Chaucer and the Matter of Spain

Despite its cultural and political importance, Spain has been suspiciously invisible to scholars of medieval England for some time now. For one recent observer, the neglect of Spain, and of the Iberian peninsula more generally, is “curious”—that is, the lack of scholarship is not justified by a lack of source materials—and largely attributable to nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars’ (historians, in this case) collective attitude toward Spain as a “backward, barely European country.” ¹ Among literary medievalists, the situation is particularly striking, especially when compared to the greater number of studies on early modern Spanish literature and culture. As María Bullón-Fernández notes in the introduction to England and Iberia in the Middle Ages (a volume that goes far toward redressing the neglect), we have been extremely slow to recognize the “complex cultural and political traffic patterns” between England and Spain; Chaucerians in particular have preferred instead to focus on the Italian and French sources and contexts for Chaucer’s poetry. ² In so favoring some regions of Europe over others, we have missed a rich opportunity: the monarchs of kingdoms within Spain during Chaucer’s lifetime were acutely aware of their own cultural and political status in relation to their French, Italian, and English counterparts; Chaucer, in turn, was acutely aware of the politics and culture of the place he called “Spayne.” ³

One of the tragedies narrated in the Monk’s Tale is the 1369 murder of Pedro I, the king of Castile and León, at the hands of his illegitimate half-brother, Enrique:

O noble, O worthy Petro, glorie of Spayne, Whom Fortune heeld so hye in magestee, Wel oghten men thy pitous deeth complayne! Out of thy land thy brother made thee flee, And after, at a seege, by subtiltee, Thou were bitraysed and lad unto his tente, Where as he with his owene hand slow thee, Succedynge in thy regne and in thy rente.

(VII 2375–82) ⁴

This lamentation occurs as one of the four so-called “modern instances” of tragedy told by the Monk; his biblical and classical tales of those brought low by Fortune are punctuated by four medieval examples: “worthy Petro,” Bernabò Visconti of Milan, Pierre de Lusignan of Cyprus, and Ugolino della Gherardesca of Pisa. Except for the Ugolino passage, which comes with some variations from Dante’s account, the modern instances are drawn from oral (either eyewitness or secondhand) accounts of events that occurred during Chaucer’s adult lifetime. ⁵ It is likely that Chaucer heard the stories of Bernabò, Pierre, and Pedro from persons intimately familiar with what happened. It is further likely that Chaucer, who traveled to Spain in 1366, followed with particular interest the events leading up to the murder of the Castilian king, and that he, along with many others in and around the court of John of Gaunt, keenly registered the shifting consequences of that murder over a period of some twenty years. Indeed, most of aristocratic England would have been attuned to events on the Iberian peninsula, thanks in part to a concerted Castilian effort earlier in the century to fashion a Matter of Spain for an international audience.

The Matter of Spain, like the Matters of Rome, France, and Britain, is concerned to define a place and its people in relation to a heroic, even mythical, past—and does so, furthermore, in (and often in response to) a context of contested definitions of political, territorial, or cultural boundaries. ⁶ R. F. Yeager, in a recent article on the topic of Chaucer’s familiarity with Iberian culture, notes that “strictly speaking” there is no “Matter of Spain.” Jean Bodel’s tripartite classification of romance poetry, which identified the “Matters” of France, Britain, and Rome, left Spain out of the schema. Similarly, Yeager notes, Chaucerians historically have identified three spheres of primary influence—France, Italy, and contemporary English life—again leaving Spain off the map. These “blunt, outdated taxonomies,” Yeager writes, testify to “the limits of our view of Chaucer, historically and presently, as a European citizen and writer.” ⁷ They further suggest the...