Love and Chivalry: Complications in Knights' Predicaments

1. Fabliau, Capellanus, and Obscenity in the Middle Ages

2. How does love complicate chivalry? Consider the predicaments of the knights in Marie’s lais. Aucassin is thrust into battle but is so lost in thoughts of his love that he fails to fight. Lancelot does not hear the challenge of a knight guarding a ford. Parcival does not heed a challenge when blood in snow reminds him of his lady. And yet All of these knights fight extraordinarily well on behalf of these ladies once they return to their senses.

3. What’s love got to do with it? From Geoffroi de Charney’s A Knight’s Own Book of Chivalry (14th century) “Deeds of arms in war are the most honorable” (49). “There is another category of men at arms who when they begin are so naïve that they are unaware of the great honor that they could win through deeds of arms; nevertheless they succeed so well because they put their hearts into winning the love of a lady” (52). “Men should love secretly, protect, serve, and honor all those ladies and damsels who inspire knights…to undertake worthy deeds that bring them honor” (66).

4. Courtly love challenges loyalty -to God -to lady -to king

5. Courtly Language Codified Andreas Capellanus’s Art of Courtly Love, written in the late 12th century,provides strict guidelines for proper speech among nobility. Capellanus’s work details rules of courtly love. The term “courtly love” is actually an 18th century invention, coined by Gaston Paris. The term is used to describe the strictly codified and highly euphemistic language associated with courtoisie. The term used to describe the concept in French literature is fin amor.

6. Capellanus: -Wrote for the court of Marie de Champagne; he was the chaplain of the royal court; not a great literary writer -Marie was the daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine and the French king Louis VII -Eleanor divorced Louis and married the English king Henry II -Cappelanus was connected with the church, but apparently not very sincerely (he was a court chaplain for Marie)

7. -A letter from Marie is included in Capellanus’s text. Marie’s letter of 1174 gives exact date and intends to give picture of her life there; yet book was probably written some time after because of a reference to a later marriage -a number of mss of Capellanus’s work indicate that it was popular through the fourteenth century. -it served as textbook for “courts of love” in 12th century -his knowledge of the Bible is mostly rote

8. How do we read Capellanus’s text? --Capellanus’s work is a translation of Ovid’s Ars Amatoria, which was intended to be parodic. But how was Capellanus’s work intended and received in the Middle Ages? -Is it sincere? -Is it mocking? -Is it didactic?-Is it parodic? Regardless, it dictated a certain method of speech enfolded into the concept of chivalry, exemplified in romance, and overturned/deconstructed in fabliau.

9. Courtly love dictated a certain method of speech enfolded into the concept of chivalry, exemplified in romance, and overturned/deconstructed in fabliau. Let’s stop for a moment and take a look at Capellanus.

11. The Penis Tree

12. Definition and Description: Fabliau -Legitimized as a genre worthy of study by Joseph Bedier in 1893, who defined the genre as “des contes a rires en vers,” or “Short, humorous tales in verse.” He argued for bourgeois origins of the genre. -Nearly fifty years later, Per Nykrog challenged Bedier, noting courtly elements in the genre: “fabliaux are works written in the meter reserved for courtly or instructive writings, and they are to be read aloud in courtly gatherings” -Now, most scholars concur that the genre was intended for a broad audience that would include nobility and bourgeois. Though intended for the nobility, chivalric values, and especially courtly language, seeped into the lower levels of medieval society.

13. -Fabliau: etymologically related to “fable.” The genre shares similarities with fables, exemplum, and romance. -Approximately 160 fabliau are extant in Old French. Chaucer writes six or seven fabliau (depending on how you classify them). Only one other fabliau exists in English, “Dame Sirith”; however, a number of Anglo-French fabliau are extant. The genre also occurs in Germany, Italy, and Spain. -Possibly, these tales originate from anecdotes or sermons. Nearly one third have morals attached, but they are typically loosely related to the narrative.

14. -Most are anonymous, though a few have names attached, such as “Rutebeuf,” but we know very little about individual fabliau authors. -These tales would have been circulated orally before they were written down and may have originated in sermons. -Old French fabliaux exist in four major manuscripts.

15. Why study dirty medieval tales? • These tales have much to tell us about courtly language. • These tales show us a texture of life not often featured in other genres. They often feature everyday items like kneading troughs, tubs, fishing poles, and so forth. • These tales can help us understand shifting social estates and social demarcations. • They are interestingly linguistically, especially regarding the use of puns. (‘handy’ Nicholas from Chaucer’s “The Miller’s Tale”) • They really are funny! (In the Victorian age, these tales were not studied because they were deemed too vulgar.)

16. -The structure of the fabliau typically (but not always) involves a lover’s triangle. -Despite their bawdy content, these tales are often written in the high style appropriate to romance. -Characters are socially liminal. (Knights are poor; bourgois are rich; clergy are lascivious.) -Fabliaux often open with an “oxymoronic epithet” that establishes characters as socially liminal: “stupid knight,” “poor knight,” “rich peasant,” “lusty priest.”

17. -Fabliaux are sometimes seen as misogynistic. However, as scholar Mary Jane Schenck observes in the title of her book on fabliau women, often female characters end up “on top.” -Fabliaux involve a trick of which one character, the dupe, is victim. Typically the dupe is socially deviant. --Fabliaux build to a comic climax in which the fabliau dupe is punished (killed, castrated, humiliated, cheated, etc.)

18. Fabliau are a direct reaction to the prescribed, polite language that is integral to chivalry, especially as chivalry is portrayed in medieval romance. Courtoisie (courtesy) refers to the polite language of the court and the polite language expected of courtly lovers. Fabliau overturn this polite speech. Boy, do they ever!

19. The connection of fabliaux to courtly language: Courtly language was highly euphemistic. By creating a set of euphemisms to describe body parts and to describe sex, previous terms were deemed “obscene” or “vulgar.” Prior to the onset of courtly language, words such as “con,” ‘fotre,” and “vit” were simply straightforward, anatomically correct terms.

20. Obscenity vs. Profanity Obscenity: description of sexual matters, or scatological language offensive to accepted modes of behavior Profanity: impious, sacrilegious language (‘bloody’ comes from a medieval profanity, ‘God’s blood’) By prescribing certain terms as unacceptable, could courtly language be responsible for ‘obscenities’?

21. WARNING! OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE AND VISUALS IN NEXT SLIDES! YOU MAY WANT TO COVER YOUR EYES!

23. Courtly language is reserved for the nobility and is highly euphemistic. It is a strictly coded and elitist form of diction. Fabliaux overturn courtly behavior and courtly language. Consider a few fabliau titles: “The Knight who made c#@*s speak”“Guillaume au faucon” (pun: faux con, or “false c&%*”)“The F&*#er”“The Castrated Lady”

24. Naughty Illuminations Knight Who Made C#@* Talk