Social Disorder and Discontent in Thomas Chestre's Sir Launfal

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— who is the one person who reacts negatively towards Launfal following Guinevere’s accusations. The extent of her influence on her husband is evident, since he has clearly forgotten the faithful service of his steward in the past. Arthur has become more like the ungrateful mayor of Caerleon who failed to remember Launfal’s largesse. The attitude of the head of the court is dangerously close to that of the head of the town of Caerleon. Arthur’s marriage to Guinevere weds the old order with the destructive force of courtly love, resulting in the birth of a new, self-serving vision of society. As king, Arthur’s concern is not for justice but for the gratification of the demands of this new world order. By contrast, Triamour comes to Launfal’s aid despite his broken vow, emphasising the essential selflessness, compassion and forgiveness of honest love. She becomes his vindicator where Guinevere is his victimiser. Chestre’s description of Triamour’s arrival at Arthur’s court has attracted much criticism for his focusing on the materialistic elements of his narrative. Marie describes her hero’s lover in general terms; her beauty is emphasised, but not detailed. Here, also, is the only time we receive any indication from Marie of her origins, and yet even still it is not explicitly stated that she is a fairy: we are simply told that she takes Lanval with her to Avalon, and the rest is left for us to surmise. Chestre gives precious little more detail of Triamour than Marie — the focus of his expanded description is on her crown, her fine clothes, her horse’s bridle, the collars of her hounds. What is significant here, though, is that her arrival, and that of her ladies-in-waiting, is seen through the eyes of the knights. It is they who focus on these materialistic elements, an indication that while the knights may show Launfal their support, their values have altered. It is only Launfal who sees Triamour for who she is. He pays no heed to the trappings of the procession, simply to his lover: And whan Launfal sawe that lady, To alle the folk he gan crie an hy, Bothe to yonge and olde, “Here,” he seide, “comith my laman swete!” (lines 967-70) Triamour’s punishment of Guinevere is unique to Chestre’s version of the tale: she breathes on Guinevere, blinding the queen in accordance with her earlier oath. The punishment is fitting in the context of this reading of the text: Guinevere is blinded because the vision of society that she represents is dangerously flawed. The influence of her presence at court has blinded her husband to the true value of his loyal steward. Launfal’s situation is a direct result of her decision to approach him after seeing him dancing from her tower, and yet the usual relationship between looking and loving that we find elsewhere in courtly romances is corrupted: the object of Guinevere’s affection is never Launfal, it is herself. She is so sure of her own beauty that she is willing to wager her eyes that Launfal cannot produce someone fairer than she is, and moves as a result from being blinded by her own selfish narcissism to literal blindness.
Sir Launfal represents a hankering after a past ideal during a time when bourgeois priorities centred on the accumulation of wealth. It offers an alternative, more positive option where the real and the other might co-exist, where the world represented by the Arthurian ‘golden age’ might be balanced with the openness, honesty and integrity that Triamour embodies. It is a new vision of society, a compromise between a lost past before the advent of dishonest and destructive courtly love, and a hoped-for future. The lack of a happy medium in the real world of Sir Launfal, however, is an acknowledgement on Chestre’s part that this dream is, for the moment at least, unattainable. In Richard II’s reign, perhaps, he sees a society where largesse has been replaced by heavy poll taxes, where a ruler’s early idea of kingship is corrupted by the self-serving greed of his subjects, and where the death of his wife, arguably the stabilising force in Richard’s life, results in the loss of his ability to rule justly. Launfal chooses to leave Carlisle to live with Triamour in Oliroun. For him, home is literally where the heart is. Although he is now out of danger and Guinevere has been punished, she is still alive, and Carlisle will never be home for him as long as it is susceptible to her discordant influence. It is a past that he cannot reclaim and he must seek solace elsewhere. He will never find the real honour, genuine chivalry, and true and honest love that he seeks in the real world and so, reunited with his mistress, he is “take in to fairie” (line 1035). As a human living in the fairy world, however, Launfal will always be a stranger; once a year he returns to the real world to snatch a taste of real life. It is tempting to believe that he returns to check up on things, to assess whether the old order might be restored, and yet the severance between the two worlds is explicit and final only at the end of the text. Launfal may return to joust — the old knight contesting the new — but his return visits are never homecomings. We find in this final severance an acceptance that there is no going back. Launfal — and Chestre — must accept that this paradise lost cannot be regained. Society, and its values, have changed. BIBLIOGRAPHY PRIMARY SOURCES Bliss, A. J. (ed.) (1960), Thomas Chestre: Sir Launfal, London and Edinburgh, Thomas Nelson & Sons. Rychner, J. (1958), Le lai de Lanval, Paris, Librairie Minard. SECONDARY SOURCES Anderson, E. R. (1977), ‘The Structure of Sir Launfal’, Papers on Language and Literature, 13, 115-24.
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Social Disorder and Discontent in Thomas Chestre's Sir Launfal

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