18 November 2006 – ‘Honour and Reputation’

November 18

 Laura Ashe (Department of English, Queen Mary, University of London)
William the Marshal, Lancelot, and the Perils of Chivalrous Lordship 

This paper argues that there are clear parallels between the depiction of William Marshal and the Young King Henry in the Histoire de Guillaume le Mareschal (c. 1226), and that of Lancelot and King Arthur in the French prose Vulgate Arthurian cycle (c. 1220s-30s). It is suggested that the parallels are not merely literary, however, but that these historical individuals can be seen to have been influenced by literary models in the conduct of their lives – in ways which had unfortunate effects. I argue that chivalry is revealed to be a code which celebrates knighthood, but excludes and limits kingship. Finally, it is suggested that the differences between insular and continental romances in this period provided a model whereby the poet of the Histoire progressively aligned the Marshal with insular, English ideals.  

Katherine McClune (St. Hilda’s College, Oxford)
‘Blasphemed in thy ryme’: Poetic Reputation in John Stewart of Baldynneis’ Ane Schersing Ovt of Trew Felicitie and Gavin Douglas’ Palace of Honoure

This paper focuses on Gavin Douglas’ Palace of Honoure, and John Stewart of Baldynneis’ Ane Schersing Ovt of Trew Felicitie. It examines the depiction of the poet in each of these poems, arguing that the authors establish within their work the antitype of the ideal poet-reader relationship, with Stewart’s depiction clearly responding to that of Douglas’. The poems show that misinterpretation is a result of over-dependence on the sensual at the expense of the rational faculty, and it is suggested that both poets, in directing their texts to their respective kings, emphasise the didactic importance of poetry.  

Joanna Martin (Lincoln College, Oxford)
Literary Reputations in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Scottish Literature: The Case of John Gower

John Gower was famously characterised by Chaucer as ‘Moral John Gower’. However, Gower’s early readers understood this reputation for morality in rather different ways to many modern critics who have long regarded him as too sober to have had an impact on the development of late medieval British writing. Indeed in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Scotland, successive generations of writers responded to Gower’s reputation as a moral poet, and the interpretive and ethical complexities of his English poem, the Confessio Amantis (c. 1390-2), in a range of creative and subtle ways. This is clearly demonstrated in the anonymous Spectacle of Luf (c. 1492), Gavin Douglas’s The Palice of Honour (c. 1501), and John Rolland’s The Court of Venus (c. 1560). These texts engage with aspects of the Confessio’s frame narrative in order to consider the function of literature and its relationship with virtue, and together comprise a distinctive and highly intertextual Scottish tradition of rereading Gower.  

Michael Clanchy (IHR, University of London)
The Concern of Abelard and Heloise for his Reputation

The secret marriage of Abelard and Heloise (in Paris in ? 1118) endangered his reputation as the teacher of the next generation of leaders of the Church.  The Latin word he uses for ‘reputation’ is fama.   ‘Who ever equalled your fame?’, Heloise rhetorically asked.  This was more than conceit, as the reverse of fame was infamy which barred a person from being a cleric altogether.  In becoming a wandering scholar, Abelard had abandoned the protection of his family and his Breton homeland.  For him, his ‘fame’ – meaning his honourable reputation – was his right to exist.