Sodomy, Masculinity, and Law in Medieval Literature

by William Burgwinkle

  His is a subjectivity shaped around him rather than by him; his agency part of an ideological illusion. In the absence of his true father, the paternal voice is omnipresent, ventriloquized through everyone who tells him he is a sinner and savior. Their investment in his quest might be compared to, but goes beyond, the attachment people feel for a military or athletic hero.41 Only in a celebrity culture like our own, in which the print media purvey the most insignificant details of private life, could we imagine these people knowing what they know. One has the feeling that they devour any information about him because they expect him either to save them through his sacrifice or damn them with his sin. Thus they follow along, directing him with their observations and criticisms.

  At the very beginning of Wauchier de Denain’s Continuation, called the second but actually the first after Chre´tien’s romance to concentrate on Perceval rather than Gauvain, Perceval is entering a forest after having spent two days without food or drink, “anclins, famelleus et pensis” (worn out, starving, and worried [MS A, l. 9473]). He finds himself at a crossroad and asks a hunter which way to go. The hunter refuses to speak to him, saying:

  “Je ne vos salu mie, / Cheitis! que par vostre folie / Avez mis tantes genz a mal. / Jame´s an nule cort roial / N’avroiz an vostre vie enor, / Qu’a la cort le Roi Pescheor / Fustes, si n’anqueistes mie / Les segroiz. Ce fu granz folie, / Que la lance sainnier veistes / Devant vos, et sin’anqueistes / Por quele acheison el sainnoit, / Ne del Graal ou il aloit. / Se vos l’eu ssiez demande´, / Cest regne eu ssiez restore´, / Et mis an joie et an leesce / Ces qui or sont an grant tristece, / Pechiez vos i a fet faillir, / Molt par vos an devez hair, / Fuiez vos de ma conpaignie, / Dolereus, et ne tenez mie / Ceste voie. Tornez aillors, car ce seroit vostre dolors; / Alez arriere maintenant. / Veez lez escloz ci devant / D’un cheval a envers ferrei. / S’il vos avoient tant meneri / Que trovessiez le cor pandu / As portal, s’avriez perdu / Vostre pris, et sanz nule faille / N’an torneriez sanz bataille.” / Atant s’an part delivremeant. / Et Percevax plus n’i atant, / Et dit: “La ou ge cuit morir / Irai, ne m’an puet nus tenir, / Quant tex honte m’est avenue / Que par tot le mont est seu e.” / Einsi chevalche molte iriez. (MS A, ll. 9493–9529)

  [“I will not salute you, you miserable man. For through your madness you brought so many people to ruin. Never in any royal court will you find honor in your lifetime for you were at the court of the Fisher King and never asked about the secrets. That was a crazy thing to do: you saw the lance that bleeds right in front of you and you never asked why it was bleeding. Nor did you ask where the Graal was going. If only you had asked, this kingdom would have been restored and happiness and joy would have returned to those who are now in a state of great sadness. It was sin that made you fail; you should really hate yourself. Get away from me, you poor wretch, and if you come this way you’ll regret it. Go some other way, I’m warning you. Turn back now. Do you see the hoof prints here of a horse that was shod backwards? If you got so far that you found the horn hung on the gate you would lose your reputation, and would never be able to go back without a battle.” Then he got up and left. Perceval did not wait a second longer, saying: “I’ll go to the place where I think I’ll die for I cannot take it any longer – such shame has come over me now that it’s known all over the world.” And so he took off, very upset.]

  The hunter is vehement in his condemnation but he does offer an accurate description of Perceval’s plight. Everyone he meets knows about his sins and failures and he can never count on there being anyone truly on his side. This is a classic double-bind: it is not like he did something for which he can now repent, it is rather that he did not do something that everyone thinks he ought to have done. How to undo what you did not do in the first place but should have?In Gerbert’s Continuation, following directly upon the Second Contin- uation, we meet several of these soothsayer/policeman/personal trainer figures who know him better than himself. At the gate of the castle where his sword will be repaired he is told, even before he has iden- tified himself, that he will never learn the truth about the Grail until he has confessed and done penance (ll. 196–204) and that this is why his sword has broken. Once inside the castle he is again told that he is “molt entechiez” (deeply stained with sin [l. 262]). In his very next stop a peasant tells him that he will be feˆted by the people of the town he is about to enter as their savior: “Que par vous avons recovre´ / Les oevres et les praeries, / Les biens et les gaaigneries, / Et trestoz los biens temporaus” (Through you we have recovered our work and prairies, our goods and profits, and all our worldly belongings! [ll. 366–368]). Similar scenes occur at almost every new encounter: he is told either that he is accursed and responsible for the devastation of the land, or that he is the savior of the people who, through his intercession, will be restored to health and prosperity (ll. 5650–5683). Can one be both sav- ior and accursed? Either we are dealing with two separate factions who view Perceval in diametrically opposed fashion, as in Brigitte Cazelles’s reading, or Perceval himself embodies both figures simultaneously, as in Rene´ Girard’s notion of the scapegoat.

  The scapegoat carries the burden of the collective’s anger and blame

  but his/her banishment or death also exorcizes the escalating violence and restores the well-being of the land. His or her murder is thus re- enacted in ritual, and from sacrificial death is born the sacred. Perceval shares some obvious features with this figure, both through his associa- tion with the sacrificial figure of Christ and with similar figures in Celtic mythology. He is not, however, cut from a mold and he differs from some of the classic literary sacrificial victims (Oedipus, Moses, Job) in the way in which he internalizes the accusations directed against him, refashioning himself as the pawn of his accusers. The sacrificial plot also diverges at significant points from the classic model of exclusion to adopt a more utilitarian view, moving from the particulars of his predicament to the more general process of subject formation. And we never arrive at the logical outcome of the process of victimization that we have been led to expect. For that we have to wait for the Queste del saint graal, where Galahad’s death and attainment of the grail providethe simultaneous climax to the entire cycle. The Continuations stay focused on the process by which Perceval is recruited into the ser- vice of ideological ends rather than on his death and its effects on the community.

  The disembodied voices which sound at key moments in his travels all represent ideological interests. In Gerbert, for example, one voice tells him to return to his family home (ll. 84–88); another explains marriage and its justification, urges him to stay a virgin, predicts that his sons will conquer Jerusalem, and warns him that if he gives up the quest his family will lose all (ll. 6882–6943). Hanging from a crucifix at a crossroads, a letter tells the newly literate Perceval to turn right (ll. 8258–

  8264) while another such crucifix’s wooden hand points out which of three roads to take (ll. 16903–16917). An inscription on a shield warns that only the best knight can touch it (ll. 8495–8505) and a cadaver holds a letter identifying the name of his killer (ll. 10912–10940).42 Perhaps most interesting is the letter that Perceval receives from the preudom as he seeks to have his sword repaired. No one can read this round letter but it serves Perceval well: he pins it to his armor to serve as a protective scapula.43

  The broken sword, the third of Perceval’s enigmas, is a virtual semiotic beacon. The motif is raised early on in Chre´tien, when Perceval is told by his mysterious cousin that due to his own imperfections, the sword given to him by the Fisher King (specified as having been given to the King by his niece, i.e., Perceval’s cousin [ll. 3146–3147]), will break into pieces in battle. Sure enough, in his first combat after that meeting, the sword shatters. In the First Continuation, during Gauvain’s first visit to the Fisher King’s castle, he sees, in addition to the elements described in Chre´tien’s Conte du graal, a corpse in a coffin, holding a sword that is broken in two pieces. In the Second Continuation as well, the brok
en sword has joined the lance and grail as a definitive part of the procession and it is still incumbent upon Perceval to ask about all three. In the last scene of the romance, the Fisher King finally gives Perceval the sword, asking him to put it back together, presumably something that no one else would be able to do. Perceval does just that but perfect suture eludes him: there is one small piece missing. His uncle exclaims that this is the true sign that he is the greatest knight in the world, then wraps the sword and gives it to him.Gerbert de Montreuil’s Continuation begins right at this point.44

  Though the Fisher King has given him the sword, he declines to explain the significance of the grail and lance, saying only that Perceval has not adequately repented of his sins. The proof, he says, is the gap in the suture, the signifier of lack:

  Mais du Graal ne di je point / Ne de la Lance qu’en ceste point / En doiez savoir le secre´: / N’avez pas bien servi a gre´ / Celui par cui vous le sarois, / Dusque a che que tant fait arois / Que li osque de ceste espee, / Qui samble estre a cysel colpee / Soit par vos mains soldee et jointe. (ll. 15–23)

  [But I cannot tell you anything about the Grail or about the Lance for there’s a secret you have to know about this: you have not served sufficiently the one from whom you would learn about such things. And you won’t until you have joined and soldered together the chip in this sword that looks like it was cut with a chisel.]

  Now, there are several ways of looking at this sword. In an obvious sense, it stands as a metonym for Perceval’s subjectivity. He receives it at a dinner after which nothing will ever be the same. When he arrives at the table, Perceval has not yet been accused of a crime. He is still caught up in object cathexis (the armor he so coveted is now his), still carries the ego ideal of the knights in his heart, can still imagine the self as armored, an impenetrable fortress.45 The sword that the Fisher King (only later to be identified as a maternal uncle, a key figure in his accession to manhood) hands him embodies all of these m´econnaissances. It was meant for Perceval, and is one of only three in the world, but it will fail him, as he learns from the young woman who identifies herself as his cousin. At that same meeting, the cousin informs him that the Fisher King was wounded “parmi les anches amedeus” (between his two thighs [l. 3451]); that Perceval has made a grievous error in not asking about the grail (l. 3523); that his name has been changed to “Perchevax li chaitis” (Perceval the miserable [l. 3520]); that his mother has died of grief on account of him, and that in not asking about the grail he bears the responsibility for the continued suffering of the King and his land (ll. 3525–3532). This is an almost parodic imposition of what in Lacanian psychoanalysis is known as the cut or “Non,” the defining moment of sundering which instantiates subjectivity andaccess to the symbolic order. All the elements are there: the castration of the patriarch, the loss of imaginary identity and replacement by a signifier, the dominance of the superego (in the imposition of guilt), and voila` – Perceval’s an adult. And rather than question the sources of these tidings, rather than identify the lack projected upon him as a lack in the Symbolic order itself, the seat of Law which gives an illusory order to the disorder of his family and personal history, his gender and sexuality, Perceval believes these accusers, turns to their advice in order to take upon himself the responsibility for the failure of the Symbolic to encompass all, personified in what Lacan called the lack in the Other. He accepts that his crime is a lack within himself, rather than a failing of the symbolic (or of language), and so resolves (unconsciously) to block this lack, to stem its fatal incursion into his imaginary wholeness, through a series of what Lacan refers to as objets a, fetishized objects which become the focus and instigator of his desire while blocking out the failures of the system to contain what he has lost in the bargain.

  At the same time that the sword becomes an emblematic objet a, it embodies characteristics of the Lacanian phallus, that ultimate objet a, with its illusory promise of power. This double-edged gift from the Fisher King breaks as he fights Orgueilleux de la Lande, just as the sword delivered by the mysterious corpse in the First Continuation will. This suggests, of course, that Perceval is not whole, not phallic, and that his quest, like that of any subject, will be to contain and fill that lack. Gauvain is, not surprisingly, no better at joining the pieces of the famous broken sword and so it is finally Perceval who succeeds, at least partially, in joining the fragments at the climax of Gerbert’s text. As with so many signs of the markers of elite masculinity, the sword serves to eliminate and discriminate rather than to bring together; and we never really learn why it is that Perceval succeeds in his final attempt at reconstruction.46 Though it appears that we are meant to believe that the Fisher King’s impotence, evoked metaphorically through the Fisher King’s wound and the broken swords, has been overcome through the suffering and military victories of the chosen young knight, a nagging dissatisfaction with that moralistic closure is hard to shake.

  From this point on, Perceval assumes a different character, shaped almost entirely through his encounters with seers. The secrets that reg- ulate the cycle are open secrets: things that are said to be hidden andsacred but which everyone but the person said to be guilty knows full well. Yet, in both Chre´tien’s version and the Continuations, Perceval is one of the principal guardians of secrets and he embodies misrecog- nition. When, for example, he meets the Count whose daughter he will save from an unwilled marriage, he will identify himself and his cousin Ysmaine only in hushed tones so that no one can hear him. In Gerbert’s Continuation Perceval attacks Gauvain at one point, unrecog- nizable in his minstrel disguise. In the same text, Lancelot challenges Perceval, not recognizing his armor. The secrets of family origins persist through Chre´tien’s conte and beyond. In the Second Continuation espe- cially, Wauchier de Denain picks up on this motif, revealing that the hermit is the brother of Perceval’s father, that the Fisher King’s wound was self-inflicted (accidentally), etc. Secrets are what keep the system working; maintaining them and revealing them are what keep Perceval in line, even when it is obvious that he is perhaps the only one kept in the dark.

  The Second Continuation’s ingenious use of the chessboard is one of the cycle’s most effective images of social manipulation. As a recapit- ulation of his trials and travels it is unmatched. Perceval, alone in the woods, comes upon what looks to be an uninhabited castle. Inside he finds a richly appointed room, dominated by an ivory bed with fine silk coverings. When he sits on the bed, a door opens and he is drawn into the adjoining room. There he sees a chessboard, set up and ready to be played upon, made of the most precious metals and gems. He cannot help sitting down to admire it and it soon begins to play. He is amazed to see that after his first move, a pawn from the other side matches him. He continues playing until he has been checkmated three times. Furious, he vows that he will never again allow a knight to be taken in by this board. He gathers it up and is about to throw it out the window when he is stopped by the voice of beautiful woman at another window who claims that it belongs to her. He agrees to respect her wishes if she will join him in the chess room. She does so and he begins almost immediately to declare his love:

  Atant la prist, si la baisa; / De tant com pot s’an aaisa, / Et feist dou plus se poist / Et elle li consanteist, / Mais pas ne li vost consantir. (ll. 20251–20255)

  [He grabbed her and kissed her; he helped himself to as much as he could and he would have done more if he had been able to and if she had consented, but she did not want to give her consent.]

  Instead, the lady imposes on him a quest to find the white stag and return to her its head. If he accomplishes this task she promises to fulfill his desires. Accompanied by her dog, he departs immediately on a quest which becomes an exercise in deferral. Now, this whole incident could be taken as a metaphor for Perceval’s socialization to this point and of the adventures that ensue during his quest, first of the stag, and then of the dog.47 The gaste terre is already a chessboard controlled by unknown forces. Desire, in the form of the inv
iting bed or the vision of the Arthurian knights, represents the threshold to the playing field. Perceval is always playing against an unseen opponent who speaks through visions, inscriptions, and voices, or through mysterious women who act as translators. His quests are ploys that shape him to accept a version of himself that comes from the Other. Perceval must save his land not by finding the Grail but by proving that he is selfless, that his aim in life is to serve and follow the dictates of a higher cause. Throughout, like a walking exemplum of Althusser’s definition of ideology (“a ‘representation’ of the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence”), he must continue to think himself an autonomous agent, pursuing his own agenda.48

  Christian Knighthood and Sodomy

  Between Chre´tien de Troyes’s Conte du graal (1180) and the last of the Continuations (1220–30), the tale of Perceval was refigured in another cycle as pseudo-Christian revelation: first at the hand of Robert de Boron in his Roman du graal trilogy, and then in the works of a series of authors who linked the diverse threads of Grail narratives into a form of escha- tological odyssey. New models of Christian knighthood, monasticism, revelation, and heroism emerged from the resulting generic and ideo- logical friction in the Vulgate (or Lancelot-Grail or Pseudo-Map) cycle. Homoeroticism can be detected throughout these cycles as something already present in human society but which can be isolated and excised, a necessary exclusion around which to construct a new order. Just as Alainde Lille uses sodomy in the De planctu naturae as the necessary darkness from which to view divine light, a parasite without which Nature’s cre- ation could not be theorized, the Grail legends imply that by ferreting out and exorcising sexual desire from monasteries, intellectual commu- nities and armies, we might all awake, like the narrator at the end of De planctu naturae from a post-lapsarian dream of contamination.