English 83

It might have been helpful to go over these ideas a week ago or so, but we’ll be spending another week with Chrétien, and other romance narratives as well. . . [This week's notes are appended]

Reading any medieval text isn’t quite like reading modern or contemporary texts; it requires the modern reader to make a few adjustments of expectation. Medieval texts, because we often read them in translation from older, now defunct forms of national languages (Old French, Middle English) are by definition texts that never existed; no one alive in Chrétien’s time read the texts we are reading – they experienced them as poetry with a rhythm, rhyme and music that is lost to us unless we can read edited editions of the Old French. Even then, if we have the linguistic skill, we are not sure what Chrétien wrote (as different manuscripts disagree on key readings), and we lack information on how audiences received it.

Expectations differed, then, as the orally recited texts were a wholly different experience from that of silent reading. As we discuss these texts in class, and online, we are perhaps recovering some of the social context: perhaps the key interpretive questions we have were debated by audiences of the 12th century? If these tales have any claim on our attention other than as historical artifacts, it may be from the ethical, cultural, moral and other questions that they raise and the problems they evince. Such claims and problems are the province of all nearly all literature worth studying, but in the case of medieval romance, these questions and problems need the attention of careful readers, and some different modes of reading that we might not be accustomed to.

When we read a novel, or watch a film, we are conditioned to look at 1) plot, and 2) character development. These two elements ought to be interrelated and should speak to each other in interesting ways. But these expectations should be modified when reading a medieval romance text.

In a medieval romance, sometimes there is a carefully plotted sequence of events, but often the action of such tales can feel repetitive, elliptical, and occasionally difficult to follow. It is not always clear why a particular event or motif repeats, and the reasons for a particular sequencing of events, or the sudden cryptic appearance of a character may seem confusing. It may help to pay less attention to plot, and more to narrative. Narrative is distinguished from plot: it is not the events that happen in a story, but the telling of those events. Focusing on narrative and narrative technique teaches us to follow closely the text’s voice (who is speaking) and how it uses the plot to create certain effects, and raise problems for the reader to think about. Medieval narratives have certain conventions that let us know what kind of story is being told. Medieval narrators are often intrusive – occasionally interpreting the story for us, and occasionally deliberately obscuring and hiding details. Chrétien’s romances are among the most tightly plotted: he prided himself on taking oral and traditional materials – matiére – and applying a new sense or interpretation – san - to them to create a mout bele conjunture – a most beautifully ordered composition (37). Nevertheless, by modern novelistic standards, the plots don’t always hold as much water as, say, a good spy thriller; nor do they advance at a regular, steady pace with predictable markers of rising action, climax, falling action and denouement. So don’t be surprised if the endings don’t always satisfy in the way we are accustomed. The telling is almost always more important than the story.

When it comes to character, and character development, Chrétien’s heroes and heroines can feel remarkably “modern” in their apparent psychological depth and motivations. We do not literally see “inside their heads” in the way of the modern omniscient narrator of novels – but they do externalize inner states in some surprising ways – through monologue and dialogue, and through action. They are not, in general, as vivid and visually oriented as the characters of most modern novels. It would be hard to draw a very good picture of Erec or Enide, Lancelot or Guinevere based on descriptions of their physical appearance. The descriptive energies of romance tend to be on things that the audiences wanted to hear about: horses, armament, clothes, the finery of courts, and the fantastic elements of the story. But little more is offered than is actually necessary to keep things moving. So if a romance narrator does pause and give a detailed description of a person, place or thing, pay close attention, because it will turn out to be important.

Important how? Those are often the interesting questions that medieval romances raise. I keep remembering the detailed description of the saddle presented to Erec and Enide from Guivret which depicted the story of Aeneas and Dido. Enide is not entirely Dido-like, but the Aeneas-Dido structure has elements in common with the Erec-Enide structure. Enide could be seen in the Aeneas role, she “arrives” in the Arthurian world with nothing, and gains a throne at the side of Erec. Erec could have abandoned Enide after losing his reputation at court (just as Aeneas loses his way on his great mission to establish a New Troy) but he didn’t. He took her with him, testing her loyalty as he tested and re-established his own confidence in his own martial prowess. The Aeneas and Dido story from the Aeneid is also a meditation on how stories travel: Aeneas is shocked to find the Carthaginians already aware of the tragedy of the downfall of Troy, and turning that story into artistic and narrative productions of their own. The image of Aeneas and Dido on a saddle suggests that they will have to carry a reminder of their own story (”Erec and Enide”), and that pictorial representation is a silent admonishment of how their own story could have ended just as badly. A visual object in this case is meant to evoke another well-known narrative, to place this narrative in dialogue with the other.

But back to character: while romance characters are not necessarily flat, or one-dimensional, they are most often pre-existing entities with their own web of competing narratives already attached to them: Lancelot and Gawain are two such examples. Neither is an invention of Chrétien – they have histories of competing stories that the audiences would have been aware of. Therefore, they exist in a complex system of narratives that carry their own significance and influence their redeployment in any new narrative. The use of a traditional character in a new way is one means of medieval innovation. When Lancelot becomes the lover of Guinevere in the “Knight of the Cart,” it changes the way his character is used and seen in subsequent narratives. But stories don’t exist for characters; usually it’s the other way around: the character fulfills some kind of role in the narrative project of the romance. Romance narratives are often allegorical to one degree or another: they raise a question, speak to contemporary political, moral and social issues (although often obliquely), and characters serve to animate those questions. “The Knight of the Cart” seems to ask: what happens when we raise adulterous love and idealized devotion to a kind of religion, with its own rules and theology? Are Love and Reason always opposed? The results are sometimes comical, sometimes deadly serious, but the characters are there to dramatize the problem, not because we are meant to like them, hate them or fall in love with them. Modern narratives, especially film, demand points of identification for the audience. Hit films often have ensemble casts where there are character types that the producers think will resonate with their target audience. That may be case the medieval narratives, but we’re not the target audience. We’re an audience that was never imagined by the writers of medieval romance.

notes week 3