Tag Archives: God

A Different Sort of “Happily Ever After”

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In this class we have learned much about mideval society, honorable knighthood, King-knight relationships and agreements, and courtly love. In almost every lai that we have read in this class the story concludes with the knight overcoming his barrier, and riding off into the sunset with his damsel. However, in Eliduc, the lai’s happy ending is one we have never seen before, devotion to God. From the time we meet Eliduc’s wife, she is a role model character, never demanding his devotion, being concerned about her husband’s sadness, assuming the best of him but not being ignorant, wishing the best for her husband and his new love, knowing to imitate the weasel to revive the girl, and finally: honorably bowing out and leaving the system of the knight/King/courtly world and joining the church.

Then, surprisingly I thought, shortly after their happy marriage Eliduc founds a church, sends his wife away to the convent his wife joined to become a nun, and finally finds “true love”. Could it be that this is the best possible ending to Marie? That the rest of the victorious knights we have read were too nearsighted to see this spiritual possibility? The wife is one of the most noble, respectable characters we have met in Marie and in this way I think that she shows us that devoting oneself to God and finding a holy love was the most honorable thing a person could do in that time.

 

The “Agency” of God

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There has been a lot said about how God (or more broadly, the divine) fits into our object-oriented understanding of agency. I remain confused as to how God can fit into an assemblage and still be God. First of all, I have to admit that thinking about spiritual matters in relation to the theory we’ve been delving into for the past few weeks requires effort on my part—it’s forcing me to rethink the way I think about the world and how I know all things to be related to each other.

For instance, if God is simply another part of the assemblage (with just as much weight as any of the other objects or non-objects), then must we rethink his uniqueness as a divine being? I understand, from our recent discussions, that an assemblage is more complicated than that—i.e. there are degrees of agency within any given network or assemblage. Fair enough, but I fail to see how God fits into all of this.

By its very nature, belief in God requires a person to accept that God is above all of us, including human beings. His ways are not our ways; his thoughts are not our thoughts, etc. I’m not saying it is ridiculous to include spirituality in object-oriented theory (or that the two are fundamentally incompatible), but its inclusion does raise interesting questions. Does the divine presence of God take away from the agency of ordinary objects? For example, should we understand the cherries in Sir Cleges as having its own particular kinds of effects independent from God, even though He made them in the first place?

Even the werewolves (whose hybrid nature complicates our need for the strict divide between human and non-human) in Bisclavret, Melion, and Biclarel seem to embody an agency with which I struggle to apply to God. It’s telling that I can accept food, power outages, or even werewolves as possessing agency, but as soon as God is thrown into the mix, I’m immediately suspicious.

I, for one, find it problematic to say that God is a part of an assemblage when I feel that He operates in a realm beyond human/non-human understanding. However, if I step back and look at it from another perspective, I can see how the spiritual makes sense in an assemblage. It is this process of reevaluation (in reference to my own preconceived notions) that pushes me toward a more comprehensive understanding of how God may fit into object-oriented theory.

Agency and God in “Biclarel”

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There is a lot of God present in this week’s Biclarel.  We have touched on the subject of God and agency a few times, so I would like to try to work through it myself as well.

In line thirty-three we are told that “As it pleased God, Biclarel / [has] a trait that he hid” (33-4).  We are well-aware that this trait is that Biclarel becomes a “beast / [t]wo or three whole days” every month (38-9).  Then, when Biclarel’s wife is begging for him to share his secret she invokes God by reminding him that God created all including their marriage, and that by hiding things from her he is “transgressing greatly against God” (61-70). She goes further by saying that God will abandon them (101) and hate Biclarel for his lying (108).  However, notice that it is not the threat of eternal damnation that prompts Biclarel to reveal his secret.  It is instead when she begs for death (138).

Let’s pause here.  Biclarel hides his secret and that pleases God.  Okay.  Does Biclarel does this because it pleases God, or is that just an unintentional result of him hiding his wolfhood for his own reasons?  I would argue the latter because, again, Biclarel isn’t really phased by these threats of God.  Could you say then that Biclarel doesn’t give God much agency?  Let’s continue….

Biclarel explains to his wife that he would speak to no one of his secret but God (151).  However, this is not his reason for keeping it secret.  He doesn’t keep his secret because God would disapprove, but because he “should nevermore have honour, / [n]or should [he] be esteemed in any court / [i]f everyone ever knew of it” (152-4).  He doesn’t fear God’s damnation for sharing his secret, but is instead afraid of how other people will react.  It is this reason and the previously mentioned one that I think that God does not have a lot (though he does have some) of agency in the assemblage of Biclarel’s life.

When Biclarel reveals his secret his wife says that if she were to reveal his secret she would lose God’s faith (190).  Biclarel never evokes the wrath of God on himself as a consequence for his revealing the secret.  However, for the wife God has a lot of agency.  This reminds me of yesterday’s class when we were discussing if agency is given.  Could I say here that the wife gives God a lot of agency in her life?  From what we have been studying, no.  Would it be right, then, to say that she is more aware of his agency?  That she recognizes it more than Biclarel?

Skipping to the end here I noticed that Biclarel doesn’t “commend [his wife] to the devil” like Melion does (Melion 581).  Instead, he requests only that she be killed—he doesn’t invoke the spiritual at all (453).

God’s place in object-oriented theory

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An issue recently discussed in class was God’s influence on agency, and whether imbuing something with spiritual agency reduces its original thing-power, because it becomes merely a divine tool. Also, we addressed how viewing actants in an assemblage as subservient to one actant’s agency in that network is troubling, as it implies that things don’t control their actions.

While it’s possible that an almighty power is part of our assemblages, focusing on this reaps no rewards regarding altering our approach to creating a better world, Bennett-style or otherwise. This is especially true when such a belief gives people a reason to disregard efforts to stop global warming, for example, with the reasoning that everything is divinely-ordained. Object-oriented theory is based on the principle that everything has agency, even if this agency is not equally spread out amongst all the actants involved in any given network. It is therefore not important to consider God’s existence, or whether the heavenly origin of the cherries in Sir Cleges takes away from their agency, because their effects are felt regardless. Cherries don’t grow out of nothing, and even without a divine influence, they would’ve needed an ecological miracle to come into being. What matters is not where something came from originally – we do not place any importance on the source of creation for Melion’s ring or Sir Degaré’s broken sword. The cherries are able to save Sir Cleges from his impoverished state, thus rendering how they entered into an assemblage with the protagonist practically pointless. The focus should instead be on what actions things take when interacting with other actants after they are brought into this world.

In terms of God’s presence in life’s assemblages, since we cannot safely judge what divine effects are, we should concentrate on controlling our response to God as best we can. Belief in an almighty power is potentially an extremely powerful actant, but its factual basis is not important. Rather, the crucial point is how we allow this actant to influence other things in its assemblage.

Chemicals and God

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Considering God to be a part of the assemblage that makes everything work in Sir Cleges seems completely natural to me and I’m actually quite happy with it. Whether I believe in God or not does not affect my belief that God acted as a part of the assemblage because the characters in Sir Cleges obviously believed in a spiritual God making him a part of the assemblage.  Although I do understand that many people had problems accepting this approach, I really think that if one can accept the idea that unseen chemicals are the reason that one is encouraged to eat certain foods then you should be open to accepting the idea of God being an active part of the assemblage. Maybe if God can’t be accepted as part of the assemblage then chemicals in foods shouldn’t be as easily accepted.

While their are a lot of differences between the idea of God and chemicals it seems like chemicals can be just as flighty and unreliable as an unseen God. Yes, we can test that chemicals are present but they have the ability to react and change in different environments making it very hard to predict the result of their presence in the body. Some chemicals make the majority of people happy while in a few people they react badly and cause depression or unhappiness. Chemists are constantly changing their word about certain chemicals. Years ago no one had a problem with BPA ( a chemical found in plastic bottles and in canned foods) but now many studies suggest that these chemicals may lead to cancer or harm developing fetuses.

I guess my point is that we are willing to believe anything that has science behind it when a lot of times that science cannot be a 100% accurate. During the time of courtly love and Marie de France most people would have believed in the presence of God and they may have considered the idea of invisible chemicals affecting their eating habits to be completely crazy. I think if I am going to be skeptical of God acting as a part of an assemblage then I must also be skeptical of modern scientific discoveries such as the chemicals in many food products being.