Malebranche was deeply committed to the position that human beings have “freedom of indifference.” However, he was equally committed to occasionalism, according to which God, and God alone, is the true cause of everything real outside of Himself. As Malebranche put it, “It is God who does all in all things (fait tout en toutes choses)” (TNG, OC 5:148; R 196). It is hard to see how these two positions are compatible. Malebranche touched upon freedom of indifference and its relation to causality in all of his major works, and in the process worked out an unusual position on human freedom. Although there is reason to disagree with Jean Laporte's judgment that this position is “coherent in all its parts” it continues to deserve the attention of philosophers and theologians for at least two reasons.

First, it shows one way in which seventeenth-century dualism influenced discussion of freedom of will. Malebranche's dualism was more extreme than Descartes7 because Malebranche not only held that mind and body are distinct substances, but that they do not really act on one another. This extreme dualism helps to account for his identification of human freedom with freedom of will, and his narrow focus on freedom of will as opposed to freedom of overt human actions.

Questions about the nature of causality occupy a rather central place in early modern philosophy. There had been, of course, a concern with causality in ancient philosophy (especially Aristotle) and in medieval thought (particularly in the sacramental context). However, the topic took on even greater urgency in the seventeenth century. In large measure, this was due to a problem specific to the period: how to reconcile an emerging scientific view of the natural world - mechanistic physics - with traditional and still-compelling beliefs about the relationship between God and his creation. On the one hand, natural philosophers of the period saw their task as one of identifying the underlying causal structures of observed phenomena and of framing explanations in terms of matter and motion alone. On the other hand, it was generally recognized that an omnipotent God is responsible not just for creating the world and its contents, but also for sustaining them in existence. Against this background, in which philosophy, physics, and theology merge, the problem of causation arises in several contexts: (1) in the realm of purely physical inquiry (How does one body produce changes in another body?); (2) in regard to relations between the mind and the body (Are mental events true causes of physical states of affairs, and do bodily states cause effects in the mind?); and (3) in philosophical inquiry into the mind alone (Are there real causal relations among thoughts and other mental activities? Does the mind cause its own states of being?) In all three contexts, the answers to these specific questions hang upon the answer to the more general question as to how God's omnipotence and role in sustaining things in being can be reconciled with granting creatures true causal efficacy.

This essay examines aspects of the manuscript transmission of Old French and Middle High German romance. Though space does not permit a comprehensive pan-European survey, the comparative examination of two literary traditions allows for a broader consideration of the medieval literary manuscript in its varied forms. Anyone who has studied romances in their original manuscripts knows that the experience is markedly different from that of reading them in modern printed editions. On the one hand, there are no line numbers, no glossary or index of proper names, no explanatory introduction or critical apparatus; there may be no indication of the author’s name, and possibly not even a title. Punctuation is sparse, and not always consistent. On the other hand, there may be features that enhance the reading experience, such as illustrations - sometimes quite prolific - and explanatory rubrics that chart the narrative or thematic subdivisions of the text. A scribe might embellish the text with flourishes and doodles that call attention to key words, passages, or motifs; scribes and readers alike often marked lines that they considered important with the marginal indication “Nota.” The medieval manuscript shapes our encounter with the text in a way quite different from that of a modern edition; and it often bears the personal reactions of generations of past readers, a material reminder of the communal nature of literary reception (Fig. 4.1).

THE FIRST JOURNEYS OF ROMANCE

As a literary tradition, medieval German romance arose in the middle of the twelfth century and in different literary guises retained its popularity until and beyond the fifteenth century. The German tradition is rich and diverse: it encompasses some fifty to eighty texts; it includes verse narrative and, beginning in the middle of the thirteenth century, prose translations as well; it sustains a wide variety of genres, the most important of which are Arthurian romances and love adventure stories; and it makes the transition from manuscript culture to print, that is to say, it continues beyond the Middle Ages into the Early Modern period. Nor is the northern European, Germanic-language romance tradition confined to those regions in northern and central Europe that correspond roughly to the modern nation states of Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, although these regions will be the focus of this essay. There are rich medieval romance traditions in other Germanic languages such as Dutch, Flemish, and Old Norse. For our purposes, this essay embarks upon a selective overview of medieval German romance in order to provide a sense of its richness and diversity.

The purpose of this essay is to look at Middle English romances from the perspective of private life. It sets them in the context of late medieval patterns of family and marriage, and presents them as part of a literate but unlearned lay culture centered on the home, where many of them seem to belong. It does not provide a survey, because that has already been done several times, but rather, by looking at around half-a-dozen, suggests a new approach.

The late medieval family can be thought of in two ways. First, as a group of people living together in the “nuclear family household” formation consisting of wife, husband and dependent children, whose home would also include servants and apprentices. The nuclear family, then as now, is always in process, because it comes into being with a marriage and is reshaped by the children’s departure. Another way of thinking about the family, though, is as a lineage that is the route for the transmission of property and privilege. In late medieval England wealth and ownership of land provided access to social prestige and political power; the family, especially the male line, was the means whereby these were passed on from one generation to the next. From the point of view of the lineage the son’s role was crucial because his marriage ensured its continuity; the marriage of the daughter who inherited took the property to another family. All this is the stuff of Middle English romance; many of its plots are derived from the crises and hiatuses of the nuclear family and the lineage, as I shall show.

The term “courtly love” was coined in 1883 by Gaston Paris with reference to Le Chevalier de la Charrete (also known as the Lancelot) by Chrétien de Troyes, the earliest surviving narrative of the adulterous love between Arthur’s knight Lancelot and his Queen Guenevere. This romance, with its disquieting combination of illicit sex and quasi-mystical love, has remained ever since in the forefront of discussions of what “courtly love” might be. The resulting drawback of these discussions, in my view, has been their assumption that such love was susceptible of codification as a system of rules or doctrines. This essay will seek to locate “courtly love” more broadly as a series of questions which are debated across large numbers of texts, and which can be traced back to the tensions within medieval court life. These tensions are responded to very differently by Chrétien’s immediate precursors, the Eneas seeking to contain them within safe limits while the Tristan romances give rein to their potential disruptiveness. Within the two poles represented by these two influential stories, Chrétien himself explores various ways of negotiating the pressures of medieval court life. His Lancelot is the most famous, but by no means definitive, outcome of these explorations.

When Chauntecleer, a cocky cock, but clearly no Latinist, woos Dame Pertelote with this paltry pick-up line, the only connection he is making between women and romance involves what he hopes will happen once he gets her off her perch. The Nun’s Priest, however, makes this connection explicit fifty lines later when he ironically asserts the improbable veracity of his mock heroic beast fable: “This storie is also trewe, I undertake, / As is the booke of Launcelot de Lake, / That wommen holde in greet reverence” (CT, vii. 3211-13). The dense irony, humor, and ambiguity of The Nun’s Priest’s Tale make it hard to tell where the narrator (let alone Chaucer) stands on women and/or romance (or on anything else, for that matter). One thing, however, is clear: women have been a confusion to men since the beginning (“In principio”), but, as Chauntecleer’s mistranslation indicates, they have also been a significant source of men’s joy, a confusing state of affairs, to say the least. One way to handle the confusio, however, is to trivialize women or to try to dismiss them.

This strategy appears in the romances of the three best-known writers in Middle English: the Gawain-poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Sir Thomas Malory. That students of medieval English literature have most likely read these authors’ romances is reason enough to examine them together. What is more, their writings span the hundred or so years that ranged from the mid-fourteenth through the mid-fifteenth century: the period roughly coincident with England’s Hundred Years War with France as well as with a flourishing of English literature often attributed to the rise in nationalism and the growing interest in English as an official language inspired by that war.

The earliest texts that preserve stories of Gawain present him not as a popular hero, but as a traditional champion. Tales in the Welsh Mabinogion, and scattered allusions from other Celtic works, suggest that Gawain was well-established in oral narratives as the nephew, companion, and defender of the great king. Welsh translations of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Latin History of the Kings of Britain confirm this match of Walwanus (Gawain) and Gwalchmai mab Gwyar, a man of action around whom adventures swirled, a renowned figure about whom audiences wished to hear more. Behind these earliest surviving stories there may lurk traces of divinity or superhuman stature, linking Gawain to solar heroes whose strength surges before noon, and wanes with the setting sun. Despite his stature and centrality in Celtic tradition, Gawain was scarcely “popular” in the sense of being available to diverse constituencies or multiple genres. Nonetheless, by the early twelfth century his fame seems to have spread far beyond the audiences for traditional oral narratives, making him a familiar figure in European ecclesiastical and learned culture. The cosmopolitan appeal of Arthurian story emerges early in a sculpture (dated before 1109) at the Cathedral in Modena, Italy; this depicts Gawain undertaking a siege, together with Arthur and two other knights.

What did medieval people mean when they used the word “chivalry” (Latin, militia, French, chevalerie)? The simplest sense was hardy deeds in a fight with edged weapons. A second meaning was social, the body of knights in one place or even all knights, thought of as a distinct group. The third meaning, more abstract, referred to their ideas and ideals, to chivalry as the ethos of the knights. All three senses of the word appear (often intertwined) in romance literature, one of our best (if least used) sources on medieval society.

Yet the historian reading romance in order to understand chivalry faces difficult questions. Historians still believe that by careful use of evidence a “real” medieval world can be partially recovered; yet how can romance, which seems so totally “unreal,” form a part of this evidence? Some scholars have thought that since it is imaginative literature, romance must be discounted as merely escapist storytelling. Some have considered the chivalry portrayed in its pages dreamlike, a thin veil pulled over the realities of a harsh world, and completely divorced from grinding social tensions or violence. An audience limited by gender would further reduce the importance of romance as historical evidence by cutting readership in half – picturing men reading (or listening in hall to) chansons de geste with their endless war and tenurial disputes; women in chamber reading the more psychological romances with love interest.

French romances occupy a central position in the development of medieval European literature. Their most popular subject matter by far was the Arthurian legend, which, though it had its origins elsewhere, was first cast in romance form in France: the Round Table, the tragic love story of Lancelot and Guinevere, and the notion of the Grail quest were all French innovations. So too was the very genre of romance, a sophisticated and complex form that dramatized quests and tests and explored the connections - and often the conflicts - of love and adventure.

The legacy of French romance in other literatures is almost incalculable. Writers in every language of Western Europe adapted or translated French texts; and even when they were not openly reworking French sources, indeed even when they sought to assert their independence from those sources, their own romances frequently betray a decided Gallic influence in their use of the structures and conventions of romance, their borrowing of popular motifs or characters, or their rhetorical procedures.

Throughout the second half of the twelfth century, with the great masterpieces of Chrétien de Troyes, the Tristan and Iseut romances of Thomas and Béroul, and a number of other works, verse had been the preferred vehicle for the composition of romances, which were generally intended to be read aloud before groups of listeners. Prose was at that time reserved largely for history writing, for legal documents, and for sermons and other religious texts.

Medieval vernacular romance is assumed to bear the stamp of the class to which it was first directed, namely the French feudal aristocracy of the twelfth century. Typically, in fact, the romances of other times, places, and socio-political contexts are compared to the first generation of French romance, and judged inadequate. The Old Italian romanzi rarely win praise from romance scholars, who tend to assume that their authors and audiences did not really understand what chivalry and chivalric literature originally meant. This assumption deserves scrutiny in light of the unusual, even unique, example of the Italian peninsula in the Middle Ages.

The Italian peninsula featured a variety of political systems quite unusual for medieval Europe. The south, including Sicily, was dominated by a monarchical model; after the death of Frederick II in 1250, though, the southern kingdom split into two hostile kingdoms, Angevin in Naples and Aragonese in Sicily. In the center and north, on the other hand, there was a myriad of smaller political organizations: semi-independent city-states called communes; the republic of Venice; the Papal State, including the territory around and north of Rome; the towns and lands governed by one noble family; and other intermediate forms of government. This political heterogeneity was not peaceful.

The essays in this volume analyze critical features of what is arguably the most influential and enduring secular literary genre of the European Middle Ages. The story of medieval romance’s evolution is one of translation and transformation, adaptation and refashioning, and fertile intertextual and intercultural exchange among the linguistic and political entities of medieval Europe. Medieval romance narratives astound the modern reader by their broad circulation in France, Germany, England, The Netherlands, Italy, Scandinavia, Portugal, Greece and Spain, and by the many stories, characters, themes, and motifs they hold in common. These fictions continue to intrigue modern audiences - as they undoubtedly did medieval ones - by the diversity of their forms and subject-matter, the complexity of their narrative strategies and perspectives, and the many critical responses they invite.

Romance’s history is integrally bound up with the creation of elite lay culture in courts and wealthy households throughout the European Middle Ages. However, romance narratives are rarely simple reflections of courtly ideals. Romances of all national origins are remarkable for their authors’ capacity to remake their shared stories anew in different contexts and to reposition their ethical systems as they respond to particular audiences, in distinct geographic locations and social contexts – often with a critical perspective that calls social ideals or practices into question. The Companion to Medieval Romance is intended as an introduction to the voyages, transformations, and interrogations of romance as its fictions travel within and between the linguistic, geo-political, and social boundaries of Europe from 1150 to 1600.

Regardless of national or temporal factors - romance is the most enduring of literary forms. From the paradigmatic Garden of Eden to contemporary or even futuristic - often highly technological - expressions, this “secular scripture,” as Northrop Frye terms it, continues to flourish. Its origins in the folktale, the optimism projected by its representation of human heroism are clearly compelling. Yet, far from merely entailing the naïve appeal of a prelapsarian order for the individual reader, romance, as Fredric Jameson explains, involves a continuous and sophisticated reinvention of itself as a response to an ever-changing historico- political environment. Indeed, we see that history frequently appropriates romance paradigms in order to legitimate itself as when, for example, Bernal Díaz clearly presents Spain’s New World conquest and colonization as a continuation of the exploits of Amadís. Whatever form it takes, romance is committed to the celebration of a coherent system of socio-political values. This extra-textual frame of reference can take a variety of forms - from political propaganda that offers a self-aggrandizing depiction of the nobility or equivalent patron for whom the text is being produced, to the articulation of escapist fantasy - futuristic or archaizing. It is, for example, nostalgia for the lost world of chivalric romance which Cervantes embodies in the figure of Don Quijote, a foolish old man driven insane by his obsession with this perennial literary form.

Alexander the Great approaches the beautiful and rich Queen Candace. He is disguised as his own messenger, and travels under the protection of Candace’s son. Long ago she had sent Alexander letters offering both her realm and her love, but only if he would take her as his equal (“si a pier la volt avoir”). Since then he has heard a prophecy of his approaching death and has defeated his last great enemy, the emperor Porrus of India, but now he puts aside both militancy and impending mortality. Candace awaits, gorgeously dressed, attended by minstrels,