Ms. Kempe If You're Nasty

Since Isabella from Measure for Measure got brought up in class today, I've been thinking about it and I'm wondering more about the accusation that Margery is a "strumpet."

Isabella, some argue, is the most sexualized character in the text by her own power. Aside from the fact that sexuality if often placed on her (Angelo, the Duke, Claudia...there isn't a man in that play who isn't pressing some form of sexual discourse on her), Isabella herself is a physical character. Her description alone of how far she's going to go to be nonsexual is probably one of the most sexually charged descriptions in the play.

As much for my poor brother as myself:
That is, were I under the terms of death,
The impression of keen whips I'ld wear as rubies,
And strip myself to death, as to a bed
That longing have been sick for, ere I'ld yield
My body up to shame.
(i.iv)

Impressions of whips? Strip myself to a bed? What kind of asexuality are we dealing with here?

I think, however, a pronounced celibacy, like Isabella's screaming in the street or Margery's white robes, is a highly sexual state of being and Margery, like Isabella, is much more sexual than we think. It is, in fact, announcing your sexual status with every step that you take. It is constantly having your thoughts on your own chastity, which is, in fact a sexual state of being. Announced sexuality, putting yourself right into a field of vision, is more of her elective Othering.

Her main issue, when she runs into people who don't know how to take the white robes, is her sexuality. And the treatment she receives on page 83-85 sounds a whole lot like "Well, if you weren't wearing that skirt, this wouldn't have happened." It is an accusation that a woman is not only aware of her own sexuality, but bringing everyone else's attention to it, as well.

In fact, I'd go so far as to backtrack and say that the fear for the wives is not because they'd be shaking up the status quo by leaving the sexual economy, but instead that the wives would be more sexualized by entering a state of being that is, in fact, completely centered on sexuality and announcing that sexuality to anyone with eyes.

That also makes the accusation of strumpet...ness that much more accurate. If a strumpet is a prostitute, one who's business is sex, then Margery is a strumpet. More modern interpretations of prostitution as the site of revolution (the short story is that prostitution and sex work show heterosexual normatively for the sham that it is. If you can pay a woman, regardless of her sexuality, to perform heterosexuality with you, how "natural" can that be?) then Ms. Kempe is definitely a strumpet.

"And now I know how Joan of Arc felt"

No, this isn't a post about The Smiths song, but instead a comparison between Joan of Arc and Margery Kempe. While reading the text, I was struck by the similarities and difference between the two women who lived around the same time period in Medieval Europe. Though Margery is a fictional character and Joan is not, their lives are quite analogous and quite dissimilar.

Margery's dress is an issue several times throughout the text. Her desire, or rather God's will, to have her dress in virginal white is contrary to her position in society. As we've noted at other times in the course, one's dress was very important in Medieval society because it depicted social status. In this text, we see dress in a slightly different way. It is clear from the text, that Margery is certainly not a virgin. She has fourteen children with her husband. Although she rebukes and is revolted by his sexual desires, she still has lustful thoughts about herself and God. During her inquest, the Archbishop asks, "Why go you in white? Are you a maiden?" She, kneeling on her knees before him, said, "No, sir, I am no maiden; I am a wife" (p.91). There is something unnatural in Margery being clothed in all white. One sees the same thing when studying the trials of Joan of Arc. The charge brought against her, wearing men's clothes, is ultimately one of the charges in which she is burnt at the stake for. The Church regards Joan's choice of dress similar to that of Margery's. Dressing in such a way is unnatural. Yet, it is even more so, something that is against the Church, which in turn causes a person to be a danger to the Church and society as a whole. Not dressing in one's normal dress and being a well known figure is a threat to society because it could cause other women to veer off the normal course and wear such dress.

Secondly, both women claim to hear the voices of higher beings. For Joan this is also a cause for her demise, as she is deemed a heretic. Margery, however, is both praised and damned for her spiritual beliefs. For instance, when she arrives in Rome at the hospice of Saint Thomas of Canterbury the text states, "and there was she houseled every Sunday with greet weeping, violent sobbing, and loud crying and was highly beloved of the master of the hospice and by all his brother" (p.59). A few lines later the text describes a priest in the hospice who despises Margery, it states "he spoke so evilly of this creature and slandered so her name in the hospice that through his evil language she was put out of the hospice so that she might no longer be shriven nor houseled therein" (p.59). It is also interesting to note that most places Margery goes, clergy seek her out as being the woman who hears the voice of God. Moreover, in places where she is thrown out of, it is more for her absurd weeping and wailing and not her belief that she hears God.

Margery and something Monstrous

It's with a heavy heart that I post my last blog. I do not have any original points to add about Margery, but I did wanted to share a story.

Several months ago, I attended the SEMA conference and sat in on the session called Gender in the Middle Ages. A graduate student presented a paper on Margery Kempe cleverly titled, "'I Am Woman, Hear Me Wail': Discussing How Gender Affects the Authorship of Margery Kempe." Her paper basically noted Margery's defiance to the "male-dominated clergy" by her extreme actions. During discussion, the presenter explained that Margery's only term for herself was "creature." Margery acquired an nonsexual persona in the story instead of fighting against the male dominated clergy with her femininity. This statement really resonated in me. I hadn't realized that instead of using her sex, Margery loses her sex for humility and possibly, the ability to act within a category that does not have limits-that of a creature.

Well, in honor of this class, I wanted to leave this post with a video that shows a monster and an other. It has been a pleasure!

Comparing Silence and Merlin

Since we talked a little about Merlin on Thursday, I wanted to talk a little bit further on Merlin’s relationship to Silence. At first, the two just seem like rivals. Silence is supposed to capture Merlin and bring him back to the king. However, the two have similar qualities, and their actions mirror one another through the course of the poem.

First, both have innately superior qualities hidden by a more mundane front. Silence is the most beautiful creature that Nature has ever created, and her disguise, although it doesn’t hide all of her beauty, does dull it down a little, making her beauty less noticeable but her nobility still apparent. Merlin possesses magical powers which allow him to predict the future. The divine gift of foresight is hidden within the human exterior. Both characters have divinity, beauty or power, disguised by “normal” appearances.

Silence and Merlin both inhabit worlds which are not their own. Silence moves of her own volition, from being a minstrel to jousting tournaments to court. The masculine world in which Silence can move about freely is not the natural world her nature would have her inhabit. Similarly, Merlin also makes a crossover into a world he does not normally inhabit, which is the society of people. In both cases, they are able to display a unique understanding about their surroundings. Merlin, although not appearing to understand much about the social reactions appropriate to the different social situations he views, makes an appearance at court and shows more loyalty to the king than anyone else. Silence excels in every aspect of court life despite the unnaturalness of her being there.

Also, the two both reveal a truth about themselves that contradicts what we originally think about them. Merlin reveals that he knows more about the goings-on at court despite his being so cut off from court society. Despite his perhaps beastly appearance, Merlin understands more about the court than the authority, the king. Silence also reveals a truth about herself which no one else knows. That is of course, her relationship to Gorlain.

Silence and Merlin act similarly, and it makes me wonder what exactly Heldris was trying to accomplish with their similarities. Is it that despite their somewhat “deceitful” exteriors, they both act in the best interest of the king? Both Merlin and Silence, in their subversive actions, are both legitimized and not othered? Heldris certainly presents some strange views on Othering with Silence and Merlin.

Also, just in case anyone is interested, I found some neat links. One’s to an online beastiary: The Aberdeen Bestiary

And some other information on illuminated manuscripts: guided manuscript tours

Silence Embodying Masculinity

I really enjoyed Janel’s presentation and the emphasis she placed on how Silence is ‘othered’ not so much because she’s a woman dressed as a man, but because she is a woman ‘performing’ or fulfilling a masculine gender role. In the second section of the romance , I would venture to argue that Silence fully embraces, performs, and exhibits masculine behavior, even at the very end; this becomes apparent if we examine the narrator’s attitude towards women and how Silence’s actions contradict this attitude.

The narrator reveals his attitude towards women numerously throughout this poem, and it does not paint a pretty picture of them. Among them is the criticism he makes about a woman’s behavior or the intense emotions she is dictated by, when in ‘love.’ On page 183 the narrator states: “But her (woman’s) is not steadfast; it’s irrational and unstable. She loves and hates with equal ease.” Queen Eufeme embodies this particular idea, and illustrates the narrator’s words on page 245. On page 245, in the context of Queen Eufeme and the trap(s) she devises for Silence, the narrator tells us that for the Queen her ‘love was the same as hate.’ With all the misfortune that falls on Silence (threat of death in France, quest to find Merlin), there is never any mention that she/he hates the queen, even with all that she’s put her/him through. In addition to this, Silence acts in a way that ensures her ‘true nature’ will not be revealed, and the queen’s as well; her literal silence about the situation illustrates not only masculine behavior, as it is perceived in the book, for it tries to ‘not compromise the lady’s (Eufeme’s) position as queen,’ and attempts to protect the king from ‘shame.’ Moreover, returning to the narrator’s attitude on page 245, his words are literally echoed by Silence. On page 269, cornered by Queen Eufeme, Silence tells her, “What you call love is betrayal”; betrayal is an act of deceit or treachery, one could say, fueled by hate or an emotion that comes close to mirroring hate. Here is Silence not only talking as a man (narrator), but she seems to truly believe in what she says about the queen’s love; this may point to how she comes to embody a masculine perspective.

Although in battle Silence asks God to intervene, to help ‘strengthen what Nature has made weak,’ and despite her transformation in the end, it is the voice that Silence gains at the end that really determines her sex/masculine behavior. On page 301 the kind tells Queen Eufeme, “A woman’s role is to keep silent”; with the narrator’s attitude towards women in mind, this idea of literal ‘silence’ complicates the main character. One could argue that Silence in keeping ‘silent’ about the Queen’s advances and treachery, she is fulfilling a woman’s role: Yet, Silence exhibits masculine behavior when she states, “Nor do I care to keep silent any longer” (309). Interestingly enough, in revealing her ‘true nature’ she contradicts the notion that ‘a woman’s role is to keep silent.’ Silence undergoes a physical transformation, but has behaved and continues to behave in a masculine way until page 309: She re-defines the ‘woman’s role,’ and in the same instance exhibits masculine behavior. It is with the voice she gains at the end where masculine behavior, in the context of this poem, merges to a degree with feminine behavior.

Although Silence is a queen at the end, she still possesses ‘knightly’ or masculine attributes, embodying both a feminine and masculine ‘nature.’ Like Annie pointed out in her blog, “Silence,” precedes the story of Joan of Arc, a story that deconstructs fixed gender roles, and re-defines ‘woman.’ On a final note, even though Nature seems to win in the end, I wonder if she isn’t the only victorious? As Janel pointed out, Silence 'performs masculinity without being masculine,' though this changes at the end of the book. If Silence has been taught through Nurture, masculine behavior, and if she truly embodies this behavior in the end ( page 309) by ‘no longer being silent,’ and ensuring protection for herself from Queen Eufeme, both Nature and Nurture seem to be victorious.

Our Hero(ine)

Let me be one of the first to say how refreshing it is to be back in a romantic narrative! I really enjoyed this text for the story and the ideas it induced. One of the most prominent questions that came to my mind while reading this text was this: if our protagonist is a noble woman dressed up as a knight, then what does this do to the othering of people in the story? Until this point, our heroes have basically been strong, Christian men of nobility and worthy knights. Though many of these men were othered because of their unusual amount of strength, this story is centered on a woman, a person initially othered before any actions occur. We are now confronted with an unusual character we call the hero (or heroine).

We begin the story of Silence with her father winning the hand of her mother after defeating a monster, the dragon. It is through the interruption of this monstrous creature that Cador and Eufemie become close and marry. In addition, it is poignant to note that in the tedious pages of tension between the two for what they believe is unrequited love, it is the woman who finally makes the first proclamation of love. This does not seem fitting after the formal modes of courtship we have read between other knights and maidens. So, this story begins with an unusual union that emasculates the male. This union allows for the birth of Silence.

In a similar manner to Alan de Lille’s writing, we have a confrontation to Silence by Nature and Nurture, two entities oddities in themselves attempting to place the protagonist on their side. Nature’s desire for Silence to “go to a chamber and learn to sew” (line 2528) is its determination to have Silence inside and away from the world. Nurture and Reason intervene as well, and help to stabilize Silence in this othered category. Silence proclaims, “I’m a young man, not a girl / I don’t want to lose my high position” (lines 2650-1). As we see here, the othering done to Silence is innate because of being born female. She decides to hide her femininity by being male, but her strength as a knight later in the text will other her once again.

Even when Silence meets the minstrels and journey’s off with them, he is othered in his actions. While performing he is the one who stands out among the minstrels as best. He is noted as being the performer rulers wish to hear and bringing in the most money.

Though Silence is attempting to fit into a false category, there is one place where he fails: in the meaning to his name. Silence rejects the silent way of life given to him as female. He rejects being silent when playing instruments for others and othering himself by creating the most beautiful music. Silence seems to other himself from his own name in the process. However, by not placing himself concretely into his own name, he does great things, and has progressed farther than he would have if known to be a female.

I would argue that this othered protagonist appears to critique the contemporary modes of conduct. Contrary to other heroes, Silence is othered in a way that is deemed, as “lower” than men. She elevates her status and by her accomplishments, she problematizes the notions of othering. It is interesting to note that this story is a precursor to Joan of Arc, who will historically other herself by not only being a female knight, but also leading the French to victory over the English.

Poem 12: Otherness and Unfixed Gender

I really loved reading the poems in, “Wine, Women, and Death: Medieval Hebrew Poems on The Good Life.” Particularly, I was drawn to poem 12 not only because of the various ‘others’ that we are confronted with as the poem progresses, but because gender constructs seem unfixed as well.

In the beginning of the poem, the poet establishes himself as the ‘other,’ an outsider, with the line, “Many men will fault me.” The weight of the line seems to carry a moral judgment that surrounds the poet’s, ‘heart’s delight,’ and echoes Nature’s grievance and judgment in Allan of Lille’s, “The Plaint of Nature.” In “The Plaint of Nature,” Nature grieves because ‘man has inverted the rules of Venus, its arrangement of genders, and has deviated from the true script’ (134). Homosexuality or coupling that is not in the service of regeneration/reproduction is one of the sources behind Nature’s grievance, and drives her to ‘excommunicate’ those men that are said to go ‘against’ her, and their own ‘nature.’ The moral judgment found in “The Plaint of Nature,” seems to resonate in Poem 12’s, “Many men will fault me,” for the poet is expressing how men will criticize or condemn him, much like Nature, for loving the ‘fawn.’ Interestingly enough though, an ambiguity surrounds the poet’s position as an ‘other.’ The line, “Death to their kind,” seems to suggest that the poet is on the outskirts or alienated from dominating society (‘men’) because he is of a different ‘kind.’ Despite this, the use of ‘their kind,’ seems to be used in the same spirit or attitude we’ve seen attached to Saracens, infidels, heathens, etc. in our earlier readings, and other’s dominating society (‘men’). The poet’s contempt over dominating society’s (‘men’) views or attitudes towards homosexuality or coupling that challenges male and female gender constructs and does not adhere to the dominant or submissive position assigned to these constructs, is felt in this line (‘Death to their kind’); ‘men’ become othered because they can be seen as ‘doubtful members of a given category’ or in this case, group or culture. The poet’s ‘heart’s delight,’ ‘fawn,’ is also othered within the poem.

The ‘fawn’ is the epitome of beauty and the promise of love. The poet’s use of animal imagery works towards othering the fawn, not in a way to enhance bestial qualities, but to illuminate a beauty that is both female (‘beautiful hind’), and exotic (‘gazelle’). Raymond P. Scheindlin states that the line, “There’s Adonai!” is found in the bible, and speaks to how, “The world of the fawn exists at a higher level of reality than that of mankind.’ Although, this assertion pushes the fawn into an ‘othered’ realm because he becomes a subliminal character, it also others him by associating him with a female ritual; thus, the fawn does not adhere to gender constructs, and seem to take on the persona, such as one that Nature (Alan of Lille) believes ‘inverts the rules of Venus.’ Researching the word ‘Adonai,’ I found that it is associated with an ancient feast honoring Aphrodite and Adonis. This feast was only celebrated by women and took place during two days where Venus’s dead lover, Adonis, is resurrected. Although the word ‘Adonai’ establishes the fawn as male, it also places him firmly within a female realm; this is further reinforced in the next line when the fawn is called a ‘stubborn wight.’ Despite the fact that a wight is a creature, it is also defined as a ‘living being,’ and in light of the ‘Adonai’ ritual of bringing Adonis back to life, the second definition seems to be what the poet intended to imply. The fawn is ‘othered’ precisely because he resides not only in a world whose reality surpasses mankind, but a world that is female, and I would argue challenges gender constructs/roles. In lines 13 and 14 the poet writes: “He listened, and let me come home with him. He did what I wanted, obeyed every whim.” These two lines seem to invoke Nature’s (Alan of Lille) assertion on the subject versus the predicate, and how some men deviate from their nature by taking a submissive or passive role, the role of assigned to ‘woman.’ The fawn ‘listens’ much like the ‘Lady’ or maidens we’ve encountered in previous reading. He is submissive in the fact that he not only does what the Poet ‘wants,’ but ‘obeys’ the poet. The word ‘obey’ establishes how the fawn carries out or complies with the Poet’s demands, commands, instructions, etc, and reinforces a submissive/passive nature within him. Even the line, ‘I took off his clothes and he took off mine,’ establishes the poet’s male, dominate role, and the fawn’s, female, submissive role; not only is the poet mentioned first, but he is the one taking the active role, and initiating the act (taking off clothes). In the next line, although the fawn literally appears first, he is still taking on the role of a ‘lady,’ and adhering to notions attached to a female gender construct; the fawn ‘offers his lips,’ and the poet still maintains an active dominating role, for he ‘drinks of their wine,’ and there’s no mention of the fawn exhibiting the same level of activeness.

Towards the end of the poem the fawn rejects the poet with: “Get along with you, and be on your way. Don’t you seduce me and lead me astray.” Why the fawn rejects the poet is a little ambiguous, but the line ‘Don’t you seduce me and lead me astray,’ seems to not only depict the fawn’s fickleness or ‘capriciousness,’ but how he believes the poet actions to be immoral (lead me astray). To me this seemed to mirror the notion of a woman needing to keep her chastity in tact, and if the fawn is taking a passive/submissive role, one assigned to women, he is fulfilling it by rejecting the poet, and keeping his virtue, to some degree, intact. In addition to this, the fawn’s rejection re-establishes the poet’s otherness, for this is the second rejection the Poet experiences (‘many men fault me’), and establishes him not only outside of ‘their kind,’ but outside of the fawn’s realm as well.

I look forward to hearing or reading about what other parallels the class makes between “Plaint of Nature,” and, “Wine, Women, and Death.” Also, in what other ways, if there are more, do the ‘lovely youths’ ‘invert the rule of Venus.’

The Nature of Complaints

I feel as though I too may be treading ground tread once before in this post, but I too feel a great deal of distrust toward nature and her words. Put simply, nature is whining. Bemoaning the state of man is all well and good when you aren't responsible for its creation. Might she believe if you talk long and loud enough one might not hear the truth? Alan repeats himself enough times for this to certainly be a possibility.

For the truth is complaints are rarely constructive. They simply cover up the fact that instead of complaining one could have actually done something to aid in a solution. In a sense it could be considered a vice as well. Is not Slothfulness one of the seven deadly sins? What interests me greatly is Nature's neglect of this vice. Of course it is not an active vice sowing the seeds of discontent and depravity. But a slothful person desires not to work to be lazy. Does this sound like anyone we know in this story? I seem to remember Nature's own laxity in her duties, in her inability to do a job or even to oversee someone else do her job. Her laziness is the cause of all other vices. She is indeed the mother of us all. The mother of vice.

I maybe stretching it but I can't get the idea out of my mind that Alan is telling us that even this lady is flawed for a purpose. During the discussion of poets and the lies they spread Nature mentions, "Or, how the poetic lyre gives a false note on the outer bark of the composition but within tells the listeners a secret of deeper significance so that when the outer shell of falsehood has been discarded the reader finds the sweeter kernel of truth hidden within?" (140). She demeans the poets for they spread "Shadowy figments" and lies, and yet she too take on the poetic form in this poem. Shall we stripp away the outer shell? The beautiful extravagant clothes and complaining and notice that nature herself is flawed? If nature is flawed then how can we expect to be perfect.

She complains about the inner monstrosity of humans, of the vice they succumb to, and yet the one who fails to be productive is nature herself. Is not her complaining simply blame? And that seems unnatural for nature to demand restrictions on human nature. If one doesn't live a natural life isn't that a perversion of natural desires? Perversion seems key to monstrosity and makes me believe that nature's instructions are monstrous demands by a monstrous being.

Can Helen Speak? - A Return to Questions of Identity and Discourse

It goes without saying that poem as gleefully and unabashedly "foul" as "Ganymede and Helen" does not offer much in the way of pathos. (On the strength of lines 229-232, I'd wager that Ganymede would respond strongly to a particular scene from Return of the Jedi.) Nevertheless, amid the crudity and the shrill back-and-forth, I thought that one of Helen's responses struck a bit of a poignant note:

I do not know which way to turn, for if I do not speak on a par with the vicious,
I shall be called the loser;
But if I strive to equal you in words,
I shall be thought a whore to have spoken so impurely (201-204).

Here, Helen voices a discursive and representational dilemma identical to that raised (apparently without knowing it) by Nature in Alan of Lille's poem: "I first of all refuse to explain my theme on the plain of plain words or to vulgarise the vulgar with vulgar neologisms, but choose to gild things immodest with the golden trappings of modest words and to clothe them with the varied colours of graceful diction....Nevertheless, as we experienced above, since the language of our discourse should show a kinship with the matters about which we speak, there should be at times an uncouthness of style to conform to the ugliness of the subject-matter.... [H]owever, it is my intention to contribute a mantle of fair-sounding words to the above-mentioned monsters of vice to prevent a poor quality of diction from offending the ears of readers or anything foul finding a place on a maiden's lips" (143-144). [Whew!]

This attempt to have one's discursive cake and eat it too, along with a number of other factors, prevents us (me anyway) from taking seriously anything Alan says. Attempting to harmonize these incommensurable modes of relating tone/form/style and content leads to Alan's extravagant metaphorical conceits - the workshop of hammers and anvils, and especially the grammar - which are simultaneously too opaque and too explicit. In their airy artificiality, their sheer poetry, they continually call attention to themselves instead of to what they signify; conversely, their elaborate and self-conscious fabric[ation] cannot sustain the weight of their referents. The struggle over what language and representational mode is appropriate - natural - to his subject-matter involves Alan, on the level of his own discourse, in a version of the natural/unnatural question about which he is trying to opine. How "natural" is it to talk about gay sex via labyrinthically complicated grammatical figures of subject and predicate?

To return to "Ganymede and Helen," Helen's complaint raises the same potentially debilitating representational predicament, but with heightened stakes - the reason for my assertion of the poignancy of these lines. Helen recognizes that gender and her own femininity, not abstract considerations of mimetic suitability, are what is really at issue here. The question is not really "what tone and language are appropriate to the subject at hand?" but "what tone and language are appropriate to a woman?"

Helen realizes (and rather poignantly laments) the fact that men entirely control the discourse and conventions of this argument. She needs to win the debate to defend her gender from Ganymede's misogyny and to maintain for it some kind of socially valued presence and role. (Among Ganymede's more telling moves is social inflection of homosexual behavior: "Peasants, who may as well be called pigs - / These are the only men who should resort to women" [135-136]. In Ganymede's ideal world, heterosexuality - and by extension, women - could not be "high society.") However, Helen, within the constraints of the construction of her gender identity, can't win the debate without forfeiting that identity. (Ganymede's response to all this is that Helen, having never really occupied this identity, can't really complain about the prospect of being stripped of it.)

Therefore, when, stung once too often by Ganymede's misogynistic provocations, Helen finally resolves to "throw away the cloak of modesty" and "henceforth speak plainly" (241-242), we can advance at least two interpretations of the forced and unconvincing victory that follows: 1) The poem shows that aristocratic young women, with their fetishized virtues of modesty and virginity, can "speak on a par with the vicious" and still maintain the identity rooted in those virtues, or 2) The poem violates its own logic and, like The Plaint of Nature, falls accordingly into contradiction and incoherence. On the whole I find this second interpretation more likely, since it seems to provide a better explanation of the implausible ending. I would add, though, that unlike Alan's representational and discursive muddles, the self-contradiction here feels more controlled and deliberate. (Unless Alan was being totally satirical, an interpretation that has occured to me once or twice.) This artificial and fantastical conclusion in which Helen is allowed to speak would thus accord with the poet's genially capricious and crude tone throughout his work.

The Unnaturalness of Nature Continued

Jolie, I'd like to follow up to your post on the "Slippery Nature" of Nature. I completely agree. After reading the essay "Intellectual Change: Men, Beasts, and Nature" I immediately thought of Nature in Alan of Lille's text. The essay states: "And voluntary virginity, which Aquinas and others considered the crowning Christian virtue . . . so clearly operated to the determent of the species in this regard that he very specifically argued in its defense that individual humans are not obliged to contribute to the increase or preservation of the species through procreation; it is only the race as a whole which is obligated" (p.322). This statement holds in itself many contradictions when applied to Lille's text.

The quotation above is a comparison of homosexuality, nocturnal emissions, and virginity. All three, the author is arguing are detrimental to the Medieval belief that one has a moral responsibility to contribute to one's nature, engage in intercourse, and further the population. However, in Medieval society, the virgin was highly valued. Thus, theologians such as Aquinas invented the idea that the continuation of the species was not to be left up to the individual but the entire society.

If an individual is not "obligated" to contribute to the process of reproduction than obviously they cannot be punished by Nature. Homosexuals are being falsely punished by Nature. They have in a sense done nothing wrong according to Christian theologians. As individual's they are not harming the continuation of the population. If society is functioning and successfully reproducing, than what harm is the homosexual doing? None.

Moreover, who and what does "race as a whole" include? Only men? This also seems contradictory. How can men be the only contributors? What about women?

Moreover, we learn that Nature is a virgin. As a woman who's main objective is to continue and aid in the process of reproduction, doesn't this seem a bit ironic? As the quotation above mentions, the virgin was an irony in herself in the Medieval world. In a culture that highly values the union of a man and woman to continue the population, doesn't the virgin go against these ideals? Thus, Nature is acting against her nature, acting against society. As a woman, Nature should be engaging in the process, as it is only natural. As a virgin, Nature is not acting natural.

The Center Cannot Hold: Nature's Slippery...Nature

This is going to be extremely difficult to talk about, but I'm going to give it a good try. I'm sorry if this post dissolves into contradictions.

Since the entire first chapter just begs discussion of the category of queer as a category and categories in themselves, I'm going there.

So first things first, there is a basic premise in a lot of queer theory that there is actually no such thing as "queer.". This is not to say that there is no such thing as homosexuality, or homosexual acts, but it is very difficult to have a positive connection to something that is "queer". It is not an inclusive space. The "queer" is, instead, what is not; queer is negatively relational. You cannot point to the "queer" aspects of a text and say "Here it is!" Instead you point to it and say "That is not me/inside/self."

This leads me to think of the thirty pages of description of Nature's clothes. I cannot help but think that the function of this is the setting up of a category. We know what is, literally, included with nature and the things that are not on the cloak are not. Nature is creating her own category of difference so that she may point to it. The extensive use of mirrors as a figure in here (most notably at the end of the Plaint, on pages 218 and 221) seems to bring this out, as well. A reflection in a mirror is false, it is not the self, it is simply something you can base your identity on.

Nature, however, is so much more encompassing than a herd of deer and some herbs. We spend the next fifty pages discussing things that are against Nature and there is no way to discuss it all. Nature, then, is the queer. One cannot point to Nature and say "There it is."

We then have Nature doing the unnatural, which is abdicating her position as Nature. Nature goes against...Nature. She commands a return to Nature through modest sex and good deeds and then opts to leave being Nature herself.

I guess, in short, Nature is located within the category of difference, of the "unnatural," that she created. Reasonably, the narrative should fall apart here, but it does not. I'm not sure why not, but if anyone has any ideas, that would be a help.

Man’s Physical & Internal Monstrousness

In our last class discussion we determined how the maiden, Nature, can appear ‘fantastical’ and ‘monstrous’ within, “The Plain of Nature.” The long description of her gown containing and organizing a number of living creatures reinforces this. The passage on page one-hundred-twenty-seven, where the poet sees her as a ‘phantom, something anomalous, and monstrous,’ also works towards strengthening Nature as both fantastical and monstrous. Janel pointed out how it is these two elements that push Nature into the realm of the other, and marks her as ‘marvelous,’ as causing wonder, admiration, and astonishment. I would even venture to say that in light of the descriptions of Nature, and her ties to celestial bodies, semi-gods, Gods, etc. she is a subliminal character, one whose voice is spiritually and literally dominating in this poem; her authority is unquestionable for it comes from God. With this in mind, Nature seems to purposely set up binaries, for example between sensuality and reason. Man always appears at odds with these binaries, or better said, subject to change; hence, man can be seen as an unstable character, because he is constantly wavering between ‘beast’ and ‘man.’ The promise of being one or the other is constantly invoked with the poem to such a degree that Nature’s words take on the tone of a warning (exile/excommunication) ; in the second half of this poem, her persistent emphasis on gluttony, money, avarice, and arrogance seem to reinforce this last assertion. Despite this promise of salvation, of becoming a god, I believe, man can be seen as the epitome of the monstrous in this poem.

Man is a fallen character in this poem, and Nature establishes this, for she grieves because ‘man has inverted the rules of Venus, its arrangement of genders, and has deviated from the true script’ (134). Homosexuality or coupling that is not in the service of regeneration/reproduction seems to ‘other’ man; Max pointed out how this is a new ‘sexual-identity’ or otherness we’ve been confronted with. Despite this, Nature’s attitude towards man and this kind of otherness or unnaturalness, clearly marks man as a monster. The violence we’ve come to associate with the monstrous is instilled in man on page one-hundred-thirty-five. The passage states:
“He disfigures the fair figure of Venus by ugliness, that he discolors the colour of beauty by the meretricious dye of desire, that he deflowers the flower of pulchritude by having it bloom into vice.”

Here man is not only seen as physically inflicting violence and ugliness through his actions, but is infringing on and determining the ultimate downfall of ‘beauty,’ what comes to be associated with purity of action; at the same time, he is manipulating desire so that it is tainted, takes on a form that deviates from the purpose Nature meant it to have. Man can be seen as inflicting harm on Nature herself for his actions not only ‘divide parts of her self,’ such as desire, but transforms them in a way that Nature does not approve of, and in a way that Nature perceives as harmful. The words ‘disfigures, discolors, deflowers,’ give some weight to this argument, while figuratively illustrating the violence he inflicts in the way Nature describes him as changing and spoiling beauty.

Page one-hundred-thirty-seven reinforces the instability of men when Nature sets up the contrast between those that are outcasts, and those that are ‘armored’ or protected. She states: “Who are guilty with the mark of shame, and to forearm the unaffected with the amour of precaution.” One of the characteristics we’ve established in the monsters from our previous readings is a kind of alienation, a quality that sets them apart from everyone else. Man in bearing ‘the mark of shame’ experiences this kind of alienation when paired with the ‘unaffected.’ Shame has a negative connotation and re-establishes how man’s ‘unnaturalness,’ the way he deviates from gender and sexual constructs, is dishonorable, disgraceful, and wrong; thus, it infringes on Nature. Yet, man is not only infringing on Nature, but inflicting harm on himself, and becomes associated with a ‘monstrous’ violence, at least on a figurative level; shame can be seen as painful feeling inflicted on one’s pride or sense of self-respect, and here, it arises in man because his acts are perceived by Nature as unnatural. Interestingly, shame gains a new dimension on page one-hundred-sixty-eight and further establishes man as a monster.

The passage states: “Without shame a man, no longer manlike, puts aside the practices of man. Degenerate, then, he adopts the degenerate way of an irrational animal. Thus he unmans himself and deserves to be unmanned by himself.” Nature seems to be stating that men no longer repent or regret ‘unnatural’ acts; in this lack of shame they are transformed into beasts/monsters, and lose physical, mental, and moral qualities. Not only is man an outsider, but he no longer retains both a physical and internal humanness; he becomes monstrous because of his lack of ‘reason,’ and this facilitates his transformation into an unsexed beast. The fact that he is unsexed makes him even more monstrous; it illustrates him not only as an ‘unknown’ creature, but an ‘unnatural’ creature, one that does not fulfill the established role of a ‘man’ or a ‘woman.’

“The Plaint of Nature” seemed to mark man as monstrous in his acts; yet, this monstrousness not only marks man physically, but internally, as well as spiritually. I’m interested to see if anyone else had a similar interpretation or if they some how saw man’s monstrousness as ‘othering’ him in the process. Also, I have yet to figure out, why the maiden is established as woman rather than a man. She does gain even more authority by the fact that she can’t be associated with ‘man who bears the mark of shame,’ on a physical and spiritual level; yet, I think, Alan of Lille is pushing for more when he establishes Nature as a woman. If anyone has a theory, I welcome it.

Cross-Pollination

So, it took me a while, but I am just going to jump in and share my week. I began Plaint of Nature, read until page 71 (yes, it does start on page 67), and then had to stop and read another book first. It was the lines: “If these kisses were honey-sweet with moisture, and grown honey-sweet, they would form a honeycomb in my mouth. My life breath, concentrating entirely on my mouth, would go out to meet the kisses and would disport itself entirely on my lips so that I might thus expire and that, when dead itself, my other self might enjoy in her a fruitful life” (Plaint 71). I noticed three things, first and least interesting, the almost Shakespearean “thus with a kiss I die” notion. Then there was a moment of Catullus:

I would be kissing your honeyed eyes forever. /…/

even if our kisses/

grew to such profusion/

they outnumbered sheaves/

ripening in the wheat field.[i]

The kisses in the plural in both of these poems suggest a continuous or plentiful occurrence, necking as opposed to one brief peck, and the idea of the kisses being fruitful clearly refers to procreation in the first example, whereas in the second they produce more pleasure. But, having kisses being united with harvest, is to me at least, a novel idea.

Then the third thing: whenever there are honeyed kisses of any sort being exchanged, there is the Song of Songs, “your lips are honey, honey and milk / are under your tongue” (Bloch 77).[ii] By the time I got to Page 73, where “a woman glided down from an inner palace of the impassible world and could be seen hastening her steps in my direction,” a goddess enters the scene, the object of the poet’s concentration, and the Song of Songs came further into play. We are told in no uncertain terms that her hair is gold, really gold, which does not line up with the Song because the subjects of that work are dark-haired. But then we get to “her forehead” and “her brows,” and a listing of attributes begins (Plaint 74). This makes “the serene peacefulness of her eyes” seem to me a lot like “the doves of your eyes” found in the Song, partly because of the listing that is associated with both sections of both poems, but also because of the symbolic meaning of a dove (Bloch 73). “Her nose, balsam-like…neither unduly small nor abnormally prominent” is given both a scientific sounding measurement of its size and a romantic one because of its exotic balsam perfume, much like the measuring aspect of “your proud nose the tower of Lebanon/ that looks toward Damascus,” and is also romanticized by the exotic locales of the imagery (Bloch 101). “Her lips…challenged the recruits in Venus’ army to kiss them” while not much like “a crimson ribbon your lips,” continues the listing, and the army imagery as well as the ribbon imagery provides us with the visual cue of lines, phalanxs, that we link to her mouth (Bloch 73).

My favorite, “her teeth by a certain uniformity in colour resembled a configuration in ivory,” reminds me so much of the lines, “your teeth white ewes, / all alike, / that come up fresh from the pond,” and both of these descriptions are working hard to make it clear her teeth are straight and well shaped (Bloch 73). The “red of her face, wed to the white of muslin,” became “my beloved is milk and wine,” “the smooth and refined chin,” became “the curve of your cheek / a pomegranate” (Bloch 73). Then, there is a return to the more scientific measuring of the anatomy of this lady, “her neck, quite normal in length and moderately slender, prevented its nape from being close-wed to the shoulders,” which is decidedly less romantic than “your neck is a tower of David/ raised in splendor, / a thousand bucklers hang upon it, / all the shields of the warriors,” or “a tower of ivory,” but still follows along the biblical pattern (Bloch 73,101). The “apple-like breasts” of this lady are reminiscent of the lines “your breasts are two fawns, / twins of a gazelle, / grazing in a field of lilies,” as the mention of fruit evokes shape, size, and sweetness which is mirrored in the ideas of uniformity and tenderness of the fawns (Bloch 75). “Her arms, shining from afar” evoke the jewel imagery of the biblical version linked to the same physiology, “a golden scepter with gems of topaz,” and the “gentle curve of her flanks” links to the line “the gold of your thigh / shaped by a master craftsman” (Bloch 89, 99).

All in all, I felt these were important connections to be made between the two texts, because we know (and I leave this open and begging for comment) that our poet, Alan of Lille, was aware of the biblical text. Instead of assuming that this list, though a unique perspective in comparison, was not modeled on the Song of Songs, it seems much safer to assume that it was. Regardless of whether one views the biblical poem as a physical expression of divine love or of mortal love, both apply here as well; is the lady a goddess or a mortal? Or is she a representation of a natural force? Does any of these interpretations make the connections less valuable?

---

[i] Gregory, Horace. Trans. The Poems of Catullus. Grove Press: New York, 1956. (Poem 48, Page 63).

[ii] Bloch, Ariel and Chana Bloch. The Songs of Songs. University of California Press: Berkeley, 1995.

Michael Camille, This American Life, and Beowulf 3D

After the experience of Beowulf in 3D, I can't help asking why Hollywood reproduces the Middle Ages for entertainment. A while back, Michael Camille, author of Image on the Edge, appeared on This American life, where host Ira Glass took Michael to Medieval Times. Since the program is an hour long, his appearance is in the last 20 or so minutes of this episode and I find his explanation of how "medieval" Medieval Times is to be relevant to the spectacle of Beowulf 3D. What's interesting about Michael Camille's analysis of Medieval Times is that, although he points out historical inaccuracies, he also is thrilled by the tournament, describing it as "Spectacle. Circus. Populous. Lowbrow in the best possible way."

I have to say, I kind of feel that way about Beowulf. Although, some elements of the movie are absurd beyond belief, I find that in being populous, in being an absurd, over-the-top spectacle of images and blood and gore and monstrosity, it keeps to the spirit, if not to the text. Reworking the text to appeal to a modern audience (the millions of dollars in box office tickets) can be likened to poets elaborating and further embroidering the "text" of heroic conquest just to keep everyone interested. Granted, I did prefer reading the text, but I can go with the spirit of the film.

However, actually listening to the actors and the producers of the film, might make you think otherwise. We live in confusing times, my friends.

Beowulf - Story Featurette

Posted Nov 08, 2007

An inside look at the story behind Beowulf.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

It is difficult to create discussion on Plaint of Nature. Honestly, this is a complex text to analyze, but I have a point I want to address. I know we discussed in class that Nature appears to be this ‘othered’ being. It should also be noted that it is through this entity that we are given lists of monstrous deeds which are allegorized with mythical tales. One of the repetitive monsters discussed in the story is the monsters we all know from The Odyssey-that being Charybdis and Scylla.

A quick background on The Odyssey: these two monsters inhabited the sea. Courageous sailors would dare try to navigate between these beasts in hope of safe passage. The danger was to avoid one monster, you might encounter the other, and the strait between the two was treacherous and almost unfeasible to pass through.

Introduction to these monsters does not occur until page 149, where Nature explains the burden of love. “It is sweet, shipwreck, light burden, pleasing Charybdis, sound debility, insatiate hunger” Here, love is described as something dangerous that one does not perceive as such. Instead, one blissfully follows, only to meet a gruesome end. A little later in the text, Nature explains how love alters the way one perceives the world, where “Scylla lays aside her fury” (150). Of course, this is not truly possible, because the monster of Scylla only exists as a dangerous man-eating monster. The only thing that alters it is the illusion created by intense desire. Intense desire for something can become idolatrous and then lure one to their doom. It leads to a struggle between the monsters which will prove fatal. This idea of an inevitable shipwreck is repeated in the text when addressing other sins to evade.

When Nature explains the idolatrous nature of gluttony, she states, “the employ the suction-process of a broad whirlpool and gulp down with the greedy throat of a Charybdis” (172). Nature assimilates gluttons with mythical monsters, but goes further in explaining the allegorical concept of these ideas on the same page, “they experience shipwreck where there is no sea” (172). Nature is pointing out here how this shipwreck is clearly possible through sins. Nature also points out the idea of this shipwreck with the sin of idolizing money. She describes, “the rich man, shipwrecked in the depths of riches” (176). The idea of travelling through Charybdis and Scylla is allegorized in these passages as the strain in navigation to avoid idol pleasures. Any sway towards these monsters of sin will lead to destruction and shipwreck.

Alan of Lille uses the story of Charybdis and Scylla to emphasize the issue of avoiding sins but appears to be in a similar situation himself. Lille himself is stuck between these two monsters as he attempts to write this story and keep consistency in his argument. The difficulty with gender relations in regards to grammar brings about an issue that could “shipwreck” his entire text. The narrow pathway between these monsters is difficult to find, but Lille believes it is there and possible to travel through.

Otherness another way

What I find interesting about Plaint of Nature has to be the fact that in a world of ambiguity regarding the Self and the Other, Allan of Lille lays it all on the line. In no uncertain terms, he gives us the Other. Up until now, it’s been easy to pluck a female character or a Saracen character out of the text and make an argument for her Otherness. However, with Plaint of Nature, since Allan of Lille’s main concern is the unnaturalness of male homosexuality, the femaleness of a female is not the source of Otherness.

Of course, with Allan of Lille’s anthropomorphized Nature being female, the prose navigates rather interesting terrain. For one thing, Nature, in addition to creating the world for God, also rules man. Here, the feminine is subject rather than predicate. In the chain of command, God’s still at the top, but now we have a woman commanding all men, directly rather than indirectly as the maidens of Parzival command. Maybe I’m reading into Nature being a woman a little too much, but Allan of Lille views women as weak, most likely subscribes to the belief that God also thinks women are morally weaker, and yet, in view of all that, Nature, as a woman, has dominion over men? I suppose the idea of a woman ruling the workings of the earth is akin to the idea of a woman ruling a household’s domestic interworkings. While God ultimately rules in the political arena, the woman has authority when it comes to ruling the household.

Ascribing deities with such humble, earthly qualities is suspect. Although, to me, Nature’s humanity is debatable. Her fantastical appearance and her descent from the heavens both seem to indicate her otherworldliness. Allan of Lille does not consider her human, but he does emphasize the fact that she is a maiden. He takes pains to describe features. “Her neck, quite normal in length and moderately slender, prevented its nape from being close-wed to the shoulders… The gentle curve of her flanks, impressed with the stamp of due moderation, brought the beauty of her whole body to perfection.” (Allan of Lille 75) She is a semi-divine being of nature, but Nature here is inviting and alluring.

Which makes me wonder, why does Allan of Lille make her so alluring? Although Nature creates everything around her and has the appearance of a human, I don’t get the impression that she is human. Any temptation caused by her beauty would be a crime against nature, since, as a non-human, she can’t have procreative sex with the writer, a human. A sexual at initiated on Nature, in this sense, would be an act against Nature.

More than the physical act against nature, Allan of Lille seems most alarmed by the notion of the “unman[ned] man,” the superior sex, the man, taking on the appearance and the traits of the weaker sex, the woman, but Allan of Lille seems to have a relatively hard time keeping it together. Nature even has to revive him after his swoon. The writer, in this case, is acted upon by Nature, who assumes a more aggressive role in the interaction. In this telling scene, the writer is unmanned by the appearance of a woman. Even taking into consideration the cultural difference, that men can swoon without automatically assuming a feminized role, Nature still takes away his subject position and assumes it for herself. Perhaps Allan of Lille becomes, at least to a small degree, the Other he rants against.

One More Look at the Conversion of Feirefiz

In class we debated over whether or not Feirefiz's conversion was sincere. I think most of us agreed that the conversion was questionable. It seems that Feirefiz only converts for the love of Repanse de Schoye. We are given much evidence of this in the text. "'If I were baptized for your sakes, would Baptism help me to win love?' asked the infidel son of Gahmuret" (p. 404). However, before we put the subject to rest, I wanted to talk about Feirefiz after the conversion.

Feirefiz's life in India, after the conversion to Christianity, seems to prove that a true conversion did take place on his part. Wolfram tells us, "Feirefiz has letters sent throughout the land of India describing the Christian life, which had not prospered so much till then" (p.408). Although the text only provides us with this very short and very brief description of Feirefiz's life post conversion, it is evident that his conversion was valid. Thus, even though Feirefiz might not have chosen to be baptized as a way to become a Christian, he still embraced Christianity afterwards. As a true convert, he uses letters to spread Christianity in the heathen world.

On the other hand, this short passage can also be used to validate our class conclusion: the conversion of Feirefiz was for the love of Repanse de Schoye and therefore cannot be considered a true conversion to Christianity. Since Wolfram provides no indication of what is said in these letters, it could be assumed that Feirefiz is solely praising the Christian life because through it he obtained the woman he most desired. It is obvious that the marriage was a prosperous one: the couple had five children. The image created of Feirefiz's life after his conversion differs from that of the wandering playboy knight who fights many battles and has many women. It is the life of a content married man. This happiness could possibly stem more from his wife than Christianity.

The Feminized, Fetishized, Totally Awesome Gral

In a previous post there was a great discussion of the Gral as both a male and female

character. I'm going to take the Gral as feminine and run with it a little bit, to discuss

how the Gral functions as a fetish (in the Freudian sense) for the male characters.

There's a lot of the feminine associated with the Gral in chapter nine. The Gral is

protected by a "Christian progeny bred to a pure life", which echos the basic chivalric code

of "pure" (ok, well, at least Christian) knights charged with serving women. (232) The

function of women is to "observe restraint...be well proofed.' (15-16) So "pure" men and

women serve the Gral and the Gral, much like women, keeps away from everyone but the one

destined for it. It's a Gral very concerned with fidelity, I feel.

The Gral, however, I think is much more fetishized than women. There are literally hundreds

of women in this poem, but only one Gral which serves as a desire-object for both men and

women. I think specifically for Parzival, the Gral serves almost as an obsession or a

fetish.

A fetish is, in basic Freudian terms, what you need to function when your desired outcome

does not match up with your expected outcome. Actually, you develop a fetish when you discover that your female lover doesn't have a penis, but in more general terms. A fetish is what you focus your energies on when you just cannot deal. A fetish is also exclusively the realm of men.

The Gral is what Parzival needs to function within the text. When he loses sight of the

Gral, he literally drops off the page, unable to do anything but sit with a hermit for years

on end. When he first sees it, he is so stunned, so preoccupied, and so unable to think that he lets it slip through his grasp. It then functions as his only driving force, what he uses to get himself through his ordeals.

This isn't mean to refute the other post, but add to it. Perhaps the Gral is the ultimate, fetishized feminine? The fetishized masculine? I don't know where I fall, personally, between thinking of its characterization as female or male, but it's certainly alive in a way objects can be only through fetishes.

A Tentative Theory of Feirefiz

We finished on Thursday with mention of the profound strangeness of the backstory Wolfram invents for his text of Parzival: translated from the French version of "Master Kyot," which is in turn translated from the "heathenish script" authored by "the infidel Flegetanis" (232), who apparently learned it through astrology. This fictional genesis of the poem can, I think, be connected to our main preoccupation from Thursday's class, Feirefiz and the nature and quality of his conversion. Is there a way in which the hybrid, exuberant, Love-obsessed, ultimately (if just technically) sanctified character exemplifies or encapsulates the hybrid, exuberant, Love-obsessed, ultimately sanctified text?

Perhaps the most arresting and thought-provoking description of Feirefiz's admittedly outlandish appearance occurs during the exhausted stand-off into which his incognito single-combat with Parzival lapses. Parizval, trying to characterize the infidel half-brother whom he knows only by report, likens his "complexion" to "a parchment, with writing." (This is not the first time a German poetic hero has been described in explicitly textual terms: at one point in the Nibelungenlied, Siegfried appears "as though limned on parchment with all a master's skill" [48].) In such an otherwise verbose poem, Feirefiz's immediate and starkly emphatic response carries extraordinary force: "'I am he,' replied the Infidel" (372).

In other words, Parzival represents Feirefiz as just such an example of "heathenish script" as Wolfram has already claimed his poem, in origin, to have been - and Feirefiz lends credence to this representation by the clarity of his assent. It makes sense that the two elements in the poem whose written-ness is most insisted upon (or, in Feirefiz's case, metaphorically ascribed [inscribed?]) are also the two which were Wolfram's personal additions: the fictional "heathen" textual history and the character of Feirefiz (with his own heathen backstory).

So Feirefiz, in appearance and in identity, is black, "heathenish" "writing" upon white (Christian?) "parchment." This seems to establish the white, Euro-Christian element - the parchment, without which basis the writing could not exist - as the more essential or integral aspect of Feirefiz's identity, a move which Parzival voices when telling Feirefiz that at Arthur's court, "we shall find our own true race" (375). (I think this holds even if you interpret "race" in more limited terms as "family" or "kindred.") If we go back to the example of Wolfram's feigned textual history, we find a yet stronger basis for an inherent or foundational Christianity pervading these "heathenish" textual artifacts. Flegetanis' writings appear to have been "heathenish" only in form, their "script": in content they evidently possessed all of the Christian connotations, at least in potentis, of Wolfram's "translated" version. There is a hint that, in this original version, form obscured content: "No infidel art would avail us to reveal the nature of the Gral and how one came to know its secrets" (232). (This obviously reminds us of Feirefiz's inability, while still non-Christian, even to see the Gral; he and other infidels can only know it through its effects, not in its Christian essence.) All it apparently took was translation to a new form to unlock the innate meaning of this content.

Similarly, Feirefiz's "writing" could be seen as conveying essentially Christian content in a garbled, "heathenish script" that warps or obscures the clear understanding and expression of that content. He seems, for example, to evince an unconscious and a priori understanding of Christian doctrine, as when good Trinitarian dogma leaks through his speech about the relationship between himself, Parzival, and their father: "If I lay hold of truth, both my father and you, and I, too, were but one, though seen as three distinct entities" (374). This may be why Feirefiz's conversion takes place so easily and with such conspicuous lack of conscious spiritual avowal. Nothing in Feirefiz needed to be changed, revised, rewritten. His conversion is simply his more or less mechanical translation into a new form. After his baptism, he was a Christian all along.

Feirefiz's relative indifference to spiritual matters should not pose too insurmountable of a hurdle for us in any case, since this is another trait that he shares with the "translated" poem. Or rather, Wolfram is not indifferent to spiritual matters, but he sees them, even at their most exalted, as indissolubly linked with the humane, the physical, the fleshly. Even Parzival the enlightened Gral-king gets to keep his wife too. The attainment of higher and higher degrees of selflessness and fidelity in the service of human Love can not only parallel (as in Gawan's case) but facilitate (as with Parzival) higher and higher spiritual attainments. And, as Jolie and Katlyn have been exploring in their postings, the feminine Love-object shades into and blends with the goal of the poem's spiritual endeavors. Feirefiz's trajectory in this regard, at least from the point of view of a contemporary reader, is less clear (one does tend to feel sorry for Secundille), but devotion to Love certainly leads to his sanctification too.

Just as only his love for Repanse de Schoye and conversion for the sake of that love allow Feirefiz to see the Gral, so the Gral in Wolfram's poem only appears through the conceptual prism of the love-service tradition and the general chivalric institutionalization of Love. I can imagine Wolfram writing a poem about Love without the Gral, but I don't think a Wolfram poem about the Gral but without Love (like, for example, the French prose Grail romances) is even conceivable. And indeed, in his final lines Wolfram insists that any (purely hypothetical, of course) woman for whom he was writing "must" admit to having been pleased (411). In short, to propose a tentative answer to the question raised on Thursday about Feirefiz's role in the poem: with reference, again, to Wolfram's fictional backstory about the translation of his own text out of "heathenish script," Feirefiz's role in the poem may be that he is the poem.

Love an Other

I have to say, Parzival compacts a great deal of themes into small lines. Wolfram’s concept Love is perhaps the most complex of them all. Love is the burden Gawan and Parzival endure because of their chivalric grace and nobility. The most notable passage about Love and the afflicted’s nobility is on page 271 when Wolfram interjects “Gawan cannot escape Love’s making him unhappy. So of what use is it if I interpose, however much I say? A man of worth should not fend off Love, if only because Love must help to save him.” (Von Ecshenbach 270-271) Wolfram attributes Gawan’s level of suffering to his elevated status, proclaiming that the best of the best anguish over love the way noble Gawan does.

Parzival’s Love anguish comes in perhaps the most symbolic of ways. He watches a falcon injury a goose from a flock, and three drops of blood from the wound form the likeness of his wife on the snow. Putting aside the strangeness of the image, the blood represents, in a tangible way, the torment Parzival feels being away from his wife. Also, the fact that Parzival has to be reminded of the way his wife looks in order to be anguished by her absence shows the sensibility of the poet as well as the court. In order to be fixated on a woman, a knight must either gaze upon her or carry with him a fetish, or love token in the case of the knights. The violence which causes the blood to represent the image of Parzival’s lady also hearkens back to the violence Parzival commits in his lady’s name. Love is inexorably linked to violence in Parzival’s world, by the nature of the jousting necessary to prove and win his love, and the fact that he sees his lady in blood symbolizes the suffering he and other knights endure because of their love.

What’s interesting about the obsessive gazing Parzival engages in is that once he engages in battle again and loses sight of the blood, “Mistress Reason restored him to his senses.” (Von Ecshenbach 151) Perhaps it is Parzival’s ignorance, his still child-like understanding of love, which causes him to gaze upon the figure of his lady with such obsessive fervor. Like Gawan, a more learned and more mature knight, Parzival’s love for his lady is described as a burden, but unlike Gawan, love incapacitates Parzival. “But Parzival sat there lost to the world, thanks to those spots of blood and imperious Love, who also robs me of my sense and sets my heart in turmoil.” (Von Ecshenbach 150) While Gawan’s love compels him to fight for his lady, Parzival becomes obsessive, ignoring the battle and acting in a way unbecoming of a knight.

In the same way, Herzeloyde also bears the burden of love but in a much more terminal fashion. The hermit tells Parzival “‘No sooner had you left your mother than she died – that was what she had for her love.’” (Von Ecshenbach 243) Her attachment to her son, perhaps caused by her unconventional fosterage, results in her being unable to bear Love’s burden and the hurt of Parzival’s absence. Herzeloyde and Parzival are both overwhelmed by the absence of the one they love, but it’s just too much for poor Herzeloyde. Although the fixation is similar, Parzival overcomes his obsession and moves on, whereas his mother dies. Also the interiority of Parzival’s obsession with the Gral mimics the internalization of Herzeloyde’s separation pains, in that she grieves Parzival’s absence so much that she drops dead because of it.

Wolfram’s opinion of Love, who causes such turmoil and strife, seems to be redeemed in Fierefiz. The heathen, or for our purposes the Other, is baptized because of his love for the lovely Repanse de Schoye. Although he has spent years jousting on behalf of ladies, he considered himself stronger than love. “The sight of her pierces my heart. I imagined myself so strong that no woman, wed or unwed, could rob me of my happiness.” (Von Ecshenbach 402) However, unlike the other figures in the poem, Feirefiz gets a better deal than the other love-suffering fools. With the baptism, not only is Feirefiz no longer a heathen, but he also immediately marries Repanse de Schoye. We hear no more of his suffering on behalf of love. The baptism acts as an extinguisher, quelling the fiery lust within Feirefiz and allowing him salvation. In the case of Feirefiz, the Other, the pains of love led him to deliverance from heathenism and to God.

Malcreatiure: The Monster & Human

We encountered more monsters in this third section we read for class! On page two-hundred-sixty-three Gawan encounters Malcreatiure, Cundrie’s brother. Similar to Cundrie, Malcreatiure has ‘two fangs like a wild boar,’ and enters with a reproach, only he directs his criticism to Gawan for leaving with Orgeluse. We’ve encountered a new kind of monster here with Malcreatiure. Yes, Malcreatiure fits out definition of the monstrous in physicality, but I think he pushes it in a number of ways in the short passage where he appears.

There is an interesting tension between Malcreatiure’s human and monstrous qualities. Malcreatiure is established as human when Wolframs states ‘he was the splitting image of Cundrie, except he was a man.’ Here, Malcreaiture quite literally is established as a human, and his role as a ‘squire,’ also seems to reinforce this, for it establishes him as insider within Gawan’s world. The monsters we’ve encountered in the previous novels/poems we’ve read, all appear to be outsiders from an ‘unknown world,’ and Malcreatiure’s status as a ‘squire’ lends a new dimension to what we’ve defined as the ‘monstrous,’ for it gives him a place within this dominating society. It is also interesting how a squire’s role is to attend to or escort a woman, can act as a judge, and is ranked below a knight in the feudal hierarchy; this not only reinforces Malcreaiure’s position within dominating society, but I think lends him certain characteristics associated with knighthood, such as protecting those in need. In this case, it seems that Malcreatiure is ‘protecting’ Orgeluse, and if we do consider him ‘monstrous,’ this is a quality we’ve never seen in the monsters we’ve encountered. In light of this though, Malcreatiure asserts, “You (Gawan) strike me as a fool…You will have high praise if you can fend off the correction in store for you.’ Malcreatiure’s words also seem to invoke a warning for Gawan, and in the same instance, foreshadows what comes next; strangely, in warning Gawan, Malcreatiure could be seen as protecting him. Wolfram seems to repeatedly blur the line between humanness and monstrous both physically, and I would say psychologically, to the point where Malcreatiure’s seems to be pushed outside of the ‘monstrous’ realm, and exhibits humanness. As ‘frightful’ as his appearance is, he holds the position of a ‘squire,’ and unlike Grendel or Grendel’s mother, talks, engages in conversation; he also adheres to a form of conduct (‘If you are a knight you might in decency have refrained!’). Yet, these are not the only characteristics that push Malcreatiure away from the monstrous.

After Gawan flings Malcreatiure to the ground, Malcreatiure is described as a ‘sapient,’ wise and discerning, squire that ‘looks up timidly.’ Yet, this image is quickly contrasted with Malcreatiure’s physical monstrousness, his ‘hedgehog bristles. An interesting thing happens in the fight between Gawan and Malcreatiure. One may argue that Malcreatiure’s ‘timidness,’ seems to readily invoke not only his defeat, but works to victimize him; the reader, in my case, sympathizes with Malcreatiure because the description of him ‘looking up most timidly,’ illustrates him as weak, almost fragile, fearful and hesitant; this paired with the fact that he is established as an ‘insider,’ as well as someone who adheres to a mode of conduct like Gawan’s, makes us further sympathize with him, something we could never do with for example, Grendel’s Mother, who could be seen as justified in avenging her son’s death. The image of Malcreatiure as ‘timid’ is quickly contrasted with vengeance (‘Yet his hedgehog bristles avenged him, cutting Gawan), and ultimately it is his monstrous physicality that ensures him protection from Gawan. Like Siegfried who after bathing in the Dragon’s blood, had ‘skin that grew horny so that no weapon should bite,’ it is Malcreatiure’s monsterous physicality, his hedgehog bristles, that protect him; in this instance he seems to mirror Siegfried, and exists as both a human and monster. In addition to this, in this part of the passage (‘Yet, his hedgehog bristles avenged him…) it is a little ambiguous whether or not Malcreatiure intended to hurt Gawan and avenge himself. Malcreatiure quickly disappears from the story, and we’re not given any information indicating that he was motivated by ‘rage,’ a characteristic associated with the monstrous, and whether he intended to cut Gawan. But the passage could be read that when Malcreatiure looks up ‘most timidly,’ he is almost putting on a show, as if manipulating an expression of weakness in order to later inflict his vengeance; this is probable because of the human qualities that have previously been established within him. In light of this, Malcreatiure’s intent is never concretely established, and I think this speaks to how Wolfram is conscious of manipulating human and monsterous qualities in order to carve out a new kind of monster, one that is both human and monster, and may be even said necessary. Like the beast in, “The Good Book,” Malcreatiure can be seen as a monster unleashed, that acts as warning. After the fight, Gawan is forced to face a number of ‘ordeals,’ and Malcreatiure’s words, ‘You will win high praise if you can fend off the correction in store for you,’ echo in the pages that follow.

The monsters in “Parzival,” specifically Cundrie and Malcreatiure seem to have a different purpose then Grendel or even the Green Giant; they appear as both human and monster, but do not epitomize the Christian idea of ‘hell’ or ‘evil doers.’ Also, they are not outsiders, nor can they truly be seen as negative characters, or better said, ‘enemies.’ In addition to this, they seem to have an agency that I don’t believe we’ve really seen in any of the monsters that have appeared in class. It is hard to determine exactly what Cundrie or Malcreatiure are ‘aiding’ or facilitating in the story, but they both seem to be characters that ‘warn,’ and foreshadow turning points. With Cundrie and Malcreatiure the line between monstrous and human is blurred to such a degree that they are ‘othered,’ for they only really fulfill the monstrous in physicality, are human, and have a place and agency within dominating society.

The Gral: A Character or an Object of Desire?

I may be reading a bit into this, but the Gral seems to take on a life of its own throughout the rest of the take. Feminine and masculine charateristics can also be contributed to the Gral. In other words, the Gral becomes as much of a character in the second half of the text as Gawan or Parzival.

As a feminine character, the Gral serves as an object to be desired. Many of the female's throughout the text are assessed on their ability to capture a man's heart. Women are an object of desire. Yet, the Gral is the ultimate object of desire. As readers, we, along with Parzival, "meet" the Gral in Chapter 5. "Upon a green achmardi she bore the consumation of heart's desire, its root and its blossoming - a thing called 'the Gral' paradisal, transcending all earthy perfection!" (p. 125). We learn that it is " a thing" which gives one anything one desires. Chapter 5 stresses the fact that the gral is an object. Not only an object to worship, but an object to desire. Just as Gawan cannot go on until he has won the favor and love of Orgeluse, Parzival can not go on with his life until he has won the favor of the Gral. Gawan's proclamation that "The Duchess Orgeluse must have mercy on me if I am to stay a happy man" echoes that of Parcival's when he tells the hermit (Trevrizent), "My deepest distress is for the Gral ... After that it is for my wife ... I languish and pine for them both" (p.296 and 239). Both the Gral and feminine love are objects to be desired. Both men "pine" over these objects. Therefore, the Gral can be viewed as an object and a almost a female character.

On the other hand, the Gral functions mainly as a masculine character. As we learn from the history of the Gral, it only chooses men to protect it. "The Gral chooses lofty servitors, thus knights are appointed to guard it endowed with all the virtures that go with chastity" (p.251). Women (virgins) care for it just as they do when knights enter their domain. This hospitality is similar to that which we have seen throughout the text when women unarm, feed, and prepare a bed for the wandering knight. It is also important to note, the wording of the above line. "The Gral chooses," indicates that the Gral has a mind of its own. Numerous times, Parzival indicates that the Gral has alluded him, as if it had the ability to escape from him. Moreover, just as Arthur has his Table Round, the Gral has its own company. Trevrizent explains to Parzival that there is a "Gral Company." He states, "As I say, maidens are given away from the Gral openly, men in secret, in order to have progeny (as God can instruct them), in the hope that these children will return to serve the Gral and swell the ranks of its Company" (p.251). In other words, the Gral is a (masculine) ruler in its own right.

These are just a few examples I noticed throughout the text. I was wondering if anyone discovered any other ways in which the Gral could serve as a character.

Women are women

Wolfram is a very noisy nosy narrator and makes sure his opinions on all important matters are well acknowledged by his audience. He waxes eloquent on the state of chivalry, his characters and religion, but women appear to be among his most favorite topics of all. And while I have been acutely aware of it through rather snide comments and portrayals of women, it wasn't until this little gem that I truly felt we had the heart of it: "If I had some petty score to settle with them I would be loathe to waive my due, but would take a kiss if they wished to make up again. When all is said, women will always be women. They will subdue a mettlesome man in a trice, they have brought it off repeatedly" (230). Apparently the foundation of womanhood is to subdue a man and capture him and make him forever theirs. Have we seen this scenario played out in Parzival? Indeed over and over again since every noble woman who draws the attention of a noble knight only bestows her love after he has worked for it, in essence a subjugation. And yet this also suggests that a woman can only be a woman and is only allowed this passive role of the household.

There are two many instances of this in Parzival, so let's look at some of the more interesting defiances of this ideal. Gahmuret defies his subjugation to his wives by running away from them and their unadventurous wedded lives. He gives Belacane "the slip"and runs off from Herzeloyde for again more adventure. He needs to run since these women, including Ampflise, are attempting to capture him for the household.

Parzival is victim to this from birth. His mother refuses to allow him knowledge of knighthood and adventure in an attempt o subdue him and draw him closer to the household. In addition, she dies upon his absence, which seems to indicate women living solely for men. Parzival's wife holds a different sway as after having first gained him and subdued him, she retains a grasp upon his mind in the form of his longing for her, torturing him for leaving her.

Gawan and Obilot's relationship is another example of the woman subduing the man. Gawan rides for her sake despite desiring to stay out of the battle raging outside their gates. Even more interesting is Gawan's relationship with Orgeluse. The power struggle here seems to indicate that Orgeluse is the one who is subdued, but in fact her charm forces Gawan to woo her and become worthy of her love before she will bestow it. She is the one in control of her love and it is her decision of when to give it. And yet she is not actively enticing him to her. Her beauty is enough to draw him to her and keep him in pursuit. During the entire process she remains true to that idea that womanhood is passive.

This is the case for all the ladies as well. They possess either beauty or knowledge and with neither do they take active roles. Let's look to Cundrie the ugliest woman presented. She is in fact simply a messenger of the gral and never truly acts upon her knowledge. Her role is passive, giving men information and in that way inciting them to action. By inciting them she is in a sense subduing them for they fall to her will. She wields wisdom as her net, while others rely on their beauty, but both are resigned in this story to passive roles.

A New Origin of Monsters

Though we have discussed in class the lack of obvious monsters in this text, I want to address a certain paragraph that appears to shed some light on the idea of monsters and where they can be found. Though the Saracens in Baghdad are not depicted as the monstrous, it appears the label has been placed on another distant ethnic group. It is an easy to overlook the account where one reads of where Malcreatiure is from, but in the description, there is a good amount of information that depicts the monstrousity of people in a foreign land.

In Wolfram’s explanation of Malcreatiure, he begins with the story of creation in which Adam advises the women to “avoid numerous herbs that would deform human offspring and so dishonour his race” (263). In this background of Malcreatiure, we receive interesting news: Feirefiz has traveled to India where he has won land. Here in India, there are “many such people […] whose appearance was deformed and no denying it – wild, outlandish features did they display” (263)!

It is interesting to note that the Saracens in Baghdad are civilized courtly people, but there still exists people that appear monstrous – they are just in Southeast Asia. Though we have this integration of other races in this story, we find another realm where people appear deformed. Wolfram’s integration of the Biblical story of Adam helps to reinforce religious reasoning for their appearance, making the deformed heathens in the wrong.

The Queen of Secundille (leader in India) also lacks religion and instead, is extremely wealthy and does not appear to be in need. However, her attempts for further information on Anfortas and the Gral sends a multitude of gifts his way, including Cundrie and her brother, Malcreatiure. In this passage, we understand the origin of these two “human wonders” who are monstrous. It appears our main ‘monsters’ in this story actually come from India, and they are not scarce.

I want to also quickly note that Feirefiz, though he is the eldest son of Gahmuret and the genuine king, travels to ‘othered’ lands such as India for conquest. Though Feirefiz does travel to Europe later, it appears that Feirefiz’s outward appearance does not give him the right to claim his lands his father left. Instead, he must conquer his own place, and he has found a land that he can gain control. Of course, the land he conquers, India, is a land filled with deformed people.

Though I agree that Wolfram is trying to allow for a more encompassing text here in terms of race, he appears to still be confined by the attitudes of certain ‘others’ in his vision. Feirefiz is able to conquer a kingdom, but it is a land with many deformed and considered monstrous people. Is this because Feirefiz is a heathen and that’s the best he will be able to conquer? How will he fare when faced with a European like Parzival? I guess that’s for our next reading…

What Women Want, Or Why Marrying A Dentist Is A Good Thing in Some Cultures

As I mentioned in class the other day, I have been enjoying the parallels between the women of Parzival and in the Gawain myths, particularly Dame Ragnelle. While these ideas are not as fully fleshed out as I would like, I am hoping that this post will encourage commentary on the women who have been (intentionally) left out of this comparison.
We begin with Dame Ragnelle before the transformation, who was "so fowlle and horyble/ she had two tethe on every syde/ as borys tuskes, I wolle nott hyde,/ of lengthe a large handfulle/ the one tusk went up and the other doun" (Ln. 547-551). This description of a woman with tusks is remarkably similar to the description of Cundrie, "her nose was like a dog's and to the length of several spans a pair of tusks jutted from her jaws" (163). What is remarkable here is not that medieval women apparently were predisposed to having faces like walruses, but that in both of these cases the tusks were simply not enough. As Professor W mentioned, they were a span, a hand length, at least in length, Ragnelle's a large handful and Cundrie's several hand spans. I began to wonder what the purpose of the demonization of these women in this way was, and all I could determine was that to have tusks would impair the use of one's mouths, distort the ability to eat, to speak and to kiss, all things that the average lady would be expected to do with grace. Tusks would definitely prevent that.
After Dame Ragnelle was transformed, there is little to be said of her. We know that she becomes a beautiful as she before was ugly, but what the author notes is that her personality seems to change. As she is now beautiful, it is easier to see that instead of being confrontational, as she was with Arthur, she becomes the paragon of femininity. She is described at "the fayrest Lady of alle Englond," which puts here even above Queen G (Ln. 826). She only has a few years with Gawain before she dies, but during that time "in her lyfe she grevyd hym nevere; therfor was nevere woman to hym lever," which is part of what makes her the fairest of them all (Ln. 823-4). Her devotion to him, her ability to keep him happy, her loving spirit and ideal femininity all are a part of what makes her the pinnacle of women in the Gawain cycle, the one that assures that while "Gawen was weddyd oft in his days; butt so welle he nevere lovyd woman always" (Ln.832-3).
Queen Belacane gets a brief amount of time with her wandering knight as well, before he leaves her. In doing so, Gahmuret achieves what the storyteller of Dame Ragnelle does, preserves her in the mind of the hero (and the readers) as she last was , young and beautiful. Belacane represents the ideal woman as the story begins, her only flaw being her faith. But she is described by Gahmuret as "although she was an infidel, a more affectionate spirit of womanliness had never stolen over a woman's heart...her modest ways were a pure baptism, as was the rain that fell on her--the flood descending from her eyes down to her sabled breast...her pleasures in life were devotion to sorrow and grief's true doctrine" (27). Though she is an infidel, though her breast is sable, she is still the pinnacle of femininity in the eyes of young Gahmuret, and while he may leave her, and while he may find plenty of other women, we hope that he always longs for her as Gawain does for Ragnelle.

What Fourth Wall?

What I'm finding most noticeable about Parzival is Wolfram von Eschenbach's regular insertions of himself into the text. We've seen the authors pop up here and there before, such as in the Nibelungenlied where an opinion is offered on the characters' behaviors that obviously comes from a source. We've never, however, had one who tears down the curtain and comes tapdancing out on stage singing, "Hello, I'm the author," quite the way Wolfram does. I'm looking into figuring out how he functions as a character in the text, and what purpose does dragging reality into this serve.

Wolfram's Apology is probably the most obvious place to look. While his other tangents are at least embedded in the page and do not break up the narrative, Apology is a separate chapter that happens right after Parzival's birth. Coming onto it in narrative form is an incredibly disorienting experience. What does it mean for the text that we are taken completely out of it at the moment it's just getting good, so to speak?

I wonder if, in some ways, Wolfram's constant removal of the curtain helps to both blur and reinforce our concepts of fantasy vs. reality in the text. What we have is an author who is announcing he is there, which serves to ground the reader in reality, to relate the story to something tangible. Wolfram insists upon relating events to reality, such as during the famine when he mentions "I, Wolfram von Eschenbach, have to make do with such comfort." (102) This lends credibility to the narrative, takes it out of the realm of pure fantasy and makes it cross a border into reality.

On the other hand, the Apology seems to enact an entirely different kind of transformation upon the text. Apology interrupts the narrative at the place of Parzival's birth to discuss, specifically, the issues brought up by another narration (a love-song, I assume of a bawdy nature, dedicated to Lady), and brings up the idea specifically of Parzival being a "story." (69) This enacts a kind of violence against the reader, who is now unable to lose themselves in the narrative, suspend disbelief in terms of fairies, and we, in fact, lose this fantasy of the perfect knight.

I have my ideas but they aren't fully fleshed out, so I'm wondering what everyone thinks the discursive repercussions of such an action could be?

Parzival, Peredur, Black Sheep, and Spiritual Balance

Inspired by Katlyn's post a little while ago comparing the "discovering the knights" scenes in Parzival and Chretien de Troyes' Perceval, I went back to the Welsh story "Peredur Son of Evrawg," which, as best as anybody can determine, stands in about the same relationship to Chretien's poem as Wolfram's does, with the added twists that a) it may draw upon other French works than Chretien's specifically and b) it probably also directly preserves much of the Celtic material that formed Chretien's source. In any event, compared to the sprawling but controlled and unified Parzival, "Peredur" tends to disappoint, wandering disjointedly until it hurriedly resolves its Gral-elements (the Bloody Lance and, standing in for the Gral itself, a severed head) in a rushed and unsatisfying conclusion. (They are relics of a slain cousin - as in Wolfram's version, Peredur runs into family all over the place - whom Peredur must avenge.) En route, however, we get a great many enigmatic, beautiful, and thoroughly Celtic scenes. I want to bring up one in particular, occuring while Peredur is on his way to kill a monster (in the middle of a larger quest to kill another "serpent"):

"Peredur rode on towards a river valley whose edges were forested, with level meadows on both sides of the river; on one bank there was a flock of white sheep, and on the other a flock of black sheep. When a white sheep bleated a black sheep would cross the river and turn white, and when a black sheep bleated a white sheep would cross the river and turn black. On the bank of the river he saw a tall tree: from roots to crown one half was aflame and the other green with leaves" (243).

It would be almost sinful to subject something this weird and wonderful to "interpretation." Instead, I merely want to note, more or less in passing, the striking congruence between the imagery of this scene and not only the specific imagery but also the broader thematics of Wolfram's work. (Wolfram bizarrely echoes the final image here during Trevrizent's description of the exotic locales he visited during his chivalric days: "I have...ridden many fine jousts at Agremontin, below its mountain, where if you issue your challenge on one side fiery men sally forth, whereas on the other the jousters you see are not on fire" [252].)

The black and white Welsh sheep ceaselessly transforming into one another, and the hybrid, half-burning tree, could serve as a reification of Wolfram's vast and complex concern with blackness and whiteness, their interplay and mutual transitions, and the hybridity which can be created by these interactions. Established in the poem's opening paragraph, this thematic network obviously surfaces in its physical descriptions of race and religion (themselves not equivalent or synonymous: Belacane has "seen many a fair-skinned heathen" [27]) and surfaces again in its spiritual dynamics: "Light and Darkness and how different they are" (72). We have talked a little bit in class about these corresponding spiritual and physical oppositions, and about the degree to which the one maps onto the other - the extent to which racial or external religious difference concretizes inferiority, "perfidy," "infidelity," or even greater degrees of inner "blackness" or evil.

The answer seems to be, "Not a great deal," if indeed at all, but by using the terms and images that he does Wolfram makes it an unavoidable and recurrent question. Very interestingly, the defeated parties in a tournament "had had their hides tanned for them with kicks and cudgels, their skins were black with bruises" (48). This seems to encode defeat or inferiority in black skin but at the same time diminishes its exotic inflection and its essentialism: Christian Europeans can, through misdeeds or failures, become black in spirit and, effectively, in hue. Against this evidentiary molehill must be set the mountains dealing with Belacane and other "heathens," which, again as we've discussed, almost approach an idea of natural piety and non- (or extra-) Christian salvation. Cundrie and her emphatic, "You think me monstrous, yet I am less monstrous, far, than you!" (164), is of course relevant here, and generally Wolfram takes pains to affirm and describe how external appearance and internal virtues or qualities do not correlate: "When a woman [and a man too, it seems] acts to the best of her nature you will not find me surveying her complexion or probing what shields her heart: if she be proofed within her breast her good name is safe from harm" (16). Yet both Belacane and Cundrie (who, we learn, does come from a "heathen" realm, "the land of Tribalibot beside the River Ganges," where her people "grow...from dire mischance" [263]) have their complexions surveyed at great length, nor does Wolfram allow us to forget their details. (For its part, "Peredur" is sprinkled with "black men" of generally hostile or antisocial tendencies, although its monstrous Cundrie-analogue transforms at the end into "a yellow-haired lad" [256] - in fact, another cousin of Peredur's.)

The spiritual trajectory of the poem, centered on the fall and redemption of Parzival, gradually overshadows these racial and religious aspects, and although the physical and spiritual still do not come anywhere close to an equation, physical and external differences do seem to become inflected, more and more, along spiritual lines. Anfortas' devastating wound is dealt by "a heathen born of Ethnise," who, tellingly, provides a parallel to Parzival's fallen state, seeking the Gral while alienated from God: "This pagan was convinced that his valour would earn him the Gral....He sought chivalric encounters in different countries, crossing seas and lands with no other thought than to win the Gral" (244). On the other hand, Trevrizent chalks up Anfortas' suffering equally to his own sin and error, and the pagan who wounded him models Parzival's current spiritual condition. Once again, heathendom and blackness are not essential qualities and do not lie beyond the potential range of Christian Europeans. Yet on the other hand again, that pagan does not get Parzival's opportunity for penitence and redemption: "let us not waste our tears on him" (244).

I won't try to pursue this immensely complex topic much further, but I want to touch on one more thing. In her post on Parzival's spiritual otherness, Ines talks about Parzival's journey towards a state "that contains a fine balance between a feminine and masculine principle, light and dark, heaven and hell, the polarities Wolfram is constantly invoking." The importance of this state of balance and hybridity in the poem can hardly be overemphasized: it is the state described in the opening paragraph ("such a man may yet make merry, for Heaven and Hell have equal part in him" [15]), it is Feirefiz's state, and, insofar as the spiritual and physical form another polarity which the poem has yet to reconcile or resolve, it is the state of the poem itself. Trevrizent's discourses establish the Incarnation as still another example of such hybridity: "God Himself took on a countenance like that of the first virgin's son, a condescension from His sublimity" (237); "[God] is a light that shines through all things....Thoughts are darkness unlit by any beam. But of its nature, the Godhead is translucent, it shines through the wall of darkness" (238). Finally, it seems to be the condition of or represented by the Gral itself, "left...on earth" (232) by the Neutral Angels, "those who did not take sides" (240).

However, Wolfram makes equally clear that this balance is not an end state. It prevails within the world, but the spiritual trajectory charted by the poem ultimately seems to lead out of it, into unambiguous light and salvation or into their opposites. As Trevrizent notes of the Neutral Angels, "I do not know whether God forgave them or damned them in the end" (240). Apparently, though, He did one or the other. That divided tree will either burn down or flourish into complete greenery; those sheep can't keep crossing back and forth forever. Their complex hybridities and transmogrifications prevail only during the time of Peredur's transit past.

As one final wrinkle, in Wolfram's conceit his poem itself has been translated from "the tale in heathenish script" discovered by "Master Kyot....It helped him that he was a baptized Christian - otherwise this tale would still be unknown. No infidel art would avail us to reveal the nature of the Gral and how one came to know its secrets" (232). Wolfram represents his own poem as itself a black sheep in the act of crossing the river to become white.

Quotations from "Peredur Son of Evrawg" from The Mabinogion. Trans. Jeffrey Gantz. London: Penguin Books, 1976. 217-257.