Noble Power in Ten Middle English Romances

Abstract

This research explores the depiction of the nobility in ten romances composed in the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It looks into the extent of the nobility’s power in these texts, and the ways in which this power is evoked. It is likely the first study to use a theoretical framework based on the work of the sociologist Michael Mann in the analysis of Middle English literature. Mann’s theory distinguishes between four forms of social power: economic, military, ideological and political. Political power is rarely evident in the corpus and therefore only incidentally features here. In the treatment of ideological power, a distinction is made between ideological power enjoyed within the context of the romance itself and ideological power enjoyed in the ‘real world’ outside the text. The romances in the corpus are King Horn, Havelok, Sir Degaré the Northern Octavian, Sir Launfal, Sir Amadace, Sir Cleges, Roswall and Lillian, The Taill of Rauf Coilyear and The Squyr of Lowe Degre. They were selected on the basis of two criteria. Firstly, were social contrasts in individual romances sufficiently evident for effective analysis to be possible even without very specific historical contexts from which to read them. Secondly, was there a temporal spread which might allow for conclusions to be drawn on the influence of specific socio?historical contexts on the worlds portrayed in the romances of the corpus. The application of Mann’s theory to the corpus produces a rich image. The image of the nobleman as a mounted warrior appears in each of the romances, testifying to the influence this image exerted over medieval conceptions of the nobility. After c. 1350, it lost much of its connection with reality as mounted warfare diminished in importance. The romances also share their portrayal of the monarch as a central figure. Some of the works espouse notions of the nobility’s engagement with military activity which clearly deny or ignore the realities of high and late medieval society. In such romances, the ideological power which the nobility enjoyed over the author and/or individuals in their environment appears to have partly suppressed realisations which challenged an exclusive association of the nobility with military power. In two romances, non-nobles can become knights and even powerful barons. Yet in three of the romances we find clear suggestions that nobility ultimately rests on factors which lie beyond human society. The notion that nobility is innate runs counter to thirteenth-, fourteenth- and fifteenth-century practice. Ideology here suppresses realistic perceptions of the social mechanisms that surrounded the nobility. Three of the romances point to the economic vulnerability of noble lords by indicating that boundless munificence need not equate having boundless resources. The romances in the corpus display considerable variety in their evocation of noble power, even to the extent of allowing one to gather a nuanced impression of noble positions. At the same time, they point to a future in which the notion of the knight as a heavily armed warrior on horseback moved into the realm of fancy.