Sexual warfare in the margins of two late-thirteenth-century Franco-Flemish Arthurian romance manuscripts
Date
2020
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
When a woman picks up her distaff, not to spin wool, but instead to mount a horse and use it to joust with a defenseless man, what is the significance? Several such motifs appear in the margins of New Haven, Beinecke Rare Books & Manuscripts Library, Ms. 229 and Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, français 95. In fact, the marginalia within these two Arthurian romance manuscripts, produced in French Flanders during the final decades of the thirteenth century, are rife with depictions of violence. Through a careful analysis of the entire body of marginal art and the subsequent grouping of these motifs thematically, the male-female distaff jousts are identified as being comprised of elements from each of these identified groups. They operate as useful case studies for understanding the relationship between text, miniatures, and marginalia in these two volumes. Ultimately, this dissertation concludes that such images operate as leitmotifs that guide the reader/viewer through the cumbersome text of the Vulgate Arthur. Moreover, these motifs respond to social and political unrest that characterized late-thirteenth-century French Flanders such as a number of popular uprisings, a rebellion against French royal authority, and the growing Flemish textile industry.
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Keywords
Arthurian, Distaff, French Flanders, Marginalia, Spinning