Blanchefleur

Blanchefleur ("white flower", also Blancheflor, Blancheflour, Blanziflor) is the name of a number of characters in literature of the High Middle Ages. Except for in Perceval, the Story of the Grail, Blanchefleur is typically a character who reflects her name—an image of purity and idealized beauty.

Galahad Parts from His Bride, Blanchefleur by Edwin Austin Abbey at the Boston Public Library^[1]

Characters

Characters with the name include:

• The mother of Tristan and wife of Lord Rivalin, in Gottfried von Strassburg's version of the Tristan and Iseult.^[2] She dies in childbirth.^[3]
• The heroine of Floris and Blanchefleur.^[4][5][6]
• Daughter of Thierry, King of Morianel, in Garin le Loherain.^[7]
• Lover of Percival in Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, the Story of the Grail.^[8]
• A title character in the British song, "Blancheflour and Jollyflorice" ("which shares almost nothing of substance" with Floris and Blanchefleur^[9])

Name and meaning

The name, in Floris and Blanchefleur, is a reference to Easter Sunday: both Floris and Blanchefleur are born on that day, named Paskes Flourie (or "flowering Easter") and associated with the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. As Denyse Delcourt argues, "Almost identical twins, the young heroes are like two flowers folded into one, the name of Blanchefleur containing that Floire", and Delcourt notes that "the flower imagery [occurring over fifty times in the romance] is the principal paradigm of the power of love to constantly renew itself".^[5] As Peter Haidu notes in an article in Yale French Studies, "Blancheflor" is a "kind of stuttering repetition of identity", "white" and "flower'" both denoting purity. This verbal play is underscored in Floris and Blanchefleur by Floris's hiding in a basket of flowers in order to visit Blanchefleur secretly—the basket is delivered to the wrong room, that of the minor character Claris, who pulls Blanchefleur into her room and invites her to look at a flower in the basket, combining (according to Haidu) allegory, metonymy, and metaphor.^[6]

Presentation in romance

Blanchefleurs occurring in romance often present stereotypical images of idealized beauty, and according to Geraldine Barnes, the Blanchefleurs in Floris and Blanchefleur and Le Roman de Perceval are interchangeable, both texts offering "a lengthy and static portrait of perfection, proceeding from head to toe with strictly ordered reference to her blonde hair, high white forehead, "grey" eyes, exquisite nose, lips, teeth, and so forth". In the Norse Flóres saga ok Blankiflúr, which takes a decidedly hagiographic turn, according to Barnes, that description is missing.^[4]

Blanchefleur in the Grail

In Chrétien de Troyes' (unfinished) Perceval, the Story of the Grail, Blanchefleur lives near the castle of Gornemant de Goort (and is related to him;^[10] she is perhaps his granddaughter^[11]), where a young Perceval is educated in knightly skills, and is knighted. He is asked by Blanchefleur, who visits him at night, to help her against her enemies, and he agrees. They spend the night together, and she initiates him sexually.^[8] In the continuations of the Grail story, she comes to play different roles. In the second continuation (by Wauchier de Denain), she continues to act the part of a sexually attractive woman as commonly found in romance, and she and Perceval are likely to end up getting married, according to Lori Walters; the third (by Manessier) takes a more religious turn and, introducing elements from hagiography, abandons that romantic involvement.^[12]

Arthurian scholar professor James Douglas Bruce held that the Clamedex-Perceval-Blanchefleur episode in Chrétien's Perceval is the source of the Baruch-Sagremor-Sebile episode in the Livre d'Artus, with Sebile as a simple substitution for Blanchefleur.^[13]

Adaptations

In Parcevals saga, the Norse version of Chrétien's Conte du Graal, Blanchefleur has the name Blankiflur.^[14] In Gerhart Hauptmann's 1914 Parsival, Blanchefleur is Parsival's tutor in the history of the Grail.^[15] In John Boorman's Excalibur Blanchefleur is Anglicized as Blancheflor, and it is her father, which the movie combines with her uncle into one character, who teaches Perceval.^[16]

Professor Alan Baragona of the Virginia Military Institute, who calls Forrest Gump "virtually a bullet-pointed list of conventions from the Perceval tradition"^[17] maps Blanchefleur onto the character Jenny in that movie, albeit a "modern, flawed, substitute" for her.^[18]

Carmina Burana

The 24th carmen in Carl Orff's Carmina Burana is subtitled "Blanziflor et Helena", after the line of the poem "Blanziflor et Helena, Venus generosa!".^[19] The original Carmina Burana poem, named Si linguis angelicis Loquar et humanis^[a] from its first line, of which Orff's is but a middle part, begins with what appear at first reading to be addresses to the Virgin Mary in Ave Maria style,^[20][21] until reaching the "Blanziflor" line reveals the implication to be sexual rather than religious,^[22][23] the "Helena" being Helen of Troy and the "Blanziflor" being the Blancheflour from Floris and Blancheflour.^[24] The Marian imagery of decus virginum in the poem connects to Blanziflor in that another title of the Virgin Mary is lilium, the lily, for which "blanchefleur" is a French description.^[19][25]

See also

• Flowering the cross

Notes

1. This is a reference to 1 Corinthians chapter 13 verse 1.^[20]

References

1. O'Gorman, James F. (2013). "Boston Public Library Murals". In Lacy, Norris J.; Ashe, Geoffrey; Ihle, Sandra Ness; Kalinke, Marianne E.; Thompson, Raymond H. (eds.). The New Arthurian Encyclopedia: New edition. Routledge. ISBN 9781136606335.
2. Vowles, Guy R. "Review: Medieval Days". South Atlantic Bulletin. 10 (2): 6–7. doi:10.2307/3197984. JSTOR 3197984.
3. Lancaster, Charles Maxwell; Frank, John G. (1948). "A Chord from Gottfried's Ancient Rote". The Modern Language Journal. 32 (2): 112–124. doi:10.1111/j.1540-4781.1948.tb06913.x. JSTOR 318194.
4. Barnes, Geraldine (1977). "Some Observations on Flóres Saga ok Blankiflúr". Scandinavian Studies. 49 (1): 48–66. JSTOR 40917672.
5. Delcourt, Denyse (2012). "Swords and Flowers: Conversion in La Chanson de Roland and Floire et Blanchefleur". Modern Language Notes. 127 (5): S34–S53. JSTOR 41810221.
6. Haidu, Peter (1974). "Narrativity and Language in Some XIIth Century Romances". Yale French Studies (51): 133–146. doi:10.2307/2929683. JSTOR 2929683.
7. "Garin le Loherain" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 11 (11th ed.). 1911. pp. 467–468.
8. Markale, Jean (1999). The Grail: The Celtic Origins of the Sacred Icon. Inner Traditions / Bear & Co. pp. 8–10. ISBN 9780892817146.
9. Green, Richard Firth (2023). "The Ballad and the Middle Ages (abridged)". In Crocker, Holly; Smith, D. Vance (eds.). Medieval Literature: Criticism and Debates. Taylor & Francis. p. 54. ISBN 9781000948264.
10. Busby, Keith (1987). "The Characters and the Setting". In Lacy, Norris J.; Kelly, Douglas; Busby, Keith (eds.). The Legacy of Chrétien de Troyes: Chrétien et ses contemporains. Vol. 1. Rodopi. pp. 57–90. ISBN 9789062037384.
11. Pickens, Rupert T. (2014). Perceval and Gawain in Dark Mirrors: Reflection and Reflexivity in Chretien de Troyes's Conte del Graal. McFarland. p. 51. ISBN 9781476618593.
12. Walters, Lori (1993). "The Image of Blanchefleur in MS Montpellier, BI, Sect Méd. H 249". In Busby, Keith (ed.). Les Manuscrits de Chrétien de Troyes. Vol. 1. Rodopi. pp. 437–456. ISBN 9789051835939.
13. Bruce 1923, p. 331.
14. Szkilnik 2008, p. 206.
15. Groos & Lacy 2012, p. 25.
16. Hoyle 2012, p. 121.
17. Baragona 2015, p. 59.
18. Baragona 2015, p. 64.
19. Orff 1996, p. 122,124, notes by Sebesta.
20. Huot 1997, p. 68.
21. Symonds 1884, p. 105.
22. Robertson 1976, p. 52.
23. Robertson 2014, p. 144.
24. Huot 1997, p. 69.
25. Winkelman 1998, p. 107.

Sources

• Huot, Sylvia (1997). Allegorical Play in the Old French Motet: The Sacred and the Profane in Thirteenth-Century Polyphony. Figurae. Stanford University Press. ISBN 9780804727174.
• Orff, Carl (1996). Sebesta, Judith Lynn (ed.). Carl Orff Carmina Burana: Cantiones Profanae. Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers. ISBN 9780865162686.
• Robertson, Durant Waite (1976). "Two poems from the Carmina Burana". The American Benedictine Review. 27: 36–59.
  • reprinted as Robertson, Durant Waite (2014). "Two poems from the Carmina Burana (1976)". Essays in Medieval Culture. Princeton Legacy Library. Vol. 569. Princeton University Press. pp. 131–150. doi:10.1515/9781400856640.131. ISBN 9781400856640.
• Symonds, John Addington, ed. (1884). Wine, Women, and Song: Mediaeval Latin Students' Songs. London: Chatto & Windus.
• Winkelman, J. H. (1998). "Floris and Blanchefleur". In Gerritsen, Willem Pieter; van Melle, A. G. (eds.). A Dictionary of Medieval Heroes: Characters in Medieval Narrative Traditions and Their Afterlife in Literature, Theatre and the Visual Arts. Boydell & Brewer. ISBN 9780851157801.
• Groos, Arthur; Lacy, Norris J. (2012). "Introduction". In Groos, Arthur; Lacy, Norris J. (eds.). Perceval/Parzival: A Casebook. Arthurian Characters and Themes. Routledge. pp. 1–42. ISBN 9781136510007.
• Szkilnik, Michelle (2008). "Mediaval Translations and Adaptations of Chrétien's Works". In Lacy, Norris J.; Grimbert, Joan Tasker (eds.). A Companion to Chrétien de Troyes. Arthurian studies. DS Brewer. ISBN 9781843841616. ISSN 0261-9814.
• Bruce, James Douglas (1923). "Wolfram's Parzival". The Evolution of Arthurian Romance from the Beginnings Down to the Year 1300. Vol. 1. Johns Hopkins Press.
• Hoyle, Brian (2012). The Cinema of John Boorman. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 9780810883963.
• Baragona, Alan (2015). "Perceval of the Avant-Garde: Rohmer, Blank and von Trier". In Harty, Kevin J. (ed.). The Holy Grail on Film: Essays on the Cinematic Quest. McFarland. ISBN 9780786477852.

Further reading

• Groos, Arthur (2012). "Dialogic Transpositions: The Grail Hero Wins a Wife". In Groos, Arthur; Lacy, Norris J. (eds.). Perceval/Parzival: A Casebook. Arthurian Characters and Themes. Routledge. pp. 119–138. ISBN 9781136510007.
• Reiter, Virgile (2015). "Blanchefleur á Blanzeflor: de la jeune fille á la sainte reine". In Lodén, Sofia (ed.). The Eufemiavisor and Courtly Culture: Time, Texts and Cultural Transfer. Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien. pp. 221–234.