Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- The De re militari of Vegetius in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
- Heroes of War: Ambroise's Heroes of the Third Crusade
- Warfare in the Works of Rudolf von Ems
- Chronicling the Hundred Years War in Burgundy and France in the Fifteenth Century
- War and Knighthood in Christine de Pizan's Livre des faits d'armes et de chevallerie
- Barbour's Bruce: Compilation in Retrospect
- ‘Peace is good after war’: The Narrative Seasons of English Arthurian Tradition
- The Invisible Siege – The Depiction of Warfare in the Poetry of Chaucer
- Warfare and Combat in Le Morte Darthur
- Women and Warfare in Medieval English Writing
- Speaking for the Victim
- Index
Speaking for the Victim
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- The De re militari of Vegetius in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
- Heroes of War: Ambroise's Heroes of the Third Crusade
- Warfare in the Works of Rudolf von Ems
- Chronicling the Hundred Years War in Burgundy and France in the Fifteenth Century
- War and Knighthood in Christine de Pizan's Livre des faits d'armes et de chevallerie
- Barbour's Bruce: Compilation in Retrospect
- ‘Peace is good after war’: The Narrative Seasons of English Arthurian Tradition
- The Invisible Siege – The Depiction of Warfare in the Poetry of Chaucer
- Warfare and Combat in Le Morte Darthur
- Women and Warfare in Medieval English Writing
- Speaking for the Victim
- Index
Summary
In the sweet springtime, when the grass is fresh and the days clear and bright, I came across a shepherdess wearing a garland of leaves and a belt of roses; she was fluting, ‘Tirra lirra!’, and Perrin was accompanying her on a pipe. I dismounted onto the grass and said, ‘Damoiselle, love me, and I will give you fine jewels, and a better knife than a shepherd's.’ Then Peronelle replied, ‘I have heard that a troop of treacherous Flemings are making great trouble. Tirra lirra! Whoever asks me for love doesn't know how fearful I am.’
The shepherdess had a fair face and a hue of rose. I said, ‘Pretty one, I'll be your lover if you're willing.’ ‘Sir, I have given my heart to Perrin and mean to marry him; but we are overrun in this country. The French have been here and have devastated it too much. Sir, are you one of those wretches who have passed the river, who gathered across the Lys? Traitors and rebels and perjurers! – they will all be made landless and their shame revealed.’
THAT TEXT is a slightly abbreviated translation of a pastourelle by the Flemish poet Jean Bodel, written in the late twelfth century. Pastourelles are poems that typically describe the encounter of a man, most often a knight, with a shepherdess; he propositions her, and she may or may not consent to his advances. Bodel's poem opens in the most conventional of ways, and its first audience would accordingly have expected something mildly salacious to follow.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Writing WarMedieval Literary Responses to Warfare, pp. 213 - 232Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2004