Arthuriana Volume 9 Issue 4 1999 [Doi 10.2307%2F27869496] SANDY FEINSTEIN -- Losing Your Head in Chrétien's Knight of the Cart

Losing Your Head in Chrétien's "Knight of the Cart"Author(s): SANDY FEINSTEINSource: Arthuriana, Vol. 9, No. 4 (WINTER 1999), pp. 45-62Published by: Scriptorium PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27869496 .

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Losing Your Head in Chretien's Knight of the Cart

SANDY FEINSTEIN

In Chr?tiens Lancelot, beheading serves as a complex sexual, political, and religious image representing power, particularly the power of speech. (SF)

The topos of beheading, like the historical action itself, has a long past.1 It is a conventional image and motif in both art and literature as well as a

punishment identified with royal prerogative and power. In art of the Middle

Ages, the image figures notably in illuminations and frescoes where it may represent both saintly martyrdoms and infernal punishments. In the twelfth

century, at the same time that Chretien wrote Lancelot, The Knight of the

Cart, numerous saints could be seen losing their heads on church walls.2 This image was equally commonplace in its depictions of males and females

being decapitated or being the agents of another's decapitation, whether the

anonymous sinners of Hell, Biblical figures acting as agents of another's

martyrdom, or popular saints who had been martyred (see figures 1 and 2). The commonplace images of Salome demanding the head of John the Baptist3 and of Judith victoriously beheading Holofernes, however, suggest that women

may only have beheaded men, while men beheaded men as well as women, first as a form of religious persecution, later as a form of institutionalized criminal punishment. Therefore, in medieval romance, the prevalence of the

image and its associations with both positive and negative biblical figures generally dictates how the demand for a knight s head, specifically by a woman, is likely to be read: as either 'good' Judith saving her people or 'bad' Salome

seductively performing for the head of the saint. In the Knight of the Cart, Chretien combines elements from both stories: as in the story of Salome and

John the Baptist, a woman requests a specific man's head, but, in the romance, the woman is understood to be good?more like Judith: she will later 'save'

Lancelot, who has freed his people if not hers; and when she frees him from

captivity, she enables him to fight to the death?by beheading?her evil

ARTHURIANA 9.4(1999)



46 ARTHURIANA

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brother who had imprisoned Queen Guenevere, the people of Logres, as well as himself.

Like the controlling image of beheading itself, the ladies of this poem are

implicitly powerful and subtextually dichotomous. In this poem written for a woman, beheading serves as a sexual, political, and religious metaphor to

represent the power of speech. In the context of the culture and its sexual

politics, it is a power limited to literary wish-fulfillment, a wish expressed by



LOSING YOUR HEAD IN CHR?TIEN 47

Figure y. Trinity MS R.17.1 ff. io6r (Courtesy of the Master and Fellows of Trinity College Cambridge)



48 ARTHURIANA

Figure 4: MS M. 644, f. 200

(Courtesy of The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York)

a real woman to a court poet when she provided him with the mati?re and

san that he would use to depict complex social attitudes to both love and

women. It is a wish' fulfilled, however, by a male author whose own powers were likely to have been more literary than 'real' and for whom the intrinsic

ironies seem to be apparent in the image he appropriates and recasts. To



LOSING YOUR HEAD IN CHRETIEN 49

understand how decapitation contributes to articulating the issues regarding power, it is necessary to understand how beheading as image and action

develops from a complex of political, historical, theological, as well as biblical associations.4

In the Christian world of Chr?tien, the head still reverberates with the

meaning one critic ascribes to its use in Anglo-Saxon epic: the source of speech.5 But rather than reflect the holy martyrs inspired by the Word, Chr?tiens victims of beheading recall a very different tradition of iconography: the damned who failed to use their voices to beg forgiveness and mercy, who used

language to blaspheme, whose words and actions identify them with the

unrepented sin of pride (see figures 3 and 4). While these damned, represented as decapitated on frescoes, suffer for their pride and blasphemy against God, in Chr?tien, the proud knights who are beheaded by the eponymous hero direct their unrepentant words and actions against women or their champion Lancelot, not God. As in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, beheading in Chr?tien

represents an assertion of justice through a revenge that also silences male authoritarian pride and evil, the silencing of which is as important as the dead

body itself.

The names of Chr?tiens recreant knights reinforce the connection between

pride and damnation, signifying their status as villains who must be beheaded. The first knight comes to be known as the Proud Knight through a description identifying him as 'prouder than a bull? / Which is a very proud beast!' (plus orguelleus que n'est uns tors? / que c'est molt orguilleuse beste!,' 2568?69).6 The repetition of orguelleus/e' emphasizes the key to this character's actions and recalls the sin of Lucifer, the proud angel who fell. According to the damsel who will rescue Lancelot from the prison tower in return for granting her the favor of the knight's head, the Proud Knight is unequivocally 'disloyal,' a 'felon,' and a 'traitor' (28n-[37f], 2825). This same damsel's brother,

Meleaganz, is the principal villain and will be the second and last knight to be

decapitated by Lancelot. He has his etymological origin in 'mal,' meaning evil or wicked, while his full name supplies a rhyming word play on the Old French malivolence or malevolence.7 His name, then, identifies and marks him.8

It is the words as much as the actions of these two knights that make them the antithesis of the martyrs whose immortal words transcend body and time.

The first knight displays his pride and its relationship to the 'head' when he

speaks and verbally assaults Lancelot for having ridden in the cart (2579? 600); then he challenges the hero who refuses a belligerent offer to be ferried across a water obstacle for a price, 'your head if I wish' ('se je vuel, la teste an



50 ARTHURIANA

prandrai,' 2634). Lancelot's response contrasts this presumptuous discourtesy: he tells the knight he doesn't want any 'trouble' ('desavanture') but that he would never risk his head this way / No matter what the consequences' ('ja sa teste an ceste avanture / n'iert mise por n?s un meschief,' 2638-39). His word

choice, 'meschief,' draws attention to the source of language as well as the

punitive action itself. 'Meschief,' translated by Kibler as 'consequences,' puns in Old French on the embedded 'mes chief or 'my head.' This reference refocuses the nature of the challenge, shifting it from the conventional chivalric

values?courtesy and honor?which typically serve women, to where life and

power reside, namely, in the head. This shift suggests what is at stake: speech itself and who will be authorized to speak. The pointed references to the head

signify the relationship between it and language, or it as a container for language from which all challenges originate. The Knight continues to speak with pride and arrogance, even after having been defeated in the joust he initiated: he

spurns Lancelot's offered mercy, which requires him to do what he judged Lancelot for doing?riding in a cart (2753-78). Moreover, the damsel calls the Proud Knight a traitor and a felon. She does not identify the actions that

prompt her accusation, nor, significantly, is she called upon to deliver any

proofs beyond speech.

Similarly, her brother Meleaganz, who has been identified with underworld

figures such as Pluto, Celtic Gods, and Satan, uses adversarial language to

trick the Lady Guenevere and later Lancelot into captivity within his own

kingdom (51?60; 5059?85).9 Invariably, he verbally defends or justifies his

repeatedly dishonorable actions: by claiming victory, he misrepresents the outcome of his battle with Lancelot, a contest (3830-33) halted by Guenevere at the request of his father the king (3783-85; 3793-94); he traps Lancelot

with lies (5059-85); he imprisons him in the castle of a retainer who has pledged

allegiance to him (5175; 5428-30); then he walls him into a special tower,

while feigning ignorance as to Lancelot's whereabouts and asserting that it is

the Queen's champion who shirks his chivalric obligations in not meeting him at the appointed time (6112-32, 6272-89). The narrator even intrudes on

his story to exclaim, 'the faithless Meleagant? / May hellfires burn the traitor!'

('Meleagant le desleal? / le traitor, que max feus arde!,' 5426-27). Meleaganz's end will enact one of the torments of Hell, the one that guarantees not only eternal pain and loss of life, but permanent loss of his equivocating voice?

decapitation not burning. In Chr?tiens Knight of the Cart, the scenes of beheading reconceive the

religious iconography. As Bruckner so aptly puts it,



LOSING YOUR HEAD IN CHR?TIEN 51

The esthetics of conventionality operating in medieval literature demand that

typical elements?motifs, themes, figures, plots?be reused and reassembled as

writers (re)invent new works. Just as the manuscript illuminators borrowed their models for tournament scenes from representations of biblical battles...so

Chr?tien may have used religious narrative models for his secular elaboration.10

As suggested by Bruckner, the romance necessarily '(re)invents' the religious iconography from which it borrows, altering the context from a sacred to

secular one, more specifically from sacred love to courtly love. What is true for love is also true for punishment. As Spierenburg reminds

us, 'during and after the Middle Ages, every social event also had a religious element...to note the sacred quality of executions in this context is actually redundant.'11 This context, whereby the sacred informs the secular concerns the evolution of codified punishment itself, that is, the historical development of punishment. Significantly, 'criminal justice,' like courtly love, originates in the middle of the twelfth century, specifically Angevin England and the duchy of Aquitaine,12 a time and place particularly significant to Chr?tien who, in the second half of the twelfth century, served Marie de Champagne, daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Citing another historian who comes to a similar conclusion, Spierenburg explains the distinction between Germanic law and this new emerging concept:

Achter considered the element of moral disapproval as the essence of punishment. This notion was largely absent from Germanic law, which did not differentiate between accidents and intentional acts...For the private avenger redressing a

personal wrong, the wickedness of the other party is so self-evident that it need not be stated. As long as the law merely attempts to encourage reconciliation, it is likewise indifferent to a moral appreciation of the acts which started the conflict...The beginnings of a distinction between civil and criminal cases become apparent. The latter are iniquitates, acts that are to be disapproved of morally and which put their author at the misericordia of his lord. Thus it is understandable that a new emphasis on the moral represensibility of illegal acts also dates from the middle of the twelfth century. Indeed this period witnessed an

early wave of moralization-individualization, connected to what medievalists have long been accustomed to call the Renaissance of the twelfth century.13

The names used in the poem to identify Lancelot's antagonists emphasize this movement of moralization. Their crimes are iniquitates, as first made clear by the maiden's accusations of the Proud Knight and then demonstrated

by Meleaganz's actions throughout the poem: from the latter's initial challenge to Arthur's court, to his treachery in combat and 'immoral' captivity of Lancelot. The issue of morality also affects attitudes to mercy both historically and in the poem. This new attitude of morality and mercy, which shows 'that



52 ARTH?RIANA

a religious notion has entered criminal justice,'14 may inform Lancelot's struggle as to how to keep both his promise to give the Lady the head of the defeated

knight and grant the defeated knight mercy, as is his custom. He would seem

to be facing a choice between two kinds of justice that require two different

responses: beheading to redress a personal wrong, or mercy that abrogates that wrong.

In addition to this juxtaposition of old and new responses to the law is

another issue, that of subordination and domination, also represented by the

traditional relationship of God to his creation: The relationship of all people with God had always been viewed as one of subordination.'15 Although

beheading is deferred in both instances of combat, in neither case does Lancelot

ultimately yield mercy. In the first situation, involving the Proud Knight, Lancelot justifies his action of withholding mercy by offering the supplicant another chance to fight, this time with an added advantage, the handicapping of his own movements. In the final contest, involving Meleaganz, Lancelot

does not wait for a plea that the poet tells us is unlikely to come anyway

(7081-83). But in his contest with the Proud Knight, it is to serve a lady's

request that Lancelot is caught in the dilemma of equivocating mercy; it is

she who requires the head, not him; in his first contest with Meleaganz, Lancelot grants his opponent mercy because his Lady Guenevere requests it,

while she is herself responding to another's wishes, King Bademagu's, whose

son's life is in jeopardy. In the final contest, Lancelot defeats and beheads

Meleaganz; the Queen, unbidden by anyone, does not speak for the knight who will not speak for himself. Beheading is, then, in one case demanded by an anonymous Lady, in another deferred by the Queen at the request of a

king, and, lastly, unimpeded by male or female intercessors. The action in all

cases is solely executed by the male hero. Thus, it is the deferral of decapitation that in both cases draws attention to who rules in the poem, who is subordinate

to whom, and what the implications are of shifting authorities.

Meleaganz will not suffer beheading by choice. One issue in Chretien may

well be Maleaganz's inability to rule his own domain and his assertion of

independence from King Arthur's rule. More prominently, however, Chretien's

use of beheading as closure becomes identified with issues of control or

authority not as they refer to male rule but as they relate specifically to women.

The scenes of beheading become a means by which to consider to whom the

Queen belongs: to Arthur by right of marriage, to Meleaganz by right of

conquest, to Lancelot, by right of love; or, put another way, what powers

marriage, conquest, and love confer or deny her.

In Chretien's romance, love is primarily defined and controlled by women.

The poet tells us as much:




Puis que ma dame de Chanpaigne vialt que romans a feire anpraigne,

je Tanprendrai molt volentiers, corne cil qui est suens antiers

de quanqu'il puet el monde feire,...

mes tant dirai ge que mialz oevre

ses comandemanz an ceste oevre

que sans ne painne que g'i mete.

Del Chevalier de la Charette comance Chrestlens son livre;

mati?re et san li done et livre la contesse, et li s'antremet

de panser si que rien ni met fors sa painne et s'antanc?on

[Since my lady of Champagne Wishes me to begin a romance,

I shall do so most willingly, As one who is entirely at her service

In anything he can undertake in this world....

I will say, however, that her command

Has more importance in this work

Than any thought or effort I might put into it.

Chretien begins his book About the Knight of the Cart; The source and the meaning are furnished and given him

By the countess, and he strives

Carefully to add nothing But his effort and diligence]. (1-5, 21-29)16

Based on Chr?tiens claim that the 'mati?re et san' (here translated by Kibler as 'source and meaning') are Marie's and the 'painne et s'antanc?on' (or, 'effort and diligence') are his own has prompted critics to remark that the aim of the

prologue is 'Chretien's acknowledgment of the Countess's substantial contribution to his own literary creation'17; or, as another critic puts it, the

'literary service of the poet' mirrors and glosses 'Lancelot's knightly service and vice versa.'18 This mirroring has been understood as submission to the

Lady's control, to both the Queen of the poem and the Countess of

Champagne, Chr?tiens patroness. As Bruckner explains in noting the evidence for this parallel, 'Just as Chr?tien willingly obeys Marie's commandment to write the Charette, so Lancelot submits to all of Guenevere's commands with

equal willingness to serve,'19 and this 'encourages us to equate Lancelot's chivalric service with the narrator's poetic enterprise.'20 Krueger concurs and adds, 'In the Prologue, the clerk responds voluntarily to Marie's wishes by fulfilling the narrative contract as she has determined it, but he does so in a



54 ARTHURIANA

way which dramatizes the constraints of his courtly performance. Chr?tiens

service to his implied female public will be as submissive ('Come cil qui est

suens anders,' 1. 4) and as confined as is Lancelot's courtly service to

Guenevere.'21 This qualified submission reinforces Wheeler and Cohen's

assertion that 'Gender performances mark not only private but also cultural

constructs of power and powerlessness, and frequently reveal individual and

collective anxieties about identity boundaries, about the Other in terms of

sex, status, race, and religion.'22

Perhaps it is in acknowledgment as well as deference to the Countess Marie

that in this romance, women appear to be empowered23 : all that the hero

Lancelot accomplishes is achieved through the agency of a woman, and this

agency is active, not passive. It is not merely love in the person of Guenevere

who guides the hero, but individual women whom he encounters on his

journey.24 The narrative, thus, is partly controlled, or at least partly determined,

by women of great influence both inside and outside the poem.25 Service is

mutual: the hero, like the poet, serves Ladies, and they serve and support him. Therefore, it follows that those knights who are beheaded have an

adversarial relationship with women and serve only themselves: Meleaganzs sister loathes the Proud Knight, though she offers no cause for her feeling or

her accusations (2930-31); and her brother Meleaganzs aggressive treatment

of the Queen contrasts Lancelot's indulgent service.26

It is in this context?of women as controllers of the narrative and of love?

that the complex politics of beheading needs to be seen. In discussing Christine

de Pisan's Le Livre de la Cit? des Dames, Maureen Quilligan argues that Christine

'does not merely recontain and recast violence,' specifically of dismemberment

and decapitation, but that she 'makes the violence political.'27 Chretien

precedes Christine in politicizing the violence. Unlike Christines poem where

the victims are women, in Chr?tiens romance, the only characters to suffer

beheading are male, and they are notable for women's perception of their

disloyalty, if not for their outright subjugation of them. Meleaganzs sister

simply confirms the impression the Proud Knight gives of himself: that he is

arrogant and duplicitous, an attitude reflected in his discourteous challenge

of Lancelot (2624-35) and his brusque dismissal of the damsel's accusations:

'Do not believe a word she says / For she hates me' ('Ne la cr?ez mie, / qu'ele me het,' 2818-19). He would seem to be a double for her brother: both are

verbally and physically aggressive, competent fighters but supercilious and

unprincipled. The Proud Knight would control the Maiden by the authority

of his voice and dismissive contradiction of her claims, just as the Maidens

brother Meleaganz seeks to control the Queen by the authority of his voice

and the petulant contradiction of his father's assertions regarding proper




chivalric behavior (3822-74, 6256-73). Meleaganz, for example, does not mince

any words when he accuses the Queen of fornication with Kay. When she

denies his charge, he fumes: 'By my head... / All your words are worth nothing!' ('Par mon chief,... / quanque vos dites est neanz!,' 4785-86, also 4756-67,

4787-89). This assertion will rebound on the head whose speech devalues

Guenevere's words ('dites').28 Through combat, Lancelot will prove the worth

of what the Queen says, the value of her self-articulation; though in the ensuing trial by combat, Meleaganz's father, King Bademagu, will keep his son from

his ultimate fate of losing the presumptuous head he swears by (5026-27). In this romance, lack of faith or faithlessness often refers to the verbalized

negation of a female voice, a devaluing of women's authority or control. Those

who lose their heads in Hell or in the geography of the romance, are those

who have denied and defied the words of God or women. Such is certainly the assessment of the Lady who requires the head of the Proud Knight, whom

she calls 'plus desleal' (2894), the most disloyal or faithless, a reiteration of

what she claimed earlier

'...et voir, einz ne trovas

si felon ne si desleal.

Ja ne feras pechi? ne mal,

ein?ois feras aumosne et bien,

que c'est la plus desleax rien

qui onques fust ne jam?s soit'

[ 'in truth, you have never encountered

A more base and faithless knight. You will commit no sin nor evil, But will instead do a good and charitable act, For he is the most faithless being

Who ever was or ever will be].' (2810-15)

In turn, the Proud Knight claims 'you would sin / If you believed my enemy' ('pechi? feriez / se m'anemie cr?iez,' 2915-16), a false assertion in the terms of the romance, as the succeeding narrative action will show: by believing the

Maiden and not yielding mercy a second time, Lancelot 'saves' himself; for, it is this Maiden who later rescues him from her brother Meleaganz's prison tower, thereby making it possible for him to defeat her evil sibling in battle and finally avenge the imprisonment of the Queen, the people of Logres, and himself.

The two recreant knights' cavalier scorn and presumption of power require that they lose their heads, and, therefore, their language and its powers. Those

who discuss decapitation invariably cite Freud's association of beheading with castration. Yet it may be difficult to reduce the meaning of the action to the



56 ARTHURIANA

simple Freudian equation since the responsibility for the action or inaction, rests with both male and female characters who articulate more than one

position, including opposing interests: two ladies with contrasting demands, one who demands a knights head, the other who requests the action be

withheld, albeit in deference to a king who uses her as intercessor; and Lancelot

himself who, in the first case, might have granted mercy were the head not

already promised and, in the the second, did not wait to learn if any would

intercede for his silent nemesis.29 Significantly, in this romance, women do

not wield the sword as Judith did. Lancelot, the defender of Love and Ladies,

does the actual beheading. He is the ideal courtly hero for the Ladies of the

narrative. One Lady who has tested him, effuses

'Des lores que je conui primes chevalier, un seul nan conui

que je prisasse fors cestui la tierce part d'un angevin'

['Of all the knights I have ever known, There is not one except this knight That I would esteem The third part of an angevin']. (1270-73)

In this compliment, other knights are rated as a small coin impossibly divided

in thirds. Implicit in the metaphor is Lancelot's superiority to this coin, his

valuation as a man, divided or undivided.

Lancelot here represents 'the real woman's attempts to manipulate the reality of fiction' which has 'no more success than fictional women's attempts to

manipulate their own reality.'30 Even if what Ferrante says is true about

women's control inside and outside texts, Krueger's comment on this text is

well taken, that 'If the image of female influence, power, and resistance is

recuperated within the text, female critical reflection on the tensions of gender is pointedly invited by the text.'31 The contradictions in female desire that

Krueger observes are little different from the contradictions in male desire,

which in turn reflect the seeming contradictions or double-sidedness of public concerns, including oppositional religious meaning and political realities. The

image of beheading contains these contradictions because of its own complex of paradoxical associations: it symbolizes both the martyr's glorious union

with God while also signifying the absolute separation of the damned from

the deity; it counterpoints the creative, immortal voice which cannot be

silenced and the threatening voice of evil that can be; and it historically functions to represent two kinds of wrongs and two kinds of punishment.




Beheadings simultaneously draw attention from and to these unresolvable issues. David Huit notes the spectacular use of'the beheading of the villainous

Meleagant' as a 'physical marker of the work's closure.' Beheading is the 'end,' the focal presence so dominant that readers 'scarcely notice or even question the absence of resolution elsewhere in the plot.'32 In this poem, beheading is an end that does not offer resolution, only closure.

In an article primarily concerned with the significance and signification of

the guillotine during and after the French Revolution, Regina Janes asks the

question, 'Why should separated heads have such power as they do'?33 Her

answer, which reassesses the Freudian analogy, is as pertinent to Chretien's

twelfth-century use of the image as it is to the use it was put to 600 years later and to quite a different ideological purpose:

Freud tells us that 'Decapitation = castration,' and heads and penises are both

highly valued protuberances...But the equation is not perfect. There is no

tradition of lofting severed genitals on pikes and carrying them about the city. For good or ill, genitals do not identify their owners. Once they have been detached, there is no way to tell whose they were.... Precisely the opposite is

true of heads. The head tells all. It identifies itself, and it speaks of its previous owner's ability, a silent narrative of fallen greatness and mastery conferred.34

'Greatness' may be debatable in history as in fiction: to rephrase the point, the head must have power of some kind and that power must matter. In the

Middle Ages, as in the eighteenth century, it was men who had power and,

therefore, more often paid with their heads. The head, however, as the source

of self-identifying speech, also represents another kind of power of which women were more often deprived than men: their voices. In Chretien's poem for Marie, the decapitated head, then, represents the presumptuous male voice

silenced as well as the challenging female voice that will not be silenced,

providing she has either a champion to fight for her or a poet to write for her. As many have noted, who wields the power and to what purpose is not a

simple question to answer in Chretien's fiction. Perhaps the lack of resolution to the question is be understood in a resonating image as powerful as any

players in the narrative.35

PENN STATE BERKS/lEHIGH VALLEY

Sandy Feinstein, who this year returned from a Fulbright in Syria, has published articles in Chaucer Review, SEL, Ben Jonson Journal, and Exemplaria, among others.



58 ARTHURIANA

NOTES

1 Although its history is long, not very much critical literature has focused on the action or image itself in relation to its Medieval historical and cultural implications. Paul-Henri Stahl's Histoire de la decapitation (Paris: PUF, 1986) does not consider the causes or implications of beheadings in Medieval history; see also the negative review of this text by A. Reix, in Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'?tranger 113 (1989), pp. 110-11, who remarks that Stahl does not even consider the 'croyance commune que la t?te,' that it is 'le si?ge

ou l'un des si?ge de l'?me.' See also, Motif Index of Folk-Literature, ed. Stith Thompson (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1958), vol. 5 of 6 vols., pp. 224-25, and 307, where beheading appears under the categories of 'Rewards and Punishments' and 'Unnatural Cruelty.' In folk literature, it is

specifically used as a punishment for adultery, rape, murder, seduction, and

persecution of wives, situations particularly relevant to Chr?tiens poem. The image has also been examined in post-medieval

art. See, for example, Regina Janes,

'Beheadings,' Representations 35 (1991): 21-51, which focuses primarily on beheading during the French revolution; Paul Joannides, 'Titian's Judith and its Context: the

Iconography of Decapitation,' Apollo Mar. 1992:163-70, who considers sixteenth

century treatments of Judith and Salome but says nothing about the iconography of decapitation as such. Jacque Le Goff, 'Head or Heart? The Political Use of

Body Metaphors in the Middle Ages,' in Fragments for a History of the Human

Body, part 3, ed. Michel Feher, et al. (New York: Zone, 1989), pp. 13-26, who

specifically emphasizes, 'the potential contribution to be made by research into the application of bodily metaphors to politics' (p. 13).

2 See the martyrdoms by beheading listed by H. Van de Waal, Iconoclass an

Iconographie Classification System, A-E Index (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1985). 3 See, for example, Joannides, above, on Salome's passivity, and, by contrast, Susan

Groag Bell, 'Medieval Women Book Owners: Arbiters of Lay Piety and Ambassadors of Culture' in Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988), p. 165, on the story of Salome and the beheading of John the Baptist as demonstrating female

power.

4 A few literary scholars have treated the topos of beheading as ritual and as symbol. See, for example, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, 'Decapitation and Coming of Age: Constructing Masculinity and the Monstrous,' Arthurian Yearbook III, ed. Keith

Busby (New York: Garland, 1993: 173-92), who sees the relationship 'between

decapitation and political, sexual and social coming of age' (p. 174). He does not include The Knight of the Cart in his discussion of texts, though he does consider

Chretien's Le Chevalier au Lion. For him, the 'display of the severed head is at once an assertion of masculinity and an admission of its constructed nature?of

the possibility of other masculinities, of a different gendering of behavior' (181). Cohen's study of the specific image of violence itself, namely beheading, takes us forward to issues of gender construction, modeling masculinities, and the

rechannelling of conflicts between young male knights or juvenes, and their seniors.




While these issues have validity within the context of the narratives he discusses, Cohen does not make clear why dismemberment, specifically decapitation, is essential to signifying them. According to Cohen, the power implicit behind the action comes less from the act and result of beheading than from its historic associations to the kings right, which he admits in romance has iost its political resonance' and becomes an

exemplary rite of passage rather than an ideological

pronouncement' (177). Cohen is concerned with male rites of passage, not with women's rites or rights, as I am. As I will argue, beheading problematizes female control and authorial attitude to it in Chretien's Lancelot, it contributes to what Bruckner calls the challenge of conflicting interpretations in the text, what I argue is the inevitable by-product of an historically 'loaded' image overdetermined in both its ubiquity and the multivalance of its associations and, therefore, meanings. Also, Mary Flavia Godfrey, 'Beowulf and Judith: Thematizing Decapitation in Old

English Poetry,' Texas Studies in Literature and Language 35.1 (1993): 1-43, and 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: the Severed Head and the Body Politic in Assays: Critical Approaches to Medieval and Renaissance Texts 8 (1995): 69-100, examines the ritualistic and political meanings of beheading, though she considers its

seemingly contradictory uses. In her discussion of Beowulf and Judith, Godfrey discusses both the Christian and pagan uses of beheading. Godfrey notes the likely origination of the image and what happens to it: that ritual sacrifice itself may become 'the language for creativity itself ('Beowulf and Judith' 10). Recognizing the strikingly different uses of decapitation, however, she observes that in the Icelandic Edda, 'decapitation and mutilation appear, usually as a means of revenge and retribution (6), a use similar to that of medieval romances in general and Chretiens Lancelot in particular. On the other hand, in her reading of Judith, informed by Hermann's psychoanalytical methodology, this mode of revenge and retribution becomes 'Holofernes s symbolic castration that typologizes the required abnegation of the self in the Christian life,' thereby supplying a rationale for not

only psychological but theological interest in a graphic depiction of the thwarting of misplaced sexual desires' (28). It is not clear, however, why decapitation must

equal castration to represent the abnegation of the self, which is historically understood as embodied in the head, not the testicles. The typological connection of self to sexuality notwithstanding, Godfrey offers a provocative reading of the

image in hagiography, while contrasting the very different use in the epic tradition. It is this issue of domination and subordination, of identifying the bodily site of power and challenging it that Godfrey considers in her discussion of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In her treatment of this later poem, her reading of the severed head accrues meaning quite unlike that which she explores in the Anglo Saxon poetry. She bases her reading of the beheading game in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight on the convention of seeing the body's head as analogous to the king's authority, or the relation of the king's body to the body politic. In the context of this tradition, 'depicting decapitation becomes a shorthand for

questioning the efficacy of government, as it also stands for the individual's capacity for self-rule, as the head is also part of the single body' (70).



6o ARTHURIANA

5 See above Godfrey, 10. 6 Chretien deTroyes, Lancelot, or The Knight of the Cart (Le Chevalier de la Charette),

trans. William Kibler (New York: Garland, 1981). All quotations are taken from this edition.

7 Dictionaire de l'ancienne langue fran?aise, 1881 ed., vol. 5, see the definitions and variants for mal, including the variant mel. See also malivolence, Old French for 'malevolence/

8 More than one form of the name appears, all with the first syllable 'Mel': 'Meleaganz' 'Meliaganz,' 'Meleagant' and 'Meliagant.' As is characteristic of spelling variants

of early language usage, the changes in spelling have little to do with grammar, prosody, or context. I have chosen to use the form with the final syllable ganz' because that form appears more often than the others in the Old French version

provided by Kibler (41 times as opposed to 18 in my manual count). Kibler bases his text on the scribe Guiot's thirteenth-century manuscript copy; in his translation,

he refers to the character as Meleagant, which has become standard, though I am

uncertain as to why this is the case. Fifty-eight references to the name in all its varied forms contrast with the lack of identification of the eponymous hero who is unnamed until he meets with his antagonist Meleaganz and Guenevere calls his name and, thus, his identity, into being.

9 Source studies identify Meleaganz with the classical Pluto, Christian Satan, and

Celtic Gods of the Other World. See Kenneth G. T. Webster, Guenevere: A Study of Her Abductions (Milton: Turtle, 1951), pp. 2-4, cited by Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner

' The Chevalier de la Charette (Lancelot),'' in The Romances of Chr?tien de

Troyes ed. Douglas Kelly (Lexington: French Forum, 1985), p. 155, which remarks

Meleaganz's 'devil-like pose.' 10 Ibid., p. 156. 11 Pieter Spierenburg, The Spectacle of Suffering (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984),

p. 6.

12 Ibid., p. 4.

13 Spierenburg, p. 5. 14 Ibid., p. 5. 15 Ibid., p.5. 16 This passage has drawn considerable critical attention. See, for example, Kibler's

textual note, p. 297, where he summarizes the various viewpoints on this passage.

See, also, Moshe Lazar, 'Lancelot et la 'mulier mediatrix': La Qu?te de soi ? travers

la femme,' L'esprit Cr?ateur 9 (1969): 243-56; David Huit, 'Author/Narrator/

Speaker: The Voice of Authority in Chr?tiens Charette in Discourses of Authority in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, ed. Kevin Brownlee and Walter Stephens

(Hanover: University Press, 1989): 76-96; and Bruckner, in Le Chevalier.

17 Huit, pp. 91-92.

18 Bruckner, Le Chevalier, p. 141.

19 Ibid., p. 144. 20 Roberta L. Krueger, 'The Author's Voice: Narrators, Audiences, and the Problems

of Interpretation' in The Legacy of Chr?tien de Troyes, ed. Norris J. Lacy, Douglas



LOSING YOUR HEAD IN CHRETIEN 6l

Kelly, and Keith Busby, vol i of 2 vols., p. 120; and Joan Ferrante, 'Public Postures and Private Maneuvers: Roles Medieval Women Play' in Women and Power in the

Middle Ages, pp. 220?221, who argues that it may be a reaction to the Countess's

control that led to his giving the work to someone else to complete. 21 Roberta Krueger, 'Contracts and Constraints: Courtly Performances in Yvain and the

Charette' in The Medieval Court in Europe 6 (1986): 99. 22 Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Bonnie Wheeler, eds., Becoming Male in the Middle

Ages (New York: Garland, 1997), p. xiii.

23 Lazar, above, moves in this direction when he sees the women as mediating the

quest and contributing to its success. For an

opposing view, see Roberta L. Krueger, 'Desire, Meaning, and the Female Reader: The Problem in Chr?tiens Charette' in The Passing of Arthur: New Essays in Arthurian Tradition, eds. Christopher Baswell and William Sharpe (New York: Garland, 1988), pp. 31-51.

24 Lazar, pp. 246-50, lists each woman and her contribution to Lancelot's quest;

Krueger, 'Desire, Meaning,' p. 36, sees each woman as reflecting Lancelot's identity;

for M. Victoria Guerin, The Fall of Kings and Princes: Structure and Destruction in Arthurian Tragedy (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1995), p. 117, the women present Lancelot with 'increasingly difficult and opposing demands' that he must reconcile (p. 117).

25 Consider, for example, that Lancelot is lodged and provided for, including a gift of horse and weapons, by women who also test him. See lines 446-594, where Lancelot receives lodging, horse and arms after his 'bed test'; 940?45 and 1020?

34, where he receives lodging and food, and meets the covant test as well as a test

of his preparedness and strength in defending the Lady from a staged attempted rape; 2510-42, where he receives hospitality from a woman who, however, does

not test him, perhaps because she is married to a knight who will welcome Lancelot; he receives his directions from a woman (608-706); he is granted sight of the

Queen and of that which is hers, a comb, while in the company of women (556? 61, 1385-1423); his magic ring, which differentiates the illusory from the real, was

given to him by a woman (2345-55, 3124-29); he is released from his first capitivity by a woman, which enables him to fight in the tournament at Noauz (5436?504); and, he is released from a more isolated prison by another Lady (6375-625).

26 Most simply put, Meleaganz has imprisoned the Queen, restricting her speech, movements, and power; Lancelot would free her, enlarging her space and her

power.

27 Maureen Quilligan, The Allegory of Female Authority (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 196. Quilligan does not consider or compare any of the many male

martyrdoms involving the same type of violence.

28 Earlier Chretien juxtaposed Lancelot's and Meleaganz's very different behavior towards Guenevere's words, 'These words, which had not been / Spoken in a

whisper, were overheard by / Lancelot and Meleagant... / Lancelot heard what

was spoken / No sooner had the last words / Flowed from her mouth? / No sooner had she said... / 'I wish Lancelot to restrain himself / Than nothing could have made Lancelot / Touch Meleagant or make any movement,' (Ceste parole ne fu mie / dite a consoil, ainz l'ont oie / Lanceloz et

Meleaganz... / La parole 01



62 ARTH ? RI ANA

Lanceloz; / Ne puis que Ii darr?ens moz / de la boche li fu colez, / puis qu'ele ot

dit:...'que il se taigne, jel voel bien,' / puis Lanceloz por nule rien / nel tochast ne ne se me?st' (3795-97, 3805-11). Lancelot does not question or negate Guenevere's

words; Meleaganz does nothing but question and denigrate the Queen's words.

29 See, for example, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, p. 173, and Regina Janes, pp. 28-29. 30 Ferrante, p. 221.

31 Krueger, 'Desire, Meaning,' p. 46.

32 Huit, p. 86.

33 Janes, pp. 28-29.

34 Ibid., pp. 28-29. 35 I would like to thank Irven Resnick, who, during an NEH Institute on 'A View

from Noah's Ark' (summer 1996), brought to my attention Rabanus Maurus and the work of Katherine Park. I would also like to thank the librarians at the Christian

Art Index of Princeton University for their assistance in locating twelfth-century images of beheading and for making their resources available to me during the summer of 1993 when I began my research for this paper.



Documents

Arthuriana Volume 9 Issue 4 1999 [Doi 10.2307%2F27869496] SANDY FEINSTEIN -- Losing Your Head in Chrétien's Knight of the Cart