The 'Readerly' Sir Launfal

The 'Readerly' Sir Launfal Since Mill's condemnation of the Middle English Sir Launfal as little more than the hack work of Thomas Chestre, the poem has received more favourable commentary. Mills' pronouncement, however, still controls these readings.1 Peter Lucas, for instance, must propose almost apologeticaUy that a line in the poem has a double meaning.2 Another reader, in a comment on the tournament episodes in Sir Launfal, concludes with this cautious remark: 'I do beUeve it fair to regard Chestre as attempting to do more than merely monstrously inflate a perfectly constructed poem of love and faery'.3 Even when the tone of such articles is not apologetic, their approach is still to argue against Mills' claims that the poem's parts do notfittogether, that they do not coherently express a valuable theme.4 These favourable discussions, therefore, look exclusively at how the representational aspect of the work communicates an important medieval theme such as honour, or true versus false love. Accompanying this representational bias is the preconception about primitive narratives that Todorov has criticized: that such narratives are crude and simple, hastily composed to meet the needs of an undiscerning audience. According to Todorov, the more closely one looks at primitive narrative the more apparent becomes the complexity and subdety with which it is organized and with which it considers its subject, and also the more the narrative expresses a consciousness of its status as narrative discourse.^ In this paper I would like to focus on the ways in which Sir Launfal expresses such self-consciousness: on the incompatibility of its hero with the themes that its episodes ostensibly express and particularly on how the poem's meaning occurs in the area of interplay between the representational level of the discourse and the narrator's frequent insinuations of his presence as the conveyor of a fiction. In part conscious, this interplay is also a necessary part of the curious combination of the tail-rhyme romance with the Breton lay. *M. Mills, The Composition and Style of the 'Southern' Octovian, Sir Launfal, and Libeaus Desconus, Medium Aevum 31, 1962, 88-109. 2 Peter J. Lucas, Towards An Interpretation of Sir Launfal, Medium Aevum 39, 1970, 293. 3 Michael J. Wright, The Tournament Episodes in Sir Launfal, Parergon 8, 1974, 38. 4 Along with Lucas's article, see E.M. Bradstock, 'Honoure' in Sir Launfal, Parergon 24, 1978, 9-17; and Earl R. Anderson, The Structure of Sir Launfal, Papers on Language and Literature 13.2, 1977, 115-24. 5 Tzvetan Todorov, The Poetics ofProse, trans. Richard Howard, Ithaca, 1977, 53-65. 34 TJ). O'Brien That Sir Launfal might possess an interesting, self-conscious texture is not finally so surprising a possibility given two circumstances of literary history. One of these circumstances is related to Chestre's mention in thefirststanza that the poem is a lay. To distinguish the Breton lay from other romances is difficult. GeneraUy it is shorter; generally it depends more centraUy on the fairy element; generally it is less concerned with physical, manly activity. But there is, I think, a more subtle difference between most Breton lays and romances, though again it is a matter of degree. The written lays traditionally express a marked sensitivity about thefictionalizingact itself.6 Marie de France's wellknown description of the genre's origin in the songs of ancient Bretons, found at the beginning of her Equitan and later at the front of Sir Orfeo, Lay le Freine, and Chaucer's Franklin's Tale, in part, expresses this concern. Frequendy the meaning of the tale involves the circumstances of its composition and telling as weU as what is told. Marie tells us (112-113) that Chevrefoil was composed by Tristan, the hero of the tale; and Sir Orfeo himself, as I have pointed out elsewhere, is portrayed as both the composer and original performer of the lay about his life's significant adventure.7 The models for the literary version of this 'ancient genre', Marie's lays are perhaps most interesting for their selfreflexiveness , for the way in which the concerns about disclosure and reporting in the narrative express Marie's own preoccupations with the fictionalizing process...