Abstract
To continue our discussion of medieval texts in which violence against women results in physical impairment, this chapter will examine texts that portray women punished by both divine agents and humans (both male and female) under supernatural enchantment. In Marie de France’s Bisclavret, Thomas Chestre’s Sir Launfal, and Robert Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid, a woman behaving subversively soon suffers a violent punishment that causes her to incur a physical impairment at the hands of a supernatural agent. The effect of incorporating a supernatural agent into the narrative is twofold. First, supernatural agents of punishment create an opening in the narrative that allows for a critical assessment of discourses that present women as inherently defective in both body and character. Second, the supernatural punishments represent an intrinsic narrative drive to control the deviancy that the unruly female character creates. However, instead of neatly concluding the narrative, the bodily impairments caused by the punishment of the character end up producing alternative narratives that challenge common medieval notions of femaleness, femininity, and disability. As a result, these alternative narratives work against the fundamental narrative drive to control textual deviancy—represented by unruly women—by critiquing the very notions of femininity and disability upon which the text’s deviancy is based.
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Notes
In the prologue to her Lais, Marie states that she writes for a “nobles reis” (noble king) who is most likely Henry II (l. 43). All French citations from Marie de France come from Les Lais de Marie de France, ed. Jean Rychner (Paris: Librairie Honoré Champion, 1981) and will be cited parenthetically by line number. English translations of Marie de France are from The Lais of Marie de France, trans. Robert Hanning and Joan Ferrante (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1978) and correspond to the French citations in line number.
Recently, scholars have attributed the Vie seinte Audree to Marie. See June Hall McCash, “La vie seinte Audree: A Fourth Text by Marie de France?” Speculum 77.3 (July 2002), 744–77.
Stephen G. Nichols, “Working Late: Marie de France and the Value of Poetry,” in Women in French Literature: A Collection of Essays, ed. Michel Guggenheim (Saratoga: ANMA Libri, 1988), p. 10 [7–16].
Nichols notes that Marie’s writing reveals the drastic changes in culture brought about by the Norman Conquest in England, particularly “how the new aristocratic centers of power, the royal and seigneurial courts, replaced the Church as patrons for a new literature in the vernacular” (p. 10). I borrow the term “hybrid” from Jeffrey Jerome Cohen when describing Anglo-Norman culture in order to denote the complicated intermixing of Anglo-Saxon and Norman peoples after the Norman Conquest. This intermixture did not easily produce a stable “English” identity. As Cohen notes, the term “hybrid” signifies “a fusion and a disjunction; a conjoining of differences that cannot simply harmonize” (p. 2, author’s emphasis). While we may at first consider groups such as the Normans, Anglo-Saxons, and English as constant and unchanging, Cohen explains that these groups “were heterogenous solidarities that altered over time, both in composition and self-definition” (p. 4). The imposition of an invading culture upon the conquered, intermarriage between native and invading peoples, and the formation of new collective identities necessarily leads to an upheaval in notions of collective culture and values. See Cohen, Hybridity, Identity, and Monstrosity in Medieval Britain: On Difficult Middles (New York: Palgrave, 2006).
Michelle A. Freeman, “Marie de France’s Poetics of Silence: The Implications for a Feminine Translatio,” PMLA 99 (1984): 860–83.
Rupert T. Pickens, “Marie de France and the Body Poetic,” in Gender and Text in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Jane Chance (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996), p. 135 [135–71].
On lycanthropy: Jean Jorgenson, “The Lycanthropy Metaphor in Marie de France’s Bisclavret,” Selecta: Journal of the Pacific Northwest Council on Foreign Languages 15 (1994): 24–30, and Kathryn I. Holten, “Metamorphosis and Language in the Lay of Bisclavret,” in In Quest of Marie de France: A Twelfth-Century Poet, ed. Chantal A. Maréchal (Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 1992), pp. 193–211. On the human-beast binary, see Freeman, and Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner, “Of Men and Beasts in Bisclavret,” Romanic Review 81:3 (1991): 251–69.
Kathryn I. Holten, “Metamorphosis and Language in the Lay of Bisclavret,” in In Quest of Marie de France: A Twelfth-Century Poet, ed. Chantal A. Maréchal (Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 1992), pp. 193–211. On the human-beast binary
Freeman, and Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner, “Of Men and Beasts in Bisclavret,” Romanic Review 81:3 (1991): 251–69.
Kerry Shea, “Male Bonding, Female Body: The Absenting of Woman in’Bisclaretz ljóð,’ “ in Cold Counsel: Women in Old Norse Literature and Mythology: A Collection of Essays, eds. Sarah M. Anderson and Karen Swenson (New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 245 [245–59].
Paul Creamer, “Woman-hating in Marie de France’s Bisclavret,” The Romanic Review 93:3 (2002): 259 [259–74].
Holten, p. 199. R. I. Moore has famously documented the links between lepers, criminals, and even non-Christians in his The Formation of a Persecuting Society (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987). Though acts of persecution may not be as linear or uniform as Moore makes them seem, groups of Others, such as lepers, Jews, and prostitutes were segregated from mainstream society either through dress or geographical location.
See also William Sayers, “Bisclavret in Marie de France: A Reply,” Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies 1 (1981): 81–2 [259–74].
Often, congenital defects were thought to visually demonstrate the sins of parents. See Irina Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe: Thinking About Physical Impairment during the high Middle Ages, c. 1100–1400 (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 154–5.
Saul Brody examines the links between sin and leprosy in The Disease of the Soul: Leprosy in Medieval Literature (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974). See pp. 99–105, for a more detailed discussion of the medieval understandings of leprosy.
Klaus van Eickels, “Gendered Violence: Castration and Blinding as Punishment for Treason in Normandy and Anglo-Norman England,” in Violence Vulnerability, and Embodiment: Gender and History, eds. Shani D’Cruze and Anupama Rao (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), p. 104n5.
Pickens, pp. 139–40. See also Jean-Charles Huchet, “Nom de femme et écriture féminine au Moyen Age: Les Lais de Marie de France,” Poétique 48 (1981): 407–30.
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1991), p. 185; the emphasis is Butler’s.
I use the term “pass” in Erving Goffman’s sense. Goffman notes that those with “stigmatizing afflictions” that are not readily visible (which can be racial, physical, or behavioral) may be able to “pass” as “normal.” Those who “pass,” however, are frequently concerned with the threat of being “discredited” and, as a result, stigmatized by others. See Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963), pp. 73–91.
Sharon Kinoshita, “Cherchez la femme: Feminist Criticism and Marie de France’s Lai de Lanval,” Romance Notes 34.3 (1994): 272 [263–73].
Jacqueline Eccles, “Feminist Criticism and the Lay of Lanval: A Reply,” Romance Notes 38.3 (1998): 282 [281–5].
The earliest source for Chestre’s tale is Marie de France’s Lanval. His primary source is most likely the Middle English Sir Landevale, a version of Marie’s lai. The Old French Graelant is another possible source for Chestre’s rendering of the tale. See Anne Laskaya and Eve Salisbury, “Sir Launfal: Introduction,” in The Middle English Breton Lays (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 1995), pp. 201–2.
A.C. Spearing, The Medieval Poet as Voyeur: Looking and Listening in Medieval Love-Narratives (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 106.
Myra Tokes, “Lanval to Sir Launfal: A Story Becomes Popular,” in The Spirit of Medieval English Popular Romance, Eds. Ad Putter and Jane Gilbert (London: Longman, 2000), p. 59 [56–77].
Myra Seaman, “Thomas Chestre’s Sir Launfal and the Englishing of Medieval Romance,” Medieval Perspectives 15 (2000): 105–19.
I borrow this term from Shearle Furnish, “Civilization and Savagery in Thomas Chestre’s Sir Launfal,” Medieval Perspectives 3 (1988): 137–149.
Dinah Hazell, “The Blinding of Gwennere: Thomas Chestre as Social Critic,” in Arthurian Literature XX, ed. Keith Busby (Cambridge, UK: DS Brewer, 2003), p. 123 [123–44].
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Of Giants: Sex, Monsters, and the Middle Ages (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999).
Geneviève Bürhrer-Thierry, “ ‘Just Anger’ or ‘Vengeful Anger’?: The Punishment of Blinding in the Early Medieval West,” in Anger’s Past: The Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages, Ed. Barbara H. Rosenwein (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), p. 76 [75–91].
Edward Wheatley, “ ‘Blind’ Jews and Blind Christians: Metaphorics of Marginalization in Medieval Europe,” Exemplaria 14.2 (October 2002): 351–82; and Stumbling Blocks Before the Blind: Medieval Constructions of a Disability (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010).
Eve Salisbury, “Chaucer’s ‘Wife,’ the Law, and the Middle English Breton Lays,” in Domestic Violence in Medieval Texts, eds. Eve Salisbury, Georgiana Donavin, and Merrall Llewelyn Price. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2002), pp. 73–93. Salisbury notes that lawmaker Henry Bracton includes blinding in his list of punishments for rape “since in Bracton’s view the rapist’s eyes were also culpable” (p. 81).
Peggy McCracken, The Romance of Adultery: Queenship and Sexual Transgression in Old French Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), p. 27. Duby states, “[A]dultery, though consummated, was barren” (qtd. in McCracken, p. 27).
Hazell, p. 140. See also E.S. Hartland, The Science of Fairy Tales: An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology, 2nd edn. (London: Methuen, 1925), pp. 62–9.
H. Marshall Leicester, Jr., “Newer Currents in Psychoanalytic Criticism, and the Difference ‘It’ Makes: Gender and Desire in the Miller’s Tale.” ELH 61.3 (1994): 484 [473–99].
See David Carlson, “The Middle English Lanval, the Corporal Works of Mercy, and Bibliotheque Nationale, Nouv. Acq. FR 1104,” Neophilologus 72 (1988): 97–106.
Felicity Riddy, “ ‘Abject Odious’: Feminine and Masculine in Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid,” in Chaucer to Spenser: A Critical Reader, ed. Derek Pearsall (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1999), pp. 280–96.
All citations from Henryson are from “The Testament of Cresseid,” The Poems of Robert Henryson, ed. Robert L. Kindrick (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 1997) and are cited parenthetically by line number.
Lee W. Patterson, “Christian and Pagan in The Testament of Cresseid.” Philological Quarterly 52 (1973): 696–714.
See Mairi Ann Cullen, “Cresseid Excused: A Re-reading of Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid,” Studies in Scottish Literature 20 (1985): 137–59 for a reading in defense of Cresseid’s redemption.
Marion Wynne-Davies, “ ‘Spottis Blak’: Disease and the Female Body in the Testament of Cresseid,” Poetica 38 (1993): 32–52.
Susan Aronstein, “Cresseid Reading Cresseid: Redemption and Translation in Henryson’s Testament,” Scottish Literary Journal 21:2 (1994): 6 [5–22].
Marshall Stearns finds that Henryson’s accurate representation of the disease and Scotland’s large number of lepers suggest that the poet may have had first-hand exposure to lepers. He even reports that Henryson’s description of Cresseid’s symptoms prompted nineteenth-century physician J. Y. Simpson to conclude that a form of the disease, Greek elephantiasis, existed in medieval Scotland. Johnstone Parr adds that Henryson’s apparent astrological understanding of the disease implies that he was well versed in medical lore on the disease. See Marshall W. Stearns, “Henryson and the Leper Cresseid,” Modern Language Notes 59:4 (1944): 265–9
Johnstone Parr, “Cresseid’s Leprosy Again,” Modern Language Notes 60:7 (1945): 487–91.
Susan Wendell, The Rejected Body (New York: Routledge, 1996), 20.
See Susan Zimmerman, “Leprosy in the Medieval Imaginary,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 38:3 (2008): 558–97 for a cogent analysis of medieval notions of leprosy.
Catherine Peyroux suggests that there are 395 documented leper houses in Northern and Eastern France and at least 270 in England from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries. See Peyroux, “The Leper’s Kiss,” Monks, Nuns, and Outcasts: Religion in Medieval Society, eds. Sharon Farmer and Barbara H. Rosenwein (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), p. 175 n12 [172–88].
Carole Rawcliffe, Leprosy in Medieval England (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006), pp. 19–21, 20. See also François-Olivier Touati, Maladie et société au Moyen Age: La lèpre, les lépreux et les léproseries dans la province ecclésiastique de Sens jusqu’au milieu du XIVe siècle (Brussels: De Boeck Université, 1998) for a challenge to common notions of medieval leprosy.
See also François-Olivier Touati, Maladie et société au Moyen Age: La lèpre, les lépreux et les léproseries dans la province ecclésiastique de Sens jusqu’au milieu du XIVe siècle (Brussels: De Boeck Université, 1998) for a challenge to common notions of medieval leprosy.
See Brody, The Disease of the Soul: Leprosy in Medieval Literature; Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society; and Byron Lee Grigsby, Pestilence in Medieval and Early Modern English Literature (New York: Routledge, 2004).
Beryl Rowland, “ ‘The Seiknes Incurabill’ in Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid,” English Language Notes (1964): 175–77.
Grigsby, p. 101. For more on leprosy, sin, and salvation, see Nicole Bériou and François-Olivier Touati, Voluntate Dei leprosus: Le lépreux entre conversion et exclusion aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medievo, 1991).
See, for example, Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Women (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1987).
See Jane Adamson, “The Curious Incident of the Recognition in Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid,” Parergon 27 (1980): 17–25, for a discussion of the intricacies of the recognition scene in the poem.
As Howard Patch notes, Lady Fortune is most often blindfolded in order “to show that she has no regard for merit.” Fortune’s blindness may have transferred onto Venus because the two were often associated with one another in medieval literature as early as the eleventh and twelfth centuries. By the end of the fourteenth century, the two goddesses were often interchangeable. See The Goddess Fortuna in Mediaeval Literature (New York: Octagon, 1967), p. 40, 90–8.
Catherine Attwood examines the effect of literary depictions of Fortune on late medieval narrative in Fortune la contrefaite: L’Envers de l’écriture médiévale (Paris: Champion, 2007).
Pseudo-Albertus Magnus. Women’s Secrets: A Translation of Pseudo-Albertus Magnus’ De Secretis Mulierum with Commentaries, trans. Helen Rodnite Lemay (Albany: New York State University Press, 1992), p. 89.
Jana Mathews, “Land, Lepers, and the Law in The Testament of Cresseid,” The Letter of the Law: Legal Practice and Literary Production in Medieval England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002), p. 63 [40–66].
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© 2010 Tory Vandeventer Pearman
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Pearman, T.V. (2010). Refiguring Disability: Deviance, Punishment, and the Supernatural in Bisclavret, Sir Launfal, and the Testament of Cresseid. In: Women and Disability in Medieval Literature. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230117563_4
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