.“The King’s Example: Arthur, Gauvain, and Lancelot in Rigomer and Chantilly, Musée Condé 472 (anc. 626),”

LORI J. WALTERS The King’s Example: Arthur, Gauvain, and Lancelot in Rigomer and Chantilly, Musée Condé 472 (anc. 626) he present study focuses on Rigomer,1 the lead text in Chantilly, Musée Condé, MS 472 (=Ch), as a key to understanding the considerable work of the person who masterminded Ch’s execution, in all likelihood a compiler with a highly developed literary consciousness. Rigomer introduces concerns central to this eleven-work compilation produced between 1250 and 1275 in Flanders-Hainaut. The collection includes, in order: Rigomer, L’Atre périlleux, Erec et Enide, Fergus, Hunbaut, Le Bel Inconnu, La Vengeance Raguidel, Yvain, Lancelot, the first half of the longest version of the prose Perlesvaus, and several branches of Le Roman de Renart.2 Of the nine Arthurian verse romances in the compilation, Rigomer, a three-part romance incomplete at 17,271 verses, is the one whose composition was probably closest in time to the assembling of the collection. Rigomer is now believed to be the work of an anonymous poet rather than the “Jehan” mentioned in the 1 Les Mervelles de Rigomer von Jehan. Altfranzösicher Artusroman des xiii. Jahrhunderts nach der einzigen Aumale-Handschrift in Chantilly, ed. W. Foerster and H. Breuer, 2 vols. (Dresden: 1908-15). All quotations will be taken from vol. 1 of this edition. The third part of Rigomer, referred to as the “Quintefuelle episode,” after the name of the heroine’s lands, or the “Turin episode,” was present in Turin, Bibl. Univ. L IX 33, a manuscript destroyed in the fire of January 26, 1904. On this episode and its relationship to Ch, see Francesco Carapezza, “Le Fragment de Turin de Rigomer: Nouvelles perspectives,” Romania, 119 (2001), 76-112. Carapezza 85 discusses why, following Gaston Paris and Walters, it is preferable to refer to the romance as Rigomer rather than Les Mervelles de Rigomer, and provides a Table detailing the structure of the codex 87-88. See my entry on Rigomer in The Arthur of the French, ed. Glyn Burgess and Karen Pratt, Univ. Press of Wales, forthcoming. My analysis of Ch has also benefited from reading Peregrine John Rand, “Narrative Closure in a ThirteenthCentury French Manuscript: Chantilly, Musée Condé 472,” (Ph.D thesis, Cambridge Univ., March 1998), and his article “Model Knights, Model Loves, Models of Romance: The Stakes of Closure in Chantilly 472,” forthcoming. 2 A detailed description of Ch is found in The Manuscripts of Chrétien de Troyes, ed. Keith Busby, Terry Nixon, Alison Stones, and Lori Walters, 2 vols. (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993), vol. 2, pp. 39-41. 700 LORI J. WALTERS text.3 As for Ch, Beate Schmolke-Hasselmann singles it out as the most important compilation of Arthurian verse romance to survive to modern times.4 Its importance derives from its inclusion of three Chrétien romances–Erec et Enide, Yvain, and Lancelot–and three late verse romances whose existence is unattested elsewhere–Rigomer, Le Bel Inconnu and Hunbaut. But the aspect of Ch that truly sets it apart is that it is one of a small number of manuscripts to combine verse and prose romance. Ch includes about the first half of the longest version of the Perlesvaus, which devotes considerable space to Gauvain’s Grail Quest. I have earlier characterized Ch as a “Gauvain cycle,” a compilation centered on the figure of Arthur’s nephew and chief advisor, a notion that has gained wide acceptance.5 Rigomer opens the collection by promoting Gauvain over all other knights, including the supposedly peerless Lancelot. Gauvain is alone among over fifty knights to be able to put an end to the enchantments of Rigomer Castle. But Rigomer sets the tone of the collection by subjecting Gauvain to the same sort of undermining as Lancelot. This compilation holds Arthurian verse romance and its heroes up to serious scrutiny. Late romances like La Vengeance Raguidel and Hunbaut tend to view Gauvain with a jaundiced eye; Le Bel Inconnu presents Gauvain’s son Guinglain, the continuator so to speak of Gauvain’s poetic legacy, with one foot in the Arthurian camp and the other in a non-Arthurian dreamland; Chrétien’s authority is dispersed and dismantled as Erec et Enide becomes separated from Yvain and Lancelot, and Lancelot is divested 3 Carapezza p. 77, n. 2. The Evolution of Arthurian Verse Romance. The Verse Tradition from Chrétien to Froissart, trans. M. Middleton and R. Middleton, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998 [Der arthurische Versroman von Chrestiens bis Froissart, Tübingen, 1980]. 5 “The Formation of a Gauvain Cycle in Chantilly Manuscript 472,” Neophilologus, 78 (1994), 29-43. For further discussion of Ch, including codicological matters, see my articles: “Chantilly MS 472 as a Cyclic Work,” in Cyclification. The Development of Narrative Cycles in the Chansons de Geste and the Arthurian Romances, Proceedings of the Colloquium, Amsterdam (17-18 December 1992), ed. B. Besamusca, W. Gerritsen, C. Hogetoorn, and O.S.H. Lie (Amsterdam and New York: North-Holland, 1994), pp. 135-39; “Parody and Moral Allegory in Chantilly MS 472,” Modern Language Notes, 113 (1998), 937-50. See Bart Besamusca’s discussion of Ch in The Book of Lancelot: The Middle Dutch ‘Lancelot’ Compilation and the Medieval Tradition of Narrative Cycles (Cambridge, UK: D.S. Brewer, 2003), pp. 151-53 and 166-70. 4 THE KING’S EXAMPLE 701 of its prologue, epilogue, and many of Chrétien’s own verses preceding the epilogue.6 By placing Rigomer at the head of his compilation, the anonymous compiler primes his audience to view verse romance as preparing the way for the Christian recasting of Arthurian themes made by the Perlesvaus author. I see this as part of what Keith Busby terms the “leveling” that takes places in the thirteenth-century reception of romance, in which verse is rewritten “in the likeness of prose.”7 Busby’s comment helps explain the logic behind the inclusion of the Perlesvaus in Ch. Rupert Pickens–whose work on the relation between Perceval and its continuations in verse and prose has had a strong influence on my ideas concerning Ch–has described the Perlesvaus as an interpretive translation into prose of Perceval.8 My thesis in the present study is that Rigomer provides a fitting introduction to the entire compilation. This includes the two texts that appear to have little place in the company of nine verse romances, the Perlesvaus and the Renart material.9 In surveying the “whole book,” as Stephen G. Nichols proposes we do,10 it is obvious that the extended prologue of the Perlesvaus casts its authority over all the works in the collection, by virtue of its length and its proselytizing fervor. The verse romance prologues that are present are relatively short. Hunbaut’s prologue of 44 verses, the longest of the group, has a sermonizing quality it shares with the Perlesvaus prologue. The Hunbaut’s anonymous poet makes an appeal for material sustenance for himself by telling his audience that they “cannot take it with them.” His motives are a bit suspect, since the 6 The transcription ends on v. 5853 of Mario Roques, ed., Le Chevalier de la Charrete (Paris: Champion, 1981). 7 “Rubrics and the Reception of Romance,” French Studies, 53 (1999), 129-41. Busby concludes by saying “the producers of the illustrated and rubricated Chrétien manuscripts have re-written the master’s verse in the likeness of prose.” 8 “Le Conte du Graal (Perceval),” in The Romances of Chrétien de Troyes: A Symposium, ed. Douglas Kelly (Lexington, KY: French Forum, 1985), pp. 232-86, at 233. See also his Welsh Knight: Paradoxicality in Chrétien’s ‘Conte du Graal’ (Lexington, KY: French Forum, 1977). 9 I have treated the inclusion of the Renart material in the studies mentioned in n. 5, and will have more to say about it in forthcoming works. See also n. 12, below. 10 Stephen C. Nichols and Siegfried Wenzel, eds., The Whole Book: Cultural Perspectives on the Medieval Miscellany (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1996). 702 LORI J. WALTERS contrast that he establishes between worldly and spiritual riches is calculated to procure him a part of his patrons’ worldly pot.11 The Perlesvaus author, on the other hand, anchors his story firmly in Christian doctrine, by repeating the precept that Christ, through his death and resurrection, renews the Law. He reinforces his echoes of the Christian credo with a striking scene in which Joseph of Arimathea takes Christ’s battered body down from the cross. Instead of defiling the remains, which Pontius Pilate quite expects the Roman soldier to do, Joseph does them great honor. Unlike the case in Hunbaut, the baseness of which the Perlesvaus narrator speaks is entirely a spiritual one, and he accompanies it with no self-serving pitch for material assistance.12 The conclusions that I am drawing from my long acquaintance with this manuscript are consonant with those made by John Dagenais13 and Mary Carruthers.14 For these critics, the appeal of literature in the Middle Ages went far beyond the intellect. This was even truer for vernacular than for Latin literature. Whether oral or written, vernacular texts were directed to the entire person, to the feelings and consciousness that were more often than not located in the heart. Texts were mirrors that presented specific examples of ethical and unethical behavior to their audiences, who were tacitly invited to compare their 11 Keith Busby, “Hunbaut and the Art of Medieval French Romance,” Conjunctures: Medieval Studies in Honor of Douglas Kelly, ed. Keith Busby and Norris J. Lacy (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994), pp. 49-68, and Michelle Szkilnik, “Un Exercice de style au XIIIe siècle: Hunbaut,” Romance Philology, 54 (Fall 2000), 2942. I am grateful to Amy Ogden of the University of Virginia for pointing out to me that a similar stance is taken by the pardoner in Chaucer’s satiric Pardoner’s Tale. 12 The Perlesvaus is set off from the rest of the compilation by its pattern of initial letters, a pattern that seems to exert its influence over the branches of the Roman de Renart that follow it, turning that text into a series of exempla designed to reinforce, in a comic vein, Ch’s ethical preoccupations. 13 The Ethics of Reading in Manuscript Culture (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1994). Although concentrating on manuscripts of the fourteenth-century Spanish Libro de buen amor, Dagenais proposes a theory of reading corroborated by my own findings on the thirteenth-century French tradition. 14 The Book of Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990), especially ch. 5, “Memory and the Ethics of Reading,” and The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400-1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998). THE KING’S EXAMPLE 703 reflection to the ones given in the mirror-text so that they could correct the image of their moral selves.15 I contend that the compiler presents the texts in Ch as a series of ethical mirrors. In so doing, he takes his cue from Chrétien, who in his first extant romance and third text in Ch, describes his heroine as a mirror: Que diroie de sa biauté? Ce fu cele por verité Qui fu fete por esgarder, Qu’an se poïst an li mirer Ausi com an un mireor. (Erec et Enide, 437-441)16 When Chrétien refers to Enide as an “essamplaire” that no one can “contrefaire” (419-20), he implicitly equates Enide-as-mirror with his text. In presenting himself as “Cil qui fist d’Erec et Enide” in the first verse of his second romance, Cligés (not present in Ch) a verse he follows with a list of his prior works, Chrétien extends the metaphor of the text-as-mirror to his subsequent creations. In having Enide issue forth from a workshop (“Issue fu de l’ovreor,” 442), Chrétien furthermore equates her with the concrete realization of his texts in a physical artifact, the painstakingly transcribed and expensively crafted manuscript book. Thus Erec et Enide’s metaphor of bookmaker as artisan can apply to the compiler’s task of editing Chrétien’s romances and placing them in a context with other works in Ch. The text-as-mirror operates by means of positive and negative exempla. This is as true at the macrotextual level of the entire compilation as at the microtextual level of its constituent parts. The most common meaning of the exemplum is a narrative with an implicit or explicit moral whose goal is to change behavior through the eloquent communication of a piece of wisdom. Originating in classical rhetoric and adopted as a major persuasive tool in the Middle Ages, the exemplum was especially prized by preachers, in particular the thirteenth-century mendicant orders, and writers of “mirrors,” a term 15 See Einar Már Jónsson, Le Miroir: Naissance d’un genre littéraire (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1995). Jónsson has a more restrictive sense of what constitutes a mirror than Carruthers, whose contention restates the medieval commonplace that all texts could be given a tropological or moral interpretation. 16 Ed. Mario Roques (Paris: Champion, 1973). 704 LORI J. WALTERS usually applied in the restrictive generic sense of “mirrors for princes.”17 Carruthers (Craft of Thought, pp. 159-60) cites Gregory the Great in support of her contention that in the Middle Ages all texts were in some sense mirrors: Reading presents a kind of mirror to the eyes of the mind, that our inner face may be seen in it. There indeed we learn our own ugliness, there our own beauty, for we should transform what we read into our very selves. (Preface to Moralia in Job, II.i and I.xxxiii). In his Mirror in the Text Lucien Dällenbach offers an explanation of the process of reading by means of exempla that complements Gregory’s: In ancient rhetoric, the exemplum was a “persuasive similarity, an argument by analogy.” Operating through historical comparisons drawn by the orator with the present, this mode of argument was ideally aimed at inducing the listener to alter his/her self-consciousness and hence his/her way of loving or acting. It is therefore inevitable that, structured in terms of this ultimate goal, the role of the receptor essentially consisted in correctly interpreting the truth that was being propounded, recognizing its relevance and virtue and deriving a practical lesson from it.18 Along with the mirror, another common metaphor for the text as barometer of moral values came from the printing of coins, which more often than not displayed a ruler’s image. The figure’s profile defined itself in relief against the background casting. The potential for reversibility implicit in the coinage metaphor (heads/tails, façon/contrefaçon)19 illustrates how characters, in their status as signs, can function as positive and negative exempla in the same collection and even in the same work. The reader’s moral profile reveals itself through positive and/or negative comparisons with characters in the text. The Rigomer poet first asks his readers to evaluate Gauvain’s behavior in light of ethical standards, second, to compare their own 17 Jacques Berlioz, “Exempla,” Dictionnaire des Lettres Françaises: Le Moyen Age (Paris: Fayard, 1964), pp. 437-38. 18 The Mirror in the Text, trans. Jeremy Whiteley with Emma Hughes (Chicago: Chicago Univ. Press, 1989), p. 82 [Le récit spéculaire: essai sur la mise en abyme, Paris, 1977]. 19 See R. Howard Bloch, Etymologies and Genealogies: A Literary Anthropology of the French Middle Ages (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1983), pp. 164-67. THE KING’S EXAMPLE 705 behavior to Gauvain’s, and third to amend their behavior accordingly. The romance’s ethical imperative is not limited to males, since Rigomer provides a model for the female reader in Lorie, whom the author likens at times to Mary, mother of Jesus, and at others to Mary Magdalene. In the truncated version of the Perlesvaus present in Ch, as well as in the verse romances included in the compilation, Gauvain is at times a model of knighthood to imitate, at other times, a model to avoid. As sign, Gauvain has the potential of representing either the exemplary Arthurian knight or “Gauvain li contrefait,” as the Perlesvaus author calls him. Evaluating one’s behavior, and the standards by which one evaluates both the model figure’s behavior and one’s own,20 is equivalent to what the Perlesvaus calls reading “par essemples.” Reading ethically has the power to change one’s life, as the reader’s hermeneutic quest becomes a larger exploration for ways of going on the pilgrimage of human life. Augustine’s own case, as he recounts in his Confessions, illustrates reading’s potential to function as a conversion experience. He was prompted to convert to Christianity after hearing what he thought was a child chanting the phrase “tolle, lege” (“Take up and read”). Opening his Bible at random, his eyes fell upon 1 Cor.7:27-35, where Paul, an earlier convert to Christianity, enjoins his listeners to become “new men in Christ” (In City 22.18 Augustine is adamant that this phrase applies to women as well as to men). A reader’s identity was defined by the way he or she interpreted a text. To paraphrase an even more famous passage further on in the same Pauline epistle, the reader’s face was revealed in the text “as if in a glass, darkly” (1 Cor.13). By comparing a text’s positive and negative exempla with one’s inner self, the reader could perfect the moral portrait that he or she was etching on the tablets or inner book of the heart that was to be presented to God on Judgment Day.21 Thanks to those who created or presented texts orally or in various material 20 See M. Bruckner’s discussion of the ‘case’ on pp. 73-74 of “An Interpreter’s Dilemma: Why are There So Many Interpretations of Chrétien’s Chevalier de la Charrette?” in Lancelot and Guinevere: A Casebook, ed. with an introduction by Lori J. Walters (New York: Garland, 1996), reissued in paper by Routledge in 2001. Bruckner’s article was originally published in Romance Philology, 40 (1986), 159-80. 21 Eric Jager, The Book of the Heart (Chicago: Chicago Univ. Press, 2000), in particular ch. 3, “The Scriptorium of the Heart,” pp. 44-64. 706 LORI J. WALTERS forms, human beings were able to see themselves with the objectivity necessary for self-correction. The Rigomer poet facilitates the moral improvement of his readers by casting his major characters as exempla that at certain times can be interpreted in bono and at other times in malo. He characterizes Arthur, Gauvain and Lancelot by means of oppositions. These verses from the prologue make ample use of contrast, emphasized by repetition and annominatio: Del roi Artu et de ses houmes Est cis roumans que nos lisoumes . . Si est tels chevaliers le roi, U plus ot sens et mains desroi. Quant plus ot sens, de desroi mains, Dont fu ço mesire Gauwains (7-11, my emphasis) Arthur, so claims the poet-narrator, was the kind of knight in whom more sense than foolishness could be found, adding that only Gauvain matched him with as much sense and less confusion. This sort of wry, “backhanded compliment” sets up a contrast between the Arthur/Gauvain pair that extends the argument the two of them have at the beginning of Erec et Enide where Gauvain’s diplomacy averts disaster after Arthur’s rash reinstatement of the Hunt of the White Stag.22 The prologue’s discussion of sense and foolishness (desroi et sens) establishes this theme as leitmotiv of Rigomer and the collection it heads in Ch. The annominatio “desroi” continues the questioning of Arthur’s supposed exemplarity begun in Erec et Enide. Related wordplay is seen in the name of the character “Sagremors li Desres,” the hot-headed knight who rapes a passing maiden in the first part of Rigomer. Guillaume le Clerc’s play on the term mesaventure in the Fergus prologue highlights a corresponding use of positive and negative exempla in the fourth romance in the collection, as does the title Li Biaus Descouneüs of the sixth and central text. The contrastive reading of Rigomer’s major players starts the reader of Ch on a hermeneutic quest to explore the public and private ramifications of the wise leadership of kings, knights, and counselors. This quest 22 My thanks to Jane H. M. Taylor for this insight. THE KING’S EXAMPLE 707 continues through all the mirror-texts, which develop the topic from different angles. In the end the reader acquires a complex vision of Arthur and his court. Ch’s summa-like quality makes the Round Table into a mirror of creation. Its shape recalls the roundness of the globe symbolizing the universe as well as the circular model of literary composition referred to as “Virgil’s wheel.”23 Rigomer and the collection as a whole explore issues of wisdom in king and vassal through frequent recourse to positive and negative exempla. The Rigomer poet builds up the exemplary status of each of his major characters–Lancelot, Gauvain, and King Arthur–before deflating it. In part I (18-6402), dedicated to Lancelot’s quest to deliver the lady of Rigomer Castle from a spell that prevents her from marrying, Lancelot at first appears to be the paragon of chivalry. Two episodes put that impression into question. In the first, Lancelot rescues a naked young woman about to be raped. When he refuses his reward of the princess’ hand and her kingdom, we ascribe it to his feelings for Guinevere. To our surprise, Lancelot gets the young woman pregnant and then abandons her, consoling her with eloquent but empty promises. The second episode is more openly critical of Lancelot. After encountering many dangers on his path to Rigomer, Lancelot makes his way past the serpent guarding the entryway, only to be put under a spell whereby he loses his memory, and with it, his identity. Once inside the castle, Dionise’s attendant invites him to avenge her lady on an enemy, an act that would gain him Dionise’s hand in marriage and her kingdom. Although Lancelot appears to want to respond to the challenge (which raises the question of his feelings toward Guinevere, from whom he had departed from court in a scene reminiscent of his leave-taking in Chrétien’s Lancelot, the ninth text in the compilation), one look at this woman, described as more beautiful than a siren, puts him under a spell that renders him unable to exercise the force of his arms. When he lets her slip Dionise’s ring on his finger, he forgets 23 See the discussion of Kathryn Gravdal, Vilain and Courtois: Transgressive Parody in French Literature of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (Lincoln: Univ. Press of Nebraska, 1989), pp. 1-3. Gravdal reproduces a model of Virgil’s wheel taken from Edmond Faral, Les arts poétiques du XIIe et du XIIIe siècle (Paris: Champion, 1971), p. 87. 708 LORI J. WALTERS who he is. His days are then taken up with the lowly tasks of a scullion boy in the cuisines of Rigomer. After a year as lord of the kitchens, Lancelot, the former example of all nobility, had become as stupid as a beast of burden. Barely able to speak and paunchy from snacking on kitchen scraps, Lancelot had come to deserve the reproach leveled by Dionise’s elegant messenger at the romance’s opening, where she expressed indignation that Arthur and his knights had become complacent creatures of appetite rather than heroic defenders of the oppressed. Lancelot’s later loss of memory seems rightful punishment for his failure to keep his promises; his nearly complete loss of speech his just desserts for having seduced the princess through deceptive speech, an act that becomes equivalent to the rape from which he had originally rescued her, thus canceling out that heroic deed. In the second part of the romance (6403-15916), Gauvain succeeds in freeing both Lancelot and Dionise. He is oblivious to the enchantments that have undone so many knights on their way to the castle: the serpent not only lets him pass the bridge unharmed, but bows down before him. A damsel who had earlier predicted Lancelot’s failure now announces Gauvain as Rigomer’s long-awaited liberator. Gauvain frees Lancelot and all the other knights in the castle by removing the gold rings from their fingers, signifying their enchantment by erotic love defined as appetite.24 Lorie informs Dionise that Gauvain cannot claim the promised recompense for having dissipated Rigomer’s enchantments–her hand and with it, the crown of Ireland, since Lorie means to keep him for herself. True to his characterization as “marriage broker” in much late verse romance, Gauvain arranges a suitable match for the disappointed queen and a knight called Midomidas. Gauvain is shown to be superior to Lancelot because he succeeds in ridding Rigomer of its enchantments, rather than coming under their spell as does Lancelot. Gauvain’s superiority to Lancelot at first includes moral superiority. We realize that the author, in a striking 24 Peter Noble, “The Role of Lorie in Les Merveilles de Rigomer,” BBSIA, 48 (1996), 281-90, argues that this differs from love as a form of magic that works for Christian ends, personified by Lorie. THE KING’S EXAMPLE 709 example of what Norris Lacy calls “motif transfer,”25 has transposed the reputation for flightiness with women that had been traditionally associated with Gauvain in post-Chrétien romance to Lancelot. After being built up throughout the romance, and finally even being compared to the savior come down from heaven to work miracles on earth, Gauvain is subjected to the same sort of undermining by luxure as was Lancelot. When Miraudiaus suspects that a lady he is trying to force into marriage will be championed by Gauvain, he falls grievously ill, even losing his taste for food and drink, because he harbors such a deep fear of this knight renowned everywhere for his valor. When Gauvain arrives, the ailing Miraudiaus proposes a civil agreement to him: if Gauvain fails to show up for battle at the appointed time, Miraudiaus will make his imprisonment comfortable indeed. Gauvain is quick to agree. After the two gorge themselves on food and drink, Miraudiaus declares that Gauvain has miraculously cured him. In gratitude, Miraudiaus orders his beautiful sisters and servant girls to satisfy his healer’s every whim, threatening to kill them on the spot if they withhold their sexual favors. Gauvain takes advantage of his host’s generosity with the gusto of a seasoned sinner. In the third part of the romance (15917-17271), the Rigomer poet dismantles Arthur’s image as exemplary ruler. The King’s actions at first appear to be heroic since he helps the Lady of Quintefuelle regain her inheritance. The royal image soon reveals major fault lines. When Guinevere questions Arthur’s decision to leave his kingdom in the hands of his best knight, Gauvain, by claiming to know someone better qualified for the position, Arthur becomes insanely angry.26 Only prevented by others from doing his wife violent physical harm, he threatens to cut off her head if she cannot find a better knight than Gauvain. Arthur’s diplomatic advisor clears up the quarrel between king and queen (which recalls his original function in Erec et Enide) by admitting that Lancelot is a better knight than he is. Gauvain then persuades Lancelot to accompany Arthur, the king whom he is 25 “Motif Transfer in Arthurian Literature,” in The Medieval Opus, ed. D. Kelly (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996), p. 157-68. Lacy bases his notion of “motif transfer” on Wolfgang Müller’s concept of “interfigurality,” the borrowing of characters and the inevitable transformation entailed in the process. 26 Carapezza, pp. 102-06 believes this episode to be a recasting of the opening scene of Le Pelerinage de Charlemagne. 710 LORI J. WALTERS cuckolding, on his travels. When Lancelot comes close to being burned alive by a panther’s breath, Arthur is happy that Lancelot survives. The reader is left to surmise that otherwise Arthur could be suspected of plotting to get rid of the man who is bedding his wife. The Rigomer poet reduces Arthur to the level of his knights in a variety of ways. Instead of setting the example for them as befits a king, Arthur becomes “just one of the guys.” And even his best knights have their less-than-heroic sides. One by one, the author reveals the distance that separates Lancelot, Gauvain, and the King himself from the exemplary figures they are supposed to incarnate. The image of king and court becomes indelibly tarnished. But the most damning comparison in the romance is that of Arthur and Willeris, the valiant multilingual parrot: Avec çou que si vallans ert, Une autre bontés li apert, Que Dames Diex li ot donee Et otroiie et destinee, Que parler savoit et entendre Si comme Diex li fist aprendre. Tant ert li oisiaus de grant sens, D’iluec a le cité de Sens N’ot bieste ne oisiel si sage. Parler savoit plusor langage. (11643-52) If the model knight Lancelot becomes an anti-model in his beast-like inarticulate state as “king of the kitchens,” so the supposedly exemplary King Arthur is shown to be less linguistically gifted than a mere animal. In Ch, a world of contrefaçon, animals come closest to speaking the truth, as well as acting in an exemplary manner. The heroic and devoted lion of Chrétien’s Yvain, which occupies the eighth place in Ch, sets the tone of the collection. That Willeris has a name is especially glaring in a compilation populated by innumerable knights who lose their names, the most notable being Gauvain, “the knight without a name” of L’Atre périlleux. The Arthurian romances present in the compilation all show an Arthurian court “bestorné,” one that needs to be corrected in order to realize its potential as standardbearer. Arthur’s shortcomings as leader may stem from a poor education. This becomes clear in the scene where the Lady of Quintefuelle’s messenger arrives at court and hands a letter to Arthur, who in turn THE KING’S EXAMPLE 711 gives it to a chaplain to read out loud. The author contrasts Arthur’s ignorance with the learnedness of the female messenger. In an age when men were more likely to receive an education than women, the messenger is able to speak Arthur’s language as well as her own (15951), whereas Arthur appears to be unilingual. The former paragon of Arthurian values may in fact not even know how to read. This is suggested by Arthur’s words when he hands the letter to the chaplain to read aloud: “Clers, or vos convient lire, / Si sarons que cis briés veut dire”(35-36 of the Quintefuelle episode). When taken in context with other criticism of Arthur, this statement, although ambiguous, does hint that he lacks proper reading skills. It could even be interpreted to mean that Arthur would be at a loss to deal with the contents of the letter even if he could read it. This innuendo reinforces the allusion to Arthur’s dependence on his counselors suggested at the beginning of the work. Arthur’s portrait as an ignorant boor in the third part of Rigomer contributes to an implicit argument in favor of a well-educated ruler. The positive qualities required of a king become clear by means of Arthur’s presentation as negative example. When the Rigomer poet contrasts the accomplished linguist Willeris with the ill-mannered and bumbling King Arthur and his inarticulate and ignoble champion Lancelot, he doubtless casts a playful nod at John of Salisbury. John’s Policraticus, the model medieval text for the mirror for princes genre, popularized the dictum, “An uneducated king is nothing more than a crowned ass.” This saying was one of the favorites of King Louis IX, king for a forty-four year period (1226-70) that encompasses grosso modo the likely time of composition of Rigomer (1250-75). The multilingual parrot has Pentecostal overtones that highlight the seriousness of Arthur’s loss of his exemplary function. Willeris, the bird blessed with the gift of tongues, is symbolic of the great potential of language, and of the Old French vernacular in particular, to express truth. Rigomer’s implicit criticism of Arthurian rhetoric in verse romance paves the way for the Perlesvaus’ association of prose and truthfulness. Rigomer is a romance whose entertainment value is clear–it is certainly meant to be funny–but which invites a moral reading. Readers interested in a purely secular reading could remain on the surface level of Rigomer, just as they could in reading all the others in the collection, and have a good laugh. No one has yet done justice to 712 LORI J. WALTERS the infinite variety of Ch’s comedy. Rigomer, the first work in the collection, is a very strange romance that evokes a complex network of responses–as irony, yes, but also as slapstick, as sophisticated literary parody, even as satire. The romance invites reflection on its own processes. The Rigomer poet’s emphasis on the abuse of rhetoric orients the reader to a proper ethical reading of the romance by means of the author’s eloquent presentation of his characters and themes. Characters’ responses are meant to guide the reader. A case in point is Gauvain’s mixed reaction to the sight of Lancelot’s degeneration. The scene in Rigomer’s kitchens occurs, significantly, at the high point of Gauvain’s prestige in the romance. Since the authority of his judgment has not yet been undermined, we are primed to concur with his point of view. Gauvain’s first reaction is to laugh at the spectacle of the former flower of all chivalry reduced to an inarticulate scullion grown fat and sloppy from snacking on kitchen scraps. Gauvain’s second impulse is to be reduced to tears. What does this convey to the reader? After many good laughs, we may be led to reflect on the higher meaning of the scene. The romance is capable of communicating a moral lesson to those who care to look beyond its obvious value as entertainment. Rigomer, found only in Ch where it is the lead work, provides a key to reading all the texts in the collection to follow. The basically negative reading of Arthur’s Round Table in Rigomer and the other verse romances in Ch prepares the new recasting of Arthurian themes in the prose Perlesvaus that begins with an affirmation of Christian doctrine and biblical authority. Here Pickens’ comments on Chrétien’s “seminal word” and “translation,” a medieval notion with a much wider meaning than its present sense, are particularly appropriate. “Translation” is part-and-parcel of a Christian reading, which has tropological and anagogical implications.27 Pickens’ insightful analysis of the relationship between Chrétien’s Perceval and the anonymous Perlesvaus receives confirmation in my reading of Ch. The seemingly anomalous Perlesvaus develops Perceval’s Christian message in a more doctrinal way than had 27 For an overview of the notion of translation, see my “Christine de Pizan as Translator and Voice of the Body Politic,” in Christine de Pizan: A Casebook, ed. Barbara K. Altmann and Deborah McGrady (New York: Routledge, 2003), pp. 25-41. THE KING’S EXAMPLE 713 Chrétien.28 Through his ordering and editing of the eleven texts in Ch, the compiler allies the verse romances–all either by Chrétien or clearly marked by his influence–with the moralistic and sermonizing Perlesvaus. In his long prologue, the Perlesvaus author casts Arthur first as a positive example, then as a negative one. For ten years following his father’s death, Arthur had lived a virtuous and prosperous life, setting a high standard for all. Then, for no apparent reason, his will began to fail. Forsaking his former generosity, Arthur came to reign over an ailing community whose knights began to desert it in large numbers. Arthur’s court, and the vernacular tradition that has transmitted the image of that court, find themselves at a serious juncture. Ch’s compiler responds to this cry for the renewal of Arthurian values by following in the wake of the Perlesvaus author’s proposed redirection of romance along more doctrinally Christian lines. By placing Rigomer at the head of his collection, the compiler points the way to the higher level of meaning encoded in verse romance by means of Rigomer’s critical view of the tradition epitomized by Chrétien. In the Perlesvaus, as in prose romance generally, Chrétien disappears as named author. The Ch compiler implies that in order for Chrétien to remain true to his name, a name that defines his identity as representative Christian writer, he had to die in verse romance and be resurrected in a reconfigured form in prose. The Ch compiler appropriates for himself the Christian authority of the Perlesvaus narrator, which is coterminous with the disembodied and anonymous voice of the “conte.” He thus tries to improve on Chrétien’s message by using his texts to channel romance into more doctrinally Christian avenues. The compiler appropriates Chrétien’s voice for himself as compiler of the “whole book” in order to realize didactic ends more consistent with prose than with verse romance. Ch’s compiler encourages his audience to read romance as though it were sacred scripture. To paraphrase Augustine’s suggestion that the 28 The compiler seems to have wanted to have the “full picture” of Chrétien, akin to those given in manuscript compilations like Paris, BnF, fr. 1450 and Paris, BnF, fr. 794, which contain all five of his extant romances. This is suggested by the inclusion of Rigomer which, significantly, has an episode set in a dangerous cemetery (see discussion below) that concerns Cligés, the hero of one of the two Chrétien romances not present in Ch. 714 LORI J. WALTERS wisdom of pagan texts could be applied to Christian truths, the reader is implicitly enjoined “to take the gold out of Egypt,” to mine Arthurian romance for its intimations of divine truth. In the hands of Ch’s compiler, romance becomes the potential vehicle of tropological and typological readings, ones that give the reader the opportunity to change his or her own life. In staging this revision of Arthurian romance in Ch, the compiler himself becomes a participant in the prototypical Christian incarnational drama in which the dynamics of sin and redemption are part-and-parcel of the workings of the divine Verbum. Set forth ever so eloquently in the opening words of John’s gospel is the idea that the universe is nothing more, nor nothing less, than a divine word game. (We can ask if it is mere coincidence that Ch opens on the name “Jehan.”) Rather than detracting from the compilation’s serious message, its comic tone reinforces it. Much like Dante a half-century later, the Ch’s compiler takes his place in a Christian effort to transform the tragedy of the Fall into a “divine comedy” through the effect that the reading of the works in the compilation will have on its audience. If I have earlier described Ch as a “Gauvain cycle,” I now even more see it as a “tombeau de Gauvain,” Gauvain’s final resting place in verse romance. My comparison builds upon one of the compilation’s commanding metaphors, that of the perilous cemetery. The episode ultimately harks back to Lancelot’s “cemetery of the future,” in which Lancelot views Gauvain’s tomb as well as Yvain’s and his own. L’Atre périlleux (“The Dangerous Cemetery”) is the title of the second work in Ch, a romance in which Gauvain arguably attains the status of a true hero. The author devotes the entire romance to Gauvain, and precisely to his attempts to redeem the marred reputation he had acquired in late verse romance. As sole protagonist, Gauvain attains a status denied to him by Chrétien. However, his redemption in the Atre, as in all the verse romances in Ch, remains fundamentally ambiguous.29 A similar judgment is discernable in the truncated version of Perlesvaus in Ch. Gauvain’s encounter with Marin le Jaloux suggests that although Gauvain has purged himself of 29 Lori J. Walters, “Resurrecting Gauvain in L’Atre périlleux and the Middle Dutch Walewein,” in “Por le soie amisté”: Essays in Honor of Norris J. Lacy, ed. Keith Busby and Catherine M. Jones (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), pp. 509-37. THE KING’S EXAMPLE 715 the sin of luxure, he cannot totally escape his prior reputation. In preserving a major portion of Arthurian lore concerning Gauvain, Ch inevitably portrays this character as a combination of good and bad qualities. Gauvain’s characterization in Ch nonetheless proves more positive than Arthur’s or Lancelot’s. The Rigomer author subjects Lancelot to further undermining after his rescue by Gauvain. When Miraudiaus tries to force Dionise to marry him, Arthur appoints a knight named Midomidas to champion her cause. When Midomidas awaits Miraudiaus, the more renowned Lancelot arrives on the scene, dressed up (appropriately, given his earlier treatment) as an idiot. When Miraudiaus sees a scar on the hand of his new opponent that identifies him as Lancelot, he declares himself defeated, on the strength of the other’s reputation. This detail is deeply ironic, since the scar on the hand is a reference to the mark of the beast in Revelations 13:11. Rather than being rehabilitated after his release from the kitchens of Rigomer, Lancelot symbolically becomes the harbinger of the Apocalypse. In Ch, Lancelot’s sins of treason and adultery far outweigh Gauvain’s transgressions. Rigomer is a fitting introduction to Ch, which in its entirety is a tribute to the figure of Gauvain in Old French romance. True to Rigomer’s opening statement, Gauvain’s political astuteness tempers Arthur’s boorish behavior and ignorance. Arthur’s counselor, like any and all Arthurian knights, may have moral failings, but he does offer the King some good advice over the course of the romance. Gauvain’s mercurial but magnetic figure remains the focus of interest throughout the compilation. He is the human knot that ties together its many textual members in one complex but unified corpus. Although denied the status of successful Grail quester in Perlesvaus, Gauvain nonetheless prefigures Perceval/Perlesvaus, who will accomplish the Grail quest in the prose romance tradition. Gauvain’s depiction in Ch is similar to his portrayal in the Lancelot-Graal, where his failure is the failure of one of the very best earthly knights.30 Gauvain is the major model for the reader’s own path to moral improvement in Ch. The compiler uses Gauvain to fix the reader’s interest and engage his sympathies. Ch’s anonymous compiler proves 30 My thanks to Elspeth Kennedy for this insight. 716 LORI J. WALTERS to be an astute psychologist and preacher. He understands that his flawed and all-too-human character Gauvain is a more effective means of realizing his didactic ends than the Vulgate’s perfect–and perfectly boring–Galaad. The compiler uses contrastive positive and negative exempla with the aim of turning his summa-like treasury of Arthurian lore into a body of wisdom to guide not only the individual reader, but the entire corporate civic body. The dual figures of Gauvain and the compiler bring to mind Augustine.31 As a result of his transformation from a man deluded by lust into a committed seeker after truth–all thanks to adventures in reading–Augustine produced a body of writing that became a major source of political theory in the Middle Ages. Perhaps inspired by Augustine’s commanding example as preacher and as writer who in his Retractions lists ninety-seven works to his credit–works he cannot resist correcting one final time before posterity passes judgment upon them!–Ch’s compiler enlists Chrétien’s worldly knight Gauvain in an ongoing attempt to transform the corporate civic body into a more authentic reflection of Augustine’s utopian vision of a truly just human society. Gauvain is above all an indicator of the fundamental ambiguity of the nascent Old French vernacular. Since the spoken, living language can potentially be used for good or for ill, a lesson as old as the serpent’s seduction of Adam and Eve in paradise, writers and orators in the vernacular had to guard against the perversion of rhetoric that had marked the archetypical human sin. As mentioned previously, Ch was undoubtedly produced during or shortly after the reign of Louis IX. Characterizing him as “un roi parlant français,” Jacques Le Goff details how Louis increased the prestige of the king’s spoken word.32 Louis IX expanded the use of the vernacular for spoken and written communication in order to unify the populace under his Capetian monarchy. Louis took special care to commit issues of importance to permanent memory. He commissioned the compiling of the vernacular prose Grandes Chroniques de France and composed Enseignements, short vernacular collections of advice, for his son and daughter in his very 31 The Augustine website maintained by J. J. O’Donnell contains many of the Church Father’s works in the original and in translation into several modern languages: http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/jod. 32 Saint Louis (Paris: Gallimard, 1996), p. 515. THE KING’S EXAMPLE 717 own hand (Le Goff 595-641). Louis went to great lengths to make himself into a living and speaking example of an educated ruler. His image as ideal Christian monarch was given permanent validation when he was canonized in 1297, only twenty-seven years after his death. My analysis suggests that Ch can be seen as yet another reflection of Saint Louis’ desire to increase the truth value of the vernacular by associating it with prose and with the image of the rex christianissimus promoted by the monarchy. Finally and perhaps most importantly, Ch’s emphasis on Gauvain’s verbal abilities at the service of Arthurian exemplarity provides reflection on the compiler’s own role as advisor to kings, counselors, and their subjects in mid-thirteenth-century France. He does his part to reorient the direction of an evolving vernacular poetics towards its proper function as tool in the establishment of the City of God on earth. In editing and re-ordering Ch’s eleven texts, the compiler accomplishes an act of re-creation that looks forward to the restoration of the time of peace and harmony that had existed in Eden before the Fall. Carruthers (Craft of Thought) compellingly refers to this as “remembering heaven or remembering the future.” This is the process of re-creating through images, whether verbal or visual, a vision of a just human society that approaches the perfect human community forever present in the eternal mind of God. For just as the created universe sprang up from God’s ingenious Verbum, so too are human communities founded on fertile ideas conceived in the minds of his human agents and communicated to others through eloquent use of the spoken and written word. In placing Rigomer at the head of his collection, the compiler allies himself with an ongoing process of vernacularization aimed at improving the individual and society through language, the skill that above all others distinguishes human beings from beasts.