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Chapter 3: Ritual Aspects of the Hunt à Force
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chapter three Ritual Aspects of the Hunt à Force Susan Crane From the thirteenth into the fifteenth century, hunting treatises in English and French describe a kind of hunt so elaborated and formalized that scholars invoke the term “ritual” to account for it. This essay explores “ritual” as a descriptor for the kind of hunt the treatises value most, à force (with strength), concentrating on treatises by three men known to have been expert in hunting: William Twiti, huntsman of Edward II (writing or dictating ca. 1325); Gaston III, Count of Foix (writing or dictating 1387–89); and Edward of Norwich, second Duke of York (translating and modifying Gaston’s treatise, ca. 1410).1 I emphasize works by known practitioners in the conviction that their treatises correlate in some measure with their practice in the field, although their practical knowledge does not guarantee that their texts depict “what happens” at every turn. The more accurate assumption, given their mixed goals of instructing, reporting, and moralizing, is that the treatises reveal how these aristocratic hunters conceived the ideal hunt, and what they believed its value and significance to be.2 The ritual potential resides at this intersection of beliefs and performance , when gestures are understood to be heavy with meaning, and actions are seen as codified repetitions as well as responses to a present circumstance. 63 “Ritual” might seem an unlikely analytical framework for an unpredictable chase across miles of country. The hunt à force looks more like a “cultural performance,” the category Clifford Geertz so influentially identified in the Balinese cockfight: a performance that encapsulates and models the aristocracy’s most profound convictions about itself and its place in creation. Alternatively, this kind of hunting could be discussed as a “game” that combines most of that term’s meanings by 1350—an amusement, a pastime with rules, a field sport, and a physically challenging contest. Cultural performance, game, and ritual overlap and co-inform hunting; no single category perfectly fits and accounts for it. Analogously, on a much larger scale, John MacAloon analyzes the modern Olympic Games as a nested set of performance types: games (the athletic events) that are incorporated into a ritual (a formal articulation of human unity) that is, in turn, staged as a festival (a recurrent celebration designed for pleasure) that is, at the same time, a spectacle (designed to be watched by a public that is not performing ).3 I concentrate on ritual in this essay because it is the least intuitively plausible performance category for hunting, and because I believe the ritual features of this kind of hunting shape it into a powerful assertion of aristocratic superiority. The first three sections of this essay argue that the hunt à force uses the strategies of secular ritual to affirm the rightness of a social and natural hierarchy headed by the aristocracy. The last two sections argue that the hunt’s affirmation of hierarchy involves certain intimacies between humans and animals that appear anti-hierarchical. Does contact with animals undermine the aristocracy’s performance of supremacy? Defining Hunt and Ritual The hunt à force, as described in the treatises, is a highly organized pursuit of a large beast that runs well before hounds, is difficult to capture and kill, has positive symbolic associations, and provides meat that is considered edible. On all four measures, the hart (the red deer stag) is the most favored: he flees a long time before exhaustion; he doubles back, covers his scent in water, and uses other elusive maneuvers ; and he stands at bay and fights bravely at the end: Gaston’s trea64 Susan Crane [54.224.52.210] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 01:25 GMT) tise praises the hart in the proverb “after the boar, the physician; after the hart, the bier.”4 Boar are also prized targets for hunting on account of their exceptional ferocity as well as their meat and the long chase they provide. Both hart and boar have strong symbolic value within chivalry, as shown in their frequent appearance on coats of arms and crests, although here too the hart has the edge, through his association with Saints Hubert and Eustace and his putative power over poisonous snakes. The boar is fierce to a fault: Edward refers to his “despitous dedis”; Gaston calls him haughty and proud.5 English and French hunting treatises agree on the general shape of the hunt à force. Details vary, but do so within a shared conviction...