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The Mother's Mark THE MOTHER’S MARK: REPRESENTATIONS OF MATERNAL INFLUENCE IN MIDDLE ENGLISH POPULAR ROMANCE by ANGELA L. FLORSCHUETZ A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Literatures in English Written under the direction of Christine Chism And approved by _____________________________ _____________________________ _____________________________ _____________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey October, 2007 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The Mother’s Mark: Representations of Maternal Influence in Middle English Popular Romance by ANGELA L. FLORSCHUETZ Dissertation Director: Chistine N. Chism This dissertation investigates fourteenth- and fifteenth-century romances in English as they struggle with the complicated question of maternal influence, collectively constructed by intersecting, yet often contradictory discourses and interests. I argue that for Chaucer and the late medieval poets who wrote Octavian, Sir Gowther, and Melusine, the genre of the family romance proved particularly conducive to exploring the status of maternal influence and contribution in the context of these political, medical and religious contexts in their poems. In this project, I argue that not only is biological maternity and its significance interrogated in these romances, but that romance, especially the so-called "family romances" that gained in popularity in the later Middle Ages, with their narrativization of the vicissitudes of genealogy, offered poets an appropriate vehicle for meditating on the problems mothers posed to patriarchal genealogies—and, in some cases, the solutions they offered. Religious and medical texts often located maternal influence as a source of deviance, even monstrosity. Yet Octavian, Sir Gowther, Chaucer’s Man of Law’s and Clerk’s Tales, and the Middle English Melusine undermine and critique paternal claims of maternal monstrosity or pollution as both untrue and ultimately dangerous to the genealogical project of reproducing the patrilineal dynasty. ii Modern scholarly discussions of medieval maternity tend to avoid the maternal body itself, identifying motherhood as a series of practices or identifying maternal images and metaphors as they were used by non-reproductive figures to describe their identities in other contexts. This project seeks to shift the register of an emerging conversation about medieval maternity to a more complicated level, one which acknowledges and references the complex and ambivalent social contexts in which maternal bodies and their influence were read and interpreted in the late Middle Ages. From the Octavian-poet, who acknowledges and refutes claims that the maternal body is a source of pollution, to the Melusine-poet’s examination of the repercussions of recognizing and acknowledging maternal influence, late medieval poets approached the maternal body with profound ambivalence and an awareness of the social and religious stakes involved in representing that body and its significance to the community. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS As a project like this comes to a close, one can look back with pleasure and gratitude upon the various contributions of the people and institutions who have made possible both the completion of the project and the retention of the sanity of the writer. To this end, I would like to thank the many members of the Graduate Program of Literatures in English who have unceasingly offered time, encouragement and assistance, in particular, members of the Graduate Office: Cheryl Robinson, Eileen Faherty, and Courtney Borack. I have had the pleasure and privilege of working with a supportive, stringent, and generous dissertation committee, who have been instrumental throughout this process. I would like to thank Larry Scanlon for his generous and invaluable advice and mentoring and Stacy Klein for her timely, insightful and in-depth commentaries throughout my career at Rutgers, and especially during the grueling dissertation process. I also offer grateful thanks to my wonderful dissertation director Christine Chism, for her unflagging humor, direction, and constant encouragement and confidence. I would like to express my gratitude for the generous institutional and financial support I have received throughout my time at Rutgers. The Mellon Summer Dissertation Fellowship and the Mellon Problems in Historical Methods Fellowship each allowed the opportunity to focus on writing my dissertation in a collegial group, while also offering financial support. The various dissertation writing workshops I have attended, headed by Meredith McGill, Emily Bartels, and Michael McKeon were also invaluable in terms of feedback and support. While I probably can’t mention all of the participants who have had a valuable impact on my work in these groups, several individuals in particular stand out in their contributions to this project: Leslie Dovale, iv Sean Barry, Colleen Rosenfeld, and Ellorashree Maitra (who I think has read a version of every chapter at this point). I would also like to thank Jenn Garrison for repeatedly reading sections, article drafts, and chapters at the drop of a hat and offering shockingly fast and helpful feedback. The friendship and support of Anna Mickelsen, Betsy Williamsen, Tzarina Prater, and Ben Johnson have also been invaluable throughout my time at Rutgers. I would also like to thank my parents for their constant advice and support. Finally, I offer my profoundest thanks to my amazing husband Reuben, who provides unflagging support, encouragement, love, and confidence in my abilities. I simply couldn’t have gotten here without you. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ii Acknowledgements iv Table of Contents vi Introduction: Maternal Traces in Middle English Romance 1 Chapter 1: Sacred and Secular Conceptions of Childbirth and Octavian 18 Chapter 2: Sacred and Profane Cannibalism and the Reeducation of Sir Gowther 61 Chapter 3: “A Mooder He Hath, But Fader Hath He Noon: Constructions of 131 Genealogy in the Clerk’s Tale and the Man of Law’s Tale Chapter 4: Maternal Generation: The Middle English Melusine and the Collapse 190 of Genealogy Bibliography 243 Curriculum Vita 260 vi 1 Introduction: Maternal Traces in Middle English Romance The medieval mother is an elusive figure, for both historiographical and evidentiary reasons. As Clarissa Atkinson notes, it is only in the recent past that maternity has acquired a history at all; until the last few decades, motherhood was defined as a universal and timeless biological fact and process, rather than as “an institution shaped by culture and subject to history.”1 Yet in the late Middle Ages, the value of a mother’s contribution to her child was a question of some political and religious urgency. According to the Church, the Virgin Mary’s legacy of humanity to her son enabled salvation through the Incarnation. The Virgin and her celebrated maternity were venerated by church and laity, and her cult was widespread. Lay maternity, however, was viewed with much more ambivalence. Biblical authority identified childbearing as a condition of a woman’s salvation, yet pollution fears deriving from Levitican proscriptions labeled the pregnant and postpartum body as profoundly polluted and dangerous to mother, child, and community.2 Politically, the system of inheritance by patrilineal primogeniture required faithful and fruitful wives for lieges, yet these women were ideally constructed as vessels rather than contributors to their children.3 During the Hundred Years War, however, the transmission of bloodlines through the mother was at the heart of Edward III’s claim to the French crown, challenging the status of mother as mere vessel to her husband’s seed.4 The significance of maternal bodies as sources of inheritance, biological and financial, presented late medieval society with 1 Clarissa Atkinson, The Oldest Vocation: Christian Motherhood in the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991, 6. 2 Jennifer Wynne Hellwarth, The Reproductive Unconscious in Medieval and Early Modern England, (Routledge: New York, 2002), xvi. 3 Sarah Hanley, “Mapping Rulership in the French Body Politic: Political Identity, Public Law and the King’s One Body,” Historical Reflections/ Reflexions Historiques 23(2)(1997): 136. 4 Hanley, 146. 2 often self-contradictory sets of standards, beliefs and practices which rendered simplistic dismissals or declarations of maternal influence difficult if not possible to clearly articulate. For Chaucer and the late medieval poets who wrote Octavian, Sir Gowther, and Melusine, the genre of the family romance proved particularly conducive to exploring the status of maternal influence and contribution in the context of these political, medical and religious contexts in their poems. My dissertation investigates these fourteenth- and fifteenth-century romances as they struggle with the complicated question of maternal influence, collectively constructed by intersecting, yet often contradictory discourses and interests. To date, literary criticism of medieval romances has overlooked the maternal, occasionally asserting that such bodies are too physical, too embodied, too abject to be represented in romance, textual evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. This study explores the discourses relating to maternity and maternal experience within a patriarchal and patrilineal culture in an area that cultural historians have neglected: medieval romance. As Stephen Knight
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