'Do The Right Thing' and Failing To Do So in The Erle of Tolous

Résumé En

Dated to the late fourteenth century the tail-rhyme romance The Erle of Tolous, somehow confusingly labeled a “geste” chronicled in Rome (1214) and a “lay of Bretayne” (1215) by its anonymous author in the last lines, relates a tinglingly suspenseful chivalric romance with a happy ending. The plot revolves around the popular Woman Falsely Accused of Adultery motif. The narrative structure artfully telescopes distinct episodes following a loss and restoration pattern. The exceptionally beautiful and virtuous Beulybon, wife to a tyranical emperor who cruelly dispossesses Syr Barnard of Tolous of his lands, falls victim to some of her husband’s retainers’ wickedness. Their iniquitous plans jeopardise her fama and doom her to the stake unless a valiant champion cleans her name. The eponymous Earl of Tolous chivalrously rights the wrong. Yet, there seems to be a gap, a discrepancy between Beulybon’s irreproachable moralilty, praised by the narrator, and the severity of the slight to her public repute. It implies that the treacherous wrongdoers identified some contingent or circumstantial flaw or fault, and took advantage of some moral or ethical crack or fissure in the apparently spotless picture. The article will attempt to explore the blind spots and fault lines that have allowed for the outrageous affront to the lady’s honour and to the valiant earl’s faith in the knightly ethos to occur. A close examination of the tale may well reveal some unsuspected crevices beneath the apparent blameless and seamless surface as far as both form and content are concerned.