French Romance and English Piety: Genre and Codex in Insular Romance
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French Romance and English Piety: Genre and Codex in Insular Romance by Elizabeth Jane Watkins A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Medieval Studies University of Toronto © Copyright by Elizabeth Jane Watkins 2014 French Romance and English Piety: Genre and Codex in Insular Romance Elizabeth Jane Watkins Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Medieval Studies University of Toronto 2014 Abstract This dissertation explores what the interplay of romance and religious literature in England from the twelfth through fifteenth centuries can reveal about the origins and development of medieval romance. Drawing upon codicological evidence, it favors a more fluid definition of romance that recognizes it as both a category of generic difference distinct from but also linked to the saint’s life, chronicle, or chanson de geste, and as a mode of translation that has its roots in the origins of the term romanz as a marker of linguistic difference used to distinguish French from Latin. It argues that the interconnections of romance and religious literature should be viewed as part of the process of translating or adapting a text, whether into a new language or for a new audience. The first section examines how French hagiographical works adopt motifs and themes associated with romance in the translation of their Latin sources. Chapter 1 focuses on Wace’s use of courtly imagery, expanded descriptions, and doubling in the Vie de Sainte Marguerite, Conception Nostre Dame, and Vie de Saint Nicolas and how these alterations to his source material anticipate qualities that would become features of the romance genre. The second chapter discusses the generic hybridity in Marie de France’s Vie Seinte Audree, in which allusions to the lais cast Saint Audrey as a mal mariée, and the Espurgatoire Seint Patriz, in ii which the emphasis on Owein’s status as a knight offers a suitable alternative to the religious life. The second section assesses the use of hagiographic and religious elements in romances. The third chapter traces the use of hagiography in three Anglo-Norman romances – the Roman de Horn, Roman de Waldef, and Gui de Warewic – to contextualize the significant generic shift that occurs in the attribution of saintly qualities to the hero Guy of Warwick in the latest of the three texts. Concentrating on the role of the relics, the final chapter looks at how the Middle English adaptations of the chanson de geste Fierabras reflect developments in devotional culture, England’s involvement in the Hundred Years War, and the rise of English as a literary language. The combination of codicological and literary approaches in this study foregrounds the processes of translation, adaptation, and transmission that operated in the literary networks of medieval England to broaden our understanding of medieval genres, as well as the place of French language, literature, and culture. iii Acknowledgments Writing a dissertation can seem like a lonely pursuit, but the journey to completion is hardly undertaken in isolation. I owe a great deal of thanks to the many people who have helped me to arrive at my final destination, whether as a steady hand to guide me, a beneficial wind in my sails to push me along when I felt adrift, or a familiar face to cheer me on my way. Firstly, I would like to thank the members of my advisory committee, Suzanne Akbari, Alexandra Gillespie, and David Townsend, for their guidance, criticism, and helpful comments in all of my work, from the first time I stepped into their respective classrooms, to the preparations for my major field exam, and, finally, to the various stages of writing this dissertation. Alexandra Gillespie and David Townsend were generous with their time and aided me to greatly improve my work by challenging my thinking. Suzanne Akbari was an excellent supervisor, patient and encouraging, as she read successive drafts of my thesis chapters and pushed me to explore my topic further. I am grateful as well to Ardis Butterfield and Dorothea Kullmann, my external and internal examiners, whose attentive reading and insightful feedback offered new perspectives that will continue to inform my research. I would also like to thank the teachers in whose classrooms my love of reading was nourished, especially Mrs. Beth Cutts who assigned T.H. White’s The Once and Future King as mandatory summer reading prior to my freshman year in high school, thus helping me to take the first step on my path towards the study of medieval literature; and Mrs. Karen Stephenson Lentini, who nominated me for the Governor’s Honors Program. I am likewise indebted to Jonathan Evans, Elissa Henken, and Susan Rosenbaum at the University of Georgia, who encouraged me to apply to graduate school. iv Thanks are due as well to the fellowship and support of the various residents (human and feline) and non-resident fellows of a certain residence inelegantly named the House of Cheese. The larks we had were greatly appreciated. Lastly, I owe much to my family, without whose encouragement, love, and patience, I could not have made my way to the shore. v Abbreviations AND Anglo-Norman Dictionary (online version) http://www.anglo-norman.net/ ANTS Anglo-Norman Text Society CFMA Les Classiques français du moyen âge EETS Early English Text Society o.s. original series e.s. extra series MED Middle English Dictionary (online version) http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/ ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online version) http://www.oxforddnb.com/ PMLA Publications of the Modern Language Association of America SATF Société des anciens textes français TLF Textes littéraires français vi Table of Contents Contents Acknowledgments .......................................................................................................................... iv Abbreviations ................................................................................................................................. vi Table of Contents .......................................................................................................................... vii Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1 Romancing the Vita in Wace’s Hagiographical Works................................................ 32 La Vie de Sainte Marguerite .................................................................................................... 40 La Conception Nostre Dame .................................................................................................... 56 La Vie de Saint Nicolas ............................................................................................................ 77 Chapter 2 Romance Spaces in Marie de France’s Vie Seinte Audree and Espurgatoire Seint Patriz ...................................................................................................................................... 100 La Vie Seinte Audree .............................................................................................................. 101 Espurgatoire Seint Patriz and Penitential Romance .............................................................. 132 Chapter 3 Hagiography, Romance, and the Matter of England in French .................................. 160 Le Roman de Horn ................................................................................................................. 163 Le Roman de Waldef .............................................................................................................. 180 Gui de Warewic ...................................................................................................................... 205 Chapter 4 The English Fierabras Tradition ................................................................................ 229 Charlemagne in England ....................................................................................................... 230 The Translation of Relics ....................................................................................................... 245 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 267 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 271 vii 1 Introduction Romance is a notoriously fluid and enigmatic term. For the proponents of Romanticism in the nineteenth century, like Nathaniel Hawthorne, romance was a highly visual genre which, by virtue of not being hindered by a “very minute fidelity […] to the probable and ordinary course of man’s experience,” possesses a degree of latitude into the realm of the marvelous unavailable to the true-to-life prose of the novel.1 In contemporary parlance, the term romance may refer to a mode of behavior relating to love, and, in turn, describe a genre of novels populated by men and women engaged in passionate love affairs. Linguistically speaking, romance may be used to describe vernacular languages that derive from Latin. A similar fluidity characterizes the use of the term romance during the Middle Ages when it functions largely as a signifier of alterity, whether linguistic, social, or generic. The term romance (romanz) originally denoted linguistic difference and referred to a text that had been written in the vernacular, namely French, as opposed to something that