Gender and Transgression in the Late Medieval English Household
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Gender and Transgression in the Late Medieval English Household Sarah Annette McLoughlin PhD in Medieval Studies University of York Centre for Medieval Studies September 2011 Abstract The household was one of the fundamental structures for late medieval social and cultural organisation. This thesis uses the concept of ‘transgression’ to explore the part the household plays in articulating ideologies of gender in late medieval England. Transgression designates both movement across the boundaries of the house and the breaking of rules that govern behaviour. I focus on a body of texts that are rarely studied but which were very popular in their own time. These include a group of lyrics known as ‘the betrayed maidens’ laments’, comic tales descended from the fabliaux, anti-feminist entertainment printed by Wynkyn de Worde, and popular romance. My approach pays close attention to the specific production and reception contexts of each text I discuss, in order to probe how they may have been understood by medieval audiences in light of the prevailing norms of gender. I examine how tropes that were in many cases already old, staples of the fabliau genre, manifest themselves in particular fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century texts and manuscripts and how they interact with prevailing social and historical conditions. Chapters 1 and 2 explore the trope of the clerical seducer, through the linked figures of the young clerk and the more established priest. Chapters 3 and 4 turn to the counterpart of the cleric in the fabliaux-like narrative - the weak or duped layman. These figures are used to give voice to anxieties about household governance and control of women’s sexuality. By focusing on how tropes circulate between different kinds of sources, and how narratives are constructed, I provide valuable insight into the resonances of the household in late medieval culture. The late medieval English household was a potent imaginative space that was used to articulate anxiety about gendered behaviour and the dangerous potential for boundaries to be crossed. ii Contents Acknowledgements vi Introduction - The Late Medieval Household and the Academic 1 Discourse of Transgression: Medieval Context, Modern Concept 0.1 The Household 3 0.1.1 The Ideology of the Late Medieval Bourgeois Household 3 0.1.2 The Debate About Order 9 0.2 An Initial Case Study 15 0.3 Transgression 26 0.3.1 Theories of Transgression and Developments in Literary Criticism 26 0.3.2 Medieval Transgression?: Grappling with the Vocabulary of Medieval Texts 38 0.4 Research Agenda 42 Chapter 1– Clerks, Maidens and Angels: Reading the Betrayed 47 Maidens’ Laments in Their Manuscript Contexts 1.1 Terminology, Scholarship and Genre 49 1.1.1 The Subgenre and the Limits of Terminology 49 1.1.2 Folk Songs or Satire? 52 1.1.3 Generic Antecedents 60 1.2 Reading the Betrayed Maidens’ Laments in Late Medieval Oxford 64 1.2.1 Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 383 / 603 64 1.2.2 The Context of the Late Medieval University 67 1.2.3 Performance Possibilities 70 iii 1.2.4 ‘Sey thou stronge strumpeth, ware hastu bene?’: The Maiden Outside the 76 House 1.3 ‘With the seid child, quid faciam?’: Responses to Illegitimate Pregnancy 84 1.4 The Sacred and the Obscene: Innuendo Around the Annunciation in Jolly 95 Jankin 1.5 Conclusion 107 Chapter 2 - Cambridge, University Library, MS Ff.5.48 and its readers 109 2.1 A Betrayed Maiden’s Lament: Holding the Clerical Seducer Accountable 109 2.2 ‘A sad little quarto’: The Appearance and Composition of CUL MS Ff.5.48 113 2.3 Will the real Gilbert Pilkington please stand up? 121 2.4 John Mirk’s Instructions for Parish Priests: Clerical Texts and Lay Readers 126 2.5 Household Governance and the Incontinent Priest in The Tale of the Basin 138 2.5.1 The Concept of ‘Husbandry’ and the Responsibilities of the Household Head 140 2.5.2 ‘Hit is a preest men callis Sir John’: Sir John and the Fabliaux Tradition 148 2.5.3 Responses to Clerical Incontinence in Fifteenth-Century England 154 2.6 Conclusion 161 Chapter 3 - Communities of Women in Two Early-Sixteenth-Century 163 Printed Texts 3.1 Groups of Women Talking in Late Medieval Texts 164 3.2 Gossips and Gossiping: The Development of a Word 169 3.3 Masculine Isolation and Feminine Community in The Fyftene Joyes of 175 Maryage 3.4 ‘Our Secretary and Frende’: The Precarious Position of the Narrator in The 194 Gospelles of Dystaues 3.5 Readership and Early Print Culture 209 iv 3.6 Conclusion 220 Chapter 4 - Speech, Gender, and Governance in The Romans of 223 Partenay 4.1 The Romans of Partenay and the Versions of the Melusine Narrative 225 4.2 The Readership of Late Middle English Romance 229 4.3 Speech, Gender, and Governance: Transgression of Gender Norms in The 233 Romans of Partenay 4.4 Conclusion 269 Conclusion - Gender and Transgression in the Late Medieval English 271 Household Appendix A – The Betrayed Maidens’ Laments (Tables 1-5) 287 Appendix B - CUL MS Ff.5.48 – List of contents 289 List of Abbreviations 291 Bibliography 293 v Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisors, Dr Nicola McDonald and Dr Jeremy Goldberg, for their support, advice, and encouragement during the course of my PhD. They have always been willing to share insights and suggestions while allowing my own academic interests to develop, and this thesis owes a great deal to their enthusiasm and dedication. I would like to acknowledge the generous financial assistance of the Arts and Humanities Research Council during the second and third years of my PhD. I also wish to thank the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of York, which provided a scholarship during my first year of study, and assistance with the expenses of conferences and research visits throughout my degree. The Centre for Medieval Studies has been a supportive environment in which to pursue my research, and I wish to thank its staff for the benefit of their vast professional experience and my fellow doctoral students for their unwavering sense of camaraderie. I would like to express my gratitude to Meredith Beales and Melinda Sellers for their willingness to proof-read large sections of this thesis, often at short notice, and their meticulous attention to detail. I wish to acknowledge the many friends who have made my time at York rewarding and enjoyable, and also to recognise the continued affection of my friends from Oxford, who have been a constant supportive presence throughout my PhD. My final and most important debt of gratitude is to my parents, Derek and Arlene, and my brother, Kyle, who have always supported my efforts and celebrated my achievements, both academic and personal. This thesis would not exist without their love and support, and I dedicate it to them. vi The Late Medieval Household and The Academic Discourse of Transgression: Medieval Context, Modern Concept The household was one of the fundamental structures for late medieval social and cultural organisation. It was the place where people lived and worked, and one of the major environments in which texts were produced and read. In this thesis, I use the concept of ‘transgression’, which designates both movement across the boundaries of the house, and the breaking of rules that govern behaviour, to explore the part the household plays in articulating ideologies of gender in late medieval England. ‘Trangression’ is a modern idea that has been created and shaped by developments in literary scholarship. I reconsider what it might mean for how we read texts produced in the fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries. I focus on a body of texts that are rarely studied but which were very popular in their own time. These include a group of lyrics known as ‘the betrayed maidens’ laments’, comic tales descended from the fabliaux, conduct literature, anti-feminist entertainment printed by Wynkyn de Worde, and popular romance. As well as contributing to the scholarship on a broad variety of understudied texts, this thesis develops an innovative methodology for resituating texts in their medieval context. My approach pays close attention to the specific production and reception contexts of each text I discuss, in order to probe how they may have been understood by medieval audiences in light of the prevailing norms of gender. My focus on manuscripts and performance possibilities avoids the pitfalls of unthinkingly applying concepts developed by modern academic criticism to medieval texts in a way that oversimplifies them. 1 This introduction serves to establish the two major concepts that underpin the rest of the thesis, that is, the household and transgression. I begin by introducing the concept of the ‘household’ and what it meant to medieval people, and the idea that a distinctive household ideology developed in the period under discussion. I identify space and order as two important elements of this ideology, and discuss the debate among historians as to whether the fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries were characterised by an increased concern about order and anxiety regarding transgressive behaviour. A case from the borough court of Nottingham provides a useful way to set up the concerns that will inform the rest of this thesis. I use the case to begin to build on the ideological ideas introduced to this point, and explore how the idea of the household was used in late medieval texts alongside a concern with boundaries and transgression. This opens up the question of whether the boundary- crossing observed in this case is the same as the modern concept of ‘transgression’ used in academic criticism.