Plot
(This summary is based upon the copy of Sir Gowther found in National Library of Scotland MS Advocates 19.3.1.)
The Duke of Austria is childless and threatens his wife with divorce if she does not quickly conceive. She is in an orchard one morning when a person she believes to be her husband arrives and they make love beneath the trees. However, she has been the victim of the utmost deception. She has been deceived in much the same way that the Duchess of Tintagel is deceived when King Uther Pendragon, cast into the likeness of her husband by Merlin, fathers King Arthur upon her in the Vulgate Merlin . [10] Like the wife of Sir Orfeo, she is accosted by a fay in an orchard. The anonymous author of Sir Gowther has already told us: "I searched high and low for a Breton lay and have brought out of this marvellous region the following tale:
- A law of Breyten long y soghht,
- And owt ther of a tale ybroghht,
- That lufly is to tell." [11]
The child the lady now carries in her womb is Merlin's half-brother, we are told. But he is a fiendish child. As a baby, he sends numerous wet-nurses to their graves and tears off his mother's nipple on the only occasion she dares to suckle him. As he grows to be a youth, hunting becomes his favourite pastime, but as he nears adulthood he prefers to roam the land with a huge sword, terrorising everybody and in particular, the religious orders. He rapes with relish and then burns a convent of nuns to death. His father is so sickened by his son's behaviour that he dies of shame.
Sir Gowther is now duke after the death of his father. But when he has his fiendish parentage thrown at him in accusation one day, he runs to his mother to find out if it is true. At the point of his sword, she admits to everything and, in a sudden change of heart, Sir Gowther resolves to travel to Rome to receive absolution for his sins from the Pope.
Sir Gowther receives an audience with the Pope and is given the penance that he may not speak and that whatever he swallows must first have been in the mouth of a dog. The curious, possible implications of this are almost corroborated when, having been kept alive for a few days by a greyhound, he dashes into the palace of the Emperor of Germany (the Holy Roman Empire), hides beneath a table and the emperor's steward comes towards him brandishing a stick. However, he is soon adopted by the court as Hob their fool and eats beneath the tables with the dogs in the evening.
The Emperor of Germany has a daughter who is mute, but this does not stop a sultan coming to claim her hand in marriage. The emperor refuses and a dreadful war begins. On three successive days, Sir Gowther, as Hob the fool, prays to God that he might be given arms to help defend the emperor's lands from the heathen hoards. And three times, he is rewarded by the magical appearance of a horse and armour outside his small room. For three days in succession, he sallies out with the emperor's army and fights invincibly, first as a black knight, then as a red knight and finally, on the third day, as a white knight, even managing to cut off the sultan's head during the final day's fighting. Like the Anglo-Norman romance hero Ipomedon, he fights in differently-coloured arms every day and nobody knows who these knights are who have conducted themselves so magnificently on the field of combat. The emperor's daughter, however, knows the truth. However, she is mute and thus unable to tell anyone anything.
But victory comes at a price. Following the sultan's death, on seeing Sir Gowther wounded on the final day of battle, the emperor's daughter, in her anguish, falls from her tower. The Pope is summoned to bury her. But as the funeral is about to start, she awakens from her bier and tells the assembled gathering that God has forgiven Sir Gowther all his sins. He may speak again, and so can she.
Following this miracle, the two are married and, when her father dies, Sir Gowther becomes Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. He builds an abbey and attaches to it a convent, in which nuns can pray for the souls of the poor nuns he once burnt alive in their church. When Sir Gowther dies, many miracles are witnessed around his tomb.
Legends
The most widely cited source for Sir Gowther is a late-twelfth or early-thirteenth century romance of a fictitious Norman duke named Robert de Diable , a story probably taken from legend. [12] [13] Influences may also be found in the saintly Legend of Gregorius and the Life of Saint Alexius . [14] At one time, the lai was believed to have come from Normandy, but a study published in the 1960s suggests that the fairy tale elements make historical inspiration unlikely and that the tale may have arisen in Italy. [15]
The visit of an other-worldly creature in an orchard, promising a marvelous child, parallels the legends of St. Anne and the birth of the Virgin Mary so closely that there would appear to be influence, especially as these are the closest parallels to be found. [16]
Unsurprisingly, resonances exist in other Breton lais, in particular the twelfth- or thirteenth-century lai Tydorel, which may itself derive from Robert de Diable, [17] [18] The Middle English Breton lai Sir Orfeo also sees the heroine accosted by an Otherworldly figure in an orchard and the Middle English Breton lai Sir Degaré has the hero conceived when his mother is raped in a forest by an Otherworldly knight. The heroine of the Middle English Breton lai Emaré has to suffer a new life in reduced circumstances before gaining acknowledgement of her previous rank.
The late-twelfth century Anglo-Norman romance Ipomedon has the hero fight as an unknown knight on three successive days of a tournament, first as a white knight, then as a red knight and finally as a black knight, in a reversal of an otherwise identical sequence later used by the anonymous author of Sir Gowther. Indeed, the tournament where the hero fights in disguise and claims to have been busy is a fairy tale commonplace (such as in The Golden Crab or The Magician's Horse , or in Little Johnny Sheep-Dung and The Hairy Man , where it is actual battle), and from there passed into romance. [19]
Two manuscript versions
The two manuscript versions, although telling the same story, do so with different emphasis and perhaps with different intention. [20]
Social story
The version of Sir Gowther in British Library Royal MS 17.B.43 was "probably intended for a more cultured and refined audience" [21] and although it is the version that explicitly identifies Sir Gowther with a saint at the conclusion, may concern itself also with the aristocratic trauma of a dynasty in distress, first by childlessness, then by an 'heir from hell', a son who inherits something of the egocentric arrogance of his forebears. [22] This is resolved in the tale by Sir Gowther descending to be amongst the lowest of the low, eating beneath the table with the dogs; and when at last his fortunes rise again, in the saddle of the white knight, "we are told: 'Rode he not with brag nor bost'", as though this may be significant to the author's intention. [23] The romance may therefore address "deep-seated anxieties in medieval society about breeding and dynasty." [24] The devilish aspect of pride illustrated in the fifteenth-century manuscript illustration at the top of this article may reflect this.
Saint’s life
The version of Sir Gowther in National Library of Scotland MS Advocates 19.3.1 is told in "a more vigorous and decidedly more explicit manner", [25] like a hagiography. It is in this version alone that the burning of the nuns in their own church is referred to and the ultimate forgiveness of Sir Gowther's heinous crimes by God, through penance and contrition, carry him onwards almost to beatification. Not only does the emperor's mute daughter come back to life to inform him that he is now one of God's children, but further miracles are later seen to occur beside his tomb; although it is only in the British Library Royal MS that Sir Gowther is actually identified with Saint Guthlac, [26] who wore animal skins and lived in a barrow, and for whom King Æthelbald of Mercia founded Croyland Abbey in Lincolnshire, England in the eighth century.
The poem in the British Library version ends: Explicit Vita Sancti. [27]
Breton lai
Breton elements in the story of Sir Gowther, including references to Arthurian legend in the form of Merlin, supernatural encounters in an orchard, the significant involvement of animals and episodes of disguise, may derive ultimately from a European pagan tradition preserved in the Breton lai.
Marie de France was a poet, possibly born in what is now France, who lived in England during the late 12th century. She lived and wrote at an unknown court, but she and her work were almost certainly known at the royal court of King Henry II of England. Virtually nothing is known of her life; both her given name and its geographical specification come from her manuscripts. However, one written description of her work and popularity from her own era still exists. She is considered by scholars to be the first woman known to write francophone verse.
Sir Orfeo is an anonymous Middle English Breton lai dating from the late 13th or early 14th century. It retells the story of Orpheus as a king who rescues his wife from the fairy king. The folk song Orfeo is based on this poem.
A Breton lai, also known as a narrative lay or simply a lay, is a form of medieval French and English romance literature. Lais are short, rhymed tales of love and chivalry, often involving supernatural and fairy-world Celtic motifs. The word "lay" or "lai" is thought to be derived from the Old High German and/or Old Middle German leich, which means play, melody, or song, or as suggested by Jack Zipes in The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales, the Irish word laid (song).
Thomas Chestre was the author of a 14th-century Middle English romance Sir Launfal, a verse romance of 1045 lines based ultimately on Marie de France's Breton lay Lanval. He was possibly also the author of the 2200-line Libeaus Desconus, a story of Sir Gawain's son Gingalain based upon similar traditions to those that inspired Renaut de Beaujeu's late-12th-century or early-13th-century Old French romance Le Bel Inconnu, and also possibly of a Middle English retelling of the mid-13th-century Old French romance Octavian. Geoffrey Chaucer parodied Libeaus Desconus, among other Middle English romances, in his Canterbury Tale of Sir Thopas.
Sir Launfal is a 1045-line Middle English romance or Breton lay written by Thomas Chestre dating from the late 14th century. It is based primarily on the 538-line Middle English poem Sir Landevale, which in turn was based on Marie de France's lai Lanval, written in a form of French understood in the courts of both England and France in the 12th century. Sir Launfal retains the basic story told by Marie and retold in Sir Landevale, augmented with material from an Old French lai Graelent and a lost romance that possibly featured a giant named Sir Valentyne. This is in line with Thomas Chestre's eclectic way of creating his poetry.
Sir Isumbras is a medieval metrical romance written in Middle English and found in no fewer than nine manuscripts dating to the fifteenth century. This popular romance must have been circulating in England before 1320, because William of Nassyngton, in his work Speculum Vitae, which dates from this time, mentions feats of arms and other 'vanities', such as those found in stories of Sir Guy of Warwick, Bevis of Hampton, Octavian and Sir Isumbras. Unlike the other three stories, the Middle English Sir Isumbras is not a translation of an Old French original.
The Brut or Roman de Brut by the poet Wace is a loose and expanded translation in almost 15,000 lines of Norman-French verse of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Latin History of the Kings of Britain. It was formerly known as the Brut d'Engleterre or Roman des Rois d'Angleterre, though Wace's own name for it was the Geste des Bretons, or Deeds of the Britons. Its genre is equivocal, being more than a chronicle but not quite a fully-fledged romance. It narrates a largely fictional version of Britain's story from its settlement by Brutus, a refugee from Troy, who gives the poem its name, through a thousand years of pseudohistory, including the story of king Leir, up to the Roman conquest, the introduction of Christianity, and the legends of sub-Roman Britain, ending with the reign of the 7th-century king Cadwallader. Especially prominent is its account of the life of King Arthur, the first in any vernacular language, which instigated and influenced a whole school of French Arthurian romances dealing with the Round Table – here making its first appearance in literature – and with the adventures of its various knights.
In the strictly academic context of Celtic studies, the term Celtic literature is used by Celticists to denote any number of bodies of literature written in a Celtic language, encompassing the Irish, Welsh, Cornish, Manx, Scottish Gaelic and Breton languages in either their modern or earlier forms.
Lanval is one of The Lais of Marie de France. Written in Anglo-Norman, it tells the story of Lanval, a knight at King Arthur's court, who is overlooked by the king, wooed by a fairy lady, given all manner of gifts by her, and subsequently refuses the advances of Queen Guinevere. The plot is complicated by Lanval's promise not to reveal the identity of his mistress, which he breaks when Guinevere accuses him of having "no desire for women". Before Arthur, Guinevere accuses Lanval of shaming her, and Arthur, in an extended judicial scene, demands that he reveal his mistress. Despite the broken promise, the fairy lover eventually appears to justify Lanval, and to take him with her to Avalon. The tale was popular, and was adapted into English as Sir Landevale, Sir Launfal, and Sir Lambewell.
King Horn is a Middle English chivalric romance dating back to the middle of the thirteenth century. It survives in three manuscripts: London, British Library, MS. Harley 2253; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Laud. Misc 108; and Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS. Gg. iv. 27. 2. It is thought to be based on the Anglo-Norman Romance of Horn (1170). The story was retold in later romances and ballads, and is considered part of the Matter of England. The poem is currently believed to be the oldest extant romance in Middle English.
"Le Fresne" is one of the Lais of Marie de France. It was likely written in the late 12th century. Marie claims it to be a Breton lai, an example of Anglo-Norman literature.
Emaré is a Middle English Breton lai, a form of mediaeval romance poem, told in 1035 lines. The author of Emaré is unknown and it exists in only one manuscript, Cotton Caligula A. ii, which contains ten metrical narratives. Emaré seems to date from the late fourteenth century, possibly written in the North East Midlands. The iambic pattern is rather rough.
Octavian is a 14th-century Middle English verse translation and abridgement of a mid-13th century Old French romance of the same name. This Middle English version exists in three manuscript copies and in two separate compositions, one of which may have been written by the 14th-century poet Thomas Chestre who also composed Libeaus Desconus and Sir Launfal. The other two copies are not by Chestre and preserve a version of the poem in regular twelve-line tail rhyme stanzas, a verse structure that was popular in the 14th century in England. Both poetic compositions condense the Old French romance to about 1800 lines, a third of its original length, and relate “incidents and motifs common in legend, romance and chanson de geste.” The story describes a trauma that unfolds in the household of Octavian, later the Roman Emperor Augustus, whose own mother deceives him into sending his wife and his two newborn sons into exile and likely death. After many adventures, the family are at last reunited and the guilty mother is appropriately punished.
Sir Eglamour of Artois is a Middle English verse romance that was written sometime around 1350. It is a narrative poem of about 1300 lines, a tail-rhyme romance that was quite popular in its day, judging from the number of copies that have survived – four manuscripts from the 15th century or earlier and a manuscript and five printed editions from the 16th century. The poem tells a story that is constructed from a large number of elements found in other medieval romances. Modern scholarly opinion has been critical of it because of this, describing it as unimaginative and of poor quality. Medieval romance as a genre, however, concerns the reworking of "the archetypal images of romance" and if this poem is viewed from a 15th-century perspective as well as from a modern standpoint – and it was obviously once very popular, even being adapted into a play in 1444 – one might find a "romance [that] is carefully structured, the action highly unified, the narration lively."
Sir Perceval of Galles is a Middle English Arthurian verse romance whose protagonist, Sir Perceval (Percival), first appeared in medieval literature in Chrétien de Troyes' final poem, the 12th-century Old French Conte del Graal, well over one hundred years before the composition of this work. Sir Perceval of Galles was probably written in the northeast Midlands of England in the early 14th century, and tells a markedly different story to either Chretien's tale or to Robert de Boron's early 13th-century Perceval. Told with a comic liveliness, it omits any mention of a graal or a Grail.
Sir Tryamour is a Middle English romance dated to the late fourteenth century. The source is unknown and, like almost all of the Middle English romances to have survived, its author is anonymous. The 1,719-line poem is written in irregular tail rhyme stanzas composed in the Northeast Midlands dialect. There are textual ambiguities and obscurities that suggest corruption or "loose transmission." Consequently, interpretations, glosses and notes vary between editions, sometimes substantially.
The Erl of Toulouse is a Middle English chivalric romance centered on an innocent persecuted wife. It claims to be a translation of a French lai, but the original lai is lost. It is thought to date from the late 14th century, and survives in four manuscripts of the 15th and 16th centuries. The Erl of Toulouse is written in a north-east Midlands dialect of Middle English.
Sir Cleges is a medieval English verse chivalric romance written in tail-rhyme stanzas in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century. It is clearly a minstrel tale, praising giving gifts to minstrels, and punishing the servants who might make it impossible for a minstrel in a noble household. Corrupt officials are central to it.
Sir Degaré is a Middle English romance of around 1,100 verse lines, probably composed early in the fourteenth century. The poem is often categorised as a Breton lai because it is partly set in Brittany, involves an imagined Breton royal family, and contains supernatural elements similar to those found in some other examples, such as Sir Orfeo. Sir Degaré itself does not explicitly claim to be a Breton lai. The poem is anonymous, and no extant source has ever firmly been identified.
Guiomar is the best known name of a character appearing in many medieval texts relating to the Arthurian legend, often in relationship with Morgan le Fay or a similar fairy queen type character.
