Research Portfolio 5
Stevens, John.Medieval Romance. London: Hutchinson & Co, 1973. p. 255.
Often it is difficult to find a book that will break down the basic makeup of the medieval romance because it is widely open to interpretation as to the key components of such literature. However, the book Medieval Romance, by John Stevens, includes the basic themes and motifs of such literature broken down into ten major parts of the study. Stevens does not claim that his particular separation of categories is the only way to analyze medieval literature; rather, he acknowledges that the arbitrary labels he has provided are just for basic study and that there is a lot of overlapping in each theory. However, Stevens book establishes a few components he deems necessary for establishing a study of romantic literature in the medieval period. This evaluation of the medieval romance was a great beginning book in analyzing literature of the period across many thematic levels.
Medieval romantic literature, Stevens believes, is the most idealistic form of text that can be found. It is the culmination of the private life experiences displayed in form for the social good of the community. Because it has such cultural weight, one of the most prominent themes in the romance is just that—the concept of love. In the second and third sections of the book which analyze the importance of love to men and women and the relationship between a lover and society respectively, Stevens portrays love as the most significant because it holds the intimacy that everyone experiences, but cannot fully understand. There is the claim that love is often times forbidden, creating the need for the romance to portray the struggle to obtain that which is unobtainable. Love “is mysterious, unexpected, imperfectly comprehended [and yet] it is a way of life [that possesses a sense of] secrecy and privateness” (Stevens 35). The romance is a way in which to educate society on the appropriateness of love, the proper ways to fall in love, and, most importantly, to work to maintain love.
Because love is such a prominent theme, the rest of the characteristics of romance seem to stem forth from it. In his fourth and fifth sections, Stevens addresses man as a supernatural form of being. The perfect man in romantic literature is one whom can fight courageously, defeating all those who oppose him in hand to hand combat. Yet, this same fellow must be a gentle creature with poetic diction to talk to the ladies in court as well as a touch of tenderness by which to take care of his woman. This impossible creation of character depicted by Stevens as the ideal man is a dramatic representation of what men in the medieval period were struggling to be. He later reasserts this argument in the eighth section of the book entitled “Realism and Romance: ‘Characters” and Types” when Stevens states that the characters in a romance do “not embody achieved perfection,” rather each hero is on a “quest” in which he must “realize his potential, not come to terms with life” (Stevens 170).
Similarly, Stevens sights the natural environment as being exceedingly drastic as well. In the fifth section of Medieval Romance he describes nature as being a marvelous thing unto itself, in which there are no rules or laws, but a sense of mystical space where anything can occur. This drastic nature serves two purposes according to Stevens. First, the radical setting provides a place where anything can happen in order to depict the dramatic heroics of the chivalric knight. Without an extreme environment, the characters would have nowhere in which to prove their worth. Secondly, Stevens states that there are some passages in romances such as Marie de France “which make us aware of something unexplained and inexplicable, a residue of the mystery which belongs to a world beyond the everyday” (Stevens 113). This world contains in it a gross number of images, which “concentrate in [themselves] the meaning of an episode or theme” (Stevens 165). Through the creation of an environment containing everyday items where it seems anything is bound to happen, romantic literature has set up a backdrop on which the hero must pursue the unobtainable and defeat the odds.
The final major theme of the medieval romance is the intended understanding of the author. Stevens writes that the author, like Chaucer, has a contradicting purpose hidden within his writing. While he wants to make the reader believe what he is writing is the truth, he also wants to acknowledge that his story is just that, a story to be taken at its face value (Stevens 219). Using his poetic verse, the author of the romance is able to urge the reader to strive for the greatness of chivalry, but also to remind him that there is no way an individual can live realistically in this manner. Unfortunately, satirical or colloquial diction may be lost in the translations of these romances, so the modern reader may in fact no be as well suited as the medieval reader to catch all the puns or innuendos described by Stevens in the ninth section of his book.
In his conclusion, John Stevens acknowledges the great impact romantic literature has had on society. It is involved in all aspects of medieval life including business, social activity, ceremonies and entertainment (Stevens 226). It was a direct reflection of countless biblical passages and it forwarded religion as God was cited in such literary works as the one true God, heightening the effects love and chivalric deed. Stevens pushes for the acceptance of the medieval romance as the basis for much art and poetry as well as musical inspiration. He concludes his piece by stating that the romance became for some individuals a way of life that was to be used as a model for all of society.
In researching, I wanted to find something that would help me to further comprehend the basic themes and motifs that were present in the basic medieval romance. As I have not studied such work before, any bit of knowledge that I could obtain would be more than helpful. John Stevens book, Medieval Romance turned out to be the perfect book for to read. On a basic level the book studied and referenced the works of Malory, Chrétien, Marie de France and Chaucer. It provided a simple way to understanding the works of all these authors as well as any medieval romance. All romantic literature can be compared to this study and broken down into the key components that should be studied when reading a medieval text.
By breaking the romantic text into titled sections (or chapters) with specific labels, Stevens has implied that these are the most important themes or approaches of a medieval text to be studied. He, himself, does state that this is not the case, but to the naïve reader, it could still possibly appear this way. More importantly, however, when Stevens indicates that there is much overlap amongst these thematic views it allows, the reader to infer that the understanding of each approach to the literature is greatly dependant upon the other parts that make up the medieval romance. If the knight has no dramatic setting in which to perform his heroic deeds, the romance loses that element of fantasy, which is vital for its comprehension.
Stevens does, however, assume that the reader agrees with the thematic lenses he has picked through which to read the text and while this is a good basic format (and the only way for Stevens to go about writing his work) there may be some necessities of the romance that have been left out of the study. The most glaring omission is based on the fact that all the chapters of the book focus on the relationship between man and a counterpoint. Women, often objectified in courtly literature, seem to be somewhat objectified in this piece of work as well, only addressed in terms of how they interact with men on a romantic scale. There seems to be no mention of friendship or counsel that some of the women in Chrétien and Marie de France provide, nor are they given any credit for perpetuating some of the actions in each story due to misdeed, similar to Malory’s Guinever. While the main focus of these medieval romances is on the chivalric hero and his actions, it is difficult to believe that women have little or no effect on their actions except in terms of an object to be pursued in the name of love.
In reading Medieval Romance, I was impressed by all the thematic lenses that Stevens was able to touch on in such a succinct piece. Each approach is evident in many other articles, especially about the importance of diction when compared to Sturges’ “Epistemology in the Bedchamber.” Like Stevens, this article touched on the importance of the textual style, as he determines how the fourteenth to sixteenth century reader will comprehend the text that is written, and even how the understanding of the language used will evolve as the linguistic styles of people change over time. This book can also be compared with the work of Beverly Kennedy in her piece of “Adultery in Malory’s Le Mort d’Arthur.” As she depicts each type of knight and the inability to establish the “perfect” being, so does Stevens question the ability of the chivalric knight in the romantic setting. It is acknowledged in both articles that these knights are not perfect, Stevens states that each is constantly on a quest for his perfection, while Kennedy displays the sometimes irrational behavior and subjective moral standards a knight upholds for himself. In all, Stevens book offer a general overview of the many parts of the medieval romance for comparison with the specifics that can be offered in briefer and more focused journal articles.
It is difficult to say that there were parts of the book that were disagreeable, seeing as the it was such a broad overview that not many specific parts could be made evident that would evoke an opposing opinion about Stevens book. Personally, I was most impressed by his ability to cover such a large amount of comprehensive study in such a “to-the-point” way. I had been most struggling with the idea that the author of a medieval romance wished to point mainly to the idea that the story is just that, a story and should be trusted for what it was worth. Stevens work showed both sides of authorship, however, proving (and confirming my understanding) that the author of the story wants the reader to believe very much in what is being written, as though it was based on factual evidence. However, the interjections in the story allow for the reader to also understand that the events are not to be taken personally, as they are just fiction. The work of John Stevens provides the reader with a great basic breakdown of the thematic approaches to medieval romance, such as this, which creates for a pleasant and interesting read on the study of such literature.
Meredith Marconi
University of Mary Washington
