Negotiating Incest and Exogamy in La fiyla del rey d'ungría

NEGOTIATING INCESTAND EXOGAMY IN LA FIYLA DEL REYD'UNGRÍA Emily C. Francomano Georgetown UniversityOne of the most widely circulating stories of medieval Europe is set in motion by the threat of father-daughter incest. This threat, leveled at a virtuous, beautiful, and long-suffering heroine, unleashes a series ofmarital adventures that dramatize the advantages and perils of exogamy. The basic structure ofthe tale is as follows: A king eidier promises his dying wife or vows after her death diat he will remarry only ifhe can find someone as beautiful as his beloved wife. The only viable candidate who closely resembles the deceased wife is their only child, a daughter. To avoid the incestuous union the princess cuts off one or both of her hands (in the case ofbodi hands, she has a servant perform the maiming). The king orders her to be killed, but, instead, she is abandoned in a forest or set adrift at sea. She is found by anodier nobleman who marries her despite her mutilation and the objections of his mother. The heroine gives birth to a son when her husband is absent and the modier-in-law forges letters to and from the absent husband, first announcing the birth of a monster or a black child insinuating that she is an adulteress and then ordering the execution ofmother and child. The handless princess is once again abandoned or set adrift. The husband returns, punishes his mother, and, after a long search, finds his wife, whose hands have been miraculously reattached. Throughout the Middle Ages, many variants of the "Flight from the Incestuous Father/Handless Maiden" story circulated in different genres and languages, transmitted through oral folktale, hagiographie legend, verse romance, and prose fiction. The first known written version, the English Vitae Duorum Offarum, appeared in the diirteenth century. The story often converged widi other widespread tale-types, La corónica 35.2 (Spring, 2007): 83-102 84Emily C. FrancomanoLa corónica 35.2, 2007 such as the "Accused Queen" or "Calumniated Wife".1 As Elizabeth Archibald observes, the pan-European literary development of the "Flight from the Incestuous Father" stories concurred both with the rise of romance "with its increased interest in the psychology of love and adventure stories about women", and with the simultaneous "great anxiety among clerics about the definition of"marriage, the consanguinity laws, and the incest taboo, and great emphasis by clerical WTiters on contrition, confession, and penance" (148-49). Whether read dirough the lenses ofstructural anthropology, psychoanalytic criticism, or in terms ofpossible uses and reception, die multiple works elaborated around the frame ofthe "Flight from the Incestuous Father/Handless Maiden" reveal deep preoccupations with themes that resonated culturally and socially for their medieval audiences.2 The stories' combination ofsexual deviance and danger, heroic virginity, marriage negotiations, and family dynamics, themes all clustered around a beautiful, pious heroine who is a type "of virtue beleaguered by vice in a fallen world" (Archibald 68) and undergoes multiple travails on herjourney out of her father's house and into adult society, no doubt accounts for the tale's medieval and later enduring popularity.3 There are two extant Catalan prose versions of the "Flight from the Incestuous Father/FIandless Maiden" story dating from the mid fourteenth and mid fifteenth centuries: La fiyla del, rey d'ungria and La filia del, emperador Costanti, respectively.4 Hie two Catalan versions are I For detailed descriptions ofthe many versions and variants ofthe tale, see Nancy Black, Medieval Narratives ofAccused Qyeens and also Elizabeth .Archibald ( 1 49-54; 245-56), R. Aramon ? Serra (10-13), Irene Gnarra (xxi-xxix) and H. Suchier ("Introduction'' xxi-lviii). I I have argued elsewhere in the context ofPhilippe de Remi's Manchine that the many medieval renditions ofthe "Flight from the Incestuous Father/Girlwithout Hands" seem to have been crafted by a Lévi-Straussiaii anthropologist for an audience of Lacanian analysts avant la lettre ("The Hands ofPhilippe de Remi's Man.eki.ne", 2). 3 The continuing popularity ofthe romance "Delgadina" in Latin American oral culture, where the heroine's !light from her incestuous father is spiritual rather than physical, suggests the persistent interest ofboth the incest theme and long...