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Spectacle of Self in Medieval Romance: Pagentry, Performance, and Clothing

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Spectacle of Self in Medieval Romance: Pagentry, Performance, and Clothing University of Mississippi eGrove Honors College (Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors Theses Honors College) 2005 Spectacle of Self in Medieval Romance: Pagentry, Performance, and Clothing Crady Yerger Bobo Follow this and additional works at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/hon_thesis Recommended Citation Bobo, Crady Yerger, "Spectacle of Self in Medieval Romance: Pagentry, Performance, and Clothing" (2005). Honors Theses. 1951. https://egrove.olemiss.edu/hon_thesis/1951 This Undergraduate Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Honors College (Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College) at eGrove. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of eGrove. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Spectacle of Self: Pageantry, Performance, and Clothing in Medieval Romance by Crady Yerger Bobo A thesis submitted to the faculty of The University of Mississippi in partial fulfillment of the requirements ofthe Sally MacDonnell Barksdale Honors College. Oxford May 2005 11 Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Educating Perceval: Learning and Unlearning the Self in The Story of the Grail 6 Chapter 2: Edible Nobility: The Feast as Comic Performance in Havelok the Dane and Sir Gareth ofOrkeney 20 Chapter 3: In and Out: Performing Sexuality in Guigemar,Sir Launfal, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 30 Bibliography 49 Ill Dedication I would like to dedicate this thesis to Brad, who was so patient and supportive through all the long nights and to Dr. Gregory Heyworth, who put so much of his time and energy into helping me. IV Abstract Crady Bobo: The Spectacle of Self: Pageantry, Performance, and Clothing in Medieval Romance My thesis focuses on young knights finding their identity. I concentrate on six works, The Story ofthe Grail, Havelok the Dane,Sir Gareth ofOrkeney, Guigemar, Sir Launfal, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and how the various romancers define identity thematically. This occurs in three dififerent ways: with Perceval it is through education, Havelok and Gareth start out as kitchen boys, prove their inherent identity, and are thus self-inventing knights, and for Guigemar, Launfal, and Perceval it is about having their sexuality challenged. I also try in each chapter to give some historical background on the reason why the romancer used his or her method. 1 Introduction On November 1, 1449, Jacques de Lalaing staged a tournament at Chalon-sur- Saone in France. Lalaing was a knight from a distinguished family, one that could show eight lines of descent. He found renown in war and at tournaments. On the island of St. Laurent on the Saone by Chalon a pavilion was set up with an image of Our Lady above it. In front ofthe pavilion was a damsel in a robe stained with tears tending a unicorn from whose neck hung three shields. The shields were also marked with tears. The lady and the unicorn, it is clear, were models. On the first day of each month a herald was present. The unicorn’s shields were three colors, white, violet, and black: white for a fight with an axe. violet for the sword, and black for twenty-five courses with the lance. As soon as a challenger touched a shield, his name was entered into the lists by the herald, who confirmed that he was a gentleman of at least four lines. The time of the fight was set for seven days later. If the challenger won, he received an axe, sword, or lance of gold depending on his event; if Lalaing won with the axe, the loser was bound to wear a gold bracelet for a year, or until he could find the lady 1 with the key to unlock it (there were parallel forfeits in the other two cases). Le Livre desfaits de Jacques de Lalaing, in Oeuvres de G. Chastellain, ed. K. de Lettenhove, VIII (Bnissels, 1886), 48-55; 189-197. 2 Lalaing titled his tournament Fontain de Pleurs, or Fountain of Tears. This unusually poetic title sounded more like the title for a romance and was meant to reflect in detail two hundred years of romance starting with Chretien de Troyes.^ Lalaing’s tournament was a pas d’armes. The pas d’armes was a form of tournament where combatants met to exchange pleasantries and test their prowess against one another. Essentially a group of challenges, the defenders often distributed prizes to the challengers. Lalaing’s actual staging of his event in France was vital to the success ofthe competition. Lalaing’s pas d’armes seems overly extravagant to a modem reader, but since his tournament was based on fiction, the seemingly lavish event is appropriately staged. A similar, but different example can be seen in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Authors such as Chaucer translate romance into real life; an example comes from “The Knight’s Tale.” Lalaing based his tournament on romance and Chaucer used his own experiences to write his romances. Appointed Clerk of the Works of Royal Estates of Richard II in 1389, he had scaffolds built for jousts in Smithfield in 1390. This experience gave him intimate knowledge about how an amphitheatre, a stage for the performance of self, is constructed and arranged. The circuit a myle was aboute. Walled of stoon, and dyched al withoute Round was the shap, in manere of compas. ^ Maurice Keen directly ties Chretien de Troyes to the pas d’aimes. “A particularly striking example of[literature’s] ritual influence centers around the references...to a perron (which seems to mean an artificial mound or pillar), often placed beside a ‘tree of chivalry.’” The perron was closely associated with the rituis of a challenge; usually, the shields a challenger had to touch were hung on it. In Yvain, and enraged giant appears after Yvain threw water onto the perron. “From Chretien, the story of the magical challenge of the perron passed in different versions into a whole series of romances, and in due course became, quite plainly, the model for the ritual of the pas.” 3 Ful of degrees the heighte of sixty pas. That whan a man was set on o degree, He lette nat his felawe for to see. Estward ther stood a gate of marbul whit, Westward, right swich another in the opposit; And shortly to concluden, swich a place Was noon in erthe, as in so litel space (1029-1038). Chaucer purposefully exaggerates to the point of irony in his description of Theseus’s amphitheater. When he describes the arena as a “circuit a myle was aboute” (1029), he is obviously embellishing. There are no arenas today, let alone 600 years ago that have a circumference of a mile. The arena described could seat 35,000 people, more people than lived in all ofLondon at the time. This hyperbole would have gotten a laugh from any reader ofthe time. The same hyperbole found in Lalaing’s Fontain de Pleurs can be found in Theseus’s extravagant amphitheater. Theseus here has the same role as Lalaing; Theseus exemplifies in romance the real life expenses Lalaing spent on his tournament. If the culture ofthe Middle Ages was all about spectacle and public performance, where does the individual fit in? If reality is based in fiction and fiction is exaggerated, how does the knight understand his reality? In The Individual in Twelfth-Century Romance, Robert Hanning puts forth a theory of chivalric identity as performance. “The great adventure of chivalric romance,” he claims, “is the adventure of becoming what(and who) you think you can be, of transforming the awareness of an inner self into an actuality which impresses upon the external world the fact of personal, self-chosen destiny, and therefore of an inner-determined identity^.” In romances, knights possess an ^ Robert Hanning, The Individual in Twelfth’-Century Romance,(Yale University Press :New Haven), pg. 4. 4 “active acceptance of life as an adventure” that “leads [them] into situations which challenge [their] acceptance of social values and therefore offer an alternative to an identity defined by forces outside [themselves]"^ ” The problems present in chivalric romance are aggressive ones that take the form of“armed prowess aimed at winning honor, that is, external approbation and an exalted social identity^ However, if a knight performs to win honor or social renown, is he really finding his own identity? As Hanning points out, a knight is constantly aware of the attention on him. Does that constant notice affect his selfhood? Psychologists studying social behavior have shown learned that the mere presence of an observer can sometimes make people behave differently that they otherwise would. The same principle can be applied to medieval knights. Are they merely performing for the audience or are their quests true searches for self-knowledge and identity? The spectacles of romance were not only about the expectations ofthe author and the individual; how does the audience receive the spectacle of romance and how do their cultural expectations inform chivalric identity? If romance stages things, it is necessarily artificial. How can society be based on something artificial? Is identity based on outward appearances or by inner beliefs? These are just some of the questions I will attempt to answer. This thesis will not be a historical analysis ofthe medieval period. It will not focus on the search for the grail, the round table, or any other traditional Arthurian mythology. This thesis will be a reading of a series of texts where I ^ Hanning Ibid; pg. 3 ^ Hanning Ibid; pg. 4 5 will trace chivalric identity in the young knight. I will explore the psychology of selfhood that underpins identity. Problems this thesis will locate will mediate between the knight and his true identity.
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