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‘Ar ye a knyght and ar no lovear?’ Men Who Resist Love
‘Ar ye a knyght and ar no lovear?’: the simple question Isode poses to Dynadan in Thomas Malory’s
Morte Darthur, completed 1469–70, is loaded with expectations about genre, gender, and desire.
1 Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur, ed. by P. J. C. Field, 2 vols (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013), i, 549. All primary quotations are from this edition and volume. Is it possible to be a knight and not to be in love? The answer ought to be an obvious yes – there are plenty of knights who are not specifically said to be in love, and there are knights who define themselves by pledges of chastity and virginity, such as the Grail Knights. Yet Isode’s question seems more specifically directed than this: is it possible to be a secular, worldly knight and to avoid love? Abstracted from a religious context that celebrates chastity and virginity, men’s resistance to love starts to look more unusual. There are some examples of men who express either hostility or active indifference to love in romance, but there are not many such portrayals. This chapter focuses on five examples, drawn from the Anglo-Norman and Middle English romances of
Guigemar,
Amadas et Ydoine,
Troilus and Criseyde,
Sir Degrevant, and Malory’s
Morte Darthur. This is not a large corpus, but it is a diverse one, spanning the full chronological and formal range of insular romance writing. The men who express resistance or indifference to love within these works reflect this variation, at times being used for more subversive purposes and at times functioning more conventionally. Some of these figures offer insights into queer sexualities, particularly asexuality and homosexuality. Others emphasise the normative function of romance literature, exemplifying the eventual acceptance of love (and sometimes marriage). Some draw upon religious models of chastity and virginity, but generally do so in a brief way – the romance drive towards desire and love exerts a greater pull in these works than in the more overtly religious narratives of the Grail. Because of the diversity within these representations of men’s romantic a(nti)pathy, I consider each narrative in turn. Men’s reluctance might receive less consistent and concentrated attention than the other kinds of resistance to love discussed in this book, but it was nonetheless a subject of interest across the period of romance’s greatest popularity. It allowed writers to reflect upon, explore, and question generic tropes and their relation to societal norms.
The chronological breadth of the romances discussed in this chapter also impacts the varied perspectives they offer on romantic a(nti)pathy, particularly the distinction between resistance to love and resistance to marriage. The development of ideas about love and marriage over the course of the medieval period, with the increasing prominence (at least in theory) of individual rather than familial consent, and the corresponding expectation that love will be located within marriage, shapes each work differently.
2 See the discussion in the Introduction. Marie de France’s
Guigemar, written in the twelfth century, is primarily concerned with reluctance to love. Marriage, as Glyn Burgess argues, is ‘closely linked to the feudal and economic realities of life’ at this time, and
Guigemar – perhaps more than Marie’s other works – attempts to liberate love from marriage, although it also interrogates the place of
fin amor and its relationship to chivalric violence.
3 Glyn S. Burgess, ‘Marie de France and the Anonymous Lays’, in A Companion to Marie de France, ed. by Logan E. Whalen (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 117–56 (p. 138). Amadas et Ydoine also indicates that elite marriages were usually arranged, depicting the political alliance between Ydoine and the Count of Nevers, but Amadas and Ydoine do marry eventually, signalling a shift towards uniting love and marriage.
Troilus and Criseyde is unusual within Middle English romance for focusing primarily on love outside of marriage, but this reflects its classical setting rather than its contemporary context. It does still interact with and comment upon this context, however, particularly through the portrayal of Criseyde as a widow. Similarly, Malory’s
Morte Darthur replicates earlier expectations through its focus on love outside of marriage, characteristic of Arthurian tradition (although Malory also emphasises love leading to and culminating within marriage at times, such as in the ‘Tale of Sir Gareth’).
Sir Degrevant is more representative of the wider tradition of Middle English romances, adopting the later medieval perspective which saw love as ideally located within marriage and aligning resistance to love with resistance to marriage. However, even where men do specifically resist marriage, this is not generally considered to compromise their political, economic, or familial priorities. This contrasts to the portrayal of women’s resistance to marriage, discussed in Chapter 2. Women’s romantic a(nti)pathy is also directly juxtaposed to men’s in some of the works discussed in this chapter, providing a particularly striking example of how resistance to love, and its transformation into desire, are impacted by and contribute to romance’s construction of appropriate gender roles. This chapter considers how romantic a(nti)pathy expressed by men intersects with constructions of desire, gender, and consent.