The Realm of Enchantment
By Dr. Matthew W. Morris
From June 12th to June 14th of 2008, Emory University and the
University of Poitiers joined forces in co-sponsoring an international
colloquium entitled Écriture et réécriture
du merveilleux féerique: Autour de Mélusine (Writing
and Rewriting About the Realm of Enchantment: All About Mélusine).
Co-directed by Drs. Matthew Morris (French Department, Oxford
College of Emory University), Jean-Jacques Vincensini (University
of Corsica) and Claudio Galderisi (University of Poitiers), the
colloquium, convened in the French cities of Poitiers and Lusignan,
was organized under the aegis of France’s Centre d’Études
Supérieures de Civilisation Médiévale. With
support from the Office of the Provost and the Dean of Oxford
College, the colloquium’s underlying aim was to facilitate
the gathering of some two dozen researchers from around the globe,
chiefly in the field of Medieval Studies, for the purpose of sharing
results of their investigations into the legend and lore of Mélusine,
a fairy indigenous to Poitou, a region of west-central France.
The legend of Mélusine and two late-fourteenth-century
romances – one prose, the other poetic – that were
outgrowths of it, link the Poitevin fairy to the Lusignans, a
medieval dynastic family of great renown, among whose number could
be counted the kings of Armenia, Cyprus, and Jerusalem. In its
basic, original form, the legend relates the tale of an “other-world”
lady who marries a mortal and helps him to found the seigneurie
of Lusignan, a territory of great power and wealth in Poitou.
After bearing him many sons, the fairy’s husband breaks
a sworn oath and spies upon her in her bath; he is shocked to
behold his wife with her normal beauty from the waist upward,
but with serpent-form from the navel down. Upon being thus discovered,
Mélusine fully metamorphoses into a winged dragon and flies
out the window, never to return except as a banshee to her descendants.
This essential framework serves as a storyline for both Mélusine
romances. One significant elaboration, however, causes the literary
tales to diverge from the indigenous legend: it is not the mere
spying by the husband into his wife’s bath that ruptures
their union. Not until he reveals Mélusine’s secret
to the world is she driven to her departure and transformation
into a winged dragon-banshee.
One might legitimately wonder why a score of scholars from disparate
areas of the world – the United States and Canada, as well
as France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, and Israel – would
gather to examine and share views on a topic apparently so far-removed
– by some seven hundred years – from our own time
and interests.
In addition to any interest in the mythically inspired Roman de
Mélusine as a purely medieval literary creation, what might
men and women of today have to learn by reading the work? They
will find, among other things, that the problems germane to their
own lives are quite similar to those of the medieval tale’s
characters. The Mélusine is a tale of love, shared intimacy,
and betrayal. It is also a tale of warfare and conquest: a large
portion of the story takes place on the battlefields of the Middle
East, depicting the campaigns against the armies of Beirut, Damascus,
and Baghdad. The same questions concerning the fictional characters’
rationale for extension of political and economic hegemony by
military might are applicable to our own motivations for waging
war. The views, attitudes, and reactions of the crusading Lusignans’
enemis (a term synonymous with “devil” in Old French)
are not at all different from the views, attitudes, and reactions
of “enemies” encountered by those waging military
campaigns on faraway battlefields today. We are all familiar with
statements by certain present-day leaders who still refer to our
wars as crusades, the same term used by the Lusignans. Those against
whom the eight crusades were waged (from 1098-1291) knew them
to be struggles of life and death. Like the massacre of all non-Christians
by Geoffroy de Lusignan upon his capture of Beirut in the Mélusine
romance, the “pagans” of the crusades – soldiers
and civilians alike – knew their fate if vanquished. Fiction
mirrored reality, since by doctrine, salvation was granted to
crusaders for the killing of non-Christians: the Council of Clermont
of 1098 which authorized the First Crusade, granted absolution
to Christians for striking down non-believers. The crusaders were
exhorted to ferir par penitence (to strike out of penance).
From the medievalists’ point of view, at least, the Roman
de Mélusine is one of the most intriguing monuments handed
down to us from the Middle Ages. With the appearance of the prose
Mélusine (composed by Jean d’Arras in 1393 for the
Duc de Berry), followed almost immediately by the poetic version
(authored by Couldrette for the Seigneur de Parthenay), the story
spread rapidly throughout France, Germany, England, and Eastern
Europe, and during the next few centuries retained an important
place in the folklore and literature of these regions. Copies
of the works multiplied rapidly, and their translation into other
languages as diverse as Russian, Czech, and Icelandic were made
early on. Why this legend and the literary tales it spawned held
such fascination for men and women of the Middle Ages, no one
can say with certainty, but for some reason, following the appearance
of the literary versions of the tale, it became very much the
vogue among the great noble families of Europe to try to attach
themselves to the Mélusine legend in one way or another;
a good number of them created fictitious genealogies in an attempt
to claim descent from the illustrious fairy. The chroniclers of
the great houses of Europe would rely on the works’ authors
(Jean d’Arras and Couldrette) to back up their masters’
claims to illustrious ancestry. In order to create links with
Mélusine, similarities of coats of arms were vaunted; coats
of arms were even changed. Resemblances in names were seized upon
as proof of kinship; charts and genealogies were forged and names
were changed.
Exactly why this myth bore such attraction will probably always
remain, for the most part, a matter of conjecture, but in all
the lands where the Lusignans founded dynasties and in all those
lands where certain families of great rank and power could attach
themselves to this illustrious house (Poitou, Saintonge, La Marche,
Agenais, Forez, Dauphiné, Languedoc, Burgundy, Alsace,
Luxembourg, Bohemia, Jerusalem, Cyprus, Armenia, Aragon, England
and France), the descendants of Mélusine, true or pretended,
swelled with pride over their supernatural origin and the frightening
privilege of seeing their great and mournful ancestor return to
this world to announce to them, with piercing cries, their approaching
death.
Whatever relevance we might find in the Mélusine story
to our twenty-first century existence, the fact remains that it
continues to attract attention on many fronts. During the last
fifteen years, the Mélusine legend and the literary works
it spawned have been the focus of much scholarly interest, attesting
to the relevance of the topic to the current academic community.
National and international colloquia are taking place at universities
worldwide, centering entirely on the subject of Mélusine,
five of them having taken place within the last seven years. Emory
University and the University of Poitiers, while not alone in
their investigation of the topic, are unique in their co-sponsorship
of a colloquium consciously joining Old World and New World forces
to contribute to the growing body of work surrounding this subject.
Moreover, not only medievalists, but also nineteenth and twentieth-century
specialists are presently engaged in research on the subject,
demonstrating the timeless nature and universality of its themes.
A good number of collections of essays on the Mélusine
myth and the literary tales related to it have recently come off
the presses, as well as modern French and English translations
of both prose and poetic versions of the Mélusine. The
topic of Mélusine has been seized upon by feminists as
well, to say nothing of the burgeoning interest of the general
public, due, in part, to the great success of British writer A.S.
Byatt’s novel Possession, published in 1990.
My own research on the Mélusine romances began thirty-five
years ago. My interest in the topic was first aroused by the reproduction
of a miniature contained in an edition of the Très riches
heures du Duc de Berry, a richly decorated prayer book dating
from the early fifteenth century. The miniature depicts Mélusine
in the form of a winged dragon, hovering above the Château
of Lusignan. This remarkable image led me to consult the standard
bibliographies on medieval works; finding that there had been
no satisfactory edition of the poetic Mélusine completed,
I decided to undertake a critical edition of the work for my doctoral
dissertation at the University of Georgia, completed in 1977.
Over the years since, the multilayered nature of the subject has
led me to investigate the myriad facets of the legend, and I have
continued to write articles and deliver conference papers on the
topic.
The primary significance of my continued investigation into mélusiniana
is that it has allowed me to consistently strengthen myself as
a researcher and contributor to the field of medieval French studies.
For the first twenty years of working on this subject, I felt
as though I were all alone in my pursuits, but beginning in the
mid-1990’s, a good number of scholars from around the world
began to publish on the subject. In 2003, as a culmination of
my many years of research, I published an expanded version of
my doctoral critical edition, along with a bilingual en face edition
of the work (Middle French/English). These two volumes published
with The Edwin Mellen Press were recipients of the Adèle
Mellen Prize for Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship. I
think I am safe in saying that it was really these two books that
made me known to the French researchers and led to the invitation
extended to me by Professors Vincensini and Galderisi to co-direct
the June 2008 Poitiers Colloquium.
As for the image that first attracted my curiosity to the Poitevin
fairy? The third day of our June colloquium took place at the
very site of the Mélusine legend’s origins in the
city of Lusignan. There, we were warmly welcomed by the Mélusins
(it is thus that the city’s inhabitants call themselves,
claiming one and all to be descended from the fairy). Following
the day’s presentations, the colloquium scholars were feted
royally by the city’s administration and leading citizens
for the honor we had paid to their patron spirit. Part of their
hospitality included a tour of the Château of Lusignan –
long since destroyed during France’s sixteenth-century religious
wars.
As I walked among the ruins of the once impregnable château
fort – that same one of the miniature – a thought
kept occurring to me – one that had taken shape gradually
over the years since my work on the Mélusine first began,
one that now informs my conception of Mélusine as I have
come to understand her: the fairy’s image hovering above
the château in the miniature is a perfect metaphor for her
true literary and historical significance. The château itself
is the actual concretion of practical power. The image of the
winged dragon, Mélusine, hovering above, however, represents
the enchantment that invests the real and practical force of the
stronghold with a superhuman valence, imbuing the fortress’s
material form with a spiritual power that renders its walls far
less assailable, or even approachable, by mere mortals.
This was in fact how the château was perceived by the inhabitants
of Poitou at the beginning of the fifteenth century when the miniature
was painted. This same aura of mystical power would remain suspended
above the Château of Lusignan until its destruction almost
two centuries later – indeed, lingering on at the site of
its ruins even up to the present day – outlasting the material
form of the castle itself.
Matthew Morris, PhD is an associate professor of French, at Oxford
College of Emory University.
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