zhc vest pc\pC RS PROCEEDINGS 10 - 14 June, 1999 Held at the University of Sydney Papers published by The Centre for Research and Education in the Arts University of Technology Sydney MISDIRECTIONS KATHY TOOHEY The story of the “Holy” Grail has passed through many hands, and has been reshaped and retold in many ways. As a result it can now come as a complete surprise to many to learn that in the story in which it first appeared, the grail was actually not holy. In Chrétien de Troyes unfinished Conte du Graal, the grail was not a chalice but a serving dish large enough to carry “a salmon or a lamprey”. And in that story its sanctity comes not from its own nature but from what we are later told it carried, the sacramental Host of the Mass. In this story there is also no grand quest for the grail. Instead, there is a scene where some fifty knights take leave of Arthur’s court in quest of adventure, but they are not going in quest of the grail. Rather, Girflet is determined to test himself at the Proud Castle, Kahedin to go and climb the Dolorous Mount, and all are responding to the challenges issued by the Hideous Damsel. Gauvain, too, would have been on his way to rescue the maiden of Montesclair, had not a challenge to his honour prevented it.1 At the same time Perceval does want to redeem his previous failure at the grail castle and find the answers to the questions he did not ask. His heart is in the right place. But the path he chooses to follow betrays all the naïve foolishness that has been so much a feature of his earlier career. From Chrétien’s account Perceval can be no more than a couple of days away from the grail castle, but he does not try to go back there. Instead, he presents a very novel plan for finding out the answers to the questions he did not ask. He declares he will “not spend two nights in a single lodging, or hear news of any adventurous passage without going by way of it” or hear of any knight worth fighting without seeking him out.2 Given such an approach, it is not surprising that the next time we hear of him, some five years have passed and he is still searching.3 Still, Perceval is the hero of this romance, isn’t he? Certainly, that is the general consensus of opinion, and this view gains some support from the fact that in two of the surviving manuscripts, the end of Chrétien’s work is marked with a note declaring that here ends the ‘old’, or the romance, of Perceval.4 Also supporting such a view is the prophecy that comes early in the work when a maiden of Arthur’s court laughs in response to Perceval’s greeting of her. There will never be, she declares, a better knight than this young man, the still unnamed Perceval, provided, that is, he lives long enough. It is a prophecy that is reinforced by the later advice related to us that the fool used to say of this maiden that she “will not laugh until she sees the man who will be supreme among 1 Chrétien De Troyes, Arthurian Romances, (tr. D D R Owen), London, J M Dent and Sons, 1987, pp. 436 -437 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. p. 456 4 Ibid. p. 526, n. 9234. (See also Chrétien De Troyes, Arthurian Romances, (tr. W W Kibler and C W Carroll), London, Penguin, 1991, p. 521, n. 29 knights”.5 As Peter Haidu notes, however, the prophecy is distinctly paradoxical because, “so far, Perceval has shown himself to be a thoroughgoing fool”.6 Nor is its reliability helped, at least in the reader’s mind, by the fact that the prophecy is predicated by the girl’s laughter, and validated by the corroborative prophecy of the Court Fool. Which naturally raises the suspicion of an ironic intent on the author’s part.7 It is also important to remember that later in this romance it is Sir Gauvain who will pass a test in the adventure of the Bed of Marvels, that will specifically validate Gauvain’s worth as a knight. What is more, he does this according to a specific set of criteria that go well beyond the superlatives applied to Perceval. The knight to pass such a test, we are told, must be “ideally handsome and wise, quite free of greed, valiant and bold, with a noble and loyal heart, without baseness or other wickedness”. Moreover, we read that “no knight can enter there8 and remain alive … if he is full of greed or at all tainted with deceitfulness or avarice. No coward or traitor survives there; and the faithless and perjurers cannot last there”.9 Yet to the noted French scholar Jean Frappier, among others, it is Perceval who has by this time risen to the “higher sphere” of knightly excellence, not Gauvain.10 The reason, I would suggest, is because we have become so conditioned to the position of Perceval in the later Grail stories, that even the best of scholars can fall into the trap of retrospective interpretation. At its worst, there are scholars who almost completely dismiss the entire Gauvain section from their thoughts when looking at Chrétien’s poem. For example, Foster Edwin Guyer in his summary of the work, simply gives an account of all that befalls Perceval then adds in a dismissive note at the end, “The rest of the romance deals with the numerous adventures of Gawain”; a slight both to Gauvain and Chrétien’s own skills as an author.11 In like vein, William Nitze in his analysis, divides the poem up into eleven episodes plus. Episodes 1 to 9 again follow Perceval’s adventures. Episode 10 relates Gauvain’s early adventures, while episode 11 relates the events of Perceval’s final appearance. The rest of the romance is again dismissed with a curt note that “the remaining 2,716 verses have nothing to do with the career of Perceval”.12 Yet Gauvain’s adventures make up some 4,000 of the 9,000 plus lines of the surviving incomplete text; almost half the entire work. Given this, it seems sheer folly to argue, as Norris Lacy has, that Chrétien has Gauvain is here serving a similar purpose to the role he played in Chrétien’s Lancelot and Yvain.13 In neither of these romances are we given any account of Gauvain’s independent adventures. In these and Chretien’s 5 Ibid. p. 388 Peter Haidu, Aesthetic Distance in Chrétien De Troyes, Geneve, Librairie Droz, 1968, p.143 7 Ibid. 8 The castle housing the bed 9 Arthurian Romances, (tr. D D R Owen), Op. Cit., pp.473-474. 10 Roger Sherman Loomis (ed), Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1959, p.189 11 Foster Erwin Guyer, Chrétien de Troyes: Inventor of the Modern Novel, London, Vision Press, 1957, p.115 12 William A Nitze, Perceval and the Holy Grail: An Essay on the Romance of Chrétien de Troyes, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1949, pp. 299 - 300 13 Norris J Lacy, The Craft of Chrétien de Troyes: An Essay on Narrative Art, Leiden, E J Brill, 1980, p. 100 6 other works, Gauvain’s appearances are presented solely as an adjunct to the story of the hero. But that is not the case in the Grail story, where Chrétien departs at many points from his previous formulae. It is not, however, my intent to argue here what the Conte du Graal is really about. Rather, I want to look at the way biases such as these have distorted the study of this work, through the consideration of two pertinent examples. The first of these turns around Gauvain’s first adventure. At Tintagel, Meliant de Liz is about to engage in a distinctly aggressive tournament against his foster father, Tibaut of Tintagel. Gauvain must pass through Tintagel on his way to defend his honour at Escavalon, and because of that he has decided not to involve himself in the Tournament. Unfortunately, Gauvain and his entourage are clearly conspicuous, and come to the attention of Tibaut’s elder daughter, Meliant’s par amor, and her young sister, la pucele as manches petites. A dispute breaks out between the two sisters, as to who is the more handsome knight, Meliant or the yet unidentified Gauvain. Gauvain’s determination not to become involved in the combat makes him the subject of a good deal of derision, but he remains true to it until that night when la pucele as manches petites seeks him out to beg him to be her champion on the morrow. Touched by this request, Gauvain accedes, and next day defeats Meliant before going on his way.14 To R S Loomis, this tale “is one of the happiest, if not the happiest of the poet’s retellings of an old story”.15 To Peter Haidu, on the other hand, “Gauvain’s championship of (la pucele as manches petites) is seen as not only ill-advised from the viewpoint of his personal honour but ludicrous in terms of knightly service”.16 So how can the one story attract two such radically different interpretations? The clue lies in the intent of each work. Loomis’ intent is to develop his thesis that “Celtic mythology is the principal root of the Arthurian tradition”, in particular with regard to the way it manifests in the poems of Chrétien de Troyes17, and the above comment is little more than an incidental observation. Haidu’s thesis, on the other hand, is that Chrétien intentionally used the techniques of irony and comedy “to provide a less than heroic view of both Perceval and Gauvain”.18 Now, as a basic proposition, this is something with which I can only concur. Nor should it be limited to Le Conte du Graal alone. In each of Chrétien’s Arthurian romances the hero will at some point be brought low or made to look foolish, often more than once. Where I must dispute with Haidu is in the way he interprets the particulars of the poem, and the ultimate conclusions he draws therefrom. 14 Arthurian Romances, (tr. D D R Owen), Op. Cit., pp 438 – 449 Roger Sherman Loomis, Arthurian Tradition and Chrétien de Troyes, Columbia, Columbia University Press, 1949, p. 430 16 Haidu, Op. Cit., p. 210 17 Loomis, Arthurian Tradition and Chrétien de Troyes, Op. Cit., pp. vii - ix 18 Haidu, Op. Cit., p. 114 15 To Haidu, “Perceval is socially ludicrous but useful, Gauvain is polished but destructive”.19 It is a proposition I could argue against at length. For brevity’s sake I would simply note that the proposal completely disregards the fact that Gauvain’s dealings with the Orguelleuse de Logres do eventually lead her to abandon a way of life that is destructive both to others and, in intent, ultimately to herself. And Gauvain’s success at the Castle of Marvels also breaks a social ‘curse’ that has lain over its inhabitants for many years.20 Part of the problem lies in the fact that Chrétien’s poems are so rich in significant detail that almost every study ends up being selective in its choice of the material from which the author argues his/her case, and Peter Haidu’s study is a case in point. Gauvain, Haidu argues, is guilty of “the psychological error … of misidentification” in seeing la pucele as manches petites as “the object of courtly service”.21 Further, in responding to the girl’s pleas, Gauvain is painted as forgoing his former justifiable resolve not to get involved, for distinctly frivolous reasons.22 But can the episode really be interpreted as simply as this? From the start of the adventure, Chrétien takes care to throw into question the rightness of Gauvain’s resolve not to get involved in the local dispute at Tintagel. The adventure begins with Gauvain sighting Meliant de Liz and his party on their way to Tintagel. Curious, he asks one of the squires in the party who they are and where they are going? The squire who answers is not one of Meliant’s men, but serves another knight, Droés d’Avés. Still, given that they are travelling together, it must be considered that he will be fighting on the same side as Meliant in the coming tournament. Which makes the squire’s urging of Gauvain to go and fight on Tibaut’s side quite curious, and at once alerts the reader to the possibility that something is not right here. That this is so is immediately affirmed by Gauvain’s surprised response, “But wasn’t Meliant of Liz brought up in Tibaut’s house?” The squire affirms this, relating how Meliant’s father had, on his death bed, entrusted his young son to his close friend, Tibaut. And, as the squire tells it, the tournament has really been brought about at the insistence of Tibaut’s own elder daughter, who has demanded that if Meliant wants her love, he must first prove his worth by challenging her father to tournament. Given that Meliant has already been down this path once before, when the 19 Ibid. p. 258 These events Haidu dismissively derides as irrelevancies, noting that Gawain “knights five hundred vaslez, many of them too old to bear arms”. Ibid. p. 258. In so doing, he 1) ignores the fact that most of those knighted are not too old to bear arms, 2) ignores the fact that Gawain, in knighting them, is redressing a social wrong imposed on them because the castle had until then no local lord to perform this vital social function, and 3) that this act of Gawain’s represents but the first fulfillment of a series of corrections of social wrongs that have been foretold will only come about when the ‘enchantments’ of the castle have been ended. Arthurian Romances, (tr. D D R Owen), Op. Cit., pp. 473 – 474, 491 – 492 21 Haidu, Op. Cit., p. 210 22 i.e. succumbing to flattery; Haidu, Op. Cit., p. 209 20 condition was that she could never love him until he had been knighted, one has to wonder if Meliant would really gain her love even if he did win the tournament. More likely, he would simply find himself facing a further test. Two important points emerge from this passage. The first is that Meliant’s challenge is clearly being represented as a betrayal of the man who has brought him up and cared for him from childhood. The second is that the character of the elder daughter is from the start thrown into question, being represented as manipulative, very self-centred, and totally lacking in any loyalty to her father. Gauvain, however, although apparently troubled by what he hears, is clearly uncomfortable with the squire’s urging him to take Tibaut’s side, and tells the squire he should go back to his own lord and say no more. This may just be a matter of feudal ethics, with Gauvain feeling uncomfortable at the vassal’s apparent disloyalty, but I would suggest that the more likely cause of Gauvain’s discomfort arises from the fact that the news places him in a moral dilemma. The next section clarifies matters, because Chrétien shifts his attention to Tintagel, where Tibaut has gathered “all his close relatives and cousins, and summoned all his neighbours”. Not to tournament, though, because Tibaut’s counselors have urged him not to take part in the tournament. Rather, they fear that Meliant wants to totally destroy them, and, in consequence, Tibaut has had “all the entrances to the fortress well walled up and cemented over”, leaving only “one small postern” for entrance and egress. Even there he keeps “a full wagon-load of iron” handy to help bar the way.23 Clearly, this ‘tournament’ is something very different from the social spectacles we have glimpsed in Chrétien’s earlier works, and smacks more of war than anything else24. It is an important point, yet one Haidu fails to pick up on. The squire’s urging Gauvain to take Tibaut’s side now becomes more understandable, and perhaps more honourable as well. Haidu also fails to mention that Gauvain’s arrival at Tintagel is the trigger that prompts Tibaut to let down his guard and venture into the fray. When Gauvain arrives and finds the gates closed, he dismounts beneath an oak tree in a nearby meadow. His presence is witnessed from Tibaut’s fortress, and his act of hanging his two shields from the tree leads a vavasour in the keep to leap to the conclusion that not one, but two of Arthur’s knights have arrived. Confident that they will take Tibaut’s side, the vavasour goes to urge his lord to go into the tourney.25 In sum, then, we find not only that there are good moral grounds for Gauvain to take part in the tournament, but that Gauvain is also, if inadvertently, the cause of the tournament 23 Arthurian Romances, (tr. D D R Owen), Op. Cit., p. 439 Which is not to ignore the fact that, as Chrétien relates it, there are those within Tintagel who regret the apparent cancellation of the contest, and whose concerns rest more with the loss of their own entertainment, than any possible consequences for their Lord Tibaut. 25 Arthurian Romances, (tr. D D R Owen), Op. Cit., p. 439. 24 going ahead. A point that will carry its own implicit moral burden when Gauvain fails to take part, and the fighting turns against the defenders. This brings us to the sibling rivalry of the two sisters, a point on which subject I don’t intend to spend too much time. We have already had a glimpse of the nastier side of the elder sister, and the violence with which she reacts to her younger sister’s suggestion that Meliant may not be the best man on the field. And the younger sister is also not without fault. Clearly she is deliberately teasing her sister in the earlier scene, her barbs rising to the level of torment the next day, after Gauvain has entered the tournament and defeated Meliant. That she can be as manipulative as her sister, is also affirmed by Chrétien’s own comment that “She certainly knows plenty of tricks and ruses and hasn’t taken long to become at an expert at them!”26 So is Gauvain, therefore, simply beguiled by this young girl’s flatteries? Well yes, and no. Gauvain is clearly charmed by the request, but it goes too far to suggest, as Haidu does, that Gauvain is guilty of misidentification, in seeing this young lady as a suitable object for courtly service.27 There are other factors at play here. When the adventure began, Gauvain was on his way to Escavalon to defend himself in combat against a charge of treason.28 The combat is set for forty days after Gauvain leaves Arthur’s court, but it is not true to say, as Haidu asserts, that when Gauvain reaches Tintagel, that combat is still forty days hence.29 The fact is that Chrétien has given us no clue as to how many of the forty days have passed by the time Gauvain reaches Tintagel. All he tells us as Gauvain leaves court is that he is going to tell us at length of the adventures Gauvain encountered, and the first of these begins with Gauvain’s sighting of Meliant’s party.30 . After the Tintagel episode, Chrétien goes back to a more precise chronology, and we find that it takes Gauvain only a couple more days to reach Escavalon. Which suggests that most of the trip was spent getting to Tintagel, and he probably did not have had much time left to finish his journey after all. At the start of the adventure, Gauvain is well equipped, anxious to reach Escavalon on time, and fit and ready for the fight to come. His personal honour is at stake, and Chrétien’s earlier works, particularly the Lancelot, make it clear just what sort of difficult moral dilemmas such a fixation can lead a knight into. It is just such an adventure that confronts Gauvain here, when he is called upon to intervene in a dispute where his help is clearly needed to see justice prevail. When he chooses not to, he quickly becomes an object of humiliating derision. As well, he is responsible for the lord of Tintagel putting himself and his supporters at risk, although he is unaware of this at the time. Later, when Gauvain is allowed into the castle at the end of the day, he finds himself having to explain his actions to the vavasour who offers him his hospitality for the night. Not long 26 Ibid., p.446 Haidu, Op. Cit. 28 Arthurian Romances, (tr. D D R Owen), Op. Cit., pp. 437 - 438. 29 Implying that Gawain clearly has plenty of time to take part in the tournament and still get to Escavalon on time. Haidu, Op. Cit., p.206 30 Arthurian Romances, (tr. D D R Owen), Op. Cit., pp. 439 - 440 27 afterwards, he finds himself having to justify himself all over again to Lord Tibaut, himself, who has only just been put off arresting Gauvain for misrepresenting himself as a knight31, by the vavasour’s threat to renounce his homage to Tibaut if he did. Both the vavasour and Lord Tibaut approve of Gauvain’s actions, once they have heard his reasons. Indeed, Tibaut goes so far as to offer Gauvain an escort to finish his journey. But events have clearly been taking their toll on Gauvain, because Gauvain actually admits to Tibaut that “there was something reprehensible and shameful in his behaviour”, before offering his explanation.32 (Another point the Haidu chooses to ignore.33) Clearly, Gauvain feels that his honour is already being undermined by the choices he has made, for the sake of defending his honour. Thus it is significant that it is at this point that la pucele as manches petites comes rushing in to plead with Gauvain to give her justice. Again, Gauvain finds himself being charged with a moral obligation to fight in the tournament, because the girl insists that she has “been treated quite shamefully on (his) account”.34 Tibaut offers Gauvain a way out, assuring him that he need not trouble himself with the request, since his daughter is still just a child. But Gauvain insists it would be wrong not to at least hear her out, and he asks her what wrong he can right and how? Her response is to ask him to “bear arms in the tourney, just for tomorrow, for love of me”. Gauvain accedes to her request, but only after confirming from her that this is the first time she has ever made such a request. For Peter Haidu, Gauvain is thereby abandoning the values he has worked so hard to defend, for the “flattering pleasure of being the first knight who ever bore arms for the little girl”35. But I would suggest that this is a gross simplification. Gauvain is clearly touched and honoured by the girl’s request, but there is no hint in Chrétien that it is flattery that drives his response. The girl’s request gives Gauvain the chance to back out of a position that he is becoming less and less comfortable with. At the same time, in doing honour to her, he is also honouring her father Tibaut as well, the lord of Tintagel. And finally, in acceding to her request, he is offering her a rite of passage into a more grown-up world. That this is so, and that this is important, is affirmed by Tibaut’s own response. Although he has twice insisted to Gauvain that there was no need for him to pay any attention to his daughter, he is clearly delighted by Gauvain’s decision and guides his daughter as to what she must do next day. It is his idea that she should provide Gauvain with a token of her affection, and when she protests that her sleeves are too small, he calls for one to be specially made up, and then tells her what she should do with it next day.36 I noted at the start of this discussion the way various modern scholars have significantly downplayed the role of Gauvain in this romance because of the pre-eminent position they 31 The elder daughter’s charge. Ibid.,pp. 443 445 33 Haidu, Op. Cit., pp.208 - 209 34 Because of the abuse she has suffered at the hands of her sister for insisting that Gawain is a better knight then Tibaut. 35 Haidu, Op. Cit., p. 209 36 Arthurian Romances, (tr. D D R Owen), Op. Cit., p. 440 32 have assigned to Perceval. Much the same thing, I would suggest, though more subtly managed, is also in process in Peter Haidu’s study. For although he has argued that Chrétien sought to provide a less than heroic view of both knights, he still clearly holds Perceval in higher esteem than Gauvain.37 It is a position he reiterates in his concluding remarks. “Each of (Gauvain’s) adventures”, he asserts, “leads to humiliation and a revelation of inadequacy”. And further, “All of Gauvain’s adventures are vitiated by their irrelevance to realistic considerations”.38 It is an assertion, I would argue that can not be sustained when the particular arguments on which it is based are examined in detail, and it arises, as I have suggested, out of a very modern trap. Scholars today cannot help but have their ideas shaped by the works of those who have gone before, even when they choose to stand against the common consensus of opinion. Add to this the academic’s need to present and justify a distinctly new position regarding a much-debated work, and it is easy to fall prey to selectivity in the way you justify your arguments, consciously or unconsciously. Peter Haidu’s study, I would argue, is a case in point, and he has been undone by an excessively selective approach to the evidence in support of his theory. That and the common fault of following the prevailing academic wisdom of the time in the way he has chosen to view the relative positions in the romance of Perceval and Gauvain. Which brings me to my second example. In Brigitte Cazelles’ The Unholy Grail, we find another illustration of the way in which an otherwise well argued, carefully researched work can be undone by a simple textual misinterpretation. The basic hypothesis may be summarised as follows. Behind the story of Le Conte du Graal, lies the tale of a blood feud between Arthur’s kingdom, and Perceval’s own family, which, had the romance been completed by its original author, would have eventually seen the matter come to the head in a duel between Perceval and Gauvain. This idea is the foundation upon which Ms Cazelles has based her theory; a “social reading” of Chrétien de Troyes last work. In Ms Cazelles’ words, “the earliest extant Grail narrative appears to lie in the ideological function of discourse at the hands of contending factions as they seek to justify their respective claims to pre-eminence.”39 The two factions to which she refers are those of Arthur and “the Grail lineage”, Perceval’s own family. Her arguments hang on the geographical identification of what Chrétien calls the illes de mer, the Isles of the Sea, where Perceval’s parents once held such a pre-eminent place. 37 See Notes 16 and 17 above. Haidu, Op. Cit., p. 258 39 Brigitte Cazelles, The Unholy Grail, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1996, p.226. In passing, it is worth noting that Ms Cazelles summary of the Conte du Graal is another classic example of the way so many scholars down play Gawain’s part in the romance. After describing Perceval’s encounter with his hermit-uncle, she concludes her summary by noting dismissively; “The story returns to the mundane adventures of Gauvain and … leaves Perceval’s quest unfinished.” p. 3. 38 Here, Ms Cazelles, following the earlier work of Madeleine Blaess, seeks to equate the illes de mer with the epithet des illes as it applies to the title of Arthur’s enemy King Rion, Li rois des illes, and as an identifier in the name Clamadeu des Illes.40 On the basis of this identification, Cazelles postulates a clan of the Isles, to which Perceval’s family, Rion, and Clamadeu all belong, which is hostile to Arthur. While acknowledging that the Chrétien’s allusions to the “Isles” lacks “geographical specificity”, Cazelles, drawing in part from later tradition41, goes on to argue for a “northern location” for the Isles. From there, she skips to Geoffrey of Monmouth’s account of Arthur’s campaigns against the Scots and Picts, and in particular, Wace’s expansion of that account, which she interprets as evidence of Arthur’s “lethal aggression” against the “victimised … people of Scotland”.42 In so doing, she neatly overlooks Wace’s own earlier testimony that Arthur had gone to Scotland because the peoples of that land had made war against him and because of the aid they had given Cheldric the Saxon.43 To Cazelles, Perceval’s father was a victim of Arthur’s aggression against the Scots and the Picts, and it is this aggression, as she reads it, that lies at the heart of her theorized hostility between the clan of the Isles and Arthur’s own kingdom. All of which is very much dependent both on the identification of the Isles of the Sea with some northern part of Britain, and on the equation of the Isles epithets with the Isles of the sea. But are these interpretations valid? I confess I fell in to the trap of identifying the Isles with the Isles of the sea in my early readings of the Conte du Graal. That was until was one brief passage later in the conte, gave me the clue something was amiss. That, and a passage in Geoffrey’s Prophecies of Merlin. Among Chrétien’s works, the term les Illes de mer occurs only in the Conte du Graal, and there it is used only three times.44 The first two occur in the passage in which Perceval’s mother is telling him his family’s history45. The last reference, however, occurs much later in the text, in the passage that relates the arrival at Arthur’s court as prisoner, of the Orgueilleus de la Lande following Perceval’s defeat of him. After the knight has told his story, Gauvain can only express his bafflement. And he demands to know just whom this other knight could be who has defeated as worthy a knight as the 40 Ibid. pp.8-9, 49-53. In particular, the Vulgate Cycle in respect of the kingdom of Rion. Ibid. p49. 42 Ibid. p.1 43 Wace and Layamon, Arthurian Chronicles, (tr. Eugene Mason), London, Dent, 1912, p.47 44 G D West, An Index of Proper Names in French Arthurian Verse Romances 1150 – 1300, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1969, p.92 41 45 Arthurian Romances, (tr. D D R Owen), p.379. “N'ot chevalier de si haut pris, tant redouté ne tant cremu, biax fix, com votre peres fu, en toutes les illes de mer. Biax fix, bien vos poëz vanter que vos ne dechaez de rien de son lineage ne del mien, que je sui de chevaliers nee, des meillors de ceste contree. Es illes de mer n'ot lignage meillor del mien en mon eage”, Chrétien de Troyes, Le Roman de Perceval, Keith Busby (Ed.), Tubingen, Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1993, p. 18, ll. 416 - 426 Orgueilleus de la Lande. “For I’ve never heard any knight named in all the isles of the sea (my emphasis) … who could compete with this one in arms or chivalry”46. The trouble is that if we accept the argument that the term refers to some place in Scotland, the use of the term here is not compatible with the context of the passage. Gauvain is describing this knight in superlative terms that simply lose all their weight if we follow Cazelles hypothesis and confine the knight’s renown to just one part of Scotland. The same holds true as well for the other proposal that has been advanced earlier this century that identifies the Illes de Mer with the Hebrides.47 Nor should it be forgotten that Chrétien has already, in his account of the knight’s tent site, left us with the distinct impression that the Orgueilleus de la Lande is Welsh.48 It is a passage in Geoffrey though which gives the clue as to what I would argue is the correct interpretation of what was meant by the phrase in the time of both Geoffrey and Chrétien. In the Prophecies of Merlin section of History of the Kings of Britain, we read the following reference to Arthur; “The Boar of Cornwall shall bring relief from these invaders, for it will trample their necks beneath its feet. “The Islands of the Ocean49 shall be given into the power of the Boar and it shall lord it over the forests of Gaul. “The House of Romulus shall dread the Boar’s savagery and the end of the Boar will be shrouded in mystery.”50 Again, the issue is one of compatibility. The Islands of the Ocean are here placed on a par with both Gaul and Rome, and this makes no sense if we accept that the Islands of the Ocean are just than the Hebrides or a part of Scotland. 46 Arthurian Romances, (tr. D D R Owen), p.428. Busby, Op.Cit.,, ll.4086-4095. It should be noted that Busby’s notes to the text at this point reveal no variant readings on the use of the term “isles de mer” that might be used to bring into question the use of the phrase here. 47 R D Graeme Ritchie, Chrétien de Troyes and Scotland: The Zaharoff Lecture for 1952, London, Oxford University Press 1952, p.19. West, Verse Index, Op. Cit. pp. 90,92. Ritchie does not actually present any argument for his identification, simply stating in regard to Perceval’s father that he “illustrious family connexions in the ‘Isles de mer’, the Insulae Oceani, the Western Isles”. In an earlier entry on the “Illes, des”, West notes that “des Illes” has been identified by Brugger as the Western Isles or Hebrides. 48 “All around the tent, which was the fairest in the world, had been erected leafy bowers, arbours and shelters made in the Welsh fashion.” Chrétien De Troyes, Arthurian Romances, (tr. D D R Owen), Op. Cit. pp.382-383 49 “Insule occeani” in the Latin text. The Historia Regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Acton Griscom (edit.) & Robert Ellis Jones (tr.), Geneva, Slatkine Reprints, 1929, p.385 Graeme Ritchie, Op. Cit., p. 19, specifically equates the “Isles de Mer” with the “Insulae Oceani”. 50 Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain, (tr. Lewis Thorpe), London, Penguin, 1966, pp. 171-172. Later in the text, though after the section on Arthur, Geoffrey actually clarifies what he means by “the Islands of the Ocean”. It comes in that section that tells of Malgo’s subjugation of the whole island (of Britain) and “the six neighbouring51 Islands of the Ocean: that is Ireland, Iceland, Gotland, the Orkneys, Norway and Denmark”. 52 This identification is not without its own problems, since from our perspective we know that Denmark and Norway are not islands, but it is possible that the names were used in different ways at the time Geoffrey was writing. In Griscom’s edition, cited above, the accompanying notes include a detailed discussion of the ‘islands’ cited above. And there the suggestion is raised that terms such as Norway and Denmark refer to Scandanavian and Danish settlements in Scotland and other northern parts of the British Isles, rather than to the homelands themselves.53 That is not an issue I intend to pursue here, but what is clear is that in Geoffrey the term Insule occeani includes at least the whole of the British Isles54, and, possibly, other lands beyond. Such an interpretation also fits in well with the use of the term les Illes de mer in Chrétien. It clearly accounts for the way in which the Orgueilleus de la Lande, who appears to be Welsh, can be said by Gauvain to have no match in all the isles of the sea. Nor should we forget that in Chrétien the term les Illes de mer functions not as a geographical term but as a superlative identifier. Thus, of Perceval’s father we are told “There was no knight in all the Isles of the Sea who was of such great merit”. And of his mother, “there was no family better than mine in the Isles of the Sea”. When we take this into account Cazelles contention that both Arthur and Perceval’s family represent two contending factions begins to look very shaky. If the term les Illes de mer is no more specific than the British Isles, her attempt to argue that Perceval’s family were victims of Arthur’s war of attrition against the Scots and Picts must be seen as being without foundation. Nor can the epithet des illes realistically be used in such circumstances to allow a link to be made between Perceval’s family and either Rion or Clamadeu. There is also a problem of chronology. The one clue Chrétien gives us as to the date of Perceval’s father’s wounding and his family’s decline is the death of Uther. As related by Perceval’s mother, the details are not precise, but the picture Chrétien gives us seems to fall into four parts: i. The wounding of Perceval’s father which leaves him crippled (and, it is generally agreed, impotent); 51 My emphasis. Ibid. p.263. In the Latin text, Ireland is hyberniam and Denmark, daciam. The Historia Regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Acton Griscom (edit.) & Robert Ellis Jones (tr.), Geneva, Slatkine Reprints, 1929, p.504. 53 The Historia Regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Op. Cit., pp. 539-546, notes 35, 36, 92, 95-97, and 106. 54 It should be noted here that in the recently published new translation of the Prose Lancelot, “les Illes de mer” is specifically translated as the British Isles. Lancelot-Grail: The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post Vulgate in Translation: Volume 2 – Lancelot, Parts I, II, III, (tr. Samuel N Rosenberg {parts I & III} and Carleton W Carroll), New York, Garland, 1993, p. 246 and n.2 52 ii. His decline into poverty; iii. The death of Uther; iv. The impoverishment and disinheritance of noble men, the destitution of the land and the degradation of the poor. Such things (barring the death of Uther) might well be the products of war, but if so Chrétien makes no mention of it. Rather, the picture he paints is of a land fallen into chaos after the death of its king. And this is in keeping with Geoffrey’s account. - Geoffrey tells us that; “as soon as the Saxons heard of the death of King Uther, they invited their own countrymen over from Germany, appointed Colgrim as their leader and began to do their utmost to exterminate the Britons.”55 It was only after the Saxons had overrun a large part of the land56 that the Archbishop Dubricius calls all the other bishops together to bestow the crown on Arthur. Arthur then has to gather an army together before marching on York where the Saxons are based. Cogrim, whose army consists of both Saxons, and Scots and Picts, marches out to meet Arthur in battle beside the River Douglas. Here, Arthur is victorious and drives Colgrim back to York where Arthur lays siege against him. The siege is broken by Colgrim’s brother, Baldulf, and Arthur is forced to withdraw to London, where, after taking council, he sends to King Hoel in Brittany for help. Hoel assembles his army and lands at Southampton on the ‘next fair wind’, and it is there that Arthur meets him. After a few days they march to the town of Lincoln which is then under siege by the Saxons. Breaking the siege, Arthur pursues the Saxons to Caledon Wood where they eventually surrender. Disarmed, the Saxons are given permission to return to Germany, but betray this act of clemency by sailing south to Cornwall, again over running the land all the way to Somerset, where they lay siege to the city of Bath. News of this, forces Arthur, who is in the north, to break off his punitive action against the Scots and Picts, to march south. The Saxons are defeated in a great battle where many of their leaders were slain. The remnants are left to Cador of Cornwall to contain, while Arthur heads north once more to rescue Hoel who is being besieged in Alclud by the Scots and Picts. Arthur breaks the siege, and pursues the Scots and Picts into Moray, but is again forced to break off the assault because of the invasion of Gilmaurius the King of Ireland. Only after Gilmaurius has been defeated is Arthur able to complete his final defeat of the Scots and Picts. It is at this point that we hear of the intervention of the Scottish bishops to plead for mercy for their defeated countrymen. This done, Arthur moves to York where he rebuilds the churches destroyed by the Saxons, and, significantly, restores “to their family honours the nobles who had been driven out by the Saxon invasions.”57 Small wonder, then, that Perceval’s mother 55 56 57 Geoffrey of Monmouth, (tr. Lewis Thorpe), Op. Cit., p.214 “all that section of the island which stretches from the River Humber to the sea named Caithness.” Ibid. Ibid. pp.212-221. These included Loth, Urian and Auguseleus. referred to Arthur as “good king Arthur”.58 It is a line that Cazelles has to admit she finds problematical.59 Chrétien may not be precise in his chronology but he does give the reader the clear impression that the flight of Perceval’s parents into exile in the Waste Forest followed close on the heels of Uther’s death. Geoffrey too, in this section, gives us few details about the passage of time over the course of the events he relates. What he does do though is give us a lot of details from which we can build some picture of the chronology.60 Thus, Dubricius does not crown Arthur until after the Saxons have over-run a large part of the island, a campaign that must have taken weeks at least to complete, if not months. Nor could Arthur and Hoel have raised their armies quickly. To that we can add time for several long army marches, the siege of York61, and seasonal factors such as the need for favourable winds for passages by sea. Taking all this into account, the gap between the death of Uther and Arthur’s final assault against the Scots and Picts seems to be better measured in several months, if not a year or more.62 Again, Cazelles’ theories collapse when the details are examined. Thus considered, the reasons for her arguments foundering are two-fold. The first lies in the problem of trying to interpret the text of one literary work on the basis of different work by another author. It is one thing to note significant parallels between different texts that might indicate that the author of the later text had some familiarity with the earlier work or a common source. It is a very different matter to base your interpretation of events in the later text, on details in the earlier one. This is to treat literature as objective history, which is clearly contrary to the way literature in general, and Arthurian literature of the Middle Ages in particular, develops. It only requires a quick survey of that literature to demonstrate that authors of the period gave little thought to maintaining consistency in details at least, with earlier works. The Continuations of the Conte du Graal, provide a very good example. 58 Chrétien De Troyes, Arthurian Romances, (tr. D D R Owen), p.380. “Le bon roi Artu”, Busby, Op.Cit.,, p. 19, l. 446 59 Cazelles, Op. Cit., n.86 pp.260-261. Her argument, predicated by the notion of a blood feud between her own family and Arthur, is that in speaking of Arthur in such terms she is seeking to preserve Perceval from the sort of customs that would require him to avenge his family’s fall. As an argument it appears contrived and less than convincing. 60 That this lack of detail could have been an irritant to readers is perhaps affirmed by the attention the author(s) of the Prose Merlin and its continuation pay to the sequence of events. There is thus more than a month between the death of Uther and the appearance of the Sword in the Stone on Christmas eve, and it is not until the following Pentecost that Arthur is crowned. Even then, it is only after the revolt of the 6 kings that the Saxons enter the picture. Lancelot-Grail: The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post Vulgate in Translation: Volume 1 – The History of the Holy Grail; The Story of Merlin, (tr. E Jane Burns and Carol J Chase, respectively), New York, Garland, 1993, pp. 211-229 61 This was only broken after an early rescue attempt had failed and reinforcements had been brought in from Germany. 62 Even longer if it is allowed that only certain times of the year were suitable for campaigning. Certainly such seasonal factors are likely to have been familiar to Geoffrey’s contemporary readers, and possibly, therefore, taken for granted. In the first Continuation we find two very different accounts of the location of the Grail castle. One closely follows Chrétien’s account, particularly in the description of the castle’s proximity to an unfordable river, although here it is a forest that seems at first to screen the castle from Gauvain63, rather than the crag that hides it from Perceval.64 The other account though is very different, the castle now being by the sea at the end of a long causeway65. The other problem with Cazelles’ hypothesis is one of intentionality. Her work is punctuated with the language of value judgements. “After having been victimised by the Saxon invaders, the people of Scotland … must now endure his (Arthur’s) lethal aggression.”66 “And the origin of their (the postulated clan of the Isles) resentment may well be the king’s (Arthur’s) unfair aggression against the Scots”67. And “In the beginning there was violence: such is, in the context of the ‘social’ reading presented in this book, the genesis of the Grail”68. In truth, in the beginning, at least as far as Cazelles’ work is concerned, there was social politics, and the imposition of modern political and feminist values regarding male aggression on the works of authors from a distant time, to whom such values would have been very alien, indeed. Which is not to say that Chrétien may not have had his own political agenda in writing the conte, and perhaps even a distinctly subversive one. If so, it will have been one in keeping with the times in which he wrote. 63 Chrétien de Troyes, Perceval: The Story of the Grail, Nigel Bryant (tr.),Cambridge, D S Brewer, 1982., p. 110. Interestingly, this account, which is closer to Chrétien, comes from the long redaction of the First Continuation, and is thus likely to be a later addition than the second account cited below. Jessie L Weston, The Legend of Sir Perceval I-II, Geneve, Slatkine Reprints, 1906-09, Book I, p.12 – 14. See also for example, Keith Busby, Gauvain in Old French Literature, Amsterdam, Radopi, 1980, pp. 152 ff., Roger Sherman Loomis (ed.), Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1959, pp.212-214 64 Chrétien De Troyes, Arthurian Romances, (tr. D D R Owen), p.414. 65 Chrétien de Troyes, Perceval: The Story of the Grail, Nigel Bryant (tr.), p. 128. 66 Cazelles, Op. Cit., p. 50. My italics. Her portrait of the Scots as victims is not really in keeping with the sequence of events related by Geoffrey cited above. 67 Ibid., my italics. 68 Ibid., again, my italics. BIBLIOGRAPHY Keith Busby, Gauvain in Old French Literature, Amsterdam, Radopi, 1980 Brigitte Cazelles, The Unholy Grail, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1996 Chrétien de Troyes, Le Roman de Perceval, Keith Busby (Ed.), Tubingen, Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1993 Chrétien de Troyes, Perceval: The Story of the Grail, Nigel Bryant (tr.),Cambridge, D S Brewer, 1982 Chrétien De Troyes, Arthurian Romances, (tr. D D R Owen), London, J M Dent and Sons, 1987 Chrétien De Troyes, Arthurian Romances, (tr. W W Kibler and C W Carroll), London, Penguin, 1991 The Historia Regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Acton Griscom (edit.) & Robert Ellis Jones (tr.), Geneva, Slatkine Reprints, 1929 Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain, (tr. Lewis Thorpe), London, Penguin, 1966 R D Graeme Ritchie, Chrétien de Troyes and Scotland: The Zaharoff Lecture for 1952, London, Oxford University Press 1952 Foster Erwin Guyer, Chrétien de Troyes: Inventor of the Modern Novel, London, Vision Press, 1957 Peter Haidu, Aesthetic Distance in Chrétien De Troyes, Geneve, Librairie Droz, 1968 Norris J Lacy, The Craft of Chrétien de Troyes: An Essay on Narrative Art, Leiden, E J Brill, 1980 Lancelot-Grail: The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post Vulgate in Translation: Volume 1 – The History of the Holy Grail; The Story of Merlin, (tr. E Jane Burns and Carol J Chase, respectively), New York, Garland, 1993 Lancelot-Grail: The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post Vulgate in Translation: Volume 2 – Lancelot, Parts I, II, III, (tr. Samuel N Rosenberg {parts I & III} and Carleton W Carroll), New York, Garland, 1993 Roger Sherman Loomis, Arthurian Tradition and Chrétien de Troyes, Columbia, Columbia University Press, 1949 Roger Sherman Loomis (ed), Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1959 William A Nitze, Perceval and the Holy Grail: An Essay on the Romance of Chrétien de Troyes, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1949 Wace and Layamon, Arthurian Chronicles, (tr. Eugene Mason), London, Dent, 1912G D West, An Index of Proper Names in French Arthurian Verse Romances 1150 – 1300, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1969 Jessie L Weston, The Legend of Sir Perceval I-II, Geneve, Slatkine Reprints, 1906-09 THE GRAIL QUEST PAPERS . Proceedings of The Grail Quest, 1999 EDITOR Associate Professor Barbara Poston-Anderson ASSISTANT EDITOR Anne-Marie Morrison First published by the Centre for Research and Education in the Arts (CREA), University of Technology, Sydney, 2000. The Grail Quest Papers ISBN 1-86365-814-9 This volume is a record of the proceedings of The Grail Quest, 1999. Inclusion was dependent on the author's submission of a written paper for publication. Copyright for individual papers remains with the author. Papers were submitted in a range of formats and styles and were for the most part reproduced as submitted. Authors are responsible for the content of their papers. Acknowledgements: The editor wishes to thank all the contributors to this volume. Special thanks are also extended to Anne-Marie Morrison for her work as Assistant Editor, to Helen Cousens, Michelle Reeks, and Lucy Bantermalis who provided editorial assistance and to Annabel Robinson who provided the cover design based on artwork from the Grail Quest Newsletter. Centre for Research and Education in the Arts University of Technology, Sydney P.O. Box 222 Lindfield, N.S.W. 2070 P: (02) 9514 5277 F: (02) 9514 5556 &R,,40112- 2- 54' 7. et 00 Contents Haydn Middleton: The Laughter of Arthur (Keynote) Arthur and Albion (Keynote) 7 13 Ruth Drobnak: Which Way to Faerie Land 16 Kathy Toohey: King Arthur's Swords Misdirections 26 39 Helen Fulton: The Three Faces of Arthur in Early Welsh Literature 52 Alice Mills: The Absence of Arthur in Arthurian Children's Literature: Helen Clare, Meriol Trevor, Susan Cooper and Moses Aaron 74 Rosemary Ross J ohnston: The Arthurian Paradigm: Representations of Female Subjectivity and Reflections of Female Space 82 Margaret Bradstock: Sir Galahad: Grail Winner Extraordinaire Isolde Martyn: The Use of the Arthurian Legend by Rulers of England during The Eleventh to Sixteenth Centuries 89 95 John Coombs: Arthur in Early Welsh Poetry Arthur in Medieval Welsh Prose Merlin, Geoffrey of Monmouth and Other Loose Ends 112 121 129 Adrian Strong: 'Dear Uncle, What Ails You?' Origins of the Grail Question in Wolfram's Parzival and Why it Remains Unanswered 137 Andrew Enstice: Laying Claim to Camelot Gillian Polack: A Jewish King Arthur? A Brief Introduction to Medieval Jewish Arthurian Literature 143 152 John Coombs, Emma Yarrow, Kathy Toohey: The Never-Ending Story: Panel 157 Norman Talbot: Morgan's Grail: A Study in Elf-queens 160 Kate Forsyth Magic: How do you do it in Writing 176 Maggie Hamilton The Relevance of the Quest in Contemporary Life 179 Felicity Pulman The Lady of Shalott — A Journey of the Imagination 184 On Creativity Exploring the Realm of the Other 191 193 Kate Forsyth