35. Arthuriana: Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages: A Collaborative Study, ed. R. S. Loomis
Few of the contributions to this Arthurian encyclopedia (for it is little less) would feel competent to give an opinion on all the articles it contains. It was therefore difficult to find an adequate critic, and I am well aware that the Review has not done so: I am not master even of all the languages involved. I am reduced to picking about here and there for what I can tackle, like a dyspeptic at a richly-spread banquet.
The chapters are not only diverse in subject but different in kind. At one end of the scale in Professor Frappier's ‘Chrétien de Troyes’ we have full-blown literary criticism designed to ‘set in relief the creative work of the poet’ (p. 163). This is perhaps the masterpiece of the book. We have here the high French academic tradition at its best, learned as Dryasdust but urbane as Sainte-Beuve. We could do with more such Arthuriana. At the other end there are chapters (far more numerous) which are entirely taken up with close reasoning to conclusions about matter of fact.
These latter are often of great interest and value. No discipline is to be blamed for not answering questions outside its own scope. The danger is lest it should, unconsciously and by implication, prejudge them. In his ‘Origin of the Grail Legends’ Professor Loomis sets out ‘to account for’ the ‘absurdities’ (p. 277) and ‘irrationality’ (p. 276) of the story as told by Chrétien. That is, he wants to know why the Host appears in a graal instead of in a chalice or ciborium, carried by a damsel instead of by a priest. This itself, we may remark, is simply the particularization of a question which might be asked about nearly every scene in every Grail romance in the general form: ‘Why does the sacred appear in a romantic, chivalric, and to that extent secularized, guise? Why does the Grail haunt a castle, not a cathedral or abbey? Why does its pursuit take the form of knightly adventures, not of the ‘religious’ life? Why does its presence provide carnal good cheer on the table rather than grace?’
His general answer is, as we all know, that in these works we see a Pagan myth – or a whole muddle of myths – partially Christianized. But press him as to why any myths, or why just these myths, were Christianized, and you get the answer: ‘No procedure could be more reasonable than to seek the cause of the sanctification of the Grail legends in a series of misunderstandings’ (p. 287). The Body of Christ comes into the Grail romances because somebody mistook cors (a horn) for cors (body) (p. 288).
With this, you see, all the poets and romancers as such – all the concrete, talented human individuals, producing works of art for the delight and edification of other individuals – vanish from the picture. Authors are, in fact, being treated like scribes, and literary history conducted by the methods – Lachmann's methods of textual criticism. When a scribe departs from his original we assume he does so in error: because a scribe ex officio is behaving as like a machine as he can. To treat authors like scribes is to reproduce the absurdity of Bédier when he said that a certain variation from the supposed archetype of the Tristan story would not have been made independently by Eilhart and Béroul (pp. 136–7).
In reality it could be predicted that any number of authors, faced with that supposed archetype, would independently think of just this variation as one possible way out of its main difficulty. Supposing people did mistake cors (horn) for cors (body), what induced them to write just these poems about the Body? Poets are not passive pipelines through which motifs pass by their own energy. Of the things that come into his head (even if some come by error) the poet selects what he chooses.
I submit that Professor Loomis has here, like Percevale himself, failed to ask a question. He has failed to ask what why (‘Why is the Grail borne by a damsel?’) means. Why demands either an efficient cause (why did the dam burst?) or a final cause (why are you going to London?). But the Celtic myths and their possible misunderstanding are not the efficient cause of any episode in Chrétien. Their mere existence did not force him to put anything into his poem. They are at most a conditio sine qua non. He could not have put them in if he had not had them; but, having them, he put them in because (for some reason) he chose.
Nor could they be the final cause. The final cause is the effect that Chrétien intended them to have on his readers. And might not that effect be the very one which they have actually had? Might not the quasi-secularization of his sacred theme have been intended to produce just that liberation from reverential inhibitions, that fresh wonder, which the Christian matter elicits by catching us off our guard? Might not the cryptic quality be designed to exercise just that fascination which has kept Professor Loomis's attention fixed on these stories (to our delight) for so many years? When we are dealing with a genius we must not exclude the hypothesis that he meant to do just what he has in fact done.
On the other hand, we get real literary criticism from Dr Loomis on Gawain and the Green Knight. He ignores the anthropological approach which, for some years, so darkened counsel. That was an attempt to explain the knowable by the unknowable; the poem, which we can enter into, by the prehistoric rite which, if it existed, no man alive has experienced from within. It ignored the profound ambivalence of Bercilak, to which Professor Loomis does justice. Personally, I would go further than he. The final Bercilak who solemnly pronounces Gawain ‘the fautlest freke’ is not merely the madcap Bercilak whom we have seen in his own castle, still less the ogreish Bercilak of Arthur's hall. He rises high, grows more numinous.
On La
amon also Professor Loomis is good, but I suggest that he follows too readily Tatlock's strictures on his ferocity. We must indeed admit that the English Brut foists upon Arthur, without disapproval, one atrocity not found in Wace. But this is not typical. In general his rough-hewn heroes have kinder hearts than Wace's more elegant knights. His Brennus repairs war-damage and repatriates enemy refugees (5938 sq.). His Caesar – alas that ever such a soul had to go to Hell! (7223) – treats the captured Cassibelaun with courtesy (8942 sq.) Vertimer plans the liberation of all slaves (18852). Arthur vows that if he wins France every poor man shall fare the better for it (23741); he provides lovingly for his discharged veterans and sends them home with pious advice (24115 sq.). The difference between the two poets is epitomized in their descriptions of Arthur: for Wace, one of love's lovers and the founder of country manner, but, for Laamon, one who was a father to the young and a comforter to the old (19936). Laamon constantly – Wace, I believe, never – remembers the sufferings of common people. He was almost one of them. We may conjecture that he expends on the Saxons of his imaginary past a hatred aroused by the actual Normans and ‘their nith craefte’ (7116). He makes this happen at Badon which ought to have happened at Hastings. He is at once fiercer and tenderer than Wace.
Professor Loomis has well divined that Laamon's sea is always seen from the shore. We feel this in the gradual appearance of Ursula's scattered fleet (12036 sq.) We feel it still more in the waves that foamed ‘as if villages burned there’ (4528). These are breakers coming in against an off-shore wind, not deep-sea billows. But are such passages ‘landlubber's commonplaces’ (p. 110)? Landsman's, if you like; but for ‘commonplaces’ read ‘strokes of genius’.
As was expected, Professor Vinaver contributes one of the richest articles. Though he has, necessarily, much to say about sources, he never slips into the sort of scholarship that tends ‘away from the masterpiece’ (p. 546). Though he has done work enough on Malory to weary ten men, there is no hint of crambe repetita: one gets the impression that the author is still growing in his mind. Much that he has to say is controversial, but the temper is not. For him, obviously, the important thing about dissentients is not that they should be silenced but that their discussion should throw new light on Malory for us all.
This brings me to a final subject for congratulation. This is a civilized book. There is in it none of the veiled calling [of] names and unveiled resentment which, in so much modern criticism and scholarship, are rapidly restoring la brutalité des journaux anglais. The rising tide of neo-barbarism has not yet submerged medieval studies. Long may their immunity last!