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

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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.

The first chapter will focus on Chretien de Troyes’ Perceval as an example of a simple knight. As Perceval moves from one to the next of his four teachers, he learns and unlearns, essentially changing and shaping him. Learning destroys that essential quality of innocence which qualifies him to find the Grail, yet it also enables him to interpret human behavior and theological signs. He must find some balance between knowledge and innocence in order to be successful.

The second chapter, “Edible Nobility: The Feast as Comic Performance in

Havelok the Dam and Sir Gareth ofOrkeneyf will link hands and mouths to identity. I will explore customs and decorum traditionally connected with medieval feasting and the inherent disgust that goes hand in hand with it. Next, I will explain the connection between food and the inherent qualities of nobility and how Havelok and Gareth defy the conventions of innateness by being self-made, self-inventing knights.

The third chapter will focus on the division offemininity and masculinity as functions of inner and outer spaces. I will link this concept to Guigemar, Sir

Lamifal, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by showing how it is necessary for them to bring what is feminine on the inside to the outside in order to define themselves and their knighthood. 6

Chapter One Educating Perceval: Learning and Unlearning the Self in the Story ofthe Grail

To say that Perceval is a simple knight is at once blatantly obvious and

profoundly ambiguous. Simplicity, in medieval theology and psychology, is

anything but simple. On the face ofthings, Perceval is a simpleton; he is Welsh

(after all), growing up in an isolated household in the middle of the woods.

Fatherless, what he knows ofthe world comes only from his mother, and what she

tells him is meager. At fifteen, he does not know his name, has never seen a

knight, a lady, weapons other than his primitive javelin, or a church. A mind in a

state of nature, he has no concept of god or courtesy or love. He does have a

charmingly pure willingness to learn, however. His story in Chretien de Troyes’s

great unfinished romance is one of learning - a Bildungsroman. The problem, as

we realize while he never quite does, is that learning destroys that essential

quality of innocence which qualifies him to find the Grail, yet it also enables him to interpret human behavior and theological signs that are essential clues to finding the Grail and healing the Fisher King.

The purpose of this chapter is to follow Perceval’s education at the hands of his four teachers, and to understand how, on moving from one to the next, he r

7

must learn and unlearn. Each stage of his education moves him to a new level or

"sense” of interpretation in the traditional medieval scheme: literal, moral,

anagogic. This process of learning and unlearning is necessitated, as we will see,

by an antagonism between the values of chivalry and those of the Knights of

Christ (Miles Christi), a new order of knighthood preached by Bernard of

Clairvaux. First, however, we will examine the first episode in Perceval’s

education, his vision of knights as angels, which will help clarify both the idea of

simplicity and that ofthe senses of interpretation, in addition to setting up a

contrast to the later pivotal scene at the Grail castle.

Knights as Angels and DevUs

On a fine spring day, the young Perceval takes his horse and goes out into the

woods to hunt. He hears, but cannot yet see, five knights, in full armor.

approaching through the forest:

“Upon my soul,” exclaimed the youth, “my lady mother spoke the truth that day she told me devils are the vilest things on earth, by far, and said I would be doing right to cross myself against their might.”(113-118)

The irony ofthis scene turns on Perceval’s attempts at reading signs anagogically;

when Perceval hears the strange clatter ofthe knights armor, he assumes that they

are m3^hological devils and not an earth-bound threat. When Perceval finally

sees the knights, however, his attitude about them changes dramatically:

“Sir God, be merciful to me, for here are angels that I see! Now I have done a dreadful sin: r

8

how terrible must I have been to call them devils I despise. My mother did not tell me lies; for angels are, she did insist, the fairest beings that exist, except for God, who is most fair. The Lord God have me in His care, for I see God here in this place. One has so fair a form and face, the other ones could never be one tenth as beautiful as he. My mother said herself the Lord, above all else, should be adored: so I will pray to him foremost and then to all the angel host.”(137-154)

The irony of this scene, and the humor, rests on the idea that, depending upon

one’s perspective - esthetic or ethical - knights are both devils and angels. John

Huizinga clarifies this essential ambiguity, or opposition, the medieval concept of

the knight had;

The conception of chivalry as a sublime form of secular life might be defined as an aesthetic ideal assuming the appearance of an ethical ideal. Heroic fancy and romantic sentiment form its basis. But medieval thought did not permit ideal forms of noble life, independent of religion. For this reason piety and virtue have to be the essence of a knight’s life. Chivalry, however, will always fall short ofthis ethical function. Its earthly origin draws it down^.

Perceval, here, invents a divine origin for chivalry, and in doing so combines the

two ethics, or aesthetic and ethic, into a comic jumble. Ultimately, as a Grail

knight, he will need to find a way to balance the two, but in a less literal, more

sophisticated way.

^ John Huizinga, The Waning ofthe Middle Ages, Garden City,New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1954, p. 69 9

Perceval falls to the ground to worship the “angels,” as his mother taught

him to do. The knight, thinking that Perceval had fallen to the ground at offear

for the five armed knights, orders his men to stay back from him.

He hailed the youth to calm his fright, “See here, young man, don’t be afraid.” “I’m not,” was the reply he made, “for by the Savior whom I trust, are you not God?” The knight, nonplussed, said, “No, my word, that is not right.” “Who are you then?” “I am a knight.” “I haven’t met a knight before,” the youth replied, “nor seen one, nor heard talk about them, which is odd, but you are handsomer than God. If only I could look so fine, and be as strong as you, and shine!”(170-182)

Perceval takes the information given to him by his mother regarding God, angels, and demons literally; he truly believes there are angels and devils walking the

Earth and these knights are just a few ofthem. However, this information has no experiential meaning. What follows is a catechism: a process of asking naive questions followed by misunderstood answers about armor, knighthood, and chivalry. This pattern of questions, which he later learns to be unchivalrous and naive, sets up a parallel scene in the Fisher King’s castle when he will be expected to interpret anagogically, but now is reluctant to ask questions. This scene, in other words, sets up the progressive patterns of learning and misunderstanding that will characterize the entire romance. 10

Mother and the Literal Act of Love

Perceval’s first teacher is his mother, who is primarily his instructor in the

mysteries of women and love, an aspect of chivalry Gomemant neglects. The

problem with her instruction is that she explains what to be, but not why. She

focuses on the importance of honoring ladies:

If you find, near or at a distance, a lady who requires assistance,

or a distressed and troubled maid who tells you she has need of aid, with her request you must concur: for all honor lies in helping her (533-538).

What she omits, however, is what “honor” is. There is, in her directions, a radical

disconnect between world and concept without which her lessons have no

meaning, or worse, the opposite meaning to the one intended. These general

directions are followed by more concrete directions on how he should honor one

woman in particular. She says that if the lady is willing, he may accept a kiss and

a ring as a token of love but may accept nothing more than these things.

However, his mother’s lesson is barely registered and totally misunderstood by

the literal-minded Perceval. Soon after he departs from his mother, he comes

upon a beautiful maiden asleep in her tent, whom he greets saying:

“I greet you, maid, as I believe my mother taught: wherever I meet them, if I find maidens, I must greet them”(682-684).

A clumsier example of courtly language is hard to imagine. We are meant to cringe not only at his literalism but at the fact that he cites his mother as his 11

teacher in how to pick up girls. He later refers to his mother’s lessons to justify

kissing the maiden seven times then stealing her ring. Here his literalism gives

way to a kind of blind, childlike egotism, a complete failure to relate emotionally

or socially to another person:

He said, “My mother said I might take the ring from your finger too, but to do nothing else to you, so, maid, give me that ring and stone; I want to have it for my own”(712-716).

Ignoring the most essential part of her lesson, the order to not force a woman to

do what she does not want to do, he forcibly takes her ring over her objections;

“You’ll never have it, on my word!” the maiden told him,“Rest assured, unless you force it off my finger!” Of course the young man didn’t linger; he seized her hand by force, extended her finger, and, as he’d intended, he put her ring upon his hand (717-723).

Perceval not only disregards his mother’s teachings, but reverses it by turning the

formerly happy maiden into just the damsel in distress his mother meant for him

to assist. His disastrous attempt to follow her advice does not mean that it was

bad advice; the advice is valid but without context. Chivalry, as we see through

the eyes of a simpleton, is an arbitrary - indeed ludicrous - script of behavior.

Chretien effectively separates the esthetic from the ethical allowing is to see how there is no necessary correlation between the two, how adherence to chivalric rules can blind the knight to more profound ethical principles of compassion and love. 12

Gomemant and the Nature of Knighthood

I have spoken so far ofPerceval as a simpleton in the sense that he represents man

in the state of nature. Indeed, beginning with the beautiful dehutprintanier or

“spring beginning” ofthe romance in which we discover Perceval in a world of

flowering trees and agriculture, a “wasteland” only in a sense that he lives in a

forest not under cultivation, Chretien takes care to stress Perceval’s naturalness as

opposed to the artificiality of both courtly love and, although he naturally believes

in God, of Christian theology. Curiously, Perceval’s only obviously successful

learning experience in the entire romance is of arms, a discipline that by paternal

blood is natural to him. Thus, as if to suggest that nature is at odds with medieval

socializing forces, we find Perceval - who struggles pitifully Avith comprehending

the niceties of courtly and religious ritual - flourish in the study of arms.

When Perceval leaves home, he is a naive, young boy Avith no fighting

experience. By luck and primitive skill, Perceval manages to defeat the Red

Knight. Gomemant recognizes the simplicity ofPerceval and takes it upon

himself to civilize the boy in arms and comportment, to mixed success. When he

offers to teach Perceval to “check and spur a steed and use a lance and sword at

need” (1457-1458), Perceval eagerly agrees to tuition from someone “excellent indeed at using lance and horse and shield, equipment he had learned to Avield in

boyhood”(1446-1446). Gomemant tells him that in order to become fully

proficient in these skills he needs “heart, hard work, and practice” (1466-1467). 13

He begins teaching immediately and was surprised to discover that Perceval does not need heart, hard work, or practice:

[He] bore lance and shield as skillfully as if^ throughout his life, he’d spent his time at war and tournament, had gone to every land and sought for great adventures where he fought, because it came to him by nature (1474-1479).

Perceval’s most successful lessons, in other words, are ones he does not need to be taught, that he understands naturally. Indeed, we are led to wonder whether nurture plays any role whatsoever in Chretien’s notion of chivalric identity.

When, after this brief lesson in jousting Gomemant asks what Perceval would do if he broke his lance on another knight, Perceval replies that he would, “fall upon him with my fist” (1515). Gomemant cautions him to never resort to such a low mean of defense. He begins thus on a process not of learning, but of unlearning, stripping him of behavior that is natural to him, a strategy that will ultimately prove disastrous for Perceval’s spiritual development.

After Perceval’s knighting, Gomemant decides that, in order to tmly be seen as a knight in Arthur’s kingdom, Perceval must unlearn his Welsh, pastoral upbringing. To do this, Gomemant encourages him to reject his mother’s influence. Stripping him of his unknightly Welsh attire provided by his mother and forbidding him to acknowledge her influence openly:

He brought the young man hose dyed red, some breeches and a shirt to wear, both made of linen, fine and fair, a silk coat, indigo in shade, from India, woven there and made (1600-1604). 14

Perceval, however, tries to reject this noble gift saying, on rational grounds, “Are not the garments mother sewed me much better than the ones you’ve shown me”

(1611-1612)? In a practical sense, they are. Yet Gomemant reminds Perceval that he promised to “obey whatever council I might say” (1617-1618). With this prompting, Perceval dons the new clothes, “ridding himself of those his mother fashioned” (1622-1623) and in so doing repressing a natural aspect of his identity.

Gomemant not only encourages Perceval to change himself externally, but internally, expunging his mother from his thoughts and not giving her credit for his actions.

“Hereafter, never say, dear brother, that you learned something from you mother,” the lord said. “You are not to blame for what you’ve quoted since you came, but now I ask you to correct your speech, if you do not object, because if you continue you’ll be thought and treated like a fool, so do avoid it, lad, I pray”(1675-1683).

Once again, Gomemant is encouraging Perceval to unlearn what is natural to him.

However, he has not yet fiilly become aware ofthe meaning of Gomemant’s instmctions; they are still just words that he does not fully understand the meaning behind the actions Gomemant is encouraging him to undertake.

Gomemant tells him to:

... not talk to freely, for no one can talk too long before he makes a statement lacking sense, or which is rude and gives offense. The wise man’s saying’s always been that “Too much talking is a sin” (1649-1654). 15

Perceval takes this advice very literally and ends up costing his next teacher, the

Fisher King, more harm than good.

The Fisher King as a Spiritual Guide

Perceval learns from the Fisher King in a different way than he learned things

from his mother and Gomemant. The Fisher King is a spintual, rather than a

chivalric teacher and Perceval learns from him in an indirect manner, rather than

just telling Perceval what it is he needs to know, he lets Perceval learn from his

mistakes at a later time.

Perceval’s experience in the Fisher King’s castle is a strange one. He sees

two things that arouse his curiosity. He sees a lance.

Out of a room a squire came, clasping a lance of purest white: while grasping the center ofthe lance, the squire walked through the hall between the fire and the two men sitting on the bed. All saw him bear, with measured tread, the pure white lance. From its white tip a drop of crimson blood would drip and run along the white shaft and drip down upon the squire’s hand, and then another drop would flow (3191-3201).

Perceval was curious about the lance and wanted to know why it bled, but he did not ask any questions. Perceval thought that asking any questions would make him seem rude because of Gomemant’s lesson. Perceval then observed another strange happening. He saw a maiden bearing a grail followed by a maiden carrying a silver platter. The grail particularly caught his attention.

The grail, which had been borne ahead, was made of purest, finest gold 15

Perceval takes this advice very literally and ends up costing his next teacher, the

Fisher King, more harm than good.

The Fisher King as a Spiritual Guide

Perceval learns from the Fisher King in a different way than he learned things from his mother and Gomemant. The Fisher King is a spiritual, rather than a chivalric teacher and Perceval learns from him in an indirect manner; rather than just telling Perceval what it is he needs to know, he lets Perceval learn from his mistakes at a later time.

Perceval’s experience in the Fisher King’s castle is a strange one. He sees two things that arouse his curiosity. He sees a lance.

Out of a room a squire came, clasping a lance of purest white: while grasping the center of the lance, the squire walked through the hall between the fire and the two men sitting on the bed. All saw him bear, with measured tread, the pure white lance. From its white tip a drop of crimson blood would drip and run along the white shaft and drip down upon the squire’s hand, and then another drop would flow (3191-3201).

Perceval was curious about the lance and wanted to know why it bled, but he did not ask any questions. Perceval thought that asking any questions would make him seem rude because of Gomemant’s lesson. Perceval then observed another strange happening. He saw a maiden bearing a grail followed by a maiden carrying a silver platter. The grail particularly caught his attention.

The grail, which had been borne ahead, was made of purest, finest gold 16

and set with gems; a manifold display ofjewels of every kind, the costliest that one could find in any place on land and sea, the rarest jewels there could be, let not the slightest doubt be cast. The jewels in the grail surpassed all other gems in radiance (3230-3239).

Perceval, however, was once again afraid to ask any questions that would satisfy his curiosity about the grail.

The young man saw the maid’s procession and did not dare to ask a question about the grail or whom they served; the wise lord’s warning he observed, for he had taken it to heart (3243-3247).

This scene of not asking questions mirrors the scene with the knights in the forest when Perceval asks question after question to satisfy his curiosity and learn from the knights. Gomemant’s teachings took away Perceval’s natural curiosity. The next morning, Perceval awakens to an empty manor. He tries to find someone to tell that he is leaving, but is unable to so he continues on his way. He next comes upon a maid he discovers is his cousin. She discovers that he has been at the

Fisher King’s castle and tells him about the Fisher King and why he is the way he is. She informs him that the Fisher King was wounded in the thigh in a battle and is now lame. She asks him if he saw the lance that bled, the grail, and the serving platter. He tells her that he did. She then asks if he questioned why the lance bled or where the grail and the platter were going. When he says that he did not, she tells him that:

To ask one question would procure the king’s recovery on the spot! When the good king had once regained 17

use of his limbs, he would have reigned in his land, to your benefit, for much good would have come from it (3584-3590).

Gomemant’s lessons had detrimental consequences for the Fisher King; however, in an indirect manner, the Fisher King teaches Perceval that when dealing with matters of spirituality and faith, it is better to ask questions. Though it may be rude in a secular court to question everything, it is necessary to ask in a spiritual realm.

The Hermit: Uniting Practical and Spiritual

Thus far, we have seen Perceval’s character take shape under the guidance of his first three teachers. He has learned and unlearned many lessons such that he now wanders a common secular knight, roaming the countryside participating in tournaments and aiding damsels in distress, but distressed by his spiritual failures.

His dual dispensation as religious and secular knight, in other words, remains unresolved.

This paradox, however, finds implicit resolution with the doctrine of

Perceval’s last teacher: his uncle, a hermit. The hermit’s goal is to transform the knightl from a secular knight to a holy knight, an ideology preached by Bernard of Clairvaux in In Praise of the New Knighthood^, a series of homilies written around 1130, some half century before the Story ofthe Grail. Bernard is readying the Temple Knights for a Second Crusade in much the same way that the Hermit is attempting to ready Perceval for the Grail quest, itself a type of Crusade.

^ Bernard of Clairvaux.In Praise ofthe New Kinghthood, Trans. M. Conrad Greenia ocso, Spencer, Massachusetts. Cistercian Publications, 1977 18

Bernard calls for a “fearless knight and secure on every side...whose soul is protected by the armor of faith just as his body is protected by armor of steel”

(34). Secular knighthood, he argues, fosters an ideology of abuses, what he refers to punningly as malitia (evils), as opposed to a Christian militia or knighthood.

As of now, Perceval is very much a secular knight enveloped in malitia, though he is concerned with his sin against the Fisher King. It is this concern with his soul that makes Perceval basically different from the secular knights that “drape [their] horses in silk, and plume [their] armor with I know not what sort of rags;[they] paint [their] shields and [their] saddles;[they] adorn [their] bits and spurs with gold and silver and precious stones, and then in all this pomp, with shameful wrath and fearless folly, [they] charge to [their] death” (37). This basic concern for his soul will allow the hermit to shape Perceval into the new kind of knight praised by Bernard of Clairvaux, the milites Christi.

Perceval’s sin, as he learns from the hermit, is not simplicity as

Gomemant believed, but ignorance. The hermit asks for his name and when

Perceval tells him what it is, the hermit recognizes it. He tells Perceval that he is feeling remorse for the wrong sin.

“A sin for which you feel no shame has brought misfortune on you, brother. It was the grief you caused your mother the day you left; a grief so great she swooned and fell before her gate next to the drawbridge, on her side, in so much anguish that she died (6392-6398).

The hermit explains that it was ignorance of this sin that caused him not to ask about the lance and the grail. The hermit’s reasoning is that it was not 19

Gomemant’s advice that kept Perceval from asking any questions, but that his

sin cut off[his] tongue” (6412). We are left, then, with a curious set of paradoxes concerning chivalric identity and knowledge. The only knowledge

Chretien valorizes is of the self in relation to God. The only reliable advice

Perceval has are his mother’s and uncle’s, both related to him. The Grail Quest, we discover, is not a search for an object in the outside world, but a quest after the question of one’s relation to God in the absence of an answer. To ask is to answer. 20

Chapter Two Edible Nobility: The Feast as Comic Performance in Havelok the Dane and Gareth of Orkeney

One ofthe cultural purposes of romance is to support and valorize

nobility, to define chivalric customs, ideals, and rituals. And yet, romance also supports a counter-movement. In reflecting upon nobility and its practices, romance cannot help but find humor in its over-determination, in the self- conscious performance of custom, ideal, and ritual. Given a social ideology often comically at odds vsdth the mode of its performance, romance presents its

audience, whether noble or bourgeois, with a paradox: when should we read

ironically and when seriously? Or, more subtly, how can we read romance as

serio-comic?

The purpose of this chapter is to answer these questions through an

examination oftwo narratives of young knights linked by a common theme of

what might truly be called “kitchen humor,”* or more specifically the comedy of

mouths, hands, and eating.

In the “General Prologue” ofthe Canterbury Tales, Chaucer describes the

Prioress in vivid detail, observing most carefully and individually her table

Robert Ernst Curties, translated by Willard R. Trask,European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages(New York; Bollingen Foundation Inc., 1953), pp. 431-433 21 manners and eating habits^. For the Prioress, “wel ytaught”(127) in manners and dinner customs at “the scole of Stratford atte bowe”(125), dinner is a choreographed performance, but one with lapses and revealing inadvertencies.

Feasting in the middle ages was highly ritualized, following strict rules of conduct and behavior. The prioress follows these rules when she eats:

She leet no morsel from hir lippes falle, Ne wette hirfyngres in hir sauce depe; Wei koude she carie a morsel and wel kepe That no drope ne fille upon hire hrest. In curteisie was set ful muchel hir lest. Hir ovQT-lippe wyped she so dene That in hir coppe ther was no ferthyng sene Of grece, whan she dronken hadde hir draughte. Ful semely after hir mete she raughte(GP 128-136, my italics).

Feasting is a messy affair at best, a fact Chaucer highlights with details whose

99 effect upon us inclines toward disgust: “fyngres” wet “in hir sauce, morsels” of

99 (( food falling from “lippes,” “dropes” falling on “brest, ferthyng” or islands of

coagulated “grece” floating in the “coppe” left in the wake ofthe Prioress’s lips.

Of course, the humor of this passage lies in the fact that the Prioress has managed to avoid these accidents. And yet, through rhetorical sleight-of-hand, Chaucer has

brought them from absence into presence. We notice too the jarring sensuality of the parts ofthe body involved in eating - mouth, lips, fingers, breasts -

emphasizing the contrast between the decorum offeasting and its inherent disgust.

In this over-determined performance of public consumption, Chaucer’s attention

is drawn most powerfully to hands and mouths. Thus, the Prioress’s concluding

gesture is to grasp: “after her mete she raughte”(GP 136). So too, in Malory’s

^ Chaucer, Geoffrey, The Riverside Chaucer^ Ed. Lany D. Benson, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987 22

tale of Gareth and the anonymous thirteenth century Havelok^ hands and mouths

function simultaneously as fetishized symbols of nobility, and objects oflow

comedy.

If Chaucer’s intrigue of upper class table manners yields irony on the

small stage, the effect becomes amplified in romance depictions offeasting as a

full-scale performance of courtesy. Indeed, feasts in the middle ages were by

design serio-comic performances, in which the drama of hierarchy, and the ritual

and protocol of eating was traditionally interrupted by a short theatre

10 performance, usually comic, known as an “interlude. In Sir Gawain and the

Green Knight, for instance, the spectacle of the Green Knight’s entrance and

challenge to the court plays, for a moment of anxious uncertainty, as a possible

interlude, a “game” that breaks up the earnest mood. Feasts, that is to say, had

inscribed within their serious social narrative a subversive subtext, a fact that

romance exploits for a larger critique of courtesy.

In Ha\felok the Dane, Havelok is a king’s son, but when his father dies, his

guardian usurps the throne by murdering his two sisters and hiring Grim, a poor

11 fisherman, to kill Havelok. From the beginning, then, nobility as an inherited

construct is called into question; if someone can usurp the throne, then nobility is

not inherent. Nobility as a social ideology must prove itself if usurpation is

10 For a discussion on the relationship between feasting and play, see Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens, Boston: Beacon Press, 1950, pp. 21-22 '’ “Havelok the Dane,” Ed. Donald B. Sands, Middle English Verse Romances, University of Exeter, 1986, pp. 58-129 23 allowed to occur. Havelok must win back the throne that should rightfully be his.

Havelok, in other words, is about the vindication, and legitimacy, of nobility.

The fisherman’s wife is the first to notice something strange about young

Havelok. As she is going to bed, she blows out her candle to find that the room where Havelok is, was as “bright so it were day”(589). “Of hise mouth it stood a stem als it were a sunnebem”(591-592). The sunbeam shooting from Havelok’s mouth is a sign of his nobility. The sun has been a symbol ofroyalty since the time of the Egyptians and Ra, their Sun God to Louis XIV, thus the sunbeam in

Havelok’s mouth is indicative of the nobility inherent in him literally shooting out of his body. Recalling Robert Hanning’s assertion that romance is about young knights taking what is on the inside and making it into their outward reality, we may theorize that Havelok is performing exactly that task: taking the nobility that is within him and transforming his outward reality to reflect his noble status.

The fact that this light comes from his mouth is also significant. He is a nobleman, so he has the economic means to feed himself Unlike most commoners, he can afford to feast and eat excess amounts offood. The mouth is therefore the source of social entitlement; similarly, it is also the source of rational authority. Since many people could not read, the decrees of the King and other nobles were spoken. The mouth then, is a twofold symbol of nobility: it gives the nobleman economic and political power.

Grim takes in Havelok and raises him, but as he gets older, Havelok realizes that he has unintentionally become a problem for Grim, one that has to do with his social class: 24

Havelok was war that Grim swank sore For his mete, and he lay at horn: He thoughte, “Ich am nou no grom; Ich am well waxen and well may eten More than evere Grim may geten. Ich ete more, by God on live. Than Grim and hise children five!”(788-794)

Because he is a nobleman, Havelok eats a disproportionate amount offood.

Disproportion, as we vrill see in Gareth, is a measure of social realiy; the nobility are bigger and therefore need more than the common people. In Arthur’s court,

Gareth is able to get all the food he needs, but Grim, a common man, is unable to

provide the amount offood that Havelok needs. Havelok’s over-eating is

significant because it once again focuses on his mouth as a symbol of his nobility.

The same symbols that give mythic legitimacy in romance have ironic

significance in real life. Though his mouth may prove who he is, it also causes trouble for the guardian that saved his life.

Havelok’s solution is to leave Grim and go off in search of a way to make

his own living. He finds a job with the King of England’s cook, who finds him a

"‘stalworthe man”(904) and seems almost instinctively to recognize something

different about Havelok when he tells him:

“Gladlike wile ich feden thee: Well is set the mete thou etes. And the hire that thou getes.”(906-908)

Like Gareth, Havelok needs food to reach his full potential and the cook seems to immediately sense this. For him, the food he is going to feed Havelok is going to be a good investment because Havelok will grow to be so big and powerful, a great person to have around when you need someone to fetch water and chop n

25

firewood. Havelok’s time as a kitchen boy will be a time of growing bigger and

stronger, developing physically to prepare himself for the fight he knows is ahead.

Because of his time in the kitchen, he will be ready to reclaim his throne when the

time comes.

Every year at Pentecost, Arthur holds a great feast, but refuses to eat until he has

seen “a grete mervayle”(VII 177 24). Imagine the discomfort of having to wait

for an expected, yet unexpected marvel before being able to eat. Knights and

ladies dressed in their finest, shifting uncomfortably in their seats, waiting to eat.

Malory is aware of the bizarreness ofthis tradition and he treats it with

seriousness only because it has become custom. No explanation is given as to

why this has become custom, so one can assume that there is no reason; it is

13 meaningless and serves no purpose, Suddenly an unknown knight, whom we

later learn is Gareth, is seen from the window.

And so Sir Gawayne, a lytyll tofore the none ofthe day ofPentecoste, aspyed at a wyndowe three men uppon horsebak and a dwarfe uppon foote; and so the three men alyght, and the dwarff kepte their horsis, and one ofthe men was hyghar than the tothir twenye by a foote and an half Than Sir Gawayne wente unto the Kyng, and sayde, “Sir, go to your mete, for here at hande commyth strange adventures.”(VII 177 27-33)

The comedy of this scene begins with an observation of disproportion that

gives way under interpretive pressure to insight into the inherited characteristics

of nobility. Gawain immediately recognizes the presence of adventure from the

12 Sir Thomas Maloiy, “Sir Gareth of Orkeney,” Ed. Stephen H. A. Shepherd, Le Morte Darthur

(New13 York: W.W. Norton Company, 2004)pp. Ill-221 The precedent for this custom can be found in Chretien de Troyes’ Yvain 26 signs of disproportion. Our attention is drawn to a hierarchy of height in which height represents nobility. Here, there are three classes of men: dwarf, common man, and Gareth. Just as common men are visually superior to dwarves, Gareth is superior to the common man. For Arthur’s court, comedy lies in disproportion. while for the medieval reader, the irony would have lain in the implied class allegory of the scene.

For my purposes, the conflict between individual and class identity as we will see, is the most important message ofthis scene. Gareth enters Arthur’s hall leaning “upon [the] sholdyrs” (VII 178 5)of his two companions. The potential for heroic size is there, but Gareth does not yet have the physical bulk necessary to support his mass. To remedy this, Gareth asks Arthur for “mete and drynke sufFyciauntly for this twelvemonthe”(VII 178 28), a request that is again at once a source of humor in Arthur’s court and serious social comment. Here, Maloiy is linking the physical characteristics of nobility to the comic topos of feasting and eating. Gareth is “the goodlyest yonge man and the fayreste that ever they all sawe; and he was large and longe and brode in the shuldyrs”(VII 178 5-7).

Gareth’s strange weaknesses also further his ultimate goal of becoming a self- made aristocrat, one who eats himself into status. Like Chaucer, Maolory pays attention to details regarding feasting to both comic and ironic effect. Malory also notes that Gareth has “the largyste and the faryeste handis that ever man sye”(VII

178 7-8). Fair hands are indicative of Gareth’s nobility because they are a sign of someone not used to manual labor. They are also comically implicated in the act of medieval eating - of reaching (as does the Prioress) after food. Finally, as with 27 the paws of a puppy, they are predictors of adult size. Gareth, we are meant to realize, is destined to wield not only chicken wings and steak knives, but swords and implements of war.

Arthur asks for Gareth’s name to which Gareth replies. Sir, I can nat tell

5 you (VII 178 40). Arthur’s comeback to this statement is not what one would expect. Instead of commenting on the secretive nature of this remark, Arthur

ccc remarks. that is mervayle,’ seyde the Kynge, ‘that thou knowyste nat thy

9^9 name (VII 178 41-42). The withholding of Gareth’s name serves several purposes. Arthur’s response is comic because it assumes, ridiculously, that Gareth doesn’t know his own name, not as is the case, that he refuses to identify himself for some hidden reason. Gareth, we are meant to conclude, resists the notion that nobility rests on name alone. He represents a different kind of nobility, one that is not solely inherited but also earned through action and deed. He wants to earn his name, so by withholding it he reserves the right to name himself In Malory, adventures are usually passive, something that “comes to” a person (Latin meaning of adventure). By not giving out his name, Gareth takes adventure into his own hands, quite literally, turning himself into a self-inventing knight.

Naming in itself is a ritual, a confirmation into knighthood. When Kay gives

Gareth the nickname Beaumains, or Fair-Hands, he does it in scorn, but it is a fairer nickname than perhaps Kay anticipates. As a name, Beaumains labels

Gareth by a comic attribute; Gareth, in revealing his real name later, will retake his reality into his own hands, changing it from a comic, generic title into and individual, heroic name. 28

That both Gareth and Havelok begin then rise to “earned” nobility and

self-invented identity is not a coincidence. There is a long tradition of social and

moral comedy associated with kitchens going back to Latin comedy and the many

14 puns on the word for cook (Latin coccus), Cooks and kitchen scullions were

traditionally slaves, the lowest ofthe low. s Metamorphoses features a

comic quarrel between a cook and a baker in which the former is ridiculed for his

blackened face, a fact that implies moral blackness as well as a social stigma of

uncleanliness. The kitchen is also associated with gluttony so in Abbo of St.

Germain’s Bella Parisiacae urbis (c. 897)in which wounded Normans are handed

over to a cook for safekeeping, and who are later berated for their wives for being

not only poor knights, but gluttons.*^ In the Chanson de Guillaume epic

Rainouart the coarse kitchen boy becomes an epic hero. This varied list

demonstrates that the tradition of kitchen humor was used in many ways and in

16 several contexts, from religion to war to romance.

As products ofthe tradition of kitchen humor, both Gareth and Havelok

are self-made, self-inventing nobles who move from low comic characters to

heroic, noble ones. They start out at the absolute lowest point, the kitchen, and

work their way to the top of the social ladder. The young knight as a kitchen boy

is an ironic symbol: the blackened face associated with kitchen boys makes him look like a devil and places him on the lowest societal mngs when he belongs on

14 Ciirtius 15 16 As mentioned in Curtins, p. 431 As mentioned in Cuitius. p. 432 29 the highest. Being in such a position makes a knight’s nobility all the more sensible. Havelok, for example.

cam to the wele, water updrow. And filde ther a michel so; Bad he non again him go; But bitwen his hondes he bar it in, All him one, to the kitchin. Bad he non him water to fete, Ne fro the bridge he bar; All that evere shulden he nitte. All he drow and all he cite: Wolde he never haven rest More than he were a best. (932-944)

He does all of the work himself and refuses to let anyone help him for two reasons: the first is that, being a noble, he is bigger and stronger so does not need any help and the second reason is that he wants to prove, like Gareth does, that he can be self-sufficient. And like Gareth, his hands are both tokens and tools of a nobility both inherited and self wrought. 30

Chapter Three

In and Out: Performing Sexuality in Marie de France’s Guigemar^

Sir LaunfaU and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

According to Galen, the father of antique and medieval anatomy, men

were women turned inside out. All the parts, then, that men have, women have

too, the difference between them being in only one thing, which must be kept in

mind throughout the discussion: namely that in women the parts are within,

whereas in men they are without^’. Pliny, following Galen, maintained further

that if a woman were to spread her legs very far apart when leaping over a fence

or in some similar activity her organs would fall out and she would become a

18 man . These fantastic, if unsanitary, superstitions have their origin in the

somewhat more mundane observation that women’s sexual organs are on the

inside, while men’s are on the outside. From this we may extrapolate a more

suggestive idea of gender and space in the Middle Ages: that the feminine lies

within, in inner spaces, and the masculine without. This generalization works not

only in terms of anatomy, but also in terms of architectural and psychological

17 18 Galen, De uso pastium, translated by Margaret May,(Ithaca, 1968), V.I, 14.6 (II. 297)p.629 Pliny, Natural History, translated by H. Rackman (London: Heinemann, 1968), VII.IV; see discussion in Handbook ofMedieval Sexuality, eds. Vem L. Bullough and James A. Brundage (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1996), p. 226 31 space. Women in the Middle Ages tended to live their lives indoors. One typical image of medieval women we have from manuscript illustrations is of ladies

spinning or occasionally reading inside while presumably waiting for their men to

come back from war or adventure. Immured women, those forced into isolation

by their husbands who feared being cuckolded by them, or anchoresses are

frequent characters in romance and hagiography. Psychologically,the feminine

was associated with emotions and passions that come from inside. A man’s world.

on the other hand, was that of commerce, adventure, and war; theirs was the

active life lived outdoors. Psychologically, their inner emotional world was

invisible from without, repressed.

Romance’s depiction of distinct masculine and feminine space leads to an

interesting paradox. Fundamentally, although romance depicts a world of

outward adventure, it belongs to an interior world: books are read inside and when

read, the narrative speaks to our inner mind. Finally, the world of romance itself

is bound between covers of the book itself The locus of romance, then.

designates an internal space not only in its mode of consumption but also

thematically, in quests of identity of heroes, that likewise contain an inward

component. Robert Hanning has argued that ‘the great adventure of chivalric

romance is the adventure of becoming what(and who) you think you can be, of

transforming the awareness ofinner self into an actuality which impresses upon

the external world the fact of a personal, self-chosen destiny, and therefore an

inner-determined identity”.*^ What does this mean, I would like to ask, for the

19 Robert W. Hanning, The Individual in Twelfth Centuiy Romance(New Haven. Conn.; Yale University Press, 1977), p. 4 32 sexual and spatial discourse of romance? How does this affect the concepts ofthe body of the masculine romance hero and the clothes he wears on the outside?

What does this discourse of inwardness look like and what are its signs? In

answering these questions, I will explore Sir Launfal, Guigemar, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to learn how the romance hero becomes masculine by

externalizing feminine space, much like the woman who jumps over the fence to

become a man.

Guigemar’s Sexuality

20 Guigemar is the story of a young knight’s journey of self-discovery. What he

discovers is a private, personal realm through a wound that anatomically

introduces him to his inner, feminine side. But this inner-self is revealed in more

ways than anatomy: Guigemar must also abandon his will to others, embrace a

feminine agency so to speak, a mode of indirectness and passivity. In suffering a

wound that can be healed only by a woman, he becomes dependent on another

person. We also witness a supernatural boat which will take him where he needs

to go, a sign that he has abandoned himself to God, to fate. While these events

demonstrate non-direct, non-masculine agencies, I will argue that they offer

Guigemar a way to become more masculine by becoming feminine.

Ovid’s Narcissus was a character well known to medieval audiences. A

bisexual who rejects love from both sexes, he is destined to live as long as he

never knows himself, “If e'er he knows himself he surely dies.” Fleeing the

20 Marie de France. “Guigemar,” Trans. Robert Hanning and Joan Fenante, The Lais ofMarie de France, New York: E.P. Dutton, 1978 pp. 30-55 33 advances of other youths. Narcissus runs off into the woods to an encounter with

himself In Marie’s La/5, Guigemar begins his tale as a type of Narcissus. Like

Narcissus, Guigemar flees the advances of would-be lovers for the woods where

he has an adventure of self discovery. When Guigemar goes hunting, an

exclusively masculine pursuit, he enters a private, otherworld where gender lines

become strangely blurred. The hunting episode frames an important question

about Guigemar’s sexuality as a mirror reflection, a la Narcissus, ofthat ofthe

deer he kills. The deer he is hunting has both male and female parts;

Guigemar saw a hind with a fawn; a completely white beast, with deer’s antlers on her head (90-93).

With antlers and a fawn, the deer seems to be a hermaphrodite, an ideal balance

between the feminine and masculine who will help Guigemar find the same

balance within himself Guigemar shoots the deer, “but the arrow rebounded,

[and] gave Guigemar such a wound - it went right through his right thigh into the

horse’s flank- that he had to dismount” 97-100). In classical tradition, the thigh is

linked to sexuality. The Latin word for the thigh femora, is etymology

related to the word for female. The arrow, a phallic symbol, carves a literal

vagina in Guigemar, bringing his inner-feminine self to the outside, precisely like

Pliny’s leaping lady. Mastered by this cupidinal assault, Guigemar is forced to

become a slave to his passions, to become woman-like in the traditional medical

sense that he is governed by desires and emotions rather than reason. - >- vv

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However, he is now on the right kind of quest, one that will force him to understand the symbolism of his new anatomy and integrate it with his inward identity and to form his outward self-concept. The deer tells him:

This shall be your destiny: may you never get medicine for your wound! Neither herb nor root, neither physician nor potion, will cure you of that wound in your thigh, until a woman heals you, one who will suffer, out of love for you, pain and grief such as no woman has ever suffered before. And out of love for her, you’ll suffer as much (108-118).

The rule the deer is illustrating is one ofgender mutuality. Guigemar will experience a love from the feminine point of view and all the weaknesses that go with femininity. He will have to acknowledge his passionate, feminine side and use that to make love an external reality. The deer also stipulates that he will have to suffer, something Guigemar as a knight is used to, but now he will have to suffer emotionally, inwardly. Other minor adventures identify Guigemar a a man exploring female space and feminine agency.

After leaving the deer, Guigemar wanders through the woods to the shore of the ocean where he finds a mysterious ship deserted by its crew. When he boards the ship, it begins to move. Since there is nothing Guigemar, injured and alone, can do to turn it around, he abandons himself to his fate. In this sense, God gives the boat direction and Guigemar must trust in divine providence. When the boat stops, he meets a woman imprisoned by her husband in a private castle; bvi^m rtfiw H

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Guigemar lands in the middle ofthe most typical of medieval female contexts -

enclosure:

The grove beneath the tower was enclosed all around with walls of green marble, very high and thick. There was only one entrance, and it was guarded day and night. On the other side, the sea enclosed it; no one could enter, no one leave, except by means of boat, as the castle might require it. Inside the castle walls, the lord had built a chamber - none more beautiful anywhere -to keep his wife under guard - At its entrance was a chapel. The room was painted with images all around; Venus the goddess of love was skillfully depicted in the painting, her nature and her traits were illustrated, whereby men might learn how to behave in love, and to serve love loyally. Ovid’s book, the one in which he instructs lovers how to control their love, was being thrown by Venus into a fire, and she was excommunicating all those who ever pursued this book or followed its teachings.(219-244)

The chamber where she is being held is a doubly feminine space: psychologically

feminine in its murals of Venus hunting down all those who depended upon

Ovid’s Remedia amoris, a book where people are taught how to get over and

recover from love, and anatomically feminine in that it is womblike in its

descriptions. The irony of this room lies in the fact that Guigemar comes this

place where healing of a love wound, a remedia amoris, both can and cannot

happen. As an enclosed space with one opening, the chamber represents a womb

that Guigemar alone is able to penetrate. Usually, “an old priest... [who had] lost ■w

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The two fall in love and she is able to heal his wound. After a year and a

half go by, the two are worried about the danger of her husband discovering their

hidden relationship and Guigemar being forced to flee back to his home. They

decide to tie knots in each others clothes that only the other would be able to

untie. These love-knots were traditionally tied in the string belt ofthe tumc worn

before going off to war or a long journey. Only the lovers, presumably, would

remember how to untie the knot. Here, the knots on each other represent

mutuality and clothing becomes an essential symbol ofthe interface between the

outward and inner self. By wearing the love-knot, Guigemar is outwardly

displaying the feminine side of himself

If space is guarded by clothing, it is also guarded by objects and behaviors

associated with clothes. On the very day the two tie their love knots, Guigemar is

discovered by one ofthe husband’s chamberlains. The husband orders three of

his henchmen to break down the door and Guigemar is discovered. Furious,

he gave orders to kill the stranger. Guigemar got up, not at all afraid. He grabbed a wooden rod on which clothes were usually hung, and waited for his assailants.(592-597)

Since Guigemar is in the inner, feminine sanctum, he does not grab a masculine

sword, but instead a clothes drying rod, a thing usually associated with the

feminine chore of laundry. By falling his love and being healed of his wound. ¥

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Guigemar’s inner feminine is displayed on the outside; first with the love knot and now by fighting with a feminine object, one that is at once phallic, yet in context effeminate.

Launfal’s Two Worlds

Sir Laitnfal is a story about the love of a knight for Tryamour, a fairy princess, the most beautiful on Earth, and how their private bond oflove - the rules they establish between themselves - comes into conflict with the public rules of

21 Arthurian “courtly” love. The tale ofSir Lawrfal is, at its root, a conflict between the materialism of the court where value is a corollary of clothes and adornments, and where quality must be external, visible, to have influence, and the ideal chivalric economy ofthe fairy world which values unseen and unspoken virtues, which resists upon oath the externalizing ofthe private sphere.

The Arthurian world of the court is an external, masculine one. Though obviously not solely inhabited by men, it is nonetheless a masculine gendered space where external values of money and reputation matter more than internal longings. From the beginning, Launfal does not fi t into this world. He leaves the court estranged from Arthur and takes up residence in his hometown where he remains for a year. At the end of this time, his “robes beth torent, and your tresoure is all y-spent” (139-140), a sign of his disfranchisement from the material economy of the Arthurian court. He rides out into the woods and meets

Tryamour, a fairy princess, where like the forest in Gtagemar, lines between

21 Sir Launfal.” Ed. Donald B. Sands,Middle English Verse Romances^ University of Exeter 1986, pp. 203-232 T

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f I 38 reality and fantasy, male and female, blur. Tryamour, Launfal quickly discovers,

is wealthy;

The paviloun was wrouth, fore soothe y-wis. All of werk or Sarsinis. The pomelles of crystal; Upon the toppe an em ther stode Of boumede golde riche and goode, Yflourished with riche amall- AJisaundre the conqueroure Ne King Artoure in his most honour Ne hadde non swich juell!(265-270; 274-276)

Her wealth exceeds even Arthur’s, and since courtly values are based on riches

and wealth, this makes her valuable. The pavilion is topped with a golden eagle.

bringing to mind the riches and splendors of ancient Rome; however, because her

wealth is based in a world of fantasy, it cannot easily be vested in this material

reality. She offers Launfal a way back into Arthur’s courtly realm through her

wealth. She gives to give him a kind of dowry, money for her love.

I will the yeve an alner Y-mad of silk and of gold cher With faire images thre. As oft thou puttest the bond therinne, A mark of gold thou shalt winne In wat place that thou be.(319-324)

This replenishing magical purse allows him to buy new clothes and armor and

through his new riches, he is able to regain his status in Arthur’s world.

Values of courtly love, however, are also based on reputation, what the

court says and thinks about a knight. In this sense, their love has a catch: Launfal

can never reveal Tryamour to anyone else. He is unable to cash-in on her courtly

value, unable to utilize in court the very thing that makes her so valuable precisely

because he cannot put her on display. In other words, Tryamour negates the

38 reality and fantasy, male and female, blur. Tryamour, Launfal quickly discovers, is wealthy:

The paviloun was wrouth, fore soothe y-wis. All of werk or Sarsinis. The pomelles of crystal; Upon the toppe an em ther stode Of boumede golde riche and goode, Yflourished with riche amall- Alisaundre the conqueroure Ne King Artoure in his most honour Ne hadde non swich juell! (265-270; 274-276)

Her wealth exceeds even Arthur’s, and since courtly values are based on riches and wealth, this makes her valuable. The pavilion is topped with a golden eagle, bringing to mind the riches and splendors of ancient Rome; however, because her wealth is based in a world of fantasy, it cannot easily be vested in this material reality. She offers Launfal a way back into Arthur’s courtly realm through her

wealth. She gives to give him a kind of dowry, money for her love:

I will the yeve an alner Y-mad of silk and of gold cher With faire images thre. As oft thou puttest the bond therinne, A mark of gold thou shalt winne In wat place that thou be. (319-324)

This replenishing magical purse allows him to buy new clothes and armor and through his new riches, he is able to regain his status in Arthur’s world.

Values of courtly love, however, are also based on reputation, what the court says and thinks about a knight. In this sense, their love has a catch. Launfal can never reveal Tryamour to anyone else. He is unable to cash-in on her courtly

value, unable to utilize in court the very thing that makes her so valuable precisely

because he cannot put her on display. In other words, Tryamour negates the

39 traditional system of courtly value which resides in public estimation of worth.

Her value, she insists, is intrinsic to her and him alone.

But of o thing. Sir Knight, I wame thee That thou make no host of me For no kennes mede.

And if thou dost, I warn the before, All m love thou hast forlore!” And thus to him she seide.(361-366)

The value of their love has inherent worth as opposed to the courtly economy of the visible. Rather, she emphasizes the inner feminine, private values oflove that are self-justifying and do not need to be performed before a court. Launfal agrees to her proposal, agreeing not to tell anyone about her and the love they share.

The performance of self in Launfal is not merely material but sexual.

After noticing Launfal’s new riches, however, Arthur invites him back to court for a great feast. While there, Guinevere approaches him and claims that she has “the lovid with all my might more than this seven yere”(677-378). Launfal rejects her on the grounds that he will not betray Arthur, his King and master. Insulted,

Guinevere retorts that since Launfal is a bachelor, he must be a homosexual:

But she seide I nas no man, Ne that me lovede no woman Ne no womannes companie.(775-777)

Outraged by this insult to his masculinity, Launfal rashly tells Guinevere about

Tryamour, saying, 4(6I have loved a fairir woman than thou evir leidest thin ey upon’”(694-695). By defending his masculinity, he unwittingly loses what he holds to be most precious, his love and his link to the world of wish fulfillment.

40

What follows is the tale’s central performance: a court drama. Angry at

Launfal, Guinevere tells Arthur of Launfal’s insult and insists that he be punished for his indiscretion. He is put on trial and given a year to produce his love, the

woman that is fairer than Queen Guinevere. On the appointed day, Sir Gawain sees a beautiful woman riding up to the castle:

She hadde a crounne upon here molde Or riche stones and of golde That lofsom lemede light.

The lady was clad in purpere palle. With gentil body and middil small. That seemly was of sight. Her mantil was fiirrid with white ermin, Y-reversid jolif and fin; No richere be ne might.

Her sadel was semily set; The sambus were grene felvet

Y-painted with imagerie.(940-951)

Notice that Gawain, caught up in the external trappings ofthe masculine world, is

able to recognize Launfal’s love based purely on the incredible richness of her

clothing and adornments. Her clothing, her external value, is how she is

recognized; her internal, personal qualities are not ofimportance.

Clearly in Sir Launfal, the value systems belonging to each world are

mutually exclusive. One cannot live as a knight in both. Perhaps the most

stunning part of this story, then, is that in the end, after his acquittal, Launfal

leaves Arthur’s superficial world for the private fairy world that we, and everyone

in Arthur’s court, don’t see. His choice ofthe private, inner world ofthe fantasy

over the public, outward world is what defines Launfal as a knight. \ 41

Gawain’s Humility

Thus far, we have witnessed young knights in the process offorming their

masculine sexual identities both by performing gendered actions(what I have

referred to as masculine and feminine agency) before an audience, and by

rehearsing feminine agency privately. These performances allow us to distinguish

between two gendered spaces in medieval romance, inside and outside, and to

suggest that the knight’s quest has something to do no only with exchanging roles

in his performance but exchanging scenery, that is making what is inside - a

private sphere of fantasy and wish-fulfillment - into an outward reality. In

turning attention to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight^ we find ourselves in

perhaps the richest territory for this argument, one in which notions ofinside and

outside, sexual identity and chivalric obligation, clothing and self-performance.

22 are woven together masterfully.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a story of a young knight, older but

not much older than Launfal and Guigemar, who must perform his knightly virtue

both in public and in private, both before the court ofKing Arthur in the opening

and final scenes and in audience-less scenes at the Green Knight’s castle and at

the Green Chapel. This performance and rehearsal ofthe ideals of courtesy is

framed as a series of games, what scholars call the “beheading game” and the

“exchange of winnings.” The purpose ofthe game, as Gawain discovers at the

end, is a test staged by Morgan le Fay ofthe Arthurian court’s ability to

comprehend true courtesy. Cmcial to the understanding of this double

22 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Ed. Professor A. C. Cawley, New York: E.P. Dutton, 1962

L

42 performance is the function of clothing and armor which invariably contrasts an inside to an outside, a meaning viewed from without by the court and one perceived from an intellectual and spiritual perspective within. In piecing together the elements of this theme on the foundation ofthe symbols and plot elements we have seen so far in Guigemar and Launfal, I am going to focus on several scenes: the arming scene that takes place as Gawain leaves the Arthurian court, the temptation or “exchange of winnings” scene that takes place in the

Green Knight’s castle in which the animals that the Green Knight has hunted outside are traded with the favors Gawain has won from the lady inside, and the final court scene where Gawain explains the significance ofthe green girdle, a piece of intimate feminine clothing which he has chosen as a sign oftme courtesy and chivalric humility to wear on the outside, a tradition which influenced and was influenced by the Order ofthe Garter.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight begins theatrically. Challenged by the

Green Knight to a beheading game, the knights of King Arthur’s court are silent except for Gawain, who jumps at the chance to take Arthur’s place, not out offear that Arthur might lose his life, but because he wants to prove his manhood and

worth before the court. Unlike Launfal, Gawain is initially caught up in the external trappings of the masculine world in which he lives, a fact in evidence as

he prepares to leave the court. Arming himself for the journey ahead, Gawain demonstrates chivalry as a performance:

Thenne hentes he the helme, and hastily hit kysses. That was stapled stifly, and stoffed wythinne. Hit was hyghe on his hede, hasped bihynde, Wyth a lyghtly urysoun over the aventayle,

43

Embrawden and bounden with the best gemmes On brode sylkyn borde, and bryddes on semes. As papjayes paynted pem5mg bitwene, Tortors and trulofes entayled so thyk As mony burde theraboute had ben seven winter in toune The cercle was more o prys That unbeclypped hys croun. Of diamauntes a devys. That bothe were bryght and broun.(605-617)

[His helm now he holds up and hastily kisses, Well-closed with iron clinches, and cushioned within; It was high on his head, with a hasp behind. And a covering of cloth to encase the visor. All bound and embroidered with the best gems On broad bands of silk, and bordered with birds. Parrots and popinjays preening their vdngs. Lovebirds and love-knots as lavishly wrought As many women had worked seven winters thereon, entire. The diadem costlier yet That crowned that comely sire. With diamonds richly set. That flashed as if on fire.]

We should note several elements of this grand and minutely observed scene. The helmet is hard on the outside but the poet notes how soft and luxurious it is on the inside; it is “stoffed wythinne.” The adornments should remind us of Tryamour’s outfit, that is, this is, in part, a feminine-gendered performance that undercuts

Gawain’s masculinity even as he thinks it enhances it. His armor is very beautiful and highly decorated with precious stones. Such expensive and precious jewels would make his armor useless in combat; it is purely ornamental. The way

Gawain reacts to his helmet is also very odd. Before he puts it on, he kisses it in much the same way that most people would kiss their loved ones before starting

23 For translation see Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Patience, and Pearl: Verse Translations: Ed. Marie Borroff, New York; W.W. Norton & Company, 2001 ’ J 44 on a long journey. He is obviously proud of his armor, a fact reflected in the parrots, “papjayes,” painted on it that symbolize his pride in life.

Gawain’s shield, however, is an even greater curiosity. On the outside it is adorned with:

... a syngne that Salamon set sumquyle In bytoknyng of trawthe, bi tytle that hit habbes. For hit is a figure that haldes fyve pyntes. And uche lyne umbelappes and loukes in other. And ayquere hit it endeles, and Englych hit callen Overal, as I here, the endeles knot.(625-630)

[... a sign by Solomon sagely devised To be a token of truth, by its title of old. For it is a figure formed offive points. And each line in linked and locked with the next For ever and ever, and hence it is called In all of England, as I hear, the endless knot]

The shield has inscribed on it a pentangle, an architectural paradigm of interlockedness that symbolizes perfection. Does possessing this shield then

mean that Gawain is perfect or does it more simply mean that he aspires to

perfection? Clearly it has an effect on the already proud Gawain’s psyche; by

believing himself to be perfect, he becomes increasingly invested in a notion of

courtesy constructed from, and visible from, without. Outward perfection is the

ultimate goal in a reputation-based world and Gawain imagines himself already at

that point.

More important, perhaps, is the symbol inscribed on the inside ofthe

shield, a detail almost neglected in the story amid the copious description ofthe

pentangle and its significance.

...the hende heven queen had of hir chylde; At this cause the knyght comlyche hade - 45

In the innermore half of his schelde hit ymage depaynted. That quen he blusched therto his belde never payred.(647-650)

[... the high Queen of heaven had in her child. And therefore, as I find, he fittingly had On the inner part of his shield her image portrayed. That when his look on it lighted, he never lost heart.]

The Virgin Mary is an inward, spiritual sign ofthe knightly code of courtesy.

Since it is an inward, feminine sign, it is painted on the inside ofthe shield to

oppose the outward, masculine sign ofthe pentangle.

The exchange of winning scene demonstrates this same distinction in

terms of architectural space, again gendered male/female. While searching for the

Green Chapel, the rendezvous site for the conclusion ofthe beheading game,

Gawain stumbles upon Bertilak de Hautdesert’s castle. Unaware that Bertilak is

actually the Green Knight and happy to find a castle so close to the Green Chapel,

Gawain agrees to stay there for a few days. At dinner the first night, Bertilak

proposes that Gawain rest while he goes hunting for three days and every night

they will exchange what they have won that day to which Gawain happily agrees.

The next morning, Gawain awakens to see Bertilak’s bride sneaking into his bed.

For two days, Gawain staves off the advances ofthe woman, yielding only to her

request for kisses, and every night, Gawain kisses Bertilak and receives the

animal he has hunted in return. Unbeknownst to Gawain, however, there are

actually two hunts occurring: one in the bedroom, a feminine realm, and one in

the woods, a masculine realm. In the same way Launfal is expected to exchange

Tryamour’s identity between a courtly economy and a moral one, so the exchange

in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight externalizes the values ofthe inner space

L J 46 since Gawain has to reveal each night what went on in the bedroom. This externalization feminizes the masculine, a task that proves impossibly difficult for

Gawain. On the third day, Bertilak’s wife offers Gawain something more:

cc I schal gif yow my girdel, that gaynes yow lasse.” Ho laght a lace lyghtly that leke umbe hir sides. Knit upon hir kyrtel under the clere mantyle. Gered hit was with grene sylke and with golde schaped, Noght hot arounde brayden, breten with fyngres (1829-1833)

[“I shall give you my girdle; you gain less thereby.” She released a knot lightly, and loosened a belt That was caught about her kirdle, the bright cloak beneath. Of a gay green silk, with gold overwrought. And the borders all bound with embroidery fine]

Once again, Gawain tries to refuse her gifts, but when she tells him “the man that

possesses this piece of silk, if he bore it on his body, belted about, there is no hand

under heaven that could hew him down,” Gawain reconsiders. That night when

Gawain and the Green Knight are exchanging their gifts, Gawain fails to give him the green girdle. Withholding the girdle is a way of breaking of“troth,” an infringement of their contract and the economy of exchange. The break is

motivated by Gawain’s hidden fear for himself, his pride of life. In this way, the

girdle, a token of human imperfection and knightly humiliation, becomes his new

symbol which is simultaneously a symbol of inner, feminine agency. It is a feminine article of clothing, but it is also a cure for Gawain’s embarrassingly

cc feminine” fear of dying. He takes up the feminine, in other words, to save

himself from the masculine, an idea underscored by the fact that the girdle is

midej-wQ3T worn knotted around the body, much like the love-knot in Guigemar J 47

When the day finally arrives for Gawain to face the Green Knight, Gawain

finds the Green Chapel in an outside space that reads like an enclosed, private,

indoor space:

And thenne he wayted hym aboute, and wylde hit hym thoght. And seye no syngne of resette bisydes nowhere, Bot hyghe bonkkes and brent upon bothe halve, And rughe knokled knarres with knomed stones; The skwes of the scowtes skayned hym thoght.(2163-2167)

[And then he looked a little about him- the landscape was wild. And not a soul to be seen, nor sign of a dwelling. But high banks on either hand hemmed is about. With many a ragged rock and rough-hewn crag; The skies seemed scored by the scowling peaks.]

Although this is an outdoor scene, the bare rock that surrounds the valley keeps

everything out and encloses the area. There are no other people in the area

because no one lives in such a wild, desolate spot. Gawain has a lot at stake in

this encounter. He can outwardly admit that he has the girdle, but that would

mean admitting his internal weakness and that, by accepting both a pagan,

magical, trophy, and an overtly sexual one, he has not followed the model ofthe

Virgin inscribed in his shield. When the Green Knight nicks Gawain’s neck, it is I punishment for cowardice, for not giving the Green Knight the gift of the girdle as i agreed upon. He is humiliated and embarrassed, but also thankful to be alive.

When Gawain returns to Arthur’s court, he is wearing a literal external

sign of his inner feminine. He feels honor bound to allocute - to reveal his

inward weakness:

C4 This is the bende of the blame I here on my neck. This is the lathe and the losse that I laght have Of couardise and covetyse that I haf caght thare. This is the token of untrawthe that I am tan inne.

48

And I mot nedes hit were wyle I may last!” (2506-2510)

[“This is the blazon of the blemish that I bear on my neck; This is the sign of sore loss that I have suffered there For the cowardice and coveting that I came to there; This is the badge of false faith that I was found in there. And 1 must bear it on my body till I breathe my last.]

The court, however, does not fully understand the change that has occurred in

Gawain. For them, the girdle is merely an external adornment, a beautiful addition to Gawain’s already magnificent attire. To Gawain it is a constant reminder of his flaws and imperfections, of the femininzing weaknesses that humanize him as a real, if not ideal, knight. J 49

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