Eve Sedgwick evoked the image of the “glass closet” in her Epistemol- ogy of the Closet as a useful heuristic for understanding the way in which accusations of sodomy structure the larger institution of gender differ- ence and configurations of sexuality. Here, in Gerbert de Montreuil’s Continuation, a similar structure sits, like the Round Table, amidst the gathered community and structures their behavior. Its only viable threat is this: if the secret of sodomy (i.e., that heterosexuality is itself a con- struct) is revealed, regardless of how transparent a secret it seems, then what binds the community will disintegrate. The threats of terrestrial ruin in Chre´tien de Troyes’s foundational tale, the Conte du graal and in the massive Continuations it inspired, make a sad and curious sense when studied in this light.
Queering the Celtic: Marie de France and the Men Who Don’t Marry
Women are given in marriage, taken in battle, exchanged for favors, sent as tribute, traded, bought, and sold. . . . Men are of course also trafficked – but as slaves, hustlers, athletic stars, serfs, or as some other catastrophic social status, rather than as men.1
Our own historical accounts, insofar as they replicate and support the dominant view of a Middle Ages that is “naturally,” effortlessly, monolithically Christian, masculinist, and heterosexual, erase the par- ticular sites of struggle at which the female, Jewish, “heretical,” queer resisted silencing even as they were brought to silence. . . . We can intervene . . . to hear, in however muted and distorted a fashion, the queer presences against which that homophobia was anxiously erected.2
In truth those who have such [same-sex] inclinations and desires are half-beast. They have shed the desirable element, their humanity, and in the sphere of conduct are made themselves like unto monsters. From levity to lewdness, from lewdness to lust, and finally, when hardened, they are drawn into every type of infamy and lawlessness.3
The prologue to Marie de France’s Lais offers, appropriately, several hints as to how the texts should be read. First, she defends hermeneutics, saying that texts worth our while are always difficult and demand an active reading style. It is the reader who brings to the text his/her own experience and thus the text’s own “surplus.” This interactive model of interpretation is not new in the twelfth century, nor is it original to the Lais. Marie avers that philosophers have always written and read like this, a statement borne out by other contemporary prologues, so to enhance their own and their readers’ wisdom. Her second point is that reading is good for us because at the same time that we learn from it, itkeeps us out of trouble. On the basis of this reasoning, she defends her choice of material – Breton lais – and suggests that though the work we are about to read or hear is not a translation from Latin, the language of most “bone estoire[s],” it is in its own way an archival project, a rescuing of wisdom from the past (24, 29).4 Based on this defense, then, we know that Marie thinks her Lais contain valuable intellectual and moral truths; that we should put into reading them as much time as she put into writing them (“soventes fiez en ai veillie” [24, 42]); and that the meaning of the texts ultimately depends on what we bring to them. It is our gloss, based on our “sen,” which imbues the text with its “surplus” or meaning (22, 16).5
Each of the individual lais that follows is also preceded by a prologue of sorts, ranging from a mere four lines (Le Fresne) to the longest of them all, the twenty-six line introduction to Guigemar. Since Guigemar is also the first of the lais copied after the Prologue in the only manuscript which contains all twelve of the lais (MS H: London, British Library, Harley 978), this means that in this manuscript we read directly from one prologue into another.6 Yet the Guigemar prologue is easily distinguished from its predecessor. Marie’s tone is more defensive and prickly. She says that when you have a good story to tell you want to do it right; and that she, being someone who does things right, has earned her praise (“Oez, seignurs, ke dit Marie, / Ki en sun tems pas ne s’oblie” [26, 3–4]).7
People are jealous of success and they attack the successful like vicious and cowardly dogs, slandering them to whomever will listen (“Sun pris li volent abeisser: Pur ceo comencent le mestier / Del malveis chien coart felun / Ki mort la gent par traison [26, 11–14]).8 People have a right to say what they want of others but when they do, they deserve to be called spiteful gossips (“gangleu r u losengier” [26, 16]) since their words cause hurt and irreparable harm.
With that denunciation ringing in our ears, we turn immediately to a story about a young Breton knight, Guigemar, whose own near perfection has led to criticism from those around him. The mise-en- abˆime seems obvious: Guigemar, like Marie, is surrounded by spiteful gossips. The question remains, however, where to situate Marie’s own investment in this story – is she projecting herself into the persona of the young knight or does she act as one of his attackers? Given that the three lais I am most interested in all concern knights who are attackedby the jealous or fearful for what they are rather than what they do, I suspect we will have better luck locating Marie’s sympathies if we pay closer attention to the knights’ camp.
Guigemar, in the first of these lais, has just returned to his Breton home in glory. He has completed his obligatory knightly training and apprenticeship and distinguished himself in the practice of arms at the courts of Flanders and France. Now he is expected to complete his accession to mature adulthood by taking up his preordained position in aristocratic society through marriage, procreation, patronage, and mil- itary defense. Into the figure of Guigemar we might therefore project any number of other Arthurian knights whose early careers are simi- larly marked by great ambition, athletic and military prowess, devotion to an ideal, and initiation into the ranks of chivalry. In the literature of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, these young men are set up as erotic idols, the centerpieces of every court festival. Allusions to sex- uality in these quasi-hagiographic narratives are largely contained by tight, pre-scripted homosocial bonds and carefully circumscribed rites of courtship. Open expressions of male–male affection and rivalry are encouraged, while the feminine is distanced: morally, as embodying a threatening sexuality, and topographically, through the ritual of tourna- ment and quest.9 When I say that women are distanced topographically I mean both that the knight’s life on the road imposes a certain obligatory solitude within homosocial circles; and that even when in the presence of women, at tournaments and court, containment is effected through segregation of the sexes, both physically and discursively. The knights perform for the feminine gaze and the patriarchal power that subtends it; the women gaze down upon the knights from their towers and galleries, communicating through signs and intermediaries.10 When Guigemar returns to his father’s land, we thus anticipate, on the basis of our pre- vious romance readings, that it is either to marry and procreate, surely to be expected from the only son of Oridial, much-loved knight at the court of the Breton monarch, Hoel; or to savor some family time before setting out again on the grueling road to Arthurian glory. This family visit is, however, rather highly charged. Guigemar has returned to see “father and lord, his mother and sister, who have desired him greatly (veeir sun pere e sun seignur, / sa bone mere e sa sorur, / ki mult l’aveient desire´” [30, 70–73]), but their desire to have him with them this timecarries a price. Deliberately upsetting our romance expectations, Marie links this family rhapsody with a discussion of what is presented as a flaw or problem:
A cel tens ne pout hom truver / si bon chevalier ne sun per. / De tant i out mespris nature / que unc de nule amur n’out cure. / Suz ciel n’out dame ne pucele, / ki tant par fust noble ne bele, / se il d’amer la requeist, / que volentiers nel retenist. / Plusurs l’en requistrent suvent, / mais il n’aveit de ceo talent; / nuls ne se pout aparceveir / que il volsist amur aveir. / Pur ceo le tienent a peri / e li estrange e si ami. (28, 57–68)
[Nowhere could one find so fine a knight. And yet, Nature made a mistake when she made him for he never had any interest in any sort of love. There was no lady or maiden regardless of
how rich or beautiful she might be who, had he asked for her hand with love wouldn’t have jumped at the chance to have him for herself. Several of them even propositioned him, and often, but he had no interest in such matters. No one who observed him could find in him any interest in having the experience of love. This is why he was thought to be in danger [marked] by both friends and those who didn’t know him.]
Several features of this passage need clarification; first, Marie’s allusion to Nature in line 59. There are two ways of reading this line and multiple possible translations. Either Nature has “mespris” Guigemar, in which case we should read the line:
Nature made a mistake [was at fault] when she made him [this time]; or
Nature transgressed her own laws; or
Nature failed him;
or perhaps it is Guigemar himself who is at fault; in which case we should translate:
Guigemar had so transgressed against Nature; or Guigemar had so failed in his duty to Nature; or Guigemar had so disdained Nature.
No translation I have seen follows the second option.11 This is an important point, for if we were able to assign responsibility for this “failing,” it might also help locate Marie’s point of view and clarifyher stance on normative sexuality by tale’s end. If Nature is to blame, i.e., assuming for a moment that there is blame to be assigned, then are we to applaud Guigemar’s willed attempts to conform to cultural expectations? And if Guigemar is the transgressor, does that mean that he deserves to be punished?
Narcissus and Guigemar
The passage just cited makes clear reference to the Ovidian figure of Narcissus, despite the accommodation to chivalric discourse in the adja- cent passages.12 Narcissus was already a prominent reference in love lyric by the time that Marie was writing but, as in all such references, he car- ries an accumulation of associations pointing to idolatry, illusion, mis- reading, pride, or homoeroticism, depending on the author and reader. Bernart de Ventadorn’s most famous song, “Qan vei la lauzeta . . .” (song 70, 43) provides an example of a twelfth-century interpretation.13
A figure at the early Plantagenet court on the Continent, Bernart is thought to have been writing in the mid-twelfth century, surely before 1170, the earliest date usually given for the writing of the Lais.14 Marie
was probably associated with that same court; most scholars agree that her dedication to the “noble reis” (70, 43) in whose heart all goodness takes root is a reference to Henry II.15 Both in the Ovidian model and in the troubadour example, Narcissus is presented as a negative model, a trap in which males are ensnared and perish. Bernart de Ventadorn provides a sophisticated and emblematic illustration:
Anc non agui de me poder / Ni no fui mieus de l’or en sai / Que.m laisset en sos huelhs vezer / En un mirail que mot mi plai. / Mirals, pus me mirei en te, / M’an mort li sospir de preon, / Qu’aissi.m perdei cum perdet se / Lo bels Narcisus en la fon. (ll. 17–24)
[Never again did I have power over myself or belong to myself from that moment when she let me see in her eyes a mirror that greatly pleased me. Mirror, since first I looked at myself in you, the sighs welling up in me have killed me and I lost myself like the beautiful Narcissus in the fountain.]
Like his Ovidian ancestor, this young man loses himself to his own image, but where the death of the Ovidian character had beenprecipitated by a spurned male lover, eager for revenge,16 the early medieval homologues are led to the fatal mirror through the instiga- tion of a female character.17 In the first part of the Roman de la Rose (c. 1230), for example, an embedded retelling of Ovid’s tale has Echo begging to die if she cannot have Narcisus, then praying that he should die as well through a burning love of his own. Within the diegetic tale, this scene serves as an exemplum from which one is meant to conclude that self-love can never match the love of others. The moral drawn by Guillaume de Lorris at episode’s end, however, seems to contradict the tale just told. Narcisus still comes to a bad end through his refusal of Echo’s proffered love but it is women who are blamed for their unwill- ingness to love men and their indifference to male suffering. The switch in the gender of the person who brought the curse upon Narcisus, from young male lover to young female lover, goes unmentioned so that the more familiar topos can be reinforced: women destroy men. It is instruc- tive to compare this scene with yet another anonymous, contemporary reworking of the Ovidian tale, Narcisus.18
In this retelling, Narcisus is the ideal knight: pursued by all, but completely indifferent to love. The author generally follows Ovid except that he stresses the intervention of Nature at every point in the process of creation, and adapts the mores, setting, and rhetoric of the Roman original to models taken from twelfth-century court life. Again, there is no mention of the spurned young male lover whose prayer of revenge in Ovid instigates the hero’s punishment. Nor is Echo heard from. Instead, the unhappy lover is Dane´, daughter of a king, ostensibly the perfect match for the perfect knight. In a paradoxical twist on the tale, Dane´ means to seduce Narcisus by convincing him that she is his mirror image or at least a completely symmetrical partner. As she tells Narcisus at their first meeting: “assez somes d’ae´ / D’une maniere de biaute´” (we are the same age, of like beauty and status [124, 481–482]). And perfect he is: beautiful beyond measure, a boy of fifteen who loves to hunt above all else.19 For Dane´, he becomes an idol to be worshiped and adored. Sleepless after a first sighting, she laments as his image haunts her:20
Que je le vis si bel, si gent: / Ques pie´s vi es estriers d’argent, / Quel vis, quel cors, ques bras, ques mains! / Ques ert sa seles et ses lorains! / Ques eus, quel bouce por baisier! / (116, 281–285)
[How beautiful he was when I saw him, and so noble: What feet in those silver stirrups, what a face, what a body, what arms, what hands! What a saddle and harness! What eyes, what a mouth, made for kissing!]
The young girl is driven to confront him in the early hours of the morning as he heads out into the forest with his companions. Knowing where his party will likely pass, she hides in the bushes, wearing just a light tunic, and waits until his companions have gone by. When Narcisus finally appears, trailing far behind the others, she moves into the pathway and stands directly in front of the oncoming horse. Thinking that this lovely young woman in a flimsy gown is a fairy, Narcisus dismounts to address her. Her first and rather intemperate response is to kiss him and declare her great love (“Je te desir sor tote rien” [I want you more than anything] [124, 462]). Narcisus is frightened by her forwardness and tells her that they are too young for love (“car trop somes encor enfant” [for we are still children] [126, 496]). She then disrobes completely before him (“Et gete ariere son mantel: / Tote est nue, le cors a bel” [She throws off her cloak and is totally naked, her body beautiful] [126, 509–510]). When still he refuses to take her, she calls out for revenge: “Venus, who betrayed me, along with your son, the God of Love, – cast me from this peril and avenge that one for whom I am dying in despair!” (“Venus, qui m’a traie, / Ensanble qu diu d’amors ton fil, / Giete me hors de cest peril / Et de celui prende´s vengance / Por cui je muir sans esperance” [130, 612–616]).
Dane´’s reasoning at this point is interesting. She cannot understand why Narcisus should refuse her since she is: (a) the daughter of a king (“Donc ne sui jou file le roi?” [128, 546]); and (b) young, noble, beau- tiful, a virgin, and has beautiful hands and feet (“Sui genius femme, sui pucele, / Sui asse´s gente et asse´s bele, / Et s’ai biaux pie´s et beles mains” [128, 559–561]). She knows nothing more about him than his birthright and his beauty, has never exchanged a word with him, yet this seems to suffice. He, in turn, is expected to fall for her on the same visual and genealogical grounds. Scorned, however benignly, she calls out for revenge.21 In the next scene, her prayer is answered. Narcisus is out hunting a stag when he approaches a fountain to quench his thirst. The image he sees there he first mistakes for a water nymph.22 This detail recalls Narcisus’ own complicated family history. His father wasCephisus, a river, who ra
ped Liriope, a nymph. Thus, in his attraction to the supposed nymph, he is either replicating his father’s (heterosexual) desire and seeing himself, unwittingly, as his own mother or one of her clan; or he is enacting a potentially incestuous narrative in which he falls in love with his own mother, confusing her for himself. Most curious in the poet’s description is Narcisus’ blindness, for what he sees reflected before him is not just the face but also the body of the reflected image: “Mes mout esgarde viseument / Le vis, le cors que voit si gent; / Loe les eux, les mains, les dois” (But at length he stares and gazes at the face and the lovely body, admiring the eyes, hands, and fingers [132, 659–661]). Sexual difference seems not yet to have dawned on Narcisus. In his love of the image, he thus resembles ever more Dane´. Rich and beautiful, perfectly matched, they now suffer in kind, rivals over the projected image of perfect young knighthood.
Sodomy, Masculinity, and Law in Medieval Literature Page 18