The late twelfth- or early thirteenth-century Anglo-Norman romance of Amadas et Ydoine tells of two young people who fall in love but are separated by Ydoine’s arranged marriage to the Count of Nevers, through which she nonetheless retains her virginity. They are eventually married after an episode of madness, the intrusion of a supernatural knight who attempts to abduct Ydoine, and Ydoine’s apparent death. Amadas et Ydoine begins very similarly to Guigemar, as Amadas, the son of Ydoine’s father’s steward, is fifteen years old and is described as perfect but for his lack of interest in women. However, the way the plot develops highlights the more disruptive, questioning, and queer impact of Guigemar’s asexuality compared to Amadas’s romantic a(nti)pathy. Amadas falls in love when he admires Ydoine’s beauty, and the romance endorses this development of love as normative and further offers insights into how romantic a(nti)pathy, love, and desire are shaped by and constitutive of gender in medieval romance.
Both Amadas and Ydoine resist love, a doubling that somewhat perversely associates them as a pair from the start. This may reduce the subversive potential of their resistance, as its resolution is anticipated from the beginning. This is particularly clear in the case of Amadas, who is mockingly nicknamed ‘le fin amoureus’ [‘the Perfect Lover’] by his companions.
1 Amadas et Ydoine: roman du XIIIe siècle, ed. by John R. Reinhard, Classiques français du moyen âge, 51 (Paris: Champion, 1926), line 98; Amadas and Ydoine, ed. & trans. by Ross G. Arthur, Garland Library of Medieval Literature, Series B, 95 (New York: Garland, 1993), p. 22. The poet’s comment that ‘ne savoient / Com il verai prophete estoient’ (101–2) [‘they didn’t know what true prophets they were’, p. 22] already anticipates that his romantic a(nti)pathy will be transformed not just into acceptance of love but the perfection of true love. This is exacerbated by the extent to which the couple’s initial resistance is used to guarantee their virginity and fidelity to each other. Amadas’s indifference is described first as a form of ‘casteé’ (94) [‘chastity’, p. 22], while Ydoine, pledging her love, declares
C’onques n’amai jusqu’a cest jour,
Ne n’amerai ja mais nul houme
Autre que vous.
2 Amadas et Ydoine, lines 1256–8. ‘Until today I never have loved and I never will love any man but you’: trans. by Arthur, p. 39.While resistance to love is not generally a means of promoting virginity and religious chastity in romance literature, it can uphold the celebration of exclusive romantic commitment by insisting on a couple’s absolute fidelity only to each other, serving a more conventional generic function.
However, while the alignment of Amadas’s and Ydoine’s initial romantic a(nti)pathy anticipates their subsequent connection, attitudes to their resistance are differentiated along gendered lines. When Amadas’s lack of interest in love is described, we are told:
Qu’il n’avoit teche, ne mais une,
Qui pas n’estoit a gent commune:
Qu’il n’avoit pas ou mont dansele
Tant courtoise, france ne bele,
Ne dame de nule devise,
Ne pour biauté, ne pour frankise,
Qu’il amast vaillant une alie.
[…]
Ne l’ont d’autre chose blasmé
Fors que trop amoit casteé.
3 Amadas et Ydoine, lines 81–94. ‘They found only one flaw in him, one that is not common: there was no damsel in the world so courteous, noble or beautiful, no lady so renowned for beauty or for nobility that he would pay her any heed. […] The knights blamed him only for loving chastity too much’: trans. by Arthur, p. 22.His indifference is deemed unusual, but its interpretation as chastity does not just anticipate his later fidelity but also interprets it positively. In contrast, Ydoine’s ‘une teche’ (171) [‘one fault’, p. 23] – a phrase directly linking her to Amadas – is condemned as pride:
D’amour si sourquidie estoit
Et si fiere et si orgilleuse,
Vers tous houmes si desdaigneuse,
Qu’el ne prisoit en son corage,
[…]
Nul houme u monde
[…]
Mult par estoit de grant orguel.
4 Amadas et Ydoine, lines 176–84. ‘She was so presumptuous toward love, so proud, so arrogant and disdainful toward all men that she would not give a place in her heart to any man […] her pride was far too great’: trans. by Arthur, p. 23.Comparisons between Amadas’s and Ydoine’s resistance are encouraged by the structure of the opening sections: first Amadas’s family situation, his nobility and talents, and his reluctance to love are described, then Ydoine’s family situation, her beauty and nobility, and her romantic a(nti)pathy are presented.
5 See Amadas et Ydoine, lines 35–120, 125–90; trans. by Arthur, pp. 21–2, 23. This mirroring again anticipates the linking of the couple in love, but also draws attention to the gendered perception of romantic a(nti)pathy. Ydoine, like the women discussed in Chapter 2, is deemed arrogant for her refusal to love.
6 Amadas et Ydoine is relatively early for an insular romance that includes a proud lady in love (c. 1190–1220), although Ipomedon (1180s) probably predates Amadas. However,
Amadas et Ydoine perhaps leaves open a means for the reader to question this gendered division: as ‘chastity is the singular virtue of women’, its association with Amadas’s but not Ydoine’s resistance seems surprising and may have enabled medieval readers to challenge this gendered portrayal.
7 Alcuin Blamires, The Case for Women in Medieval Culture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 138. See further Mary C. Flannery, Practising shame: Female honour in later medieval England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020), pp. 1, 15. Within the romance, however, this contrast sets up the subsequent exploration of women’s romantic a(nti)pathy as more extreme and problematic than men’s resistance to love. Amadas immediately converts to love when he sees Ydoine and admires her beauty, offering an example of the overpowering nature of love at first sight that contrasts with the trajectory of Guigemar discussed above. There is some conventional emphasis on this overwhelming love being ‘estre son voel’ (235) [‘against his will’, p. 24], which is continued in his experience of lovesickness (333–4; trans. by Arthur, p. 26). However, Amadas’s conversion to love is inspired or enacted entirely by his spontaneous desire for Ydoine, and not by any other consideration. Ydoine, on the other hand, rejects Amadas outright when he first approaches her, in terms very similar to those of Felice in Guy of Warwick (who is discussed in Chapter 2). Amadas petitions her again, and this time asserts that Ydoine
Pechiet ferés et mult grant tort,
Se me laissiés issi morir.
8 Amadas et Ydoine, lines 695–6. ‘Will be committing a great sin if you let me die like this’: trans. by Arthur, p. 31.He repeatedly insists that he will die if Ydoine does not save him: while pleading for mercy from the beloved is a common romance and lyric trope, it is also potentially coercive because it frames love as a moral obligation and exaggerates its stakes to those of life and death.
9 See further Sara V. Torres, ‘Sans merci: Affect, Resistance, and Sociality in Courtly Lyric’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 44 (2022), ‘Colloquium: Historicizing Consent: Bodies, Wills, Desires’, ed. by Carissa M. Harris and Fiona Somerset, 325–34 (especially pp. 325, 328). This technique of pressurising someone into love by claiming that a life is at stake is later used by Pandarus in
Troilus and Criseyde. It also recurs in Alain Chartier’s
Belle dame sans mercy, where the lady attempts to refute it:
Sy gracïeuse maladie
Ne met gueres de gens a mort,
Mais il chiet bien que l’on le die
Pour plus tost attraire confort.
10 ‘Such a gracious malady / causes the death of no one, / but it serves well to say so, / to win consolation all the sooner’: Alain Chartier, ‘La belle dame sans mercy’, trans. by Joan E. McRae et al., in Alain Chartier, The Quarrel of the Belle dame sans mercy, ed. by McRae (London: Routledge, 2014; first publ. Taylor & Francis, 2004), pp. 43–95 (xxxiv. 265–8). Thanks to Lucas Wood for conversations about the belle dame material.The belle dame recognises that this is a manipulative claim and disavows it, but she does so from the vantage point of later medieval writing, whereas Amadas’s plea goes unchallenged within the romance.
To some extent it is this emotive appeal that awakens Ydoine’s love, as it is only on his third attempt, when he faints before her, that
Adont primes pités l’em prent;
Ne quide avoir confession
Ja mais a nul jor ne pardon
Dou grant pechié que ele a fait,
Se ele ensi morir le laist
A grant angousse pour s’amour.
Et d’autre part ra grant paour
Qu’el n’en ait blasme et mauvais cri,
S’en sa cambre muert devant li.
11 Amadas et Ydoine, lines 1075–83. ‘Then, for the first time, she was seized by pity. She thought that she could never be absolved of her great sin if she let him die so painfully for love of her. She was terrified that she would be blamed and defamed if he died in her presence’: trans. by Arthur, p. 37.While aspects of this description align Ydoine’s emotional experience with Amadas’s, only she is influenced by a fear of sin and public blame, indicating how ‘the social risks involved in negotiating interpersonal emotions of love are understood as mainly borne by the lady’.
12 Carolyne Larrington, ‘“This was a sodeyn love”: Ladies Fall in Love in Medieval Romance’, in Medieval Romance, Arthurian Literature: Essays in Honour of Elizabeth Archibald, ed. by A. S. G. Edwards (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2021), pp. 93–110 (pp. 93–4). Ydoine later insists that the couple should ‘sans pecié faire’ (6727) [‘commit no sin’, p. 118], but wait until she can
serai vostre espousee
[…]
Sans pecié a l’ouneur de Dé
Par esgart de crestïenté.
13 Amadas et Ydoine, lines 6747–50. ‘Become your wife […] with honor from God, with respect for Christianity and without sin’: trans. by Arthur, p. 118.This again illustrates how women attend, or were supposed to attend, more closely to societal expectations when considering their involvement in love. Amadas falls in love upon admiring Ydoine’s beauty, responding only to his own feelings; Ydoine falls in love after Amadas exerts pressure on her and asks her to think about the social consequences of continuing to reject him.
While Amadas’s romantic a(nti)pathy is short-lived, then, it contrasts significantly with Ydoine’s resistance, facilitating the exploration of gendered norms and expectations. This pattern is continued in
Troilus and Criseyde and
Sir Degrevant. While there is no evidence that Geoffrey Chaucer knew
Amadas et Ydoine,
Sir Degrevant refers to Amadas and Ydoine, offering a possible direct line of influence. Recognising the significance of resistance to love in
Amadas et Ydoine allows us to re-evaluate the prominence of this romance, which was widely known in medieval England at least in general terms, but which is not often discussed today.
14 Helen Cooper notes that ‘Tristan and Isolde may be more famous, but Amadas and Ydoine were celebrated in England as exemplary lovers alongside or even ahead of them’: The English Romance in Time: Transforming motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the death of Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 225. Amadas et Ydoine sets a pattern of comparing and contrasting two reluctant lovers, which is continued by later romances, and which reveals the gendered stakes of love, consent, and coercion in romance literature.