NOTES

 

 

COURTLY LOVE AND THE REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN IN THE "LAIS" OF MARIE DE FRANCE AND THE "COUTUMES DE BEAUVAISIS" OF PHILIPPE DE BEAUMANOIR

 

 

 

* Cet article a été initialement publié dans Rocky  Mountain Review of Language and Literature, vol. 57, n° 2 (2003), p. 7-24. 

 

 

(1) Brian Stock, "History, Literature, and Medieval Textuality", Yale French Studies n° 70 (1986), p. 7-17.

 

(2) For similar perspectives on a necessary interdisciplinarity of history and literature, see Lee Patterson, Negotiating the Past, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1987, p. 44 and Frederic Jameson, The Political Unconscious, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1977, p. 35)

 

(3) Put another way, these are simple but vexing Foucauldian questions that seek to expose the discursive conditions of the twelfth-century literary representation of women. In Foucault's own words: "Comment se fait-il que tel énoncé soit apparu et nul autre à sa place ? Pourquoi il ne pouvait étre autre qu'il n'était ?" ; Michel Foucault, L'Archéologie du Savoir, Paris, Gallimard, 1969, p. 39-40. 

 

(4)  Ibidem,  p. 46.  

 

(5) For a good recent summary of the critical debate on courtly love, see Sarah Kay, "Courts, Clerks, and Courtly Love", The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance, (dir.) R. Krueger, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 84-87. Roberta Krueger, Women Readers and the ideology of Gender in Old French Verse Romance, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993, p.1-2 and "Introduction" p. 209 also summarizes the debate and gives the appropriate bibliography. In brief, earlier scholars implied that courtly love had an empowering effect on women (cited in Krueger are Paris, Bezzola, Frappier) whereas more recent scholars have questioned whether or not real conditions for women were in fact improved by courtly love and have identified a hegemonic, male­ centered project in the courtly love discourse (John E. Benton, "Clio and Venus : An Historical View of Medieval Love", The Meaning of Courtly Love, (dir.) F. X. Newman, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1968, p. 19-42 ; Georges Duby, Mâle Moyen Age : De l'amour et autres essais, Paris, Champs, Flammarion,1988 ; Sarah Kay, "Courts, Clerks, and Courtly Love", art. cit. ; Roberta Krueger, Women Readers and the ideology of Gender in Old French Verse,  Romance, op cit.. Frappier gives a passionate defense of Gaston Paris and very helpful background on the history and debate of the term.

 

(6) Surely one of the reasons for the more recent modern resistance to Gaston Paris' concept of love is that one of its key characteristics is the daim that courdy love puts women in a position superior to men ; Gaston Paris, "Etudes sur les romans de la Table Ronde. I : Lancelot du Lac. II. Le Conte de la Charrette", Romania 13 (1883), p. 459-534. Already in 1968, Benton argued forcefully against the idea courdy love might have empowered women historically ; John E. Benton," Clio and Venus: An Historical View of Medieval Love", art. cit., p. 35-36. Even though this is a dubious historical daim, Frappier argues intelligendy (against Benton) for the historical significance of the general "imaginaire" that Parisis itions, can have a real effect on social conditions.

 

(7) Jean Frappier, Amour courtois et table ronde, Genève, Droz, 1973, p. 40-41. 

 

(8) These levels, technically, are diegetic and extradiegetic. Women as characters, whether speaking or spoken about by other characters, function on the diegetic level. Generally, narrators on the extradiegetic level. Genette formulated these distinctions ; Gérard Genette, Figures IlI, Paris, Seuil, 1972. See especially the section "Voix" P. 225-267) Rimmon-Kenan gives a more succinct description of these different levels of narration ; Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction, London, Methuen, 1983.

 

(9) This is Genette's "fonction idologique" ; Gérard Genette, Figures IlI, op. cit., p. 262-263. 

 

(10) As Janet Coleman has noted, in the medieval period "the only kind of history there is, is imaginable history." Material conditions must be "imaginable" or they simply have no meaning at all ; Janet Coleman, "Late Scholastic Memoria et Reminiscentia : Its Uses and Abuses", Intellectuals and Writers in Fourteenth-Century Europe, (dir.)  P. Boitani and A. Torti, Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 1986. p. 34

 

(11) Brian Stock sums up this approach in his article"History, Literature, and Medieval Textuality", art. cit. p. 7 : "Accounting for what actually happened is now recognized to be only part of the story ; the other part is the record of what individuals thought was happening, and the ways in which their feelings, perceptions, and narratives of events either influenced or were influenced by the realities they faced". 

 

(12) In order to facilitate cross-referencing with the Salmon edition, references to the Beugnot edition are given as follows : volume  page, chapter, paragraph. English versions are given by page number from the Akehurst translation. 

 

(13) Godefroy defines "debatre" as "récuser" (to reject, to challenge), using this particular passage from Beaumanoir as evidence. Curiously, "celi" is usually a demon­ strative pronoun indicating feminine gender ( E. Einhorn, Old French : A Concise Handbook, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,1974, p. 37 ; Lucien Foulet, Petite Syntaxe de L'Ancien Français, Paris, Champion, 1974, p. 168. Beaumanoir, however, clearly uses this pronoun as a generic category "someone" or (as we will see later with Beaumanoir's generic categories) as a specifically masculine pronoun. A good example of this usage occurs in section 12 of this same chapter (39). Jehan is accused of killing Pierre's "parent." Beaumanoir clearly uses "celi" as a substitute for "celui," the masculine singular, oblique : "li dis Jehans courut sus à celi qui fu tués le coute! tret, et tantost s'assanlla une grant tourbe de gens entor eus, qu'il ne virent pas que li dis Jehans ferist celi ["celui" in the Salmon edition] du coustel qui fu mors" (II:  96, XXXIX, 12) ["the said Jehan struck with his knife the person who died, but they saw the said Jehan leave the crowd with his naked blade covered with blood, and they heard that the person who died said: 'He has killed me"' (421)]. Another example of"celi" as a masucline singular, oblique pronoun occurs in section 18 of this same chapter (98). 

 

(14) While the legal space to speak available to women (clearly and almost exdusively the domain of reproduction) seems limited, this limitation can also be exploited. Michelle Freeman shows how Marie de France herself exploits this limitation in "The Power of Sisterhood :  Marie de France's 'Le Fresne." ; Michelle A. Freeman,"Marie de France's Poetics of Silence : The Implications for a Feminine Translatio", PMLA 99.5 (1984), p. 860-883. 

 

(15) Michel Foucault, L'Archéologie du Savoir, op. cit., p. 34

 

(16) All citations from the Lais are from the Rynchner edition ; translations are from the Hanning and Ferrante edition. 

 

(17) Andreas Capellanus, The Art of Courtly Love, 194, (éd. et trad. John Jay Party, New York, Columbia, 1990, v. 45. 

 

(18) Ibidem, v. 65. 

  

(19) Ibid., v. 136. 

 

(20) In "Guigemar" we see nearly the same prescriptive formula without the class difference. He offers his love. She asks for some time to think it over. He daims that only coquettish women need time to think about such things and that she should say yes immediately (v. 513-526). She does.

 

(21) By reading backwards from Beaumanoir's use of this term into the text of Marie de France, we get a particularly explicit example of how "real social contradictions find a purely formal resolution in the aesthetic realm" ; Frederic Jameson, The Political Unconscious, op. cit., p. 79. Georges Duby underlines the illusory nature of the empowerment that courtly love is said to provide medieval women ; Georges Duby, Mâle Moyen Age : De l'amour et autres essais, op. cit., p. 7. 

 

(22) See James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1987, p. 388 for the threat of excommunication. Beaumanoir adroits death as a possible punishment for the man or woman caught in adultery by the husband (I : 455-456, XXX, 103-105).

 

(23) Krueger also sees women as locked into an economy of reproduction : "Women were quite literally at the reproductive center of these social processes". For Krueger the centrality of the role of women in reproduction is a source of male anxiety ; Roberta Krueger, Women Readers and the ideology of Gender in Old French Verse Romance, op. cit., p. 20. For a near opposite reading of the effects of this economy of reproduction, see Michelle A. Freeman, "The Power of Sisterhood:  Marie de France's 'Le Fresne", French Forum 12.1 (1987), p. 5-26.

 

(24) Examples of the generic "Pierre et Jehans" abound, e.g., "si comme se Jehans est tenans de le terre que Pierres requiert à avoir" (I : 106, VI, 14) ["if Pierre holds the land that John is asking for" (81)]. Cf. Volume I : 117, VI, 28 ; 382, XXVII, 9; 449-450, XXX, 95 ; and in Volume II : 187, XLIII, 2.

 

(25) For the exceptions and a discussion of the importance of female names, see Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner, "Strategies of Naming in Marie de France's Lais : At the Crossroads of Gender and Genre", Neophilologus 75 (1991), p. 36-37. 

 

(26) "Guigemar" provides good examples ofboth the "octroi": "La dame entent ... e li otreie sanz respit / l'amur" (v. 527-530) and the "plainte": "Guigemar, sire, mar vus vi!l / Mieuz voil hastivement murir" (v. 668-669).

 

(27) Duby speaks generally about the fantasy element in courtly literature, suggesting that chivalric romances were composed "pour offrir une compensation onirique aux frustrations qui mûrissaient au sein du privé féodal" ; Histoire de la Vie Privée : De l'Europe Féodale à la Renaissance, (dir.) G. Duby, Paris, Seuil, 1985, p. 511. Although he obviously focuses here only on male frustration, his comment supports the notion that even in Marie de France images of women are culturally conditioned by a dominant male fantasy. See also Sarah Kay, "Courts, Clerks, and Courtly Love", art. cit., p. 83. 

 

(28) Indeed, the text makes this fantasy quite explicit. The knights are ail distracted by the scantily clothed attendants to the fairy queen. When the first two arrive "vestues / Tut senglement a lur chars nues" the knights "les esgardent volentiers" (v. 475-477).

When Arthur turns to them for the judgment he requested, they make clear how distracted they are by the arrival of this parade of beautiful women : "Sire, funt il, nus departimes / Pur les dames que nus veïmes" (v. 503-504).

 

(29) Freeman analyses this self-effacing stance as a feminist "poetics" in "Poetics of Silence" ; Michelle A. Freeman, "Marie de France's Poetics of Silence : The Implications for a Feminine Translatio", art. cit., p. 865. 

 

(30) Michelle A. Freeman, "The Power of Sisterhood :  Marie de France's 'Le Fresne", art. cit., p. 21. F

 

(31) Alfred Foulet and K.D. Uitti. "The Prologue to the Lais of Marie de France : A Reconsideration", Romance Philology, 35.1 (1981), p. 242-249. 

 

(32) The "poetics" of the Prologue and Marie's relation to the literary tradition have been amply studied. See Leo Spitzer, "The Prologue to the Lais of Marie de France and Medieval Poetics", Modern Philology 41 (1943-4), p. 96-102 ; D. W. Robertson, "Marie de France, Lais, Prologue 13-16", Modern Language Notes 64 (1949), p. 336-338 ; Rupert Pickens, "La poétique de Marie de France d'après les prologues des Lais", Lettres Romanes 32 (1978), p. 367-384 ; Alfred Foulet and K.D. Uitti. "The Prologue to the Lais of Marie de France : A Reconsideration", art. cit. While these articles give different readings of the Prologue, they do seem to concur that the narrator's self-deferential stance is typically medieval.

 

(33) Rupert Pickens, "La poétique de Marie de France d'après les prologues des Lais", art. cit., p. 374.