Copyright by Rebecca Anne Wilcox 2009 The Dissertation Committee for Rebecca Anne Wilcox certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: CULTURES OF CONQUEST: ROMANCING THE EAST IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND AND FRANCE Committee: Geraldine Heng, Co-Supervisor Daniel Birkholz, Co-Supervisor Barbara Harlow Elizabeth Richmond-Garza William Kibler CULTURES OF CONQUEST: ROMANCING THE EAST IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND AND FRANCE by Rebecca Anne Wilcox, B.A, M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August, 2009 Acknowledgements I would like to thank the members of my dissertation committee for their insights, kindness, and patience over the last decade. I would also like my parents for their support, without which this project never could have been completed. And I would like to thank my fiancé for his generous gifts of time and understanding as this project came to completion. iv Cultures of Conquest: Romancing the East in Medieval England and France Publication No._____________ Rebecca Anne Wilcox, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2009 Supervisors: Geraldine Heng and Daniel Birkholz Cultures of Conquest argues for the recognition of a significant and vital subcategory of medieval romance that treats the crusades as one of its primary interests, beginning at the time of the First Crusade and extending through the end of the Middle Ages. Many romances, even those not explicitly located in crusades settings, evoke and transform crusades events and figures to serve the purposes of the readers, commissioners, and authors of these texts. The prevalence of crusade images and themes in romance testifies to medieval Europe’s intense preoccupation with the East in its multiple manifestations, both Christian and Muslim. The introductory chapter situates the Song of Roland (c. 1100) as a hybrid epic- romance text that has long set the standard for modern thinking about medieval European attitudes toward the East. The following chapters, however, complicate the Song of Roland’s black-and-white portrayal of Muslims as “wrong” and Christians as “right.” v Chapter Two, focusing on the Middle English romances Guy of Warwick and Sir Beues of Hamtoun, demonstrates the extreme “othering” of Muslims that occurred in medieval romance; but it also acknowledges the antagonism of other Christians (whether Eastern or European) in these texts. In Chapter Three, on romances with Saracen heroes (Floire et Blancheflor, the Sowdone of Babylone, and Saladin), I show how these texts reimagine the East as a desirable ally and even incorporate Saracens into European genealogies, seeking a more conciliatory relationship between East and West than is provided by the romances discussed in the previous chapter. My fourth chapter shows how gender mediates cultural contact in Melusine and La Fille du Comte de Ponthieu: women, as the cornerstones of important crusading families, were invested in crusading and were imagined as key to the success of the crusades. The epilogue offers a brief reading of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (emphasizing the “Squire’s Tale” and the “Man of Law’s Tale”) within a long and varied tradition of medieval crusade romance. I argue that Chaucer works to replace a literary climate that idealizes violent conflict between East and West with one that imagines the possibility and desirability of commercial relationships with the East in England’s future. vi Table of Contents Chapter 1 Orientalism and Conquest: The Crusades in Medieval Romance and the Chanson de Roland .........................................................................1 Chapter 2 Christian Heroes and the Politics of Conquest ...................................29 Chapter 3 From Monstrous Other to Christian Brother: Romances of Saracen Heroes..........................................................................................90 Chapter 4 Female Crusaders and the Matrilineal Line......................................137 Epilogue Romance of the Past, Romance of the Future: Commerce as Conquest in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales .................................................193 Bibliography ....................................................................................................222 Vita ................................................................................................................250 vii Chapter One ORIENTALISM AND CONQUEST: THE CRUSADES IN MEDIEVAL ROMANCE AND THE CHANSON DE ROLAND Romance Genres The Song of Roland (c. 1100) is famous among readers of medieval literature for making intractable black-and-white distinctions between Christians and Saracens,1 vilifying the latter while portraying the former as the chosen people of God. Composed close to the time of the First Crusade (1096-1099), this chanson de geste serves as a point of origin for my dissertation, both in that it first introduced me to medieval fiction of the crusades and in that the chanson de geste form gave rise to medieval romance, which gradually 1 According to Norman Daniel, the word “Saracen” is Greek, and generally “means an unspecified residuum of Arabic-speaking Muslims. When from the twelfth century onwards there were more specific ideas of Islam, ‘Saracen’ in many contexts—in a discussion of Islam, or an account of the time of the Prophet—meant ‘Muslim’” (53). He goes on to explain that the word sometimes referred specifically to Arab Muslims (as opposed to Turks, for instance), though not necessarily; indeed, the word “Saracen” could refer to any non-Christian who was imagined to be pagan. See Daniel, The Arabs and Mediaeval Europe (London and New York: Longman, 1979). Elsewhere Daniel points out that Saracens, because of the Muslim occupation of Southern Europe in the early Middle Ages, were often associated with pagan antiquity; hence, in the imaginative literature of medieval Europe, they are often depicted as worshiping gods such as Apollo or Jupiter in addition to Muhammad, and often idols. See Daniel, Heroes and Saracens: An Interpretation of the Chansons de Geste (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1984), p. 141. Dorothee Metlitzki notes that the terms “Saracen” and “pagan” are often interchangeable as designations for enemies; Layamon even speaks of the pagan Saxons as worshiping “maumets,” or idols (119). See Metlitzki, The Matter of Araby in Medieval England (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1977). In historical sources, the term “Saracen” might be used in genuine attempts to describe adherents to Islam; in fictional literature such as romance and chanson de geste, however, we must remember that the word refers to fictional characters whose similarities to real Muslims were often virtually non-existent. 1 became the predominant vernacular genre of the European Middle Ages.2 The correspondence, within a few years, of the composition of the Chanson de Roland with the First Crusade is not coincidental: this historical moment witnessed a solidification of the new European ideal of aggressive holy war.3 I shall return to the Chanson de Roland below. Before discussing the Roland in greater depth, however, I will contextualize my work on crusade romance—the primary interest of this dissertation—in terms of genre, history, and modern criticism. 2 The chanson de geste is the specific medieval French form of epic poetry. In his study of romance as a genre, Fredric Jameson observes that “a positional notion of good and evil does not characterize romance alone, but also the chanson de geste, from which romance emerged” (160). See Jameson, “Magical Narratives: Romance as Genre,” New Literary History 7.1 (1975): 135-163. Lynn Tarte Ramey defines the chanson de geste as a “romance epic”—a work of fiction focusing much of its energy on war and the building of national identities, and which often incorporates semi-historical characters, but which nonetheless appropriates some of the romantic love story of a traditional romance. I would add that many of these texts were adapted, over the course of the Middle Ages, into crusade romances, often with very little generic distinction between the two other than that the chanson was generally meant to be sung, while the romance was meant to be read. See Chapter 4 of Ramey’s Christian, Saracen and Genre in Medieval French Literature (New York and London: Routledge, 2001). Daniel Poiron argues that the chanson de geste is actually a distinct genre from the epic—though he acknowledges many instances in which they overlap. Despite his hesitancy to equate epic and chanson, and the generic distinctions he makes between chanson and romance, one cannot help but notice how often his definitions of both epic and chanson de geste work for crusade romance as well. For example, he posits that “[c]e qui charactérise la chanson de geste, c’est la tendance à cristaliser autour de certaines figures de héros, autour de certains noms, les questions fondamentales qui se posent à la société de l’epoque, les valeurs qui la définissent dans sa singularité, beaucoup plus qu’aux problèmes éternels de la condition humaine, tel celui du sexe et de l’amour” (15). This is equally true of most crusade romances as it is for the chansons de geste: Sir Beues of Hamtoun, for instance, has long been acknowledged to tackle the ambiguous relationships—and competing values—between the monarchy and the barony in England. Likewise, many romances fulfill Poiron’s criteria