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An aristocratic society lies at the center of the fictive worlds proposed by most medieval romances. The life of this literary aristocracy may have borne relatively little material resemblance to the lives of its medieval audiences, but it is none-theless linked in recognizable ways to their interests, longings, ambitions, con-cerns, and values. And thanks to the significant continuity between medieval literary practices and modern ones, something of this implicit identification between the audience and the aristocratic society at the heart of romance sur-vives for the modern reader. Even we modern readers, that is, sense that the members of the central aristocratic society we encounter in a romance are the protagonists with whom it is assumed we will identify, that the central aristo-cratic society is in some sense “our” society.

Opposite this central aristocratic society, most medieval romances establish, or assume the existence of, other social “worlds” of various kinds. The members of these other worlds may resemble the members of the central society – they may be as sophisticated, rich, elegant, well-mannered as members of “our”

society – but their worlds are nonetheless recognizably different from “ours.”

Their motives and customs may be enigmatic or at least strange, and they them-selves may be monstrous.

The study of these romance other worlds over the last one hundred years has been largely preoccupied with a search for the sources on which their authors drew in creating them. It has shown that these sources were both popular and learned, and included Classical, Germanic and Celtic traditions concerning

“real” other worlds that were thought to surround the everyday world of common experience.¹It has demonstrated the romances’ fertile cultural eclecti-cism and has helped modern readers better understand them insofar as it has given us a more precise idea of the resonances their authors were seeking to create when they incorporated this motif or that element in their fictive other worlds. When, for example, one reads in Chrétien de Troyes’ Chevalier de la Charrette of c. 1177 that Lancelot entered the land of Gorre by a bare-footed, bare-handed crossing of a bridge made out of an immense sword (Charrette, ed.

Méla, 3003–35; trans. Staines, 207–08), it is useful to know that some medieval people sometimes imagined the soul’s passage to or through a “real” other world in terms of a bridge-crossing.² It is even more interesting to learn that nail-studded bridges were part of the furniture of the Christian other world in the recorded visions of an Irish knight in 1149, and an Essex peasant in 1206, and that in the vision of a German peasant in 1189 the souls of the dead had to cross a field of thorns, in some instances bare-foot, in order to reach the “real” other world.³These visions show us that twelfth- and thirteenth-century audiences who heard or read Chrétien’s romance may well have interpreted Lancelot’s crossing as a passage to an other world, and that Chrétien may well have intended them to do so.

Even though an author drew on ambient cultural traditions in creating it, a romance’s other world was a fictive world created to stand over and against the equally fictive world of its central aristocratic society. The purpose of the above-mentioned visions of the “real” other world, whose audiences are invited to compare them to their existing notions about that world, is vastly different from that of Chrétien’s description of the world of Gorre, whose audiences are invited to compare it, not to any “real” other world, but to Logres, the fictive world of the romance’s central Arthurian society. Chrétien did not borrow a motif from traditions concerning the “real” other world in order to say anything about that world, but in order to designate Gorre as an other fictive world, an other world than Logres.

An encounter between the central world and an other one is one of the most common ways of beginning a romance, but the nature and consequences of this encounter differ according to the status of the central aristocratic society at that moment. When, as is often the case, the central society is in a state of peace and plenitude, a state often represented by a joyous court gathering, the otherworldly intervention comes as a threat to this aristocratic well-being that must be dealt with and resolved. In Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae, for example, Arthur decides to hold a plenary court in Caerleon to celebrate his con-quest of Gaul. To this gathering he summons the lords of all the lands he has conquered. They come from Scotland, Wales, England, Ireland, Iceland, Gotland, Norway, Denmark, the Low Countries, Brittany, Normandy, Anjou, Poitou, and Gaul. “Preter hos,” writes Geoffrey, “non remansit princeps alicuius precii citra hyspaniam quin ad istud edictum ueniret” (“Once they are listed, there remained no prince of any distinction this side of Spain who did not come when he received his invitation”). Into this gathering of the entire Arthurian aris-tocracy “duodecim uiri mature etatis. reuerendi uultus. ramos oliue in signum legationis dextris ferentes. moderatis passibus ingrediuntur. & salutato rege. lit-teras ei ex parte lucii hiberii” (“twelve men of mature years and respectable appearance came marching . . . at a slow pace. In their right hands they carried olive branches, to show that they were envoys. They saluted Arthur and handed

to him a communication from Lucius Hiberius”), the “procurator” of Rome.

This letter threatens war unless Arthur returns Gaul to Rome, and thus provokes Arthur’s last great foreign campaign, during which he is betrayed by Modred and Guinevere (Historia regum Britanniae, ed. Griscom, ix.xii–xx, 451–67; trans.

Thorpe, 225–36). Respectable and ceremonious as they are, these men nonethe-less represent a hostile and alien world, the empire of Rome, and their entry into

“our” world threatens its peace and survival.

This narrative-launching irruption of another world in the central social world may be rather more striking and mysterious than the Roman ambassadors, and the menace it poses may be rather more frightening. At the beginning of Sir Orfeo, for example, Queen Heurodis and two of her ladies take a walk in an orchard at noon one day in May. The queen falls asleep under a tree and awakes screaming, writhing and tearing at her face and clothes. When she can talk, she relates that a fairy-like king accompanied by a vast train came to her in a dream, took her away with him, showed her his realm, and promised to return for her at the same time and place the next day and take her away with him forever. If she resists or tries to hide, he told her, she will be found, torn limb from limb, and taken with them all the same. King Orfeo, her husband, surrounds her with knights the following day in an effort to protect her, but she is snatched away nonetheless (Sir Orfeo, ed. Bliss, 77–82, 162–74, 193–94; trans. Tolkien, 124–27).

Orfeo leaves his kingdom as a result of this abduction, and the story is set in motion.

As this appearance of the King of Faërie in a dream shows, the border between the central and other worlds may be psychic as well as physical. Another, even more troubling narrative-launching psychic irruption of an other world is to be found in Hartmann von Aue’s Gregorius. This romance begins with the birth of twins, a boy and a girl, to the duke and duchess of Aquitaine, and their mother’s death in childbirth. The duke dies ten years later, at which point the devil, taking advantage of the siblings’ natural affection for one another, lures them into incest. The hero of the poem is born from their union and set adrift in a boat.

The celestial other world may also launch the narrative by irrupting within, and disrupting, a stable and harmonious central world. Guillaume d’Angleterre, which is perhaps the work of Chrétien de Troyes, relates that the pious King William woke up one night at the normal hour for Matins but heard a thunder-clap instead of the bell he expected. He opened his eyes

Et vit une si grant clarté Que dou veoir touz esbloÿ.

Avec ce une voiz oï

Qui li dist: “Rois, va an essil, De par Deu et de par son fil Lou te di je qu’il lou te mande.

Fei tost ce que il te comande!”

[and beheld such a brilliant brightness that he was dazzled. At the same instant he heard a voice speak to him: “King, go into exile. From God and His Son, I tell you this, that He so commands you and through me so orders you.”] (Guillaume d’Angleterre, ed. Holden, 80–86; trans. Staines, 451.)

A similar sort of divine intervention occurs at the beginning of Hartmann von Aue’s Der arme Heinrich (The Unfortunate Lord Henry) when the prosperous hero, who enjoys “êren unde guotes / und vroelîches muotes / und wertlîcher wünne” (“honor, possessions, a happy heart, and earthly joy”), is suddenly struck with leprosy “von sînem [God’s] gebote” (“through God’s command”) (Der arme Heinrich, ed. Paul, 75–83, 116–19; trans. Tobin, 2–3). Thus afflicted, he sets out to find a cure.

The other worlds evoked in these various romances are of different kinds and belong to different traditions – the realistic, even historical world of imperial Rome in the Historia regum Britanniae, the underworld of Sir Orfeo, the fiendish world of Gregorius, the celestial one of Guillaume d’Angleterre and Der arme Heinrich – but they all function in a similar way. They disrupt the order of a peaceful, stable aristocratic world, bring about the hero’s departure from that world, and launch the narrative. Narrative-launching otherworldly interventions may also occur, however, in response to pre-existing problems or tensions within the central aristocratic society which it cannot resolve on its own, or in order to bring to light faults in that society which might otherwise go unnoticed and uncorrected. In this case, the otherworldly intervention is not a threat to be coun-tered but a catalyst that helps the central aristocratic society attain a new order by provoking a process through which a problem in that world is resolved or a fault in it is exposed.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight provides a good example of this sort of intervention. When we first encounter the Green Knight who rides into Arthur’s Christmas court at Camelot, he seems an otherworldly apparition come to disrupt a joyous aristocratic world. He is green, “Half etayn” (“half a troll”), “an aghlich mayster” (“a perilous horseman”), carries “a hoge and vnmete” (an

“ugly and monstrous”) axe in one hand, proposes a bizarre, gory and seemingly fatal contest, and his appearance results in the hero’s departure from Arthur’s court and launches the narrative. We later learn, moreover, that he was sent to the court by Morgan La Faye in the hope that his appearance would frighten Guinevere to death. The Green Knight is an ambivalent figure, however – he is also described as “te myriest in his muckel tat myyt ride” (“the seemliest for his size that could sit on a horse”), speaks in courtly fashion, is richly dressed, holds

“a holyn bobbe” (“a holly-bundle”) in his other hand, and calls his strange contest “a Crystemas gomen” (“a Christmas pastime”) – and his intervention exposes an unlooked-for fault in Gawain and in Arthur’s other knights who, at the end of the poem, adopt Gawain’s green “syngne of . . . surfet” (“token of . . .

trespass”) or “token of vntrawte” (“token of . . . troth-breach”) as the emblem of their belonging to Arthur’s household (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed.

Tolkien and Gordon, 130–466, 2433, 2459–62, 2509; trans. Tolkien, 28–36, 85–87). Arthurian society seems harmonious when the Green Knight appears in its midst, but this harmony is hollow, masking the knights’ underlying failure to live up to the ideals they profess, or, more charitably, their ignorance of just how demanding those ideals can be. By exposing both this fault and its universality, the Green Knight’s intervention simultaneously gives Gawain and the other knights the opportunity to correct it, reduces the shame attached to it, and increases their solidarity both through this reduction of shame and because they all share the fault.

The function of the fairy-made mantle of the Lai du cort mantel (Lai of the Mantle) and horn of Robert Biket’s Lai du cor (Lai of the Horn) (a lai is a brief tale, a mini-romance, devoted to a single episode) is similar to that of the Green Knight’s Christmas pastime, and they are similarly ambiguous.⁴Both arrive in the midst of a joyous court gathering and both at first appear to threaten the peace and stability of the central aristocratic world. Both, however, are beauti-ful, richly-made courtly accessories and both initiate a process of discovery that exposes hidden, but almost universally shared faults in the Arthurian society, thus rendering them less shameful, giving the members of that society the oppor-tunity to address them, and ultimately increasing their solidarity.⁵Unlike the Green Knight’s test, however, which shows that none of Arthur’s knights can live up to their ideals of courage and honor, the mantle and horn tests do accomplish their ostensible goal of singling out the absolutely faithful couple or lady. They thus simultaneously preserve an – otherworldly? – ideal of fidelity and provide models of its attainment, while removing or reducing substantially the shame attached to not living up to it.

One of the most intriguing examples of this kind of otherworldly intervention in response to a fault in the central aristocratic world is to be found in Marie de France’s lai of Lanval. Here, Lanval, a foreign knight in Arthur’s service, does not leave the central aristocratic society in response to an otherworldly provoca-tion but as a result of Arthur’s failure to reward him for his service and give him the means to maintain himself as a member of his household. Impoverished and troubled, Lanval rode out of the town until he came to a stream in a meadow before which his horse “tremble forment” (“trembled violently”). He dis-mounted, turned his horse loose to graze, “Le pan de sun mantel plia / Desuz sun chief, puis se culcha. / Mult est pensis pur sa mesaise, / Il ne veit chose ki li plaise”

(“folded his cloak to place beneath his head, then lay down, very disconsolate because of his troubles, and nothing could please him”) (Lanval, ed. Rychner, 41–52; trans. Burgess and Busby, 73; trans. modified). Two ladies came to him as he was lying there (in the stream and in Lanval’s introspective state when he first

sees these ladies, half-way between waking and sleeping, we find the suggestion of both a physical border between “our” world and an other world, like the river separating Logres from Gorre, and a psychic one, like the one Heurodis crosses in her sleep) and conducted him to their beautiful, rich mistress, who told him that she had come from her distant homeland to find him. If he proved himself worthy, she told him, she would be his lover and make him inexhaustibly rich.

Lanval promised to do whatever she wished and wanted to stay with her, but, after an afternoon in her tent, she sent him back to Arthur’s court, giving him the means to support himself there and promising to come to him, albeit secretly, whenever he desired.

As a result of Lanval’s return and strange new wealth and the Queen’s miscon-duct and lies, Arthur is eventually made to bring an accusation of treason against Lanval. The accusation is proved false when Lanval’s mysterious lady appears and subsequently, and finally, takes him away with her to her country. Arthur is not himself condemned, and there is no mention here of his failure in his duty vis-à-vis his household knight, Lanval, but his public humiliation feels like a kind of punishment for this failure, and the end result is the same: Lanval leaves his household and court. Ultimately, that is, the otherworldly lady’s intervention is intended to punish Arthur for his lapse, to correct a fault in the central aristo-cratic society which it is itself unwilling or unable to correct, and this is why she, rather curiously, forces Lanval to return to the court rather than leaving with him immediately.

In contrast to the other examples I have cited above, the otherworldly interven-tion in Lanval does not launch the story, which is set in mointerven-tion by Arthur’s lapse.

It serves rather to keep the story going by transforming the initial problem into a more narratively attractive and tractable one, and thus to bring about its resolu-tion. Two other well-known examples of this kind of “intermediate” intervention are to be found in Merlin’s helping Uther Pendragon to satisfy his desire for Ygerna in the Historia regum Britanniae – without his help neither the story nor history could go on (Historia regum Britanniae, viii.xix, ed. Griscom, 422–26;

trans. Thorpe, 204–7)⁶– and in Perceval’s night at the castle of the Fisher King in Le Conte du Graal, an episode that turns a facile Bildungsroman into a most complex one by transforming a sin – of which Perceval, as his cousin and uncle tell him, is not aware – into a silence before the grail (Le Roman de Perceval, ou, Le Conte du Graal, ed. Busby, 2976– 3625, 6390–412; trans. Staines, 376–84, 416–17).

Other worlds have a complementary function in medieval romances in addi-tion to their narrative one of setting the story going, keeping it going, or chang-ing its direction. These worlds, that is, also define the central aristocratic world by valorizing certain of its elements or aspects and offering visions of what it is not, and provide representations of its materially or morally unrealizable aspi-rations.

The Green Knight’s “Crystemas gomen,” the fairy mantle and the fairy horn are three examples of otherworldly characterizations and valorizations of pro-tagonists and the ideals they represent. Other examples abound. In Lanzelet, one encounters “der Eren steine . . . / . . . / daz . . . den man niht vertruoc, / an dem was falsch oder haz” (“the Stone of Honor . . . [which] did not endure a man in whom was falseness or malice”). When Lanzelet approached the Stone, there-fore, the members of the court “dûhtes alle guot genuoc, / daz in der stein sô wol vertruoc” (“were all pleased to see how well the stone suffered him”) since this indicated his moral nobility (Lanzelet, ed. Hahn, 5178–81, 5193–94; trans.

Webster, 96). In order to survive the test of the Bed of Marvels in the Conte du Graal, similarly, a knight cannot “‘de covoitise soit plains / Ne . . . ait en lui nul mal vice / De losenge ne d’avarisse. / Coars ne traïtres n’i dure, / Ne foimentie ne parjure . . . ’” (have “‘any trace of the evil vices of slander or greed. No coward or traitor survives there, nor any man forsworn or perjured’”); he must, rather, be “‘Sage et large, sanz covoitise, / Bel et hardi, franc et loial, / Sanz vilonie et sanz tot mal’” (“‘perfectly wise and generous, noble and handsome, loyal and

Webster, 96). In order to survive the test of the Bed of Marvels in the Conte du Graal, similarly, a knight cannot “‘de covoitise soit plains / Ne . . . ait en lui nul mal vice / De losenge ne d’avarisse. / Coars ne traïtres n’i dure, / Ne foimentie ne parjure . . . ’” (have “‘any trace of the evil vices of slander or greed. No coward or traitor survives there, nor any man forsworn or perjured’”); he must, rather, be “‘Sage et large, sanz covoitise, / Bel et hardi, franc et loial, / Sanz vilonie et sanz tot mal’” (“‘perfectly wise and generous, noble and handsome, loyal and