Cultural Difference and Material Culture in Middle English Romance

Normans and Saxons

Dominique Battles

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136156625
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Medieval & Early Modern Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This book explores how the cultural distinctions and conflicts between Anglo-Saxons and Normans originating with the Norman Conquest of 1066 prevailed well into the fourteenth century and are manifest in a significant number of Middle English romances including King Horn, Havelok the Dane, Sir Orfeo, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and others. Specifically, the study looks at how the material culture of these poems (architecture, battle tactic, landscapes) systematically and persistently distinguishes between Norman and Anglo-Saxon cultural identity. Additionally, it examines the influence of the English Outlaw Tradition, itself grounded in Anglo-Saxon resistance to the Norman Conquest, as expressed in specific recurring scenes (disguise and infiltration, forest exile) found in many Middle English romances. In the broadest sense, a significant number of Middle English romances, including some of the most well-read and often-taught, set up a dichotomy of two ruling houses headed by a powerful lord, who compete for power and influence. This book examines the cultural heritage behind each of these pairings to show how poets repeatedly contrast essentially Norman and Anglo-Saxon values and ruling styles.

1 Plotting Conquest

The Middle English romances that form the subject of this volume feature heroes who find themselves embroiled in unjust politics, usually at the receiving end. These various situations of corruption and wrongdoing have naturally led scholars to read these texts within a variety of political contexts. Some scholars have looked to the contemporary political scene that produced these stories, to thirteenth- and fourteenth-century England, finding meaningful parallels among the political machinations of an unpopular king, or baronial intrigues, or court culture.¹ Others have turned to the fictional political contexts of continental literature, seeking parallels for these English texts among the body of French chansons de geste, which also feature heroes whose careers and reputations hinge on their handling of various politicized relationships and situations.² While the chansons do share certain narrative features with these Middle English romances, such as large-scale combat stemming from political conflict, the political circumstances featured in the chansons in general emerge from the historical crusading incursions into foreign, often Muslim, lands.³ Such campaigns place the hero on the side of the invading Christian force, not on the side of the invaded people, as we find so often in Middle English romance. The one political context that has not been brought to bear on these English poems is that of the Norman Conquest, by far the most cataclysmic and far-reaching political event of medieval England, and the event that reshaped the English language and English poetry most dramatically from that point on. Given its import for English society and literature during the later Middle Ages, the Conquest forms the proverbial white elephant in the room in discussions of Middle English romance. The absence of the Conquest in such discussions, even in political readings, is all the more striking when we consider how frequently these poems explicitly feature situations of conquest, and how often these stories are set in the pre-Conquest past, not to mention how regularly we, the audience, experience the hostile takeover from the perspective of a hero who belongs to the conquered people. In this chapter, I revisit a number of Middle English romances against the backdrop of the Norman Conquest, exploring the many ways that these plots and heroes capture and perpetuate the cultural difference between the conquering Normans and the conquered Anglo-Saxons.

The theme of conquest from the perspective of the conquered underlies some of the most well-read and often-taught texts of Middle English literature. Unlike the heroes of French romance, who apply themselves in acquiring new things, whether it be the women they love or the kingdoms they eventually inherit, the heroes of the English romances of King Horn, Havelok the Dane, Sir Orfeo, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and The Tale of Gamelyn all struggle instead to reclaim what was lost and to end up where they started. More specific, they find themselves and their people robbed of land, loved ones, position, and/or honor, and must fight to restore those things. Their struggle often leads them into a period of exile, during which they ponder their losses, in some cases modify their identity either through voluntary disguise or involuntary physical deterioration, and eventually plot a return. This struggle for stability often, though not always, coincides with a love interest, showing the clear influence of French chivalric literature. Unlike the French hero, however, these English heroes are not at leisure to go questing for adventure in search of new things. The loss of property or inheritance that results in a loss of identity and often exile, followed by recognition and restoration of that property, has been identified by Susan Wittig as a central and distinctive theme of Middle English literature, a theme that often competes in importance with the love interest of these stories.⁴ Wittig and others have attributed this theme of loss and reclamation in Middle English literature to mythic patterns common to most literature rather than to any historical reality.⁵ Still others have traced the theme of exile and return to Norman political myth-making as the “heirs” to England.⁶ I would suggest that the theme of loss and restoration involving exile and return, which dominates the English literature of post-Conquest England, reflects the historical and literary legacy of the Anglo-Saxon people who, despite their losses and failed attempts to resist the Norman Conquest nevertheless, remained the large majority of the English population.

This theme of loss of property reflects an Anglo-Saxon consciousness on two fronts, literary and historical. Fabienne Michelet points out that a major theme in Anglo-Saxon literature is “contested space.”⁷ The conflicts of so many works of Old English literature revolve around struggles for control of various spaces including the hall of Heorot in Beowulf, the beach in the Battle of Maldon, the mound in Guthlac A. The theme of contested space also underlies the Anglo-Saxon elegiac tradition, which gives expression to the nostalgia for lost, previously contested spaces. This theme carries over into the literature of the Middle English period, where we see the heroes of King Horn, Havelok the Dane, Sir Orfeo, and The Tale of Gamelyn, lose their kingdoms or inheritance, and subsequently their identity, enter into a period of exile, and reemerge at the end of the story to triumphantly reclaim their property. In each case, with the exception of Gamelyn, the story of the love interest is interwoven with the theme of exile and return, and in fact serves the larger project of restoration as the woman provides the hero with the opportunity to reveal himself and reassert his claims to his identity and property. The theme of exile and return, however, goes beyond the realm of literary entertainment in that poets of the Middle English period use these stories to revisit the cultural divide between Normans and Anglo-Saxons precipitated by the Conquest, and the clues to this divide are often hidden in plain sight. The English poets use specific cultural markers (styles of homes, landscapes, legal procedures, and methods of combat) to ground what looks like a general literary theme into the specific historical reality of post-Conquest England and the people who brought it about. Thus the figures invading and robbing the hero of his lands and identity use the specific tools of England’s historical invaders, Norman and, in some cases, Viking. Likewise, the English heroes interpret these violations to themselves and their property through an Anglo-Saxon worldview, and retaliate using the tools of Anglo-Saxon society.

Some of these texts, such as King Horn, feature an enemy most commonly associated with the notion of conquest, that is, an external invading force, however, more often than not, conquest in these stories comes by way of an internal agent—a traitor, known and trusted by the hero. Here too, the historical picture proves enlightening, for the success of the Norman takeover came in part through Anglo-Saxon “turncoats” who betrayed their own people, a situation acknowledged openly in the English interpretations of the Conquest. The Middle English Life of Wulfstan, for instance, attributes much of the fall of England to weak lords, “Vor Englisse barons bycome somme vntriwe and fals also/To bitraie hom sulf and hore kyng þat so much triste ham to” (ll. 79–80).⁸ In fact, Wulfstan establishes a chain reaction of treason reaching all the way to Harold Godwinson, who “wiþ traison alas/Þe croune he bar of Engelond wuch wile so it was/Ac William Bastard þat was þo duk of Normandie/Þoʒt to wynne Engelond” (ll. 61–64), while Harold himself was betrayed: “For hy þat Harald triste to faillede him wel vaste” (l. 85). This theme of betrayal from within occurs in English romance as well, for King Horn, Havelok the Dane, and Gamelyn all have the hero betrayed by an individual from his own household (King Mody and Fikenhild; Goddard and Godrich; Johan). Likewise, Sir Orfeo and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight both feature challengers who, though previously unknown to the hero, live in the same general region as the hero. In some cases, as with Fikenhild or Godrich, for instance, the traitor goes by an Anglo-Saxon name and appears to share Anglo-Saxon cultural background with the hero. Nevertheless, in all of these cases, the traitor or challenger applies tools and ideologies long associated with the conquering Normans, tools and ideologies not shared by the hero and his people, thus solidifying the cultural divide created by the Conquest across actual ethnic barriers. The divide, therefore, becomes a matter of mentality rather than exclusively one of race.

Not surprising, the theme of exile and return (or “separation and restoration” according to Wittig) often occurs alongside the theme of death of the father, so that the hero loses his property as a result of his father’s (sometimes violent) death.⁹ King Horn, Havelok the Dane, and The Tale of Gamelyn all begin with the death of the hero’s (and heroine’s in Havelok) father. Because of his death, the hero or heroine loses his or her lands, and the rest of the story has to do with his or her attempts to regain them. In each case, moreover, the death of the father marks a rift between the old culture and the new, between pre-Conquest ways of doing things and post-Conquest political realities. The dead father belongs to the old culture, and the hero must navigate on his own through various unfamiliar and often hostile spaces and experiences of Norman design, including buildings, landscapes, and judiciary procedures. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight too, while not featuring the hero’s father in life or in death, nevertheless presents a father figure, King Arthur, Gawain’s uncle, with whom the hero remains powerfully identified from beginning to end, and whose court bears a pre-Conquest cultural picture. Thus, an Anglo-Saxon father culture, represented by fathers in these stories, comes under direct attack, and the hero or heroine’s task involves defending and restoring everything it represents. In this sense, these stories recast the widespread political trauma of the Conquest as personal trauma, using a specific family or household to revisit the political misfortunes of the many.

The old father culture represented in these stories finds expression in the hero’s social bonds, where male companionship takes precedence, yet another feature that distinguishes English from French romance. One key feature of how conflict unfolds in the English romances in question concerns the prominence of the hero’s companions throughout, a presence that recalls the Warrior Band of Anglo-Saxon tradition. Unlike the heroes of French romance who insist upon venturing out alone, the English heroes Horn, Havelok, King Orfeo, and Gamelyn all fight with a band of supporters, never alone. Variously known as the Retainer Band, the War Band, or in Latin, comitatus, the institution of the Warrior Band reflects the social structure of Anglo-Saxon culture and warfare.¹⁰ Lords at all levels of society, whether king, aetheling, or ealdorman, maintained a loyal band of warriors, some of them his own kin, who lived in his hall, ate at his table, and in return fought on his behalf. The lord-retainer relationship was highly personal, reciprocal, and lifelong, bestowing benefit and honor on both sides. The historical reality of the Warrior Band became a literary topos as well in the form of recurring scenes throughout Anglo-Saxon poetry involving a band of loyal retainers defending, serving, and/or avenging their lord, mostly famously exemplified in the Battle of Maldon.¹¹ So pervasive is the concept of the band of retainers in Anglo-Saxon tradition that Old English adaptations of classical Latin and biblical texts will introduce imagery of the social institution of the Warrior Band where it may be lacking in the original. Thus, in his translation of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy into Old English, King Alfred expands a single phrase characterizing corrupt earthly kings “saeptos tristibus armis” (“surrounded by forbidding arms”) into a scene evoking the Warrior Band in the hall.¹² Similarly, the Old English Genesis A casts the prelapsarian heavenly angels as loyal thegns to their lord in the heavenly hall.¹³

The Warrior Band as a cornerstone of native English society and warfare survives into the Middle English period, where it continues to shape cultural identity in a literary context. This takes primarily two forms. First, we have combat scenes, where the hero fights alongside a group of loyal companions, as seen in King Horn, Havelok the Dane, Sir Orfeo, and Gamelyn. Such is the case even when the story line of a hero fighting for his lady would seem to call for single combat, as in Sir Orfeo and portions of King Horn. Second, we see in the influence of the Warrior Band in the hero’s social sphere, which frequently includes a small group of loyal male companions who nearly always accompany the hero on key missions as well as into battle. Such is the case for Horn, Havelok, and Gamelyn. In the case of Horn and Havelok, in particular, comparison with Anglo-Norman versions of the same stories reveals how the English poet adds and/or expands the presence of male companions for the hero where none exist in the French, suggesting adherence to Anglo-Saxon literary tradition. Thus, unlike the hero of French romance, whose knightly success is conditional on the solo quest, the hero of many English romances, even one like Gawain who ventures alone into the wilderness, remains, in mind if not in body, firmly oriented toward his male companions, all of whom, as we shall see, live in a hall.

Defending and restoring the old father culture takes a variety of forms in these romances. The specifics may vary, but the underlying pattern is the same. The Middle English King Horn presents two invading forces, seemingly disconnected from one another, who together form a panorama of the historical invaders of Anglo-Saxon England, Viking as well as Norman. The Middle English Havelok the Dane unfolds a geography of conquest, reshaping an earlier Lincolnshire legend to include the whole of England, and using the occasion of political conquest in Denmark to invite a reexamination of the Conquest of England. The Middle English Sir Orfeo presents a tale of two kings, one styled as an Anglo-Saxon and one as a Norman, and reenacts the Conquest scenario of invasion, exile, and return by way of striving for some degree of social parity between conqueror and conquered. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight invokes the Anglo-Saxon type-scene of the monster in the hall, merging the invader of Anglo-Saxon literary imagination with the newer, far more fashionable invader of post-Conquest England. Finally, The Tale of Gamelyn stages a contest between Anglo-Saxon and Norman legal institutions and procedures through a courtroom struggle between two brothers over their inheritances. These poems span a period of roughly 175 years (c. 1225–1400), the earliest, King Horn, dating almost 200 years after the Conquest; yet again and again, we find English poets revisiting the events, consequences, and lingering injustices wrought by the Norman Conquest from the vantage of the Anglo-Saxon people. I should say at the outset that these English texts do not identify the problem explicitly by using proper names and terms such as “Norman” or “Norman Conquest.” Rather, they provide oblique, yet copious and highly incriminating evidence in the form of material culture. Without necessarily naming it, these texts compulsively work out the dynamics of the Conquest and the peoples involved, using configurations of detail that leave no mistake as to the ultimate origin for the experiences depicted.

KING HORN

The theme of conquest is presented from the very beginning of English romance, in the Middle English King Horn, dating to c. 1225, the earliest extant English romance.¹⁴ Gi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Credits
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Plotting Conquest
• 2 Castle Architecture and English Identity
• 3 Forest Landscapes and Forest Exile
• 4 The Greenwood Tradition: English Heroes and English Outlaws
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index