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Etymologies and Genealogies ALiterary Anthropology of the French Middle Ages

R. HOWARD BLOCH

Contents Acknowledgments

ix

Abbreviations

xi

Introduction: Toward a Literary Anthropology of the Middle Ages 1 • Early Medieval Grammar

1 30

Genealogy and General Sign Theory Linguistics and History Origins Strategies of Return

2 • Kinship The Biopolitics of Lineage The Aristocratic Practice of Signs Grammar and Lineage The Tree of Jesse

64

vii

viii • Contents

3 • Literature and Lineage

92

The Epic The Poetics of Disruption 4•

Poetry, Philosophy, and Desire

128

Rhetoric and Desire Philosophy and the Family: Abelard Nominalist and Modal Grammar

5 • The Economics of Romance

159

Household Money The Courtly Novel

6 • Grail Family and Round Table

198

The Wasteland Grail Quest and the Quest for the Name of the Father Genealogy of the Book and the Book of Genealogy Round Table and the Politics of Intention

Appendix A

229

Appendix B

231

Notes

233

Index

275

Acknowledgments The excruciating final stages in the preparation of a book-proofreading, checking of sources, indexing-are compensated only by the pleasure of thanking those who have participated in its genesis all along the way. First among these are two close friends and intellectual companions, Alexandre Leupin and Eugene Vance, who will recognize in the present work glimpses of an often heated, sometimes maddening, always challenging dialogue of the last few years. I am also indebted to Daniel Poirion, who permitted me to present my ideas in their early stages to his seminar at the Ecole Normale Superieure, and to Charles Mela and Michel Zihk, whose comments partially reshaped my thinking at that time. It is, of course, impossible to acknowledge all the colleagues whose erudition and generosity lie hidden beneath the surface of the essay which follows; I mention only in passing Leo Bersani, Alan Bernstein, Tom Bisson, Joe Duggan, Sepp Gumbrecht, Denis Hollier, MarieHelene Huet, Leo Lowenthal, and the group around Representations. A ix

x • Acknowledgments

special note of thanks is due Peter Haidu and Bernard and Jacqueline Cerquiglini who read the manuscript in its entirety, as well as Charles Bernheimer, Geoff Nunberg, and Paul Rabinow who, from the viewpoints of the critic, the linguist, and the anthropologist, offered a wide range of perspectives upon the Introduction. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to Jann Matlock, whose assistance with everything from the sleuthing of sources to typing facilitated my task at every stage, to the Humanities Research Council of the University of California, and to the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, which afforded me a delicious sabbatical year.

Abbreviations In order to reduce the number of footnotes, I have adopted the following abbreviations for frequently cited texts:

Aucassin Aucassin et Nicolette, ed. M. Roques (Paris: Champion, 1967). De Planctu Alain de Lille, De Planctu Naturae, in Satirical Poets of the Twelfth Century, ed. T. Wright (London: Longman, 1872). Etym. Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive originum libri XX, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1911). Historia Abelard, Historia Calamitatum, ed. J. Monfrin (Paris: J. Vrin, 1959). Huth Huth Merlin, ed. G. Paris and J. Ulrich (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1886). Marcabru Les Poesies de Marcabru, ed. J. Dejeanne (Paris: Champion, 1909). Metalogicon John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, ed. C. I. Webb (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1929). xi

xii • Abbreviations

Notices C. Thurot, Notices et extraits de divers manuscrits latins pour servir a l'histoire des doctrines grammaticales du moyen age (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1868). Perceval Chretien de Troyes, Le Roman de Perceval, ed. W. Roach (Geneva: Droz, 1959). PL Patrologia Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris: Garnier, 1879). Priscian Priscian, Institutionum Grammaticarum libri XVIII, ed. H. Keil (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1961), vol. 2. Roland La Chanson de Roland, ed. J. Bedier (Paris: H. Piazza, 1964). Rose Le Roman de Ia rose, ed. D. Poirion (Paris: Flammarion, 1974). Varro Varro, De Lingua Latina, ed. R. G. Kent (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951). William IX Les Chansons de William IX, ed. A. Jeanroy (Paris: Champion, 1913).

Introduction: Toward a Literary Anthropology of the Middle Ages In Classical mythology the invention of writing is alternately ascribed to the Phoenician Cadmus, the Greek Hermes, and the Egyptian Thoth. 1 The medieval figures most associated with writing are Odin, the inventor of runes, and Merlin-magician, enchanter, and prophet. Merlin is said to have written two books. The first, dictated to his mother's confessor and protector Blaise, contains Merlin's account of events prior to and during the Arthurian reign as well as the story of his own birth and precocious rhetorical gifts. Through it we are privy to the legends of the Round Table: "Et Merlins s'en ala a Blaise en Norhomberlande, si li raconte tot et dist, et Blaise le mist en escrit et par son livre le resavons nous encore. " 2 The second book, divinely inspired and transcribed by the counselors at the court of Uter and Pendragon, is prophetically disposed: "Et nostre sires qui est poissans sour tout m' a donne sens de savoir toutes choses qui sont a avenir en partie." 3 Merlin is the patron saint of letters within the Arthurian world. In Geoffrey of Monmouth's Vita Merlini he 1

2 • Introduction

supervises the construction of a scriptorium for the recording of his predictions; in the Didot-Perceval he retires from the world to a "writing house" or esplumoir. 4 The numerous disp.e_tches which circulate between lovers, between enemies, between Arthur and his barons are the product of Merlin's prolific pen, as are the inscriptions on tombstones, swords, boats, and hermes scattered throughout the realm. Merlin is as powerful an image of the writer as the Middle Ages produced and, indeed, an embodiment of the principle of writing itself. The pluralistic possibilities of writing are subsumed in the magician's ~any shapes. At times a young child, adolescent, old crone, woodsman, shepherd, monk, and preudom, Merlin moves about under continually shifting guises. His interlocutor in the Welsh Dialogue of Merddin and His Sister Gwendydd addresses him successively as the "Judge of the North," the "Prophet," the "Master of Song," the "Melancholic," the "Warrior of Arderydd," the "Wise," and the "One Who Has Completely Read the Distichs of Cato." 5 The author of the Huth text confides that the other characters "do not know that Merlin can take other forms and other appearances (samblance) than his own"; and the polymorphous enchanteor himself boasts that "those who believe they know me know nothing of my being." 6 Merlin is the representation of that which cannot be said and of everything that can be said-a shifter, trickster, joker, arbiter of value and of meaning. Also omniscient, his special knowledge of the past, of men's thoughts and intentions, of paternity, of the future, places him in relation to the other figures of the text as the author Btands in relation to his work: a privileged observer of its every aspect. Merlin personifies the figure of the paradox-the prophet who is everywhere, yet nowhere. Representative of Satan, recuperated by God, he retains the knowledge imparted by both. A fatherless being without discernible origin, his conception having occurred without his mother's awareness, he is at the same time the protector of paternity. A latter-day Hermes, he is the inhabitant of the forest-the Wild Man-who is simultaneously the bringer of culture, the master of arts and of science, the practitioner of music, medicine, astronomy, mathematics, and calculation.7 Merlin is no less adept at human relations. Also like Hermes--the god of clever speech, the wise child, flatterer, and liar-he represents the skilled rhetorician, master of juridical discourse, guardian of technology, and engineer of the physically impossible. 8 We are told that Hermes took a special delight in the affairs of men, particularly in commerce, deals, in barter as well as in buying and selling; he was the herald and messenger of the Gods. Merlin, like his Classical counterpart, acts as messenger, go-between, matchmaker, mediator, peacemaker; and, these failing, as military strategist-master of ruse, maneuver, and surprise·. His military

Introduction • 3

triumph_s are supplemented by political savvy during peacetime. The foundation of the Round Table is the product of Merlin's ingenuity as is Arthur's elaborate succession toUter's kingdom. 9 Merlin's p_olysemous nature, invisible omnipresence, and superhuman perception of the past and future incorporates a sa voir that permits the ?overnance of men and that poses generally the question of the relation between knowledge and power. More precisely, his special ~nowledg~-inherent in writing-implies the existence of a power distmct from Immediately physical, military domination; the kind of power afforded by know-how, technical competence, mastery of the signs of a culture, including its music. 10 Here the confrontation between Merlin and the counselors at Vertigier's court is highly instructive. In what consti~tes the _fi~st political episode of the thirteenth-century prose romance, King Vertigier concludes a pact with the Saxons. He then seeks repeatedly to build an impregnable tower which crumbles mysteriously after each attempt at construction. Vertigier summons his counselors whose wis~?m co~sists of their skill in the p~actice of astronomy. 11 'Yhat thes~ official arbiters of truth read in the stars is, in fact, a premoniti~n of therr own death at the hands of "a child of seven years conceived without earthly father" ("un enfant de set ans qui estoit nes sans pere d'oume terriien [et conceus] en une feme" [Huth, 1:41]). ~he Oedipal overtones of the astronomical prediction are obvious: like Lams, the counselors seek to destroy that which the oracle reveals; and like Oedipus himself, they pursue the knowledge which destroys. For the struggle between the sanctioned discipline of astronomy and Merlin's art is sealed in the lie, presented to Vertigier's court, that only the blood of the fatherless child will make the tower stand (" ... et qui porroit eel sane ~~oir et metre ou mortier, si tenra la tours et sera tous jors mais bonne" Ibid., ~:42]). Thus the sages hommes, in their search for the object of the menacmg omen, come upon a group of children playing: Et _en eel camp avoit une compaignie d'enfans qui choulloient. Et Merlins, qUI to~tes le_s choses ~avoit, i_ estoit et vit les messages le roi Vertigier qui le quer~:nent. ~I s_e(s) trai~t Merhns les un des plus riches enfans, pour chou que Il savmt bien que Ille mesaesmeroit, si haucha la croche, si en feri l'enfa~t en l_a gambe; et li enfes commencha a plourer et Merlin a laidengier et apieler f~us sans pere. Quant li message qui le queroient oirent I' enfant ensi parl~r, SI alerent tout quatre viers I' enfant qui ploroit, si le demanderent: "QUI est cil_ qui t'a feru?" Et il dist: "C'est (li) fieus d'une feme que onques n~ seult qUI l'engendra, ne onques n'ot pere." Quant Merlins l'oi, si vint viers les ~essages tout en ~a~t e! lour dist: "Signour, je sui chieus que vous queres et que vous aves Jure(s) que vous ochirres et deves porter mon sane le roi Vertigier." [Ibid., 1:43] In this field there was a group of children playing with ball and club [Fr. chouler]. And Merlin, who knew everything, was there and saw King Verti-

4 • Introduction

gier's messengers who were looking for him. Me~li~ dre:v alongs~de one of the richest children because he knew he would dtshke htm; he rmsed the club and struck the child in the leg, and the boy started to cry and to curse Merlin and call him "fatherless son." When the messengers who w~re looking for him heard the child speak thus they approa~hed the cry.mg, child and asked him: "Who is the one who struck you? A~d he sm~: He is the son of a woman who never knew who engendered htm, nor dtd he ever have a father." When Merlin heard this he approached the messengers and said, laughing: "Lords, I am the one yo~ are se~k~ng ,~nd that you have sworn to kill in order to take my blood to King Verhgter.

Merlin's triumph over the astronomers is by no means uniq~e .. ~e systematically usurps the officially sanctione? discourses-sCienhfi~, juridical, political, technological, even theological-of a culture t.h~t !s transformed by his pervasive presence. The entrap.ment ?f Verhgi~r s counselors is merely the first of a number of foundmg episodes which serve to establish the authority of a point of view indistinguishable from the authorial voice-ubiquitous, omniscient, present in all its ruses. More ) U(IHl ,. p. l~\t1' " .l ·!l'' -· ~ qd.-t.•\.t.,)~\htt£c 4f1.,\{.-.VUJ '+ U ..\lfH- de1

~.fdt:'*1-i ·:tut.r~~il ar.Jg,J?IQE~-~illn&.tlte body" of !~e text rs co~~!~~eaw.rffi-even de1ined by-the~~~!~.~!l to reacrtlle ~!~.n.:~_§fknrghtly culture. Here, our three levels of meaning seem to ftise: seme (to sow) calls into question an economics of war versus agriculture; seme (to beget) binds the process of destruction and decline to the death of the father; and seme (to signify) situates both natural and paternal functions within the context of a drama of meaning. Grail Quest and the Quest for the Name of the Father

Perceval's youth in the wasted margins of society is, as we have seen, synonymous with a loss of the father that can also be equated with an ignorance of the signs of knighthood. In this his mother stands as the agent of interruption, since her horror of her husband's fate leads her to shield the son from knowledge of the father, who, had he lived, would, as she acknowledges, have preserved the continuity of lineage: "Chevaliers estre deiissiez, I Biax fix, se Damedieu pleiist, I Qui vostre pere vos eiist I Garde et vos autres amis." 14 Perceval's first contact with the world of the father is set within the frame of a series of misreadings based not only upon ignorance but upon misinformation: Molt se merveille et dist: "Par m'ame, Voir se dist rna mere, rna dame, Qui me dist que deable sont Les plus !aides choses del mont; Et si dist por moi enseingnier Que por aus se doit on seingnier Mes cest ensaing desdaignerai, Que ja voir ne m'en seignerai."

[Perceval, v. 113] He marveled greatly and said: "By my soul, it is true that my mother told me that they are devils and the ugliest things in the world. And she told me by way of instruction that one should cross oneself before them; but I will disregard such teaching and will not cross myself."

The neophyte's meeting with the knights underscores the extent to which his mother, in seeking to deny a proper inheritance, also undermines the property of perception, of meaning, and, as the play upon enseingner, seingnier, ensaing suggests, the extent to which Perceval's attempt to come

2Q.~

• Chapter Six

to terms with the world of the father is an attempt to assimilate its signs. 15 The gap between the mother's misinformati?n and the h.ero' s perception accounts for the irony of the passage, that IS, the crossmg of one.self, a second misreading of the mother's devils (deables) as angels, and, fmally, their relegation to the status of gods. 16 Nor should Chretien's ironic intent blind us to the fact that for Perceval knowledge of the world is essentially a knowledge of the names associated with. the fa~~;r-first the n~me "knight" itself ("'Qui estes dont?' -'Chevaliers sm ), then the leXIcon of knightly weapons: "'Que est or che que vas tenez?' ... 'Sel te dirai, ce est rna lance'";" 'Escu a nonce que je port' ; 'Va 11et , c' es t mes h aub ers. ' " .17 Le Conte du Graal is, in effect, an upside-d~oman, one m whTcl1Teamli'lg1se5Sentiallya processofiinlearning-an undoing of the obfuscating signs of the mother, her "protective" sens, and, eventually, ~f the teaching of the spiritual father, Gornemanz. 18 • Even once Pe~ceval s mother has accepted the inevitable attraction. of kmghtho~d, her u:structions are no less misleading, no less productive of the senes of misreadings that can be said to shape Chretien's tale. For example, Perceval's "sex education"-the directives to serve women ("Dames et puceles servez"), to kiss them but to "leave off the rest," to accept the gift of~ ring (v. 553)-leads directly to the encounter with the mistress of Orguell~eux de la Lande, as Perceval's actions, in keeping with his mother's teachmgs ("Que rna mere le m'ensaigna," v. 696), only provoke a series of further misunderstandings. 19 Orgueilleux cannot believe any ':oman capa~le ~f "leaving off the rest"/0 and the disfiguring abuse to which he submits his beloved merely confirms this belief, since, when Perceval me~ts the couple again, he fails to recognize them. Thus we have come full Circle. A first misreading (the maternal enseignement) gives rise to a second (t.he initial encounter with the victimized woman), the second to a third (Orgueilleux's misinterpretation), and the third. t~ a fourth (Perceval's failure to recognize his victims because of the disfigurement caused by Orgueilleux's original mispri§ion). . A similar pattern is to be found in Perceval's relation to the substitute father Gornemanz de Gorhaut. The older knight initiates the neophyte to the use of arms and to the chivalric code, thus reversing the maternal preaching. To the mother's warning not to travel wi~h a c?~pan~on without first learning his name, Gornemanz counters with an InJunction against speaking too much. 21 And it is, of course, this rule that l~ads to Perceval's celebrated lapse of speech in the presence of the Grall mysteries: Si s' est de demander tenus Coment ceste chose avenoit, Que del chasti li sovenoit Celui qui chevalier le fist,

1;

Grail Family and Round Table • 205 Que li ensaigna et aprist Que de trop parler se gardast. Et crient, se ille demandast, Qu' en le tenist a vilonie; Porche si nel demanda mie. [Perceval, v. 3204] 22 He kept himself from asking how this thing came about, since he remembered the warning of the one who made him a knight and who taught him to refrain from speaking too much. And he feared, if he were to ask, that one would hold him in scorn; and for this reason he asked nothing.

The failure to speak, the interruption of language altogether, stands, then, as the prolongation of the mother's attempted interruption; for, as his cousin later attests, the right question at the right time would have restored the maimed king' s health, the prosperity of the Wasteland, and the integrity of lineage. The rest of Chretien's unfinished text represents, in fact, an attempt to return to the Grail Castle in order to undo the misreading, interpreted through Gornemanz, of the mother's original invocation to speech. Le Conte du Graal focuses poignantly upon the issue of nature versus culture, which seems to be resolved in favor of a certain genetic continuity. Perceval's mother's effort to shield him from the world of the father is as ineffective against the urge toward knighthood as Silence's parents' attempt to hide her sex (see above, pp. 195-197). And the son's deaf ear to the mother's obfuscation ("Li valles en tent molt petit I Ache que sa mere li dist") is transformed, upon contact with the outside world, into a desire for that which has remained hidden ("Molt m' en iroie volentiers I Au roi qui fait les chevaliers"). 23 Perceval desires instinctively the inheritednatural-status of the father, as that which is intuitive and innate triumphs over that which is learned. Upon further examination, however, there is in Perceval's assumption of knighthood no contradiction of the principle of culture, for that which impels him naturally is precisely the desire for social status despite the father's death and the mother's attempt at interruption. What I am suggesting, first of all, is that the socialization that Perceval1 undergoes is indistinguishable from the process of learning the signs that make him capable of reading knightly culture. To play one's "natural" role in society and to be sene, to be endowed with signs, are connatural concepts. And not only is the ingenu, referred to initially as "cil qui petit fu __\ senez," equivalent to "one who is ignorant of the law" ("'Sire, que vas dist cist Galois?' I-'ll ne set pas totes les lois .... Que Galois sont tot par nature I Plus fol que bestes en pasture'"), but Chretien's equation of savagery, ignorance of signs and of the law has deep roots in the etymological connection of lex and lectio. 24 He who is conversant with the law is

206 • Chapter Six

essentially a reader, just as he who is mad-forcene-remains essentially excluded from the law. To be outside of signs, insanus, is to be outside of society (Perceval, vv. 319, 933, 4187, 4197). Second, Perceval's quest for knighthood is, at bottom, a quest for the father that is indistinguishable from a quest initially for the proper names of the father's profession and, ultimately, for his own proper name. The drive toward mastery of the signs of chivalry uncovers bit by bit the traces of a lineage scattered-by the dispersion (the dissemination) associated with the Wasteland itself-throughout the Arthurian countryside. It is, for example, during the meeting with his cousin shortly after the visit to the Grail Castle that Perceval remembers his own name which, merely repressed, inhered in his "lineal subconscious" all along: "Et cil qui son non ne savoit I Devine et dist que il avoit I Perchevax li Galois a non." 25 Later, in the course of another fortuitous encounter, this time with the hermit who will remind him of his (the hermit's) sister (who is also the hero's mother), Perceval learns that the Grail King is his uncle and the Fisher-King his cousin: "Cil qui l'en en sert est mes frere, I Ma suer et soe fu ta mere; Et del riche Pecheor croi I Qu'il est fix a icelui roi." 26 The\ attempt to return to the Grail Castle becomes, then, an attempt to relocate and thus to restore the integrity of a lineage that is from the beginning unrecognizably fragmented-and, at the same time, to restore a lost plenitude of meaning situated beyond signs. In the quest for union with-ll the lost father lies the wish to unite the signifier with its signified. What this suggests, finally, is an elaborat~ t~~t.I~~~rat_~;gy}!}_~ ~