How to be ‘Both’: Bilingual and Gendered Emotions in Late Medieval English Balade Sequences

Abstract

In the field of late medieval English literary study, work by Ardis Butterfield, Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Judith Jefferson, and Ad Putter, among others, has confirmed that continental French continued to influence the production and consumption of secular literature in England until well into the fifteenth century.¹ Those who used French most often — usually, the literate, educated, male elite — ensured the ongoing importance of the language in the political, social, and emotional \life of the court. How the bilingual culture of England’s aristocracy impacted on the work of poets in late medieval England is the subject of this chapter, which concentrates in particular on the relationship between bilingualism — whether individual or cultural — and the expression of emotion in literature. My focus in this chapter is on two secular balade sequences, one written in French, the other in English, by authors who wrote and probably spoke fluently in more than one language: John Gower (c. 1330–1408), court poet during the reigns of Richard II and Henry IV; and Charles of Orleans (1394-1465), taken by the English at the battle of Agincourt in 1415, and held prisoner in England for 25 years. Both men were ‘bilingual’ in that they spoke at least French and English fluently (Gower’s work also survives in Latin), and both wrote lyric sequences in what sociolinguists would today call an ‘L2’ or acquired tongue.