• 1  Perceforest,ed. G. Roussineau (première partie [2 vols], deuxième partie [2 vols.], troisième part (...)

1Le Roman de Perceforest articulates a fantasy of origins1. Tracing the history of Britain from Brutus, via Alexander, to the inception of the Arthurian epoch, it invents and instigates an illustrious past worthy of its literary and historical heritage. In this article, I shall explore the way in which the notion of origin, in relation to both the individual and the collective, is constructed in Perceforest with reference to the animal. Many depictions of the establishment of British civilisation and sovereignty in Perceforest involve encounters with animals ; and several narratives of the genealogy and birth of the romance’s heroes are constructed in relation to animals. The animal, I shall argue, can be seen in Perceforest as a means of representing that which is savage and primitive, from which the civilised culture wishes to distance itself. And yet, as I shall show, individual animals can be portrayed as displaying qualities more associated with the rational human. In Perceforest, the articulation of the human and the animal orchestrates a narrative about the construction of civilisation in general and the courtly culture of late medieval romance in particular. The civilised is portrayed as stemming from, and superior to, the savage ; yet nature red in tooth and claw emerges and returns within the biographies of characters in this cyclic romance, and in its accounts of chivalry and courtly life.

• 2  The theorists and works which inform my approach in this article are J. Derrida, L’animal que donc (...)

2Attention has been drawn by Jacques Derrida and Giorgio Agamben, and other scholars responding to their work2, to the way in which the category of the animal is self-reflexively human, a means of examining what it means to be human by constructing and excluding that which is labelled as not-human. The animal thereby becomes a category which is neither wholly inhuman – since it is delineated and understood via the processes of rational thought which humanity assumes for itself – nor wholly human – since it is precisely constructed as that which lies beyond or beneath the human. The animal functions as the foundation upon which humanity constructs its image of itself as distinct from, yet related to, the animal. The pun in the title of Derrida’s work, L’Animal que donc je suis, highlights the way in which the category of the animal is positioned in relation to the human such that it is understood as a primitive, simple form of life which inevitably leads to humanity (so that « suis » comes from « suivre »), while at the same time, the idea of the animal stands at the very heart of what it means to be human (so that « suis » comes from « être »).

• 3  On Agamben and Bisclavret, see M. Griffin, « The Beastly and the Courtly in Medieval Tales of Tran (...)
• 4  K. Steel, « How to Make a Human », Exemplaria, 20, 2008, p. 3-27 (p. 3).

3Derrida and Agamben focus on the ethics of separating the human from the animal, and the subsequent significance each category is accorded. Agamben’s formulation of « bare life » is a classification which can be allotted to any form of life which is beyond recognition or respect as these are regulated by sovereign power. As Agamben shows, decisions about who or what is human or animal are based upon these relations between bare life and sovereign power. Agamben uses Bisclavret, the twelfth-century werewolf lai attributed to Marie de France, as an example of these relations and the decisions which result from them3. This example highlights two ideas which are crucial to my reading of Perceforest : first, the need for a decision reveals that the division between the human and the animal is both contingent and a matter of human judgment ; and second, contemporary theoretical enquiry into the interdependence of the human and the animal has its roots in a reading of literature of the Middle Ages. As Karl Steel reminds us in his article How to Make a Human, « the essential role the subjugation of animals plays in human self conception [is] an inheritance from the Christian Middle Ages »4.

• 5  On the Beste Glatissant in Perceforest, see S. Huot, Postcolonial Fictions in the Roman de Percefo (...)

4The plot of Perceforest is rife with individuals whose status in relation to the categories of human and animal is subject to confusion and debate, and the reader is invited to reflect on the proper designation of a passionate monkey, some warlike fish, a dwarf, a valiant hunchback, pregnant women, a werewolf, a bear who behaves like knight, a handsome young man who looks like a bear, and a beautiful feral girl. These are just the examples I shall discuss in detail here : in an article of this length, it is evidently impossible to mention, let alone discuss in detail, every encounter with the animal in Perceforest. Lyonnel’s name and story, for instance, indicate the importance of the animal in defining identity, as do those of Le Tor. Human-animal metamorphosis punctuates the coronation of Gadifer and Bétis by Alexander (I.i, 105-9). And surely the most striking image of the alluring, menacing, monstrous hybrid is provided in Perceforest by the Beste Glatissant5. However, what I want to emphasise in this article is the way in which the fluctuating boundary between the human and animal is a subject of constant revision in Perceforest. The romance’s cyclical structure means that stories of encounters between humans and animals, and the originating role of animals in the establishment of human culture and its institutions, are recast as the narrative traces the rise, fall and rise again of courtly culture in Britain.

• 6  J. J. Cohen, Medieval Identity Machines, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2003, p. 35-7 (...)

5In order to forge a link between the role of the animal in the origins of the community and those of the individual, I concentrate in this article on episodes from Perceforest which involve the connections between animality, identity and parentage. I start with a reading of the « raison » informing the experiments undertaken by the philozophe Nardan as he seeks to prove the legitimacy of the deformed yet noble knight Le Bossu de Suave. Nardan’s rationale is based on the coincidence of the theses that the human is sufficiently similar to the animal yet entirely different to it. As I shall show, this rationale is unsettled when the story of Le Bossu’s conception is echoed and distorted by the narrative of Le Bossu’s own experience of paternity. While Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s reference to the fusion of animal and human in the definition of pure chivalric identity is initially informed by queer theory, his account of the inhuman at the heart of the exclusive institution of « Chevalerie » resonates with my argument that the animal is essential to the formulation of fantasies of origins6. In the second part of this article, I shall explore the way in which chivalry is explained in Perceforest with reference to animals. In the last section, I explore the animality which characterises two of the principal lineages traced in Perceforest, lineages which retrospectively establish the genealogy of earlier prose romance, and underpin a fantasised courtly ideal.

• 7  On dwarves in medieval romance in general, see A. Martineau, Le nain et le chevalier. Essai sur le (...)

6The logic which binds together the human and the animal in the scientific experiments conducted by Nardan in the first part of Perceforest is crucial to the argument of this article. Undertaking to prove the legitimate paternity of Le Bossu de Suave, the philozophe sets out to demonstrate that it is fear of, rather than sex with, a dwarf, which has resulted in the deformity of the son of the lord and lady of Suave. The lord of Suave refuses to believe that he could be responsible for the conception of this hunchbacked child, and accuses his wife of having slept with the dwarf whom his father-in-law gave the couple as a wedding present. Since the dwarf’s stature denotes him, in medieval eyes, as sub-human and monstrous, he is never asked for his account of events : he is marked as an animal, an object of exchange and fear, rather than as a speaking subject whose opinion is worth asking7.

• 8  J. E. Salisbury, The Beast Within : Animals in the Middle Ages, New York-London, Routledge, 1994, (...)

7The story is told as part of Le Bossu’s autobiographical account of his own conception – conception being the operative word here, since it is the very concept of a hunchback dwarf which proves more powerful than the physical prowess of Le Bossu’s father in engendering Le Bossu. As Le Bossu himself says, his appearance is caused by « ung nayn boçu et contrefait, en moy pouez veoir la copie » (I.i, 418). The notion that a pregnant woman’s imagination was both so strong and so impressionable that it could influence the appearance of her unborn child was common in the Middle Ages8. Initially, Nardan attempts to assure the lord of Suave that his wife’s fear of the dwarf is to blame for their son’s form by telling him a story of sheep which gave birth to spotted lambs after seeing speckled sticks, and then glosses his story as exemplary and irrefutable :

• 9  On medieval animal experiments as a means of understanding creation, see P. Buellens, « “Like a Bo (...)

9Nardan draws attention to his anagogical logic, based on the given that animal fear and birth mirrors human fear and birth, with the collocation « par ceste raison », showing that his experiments have achieved quod erat demonstrandum. Yet his ability to articulate this understanding stems from his exclusively human « raison ». The reason with which Nardan proves the legitimacy of Le Bossu’s paternity both distinguishes humanity from the animals who are the subjects of his experiments, and reveals humanity to be so similar to these other animals that animal behaviour can be observed in order to model, predict and understand human behaviour9. Humans have an animal physiology, but a rational mind: the fear experienced by the hens, rabbits and the Lady of Suave is posited on the boundary between the human and the animal.

• 10  Agamben, Open,p. 50
• 11  See Salisbury, Beast Within, p. 6-8. Steel identifies this subjugation of animals as the defining (...)
• 12  See P. de Leemans and M. Klemm, « Animals and Anthropology in Medieval Philosophy », in Resl, A Cu (...)

10In The Open, Agamben explores what he describes as the « metaphysical play of presupposition and reference, privation and supplement, between animal and man »10, in other words, humanity’s preoccupation with classifying and constructing itself as distinct from, yet based upon, the animal. Agamben interrogates the Heideggerian notion that the animal is essentially incapable of conceiving of itself in relation to – being open to – the world which surrounds it, whereas the human is marked as such by its ability to understand its relation to the world and its place in it. Man recognises himself within, and yet apart from, the animals which he classifies and subjugates. This is the process at work between one of the most significant representations of the relations between humanity and other animals for the Middle Ages : Adam’s dominion over and naming of the beasts in chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis11. It is worth noting that in the creation story related in Genesis chapter 1 animals are created before humans, whereas in chapter 2, God creates man, then the animals and then woman. This blurred hierarchy is inherited, reiterated and rewritten throughout the Christian Middle Ages12.

• 13  J. Block Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought, Cambridge MA-London, 1981 ; Wi (...)
• 14  See C. Walker Bynum, Metamorphosis and Identity, New York, Zone Books, 2001 ; Salisbury, The Beast (...)
• 15  St. Augustine, Concerning the City of God against the Pagans, trans. H. Bettenson, London, Penguin (...)
• 16  Williams, Deformed Discourse, p. 10.

11The work of John Block Friedman and David Williams examines the criteria by which the precarious division between animal and human life was constructed and reconstructed in the Middle Ages13. The category of the monstrous – and the figure of the monster – are often deployed in order to scrutinise the defining similarities and differences between these categories14. Since St. Augustine’s City of God, the monster has been linked to the demonstrative, via the etymological connection between monstrum and monstrare, to show, and monsters are understood as showing the will of God, which is nevertheless beyond human understanding15. As Williams puts it, « the language of the monstrous […] points to utterances that lie beyond logic »16.

• 17  Agamben, Open,p. 26.
• 18  On Agamben’s notion of the anthropological machine, see Calarco, Zoographies, p. 92-95.

14For Agamben the category of « human » is empty apart from the capacity to define itself : « Homo sapiens, then, is neither a clearly defined species nor a substance ; it is, rather, a machine or device for producing the recognition of the human »17 ; the implication is that humanity also constructs itself as uniquely able to identify and recognise what it is not18. Nardan’s experiments rely on the assumption that the animals he uses are simpler, more basic versions of the human, and yet completely different from the human : the chicken and the rabbit are governed entirely by brutish fear, whereas the reason and wisdom of man enable him to intellectualise this process. However, the meticulous experimental and logical work carried out by Nardan to prove his legitimacy is troubled when Le Bossu becomes a father himself. In the second part of Perceforest, Le Bossu is married to a beautiful woman named Cleoffe, who has fallen in love with him because of his « plaisance », and with whom he has two sons, described as « beaux » (II.ii, 179) (later a daughter, Gloriande, is named (II.ii, 258)). Much later in Le Bossu’s story, however, he is portrayed as fathering children who are disturbingly monstrous.

• 19  On the structural significance of the practice of repetition in the narrative of Perceforest, see (...)

15Telling his tale in part I, Le Bossu describes himself as a « copie » of the dwarf of whom his mother was so frightened ; and this copying is revisited – if not quite copied – later in the romance19. In the fourth part of the romance, the fear experienced by his mother when faced by the hunchbacked dwarf is rewritten as desire for Le Bossu’s body experienced by a female monkey, a singesse, who rescues Le Bossu from an attack by her fellow monkeys. Once more, Le Bossu’s tale is related in his own words, as he recounts his adventures to King Perceforest. Such was the singesse’s desire for Le Bossu, he recalls, that two of her four babies resembled him. Le Bossu is eager to stress that these children are not the result of a sexual encounter between himself and the singesse :

• 20  Huot, Postcolonial Fictions, p. 66.
• 21  For a fascinating reading of copying and conception in this episode, see Szkilnik, « “Des blancs m (...)

16Sylvia Huot points out the similarities between the conception of Le Bossu and the two little singos20. Although Le Bossu is portrayed as an exemplary knight elsewhere in Perceforest, there is more than a whiff of disingenuousness about his denial (« ne sçay par quel moien »), marking the significant differences between his conception and that of the baby monkeys. The way in which the « copie » of Le Bossu’s own paternity is played out in this tale of the spontaneous generation of baby monkeys rewrites the logic by which Nardan proved the innocence of the Lady of Suave. Le Bossu’s mother was simply frightened by the dwarf as she had sex with the Lord of Suave ; the singesse seems to have conceived the singos solely via her desire for Le Bossu. Thus, while Nardan’s experiments, with recourse to « raison », prove that Le Bossu, despite appearances to the contrary, is not the offspring of the dwarf, the episode on the island of monkeys suggests that the baby monkeys are indeed the offspring of Le Bossu. Certainly no alternative father is mentioned as a partner for the singesse. The implication is, then, that if Le Bossu is a « copie » of the dwarf, it is not for the same reason that the singos are « copies » of him21.

• 22  Huot, Postcolonial Fictions, p. 67.

17Huot also remarks on the resonances with depictions of Dido and Medea evident in the the singesse’s enraged reaction to her abandonment by Le Bossu22. I would argue that the references to classical tales of vengeful, spurned women in the description of the singesse’s filicide reinforce the impression that Le Bossu is the singos’ father. His horrified recollection of this episode suggests that he what he was witnessing was the murder of his own offspring :

• 23  On the importance of this tournament, see Ch. Ferlampin-Acher, Perceforest et Zéphir. Propositions (...)

20The first time Le Bossu de Suave is encountered by the reader of Perceforest is at the very first tournament held in Britain, under the aegis of Alexander, who is attempting to civilise this wild yet once noble kingdom23. The description of Le Bossu’s physical deformity is meshed with the exaltation of his chivalric strength, strength which is being tested and defined for the very first time :

• 24  On the Alexander tradition in Perceforest, see Ch. Ferlampin-Acher, « Perceforest et le roman : “O (...)

21Le Bossu and his fellow knights are all able to acquit themselves well, despite all being debutants at jousting, since Alexander has only just formulated the idea of an « esbanoy qui fut puis nommé tournoy » (I.i, 117), inspired by the memory of some remarkable fish he encountered during his marine voyages24.

• 25  See Huot, Postcolonial Fictions, p. 59-63 ; Ferlampin-Acher, « Le monstre dans les romans », p. 85 (...)

22Bethidés encounters these fish-knights in the third part of Perceforest (III.ii, 273-85), where they display the seemingly human characteristics of speaking a language and obeying a king25. If the inauguration of one of the most characteristic activities of the chivalric romance, the tournament, is predicated on Alexander’s proto-scientific observations of the « chevaliers de mer », then courtly language and hierarchy, it is implied, may also be markers of civilisation which are copied from the animal kingdom.  

• 26  Cohen, Medieval Identity Machines, p. 49.

23As Cohen points out, the construction of chivalric identity is ever predicated on the fusion of man and animal. « Chevalerie » depends upon knights’ intimate relation with horses, « creatures that conjoined in their own chivalric bodies flows of violence (kicking, rearing, hurling, biting) to a responsive docility »26. In the conception of the chivalric ideal, both the man and the animal he rides, lives with and loves are characterised by instincts which are simultaneously noble and savage ; and this is manifested in Perceforest by the location of animal activity and animal form as the inspiration for the tournament. In the descriptions of Le Bossu and the « chevaliers de mer » I quote above, our attention is drawn to the conjunction of the chivalric and animal body : Le Bossu’s body is described in detail as it fits with that of his horse, and it is impossible to distinguish the fish’s scales from the accoutrements of the well-equipped human knight. The use of the « chevaliers de mer » as prototypes upon which human chivalry is modelled is a useful illustration of the circularity of the logic which characterises the way in which animality is deployed as that which both grounds, and yet is excluded from, rational humanity.

• 29  On this transformation, see D. Delcourt, « Magie, fiction et phantasme dans le Roman de Percefores (...)

26Whereas Nardan’s experiments relied on one of aspect the similarities and separation between human and animal, Lydoire’s « science » and « experimens » provoke another : Estonné looks to others like a bear, believes himself to be one, and has acquired a fair amount of ursine « nature »29.

• 30  For the significance of the prohibition of rape in the founding of the civilisation in Perceforest(...)

28Both Estonné’s body and soul (the latter of which might be understood by « nature » and « sens » in the quotations above) are marked by both the human and the animal. In Agamben’s terms, his identity is riven with the « inimate caesura », the suture which divides and joins the animal and human, in a line which transects both body and soul. The bear is again described as being in possession of « sens » when he almost loses it through rage at the sight of his three owners being attacked by evil, rapacious knights descended from the maleficent Darnant : « il fut si courroucié que a pou qu’il n’yssoit du sens » (II.i, 326). This near-departure from his « sens » is triggered by a civilised, not to say chivalrous, response : that of a need to defend women from rape30. His furious and fatal attack on the knights is all the more remarkable because he uses their own swords and shields against them. In another configuration of animal body and chivalric equipment, the bear is described as wielding a sword in « la dextre pate » (II.1, 327). Gadifer and Lydoire are faced with the extraordinary sight of a beast using chivalric weapons to defeat knights who were in thrall to their base, brutal instincts :

• 31  Delcourt, « Magie, fiction et phantasme », p. 168 ; Huot, Postcolonial Fictions, p. 51-52.

30Delcourt and Huot both remark on the similarity between the story of Estonné’s transformation and that of Bisclavret31. Like Estonné, the werewolf in Bisclavret becomes a pet of the court, reacting with violence and fury only when he is faced with sexual misconduct as it is defined by the rules of the court : the werewolf bites off the nose of his adulterous wife and Estonné defends his beloved Priande and her companions from would-be rapists. The Perceforest author would almost certainly have been familiar with werewolf lais such as Bisclavret and Melion, and we may well see a clin d’œil in their direction in Blanche’s initial reaction to glimpsing the « sy laide beste » that Estonné has become :

• 32  On colonisation via naming, see Huot, Postcolonial Fictions,p. 31-32.

34Gadifer’s pronouncement implies that it is so difficult to tell apart animal and human life that the words of the sovereign need to intervene in order to make this distinction. Estonné scoops up one of these feral children, substitutes his own cloak for her sheepskin garment, and takes her back to Lydoire at court. The queen names the savage child as a reminder that the people of Scotland are descended from Priam’s sister, yet themselves seem to have forgotten their illustrious Trojan heritage : « je l’ay appellee depuis Priande a la recommendacion de sa lignie, qui ne fait pas a oublier » (II.i, 21)32. Priande’s transformation into a young lady of the court might be seen as the inverse of the transformation Lydoire works upon Estonné : both transformations transgress the border between animal and human, civilised and savage, but in different directions – yet both are consistently marked by the intimate caesura.

• 33  On the possible etymology of Estonné’s name, see Ferlampin-Acher, Perceforest et Zéphir, p. 22-23.

36Since name and « nature » are explicitly connected in this description it is quite appropriate that, when one changes, the other follows suit33. The Perceforest author continues the play on Estonné’s name in the second part of the romance : when Priant the bear is fighting the sons of Darnant, for example, he is dealt such a blow by one of them « que l’escu ala feindre sur la teste de l’ours si dur qu’il en fut tout estonné » (II.i, 327). The bear is « tout estonné » in the sense that he is momentarily stunned by this assault, but also in the sense that he is acting entirely in the way that Estonné the knight would act. Conversely, in his human form, Estonné is repeatedly dazed and confused by Zéphir’s tricks. When Lydoire restores him to human appearance, Estonné believes himself to be waking from a dream, and his bewildered mutterings as he comes round reveal a division within his identity : he addresses himself in the second person, wondering : « Qui es tu ? N’es tu pas Estonné ? » (II.i, 329). « Estonné » could be read here as a proper noun or an adjective, and Estonné’s question voices uncertainty as to his own name or his dazed mental state. When Estonné and Le Tor encounter the « pilier Estonné », on which is depicted in detail the events he believed he dreamt, both knights are so stunned that they are almost oblivious to the arrival of Lydoire, Blanchette, Lyriope, Priande and their entourage, as well as challenges issued to them by two knights. These latter knights, indignant at being ignored, knock Estonné and Le Tor from their horses, and it is only the shock of this which brings then round, « tous estonnez du cheoir » (II.ii, 13). Once more, the encounter with his animal avatar leads Estonné to an interrogation of his chivalric identity.

• 34  On the connections between Le Bossu and Ourseau, see Ferlampin-Acher, Perceforest et Zéphir, p. 11 (...)
• 35  See Ferlampin-Acher, « La Peur », p. 129.

37If the effect of Estonné’s transformation on his « nature » and mental state is articulated in his own name, then its physical repercussions are seen in both the name and body of Ourseau, the child conceived the very night on which Lydoire conjures Estonné’s ursine appearance. In a manner reminiscent of Le Bossu’s mother and the singesse34, the physical appearance of Lydoire’s child is formed via her sense of sight. Lydoire is « lye quant elle veyt qu’elle fut venue a son entente, car elle veoit aler le chevalier a maniere d’un ours » (II.i, 323). The reiterated references to sight reveal that Lydoire’s illusory magic is so convincing that the sight of this knight influences the appearance of her own offspring35.

• 36  Ferlampin-Acher notes the similarity of Passelion’s birth to that of Athena (« Le rôle des mères » (...)

41The women who attend the birth act as a surrogate audience, bearing witness to Priande’s cries of labour-pain, which are indistinguishable from her cries of grief at her husband’s prefigured death, and are echoed by cries of anger from her still as-yet-unborn son, from within his mother’s womb. As soon as Passelion enters the world (breaking through his dead mother’s chest in his haste to be born) Lyriope tells him of he need to avenge his father’s foretold death ; but this is somewhat unnecessary, since Passelion is grasping a bow and arrow, fashioned from the his mother’s « char nerveuse » (IV.i, 160), ready to do so as soon as possible. Passelion’s strange birth therefore nuances Cohen’s account of the heterogeneity of the chivalric body, and recalls the uncanny, originary chevaliers de mer. In both these cases, the chivalric body is not overlaid with arms and armour : these are formed from flesh itself36.

• 37  See J. Taylor, « The Sense of a Beginning. Genealogy and Plenitude in Late Medieval Narrative Cycl (...)

46In Perceforest,animals are fabricated as causes or origins for human behaviour or identity : Ourseau’s appearance ; the practice of tournaments ; British kingship. But these animals’ retrospective construction means that they are can never be entirely non-human or separate, since they are the product of human fantasies. The definition of an individual as legitimate and legible in the newly-re-civilised Britain of the Perceforest depends upon the construction and disavowal of the retrospectively posited animal. In the cyclical structure of Perceforest37, genealogies are traced, history anticipated and repeated, and the crucial role of the animal in constructing origins is recast as the narrative of these origins is rewritten. Thus Le Bossu’s encounter with the singesse rewrites the relationship between the human and animal as it is figured in the story of his own conception ; Estonné’s ursine escapades shed light not just on the grounds of his own chivalric identity but also the wild origin and appearance of Ourseau ; Estonné’s relationship with Priande is haunted throughout by animality, as her death scene recalls the capture which initiated her absorption into the Scottish court and British history. The retrospective articulation of the stories of Le Bossu and Ourseau also draws our attention to Perceforest’s essential cyclicity : they bear witness to the way in which the romance rewrites an embedded past to explain the present and anticipate a future.

• 38  In her most recent book on Perceforest, Perceforest et Zéphir,Ch. Ferlampin-Acher argues that this (...)

47Perceforest responds to and builds upon the tradition of earlier prose romance, both in content and form. It constructs a pre-history for the Arthurian world it inherits, articulating this pre-history in relation to the wildness represented by animality in general, and a set of individual animals in particular. It might be argued that this is especially revealing in a reading of Perceforest since this is a romance which purports to recount the founding of a particularly influential manifestation of humanity : the European courtly ideal38. This ideal is portrayed as emerging from a fusion of history and pre-history : documented (if not verifiable) records are retold against a fantasised wild landscape, in which only an anxious distinction can be made between people and animals.