I found reading through The Siege of Thebes somewhat tedious. Much of this likely comes from a saturation point in my reading, the fact that this is the first longish primary text I've read in a couple of weeks, or even from Lydgate's attempts to pitch himself as on par as Chaucer (and let me tell you, despite his obvious talent Lydgate is no Chaucer). Regardless, while I can't say that this is my favorite chunk of Middle English literature, there are some interesting points throughout the text.
The TEAMS introduction spends some time discussing Lydgate's attempt to insert himself into Chaucer's narrative, indicating that this is part of Lydgate's larger project to explore nearly all of the Chaucerian genres. For The Siege of Thebes, Lydgate inserts himself directly into The Canterbury Tales as another pilgrim catching the return trip from Canterbury, whose turn for tale telling has come up. The Host, as he is wont to do in Chaucer's work, makes some specific requests on the nature of the tale, as Lydgate is a monk and the Host wants to avoid overly moralistic tales. Despite this, Lydgate's tale drags on for much longer than any of those told by Chaucer's pilgrims, and while it is spaced out the tale still contains a series of moralistic points. Lydgate attempts to take on the same role as Chaucer by inserting himself in the text, but Chaucer the Pilgirm's tale was cut off by the Host. I can only image the same would've occured with Lydgate's tale.
While on the matters of intertextuality and authorship, Lydgate sets his tale up initially under the pilgrimage tale telling model but the tale itself is self consciously a written tale at multiple points. The introduction touches on this briefly, calling this part of Lydgate's self consciousness, but the interjections seem to go a bit beyond that. Calling often to his cited sources, specifically describing his act as that of writing, and pausing to reflect on the tale itself at regular intervals. In some ways, this spoils the dynamic of the pilgrim tale structure, but mostly I think this represents an author whose predominant method of writing is heavily intertextual who cannot help but point this out to his readers. Chaucer was willing to have his own character in the tales be a poor tale teller, allowing the rest of his work to speak for itself. Lydgate seems incapable or unwilling to do so.
Epic Bromance (to borrow the phrase from the Szyd):
I won't belabor this point too much, especially as male friendship is not a topic I work with terribly often, and Neel and the Szyd would handle it much more effectively, but one cannot ignore the epic bromance between Polymete and Tydeus. I use the phrase "epic" here both in its sense of grandeur and literary genre. The early section of the tale, retelling the Oedipus story, is predominantly set up for the epic/romance that will develop out of the contention between his sons. These elements begin to develop around the relationship between Polymete, one of Oedipus' sons and (supposedly) temporary exile from Thebes, and Tydeus. After their initial conflict surrounding sleeping arrangements, the two come together under Adrastus' direction, are "armed" by that king with the trappings of nobility in what is functionally an arming of the hero scene (1436-1445), and eventually become the best of buds. Functionally, Will Ferrel's Step Brothers could have been based on this section:
To further set up the male homosocial bonds, Adrastus joins Tydeus and Polymete to one another through marriage, or rather through the marriage of his two daughters, which is nearly the same thing in this situation. I did find it interesting that, while this should be the story of contention between the heirs of Oedipus, Tydeus acts as a representative for Polymete and the text features a larger proportion of Tydeus' role in the siege than Polymete himself. I suppose that it is a brospouse's responsibility to stand in for their bro whenever necessary (I think I just coined the term brospouse; dibs!).
Exchange, Contracts, and Lions (oh my!):
The final aspect of this text which interests me is the manner in which various agents attempt to bring the crisis to a (relatively) peaceful end. Specifically, at this point in the text issues of exchange and contracts begin to move to the forefront. For contracts, whether or not Ethiocles has fulfilled his social contract to Thebes becomes a point of discussion, and his trustworthiness as a result has been put into question. As Ethiocles' wife and mother (I just realized that in this context I need to specify that these are two different people) attempt to sue for peace, a negotiation begins. Even outside of the direct negotiation, this section of the text is filled with a higher frequency of economic metaphors, suggesting that Lydgate saw this matter as one dealing with exchange. Perhaps the most absurd part of this text is the random appearance of the wondrous lion. Lydgate suggests that this comes from his sources, but more odd than a playful, seemingly domesticated lion showing up in the middle of negotiations is one party trying to barter off that lion as part of the deal. Sort of like this: "holy crap, is that a lion? He's totally badass!" "Really...ummm...you know we could throw it in to sweeten the deal." "Huh. I thought he was just a WILD FUCKING LION that showed up out of nowhere, but sure." This works out for exactly as long as it takes someone not involved in the negotiations to see said lion and kill it, triggering the war. While odd, the attempt to commodify the lion says something about the attempt to consciously add extra market factors to economic exchange. One cannot prevent such factors entirely, but depending on them as the basis for the exchange itself is problematic at best.
No comments:
Post a Comment