Walter Map and the Matter of Britain. Joshua Byron Smith
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Incensed, the king plans to murder the boy during a public celebration. Lausus, however, convinces the boy to yield his place of honor to him, and thus when the murderer attacks, he kills Lausus—not the boy. After some confusion, the truth comes out and King Ninus restores the boy to his high position in court.
The homosocial love triangle of Parius, Lausus, and Ninus is the only romance from distinctio 3 not to feature a woman in any prominent role. Nevertheless, the beginning of the romance dwells on the feminized allegorical figure of Invidia (Envy). We read that Invidia was born in the heart of Lucifer and crept into Paradise to cause the fall of man. A conqueress (victrix), but expelled from heaven, she now makes her home with us, attacking everyone, regardless of station.134 Invidia is explicitly made the cause of the outbreak of jealousy at the Babylonian court: “She secretly entered the seat of proud Babylon.”135 Thus, this romance begins with a feminine allegorical figure attacking the Babylonian court. Moreover, Parius murders Lausus in a way that invokes female deceit. While trying to discover a way to murder Lausus, he finally calls to mind Hercules and Deianira and the poisonous sheet that she almost inadvertently kills him with.136 For Walter, this classical example is a memorable act of female betrayal, one that he also recounts in his antimatrimonial treatise, the Dissuasio Valerii.137 While no female characters exist in this romance, Walter still manages to give the story’s betrayal a feminine veneer.
The next romance features Raso, Raso’s wife, and an emir. Chaucer’s Wife of Bath would have approved of Raso’s approach to his marriage, since, moved by classical examples, he decides to grant his wife control over herself: “and so he released the horse from the bridle, so that she could seek fodder wherever her hunger directed her, and he praised her voluntary chastity to the stars.”138 Her appetite, however, leads her to the emir, whom Raso has captured and placed in confinement. Eventually, she helps the emir escape, and Raso is himself captured in the counterattack. Raso’s son saves his father and kills the emir, but Raso’s wife escapes with a knight whom she intends to take as yet another lover. Before the two can flee the city, Raso kills this knight, puts on his clothes, and travels in disguise with his estranged wife. The pair are attacked by hostile forces, but Raso’s son again appears and saves his father, killing his stepmother in the process.
Those unfortunate enough to have read even a small selection of medieval misogynistic texts will be able to see from this bare summary that Raso’s wife exhibits several stereotypical traits: she abuses her freedom, betrays her husband, and recklessly jumps from man to man. This story, however, is not a simple retelling of the unfaithful wife motif. Given the conventions of romance, one could imagine this story focusing on the bond of father and son, or even on a grudging, mutual respect between Raso and the emir. Walter, however, introduces an element that brings this romance close to parody. Raso’s true love turns out to be his horse. The emir flees Raso’s city “on Raso’s favorite horse” (equo Rasonis carissimo).139 The loss of this horse causes him the greatest grief when he learns his wife’s deception: “He sobs without restraint, but not because of the loss of the emir, or his wife, or what they had taken from him—only from the loss of his horse. Neither his son’s nor his household’s consolation lifts his spirits.”140 When the lady evades Raso’s counterattack, she escapes on “this excellent horse” (optimum equum).141 Later, when Raso is disguised as his wife’s new lover, the two exchange horses, and so he finally gains what he has most desired. As they travel, Raso eventually falls asleep from exhaustion on his beloved horse. The horse proves to be a trustworthy companion, since it warns Raso of an impending attack: “Just as the men are drawing near, Raso’s horse, who was not used to remaining idle in battle, lifts his head, neighs, and paws the sand with his feet to protect his lord from death.”142 Raso awakes, and in the ensuing battle he bursts through the enemies and “is carried wherever he wants thanks to his horse’s speed.”143 Raso’s horse becomes a better companion than his wife, and readers are implicitly invited to compare the two, since Raso’s initial misguided laxity toward his wife has already been described in bestial terms: “he released the horse (iumentum) from the bridle that she could seek fodder (pabula) wherever her hunger directed her.”144 With the wife dead and Raso’s son restored to his rightful place in the household, the romance suggests that keeping a bridle on female agency will help one avoid a cheating wife, hostile capture, and even horse theft.
The love triangle in the final romance in distinctio 3 consists of the nobleman Rollo, Rollo’s wife, and a young knight named Rhys.145 Rhys pines for Rollo’s wife, but she scorns him, forcing Rhys to recognize that he has little renown, especially when compared to Rollo. Chastised, he sets out to make a name for himself in the world of chivalry. Guided by “Master Love” (magister amor), Rhys becomes famous and gains a name for himself.146 Rollo takes note of his accomplishments and he praises the knight in conversation with his wife. Trusting Rollo’s opinion, the wife decides she has been too proud and agrees to a tryst with Rhys. She then tells Rhys why she changed her mind: “Rollo was the cause,” she baldly states.147 Rhys is shocked. “Rhys will never repay Rollo’s good will with wrong,” he says, “since it is uncourtly of me to stain his bed, which all the world denied me and he himself granted me.”148 The romance ends by invoking Ovid, claiming that he was wrong when he stated that a lady cannot be made a virgin again.
It is tempting to read Rhys’s love as ennobling, as the driving force making him into a superb knight, but that is not the case.149 Walter describes Rhys’s chivalric education in a thoroughly scornful manner. Outwardly, he appears a great knight, but inwardly he is, in Walter’s opinion, one of the worse things a man can become—a woman.
He conquers ranks of iron, walls, and towers, and the spirit [animus] that led him to all his victories makes itself womanly [a seipso effeminatur], but he becomes a woman [sed infeminatur], because his spirit changes into feminine weakness [in femineam transit impotenciam], so that he runs after his desires without a thought like women do—a lamb inwardly, but outwardly a lion—and the one who levels the castles of foreigners becomes castrated [castratus] by domestic concerns; he grows soft, weeps, begs, and cries. She, like neither a virgin nor a virago, but like a man, renounces, scorns, and shoves him into despair in every way she can.150
Like Chrétien’s Erec, Rhys’s devotion to love, to Magister Amor, has made him womanly. Moreover, Rollo’s wife maintains control of her emotions and her restraint, making her more of a man than her suitor. When it comes to gender, Walter is an assuredly unsubversive writer, and this story’s ending, which restores normative gender roles, is unsurprising given the three romances that have preceded it. Male order and control is reasserted, and female variability is scorned once again.
The four romances in distinctio 3 all explore love triangles, and they all praise homosocial male friendship, even if that friendship is, in one instance, with a horse. Each romance, moreover, introduces an element of inconstancy at a different point in the triangle, creating a series of romances that speak to one another. These romances are also notable for what they lack—courtly love. But this does not mean that Walter was not aware of the concept. Indeed, this sequence of romances seems to delight in being as opposed to courtly love as possible. Trysts are thwarted; Master Love leads knights astray; and by the end of the stories women are dismissed altogether. The fact that Walter consistently teases readers’ expectations by setting up familiar courtly love situations, only to dash them, shows that he was very familiar with this popular literary concept. Tony Davenport, speaking specifically of the story of Rollo and Rhys, finds acknowledgment of courtly love in “its reference to Ovid and its obvious awareness of contemporary interest in debating degrees of honor and love.”151 Walter’s romances are meant as a clerical satire of, or remedy to, courtly love in popular vernacular romances. Walter Map, like Marie de France and Geoffrey Chaucer, enjoys generating debate by asking readers to compare and contrast similar stories and by subverting generic expectations. The interconnected themes of Walter’s romances demonstrate that he could approach the genre with a high deal of sophistication and expertise.
Walter Map knew contemporary romance, and he wrote romance himself; in spite of some misguided suggestions otherwise, nothing should