English 83

Even though throughout the whole story Yvain goes on and on about how much he loves Laudine the whole time before he marries her, he’s easily convinced to leave and go to some tournaments with Gawain after he’s married. Although she gives Yvain a whole year to be gone, he can’t make it back in time and he loses her love. He finally gets back into Laudine’s good graces by teaming up with Lunete and tricking Laudine into reconciling with Yvain before she knows who he is. Yvain, of course, is very exciting by this prospect, although Laudine isn’t too happy. It seems like Laudine’s love for Yvain is gone, but he doesn’t care as long as he’s happy.

This is what Laudine says on page 379 when she realizes she’s been tricked into reconciling with Yvain:

“So help me God Almighty, you’ve caught me neatly in your trap! In spite of myself you will make me love a man who doesn’t love or respect me. What a fine thing you’ve done! What a great way to serve me! I’d rather have put up with the storms and high winds all my life; and if it were not such an ugly and wicked thing to break one’s oath, this knight would find no peace with me no matter what his efforts. Every day of my life I would have harboured, as fire smoulders under the ashes, a pain it is no longer fitting to mention, since I must be reconciled to him.”

That doesn’t sound like a happy woman at all.

This story seems like the opposite of Eric and Enide. Enide gets to stay with Eric so long that she makes him go off adventuring to get his honor back. Yvain doesn’t have that period of marriage time with Laudine and goes off adventuring right away and doesn’t take her with him. These knights have to find a balance between home time and adventure time so they can have functional marriages.

Oh, and one more thing that made me not too thrilled with the character of Yvain is that after he gets the lion, his enemies make Yvain promise to keep the lion at bay. However, whenever the lion breaks out and starts mauling people, Yvain doesn’t really care that much. In summation: Chivalry, thy name is not Yvain.

When did Kay the seneschal become such a jerk? In Geoffrey of Monmouth’s account he is one of the more valiant knights in Arthur’s court. For instance, when Arthur goes to kill the giant the only two knights he brings with them are Bedevere and Kay. Kay also shows exceptional bravery at the battle of Saussy, where he leads a group of knights into battle and is mortally wounded while avenging Bedevere and dragging his body back.

In Erec and Enide, Kay’s flaws are not mentioned, but in The Knight of The Cart and The Knight With The Lion, He suddenly becomes incredibly rude and reckless. All the other knights notice his behavior and they do not respect him. This is completely different from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s account, where Kay is one of the more famous knights, and everyone is upset when he dies because he was such a courageous fighter. Why does Chretien suddenly turn him into a character who is just as rude as the dwarves?

This isn’t a very poignant or perceptive post, but I have been wondering throughout the two Chretien stories that I’ve read so far why Gawain is always referred to as “my lord Gawain.” He is the only one to receive this strange title, and almost every time his name is mentioned in Erec and Enide or The Knight of the Cart, “my lord” precedes it. Is there a specific reason why this is true? It seems like Chretien is using a possessive title for Gawain. I find it strange because he is not the main character of either of them, and no other knights or central characters receive the title. Some examples of this occur on pages 51, 210.

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.

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When Tessa asked the question – how did these stories become kids stories, I kind of scrambled for an answer, assuming it must have been Andrew Lang, the Scottish folklorist and prolific writer/translator. Lang may have adapted some Arthurian material, but Sidney Lanier (again, one of those 19th Century “men of letters”) wrote two books of adapted material, The Boy’s Mabinogian, and The Boy’s King Arthur (adapted from Malory). Given Victorian notions about childhood and sentimentality, these must be a primary source for our vague notion of Arthurian texts as stories for children.

You know a guy is a smooth operator when his heroic tests are comprised of an equal mix of jousting tournaments and beds, the latter most memorably represented by Death Bed: The Bed that Burns!

One thing that I have noticed in Erec and Enide is that names are given out sparingly. Almost all of the characters that are introduced into the story are nameless for at least a portion of the narrative, only receiving a name if they are essential to the story. Enide is referred to as the maiden with the white dress for 30 pages, until the actual wedding comes up in the storyline. Everyone has made such a big deal out of how great she and Erec are together and yet, Chretien writes, “When Erec received hs wife, she had to be named by her proper name, for unless a woman is called by her proper name she is not married. People did not yet know her name, but now they learned it for the first time” (62). It seems awfully strange to me that they are the talk of the town, but no one knows her name until they get married.
This strange absence of names is furthered by Erec who always withholds his name unless it is absolutely essential that he give it. He fights Kay, one of his own friends, because Erec is unrecognizeable, and Erec is too stubborn to tell him his name. Then, he also doesn’t give his name to Guivret, another friend, as they charge at each other during the night. Instead he nearly gets himself killed by blindly assaulting Guivret without giving any warning. He also has numerous other battles in which he never gives his name, which seems really strange.
Being that the ultimate goal of a knight, indeed a goal highly touted by Chretien, is to win glory for himself and to uphold good morals. And yet, since there was no widespread visual communication in medieval times that would allow people to recognize a person by his face, it would seem that a name would be essential for establishing glory for oneself. So it strikes me as odd that names are avoided as much as possible in a story so concerned with a hero becoming renowned. Are there any thoughts?

While I was reading the book, one quote struck me more than any other. After Erec’s father passes away, Chretien remarks, “Grieving is uncourtly on the part of a king and it does not befit a king to show grief.” (117) His comment really hit me because it reminded me of Queen Elizabeth’s reaction (or lack thereof) after Diana’s death. In the 20th century she was berated for her lack of visible emotion, the same thing Erec is praised for in the sixth century.  To modern audiences, Elizabeth’s response could be viewed at best as desire for privacy and at worst as just callous. But perhaps she was acting the way she thought people expected her to act – according to a very old precedent.

Why is visible grief unbefitting for a king?

It is obvious that Erec and Enide is a tale in the heroic tradition.  Erec, who has been described as “the most handsome, most loved, most revered, most muscular, bravest, wisest, fastest, strongest man in the history of the human race” is very obviously intended to be heroic and larger than life.  Indeed, Erec and this story probably serve to help define the knight in shining armor trope for future authors.   Further, as a Romance Erec and Enide includes elements of the fantastic.

Chretien asks us to suspend our disbelief, appropriating physical laws and ignoring basic human biology to create a story.  As the “Hero” of the story, Erec is endowed with many superhuman powers, which utterly surpass those of his contemporaries.  Erec is in effect granted exemptions from the limits placed on normal humans.  This is obvious in his physical attributes, and perhaps even in his psychological ones, but it is more subtle in its effects on the way his actions are perceived and their morality within the story.

As Dan insightfully observes, whenever Erec encounters another knight, they joust.  This is an outgrowth of the extreme xenophobia which pervades Europe due to the extreme fragmentation in social structure since the fall of
Rome.  For a peasant, or even a manorial lord, in Chretien’s time, danger was literally right over the next hill in the unknown beyond the village.  Erec sees others through his pervasive fear of the unknown and is occasionally seen this way, for example one of the knights who attacks Erec does so because “he had seen an armed knight pass by in front of his walls” (82).  This is a statement of pure xenophobia, one is attacked only because of one’s status as an outsider and a potential enemy.

When Erec is attacked the book takes a moralistic tone.  In particular when Erec is wounded after escaping from the Count of Oringle, Enide stops Guivert from fighting Erec saying, “Cursed be you, knight, for you have attacked a man who is alone and powerless” (98).  Note particularly that Erec is described as alone, a condition defined by distance from others and separation.  While Chretien explicitly condemns those who attack the outsider Erec, he paints the outsiders Erec encounters in negative terms.  An example of this latter type is the Knight at the beginning of the tale with the dwarf who refuses to recognize the authority of Guinevere.  In this case, Erec swears revenge against the outsider and is rewarded for it with his bride and increased fame.

Thus, morality is subject to a type of heroic exceptionalism, just like physical strength.  The chosen hero plays by a different set of rules than everybody else.  This seems related to the discussion on “Arthur’s Duplicity” because both stem from an asymmetry between the moral value of an action committed by the known protagonist and the unknown antagonist. 

Thoughts?

We’ve briefly mentioned Wace, who ca. 1160 wrote Roman de Brut – a French (Romanz) translations of Geoffrey’s Latin Historia. Wace’s Brut is part translation, part expansion on Geoffrey intended for Breton-French audience who were curious about the Breton connections to the stories of Arthur of Britain. It’s important I think to remember that our written records of Arthuriana from the Middle Ages don’t tell the whole story: Geoffrey did not create out of nothing (his putative ancient book notwithstanding); there were certainly very active oral traditions of Arthurian and other tales of Britain which formed the basis of the Romances we have in writing today. Commerce and political connections between northern France and Southern England ensured the transmission and enduring popularity of the matter of Britain throughout the Continent (as witnessed by the visual arts – the Archivolt of Modena, an Italian representation of Arthur from the early 1100s).

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Am I the only one who was bored to tears by “Erec and Enide”? Sure, it was cool for the first 20 pages, in which Erec wins for Enide the Medieval Miss Universe pageant by jamming his sword into some fool’s skull (after which he appeared to be relatively ok), but after all that it was the same story repeated five or six times. This is the general outline of the story:
Erec (the most handsome, most loved, most revered, most muscular, bravest, wisest, fastest, strongest man in the history of the human race) and Enide (the most beautiful woman ever, which, simply put, makes her the most perfect woman ever) love each other more than anything in the world (because that’s what happens when two beautiful people get into a relationship; the love that they share is directly proportional to how beautiful they are). People love Erec mostly because he kills other knights and looks damn good while he does it. People love Enide because she is pretty and because she is polite. Trouble arises when Erec stops killing people to have sex with his wife. People don’t like the new Erec and think he is a pansy. Erec proves that he is not a pansy by journeying all about the country killing everyone. The people who survive with only severe injuries become bff’s with Erec. After 60 or so pages of this, Erec vanquishes a particularly tall knight, and then they party for 10 pages.
The storyline had the finesse and complexity of an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. Which is cool if it’s a movie. Or a videogame. Some people are going to say, “Why, of course there’s no plot. Of course there are no characters. It’s only an oral tradition meant to entertain (pg. 37)!” Fine. It was entertaining (kind of). Although by the end of the story I found that no descriptions of rich clothes, or food, or fighting skill could impress me. But maybe we can all learn something from “Erec and Enide.”

“Erec and Enide” taught me that every princess is the mst beautiful woman in the world…until the next most beautiful woman in the world gets discovered, and that every knight is the best fighter he’s aware of…until he fights Erec.
It taught me that everyone is so rich that he can endlessly give expensive gifts, so much that “rich” and “expensive” become meaningless terms.
It taught me that if you are beautiful, you are “destined for good fortune” (94).
It taught me that the fastest and most effective way to resolve an argument is by fighting.

Surely you all are more insightful than I am. What did you learn?

Ygerna’s character utterly baffled me. When Uther first walks in disguised as Gorlois, Geoffrey said that she “naturally believed all he said and refused him nothing,” implying that she is at least a dutiful wife-whether or not she actually loved Gorlois is up for debate. But then when Uther claims her in his own form, Geoffrey says that “From that day on they lived together as equals, united by their great love for each other.” Where did that come from? Is Ygerna just a fickle person, or does Geoffrey expect his women to love whichever man they’re currently married too? I was also surprised that Geoffrey would feel the need to say they lived as equals, since I didn’t think equality between men and women was an issue back then.

He also mentions Arthur’s sister Anna, who later married Loth of Orkney. In more modern versions of the Arthurian legend, this role is usually played by one of Arthur’s stepsisters Morgause or Morgan. What happened to Anna? Does anyone know when or why she disappeared from the legend?

Because we ran out of time before we ran out of stuff to talk about I thought I would post a few things. My notes and slides from this week are attached at the end of this post, if you want them.

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There is a specific passage in the reading in part 7, which caught my attention because of the blatant double standard that Arthur holds with respect to claiming land. Throughout his entire narrative section about Arthur, GM describes the numerous accounts of Arthur going outside of Britain to conquer other lands for the glory of Britain and to augment the wealth of his people. Furthermore, he even seems to enjoy his power over others in a way that does not present him in a very appealing light: “The fact that he was dreaded by all encouraged him to conceive the idea of conquering the whole of Europe” (222). I recognize that this was a different culture, and what we would consider acceptable now is a lot different from then, but he is supposed to represent a good and moral king. Even if GM just left it at that, I would be able to understand his thinking, but then I read the passage that I referred to at the beginning of the post.

The passage reads, “When these men landed with their armed band and conquered our fatherland by force and violence at a time when it was weakened by civil dissensions, they had been encouraged to come here by the disunity of our ancestors. Seeing that they seized the country in this way, it was wrong of them to exact tribute from it. Nothing that is acquired by force and violence can ever be held legally by anyone” (232). I cannot help but wonder that GM would put that in his speech. It is either a severe mental lapse on the part of the author or a serious duplicity in the actions of Arthur. He ravages the known world, subdues the people, and exacts tribute, and then declares that land taken forcefully cannot be rightfully possessed by the invader. I was just struck by the blatant disregard for everything that he did previously when he said that.

We discussed today in class how GM seems to keep slipping in little Christian moments way too early in Britain’s history. Well, the one we found turned out to be a translation inconsistency, but I think another one happened even earlier.

On page 61 while Brutus is fighting the Greeks and slaughtering them, this passage caught my attention:

“Themselves unarmed, the Greeks ran to and fro between the armed men wherever their panic led them; but all the time they were being cut to pieces by the Trojans who attacked them. Anyone who got away half-alive was dashed against the rocks and the tree-trunks as he rushed along in his desire for escape, and so gave up his soul together with his blood.”

It seems like the phrase “gave up his soul” implies that these soldiers are going to hell because they’ve really committed suicide by running themselves into the rocks and trees in their panic. Being sent straight to hell because of suicide is a Catholic belief, so it seems to me that GM is bringing in more Christian snippets really early along in Britain’s history.

As class closed we discussed Monmouth’s Histories as a sort of unifying Anglo-Norman revenge fantasy. I think we can push that a little farther to include other Celtic peoples, namely the Scots and the Irish. Pulling a few of the threads we discussed in class a bit further would suggest a reading calling for unity among the splintered Celts of the British Isles.

The most cursory evidence is the frequent unification of the island, only to see it fragment when warring families splinter (most clearly seen in the tripartite division of the land by Lear between Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia.) The message therein seems to be something resembling the cliched line that a society is only vulnerable once it has crumbled within- in this case, by the family divisions we spoke of. At the time of Geoffrey’s writings, the Scots had almost totally disengaged themselves from the rest of the island and would remain so until the late 13th century.

Obviously Monmouth’s work is an exaltation of the ancient British peoples, holding them up as a proud civilization equivalent to the Romans, Hebrews, and other nations whose concurrent events he mentions when describing those in Britain. He also holds Britain up as the true inheritors of the Roman legacy, as typified by in Cassibelaunus’s speech to Caesar, while the story of Britain’s anachronistically early conversion to Christianity at Lucius’ hands holds Britons up as the keepers of Christian purity. The Irish, however, served that role historically . As the Roman empire fragmented and collapsed, the Irish monasteries, once purged of Pelagianism, served as the repositories for Roman lore and Catholic fidelity (in doctrinal matters, not political ones). This gave rise to the Frankish practice of recruiting Irish monks among the Carolingians. Thus, it seems to me, Monmouth’s promotion of the Celtic Britons as a sort of old guard in exile can be read as a nod to Ireland.

I know this was probably supposed to be a heroic epic to make the British people proud of themselves, but it seems to me that once the Romans come, GM makes the British look progressively worse. When Julius Caesar first arrives, the British boot him off the island (twice) and leave him feeling humiliated. Even when Claudius ultimately gets them to surrender, GM still makes note of their courage and bravery.

But then we have people like Carausius (a commoner) who uses deceit and bribery to oppose the Romans and then invites the Picts into Albany, who proceed to intermarry and mingle their blood with the Britons.  Maximianus stood up to the Romans too, but he’s portrayed as bloodthirsty conqueror. Instead of courage and bravery, GM uses terms like “the savagery of the Britons” and “the inhumanity of Maximianus.” And then you’ve got Vortigern, who in GM’s view sinks about as low as anybody of royal blood can go.

 It seems like by the time Merlin comes around, GM has created a Britain that needs a legendary king, and in doing so set the stage pefectly for Arthur.

There are parts in The History of the Kings of Britain that are obviously made up. Geoffrey writes such detail about events immediately folowing the Trojan War (55), and about supersoldiers like Corineus (who dodges arrows and slices humans in half with one stroke; 67), and about man-eating monsters (102), and about how Constantine was originally a British king (132); he writes such detail about these things that never happened that it makes me believe he is openly and unashamedly writing a work of fiction. I think he wants to give Britain an epic history and to inspire British people with nationalistic pride, so he ties in stories like that of the Trojan War. And Geoffrey also tells his story like, “While Moses was doing his thing over in Egypt, Britain was doing this. And while Isaiah was making prophecies, and Romulus and Remus were founding Rome, King So-and-so was killing people” (parphrased from page 87, and there’s also Jesus on 119). It’s like Geoffrey is borrowing the epic-ness of other stories to make his own cooler.

Of course, he uses other histories as refences. He mentions Gildas a couple times (94, 125, which is interesting to me because Professor Pollack said that Gildas’ Ambrosius is Geoffery’s Arthur) who I assume was a historian. And he also refers to Roman historians (99) but says that he doesn’t want to repeat anything that anyone else has written. Does this mean that everything he wrote in The History is stuff that cannot be found in historical records? I am by no means a history buff, but to those of you who are, are there any stories in The History that are, in fact, history?

Notes on Arthurian history – Roman and sub-Roman Britain, and some on T.H. White and Sword in the Stone.

Notes week 1 (zip file)

So – this is Wordpress. It works just about like any blogging engine you’ve seen or used before. You will need to create a Wordpress account ASAP to start using this. As noted in class, I strongly recommend using a “screen name” rather than your full name

You can login, write a “post” (usually a short statement, observation, mini-essay, or the like) on whatever Arthurian stuff you’re thinking about. Or you can “comment” – write a short response to someone else’s post. This medium tends to favor the short and snappy – long essays don’t read that well online – but I do want you to feel free to speak your mind, use as many words as needed.

Why do this? First, I think it’s fun. No – really it is. I truly enjoy seeing what other people are thinking about a set of issues, or interests that we share in common. Agreement is not the goal – differences are what matter, and create meaning. Also, it seems to mesh well with my beliefs and observations about teaching. . . . That is, I truly believe much of what constitutes learning does not happen in the classroom with some professor nattering away. I have observed that learning happens socially, through interaction. That interaction may be in conversation, exchanges of writing, etc. This blog is one tool for making that happen.