Abstract
On December 24, 1459, Norfolk gentrywoman Margaret Paston, faced with governing a house in mourning over the Christmas holidays, had sent a letter to her husband updating him on the festivities:
Plese it yov to wete that I sent yovr eldest svnne to my Lady Morlee to haue knolage qwat sportys were husyd in here hows in Kyrstmesse next folloyng aftyr the deceysse of my Lord, here husband. And sche seyd that þere were non dysgysynggys nere harpyng nere lvtyng nere syngyn, nere non lowde dysportys, but pleyng at the tabyllys and schesse and cardys, sweche dysportys sche gave here folkys leve to play, and non odyr.1
[Please it you to know that I sent your eldest son to my Lady Morley to have knowledge [of ] what sports were used in her house in Christmas next following after the decease of my Lord, her husband; and she said that there were neither guisings, nor harping, nor luting, nor singing, nor any loud disports, but playing at the tables, and chess, and cards. Such disports she gave her folks leave to play and none other.]
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Notes
Paston Letters and Papers, ed. Norman Davis, EETS, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 1:257. We do not know the letter’s exact date. Norman Davis’s notes remarks that the epistolary forms are closer to Margaret’s letters, and the reference to Caister suggests the year 1459.
Christmas in the Middle Ages was full of amusements, carols, and game-playing. See Jean-Michel Mehl, “Games in Their Seasons,” in Custom, Culture, and Community in the hater Middle Ages, ed. Thomas Pettittand and Leif Sondergard (Odense: Odense University Press, 1994), pp. 71-83.
Catharine Perry Hargrave, A History of Playing Cards and a Bibliography of Cards and Gaming (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1930; repr. New York: Dover, 1966), p. 169.
Nicholas Orme, “Education and Recreation,” in Gentry Culture in hate Medieval England, ed. Raluca Radulescu and Alison Truelove (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), p. 76 [63-83]. See also Nicholas Orme’s chapter, “Games and Education in Medieval England,” elsewhere in this book.
Deborah Youngs, “Cultural Networks,” in Gentry Culture in Late Medieval England, ed. Raluca Radulescu and Alison Truelove (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), pp. 119-33.
Georges Duby, “The Diffusion of Cultural Patterns in Feudal Society,” Past & Present 39 (1968): 3-10.
Nicholas Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry: The Education of the English Kings and Aristocracy, 1066-1530 (London: Methuen, 1984), pp. 224-31.
Peter Coss, “Aspects of Cultural Diffusion in Medieval England: The Early Romances, Local Society and Robin Hood,” Past & Present 108 (1985): 44-45 [35-79].
John Stevens, Music and Poetry in the Early Tudor Court (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), pp. 154-202.
See also: Arthur Långfors’ Un Jeu de société au moyen age, Ragemon le Bon, Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae, Ser. B, 15, No. 2 (Helsinki, 1920-1921)
John Frankis, “The Social Context of Vernacular Writing in Thirteenth Century England The Evidence of the Manuscripts,” in Thirteenth Century England I: Proceedings of the Newcastle Upon Tyne Conference 1985, ed. Peter R. Coss and S. D. Lloyd (New Hampshire: Boydell, 1985), pp. 175-84
Peter Coss, The Foundations of Gentry Life: The Multons of Frampton and their World 1270-1370 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 245-48
Nicola McDonald’s examination of fifteenth-century women’s games, “Games Medieval Women Play,” in The Legend of Good Women: Context and Reception, ed. Carolyn Collette (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2006), pp. 176-97.
Christine Carpenter, “Gentry and Community in Medieval England,” The Journal of British Studies 33.4 (1994): 379 [340-80].
Peter Coss, The Origins of the English Gentry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 11.
Raluca Radulescu and Alison Truelove, “Editor’s Introduction,” in Gentry Culture in Late Medieval England, ed. Raluca Radulescu and Alison Truelove (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), p. 1 [1-17].
M. Dominica Legge, Anglo-Norman Literature and Its Background (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), p. 3.
Judith Tschann and Malcom Parkes, “Introduction,” in Facsimile of Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Digby 86, EETS (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. lvii.
B. D. H. Miller, “The Early History of Bodleian MS Digby 86,” Annuale Medieval 4 (1963): 42 [26-56].
Richard Firth Green, “Le Roi qui ne ment and Aristocratic Courtship,” in Courtly Literature: Culture and Context, ed. Keith Busby and E. Kooper (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1990), pp. 211-25.
“Geus d’Aventures,” in Jongleurs et trouvères, ed. Achille Jubinal (Paris: J. Albert Merklein, 1835), lines 33-36.
David Burnley, Courtliness and Literature in Medieval England (New York: Longman, 1998), p. 53. While courtly activities were not often thought of as “useful accomplishments” for men and women, the plethora of descriptions of courtly ladies reading stories of Troy, playing chess, sewing, feeding a pet, and playing musical instruments indicate a need to illustrate external symbols of courtly refinement.
“A Game of Chance,” in Anecdota Literaria: A Collection of Short Poems in English, Latin, and French, Illustrative of the Literature and History of England in the Thirteenth Century, ed. Thomas Wright (London: John Russell Smith, 1844), lines 5-8. Subsequent citations will be references parenthetically in-text.
In a thirteenth-century Anglo-Norman political lyric concerning King Edward I, the poet writes, “Nostre rays Edward ait la male rage! [May our King Edward suffer the male rage].” In the Anglo-Norman fabliau Le Chevalier à la Corbeille [the Knight of the Basket], found uniquely in London, British Library MS Harley 2253, fols. 115v-117r, the lady uses the term “male rage” to wish the death of a peeping old crone (line 80, fol. 116r). According to the OED, the term “rage” became associated with toothaches around 1352, though the association may have occurred much earlier. In Terms of Association, the use of the term in Middle English appears as “A rage of tethe,” and is located in Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, MS Brogyntyn 2.1 (olim Porkington 10) (ca. 1450) and Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawl. D.328 (ca. 1475). In 1538, the Flemish composer Thomas Crecquillon uses the phrase ‘male rage’ in his song “Alix avoit aux dents la male rage” [Alice Has a Violent Toothache], wherein Alice’s beloved promises to cure her toothache by inducing heartache in its stead. See: OED, rage, n. and Stefano Eramo, “Classical Music and the Teeth,” Journal of the History of Dentistry 60.3 (2012): 36-37 [36-44].
Stefano Eramo, “Classical Music and the Teeth,” Journal of the History of Dentistry 60.3 (2012): 36-37 [36-44].
Game designer Raph Koster argues that fictional narratives in games are “convenient metaphors” that wraps the patterns underlying games. A Theory of Fun for Game Design (Arizona: Paraglyph, 2005), pp. 80-86.
R. Howard Bloch, “Introduction,” in The Fabliaux, trans. Nathaniel E. Dubin (New York: Liveright, 2013), p. xxi.
Facsimile of British Museum MS. Harley 2253, ed. N. R. Ker (London: Oxford University Press, 1965).
Keith Busby, “Esprit gaulois for the English: The Humour of the Anglo-Norman Fabliau,” in The Old French Fabliaux: Essays on Comedy and Context, ed. Kristin L. Burr, John F. Moran, and Norris J. Lacy (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2007), p. 162 [160-73].
Carter Revard, “‘Gilote et Johane:’ An Interlude in B. L. MS Harley 2253,” Studies in Philology 79.2 (1982): 132 [122-46].
Jacques Lacan, “Courtly Love as Anamorphosis,” in The Ethics of Psychoanalysis 1959-60, The Seminars of Jacques Lacan, ed. Jacques Alain Miller, trans. Dennis Porter, 20 vols. (New York: Norton, 1992), 7:139-55.
Slavoj Žižek. The Metastases of Enjoyment: On Women and Causality (New York: Verso, 1994), p. 94.
See Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World, trans. Hélène Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1941).
P. Jeremy P. Goldberg and Maryanne Kowaleski, “Introduction. Medieval Domesticity: Home, Housing and Household,” in Medieval Domesticity: Home, Housing and Household in Medieval England, ed. Maryanne Kowaleski and P. Jeremy P. Goldberg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 9.
John Scahill, “Trilingualism in Middle English Miscellanies: Language and Literature,” The Yearbook of English Studies 33 (2003): 20 [18-32].
Ralph Hanna, “Miscelleneity and Vernacularity: Conditions of Literary Production in Late Medieval England,” in The Whole Book: Cultural Perspectives on the Medieval Miscellany, ed. Stephen G. Nichols and Siegfried Wenzel (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), pp. 46-47 [37-51].
Julia Boffey and John J. Thompson, ‘Anthologies and Miscellanies: Production and Choice of Texts,’ in Book Production and Publishing in Britain, 1375-1475, ed. Jeremy Griffiths and Derek Pearsall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989; repr. 2007), pp. 257-69.
Karl Reichl has produced the only edition of the manuscript, including a detailed description of its contents, Religiose Dichtung im englischen Hochmittelalter (Munich: Fink, 1973) and Frankis, “The Social Context,” p. 182.
“Ragman Rolle,” in Anecdota Literaria: A Collection of Short Poems in English, Latin, and French, Illustrative of the Literature and History of England in the Thirteenth Century, ed. Thomas Wright (London: John Russell Smith, 1844), lines 41-42.
See Carol Meale, “Book Production and Social Status,” in Book Production and Publishing in Britain, 1375-1475, ed. Jeremy Griffiths and Derek Pearsall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989; repr. 2007), pp. 201-38.
A. S. G. Edwards and Derek Pearsall, “The Manuscripts of the Major English Poetic Texts,” in Book Production and Publishing in Britain, 1375-1475, ed. Jeremy Griffiths and Derek Pearsall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989; repr. 2007), pp. 260-63 [257-78].
John Gower, Confessio Amantis, ed. Russell A. Peck, TEAMS: Middle English Text Series 2nd ed., 3 vols. (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2006), 1:8.2378-79.
John Norton-Smith, “Introduction,” in Bodleian Library MS Fairfax 16 (London: Scolar Press, 1979), p. vii.
Teresa Tinkle, “The Imagined Chaucerian Community of Bodleian MS Fairfax 16,” in Chaucer and the Challenges of Medievlaism: Studies in Honor of H. A. Kelly, ed. Donka Minkova and Theresa Tinkle (New York: Peter Lang, 2003), pp. 157-74.
Betsy McCormick, “Remembering the Game: Debating the Legend’s Women,” in The Legend of Good Women: Context and Reception, ed. Carolyn Collette (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2006), pp. 105-31.
Gisela Guddat-Figge, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Middle English Romances (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1976), 166.
Martha Dana Rust, Imaginary Worlds in Medieval Books: Exploring the Manuscript Matrix (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007), p. 10.
Mary C. Erler, ‘“Printers’ Copy: MS Bodley 638 and the Parliament of Fowls,” The Chaucer Review 33.3 (1999): 224 [221-29].
Alexandra Gillespie, Print Culture and the Medieval Author: Chaucer, Lydgate, and their Books 1474-1557 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 117.
See, for instance, the craftsmanship of the walrus-carved Lewis chessmen. James Robinson, The Lewis Chessmen, British Museum Objects in Focus (London: British Museum Press, 2004), pp. 57-63.
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Patterson, S. (2015). Sexy, Naughty, and Lucky in Love: Playing Ragemon le Bon in English Gentry Households. In: Patterson, S. (eds) Games and Gaming in Medieval Literature. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137497529_5
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