CONSTRUCTING TONWENNE: A GESTURE AND ITS HISTORY

Abstract

In La3amon's Brut, the episode of Belin and Brenne, dealing with a conflict over succession between two brothers, includes a notable moment of maternal intervention. A civil war is about to be fought; batde lines are drawn; brother is prepared to kill brother, when their mother, Tonwenne, strides into the space between the two opposing armies to prevent fratricide. In this, she is akin to her counterparts in Statius, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and Wace. Like them, she demands that her erring son consider the breasts that suckled him and the womb that bore him, but unlike them, she does not heighten the drama by appearing with nude breasts. Instead, she dresses in a tattered kirtie that apparendy may still allow a glimpse of her bosom. Why does La3amon make this change? What led La3amon to alter his construction of Tonwenne so that the breast-baring motif, ancient and common in many tales of distressed (as will be seen) is effaced? La3amon's Tonwenne is best understood within the context of, and as a departure from, the long-lived literary and artistic motif of women (both and virgins) who bare their breasts at times of conflict. I will argue that La3amon manipulated his account of Tonwenne's appearance to accomplish two things: to distance his Tonwenne from the stereotype of mothers and to reposition her as both a wise mother and a savvy trickster.I borrow the phrase mothers from Barbara H. Rosenwein's book Emotional Communities in the Middle Ages. Rosenwein notes that were expected to be emotionally overwrought yet condemned for it.1 She uses the term to designate the emotional community of women who weep devotedly and excessively for their sons, as did Monica for St Augustine. I will use the term in a more restricted sense to designate those who invoke breasts and womb in order to restrain sons from erring, whether risking death against an overpowering enemy, indulging in fratricide, or vanishing into a monastery. In epic, chronicle, and saints' lives, breasts are bared at times of threatened rupture to the social fabric, be it family disintegration, institutional upheaval, or civil war.An early expression linking breasts and womb occurs in Luke 11.27: Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked. Scott Westrem notes that these lines may be a source for the image of the bare-breasted Virgin Mary in the Doomsday scene atop the Hereford world map.2 Pulling her garments apart sideways, Mary, an intercessory figure, displays her breasts to her son. The accompanying Anglo-Norman poem states:Veici, beu fiz, mon piz, de deinz la quele chare preistes,E les mamelectes, dont leit de Virgin queistes.[See, dear son, my bosom, in which you took on flesh,And the breasts at which you sought the Virgin's milk.]3The words Mary speaks here greatly resemble the pleas of overwrought in earlier literatures. Within the literature of the desert fathers, one commonplace is the mother who seeks out a son who has secluded himself within a monastery to live a life of holiness. The mother is often seen at the gate of the monastery, pleading to see her son again. The mother of St Simeon Stylites, for example, when not permitted to see her son at his monastery, cries out, Son, why have you done this? For the womb in which I bore you, you have overwhelmed me with mourning; for the milk with which I suckled you, you have given me tears.4 Similarly, the mother of St Archillites accosts the gate-keeper of his monastery crying out:I beg you, say to him, Behold the breasts that nourished you - Synkletike, your mother, stands at the gate, saying 'Let me see your face and when I see your face, let me die'.5The very awkwardness of passing on the message, Behold the breast, via an intermediary indicates a likely source in even earlier tradition.The earliest epic occurrence of this motif of which I am aware is in Book 22 of the Iliad, when a tearful Hecuba, hoping to dissuade her son Hector from fighting the approaching Achilles:. …