honor – Islam & Medieval Western Literature

Griselda

kathryn — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 15:22:48 +0000

Boccaccio tells that story of Griselda, a story that we learn from Petrarch’s letter to him, is one that is well known in Italy at the time. I think this story is just wrong. Any man who would let a woman think that he had killed her children and then was going to put her aside for another wife is just plain wrong. And the idea that Griselda just goes along with it is terrible. Griselda needs to grow a backbone and tell her husband to shove it where the sun don’t shine. I know it makes a good story but the reality is that no one is that gracious and humble and obedient.

As we discussed in class, that fact that the story can be read as an allegory, does not mean that is should be read as such. Others see Griselda as the perfect Christian, who does whatever is asked of her by her lord and master. The fact that is not at all what most people would tolerate in real life has no bearing on the story and it’s characters.

These three panels show the story of Patient Griselda.

The story details the humilation of peasant girl Griselda by a rich Marquis, Gualteiri, who is seeking to mould the perfect wife.

Here Griselda (right) is forced to strip in front of the male courtiers.

In the second panel, Griselda has married Gualteiri, but he is keen to test her further.

He orders one of his servants to take Griselda’s baby daughter and tell her it is to be killed.

The panel shows Griselda’s acceptance as she tells the servant; “do exactly what your lord and mine has ordered you to do.”

The story climaxes with the return of Griselda’s daughter, now twelve, who was secretly raised in Bologna.

Griselda is told it is not her daughter but Gualteiri’s new bride-to-be, and she is ordered to sweep her quarters – which she does.

Eventually, Gualteiri confesses his trick, and says he has now taught Griselda “to be a wife.”

All images are copyright of the National Gallery.

Where’s the chaste knight?

jordan — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 01:24:08 +0000

Okay, I get that Tristram is a great guy. Courageous, merciful (see previous post), cunning, etc. And maybe I’m just having a hard time following all of this (I really have no previous knowledge of medieval literature), but weren’t we just talking about the chaste knight emerging in medieval literature? For example, the Knights of the Round Table? Before the chaste knight, I realize it was accepted that an exceptional knight more or less gets what he wants when he wants it, but it seems that Tristram has done the same., which still I can swallow until he bests the chaste Knights of the Round Table. Isn’t that saying something?

Granted, I haven’t completely finished the reading yet, so if he learns his lesson in the very end I don’t know it yet. And granted, given the choice the lady refuses to leave with Tristram and wants to return to her husband, but that’s after she’s already been getting it on with him. In my mind this seems to be pretty dismissive of chastity.

Questions.

jordan — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 15:25:34 +0000

Looking at the Lancelot reading again I want to parallel the evil dwarf with the evil Jinn of the Arabian Nights. That’s pretty obvious– they’re both wretched, tricky creatures, even if the Jinn is not that bright, not to mention their hideous physical features. Is this a ridiculous statement, though? Should this be regarded as possible evidence of the Arabic influence on Western medieval literature, or is the depiction of such a villain pretty universal, so much so that the attempt to draw this parallel is pretty worthless?
What’s going on with the Decameron? I’ve never seen so much un-chivalrous behavior in my life. For example, many of the stories of Day Two dealing with people who run into misfortune only to find themselves incredibly lucky (usually wealthy) one day actually deal with people who have engaged in unseemly behavior and brought misfortune on themselves at some point. There’s the pirate who finds the treasure chest and Andreuccio who agrees to help raid a tomb and regains his money in the form of the corpse’s ruby ring. Granted, these characters often have an admirable quality or two, but they are certainly not quite up to par with our Lancelot. So my guess is that this has much to do with the characters telling the stories, who are more or less your average Joe hiding from the plague, which in turn is a result of the less-than-exalted position this text must hold in medieval literature. As we have learned in our reading, texts that are not in verse are considered far inferior to those that are. But let me know if I’m way off as I was not in class for the discussion yesterday.
I’m posting from a resort in the mountains. Shouldn’t I get some sort of extra credit for this?

Violence in the Middle Ages

ebarn4wv — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 08:25:30 +0000

First of all, since I missed class yesterday, if any or all of this was talked about, I’ll shut up and color (although i always had a hard time staying inside those damn lines). From what I’ve read on the blog, it seems like some of y’all are noticing the high level of violence in the Lancelot reading, and thinking that the violence itself is the significant part of the reading. The problem with this is that we’re reading it from a 20th century point of view, from a world in which we are removed from death, and where real violence is something most of us have/will never see. This is not the case for the original audience of Lancelot.

The middle ages were a time of constant warfare (hell, the English and French fought over the same chunks of land for over 100 years), high infant mortality, and rampant disease. As such, death was a very real part of life, and a consequence of that was killing wasn’t really such a big deal. If you had to kill someone – over honor, property, for your country, whatever – you did it because you had to, and that was that. So when the lady asks for the offending knight’s head, it isn’t that she’s a bloodthirsty sociopath. It’s that seeing your foe’s head was a surefire way to ensure that he/she was dead, since you’d have a hard time faking that particular proof.

It’s also not that these people in the story had a hard-on for killing. From our perspective, it seems like their only way of solving any problem is to kill something. This too is a flaw of our particular vantage. Think for a minute, that you live in a world where there is no real court of law. Where there was no police force to keep the peace, and where the strong simply have their way with the weak. This is the world of the middle ages, and as such, physical violence was the favorite way to settle disputes simply because there was no other alternative. If a brigand was strong-arming a village into paying “protection” money, you couldn’t call the FBI to stop him. You had to make him stop yourself, and you had to use the only language he understood: you had to show him that you were stronger than he.

It is for these reasons that the world of Lancelot is one so brutish. For example, if you wanted to send your enemy a message, this is how you did it:

Also, happy Fuck the British Day.

(I couldn’t resist showing an “Oriental” view of America. If it offends anyone, just let me know and I’ll take it down)