Understanding Genre and Medieval Romance

K.S. Whetter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780754661429
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317004929
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Unique in combining a comprehensive and comparative study of genre with a study of romance, this book constitutes a significant contribution to ongoing critical debates over the definition of romance and the genre and artistry of Malory's Morte Darthur. K.S. Whetter offers an original approach to these issues by prefacing a comprehensive study of romance with a wide-ranging and historically diverse study of genre and genre theory. In doing so Whetter addresses the questions of why and how romance might usefully be defined and how such an awareness of genre-and the expectations that come with such awareness-impact upon both our understanding of the texts themselves and of how they may have been received by their contemporary medieval audiences. As an integral part the study Whetter offers a detailed examination of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur, a text usually considered a straightforward romance but which Whetter argues should be re-classified and reconsidered as a generic mixture best termed tragic-romance. This new classification is important in helping to explain a number of so-called inconsistencies or puzzles in Malory's text and further elucidates Malory's artistry. Whetter offers a powerful meditation upon genre, romance and the Morte which will be of interest to faculty, graduate students and undergraduates alike.

Chapter One

Generic Kinds and Contracts

All forms of artistic mimesis, for that matter all aspects of human communication in general, are subject to generic conventions. Our generic considerations may, like our use of language, be so thoroughly assimilated as to function unconsciously, but our presentation, understanding and interpretation of any mimetic and communicative act is affected by genre, whether the medium be speech, literature, music, film, dance or anything else. Hence Hans Robert Jauss’s influential notion of a generic ‘horizon of expectations’.¹ Genre is most often discussed in connection with literature and film, but very little thought is needed to reveal its presence in a variety of other forms; even architectural and musical styles are recognized through generic conventions.² As Dudley North observed in the seventeenth century: ‘Mufick hath its Anthems, Pavens, Fantefies, Galliards, Courantoes, Ayres, Sarabands, Toyes, Cromatiques, & c. And Verfes have their Hymmes, Tragedies, Satyres, Heroiques, Sonets, Odes, Songs, Epigrams, Diftiques, and Strong lines, which are their Cromatiques’.³

Genre, then, is multi-disciplinary, multifarious and multiform. Genre’s complexity has given rise to a number of different scholarly approaches, some of which are more concerned with the sociological function of genre than its critical value and definition. For some linguists, for instance, genre is a type of communicative event, a distinctive category of discourse of any type, spoken or written, with or without literary aspirations.⁴ Folklorists, on the other hand, sometimes see genres as classificatory systems, sometimes as quasi-permanent forms which still exist even if the myths from which they spring are reduced to nursery rhymes, sometimes as indicators of social or cultural expectations, needs, composition and mores.⁵ Rhetoricians likewise use genre as a social indicator, a means of analysing types of discourse and their socio-historical implications,⁶ whilst structuralist critics like Tzvetan Todorov see genre as representing ‘a structure, a configuration of literary properties, an inventory of options’.⁷ Some literary theorists, on the other hand, have argued that genre is a way of grouping literary works based, theoretically, upon what we may call both inner and outer form, a combination of metrical and structural traits with elements such as tone and purpose which are usually associated with subject and audience.⁸ Many of these various approaches to genre share certain common assumptions, the most important of which are a wariness of prescriptive classifications of genre and an awareness of genre’s possible role in integrating past and present.⁹

Rather less convincing is Todorov’s view that all genres result from speech acts, just as it is a simplification to see genre as always being produced by and reflective of society’s ideology.¹⁰ M.M. Bakhtin attempts to equate literary genres with ideology in this sense, but having done so he immediately realizes the untenableness of this position, acknowledging that any generic style or example can reflect the views and opinions of an individual speaker or author who, it must be added, is perfectly capable of opposing his or her society and its ideologies.¹¹ Certainly genre is capable of reflecting the reigning ideology, but this is not its only purpose and it is certainly not the case that genre must always be ideologically determined. Often, in fact, a writer simply chooses to write in a certain way, one free of ideological baggage. Equally often, as is exemplified in the writings of Aristophanes and Swift and Shaw, authors actively criticize rather than endorse the ideology of the time. Coleridge considered the poetic or literary work to be guided by a sense of ‘INITIATIVE’, a term which includes or can be defined as genre,¹² but this generic initiative belongs as much to the individual poet or author as to society. Further, it comprises a number of considerations, a ‘complex of factors’,¹³ and need not reflect a particular ideology. Finally, since most of the theorists who claim that all literary genres and texts are ideologically determined also claim, implicitly or explicitly, to be themselves exempt from the dominant ideology,¹⁴ they must allow that other authors may also be exempt, even those who do not criticize the ruling class or classes. As Raymond Williams observes, not only should literature and culture consequently be ‘approached in ways other than reduction, abstraction, or assimilation’, but ideology in whatever sense or form is ultimately insufficient to such a task.¹⁵

If genre can help indicate or indict ideology it can also function as a selfreflexive property, often in ways which suggest a certain type of interpretation. To take a cinematic set of examples, Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1969) is fully understood only in relation to more traditional Westerns like George Stevens’s Shane (1952),¹⁶ just as Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven (1992) can be seen as looking back at and commenting upon both his own Westerns and the genre in general, including these earlier icons. In all three films this relationship – and generic commentary – is announced in the opening frames (see Figures 2, 3, 4, and 5). As The Wild Bunch ride toward and then flee from their opening robbery turned ambush their initial approach is shot over the heads of a group of children at play (Figure 2); the remainder of this lengthy shot and their subsequent flight are both interspersed with shots of the children. This evokes the opening of Shane with Shane riding into the valley towards the Starrett ranch where little Joey is playing in his yard and pretending to shoot a deer; Shane’s approach is silhouetted (probably from Joey’s eyes) through the deer’s antlers (Figure 3). But Joey’s gun is not loaded and the bucolic, even idyllic atmosphere of Shane is exploded in The Wild Bunch when we see that the children’s play consists first of arranging a pit-fight between scorpions and ants and then of burning the lot, victors and victims. Unforgiven opens with the would-be farmer and house on the hill, and the silent shot of the rickety farmhouse and the burial of Bill Munny’s wife suggests a possible familial and pastoral tone reminiscent of the Starrett homestead (Figure 4). But the burial evokes loss and change and we are simultaneously presented with the brief on-screen biography of Munny’s past which creates a more sinister promise that, as in the opening of The Wild Bunch, all is not as it seems.¹⁷ When the action returns to the farm we see that, in contrast to the Starretts, Bill Munny is neither a contented nor a very competent farmer (Figure 5). The deliberate dialogue between these movies, as well as the enjoyment and interpretation of them, is announced, enabled and magnified by genre.

Fig. 2 The opening approach of The Wild Bunch (William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Warren Oates, Jaime Sanchez and Ben Johnson) and the children playing with ants and scorpions. From The Wild Bunch, dir. Sam Peckinpah (Warner Bros, 1969).

Fig. 3 Shane (Alan Ladd) approaching the Starrett ranch. From Shane, dir. George Stevens (Paramount, 1952).

Fig. 4 Bill Munny’s house and the burial of his wife. From Unforgiven, dir. Clint Eastwood (Warner Bros, 1992).

Fig. 5 Bill Munny (Clint Eastwood) and children (Shane Meier and Aline Levasseur) as improbable and impoverished farmers. From Unforgiven, dir. Clint Eastwood (Warner Bros, 1992).

I argue, therefore, that the most important generic consideration to bear in mind is that genre is an essential part of the medium of a work, without which, consciously or unconsciously, we can never fully understand its message.¹⁸ As Jauss styles it, we approach genre with a series of expectations, so that ‘no work makes its meaning without to some extent depending upon the audience’s recognition … that it belongs to a specific genre’.¹⁹ To take an extreme example, parody can only function successfully when its audience is aware of the typical features comprising a generic kind, element or tradition. The close of Swift’s ‘On Poetry: A Rapsody’ (1733) pretends to be a royal panegyric and dramatization of Swift’s advice to the poet about royal flattery, but it is actually a satire on critics, hack poets, and royalty. The curious spelling of ‘rapsody’ in the subtitle indicates Swift’s satiric intent, as ‘rapp’ can mean both a counterfeit coin and a blow to the head.²⁰ Queen Caroline, however, missed this clue and failed to recognize the poem’s true genre: she not only accepted the praise as genuine, she only realized that Swift should not be rewarded when her advisers pointed out her error. Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’ (1681), in contrast, has been seen by one critic not as a carpe diem poem – as it surely is – but as a parody of such poems.²¹ Whether this is a simple truth recognized far too late or, as is more likely, a blatant misreading of both the poem and of generic conventions in general, it either way shows the vital importance of a proper understanding of genre. In a similar generic misreading Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae (1138) has likewise been said to be a parody, although it is more properly part of the pseudo-historical chronicle tradition with, moreover, little evidence of parodic or even comedic intent.²²

While some generic conventions are overlooked or blatantly misconstrued, other genres can suffer from a limited view of their conventions or potential. Shaw, for instance, lamented the comic success of his plays at the expense of their morality, complaining vociferously that people continually missed the serious moral message embedded in the humour.²³ Such misunderstanding presumably stems from the commonplace failure to understand the comic genre in general, the restrictive belief that comedy cannot also be didactic and espouse a serious message. Amongst modern critics, at least, this misconception extends as far back as the study of Greek Old Comedy, where the possibility that Aristophanes’ plays could contain both great comic fantasy and a moral or didactic message was long denied.²⁴ Much of the difficulty and controversy surrounding our interpretation and understanding of Euripides’ Alkestis (438) is likewise genre-based, stemming from the fact that critics are unsure as to just what genre it is.²⁵ Tourneur’s The Atheist’s Tragedy (1609–11) might similarly be better appreciated if its generic manipulation were better recognized. Surprisingly, even Paradise Lost (1667; 1674) has been the object of a spectacular generic misreading, one which construes the poem as a classical epic with Satan as the hero.²⁶ Judging one generic form by the features and conventions of another can lead to serious complications: one problem in trying to get modern concert bands to play swing or jazz arrangements is that many members of the band judge the music by the wrong conventions, consequently misplaying it. Orson Welles’s 1938 American radio broadcast of H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds suffered from an even more serious generic misinterpretation, one made possible in part by Welles’s manipulation of various generic conventions and media: many Americans, failing entirely to recognize the story as science fiction, actually believed that Earth was being attacked by aliens! Genre, consequently, should be seen not as restrictive but as a communicative resource leading to understanding, albeit one which has itself often been misconstrued, and whose fluidity has often led to errors in communication and interpretation.²⁷

This realization is highly relevant to Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur (completed 1469–70), a text which has been much misunderstood because its genre has been consistently misinterpreted. The Morte has...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• References
• Introduction
• 1 Generic Kinds and Contracts
• 2 Redefining Medieval Romance
• 3 Generic Juxtapositioning in Malory’s Morte Darthur
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index