Love and War in Cligés

Love and War in "Cligés"Author(s): PEGGY MCCRACKENReviewed work(s):Source: Arthuriana, Vol. 18, No. 3, Essays on Chrétien's Cligés (FALL 2008), pp. 6-18Published by: Scriptorium PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27870912 .Accessed: 13/02/2012 15:29

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Love and War in Clig?s

PEGGY MCCRACKEN

In the first part of Clig?s, the intercalated stories of love and war suggest that each is articulated through the other. (PM)

C?ig?s

is the only one of Chretien's romances in which he recounts a war. Critics have long noted the realistic detail that Chretien uses to describe

Angr?s's treason and Arthur's war against him in the first part of the romance, and they have often seen a disjunction between the realistic representation of the violence of war and the monologues full of metaphor and figurative language through which Alexandre and Soredamors come to understand and

experience their love for each other. The perception of such a disjunction is

heightened by the abrupt movements of the narrative from the war back to the lovers, then back to the war, then back to the lovers. In other words, the

story of war is intercalated with a story of love, but the narrative style of each

story seems to isolate it from the other in the romance. Sharon Kinoshita reads the two kinds of discourses in generic terms, noting that although the distinction between the epic-like discourse of war and the romance-type discourse of love is sometimes partially deconstructed in rhetorical conflations of love and war, 'the fundamental discursive incompatibility between the literal-mindedness of epic and the rhetorical excess of the monologues is both

foregrounded and scrupulously ignored.'1 But how might these two narrative strands speak to each other across their differences of focus, of perspective, and of style? How might they be in dialogue with each other? What has the

graphic description of war got to do with the metaphorical discourse of love, and what has the figurai and poetic description of growing love got to do

with the violent narrative of war?

ARTIFICE AND AFFECT

Clig?s is a romance unique in its focus on arts?particularly through the characters of Thessala and Jehan, but also in its representation of the arts of war2?and in its use of artifice. On the one hand, Chr?tien's use of artifice demonstrates his craft, his use of motifs from other narratives, like the Tristan romances, to new ends in Clig?s? On the other hand, the artifice of the narrative identifies the narrator's distance from the story, a distance that

6 ARTHURIAN A 18.3 (2008)

LOVE AND WAR IN CUg?s 7

leaves room for an ironic stance toward the characters who attempt to enact

the values of courtliness, or that allows for a critique of courtliness and of an

adherence to social forms valued over substance or intensity of feeling.4 In the first part of the romance artifice and courtliness are most clearly at stake in the monologues through which Alexandre and Soredamors explore their

feelings and come to understand that they are in love. These monologues are

far more extensive than those Chr?tien includes in his other romances, and

they offer the narrator a way to convey the feelings of the characters to his audience.5 Alexandre and Soredamors don't know how to express their love

any other way, and in this they are different from F?nice and Clig?s, who have no trouble understanding their own feelings, and whose uncertainty about love focuses on whether the other returns love.6 Alexandre and Soredamors debate whether they love, and the question of whether they love begins with a question of how they have fallen in love, of how love has entered them?and for each character, this question is answered using conventional love rhetoric (love enters through the eyes, love is an arrow shot into the

heart), but a rhetoric in which metaphors of embodiment become confused with literal bodies.

Alexandre in particular seems to have trouble maintaining rhetorical control over the figures that structure his first monologue about love. He describes being wounded by an arrow in the heart, debates how the arrow entered (through the eyes), accuses his eyes and heart of betraying him, and then says that he will describe the arrow of which he now has charge. The

golden feathers of the arrow are like the golden hair of Soredamors that he saw the previous day on the sea journey to Brittany?this is the arrow that has inspired his love, this is an arrow to be treasured. He rhetorically transforms the arrow into a body, a figure of love becomes the figure of a

woman. Alexandre describes a beautiful face, sparkling eyes, a lovely nose, and a small laughing mouth with ivory teeth to which Nature has applied her art. He glimpses a beautiful bosom, a white neck, but he was not able to see all of the arrow.7

Molt volantiers, se je se?sse,

De?sse quex an est la floiche.

Ne la vi pas, n'an moi ne poiche Se la fa?on dire n'an sai De chose que veiie n'ai.

Ne m'an mostra Amors adons

Fors que la coche et les penons, Car la fl?che ert el coivre mise: C'est li bl?auz et la chemise Don la pucele estoit vestue.

Par foi, c'est li max qui me tue,

8 ARTHURIANA

Ce est Ii darz, ce est Ii rais, Don trop vilainnemant m'irais.

Molt sui vilains qui m'an corroz;

Ja mes festuz n'an sera roz

Par desf?ance ne par guerre

Que je doie vers Amors querre. (vss. 848-64)

[Were I able, I would be delighted to describe the shaft, but I did not see it. I am not to blame if I cannot describe the form of something I

have not seen. At that time Love showed me only the notch and the feathers. The remainder of the shaft was placed in the quiver, that is, inside the dress and chemise the maiden wore. Never will provocation or war break any engagement I should seek with Love.8]

Jane Burns has pointed out that although Alexandre describes his beloved's

body hidden beneath lady's clothes, the 'bliaut' and 'chemise' that he names

were worn by both knights and ladies. Twelfth- and thirteenth-century courtly dress did not distinguish men from women in obvious ways, she explains, and since unisex courtly dress could be used to facilitate gender crossing, as

a number of romances from the period suggest, the clothed body/arrow that

Alexandre describes introduces gender ambiguity into the discourse of love.9

If the clothes that hide the lady/arrow's body from Alexandre's gaze, like the

conflation of the arrow clothed in lady's clothes with the allegorical figure of Love, tend to confuse gender in this passage, Alexandre's claim that he

will abandon himself to Love and to lovesickness also seems to suggest that

he will abandon the masculine pursuit of war: 'Ja mes festuz n'an sera roz /

Par desfiance ne par guerre / Que je doie vers Amors querre' (vss. 862-65)

[Never will provocation or war break any engagement I should seek with

Love (97)].10 Alexandre means that he will not be deterred from his quest for love, but he invokes provocation and war as the deterrents he will resist.

Unlike the hero of Chretien's first romance, Alexandre does not fall under

the spell of his beloved to the extent that he abandons chivalry, nor does he

become recr?ant, like Erec. In fact, it is war that allows him finally to pursue love actively.

Alexandre and Soredamors debate with themselves how they have come

to love (through the eyes), whether they love (they do), Alexandre vows to

remain faithful to love and Soredamors resolves to let Alexandre know of

her love through 'signs and hints' [Par sanblant et par moz coverz (vs. 1041)].

However, neither of the lovers is able to communicate with the other, they continue to suffer from love, and the lovers' state of suffering seems bound

to continue without resolution until it is interrupted by war.

Ensi se plaint et cil et cele, Et H uns vers l'autre se cele;

Le jor ont mal et la nuit pis.

LOVE AND WAR IN CUg?s 9

An tel dolor ont, ce m'est vis,

An Bretaigne lonc tans est? Tant que vint a la fin d'est?. Tot droit a l'entr?e d'oitovre Vindrent message devers Dovre

De Londres et de Quantorbire Au roi unes noveles dire

Qui molt Ii troblent son corage. (vss. 1047-57)

[Thus the two lamented, concealing their feelings from each other. Their days were ill, their nights worse. For a long time, as I believe, such was their anguish in Brittany until the coming of summer's end.

At the very beginning of October, a message came from London and from Canterbury, by way of Dover, with disturbing news for the

king. (100)]

This passage is full of the specific detail about time and place that is typical of the first part of Clig?s. Here the indications of time seem to emphasize the

lengthy period in which the lovers suffer from their inability to speak and to act [lonc tans...vint a la fin d'est?] and the abrupt interruption of this

period by the arrival of the messenger who brings the news that Angr?s has

betrayed Arthur and claimed London. In other words, the impasse in which the lovers are caught?the inability to reveal their feelings to each other?is

interrupted by news that leads to war.

LOVE OBJECTS AND INTERRUPTIONS

The news of war provokes Alexandre to act on a desire which, unlike his desire for Soredamors, he has no trouble articulating?he asks King Arthur to knight him and his companions. Arthur consents, and as a favor to Alexandre, the

queen sends him a white silk shirt that Soredamors helped to make and into which she wove one of her own golden hairs. The chemise that the queen gives to Alexandre (recalling the chemise that hides the lady/arrow's body from his eyes?) is a material construction that speaks Soredamors's own desire, in Burns's reading.11 It is perhaps also to be read as a material manifestation of the moz coverz,' the 'covered words' or hints with which Soredamors claims she would reveal her love to Alexandre (vs. 1041). But initially at least, the shirt speaks to Soredamors rather than to Alexandre.

After Alexandre's first battle, Soredamors and the queen's ladies are in Guenevere's tent with Alexandre and his companions. Soredamors sees the

shirt, recognizes it as her own work, and sees the hair that she wove into its fabric. But she cannot speak because she does not know how to initiate a conversation with Alexandre: should she call him by his name (too many letters, she would stumble on them), or should she call him 'amis' (but what if that is a lie, what if he is not her friend?)? She would gladly be called 'sweet

10 ARTHURIANA

friend' by Alexandre, and she would gladly shed her blood if she could call him her sweet friend: 'Voldroie avoir de mon sane mis / Qu'il e?st non "Mes dolz amis'" (vss. 1411-12).

This is an odd phrase. Soredamors has been lamenting the difficulty of

addressing Alexandre, of knowing how to address him, but the sudden shift to bloodshed is puzzling?except that it may foreshadow the events that follow. Soredamors has noticed the shirt while waiting in Guenevere's tent

for the queen's return from a meeting with the king. Arthur has demanded the enemy knights that Alexandre captured in his first battle. Alexandre

gave the captives to the queen because he knew that the king would hang them, but the king demands that the queen turn the hostages over to him. Soredamors's debate about how to speak to Alexandre occurs in the interlude of the queen's absence. In other words, just as the war interrupted the

temporality of indecision for the lovers who could not speak their desire to

each other, so the interlude in which Soredamors debates how to address

Alexandre interrupts an episode of war that ends with the king's decision

that the captives will be executed.

'Voldroie avoir de mon sane mis

Qu'il e?st non "Mes dolz amis".'

An cest panss? tant se sejorne

Que la reine s'an retorne

Del roi, qui mand?e Favoit. Alixandres venir la voit, Contre li vet, se li demande

Que li rois a feire comande De ses prisons, et qu'il en iert.

'Amis,' fet ele, 'il me requiert Que je li rande a sa devise, Si l'an les feire sa justise. De c'est li rois molt correciez

Que je ne li ai ja bailliez, Si m'estuet que jes li anvoi

Qu'autre d?livrance n'i voi.' (vss. 1411?26)

['I would shed my own blood to have his name be "my sweetheart.'" She pondered still on these thoughts until the queen returned from the king, who had summoned her. Seeing her approaching, Alexandre

went to meet her and asked her what the king commanded be done with the prisoners, and what would happen to them. 'Friend,' she

said, 'he asks me to yield them to his will that he may exercise his

justice over them. He is most angered that I have not already handed them over to him. I must send them to him, for I see no way out of it.' (104)]

LOVE AND WAR IN CUg?s 11

The queen does not hesitate to call Alexandre 'Amis'?the name Soredamors

could not say, and although Guenevere may assume Alexandre's friendship in part because of her position as the king's wife and in part because he has

demonstrated it with the gift of the captives, it is striking that the interlude

defined by the wait for the queen's return is interrupted by the very word of

address, 'amis,' whose appropriateness Soredamors debated in the queen's absence. The scene of love is linked to the scene of battle and the justice of war by repetition of the (failed) address of Alexandre as 'Amis.'

The king, too, addresses Alexandre as 'friend': '"amis," dist il, "molt vos vi

hier / Bel assaillir et bel desfandre; / Le guerredon vos an voel randre'" (vss.

1446?48). [Friend, what a splendid assault and defense I observed you execute

yesterday. For this I should reward you. (105)] The king's commendation of

Alexandre, his 'amis,' comes only twenty-six lines after the queen's report of the king's decision to her 'amis.' That the king calls Alexandre 'amis' is

not unusual or unexpected (though it may have a conciliatory tone, since

Arthur has just claimed Alexandre's gift to the queen), but again, it ties the

discourse of war to the discourse of love introduced in Soredamors's earlier

debate about whether she could call Alexandre 'amis.' The king's description of Alexandre 'attacking and defending splendidly' also repeats the terms in

which Soredamors described her lack of defenses before the assault of Love in her first monologue:

Ceste volantez est malveise,

Mes Amors m'a si anvafe

Que foie an sui et esbahie, Ne desfansse rien ne m'i vaut,

Si m'estuet sofrir son assaut, [vss. 932?36]12

[This is an ill desire, but Love persists in such hatred toward me that I am confounded and foolish; resistance aids me not; I must submit to his assault. (98)]

It is not surprising that the vocabulary of love is also the vocabulary of war.

Indeed, the narrator introduced the lovers' initial monologues by describing Love's battle with them: 'Amors les .iL amanz travaille, / Vers cui il a prise bataille' (vss. 573-74). [Love waged battle against the two lovers and now

tormented them. (94)] 13 Here, though, the relationship between love and

war seems to go beyond a shared vocabulary. The way that episodes of war

interrupt the static time of love, and the way that interludes of love interrupt the action of war suggest that the intertwined stories of love and war speak to each other, that love is defined with reference to war, and war is defined

with reference to love.

12 ARTHURIANA

COVERED WORDS AND COVERED BODIES

Joan Tasker Grimbert has noted that the birth of love is described in a set of

monologues and dialogues far more elaborate than any found in Chretien's other romances, and it is also true that the violence of battle is described with

explicit detail not found in any of Chretien's other romances.14 In his first act of chivalry, Alexandre takes four captives, but he and his companions leave behind many decapitated, wounded or maimed men [Et Ii mort gisent an

l'arainne, / Qu'asez i ot des decolez, / Des plaiez et des afolez (vss. 1346-48)]. The king's execution of the captives is even more graphic:

Mes einz que nul assaut i ait,

Li rois antor le chastel fait Tra?ner a .ii?. chevax

Les traitors parmi les vax

Et par tertres et par larriz....

Qant li quatre tra?n? furent Et li manbre par le chanp jurent, Lors ancomance li assauz. (vss. 1493-1511)

[Before any assault was made, the king ordered the traitors drawn by four horses around the castle, through valleys, over small hills, and across fallow fields_After the prisoners had been drawn and their limbs lay across the countryside, the assault began. (105)]

The execution of the captured men launches the assault on the castle, but

it receives little comment in the text. In fact, the vulnerability of the enemy bodies stands in opposition to the invulnerable castle. The attackers achieve

little, though they fight all day: 'Ensi tote jor se travaillent: / Cil desfandent et cil assaillent / Tant que la nuiz les an depart' (vss. 1523-25) [In this manner

they struggled all day long, one side defending, the other attacking, until night

separated them. (106)] Here the description of war again recalls Soredamors's

description of the love that assails her and against which she has no defense

[Mes Amors m'a si anva?e / Que foie an sui et esbahie, / Ne desfansse rien ne m'i vaut, / Si m'estuet sofrir son assaut (vss. 932-36); Love persists in such

hatred toward me that I am confounded and foolish; resistance aids me not; I must submit to his assault (98)], and the failure to take the castle leaves the

king's war?like Alexandre and Soredamors's love?unresolved, in a state

of temporal suspension. After the initial assault on the castle Alexandre returns to the queen's tent,

as is his habit.15 Alexandre sits beside the queen; she notices the golden hair woven into his shirt, remembers that Soredamors made it, and calls for the

young woman to come near. When Soredamors approaches the queen and

Alexandre, Guenevere notices her confusion and Alexandre's inability to look at her, and she understands that they love each other. She asks Soredamors to

LOVE AND WAR IN Clig?s 13

explain how the shirt was made, and when Alexandre learns that one of his beloved's hairs is in the shirt, the chemise becomes a love object, a metonymy of Soredamors's body, and he embraces and delights in it all night long. The narrator describes Alexandre's dream of delight as a lingering pleasure interrupted by war:

Molt an fet tote nuit grant joie Qant il est colchiez an son lit. A ce ou n'a point de d?lit Se d?lite au vain et solace: Tote nuit la chemise anbrace,

Et quant il le chevol remire, De tot le mont cuide estre sire. Bien fet amors de sage fol,

Quant cil fet joie d'un chevol. Ensi se d?lite et d?duit, Mes il changera cest d?duit Einz l'aube clere et le soleil. Li tra?tor sont a consoil

Qu'il porront feire et devenir, (vss. 1626-39)

[When he lay in his bed, he took comfort, pleasure, and delight in an object incapable of offering delight. All night he held the shirt in his arms, and when he gazed on the strand of hair, he thought himself lord of the entire world. Love indeed made a wise man a fool, for the knight rejoiced over a strand of hair. Yet love would trade this pleasure for another. At that time, such was Alexander's joy and

delight. Before the bright dawn the traitors held council to decide what could be done and what would happen. (107)]

Again, the static time of love, here demonstrated in Alexandre's lingering in the pleasures of love, is interrupted by the events of war in an abrupt transition from Alexandre's delight to the traitors' plans for attack.

In other words, Alexandre's pleasure in bed is interrupted by a plan to kill him in bed. Angr?s and his men plan to attack Arthur's army while his knights are still asleep [Si troveront l'ost d?sarm?e / Et les chevaliers andormiz, / Qui ancor girront an lor liz (vss. 1654-56); They would come upon the unarmed host by surprise while the knights were still asleep in their beds (107)]. The site of Alexandre's pleasure becomes a site of danger, and the traitors' plan to attack in secret [a celee (vs. 1653)] and, after the plan has failed, Angr?s's escape back to the castle through a hidden way [couverte voie (vs. 1757)] are countered by the deception of Alexandre and his men who disguise themselves

by taking dead men's shields and lances. The defenders of the castle do not

suspect the deception that hides under the cover of the shields:

ARTHURIANA

Les genz del chastel mont? furent,

Qui les escuz bien reconurent Et cuident que de lor gent soient, Car de l'aguet

ne s'apansoient

Qui desoz les escuz se cuevre. (vss. 1845-49)

[The men of the castle, who had gone up to the battlements of the

keep, recognized the shields and believed that the men approaching were from their side. They did not suspect the trap concealed beneath the shields. (109)]

Alexandre and his men enter the castle, defeat Angr?s and the other traitors, and take prisoner those whom they do not kill.16

The technique of disguise that Alexandre uses to enter the castle has been

linked to the contemporary view of Greeks as deceptive. Sharon Kinoshita

points out that Alexandre appropriates the legendary Greek propensity for

deception to serve Arthurian ends.17 The passage may also point yet again to the way that the narratives of love and war are entwined: the hidden ways of war, the identities disguised under the cover of shields, may reference the

hidden ways of love, the 'covered words' [moz coverz] that Soredamors says she will use to give hints of her love.

And just as Alexandre cannot recognize the signs of love that Soredamors

demonstrates, Soredamors does not recognize the covered identity of

Alexandre any more that Angr?s's men do. She too does not see who hides

beneath the shield?not the one that Alexandre carries, but the one he has

left behind and which is taken to cover his dead body, a casualty of the battle.

Soredamors's mourning for Alexandre is an emotional demonstration of her

love that parallels Alexandre's demonstration of joy while alone in bed with

the shirt she has made. In both cases the demonstration of love is unseen by other characters in the story, and in both cases the private scene of longing is

interrupted by events of the war?Soredamors's mourning is ended by news

of Alexandre's victory and arrival at Arthur's court.

At this point, the mutual articulation of love and war through interruption seems to fail. The regular temporality of Alexandre's habitual visit to the

queen's tent is disrupted after his defeat of Angr?s. Both lovers are impatient for their reunion in Guenevere's tent, both regret that Alexandre is detained and does not come promptly, and when he does arrive, the queen lectures the knight and the young woman about love and allows them?finally?to declare their love to each other.

The intertwining of the stories of love and war acts as a narrative motor?

each helps the other to move forward, and they end together. In the early parts of the story of Alexandre and Soredamors, their growing awareness of love is not only articulated through a vocabulary that also describes war, but

the events leading to war punctuate the monologues through which the lovers

LOVE AND WAR IN Clig?s 15

debate their feelings and impose a temporality on those static moments that allows the lovers' awareness of love to progress. The events of war seem to

move the love story out of its contemplative and almost atemporal context, and to the extent that war moves the love story forward, the love story is part of the war story. And both stories end together: the inability of Alexandre and Soredamors to articulate their love is resolved when the queen recognizes it,

explains it to them, and gives them to each other in marriage after Alexandre wins the war for Arthur by capturing Angr?s.

LOVE STORIES

If the story of love is integral to the story of war, and the story of war is

integral to the story of love in the first part of Clig?s, they both end when Alexandre captures Angr?s. The betrayal of the Count of Windsor starts the war, which allows the love story to progress, as I've suggested above. But the events that cause the war may invite a consideration of another story of love and war that subtends the story of Alexandre and Soredamors: the story of Arthur and Angr?s.

Although feudal relationships are often described using the vocabulary of

love, the narrator never says that Arthur loves Angr?s or that Angr?s loves Arthur. He doesn't even describe Angr?s as being particularly close to the

king. Angr?s is designated as regent by Arthur's other barons, and Arthur

accepts the recommendation (and later reproaches the barons for it):

Li rois Artus an eel termine S'an vost an

Bretaigne passer. Toz ses barons fist amasser

Por consoil querre et demander

A cui il porra comander

Eingleterre tant qu'il reveingne, Qui la gart an pes et mainteingne. Par le consoil de toz ansanble Fu comandee, ce me sanble,

Au conte Angr?s de Guinesores, Car il ne cuidoient ancores

Qu'il e?st baron plus de foi An tote la terre le roi. (vss. 422-34)

[It was the will of King Arthur at that time to cross over to Brittany. He had all his barons assemble in order to ask and seek their counsel as to whom he might trust to keep England safe and peaceful until his return. On unanimous advice, as I believe, it was entrusted to Count

Angr?s of Windsor, for they still believed that in all the king's land, there was no baron more loyal. (92)]

i6 ARTHURIANA

The narrator describes the barons' confident decision in a somewhat

hesitant way [ce me sanble], and he seems to anticipate the count's betrayal in his indication that they 'still believed' [cuidoient ancores] that Angr?s

was loyal. Angr?s's betrayal of Arthur receives no explanation in the story; we (like

Arthur) learn only that he has claimed England for himself:

Ce Ii ont cont? Ii message Que trop puet an Bretaingne ester,

Car cil li voldra contrester Cui sa terre avoit comandee. (vss. 1058?61)

[The messengers informed him that he perhaps stayed too long in

Brittany; the man he had entrusted with his land was planning to

challenge him. (100)]

The abrupt announcement of Angr?s's betrayal attempts no explanation of

his behavior, and perhaps it is readily understandable that he would wish to

possess England. But Angr?s's claim on Arthur's lands is announced just after

a long and elaborate monologue in which Soredamors attempts to understand

whether she loves and how love entered her, that is, in which she tries to

understand what motivates her love. The lack of explanation for Angr?s's actions is notable, especially since Angr?s's loyalty is initially described in

the same terms [baron...de foi] in which Soredamors describes the betrayal of her heart in a speech that immediately follows the account of the barons'

choice of Angr?s. Her heart had been loyal to her and disdainful of love, but

now has betrayed her: 'Oel, vos m'avez tra?e! / Par vos m'a mes cuers anha?e,

/ Qui me soloit estre de foi' (vss. 475-77) [Eyes, you have betrayed me. My heart was once loyal to me. You made it hate me (93)]. We hear at length about the betrayal of Soredamors's heart, but get only a brief announcement

of Angr?s's betrayal of Arthur. Both are described in terms of loyalty, of

Toi.' This is admittedly a small word on which to hang an argument, even

a speculative argument, but Peter Haidu has shown that brief notations in

one part of the romance may recall a more extensive narrative development in another.18 And if the description of Angr?s as a loyal man, a 'baron de foi,'

recalls Soredamors's regret for the lost loyalty of her heart, it also associates

Angr?s's loyalty with love and his disloyalty with a betrayal of love. The

narrative thus offers another instance of the interconnectedness of love and

war in Clig?s, but it also suggests that the concealed (because the narrative

does not recount it explicitly) story of Angr?s's betrayal of Arthur is not just a betrayal of feudal trust, but also a betrayal of love.

Clig?s is a story that recounts the importance of looking under covers?

under covered words to find their real meaning, under shields that cover

foreign bodies. The text's uncovering of the love of Angr?s for Arthur

LOVE AND WAR IN CUg?s 17

underneath his betrayal may offer another example of Chretien's famous

irony, so richly discussed for Clig?s by Haidu and others. Chretien may suggest that love so easily abandoned might put into question the endurance of the

passion discovered by Soredamors and Alexandre during Arthur's war with

Angr?s. Angr?s's story, brief as it may be in the narrative, may also point to the

political and dynastic structures that organize love in this romance?structures

that are overtly contested in the second part of the romance.

The intercalated stories of love and war suggest not just that love is like

war, but that the stories of love and war are necessary to each other, and not

just in the conventional courtly equation of fighting well with loving well.

Rather, in their articulation of each other, love and war in Clig?s point not

only to adversity in love, but also to love in adversity. And here is perhaps the

place to locate Chretien's irony: the story of Soredamors and Alexandre?

particularly in comparison to the story of Clig?s and F?nice?suggests that

betrayals always ground love. UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, ANN ARBOR

Peggy McCracken is Professor of French and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan. Her most recent books are The Curse ofEve, the Wound of the Hero:

Blood, Gender, and Medieval Literature (2003) and, coedited with Basil Dufallo,

Dead Lovers: Erotic Bonds and the Study of Premodern Europe (2007).

NOTES

? Sharon Kinoshita, 'The Poetics of Translatio in Clig?s,' Exemplaria 8.2 (1996): 347

2 On arts, see Sharon Kinoshita's essay in this volume. On war, see Lucie Polak,

Chr?tien de Troyes, Clig?s (London: Grant and Cutler, 1982), pp. 22-36. 3 For example, Michelle Freeman notes the artifice of the chemise in which

Soredamors weaves strands of her golden hair, a repetition of a motif from the Tristan legend. 'Structural Transpositions and Intertextuality: Chr?tien's Clig?s,' Medi?valia et Humanistica n.s. 11 (1982): 150-53. Intertextuality in Clig?s has been much studied; see most recently Joan Tasker Grimbert, 'Clig?s and the Chansons: A Slave to Love,' A Companion to Chr?tien de Troyes, ed. Norris J. Lacy and Joan Tasker Grimbert (Cambridge, UK: D.S. Brewer, 2005), pp. 120-36, and Matilda

Tomaryn Bruckner, 'Of Clig?s and Cannibalism,' in the present volume.

4 Peter Haidu, Aesthetic Distance in Chr?tien de Troyes: Irony and Comedy in Clig?s and Perceval (Geneva: Droz, 1968), especially pp. 64-70; Norris J. Lacy, "Clig?s and Courtliness,' Interpretations 15.2 (1984): 18-24.

5 Grimbert, 'Clig?s and the Chansons,' pp. 126-27, Haidu, Aesthetic Distance, pp. 86-87.

6 Haidu, Aesthetic Distance, p. 109. See Tracy Adams's discussion of Soredamors's and F?nice's different understandings of love and will in Violent Passions: Managing

l8 ARTHURIANA

Love in the Old French Verse Romance (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 210-14.

7 Chretien de Troyes, Clig?s, ed. Stewart Gregory and Claude Luttrell (Cambridge, UK: D.S. Brewer, 1993), vss. 801-47. Subsequent references to this edition are

indicated by line number in the text. 8 The Complete Romances of Chr?tien de Troyes, trans. David Staines (Bloomington:

Indiana University Press, 1990), p. 97. Further references to this translation are

indicated by page number in the text. I have occasionally modified the translation

slightly. 9 E. Jane Burns, Courtly Love Undressed: Reading Through Clothes in Medieval French

Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), pp. 166?67. 10 Luttrell and Gregory gloss 'rompre le festu' as a symbolic act of breaking personal

ties, here referring to the homage due to Love. Clig?s, p. 255. 11 Burns, Courtly Love Undressed, pp. 63-65. 12 Another example from the first attack on the castle: 'Cil desfandent et cil assaillent

/ Tant que la nuiz les an depart' (vss. 1525-26). 13 The arrow that Alexandre describes may be another example of an image common

to love and war. The arrow, particularly in descriptions of Love's arrows, may be

associated with hunting, but in Clig?s it is an instrument of war. See, for example, the attack on

Angr?s's castle, vs. 1520.

14 Grimbert, 'Clig?s and the Chansons,' pp. 126-27. Kinoshita notes that '[m]ost of the time the disjuncture between the discourses of passion and war remains

absolute, the lovers' precious and extended monologues abruptly juxtaposed with the graphic physical detail of the battlefield' ('The Poetics of Translation p. 436).

Warfare occupies 38% of the story of Alexandre, according to Polak {Chr?tien de

Troyes, p. 22).

15 'N'ot pas sa costume oubli?e / Alixandres, qui chascun soir / Aloit la re?ne veoir'

(vss. 1548-50). 16 On patterns of concealment and revelation, see Nords J. Lacy, 'Form and Pattern

in Clig?s,' Orbis Litter arum 25 (1970): 307-13. 17 Kinoshita, 'The Poetics of Translation p. 352. 18 Haidu, Aesthetic Distance, p. 107.