Living Landscape: Attitudes Toward the Environment in French Medieval Literature Katherine A. Snider A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2015 Reading Committee: Denyse Delcourt, Chair Louisa Mackenzie Richard Watts Stephen Hinds Program Authorized to Offer Degree: French and Italian Studies ©Copyright 2015 Katherine A. Snider University of Washington Abstract Living Landscape: Attitudes Toward the Environment in French Medieval Literature Katherine Allene Snider Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Professor Denyse Delcourt French Studies This dissertation demonstrates the material grounding of twelfth and thirteenth century French texts by using environmental history and archaeology in conjunction with close readings. The title, “Living Landscape,” attempts to capture the physical and symbolic imbrication of humans, animals, plants, topographies, and objects in these texts, and each chapter addresses one or more of these enmeshed configurations. The first seeks to recognize the life and agency particular to the non-human environment, and the way in which the “inanimate” can nonetheless act on the human characters in the Chanson de Roland and the Roman d’Alexandre via physical manifestations. The second chapter focuses on the way in which humans live and interact with the material world around them, particularly how the non-human nodes in the network can be negatively impacted by human misbehavior, particularly in the form of physical and moral pollution in French grail romances from the Conte du Graal to the Queste del Saint Graal. The third chapter has as its subject how the historical, cultural and material conditions of one’s surroundings can impact relations to objects, based on the geo-political situation which determines the familiarity of automata, hydraulic, and fabric technologies Floire et Blanchefleur, the Voyage de Charlemagne, and De Planctu Naturae. I am not claiming that one can glean “facts” about medieval “reality” from medieval literature; rather, that the inclusion and manipulation of said “facts” can shed light on the interpretation of the text itself. In other words, here are two questions to which this project attempts to respond: what is the degree of faithfulness of depictions of geography, pollution or technology to contemporary realities or knowledge levels, and what do any alterations tell us? Table of Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter One: Agentic Topography ................................................................................................. 7 The Chanson de Roland ............................................................................................................ 11 The Roman d’Alexandre............................................................................................................ 19 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 42 Chapter Two: Moral Pollution in the Grail Romances ................................................................. 44 Wastelands ................................................................................................................................ 48 Waste Forests and Moors .......................................................................................................... 69 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 79 Chapter Three: Artificial/Nature ................................................................................................... 81 Automata ................................................................................................................................... 83 Garden Technology ................................................................................................................... 90 Fabric Technologies .................................................................................................................. 95 Representational Technologies ............................................................................................... 100 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 107 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 113 Snider 1 Introduction This dissertation demonstrates the material grounding of twelfth and thirteenth century French texts by using environmental history and archaeology in conjunction with close readings. The title, “Living Landscape,” attempts to capture the physical and symbolic imbrication of humans, animals, plants, topographies, and objects in these texts, and each chapter addresses one or more of these enmeshed configurations. The first seeks to recognize the life and agency particular to the non-human environment, and the way in which the “inanimate” can nonetheless act on the human characters in the Chanson de Roland and the Roman d’Alexandre via physical manifestations. The second chapter focuses on the way in which humans live and interact with the material world around them, particularly how the non-human nodes in the network can be negatively impacted by human misbehavior, particularly in the form of physical and moral pollution in French grail romances from the Conte du Graal to the Queste del Saint Graal. The third chapter has as its subject how the historical, cultural and material conditions of one’s surroundings can impact relations to objects, based on the geo-political situation which determines the familiarity of automata, hydraulic, and fabric technologies Floire et Blanchefleur, the Voyage de Charlemagne, and De Planctu Naturae. I am not claiming that one can glean “facts” about medieval “reality” from medieval literature; rather, that the inclusion and manipulation of said “facts” can shed light on the interpretation of the text itself. In other words, here are two questions to which this project attempts to respond: what is the degree of faithfulness of depictions of geography, pollution or technology to contemporary realities or knowledge levels, and what do any alterations tell us? Before proceeding to a more detailed consideration of my chapters, I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge my indebtedness to Snider 2 ecocriticism, ecotheory and its various offspring, including but not limited to object oriented ontology, new materialisms, and animal studies. I have benefited from wide-spread medievalist work on English texts, which undermine presentism in ecotheory. For example, Gillian Rudd’s “green reading” has expanded the more prevalent symbolic readings of the non-human in texts to valorize even the briefest landscape description. “Green reading poses the question of exactly what such non-iconographic, descriptive elements are being true to: of whose ‘real’ is operating at any given time and what undercurrents may be at work in those apparently insignificant ‘other details’” (Rudd 11). In the Middle Ages, the “real” at stake is at once physical and spiritual since each material phenomena had an explanatory referent in the realm of the divine. In the chapters that follow, the choice of words or the turn of a phrase that describes a landscape or an object often opens up understanding of interconnected concepts on physical and symbolic levels. For example, in Chapter Two, we see how in the Conte du Graal, the Waste Forest’s non-utilitarian value to the twelfth-century urban economy and its association with the “lande” or moor connects to Orgueilleus de la Lande, who badly mistreats his “amie,” and from there to other remote locations that lend themselves to rape. Ecocriticism’s initial fixation on the color green has recently received some backlash for the way in which it can reify “nature” and “wilderness” and thus reinforce the hierarchical divide between humans and non-humans. For example, Prismatic Ecology: Ecotheory beyond Green proposes alternatives to “green reading” by embracing other hues to complicate this nature/culture divide (Cohen, “Introduction: Ecology’s Rainbow” XX). My second and third chapters follow somewhat in this tradition, since the second chapter is interested in non- utilitarian or destroyed environments, and the third is interested in human crafts, particularly the Snider 3 precious metals, crystals and silks representing foreign automata, hydraulic, and fabric technologies. Eileen Joy uses a “both-and” approach to advocate for non-human agency (which is at stake in Chapter One). Eileen Joy’s “You Are Here: A Manifesto,” theorizes a way of being in the world which eliminates terms of division between the human and the non-human, placing everything “on the same ontological footing as everything else, including us” (Joy 164). She admits like other critics that such terminology is unavoidable, as it will be in these chapters. Part of her manifesto involves the recognition of everything’s personhood and letting “the world happen to us for a change” (Joy 170). This idea is crucial to Chapter One, which works to recognize the way in which “[s]ilent things [...] speak, exert agency, propel narrative,” like the storm and France’s mourning in the Chanson de Roland and the sea in the Roman d’Alexandre (Cohen, “Introduction: All Things” 6). Scholars like Eileen Joy and J .J. Cohen have built on the “vibrant materialism” of Jane Bennett and the Actor Network Theory of Bruno Latour. Latour’s ANT theory, which involves the non-hierarchical connection of human and non-human “actors” across time, space, and categorical divisions, has been particularly useful for Animal Studies and object oriented ontology, as its framework allows the animal to be recognized as an individual with agency, as well as theorizing the impact of the circulation of inanimate objects upon the animate (see Chapter Three, for the circulation of automata, fabrics, and other technologies). Latour’s series of networks is reminiscent of the Chain of Being discussed in Chapter One, except that the latter is hierarchical and tolerates agency other than God’s uneasily. Now I’d like to turn to a more detailed discussion of the individual chapters. Chapter One is concerned with the agency possessed by French and Spanish landscape in the Chanson de Roland, and by the sea and hostile Eastern landscape in the Roman d’Alexandre, which all fall under the heading of “agentic topography” and comprise a “spectrum of non- Snider 4 human agency,” which runs from an impact on the human characters that is so subtle as to almost pass unnoticed (like the way in which the landscape forms a funnel between two sites of violence, between the mountain pass at Roncevaux and the Spanish Shadowy Valley, or the sea’s positive presence during Alexander’s life) to the terrifying storms before which human beings cower uncomprehending, unaware that these storms celebrate Alexander’s birth or mourn Roland’s death. The ambush of Charlemagne's rearguard at Roncevaux and the legendary life of Alexander the Great, including his Eastern conquests, are both topoi, common sites of inspiration for epics throughout the Middle Ages (D. Kelly, “Alexander’s Clergie” 52). Topography is an anachronistic word for the French-speaking Middle Ages, but possesses a helpful etymological connection to the word topos, and thus underlines the realistic details of geography including topographical relief and climate that undergird the materia or materials which the author shaped in order to reveal the truth he sees hidden within the text (D. Kelly, The Art of Medieval French Romance 37ff). In Chapter Two’s corpus of French grail romances from Chrétien de Troyes’ Le Conte du Graal to the Queste del Saint Graal, the key word is pollution, which has existed in the French language since the twelfth century (Leguay 13). In the first section of this chapter, the concrete destruction of war turns Biaurepaire into a wasteland or “terre gaste” in the Conte du Graal. The vocabulary and concrete symptomatology of the Wasteland topos in French grail romances suggests that human violence and material environmental destruction overlap, even so far as human moral misconduct has environmental consequences beyond the usual cause and effect. In some of the later grail romances like the Queste del Saint Graal, one act of human immorality (murder or rape) results in the same kind of environmental desolation enacted by all-out war. I argue that moral pollution in the grail romances is extrapolated from (and remains connected to) Snider 5 material realities of war, famine, and trade, that would have been familiar to medieval audiences. In the second section of this chapter, the concept of pollution reminds us that the twelfth century was a time of increasing urbanization, when cities were plagued by human and animal waste, artisanal smoke and water pollution, noise and odor pollution. Populations within cities relied on nearby fields and forests for food and wood for construction and burning. We can guess that Perceval’s childhood home, the Waste Forest, didn’t fall within an urban resource “footprint” due to the small stature of the trees, unsuitable for building (Hoffmann 288–294; Bechmann 28). The Waste Forest’s isolation from human population centers and its uselessness for urban consumption, seem communicable to Perceval. These traits of the Waste Forest appear responsible for Perceval’s anti-social behavior, particularly his near-rape of the Tent Damsel. Upon meeting the Tent Damsel’s “ami,” however, Orgueilleus de la Lande, who spouts misogynistic rhetoric, and in comparison with Gauvain’s own unchivalrous intentions toward a damsel, it becomes clear that moors as remote locations lend themselves to violence. The first two chapters of this study focus on the material reality underpinning medieval literary interactions between humans and their non-human environment. What remains to be considered in a range of human-environmental relations are crafts or the “mechanical arts,” human modification of the non-human world. Just as E. Jane Burns reads “through clothes” worn in courtly love narratives, Chapter Three performs a reading of twelfth-century texts through the material presence and production history of fabric, hydraulic, and automata technologies. Crafts or the “mechanical arts” have long been criticized and praised for being human creations inspired by nature’s divine forms. In texts such as the Roman d’Alexandre, Floire et Blanchefleur, and the Voyage de Charlemagne, the location of crafts in non-Latinate cultures contributes to the atmosphere of distrust while also reflecting material realities.