Washington University in St. Louis Washington University Open Scholarship Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations Arts & Sciences Summer 8-15-2017 Troubling Truth in the Auchinleck Manuscript Amy Elizabeth Reynolds Washington University in St. Louis Follow this and additional works at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/art_sci_etds Part of the English Language and Literature Commons, and the Medieval Studies Commons Recommended Citation Reynolds, Amy Elizabeth, "Troubling Truth in the Auchinleck Manuscript" (2017). Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1251. https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/art_sci_etds/1251 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Arts & Sciences at Washington University Open Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Washington University Open Scholarship. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS Department of English Dissertation Examination Committee: Jessica Rosenfeld, Chair Antony Hasler David Lawton Joseph Loewenstein Nancy Pope July Singer Troubling Truth in the Auchinleck Manuscript by Amy Reynolds A dissertation presented to The Graduate School of Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2017 St. Louis, Missouri © 2017, Amy Reynolds Table of Contents Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………………….iv Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………...vi Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter One: The History, the Theme, the Book, and the Genre: A Four-Strand Methodology………………………………………………………………………………………9 1. The Early 14th Century……………………………………………………………….11 2. Crisis of Truth………………………………………………………………………..17 3. The Auchinleck Manuscript………………………………………………………….22 i. Coherent………………………………………………………………………..24 ii. Creative………………………………………………………………………..32 iii. Contemporary………………………………………………………………...38 4. Middle English Romance…………………………………………………………….56 Chapter Two: “Thow schelt ben hanged and to-drawe”: The Discourse of Treason in Bevis of Hampton……………………………………………………………………….........…..64 1. Lese-Majesté, Proditio, and Rebellion……………………………………………….65 2. Favorite Traitors……………………………………………………………………...68 3. “She Answerde with Tresoun”……………………………………………………….73 4. “A Queinte Gile”……………………………………………………………………..79 5. “Beves Scholde Ben Anhonge”……………………………………………………...83 6. “Al Temse Was Blod Red” ………………………………………………………….88 Chapter Three: No Good Brother Goes Unpunished: Keeping Truth in Amis and Amiloun…...100 1. “An Unbreakable Bond of Love before All Men”…………………………………105 2. Questions of Sodomy and Sexual Truth……………………………………………112 3. The Misuse of Equality……………………………………………………………..122 4. “His Brother Out of Sorwe Bring”………………………………………………….129 5. Happily Ever After?...................................................................................................139 Chapter Four: All “Play” and No Work: Satirizing Sooth in Sir Tristrem……………………..144 1. Contexts and Intertexts……………………………………………………………..148 2. Illegitimate Origins and Unstable Naming…………………………………………156 3. Seeing the Sooth in Sight…………………………………………………………...163 4. Adulterous and Animalistic Play…………………………………………………...167 5. What King Mark Sees………………………………………………………………174 i. Meriadok’s Meddling and the Tryst beneath the Tree……………………176 ii. The Ambiguous Oath…………………………………………………….181 iii. Found in the Forest……………………………………………………...186 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...191 Coda…………………………………………………………………………………………….194 ii Appendix: The Auchinleck Manuscript Contents………………………………………………205 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………207 iii Acknowledgements As it by now not only a cliché to gesture towards the impossibility of sufficiently thanking those who have helped one towards such an achievement as this, but is also itself a cliché to even point out the cliché nature of such a gesture, one must inevitably come to terms with one’s unavoidable unoriginality. This selfsame unoriginality, however, cannot dampen the true depths of gratitude I feel towards the incredible people who have helped me to reach this point. To the incomparable Jessica Rosenfeld must go my first and most fervent thanks, an adviser the likes of which any graduate student would dream of and the steady north star to all my bumbling endeavors. If what follows has any hint of coherence or relevance or impact, then it is only there as a result of her tireless efforts to get me to look up from the minutiae of the trees and take in the forest surrounding me. Any lingering fascinating with microscopic bark analysis is entirely upon my own shoulders and should not be held against her. The entire English Department at Washington University, particularly as embodied in that wonderful goddess of the administrative realms, Sarah Hennessy, also has my undying thanks, not just for the generous financial support that has allowed me to pursue a passion I still cannot believe anyone was ever willing to pay me to pursue, but also for the community and collaboration which have made my time here all the richer. To my remarkable defense committee, I also offer my sincere thanks, not only for taking the time to read and respond to this work of mine, but for helping me, each in your own unique ways, to grow and develop as a scholar throughout my career at this university. The support structure to which I have had access within St. Louis has also been of inestimable value—I am very sure that I would not have made it this far in any city but my own. To my parents, Bob and Mary Reynolds, my constant champions whose pride and belief in me has never wavered, bless you and thank you. To Lisa Strader, my best friend, my faithful one, iv you more than anyone know the twists and turns this journey has taken, the triumphs and the heartbreaks along the way, and you have been there for me at every step. Bless you, and thank you. To Nancy Pope, my boss turned mentor turned friend, you have been more of a boon to my heart and spirit and mind than I could have ever thought to pray for—bless you, and thank you. And finally to my feline roommates, Smock and Loki: though you cannot read this, you have been present at the writing of all of it, and have kept me sane from one sentence to the next. While my paternal grandmother, Teddy Reynolds, was alive, I resolved to dedicate to her the first book I ever published. Well, Grandma, I don’t know whether this quite counts or not, but either way, this one’s for you. Thank you for the Robin Hood song. Amy Reynolds Washington University in St. Louis August 2017 v ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Troubling Truth in the Auchinleck Manuscript by Amy Reynolds Doctor of Philosophy in English and American Literature Washington University in St. Louis, 2017 Associate Professor Jessica Rosenfeld, Chair “Troubling Truth in the Auchinleck Manuscript” argues that many of the romances contained in this famous volume (c. 1330-40) respond in complex ways to the intensely unstable reign of Edward II (1307-27), and to that reign’s cataclysmic end and aftermath. These romances engage with these crises’ varied and negative impact on the foundational medieval value of “truth”—i.e. loyalty, trustworthiness, honor. Richard Firth Green’s A Crisis of Truth examines many the late fourteenth century results of this destabilization of truth, and my work expands and adjusts his not only by examining the early fourteenth-century roots of such changes, but also by placing contemporary literature at the core of my investigation. I contend that romance provided the ideal ground for exploring the damage done by the recent disruptions of human truth, largely because romance itself freely mixed the untruths of fantasy with the troubling actualities of contemporary medieval life. My historicism is informed by—and looks to contribute to—the manuscript studies work that surrounds Auchinleck itself, the largest early witness to over a dozen new or unique Middle English romances. By blending an interdisciplinary approach with keen attention to the details of the romance texts themselves, my dissertation seeks to expose how this ostensibly “popular” literature creatively engages with its own historical circumstances, giving voice to a variety and depth of distress with those circumstances in a way that reveals otherwise obscure layers of this crisis of truth vi Introduction There has been a great deal of productive historicist attention paid to the literature of the fourteenth century, but most of this scholarship has focused, understandably, on the latter half of that century. Scholars such as Lee Patterson, Paul Strohm, David Aers, Ardis Butterfield, Richard Firth Green, and many others have worked to bring to light different facets of this era’s intricate textual environment and the significance of that intricacy. Geoffrey Chaucer’s position in this “web of discourses”1 is naturally an essential one, and his chronological location at the end of the fourteenth century, combined with the political, social, religious, and cultural upheavals of the late 1300s, has pulled a great deal of medieval literary criticism towards his era. This scholarship has produced a deep, nuanced, and still-expanding appreciation for the complex ways in which the literature created by Chaucer and his contemporaries responded to the pressing issues of their own time and engaged with the fraught discourses of class structure; urban, rural, and national self-definition; the evolving