Épreuves d’amour and Chaucer’s Franklin’s Tale

Abstract

Épreuves d’amour and Chaucer’s Franklin’s Tale Roy J. Pearcy The emergence of the literary motif of the épreuve d’amour (a test and demonstration of love) coincides with the appearance in western European literature of fin’ amor as defined in the De Arte honesti amandi of Andreas Capellanus.1 Its overriding concern is with the irresistible power of heterosexual love.2 The motif conventionally depicts a man in love with his superior’s wife, a promise on her part that performance of some task she imposes will be rewarded with the granting of her sexual favors, and a successful outcome resulting in the circumvention of any opposition to their union stemming from the lady’s husband. Clearly both Menedon’s story from Il Filocolo of Boccaccio, and Chaucer’s Franklin’s Tale fit this pattern to some degree, but Boccaccio modifies his exemplar to comply with a different artistic intent, and Chaucer follows the Boccaccian model as the primary source of his own version of the story.3 [End Page 159] Épreuves d’amour first appear towards the end of the twelfth century in two different contexts, the clerical Latin comedies and the Arthurian romances of Chrétien de Troyes. The comédies latines that include the motif are humorous, frequently bawdy, and feature a triangle situation involving a married woman, her lover, and the woman’s husband. The latter is typically a blocking character whose intervention in the successful achievement of an adulterous affair has to be circumvented by the lovers acting in collusion. In the courtly romances of Chrétien de Troyes, by contrast, the husband is excluded from any participation in the central dramatic action. From its initial appearance, therefore, the motif assumes two quite distinct forms.4 Typical of the épreuve d’amour as it appears in the comedie latine is the episode in Lidia wherein Lidia, the inamorata of Pirrus, demonstrates—by killing his falcon, plucking five hairs from his beard, and conspiring to his voluntary loss of a good tooth—her dominance over a husband sufficiently profound to prohibit his opposition to her extramarital activities.5 The épreuve d’amour in the earliest of Chrétien’s Arthurian romances, Erec et Enide, is very different. The situation resembles that in Les trois Chevaliers et la Chaisne [End Page 160] where the testing of the lovers is reciprocal, although it is the testing of Enide that best fits the standard pattern. These early instances of the motif establish some of its essential characteristics. Primarily they demarcate the polarities within which occurrences of épreuves d’amour operate, ranging from the comic and bawdy to the serious and courtly. In one respect the two seminal examples cited are atypical. In both instances, the main test is assigned by the male character and passed by the female protagonist. Furthermore, it may appear egregious that Enide successfully passes the test assigned her by disobeying instructions, but this is a characteristic feature of some later narratives. The squire in Guillaume au Faucon wins the love of his master’s wife by persistently refusing to obey her reiterated injunctions to abandon the fast he has undertaken to demonstrate his intractable determination to be granted her sexual favors, and the knight in Le Chevalier qui recovra l’Amor de sa Dame achieves the same happy outcome by ignoring the command of his mistress that he should not attempt to approach her after committing what she regards as an unforgivable offence. Having wed Enide, Erec abandons all interest in chivalric activities, and behaves like a besotted courtly lover: Mes tant l’ama Erec d’amors, que d’armes mes ne li chaloit, ne a tornoiemant n’aloit. N’avoit mes soing de tornoier. But Erec loved her with such a tender love that he cared no more for arms, nor did he go to tournaments, nor have any desire to joust.6 When the murmuring caused by his abstinence reaches Enide’s ears, Erec surprises her weeping, and learning that she grieves over the decline of his reputation in chivalry resolves to depart immediately as a knight-errant. Enide’s revelation prompts Erec into a commitment similar to that required...

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