Taking the Past Seriously

I liked that Nederman ended his conclusion with a plea that we take the past seriously. Though his words immediately preceding this sentence indicate that he meant that Medieval Europe should be considered when we attempt to understand our current political and philosophical environment, I feel like his words could be used to address some of the recurring issues we have had in our class.

Taking the past seriously means that we must endeavor to understand the Europe of the Middle Ages on its own terms; instead of just imposing our current intellectual categories onto the literary figures of the past, we also should attempt to interpret them using the categories that were available at the time. I am not saying that there is not a valuable interpretation to be made of, for example, Sir Gawain as a homosexual or Margery Kempe as delusional, but that interpretation should be aware of the temporal imperialism that is enacted as a result. The attitude in much of those claims seems to be that the writers of the Middle Ages were children, unaware of the true meaning of their words and of their narratives, and that it is up to us, the adults of history, to tell them what they mean.

In terms of Nederman's broader discussion of toleration, I feel that this means that we should be wary of dismissing the tolerance that was present in medieval Europe, just because it does not look or sound like the tolerance we practice (or sometimes fail to practice) today. Expecting to see ourselves reflected back in the literature of centuries ago seems a much less satisfying intellectual pursuit than tracing the reflections of that same literature in our culture today.

Margery the Loud

Something that we touched on in class yesterday was the volume of Margery's demonstrations of devotion through weeping, crying and roaring loudly during church services a dinners. Even though we addressed how this behavior would have seemed jarring in her church and her larger community, I feel like her loudness is especially interesting within the context of the silent Christian women we have encountered in our previous texts.

Silence seems to be a key characteristic of the literary Christian women, beginning with our encounter with Julianna of The Song of Roland. As a Saracen queen, she had a voice and used it to express her anger against her failed gods, but once she is converted, her voice is not heard again. Similarly, when Silence is publicly returned to the realm of women by marrying the king, we as readers are cut off from her thoughts and words. Margery, who seems to want everyone to hear her feelings, seems to be cut from an entirely different cloth.

In writing her autobiography, Margery is obviously speaking to her book's audience, but she is also implicitly arguing for the value of her voice among the faithful. We can think of this as just a "PR campaign for sainthood," which I am sure it at least partially is, but I think that is too narrow an interpretation. She, and many of the other women mystics at the time, are redressing the tradition of silence around their place in Christian discourse.

Even though, if I were part of her fellowship, I would probably also be put off by her constant weeping through dinner, her daring in publicly and with great volume expressing the truth of her connection to God should not be underestimated.

The Irrelevance of Gender

Like Parzival and Silence, the poems in these excepts emphasize an ideal of beauty that is not gender specific. The young men of the Hebrew love poetry and the cup-bearer of Al-Sharif al Taliq's poem are both described in what we would now consider to be feminine terms - the lips, flushed cheeks, slender thighs and thin waist are all physical attributes that we would not consider fully masculine today. Rather, they are signs of youth, boyishness, or femininity - all qualities that make the young man of the poet's gaze an object of desire to the presumably older man.

(This makes me wonder if there is much poetry celebrating masculine beauty from this time. I would think that objectifying a full-grown man would be seen as transgressive, as would the expression of female desire, but I could be wrong.)

What I thought was most interesting was Serrano's comment that the sex of the beloved in Al-Sharif al Taliq's writing is actually not known, nor is it important: "The use of the masculine pronoun in referring to the beloved...does not necessarily mean that he is male. Love poems of this period sometimes addressed women with masculine pronouns and masculine forms of nouns. The gender of the addressee here is ambiguous and probably irrelevant" (153).

According to Serrano, all extra-marital desire was considered illicit, so the desire of a man for a young man instead of a young woman would not have been thought of as any more scandalous to express. Where we would now view the divide between homosexual and heterosexual desire as stark, the line between marriage and non-marriage was the primary consideration.

The Desire of the King

Our final class discussion on Silence, during which we noted that Silence seems to be a character devoid of desire, made me question our reading of King Evan's desire. We assume, that because he chooses at the end to marry his young and beautiful great-niece, that he desires her sexually and we see him as a creepy old man because of it.

If we look more closely at the end of the poem, however, we can see that the poet never mentions Evan's physical attraction to Silence. Instead, when she is revealed to be a woman, he praises her only for her loyalty to her father's wishes: "Indeed the price of your loyalty / is far above that of my royalty. / There is no more precious gem, / nor greater treasure, than a virtuous woman" (Lns 6630-6634). Though he is comparing her to a "gem," his language is hardly romantic - the virtue of loyalty is one shared by men and women. Silence's loyalty to the king was, in fact, probably best demonstrated when she was a knight and fighting the rebellious counts on his behalf. He could also be emphasizing her loyalty in comparison to the disloyalty of his wife; perhaps after being betrayed by Eupheme, he desires a new wife who will be as loyal as a knight.

Still, his final decision to marry Silence is seen as a result of much consultation, rather than personal feelings: "Then the king took her to wife - / that's what it said in the book where I found this story - / on the advice of his / most loyal and trusted advisers" (Lns 6676-6680). The advisers seem to have an interest in Silence being married off, in being silenced and brought back into proper gender roles. Perhaps marrying her to the king would mediate the scandal produced by her successful knighthood? She could no longer be perceived as such a threat once she is allied so closely with the king.

Whether the final marriage was a political solution devised by the king's counselors, or the king's decision to marry a more knight-like bride, or the poet's attempt to re-inscribe Silence into a feminine role, it appears far removed from the courtly love of Silence's parents.

Nurture and the Devil

I was interested that the final debate between Nurture and Nature ends so firmly on the side of Nature, and even goes so far as to say that Nurture was the ultimate reason for the fall of mankind: "Nothing was ever in Adam / except what God created / and placed there. / It is not like God / to leave an evil nature in him to claim him...Whatever evil Adam did / was due to you, Nurture, without a doubt, / for the Devil fed him / evil, rotten advice." (Line 6057 - 6070)

This stark division of Nurture and Nature along the lines of good and evil seemed surprising, but slightly less so when I considered the relation between God and Nature in the poem. In many of the previous sections, Nature is shown to be the creator of man - a creator who occasionally makes mistakes and allows a little rough flour in with the fine - but in the relation of the fall of mankind, only God is given creative powers, and he never makes mistakes. If Nature is simply the agent of God (helping with the work of creating a larger population?), and Nurture has "opposed [Nature] ever since the first man / sinned be eating that apple" (Lines 6046-6047), then Nurture is in some way consistently interfering with God's work.

Still, considering that Nurture is the reason that Silence was able to grow into the person she becomes- valiant, brave, and strong as well as beautiful - I was taken aback that it would be so explicitly associated with the Devil. The text even seems to argue that the nurturing of Silence allows greater wrongs, such as King Evan's not allowing women to inherit, be redressed. Silence's story may end with her reversion to her Nature, but the story would not have existed had Nurture not taken precedence for a large part of Silence's life.

Morgan the Crone

I was happy to read in Heng's article that so many have been puzzled by Morgan le Fey's sudden and unexpected responsibility for the action of the romance of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. It is certainly a tricky interpretive mystery, one that leads to a lot of interesting questions about her intentions and her success that are, to allude to Heng's title, knotty.

One knot in particular that interests me, however, is that of Morgan's evident old age. When she is described, ever so briefly, her main characteristic is that of her great age, especially in contrast with the youthful and beautiful Lady. Since Arthurian legend tells us that Morgan is Arthur's half sister, and that he, in this poem, is barely out of his youth, her apparent age is something of a mystery.

It could be that her age is a disguise, meant to conceal her presence in the castle and her control over the plot. After all, Sir Gawain shows himself to be more likely to pay attention to the young ladies than his venerable elders. The lack of unveiling of that aspect of the disguise would seem to weaken this theory, however, especially given the "reveals" that occur in this tale and that of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell.

Another theory is that she is meant to contrast to Gawain's patron, the Virgin Mary, who is often depicted as youthful and maidenly, and Guenevere the young queen. Morgan could be meant to be the wicked old witch preying on young ladies, in the same way that the stepmother in Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell preyed on her youthful stepdaughter.

Whether either of these, or some unknown third option, was the intent of the author is obviously impossible to know, but in any case, her age lends yet another layer of mysterious on top of the already enigmatic Morgan.

Only the Lonely

One of the most surprising things to me about the great death of Beowulf is that he does not die alone. When, before preparing to confront the dragon, he states, "I would always go before him, / alone on the front line - and all of my life / I will wage war, while this sword endures" (lines 2497 - 2499), the poem seems to be setting up a parallel between being a great fighter, and fighting alone, which would lead one to assume often means dying alone.

In Beowulf's two other major fights, he is very much depicted as the lone warrior fighting against evil, while those around him sort of, kind of help out. When he kills Grendel, the other men of the hall, even the fighters he hand-picked to assist him, are prevented from helping because of their use of weapons. When he invades Grendel's mother's home, he does so by himself. The many battles that occupied the fifty years between his defeat of Grendel's mother and his confrontation with the dragon were no doubt filled with cooperative warfare, but we hear less about those, implying that the heroics that are worth writing about are those in which one man takes on many monsters.

Compounding our image of Beowulf the lonely is the fact that we never hear about him marrying or having children, something that I would think was odd for the leader of a people, who would in other circumstances would feel compelled to produce a son to carry on his leadership. Instead, he is a man only of war, with no need for a "peaceweaver" wife, or sons to continue his reign.

This is not to say that Beowulf is outside of society in any way - he is not Grendel. Beowulf is both within the hall society and a little above it. He participates in the celebrations and exchanges of property that come along with being a good fighter, and he is seen as a loyal thane, but he is dedicated to fighting and defending his people, which seems to set him a little apart from others.

Yet Beowulf the solitary is given company at his death in the form of the loyal Wiglaf, who not only helps him to defeat the dragon (doing most of the heavy lifting himself), but comforts him and stays with him. Wiglaf is acting as a surrogate son in ensuring that Beowulf is honored, and he is also acting as a kind of surrogate "reader" of Beowulf's life by ensuring this his last words are heard. Perhaps lone warriors are not truly alone as long as we hear of their good deeds.

Grendel and Technology

Along the lines of Aia's and Megan's posts, I have been thinking about what Grendel might have represented to the original audience of Beowulf. Clearly, as Liuzza says, he is a terrifying combination of pagan and Christian threats, an amorphous boogie-man that is all the more frightening for being undefined. Still, the aspect that most fascinates me about Grendel is that weapons have no power over him because "he had worked a curse on weapons / every sort of blade" (ln 804-805). Could it be that he represents a past that is not only pagan, but also pre-technology? He can be seen not only as a destroyer and consumer of men, but also the embodiment of the fear that the things that man has created to make him safe are of no use against true evil.

We can see this first with the ease with which Grendel penetrates the hall, which is depicted as beautiful and towering, something that "the sons of men should remember forever" (ln 70). The pride of the Danish people, filled with its lords and warriors, as well as poets and musicians (all the best representatives of the current culture, in other words) becomes a target for Grendel's rage and then the site of frequent massacres. The Geats, with their beautiful, well-made and frightening armor and weaponry, are in fact no better equipped to meet Grendel than their counterparts. The look-out may be impressed by their showing, but the reader knows that all of their shields will not keep them safe against Grendel.

Only Beowulf's lucky decision to meet the demon without a sword - something that he amusingly seems to consider a way to keep things fair ("I will not kill him with a sword, / put an end to his life, though I easily might; / he knows no arts of war, no way to strike back" ln679-681) - leads to the defeat of the monster. In other words, only by regressing back to an earlier form of combat is Beowulf able to survive and kill Grendel. The people end up being saved, not by superior weapons, but by a very firm grip. This seems to me to suggest that there was an anxiety about the technology of the time - the swords, chain mail, and shields- and a fear that there might exist something in the world that could not be stopped by such civilized defenses.

Would Roland have understood a pluralistic world?

While reading our secondary text for this week, I found myself wondering if it would have mattered to the medieval European Christians if they had truly understood the faith of their Muslim enemies. In the eyes of a Crusader, does it truly make a difference if the opposing forces are pagan or monotheistic?

In a society that sees itself as the rightful descendants of martyrs and apostles preparing for the end of the world and the world-wide reign of Christianity, their enemies will automatically and necessarily be defined not what they are, but what they are not. Since they are not Christians, regardless of the particulars of their religious practice, they are, to Roland and his comrades, the evil Other and to be treated as such. This is not an epic that allows for a range of acceptable belief systems, but rather a story that traffics purely in good/bad, us/them, light/dark, Christian/Saracen binaries. While it is interesting and illuminating to see how the categories of Muslim and pagan were repeatedly blended, I wonder if the author of The Song of Roland wouldn't consider it besides the points.

(Obviously, it is a given that the Muslims of this time period - as well as our own- would probably prefer not to be conflated with pagans, sorcerers and the Antichrist, but they are not given much of a choice in this text.)

Locking your wife in a tower...

is apparently less effective than you might think.

I was struck in my reading by the two instances of beautiful young wives being stowed away from society by their husbands so they would not be seen by other men who would seduce them. In both Guigemar and Yonec, the initial captivity of the women is seen as an inevitable byproduct of their unhappy marriages: the lord in Guigemar is old, and “all old men are jealous and hate to be cuckolded” (46), while the rich old man in Yonec locks his lady in a tower to “watch over her” (86). Both women are given limited female companionship and some access to religion in their prisons, but little else. Their beauty and sexuality, though attractive, is also threatening to their husbands, who believe they must physically contain it in order to control their households.

Given the social conventions and views of female sexuality at the time, I expected the men who safeguarded their wives’ chastity and Christianity to be seen as the heroes, the non-monstrous figures. Instead, Marie de France seems to ask us to sympathize with these women and their lovers, despite their association with the supernatural, either through ever-bleeding wounds and prophecies, or transforming into birds. The lover in Yonec is even implicitly granted to the woman in response to her prayer, implying that their affair, though technically adultery, is sanctioned by God. The lines between the monstrous and the divine in both these tales seem decidedly blurry.

One final note: both of these women end up escaping their imprisonment shockingly easily. Why did the woman in Yonec not jump out the window earlier in her seven year captivity? Sure, it was a high jump, but she does it so easily when motivated. Is seems the sexual female is not only easily (though understandably, seduced, even within captivity, but also impossible to truly contain, tower, or no tower.