The Middle Ages as a Monstrous Other

Even taking the past on its own terms and not imposing our modern understanding, it is impossible not to look at the Middle Ages and be constantly aware of how different the world was six hundred and more years ago. There are moments where a reader of medieval literature can easily find familiarity, but those moments are greatly overshadowed by the largely overlooked differences.

The Middle Ages form an other simply in the fact that that era is past and no scholar of the present can identify with it fully. We are outsiders looking in, but there's a thick pane in the glass of time that we just can't get past. Does our interest make the Middle Ages less of an other, because we so often seek and find ourselves in the people of our past? Or does our fascination reverberate with a further othering, because we cannot fully understand? Perhaps we are intrigued by the Middle Ages the way the Roland poet or the Beowulf poet seem fascinated with a religious culture not their own, and yet fail to fully prevent their self-understanding from color how they understand that other.

I am constantly reminded by the people I know who aren't medieval scholars that this era that fascinates me has no hold on their interest. My peers in the theatre department were teasing me just this morning for knowing the meaning of the -wright in playwright as 'to make' or 'to build.' It seems every little thing I know has something to do with Middle English, which one friend jokingly imitates by mumbling through his beard incoherently. If I am in some small way othered by my study of the Middle Ages, then to the general population outside our small world of medievalists, how much of an other must the era itself be?

Perhaps in some ways it is monstrous too. Life was terrible then, people say. No indoor plumbing, no central heating, the plague, low life expectancy. Every child who wants to be a princess or a knight eventually grows up to realize that in the Middle Ages they probably would have been a peasant and dead in their twenties or thirties. It's frightening to imagine living then. The Middle Ages are monstrous to us indeed, even if those who study it are perhaps desensitized to it. Why else would we equate the Middle Ages positively as just the time between better eras, and negatively as the Dark Ages?

Who the monster was, anyway?

For a society based in oaths and rites, Marie appears extremely liberal when it is time to talk about love. Nothing can stop it. Bisclavert appears as an exception: Bisclavert’s wife simply stops loving him when she is aware that he is a werewolf… but she is not a Noble woman, or at least not noble enough. She is practical and cares about small details, like where her husband hides his clothes during his werewolf phase… small things; an occupation for small persons? Other characters are noble, tragic. Love in aristocratic hearts is always pure, their strategies and subterfuges appear always justified. Bisclavert´s wife is just a cheater who brings condemnation not only to her, but to her children and for several generations. Meanwhile, Yonec’s mother remains without sin, even thou she carries the baby of her affair to her marriage, and the adult son becomes the killer of his stepfather; the legitimate husband of her mother. They have different rights because they are different people, and their passions are made of a different matter. The mysterious knight who is the father of Yorec has the even the right to become a hawk using of course some kind of (always heretic) magic, and Bisclavert is the victim of a “condition”. This “condition” does not change or even touch the nobility of his inner nature. Ultimately he is beyond of this kind of “small things” and becomes the poodle version of the werewolf: the king’s personal “poodle”.

Marie de France is liberal with love, but only if the lovers are aristocratic, pretty and young. Is this only an ornament to please the listeners of the lais? It reveals some exclusive and excluding point of view of a group that nowadays we should call a class? Who is really the other? The guy affected by his werewolf “condition”? Or is the woman that cannot sustain her love because her lack of sensibility to the noble qualities of her husband? Is the monster the knight who is capable of taking the hawk’s shape? Or is the old and jealous old husband?

Personally, I think the monster is always the other; in this case, the most opposite character to the one that the reader or the listener can identify him or herself with...

The Werewolf: Man's Best Friend

If any creature can be associated with the monstrous, it is the werewolf. Marie de France begins her lai, Bisclavret, with a classic, even stereotypical description of the shapeshifter: “A werewolf is a ferocious beast which, when possessed by this madness, devours men, causes great damage, and dwells in vast forests.” Yet the werewolf in this lai does not inspire fear or terror. In fact, unlike modern werewolf mythology, which is permeated with tragedy and despair, this story has a happy ending, at least for the werewolf. His wife and her lover, both who despised and betrayed him, are the ones who have a miserable end. Again contradictory to contemporary werewolf lore, Bisclavret remains intelligent, lucid, and in control of himself. His appeal to the king results not only in the king’s pardon, but in the king’s love, friendship, and protection. He becomes the king's companion, following him everywhere like a faithful dog. Even though Bisclavret’s appearance is frightening and bestial, everyone seems to overlook this to see his better, interior qualities. His attacks are justified by the onlookers, who see monstrosity in the victims rather than the attacker. And with good reason. No one in the story (and most likely neither the reader nor the author) pities the wife whose nose is bitten off. Bisclavret’s popularity only increases when he is restored to his human form. But even if he had remained a werewolf, no one, especially the king, would have loved him less. The werewolf is no longer a ravenous, indiscriminate killing machine, but a loyal, affectionate, and chivalrous man-beast. Metaphorically he is transformed, even redeemed, in this story. Much in the same way the scarlet letter became a badge of honor for Hester Prim, so the werewolf “curse” proves to be a misnomer. The werewolf, at least in this story, is no monster: he is man’s best friend.