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Introduction to Blanchardyn and Eglantine

When William Caxton printed Blanchardyn and Eglantine in 1489, the lovers’ story had been circulating in French verse for over two hundred years. The original romance had been composed in the early thirteeth century in northern France; in the later fifteenth century this narrative was adapted in prose for the court of Burgundy. It was this version that Caxton translated into English. The story of Blanchardyn and Eglantine maintained its appeal for many years. English versions circulated as late as the seventeenth century. Audiences would have appreciated its tale of faithful lovers and chivalric combat, as well as its literary sophistication and realistic treatment of conventional material.

This introduction to Blanchardyn and Eglantine begins with an overview of the romance’s origin and genre and a summary of its plot, followed by sections devoted to its patrons and setting, instructional agenda, treatment of race and religion, construction of gender, attention to emotion, and review of scholarship. The concluding sections address technical matters, including Caxton’s translation practice, a description of his copytext, and evidence of early owners. A list of witnesses and source texts in French and English follows. Explanatory Notes and Textual Notes accompanying the text provide additional information on topics discussed here.

Origin and Genre

The lovers’ story originated early in the thirteenth century in the northern French region of Picardy, where an anonymous author composed a verse romance known as Blancandin et l’Orgeuilleuse d’Amours [Blancandin and the Proud Lady of Love]. This person drew on other romances and chansons de geste for themes and incidents, and incorporated entire lines from the Roman d’Eneas [Romance of Aeneas]. Several episodes resemble those in the romance Richard le Beau [Richard the Good]. The first part of Blancandin shows the influence of Chrétien de Troyes’s The Story of the Grail, whose protagonist, like Blanchardyn, is forbidden the knowledge of chivalry, learns the art of combat, and claims a kiss from an unwilling lady. The heroine shares her name with several proud ladies in this and others of Chrétien’s romances: l’Orgueilleuse de Logres [the Proud Lady of Logres], l’Orgueilleuse de la Roche [the Proud Lady of the Rock], and l’Orgueilleuse de la Lande [the Proud Lady of the Wilderness]. Other names suggest the author’s familiarity with chansons de geste: Blancandin [from Fr. blanc, white] has analogues in the Song of Roland and elsewhere, while the names Daryus, Rubyon, and Sadoine are found in Ogier le Danois [Ogier the Dane], Godefroi de Bouillon [Godfrey of Boulogne], Tristan de Nantueil [Tristan of Nantueil], and elsewhere.

The narrative’s blend of chivalric love and warfare proved popular. The earliest version survives in four verse texts from the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries and the story’s continuing appeal in the fifteenth century is attested by its adaptation into two prose versions at the court of Burgundy during the reign of Duke Philip the Good (1396–1467). A copy of the longer prose version was Caxton’s source for his translation, and a fifteenth-century German verse translation also survives. With Caxton, Blanchardyn and Eglantine made the transition from manuscript to print and wider circulation, and the romance continued to be read in the seventeenth century, for 1595 saw the printing of a version refashioned for Tudor audiences. The story owed its appeal to a plot based firmly in formulas of romance and feats of chivalry, and to its morally and socially uplifting messages. These would have appealed to Caxton’s audience — a mix of gentry, courtiers, merchants, and professionals who read English more readily than French, and who wanted access to the chivalric literature fashionable at the courts of England and northern France.

Blanchardyn and Eglantine has been variously characterized as a composite romance, as a non-cyclic roman d’aventure, and as a romance of chivalry and fin amor. It is a sentimental romance, devoting much attention to the characters’ emotions and to engaging those of the audience. It can also be described as a pedagogical romance, for it incorporates the story of both the hero’s and the heroine’s educations and provides models of chivalric behavior and governance. Caxton, like his source, refers to the narrative as a history, a term of prestige that makes claims of veracity and fidelity to actual occurrences that the term romance does not.

Plot

Caxton’s romance is long and its narrative complicated, though the plot consists of three main episodes: the proving of a knight; his adventures in foreign lands with his brother-in-arms; and his return to rescue his lady. Romance plots are notable for their repetition, and Blanchardyn and Eglantine does not disappoint. There are two storms at sea separating the lovers, two exchanges of messages, two raids to capture supplies, two marriages, two pleadings for imprisoned heroes, three episodes of capture and imprisonment, and four full-scale battles. Not only is the plot repetitive, the narration is redundant. The same details and events are related multiple times; the audience is advised of what is going to happen, told about the event as it occurs, then again when it is reported by a character, and reminded once more in the narrator’s transitions at the beginnings and ends of chapters. The chapter headings themselves refer to the events yet another time.

As the story begins, the king of Frisia has no heir; the queen prays for a child and gives birth to a son who is named Blanchardyn. He is well educated, though forbidden to learn the art of war; nevertheless, inspired by the legends of Troy, he secretly departs his peaceful kingdom to prove himself a knight. He rescues a maiden, slays her oppressor and returns her to her dying lover, whereupon she too expires — greatly impressing upon Blanchardyn the value of such true love. He encounters a knight who helps him to cross a river, and directs him to the city of Tourmaday where the queen, Eglantine, is besieged by the Muslim king Alymodes. Blanchardyn can vanquish these attackers if she will accept him as her champion, but that requires that she fall in love with him, which can only be accomplished by a kiss. This is no easy task, for the queen is known as l’Orgueilleuse d’Amours because she refuses all suitors. Blanchardyn is able to accomplish this feat, much to the lady’s displeasure, and arrives in Tourmaday where he jousts, then lodges with the provost. News of the knight’s victory reaches Eglantine, who, on the advice of her governess, relents and puts him in charge of her armies. The provost and his daughters supply Blanchardyn with arms, and he joins the battle against Alymodes. Eglantine observes the knight’s prowess and begins to fall in love with him; she has him brought to her and they declare their love, which is confirmed by a flame descending from heaven. Blanchardyn accepts the challenge of Alymodes’s giant, Rubyon, and kills him, wounds Alymodes’s son, Daryus, and siezes his sister, Beatrix, but is captured by enemy forces.

Alymodes sends his prisoner to Rubyon’s brother, but the ship is wrecked in Prussia, where Blanchardyn disguises himself to pass among the local inhabitants, who are Muslims. He offers his services to the king and leads his troops to victory over the invading Poles, befriending the Prussian prince, Sadoyne. Meanwhile, Daryus sails to renew the siege of Tourmaday, is driven off course to Frisia where he plunders the countryside, seizes Blanchardyn’s father, and sends him prisoner to Alymodes. When Daryus arrives at Tourmaday, the provost captures the stolen provisions and repels his assault. Back in Prussia, Blanchardyn tells Sadoyne of his love for Eglantine, and they set sail to come to her aid. En route, they meet the provost, so Blanchardyn, still in disguise, sends a letter to Eglantine telling of his imminent arrival. Before he can land, a storm drives his ships away, but when Sadoyne throws his idols overboard, the sea becomes calm and the fleet makes land at Cassydoyne, Alymodes’s capital. Blanchardyn defeats the Cassydonians, kills Daryus, and betroths Beatrix and Sadoyne, who are baptized, married, and take possession of the city. Blanchardyn then releases his father from prison and, with Sadoyne, sets sail again for Tourmaday. They encounter the provost, who returns to Eglantine with the news of Blanchardyn’s arrival. In the battle that follows, he and his father rout Tourmaday’s attackers, and Sadoyne kills Alymodes’s brother but is captured and imprisoned at Cassydoyne.

Eglantine and Blanchardyn are betrothed; he then leaves to rescue Sadoyne, appointing the steward, Subyon, as guardian. When Subyon claims Eglantine for himself, she escapes with the help of the provost and the knight of the ferry. Meanwhile, Blanchardyn and his father arrive in Cassydonye in time to save his friend from the gallows. Together the three men conclusively defeat the forces of Alymodes and take him prisoner. Beatrix and Sadoyne are crowned. The provost reaches Cassydoyne with news of Subyon’s treachery, so Blanchardyn and his compatriots sail a third time for Tourmaday, kill Subyon and a band of outlaws, and rescue Eglantine. Finally, the lovers are married and Blanchardyn is crowned king of Frisia and Tourmaday.

Patrons, Politics, and Setting

We owe Blanchardyn and Eglantine to the request of Margaret Beaufort, duchess of Somerset and mother of Henry VII. In his dedication, Caxton says she asked him to translate the romance into English. He had earlier sold her a manuscript of the text written in French, and it seems likely the story had particular significance for her since she wanted to make it available to English readers. This possibility is further supported by the fact that it is the only secular work commissioned by this important patron of books and early printers. Caxton justifies the reading of “noble historyes” for, there, gentlemen can learn of chivalry and “stande in the specyal grace and love of their ladyes.” The ladies, in turn, can learn “to be stedfaste” to those they “have promysed and agreed to,” and who “have putte their lyves ofte in jeopardye for to playse theym to stande in grace” (Dedication.1). These phrases may have resonated with Margaret since she, with Queen Elizabeth Woodville, had earlier negotiated the marriage of their children, Henry Tudor and Elizabeth of York. Perhaps the duchess saw in the separations of Blanchardyn and Eglantine similarities to the protracted courtship of the royal couple, for though they were betrothed in 1483, they did not marry until 1486. Elizabeth may be the lady steadfast in her promise to Henry who has put his life in jeopardy for her (and his) kingdom. The heroine’s name, which first appears in the long prose version, may have suggested to Margaret an association with the future English queen, since eglantine is a name for the sweetbriar, or briar rose, which is also known as the English rose. Caxton emphasized the name by referencing it four times, while his source mentions it only once; he was also the first to include it in his title, for all the French texts refer to the romance as Blancandin et l’Orgueilleuse d’Amours.

If Margaret saw in the French romance parallels to her own political and personal circumstances, the narrative may have appealed to Duke Philip the Good for similar reasons. Blanchardyn became king of Frisia, and so did the duke, who assumed that title in 1447. Philip may have regarded Blancandin as an ancestral romance; the fact that his library included two versions suggests he attached some importance to it. The longer prose version, composed 1454–1474, was commissioned by Jean de Créquy, Philip’s chamberlain and counselor. The illuminated copy now in Vienna (Österreichische Nationalbibliothek 3438) would have been intended for a high-ranking member of the court, if not the duke himself, perhaps to commemorate his ascension to the Frisian throne. Créquy was probably responsible for a significant modification to the story — a change of setting. The verse narratives of Blancandin et l’Orgeuilleuse d’Amours refer to Blancandin’s home as Phrygia (once); they and the short prose version are set in the eastern Mediterranean on the model of chanson de geste and Oriental romances such as Floris and Blauncheflour and Partonope of Blois. Blancandin is shipwrecked in Greece, befriends the king of Athens, and defends Constantinople. Other characters come from Alexandria, Babylon, Jerusalem, Persia, and India. The long prose romance, however, unfolds in northern Europe and along the Baltic: in Frisia, Prussia (northern Germany), Poland, and Norway, all regions parts of which were claimed by Burgundy at one time or another. The romance’s locale as well as the protagonist’s title would have resonated with the duke, and readers seem to have accepted the conflation of Prussians who practiced a Germanic religion with Mediterranean Muslims.

Blanchardyn’s sojourn in Marienburg fighting the Poles may have recalled contemporary events to audiences in Burgundian regions. The castle there on the river Nekar (in modern Poland) was a key defensive and administrative position of the Order of Teutonic Knights, as well as a major trading center for the Hanseatic League. The territories surrounding the fortress there were the site of frequent military campaigns in the fifteenth century as Poles, Prussians, and the Order struggled for military, religious, and commercial hegemony there. In 1410, the Order was defeated at the Battle of Wittelsbach by Wladyslaw Jagiello, king of Poland and duke of Lithuania, who had accepted Roman Catholicism in 1385. The Poles were driven out of Marienburg by the Prussians in 1454. Accounts of these battles and other campaigns in the region may have influenced the long prose Blancandin’s depiction of the victory of the Prussians over the Poles, which is greatly expanded from the account in other versions of the romance. Créquy himself was in the service of the duke of Burgundy and participated in battles in the region around Marienburg. The setting would not have seemed remote to English audiences, for England had long had political and commercial interests there: Caxton was in London when the king of Poland visited to intercede with Edward IV on behalf of the Hanseatic merchants in his city. A century earlier, Chaucer’s Shipman knew all the creeks and havens from Gotland to Finistere, and readers of Caxton’s romance, especially merchants, would have been aware of events taking place in the Baltic, Germany, and Scandinavia.

Instructional Romance

Caxton’s dedication to Blanchardyn and Eglantine stresses the moral and pedagogic value of reading histories, and chivalric education was an important axiom of his publishing agenda, as discussed in the General Introduction to this volume, pp. 8–11. He recommends the story as being “honeste and joyefull to all vertuouse yong noble gentylmen and wymmen” (Dedication.1) to read for their pastime, as an alternative to studying overmuch in books of contemplation. Accounts of chivalry have moral value of their own, and Caxton’s Dedication stresses specific values of valor in combat and steadfastness in love, going beyond the brief, conventional defense of reading histories found in Pierre de la Cépède’s prologue to Paris et Vienne. The romance itself is about an education: the first episodes of Blanchardyn and Eglantine are devoted to the instruction of the hero, for while his superior character is innate, his chivalry is learned. He is educated as a young royal of the fifteenth century: under the tutelage of a clerk who teaches literature, manners, grammar, logic, and philosophy; later Blanchardyn writes his own letters. He also excels at table games, chess, polite conversation, hawking, and hunting, pastimes appropriate to one of his status. The youth’s natural inclination for chivalry is evident in his curiosity about the scenes from the Trojan War depicted in the palace’s tapestries, and his tutor’s explanation is a lesson in deeds of arms. Inspired by their example, Blanchardyn sets out prove himself in knightly combat. His first encounter is a lesson in love, as he vanquishes the felon knight. Thereafter he proves himself in a graduated series of challenges against the provost, the giant Rubyon, and Alymodes, to become the commander of armies and navies. Earlier episodes emphasize his novice status by referring to him as chylde or jovencel, terms that designate a young man of noble birth or an aspirant to knighthood. Blanchardyn later becomes a mentor to Sadoyne, whose father sends him into battle for the first time under the instruction of the proven warrior.

Eglantine, too, is educated by her governess and by the god of love, one giving political, the other emotional instruction. In a series of lengthy dialogues followed by passages of reflection, her mistress counsels Eglantine to restrain her anger at Blanchardyn and to consider her duty to secure peace for her kingdom. Eglantine is further educated by Reason, who restrains her with “premysses” and “conclusyons” (23.4) to temper her pride and emotion in the debate with Love. The lady herself is a source of instruction as she admonishes the provost about his daughters’ “wanton” looks and the impropriety of their considering marriage to someone so far above them in rank as Blanchardyn. Eglantine’s advice is motivated more by jealousy than concern for her official’s family; nevertheless, her comments are instructive. The same precepts are conveyed by The Book of the Knight of the Tour-Landry, which also cautions young women to control their gaze and not to seek husbands above or below their station.

The characters are models of courtly manners. Blanchardyn is a paragon — even Alymodes’s men admire him for his “grete beaulté and worthynes” (25.1). He is always and often described in superlatives. Those he meets recognize his noble lineage in his courtesy, impeccable bearing, extraordinary horsemanship, and skill at arms. His audiences with Eglantine are the epitome of protocol and humility. He demurs when she takes him by the hand, making “hymself to be prayed and drawen sore or ever he wolde vaunce hymself for to sytte hym doune by her, but force was to hym to obeye her commaundement” (23.3). Though his reticence is not without irony, such behavior is described in Caxton’s The Babee’s Boke and The Boke of Curtasye, which includes instructions for how to properly greet one’s lords and superiors, approach them, and engage in conversation. Eglantine’s resistance to the game of love, and to kissing, is exactly what the lady of la Tour-Landry recommends to her daughters, as is her concern for reputation and avoiding rumor and gossip. Both hero and heroine exemplify self-control and governance of strong emotion.

The romance also provides models for the governance of states. Frisia, under the rule of Blanchardyn’s father, enjoys the “wele of peas” (1.1), while Alymodes is a “grete tyraunt” who has “ravysshed . . . by stronge hande upon his neyghbours . . . all that he fonde of grete value” (38.6), as we see in the ravaging of Frisia. Portraits of good governance are found throughout the romance. When Blanchardyn approaches Tourmaday, he beholds a “most fayre and most riche cyté” (13.1) with walls of stone surrounded by fields, orchards, and rivers — the picture of prosperity befitting the seat of a great lord. Illuminations in the duke of Berry’s Tres Riches Heures [Very Rich Hours] and The Hours of Mary of Burgundy depict similar scenes of peaceful castles, towns, and their fruitful surroundings. The citizens of Tourmaday are not absent; they cooperate under the leadership of the provost to defend the town, secure provisions, provide weapons, and process with their lady to their church for prayer. All rally before the final battle with Alymodes, donning their best clothes, festooning the streets, and parading through them by rank to musical accompaniment. These scenes present an ideal of a well-ordered, prosperous society, the civic equivalent of the flourishing landscape. When Sadoyne becomes king of Cassydonye, he eliminates bad customs and enacts new laws. In highlighting such regnal contrasts, Blanchardyn and Eglantine reveals affinities with another pedagogical genre, the mirror for princes, and even offers “a covert political manual for its politically-engaged aristocratic, noble and gentry women readers.” Eglantine acts to insure the security of her kingdom and the welfare of its people. She convenes councils, consults advisors, provisions armies, plans battles, negotiates ransoms, and decrees sentences. Christine de Pizan, in Treasure of the City of Ladies, advises noble women about the importance of preparing themselves for such responsibilities. Her Faytes of Arms and Chivalry includes instructions for mounting a siege, plans for attack, defense, and types and placements of weapons, just as the romance depicts such preparations and provisioning. Loyalty is especially emphasized: the long prose Blancandin makes a point of denouncing Subyon and his corrupt barons, both for their treason and for his social climbing. Caxton adds several proverbs to those in his source, reinforcing the message that people of the lower classes and those who seek to rise in status are not to be trusted: “[T]herfore I saye that of churles, both man and wyff can departe noo goode fruyte” (44.4). The episode is an argument for the established social hierarchy and noble privilege, and a warning to those in positions of authority to choose their officials carefully. Usurpation and troth-breach could well have been on the minds of Caxton’s audience during the Wars of the Roses, and of the Burgundians and the French during the final phases of the Hundred Years War.

Marvels and Others

Blanchardyn and Eglantine is composed of elements tracing their origins to Chrétien de Troyes and the chansons de geste, but the author of Blancandin did not adopt the marvelous elements of its sources, and its conventional construction of Muslim difference is complicated by the fact that the followers of Islam have been transplanted to the Baltic. An overt instance of the suppression of the marvelous is the provost’s observation that Blanchardyn’s prowess in battle is such that he seems to be more “a man of the feyré than . . . humayn” (21.3). The comment simultaneously invokes and dismisses the topos of the hero’s supernatural taint, and perfectly illustrates “the transfer of wonder from the marvelous to the human” that is a generic marker of romance. The lovers’ first kiss is a realistic cousin to the disenchanting kisses of Sleeping Beauty and the fier baiser of Lybeaus Desconus. In the verse romance of Blancandin, the test requires the traditional number of three kisses. While it may recall episodes of enchantment, the kiss is described with specificity. The author of the prose version takes pains to explain how such a manouver could be executed on horseback. Eglantine turns to determine the source of a noise behind her; at that moment Blanchardyn rides past, leaning so that their lips meet — an impressive display of horsemanship. The flame of love that descends to sanctify their pledges to one another belongs to the conventions of courtly love, and the calming of the sea is a Christian miracle, not uncanny.

Blanchardyn and Eglantine incorporates the negative stereotypes of Muslims as aggressors and religious and racial others that originated in the Crusades. The romance refers to the Prussians and Norwegians as pagans and as Saracens interchangeably and exclusively. Both words denote non-Christians, but the latter is also Islamophobic and racialized. The terms appear most frequently in reference to Alymodes and his troops, usually coupled with the adjectives false, infidel, and untrue. These expressions are repeated throughout the narrative, and Caxton himself added such doublets, reiterating the romance’s Islamophobia. Almost half of the narrative is devoted to battles in which Blanchardyn decimates armies of religious others. He and his allies slaughter Alymodes’s male relatives in a series of battles where their deaths are described in grisly detail, though Alymodes himself is spared and taken prisoner. The romance is Islamophobic, but Alymodes is not fighting a war of religious aggression; his motives are territorial and matrimonial.

Common racial stereotypes of Muslims are present in the romance: they are dark-skinned, grotesque, even demonic. This physiognomy was attributed to the climate of Africa, said to be their homeland by the atlases, encyclopedias, and travel writings of the time. Christian allegory accounted for these characteristics as physical manifestations of Islam’s perceived spiritual distortion and false belief. Though Blanchardyn and Eglantine acknowledges these conventions, it rarely exaggerates racial difference and takes no notice of the fact that a marriage of Eglantine and Alymodes would be interracial. There is a single instance of the monstrous: Rubyon, the giant who challenges Blanchardyn, is described as foul and hideous in the sole reference to his size and appearance. Alymodes has other stereotypically “Saracen” attributes: irascibility, cruelty, hatred of Christians, and ugliness. With the distortion typical of medieval Christian misrepresentations of Islam, the romance’s Prussians pray to Muhammed as a deity and worship idols, both practices that are counter to actual Muslim doctrine and practice, but which mirror Christian belief in the divinity of Jesus and the cult of saints. Beatrix denounces her father’s religion as false, deceiving, and without efficacy, while lecturing him on the articles of Christian faith.

Though the Prussians are racialized by their dark skin, this feature is mentioned only in reference to Blanchardyn, who blackens his skin with herbs to blend in at the Prussian court. In a nod to realism, the author of the prose romance explains that this was the “coloure suche that the folke of that contrey had hers [theirs] atte that tyme” (26.6), in recognition of the fact that fifteenth-century Prussians did not have dark skin. This awkward detail had made sense in the verse Blancandin, which was set in the Middle East. The romance mentions Blanchardyn’s complexion twice more when the provost fails to recognize him and attributes his skin color to the heat of the southern sun. This pigmentation does not occlude the knight’s whiteness (purity) and racial identitification stated in his name. Alymodes’s skin color is not mentioned; Beatrix is said to be “fayer,” which means beautiful, but in context suggests fair-skinned as well; princesses in romance and chanson named as “Saracen” are often white. The illustrations in the Vienna manuscript do not depict these characters with darkened coloration, suggesting that the audience may not have expected it.

Blanchardyn is one of many Christian knights in romance who travel in Muslim lands and adopt the local language, style of dress, and physical appearance. He speaks German (appropriate to the setting), as well as speaking in character as a Muslim when he interjects “thanked be Mahon” (26.8) when introducing himself to the Prussian king; several times he identifies himself to Christians as a “paynem” and a “Sarasyn” (35.1), all without reflection on his part or comment by the narrator. Blanchardyn’s passing for a Muslim Prussian becomes a disguise that enables him to play the trickster and test the loyalty of those who know him. He tells the unsuspecting provost that he has heard of Blanchardyn’s marriage, to which the provost responds that this cannot be true, for the love of Blanchardyn and his lady is indissoluble. In another instance of deception, he frees his father from prison only to pretend to be a companion of Blanchardyn’s and to have had news of his friend’s death. Aside from these episodes in the first part of the romance, there is no mention of the knight’s disguise.

Eglantine rejects marriage to Alymodes because he is an “infidel” and worships “false ydols,” but these grounds are not sufficient to deter the friendship of Blanchardyn and Sadoyne. The pair have analogues in other Christian knights who become brothers-in-arms to Muslims who convert (Roland and Otuel, Tristan and Palomides). Often in romances, political allegiances of Christians and Muslims follow on conversion of the latter, but the alliance of Blanchardyn and Sadoyne is established long before. Though Blanchardyn passes as a Muslim, the permeability of boundaries between Muslim and Christian is shown to operate principally in the other direction, namely in Muslim assimilation, though conversion is voluntary, not compelled by the sword as in the chansons. Sadoyne readily jettisons his idols (though not before Blanchardyn tells him to save their gold and jewels). The baptism of Beatrix, Sadoyne, and their people takes place in the Christian ghetto of Cassydonye which produces the priest, tubs, and holy water necessary for the public ritual.

Sadoyne and Alymodes are contrasting constructions of cultural others, one featuring assimilation, the other, extermination. Sadoyne and the Prussians are Blanchardyn’s allies, not enemies; their troops join Blanchardyn to defeat other Muslims. While the romance is conventionally anti-Islamic, it is less negative and extreme in its treatment of Muslims than the giants and monstrosities, the idol-bashing, and crusading genocide of earlier romances such as Isumbras, Fierabras (or The Sultan of Babylon), and The King of Tars, or Caxton’s Godfrey of Bolougne. In Blanchardyn and Eglantine, shared chivalric values of loyalty, feudal service, and military valor supersede the religious differences — the Christian Subyon’s betrayal of these values makes him a villain. Military and political alliances outweigh racial and religious differences.

Gender and Character

Like other romances, Blanchardyn and Eglantine constructs gender according to chivalry’s code of aristocratic masculinity. This code included a model of female command and male service, but was based on a patriarchal system in which men controlled the marriages of women to secure alliances with other men. Women are thus mediators, supporting “men’s agency, as well as the harmony of masculine communities.” Blanchardyn succeeds in his quest to marry his lady (and become king) because he has the support of other men who are loyal to her, and together they vanquish her challengers. As in many other romances, the absence of women is noticeable in the treatment of family. Fathers play a role throughout the narrative: Alymodes is a constant presence, and Blanchardyn’s father is active in the second part of the story, insuring the succession to the throne of Frisia. In contrast, Blanchardyn’s mother is there to nurse him, lament his departure, die of sorrow (off stage), and be mourned by her son. Eglantine is without a family: her parents are dead, her absent uncle dies, and her governess and surrogate mother is rarely present after the couple declare their love. The long prose version of the romance makes a gesture to compensate for the lack of a maternal presence by adding the initial episode of the childless queen’s answered prayers, and references to mothers breast-feeding the hero and heroine.

The courtly model of male service and female command suggests the possibility of marriage based on love rather than solely on practical or dynastic considerations, but Eglantine, as an orphaned heiress, is very much identified with her kingdom. The knight of the ferry, the provost, and her mistress refer to their lady’s marriage pragmatically, the latter goes so far as to advise her to wed Alymodes in order to secure peace. Though Eglantine insists on her own choice of a husband, she, too, is pragmatic in choosing husbands for the provost’s daughters. The exchange of women here is a function of the queen’s jealousy and status, as she exercises a ruler’s prerogative to arrange marriages and alliances. Social and emotional harmony are restored: all parties are agreeable as the unions are socially correct and advantageous. Blanchardyn arranges the marriage of Beatrix to Sadoyne, treating her as a spoil of war, a gift promised to his fellow in recognition of their friendship and loyalty. When her city falls, Beatrix courteously yields to the victorious Sadoyne and willingly accepts Blanchardyn’s proposal to wed her to that prince. The union has been foreshadowed, since the lady had previously admired Sadoyne from afar and had been attracted to Blanchardyn by his excellence, at one point even wishing she were his “lady paramours.”

Beatrix resembles other strong-willed Muslim princesses of romance who are attracted to Christian knights, convert, and marry them, though she marries a converted Muslim. She happily leaves her father’s camp with Blanchardyn to avoid an arranged marriage to the giant Rubyon. Later, she challenges Alymodes when he berates her for disobedience, and asserts her right to marry without his knowledge or consent; she then mounts a rebellion, commanding her father’s troops and defending his city against him. Muslim heroines are often depicted as “gruff, forthright, and even brutal in their speech and manners,” and Beatrix is no exception. In a memorable scene she approaches her father with humility and polite appeals, “swetly” urging him to convert and make peace with Blanchardyn and Sadoyne. When he refuses, calling her a “false and renyed [renegade] strompet,” she lashes out: “Olde unfamouse myschaunt [wicked one], how arte thou soo follyshe and so overwenynge as for to wene to have her [Eglantine]? Thou haste that berde of thyne over-whyte therto, thy face is too mykel wonne [pale], and that olde skynne of thyn ys over mykel shronken togyder.” He is too old to marry, she says, and should take himself to some “fayr hermytage” (48.6–8). Despite the humor of Beatrix’s rebuttal, a reader looking for models of filial behavior might be taken aback by her mocking repudiation of her parent, and by the inversion of the accepted father-daughter power dynamic.

Unlike the absent ladies of some romances, Eglantine and Beatrix are very much present in the narrative, whether in the scene or in the thoughts and conversations of others. However, the two never meet, so there is no sisterly bond to parallel the brotherhood of Blanchardyn and Sadoyne. Many episodes are narrated from their point of view and there are frequent instances of the female gaze as Eglantine and Beatrix, from their castle windows, chuse their men in the commotion of battle. The word is apt, meaning both “to choose” as well as “to see,” in the sense of discerning, or recognizing. The intensity of the women’s gaze suggests their agency in constructing chivalric masculinity. It is also possible that these are episodes of male narcissism — “the author’s appropriating the woman’s gaze merely for the purposes of male self-admiration.”

The limits of chivalry’s gender-role-subverting conventions are apparent when Eglantine’s resistance to masculine control is overcome by the kiss. The episode may have been suggested by the stolen kiss in Chrétien’s The Story of the Grail; though subdued by comparison, Blanchardyn’s kiss still “resonates with sexual violence.” The test of manhood and horsemanship is a transgression: Eglantine falls to the ground in a faint and insists that her person has been violated, the outrage being compounded by the fact that the perpetrator is a complete stranger. Her mistress minimizes the significance of the kiss and discourages Eglantine from seeking public retribution, pointing out that, since there were no other witnesses to the kiss, the lady’s reputation will not be sullied by gossip. The romance thus presents two responses to the act: the mistress is more pragmatic and conventional while Eglantine is principled and absolute in her rejection of love and male dominance.

Although the plot turns on the love of Blanchardyn and Eglantine, the narrative devotes equal attention to bonds between men, that is Blanchardyn’s network of loyal supporters which includes his father, Sadoyne, the king of Prussia, the earl of Castleford, the knight of the ferry and the provost, both mentors. The story of Beatrix and Sadoyne takes on a life of its own in the latter part of the romance when his capture by Alymodes and rescue by Blanchardyn postpone the wedding and prolong the “bromance,” a term that captures the nature of the bond of male friendship depicted in romances. The narrative speaks frequently of the love the two men have for one another, and it is telling that, on the point of dying, Sadoyne laments that Blanchardyn is not present to avenge his death (and honor their oath) as much as he laments that death will separate him from Beatrix.

Blanchardyn and Eglantine’s conception of chivalric masculinity is grounded in warfare. The long prose romance pays more attention to military matters than does the earlier verse romance, abridging passages of courtly sentiments while adding and enhancing episodes of combat. There are four full-scale battles and four individual challenges; the battle between the Prussians and the Poles and the capture of the king of Frisia are greatly expanded and are not mediated by female witnesses. These engagements are described in detail, including the arming of leading warriors, individual combats, and deployments of troops under various leaders, their advances, retreats, casualties, and captures. The culminating combat of Blanchardyn and Alymodes is described as though it were a tournament, including single combats separate from the méleé, observed by a lady who sends a sleeve to her knight. Roughly fourteen chapters, comprising half the lines of the text, are devoted entirely to fighting.

Courtly Love and Affective Romance

Blanchardyn and Eglantine is attentive to the characters’ emotions and to the literary conventions of courtly love, as is suggested by the heroine’s soubriquet, The Lady Proud in Love. While in the verse romances the lady refuses suitors because she has not yet found a knight who meets her standards, in the prose versions, her absolute refusal to love is an example of youthful pride and dangerous disregard for her kingdom. Her obstinacy is treated with a degree of irony and humor. In her fury after the kiss, Eglantine debates what manner of execution would cause Blanchardyn the most suffering: “late hym be hanged, brente, or drowned, his hed to be smytten off from his shulders, or to make hym to be drawen and quartred” (16.2). Soon, under threat of Alymodes’s attack, she decides to pardon Blanchardyn and appoints him commander of her troops. She ends her deliberations with the declaration that “never daye of my lyffe hym nor other I wyll not love . . . for all syche thynges I repute and take for foly . . . and shal be allewayes my soverayne desyre and fynall conclusion” (17.1). The folly of her overstatement is emphasized in a later episode when the narrator comments, “at the same owre was taken the fynal and faste conclusion and altogydre was of her determyned to make of Blanchardyn her lover and her specyall, that a lytyl before that for one kysse onely was so ferre from her gode grace and in daunger of his lyf” (20.10).

Eglantine displays all the symptoms of courtly love. She becomes jealous of the provost’s daughters. She is love-sick: wounded by love’s arrow, her heart is enflamed and her body’s humors thrown out of balance so that she is unable to eat, drink, or sleep. The rhetoric of courtly love is much in evidence in oxymorons, as when Eglantine shakes with cold caused by the arrow’s heat, and when Blanchardyn declares that to be her servant would be great freedom. There is the allegory, personification, and metaphor of love, as when Love serves Eglantine a sour meal of jealousy and sends her servant, Care, to wait upon the lady and make her anxious. Love is likened to a religion with deities, conversions, temples, chapterhouses, and rituals. There are passages of debate between Reason and the lady’s Pride. There is also a lover’s soliloquy in a walled pleasure ground among “fayere flouris wherof nature had fayre appareylled the gardyne” (33.1). In a scene familiar from the Roman de la Rose, Blanchardyn sees a rose whose perfection reminds him of Eglantine, prompting him to lament their separation bitterly and at length.

The conventions of courtly love and debate enabled medieval authors to depict characters’ emotions, and passages of dialogue and monologue make the reader privy to their thoughts and feelings. The plot often advances in series of conversations: those between Eglantine and her mistress concerning the kiss and Alymodes’s proposal, followed by that between Eglantine and the Provost regarding his daughters and Blanchardyn, which is followed by the provost’s communication with the knight, and finally the exchange between Blanchardyn and Eglantine in which he becomes her commander in chief and they declare their love. These passages shift fluidly between direct and indirect discourse, a feature of fifteenth-century prose that brings immediacy to the exchanges. Formal speeches of lamentation, declaration, and supplication heighten emotion, promoting audience engagement.

Blanchardyn and Eglantine portrays its characters’ emotional states and appeals to those of the audience. Among romances of sentiment, it is distinguished for its exploitation of “empathy-creating devices . . . to promote maximum identification with the characters,” and for breaking “the temporal and spatial barriers between the narrator, audience and text.” There are many scenes of melodrama and pathos. Twice Eglantine joyously anticipates Blanchardyn’s arrival only to despair as his return is thwarted by capture or storm. Sadoyne, on his way to the gallows, faints and is beaten with staves. He laments, “Alas, yf nedes I shal dey . . .” (48.10) and expounds at length upon his sorrow in response to a series of rhetorical questions, each also prefaced by “Alas.” The lamentations of the king and queen of Frisia on the loss of their son are reiterated in several passages. The later sufferings of the captured king are narrated with specificity and repeated. He is “sore beten wyth the flayel of fortune” in a “tenebrouse and derke” dungeon (32.5) where he languishes dirty, starving, and nearly blind. The pathos of the father-son reunion is heightened by Blanchardyn, who does not reveal himself and instead inflicts more suffering on the poor man.

Techniques of narration also bring the reader into the action and minimize distance from the characters. We experience battles from the perspective of Eglantine and Beatrix. The narrator addresses the audience, creating “eavesdropping” effects that position the reader as a witness to the action. The narrator refers to the audience directly as “we” and “you,” as listeners and as readers, and interjects familiar occupatio such as, “Yf . . . I wold reherce and telle, I sholde over longe tary myself” (51.4). The voice contributes humor in comments and ironic asides, as when Eglantine arranges marriages for the provost’s daughters: “I saye not that jalousy was cause of this thynge, but I leve it in the jugement that in suche a caas can good skyle” (24.1). Appeals to the audience in transitions between episodes are frequently empathetic, reminding the audience of the characters’ emotions: “So shal we leve hym thus makyng his sorowfull complayntes tyl that tyme befor to speke of hym, and shal retourne to speke of his sone the goode yonge knyght Blanchardyn, whiche we have left wythin the paleys of Maryenborugh wyth Sadoyne” (32.5). The narrator even invites the audience to participate in the action by consoling the characters: “[let us] retourne to helpe the sorowful kynge and quene for to complayne and wepe for the absence of theyre dere sone Blanchardyn” (3.2). As it is a constant presence in the romance, the narrator’s self-conscious persona becomes a kind of character, speaking to the audience in a tone that is familiar, even colloquial in its use of proverbs. Since the romance was read aloud, the voice would have spoken directly to the listeners, making the reader’s performance more engaging.

Descriptions further appeal to the audience through synesthesia by invoking multiple senses. Episodes of feasting, private entertainment, and public celebration are often embellished with catalogues of musicians’ instruments that invite the audience to form aural as well as visual images of these scenes, as though they are onlookers. Battles are rendered in grisly, if formulaic, realism that puts one on the battlefield amidst the blinding dust, the blast of trumpets, and the explosions of siege guns so loud the four elements seem to be colliding. Wounded knights are trampled under the hoofs of their mounts while injured horses run trailing their bowels; bodies are pierced by spears that are jerked out, and swords stab “lunge and lyvre” (20.4). Caxton sometimes adds such details where they do not appear in his source, compounding the depiction of carnage. The Vienna manuscript of Blancandin gives visual emphasis to the violence with its numerous illustrations of massed armies and battlefields heaped with dismembered dead and bloody wounded.

Scholarship

Sources of information on the development of the romance, the French manuscripts, and Caxton’s text can be found in Leon Kellner’s brief Appendix to the Introduction of his 1890 edition of Blanchardyn and Eglantine; it provides a concise but outdated survey of the surviving verse and prose manuscripts. Rosa Anna Greco’s 2002 edition of the French prose Blancandin romances, short and long, includes stemma for both verse and prose texts and a thorough introduction (in Italian). Judith P. Stelboum’s 1968 dissertation, “William Caxton’s Romance of Blanchardyn and Eglantine,” is designed as a companion to Kellner’s edition with discussion of the romance’s sources and the relationships of its surviving versions and texts, as well as Caxton’s style and translation practice. “Translation Techniques in the Romances of William Caxton,” Joanne M. Despres’s dissertation of 1991, compares three of Caxton’s romances to show his development as a translator and includes a semantic and syntactic analysis of Blanchardyn and Eglantine with attention to additions and omissions from his source. Both dissertations note that the romance had received little critical attention.

For the most part, scholars have approached the romance through its Burgundian connections and in the context of Caxton’s other romances and chivalric publications. One of the first to do so was to was Margaret Schlauch, whose Antecedents of the English Novel (1963) examines late medieval prose narratives, termed society romances, that are more interested in human relationships than in military exploits. Diane Bornstein’s article, “William Caxton’s Chivalric Romances and the Burgundian Renaissance in England” (1976), examines the cultural diffusion of Burgundian chivalric practice and its literature into England, particularly through the court of Edward IV. This movement’s lingering influence was due largely to Caxton’s translations and other works from his press. Because Caxton’s translation of Blanchardyn and Eglantine is faithful to his source, recent studies of the French prose romances are also useful: Rosalind Brown-Grant’s “Narrative Style in Burgundian Prose Romances of the Later Middle Ages” (2012) compares narration in chronicle and romance, and notes ways romances decrease the distance between audience and character. Her analysis of the long prose Blancandin shows it to be particularly concerned with promoting empathy and engagement. Matthieu Marchal, in “De l’existence d’un manuscrit de la prose de Blancandin et l’Orgueilleuse d’Amours produit dans l’atelier du Maître de Wavrin” (2018), identifies the Vienna manuscript of the romance as a product of the Wavrin workshop and includes information about its production and connections to the Créquy and Croy families.

Other studies of Blanchardyn and Eglantine examine it through a central figure in the Burgundian connection, Margaret Beaufort, and her program of patronage. All these studies address gender and the role of women as literary patrons, readers, and owners of books: see Patricia Pender’s “‘A Veray Patronesse’: Margaret Beaufort and the Early English Printers” (2017), Rebecca Krug’s “Margaret Beaufort’s Literate Practice: Service and Self-Inscription” (2002), and Jennifer Summit’s “William Caxton, Margaret Beaufort and the Romance of Female Patronage” (1995). The latter demonstrates how Caxton’s dedication of Blanchardyn and Eglantine uses the language of courtly love and chivalry to represent the relationship of printer and patron according to the model of gendered behavior present in the romance itself. Anne Clark Bartlett reads the romance as a mirror for princesses in “Translation, Self-Representation, and Statecraft: Lady Margaret Beaufort and Caxton’s Blanchardyn and Eglantyne” (2005) and finds the romance to be “a highly idealized, and deeply didactic account of its patron’s own exercise of governance.” Other scholars discuss Blanchardyn and Eglantine in terms of Margaret’s political activities and negotiation of the betrothal of Henry VII, in particular George Painter’s biography of Caxton (1976) and Helen Cooper’s The English Romance in Time (2004).

Studies have also focused on the romance’s female characters and how contemporary audiences would have read Blanchardyn and Eglantine. Rosalind Brown-Grant’s chapter “Chivalric Prowess and the Threat of Female Autonomy in Versions of Blancandin” (in FRLMA, 2008), compares French verse and prose versions, noting that the latter’s treatment of chivalric masculinity gives less importance to love for women, and more importance to their land. Amy Vines’s Introduction to Women’s Power in Late Medieval Romance (2011) notes that Caxton’s dedication of Blanchardyn and Eglantine suggests “new opportunities for female readers to consolidate and enact social and cultural power.” Though she does not discuss the romance itself, her observations about the female characters of similar romances are relevant. In “‘A kysse onely’: The Problem of Female Socialization in William Caxton’s Blanchardyn and Eglantine,” Jennifer Alberghini examines Eglantine’s and her mistress’s responses to Blanchardyn’s kiss, and his removal of Beatrix from Alymodes’s camp, in light of modern concerns for issues of female consent.

Textual Matters

Caxton is a faithful, accomplished translator, leaving nothing out and endeavoring to render the style of his French prose source into English. However, his romance is wordier than his source and longer, though he adds no episodes. Besides creating many doublets, often to emphasize misfortune, violent action, and emotion, he adds expressions of pious or chivalric sentiment such as “[H]e whom God wolde preserve can not peryshe” (25.3) and “as longeth [is appropriate] tyl a knyght to doo” (23.4). In addition he adds Islamophobic intensifiers such as “false Sarasyns” (21.2) and embellishes the episode of Subyon with additional proverbs. Caxton’s deviations from the French texts are indicated in the Textual Notes and Explanatory Notes. The following passage, the end of the chapter in which the King of Frisia is taken prisoner, is a typical example of Caxton’s additions which are indicated by italics (32.5).

Whan Kyng Alymodes knew the same he wexed sore angry and wroth, but no remedy he myght not put therto, for or ever he was advertysed therof, the provost and his felauship were almost oute of syght. Well he had wold that they myght be met wythall by Daryus his sone, but he oughte not to care for it, for Daryus and hys navey helde their waye toward Cassydonye wher they arryved in fewe dayes wythout eny fortune. And the provost saylled and rowed toward the costes of Nourthweghe. Whan Daryus was come to lande into the haven of Cassydonye, where he arryved wythin short tyme wythout ony fortune, as it is sayd, he made the kyng of Fryse and other his prysoners to be had out from the shippes into a grete and strong toure whereas was a tenebrouse and derke dongeon, wherin the poure sorowfull kynge, replenysshed and sore beten wyth the flayel of fortune, was cast in pryson there to consume his olde dayes ful myserably, unto that tyme that by his right wel beloved sone Blanchardyn he be had out from this grete poverté and myserye. So shal we leve hym thus makyng his sorowfull complayntes tyl that tyme befor to speke of hym, and shal retourne to speke of his sone the goode yonge knyght Blanchardyn, whiche we have left wythin the paleys of Maryenborugh wyth Sadoyne.

As these examples show, Caxton’s additions, besides supplying rhetorical flourishes, add continuity to the narrative by knitting up the threads of the preceding episodes and carefully locating all the characters.

Caxton’s publication survives in a single copy, now in the John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester. This volume consists of ninety-six folios in fourteen quires of four leaves. Its present dimensions are 230 mm high (8 3/4 inches) by 178 mm wide (6 3/4 inches). The pages are printed in single columns, usually thirty-one lines per page. All the type is Caxton’s gothic black letter font number six. The text is ornamented with large woodcut capital letters at the beginnings of chapters, and usually chapter headings are set off by spaces between the preceding and following text. There are fifty-four chapters, ranging in length from one to twenty-one pages. Several leaves are missing from the Rylands volume: folio five containing the last leaf of the Table, the leaf following gathering Bii in chapter nine, and the conclusion to the romance after leaf Miiii. In this edition, the missing narrative is supplied by my translation of BNF fr. 24371. The book is now bound in red leather stamped with the arms of John, duke of Roxburghe, an eighteenth-century bibliophile and antiquarian. The volume has been restored, perhaps when he had it bound. Leaves have been inserted at the beginning including an engraved portrait of Caxton, a decorated title page, and a leaf, written in professional Gothic hand, which replaces one missing from the Table of Chapters. Headings in decorative script and annotations have been added to the pages of the Table and the Dedication. Before the restoration, a single writer had added folio numbers and was responsible for a program of textual annotation and correction. There are further annotations in several seventeenth-century hands, well as traces of other readers, and several sets of marginal brackets that mark passages of particular significance. These features are referenced in the Textual Notes.

Earlier owners and readers have left their marks in the volume. John Dewe of Chesterton wrote that the book belonged to him in 1500, and described his family’s coat of arms granted by Richard II. A John Dew (d. 1517) received his B.A. 1484–1485 at Cambridge and was a fellow of Gonville Hall there in the years 1488–1500. Chesterton is part of modern Cambridge, so it is possible that this person was the book’s owner, perhaps its first. Others have left their names on its pages, the most legible being a Mary, a Richard, and John New. In 1776, John Ratliff, a London tradesman and bibliophile, sold the book to John Mason, who in turn sold it at auction to the duke of Roxburghe. When his library was auctioned in 1812, the book was purchased by the earl Spencer from whose collection it passed to the Rylands Library in 1894.

This edition follows the METS guidelines explained in the General Introduction to this volume, where they are accompanied by comments on my editorial practices, with examples. The text is based on the only surviving print of Blanchardyn and Eglantine, that in the Rylands Library; it is available online at https://luna.manchester.ac.uk/luna/servlet/detail/Manchester~20~20~17~190274:Bookreader-15027(Opens in a new tab or window).

Witnesses and Source Texts

French:

  • Verse
  • Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS fr. 375, fols. 254v–267r. [End 13c.; omits captivity of Sadoyne and treason of Subyon.]
  • Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS fr. 19152, fols. 174–192v. Online at https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b52513419n?rk=42918;4(Opens in a new tab or window). [Beginning 14c.]
  • Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection, MS Codex 862 (formerly MS French 22). [Beginning 14 c. (incomplete); likely source of prose version.]
  • Turin, Biblioteca nazionale universitaria, MS L V 44, fols. 136r–188r. [13 c.; destroyed by fire 1904.]
  • Prose: all mid-fifteenth-century

English: