Author: Douglas Galbi

In her twelfth-century lai Guildeluëc and Guilliadun, or Eliduc {Guildeluëc et Guilliadun, ou Eliduc}, the great medieval writer Marie de France has the woman Guilliadun angrily declare to the woman Guildeluëc:

She is very foolish who believes a man!

{ Mut est fole que humme creit! }[1]

Medieval women undoubtedly expressed such categorical condemnations of men at times. Today such condemnations, if noticed, could be called misandristic or anti-meninist. Such condemnations in their reverse-gender form evoke censure and censorship.[2] Marie de France, however, appreciated the psychological complexity of human behavior. Overall, her lais show medieval women’s deep and generous love for men.

The happily married Guildeluëc and Eliduc loyally loved each other. Then false accusations caused Eliduc to lose his king’s patronage. Eliduc had to voyage from his home in Brittany across the sea to England to work as a soldier. There he served in brutal violence against men for an English king. Men deserve more humane work than soldiering in brutal violence against men.

The English king’s lovely daughter Guilliadun heard about Eliduc’s victorious violence against men in service to her father. She asked for him to come to her. He of course obeyed her summons. They sat together on her bed and talked for a long time. After he departed, she couldn’t rest or sleep. She was madly in love with him. She told her chamberlain:

If he wishes to love me as a lover
and pledge his body to me,
I will do all his pleasure.
If so, from such great good can come to him:
he will be king of this land.
So very wise and courtly is he
that, if he doesn’t love me as a lover,
I will necessarily die in great sorrow.

{ Si par amur me veut amer
E de sun cors asseurer,
Jeo ferai trestut sun pleisir,
si l’en peot grant bien avenir:
De ceste tere serat reis.
Tant par est sages e curteis,
Que, s’il ne m’aime par amur,
Murir m’estuet a grant dolur. }

Admirably disregarding men’s conventional gender burden of soliciting amorous relationships, her chamberlain advised her to send love-tokens to Eliduc. She took that initiative without inquiring whether Eliduc was married.

While taking the initiative in love involves risks that men have traditionally borne, in this case Eliduc didn’t reject Guilliadun’s love initiative. He himself felt amorously attracted to Guilliadun. However, he had pledged fidelity to his wife before traveling overseas to work as a soldier. Like many men, even sexually deprived soldiers in armies exploiting only men, Eliduc sought to uphold his pledge to his wife. He resolved to visit and talk with Guilliadun, and kiss and embrace her, but not have sex with her. He felt great love anguish as he mounted his horse to visit her.

Guilliadun was delighted that Eliduc had come to see her. When her father the king praised Eliduc as the best among five hundred men, she felt her passion validated. She summoned Eliduc to a private conversation with her. They both hesitated to speak. Then Eliduc thanked her for her gift of love-tokens to him. Appreciating his receptivity, she pressed forward:

She replies to the knight
that with this she is delighted,
and for this she sent the ring
and the belt as well,
because she has given him her body.
She loves him with such love
that she wishes to make him her lord.
And if she cannot have him,
never will she have any living man.
Now let him in return tell his desire!

{ Ele respunt al chevalier
Que de ceo li esteit mut bel,
E pur ceo l’enveat l’anel
E la ceinture autresi,
Que de sun cors l’aveit seisi;
Ele l’amat de tel amur,
De lui volt faire sun seignur.
E si ele ne peot lui aveir,
Une chose sace de veir:
Jamés n’avera humme vivant.
Ore li redie sum talant! }

Guilliadun was fighting strongly and aggressively for love. Eliduc meekly thanked her. He explained that he was contracted to fight for a year as a soldier for her father in brutal violence against men. After that term, he would leave their country and return home. She appreciated his forthrightness about his intentions. She didn’t ask if he was married.

Guilliadun and Eliduc subsequently enjoyed flirtatious love-play, but nothing more. After some time Eliduc received a message that his king in Brittany urgently needed his service as a soldier. Distraught, Eliduc nonetheless recognized his feudal obligation. He requested leave from both the English king and Guilliadun to return to serve his own king. They both reluctantly let him return.

Guilliadun threatened to kill herself if Eliduc didn’t take her with him. But if he took her with him, that would violate his feudal obligation of loyalty to her father. Moreover, he was married and had pledged faithfulness to his wife. Like Aeneas with respect to Dido, Eliduc has no obligation to Guilliadun. But he loved her and didn’t want her to commit suicide. Under her love coercion, Eliduc promised to return to her after his term of obligation to her father had expired. Then he would take her away. To what he would take her wasn’t clear to anyone, including apparently Eliduc himself. Facing a love dilemma impossible to resolve rightly, a man can only seek time and hope for a loving way forward.

When Eliduc returned home, his wife Guildeluëc rejoiced. He, however, was morose and withdrawn. Described as a good, beautiful, wise, and worthy wife, she didn’t become resentful. She asked if anyone had told him that she had betrayed him. She offered to make amends for any such claims. That wasn’t it, he explained. His concern was that he had to return to the English kingdom and would suffer greatly before he could return to her. What exactly he meant isn’t clear, but certainly he was in a difficult love situation.

At the time Guilliadun had appointed, Eliduc returned to her in England. He arranged for her to leave her castle secretly and join him on a boat sailing back to Brittany. As if by divine vengeance like that against Jonah, a fierce storm enveloped the ship near the Brittany shore. A sailor blamed Eliduc for bringing a woman who wasn’t his wife on ship with him. That’s when Guilliadun learned that Eliduc was married. She fainted from that news and apparently died. Eliduc then killed the sailor who had blamed him for agreeing to Guilliadun’s request. Men’s lives count for little relative to women’s lives.

The anguished Eliduc managed to steer the boat to shore. He sought to bury Guilliadun with honor in a sacred place. He took her to a chapel in the woods near to his home and laid her on a bed before the altar. He left to make plans to bury her. He also planned to become a monk who would constantly cry out to God in grief for Guilliadun’s death and pray for her soul.

On the next two days the grief-stricken Eliduc came to the chapel to grieve and pray over Guilliadun’s body. His wife Guildeluëc noticed his grief and his absences. She had one of her servants follow him. The servant discovered Eliduc visiting the chapel. When Eliduc was at an audience with the king, Guildeluëc with her servant came to the chapel. She saw the body of the beautiful young woman lying before the altar. She then understood her husband’s grief:

“Do you see,” she says, “this woman,
who resembles a gem in her beauty?
This is my lord’s lover,
on whose account he shows such sorrow.
In faith, I do not wonder at that,
when such a beautiful woman has died.
So much by pity, so much by love,
never will I have joy on any further day.”

{ “Veiz tu,” fet ele, “ceste femme,
Que de beuté resemble gemme?
Ceo est l’amie mun seignur,
Pur quei il meine tel dolur.
Par fei, jeo ne me merveil mie,
Quant si bele femme est perie.
Tant par pité, tant par amur,
Jamés n’averai joie nul jur.” }

In implicit sympathy with her husband’s grief, Guildeluëc wept and lamented the young woman’s death.

A weasel ran out from under the altar and scampered across Guilliadun’s body. The servant struck the weasel with his staff and apparently killed it. Another weasel saw its dead friend and seemed to be filled with sorrow. It went into the woods and returned with a red flower that it put into the mouth of its companion. The apparently dead weasel immediately returned to life.

Guildeluëc noticed the weasel’s action and its effect. With a characteristic act of women’s aggression, she ordered her man-servant to strike the weasel so as to get the flower from it. The servant did as his lady instructed.[3] The wounded weasel dropped the red flower. Guildeluëc then placed it in Guilliadun’s mouth. Like the apparently dead weasel, Guilliadun immediately returned to life.

Guildeluëc resurrected an apparently dead, beautiful young woman that her husband loved. Her love and generosity toward her husband went even further. She told Guilliadun:

What great joy I have that you are alive.
I will take you along with me
and return you to your lover.
I wish to make him entirely free of our marriage,
and I will take a nun’s veil.

{ Que vive estes, grant joie en ai;
Ensemble od mei vus enmerrai
E a vostre ami vus rendrai.
Del tut le voil quite clamer,
E si ferai mun chef veler. }

When she thought that Guilliadun was dead, Guildeluëc said that she would never again have joy. Guildeluëc felt joy again when she succeeded in bringing back to life a beautiful young woman whom her husband loved. Moreover, she then gave her husband to Guilliadun. While Jesus was a fully masculine man, Guildeluëc as a woman was fully able to embody the perfect, salvific love of Jesus in Christian understanding. No man could have a more wonderfully loving wife than Guildeluëc.[4]

Guildeluëc wasn’t an exception among medieval women. In Marie de France’s lai Le Fresne, an orphan given to a convent grew up to be a beautiful woman called Le Fresne. She and Gurun, a knight owning much land, became lovers. Worried that she might become pregnant, he urged her to run away with him. So she did. They then married and lived happily. But she never got pregnant.

Other knights who held land from Gurun were upset that he didn’t have an heir. They wanted to be sure that their land holdings would continue when he died. They thus coerced him into divorcing Le Fresne and taking another woman named Le Codre as his new wife. All of people of his household were extremely upset at losing Le Fresne as their lady. But Le Fresne didn’t get upset or resentful. She apparently understood the bad circumstances and didn’t blame her husband.

Le Fresne displayed her generous love for her then ex-husband on the day of his new wedding. She instructed servants to prepare the marital bed for Gurun and his new bride Le Codre as she knew he liked it:

When the bed was made ready,
they threw a coverlet over it.
The material was an old woven silk.
The young lady saw it —
it didn’t seem right to her.
It pressed down on her heart.
She opened a chest, took out her cloth,
and put it on the bed of her lord.
She did it to honor him.

{ Quant le lit fu apresté,
Un covertur unt sus jeté;
Li dras esteit d’un viel bofu.
La dameisele l’ad veü;
N’ert mie bons, ceo li sembla;
En sun courage li pesa.
Un cofre overi, sun pali prist,
Sur le lit sun seignur li mist.
Pur lui honuere le feseit }[5]

Her cloth was the lovely silk that had wrapped her as a baby when she had been abandoned at the convent. She didn’t mean to signify her husband’s abandonment of her. Her life as an orphan had gone well, except for her husband being forced to divorce her. She simply wanted to make the marital bed more beautiful for her ex-husband and his new wife. That’s a wonderfully generous act of love.

Le Codre’s mother led her to that marital bed. The mother recognized the beautiful silk coverlet as the cloth in which she had wrapped her twin daughter that she had abandoned. She called for Le Fresne and embraced her daughter. She explained to everyone that Le Codre was Le Fresne’s twin sister. The mother profusely apologized to her husband for secretly abandoning one of their twin daughters. He forgave her and rejoiced in recovering his lost daughter. For Gurun, divorcing one twin and marrying another made no sense. The archbishop agreed to annul the wedding and cancel the divorce. Le Fresne and Gurun joyfully became spouses again.

Le Fresne’s generous act of love for her ex-husband Gurun eliminated all worldly concerns. Gurun’s scheming knight-tenants aren’t mentioned again. Whether Le Fresne and Gurun subsequently had children isn’t mentioned either. Le Fresne’s generous love for Gurun clearly was fruitful. That’s all that ultimately mattered.

Men today urgently need the generous love from women that Marie de France depicted. Woman today can be just as generously loving to men as medieval women were. The great medieval woman writer Marie de France provides woman and men today inspiring examples of wonderful women.

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• Marie de France’s Bisclavret on men’s secret, inner beast
• medieval literature described men’s passionate desire for many women
• Ovid as walnut tree: men’s despair supports castration culture

Notes:

[1] Marie de France, Guildeluëc and Guilliadun, or Eliduc {Guildeluëc et Guilliadun, ou Eliduc} v. 1084, Old French text and English translation (modified) from Waters (2018). For a freely available, online Old French text, Warnke & Köhler (1900) pp. 186-224. For another modern English translation, Fowles (1974) pp. 109-126, available here. Freely available translations into slightly dated English are those of Mason (1911) and Rickert (1901).

The subsequent quotes above from Guildeluëc et Guilliadun, ou Eliduc are similarly sourced. They are vv. 343-50 (If he wishes to love me…), 508-18 (She replies to the knight…), 1021-8 (“Do you see,” she says…), 1098-1102 (What great joy I have…).

[2] While strictly policing what’s labeled misogyny or anti-feminism, modern literary scholarship has long been inclusive and tolerant of misandry and anti-meninism. In 1977, a well-regarded academic literary scholar referred to Guilliadun’s categorical condemnation of men as “her own all too correct pronouncement that women should not trust men.” Hieatt (1977) p. 355. Hieatt further claims that “idiotic and heedless men abound” in Marie de France’s work:

The most typical characters in her lays are women victimized by men, either oppressive and cruel men or weaklings like Eliduc, and women whose native intelligence and/or humane compassion saves the day — or would, if the men would only listen to them.

Id. p. 356. Apparently projecting her own animosity toward men upon Marie de France, Hieatt grossly mischaracterized Marie de France as “a writer of distinctly feminist tone.” Id. p. 357.

[3] Lauding men-abasing courtly love, Fowles described it as an important context for Guildeluëc et Guilliadun, ou Eliduc:

It is hardly a fashionable idea in the twentieth century; but amour courtois was a desperately needed attempt to bring more civilization (more female intelligence) into a brutal society, and all civilization is based on agreed codes and symbols of mutual trust.

Fowles (1974) p. 107. In fact, courtly love {amour courtois} was been a quite fashionable idea since late in the nineteenth century. Showing the narrow contours that have long governed elite gender debate, Hieatt countered:

These and others of Marie’s lays show a good deal more concern with the poor behaviour of the male and the superior wisdom and humanity of the female than they do with the romantic aspects of “courtly love.”

Hieatt (1977) p. 356. The ideology of female supremacism has grown terribly in influence and viciousness since 1977.

[4] Regarding Guildeluëc’s generous love for her husband Eliduc, Hieatt commented:

A self-respecting modern wife faced with the prospect of being discarded for a younger woman generally expresses her indignation quite firmly and demands reprisals in the form of alimony and other perquisites before she will offer any cooperation at all to an errant spouse.

Hieatt (1977) p. 352. Not all women are like that.

[5] Marie de France, The Ash Tree {Le Fresne} vv. 397-405, Old French text and English translation (modified) from Waters (2018). The name of the lai is also the name of its woman-hero. The name of her twin sister Le Condre in English means “the hazel tree.” Following Waters, I’ve retained the French forms of the twins’ names. For a freely available, online Old French text of Le Fresne, Warnke & Köhler (1900). For freely available translations, Mason (1911) and Shoaf (1996).

[images] (1) Portrait of Mesopotamian courtesan Albaydé, as described in Victor Hugo’s poem “Fragments of a Serpent” in Les Orientales. Oil on canvas painting that Alexandre Cabanel made in 1848. Preserved in Musée Fabre (Monpellier, France). Via Wikimedia Commons. On this work, Moussa (2011). Ralph Hancock has observed that Albaydé is holding bindweed / morning glory {convolvulus}. Bindweed / morning glory is an invasive, climbing perennial that wraps itself around other plants and can kill them. Getting rid of it is very difficult.  (2) Medieval lady. Watercolor and gouache on paper. Painted by Alexandre Cabanel. Preserved in Mariano Procópio Museum (Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brazil). Via Wikimedia Commons. Here’s detailed information on the artistic career of the nineteenth-century French academic painter Alexandre Cabanel.

References:

Fowles, John. 1974. The Ebony Tower. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.

Hieatt, Constance B. 1977. “Eliduc Revisited: John Fowles and Marie De France.” ESC: English Studies in Canada. 3 (3): 351-358.

Mason, Eugene, trans. 1911. French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France. London: J.M. Dent & Sons.

Moussa, Sarga. 2011. “Imaginary Hybridities: Geographic, Religioius and Poetic Crossovers in Victor Hugo’s Les Orientales.” Ch. 25 (pp. 280-290) in Guignery, Vanessa, Catherine Pesso-Miquel, and François Specq. Hybridity: forms and figures in literature and the visual arts. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Pub.

Rickert, Edith, trans. 1901. Marie de France. Seven of her lays done into English. With designs by Caroline Watts. David Nutt: London.

Shoaf, Judith P. 1996. “Le Fresne: Marie de France, translated.” Online.

Warnke, Karl, and Reinhold Köhler, eds. 1900. Die Lais der Marie de France. Halle: M. Niemeyer.

Waters, Claire M. 2018. The Lais of Marie de France: Text and Translation. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press.

Political scheming caused Princess Argentille to be married to the kitchen scullion Haveloc in the Anglo-Norman lai Haveloc written about the year 1200. Like the seventh-century English nobles Æthelthryth and Tondberht and many American couples today, Argentille and Haveloc seemed to be destined for sexless marriage:

When they were both brought to bed,
she was greatly ashamed of him,
and he even more so for her sake.

{ Quant coché furent amdui,
Cele ot grant hunte de lui
E il assez greinur de lui. }[1]

Fear and wariness in the marital bed fosters neither joy nor sleep. However, personal conversation overcame the apparent gulf of social class between them. It also prompted physical intimacy:

But later they became so trusting of each other,
both in their words and their expressions,
that he loved her and lay with her
as was his duty to do with his wife.
On the night he first had sexual congress with her,
he had such joy from it and loved her so much
that afterwards he fell asleep and became oblivious.

{ Mais pus se assurerent itant,
E de parole e de semblant,
Ke il l’ama e od lui just
Cum il od sun espuse dust.
La nuit qu’il primes i parla
Tel joie en out e tant l’ama
Ke il s’endormi e oblia. }

In these verses, the Anglo-Norman word for sexual congress is a form of the verb parler. That Anglo-Norman verb most commonly means “to have conversation.” But as the greatest scholars of lais recognized, the fitting meaning here is “to have sexual congress.”[2] That meaning re-enforces the communicative development in Argentille and Haveloc’s relationship depicted in the prior four verses. Their relationship in words became a relationship in flesh. That’s fundamentally a Christian understanding of love.

Although primarily interpreted as political history, the lai Haveloc offers keen psychological insight into medieval marriage. Wives and husbands in Haveloc consciously treat each other with sensitivity for their relationship.[3] For example, a hermit told Argentille that Haveloc was born of a royal lineage. That’s an extraordinary claim about a man working as a kitchen scullion. Argentille addressed the situation with psychological sophistication:

She returned to her husband.
In private and lovingly,
she asked him where he was born
and where his family were.

{ Ele s’en vait a sun seignur.
Privement e par amur
Li demande dunt il ert nez
[E ou] esteit sis parentez. }

Argentille took care to show that her love for her husband didn’t depend on whether the hermit’s claim was true. She also took care not to expose her husband to public ridicule.

Haveloc believed that he was the son of Grim the fisherman and his wife Sebur. That elderly couple lived in the small Lincolnshire town called Grimsby. Unhappy under her current circumstances, Argentille wanted she and Haveloc to go to live with his parents. Haveloc readily agreed.[4] When they arrived in Grimsby, only Grim and Sebur’s daughter Kelloc, married to a merchant, remained alive. Kelloc asked Haveloc about the beautiful woman with him. He explained that she was his wife and a princess who had been robbed of her heritage. Recognizing the astonishing circumstances, Kelloc, who had grown up with him, pondered what to do:

She summoned her husband.
Following his advice, she asked Haveloc
whose son he was, if he knew,
and if he recognized his parents.

{ Sun seignur avant apella,
Par sun conseil li demanda
Ki fiz il fu, s’il le saveit,
Si sun parenté conusseit. }

Medieval women respected their husbands. In a complicated situation, a medieval woman might summon her husband for advice and occasionally even follow his advice.[5] Haveloc declared that Grim was his father and she his sister. Kelloc then revealed Haveloc’s true parentage: he was actually the son of Gunter, King of the Danes. Grim and Sebur had served as Haveloc’s guardians after King Gunter had been treacherously killed. Argentille and Haveloc were thus actually a royal couple.

Through victory in brutal violence against men, Haveloc became the new Danish king. Argentille became the queen of the Danes. After King Haveloc had ruled Denmark very successfully for three years, Argentille advised him to engage in further violence against men:

Argentille advised him
to cross to England
in order to conquer her heritage
from which her uncles had ejected her
and with great wrong disinherited her.
The King said that he would do
whatever she advised him.

{ Argentile li conseilla
Q’il passast en Engletere,
Pur sun heritage conquere
Dunt ses uncles [l]’aveit jeté
E a grant tort desherité.
Li reis li dit qu’il fera
Quanqu’ele li conseilera. }

The medieval ideal of marriage was conjugal partnership. But medieval marriage often devalued husbands relative to their wives. Women, for example, typically didn’t serve as men’s equal partners in brutal warfare. More significantly, norms of gynocentrism instruct husbands to do whatever their wives advise them to do.

In Haveloc, the dominant woman Argentille shows little concern for men’s suffering. The first day of battle for the lands of Argentille’s heritage caused massive harm to men:

The combat between the sides was fierce,
lasting until five in the evening.
Many of the Danes were killed
and among the survivors many were badly wounded.
The Danes were nearly unable to suffer more
when the darkness made them part.
Haveloc was very angry
because of the men he had lost.
With the Danes he would have retreated
and returned to his ship
if the Queen would have suffered that.

{ Entre eus fu dure la meslee
De ci que vint a la vespree.
Mut i out Daneis oscis
E des altres assez malmis;
Il nel poient mes suffrir
Quant la nuit les fait partir.
Aveloc fu mult irascuz
Pur les homes qu’il ot perduz.
Od ses Daneis s’en fu[s]t alez
E a sa navie returnez,
Si la reïne li suffrit. }

Queen Argentille suffered none of the war’s violence. Her suffering was the thought of not regaining her inheritance through men’s brutal suffering in battle. Greatly devaluing men’s suffering relative to her interest, Argentille refused to allow her husband and his surviving men to retreat. The author of Haveloc understood and attempted to communicate gynocentric devaluation of men’s lives. Literary scholars have still largely failed to recognize that historical reality.

From her position of female privilege, Argentille advised her husband King Haveloc even with respect to tactics of warfare. She advised manipulating the bodies of the dead Danish men:

Because of a ruse that she promised would work,
by which he could conquer his enemy,
the King remained, so trusting her.
All night long he had limbs cut
and at both ends sharpened.
They staked up the dead men;
among the living they positioned them.
They were arranged into two echelons,
with axes raised above their shoulders.

{ Par un engin que li pramist,
Dunt il veincerei sun enemi,
Remist li reis, si la creï.
Tute la nuit fit peus trencher
E de dous parz aguiser.
Les morz homes i ficherent;
Entre les vifs les drecerent,
Dous escheles en unt rengez,
Les haches sur les cous drecez. }

Medieval literature recognized that women’s guile readily defeats men. Haveloc ironically trusted in his wife’s guile. Via stakes driven into the ground and at the other end into their bodies, dead men were grotesquely resurrected according to Argentille’s instructions. Dead men thus rose to be mixed among living men, all prepared to do further violence against men. With this highly imaginative scene, Haveloc poignantly depicts the horror of men’s subordination to women and men’s suffering as a gender.[6]

Men’s inhumane status as a gender is readily ignored or forgotten under gynocentrism. Staked-up dead men positioned among living men served Argentille’s interest. Because so many men have been killed on both sides, the opposing king perceived his side to be out-manned seven to one. He thus made peace. He pledged loyalty to Haveloc and surrendered all of Argentille’s lands. That’s what historical accounts concerning Argentille and Haveloc have memorialized.[7] The subtle men’s sexed protest of the lai Haveloc apparently hasn’t been noticed until now.

To serve social justice, study of medieval literature must be welcoming and inclusive of meninist literary criticism. Dominant anti-meninist ideology has marginalized transgressive, wildly imaginative medieval works and supported continuing devaluation of men’s lives.[8] Women and men today must strive to realize the medieval ideal of equal conjugal partnership. A way forward starts with much greater appreciation for the Anglo-Norman lai Haveloc.

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• gendered love-quests contradict classical symmetry of Aristaenetus
• Machaut’s Jugement dou Roy de Navarre: farce of gendered justice
• Ovid as walnut tree: men’s despair supports castration culture

Notes:

[1] Haveloc, vv. 377-9, Anglo-Norman text (manuscript P) from Burgess & Brook (2015), English translation (modified) from Burgess & Brook (2016). Haveloc was written by an unknown author in Lincolnshire, England, probably between 1190 and 1220. This lai survives in two manuscripts denoted P and H. They are P: Cologny-Genève, Bibliotheca Bodmeriana, Codex Bodmer 82; and H: London, College of Arms, Arundel XIV. Burgess & Brook (2015) provides a critical edition of both P and H and a verse-by-verse English translation of H. Burgess & Brook (2016) offers a prose translation of P. For an earlier edition of P that’s freely available online, Bell (1925). For an earlier, freely available text of H with English translation, Hardy (1888).

The political scheme that engulfed Argentille and Haveloc involved familial betrayal. King Edelsi promised his neighboring brother-in-law King Achebit to protect his daughter Argentille after his death and to have her married to the strongest man in the land. King Achebit subsequently died. King Edelsi then arranged for Princess Argentille to marry the kitchen scullion Haveloc, the physically strongest man in the land. By that deliberate misinterpretation of his promise, King Edelsi appropriated the kingdom that Argentille inherited from her father. The marriage of Argentille and Haveloc, who went by the name Cuarant as a kitchen scullion, was arranged without the consent of either.

An earlier Anglo-Norman verse account of Argentille and Haveloc exists within Geoffrey Gaimar’s History of the English {Estoire des Engleis}. Gaimar wrote Estoire des Engleis in the 1130s in Lincolnshire for Constance, wife of Ralf Fitzgilbert. She was much more privileged than almost all medieval men. For a critical edition and English translation of Estoire des Engleis, Short (2009). For an earlier, freely available edition, Hardy (1888). Burgess & Brook (2015), Appendix II, provides an English translation of Gaimar’s Haveloc.

The story of Haveloc was written in Middle English as a romance between 1295 and 1310. Called Havelok the Dane, it depicts Haveloc as an ideal king from the perspective of laborers and peasants. Staines (1976), which compares Havelok the Dane to Gaimar’s Haveloc and the lai Haveloc. In Havelok the Dane, the character of Argentille is named Goldeboru. For a glossed Middle English text, Herzman, Drake & Salisbury (1999). Here’s a modern English translation of Havelok the Dane.

Burgess & Brook (2015) provides the most comprehensive coverage of medieval accounts concerning Haveloc. It provides text and English translations for many short versions:

The foregoing short versions of the Havelok story, five in French, eight in English and five in Latin, are mainly found in chronicles of the history of England. They testify to the widespread awareness and popularity of the legend in the later Middle Ages and into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, particularly in the East-Anglian region. But these chroniclers did not just record a good story. They were interested in the political and social history of England, and for the most part they clearly regarded Havelok as an important figure in the chain of royal successions in both England and Denmark.

Burgess & Brook (2015) p. 207. Fahnestock (1915) provides some detailed textual comparisons among long versions. Weiss called Havelok the Dane “the most literary treatment.” Weiss (1969) p. 247. Havelok the Dane is the most conventional literary treatment. On Haveloc’s development into a conventional man-hero in the literary history of the story, Staines (1976). For a more nuanced perspective, Couch (2008). With respect to Argentille and Haveloc’s marital relationship, the Anglo-Norman lai Haveloc is far more critically perceptive and sophisticated than the Middle English Havelok the Dane.

Subsequent quotes above are similarly sourced from Haveloc (manuscript P) verses 383-9 (But later they became so trusting…), 531-4 (She returned to her husband…), 579-82 (She summoned her husband…), 970-6 (Argentille advised him…), 1035-45 (The combat between the sides was fierce…), 1046-54 (Because of a ruse that she promised would work…).

[2] Burgess & Brook (2016) translated parla in v. 387 as “had relations with.” The corresponding verse in manuscript H is “La nuit qe primes enparla” (v. 391). Burgess & Brook (2015) similarly translated enparla as “had relations with.” Sayers objected, asserting “Anglo-French enparler seems to have been read as emparer.” Sayers (2017) p. 1164, which translated enparla as “conversed with.” Parla in fact is attested in Anglo-Norman to mean sexual intercourse. See Espervier vv. 93, 99, and 144, and note to v. 93 in Burgess (2012); Wace’s Conception Nostre Dame, vv. 827-8: “How can a woman bear a child / if she has not had sex with a man {Feme, coment enfantera / Qui a home parlé nen a}?”; and Wace’s Roman de Brut, v. 117: “He had sex with her and she conceived {Od li parla, cele conçut}.” For texts, Blacker, Burgess & Ogden (2013) and Arnold (1938-1940). In addition, as argued above, the meaning “had sex” makes much better sense in the broader context of the relevant verse in Haveloc.

[3] Modern literary scholars have largely interpreted medieval marriage to buttress anti-meninist myths:

Medieval romance heroines, just as women in the real medieval world, are prohibited from participating in military combat, but they take an active role in personal relationships in these narratives. This may be in part because the relatively new concept of romantic love in companionate marriage was making its way into popular culture. Marriage was slowly moving away from being mostly an exchange of property (the woman and her dowry being the items of exchange) and towards a loving if not always socially equal partnership.

Herzman, Drake & Salisbury (1999), Introduction. The thirteenth-century men’s sexed protest of Matheolus provides much better insight into medieval marriage.

[4] Haveloc responded to Argentille’s request with prompt subservience:

My lady, we will be there very soon.
I will gladly take you with me.
Let’s go and take leave of the King.

{ Dame, tost i serum venu;
Volunters vus merrai od mei.
Alums prendre cungé al rei. }

Haveloc (manuscript P) vv. 546-8. In this interaction, Gaimar’s Haveloc displays full-blown gyno-idolatry toward Argentille:

My love,
be it wisdom or be it folly,
I will do what you wish.
I will take you there if you think fit.

{ La maie amie,
U seit saver, u seit folie,
Jo ferai co ke vus volez.
La vus merrai si vus me loez. }

Haveloc (Gaimar’s version) vv. 315-8, Anglo-Norman text from Hardy (1888) v. 1, p. 15, English translation from id. v. 2, p. 10.

[5] The scribe of manuscript H apparently couldn’t imagine Kelloc seeking advice from her husband. The H manuscript thus reads:

She summoned Haveloc
and in private asked him
whose son he was, if he knew,
and if he recognized his parents.

{ Haveloc avant appella,
Et a consail li demanda
Qui fiz il ert, s’il le savoit,
Si son parenté conoissoit. }

Haveloc (manuscript H) vv. 583-6, Anglo-Norman text from Burgess & Brook (2015), English translation (modified) from id. A strong, independent women like many medieval women, Kelloc took the initiative to arrange Argentille and Haveloc’s return to Denmark.

[6] Unlike Argentille, Haveloc showed extensive, meaningful concern for men’s lives. In overthrowing the evil Danish King Odulf, Haveloc put his own life at risk to avoid the deaths of many other men. In particular, Haveloc challenged King Odulf to a man-to-man fight in place of battle between their respective forces. In that brutal fight, Haveloc killed King Odulf. Haveloc then pardoned all of King Odulf’s men. Peace was thus established without further loss of men’s lives.

Haveloc engaged in violence against men only when he had no alternative. For example, when a gang of young Danish men grabbed Argentille, apparently intending to rape her, Haveloc killed five of them. Townsfolk then attacked him and Argentille. Haveloc in response killed many more persons. These actions were defensive violence when Haveloc had no reasonable alternative.

Weiss uncritically described Haveloc as passive and subordinate to his wife Argentille:

Naive, sexually ignorant (Estoire 175-178), strong but curiously passive, Haveloc often takes second place to his wife Argentille, who initiates action, makes decisions, and gives proof of much more resource.

Weiss (1969) p. 252. Haveloc, like many men today, passively accepted his wife’s authority over him and didn’t challenge men-oppressing gender norms.

[7] Burgess & Brook stated:

Haveloc is far more concerned with social and political issues than it is with chivalric activities and amorous relationships. Indeed, even the more literary incarnations of the Haveloc story read more like a work of history than a work of entertainment.

Burgess & Brook (2015) p. 19. On the political context of Haveloc, Kleinman (2003), Battles (2012), and Murtaugh (2016). Gender concerns amorous relationships, men-abasing constructions of chivalry, as well as social and political issues.

[8] With respect to medieval Anglo-Norman lais / romances, Weiss asserted:

That the romances retain interest for us today is in large part due to their creation of these female characters, who challenge the stereotypes of their period and, in so doing, come alive.

Weiss (1993) p. 19. The “stereotypes of their period” are stereotypes that our period has projected onto them. That modern work of stereotyping medieval women and men serves to buttress the gynocentric ideology that continues to oppress men today. Medieval literary studies must do more to be welcoming to men as a gender.

[images] (1) Britomart: medieval woman warrior gazes longingly across the sea. Britomart is the heroine of Book III of Edmund Spenser’s allegorical epic The Faerie Queene (1590). Watercolor painting by Walter Crane, made in 1900. Preserved in Bibliotheque des Arts Decoratifs (Paris, France). Via Wikimedia Commons. (2) The prophetess Deborah directs Barak and his men warriors to attack Sisera and his men warriors. Cf. Judges 4:8-16. From folio 12r of the Morgan Picture Bible (The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, Ms M. 638), created in Paris c. 1245. (3) King Charlemagne mourning Roland and other men warriors who died in the Battle of Roncevaux Pass in 778. Fourteenth-century illustration via Wikimedia Commons.

References:

Arnold, Ivor D. O., ed. 1938-1940. Le roman de Brut de Wace. 2 vols. Paris: Société des Anciens Textes Français.

Battles, Dominique. 2012. “Reconquering England for the English in Havelok the Dane.” The Chaucer Review. 47 (2): 187-205.

Bell, Alexander, ed. 1925. Le Lai d’Haveloc and Gaimar’s Haveloc Episode. Publications of the University of Manchester, French series 171, no. 4. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Blacker, Jean, Glyn S. Burgess, and Amy V. Ogden, eds. and trans. 2013. Wace, The Hagiographical Works: The Conception Nostre Dame and the Lives of St Margaret and St Nicholas. Leiden: Brill.

Burgess, Glyn S., ed. 2012. “The Lay of Espervier.” Pp. 17-47 in Gaffney, Phyllis, and Jean-Michel Picard, eds. The Medieval Imagination: Mirabile Dictu. Essays in Honour of Yolande De Pontfarcy Sexton. Dublin: Four Courts Press.

Burgess, Glyn S., and Leslie C. Brook. 2015. The Anglo-Norman Lay of Haveloc: text and translation. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer.

Burgess, Glyn S., and Leslie C. Brook, trans. 2016. Twenty-Four Lays from the French Middle Ages. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.

Couch, Julie Nelson. 2008. “The Vulnerable Hero: Havelok and the Revision of Romance.” The Chaucer Review. 42 (3): 330-352.

Fahnestock, Edith. 1915. A Study of the Sources and Composition of the Old French Lai d’Haveloc. Jamaica: The Marion Press.

Hardy, Thomas Duffus, ed. and trans. 1888. Lestorie des Engles: solum la translacion Maistre Geffrei Gaimar. 2 volumes. Vol. 1, text. Vol. 2, translation. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode.

Herzman, Ronald B., Graham Drake, and Eve Salisbury. 1999. Four Romances of England. Kalamazoo, Mich: Published for TEAMS (the Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages) in association with the University of Rochester by Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University.

Kleinman, Scott. 2003. “The Legend of Havelok the Dane and the Historiography of East Anglia.” Studies in Philology. 100 (3): 245-277.

Murtaugh, Daniel M. 2016. “Havelok the Dane: Kingship, Hunger, and Purveyance.” Neophilologus: An International Journal of Modern and Mediaeval Language and Literature. 100 (3): 477-488.

Sayers, William. 2017. “Book Review: The Anglo-Norman Lay of Haveloc: Text and Translation. (Gallica 37).” Speculum. 92 (4): 1163-1164.

Short, Ian, ed. and trans. 2009. Geffrei Gaimar. Estoire des Engleis: History of the English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Staines, David. 1976. “Havelok the Dane: A Thirteenth-Century Handbook for Princes.” Speculum. 51 (4): 602-623.

Weiss, Judith. 1969. “Structure and Characterisation in Havelok the Dane.” Speculum. 44 (2): 247-257.

Weiss, Judith. 1993. “The Power and the Weakness of Women in Anglo-Norman Romance.” Pp. 7-23 in Carol M. Meale, ed. Women and Literature in Britain, 1150–1500. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.