NOTES Introduction 1. See, for example, the definition of the social construction of sexuality offered by Cartledge and Ryan that concerns “the intricate and multiple ways in which our emotions, desires and relationships are shaped by the society we live in” (1983: 1). See also Weeks’ argument that sexuality should be seen “not as a primordially ‘natural’ phenomenon but rather as a product of social and historical forces” (2003: 6). 2. Pearce and Stacey state that their book represents an enquiry into why romance retains such a hold in the postmodern world. Neither intellectual nor political skepticism seems to save anyone—feminists included—from succumbing to its snares (1995: 12). Jackson, writing in the same volume, states that “You do not have to see romance readers as cultural dupes in order to argue that romance is implicated in maintaining a cultural definition of love which is detrimental to women. Nor need we resort to a moralistic sackcloth-and-ashes feminism which enjoins strict avoidance of cultural products and practices which are less than ideologically sound. These romances derive from a specifically western cultural tradition—if they are being consumed world-wide we need to know why they are being read” (1995b: 50–51). See also Modleski (1982); Hazen (1983); and Radway (1984). 3. It has been argued that the medieval romance is the forerunner of the novel: Jewers considers that the medieval genre provides part of the blueprint, if not a vital cornerstone, of the novel’s foundation (2000: 4); McDonald (2004a) regards medieval romance as the origin of the modern novel and the ances- tor of almost all contemporary popular fiction in print and on the screen (2004: 1). 4. It should be noted that Mills has since warned of the dangers of employing models of interpretation which are too simple; specifically, she notes the assumption within feminist analyses of transitivity that if there were certain transitivity choices associated with female characters, then those characters were being portrayed as passive (1998: 239). 5. The first issue of the Journal of Historical Pragmatics came out in 2000. 166 NOTES Chapter 1 Constructing the Heterosexual Contract 1. Stephen Benson argues that there is an obvious link between the romance as it exists today and medieval chivalric romances in which the hero’s life was narrativized into a quest. Although he claims that it is possible to chart a process of the “feminization” of romance from these masculine origins, Benson does not go on to do this (1996: 105). The process is, I think, more complex than he suggests. Lori Humphrey Newcomb provides a highly nuanced account of male anxieties about the pleasures offered by romance and the consequent feminization of the readership of romance in Renaissance England (2004). 2. In his novel Small World, David Lodge picks up on these associations by hav- ing Angelica, who is working on a PhD on medieval romance, appear to suggest to her would-be lover that they enact the scene in which Porphyro hides in the closet and watches Madeline undress (1984: 40). 3. All quotations are from the version in the Cambridge manuscript (Casson 1949) since this is both the most complete text of the romance and the man- uscript most associated with a female readership for the poem. 4. This seems to be the sense in which Arlyn Diamond understands the lines; she cites lines 479–80 to illustrate the idea that “Degrevant never doubts his ability to win Melidor, any more than he doubts his ability to injure his ene- mies” (2004: 86). 5. The MED’s definitions for n1 include 1a (a) “Love (either the emotion itself or the manifestation of it in action or conduct”; (b) a specific feeling or expression of love; 2a (a) “Love of man and woman, sexual love, conjugal love” (b) “. .plei of ~, sexual intercourse.” 6. We may note Wareing’s analysis of a sex scene in a twentieth-century work of romantic fiction in which the “vision” is entirely that of the male protag- onist. Wareing observes that by focalizing the scene through the male’s experience, the female is inevitably represented as the object of the male gaze; by mediating her textual representation through the male’s perception of her, her pleasure is represented as subordinate to his (1994: 129–30). 7. See Krentz (1992: 42) for a discussion of the persistence of this motif in twentieth-century romantic fiction and its effectiveness for women readers. 8. Davenport’s reading of these lines appears to attribute Degrevant’s lack of pleasure in the hunt to its being part of a vendetta initiated by the earl and suggests that Degrevant’s thoughts of love are subsequent to the hunt (2000: 121–22). I am suggesting that Degrevant is distracted from his pleasure in hunting by a chase that is (at least momentarily) more compelling to him. My view is shared by Casson who translates: “Sir Degrevant hunted on the Earl’s land, and killed his beasts, but took no pleasure in the chase, because his thoughts had turned to love” (1949: 33 and 35). Rickert’s translation seems unclear on this point; having described the sport that Degrevant has in the earl’s forests, she inserts a separate paragraph into her text: “But now him likes no mirth or revel, since for maid Melidore’s sake he hath fallen into heavy care” (1908: 116). NOTES 167 9. Critics have focused on Melidor’s room and its accoutrements (see Davenport 2000; Diamond 2004). Writing on contemporary romantic fiction (both Mills and Boon and more literary exemplifications such as Jeanette Winterson’s The Powerbook), Pearce points to such elaborate descriptions as “marking the cultural ‘commodity’ appeal of these texts” and suggests that “the significance/pleasure associated with such details in the romance is in excess of its relation to the love plot” (2004: 524, italics in original). I suggest that this analysis applies equally to the medieval romance Sir Degrevant, and that the investment of that text in its own commodity appeal marks it as located within a set of values that also encompass marriage and traditional gender roles, despite the superficial departure from these in the characterization of Melidor. 10. To the modern reader, Degrevant’s request is somewhat opaque. Rickert translates “My heart breaks with love! When wilt thou set it at rest?” (1908: 134), which is not entirely helpful. The Cambridge manuscript (in Casson’s edition) has “me” rather than “it,” and Rickert’s translation seems to ignore the suggestive nature of the idea of going to rest (to bed?). The sense of this seems clearer in the Lincoln manuscript that elides Degrevant’s second question with the rest of the sentence: “For lufe myn hert will brist; / When Qou gase to thi ryste / Lady, wysse me the best, / Giff it be thi will.” Understanding this passage seems to depend on Melidor’s interpretation that is remarkably clear. It is presumably her response that prompts Casson’s marginal gloss “About midnight, Sir Degrevant asked for the privilege of a husband” (1949: 91). 11. I am grateful to Christian Kay and the editorial team of the Historical Thesaurus of English for allowing me access to their data. For information on the project, see http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/SESLl/EngLang/thesaur/ homepage.htm. (2006.4.3). 12. See Gayle Rubin’s foundational essay examining the ways in which women function as tokens in economies of male exchange (1975). 13. It is important to be aware that the meaning of speech acts is not dependent on syntactic and semantic categories; the surface form of an utterance cannot tell us which speech act is performed by that sequence in all situations: Sinclair and Coulthard introduce their analysis of discourse by observing that traditionally “three major language functions, or contextual types, have been identified as statement, question and command, having their ideal realiza- tions in declarative, interrogative, and imperative forms. However, the rela- tionship between these functions and forms in actual language use is more flexible—we might, for instance, use a declarative form to give a command or make a request” (1975: 11; see also Coulthard et al. 1981: 10–11). 14. Diamond comments briefly on this moment in the romance, however, and Davenport omits precisely the passages I have selected in his discussion of the poem. 15. In holding out for marriage in this way, Melidor is functioning within the social expectations of a woman of her class. P. J. P. Goldberg states that women who had no land or wealth to offer may have tried entering into a 168 NOTES sexual relationship in the hope that this would lead to a binding contract; this was a risky strategy, however: cause papers offer evidence of women’s attempts to enforce dubious contracts against lovers who had abandoned them. Where families had a material stake in the marriage process, the choice was not left solely to the parties contracting. Deposition evidence also implies that in rural society sons, and more especially daughters, fre- quently lived with their parents until marriage, which put parents in a strong position to supervise the marriages of their children. The consent of a parent or guardian was an expected requirement for any woman contem- plating marriage (1992: 244–50). 16. As Brundage notes, medieval notions of rape are grounded in the raptus of Roman law. In ancient Roman law, raptus consisted in the abduction and sequestration of a woman against the will of the person under whose authority she lived (1993a: 63). 17. I follow the practice in Archibald and Edwards’ edition (1996) of citing the volume in the Oxford Standard Authors’ edition of The Works of Sir Thomas Malory edited by Vinaver (1971) parenthetically by page and line (for exam- ple, 623/27) followed by references to Caxton’s edition edited by Cowen (1969) cited by book and chapter (for example, XVIII, 9).