Silence: A Thirteenth-Century French Romance (Medieval Texts and Studies)

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see also Androgyny; Clothing; Gender Identity; Gender Roles: I. Overview; Ide and Olive; Literature: I. Overview; Maiden; Manliness; Manly (Masculine) Woman; Passing (Woman); Transgender. BIBLIOGRAPHY Krueger, Roberta L. "Questions of Gender in Old French Courtly Romance" in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance Cambridge, ed. Roberta L. Krueger, 132-49. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Now this is one of the ‘No man can kill me’ – ‘I am no man’ moment, which is also the epitome of the romance. The way Silence captures Merlin is parallel to how Cador kills the dragon – here we have the two generations tied together. Instructed by a mysterious wise man, Silence roasts meat but makes it very salty. Although he has been living in the wild like a beast, Merlin is unable to resist cooked food (i.e. proper human food). He swallows the meat before he realises it is not very nicely spiced. Then he spots a jar that Silence places nearby and hurries to it, thinking it is water while it is actually honey; drinking it up just makes the thirst even more unbearable. The second jar is full of milk – still not helpful. The third is wine – this time it helps, but it gets Merlin drunk and sleepy. Just as Cador kills the lazy dragon with ease, Silence captures Merlin. Merlin in a medieval manuscript of a compilation of texts of astronomy by Alfonso the Wise (c. 1400)

He was pained to think that the king of France could think him enough of an imbecile as to even imagine anything that crazy." Choosing to use the singular “they” in reference to Heldris throughout our discussions ended up highlighting (sometimes rather strikingly) the author’s problematic position of authority. When divorced from gender identifiers, assumptions students might otherwise have made about Heldris’s opinions or positions suddenly unraveled, making them much more complex (and perhaps for my students, more frustrating). One minute, Heldris seems so intimately conversant in the effects of sexual harassment on a female victim. The next, they’re condemning women wholesale for their tendency to manipulate men with their tears. When we removed our essentialist biases about how women write or men write (and where their sympathies lie as writers), we found ourselves so much less sure about how to understand Heldris’s position. Silence is initially described as a woman, but raised as a man after the king decrees that daughters can no longer inherit.Psaki, R., ed. Arthuriana. Special Issue: Essays on Le Roman de Silence, Dallas, Southern Methodist University, 12.1 (2002). Silence embodies absolute physical perfection and engages in outstanding knightly activities that seem impossible for an ordinary human being. This can be considered as a supernatural element in the romance alongside Merlin's existence. [10] Such tropes can be found in most romance or literature pieces, where the protagonist is epitomized as the flawless being that everyone envies and desires. [ citation needed]

In retelling this poem in my novel, The Story of Silence, I wanted to give Silence what they don’t have in the original—a voice. Instead of being a passive chip, fate decided by father, identity argued over by Nature and Nurture, I wanted Silence to overcome their name and speak for themself. I wanted other things, too: more Merlin, more magic, more queerness. But what I wanted most was to write the story of a truly noble knight, the one I wanted to be like when I was a little tomboy all those years ago. Written in old French it follows the story of an England where King Evan has barred women from inheriting property. Duke of Cornwall Cador and Duchess Eufemie’s heir is, naturally, born female, and so removing the possibility of her claiming her parents' fortune; it would revert to the crown. Cue Silencia becoming Silencius, add his rise to becoming greatest fighter/jouster/minstrel etc. in the known world, a few death threats, much adventuring, plus Nature and Nurture fighting over Silence’s ‘true’ gender.Wealth only makes a man mean-spirited and makes him toil without profit. All he does is soil himself." A medieval romance was not necessarily a tale of romantic love, but rather a fictional narrative in prose or verse. Plots often revolved around chivalric adventures, and Chrétien de Troyes’s Arthurian works may be some of the best-known examples. Courtly love had a place in this genre, but it was rarely the primary focus. In many ways, the medieval romance was the precursor to the modern novel, an indication of which is the modern French word for novel: roman. Silence was named "Silentia" by her parents and called "Silentius" because of her changed gender. However, she was largely referred to by the gender-neutral name "Silence". In the beginning, Silence was in a way silenced because he could not reveal his true sex as a woman, but he chose his gender to be male. He was only briefly able to speak his opinions as a woman at the end of the story when he claimed that he no longer cared to keep silent any longer. His final monologue was the only time when he was publicly recognized as a woman and able to give his honest opinion. Afterwards, his opinions were no longer stated and he was effectively silenced. Silence was silent in various ways throughout the story.

a b Allen, Peter (1989). Wasserman, Julian; Roney, Lois (eds.). Sign,Sentence,Discourse: The Ambiguity of Silence. New York: Syracuse University Press. p.108. ISBN 0-8156-2445-X.

In this Book

Nurture refers to how societal, historical, and or parental influence renders a person. In this case, it's Silence living as a man. v. 165-209, 228-248, 3694-3716, 3721-3781, 3791-4176, 4225-4231, 4248, 4274-4280, 5242, 5680, 5804, 6180, 6348, 6371, 6460, 6531, 6587, 6651, 6663, 6695-6697 Thorlac Turville-Petre and Dorothy Johnston, Image & Text: Medieval Manuscripts at the University of Nottingham (Nottingham: Djanogly Art Gallery, University of Nottingham Arts Centre, 1996), p. 9.