“Gode in all thynge”: The Erle of Tolous, Susanna and the Elders, and Other Narratives of Righteous Women on Trial
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Jonathan Stavsky
Abstract
The fourteenth-century romance The Erle of Tolous stands out among the corpus of tried-heroine narratives from medieval England, best known to modern readers in the form of Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale. In nearly all cases, the protagonist of these stories is an emblem of purity and piety. By contrast, the married heroine of The Erle grants an audience and one of her rings to the nobleman who loves her. After she is framed with adultery, he undertakes an ordeal to vindicate her and the two are finally wed upon the death of her husband, the Emperor of Almayn. Weaving together the account of this tender affection with the drama of the Empress’ false accusation and, furthermore, the territorial disputes between the Earl and the Emperor, the romance continually shifts its perspective on these characters, their mutual dealings, and the values that inform them. By analyzing the twists and turns of its plot and comparing it with analogous narratives of calumny, in particular Susanna and the Elders (Daniel 13 in the Vulgate numbering), I argue that The Erle replaces their conception of virtue as God-sanctioned righteousness with a pragmatic ethics that stresses the importance of fostering benevolent relations among human beings in changing circumstances. Whereas this romance departs significantly from the worldview of the biblical story, their close thematic and structural parallels suggest deliberate revision. The Erle is therefore a chapter in the largely uncharted reception history of Susanna and the Elders in the late Middle Ages.1
© 2013 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co.
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- The Wonder of Creation: A New Edition and Translation, with Discussion of Problems
- Debt and Sin in the Middle English “Judas”
- “Gode in all thynge”: The Erle of Tolous, Susanna and the Elders, and Other Narratives of Righteous Women on Trial
- Language Contact and Prestige
- Verbal Compounding in English: A Challenge for Usage-Based Models of Word-Formation?
- Kathryn Allan and Justyna A. Robinson (eds.). Current Methods in Historical Semantics
- Claudia Lange. The Syntax of Spoken Indian English
- Jeremy J. Smith. Older Scots: A Linguistic Reader
- Peter S. Baker. Honour, Exchange and Violence in Beowulf
- David Trotter (ed.). Present and Future Research in Anglo-Norman: Aberystwyth Colloquium, July 2011 / La recherche actuelle et future sur l’anglo-normand: Colloque d’Aberystwyth, juillet 2011
- Elizabeth Archibald and David F. Johnson (eds.). Arthurian Literature XXIX
- Brian Cummings and James Simpson (eds.). Cultural Reformations: Medieval and Renaissance in Literary History
- Helen Cooney and Mark S. Sweetnam (eds). Enigma and Revelation in Renaissance English Literature: Essays Presented to Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin
- Stanley Wells. Shakespeare, Sex & Love
- Jonathan Baldo. Memory in Shakespeare’s Histories: Stages of Forgetting in Early Modern England
- Rolf Breuer. Englische Romantik: Literatur und Kultur 1760–1830
- Stefan Horlacher (ed.). Constructions of Masculinity in British Literature from the Middle Ages to the Present
- Jens Zwernemann. “Painting and writing have much to tell each other”: On the Conceptualization of Personal Identity in Modernist Painting and Literature
- Stefanie Preuss. A Scottish National Canon? Processes of Literary Canon Formation in Scotland
- Nora Tunkel. Transcultural Imaginaries: History and Globalization in Contemporary Canadian Literature
- Jochen Petzold. Sprechsituationen lyrischer Dichtung: Ein Beitrag zur Gattungstypologie
- Stephan Freißmann. Fictions of Cognition: Representing (Un)Consciousness and Cognitive Science in Contemporary English and American Fiction
- Carsten Gansel and Dirk Vanderbeke (eds.). Telling Stories - Literature and Evolution / Geschichten erzählen - Literatur und Evolution
- Ben De Bruyn. Wolfgang Iser: A Companion
- Bruce Clarke and Manuela Rossini (eds.). The Routledge Companion to Literature and Science
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- The Wonder of Creation: A New Edition and Translation, with Discussion of Problems
- Debt and Sin in the Middle English “Judas”
- “Gode in all thynge”: The Erle of Tolous, Susanna and the Elders, and Other Narratives of Righteous Women on Trial
- Language Contact and Prestige
- Verbal Compounding in English: A Challenge for Usage-Based Models of Word-Formation?
- Kathryn Allan and Justyna A. Robinson (eds.). Current Methods in Historical Semantics
- Claudia Lange. The Syntax of Spoken Indian English
- Jeremy J. Smith. Older Scots: A Linguistic Reader
- Peter S. Baker. Honour, Exchange and Violence in Beowulf
- David Trotter (ed.). Present and Future Research in Anglo-Norman: Aberystwyth Colloquium, July 2011 / La recherche actuelle et future sur l’anglo-normand: Colloque d’Aberystwyth, juillet 2011
- Elizabeth Archibald and David F. Johnson (eds.). Arthurian Literature XXIX
- Brian Cummings and James Simpson (eds.). Cultural Reformations: Medieval and Renaissance in Literary History
- Helen Cooney and Mark S. Sweetnam (eds). Enigma and Revelation in Renaissance English Literature: Essays Presented to Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin
- Stanley Wells. Shakespeare, Sex & Love
- Jonathan Baldo. Memory in Shakespeare’s Histories: Stages of Forgetting in Early Modern England
- Rolf Breuer. Englische Romantik: Literatur und Kultur 1760–1830
- Stefan Horlacher (ed.). Constructions of Masculinity in British Literature from the Middle Ages to the Present
- Jens Zwernemann. “Painting and writing have much to tell each other”: On the Conceptualization of Personal Identity in Modernist Painting and Literature
- Stefanie Preuss. A Scottish National Canon? Processes of Literary Canon Formation in Scotland
- Nora Tunkel. Transcultural Imaginaries: History and Globalization in Contemporary Canadian Literature
- Jochen Petzold. Sprechsituationen lyrischer Dichtung: Ein Beitrag zur Gattungstypologie
- Stephan Freißmann. Fictions of Cognition: Representing (Un)Consciousness and Cognitive Science in Contemporary English and American Fiction
- Carsten Gansel and Dirk Vanderbeke (eds.). Telling Stories - Literature and Evolution / Geschichten erzählen - Literatur und Evolution
- Ben De Bruyn. Wolfgang Iser: A Companion
- Bruce Clarke and Manuela Rossini (eds.). The Routledge Companion to Literature and Science
