Abstract
In this article, I approach premodern dance through the lens of cultural game theory. Specifically, I examine how the Middle English Sir Launfal (c.1400) is transformed by Thomas Chestre into a narrative about games. Chestre’s ludic additions have been met with criticism for how they disrupt the plot of Marie de France’s twelfth-century Lanval. While the games interrupt narrative progression, the ludic additions allow Chestre to consider the porousness between game worlds and the official world. Chestre’s ludic additions are not merely digressive. I demonstrate how the two longest ludic additions—the joust with Sir Valentine and the dance with Guinevere—share a structural pattern. I argue that the poem’s joust and dance games realise the more serious social implications inherent in playing games as the poet shows the consequences of Launfal’s unsportsmanlike behaviour.
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Notes
Chestre’s sources are contested. Myra Seaman convincingly argues that there is ‘no compelling evidence suggest[ing] that Chestre even knew Marie’s text [as] he appears to have worked from an intervening English version, Sir Landevale’ (2000, 107).
Marie de France’s Lanval is 646 lines. The earlier Middle English translation Sir Landeval is 538 lines. The French Graelent is slightly longer than both of the preceding Lanval-narratives at 756 lines. Chestre’s Sir Launfal is 1044 lines long.
A note on terminology: I use the terms as identified by Laura Kendrick: ‘games’ refer to ‘regulated leisure activities in which fun was harnessed for extrinsic aims and social ends’ and ‘play’ as ‘more spontaneous, fanciful, free-form experiments in entertainment’ (2009, 53). See also Edwards (1998, 11–37).
In the same chapter, Spearing famously refers to Sir Launfal as a ‘fascinating disaster’ (1993, 106).
This reading builds from video game theorist Jesper Juul’s codification of lusory attitudes into three player considerations (goal-orientation, experience, and social context) (2010, 126–127). Juul builds from Jonas Heide Smith’s work on how players balance stability with spontaneity while playing games (2006, 217–227).
Barbara Sparti notes that ‘there was a great deal of dancing’ at jousting events in Italy as well (Sparti 1993, 47–48).
The Middle English translation of the Roman de la Rose, The Romaunt of the Rose often attributed to Geoffrey Chaucer, maintains that Largesse’s dance partner is a ‘sib to Artour of Britaigne’ and ‘This knyght was comen all newely / Fro tourneiynge faste by,’ (Chaucer 1987, 1199 and 1205–1206).
On dance and masculinity in the Middle Ages, see Karras (2021, 154–164).
On Chestre’s cataloging of knights and their tournament history, see Weldon (2000, 118–119).
In the poem’s extant manuscript, the Valentine episode is specifically demarcated by a space for an absent large rubricated initial. This is the only space for a large rubricated initial in Sir Launfal. See Chestre, London, BL Cotton MS Caligula A.II, fol. 39r.
All Middle English quotations are from Chestre (1960); translations are mine.
Fallows notes similar rules composed in the Duke of Milan Francesco Sforza Visconti’s Regolamento delle giostre (1465) (2010, 219–20).
Chestre introduces Guinevere at the start of the romance (37–72). At her and Arthur’s wedding, she gifts every knight a broach or ring except for Launfal (70–72).
In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ‘wylle’ is also used a pun alongside the carole dance—a popular circle dance in the Middle Ages. See Morrison (2021, 32).
For parallel examples, see Page (1989, 113–15).
All text and English translations are from Ebreo (1993).
Middle English Dictionary (MED), n. ‘gāme,’ 1.
See also Weldon (2000, 113).
Oxford English Dictionary (OED), n. ‘envy,’ 4a; MED, n., ‘envīe,’ 5. This more positive use of envy that comes from Old French is no longer used in modern English.
Launfal’s attitude does fluctuate more positively when Gyfre, the knight’s magical companion, temporarily lifts the knight’s spirits by helping to retrieve his helmet and later his shield when Valentine ‘smot’ it from him (589–95). His negative attitude wins out in the end.
See Ebreo (1993, 120–23).
Chestre notes that they ‘swore þat he schold dye / Er he wente out of Lumbardye, / And be hongede & todrawe’ (604–6).
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to have had the opportunities to share earlier versions of this essay at a Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Colloquium at the Ohio State University and on a panel sponsored by the Game Cultures Society. Special thanks to Karen Winstead, Kimberly K. Bell, Julie Nelson Couch, Betsy McCormick, Sarah J. Sprouse, Ethan Knapp, and Eric Johnson. I am grateful to this special issue’s editor Kathryn Dickason and my anonymous reviewers for their feedback as I prepared the piece for publication. All errors that remain are my own.
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Morrison, C. ‘To se hem play, hyt was fayr game’: Playing & dancing in Thomas Chestre’s Sir Launfal. Postmedieval 14, 435–455 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41280-023-00273-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41280-023-00273-3