A Warning against Reductive Interpretation of Ancient Auctoritas : Interpretation of Sources in Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women

[written as a seminar paper for Fall semester 2013 at WMU]

            It matters aesthetically and historically, therefore, to grasp the ambivalent and
            multiply nuanced Chaucerian attitude toward women, its distance from a 
            simplistic or essentialist misogyny that would portray women - "Woman"
            as inherently passive or inherently wicked (Delaney 188).

Chaucer wrote the unfinished Legend of Good Women in approximately 1386, after Troilus and Criseyde but before the Canterbury Tales (Delaney 34). The style is rather like that of hagiography, not only because it is a list of women that fit an ideal, but because these women have been martyred, not for religion, but for the ideals of love (Delaney 60). The tales of Cleopatra, Thisbe, Dido, Lucretia/Lucrece, Hypsipyle and Madea, Ariadne, Philomela, Phyllis and Hypermnestra are paraded out and altered to demonstrate how these sources can foster an understanding of how faithless men are and how many women have been martyred for love. As Sheila Delaney, author of The Naked Text: Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women, has noted above, this text presents a complicated image of women, despite its title and the mandate given to the narrator in the Prologue to present only good women. While it is a text about women, it is also a text about texts. In fact, while his characterization of women is important, often the women are metaphors for texts. Truly, the Legend is a text about sources, or about the works that Chaucer adapts to convey truths to his audience. The Riverside Chaucer, in the introduction to Troilus and Criseyde, calls Chaucer a kind of historiographer, presenting the pre-existing Troilus and Criseyde legend to his English audience (471). In the Legend of Good Women Chaucer is dealing with fallout from that distinction. Jamie Fumo has described Troilus and Criseyde as ‘haunting’ at least the Legend of Good Women’s Prologue (Fumo 167). Lisa Kiser, author of Telling Classical Tales: Chaucer and the Legend of Good Women, states that ultimately, Chaucer, “in actually producing the stories in the legendary, … succeeds in parodying some of the ways in which classical fiction was commonly ‘modernized’ to conform to fourteenth-century tastes” (Kiser 93). The stories themselves are altered substantially from their original forms, so that they could be characterized as unfaithful representations, and they emphasize the theme of ‘misreading’ taken up from the Prologue. However, the repeated emphasis on the sources for the story, and drawing attention to the place of the narrator in constructing the stories, as well as being able to compile stories that do contain women devastated in love, does show the value in using these ancient sources to frame discussions about topical concerns, such as love or honor. Just as women are neither wholly wicked or wholly good, even in a collection of stories about ‘good women,’ the interpretation of ancient sources to tell modern tales is useful, while being fraught with pitfalls for those who seek to be too reductive in their interpretations.

As James Dean, looking at Chaucer’s use of the past, has noted:

There can be no doubt that the English fourteenth century possessed a strong sense of the past, a feeling for history and its bearing on the present. … Chaucer in his works concerned himself with history, mutability, and changes in customs from pagan antiquity to the Christian era and his own times (Dean 401).

Since Chaucer is not the only one who is concerned with how classical precedents affect current proceedings, choosing classical tales for the legendary is particularly appropriate. Classical sources are well known, and so are used as exempla often. Biblical sources would seem an obvious choice if you are going to make a legend about good women, but not if you are going to critique the way that the sources can be interpreted. The same impulse may account for Chaucer’s tendency to stays away from overtly referring to contentious contemporary subjects, such as the uprising of 1381, and possibly, in this context, contemporary women (Philips 101). Chaucer, in works like Troilus and Criseyde, is clearly interested in how these classical sources can be made relevant for modern audiences and how they can be used to express his truths and read for the truths they contain. But they are also appropriate subject matter for this legendary because of the way that they could, and no doubt had, been interpreted or reduced by his contemporaries and their pre-existing position in a learned tradition: Kiser says that “the medieval urge to alter, gloss, allegorize, and edit classical narrative – in other words, the desire to intervene between it and its readers to clarify its usefulness – is rejected by Chaucer in favor of respectful preservation of the ‘doctrine of these olde wyse’” (Kiser 146).

                Ironically, in a text about how authoritative sources can be, there is not necessarily an authoritative, definitive version of the Legend. The Prologue has two variants. G exists in one manuscript, while F exists in several (Delaney 34). Much of the earlier criticism was about what relation the Prologues had to each other (Delaney 35). It is generally accepted that F has priority, though that doesn’t mean that one or the other has more authority (Quinn 2). They are printed side by side in all three ‘Cambridge Editions’ with F given priority by being placed on the left (Quinn 28). They are both “famously, concerned with auctoritas and the textual tradition of ‘olde approved stories’ (F 21),” though the different texts do present different ways of understanding the relationship of sources to people who interpret them (Warren 83).

Both Prologues opens with an epistemological discussion of how we know what we do about heaven and hell (Delaney 44). Since no man of this ‘countre’ has seen it, the divine is revealed to us through authorities and “For by assay ther may no man it preve/ But God forbade but men shulde leve/ Wel more thing then men men han seen with ye!”(F 9-11, G 9-11). This is phrased in terms of religion; it is evident to Chaucer’s audience that, unless we are privee to divine revelation ourselves, we must rely on ancient authorities in matters of religion. However, in this context ‘countre’ (or ‘countree’ in Prologue F) also refers to Chaucer’s England. Delaney shows us that this is not the only reference to the English audience, referring to daisies and Wycliff and other in text clues (Delaney 230). The Legend of Good Women contains tales ancient stories that are removed from Chaucer and his audience by time and by geography. There is no way to know the truth of these tales than through the authorities who pass them on. This is common to both Prologues.

In Prologue F book learning is set up in opposition to direct experience. When Chaucer wearies of his books he must go out into the world and experience it: “though he realized the lasting value of authoritative statements made by poets of the past, he, like all artists, also wanted to make his poetry speak with the voice of experiential truth” (Kiser 30). By looking at the daisy he can see, through direct experience, its truth. However, he understands the truth even more fully by listening to authorities speak about the daisy, a.k.a. the ‘foules’ who sing its praises. He also calls on Etik (Horace) to understand what the daisy is signifying about innocence and virtue. In the Prologue Chaucer is praising authorities who make truths available to their readers.

Chaucer then passes into the dream world where he is subject to the judgment of the God of Love and Alceste, the God of Love’s Queen. Alceste is so beautiful that Chaucer the narrator feels compelled to express her loveliness in a ballad. To express the truth of her loveliness he compares Alceste to lists of legendary beauties. When he finishes he laments that it may not be sufficient for her praises: “For certeynly al thise mowe nat suffise/ To apperen wyth my lady in no wyse” (F 272-3). According to Kiser, Chaucer recognizes “that earthly poets like himself may not always succeed in making their doctrines clear, especially to readers who are unfit to receive literature’s highest gifts” (Kiser 154). The issue is not with the sources that are being used, or with Alceste’s loveliness, but whether or not Chaucer has used them justly and that the meaning is conveyed to his audience.

Chaucer the narrator is kneeling by his daisy when the ladies who are in the God of Love’s train meet up with him. They and Chaucer together are paying homage to the daisy, who is clearly worthy of praise, as can be perceived by observation. However, the God of Love reproaches Chaucer for kneeling at his flower, reprimanding Chaucer for his depiction of women in Troilus and Criseyde and the Romaunce of the Rose. His charge is that in those texts there were false women. His charge is short compared with Alceste’s defense. The God of Love’s charge is short because he has taken a limited view of Chaucer’s work, seeing only the negative, and hence a limited view of Chaucer. He is misreading the texts, which is represented by misreading Chaucer. Kiser argues that “as a character whose metaphorical attributes do not add up to a clear representation of any real truth, and thus as a character who can survive only in a dream visions and not in descriptions of life, the God of Love is a parody of the kind of poetic artifice that Chaucer wished to reject” (Kiser 65). The God of Love has taken the narrow view that only stories of ‘good’ people can accomplish good ends, a statement that Chaucer rejects (Kiser 77).

Alceste tries to show the God of Love his mistake, saying first that one should never listen to only one side, but take in all of the evidence, before a man (text) is condemned: “For, syr, yt is no maistrye for a lord/To dampen a man without answere of word” (F400-1). She points out that while Chaucer’s previous works may have done harm to women in love, they have also done them a service by educating people in these original stories “yet hath he maked lewed folk delyte/ To serve yow, in preysinge of your name” (F 415-6). This comes back to the original point that opened the Prologue, that authorities are important to fostering understanding of the world.

Chaucer is then allowed to make the point that whatever faults can be found in Criseyde or the Rose were not put there by him, but were a result of his sources, since he thoroughly meant to be true to and cherish the concepts of love:

For that I of Creseyde wroot or tolde,

Or of the Rose; what so myn auctour mente.

Algate, god woot, yt was myn entente

To forthren trouthe in love and yt cheryce,

And to ben war fro falsnesse and fro vice

By swich ensample; this was my menynge (F 469-74).

Chaucer then is caught between the ability of authorities and ancient sources to help him express truths about love (or divinity, as is his first example), and how reference to authorities can cause you to fall short of the truth you are trying to express. Chaucer the narrator found authorities and comparisons with other ancient women insufficient for expressing Alceste’s beauty and found that the intentions inherent in his original sources may be counteracting his professed authorial intent in his own works. In both those cases it is not the truth of the ancient sources that are at fault but Chaucer’s own reworking of them. He, like the God of Love, is being accused of misreading, and mistranslating with translating here meaning taking material and ‘translating’ it into something new that is supposedly more accessible for readers.

                The God of Love is misreading Chaucer as Chaucer is accused of misreading his sources. The God of Love is guiltier, since he is, as Alceste says, not weighing both sides equally, or is being too reductive in his reading. Kiser says that he is “confusing the ethical purpose of a literary work with the traits he perceives in its individual characters, a massive confusion, indeed” (Kiser 77). Ironically, Alceste is the one that asks Chaucer to appease the God of Love by scanning ancient sources and reducing them to a single point of view. She is asking Chaucer to condemn the men of ancient sources by showing them only as faithless towards women. She is asking Chaucer the narrator to wilfully misread the texts, but it is not necessarily a shift in her character, since she is asking Chaucer to use the sources to express an essential truth. In addition, while the stories that are to be chosen for the Legend are often reduced to the point of changing the truth of the original source, they do all portray women who are unlucky in love, and so are martyrs in Love’s cause.

                The God of Love asks Chaucer the narrator if he has recognized Alceste. Chaucer the narrator replies: “Nay, sire, so have I blys,/ No moore but that I see wel she is good” (F 504-5). Alceste is identified with the ultimate martyr for love. She died for love of her husband. She is identified with the daisy and with a pure form of a loving woman. Kiser argues that Alceste operates literally and as an allegorical figure who represents experiential learning, as the daisy, but also textual authority since hers is also an ancient tale (Kiser 139). This is much stronger in Prologue F than it is in G. The God of Love charges Chaucer to write her story and do her justice as he hasn’t yet in any of his texts. Alceste then represents Chaucer’s task to do justice to the ideal of loving women, as well as to Alceste’s story. Alceste represents the truth to be found in ancient sources, but she also represents the ancient sources themselves. Chaucer the narrator is being charged with the nigh impossible task of representing a single truth of the story while doing justice to the original source.

Prologue G maintains many of these themes from Prologue F, but emphasizes even more the role that ‘authorities’ play in our understanding of truths, downplaying the truths themselves. Delaney observes that G “strikes one as a work on the whole less subjective than F, less insistent on art in general, and more modest in its presentation of the Narrator as poet” (Delaney 36). The opposition between book learning and direct experience is downplayed. Helen Philips sees an “increased emphasis on the interpretation of texts, authorial intentionality, and translation” (Philips 109). We still have the opening lines showing the role ancient authorities play in how we know things we cannot experience, however our narrator does not go out and experience nature in the same way as he does in Prologue F. The daisy is one of two nature metaphors that are being used to talk about sources. Chaucer the narrator does not experience the nature of the daisy to the same extent, though it still is his favorite flower and still represents Alceste. The other metaphor of corn, which is mentioned in Prologue F, is more fully developed in G. Both texts state:

                For wel I wot that folk han here-beforn

                Of making ropen, and lad awey the corn;

                And I come after, glenynge here and there,

And am ful glad if I may fynde an ere (G 61-4; F 73-6)

In both texts it is standing in for finding something worthwhile in other works, however G continues the metaphor and makes it more explicit, when Love tells Chaucer the narrator “Let be the chaf, and writ well the corn” (G 529). Prologue G plays down the narrator’s direct knowledge of the daisy, and plays up the art of creating based on original sources.

                Prologue G emphasizes Chaucer the author’s role as author who uses ancient sources by having the God of Love elongate the charges against the narrator:

                Yis, God wot, sixty bokes olde and newe

                Hast thow thyself, alle ful of storyes grete,

                That both Romayns and ek Grekes trete

                Of sundry women, which lyf that they ladde,

                And evere an hundred goode ageyn oon badde (G 272-7).

The God of Love criticizes the deliberate interpretive choices made by Chaucer the author in his previous works, saying that he has so many books to choose from, and that even though there are more ‘sundry’ choices than ‘good’ ones, it is up to him as ‘translator’ to choose the ones that will best fit Love’s ideal. For the God of Love “all literature is exemplary in function; he cannot conceive of literary meaning other than that which might arise from these prerequisite moral categories” (Kiser 80). The God of Love of Prologue G is even more deliberately reductive than Love in F.

                Prologue G puts the ‘Balade’ about Alceste’s beauty in the mouths of the God of Love’s train of women. They make the appropriate authoritative comparisons and there is no second guessing of whether the description using ancient sources falls short of the actual thing being described. The effect of this is that there is less emphasis on the Chaucer narrator’s concern over whether or not he can do a good job. With the exception of when he is allowed, through Alceste’s intercession, to defend himself to the God of Love, an episode in both Prologues, the problem is in G is solely whether or not Chaucer’s (narrator and author) work holds up to the reductive ideals prescribed by the God of Love. The defense that he didn’t know “what so myn auctor mente” has much less bite in G than F, as it sounds like our narrator is saying whatever will get him out of a jam in G, whereas in F the sentiment was backed up by Chaucer the narrator’s own doubts about his ability to use authorities to express what needed to be expressed.

While Prologue F emphasizes the truth that can be described by known authorities, Prologue G maintains this theme, shifting the emphasis away from the truth that needs to be expressed to the ability of poets to properly present those stories to their audiences. Prologue G, however, leaves Chaucer the narrator with the same task, of presenting only good women and not ‘sundry’ ones, or reducing women, texts and authorities to one dimension so that audiences have no doubt how they will interpret them. The God of Love says presenting the Romance of the Rose “in pleyn text, withouten to glose” was “an heresye ayeins my lawe” (F 328-30; G 254-6). Laura Getty has shown how “glossing, … consistently represents deception in Chaucer’s works. To follow the God of Love’s commands, the narrator must gloss (i.e., misrepresent) the stories, rather than telling the “verray sooth” of their tales” (Getty 53). Although the God of Love is emphasizing how dangerous it is not to give readers the gloss, or proper conclusions to take from the text, Chaucer parodies this in the Legend by attempting to do so, and then undercutting his tales and parodying the reduction of women and lists of women to one interpretation.  

Either Prologue sets us up to read the legends, which have been distilled to a truth, that of the persecution of women in love. As the God of Love misreads Chaucer, the women in the legends often misread the men who will eventually do them harm. This mimics the misreading of these sources happening in the Legend. The theme of misreading recurs throughout the legends, indicating, as was shown in the Prologue, that there is unreliability in the way sources are interpreted. This does not efface the truth we can glean from these authorities (these women were persecuted in love) but the text is nevertheless a critique of readers and writers who are reductive to the point of obscurity.

In the introduction to her collection of essays on the Legend Carolyn Collette states that “the victimization of loyal women at the hands of crafty and duplicitous men is the central thematic point Alceste insists upon in her directive …, and Chaucer seems to follow her direction slavishly” (Collette ix). Nor is this meant as a compliment. The stories are brief and much has been cut from the originals. In fact, Kiser states that “brevitas turns into something more like lying, for Chaucer is forced to employ it as a device to mask those details in his sources which would complicate our moral judgments of these women and their deeds and would render the narratives useless as exempla” (Kiser 100). We will see that there are details in many of these examples that were not included, because they did not fit the mold of the exemplum, which is the source of much of the comedy and irony (Kiser 98). Delaney sees those original traditions “break through again and again in the legends, swamping the simplistic demands of Eros and Alceste” (Delaney 193).

The first is the Legend of Cleopatra. It is no coincidence that this is both the most authoritative story and that it occurs first. While there is not as great a division between mythology and history in Chaucer’s idea of the past, since both offer truths from authorities for modern audiences, Chaucer does make the distinction that Cleopatra is a woman who really lived: “And this is storyal soth, it is no fable” (702). Kiser states that it is the most faithful retelling of a classical source in the whole collection (Kiser 102). But already it is undercutting the proposed plans of Alceste and the God of Love since, as Delaney argues, Cleopatra would hardly be considered a ‘good’ woman (Delaney 173). William Sayers argues that the description of the Battle of Actium is from Vegetius, an authoritative source itself, and that the naval battle seems real (Sayers 85). The point is then to bring the learned audience to feel the truth of the story. Chaucer has used many devices to ground this tale as a real episode in the imagination of his readers. Cleopatra’s status as a ‘real’ suffering woman is meant to instill in the readers how ‘true’ the suffering of the ensuing women is. Getty, however, offers an alternative view of the inclusion of the long description of the Battle of Actium:

The battle mirrors the process that Chaucer has gone through to write this piece of history/legend: it is a mess. The story must literally be ripped into pieces, like the ships, in order to conform to the God of Love’s expectations, as all of the stories will be (Getty 57-8).

Getty is scanning the legends for metaphors of misreading, and her argument is that while the veracity of the story is made present to the reader, the story itself has been cut short to show only the battle and Cleopatra’s suicide. In addition to Cleopatra’s misreading of Antony, the text misreads Antony, casting him in with faithless men, when that is not the reason he commits suicide himself: “thus we see that the Chaucer who is so faithful to the women in this legendary is at the same time the faithless betrayal of its men” (Kiser 125). Therefore, the text seems grounded in the authorities that were discussed in the Prologue, but the text has been altered, so that it is not faithful to the original, nor can it be said to represent a wholly good woman. The sources are useful to creating an image of Cleopatra, and yet they cannot be used effectively if they are reduced so viciously.

                If Cleopatra is not necessarily a good woman, Thisbe is not really oppressed by a faithless man. Antony does not deserve all the aspersion cast on him in the text, but Piramus simply misread the situation and tried to himself become a martyr for love: “Chaucer has to moralize this narrative awkwardly after he has told it, in hopes of making it appropriate to his project” (Kiser 118). Both Antony and Piramus are at fault, Antony for his suicide and Piramus for his stupidity, but they are not the ‘faithless’ men that Alceste prescribed. Cleopatra didn’t overtly treat on its sources, mentioning just the fact that it is history and presenting a convincing naval battle. In Thisbe, Maggie Burns has shown that the depiction is largely derived specifically from Ovid, but we also have a first mention of an authority: “Naso seyth thus” (Burns 637; 725). We are also drawn back to the fact that the narrator is constructing his legendary from sources: “Of trewe men I fynde but fewe mo/ In alle my bokes, save this Piramus, / And therefore have I spoken of hym thus” (917-9). Clearly sources have been useful to construct this tale, but the whole thing is undercut by its deviance again from the directions of the God of Love, and by the metaphors of misreading, which are stronger than in Cleopatra.

                In the Legend of Dido, Chaucer the narrator reminds us that he is writing under a directive: “But nat to purpose for to speke of here,/ For it acordeth nat to my matere” (954-5). Both the reference to sources and references to the interceding hands of the narrator are exponentially increasing. In fact this tale starts specifically with references to both:

 Glorye and honour, Virgil Mantoan,

Be to thy name! and I shal, as I can,

Folwe thy lantern, as thow gost byforn,

How Eneas to Dido was forsworn.

In thyn Eneyde and Naso wol I take

The tenor, and the grete effects make (924-929).

There is a great emphasis in Dido on the inability of Chaucer the narrator to do justice to either source, or to write it in a way that will be as compelling as their versions. The narrator says “I coude folwe, word for word, Virgile,/ But it wolde lasten al to longe while” (1002-3) as well as “But who wol al this letter have in mynde,/ Rede Ovyde, and in hym he shal it fynde” (1366-7), which are parallel statements that invite the reader to go back to the original sources. The Legend of Dido contains a lot of praise for the sources of Dido, but constantly undermines its own ability to properly interpret them. It makes of itself an unreliable narrator, although it does contain a condensed version of the story.

The Legend of Hipsipyle and Medea is a bit of a misnomer since the reason these two stories go together is that both women are duped by Jason, so that it is really the legend of Jason. Getty takes this as evidence that “the project is slipping out of his grasp, [since] the body that is misread is Jason’s” (Getty 61). Dido somewhat misread the character of Aeneas, but Hipsipyle and Medea are grossly misreading the character of Jason, although the text makes him even more despicable than he appeared in sources. The narrator’s direction to the reader, that they should go back and read the original, is again present: “Lat hym go rede Argonautycon, / For he wole telle a tale long ynogh” (1456-8). One of those statements comes at the end of Hipsipyle’s tale, saying that the rest of the letter she was writing can be found in the source material “Wel can Ovyde hire letter in vers endyte,/ Which were as now to long for me to wryte” (1678-9). In this case, both of the women’s tales are not finished. Hipsipyle’s letter is left hanging, and Medea, like Cleopatra, is a woman who, if you know the whole story, it is hard to see as among the ‘good’ ones. The tale ends before Medea takes her revenge on Jason by killing their children and Jason’s new bride. Such an omission clearly alters the nature of both Medea and her story, and so does not do justice to the original tale. The sources are emphasized by the author as useful, but the decisions made in the editing of the text undercut the ability of the text to represent either the proposed purpose of the legend, or the original sources.

The whole reason that Lucrece dies is because she is afraid of being misread, of being at all complicit in the Tarquinius’s violence (Getty 63).  The opening lines of the Legend of Lucrece deal with the sources and treats on how the material is going to be treated:

Now mot I seyn the exilynge of kynges

Of Rome, for here horrible doings,

And of the laste kynge Tarquinius,

As seyth Ovyde and Titus Lyvius.

But for that cause telle I mat this storye,

But for to preyse and drawe to memorye

The verray wif, the verray trewe Lucresse,

That for hyre wifhood and hire stedfastnesse

Nat only that these payens hire comende,

But he that cleped is in our legend

The grete Austyn hath gret compassioun

Of this Lucresse, that starf at Rome toun;

And in what wise, I wol but shortly trete,

And of this thing I touché byt the grete (1680-93).

The narrator references Ovid and Titus Livius as sources, but also draws readers to the interpretation of the tale by St. Augustine. He finishes his introduction by stating that he himself will only treat on it a little. Placing the sources in the context of other famous interpretations he is bringing the readers’ attention to the tradition of interpreting the material. He then reminds the reader that he is interpreting it himself, which is contrasted with the original sources.

Although Lucrece was avoiding being the object of misreading, Ariadne, like Medea, Hipsipyle and Dido, is the subject, misreading the character of Theseus. She is, however, the object of Theseus’s wiles, as the other women are the object of the viciousness of their respective men.  Delaney has observed that Ariadne continues in her misreading right until the end of the legend (Delaney 212). Ariadne constructs her own version of events, just as she can translate the labyrinth for Theseus so that he can understand it (Getty 64). Nancy Warren sees Ariadne as asserting her will, almost Amazon like, more than any of the other women in the legendary (Warren 85). The result is that she comes off as ambitious, and in the end she is incorrect in her assessment of events. In her betrayal of her kingdom and father and her portrayal as ambitious, she may not fit the category of ‘good’ either. Also, the changes to this legend make her situation more tragic than it was, as Ariadne is eventually rescued from the island, in some traditions by Dionysius. The alteration of the story makes the moral derived from it untrue to the nature of the original. Again the source is mentioned, “In hire Epistel Naso telleth al” (2220). Again the reader’s attention is brought back to the narrator’s role as interpreter: “But that tale were to long as now for me” (1921).

Delaney has noted that the Legend of Philomela differs from the other “in its lack of obscenity, wordplay, or other evidently ironic devices” (Delaney 213). Delaney also notes how many things are left out of the text from the original story. Philomela, Phyllis and Hypermnestra differ from the others in that there is less emphasis on the source material they are drawn from, though they still have a lot of narratorial interjections. The effect of this is that there has been a degradation of the source material from Cleopatra to the last three texts. Cleopatra, the text says, was a tale grounded in history. The intervening legends bring readers back to the original sources. The legends of Philomela, Phyllis and Hypermnestra do not remind the reader of the source, and offer no way for the reader to check Chaucer’s facts.  Like Ariadne, Philomela is a writer of text; she weaves her own tapestries to tell Procne the terrible tale of her fate at the hand of Tereus. This is continued in the Phyllis and Hypermnestra; Phyllis writes her own letter and Hypermnestra, while she cannot prevent Lyno from leaving her, does not kill him, controlling, in part, her own narrative. Therefore, the texts are degraded from removal from the sources, but they also redeem themselves by showing the creation of texts within the narrative. They are themselves source material, with Philomela’s tapestry, as well as Phyllis’s letter, being the true interpretations of that source.

The most interesting interjections by the narrator, reminding us both of his purpose and of his unreliability, occur in the Legend of Phyllis. The legend starts “By preve as well as by autorite,/ That wiked fruit cometh of a wiked tre,/ That may ye fynde, if that it like yow” (2394-6). This brings us back to the idea expressed in the prologue that some things can only be known by ‘autorite.’ This is elaborated on more explicitly later:

To wryte of hem that ben in love forsworn,

And ek to haste me in my legend,

(Which to performe God me grace sende)

Therefore I passe shortly in this wyse (2455-8).

The passage notes his specific purpose, in case we as readers forgot, and reminds us that he is making editorial decisions. Most interesting is the final lines of the tale: “Be war, ye wemen, of your subtyl fo,/ Syn yit this day men may ensaumple se;/ And trusteth, as in love, no man but me” (2559-61). The narrator casts himself into the group of men. Even though he is meant to be a contrast, the irony is that the editorial decisions he has made mean that we cannot trust him.

In the final, unfinished Legend of Hypermnestra (though there were meant to be at least nineteen) our narrator reminds us again that he has told these tales, “And shortly, lest this tale be to long” (2675-8). Getty has shown how it is drastically altered from the source material: “if Hypermnestra is interchangeable with her forty-nine sisters, and her father’s and uncle’s names are just as exchangeable, does anything have solid meaning?” (Getty 68). It is least effective in showing the God of Love and Alceste’s purpose, being so different from the other texts. Her father is more of an oppressor than her lover. It is also the least faithful to its source.

                The women of the legends wilfully misread the men in their lives. When they don’t, they are being misread by the men. This theme is prominent in each of the tales. In addition, each tale has undergone a very severe selection process, whereby scholars and likely learned readers of Chaucer’s time, notice the absences as much as they notice what has been included. Chaucer has convincingly, as per Alceste and the God of Love’s request, made a collection which demonstrates the martyrdom of good women to the cause of love. However, in the process the original sources have been mangled and altered to fit his purpose. They are carefully located in the context of their original sources and historical context, making them seem more authoritative, which is then undercut by the aforementioned mangling (Getty 56). This is an unreliable representation of the original material, which also exults in the truth that can be found there. Readers take away from the Legend of Good Women both the importance of ancient sources for creating works such as this which can tell us truths, but also a warning about misreading the original texts and about being too reductive of ancient tales and books.

                This has implications for the lists of women that appear in Chaucer’s later, also unfinished work, the Canterbury Tales. The theme of misreading comes up often. Fumo has noted that the ‘Retraction’ that occurs at the end of the Tales demonstrates an ongoing concern for being misread (Fumo 175). Dean has noted the obsession in the tales with sources and proof, such as is explored by Prudence in The Tale of Melibee (Dean 402-3). However, the greatest implications may be reserved for reading the frequent appearance of lists of women, such as appear in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale. Delaney argues that there is a parallel in the search for ‘preve’ in the Legend and the Wife of Bath’s Prologue (Delaney 222). In that Prologue Alisoun, the Wife of Bath, describes her husband’s habit of reading from a certain list of women: “Whan he hadde leyser and vacacioun/ From oother worldly occupacioun,/ To redden on this book of wikked wyves” (685-7). She takes action and even rips pages out of the book (and possibly does away with her husband, depending on the reading of the text). She re-enforces this idea from the Legend of Good Women, that the truth of original sources often depends on who is doing the interpretation:

By God, if women hadde written stories,

As clerkes han withinne hire oratories,

They wolde han written of men moore wikkednesse

Than al the mark of Adam may redresse (693-6).

The Legend of Good Women, read in conjunction with this episode, echoes Alisoun in condemning such a reduction of texts and of women to one single wicked truth. It also confirms the reading of the Wife of Bath’s character as neither wholly bad or wholly good, as the Legend, by being tongue and cheek-edly reductive, is anti-reductive interpretation, especially of women.

                The Legend of Good Women has been less well received critically, Kiser suggests because it is harder to unweave the “tangled web of irony” to get at the criticism that Chaucer is making about reductive interpretations (Kiser 20). Nevertheless, while he is comedic he is also making a serious point (Kiser 48). Chaucer walks the line between ironic and serious, with both intents existing in the text at the same time. Throughout both Prologues, Chaucer is emphasizing how we use our sources to create truth for ourselves and for our audiences. Chaucer the narrator’s interactions with Alceste and the God of Love make it clear, however, that Chaucer is negotiating how that process works, and what kind of truths can be ‘gleaned’ from that ‘corn.’ He wishes to mine the works for the truth that he sees there, but doesn’t want to be misunderstood or misrepresent those sources. By inserting himself and his own works in the text the reader understands the Legend as a negotiation of the place ancient sources have in Chaucer’s work.

Bibliography

Burns, Maggie. "Classicizing and Medievalizing Chaucer: The Source for Pyramus' Death-Throes in the Legend of Good Women." Neophilologus 81 (1997): 637-47. Print.

Chaucer, Geoffrey. "The Legend of Good Women." The Riverside Chaucer. Ed. Larry D. Benson. 3rd. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987. 587-630. Print.

Chaucer, Geoffrey. "The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale." The Riverside Chaucer. Ed. Larry D. Benson. 3rd. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987. 105-121. Print.

Collette, Carolyn P. "Introduction: Rethinking the Legend of Good Women: Context and Reception." The Legend of Good Women: Context and Reception. Ed. Carolyn P. Collette. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2006. vii-xviii. Print.

Dean, James. "Time Past and Time Present in Chaucer's Clerk Tale and Gower's Confessio Amantis." ELH 44.3 (1977): 401-18. Print.

Delaney, Sheila. The Naked Text: Chaucer's Legend of Good Women. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. Print.

Fumo, Jamie C. "The God of Love and Love of God: Palinodic Exchange in the Prologue of the Legend of Good Women and the 'Retraction'." The Legend of Good Women: Context and Reception. Ed. Carolyn P. Collette. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2006. 157-175. Print.

Getty, Laura J. "'Other Smale Ymaad Before': Chaucer as Historiographer in the Legend of Good Women." The Chaucer Review 42 (2007): 48-75. Print.

Kiser, Lisa J. Telling Classical Tales: Chaucer and the Legend of Good Women. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983. Print.

Philips, Helen. "Register, Politics, and the 'Legend of Good Women'." The Chaucer Review 37.2 (2002): 101-128. Print.

Sayers, William. "Chaucer's Description of the Battle of Actium in the Legend of Cleopatra and the Medieval Tradition of Vegetius's De Re Militari." The Chaucer Review 42 (2007): 76-90. Print.

Warren, Nancy Bradley. "'Olde Stories' and Amazons: The Legend of Good Women, the Knight's Tale', and Fourteenth-Century Political Culture." The Legend of Good Women: Context and Reception. Ed. Carolyn P. Collette. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2006. 83-104. Print.

Non-imperial women in Anna Komnene’s Alexiad and Nikephoros Bryennios’s Materials for History

[This paper was written for a seminar in medieval literature at WMU in Fall 2013]

When the emperor reached Philomelion after rescuing prisoners everywhere from the Turks, the return journey was made slowly, in a leisurely way and at an ant’s pace, so to speak, with the captives, women and children, and all the booty in the centre of the column. Many of the women were pregnant and many men were suffering from disease. When a woman was about to give birth, the emperor ordered a trumpet to sound and everyone halted; the whole army stopped at once wherever it happened to be. After hearing that a child had been born, he gave the general order to advance by another, and unusual, trumpet blast (451).[1]

This episode in Anna Komnene’s Alexiad is meant to show both the power and the mercy of emperor Alexios I Komnenos, Anna Komnene’s father. In this show of power women have joined Alexios’s train, indicating that Alexios was so powerful as to submit the whole community to his will. Anna also uses the women to show how Alexios is merciful, since he exercises his power to accommodate those who are among the most vulnerable members of the community, the pregnant women. This act demonstrates Alexios’s respect for the role of motherhood. In studying representations of gender in Anna Komnene’s Alexiad, most attention has been given to the imperial women. Lynda Garland has demonstrated that three imperial women, Maria of Alana, Anna Dalassene and Eirene Doukaina, shaped the reign of Alexios and in Anna’s history they play a decisive role. Looking at the imperial women (Garland 186), Barbara Hill has argued that Anna Komnene is making an argument about the kind of power that women can wield in their familial roles, as wife or mother (Hill “A Vindication of the Rights of Women to Power” 52).  However, less attention has been paid to the non-imperial women, such as the pregnant women mentioned above, and how their depiction contributes to the discussion of gender in the text.

Nikephoros Bryennios, Anna Komnene’s husband and fellow historian, also began to write a history of the reign of Alexios I Komnenos, though his is unfinished. Leonora Neville demonstrates that gender is just as important to Nikephoro’s text as it is to Anna’s, and argues that Nikephoros uses the Roman model of masculinity to critique Alexios’s rule (Neville 2). The main female character in Nikephoros’s brief history is also Anna Dalassene, though it includes the other imperial women of the court. However, Nikephoros also chooses to include non-imperial women to make his point about gender.

Comparing Anna and Nikephoros’s history, it is clear that they have differing opinions about gender roles. In both cases, the role that non-imperial women play mirrors the role of the imperial women in interesting ways.  Anna and Nikephoros had different motives behind how they portray women in their texts, but in the case of the main characters they are the same women. However, for the non-imperial women each choice was very deliberately included to make a larger point in the text, and so is a useful lens through which to establish the gender roles both as they are perceived by the authors in Byzantine society, and as they are functioning in the texts. The non-imperial women in Nikephoros are mentioned in conversations about the masculinity of the men, just as the imperial women are. The non-imperial women in Anna Komnene mimic the imperial women’s importance in caring for family and community, in addition to being a reflection on the men in the text. In Anna’s text these women function as powerful entities in their own right, with the ability to sway, or as in the above example, delay an emperor whereas in Nikephoros’s text they are only subsumed into the descriptions of the virtues of men. Analysis of the role of the non-imperial women brings out how gender was intentionally used by each author and helps define further how the depictions of women in both texts relate to the depictions of men.

As the author of her father’s biography, Anna Komnene may be the most well-known Byzantine woman, as she is the only extant Byzantine woman writer of history (Hill Imperial Women in Byzantium 34).  Traditionally her work has overshadowed the work of her husband’s, not only because it was written by a woman but because it was finished, because it was an eye witness account of events and because it contained details about the First Crusade. Neville points out that the two histories, Nikephoros’s and Anna’s, are companion pieces not just because of the relation between them, or because Anna mentions Nikephoros as a source for her work, but because these are the two highest ranking historians from Byzantium, when histories were already written by judges, courtiers and officials and other people with rank (Neville 29). Nikephoros’s history is also usurped by Anna’s history because the only manuscript containing the text is no longer extant. Nikephoros clearly wrote in his lifetime, between 1083 and 1137, but it is still unclear if he wrote when Alexios was alive or later. The manuscript was acquired by French legal scholar Jacques Cujaus, who died in 1590, who lent it to Pierre du Faur de Saint-Jorri, who was editing an edition of the Alexiad, and who died in 1600. The manuscript was subsequently lost (Neville 7). Scholars today work with a transcription of the manuscript from that period.

In a recent in depth study of the text through the lens of gender Leonora Neville has concluded that “[w]hen the text is read in light of classical Roman ideas of masculine virtue, new meanings emerge” (Neville 2). Reading the text for gender, Neville concludes that Nikephoros is critiquing Alexios showing how he does not live up to the standards of Roman masculine virtues, unlike characters such as John Doukas. Defining the role of women in the text, Neville concludes that, in addition to being used to contrast men:

Women in Nikephoros’s history are similarly portrayed as emotionally committed to the well-being of their families. The women appear to ‘follow the model of the Roman matrona’ in taking great concern for a good marriage and their children. Nikephoros brings women into his story of men’s deeds when their responses to the difficulties of their families add pathos to the story (Neville 109).

Neville’s analysis focuses on the imperial women in the text. Anna Dalassene, as a primary figure, and her involvement in Alexios’s decisions, casts Alexios into the role of ‘momma’s boy,’ some twentieth century American slang that Neville finds very appropriate (Neville 174). Neville makes it clear that neither Anna Komnene nor Nikephoros Bryennios had to place any emphasis on women. Both of our authors include women in prominent positions, exercising power, not only because it is true, but because they had a gender agenda.

Anna Komnene’s text has a surer provenance and a surer place in academic discourse. She wrote between 1143 and 1153, in the midst of the reign of Manuel and the second Crusade (Neville 182). Neville shows that Anna Komnene’s focus on Greek, and not Roman history, plays a role in Anna’s discourse on gender. To Anna, victory is victory no matter how it is won, and Alexios crying does not detract from his manliness, both of which counteract Roman ideals of masculinity (Neville 193). Consequently, the actions of imperial women such as Anna Dalassene or Eirene Doukaina are not fulfilling the same role in Anna’s text as they are in Nikephoros. Instead, Thalia Gouma-Peterson argues that Anna Komnene is showing how women as maternal models are exceptions to the weakness of women and fulfill an important role in the imperial court (Gouma-Peterson 110). Lynda Garland also sees all imperial women deriving their power through their connection to Alexios, but that nonetheless they are shown to wield power, no matter its source (Garland 119). Barbara Hill argues also that “[t]he only sphere in which the dominant ideology granted overt power to women was as mothers. All other roles involved the exercise of power of moral force, but women as actors were denied” (Hill Imperial Women in Byzantium 93). While women wield power in the domestic sphere, Hill shows how in the Komnenian court the public and private spheres were not necessarily separate, since familial ties were the basis for power (Hill Imperial Women in Byzantium 184). Therefore, as the title of her article “A Vindication of the Rights of Women to Power” suggests, Hill argues that the Alexiad is an argument about women’s rights to certain kinds of power in the court, and therefore this is the role the depiction of women is playing in the text. These theories are based on the role of imperial women in the narrative, but they can be applied to the non-imperial women in interesting ways. However, as will be seen, depictions of non-imperial women focus less on the maternal than the depictions of imperial women, which has interesting implications for the role of gender in this text.

The now infamous theories of J. Howard Johnston, arguing that the depictions of things such as battles must be attributed to Nikephoros and not Anna, show how the texts are similar, though the theories have been thoroughly refuted by scholars like Diether Reinsch, who shows that “Anna was not limited to the autoptic material available to her in Constantinople: according to her own irrefutable testimony, she accompanied her father on military campaigns (Reinsch 98). In addition, a study of the gender roles in each text indicate the elements of design of both authors, showing the deliberate choices that are made by each, despite the overlap of the textual materials. Anna Dalassene’s involvement in Alexios’s court was well known and could not be dismissed if the authors had decided to talk about gender in their texts. They both make this conscious decision. However, if the inclusion of imperial women is a conscious decision, then the inclusion of non-imperial women is an even more deliberate choice on the part of each author.

Nikephoros Bryennios non-imperial women

        The non-imperial women included in each text are even more consciously included than the imperial women, on whom the above theories of Hill and Neville are based. Who is and who is not an imperial woman is actually more difficult to determine than it would seem. Eiene Doukaina and Maria Alana both had the title of basilissa, and Anna Dalassene never did, nor was she ever crowned Augusta, though she was given other imperial titles (Garland 2). However, for the purposes of this paper, imperial women are those women who ruled as regent, had the title or exercised power at the imperial level. Non-imperial women can include powerful women, but not those women whose husbands or sons ‘took the purple shoes.’[2]

                For instance, in this description of Anna Dalassene’s children there are several daughters who can be classified as non-imperial:  

Le curopalate Jean … laissa huit enfants, comme le récit l’a déjà signale, cinq fils et trois filles, que leur mère éleva tous à la perfection et rendit dignes de leur famille. Deux des filles épousèrent, du vivant de leur père, des hommes nobles et fortunés, l’aînée Marie, Michel Taronite, la puînée Eudocie, Nicéphore Mélissènos, un homme intelligent et admirable, qui par son père remontait à la famille des Bourtzès. Quant à la dernière de toutes, Théodora, sa mère la maria, après la mort de son père, au fils de Diogène, Constantin, dont le père tenait alors le sceptre des Romains, un jeune homme noble et vaillant, mais dont le caractère n’était pas en tout point louable, comme la suite le montra (84-6).

[The curopalate John ... left eight children, as the story has already been reported, five sons and three daughters, and their mother brought all to perfection and made them worthy of their family. Two of the daughters married, in the lifetime of their father, noble and wealthy men, the elder Marie to Michael Taronite and the younger Eudocia to Nikephoros Melissenos, an intelligent and admirable man, who through his father rejoined the family Bourtzès. As to the last of all, Theodora, his mother married her after the death of her father to the son of Diogenes, Constantine, whose father then held the scepter of the Romans, a young noble and valiant man, but whose character was not commendable in every way, as the sequel showed (84-6).]

This example of non-imperial women is a comment on the male role in the household. For Nikephoros, the father’s importance in giving away his daughters in marriage is very clear. The two who were married in his lifetime married well. The one that Nikephoros explicitly states married after his involvement was married exclusively by her mother, and while this husband was the most powerful, he was apparently not as ‘commendable’ as the other two. Nikephoros uses these important women to establish the men’s role in the household and the danger of the absence of men in these decisions. This is true for all the non-imperial ‘important women’ in Nikephoros Bryennios’s text. They are mentioned to give context to the power of men. One of these marriage alliances is mentioned again later on, to indicate how women can link men together:

Pendant ce temps, Nicéphore Mélissènos, un homme de la noblesse, comme notre récit l’a indiqué plus haut, qui était par mariage allié aux Comnène – il avait en effet précédemment épousé leur sœur Eudocie – et qui résidait dans l’île de Cos, attira à lui des troupes et des notables turcs et fit le tour des villes d’Asie, après avoir chaussé les souliers de pourpre (300).

[Meanwhile, Nikephoros Melissenos, a nobleman, as our story noted above, who was allied by marriage to Komnenos - had in fact previously married their sister Eudocia - and who resided in the island of Kos , brought in troops and Turkish leaders and toured the cities of Asia, after having chased the purple shoes (300).]

This time the emphasis is not on the father’s ability to make alliances, but on the alliances that the marriage brings to her brother Alexios in his bid to become emperor.

Nikephoros discusses non-imperial mothers to show how men exercise their manly virtue. For instance, in discussing the upbringing of Manuel Doukas, Nikephoros writes:

Alors qu’il n’avait pas encore dépassé l’adolescence, il contraignit sa mère à le laisser partit en campagne avec son frère : il suivit ce dernier qui était à la tête des armées et montra sa valeur avant d’avoir atteint sa maturité, portant le bouclier, maniant la lance à la perfection, et son nom fut aussitôt dans toutes les bouches (86).

[When he was not yet past adolescence, he forced his mother to let him take the field with his brother: he followed the latter who was the head of the army and showed his value before reaching maturity with a shield, wielding the spear to perfection, and his name was soon on everyone's lips (86).]

This extract supports Neville’s claim that Alexios is criticized for being too reliant on his mother, since Manuel Doukas is here praised specifically for counteracting the wishes of his mother to go to war. The woman here is mentioned to give more credence to Nikephoros’s description of Manuel as possessing manly virtues.

Important women are depicted as extensions of the male household. When the one emperor Isaac Komnenos retires to a monastery the new emperor Constantine Doukas honours his predecessor: “[e]t ce n’est pas seulement lui qu’il honorait, mais encore toute sa famille, sa femme, sa fille, son frère et tous les siens” [and it is not just that he honored him, but his family, his wife, his daughter, his brother and all his household] (84). The women are included to extend the generosity of the reigning emperor by showing him honouring all that the old emperor once was. The old emperor has given up his rights to power by joining a monastery, which means any rights he had because of his family connections as well. As Hill points out, “the growing interest in family which this chapter has already noted cannot be overemphasized, nor its importance overstated,” so the fact that the (Hill Imperial Women in Byzantium 66) emperor still pays tribute to the family is indicative of his respect for his predecessor’s former power.

However, most interesting in the text is the collection of ‘theoretical’ or ‘metaphorical’ women who are mentioned specifically to cast aspersions on the manliness of the male characters. When Muhammad son of Ibrail, master of Persia etc., faces the Turks in battle, Nikephoros writes that “Mouhoumet, fort mécontent de la tournure des événements, fit aveugler à leur retour ses dix généraux et menaça les soldats qui avaient fui le danger de les exposer à la risée publique vêtus en femmes” [Mouhoumet, very unhappy with the turn of event, blinded his ten generals at their return and threatened the soldiers who had fled the danger with exposing them to public ridicule dressed up as women] (92). The worst insult to the soldiers is for them to be dressed up as women, emphasizing the importance of ‘manly’ virtue. Likewise, when discussing a war strategy, the enemy sultan … denigrates the fighting skills of Roman soldiers by comparing them to women: “[e]n passant, il l’entretint de la Médie, disant que c’était un pays fertile, mais possédé par des femmes, faisant ce rapport, le sultan envoya environ vingt mille hommes contre les Romains” [in passing he spoke of Media, saying it was a fertile country, but owned by women, and because of this report the Sultan sent about twenty thousand men against the Romans] (98). In this case the report which compared the soldiers to women ends disastrously for the sultan, but it is another instance when being called a woman is an insult. To be manly is specifically to do things differently from the way women do it:

En le voyant, il se prit à sourire et l’autre se demandait ce que cela signifiait; Alexis déclara que les hommes et surtout les soldats n’avaient pas l’habitude de se regarder dans un miroir : ‘C’est l’affaire des femmes et seulement des femmes préoccupées de plaire à leur époux. La parure de l’homme et du guerier, ce sont les armes, la simplicité et la dignité de la tenue.’ Ceux qui l’entendirent admirèrent la modestie et la sagesse du jeune homme (154).

On seeing this he began to smile and the other wondered what it meant; Alexis said that men and especially the soldiers did not have the habit of looking in the mirror: 'this is the preoccupation for women and only women, concerned to please their husbands. The adornment of a man and a warrior is weapons, simplicity and dignity of the outfit.' Those who heard admired the modesty and wisdom of the young man (154).

And, to be good men, you should be at least as good as women  “je crois en effet pareil comportement indigne non seulement de Romains bien nés, mais même de femmes nobles et sages” [I believe indeed such behavior unworthy not only of well-born Romans, but even of noble and wise women] (158).

                Nikephoros’s theoretical women are all introduced in the text to contrast the ideas of manliness and femininity. This supports Neville’s argument that gender is meant to play a major role in the text, and consequently is the basis for the critique of Alexios. But the women in the text are playing the role as bench markers that the men can compare their manliness to. They do play roles as wives and mothers, but this is only discussed in the text to show how women relate to the relationships among men. Nikephoros cannot disregard the role that wives and mothers play altogether, but by looking at the non-imperial women it is clear that Nikephoros used women in his text to highlight the manliness of his characters.

Anna Komnene’s non-imperial women

                There is much less use of the feminine as a derogative in Anna Komnene’s text; remarkably less when you consider how much more text there is. This alone shows how gender is being explored differently in this text. There is one instance while fighting Masout’s forces where the emperor is said to have stated to the son of the Satrap Asan Katou : “I didn’t know that women, too, are now bearing arms against us” (449). Like Nikephoros, this is a definition of masculinity as militant, contrasting with feminity. But it is a fairly lonely reference in a text filled with other ways of describing women. Anna Komnene has more space to explore the roles that women play in the unfolding events. However, despite the more varying depictions of women’s roles, they are still rooted in the way they affect the men of the text.

                 Anna Komnene’s generalized women are less theoretical and more concrete. When Nikephoros is mentioning a group of women they are meant to represent an abstract femininity with which men can be contrasted. When Anna Komenene mentions a group of women they are not abstract, but a real part of the community she describes, and they are being mentioned to show the extent or pathos of a certain situation. 

                After the Romans under Alexios routed the Cumans Anna says that the emperor ordered that the Romans return the loot they had taken from the countryside. The people came to the camp and “[b]eating their breasts and raising their hands in supplication to heaven they prayed for the emperor’s prosperity; the loud cries of men and women alike might well have been heard on the moon itself” (272). The women in this context demonstrate that the whole community came to praise Alexios. To indicate that a whole community has been affected, Anna uses this rhetorical device often, mentioning that something affects both men and women: “[t]he upheaval that ensued as both men and women took to the road was unprecedented within living memory” (277). When the possibility of the Turks overrunning the people of Philemelion arose “[i]t was immediately announced that every man and woman should leave the place before their arrival, thus saving their own lives and as much of their possessions as they could carry” (313). In other words, the events will affect the whole community. It further says that “without delay the whole population, men and women alike” meaning the whole community “chose to follow the emperor” who benevolently lead them away from the danger (313). The battle against the Scythians saw the decimation of the community: “when the sun was just about to set and all had been smitten by the sword, and I include children and mothers in this number, and many also had been taken captive, the emperor ordered the recall to camp” (226). Although it seems like this is an indictment of her father’s actions, as the destruction of the whole community including women and children may be included to incite pathos, Anna Komnene is using this device to indicate the extent of the victory her father grants his followers: “[n]or was that all – such outcomes [victory] are not uncommon in minor clashes – but in this case a whole people, comprising myriads of men, women and children, was exterminated in one single day” (227).

                The victory is meant to reflect well on her father’s abilities, but the fact that women are often mentioned in groups for pathetic reasons indicates that the above example of Scythian destruction is meant to be read with pity. For instance, in depicting Alexios’s treatment of the Manicheans the Alexiad says that “[t]he officer in charge of this duty left to drive the Manichaean women from their homes and held them in custody in the citadel” (156). It shows that the whole community was affected, and also that the situation was quite tragic. Anna impugns the Latins who arrive on Crusade by showing how they treat women and children: “nor was that all: the unreliability of these men and their faithless nature might well sweep them again and again … through love of money they were ready to sell their own wives and children for next to nothing” (300). Clearly women add a sense of pathos to the episode cited in the introduction, the rescuing of the prisoners around Philomelion. The text describes how Alexios gets such a long train composed of such diversity:

[t]he native inhabitants, Romans who were fleeing from barbarian vengeance, followed them of their own free will; there were women with newborn babies, even men and children, all seeking refuge with the emperor, as if he were some kind of sanctuary. The lines were now drawn up in the new formation, and having placed all the prisoners in the centre, as well as the women and children, he retraced his steps (443).

The text mentions groups of women here to indicate both the extent to which the community was dependent on the generosity of the emperor, which is especially evident in the care that he took to protect those perceived to be vulnerable, namely women and children.

                These groups of women, anonymous since they have no names themselves though always named as part of a community, are most often deliberately included in the text to show either the power or the generosity of the emperor. In the case of the Cumans and the Manicheans, the situation is meant to have pathos because the harsh penalties have fallen on men as well as women, however they are situations in which the emperor is exercising his power. In other situations, particularly on more than one occasion around Philomelion the women are mentioned to show the generosity of the emperor towards that community. However, in all contexts, the mention of groups of women is meant to be a reflection that an event is taking place which affects a whole community. They are not, however, necessarily reflecting back on the virtues of the men in this context, unlike in Nikephoros’s text.

In the episode outside of Philemelion Anna Komnene says that she herself witnessed:

an old woman being assisted by a young girl, a blind person being led by the hand by another man who had his sight, a man without feet making use of the feet of others, a man who had no hands being aided by the hands of his friends, babies being nursed by foster-mothers and the paralysed being waited on by strong, healthy men. In fact, the number of people maintained there was doubled, for some were being cared for, while others looked after them (453).

The women here are clearly part of the community, and while the old woman adds pathos to the situation, it is not necessarily because of her gender but because of her age. In this example of the train of unfortunate souls who have latched on to the emperor, the only one who is being useful is the young girl. While she might be adding pathos to the situation because of her gender, she is also an example of non-imperial women being helpful. Anna Komnene has a lot to say about how her grandmother Anna Dalassene was helpful to her father in running the empire, and how her mother was helpful in catering to the needs of her husband, even if she was not popular because it meant she went on campaign. This is mirrored in descriptions of non-imperial women, since they are depicted, like the young girl, in useful roles.

                Another anonymous little girl is able to offer assistance, this time to the emperor: when an assassin comes to the emperor’s tent he “caught sight of the little girl who was fanning the imperial couple and driving away mosquitoes; at once ‘a trembling seized on his limbs and a pale hue spread over his cheeks’, as the poet says” (247). She is not just a passive deterrent but an active force preventing plots from coming forth from the same source: “the maid soon went to the emperor and told him what had happened” (247). Alternatively, Alexios had another male family servant, Traulos, who worked for him while he was suppressing the Manicheans. When the Manicheans were imprisoned Traulos found out his four sisters, representatives of his family and his community, were deprived of their property and taken into custody. He tries to escape the emperor’s service but “[h]is wife had by now discovered his plan and seeing that he was about to run away, told the man who was at that time charged with supervision of the Manichaeans” (158). This is another example of how women can be specifically useful to the emperor, since she put her duties to the emperor ahead of her duties to her husband. Likewise, when the emperor was in dire straits, he found a woman who could offer him aid: “[f]or eleven days he wandered seeking a way to safety – no easy task – but finally met a soldier’s widow and found lodging with her for some time” (197).

                Anna Komnene makes a case also for the involvement of women in religious work. The Alexiad shows Alexios and the imperial family interested in the affairs of the church. The imperial women are involved in women’s communities. Alexios is also interested in the role women can play in the church:

When you enter this church you would hear antiphonal choirs singing; following Solomon’s example, Alexios decreed that there should be male and female choristers in this church dedicated to the Apostle. The work of the deaconesses was also carefully organized. He devoted much thought to Iberian nuns who lived there; in former times it was their custom to beg from door to door whenever they visited Constantinople, but now, thanks to my father’s consideration, an enormous convent was built for them and they were provided with food and suitable clothing (454).

These women are portrayed as fulfilling a useful and important function, just as the anonymous women mentioned above. Even though the last example shows women being useful in a religious context, all of these women are useful because of their service to the emperor, including the nuns and deaconess and female choristers, because Anna portrays Alexios as interested in the affairs of the church, and his involvement with these female religious reflects well on him.

An interesting case, however, is that of Sigelgaita, the mother of Tancred who leads the defense of a fortress from attack. Anna Komnene did not have to include this episode in her text. Sigelgaita is a non-imperial woman who takes on this masculine role, not unlike Anna’s grandmother, though even more masculine since it is military strategy and not administration that Sigelgaita takes on. As Reinsch points out “there was something offensive about the fighting Sigelgaita, but at the same time Anna's words reveal that she did admire the martial valor of this woman, to whom she devotes this brief heroic narrative (Reinsch 95). In the reader’s understanding of the woman as a woman, it is important to see that Anna says “[t]he place was defended by a woman, the mother, so it was said, of Tancred, though whether she was a sister of the notorious Bohemond or not I cannot tell, for I do not really know if Tancred was related to him on his father’s or his mother’s side” (351). Anna is placing her in context with the men she is associated with. The event is described thus:

The highly intelligent and level-headed woman inside the walls had anticipated this when she had seen the ships arrive and had already sent a message to one of her sons asking for assistance quickly. The Roman fleet was full of confidence, as though the place had already fallen to them, and all the sailors had begun acclaiming the emperor. The woman, who was herself in grievous straits, ordered her own people to do likewise. At the same time she sent ambassadors to Kontostephanos acknowledging the authority of the emperor and promising to negotiate for peace; she would come to him and together they would discuss terms, so that full details might be passed on to the sovereign. She was contriving to keep Kontostephanos in suspense and playing for time, to give her son the chance to reach her. Then, as they say of the tragic actors, she could throw off the mask and start the fighting. … The combined acclamations of those within and without echoed all round the town, while this woman gladiator kept Kontostephanos’ plans up in the air with these cunning words and her lying promises (351).

Anna both condemns her and praises her. While she is condemned because she is doing all she can to counter the imperial forces, she is praised for her ability to handle the situation. While this is not necessarily a wholly positive depiction of a woman, it is an instance showing how high ranking women can be useful to high ranking men, especially when there are no appropriately ranked men around.

Another group of non-imperial women who are useful to the emperor are the important women, often not anonymous, who extend his sphere of influence through marriage alliances. Anna stresses the importance of relatives by marriage several times. Alexios calls a counsel and “[a]ll his relatives, by blood or marriage, were present – those, that is, who were really devoted to him – and all the family servants” (255). Another time he informs his closest confidantes of his decisions: “at the same time he informed his kinsmen by blood or marriage and all the nobles enrolled in the army that he was going out to do battle with the Scythians” (215). When he goes into battle “[o]n right and left were those to whom he was related by blood or marriage, and next to them selected warriors from the various contingents, all in heavy armour” (447). Close relatives by marriage are thought by the community to be an extension of the emperor: “[Gregory, doux of Trapezous] even sent off a long letter to the emperor in which he abused not only members of the Senate and prominent soldiers, but also close relatives and kinsmen by marriage of the emperor” (349). Anna Komnene argues that relatives by marriage form an important bond that is not easily broken.

                This is one means that the Alexiad uses to cast further aspersion on characters like Robert Guiscard, who do not properly honour marriage ties: “we have mentioned before that Michael, for some inexplicable reason, had agreed to unite his own son Constantine in marriage with Robert’s daughter (her name was Helena)” (34-5). In this context the women are links between men, as they are in Materials for History. Helena’s name is an afterthought. And yet, it is through the women that these links are formed, and so they are of great use to the emperor and an important part of their familial groups.

                The text demonstrates the complexity of these alliances in the lengths the emperor goes to to form an alliance with Gabras, who will become important to Alexios’s campaigns. Isaac Komnenos, the emperor’s brother, promises his daughter to Gabras’s son Gregory. However, Isaaac Komnenos second wife is too closely related, so the marriage is called off. Alexios holds Gregory until he can find another suitable match:

He wished to keep him in Constantinople, for two reasons: first, he could hold him as a hostage; and, secondly, he might win Gabras’ friendship. Thus, if Gabras did harbor some evil design, he might frustrate it. He intended to marry Gregory to one of my sisters. These were the reasons why the boy’s departure was delayed (233).

With such considerations, it is not surprising that the alliances do not always work out. For instance, the sultan Toutouses, wishing to form an alliance with the emperor sends a son for a marriage alliance with one of Alexios’s daughters. This is rejected, since it is not advantageous to Alexios (170-1). Sometimes the women are named and sometimes they are not, though it is more likely when they are related to Anna directly. Anna describes a marriage alliance right in the middle of her description of battle, because Alexios has gained the loyalty of many of his generals this way: “Nikephoros – who afterwards became my brother-in-law when he married my younger sister the Porphyrogennetos Maria – seized a long spear, wheeled round and met his Scythian pursuer face-to-face” (268).

                The non-imperial women are shown, just as in Nikephoros’s history, in relation to men, but in Anna Komnene they are not reflecting the virtues of the men, but are useful to the men in their own right. There is a lot of similarity in terms of marriage alliances, though there is less of a stress on how important it is that men make the alliances, as in the importance of Alexios’s father making the decisions about who his daughters will marry instead of his mother, and just that women are useful in alliances made by men, in that Alexios needed alliances so he disposed of those female relatives he had in his familial unit. The women in Anna Komnene are more representative of the community, and less used as rhetorical devices for talking about masculinity. In the depictions of imperial women in the Alexiad, their role as mothers and widows and wives has been emphasized. While Anna Komnene does choose to include many non-imperial women in her text, it is interesting that important mothers and nurturing wives have largely been left out. Tancred’s mother is the only obvious mother, and while she could be understood to be exercising her influence in her capacity as a good mother, that conclusion is problematic because of how conflicted Anna seems to be about Sigelgaita’s character. The roles of powerful mother and caring wife are left solely for empresses. However, the text does focus on women’s role as helpers of men in general, and as helpers of Alexios specifically and on all women’s importance to the family dynamic.

Anna Komnene is herself, technically a non-imperial woman in the Alexiad – one who does not appear in Nikephoros’s Materials for History. She was one of the porphorygennitoi and grew up in the palace, but her attempt to take the throne was famously thwarted. She is exceptional, in that she is the only woman noted for both medical knowledge and writing a history: “[o]n the orders of the empress I was present myself at this conference, in order to act as arbiter; I heard the doctors’ arguments and I personally supported the views of Kallikles; however, the view of the majority proved decisive” (464-5). However, she does not fall outside the roles that she sets for her women in the text as evidenced by the non-imperial women. Her main concern may be construed as both community and family in her role as historian and her usefulness to her father, the emperor, was felt at his death bed. 

Conclusion

As Hill points out, “Anna’s motive [for writing her history] is a vexed question among Byzantinists” (Hill Imperial Women in Byzantium 189). There are many variables that have taken scholars in many different directions. Hill looks to the omissions and deliberate choices that Anna Komnene makes in the text to give us more definitive clues. The role that gender plays in Anna’s text may reflect Anna’s objective in writing it. While Eirene and Anna Dalassene are portrayed as powerful and important mothers, Gouma Peterson argues that “it is no accident that while creating in her narrative ‘a mirror in which to read herself shaped in the measure of her desire,’ that is, as a daughter and granddaughter in relation to maternal images of two ideal women, she does not place herself within the maternal category” (Gouma-Peterson 114). Anna does not have a claim to power in the same way her mother or grandmother do, but can still depict herself as a member of the imperial family and still show how non-imperial women, like herself can be useful to the emperor. Such an interpretation, while still speculative, is supported by the evidence of the non-imperial women in the text. It is not just Anna, but all the other non-imperial women, with the exception of problematic Sigelgaita, who show their value in roles other than motherhood.

The role of women in Nikephoros’s text may also give us a clue as to the goal of his text. The analysis of the non-imperial women supports Neville’s analysis of the use of imperial women in the text. Neville argues that “given the lionization of his own grandfather and the distaste expressed for Alexios Komnenos in the history he wrote later in life, it appears clear… that Nikephoros had wanted to become emperor” (Neville 179).  However, he wanted to conform to Roman rules of masculinity and wouldn’t take the lead in the coup that Anna Komnene and her mother Eirene Doukaina organized at the end of Alexios’s life. Instead John Komnenos, Anna’s brother, ascended to the imperial throne. While again this is speculation, especially since it is unclear when in Nikephoros’s lifetime the text was written, the depiction of women in Nikephoros’s text supports the conclusion that, as Neville says, “he would not agree with Anna that ‘victory always means the same thing’” (Neville 191-2). Nikephoros would not take the throne at any cost, but defends his actions as following the codes of manly virtue, while harbouring some bitterness against Alexios Komnenos for his frustrated ambition.

The role of women in the Alexiad has been important because “presentation of women in the Alexiad has been the basis of arguments both for women’s oppression in Byzantium and their relative freedom and importance” (Hill “A Vindication of the Rights of Women to Power” 45). Neville shows that the role of women in Materials for History is important because gender is key to understanding Nikephoros’s criticisms. Both Nikephoros and Anna use information from other sources, but it is possible to see intentional choices made in the depictions of women in the text. The non-imperial women elucidate for the reader the roles played by the imperial women in the rest of the text. For Nikephoros women act in a framework that reflects on men and men’s choices. For Anna, women possess a power that incorporates both the public and private spheres, a.k.a. they play major roles in the well-being of family and community. The example of the poor women from Philomelion is a perfect example of women as helpers, as amplifiers of pathos, and tools used by Anna Komnene to reflect Alexios’s power and mercy, as well as relating more to Anna’s depiction of imperial women than most of her depictions of non-imperial women by showing deference to the ideas of motherhood. How the women relate to men is an important theme in both texts, a common denominator to both Anna Komnene and Nikephoros Bryennios. Nikephoros wants to use it to bring down men and Anna to bring up women. The non-imperial women characters throughout both texts are included for specific purposes, the end result of which is to give the reader a key through which the roles of each gender in both texts can be understood.

Bibliography

Bryennius, Nicephorus. Nicéphore Bryennios histoire: introduction, texte, traduction et notes. Trans. Paul Gautier. Bruxelles: Byzantion, 1975. Print.

Garland, Linda. Byzantine Empresses. London: Routledge, 1999. Print.

Gouma-Peterson, Thalia. "Gender and Power: Passages to the Maternal in Anna Komnene's The Alexiad." Anna Komnene and her Times. Ed. Thalia Gouma-Peterson. New York: Garland Publishing, 2000. 107-124. Print.

Hill, Barbara. "A vindication of the rights of women to power by Anna Komnene." Byzantinische Forschungen 23 (1996): 45-53. Print.

—. Imperial Women in Byzantium: 1025-1204. New York: Pearson Education Inc., 1999. Print.

—. "The ideal imperial Komnenian woman." Byzantinische Forschungen 23 (1996): 7-18. Print.

Komnene, Anna. The Alexiad. Trans. E.R.A. Sewter. New York: Penguin Books, 2009. Print.

Neville, Leonora. Heroes and Romans in Twelfth-Century Byzantium. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Print.

Reinsch, Deither. "Women's Literature in Byzantium? The Case of Anna Komnene." Anna Komnene and Her Times. Ed. Thalia Gouma-Peterson. New York: Garland Publishing, 2000. 83-105. Print.

Smythe, Dion C. "Middle Byzantine Family Values and Anna Komnene's Alexiad." Byzantine Women. Ed. Linda Garland. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2006. 125-140. Print.

Stuttgart, B.G. Teubner. "Nikephoros Bryennios, Anna Komnene and Konstantios Doukas: A story about different perspectives." Nyzantinische Zeitchrift 100.1 (2007): 169-175. Print.

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[1] The texts are read in translation. Nikephoros Bryennios Materials for History is not yet translated into English, so is referenced here in French, in an attempt not to stray too far from the original, with English translation from the author.

[2] Or women who ruled in their own right, which happened more than once in Byzantine history, though not in either the histories of Anna or Nikephoros. 

University of Victoria, Home of the 'Vikes': Canadian Society of Medievalists Annual Congress 2013

I'd never been to Victoria before, the furthest west that I'd ever managed was Regina Saskatchewan. If it weren't for my first travel grant I wouldn't have really been able to go. I've also never been to a meeting of the Canadian Society of Medievalists, so all in all, this was a trip of firsts. In fact they were conflicting firsts, because I found my desires to do tourist things and desires to do conference things often were at an impasse. As soon as the plane landed and I saw the mountains and the sea of green in front of me, I am not sure that tourism didn't win. But, I think that, in the end, I got a good dose of both. To other tourists/conference goers to the city of Victoria I highly recommend renting a car if you can, because the University is quite a distance from the downtown. 

Also I can't let the fact that the University of Victoria's sports teams are called the Vikings, and are represented by this lovely horned helmet go unmentioned. It was such a nice backdrop. 

I managed to turn my seminar paper "Alfred the Little: Medievalism, Politics and the Poet Laureate" into a conference paper for this year's meeting of the annual Congress of Medieval Studies. Since it is not about something directly in the medieval time period, this meant I was at the very end of the conference.

I missed much, but the quality of the presentations I saw was higher than at Kalamazoo, only because more people had practiced speaking skills, whereas Kalamazoo has some excellent speakers and some who are new to presenting. But I really enjoyed the papers that I was lucky enough to see. 

Sunday June 2, 2013

9:30 am George Clark - "Placing the past on parchment"

This talk was a really interesting summary of the spacing and textuality of the manuscript of Chronicle A, from around the years of the Battle of Maldon. A clearer picture of Scribes 4 and 5 also developes, with Scribe 5 taking on the character of someone who is really interested in representing history.

10:30 am -12:00 Representations of Monasticism

Jenny Weston - "How 'monastic' is the Monastic book?"

This paper was clearly articulated with an excellent slideshow that showed that some elements which are supposed to be scholastic, are carried over into a percentage of texts used for reading in the monastery in the Netherlands where Jenny Weston is doing her research. She has compiled a database, and is looking at how books were constructed for the monastery, and what that says about the reading habits of monks. However, the chapter titles, the margins that in scholastic books are used for notes, do not carry the same connotations in the books designed for monk usage. In fact only a small percent use these techniques. Mostly the books show that they were meant to be read and re-read, and that the monks were not encouraged to make notes like scholastics were. It was a very interesting paper.

Stephanie Morley - "Whensoever ye be touched;': monastic habits and daily necessities in A Dyurnall for Devoute Soules"

This paper showed that A Dyurnall for Devoute Soules was different from other instructional religious texts, because it advocated a strictly organized routine, mixed with a laissez faire attitude that promoted praying when the mood struck you. The practical nature of the text shows that it was intended not for religious, but for lay people. It was for those people interested in emulating the lives of the religious.

Brandon Alakas - "Shakespeare's Medievalism and the Life Removed: Depictions of Religious in Measure for Measure"

This paper showed that, despite the entrenched demonization of religious in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, Shakespeare often employs sympathetic (though not entirely unflawed) religious characters. These include the Friar in Romeo and Juliet, but it is particularly interesting in Measure for Measure. The paper also proposes that the choice is often of a Friar, because they had varied responsibilities and were apparent in varied places,they had a mixed life, making them ideal for their usage in Shakespeare's dramas.

Monday June 3, 2013

1:30 pm - 3:00 pm Medieval Emotion

Spencer Young - "Avarice and the Emotions in thirteenth century Moral and Pastoral Discourses"

Avarice is an umbrella for quite a number of sinning activity in the thirteenth century. Crimes of usury fell under the heading of avarice. Most interesting where the texts, such as Paraldus, which stated that leaving money you got through usury to your children is still selfish because it does nothing for your soul, and endangers the souls of your children.

Donna Trembinski - "Roland of Cremona's Scholastic Appraisal of Sadness (1229)

In Roland of Cremona's text says that sadness, as an act, is sinful, though it is less sinful in those that are melancholic by nature than in those who have other natures and indulge in sadness. At the UNiversity of Paris, where Roland became a Master after an incident where many of the Masters had left, he is representing an interesting intersection between theology and medicine, since the humours can determine one's mood, and certain moods can be sinful.

Marc Cels - "A Pastoral or Academic Approach to Wrath in Thomas of Ireland's Dictionary of Quotations, the Manipulus florum (1306)?"

The Manipulus florum represented a theory of wrath that treated it more positively than it is treated in many other texts. It recognizes that there is a good and righteous wrath that can be exercised appropriately. This is what separates it from instructional texts for preaching.

3:30 pm - 5:00 pm - Women @ the Edge

Joanne Findon - "'I have loved you for a long time': Fairy Lovers, Liminal Women, and the Female Journey'"

This paper is a small part of a larger project that is looking at women's subjectivity in romantic encounters between this world and the other world in Irish literature. The subject of this paper was specifically about mortal women who meet an other worldly man, and who, since they have sons, have their experience elongated, told over the course of their son's maturation as well. These tales involve women who are already unhappy in some way with their temporal lot. Often the lover comes with a protestation that they, though they were absent, were in love with the subject for a long time. In some ways, though the encounters are often problematic, the wishing of the women has summoned the men to the encounter.

James Weldon - "The Troublesome Monstrosity of the Lady of Sinadoun in Lybeaus Desconus"

In Le Bel Inconnu, the Lady of Sinadoun is monstrous, but when she kisses the hero, her dragon exterior melts away and she is revealed to be beautiful. There are interesting parallels with the like of St. Margaret, who makes the cross inside the dragon, and is released. Both are linked to children and childbirth. This problematizes even further the fact that the body, which the beautiful maiden emerges from, is monstrous, suggesting a monstrosity inherent in women, one that can trace its theoretical roots back to classical ages.

Kenna Olsen - "At the edge no more: Middle English Women's claim of textual space"

This was a really interesting presentation, using a presentation tool I hadn't seen before, prezi.com. This looked at women's engagement in the epistellary tradition, by looking at the letters of three different women from 1156-1537. The letters are all in English, and they are mostly written to request financial aid. What is interesting is that it shows that women were aware of the letter writing tradition and so had some integration in the literary tradition. This is good, because there is a silence  from women about their involvement in the textual world of the Middle Ages. However, there is also evidence that the letters may have been written, at least some of them, by a professional scribe, through dictation.

Tuesday June 4, 2013 Understanding the Medieval

Andrew Klein - "The Rhetoric of Independence: The Wars of Scottish Independence, Then and Now"

For the upcoming Scottish referendum, the SNP has decided to steer clear of any associations with the medieval past to push for a yes vote for Scottish independence in 2014. they don't engage at all with the rhetoric of the past. However, there is a popular adherence to figures like William Wallace, Robert the Bruce and the battle of Bannockburn. The association is being made in any case, so Klein argues that the SNP should embrace an interpretation of the past as a tool, because otherwise they will have no stake in how these nationalistic images are used. I am not sure I agree with the conclusions, but I found this discussion of the political use of the past, and the discussion of the effects of the middle ages on the popular consciousness to correspond the most to my own work, and so it was to me the most interesting presentation. This is no doubt why we are in the same panel.

Noelle Phillips - "Piers Plowman, Popularity, and Pedagogy'

This looked at how studying Piers Plowman, and the tradition of Piers Plowman together in one class can stimulate discussions that will make it more interesting to learners and also will generate discussions about texts that are not as frequently studied. It can also generate modern interest in Piers Plowman.

Me!

I can only say that I think it went quite well. People laughed at the appropriate times.

I also went to the banquet, got three free books from the society, and went to the fanciest President's Reception that I have ever been to. I managed to sneak in also a visit to Fort Rodd and Fisgard Lighthouse National Historic Site, Whale Watching, went to Fisherman's Wharf, did the Ghost Walk and visited Craigdarroch Castle. Victoria was lovely.