Newberry Essays in Medieval and Early Modern ... - Newberry Library

Newberry Essays in Medieval and Early Modern Studies 7These bodies lie at the intersection of two distinct desires on the part of the audience—the desirefor a sense of unity and community with the other groups who have shared the same space, and thedesire to dominate these other groups and define the stories themselves. One final corpse illustratesthis tension and the negotiation between unity and dominance. When King Locrin rejects his Britonqueen Gwendoleine and their son in favor of his foreign lover Æstrild and their daughter Abren,Gwendoleine leads an army against him, and he dies in battle. Not content with this, however, shethen:went to the castlewherein Æstrild was;she took Æstrild and Abren,and caused them to be bound,and caused them to be castinto a deep water;there were they drowned,and there they suffered death. 39The corpses are lost in the water, but Gwendoleine knows the power of an absent body, and oncethe sole ruler of the landscape that she and Locrin once ruled together, she:commanded a command,with deep wit,that men should the same water,where Abren was drowned,call it Auren,for the maiden Abren,and for Locrines love. 40While other lost corpses, such as those of Rodric and Hamun, are commemorated by their killerswithout comment, here Laȝamon gives a clue as to why the victor would memorialize the victim.Gwendoleine is explicitly motivated by love of Locrin. Yet instead of naming a portion of thelandscape after him, she instead selects his daughter’s name. Through her “deep wit,” she is able tocontrol the narrative, connecting herself to her beloved through story, while simultaneously denyinghim his own memorial, giving it instead to Abren.Just as Gwendoleine balances her desire to be connected to Locrin with her desire to dominatethe narrative and the landscape by shaping their story through Abren’s corpse, so Laȝamon shapesthe story of the Britons though the bodies of the dead for his Anglo-Norman audience. The corpses39 2484-90: “& heo ferde to þan caſtle/þer Æstrild wes inne./heo nome Æstrild & Abren/& lette heom ibinden./& letteheom worpen/in ane deope watere/þer heo adronken/& þer heo deað þoldeden.”40 2494-2500: “þa hehte heo ane heſte/mid haiȝere witte/þat me ſculde þat ilke wat(er/ þer Abren wes adrunken/clepianhit Auren/for þane mæidene Abren/& for Locrines lufe.”15