Literature: Vernacular Traditions

Sources

The Significance of Vernacular Literature. The early medieval epics and sagas and the chansons de geste of the eleventh and twelfth centuries are some of the earliest manifestations of a form of literature that grew increasingly prominent and popular throughout the Middle Ages: vernacular literature. The word vernacular means “in the vulgar tongue,” and when applied to literature it is used to describe literature that is composed or written in the language that the author and his audience speak daily. Although Latin was an international language in medieval Europe and those who knew Latin wrote, read, and spoke it, the majority of Europeans spoke local dialects that eventually evolved into the modern languages now known as French, English, German, Italian, and so on. A medieval author who was interested in gaining an international audience had to write in Latin, but authors who were writing for courts, where many nobles only knew a little Latin at best, or those who were composing for local, popular consumption wrote in the vernacular. Such works were frequently considered “lesser” works than their Latin counterparts, until a significant literary movement in the late Middle Ages asserted the equality of vernacular and Latin compositions. Led by writers such as Dante Alighieri and Geoffrey Chaucer and spurred by increasingly literate urban and noble communities, vernacular literature in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries gradually dominated popular entertainment and gained headway in traditionally Latin academic fields such as history, theology, and philosophy.

Troubadours and Minnesänger. In the late eleventh century there emerged a form of poetry that celebrated court culture and emotions and could be performed aloud or even set to music. The authors of these works were known as troubadours in southern France, where they originated, and Minnesänger in Germany, where they had a great influence on court literature. Duke William IX of Aquitaine (1071–1127) is often considered the first troubadour, and he began the patronage of other poets that was continued in the courts of his descendants Eleanor of Aquitaine and Marie of France. These poets covered a variety of themes, from romantic longing for love to a lover’s boasts about sexual conquest. Unlike much earlier poetry, troubadour poetry is quite erotic. Even when condemning adulterous love and the foolishness of a lover, the poet Marcabru (active 1130-1150) is far more suggestive than his poetic ancestors. Among the many themes of well-known troubadours such as Jaufre Riddle, Bernart de Ventadorn, Bertrán de Born, and Beatrice, Countess of Dia were the daily experience of court life and human emotion. These lines by Castellozza (born circa 1200), the wife of a southern French Crusader, represent common concerns of the troubadours: “Friend, if you had shown consideration, / meekness, candor, and humanity, / I’d have loved you without hesitation, / but you were mean and sly and villainous.” The German poets—including Hartmann von Aue

ARTHUR’S TOMB

Gerald of Wales, royal clerk, diplomat, and historian, often wrote accounts of recent events as well. His report of the discovery and excavation of a tomb he and his contemporaries believed to be King Arthur’s at Glastonbury, England, circa 1223, suggests the power of the Arthur legend among medieval people.

However, Arthur’s body, which the fables allege was like a fantastic thing at the end, and as it were moved by the spirit to far away places, and not subject to death, in our own days was discovered at Glastonbury between two stone pyramids erected in the holy cemetery, hidden deep in the ground by a hollow oak and marked with wonderful signs and marvels, and it was moved into the church with honor and committed properly to a marble tomb.… many notable things happened here; truly he had two wives, the second of which was buried together with him, and her bones were discovered with his, but separate however, so that two parts of the sepulcher, toward the head of course, were considered to be containing the bones of the man, and truly the third, toward the feet, contained the woman’s bones separately; where a lock of a woman’s blond hair was discovered intact with its original color, such that when a certain monk snatched it greedily with his hand and raised it up, at once all of it crumbled into dust.

Most clearly King Henry II of England disclosed to the monks some evidence from his own books of where the body was to be found, some from letters inscribed on the pyramids, although most of it was erased by age, some also through visions and revelations made to good and religious men, just as he had heard from the ancient British bard, how deeply in the earth, 16 feet or more, they would discover the body, and not in the stone tomb but in a hollow oak.…

It must also be known that the discovered bones of Arthur were so large that it can be seen to have fulfilled these words of the poet: “And wonder at the giant bones in the opened graves.” [Virgil, Georgics, 1.497] Truly the shinbone of that man [Arthur] when placed next to the shin of the tallest man there, whom our abbot showed to us; and fixed in the ground next to his foot, greatly extended across the knee of that one by three fingers. Moreover, the skull was spacious and large to the point of being a freak or prodigy, so much so that the space between the eyebrows and the space between the eyes would contain entirely a small handswidth. However, ten wounds or more were apparent on the skull, one of which was greater than all the others, which made a large hole, and which alone seemed to have been fatal; the wounds healed in a solid scar.

Source: Gerald of Wales, On the Instruction of a Prince (De Instructione Principii), circa 1223.

(1180–1210), Wolfram von Eschenbach (circa 1170–1217), and Walter von der Vogelwiede (circa 1170–1230)—also deal with the standard themes of love poetry, such as the longing of the lover and the sadness of unfulfilled

filled love, but they also introduced new themes, pointing to the uselessness of court life and arguing that the love between man and woman should be on an even basis.

Courtly Literature and Love. Troubadour poetry is often called the beginning of a new form of vernacular literature dealing with love in all its permutations that arose around 1170 and flourished into the fourteenth century. Known as “courtly literature” because it developed in medieval courts and its audience was based there, courtly literature began in southern France and soon influenced vernacular literature in northern France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. One of its primary themes was “courtly love,” a term that is frequently misunderstood. In some of its significant representations, courtly love was the view that love in the context of marriage was impossible and the only true form of love was the adulterous relationship. There were other viewpoints arguing that love inevitably led to unhappiness. Indeed, medieval attitudes toward love tended to be influenced by the variety of responses ranging from approbation to condemnation, found not so much in the Bible as in classical Latin literature. The major writer on love matters in Roman times was Ovid (43 B.C.–18 A.D.), and he greatly influenced some medieval writers. In the view of Ovid, as with many ancient authors, love was a terrifying passion that could separate people from commonsense reason and from daily life. Thus, clerical writers in the Middle Ages who drew on these sources and on biblical themes found a fecund resource for moralistic sermonizing, especially much anti-woman rhetoric. Perhaps the most important of these writers was Andreas Capellanus, who at the end of the twelfth century wrote Liber de arte honeste amandi (Book of the Art of Loving Rightly). In the first half of his work, he depicted love as a form of suffering, a strong response to physical beauty. He held that there can be no true love in marriage and that love must be consummated adulterously. Although Andreas recognized that adultery is not acceptable to society, he believed that social stigma could be avoided through discretion and guarding the good name of the woman. Typical of male writers of his time, he was only interested in the positive effects of love on the male lover. He thought that male clerics made the best lovers, while he thought nuns should be banned from love. Prostitutes, peasant women, and promiscuous women were also excluded; youth or old age, blindness, and excessive lust all impeded love. In the second part of his work, Andreas presented a different and quite contradictory picture. He claimed that in part one he was just giving an objective analysis of love so that people could make good judgments. In part two he called for avoiding adulterous love at all costs because it is a sin against oneself and against one’s partner, leading to deceit, fear, and an attachment to passing pleasures. Finally, it can have socially disastrous consequences. Moreover, he drew on ancient authorities to claim that women are a major source of vices. The modern reader may well develop the impression that Andreas was taking part in the favorite medieval pastime of presenting opposite points of view for the purpose of conversational entertainment.

The Romance of the Rose. During the first half of the thirteenth century, building on the work of Andreas Capellanus and other medieval poets, Guillaume de Loris began the classic medieval poem in the courtly love tradition, Roman de la Rose (Romance of the Rose), which was completed by Jean de Meun later in the same century. Following a common medieval literary conceit, it is a long allegorical poem describing a dream vision in which a lover attempts to gain his beloved. He dreams of a garden surrounded by a wall and containing a rose that symbolizes the female love object. On the wall are ten figures, among them Hate, Felony, Villainy, and Greed, which hinder the lover from attaining the rose. When he finally gets inside, he receives a warning about the treachery of love, but when he sees the rose, he falls in love with the beauty before him. To reach his love, he must become a vassal of Cupid, who embodies a series of paradoxes such as Pride and Humility and Courtesy and Villainy. A new personification, Reason, appears and advises the lover to abandon Cupid. A battle ensues when a series of other figures—a friend of the lover, Venus, Pity, Jealousy, Fear, and Shame—start fighting among themselves about what the lover should do. At this point Guillaume’s part of the poem ends. When Jean de Meun wrote his part he offered a different perspective about the relationship between the lover and the beloved. Reason returns but now argues that all earthly love is transitory and advises the lover to seek happiness in eternal goods. The fickle nature of woman is attacked, and the lover’s friend reappears to advise on a new strategy based on a woman’s nature. The friend argues that the castle (the woman’s body) should be stormed and the rose (her virtue and love) should be taken by bribery, hypocrisy, and deceit. More characters appear and join in the argument, which turns into a litany of medieval misogynistic (anti-woman) themes. An old woman advises trickery, infidelity, and frivolity as a means of attaining the rose. For her, love is but the fulfillment of a natural urge. Nature argues that the only true lovers are clerical celibates, and the fact that celibates make the best lovers is enough to free them from their vows. Eventually the lover and his allies take the castle, and the lover is united with the rose. The dream ends, and he awakens. This kind of courtly literature spread through the forms of entertainment for royal houses, and it eventually evolved into popular works of prose and poetry. Rather than elevating a woman’s status, as some scholars have asserted, this literary tradition actually popularized and developed as series of medieval beliefs against women.

The Arthur Legends and Romance. Related to the genre of courtly love was another theme in courtly literature which has enjoyed enduring popularity: the Arthurian Romance. The earliest stories about a figure named Artus (Arthur) were old Celtic poems and histories in which he was portrayed as a war leader with a small group of loyal followers, and no Lancelot and Guinevere appear in them. In the hands of French and German poets during the twelfth century, Arthur became the leader of a wealthy and prestigious court that attracted and rewarded virtuous young men from all over Europe. Arthur rarely went on quests; instead, much like the gift-giving kings of earlier epics, he was the person who gave rewards to younger warriors, his favor was the ultimate attainment, and his court the ultimate setting for this idealization of noble culture. Although many authors composed stories, poems, and even musical lyrics on Arthurian themes, probably the most influential early creator of the Arthurian Romance was Chrétien de Troyes (1135-1183), the court writer of Marie de Champagne, daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine. He explored the contradictions and tensions in human relationships, using Arthur’s court as a setting. One of his best-known romances was Lancelot, in which Lancelot, a paragon of knightly virtue, loves Arthur’s wife, Guinevere, so desperately that he is willing to humiliate himself repeatedly in order to free her from a treacherous knight. This Lancelot character is filled with contradictions: as a knight he should be proud, but he humbles himself by riding in a cart to reach Guinevere; as a vassal, he should honor his lord’s wife, not try to sleep with her. The Arthurian Romances also deal with Christian themes, in particular the attempt to establish a truly Christian nobility. In the process, knightly valor is focused on a Christian quest: the attainment of the Holy Grail, the cup from which Christ drank at the Last Supper. This theme reappeared in various poems, particularly Chretien’s last work, Perceval. It was also picked up by several German poets: Hartmann von Aue, Gottfried von Strasburg, and in particular Wolfram von Eschenbach. In von Eschenbach’s Parzifal, the quest for the Holy Grail is turned into a journey of education for the hero. Further, his mission for the Grail is linked to Christian themes and to the gift of the Holy Spirit, uniting Christian and Arthurian values.

Fabliaux and Other Forms of Poetry. Coexisting with courtly and Arthurian literature were other poetic forms, some of which had earlier roots and were performed in both Latin and the vernacular. Probably the most influential of these styles was goliardic poetry. Because of the relatively unstructured style of the medieval university, scholars could wander among them at will, and from the middle of the twelfth century royal and imperial privileges protected many of these traveling scholars. Those who never found permanent appointments continued their wanderings through most of their careers, gaining the name of goliards and a reputation for loose, marginal living. Proud of their Latin learning, they combined this knowledge with vernacular poetry and music that celebrated the joys of wine, women, and song, and goliardic poetry was born. Although respectable figures such as Hugh of Orleans and Walter of Chatillon composed goliardic verse, probably the best known is the German called the Archpoet (died 1165). His Confessio Goliae (The Confession of Golias) was a prototype for later goliardic verse. No one was safe from the goliards’ critiques; clergymen and nobles, men and women found themselves the butts of goliardic jokes, and parodies on hymns and prayers provided the framework for their poems. In addition, fables drawing on the Greek author Aesop and on folklore found a place in vernacular literature during the twelfth century. Authors such as Marie de France translated Aesop’s fables into French and used his works as a foundation for the creation of new fables. Common themes were love triangles and seduction, as well as revenge, trickery, and deceit. One of the influential legends developed by these writers was the relationship between Aristotle and Phyllis, according to which the philosopher Aristotle married a beautiful young woman, Phyllis, in his old age, thus illustrating how even the most intellectual people could be controlled by love and sex. His subservience is further stressed when Phyllis manages to convince him to put on a bridle so that she can ride him like a horse. This medieval legend of Phyllis and Aristotle was cited long after the Middle Ages as a powerful example of the corruptive nature of women.

Folktales: Robin Hood and Renard the Fox. Other popular fables that arose during the later Middle Ages had few roots in Latin culture. Among the most popular and enduring were the stories that developed around the characters of Robin Hood and Renard the Fox. Although most of the Robin Hood legends were developed during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, evidence suggests that popular ballads, poems, and even short plays about him had developed in England by the middle of the fourteenth century. The Robin of these stories is not, however, a displaced noble who steals from the rich and gives to the poor. He is an outlaw and a trickster, who supports nobles over peasants, manipulates anyone who enters his territory, and acts in many ways like a loan shark. In the Renard the Fox legends of medieval France, Renard shares many qualities with this earlier Robin Hood. Pierre St. Cloud was the first known author who wrote about Renard the Fox, Ysengrin the Wolf, and Hersent, Ysengrin’s less-than-virtuous wife. Many of the stories revolve around tricks Renard plays on the stupid and greedy Ysengrin, but any other animal in the forest is a potential victim of Renard’s somewhat malicious sense of humor. In this sense, Renard, like Robin Hood, is a medieval antihero, parodying the virtuous knights of epic literature but doing so in such a charming and clever fashion that he gains the audience’s sympathy. In some cases, the Renard stories explicitly make fun of Arthurian Romances, such as the Grail cycle, and The Song of Roland. Renard stories were so popular that by the fifteenth century his name, “Renard,” became the French word for fox, replacing the earlier medieval word goupil.

Later Medieval Developments. By the thirteenth century most of the major vernacular languages had been established as appropriate vehicles for serious literary and even philosophical compositions. The power of the vernacular was even felt in the religious realm, where the laity increasingly pushed for translations of the scriptures or, at least, of primary spiritual texts. Building on the earlier work of French and German poets and romance writers, Italians in the late thirteenth and

fourteenth centuries developed a poetic style known as la dolce stil nuova (the sweet, new style) that in turn influenced northern European authors of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. A leading figure in this Italian poetic movement was the Florentine Dante Alighieri (1265–1321). A poet, scholar, and civil servant, Dante was quite familiar with Latin and vernacular literature. In De vulgari eloquentia (On the Vernacular Language, 1308) he discussed the nature of the vernacular and asserted primacy over Latin, overturning medieval Scholastic theory of Latin as a “universal language.” His best-known work, one of the masterpieces of medieval literature, is his Commedia (completed in 1321)—known as the Divina Commedia (Divine Comedy) since the sixteenth century. In this three-part epic he traces his travels through Hell and Purgatory with the Roman poet Virgil as his guide and then to Heaven, where his guide is his beloved Beatrice, subject of many of his other poems. Though long and sometimes difficult to understand, the Divine Comedy was a contemporary success. In beautiful Italian, Dante combined the most sophisticated theology and philosophy of his time with rich poetic traditions, many popular stories, and allusions to contemporary events, creating an allegorical exposition of the journey of the human soul toward God.

Sources

R. Howard Bloch, Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).

Peter Dronke, The Medieval Poet and His World (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1984).

Robert Hollander, Dante: A Life in Works (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001).

Armando Petrucci, Writers and Readers in Medieval Italy: Studies in the History of Written Culture, edited and translated by Charles M. Radding (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995).

Francesca Canade Sautman, Diana Conchado, and Giuseppe Carlo di Scipio, eds., Telling Tales: Medieval Narratives and the Folk Tradition (New York: St. versit^y Press, 1998).

Marcelle Thiebaux, ed. and trans., The Writings of Medieval Women: An Anthology, second edition (New York: Garland, 1994).