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Middle English Marvels: Magic, Spectacle, and Morality in the Fourteenth Century

2019; Penn State University Press; Volume: 8; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5325/preternature.8.1.0148

2161-2196

Melissa Ridley Elmes,

Medieval Literature and History

In Middle English Marvels: Magic, Spectacle, and Morality in the Fourteenth Century, Tara Williams offers a study of her subject that is both scholarly and accessible. Working from an interdisciplinary vantage point at the intersection of literary and manuscript studies, historical contexts, magic studies, and affect studies, Williams reveals that Middle English writers brought magical, spectacular, and moral elements together into what became a coherent theory of the marvelous. Throughout the book's four chapters Williams uses a variety of romance, hagiographic, and philosophical texts to demonstrate that this theory is traceable across genres and throughout the fourteenth century.The introduction offers a concise literature review and summary of the chapters and primary sources for this study, setting up the more-or-less chronological argument that “over the course of the fourteenth century mostly supernatural—and static—marvels in Sir Orfeo give way to interactive marvels that mix the magical with the technological in the Canterbury Tales” and that this shift consists of a move from moral systems to the consideration of a more individualized moral character (8). Williams takes an exceptionally clear and straightforward approach to introducing the argument and its framework in these opening pages, eschewing extensive explanation in favor of spare, yet rich, description and avoiding the bogging-down of the reader in an overabundance of material. This approach allows the chapters to do their own work as case studies in making the argument rather than demanding the introduction do the heavy lifting, rendering the introduction not only direct in its presentation of the book's argument, but also a genuine pleasure to read and think with.Chapter 1, “Mirroring Otherworlds: Fairy Magic, Wonder, and Morality,” both characterizes fairies as a form of wonder that is intense because of its connection to magic, and provides a balance of fear and fascination stemming from the fairies' simultaneous anthropomorphism and otherworldliness. With Sir Orfeo as her primary source in this chapter, Williams uses theories of wonder and spectacle to show how this characterization permits fairies in the tale to serve as a lens of morality, focusing on the gallery of humans in the garden of the fairy king as a spectacle that reveals the moral code of the fairies and encourages a moral reaction from the readers. Pointing out that “we know that the fairies are responsible for the gallery, but we do not know exactly what they have done to the figures or whether that magic represents the limit of their abilities or merely a facet or fraction of them,” Williams encourages her reader to consider the moral and ethical question: “did the violence attract the fairies, or are they responsible for it?” (18–19). She concludes that in fact the gallery presents us with a glimpse of the fairies' moral code, and that it is neither random nor uncontrolled. This code mirrors human codes of chivalry and ethics, and the scene thus encourages critical reflection on those codes that, in turn, magnify the gendered symbolic function of Heurodis, the subject of Orfeo's gaze.In chapter 2, “Revealing Spectacles: Virtue and Identity in Fair Unknowns,” Williams turns to the Middle English “fair unknown” tradition, in which an unknown knight undergoes a series of tests that display his inherent virtue, ultimately unmasking him as a noble and worthy individual. Working on the premise that marvels, which are an essential feature of romance, take on a special resonance in fair unknown tales, she shows how magic not only tests the virtue and moral code of the knight in question but also raises concerns about identity, which in turn is tied to the question of the knight's quality as a person and suitability as a knight and lover. Both his knighthood and his status as a courtly lover are sites of moral testing, in keeping with most romances from the medieval period in which morality appears in the form of chivalrous behavior codes that are tied to courtly love. Williams argues that “the link between magic and morality is actually most evident when magic takes the form of a marvel that explicitly tests chivalric virtue,” and that “a hero who triumphs with the help of magic creates doubts about his own heroism,” whereas “overcoming a marvelous opponent or obstacle … provides an extreme testament in that regard” (41). This sets the stage for her reading of the scene in Thomas Chestre's Lybeaus Desconus between Lybeaus and the dragon fairy woman as an ethical dilemma whose resolution reveals both the knight's personal virtue and his identity, while reclassifying the female serpent figure in this tale as redeemer rather than seductress.Chapter 3, “Moving Marvels: Action and Agency in Courtly Spectacles,” considers optics theory and the manuscript context of Cotton Nero A.x, the only extant manuscript containing Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (SGGK), in a reading that focuses on the intersection of morality and ethics as it relates specifically to the Arthurian tradition of that poem. Williams notes that all four poems in this manuscript (Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight) use visual marvels to impart their moral lesson to the viewer. Williams provides engaging readings of the manuscript's illustrations and their relationship to the tales, and her tying of the SGGK illustrations to the standard understanding of the poem as a study in ethical and moral issues for the characters and readers alike renders this a fresh interpretation of a well-trod idea.Williams begins chapter 4, “Talking Magic: Chaucer's Spectacles of Language,” with a summary of thinking on the subject of marvels by philosophers including Augustine and Isidore of Seville, with particular attention to the distinction between miracles, which are the result of divine agency, and marvels, which include all other forms of the marvelous in medieval thought as expressed by Gervase of Tilbury. Williams reminds us that an important element in this distinction is the ready ability to classify something as belonging to one or the other category, and that this skill depends in large part on familiarity and the ability to rely on what we are seeing so that we can understand the agency and intent of the wonder confronting us. She then argues that marvels work differently in literary texts than in medieval magic and science taxonomies, because “agency and intent are often obscure, so marvels must be identified and classified on the basis of representation and effect” (103). Following this theoretical framework with a classification of the marvels in the Canterbury Tales, Williams concludes the chapter with a pair of readings of the “Wife of Bath's Tale” and the “Squire's Tale” that demonstrate how Chaucer converts the visual spectacle of the marvelous into a linguistic one, “discouraging readers from becoming absorbed in [magic] for its own sake” so that the focus remains on the ethical and moral questions raised by the use of magic, which in turn “bring[s] extraordinary pressures to bear on characters, and involve[s] the readers more profoundly in moral issues” (125).Williams's conclusion positions her argument within the broader critical conversations in romance magic and magic studies more broadly, offering suggestions for further paths of exploration. There is much to admire in this monograph, particularly Williams's critically generous notes and evident appreciation of and respect for the scholars with whom she is in dialogue. Williams's work is a welcome addition to romance criticism and Middle English literary scholarship. Beyond these immediate fields, those readers with an interest in questions of gender and monstrosity, morality and ethics, and of course magic and the marvelous should certainly avail themselves of this book, which will appeal to scholars, students, and individuals with a general interest in these subjects, thanks in no small part to Williams's skill in writing accessibly and engagingly, as well as critically.