The Audience for Sir Gawain?

 

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is arguably the most courtly of Middle English poems, especially ones written in the heavily Norse influenced Northern dialect. My thesis here is that there are explicit clues within the poem to link it to Richard II’s wandering Court which travelled around the midlands and the north in 1397 and 98. Also that there are significant geographical features which could link it to the influential Stanley family within that court. Finally that it may be possible to suggest that it was written for performance as a set piece storytelling event at the the Royal Christmas celebrations in Lichfield in 1398.

  

Arthur’s court is described in all its royal splendour and the young King is given a wonderful cameo role as the rather miffed, impetuous, angered leader of a group of knights not rising to a challenge. This court is a mixture of the manly arts of jousting and physical tests and the more feminine pursuits of conversation and carolling.  Camelot is, of course, the Royal court.  The court that Gawain finds after his travails is set in a wilderness, the High Desert, but this too is a shining place built in the latest style. It is the locus for a gathering rivalling Camelot in luxury, style, hospitality and beauty. Both Camelot and Hautdesert are described lovingly and meticulously. If we posit 1398 as the date for a presentation of Sir Gawain, then we have a reason for Hautdesert being described as the height of fashion. The court in London was very disparaging about Richard’s Cheshiremen almost in the same sentiments that the Gawain poet uses of the denizens of the Wirral! Of course, the polish and panache of the poem itself is an answer to the criticism that there is nothing civilised North of Watford. And If Pearl too was presented to the court, that would be the icing on the cake (or perhaps the enamel on the gold?).

Given that the poem can be dated in its composition around the late 1390’s, there are many links between the poem and the King, the area within which it was written and events in Richard’s reign.

• Cheshire was becoming increasingly important to Richard’s security and psychological welfare. His Cheshire Archers were in effect a trusted and efficient bodyguard. They seem to have a special place within Richard’s heart as he was on very familiar terms with them, even allowing them to use the diminutive name “Dyckon” for him. The controller of his household was Sir John Stanley another staunch Cheshire man, younger son of William Stanley of Stanley (5 miles south of Leek).
• One of Richard’s special saints was Saint Winifred and it is recorded that he visited the Holywell shrine in 1398. Besides the beheading, rolling and restoration story echoing the Green Knight’s career at Camelot, Holywell would have been on Gawain’s itinerary to the Green Chapel.
• RVW Elliott has finally secured the landscape of the poem within a small area of moorland about 3 miles north of Leek and the linguistic analysis suggest composition and copying also within a few miles of this area. The heart of the Stanley interests in Cheshire is actually the ancestral home in Stanley itself: right at the heart of the Gawain country.
• Richard had in 1398 seemingly secured his kingship and his “gyration” possibly consolidated his reign in that he was with friends and supporters. A celebratory story featuring lavish courts in a historical setting would be an ideal gift for the king who has everything!
• Richard is famous for his love of jewels and high end craftsmanship. The Wilton Diptych, a sumptuous piece of work detailing Richard’s presentation to the Virgin and Christ is perhaps the epitome of this and dates from about 1396. It touches on themes prevalent in Pearl, the relationship between the earth and Paradise and the barriers and crossings between them. Let’s face it, in literary terms, Pearl is the equivalent of the diptych.

• The hint of homoeroticism or at least the celebration of male beauty and the physicality of male friendship has been detected in Sir Gawain. Richard’s sexuality has been indeterminate for many historians and his close friendship with Robert de Vere caused Thomas Walsingham, an antagonistic chronicler to accuse him retrospectively of homosexuality.

• The most positively Ricardian chronicle of the reign came from Dieulacres Abbey.                                    …let that sink in….  Dieulacres Abbey was the Abbey that moved from the "Godless Wirral" (a phrase in the poem) to the sheep country around Leek!                                                                                                                                    Almost all the other chronicles of his reign, written after the events of 1399 were pro Bolingbroke and saw the downfall of Richard’s career as of his own making. The earliest Dieulacres chronicler (There were two) writing about 1381 to 1400 is almost sycophantically positive and offers a very different view on Richard’s later reign than, say, Walsingham.

• Lichfield, not that far from Leek, even in the depths of winter, was the setting of Richard’s last Christmas court in 1398. He’d visited the city four times that year already so it seems he was quite at home there. The Lichfield locus of the court has been described as glittering, and it seems that Richard, aged only 31, was in his pomp and his prime, as were both Arthur and Bertilak in Sir Gawain! 

 

All circumstantial, all surmise, but somehow compelling to link ths poet, in a however tenuous a way, to the King renowned for his love of luxury, of hunting, of jewellery (especially pearls), of the history of his predecessors, of travelling around his kingdom, of his trust in Cheshiremen and his parlous way with promises. 

A Country Parson.

 I remember about a dozen years ago digging around for useful literature whilst researching for everyday life in the late Eighteenth Century. For a couple of long weekends each year my wife and I become Edward and Isabella Fortescue, a married couple of the 'Middling Sort' who've done rather well for themselves. Edward has made money publishing and printing songs, hymns, political pamphlets and other ephemera with a wide market and a cheap outlay. Together with Isabella he is profiting from quite a jump in the numbers of literate folk all wanting news of the latest scandal, the best songs around, scurrilous satire etc etc...things haven't changed much have they?  Each year the pair go to visit Sir Henry Moore at his home in Suffolk, Kentwell Hall, where they chat to his many visitors, and  may even sing a song or two from Edward's back catalogue.

The big stuff was easy to find: who was King, Prime Minister. Who were the fashionable composers, authors, artists etc? What was more interesting was finding out the minutiae of everyday living, the price of potatoes, bread, typical meals, time taken for travel, how much to spend on silk and how to find a good mantua maker. Finding out more about these things definitely helped us to further develop credible personae.

James Woodforde was a chap who compulsively wrote a diary detailing all those fascinating facts, peppered with his opinions of his neighbours, of politicians, of the scariness of the French Revolution, and how to treat servants. He was unmarried and kept a well ordered household overseen by his niece Nancy who came to live with him as his housekeeper. Servants came and went: occasionally they were sacked, but they were all treated with optimism and kindness. At one point Nancy was involved in a friendship with a young woman who had a Jack-the-Lad suitor. He ran up £1,500 in debts, aged just 21, and died two years later of consumption. In the beginning James describes him as 'droll' and 'a good singer'. The diaries give a meticulously recorded insight into the minutiae of late Georgian rural life.

What was astonishing to me was that in his diary he never mentions Jesus, never refers to Christ or the Holy Spirit and talks more about his acts of charity rather than his prayer life or his own beliefs. There is no hint of any doctrinal issues and I seriously wonder about the depth of his own personal faith. James expresses distaste at the "enthusiasms" of the local Methodists and  resents their intrusion into his cosy little Parish. He comes over as a very caring but slightly fussy social worker. 

We think we know his world from films, stories, history books etc but some entries have the ability to challenge. He managed his money carefully but traveled to Somerset almost every year to see his family using public coaches over roads little more than cart tracks. These trips would have taken about a week and cost £10, (think about £2000)! More contentiously, he regularly found casks of brandy and good wine turning up on his doorstep with no questions asked. And then a week or two later he would entertain the Excise Man! He unquestioningly cared for his staff when they were ill. In a very detailed account of a local Doctor's treatment of an outbreak of fever he mentions Bark, a source of quinine, and laudanum, opium dissolved in alcohol. After Nancy has been given this, James describes her as "Brave, but seemed Light in her head", not surprising really... Death, especially infant mortality is forever present but no less grievous for its ubiquity.

Shining through his diary is his practical compassion for the little rural community. He gives alms to the hard up, he treats his older, poorer parishioners to sumptuous Christmas Feasts and gives them all a little money.  He keeps his eye on the children of the village and gives them pocket money on Valentine's Day, all strictly accounted for. I suspect he wasn't the only parish parson who saw his job as mainly gentle care in the community. His politics are Tory and at variance with the local Whigs (North Norfolk has a great history of liberal MPs!), and he doesn't much like nor trust Thomas Coke at Holkham who is doing a lot of experimental land management and scientific farming.  He keeps up with national and indeed international news through the Newspapers which he gets every Saturday from Norwich. James writes disparagingly about the French Revolution when Wordsworth et al were singing its praises as a great levelling movement and his fear of revolution and regicide in England is very real. Revd. James was definitely scared of changes in the status quo. He was living in a time of great upheaval when even rural Norfolk was quivering with unknowns and technological possibilities. His slightly bemused but worried reactions to these changes makes him an appealing character to me, but in a characteristically enthusiastic way he notes a balloon ascent in Norwich in 1785 He loves his food too and his menus are quite something! (Although in one entry he regrets his habit of drinking a pint of port a day and wonders if it contributed to his bouts of ill health.)

 So when I was planning my pilgrimage I really wanted to visit Weston Longville, the tiny but prosperous village about eight miles North West of Norwich where an unsung Parson looked after his community with real humane compassion. I wasn't disappointed and although it was a fleeting visit I found time to pose under James's portrait. 

 He doesn't write with Samuel Pepys' searing self awareness and panache, but I've read the edited diary a couple of times and I would have loved to have met him and talked to him about his life and work. I obviously can't, but I can celebrate his compassion towards his much loved community.

To be a Penguin!

 I can't remember when it started, but one of our family traditions of singing in the car involved the changing of the words of songs to humorous effect. Annabel was the undisputed queen of this but sadly most of her offerings would not pass any censor, ever, anywhere, not even in barrack rooms nor ships of the Merchant Navy. A lot of her lyrics (I use the word loosely) involve fruit and body parts which fundamentally (that's a clue) should never be thought of in conjunction.

It must have been when the children had particularly Christian assemblies. Most of you probably think that this is simply the way it always has been but allow me to digress. In the seventies and early eighties I was teaching Primary School children and I can assure you that my assemblies were emphatically not Christian, and even less Worship. I feel more strongly about this aspect of schooling than almost anything else. Education in state schools should not be allied to any belief system at all, but learning ABOUT beliefs should be mandatory. Anyway.... both children knew the words and music to the wonderful Wesley hymn "To be a Pilgrim" set to the tune by Ralph Vaughan Williams. So, for evermore in my mind, the aspiration of this fine hymn is to become a faintly ridiculous, rather dapper looking flightless bird that aspires to being a fish or even a whale. I sincerely hope Penelope doesn't take offence.

Penelope was my commission from peacockemporium, a local craftswoman who volunteers at About With Friends as well as making exquisite things with threads and cloth. She's going to accompany me on the pilgrimage and is really looking forward to having her photograph taken with as many groups as we can get to pose. As you can see, despite staff shortages we've managed to kit her out rather well.

After the big ride she'll join all the other specially made unsung heroes basking in the eternal glory of the cherry blossom on the LEGO bonsai. You may have guessed that I don't take things terribly seriously....actually that isn't true at all: but
even serious issues can be taken lightly.

Lollards Pit... a rather nice pub.

 As part of my preparation for the pilgrimage I've been reading lots of books about the religious history of Norfolk. Besides the positive stuff about Julian and Margery Kempe, there have been hints at a darker side. Blood libel I knew about from days of being able to sing Hugh of Lincoln in folk clubs in the seventies and so I was prepared for the story of William of Norwich which followed an almost identical narrative arc of a mysterious death of a child which was wrongly blamed on a religious minority followed by blatant fake news, persecution and banishment.

As well as this unpleasant diversion I've skimmed Foxe's Book of English Martyrs. This is the rather unedifying account of the persecution of Protestants by the Catholic regime of Mary Tudor in the mid sixteenth century.  This was a countrywide phenomenon but Norwich had a series of fiery executions. Exactly how many depends, as always, on what you take as "evidence". We've always had fake news, sometimes it was called propaganda, sometimes it was simple exaggeration, but unless events leave an existent paper trail, we must take lots on trust. 500 Martys in Norwich is the top number, 3 are mentioned in Foxe, but the general assumption by modern historians is about 50 people were burned in the late Middle Ages and Tudor times. Lollards Pit is a place just outside Norwich City Walls where these particularly gruesome acts took place. And that, of course is a clue when the first heretics were executed: Around the time of Wycliffe and the fight to get a Bible in English, 14th Century.

Burning for heresy is theologically sound because if you believe in bodily resurrection at the last trumpet of Judgement Day, then a death which totally destroys the body is a mark of oblivion (as well as being indescribably painful). Foxe describes all his martyrs as within the conflagration calmly singing hymns  and praying with beatific smiles. Protestant propaganda and wishful thinking surely? I shrink from quoting any of the plethora of Foxe's descriptions of torture and burning as they are graphic in the extreme. But what really beggars my belief is that from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, the three books found in every C of  E place of worship, and the homes of many of the congregations, were The Bible, The Book of Common Prayer and Foxe's Book of Martyrs. And the latter was deemed suitable to read to children. 

In one of those bizarre bits of planning and geography Lollards Pit has now had a pub directly over it called, somewhat predictably but unimaginatively, The Lollards Pit. 

I may have a well earned Bloody Mary cocktail when I get there..........

To be a Pilgrim...and is it a Progress?

As a ten year old I remember being read to by an eccentric Head Teacher. His favoured authors were Dickens, Wordsworth and Bunyan and along with A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist and Daffodils I vividly remember the strange world of Pilgrim's Progress. I also remember singing John Bunyan's resume of his book set to music by Ralph Vaughan Williams (although to call him the composer of this folk tune seems to be pushing it!). The story and especially the hymn spoke to my early love of chivalry and Arthurian romances; the idea of the lone traveller setting out on a quest for something usually mistily shrouded but quite specific is very strong in my psyche. 

A reminder of the story follows:

The English novel begins behind bars, in extremis. Its first author, John Bunyan, was a Puritan dissenter whose writing starts with sermons and ends with fiction. His famous allegory, the story of Christian, opens with a sentence of luminous simplicity that has the haunting compulsion of the hook in a great melody. "As I walk'd through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place, where was a Denn; And I laid me down in that place to sleep: And as I slept I dreamed a Dream."A "Denn" is a prison, and Bunyan wrote most of the book in Bedford county gaol, having been arrested for his beliefs during the "Great Persecution" of 1660-1690. He shares the experience of prison with Cervantes, who had the idea for Don Quixote while incarcerated in La Mancha. Like so many novels, The Pilgrim's Progress blends fact and fiction. As well as being the record of Bunyan's dream, a well-known fictional device, it is also an archetypal tale – a quest, fraught with danger. Christian's pilgrimage takes him through the Slough of Despond, Vanity Fair and the Delectable Mountains in a succession of adventures that keep the reader turning the page. With his good companions, Faithful and Hopeful, he vanquishes many enemies before arriving at the Celestial City with the line that still reverberates through the English literary tradition: "So he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side."

In Hollywood terms, the novel has a perfect "arc". It also contains a cast of unforgettable characters, from Mr Worldly Wiseman to Lord Hategood, Mr Stand-fast and Mr Valiant-for-Truth.

(The Guardian Best Books List)

I suppose now with the benefit of hindsight I can appreciate the steeping of my young mind in protestant Christianity. I went to Methodist Sunday School, loved singing hymns, and later joined the Boys' Brigade in the family tradition. And always this image of a lone traveller in all my favourite hymns: "Who would true valour see", "Courage, Brother, do not stumble", "My faith it is an oaken staff, the traveller's well loved aid", "Will your anchor hold in the storms of life?" and of course, "When a Knight won his spurs". I was never encouraged to analyse these hymns, just sing them in an open voiced, unapologetic manner that marks one out as brought up Northern Methodist. Of course, they're all suffused through with brave journeying, overcoming whatever problems you have, and reaching the destination which is always there if not a little mysterious.

Another favourite hymn was Jerusalem: "And did those feet in ancient time..." Blake's hymn of political striving and resacralising the landscape interpreted by me as the goal of my incipient socialism and Green awareness.

Pilgrim's PROGRESS? Christian has his Celestial City, Blake his too. One is personal and the other is collective (and practical and active, a very important aspect for me). My pilgrimage will hopefully be both, my Celestial City or Blake's Jerusalem, will have no gates to pass through, no secret codes of entry, no chosen few. It will be full of humanity of every faith( and none), colour, gender, sexuality, ability, or any other boxes we so readily make, and will be swimmingly full of compassion. This possibility is what I hope to highlight and celebrate! So yes, definitely a progress in terms of a greater good than that around at the moment.
So on an individual Bunyanesque way, how do I see my progress. It's certainly goal oriented which is to get back to my starting place, home in Cromer. Will I be changed? I hope there will perhaps be insight, self knowledge, even some sort of grounding and rooting in the Norfolk landscape and its many treasures. Personally, my goal is less easy to define, in fact it is very misty in the best Arthurian tradition, perhaps, as with the Way of Taoism, to travel is all that's needed .

Palimpsests

 

A palimpsest is a document, usually written on vellum, that has been scrubbed off so that another document may be written on the same vellum. The rub (sorry) is that the previous document is never completely effaced and traces of it remain, especially the guidelines. 

These three maps are about 240 years apart with the middle one about 120 years ago. For me, what shines through is the basic consistency in routes in and out of Cromer, the rough pattern of settlement and the wealth of churches (in both senses).  Norfolk in the Middle Ages was a rich farmland where sheep were reared for the fine fleece (only surpassed in quality by Dieulacres Abbey, but that's another rabbit hole!) Turkeys thrived and were driven to markets in London, don't think lorries, think a chap and his wife and a dog herding them! Cromer became a holiday resort and quite a few rich bankers built halls. A railway came and went, and the coastline subtly changed as coastlines do. In the twenty years I've been here I've seen many cliffslips and the odd precarious house tumble.  

Through all the maps some little details stay the same giving the landscape a history, a deep sense of its own timescale. We take our little dog up the Avenue most days, it's the straight bit of lane leading to Northrepps Hall and we have a couple of pictures from 1890 showing it almost identical to now.It's a delightful walk!

 Maps, like palimpsests, show changes in values: when does an arable field become a housing estate? And when does a railway become a footpath? It's all here in the maps. What isn't as clear is the underlying motivation for this change.

I guess we who were born in the fifties believed in progress as the underlying driver of change. In my Technical School it was very much taken for granted; by rational scientific thought and good engineering and architecture we could and would build a better world. Now, I'm not so sure. Humans are complicated creatures who think they are fundamentally rational and will carefully consider whether the projected change is beneficial and, more importantly, for whom.

Here's a thing. 

It's a genuine, medieval palimpsest. It was made, as you know, by scraping an existing document off the vellum to be able to write a new document. Please bear in mind that this is before printing (unless you are Chinese) when every document was the product of painstaking copying in scriptoria.

The uppermost document, the darker script, is a prayer book. The work that has been diligently scraped and rubbed away is mathematical text by Archimedes, written in the third century BCE and copied possibly in the tenth century. It is a groundbreaking piece of work showing some understanding of what became the calculus of Newton and Leibniz as well as advanced geometry and mechanics. It is the only way we have access to Archimedes' thought. And in the thirteenth century, in a monastery somewhere in the Middle East run by Orthodox Christians, this fountain of mathematics, natural philosophy and logic was scraped away for a prayer book which was so unimportant it was not even cut, sewn nor bound. Ironically it is thought that the original Archimedes sheets ended up in an obscure little scriptorium to keep it safe from the marauding crusaders who destroyed anything in an unknown script as heretical.

But back to maps......I suspect, from what is happening elsewhere, the next map in the Norfolk series may be covered with solar panels while we throw away sheep's fleece and import more and more food....

Progress? I'll talk about that in my next entry........

Just Me and my Bicycle

I've tried the organised Centuries in Norfolk and Suffolk, I really have. I was led to understand that the buzz of lots of cyclists would add sparkle to the day, that other people chatting to you as you ride would help the miles whizz by and that a mutually congratulatory beer with other finishers would add to that sense of achievement. I'm not a curmudgeonly chap. I like dinner parties, chatting to folk at Kentwell Hall reenactments, helping children make LEGO models at the Radar Museum, and I absolutely love flirting while shopping, but there's something gloriously freeing about solitary cycling. I can't explain it if you don't get it. Other cyclists just detract from the simple joy of silently gliding through country lanes or dodging traffic in towns. 

That's why I've chosen to go solo! I shall be meeting quite a few Faith (and No Faith) communities, I'm meeting up with my Kentwell apprentice at Julian's shrine, a few Zen Buddhists may accompany me on the ride out of Norwich and a couple of friends have generously given me a bed for the night in Dersingham. I don't think I'll be lonely!