Denise Baker (ed.)
Inscribing the Hundred Years’ War in French and English Cultures
(Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 2000), 277 pp., $24.50, ISBN 0-7914-4701-4.
At most conferences dealing with a historical period such as the Middle Ages, the major divide tends to be between historians and literary scholars, a divide symbolized from the historian’s perspective (which is the perspective of this reviewer) by the half-joking lament, “Not another Chaucer paper!”
The collection of essays entitled Inscribing the Hundred Years’ War in French and English Cultures clearly belongs on the literary side of this ledger. Medieval authors dealt with in the volume include the likes of Chaucer, Langland, Gower, and Deschamps, most of whom do not directly treat the Hundred Years War in their writings. Only one individual on whom these essays focus—the French writer, Christian de Pizan—can legitimately be numbered among contemporaries who wrote extensively on the war; and only her brief tribute to the “Maid of Orleans,” La Ditié de Jehanne d’Arc, drafted around the time of her death, comes under consideration. While several of the essayists do mention chroniclers such as Froissart and the Chandos herald, it is only in passing.
The collection’s literary orientation is initially signalled by choice of the word “inscribing” in the title rather than “chronicling” or “recording.” A verb used almost exclusively in literary scholarship, it refers to the way in which life experience influences an author and, through his mediation, the creative process. The resulting work need not record or even reflect very closely the experience that helped bring it into being; hence, the Hundred Years War might account for an author’s views or even the language in which he chooses to write without his ever mentioning that event. Most of the articles utilize a certain amount of “literary vocabulary” (dare one say jargon?), though fortunately, only one, Patricia Marco’s, “Inscribing the Body with Meaning: Chivalric Culture and the Norms of Violence in The Vows of the Heron,” seems to do so to excess. A few assume a degree of literary knowledge not immediately to hand among non-specialists.
While the volume is aimed primarily at literary scholars, it is not a literary analysis of medieval authors and their works; instead, it attempts to show the influence of one of the leading events of the later Middle Ages—the Hundred Years War—on literature generated by the two major combatants, England and France. Hence, it speaks to scholars of whatever persuasion who are interested in learning more about the conflict’s effect on the great writers who lived through it. Editor Denise Baker sums up the goal of her collection in an introductory paragraph:
From 1337, when Philip VI confiscated Aquitaine from Edward III, until 1453, when the English lost the duchy for good, France and England engaged in the intermittent military conflict that historians have named, somewhat inaccurately, the Hundred Years War. This period of hostilities coincided with a remarkable efflorescence of vernacular literature in both countries. French literature which had come to dominate the secular culture of Christendom in the twelfth century, continued to flourish in texts by authors such as Machaut, Deschamps, and Christine de Pizan, the first woman know to earn her living as a writer. In England, over which France had exercised cultural hegemony since the Norman Conquest, a renaissance of literature in the native language occurrred during the second half of the fourteenth century with texts by such authors as the anonymous Gawain poet, Langland, Gower, and Chaucer, the father English literature. The intersection between these two contemporaneous phenomena, the sociopolitical circumstances of the Hundred Years War and the production of vernacular literature in France and England, is the subject of this collection of essays. (1)
Using a more historically-conscious methodology that in recent decades has come to characterize the writings of many literary scholars, the contributors work from the assumption that their texts not only reflect the period in which they were drafted, but also influenced that period; or, as Baker puts it, “texts both mirror and generate social realities.” (2)
It is [the] reciprocity between literature and history that the following essays explore. Concentrating on the moment of inscription, they investigate the social logic of texts that speak of and speak to the Hundred Years War. Examining the ways in which these texts manifest the sociopolitical conditions under which they were produced and analyzing the work they perform in their cultural economy, these essays demonstrate how history influences literature and how literature intervenes in history. (3)
The goals are admirable. The question is, just how well do the essays accomplish them? To put it another way, to what extent do the writings of a Chaucer or Langland actually reflect and influence the conflict out of which they were born?
Here, a useful comparison might be made to literature generated by the great conflict that opened the twentieth century. Such works as Wilfrid Owen’ poem, Dulce et Decorum Est, Sigfried Sassoon’s trilogy, The Memoirs of George Sherston, Erich Maria Remarque’s classic All Quiet on the Western Front, the graphic memoirs of Robert Graves and Vera Brittain, and Robert E. Sherwood’s Pulitzer prize-winning play, Idiot’s Delight are all part of World War I’s legacy. Nor is it just the subject matter of these works that makes the connection clear. The enormous amount we know about the life (and, in one case, the death) of each of these twentieth century authors permits us to trace with absolute certainty the war’s influence on his or her writings. What is more, any number of surviving sources can be cited to demonstrate how these and other such works influenced the era that gave rise to them.
By contrast, if the current collection shows us anything, it shows us that no such clear connection can be drawn between the Hundred Years War and the great Anglo-French literature of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The problem lies in the comparative scarcity of sources dealing with the authors and their works. It is disturbing to discover just how little is really known about the lives of the leading fourteenth and fifteenth century writers or about the chronology of their major works. In the absence of more historical information, much of what is said here oncerning the war’s impact on their literary output must remain highly speculative.
For example, in “Politics and the French Language in England during the Hundred Years’ War, The Case of John Gower,” R. F. Yeager suggests that the poet’s major work in French, Mirour de l’Omme, may have been begun in the years between the battle of Poitiers (1356) and the treaty of Brétigny (1360).
At that time Gower was between twenty-six and thirty years old, clearly nature enough to commence a major work like the Mirour. That he should have chosen then to compose his most ambitious project to date in French, when France and England seemed about to become one kingdom under a single crown, has a likelihood about it which is not diminished by the French itself: Anglo-Norman, the dialect of Edward and his Parliament, soon to be (as Gower and others must have believed) the speech of government and power in Paris and beyond...What may be true of Gower’s “French period, then, is that it began and was shaped in significant ways in reaction to the course of politics of the Hundred Years War. (138)
The problem with this admittedly cogent argument lies in what we do--and
what we do not--know about the Mirour’s chronology. While
internal evidence demonstrates fairly conclusively that Gower finished
the work around 1378 (even if he tampered with it in minor ways at a
later date), no such evidence, internal or external, indicates just when
he began the composition; whether that moment occurred two years or two
decades earlier, there is no way of telling. Yeager’s explanation
as to why Gower chose to write in French depends upon the Mirour having
been commenced during the hiatus between Poitiers and Brétigny
(1356-1360), something that simply cannot be established. As Yeager admits
when making this argument, the work’s incipience is usually dated
to considerably later than this four year period An argument that is
based only on speculative assumptions, however compelling it may appear,
can lead only to speculative conclusions.
Nor are the assumptions consistent from essay to essay. Consider two
quite different assessments of Richard II’s influence on the direction
of English literature, assessments that both start from the same point,
the king’s desire to make peace with France. In “Chaucer
after Retters: The Wartime Origins of English Literature,” John
Bowers argues that in order to aid in the peace-making process, Richard
promoted within his court a rapprochment with French culture and language,
thereby posing a dilemma for an author like Chaucer who now found it
necessary to temper his rebellion against French cultural dominance.
As a result, throughout his last years, the poet had to divide his writing
time. To satisfy the official francophilia of his royal patron’s
court, he worked on a French-based composition, The Legend of Good
Women, while at the same time, he produced for himself and a small
coterie of friends not caught up in that court culture the quintessential
English work of the Middle Age, The Canterbury Tales.
By contrast, in “Politics and the French Language in England,” Yeager spins a very different tale regarding Richard’s influence on the writings of John Gower. For Yeager, Richard’s disengagement from the conflict with France was accompanied not by a rapprochment with, but by a turning away from French culture. As the king was transformed “into an Englishman whose focus was perforce upon his own countrymen and country,” (143) English works found increasing favor at court. This, in turn, led Gower to write the Confessio Amantis that despite its Latin title and glosses, “is overwhelming a poem in English.” (145) Both senarios are possible; unfortunately, they are mutually exclusive.
If the volume’s first goal—to demonstrate “how history influences literature”—is only partially satisfied, its second goal—to demonstrate “how literature intervenes in history”—remains almost entirely unexplored. Most of the essays fail to address the issue of what affect (if any) the authors and their works had on society. The assumption seems to be that they did indeed influence contemporary opinion, including opinion at the highest levels, but how do we know that to be true? Was Chaucer’s “rebellion” against French cultural dominance merely a reflection of a trend or did it influence others to follow a similar course? Did growing opposition to the struggle by men like Langland strike any wider cords? To answer such questions in any but a general way remains difficult given the state of our information.
Despite these shortcomings, imposed by the nature of the sources, the collection is well-worth a reading by historians as well as literary scholars who wish to know more about the reciprocal influence that war and literature had upon one another in the late medieval period. From the point of view of a medieval military historian, several essays are particularly helpful for the light they shed on authorship in wartime.
- Denise Baker’s “Meed and the Economics of Chivalry in Piers Plowman” argues that William Langland became one of the first significant authors to oppose the conflict. Langland used the character of Meed to criticize a conflict fuelled largely by the overarching greed of England’s military class rather than its ostensible “just cause”—Edward III’s claim on the French throne.
- In “Chaucer after Retters: The Wartime Origins of English Literature,” John Bowers traces the poet’s “rebellion” against French cultural dominance back to his captivity by the French during England’s unsuccessful 1359-60 campaign, a “rebellion” further fueled by the condescending attitude of French writers like Deschamp toward their English counterparts. In what Bowers characterizes as a “post-colonial” interpretation of Chaucer, he argues that starting in the 1360s, Chaucer began to break in so far as possible with the French literary tradition, a break signalled first by parodying French works, then turning to the Italian tradition for inspiration, and finally, writing his greatest works in English.
- “The Political Poetics of the Ditié de Jehanne d’Arc” by Anne Lutkus and Julia Walker argues that the work was one of “active political propaganda” and by no means just a celebratory hymn of praise for its ostensible subject. Throughout its stanzas, the foremost female figure of French letters, Christine de Pizan, strongly endorses the maid’s call for an aggressive strategy following the dauphin’s coronation at Rheims, one that would embody an attack on the English-occupied city of Paris. Despite the patronage she had enjoyed from three generations of Valois kings, Christine took this opportunity near the end of her life to sharply criticize the dynasty’s latest scion, Charles VII, and the dilatory policies he adopted following his coronation at Rheims.
- In “Clothing and Gender Definition: Joan of Arc,” Susan Crane explores Joan’s cross-dressing, explaining how both her judges and supporters regarded it and how she herself over the course of her trial shifted the grounds on which she defended this unnatural insistence upon wearing men’s clothing.
- In a rather sporadic manner, Ellen Caldwell’s article, “The Hundred Years’ War and National Identity” traces into the modern era the continuing use of several key events of the conflict, including how Shakespeare’s portrayal of English defeat in his Henry VI plays might have spoken to a contemporary Elizabethan audience.
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