The Medieval Poet as Voyeur. Looking and Listening in Medieval Love-Narratives

332 Pages·1993·16.338 MB·English

by  A. C. Spearing

Love is private, and in medieval literature especially is seen as
demanding secrecy, yet to tell stories about it is to make it
public. Looking, often accompanied by listening, is the means
by which love is brought into the public realm and by which
legal evidence of adulterous love can be obtained. Medieval
romances contain many scenes in which secret watchers and
listeners play leading roles, and in which the problematic
relation of sight to truth is a central theme. The effect of such
scenes is to place the poem's audience as secret watchers and
listeners; and in later medieval narratives, as the role of the
storyteller comes to be realized, the poet too sees himself in the
undignified role of a voyeur.
A. C. Spearing's book explores these and related themes,
first in relation to medieval and modern theories and instances
of looking, and then through a series of readings of romances
and first-person narratives, including works by Beroul, Chre-
tien, Marie de France, Gottfried von Strassburg, Chaucer,
Lydgate, Douglas, Dunbar, and Skelton. Its focus on looking
also leads to the recovery of some less well-known works such as
Partonope of Blois and The Squire of Low Degree. The general
approach is psychoanalytic, but the reading of specific medi-
eval texts always has primacy, and this in turn makes possible a
running critique of current conceptions of the gaze in relation to
power and gender.

THE MEDIEVAL POET AS VOYEUR

THE MEDIEVAL POET AS
VOYEUR
Looking and Listening in Medieval Love-Narratives
A. C. SPEARING
William R. Kenan Professor of English, University of Virginia
Fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge
CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 IRP
40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA
10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Victoria 3166, Australia
© Cambridge University Press 1993
First published 1993
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data
Spearing, A. C.
The medieval poet as voyeur: looking and listening in medieval
love-narratives / A. C. Spearing.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-5 21-41094-0
1. Poetry, Medieval - History and criticism. 2. Love poetry -
History and criticism. 3. Voyeurism in literature.
4. Point-of-view (Literature) 1. Title.
PN691.S64 1993
808.1'354- dc20 92-8129 CIP
ISBN o 521 41094 o hardback
Transferred to digital printing 2004
Contents
Preface page ix
1 Theories of looking i
2 Examples of looking 26
3 The Tristan story 51
4 Chretien de Troyes 75
5 The Lanval story 97
6 Troilus and Criseyde and The Manciple's Tale 120
7 Partonope ofBlois 140
8 The Knight's Tale and The Merchant's Tale 155
9 The Squyr of Lowe Degre 17 7
10 TheRomauntoftheRose 194
11 The Parliament of Fowls and ^4 Complaynt of a Loveres
Lyfe 211
12 The Palice of Honour and The Goldyn Targe 231
13 The Tretis of the Twa Mariit Wemen and the Wedo 249
14 Phyllyp Spar owe 268
Notes 283
Bibliography 303
317

Preface
The conscious origin of this book (of its unconscious origins the less
said the better) lies in a course of lectures given in the English
Faculty at Cambridge. These were then summarized as a paper read
at Harvard and at Pennsylvania State University in 1986 and
published as 'The Medieval Poet as Voyeur', in The Olde Daunce:
Love, Friendship, Sex and Marriage in the Medieval World, ed. Robert R.
Edwards and Stephen Spector (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1991), pp. 57-86, (E) 1991 State University of New
York, to whom I am grateful for permission to use most of the paper
here in revised form. Subsequently the material, now vastly
expanded, became the basis of two courses of graduate seminars
given at the University of Virginia; I am greatly obliged to the
participants in ENMD 961 (1989) and ENMD 983 (1990) for the
enthusiasm and critical sharpness with which they helped me to
think about many of the texts and issues discussed in the book.
In earlier versions parts of the book have been published as
follows. Chapter 5 incorporates substantial parts of 'Marie de
France and Her Middle English Adapters', Studies in the Age of
Chaucer 12 (1990), 116-56; grateful acknowledgments to the
publishers (the New Chaucer Society) and to the editor. Chapter 9
is based on 'Secrecy, Listening, and Telling in The Squyr of Lowe
Degre\ Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 20 (1990), 273-92;
grateful acknowledgments to the publishers (Duke University
Press) and editors. Chapter 13 is a rewritten and expanded version
of pages 215—23 of my Medieval to Renaissance in English Poetry
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). All reused mater-
ial has been carefully revised.
I have sometimes modified cited translations of non-English texts
in the interest of greater literalness. Italics in quotations are mine
unless otherwise noted.