Durham E-Theses `As Meeke as Medea, as honest as Hellen': English literary representations of two troublesome classical women, c.1160-1650 Heavey, Katherine How to cite: Heavey, Katherine (2008) `As Meeke as Medea, as honest as Hellen': English literary representations of two troublesome classical women, c.1160-1650, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/2930/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 'As Meeke as Medea, as Honest as Hellen': English Literary Representations of Two Troublesome Classical Women, c.1160-1650. Katherine Heavey PhD Thesis Durham University Department of English Studies December 2008 The copyright of this thesis rests with the author or the university to which it was submitted. No quotation from it, or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author or university, and any information derived from it should be acknowledged. Thesis Abstract: 'As Meek as Medea, as Honest as Hellen': English Literary Representations o(Two Troublesome Classical Women, c.1160-1650. My thesis considers English literary representations of two notorious classical women, Helen of Troy and Medea, from the twelfth to the seventeenth centuries. My primary focus is on the ways in which male authors in the period deal with the troubling spectres of the women's very different powers: Helen's alarming and captivating sexuality, Medea's magical abilities and unrestrained violence. First tracing how their power is represented in classical and late antique Greek and Latin texts, I then assess how their stories enter the English literary imagination. My project considers both longer renderings of their stories (Gower's Confessio Amantis, Lydgate's Troy Book, Heywood's Ages) and also the brief references to both women that recur time and again in the works of authors including Chaucer, Hoccleve, Gascoigne, Turberville and Greene. My research spans genres and media, considering the various uses the women are put to (didactic, cautionary, tragic, occasionally comic) in history, prose, poetry and drama, as well as in direct translation of classical works. Very often, authors use Helen and/or Medea ironically, in a way that demands a close familiarity with their classical incarnations (particularly, perhaps, with Ovid). Often paired as well as treated separately, Helen and Medea are used across the period to exemplify the unhappy effects of love, the dangerous effects of passion, and perhaps most frequently, the peculiar dangers women pose to men. Though their literary incarnations have often been considered separately by critics, by handling them together my research considers the way authors such as Chaucer, Lydgate, Gascoigne and Turberville choose their classical exemplars very carefully, how two apparently quite different notorious women may be turned to the same ends, used to caution both men and women. Taking their power, and concerted male efforts to undermine it, as its overarching theme, the thesis considers Helen and Medea in relation to medieval and Renaissance theories of translation, to instructional, didactic or cautionary literature, to Christianity, to political and religious upheaval, and most significantly, in relation to the male establishment of the period. My thanks are due to my two supervisors, Dr Robert Carver and Professor Corinne Saunders, for their help and advice throughout the project, and for checking Latin and Old French translations. Thanks also to Jon Carter, Romain Fournier and Laura Jose for help with proofreading, and to the staff of Durham University Library, the British Library and the Bodleian Library, Oxford. List of Abbreviations EETS OS Early English Text Society, Original Series 1864-. EETS XS Early English Text Society, Extra Series 1867-1921. ELH English Literary History MLN Modem Language Notes MLR Modern Language Review PL Patrologia Latina Cursus Cornpletus, ed. J.P. Migne. Paris: 1844-65. PMLA Proceedings of the Modern Language Association RER Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores. London: 1858- 1964. RES Review of English Studies SQ Shakespeare Quarterly 2 TAPA Transactions of the American Philological Society Note on editions used The structure of the thesis means that frequently, texts are discussed and quoted first in a chapter on Helen, and then again some time later in a chapter on Medea. Unless I have noted otherwise, I have used the same editions of primary texts throughout. Thus if I have used a text in my discussion of both women, the citation will generally be found in the relevant place in the Helen chapter. Note on early modern texts Throughout the thesis, where necessary I have replaced u with v and i with j in medieval and early modem English texts and translations. I have also replaced the longs in early modem texts with a standards. Unless I am quoting a critic or primary text, I have also standardised certain names, most notably Aeetes, Ageus, Apsyrtus, Helen, Menelaus, and Pelias. Particularly long titles have been abbreviated in the text and in footnotes~ the full title may be found in the Bibliography. Occasionally in early modem texts, I have been unable to find a signature. In such cases, I have noted this in the footnotes, and wherever possible have supplied the missing signature, or else the page number given in the early modem edition used. 3 Contents Introduction 5 Chapter One: Classical Helen 20 Chapter Two: Classical Medea 42 Chapter Three: From Antiquity to the Middle Ages 64 Chapter Four: Helen in the English Middle Ages 108 Chapter Five: Medea in the English Middle Ages 132 Chapter Six: Early Modern Helen 165 Chapter Seven: Early Modern Medea 249 Conclusion 314 Bibliography 319 4 Introduction "[ ... ] it seemeth his Lady Laymos that he so highly commended, was in very deede as fayre as Flora, as faithful as Faustine, as loving as Layis, as meeke as Medea, as honest as Hellen, as constant as Cressed, and as modest as Maria Bianca, and therefore worthie of estimation". (P') George Whetstone, The Rocke of Regard ( 1576).1 In this extract from The Rocke of Regard, a collection of prose and poetry published by George Whetstone in 1576, the Reporter makes wry comment on the hero Plasmas' misguided love for Laymos, a woman who is later to prove faithless. In his use of classical mythology, and through the Reporter, Whetstone introduces several issues that were key to the representation of both Helen and Medea by male authors in the sixteenth century, throughout the Middle Ages and into the seventeenth century. First, if the reader is to understand the point that the Reporter hopes to make, he or she must understand the allusion, must know the classical stories of Homer, Ovid, Virgil or Seneca, and understand who Helen and Medea were, and how they arrived in Elizabethan England. However, knowledge of these classical texts, of Ovid's Metamorphoses, Heroides, and Ars Amatoria, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, and the tragedies of Euripides and Seneca (all of which were available by the time Whetstone came to write) may seem to complicate, rather than to elucidate, the Reporter's commentary on Plasmas' love. An astute reader of the classics would know that Medea was typically far from meek, that Helen was deceptive and untrustworthy, and that the comparison between them and Laymos therefore seems inherently flawed. In tum, the reader must appreciate that the women are used ironically, that the choice of such classical figures is intended to say far more about Plasmas' blindness than it does about Laymos and her virtue. Accordingly, Whetstone's words problematise the issue of how to read the classics,. and how male characters read them in the period. Whetstone cleverly subverts not only the classical reputations of these 1 George Whetstone, The Rocke of Regard (London: H. Middleton for Robert Waley, 1576). 5 women, but also the medieval catalogue tradition, which very often saw such women (and often, specifically, Helen and Medea) listed as examples either of wicked women, or of women who suffered for love. Plasmos' infatuation with Laymos - his refusal to recognise or acknowledge her infidelity - gives her a degree of power, which is underlined by his failure to recognise the subversive threat that his classical models posed to the male establishment (and specifically to male control over their wives). At the same time, however, if the Reporter (and through him Whetstone) poke fun at Plasmos by making such comparisons, they concurrently undermine their classical models: Helen, Medea, Cressid. (It is worth noting that here Whetstone is deliberately choosing a trio frequently linked by disapproving male authors from the Middle Ages onwards: all embroiled in the story of the Trojan War, all women any man would be unwise to become involved with). Accordingly, Whetstone's use of both women underscores the uncomfortable relationship between their power and the male authorial community in the period, and earlier. Male authors from antiquity onwards found Helen and Medea's power in relation to the male community to be deeply alarming: Helen's disturbing sexual appeal, and the devastating war it engendered; Medea's control over Jason's success in the quest for the Golden Fleece, and later the devastating revenge she wreaks on him for ignoring the marriage vows he swore to her, in favour of a more auspicious match.