. 46 Athelston ......................................................................................................................... 48 Sir Cleges ........................................................................................................................ 51 Sir Gowther ..................................................................................................................... 53 The Temporal Framework .............................................................................................. 56 3. SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT .................................................................... 58 The Plot is Seeded ........................................................................................................... 63 Why Gawain? .................................................................................................................. 66 Gawain’s Failure, or Why Praise a Loser? ..................................................................... 72 The Shame of Administrative Knights ........................................................................... 75 vi 4. ATHELSTON ................................................................................................................... 81 Bound by Laws ............................................................................................................... 81 The Second Act ............................................................................................................... 98 The Third Act ................................................................................................................ 103 The Mobility of the Merchants ..................................................................................... 105 5. SIR CLEGES ................................................................................................................. 110 A Tale of Knightly Woe ............................................................................................... 110 “Land is the Only Thing That Lasts” ............................................................................ 113 Family in Sir Cleges ...................................................................................................... 115 The Strength of a Man’s Arm ....................................................................................... 121 6. SIR GOWTHER ............................................................................................................. 124 Succession as a Familial Priority .................................................................................. 124 Gowther’s Message ....................................................................................................... 130 Property Rights and False Piety .................................................................................... 138 7. CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................. 147 REFERENCE LIST ...................................................................................................... 155 VITA ............................................................................................................................ 171 vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work could not have been completed without the knowledge and skills imparted to me by mentors who will always be a part of my personal scholastic pantheon: Dr. Virginia Blanton, Dr. Linda Mitchell, Dr. Linda Ersham Voights, and Dr. James Falls. Each of you has taught me far more than can be reflected in this work. viii I dedicate this work to Melissa, who gave me the courage to reengage with my scholarship, my children, Allison, Emma, Ian, and Odette, whose presence in my life has made all of my struggles worthwhile, and to Dr. Shona Kelly Wray, who saw promise in me that I could not see in myself, may she rest in peace. ix CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Of all spatial practices, literary representation is arguably the most potent. In the literate and densely urban Low Countries, cities possessed the power of the pen, and with it, the authority to inscribe a space of distinct moral and cultural practices.1 The Power of the Pen Bruce Hall states that: “The structure of social identities consistent with Christian theology engendered the constitutive, hieratic principles of feudal social organization.”2 In his estimation, the entirety of the feudal hierarchy underpinning medieval society was based in a theological perspective of hierarchical systems drawn from doctrinal views of the universe in which the English people of the Middle Ages existed. In this deceptively simple statement, Hall begins an argument articulating the idea that the entire structure of medieval English society was based in an interpretation of biblical text, which was reconstituted from that text into the physical world via inscription into another textual tradition entirely. That tradition, is the Middle English Romance. The medieval romance has undergone a renaissance of sorts during the last ten years of study. What was once considered light fare baring little worthy of study by the literary scholarly establishment has risen anew, read through a series of lenses that has given the 1 Herman Pleij, “Restyling ‘Wisdom,’ Remodeling the Nobility, and Caricaturing the Peasant: Urban Literature in the Late Medieval Low Countries,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 32, no. 4 (Spring, 2002), 689. 2 Rodney Bruce Hall, “Moral Authority as a Power Resource,”