Medieval French idyllic romance (12th and 13th centuries): A new look [thesis]

Description

This thesis centres around a group of 12th and 13,h - century verse narratives identified as 'idyllic romances' in Myrrha Lot-Borodine's influential monograph, Le Roman idyllique en France au moyen age (1913): 'Floire et Blancheflor', Galeran de Bretagne, L'Escoufle and Aucassin et Nicolette (a fifth work, Guillaume de Palerne, is excluded here for reasons explained in the introduction). Although critics commonly refer to 'idyllic romance' as a major sub-genre of medieval French romance, the texts have rarely been closely studied to determine what they have in common and how they differ. This thesis examines the works individually and as a group, and further investigates their relationship to wider literary tradition. The idyllic romances are apparently conventional love stories between a boy and a girl who grow up together, fall in love, are separated and after a series of adventures are reunited in marriage. I show how, in exploring issues of gender, sexuality, social acceptability and narrative violence early 13th - century idyllic romances engage with the most powerful love story of medieval French literature - the legend of Tristan and Iseut, itself a contested narrative (12th - century versions). The idyllic romances undertake to rewrite Tristan in such a way as to combine what is presented as a happy ending with a glimpse into the nature of an anti-social passion. 1 further identify those characters or those aspects of the narrative that are sacrificed to make the happy denouement possible. The 'Introductory Flssay' offers a comparison between Floire et Blancheflor, the earliest text of the Old French 'idyllic' corpus, and the Greek 'idyllic' romance Daphnis andChloe (2nd century AD) that share a similar plot structure and are organized around themes of common upbringing, education, nature and love. Unlike the Greek text, however, the French romance does not see the 'natural' life in the idyll as its goal but envisages it as a stage that makes social change and improvement possible. Focusing on Floire et Blancheflor and using Mikhail Bakhtin's idea of the 'chronotope'. Chapter I develops the concept of the 'idyllic' space that the lovers in idyllic romance inhabit and that is inaccessible to outsiders, positioned as it is outside dynamic time of society and separated by a language barrier. In Luce Irigaray's terms, the 'productive remainder' of their love forms a place for both Floire and Blancheflor in the idyll when they leave the idyllic enclosure and are united in a socially acceptable marriage, they return to the traditional gender roles where the woman serves as a place for the man and where there is no other productive remainder but procreation and social change (such as the conversion of Floire's people). In Chapter II, I study the idyll in Jean Renart's L 'Escoufle via the theme of paternity - both biological (count Richard) and intertextual (Tristan, especially BerouPs version) - and the anxiety of influence (Howard Bloch's term) it produces. The idyll in this text functions as an alternative to paternity, the point of departure to which both protagonists refer during the period of separation and which allows Guillaume to overcome anxiety and assume his role as husband and ruler. Chapter III focuses on the theme of doubling of the heroine, borrowed from Thomas's Tristan, and its implications for the idyll. Using Slavoj Zizek's interpretation of the Lacanian concept of'double death' that I connect to Otto Rank's reading of the figure of the double, I argue for the necessity (for the hero) to refuse all repetitions (or doubles) of the idyll in order to move on, to be reunited with the beloved and to be successfully integrated in society. In Chapter IV, I show how the idyll is constantly sought but never fully recovered in Aucassin et Nicolette. I do so by referring to the theories of recognition and parody and the use of recognition scenes in the chantefable. Both recognition and parody exemplify transformation and potential loss of the original and anxieties associated with it. The general comic and possibly parodic nature of the work destabilizes the structure of idyllic romance and questions its credibility.