MEDIEVALISM AND PAGANISM: INTERPRETATIONS OF THE CARMINA BURANA CLARE CARPENTER DPHIL THE UNIVERSITY OF YORK DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND RELATED LITERATURE SEPTEMBER 2001 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Acknowledgments iv Abstract v INTRODUCTION I 1. Methodology 2 2. The Carmina Burana 11 3. Medievalism,morals and 'personalities' 15 CHAPTERI Dicing on The Altar 20 The goliard poets: themesand identity. 1. The tribe of Golias 23 2. The Nemo-texts 30 3. The Feastof Fools 4. Hugh Primasand the Archpoet: fools in judgment 42 5. Love and nature: the secularlyric tradition 63 CHAPTER 2 Gods In Exile 79 Wine, Women and Song in the context of late nineteenth century medievalism. CHAPTER 3 Vagabond Spirits 138 Rupert Brooke and the development of the Georgian personality. CHAPTER 4 Eternal April 172 The WanderingScholars and the 'Lost Generation'. H CHAPTER 5 On The ViRageGreen 217 1. After The WanderingScholars: English interpretations 218 2. Carl Orff and Carmina Burana 227 CONCLUSIONS 235 BIBLIOGRAPHY 240 iH ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My first and very grateful thanks must go to my supervisors,Jim Binns and Karen Hodder, for their help and guidance. Individually, I would like to thank Jim for his very patient and expert help with the Latin (and for all the cups of tea!), and Karen for her unflagging support of research group meetings, conferencepapers, etc. I would also like to take the opportunity to thank Karen for making our joint undergraduate teachingsuch a pleasantexperience. Thanks to the AHRI3 for their financial support over the last two years of this thesis, and to York University for their award of a part-time bursary. A number of libraries and staff deservemy thanks and frequently my apologies! They are the JI3 Morrell and King's Manor libraries at York (especially the Inter-Library Loan department), the Brother-ton at Leeds, York Minster library, Cambridge University library and the Rupert Brooke archive at King's College, Cambridge. Unlike the above, Stanbrook Abbey does not exist for the benefit of scholars:I would therefore like to expressmy particular gratitude to the community, and especiallyto Sister Philippa Edwards and Dame Felicitas Corrigan, for the generous hospitality they extendedto me during my study of Helen Waddell's papers. I would like to thank Paul Hardwick for permissionto quote his unpublishedpaper, and for all his help and guidancein the running of the 'medievalism'xesearch group at York. On a more personaland tangentialnote, I would like to thank the following; My parents, Richard and Jennie Carpenter, for love and support throughout my academiccareer - also for their financial help; My in-laws, Lis and Marcus Offer, for constant encouragementand sympathetic proof-reading; My three brothers - Martin for essential emails; Nicholas for gardening services; Jamesfor the vampire bat; The children of Featherbank and Rosebank schools, and Headingley Station Allotments Association, for providing a variety of much-needed'reality checks'. Lastly, my thanks and love go to my husband Alex for his share in three years of 'interesting times'. Long may they continue to be so. iv ABSTRACT This thesis discussesinterpretations of goliardic poetry, in particular the manuscript coRectionknown as Carmina Burana, between 1884 and 1930. The Introduction to the thesis discussesthe different approachesand methodology available to the scholar in the field of medievalism, and explains how this study relatesto them. Chapter I discussesgoliardic poetry in its original context, and explores a number of themes in the poetry which were to be taken up by its later interpreters. It also addressesthe question of the goliards' identities, describing and evaluating some of the theorieswhich critics have proposed. Chapter 2 explores the development of a new kind of medievalism in the late nineteenthcentury, deliberately opposed to the more familiar 'chivalric' medievalism of writers like Tennyson.It then goes on to discussthe relationship of John Addington Symonds' Wine, Womenand Song to this form of medievalism. Chapter 3 deals with some possible links between the poetry of Rupert Brooke and goliardic lyrics. It also explores the developmentof Brooke's self-image, suggesting that Helen Waddell might have drawn on his posthumous myth when writing The WanderingScholars. Chapter 4 looks at Waddell's The WanderingScholars in the context of the collective mourning for the dead of World War 1, and the growth of the 'Lost Generation' myth. It suggeststhat Waddell made imaginative links between the young men of the 'Lost Generation' and the twelfth century goliard poets. Chapter 5 offers an overview of post-1927 translations of goliardic poetry, and containsa brief discussionof Carl Orffs 1937 cantataCarmina Burana. V INTRODUCTION In 1884, John Addington Symonds wrote diffidently that: 'When I look back upon my own work, and formulate the impression left upon my own mind by familiarity with the songs which I have translated, the doubt occurs whether some apology be not required for having draggedthese forth from antiquarianobscurity. ' I It must occur to the reader of this thesis that some explanation,at the very least, may also be required for the even more dubious enterpriseon which it embarks- not merely a study of obscure goliardic poems, but, as it were, a second-hand study of them - the study of other writers' interpretationsof the goliard poets in the nineteenthand twentieth centuries. The initial justification for dragging forth Symonds' Wine, Womenand Song and even Helen Waddell's much better known The Mandering Scholars must lie in an understanding of the different possibilities wWch medievalism (by wWch I mean the study of post-medieval interpretations of literature, history and culture) has offered to the scholar in recent years. 1. MethodolgW Two main approacheshave been used by scholarsin what is still a relatively new and developing field of study. The first, discussedbelow, is an older and perhaps more straightforward approach.It is in an exploration of the secondmethodology ' John Addington Syrnorids,Wine, Womenand Song: Medieval Latin Students'Songs nowfirst translated into English verse Kith an essayby JohnAddington Symonds(London: Chatto and Windus, 1907: first edition 1884), p. 190 1) that we can see how much is to be gained from its application to a study of 'medievalist' versionsof the goliards. The first approachis concernedwith the achievementsof individual authors, with the means by which they have transformed a medieval original into a modem text,,and with the artistic merits of the results. Although most studies of this kind place the author's work in the context of contemporarymedievalism, the writer's main concern is not to discussthe social and cultural factors which might have led to the author's choice of source material, but rather to examinethe merits of what they produced having chosen it. The context into which the work is placed is often a biographical,rather than a historical or cultural one. A recent study which utilises this methodology is Elisabeth Brewer's book on T. H. White's Arthurian tetralogy, The Once and Future King. Beginning her work with a brief biography of White, Brewer goes on to remark in her introductory chapterthat: The Once and Future King is probably the last major retelling of the story based on Malory, set in the Middle Ages and in the chivalric tradition... None has so lovingly and minutely evoked the medieval scene,or so painstakinglyendeavoured to interpret Le Morte dArthur for his contemporaries,showing us not only how Arthur's tragedy unfolded, but also endeavouring to bridge the gap between medieval ways of thinking and our own. ' Brewer's main aim in studying VA-dte is to assess the artistic merit of his transformed version of the Arthurian story, exploring in passing how accessible he makes the medieval material to modem readers. Throughout, her approaches are twofold: comparative and biographical. Large parts of the study compare the book to its major medieval source, Malory, discussing the points of similarity 1 Brewer, Elisabeth, TH. nite's 7he Once and FutureUng (Cambridge: DS Brewer, 1993), p. 18 3 and divergence,and assessingwhether the changeshave proved to be successful or otherwise. In the chapter ')White and Malory', Brewer offers a detailed comparison of the two authors. She draws attention, for example, to the fundmentally different interpretation which the two place on the Arthurian story: Malory sees the downfall of the Round Table as a political, institutional tragedy, while )Whiteis drawn to seethe relationshipsbetween Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot, and between Arthur and Mordred, as lying at the heart of the tragedy. She further draws our attention to issues such as VMte's infusion of Malory's entirely seriousstory with a consistentelement of comedy'. The major part of the book, then, is a study of the ways in which White has transformed Malory and made a perhaps inaccessible medieval text into a popular modem novel. As Brewer writes: The S;vord in the Stone can dissolve the prejudices of those who believe that the medieval is dull, remote and irrelevant, as it creates interest in the Arthurian charactersand draws the reader into the story, even if it does not presenta veraciouspicture of medieval life.2 The qualities of the transformation, however, are seen as dependenton White himself, rather than on the cultural milieu in which he wrote, and this leadson to the secondimportant element in the study - biography. Accounting for important themes in The Once and Future King, Brewer refers frequently to White's fife and.,in particular, to his relationship with his mother. In his characterisationof Guinevere, and even more so, of Morgause, she argues that WWte's difficult relationship with his mother was highly influentia.13. Elsewhere, she suggests that: ' Brewer, Yhe Once and RutureUng, pp. 207 - 225 passim 2 Ibid, p.207 3 lbid, p.55 4 His genuine and sympatheticinterest in young boys, and his life- long passion for both learning and teaching led him readily to cast himself as tutor in the shapeof Merlyn'.