Sodomy, Masculinity, and Law in Medieval Literature
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Percevauz pas ne s’andormi / Si tost conme faire soloit; / A la demoi- selle pansoit, / Qui de biaute´ resambloit fee. / Que qu’il estoit an sa pansee, / Vint elle au lit, si se coucha / Et vers lui sa foi aquita, / Tot si com il ot devise´ / Et com li ot acreante´, / S’an lui ne remest par folie. / Tote celle nuit anuitie / Ont andui ansamble geu . (ll. 28128–28139)
[Perceval did not fall asleep as quickly as usual; he was thinking of the demoiselle who in her beauty resembled a fairy. While he was thinking of her, she came to his bed, got in, and kept her word. Just as she had planned and promised, she did not put him off out of folly. All that night, hour by hour, they lay together.. .]
The ambivalence we find in this passage resides in the fact that we never know whether any sex takes place, whether sex with a fairy is really sex, or whether Perceval or the fairy are doing what they are doing for any reason other than to fulfill a promise. In Gerbert de Montreuil’s Continuation, we first see Perceval turning down the offer of a pucelle to spend the night with him as thanks for his defense of their realm.Despite the fact that “li cors li fremist et li membre” (his body and limbs trembled [ll. 631–632]) at the offer, he tells her that he must decline for fear that “tro feroie grant pechie´ / Se je avoie despechie´ / Vo pucelage ne le mien” (I would be committing a grave sin if I despoiled your virginity or my own [ll. 651–653]). When she has departed, Perceval turns his thoughts immediately to the grail as a way of sublimating his anxiety but also as a way of admitting that the grail is itself as an object of desire, not always easily distinguished from a sexual register (“torne et retorne, / Au Graal son pense´ atorne” [ll. 667–668]).
When later, in the same Continuation, Gerbert returns to Chre´tien’s original love story of Perceval and Blanchefleur, it is an anomalous account. After all, in the known versions of Chre´tien, Wauchier de Denain, Manessier, and Gerbert, Perceval thinks only occasionally of Blanchefleur after their night together and then mostly in terms of his obligation manqu´ee. But in Gerbert’s text, having been reminded yet again that it is his own imperfections and transgressions that have kept him from completing the quest, he comes to the realization that the sin in question must be his failure to have kept his promise to Blanchefleur:
Et ele m’ama de cuer fin / Et me dist que je la preisse / Et de li ma feme feisse. / Et je li si en covent mis / Que je seroie ses amis / Et a feme l’espouseroie, / Ne vers autre ne mesferoie. / Or m’en membre, c’est li pechiez / Dont je quit plus estre entechiez. (ll. 5140–5148)
[And she loved me with a fine/true heart and told me I should take her and make her my wife. And I made a promise to her that I would marry her and would do nothing with anyone else that would betray that promise. Now I remember – this is the sin with which I think I am most stained.]
As usual, Perceval’s thinking is not quite straight, not surprising given that this is Gerbert’s version of the story. He is impelled to identify a failing within himself because he is told by everyone he meets that he has one. Instead of challenging that view, he adopts the image mirrored back to him and entertains an extended examination of conscience. This sounds like the dream of any panoptical disciplinarian: the tracking of Perceval’s travels is but the macrocosmic version of the microcosmic tracking that goes on in his own head. Acting as his own inquisitioner, he interrogates himself and lands on Blanchefleur as the key to hisfailure, a person for whom he clearly feels affection but who seems not to have left an indelible impression. Even as he remembers his promise to her, he recalls that it was she who asked him to marry her, she who took the initiative and he who followed. His disappearance immediately after their love interlude and his subsequent lack of concern for what has become of her (apart from his reverie upon seeing blood on snow) do not seem to dampen his rising conviction that the serious sin he has committed must have been in her regard. This prise de conscience is suspect; it is not so much that guilt is born at that moment as that he has mastered his masters’ inculpatory discourse, a true moment of subjection.
Blanchefleur is another story. Described as a pucelle enamouree, she spends one long soliloquy bemoaning Perceval’s absence and her inabil- ity to live without him (“S’il euˆ st ausi son cuer mis / En moi con je ai mis en lui, / Il ne meist pas en delui / Qu’il ne venist prochainement” [If he had placed his heart in me like I placed mine in him, he would delay no longer but return immediately] [ll. 6264–6267]). Gerbert runs through the physical, tell-tale signs of love in a young maiden and Blanchefleur fits the bill (her color changes, she grows timid, sighs a lot, etc. [ll. 6383–6390]). It is no surprise then that their reunion has the makings of an erotic fantasy even if, given what has preceded it, its climax is unexpected:
Au lit Percheval est venue / En chemise et en matel nue, / Sor l’esponde s’est acoutee. / Perchevaus, qui l’ot escoutee / Venir, le prist entre ses bras; / Pres de lui, par desoz les dras, / L’estraint et dolcement le baise. / Molt est li uns de l’autre a aise: / De l’acoler et du baisier / Se puent il bien aesier, / Car du sorplus n’i ot point. (ll. 6551–6562)
[She came to Perceval’s bed wearing only a night-shirt and robe, with nothing on underneath, and leaned on the edge of the bed. When he heard her arrive, Perceval took her in his arms; close beside him, beneath the sheets, he hugs and kisses her sweetly. Both of them are very content just to be together: hugging and kissing keeps them satisfied for their lovemaking didn’t go beyond that.]
This short scene does however prepare us for the wedding night that follows, when both parties vow spontaneously to maintain their chastity in marriage. Gerbert’s choice of words in the following passage betraysthe ambivalence he feels about sex, power, and gender and his determi- nation to offer a new and revised version of Perceval’s sexual history to this point:
Et quant li lis porcerne´s fur / Et saignie´s de crois et de fu / S’i ont couchie´, si con moi samble, / Perchevaus et la dame ensamble. / Si se sont les gens departies / Et s’en vont en pluisors parties: / Et les chambrieres s’en vont, / De lor dame pas paor n’ont / Qu’eles sevent bien tot sanz faille / Que bien vaintra ceste bataille. / Ambedui jurent bras a bras / Nu a nu, par desoz les dras. / Et Blancheflors fremist et tramble, / Et il plus que feuille de tramble, / Car il ne sont mie asseu r: / N’i a celui qui n’ait peu r / Que por le corporel delit / Ne perdent ce que li eslit / Ont en la grant joie des ciels: / Garder se welent des perius / D’enfer et de la grant tormente. / Perchevaus sozpire et gaismente / Qui tient Blancheflor acolee. / Cele, qui bien fu escolee / De tout bien, de toute honour faire,/A parle come debonaire / Et come dame bien aprise, / Car de l’amour Dieu est esprise. / Se dist: “Perchevaus, biaux amis, / Or gardons ce que anemis / N’ait sor nous force ne pooir. / Legiere chose est a savoir / Que chaastez est sainte chose, / Mais / ensemnt come la rose / Sormonte autres flors de biautez, / Ausi passe virginitez / Chastee´, ce sachiez de voir: / Et qui puet l’une et l’autre avoir, / Sachiez toute honors l’avironne, / Et si en a double corone / Devant Dieu en saint paradis.” (ll. 6799–6839)
[And when the bed was made and they had made the sign of the cross [and fire] they got into bed, Perceval and the lady together, or so it seems to me. All the others left the room and went in different directions: the chambermaids went off with no fear for their lady for they knew without any doubt that she would win this battle. The two of them lie there, side by side, naked flesh touching naked flesh, under the sheets. And Blanchefleur shakes and trembles and Perceval does too, more than an aspen leaf, for they are not at ease: they are not like those others who have no fear that through bodily pleasures one can lose the heavenly joys of the saved: they want to be safe from the perils of hell and the great torment. Perceval sighs and moans as he holds Blanchefleur close to him. Blanchefleur, who was well instructed in the right way to do things and save honor, spoke up then like a well brought-up and intelligent woman who is overcome with her love of God, and she said: “Perceval, my beautiful friend, let’s be careful not to let the enemy have any power over us. It is
obvious that chastity is a sacred thing, but like the rose surpasses all otherflowers in beauty, virginity surpasses chastity, and this you should know as truth. Anyone who can have both of them is surrounded by all blessings and is doubly crowned before God in holy paradise.”]
This is a remarkable turn of events since even in Chre´tien’s version, to which Gerbert refers, Perceval and Blanchefleur seemed already to have experienced bodily delights, and Gerbert clearly knew Perceval’s text very well.36 Though both of them seem to have rethought their relationship, it is Blanchefleur whose decision is most surprising, given the description of her to this point as the archetypal woman in love. We should remember, though, her chambermaids’ words as they left the nuptial bed: this is a battle that they know she will win. Whereas that metaphor usually refers to women’s sexual appetite, and to battles that women win (gain pleasure) by losing (giving in), here it takes on a decid- edly ironic cast since sexual fulfillment has been forsworn. Nonethe- less, victory is indeed Blanchefleur’s if it means keeping Perceval happy, indebted to her, willing to stay and offer his protection; and renuncia- tion of sex was the key weapon. As for Perceval, given his apparent lack of commitment since their first meeting, the idea of a mariage blanc might have appealed to him enormously. There are, after all, only two justifications for marriage, according to Gerbert’s narrator: procreation and the avoidance of sin.37 Perceval needed marriage as a way to avoid falling prey to the next damsel who offered herself to him. Since he seems otherwise incapable of responding to his own desire and exists mainly as an icon for the enjoyment of others, marriage, providing that he can remember his vow, will offer a convenient excuse. Sexuality was central to the construction of sanctity in the Middle Ages but sanc- tity was often an element, as well, in the construction of sexuality.38 It is through recourse to sacred proscriptions that Perceval is finally able to reject the passive promiscuity of Gauvain. As a sexual being, he is buffeted by competing discourses which inscribe him as monk, knight, hermit, or lord and defender of feudal rights, and all of these assume, at least nominally, heterosexual desire or its repression. As Perceval is asked either to perform or deny or sublimate these desires as the key to subjectivity, he seems like a frightened deer in the glare of the Other’s gaze, saying only: “Make of me what you will.” Marriage seems to offer him a modicum of safety.Not so with Gauvain. If Perceval finally rejects heterosexuality, replac- ing it with chaste marriage, Gauvain embraces it.39 Throughout the Grail romances, Gauvain leaves in his wake a trail of women who love him and to whom he has promised to return. When he fails to do so, he does not suffer the pangs of Perceval. He is not haunted by his failings and never interprets them as the sin holding him back from perfection. He, too, is accused in Chre´tien’s text of a crime, but not one of passivity or lack, as in Perceval’s case. It is not that he did not do something that he learns only later that he should have done, but rather the more mun- dane (at least in chivalric terms) charge that he has killed a man whose family now demands revenge. That Gauvain does not at first remember this incident, yet is tracked like Perceval by his enemies, makes him also a victim of sorts. But the fact that no one “explains” to him his failings in spiritual terms leaves him free to pursue his own knightly agenda with- out waiting for signs of what to do next. His sexual encounters are not marked by the ambivalence we have noted when Perceval is involved. In a scene from the Second Continuation, for example, Gauvain, the Petit Chevalier and his sister, Tanree, are all seated on a bed in their castle (l. 29780). When the Chevalier leaves the room to prepare for battle, Gauvain and the sister immediately turn the topic to love. He wants to know whom she loves and she, of course, reveals that it is he (l. 29847). Lovemaking ensues and Gauvain ends up taking her virginity, but Wauchier de Denain is eager to assure us that this was not a rape:
Tant ont baisie´ et acolle´ / Que Gauvains la fleur an coilli; / Mais el livre n’ai pas oi / Que fust maugre´ la damoiselle / Qu’elle perdi non de pucelle, / Ainz le graa et molt li sist. / Se Gauvains force li feist, / Dont ne fust il mie cortois, / Mais antulles et mal sourdois. (ll. 29862–29870)
[They kissed and hugged so much that Gauvain picked the flower [of her virginity]; but I never learned in the book that it was against the young lady’s wishes that she lost the name of virgin; on the contrary she wanted it thus and was happy about it. If Gauvain had forced her, it would hardly have been courteous [courtly], more like shameful and disgraceful.]
The following night they again sleep together and enjoy each other thoroughly (ll. 29929–29935). When Gauvain leaves her behind thenext morning, he regrets only that he did not wake her to say good- bye! Even in Gerbert’s Continuation, Gauvain has an adventure with a young woman whose father he has killed. Instead of killing her father’s murderer, this young woman falls instantly in love with him, and pro- ceeds to betray her brothers for his sake. Having just witnessed her brothers’ attack on Gauvain, during which one brother is killed and the other maimed (Gauvain cuts off his hand), the young woman turns to Gauvain, impervious to the still-warm familial blood around them, and begs him to make love with her (“Ha! dols amis, or m’acolez!” [l. 12720]). She first has to bandage his wounds but then they lie together, “bouche a bouche, vis contre vis... dolcement embrachie” (mouth to mouth, face to face, . . . sweetly entwined in embrace [ll. 12740–12741]). Gerbert never back-pedals on Gauvain’s encounters with women as he does with Perceval. They involve sex and pleasure with little or no guilt.
Victimization
The terms of victimization that subtend the rhetoric of elite masculinity are already present and developed in Chre´tien’s text, but they receive further elaboration in the four continuations that appeared between c. 1200 and 1230. As we have seen, Perceval learns in Le roman du graal that he is a sinner, though it is never clear just what, other than youth, he is guilty of. He is a cipher, refashioned and redirected by messengers, hermits, and mysterious women who know far more about him than he knows himself. The unknown cousin he meets after his first stay with the Fisher King speaks for all of them when she says: “Je te conois mielz que tu moi / Et tu ne sez pas qui je sui” (I know you better than you know me and you do not even know who I am [ll. 3534–3535]). These agents from some omniscient realm (fairies, long-lost cousins, and uncles) are disciplinary agents, messengers from the Other, who intend to make of him a “useful individual” who will provide service to Church, court, and family. Le conte could thus also be read as an allegory of subject formation, hailed by agents of “state apparatuses” avant la lettre. Through interpellation into their discourse he is assigned a name, family history, and purpose in life.40 Perceval li Gaulois becomes, in the discourse of the demoiselle, Percevaus li chaitis, and the name is a function of his crimes (not asking the right questions, not turning backto help his dying mother). When Perceval asks how she knows what she knows (“Ha! cosine, fait Percevaus / Se ce est voirz que dit m’avez / Dites moi commant lo savez!” [ll. 3550–3552]), he is told simply that he has always known her but does not recognize her. Recognition and misrecognition, secrets and lies, are central to the romance tradition but are never more marked than in the Conte du graal. Through elaborate charades of identification, claims of consanguinity, and acceptance of lack, the complicity of Perceval is ensured. It is not that what happens to Perceval is exceptional; better to say that his is an exemplary case, exaggerated so as to hook readers and interpellate them in turn. Perceval is naive beyond the norm: he displays so little intellectual curiosity; listens so poorly; reacts so impulsively – yet the process of socialization by which he becomes a disciplinary subject is instantly recognizable and naturalized.