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The centrality of the peripheral: Illuminating borders and the topography of space in medieval narrative and art, 1066-1400

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The centrality of the peripheral: Illuminating borders and the topography of space in medieval narrative and art, 1066-1400

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Content THE CENTRALITY OF THE PERIPHERAL: ILLUMINATING BORDERS
AND THE TOPOGRAPHY OF SPACE IN MEDIEVAL NARRATIVE
AND ART, 1066-1400
by
Daniel Paul Terkla
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(Comparative Literature)
August 1992
Copyright 1992 Daniel Paul Terkla
UMI Number: DP22560
All rights reserved
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This dissertation, written by
.........................................
under the direction of hi.s. Dissertation
Committee, and approved by all its members,
has been presented to and accepted by The
Graduate School, in partial fulfillment of re
quirements for the degree of
DO CTO R OF PHILO SO PHY
Dean of Graduate Studies
Date
June 9 , 1992
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
Chairperson
J..9 .S . e p . f r . A , . . . t o n . e
It is that strange disquietude of the Gothic spirit that is its
greatness; that restlessness of the dreaming mind, that wanders
hither and thither among the niches, and flickers feverishly around
the pinnacles, and frets and fades in labyrinthine knots and
shadows along wall and roof, and yet is not satisfied, nor shall be
satisfied. .. . [I]t can neither rest in, nor from, its labour, but must
pass on, sleeplessly, until its love of change shall be pacified for
ever in the change that must come alike on them that wake and
them that sleep. (John Ruskin, “ The Nature of Gothic” 99)
For My Mother and Father-lately known as Gramps
With Love and Sincere Appreciation
Acknowledgments
There is a very large number of people without whose help this long
term study would never have come to fruition: first and foremost is Joseph
A. Dane, whose irrepressible intellectual pugnacity kept me not only
writing but thinking--and, more important, smiling-through some rather
| tough times these past two years. I am grateful to him and to Anthony
| Kemp for their willingness to read, comment upon and discuss my work, as
i
well as for their always useful professional advice-useful even when I
; chose to ignore it. Additionally, I would like to thank Anthony Kemp for
j
| suggesting that I look at “ the maopamundi.” to which I remember replying,
i
: “What maopamundi?” At the time his suggestion seemed little more than
i
i
| an off-the-cuff remark; only now do I realize its importance, insight and
i
! wide-ranging applicability. Thanks go also to Nancy J. Vickers for reading
i
the rough draft of this study and for her comments. I would also like to
make known my gratitude to those who were perhaps less directly, but no
less importantly, involved in this work: Vincent Farenga for his advice,
j unflagging confidence and moral support; Peter Manning for the same, for
proving that there is excellence in university teaching and for hours taken
out of a perennially busy schedule, hours which I always found extremely
beneficial; and to Phillip Ashlock, whose good-naturedly irascible
j temperament, endless searching and willingness to forgive a multitude of
j circulatory sins made five years in Doheny bearable.
V
Since this was something of an international effort, those overseas who
contributed must be recognized and thanked: in Oxford, Elspeth Kennedy
for guiding a sometimes too-stubborn visitor through Chretien’s magical
world, to say nothing of Bucklebury’s; Roger Pensom for countless hours
of some of the most stimulating, patient and nourishing conversation that
this “ exotic alien” can recall; Robert MacNamee for sharing his car, his
insights and his abiding interest in medieval country churches,
cartography and Roman Britain; Miss Maureen Pemberton for leading me
through the Bodleian Library’s at times overwhelming collection of photo
reproductions and for leaving me free to browse at length. And, finally,
Peter Whitfield of Wychwood Editions deserves the thanks of everyone
interested in maps and map-making for continuing to make quality
reproductions of early maps available.
In London Francis Herbert of The Royal Geographical Society merits
special thanks for reading very early drafts of this study, for putting me in
contact with a number of very helpful scholars and for essentially giving
me the run of his Society’s map and printed book holdings. Without his
associate Janet Turner’s help and patience I would have gotten much less
out of the Society’s wide array of material. In Hereford Meryl Jancey and
Mrs. Williams in the Cathedral Archives were most helpful in pointing out
relevant items and in dispelling some of my misconceptions about the
Hereford Maooa Mundi.
vi
Scholarship works best and is most enjoyable when it functions
communally, when those in the academy participate in our endeavors; but
without the additional support of close friends, few of us could sustain what
ultimately becomes a solitary journey. My sincerest thanks, then, to friends
and loved ones who made this possible: to Kathi Terkla, most of all, for
twenty years of sacrifice, encouragement and understanding; to Cecelia
Des Brisay, who long ago pushed me out indecision’s selva oscura and
continued to provide much needed inspiration and suggestions in this
work’s final stages; to Paul Toth, cartographical confidant and
astrophysical advisor--and to Dolores Toth for allowing him out; to
Geoffrey Brackett, Richard Allcorn--Good King of us all--and Jenny Putin,
who have provided, and hopefully will continue to provide, the best
friendship has to give, both spiritual and physical. Pure Genius. To
Stacey Shimizu, who patiently suffered through endless but all too brief
commutes, countless days and nights of scribbled napkins and bad coffee
(or not), to Stacey who has heard more versions of this study than anyone
and who came late to my life but whose presence is none the less vital for
that. And lastly, to Helen and Dan Terkla, without whose unceasing love,
confidence and decades of support none of this could have happened: to
them I dedicate this study.
Table of Contents
Introduction
I
Chapter One
The Hereford Maopa Mundi: Spatial Considerations
and Programs of Salvation
Appendix A: Map Plates
| Notes
I
i
\
I Chapter Two
i
; Cut on the Norman Bias: Fabulous Borders and
Visual Glosses on the Bayeux Tapestry
1
i Excursus One: Design and Provenance
I
! Excursus Two: The Tapestry’s Public History
Excursus Three: Border Transgressions and Oddities
Notes
Chapter Three
i
! Peripheral Centers: Narrative Space and the Significance
: of Place in Chretien’s Yvain /Lancelot
t
; Notes
15
57
62
69
127
138
140
150
168
222
VIII
Chapter Four
Dal cerchio al centro e dal centro al cerchio:
Salvific Gyrations in Dante’s Commedia
Notes
Chapter Five
“I wolde fayne knowe hou ye understonde thilke text,
and what is your sentence”: Matters “ Textuel,” Spatial
and Ordinal in the “ Canterbury Tales”
Appendix B: Ordering Schemes
Notes
231
300
311
397
402
Bibliography 425
1
Introduction
Chaos and order, unimaginable variety, inexpressible desire expressed
insufficiently at great length, compelling curiosity coupled with fear of the
unknown, violent encounters and soaring delights, irrationality at odds
with reason, firmly held faith and lingering superstitions: in short, the
medieval world and works explored here are characterized on a grand
scale by a stunning multiplicity of images and beliefs. The period from
1066 to 1400 was one of restless invention and creation, in both the
intellectual and physical senses, one of encyclopedic summae. massive
literary and theological volumes, crusades, pilgrimages and travel-an age
of burgeoning exploration that combined classical, pagan knowledge with
Christian Scholasticism.
More important for this study, which explores the creation of aesthetic
| structures and the ordering of narrative space, this world is typified in the
i
j visual and literary arts by the artist’s drive to order local and universal
| knowledge as well as terrestrial experiences and celestial expectations
through representation, collection and categorization. During this latter
part of the Middle Ages thinkers walked the epistemological path of self-
! discovery, and artists created fantastical fictional spaces through which
their characters, readers and viewers travelled the path of self-realization
via encounters with the Other. These peripatetic personnaaes journeyed
on a seemingly endless variety of quests, voyages and expeditions, much
2
like the church-pew pilgrim’s optical travels round large syncretic
maopaemundi or the vicarious conqueror who followed the Bayeux
Tapestry’s moralized historical narrative.
This study explores five very different representations of such narrative
space and the ways in which these idiosyncratic constructions themselves
help us twentieth-century readers and viewers to understand them and, by
extension, their larger medieval aesthetic context. These bustling, ever-
moving works of art engender in their modern audience a certain unease,
an anxiety born of unfamiliarity with this context and the inevitable clash
! between it and our modern conceptions of literal and fictional time and
| space. The itineraries followed by viewers of artworks and maps, readers
i
i
or fictional characters were rarely linear; indeed, they were often elliptical,
diversionary and usually literally unmappable. This seeming aimlessness
has long bothered the modern reader or viewer; and, because of this, all of
my study texts have been characterized as formally nonsensical at some
time. This study confronts this alterity and aims to relieve some of this post-
i
I Enlightenment anxiety by charting paths through these texts and their
i
! worlds of wonder, holistic paths which follow and integrate inherent
l
| narrative signposts, in-built geometrical and geographical structures which
; are provided to guide us along the hermeneutical path to epistemological
; recovery.
In the first four chapters I propose new ways of reading both visual and
narrative medieval texts: The Hereford Maooa Mundi (c. 1300), The Bayeux
Tapestry (c.1080), Chretien de Troves’ Yvain and Lancelot (c.1180) and
Dante Alighieri’s Commedia (c. 1314-21). I begin with the assumption that
there is narrative unity in what the modern reader or viewer sees at first as
one text’s daunting inclusivity or another’s apparent disunity, two elements
often construed as the dominant characteristics of these and other
medieval texts. By uncovering and implementing these unifying structures
by using them as the bases my interpretive schemata. I simultaneously
acknowledge each text’s multiplicity and demystify its alterity. I do this by
employing a spatial approach, by which I mean that I examine each text
from the perspective of its inherent geographical and/or geometrical
arrangement. This approach allows for the description, examination and
j utilization of the interaction, the dialogue and/or tension between each
I work’s center-be it literal or figurative-and its liminal areas: in chapter one
i
| the conflict contained within the Hereford Mappa Mundi is between
i
j Jerusalem, the potent center of Christian truth, and the infinitely more
i
j seductive border areas which function as centers of attention, pulling the
i
viewer’s gaze and attention away from the civitas terrenae: in chapter two
the glossal interaction between the Bayeux Tapestry’s central and border
i panels is delineated and engaged by way of demonstrating the designer’s
i
| Norman bias; chapter three on Chretien’s romances foregrounds the
4
tension between Arthur’s court, the virtually impotent conventional center
of chivalric romance, and this world’s peripheral loci, the narratives’ actual
centers of signification; in the fourth chapter on Dante’s Commedia I
elaborate on the harmony of his complex Aristotelian planispherical
system-with its potent centers and transgressed circumferences--and its
utter compatibility with the pilgrim’s journey from the selva oscura to the
Godhead.
The fifth and final chapter is decidedly different; indeed, at first it seems
to argue against precisely the medieval drive to order, the need for spatial
structuring, which I find in the other texts and which I suggest characterizes
this aspect of medieval thought. I depart from this argumentative tack in my
discussion of Chaucer’s text simply because it is incomplete and, thus,
unresponsive to the kind of holistic approach taken in these other chapters.
Instead of attempting to recreate Chaucer’s conception of space and
illustrate its deployment throughout the “Canterbury Tales,” I show how
editors of this problematical, fragmentary work have tried to understand it
be ordering the Fragments. I demonstrate that what I call the
cartographical fallacy underlies the work’s textual tradition and these
efforts to recreate Chaucer’s “ bookspace,” his authorial-and therefore
authoritative--text. I show how editors since Thomas Tyrwhitt in the
eighteenth century have (mis)construed and (re)constructed this fictional
space by ordering the manuscript Fragments on the basis of real-world
mapping and Romantic idea(l)s of poetry and organicism.
While this modern search for organic unity seems to fit quite well with
the medieval school of thought for which I argue in the first four chapters, it
i
is untenable in Chaucer’s case largely because of the way the two poles in
the history of ideas are connected. In the stream of the textual-critical
tradition that I investigate here, we see that Chaucer’s texts are not
arranged, re-unified, according to internal evidence, but by constant and
persistent reference to extratextual support, i.e., to the “cartographical
i
j fallacy.” This drive to recreate the medieval conception of spatial
I organization is unnecessary. Chaucer himself provides us with a mode of
travel through his work in the “Prologue to the Miller’s Tale," when he
suggests that if we do not like or approve of a particular tale, we are free to
turn the page and choose another story. In other words, as with the
Hereford Maopa Mundi. there is no need to impose any sort of linear
ordinal reading schema, especially one based upon modern, real-world
conceptions of time and/or space, upon Chaucer’s multiplicitous medieval
i
narrative. Aside from obvious inter-Fragmental links, the “ Tales” can be
read in any order, with tales omitted or included-as the reader wishes.
Nonetheless, in the “Retraction” Chaucer reminds us, as does the word
MORS (death) that bounds the Hereford map, that we choose our fictional
6
itinerary through his world at our peril, and that salvation-not momentary
delightful distraction--is to be our ultimate goal.
The implementation of this methodology allows for a number of things: it
enables a discussion of each text on its own terms, since in each chapter
the schema largely arises sui generis, from the text itself, and not as the
product of a priori conceptual theories about medieval spatio-temporal
! conceptions. This perceptual gap, widened by the insistence on viewing
i
i
, medieval texts through a modern critical optic, is what has produced our
| unease with them. Second, my approach permits generalizations
i
j regarding these and other medieval texts. For, while each author or
i
designer under investigation here deployed a narrative-specific scheme of
spatial organization, the scope of my study-the wide chronological period
and the variety of texts-is broad enough that I can say that when viewed
holistically these texts present us with a context that is representative of the
way medieval artists construed space as well as humankind’s relation to
and movement through it. Clearly, each one saw the world as a fiercely
i
i vital place in which space-both geographical and topographical-was
1 plastic and deformable according to narrative needs, a place where time
i
j and history were at once synchronic and diachronic. This orderly disorder,
i
which is so representative of the medieval understanding of the connection
between time and space, is evident in each artist’s drive both to represent
7
and to control the chaotic world figured in each text, to unify through art the
perceived disunity forming the matiere of the world during this period.
And so, this particular group of texts was chosen precisely because of
their seeming organizational dissimilarities, relative to one another, that is,
since each represents narrative space and the passage through it in a
different way. In arranging the analytical space of this study I have been
inspired by these differences, by the way these and other medieval texts
bound or seek to control apparently disparate elements, with each text at
times packed with unruly images that seem barely contained, much like the
Hereford map’s circular border or the Tapestry’s parallel ones. The
i
j theoretical framework of this study, then, functions as a sort of unifying
force which encompasses but neither suppresses nor inhibits narrative
movement and play. In fact, by embracing and utilizing the multiplicity
inherent in each of the text’s worlds and by bounding them under the
I theoretical rubric of spatial organization, a broader understanding of the
i.
j medieval conception of the order underlying the perceived metaphysical
i
chaos emerges.
In addition to its immediate usefulness, this study demonstrates my
j methodology’s hermeneutical ramifications for a wide range of medieval
i
literary, visual and plastic works of art, as well as for those which combine
various these modes of expression: for example, it is applicable to
manuscripts and their glosses and illuminations; Romanesque and Gothic
8
church architecture, which nearly explodes in a cacophony of signification
because of the plethora of media they incorporate to convey their salvific
message; romance narrative and its relation to, say, medieval cartography;
medieval cartography in relation to painting and architecture and, finally,
early mapmaking itself with its initially bewildering combination of word
and image.
These creations must be encountered on their own terms-medieval
! terms-and not referenced to modern conceptions of art’s spatio-temporal
unity and its relation to quotidian existence. We must learn to recognize
our reluctance to forego such anachronistic applications of conceptions of
time and space. By travelling the hermeneutic road in this direction-
starting with the texts themselves, embracing their alterity and making use
i
; of it, working toward theories of cognitive recovery instead of the reverse-
i
i one of the long-standing obstructions between medieval art and the
!
! modern reader/viewer can be rolled from the path leading toward a useful
medieval aesthetic. Medieval art’s seeming strangeness can and must be
recognized as its greatest asset and not seen as an insurmountable
liability.
i
i
i
i
Chapter Epitomes
In chapter one, "The Hereford Mappa Mundi: Spatial Considerations
i
and Programs of Salvation," I discuss medieval mappaemundi. Gothic
ecclesiastical architecture-specifically the Last Judgment figured on the
tympanum of the Eglise Ste.- Foy at Conques--and Giotto's Arena Chapel
frescoes to advance an interpretive schema for the Hereford world map,
one which considers our desire to encounter the Other, the human
fascination with journeys to the unknown or the unexperienced and its role
in experiencing the map. I combine an examination of this drive to
i
| peregrination with the map's salvific teleology and demonstrate that the
designer of this seemingly aporetic text capitalized upon this desire by
providing his viewers with an infinite number of visual itineraries, all of
which lead back to Jerusalem, to the map’s literal center and the civitas
terrenae. through the crucifixion pictograph to the Earthly Paradise and
j straight to the Last Judgment and civitas Dei. In this unique synchronic,
i
| syncretic text, the centrality of Jerusalem is crucial; indeed, it is what-from
a Catholic perspective-imparts order to the surrounding chaos and a
sense of reassurance to the faithful.
"The Bayeux Tapestry: Fabulous Borders and Visual Glosses," which
follows, details my spatially-based scheme which unites the embroidery's
three parallel panels into a coherent interpretive program. I focus
i
| simultaneously on the representations of deliberately-chosen scenes from
Aesopic fables and the Norman chevrons stitched into the lower and upper
border panels to demonstrate how they gloss crucial episodes pictured in
the main panel’s historical narrative. This integral approach enables
10
explanations of long-standing anomalies such as the seeming temporal
disjunctures in a number of primary scenes and the function of certain
seemingly inexplicable border images. Unlike previous studies of the
Tapestry, this reading privileges these border images over those in the
main panel to illustrate how its designer's decidedly Norman bias is made
manifest by using these fabulous images to enhance and moralize the
main panel's historical events.
p
i
In chapter three, “Peripheral Centers: Narrative Space and the
Significance of Place in Chretien’s Yvain/Lancelot.” I argue that the plots of
Chretien de Troves’ Yvain and Lancelot revolve around the empty center
of Arthur’s court and that they depend upon the deficiencies that
characterize its heroic knights, Yvain and Lancelot, for their drive. I discuss
what I call “narrative mapping” to show how the simultaneously composed
Yvain and Lancelot can be lain gridlike atop one another to produce a
combinatory text that I refer to as the Yvain/Lancelot. At the center of this
narrative structure lie Gauvain’s three intertextual instances of absent
j presence. His absences from each text pull Yvain and Lancelot away from
court and toward the potent periphery of the Arthurian world, allowing both
Yvain and Lancelot to (im)prove themselves by filling in for him. These
hero-specific, spatio-temporal convergences can occur only on the
margins of the romances’ fictional geography, where they become the
potent, central lod of signification. A kind of locational dialectic is thus
11
engendered, and tension is created between the romances’ conventional
center, Arthur’s court, and events on its geographical periphery. These
events highlight the ineffectuality of Arthur as king and the problematic
nature of the conventions that his court represents. This compositional
narrative system therefore functions inversely to the Hereford Maopa
I Mundi’s. There, the peripheral, while perhaps the most immediately
; intriguing aspect of the map’s picto-textual topography, is shown to be the
i
j least ultimately significant and the geo-sacral center to be of supreme
importance.
In chapter three’s second section I examine Lancelot on its own and the
ways that Meleagant’s sister functions intratextuallv. much as Gauvain
functions intertextuallv in the Yvain/Lancelot. Her appearances at hero-
specific moments, far from Arthur’s court on the geographical periphery,
pull together the tale’s main themes, focus them on Lancelot and further
the dialectical topos which pervades and moves the romance. These
moments of geo-peripheral psvchomachia retard both Lancelot’s progress
! through the narrative as well as the reader’s, centering his attention and
j the reader’s on the particular issues to hand. I then discuss the pledges
i
that Meleagant’s sister and Lancelot make to each other in the context of
their encounters. The ambiguity of their vows, including that of the word
amis, problematizes traditional readings of Lancelot as the premier roman
courtois. and of Lancelot as the constant epitome of the romance fin amant.
12
“Dal cerchio al centro e dal centro al cerchio: Salvific Gyrations in
Dante's Commedia” is chapter four. There I work off the image of the gyre
and the pilgrim's spiral movement through Dante's tripartite eschatological
space. The gyre, combining as it does the perfect circular-if non-
progressive-form with direct linear progression, is the ideal geometrical
image with which to represent transcendent movement through the
Commedia's three- and four-dimensional cosmology. I link this notion of
gyrational ascent to the Aristotelian idea of spiral celestial movement
propounded in his De caelo--and expounded by Dante in the Convivio and
the Quaestio de aqua et terra-to show not only that the pilgrim's mode of
ascent is in harmony with the movement of the spheres but that it is the
ideal motion for enabling him to transgress all of the fifty boundaries that
his poetic alter ego creates. This transgressive movement and resultant
alienation from life terrestrial allows the pilgrim to pass naturally through
one of Augustine's three levels of “ vision” in each cantica: the visio
corporalis. the visio spiritual is and the visio intellectual is. until in Paradiso
he attains his goal-total static immersion in and cognition of the visio Dei.
This final vision occurs, not at the center of its circle, but out upon its
; circumference, the ultimate and all-embracing metaphysical boundary.
In my fifth chapter, “’I wolde fayne knowe hou ye understonde thiike text,
i
; and what is youre sentence’: Matters Textueel,”’ Spatial and Ordinal in the
i
\
“Canterbury Tales,” I argue that what we call the Canterbury Tales is not a
13
unified text but the product of myriad editors and scribes, stretching from
the present back past Caxton’s first edition of c.1478 to the early fifteenth-
century Hengwrt manuscript and its near contemporary, the Ellesmere.
Critics who discuss the Canterbury Tales-as-book or the ordering of the
eighty-seven fragments in an attempt to (re)create Chaucer’s text,
subscribe to an intentional fallacy of a rather misleading kind: they often
i
|
! seek, in the name of providing the reader with Chaucer’s text or an
i
; approximation thereof, to cobble together a unified version of the “ Tales,”
i
something which never existed and which does not now exist. To believe
that this can be done, to refuse to acknowledge the slippery slope upon
which the textual tradition of the “Tales” is founded, is to privilege the roles
of modern critic and textual criticism over the medieval author.
I demonstrate how this approach, this need for unified wholeness is the
product of eighteenth-century German and nineteenth-century English
organicist aesthetics and how it has led to a series of confusing textual-
critical policies. I set editions of the “ Tales” in the context of this
organicism, examine the idea of fictional pilgrimage against the backdrop
of medieval cartography and show how the editorial schemata in some of
!
! the major editions of the past two hundred years-those of Tyrwhitt,
Furnivall, Skeat, Manly-Rickert, Robert Pratt and the Riverside Chaucer-
are products of this literary/cultural predilection, of the intentional and
cartographical fallacies.
14
My theories all begin with the assumption that there are varying degrees
of inherent narrative interconnectedness, varying degrees of organicism-
to use a somewhat outmoded notion--in all five of my chosen narratives
and that this can be recovered to some extent. By considering them
spatially, I illustrate how some order can be brought to these vibrant
narratives or how~in the case of Chaucer’s work-the chaos cannot be
wholly ordered but can be used to produce editions that are truer to the
manuscript tradition. This is not to say that the Hereford mappamundi. the
Bayeux Tapestry, Chretien’s romances or Dante’s Commedia are perfectly
ordered constructions--far from it. Each generates no end of problematical
issues, enough to keep the scholarly community going for years to come. It
is to say, however, that there are recoverable structures within each text
that can help the reader get through on certain levels, to enable one to
reach either a higher degree of textual- or self-understanding. By
confronting the alterity of medieval art and by coming to terms with it in
some fashion, we are set in dialogue with the alterity within each of us.
The ultimate goal of my study, then, is to provide a methodology via which
i
i
j this can transpire.
15
Chapter One
The Hereford Mapoa Mundi: Spatial
Considerations and Programs of Salvation
16
“Art,” said Picasso, “is a lie which makes us realize the truth.
So is a map. We don’t usually associate the precise craft of the
cartographer with the fanciful realm of art. Yet a map has many
ingredients of painting or a poem. It is truth compressed in a
symbolic way, holding meanings it does not express on the
surface. And like any work of art, it requires imaginative reading.”
(Muehrcke 19)
The Hereford Mapoa Mundi. the medieval world map which has
hung, since its creation nearly 700 years ago, in the English cathedral
from which it takes its name, presents us with no less than a summa. a
visual compendium, of all knowledge and belief from classical antiquity up
to the early fourteenth century. Peter Barber has described it as, “a
visualisation of all branches of knowledge in a Christian framework” (2). It
is now the largest and most comprehensive extant medieval world map;
as such, it provides us with a unique opportunity to examine any number
i
| of historical, literary, theological, geographical and artistic issues. 1 Among
the map’s definite sources we can include:
Herodotus’ History (ca. 489-425B.C.), Ctesias of Cnidos (fl.398
B.C.), Alexander the Great’s invasion of India in 326 B.C.;
Megasthenes (ca.303 B.C.), Strabo’s Geography (64/63B.C-21
A.D.), Pomponius Mela’s Choroaraohia (37-42 A.D.), the Elder
Pliny’s (23/34-79 A.D.) Historia Naturalis. the Antonine Itinerary
(3c. A.D.), Solinus’ Collectanea Rerum Memorabilium (3c. A.D.),
the Bible, St. Jerome (340-420), St. Augustine (354-430),
Martianus Capella’s (fl. 410-39) Marriage of Philology and
Mercury. Macrobius’ (395-436) commentary on Cicero’s
Somnium Scipionis. Isidore of Seville’s (560-636)
Etvmolooiarium and De natura rerum and Paulus Orosius’
Historia adversum paoanos (5c.). (Harley 300)2
17
The inhabited northern hemisphere pictured on the map is organized
under the conventions of a medieval cosmography dominated by
Christian theology. It pictures a world view at once unified yet chaotic,
secular yet spiritual, one that embraces a plethora of images-both pagan
and Christian--to produce a compositional complexity which still
fascinates its viewers so many years after its creation.
I This chapter examines the Hereford Mappa Mundi’s religious program
i
' and some of the ways that its author, Richard of Haldingham, attempted to
present his age with a liberal Catholic vision of metaphysical and political
unity, of worlds terrestrial and celestial linked via the cartographical
manifestation of the Earthly Paradise. To this end, I first situate the map
within its historical context by discussing its authorship, sources and
cartographical provenance. Next, I have outlined for the reader a
necessarily idiosyncratic tour of the map’s medieval world. The reader’s
participation in such an elliptical visual “pilgrimage” achieves two things:
! first it familiarizes one generally with the map and its elements; and,
second, it lays the foundation for my theories on reading the map and
other similar visual compositions. My primary goal in this chapter is to
propose a system for reading this medieval mappamundi and others like
it, a scheme which will allow it to be read comparatively within the contexts
i
| of the medieval visual, plastic and literary arts.3 It is my ultimate intention
t
to elevate the study of this and similar cosmographic texts to an analytical
18
sphere beyond the condescendingly descriptive which, until very recently,
is where discussion of these potent artifacts has stagnated. Indeed, it will
become apparent that we can no longer say, along with Charles Raymond
Beazley, that “’the non-scientific maps of the later Middle Ages . . . are of
such complete futility . . . that a bare allusion to the monstrosities of
Hereford and Ebstorf should suffice’” (Harley 288), or with Malcolm Letts
i
i that, “’Unlike other medieval maps, [the Hereford map] is not an exercise
j
i
in cartography but a picture book’” (Crone, Maos 8).
I
History, Church and Public
i
i
I Considering its history and strategic geographical placement, it is not
j
| surprising that Hereford’s Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin and St.
Aethelberht is the site of a monumentally important logocentric work like
Richard’s mappamundi. Hereford is situated near the Welsh Marches, that
j long-volatile border area between Wales and England. The earldoms of
i
I Hereford, Shrewsbury and Chester-later to be the site of the Chester
! Mystery Plays-were established shortly after the 1066 Norman Conquest
i
of England as military outposts, and ever since the area has since been
indissoluably identified with its string of Norman castles running nearly the
j length of the frontier. Not only was Hereford a royal demesne, a feudal
19
holding, but it “ was reckoned second only to Canterbury as a pilgrimage
centre” (Farmer 137) and was empowered to exact ecclesiastical fees
from its residents beginning in the year 1086. Richard Dales points out
that the church school was known for its excellence in the field of natural
sciences (158) and characterizes it as one of the “major European
schools,” along with “Monte Cassino, Salerno, Bologna, Pavia, Modena,
Reggio, Freising, Bremen, Cologne, Erfurt, Vienna, St. Gall, Montpellier,
Lyons, Orleans, Tours, Le Mans, Paris, Chartres, Reims, Bee, Oxford, and
Lincoln” (146). In addition to its academic renown and thriving wool trade,
the town had both a provincial mint and, from around 1215, the grant of an
| exclusive merchant guild. After Edward I invaded Wales and subjugated
! its people in the thirteenth century, Hereford was deprived of its military
importance until the seventeenth century and the English Civil War, during
i
j which it switched sides a number of times.
i
The Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin and St. Aethelberht has an
even longer history than the town, dating as it does from the early ninth
century, when the wooden structure was replaced by “Milfrith, a Mercian
nobleman,” who had probably heard of the miracles worked at the tomb of
St. Aethelberht, “ the youthful king of the East Saxons” (Phillott, Diocesan
14). Construction of what was to become the present church was
undertaken “by Bishop Athelstane, who held the see from 1013 to 1056”
(Phillott, Diocesan 14). After being burned by the resurgent Welsh, the
20
cathedral was begun again in 1079 and finished by 1148. In 1786 the
western tower collapsed, taking with it the west front bay and the first bay
of the nave; restoration of this section of the church was not concluded
until 1908.
The Hereford Mappa Mundi hung on the north choir wall of this church
and probably did so--with the exception of a brief period in 1988-89--since
its completion around the year 1300.4 It now is on display in the former
cathedral crypt. Meryl Jancey, the cathedral’s Honorary Archivist, informs
us that it was first mentioned in 1682 by one Thomas Dingley, “who had
spent some time in Herefordshire examining its antiquities. Among his
descriptions of the monuments and memorials in the cathedral he
i
; mentions the presence of an old map on vellum, written by a monk” (1).
A.L. Moir provides us with more from Richard Gough, who wrote that “it
served antiently for an altar-piece in this church” (18). And much more
recently Richard Barber has provided us with still more information on the
map’s placement in Hereford Cathedral:
Until at least the beginning of the last century it was the
centrepiece of a triptych, with painted wings showing the
annunciation. This frame was probably contemporary and
suggests that within a few years of its creation, the map was
being used as an altar piece. (7)
This is all well and good, (indeed, the map’s function as altarpiece is
important for my interpretive program) but how has this fragile document
21
managed to survive “the stormy episodes of effigy-wrecking, natural
processes of deterioration and discoloration, and the ravages of war”?
(Moir 18) All of this remains something of a mystery, and there are various
theories as to why it has been preserved for these past 700 years, while so
many other treasures from the period have been lost or destroyed. Jancey
feels that the map’s longevity could be due to its function as altarpiece.
She too gives the above quote from Gough’s British mopoaraohv of 1780
as evidence, admitting, however, that, “This statement reads like hearsay
evidence, an orally transmitted tradition, but it would explain how the map
survived the later years of the middle ages and might have come to be
| reverenced and so hidden away for a time at the Reformation” (4). Gerald
i
R. Crone, formerly Map Curator and Librarian for the Royal Geographical
Society--and the person who has done the most work on the Hereford
map--has proffered a somewhat more definite suggestion: “[The Ebstorf
and Hereford maps] no doubt owed their survival to their preservation in
ecclesiastical libraries, while others of a similar type, less fortunately
| placed, were destroyed” (Memoir 17). And finally, Moir provides us with a
| more cloak-and-dagger sort of tale:
i
I During the civil war of the seventeenth century is is supposed to
1 have been concealed under the floor of the Audley chapel and in
' the second world war it was hidden in the wine-cellar at Hampton
j Court in Herefordshire and later buried in a coal-mine at Bradford-
i on-Avon. (18)
22
We may never know for sure why or how the Hereford map was preserved
all of these centuries; however, all of these suggestions attest to its
importance as a cultural and religious icon, its most important function for
this investigation.
There is less irresolution over the map’s author and date of
composition. It seems certain that its author was Richard of Haldingham,
also known as Ricardus de Bello, as the Norman French inscription in the
lower left hand corner indicates:
Tuz ki cest estoire ont
Ou oyront ou lirront ou veront
Prient a Jhesu en deyte
De Richard de Haldingham e de Lafford eyt pite
Ki lat fet e compasse
Ke ioie en cel li seit done.
(“Let all who have this history, / Or shall hear, or read or see it, /
Pray to Jesus in His Divinity, / To have pity on Richard of
Haldingham and Lafford / Who has made and planned it, / To
whom joy in Heaven may be granted. ”)5
On Richard’s career in the Church, Crone wrote:
A Ricardus de Bello was Prebend of Lafford in Lincoln Cathedral
from at least 1276 until 1283, having earlier been Treasurer from
a date between 1250 and 1260. Haldingham was part of the
parish of Lafford, the tithes of which formed the endowment of the
prebendary. Richard resigned this office in 1283, and it has
therefore generally been supposed that the map was drawn
before that date. This does not conflict seriously with the
paleographical evidence, which places the composition at the
end of the thirteenth century. . . . [His] connection with Hereford
Cathedral did not begin until 1305, when he was appointed
Prebend of Norton [in Hereford cathedral]. (Memoir 3)6
23
Largely on the basis of these inscriptions, diocesan records and on
paleographical evidence, cartographers unanimously accept Richard as
the author and are sure that he produced the map on his own sometime
around 1300. Francis Wormald concisely summarizes this consensus of
opinion:
. . . all the writing and the drawings on the map were done by one
scribe, and that it does not appear that any insertions were made
at a later date. The script, English thirteenth-century Gothic, is
characteristic of the very end of the century, so that
paleographically the map can be dated 1300 A.D., or a few years
before or after. (Crone, Memoir 4)
So, we have a date, an author and a place in which the map is
displayed. We now must consider its construction and what its functions
might have been. Medieval mappaemundi served many purposes, they
were widely distributed and their audiences’ abilities ranged the full gamut
of literacy. Larger maps like the one in Hereford contain not only
hundreds of illustrations-recognizabfe, conventional, medieval graphics--
that would appeal to the unlettered; but some, like this mapoamundi.
include a number of lengthy, explanatory Latin inscriptions. This narrative
component is one of the most intriguing aspects of the Hereford map and
was by no means unusual: “map features were often described with
rubrics or legends, some of which could be extremely long” (Harley 324-
25). In the fourteenth century, Fra Paolino Veneto endorsed such
24
extensive inscriptions wholeheartedly, acknowledging their practical
didactic nature:
I think that it is not just difficult but impossible without a world map
to make [oneself] an image of, or even for the mind to grasp, what
is said of the children and grandchildren of Noah and of the Four
Kingdoms and other nations and regions, both in divine and
human writings. There is needed moreover a twofold map,
[composed] of painting and writing. Nor wilt thou deem one
sufficient without the other, because painting without writing
indicates regions of nations unclearly, [and] writing without the
aid of painting truly does not mark the boundaries of the
provinces of a region in their various parts sufficiently [clearly] for
them to be descried almost at a glance. (Harley 287)
The Hereford Maooa Mundi exists in something of a state of aesthetic
indeterminacy. It is neither completely a written text, nor is it wholely
pictorial; although in the lesser-known geographical regions it looks more
like an illuminated manuscript than a cosmographic illumination with
explanatory rubrics.7
Mappaemundi were immensely popular and were found “in stained-
glass windows, frescoes, and floor mosaics, in reredos and tympana
decoration, as sculpture, and even carved in benches. Most commonly,
however, they are found in manuscript encyclopedias, Bibles, and
psalters” (Harley 324). Medieval interest in these maps was attributable to
the general medieval interest in “ the place of man in the terrestrial,
celestial, and spiritual worldsf, which] was a central concern for medieval
philosophers, and [in] such geographical issues as the nature, shape, and
25
size of the earth” (Harley 306). More particularly, though, these maps filled
‘ specific philosphical, didactic and inspirational roles. For example,
Richard’s borrowing from both Roman itineraries like the third-century
Antonine one and from later medieval itineraries like those of Matthew of
Paris provided potential pilgrims with rough directions to a variety of
shrines. His mappamundi has been described similarly by more than one
historian as “a repository of contemporary geographical information used
for planning pilgrimages and stimulating the intended traveler” (Harley
288). This, however, is but one half of the map’s function. True, it must
have served inspirationally to motivate “ folk” like Chaucer’s fictional
pilgrims to experience the physical world, “to goon pilrgimages, / And
palmeres for to seken straunge strondes, / To feme halwes, knowthe in
sondry londes” (“ General Prologue” 12-14)-even to ravelin mundane
wonders and pagan legends. But its greater related mission was to
reassure the faithful, to confirm that their chaotic world did have a center of
Truth, that their universe was firmly grounded in the Christian Logos,
however ineffable. It also served to remind its viewers that their mundane
world was temporary and that real life began only after death. The
Hereford Mappa Mundi presents these ideas visually-cartographically-to
show its actual and church-pew pilgrims that they must adhere ultimately
to the safvific path, that they must locate and pursue topographically, in
26
either the metaphorical or physical sense, that which should be spiritually
central in their lives.
II
Cartographical Context and Spatial Representation
During the Middle Ages there were four basic kinds of world maps, one
of which was the “ T-O” type (Harley 297, fig. 18.4). This is the category
into which the Hereford Mappa Mundi fits. These sorts of maps were
oriented to the east, sometimes with Jerusalem at the geometrical center,
and represented the three continents of Asia, Europe and Africa. As David
Woodward explains, the inhabited hemisphere--or oikoumene (Wright 18-
19)--was evenly partitioned:
. . . [by] three major waterways believed by medieval scholars to
divide the three parts of the earth: Tanais (the river Don) dividing
Europe and Asia; the Nile dividing Africa and Asia; and the
Mediterranean Sea dividing Europe and Africa. In most cases
the four cardinal directions are provided in Latin: Septentrio
(septemtriones-the seven plow-oxen from the stars of the Great
Bear or Little Bear); Meridies (for the position of the sun at
midday); Oriens (from the direction of the rising sun); and
Occidens (from the direction of the setting sun). (Harley 296)
The second type is the “ zonal” one (Harley 297, fig. 18 5); it is
“ characterized by orientation to the north or south and the representation
of latitudinal zones or [Greek] climata” (Harley 296). It also represents the
27
uninhabited central hot equatorial zone and cold uninhabited polar zones.
The third type is the quadripartite (Harley 297, fig. 18.6) and contains
characteristics of both types one and two, with a fourth continent in the
Southern Hemisphere, “either inhabited or uninhabited by the
Antipodeans” (Harley 297). The fourth and final category is the transitional
one (Harley 297, fig. 18.7). Mappaemundi of this classification “have as
their basis the configuration of the Mediterranean commonly found in
portolan [sea] charts and rely in some degree on contemporary
exploration, especially the Portuguese voyages to the Atlantic islands and
along the west coast of Africa” (Harley 299).
There were other types of maps in use during the later Middle Ages,
types to which the Hereford T-O map is related, either because it
incorporates information from them or because it stands as an earlier type
in the development of cartography. One of the most important for
purposes of this study is the itinerary map; because, as Gerald Crone has
demonstrated so convincingly for the Hereford map, “ pilgrimage goals
were often emphasized on mappaemundi. and the associated itineraries
provided the source for many of the place names” (Harley 330). In this
section I would briefly like to discuss this type of map and show its
connection to the mappaemundi. Proceeding in chronological order, then,
we begin with a twelfth- or thirteenth-century transcription of an itinerary
map (Harley pi.5), now called the Peutinger Taffel after Konrad Peutinger
28
“in whose hands it had been since 1507” (Harley 238). It is thought to be a
copy of an itinerarium pictum. or a picture itinerary map, dating from
between 335 and 366 A.D. David Woodward suggests:
[It was] primarily drawn to show main roads, totaling some 70,000
Roman miles, and to depict features such as staging posts, spas,
distances between stages, large rivers, and forests. It is not a
military map, though it could have been used for military
purposes. (Harley 238)
The next two illustrations (Harley pls.38 and 39) are of later English
itineraries done by the famous thirteenth-century cartographer, Matthew
Paris.8 The first of these is a very straightforward itinerary, indeed little
more than a “series of vertical strips showing the successive staging points
by tiny thumbnail sketches, some based on the places’ actual
appearance” (Harley 495). Next comes Matthew’s map of Great Britain,
which is basically an itinerary map with much added information and a
more topographically-mimetic outline. It has as its axis “ the route from
Newcastle upon Tyne to Dover, with some fifteen intermediate places,
among them Matthew Paris’ own monastery at St. Albans” (Harley 496).
The last illustration in this series is of the 1360 Gough map (Harley pi.40),
. . . a map of the whole of Britain, but instead of having a single
route as its basis it takes five main roads radiating from London,
with some branches and crossroads and , in Lincolnshire and
Yorkshire, some local roads too. [It] marks towns, rivers, and
coastlines beyond its basic routes as well as along them, and it
does this with a thoroughness and accuracy that far surpass the
achievement of Matthew Paris. (Harley 496)
29
Next to the mappaemundi: here again, as on the itinerary maps,
England seems to have played a major role; indeed, four of this group are
English world maps: the Vercelli, the Duchy of Cornwall fragment, the
Ebstorf and, of course, the Hereford Mappa Mundi.Q The first example is a
twelfth-century illustration from a manuscript of the Spanish Benedictine
Beatus of Valcovado’s 776 Commentary on the Apocalypse of St. John
(Bagrow pi. XVI). It represents a type often called “Mozarabic,” since it
shows the “Arabic influence in Spain, with bright, opaque colors and
arabesque illumination” (Harley 304). Also, it— like the Hereford map-is
oriented to the east; however, it is different in some ways from the Hereford
map, one being that these kinds often show “paradise enclosed in a
square vignette with the four rivers flowing from it” (Harley 304, my
emphasis). Richard’s map depicts the Earthly Paradise as ringed by a
circular wall of flames and set on a circular island in the Ocean River. Next
comes a twelfth-century psalter mappamundi (Bagrow pi. X V III), which
more closely resembles the Hereford T -0 type, although it is cruder and
much less detailed. Following this is the fragment of the twelfth-century
Duchy of Cornwall mappamundi (Harley pi. 14), so called because it was
found in the records of the Duchy of Cornwall. This remnant looks very
much like the Hereford map, with its line of marvelous beings in Ethiopia,
the Nile to their northeast (left) and its obviously circular shape. The next
example of a mappamundi is that of the Vercelli map (Harley 308, fig.
30
18.17), interesting in this context primarily because it is not centered on
Jerusalem, as were many mappaemundi. In fact, it seems to be centered
on nothing in particular. Next is the wonderful thirteenth-century Ebstorf
mappamundi (Appendix A, pi. 1). This T-O map, a near contemporary of
the Hereford Maopa Mundi. was the largest world map ever found,
measuring 3.58 by 3.56 meters (Harley 309). The most compelling aspect
of the Ebstorf map for purposes of this discussion is the positioning of
Christ, who is shown literally embracing the earth and all of its disparate
elements, the pagan, the Christian, the biblical and the fantastic. In
addition to the map’s obviously Catholic program, we can see that its
author had a more practical use in mind for his map, for he wrote on it: “’it
can be seen that [this work] is of no small utility to its readers, giving
directions for travelers, and the things on the way that most pleasantly
delight the eye’” (Harley 309). Chronologically following is the Hereford
map, which is almost half the size of the Ebstorf map (Appendix A, pi. 2),
measuring 1.65 by 1.35 meters. As we can see, it is constructed much like
its contemporary, with the conventional T-in-the-O format, Jerusalem at the
center and the Earthly Paradise at the head in the east.
Finally, we have two later world maps (Harley pis. 16 and 18), the first
from 1321 by Petrus Vesconte of Verona and the second from 1459 by the
Camaldulian monk, Fra Mauro. Both of these come closer to looking like
what we in the latter half of this millenium expect world maps to look like.
31
This is largely because these later mappaemundi took advantage of
advances in cartography, geographical exploration and the records of
Marco Polo’s travels (13-14c.). Such transitional maps are characterized
by “a convergence of three conceptual frameworks of world maps. . . : the
traditional, confined mappamundi. the expanding portolan [sea] chart, and
the Ptolemaic coordinate system” (Harley 314). They also indicate “ a
trend toward the reemergence of the map as an independent artifact rather
than as a mere addition to a text” (Harley 314).
Ill
The Hereford Mappa Mundi: Convention and Deformation
The Hereford Mappa Mundi certainly qualifies “as an independent
artifact,” and I now move to a closer examination of its main features
(Appendix A, pi. 2). Although it is not as large as the Ebstorf map was, at
64 by 54 inches it is by no means small, and it is now the single most
comprehensive and informative extant mappamundi. It is drawn on a
single calf skin, with the neck at the top--hence the odd shape. The great
majority of place names and legends are stiff legible; and, indeed, “the
brilliant colours and rich decoration have faded, but traces enough remain
to show that this must have been made in a well-found[ed] workshop. . .”
(Jancey 1). As I mentioned above, Richard followed medieval theological
32
and artistic conventions in orienting his map to the east. Thus, this and
other
mappaemundi. . . belong to a much wider family of spatial
representations and ideas found in architecture as well as in
cartography. Byzantine churches were often laid out with their
main doors facing east, and later in the Middle Ages, particularly
in northern Europe, the buildings were so oriented that the
congregation faced the altar in the east. A dome, representing
the heavens above the four directions of the earth, was often built
above the intersection of the transepts and nave. In this way the
building expressed the same symbolic spatial concepts as the
mappamundi. a microcosm of earth and heaven. (Harley 340)
The conventional round outline necessitated by the T-O category makes
some degree of deformation inevitable. As Gerald Crone noticed some
forty years ago, we see this in the northwest (lower left) corner of the map:
England and Wales are depicted as an elongated island, to
which Scotland is joined by a narrow isthmus. This shape was
probably imposed to some degree by the attempt to bring the
island into closer relationship with Europe, instead of leaving it
isolated in the outer ocean. This and the limitation imposed by
the circular frame have obliterated most of the coastal features,
particularly the change in direction between the southern and
eastern coasts. (Memoir 8)
Futher distortions in the relative positions of the cities shown in the Holy
Land occur because of the author’s centering of Jerusalem and because
he showed depiction of Palestine and the surrounding area on a larger
scale. These deformations accord with the medieval conception of
perspective in painting, where, for example, items of greater importance
were shown to be larger in size than others in the same picture. 1 o
33
There are a number of inscriptions on the map, both within and without
its circumference. Beginning in the upper left corner and extending round
the whole border is an inscription attributing a survey of the world to Julius
Caesar: “A Julio Cesare orbis terrarum metiri cepit. A Nicodoxo omnis
oriens dimensus est. A Policlito meridiana pars dimensus est. A Teodoto
septemtrio et occidens dimensus est,” (“ The measurement of the world
was begun by Julius Caesar: all the East was measured by Nicodoxus, the
North and West by Theodoxus, the southern part by Policlitus.”) And now,
looking to the lower left-hand corner of the Hereford map, we see the
Emperor Augustus commissioning three surveyors: “Ite in orbem
universum et de omni eius continentia referte ad senatum, et ad istam
confirmandam huic scripto sigillum meum apposui,” (“Go forth into the
whole world and report to the Senate on all of its parts, and in confirmation
of this I have set my seal to this ordinance” ). The “ sigillum,” in the form of a
vesica or fish bladder, bears the inscription “S. Augusti Cesaris
Imperatoris.” In addition to these items, we notice that the four cardinal
points-Oriens, Meridiens, Occidens, and Septentrio--are listed around the
circumference, with their locations marked by what Crone describes as
“ grotesque dwarfs within circles” (Memoir 3). Along with the cardinal
directions, the intermediate points are indicated:
. . . two equally spaced in each quadrant, [and] are marked by
circles containing an animal’s head. The points thus make up the
34
twelve winds according to the system associated with the Greek
admiral Timosthenes. . . . In addition, each quadrant is divided in
half by four letters projecting outside the circle, which make up
the word MORS. (Memoir 3)
This word, MORS, although somewhat hard to pick out, is perhaps the
most critical term on the map from a Christian perspective. Just as it death
frames this oikumene on the Hereford map, the medieval viewer would
have been expected to keep in mind the ephemeral nature of the world-
full of marvelous cities, creatures and legends, yes-but a temporary one
all the same: “Sic transit gloria mundi.” indeed kings, no less than
commoners, could fall at any moment, as can be seen almost in any
medieval representation of Fortune’s wheel.
IV
Church-pew Peregrinations
The T-O structure and its attendant circular form “ follows a cartographic
tradition, a convention, derived from Roman times in which the habitable
world was drawn within a diagrammatic scheme” (Jancey 2). Within this
most perfect of shapes is inscribed the northern hemisphere’s most
striking divisional feature, the tau-symbol T, which is formed by the
connection of the Mediterranean stretching to the west and its two eastern-
reaching fingers, with the Black-or Euxine-Sea far to the north and the
35
Nile to the south (Appendix A, pi. 2). This T-shape separates the inhabited
world into three continents, with Asia on the top, Europe on the lower left
and Africa on the lower right. 11 These bodies of water were crucial for
mapmakers:
In the absence of a grid of latitude and longitude, the main
locational feature of the mappaemundi was provided by
prominent hydrographic features. Three of these, the river Don,
the Nile or the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean provided the
boundaries within the tripartite world. (Harley 328)
Taking this cue, I now propose a tour of the Hereford map’s tripartite world,
one which uses these bodies of water as primary points of orientation. On
this mappamundi the entire hemisphere depicted-the inhabited
hemisphere of land--is surrounded by water, by the Homeric Ocean River.
Moving counterclockwise from the eastern apex, we see within the circle
the Earthly Paradise and “ the far north-eastern regionsf, which] are
depicted in terms indicating a kind of horror at the cold and desolation
[“ frigus intollerabile” ] found in them” (Jancey 9). Note that these northern
seas are strewn with islands populated by an assortment of strange
inhabitants: in the extreme northeast is a pictograph of the “Phanesii,” who
use their huge ears for protection from the cold and another pictograph
representing a race of people with horse hooves for feet.
Connected to the Ocean River in the northeast is the Caspian Sea, the
“Mare Caspiam.” The text to its east is derived from the deeds of
36
Alexander the Great and describes the sons of Cain among the race of
Gog and Magog: “Hi'c sont homines truculenti nimis, humanis camibus
vescentes, cruorem potantes, filii Caini maledicti. . . inclusit. . . per
magnum Alexandrum. . . . nam tempore Antichristi erupturi et omni mundo
persecutionem illaturi,” (“Here are excessively ferocious men, who feed
upon the flesh of men, drinking their blood, evil sons of Cain . . . walled up
by Alexander the Great. . . . In the time of Antichrist they will escape and
persecute all of the world).” Also in this area is evidence of trade with
China, for just to the west of the Caspian, an inscription informs the viewer
that, “Hie post nives longa deserta. Seres primi homini post deserta
occurrunt a quibus serica vestimenta mittuntur,” (“Here beyond the snows
is a vast desert. The Seres [Chinese] are the first men beyond the desert,
by whom silken clothing is exported).”
Moving southwestward across the map, we come to the Mediterranean
Sea, the “Mare Mediterraneum,” with its myriad of pictographs. Here we
confront the pillars of Hercules, a charming mermaid, the legendary Scylla
and Charybdis and the Colossus of Rhodes, among many others. The
Sea’s two eastward pointing fingers reach to embrace Syria and
Palestine, drawing the viewer’s eye to Jerusalem, center of the spiritual
world. The Adriatic juts off to the northwest from the Mediterranean,
pointing the way to Western Europe, where we find a blunted Italy
thrusting its way between these two seas and the Spanish peninsula,
37
“ destroyed by the distortion caused by the curve of the map” (Jancey 23).
To the east of Spain is France, divided from its western neighbor by the
conventionally-rendered scalloped Pyrenees, which lie just west of a
curiously-named bull: “Buglossa," which the Rev. W.L. Bevan glosses as a
type of “plant, the burrage, so called from its resemblance to an ox’s
tongue” (149). Travelling further into this extreme northwestern area we
see the very distorted British Isles, looking quite cramped and elongated.
Continuing in a southwesterly direction, we come upon the Fortunate
Islands, here labeled as “Fortunate Insule: sex sunt insule Sancti Brandini”
after the tenth- or eleventh-century Naviaatio Sancti Brandani. False
etymology, often in evidence in medieval texts, assumed one of these
islands, “ Canaria,” to be derived from canis. hence the addition “plena
magnis canibus,” “ full of large dogs.”
The Hereford Maooa Mundi is unique in the number of cities and towns
that it includes in its pictorial display. Gerald Crone characterizes it as
being “ superior to earlier examples, with the exception of the Matthew
Paris maps” (Memoir 8). I pause here in the map’s most civically-storiated
lower section to indicate just a few of them— although in England, Wales
and Scotland forty are depicted. As I have already noted, a walled
Jerusalem is given pride of place in the center of the map; due west across
the Mediterranean, we encounter Rome; Paris to the northwest; London its
northwest; and back to the south, Hippo with Augustine looking rather
38
episcopal, enshrined and facing east; Carthage with its imposing edifice
Finally, turning further east, we come upon Alexandria with its fabled
lighthouse.
To the northeast of the Mediterranean, forming the prominent left arm of
the T-shape, we see the Black or Euxine Sea. And to its north we
encounter a veritable Michelin guide to the mythological and legendary:
To the left of the Black Sea . . . [are the] iron-eating ostrich,
Scythians fighting, Essedenes who eat the flesh of their dead
parents, the emerald-guarding griffon and the grey-eyed race
who see better by night than by day Not far away is the Minotaur,
bull-headed and gently holding his tail. To his right is the
Hyrcanean tiger, famed for speed and ferocity, in the regions
depicted in the right hand corner we again approach India with its
marvels, the fig tree and the manticora, a man-headed beast with
the body of a lion. (Jancey 15)
Traveling to the southeast we come upon the cleverly-colored Red Sea,
the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, the latter connected to the
circumambient ocean and a large triangular island, which is meant for
Ceylon but called Taphana, for Taprobane. As the inscription says, it is an
area with two summers, two winters, two springs and full of elephants and
dragons: “ Taphana insula . . . habet in anno duas estates et duas hiemes
et bis floribus vernat. Si ulterior pars eiephantis et draconibus plena. ”12
Moving now to the last of the completely mundane hydrographic
features, we come upon what W.L. Bevan has called, “ The most
remarkable feature in this portion of the map . . . the broad blue line which
39
traverses nearly the whole length of the continent in a line parallel to the
Southern Ocean” (100). This is the Upper Nile, and in its environs and in
those of the Lower Nile to its north, Richard of Haldingham has located yet
another group of marvels. To the left of the lower Nile Egypt is filled with
wonders like the mandrake, the salamander, the yale, and the phoenix.
Closer to the Holy Land, one encounters a number of biblical references,
most of which are from the Hebrew Bible. Here are Joseph’s granaries,
the “ Orrea Josephi,” as the Pyramids were known in the Middle Ages
(Bevan 86); a typically-misrepresented horned Moses receives the tables
of the covenant in the area between the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf,
while the Israelites worship the idolatrous golden calf and the Exodus
route is traced in gold ink.13 in the area to the south of the lower Nile, in an
area enclosed by scalloped mountains, are a unicorn, the rhinoceros, and
the sphinx with its feet of a serpent, wings of a bird and a woman’s face.
Concluding this deliberately erratic world tour, I now move far from the
center, to Ethiopia so-called on the southwestern section of the map. As
John Kirtland Wright says, “[i]n the minds of medieval writers this name
was not restricted to the region beyond Upper Egypt but was applied to the
entire southern part of the known world, just as ‘India’ sometimes was
applied to the entire Far East” (302-03). He also writes:
Some of the Beatus maps designate Ethiopia as a country ‘where
there are races horrible on account of their strange faces and
40
monstrous appearance. . . . It also abounds in wild beasts and
serpents; and precious stones, cinnnamon, and balsam are found
there.’ (303)
Again true to form, the Hereford map fulfills convention; for we see in its
extreme southern region--as far as possible from the center-what Meryl
Jancey intriguingly has called “a kind of frieze of strange beings whose
location indicates places beyond the limits of ordinary experience” (19).
Proceeding along this “ frieze” from east to west we first encounter the
“ Gens sine auribus, Ambari dicti quod adversis plantis,” that is, “ the people
without ears and with twisted feet,” who see where they have been but not
where they are going. Next come the “Scinopedes [or Monocoli], qui
unicruri mire sceleres plantis obumbrantur. . .,” a one-legged, one-eyed
race. These creatures’ single leg “is of extra size, and is terminated by a
foot with a preternatural number of toes. Its versatility of use is probably
intended to make up for its singularity, for it serves the purpose of an
umbrella” (Bevan 102). Just below this natural sunshade are the “ Gens
ore concreto calam cibatur,” the “men whose mouths are grown together
so tightly that they are forced to take their food through a reed.” These are
followed by what the modest Rev. W.L. Bevan dismissed as those “ of
whom the less said the better” (102)-the “ Gens uterque sexus innaturales
multimodus modis,” the Hermaphrodites. Next, and not nearly as
interesting, are the “Himantopodes,” a race who moves along on all fours
41
instead of by walking. The puzzling “Psylli” are below them, the race who
tested their wives’ chastity by exposing their newlyborn infants to serpents.
To the west of the Psylli are the “Blemyae,” who have their mouths and
eyes implanted in their chests, followed by “Isti os et oculos habent in
humeris,” the headless race whose mouths and eyes grow beneath their
shoulders. Continuing still westward, we come upon the “Marmini
Ethiopes qui quaternos oculos habent,” the four-eyed Maritime
Ethiopians, and then the “Gangines Ethiopes: amicitia cum eis non est.”
These are the Ethiopians of the Ganges who have no friends, perhaps
because they carry what look like very large sticks.
Shifting the focus now to the northern shore of the Upper Nile and
heading east, we see the “Agriophagi Ethiopes: solas panterarum et
leonum carnes edunt: habentes regem cujus in fronte [oculus] unus est.”
This is the one-eyed race of kings who eat only panthers and lions from
the Kina Alisaunder romance. Just above them is something most
unusual: “Hie grandes formice auream sericam [servant] arenas,” “large
ants digging up gold dust with their feet, and jealously guarding it against
all comers” (Bevan 105). Continuing eastward we encounter the busy
“ Trocodite: mire sceleres: specu accolunt: serpentes edunt: feros saltibus
apprehendunt.” These are the Troglodytes who live in caves, eat serpents
and capture wild animals by riding on their backs. And finally, we meet the
“Basilicus: semipedalis: est albis lineis maculatus,” the basilisk or
cockatrice which-unlike Solinus and Pliny— Richard does not picture as a
serpent, although it does have a rather serpentine tail.
In closing I should say that not all medieval cartographers and travelers
believed in these fantastic creatures. In The Medieval Expansion of
Europe J.R.S. Phillips recounts the story of one John of Marignolli,
. . . who visited India on the way home from China, devoted
several pages of his description of the country to a reasoned
denial of the existence of the monstrous races. He concluded that
the truth was that ‘no such people do exist as nations, though
there may be an individual monster here and there.’ The people
he asked about these races had even asked him in turn whether
such existed in his own homeland. (194-95)
V
Salvific Itineraries
In this final section I propose an interpretive program for this map and
others like it, all the time keeping in mind Emile Male’s caution, “ that the
old craftsmen were never so subtle as their modern interpreters” (Image
47). To proceed from here, I will need to make reference to two other
branches of medieval visual arts, French cathedral tympanum sculpture
and Italian religious fresco painting. My architectural examples are from
the western portal of the Eglise Sainte-Foy at Conques, and for painting I
have chosen Giotto’s Last Judgment fresco in Padua’s Arena Chapel.
These two artworks and the Hereford map’s “ tympanum”^ have as their
43
subjects the events of Judgment Day, alt of the compositions are syncretic,
the action in each is synchronic rather than diachronic and each forms part
of the decorative program of their respective Western European churches.
We should also keep in mind that, just as the mappaemundi were
intended as two-dimensional planar summae--as visual compendia of
historical knowledge, legends and beliefs--later medieval (particularly
Gothic) cathedrals were encyclopedic in their figuration and historiation.
As Emile Male noted, the cathedral “ too in its fashion was a Speculum, a
Summa. an Imago Mundi into which the Middle Age[s] put its most
cherished convictions” (image 23). 15
Now, granted the Hereford map is an infinitely more complex visual
realization than either the text at Conques or Padua; this, however, goes
right to my point. Quotidian human life is much more than the abstract
concepts pictured at Conques and Padua; it is the sum of all that we
encounter that is inexplicable, marvelous, wonderful and familiar. As
pilgrims along the road of life, as readers of history’s and God’s grand
book, we stray constantly from what the Church deems the right path, the
path of righteousness. This is exactly what we do when experiencing a
mappamundi. Our eyes often light on a different aspect of its world each
time we view it; and, I would venture to say, we most often begin with the
weird and unusual, rather than the familiar. This is why our world tour took
such an elliptical form, one which followed the major hydrographic
44
markers, yet took in the fabulous aspects, largely ignoring the mundane.
Wandering during a journey was expected, experiencing life was
acceptable, but only if one recalled that “MORS” lingered always.
Nonetheless, contemotus mundi or monastic seclusion was not for
everyone. This is surely the reason that Richard included the rider on the
prancing horse at the map’s southwestern extremity, seemingly advancing
out of the map’s frame into the real world (Appendix A, pi. 2). He waves
and looks back over his shoulder, while the forester behind him with his
greyhound urges him--and perhaps the viewer-to “passe avant,” or to go
forward. And so, a mappamundi with an overarching theological structure
like the one at Hereford or the one formerly at Ebstorf is a construction with
an immediate message, a text which more closely presents a speculum of
daily life than my other two chosen artworks, ft was and is essentially
entertaining— albeit thought-provoking-redemptive popular art. The
Hereford Maooa Mundi and others like it provide us with itinerarium picta
which we are free to use in getting, both metaphorically and ultimately,
from the terrestrial to the celestial. With a little help from Giotto and the
Conques tympanum, I will now indicate the way.16
45
V.i
Conques: Frozen Theophany, Fateful Silence
The twelfth-century tympanum at the Eglise Sainte-Foy at Conques in
southwestern France is a wonderfully preserved rendition of a sculpted
Last Judgment scene (Appendix A, pi. 3). It surmounts the western portal
of the church, which is largely an eleventh-century construction, and is
framed by its upper arch and lower cornice. Our eyes are drawn
immediately to the center, where Christ is seated. Emile Male has
observed that, “ One feels that he has not yet spoken to the world, and the
fateful silence is terrible” (Image 369V But what pulls us to this focal point?
Rudolf Arnheim suggests:
The frame, or the border, delimits the field of force, with its
gradients of meaning increasing towards the center. So strong is
this feeling of an organizing pull that we take it for granted that the
elements of the pattern are all oriented towards their common
center. In other words, the field of force creates its own
gravitational field. (Center 54)
How does this happen? How are we drawn into the center of this
“ gravitational field” ? The answer lies in the formation of the tympanum’s
two axes, the horizontal and the vertical. Stephen Nichols refers to this as
a “biaxial narrative structure . . . where humans tend to be set in horizontal
registers, while the theophanic Christ figure . . . cuts vertically across these
bands at the center of the image field to make a dominant vertical axis”
46
(Signs 43). This is just what we see in Conques’ symmetrical sculptural
layout, which at first glance looks chaotic-much like the Hereford map,
though to a lesser degree-with everything literally happening at once. But
if we look closely, we note that all of the framing devices which support,
integrate and help to complete the scene direct us upward and then
inward to its center. This follows Church doctrine on hierarchies, as
Nichols rightly points out:"... the orthodox view imposed a vertical
perspective according to which contemplation of created things in the
lower world should lead to recognition of a hierarchy running from the
world up to heaven and beyond to the Prime Mover” (Signs 42). The four
pillars and lower central wall which hold the entablature up, as well as the
central pilaster in the lower horizontal band, move our eyes upward along
the vertical axis. There are also the two arrow-like triangular cornices
surmounting the seated figures of ecclesia on the lower left and a rather
well-fed Satan on the lower right. 17 Our gaze is thus drawn upward to the
next horizontal band, where a cornice-like shape is figured by the
inscribed scrolls borne by the angels on the left. On the right side of
Christ, “ the principal subject. . . placed in the middle [where]. . . [he] sits
clearly, securely, powerfully” (Center 72), the composition relies heavily on
a vertical orientation, with the four winged figures and the souls of the
damned stacked atop one another in a much more orderly fashion than
those below in hell proper. Not to be forgotten, of course, is the centrally-
47
fixed cross, figuring in itself the horizontal and vertical axes, the mundane
and the celestial. And lastly, the upwardly mobile angel on the far left in
the middle band and the diagonally-stacked lost souls on the right pull our
eyes toward the center of the arch, where the two angels supporting the
cross tend downward, returning us to the central figure, reasserting the
work’s symmetry and theological hierarchy.
Nonetheless, the viewer’s eyes do not remain fixated on the figure of
Christ, nor on the central point in any visual composition:
Standing before the picture, [the viewer] acts as a component of
the comprehensive space that involves viewer and picture. His
eyes scan the pictorial surface in order to perceive its
composition as as whole. Inevitably, at any given moment, the
eyes single out a particular spot, making it the center of attention.
A center of attention carries weight, just like any other center, and
therefore for the time being it dislodges the inherent hierarchy of
the composition. It upsets the balance and meaning. . . . such
momentary onesidedness must be overcome by continuous
scanning. (Arnheim, Center 37)
And so, our gaze is constantly being pulled elsewhere, perhaps to the
neatly arranged, serried ranks of the elect on Christ’s right, but more likely
to his left where we enjoy the torments suffered by the souls of the
damned. Here we linger the longest, maybe shifting over to the mouth of
hell to the left of center in the lower band or back up to the middle register
on His left, where we revel in the various punishments being inflicted upon
these poor fig u re s . 18 Regardless of where our eyes stray-of what visual
route we as viewers create-our “ continuous scanning” is ultimately
48
controlled and pulled back to the central, frozen theophanic figure by the
horizontal and vertical axes.
Not surprisingly, this perception of the visual arts had its analogue in
daily life, perhaps because of daily life: the Christian structure of the
cosmos, “ the great chain of being,” was meant to be always in the back of
the faithful’s minds, much like this vertical hierarchy with Christ at the
center of Conques’ tympanum. Nonetheless, just as one’s gaze strays
from the vertical progression in the portal’s program, men and women
constantly found themselves metaphorically in Dante’s dark wood, either
accidentally or purposely. The message of these Last Judgment scenes,
wherever depicted, was the same: some wandering along life’s road was
acknowledged and accepted, but the faithful were expected-with the help
of works like this one at Conques, Hereford’s mappamundi and Giotto’s
Last Judgment fresco, indeed, with any such teleological representation-
to remember that what was truly important was the return to the justified
path. This, in the eyes of the Church, was all that mattered.
V.ii
Giotto: Election and Rejection
In Padua’s Arena Chapel Giotto’s fresco “ fills the entire entrance wall”
(Hartt 73), so that it is the last thing the faithful see when leaving the
49
building, leaving them to contemplate death— the “MORS” of the Hereford
map~and what they need to do to find themselves among the elect on
Judgment Day (Appendix A, pi. 4). The importance of its theme is
emphasized by the fact that it is the only thing on this wall and the last
image one sees when leaving the church. It thus fits wonderfully into the
building's book-like program of Scriptural tales that are related to the lives
of the Virgin and Christ. In fact, James Stubblebine feels that the whole
chapel was designed to display the fresco scheme in its optimum light:
The Arena Chapel may very well have been designed to Giotto’s
specifications. It is so simple a space, so devoid of any true
architectural interest, as to stand apart from any other structure of
the time in Italy. It is peculiarly bare; in fact, it is little more than a
skin of blank walls seemingly designed for some already-
determined scheme of painted decoration. (74)
This permits Stubblebine to refer to the Chapel as “ a kind of viewing box”
and say that “its success is demonstrated by the fact that the entire scheme
of decoration is visible and can be clearly read from the moment one
enters the Chapel” (74). 19
As a visual salvific text, Giotto’s “Last Judgment” fresco functions in
much the same way as the Conques tympanum; therefore, the reading
strategy I proposed in the previous section works equally well here.
Again, Christ is seated in static majesty in the center of the painting, and
all of the other conventions hold true: there are two horizontal bifurcated
bands, with the elect on his right being resurrected and led to eternal bliss
50
and the damned on his left being thrown unceremoniously into the eternal
torment described by the medieval schools’ verse, recorded by Vincent of
Beauvais: “’Nix, nox, vox, lachrymae, sulphur, sitis, aestus; / Malleus et
stridor, spes perdita, vincula, vermes’” (Male 381), (“’Snow, darkness,
crying, tears, lightning, thirst, heat; / Hammer and shrieking, hope lost,
bondage, worms’” ).
Christ is surrounded by a fiery tondo, much as he is on the Conques
tympanum and the Hereford Maooa Mundi. The upwardly mobile on his
right have more the appearance of milites Christi than on the Conques
tympanum, perhaps because of their stiff postures and centrally-directed
communal stare. Their symmetrical tripartite displacement around the
center approaches the sort of intensely ordered arrangement we see in
Dante’s Paradiso. As in the French text, the crucifixion cross is granted
pride of place and contributes to Nichols’ “biaxial narrative structure”
(Signs 43), only here it is below Christ and takes the tau shape. This
placement functions like the central pilaster which we saw both divided the
lower register in the Conques tympanum and directed the viewer’s gaze
upward. Again, each individual’s eyes proceed around the scene in
distinct patterns, as Arnheim notes: “. . . viewers tend to concentrate on a
picture’s compositional high spots; but . . . the directions they choose for
their exploration of the picture space are quite arbitrary” (Center 210).
Like the ones on the frieze at Conques, the horizontal and vertical axes
51
always pull the gaze back to the central tondo, a shape that Arnheim has
described as “ the most beautiful format in that it takes us beyond the
limitations of earthly gravitational space to the more fundamental model of
cosmic concentricity. . .” (Center 129V
Perhaps the most intriguing elements of Giotto’s fresco are the scrolling
angels at the very top and the open window above Christ's head. The
angels, who seem to be unfurling the Book of Creation, reinforce and
define the vertical impulse, while their diagonally oriented scrolls move
our eyes to the space of the open window. Although in the Arena chapel
this space is filled with a real window, one cannot help but think of Dante’s
vision of Paradise as an ever-effacing space of pure white light. Perhaps
this is something that Giotto-a friend of Dante’s-intended here in his
visual depiction of the ineffable. The inclusion of the window in the
fresco’s program is brilliant, for it implies eternity; upward movement--
possibly to God and the Celestial Rose-to the mystery of it all. What better
way of picturing the upper regions of Paradise than as a starkly contrasting
space of pure white light, a light even more brilliant than that illuminating
the angels’ heaven?
52
V.iii
The Hereford Mappa Mundi and the Salvif ic Path
At the risk of slighting Giotto, I now demonstrate how this theory of
visual reading applies to the Hereford Mappa Mundi (Appendix A, pi.2).
On our tour we saw that the map contains many of Arnheim’s
“compositional high spots” (Center 211) and that our attention can be
drawn to them and away from the center, much like it was to the infernal
regions of Giotto’s fresco and the Conques tympanum. The map’s visual
field seems so overwhelming because it attempts to show us all of history,
Christian and pagan:
[The Church] wanted to make the past present to show that the
present belonged to a coherent cosmogony, that it manifested a
divine plan of the universe. Particularly the Christ story, which
they interpreted as revealing the whole trajectory of Salvation
history, from the beginning to the end of the world. (Signs xi)
A key to my reading theory was that each of the previous visual
programs was articulated around the two axes, which were enhanced by
the centered cross. The Hereford map’s apex “ tympanum” has no clear
“biaxial structure,” since it lacks a truly horizontal axis. However, I would
argue that the semiotic field within the map’s circle functions in much the
same distractive way as did the horizontal bands of the saved and
damned in the two previous texts. It was there that our eyes wandered
53
from the center, much as we roamed around the map's hemisphere.
Nonetheless, the map proper does have a prominent biaxial shape in its
hydrographic “ T,” one “ of the tau variety” (Harley 334) that we saw on the
Arena fresco (Appendix A, pi. 4). On the map this is set within the framing
“ O,” Arnheim’s “most beautiful format” (Center 129) and Dante’s ubiquitous
symbol of spiritual perfection. This topographical “ T” shape fulfills at least
two roles: it serves the same purpose that the axial elements did in the
previous two texts, and it functions metaphorically as cruciform sign.
David Woodward’s comments on the Ebstorf map’s figuration of Christ-as-
cruciform shape, as “ T-supra--0,” are quite relevant: “When the body of
Christ is superimposed on the map of the earth in an all-embracing dying
gesture, as in the Ebstorf map, the map itself becomes a clear symbol of
the salvation of the world” (Harley 334). The Hereford map’s “ tau” cross
functions in much the same way. At the very least, it draws our eyes up
along the Mediterranean to the precisely-centered Jerusalem with its
double-cross shape, and then further east to “Mons Calvarie,” where the
crucifixion is figured. Additionally, the tympanum pictures Christ exhibiting
the stigmata with both hands raised above his shoulders, similar to his
representation in Giotto’s fresco (Appendix A, pi. 4). This melange of
iconographic and symbolic images is certainly suggestive enough of
Nichols’ “ transcendent events [of] the Christ story” (Signs xi) for us to plot
54
“ the . . . trajectory of Salvation history” across the map by using these
cruciform images as signposts.
These elements are, however, only signposts and not centers. The
map has only one terrestrial center, as I have noted, and that is Jerusalem.
This orientation is most likely based upon Ezekiel 5.5: “This is Jerusalem: I
have set her in the midst of the nations, with the other countries around
her: . . .” The city could function on other levels as well, as Gulielmus
Durandus reasoned:
‘Jerusalem,’ [he said], ‘in the historical sense is the town in
Palestine to which Pilgrims now resort; in the allegorical sense it
is the Church Militant; in the tropological it is the Christian soul;
and in the anagogical it is the celestial Jerusalem, the home on
high.’ (image 139)20
But there are other centers on the map, though not geometrical ones.
Instead, they are centers of spiritual attention to which our eyes are drawn
as we travel round its graphic world. The first of these is located far to the
east and connects the terrestrial sphere to the celestial one (Appendix A,
pi. 2). This is Eden, the Earthly Paradise; and with its four rivers--the
Tigris, Euphrates, Gihon and Phison-forming an eastward vertically-
pointed arrow, it figures the metaphorical bridge to the supralunar
spheres. A. Bartlett Giamatti remarked:
In terms of physical characteristics and spiritual significance, the
earthiyparadise is the norm and all other places in the sublunar
universe are defective or incomplete according to its standards.
55
Yet it is only the standard here below, for the earthly paradise is
simply a prefiguration of the celestial paradise. (102)
The third and most critical locus of attention is the tympanum-like
structure that overarches this world view. This conventional rendering of
Christ at the Last Judgment is meant to be the ultimate goal of our church-
pew wanderings over the map, just as the theophanic vision was on the
Conques tympanum and Giotto's fresco. One difference here is that we
can more readily project the two-dimensional into the three dimensional,
because both spheres have been projected into two-dimensional
cartographical planes by Richard, the author of this painted “ estoire.” So,
the viewer essentially reverses this process and visualizes this, the
mundane world, as one sphere surmounted and surrounded by another
one where Christ sits.21 This abstract dimension of the map’s Last
Judgment scene transforms what I have called a center of attention into
the center of Truth. Edward Shils’ work in macrosociology provides us
with further insights into the abstract nature of such focal points:
The center, or the central zone, is a phenomenon of the realm of
values and beliefs. It is the center of the order of symbols, of
values and beliefs, which govern society. It is the center because
it is the ultimate and irreducible; and it is felt to be such by many
who cannot give explicit articulation to its irreducibility. The
central zone partakes of the nature of the sacred. (Essays 3)
The reader will remember that we ended our journey round the map’s
world in its southwest quadrant (Appendix A, pi. 2). How do we get from
56
such a “concrete,” if peripheral, locus to the map’s “ultimate and
irreducible” center? With the knowledge that we now have, it is realty
quite simple. Since the hydrographic “T” is the dominant shape, the
viewer’s eyes return to it first. From the southwest-or, indeed, from
wherever we find ourselves--the commanding Mediterranean pulls the
gaze towards it, directing it eastward until we reach that fetching mermaid.
Then the Black Sea, the Blue Nile and the two Mediterranean fingers take
over, pushing us ever east to Jerusalem. We then rise to the crucifixion
pictograph above it and still further east. Next, the imposing structure of
the Tower of Babel sends us along to the Earthly Paradise with its triple-
triangulated river system-looking very much like the triangular cornices at
C o n q u e s .22 From there, without having to climb the Purgatorjo’s seven-
storied mountain, we easily make the crossing to the security of the Virgin
Mary, the Maria Lactans in this case, who is positioried before before
Christ, ready to plead on our behalf The rest of the tympanum is quite
conventional and really needs no further explication. Suffice it to say that
at this point we are home free, that we have traveled from the center to the
circumference and back through the true center to the center of Truth.
Appendix A
Map Plates
Ebstorf mappamundi
58
59
Hereford Mappa Mundi
M MR* H VttW
V* * BfLkO lUCfiHH:
rV fW R R H IW ® ORJHH fiHBHLHUi
/ a
j ? K K L H K I H I B - H f l t t
4 w ft' r Pi ,S CIW H MX. C '
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09
81
60
Conques: the Tympanum of the Eglise Ste.-Foy
Padua: Giotto’s Arena Chapel Fresco
62
Notes
1 The Ebstorf mappamundi (c.1235) was a larger, albeit less narratively-
detailed, map; tragically, it was destroyed during an air raid on Hanover in
WWII. Fortunately, it had been photographed in Berlin just prior to this
bombing.
2 I indicate here my profound debt to J.B. Harley and David Woodward,
History of Cartography: Cartography in Prehistoric. Ancient, and Medieval
| Europe and the Mediterranean (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987),
I particularly to Woodward’s Part Three, “Cartography in Medieval Europe
I and the Mediterranean” (281-510). This comprehensive work incorporates
| and supersedes other such monumental efforts as John Kirtland Wright,
The Geographical Lore of the Time of the Crusades: A Study in the History
of Medieval Science and Tradition in Western Europe (New York:
American Geographical Society, 1928) and Leo Bagrow, History of
Cartography Rev. and Enl. R.A. Skelton. Trans. D.L Paisley. (Cambridge:
Harvard UP, 1964). These latter studies-although dated-are still useful,
especially Wright’s, which contains a good deal of information not
available in such a concise form in any other single work of its type.
For my discussion of the Hereford map’s cartographical context, I refer
the reader to Harley and Woodward’s illustrations. Due to cost constraints,
I have chosen not to reproduce their plates and figures. I note them within
my text in two ways: for their color plates, which follow page 106, I give
only the plate number, since the pages with plates are not numbered.
Thus (Harley pi. 15). For their black and white reproductions and
drawings, I cite both page and figure number, for example (Harley 237, fig.
16.8). The Beatus and psalter mappaemundi references are to Leo
Bagrow’s book, cited above, and are referenced to his plate numbers, also
unpaginated. The photographs of the Hereford and Ebstorf mappaemundi.
Conques’ tympanum and Giotto’s fresco are mine. The map pictures were
taken from reproductions obtained from Peter Whitfield, Wychwood
Editions, Glovers House, Woodgreen, Witney, Oxford, England. The
Conques tympanum photograph is from an original slide. My reproduction
of Giotto’s fresco is taken from Frederick Hartt, History of Italian
Renaissance Art: Painting. Sculpture. Architecture. 3rd ed. (New York:
i Harry N. Abrams, 1987.)
i
i
i
j 3 David Woodward indicates that use of the term “mappamundi” was by
I no means restricted to visual cartographical depictions: “It is common to
♦
find the term used to mean a verbal description in a metaphorical sense,
much as we talk today of ‘mapping a strategy.’” He cites Ranulf Higden and
a British Library manuscript as further evidence. He says that in his
Potvchronicon Higden “was referring not to the world map that frequently
accompanies it, but to a verbal description of the world,” and that the BL
manuscript “’entitled Mappa mundi sive orbis descriptio’ is also purely a
textual account” (Harley 287).
4 The story of the map’s recent removal is quite interesting, though
largely irrelevant to this study. Suffice it here to say that Francis Herbert
informs me that the mappamundi is again back in its rightful place in the
cathedral, after its much-discussed travels in the period from November
1988 to November 1989. The reader is referred to the Times of London for
the period stated.
s This and all subsequent translations are mine, unless otherwise noted.
6 This ascription of the map’s creation to Richard caused a nineteenth-
century editor to include the following Latin rubric across the top of his
version of the map. It does not appear on the original:
Hanc quam videtis terrarum orbis tabulam
Descripsit delineavitque Ricardus de Haldingham
Sive de Bello dictus A.S. circa MCCC.
(“ This which you see is the map/painting of the earth / designed
and drawn by Richard of Haldingham / also called de Bello, Anno
Salvatis circa 1300.” )
7 These compositional similarities come as no surprise, particularly
when we consider that many “fmlappaemundi were regarded as paintings
in the Middle Ages” (Harley 324). Both maps and manuscripts were drawn
or written on vellum; each text’s illustrations were drawn from bestiaries,
lapidaries, florilegia and other sources like Pliny’s Historia Naturalis (A.D.
77) and the encyclopedic early medieval Marvels of the East (2c.-6c.).
Their authors relied heavily upon works like the latter for pictographs,
information and inspiration; and, so as David Woodward tells us, “. . . the
techniques involved [in drawing the mappaemundil are indistinguishable
from those used in manuscript illumination” (Harley 324).
64
8 Interestingly enough, it seems “ that several of the most significant early
itinerary maps come from England, [these being] the maps of Matthew
Paris and the Gough map” (Harley 495).
9 David Woodward reports that the Ebstorf map has been linked to
Gervase of Tilbury,
. . . a teacher of canon law in Bologna who may possibly be
identified with the provost of the abbey of Ebstorf who died in
1235. In his historical work Otia imoerialia (1211), Gervase refers
to a ‘world map,’ and his text has been recognized as the latest
I known source of information from which the author of the Ebstorf
! map might have drawn. (Harley 307)
| See also Konrad Miller, Mappaemundi: Die altesten Weltkarten. 6 vols.
; (Stuttgart: J.Roth, 1895-98). 5 75; Jorg-Geerd Arentzen, Imaao Mundi
Cartoaraphica: Studien zur Bildlichkeit mittelaterlicher Weltund
Okumenekarten unter besonderer Berucksichtiauna des
Zusammenwirkens von Text und Bild. Munstersche Mittelalter-Schriften 53
(Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1984) 140; and Richard Uhden, “ Gervasius von
Tilbury und die Ebstorfer Weltkarte,” Jahrbuch der Geoaraphischen
Gesellschaft zu Hannover (1930): 185-200.
10 Central or “ vanishing point” perspective is a later discovery, not
coming about until 1435 with Alberti’s “notion of the visual pyramid”
(Arnheim, Art 283).
1 1 On the Hereford map these last two are mislabelled: the word “Africa”
stretches across western Europe, and Africa is labelled “Europa.” I am
aware of no truly satisfying explanation for this. Bevan acknowledges the
transposition and postulates either “ carelessness” as the reason or the
possibility that Richard sought “ to convey the notion occasionally
expressed that Africa was not a separate continent, but a sub-division of
Europe” (23). He references Orosius and Ranulf Higden as support for this
latter supposition.
| 12 Meryl Jancey makes a particularly salient point regarding this
! elephant of “ Ceylon,” one which has wider applications for our
! understanding of Richard’s metaphysic:
j The drawing of the elephant illustrates an interesting and
! possibly highly significant point about this map. The animals and
| monsters are portrayed, alongside textual descriptions as
evidence for them, as straightforward factual depictions of
65
creatures. They are not shown or described as allegories or
“ types." The elephant is here a beast of war, not a symbol of the
innocence of Adam and Eve. The source behind the drawings is
ancient natural history and mythology rather than Christian
traditions of thinking of such creatures as symbols. (13)
The Hereford map pictures a syncretic, synchronic world, one that
embraces all of pagan and Christian knowledge. It does not exclude
natural historical “ facts” merely because they come from pagan sources; in
l fact, a great deal of the map’s information comes from these texts, as I
I have indicated in my opening paragraphs. Richard assumed that his
| medieval world and the classical one preceding it were both created by
i God and were linked through philosophy, science, cartography and the
arts.
13 | say “ typically-misrepresented” because the figure of the horned
Moses results from a mistranslation in the Vulgate of the Hebrew qeren.
which can be translated as both “ray of light” and as “horn” (New English
Bible 93, n. to 29). When Moses came down from the mount his face
shone because of his divinity. The Vulgate renders this as “Moses’ face
had horns,” “ faciem egredientis Mosi / esse cornutum. . (Exodus 34.34-
35, my emphasis). The tenacity of this misreading is attested to by the
appearance of Michelangelo’s horned Moses in the Sistine Chapel.
14 By “ tympanum” I mean the tympanum-like illustration of the Last
Judgement which we see at the top of the Hereford Mappa Mundi. This
constitutes quite a clever use of space and serves to tie the map to my
other study examples. The Giotto fresco is not a tympanum either, but its
subject is the Last Judgement; and we read it like the Conques tympanum,
which combines the teleological theme with a true architectural tympanum.
15 Male also suggested:
It is . . . as a mappa mundi that we should interpret the famous
doorway at Vezelay. Here all the peoples of the earth are
gathered round Christ as He gives the Holy Spirit to the apostles.
One is reminded by the curious figures of men with dogs’ heads
or with ears like winnowing fans that He came to preach the
Gospel to the whole human race, and that the Church must carry
| the message to the ends of the earth. (Image 57)
We see these same creatures on the Hereford map.
66
16 This next part of my discussion owes much to Rudolf Arnheim, The
Power of the Center: A Study of Composition in the Visual Arts. The New
Version. (Berkeley: U of California P, 1988.) Although he does not
address medieval art per se. his theories offer immeasurable assistance in
deciphering visual compositions like those under examination here.
t 17 These lateral designations are vitally important in any discussion of
I medieval church art or architecture. “Right” always refers to the line of
' sight running from depicted object to the viewer: it is not the viewer’s right.
1 The same, of course, holds for “left”: this designation is really the viewer’s
| right and the depicted object’s right.
| 1 8 This recalls to mind the devils of medieval drama, who were no doubt
i the most popular characters on stage and other figures like the pugilistic
l Virgin Mary that we see in Rutebeuf’s Miracle de Theophile or the vitriolic,
petulant Virgin from L’Advocacie Nostre Dame. It was--and is--much more
entertaining to follow characters such as these around a lively stage or
through a literary text than it is to focus on yet another frozen theophany or
edificatory sermon
19 The Romanesque tympanum of Ste.- Foy is displayed in the more
conventional manner, with the Last Judgment scene positioned over the
entrance door facing west, “ where the setting sun lights up the great scene
of the evening of the world’s history” (Male 5-6). Thus, unlike at the Arena
Chapel, the worshipers at Conques experience the Last Judgment upon
entering the church. Assumedly, their prayers were all the more fervent
while inside after seeing this scene, replete with its infernal horrors. Louis
Male writes:
The sculptured scenes of the Last Judgement in church porches
moved souls of men more profoundly than we can now imagine.
They were not looked at with minds free from anxiety, for the
faithful, passing through the doorway, believed that the scene
above their heads might at any moment become a fact, and the
trump of the angel sound in their ears. (Image 355-56)
So, Giotto’s fresco sends the faithful out into the world, ideally to
contemplate good deeds-certainly with the “sic transit gloria mundi" topos
in mind; whereas, the tympanum at Conques forces.one into a more
personal, inward-directed contemplation and worship to be carried out
within the world of the church. Each, however, assumes that the effect of
worship will be a soul more attuned to the basic Christian ideal of caritas-
true Christian charity-after leaving the sacred building.
67
The Hereford Maooa Mundi too has its Last Judgment scene inscribed
over its vision of the world, and we remember that it was perhaps hung
over an altar in a cathedral. So, although it is not viewed in the same way~
from the same perspective-as either Giotto’s fresco or Conques’
tympanum, viewing it should leave the churchgoer contemplating the
same crucial issues: one’s geographical and spiritual place in the world;
how he or she has led their life thus far, their personal history, in other
words; and lastly and most importantly, how one will fare come the day of
atonement. The map forces all of these things to be considered and again
reinforces the ubiquitous medieval theme from Ecclesiastes 1.3— 1 would
argue even more effectively than either the tympanum or fresco~“ vanitas
vanitatum omnia vanitas.” I say this because the Hereford map portrays all
of creation in a more concrete manner and lays it out before our eyes. In a
very real direct manner it “assert[s] Eternal Providence, / And justifies the
ways of God to man” (Paradise Lost 1.25-26). The programs of Giotto’s
fresco and the Conques tympanum do not physically include the same
catholic universitas mundi and thus do not function with the same sort of
metaphysical effectiveness.
20 Not all, not even most, medieval mapmakers centered their
mappaemundi on Jerusalem, as the Vercelli map attests. It is a concept
that was introduced in the seventh century but was not “generally
established until the twelfth or even the thirteenth” century (Harley 342,
n.262). Later on the Conquest of the Holy Land played a significant role,
as David Woodward suggests: “ The strengthening of the idea of Jerusalem
as the spiritual center, a natural outcome of the Crusades, may have been
responsible for a noticeable shift in the structure of mappaemundi from
1100 to 1300, toward centering the maps on Jerusalem” (Harley 341-42).
The fact that Richard of Haldingham followed this trend makes his
positioning of it all the more significant and marks a definite theological
program.
21 David Woodward has amassed an impressive amount of evidence,
indicating that many medievals knew that they inhabited a spherical body
(Harley 318-21). I cite what, for medieval literary studies, is perhaps his
most convincing proof: “Dante used the idea of a spherical earth to set his
Divine Comedy, probably the most widely disseminated vernacular work of
its type. Moreover, he apparently felt not the slightest need to justify his
view” (Harley 321).
68
22 The text next to "Babel Turris,” describes “Babilonia a Nembroch
gigante fundata” and not the tower, which it locates in “ terra babilonie.”
Chapter Two
Cut on the Norman Bias: Fabulous Borders
and Visual Glosses on the Bayeux Tapestry
70
. . . the tendency of artists to breach the supposed boundaries
between temporal and spatial arts is not a marginal or
exceptional practice, but a fundamental impulse in both the
theory and practice of the arts, one which is not confined to any
particular genre or period. (Mitchell 98)
Harold Godwinson, king of England for nine months in 1066, was
undeniably an assertive opportunist-albeit a brave one--and perhaps a
traitor; Edward the Confessor was a misguided monarch-or at least a bad
judge of character— and William of Normandy was a righteous conqueror,
a ruler asserting his legal right to the English crown. This, at least, is the
interpretation of historical events presented to us by the Bayeux Tapestry,
the late eleventh-century embroidery that Otto Pacht called the “earliest
work of secular art on a monumental scale which has survived from the
Middle Ages” (Rise 10-11)J In this chapter I outline an interpretive
program which shows how the Tapestry’s Norman bias was manifested
and emphasized by its designer’s intratextual, interactive use of marginal
images, specifically the eight appearances of the Norman chevrons and
the pictographs representing the Tapestry’s nine Aesopic fables.2
Before discussing my interpretive plan, I pause here to summarize
quickly the events depicted in the main narrative panel. This summary
does not distinguish between “subjective” and “objective” representations
of various images, nor does it take the Norman chevrons or parallel border
panels into account.
71
I
Narrative Summary
A good number of the Tapestry’s 73 scenes represent historical
occurrences;3 however, there are also a good number that are best
categorized as historical fiction, that is, historical events which are
elaborated upon by the Tapestry’s designer. I refer here to scenes like the
one portraying Harold’s oath-taking--his swearing allegiance to William on
what appear to be Bayeux Cathedral’s reliquaries (Plates 25, 26);4 the
wonderfully prescient, foreboding depiction of Hailey’s comet streaking
over London and the townsfolk’s reaction to it (Plate 32); and, finally, the
still-controversial image of Harold, mortally wounded by an arrow in the
eye (Plate 71).
The Bayeux Tapestry depicts the events leading up to and including the
Norman Conquest of England, essentially covering the years 1064-1066.5
The three main characters in the drama are Edward the Confessor, King of
England from 1042-1066; Harold Godwinson, King of England for a short
time in 1066, son of Earl Godwin and brother of Edward’s Queen Edith;
and William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy and King of England from
1066-1087. Also playing an important, albeit brief, role is Bishop Odo of
Bayeux, Earl of Kent and William’s half-brother. (There are those who
argue that Odo was the patron of the Tapestry, hence his Turpin-like
72
representation as warrior bishop and close confidant of William the
Conqueror.)
The story begins with Harold and Edward meeting at the King’s palace
before Harold’s voyage to France (Plate 1). After this conference, the
substance of which has been much disputed, Harold rides toward his
home at Bosham for a bon vovaae feast, stopping off at a church on the
way (Plates 2 -4 ).6 He and his men set sail for France and are blown off
course, landing at Ponthieu. There he is taken captive by Guy of Ponthieu
and led to Beaurain, where he is held (Plates 5-8). Messengers bring
news of this to William, who sends to Guy two other messengers in order
to secure Harold’s freedom (Plates 9-13). Guy then leads the newly-
indebted Englishman to William, who meets them, dressed in all of his
ducal splendor (Plate 15). Harold and William proceed together to the
latter’s palace in Rouen where they confer (Plates 16, 17).
Following this comes the still-enigmatic scene labelled, “UBI UNUS
CLERICUS ET /ELFGYVA,” in which a tonsured man suggestively touches
the face of a lady who seems to smile (Plate 17)7 William, Harold and
their combined troops then ride for Brittany to do battle with Conan of Dol
(Plates 18-20). On the way they pass a nicely-rendered Mont St. Michel,
in front of which Harold rescues two men from the River Cousenon’s
(COSNONIS) quicksand (Plate 19). Conan escapes down a rope from his
burning stronghold, and the combined Norman and English troops pursue
73
him past an uninhabited Rennes to Dinan, where battle ensues (Plates 20-
23). Conan surrenders the keys to the gates on the tip of his lance to
William, who receives them in the same manner (Plate 23). William arms
Harold (WILELM DEDIT HAROLDO ARMA) (Plate 24), thus placing the
English earl in “a position of vassalage” to him (Wilson 180). The scene
shifts to Bayeux (BAGIAS), where Harold swears allegiance to the Duke,
each of his hands on one of the cathedral’s reliquaries (Plates 25,26).8
Harold then sails for home and another meeting with Edward in “late
1065” (Wilson 182), whom he approaches in a posture of humility (Plates
26-28). The next section (Plates 29-30) is to be read in reverse order, from
right to left, and covers Edward's bestowal of the kingdom on Harold and
the King’s death.9 Harold is offered the English CORONA REGIS, as he is
informed of Edward’s death. He is then invested by Stigand, Archbishop
of Canterbury (Plate 31). In the succeeding scene Harold is shown seated
on a shaky throne, listening to a messenger who provides him with “secret
intelligence” (Wilson 182). While this transpires, Hailey’s comet streaks
portentiously overhead, and a crowd of townspeople gaze up in wonder at
the heavenly marvel (Plate 32). News of the coronation is taken across
the Channel to William, who is shown seated in conference with Odo and
another counselor (Plates 33-35).
A wonderfully constructed section of tree-felling, ship-building and
provisioning follows, as the Normans set sail for Hastings (Plates 35-39). 10
74
A long stretch then chronicles the Normans’ voyage to and landing in
England, where they forage and hunt for the food later blessed by Odo at
the feast (Plates 40-48). 1 1 Orders are given for the construction of a
CASTELLUM with a Norman motte. an English house is razed while a
woman and a small boy stand by and William prepares to mount his
warhorse for battle (Plates 48-51). The remainder of the Tapestry treats
the Battle of Hastings (Plates 52-73) and the Norman victory over the
I
i
English, who are shown at the end in full flig h t. 12
l.i
Narrative Structure and Reading P r o g r a m ^
. . . the meaning of one picture is not transferred to another, but
rather both pictures are seen to express a single meaning when
viewed sequentially or in combination--a meaning neither is
capable of supporting in isolation. (Dane, “Millstatt” 27)
My interpretive program for the Bayeux Tapestry is an analogic one in
which the border images gloss the scenes in the main narrative panel.1 4
This liminal system of the 224 ft. by 15-18 in. (68.38m x 45.7-53.6cm)
embroidery is quite complex. There are three sets of frames on the
Tapestry, the first of which functions much like a standard picture frame: it
is the outer line which surrounds the other two framing systeips and the
75
main panel. This rectangular box has vertical and horizontal elements
which would meet to form roughly right angles (Plate 1). I say “ would
meet” because the right edge of the Tapestry is missing, and thus the
closing vertical bar is missing, leaving the right extremity open (Plate 73).
Therefore it seems, as I stated above, that one of the fleeing, defeated
English soldiers rides off, quite literally, into space. The second frame--the
inner frame--is made up of the rectangular border which parallels the outer
frame and contains the main narrative panel, the space in which the
primary story is told. Bracketed by the inner and outer frames are the
spaces of the border panels which run the entire length of the Tapestry
(Plate 1 passim). The third set of frames is contained within these spaces
and is composed of hundreds of paired trapezoids which enclose-among
a host of flora and fauna-the Aesopic pictographs and the Norman
chevrons that are set within pairs of diagonal bars. Between these
diagonals stylized vinuous scrolls often appear, the design of which is
reminiscent of the larger flora of the main panel (Plate 7 0 ). 15
The second frame, the inner border, is the one that is transgressed. At
times its upper segment is crossed, as when Hailey’s comet streaks
ominously over the newly-crowned Harold (Plate 32), when the Norman
ships in full sail rush across the Channel (Plates 40-43), when various
creatures break free of the upper panel constraints (Plates 29, 48, 58) or
when the Latin inscriptions intrude there (Plates 30, 32, 34, 35).
76
Incursions occur from the bottom as well, either analogically, in the case of
the fables (Plates 4, 18,28 passim), or literally, in the scenes detailing the
Battle of Hastings. There the lower inner border gives way completely and
the carnage of battle spills out of the main panel space, filling the lower
border panel (Plates 61-73). This inner frame, then, is by far the most
significant divisional marker or framing element on the Tapestry.
The embroidery’s Norman prejudice is not readily apparent and is not
fully recoverable without energizing its five-part narrative schema, its
complete “pictorial syntax” (Dane, “Millstatt” 27). A systematic reading
scheme, one incorporating all of the Tapestry’s intratextual components,
has not been offered by anyone writing on the bewildering variety of
border panel images or on the nine Aesopic fables. 16 in the two most
extensive recent studies, both J. Bard McNulty and David Bernstein have
posited reading theories. For example, Bernstein writes: “. . . without an
understanding of the interdependence of its three main visual components-
-images in the main field, words in the inscriptions, and figures in marginal
zones-it is little wonder that parts of the narrative remain baffling” (7).
Similarly, McNulty feels that a “ full understanding of the narrative art of the
Tapestry requires a recognition of the ways in which all elements--the
borders as well as the main panels-have been woven into the meanings
of the story as a whole” (3). Although each of these books outlines an
interpretive schema somewhat like mine, neither fully implements it.
77
McNulty's book— the most complete on the subject of the Tapestry’s
narrative intratextuality-gives many of the fables short shrift, glossing over
the more problematic ones (24-39 passim): and, although Bernstein
acknowledges that a comprehensive study is necessary, he says that such
“ a full-scale study will have to await a different context. . (128). My study
aims to provide both that “ context" and, within it, “a full-scale study” of the
Tapestry’s intratextuality, one that weaves its multilevel construction into a
i more coherent, interactive narrative.
]
The interaction between the Norman chevrons, the Aesopic pictographs
and the main panel is the key to my interpretive program, since I focus on
the main panel’s narrative by engaging it through its pictorial glosses. As I
have shown above, the two full-length border panels which enclose these
images constitute two of its five narrative strands, the other three being the
j main panel, the upper and lower panel systems of intraconnected
trapezoids and the 53 Latin inscriptions. These elements interrelate with
one another analogically in a number of ways: first, the tower panel’s
fabulous pictographs provide the viewer with a relatively systematic
commentary upon the main story, one which moralizes the actions of the
main characters, Edward, Harold and William. Second, certain images
from the fables in the upper border panel gloss events in the main
i
narrative strip. The upper pane! images are always tied to a fable which
has first been illustrated in the lower panel. These reproductions do not
78
simply duplicate the original, but illustrate a different scene from the same
story. Thus it helps to have the first image in mind while decoding the
second, while at the same time considering the fable’s overall relevance to
the main story. Third, the images within each border are at times
intraconnected, creating expanded tales which gloss the main panel’s
story in more complicated moralizing ways. This occurs mainly in
extended lower panel sections where, for example, the fable of “ The Lion
Hunting with His Companions” (Plates 7-8) is continued by that of “The
Lion and the Stag” (Plate 8). Intraconnections of this sort work in general
thematic ways, in this instance by providing exemola of pursuit and
capture which reoccur frequently in both upper and lower panels in
locations apposite to the central one. Fourth and finally, the Latin
inscriptions provide a running guide to the essential plot. They can be
read alone for a quick declarative summary of the story or in combination
with the fables and the main panel for a more subjective interpretation,
one that reveals the Tapestry’s Norman bias. The viewer is therefore
presented with a three-tiered narrative: the inscriptions can be read alone,
even without the pictures; they can be read in conjunction with the main
panel’s images; or they can be read along with both the main panel and its
two parallel border panels. Each time a layer is added, the tale becomes
fuller and more complex.
Like most borders, the Tapestry’s are most epistemologically
compelling and most troublesome when violated: the tension inherent in
any such arbitrary geometric or geographic system of separation is
heightened when its integrity is compromised. These violations, like
certain oddly-postured fauna and suggestively-placed flora within the
; border trapezoids, halt the viewer’s gaze and visually punctuate, as it
!
| were, the main narrative (Plate 43, 50). At these moments the viewer’s
peripheral gaze is slowed, the narrative flow is retarded and isolated
scenes or images are foregrounded, privileging them and their
relationship to the Tapestry’s main story.
Indeed, it is rather difficult to read the central panel in isolation: the
| border panels constantly pull the viewer’s eye away from the main
i
j narrative, as do the border images on the Hereford Mapoa Mundi. The
! Tapestry’s borders do not separate the three panels from one another;
i
i
rather, they encourage their own transgression by optically decentering
the viewer’s gaze and enticing it across themselves as the main strip is
followed from left to rightT? In this way, the Tapestry viewer is drawn into
confrontations with its marginal images and invited to conflate the three
narrative strands, engaging them simultaneously as mutually inclusive
parts of the Tapestry’s total narrative.
This is not to say, however, that the Tapestry’s story cannot be followed
J by focussing only on its central section; it is certainly possible to read its
80
main narrative without reference to its fabulous borders, as I did above in
my narrative summary. In fact, this is precisely the way it was engaged
until very recently, with the borders largely excluded as interesting but
irrelevant oddities-much as the strange inscriptions and drawings out on
the circumference of the Hereford Maopa Mundi were. When these
literally marginal images are taken into account~when they are employed
| as exegetical tools--the central panel’s tale of the Norman Conquest and
i
i Harold’s treachery becomes fuller: less schematic, less puzzling and
i
decidedly less reportorial.
I.ii
The Succession Controversy:
HIC RESIDET HAROLD REX ANGLORUM
Who was the rightful heir to Edward’s English th ro n e ? is Was William of
i
I Normpndy promised the throne in 1051 by his kinsman, Edward the
i *
j Confessor? What right was Harold Godwinson granted in 1065 by
Edward on his deathbed? How did these issues affect the Tapestry
designer’s Norman bias? These issues surrounding Harold’s and
William’s claims to the throne of England will never be resolved to
!
everyone’s satisfaction; and here I sketch in just enough of the hazy
81
picture to support my argument about the roles of the Norman chevrons
and the fables.
While, as my interpretive schema shows, the Tapestry’s Norman bias is
readily apparent, it is also abundantly clear that Harold is not portrayed
throughout as the villain. 19 In the main panel he is accorded the respect
; due an earl, and his heroic deeds are duly represented. For example, he
; pulls an Englishman and a Norman from the River Cousenon’s quicksand
i
(Plate 20), and he rides with William into battle against Conan II, duke of
Brittany, who surrenders his castle at Dinan to the troops (Plates 17-24).
The Tapestry gives us no reason to assume that Harold acquitted himself
in these instances in anything less than an honorable manner.
However, if one reads the chronicles, Norman chevrons and border
fables in conjunction with the main panel images, it becomes clear that in
his political relations with both Edward, his king, and William, duke of
Normandy, Harold was anything but honorable. His first loyalty was to
Edward; however, as the Tapestry shows and as William of Malmesbury
i
j wrote, Harold made a “ covenant between himself and William” (271): he
! accepted arms and English lands from the Norman duke (Plate 24), and
i
j he swore an oath of allegiance to William on the reilquaries of Bayeux
! Cathedral (Plates 25, 26). As Guillaume de Jumieges wrote, “Harold
i
i
I thereupon sojourned with the duke for some time, and performed fealty to
him in respect of the kingdom with many oaths” (English Historical
82
Documents 229). R. Allen Brown has argued for the chronicler’s
tru s tw o rth in e s s ,20 and Guillaume de Poitiers provided the oath that-
according to him, at least-Harold swore to William:
. . . se in curia domini sui Edwardi regis, quamdiu superesset,
ducis Guillelmi vicarium fore; enisurum quanto consilio valeret,
aut opibus, ut Anglica monarchia post Edwardi decessum in ejus
manu confirmaretur; traditurum interim ipsius militum custodiae
castrum Doveram, studio atque sumptu suo communitum; item
per diversa loca illius terrae alia castra, ubi voluntas ducis ea
firmari juberet, abunde quoque alimonias daturum custodibus.
(Brown [1968] 129, n.108)
([i] that he would be the representative [vicarius] of duke William at
the court of his [Harold’s] lord, king Edward, as long as he
[Edward] should live.
[ii] that he would employ all his influence and resources to assure
him [Wiliam] that possession of the English kingdom after the
death of Edward.
[iii] that he would meanwhile hand over to the custody of his
[William’s] knights the castle of Dover, fortified at his [Harold’s]
own effort and cost.
[iv] that he would similarly hand over, amply provided with
supplies, other castles in various parts of the land where the duke
should order them to be fortified.) (Brown [1968] 129-30)
Harold broke this covenant when he accepted the CORONA REGIS from
the English on the day of Edward’s death. The Tapestry depicts this,
indicating the immediacy of Harold’s acceptance by having the man who
stands to the new king’s right point to the death, enshrouding and burial of
the Confessor (Plate 31).
William’s claim to the throne and Edward’s Norman bias arose from
their rather complicated common a n c e s try .21 Richard II, duke of Normandy
83
(996-1026), and Emma were children of Richard I, duke of Normandy (942-
996). William, duke of Normandy (1035-1087) and later king of England
(1066-1087), was the bastard son of Robert I, duke of Normandy (1027-
1035) and Herleve of Falaise. Edward the Confessor, king of England
(1042-1066), was the son of Emma and Ethelred II, king of England (987-
1016). Odo, Bishop of Bayeux (1049-1090), was William’s half-brother by
virtue of Herleve’s marriage to Herluin, vicomte of Conteville. So, three of
the four main actors in the Bayeux Tapestry’s narrative were descendants
of Richard I, duke of Normandy: Edward was his grandson, William his
illegitimate great grandson and Odo his great grandson. The fourth
principal, Harold Godwinson, had no blood link to the English crown; he
was, however, Edward’s brother-in-law.
Added to this genealogical link is the probability that Edward the
Confessor offered William the Bastard the crown of England in 1051 in
i
order to assure the country a legitimate successor and to protect it from
! Northern invaders. Such nominations were the custom, since there was
no codified system of primogeniture in England during this time:
. . . in the 11th century the English throne, even when there were
eligible male heirs, was not passed on in any such strict order as
primogeniture. The reigning king would designate his successor,
usually the most suitable from the royal family, and the nominee
would be ‘elected’ or ‘recognized’ by the leading nobles in the
] land. (Bernstein 1 2 0 )2 2
84
William certainly would have qualified as “ the most suitable from the royal
family” on the basis of his ancestry, not to mention his remarkable martial
accomplishments in his own duchy of N o r m a n d y .23
Both major Norman chroniclers, discuss the nomination. Guillaume de
Jumieges wrote:
Edward, king of the English, being, according to the dispensation
of God, without an heir, sent Robert, archbishop of Canterbury, to
the duke with a message appointing the duke as heir to the
kingdom which God had entrusted to him. He also at a later time
sent to the duke, Harold the greatest of all the counts in his
kingdom alike in riches and honour and power. This he did in
order that Harold might guarantee the crown to the duke by his
fealty and confirm the same with an oath according to the English
usage. (English Historical Documents 228)24
Guillaume de Poitiers’ chronicle provides a more concise version:
. . . About the same time, Edward, King of the English, who loved
William as a brother or son, established him as his heir with a
stronger pledge than ever before. [. . .] He therefore dispatched
Harold to William in order that he might confirm his promise by an
oath. (English Historical Documents 231)
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states that this upset the Godwins, who were
then among the most powerful and influential of English families (Stenton,
Anglo-Saxon 5 7 6 -7 7 ).2 5 As if Edward’s offer of the crown to William were
not enough, the king in 1051 ordered the Godwins into battle against their
own subjects, whom Edward’s brother-in-law, Eustace II of Boulogne
along with his troops, had abused on their way back home to France:
85
Then Earl Godwine was indignant that such things should
happen in his earldom, and he began to gather his people from
all over his earldom, and Earl Swein his son did the same all over
his, and Harold his other son over all his. And they all assembled
in Gloucestershire and Langtree, a great and innumerable force
all ready to do battle unless Eustace were surrendered and his
men handed over to them, as well as the Frenchmen who were in
the castle. (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle “D” 1 1 9 -2 0 )2 6
Following this uprising, Earl Godwin and his supporters were exiled “by a
coalition of his opponents headed by the king himself” (Stenton, Tapestry
12). With the earl and his men out of the country, Edward had a prime
opportunity to secure for William-and not the for Godwins-the Norman
succession which he desired. These hopes were dashed, however, in the
following year when Earl Godwin and his sons returned with a vengeance,
forcing “the expulsion of many Normans who had lately received places at
court and official positions in the country from King Edward” (Stenton,
Tapestry 12). This brief chronicle brings us to the year 1064, one year
before Edward’s death and the next date of importance for this study of the
Bayeux Tapestry. 1064 is the year in which the Tapestry’s events
commence, the year in which we come upon Harold Godwinson and King
Edward the Confessor in deliberate conference.
86
II
UBI HAROLD SACRAMENTUM FECIT WILLELMO DUCI:
Harold’s Treachery Emblematized
In the Tapestry’s first scene (Plate 1), the viewer sees that most of the
heraldic looking creatures in the upper and lower border panels face each
i
i other and fit well within their diagonal fr a m e s .27 These instances of
pictorial balance indicate, by association, moments of harmony in the main
story panel. When such symmetry is present the eye is not jarred nor is
the attention distracted in any significant way: the viewer can comfortably
scan the Tapestry, relying upon peripheral vision to take in what are
essentially decorative border panel images. This is borne out in the main
panel’s first scene: Edward confers confidently with Harold and another
man. There is nothing in the scene itself which indicates what the subject
of their conference, only that the king-whose large size speaks to his
j
j importance--is dominant and that he and Harold are engaged in a
I
d ia lo g u e .28 But of what do they speak? It can only concern the grant of
succession Edward made to William. It is, after all, 1064, the Tapestry’s
opening scene, and history records that after the meeting Harold
embarked upon his ultimately fateful voyage to France.
In the next scene the viewer quickly senses that all is not well, temporal
j progression is delayed and the seemingly harmonious tale is quickly
87
problematized. As Harold and his men ride off, one of them points
i upward, and the eye is drawn away from the central panel to the Latin
inscription above and then to the upper border panel (Plate 2). There
appear the words DUX ANGLO RUM, which refer to Harold, and above
i
j them two diagonals which are decorated in the Norman sawtooth or
i
j chevron p a tte r n .29 This is the first-and most prescient--of eight
I
! occurences of this motif. Why does the English rider gesture in this way;
1
and why is this abberant design used in this particular scene, particularly
in a decorative scheme which exclusively utilizes solidly colored
diagonals? Each time the motif appears, it is in a Norman context, often in
close proximity to William himself. For example, a single diagonal which
1
supports Odo’s chair as he confers about the upcoming invasion of
England with William, his half-brother (Plate 48). There is also one scene
in which William himself is robed in chevrons (Plate 18). Therefore, it is
highly unlikely that these occurences are accidental; in fact, I argue that
they constitute subtle but pervasive indications of the Tapestry designer’s
Norman bias.
In perhaps the most important scene in the Tapestry, certainly from the
Norman perspective, two chevron diagonals solidly support William’s
Norman throne, while he points tellingly to Harold, who swears an oath of
fealty to the duke (Plate 2 5 ).30 These diagonals appear again a little
further along in the upper panel, hovering like a bad conscience over
88
Harold as he approaches Edward, his king (Plate 28). Harold’s stooped
posture, unusually extended and bared neck, and the fact that he is
followed closely by a man with a rather large battle-axe illustrate the
Tapestry designer’s suggestion that Harold was aware of his perjury, that
he knew he had pledged himself to two lords, neither of whom he planned
to support. As I indicated above, Harold pledged to uphold William of
Normandy’s right of succession to the throne, and, according to R. Allen
Brown, he also swore to be William’s man:
Harold did homage to the duke by the immixtio manuum. and the
duke, evidently before the oath of fealty with its crucial additions,
and at Harold’s request, gave him, i.e. invested him with, his
lands and powers in England. ([1968] 130)
By accepting the English crown, Harold broke three pledges: one of
J regnal support for William, his oath of fealty to him and his allegiance to
! Edward, his king. The Tapestry designer does not allow us to forget this,
!
j for the pattern reappears under Harold as he is offered the CORONA
i
| REGIS by two Englishmen-the crown that Edward promised to William in
1051 (Plate 31). Here the diagonals tightly frame a bird while pinning it by
the neck. The bird must signify the treacherous Harold-soon to be
“ pinned” himself by the Conqueror for breaking his oath and assuming the
English throne. In later scenes (Plates 37, 56) the decorative theme
reoccurs, although it is present only in outline. In the first of these two
89
instances, it is under the group of Normans tying up the ships after arriving
in England; in the second they appear above and to the left of a pointing
William on horseback.
Returning to the Tapestry’s second scene (Plate 2), one can see the
significance of this first manifestation of the pattern. It functions first to
signify that Harold is on his way to Normandy and that he will be involved
in some way with the DUX NORMANNORUM. Reading this scene
retrospectively, it is clear that these first Norman chevrons assume an
ominous aspect, foreshadowing-like Hailey’s Comet and the ghost ships
framing his shaky throne (Plates 32-33)— Harold’s ultimate demise some
seventy plates and two years later.
Ill
Borderline Vitality and Fabulous Commentary
In this section I offer an integrated reading of the Tapestry’s scenes
which are bordered by the nine beast fables: “The Fox and the Crow”
(Plates 4; 18; 27-28, upper panel), “ The Wolf and the Lamb” (Plate 4), “ The
Dog and Her Puppies” (Plates 4, 57), “ The Wolf and the Crane” (Plates 5;
27, upper panel), “ The Rule of King Lion” (Plates 5, 6), “ The Mouse and
the Frog” (Plate 6), “ The Goat Who Sang” (Plates 6-7, 59-60), “ The Lion
Hunting with His Companions” (Plates 7, 8)31 and “The Farmer, and the
90
Cranes” (Plates 10, 11). Most of the fables appear early on in the
Tapestry’s narrative program, and all appear initially in the lower panel.
With the exception of the reoccurring “ The Fox and the Crow,” “The Dog
and Her Puppies,” “ The Wolf and the Crane” and “ The Goat Who Sang,”
these fabulous images occur in the first sixth or so of the 73 plates, in what
might be referred to as the tale’s “prologue.” In this early section the
Tapestry’s main characters are introduced, they are fleshed out and the
designer’s Norman bias is established. The fables— which come from a
long tradtion, established by Aesop and continued by Babrius and
Phaedrus, as well as by later authors like Marie de France-add a degree
of depth to the characters’ development, while commenting and moralizing
on their personal motives for their political actions. The interplay of border
and main panels suggests that the seemingly objective tale told by many
of the primary images and the Latin inscriptions is not the full one. If it
were, there would have been no need to “clutter up” the embroidery with
hundreds of images which slow down our progression through what
seems a quite straightforward tale. As each fable is encountered, I
summarize it briefly before discussing its function as part of the Tapestry’s
narrative s c h e m e .32
9
lll.i
“ The Fox and the Crow”
He who takes delight in treacherous flattery usually pays the
penalty by repentance and disgrace.
When a crow, perched on a high tree, was about to eat a piece
of cheese which he had carried off from a window, a fox who
coveted the prize spoke up as follows: “ Oh, Mr. Crow, what a
lustre your plumes have, how graceful your face and your figure!
If only you had a voice no bird would rate higher.” Anxious to
show that he did have a voice, the foolish crow opened his mouth
to sing and let fall the cheese, which the crafty fox immediately
snapped up with eager jaws. Too late the crow, betrayed by his
own folly, moaned his loss.
[This affair shows how much ingenuity can accomplish;
cleverness is always more than a match for hardihood.]
(Perry 206-09.P13, 97.B77)
! The pictograph for this first fable is placed in the lower border panel
i
j beneath and just to the right of the feast that Harold holds just before his
j departure for Normandy (Plates 3, 4). It first functions to interrupt the
j
! narrative flow, as the Norman diagonals and the pointing rider do in the
I second scene. And it does so in the same way, interrupting the
i
] symmetrical arrangement of the birds and animals in both the upper and
i
! lower panels. More specifically, it is placed under the stairs upon which
i
the messenger stands who informs Harold that his ships are ready, that it
is time to sail. This messenger connects the banquet scene with the
j following one of loading and embarkation by turning his head toward
| Harold while pointing his index finger at the soldiers boarding the ship.
92
He is literally connected to the succeeding action by the man standing two
steps below him. He touches the messenger’s leg with his right hand and
; holds a spear in his left hand, which is woven over the next man’s right
shoulder. We also notice that the waterline begins right at the foot of the
steps and continues through to Plate 7, where the lead boat’s anchor
physically connects it to a disembarking Harold, there caught by Guy’s
men.
The fable plays a connective role in the narrative also, but in a symbolic
manner. This tale of “The Fox and the Crow” is one of trickery and greed.
It is represented on the Tapestry in medias res, much like the main panel
narrative. The viewer knows that Harold is off on a sea voyage, but the
; Tapestry does not indicate what his destination is. Nor will it until Plate 7,
i
: and then, unless we know that Guy (WIDO) was Count of Ponthieu,
i
nothing shows that the English have landed in France. Similarly, at this
i
j point we are not shown the denouement of the fable, the cheese hovers
tantalizingly in the air, having been dropped by the crow but not yet caught
by the fox. What does this mean? What is the connection between the
main panel and the fable? J.Bard McNulty comments, somewhat vaguely:
“All this, by analogy, foreshadows the rivalry of William and Harold for the
prize of the throne of England, which like the cheese is not yet in the
j possession of either contender and which is to be the subject of the entire
Tapestry” (28). The cheese represents the English CORONA REGIS and
93
succession to the English throne. However, for this fable to work it must do
so in a more fully analogic way, and for this McNulty’s commentary is too
imprecise. The fox must represent Harold and his cause and the crow the
cause shared by Edward and William. The foolish Edward “drops” the
cheese into the treacherous earl’s grasp when he dies by making Harold
vicarius (Plate 30), unwittingly breaking his promise to William and forcing
the Norman invasion of his own country .33 The Tapestry’s designer saw
William as the rightful heir to the English crown and the English earl as a
scoundrel, as cunning and treacherous as a fox. If the Tapestry did not
reflect its designer’s Norman bias, why would he so consistently have
linked Harold with the oath-breaking events that are connected by the
Norman diagonals and with this symbol of bestial cunning and deceit?
The fable of “ The Fox and the Crow” is represented again in the lower
panel further along (Plate 18)34 Here, however, the tale is concluded and
the fox has the cheese— much to the chagrin of the squawking crow. We
notice also that Harold-the-fox’s tail is pinned down by one of its
diagonals. This closure of the fable foreshadows Harold’s nine-month
reign over England in 1066 and functions much like the Norman diagonals
i
j and the fable’s first appearance, all of which adumbrated significant
I
i negatively-valenced events. It also alerts us to the moral: “He who takes
delight in treacherous flattery usually pays the penalty by repentance and
, disgrace.”
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The final appearance of the tale is just as telling as the first two, and is
so precisely because it is so odd (Plates 27, 28). Both of the other
pictographs are found in the lower border panel, and their narrative
progression is as expected. This one is in the upper panel, an occurrence
odd enough in itself to attract our attention. But there is more. The tale is
j first represented, as I have said, in the midst of its narrative. We should
!
i logically expect that if the tale is to be used later within the Tapestry’s main
narrative, that it would depict the fable at a point further along in its own
history. As we have seen, this is precisely what happens: the fox has the
cheese, and the crow squawks in anger. This third manifestation,
however, takes us back to the very beginning of the fable: here the crow is
perched placidly in its tree, cheese firmly gripped in its beak. The fox is
not even in the same border frame this time as it was in the other
occurrences; rather, it moves to our right, towards the bird, and is just
about to begin its speech. This seems to indicate that the story has not
even reached the point where it was in Plate 4. Why does the fable start
over again at such a late point in the main narrative? Why was this
opening scene of the fable not placed nearer the opening scenes of the
j Tapestry? Keeping in mind that the cheese signifies the kindgom of
}
j England, the CORONA REGIS, that Edward’s and William’s cause is
I represented by the crow and Haroids’s by the fox, all becomes clear.
t
i
i
i
i
95
It is no surprise that this tale begins the section which has baffled critics
for so long. Here it seems that events happen in reverse chronological
order, with Edward interred in his church before he dies. This clearly is not
the case. What happens is that the narrative direction shifts and must be
read right to left. That is, we are meant to begin with Edward’s death and
work left to his interment (Plate 30>Plate 29, not Plate 29>Plate 30). J.
Bard McNulty has outlined a reading strategy for this seemingly
problematic section which is applicable in a number of other places in the
Tapestry:
Time in the Tapestry moves in the direction the figures move, so
that while most passages are to be read from left to right, others,
like the funeral sequence, are to be read from right to left because
the actors move from right to left. As the mourners are moving
from right to left, away for the deathbed scene, the King’s death is
to be understood as anterior to his funeral, as nature and
common sense-not to say common decency— demand. (17)
Crucial here is McNulty’s distinction between the movements of time and
the Tapestry’^ “actors.” Time never stops in this embroidered narrative,
although the direction of its progression is often reversed. Accordingly, we
should not be surprised if the border narrative shifts its temporal flow,
especially in this section.
Harold has returned from France to face Edward; he is a man of divided
loyalties, having sworn himself to William while still owing allegiance to his
king (Plate 28). Edward is again shown securely seated in majesty with
96
his throne firmly planted on the ground line and is woven much larger than
any of the three men who surround him, including Harold. Indeed, the
Confessor’s crown nearly touches the roof of his palace, and he seems
fully twice the size of the man standing behind him. His impressive size,
secure enthronement and Harold’s submissive posture show us a king
completely in control of his kingdom, his “cheese,” at this particular
| moment and completely unsuspecting of his earl’s coming treachery.
Supporting this contention are all of the border panel flora and fauna,
which are all symmetrically arranged in compositional harmony, including,
of course, the fable’s pictograph.35 Only Harold and the viewer who reads
this pictograph in conjunction with its two predecessors are cognizant of
| his private deceit. Harold fairly creeps upon his sovereign, set to play the
role of dutiful inferior and to begin the “ tale” of his quest for the “ cheese.”
Even the positioning of the beasts matches that of their main panel
counterparts: the fox moves beseechingly to the right, and the bird looks
confidently to the left. Looking back to the placement and postures of
Edward and Harold in the very first scene (Plate 1), which parallels this
one, we see that they too match the placement and postures of the fox and
crow here. In this and the following scenes, the events set out earlier in
the narrative really begin to run down to a swift conclusion. By now, all of
the character development has been completed, motives have been set
97
and sides drawn. All that is needed is the king’s death, which comes in
the following scenes (Plates 29, 30).
Illii
“ The Wolf and the Lamb”
Impelled by thirst, a wolf and a lamb had come to the same
brook. Upstream stood the wolf, much lower down the lamb.
Then the spoiler, prompted by his wicked gullet, launched a
pretext for a quarrel: “ Why,” said he, “have you roiled the water
where I am drinking?” Sore afraid, the woolly one made answer:
“Pray, how can I, wolf, be guilty of the thing you charge? The
water flows from you downstream to where I drink.” Balked by the
power of truth, the wolf exclaimed, “Six months ago you cursed
me.” “Indeed,” replied the lamb, “at that time I was not yet born.”
“Well, I swear, your father cursed me,” said the wolf, and, with no
more ado, he pounced upon the lamb and tore him, and the lamb
died for no just cause.
This fable was composed to fit those persons who invent false
charges by which to oppress the innocent.
(Perry 190-93. P1, 111.B89)
This next fable follows “The Fox and the Crow” in the lower panel (Plate 4).
Much as the designer placed the fable centered on eating first under
Harold’s bon vovaae feast, he placed this one centered on drinking under
the first aquatic scene. The fable of “ The Wolf and the Lamb” is just
beneath the English ship being loading before its departure for France.
This fable, as J. Bard McNulty writes, applies “in a broad, general way”
(33), unlike the previous one and most of the others. Nonetheless, it does
not work if we cannot assign its animal actors historical counterparts. Like
98
its predecessor, it is about greed, but the added element of provocation to
needless violence plays a fundamental part here, as it does in the main
narrative. Once again the guileful actor-the predator--is Harold, who
takes what is not his, thereby unleashing unnecessary violence upon the
innocent. To the lamb we can assign the character of an unsuspecting
Edward and his rightful cause, the usurpation of which prompts bloodshed
and slaughter. His kindgom is devoured by the power-hungry Harold,
“ prompted by his wicked gullet.”
fll.iii
“ The Dog and Her Puppies”
The fair-seeming words of evil persons conceal a trap; the
following lines warn us to beware.
A bitch about to have puppies asked another bitch to let her
deposit her litter in the other’s kennel, for which she easily got
permission. Later on, when the owner asked for her kennel back
again, the other dog resorted to supplications, asking but a brief
stay till the puppies were strong enough for her to take with her.
When this time also had expired the owner began to insist more
stoutly on the return of her sleeping quarters. “If,” said the tenant,
“ you can prove yourself a match for me and my brood I’ll move
out.” (Perry 214-15.P19)
The tale of the “Wolf and the Lamb” is followed in the lower border by
one with much more specific significance for the main story. “ The Dog and
Her Puppies” is a tale fraught with deceit and treachery. The pictograph
for this moral tale is tellingly situated just beneath the English ships as
99
they depart for France (Plates 4, 5) and reappears in much the same form
farther along when William leads his troops into battle (Plate 57). As
usual, the analogy does not work unless we assign historical counterparts
and their causes to the animal actors. The bitch without the litter is both
Edward and William, and the occupying one with the litter is Harold. Here
in its first representation the tale bears little more than the sort of general
relevance to the main narrative as the “The Wolf and the Lamb” did.
Considered it in relation to its second appearance on the Tapestry and to
its role in the historical story, things change quite a bit. As noted above, in
1051 Edward intended to leave his kingdom to William who, like himself,
was a descendant of Richard I, duke of Normandy. However, its seems
| that on his deathbed Edward awarded the title, at least that of vicarius. to
j Harold:
i
The one detailed near-contemporary description of the old king’s
last moments which we have in the Vita Edwardi certainly refers
to the matter, though the form and manner of Edward’s dying
speech at this point seem somewhat inappropriate to so
momentous an occasion as a grant of the succession, and may
be thought to fit much better the context of putting the kingdom
into the protection of Harold as the vicarius. executor or
representative of duke William, the previously nominated and
recognised heir.
; (Brown [1968] 135)
j If we assume that Harold was to be regent only as long as it would take for
i
j William to assume his rightful place, the analogical relations are perfectly
100
apparent. When William was set to return to England after Edward’s
death, Harold had already had himself crowned. This, then, is the most
telling of the fables, conjuring as it does the most profound historical
resonance on the Tapestry--Harold’s treachery.
The work’s designer placed a second pictograph representing “The
Dog and Her Puppies” much further along to gloss his narrative (Plate 57).
The spatial arrangement of this image is a bit different, a bit less elaborate,
but otherwise the same. The fable’s narrative has not progressed, as it did
in the second appearance of “The Fox and the Crow.” Again, to
i
j comprehend fully this fable’s significance, it must be discussed in relation
t
to the relevant lower border scenes which bracket this fable’s pictograph.
By reading these other images in conjunction with the glossal tale, its
function vis-a-vis them and the main narrative is revealed, and it is tied to
its first appearance. William has come in pursuit of Harold, the “ dog”
whom he intends to dethrone, to drive out of his and Edward’s “ cave” so
that he can rightly occupy it. This second representation of the fable is
! placed here to remind the viewer of William’s right of succession and
i
| Edward’s desire to have him become king of England upon his death. Not
i
| accidentally does it appear under scenes linked by the inscription in which
] William exhorts his troops to prepare themselves manfully and wisely for
i
their battle with the English, HIC WILLELM DUX ALLOQUIT[UR] SUIS
MILITIBUS UT PREPARARENT SE VIRI LITER ET SAP I ENTER AD
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PRELIUM CONTRA ANGLORUM EXERCITU[M] (Plates 57-61). As such, it
works both as a reminder and as a kind of “pep-talk” for the viewer, much
| as the Tapestry itself did for N a p o le o n 3 6 and as William of Malmesbury
I wrote that the Chanson de Roland is said to have worked for the Normans
i
j at Hastings: “Then beginning the song of Roland, that the warlike example
' of that man might stimulate the soldiers, calling on God for assistance, the
‘ battle commenced on both sides” (277).
As the Norman fleet sets sail for England, there appears in the lower
! panel a hare pursued by what looks like a hound (Plate 41). As the “ elite
i
I of the Norman army” (Wilson 188) ride out from Hastings (HESTENGA) to
do battle with Harold, they are bracketed by two odd border scenes and
t
J followed by three others (Plate 53). In the upper panel is an ass, framed
! solum, followed by what looks like an approaching fox, also framed alone
i
; (Plate 53). In the lower panel a hare is pursued by a bird, and both are
i
| framed within the same trapezoidal shape (Plate 5 4 ).3 7 Next appears an
t
j image of a grazing donkey stalked by what seems to be a leopard (Plate
| 55). Following the fable’s pictograph, we see two more images of pursuit
and capture: Two quadrupeds (wolves? dogs? foxes?) are shown in
i
| forward motion, each with a bird (a goose and a chicken?) firmly gripped
i
, in its jaws (Plate 59). And finally, a few scenes before Harold is killed by
i
! an arrow in the eye, a lamb appears in the upper border, framed solum but
i
i
! bracketed by two rather fierce looking birds (Plate 7 0 ) 3 8 Do these
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pictographs represent fables? Why are they here? I find no tales that
correspond to these five sets of images in the fable collections of Aesop,
Babrius, Phaedrus or Marie de France 39 In most cases there is not
enough pictorial information given to tie these images securely to one
particular tale. Images of the fleeing lamb and the pursued hares just do
not provide the viewer with enough information to do anything with, aside
from drawing general parallels to the main story. Based upon this, one
can assume that they do not refer to fables, at least not to fables of which
these authors were aware. Nonetheless, they function analogically like
the fables at which we have already looked. Reading them this way, their
relationship to the main panel becomes evident, especially considering
that this section is centered-like these border decorations— on themes of
the hunt, pursuit and capture. 40
fll.iv
“ The Wolf and the Crane”
He who wants to serve rascals and be duly paid for it makes
two mistakes: first, he helps the undeserving, and, secondly, he
enters into a deal from which he cannot emerge without loss to
himself.
A bone that he had gobbled stuck in a wolf’s throat. When the
pain was too much for him he went about offering pay to one and
another as an inducement if they would remove the offending
object. At length a crane accepted, on the strength of a solemn
oath. She mortgaged her neck full length in the wolf’s throat and
performed a successful operation on him with great danger to
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herself. In return she demanded her fee according to contract,
but the wolf retorted: “You ungrateful thing! Your head was in my
mouth and you got it out intact, and now you stipulate that I am to
pay you a bonus.” (Perry 200-01 .P8)
The Tapestry’s fourth fable follows “ The Dog and Her Puppies” and
directly precedes “ The Rule of King Lion” in the lower border panel (Plate
I 5). “ The Wolf and the Crane” is repeated later in the narrative, where it
i
appears in the upper border preceding the second rendering of “The Fox
| and the Crow” (Plate 27). In the first instance, the pictograph is placed
i
i
| under Harold’s ships as they sail for France. Above the first ship the
i
j designer placed two border beasts, each twisted toward the ground in an
I odd posture (Plate 4). Of these animals McNulty says: “Inversion, upside-
i
!
downness, is a common medieval metaphor for things going wrong, as
I
| they do on Harold’s crossing the Channel” (87).41 This seems right and
i
! certainly follows what I have said about the fables in this scene, not to
i
| mention the main narrative events. The most significant analogy between
i
! the fable and Tapestry’s main panel is their common reliance upon a
I broken oath. I have outlined the historical events surrounding Harold’s
i
j
j oath, showing them--and it— to be key in understanding the Tapestry
! designer’s bias. Following this, the specific analogical parallels between
]
j the fable and the historical characters appear obvious: the crane
i
: represents William, who has done Harold the services of arming him and
104
investing him with his English lands; the wolf, then, is Harold, who breaks
these oaths and betrays William’s trust in him 42 The moral is particularly
appropriate to the Tapestry’s political tale and the designer’s Norman bias:
“He who wants to serve rascals . . . enters into a deal from which he cannot
emerge without loss to himself.” William has done Harold the services of
vassalage and of freeing him from Guy of Ponthieu, only to be
treacherously repaid.
In the second instance the pictograph is situated above the English
coastal lookout tower which functions as a marker of visual punctuation,
separating the incoming voyagers from the riders who move out to
Edward’s court (Plates 27, 28). This tower also serves to connect the two
narrative scenes, implicitly connecting Harold’s overseas exploits to his
approaching reconciliation with Edward. The fable’s representation
enhances this connection and reminds the viewer that it was in France that
the earl swore his oath and that this pledge will be broken upon Harold’s
return to England. This border image immediately precedes the second
i
! appearance of “ The Fox and the Crow,” which I have discussed in some
: detail above. Suffice it to say that, taken together, these two pictorial
! images call up all of the most relevant political issues represented by the
i
i
I Tapestry while moralizing them and coloring them with the designer’s
i
i
i Norman bias: Harold’s hierarchical relationship with Edward (Plates 1), his
105
arming by William (Plate 24), his sworn oath to the Conqueror (Plate 26)
and his future treachery.
Ill v
“The Wolf King”
A lion once decided to go and live in another land. So he
assembled all the animals and revealed his plan to them and told
them that since he didn’t intend to return, they must choose a new
king. There wasn’t a single animal who didn’t plead with him to
give them another lion, but he explained that he had no heir-he
had not raised one because he hadn’t dared to. They must look
among themselves, he told them, for the one who might govern
them best.
Thus it happened that they chose the wolf, because there was
no one bold enough to choose any but him. They considered him
to be very disloyal, but he had promised many that he would
always be true to them. They went to the lion and told him that
they had chosen the wolf, and he replied that they had chosen a
shrewd animal, to be sure--one who was alert and quick and
enterprising, if he were as ethical in his way of thinking and acting
as he should be. But the lion feared one thing: that the wolf might
choose as his advisor the fox, who knew well how to deceive;
both of them were treacherous and evil. If they wanted to have
peace from the wolf, they should make him swear on the saints
not to touch any animal or ever in his life eat meat in any shape or
form. The wolf willingly swore even more than they had asked
him to. But when he had been bound by oath and the lion had
left, the wolf had a terrible craving for meat. Through a ruse he
wanted to get the animals to grant and carry out his wish. [Here
the wolf calls a succession of animals before him, all of whom he
eats.]
Shortly afterwards, the wolf saw a fat, well-fed monkey. He
had a great craving for him--he wanted to eat and devour him.
One day he went to ask him if his breath stank or if it was sweet
smelling. The monkey was very sly and didn’t want to be
condemned, so he said that his breath was between the two. The
106
wolf didn’t know what to do, because he couldn’t put him to death
unless he wronged him. So he pretended to be sick in bed. He
complained to all the animals who came to visit him that he would
not recover. They had doctors come to find out if he could be
cured. The doctors were perplexed; they saw nothing and found
no injury that hurt him, if only he would want to eat. “My only
desire,” he said, “is to eat monkey meat. But I don’t want to touch
any animal--1 must keep my oath unless I have such a reason that
my barons would grant it.” Then they advised him that he should
surely do so-he should never keep an oath against his heart and
his wish. They could never prevent him from doing anything that
would cure his body from ill. When he heard what they advised
him, he killed the monkey and ate him. Afterwards, they all got
their sentence, for he kept no oath with them.
Thus the philosopher shows us that for no reason should one
make a treacherous man lord or bring him to any honor. He will
no more keep loyalty to strangers than to his intimates and will
behave toward his people as did the wolf with his oath.
(Marie de France 94-100)
This fable, I fear, is longer than my commentary on it. It is a particularly
well-chosen one, however, and deserves to be recounted in full. McNulty
refers to it as “ one of the happiest strokes of the Master of the Tapestry”
(32). The pictographs representing it are placed beneath the second of
Harold’s boats in which he and his men sail for England. It is so well-
suited that it requires little explication: the lion is Edward, who leaves his
j kingdom without providing a male successor. The wolf who swears on the
| saints’ bones is Harold, who has pledged himself to William on Odo’s holy
i
relics. It is the wolf-like Harold who breaks this oath and “ eats the
i
monkey,” “the cheese,” the succession, the CORONA REGIS, all of which
represent the crown of England which Edward leaves upon his death.43
107
Harold, like the wolf, replaces the king-although, his role should have
been that of vicarius and not king,
j “ The Wolf King,” while it points out Harold’s treachery and moralizes on
i it, also comments rather unfavorably on Edward’s Lear-like folly: he
! apparently left his kingdom to William but then also granted Harold some
! position of authority, fertilizing the seeds of treachery sown by Earl Godwin
I
! in the rebellion of 1051. One cannot help but wonder why Edward made
no provision for keeping the Godwins out of power. After all, he did exile
them following their uprising in 1051. Why did he make one of his most
potentially troublesome earls vicarius? Undoubtedly, Harold’s power and
holdings made him a likely protector of the kingdom. They also made him
capable of assuming the kingship with apparently little dissension, of
defeating Harold Hardrada at Stamford Bridge in 1066 and of marching
back south to Hastings to meet William in a matter of days. By promising
the crown to William in 1051, fourteen years before his death, the king
seemed to have provided in ample time-perhaps too ample--for his
kingdom’s security. Ironically, by trying to secure a smooth transition of
power for a member of his own family, however distant, by appointing the
powerful Harold Godwinson as intermediary, Edward opened the way to
what was arguably the single most significant battle of the Middle Ages.
108
lll.vi
“ The Mouse and the Frog”
Aesop said, “ Once when the animals all spoke the same
language, a mouse made friends with a frog and invited him to
dinner. He took him into a very well-stocked storeroom where
there was bread, meat, cheese, olives, figs. And he said: ‘Eat.’
When he had helped himself generously, the frog said: ‘You must
come to my house for dinner, too, and let me give you a good
reception.’ He took the mouse to his pool and said: ‘Dive in.’ But
the mouse said: ‘I don’t know how to dive.’ The frog said: ‘I’ll
teach you.’ And he tied the mouse’s foot to his own with a string
and jumped into the pool, pulling the mouse with him. As the
mouse drowned, he said: ‘Even though I’m dead, I’ll pay you off.’
Just as he said this, the frog dove under and drowned him. As
the mouse lay floating on the water, a water bird carried him off
with the frog tied to him, and when he had finished eating the
mouse he got his claws into the frog. This is the way the mouse
punished the frog. Just so, gentlemen, if I die, I will be your doom.
The Lydians, the Babylonians, and practically the whole of
Greece will reap the harvest of my death.” (Perry 490-91.384)
This fable follows “ The Wolf King” in the lower border panel and
precedes “The Goat Who Sang” (Plate 6). “ The Mouse and the Frog” too
is placed underneath the sailing English ships, only here we have come
much closer to Harold’s landing at Ponthieu.44 Following the sails which
invade the upper panel, the first figures are contorted birds, which seem to
be biting their feet or at least to be in some kind of discomfort, much like
the mouse in the tale and Harold in the Tapestry's story. Again, if we
assign characters to the animal actors, the analogic significance of the
fable comes clear. The “ water bird” is William who swoops down~here
109
represented by the apprehending Guy of Ponthieu— and captures both the
dead mouse and its unkind host. The frog is Harold, who will have
submerged Edward’s deathbed wishes (the mouse?) by assuming the
crown instead of passing it on to W illia m .45
III.VII
“The Goat and the Wolf”
A she-goat while pasturing among the bushes met a wolf who
said to her: “What are you doing here in the woods?” The goat
replied that she had long avoided the wolf’s haunts, but now she
had come there of her own accord, resigned to her fate, only she
begged that he would show her some little consideration. “I don’t
ask for my life,” she said, “but that you extend it just long enough
for me to sing two masses, one for myself and one for you.” “I
grant it,” said the wolf. Then said the goat, “Lead me up on to the
high place yonder, in order that, being nearer to the heavenly
ones, they themselves may hear me better as I sing and pray, and
the other she-goats, on hearing me, may be inspired with
devotion and join in praying for us both.” This was done, as the
goat requested. Standing on the high place and looking up to the
sky, the goat began to call out very loudly, while the wolf stood by
supposing that she was singing a mass. All the goats in the
neighbouring countryside heard the clamour; then the dogs and
rustics came out of the farmyards, pursued the wolf, caught him,
beat him with clubs, and freed the goat from his jaws. As he was
being dragged along and beaten, the wolf turned to the goat and
said, “My hard luck; I see that you didn’t pray much for me, but
very well for yourself.” “I’m satisfied,” said the goat, “ that the
prayers which I made for myself were heard.” (Perry 581-82)
| The fable of the goat singing is placed directly under a pointing Harold
i who stands in the bow of his ship, about to disembark and be taken
___i
110
captive at Ponthieu (Plates 6, 7). It appears again much farther along in
the narrative, this time in the upper panel above William leading his men
into battle (Plates 59, 60). There it brackets the charging cavalry along
with the scenes of pursuit in the lower panel, which were examined above.
It is not represented in this first instance by just a single pictograph, one
scene, but is given a large amount of space. In fact, nearly the entire fable
is illustrated: first we see the wolf and goat face to face; then the goat sings
with head held high-no doubt for maximum volume-while one of the club-
wielding, wolf-chasing men turns his head to listen. He and another man,
this one seemingly intent on capturing the wolf, follow a pack of dogs
which chase the fleeing wolf. This long pictorial narration is separated
from the preceding fable of “ The Mouse and the Frog” by two stylized
j trees, visual markers which also partition it off from the succeeding fable of
i
j “ The Lion Hunting with His Companions.” Such an arrangement is
j somewhat unusual for the Tapestry’s border panels, since most internal
1
j sections are separated by the diagonal bars. As usual, the odd disposition
»
j catches the eye, slows the narrative and forces the reader to consider the
t
i.
theme which links the fables: the topos of pursuit, of the hunt, capture and
death.
By virtue of conquest, Guy was William’s vassal at this point--or at least
his grudging underling: “Ponthieu had recently been brought under
i
Norman overlordship, and the duke was able to obtain the surrender of
111
Harold” (Stenton, Anglo-Saxon 577). Perhaps their relationship was still
just hostile enough— and his allegiance to his conqueror just tenuous
enough-for Guy to expect some sort of ransom for this English captive. It
seems that if he were fully subservient to William, he would have escorted
Harold to the duke immediately upon his arrival. Instead, it took “ duke
William’s powerful intervention” to set the earl free, after which his “visit. . .
included an expedition into Brittany on which the duke took his
i
| distinguished guest with him” (Brown, [1968] 128). This is all illustrated
i
i
on the Tapestry (Plates 18-25), where we find further evidence of the
differences in treatment accorded to Harold, this time in the inscriptions: he
is APPREHENDIT (Plate 7) and TENUIT (Plate 8) by Guy but is armed by
William, DEDIT HAROLDO ARMA (Plate 24), to whom he swears his
allegiance in the famous oath-taking scene (Plates 25, 26).
All of this is by way of arguing that the wolf is William and Guy-his legal
representative-and that the goat is Harold.4s This tale is another which
takes advantage of the broken oath theme, only in this first illustration the
| potential victim is the clever party and the one who benefits from deceit.
That is, Harold is taken by Guy, and William hears the news of his
imprisonment from a messenger, HIC VENIT NUNTIUS AD WILGELMUM
\
i
DUCEM (Plates 12,13). The duke has Harold released from custody, after
j hearing the “song” of his imprisonment. Harold-the-goat repays William-
| the-wolf’s largesse by breaking his oaths of fealty and support of the
112
duke’s succession: William is driven from his rightful place on the English
throne.
In its later appearance, the fable is given in the sort of mnemonic,
pictorial shorthand more characteristic of the Tapestry (Plates 59, 60).
There only the wolf and the goat face each another, framed together in the
same trapezoidal enclosure. As in these other instances, apparently the
designer felt such an abbreviated image would be enough to call the fable
i
I
! to the viewer’s mind. Indeed, this works rather well: all the viewer needs
here is a reminder of the fable to see that now the tables have been turned
by Harold’s treachery, that all along he was truly the “wolf.” Enhanced by
i
| the lower panel images of fervent pursuit, the main panel shows William
i
\
and his men going after what is rightfully his, that which Edward granted
i
i
j him in 1051--the English throne.
i
t
I
Vll.viii
“ The Cow, the She-Goat, the Sheep and the Lion”
To go shares with the mighty is never a safe investment. This
little fable bears witness to my statement.
A cow, a she-goat, and a sheep, patient sufferer when
wronged, went into partnership with a lion in the forest. When
they had captured a stag of mighty bulk the lion made four
portions and spoke as follows: “I take the first portion by virtue of
my title, since I am addressed as king; the second portion you will
assign to me because I am a partner; then, since I am superior to
j you in strength, the third portion will come my way; and it will be
113
too bad for anyone who meddles with the fourth.” Thus all the
booty was carried off by ruthlessness alone.
(Perry 198-99. P5, 82-85. B67, 449-50.149)
Precisely identifying the next lower border scene is somewhat
problematic. As J.Bard McNulty notes, this is because “several traditional
fables have to do with lions defeating stags” (34). McNulty sees this fable
as the eighth of nine, with “ The Lion and the Stag" as the ninth and last
(27, 34), although he also concedes that it is possible that this “scene
shows, not a ninth fable, but the conclusion of the eighth” (91). Helene
Chefneux reads “Le Lion chassant” as the eighth and “L’Homme semant
le Lin et les Oiseaux” as the ninth. I read “ The Cow, the She-Goat, the
j Sheep, and the Lion” along with “The Lion and the Stag” together as
| number eight. It seems only logical that the latter follows in continuation of
i
| the former. The unlikely group of the goat, the sheep, the cow (a bull on
i
, the Tapestry) and the lion are shown in hot pursuit of a deer in full flight,
with its front legs extended, body stretched out and head back (Plates 7,
8). In the next panel scene the lion, who is out in front of the hungry group,
has felled the deer and is enjoying the fruits of his labors. This all takes
place under the main narrative scenes which depict Harold’s capture and
captivity, beneath the APPREHENDIT and TENUIT discussed above. The
illustration is separated on its left from the chase portion of the preceding
fable, “ The Wolf and the Lamb,” and on its right from the scene of the lion
114
devouring his deer (Plates 7, 8). These separations are effected, not by
the more common solid diagonals, but by the stylized trees which I have
characterized as markers of visual punctuation. The diagonals are akin to
full stops in print narratives. These floral markers, on the other hand, can
both separate and connect--and here I suggest that they do both. That is,
while physically dividing the panels, the trees connect them thematically,
serving much like the comma does in print, allowing us to pause without
necessitating a full stop. Following the scene of the lion feeding on the
deer, we return to the standard border decoration, with what appear to be
two griffins, back to back in their own diagonally-framed trapezoids.47
The significance of this fable for the main narrative is clear and
continues the morals of the preceding ones, albeit with a violent twist:
\
William the “lion” and his motley troops “of bellicose knights . . . polished
and tempered by continual training and application” (Brown [1968] 49),
will hunt down Harold and will exact final and fitting justice. The spoils will
go to William, who shall partition them or not as he sees fit.48 The finality
implicit in the kill here is emphasized by the two trees which
uncharacteristically frame the action as well as the griffin, who faces the
action, its strident posture forcing the viewer to come to a full stop and pay
I
i
■ heed to the tale’s denouement: William will be “ruthless” and will carry off
i
| the “booty” which is rightfully his.
1
J
i
I
115
lll.ix
“ Outwitting the Birds”
‘Twas the setting of the Pleiades, the time for sowing wheat. A
farmer had cast his seed in the fallow ground and was standing
by to guard it; for a countless host of black and noisy daws had
come, and starlings, to destroy the seed in the planted fields. A
boy followed him carrying an empty sling; but the starlings
listened as usual whenever the farmer asked for the sling and
would fly away before he could shoot at them. So the farmer
changed his method and, calling to the boy, instructed him as
follows: “Boy, we must outwit this clever tribe of birds. So when
they come I’ll ask for ‘bread,’ but you will give me not bread but
the sling.” On came the starlings and settled in the field. The
farmer called for “bread” according to the plan, and the starlings
did not flee. The boy gave him the sling full of stones, and when
the old man let fly, he hit one bird in the head, another in the leg,
and another in the shoulder. Then they fled. Some cranes met
them and asked what had happened. Said one of the daws:
“Watch out for this wicked tribe of men; they have learned to say
one thing to each other and to do something else when it comes
to action.”
[A formidable tribe of men are those who act with guile.] (Perry
46-49. B33)
I see no reason not to include this particular part of the lower border
section in the grouping of fables (Plates 10, 11), unlike McNulty: “Efforts to
demonstrate that some of these continue the series of Aesop’s fables or
that they suggest the labors of the months have not been convincing” (34).
Wilson would seem to disagree, but offers nothing other than to say that
this, “ploughing, harrowing and bird-scaring scene in the lower border has
been identified as Aesop’s fable of the swallow and the birds. . .” (177).
Francis Wormald lumps together these scenes and those following them
116
as “genre scenes” (Plates 10-13) and says that they are purely decorative
(28). I suggest that they illustrate quite well the major themes of the fable
as recounted by Babrius;49 in the lower border, as well as in the Tapestry
as a whole, it is the time for sowing--the Pleiades are in the night sky at
this time of year-and there is a threat to the crops from hungry birds.so
This long scene depicts the entire planting process: we first see a pair of
men plowing, then a lone man sowing seed, followed by a man harrowing
and a man with a sling and a rock ridding the field of birds.
This whole section underlies the main narrative scenes in which
William’s messengers ride from right to left, on their way to suggest to Guy
that he free Harold (Plate 10). The fable’s pictographs are immediately
! followed by a pair of birds, separated by the standard diagonals, each of
; which chews on a stylized tree. The beginning of the plowing scene is
i
! firmly delineated by two diagonals, and the main panel manifests similar
i
I
i
visual punctuation. The large amount of such markers in the main and
lower panels, trees and buildings in particular, radically impede the
narrative flow, alerting the viewer to the importance of the scenes (Plates
10-13). Things do not make much sense until one realizes that this set of
scenes is meant to be read from right to left-just as in the episode of
Edward’s death and burial. These scenes are nearly as important,
because in them Harold is brought before William. Here his treachery
117
really begins, and the viewer reaches a new juncture in both the border
panel and in the main narrative.
The illustrations of the fable are, as usual, anagogically quite
straightforward and almost overwhelmed by the complexity of the
pictographs: the birds in flight signify Harold whom William will put to flight.
This he must do with all dispatch or the pestiferous Englishman will
“nibble” away at his kingdom and his support like the birds do in the panel
following the sling-shooter and the birds in flight. Perhaps the length of
the illustration-representing work and the hope of growth and rebirth-
signifies generally the labor which Edward put into the kingdom to keep
rival factions like the Godwins at bay and the hope which he and William
expected from the Norman’s succession. Harold, of course, upsets all of
these hopes and trials by accepting the crown. His meeting with the duke,
in which he was “ to confirm the earlier promise of the succession to duke
William” (Brown [1968] 127), turned out to be the turning point in his
personal history and in that of England. William would have done well to
have listened to what the daw said to the crane at the fable’s end: “Watch
out for this wicked tribe of men; they have learned to say one thing to each
other and to do something else when it comes to action.”
118
IV
Theory Redux
The Norman chevrons and the images illustrating the fables draw out
and foreground the Tapestry designer’s bias toward Edward’s desires and
the affiliated Norman cause. They show that Harold perjured himself in his
relationships with both men: he betrayed his king’s succession plans by
accepting the English crown upon Edward’s death, and he betrayed both
the pledges of homage and of fealty that he swore to William. Although
Anglo-Saxon England did not function under the sort of early feudal
hierarchy that Normandy did, this do^s not excuse Harold: “ The gift of
arms by William to Harold put the English earl in a position of vassalage to
William and although it is likely that such an idea had not yet taken root in
England, it would b^/clear to Harold what was happening” (Wilson 180).
One need only consider “ the precedent of the Germanic and Anglo-Saxon
comitatus. the warriors gathered around the chief” (Powicke 4) and the
system of huscarls instituted by Cnut, to assume that Harold understood
what he was getting himself into in Normandy. Although these systems
were by no means parallel, the ideas of service and loyalty played strong
parts in each. As William’s vassal, Harold would have been subject to the
system of homage that Marc Bloch described in his classic study:
The ties which bound these war-companions to their chief
represented one of those contracts of fidelity freely entered into
119
which were compatible with the most respectable social position.
The term which designates the royal guard is extremely
significant: trustis. that is to say fealty. The new recruit enrolled in
this body swore to be faithful; the king in return undertook to ‘bear
him succour.’ (Feudal Society 1.156)
Harold’s obligation to William is further reinforced by the oath which he
swears on the relics of Odo’s cathedral at Bayeux. In was in just such
ceremonies that, by “laying his hand on the Gospels or on relics, the new
vassal swore to be faithful to his master. This was called fealty, foj. in
French . . .” (Feudal Society 1.146). The homage ceremony always came
first and took precedence over that of fealty in terms of binding obligation
(Feudal Society 1 .1 4 7 ) 5 1 The Tapestry designer exhibited his
understanding of the rites of vassalage by picturing its attendant
ceremonies in the correct order, at the same time tying Harold as closely to
William as was legally possible. For the moral obligations of this bond and
ethical commentary upon its unilateral dissolution, we have to rely upon
the fables.
Having examined the Tapestry’s Norman chevrons, its nine fables and
assorted relevant scenes, it is time to evaluate the applicability of my
reading theory. I said above that to appreciate fully the tale pictured on
this Anglo-Saxon embroidery, it is necessary to reweave the border tales
into the story told in the central panel. This is not to say that one cannot
read the Tapestry by focussing only on this main section, as my summary
120
trek through its median strip shows, it is certainly possible to read the
main narrative without reference to the fabulous borders; indeed, this is
the way it was engaged for years, with the borders excluded as interesting
but irrelevant. What this study’s methodology has shown is that when
these marginal images are taken into account, the story pictured in the
center panel becomes fuller, less schematic, less puzzling and decidedly
less objective.
How does a reading differ when these border tales are incorporated?
To answer this, one needs only to consider what story is told without
reference to the fables and how it differs when they are incorporated. The
fables of “ The Fox and the Crow” and “ The Wolf and the Crane” serve to
illustrate the point. The second pictograph for “ The Fox and the Crow” is
placed under the scene representing William, Harold and the troops riding
to do battle with Conan II of Brittany and crossing the River Cousenon
i
(Plates 18-20). The inscription declares that that William and his men
arrive at Mont St. Michel and cross the River Cousenon, from which Harold
pulls a Norman and an Englishman out of the quicksand: WILLEM DUX ET
j EXERCITUS VENERUNT AD MONTE[M] MICHAELIS ET HIC
I TRANSIERUNT FLUMEN COSNONIS ET HIC HAROLD DUX TRAHEBAT
i
j EOS DE ARENA. This is the beginning of the section depicting Harold’s
i
I martial exploits in Normandy.
121
I have gone into some detail above regarding the relation between this
fable and the main story. Here I will just point out a few things. First,
William and Harold ride as equal; that is, there is no hint of Harold’s being
forced into the duke’s combat with Conan. All seems to be going well for
him: he has been released from Guy’s captivity by the most powerful duke
j in Normandy, with whom he now rides as an ally. In the next scene he
! courageously rescues two men, an Englishman and a Norman, from the
! quicksand. Indeed, these scenes portray Harold in the best light of any on
f
| the Tapestry.
I So, what is wrong? Is anything wrong? If the fable is drawn into the
narrative, it quickly becomes apparent that not all is going as well as it
could. As I explained above, the first appearance of the fable (Plate 4)
appears as Harold sets sail for Normandy and prefigures the upcoming
struggle for the English crown, the cheese representing the CORONA
REGIS. This second representation of the fable (Plates 18-20) shows the
cheese firmly gripped by the fox, whom I said represents Harold. This
scene shows that Harold intends to have— and will have, however briefly--
the cheese firmly in his grasp. Further enhancing this harmony is the
generally symmetrical arrangement of the upper and lower border flora
and fauna; that is, with the exceptions of the naked men in the lower panel
(Plates 17, 18) and the curious aquatic scene (Plate 20). But looking
closely at this second pictograph, the viewer notices that things are
122
problematized: the fox’s tail is trapped beneath the diagonal which frames
the fabulous scene. So, even though all seems well for Harold, something
is not right. If the viewer then skips ahead to the scene of Harold’s return
to England, he notices that the crow has the cheese securely within its
beak, the story seemingly starting all over again (Plates 27-28). This third
illustration is placed just to the left above a submissive-looking Harold
approaching the securely-enthroned, but noticeably aged, E d w a rd 52 As I
argued above, this can only mean that the story of Harold’s treachery, of
which he was fully congizant while in Normandy, is about to be put into
action. Thus, his posture is deceptive and indicative of his false humility.
Perhaps he, too, recognizes Edward’s age and hopes that the old king will
!
1 make him regent when he dies. Even if this serialized fable were read in a
I different way, there is no denying that it is a reminder of the succession
i
controversy. Nowhere in the main panel does the viewer perceive this
historical thread interwoven into its narrative. We are shown Harold’s
treachery to William, but only the fable of “ The Fox and the Crow” keeps
the question of succession before our eyes and moralizes it in our minds.
Much the same thing happens with the fable of “The Wolf and the
Crane” (Plates 5, 27). The inscription for this section details Harold’s oath-
taking at Bayeux and his subsequent return to England: WILLELM VENIT
BAG I AS UBI HAROLD SACR AMENTUM FECIT WILLELMO DUCI HIC
HAROLD DUX REVERSUS EST AD ANGLICAM TERRAM ET VENIT AD
1
EDWARDU[S] REGEM. I begin with Wilson's “ Commentary” on Harold’s
oath and return to England:
William takes Harold to Bayeux, and Harold swears an oath in the
presence of William who sits in majesty, holding his sword as a
sword of state (the sword, however, being sheathed). Harold
then returns by ship to England and sets out to meet Edward.
The oath was seen by both the chroniclers and the designer of
the Tapestry as one of the high points of the story. William of
Poitiers says that the ceremony took place before the Breton
expedition and in this disagrees with the Tapestry. Whether the
ceremony took place at Bayeux, as the Tapestry implies, or at
Boneville-sur-Touques as recorded by William of Poitiers is
immaterial; the event became central in Norman eyes.
[. . .] The ship on which Harold returns to England has the broken
gunwale line noted below . . ., but the sail is treated rather
differently from those in pis. 5 and 6, the folds being completely
linear and not worked in different coloured strips. The lookout on
the English shore stands on an elaborate balcony and curious
faces peer out from the windows of the tower behind him. It is not
known where Harold landed on his return to England.
Two more fables appear, this time in the upper borders. One,
above the lookout in pi. 27, has been explained as the gander
and the cygnet, but this seems most unlikely; it must be a repeat
of the crane removing a bone from the wolf’s throat as seen in pi.
5. To the right of pi. 27 is yet another version of the crow, the fox
and the cheese. Harold comes to Edward, who sits informally on
a stool, crowned, but holding a walking stick to emphasize his
age. Harold approaches with bowed head, as though seeking a
favour, followed by a man bearing an axe. (180-82)
Wilson’s description is quite informative, covering the chronicles’
discrepancies and providing somewhat more substance on the fables.
Still, it tells us little more than the inscriptions and the pictures. It
essentially turns the Tapestry’s images into words, no small feat* and one
124
of no small importance for a late twentieth-century audience so reliant
upon the printed word.
Reading these scenes from the perspective of the borders and not from
the main panel again provides the viewer with a different picture, one
more fully revelatory. When this fable is first represented, Harold and his
men confidently sail for Normandy after feasting, with their VELIS VENTO
PLENIS--so full in fact that they transgress the upper border line and fill
that entire space (Plates 5-6). This implies power, speed and surety of
purpose. Such imagery is enhanced by the image of a confident-looking
Harold seated in the stern of his ship, tiller in hand. Again, everything
looks good for the earl and his forces. Nonetheless, the lower border here
is full of fabulous pictographs, each of which forces the viewer to stop and
consider its significance. Things must, then, not be what they seem.
Taking just the one fable of “ The Wolf and the Crane,” the viewer is
tempted to metaphorize the main story’s characters: which one is William,
which Harold? This question is easily answered by anyone who
remembers that it was William who assisted Harold by freeing him from
Guy of Ponthieu. How was the Norman repaid for “sticking his head down
this potential enemy’s throat”? Harold usurped his rightful place on the
English throne, breaking his oath just like the wolf did to the crane.
In its second representation, the fable is placed above Harold’s return
to England and is followed significantly by the third instance of “The Fox
125
and the Crow” (Plate 27). Here again on the main panel all seems well:
Harold returns home after distinguishing himself in Normandy in his
alliance with William against Conan II. After landing Harold rides with
another man to court and assumes a conventional humble posture before
his king. All of the border panel flora and fauna are symmetrically
arranged, implying harmony. This imagistic consonance is quickly shaken
by the fables’ pictographs, though. The crane violates its frame, going
j beyond its boundaries to help the wolf out of its predicament. This less
than subtle reminder of the assistance that William rendered Harold is all
the more damning for the English earl by virtue of its placement adjacent
j to “ The Fox and the Crow’s” pictograph. As I indicated above, that image
; metaphorically portrays Harold about to begin his treacherous tale, his
i
| quest for the English CORONA REGIS. The second appearance of “ The
j Wolf and the Crane’s” pictograph carries the themes of treachery and
i succession forward to this point in the Tapestry’s narrative and ties all
i
; three strands together, those of the main panel and of the two fables. It
! recalls simultaneously Harold’s oaths, while it reestablishes the link
! between his Norman vassalage and his upcoming treachery to William
| and Edward’s succession wishes. As with “The Fox and the Crow,” and all
| of the other fables, this one tells a tale without which the main panel’s story
| is much less potent.
126
The Bayeux Tapestry tells a much more involving and exciting tale than
a simple reading of its main narrative panel allows. While this central
section, or even its Latin inscriptions, can be read alone for a skeletal
rendition of the events leading up to and culminating in the Norman
Conquest of England, this does not leave us with full sense of the way
these events were perceived and interpreted by others. Only by
integrating the Aesopic pictographs, the Norman chevrons and other
seemingly extraneous aspects of its spatial program with the main
narrative panel do we get a fuller picture of the Conquest’s reception— at
least that of its political sympathizers. The inclusion of these elements
paints a much more varied-while at the same time, synthetic— historical
picture, one which demonstrates the medieval penchant for organizing
what appears to the modern eye as an often chaotic, bewildering number
of visual signs. When all of these aspects of the Tapestry’s design are
taken into account, the genius of its designer and embroiderers-not to say
their sense of humor and aesthetic vitality-comes to the fore and can be
more fully appreciated by the modern viewer.
127
Excursus One:
Design and Provenance
The Bayeux Tapestry is not really a tapestry but a narrative embroidery
worked on linen. George Digby distinguishes between these two terms
and explains why embroideries like the one in Bayeux are called
tapestries:
Tapestry is technically quite distinct from embroidery or
needlework, tapestry being woven on a loom, whilst embroidery
is worked with needle and thread on the surface of an already
woven fabric. That variety of embroidery which uses canvas as
ground material and is worked in tent or cross stitch is in common
parlance often called tapestry, for it has been much used for
hangings and upholstery. But although the word ‘tapestry’
derives from the Latin tapesium. meaning a cover in general. . . it
is very useful to reserve the word exclusively for the woven fabric
whose different-coloured wefts combine with the warp to make up
a figured material, the wefts not being thrown in a shuttle from
selvage to selvage. (38)
j While it is true that the embroidery on the Bayeux Tapestry was not and
4
! could not have been done on a loom, where the wefts would have been
i
“ thrown in a shuttle from selvage to selvage,” it is also true that it is not
“ worked in tent or cross stitch.” Instead, its weavers employed laid and
couched work, which allowed them to cover greater areas more quickly.
| And so, although it is decidedly not a tapestry, it seems that history and
convention have conspired against nominal accuracy. The work has
128
always been called a tapestry, and we would do well to heed Frank
Fowke’s comments written so long ago: . historical embroidery would
be a more accurate title than tapestry for this work; time has, however,
consecrated the misnomer, and it is improbable that it will ever bear a
different appellation” (21). Bowing to historical precedent and convention,
then, I refer to the embroidery throughout this study as a/the Tapestry.
The images are embroidered on the Tapestry in eight colors of worsted
on a linen background: “red, yellow or buff, grey, two shades of green, one
bright and the other dark, and three shades of blue” (Bernstein 14). The
stitching technique is that of laid and couched work.53 The backing is not
| one continuous piece, but is made up of eight pieces of linen sewn
j
| together, giving the work an overall length of some two hundred feet and a
| width that varies from eighteen to twenty-one in c h e s .5 4 This long, frieze-
i
like form is unique in Western European medieval art, according to David
Bernstein:"... a programme of continuous narration in the manner of the
Tapestry has no precedent in any existing Anglo-Saxon art, nor, except in
one unusual case of Ottonian art. . ., was it practised on the Continent”
(94). Not only is its shape incomparable, but its design and function as
i historical narrative also set it apart: “. . . in grand conception there is no
clear parallel, no prototype, no model, for the Bayeux Tapestry: no tapestry
, or any manuscript of the period illustrates by drawings historical events of
the recent past” (Wilson 201). The irony in all of this, of course, is that the
129 |
Tapestry designer’s brilliance was used to chronicle the conquest of his
own people in this “last and most spectacular masterpiece of Anglo-Saxon
pictorial art” (Bernstein 6 0 ).55 The probability that this Anglo-Saxon
embroidery was designed by an Anglo-Saxon artist has led some, like
Jean Adhemar, to suggest the presence of a subversive, pro-Saxon,
element in the Tapestry’s overall plan:
j Le legon, la morale evidente de toutes ces fables c’est, sous les
i formes les plus variees, la glorification de I’adresse qui permet de
s’emparer du bien d’autrui. Le trouvere qui a inspire I’ceuvre
devait commenter et paraphraser de la sorte les conseils de
prudence donnes par Edouard le Confesseur a Harold et
rappeles par Augustin Thierry: “Je connais bien le due Guillaume
et son esprit astucieux: il ne t’accordera rien, a moins d’en avoir
: un grand profit.” Les petites images de la frise soulignent ainsi,
I avec un esprit satirique qui est assez dans la tradition, la ruse du
due normand. (230)
I
j These comments relate to the fables found in the lower border panel
I under Harold’s voyage to Normandy. However, I find no evidence of
!
! subversion or “un esprit satirique”; certainly, there is much wit in the
design, but no sustained undercutting of its Norman ideal.
The uniqueness of the work’s shape and composition forced its
designer to be more inventive than his artistic contemporaries who worked
in paint, stone or stained and leaded glass. There are two reasons for this:
first, the Bayeux Tapestry is meant to be read as a continuous, linear
narrative. Second, its designer had neither model nor convention to follow
when crafting his secular tale. The same cannot be said of contemporary
130
works, religious windows and sculptural programs done for church
buildings, “ where, once the pictorial program for, say, a tympanum had
been decided upon, there was an abundant established iconography on
which the artist could draw” (McNulty 15).56 These texts, be they worked in
paint, glass or stone, require different reading programs from the Tapestry,
primarily because they do not have the same frieze-like s h a p e .57 While it
shares some of the conventional images that were common to the time, as
a visual text it is sui generis: and, therefore, any reading program which is
applied to it must arise from it. Not only were pictorial conventions shared,
but later “in [and up to?] the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when opus
j anqlicanum, or medieval English embroidery, reached its peak of
] excellence” (Morris 3), the artists were shared as well:
I
j The few illuminated manuscripts [in a 1963 exhibition] bear a still
| more intimate relation to the embroideries, for— since most of the
! latter were pictorial, a kind of painting with the needle
J (acupictura)--the embroidery workshops inevitably relied on
| painters to provide their designs. (Opus Anqlicanum 6)
It is reasonable to wonder if such an artist was behind the designing of the
j
Bayeux Tapestry. If this was the case, then perhaps the Tapestry is part of
j a representational “missing link.” Otto Pacht wrote:
I
I As a consequence of the political and social upheaval,
i representational art seems to have suffered an eclipse, and,
j although it would be wrong to imagine that Anglo-Saxon
illumination came to an abrupt end in 1066, there is certainly no
j sign that narrative cycles continued to be produced.
(Rise 12)
It is certainly possible to say that the Tapestry figures a “narrative cycle”
i and that it was created after 1066. Could it, then, have played a role in
j encouraging what Pacht has called the “unparalleled outburst of pictorial
j narrative [that] is one of the most astonishing phenomena in the history of
i
j medieval art, second only in importance to the sudden rise of monumental
!
i sculpture” (Rise 13)?
i
i
i
i
1 Odo of Bayeux and the Tapestry’s Provenance
i
i
i
; There has been a good deal written on this subject in an attempt to
|
| decide whether the Tapestry was manufactured in England or in France
i
i
j and whether its designer was Norman or English. While an extensive
i
: examination of these questions is not germane to this discussion, it must
I
: be noted that consensus holds that the Bayeux Tapestry was produced in
j southern England by English craftsmen. More specifically, Brooks and
I Walter have argued persuasively that it could have come out of the
j workshops of St. Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury. There are those who
j do not accept Canterbury as the site of design and production, however.
I
j For example, David Wilson argues that since Bishop Odo of Bayeux, the
| Tapestry’s probable patron, was not archbishop of Canterbury, it could just
as easily have been made "at one of his estates there, or in a nunnery
i under his patronage” (212). David Bernstein seems uncomfortable with
132
accepting Brooks’ and Walker’s hypotheses, stressing the somewhat
ambivalent language found in their article (although he does not cite
them):
Would that we could . . . be more precise than simply saying that
the artist was most probably an English clerk living in Canterbury,
perhaps at St Augustine’s Abbey, who seems to have created the
cartoon in the 1070s and 1080s for embroiderers who evidently
took great pleasure in sewing their o p u s Anqlicanum. and that the
Bayeux Tapestry was in all likelihood commissioned by Bishop
Odo; but, for the present, certainty is not possible in such matters.
Perhaps it never will be. (59)
j Such vagaries do not detract from the convincing argument made by them.
i
; Brooks and Walker amassed an impressive amount of evidence for
I
: Canterbury, examining carefully the manuscripts produced there, what
! they say was the familiarity of the Tapestry’s designer with Eadmer’s
I Historia Novorum and the anonymously-composed Vita Eadwardi. “ works
: that are closely associated with Canterbury” (13) and Odo’s relation to the
I place.58 Following is a summary of their reasons for the association;59
j
] (1) English provenance is indicated by the inscriptions.
(2) Canterbury was the chief town of Odo’s earldom, and he held
] most extensive properties there.
! (3) Turold, Wadard and Vital all held lands from Odo in Kent, and
Vital was specifically known as Vital of Canterbury.
I (4) Where the Tapestry remarkably departs from the Norman
j version of the events of 1064-66 it appears to be following
i traditions that are only found elsewhere in chronicles connected
! with Canterbury.
! (5) Canterbury was the outstanding centre of late Anglo-Saxon
; drawing, especially notable for the skill of its artists in pictorial
narrative. Professor Wormald demonstrated many of the stylistic
133
similarities between the Bayeux Tapestry and Canterbury
manuscripts of the period 1000-75.
(6) One figure in the tapestry, the rope-carrying Norman forager,
was copied from a mistaken figure in a late-Saxon Prudentius
from St. Augustine’s; whilst the meal scene at Hastings was
derived, probably indirectly, from the Last Supper in the famous
St. Augustine’s Gospels.
(7) St. Augustine’s, in stark contrast to other Kentish houses,
enjoyed good relations with Odo and his tenants. He was their
major post-Conquest benefactor during the very years that
Bayeux cathedral was being completed. (18)
! In addition to being a well-established center of manuscript illumination at
| the time, the see of Canterbury was granted primacy over the that of York
!
1 by William after the Conquest (Brown [1985] 65). So, for the purposes of
j my argument, it is enough to accept Brooks’ and Walker’s most convincing
“ assumption that the Tapestry was designed in Kent, at Canterbury and a
the monastery of St Augustine’s” and that the designer was either “a monk
or a dependant of St Augustine’s” (18).
Discussions about the date of construction and reasons for displaying
the Tapestry in Bayeux usually involve Odo in some way. Most historians
accept that he was its patron and that it was manufactured before his
| mysterious imprisonment by William in 1082. On the date, Francis
Wormald felt that, “If the Tapestry was created in England to order of Odo
of Bayeux for the decoration of his new cathedral its date must be between
1066 and 1077, eleven years” (33). Brooks and Walker suggest a similar
134
time frame and write that it must date, “before Odo’s rising of 1088, and in
all probability before his imprisonment in 1082” (18).
Odo was William’s half-brother: they both had Herleva of Falaise as
their mother. William, however, was born of her illicit relationship with
Duke Robert of Normandy, while Odo, and a brother named Robert, were
offspring of her marriage to Herluin of Conteville (Bernstein 3 1 ).so Odo
was a man of high authority and one in a position of immense power. Six
months after Hastings, William “divided the responsibility for the
government of England between his seneschal, William fitz Osbern, whom
he made earl of Hereford, and his half-brother Odo, bishop of Bayeux,
whom he made earl of Kent” (Stenton, Anglo-Saxon 599). The bishop
was presently “set in Dover castle in order to guard the Kentish ports”
(Stenton, Anglo-Saxon 599). This, however, was not the extent of his rule:
Between 1077 and 1080, Odo of Bayeux was setting judicial
investigations in motion by the use of the king’s authority,
confirming private transactions in land which needed the king’s
j assent, and transmitting the king’s commads, received from
abroad, by writs issued under his own name. The statement of a
twelfth-century historian that Odo was justiciar of England is too
j precise, but it may well be near the truth. (Stenton, Anglo-Saxon
610)
Little is known about the circumstances surrounding Odo’s imprisonment.
Sir Frank Stenton sums up the supposed facts surrounding the bishop’s
arrest:
135
The most remarkable incident of this period was the arrest,
forfeiture, and imprisonment of Bishop Odo of Bayeux, in 1082.
No contemporary writer attempts to explain it, but in the twelfth
century it was said that the bishop had been trying to obtain the
papacy by distributing money among the citizens of Rome, and
that he had induced knights from all parts of England to join him
for an expedition to Italy. (Anglo-Saxon 616)
Odo was later released from prison in the general amnesty of 1087,
granted by William upon his death bed, but only after the special
intervention of Robert of Mortain, their other brother. Characteristically,
Odo “immediately returned to the political arena, taking a prominent part in
the 1087 rebellion of the nobles against William Rufus, the Conqueror’s
son who had gained the crown of England” (Bernstein 34). After losing all
of his English lands when this rebellion failed, Odo was banished as a
traitor and returned to Normandy, where his political machinations
continued. He died in Palermo in 1097, having journeyed to Rome where
he received the papal blessing.
Considering Odo’s lineage and his ambitious nature, it is not surprising
that he plays such a prominent role in the Tapestry’s history and that it
continues to be displayed in his city of Bayeux even today. Bernstein calls
him, “after his brother, the wealthiest and most powerful man in the
kingdom” (36). Even three of his tenants--who have no historical reason to
be represented on the Tapestry-receive honorable mention in its
embroidered history.6 1 Although Odo only appears four times on the
136
Tapestry, these appearances are enough for J. Bard McNulty and others to
I
; argue that its narrative “stresses the substantial contributions of Odo to the !
! !
! conception of and the success of the conquest--his assistance in planning j
! i
! the invasion, in council, and in turning the tide of battle in William’s j
I
greatest hour of need” (77). This sounds very much like what Stenton
! wrote: “It was a tale which gave especial prominence to Odo, bishop of
I i
j f
I Bayeux, to certain of his military tenants, and, above all, to the relics i
1
i ,
I preserved in his cathedral church” (Baveux 9). Echoing Stenton and other
i !
1 scholars, McNulty also says that it is “ possible that the Conquest is i
i
displayed in the Tapestry, not primarily for its own sake, but as a glorious '
i
foil for the exploits of the narrator’s patron--Odo” (65). It is David
Bernstein’s contention that the Tapestry was meant to glorify William and
Odo: “. . . the Tapestry’s . . . aim is political and personal: to demonstrate
William’s power and legitimate claim to the throne of England, while at the j
same time giving special prominence to Bishop Odo and the relics of his
cathedral church in Bayeux” (114). I essentially agree with this last
comment of Bernstein’s, but I would reduce the stress placed upon Odo
the man. The Tapestry surely accords “special prominence” to William
and his cause, even going so far as to portray Edward in a sympathetic, if
somewhat condescending, light. I see little evidence on the Tapestry for
| granting the same degree of eminence to Odo; although certainly the
i
i 1
i
I
1 I
I
137
relics of his cathedral, upon which Harold swears his fatal oath, are given
glorious representation.
138
Excursus Two: The Tapestry’s Public History
The Tapestry is still on display in Bayeux, near Odo’s cathedral in the
Centre Guillaume le Conquerant. It was first mentioned in an inventory of
the Cathedral’s holdings in 1 4 7 6 .6 2 The hanging was little publicized,
although it did have a decorative function:
. . . [it] was used as a festal decoration for the nave of the
| cathedral. Here it remained obscure and forgotten, save by those
! who lived within the walls of Bayeux, until, in the year 1724, a
I drawing which had formerly belonged to M. Foucault, Ex-
| intendant of Normandy, and a collector of antiquities, was
i presented to M. Lancelot, a member of the Academie des
Inscriptions, by the secretary of that institution. (Fowke 3)
According to the statutes of Bayeux Cathedral, the Tapestry was hung
round the nave for eight days, beginning on St. John’s Day:
“II est bon de savoir que le matin du samedi de Paques, avant
d’appeler les dignitaires et les chanoines au service, on pare le
tour de I’eglise, dans I’interieur, avec des tapisseries propres, au-
dessous desquelles, entre le chceur et I’autel, on place des
coussins et des draps de soie les plus beaux qui se trouvent
dans I’eglise. . . . L’eglise se pare depuis la fete de Paques
jusqu’a le Saint-Michel, en septembre.” (Fowke 6)
After receiving Foucault’s drawing, Lancelot delivered a paper entitled
“Explication d’un monument de Guillaume le Conquerant” to the
Academie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres on 21 July 1724.63
i
Following this presentation, the Tapestry became a popular topic of public
■ discussion, and in late 1803 it was ordered by Napoleon Bonaparte to be
139
displayed in Paris’ Musee N a p o le o n .64 There it was used, “as
propaganda in relation to the preparations for the invasion of England,
and as such was an enormous success, politically and artistically. .
j
(Wilson 13).
It was returned to Bayeux, and in 1842 Edward Lambert, the town
, librarian, was made custodian of the Tapestry. He undertook its relining
; and restoration, “guided by the holes left by the needles” (Fowke 1 6 ).65 it
i was then displayed in the public library “behind glass in a separate room”
i
I
! (Wilson 13), where it remained until being moved during the Franco-
j Prussian War in 1870. The Tapestry was returned to its glass display case
i
I and there where it remained until 1913, “when it was re-housed in the old
i
i
i
! the Bishop’s Palace” (Wilson 13). It was moved to the Louvre in 1944,
i
, when the Allies landed on the Normandy beaches and was returned again
| to Bayeux in 1948. In 1982-83 it was cleaned and placed on exhibit
t
[ where we see it today, in the Centre de Guillaume le Conquerant (Wilson
i
14).66
140
Excursus Three: Border Transgressions and Oddities
Aside from the fables, the Tapestry pictures close to one hundred
t
*
| border panel images which are related to the main panel tale by analogy.
Like the fables, they provide a commentary upon the main narrative,
glossing it to reiterate a multitude of themes-among them the designer’s
Norman bias, the ferocity of battle and the characteristics and political
affiliations of the main characters. The narrative significance of many
images in the main and border panels may never be recovered. The
; (in)famous UBI UNUS CLERICUS ET /ELFGYVA scene (Plate 17) and the
curious nudes (Plates14, 17, 52, 53) are prime examples. Although one
can see the physical relation of the phallic man’s posture in the lower
panel to that of the aggressive cleric in the main panel, this is of little use in
determining the importance of the scene for the Tapestry’s story. Others,
like the dog that howls under Edward’s bier (Plate 29), the foreboding
i ghost ships under the newly-crowned Harold (32), Hailey’s comet blazing
| ominously over him in the same scene and the masses of dead and dying
i
in the lower panels (Plates 61-67, 70-73) are easily related to the main
narrative and require no elaboration.
Still others seem to be included solely for the sake of whimsy, like the
bird who chews on the steeple of Edward’s barely-finished Westminster
Abbey (Plate 29). Here the Tapestry gives the title ECCLESIAM SANCTI
141
PETRI APOSTOLI for the Abbey, to which a man affixes a weathercock.
This prompts J. Bard McNulty to postulate astutely that “ the weathervane is
appropriately a cock, the attribute of St. Peter” (17). When the Norman
ships land in England, the designer wittily shows one of the upper panel
birds coming in for a landing, while his companion is knocked off of his
perch by a Norman mast (Plate 43). The motif of expressive birds reoccurs
above and below William as he is told of Harold’s usurpation of the
English throne (Plate 50), except that here analagous disbelief bowls the
upper pair over, while the lower two evince similar emotions. Finally,
these avian commentators appear in the lower panel to prepare the viewer
for the first shock of battle (Plate 61). Here the two small birds are
completely upset, ending the symmetrical arrangement of the lower panel
! and presaging the violence to come: from here on the panel is filled with
| the battle’s overflowing, uncontainable carnage.
There are many moments when the Tapestry’s inner borders are
crossed. By my count, there are 111 instances of border violations, either
from the border panels into the main panel or vice versa. For purposes of
i
discussion, the majority of them can be grouped roughly by using their
main characteristics as rubrics: there are 70 violations by weapons,
I including banners; 15 by ships’ sails; 12 by buildings and 5 by
inscriptions. The remaining nine can be less neatly catalogued: there are
5 intrusions by various border panel animals into the main panel, 1 by a
main panel horse into the lower border panel, 2 by slain knights and 1 by
i a scavenger who strips the slain of their armor. These last three are also
intrusions into the main panel,
j Those weapons intrusions which occur later on in the Hastings battle
j scenes are part of the designer’s masterful evocations of what was surely
I a massively confusing, violent and noisy battlefield. In point of fact, these
! show him at the peak of his expressionistic capabilities. One has only to
I
! consider a scene where a number of these intrusions occur— like that of the
i
i
| tumbling horses and knights (Plates 65, 66) following the death scenes of
Gyrth and Leofwine, Harold’s brothers-to appreciate the designer’s skill
j and vision. Even the usually sober comments of David Wilson take on a
I comparatively excited tone, mimicking the speed of the visual narrative:
i
After the death of Harold’s brothers, the artist seems carried away
j by a mood of excitement and movement. The battle gets fiercer. .
! . an axe is decapitated by a sword, a horse is killed with an axe
and swords are wielded with great abandon. (192)
Wilson’s relatively rousing description of these scenes is certainly fitting;
nonetheless, the preponderance of the intrusions in the weapons category
are unimportant from a narrative point of view, since they are mainly
i
representations of single lances, swords or banners which burst the
confines of the main panel.
The building, ship’s sail and inscription categories vary in narrative
importance. Like the weapons classifications, they enhance the story
expressionistically and dramatically. These instances of border
transgression, like the asymmetrical border panel arrangements, the
stylized fauna and the fabulous pictographs, cause the viewer to pause
while progressing through the Tapestry’s narrative. With very few
exceptions, this is true case every time a border’s integrity is violated.67
The ships’ sails are probably the most visually exciting while
simultaneously being the least meaningful (Plates 5, 6, 33, 40, 41, 42, 43).
This motif occurs in three of four scenes of Channel crossing;68 therefore,
within the closed system of the Tapestry’s aesthetic environment, it can be
called conventional. Keeping in mind that each representation of this motif
has its own idiosyncrasies, examination of one appearance serves well
enough as commentary on the rest. The most com positionally complex of
these voyages is the one William makes to Pevensey (Plates 40-43). In all
three plates, the sails protrude into the upper border panel, giving the
i
impression of speed and lending a note of urgency to the section. This is
enhanced by the steersmen who hold the lower aft corners of the sails,
I “ the clews” (Wilson 186), the sheets seemingly ready to rip out of their
: hands with the force of the wind. The size of the fleet and the breadth of its
: displacement across the Channel is portrayed by the sails intruding into
the upper border panel, by their serried arrangement toward what would
be the horizon tine and by the three smaller boats which also ride high on
the waves, extending into the upper panel. The ground line--here the
water line— is rarely violated in this way, and it is never violated in these
I sailing scenes.69 Here things are always pushed up and out of the main
panel rather than pulled down into the lower panel, giving the appearance
j of buoyancy. As we see, this motif has little direct narrative relevance.
Instead, it serves expressionistically, primarily to impart feelings of speed,
urgency and anticipation.
The intrusive building theme works in a similarly emphatic way. Each
instance of unusual symmetrical placement catches the reader’s eye,
causing him or her to pause and consider the particular scene with greater
care. The buildings, including those which do not fall into this category,
i
| emphasize the prominence of the individuals whom the structures
j surround, the importance of the structure itself or both. These edifices also
I
act at times as visual punctuation, separating scenes and indicating
reversals in narrative direction. The Tapestry portrays twelve instances of
»
buildings intruding into the upper border panel (Plates 19, 23, 25, 28, 29,
30, 31, 32 [twice], 34, 45, 46).
The pictograph for Mont St. Michel (Plate 19) primarily emphasizes
the significance of the building itself7° It protrudes well into the upper
panel, completely filling it. The Mont is included, one would assume, as a
i
I
| familiar landmark and because of its unusual topographical situation and
145
construction— all characteristics which catch the eye of the passerby or
pilgrim even today. Its positioning on the Tapestry also indicates an
awareness of perspective, since it is correctly rendered in the distance,
some way offshore.
The impressive size of the conventionally stylized Bayeux pictograph,
which causes it to force its way into the upper border, is representative of
the city’s importance. It is the locus of Odo’s bishopric, the reliquaries
upon which Harold swears his oath and the site where it was sworn. The
eminence of the reliquaries is highlighted by comparing them to this
already impressive edifice-they are nearly three-fourths its size (Plates
25, 26).
Edward’s palace and Abbey (Plates 28, 29, 30) take up fully three
plates and depict the most elaborate structures on the Tapestry.
Everything about them is impressive, from their size to the details of
craftsmanship to the amout of space allotted to them. This is no surprise,
since they do represent the ultimate prize for which Harold and William
battle. The first of these scenes shows us a throne room which fills not
only the main panel, but which soars into the upper one. Regardless of
this, the figure of Edward dwarfs the structure. Even allowing for medieval
apprehensions of two-dimensional perspective, one cannot help but come
away from this scene with a feeling of the value of the English crown and
possibly some understanding of the motives behind the succession
146
controversy. Edward’s deathbed episode is framed by a structure which is
no less impressive, and the sensation of importance is enhanced by the
complexity of the situation. Two levels of the king’s palace are
represented, and he is pictured on each: on the top is the crucial scene in
which he seems to make Harold vicarius. while on the bottom we are
shown the king after death as he is enshrouded. Reading to the left as we
must do in this section, we perceive the bier being borne to Edward’s
wonderfully-rendered Abbey, while the hand of God breaks through the
clouds in the conventional gesture of benediction. This most crucial of
episodes is given the maximum amount of space, and the designer’s skills
fully utilized to highlight its gravity.
The stylized wooden fort from which Conan II fights off Harold’s and
William’s men seems designed primarily to allow the designer to exhibit
his ability to excite the viewer. The structure forces its way into the upper
border, forcing us to pause and examine it and the surrounding action
closely. It serves as a marker of visual punctuation, separating two
temporally distinct scenes: that of the attack on the hill and that of Conan
surrendering the city’s keys, “ on the end of a beflagged lance to William,
who receives them in like manner. William then bestows them on Harold”
(Wilson 180). It is wonderfully colorful and a nicely expressive
representation of a battle scene, but aside from linking Harold closer to
147
William, has little to do with the main narrative. As such, its size and
exuberance seem a bit out of proportion to its importance.
King Harold’s two enthroned appearances (Plates 31, 32-33) benefit
from the same employment of aesthetic capabilities. In the first instance
the new king is shown securely seated on the English throne, facing the
viewer, sceptre and orb in hand, sword of state unsheathed and
Archbishop Stigand by his side. His palace extends confidently into the
upper panel and is firmly rooted on the ground line— truly a picture of
stability. In the second instance, however, things do not seem so
immutable. The palace roof extends fully into the upper border and the
structure fills the entire visual field; however, the posture of the king is not
that of before. Instead of facing the viewer from a position of authority, he
leans precariously to his right, “as though listening to secret intelligence”
(Wilson 18£). Hailey’s comet streaks to the right across the upper border
panel, while the townsfolk gaze up in awe. As if this were not foreboding
enough, seven ghostly ships in the lower panel support Harold’s throne,
instead of the usual configuration of sturdy, buttressing diagonals. This is
not a king who will be enthroned long. The full impact of this is easily
grasped if one looks at these scenes (Plates 31-33) as a piece and not as
discrete plates. In this way the difference between the two representations
of Harold-and his certain downfall-is most strikingly manifested.
148
By far the most significant of these intrusive categories is that of the
inscriptions, and it is with this one that I close. There are five of these Latin
rubrics which transgress the boundaries of the upper panel (Plates 30, 31,
32, 41, 42). Taken together they tell the story of the Tapestry in its most
elemental, declarative form. The first one tells the tale of Edward’s
probable granting of the regency to Harold: HIC EADWARDUS REX IN
LECTO ALLOQUIT[UR] FIDELES. This is inscribed like a banner over the
old king’s deathbed scene and is balanced below by, ET HIC
DEFUNCTUS EST. The next one is woven over Harold, seated for the first
time on the English throne: HIC RESIDET HAROLD REX ANGLORUM.
While this legend is not properly within the upper panel, the palace
structure of which it is a part certainly is. The third upper panel inscription
is the one announcing the ominous comet’s approach: 1ST! MIRANT
STELLAfM]. This inscription is part of the intrusive building from which the
townsfolk watch the comet. The fourth and perhaps most telling legend is
inscribed over William’s ship, the Mora, “ with its cruciform frame at the
masthead” (Wilson 186): ET VENIT AD PEVENS/E. And so, here in these
five inscriptions which either intrude into the upper panel or are part of
structures which do, we have the gist of the Bayeux Tapestry’s story:
Edward grants the regency of England to Harold upon his deathbed; the
earl accepts the CORONA REGIS and sits enthroned; Hailey’s comet
149
streaks its warning overhead; and, finally, William sails to England to claim
what is rightfully his.
150
Notes
1 One could easily say the same thing about the Hereford Maooa
Mundi. substituting “sacred” for Pacht’s “secular.” Not all critics agree on
the Tapestry’s uniqueness, and some prefer to see it less as an historical
narrative text than as an example of the embroiderer’s art:
The Bayeux Tapestry is one of a handful of surviving monuments
of a genre of figurative textile hangings which must have been
produced in large numbers throughout the early Middle Ages.
Thus, one cannot determine whether the format was common or
exceptional. (Werkmeister 535, my emphasis)
The Bayeux Tapestry is not technically a tapestry, but an embroidery
worked on a linen background. See Excursus One below.
2 McNulty and Chefneux, whose pioneering 1934 study of the fables
remains crucial, each note nine fables. They agree on the titles of the first
eight and on the order of their appearances, but they disagree on the ninth.
I understand the eighth fable to be their eighth, “ The Lion Hunting with His
Companions,” and McNulty’s ninth, “The Lion and the Stag,” to be a
continuation of it. For the ninth fable, I accept what Chefneux called
“L’Homme semant le Lin et les Oiseaux.” However, I read this final tale as
Babrius’ “ The Farmer and the Cranes.” Following Francis Wormald,
McNulty considers this not to be a fable but a “genre scene” (34-37).
3 This number is from Wilson. Bernstein gives 72 and McNulty 58. The
latter’s “plates” are really black and white line drawings taken from John
Collingwood Bruce’s The Baveux Tapestry Elucidated. London, 1856.
Bruce’s numbering system for the plates is taken from the numbers found
on the back of the Tapestry, which were probably put there in the 1840’s
(McNulty viii). Although McNulty’s illustrations are of little use for detailed
readings, they are quite helpful in that they faithfully represent “the gaps
and tears that have since been repaired” (viii). Any restoration done is
thus easily disginguishable from the original embroidery.
4 I refer the reader to David Mackenzie Wilson’s beautiful book, The
Baveux Tapestry: The Complete Tapestry in Color (New York: Knopf,
1985), for its excellent photo-reproductions. In addition to the half-size
color plates of the entire embroidery, there is an excellent section, “The
Commentary” (174-95), containing a complete black and white
reproduction, with which runs a summation of and commentary on its
narrative. Woven into this are many helpful historical notes on things like
151
medieval warfare, armor, politics and social customs. My summary owes
much to this edition.
All of my references to the Bayeux Tapestry’s pictorial program are
keyed to the color plates in Wilson’s book (23-70). I have left quotations of
the Latin inscriptions in upper case characters, as they are on the Tapestry,
and have omitted the colons which separate most of the words.
s Wilson prefers the spring of 1064 as the terminus a quo, primarily
because “ travelling was not a winter activity” (229, n.42).
6 For discussions of this conference, see: David Bernstein, The Mvsterv
of the Baveux Tapestry (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986) 114-17;
J.Bard McNulty, The Narrative Art of the Baveux Tapestry Master (New
York: AMS P, 1989) 66-68; and N.P Brooks and H.E. Walker, “ The
Authority and Interpretation of the Bayex Tapestry,” Proceedings of the
Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies I Ed. R. Allen Brown.
(Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 1979) 4-5 and 10-13.
7 Perhaps even more than the Tapestry’s opening conference scene
between Edward and Harold, this episode’s significance has eluded
generations of scholars. For some of the widely varying hypotheses, see
R. Allen Brown, The Normans and the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge,
Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 1985) 67; J. Bard McNulty, The Narrative Art
of the Baveux Tapestry (New York: AMS P, 1989) 38-39 and 56; Sir Frank
Stenton, The Baveux Tapestry: A Comprehensive Survey 2nd ed.
(London: Phaidon, 1965) 10; and W. Brunsdon Yapp, “Animals in Medieval
Art: the Bayeux Tapestry as an Example,” Journal of Medieval History 13
(1987): 33.
Q For more on Odo's role in both the Tapestry and English history, see
Excursus One below, David J. Bernstein, The Mystery of the Baveux
Tapestry (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986) 31-37; R. Allen Brown,
The Normans and the Norman Conouest (Woodbridge. Suffolk: Boydell
and Brewer, 1985) 26-28; J. Bard McNulty, The Narrative Art of the Baveux
Tapestry Master (New York: AMS P, 1989) 59-77; Sir Frank Stenton, The
Baveux Tapestry: A Comprehensive Survey 2nd ed. (London: Phaidon,
1965) 9; and Anglo-Saxon England 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1971) 599
and 610-16; and N. P. Brooks and H. E. Walker, “ The Authority and
Interpretation of the Bayeux Tapestry,” Proceedings of the Battle
Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies I Ed. R. Allen Brown (Woodbridge,
Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 1979) 8.
152
9 See David Mackenzie Wilson, The Baveux Tapestry: The Complete
Taoestrv in Color (New York: Knopf, 1985) 182-83; J. Bard McNulty, The
Narrative Art of the Baveux Tapestry Master (New York: AMS P, 1989) 70-
71; N. P. Brooks and H. E. Walker, “The Authority and Interpretation of the
Bayeux Tapestry,” Proceedings of the Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman
Studies I Ed. R. Allen Brown (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer,
1979) 11 and 13; and David J. Bernstein, The Mvsterv of the Baveux
Tapestry (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986) 117-23 on the English
bias of this scene.
10 See David Mackenzie Wilson, The Baveux Tapestry: The Complete
Tapestry in Color (New York: Knopf, 1985) 184-85 and 188-89 for
information on the armaments and tools use in these scenes and for a
discussion of the preparation for the Norman feast at Hastings; also see Sir
Frank Stenton, The Baveux Tapestry: A Comprehensive Survey 2nd ed.
(London: Phaidon, 1965) passim, which contains a wealth of information
on these and other historico-cultural topics.
11 Francis Herbert of the Royal Geographical Society has sent me a
copy of an article from the Observer. 30 September 1990, by Peter
Beaumont and Paul Levy which reports on Robert Chenciner’s theory that
the Tapestry is actually an eighteenth-century embroidery. He bases this
rather bizarre argument on the fact that the kebabs which the Normans are
cooking were unknown in the eleventh century
The existence of the kebabs was the puzzle. The suggestion of
pre-Norman Moorish influence on cooking in France is
reasonable, but perhaps a more likely date for their introduction
was 1722, following an exchange of cultural embassies.
(Observer n.p.)
Mr. Herbert has also kindly sent me a copy of an article from the London
Times of 2 October 1990 in which Nicholas Brooks of Birmingham
University and David Wilson convincingly rebut Chenciner’s theory.
12 There are a number of compelling episodes depicted in this last long
section. Here the Tapestry designer gave full reign to his expressionistic
powers: the massed Norman archers (Plate 60), the English shield wall
(Plates 61, 62), close-quarter combat (Plate 65), the carnage of a battle so
fierce and overwhelming that the bodies of men and horses spill into the
lower border panel (Plates 66, 67) and the English fleeing the battlefield
(Plate 73). In another scene we watch as Odo--recaIling to mind the
153
warrior bishop Turpin in the Chanson de Roland-rallies the Norman
soldiers in a moment of panic (Plate 67). In the next plate William turns,
raises his nasal and faces his men— thereby quashing the false rumours of
his death (Plate 68).
Perhaps the most controversial scene in the Tapestry is the one in
which Harold is mortally wounded. We see what clearly looks like the Earl
pulling a Norman arrow out of his eye and in the next scene being hacked
by a Norman knight. All of this occurs under the rubric, HIC HAROLD REX
INTERFECTUS EST, with the King’s embroidered name separated into
HARO a LD by the peak of his helmet (Plate 71). There has been much ink
spilled over whether the arrow-in-the-eye is a restorer’s embellishment,
based upon the literature which succeeded the Tapestry, or whether it is in
the original design. The same is true for the “second” death of Harold.
Some of the most influential studies on this have been done by Brooks and
Walker (23-27), Gibbs-Smith (’’Death” 188-91); Bernstein discusses it (24,
144-61, 171-74), as does Wilson (194, 199-200). Baudri de Bourgueil
mentions it (195.463-66), it is found in William of Malmesbury (277) and in
Wace (8805-13). See also Phyllis Abrahams’ notes in her critical edition of
Baudri’s poems for the relation between these various “ fictional” texts and
the Bayeux Tapestry (241, n. 52; 243-47, n.61).
Despite arguments to the contrary, I accept what the Tapestry itself
depicts and Brooks’ and Walker’s assertion:
Detailed examination of the Tapestry’s depiction of the death of
Harold therefore confirms that the old interpretation is correct.
The story of Harold’s death commencing with the arrow-wound in
the eye is one of the best-known traditions of English history, and
it is not one that needs to be jettisoned. (33)
It is Harold, King of England, who dies. His death is initiated by the wound
received from a Norman arrow and finalized in the second scene by the
hacking he receives from a Norman knight.
13 There is no doubt that the story pictured on the Bayeux Tapestry
constitutes a narrative, a connected series of plot events which progresses
through time. The Tapestry’s form lends itself perfectly-by virtue of its
shape and 200 foot length-to the portrayal of an extended series of
interrelated visual scenes which are temporally processional. By virtue of
its spatio-temporal characteristics, the Tapestry manifests a
representational hybrid, effecting as it does an embroidered conflation of
W.J.T. Mitchell’s description of the historical conflict between the verbal
and the visual: “Poetry is an art of time, motion, and action; painting an art
of space, stasis, and arrested action” (48). The Tapestry’s scenes, while
154
individually static instances of “arrested action," are arranged in such a
way that their spatial relationships produce a plot which is moved
whenever the viewer engages it. This engagement occurs, as it does with
the Hereford Mappa Mundi. both in past historical time and present
viewing time. Hence, the viewer supplies the movement and the
connective cognitive element which link the static scenes into a coherent,
advancing narrative. This interpretive process, precisely because it is a
process, cannot take place extratemporally.
14 | intend “ gloss” here in the sense of “[an image] inserted between the
lines or in the margin as an explanatory equivalent to . . . [an image] in text
. . ., comment, explanation, interpretation. . .” (COED 1.230.1). This is
obviously a departure from the standard definition of “ gloss” which gives
“word” where I have bracketed “image.” I make this change, because the
Tapestry is first and foremost a pictorial text, one on which images gloss
images.
Granted, there are lexical inscriptions on the Tapestry; however, the
information that they provide is not interpretive as are manuscript glosses.
For example, the inscription over the wounded Harold reads, HIC HAROLD
REX INTERFECTUS EST (Plate 71). This statement, “Here King Harold
has been killed,” is quite clear and leaves virtually no room for
interpretation. What is odd about this arrangement of word and image on
the Tapestry is that the images, the main text, sometimes problematize the
inscriptions: Just what does the picture show? Is it Harold who is struck by
the arrow? Is he also the one in the next scene whose leg is being hacked
by an English soldier? In instances like this we have something different
from verbally-glossed manuscripts: here the main text is pictorial and open
to interpretation, while the inscription is quite objective and declaratively
stated.
15 These scrolling shapes differ in design throughout the Tapestry,
particularly in its latter sections. For example, those found in Plates 36 and
37 are more reminiscent of candelabra than those in Plates 67 and 68,
which are more abstract, more involved and less foliate. This could be an
indication of different workshops. Or perhaps it is an example of what John
Ruskin called Gothic art’s “perpetual novelty” (“ Gothic” 95).
16 By “reading” I mean simply an interpretation, the end result of the
hermeneutic process through which a meaning is deduced, one that is
conveyed by the particular members of the Tapestry’s set of signs that are
155
arranged in a particular way. I do not intend this meaning to replicate the
Tapestry designer’s intention, which can never be fully recovered.
17 This also occurs in Dante’s Com media, where the poet constructed
an elaborate system of some fifty circular boundaries that exist only to be
crossed by the pilgrim on his journey to encounter the visio Dei.
is For a thorough discussion of the historical background, see Sir
Frank Stenton’s excellent Anglo-Saxon England 3rd ed. (Oxford:
Clarendon P, 1971); R. Allen Brown’s insightful, if biased, The Normans
and the Norman Conquest 2nd ed. (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell P, 1985);
Frank Barlow, Edward the Confessor. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: U
California P, 1970); and English Historical Documents H 1042-1189. Ed.
David Douglas and George W. Greenaway 2nd ed. (London: Eyre
Metheun, 1981).
There are a number of chroniclers who treat the story, most of whom are
sympathetic to the Norman cause: Guillaume de Jumieges in the Gesta
Normannorum Ducum. ca. 1070; Guillaume de Poitiers in the Gesta
Guillelmi Ducis Normannorum et Regis Anolorum. ca. 1073 and the
anonymously written Vita /Edwardi Regis, which may be contemporary or
nearly so. The exception is Eadmer of Canterbury, whose Historia
Novorum in Anglia, ca. 1122, is written with an English bias. See also the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, annal 1066.
There are poetical works as well which are related to the Tapestry’s
events: Wace’s Roman de Rou. ca. 1175; the Carmen de Hastinoae
Proelio. ca. 1070, until recently attributed to Guy, Bishop of Amiens; Les
Oeuvres Poetioues de Baudri de Bourgueil. ca. 1100 and King Harald’s
Saga, ca. 1200.
19 See David J. Bernstein, The Art of the Baveux Tapestry Master
(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986) 134-35 and passim on the
Tapestry’s alleged English bias and N. P. Brooks and H. E. Walker, “ The
Authority and Interpretation of the Bayeux Tapestry,” Proceedings of the
Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies I Ed. R. Allen Brown
(Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 1979) 10-12 on its
“Englishness.” I cannot accept subversive readings of the narrative like
Bernstein’s which argue for an Anglo-Saxon “deconstruction,” as it were.
The images just do not support such contentions.
20 “[William] goes out of his way to assure us of the authenticity of his
account— ‘as men perfectly sincere and trustworthy, who were witnesses of
156
it, have related it'-and we should be unwise to ignore it, for contrary
evidence there is none” (Brown [1968] 129).
21 For a complete, detailed genealogical chart, see James Chambers,
The Norman Kings (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981) 216-17 or
"Select Chart Pedigrees,” Tables 1 and 3, in David C. Douglas, William the
Conqueror: The Norman Impact upon England. (Berkeley: U of California
P, 1964) 418-19.
22 The system in France was different and was more like our notion of
primogeniture:
While detailed evidence from the tenth century is sparse, the
important fact is clear that an hereditary right to rule-coloured but
not qualified by the Scandinavian toleration of bastards, or rather,
long indifference to Christian marriage--was established in the
I ducal house by the ususal device of having the heir recognised
and accepted in his father’s lifetime. (Brown [1985] 45)
23 See R. Allen Brown, The Normans and the Norman Conquest
(Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 1985) chs. 1 and 2 for a full
\ recounting of William’s exploits in his duchy. For a less biased account,
j see Sir Frank Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford UP,
I 1971) ch. 16.
I 24 r . Allen Brown gives the date for the first of these seminal events,
i “. . . the only time when the new archbishop, appointed in mid-Lent 1051,
could have visited the duke for this purpose is during his journey to and
from Rome for his pallium between mid-Lent and late June, 1051” ([1985]
106).
25 See Sir Frank Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England 3rd ed. (Oxford:
Oxford UP, 1971) 576-77 for a discussion of Harold’s power and place in
England.
26 Checking the Chronicle for the year 1051, we also find that William
himself is said to have come to England:
Then forthwith Count William came from overseas with a great
force of Frenchmen, and the king received him and as many of
his companions as suited him, and let him go again. This same
year William the [Norman] priest was given the bishopric of
London which had been given to Sparrowhawk (“D” 120-21).
157
Although “D” differs from both “C” and “E,” this entry is intriguing. If William
did visit England this summer, was it to accept the crown and succession
upon Edward’s death? Was it to help put down the unrest of Godwin’s
| rebellion? Perhaps it was both. If William came in response to a summon
by Edward for help, he could have easily been offered the rights of
succession.
27 Although “ the evolution of true heraldry” has been followed back
only “to the second quarter of the twelfth century through the study of
armorial seals” (Brault 3), there are a number of pictographs in the
| Tapestry which look decidedly heraldic. Consider, for example, the
I omnipresent lions couchant. rampant and passant: the Norman shields
emblazoned with dragons and chevrons (Plates 7, 8), the firedrakes
associated so often with William (Plate 14, lower panel passim); and, of
course, the chevron-embossed panel diagonals, which play a crucial role
as Norman signifiers. This last motif is found also on a shield attributed
falsely to William, king of England (Brault 77, fig. 24).
28 Curiously enough, it is their hand gestures which show their speech
and not their facial expressions. Their movements are not those of oath-
takers or of oath-makers, like Harold’s in Plate 26 where he swears his
oath to William. Here the extended index fingers illustrate not only speech
but dialogue, since each man extends his finger to touch the other’s. This
was a conventional gesture that, “accompanied any solemn spoken
pronouncement and belongs to the repertory of movements recommended
I by ancient teachers of rhetoric. In medieval narrative art it comes therefore
| to function simply as a ’speaking gesture’” (Gombrich, “Ritualized” 66).
! 29 Chevrons were used extensively as a decorative theme in Norman
i and Romanesque art and architecture. They appear, for instance, in the
; west-end window and portal arches of the abbey church of St. Stephen in
I Caen, which was founded by William and which is where he is buried; in
j the vaulting of England’s Ely (1080) and Norwich (1096) cathedrals and in
. Selby Abbey (1100). They dominate the exterior of the twelfth-century
i Norman church of St. Mary the Virgin in Iff ley, Oxfordshire, decorate the
| exterior stringcourse on the even earlier Kilpeck village church just outside
j of Hereford and can be seen all round the interior of Hereford’s Cathedral
! Church of the Blessed Virgin and St. Aethelberht, as well as on the outer
frame of its famous Maooa Mundi.
158
30 The same regal support system is present under William’s pavilion at
Hastings, where it supports Archbishop Odo’s chair. There is only one
Norman diagonal here, however, and not a pair (Plate 48). Could this be
some reference to the fact that Odo was William’s half-brother?
3 1 The pictorgraph which McNulty identifies as “ The Lion and the Stag”
(Plate 8) does not seem to be a discrete fable. See n.2 above and my
discussion below.
32 All summaries of and references to these beast fables are to Ben
Edwin Perry, Babrius and Phaedrus (Cambridge: Harvard UP for the Loeb
Classical Library, 1984) unless otherwise noted. I give first the page
number on which the tale is found, either B (for Babrius) or P (for
i Phaedrus) and then its number in Perry’s collection. For example, “The
Farmer and the Cranes” appears on pages 38-39, is part of Babrius’
collection and is fable 26: thus (Perry 38-39. B26). Often both Babrius and
Phaedrus give the same basic fable in their respective collections. When
this is the case, I reference the one I cite first and the other second. Thus,
“ The Fox and the Crow” appears in both collections and is cited as (Perry
206-09. P13, 96-97. B77).
Perry’s extensive introduction is excellent. It contains background
information on “Aesopic” fables; biographical information on Aesop
(6c.BCE), Phaedrus (1c.CE) and Babrius (2c.CE); sections on sources and
influence studies; bibliographies of original language texts, manuscripts,
papyri, translations into other languages and secondary works (xi-cii).
33 R. Allen Brown characterizes Edward:
A weak king in reality if not in intent, and married to a queen he
did not love, Edward was never able to free himself from the
dominance first of earl Godwin and then of earl Harold, Godwin’s
son (the queen was Godwin’s daughter), and stands as the very
antithesis of duke William in Normandy across the Channel, who
dominated his new aristocracy by his excelling personality and
achievements. (£1985168)
34 Helene Chefneux felt that some fables were repeated because the
designer was lacking in inspiration:
Ces doubles ne nous apprendront plus rien et denotent
simplement que I’artiste, arrivant a I’ornementation de la fin des
listes, s’est trouve legerement a court d’inspiration; il s’est aiqfs
159
contente de reproduire certains motifs du debut, avec ou sans
modifications de detail. (21)
35 That is, up to the figure of Edward in Plate 28. At that point the lower
panel figures shift into an unusual arrangement, one of some confusion,
which perhaps indicates the confusion to follow the king's impending
death.
36 See Excursus Two below.
37 David Wilson notes that “rabbits were introduced into England by the
Normans” (187). There must be some irony here, since Harold is
represented in this instance as the prey and in the later scene, where a
bird pursues a hare (Plate 54).
38 j. Bard McNulty wonders if these are “ two birds (of prey)?" and notes
that the lamb “is in the position of the footsoldiers in the main panel, under
cavalry attack from both sides” (145). This seems plausible, and I would
add that the lamb seems to mimic the forward motion of the hard-riding
Normans, who rush toward the English footsoldiers. It is obviously in flight
and in grave danger.
39 The one in the upper panel does look somewhat like the fable called
“Rough Fare”: An ass was eating the prickly leaves of some thorn bushes.
Seeing him, a fox crept up and said: “You there, how can you, with that soft
and flabby tongue of yours, chew up and eat such rough fare as this?”
(Perry 173.B133) However, there is little here to connect it thematically
I with the Tapestry’s narrative. Leon Herrmann, Les Fables antiques de la
! borderie de Baveux (Brussels: Latomus, 1964) 19-23 has identified all of
| the non-paired beasts in this section (Plates 54-59) as representatives of
I various fables, not always convincingly. See also David Mackenzie
Wilson, The Baveux Tapestry: The Complete Tapestry in Color (New York:
Knopf, 1985) 189 and passim on Herrmann.
40 The theme of flight and attempted escape also appears in the final
j Tapestry panel, as the English flee in fear for their lives (Plate 73). This is
a bit far from the plates under discussion here to be of any but general
1 relevance, however. Curiously enough, the designer did not depict the
, Normans’ feigned flight down from Battle Ridge, which was engineered to
i draw the English down from their superior defensive position, to break up
160
the English shield wall and to open them up to Norman attacks on their
flanks:
At length, however, seeing that the enemy, so massed and so
determined, could not be overcome without very heavy losses,
the Normans and their associates decided upon the strategem of
the feigned flight, remembering with what success the pursuing
English had been, in the event, cut down earlier in the battle. It
was a cavalry manoeuvre, twice conducted; each time the English
were tempted to break ranks in pursuit, and the knights, wheeling
their horses about, surrounded them and slew them to a man.
But still the main position held, no decision had been achieved,
and evening, by all accounts, was now approaching.
(Brown [1968] 171-72)
Why is this not on the Tapestry? According to Brown, this maneuver “is
very well attested by all the principal sources for the battle, except the
Tapestry” ([1968] 171, n. 147). Even though it reportedly had worked
before, was it a bit too “ fox-like,” too deceptive a maneuver to represent?
Or was the fact that it did not work what kept it out of the design?
4 1 My only quibble with this assessment is McNulty’s characterization of
“inversion” as “ wrong.” I would modify this to say that the monde renverse
topos is not always an indicator of wrongness in the negative sense. It is
often— perhaps more often-used in medieval romances, for example those
of Chretien de Troyes, to show moments of mental confusion, moments
often influenced by Prudentius’ Psvchomachia. These scenes are most
often ones in which a lover (male or female) agonizes over their love(r).
So, paradoxically, it is only when things go “wrong,” when the lover’s world
seems inverted, that things are going right. Here, however, this inversion
does signify trouble for Harold.
42 All of this is to say nothing of the legendary connotations that wolves
and foxes have had. For a lengthy “ analysis” and commentary on the wolf,
see T.H. White, The Book of Beasts (New York: G.P Putnam’s Sons, 1954)
56-61. He writes that wolves “massacre anybody who passes by with a
fury of greediness”; that “[wjolves are known for their rapacity. ...” And that
“a wolf is a rapacious beast, and hankering for gore” (56). The Phvsioloaus
characterizes the fox no less negatively: “[a] fox is an entirely deceitful
animal who plays tricks”; and, “ The fox is a figure of the devil” (27).
43 Strangely enough, this is an anthropomorphized monkey, as Wilson
indicates: “note the monkey represented as a naked human” (175). Not
161
only is the simian humanized, but he seems to have an English
moustache! This ties its significance to the historical events a bit more: is
Harold being “aped”?
44 Harold seems to be sailing alone. It must be Harold who points
toward land as he stands in the bow of the ship. His name is embroidered
right over his head, just as it is when he is killed (Plate 71). (In fact, his
lance tip separates the letters: HARa OLD.) Does his isolation signify his
importance, his role in directing the mission? Or is does it single him out
because of the things he is about to do in Normandy?
i
| 45 The theme of hospitality, in which the mouse is sorely repaid for
! entertaining the frog in such a kind way, supplies a variant reading.
Edward's and William’s trust and hospitality could be the mouse, since the
Norman apparently took such good care of Harold while he was in France.
The frog again is Harold, who repaid his lords’ trust and hospitality with
such treachery. This would leave William himself as the bird, who swoops
down to avenge his own betrayal. Regardless of which reading is chosen,
Harold is pegged as the frog, just as I have associated him with every other
negatively-valenced animal in the previous fables. He can be no other: the
Tapestry is decidedly biased in Edward’s and William’s favor.
46 McNulty is uncharacteristically silent on the significance of this fable.
Regarding its later manifestation he writes:
The main panel below this fable is filled with the cavalrymen and
bowmen who have come to England with William in response to
his call for support in a just cause. They are like those who
responded to the call of the brave and intelligent goat in the fable.
(30)
47 Notice here also that the griffin is poised as if watching the
proceedings, and that it is separated from these fable illustrations, not by a
diagonal, but by another tree. This seems to include him in the events as
an observer. In addition, his orientation is backwards, if the pattern set in
the lower panel up to the point where the fables begin is followed (Plate 4).
From the beginning to this point, each pair of animals faced one another
but had their backs to the preceding and succeeding animals.
Perhaps the griffin is placed here out of convention. As Beryl Rowland
notes, “[wjhile there are many representations of griffins without lions,
j particularly in connection with Alexander’s hubristic flight to heaven, the
| lion is the animal with which the griffin is most commonly associated from
earliest times” (48). Her characterization of the beast certainly fits this
scene, if we excise its negative valence: “Usually the griffin represents an
evil principle, gaining victory over animals and men whom he appears to
tear to pieces” (48).
48 William of Malmesbury notes that after the battle at Stamford Bridge,
Harold, elated by his successful enterprise, “vouchsafed no part of the
spoil to his soldiers. Wherefore many, as they found opportunity, stealing
away, deserted the king, as he was proceeding to the battle of Hastings”
(257).
49 Other possibilities are Phaedrus’ “The Farmer and the Cranes”
(Perry 39.P26) and Marie de France’s “The Swallow and the Linseed” (71).
Neither of these fables covers as much of the illustrated material as the
one from Babrius’ collection.
so The Pleiades are in the sky from May to November in the northern
hemisphere which, along with planting and harvesting seasons, is sailing
season. William landed at Pevensey on 28 Septemeber 1066 and
charged Harold at the Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1066 (Brown
[1968] 160-63). Can it be a coincidence that the same time frame is used
for these fabulous border scenes?
51 Marc Bloch explained the order and significance of these two
components of vassalage:
There were therefore many acts of fealty without homage: we do
not know of any acts of homage without fealty--at least in the
feudal period. Furthermore, when the two rites were combined,
the pre-eminence of homage was shown by the fact that it was
always given first place in the ceremony. It was this alone that
brought the two men together in a close union; the fealty of the
vassal was a unilateral undertaking to which there was seldom a
corresponding oath on the part of the lord. In a word, it was the
act of homage that really established the relation of vassalage
under its dual aspect of dependence and protection. (1.147)
52 David Wilson points out that Edward holds “ a walking stick to
emphasize his age” (182).
53 George Digby describes laid and couched weaving and outline
stitching:
163
In laid and couched work, first the threads are laid over a given
area, packed tightly together to give a massed effect which fills
the contours of the figure from edge to edge; secondly, another
series of threads, usually but not necessarily of the same colour,
is laid at right angles to these, this time at short intervals one from
another, usually about 1 /8 of an inch apart; lastly, these are
couched down with the same thread which secures each of them
and so holds the whole complex firmly in position. Probably the
second lot of laid wool threads can be seen to follow the contours
and indicate the masses very precisely. Such sensitive work
could hardly have been effected otherwise. The outline of the
contours of the figures is worked in stem or outline stitch, as are
all the thin lines, such as the lettering, lines demarking the
borders and some of the scroll-work, the lances, etc.; so too are
details, such as hands and faces, and many of the fillings, for
instance the fish-scale patterns of the chain armour. Outline stitch
is a variety of stem stitch in which the needle comes out each time
on the right of the thread, thus forming a thin, continuous line,
instead of the slight overlapping of consecutive stem stitches.
(40)
54 Francis Wormaid gives its dimensions as 70.34m by 50cm, or 230ft.
101/2in. x 193/4in (Baveux Tapestry 25). Wilson, citing what he says are
the most recent measurements taken in 1982-83 by Monuments
Historiques, gives 68.38m by 45.7 to 53.6cm, or 2241/4ft. x 18-21 in. as its
dimensions (10).
55 The irony of a pro-Norman historical narrative, particularly one
created for public viewing, being designed and worked by English
craftsmen has not been lost on David Bernstein:
Thus, just as it was ironic that the Anglo-Saxon excellence in
creating instruments of government gave the Conqueror tools
with which to consolidate his victory, so it was doubly ironic that
when the Normans wished to have their achievement at the Battle
of Hastings commemorated they apparently turned to native
English artisans to make a triumphal monument. (26)
: See also Otto Pacht: “Strange a it may seem, we may have to accept that
j the tale of the Norman triumph over Anglo-Saxon England, presented as
the story of just retribution for Harold’s perjury, has been designed by an
! Anglo-Saxon artist” (Rise 91.
56 Although on a later period, still valuable as a general discussion on
this topic is Emile Male, The Gothic Image: Religious Art in France of the
Thirteenth Century (New York: Harper and Row, 1958) 1-26 passim.
57 See my discussion of the tympanum at Conques in Ch. 1; Steven
Nichols, Romanesque Signs: Early Medieval Narrative and Iconography
(New Haven: Yale UP, 1983) 43-47 passim: M.F. Hearn, Romanesque
Sculpture: The Revival of Monumental Stone Sculpture in the Eleventh
and Twelfth Centuries (Oxford: Phaidon, 1981) 68-118, 169-224; and
| Linda Seidel, Songs of Glory: The Romanesque Fapades of Aquitaine
(Chicago: Chicago UP, 1981) 17-69.
i
! 58 See also David Bernstein, The Mvsterv of the Baveux Tapestry
(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986) 38-44 for a well-illustrated
discussion of the Utrecht Psalter (and its English copy, the Harley Psalter),
Prudentius’ Psvchomachia. St Augustine’s Gospels, and the /Elfric
Hexateuch, among other illuminated texts produced at or in the possession
of St. Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, and their relation to the Tapestry (38-
44).
59 Of course, Brooks’ and Walker’s article must be read in full. It is one
j of the most comprehensive, insightful treatments of the Tapestry,
j particularly the section on the Canterbury association (6-20).
so it was not at all unusual for close friends and relatives of the Norman
ducal families to hold high offices in the Church:
Almost everywhere, as it came about, the frontiers of the duchy
coincided with the limits of the metropolitan province of Rouen-
one duke and one archbishop, often enough side by side at
Rouen, where the former had his foritified palace and the latter
his cathedral church. Further, the duke controlled the Church,
both secular and regular. He appointed, and invested, his
bishops who, already before 1066, owed him military service for
their lands; also he could on occassion dismiss them, as
archbishop Mauger was deposed, with papal sanction, in 1054 or
1055. The greatest abbeys, of which those established before
! about 1050 also owed him military service, were ducal
j foundations, and thus their abbots were appointed and invested
by him. . . . (Brown [1985] 26)
165
Many of the bishops were members and close relatives of the
ducal family-Robert (989-1037) and Mauger (1037-54),
successively archbishops of Rouen, Hugh (1015-49) and Odo
(1049-99), successively bishops of Bayeux, John, bishop of
Avranches (1060-7), Hugh, bishop of Lisieux (1049-77)— or
members of the new Norman aristocracy, like Ives de Belleme,
bishop of Seez (1035-70) and Geoffrey de Mowbray, bishop of
Coutances (1049-93). (Brown [1985] 27)
6 1 Such fame by association led Brooks and Walter to conclude that, “. .
. the Tapestry would seem to have been made for a Bayeux audience at a
time when Turold, Wadard and Vital were either still alive or at least fondly
remembered” (8).
62 a selection from this catalogue follows:
“Inventaire des joyaulx, capses, reiquiairs, ornemens, tentes,
paremens, livres, et autres biens apartenans a I’eglise Nostre-
Dame de Bayeux, et en icelle trouves, veus et visites par
venerables et discretes personnes maistre Guillaume de
Castillon, archidiacre des Vetz, et Nicole Michiel Fabriquier,
chanoines de ladite eglise, tenu et celebre apres la feste de
sainct Ravent et sainct Rasiph, en Tan mil quatre cent septante-
six, tres reverend pere en Dieu Mons. Loys de Harecourt,
patriarche de Jerusalem, lors eveque, et reverend pere maistre
Guillaume de Bailleul, lors doyen de ladite eglise; et fut fait ce dit
inventaire en mois de septembre par plusieurs journees, a ce
presens les procureurs et serviteurs du grand cousteur de ladite
eglise, et maistre Jehan Castel, chappellain de ladite eglise et
notaire apostolique; et icy est redige en frangois et vulgaire
langage pour plus claire et familiere designation desdits joyaulx,
ornements et autres biens, et de leurs circonstances, qu’elle
n’eust pu estre faicte en termes de latinite, et est ce dit inventaire
cy-apres digere en order, et disigne en distinction en six
chapitres. . . .
Ensuivent pour le tiers chapitre les pretieux manteaux et
riches chapes trouves et gardes en triangle qui est assis en coste
dextre du pulpitre dessous le crucifix.
Premierement ung mantel duquel, com me on dit, le due
Guillaume estoit vestu quandil epousa la ducesse, tout d’or tirey;
semey de croisettes et florions d’or, et le bort de bas est de or
traict a images faict tout environ ennoble de fermailles d’or
166
emaillies et de camayeux et autres pierres, pretieuses, et de
present en y a encore sept vingt, et y a sexante dix places vuides
ou aultres-foiz avoient este perles, pierres et fermailles d’or
emaillies.
Item .-U n a autre mantel duquel, com me I’en dit, la ducesse
estoit vestue quand elle epousa le due Guillaume, tout semey de
petits ymages d’or tire a or fraiz pardevant, et pour tout le bort de
bas enrichiz de fermailles d’or emailies et de camayeux et autre
pierres pretieuses, et de present en y a encore deus cens quatre-
vingt-douze, et y a deus cens quatre places vuides ausquelles
estoient aultres-foiz pareilles pierres et fermailles d’or emaillies
Ensuivent pour le quint chapitre les tentes, tapis, cortines,
paremens des autels et autres draps de saye pour parer le cueur
aux festes solonnelles, trouves et gardes en le vestiare de ladicte
eglise.
Item.-- Une tente tres longue et etroite de telle a broderie de
ymages et escripteaulx faisans representation du conquest
d’Angleterre, laquelle est tendue environ la nef de I'eglise le jour
et par les octaves des Reliques.” (Fowke 1-2)
63 Lancelot was unsure of what Foucault’s drawing depicted: “He had
failed, he said, to discover whether the original was a bas relief, a
sculpture round the choir of a church, upon a tomb, or on a f rieze-if a
fresco painting, stained glass, or even a piece of tapestry” (Fowke 3). He
even went so far as to suppose that it could have been part of William’s
tomb or a representation of stained glass windows from the abbey of St.
Etienne de Caen, the site of the Conqueror’s tomb (Fowke 4).
64 Frank Fowke recounts the popularity of the exhibition:
. . . three authors of vaudevilles, much renowned in that day, MM.
Bar re, Radit et Desfontaines, composed a one-act comedy in
prose, entitled, “La Tapisserie de la reine Mathilde,” which was
produced at the Theatre du Vaudeville. In this piece Matilda, who
had retired to her uncle Roger during the contest, was
represented passing her time with the women in embroidering
the exploits of her husband, never leaving her work except to put
up prayers for his success. It related to passing events, and was
of a very light character, as all such pieces are, but contained
nevertheless many witty strokes, and some ingenious allusions to
the projects of Napoleon. (9)
167
65 For a rather lively history of the Tapestry’s public exposure, see
! Frank Rede Fowke, The Baveux Tapestry: A History and Description
| (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1913) 8-18 and 22; see also David J.
Bernstein, The Mvsterv of the Baveux Tapestry (London: Weidenfeld and
Nicolson, 1986)104-07; and David Mackenzie Wilson, The Baveux
Tapestry: The Complete Tapestry in Color (New York: Knopf, 1985)12-14.
66 When not being displayed, the Tapestry was preserved in what
Fowke called a “strong wainscot press” (6). Just what this contraption was
is unclear. “ Wainscot” usually refers to oak; however, this does not seem
to jibe with David Wilson’s description of the press: “By 1812 it was in the
Prefecture [of Bayeux] where it was wound for ease of access on two
cylinders. . .” (13). Whatever it may have looked like, this method of
storage clearly accounts for the damage done to the Tapestry, since the
exposed end is the damaged one. As one can see, the story literally
breaks off with the English in flight and does not show William’s coronation
scene, with which it surely would have closed (Plate 73).
67 Examples of these exceptions are London’s buildings in the Hailey’s
comet scene (Plate 32), the two small buildings depicted in the scenes of
Norman feasting after their landing at Pevensey (Plates 45, 46), the
! server’s foot which slips below the ground line in the same section (Plate
48) and the horses hooves which do the same in the last panel (Plate 73).
68 it is not utilized for Harold’s ships upon their return from Normandy
, (Plates 26, 27).
J 69 The most striking exception to this is the battle section (Plates 61-
73), in which the lower border, the ground line, is repeatedly crossed by
attacking Normans or dying knights until it basically ceases to function.
70 Some of these pictographs, like the one for Bayeux, are
conventional renderings and mirror some of the ones found on the
Hereford Mappa Mundi. See, for example, those representing Paris,
I London and Babylon on the map.
Chapter Three
Peripheral Centers: Narrative Space and the
Significance of Place in Chretien’s Yvain/Lancelot
169
By omitting any direct reference to the center, the painter
understates the basic stability of his composition. He entrusts it to
the interaction of his vectors and charges the viewer with
organizing what he sees by referring it to the indirectly given
center. (Arnheim, Center 119)
The plots of Chretien de Troyes’ romances, Yvain and Lancelot, revolve
around essentially empty centers. Initially, each text is characterized by
the deficiencies of is conventional center, Arthur’s court, and of its
protagonist, Yvain and Lancelot, respectively.1 Both knights journey away
from Arthur’s court to the peripheries of the kingdom’s imaginary
landscape, seeking there self-definition and, in Lancelot’s and Gauvain’s
cases, the rescue of Guinevere. Once out on the edge of the Arthurian
world, each protagonist encounters characters and events which set up
self-definitional situations that provide them with opportunities to
overcome character faults. This is true, regardless of whether the knight is-
-like Yvain--a chivalric signifier or--like Lancelot--a courtly signifier.
These hero-specific, spatio-temporal convergences can occur only on
the margins of the romances’ fictional geography, where they become the
central loci of signification. Tension is thus created between the
romances’ conventional center, Arthur’s court, and their geographically
peripheral “centers of attention,” of which Rudolf Arnheim writes:
A center of attention carries weight, just like any other center, and
therefore for the time being it dislodges the inherent hierarchy of
the composition. It upsets the balance and meaning . . . such
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momentary onesidedness must be overcome by continuous
scanning. (Ceriter37)
The resultant tension between conventional center and “center of
attention” highlights the ineffectuality of Arthur as king and the problematic
nature of the conventions that his court represents.
This compositional narrative system functions inversely to that which
structures the Hereford Maooa Mundi. Its designer, Richard of
Haldingham, positioned Jerusalem as the geometrical, geographical
center of Christian Truth, with its “ centers of attention,” border areas like
Ethiopia with its strange inhabitants, insistently distracting our gaze to the
periphery. This momentarily dilutes the compositional and salvational
power of Jerusalem-as-center. Its power--and that of the Logos-is
consistently reaffirmed, however, since the viewer’s gaze is constantly
pulled back there, regardless of where it wandered on the viewer’s
idiosyncratic pilgrimage. In other words, the peripheral, while perhaps the
most immedately intriguing aspect of the map’s picto-textual topography, is
shown to be the least ultimately significant and the center to be of supreme
importance. On the map Jerusalem, the mundane civitas Dei, is meant to
be the first literal or metaphorical stop on the optical pilgrim’s journey to
God, followed next by the Earthly Paradise, which figures as the
bridgeway to the ultimate destination, to the celestial ci vitas Dei.
171
In the first part of this chapter I explore two aspects of these narrative
spatio-temporal conjunctions: their effects upon Yvain, Lancelot and
Gauvain and the intertextuality they engender between Yvain and
Lancelot. I first relate the errant knights’ journeys away from Arthur’s court
to my theory of center versus periphery for the Hereford Mappa Mundi’s
simultaneous temporality, its function as both synchronic and diachronic
space. I then discuss what I call “narrative mapping” to show how Yvain
and Lancelot can be lain gridlike atop one another, so to speak, to
produce a meta-text that I call the Yvain/Lancelot.2
Gauvain’s three intertextual instances of absent presence in Yvain.
along with his role as chivalric foil in Yvain and Lancelot, bring the two
texts together at crucial points in their respective plots to produce this meta
narrative. His absences from each text pull Yvain and Lancelot away from
court and toward the potent periphery of the Arthurian worlds in Yvain they
allow Yvain to prove himself, to develop his social-chivalric self, by filling
in for his absent comrade and accomplishing the deeds that Gauvain is
expected to perform. In Lancelot Gauvain’s ineffectiveness in his parallel
mission to find the abducted Guinevere allows Lancelot to participate in
his specifically-tailored series of encounters, rescue his lover and release
the captive Logrians from Gorre. Compared to these two, Gauvain is
shown to be as ineffectual-if well-intentioned-as Arthur’s court, and
Arthur’s reputation as “ the good king of Britain who teaches us by his valor
172
that we should be brave and courteous,” (“li boens rois de Bretaigne / la
cui proesce nos enseigne / que nos soiens preu et cortois”) (Yvain 1-3), is
called into question. By continually drawing the reader back to this locus,
Gauvain’s intertextual (dis)appearances reinforce Yvain’s successes and
the image of Arthur as, at worst, a roi faineant or. at best, a roi inefficace.
Reading this meta-text retrospectively, that is, reading Yvain and
Lancelot and then considering them as the Yvain/Lanceiot. opens the way
to new interpretations. Here I concentrate only on showing that these
individual romances are structured round empty, essentially impotent,
centers: round Gauvain as chivairic paradigm and Arthur’s court as
conventional hub of the Arthurian world.4 in these tales it is clear that
chivairic romance’s most mistakenly privileged character and its locus of
convention-the romance equivalent of the medieval maopaemundi’s
Jerusalem-are tested repeatedly and found wanting.5
In the second section I examine Lancelot on its own, particularly the
ways that the character of Meleagant’s sister functions jntratextually, much
as Gauvain functions intertextuallv in the Yvain/Lancelot. The dameisele
appears twice, perhaps three times, at crucial narrative moments-
instances which are set on the geographical periphery, far from Arthur’s
court at the tale’s “centers of attention” (Arnheim, Center 37). Her
appearances at hero-specific moments of spatio-temporal convergence
pull together the romance’s main themes, focussing them on Lancelot: his
173
hesitation and shame for riding in the ignominious charrete and the
conventional pledges of servise. As Gauvain’s absent presences set up a
dialogue between Yvain and Lancelot. Meleagant's sister’s presence
furthers the dialectical topos which pervades and drives Lancelot. Her
requests place Lancelot in situations that require him to make decisions
based upon the outcomes of his inner debates-between Laraece and
Pitiez. for example-that mirror the one he has early on between Reisons
and Amors and prepare him to operate instinctively at Noauz, when
Guinevere bids him to do his worst, “‘au noauz’” (Lancelot 56541 and then
to do his best, “‘au mialz’” (Lancelot 5879). These moments of
psvchomachia retard both Lancelot’s progress through the narrative as
well as the reader’s, centering his attention and the reader’s on the
particular issues to hand.
Finally, I discuss the pledges that Meleagant’s sister and Lancelot make
to each other after she rescues him from the tower in which her brother
imprisons him. The ambiguity of their vows, including that of the word
amis, problematizes traditional readings of Lancelot as the premier roman
courtois. and of Lancelot as the constant epitome of the romance fin.
i
! amant. I do not suggest that his love for Guinevere is insincere or that it no
i
I longer exists when he returns to Arthur’s court. Certainly, Lancelot can be
i
i construed as the paradigmatic fin amant up to his meeting with
i Meleagant’s sister on the islet in Gorre; however, I argue that once he
174
crosses back into Logres he can no longer maintain this posture-not
without potentially effecting the destruction of the Arthurian realm. In other
words, geographical boundaries, ambiguous though they may be, are vital
to our understanding of Chretien’s sans, marking as they do more than just
topographical borders.
I
Time is the longest distance between two places.
--Tennessee Williams
Time and its potential organizational variations, such as chronologies,
are important to this study, though not as much as considerations of spatial
organization. By chronology I do not mean Chretien’s order of
composition, the texts’ “historical chronology,” but what Roberta Krueger
has called their “ textual chronology” (“Reading” 174):
. . . the temporal sequence of events within the two poems, as
established by intertextual references and allusions in Yvain and
the Charrete. It may or may not reflect the order in which the
episodes were actually written. (“Reading” 174)
The “historical chronology,” by which is meant the question of whether
Yvain or Lancelot was composed first or whether they were composed
simultaneously, has been extensively debated by scholars like Krueger,
175
David Shirt, Jan Janssens and Evelyn Mullally. This kind of chronology is
of no real concern here, because I have chosen to discuss the poems as
we have them and not their order of composition. I am not interested in
attempting to reconstruct Chretien’s original text; therefore, the issue of
which episodes might have preceded or followed others is not germane to
this s tu d y 6 At this point, using textual evidence, we cannot reconstruct
Chretien’s compositional chronology with any surety, any more than we
can discover just who this mysterious Christian “ de Troyes” was. If we
consider narrative episodes, however, we can construct a composite text,
the Yvain/Lancelot. a playfully ironic-perhaps even subversive--“molt bele
conjointure” (Erec 14)7
The general structure of this non-authorial narrative-and I stress non-
authorial-melanae follows. Arabic numerals signify this textual
chronological order, “ Y” and “L” stand respectively for Yvain and Lancelot.
lower case letters for various ordered sections in the poems and Roman
numerals for the four instances when Arthur’s court is referenced in Yvain.
The intertextual interlace is indicated, for example, in numbers 2, 3 and 4,
where Yb is followed by La, which precedes Yc, an episode from Yvain.
Yvain/Lancelot:
1. Ya: The first section of Yvain (1-2797), from “la Pantecoste” (6), 19
May, to the scene at Chester with Gauvain, where Yvain goes
mads
Yb: Gauvain and Arthur, along with the king’s entourage, return to
court (?)
La: The first section of Lancelot (1-709), from “une AcenssTon”
(30), 5 May, to the point at which Gauvain and Lancelot
separate to seek Guinevere
Yc: Yvain’s madness and recovery (2798-end) and Lb:
Lancelot’s and Gauvain’s adventures in Gorre, Guinevere
rescued, their return to court, (710-end)
Yc.i: Two episodes of Lunete’s imprisonment in the chapel near
Laudine’s miraculous fountain, Lancelot’s plot
recounted for Yvain by Lunete (3520-3763, 4298-
4645)9
Yc.ii: Episode of Haroin de la montaiane. Lancelot’s plot
recounted for Yvain by his host (3764-4307)
--This scene is inserted between Yvain’s first meeting
with the imprisoned Lunete and his return to rescue
her, an instance of intratextual interlace.
Yc.iii: First episode of the two daughters of the sire de la
Noire Esoine. Lancelot’s plot recounted by narrator
(4731-39)
Yc.iv: Gauvain, returned to court for the second time (?) since the
Chester episode in Yvain and for the first time since his
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efforts to save the Queen in Lancelot, hears from his
niece and nephews of Yvain’s victory over Harpin the
giant (4740-52)
I do not mean by this chart to suggest that Lancelot and Yvain can be
combined to form a perfectly-fitted meta-text, with one laid precisely upon
the other. I merely wish to indicate points of spatio-temporal convergence.
I cannot agree with W.W. Kibler: “This intertextual technique did not have
the success of the [intratextual] interlace, but attests like it to an acute
artistic awareness on the part of Chretien to the structuring of his
i
romances” (Yvain xx). As Lancelot and Gauvain travel for a time together
on the same quest, even when apart in Lancelot, the reader is implicitly
asked to compare the success of one knight's quest to the other. In the
last section of Yvain (Yc.iii), Gauvain’s social responsibilities are assumed
by Yvain. As he and his lion travel the French countryside, the tale of
Gauvain’s exploits in Lancelot is retold three times, and his absences are
highlighted-brought back before the reader as points of reference relative
to Yvain’s actions. In this way, Gauvain’s actions constitute reference
points for the respective heroes in each romance and provide the link
through which we can read each poem as a gloss on the other. These are
the moments when the reader has the greatest opportunity for comparative
i reading, and feels that perhaps Chretien’s “ acute artistic awareness”
I
extended further than Kibler noticed.
178
It can even be said that it is precisely the chronotope that defines
genre and generic distinctions, for in literature the primary
category in the chronotope is time. (Bakhtin 8 5 )io
In Yvain and Lancelot space and time are “bewitched” by Chretien and
converge at hero-specific narrative “ axes.” Mikhail Bakhtin referred to
such coincidences as instances of the “ artistic chronotope,” what he called
the foundation of the romance’s “miraculous world in adventure time”
(154):
In the literary artistic chronotope, spatial and temporal indicators
are fused into one carefully thought-out, concrete whole. Time,
as it were, thickens, takes on flesh, becomes artistically visible;
likewise, space becomes charged and responsive to the
movements of time, plot and history. This intersection of axes and
fusion of indicators characterizes the artistic chronotope. (84)
In order for this fictional “intersection of axes” to happen, space and time
are distorted arbitrarily by the author to fit the hero’s needs:
The chronotope of the miraculous world, which is characterized
by this subjective playing with time, the violation of elementary
temporal relationships and perspectives, has a corresponding
subjective playing with space, in which elementary spatial
relationships and perspectives are violated. (Bakhtin 155)
Although Yvain and Lancelot do expend time on their quests, they grow
no older; that is, they do not travel in “biographical time,” since there is no
evidence that either has aged upon returning from their adventures. This
temporal space is what Bakhtin called “ adventure time,” the “extratemporal
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hiatus between two moments of biographical time” (90), the space where a
character’s biological clock does not tick but the narrative’s does:
In this kind of time, nothing changes: the world remains as it was,
the biographical life of the heroes does not change, their feelings
do not change, people do not even age. This empty time leaves
no traces anywhere, no indications of its passing. (91)^
Romance “adventure time" is in abeyance only at the biographical poles
which come at the beginning and end of each tale--at the relatively static
Arthurian center from which knights leave and to which they return.
Obviously, Yvain and Lancelot cannot remain at the first pole for long, or
the narrative would never proceed: they must leave for biographical--and,
therefore, biological-time to stop and “ adventure time” to begin. This kind
of temporality, or temporary time, exists only at the peripheries of the
Arthurian world. For example, in Lancelot Meleagant challenges Lancelot
to a meeting one year from the day Guinevere and the captive Logrians
are released from Gorre. This year, this increment of
biological/biographical time can only be closed out at the tale’s
biological/biographical pole, Arthur's court. In between the time of their
agreement to meet and its moment of closure, any number of events can
occur, because the narrative shifts into “adventure time” while Lancelot is
away from court. Therefore, what Bakhtin terms “empty time” is the most
significant sort of time in Arthurian romance, since it is there at the liminal
areas that the most significant events transpire.
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Yvain is invested in the passage of biographical time, but here the tale’s
center moves, as I have indicated, from Arthur’s court to Laudine’s. Once
Yvain marries her, their court-once a center of attention-becomes the true
center of the romance. After Yvain leaves at Gauvain’s insistence to go
tourneying, the temporal frame shifts to “ adventure time,” only to shift back
momentarily at Chester when Lunete appears and berates him for not
having returned to Laudine within the appointed time of a year. 12 During
the romance’s second half, during Yvain’s madness and recovery,
“adventure time” dominates but is interrupted by biographical time when
1
i
| Yvain’s rescue schedule is structured round specific appointments to fight
Harpin, Lunete’s captors and Gauvain. In this final meeting, “ adventure
time” ends, because Yvain returns to his tale’s new pole, Laudine’s court-
its new center of convention. The same occurs in Lancelot, where
“ adventure time” concludes after Meleagant’s sister releases Lancelot
from his tower to return to Arthur’s court and defeat Meleagant.
Like the Hereford Maooa Mundi. romance's “miraculous world” is
j organized, in both diachronic and synchronic modes: “adventure time”
! proceeds synchronically, and biographical time moves diachronically. (On
the map the viewer converts time from synchronic to diachronic by
engaging selected images or bits of text along his or her idiosyncratic
ocular itinerary.) In his moments of narrative convergence in the
Yvain/Lancelot. Gauvain travels in the synchronic mode, in the gap where
181
time and history fuse. Here narrative events from Yvain and tancelot
happen simultaneously. Since he performs no actions within either text
during these moments, his movements are reported but he is not seen: he
is slated to be forever elsewhere, a recurrent, albeit significant, absent
presence. When he is mentioned, the reader is alerted to the parallel
fictional worlds in operation and that Gauvain is the medium via which the
temporal gap can be bridged--if only for brief, discrete moments. In other
words, as we read about Yvain, Lancelot and their adventures, Gauvain
and his exploits in Lancelot are at the back of our minds. These
intertextual coincidences shift the entire Yvain/Lancelot into the synchronic
mode. Only this meta-text is inherently synchronic, though: when each
i
! tale is read on its own, narrative time is diachronic until such a
i ’
! coincidence is met. When the Yvain/Lancelot. this abstract mental
i
I construction, is considered in its constituent wholeness, the temporal
i
| frame shifts to the synchronic. The same occurs on the Hereford Mappa
I
j Mundi. as I have said: the entire “molt bele conjointure” (Erec 14) is
i
j synchronic until the viewer engages its encyclopedic text, essentially
! writing his or her own narrative that proceeds diachronically.
Geography is as maleable for Chretien as is time. In Lancelot spatial
i
; distortion occurs especially where ambiguous geographical borders are
i
I
| crossed, countries and spaces melded into one fantastic topographical
I
whole. We know, for example, that Lancelot moves from Logres, Arthur’s
182
kingdom, into Gorre, Bademagus’ land.13 However, we do not know for
sure where or when this first border crossing occurs. It could be after
Lancelot and the dameisele amoureuse leave the cimetiere futur where he
reads the prophetic inscriptions on the tomb and assures the hermit that
he— as custom dictates-is the one who will free the Logrians from
imprisonment. Or, it could come just after this, when Lancelot meets a
Logrian vavasour coming out of a wood, and the knight offers him lodging.
The narrator’s comments indicate that the man and his family are in Gorre:
N’estoient pas del pats ne,
mes if estoient anserre,
et prison tenu i avoient
molt longuemant, et si estoient
del reaume de Logres ne. (Lancelot 2051-55)
(“ They were not born in this land, but were imprisoned there, and
they were held there for a long time away from their native land of
Logres.”)
The ways in and out of Gorre are as problematical as what precisely it is
that keeps the Logrians captive. The “Pont de soz eve,” the Underwater
Bridge, and the “Pont de I’Espee,” the Sword Bridge, apparently lead
! across the river to Bademagus’ castle and are not borders between the
| two realms. We can therefore assume that the captives did not cross them
I on their way there from Logres. So, why cannot Arthur’s people leave
j when they wish? What is the “costume” (Lancelot 2096) that keeps them
i
| there? All we are told is that the inscription on Lancelot’s tomb indicates
183
that since the beginning no foreigners have escaped, though local
inhabitants are free to go and come as they please:
des I’ore qu’il i est antrez;
(“Whoever will lift this slab by his own strength will release all the
men and women who are imprisoned in this land. Thus neither
clerk nor nobleman has been freed [since the custom was
instituted], nor has anyone returned home. Foreigners are held
captive and those of this country come and go as they please.”)
“Costume” is not magic, and the reader is offered no real explanation for
the Logrians’ captivity, except that it is the custom of Gorre-which resolves
nothing. We are left with two realizations: first, there is no logical
explanation and, second, there need be none. Events in Gorre happen in
“adventure time,” where Chretien has “bewitched” both space and time.
Yvain’s liminal areas are no more clearly defined: the action starts in
Britain at Carduel, from where Yvain rides to Laudine’s spring in France’s
forest of Broceliande. W.W. Kibler writes:
The forest of Broceliande . . . is identified as the present-day
forest of Paimpont, about 30 miles west of Rennes, in Brittany.
Chretien, however, places it in Britain, since there is never any
question of crossing the channel going to or coming from it to
Carduel. This, like the situation of Carduel in “Wales,” . . . is better
seen as poetic than mistaken geography. (Yvain p.280, n.189)
“. . . Cil qui levera
cele lanme seus par son cors
gitera ces et celes fors
qui sont an la terre an prison,
don n’ist ne clers ne gentix
retiennent;
et cil del pais vont et vienent
et anz et fors a lor pleisir.”
(Lancelot 1900-09)
n’ancors n’en est nus retornez;
les estranges prisons
hon
184
Kibler further indicates that “Carduel has been identified with Carlisle in
Cumberland” and cites Loomis and Foerster, respectively: “Gales, which is
usually translated Wales, might be a case of mistaken geography . . . or
refer more likely to the land occupied by the Cymri, including modern
Cumberland” (Lancelot p.279. n.7). This is all well and good; however,
J such speculation is of as little help as my above discussion of borders in
Lancelot. Carduel does not have to be in Wales or any other “real” space
j in this fictional world. The Gales reference does not have to be “a case of
i
i
I mistaken identity.” Chretien’s geography does not have to be any more
| pragmatically reliable than that of the Hereford map’s designers4 As
i
I Bakhtin writes, the same geo-spatial distortions apply in each land that the
i
hero crosses, doing away-one would assume-with their national
differences and the need for chartable borders:
| . . . both the hero and the miraculous world in which he acts are of
I a piece, there is not separation between the two. This world is
| not, to be sure, his national homeland; it is everywhere equally
i “ other” (but this “ otherness” is not emphasized)--the hero moves
! from country to country, comes into contact with various masters,
crosses various seas~but everywhere the world is one, filled with
the same concept of glory, heroic deed and disgrace; throughout
this world the hero is able to bring glory on himself and others;
everywhere the same names resound and are glorious. (153-54)
And so, following Bakhtin, I suggest that we read romance topography as
a construction in which “elementary spatial relationships and perspectives
are violated” (Bakhtin 155) and our modern conceptions of spatio-
185
temporal mapping upset. If Chretien could bewitch time, why not space as
well?
At first, this seems to leave the reader in a wildly fluid narrative
environment, one with few controlling factors. This is not the case,
however. Narrative time and space need markers so that the reader can
recognize significant instances of convergence, and Chretien provides
them for us. According to Bakhtin, these markers can be positively or
negatively valenced, and so we get the “motif of meeting” and the
“negative sign” (97), both of which function under the aegis of the
“chronotope of the road," which he explains as a particular democratic
coincidence of space and time:
. . . the spatial and temporal paths of the most varied people-
representatives of all social classes, estates, religions,
nationalities, ages-intersect at one spatial and temporal point.
People who are normally kept separate by social and spatial
distance can accidentally meet; any contrast may crop up, the
most various fates may collide and interweave with one another.
[. . .] The chronotope of the road is both a point of new departures
and a place for events to find their denouement. Time, as it were,
fuses together with space and flows in it (forming the road). . . .
(243-44)
| There could hardly be a more appropriate description of Arthurian
*
; romance, a text which is centered around the lack of a center, one which
t
relies so heavily on the knight-errant moving along the road away from
186
court and seemingly accidentally meeting people and creatures whom he
might never meet if he stayed at Arthur’s court, the conventional center.
These meetings are not, of course, accidental-they are highly contrived
by the author. Chretien has Lancelot see Guinevere riding at the head of
a mysterious funeral pageant for a reason; it is not chance that causes
Yvain to run across a lion and a dragon battling in a forest clearing. These
meetings, these convergences of time and space, are purposely-and
fortuitously-structured for each hero, for the knights whom Eric Auerbach
called the “ elect.” There are “ degrees of election,” and they provide the
means of classifying characters according to their importance in a given
story:
The degrees of election, and specific election for a specific
adventure, are sometimes more clearly emphasized in the
Lancelot and the Perceval than in the Yvain: but the motif is
unmistakable wherever we have to do with courtly literature. The
series of adventures is thus raised to the status of a fated and
graduated test of election; it becomes the basis of a doctrine or
personal perfection through a development dictated by fate. . . .
(136)
Although none of Chretien’s knights ever achieve and maintain
unquestionable “personal perfection,” the appropriateness of this theory
that implies that there can only be one hero per tale is readily apparent.
Gauvain cannot be successful in either Yvain. Lancelot or the
Yvain/Lancelot. because he is not-and cannot be-the “elect” knight. He
187
functions under the “negative sign” and can never be a part of the “motif of
meeting.”
The reverse, of course, is true for Lancelot and Yvain: they are the
“ elect” knights, do not travel under the “negative sign” and are allowed by
the positive nature of their “ chronotopes” to benefit from the “motif of
meeting.” Only those at the top of Auerbach's pyramid of election can
benefit from what Bakhtin called the “motif of meeting,” the positiveiy-
valenced counterpart to the “negative sign”:
. . . in any meeting the temporal marker (“at one and the same
time”) is inseparable from the spatial marker (“in one and the
same place”). In the negative motif (“they did not meet,” “ they
were parted") the chronotopicity is retained but one or another
member of the chronotope bears a negative sign: they did not
meet because they did not arrive at the given place at the same
time, or at the same time they were in different places. (97)
Combining Bakhtin’s “miraculous world in adventure time,” the
“ chronotope,” the “motif of meeting” and the “negative sign” with
Auerbach’s “degrees of election,” provides the reader with a critical
apparatus and a system of description to use in the discussion of Yvain.
Lancelot, the Yvain/Lancelot and other Arthurian romances.
188
l.ii
“Et mes sire Gauvains, chaeles,
le frans, li dolz, ou ert il donques?
A s’aie ne failli onques
dameisele desconseilliee.” (Yvain 3692-95)
(“‘And, indeed, my lord Gauvain, the noble, the fair, where was he
then? He never failed to help a damsel in distress.’” )
Gauvain’s absences, his disappearances, are more significant than his
appearances, both in the individual romances and in the Yvain/Lancelot.
There are three instances when his name and reputation-and that of
Arthur’s court— are invoked in Yvain. During each episode, Gauvain is
missing from this poem, is off searching for Guinevere in Lancelot. His
absences, like Arthur’s mistaken judgments in the prologues to Yvain and
Lancelot, draw Yvain and Lancelot into encounters far from court that are
vital to the san (Lancelot 26) of Chretien’s tales and to the development of
the knight’s identities. The reader should not judge Gauvain— that is, fault
him for participating in the Queen’s rescue-even though it means that he
neglects what one might assume to be his duties elsewhere: the rescue of
Lunete and his brother-in-law, the castellan who is being besieged by
Harpin. Nevertheless, the reader is left to wonder why Gauvain seems
unable to “interweave” his public commitments like Yvain does,
crisscrossing the fabulous terrain, moving from one rescue to another in
time to fulfill his obligations. 15 This is particularly true if the irony of this
189
section’s epigraph and the other instances of praise accorded to Gauvain
are considered. He may have “never failed to help a damsel in distress,”
but his performance in the Yvain/Lancelot gives no clue as to whether this
is still the case. Like Arthur, Gauvain seems to subsist largely on past
events, on the basis of his reputation and not his deeds.
The first time Gauvain’s name is mentioned in this intertextual context-
the first inkling that there might be a text that we can call the
Yvain/Lancelot-is when Yvain returns with his lion to Laudine’s spring
and finds Lunete imprisoned in a riverside chapel. 16 Lunete informs Yvain
of her plight: since Yvain missed his appointment to return within a year,
Laudine’s seneschal, ‘“an unfaithful, deadly traitor,”’ (“‘uns fel, uns traitres
mortax’”) (Yvain 3662), publicly accused Lunete of betraying her lady in
favor of Yvain. Lunete now needs a champion to defend her against him
and two other of Laudine’s knights, men Lunete referred to earlier as not
worth “‘one chambermaid,” ’ (“‘une chanberiere’”) (Yvain 1632). Only two
knights can help her: Gauvain because of his pledge of love and servise
and Yvain because he owes her his life-and because it is his fault that
she is in this situation:
“ Je le vos dirai sanz mantir:
li uns est mes sire Gauvains
et li autres mes sire Yvains
por cui demain serai a tort
livree a martire de mort.” (Yvain 3618-22)
190
(‘“I will tell you truthfully: one is my lord Gauvain and the other is
my lord Yvain, whose fault it is that tomorrow I will be handed
over for execution. ” ’)
The reader here reasonably expects Gauvain to ride to Lunete’s rescue
because of his vow to her made during the “private meeting of the sun and
the moon,” the “ prive consoil entre la lune et le soloil” (Yvain 2399-2400):
“Ma dameisele, je vos doing
et a mestier et sanz besoing
un tel chevalier con je sui;
ne me changez ja por artrui,
se amander ne vos cuidiez;
vostres sui et vos resoiez
d’ore en avant ma dameisele.” (Yvain 2435-41)
(“‘My fair one, I place myself willingly in your service, a knight
such as I am. Do not exchange me for another, unless you
believe that you can do better. I am yours and you will be, from
this moment forward, my fair maid.”’)
This is not to be, however, since Lunete tells Yvain that she has been to
many courts but to no avail, including Arthur’s, where she found no
assistance:
“Puis ai este an maintes corz:
a la cort le roi Artus fui
n’i trovai consoil en nelui
ne n’i trovai qui me deist
de vos chose qui me seist,
car il n’en savoient noveles.” (Yvain 3686-91)17
(“‘I have been to many courts: I was at Arthur’s court where I
found no one who could advise me nor anyone who could tell me
any news of your whereabouts, because they had no news. ’”)
191
This surprises Yvain no less than the reader, and he wonders why his
friend Gauvain did not offer to defend her, Gauvain who has never failed to
help a damsel in her moment of distress:
“Et mes sire Gauvains, chaeles,
le frans, li dolz, ou ert il donques?
A s’aTe ne failli onques
dameisele desconseilliee.” (Yvain 3692-95)
(‘“And, indeed, my lord Gauvain, the noble, the fair, where was he
then? He never failed to help a damsel in distress.”’)
Again the irony is clear, since the retrospective reader knows that the only
woman Gauvain helps in this tale is the fille du seigneur de Noire Esoine,
the one whom everyone-Gauvain included--knows to be in the wrong.
Arthur says as much, towards the end in his one moment of decisive
leadership: . . ne dirai mie toz voz buens, / que vostre torz est bien
seuz’” (Yvain 6402-03), (“\ . . what I shall say will not be pleasant to you,
because your guilt is well known.’”)
Lunete then recounts for Yvain the basic plot of Lancelot, managing to
get in a tellingly pejorative comment on Arthur at the same time:
“ Cil me feist joiant et liee, quant apres li Ten envoia;
e je a cort trove I’eusse; et Kex, ce cuit, la convoia
ja requerre ne li seusse jusqu’au chevalier qui I’en
riens nule qui me fust vehee; mainne;
mes la rei'ne en a menee s’an est or entrezan grant
uns chevaliers, ce me dit an, painne
dons li rois fist que fors del mes sire Gauvains qui la
san, quiert.
192
Ja mes nul jor a sejor n’iert
jusque tant qu’il I’avra trovee.”
(Yvain 3696-3709)
(“‘[Gauvain] would have made me happy and joyful, had I found
him at court. Never would I have been refused anything that I
would have asked of him. But the queen has been carried off by
a knight, I was told. The king was surely mad when he sent her
off with him. And Kay, I believe, escorted her to meet the knight
who led her off. And now my lord Gauvain, who seeks her,
suffers great difficulty. Never will he rest a single day until he has
found her.”’)
The captive Lunete feels, as does the reader and all at court, that Arthur
has acted foolishly by entrusting Guinevere’s safety to Kay. Laudine’s
dameisele paints a rather positive picture of the tenacious Gauvain,
though, implicitly honoring his efforts to save the queen in Lancelot.
although the reader knows that he will not be the one to rescue her from
Gorre.
Aside from Lunete’s editorializing, the most significant aspect of the
scene is Yvain’s substitution for Gauvain. He tells Lunete that as long as
he is alive she shall not be executed: ‘“Ja Deu ne place / que I’en por moi
nul mal vos face; / ja, que je puise, n’i morroiz’” (Yvain 3715-17)! This bit
of role-filling links the two narratives and draws the reader into a
comparison between the success of the two knights’ quests. Yvain,
naturally, saves Lunete from her would-be-executionersJ8 Gauvain, on
the other hand, ends up being unceremoniously pulled from the river. His
193
rescuers have a difficult time, as he comes into and then goes out of their
sight because he is bobbing up and down, “une ore essort et autre afonde,
or le voient et or le perdent” (Lancelot 5110-11). Although Gauvain has
suffered much, enduring many perils and challenges, “avoit sofferz
travauz, / et mainz peris et mainz asauz / avoit trespassez et vaincuz”
(Lancelot 5119-21), the scene is quite comic, since he is pulled from the
river like an rusty, armored apple from a bobbing barrel. There are many
things that a second or third degree elect knight can do, but only the
elected one can cross the Pont de I’Espee. rescue Guinevere or— in
another context-look upon the grail. Gauvain can do none of these
things, but it is certainly not for lack of trying. Although he is made of
sterner stuff than most, he is not driven by the right stuff-fated always to be
second best but better than all the rest.
The second time the two tales are conjoined by the absent Gauvain is
when Yvain arrives at the castle of Gauvain’s brother-in-law, which is
being besieged by Harpin de la Montaingne:
“Sire, fet il, de vostre enui Nus horn n’est de si grant vertu
molt iriez et molt dolanz sui, qu’a sa cort ne poist trover
mes d’une chose me mervoii tex qui voldroient esprover
se vos n’en aves quis consoil lor vertu ancontre la soe.”
a la cort le boen roi Artu. (Yvain 3897-3905)
(“‘Lord,’ he said, ‘I am most angry and unhappy at your difficulties,
but it amazes me that you have not sought help at the court of the
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good King Arthur. No man is of such great ability that he could
not find at Arthur’s court such as would prove his mettle against
him.’”)
Again, Yvain-counting upon the reputation of the court-asks if Arthur has
been consulted, using the same description of the King, “‘le boen roi Artu,” 1
as in the prologue: “Artus, li boens rois. . .” (Yvain 1). And again he gets a
negative response; for, as in the scene with Lunete, Yvain’s “ostes” (3894)
has sought help from Gauvain--to no avail:
Et lors li descuevre et desnoe
li riches horn, que il eust
boene aie, se il seust
ou trouver mon seignor
Gauvain.
“Cil ne I’anprei'st pas en vain
que ma fame est sa suer
germainne;
mes la fame le roi en mainne
uns chevaliers d’estrange terre
qui a la cort I’ala requerre.
Ne por quant ja ne Ten eust
menee, por rien qu’il peust,
ne fust Kex que anbricona
le roi, tant que il li bailla
le rei'ne, et mist en sa garde.
Cil fu fos et cele musarde
qui an son conduit se fi'a,
et je resui cil qui i a
trop grant domage et trop grant
perte,
que ce est chose tote certe
que mes sire Gauvains li preuz
por sa niece et por ses
neveuz,
fust ga venuz grant aleure
se il seust cest aventure;
mes il nel set, don tant me
grieve
que par po li cuers ne me
crieve;
einz est alez apres ceiui,
cui Damedex doint grant enui,
quant menee en a la rei'ne.”
(Yvain 3912-33)
(“And then the wealthy man explained and revealed to Yvain that
he would have had good help if he had known where to find my
lord Gauvain. ‘He would not have taken it idly, because my wife
is his sister, but the wife of the king has been taken by a knight
from a foreign land who came to [Arthur’s] court to seek her.
However, he never would have been able, by virtue of his own
abilities, to carry her off the queen, had Kay not tricked the king
195
into placing her under his protection. He [Arthur] was a fool and
she an imbecile to place her trust in his escort. And I am one who
has much to suffer and much to lose, for it is quite certain that my
brave lord Gauvain, had he known of the danger to his niece and
nephews, would have come quickly. But he has no knowledge of
it, which so grieves me that my heart nearly bursts. Rather, he
has gone after him, to whom may God give great grief, for
carrying off the queen.” ')
Like Lunete, Yvain’s “ostes” impugns Arthur’s court for not providing him
with the assistance he feels he deserves. Also present is the irony
regarding Gauvain’s pledge of servise. The man calls Arthur a ‘“fos”’ and
Guinevere a “‘musarde’” for trusting Kay as her escort, and says that he
knows Gauvain would have helped if he would have been apprised of the
situation. The reader, however, is not so sure. Once again, Yvain agrees
to substitute for Gauvain, ‘“Biax dolz sire chiers, / je m’an metroie
volentiers / en I’aventure et el peril. . .’’’ (Yvain 3937-39), and another
dimension is added to the picture of the absent knight’s responsibilities.
Gauvain promised Lunete servise in his pledge of love and protection.
Here his duty is familial: the host's wife is Gauvain’s sister, making the
family’s three sons and daughter his nephews and niece. After defeating
Harpin, Yvain will have substituted in two vital capacities for Gauvain, the
private and the familial, adding two more elements to his knightly persona.
A third judicial component will be added after the two battle incognito over
the inheritance contested by the two daughters of the sire de la Noire
Esoine.
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Upon the arrival of the younger sister at court, the narrator recounts for
the third and last time the plot of Lancelot, its hero’s deeds and present
imprisonment:
(“ Thereupon the other sister came to court, dressed in a short,
costly woolen mantle lined with ermine. It had been three days
since the queen had been returned from the prison where
Meleagant had held her and all of the other prisoners. And
Lancelot, betrayed, was still walled in the tower.”)
This time Gauvain is present to hear this news of Yvain’s triumphs over
Harpin de la Montaingne and Lunete’s enemies. In a nice touch, Chretien
has the news of Harpin’s defeat delivered by Gauvain’s nephews and
niece, whom Yvain has sent to court for that very purpose:
Et an celui mei'smes jor
que a la cort vint la pucele
i fu venue la novele
de jaiant cruel et felon
que li chevaliers au lyon
avoit an bataille tue. (Yvain 4740-45)
(“And on that very same day that the maiden came there to court,
the news came that the knight of the lion had killed the cruel and
treacherous giant in battle.”)
In this section both romances truly merge, with the linking character,
A tant vint I’autre suer a cort,
afublee d'un mantel cort
d’escarlate forre d’ermine:
s’avoit tierz jor que la rei'ne
ert de la prison revenue
ou Meleaganz I’a tenue
et trestuit li autre prison,
et Lanceloz par traTson
estoit remes dedanz la tor.
(Yvain 4731-39)
Gauvain, present to hear summations of the two elect knights against
197
whom he Is referenced by the reader. At this point the reader realizes just
how unsuccessful Gauvain has been-at least he has accomplished
nothing worth reporting to the court. His adventures while in search of
Guinevere have precluded him from fulfilling his pledge to Lunete and
from protecting his family members from Harpin the giant--and he has
championed the sister who is in the wrong. Nevertheless, Gauvain is not
to be completely faulted; after all, he was off trying to rescue Guinevere,
his queen. He was not on some comparatively empty journey of knight
errantry like Calogrenant, who wanted to find “‘adventure in order to prove
my valor and boldness,” ’ as he tells the vilain. (“‘avanture, por esprover /
ma proesce et mon hardemant’”) (Yvain 362-63).
What, then, does this signify? What is the reader to make of the
chivalric paradigm’s seeming ineffectiveness? Of his (dis)appearances as
protagonist in his own “mini-romance” within the larger narrative of Yvain.
as the anti-hero of his own empty tale? A look at the comparative
Yvain/Lancelot through the character of Gauvain reveals, first, that his
character’s most obvious function is that of chivalric and courtly foil to the
romances’ heroes, Yvain and Lancelot. In this sense his actions work
structurally, narratologically, to bind the two separate tales into one meta
romance, the Yvain/Lancelot. Second, and more importantly, the reader
recognizes that a reputation for “proesce” and “hardemant” are not
enough. Although Gauvain and Arthur are highly regarded, there largely
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ineffective in both Yvain and Lancelot. The repeated references through
Gauvain to the court and to his expected behavior only reinforce this
suppostion.
Cele respont: “Bien le savroiz li rois Bademaguz a non.”
mes, ce sachiez, molt i avroiz (Lancelot 646-52)
(“‘Miss, where is this land? / Where can we find the way there?’ /
She answered: ‘You shall know / but, know this, you will /
encounter difficulties and treacherous passes, / because it is no
simple matter to enter / the kingdom of the king called
Bademagus. ’”)
In Lancelot a good deal is made of the borders between Logres,
Arthur’s kingdom, and Gorre, Bademagus’ kingdom, and particularly of
events that occur on their peripheries. These marginal events are central
to Chretien’s san (Lancelot 26), to the wisdom of his tale. As we saw in
Yvain and as is the case in countless other Arthurian romances, these
liminal events are the most significant for the hero, more so than the
incidents which happen at Arthur’s court; although, it is there that the plot
is set in motion. For instance, in Lancelot the potentially realm-threatening
adultery of Lancelot and Guinevere does not--and cannot-continue at the
tale’s conventional center, at Arthur’s court; it can only go on in Gorre--on
II
“Dameisele, ou est cele terre?
Ou porrons nos la voie
querre?”
anconbriers et felons trespas,
que de legier n’i antre an pas,
se par le congie le roi non:
199
the periphery of Arthur’s kingdom. 19 It is there on the edge that Chretien
placed Gorre, one of the romance’s many “centers of attention,” one of its
“compositional high spots” (Arnheim Center 211). The Arthurian center is
displaced, as it were, in favor of other centers of attention, although
Lancelot and Gauvain return-as always-to Arthur’s court at the romance’s
close. As with the Yvain/Lancelot. the centers of attention are the centers
of Truth, the areas of most potency, and Arthur's court is essentially empty
of everything but dubious conventional reference. As in so many other
romances, Arnheim’s “momentary onesidedness” (Center 37)--this event-
driven narrative imbalance--is never “overcome.” Indeed, the longer the
romance, the more imbalanced. The Continuations of Chretien’s
Perceval, for instance, go on for some 58,000 lines-63,000 if Chretien’s
original are included-with interpolations inserted and interlaced within
interpolations, all the time pushing Arthur’s court farther and farther off
center.
Lancelot and Gauvain both set out from Arthur’s court on parallel
quests, hoping to find ways to cross from Logres to Gorre in their attempts
to rescue Guinevere from Meleagant, Bademagus’ son. They come upon
a total of five passages: two potential river crossings, one a ford and the
other via boat; two bridges, the Sword Bridge and the Underwater Bridge,
and a Stone Passage-most of which are problematical in terms of travel
into or out of either kingdom. Unlike the Commedia. in which Dante’s
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spatio-temporal metaphysic begs for~and lends itself to-illustration,
Chretien’s secular romance universe defies mapping. His tales of knight-
errantry generate countless questions regarding their topography and few
answers: what is the relationship between Lancelot’s topographical and
psychological liminal events? Why is so much attention given to the
inexplicable? Why does the dameisele. in this section’s epigram, tell
Gauvain and Lancelot that the way into Bademagus’ kingdom is so difficult
when it turns out to be quite simple? (The journey there is difficult, but
getting in is no problem; indeed, it is not possible to say precisely when
and where Lancelot crosses over from Logres because it happens so
easily.) Does the same dameisele tell the two knights that there are four
ways to enter Gorre? Or is she just describing the Stone and Underwater
Bridges twice? Why does Lancelot, who claims to seek the quickest way
|
into Gorre, not take advantage of two early opportunities to cross what
seems to be the border? Why does the vavasour with whom Lancelot
dines after entering Gorre give him information which contradicts the
dameisele’s. that it is quite easy to get in but impossible to leave? In short,
why did Chretien imbue his fiction so heavily with geographical
ambiguity? What do spatial concerns have to do with the interwoven
themes of love, chivalry and personal definition?
The poem itself answers some of these questions through the actions of
the dameisele du aue and Meleagant’s sister. It is no accident that these
201
women are present at the first two crucial border areas just as Lancelot
approaches them-no more than it is accidental that Meleagant’s sister is
the one who releases Lancelot from captivity or that Gauvain is absent at
moments vital to Yvain’s development in the Yvain/Lancelot. The
meetings Lancelot has with the various dameiseles. puceles. vilains.
moinnes or hermites away from Arthur’s court all contribute in some way to
his self-definition, both as knight and fin amant. Some of these meetings
are of greater importance than others; and, therefore, in this last section I
focus on three of the most topo-thematically significant: Lancelot’s
encounter at Logres’ border ford with the woman who figures Meleagant’s
sister and the two crucial meetings that he has in Gorre with the dameisele
who is certainly the sister of Meleagant, Guinevere’s captor.
These two women act in ways that are similar to, while at the same time
quite different from, Gauvain’s role as intertextual link between Yvain and
Lancelot. Their three enabling appearances are as significant for Lancelot
as Gauvain’s absences are for Yvain. Much like Gauvain’s moments of
absent presence tied together the Yvain/Lancelot. the dameisele’s
requests, demands and pledges tie together Lancelot’s main themes: the
hero’s expiation of his courtly sin of hesitation-Lancelot’s “deus pas”
(Kibler, Lancelot 360b1-and service to w o m e n .2 0 For example, the first
two liminal encounters set up one of the text’s many dialectical moments
and ready Lancelot to prove unstintingly his love for Guinevere at Noauz.
202
There the queen orders him twice to do his worst, “£ au noauz’” (Lancelot
5645) and then to do his best, ‘“au mialz’” (Lancelot 5879). These
meetings with the dameisele du que and Meleagant’s sister put Lancelot
in ethical quandries in which he has to decide between two possibilities,
situations in which a mental debate occurs much like the initial one
between Reisons and Amors (Lancelot 360-94) that causes him to hesitate
before mounting the charrete. By the time he reaches the tournament at
Noauz, he is secure enough in his chivalric identity to publicly humiliate
himself for Guinevere, to forego Reisons instinctively-which would argue
for martial triumph--in favor of Amors.
In Lancelot’s first encounter with the knight at the ford, he bests the
guardian because the knight has the temerity to interrupt Lancelot’s
reverie over Guinevere, a shameful deed in the lover’s eyes: “a grant
honte feite” (Lancelot 895). The dameiesele-a figure for Meleagant’s
sister, if not his sister--asks Lancelot to spare the man, to do his worst, in a
sense, by not avenging this shameful act, and Lancelot acquiesces. When
they meet again, after the belligerent chevalier oraueilleux has recalled
publicly the shame of Lancelot’s cart ride, the maiden asks for the knight’s
head-for Lancelot to do his best and avenge his slandered name, which
he does. In these two episodes, the dameisele du gue and Meleagant’s
sister act both as foils for Guinevere and as characters who enable
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Lancelot’s development as the archetypal courtly lover, much like Gauvain
does for the two heroes in the Yvain/Lancelot.
Paradoxically, these roles which drive the plot on, enabling the
inevitable tryst between Lancelot and Guinvere in Gorre, greatly
problematize the very relationship they help Lancelot to establish. The
pledges that Lancelot makes to Meleagant’s sister are far stronger than
anything that he makes to Guinevere. He promises her his heart, his body
and all that he possesses, pledges that he never makes explicitly to the
queen. I do not mean to say that Lancelot does not love Guinevere--he
does--or that he is not the premier fin am ant-he is; nonetheless, his
pledges are problematic enough to raise a number of troubling questions:
why does Lancelot pledge himself wholly and exclusively to this pucele
after Guinevere has left Gorre? Aside from Arthur’s absence, is there a
difference between Logres and Gorre? What effect do Lancelot’s two
pledges to Meleagant’s sister have upon his relationship with the queen?
And, most importantly, what do Lancelot’s oaths do to readings which posit
Lancelot as the archetypal tale of amour courtois?2i
II.i
“[CJIainme moi quite sa prison
par covant que quant ieus sera
tel guerredon con toi pleira
204
t’an randrai selonc ma puissance.”
(Lancelot 918-21)
('"Release him from captivity to me, and when the time arrives I
promise to repay you with such reward you request, according to
my power to grant it. ’” )
It is difficult-perhaps impossible-to prove that the woman whom
Lancelot encounters at the ford, the dameisele du que. is Meleagant’s
sister. The textual evidence for this equation is circumstantial; however,
her pledge of service, its thematic connection with Meleagant’s sister’s on
the heath, and her wish not to be recognized all suggest that these are
one and the same woman. Even if it is not her, this “dameisele . . . sor un
palefroi” (Lancelot 734) certainly adumbrates and figures Meleagant’s
sister, with their pledges and requests working to set up Noauz’s “‘au
noauz’” (Lancelot 5645)/ ‘“au mialz’” (Lancelot 5879) dialectic. Her
appearance, therefore, rewards scrutiny.22
Having left Gauvain, who is off searching for the “Li Ponz Evages”
(Lancelot 656), the Underwater Bridge, Lancelot rides on alone toward “Le
Pont de I'Espee” (Lancelot 673), the Sword Bridge. Deaf to the world, he
falls into a lover’s swoon, completely unaware of his surroundings, and his
thirsty horse takes him into a guarded ford. There the custodian knight-
who is accompanied by the dameisele du a u e -calls out three times,
warning Lancelot not to cross. These warnings, and the fact that Lancelot
ignores them, are not unexpected. However, the knight’s second warning
205
is odd, because he tells Lancelot that this is not the place for him to cross,
that he would be wise not to take the ford: “‘Lai le gue, si feras que sages, /
que la n’est mie li passages'” (Lancelot 749-50). Why? According to the
knight, this is not “li passage,” the passage (singular), not the passage to
where? It seems that, like the dameisele amoureuse. who earlier in the
tale was waiting specifically for Lancelot, this knight has intelligence of his
mission, of his attempt to rescue the queen from Gorre. He seems to know
i
! that Lancelot must cross this river elsewhere, that he is meant to cross to
J Bademagus’ castle at the Sword Bridge and that it is the only “passages”
| which can function as part of Lancelot’s expiation. This river could be a
I
j point of departure from Gorre, hence the guard, since custom states that
j no one may leave once they have entered the Bademagus’ kingdom.
Perhaps it is one of the dangerous passages that are destroyed, (“li mal
j pas sont depecie”) (Lancelot 4116). after Meleagant agrees to release
j Guinevere when Lancelot agrees to meet him a year hence. Whatever its
| nature, regardless of where it leads, the ford is a border crossing of some
i
! sort-a center of attention--and a fit place for Lancelot to encounter the
pucele who prefigures Meleagant’s sister.
Along with foregrounding the peripheral locus as one of importance,
i
i
I this encounter highlights Lancelot’s hesitation for “deus pas” (Kibler,
■ Lancelot 360b) before mounting the shameful cart. Throughout the tale
Lancelot chastises himself and is chastised by others for this courlty sin as
206
he works to atone for it. After the guardian’s multiple warnings, a fight
ensues, and Lancelot berates himself for taking so long to defeat this man:
. . . li chevaliers de la charrete,
. . . dit que mal randra la dete
de la voie qu’il a enprise,
quant il si longue piece a mise
a conquerre un seul chevalier. (Lancelot 867-71)
(“. . . the knight of the cart said that poorly would he repay the debt
of the way he had taken, when it had taken him so long to defeat
a single knight.”)
This crucial theme is then linked with that of courtly obeisance, of
servise to women. As Lancelot prepares to kill the ford’s custodian for
disturbing his lover’s reverie, first the woman and then the knight beg for
mercy, for the guardian’s life to be spared. They make this request as a
favor and in the name of God. The knight pleads for his life: ‘“Por Deu et
por moi I’en aiez / la merci que je vos demant”’ (Lancelot 898-99). These
elements of their joint request are noteworthy, for they reappear in the
encounter with Meleagant’s sister and tie the two episodes together.
There Lancelot refuses to grant a vanquished knight his head, even
though the man makes a similar plea. Instead, Lancelot beheads the man
and awards the grisly trophy to Meleagant’s sister. Here, however,
Lancelot agrees to spare the man, but only because he asks in the name
of God:
Et cil [Lancelot] respont: “Se Dex m’amant
onques nus tant ne me mesfist
207
se por Deu merci me requist,
que por Deu, si com il est droiz,
merci n’an eusse une foiz.” (Lancelot 900-04)
(“ And he [Lancelot] answered: ‘So God help me, never has a man
mistreated me so that if he asked for mercy in God’s name, I did
not grant it one time, as is right.’”)
The pucele thanks him, promising that when--not “if,” but “when” --the time
comes, she swears to repay him whatever he demands, so long as it is
within her power to do so: . . par covant que quant leus sera / tel
guerredon con toi pleira / t’an randrai selonc ma puissance” ’ (Lancelot
918-20). The distinction between the conjunction “if” and the adverb
“ when” -along with the third person singular, future of estre. “sera,”-
signals the reader that this dameisele. even if she is not Meleagant’s
sister, expects to meet Lancelot in the future.23 This expectation is
therefore set up in Lancelot as well as in the reader, who awaits either her
appearance or that of a similar character.
II.ii
“Uns guerredons de moi t’atant
qui molt te vanra an boen leu.
An cest servise avras grant preu,
que tu m’as fet, ce t’acreant.” (Lancelot 2934-371
(‘“I will have a reward for you, which will come in a good place.
For this service you have done me you will be handsomely
rewarded, of this you may assured.’”)
208
Chretien disappoints neither the reader nor Lancelot, as later in the
romance he and we meet Meleagant’s sister. Here in Gorre, at another
center of interest, this time on a heath near a river (the same one with the
ford?) the romance’s major themes converge again. This scene is
structured round the shameful cart ride, which this time Lancelot uses to
overcome his hesitation, and all is tied to courtly obeisance and the
dameisele’s pledge of future service for present services rendered.
Having mysteriously crossed the border into Gorre, Lancelot has
assisted in winning the battle between the imprisoned Logrians and their
Gorrian captors and finds himself lodged with an anonymous “sires de la
meison” (Lancelot 2603). Into this Logrian family’s dining hall rides a
boastful knight who offers to provide Lancelot with a boat ride across the
river-we assume to Bademagus’ castle in lieu of his crossing the Sword
Bridge. The chevalier oraeuilleux says that, once on the other side,
Lancelot will be at his mercy, either to fight or not, as the knight pleases.
Lancelot refuses to ride again in such a vehicle, and the knight then
viciously chastises him for his first ride. This time, instead of being
humiliated by the image of the cart, Lancelot turns it to his advantage and
finds himself spurred on to victory by his opponent’s taunts de la
charrete:24
Et lors li chevaliers s’apanse
que il li avoit molt vilmant
209
la charrete mise devant.
Si li passe et tel le conroie
qu’il n’i remaint laz ne corroie
qu’il ne ronpe antor le coler. . . . (Lancelot 2734-39)
(“And then the knight [Lancelot] recalled when he had most vilely
brought the [image of the] cart before him. He thus struck and
treated him such that nothing was left unbroken of either his
lacing or strap around his neck. . . .” )
Much like the guardian of the ford, the defeated knight begs for mercy in
the name of God, “‘por Deu’” (Lancelot 2769L Lancelot tells the man that
the only way he will spare him is if he agrees to ride in one of the shameful
carts; nothing else is acceptable recompense:
Et cil dit: “II te covandroit
sor une charraete monter;
a neant porroies conter
quan que tu dire me savroies,
s’an la charrete ne montoies
pour ce que tant foie boche as
que vilmant la me reprochas.” (Lancelot 2760-64)
(“And he said: ‘You shall have to climb onto a cart. Say what you
will. Nothing that you say will have an effect on me, unless you
do mount the cart for reproaching me so vilely with your foolish
mouth.”’)
The man refuses this ignominious offer, and Lancelot is about to behead
him when Meleagant’s sister rides onto the scene-this time begging for
the head of the defeated knight:
“Chevaliers,” fet ele, “de loing
sui ga venue a grant besoing
a toi. por demander un don
210
en merite et an guerredon
si grant con ge te porrai feire;
et tu avras encor a feire
de m’ai'de. si con je croi.”
(Lancelot 2796-2802, my emphases)
(“‘Knight,’ said she, ‘I have come to you from afar in great need, to
ask a favor, for which you will merit a reward as great as I can
offer. At another time you will have need of my assistance, as I
believe.’”)
This effects a reversal of the earlier meeting with the woman whom I
suggested figured Meleagant’s sister: the dameisele at the river crossing
and the knight asked that his life be spared-both invoking God’s name.
There Lancelot agreed, largely because of this divine invocation. Here the
man’s pleas are countered by the woman’s alternating calls for his head.
Their oppositional dialogue with Lancelot continues, as the chevalier
oraueilleux’s pleas and invocation fall upon deaf ears. Lancelot tells him
that he must die for refusing public humiliation: “‘Non?’ fet cil, ‘et vos i
morroiz’” (Lancelot 2767). This woman’s appearance is no accident: she
has ridden hard and come specifically to see Lancelot, “‘a toi. ’” She
seems confident that Lancelot will grant her request and and she knows
that he will have need of her help in the future, ‘“avras encor a feire.’”
The knight’s pleas for clemency and invocation of Christ, “‘who is both
son and father,’” . . je vos pri / que vos aiez de moi merci / por ce Deu
qui est filz et pere . . .’” (Lancelot 2819-21), coupled with the dameiseie’s
pleas for the head of the defeated knight, “‘Ce est li chies / de cest
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chevalier que tu as / conquis. . send Lancelot into an extended--if
predictable-bout of indecision. Recalling his inner dialectic between
Reisons and Amors and prefiguring the larger dialectic of the tournament
at Noauz (“au noauz” vs. “au mialz” ), Lancelot argues within himself,
alternately taking the sides of generosity and compassion, “largece et
pitiez” (Lancelot 2838). These anthropomorphozed abstractions “demand
that he satisfy them both, since he is generous and compassionate,”
(“ comandent / que lor boen face a enbedeus / qu’il estoit larges et piteus”)
(Lancelot 2838-40). Generosity vanquishes Compassion, and Lancelot
decides to grant her the chevalier’s head if he can, (“. . . s’il puet”)
(Lancelot 2865)25
Lancelot proposes a rematch, and there is no doubt in either his or the
reader’s mind that he will be able to provide the dameisele with her
ghastly trophy. True to expectations, the boastful knight is defeated,
clearing the way for Meleagant's sister to ask a second time for his head
and to assure Lancelot of her future assistance:
“Tranche au plus desleal le chief
de (’empire et de la corone,
frans chevaliers, si le me done.
Por ce le me doiz bien doner
que iel te cuit auerredonner.
molt bien ancor tex iorz sera. . . .”
(Lancelot 2894-99, my emphasis)
212
(“‘Cut off the head of the most disloyal and man in the empire and
kingdom, dear knight, and give it to me. You should give it to me,
since another good day will come when I expect to reward you.’”)
Her cognizance of their future meeting is reinforced a bit later, when she
pledges her servise. after being presented with the head of the chevalier
oraueilleux:
“Uns guerredons de moi t’atant
qui molt te vanra an boen leu.
An cest servise avras grant preu.
que tu m’as fet, ce t’acreant.”
(Lancelot 2934-37, my emphases)
(“‘A reward from me is waiting which will come to you when you
need it most. Rest assured that for the service that you have done
for me you will be well recompensed.’”)
Like the dameisele du que. Meleagant’s sister can somehow promise to
be there at the right place and the right time, “‘an boen leu,” ’ where
Lancelot will most need her assistance. The figural dameisele du que
prepares the reader for this meeting between Lancelot and Meleagant’s
sister, and both encounters set up the last~and most problematical--
meeting.
li.iii
“Lancelot! Amis, vos que estes lessus
parlez a une vostre amie” (Lancelot 6537-38)
213
(‘“Lancelot! Dear friend, you who are there, speak to one
who loves you”’)
Their final convergence takes place on the coast of Gorre, far from
Arthur’s court. Meleagant has walled Lancelot up in a tower built on an
inlet island so that the hero will be unable to keep their appointment to do
battle at Arthur’s court. The scene then shifts to Bademagus’ birthday
party at Bath, the capital of Gorre. Godefroi, the romance’s continuator,
teases the reader by promising an appearance of the woman who is finally
identified as Meleagant’s sister:
. . . mes une en i ot avoec eles que ci androit an doie dire,
don bien vos dirai ga avant ne je ne la vuel boceier
(cele estoit suer Meleagant) ne corronpre ne forceier,
mon pansser et m’antenc'i'on; mes mener boen chemin et
mes n’an vuel feire mancion, droit,
car n’afiert pas a ma matire (Lancelot 6242-51)
(“. . . but there was one there among the others. Of her I shall
happily tell you my plan and my intention later (she was
Meleagant’s sister). But I do not want to say anything here,
because it does not befit my tale to tell of her coming at this time.
I do not want to distort, corrupt or falsify the story, but rather to
hold to the good straight path.”)
Godefroi tells us that he intends to move the narrative along here and not
spend time on a digression, which, of course, is precisely what he does.
This ironic retardation of the narrative teases the reader by shifting the
focus and foregrounding Meleagant’s sister. This device works essentially
214
like the many events engaged in by Lancelot or any other romance hero:
they become momentary centers of attention, causing the reader to pause
and pay close attention to the matter at hand.
This dameisele hears their father unwittingly-and, for the reader,
ironically-suggest that perhaps Lancelot is missing because someone
has imprisoned him or walled him up somewhere, in a place from which
he cannot escape: . . an tel prison anserrez, / don li huis est si fort serrez
/ qu’il n’an puet issir sanz congie” (Lancelot 6363-651. Hearing this, she is
inspired to set off in search of the knight to whom she has pledged servise.
Like Yvain early on in his tale, Meleagant’s sister steals away from court
and rides “par avanture” (Lancelot 6398) in search of L a n c e lo t.26 When
she finds the tower she hears the knight bemoaning his fate, much like
Yvain does when when he finds Lunete imprisoned in Laudine’s chapel.
She assumes that Lancelot is the one in the tower, hears him moaning his
name and knows that she has hit her mark: “qu’ele est bien assenee”
(Lancelot 6535V She calls out to him, “’Lancelot! Amis, vos que estes
lessus, / parlez a une vostre amie’” (Lancelot 6537-38, my emphases)
(“‘Lancelot! dear friend, you who are there, speak to one who loves you’”).
She is the only woman in the entire romance, aside from Guinevere’s
oucele molt saae at Noauz, to use the knight’s given name. This, along
with her reference to him as ‘“Amis’” and to herself as “‘vostre amie,” ’
implies that she regards herself as more than a casual friend. I propose
215
that she is in love with Lancelot and that she has never been far away
during his quest, appearing at least twice--in just the right places and at
just the right times--to provide him with appropriate trials and, ultimately,
rescue. I also suggest that his feelings for her at this point are something
more than gratitude. This is not to say that Lancelot does not still love
Guinevere, as A.H. Diverres has wondered: “His attitude towards
Meleagant’s sister is also puzzling. . . . Is she his ‘dompna’ now? Does he
grow tired of Guienevere’s dominance; has his patience run out. . .?” (35)
It is to say, however, that Lancelot’s pledges to this dameisele are
potentially problematical.
Curiously enough, Lancelot sees her, but he does not recognize her:
“. . . ne la conut, / mes il la voit” (Lancelot 6566V We know that he has
seen and recognized at least her speech before: “Et tors i ot cil
conuissance / par la parole qu’ele ot dit. . (Lancelot 923). She knows
him on sight, though: “. . . mes cele tantost conut lui. . .” (Lancelot 6567).
and intends to repay him, just as she promised to do when he granted her
the head of the chevalier oraueilleux. She identifies herself as that one
whom he met near the Sword Bridge:
“ Je sui cele qui vos rove ce fu del chevalier conquisle
quant au Font de I’Espee chief, que je vos fis tranchier,
alastes que je nes point n’avoie chier.
un don, et vos le me donastes Por ce don, et por ce servise
molt volantiers quant jel vos me sui an ceste poinne mise:
quis:
216
por ce vos metrai fors de ci.”
(Lancelot 6572-81)
(‘“I am she who implored a favor of you when you were nearing
the Sword Bridge. You willingly granted it to me when I asked it
of you: it was the head of the defeated knight that I had you cut off,
because I did not hold him dear. Because of this gift, and
because of the service, I have put myself in peril: because of this I
shall set you free from here.’”)
Turning finally to Lancelot’s pledges to this helpful pucele. we see that
they are enough to give the reader pause. The items that he promises her
and the intensity of his vows are most significant. In the first oath he
thanks her profusely for helping him escape and promises her almost
everything. In the second he promises her the rest. He first vows:
“ Se fors de ci me poez metre, ja mes n’iert jorz que je ne
por voir vos puis dire et face
prometre quan que vos pleira
que je toz jorz mes serai comander.
vostres, Ne me savroiz ja demander
si m’ai'st sainz Pos li apostres; chose nule, por que je I’aie,
et se je Deu voie an la face, que vos ne I’aiez sanz delaie.”
(Lancelot 6587-96)
(“‘If you can set me free from here, I can truly say and promise that
I will be yours for all my days, with the help of St. Paul the
Apostle. And as I may see God face to face, never will there
come a day when I will not do what it pleases you to command.
Never will you be able to ask for anything which, provided I have
it, you will not have without delay. ’” )
Lancelot promises to be hers for the rest of his days, and calls upon Paul-
the archetype of profound spiritual conversion-for help and God as
217
witness. This pledge, along with the temporal reinforcement provided by
the negatives and the later scene where they “graciously commend one
another to the ever-truthful God,” (“Lors a Deu qui onques ne mant /
s’antrecomdent boenemant”) (Lancelot 6705-06). secure his commitment
here in Gorre to Meleagant’s sister. There is nothing, (“'chose nule’”) that
he will not do for her without delay, (“‘sanz delaie’” ).
In light of all this, Lancelot’s second oath is even more striking in its
expansiveness. We are not told precisely what the dameisele has done
for the ailing Lancelot, although it has obviously been miraculous:
. . . si estoit planter's de tot
li leus, et sains et molt privez
La est Lanceloz arivez:
et si tost com il fu venuz,
quant il fu de sa robe nuz,
en une haute et bele couche
(“. . . the place was completely planted, very private and safe.
There Lancelot arrived: and as soon as he had come, when he
was disrobed, the pucele lays him gently on a beautiful high bed.
Then she bathes him, and cares for him so well that I cannot tell
the half of it.”)
Here again, Godefroi feigns ignorance, but the sexualization of the scene
is obvious and recalls the excessive anointing of Yvain after his fit of
madness as well as foreshadowing Lancelot’s rehabilitation at the hands
of Mefeagant’ sister. It is no accident that these scenes take place in leafy
locales: the references to Tristan and Iseult in their forest bower and
la pucele soef le couche,
puis le baigne, puis le conroie
si tres bien que je n’an porroie
la mitie deviser ne dire.
(Lancelot 6656-65)
218
Fenice and Cliges in Jehan’s walled sanctuary are clear. Godefroi’s
inability to describe the events also recalls Chretien’s description of
Lancelot and Guinevere’s tryst in Gorre:
Tant li est ses jeus dolz et qu’an conte ne doit estre dite.
buens, Des joies fu la plus eslite
et del beisier, et del santir, et la plus delitable cele
que il lor avint sanz mantir que li contes nos test et cele.
une joie et une mervoille Molt ot de joie et de deuit
tel c’onques ancor sa paroille Lanceloz, tote cele nuit.
ne fu oTe ne seue; (Lancelot 4674-86)
mes toz jorz iert par moi teue,
(“Her love play seemed so sweet and good to him, both her
kisses and emotions, that truthfully both of them felt a joy and a
wonder that was neither known nor heard of. But I shall always
keep it to myself, since it should not be told in a story. The most
delightful and choicest joy is that which the tale keeps from us
and never tells. Lancelot had much joy and pleasure, all that
night.”)
There can be little doubt about what transpires here. Chretien’s authorial
coyness makes it all the more delicious and succeeds in expressing the
sense of what he implies is ineffable.
After spending this idyllic period in rehabilitation, Meleagant’s sister
revives Lancelot— revivifies him, in fact-to the point where he can be
described as “no less handsome than an angel,” “Or n’est mie moins biax
d’un ange. . .” (Lancelot 6670). This new man then kisses and embraces
his nursemaid before pronouncing the strongest pledge in the poem:
La pucele beise et acole,
puis li dist amiablemant:
“Amie,” fet il, “seulemant
a Deu et a vos rant merciz
219
de ce que sains sui et gariz.
Par vos sui de prison estors,
por ce poez mon cuer. mon
quant vos oieira. orandre et
avoir.
Tant m’avez fet que vostres
et mon servise. et mon avoir.
cors. sui. . . .”
(Lancelot 6678-87. my
emphases)
(“He kissed and embraced the girl, then he said to her amicably:
‘Dear,’ he said, ‘to you and God alone do I give praise for being
healthy and free. Because of you I am out of prison, for this
reason I give you my heart, my body, my pledge of service and all
that I own, to take and to have whenever you wish. So much
have you done for me, that I am yours. . . .’”)
The intensity of this pledge and the items promised differentiate it from the
other vows that Lancelot makes throughout the poem. He gives
Meleagant’s sister everything: his heart, his body, his service and all of his
possessions; he and all that he holds is hers for the asking.
His leave-taking is no less commital or intense:
“Or, douce amie deboneire,
par amors si vos prieroie
congie d’aler, et g’i iroie,
s’il vos pleisoit, molt volantiers.” (Lancelot 6692-95)
(“‘Now, sweet, kind dear, with love I would take my leave, and--if it
pleases you-l would go [to Arthur’s court] most willingly.’” )
The phrases “‘douce amie deboneire,” ’ “‘par amors,”’ and “‘s’il vos
pleisoit’” all sound much more profound than gratitude, as does the way
the dameisele refers to him: “‘Lancelot, biax dolz amis chiers. .
“‘Beloved Lancelot, beautiful sweet friend/lover. . .’” (Lancelot 66961.27
220
What is the reader to make of this? At the very least, it problematizes
our reading of Lancelot’s love for Guinevere at this point. As I indicated,
there is no evidence that Lancelot no longer loves the queen, and I do not
mean to suggest this. Rather, what seems to happen here in Godefroi’s
section is that a new Lancelot is created, or at least the old one is refined.
He has to return to Logres and to his duties as Arthur’s knight. He has to
leave the Gorrian center of attention, where their illicit love can continue,
for the tale’s conventional center, where it cannot. As I have indicated,
when Lancelot returns to court, there is absolutely no communication
between him and Guinevere. None. I suggest that, in order to make the
transition from Gorre to Logres, Lancelot has to be reborn and that he is
given a new life by Meleagant’s sister. He returns to Logres as the feudal
knight par excellence, no longer the exemplary fin amant.
Regardless of how Lancelot is read, a certain amount of tension is
created here between the two relationships, with Lancelot squarely in the
middle, and this tension must be discussed, confronted. Sweeping it
under the conventional rug of fin’amors does nothing but ignore its
presence. Therefore, the conflict has larger ramifications for the whole
“courtly love” topos, for the literary convention which states that adulterous
love is the highest and most valued kind. Lancelot’s pledges and his
period of rehabilitation call into question traditional readings of Le
Chevalier de la Charrete as the paradigmatic “courtly love” poem. In the
221
literary crucible that is Lancelot. Chretien mixed the intensely private world
of adultery, in this case the betrayal of a knight’s liege lord— of King Arthur,
the ultimate liege lord— with the public geography of the chivalric romance
to show that the two are fundamentally incompatible and, indeed,
potentially destructive.
222
Notes
1 All quotations from Yvain (Le Chevalier au Lion) and Lancelot (Le
Chevalier de la Charrete), unless otherwise indicated, are from Mario
Roques’ editions for Les Classiques Frangais du Moyen Age. References
are to line numbers, and all translations are my own.
2 I have taken the idea for this title from Barbara Krueger, who has
labelled her conception of Chretien’s text the “Yvain/Charrete” (“Reading”
172). My combinatory narrative, if illustrated, would look something like a
Venn diagram, with A representing Yvain. B Lancelot and C the
conjunctive, intertextual instances of Gauvain’s exploits. The entire
diagram would therefore represent the Yvain/Lancelot:
3 In Yvain the center shifts from Arthur’s court to Laudine’s after she
marries Yvain, who returns to Arthur’s court to battle Gauvain and then
hurries home to an ambiguous welcome.
4 Arthur’s court can only be called a geographical center in a figurative
way, since literal mapping is non-functional in medieval romance. Still, if
we were to plot its location in relation to various knights’ movements, it
would be best placed in the center of a circle, much like the positioning of
Jerusalem on the Hereford map. That way, knights and others would be
free to move out in any direction, riding either elliptical or linear paths
which lead away from court.
s As modern readers of the printed page, we have the luxury of
rereading and examining Chretien’s poems in ways that his
contemporaries would not have had. Nonetheless, any perceptive
auditor/reader-medieval or modern-would notice Gauvain’s
reappearances and the three times the Lancelot plot is recounted within
the text of Yvain. As Roberta L. Krueger points out: “Such self-reflection
and comparative analysis are as germane to the twelfth-century
223
renaissance, and to the sens of Chretien de Troyes, as is the ideology of
chivalry and courtly love” (“Reading” 181). While one might quibble with
Krueger’s use of the now somewhat maligned “courtly love,” her thoughts
on Chretien’s rhetorical astuteness are none the less valid.
6 See David Shirt, “Godefroi de Langy et la composition de la
Charrette.” Romania 96 (1975): 27-52; David Shirt, “How Much of the Lion
Can We Put Before the Cart? Further Light on the Chronological
Relationship of Chretien de Troyes’s Lancelot and Yvain.” French Studies
31.1 (1977): 1-15; Roberta Krueger, “Reading the Yvain/Charrete:
Chretien’s Inscribed Audiences at Noauz and Pesme A venture,” Forum for
Modern Language Studies 19.2 (1983): 172-87; Evelyn Mullally, “ The
Order of Composition of Lancelot and Yvain.” Bulletin Biblioaraphiaue de
la Societe Arthurienne 36 (1984): 217-29 and Jan Janssens, “The
‘Simultaneous’ Composition of Yvain and Lancelot: Fiction or Reality?”
Forum for Modern Language Studies 23.4 (1987): 366-76.
These critics all discuss Shirt’s 1977 article to varying degrees. None of
them seems as convincing as his though, primarily since his textual
support is so strong. Shirt’s order of composition is as follows: Chretien
first began work on YAi [1-2000]; in the course of composing YAii [2001-
4739] he also wrote LA [1-5358; “LB”. 5359-6132] (which must have also
included a reference to Lancelot’s imprisonment in the tower); he then
asked Godefroi to complete LA and while this was being done went bact to
finish off Yfvainl adding to it YB [4740-end], Some time later still he
inserted the Nouaz episode plus a remodelled description of the tower in
between LA and Godefroi’s continuation to it. . . . [PJerhaps Chretien was
moved to add this supplementary episode to his Lfancelotl because he felt
some dissatisfaction with the way in which Godefroi had handled the
Lancelot/Guinevere liaison and in particular the way in which the
continuator appears to make Lancelot transfer his courtly affections from
the Queen to Meleagant’s sister; in the Noauz episode the courtly
orthodoxy is strictly conventional (Shirt, "How Much” 14).
The line number additions are mine, come from Shirt’s article and refer to
the editions of Wendelin Foerster.
7 There has been much discussion of the phrase “une molt bele
conjointure,” which appears in Chretien’s first romance, Erec et Enide. I
intend it here quite literally as “a very beautiful [narrative] conjunction.”
Some of the often-cited studies of this term are: Mario Roques, “La
‘Conjointure,’ le ‘Sens,’ et la ‘Maniere,’” Erec et Enide. (Paris: Champion,
1981) xvi-xxvi; D.W. Robertson Jr., “Some Medieval Literary Terminology,
224
with Special Reference to Chretien de Troyes,” Studies in Philology 48
(1951): 669-92; W.A. Nitze, “ Conjointure in Erec. vs. 14.” Modern
Language Notes 69 (1954): 180-81; D. Kelly, “The Source and Meaning of
conjointure in Chretien’s Erec 14,” Viator 1 (1970): 179-200 and Michelle
A. Freeman, The Poetics of Translatio Studii and Conjointure: Chretien de
Troves’s Clioes. (Lexington, KY: French Forum Publishers, 1979) passim.
Q The feast of Pentecost is when the Holy Spirit was supposed to have
come to the gathered Apostles, imparting to them the ability to speak in
tongues:
While the day of Pentecost was running its course they were all
together in one place, when suddenly there came from the sky a
noise like that of a strong driving wind, which filled the whole
house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them
tongues like flames of fire, dispersed among them and resting on
each one. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began
to talk in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them power of
utterance. (Acts 2.1-4)
This passage ends with the Jews outside of the house wondering what
has enabled the Apostles to perform this linguistic miracle. The text then
says, “And they were all amazed and perplexed, saying to one another,
‘What can this mean?’ Others said contemptuously, They have been
drinking!” ’ (Acts 2.12-13). This temporal marker is quite ironically
appropriate here, since the romance opens with Arthur’s court in rhetorical
chaos.
9 Here Yvain has come geographically full circle, as he returns to
Laudine’s fountain for the first time since his first encounter with its
wonders. Lancelot and the dameisele amoureuse almost pass this spot,
but she steers him down another road:
Quant la dameisele pargoit
la fontainne et le perron voit,
se ne volt pas que cil la voie,
einz se mist en une autre voie. (Lancelot 1357-60)
(“When the dameisele perceived the spring and saw the stone,
she took another path, since she did not want the knight to see
them.”)
10 This and all further references to the work of Mikhail Mikhailovich
Bakhtin are to The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays bv M M. Bakhtin
225
Trans. Michael Holquist (Austin: U of Texas P, 1981), primarily to “Forms of
Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel” (84-258).
11 For this reason medieval romances are capable of being extended
ad infinitum (thanks to this and the device of entrelacement. which
connects the numerous threads), with any number of events inserted
between the opening and closing poles of the narrative. One needs only
to consider the textual history of the Continuations of Chretien's unfinished
Perceval, which runs 9,234 lines:
A first continuator picked up the story at this point and added
9,500 to 19,600 lines (depending on the various manuscript
traditions) but came to no conclusion. A second continuator took
over the plot where the first ended, lengthened it by some 13,000
lines, but still failed to complete the task. A third continuator,
Manessier, added 10,000 lines more, with, finally, a conclusion.
Gerbert de Montreuil compiled an enormous Fourth Continuation
of some 17,000 lines, which survives in two manuscripts, where it
is inserted between the Second and Third Continuations.
Gerbert managed to compose an ending, but it has been lost in
the manuscript tradition. In sum, the Continuations amount to an
augmentation of more than 58,000 lines. One manuscript, B.N. f.
fr. 12576, contains a ‘total’ Perceval romance, including
Chretien’s, which adds up to 63,500 octosyllabic lines. (Lacy,
Encyclopedia 118)
12 Although Laudine marks time in Yvain. for example, with ‘“each day in
each season, ‘trestoz les jorz et toz les tans’” (2757), the lengths used
are completely arbitrary. Chretien could have just as easily made it two or
even twenty-two years from “la feste saint Jehan,” and it would have made
no difference: “In the chivalric romance . . . time itself becoms to a certain
extent miraculous” (Bakhtin 154). In the same way, the elapsed time
between Calogrenant’s shameful avanture with Esclados and his
recounting of it at Arthur’s court could have been five or ten years just as
easily as more than seven, “‘plus a de set anz’” (Yvain 173). What we
witness is the “hyperbolization of time typical of the fairy tale: hours are
dragged out, days are compressed into moments, it becomes possible to
bewitch time itself” (Bakhtin 154). Temporal reality is not important,
temporal distorition for effect is: Laudine marks time almost obsessively,
growing more and more angry as she waits for her tourneying bridegroom,
and Calogrenant’s chivalric shame has gnawed at him for a long, long
time.
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13 it is difficult to say whether Gorre is a magical place, though the name
Bademagus (magician of Bath?) seems to indicate that it is. The borders,
however hard to define or to place exactly, do not seem to be. For
instance, there is the chevalier du que. who quite realistically guards a
river crossing, and then there are the passages danaereux. which are
taken down after Guinevere is released.
14 There is, as I explained in chapter one, much that is inexplicable and
legendary is relegated to Ethiopia so-called, which is part of a continent
mislabelled “Europa” (not “Africa” ). From a modern perspective, much of
the Hereford map’s labelling and placement is “ wrong.” However, what is
actually “wrong” is not the map but the fact that we interpret it according to
twentieth-century conceptions of spatio-temporal arrangements.
is Chretien raises this issue via the character of the younger daughter of
the sire de la Noire Espine. She comes to Arthur’s court for the final
judicial duel between Yvain and Gauvain and praises Yvain for
rearranging his busy schedule to champion her cause:
“. . . s’eust il molt aillors a feire
li frans chevaliers deboneire;
mes de moi li prist tex pitiez
qu’il a arrieres dos gitiez
toz ses afeires por le mien.” (Yvain 5943-47)
(“\ . . even though this kind, noble knight has much to do
elsewhere, he has taken such pity on me that he has put behind
him all of his affairs to help me.’” )
16 Lunete’s imprisonment and Yvain’s approach sound very much like
Lancelot’s incarceration in Meleagant’s tower and his sister’s approach to
rescue the hero: both prisoners are unjustly held, both complain loudly
enough to be heard by passersby and--perhaps most significantly-both
are rescued by someone substituting for Gauvain. Lancelot expects
Gauvain to save him but is rescued by the dameisele. and Lunete expects
Gauvain to rescue her but is championed by Yvain.
17 This is the second time Lunete has been poorly served at Arthur’s
court. When she was there as Laudine’s messenger, no one would even
look at her, with the exception of Yvain (Yvain 1004-15). His courtesy
there is what inspires her to help him after he slays Esclados.
227
18 in a move worthy of Dante’s contrapasso. Lunete’s adversaries are
executed on the pyre which they constructed for her:
Et cil furent ars an la re
qui por li ardoir fu esprise;
que ce est reisons de justise
que cil qui autrui juge a tort
doit de celui mei'smes mort
morir que il li a jugiee. (4564-69)
(“And those who were hot to see her burned were themselves
burned upon the pyre, because it is right that those who
wrongfully judge another should themselves die the same death
to which they have condemned the other.”)
19 Lancelot and Guinevere are never together outside of Gorre. As the
tale begins, a harried-and anonymous— Lancelot rides upon the scene
and immediately rides off in search of Guinevere. So, at the outset they
neither see nor speak to one another. After all have returned to Arthur’s
court and Lancelot has killed Meleagant, they neither speak nor exchange
glances-let alone embraces; in fact, Lancelot and Guinevere never speak
directly to one another outside Gorre. They cannot, for if we take the
dangerous step of projecting from one text to one which continues its main
theme, we see in the La Mort le Rois Artu that their love brings about the
destruction of the Arthurian world and the deaths of all the main characters
when it becomes a public concern.
20 Roques does not include the “ deus pas” passage. His text reads:
“ Tantost a sa voie tenue / li chevaliers que il n’i monte” (Lancelot 360-61).
Without including the “ deus pas” reference, it is impossible to understand
Guinevere’s chastisement of Lancelot during their second meeting in
Gorre:
“Comant? Don n’eustes vos honte
de la charrete, et si dotastes?
Molt a grant enviz i montastes
quant vos demorastes deus pas.
Por ce, voir, ne vos vos je pas
ne aresnier ne esgarder.” (Lancelot 4484-89. my emphasis)
(“‘What? Weren’t you ashamed of the cart, and thus fearful? By
delaying two steps you showed great reluctance [to climb into the
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cart]. Truly, for this reason, I did not wish to either see or speak
with you.’”)
Kibler, whose edition I have quoted, includes the telling lines 360a and
360b (although he does not say from which manuscript they were taken):
Tantost a sa voie tenue
qu’il ne I’atant ne pas ne ore;
tant solemant deus pas demore
li chevaliers que il n’y monte.
(Lancelot 360, 360a, 360b, 361, my emphasis)
(“He [the dwarf] held to his path without waiting even an instant
for the knight, who only hesitated two steps before he climbed
in.”)
21 See, for example: Jean Frappier, Amour courtois et Table Ronde
(Geneva: Droz, 1973) 43-56; Moshe Lazar, Amour courtois et “ fin’amors”
dans la litterature du XIle siecle (Paris: Klincksieck, 1964) passim and F.X.
Newman, ed., The Meaning of Courtly Love (Albany: SUNY P, 1968).
22 There is precedent for such adumbration and figuration in Lancelot.
As Lancelot and the dameisele amoureuse ride through the woods, they
encounter a belligerent knight and his kindly father who sound very much
like Meleagant and Bademagus. The young knight is bent on abducting
the dameisele with whom Lancelot rides, and he and his father argue over
the his rashness in challenging le chevalier de la charrete--all of this
mirroring the relationship between and personalities of Meleagant and
Bademagus. This figural appearance readies the reader and Lancelot for
his later encounter(s) with Meleagant in which many of the actions in this
earlier episode are virtually repeated.
23 The scene following this is quite puzzling. Lancelot recognizes this
unnamed dameisele by her speech, and this upsets her for some reason:
Et lors i ot cil conuissance
par la parole qu’ele ot dite;
si li rant le prison tot quite.
Et cele en a honte et angoisse
qu’ele cuida qu’il la conoisse;
car ele ne le volsist pas. (Lancelot 922-27)
(“And then he had knowledge of her by the speech that she had
spoken; he thus handed over the prisoner quickly. And she was
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shamed and upset because she thought that he recognized her;
which was something that she did not want.”)
The dameisele’s desire for anonymity and fear of being recognized are
baffling. Of what is afraid? Who is she that Lancelot decides to turn the
vanquished knight, “le prison,” over to her? How does Lancelot recognize
her by her speech, . . oar la parole au’ele ot dite. . (my emphasis)? Is it
the way she has spoken that alerts him to her identity, or is it the words she
has used? The former seems unlikely, and the substance of her pledge is
not at all unusual. Although quite conventionally worded, her oath~and its
pledge of a future encounter-must be what reveals her identity to him. It is
almost as if she is following Lancelot, staging herself to appear at just the
right moment, as Meleagant’s sister does in their encounters.
On a side note, D.D.R. Owen translates lines 925-27 as, “She feels
embarrassed and anxious in this situation, thinking he may ravish her, for
she would not have wished that” (p. 197). While this relieves the original’s
ambiguity, it is just not in the Old French, at least not in Roques’ or Kibler’s
texts. I cannot see how Owen arrived at this rendering of the passage,
which he supports by citing the custom of Logres, whereby a damsel is
safe as long as she travels alone and in danger of abduction only when
accompanied by a knight. He “used as [his] models the Foerster texts, the
more recent editions by Roques and Micha being based on a manuscript
copied by the individualistic and hence unreliable scribe Guiot” (xxvi).
Owen gives no variant readings for these lines, and I have not checked
Foerster, so I am unsure what his Old French original read.
24 Significantly enough, now that Lancelot has proven himself worthy of
public approbation, those gathered around him at dinner curse the cart
and not its rider:
“Ha, Dex! con grant mesavanture!”
fet chascuns d’ax a lui mei'smes:
“I’ore que charrete fu primes
pansee et feite soit maudite;
car molt est vix chose et despite.” (Lancelot 2608-10)
(“Oh, God! What great misfortune!’ Each man said to himself.
Oursed be the hour when the cart was first conceived and built;
because it is a thing vile and despicable.’”)
25 This occurs again before those watching the tournament at Noauz.
After Lancelot has shamed himself before them at Guinevere’s command
that he do his worst, “‘au noauz’” (Lancelot 5645), the spectators accuse
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him in absentia of “Malvestiez” (Lancelot 5740, 5747, 5754), proving that
the public cannot understand his proesce born of love for the Queen. For
Lancelot, there is no indecision; he does his worst immediately upon
hearing Guinevere’s wish, never considering it a cowardly thing to do.
26 Godefroi says that not even he knows where she travels, nor does he
seem to care. He is interested only in getting her to the tower in the least
amount of time:
Mes ie cuit qu’aingois qu’el le truisse
en avra maint pais cerchie,
maint ale, et maint reverchie,
ainz que nule noveie an oie.
Mes que valdroit se je contoie
ne ses gistes ne ses jornees?
Mes tantes voies a tornees
a mont, a val, et sus, et jus,
que passez fu li moins ou plus,
c’onques plua aprandre n’an pot
ne moins qu’ele devant an sot,
et c’est neanz tot an travers.
(Lancelot 6410-21, my emphasis)
(“But I think that before she finds him she will have searched
many lands, travelled much, and searched many countries,
before she will have heard any news. But what use is it for me to
tell either of her nightly lodgings or daily journeys? She travelled
so many ways, over mountains, valleys, high and low, that she
passed a month or more without discovering what she already
knew, and this is less than nothing.”)
27 Here, and throughout this section, the troublesome word is
“amis”/”amie.” It can mean either “lover” or “ friend”; I have chosen to
render it as “lover” on the basis of Lancelot’s promissory catalogue and the
strength of the surrounding language.
Chapter Four
Dal cerchio al centro e dal centre al cerchio
Salvific Gyrations in Dante’s Commedia
232
The modern reader hoping to follow Dante’s metaphorical logic
(or an argument alleging such a logic) is therefore called upon to
acknowledge . . . the theoretical and historical possibility that
Dante had a fundamentally different conception of the poetic text
than most prevalent today. . in particular that Dante’s
conception was more spatial and more material. (Hart 109)
To say that Dante’s pilgrim, his poetical alter ego and the reader’s
pilgrim-surrogate, travels “al centro” three times is to state nothing new;
however, to demonstrate how this movement is wed to Augustine’s three
levels of intellection and a seemingly inverse Aristotelian cosmology is.
This chapter attempts to tie these three narrative strands together.
It is well-known that Dante’s pilgrim moves from the earth’s rim to the
center of hell, from the shores of Antepurgatory to the Earthly Paradise on
the purgatorial peak and from the circumference of the lunar sphere to the
center of the heavenly rose and immersion in the visio Dei. This
teleological excursion through Dante’s uniquely traditional cosmology has
been mapped and linguistically plotted by any number of scholars,! and I
have no intention of recrossing this space in the same way. Instead of
describing the space through which the pilgrim travels, this chapter
explores some of the poet’s possible reasons for choosing this particular
spatio-temporal configuration and discusses the manner in which his
pilgrim proceeds. I concentrate on how he gets from the “selva oscura,”
(the “dark wood”) (Inferno 1.2)2 to total reintegration of the disjecta
membra of his own eschatological existence into the final vision of Tamor
233
che move il sole e I’altre stelle,” (“ the love that moves the sun and the
other stars”) (Paradiso 33.145). I describe the aspects of Aristotelian
cosmology that “il Filosofo" (Convivio 1.1.12 o a s s im P elaborated in De
caelo 4 a text which Dante knew, commented upon in the Convivio and the
Quaestio de aqua et terra and integrated into his own traditional, if
idiosyncratic, Catholic metaphysic 5 He used this pagan cosmography as
the map upon which to plot his pilgrim’s movement through his own
decidedly Christian space. As John Freccero has s h o w n ,6 Dante’s
dominant motive image is the gyre, and thus his chosen path is a spiral
one which allows the pilgrim to traverse the three conical realms of
Inferno. Puraatorio and Paradiso. In order to do so, he transgresses the
circular borders the poet sets up in each space, all the while crossing the
even more abstract boundaries of language, image, myth and theology.
The generation of such dynamism is not the poem's goal, however. In
fact, motion is to be negated at all costs and “intransitive lingering”
achieved (Chiampi 39), whereby the mystical confrontation with God
essentially-albeit briefly--paralyzes the pilgrim J Joseph Mazzeo writes:
All motion, as in the Aristotelian universe, is a symptom of
incompleteness, of the ‘desire’ to become fully actual and to
be assimilated to the Pure Act which moves the world as an
object of desire. This heaven is the still and quiet light in
which the Deity dwells who alone completely beholds
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Himself; it is the abode also of the blessed, as the Holy
Church ‘who cannot lie’ maintains. (“Metaphysics” 96)
As Dante’s “novo peregrin” (Puraatorio 8.4) ascends through the
Com media’s three-in-one spatio-temporal construction, he attains
successively to each of St. Augustine’s three visiones. the visio corporalis.
the visio spiritualis and the visio intellectual is. experiencing in the last
salvific cognition of the visio Dei. It is at this point-and only at this point-
that motion, speech, incredulity and carnal desire cease for the pilgrim. In
other words, Dante’s complex poetic machinery exists only to propel its
traveler through its intricately-structured areas of diminishing physicality so
that he may achieve, for a brief flashing moment, perfect silent stasis-that
immobility which characterizes the ineffable Empyrean, the atemporal and
aspatial infinity where desire is both extinguished and unutterably
intensified.
I
“. . . e questo cielo non ha altro dove
che la mente divina, in che s’accende
I’amor che ‘I volge e la virtu ch’ei piove.
Luce e amor d’un cerchio lui comprende,
si come questo li altri; e quel precinto
colui che ‘I cinge solamente intende.
Non e suo moto per altro distinto,
ma li altri son mensurati da questo. ...”
(Paradiso 27.109-16)
235
(“. . . and this heaven has no other ‘where’ but in the divine mind,
within which the love is kindled that turns it and the virtue that it
precipitates. Light and love compass it within a circle, like it does
the others, and only he alone who encircles it understands. Its
motion is not determined by any other’s, but the others take their
measure from it. . . . ” )
Dante the astrologer-poet, in his representation of late-medieval
Christian cosmology, has set fifty circular and/or spherical boundaries
between his pilgrim and God.Q As is often the case with topographical and
spatial restrictions, violation is expected. Dante’s elaborate liminal
configurations primarily exist to be transgressed: they are hindrances
which force him to pause and to consider what lies before him and how
each spatial exemplum and each instance of contraoasso fits into the
larger scheme of Christian doctrine. This device also works for Dante’s
readers, the armchair perearini-like the Bayeux Tapestry’s instances of
“ visual punctuation” and Chretien’s spatio-temporal border convergences:
they cause the reader or viewer to pause in their passage through the
narrative, as they accompany the pilgrim and consider various theological
issues with which he is confronted. For the pilgrim, who is neither Aeneas
nor Paul (“‘lo non Enea, io non Paulo sono’” Nnferno 2.321). but who is
much more, this fundamental textual and metaphysical structure must be
worked and overcome: the pilgrim must become upwardly mobile, the
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supreme trespasser, if he and the reader-after ail, it is the “cammin di
nostra vita” (inferno 1.1)--are to reach the Ultimate Goal.
But how is this to happen? I suggest that the most appropriate way to
get from Inferno’s soteriological “shipwreck” to Paradiso’s Pauline
apotheosis, to the meeting with God facie ad faciem. is to pick up John
Freccero’s well-known trail and proceed ever upward in a gyral or spiral
path. But first we may ask why it must be a gyral motion? Why not just
move in a direct, linear fashion-from “A” to “B,” so to speak, from littoral to
transcendental? After all, it is the straight way that the poet tells us he had
lost: “la diritta via era smarrita" (Inferno 1.3): and this, according to Virgil, is
the reason that Beatrice has intervened, fearing that the author of the Vita
Nuova had gone astray:
“O anima cortese mantoana, . . .
temo che non sia gia si smarrito,
ch’io mi sia tardi al soccorso levata,
per quel ch’i’ ho di lui nel cielo udito.” (Inferno 2.58-66)
CO courteous Mantuan soul, . . . from what I have heard in
heaven, I fear that he might have gone astray and that I might
have started too late to help him.'”)
And so, should our pilgrim not be looking to retake the straight and narrow
path, to fly like a bowshot to the Target, . . come saetta che nel segno /
percuote pria che sia la corda queta. . .,” (“like an arrow that has struck the
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mark before the string is quiet”) (Paradiso 5.91-92)? Indeed, why am I
here so concerned with the image of a gyre?
To answer, I begin with definitions of terminology. I use the
conventional understanding of “gyral” to indicate a motion which follows
either a circular or a spiral path round a center or axis. The root for “gyre”
and “gyral” is the Greek auros. “a ring or circle, circular, round” (LSJ. sv.),
from whence the Latin gyro-, avrare. which Lewis and Short define as “to
turn around in a circle, wheel around, go around a thing, to turn around”
(833). The definition of most use here is “ to revolve around a center or
axis,” since this is precisely what Dante’s pilgrim does. (Because of the
orientation of hell, the Mount of Purgatory and heaven, and because of the
alignment of their centers through which the pilgrim passes, we can infer
an axis around which he turns in his ascension to the Empyrean.) This is
not the earth’s imaginary axis to which we are accustomed but what we
might call an eschatological axis running from Jerusalem (the civitas
terrenae^ through hell and Giudecca, up the Mount through the Earthly
Paradise and from there through the nine celestial spheres to the center of
the rose (the civitas DeiL John Freccero uses this unidirectional spiral
image to explain this movement horologically:
It appears from the text, and particularly from the flight of Geryon
in Canto XVII of the Inferno, that the descent into hell is
accomplished by a clockwise spiral, and there seems to be no
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doubt that the ascent of the Mount of Purgatory is counter
clockwise. (71)
The logical anagogical path to God--the primary source-would seem to be
circular; for, as Aristotle stated, “circular motion must be primary” (De caelo
1.2). One cannot travel a circuitous path if the journey’s terminus is a point
fixed somewhere off the primary circle, either out upon the circumference
of an adjoining circle or, as is the case here, at the center of another
circle.9 In other words, the only way to progress to a central endpoint in
circular space is via a spiral course. This is because a spiral or gyral
motion combines the circular with the linear and, more relevant for the
Commedia. the theological “ segno” of perfection, infinity and the eternal
with the necessarily transgressive directness of “la diritta via” (Inferno
1.3)10 For the pilgrim, the border of each circle upon which he travels must
be crossed over in order for him to pass to the next level. The only way to
accomplish this transition or transgression, to move finally from the littoral
to the transcendent, is via a gyral trajectory. To pass through the
Commedia’s terrestrial and celestial spaces, then, the pilgrim combines
circular with linear movement,n climbing round and “up” the sides of three
conical spaces, from the entry point somewhere in Italy round and up to
Cocytus, from the shores of Antepurgatory round the outside of the conical
Mount Purgatory to its peak and from this point to the Empyrean in an ever-
239
widening gyral motion. Freccero-possibly with Aristotle in mind--refers to
this movement as an “absolute spiral,” as opposed to a relative spiral:
As the heavens following the same inexorable course move
clockwise or ‘to the left’ to the cosmological man in our
hemisphere and ‘to the right’ when viewed from the southern
perspective, so the traveler moves in one absolute spiral direction
which is to the left as he descends and to the right as he ascends,
after having turned upside-down at the earth’s center. (75)
By merging circular and linear travel, the “ultimate” gyral shape of the
pilgrim’s journey is a spiral which turns always in the same direction as he
proceeds heavenward, even though Freccero’s “clockwise” and “counter
clockwise” still apply. This seeming self-contradiction is explained by
Virgil after his rotation and reorientation at the earth’s center as he climbs
“down” and then “up” Lucifer’s shank with his quizzical charge clinging to
his back:
. . . “ Tu imagini ancora
d’esser di la dal centro, ov’io mi presi
al pel del vermo reo che ‘I mondo fora.
Di la fosti cotanto quant’ io scesi;
quand’ io mi volsi, tu passati ‘I punto
al qual si traggon d'ogne parte i pesi.
E se’ or sotto I’emisperio giunto
ch’e contraposto a quel che la gran secca
coverchia. ...” (Inferno 34.106-14)
(“'. . . You still imagine that you are on the other side of the center,
where I grabbed hold of the hair of the evil worm who pierces the
earth. So long as I descended you were on that side; when I
turned myself round, you passed the point to which all weight is
drawn from every part. And now you are below the hemisphere
opposite to that which covers the great dry land. . . .’”)
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A final crucial concept connected with the pilgrim’s direction of travel is
the apparently spiralling solar ecliptic, something which Dante himself
takes up in the Convivio:
Dico adunque che ‘I cielo del sole si rivolge da occidente in
oriente, non dirittamente contra Io movimento diurno, cioe del die
e de la notte, ma tortamente contra quello; si che ‘I suo mezzo
cerchio, che equalmente e ‘ntra li suoi poli, nel quale e Io corpo
del sole, sega in due parti opposite Io [mezzo] cerchio de li due
primi poli, cioe nel principio de I’Ariete e nel principio de la Libra,
e partesi per due archi da esso, uno ver settentrione e un altro
ver mezzogiorno. (3.5.13)
(“I say then that the heaven of the Sun revolves from west to east,
not directly counter to the diurnal movement, that is, that of day
and night, but obliquely counter to it: so that this ecliptic, which
lies equidistantly from its poles, on which is situated the body of
the Sun, cuts the equator of the two primary poles into two
opposing regions, that is, at the beginning of the Ram and at the
beginning of the Scales, and diverges from it along two arcs, one
toward the north and the other toward the south” [my emphasis].)
It is this apparently oblique movement which gives the sun its apparently
spiral path, which Dante characterizes as a screwlike ascent, “. . .
montando a guisa d’una vite d’intorno. . .,” (“. . . mounting upward like the
screw in a press. . .”) (Convivio 3.5.14). As John Freccero explains, the
medieval understanding was that the other celestial bodies followed
apparently similar paths:
The analogy between celestial motion and that of the pilgrim is
less vague when we press it further. The diurnal motion of the
heavens is a uniform circle, whereas the pilgrim moves spirally.
The diurnal motion, in Aristotle’s view, is the simple circling of the
sphere of the fixed stars around the earth as center. This is the
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movement ‘to the right’ which carries along all other lower circles
with it, but they seem to struggle against this movement, in
varying degrees, with a movement to the left along the Zodiac. In
the case of the sun and the planets, the path formed by the
resolution of these two forces is a slow-moving spiral, composed
of the daily turns of the celestial equator and the yearly contrary
circuit along the ecliptic, from west to east. In other words, the
sun appears to be traveling in a spiral, as the result of what we
know to be the two movements of the earth: rotation, which
causes the apparent east-west circling of the heavens each day,
and revolution, which causes the apparent contrary circuit
accomplished annually. To medieval men, far more accustomed
to watching the heavens than we, the sun seemed to follow a
spiral path, geometrically similar to the pilgrim’s in the poem.
(74-75)
We now refer to this as retrograde motion, which is easily imagined: if we
picture a fixed terrestrial observation point and a picket fence away from it
on the horizon, we can see that the sun seems to disappear at a more
easterly place every night until-moving along the pickets, as it were— it
returns to its original place “on the fence’’ in a month. It would thus seem
that the sun’s path is not a circular one but a dimishing spiral which
reaches its nadir every month before winding its way outward again. This
all sounds like so much scholastic astrology until we consider that in the
Commedia the sun and its ubiquitously infusive light is one of the
dominant metaphors for God’s love. If this fundamental celestial body was
thought to travel a spiral path, what better way to ascend to its theological
referent than to mimic its movement?12
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Thus we see that the gyre is the ideal image to portray the pilgrim’s
movement through Dante’s tripartite cosmology: it combines the perfection
of the circle, like that of the divine wheel, the “rota ch’igualmente e mossa,
/ I’amor che move il sole e I’altre stelle” (Paradiso 34.144-45), “the wheel
that is evenly moved, by the love that moves the sun and the other stars,”
with the “diritta via,” the straight way lost by the pilgrim that he must
recover to attain the visio Dei: it is also in perfect harmony with the sweep
of the sun and the other six planets which, for those living in an earth-
centered universe on a stationary planet, was spiral.
II
E ancora la Geometria e bianchissima, in quanto
e sanza macula d’errore e certissima per se. . . .
(Convivio 2.13.27)
( “And yet Geometry is most white, inasmuch as it is without
blemish of error and most certain . . . in itself. . . .” )
Certainly, it would have been much simpler to move the pilgrim through
this system in a straight linear fashion, but neither ours nor Dante’s is a
planar u n i v e r s e .1 3 Dante’s pilgrim’s gyral path harmonizes perfectly with
the Aristotelian-and, to a lesser extent, Platonic-conceptualization of a
universal spherical space. Aristotle’s influence is in no way surprising,
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particularly when we consider the impact of his ideas on later medieval
thought:
During the thirteenth century Aristotle’s major works became
available in direct translation and were read with the
commentaries of Averroes. They rapidly imposed their
philosophical techniques upon the intellectual training in the
newly established universities and guided it for the rest of the
medieval period. (Kretzmann 440)
Dante, of course, was no exception to this rule, and we need only consider
the number of references to Aristotle in his various works to see the extent
of the Philosopher’s influence on his thought: “With the exception of the
Bible, Aristotle’s works are quoted by D[ante] more frequently than those of
any other author, the direct quotations or references to them numbering
about 150” (Toynbee 48). In this rather lengthy section I lay the
groundwork, the celestial cartographic foundation, for the following
discussion of the pilgrim’s movement, Augustine’s visiones and their
interwoven place in the Dantean universe. This involves a somewhat
complicated examination of what at first seems a straightforward
proposition; namely, that when we speak of Dante’s heaven of the fixed
stars, his eighth sphere and Aristotle’s heavenly sphere, we can attribute
both absolute and relative directions to it: up, down, left and right. If we are
to discuss the upward direction of the pilgrim’s travel, we must have a
frame of reference. In other words, if we can say-and we must be able to
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say this--that the pilgrim follows Augustine’s dictum that one must descend
before ascending, “descendite, ut ascendatis, et ascendatis ad deum”
(Confessions 4.12V that he descends to hell and ascends to the Empyrean
through the system of concentric celestial spheres, the universe must have
a mappable orientation.
Plato thought the earth and the universe to be spherical, because the
sphere is the perfect form: It is “a figure that has the greatest degree of
completeness and uniformity, as he [god] judged uniformity to be
incalculably superior to its opposite” (Timaeus 5.33).14 On the idea of a
spherical universe, Aristotle wrote:
The shape of the heaven must be spherical. That is most suitable
to its substance, and is the primary shape in nature. But let us
discuss the question of what is the primary shape, both in plane
surfaces and in solids. Every plane figure is bounded either by
straight lines or by a circumference; the rectilinear is bounded by
several lines, the circular by one only. Thus since in every genus
the one is by nature prior to the many, and the simple to the
composite, the circle must be the primary plane figure. Also, if the
term ‘perfect’ is applied, according to our previous definition, to
that outside which no part of itself can be found, and addition to a
straight line is always possible, to a circle never, the
circumference of the circle must be a perfect line: granted
therefore that the perfect is prior to the imperfect, this argument
too demonstrates the priority of the circle to other figures. By the
same reasoning the sphere is the primary solid, for it alone is
bounded by a single surface, rectilinear solids by several. The
place of the sphere among solids is the same as that of the circle
among plane figures. [. . .]
It is clear, then, that the sphere is the first solid figure, and it
would also be most natural to give it that place if one ranked
figures according to number, the circle corresponding to one and
the triangle to two, on account of its two right angles-for if one
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gives unity to the triangle, the circle will cease to be a figure. But
the primary figure belongs to the primary body, and the primary
body is that which is at the farthest circumference, hence it, the
body which revolves in a circle, must be spherical in shape.
(De caslo 2.4)
On this Aristotle harmonizes with Plato quite well, using similar logic to
describe the sphere’s primacy and then developing the idea so that it is
more like the familiar medieval cosmology. Indeed, we may say that
Dante imported this by then traditional system almost completely, although
he made some changes in it. When reading the Commedia. it is easy to
lose sight of the spatial totality of this Aristotelian importation, since the
reader only “sees” parts of the system while travelling through it, when
informed that a new level in hell has been reached or that the pilgrim and
Beatrice have migrated to the next highest sphere. On a more particular
level, Dante used the language of mathematics and the images of the
circle and sphere throughout the Commedia when he needed to represent
the perfect or the ineffable:
. . . Dante used the abstract language of mathematics and
geometry to express the most abstract aspects of his poetic
vision. His most conspicuous geometrical image is the circle:
wheels, orbits, spheres and the geometrical figure itself. . . [and
terms for it] abound; recur[ring], on average, more than twice per
canto or about one every seventy lines, with the greater
concentration building to a climax in the Paradiso. . . . (Hart 100)
Speaking here of this ineffability and the failure of language, Hart makes
another, more insightful point:
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But there is another aspect of the image that may have made it
attractive for Dante’s symbolic purposes, an aspect generally
overlooked: the incommensurability of radius and circumference,
the resulting insolubility of their ratio as an arithmetic problem
involving integers and, consequently, the infinite series of
calculations and quotient remainders inherent in the figure’s
characteristic proportionality. (100)
In other words, since n was incalculable-as it still is-the precise relation
between the radius and the circumference of a circle was impossible to
describe, either linguistically or arithmetically using integers. For Dante, n
was as indescribable as God, but the language of poetic geometry was the
best medium for approximation:
Si che tra ‘I punto e lo cerchio si come tra principio e fine si
muove la Geometria, e questi due a la sua certezza repugnano;
che lo punto per la sua indivisibifitade e immensurabile, e lo
cerchio per lo suo arco e impossibile a quadrare perfettamente, e
pero e impossibile a misurare a punto. E ancora la Geometria e
bianchissima, in quanto e sanza macula d’errore e certissima per
se e per la sua ancella, che si chiama Perspettiva. (Convivio
2.14.27)
(“ Thus Geometry moves between the point and the circle as
between its beginning and its end, and these two are in
opposition to its exactitude; because the point is in itself
indivisible and therefore immeasurable, and the circle is
impossible to square perfectly because of its arc, and because of
this it is impossible to measure exactly. And still Geometry is
most white, inasmuch as it is without blemish of error and most
certain both in itself and in its handmaid, which is called
Perspective.”)
God, like the point, is characterized by his “indivisibilitade” and is
“immensurabile” in fact. Just as the circle is “impossibile a quadrare
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perfettamente” and is “impossibile a misurare a punto,” so is God--often
referred to in print and paint as the Geometer-impossible to measure, as
we see in the final vision:
Qual e ‘I geometra che tutto s’affige
per misurar lo cerchio, e non ritrova,
pensando, quel principio ond’ elli indige,
tal era io a quella vista nova. . . . (Paradiso 33.133-36
(“ Just as the geometer who fully applies himself to measure the
circle, and does not find, in thinking, the principle which he
needs, so was I before that new prospect. . . .” )
Thus we see that for Dante the circle is the perfect shape for representing
God and the language of geometry the most suitable for expressing his
inexpressable essence.
Naturally, circles can become spheres when projected into the third
dimension, and we have seen that Dante, following Plato and Aristotle,
constructed a universe built of concentric spheres of which earth was the
c e n t e r . 15 Much like Aristotle, Dante posited a finite physical universe, one
composed of nine spheres surrounded by a tenth space, the Empyrean-
which, being infinite and atemporal, is perhaps more correctly referred to
as aspatial.16 He took Aristotle to task for suggesting in De caelo that there
were only eight spheres:
Aristotile credette, seguitando solamente I’antica grossezza de li
astrologi, che fossero pure otto cieli, de li quali lo estremo, e che
contenesse tutto, fosse quello dove le stelle fisse sono, cioe la
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spera ottava; e che di fuori de esso non fosse altroy alcuno.
(Convivio 2.3.3)
(“Aristotle believed, simply following the unrefined conceptions of
the ancient astrologers, that there were only eight heavens, of
which the eighth-which contained all of the others-was the
outermost, that it was the one where the stars are fixed and that
there was no other beyond it.”)i7
In Aristotle’s physical universe, the eighth sphere was the heaven of the
fixed stars, and he argued that the total system was finite, because," ...
there cannot exist an infinite body” and, “every body which revolves in a
circle must be finite” (De caelo 1.6, 1.5). Beyond the eighth sphere natural
laws do not apply:
. . . there is neither place nor void nor time outside the heaven,
since it has been demonstrated that neither is nor can be body
there. Wherefore neither are the things there born in place, nor
does time cause them to age, nor does change work in any way
upon any of the beings whose alloted place is beyond the
outermost motion: changeless and impassive, they have
uninterrupted enjoyment of the best and most independent life for
the whole aeon of their existence. (De caelo 1.9)
This sounds much like Dante’s and medieval Christianity’s Empyrean.
M.A. Orr neatly encapsulates the convergence of Greek, Arabic and
Christian cosmologies in this regard:
Aristotle’s demonstration that there must be a First Mover, himself
unmoved, became an argument for the existence of the Christian
Deity. The intelligences which preside over the celestial
movements were interpreted as the nine hierarchies of angels
whose existence was taught by the Church. To the eight spheres
of the Greeks and the Primum Mobile of the Arabs, the thirteenth-
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century Christians added the all-embracing heaven of heavens,
the Empyrean, to be the abode of the Creator and blessed spirits.
(204-05)
Finally, and of supreme importance for this study, it must be noted that,
following Aristotle, Dante attributed north and south poles-and, one would
assume, an axis-to his ninth and outermost sphere, the heaven of the
Primum Mobile. Plato, who we have seen posited a spherical universe,
argued against its having any definable orientation, precisely because of
its shape:
For since the universe is spherical all points at extreme distance
from the centre are equidistant from it, and so all equally
‘extremes’; while the centre, being equidistant from the extremes
is equally ‘opposite’ to them all. This being the structure of the
universe, it would be inappropriate to use the terms ‘above’ and
‘below’ of any of the regions we have mentioned. [. . .] Indeed,
can contrary terms be properly applied to any completely uniform
object? (Timaeus 31.62)
This is completely at odds with what Aristotle and Dante thought. First
Aristotle, who attempted to answer the question of whether the heavenly
sphere had a top, a bottom, a left and a right side:
By the length of the heaven I mean the distance between its
poles, and I hold that one pole is the upper and one the lower; for
only two of the possible hemispheres have a distinguishing mark,
and that is the immobility of the poles. . . [. . .]
Of the poles, the one which we see above us is the lowest part,
and the one which is invisible to us the uppermost. For we give
the name of right-hand to that side of a thing whence its motion
through space starts. Now the beginning of the heaven’s
revolution is the side from which the stars rise, so that must be its
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right, and where they set must be its left. If this is true, that it
begins from the right and moves round to the right again, its
upper pole must be the invisible one, since if it were the visible,
the motion would be leftward, which we deny. Clearly therefore
the invisible pole is the upper, and those who live in the region of
it are in the upper hemisphere and to the right, whereas we are in
the lower and to the left. It is the contrary of the Pythagorean
view, for they put us above and on the right, and the others below
and on the left. The truth is just the reverse. Nevertheless in
relation to the secondary revolution, La. that of the planets, we are
in the upper and right-hand part, and they are in the lower and
left; for the place from which these bodies start is on the opposite
side--since they move in the opposite direction-so that we are at
the beginning and they at the end. (De caelo 2.2)
There are a number of ideas here of particular relevance for any
discussion of Dante’s universe, especially the Aristotelian concept of
inverse orientation. In reference to the pole “which we see above us,” that
is, what we call the Arctic Circle or “North” Pole, Aristotle says it is the in
“ the lowest part” of the heavenly sphere. This means that “the one which
is invisible to us is uppermost.” In other words, what was regarded in the
Middle Ages as the habitable universe, what Dante called "terra
discoperta” (Cgnyivio 3.5.8) and what we call the northern hemisphere, is
at the bottom in relation to the heavenly sphere. According to this
orientation, then, what we call Antarctica or the “South” Pole and what the
medieval astrologers and cartographers considered to be uninhabitable
and covered by water, is at the top. in relation to the heavenly sphere.
Obviously, terrestrial cardinal directions are completely perspectival and
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relative to one’s vantage point. This is manifestly not the case, however,
with ultimate directions--Aristotle’s “top” and “bottom,” for example, or
Freccero’s “absolute spiral direction” (75) to which I referred earlier.
These are forever fixed and immovable, just like the earth at the center of
the universe, as Dante indicated in the Convivio. There he sides with
Aristotle over Plato, who felt that the earth had some axial movement:
E le sue ragioni, che Aristotile dice a rompere costoro e affermare
la veritade, non e mia intenzione qui narrare, perche assai basta
a la gente a cu’ io parlo, per la sua grande autoritade sapere che
questa terra e fissa e non si gira, e che essa col mare e centro del
cielo.
Questo cielo si gira intorno a questo centro continuamente, si
come noi vedemo; ne la cui girazione conviene di necessitade
essere due poli fermi, e uno cerchio equalmente distante da
quelli, che massimamente giri. Di questi due poli, I’uno e
manifesto quasi a tutta la terra discoperta, cioe questo
settentrionale; I’altro e quasi a tutta la discoperta celato, cioe lo
meridionale. (3.5.7-8)
(“It is not my intention to here to recount the proofs that Aristotle
speaks in order to refute those men [i.e., Plato] and to affirm the
truth, because it is quite enough for those people to whom I
speak to know on his great authority that this earth is fixed and
does not turn, and that with the sea [the uninhabitable “ southern”
hemisphere] it is the center of heaven.
Heaven turns round this center continuously, as we see; in this
revolution there must of necessity be two fixed poles, and one
circle equidistant from them which turns the more swiftly [the
equator]. Of these two poles one, namely the northern one, is
visible to almost all of the uncovered land [the habitable
hemisphere]; the other pole, namely the southern one, is hidden
from nearly all of the uncovered land.”)
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Dante’s “ terra discoperta” equates with Aristotle’s “lowest part,” which is
“ the one we see above us.” That is, we are at the bottom half of the
Philosopher’s celestial sphere, although on the “top” half of the earth.
Hence, when the pilgrim sets out on his journey-indeed, during the whole
of his trip— his absolute, Aristotelian, eschatological direction is u& even
though, relatively speaking, he travels down through hell. I therefore
agree with John Freccero, who postulates: “From this argument, absurd to
us, but nevertheless authoritative for Dante, it is clear that the pilgrim is
traveling upwards, even during his descent into hell, for true ‘up’ in the
cosmos is ‘down’ to us. . (73).
Further support of this contention of an inverse Dantean universal view
emerges when we consider Dante’s placement of the mount of Purgatory
in the uninhabited, but “nobler,” hemisphere of water. As M.A. Orr wrote so
long ago:
This original conception is an extraordinary gain, both from the
artistic and the allegorical points of view; and it is in harmony with
the idea of Aristotle, and of many mediaeval writers, that the
southern hemisphere was the ‘nobler’ part of Earth. Here, then,
man was permitted to dwell before the Fall, and hither come
repentant souls, saved from Hell, but not yet pure enough to enter
Heaven. [.. .]
Nowhere does he describe this scheme in full, but it was
evidently clear in his own mind, and by following him step by step
in his own journey it is easily reconstructed. . . . (353-54)
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Although I do not agree that this Aristotelian connection “is easily
reconstructed,” there is rather solid ground upon which to base such a
conjecture. In the Quaestio de aaua et terra Dante’s views on the noble
nature of the southern hemishphere are made quite clear:
Secunda Ratio §IV. Nobiliori corpori debetur nobilior locus; aqua
est nobilius corpus quam terram: ergo aquae debetur nobilior
locus. Et cum locus tanto sit nobilior, quanto superior, propter
magis propinquare nobilissimo continenti, qui est ccelum primum;
ergo etc. Relinquo, quod locus aquae sit altior loco terrae, et per
consequens quod aqua sit altior terra, quum situs loci et locati
non differat. Major et minor principalis syllogismi hujus rationis
quasi manifeste dimittebantur. (418)
(“Second argument: To the nobler body the nobler place is due.
Water is a nobler body than earth, therefore the noble place is
due to water. And since the place is noble in proportion as it is
higher, because it is nearer to the most noble envelope, which is
the first heaven; therefore, etc. It remains that the place of water
is loftier than the place of earth, and secondly that water is loftier
than earth, since the position of the place and of the thing placed
is identical. The major and minor of the chief syllogism of this
argument were taken as obvious” [Wicksteed 392].)
And further on we see Dante’s response to this, the “Secunda Ratio,” in
which he concedes that the “minor principalis syllogismi” is true: “Ad
secundum, cum dicebatur: Nobiliori corpori debetur nobilior locus, dico
quod verum est secundum propriam naturam; et concedo minorem. .
(“As for the second, when it is said: The nobler place is fitting for the
nobler body,’ I say that it is true as far as concerns their proper nature; and
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I grant the minor. . .” ) (Quaestio 523. 446, my emphasis). And so, as Orr
suggests,
Aristotle tells us that he considers the sphere of the Universe to
have a top and a bottom, and that the Pole which is not seen by
us (the south) is at the top. One cannot help thinking that Dante
had this in mind when he chose the southern hemisphere for the
mount of Purgatory, whither, after all their mistakes and
wrongdoing on this underside of the earth, souls go to purify
themselves on the upper side, under the stars of the southern
pole. (105)
Aristotle defines “up” for us and relates it both to points on the earth and to
this planet’s position within the immobile celestial sphere, the eighth
heaven: “ We however apply up. to the extremity of the world, which is both
uppermost in position and primary in nature; and since the world has both
an extremity and a center, there clearly must be an up and down” (De
caelo 4.1). As this passage indicates, what we call the “southern”
hemisphere, that “ which is . . . uppermost in position” for Aristotle, is also
the one which is “primary in nature,” what Dante called the “nobler place,”
the “nobilio locus” (Quaestio $23. 446). In his discussion of Purgatory’s
location, Peter Hawkins has compared Dante to his cartographic
contemporaries:
What we find in this extraordinarily dense act of myth-making is a
blend of topography, sacred history, and belief--a treatement of
geography as a kind of scriptural exegesis-that links Dante to the
cartographers of the mappaemundi. In the art of both, theology
generates landscape and faith has the power both to invent
mountains and to cast them into the midst of the sea. No space is
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neutral. Rather, it becomes the occasion for Christian doctrine to
take on a local habitation and a name; for event to become
place. . . . Jerusalem and Eden share a common horizon line so
that geography can show the redeeming link between one
testament of scripture and the other. (“Circumference” 7)
While I agree that “theology generates landscape” and that “ geography as
a kind of scriptural exegesis” is at work in the Commedia. it is clear that
more emphasis should be placed upon Dante’s apparent knowledge of
the physical sciences. Although he did combine the Mount of Purgatory
with the Earthly Paradise, he did not put this construction in the east (the
“ top” of the map) where it usually appears on medieval mappaemundi. at
least not on those of the T-O variety like the Ebstorf or Hereford world
maps. The reason that his invented mountain was “ cast into the midst of
the [southern] sea” is that it was the nobler hemisphere. What better place
to locate the Earthly Paradise than in the single most inaccessible,
uninhabited part of the terraqueous globe, a locus positioned symbolically
and oriented cartographically so that it pointed the way to heaven-that is
to say, up?1 Q
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III
E come quei che con lena affanata,
uscito fuor del pelago a la riva,
si volge a I’acqua perigliosa e guata,
cosi I’animo mio, ch’ancor fuggiva,
si volse a retro a rimirar lo passo
che non lascio gia mai person viva.
(Inferno 1.21-26)
(“And as he who has escaped from the depths to the shore with
laboring breath turns back to look upon perilous waters, so was
my mind, which was still fleeing, turned back to gaze upon the
pass fil pelaaol that never let anyone live.” )
This, the first simile in the Commedia. adumbrates the sense of
separation from the living that the pilgrim experiences as well as his
alienation from God at the poem’s outset. He is a man alone, much like
the historical Dante writing in exile. Combining this with the poem’s
dominant image of the gyre, we may label the pilgrim both alienus Dei and
qyrovaqus.19 a wanderer much like those monks so despicably described
by Benedict of Nursia in the Reaula Benedicti:
Quartum vero genus est monachorum quod nominatur
gyrovagum, qui tota vita sua per diversas provincias ternis aut
quaternis diebus per diversorum cellas hospitantur, semper vagi
et numquam stabiles, et propriis volantatibus et gulae illecebris
servientes, et per omnia deteriores sarabaitis. (1.10-11)
(“Fourth and finally, there is the type of monk which is called the
gyrovague; these spend their entire lives drifting from region to
region, staying as a guest for three or four days in different
monastaries. Always on the move, they never settle down, and
are slaves to their own wills and gross appetites. In every way
they are worse than sarabites.”)2o
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Here in the early cantos the pilgrim is no better than Ulysses, who--
according to Dante--was killed for transgressing the bounds of the known
world, for sailing beyond the pillars of Hercules. The ship of this
avrovaaus per gloria is spun round three times before being sucked under
the waves by a whirlpool:
. . n’apparve una montagna, bruna
per la distanza, e parvemi alta tanto
quanto veduta non avea alcuna.
Noi ci allegrammo, e tosto torno in pianto;
che de la nova terra un turbo nacque
e percosse del legno il primo canto.
Tre volte il fe girar con tutte I’acque;
a la quarta levar la poppa in suso
e la prora ire in giu, com’ altrui piacque,
infin che ‘I mar fu sovra noi richiuso.”
(Inferno 26.133-42, my emphases)
C “. . . in the distance there appeared to us a dark mountain, and it
seemed to me that I had never seen one so high. We rejoiced,
but our joy soon turned into grief, because from the new land a
storm [or a whirlwind] [was born] and struck the forepart of the
ship. It whirled her round with all the waters three times, and the
fourth time it lifted the stern aloft and plunged the prow below until
the sea closed over us, so as to please another. ” ’)2i
Ulysses’ function as the pilgrim’s antithesis, as negative exemplum for the
reader, and the complex web of intertextual references back to the first
canto have all been well charted.22 Here I only point out the way in which
the whirlwind or gyral image links the two “ sailors.” The whirlpool which is
created by the ‘“turbo” ’ pulls Ulysses down into a watery vortex, “‘il fe girar
con tutte racque’”--a gyre swirling round an axis which pulls him in the
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opposite direction to that round which the pilgrim travels and in the same
direction which Lucifer fell: down from heaven, into and through the
southern hemisphere.22 This Dantean fiction, this manipulation of
tradition, serves admirably well to reinforce the validity of his character’s
journey while breaking legendary boundaries to do it. Or, as Peter
Hawkins writes: “Given all this, it is possible to see Dante connecting the
dots of tradition in a new but essentially reassuring way; to watch him
break boundaries (narrative and exegetical) in order to reinforce others”
(“Circumference” 15).
IV
Poi che fu piacere de li cittadini de la bellissima e famosissima
figlia di Roma, Fiorenza, di gittarmi fuori del suo dolce seno--nel
quale nate e nutrito fui in fino al colmo de la vita mia, e nel quale,
con buona pace di quella, desidero con tutto lo cuore di riposare
I’animo stancato e terminare lo tempo che m’e dato--, per le parti
quasi tutte a le quali questa lingua si stende, oerearino. quasi
mendicano. sono andato. . . .
(Convivio 1.3.4).
(“Since it pleased the citizens of the most famous and beautiful
daughter of Rome, Florence, to throw me out of her sweet bosom--
where I was born and bred until the summit of my life, and where,
with her good graces, I desire to rest my weary mind and to end
the time which is allotted me--l have wandered like a pilgrim, like
a beggar through almost all the parts of this region where our
tongue extends. . . .”)
As this passage from his Convivio shows. Dante gyrovagus was a bitter
exile, one who described himself as a “peregrino,” a “pilgrim” almost as
259
destitute as a “mendicano” or a “beggar.” What he considered this unjust
“pena . . . d’essilio e di povertate” (Convivio 1.3.3), (the “pain . . . of exile
and poverty”), undoubtedly had a profound impact upon him. Indeed, as I
indicated above, the “shipwrecked” pilgrim of canto one Inferno is
alienated from both civilization and God. It is precisely as Giuseppe
Mazzotta has written, “Exile for the poet... is also the very condition of his
text, its most profound metaphor” (Desert 145): displacement drives him to
record his experience as both a didactic exemplum for his readers and as
a means of recapturing something of the original journey for himself.24 As
he progresses through the three cosmic spaces, his distance from
humankind-both physical and metaphorical— increases as he draws
closer to God. Gerhardt B. Ladner discusses what for the Middle Ages
were the two dominant levels of alienation: “. . . we must then remember
that mediaeval thought had derived from its early Christian sources not
one, but two ideas of alienation, and was to make them lastingly its own:
estrangement from God and estrangement from the world” (237-38). This
is echoed in a different context by Christian Zacher: “Pilgrims . . . also saw
themselves (and were so imagined by poets and moralists) as moving
allegorically in a one-way journey through life to truth and heavenly bliss”
(50). Dante’s pilgrim is an excellent example, perhaps the ultimate
example, of Ladner’s bipartite definition of separation and Zacher’s “one
way journey.” This terrestrial “pilgrimage,” what Augustine called “istam
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peregrinationem” (PL 24,458-86)--the wanderings which are analagous to
the ocular journey that we took round the Hereford map in chapter one-
this is not the true life journey for the Christian viator. Ladner cites Gregory
the Great’s Moralia on this:
At contra justi. . . sic . . . temporaii refoventur subsidio, sicut viator
in stabulo utitur lecto: pausat et recedere festinat; quiescit
corpore, sed ad aliud tendit mente. [. . .] Justi itaque hie se
construere negligunt, ubi peregrinos se et hospites noverunt.
Quia enim in propriis gaudere desiderant, esse in alieno felices
recusant. (PL 75.857C-858A)
(“. . . temporal comfort on this earth is to the just man what the bed
in an inn is to the viator, to the traveller on his journey: he will rest
in it bodily, but mentally he is already somewhere else. [. . .] The
just, therefore, do not settle for good in this world-they know that
they are only pilgrims and guests in it. They desire to rejoice
where they belong and cannot be happy in a foreign land.” )
(Ladner 235-36)
Dante’s pilgrim is not Ulysses, he is no voyager for fame (not to the same
extent anyway), no transgressive deceptor but a viator chosen by God,
someone who “was chosen in the heaven of the Empyrean,” (“ne
I'empireo ciel per padre eletto”), (Inferno 2.21). He is no longer Aeneas,
an essentially guideless wanderer. Nor is he Jason, for he expects that
upon his return from exile he will bring back a “ vello,” a manuscript “fleece”
of a different kind. His return and reportorial responsibility are divinely
mandated, as the light of Cacciaguida informs him:
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. . . “ Conscienza fusca
o de la propria o de I’altrui vergogna
pur sentira la tua parola brusca.
Ma nondimen, rimossa ogne menzogna,
tutta tua vision fa manifesta;
e lascia pur grattar dov’ e la rogna.
Che se la voce tua sara molesta
nel primo gusto, vital nodrimento
lascera poi, quando sara digesta.” (Paradiso 17.124-32)
(“‘A conscience which is dark with either its own or someone
else’s shame will certainly consider your speech harsh. But
nevertheless, set aside all falsehood and make manifest your
entire vision; and let them scratch where they itch. For if your
voice is at first injurious, it shall leave vital nourishment when it is
digested.”')
We see, then, that the poet surpasses Paul, clearly the preferred apostolic
predecessor, who was told not to report what he saw. Dante had hoped,
and would have us believe, that this sacred “ vello” would benefit all who
read it and that he would be crowned with the laurel for presenting his
vision:
Se mai continga che ‘I poema sacro
al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra,
si che m’ha fatto per moiti anni macro,
vinca la crudelta che fuor mi serra
del bello ovile ov’ io dormi’ agnello,
nimico ai lupi che i danno guerra;
con altra voce omai, con altro velio
ritornero ooeta. e in sul fonte
del mia battesmo prenderd ‘I cappello;
pero che ne la fede, che fa conte
I’anime a Dio, quivi intra’ io. . . .
(Paradiso 25.1-11, my emphasis)
262
(“If It ever happens that the sacred poem which heaven and earth
have set hand to so that It has made me lean over the years
should overcome the cruelty which keeps me from the fair
sheepfold where as a lamb I slept, an enemy to the wolves that
make war upon it, I will return a poet with changed voice and
changed fleece. At my baptismal font I will take the wreath.
Because it was there that I entered into the faith that makes souls
known to God. . . .”)
By virtue of his being banned from intellectual and theological communion
with those to whom he felt closest, Dante produced a text which could
have--and, to his way of thinking, should have-had an enormous impact
on those of his birthplace. Mazzotta writes of this poetical truth and its
transmission:
. . . Dante’s exile from the city is linked with the poetic act and is
described as the transmission of truth to the people. [. . .] It is an
act central to the idea of community because through the poetic
discourse Dante acts upon the world by being outside of it.
(Desert 138).
Unfortunately for Dante, he was unable correctly to characterize his
return from exile, unlike the “ future” events about which his pilgrim seems
so prescient in Inferno, those historical incidents which predated the
poem’s composition. His return, this event that lay in the real future (note
above the future constructions “ritornero” and “prendero”), was nothing like
the successful reconciliation with his beloved Florence for which he had
hoped Although he was less than successful at displaying his new
“ fleece,” Dante’s poem is nonetheless a brilliant failure, one that is
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remarkably successful at showing us his unshowable “vision,” the Italian
cognate for the very term Augustine used in his gloss on the raotus Pauli.
Ill
Videmus nunc per speculum in aenigmate;
tunc autem facie ad faciem. Nunc cognosco
ex parte; tunc autem cognoscam sicut et
cognitus sum. (1Cor.13.12)
(“ We see now in a mirror darkly; but then we shall see face to
face. My knowledge now is partial; then I shall know clearly, and I
shall be known.”)
In his explication of the raptus Pauli (De Genesi ad litteram 12)25 the
event that David Thompson calls, “ the great exemplar of visio
intellectualis. that is, the direct, unmediated, and indescribable knowledge
of God which Dante himself attains at the end of his journey” (77),
Augustine wrote of a tripartite process leading to spiritual enlightenment,
one in which the individual passes through three stages: from the visio
corporalis to the visio soiritualis and then the visio intellectualis-the
confrontation with God facie ad faciem:
Quanquam itaque in eadem anima fiant visiones, sive quae
sentiuntur per corpus, sicut hoc corporeum caelum, terra, et
quaecumque in eis nota esse possunt, quemadmodum possunt;
sive quae spiritu videntur similia corporum, de quibus multa jam
diximus; sive cum mente intelliguntur, quae nec corpora sunt, nec
similitudines corporum; habent utique ordinem suum, et est aliud
alio praecellentius. Praestantior est enim visio spiritualis quam
corporalis, et rursus praestantior intellectualis quam spiritualis.
Corporalis enim sine spirituali esse non potest; quandoquidem
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momento eodem quo corpus sensu corporis tangitur, fit etiam in
animo tale aliquid, non quod hoc sit, sed quod simile sit; quod si
non fieret, nec sensus ille esset, quo ea quae extrinsecus
adjacent, sentiuntur. Neque enim corpus sentit, sed anima per
corpus, quo velut nuntio utitur ad formandum in seipsa quod
extrinsecus nuntiatur. Non potest itaque fieri visio corporalis, nisi
etiam spiritualis simul fiat: sed non discernitur, nisi cum fuerit
sensus ablatus a corpore, ut id quod per corpus videbatur,
inveniatur in spiritu. At vero spiritualis visio etiam sine corporal!
fieri potest, cum absentium corporum similitudines in spiritu
appareat, et finguntur multae pro arbitrio, vel praeter arbitrium
demonstrantur. Item spiritualis visio indiget intellectuali ut
dijudicetur, intellectualis autem ista spirituali inferiore non indiget;
ac per hec spirituali corporalis, intellectuali autem utraque
subjectaest. (PL 34, 474B.24.51-475A.24.51)
(“In one and the same soul, then, there are different visions: by
means of the body it perceives objects such as the corporeal
heaven and earth and everything that can be known in them in
the degree that they are capable of being known; with the spirit it
sees likenesses of bodies-a matter that I have already discussed
at length; and with the mind it understands those realities that are
neither bodies nor likenesses of bodies. But there is, of course, a
hierarchy in these visions, one being superior to another. For
spiritual vision is more excellent than corporeal, and intellectual
vision more excellent than spiritual. Corporeal vision cannot take
place without spiritual, since at the very moment when we
encounter a body by means of bodily sensation, there appears in
the soul something not identical with the object perceived but
resembling it. If this did not happen, there would be no sensation
by which exterior objects are perceived.
For it is not the body that perceives, but the soul by means of
the body; and the soul uses the body as a sort of messenger in
order to form within itself the object that is called to its attention
from the outside world. Hence corporeal vision cannot take place
unless there is a concomitant spiritual vision; but no distinction is
made between the two until the bodily sensation has passed and
the object perceived by means of the body is found in the spirit.
On the other hand, there can be spiritual vision without corporeal
vision, namely, when the likenesses of absent bodies appear in
the spirit, and when many such images are fashioned by the free
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activity of the soul or are presented to it in spite of itself.
Moreover, spiritual vision needs intellectual vision if a judgment is
to be made upon its contents, but intellectual vision does not
need the spiritual, which is of a lower order.” [Taylor 213-14])
As we can see, he does not limit “visio” to the physical act of seeing.
The term denotes more the transcendental sense of illumination, ultimately
of integration into the Godhead. Francis X. Newman glosses this passage
j
for us: i
i
i
The first of these is the visio corporalis. the literal sight of the eye
or, more generally, knowledge by means of the external senses.
The second is the visio spiritualis or imaainativa. knowledge by
means of the imagination. In ‘spiritual’ vision we do not see
bodies themselves, but images that have corporeal shape without
corporeal substance. Dreams, for example, are a sub-class of the
visio spiritualis. The third and highest of the classes of vision is
intellectualis. the direct cognition of realities such as God, the
angels, caritas. etc., which have neither corporeal substance nor
corporeal shape. (59)
Only certain sorts of things are visible under each degree of vision, as the
following table indicates:
1. in ocular vision:
terrestria and caelestia:
2. in spiritual vision:
natural iter visa and demonstrata ab anaelis:
3. in intellectual vision:
intellectualis in ipsa anima and Deus illuminans.
(Taylor 316, n. 155)
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These correspond quite nicely to the three cantiche. with “terrestria” and
“caelestia” matching Inferno's physical nature and the view of the stars with
which it concludes: . . le cose belle /che porta ‘I del. . (“. . . the
beautiful things that heaven holds. . .” (34.137-38). Level two and
Puraatorio mesh in the same way, as the encounters with the various
angels coincide with the “demonstrata ab anaelis” and the pilgrim’s
dreams with the “naturaliter visa.” Finally, Paradiso’s visio Dei conforms to
the “Deus illuminans” as well as the “intellectualis in ipsa anima.”
There are, however, a number of other things relative to this last level
that Newman does not mention, abstract entities crucial to a definition of
visio intellectualis that Augustine himself specifies:
Quo enim alio modo ipse intellectus nisi intelligendo conspicitur?
fta et charitas, gaudium, pax, longanimitas, benignitas, bonitas,
fides, mansuetudo, continentia, et caetera hujusmodi, quibus
propinquatur Deo: et ipse Deus, ex quo omnia, per quern omnia,
in quo omnia. . . .
(PL 34, 474.24B.50)
(“How else but by intellection can the intellect be seen? In this
way [are seen] charity, joy, peace, forebearance, kindness,
goodness, faith, meekness, continency and the rest, by which we
come near to God: and God himself, from whom are all things,
through whom are all things, in whom are all things. . . .”)
The celestial space of the Paradiso. if we may call it such, is composed of
love, which Dante renders as pure light.26 Under God’s love/light, which
pervades all of creation in much the same way that we now understand
light to pervade the cosmos, are subsumed these other qualities
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mentioned by Augustine, including God himself. In turn, all of these
abstractions are found in the members of the celestial rose who
condescend to appear as differentiated points of light for the pilgrim’s
benefit. These incorporeal substances are what the pilgrim “sees,” not
their corporeal shapes.
To reach the last level, one must be guided and move sequentially
through the first two: “. . . potest etiam fieri, ut etiam in spiritualibus vel
intellectualibus multos quosdam gradus quisquam esse comendat, aut si
possit ostendat, eosque distinctos juxta aliquem provectum magis
minusve illustrium revelationum” (PL 34, 479A.29.57). (“. . . one can even
hold that in spiritual or intellectual visions there are many grades and that
these are distinguished by a progression of revelation under the guidance
of greater or lesser illumination”). This progression through Dante’s
tripartite “centric system” (Arnheim 226) is vital and contains two “centers
of attention” (Arnheim 37) as I referred to them in my discussion of the
Hereford map. That is, there are two moments where major sections of the
journey are completed, one in hell and the other in purgatory. However,
neither of these is the poem’s terminal center. Only the third central point--
the middle of the celestial rose-is the true center (and simultaneously the
circumference of all creation), as the Last Judgment is on the map.
Francis X. Newman calls these endpoints “ centripetal moments,” which fits
nicely into my discussion of the Commedia’s tripartite gryral structure:
268
Each of the three major divisions of the action is arranged so that
in order to understand the structure of the poem we must perceive
that it has three points of climax, three centripetal moments of
vision, within the larger movement toward finality. The first two of
these visions are not terminal, but point beyond themselves and
require the pilgrim to journey further until he reaches the third and
final vision which is an end in itself. (58)
The pilgirm’s escorts to these loci are well known, and their functions
are mediated for the reader by the poet, the reader’s primary guide, who
operates much like Statius says Virgil did for him: “‘Facesti come quei che
va di notte, / che porta if lume dietro e se non giova, ma dopo se fa le
persone dotte”’ (Puraatorio 22.67-69), (‘“You have done as one who goes
by night, carrying his light behind him and not benefiting himself, but
making wise those who follow him”’). If nothing else, Dante meant the
Commedia to be didactic, to make the reader wise in a practically
illuminating way. In his letter to Can Grande della Scala, he discusses this
function of his poem and again cites Aristotle:
Genus philosophise sub quo hie in toto et parte proceditur est
morale negotium, sive ethica; quia non ad speculandum, sed ad
opus inventum est totum et pars. Nam si et in aliquo loco vel
passu pertractatur ad modum speculativi negotii, hoc non est
gratia speculativi negotii, sed gratia operis; quia ut ait
Philosophus in secundo Metaphvsicorum: ‘ad aliquid et nunc
speculantur practici aliquando.’ (Epistola 10.16)
(“The branch of philosphy which determines the procedure of the
work as a whole and in this part is moral philosophy, or ethics,
inasmuch as the whole and this part have been conceived for the
sake of practical results, not for the sake of speculation. So even
if some parts or passages are treated in the manner of
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speculative philosophy, this is not for the sake of the theory, but
for a practical purpose, following that principle which the
Philosopher advances in the second book of the Metaphysics
[2.1], that ‘practical men sometimes speculate about things in
their particular and temporal relations.”’ [Haller 102])
Dante the poet went alone into the dark night of spiritual uncertainty and
returned to write the Commedia. through which we may follow his alter
ego, who leads us, while carrying the poet’s lamp behind him to light our
spiral way.
Although the visio corporalis is fallible, it is through the sense of sight
that the process starts, and it must be noted that the topos of vision is
central to the pilgrim’s progress throughout: “The senses are, in effect, not
merely gateways to the intellect, but lower forms in a continuous hierarchy
of faculties of knowing, unified by light” (Mazzeo, “Light” 82). Also, sight
functions for Augustine (and for Dante), “as a synechdoche for all sense
perception” (Zacher 28), so that the pilgrim experiences true ocular sight,
smells foul odors and hears voices and noise in Inferno-all of which add
to his experience of the visio corporalis:
The plot of Inferno is thus a movement toward a center, and at the
center the pilgrim discovers the meaning of the realm in a
climactic and synoptic moment of vision. Regarding the action as
a process of vision, we can say that the emphatically tactile
imagery of Inferno is preparative, a way of readying the pilgrim’s
eyes to see what they see at the bottom of the pit. (Newman 63)
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As he hears voices and music in Puraatorio. the pilgrim continues his
progression from the corporeal to the incorporeal, until in the Empyrean he
does not physically see God, he does not hear the music of the sphere(s),
nor does he touch anything. As I noted above, sight becomes
synecdochal for all means of perception, combining, as it were, to turn the
pilgrim into a super- and supra-sensitive receptor. These cumulative
experiences lead up to Augustine’s visio intellectualis. which cannot be
had until the pilgrim has experienced the entire journey, at least the last
third of which is an accomodative metaphor, by which I mean that in the
Paradiso the pilgrim never really sees any of the images the poet
describes, that"... from the beginning . . . they were not there for the
pilgrim, that the vision that the poet describes was imageless”; and, further,
“ from the very first heaven he shows us . . . that, though we shall see only
images, he saw only substances” (Chiarenza 90). Indeed, the problem
stems from the earthbound poet’s reliance on the medium of language,
which requires appeals to our external senses, to our sense of time and
space. Unfortunately, the Empyreal encounter that he must describe and
the substances that he saw were made manifest to him through his
internal senses, faculties which cannot rely upon the external for re
iteration. Beatrice explains as much to her pupil early on in their journey
through paradise:
271
“Qui si mostraro, non perche sortita
sia questa spera lor, ma per far segno
de la celestial c’ha men salita.
Cosi parlar conviensi al vostro ingegno,
pero che solo da sensato aoprende
cio che fa poscia d'intelletto deano.
Per questo la Scrittura condescende
a vostra facilitate, e piedi e mano
attribuisce a Dio e altro intende;
e Santa Chiesa con aspetto umano
Gabriel e Michel vi rappresenta,
e I’altro che Tobia rifece sano.”
(Paradiso 4.37-48, my emphasis)
(“These showed themselves here, not because this sphere is
assigned to them, but to give you a sign of the celestial level that
is the least blessed. It is necessary to speak in this way to your
mind, because only through sensual apprehension does it
perceive that which it later makes fit for intellection. For this
reason Scripture condescends to the level of your faculties, and
with other meaning, attributes feet and hands to God; and Holy
Church represents with human aspect to you Gabriel and Michael
and the other one who made Tobit whole again.” ’)
In his notes to the Paradiso. Charles Singleton recalls the Aristotelian
dictum, “often stated as the tenet ‘nihil est in intellectu quin prius fuerit in
sensu,’" (“. . . nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses”)
(p.79, n.41). The pilgrim’s sensual progression through the Commedia
demonstrates this process that begins in Inferno and continues until he is
ready to absorb and be subsumed by the final unmediated vision of God.
Until that point everything is staged for his edification and education: God
condescends to make the ineffable sensually acceptable and intellectually
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comprehensible until, as Charles S. Singleton wrote, homo viator
becomes homo comprehensor:
The notion expressed by in via is the same as that which informs
the familiar term homo viator, a conception central to the scheme
of the allegorical journey as Dante represents it. To attain to
patria is to make an end of our pilgrimage in via. It means to pass
from the condition of homo viator to that of homo comprehensor:
and what is comprehended or possessed, or course, is that vision
of God in His essence. (“Beatrice” 21)
The pilgrim attains this level of substantial inner vision only at the end of
the poem when he finally understands, if only for the briefest of instants.
Sensual perception-along with all the laws of Nature-is transcended at
that point, and for a flash in time the pilgrim is totally subsumed in the visio
Dei:
veder voleva come si convenne
I’imago al cerchio e come vi s’indova;
ma non eran da cio proprie penne:
se non che la mia mente fu percossa
da un fulgore in che sua voglia venne.
(Paradiso 33.137-41)
(“I wished to see how the image coincided with the circle and how
it fit; but my wings were not enough for that: but my mind was
struck by a flash in which its wish was granted. ” )27
Augustine’s program, stated in different but analagous terms here by
Singleton, can be lain like a grid over Dante’s text, since the plot of the
Commedia is essentially a process of this sort, an elaborate literary
exemplum of Augustine’s gloss on Genesis in which both reader and
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pilgrim are led by a series of guides to the Empyrean. The fact that the
reader, ideally and vicariously, and the pilgrim, certainly and
experientially, attain to one of these levels of vision in each of the three
cantiche indicates that Dante regarded them as plottable points upon an
ascending continuum, as a literally spiralling progression from potential
damnation to assured illumination and salvation. To illustrate this idea, my
final section concentrates on two seemingly incredible examples from
each cantica. all six of which center on addresses to the reader and
demonstrate the Augustinian idea of progression: the visio corporalis in
Geryon and Lucifer (Inferno 16.127-30 and 34.22-27); the visio soiritualis
in the appearance of the Sun to the pilgrim and his experience of the
imaao Christi. the griffin (Puraatorio 17.1-9 and 31.112-45); and the visio
intellectualis. the visio Dei (Paradiso 10.1-27, 43-48 and canto 33).
V
Si vero per apostolos Christi, ut eis crederetur resurrectionem
atque ascensionem praadicantibus Christi, etiam ista miracula
facta esse non credunt, hoc nobis unum grande miraculum
sufficit, quod earn terrarum orbis sine ullis miraculis credidit.
(De Civitate Dei 22.5).
(“If they do not believe that these miracles were wrought by
Christ’s apostles to confirm their word as they preached the
resurrection and ascension of Christ, then this one miracle is for
us enough, that the world has believed it without any miracles.”)
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The Com media is a marvel of poetic composition, and at its moments of
greatest incredulity Dante the poet directly challenges his reader to
believe the unbelievable, to confront his re-imaging of the ineffable as if it
really happened. We have seen that in his Epistola to Can Grande the
poet intended his Commedia to be instructive, as Benedetto Croce called
it, “la poesia didascalica dantesca” (122). The poet’s addresses to the
reader are intended to generate questions of faith, of trust in his visionary
journalism and, more importantly, a re-evaluation or re-examination of the
faith that they might have brought to the text. Doubt raises its head much
as Geryon does as the beast swirls upward in its gyral path to collect Virgil
and the pilgrim. In this way, Dante’s text functions as a self-examination
for the reader, one much like that administered to the pilgrim by Sts. Peter,
James and John in Paradiso. As the pilgrim passes his exams by giving
the expected answers, as he passes from one realm to another and
approaches the final vision, the reader’s incredulity decreases until we too
are rendered momentarily “intransitive” (Chiampi 39) as this immense,
kinetic narrative machinery comes to a halt. This occurs because the
pilgrim’s doctrinal reiteration is reassuring: even though the poet has
twisted the legend of Ulysses to suit his own needs, broken cartographic-
not to say theological-bounds by populating the uninhabited southern
hemisphere with his purgatorial shades, it generally meshes with received
Catholic dogma. Dante shows us that, miraculous though the Commedia
275
might be, it would be a miracle if we did not believe in it: the Bible was
right, God exists, and he is ultimately approachable-providing that we do
not lose the straight path, “la diritta via” (Inferno 1.3).
There are a number of places in the poem where one could begin to
chart this, but the appearance of Geryon in inferno 16 is the first instance
of the truly outlandish. The pilgrim and Virgil find themselves at the rim of
the Great Barrier and in need of a way down to lower hell, the last of the
three infernal regions with its ten maiebolae. where sinners are punished
for ever-increasing levels of fraud. In their spiral descent through this gyre-
-relative descent, absolute ascent~the travelers have already traversed
the first seven circles of hell, moving from the circumference of hell’s
vestibule to the center of Giudecca. When viewed from above, as the
pilgrim sees them from Geryon’s back, for instance, it is clear that
Malebolge is constructed like a wheel: the ten circles leading down to
Cocytus are divided by seven bridges, all of which are broken as they
cross the sixth bolaia containing the hypocrites.28 These bridges radiate
out from the circumference of Cocytus, where Lucifer is forever centrally
frozen, his lower extemities pointing to heaven. This spatial arrangement
is a diabolic perversion of the celestial sphere with its nine concentric
circles and static Deific center. The broken bridges, the “spokes” of this
infernal wheel, ape the final image in the poem, where the pilgrim sees the
universe from a terrestrial perspective and finds it to be, “come rota
276
ch’igualmente e mossa, / I’amor che move il sole e I’altre stelle” (Paradiso
33.144-45),29 (“like a wheel that is moved harmoniously by the love that
moves the sun and the other stars.”) Here, as Charles Singleton noted,
we have “the image of Aristotle’s unmoved mover, the spheres turning in
desire of him, being moved by desire of him” (Paradiso p. 590, n.145).
And so, as the travelers stand at ”lo stremo” (Inferno 17.32), Virgil
tosses his charge’s belt over the edge while the pilgrim wonders, “‘E’ pur
convien che novita risponda,’ / dicea fra me medesmo, ‘al novo cenno / ch
'I maestro con I’occhio si seconda’” (Inferno 16. 115-17), (“‘Surely,’ I said
to myself, ‘something strange will answer this signal that my master follows
so with his eye’” ). True to form, the strangest vehicle in the Commedia.
“una figura . . . / maravigliosa ad ogne cor sicuro. . (Inferno 16.131-32),
(“a figure . . . amazing to every stalwart heart. . .”) comes “notando . . . in
suso” (inferno 16.131), (“ swimming . . . up”), and Geryon approaches. This
creature is described in detail at the outset of canto 17 like something
dredged from the bottom of the sea. Virgil sounds here like nothing so
much as a sideshow barker when he admonishes the pilgrim to look upon
this freak of Nature, this synthetic creation: “‘Ecco la fiera con la coda
aguzza, / che passa i monti e rompi i muri e I’armi! / Ecco colei che tutto ‘I
mondo appuzza!”’ (Inferno 17.1-3), (“‘Behold the beast with the pointed
tail, which passes mountains, breaking walls and weapons! Behold him
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who makes all the world stink!”’) This bizarre image of fraud is a motley
patchwork of man and painted serpent:
La faccia sua ere faccia d’uom giusto,
tanto benigna avea di fuor la pelle,
e d’un serpente tutto I’altro fusto;
due branche avea pilose insin I’ascelle;
lo dosso e ‘I petto e ambedue le coste
dipinti avea di nodi e di rotelle.
Con piu color, sommesse e sovraposte
non fer mai drappi Tartari ne Turchi,
ne fuor tai tele per Aragne imposte.
(Inferno 17.10-18, my emphases)
(“His face was the face of a man, so complaisant was its outward
appearance, and all of the rest of his trunk serpentine; he had two
paws which were hairy to his armpits; his back and chest and
both sides were painted with knots and small wheels. The Turks
or the Tartars never made a fabric with such color, so well woven,
nor were such webs spun by Arachne.”)
Faced with this incredible apparition-we read as the pilgrim looks into
the human-yet-nonhuman face of fraud, a face connected to a fabulous
body with a venomous tail coiled behind ready to strike--the poet asks the
reader to trust him, to trust this literary voyage and what it sets out to
represent. What better infernal example, with perhaps the exception of
Lucifer, is there of Augustine's visio corporalis? This is, after all, the
creature on whose back the poet swears he rode down to Malebolge: “ ma
qui tacer nol posso; e per le note / di questa comedia, lettor. ti aiuro. / s’elle
non sien di lunga grazia vote. . ." (Inferno 16.127-29. my emphases), (“but
here I cannot be silent; and by the notes of this Comedv. reader, I swear to
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you, so that they may not fail of lasting favor. . There was no need for “ti
giuro” unless Dante knew--indeed, expected--his “lettor” to doubt his word.
Dante knew that the singular strangeness of this creature would be
surpassed by the vision of Lucifer frozen in the pit of hell-not engulfed in
flames as convention would have us expect— and with the vision of Geryon
prepares us for it. If we have little faith in the vision of Geryon, what will we
make of Lucifer, what will we make of the rest of the Commedia--in
particular of the visio intellectualis? Incredulous though we may be, the
poet will school us from his own unique perspective on Catholic doctrine,
as we progress with him toward this vision.
The travelers mount Geryon, and Virgil instructs the reptilian shuttle to
proceed on its gyral course down to Malebolge: ‘“Gerion, moviti omai: / le
rote larghe, e lo scender sia poco; / pensa la nova some che tu hai’”
(17.97-99, my emphasis), (“‘Geryon, move along now: let your wheels be
wide and your descent slow; think of the new burden which you have’” ).
This might be the best instance for the reader to imagine the spiral motion
which Virgil and the pilgrim follow in their journey to the center of the earth:
they leave the ledge of the Great Barrier and fly out into the cone, round
and down through the gyre that is hell: “Ella sen va notando lenta lenta; /
rota e discende. . (“He goes on swimming slowly; wheels and descends
. . (Inferno 17.115-16. my emphasis). And, “E vidi poi, che nol vedea
davanti / lo scendere e ‘I qirar per li gran mali / ch s’appressavan da
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diversi canti,” (“And then I saw that which I had not seen before, the
descending and the circling through the great evil which drew near us
from either side” (Inferno 17.124-27, my emphasis). Thus, the image their
flight inscribes on hell’s murky air is a spiral one, and the salvifically
antithetical image of Ulysses’ “ turbo” is again evoked by “ girar” here, as is
the divine wheel, the “rota” of the Commedia’s final image conjured by
“rotelle,” “rote” and “rota.”
As they descend, the circumference of their wheeling motion decreases
until they touch down at Cocytus, from where they make their way to the
ultimate pit, Giudecca. If, as Augustine said, Moses could see God in the
visio corporalis-even in a burning bush-we might well ask if God can be
discerned in Geryon. Aside from the standard, “God is in all of his
creation,” the answer would have to be in the negative. In the
Commedia’s proaressus per visiones. Geryon serves only to prepare the
reader for the appearance of Lucifer, in whom we can see God. Actually,
God is defined in this vision through his antithesis: Dante’s Lucifer is not a
metaphor of or symbol for God, not the speculum Dei, not the Trinity, not
love, not hope, not charity, neither light nor any longer the bringer of light,
not order, not stasis, not calm, not peace, not harmony-the list of negative
descriptors is as infinite as God is ineffable and indescribable. And so,
just as the descriptio Dei can never be complete, the contrary descriptio
Satanus can never be complete. Given these considerations and the fact
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that he is anything but incorporeal we can say with Francis X. Newman
that, “The confrontation with Satan is the ultimate exercise of the visio
corporalis since Satan is the ultimate center of corporeality” (65).
As we saw in the section on Geryon, Virgil barks at his charge, with his
admonition echoing his earlier one and “ecco” opening each imperative:
“‘Ecco Dite,’ dicendo ed ecco il loco / ove convien che di fortezza t’armi”’
(Inferno 34.20-21). (“‘Behold Dis! [Satan]’ [he was] saying, and behold the
place where you must arm yourself with courage”'). Once again Dante
addresses his reader at the moment of highest incredulity--just as his
pilgrim comes upon Lucifer.
Com’ io divenni allor gelato e fioco
nol dimandar. lettor. ch’i’ non lo scrivo,
pero ch’oane parlar sarebbe poco.
lo non mori’ e non rimasi vivo;
pensa oaaimai per te. s’hai fior d’ingegno,
qual io divenni, d’uno e d’altro privo.
(Inferno 34.22-27, my emphases)
(“How frozen and faint I then became, ask not, reader, for I do not
write it, because all words would fail. I was not dead nor did I
remain alive: now think for yourself, if you have any wit, what I
became, deprived of both the one and the other.”)
This address to the reader is more intense, more insistent, as my
emphases indicate under “ dimandar” and “pensa.” Here is no mere oddity
like Geryon: this is the one and only Satan, “Belzebu” (Inferno 34.127),
cause of all the world’s troubles. The address to the readers insures that
they had best pay close attention to this dramatic manifestation of the visio
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corporalis. to this perversion of the “una sustanza in tre persone. . .,’’ (“the
one substance in three persons. . .”) (Purgatorjo 3.36). The sight of Satan
is so truly horrific that the poet cannot explain how he felt-he too freezes
as the ineffability topos fills in for a description of his/the pilgrim’s mental
state. He is not, however, at a loss to tell his reader at great length how
this anti-Christ looks (34.28-60). At this point we and the pilgrim have
experienced the worst of the coporeal universe, he firsthand, we once
removed through the veil of Dante’s verse. After this initial encounter, we
are ready to move with the pilgrim to Augustine’s second level of
cognition, to the visio soiritualis.
V.i
“Fa che le viste non risparmi;
posto t’avem dinanzi a li smeraldi
ond’ Amor gia trasse le sue armi.”
(Purgatono 31.115-17)
(“Do not spare your sight; we have placed you before the
emeralds from which Love once shot his darts at you.” )
Just as the topographical placement of the Earthly Paradise on the
Hereford Mappa Mundi served to connect our optical crossing from the
terrestrial to the celestial, Dante’s upwardly-spiralling Mount of Purgatory
functions as a transitional zone between Inferno’s realm of darkness and
negation and Paradiso’s realm of light and affirmation.so The reader is
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again directly summoned to participate vicariously, here to continue as
perearinus and ascend the Mount with Dante’s pilgrim while he follows his
bipartite progressive path-twofold because it is composed of the
topographical and the spiritual, the two being inextricably linked in this
text. To restate the already apparent, without spiralling down the infernal
gyre and then ascending the purgatorial cone, the pilgrim cannot move
from the visio corporalis to the visio intellectualis. Francis X. Newman has
noted that this intermediate space is crucial to the pilgrim’s progress, since
it is the bridge between the corporeal and the incorporeal, between these
two first levels of deific cognition: “The passage from Hell to Purgatory is
an entry into the light and thereby into a realm which calls for a different
kind of vision. The culminating action of Puraatorio is not a vision of
corporalia. but of spiritualia. in Augustine’s sense of the terms” (66).
Puraatorio 17 is unquestionably the locus ootimus from which to view
these transitions. This is the literal center of the Commedia. the canto in
which the crucial doctrine of love as motive force is expounded by Virgil
and the one in which the pilgrim metaphorically comes out of his
perceptual fog to see the sun, thereby adumbrating the poem’s final vision.
This is such a monumental occurence that Dante again challenges his
reader, in the imperative, to confront and to participate in his pilgrim’s
spiritual metamorphosis:
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Ricorditi. lettor. se mai ne I'alpe
ti colse nebbia per la qual vedessi
non altrimenti che per pelle talpe,
come, quando i vaporl umide e spessi
a diradar cominciansi, la spera
del sol debilemente entra per essi;
e fia la tua imagine leggera
in giugnere a veder com’ io rividi
lo sole in oria. che gia nel corcar era.
Si, pareggiando i miei co’ passi fidi
del mio maestro, usci’ fuor di tai nube
ai raggi morti gia ne’ bassi lidi.
(Puraatorio 17. 1 -9, my emphases)
(“Recall, reader, if ever in the mountains a mist has caught you,
through which you could not see except as moles do through the
skin, how, when the moist dense vapors begin to dissipate, the
sphere of the sun enters feebly through them, and your
imagination will quickly come to see how, at first, I saw the sun
again, which was now setting. So, matching mine to the trusty
steps of my master, I came forth from such a fog to the rays which
were already dead on the low shores.”)3i
The reader is expected here to match both imaginative faculty and
metaphorical steps with the pilgrim, to follow spiritually and “physically” in
his ascent.32 Here the poet likens the pilgrim’s mental state to that of a
man in an alpine fog, a state in which imagination cannot function
because the fog of corporeality and faulty vision blocks the light of God. A
glimpse of the primal star, of enlightenment, is necessary to drive away the
confusion of the “nebbia” before confronting the solar brilliance facie ad
faciem. This is “ fantasia,” the visio spiritualis. and is it fittingly situated in
this transitional space as the middle order of cognition, since it combines
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both external and internal modes of sensory perception. Here in
purgatory, “off the map” as it were, things are seen “per aeniamata.” as
Augustine, following Paul, said in the De aenesi ad litteram (PL
34.476.26.54). This is the realm of dreams, the shadowy zone where
precedence is given to “imaginativa,” to “ fantasia":33
O imaginativa che ne rube
talvolta si di fuor, ch’om non s’accorge
perche dintorno suonin mille tube,
chi move te, se ‘I senso non ti porge?
Moveti lume che nel del s’informa,
per se o per voler che giu lo scorge.
(Purgatorio 17.13-18)
(“O imagination, which at times steals us from things outside,
which does not leave man aware, even though a thousand
trumpets sound, what moves you if the senses offer you nothing?
You are moved [either] by the light which is formed in heaven or
by the will that sends it.”)
Here we read as the poet calls upon his own “imaginativa,” thereby linking
it to the reader’s before wondering about its source. This is clear enough,
but what precisely is this crucial faculty, this imagination? In his notes to
Puraatorio 17, Singleton indicates that in Summa 1.78, a.4, Aquinas
followed Aristotle’s De anima to explain that it is an interior sense, a
“thesaurus,” into which images are received through the physical senses
and within which they are stored: “‘Ad harum autem formarum retentionem
aut conservationem ordinatur phantasia. sive imaainatio. quae idem sunt;
est enim phantasia sive imaginatio quasi thesaurus quidam formarum per
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sensum acceptarum,” ’ (‘“But for the retention and preservation of these
forms, the phantasy or imagination is appointed; which are the same, for
phantasy or imagination is as it were a storehouse of forms received
through the senses’” [p.378, n. 13-18]).
Dante asks rhetorically whence come the images and provides two
possibilities: either they derive from light generated in the physical
universe, that is, from the stars, or they come straight from the will of God
and enter Aquinas’ "thesaurus.” Singleton suggests that . .of the two
possibilites . . . it is the second that applies here: the images descend into
the mind directly from God, whose will directs them downward” to aid our
understanding of things d iv in e .3 4 He continues in his commentary on
Puraatorio 17. “[t]he other possibility, that of a light formed in the physical
heavens and descending dircectly into the mind, is excluded. . .,” although
he does not indicate the reason for this exclusion (p.379, n. 13-18). Surely
he is correct in this assumption, and one can just as surely and easily see
why it is preferred: the Primum Mobile drives all of the other spheres,
including that of the fixed stars, which it contains as it is contained within
the Empyrean. Since the Empyrean is that heaven which exists only in the
mind-in the imagination-of God, it can be the only “place” from which the
poet’s “imaginativa” is inspired. It is the only locus, for example, from
which the image of a crucified Haman, Ahasuerus’ minister, can have “. . .
rained down within the high fantasy. . .,” (“. . . piowe dentro a I’alta
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fantasia . . rPuraatorio 17.25. my emphases]).
Puraatorio 17’s address to the reader and its invocation of Scholastic
thought are to be seen together as preparation for the visionary exempla
of wrath, murals and apparently animated pavement that the pilgrim
encounters in this section of Puraatorio. with the reliefs acting as yet
another test of both the poet’s skill to present to the reader God’s
handiwork and of the reader’s credulity. We are again asked to believe
the literally incredible. As crucial as these reliefs and visions are, however,
one must keep in mind that the opening of canto seventeen looks beyond
them by priming the reader for the visio Christi figured in the griffin and for
the ultimate ineffability, the visio Dei at the poem’s end.
The griffin appears in canto twenty-nine, when the pilgrim has reached
purgatory’s peak and has been initiated into the mysteries of the Earthly
Paradise. The mountaintop is the optimal place to experience the final
and most important occurence of the visio soiritualis. Just as the reliefs
and dreams spoke to the pilgrim through the veil of accomodative
metaphors and to the reader, once again removed, through the veil of
Dante’s text, here the pilgrim’s vision is still mediated, now by Beatrice.
He must look into her eyes to see a reflection of the divine, because he is
still not ready to experience Christ incarnate facie ad faciem. Continuing
with the words of Paul, we can say that Beatrice is the speculum in which
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the pilgrim sees Christ, but only in a e n ia m a te .35 When the griffin appears
the oeregrino is consumed by desire to gaze upon it:
Cos] cantando cominciaro; e poi
al petto del grifon seco menarmi,
ove Beatrice stava volta a noi.
Disser: ‘Fa che le viste non risparmi;
posto t’avem dinanzi a li smeraldi
ond’ Amor gia ti trasse le sue armi.'
Mille disiri piu che fiamma caldi
strinsermi li occhi a li occhi rilucenti,
che pur sopra ‘I grifone stavan saldi.
Come in io specchio il sol, non altrimenti
la dopoia fiera dentro vi raaqiava.
or con aitri. or con aitri reaaimenti.
Pensa. lettor. s’io mi maravigliava,
quando vedea la cosa in se star queta,
e ne I’idolo suo si trasmutava. [. . .]
O isplendor di viva luce etterna
chi palido si fece sotto I’ombra
si di Parnaso, o bewe in sua cisterna,
che non paresse aver la ment ingombra,
tentando a render te qual tu paresti
la dove armonizzando il ciel t’adombra,
quando ne I’aere aperto ti solvesti?”
(Puraatorio 31.112-45, my emphases)
(“ Thus they began to sing, then brought me with them to the
breast of the griffin, where Beatrice stood turned towards us. ‘See
that you spare not your gaze,’ they said, ‘we have placed you
before the emeralds from which Love once shot his darts at you.’
A thousand desires hotter than flame held my eyes on the
shining eyes that remained ever fixed on the griffin. As the sun in
a mirror, so was the twofold animal gleaming there within, now
with the one, now with the other bearing. Think, reader, if I
marveled when I saw the thing stand still in itself, and in its image
changing. [. . .]
O splendor of living light eternal! Who has ever grown so pale
under the shade of Parnassus or drunk so deep at its well, that he
would not seem to have his mind encumbered, on trying to render
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you as you appeared, when in the free air you did disclose
yourself, there where in its harmony that heaven overshadows
you!” )
Again we have an admonition to the reader, an address delivered in the
imperative, “Pensa, lettor. . .,” which pulls the reader into the scene. By
asking us to understand his amazement, Dante indicates that he
! understands our incredulity; indeed, he expects it and knows full well what
is yet to come. All we have to do is read; whereas, he is mandated to write
what he saw-to rewrite what God had already written-by imitating God’s
handiwork. It should be no surprise to us if he falls short of his desire to
represent the incarnation of Christ, the “transmutava,” and of his wish to
break the linguistic boundary~the only one he cannot cross. Dante
himself acknowledged this aporia before composing the Commedia:
. . . dico che nostro intelletto, per difetto de la vertu da la quale
trae quello ch’el vede, che e virtu organica, cioe la fantasia, non
puote a certe cose salire (pero che la fantasia nol puote a certe
i aiutare, che non ha lo di che), si come sono le sustanze partite da
I materia; de le quali se alcuna considerazione di quella avere
i potemo, intendere non le potemo ne comprendere perfettamente.
E di cio non e I’uomo da biasimare, che non esso, dico, fue di
questo difetto fattore, anzi fece cio la natura universale, cioe
Iddio, che volse in questa vita privare noi da questa luce; che,
perche elli lo si facesse, presuntuoso sarebbe a ragionare. Si
che, se la mia considerazione mi transportava in parte dove la
fantasia venia meno a lo ‘ntelletto, se io non potea intendere non
sono da biasimare.
(Convivio 3.4.9-11)
(“. . . I say that our intellect, by defect of that faculty from which it
! draws what it perceives, which is an organic power, namely the
i
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fantasy, cannot rise to certain things (because the fantasy cannot
assist it, since it lacks the means), such as the substances
separated from matter. And if we are able to have any concept of
these substances, we can nevertheless neither apprehend nor
comprehend them perfectly. Man is not to be blamed for this, for
as I say he was not the maker of the defect; rather universal
nature was, that is, God, who willed that in this life we be deprived
of that light. Why he should do this would be presumptuous to
discuss. Consequently if my contemplation has transported me to
a region where my fantasy has failed my intellect, I am not to
blame for being unable to understand.”) (Lansing 98)
The poet cannot describe Beatrice’s unveiled beauty, although he has
experienced it fully, just as the pilgrim cannot understand the vision of the
griffin, which the poet is able to represent more fully. In Paradiso’s final
vision these two topoi come together, for neither pilgrim nor poet can
describe what he saw.
V.ii
Ibi enim beata vita in fonte suo bibitur,
inde aspergitur aliquid huic humanae vitae,
ut in tentationibus hujus saeculi, temperanter,
fortiter, juste, prudenterque vivatur.
(De Genesi ad litteram 12.26.54: PL 34, 476.26A.54)
(“ There beatitude is imbibed at its source, from where a few drops
are sprinkled upon this life of man, that amid the trials of this
world we may live out our days with temperance, fortitude, justice,
and prudence.” )
In order to reach the point in the Commedia where we may have a few
drops of Augustinian beatitude rained down upon us, we must follow the
. _ !
290 !
i
pilgrim a bit further. If we do, we notice that his course changes. Up until !
now he has moved along ever-tightening gyral routes. These ascending
ways led him to the poem’s first two centers of attention, Giudecca and the j
i
i
Earthly Paradise, to the two instances where his vision was concentrated j
on the images presented to him. These images, Antichrist and Christ, j
i
were preparatory apparitions constructed to ready him for the final vision !
i
of God. They were also substantially different: Lucifer in hell, the visio
corporalis. is the essence of mass, of corporeality; whereas the griffin, the j
visio Christi. is at once incarnate and non-corporeal, in the latter, more '
abstract manifestation, a true instance of the visio soiritualis. what John
Hammond Taylor has called, “likenesses of bodies seen by the spirit”
(303, n.20). To reach the end of Paradiso. the pilgrim’s path and means of
travel change dramatically; whereas he largely walked through the first
two spaces through smaller and smaller spirals, he is now borne through
the heavens in a way that he cannot explain. Instead of winding ever to
the center, his track leads him outward as the spiral path he follows round
the heavenly sphere--a track inversely opposed to Ulysses’-continually
i
increases round the circumference, much like the ascending gyre !
Benedict follows, with Beatrice and the pilgrim close behind: !
Cosi mi disse, e indi si raccolse '
al suo collegio, e ‘I collegio si strinse;
poi, come turbo, in su tutto s’awolse. ,
La dolce donna dietro a lor mi pinse
\ i
j t
i
; j
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con un sol cenno su per quella scala,
si sua virtu la mia natura vinse. . ..
(Paradiso 22.97-105. my emphasis)
(“Thus he spoke to me, and then returned to his company, and
the company drew together; then, like a whirlwind they were all
gathered upwards. The sweet lady, with a gesture, drew me up
the ladder after them, her power overcoming my nature. . . .”)
Beatrice leads the pilgrim directly to the center of the celestial rose, in the
center of which is God, before disappearing as quickly as did Virgil:
Nel giallo de la rosa sempiterna,
che si digrada e dilata e redole
odor di lode al sol che sempre verna,
qual e colui che tace e dicer vole,
mi trasse Beatrice, e disse: “Mira
quanto e ‘I convento de le bianche stole!
Vedi nostra citta quant’ ella gira. . . .” (Paradiso 30.124-30)
(“Into the yellow [center] of the eternal rose, which ascends and
expands and breathes forth praise to the sun which makes spring
everlasting, Beatrice drew me as one who wishes to speak, and
said: ‘Look how vast is the congregation [literally, ‘monastery’] of
white robes! Behold our city and how large is its circuit. . .
After thus crossing from the Primum Mobile to the Empyrean--to the civitas
Dei--the pilgrim’s interior sense of vision completely takes over the work of
his perception, which is only fitting, since vision is the operative metaphor
for enlightenment in the Commedia. It is also appropriate that the image of
an ever-expanding gyre is used to get to God, since God is infinite and all
encompassing, like Plato’s and Aristotle’s perfect circular form. The only
way that Dante can describe this process is by coining a term to indicate
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that he cannot explain what he feels has happened after his initiation into
things divine in the Earthly Paradise, “ Transumanar sianificar per verba /
non si poria. . (Paradiso 1.70-71. my emphasis), (“Transhumanize
cannot be explained in words. . What we and the pilgrim experience is
what Taylor terms, “immaterial realities seen by the intellect” (303, n.20) 36
There is no physical reality to the images directed toward the pilgrim in
this canto; in other words, . . the vision the poet describes was
imageless” (Chiarenza 90). Another way to look at it is to say that, when
the pilgrim’s desire is extinguished (and, paradoxically, immeasurably
increased) in the final vision, he has angelic sight. Again, I turn to
Augustine for a description, this time from the Confessions:
Laudent nomen tuum, laudent te supercselestes populi
angelorum tuorum, qui non opus habent suspicere firmamentum
hoc et legendo cognoscere verbum tuum. Vident enim faciem
tuam semper, et ibi legunt sine syliabis temporum, quid velit
aeterna voluntas tua. Legunt, eligunt, et diligunt; semper legunt et
numquam praeterit quod legunt. (13.15)
(“Let those super-celestials, your angels, praise you, let them
praise your name, they who have no need to gaze upward to this
firmament, and by reading to attain cognition of your word. For
they always gaze upon your face, and there they read without
temporal syllables the meaning of your eternal will. They read,
they choose, they love; forever they read and what they read
never passes away.”)
After the poem is finished, it is the reader, not the poet or the pilgrim, who
is left with the “need to gaze upward” and to “attain [as closely as possible]
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cognition” in this life by reading the Commedia. By its conclusion, Dante
and his alter ego have attained to the highest level possible for living
being(s). On the basis of this passage from Augustine, then, perhaps we
cannot say that they become God-like; nonetheless, we can say that they
become-for however brief a narrative moment-angelic in their cognition.
The reader must trust in this imperfect representation of the ineffable, must
have faith in Dante’s verses:
Perch’ io lo ’ngegno e I’arte e I’uso chiami,
si nol direi che mai s’imaginasse;
ma creder puossi e di veder si brami.
E se le fantasie nostre son basse
a tanta altezza, non e maraviglia;
che sopra ‘I sol non fu occhio ch’andasse.
(Paradiso 10.43-48)
(“Even if I should call upon genius, art and habit, I would not be
able to speak it so that it could ever be imagined; but one can
believe and thus may he long to see it. And if our imaginations
are too low to rise to such a height, there is no need to marvel; for
no eye has ever known a light brighter than the sun’s.”)
At this exalted level, the visio soiritualis will be insufficient, “. . . le fantasie
nostre” must give way to intellection.
In Paradiso 10 divine perfection is adumbrated and the reader again
addressed, challenged to make ready for what is to come. Here, instead
of the nautical imagery that we saw in the address to the reader in
Paradiso 2, Dante uses the same circular, wheeling images with which the
Commedia closes and which began this chapter:
294
Guardando nel suo Figlio con I’Amore
che I’uno e I’altro etternalmente soira.
lo primo e ineffabile Valore
quanto per mente e per loco si aira
con tant’ ordine fe ch’esser non puote
sanza gustar di lui chi cio rimira.
Leva dunque, lettore, a raltre rote
meco la vista, dritto a quella parte
dove I’un moto e I’altro si percuote;
e li comincia a vagheggiar ne I’arte
di quel maestro che dentro a se I’ama,
tanto che mai da lei I’occhio non parte.
Vedi come da indi si dirama
I’oblico cerchio che i pianeti porta,
per sodisfare al mondo che li chiama.
Che se la strada lor non fosse torta.
molta virtu nel ciel sarebbe in vano,
e quasi ogne potenza qua giu morta;
e se dal dritto piu o men lontano
fosse ‘I partire, assai sarebbe manco
e giu e su de I’ordine mondano.
Or ti riman. lettor. sovra ‘I tuo banco,
dietro pensando a cio che si preliba,
s’esser vuoi lieto assai prima che stanco.
Messo t’ho innanzi; omai per te ciba;
che a se torce tutta la mia cura
quella materia ond’ io son fatto scriba.
(Paradiso 10.1-27, my emphases)
(“Looking upon His Son with the love which the One and the
Other eternally breathe forth, the primal and ineffable Power
made everything that revolves through the mind or through space
with such order that he who contemplates it cannot but taste of
Him. Lift then your sight with me, reader, to the lofty wheels,
straight to that part where the one motion strikes the other; and
amorously there begin to gaze upon that Master’s art who within
Himself so loves it that His eye never turns from it. See how from
there the oblique circle which bears the planets branches off, to
satisfy the world which calls on them: and were their pathway not
aslant, much virtue in the heavens would be vain, and well-nigh
every potency dead here below; and if it parted farther or less far
295
from the straight course, much of the order of the world, both
above and below, would be defective.
Now remain, reader, upon your bench, reflecting on this of
which you have a foretaste, if you would be glad far sooner than
weary. I have set food before you; now feed yourself; because
that matter of which I have been made the scribe requires all of
my care.” [Singleton pgs. 107, 109])
Much like in a trailer for a new film, the reader is admonished to “stay
tuned” for the coming attraction and to partake of the celestial nourishment
to come, to catch some of Augustine’s “drops of beatitude” on which the
soul feeds. In this tightly compacted space Dante describes nothing less
than the universal perfection of God’s handiwork, which is visible in all of
his creation, visible, that is, to both the exterior and interior senses. Dante
tells us that no matter what part of the cosmos we gaze upon we will see
God within it. This passage, then, in a sense summarizes the progression
from the visio corooralis to the visio intellectual is: we have seen within
Dante’s recreation of God’s creation the first two levels, and now in the
sphere of the sun we are asked to stay on and to participate in the ultimate
experience--to look upon that one . . ciel ch’e pura luce: / luce
intellettual. piena d’amore. . .’” (Paradiso 30.39-40. my emphasis),
(“'. . . heaven that is pure light: light intellectual full of love. . .’”).
As I indicated, this poem is ultimately about achieving perfect stasis and
extinguishing desire, both of which happen when the pilgrim confronts the
visio Dei: “E io ch’al fine di tutt’ i disii / appropinquava, si com’ io dovea, /
296
I’ardor del desiderlo In me finii” (Paradiso 33.46-48). (“And I who was
coming near the end of all I desired, as I should, raised high the desire
burning in me”). Just as one kind of desire overtakes another baser kind,
the visio spiritual is is subsumed in and superseded by the visio
intellectualis in this ultimate experience of the Godhead. This allows the
pilgrim finally to look upon Beatrice in all of her blinding glory:
Bernardo m’accennava, e sorridea,
perch’ io guardassi suso; ma io era
gia per me stesso tal qua! ei volea:
che la mia vista, venendo sincera,
e piu e piu intrava per Io raggio
de I’alta luce che da se e vera. (Paradiso 33.50-54)
(“And smiling, Bernard signed to me to look upward; but I was
already on my own doing as he wished; for my sight, becoming
pure, entered more and more through the beam of the exalted
light which is true in and of itself.”)
Shifting back to the present tense, to his life in exile, Dante describes
his faith in his memory as he describes his experience of God facie ad
faciem. the “valore infinito,” (the “infinite good”):
Io credo, per I’acume ch’io soffersi
del vivo raggio, ch’i’ sarei smarrito,
se li occhi miei da lui fossero aversi.
E’ mi ricorda ch’io fui piu ardito
per questo a sostener, tanto ch’i’ giunsi
I’aspetto mio col valore infinito. (Paradiso 33.76-81)
(“I believe, because of the brilliance which I endured, that had I
turned away from the living ray, I would have been lost. And I
remember that I was more ardent to sustain it, until I united my
gaze with the infinite good.” )
297
j Such effulgence not surprisingly occasions descriptive failure on Dante’s
part, and there are a number of admissions to this from here on.37 indeed,
Dante tells us that his memory is obliterated by this sight so that it would
be easier to remember twenty-five centuries back to Jason’s voyage-the
first ever: “Un punto solo m’e maggior letargo / che venticinque secoli. . .
| (“ One moment brings greater forgetfulness than twenty-five centuries. . .” )
i
j
| (Paradiso 33.94-96).
j He can, however, tell us of his moment of stasis, of “intransitive
i lingering” (Chimapi 42), of the instance when celestial stasis is achieved:
Cosi la mente mia, tutta sospesa.
mirava fissa. immobile e attenta,
e sempre di mirar daceasi accesa.
A quella luce cotal si diventa,
che volgersi da lei per altro aspetto
e impossibil che mai si consenta;
pero che ‘I ben, ch’e del volere obietto,
tutto s’accoglie in lei, e fuor di quella
e defettivo cio ch’e li perfetto.
(Paradiso 33.97-105. my emphases)
(“Therefore my mind, completely suspended, was gazing fixed,
immobile and intent, and ever desirous to see more. In that light
one becomes such that it would be impossible to think of turning
from it for another sight; because the good, which is the object of
the will, is completely gathered in it, and outside of this everything
is defective that is perfect here ”)
Here the pilgrim witnesses “the conjoining of substance and accident in
God and the union of the temporal and the eternal. . .,” as Mark Musa
indicates (Paradise p.397. n.91-93). Dante returns to the language of
298
mathematics, to “la Geometria [ch’] e bianchissima, in quanto e sanza
macula d’errore. . (“Geometry, [which] is whitest, in as much as it is
without error. . (Convivio 2.13.27). to depict as best he can the visio Dei.
This is the goal toward which his massive poetic machine has moved us:
Qual e’l geometra che tutto s’affige
per misurar Io cerchio, e non ritrova,
pensando, quel principio ond’ elli indige,
tal era io a quella vista nova:
veder voleva come si convenne
I’imago al cerchio e come si s’indova;
ma non eran da cio le proprie penne:
se non che la mia mente fu oercossa
da un fulaore in che sua voalia venne.
A I’alta fantasia qui maned possa;
ma gia volgeva il mio disio e ’I velle,
si come rota ch’igualmente e mossa,
I’amor che move ii sole e I’altre stelle.
(Paradiso 34.133-45. my emphasis)
(“Like the geometer who completely sets himself to measuring the
circle, and in thinking cannot find the principle which he needs,
so was I at that new sight. I wished to see how the image came
together in the circle and how it fit there; but my own wings were
not sufficient for that, until my mind was smitten by a flash wherein
its wish came to it. Here power failed lofty fantasy; but my desire
and my will already were turned, like a wheel in balance that is
moved by the love which moves the sun and the other stars.”)
And so here the pilgrim finally achieves the visio intellectualis. brief but full
and overwhelming congition of the Godhead. Appropriately enough it
comes in a burst of light, which metaphorically allows him to square the
circle, bringing the narrative back round to canto one Inferno where the
299
spiritually shipwrecked pilgrim set out upon his path by spiralling down
into the darkness.
I
300 ;
Notes
1 See, for example, the Illustrations of C.W. Scott-Giles for Dorothy
Sayers 1949 edition as well as Mark Musa’s and Charles S. Singleton’s
i profusely illustrated publications. (Musa’s diagrams are taken largely from
Sayers.) Pietro Fraticelli’s 1907 Italian edition has a very nice, if
incorrectly oriented, diagram of the entire spherical universe following
i page 401.
i
i
| 2 This and ail subsequent citations of the Commedia are taken from
| Charles S. Singleton’s edition and are given as canto and line numbers.
: Although, unless noted, the translations are my own, I have relied to some
j extent on Singleton’s and have referred to Mark Musa’s.
j 3 Toynbee indicates that this was the “ title by which Aristotle was
| commonly known oar excellence in the Middle Ages . . .” and cites Roger
I Bacon in his Opus Majus (2.13) on him and St. Paul, the importance of
> whose raotus. reported in 2 Cor. 12.1-4, I discuss below: “‘Hie omnium
i philosophorum magnorum testimonio praafertur philosophis, . . . sicut
Paulus in doctrina sapientiae sacrae Apostoli nomine intelligitur’” (427),
(“Of all the great philosophers, the testimony of this philosopher is
preferred, . . . as is the name of Paul in the doctrine of sacred wisdom
i understood.”)
i
| 4 Throughout this study I have rendered the Latin ligature “as” and not
j as the more modern “ae,” since many of my primary sources use this older
orthographic representation. Unless otherwise noted, all English
translations of Latin quotations are mine.
s l realize that Dante’s authorship of the Quaestio is contested; however,
since its argument is supportive but not crucial for the purposes of this
study, I accept its authority.
! 6 See John Freccero, “Pilgrim in a Gyre,” Dante: The Poetics of
; Conversion, ed. and intro. Rachel Jacoff (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP,
1986) 70-92. Freccero’s influence and inspiration run throughout my
study and are gladly acknowledged here.
! 7 Chiampi gets this concept of intransitivity, that is, “the power of poetry
! to lock man within its context and leave him no outlet for action” (39), from
_ j
301
Murray Krieger and intends it to work for the reader as the pilgrim’s vision
of God works for him:
. . . when in the Paradiso the res appear, they turn the inferno and
the Puraatorio. indeed all that went before, into a transitory web of
signs in which to be is to indicate, esse est sianificare. Insofar as
the Paradiso is the locus of these terminal values, it, rather than
the often so regarded Inferno, is the truly poetic realm, because
the Paradiso is consecrated to intransitive lingering. (Chiampi
42)
8 The breakdown of these fifty borders is as follows:
29 circular levels+1 center in inferno
10 in upper and lower hell
10 Malebolge
9 others: earth’s crust/vestibule; Acheron; 3 rings in 7th
circle: river, wood, plain; 4 rings in 9th circle: Caina,
Antenora, Ptolomea, Judecca
_1_for Lucifer at center
30
9 circular levels+1 center in Puraatorio
2 in antepurgatory
7 levels for 7 sins
1 for the Earthly Paradise
9 circles/spheres+1 center in Paradiso
9 spheres: moon, Mercury, Venus, sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn,
fixed stars, Primum Mobile
1 the Godhead, center of the celestial rose
10
There are also the nine orders of angels, each circling in its sphere
j round the celestial rose with God at the center. This geometrical center is,
of course, the Center and the Circumference of the entire universe. The
center of inferno is a perversion, the literal antithesis, of Paradiso , and the
Earthly Paradise is the transitional point between the two. It is interesting,
not to say ironic, that Lucifer is embedded head-down in hell, at least
| according to Aristotle’s absolute directions, which I discuss below. One
: cannot help but think that, if the infernal one had to be in only one position
■ for eternity, that he would certainly prefer the one into which Dante cast
i
I
302
him--the ultimate Malacoda. whose placement recalls the salutation of the
malebranche:
Per I’argine sinistro volta dienno;
ma prima avea ciascun la lingua stretta
coi denti, verso lor duca, per cenno;
ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta. (Inferno 21.135-38)
(“ They wheeled round past the bank on the left, but first each one
pressed his tongue between his teeth at their leader for a signal;
and he made a trumpet of his ass ”)
9 l realize that I have posited a spherical universe and now refer to the
pilgrim’s movement as circular. This is because he travels round what we
may regard as latitudinal lines on each sphere, effectively tracing a
circular path round each one, paths which connect, one with the other, as
he progresses. There can be, after all, no such thing as spherical
movement.
10 No lesser light than “il Filosofo” himself addressed this issue of
circular infinitude: [The] “nature of circular motion . . . [is] eternal both here
and in the other worlds” (De caelo 1.8). And before him, Plato in the
Timaeus spoke of a sphere’s geometrical perfection:
The shape he gave it [the world and/or the universe] was suitable
to its nature. A suitable shape for a living being that was to
contain within itself all living beings would be a figure that
contains all possible figures within itself. Therefore he turned it
into a rounded spherical shape, with the extremes equidistant in
all directions from the centre, a figure that has the greatest degree
of completeness and uniformity, as he judged uniformity to be
incalculably superior to its opposite. (5.33)
n Freccero provides an ecclesiastical rendering of this combinatory
motion by referring to St. Bonaventure’s itinerarium mentis:
Man, like a planet which stands at the border between earth and
stars, or between time and eternity, moves in a composite way on
his journey to God, for his spiral path is formed by the resolution
of forces between his interior motion according to the circle of the
Same (to the right) and his motion according to the circle of the
Other (to the left). (“Gyre” 81)
303
12 Freccero notes one of the supreme ironies in this view of people
living in what they believed was an earth-centered universe:
It is one of the ironies of intellectual history that the cult of the sun,
adapted eventually to the exigencies of Christian symbolism,
should have reached its highest point within a Ptolemaic world
view, when its centrality was regarded as purely symbolic.
(“Dance” 230)
13 And, of course, a direct trajectory like that of the raptus Pauli
provides the author with much less topography to cover and thus would
have allowed Dante much less narrative space to tell his tale-no small
consideration.
14 According to Desmond Lee, Plato’s Timaeus. in Chalcidius’ Latin
version, was not superseded in the schools by the Aristotelian corpus until
around 1255 (Timaeus. “Introduction” 21).
is We propagate a similar fictive cosmos even today when we speak of
the celestial sphere which we use to plot the constellations and galaxies
which surround our solar system. We, as did Dante and the Ancients, feel
the need somehow to anchor our globe, to set up an ultimate-if admittedly
imaginary-point of reference. In fact our modern celestial sphere
“ surrounds” our heliocentric system just as the sphere of the fixed stars
and the other eight spheres did Dante’s earth-centered system.
16 This universe is not, as Mark Peterson has argued, the earliest
manifestation of “one of the foremost cosmological models of modern
astrophysics, usually called, simply, the ‘closed universe'” (“Physics” 171).
The closed universe is a non-Euclidian space, one in which, for example,
a straight line will not move on out into infinity; rather, it will ultimately
curve back round and meet its initial point, thereby forming a closed curve.
Dante’s universe, at least beyond the Primum Mobile, does not function in
this way: it is there decidedly Euclidian. Peterson’s theory, if I understand
it correctly, is more applicable to the closed Platonic system.
17 Piero Cudini glosses “seguitando . . . grossezza” as “seguendo le
antiche concezioni grossolane” (Convivio 72. n.10).
18 Orr’s study of Dante’s universe is the only one I have seen which
pictures his system with the Mount of Purgatory at the “top” of the earth,
that is, pointing “up” in the Aristotelian sense toward heaven (355).
304
19 This term is glossed by the editors of the Reaula:
(gyrovagum): This word is a mongrel formation from the Greek
auros (circle) and the Latin vaaari (to wander). RM [the Reaula
Maaistril is the first to use this term. Perhaps it is fervor novicius
that makes the Master go on for sixty-two verses about these
wretched men whom St. Benedict dismisses in two. (171, n.1.10)
20 Benedict is even less charitable regarding the sarabites:
Tertium vero monachorum taeterrimum genus est sarabaitarum,
qui nulla regula approbati, experientia magistra, sicut aurum
fornacis. sed in plumbi natura molliti, adhuc operibus servantes
saeculo fidem, mentiri Deo per tonsuram noscuntur. . . . pro lege
eis est desideriorum voluntas, cum quicquid putaverint vel
elegerint, hoc dicunt sanctum, et quod noluerint, hoc putant non
licere. (Reaula 1.6-91
(“ Third, there are the sarabaites, the most detestable kind of
monks, who with no experience to guide them, no rule to try them
as gold is tried in a furnace. (Prov. 27:21), have a character as
soft as lead. Still loyal to the world by their actions, they clearly
lie to God by their tonsure. . . . Their law is what they like to do,
whatever strikes their fancy. Anything they believe in and
choose, they call holy; anything they dislike, the consider
forbidden.” fReaula 1.6-9, editors’ translation].)
21 This recalls a passage in Virgil’s Aeneid. which describes a similar
incident:
unam, quae Lycios fidumque vehebat Oronten,
ipsius ante oculos ingens a vertice ponus
in puppim ferit: excutitur pronusque magister
volvitur in caput; ast iliam ter fluctus ibidem
torquet agens circum et rapidus vorat aequore vertex.
(1.113-17)
(Before Aeneas’ eyes a massive breaker
smashes upon its stern the ship that carries
the Lycian crewmen led by the true Orontes.
The helmsman is beaten down; he is whirled headlong.
Three times at that same spot the waters twist
and wheel the ship around until a swift
*1
305
whirlpool has swallowed it beneath the swell. [Mandelbaum 5])
22 Patrick Boyde summarizes this tradition nicely:
His Ulysses is simultaneously a man of courage and resource, a
representative of a great civilization that had nevertheless been
cut off from divine grace, an orator whose power of persuasive
speech gave him a dangerous hold over the minds and actions of
his fellows, and a human being whose innate thirst for knowledge
had declined into mere curiosity of a desire for sense-experience
which led him to set aside the claims fo family and society, to
reject the occupations proper to an old man, and to defy the
prohibition of the gods in pursuit of a “ world without people
behind the sun.” (107)
23 Edward Moore records the Arab legend regarding the Atlantic:
The Arabs . . . held a strange horror of the Atlantic, “ the green sea
of darkness,” and they imparted much of this paralyzing
cowardice to Christian nations. It was said that a man who
should embark on such a voyage was so clearly mad that he
ought to be deprived of civil rights. [. . .] Moreover, it was said
that “whirlpools always destroy such an adventurer.” This, it will
be remembered, is precisely the fate which Dante assigns to
Ulysses. . . . (118-19)
24 This, of course, assumes that we accept the fiction that Dante
Alighieri actually made this journey, at least while we read the poem.
25 Paul’s description of his rapture is as follows:
scio hominem in Christo ante annos
quattuordecim
sive in corpore nescio
sive extra corpus nescio
Deus scit
raptum eiusmodi usque ad tertium
caelum
et scio huiusmodi hominem
sive in corpore sive extra corpus ne
scio Deus scit
quoniam raptus est in paradisum
et audivit arcana verba quae non
licet homini loqui. . . . (2 Cor. 12.2-4)
306
(“I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago, whether in the
body I do not know or out of the body I do not know-God knows—
was rapt to the third heaven. And I know such a man, whether in
or out of the body i do not know— God knows— who was taken into
paradise and heard secret words that he may not repeat.” )
26 Augustine himself draws this analogy between light and love in De
I aenesi ad litteram 31.59: "Aliud autem est ipsa lumen, quo illustratur
j anima, ut omnia vel in se vel in ilfo veraciter intellecta conspiciat: nam illud
I jam ipse Deus est. . (“But distinct from these is the light itself by which
j the soul is illuminated, so that it may see and truly understand all things,
' either in itself or in the light: for the light is God himself. . .”) (PL. 34.
| 479.31 A.59).
27 Mark Musa renders this passage as:
j I yearned to know how could our image fit
i into that circle, how it could conform;
but my own wings could not take me so high-
then a great flash of understanding struck
my mind, and suddenly its wish was granted.
| His rendering of “to know” for “ veder” and “ flash of understanding” for “un
I fulaore” closely approximate the Augustinian sense of transcendence.
I
! 28 This is the first of three aerial views that the pilgrim is granted. The
second comes in Paradiso 22. where Beatrice instructs him to look back to
! see how far he has come with her:
“Tu se’ si presso a rultima salute,’
comincio Beatrice, ‘che tu dei
aver le luci tue chiare e acute;
e pero, prima che tu piu t’inlei,
rimira in giu, e vedi quanto mondo
sotto li piedi gia esser ti fei... .’ [. . .]
Col visto ritornai per tutte quante
le sette spere, e vidi questo globo
j tal, ch’io sorrisi del suo vil sembiante;
| . . . L’aiuola che ci fa tanto feroci,
| volgendom’ io con li etterni Gemeili,
| tutta m’apparve da’ colli a le foci. . .. (124-53)
i
307
(‘“You are so close to the final blessedness,’ Beatrice began, ‘that
your eyes must be keen and clear; and so, before you entering
further, look back downward, and see how great a universe I
have laid at your feet. . . .’ With my sight I returned through all the
seven spheres, and saw this globe and smiled at its paltry
appearance. . . . The little threshing-floor which makes us so
fierce was completely revealed to me, from its hills to its river-
mouths. .. .)
Written from earth, “auesto alobo.” this sight of the seven celestial
spheres makes the “little threshing-floor” (a description which is repeated
in the next retro-vision) of earth seem completely insignificant.
In Paradiso 27 Beatrice again instructs him to look down to see how far
he has “revolved”:
... “Adima
il viso e guarda come tu se’ volto.”
Da I'ora ch’io avea guardato prima
i’ vidi mosso me per tutto I’arco
che fa dal mezzo al fine il primo clima;
si ch’io vedea di la Gade if varco
folle d’Ulisse, e di qua presso il lito
nel qual si fece Europa dolce carco.
E piu mi fora discoverto il sito
di questa aiuola. . . .” (77-86)
(‘“Cast your gaze down and see how far you have revolved.’
‘Since the last time I looked, I saw that I had moved through the
entire arc that the first climate makes from middle to end; thus I
saw past Cadiz to the mad route that Ulysses had taken and to
the shore where Europa made herself a sweet burden. And more
of this little threshing floor would have been uncovered to
me ’” )
This passage links the pilgrim’s sanctioned journey to Ulysses’ illicit
one. Perhaps more apropos here is its connection with the Hereford
Mappa Mundi. which depicts the Straits through which Dante’s Ulysses
sailed, along with the Pillars of Hercules set up as “border guards.” See
the western extreme of the map, its “bottom,” Appendix A, pi. 2.
308
29 Wilkins and Bergin’s concordance shows that “ wheel,” that is the
noun “rota” or “ruota,” along with its intransitive verb forms “rotante,”
“rotare” and “roteare,” appears forty-eight times in the Commedia (481-82).
30 Peter S. Hawkins connects Dante’s idiosyncratic universe— in
particular this purgatorial segment— with conventional medieval
cartography:
Because in the early 14th century both hell and purgatory could
still be treated as matter of geographical, or at least cosmological,
science— that is, treated as actual terrestrial sites-Dante was able
to show much of the hereafter as occupying the topography of the
here and now; he could situate his exploration of the life to come
in unknown and inaccessible regions of this life. For all but the
final stage of his journey, therefore, he is seen discovering
territory which, if strictly off-limits to flesh and blood, was
nonetheless capable of being charted in the material heavens or
located on an earthly map. Indeed, what the Commedia
essentially unfolds for the reader is a literary mappamundi. a
complex map of words that builds upon (and by and large
reflects) a contemporary cartographer’s notion of the world and its
position in the cosmos. (“Circumference” 3)
3 1 Here “in oria” recalls the pilgrim’s crawl onto the littoral in Inferno 1.
where he sees the sun for the first time, the planet which leads men on the
straight path: “guardai in alto e vidi le sue spalle / vestite gia de’ raggi del
pianeta / che mena dritto altrui per ogne calle,” (“I looked on high and saw
[the mount’s] shoulders already clad in the rays of that planet that leads
others straight along every path”) (16-18).
32 This is very much like the imperatively cautionary opening of the last
cantica:
O voi che siete in piccioletta barca,
desiderosi d’ascoltar, seguiti
dietro al mio legno che cantando varca,
tornate a riveder li vostri liti:
non vi mettete in pelago, che forse,
perdendo me, rimarreste smarriti.
L’acqua ch’io prendo gia mai non si corse. . . .
(Paradiso 2.1-7)
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(“ Oh, you who are in your little bark, desirous to hear, following
behind my ship which passes along singing, turn back to see
your shores. Do not put to sea, lest perchance, losing me, you
would remain lost. The water which I take has never before been
coursed. ...,”)
33 Francis X. Newman writes of this connection: “The Middle Ages had
: many theories about dreams, but the theorists were virtually unanimous in
| assigning dreams to the faculty of imagination” (69).
34 [t is interesting to note that the words “imaginativa” (17.13), “senso”
(17.16) and “lume” (17.17) are deployed in descending order of
i importance on the page-or in ascending order as we move down through
j this passage:
! . . . imaginativa . . .
35 Singleton writes: “It should be noted also, since Sapientia remains
j (along with Revelation) one of the names of Beatrice, that in Sapien. 7:26
j Sapientia is termed a mirror of the majesty of God” (Purqatorio p.775,
! n. 121-23).
36 Although “seen” is perhaps the best way to describe the
J transmission of these images to the pilgrim’s interior senses, we must
I remember that the term is insufficient to describe these visions, particularly
j the visio Dei. The pilgrim does not “see” God, he is subsumed by him, by
| his essence. This, of course, is the main problem with the Commedia or
I with any other linguistic attempt to describe those things which exist
I outside of language and time, as Joan Ferrante has indicated:
| Not only the final lines, but the whole cantica, describes the vision
of God, which occurred in a moment outside time, to which the
normal rules of logic and grammar do not apply. All of Paradise
! exists in the mind of God; all existence and motion begin and end
■ in him; every aspect of the poetry reflects him. (“Words” 130)
! And so, as we have seen in the earlier passage cited from the Convivio.
j such descriptions are always doomed to fail.
senso
lume
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37 Expressions of poetic failure occur in the following: Paradiso 33.55-
66, 67-75, 93-105, 106-08, 121-23, 139-41 and 142-45. Interestingly
enough, there is only one occurence of “parere,” “ to seem,” in the infinitive,
other conjugated forms or as synonyms in this canto; whereas it appears
countless times in the cantos leading up to this last one. Dante’s re-vision
of the original visio Dei seems quite assured here.
Chapter Five
“I wolde fayne know hou ye understonde thilke text,
and what is your sentence”: Matters “Textuel,”
Spatial and Ordinal in the “Canterbury Tales”
312
Guil (leaping up): What a shambles! We're just not getting
anywhere.
Ros (mournfully): Not even in England. I don’t believe in it
anyway.
Guil: What?
Ros: England.
Guil: Just a conspiracy of cartographers, you mean?
Ros: I mean I don’t believe it! (Calmer.) I have no image. I try.
[. . .] But my mind remains a blank. No. W e’re slipping off the
map. (Tom Stoppard 107-08)
With what is conventionally referred to as Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
we are confronted with a similar yet completely different set of spatio-
temporal problems than those encountered in the previous chapters; in
other words, Chaucer’s poetry both does and does not work like the
poetics of these foregoing texts. 1 Like Chretien’s works, Chaucer’s text
was to be a framed tale, a narrative with the potential for infinite insertions
held together by the “bookends” of the pilgrims’ fictional journey to and
return from Canterbury,2 a construction which Donald Howard has called
“ by nature effulgent and self-generating” (idea 171). As was the case with
the Hereford map, the Tapestry and Chretien’s printed texts, we at first
seem to be dealing with a familiar physical object, a book called the
Canterbury Tales written by Geoffrey Chaucer late in the fourteenth
century. It quickly becomes apparent, however, that what we really have
is nothing but a highly disorganized group of manuscript fragments, som e-
like the Ellesmere and Hengwrt manuscripts-certainly closer to a finished
product than others, but none complete and none autographical.3
313
Whereas we can point to and touch concrete, completed manifestations of
Dante’s poem, the Tapestry and the mappamundi (and by implication of
their authors’ intentions), for Chaucer’s “poem” we can point only to some
eighty-seven partial bits written on vellum and paper, none of which is
definitive. In other words, Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales does not
exist A
I
Textual critical methods are historical, and meaningful
only in such a context. (Dane. Editing 182)
In this chapter I make no attempt to reconstruct Chaucer's fictional
space but to free him from his organic aestheticist constraints by showing
what constitutes them and how they can bind us who consider all types of
artistic expression from a post-Romantic perspective. In the following
section, I set the textual tradition of the “Tales” from Tyrwhitt to Pratt in its
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century critical-aesthetic context. I argue
briefly that eighteenth-century German Romanticism with its attendant
notions of Ganzheit and Geisteaeschichte infiltrated literary criticism in
nineteenth-century England through the conduits of the Cambridge
Platonists and Coleridge. I show how the notion of Ganzheit appears in
and affects the textual-critical policies of a number of editors who have
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striven to find order and harmony in the “ Tales” where none exists, critics
who have attempted through this well-meaning aesthetic sleight-of-hand
to (re)vivify Geoffrey Chaucer in the guise of Great English Poet. Picking
up the critical trail with Caxton, it becomes clear that there is a clear
tradition of editors who have essentially tried to (re)constitute the “true
Chaucer” through his poetry (a phrase, significantly enough, often used to
refer to both poet and poem) and his poetry through their idiosyncratic
ordinal schemes.
Part three treats maps and what I call the cartographical fallacy in a
theoretical way. I discuss maps-medieval and modern--their modes of
spatial organization and the role they have played in understanding and
arranging the “Canterbury Tales” into a unified narrative that moves in a
linear fashion, one in which point “A” comes before point “B.” Those
modern editorial Procrustes who base their ordinal plans on internal
geographical references and extratextual cartographical evidence seek to
fit what is essentially a loosely-ordered literary chaos like we see on the
Hereford Mappa Mundi into a form more akin to the vertical strip itinerary
maps of Matthew Paris discussed in chapter one. This cartographical
format is as unlike the narrative of the “ Tales” as is that of the English
Ordnance Survey maps which nineteenth-century critics such as Frederick
J. Furnivall and Henry Littlehales used to plot the pilgrims’ progress and
the Fragments’ arrangement 5 On this I agree wholeheartedly with Robert
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Jordan: “ the editors’ desire to smooth the road to Canterbury eventuated
in a journey Chaucer’s pilgrims never made. And . . . [Ralph Baldwin’s]
‘roadside drama,’ which is a further extension of the desire to ‘unify’ the
pieces, eventuates in a poem Chaucer never wrote” (Shape 117-18). I
show, with reference to my reading program for medieval T-O
mappaemundi. that it makes little or no difference to argue-as Henry
Bradshaw did in 1868 with his now (in)famous “Bradshaw Shift,” 6 which
was based upon the order found in a single manuscript, Arch. Seiden B
14--that the Fragment (B 2) in which the Summoner remarks that he will tell
his tales before the pilgrims come to Sittingbourne “should be lifted up to
follow B1 ” (Hammond 166), in which the pilgrims are near Rochester.7
Since all maps by nature misrepresent reality, it is clear that using such
unreliable spatio-temporal constructions to prove the interconnectedness
of the fictional “ Tales” and Chaucer’s realism is an untenable exercise. I
call this methodology the cartographical fallacy, including under this rubric
inter- and intra-textual temporal allusions, since time is an essential
element in all kinds of travel through space, be that movement actual or
fictional. This, in turn, takes into account attempts to organize and
structure such travels. It is this spatio-temporal mode of textual-critical
thinking that I put into question, arguing that we should accept the
fragmentary nature of what Chaucer left us and treat it like the information
arrayed on the later medieval mappaemundi--as a collection of distinct
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texts arranged very tenuously within a broad frame. We should revel in
the tension generated by the seeming incongruities raised by the texts’
refusal to coincide with this arbitrarily imposed, mechanistic form. We
should embrace the heterogeneity of the “ Tales” and accept willingly the
countless opportunities for inter-and intratextual play.
In my fourth section, I examine the textual-critical policies of Thomas
Tyrwhitt; Henry Bradshaw, Cambridge Librarian; Frederick J. Furnivall,
founder of the Chaucer Society and friend of Henry Bradshaw; Walter W.
Skeat; John M. Manly and Edith Rickert and Robert A. Pratt.s I
demonstrate how all of these editors, along with Henry Littlehales, have
relied upon the cartographical fallacy initiated by Bradshaw; and how, in
fact, the combined textual-ordinal efforts of Tyrwhitt and these two
Victorians-Bradshaw and Furnivall--are those which have most affected
the way editors receive and arrange Chaucer’s tales and, by extension, on
the way that we read and discuss his poetry yet today. Tyrwhitt, Bradshaw
and Furnivall were the first to be concerned with ordering the Fragments
and the tales within the Fragments so as to harmonize what they saw as
geo-temporal inconsistencies, to create a smooth narrative which
progressed along a mappable, linear path. Indeed, Eleanor Hammond’s
simple statement of over eight decades ago, that “Later editors have
generally followed the conclusions of Furnivall” (165), still holds today-
and reads in a rather unfortunately prescient way.
317
This chapter, then, is about the textual-critical reception of the complete
manuscripts and the Fragments of the ‘Tales,” about the ways in which
select editors working in the long shadow of German and English
Romanticism-particularly under Coleridgean conceptions of unity and
organicism-have tried to excavate and recuperate Chaucer by
reconstructing what he wrote. Organicist critical rhetoric recurs in editorial
statements of texts which rely on the Bradshavian-Furnivallian tradition, in
Manly-Rickert (and in Kane’s review of it), in the Variorum Chaucer and in
new studies like Dolores Warwick Frese’s An Ars Leaendi for Chaucer’s
Canterbury Tales: Re-constructive Reading.9 (Not surprisingly, such
rhetoric is absent from editions which do not rely upon extratextual
geographical evidence as part of the textual-critical policy, like N.F.
Blake’s single-manuscript edition, 10 F.N. Robinson’s eclectic Ellesmere-
based text or the Riverside Chaucer, which is supposed to be a new
edition of Robinson’s text.) 11 This kind of critical language recalls
immediately German Romantic aesthetics, the Cambridge Platonists and
Coleridge’s universalizing aesthetics of poetical unity. What is manifested
in these editions is the real desire behind the stated editorial policy, the
policy behind the policy, as it were: the Chaucerians under discussion
here, from Tyrwhitt to Furnivall and from Skeat to Pratt, were about finding
the true poem, the pure poem. If they could succeed in doing that, they
would be able to discuss more confidently Chaucer’s intentions; and when
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they could do that, they could discuss more confidently Chaucer the man.
This done, they would have succeeded in (re)creating him in their own
image, that is, in the image of critic/poet as divine. All would then be of a
piece, a true organic compound: Chaucer, his great poem-posthumously
completed-and the literary-textual critic, the one who finally was able to
piece it all together, to fashion not only the Real Chaucer but the rationale
for engaging in this kind of scholarship. As Joseph A. Dane writes,
true textual criticism, apparently-that is, textual criticism in the so-called
‘Great Tradition’ . . . -is one way to ensure that that structure of power
remains intact" (“Reception” 222). While this might be a bit too cynical, it is
clear that what is under consideration here is not only the creation and
organization of literal bookspace but-and perhaps more importantly— the
construction of self-perpetuating academic myths and misconceptions. 12
Li
The form is mechanic when on any given material we impress a
pre-determined form, not necessarily arising out of the properties
of the material, as when to a mass of wet clay we give whatever
shape we wish it to retain when hardened. (Raysor 1.224)
In examining this textual-critical tradition of the “Tales,” it becomes
apparent that editors have-to one degree or another-all attempted to
create what I have chosen to call their own “bookspaces”; that is, various
319
arbitrary arrangements of the manuscript Fragments’ internal orders into
literal, physical books-into spaces arranged according to a priori
understandings of the relationship between real geography, temporality
and fiction. Underlying many of these editorial policies are extratextual
considerations of inner- and inter-fragmental references to time and place.
Like Henry Bradshaw and Frederick J. Furnivall, upon whose nineteenth-
century work much succeeding Chaucerian textual-critical policy is based,
these editor/arrangers have attempted to ground the “ Tales” in the reality
of their own existences, to find real-life analogues of the pilgrims or to
organize the “Tales” round modern conceptions of mapping and the
conceptualization of geographical s p a c e . 13 in other words, these editors
created Chaucerian bookspaces based upon often idiosycratic,
anachronistic criteria, editions which do not represent-indeed, cannot
represent-Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. What we call the
Canterbury Tales is not necessarily what Geoffrey Chaucer wrote; rather, it
is the product of a long line of editors and scribes, stretching back at least
to Caxton’s first printed edition of c.1478.
Having said this, I freely acknowledge that Chaucer gave us permission
to do what we will with his text, even arranging its parts according to what I
have implied are misguided textual policies. Chaucer gave each reader-
and, thereby each editor-the freedom to create individual fictional
itineraries as he or she moves through the “Tales”: “And therfore, whoso
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list it nat yheere, / Turne over the leef and chese another tale” (1.3176-
77). 14 Mapping our own individual fictional routes is fine, as long as we
keep in mind that one is as “right” as another, that no one itinerary is The
Itinerary, that is, Chaucer’s Itinerary. Critics who discuss the Canterbury
Tales-as-book. as The Book, or the collation and ordering of the eighty-
seven fragments in an attempt to (re)create Chaucer’s text, his narrative
itinerary, engage in a dangerous exercise and subscribe to an intentional
fallacy of the most misleading kind: they seek to cobble together
something which does not exist-Chaucer’s organically-unified poetical
work. This is an exercise in futility, for we cannot point to any one physical
object-be it manuscript or printed edition-and say confidently that it
represents what Geoffrey Chaucer intended as the Canterbury Tales. To
believe that this can be done, to ref use to acknowledge the slippery slope
upon which the textual tradition of the “Tales” is founded, to say nothing of
its economic and political ramifications, is to privilege the roles of modern
critic and textual criticism over the creative ability of the medieval author.
This presents us with a paradoxical situation, since the underlying goal-
be it implicit or explicit--of scholars who need their Chaucer whole, even
pure, is to recuperate the reputation of the m an-as well as the man
himself-whom Lydgate called “‘the chief Poete of Britaine’” and Hoccleve
“‘the flour of Poetes’” (Tyrwhitt, Essay 2). Instead of elevating him to
laureate status by clearing away the alleged scribal/editorial detritus from
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his “masterwork,” these Chaucerians postulate a non-Chaucer, someone
who quite possibly never created anything like the numerous editions of
his “poem” we now find for sale on bookstore shelves. His incomplete
“ Tales” have been forced into an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
mechanistic mold by unwitting organicists who failed to recognize the
creative process for what it is, and perhaps always has been: a disjointed,
fragmentary and, at times, structurally incomprehensible process. To say
that Chaucer left the “ Tales” unfinished, to accept that he probably had no
grand design, a la Dante, to which he adhered for fifteen years, to accept
the futility of trying to reconcile often-conflicting intratextual elements into
one synthetic whole, is not to deny Chaucer’s genius: it is merely to say
that he never finished this poem.is To write anything more into the textual
situation elevates us as critics to undeserved positions of divinity.
Chaucer created a group of texts, a loosely-structured group of tales hung
upon an inchoate frame, nothing more nor less, and we as critics have no
right to recreate his Text-or Him in our image through It.
II
The spirit of poetry, like all other living powers, must of necessity
circumscribe itself by rules, were it only to unite power with
beauty. It must embody in order to reveal itself; but a living body
is of necessity an organized one,-rand what is organization, but
the connection of parts to a whole, so that each part is at once
end and means! This is no discovery of criticism; it is a necessity
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of the human mind-and all nations have felt and obeyed it, in the
invention of metre and measured sounds as the vehicle and
involucrum of poetry, itself a fellow-growth from the same life,
even as the bark is to the tree. (Raysor 1.2 2 3 )1 6
Any investigation into the editorial policies of those who have tried to
excavate and recuperate Chaucer in the past two hundred years or so
must begin by forming some idea of why those Chaucerians edited as they
did, of how Romantic organicist tendencies affected their textual-critical
policies. Their influential predilection for order stems from eighteenth-
century German philosophy and from nineteenth-century philosopher/
poets like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who laid out his theory of poetical
aesthetics most fully in the Bioaraohia Literaria and in other venues like his
self-titled “Lectures” on Shakespeare. This section’s epigraph, taken from
one of Coleridge’s “Lectures,” nicely encapsulates the type of idealist
transcendental thinking that lies behind many of the editorial decisions
made by Chaucerian constructionists. In this section I quickly sketch in
Coleridge’s connections--back to German Romanticists like F.W.J. von
Schelling (1775-1854) and A.W. von Schlegel (1772-1829) and forward to
his Cambridge successors like Henry Bradshaw (1831-86) and Frederick
J. Furnivall (1825-1910).1? | do not posit Coleridge as the direct, personal
influence on Victorian and later editors of Chaucer’s work. I do, however,
intend him as exemplary of the kind of organicist thinking which informs the
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particular kind of post-Romantic textual criticism under discussion here, the
sort which often sought unity-to the detriment of poetical in te g rity .18
In his discussion of historicism, Lee Patterson lays some of the historical
groundwork for this contextual segment of my discusson:
In its original form, Geistesaeschichte strikingly embodies the
commitment to unity or wholeness that characterizes historicism
in its original, Romantic form. In reaction against the
Enlightenment appeal to timeless laws and analytic reason,
historicism insisted that all human phenomena had to be judged
in terms appropriate to the supervening totality of which they were
but parts. [.. .] In terms of historical studies as a whole, this
wholeness or Ganzheit was possessed by the various cultural
periods, however defined. Each historical entity, and especially
cultural artifacts, could be understood only in terms of all the other
phenomena that together made up the period. (27)
It is precisely this idea of Ganzheit. or organic unity,1 9 that is so pervasive
in the work of the Cambridge Platonists, Coleridge and even in the art
historical writings of John Ruskin and, later, Emile Male.2® The
seventeenth-century Cambridge Platonists, along with Kant, Schiegel and
Schelling in Germany, informed Coleridge’s thought to a great extent: “For
readers in general, let whatever shall be found in this or any future work of
mine, that resembles, or coincides with, the doctrines of my German
predecessor, though contemporary, be wholly attributed to him”
(Bioaraohia 236).2 1
Gordon McKenzie writes of the Cambridge Platonists:
. . . the transcendental world is one and indivisible in its essence
and represents reality, which is God. [. . .] The link between the
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ideal w orld and th at of ordin ary e x p e rie n c e is s o m e w h a t v a g u e ly
conceived, but th e fact that such a link exists is not for a m o m en t
doubted (8 ).22
This is p recisely th e philosophy w e s e e throughou t C o le rid g e ’s w ritings
and lectures, as illustrated by this selection from th e B io a ra o h ia :
It is th e essential m ark of the tru e philosopher to rest satisfied with
no im p erfect light, a s long as th e im possibility of attaining a fuller
kno w ledge has not b e e n dem o n strated . T h a t th e com m on
consciousness itself will furnish proofs b y its ow n direction, th at it
is co n n ected w ith m aster currents b elow th e surface, I shall
m erely a s s u m e as a postulate pro tem p o re. (286)23
S in ce th e “im possibility of attaining a fuller k n o w led g e” h ad --an d h a s -
n ev er b ee n o verco m e, C o lerid g e could rely upon th e tran scen d en tal
“m aster currents” flow ing “b elow th e s u rfa c e ,” th a t is, on his ow n English
G a n zh e it. to con nect him through his poetry to th e g re a te r
G e is te s a e s c h ic h te . And it w as through C o lerid g e th at this brand of
poetical m etap h ysics m a d e its w a y into the English c o n s c io u s n e s s .24
T h is brief outline leads to C o le rid g e ’s definitions of th e poet, po etry and,
in particular, to th e distinction b e tw e e n m ech an ism an d organicism . It is
this distinction th at c h a ra c te rize s th e g ap b e tw e e n C h a u c e r’s editors'
d esires an d their results. T h e irony is th a t editors like Tyrw hitt, Furnivall,
S k e a t an d P ratt atte m p ted to im p ose a preco n ceived fo rm -o n e derived to
a g reat e x te n t from extratextu al, geo g rap h ical in v e s tig a tio n s -u p o n a
fra g m e n ta ry w ork that lacks the sort of inherent C o lerid g ea n unity th at th ey
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desired to restore.25 Again, we find Coleridge’s thinking “anticipated in
some fashion by Schelling” and influenced mightily by Schlegel, upon
whom he based his understanding of the “central antithesis between
mechanical and organic art” (Abrams 218). This is nowhere better
delineated than in a lecture fragment of Coleridge’s in which he discussed
Shakespeare:
The true ground of the mistake, as has been well remarked by a
continental critic [Schlegel], lies in the confounding mechanical
regularity with organic form. The form is mechanic when on any
given material we impress a pre-determined form, not necessarily
arising out of the properties of the material, as when to a mass of
wet clay we give whatever shape we wish it to retain when
hardened. The organic form, on the other hand, is innate; it
shapes as it develops itself from within, and the fullness of its
development is one and the same with the perfection of its
outward form. Such is the life, such the form. Each exterior is the
physiognomy of the being within, its true image reflected and
thrown out from the concave mirror. And even such is the
appropriate excellence of her chosen poet, of our own
Shakespeare, himself a nature humanized, a genial
understanding directing self-consciously a power and an implicit
wisdom deeper than consciousness. (Raysor 1 .2 2 4 )2 6
There are a number of seminal concepts in this passage: first, “ the true
course of the mistake,” indicates, naturally, that there is a right way to
regard poetry, a “ true” way. Thus, any methodology which confounds
“mechanical regularity with organic form” would be a mistaken one. These
two forms, the mechanic and the organic, are not in the least compatible.
The mechanic is exoskeletal and can never be made to merge fully with
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the essence of the poetic text. Any effort to force such a fit must
necessarily end in failure. This “pre-determined form” can never replace
the work’s endoskeleton, since it does not grow from w ith in .27
Coleridge made this metaphysical phenomenon anlagous to the
“excellence of her chosen poet, of our own Shakespeare,” a move which
Chaucer’s editors have tried to engineer posthumously for him by trying
desperately to organize his poetry into a text which will demonstrate that
“ the fullness of its development is one and the same with the perfection of
its outward fo r m .”28 Their efforts, unfortunately, only highlighted the gap
between their attempts to “impress a pre-determined” mechanic form upon
a text within which they perceived an “innate” organic form, one which they
assumed could be recovered and reconstructed by rearranging
manuscript Fragments and fragments of these Fragments; or, as Robert M.
Jordan has written:
I think commentators have failed to recognize the extent to which
the claim of the whole and that of the parts intefere with and
disarm one another, though the absence of a satisfactory critical
rationale is implicit acknowledgment of the difficulty of the
problem. (Shape 112)
We may now reasonably ask how this was manifested in Coleridge’s
idea of what constituted poetry. Again, the best way to illustrate the point
is to turn to the Bioaraphia. this time for a rather long quote, but one of
prime importance, in which Coleridge defined both poetry and the poet:
327
What is poetry? is so nearly the same question with, what is a
poet? that the answer to the one is involved in the solution of the
other. For it is a distinction resulting from the poetic genius itself,
which sustains and modifies the images, thoughts, and emotions
of the poet’s own mind. The poet, described in ideal perfection,
brings the whole soul of man into activity, with the subordination
of its faculties to each other, according to their relative worth and
dignity. He diffuses a tone, and spirit of unity, that blends, and (as
it were) fuses, each into each, by that synthetic and magical
power, to which we have exclusively appropriated the name of
imagination. This power, first put in action by the will and
understanding, and retained under their irremissive, though
gentle and unnoticed, control (laxis effertur habenis) . . . reveals
itself in the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant
qualities: of sameness, with difference; of the general, with the
concrete; the idea, with the image; the individual, with the
representative; the sense of novelty and freshness, with old and
familiar objects; a more than usual state of emotion, with more
than usual order; judgement ever awake and steady self-
possession, with enthusiasm and feeling profound or vehement;
and while it blends and harmonizes the natural and the artificial,
still subordinates art to nature; the manner to the matter; and our
admiration of the poet to our sympathy with the poetry. (319)
The poet who “blends, and (as it were) fuses, each into each, by that
synthetic and magical power,” is nothing less than a conduit for divine
inspiration, the creator who breathes unified life into his creation. By doing
so, the poet engaged and completed the Kantian process whereby thesis
and antithesis produce a synthesis of “opposite or discordant qualities”
which “blends and harmonizes” while it “subordinates art to nature.” This
near miracle is the result of poetic genius and is precisely what many of
Chaucer’s editors have wanted to find in his poetry, especially in the
“ Canterbury Tales,” that is, the poet himself. Such ideal organic essences
328
are lacking, however, even though scholars like Charles A. Owen were
seduced by their ordinal siren songs and were driven to great lengths to
attempt to recover something which never existed. In his discussion of
Chaucer’s Retraction, Owen desperately wrote:
That this period of intellectual vigor continued to Chaucer’s death
or to a totally incapacitating final illness is suggested by the
fragmentary and uncertain state in which the Canterbury Tales
was left. If he had had even a short period of respite before
death, Chaucer could hardly have failed to devote some effort to
the arrangement and clearer definition of what had drawn from
him so much in invention and artistry. (“Development” 464)
Here we see the lengths to which Owen went in trying to understand why
Chaucer did not leave us his Canterbury Tales in a nice, neat, orderly pile,
one which would have obviated the need for the decades of academic
argumentation.
Robert Pratt did much the same thing in his suppostions as to why we
are left with such a confusing manuscript tradition. He wondered how to
reconcile his rather convincing rationale for ordering the tales with that
found in the Ellesmere manuscript, postulating as evidence that things
went amiss in Chaucer’s study:
These apparently conflicting bodies of evidence lead us directly
to the conclusion that at about the time of Chaucer’s death,
Fragment VII was accidentally misplaced from its correct
(“Chaucerian”) position between II and III and to the incorrect
(“1400”) position between VI and VIII. At this time, the fascicles
and loose leaves making up his various copies of the tales and
links cannot all have lain scattered chaotically about his
329
residence; instead (I conjecture) one complete (or nearly
complete) set of the tales and links was piled up, arranged
physically in an order which was probably close to or identical
with the poet’s intention (the “Chaucerian” order [that is, Pratt’s
order]). At about this time, however, the fascicles and leaves
making up the sequence of tales from the Shipman’s through the
Nun’s Priest’s (Fragment VII) cannot have been in their proper
location. Fragment VII may have lain in the wrong position
between the Pardoner’s Tale and the Second Nun’s Tale (i.e.,
between Fragments VI and VIII: the “1400” order). On the other
hand, it may have simply lain apart from the rest of the MS. and
then have been inserted in its wrong (“1400”) position by
someone who knew no better. For example, the bulk of the MS.
was perhaps in Chaucer’s chest while the Shipman-Nun’s Priest
sequence lay on his desk. Once this misplacement occurred, it
was never rectified (i.e., before Bradshaw); and from now on
Fragment VII remained right after Fragment Vl--a sequence
reflected in the continuity of the genealogical groups of MSS.
from VI to VII. In short, the shift of VII from the “Chaucerian”
position to the “1400” position took place long before the copying
of Chaucer’s MSS. began. (1161-62)
I leave this passage basically without commentary, except to point out that
Pratt excused both Chaucer and his redactors from any textual
wrongdoing, just as Skeat did. By arguing away what he felt was the
“incorrect” order and by positing in its place the “Chaucerian” one, Pratt
assumed that he had validated his own ordinal scheme-which for him, of
course, was the same as the “Chaucerian” o n e .2 9
330
II.i
And it is one of the chief virtues of the Gothic builders, that they
never suffered ideas of outside symmetries and consistencies to
interfere with the real use and value of what they did. (Ruskin 98)
It is well known that the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
in England were the time of the Gothic Revival and of Medievalism, during
which architecture, textiles, bookmaking and literary expression centered
largely around the romantic resurrection of things medieval. William
Morris and John Ruskin--who greatly influenced the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood-Augustus Pugin and Thomas Carlyle were all active during
this period, shaping, along with the Romantic poets, a literary sensibility
and a nationalism that is apparent in the desire to have Chaucer as Great
English Poet. This wish and its attendant nationalism are brought together
in Lee Patterson’s description of this period:
More profoundly, in returning to the primitive origins of the nation
these writers [Ruskin and Morris] sought to recuperate an
undergirding identity of spirit that could serve as an ideal of social
coherence and unity to set against a contemporary society
stratified by class divisions and riven by economic warfare.
Rejecting the eighteenth-century idea of culture as the
discriminating mark of social superiority, Romantic medievalists
instead defined culture as an elemental and universal value that
is the birthright of every member of the nation, and one from
which too many had been alienated by a postmedieval history
that should now be set aside. (11)
331
With Patterson’s thoughts in mind, it is apparent that there is a rather grand
irony at work in the textual-critical tradition of the “Canterbury Tales,” one
which seemingly undercuts the efforts of those like Bradshaw, Furnivall,
Skeat and Pratt. Coleridge wrote, “The man who reads a work meant for
immediate effect upon one age with the notions and feelings of another,
may be a refined gentleman, but must be a sorry critic” (McKenzie 61).
Although perhaps a bit harsh, this statement speaks well, both to this irony
and to the kind of approach taken by Victorian and later editors of
Chaucer’s texts. I suggest irony because those editors and critics who
seek to conjure Chaucer and a Golden Middle Ages through his work,
those who view his incomplete texts through an organicist, textual-critical
optic, violate this tenet of the very man who was most representative of this
school of poetical aesthetics. My argument is further informed by the
thinking of Robert M. Jordan:
Since it is unlikely that we can view medieval narrative exactly as
it was viewed in its own time, it is important to recognize our
presuppositions so that we can reasonably appraise their utility
and their limitations. Both in critical theory and in novelistic
practice the pressure of the romantic and postromantic literary
sensibility has been to break down lines of demarcation and
thereby to achieve a communion between artist and art. Art thus
becomes ‘alive’ and ultimately responsive to its own nature rather
than inert and submissive to externally imposed limitations, such
as the rules of genre or the fixed outlines of structure.
(Shape 4-5)
332
critically seductive “horizon of expectations,” finally admitted. We can-
i indeed, we must— recognize that we bring to texts an inordinate amount of
t
; Romantic critical baggage and that this leftover “postromantic literary
I sensibility” still colors the way many of us engage artworks of all sorts.
This is rather easier to recognize for those of us writing from a post-
: structuralist vantage point, and all it really does is acknowledge that
i
! literary theories of all stripes are products of their historico-cultural periods.
Joseph A. Dane acknowledges this and ties the editorial desire for textual
unity to Biblical hermeneutics:
The perpetuation of the Biblical textus receotus (not a good one
by modern standards) was based on the ideological claim of the
sacredness of the text. The same process occurs with classical
texts, but the ideological claims are necessarily different ones.
An ‘aesthetic’ object replaces a ‘sacred’ one-both are the
I product of inspiration, as the language of textual criticism has
! always acknowledged (for example, the word ‘divinatio’-th e
f inspired emendation that recovers the pure source). A medieval
text cannot be edited according to these principles without
reproducing the associated ideology. (Editing 181)
i
j The intense admiration for Chaucer the Poet evidenced by some of his
editors often bordered on the reverent, indicating that Dane’s linkage of
‘“sacred” ' and “‘aesthetic’” is exactly right in this regard. Such thinking
goes back to William Caxton, whose “Preface” to his second edition of
1484 Tyrwhitt quoted in full.3o Caxton was told by “ one gentylman” that his
, first edition of six years earlier “was not according in many places unto the
| book that Geffrey Chaucer had made,” that it was “incorrecte” and not-as
333
he had supposed-"veray true and correcte.” This anonymous gentleman
then provided Caxton with a "a book . . . that was very trewe,” and Caxton
i
i
i agreed to produce a second edtion:
| . . . [to] enprynte it agayn, for to satisfy the auctour, where as tofore
I by ygnoraunce I erryd in hurtyng and dyffamyng his book in
dyverce places in setting in somme thynges that he never sayd
ne made, and leving out many thynges that he made, whyche
ben requysite to be sette in it.
(“Appendix to the Preface,” Tyrwhitt vii)
I
I
! I emphasize here Caxton's deferential wish “to satisfy the auctour,” against
i whom he had “erryd in hurtyng and dyffamyng [through] his book” by being
j inaccurate and not including “many thynges that he made, whyche ben
j requysite to be sette in it.” In printed editions the drive toward fullness,
j accuracy and truth-in-editing begins here with Caxton-the first English
| printer and the first to publish an edition of the “Canterbury Tales” (c.1478)-
I
, -and is picked up by Tyrwhitt in his desire “ to give the text of The
Canterbury Tales as correct as the Mss. . . . would enable him to make it,”
- to “make proper use of these Mss. . . . and to judge between a great
i number of various readings” (1.i).
i
Along these same lines, Tyrwhitt undertook “ To vindicate Chaucer from
the [Verstegan’s] charge of having corrupted the English language by too
! great a mixture of French with it” (“ The Contents” n.p.). He argued in this
“Essay on the Language and Versification of Chaucer” that the influence of
i
t
I
334
French extended all the way back to the time of Edward the Confessor,
who “became almost a Frenchman" (4). Based upon this argument,
i
| Tyrwhitt dismissed such charges out of hand:
i
i
I would ask, whether it is credible, that a Poet, writing in English
i upon the most familiar of subjects, would stuff his compositions
■ with French words and phrases, which . . . must have been
I unintelligible to the greatest part of his readers; or, if he had been
! so very absurd, is it conceivable, that he should have immediately
| become, not only the most admired, but also the most popular
writer of his time and country. (Essay 19)
Hence, the “corruption . . . of the English language by a mixture of French
i was not originally owing to Chaucer” (“Essay” 19).
i
In Frederick Furnivall’s “ Temporary Preface” we see what we might call
Chaucerian nationalism at work. He thanked F. J. Child of Harvard for the
work this American scholar had done in writing “his masterly and
I
i
| exhaustive essay on the use of the final e in the Harleian MS 7334” and
i
| for prompting Furnivall to make available “more Chaucer MSS” (2).
1 Furnivall then felt it his duty to produce something of similar value, not only
; for Chaucer studies, but for England:
. . . and I thought that some return was due to him from England
for it. Moreover, any one who reads the Canterbury Tales, and
gets to know the man Chaucer, must delight in and love him, and
must feel sorry that so little has been done for the works of the
genial bright soul, whose humour and wit, whose grace and
tenderness, whose power and beauty, are the chief glory of our
Early Literature. (2)
^ And later in the same essay, Furnivall wrote:
335
When that American had laid aside his own work to help, heart
and soul, in the great struggle for freeing his land from England’s
legacy to it, the curse of slavery, could one who honoured him for
it, who felt strongly how mean had been the feeling of England’s
upper and middle classes on the War, as contrasted with the
nobleness of our suffering working-men-, could one such, I say,
fail to desire to sacrifice something that he might help to weave
again one bond between (at least) the Chaucer-lovers of the Old
Country and the New? No. That educated England may never
so again fail in sympathy with all that is noblest in the education
of America, I sincerely trust. (3)
By the nineteenth century, Tyrwhitt’s concern with accuracy and fidelity
to the author, along with Furnivall’s nationalism became something
bordering on veneration. This is nowhere more apparent than in Walter
W. Skeat’s comments^
It is important to observe that Chaucer was, throughout life,
haunted by great ideas: and especially, by the desire to leave
behind him at least some one great work which would attract
general attention. [. . .] We thus see our author constantly striving
after the endeavour to produce some great original work: and the
Canterbury Tales was, in fact, the result of the latest and greatest
of these endeavours. (3.373, my emphases)
I emphasize the telling terminology here in order to highlight Skeat’s
insistency. He saw Chaucer as “our [i.e., England’s] author” who was
“haunted by great ideas,” as a sort of proto-Byron detemined to leave “one
great work” behind “which would attract general attention”; that is, the
attention of the English people. Chaucer for Skeat was someone who was
driven to produce not just a “great work,” but an “original” one as w e ll.3 2
(This latter concern recalls to mind Tyrwhitt’s defense of Chaucer’s French
336 ;
I
! i
linguistic imports.) Not surprisingly, the Canterbury Tales was the j
i
“ greatest of these endeavours/’ an endeavor which therefore must contain
a recoverable unity and order. A.S.G. Edwards notes:
i
i
I There is in many of Skeat’s emendations a general inclination to ,
j render Chaucer more explicit and accesible, in effect more
| prosaic, than either sense or meter warrants. It is an inclination of ;
| a piece with Skeat's concerns about the ordering of The
Canterbury Tales and his preoccupation with verisimilitude and
logic and his concern to make the text smooth, neat, and tidy.
(Editing Chaucer 183)
i
I Skeat was willing to concede that the texts that we have now had
i
! undergone some editorializing, but that the poet’s greatness still shone
i through:
l
| That Chaucer’s work did receive, in some small degree, some
| touching-up, is rendered more probable by observing how Group
j A ends. [. . .] . . . the tale [Gamelyn] is a capital one in itself, well
I worthy of being written even by so great a poet. . . . But I cannot
but protest against the stupidity of the botcher whose hand wrote
■ above it The Cokes Tale of Gamelyn.’ (3.381)
i
1 I note here the hesitant qualifications: “some small degree,” “some
touching-up,” “more probable.” Regardless of “the stupidity of the botcher”
Chaucer’s tale of “Gamelyn” (which is no longer recognized as his)
remains “a capital one in itself, well worth being written even by so great a
i
| poet ”33 Such postulations allowed Skeat not only to lionize Chaucer, but
i
to recreate his work habits (as Robert A. Pratt did) in a manner that he
thought did away with a good many of the problems inherent in the
337
“Tales.” By doing so, Skeat fictionalized his Chaucer in order to
i
i psychologize and revivify him:
i
! We thus have the pleasure of seeing Chaucer actually at work: he
begins with Boccaccio and the Vulgate version of the Bible,
drawing upon his recollections of Boethius for the story of
Hercules; he next takes a leaf or two from the Romaunt of the
I Rose; the story of Alexander, suggested (see B 3845) by the book
! of Maccabees, leads him to write the tragedy of Caesar; then he
tires of his work, and breaks off. Returning to it for the purpose of
filling up his great work, he adds a few ‘modern instances’; mixes
u p the order of tales: writes an apology for their want of order:
! humorously assigns them to the Monk, from whom the Host had
expected something widely different; and makes the Knight cut
him short when the right moment comes. The pilgrims had heard
enough about tragedies, and began to want something more
cheerful. (3.430, my emphases)
The next logical step after this for Skeat was to state that his Oxford text not
only approximated Chaucer’s original, but that it was-in one instance at
i
least--the original:
But Chaucer’s apology for want of order left him free to insert
them [the tragedies at the end of Monk’s Tale] where he pleased;
and he was accordingly pleased to put them in the order in which
j they appear in the present edition, which follows the arrangement
of the Harleian, Corpus, Petworth, and Lansdowne MSS. (3.429,
my emphases)
This process of revivification quite cleverly resuscitates a long-dead
Chaucer, essentially so that he can write Skeat’s Oxford edition, thus
lending it the ultimate authorial imprimatur. By positioning a great English
poet at the leading edge of England’s literary history, eighteenth- and
! nineteenth-century editors of Chaucer’s texts sought “ to recuperate an
338
undergirding identity of spirit,” to establish a direct connection with their
first author and their common la n d .3 4 By returning to the “elemental”
medieval period, to a Golden Middle Age, and by finding there a
mappable order in the fragments of the Canterbury texts (one built upon
references within the tales themselves-that is, upon what they read as
Chaucer’s own inscribed order) critics could unite the Groups of tales and
establish a unified text that represented both Chaucer’s intentions and his
greatness. All of this could then be tied, quite literally, to terra firma
A n a lia e .35
There are, however, at least two glaring problems with such an
approach, the first and most obvious being that Chaucer never finished
the “ Canterbury Tales.” J.S.P. Tatlock has summed up the magnitude of
this problem quite well:
It is hard to think of any work ever written, important or
unimportant, which was intended as a unit and in which there is
anything like so chaotic a condition in the early authorities. This
chaotic condition is the conspicuous feature of the MSS. to one
familiar with them; it could hardly be worse. (101)
Second, it is apparent, but not unanimously accepted, that Chaucer left no
inscribed ordering schema for us to fo llo w .36 Albert Baugh’s and Manly-
Rickert’s (M-R) comments are representative of one side of this issue:
“. . . the arrangement in none of the extant manuscripts can be attributed to
Chaucer. . .” (Baugh 232); and, “Chaucer was not responsible for any of
339
the extant arrangements. . (M-R 2.475). That such a seminal literary text
has come down to us in such a confused state of incompletion is what has
driven editors and critics to complete it for Chaucer by collation,
emendation and organization. Editors who follow the Coleridgean
unification theory are forced “to assert a belief in a single act of
composition, brought to completion in the issue of an authorized text, and
a belief in the poet as practitioner of a divine mystery. . .” (Pearsall 99).
This forces/allows them to create any number of textual-critical
methodologies under the guises of which they can practice their “own
mystery” (Pearsall 9 9 ).37
III
A happy hit! And it sets us free to alter the arrangement of any or
all of the MSS, to move up or down any Groups of Tales,
whenever internal evidence, probability, or presumption, requires
it. (Furnivall 21-22)
A third difficulty with the above suppositions-and this is the most
important point-is the incongruence of the late-medieval and modern
understandings of literal and figurative spatial organization. All critics who
attempt to arrange the “ Tales” according to internal geographical
references do so using linear cartographical constructions. Through such
approaches these scholars want to construct a journey along a route
similar to those mapped by Matthew Paris on his pilgrimage itinerary maps
340
or like the Roman itinerary, now called the Peutinger Taffel, to which I
referred in chapter one. These are strip maps, with the places laid out
along either horizontal (Peutinger) or vertical lines (Paris). The viewer
i
proceeds from a starting point (which we assume can be any of the
mapped locations) and moves along the straight strip until the destination
j is reached. In other words, one’s eyes travel from point A to point Z,
|
| moving through all of the intervening points to get there. Interestingly
i
I enough, mapping schemata like these never, to my knowledge, refer to
! these or any other medieval maps, including mappaemundi like the
i
I
| Hereford or the Ebstorf. Their creators rely instead upon what might be
I called the Ordnance Survey school of literary cartography, a school which
I
I is decidedly not medieval, but which seeks to realistically represent three-
dimensional reality in a two dimensional form and then use this form to
! (re)structure narrative fiction. We see this in the two foldout maps in Henry
j
! Littlehales’ Some Notes on the Road from London to Canterbury in the
j Middle Ages, done in 1898, and on the endpapers of Alfred W. Pollard’s
Globe Edition of 1910 and Robert A. Pratt’s The Tales of Canterbury.
Complete. Geoffrey Chaucer of 1966. On the face of it, there seems
nothing wrong with such a procedure; after all, the fiction is that the
| pilgrims are meant to be travelling along this very road, passing through
i
I real places: Southwark, The Watering of St. Thomas, Greenwich,
Rochester, Boughton-under-Blee, Bobbe-up-and-down (still not
I 341
*
■ conclusively identified) and S ittin g b o u rn e.38 W h y not, then, o rg an ize th e
i
manuscript Groups around this itinerary? For one possible answer, I turn
j to Donald Howard: “He [Chaucer] converts the factual account [of
i
| pilgrimage narratives] to a poetical and fictional one, an artifice whose
j truth is not owing to ‘real life’ but to the life of the mind” (Writers 80). The
1
key here is the phrase ‘“real life.’” Chaucer’s pilgrims are not “real,” his
i story is not “real,” the journey is not “real.” It is fiction, “poetical,” something
, completely artificial. We cannot map a fictional construct onto a pseudo-
i
realistic grid like those of the itinerary maps. We have to realize that all
maps misrepresent topographical reality; they must, for there is no way to
i
i
j represent three-dimensional space via a two-dimensional medium. So,
\
' ■ even if the pilgrims’ “ journey” could be fitted to a linear map, either one by
, Matthew Paris or by the Ordnance Survey, all we would have is one fiction
; grafted upon another, a combination which neither adds up to a true
i
representation of the real world, in this case the London-Canterbury road,
or to the ficitional one of the text.
One other danger inherent in this approach is that it focuses the
j reader’s attention on the links between discrete tales and between
|
! manuscript Groups and away from discrete tales themselves. Paul G.
i Ruggiers comments upon this and ties the idea of linear topographical
i
j progression to linear plot progression:
342
O u r attention, not prim arily co n cern ed w ith ‘w h at co m es n e x t? ’ is
focused upon cen ters of interest s u s p e n d e d b e tw een tw o poles: a
fictive representation of m an kin d in all its variety g overned
sim ultaneously by th e spirit of p e n a n c e a n d festivity; an d a t the
close, a non-fictive exam in atio n of th e vices to be avo ided and
the virtues to b e pursued as th e m e a n s of attaining the h ea ven ly
city. (Art xiii)
“C e n te rs of interest” is th e w a y th at th e tale s th e m s e lv e s should be
ch aracterized . T h e y d raw us in an d k e e p our attention, m uch like Rudolf
A rn h eim ’s cen ters of attention th at I used in m y interpretive program s for
th e H ereford m ap an d C h re tie n ’s rom ances. A s w e read th e “T a le s ” or
view the m ap, w e a re captivated by individual a s p e c ts of th e s e te x ts ’
lo o sely-o rg an ized chaotic s tru c tu re -b y certain tale s or fan tastic
pictographs. T h e order in w hich w e e x p e rie n c e th e s e cen ters is of little
con sequen ce, aside, th at is, from th e obvious narrative dialogic links.
Follow ing C h a u c e r’s reading advice from th e “M ille r’s P ro lo g u e,” w e a re
fre e to turn th e p ag e and choose an o th e r ta le or, a s Paul R uggiers w rites,
“W e can savo r th e cen ters of interest, seein g them as disconnected. . .” (Art
9 ).39 Thus, a m ore congruent organ izational m odel for th e “T a le s ” w ould
be one b as ed upon som ething like th e T -O m a o p a e m u n d i w hich, in fact, is
b arely an organ izational m odel a t all. A s I stated in ch ap ter one, th ese
artw orks a re s u m m a e . syncretic, synchronic rep resen tatio n s of late
m edieval know ledge, constructions integrating all th at w a s know n b y th e
d e s ig n e r-o r a t least all th at w ould fit within th e circular fra m e --o f history,
f “ I
! 343
1
I i
| theology and the physical and spiritual worlds. Indeed, this sounds very
j <
! much like Howard’s characterization of Chaucer’s setting: j
j When Chaucer chose the pilgrimage as the setting of his work,
! and chose to represent it thus disoriented in space and time,
insubstantial and transient, he was adopting and representing
‘the world’ as his subject. He chose to represent the stuff of
| memory grounded in the particularities of the sensible world, the
characters and intentions of people, and their tales. [. . .] But
within this overriding form he placed what was unmistakably the
forbidden underside of pilgrimage, curiositas--the delight men
took in divertisements, in ‘wandering by the way.’ He put at the
I center precisely those matters for which the pilgrim authors like
Mandeville touched least of all, what others sav to the pilgrim as
he travels. (Idea 168-69V*o
This note of transiency, the “disorientation in space and time” and “‘the
j world’” as “subject”--all of these could easily be applied to the Hereford
! Maooa Mundi. Within the “overriding form” of the map’s circular frame and
theological program we saw the same “curiositas-the delight men took in
! divertisments.” This was, in fact, the focus of my interpretive program. The
i
difference here is that there is no center, no “ Jerusalem,” to hold the
“ Canterbury Tales” together as there is on the map. All we have are the
I
discrete tales and their tenuous, intertextual links-centers of attention with
no center.
i
| The conceit of the “ Tales” is not predicated upon our belief in its
j mundane reality, its factuality, but upon our acknowledgement of its
H *
; verisimilitude. It does no good to try and situate ourselves or the pilgrims
i
i literally or cartographically as we read. When questions are posed from
344
these perspectives, only one answer materializes: “If we ask ‘where we
are’ as we read the General Prologue, the answer is neither on the road
nor at the inn, but in the realm of mental images, or memory, or hearsay
and surmise, of empathy, even of fantasy” (Howard, Idea 149). The
“Canterbury Tales” are fantasy, and the “realm o f. . . fantasy” is not literally
mappable.41
IV
Discussions of the order of the Canterbury Tales, although some
of them are brilliant displays of the scholarly process, seem to
share one original sin: a marriage of genuine evidence and
rationalization so dearly joined that the reader finds it difficult to
distinguish between the two. (Donaldson 193)
In this section I examine the textual-critical policies behind a number of
the major published versions of the “Canterbury Tales,” some non-editorial
texts and these works’ geo-temporal underpinnings, that is, their reliance
upon the cartographical fallacy: Thomas Tyrwhitt’s The Canterbury Tales
of Chaucer. To which are added, an Essav upon his Language and
Versification: an Introductory Discourse: and Notes (1775-78): Frederick J.
Furnivall’s A Temporary Preface to the Six-Text Edition of Chaucer’s
Canterbury Tales. Part I. Attempting to Show the True Order of the Tales.
and the Davs and Stages of the Pilgrimage, etc.. etc. (1868): Henry
Bradshaw’s “The Skeleton of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales” (1867); Walter
345
W. Skeat’s The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (1900): John Manly
and Edith Rickert’s The Text of the Canterbury Tales: Studied on the Basis
of all the Known Manuscripts (1940) and Robert A. Pratt’s The Tales of
Canterbury. Complete (1 9 6 6 ).42 I read each text’s editorial policy closely
and show how the editors sought to produce “accurate” or “pure”
Canterbury Tales-complete texts structured around conceptions of spatio-
temporal ordering which, ironically, are anything but organically u n ifie d 43
Their concerns with purity translate into critical (re)vivifications of the Real
Chaucer and are based largely upon ordinal policies that rely upon
internal geographical and extratextual cartographical references.
IV.i
Thomas Tyrwhitt
To begin this discussion of the Chaucerians’ fixation with the literal as a
basis for organizing the fictional, I turn to Thomas Tyrwhitt’s 1775-78
edition.44 Tyrwhitt was the first to discuss the texts from an extratextual,
spatio-temporal perspective, and his thinking and decisions in these
matters are at the head of a long line of Chaucer’s editors.45 Tyrwhitt
expressed disappointment that what he regarded as Chaucer’s intentions
seemed incongruous with what was expressed in the text, beginning with
the existence of the Tabard Inn:
346
Those who are disposed to believe the Pilgrimage to have been
real, and to have happened in 1383, may support their opinion by
the following inscription, which is still to be read upon the Inn,
now called the Talbot, in Southwark. This is the Inn where Sir
Jeffrey Ghaucer and the twenty-nine Pilgrims lodged in their
journey to Canterbury, Anno 1383.’ Though the present
inscription is evidently of a very recent date, we might suppose it
to have been propagated to us by a succession of faithful
transcripts from the very time; but unluckily there is too good
reason to be assured, that the first inscription of this sort was not
earlier than the last century. (4.124, my emphasis)4^
This adverbial longing is again expressed in Tyrwhitt’s suggestions for
temporal rearrangement:
It seems to have been the intention of Chaucer, in the first lines of
the Prologue, to mark with some exactness the time of his
supposed pilgrimage; but unluckily the two circumstances of his
description, which were most likely to answer that purpose, are
each of them irreconcileable to the other. When he tells us, that
‘the shours of April had perced to the rote the drought of march’
[ver.1,2.], we must suppose (in order to allow due time for such an
operation) that April was far advanced; while on the other hand
the place of the Sun, ‘having just run half his course in the Ram’
[ver.7,8.], restrains us to some day in the very latter end of March;
as the Vernal Equinox, in the age of Chaucer, according to his
own treatise on the Astrolabe . . ., was computed to happen on
the twelfth of March. This difficulty may (and, I think, should) be
removed by reading in ver. 8, the Bull, instead of the Ram. . . . all
the parts of the description will then be consistent with
themselves, and with another passage [ver.4425.], where, in the
best Mss. the eiahte and twenty day of April is named as the day
of the journey to Canterbury. (4.121 -23, my emphases)
Here we notice Tyrwhitt’s reliance upon “ the best Mss.” (although what
constitutes “best” he never says)4? and Chaucer’s own astronomical
observations as he argues for a reconstruction of Chaucer’s “intention.” 48
347
I
J
: The lengths to which he went to reconcile the seemingly “unluckily . . .
i
j irreconcilable” are great. And he suggests that the manuscripts to which
j he consistently ascribes such authority be tampered with in his bid for a
“consistent” text, one in which “ This difficulty may . . . and . . . should . . . be
removed” so that “all the parts of the description will then be consistent
i
with themselves. . . ” 49 This suggested emendation is not based upon any
! manuscript authority, at least not upon any which Tyrwhitt cites; rather, he
gives the following tenuous support for his suggestion:
This correction may seem to be authorized, in some measure, by
Lidgate, who begins his continuation of the Canterbury Tales in
this manner. “Whan bright Phebus passed was the Ram Midde of
Aprill, and into the Bull came.”
! This heavily qualified, anachronistic assertion, “may seem” and “in some
| measure,” is then undermined by his comments on Lydgate:
i
* But the truth is, that Dan John wrote for the most part in a great
hurry, and consequently without much accuracy. In the account
which he proceeds to give of Chaucer’s Tales, he not only
confounds the circumstances of description of the Sompnour and
Pardoner, but he speaks of the latter as-Telling a tale to anger
with the Frere. Storie of Thebes, ver. 32-5. (4.122, n.5)
i
j Tyrwhitt’s consternation with his perceived lack of temporal order in the
i
j “ Tales” is again evident in his passage on the arrangement of “The
Parson’s Prologue” and “The Manciple's Tale”:
The Parsones Prologue therefore is here placed next to the
Manciples Tale, agreably to all the Mss. which are known, and to
] every Edition before 1542. In this Prologue, which introduces the
; last Tale upon the journey to Canterbury, Chaucer has again
^ 348
i
i
pointed out to us the time of the day; but the hour by the clock is
very differently represented in the Mss. In some it is ten, in others
two: in most of the best Mss. foure. and in one five. According to
the phaenomena here mentioned, the Sun being 29° high, and
the length of the Shadow to the projecting body as 11 to 6, it was
between four and five. As by this reckoning there were at least
three hours left to sunset, one does not well see with what
j propriety the Host admonishes the Person to haste him, because
: ‘the Sonne wol adoun.' and to be ‘fructuous in litel space:’ and
indeed the Person (knowing probably how much time he had
| good) seems to have paid not the least regard to his admonition;
■ for his Tale (if it may be so called) is twice as long as any of the
j others. (4.186-87)
i
I Interestingly enough, it is not Chaucer who is chastised for this temporal
| discrepancy, but the fictional pilgrims: first it is the Host, who acts without
i “propriety,” and then the Parson-who has been quickened and given
i
1
| cognitive powers by Tyrwhitt-disregards Harry’s “admonition” to hurry his
|
tale. Indeed, Chaucer seems to escape censure all together, since he has
“pointed out to us the [correct?] time of day,” which “is very differently
i
represented in the Mss.” Tyrwhitt would have had us believe, then, that
the Host and Chaucer’s redactors were responsible for these
inconsistencies and not Chaucer the poet. This goes along with his desire
i
| to recuperate Chaucer’s use of French, which I have already discussed.
i
i
This reliance on realism recurs in Tyrwhitt’s geographical
considerations, which he uses to arrange a number of tales in their “true
order”:
! Thus far I flatter myself I have been not unsuccesful in restoring
the true order, and connexion with each other, of the Clerkes. the
349
Marchantes. the Sauieres and the Frankeleines Tales, but with
regard to the next step, which I have taken, I must own myself
more dubious. In all the editions the Tales of the Nonne and the
Chanones Yeman precede the Doctoures. but the best Mss.
agree in removing those Tales to the end of the Nonnes Preestes.
and I have not scrupled to adopt this arrangement, which, I think,
is indisputably established by the following consideration. When
the Monk is called upon for his Tale the Pilgrims were near
Rochester [ver. 13932.], but when the Chanon overtakes them
they were advanced to Boughton under Blee [ver. 16024.], twenty
miles beyond Rochester, so that the Tale of the Chanones
Yeman. and that of the Nonne to which it is annexed, cannot with
any propriety be admitted till after the Monkes Tale, and
consequently not till after the Nonnes Preestes. which is
inseparably linked to that of the Monk. (4.170-71 )so
Tyrwhitt is less confident about this other fragment shift, calling it into
question himself. To my knowledge, this self-styled “dubious” rationale for
moving the “Nun’s” and “Canon’s Yeoman's” tales to follow the “Monk’s”
tale is original with Tyrw hitt.si He was perfectly right in thinking this shift
“dubious” for two reasons: first, it is not backed by manuscript authority, to
which Tyrwhittt so often claimed to defer. In fact, in this instance he went
against both the authorities and the textual-critical tradition, as he said: “I
have not scrupled to adopt this arrangement,” which is found in “ the best
Mss.” Second, it is based upon extratextual topographical evidence which
is irreconcilable with the fiction of Chaucer’s tales.
This sort of thinking occurs again in Tyrwhitt’s discussion of the pilgrims’
itinerary. He, like so many after him, consulted maps--presumably of the
London-Canterbury road--in his bid to organize the fragments:
350
In the Prologue to the Manciples Tale, the Pilgrims are supposed
to be arrived at a little town called ‘Bob up and down, Under the
blee, in Canterbury way.’ I cannot find a town of that name in any
Map, but it must have lain between Boughton (the place last
mentioned) and Canterbury. (4.183-84)
The pilgrims never actually walked this road, nor did the fictional Chaucer
(although the real Geoffrey Chaucer might have). Indeed, the reader is
prompted to wonder just why the town “must have lain between Boughton .
. . and Canterbury” or anywhere on a real map, for that matter. Do we
have to reconcile Dante’s fictional geography with that of fourteenth-
century Italy? Is it necessary to know where Chretien’s lands of Gorre and
Logres lie? The answers, obviously, are no, and attempting to order the
“Tales” on such evidence is just as untenable.
IV.ii
Henry Bradshaw
Many Chaucerians who followed Tyrwhitt, including a number who
produced “standard” editions, based their arrangements on precisely
these kinds of intra- and inter-fragmental topographical references. The
most influential in this regard was Henry Bradshaw, whose eponymously-
titled “Shift” found its way into Furnivall’s Six-Text arrangement for the
351
Chaucer Society (1868-84). Donald C. Baker explains the “Bradshaw
shift,”
[as] moving fragment VII (The Shipman's Tale through The Nun's
Priest's Tale) up to the position following The Man of Law's Tale.
a position that in the lettering of the fragments caused it to
become B2 (The Physician’s Tale and The Pardoner's Tale being
C and The Wife of Bath's Tale. The Friar's Tale, and The
Summoner’s Tale being D). . . . (Editing Chaucer 161)
This was, in turn, accepted by Walter W. Skeat (1894, 1 9 0 0 ),52 Albert
Baugh (1963) and Robert Pratt (1966) in their editions, as well as others
who have argued for its acceptance. The influence of this shift, the validity
of which continues to be argued today, is quite surprising-unless, that is,
one considers how firmly Bradshaw fitted into the organicist mold and how
appealing “an answer” to the vexing problem of Chaucer’s lack of
inscribed order must have seemed to his contemporaries. Indeed, “The
Skeleton of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales” (1867), in which it is outlined, is
the only piece on Chaucer that Bradshaw ever p ub lished.53 There he
sketched his thoughts on organizing the “Tales” and on Chaucer’s ordinal
intentions:
The Somnour’s remark that he will telle tales two or three of freres
or he come to Sidenborne, and his last words: ‘My tale is don we
ben almost at toun,’ would lead me to believe that Chaucer
intended this fragment to find its final place in a later portion of the
poem, between Fragment X. in which the allusion is made to
Rochester, and Fragment IX. where Boughton under Blee is
mentioned. (119)
: 352
I
I
j Continuing his topographical discussion, and sounding much like the
j
recuperative Tyrwhitt, Bradshaw relieves the historical Chaucer of any
blame for disarranging Fragments X and XI, all the while acknowledging
the futility of ever finding a temporally-based ordering schema:
i
! Where this Fragment [IX] is found placed between Fragments X.
1 and XI. I have very little doubt that this transposition is the result of
that editorial care which has rearranged the Monk’s tale, &c. from
a feeling that the mention of Boughton under Blee must of
; necessity throw this Fragment to a much later place in the
! collection. But it has been before shewn [by Tyrwhitt?] how
impossible it is so to arrange the several Fragments that the order
of time shall be preserved throughout. (“Skeleton” 133-34, my
em p h asis)54
Ironically, the man responsible for the Bradshaw Shift, the textual move
! which has influenced over one hundred years of editorial policies, argued
for displacing Fragments while insisting upon the impossibility of
; achieving temporal consistency.
IV.iii
Frederick J. Furnivall
It is to Frederick Furriivall’s “ Temporary Preface” that one must look for
I more details on the “Bradshaw Shift”; since, as Eleanor Hammond noted,
i
“Bradshaw though suggesting to Furnivall (in 1868) that B2 should be lifted
I up to follow BT made no definite order of the tales; he contented himself
I
1 with outlining the way in which the evidence should be gathered and
353
studied” (166-67). In his unbelievably influential “Preface,” Furnivall, the
founder of the Chaucer Society wrote: “So far, all is straight; but when we
get to the end of the Man of Law's Tale, our troubles begin. What is to
come after it?” (20) Looking for a “straight” itinerary, Furnivall answered
himself: “ Why, the set of Tales which mentions Rochester, the next big
town to Greenwich, answers the man who works by ‘geography;’ and
that’s true” (20-21, n.1). Furnivall, the man who followed “the man,”
Bradshaw, “ who worked by ‘geography,’” commented on Tyrwhitt’s
arrangement of what the Chaucer Society came to call Groups Bi and B2.
After noting rather condescendingly that, “ Tyrwhitt did use his head . . .;
but he didn’t use it enough” (20-21), Furnivall wrote:
[l]f he [Tyrwhitt] had looked carefully at his MS C, the Harleian MS
7334, . . . he would have found the chat or link he wanted, the
right hook to the Man of Law’s Tale, namely, “the Prologue to the
Shipman’s Tale,” which, as Mr Thomas Wright observes, “The
Harl. MS erroneously [that is, quite rightly] places” there. . . .
Tyrwhitt, like the rest of us, did not take this hint; he also did not
take the further hint of his MS Bd,-Arch. Seld. B 14,--which
actually links the Man of Law’s and Shipman’s tales together, and
accordingly he did not adopt this latter manuscript’s right
arrangement of these Tales; and though he saw that this chat or
link of which we are treating suited (in its latter half) the Shipman,
he failed to see that its lines 3 to 6
This was a thrifty tale for the nones,
Sire parish preest, quod he, for Goddes bones,
Tell us a tale, as was thy forward yore;
I see wel that ve lerned men in lore [t.e. [sic] Man of Law &
Can mochel good, by Goddes dignitee Priest]
“inseparably linked” this Prologue to the Man of Law’s
354
I can right now no thrifty tale sain (Tyr.i.174, 1 .4466).
It was reserved for Mr Bradshaw (on the receipt of my Trial-
Tables, which he rebelled against,) to make this discovery, and
put the Shipman’s Tale, with its belongings, up to the Man of
Law’s; and the proof that his discovery was right, was given at
once by line 15412 (WriahtT
Lo, Rowchestre stant heer faste by,
exactly suiting the new arrangement of the Tales, bringing the
Pilgrims at the end of their second day’s journey to Rochester, 30
miles from town, and removing a terrible contradiction from the
old arrangement. A happy hit! And it sets us free to alter the
arrangement of any or all of the MSS, to move up or down any
Groups of Tales, whenever internal evidence, probability, or
presumption, requires it. (2 1 -2 2 )
There are a number of things requiring commentary in this crucial
passage, perhaps the single most important one in terms of Furnivall’s
Fragment ordering--the one that emphasizes the “right hook,” the “right
arrangement.” First, there is Furnivall’s reliance upon two manuscripts,
the Harleian 7334 and the Arch. Seld. B 14. The first was used by
Trywhitt, as Furnivall noted, and contains one clue to the “straight” order,
the “Shipman's Prologue.” Arch. Selden B14, which Eleanor Hammond
called “the most enigmatic of Chaucerian codices” (178), provides another-
-indeed, the most significant-clue, since it contains the “Prologue to the
Shipman’s Tale” and places it in what Furnivall considered the right place,
that is, following the.“Man of Law’s Tale”:
in one MS only, the Selden, the word Shipman apears in line 17
of the endlink, and the Shipman’s Tale follows. This arrangement
355
recommended itself to Bradshaw and to the Chaucer Society [that
is, to Furnivall], largely because the sequence of Tales appearing
when Bradshaw “lifted” the fragment headed by the Shipman up
to follow the Man of Law corresponded more nearly to the
geography of the pilgrims’ for the allusion to Rochester which the
Monk’s headlink (in the B2 fragment) contains, was thereby made
to precede the allusion to Sittingbourne, ten miles further from
London, which is found in the Sompnour’s headlink, in the D
fragment. [. . .] It should be noted however that although the
Selden MS joins B 1 and B2, it does not move B2 up to follow B1,
as Bradshaw and modern editors arrange the Tales, but moves
Bi down to meet B2, late in the Tales. (Hammond 277 -7 8)5 5
As Hammond noted, “It is hardly necessary to remind the student that in
only one MS, Selden B 14, does the Man of Law’s endlink introduce the
Shipman’s Tale. . .” (244). Therefore, in Selden B 14-and only in Selden
B 14-does the “Man of Law’s” tale form the Chaucer Society’s Group Bi
and provide the link with the much larger B2, which contains the
“Shipman’s” and “Prioress’” tales, along with “Thopas,” “Melibee” and the
“Monk’s” and “Nun’s Priest’s” tales.56 This single manuscript is the one
upon which the entire Bradshavian-Furnivallian ordinal schema is based.
By moving the fragments on the authority of this manuscript’s inclusion of
the word “Shipman,” the topographical discrepancies come into line,
thereby “removing a terrible contradiction from the old arrangement.”
What Bradshaw and Furnivall did not consider, however, is that we have
no idea who made this emendation or why. If the Selden scribe saw the
geographical incongruity, it could be that he inserted “Shipman” in place
of “Sompnour,” which shows in “Harley 7334 and at least two other MSS”
356
(Hammond 277). We perhaps will never know; in any case, this is a
slippery slope upon which to build such a massive textual-critical tradition.
Furnivall’s often-cited quotation-"A happy hit!”--stands, along with his and
the Chaucer Society's well-deserved reputations, as procedural
dispensation, as editorial carte blanche, to generations of editors who
have based their textual-ordinal policies upon “internal evidence” (like
Robert A. Pratt) upon the “presumption” of authorial intent (this criterion
covers all of the editorial policies under consideration here) or
mathematical “probability.”57 By valorizing Bradshaw in a Chaucer
Society publication, Furnivall set the stage for critics who, working “ by
geography,” seek imaginary unity-through-geography along the real road
to Canterbury.58
Furnivall’s debt to Bradshaw’s Unitarian thinking is evident in the full
title to his “Preface” for the Chaucer Society’s texts: “A Temporary Preface
to the Six-Text Edition of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales Part I, Attempting to
Show the True Order of the Tales, and the Days and Stages of the
Pilgrimage, Etc. Etc.” There was to be no Part II, but in “Part I” Furnivall
parlayed his Bradshavian way of ordering with his own advice regarding
editorial carte blanche to find the “ True Order” and to answer questions
like the following in the affirmative:
Can we halt the Pilgrims at Harbledown to dine, or to visit the
nuns, or to take a very long time in kissing the Harbledown relic,
357
St Thomas’s shoe-not, like Colet, exclaiming, “What! do these
asses expect us to kiss the shoes of all good men that ever lived?
Why, they might as well bring us their spittle or their dung to be
kissed!” (37)
Or to advertise hopefully for solutions to temporal discrepancies: “I hope
some one will soon find a plausible reason for keeping the Pilgrims at
Harbledown till 4 P.M. Until it is found, we must give up the hope of
making the time of the Parson’s Prologue work in with the rest of the Tales”
(38).
One of the most striking of Furnivall’s approaches was his insistence
upon tying the fictional events in the “Tales” to his own real-life
experiences--a nearly universal prediliction, as anyone can attest who has
been charmed by ruins or remnants of an older time. He seemed to think
that this would at once prove his (and Bradshaw’s) ordinal theory as “right”
and “True,” and tie Chaucer, as the first English poet, to English soil. This
mode of thought went one step further than critics like Tyrwhitt and
countless others who argued as if the pilgrims were real and the
pilgrimage a real event. In the “Preface,” Furnivall, the rambling amateur-
and I mean this in the best sense-wrote:
In the autumn of 1861, while on a walking-tour through Sussex, I
had seen Lord Leconfield’s MS [Petworth House MS 7] of the
Canterbury Tales, and both then and on a subsequent journey to
Petworth, I thought the MS was old and good enough to deserve
collation for the next edition of Chaucer. (5)
358
When discussing the probable medieval road conditions, Furnivall
reminisced:
I sha’n’t soon forget a spring walk in the wood by the side of
Shooter’s Hill, on one of our Sunday geological excursions from
the Working Men’s College. The wet clay was more like ice
covered with soft butter, than anything else; and the way we slipt
about-especially those at the tail of the party-was a joke to see.
(15, n.6 )
And later, on the impossibility of making the trip from London to
Canterbury in one day:
I am obliged to insist on the road- and horse-points, as some non
riding friends have seen no difficulty in the one April day’s ride to
Canterbury by the party of Pilgrims, including three women (one
oldish), a ploughman on his (cart-) mare, a sailor who rode ‘as he
couthe,’ and a Miller who was drunk before he got to Deptford.
Such a party could no more have done the distance in a day than
have flown. (16-17, n. 1)59
On the same topic, he related the ride to contemporary Victorians out for
“more or less of a lark,” perhaps like his ramble to Petworth house to view
Lord Leconfield’s manuscript:
Further, the reader must recollect that the Pilgrims were out for a
holiday, more or less of a lark, and not for a hard ride to lose
leather; and that, even now, men and their sisters out for a riding-
tour do not generally ride more than 20 or 25 miles a-day. To
allow 15 or 16 miles a-day for a large party along the bad narrow
roads of near 500 years ago is not unreasonable, especially
when we consider the style of cart-horse on which men rode at
the time. . . . (16-17)
This kind of thinking about the texts, along with Henry Bradshaw’s
formative ideas on geographical criticism, led-or allowed-Furnivall to
359
argue for thrity-one pages from this perspective. Indeed, he stated, “But
before we can proceed with our discussion of the Fragments, and the
Groups of the Tales, and their order of succession, we must consider that
of the stages and days of the journey” (12). The only way to understand
this for him was to regard the issue through a temporal-topographical
optic, an aperture which opened out onto the pages of history. After tying
his own experiences to those of the fictional pilgrims, Furnivall turned to
recorded accounts of similar journeys, beginning with Isabella, Edward M ’s
queen:
Our members will find, as we go on, that there is no real reason
for supposing that Chaucer made a mess of his geography, or
that he compressed his journey into one day. Meantime we will
take as correct the Dean’s statement, that the journey (of 56
miles, or thereabouts) usually occupied three or four days, as his
authorities for it are the facts that Isabella, queen of Edward II,
was four days on the road . . ., and that [John, King of France,
traveled from the Tower of London to Canterbury in four days]. . . .
(12-13)60
After quoting “the Dean” at some length and absolving Chaucer of “making
a mess of his geography,” Furnivall gives the reason for his historical
digression: "Note then the sleeping-places on [Isabella’s] journey,--
Dartford. Rochester. Osorinae. . .” (14). Dartford and Rochester are, of
course, places allegedly passed through by Chaucer’s Canterbury
pilgrims. Although Ospringe does not appear in the text, it is often
360
conjectured that the travellers stopped there before reaching Canterbury.
This leads Furnivall into a long jusification:
After this [these acounts] we may fairly assume that the regular
sleeping-places on the road were Dartford. Rochester. Osorinae.
and that Chaucer and his fellow Pilgrims were three or four days
on their journey. We shall now inquire whether these
assumptions suit the statements and allusions of the Tales,
whether our voyagers “passed the night at Dartford,” Rochester,
and Ospringe, like King John of France, and Queen Isabella of
England before him; whether the Pilgrims dined at Sittingbourne,
also like King John. For this purpose we return to the Tales, and
the chats between them; but let me first ask any reader who
doubts whether 56 miles could take up to three days and a half’s
ride, to recollect what this 14th-century Canterbury road--all stiff
sticky London-Clay, mind, except one little bit of chalk, and two
bits of drift— is likely to have been,
Whan that Aprille, with his schowres swoote,
The drought of Marche ha[d] perced to the roote.
and how Chaucer twice calls our attention to the kind of swampy
field the road actually was . . . [and of] the deep holes full of slosh
that, even in the nineteenth century, one has oneself occasionally
flopped into on cross-country roads. (15-16)
Arguing that “Chaucer and his fellow Pilgrims were three or four days on
the road. . .,” Furnivall tried to link the fictional to the factual. Unfortunately,
this kind of thinking made his argument less and less tenable: “The
Pilgrims had evidently ‘made a night of it’ at Dartford, or been very tired
with their journey, so that they started late next morning, and may indeed,
like King John, have had their dinner before setting out” (20). This is
followed by: “ The Pilgrims would thus have done 16 miles in their third
361
day’s journey, and sleep, as Queen Isabella, and as King John of France
did, at Ospringe, 46 miles from town” (29); and finally, “ At Ospringe the
Pilgrims may have stopt with Le maistre et freres de I’ostel Dieu. as King
John did.. ."(41, n. 1).
My final example of Furnivall’s cartographical criticism comes from his
discussion of his Fragment 4’s composition. Here he uses the textual
reference to Sittingbourne to place the “Wife of Bath’s Tale” “in Fragment 4
or 5”:
What is to form Fragment 4? As Sittingbourne is the next
important town to Rochester, on the road to Canterbury, it is clear
that in Fragment 4 or 5 we must put the Wife of Bath’s Tale, and
those “inseparably linked” to it,-the Friar’s and Sompnour's,-
because in the Wife’s Prologue, the Sompnour says,
‘And I beschrewe me
But if I telle tales tuo or thre
Of freres, er I come to Sydingborne’ (1.6429,
Wright)
and the Sompnour’s Tale ends with
My tale is don, we ben almost at toune (1.7876,
Wriaht)
no other Tale is inseparably linked with it.
If then these 3 Tales are sufficient for the 10 miles between
Rochester and Sittingbourne, we must make them Fragment 4
and Group C. If not (which is my own opinion) we must bring up
two Tales which are “inseparably linked” together, and form one
Group, but which contain no internal evidence as to their proper
place in the Work,-namely, the Doctor’s and Pardoner’s-and
make these two, Fragment 4 and Group C; turning the Wife, Friar,
and Sompnour, into Fragment 5 and Group D. This then I
propose to do; and let the Pilgrims halt for a meal at
Sittingbourne, 40 miles from town:-why not for dinner, like King
John? (24-25)
362
This is precisely what he did, as is attested in the Chaucer Society’s order
of the Tales (“Preface” 42-43, Hammond 159). We notice here the heavy
reliance first, upon real linear travel; indeed, “it is clear” that this
arrangement of tales is valid because “Sittingbourne is the next important
town to Rochester.” Second, actual travel miles figure prominently, with
“10 miles between Rochester and Sittingbourne” supplying further support
for this arrangement.6 1 We later readers might also ask: “why not for
dinner, like King John?” Our answer, however, would have to be that
fictional characters do not eat dinner like King John.
I cite the following as an example of what is to me the epitome of
psychological animation as a basis for an ordinal literary theory. Furnivall
here took a fictional character, the Cook, and gave him life so that he then
could use his doubly fictitious creation as a means of reconciling what he
took to be one of the text’s temporal inconsistencies:
[C]ne must allow the Cook some miles’ ride, either to get drunk or
fall asleep in. Granting that he’d been flea-bitten all night, or in
bed with some quean, yet the stir of starting and the morning-air
would be sure to have freshened him up and kept him awake for
some miles. From the Manciple’s words, and the Host’s second
speech, however, it is clear that the Cook was drunk; and to get
so must have taken him some time. Are the 8 V2 miles from
Ospringe to Harbledown too much to allow the man to have got
thoroughly drunk in, and drop ‘al byhynde,’ so that the Blean-
Forest ‘theef mighte ful lightly robbe and bynde’ him? I think not.
This last touch settles the question for me. The Pilgrims had
evidently got through the (no doubt) robber-haunted Forest, and
were approaching Harbledown, the Cook had dropped behind all
the party (brought up by the Reeve), when the Host turned round,
363
saw Master Cook all behind, at once thought of the Forest
thieves, and called for one of the company to go and fetch up the
lagging Cook, before he was caught by some thief and carried
back to the Forest. (35)
Furnivall quoted at great length one “Mr J.M. Cowper of Faversham,
who kindly undertook to walk the roads for me” (31-34, n.2) in support of
his bid to establish the true identity of “Chaucer’s Bob-Up-And-Down” (32).
I cannot reproduce Mr. Cowper’s report in full, running as it does over two
pages of very small, single-spaced type. Representative excerpts will
suffice. Before reprinting Cowper’s letter “ from The Athenaeum of Dec. 26,
1868, p.8 8 6 ” (32), Furnivall tellingly suggested that the correspondent’s
comments “should be read with the Ordnance Map by one’s side” (32).
Here we see an outstanding example of the (mis)use of modern maps to
reconstruct a fictional journey. Cowper reported:
When I started out on my quest to find the place, I started on the
supposition that it must denote some undulating locality between
Ospringe and Canterbury. But a difficulty presented itself-the
whole district is undulating, and any number of places may be
found which exactly suit the description, notably Boughton-under-
Blean (not Boughton Street), which is quite as bob-up-and-
downing as Harbledown. (32)
Again I indicate that Ospringe is not mentioned anywhere in the
“Canterbury Tales”; it is, however, on nineteenth-century maps, including
Ordnance Survey Maps of the usual sort as well as on their special-issue
“Map of Monastic Britain, South Sheet.” It seems to have been repeatedly
364
used in analyses like Furnivall’s for two reasons: first, it allegedly fit
geographically the place on the journey where the Canon’s Yeoman says
in his “Prologue”: “‘Sires, now in the morwe-tyde / Out of youre hostelrie I
saugh yow ryde. . .” (588-89, my e m p h a s is)6 2 Second, Furnivall and other
Bradshavians took this as an almost certain reference to Ospringe
because, according to accounts like that of Isabella’s journey, it was a real
pilgrimage stopping-point: ‘“On the 1 2 th she returned to Ospringe. and on
the 13th proceeded to Leeds Castle, where she remained until the 2nd of
July’” (“Preface” 1 4 ).63 in his “Allusions to Places, Times, Prior Tales, &c.
(“Preface” 42-43),” which Littlehales reprints in full (40-42), Furnivall
bracketed “[?Ospringe 46 miles]” next to Group E, Fragment VI, the
“Merchant’s” link. He suggested that this topographical marker indicated a
temporal one, that it marked the f?End of the Third Day’s Journey!” (43).
And so, a literal topographical point which does not literally appear in the
“Tales” became a nexus for a fictional spatio-temporal convergence. This,
in turn, was used as part of Furnivall’s argument for arranging the
fragments of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales on geographical evidence.
Mr. Cowper himself evidenced doubt as to the efficacy of his enterprise:
As I could find no place to satisfy me on the now well-known road
between Ospringe and Canterbury, the question arose--Did the
Pilgrims follow that route? In the first place, I had failed to find
Bob-up-and-down in this direction-would it answer in other
particulars? The Canon’s yeoman overtook the pilgrims not five
miles on, at Boughton-under-Blean; supposing Ospringe to have
been the ‘hostelrye' mentioned, the present village of Boughton is
only about three miles and a half distant; is it likely that Chaucer
would have said ‘not five’-would he not have said four? But
another question presented itself-Did the modern village exist in
Chaucer’s days? To satisfy myself on this head I turned to
Hasted’s ‘Kent,’ 8vo, vol.7 p.4, where I found the following:-‘A
little further on is a hamlet called Sough Street, which report says
ways once the only one in the parish, the London Road having
gone through it instead of the present way, on which the present
street of Broughton has been since built. . . . (32)
Even after exhausting his sources-and perhaps himself through rambling-
Cowper could only admit to showing “the existence of an old road round
the hill” (33). He was confident, nonetheless, that it was the old London-to-
Canterbury road:
Is there another road which, without violating any probability, will
answer Chaucer’s description? At two miles and a quarter from
Ospringe the Key Street above mentioned commences on the
right-hand side of the road at Brenly Corner, and running close
under the walls of the Church of Boughton-under-Blean passes
throught the hamlet of South Street, which still bears the marks of
a very ancient village. It is, moreover, fully four miles, perhaps
more, from Ospringe, and so tallies better with the Canon’s-
Yeoman’s ‘not five miles on.’ The road then passes between
Fishpond Wood and College Wood down to Hatch Green Wood,
where it falls into the old Pilgrims’ Way, so well described in
Stanley’s ‘Memorials of Canterbury’ [also cited by Furnivall,
“Preface” 12], by Mr Albert Way. The road, as described by him,
then runs through Bigberry Wood, and meets the London Road
about half a mile above St Dustan’s Canterbury. At this end it is
known as Cut-Throat Lane; ‘but they do say,’ as a labourer
remarked to me the other day, ‘as how it is the old London Road.’
(33)
Finally, having inconculsively postulated that, “my theory is that Chaucer
used ‘Bob-up-and-down,’ the name of part of the parish of Thannington for
366
| the parish itself” (33), Mr. Cowper admits to the danger of relying solely on
maps:
No map that I have yet seen is so satisfactory as a pilgrimage
along these bye-ways and disused and forgotten roads. Their
track still remains in the forest, their name is handed down from
generation to generation of wood-reeves and tillers of the soil.
The many ‘new roads’ which have been made for more civilized
times are only apt to mislead in cases of this sort if researches are
| carried on only by the aid of a map. (34)64
! According to Frederick Furnivall and J.M. Cowper, it would seem that the
; only way to really understand Chaucer’s intention--which is what they tried
i to reconstructs to either animate the characters of the “ Tales” and then
i
i
tie them to real English topography or to actually take oneself on a
pilgrimage which retraces exactly the road that Chaucer’s pilgrims never
took: “No map . . . is so satisfactory as a pilgrimage.”
IV. iv
Henry Littlehales
Just as literal-minded as Frederick Furnivall and Mr. Cowper-and, in
I fact, heavily indebted to them-was Henry Littlehales. His Chaucer
Society publication, Some Notes on the Road from London to Canterbury
i
| in the Middle Ages, sets out “ to trace the route commonly followed by
i
I
, Pilgrims, and to collect some of the scattered notes which refer to the route
during the period between the canonisation of St. Thomas and the
\
i
I 367
I
j
: proscription of all pilgrimages” (np).65 Littlehales provides two fold-out
j maps in support of his suppositions: as the front endpapers to his text is
! one taken, significantly, from the Ordnance Survey and is called “The
j Pilgrims’ Way from London to Canterbury. Mainly from a tracing from the
Ordnance Survey Maps, by permission of the Controller of Her Majesty’s
j Stationery Office.” This is a very straightforward rendering of what looks
! very much like a road map, with major towns, villages and points of
i
relevant interest to Chaucerians marked. It also has a scale, the ratio of
which is about three and a quarter inch to every ten miles. At the back we
find “a reproduction” (Hammond 539) of, as Littlehales notes, “[The Road
from London to Canterbury. From Oailbv’s Roads. A.D. 1 6 7 5 ].”66 This
| lovely reproduction looks very much like Matthew of Paris’ pilgrim itinerary
i
j map to which I referred earlier. It is laid out in vertical strips, proceeding
i
| from Southwarke, bottom left, to Swanscomb, top left; from Tilbury Marsh
j (Northfleet), bottom center, to Kent (Newington Street), top center; and
j from Bobbin (Sittingbourne), bottom right, to Canterbury, top right. The
; map is liberally labelled, with county, city, town and village names listed,
i
j along with incremental mileage for the points from London to Canterbury.
| In addition, it is illustrated with five compass roses, line drawings of
I structures, wooded areas, hills and a “beacon”-which looks rather like a
i
! gallows-at Ospringe. This copy of Ogilvy’s map is further annotated with
i
i
i
I
i
i
368
comments like, “a rill,” “a Brick bridge & Rill” and the curious “Madam
Finches” and Mr. ludils.”
Littlehales also reprints, as I have indicated, Furnivall’s “Table of
i Allusions. . . ” (40-42) and the letter from J.M. Cowper to The Athaeneum
(36-38) that Furnivall reprinted in the “Preface.” So, his Bradshavian
i
J textual-critical approach and its genealogy are clear: like Bradshaw,
I
■ Furnivall and Cowper, Littlehales used both literal ramblings and fictional
j maps to discuss medieval fiction, and he did so by employing modern
cartographical methods— predominately those underlying Ordnance
}
! Survey Maps.67 Having said this, I must qualify it somewhat: Littlehales
I
j does stick to his stated purpose, that is, to provide Some Notes on the
i
I Road from London to Canterbury in the Middle Ages: nonetheless, he
treats the place-names from the Canterbury Tales, often referencing them
i
as such, in a way that makes it is clear that he thought them to have been
i
! realistic representations. The very fact that he published his study with the
: Chaucer Society and based it upon a combination of local testimony, like
j that of Canon Scott-Robertson (11 passim) and Ordnance Survey and
; antiquarian maps of the same topographical region reinforces my
i
! supposition.
; Space does not permit me to exhibit all of the relevant passages;
therefore, I shall work through only a representative sampling, specifically
his comments on those place names in the “ Tales”: “ The Watering of Saint
j 369
l
j Thomas” (“General Prologue” 826), “Deptford Bridge” (“Reeve’s Prologue”
j 3906) and “Boughton” (“Canon’s Yeoman’s Prologue” 5 5 6 ).68 As with
| Cowper’s letter, I largely let Littlehales speak for himself. On “The
Watering of Saint Thomas,” Littlehales quotes from “Thornbury's Old and
New London, pp. 250-1”:
S “Saint Thomas A’ Waterings was situated close to the second
j milestone on the Old Kent Road, and was so called from a brook
i or spring dedicated to Saint Thomas A’ Becket. . . the memory of
j the place is still kept alive by Saint Thomas’s Road . . . The
| Thomas A’ Becket’ at the corner of Albany Road commemorates
i the soot where the Pilgrims first halted.” (10, my emphases)
i
The main items of interest here are the references to intensely localized
, landmarks--”the second milestone,” “a brook or spring” and monuments--
; the “'Thomas A’ Becket’” [an inn? a pub?]--along with the final comment on
| “ the soot where the Pilgrims first halted.”
| On “Deptford Bridge,” Littlehales quotes Canon Scott-Robertson, to
i
| illustrate further his localizing intentions. This passage echoes Frederick
i
I Furnivall’s reminiscences over his countryside rambles and his trek to
! Shooter’s H ill;69
“St. Katherine’s Hermitage abutted on the east end of Deptford
Bridge, and masses were said by the hermits from the time of
Edward III. to that of Henry VIII., who on the 29th July, 1531,
caused £3 6s. 8d. to be paid to the hermit for the repair of his
chapel.”
! At Deptford we turn up the Blackheath Road and go up
! Blackheath Hill (Ordnance Map, Middlesex, sheet xxiii.), bearing
' in mind that at Blackheath the road we are to follow is more
370
probably that running by the side of Greenwich Park than the
present main road crossing the Heath.
In this respect we follow Ogilby’s map of the road from London
to Canterbury, 1675, reproduced in facsimile and issued by the
) Chaucer Society with the Tale of B e r v n 7 Q
We shall note too that the Ordnance map (Middlesex, sheet
xxiii.) shows the Old Road, as Ogilby had drawn it, running by the
| side of the Park, and then, soon after, bearing to the right and
i joining again the present main road some little distance before
! Shooter’s Hill. (11)
i
| For my last example, I turn to Littlehales’ section on Boughton, this time
i
taken from its vicar and from the ubiquitous Canon Scott-Robertson, “who
lived for years in the neighbourhood of Sittingbourne” (31):
The vicar of Boughton kindly tells me that--
“ The older part of this parish is the hamlet now called South
Street, and I doubt if anything now existing in Boughton Street
dates from pre-Reformation times.”
Canon Scott-Robertson writes-
“When the Pilgrims reached Boughton, they found on the south
side of the road, about half a mile east of Brenley Corner, another
wayside chapel. Its site is now marked by a lane, called Holy
| Lane. Oddly enough, there is no other landmark of the Chaucer
| Pilgrims’ Road between that chapel and Harbledown. It is quite
! possible for Mr. Cowper to argue that Holy Lane really leads off
1 the High Road (Watling Street) towards the Chartham Road, on
I which Up and Down Field stands.” (38-39)
i
i
i
\ The realistic references to Chaucer’s characters are obvious, as the
| antiquarian canon speaks again of “the Pilgrims” and “the Chaucer
i
I Pilgrims’ Road.” It is not, one would assume, too odd that “there is no
I
| other landmark” of this road, since “ the Pilgrims” never travelled it in the
j first place.
371
IV.v
Walter W. Skeat
| The Rev. Walter W. Skeat was unstinting in his praise of Thomas
Tyrwhitt, Henry Bradshaw and Frederick Furnivall. Of his eighteenth-
century predecessor he wrote:
First and foremost, must be mentioned the honoured name of
Thomas Tyrwhitt, whose diligence, sagacity, and discrimination
have never been surpassed by any critic, and to whom are due
nearly all the more important discoveries as to Chaucer’s
i sources. (6.xx)7i
i
i
; On Henry Bradshaw and his “Shift” including, presumably, its resultant
i
I Chaucer Society ordinal scheme for the “Tales,” he indicated: “Few
!
j haooier hits have been made than the convincing argument which we are
! glad to owe to Mr. Bradshaw, whose knowledge of Chaucer’s text was
i
i
I believed bv many scholars to be without parallel” (3.419, my emphases).
This statement echoes Furnivall's regarding Bradshaw’s “happy hit!” and
! initially establishes the connection between these three influential
i
i Victorian C h a u c e ria n s 7 2 Skeat was so assured by Bradshaw’s and
Furnivall’s arrangement of the B Group of the “ Tales” that he dismissed
i
their seeming geographical inconsistencies, while disagreeing with
Tyrwhitt’s scheme:
The references to places on the road can cause no trouble; on
! the contrary, these allusions afford much help, for we cannot rest
372
satisfied with the arrangement in Tyrwhitt’s edition, which makes
the pilgrims come to Sittingbourne before arriving at Rochester.
(3.376)
Skeat was even more lavish in his praise of Furnivall and his editorial
efforts: “As regards the texts, my chief debt is to the Chaucer Society,
which means, practically, Dr. Furnivall, through whose zeal and energy so
many splendid and accurate prints of the MSS. have been produced. . .”
(6.xviii). In an earlier volume he expressed his appreciation in this
encomium:
[l]t owes everything to the labours of Dr. Furnivall for the Chaucer
Society, but for which no satisfactory results could have been
obtained. . . . In other words, my work is entirely founded upon
the splendid ‘Six-text’ Edition published by that society,
supplemented by the very valuable reprint of the celebrated
‘Harleian’ manuscript in the same series. (4.vii)
Finally, Skeat applauded Furnivall for printing the Ellesmere manuscript,
upon which he said he based his Oxford text73
Of all these MSS., E. is the best in nearly every respect. It not
only gives good lines and good sense, but is also (usually)
grammatically accurate and thoroughly well spelt. The
publication of it has been a very great boon to all Chaucer
students, for which Dr. Furnivall will be ever gratefully
remembered. (4.xvii)
To read Skeat’s opinion of textual emendation in general and Tyrwhitt’s
“Prologue” alterations in particular, one would think him averse to what
Hammond called “eclectic” edtions (107): “Tyrwhitt’s proposal, to alter the
373
text of the Prologue so as to make it square better with the facts,
contradicts all that we know about Chaucer” (3.388). On editorial
procedure, he felt that,
If we are to go through the Tales, picking out, and setting aside as
spurious, every passage which does not please us, the result can
only be unsatisfactory. Different readers will eliminate different
phrases and opinions, and the residuum will be valueless. I see
no reason why we may not be content with the Tales in the form
presented by the best MSS. (3.504)74
After such statements we might suppose Skeat to have favored a print like
Furnivall’s for the Chaucer Society, but one without editorial alterations
like N. F. Blake’s edition of the Hengwrt manuscript, even though he
argues here against the kind of editorial carte blanche which Furnivall saw
in the “Bradshaw Shift.”75 However, I have shown that this was not the
case; that, indeed, his was an eclectic edition-a single, unified text-based
upon a select group of manuscripts like Trywhitt before him. In other
words, he seems to have taken Chaucer’s reading suggestions and
Furnivall’s editorial openness to heart. If we look closely we see that he
based many of his decisions upon the same sorts of spatio-temporal
considerations as did his contemporary Bradshavians. A.S.G. Edwards
notes:
For Skeat the issue devolves into questions of verisimilitude and
reason. The pilgrim is intended to be a realistic representation,
hence logically the order must be adjusted to accord with what
would appear to be the rational sequence of narrative. It has
been pointed out that neither Chaucer’s scribes nor his previous
374
editors had been as worried about this as Bradshaw, Skeat, and
Furnivall were. (Editing Chaucer 180)
We do not need to look far to find support for such statements. Skeat’s
I reliance on the “Bradshaw Shift” and Furnivall’s order left him free to
i
j spend his time on ordino-temporal matters. His efforts to date the “Man of
| Law’s Prologue” shift the emphasis from Chaucer’s creative itinerary to
i
; that of the fictional characters, who take on lives of their own:
i
To assign an exact date for the Man of Lawes Prologue, which
mentions April 18, is difficult. Yet we must exclude 1389, when
that day was Easter Sunday, a day unsuitable for travelling and
telling tales; as well as 1390, when April 17 was Sunday, which
would have prevented the pilgrims, at any rate, from making an
early start (Prol. 822-5).
The year 1391 is certainly too late; so that only 1386, 1387,
and 1388 are left for consideration. But in 1386, Easter-day fell
on April 22, and Good Friday on April 20; and we cannot suppose
! that the pilgrimage could have taken place in Passion-week,
| when the Parson and others would have been much in request
' for the duties which the season imposed upon them.
In 1387 and 1388, however, Easter fell early, and left the
pilgrims free to take a holiday. In 1388, April 18 was a Saturday,
j so that the pilgrims must have travelled on Sunday, since they
certainly stopped one night on the road at Ospringe, and
probably also stopped elsewhere; and surely, if Sunday travelling
had been intended, something would have been said about the
hearing of mass. But in 1387, everything comes right; they
assembled at the Tabard on Tuesday, April 16, and had four clear
days before them. And when we consider how particular our
j author is as to dates, we shall do well to consider the probability
i that this result is correct. (3.373-74)
: One might first ask why it is necessary to “assign an exact date” and,
| second, to wonder just what date he is talking about, the date of
375
composition or of the journey. But this would be to argue with a different
sort of logic than Skeat’s. His quest for verisimilitude drove him--and
Bradshaw, Cowper, Furnivall and Littlehales before him--to animation of
the fictional characters and to literal temporizing and localizing. I can
understand Skeat’s logic in arguing against Easter as a travel day or
against Passion Week as the time to set off on a real journey, but if we
accept the fact that the work is fictional, it obviously makes no difference
on what day the pilgrimage begins. Considerations like the parsons’
parish duties are irrelevant, as are considerations of worship. In addition,
we obviously cannot say that the pilgrims “certainly stopped one night on
the road at Ospringe,” since nowhere does the text say this. Reading from
Skeat’s perspective, these suppositions are understandable, but when he
asserts that “they assembled at the Tabard on Tuesday, April 16, and had
four clear days before them,” we are caught up short. If we had not
already been through similar positivistic Bradshavian arguments, we might
just dismiss Skeat as nothing more than a quaint Victorian anitquarian-
not to say as an unusually insightful meteorologist--on the basis of such
claims. As it is, however, it is clear that he was, like Bradshaw and
Littlehales, a product of his time--a scholar thoroughly infused with the
orgahicist spirit.
Skeat seemed to have been somewhat at odds with himself over this
issue of time as ordering factor: is it important or is it not? Sounding very
376
much like Furnivall, he went to some length to dismiss those who would
have the journey take place in just one day, assigning such notions to
“modern” ideas and “ thoughtlessness”:
Another question at once arises, however, which must be settled
before we can proceed, viz. whether the pilgrimage was intended
to be performed all in one day, or in two, or three, or more. Any
one who knows what travelling was in the olden time must be
well aware that the notion of performing the whole distance in
one day is out of the question, especially as the pilgrims were out
more for a holiday than for business, that some of them were but
poorly mounted (Prol. 287, 541), and some of them but poor
riders (Prol. 390, 469, 622). In fact, such an idea is purely
modern, adopted from thoughtlessness almost as a matter of
course by many modern readers, but certainly not founded upon
truth. (3.376)
Skeat, like Furnivall, felt that his sensibilities, his intuition (to quote
Hammond), allowed him to perceive “ the truth” regarding Chaucer’s
intention, a truth based upon real experiences of old-road rambles and
local testimony, upon familiarity with historical chronicles and the ability to
synthesize all into a smooth, eclectic rendering of Chaucer’s Canterbury
Tales. Nonetheless, the reader might reasonably ask what kind of “ truth”
he intends here and what it has to do with fiction.
Skeat could not let the issue of time lie, and Frederick Furnivall surfaces
again, as the Chaucer Society’s founder is called upon to resolve “another
extremely awkward allusion to time” in the “Tales”:
[l]t is not of much consequence whether we allow the pilgrims two
days, or three, or four; but the most convenient arrangement is
377
that proposed by Mr. Furnivall, viz. to suppose four days (or three
and a half) to have been occupied; the more so, as this
supposition disposes of another extremely awkward allusion to
time, viz. the mention of ten o’clock in the morning in Group B, I.
14, which must refer to yet a third morning, in order not to clash
with the two notes of time already alluded to; whilst the passage
in the Canon’s Yeoman’s Prologue absolutely requires a fourth
morning, because of the pilgrims having passed the night at a
hostelry. (3.376)
Although Skeat wrote here that the amount of time allotted for the
pilgrimage “is not of much consequence,” he went to great lengths to
support his and Furnivall’s “supposition” of a four-day journey Like
Littlehales before him, Skeat included Furnivall’s “Allusions to Places,
Times, Prior Tales, &c.” (“Preface” 42-43) in his section on “Sources of the
Tales.” But Littlehales just reprinted Furnivall’s “Allusions,” Skeat went
one step further and added dates. After writing off the geographical
discrepancies on the basis of Bradshaw’s “Shift,” he continued, “But the
data are not yet all disposed of: for we can fix the very days of the month
on which the pilgrims travelled” (3.376). To prove this, he expanded
Furnivall’s “Allusions,” by adding fragment and line numbers and by
annotating each date with notes like the following:
In the Man-of-Law Head-link, we learn that it was 10 o’clock
(1.14), and that it was the 18th of April (1.15). In the Monk's
Prologue, 1.3116, we find that the pilgrims were soon coming to
Rochester. This Group is probably incomplete, rather at the
beginning than at the end. Something is wanted to bring the time
to 10 o’clock, whilst the travellers would hardly have cared to
pass Rochester that night. Suppose them to have halted there, at
thirty miles from London. (3.377)
378
Therefore, by “Putting all the results together, we get the following
convenient scheme for the Groups of the tales” (3.377), the aim of which
was to be “useful as shewing the exact extent to which Chaucer had
carried out his intention; and at the same time shew[ing] what is, on the
whole, the best arrangement of the Tales” (3.379). Having gone to these
lengths to order and arrange the “Tales,” Skeat then wrote: “This
arrangement is not much affected by the question of the number of days
occupied by the pilgrims on the journey. It possesses, moreover, the great
advantage of stamping upon the whole work its incomplete and
fragmentary character” (3.379). Now, either the text is fragmentary and
cannot be completed, or it contains inscribed clues to the author’s ordinal
intentions which allow it to be completed by the insightful editor. We
cannot have it both ways, though Skeat seems to have wanted it that way.
His positivistic drive to find The Unity in disunity, The Order in chaos,
follows right along with those of Henry Bradshaw, Frederick Furnivall, J.M.
Cowper and Henry Littlehales. These critics attempted to edit away the
unremovable inconsistencies in Chaucer’s incomplete texts, to impose an
inorganic form upon what they saw as an organic creation. These
fragments are anything but organic in the Coleridgean sense of the term:
they resist the imposition of arbitrary ordinal schemata, particularly those
of the externally-derived, spatio-temporal variety, those that rely upon
calendars, modern maps and misguided ideas of fictionality76
379
IV.vi
Manly-Rickert
Ralph Hanna has written: “The watershed year for study of the text of
the Tales was 1940. With the appearance in this year of Manly and
Rickert’s monumental eight-volume text, editing the poem could never
proceed on the same footing as before (Riverside 1119).” Would that this
were so; unfortunately, even though the M-R edition makes the variants
available, we see that even into this century some things editorial have
“proceed[ed] on the same footing as before.” Even in the long-awaited
University of Chicago Press’ 50th anniversary edition of Manly and
Rickert’s (M-R) The Text of the Canterbury Tales: Studied on the Basis of
all Known Manuscripts, we see Bradshavians in the editorial closets.
Although M-R went a good way to distance themselves from past editorial
mistakes, it is generally accepted that their raison d’etre is so
indecipherable that it is hard to assess the extent of their success. Here I
focus on but one small part of this eight-volume opus, that treating the
order of the “ Tales.” M-R, like Skeat on temporality, argue at cross
purposes with themselves, first saying that ordinal concerns are
unimportant and then conjuring Furnivall and Bradshaw to sort the Tales
out for them.
380
They began by citing five reasons for caution when “interpreting these
[intertextua! spatio-temporal] allusions.” (2.490, my emphasis). (Again, it is
hard not to think of Furnivall’s table of “Allusions . . .” to which I have
repeatedly referred when reading M-R on this subject, especially since the
term appears eight times in the following quotations):
1. That in spite of the careful systematization of his work as
Comptroller of Customs-perhaps as a reaction against it-
Chaucer did not lay out a general plan for the whole journey to
Canterbury and return and assign each block of tales to its proper
place in this plan. The probability of this view is suggested by the
fact that when he changed his intentions with regard to the use of
a particular tale, he did not always remove all traces of its
previous use.
2. That we cannot be sure whether his final plan called for two
tales on the journey out and two on the journey back, or for only
one on each journey.
3. That we cannot be sure whether any of the extant tales
belong to the journey homeward.
4. That in making allusions to time and place he may have
been guided by the needs of the moment, as Shakespeare was
in his allusions to time, and not have considered carefully
whether these allusions would fit into his general plan or would
harmonize with one another.
5. That there is no evidence that he was so literal-minded as to
attempt to harmonize the amount of storytelling with the distances
travelled. In A 859 the story-telling begins, and 2100 lines later
(A 3906) the cavalcade has journeyed a little more than two
miles, and it is about 7:30A.M. In B 14 it is 10:00 A.M., probably of
the same day, for it seems unlikely that the date would have been
given so explicitly as it is in B5-6 except on the first day of the
journey. These calculations, however, hardly justify us in
estimating the number of tales which Chaucer intended to insert
between CkT (never finished?) and the pause which preceded
the words of the Host at the beginning of B1. (2.490-91, my
emphases)
These five negative notions would seem to be enough to keep M-R from
falling into the same literalist trap as other Bradshavians. After all, they
apparently covered all of the reasons not to engage in the traditional
positivistic ordinal approach, with the exception of stating that Chaucer left
the “ Tates” unfinished. Nonetheless, after positing this summary of critical
opinion, they proceeded to follow the same London-Canterbury Road as
did Littlehales, et al. They admitted that, “ These [temporal] calculations . . .
hardly justify" postulations regarding Chaucer’s intentions as to missing
tales, but then they spent the rest of this section discussing spatio-
temporal ways to re-construct Chaucer’s intentions vis-a-vis Fragment
ordering:
In interpreting the allusions, however, as they stand, we must, it
seems, conclude with Professor Tatlock in the main. In arranging
the blocks of tales in accordance with allusions to time and place,
it is clear that Block A, including as it does the General Prologue,
must come first. Bi . . . is generally regarded by scholars as
coming next. It is further quite certain that Block B2, with its
allusions to Rochester, should precede Block D, with its allusions
to Sittingbourne. Block B2 should not, however, be connected
with Block Bi, for it is clear that ML Endlink belongs to an early
stage of the development of Chaucer’s plan and that he finally did
not intend to use it for introducing and connecting with MLT any
tale now extant. [. . .] In Block C there is no time or place allusion
which enables us to determine its proper position. It is, however,
always placed before B2 by the early scribes, and, although there
is no reason to believe that they were informed of Chaucer’s plan,
there is no objection to accepting this position and placing it
between Blocks Bi and B2; so far as time and distance
calculations are of any value, more tales must intervene between
10:00 A.M. and the approach to Rochester indicated in B2 3116.
Furthermore, if the Pardoner’s desire for a drink indicates, as Dr.
382
Furnivall thought, a morning hour, it is better that C should
precede B2 rather than follow it; but this argument is of little value,
as the Pardoner was doubtless ready for a drink at any hour of
the day. The obvious only objection to placing C before B2 is that
this leaves us with an inadequate supply of tales between
Rochester, 29 miles from London, and Sittingbourne, 40 miles;
but this is Chaucer’s fault, not ours. Block D undoubtedly comes
next on account of the allusion to Siitingbourne already
mentioned; apparently the block immediately precedes the arrival
at Sittingbourne, for at the end of SuT (D2294) we read,
My tale is doon we been almost at toune.
Block E-F has no reference to place, but the allusions to the Wife
of Bath in CIT (E1170) and MeT (E1685) certainly imply that she
had already expounded her doctrines. It seems therefore
probable that CIT is the first of the group of tales after leaving
Sittingbourne, and this would account for the reference to
morning in F 73. Block G we can place with certainty at Boghton-
under-Blee (G556). The reference to the five-mile chase of the
pilgrims by the Canon and his Yeoman suggests that the pilgrims
had stopped over night at Ospring, but Chaucer’s lack of care for
minute realism is indicated by the fact that it had taken hard riding
for the pursuers to catch up with the leisurely pilgrims in five
miles-unless, perhaps, the pursuers had been slow in starting.
(492-93, my emphases)
I cite these lengthy sections in full, since there is much to discuss within
them, so much that links M-R’s thinking to their positivistic heritage. First,
since they lay much of the “blame” for the manuscript situation upon
Chaucer himself, it seems that their whole argument here collapses under
its own weight. If all of “this is Chaucer’s fault, not ours,” then there is
really nothing we or they can do to rectify matters. Second, they cite as
support Tatlock's 1907 monograph in which, as Eleanor Hammond rightly
remarked, “the discussion outweighs the facts” (555). It is difficult to say
383
why they use Tatlock’s work on “the received chronology” (v) of Chaucer’s
works. He praised Skeat and Furnivall with the by-then-standard
: encomium, as “the two most distinguished living Chaucer scholars” (v),
j writing: “ Without [his] great edition . . . with its valuable commentary, any
sound work on Chaucer must be far more difficult and less extensive;
without Dr. Furnivall’s prolonged and self-sacrificing labours on the
manuscripts it must be impossible” (v-vi). However, on matters relevant to
j M-R’s ordinal discussion, Tatlock cited Bradshaw off-handedly, as
i
“important in other directions than that of chronology" (vii), and then
| referred to Furnivall in much the same way: “The work of Dr. Frederick J.
Furnivall on Chaucer-chronology is less important than his work in other
directions” (viii).
So, by seemingly privileging Tatlock--and, indirectly Skeat-it would
I
i
appear that M-R owe little to Bradshaw and Furnivall. The reality,
however, is quite different. At the outset of the second passage quoted
above, they slide immediately into a discussion of the “Bradshaw Shift,”
without terming it as such, when they say that “it is further quite certain that
Block B2, with its allusions to Rochester, should precede Block D, with its
I allusions to Sittingbourne.” They next posit a knowledge of Chaucer’s
I
1 intention, when they write that “it is clear that... he did not intend to use”
i
: the “Man of Law’s” endlink to connect it to “any tale now extant.” They do
j
! not say how they arrive at this notion. Although they do not accept
384
Bradshaw and Furnivall’s placement of B“ i before B2, they position Block
i
' C, which contains “no time or place allusion,” between B“ * and B2 because
| “[i]t is . . . always placed before B2 by the early scribes . . . although there is
no reason to believe that they were informed of Chaucer's plan.”
Again sounding Bradshavian, they indicated that “more tales must
, intervene between 10:00 A.M. and the approach to Rochester indicated in
i
B2 3116.” They then cited Furnivall’s conclusions on the Pardoner’s
drinking habits as evidence for placing C before B2, only to argue against
i
| it, not on the basis of any sort of textual support but because “ the Pardoner
i
was doubtless ready for a drink at any hour of the day”! Bradshaw raised
his positivistic head again, as M-R suggested that allusions to Rochester
and Sittingbourne determined the Fragments’ order.
Finally, they rely upon the Canon’s Yeoman’s “reference to the five-mile
i
i
| chase” to conjure the image of Ospringe which, as we have seen, is not
i
! mentioned in the text but which was used by the Bradshavians to argue for
j placing Block G “at Boghton-under-Blee.” They even recall to mind
i
i Furnivall’s personal reminiscences and suppositions regarding gentlemen
! riders and their sisters when they state that “it had taken hard riding for the
pursuers to catch up with the leisurely pilgrims in five miles--unless,
perhaps, the pursuers had been slow in starting.” I must say again, at the
! risk of sounding repititious, that none of these fictional characters ever
j went, rode or walked anywhere, nor did they “halt for a meal at
I
Sittingbourne, 40 miles from town. . ., like King John. . .” (Furnivall 25).
I It is clear that this section of Manly and Rickert’s argument is based
upon Edith Rickert’s “investigations” into real travel along the road and, by
implication again, upon Bradshaw, Furnivall et al.:
[T]he main result of her investigations was that large parties of
people. . . normally travelled at the rate of about thirty miles a day.
| She therefore insisted that the Canterbury pilgrimage was
planned for two days each way. It seems impossible, however, to
disregard entirely Chaucer’s indications of the passage of time,
i and it is clear that the pilgrims were at Ospring on the morning of
! the last day. The outward journey, therefore, would appear to
have been planned either for three or four days, with a stop the
first night at Rochester and the second night at Ospring, and a trip
of nineteen miles ending before noon of the third day; or, if the
travellers were more leisurely, for four days, with overnight stops
j at Dartford (which is not mentioned by Chaucer), Rochester, and
i Ospring. If the latter is true, it may be that Block C belongs on the
! morning of the second day-that is to say, after Block B2. (2.493)
j Furnivallian conceptions of space and time abound here: in the desire to
tie fictional travel to real-life journeys, to calculate hypothetical temporal
and distance-travelled schemes, to animate the characters and
i
i
! characterize them as “leisurely,” to posit Ospringe again as a stopping-
I
i
i place and in the drive to synthesize all into a neat package that does away
with a number of endemic inconsistencies.
' For just the briefest of moments in their ultimate sentence we are lulled
i
i into hoping that M-R recognized the futility of such evidence: “But certainly
j the question of the number of days occupied by the pilgrimage is a matter
1
| of very small consequence. ...” The reader first rejoices, but any joy is
I premature, because M-R close with, “since the whole conception of a
i
series of tales told while riding by so large a group of pilgrims is, however
entertaining, entirely unrealistic” (2.493-94). Instead of admitting that
extratextual spatio-temporal considerations are no basis for ordering
fiction, they disappoint by reverting to reality to assess fictionality.
i IV.vii
i
' Robert A. Pratt
!
i
i In his article, “ The Order of the Canterbury Tales,”77 Robert A. Pratt
! argued rather convincingly for retaining the Bradshaw Shift, for moving B2
(Fragment VII) up to follow Bi (Fragment II), although he did not accept the
rest of Furnivall’s Chaucer Society order, which placed Group C
J (Fragment VI) before Group D (Fragment III): “The Furnivall (‘Chaucer
j Society’) order has nothing to recommend it, and it has met with
j considerable opposition from critics who have felt that Furnivall’s gesture
j
i was arbitrary and illogical. . .” (“Order” 1157-58). And further, that to,
“Resort to the Ellesmere order is a desperate makeshift, based on the
belief that Chaucer never arranged the tales” (“Order” 1167). So, Pratt set
about to create a unique order by gathering theories from a variety of
387
critics. He called this order “Chaucerian,” that is, Chaucer’s. Like Skeat,
Pratt assumed that he had recovered “ the actual intention of the poet” via
his ordinal theory. Unlike Skeat, however, he would not rely solely upon
the Ellesmere manuscript or any other, since the true “order in which
Chaucer intended us to read the Canterbury Tales” is to be found in “no
MS or printed text”:
[This scheme] offers positive artistic values and interlocking of
themes and ideas, inherent in the order of no MS. or printed text,
which reveal the actual intention of the poet, and which fully
justify this reopening of the whole question of the order in which
Chaucer intended us to read the Canterbury Tales.
(“Order” 1167)
Unlike his predecessors, Pratt based his opinions largely upon textual
evidence and less on extratextual elements. This makes some of his
contentions hold up much better than those proffered by Furnivall,
Littlehales, Skeat, et al. For instance, he assembled cogent theories--
which he admitted were not completely original-for linking the Man of
Law’s tale to the Shipman’s, rather than to the Wife of Bath’s as in the
Ellesmere and for connecting the Nun’s Priest’s to the Wife of Bath.
Therefore, the Man of Law/Shipman conjunction is used to buttress Pratt’s
pro-“Bradshaw Shift” stance. (All of this results in his preferred order
which I reproduce below with Pratt’s comparison to the Ellesmere.)
Although it was but part of his ordinal scheme, Pratt did fall victim to
Furnivall’s cartographical-temporal fallacy:
388
Chaucer envisaged the Canterbury Tales as presented on the
actual London-Canterbury road at various times during
successive days, for he offers about seven allusions to place and
at least five to time, scattered throughout eight of the nine
Fragments which make up the work. That Chaucer had a definite
plan for the order of the Fragments is revealed by various kinds of
internal evidence, including the mention of the towns along the
way, the reality and precise location of which were clear and
obvious to the poet and his audience. (“Order” 1141)
He also argues from the Furnivallian perspective against the Ellesmere
order:
The Ellesmere . . . order of the Tales has long seemed
unsatisfactory because it distorts the geographical order of
allusions to towns, and Chaucer would not have deliberately
alluded to Sittingbourne (Fragment III) before Rochester
(Fragment VII) on the way from Southwark and Greenwich to
Boughton-under-Blean and Canterbury. (“Order” 1141)78
In his encomium to Henry Bradshaw and elsewhere in his article, Pratt
succumbed to the intentional fallacy, as I indicated above. He suggested
like Skeat that what he printed was Chaucer’s order of the tales:
Only after a wait of four and a half centuries did the enlightened
opinion of Henry Bradshaw improve upon El and bring about the shift
which eventually led to the discoverv-or recoverv-of what is here
proposed as the correct ’Chaucerian’ order. How was the El scribe
able to do so well after only a brief wait from the time of Chaucer’s
death? And why, since he did so well, was he unable to uncover
Chaucer’s intention in its entirety? (“Order” 1161, my emphases)
Indeed, as Pratt wrote in the prefatory material to his edition, his order is
Skeat’s:
This order, which was first proposed by Skeat, following
suggestions made by Henry Bradshaw, is supported by evidence
389
provided by the fact that in the course of The Tales Chaucer and
the other pilgrims mention places along the road from Southwark
to Canterbury. (Tales xxxvi)
He then goes on to discuss essentially the placenames covered by
Furnivall and Littlehales: the Wateryng of Seint Thomas, Depeford,
Grenewych, Rouchestre, Sidynborne and “Boughton in the Blean Forest”
(Tales xxxvi). This leads him to conclude, again echoing Fumivall’s table
of “Allusions to Places, Times, Prior Tales, &c.”:
Here is an impressive series of clear allusions to places, the
order and location of which were perfectly familiar to Chaucer
and his audience, who could be expected always to recognize
easily just how far along the Pilgrims’ Way the company had
traveled” (Tales xxxvi).
This “impressive series” is problematized, however, by the fact that “in the
complete manuscripts of The Tales, while the places near Southwark and
those near Canterbury appear in correct order, the two crucial passages-
those naming Rochester and Sittingbourne-appear in incorrect order”
(Tales xxxvi). By “correct” and “incorrect,” of course, Pratt means
geographically correct and incorrect. This is again the Bradshavian
cartographical fallacy, an ordering scheme based upon extratextual
elements. Why, one might ask, if the “ complete manuscripts” give the
“incorrect” order, does a large part of the textual-critical tradition rely so
heavily upon Selden B 14, the only manuscript that has “ the Man of Law’s
390
endlink introduce the Shipman's Ta!e” (Hammond 244)? This is no small
point, since this linkage is responsible for the Bradshaw Shift:
This arrangement recommended itself to Bradshaw and to the
Chaucer Society, largely because the sequence of Tales
appearing when Bradshaw “lifted” the fragment headed by the
Shipman up to follow the Man of Law corresponded more nearly
to the geography of the pilgrims’ road; for the allusion to
Rochester which the Monk’s headlink (in the B2 fragment [Pratt’s
Fragment VII]) contains, was thereby made to precede the
allusion to Sittingbourne, ten miles further from London, which is
found in the Sumpnour’s headlink, in the D fragment.
(Hammond 277)
And so, here again in Pratt’s edition we see the search for the True Order
of the Tales. After this is found, the author’s intention comes clear “in its
entirety” (“Order” 1161).
Pratt reasoned that his interfragmental evidence showed Chaucer’s
order, but that an accident caused Group B2 (Fragment VII) to be
misplaced, creating what he called the “incorrect ‘1400’ order,” essentially
that of the Ellesmere manuscript:
The internal evidence suggests that Chaucer finally intended the
Fragments of the Canterbury Tales to be arranged in the
following order:
I II VII III IV-V VI VIII IX X
(A B 1 B2 D E-F C G H I)
However, the continuity of the genealogical groups of MSS.
through VI and the first half of VII, suggest that soon after
Chaucer’s death, before copying began, Fragment VII was
accidentally misplaced from its ‘Chaucerian’ position in such a
manner as to yield the incorrect ‘1400’ order
391
I II III IV-V VI VII VIII IX X
(A B 1 D E-F C B2 G H I)
(“Order” 1166, my emphasis)
Pratt quoted Germaine Dempster, who outlined his own argument for the
true order:
“As to [VI-VII] there is, with regard to the main lines of derivation
from the Originals, enough continuity through [Fragment VI] and
the first three tales of [Fragment VII] to suggest rather definitely
that the sequence was favored by the arrangement of Chaucer’s
MSS., if not at his death at least by the time transcriptions were
made from them.” (“Order” 1161)
While his discussion of the intertextual evidence is seductive, his
reasoning regarding this accidental misplacement was less so, as I
indicated earlier in Pratt’s suppositions regarding the chaotic state of
Chaucer’s study upon his untimely death.
V
Conclusions and Connections
In the preceding four chapters I have been concerned with the ways in
which visual and narrative artists organized their textual spaces. In each
case the text was complete, and its total or constituent space was
contained within some sort of border, either a literal or a figural one. In
chapter one on the Hereford Maooa Mundi. I discussed the circular
392
boundary of T-O maopaemundi and the way that framing shape and the
tension engendered between it and its internal elements affected the
viewer’s participation in its literary/cartographical program. I then posited
an interpretive program showing how the Bayeux Tapestry’s designer
organized his embroidery’s physical space so as to provide the viewer
with a complex, interwoven narrative constituting a primary text-one that is
literally central-and two interactive, parallel border panels which gloss the
main narrative via a liminal system which requires the viewer’s constant
visual violation. With the discussion of Chretien’s romances the focus
shifted media and moved from the visually concrete to the linguistically
abstract: I argued first that there are figurative “borders” in Yvain and
Lancelot which exist only to be crossed. These inscribed narrative limits
produce a set of internal linkages in each text which in turn produce a
complex system of intertextual boundaries or links that Gauvain crosses in
his comparative role as chivalric and amorous paradigm. By writing Yvain
and Lancelot simultaneously and by structuring them around this
boundary schema, Chretien created an essentially self-referential meta
narrative, one which I have called the Yvain/Lancelot, and which I argue
should be read in an intertextual manner. My exegetical reading of
Dante’s Commedia found it to be highly ordered in terms of space and
time, with the pilgrim having to cross some fifty borders in his insistent
movement from despair to the visio D ei-toward perfect, silent stasis and
393
brief tran&cendance of the text’s elaborate, planimetric, scheme79 As he
progresses, the pilgrim passes ordinally through an Augustinian system to
enlightenment, moving from the visio corooralis in Inferno to the visio
soirituaiis in Puraatorio and finally to cognition of God in Paradiso. to the
visio intellectualis.so
Chaucer’s texts function like these preceding works on some levels,
and thus can be spoken about in many of the same ways. For example,
the relation of the “Tales” to historical pilgrimages and to pilgrimage and
other travel narratives, while intensely problematical, raises issues of
mapping and movement through space and time that can divert critical
attention away from the texts much like some realist discussions of Dante’s
Commedia or Chretien’s romances do. We have seen the analagous
relationship of the Hereford Mappa Mundi and the “Canterbury Tales,”
how each figures a complex, syncretic world through which the reader is
free to plot his or her own itinerary, much like Gauvain, Yvain and Lancelot
ride errantly through the narrative spaces of their fictional worlds. And,
finally, an ocular traveler over the Bayeux Tapestry is distracted from the
justified path, the central narrative, at times by the Aesopic pictographs,
Norman chevrons or other oddities figured in the upper and lower border
panels, much like the reader of the “Tales” is distracted by discrete tales or
links, forgetting at times that there is a terminus to be attained, that the
Retraction indicates the true goal of life’s pilgrimage.
394
The “Tales” maintain their own idiosyncratic spatio-temporal
i
characteristics, the convergence of which necessitates a different
i
analtyical approach. They contain geo-temporal references which are
very tempting and which have been used for hundreds of years as ordinal
markers, referenced to real English topography, astronomy and calendars,
i There is also the physical object which readers and critics have for
hundreds of years referred to as Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
something which I have argued does not exist, something which editors
have been driven to (re)create. This is, of course, impossible, at least at
this time, since the text is incomplete. All of my other study texts are
i
j complete: with the exception of the “ deus pas” lines in Chretien’s Lancelot.
scholarly conventions accept that they are finished. As I have indicated,
i
there are over eighty fragments of the “Canterbury Tales,” none of them
autographical, none of them containing The Correct Order and
undisputable displacement. This, more than anything, is the characteristic
| that has pushed critics to such levels of analysis and bricolaae.
! In this chapter I have demonstrated how a number of editors and critics
I have attempted to restructure both Chaucer's poems and Chaucer the
i
i man through them. Since it is clear that the “Canterbury Tales” does not
i
[ lend itself to such reconstructions, it is equally clear that the man cannot
i
I be revivified through his fragmentary text. Indeed, this is not possible in
any regard, certainly not with any fictional text. Even with something like
i
395
the Commedia. a poem so seemingly tightly structured and ontologically
centered, the reader can never fully and accurately reconstitute the author.
In any case, such exercises lead nowhere and seek often to turn literature
into chronicle. Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales might not exist, but
Geoffrey Chaucer the man certainly did; however, we can never bridge the
gap separating him from his poetry, at least not by using the literature as
the ford to get across to the man.
What this chapter points out, then, is the futility of becoming too
absorbed in the kinds of arguments which preceded it in my first four
chapters. Interpretive caution should be exercised, since seeing unity
where none exists is misleading at best and intellectually dishonest at
worst. This final discussion indicates that as literary analysts we must be
aware of our positivistic biases and recognize their source. These biases
need not necessarily be abandoned when recognized, but they must be
recognized and acknowledged when editions of Chaucer’s work are
created. Critical persepectives which do not do so result from a very long
tradition of organicist thinking, from a tradtion which privileges critic or
editor over reader, the “ expert” or educated, clever professional over the
amateur. This mode of thinking, born of the German and then English
Romantics, was resurrected as part of New Criticism, a theoretical
movement which replaced the deceased author on his or her pedestal
with the living scholar, the professional reader who held the key to unlock
396
the mysteries within the texts themselves. Once we acknowledge the
presence of our Romantic critical heritage, arguments like Bradshaw’s,
Furnivall’s and Skeat’s seem no longer quaint and antiquarian but
representative of their times. What is worrisome is their persistence, their
shadowy presence in the work of late twentieth-century Chaucerians like
Robert A. Pratt, Charles Owen, John Manly, Edith Rickert and Donald C.
Baker. It is my intention that the evidence amassed here succeeds in both
situating the Victorians within their organicist context and, by extension,
showing how anachronistic such assertions can sound today.
to
Appendix B
Ordering Schemes
398
Ellesmere ms.: AB1 D E F C B 2 G H I
Hengwrt ms.: A, D, B1, Squire’sT, Merchant's!", Franklin’sT, Second
Nun’sT, Clerk’sT, C, B2, H, I
i
Arch. Selden B 14 ms.: A E1 D E2 F1 B1 B2 G C F2 H I
| Tyrwhitt (1775-78):
; AB1 D E F C B 2 G H I
; --Includes Man of Law's endlink as Shipman’s headlink
i
! Chaucer Society (Furnivall’s Six-Text, 1868-77):
i
AB 1B 2 C D E FG H I
--B1: Man of Law’sT
--B2: Shipman’sT, Prioress’T, Rime of Sir Thopas, Melibeus, Monk’sT,
Nun’s Priest'sT
Skeat’s Oxford Edition (1894-97):
AB1 B 2 C D E F G H I
-S keat’s “real order”: A B D E F C G H I (from 1894 ed., vol. 2.86)
| Robinson (1933, 2nd ed. 1957):
! AB1 D E F C B 2 G H I
i 399
j Manly-Rickert (1940):
A B D E E-F F C B G H I
i
j
i
i
I Pratt (1966):
i
| A B 1B2 DEFCG HI
i
i
!
j Riverside (1987):
' A B 1D E FC B 2G H I
Correspondence between Fragment numbering and Group lettering:
I I = A (Prologue, Knight, Miller, Reeve, Cook)
j II = B1 (Man of Law)
| 1 1 1 = D (Wife, Friar, Summoner)
IV = E (Clerk, Merchant)
V = F (Squire, Franklin)
VI = C (Physician, Pardoner)
i
■ VII = B2 (Shipman, Prioress, Thopas, Melibee, Monk, Nun’s Priest)
VIII = G (Second Nun, Canon’s Yeoman)
IX = H (Manciple)
X = I (Parson)
l
i
i
400
Pratt wrote: “Skeat followed the order used in the ‘Six-Text’ edition
i
| of the Chaucer Society, lettering the ‘Groups’ from A to I. F.N.
j Robinson . . . numbered the ‘Fragments’ from I to X” (Tales xxxvV
i Skeat’s lettering corresponds to Furnivatl’s for the “Six-Text,” though
Robinson’s numbering does not. For Furnivall’s labelling system, see
his “Scheme of the Order of the Canterbury Tales, and the Halting-
and Sleeping-Places of the Pilgrims on their Journey to Canterbury
with Chaucer” (“Preface” 41-43). This chart is from Pratt (Tales xxxv)
and collates Skeat’s and Robinson’s systems. These are the common
labelling forms and are the ones used throughout this study.
Manly-Rickert’s correspondences differ from this, however:
A: General Pro; Knight’sT; Miller’sP,T; Reeve’sP,T; Cook’sP.T
B: Man of Law’sHk,P,T; Man of Law’s Ek
D: Wife of Bath’s P,T; Wife-FriarK, Friar’s Tale; Friar-SummonerK, T
E: Clerk’sHk, T; Clerk-MerchantK and Merchant’sT
j E-F: MerchantEk and Squire Hk
i
j F: Squire’sP, T; Squire-FranklinK; Franklin’s P, T
! C: Physician’sT; Physician-PardonerK; Pardoner’sP, T
i
i
i B: Shipman’sT; shipman-PrioressK, Prioress’T; Prioress-ThopasK, Sir
i ThopasT; Thopas-MelibeusK, MelibeusT; Melibeus-MonkK,
Monk’sT; Nun’s Priest’s P, T
1 G: Second Nun’sP, T; Canon’s Yeoman’s P, T
i ’ * *
I
i
i H: Manciple's P, T
t
: I: Parson’s P, T; Retraction (M-R 3.vii, 4.v)
i
I Manuscripts used for the Six-Text: Corpus, Oxon. (Cp), Ellesmere (El),
i
Cambridge U Library (Gg), Hengwrt (Hg), Lansdowne (La),
j Petworth (Pw)
i
■ Manuscripts used for the Eight-Text: Corpus, Oxon. (Cp), Ellesmere
| (El), Cambridge U Library (Gg), Hengwrt (Hg), Lansdowne (La),
! Petworth (Pw), Cambridge U Library (Dd), Harley 7334 (Ha4)
i
j --The last two added to the Six-Text group
402
Notes
*
1 I indicate this text as the “Canterbury Tales,” eschewing the
conventional marking of it as the Canterbury Tales, since this underlined
designation implies a “book” which does not exist. The underlined title in
this study, then, is only used to refer to those critics or editions which
postulate-implicitly or explicitly-such a text. By using quotation marks, I
intend to represent, not just the fragmentary nature of the “ Tales,” but a
new way of thinking about this aspect of Chaucer’s literary production. I
suggest, in other words, that Canterbury Tales is no longer a valid
description/definition of the textual situation, that a new approach is
needed to this work and that “Canterbury Tales” better represents its
result.
2 I realize that the fictional journey is never completed; however, as the
General Prologue indicates, there was the possibility of a return to
Southwark’s Tabard Inn.
3 See Appendix B for more on the relationship between these Groups
and Fragments.
4 This leaves the literary critic in something of a desperate situation. If
there is no fixed text, how do we talk about what there is? What do we call
it? How are we to receive and analyze what we have? Or, put more
cynically, how does the academic machine continue to function? There
are a number of possibilities: one is to continue producing editions, new
versions/organizations of “ Chaucer’s poem” based upon extratextual
historical evidence, like Frederick J. Furnivall’s for the Chaucer Society,
Walter Skeat’s Oxford edition-which relied heavily upon Furnivall and
Henry Bradshaw for the order of the “ Tales”-o r Robert A. Pratt’s 1966
edition, which still prints the texts using the Bradshaw Shift as ordering
device. A second option is to create new editorial policies, like N.F.
Blake’s for his single manuscript edition based upon the Hengwrt text or
that of the Variorum Chaucer; and, finally, a third plan is to rework previous
editions and title them differently, as the editors of the Riverside Chaucer
have done with F.N. Robinson's The Complete Works of Geoffrey
Chaucer. I suggest that the most critically honest methodology is like that
followed by N.F. Blake in his edition. By using only one manuscript, not
one as a base manuscript with countless emendations, there is less
textual-critical obfuscation; and, therefore, a reader can be more certain of
403
just what text is presented and where it stands in the textual-critical
tradition.
s The COED defines Ordnance Survey Maps:
The official survey of Great Britain and Ireland, undertaken by the
Government, and originally carried out under the direction of the
Master-General of the Ordnance. Hence ordnance datum, the
datum-line or level, to which all heights are referred in the
Ordnance Survey, being 12 1/2 feet below Trinity High-water
mark, and 4 1/2 feet above Trinity Low-water mark; ordnance
map, a map prepared by the Survey; also ordnance sheet.
In 1889 the Ordnance Survey was made a department of the
Board of Agriculture.
1840 Encycl. Brit, (ed.7) XXI. 354/2 In 1791 the Ordnance
survey was begun. (190)
I cite these sheets and intend them to be used as one would modern-day
road maps, as did Chaucer’s nineteenth-century editors.
6 Bradshaw’s contention was that, since Rochester precedes
Sittingbourne on the London-Canterbury road, that the Summoner could
not possibly have made this remark before Rochester. Furnivall accepted
this argument and used it when he arranged the Six-Text Print for the
Chaucer Society.
7 The justification behind this seemingly simple maneuver has given
Chaucerian constructionists free rein to arrange the tales almost at will.
Modern-day textual surgeons like W.W. Skeat, John Manly and Edith
Rickert either remove what seems not to fit into their predetermined
mechanistic frameworks or add whatever they deem necessary from other
manuscripts to flesh out their a priori wavs of understanding their
Canterbury Tales. Derek Pearsall has summed this critical method up
quite nicely:
Instead of the noble ideal of the editor as the physician who is
restoring the body of the text to its original whole and healthy
state, we have the reality of the fanatical surgeon who cuts away
dead and living tissue indiscriminately in his desire to
demonstrate the truth of his diagnosis (101).
s Like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Furnivall was a student at Cambridge,
as were Henry Bradshaw and Henry Littlehales.
404
9 Frese’s intention is to reconstruct Chaucer’s intention via a theory
which valorizes the Ellesmere manuscript “as the poetic text reflecting
Chaucer’s final authorial intentions in the matter for ordering the Tales” (1).
She suggests that this study is needed, since, “ The decision of the
[Variorum] editors to present a facsimile and transcription of the Hengwrt
manuscript, with variants from the Ellesmere, profoundly refreshed the
1 issue of final authorial intent. . (1). I suggest, at the risk of sounding New
I Critical, that this is an impossibility. Frese’s organicist, post-Romantic
colors show through in her title, with “Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales”
■ implying what the above quote purports, that we can “Re-construct. .
j Chaucer and the book of his Tales if we just read them in the right order
I and in the right manner, not to say in the right spirit-the anachronistic spirit
of Bradshaw, Furnivall, Coleridge, the Cambridge Platonists and the
German Romantics.
10 n.F. Blake’s editorial policy is quite straightforward:
As [Hengwrt] contains the best text and as it embodies what can
be understood only as a first attempt to arrange the tales in an
] intelligent order, modern editors may accept it was the earliest
i manuscript whose text and order they should follow. This is what
| I have done and I have included only those parts of the poem
i found in Hg except that the two spurious links have been
relegated to Appendix B. (Tales 9)
i
| 11 Hammond defines “eclectic” and then warns against such editions:
i Some or all MSS lie before the editor, and he selects now from
one, now from another, according as he considers the text better.
One MS may be followed for several lines, and then, when its
reading seems confused or harsh to the editor, recourse may be
had to another manuscript, and that manuscript’s version of a line
or a word may be incorporated in the edition. The resultant text
is, of course, smooth and musical, for artificial selection has been
; exercised with this end in view; but every student should
j understand that it is obtained by an intrusion of the editor’s
j personal judgment between us and the author. The epoch-
! making edition of the Canterbury Tales by Tyrwhitt in 1775 was of
! this sort, as is that of Skeat. (106-07)
4
12 Having said this, I am aware that the fact that I am writing on this
, topic is a participatory, hopefully generative act; however, it is not my
405
I intention to keep the textual-critical ball rolling down the same rhetorical
lane, but to nudge it into a different trajectory.
| 13 Here I am thinking of works like W.F. Bryan and Germaine Dempster,
I eds., Sources and Analogues of the Canterbury Tales (Chicago: U of
Chicago P, 1941) and John Manly, Some New Light on Chaucer (New
York: Henry Holt, 1926).
14 This and all further citations of “The Canterbury Tales” are taken from
the Riverside Chaucer and are given as line numbers.
is Indeed, one wonders if modern Chaucer criticism has not been
i colored by the Commedia’s elaborately-fashioned structure. It is well-
! known that Chaucer was indebted to his Florentine predecessor in many
j ways; however, to evaluate his work through a rosy-colored Dantean optic,
j to analyze Chaucer’s poetical gifts based upon Dante’s Christian
I preconceptions and expectations, is less than helpful.
' 16 In this section I am much indebted to the following: Robert M. Jordan,
I Chaucer and the Shape of Creation: The Aesthetic Possibilities of
Inorganic Structure (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1967); Gordon McKenzie,
; Organic Unitv in Coleridge, University of California Publications in English
; 7.1 (Berkeley: U of California P, 1939) 1-108 and Lee Patterson,
! Negotiating the Past: The Historical Understanding of Medieval Literature
| (Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1987).
I
I 17 Lee Patterson compares Furnivall and J.M. Kemble to nineteenth-
| century German essentialists, calling them “politically liberal scholars” who
! “privileged individuality not only as the object of study but also as the
I subject who studies, the scientific investigator who is able to arrive by
| painstaking labor at the original truth of things” (13). The “original truth,”
: the true Chaucer, is precisely what I argue Furnivall et al. were after.
i
is Robert M. Jordan quotes Gerard Genette on the dangers of
i impositional unity:
I “It would be unfortunate, it seems to me, to seek ‘unity’ at any
I price, and in that way to force the work’s coherence--which, of
i course, is one of criticism’s strongest temptations, one of its most
j ordinary (not to say most common) ones, and also one most easy
» to satisfy, since all it requires is a little interpretative rhetoric.”
: (Poetics78)
406
Jordan then writes:
By resolving discords into harmony, the critic is able to
demonstrate--at least to his own satisfaction-that a highly valued,
though apparently erratic or inconsistent, text is indeed unified.
The tendency of unitary interpretation is to deny diversity, to
interpret out, so to speak, in order to certify the value of an
admired text. (Poetics 80)
19 Donald McKenzie lists what he feels are the four characteristics of
organic unity:
1. It is an organizing process, growing in richness. Given any
single appearance, other appearances will be attracted to it
which fuse or blend and thus become organized. The additional
appearances add complexity of relationship which means
richness.
2. It is a cumulative process. The later stages of any
organization include all the relevant appearances of the earlier
stages as well as the newest additions.
3. It is an economical process. All relevant appearances are
saved; only those irrelevant are thrown away. But there are no
appearances which are not relevant to something; each one finds
its place in its proper organization.
4. it is a spontaneous process. It is inevitable and happens of
its own accord. The scientist or artist who organizes material is a
mere agent. This is the result of the conception of a dynamic
active force at work in both man and nature, and has as a
corolary the theory that in any single stage there is the potentiality
and, in a sense, the prophecy of all later stages. (36-37, my
emphases)
This list foregrounds the fact that the concept is predicated upon a
consistent “process,” and that this implies the incompatability of the
mechanical and organic forms. The fourth tenet precludes the imposition
of predetermined forms upon “ the potentiality . . . of all later stages,” since
the former is finite and the latter evolutionary.
20 | am thinking of John Ruskin on Gothic, and Gothic Revival,
architecture in “The Nature of Gothic” and the ubiquitous sense of organic
unity and order running throughout Male’s The Gothic Image. Although
Ruskin privileges imagination and individual “imperfection,” he at the
same time valorizes an almost animate unity in diversity:
407
[The Gothic character] is made up of many mingled ideas, and
can consist only in their union. That is to say, pointed arches do
not constitutes Gothic, nor vaulted roofs, nor flying buttresses, nor
grotesque sculptures; but all or some of these things, and many
other things with them, when they come together so as to have
life. (Unto This Last 77-78)
Emile Male did not value the individual imagination, but on synthesis
and order he was in accord with Ruskin:
The Middle Ages had a passion for order. They organised art as
they had organised dogma, secular tearing and society. The
artistic representation of sacred subjects was a science governed
by fixed laws which could not be broken at the dictates of
individual imagination. It cannot be questioned that this theology
of art, if one may so put it, was soon reduced to a body of
doctrine, for from very early times the craftsmen are seen
submitting to it from one end of Europe to the other. (1)
21 For Coleridge’s debts to Schelling and Schlegel, see Thomas
Middleton Raysor, ed., Coleridge’s Shakespearean Criticism. 2 vols.
(Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1930). On Schelling see vol. 1: xxv, xxxi, xxxiii,
xli, 205 and 224. In vol. 2 see: 117, 214 and 326. On Schlegel see vol. 1:
xi-xii, xxiii-xxvii, xxx-xxxiii, xxxvi, xxxviii-xlvi, lii-liii, Ix passim. See also M.H.
Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical
Tradition (Oxford: Oxford UP. 1953): on Coleridge and German philosophy
in general, see 170, 218 and 346. On Schelling see 52, 174, 314, 356
and 357. On Schlegel see 172, 213 and 386.
22 McKenzie quotes the following in support of his connection between
Coleridge and the Cambridge Platonists:
The universe itself! what but an immense heap of little things? I
can contemplate nothing but parts and parts are all little. My mind
feels as if it ached to behold and know something great.
something one and indivisible. And it is only in the faith of that,
that rocks or waterfalls, mountains or caverns give me the sense
of sublimity or majesty! But in this faith all things counterfeit
infinity. (7-8)
23 As M.H. Abrams notes, we find similar organicist tenets in
Wordsworth’s architectural metaphor regarding his poetical works,
although he never reaches Coleridge’s transcendental heights:
408
. . . Wordsworth declares that all his poems, long or short, and on
whatever subject, are to be viewed as components of a Gothic
cathedral, in which the poet himself constitutes the principle of
unity. The Prelude, he says, has to The Recluse the same
relation ‘as the ante-chapel has to the body of a gothic church’;
while the minor poems already published will be found by the
attentive Reader to have such connection with the main Work as
may give them claim to be likened to the little cells, oratories, and
sepulchral recesses, ordinarily included in these edifices. (99)
We see here that, although Wordsworth is less metaphysical, he does
value the role of poet as creator/organizer, much as Coleridge did and
1 much as Chaucerian constructionists do.
i
l 24 m .H. Abrams wrote: “ The historical importance of Coleridge's
! imagination has not been overrated. It was the first important channel for
' the flow of organicism into the hitherto clear, if perhaps not very deep,
! stream of English aesthetics” (168).
i
i
25 Lee Patterson writes:
Furnivall was profoundly committed to the quintessentially liberal
and Arnoldian idea that the study of the literature of the English
! past could serve to recover the organic unity that the class-
| divided society of the nineteenth century had lost, and at the
! opening session of the Working Men’s College in Red Lion
Square-where he taught for many subsequent years--he
■ distributed copies of Ruskin’s The Nature of Gothic’ that he had
| printed at his own expense. (13)
i
j
| 26 in a more lyrical moment, Coleridge expressed the same tenets:
i . . . say rather if, having first seen the dove, we abstracted its
| outlines, gave them a false generalization, called the principle or
ideal of bird-beauty and then proceeded to criticize the swan or
the eagle-not less absurd is it to pass judgement on the works of
! a poet on the mere ground that they have been called by the
i same class-name with the works of other poets of other times and
' circumstances, or any ground indeed save that of their
inappropriateness to their own end and being, their want of
significance, as symbol and physiognomy. (Raysor 1.196)
27 Again Coleridge couched a rather abstruse idea in poetical
language:
409
The fairest part of the most beautiful body will appear deformed
and monstrous, if dissevered from its place in the organic whole.
Nay, on delicate subjects, where a seemingly trifling difference of
more or less may constitute a difference in kind, even a faithful
display of the main and supporting ideas, if yet they are
separated from the forms by which they are at once clothed and
modified, may perchance present a skeleton indeed; but a
skeleton to alarm and deter. (Bioaraohia 281)
Curiously enough, Henry Bradshaw called his schema for organizing
the “ Tales’" fragments “The Skeleton of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales”
written in 1867 and published in Memorandum No. 4, November 1871
(Bradshaw 102-48). This preceded Furnivall's 1868 “Scheme of the Order
of the Canterbury Tales and the Halting- and Sleeping-Places of the
Pilgrims on Their Journey to Canterbury with Chaucer” (“Preface” 41-43).
Skeat included it in his Oxford edition of 1900, noting that it was “copied
from Dr. Furnivall’s Preface, with the mere addition of the dates” (3.377).
28 At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, we might even apply Coleridge’s
definition of poets to these critics’ conceptions of themselves as, “the
Bridlers by Delight, the Purifiers, they that combine them with reason &
order, the true Protoplasts, Gods of Love who tame the Chaos” (Coleridge
548).
29 indeed, Pratt connected himself with Skeat and his privileged order:
“Although Furnivall proceeded to a more elaborate solution of the
problem, Skeat recognized that the result of this single, simple [Bradshaw]
shift was in all likelihood the correct, Chaucerian order for the tales. . .”
(“Order” 1141).
30 Joseph A. Dane argues that, “ To Tyrwhitt, an edition is not the
foundation for future scholarship, since he did not avail himself of the one
earlier edition that drew his praise. The future acts rather to suppress its
own origins in that past” (“Reception” 227-28). Dane here is writing of
Morelt’s partial edition (1737); but, as I have indicated, Tyrwhitt did make
use of Caxton’s text-as-manuscript, and he did go so far as to print the
“Preface” to Caxton’s second edition in full (1 .vii-viii). I would point out
also that Tyrwhitt’s “Appendix to the Preface” opens with a section entitled
“An Account of Former Editions of the Canterbury Tales” (1.vi-xxi), in which
he discusses in some detail his predecessors, ending with Morell, whose
methodology, as Dane notes (“Reception” 227), he privileges:
He [Morell] appears to have set out upon the only rational plan of
publishing Chaucer, by collating the best Mss. and selecting from
them the genuine readings; and accordingly his edition, as far as
it goes, is infinitely preferable to any of those which preceded it.
(“Appendix to the Preface” 1.xx-xxi)
This is the same “rational plan” followed by Tyrwhitt himself. While it is
perhaps not possible to attribute Tyrwhitt’s editorial inspiration to Morell, it
seems clear that he did at least “avail himself” to some extent “of the one
earlier edition that drew his praise.”
31 It is instructive to note here that Skeat’s comments complete
Tyrwhitt’s “Essay” and that Skeat sounds not unlike his predecessor at
times. For example, Skeat wrote: “. . . could the exact orthography and
| pronunciation of every word of the author be recovered, his Metre would
probably prove to be in a high degree melodious, and hardly less
remarkable for smoothness than it is for strength” (53).
32 Skeat’s notion of originality is at odds with the medieval concept of
authorship, which privileged citation and manipulation of auctores over
personal originality; or, as Chaucer wrote in the “Manciple’s Tale”: “My
sone, be war, and be noon actour newe. . .” (359).
33 Skeat considered Chaucer a greater poet than Dryden or
Wordsworth, at least when these two tried to retell “The Wife of Bath’s
Tale” and “The Prioress' Tale”: “The Wife of Bath’s Tale has been retold by
Dryden, in a way peculiarly his own. If compared with the original, it
suffers sadly by the comparison” (3.450). And:
A modernised version of the Prioresses Tale will be found among
Wordsworth’s Poems. It can hardly be said to be satisfactory, and
the language of the original is, for the most part, so simple that the
attempt to modernise it was a needless task. The old idea, that
the attempt to read Chaucer in the original requires almost
superhuman ability, will, I hope, soon be a thing of the past. As a
matter of fact, his language is easier than that of Homer or Vergil;
and Englishmen are already ceasing to be overpowered by a
dread of learning facts that concern their own language. (3.423)
One wonders how Middle English could have been thought by
i Englishmen like Skeat to be harder than Greek or Latin, even in the
| Oxbridge of his time.
i
i
; 34 Patterson takes this one step further:
411
After all, much of nineteenth-century historicism had been
motivated by a desire to use the past, and specifically the
medieval past, to prescribe a future, whether it was the restoration
of the ancien regime in France, the reunification of Germany, or
the dismantling of industrial techniques of labor management in
England. Genetic explanation was virtually the raison d’etre of
historicism: knowing whence we came, so ran the argument, we
would know what we should become. The mission of historicism
was quite simply to historicize, to show that the present entities
that had previously been understood in terms of universal
principles or natural laws were instead the effect of prior causes.
And this historicizing applied as much to literary texts as it did to
political institutions. (16)
35 Donald Howard, writing about the projected plan of the “ Tales,”
illustrates this Victorian predilection with order:
The idea that Chaucer meant to write the work according to the
Host’s plan, that he meant to add links describing the progress of
the journey and actually ending the work with the projected
supper at the Tabard, seems to be chiefly an invention of the
nineteenth century. Until then, no one worried much about
missing tales. (Writers 120)
36 For a concise attempt at an even-handed summation of the issue,
see Ralph Hanna, “Textual Notes: The Canterbury Tales.” The Riverside
Chaucer (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987) 1120-21.
37 Such preconceived, mechanic editorial policies are noted by N.F.
Blake:
In general, then, modern criticism has tried to make the
Canterbury Tales a complete poem because modern critics are
interested in structure, plan and design. Our wish to investigate
these elements in the poem automatically presupposes that they
exist, that the poem is sufficiently finished for such investigations
to be meaningful. The wish is father to the thought. (“Editing” 58)
38 Although the Variorum Chaucer does not subscribe wholeheartedly
to the cartographical fallacy, Donald C. Baker’s volume on “ The
Manciple’s Tale” veers dangerously near the edge at times. In his
discussion of the “real” Bobbe-up-and-down, Baker sounds decidedly like
Furnivall on a Sunday ramble:
412
I permit myself the observation that the name “Bobbe up and
down” may well have been merely a popular one, used
particularly by pilgrims, because in walking to Canterbury from
the London Way, as I have done, one discovers that a series of
hillocks of varying heights that carries the path does indeed make
Harbledown “bob up and down” to the approaching traveler, in
turns revealing the village to his view and then hiding it. (80)
And when discussing the temporal difficulties found in the link between
Fragments H and I, Blake again sounds much like his Victorian
predecessors:
Clearly, it is difficult to imagine the pilgrims, even if all were in the
condition of the Cook, taking about seven hours to travel less
than two miles and then having time for ParsPT before arriving at
Canterbury. (80)
39 Ruggiers goes on to qualify this statement, thereby draining it of any
relevance. He indicates that order is unimportant:
. . . except for the steady implications of the pilgrimage narrative
form and its linear movement, the presence of the Host as the
chief moderator of the social group in action and interaction, and
the attitude of the in-the-main detached author who refrains from
passing judgment upon the worth of the various points of view.
(Art 9)
Chaucer’s work, of course, is not a “pilgrimage narrative,” nor does it
proceed in a “linear” manner.
40 See Robert M. Jordan, Chaucer’s Poetics and the Modern Reader
(Berkeley: U of California P, 1987) 137. There he addresses this issue in
his work on “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale”:
In Chaucer’s poetics, as we have seen from the Book of the
Duchess and the House of Fame onward, the principle of
encyclopedic inclusiveness overrides considerations of inner,
organic cohesion, and in the comparatively narrow compass of
this tale Chaucer tests the limits of compositional coherence.
4 1 There is a contradiction in Howard’s argument on this point. On the
one hand, he recognizes the fictionality, the fantastic nature, of the “ Tales”;
however, on the other he wants to discuss them in terms of real (as real as
they were, at any rate) pilgrimage narratives. He writes: “But almost no
one ever seriously thinks of The Canterbury Tales as a story about a
413
pilgrimage: it would be naive. Hence no one has viewed accounts of
pilgrimages as analogues” (78). Further, he feels that,
The work, like medieval art in general, is at once realistic and
abstract. We can have it both ways. A real live pilgrimage to any
medieval man was a metaphoric one-way journey to the
Heavenly Jerusalem, and none the less real for that. (Writers
121)
I agree that there are both realistic and abstract qualities to many works
of medieval art, the Commedia. for instance or the Pelerinaae de la vie
humaine. Nonetheless, we cannot have it both ways, we cannot discuss
fiction as though it were travel literature written as a record of real
journeys. Besides, Chaucer’s tales are not eschatological; the pilgrims
are not primarily interested in the salvation of their souls as is Dante’s
pilgrim or the viewers of the Hereford Maooa Mundi--at least those who
view it according to my interpretive scheme.
42 While I do not mean to impute disingenuousness to any of these
editors, it is of interest to note that Donald Howard indicates that the term
“a Canterbury Tale” was used to mean “a tall tale” (Writers 89) and that its
“usage is reported in the OED only in the sixteenth century” (Writers 89.
n.10). Eleanor Hammond reports the same:
The title ‘Canterbury Tales’ was abused by some scurrilous
jest-books of the 17th and 18th centuries, viz.:
Canterbury Tales composed for the entertainment of all Ingenious
Young Men and Maids at their Merry Meetings at Christmas,
Easter, And Whitsuntide, or any other Time, especially long
Winter Evenings. Printed and sold in London.
Short prose anecdotes of the coarsest character, all placed at
Canterbury. 24 pages, no date. (155)
One wonders how such a usage came about; unfortunately, the OED
gives us no clue, indicating only select historical appearances of the
phrase. Did Chaucer’s Victorian editors see them as “tall tales”? If so, it is
all the more curious that they relied so heavily upon extratextual, historical
and geographical information in their discussions of Chaucer’s fiction.
This is particularly true if “ the notion that pilgrims’ and travellers’ tales were
tall tales was firmly established” (Howard, Writers 89. n.10).
43 | emphasize “pure” and “accurate” because these are terms which
recur in various editorial policy statements.
414
44 Throughout this section I use the Chaucer Society’s labels for the
manuscript fragments:
A: General Prologue, Knight’s, Miller’s, Reeve’s, Cook’s
B i: Man of Law’s
B2: Shipman’s, Prioress’, Thopas, Melibee’s, Monk’s, Nun's
Priest’s
C: Physician’s, Pardoner’s
D: Wife of Bath’s, Friar’s, Summoner’s
E: Clerk’s, Merchant’s
F: Squire’s, Franklin’s
G: Second Nun’s, Canon’s Yeoman’s
H: Manciple’s
I: Parson’s, [to which I add the Retraction]
Within each Group is contained all headlinks, endlinks, prologues and
epilogues. For a more detailed description, see either Furnivall,
“Temporary Preface” (42-43) or Hammond (158-60). For Group and
Fragment correspondences, as well as for Manly-Rickert’s different
labelling system, see Appendix B.
45 b .A. Windeatt writes:
Tyrwhitt’s main ‘large-scale’ editorial achievement is in his work
of establishing the order of the tales and their links much as in
later editions, with a few minor points of difference. Tyrwhitt
disentangles the very confused and corrupted tale order in
Speght, for which he assumes that The Canterbury Tales is
unfinished precisely in matters like the disposition of its parts,
Tyrwhitt perceives that the manuscripts support better
arrangements than those that had previously been printed.
(Editing Chaucer 126)
46 On a related note, Hammond lists “A Supplement” to issue 91 (1898)
of the Chaucer Society’s first series which included “a Reproduction of Mr
Paul Hardy’s pen-and-ink Drawing of the Yard of the Tabard Inn on the
Morning of the 17th of April, 1387” (533). This apparently was the morning
upon which Hardy thought the pilgrims left the Tabard.
47 b .A. Windeatt writes: “Tyrwhitt’s ‘best Mss.’ are the most convincing
examples to him of the best tale order, though his meticulous notes to the
tales show how careful Tyrwhitt is not to mislead the reader about the
range of manuscript variation” (Editing Chaucer 128L
415
48 Tyrwhitt collated twenty-five manuscripts, although he felt “ the most
credit is certainly due to” Harley 7335, Cambridge D.d.4.24, Askew 1(now
British Library Egerton 2684) and 2 (now British Library Adds. 5140) and
Haistwell (now British Library Egerton 2726). The manuscripts he used are
listed by Eleanor Hammond: Harley 1239; Harley 1758; Harley 7333;
Harley 7334; Harley 7335; Sloane 1685; Sloane 1686; Royal 17 D xv;
Royal 18 C ii; Bodley 686; Laud 600; Laud 739; Selden B 14 (the one
upon which Bradshaw based his “Shift”) Hatton Donat. I; New College
314, Oxford; Barlow 20; Univ. Libr. Cambr. Dd iv, 24; Univ. Libr. Cambr. Ii
iii, 26; Trinity Coll. Cambr. R 3, 3; Trinity Coll. Cambr. R3, 15; Askew I (“now
Brit. Mus. Egerton 2864.”); “Askew ll=Brit. Mus. Adds. 5140”;
“Haistwell=Brit. Mus. Lansdowne 851”; “Cholmondeley-Norton collations
! made by Thomas for the Urry ed. Gholmondeley=Delamere.
; Norton=Hodson, now Brit. Mus. Egerton 2863.” (207-08)
j As Tyrwhitt indicated, he took these manuscripts from Cambridge,
I Oxford and “The [British] Museum” (l.xxii), with six exceptions: the
! Egertons 2726, 2863 and 2864, the Lansdowne 851, Brit. Mus. Adds.
| 5140 and the Delamere (now MS32 of T. Takamiya of Tokyo) (1.xxii-xxii).
j Furnivall took three of his manuscripts for the parallel Six-Text Print from
these two universities but relied upon private holdings for the rest: the
Hengwrt, the Petworth and the Ellesmere were borrowed from their
owners. For the other three, Furnivall wrote that he was intent upon
“ choosing, if possible, one from each of our great stores of MSS, London,
Cambridge, and Oxford” (“Preface” 6). Cambridge University Library
loaned him its Gg.iv.27, Corpus Christi 198 was loaned by the Oxford
college and the British Museum made its Lansdowne 851 available to him.
For his Eiaht-Text Edition he added D.d.iv.24 from Cambridge and Harley
7334 from the British Library. These were not printed in the parallel-text
format.
49 He seems to have succeeded, at least in the view of Thomas W.
Ross, who writes of Tyrwhitt’s methodical collation that, “ The result is a
smooth Augustan version of Chaucer” (Editing Chaucer 148).
50 As Tyrwhitt wrote here, “In all the editions the Tales of the Nonne and
the Chanones Yeman [Group G] precede the Doctoures [Group C]
. . . .” Two of his predecessors printed full texts. Caxton’s c.1478 order
was as follows: A Bi F1 E2 D E1 F2G C B2 H I; in c.1484 it became: A Bi Fi
E2 F2 D E1 G C B2 H I. Wynkyn de Worde’s 1498 edition prints the “ Tales”
; in yet another order: AB 1DE FGCB2 HI (Hammond 202-04).
416
si Tyrwhitt’s order essentially replicates the Ellesmere’s (A B 1 D E F C
B2 G H I), with the “Man of Law’s” endlink functioning as the “Shipman’s”
headlink. The “Second Nun’s Prologue and Tale” and the “ Canon’s
Yeoman’s Tale” are part of Group G (Fragment VIII), and the “Nun’s
j Priest’s” and “Monk’s” tales are found in Group B2 (Fragment III). For more
; on Groups and Fragments, see Appendix B.
i
| 52 The sixth volume of Skeat’s 1894 Oxford edition, “Introduction,
] Glossary, and Indexes,” is inscribed, “In Grateful Memory of Henry
! Bradshaw.”
i
53 For more on this, see Hammond 166-67. She also notes:
Prothero, in the Diet. Nat. Biog., says of Bradshaw, “ The amount
of his published work is small, and the reputation which he
; enjoyed among his contemporarries will be almost unintelligible
i to those who never knew him, and who are unaware how much of
I his labour took shape in the production of others.” (520)
! Considering the effect that his “Bradshaw Shift” has had (and continues
■ to have) on succeeding critics, we can see just how accurate Prothero was
in his estimation of the little-published Cambridge University Librarian.
Nevertheless, we must bear in mind that it is just as Donald C. Baker has
written: “One can admire Bradshaw’s scholarship, but without Furnivall
. there would have been nothing” (Editing Chaucer 166).
j 5 4 Bradshaw also used his topographical criteria to situate the less
: troubling fragment XI, containing the “Prologue” and “Manciple’s” Tale:
This Fragment is devoid of any allusion by which it can be
I connected with any other, and is acordingly found variously
| placed in different copies, though in most MSS. the argument
| from the locality, the M itel toun which that icleped is Bob-up-and-
| doun under the Blee in Canterburie weye,’ has been sufficient to
| force it into a very late place in the collection. (“Skeleton” 144)
i
] 55 Bradshaw’s confidence in his positivistic plan shines through his
| prose:
' I have been able, after a minute examination of a good number,
! so far to break the work up into what I have been led to believe
were the fragmens as left by the author, that it is now
comparatively easy to describe, on finding any particular
manuscript, in what order or disorder the contents are placed.
I Further than this, I have found it possible to say in very many
417
cases what order any manuscript gives evidence of, however
great the disorder may seem to be at first sight. (“ Skeleton” 102)
56 Hammond did not subscribe to this conjunction: “From the facts that
B2 has the short form of the Monk’s endlink, that there are no Words of the
Franklin, and two spurious passages, I cannot concede authority to this
MS’ connection Man of Law and Shipman” (187). On this same page she
gives a detailed description of the manuscript and quotes Furnivall, who
said that Selden was but the “‘best of the disappointing Bodleian lot’”
(“Preface” 7).
57 The most obvious practitioners of the latter were Manly and Rickert,
who seem to have taken Furnivall to heart, as they write of their “trust in the
regular operation of the laws of probability” (2.22-23) when discussing
their variant-based editorial scheme.
58 Donald C. Baker nicely sums up this aspect of the “Tales’” textual-
critical tradition:
The problem of the order of the tales forced itself upon Furnivall
because, if he was to arrange the manuscripts in a parallel-text
edition, obviously there had to be congruity in order, or else the
order had to be changed for printing (as was to be the case
anyway, particularly with the Hengwrt). He followed basically the
order suggested to him and worked out by Bradshaw, whom he
lavishly acknowledges. [. . .] Fumivall’s speculations on the
number of days that the pilgrimage required, and so forth, are of
no particular importance for the history of the text of The
Canterbury Tales, but his adoption of ‘the Bradshaw shift’ . . . has
been quite important and continues to be debated, though it was
later abandoned by Skeat himself. . . . (Editing Chaucer 161)
59 This aspect of Furnivall’s argument lies behind later analyses like
those of Charles A. Owen, who was convinced that he could determine the
number of days Chaucer intended the trip to take, based upon the
cartographical fallacy. He also felt that the tales could be arranged to
provide enough for a return journey. See especially Charles A. Owen,
“The Design of the Canterbury Tales.” Companion to Chaucer Studies.
ed., Beryl Rowland (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1968) 221-42 and “ The Plan of the
Canterbury Pilgrimage,” PMLA 66.2 (1951): 820-26.
418
60 This is a reference to Dean Stanley’s Historical Memorial of
Canterbury, i can find no further information on this text or author.
Perhaps he was Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, “ecclesiatical historian, a leader
of the Broad Church movement, and a courageous champion of religious
toleration” (Oxford Companion 931).
6 1 Further evidence of Furnivall’s literalmindedness is found in his
discussion of pilgrims’ dietary habits (“Preface” 26-27) and his thoughts on
the Pardoner and this character’s relation to the work’s temporal
inconsistencies:
This bite on the cake and draught of ale leave no doubt in my
mind that the Pardoner wanted a snack, by way of breakfast,
before telling his tale; and that before-dinner suits the
circumstances much better than after; for if he had had a hearty
meal at 9 or 10, after a morning’s ride, he would not have wanted
a luncheon between that and supper at 4 or 5. A draught of ale
he might have felt the need of, but the bite on a cake means
before-breakfast. (25-26)
62 Skeat does not gloss “hostelrie” at this point, but he does use his
cartographical capabilities to explain both “ five myle, five miles” (line 555):
It is really very easy to explain the matter, and to tell about it. It
is perfectly clear that these two lines express the fact that they
were riding to Canterbury. It is even probable that every one of
the extant Tales refers to the outward journey: for Chaucer would
naturally write his first set of Tales before beginning a second,
and the extant Tales are insufficient to make even the first set
complete. Consequently, we have only to reckon backwards from
Boughton (see I. 556) for a five-mile distance along the old
Canterbury road, and we shall find the name of the place
intended.
The answer to this is-Ospringe. The matter is settled by the
discovery that Ospringe was, as a matter of fact, one of the halting-
places for the night of travellers from London to Canterbury.
(5.415)
Skeat summarizes Furnivall’s evidence from the “Preface” regarding
Isabella’s journey and that of King John of France (5.415) before
discussing “Boghton-under-Blee” (line 556):
Here Blee is the same as the blee in Group H, 1 .3, which see. It is
now called Blean Forest, and the village is called Boughton-
under-Blean, in order to distinguish it from other villages of the
419
same name. I find, in a map, Boughton Aluph between
Canterbury and Ashford, Boughton Malherb between Ashford
and Maidstone, and Boughton Monchelsea between Maidstone
and Staplehurst. (5.416)
In the Riverside’s “Explanatory Notes” to “The Canon’s Yeoman’s
Prologue,” there is nothing for “hostelrie”; however, “Boghtoun” (line 556)
is glossed: “Boughton was [?] five miles beyond Ospring, a regular
stopping place, where the pilgrims had presumably spent the night; they
were now some five miles from Canterbury” (948). It seems that the
Bradshavian textual-critical philosophy was still alive and well in 1987.
F.N. Robinson was the least literal: “Boughton, which was five miles
from Ospring, a regular stopping-place on the Canterbury Road”
(“Explanatory Notes,” “The Canon’s Yeoman’s Prologue,” line 556). He
does, nonetheless, refer the reader to “the references on the duration of
the pilgrimage in the introduction to the Explanatory Notes on the CT”
(760). On the name under Blee. “under the Blean forest,” see F.P.
Magoun, J., Med. Stud., XVI, 134” (760). In the referenced section,
Robinson cites Littlehales’ booklet, discussed below, among others (649).
63 Furnivall further notes:
That markets were held in Ospringe in 1300, we know from Liber
Garderobae Edw. I, p.1-2; for his Treasurer receives “ de villa de
Ospring, pro transgressione mensural’, 13s. 4d.,” among the
“Perquisites of the Market. . fines upon conviction for deficiency
in quality or quantity of goods sold in the market, and levied on
millers, bakers, brewers, persons who refused to take the current
money of the realm, transgressed the measure of corn, &c., or
made bread deficient in weight.” (14, n.2)
64 The location and description of this ancient road, “handed down from
generation to generation of wood-reeves and tillers of the soil” and its
opposition to “ The many ‘new roads’ which have been made for more
civilized times” recalls not only the pervasive Romantic valuation of the
past and the rural over the present and the urban, but also conjures
images of Wordsworth’s ubiquitous figure of the Pedlar or beggar: that
“ Statesman!” (“Old Cumberland Beggar” I.67); the “old Mendicant” (“Old
Cumberland Beggar” 1.152); “He [who] is by nature led / To peace so
perfect, that the young behold / With envy, what the old man hardly feels”
(“Old Man Travelling” 11.12-14).
Wordsworth on language from the Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1802)
also comes to mind:
420
Low and rustic life was generally chosen, because in that
condition, the essential passions of the heart find a better soil in
which they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and
speak a plainer and more emphatic language; because in that
condition of life our elementary feelings co-exist in a state of
greater simplicity, and consequently, may be more accurately
contemplated, and more forcibly communicated. . . . (William
Wordsworth 597)
65 Hammond lists a number of studies of this sort, essays on identifying
Chaucer’s pilgrims, on “the shrine of St. Thomas, the pilgrimage, and the
road,” on descriptions of pilgrimages and pilgrims” and on “discussion[s] of
the road” (269-70).
66 The Oxford Companion to English Literature has an entry under
John Ogilby (1600-76): “Scottish author, topographer, and printer, [who]
published verse translations of Virgil, Aesop, and Homer; also maps,
atlases, and Road Books of England and Wales, the last of which were
constantly revised until they faded into Mogg’s Road Books” (711-12).
67 Littlehales’ influence extends down to this century. Charles A. Owen,
Jr.’s work on “ The Plan of the Canterbury Pilgrimage,” in which he argues
for a round-trip pilgrimage of five days, references Littlehales’ mileage
calculations (820, n.2). The most striking aspect of his argument, however,
is its Furnivallian rhetoric. One rather long quote shall suffice:
The pilgrims then probably spent their first night at Dartford, rode
the 32 miles past Rochester to Ospring on their second day, and
arrived in Canterbury, only nine miles away, in time for dinner on
the third day. That left the afternoon for the visit to the shrine of
St. Thomas, and made it possible for the group to start the return
journey early on the morning of the fourth day. Here we see the
reason for not stopping at Rochester on the way to Canterbury:
The pilgrims were planning to spend their fourth night there and
wanted the novelty of a different town and a different hostelry for
each night of their journey, variety being then as now one of the
principal spices of travel. The homeward journey was thus made
in two stages of 26 and 30 miles, and the evening of the fifth day
found the pilgrims listening to the Parson as they approached the
Tabard for their final supper and the announcement of the winner
of the story-telling contest. (“Plan” 821)
421
I state again: these were not real pilgrims; this was not a real pilgrimage
and these fictional characters never planned to do anything-least of all
search for “variety . . . one of the principal spices of travel.”
68 Under “Schamel” and “Swanstree” (29-33) Littlehales discusses
Sittingbourne (“Wife of Bath’s Prologue” 847) in great detail-far more than
is necessary to recount here, largely citing Scott-Robertson’s
Sittingbourne Purina the Middle Ages. Ospringe is given two pages, with
no direct commentary on the “Canterbury Tales” (34-35). Harbledown,
“Bobbe-up-and-down,” (“Manciple’s Prologue” 2) is handled in much the
same detailed manner, again without reference to the “ Tales” (39).
69 Furnivall is again cited and tied to geographical concerns by
Littlehales in his discussion of Dartford Brent:
Respecting the question of the common use of the main [Roman]
road, Dr. Furnivall’s ample knowledge comes to our aid, and the
original documents to which he advised reference prove beyond,
I think, any question that the route, for at any rate ordinary
travellers, was via Gravesend, and not by the Roman Road. [. . .]
All, without exception, went through Sittingbourne, Rochester and
Gravesend, a fact of very great importance. Scrap Book B [of the
Dean and Chapter of Canterbury] does furnish information
respecting the route, but nothing in addition to that afforded by the
Account Book [in the Canterbury Cathedral Library]. Dr.
Furnivall’s opinion as to the use of the two routes inclines to the
Roman way. He writes:--
“I doubt whether Chaucer went through Gravesend. I incline to
the old Watling Street and Roman Road, straighter, as the arc of
the bend.” (17-18)
70 Second series, number 17:
Supplementary Canterbury Tales: I. The Tale of Beryn, with a
Prologue of the merry Adventure of the Pardoner with a Tapster at
Canterbury, re-edited from the Duke of Northumberland’s unique
MS, by Fredk. J. Furnivall. Part I, the Text, with Wm. Smith’s Map
of Canterbury in 1588, now first engravd from his unique MS, and
Ogilby's Plan of the Road from London to Canterbury in 1675.
(Hammond 537)
Again, we see the fiction/topography connection and Furnivall’s
involvement.
422
7 1 N.F. Blake felt that Skeat himself, in fact, did not surpass Tyrwhitt:
Skeat was aware of the existence of over fifty manuscripts, but he
relied on these eight with an occasional reference to another
manuscript for the solution to a particular problem. To this extent
editorial work with Skeat was less advanced than with Tyrwhitt,
who had collated far more manuscripts for his edition. (Textual 1)
Eleanor Hammond held similar opinions: “Professor Skeat’s great six-
volume edition of Chaucer is acknowledged by his severest critics to be
the best extant; but it has certain marked faults against which the student
limited to its use should be warned” (145); “a weakness appears under
which editions of Chaucer must labor until his editors recognize, as
classical editors long ago recognized, that for a definitive edition the use of
all the available evidence is indispensable” (145); “it may be asserted that
our progress beyond [Tyrwhitt] has not been equal to our professions. . .”
(209); and, finally, “ The edition of Skeat in 1894 is still an edition of the
18th-century type. . .” (209). And, most tellingly, she valorizes Tyrwhitt’s
method and seems to pave the way for Manly-Rickert:
Skeat has not devoted to the MSS such examination as Morell or
Tyrwhitt made, and that his editorial procedure, a century and
more after Tyrwhitt, is guided by the erroneous supposition that
the true Chaucerian readings may be picked out intuitively,
instead of by the laborious and impartial comparison of all the
authorities. We find him still in the view of Bentley, ‘Nobis et ratio
et res ipsa centum codd. potiores sunt.’ (146)
72 it also recalls to mind the following from Furnivall’s “Preface”: “ There
is only one man in the world, I believe, who thoroughly understands this
subject, and he is the Librarian of the University of Cambridge, Mr Henry
Bradshaw, M.A., Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge” (9).
73 Skeat elaborated further upon his authorities:
The text of the present edition of the Canterbury Tales is founded
upon that of the Ellesmere MS. (E.) It has been collated
throughout with that of the other six MSS. published by the
Chaucer Society. Of these seven MSS., the Harleian MS. 7334
(HI.) was printed separately. The other six were printed in the
valuable ‘Six-text’ edition, to which I have constantly occasion to
refer, in parallel columns. (4.xvii)
74 On this topic, Skeat took Furnivall to task for his part of his ordering
scheme, primarily because Skeat preferred a different order:
423
In the best MSS., it [the Physician’s Tale] follows the Frankeleins
Tale; and such is, in my belief, its proper position. This
arrangement was arbitrarily altered by Dr. Furnivall, in order, I
suppose, to emphasize the fact that the relative order of the
Groups may be altered at pleasure; but this might have been
! understood without forcible dislocation; and I think that no good
has been effected by it. I have been obliged to follow suit, but I
wish to make a note that the right order of the Groups is A, B, D, E,
F, C, G, H, I. (3.434)
! Skeat’s subjective eclecticism shows through again in a later volume: “ The
| text of the Ellesmere MS. has only been corrected in cases where careful
collation suggests a desirable improvement. Every instance of this
character is invariably recorded in the footnotes” (4.xviii). The “desirable
improvement” being, of course, according to Skeat’s editorial desires.
75 One might wonder why Skeat felt that another edition was
necessary. But, as Joseph A. Dane has pointed out in discussing this,
Skeat’s Oxford text is essentially the culmination of Furnivall’s efforts.
While Skeat’s is a useable--not to say marketable-edition. The Six-Text
Print only contains the raw material for such a product.
76 Having said this, I realize that a post-structuralist critical
consciousness which accepts the incomplete state and fictionality of the
“ Tales” can easily be accused of reading such efforts condescendingly,
when the preferred course is certainly to evaluate them in their historico-
! critical context.
77 | focus more on this article than on the “Introduction” and “ The Order
of the Tales” from Pratt’s The Tales of Canterburv-which I discuss below-
since here he more fully delineates his ordinal rationale.
i
!
j 78 Again, note the implicit allusions to Furnivall’s “Allusions. . . .”
i
| 79 Admittedly, medieval romance provides a poor generic analogy with
; the Commedia. since its interlaced structure allows for infinite elaboration,
! its liminal areas being much more amorphous, less obviously inscribed,
j What we might call its “bookend” structure permits the insertion of any
number of characters and/or events between the knight’s departure from
and his return to court. Although these narrative moments are linked-
often very loosely--by what Eugene Vinaver called entrelacement. the
, resulting spatial construction is not closed like the Com media’s, which is
l
bound by the geometrical and numerological aspects of the late-medieval
Christian metaphysic.
80 Donald Howard’s summation of the “Canterbury Taies”sounds very
much like he is reading the Commedia. indeed, it sounds a bit too much
like this:
As the Manciple's Tale ends with the discredited image of the
wagging tongue, the Parson’s Tale in its penultimate sentence
extolls ‘the sight of the perfect knowing of God.’ Sight,
instantaneous vision, replaces time-bound utterance at the end of
this most noisy book. So in his final words the author, grave and
filled with hope, imposes silence on his feat of impersonation in
the work and on his whole performance as a poet, embraces that
death and that day of doom which alone will make the world
complete, and turns his eye upon the still center. (Idea 386-87)
425
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Creator Terkla, Daniel Paul (author)

Core Title The centrality of the peripheral: Illuminating borders and the topography of space in medieval narrative and art, 1066-1400

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Comparative Literature

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Art History,Literature, Medieval,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

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Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c17-739548

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Legacy Identifier DP22560.pdf

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