Revealing Otherness: a Comparative Examination of French and English Medieval Hagiographical Romance
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Apollo REVEALING OTHERNESS: A COMPARATIVE EXAMINATION OF FRENCH AND ENGLISH MEDIEVAL HAGIOGRAPHICAL ROMANCE Muriel P. Cadilhac-Rouchon St John’s College, Cambridge 2009 This dissertation is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Summary REVEALING OTHERNESS: A COMPARATIVE EXAMINATION OF FRENCH AND ENGLISH MEDIEVAL HAGIOGRAPHICAL ROMANCE Muriel P. Cadilhac-Rouchon This dissertation is an analysis of three hagiographical romances written in France around the thirteenth century and later adapted into English. The texts are Ami et Amile, Robert le Diable and Florence de Rome and their English counterparts Amis and Amiloun, Sir Gowther and Le bone Florence of Rome. All six texts have been understudied, with the possible exception of Ami et Amile. They are linked in many ways, some thematic, some generic. They have all caused confusion and arguments as to what their genre is (Epic? Saint’s life? Romance? A combination of two or three genres?) and feature the defining notions of otherness, exile and penance. In spite of appearances, this work shows that the French and English authors prove to have quite different takes on the same stories. Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis and postcolonial theory, the chapters discuss the presence of otherness in the texts, in all its manifestations and offer new readings of the poems as well as possible solutions to the difficult question of genre in the middle ages. The many shapes taken by the other/Other (physical and emotional otherness; hybridity and gender) are exposed and utilised to uncover the meanings and ideological complexities of these multidimensional poems. This approach also reveals that the English texts propose a more conservative reading of common material than did their French originals. It is therefore suggested that the generic tendencies of these medieval texts be correlated with the importance of the Other in the respective redactions of the tales. Reading without consideration of these two factors produces a lopsided comparative view, while reading with both in mind leads to a better appreciation of rewriting and adaptation in the Middle Ages. Declaration This dissertation is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration except where specifically indicated in the text. 67126 words including footnotes, references and appendices, but excluding bibliographies. A ma mère. Acknowledgements My thanks go first to my brave, devoted mother who supported me and believed in me for as long as she lived. I think she would be immensely happy to know that I completed this dissertation. My mother taught me to read, to surround myself with books and to enjoy literature and learning. She taught me many things but above all, and perhaps most vividly, she showed me that one must never give up when faced with obstacles and hardship. Writing this PhD thesis has been very difficult at times. Saying that I am grateful to those who were there for me is an understatement. My very special thanks go to Yvonne Vergnes and Pekka Tuutti who were by my side in the darkest hours when mourning the death of my mother was overwhelming. Luckily true friends and my irreplaceable Sandrine were there too. All helped me find the strength to pursue a project that I always loved. I also wish to thank, with all my heart, my wonderful supervisor Dr Burgwinkle of King’s College, Cambridge. Dr Burgwinkle has been a constant and valuable source of support and good advice and also a great listener when coping with grief and writing a PhD did not go well together. Finishing this dissertation would have been much harder had it not been for his understanding and encouragement. Finally, I would also like to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding this research project and allowing me to fulfil a lifelong dream. Table of contents Introduction p.1 Chapter one: p.28 Otherness and the orders of friendship: the very imperfect examples of the Old French Ami et Amile and its Middle English counterpart Amis and Amiloun Part one: Ami et Amile I Introduction II The foundational relationship III Ego and rationalisation: the example of Hardré IV The feminine threat Concluding with the murder of the children Part two: Amis and Amiloun p.66 I Scrutinising the protagonists’ friendship: Unexclusiveness and imbalance II Reading imperfection III Leprosy versus infanticide IV The question of sanctity Conclusion Chapter two: p.97 Ambiguous identity, elusive Otherness and Christian discourse in Robert le Diable and Sir Gowther Part one: Robert le Diable I Introduction II Robert the disjointed hero III History, genre and the character of Robert: further debate on the hero’s humanity IV The penitent, the madman, the knight and the hermit V Hybridity and Christianity VI Impotent power figures: the Father, the pope and the emperor VII The question of conscience and exogenous manipulation: paranoia again? Conclusion Part two: Sir Gowther p.134 I New beginnings: why the orchard scene matters II Paradoxical hybridity: the question of the father answered III The secularisation of the hero and the power of chivalry IV Potent figures and the triumph of the symbolic Conclusion Chapter three: p.163 From ultimate other to the end of otherness: from Florence the character to Florence the ‘sympull woman’ Part one: Florence de Rome I Introduction II Writing about woman: the ‘problem’ of the heroine III Hagiography and the wedded virgin IV The restoration of order and the end of ultimate otherness V Woman cannot be on her own: patriarchy and dissent Part two: Le bone Florence of Rome p.199 I introduction II Erasing le merveilleux III Enforcing the religious IV The end of otherness and the question of identification Conclusion Conclusion p.222 Appendix p.228 Bibliography p.240 1 Introduction I WHY COMPARATIVE LITERATURE? It is well known that even despite the absence of the internet and a reliable postal system, people managed to communicate and exchange ideas in the Middle Ages. Poems travelled across Europe and beyond, as well as across, the centuries and the norms of literary forms. As Judith Weiss rightly stresses, ‘romances travelled between England and France, becoming everyone’s property; it is only for our convenience that we allocate them firmly to one country rather than another’1. It is, for example, quite common to read a story in a given European language and learn from a conscientious modern editor that that said story has several analogues2. Those analogues may range from close translations to creative adaptations or loosely-inspired renditions. Such links are normally retraced in the introductions of the medieval texts that we read today but they have often been assembled essentially through patient detective work. More often than not, the editor is in fact trying to build a genealogy for a text, resorting to the analysis of dialects or the evolution of a specific folkloric element to reconstruct the chronology that they are proposing; and thanks to their painstaking work, we 1 Judith Weiss, ‘Ineffectual monarchs: portrayal of regal and imperial power in Ipomedon, Robert le Diable and Octavian’, in Cultural Encounters in the Romance of Medieval England, ed. by Corinne Saunders (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2005), pp.55-68 (p.56). 2 See, for example the introduction to Elisabeth Gaucher’s recent bilingual edition of Robert le Diable: Robert le Diable: Edition bilingue français-ancien français (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2006). 2 can then visualise family trees for the texts we wish to study. Despite all that effort, however, family trees are not really exploited at all. In fact, very few scholars attempt to look at the various versions of the same story over time and/or space3. Instead they examine one text at a time, without ever getting to the stage where they would compare notes on the different versions and draw the larger conclusions that might be suggested by that comparative work. Having said that, I must now admit that the study of all the different versions of Robert le Diable, to name but one of the tales that I will be discussing in the following chapters, is a colossal task that is only likely to be achieved with the cooperation of a wide range of scholars. Such a task would not be feasible in the scope of an analytical (rather than philological) PhD thesis but I see my work as the first step in this direction and I invite other scholars to add their share to a worthwhile project. Literature is a part of society as well as a part of history. I firmly believe that studying the literature of an epoch will teach us something about the people who created and enjoyed this literature. Likewise, it can say something about the place where 3 One notable exception is James Hartman Blessing’s unpublished PhD dissertation, A Comparison of some Middle English Romances with the Old French Antecedents (Stanford, 1960), in which Blessing attempts to highlight general differences between William of Palerne, Guy of Warwick, Floris and Blancheflour, Le Freine, Ywain and Gawain, Otuel, Libeaus Desconnus and Ipomadon and the Old French versions of these stories. Two articles worth mentioning are Roger M. Walker’s ‘From French verse to Spanish prose: La Chanson de Florence de Rome and El Cuento des Enperador Otas de Roma’, Medium Aevum, 49 (1980), 230-43 and Anne Thompson Lee, ‘Le Bone Florence of Rome: A Middle English Adaptation of a French Romance’, in The Learned and the Lewed, Studies in Chaucer and Medieval Literature, ed. by Larry D. Benson (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1974), pp.