"Never forget what you stand for."

Gawain and Green Knight

Namely, a woman when she enters the room - if you're a man of traditional courtesy. As Gawain is, who also knows to stand up to the Green Knight, with traditional courtesy, of course.

'Green' Vikings and the Green Knight?

Amazon

The early-10th-century Muslim envoy Ibn Fadlán, writing in a travel account often referred to as In the Land of Darkness -- which I suppose refers to the north's long winter nights but perhaps refers to the darkness of ignorance -- describes Vikings (whom he calls "the Rūs") as follows:

I saw the Rūs, who had come for trade and had camped by the river Itil. I have never seen bodies more perfect than theirs. They were like palm trees. They are fair and ruddy. They wear neither coats nor caftans, but a garment which covers one side of the body and leaves one hand free. Each of them carries an axe, a sword and a knife and is never parted from any of the arms we have mentioned. Their swords are broad bladed and grooved like the Frankish ones. From the tips of his toes to his neck, each man is tattooed in dark green with designs, and so forth.

What interests me is that the Vikings are tattooed in dark green designs from toes to the neck, and I wonder if there is a memory of these 'green' men by the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, though there are differences, the Green Knight being solid green from toes to top of head.

Probably not . . .

Neda Agha-Soltan's death revisited . . .

Marzieh Amirizadeh

and

Maryam Rustampoor

Muslim-Background Christians

(Image from BosNewsLife)

Although I'm now about 90 percent convinced that Neda Agha-Soltan's death was a purely random killing by the Basij, who had no suspicion that she might have been Christian, the case of Muslim-background Christians such as Marzieh Amirizadeh and Maryam Rustampoor is what raised my suspicions:

Marzieh Amirizadeh, 30, and Maryam Rustampoor, 27, have been held for over four months in Tehran's notorious Evin prison apparently for converting to Christianity from Islam.

Iranian Christians and rights investigators said the two young women, who were arrested March 5, suffered sleep deprivation as part of police interrogations and were held in solitary confinement for three weeks in May and early June.

Later, they were put together in one small cell for about two weeks before being moved to a larger area to make place for other inmates, including many protesters who were detained following last month's disputed presidential elections, said Christians with close knowledge about the situation.

About 600 women were reportedly brought to Evin prison during the protests. (Stefan J. Bos, "Concerns Over Detained Iranian Christians Amid Political Turmoil," BosNewLife, July 7, 2009)

As the report notes, apostasy from Islam is taken very seriously in Iran:

Apostasy along with murder, adultery, rape, armed robbery, and drug trafficking are all punishable by death in Iran, and last week Iranian media reported that at least six people were hanged for murder in the same prison where the two Christian women are held.

Iran's hardline on apostasy, combined with the seeming cross worn by Neda Agha-Soltan, left me wondering . . . but my former student Hajir, an Iranian, expressed skepticism that Neda had been specifically targeted:

Even though it might seem interesting that a girl whos name is Persian was wearing a cross in a picture, to me it is not surprising at all. First of all many of people who I know that live very secular if they find something stylish they might wear it for a period, therefore they are not necessarily Christian.

Or since many Persians these days are confused with their religious identity might identify themselves with any religion temporarily, but they cannot be considered real converts because [they] mostly do not have deep understanding and they just follow the trend for a short period.

But still there are many (unknown number) of Christian converts in Iran that she might also be one of them, Her religious belief is really uncertain to me, indeed it seems a cross to me in the photo.

. . .

I personally think her death was just like other deaths that unfortunately took place within the past few weeks and the only distinction is the video that has made the scene more significant than the others.

I believe she was shot down by Basij troops and the death was not plotted in advance. Because police were even unable to locate the protests, how could they possibly know somebody who has no high profile -- like her -- is somewhere among the protesters to plan to kill her?!

Hajir's final point is a very astute one. Following through on some plan to kill Neda Agha-Soltan in the chaotic crowds would have been very difficult. Still, let's not dismiss it entirely, for Iran's Islamist leaders are said to be worried about conversions away from Islam, especially conversions to Christianity, so much so that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has reportedly promised, "I will stop Christianity in this country" (Kenneth R. Timmerman, "Freedom to Believe," NRO, December 15, 2005). Consider this analysis from the news report above on Marzieh Amirizadeh and Maryam Rustampoor:

Elam Ministries linked the attacks [on Muslim-background Christians] to concern among Iran's leaders about the spread of Christianity in the Islamic nation. "Because Iran is a strategic gateway nation, the growing church in Iran will impact Muslim nations across the Islamic world."

The group said in 1979, there were less than 500 known Christians from a Muslim background in Iran. "Today the most conservative estimate is that there are at least 100,000 believers in the nation."

Church leaders have reportedly said that they believe "millions" can be added "to the church in the next few years-such is the spiritual hunger that exists and the disillusionment with the Islamic regime." (Stefan J. Bos, "Concerns Over Detained Iranian Christians Amid Political Turmoil," BosNewLife, July 7, 2009)

One need not accept the optimistic projections of Elam Ministries to recognize that the Islamic Republic of Iran might be paranoid about such conversions. Some supporters of the Iranian government even seem to revel in the brutal suppression, as with this "Anonymous" individual in a comment to one of my blog entries on the election in Iran:

Ahmadinejad was ahead before the election, and there is no reason to believe he did not win a landslide. He has been rubbing the West's nose in its own sh*t for over 4 years.

Four more years, like it or not. (Your own sh*t, that is.)

I found courtesy difficult to maintain in the face of such vulgar gloating by an individual who didn't even bother with asterisks (though I have since supplied these), but I did manage what I hope was a sufficiently irenic reply:

Anonymous, when I saw the "Anonymous" signature, I expected the sort of comment that you posted, so I wasn't surprised and therefore certainly not disappointed.

Congratulations on your victory. You sound happy with it.

We'll just have to see how this all plays out over the years and months, but "Anonymous" should recall that fateful warning to Sir Gawain: Þe forme to þe fynisment foldez ful selden ("first things to last things very seldom match," SGGK, Part 2, line 499).

Anahit Vart: Artist

Anahit Vart, Green Knight

(Image from Anahit Vart Homepage)

In my post of November 10th, I noted that I had been looking for an image of a painting by Guillermo Pérez Villalta showing "a naked green man astride a green horse" -- for I was wondering if the artist were depicting the antagonist in the Pearl Poet's strange poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight -- and I learned of a different 'knight', the Moor Alfatami, who also had a green horse (but was himself not green), and while looking for a possible depiction of this Moor and his green horse, I Googled onto the above image of a green knight on a green 'horse' painted by Anahit Vart.

A commercial website that also shows an image of this painting suggests that the scene is connected to the "Arthurian legend," but the site offers no substantiation. Taking a slight risk, I emailed the artist to inquire:

I am curious about your painting Green Knight (2001?). Is it inspired by the Pearl Poet's 14th-century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight? I hope that you don't mind that I posted an image of your painting on my blog . . . . There, I speculate that there might be a source other than the Pearl Poet's poem, for the imagery in your painting looks different than what is found in the poem. Are you drawing upon Armenian legends? Or possibly Russian ones?

Today, Ms. Vart replied:

Your email was nice surprise for me and I'm very happy see my painting on your blog. My painting is my interpretation of a story about "Sleepy Beauty", but I painted some elements from Armenia like [the] mountain Ararat (on a left bottom corner). You have very interesting site, I think I will get a lot new information from there. I'm sending to you my late artwork image inspired by Spain where I traveled last year.

I wonder if Sleepy Beauty is the same story as Sleeping Beauty. Anyway, the painting seems to come from a different cycle of Romance fiction than the Arthurian legends. For yet another image of 'romance', I'm posting the artwork inspired by Ms. Vart's trip through Spain:

Anahit Vart

Scene from Spain

(Image sent from Anahit Vart)

I don't know if this depicts a scene from Carnival or one from a masked ball. Perhaps if Ms. Vart visits again, she can inform us. Whether the painting is of Carnival or a ball, the verdant branch borne by the lady leads me to wonder about possible symbolism. From what I've seen at Ms. Vart's website, many of her paintings have a mysterious quality that suggests to me larger meanings drawn from stories. Possibly, she might tell us about this as well.

Or perhaps all will remain a mystery.

More Greenery . . .

Green's Spectral Coordinates

It's all so complicated . . .

(Image from Wikipedia)

Searching for more on that green knight on a green horse, I came upon an interesting fact. According to the Online Etymological Dictionary, "green" is related to the word "grow":

O.E. grene, earlier groeni, related to O.E. growan "to grow," from W.Gmc. *gronja- (cf. O.Fris. grene, O.N. grænn, Dan. grøn, Du. groen, Ger. grün), from PIE base *gro- "grow," through sense of "color of living plants."

Compare with the entry for "grass":

O.E. græs, gærs "herb, plant, grass," from P.Gmc. grasan (cf. O.N., Ger., Goth. gras), from PIE *ghros- "young shoot, sprout," from base *gro-/*gre- "that which grows" (cf. L. gramen "grass"); related to grow and green.

And we might as well check out "grow":

O.E. growan (of plants) "to flourish, develop, get bigger" (class VII strong verb; past tense greow, pp. growen), from P.Gmc. *gro- (cf. O.N. groa, O.Fris. groia, Du. groeien, O.H.G. gruoen), from root of grass (q.v.).

These dictionary entries inform us only about the etymologies for the English words "green," "grass," and "grow," but the proposed etymology for "verdure" suggests a parallel in the Romance languages:

c.1300, "fresh green color," from O.Fr. verdure "greenness," from verd, variant of vert "green," from L. viridis (cf. Sp., It. verde), related to virere "be green," of unknown origin. Perhaps ult. from a root meaning "growing plant" and cognate with Lith. veisti "propagate," O.N. visir "bud, sprout," O.E. wise "sprout, stalk, etc."

That, however, is speculation.

So is this: perhaps green is subtly associated with a 'supernatural' ability to regenerate. That might explain the Green Knight in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight has the supernatural power to survive having his head chopped off:

The green knight got ready, feet firm on the ground;
leaned his head a little to let the cheek show,
and raised the rich riot of his hair
so the nape of his neck was naked and exposed.
Gawain held the ax high overhead,
his left foot set before him on the floor,
swung swiftly at the soft flesh
so the bit of the blade broke through the bones,
crashed through the clear fat and cut it in two,
and the brightly burnished edge bit into the earth.
The handsome head fell, hit the ground,
and rolled forward; they fended it off with their feet.
The red blood burst bright from the green body,
yet the fellow neither faltered nor fell
but stepped strongly out on sturdy thighs,
reached roughly right through their legs,
grabbed his graceful head and lifted it from the ground,
ran to his horse, caught hold of the reins,
stepped in the stirrup, strode into the saddle,
the head dangling by the hair from his hand,
and seated himself as firmly in the saddle
as if he were unhurt, though he sat on his horse without
a head.

(Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Stanza 19, translation by Paul Deane)

Rather gruesome, but it makes my point. The Green Knight survives decapitation. Also noteworthy is that he appears in the dead of winter but at the new year's beginning, when the darkest days are just being left behind, bearing -- in an earlier stanza -- a sprig of the evergreen holly, a winter promise of life in the coming springtime.

I've written "supernatural," but I'm not entirely satisfied with the term, for the growing of green grass -- as with all greenery -- is a purely natural process, presumably not just for us Moderns but also for Medieval people. But what does "natural" mean in such a context? Perhaps the green growth of springtime was considered natural but also mysterious, even uncanny.

A natural miracle.

Looking for a green knight . . .

Anahit Vart, Green Knight

(Image from Anahit Vart Homepage)

A few days ago, I posted a query about a painting by Guillermo Pérez Villalta of "a naked green man astride a green horse," for I wondered if the artist were depicting the antagonist in the Pearl Poet's strange poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

In response to my query, a comment has been posted by Trevor the Baldie, the back of whose head can be viewed here but the font of whose wisdom is much closer:

There are lots of jokes in Spanish about green horses, but I don't think they connect. Verde means indecent, which tends to cloud things.

The Moor Alfatami and his green horse are hidden under a hill somewhere in Valencia, Spain, awaiting an appropriate call to emerge and slaughter Christians, but I don't think he's a bodypainter.

I replied:

Trevor, thanks for the information. The possible pun between "green" and "indecent" might be lurking here (if puns lurk like a parenthetical remark).

I don't know much Spanish, by the way. I know that "indecente" means "indecent" . . . so does "verde" have a secondary meaning of "indecent"? As in the English "green" meaning the color green but also having a secondary meaning of "inexperienced"? Or are there two words "verde"? As in the words "cleave" (meaning "cut asunder") and "cleave" (meaning "cling together").

As for the apparently bloodthirsty Alfatami, his name (though not his horse) strikes a chord of memory, but only distantly. I checked online and found only one Googled reference to him with a green horse. I thus didn't learn much, but I did learn something, hence proving the old saw that one learns something new every day . . . even if merely a little bit.

This new information sent me Googling for images of a Moor riding a green horse. As the image above demonstrates, however, I found not a Moor but a "Green Knight" instead, possibly the very same one described by the anonymous Pearl Poet.

The artist, as noted above, is Anahit Vart, who was born in Armenia but moved to Buenos Aires in 1992, then on to Los Angeles in 1997 and continues to live in California. I obtained this biographical information from Vart's own website, but she doesn't provide any details about her various paintings there.

On a commercial website, however, I found that the painting reproduced above was painted in 2001 and is noted, at that website, as being connected to the "Arthurian legend." I don't know if this Arthurian link is correct, for the site offers no substantiation. Moreover, the green knight depicted above has no beard and may be riding a green dragon rather than a green horse, as can better be seen at Vart's website by clicking on the image there and looking at details. Also, the other images in the painting have no obvious connection to the Pearl Poet's Gawain tale. I'm guessing that Vart might have been inspired by Armenian legends -- or possibly Russian ones. Or Jewish? The above painting recalls imagery from Marc Chagall's work . . . at least to me.

Well, this entry hasn't taken me very far, but at least it took me a lot of time to get here.

"a naked green man astride a green horse"

Guillermo Pérez Villalta

"The Symbols of Love"

(Image from International Herald Tribune)

Dale Fuchs has published an article, "For Spanish tapestries, a 21st-century makeover," in the International Herald Tribune on Spain's Real Fábrica de Tapices (Royal Tapestry Factory), which was founded in 1721 by King Philip V and which sounds like a fascinating institution.

What caught my attention was a reference to an image from a painting by Guillermo Pérez Villalta that one of the tapestry makers is weaving into a tapestry:

Consider, for instance, the tapestry in progress by the veteran craftsman José Antonio Carbajal. He is weaving a Pérez Villalta composition depicting a naked green man astride a green horse, which trots into a flat horizon of multicolored Delaunay-style circles.

The "green man astride a green horse" could perhaps be a pictoral allusion to the the Green Knight in the Pearl Poet's story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, but the IHT article offers no information on that possibility. I'm guessing that the scene depicted above is a detail from a larger painting by Villalta that would reveal the green man mentioned by Fuchs.

Unfortunately, I don't know anything about Villalta. For those who read Spanish, that edition of Wikipedia provides some information, but the English Wikipedia has no entry on him. I did find via BNET a short review by Kim Bradley for Art in America, "Guillermo Perez Villalta at Soledad Lorenzo, Madrid, Spain" (1997):

Nowhere is the artist's fondness for the Byzantine more apparent than in Faz (The Holy Face). Set against a primarily golden background, this sinewy Pantocrator with veined, marblelike flesh sports a halo of zigzaggy hair and an elaborately linear mustache and beard. His elongated face and thin lips and nose are offset by large amber-colored eyes which fix their piercing gaze on the viewer. Perez Villalta often freely intermingles Christian subjects and symbols, such as the Crucifixion, with pagan themes, gods and monsters. In Creacion (Creation), which takes both Dionysus and the Good Shepherd as its main topics, a host of satyrlike creatures and winged angels with fish tails cavort in a peculiar wilderness. Flawlessly executed, the work evidences Perez Villalta's increasingly refined technical skills as well as his highly developed personal mythology.

The free intermingling of "Christian subjects and symbols . . . with pagan themes, gods and monsters" recalls Medieval art and literature and might therefore suggest that Villalta has turned to artistic and literary sources from the Middle Ages. This intermingling is certainly consistent with the Arthurian story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Perhaps some reader happening upon this blog entry would also happen to know the answer -- or would at least be able to supply a link to Villalta's image of the "green man astride a green horse."

"Do ye ken it?"

Ozark Mountains

"Do ye ken it?"

(Image from Wikipedia)

In a comment to my post on "Strange, overlapping loops," one of my regular readers, JK, noted the continued use of the word "ken" in the Arkansas Ozarks up until the time of my own childhood there:

In the hills the lexicon still contained a few words not much heard today. You'uns, we'uns. But one perhaps most revealing in this context was "ken."

My grandfather occasionally used it when he was giving me a life lesson. One of my most memorable times with him occurred when he took me fishing on Southfork [River]. I don't recall the exact lesson that day but I asked him just what ken meant.

"It's a bit like understand, but there's more to it" he said. He slapped his head and said "you know it here." He placed his hands on his chest and said, "you know and feel it here." He made an arm's wide gesture and said, "and you can use it to feel the world around you."

If memory serves, and perhaps your English commentor [Eshuneutics] might give a more accurate lesson, my memory seems to tell me that "ken" was of Scots origin.

Now, I have to own up to never hearing this word myself when I was a kid. It must have passed out of people's active vocabularies, but I've no doubt that the old folks would have known it. I wish that I could ask Grandma Shell (born 1877) or Grandpa Perryman (born 1895) -- or even better, my Grandma Hodges (born 1895) or 'Grandpa' Archie (born 1899), who lived on an isolated farm southwest of Viola, Arkansas at the end of 6 miles of dirt road and who still spoke like oldtimers. 'Grandpa' Archie was still living in the mid-1990s -- long enough for Sun-Ae to meet him -- and could have told me if I'd known to ask about the word "ken." But, of course, asking about this word never occurred to me because I didn't know that "ken" had lasted until my own Ozark childhood.

JK's anecdotal remembrance of his grandfather's explanation of what "ken" meant is striking for me because of what it suggests about people's nonacademic understanding of their own language. Let me get at my meaning this way. If I -- in my academic way -- wanted to know what "ken" meant, I'd check a dictionary. Let's try the online free dictionary as a first approximation:

noun: 1. Perception; understanding: complex issues well beyond our ken. 2. a. Range of vision. b. View; sight.

verb: kenned or kent (kĕnt), ken·ning, kens Scots

transitive verb: 1. To know (a person or thing). 2. To recognize.

intransitive verb: To have knowledge or an understanding.

We can immediately see that JK's grandfather's use of "ken" fits within this range of meaning. Two things, however, strike me as missing in the dictionary -- the old man's emphasis upon feeling as a way of knowing and his way of uniting the word's three uses rather than dividing them. Recall his own words:

"It's a bit like understand, but there's more to it" he said. He slapped his head and said "you know it here." He placed his hands on his chest and said, "you know and feel it here." He made an arm's wide gesture and said, "and you can use it to feel the world around you."

Rather than distinguish meanings, JK's grandfather joined them, emphasizing "there's more to it." I particularly like the way that he joined "ken" in its senses of know (mental), feel (emotional), and perceive (sensational) -- as though all three can operate simultaneously.

And that leads me to rethink my earlier reading of these lines in Milton's Paradise Lost, which describe Satan awakening in Hell after his expulsion from heaven and growing aware of his dismal circumstances:

Nine times the Space that measures Day and Night [50]
To mortal men, he with his horrid crew
Lay vanquisht, rowling in the fiery Gulfe
Confounded though immortal: But his doom
Reserv'd him to more wrath; for now the thought
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain [55]
Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes
That witness'd huge affliction and dismay
Mixt with obdurate pride and stedfast hate:
At once as far as Angels kenn he views
The dismal Situation waste and wilde, [60]
A Dungeon horrible, on all sides round
As one great Furnace flam'd, yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible
Serv'd onely to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace [65]
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all; but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery Deluge, fed
With ever-burning Sulphur unconsum'd: (PL 1.50-69)

I focus here upon lines 59-60: "At once as far as Angels kenn he views / The dismal Situation waste and wilde." Alastair Fowler notes that "kenn" may have verbal force here (Fowler, ed., John Milton: Paradise Lost, 2nd edition (1998), page 63, note 59).

If I may extrapolate from the old man's explanation of "ken" in the early 1960s back to Milton's use of the word some 300 years earlier in his 1674 edition of Paradise Lost, then I should understand "kenn" to mean more than merely "range of vision" (a meaning that goes back to at least 1205 in its verbal sense, according to my OED, page 671). I should understand "kenn" to mean that Satan not only "sees" but also feels his situation in perceiving it and knowing it. Certainly the emotional force of his dismal situation would be powerfully perceived, known, and felt all at once.

Now, this may seem like a minor point, but it's an important matter for interpretation and translation. If I am working with a Middle English text such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and encounter the word "ken," then I will need to consider that the word may combine its meanings rather than distinguish them, for with such a text, I am forced to translate its archaic and even dialectical English into a more modern, mainstream form, so I need to understand what meaning needs to be preserved in doing that.

I'll have to give this point some more thought and perhaps seek out a few examples, especially since I'm scheduled to present a paper at a Medieval conference on translation this autumn...

Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Wine!

Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Judgment of Paris

"Siþen þe sege and þe assaut watz sesed at Troye..."

(Image from Wikipedia)

I've finished writing my paper on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. My next step is to do the research.

I know, I know, that sounds like putting Descartes before the hearse -- 'he thought, therefore he was' in the way -- but that's how I write my scholarly papers these days. I have my 'big idea' first, I think about it a bit, I convince myself that I'm right, I write the paper in a short time, and I then set sail for the wide seas of scholarship on a treasure hunt.

I admit that I do look for a few trinkets in the process of writing, but the search for scholarly treasure generally comes later. I'm now at this "later" stage.

Anyway, for those of you still reading this stuff, here's what I finished up with yesterday, my grand "Conclusion":

As noted at the outset of this paper, Gawain's quest has led him through the paradox of Christian salvation wherein his very failure itself has prepared him properly for redemption. Although a pious Christian devoted to the Virgin Mary, Gawain is too proud in his virtues despite his courteous air of humility. As with the others at the court of Arthur, Gawain suffers a surfeit of pride, and his faith must be tested through the various games set up by the Green Knight. Specifically, he is tested in his courage, his troth, and his celibacy. Readers see clearly that he fails in his faith by placing his trust in the green belt rather than the Virgin Mary. This reliance upon the 'magical' belt calls his courage into doubt as well. Retaining the belt rather than handing it over to Lord Bertilak shows that he fails in his troth. The Green Knight observes that Gawain fails in his courage and his troth, so this is also quite clear to readers. Readers might miss the way in which Gawain falls into a lecherous adultery of the heart, for he seems to have displayed remarkable restraint in resisting the advances of an extraordinarily beautiful, charming, and seductive lady, and the Green Knight himself states that Gawain has not failed due to "wooing" (wowyng, line 2367 (cf. 2361)). However, from Gawain's self-condemnation, one sees that he focuses upon two failings, his cowardice and his sexual coveting (couetyse, line 2374) of Lord Bertilak’s wife. Gawain may have satisfied the Green Knight on this point, but the falseness of his own heart condemns him, for he has failed to remain chaste within -- he has failed to stay celibate and true to the Virgin Mary. His fall, however, can become a felix culpa, a happy fault, if the blow dealt his pride leads him to true repentance. Concerning this final stage of redemption, the text remains silent. Perhaps, then, Gawain has yet a few more quests to undertake in his path toward self-knowledge.

That brief conclusion brought my paper to precisely 24 pages ... though it will surpass that today as I launch my scholarly craft, run up my Jolly Roger, and start raiding other people's papers.

Now, however, is a moment to treasure. "Yo ho ho and a bottle of wine!" Just let me uncork a fine American wine. Yes, an American wine, despite the advice of Korean wine expert Lee Je-chun, proprietor of Jell Wine in Itaewon-dong. Some of you will recall Lee's remarks about avoiding American wines:

"They cost so much because the land is the most expensive in the world," says Lee. "With good American wines you are paying a lot for the soil and not so much for the grapes." (Daniel Jeffreys, "Looking for a good wine? It's all a matter of balance," JoongAng Daily, May 18, 2007)

At the time, I took issue with this ... twice. I doubt that American land is the most expensive in the world, even in California, and as my friend and wine expert Bruce Cochran retorted:

How much does land cost in those Burgundian vineyards he likes? Or Bordeaux (the best parts)?

I can't imagine that land in Europe is actually cheaper than land in the US, but I'm willing to hear what the real estate experts say on this. Meanwhile, I can report that one is not "paying a lot for the soil" in buying American wines. According to a recent article by Jon Herskovitz (and Jessica Kim) in Reuters, "South Korea wine mart ready to toast U.S. trade deal" (June 30, 2007), prices for American wines in Korea are "due to high mark-ups, taxes, distribution costs and government regulations" on the Korean side (and not because of American land prices). But those high Korean wine prices might be going down ... eventually. Here's the story:

South Korea's free trade pact with the United States signed at the weekend should nicely pair South Korea's steadily growing wine market with the export ambitions of U.S. wine makers.

But it may take several years of ageing before it leads to a drop in exorbitant wine prices in South Korea.

"Korea is due for a big boom in California wine," said Dan Schulte, a senior executive with major importer Pieroth Korea.

When the free trade deal comes into effect with the United States, it will lead to a lot more wine on the market, but the price drop from the tax cuts may not be quickly passed on to consumers, Schulte and other wine industry sources said.

The few South Koreans who are regular wine drinkers are used to paying a premium for the beverage and it will take a much larger number of consumers, who are better informed about global prices, before a bottle becomes cheaper, they said.

A paper from the U.S. Embassy in Seoul shows retail wine prices in South Korea are about two to four times those in the United States due to high mark-ups, taxes, distribution costs and government regulations.

...

South Korean media have said the trade deal with the United States, and one in the works with the European Union, could lead to a sea change in the world's 12th largest economy, turning wine from a niche drinking choice to a mainstream beverage.

A trade deal with Chile in 2004 brought about lower prices, more varieties of wine from the South American country coming into South Korea and led to about a five-fold increase in sales.

...

Jerome Stubert, general manager of the Novotel Ambassador in Seoul said the FTA would push up sales of U.S. wine in the same way it did for Chilean wine. But the free trade deal in the works with the EU is the one to watch.

In short, the high price of American wines, despite Lee Je-chun's remarks, is not due to high land prices in the States but, rather, a consequence of distribution costs combined with high markups and government taxes -- all of these on the Korean side of the wine trade.

This Reuters report also appeared in the July 2nd edition of The Korea Herald, (page 6, columns 2-5), but I couldn't locate the online version. However, I do have the hard copy, and I've a good mind to march right over to Jell Wine in Itaewon-dong and wave it in Mr. Lee's face.

Actually, I'd have to march right over to a nearby bus stop, catch a bus to Bonghwasan Station, march right down to the subway, catch a train to Itaewon Station, march right up to the street level, and then march right around looking for Jell Wine.

Sounds like too damned much marching for a hot summer day, so I think that I'll just stay here and enjoy a refreshing white wine from America and toast the day that the FTA brings those wine prices down and Mr. Lee gets his comeuppance in a new "Judgment of Paris"!

When I'll be chortling, "Yo ho ho and a bottle of wine!"

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Medieval Bildungsroman?

The Landscape of Medieval Romance

The Pearl Poet's Europe (c. 1328)

(Image from Wikipedia)

I'm still working on my Gawain paper, which is taking shape bit by bit in a rough, patched-together manner, and as readers might have noted, I'm presenting the story as a sort of Medieval Bildungsroman, a story of personal development in which a character comes to deeper insight and greater maturity.

"Medieval Bildungsroman" is an expression that I came up with just this morning, but I see that it's been coined already. Joseph Szoverffy used the term way back in 1977 in his review of Ruodlieb: Faksimile-Ausgabe des Codex Latinus Monacensis 19486 der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek Munchen und der Fragmente von St. Florian, by Walter Haug, in Speculum, Vol. 52, No. 4 (Oct., 1977), pp. 981-983. Some 15 years later, John W. Baldwin used the expression in his article "Five Discourses on Desire: Sexuality and Gender in Northern France around 1200," also in Speculum, Vol. 66, No. 4 (Oct., 1991), pp. 797-819. And just three years later, John Il Kwun (or John Bachmann?) seems to have used the expression in "The Ultimate Quest: Secular and Spiritual Conceptions of Self-Perfection in the Medieval Chivalric Romance," Google Group: sci.anthropology, May 1, 1994. More recently, on September 27, 2004, M. Charlotte Wolf finished a dissertation, "The Treatment of Fragmentation in Irmtraud Morgner's Unfinished Salman Trilogy" (Union Institute and University, Cincinnati, Ohio), in which she also used the expression.

I cannot, therefore, claim originality in coming up with the expression Medieval Bildungsroman, for its use stretches back to at least 1977. But I can perhaps say something new about Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. If this is a Bildungsroman, then what does Gawain learn about himself in the process of his self-formation? One thing that he learns is that he is not completely in control of his own moral development, for he has been tricked into greater self-knowledge, but he does attempt to learn his lesson and apply it.

In particular, his confession to King Arthur in the presence of his fellow knights after returning to that royal court seems to distinguish two sins that he has committed:

"Behold, sir," said he, and handles the belt,
"This is the blazon of the blemish that I bear on my neck;
This is the sign of sore loss that I have suffered there
For the cowardice and coveting that I came to there;
This is the badge of false faith that I was found in there,
And I must bear it on my body till I breathe my last.
For one may keep a deed dark, but undo it no whit,
For where a fault is made fast, it is fixed forevermore."
(ll 2505-2512)

Gawain accuses himself of "cowardice" (couardise) and "coveting" (couetyse). Both contribute to his "false faith" (vntrawþe), a self-reproach by which Gawain confesses his unworthiness to wear the pentangle, that "endless knot" (endeles knot) that stands for trawþe -- the Middle English of “troth” -- which combined the meanings "truth" and "loyalty." Gawain's sin has loosened that endless knot, and the baldric crossing over the shoulder where the shield with pentangle had been hung (line 621) has been replaced with the belt as a substitute baldric tied with a knot at his left side (line 2486). In Gawain's confession, the fault that he has committed will stain him as long as he lives, but what precisely does Gawain confess to? His couardise is clear enough: fear for his life partly led him to accept the belt offered by Lady Bertilak. But what was the object of his couetyse? This recalls the earlier discussion of Matthew 5:27-28.

Ye han herd that it was seid to elde men, Thou schalt do no letcherie. But Y seie to you, that euery man that seeth a womman for to coueite hir, hath now do letcherie bi hir in his herte. (Matheu 5:27-28: Wycliffe Bible)

In that earlier discussion, we learned that in the 14th century, the time of both Wycliffe and the Pearl Poet, the word "covet" (coueite) meant "To desire with concupiscence or with fleshly appetite" (OED I, 1106, 2). The term here, however, is the noun "covetise" (couetyse), so what did it mean? According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "covetise" had a sexual connotation in the 14th century. In Daniel 13:7 of the 1382 Wycliffe Bible, we read these words concerning the men who saw the beautiful Susanne bathing:

Thei brennyden in the couetise of hir. (OED I, "covetise," 1106, 1)

They burned with covetise for her. (My Translation)

And Chaucer uses the noun "covetise" to warn against lechery in his Parson's Tale, written about 1386 (OED I, "covetise," 1106, 1). Speaking of the sin worked by the devil's hand, Chaucer identifies the specific work of the devil's first finger:

This is that other hand of the devel, with five fyngres to cache the peple to his vileynye. / The firste finger is the fool lookynge of the fool woman and of the fool man, that sleeth right as the basilicok sleeth folk by the venom of his sighte, for the coveitise of eyen folweth the coveitise of the herte. (John H. Fisher, editor, "Parson's Tale," in The Complete Poetry and Prose of Geoffrey Chaucer (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1977), page 385 (ll 851-852))

This is the other hand of the devil, with five fingers to draw people to his villainy. / The first finger is the foolish glancing of the foolish woman and of the foolish man, which slays [people] exactly as the basilicok slays people by the venom of its glance, for the covetise of the eyes follows the covetise of the heart. (My Translation)

Chaucer's parson thus identifies "covetise" with lechery and emphasizes that "the covetise of the eyes follows the covetise of the heart," which fits rather nicely with the view that Gawain has fallen into an adultery of the heart, given his confession of "coveting" (couetyse). Gawain takes rather hard his self-knowledge as one guilty of breaking faith for the low motives of cowardice and lechery. Indeed, he tell us in line 2512 that "where a fault is made fast, it is fixed forevermore," as though he believes that his sin has brought him into a fallen state as low as original sin brought Adam. While Gawain's self-reproach might seem excessive, it represents an important stage in his development as a Christian knight, for he has previously been held in thrall to pride, as the Green Knight tells us in revealing that Morgan le Faye sent him:

She guided me in this guise to your glorious hall,
To assay, if such it were, the surfeit of pride
That is rumored of the retinue of the Round Table.
(ll 2456-2458)

The Middle English word translated by Borroff as the phrase "surfeit of pride" is surquidre (cf. sourquydrye, line 311) which the OED traces to as early as 1225 and renders as "arrogance, haughty pride, presumption" (OED II, “surquidry,” 243). Gawain does, in fact, recognize his fault of pride, for in the punning passage of lines 2437-2338, Gawain has already agreed to keep the belt, saying that it will remind him of his pride and humble his heart. Although the Green Knight assures Gawain that his confession of all his failings has left him as pure as if he had never sinned (lines 2391-2394), Gawain remains troubled over his fall and considers himself stained for life, as we have already seen. Indeed, Gawain needed to fail for this story to be a Christian one, for such is the Christian view of human nature, that it is fallen and must therefore fail due to its innate sin.

Sir Gawain's encounter with Lady Bertilak and his subsequent entrapment in an adultery of the heart thus works as a type of felix culpa -- a fortunate fall -- that leads him to deeper knowledge of himself and thereby to the possibility of salvation.

And that's where my paper now stands, at 22 pages and still in need of a conclusion -- plus a great deal of smoothing out, minor additions, scholarly notes, and so on. Obviously too long for a 20-minute presentation...

Sir Gawain: "quen pryde schal me pryk for prowes of armes"

A Headless Cock

This could have been Gawain's chicken-hearted fate!

(Image from Wikipedia)

Yesterday, I concluded with the threat to subject my readers to more of my rough draft-in-progress on Gawain's adultery of the heart. What follows is a still-developing argument in which I attempt to bring together two sorts of 'infidelity' in Gawain's acceptance of Lady Bertilak's belt.

I have already noted that by accepting the belt, Gawain breaks faith with his true lady, the Virgin Mary, but he also breaks faith with Lord Bertilak, and he does so in two ways: in committing an adultery of the heart confirmed by the terms luf-lace and drurye, as already noted, and in failing to keep to the agreement reached to exchange each day's 'winnings'. I will begin by alluding to the former point, then deal at some length with the latter point before returning to the former point with a bit more evidence.

Gawain's acceptance of the belt has set up a further problem in addition to an adultery of the heart. Recall that Gawain has confirmed an agreement with Lord Bertilak to exchange their winnings each day, and as already noted, Gawain does give to Bertilak the three kisses received from Lady Bertilak when she last parted from him. He does not, however, hand over the belt. Of course, he cannot do so without losing the magical protection that it supposedly offers, but by keeping it for himself rather than giving it to Lord Bertilak, Gawain breaks an agreement and thereby proves himself less than perfectly honest, as the Green Knight informs him when they meet at the Green Chapel on New Year's Day to finish their beheading game. The Green Knight has just made two feints to test Gawain before finally bearing down hard, yet only just nicking Gawain's neck, but nevertheless fulfilling the game started one year before in Arthur’s court. As the Green Knight tells Gawain:

"I owed you a hit and you have it; be happy therewith!
The rest of my rights here I freely resign.
Had I been a bit busier, a buffet, perhaps,
I could have dealt more directly, and done you some harm.
First I flourished with a feint, in frolicsome mood,
And left your hide unhurt -- and here I did well
By the fair terms we fixed on the first night;
And fully and faithfully you followed accord:
Gave over all your gains as a good man should.
A second feint, sir, I assigned for the morning
You kissed my comely wife -- each kiss you restored.
For both of these there behooved two feigned blows

by right.

True men pay what they owe;
No danger then in sight.
You failed at the third throw,
So take my tap, sir knight.

"For that is my belt about you, that same braided girdle,
My wife it was that wore it; I know well the tale,
And the count of your kisses and your conduct too,
And the wooing of my wife -- it was all my scheme!
She made trial of a man most faultless by far
Of all that ever walked over the wide earth;
As pearls to white peas, more precious and prized,
So is Gawain, in good faith, to other gay knights.
Yet you lacked, sir, a little loyalty there,
But the cause was not cunning, nor courtship either,
But that you loved your own life; the less, then, to blame."
(ll 2341-2368)

Interestingly, the Green Knight -- who we now learn is also Lord Bertilak -- does not ascribe to Gawain any adulterous motive. He is, however, judging from appearances. We know differently, for we have been privy to Gawain's heart, courtesy of the narrator, who informed us in lines 1658 through 1660, as noted previously:

So uncommonly kind and complaisant was she,
With sweet stolen glances, that stirred his stout heart,
That he was at wits' end, and wondrous vexed;
(ll 1658-1660)

Moreover, Gawain himself proceeds to suggest that Lady Bertilak's seductive charms have succeeded with him, for in a somewhat misogynist monologue, he compares himself to other men seduced by women:

But if a dullard should dote, deem it no wonder
And through the wiles of a woman be wooed into sorrow,
For so was Adam by one, when the world began,
And Solomon by many more, and Samson the mighty --
Delilah was his doom, and David thereafter
Was beguiled by Bathsheba, and bore much distress;
Now these were vexed by their devices -- 'twere a very joy
Could one but learn to love, and believe them not.
For these were proud princes, most prosperous of old,
Past all lovers lucky, that languished under heaven,

bemused.

And one and all fell prey
To women that they had used;
If I be led astray,
Methinks I may be excused.
(ll 2414-2428)

Traditionally, all these men had been seduced by the sensual, physical charms of the women. Gawain is thus claiming the same thing in his case, tantamount to a confession of having committed an adultery of the heart. Moreover, Gawain accepts the Green Knight's offer of the belt as a gift:

But your girdle, God love you! I gladly shall take
And be pleased to possess, not for the pure gold,
Nor the bright belt itself, nor the beauteous pendants,
Nor for wealth, nor worldly state, nor workmanship fine,
But a sign of excess it shall seem oftentimes
When I ride in renown, and remember with shame
The faults and the frailty of the flesh perverse,
How its tenderness entices the foul taint of sin;
And so when praise and high prowess have pleased my heart,
A look at this love-lace will lower my pride.
(ll 2429-2438)

Note that Gawain emphasizes the weakness of his "flesh perverse" (flesche crabbed), which can have a sexual connotation, and he does refer again to the belt as a "love-lace" (luf-lace). Also, one should note the perhaps not too remote possibility of still other sexual innuendo in the Middle English original of lines 2437-2338:

And þus, quen pryde schal me pryk for prowes of armes,
Þe loke to þis luf-lace schal leþe my hert.

Translated more closely to the original:

And thus, when pride shall prick me for prowess of arms,
A look at this love-belt shall humble my heart.

The word "pride" (pryde) has the connotation of "sexual desire" in Middle English, albeit only recorded in writing about 100 years after the Pearl Poet (OED 2, "pride," 1351 11). The word "prick" (pryk) is a notorious wordplay in Middle English, as noted by Stephen Knight in his discussion of the Pearl Poet's contemporary, Geoffrey Chaucer, who uses the word "priketh" in line 13 of the "General Prologue" to his Canterbury Tales, playing on its vulgar meaning, for "the sexual pun on 'prick' operates in Middle as well as Modern English" (Stephen Knight, "Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales," Literature in Context, edited by Rick Rylance and Judy Simons (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2001), p. 12). If "prowess of arms" could also be taken as sexual innuendo, then the significance of the luf-lace for Gawain's probable adultery of the heart is further enhanced.

I've previously poked about on Chaucer's probable prick-pun, as readers may recall, so this is familiar territory to me. Anyway, there it stands, thus far, rough but ready.

Lady Bertilak's Gift to Gawain: luf-lace and drurye

Lady Bertilak?

Not that sort of 'girdle'...

(Image from Wikipedia)

I'm still working on my paper for the upcoming ICKS conference on "Celibacy and Enlightenment/Salvation" (August 2-3) and will likely continue right up to the deadline this coming Friday (July 6).

Thus, I'm churning out stuff like the short piece below, in which I investigate the Middle English terms drurye and luf-lace (referring to the girdel, i.e., "belt" (cf. line 1829) given him by Lady Bertilak) as part of my argument that Gawain commits adultery of the heart. The piece is still a rough draft, and I have yet a lot of reworking to do before the conference (not to mention a lot more research), but I'm posting it here in case any Medievalists should find it mildly interesting. Said Medievalists should feel free to provide advice.

The piece below follows the excursus through Part 1, Chapter 13 of Don Quixote, where Cervantes has the Don and a traveller discuss the 'pagan' practice of the knight errant as courtly lover offering an almost religious devotion to his lady:

By means of this excursus through Cervantes, we can now draw together two things happening through Gawain's acceptance of Lady Bertilak's gift. First, as just demonstrated, by accepting the 'magical' belt, Gawain objectively accepts Lady Bertilak as the object of his devotion, thereby displacing his devotion to the Virgin Mary and no longer relying upon the Virgin as his protectress. Second, by accepting Lady Bertilak's gift, Gawain makes himself her knight rather than Mary's knight and thus places himself in a relation of courtly lover to Lady Bertilak, a problematic connection since this sort of love can scarcely be distinguished from an adultery of the heart. The narrator emphasizes this latter point by two terms used in referring to this gift. After Lady Bertilak has given her 'magical' belt as a gift and left the bedroom, Gawain:

Tucked away the token the temptress had left,
Laid it reliably where he looked for it after.
(ll 1874-1875)

The Middle English word translated as "token" is actually luf-lace, literally, "love-belt." The belt is thus a love-token, a sign of Gawain's 'love' for the lady. The other term referring to Lady Bertilak's gift occurs in the passage in which Gawain puts the belt on just prior to leaving for his encounter with the Green Knight:

Yet he left not his love-gift, the lady's girdle;
Gawain, for his own good, forgot not that:
When the bright sword was belted and bound on his haunches,
Then twice with that token he twined him about.
(ll 2030-2033)

The Middle English word translated as "token" is actually drurye, which means "love-token" (or even "love-making"!). If we recall now that Gawain had also responded to Lady Bertilak's amorous glances at him at supper on the second day (cf. ll 1658-1660), then Gawain has likely fallen into an adultery of the heart so common to courtly love.

Next, in my paper at least, I'll have to deal with how Gawain's acceptance of the belt leads him to break faith with Lord Bertilak by failing to keep to their agreement to exchange each day's 'winnings', which I haven't yet mentioned on this blog.

Sudhana encounters Vasumitra

A Bodhisattva

(Image from Wikipedia)

Sir Gawain's encounter with Lady Bertilak and his subsequent entrapment in an adultery of the heart works as a type of felix culpa -- a fortunate fall -- that leads him to deeper knowledge of himself and thereby to the possibility of salvation. And since my paper will be presented at a conference devoted largely to Buddhism, I should make some gesture in the direction of something like a felix culpa within some text from that world religion. I found one that has a nice parallel ... maybe.

In the "Gandavyuha Sutra," the last chapter of the Avatamsaka Sutra, one of East Asian Buddhism's most important Mahayana texts, we can read the story of the young Buddhist Sudhana as he seeks enlightenment on a pilgrimage that leads him through a sequence of 52 different masters. The twenty-fifth of these is the courtesan bodhisattva Vasumitra, from whose seductive powers, Sudhana must learn a lesson. In Thomas Cleary's translation in The Flower Ornament Scripture: A Translation of the Avatamsaka Sutra, we read:

People there [in Ratnavyuha, the city of Vasumitra,] who did not know of Vasumitra's virtues or the scope of her knowledge, said to Sudhana, "What has someone like you -- with senses so calm and subdued, so aware, so clear, without confusion or distraction, your gaze focused discreetly right before you, your mind not overwhelmed by sensations, not clinging to appearances, your eyes averted from involvement in all forms, your mind so cool and steady, your way of life profound, wise, oceanic, your mind free from agitation or despondency -- what have you to do with Vasumitra? You should not have any lust for her, your head should not be turned by her, you should not have any such impure thoughts, you should not be ravaged by such desires, you should not be under the power of a woman, you should not be so bewitched, you should not enter the realm of temptation, you should not sink into the mire of sensuality, you should not be bound by the snares of the devil, you should not do what should not be done." (1270-1271)

Others, however, urging Sudhana to seek out Vasumitra, provide directions to a house that in its greatness resembles a castle. There, he sees her:

There he saw Vasumitra, who was beautiful, with golden skin and black hair, her limbs and body well-proportioned, more beautiful in form than all celestial and human beings in the realm of desire, her voice finer even than that of the god Brahma. (1271)

Vasumitra tells Sudhana:

"[A]ll who come to me with minds full of passion, I teach them so that they become free of passion." (1272)

She then adds:

"Some attain dispassion just by embracing me, and achieve an enlightening concentration called 'womb receiving all sentient beings without rejection.' Some attain dispassion just by kissing me, and attain an enlightening concentration called 'contact with the treasury of virtue of all beings.'" (1272)

From a commentary on Sudhana's encounter with Vasumitra, we learn:

This woman was settled in a polluted, fearsome realm, making it hard for people to believe in her; so the land was called Danger. By means of meditation, she entered into defiled realms and turned them all into spheres of knowledge; by virtue of great compassion, she remained in the ordinary world, and by virtue of knowledge she remained unaffected, so her city was called City of Jewel Arrays. (1599)

Her compassion and decision to remain in the ordinary world and lead others to enlightenment is, of course, characteristic of the bodhisattvas of Mahayana Buddhism. The commentary tells us how she leads others to enlightenment:

Vasumitra went on to speak of holding her hand, getting up on her couch, gazing at her, embracing her, and kissing her. Holding her hand means seeking salvation. Getting up on her couch means ascendancy of formless knowledge. Gazing at her means seeing truth, embracing her means not departing from it. Kissing her means receiving instruction. (1600)

The commentary then explains:

This illustrates how all who come near enter a door of total knowledge, unlike those who only seek to get out of bondage and do not arrive at the ultimate dispassion -- supreme knowledge of the real universe that remains in the polluted world without being defiled, freely helping the living, neither bound nor freed. (1600)

The commentary does not clearly state whether or not Sudhana actually has sex with Vasumitra, but many have interpreted the sutra as meaning this. At any rate, the sutra teaches that one can achieve dispassion by an encounter with passion and thereby attain fuller enlightenment.

As a sufficiently general level -- and allowing for differences in the two religions -- this might be what Gawain is doing in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, but I'll need to think about this some more.

"I'm 'a get medieval on your eyes"

Our Lady of Cardigan

Cardigan, Wales

"Go west, young man Gawain, go west..."

(Image from Mair O Aberteifi)

We left Gawain in trouble yesterday just as he had turned from devotion offered to the true heavenly queen to devotion offered to a more earthly aristocratic lady. Part of Gawain's trouble stems not from this pagan turn but from the nature of the courtly love that he accepts as part of his aristocratic culture.

I'm working on this topic (and hence boring my regular readers to tears) because the International Center for Korean Studies (ICKS) has asked me to present a paper at the ICKS International Conference on "Celibacy and Enlightenment/Salvation" (August 2-3, 2007), which will take place at Korea University. Since I've long wanted to write something about my favorite Medieval romance, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, I'm taking this opportunity to do so ... and thereby inflicting my interests on my wary but longsuffering readers.

The connection between the theme of this conference and my Gawain paper lies in the Christian conception of humankind's fallen nature and the need for a salvation external to one's own efforts. Early in the poem, Gawain is described -- though perhaps ironically -- as an almost perfect human being, one who perfectly embodies courtly and Christian virtues. He initially manages this by paying court to the Queen of Heaven, for he can thereby fulfull the demands of both systems. Gawain, however, must fail in his efforts at perfection if this poem is intended to convey a profoundly Christian soteriological point. The nature of Gawain's failure is what links my paper to the conference theme of celibacy and salvation, for when Gawain turns from the Virgin to Lady Bertilak, the love expressed turns from spiritual to carnal, for that's the nature of courtly love.

The following is part of what I've been working on to establish the problem posed by courtly love for Gawain's attempt to remain chaste. I'm not saying anything new, of course; I'm merely trying to fill some details for scholars outside of Medieval English studies.

In the Medieval context, courtly love would ordinarily entail some problematic elements. In the ideal case, a knight devoted himself to service not only to his liege lord but also to his lord's wife, whom he was bound to protect, honor, and love. But what sort of love? Although perhaps modeled on the paradigm of the Christian's devotion to the Virgin Mary, in which case the ideal courtly love would be a highly sublimated sort of love similar to Christian caritas (cf. Edmund Reiss, "Fin'amors: Its History and Meaning in Medieval Literature," in Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 8 (1979), 74-99), the reality is that courtly love was an unstable complex of sexual desire and spiritual aims. Francis Newman noted that courtly love was "a love at once illicit and morally elevating, passionate and self-disciplined, humiliating and exalting, human and transcendent" (Francis X. Newman, ed., The Meaning of Courtly Love (1968) vii). Similarly, C.S. Lewis described it as "love of a highly specialized sort, whose characteristics may be enumerated as Humility, Courtesy, Adultery, and the Religion of Love" (C.S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love (London: Oxford University Press, 1936), page 2). From a rigorously Christian perspective, courtly love is inherently adulterous, for its practice entails that mature men express their love for an already married lady in language that powerfully emphasizes her physical beauty. From the explicit teaching of Christ as given in Matthew 5:27-28:

Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

The operative word here in this King James Bible, obviously, is "lust," but we should dig a bit deeper into the past and look at the Wycliffe English translation, for John Wycliffe was a contemporary of the Pearl Poet:

Ye han herd that it was seid to elde men, Thou schalt do no letcherie. But Y seie to you, that euery man that seeth a womman for to coueite hir, hath now do letcherie bi hir in his herte. (Matheu 5:27-28: Wycliffe Bible)

But we should also check the Latin Vulgate, which the Pearl Poet would surely have known:

Audistis quia dictum est antiques: non moechaberis. Ego autem dico vobis: quoniam omnis qui viderit mulierem ad concupiscendum eam iam moechatus est eam in corde suo. (Matthaeus 5:27-28: Vulgate)

The two words are thus coueite (covet) and concupiscendum (ardent desire), and they are related etymologically. The former derives from the Latin word cupere, meaning "to desire, covet," and in the 14th century, the time of both Wycliffe and the Pearl Poet, the word coueite meant "To desire with concupiscence or with fleshly appetite" (OED I, 1106, 2), hence demonstrating why Wycliffe (or one of the Wycliffe 'team') rendered the Latin Vulgate's concupiscendum by the Middle English coueite. As for the latter term, concupiscendum, it derives from the Latin concupere (the intensive prefix con- plus cupere, thus "to long for, desire"). The related Latin term concupiscentia was taken over into English as "concupiscence" as early as the 14th century, appearing in Chaucer, The Parson's Tale (c. 1386), with the meaning of "Libidinous desire, sexual appetite, lust" (OED I, 777, 2). Given the Pearl Poet's theological interests and scriptural knowledge, he would surely be aware of Christ's teaching on adultery as a matter of lusting in one's heart.

I still need to fill out this part of my paper more completely, for I need to put my own stamp on the material, maybe liven it up a bit so that it won't be quite so boring as this blog entry.

Perhaps if I were to quote from Lady Bertilak's attempts to seduce Gawain...

On knights errant and courtly love...

Lady Bertilak at Gawain's Bed

"tempting someone else's fate"

(Image from Wikipedia)

In Part 1, Chapter 13 of Don Quixote, Cervantes has the great Knight of the Woeful Countenance describe to a fellow traveller the ennobling sufferings of a knight errant, comparing them to the rigors of a monk's life and suggesting that it is a divine calling because:

[C]hurchmen in peace and quiet pray to Heaven for the welfare of the world, but we soldiers and knights carry into effect what they pray for, defending it with the might of our arms and the edge of our swords, not under shelter but in the open air, a target for the intolerable rays of the sun in summer and the piercing frosts of winter. Thus are we God's ministers on earth and the arms by which his justice is done therein. (Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote, Part 1, Chapter 13 (1605), translated by John Ormsby (London, 1885))

The traveller listens carefully to the great Don's words and courteously agrees, but with a significant caveat:

"That is my own opinion," replied the traveller; "but one thing among many others seems to me very wrong in knights-errant, and that is that when they find themselves about to engage in some mighty and perilous adventure in which there is manifest danger of losing their lives, they never at the moment of engaging in it think of commending themselves to God, as is the duty of every good Christian in like peril; instead of which they commend themselves to their ladies with as much devotion as if these were their gods, a thing which seems to me to savour somewhat of heathenism." (Cervantes, Don Quixote, Part 1, Chapter 13)

In effect, the traveller is politely calling into question the very thing that he had courteously agreed to. Knights errant may believe that they are carrying out God's work in this world, but in fact, they fall into something like the pagan practice of worshipping goddesses.

Don Quixote responds by appeal to the custom among knights errant:

"Sir," answered Don Quixote, "that cannot be on any account omitted, and the knight-errant would be disgraced who acted otherwise: for it is usual and customary in knight-errantry that the knight-errant, who on engaging in any great feat of arms has his lady before him, should turn his eyes towards her softly and lovingly, as though with them entreating her to favour and protect him in the hazardous venture he is about to undertake, and even though no one hear him, he is bound to say certain words between his teeth, commending himself to her with all his heart, and of this we have innumerable instances in the histories. Nor is it to be supposed from this that they are to omit commending themselves to God, for there will be time and opportunity for doing so while they are engaged in their task." (Cervantes, Don Quixote, Part 1, Chapter 13)

The great Don has not, of course, truly responded to the traveller's criticism of the knight errant's heathen devotion to his lady, for by re-emphasizing the knight errant's practice of "entreating her to favour and protect him in the hazardous venture he is about to undertake, and ... commending himself to her with all his heart," Quixote merely restates what the traveller finds troubling.

So, naturally, the traveller politely maintains his difference of opinion:

"For all that," answered the traveller, "I feel some doubt still, because often I have read how words will arise between two knights-errant, and from one thing to another it comes about that their anger kindles and they wheel their horses round and take a good stretch of field, and then without any more ado at the top of their speed they come to the charge, and in mid-career they are wont to commend themselves to their ladies; and what commonly comes of the encounter is that one falls over the haunches of his horse pierced through and through by his antagonist's lance, and as for the other, it is only by holding on to the mane of his horse that he can help falling to the ground; but I know not how the dead man had time to commend himself to God in the course of such rapid work as this; it would have been better if those words which he spent in commending himself to his lady in the midst of his career had been devoted to his duty and obligation as a Christian." (Cervantes, Don Quixote, Part 1, Chapter 13)

Cervantes, perhaps writing these words around 1600, was not the first to note the problem posed to the Christian knight by the practice of courtly love. In the latter 14th century, the Pearl Poet implicitly sets up the problem in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by first presenting Gawain as a good Christian knight:

And all his fealty was fixed upon the five wounds
That Christ got on the cross, as the creed tells;
And wherever this man in melee took part,
His one thought was of this, past all things else,
That all his force was founded on the five joys
That the high Queen of heaven had in her child.
And therefore, as I find, he fittingly had
On the inner part of his shield her image portrayed,
That when his look on it lighted, he never lost heart.
(Pearl Poet, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, translated by Marie Borroff (1967), Part 2, in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume 1, Seventh Edition, page 172, lines 642-650)

Gawain, a good Christian knight, maintains devotion to the Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven, which therefore makes him Mary's knight (cf. line 1769) and thus protected against falling into the heathen practice of courtly devotion to a mere woman.

Yet Gawain's courtesy and concern for his own life move him to accept from the beautiful Lady Bertilak the gift of a purportedly magical green belt interlaced with threads of gold that will supposedly protect him from an otherwise certain death:

She released a knot lightly, and loosened a belt
That was caught about her kirtle, the bright cloak beneath,
Of a gay green silk, with gold overwrought,
And the borders all bound with embroidery fine,
And this she presses upon him, and pleads with a smile,
Unworthy though it were, that it would not be scorned.
But the man still maintains that he means to accept
Neither gold nor any gift, till by God's grace
The fate that lay before him was fully achieved.
"And be not offended, fair lady, I beg,
And give over your offer, for ever I must

decline.

I am grateful for favor shown
Past all deserts of mine,
And ever shall be your own
True servant, rain or shine."

"Now does my present displease you," she promptly inquired,
"Because it seems in your sight so simple a thing?
And belike, as it is little, it is less to praise,
But if the virtue that invests it were verily known,
It would be held, I hope, in higher esteem.
For the man that possesses this piece of silk,
If he bore it on his body, belted about,
There is no hand under heaven that could hew him down,
For he could not be killed by any craft on earth."
Then the man began to muse, and mainly he thought
It was a pearl for his plight, the peril to come
When he gains the Green Chapel to get his reward:
Could he escape unscathed, the scheme were noble!
The he bore with her words and withstood them no more.
And she repeated her petition and pleaded anew,
And he granted it, and gladly she gave him the belt,
And besought him for her sake to conceal it well,
Lest the noble lord should know -- and the knight agrees
That not a soul save themselves shall see it thenceforth

with sight.

He thanked her with fervent heart,
As often as ever he might;
Three times, before they part,
She has kissed the stalwart knight.

(Pearl Poet, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, translated by Marie Borroff, Part 2, Norton Anthology, Volume 1, page 196, lines 1830-1869)

Up until this moment, Gawain has courteously refused to accept any gift from the lady, for in the act of accepting a parting gift from a lady, a knight setting off on a quest is implictly accepting the lady herself as his lady. By accepting the magical belt, Gawain has exchanged the higher Queen of Heaven for the lower Lady Bertilak and thus relinquished the Virgin's protection from harm in return for Lady Bertilak's protection.

In this manner does Gawain lose his status as Mary's knight and adopt the practice of other knights errant, who "commend themselves to their ladies with as much devotion as if these were their gods, a thing which seems ... to savour somewhat of heathenism," and by accepting Lady Bertilak, he does, as do other knights with their ladies, "turn his eyes towards her softly and lovingly, as though ... entreating her to favour and protect him in the hazardous venture he is about to undertake," as both the traveller and Don Quixote, respectively, have already noted.

In doing so, ironically, Gawain falls into a well-constructed trap and puts his life at risk ... but that is a longer story.

Professor Edward Condren: On the Pearl Poet

Professor Edward Condren

English at UCLA

(Borrowed from UCLA, June 14, 2006)

By Googling, I located online an enquiry posed by Professor Condren on Drexel University's Math Forum back in June 1999 when he was researching the material that became his book. Here are some details that he provided on his interpretation of the entire manuscript of the Pearl Poet's four poems:

A unique fourteenth century manuscript, British Library Cotton Nero A.x., has four poems, two of which are the brilliant Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. It has always been thought to be a mere anthology, probably by the same author. My book argues that it is in fact a single artifact unified by the same mathematics that, from the Neo-Pythagoreans onward, have been held to demonstrate the unity of all creation. The line counts of the four poems are, respectively, 1212, 1812, 531, and 2531. This highly artful arrangement, minus the signature twelves in the first half and signature 31s (the tenth prime as the Middle Ages reckoned primes) in the second half, gives us two halves of 3000 lines each. More intriguing still, the two outer poems divided by the two medial poems give the Golden Section. The first poem, Pearl, has 20 sections of 5 stanzas each, with each stanza containing 12 rhyming lines. Moreover, the first line of each stanza replicates the last line of the preceding stanza, with the first line of the poem echoing the last line of the poem. It seems clear to me that this poem's 1212 lines create a verbal dodecahedron: 20 vertices; 12 faces; each face a five-sided pentagon. The pentagon, of course, is highly dependent on the phi ratio. The three remaining poems seem 2-D, rather than 3-D. In other words, the poet may have conceived them as the three inscribed planes. The first of these remaining three, Purity, is constructed almost entirely of phi-related sections which encode a five-pointed star -- another phi-dependent figure -- which happens to be the main symbol on Sir Gawain's shield. The next poem I haven't entirely cracked yet (hence my query about the size of the inscribed rectangles). It's a retelling of the story of Jonah. But its 5 sections have intriguing sizes: 60, 184, 60, 104, 123. When we remove the overages, which total 31 (4 + 4 + 23), we are left with two 60s, two 100s, and 180. This last is the radius of the circumscribed circle surrounding the five-pointed star laid out in Purity.

Obviously, this is technical stuff, and I haven't had time to delve into it beyond checking just enough to learn that the "Golden Section" and the "phi ratio" are two names for the same thing, the "Golden Ratio," which was known as the "Divine Proportion" in the Middle Ages. Assuming that the Pearl Poet really was encoding this into his poem, the question then becomes: What does it all mean?

.

I presume that Condren tells us in his book. From the book description at Amazon, I infer that the Pearl Poet's manuscript of four poems is intended to reflect the cosmos, though what this means in its particulars would require my reading Condren's book, which I may well do