Mad Romance: Sir Tristans Gender & Neoplatonic Logos

“I tell you that he had 

suffered such hardships for her ...he was already a madman”

Roman de Tristan
Beroul

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Introduction to English Literature 1 
A Genealogy of Gender and Genre 

In this course, we explore gender and genre through literature produced in and around the early British Isles, from the elegiac poetry of the Anglo Saxons to the Epic poetry of John Milton’s Paradise Lost. In this survey of medieval and early modern texts, we trace how forms of narrative were informed by and acted on the construction of concepts of sex and sexuality. We study how debates around nature and nurture, essential and artificial, eternal and mutable came to produce later notions of transgender, queerness, disability, race, and religious difference.

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King Mark's Logos

The second section of our course centered around two Chivalric Romances about Knights of Cornwall, the 12th century Roman de Tristan by Beroul and the 13th century Roman de Silence. The movement from an Anglo-Saxon to French language follows cultural changes in and around England after the Norman Conquest. After William the Conquerer invaded England, he launched a census project over all his domain, collected in the Domesday Book. The significance of tomb goes beyond its tactical uses. Suddenly, the disparate land inheritance rights honored by the Anglo-Saxon lords were now nullified, centralizing all property in the kingdom under the sign of the King. Power was located in the center and moved outwards through intermediaries to the peripheries, following the rising theological structure of Neo-Platonism. Structured around a hierarchy of concentric circles, the Norman Neo-Platonic Logos became well represented by one of the conquerer's tools: the castle.

The chief castle of Cornwall is Tintagel, where King Mark sits in the center of power. We began by examining Beroul's Tristan from the point of view of the King's supposed (and humorously faulty) god-eye view. In Neo-Platonism, the greatest of all things is the unified and the unifier. Difference and particularity marks someone as lower in rank of perfection. This may be one explanation why King Mark is such a flat character. He lacks the charisma of Tristan or Yseult because he lacks their madness, their characterizing marks. King Mark marks others as Other, but works to remain above demarkation. He represents an exacts he Law and the Truth - as they would be traditionally defined. When Mark enacts power and information, he does so through intermediaries. The unmoved mover must remain above the fray. Often Mark shows anger and compassion, but even these emotions represent the wider unrest in Cornwall and Tintagel. The characteristic scene with King Mark is sitting in his castle, on his throne, listening to his advisors.

Sitting in the earthly counter-part to the seat of the Neo-Platonic unmoved mover, Mark is far from omniscient and omnipotent, yet is supposed to represent the logos that his castle orders. In Tintagel, there are designated chambers for the King, the Queen, Knights, and Ladies where life is organized according to rules of gender and genus. When rumors of sexual impropriety emerge about his Queen Yseult and nephew Sir Tristan, they center around the male knight breaking the spatial code of the castle that ordered their bodies, entering the lady's chamber at night. When the King orders his hunchback dwarf, Frocin, to spy on the lovers and determine whether or not they are committing treasonous adultery, he perpetuates the securitization of bodies that the castle is designed to enact. Frocin covers Yseult's chamber in a fine dusting of flour after she goes to sleep in order to catch any footprints of men walking in and out. Through the flour, the castle's floors gains the ability to perceive and report the sexual trespasses of the bodies it contains. While Tristan spots the trap and leaps over the flour-covered floor, his strain rips open a wound and pours his blood over the floor. This is significant event represents and sets into motion the unmaking of Tristan's physical, mental, and social integrity at the hands of the state apparatus of King Mark's castle and logos.

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Sir Tristan's Madness

The counter-point to King Mark's logos is Sir Tristan's Madness. Tristan's madness is a characteristic feature of his romance that remains throughout iterations of the character from Beroul's 12th century version to Thomas Malory's 15th century Book of Tristan. The story of Tristan's madness is often marked off, as it is with Beroul, as a self-contained scene, and yet it contains all the central themes of his romance as contrast's to King Mark's constancy. Whereas King Mark works towards Neo-Platonic Unity, Sir Tristan points towards 13th century Nominalistic Division (or at very least Realism). Whereas the King is a monotonous presentation of universal kingship, Tristan works to emphasize radical particularity. The King is a conservative force that retains identity and truth, while Tristan is constantly changing his identity and dissembling matter from meaning. If the King's symbol (and weapon) of logos is the castle, then Tristan's symbol (and weapon) of madness is the sword. This sword enacts the work of Ockham's Razor, cutting bodies free from the presumptions of gender and rationality which confine them.

Beroul's Tale of Tristan's Madness exists in a fragment of its own, but continues the theme of ecstatic particularity from other tales. King Mark is always King Mark, but Tristan us also Tantris, a leper, a black knight, and the madman Picous. In most of these versions of himself, Tristan emphasizes the mutability of the body through wounds, open sores, or fragmented mental states. In the process, Tristan changes his clothes, skin, and hair to become his new persona. "He did not want anyone to think he was in his senses," writes Beroul, "so he tore his clothes and scratched his face. He struck any many who crossed his path. He had his fair hair shorn off... he was carrying a staff in hand" (153-154). Madness is not merely a mental characteristic, but involves a whole body transformation. The objects he carries become integral to his being mad. So too when Tristan became a leper, "He wore woollen garments and no shirt. He wore a rough woollen tunis and his shoes were patched. He had made a wide cloak made of coarse wool, which was blackened with smoke... his face was well covered with bumps" (127-129). Disability is embodied through physical differences as well as changes in the vestments of class, from a supposedly sealed body whose mind and body emphasize porousness and dependency. King Mark's powerful masculinity can suppose universality and self-sufficiency, but the leper and the madman bears their vulnerable physical and social bodies to put pressure on the systems that make them particular yet intermeshed in wider networks. Just as a knight is no knight without armor and a horse, so too the madman requires specific material assemblages.

This constant transformation becomes essential to Tristan's being. Just as when becomes a leper but cannot resist wearing his signature sword, Tristan remains himself even when he becomes other, "he had extremely well made arms, hands and feet, and a shapely waist" (157). Yet he is also "not at all like Tristan" as the Queen condemns him. "He is a fine man and you are a wretch. You have taken on a strange task - beggary makes you deceitful" (161). Picous may share similar body parts as Tristan but his use of them is other. The physical transformation coincides with a social transformation. Yet there is more to the condemnation of deceit that a mere classism. Tristan is always Tristan because Tristan is always changing - always deceiving. The primary motivation for many of these changes however are a lack of power. If Tristan was King, like Mark, he could afford to be truthful in traditional manners. But because he lacks power, his beggary makes him deceitful and encourages change not only in his body but in a wide range of social positions. Neo-Platonism is oriented towards the middle and works towards preserving unity, like the walls of a castle, with everything in its proper place. Nominalism, however, like Tristan's sword or Ockham's razor, cuts through the presumptions of embodiment, gender, and class to open up uncharted possibilities for life, love, and truth. Truth is constantly made anew. Truth itself becomes mad(e).

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Queen Yseut's Ambiguity

While King Mark sits in the central logos of power and Sir Tristan's madness cuts through presumptions with radical particularity, Queen Yseut finds herself constantly caught between warring powers. While a King and a Knight have the ability to suppose themselves to be self-contained universal or particular bodies, Yseut is rarely ever alone, depending on men (Mark or Tristan) to enact power for her. As a relational being, caught between systems, Yseut is able to play both sides through the power of ambiguity. In terms of Christian metaphysics, Yseut embodies (like the protagonist in Roman de Silence) John Duns Scotus's theory of "thatness" (categorical relations structuring power dynamics between like beings) and "thisness" (the ever changing specific conditions that break off to create an alternative logos). While Tristan acts like a sword that cuts and reconstructs his relations between identities with his costume changes, Yseut is more like the fabric of the tunic to which she is regularly compared - at once revealing and veiling, conforming and subverting her liminal position within the Neo-Platonic hierarchy of King Mark.

In "the Tale of Yseut's Ambiguous Oath," Beroul describes how Yseut manipulates King Mark's Neo-Platonic desire to expose the Truth and Sir Tristan's Nominalistic desire to produce new truths by calling for a public declaration of her innocence that will play upon the ambiguity of meaning to present multiple T/truths at once. Specifically, the truths that are competing revolve around the state of Yseut's chastity to King Mark. Previously, Yseut had avoided consummating her marriage by slipping out of bed on her wedding night and having her servant woman, Brangain, take her place, "the unfortunate girls was at first reluctant, but finally acquiesced" (44-45). Here bodies are exchanged, given and withdrawn in a move that would become a trademark of Yseut's ambiguity. When Yseut becomes nervous that her maid would reveal her duplicity, she plots to have her servant killed. Yet when the knights employed to carry out the task ask Brangain why she is sentenced to death, she confesses her own ambiguous truth, "she answered that her only misdeed was to lend Yseut a clean white tunic when Yseut's was soiled" (46). This metaphorically laden confession persuades the knights and the queen to preserve Brangain's life. The servant, like Yseut, know how to use the ambiguity of clothing and language to manipulate truth in ways that at once reveal and conceal bodily states.

When Yseut's mad romance with Tristan is made an accusation of treason to King Mark's laws ordering sex and loyalty, Yseut insists that her trial be staged as a public declaration where royal dignitaries, lords, clergy, and commoners will be present to witness the proceedings. In effect, Yseut transforms a private confession of sin into a public spectacle where she can play upon the metaphorical power of clothes and language to at once reveal and alter the truth. The location chosen for the event is a muddy clearing near the forest, where Tristan is hidden as a leper and Yseut arrives dressed in pure white clothes befitting a queen representing all the cardinal neoplatonic virtues. "The queen was wearing robes of silk brought from Bagdad," writes the narrator, "lined with white ermine. Her cloak and tunic hung down behind her. Her hair fell over her shoulders in a linen headscarf worked with fine gold. She was wearing a gold circlet on her head which showed off her fresh rosy and white coloring" (135). These valuable, precious, and white materials suggest the delicate royal body they enfold. The length of the garments also introduce a problem which Yseut bends to her advantage. Because they drag on the ground behind her, it is improper for her to walk through the mud. Getting off her horse, Yseut calls over the leper (Tristan) and has him carry her to the stage. This contrived situation compels this embarrassing but justifiable humiliation of a mad lower class body under the service of his royal superior. The neoplatonic order is being affirmed on the surface. Yet the event also allows Yseut to speak truthfully and in apparent innocence when she confesses, "I swear that no man ever came between my thighs except the leper who carried me on his back across the ford and my husband, King Mark" (142). Here, as before, Yseut uses clothes and words to at once speak a truth which is demanded by the King and will be safely received because of other truths it obfuscates and reconstructs. Yseut is presented as white, chaste, and pure by contrasting with Tristan's dirty, dark, and diseased costume. Yet by playing with these public appearances, Yseut is able to arrange events to acknowledge a sexual relationship with Tristan that becomes recast as the benign service of a lower member of society to a higher. "That" category of divine and court law is fulfilled to the letter, while the meaning of "that" letter is made ambiguous so as to serve the needs of "this" circumstance.

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More on Chivalric Romance
coming soon...

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Quantum Objects: Transvestism in Estoire de Merlin

"Cest gent qui me cuident 

connoistre ne sevent riens de mon estre"

[Those who believe they know me 

know nothing of my being]

Suite du Merlin

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The following is a transcript of a talk

given at the Catholic University of America

Medieval Objects Conference

on 4 April 2014

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The Mantle of Merlin

In the early 20th century, Nature, it is accounted by Karen Barad,(Meeting the Universe Halfway), was under threat of being unmade by the splitting of the atom. Not only was matter burst apart, creating the atomic bomb, but the very meaning of nature set by Newtonian physics. Explicating the work of quantum physicists, Barad explains that at an object, such as an unobserved photon, can be determined to pass through two different points simultaneously, as in the famous "two-slit experiment." This unobserved bi-location in multiple contradictory states occurs, argues quantum theory, because of the "superposition" of matter.

The implications of this superposition on the changes of larger bodies is summarized by Schrödinger's Cat, a though experiment postulated by Erwin Schrödinger. A cat placed into a sealed box with a cyanide pill set to go off at an undetermined time, will in fact exist both in an alive and dead state simultaneously. Only after the box is open does quantum reality collapse into a singular event. Through such theories, Quantum philosophy works to bring together disparate experiences in philosophy and science back to a unified whole. In a very real sense, quantum theory attempts to defend the nature of things against the increasingly disparate observations where matter itself seems to be in a constant state of flux and multiplicity.

In the 1940s, with such power at work in the Sciences, CS Lewis suggested, in his sci-fi fable That Hideous Strength, that the Humanities had its own quantum being lurking in its archives, waiting to be unearthed: Merlin. Why this turn to medievalism to engage quantum physics? Lewis himself acknowledges that modern day scientists are "not likely to be influenced by any poetic fancy about Merlin's mantle having fallen on them." Yet, quantum theory boasts a lineage going back to Aristotle and touching upon such 13th century medieval theologians as John Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas. Turning back to the 13th century in fact demonstrates an ongoing intellectual engagement with the quantum problem: how to unify bodies that seem to be made of such diverse parts? It was a question answered as much by abstract prose as by literary imaginations of Arthurian Romance. 

In this paper, I argue (I) that the postulation of univocal beings like Merlin, allow for a quantum ideology of constancy through change to perpetuate the Arthurian figure throughout later Medieval and late modern literature. (II) Placed in the center of diverse world that seems at many moments to be coming apart at the threads, (III) Merlin acts as an exemplar and a judge that at times violently over-rides hybridity and change in order to carry out his project of unification. (IV) By attending to the work of Merlin, scholars in medieval studies may speak back in their own terms, the dangers of grand unifying theories in natural sciences and philosophy. Like Lewis, we may resurrect Merlin to oppose the violent eugenic industries that seek remake mankind in the image of a ruthless and univocal god: Nature.

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Quantum Medievalism

The 13th century saw a resurgence in quantum theory as medieval theologians began to reengage with Aristotle’s Metaphysics in order to develop unified theory that brought together the equivocal liminality of natural philosophy with the univocal eternity presented in Christian thought. 

Among the great metaphysical treatises of the century, Thomas Aquinas's (1225-1274) Summa Contra Gentiles stressed the "analogical" mode of thinking whereby the wholeness of the soul, ultimately rooted in God, can only be grasped indirectly through the power of metaphor (SCG.I.32-34). The angelic doctor was a careful scholastic, emphasizing the gap between signs and signifiers, meaning and messengers, the soul and angels. This epistemological doubt, which may be recognizable to many post-structuralist thinkers, left some at that time, as today, unsatisfied.

In England, contemporary philosopher John Duns Scotus (1264-1308), tried his hand at bridging the divide between the natural and super-natural in his Questions on the Metaphysics of Aristotle. Standing firm on the "univocality" of being, Duns Scotus emphasized and reinvigorated Aristotle's notions of "the quanta." The Subtle Doctor, so called for his attentiveness to the most small and brief of intellectual objects, brought quantum philosophy into the 13th century, explained as manifesting when “the whole time and the parts of motion are joined to some ‘mutated being’ which is not one in the same motion” (Scotus, V.X). What does this mean? Consider an object, like a mantle. Over time the object will be sewn, worn, torn, mended, and torn apart. Each of these instances can be considered as an isolated thing, defined by its "quiddity" (or "thatness"). Insofar as it is itself, throughout time and change, there must be some thing that we call the mantle, that remains constant and stitches together these different moments. The metaphysical significance of this is that objects are mutable.

This unifying claim affirms Aristotelian quantum being. In Aristotle’s Metaphysics, we find that "Quantum means that which is divisible into two or more constituent parts of which is by nature a 'one' and a 'this'" (Aristotle, Metaphysics V, ch. 13, 1020a 8-10). This definition of being is key to describing change without consenting the either equivocal or analogical logic that would recognize an internal divide or partialness within being. In quantum theory, the one comes to stand in for the many, insofar as the whole cannot exist without its different constitutive parts. In fact, the quantum object is defined by its iterability, being "divisible into continuous parts" (Aristotle, Metaphysics V, ch. 13, 1020a 8-10). The metaphysical significance of the whole being present in each of its disparate parts is that an object exists in multiple places in time and space at once. This is superposition.

The effect of this is reassuring for authorities considering bodies undergoing change and transition. In 13th century French and English society, amidst war, economic revolution, and an influx of Muslim and classical philosophy, univocality (the ability to speak in one voice) offered by quantum theory may be incredibly reassuring. Quantum theory promises that the world still makes sense. However the Kings might change, the kingdom remains itself. However bodies fall apart, the soul abides. These shifts may seem counter to experience, because there are significant differences when one King replaces another King or when you lose an arm. Yet, quantum theory insists, that the attributes of a body can be "transferred to other things also" (Aristotle, Metaphysics V, ch. 13, 1020a 8-10). The metaphysical significance of this is what is expressed and explicated in quantum uncertainty. That is, that we cannot know all of a things attributes at once. From Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976), we know that we can either know a particles speed or its location, but not both at once. Likewise, we can either know one King of England (qua King) or else another King of England (qua King). While this is possible to experience over time, to attempt to bring them together into the same time and place creates a contradiction - and likely a war.

It might is not surprising then why Duns Scotus's theory of constancy through change should become so pervasive and come to infiltrate contemporary shape-shifter narratives. Among them, few stories of transformation have spread so far and lasted so long as Arthurian Romances. Within and beyond this body of literature, few figures have taken on so many forms and yet remained himself, as Merlin. As of the 13th century Estoire de Merlin, the shape-shifter had become so notable for his (1) power of mutability, the ability to take on the mantle of many forms without being limited to any one, (2) the power of superposition, the ability to prophesize multiple places in time and space at once (e.g. the past, future, and present), and (3) the power of uncertainty, the ability to enter into a tale without being noticed, affect events, and withdraw without his presence ever becoming fully known (see: Quantum Medievalism Part 1).

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the Metaphysics of Transvestism

In turning to the 13th century Estoire de Merlin, here dealt with through its 15th century translation to Middle English, commonly called the Prose Merlin, we find Merlin so exemplifying quantum being that he comes to stand outside the world of transformation in order to act as judge of the changes of others. In one of the included tales "Merlin and Grisandolus," a transvestite knight comes into the service of Julius Caesar, bearing a quantum likeness with Merlin and the mantles he wears. Yet the shape-shifters appearance late in the plot comes as a judge who unveils the trans-being of Grisandol, forcing her back into a "natural" station of womanhood, as well as twelve trans maidens in the service of the empress, leading to their death by fire.

An exemplar of change, Merlin's violence against a trans bodies is startling, but in the context of quantum univocality it is evident that this reading of change covers over difference to sure up a sense of constancy and unity in Nature. In doing so, the violence of the quantum narrative of change becomes evident, wherein the trans/forming body is at once a potential challenge and a potential corrective to deconstructive readings of gender. In the end, Merlin stands outside the system, as the transcendent signifier of trans-being, an exception to prove and enforce the rule. 

The narrative presents the twelve maidens as one of many trans body, reflective of Merlin's (1) mutability, (2) superposition, and (3) uncertainty. While Grisandolus likewise reflects the same characteristics as Merlin and the twelve maidens, scholarship on the tale has focused on the trans man and left the trans women largely unconsidered. Furthermore, while Merlin comes to find a fixed but livable life for Grisandol, the violence of his judgement is most evident in the ritual burning of the twelve maidens at the texts conclusion. Regardless of which of the trans figures is being addressed, however, many of the same concepts and critiques are active or applicable. Reading quantum and trans embodiment through a biopolitical analysis, constancy and change are pervasive throughout a text as symptomatic of wider social tensions.

(1) Mutability

Before Grisandol's arrival into Julius Cesar's court, the narrative tells of a group of twelve men that live as women at the conscription of the empress, detailing the process of their trans/formation: "for the drede that theire beerdes sholde growe, she lete anoynte her chynnes with certeyn oynementes made for the nones. And thei were clothed in longe traylinge robes, and theire heer longe waxen in gise of maydenes and tressed at theire bakkes, that alle that hem saugh wende wele thei were wymen." (PM.M&G.11-15). Forming and transforming their bodies, these servants use of a hormone mimicking oil to prevent the growth of facial hair, the prosthetics of clothing, the surgery of cutting their hair into long braided locks. Their bodies are de-centered, made up through diverse materials and the pressures of the court. Conscripted by the force of the empress to serve as trans sex slaves; nearly enough for a fortnight.

(2) Superposition

While Merlin's prophecies are localized in his body, the trans women in Caesar's court project their prophecies through other people. Experiencing the symptoms of indeterminate knowledge, the emperor becomes troubled after some time by dreams in which he sees the identity of the maids and their illicit sexual relations with his wife. 

"He hadde a vision that hym thought he saugh a sowe in his court that was right grete before his paleys; and he hadde never seyn noon so grete ne so huge. And she hadde so grete bristelis on her bakke that it trayled on the grounde a fadome large, and hadde upon hir heed a cercle that semed of fyn golde... [then] he saugh come oute of his chamber twelve lyonsewes, and com into the courte to the sowe and assailed hir, oon after another." (PM.M&G.38-46).

As he sleeps, the emperor sees many things at once. On the surface, he dreams of a great sow that is sexually engaged with a dozen lionesses. An attentive reader is aware at this point that he is also seeing the ongoing infidelity of his wife with her twelve trans servants. The confusion the emperor experiences upon waking reflects the indeterminacy of what and when he is seeing the information. He sees an meeting that has already happened. He sees what may be going on that very night. He also sees information that will not be given to him until a much later date. This ability to glean something of the shifting bodies in his dream and in his court, but not other information reflects the quantum uncertainty epitomized by Merlin. Each of these trans women might as well be wearing Merlin's mantle, or else closed up with Schrödinger’s cat for all that we might know of them.

(3) Uncertainty

The presence of the trans women are given at the start of the narrative but remain invisibly present in the background for the remainder of the tale. In this way, they are like Merlin when he appears among them in the form of a doe and a mad-man, active in the court of the emperor, influencing events but without giving away their definite location at any point in time or space. "longe thei endured with the empresse unknowen." (PM.M&G.15). The emperor might see them, and the narrator might comment as to their activity, but like Grisandol, they operate unnoticed in plain sight. In other words, they pass. The work of transvestism, reflects certain aspects of quantum being. To both be and not to be present, until the moment when their existence is called into question, as at the arrival of Merlin to the court. Then, their fate become as determined (and as deathly) as Schrödinger’s cat in a box full of cyanide.

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the Biopolitics of Superposition

Given the shifting, projecting, and obscuring nature of the trans bodies in Julius Ceasar's court, the equivocal and analogical lives of the twelve maids and Grisandol could have potentially continued indefinitely if not for Merlin’s laughter. Up until Merlin's appearance in Grisolde's tale, this state of suspension is maintained, but upon his arrival, quantum theory begins to aggregate flux back into definite objects. Arriving in the emperor's court, Merlin uses all three of his quantum powers to set about the fixing of the trans identities. First, he takes the form of a dear (mutation). Next, he runs into the court and delivers a proclamation that Merlin lurks nearby and only a woman may catch him (prophecy). Finally, he disappears without a trace, leaving the emperor to institute a quest to find Merlin offering his daughter and half his kingdom as a reward (uncertainty). One he enters into the narrative, he continually uses these aspects to begin enforcing the logic of continuity on the shifting bodies of Caesar's court.

(1) Mutability

Grisandol, as the emperor's finest and craftiest knight, is of course the first to capture Merlin in the form of a mad man of the woods. Dragging him back to court, the old prophetic looks at Grisolde and begins his work of judging her gender, calling her a "Creature formed of Nature chaunged into other forme... Ymage repaired and disnatured fro Kynde" (PM.M&G.147-158). As with Duns Scotus's attempt to find the univocality of God in nature, Merlin here invokes nature as the original foundations for the trans characters' gender. It is important to note that in trans/forming, she has changed or denatured that being. In other words, the question at hand is not social constructionism versus essentialism, but one version of essence in debate with another form of essence. The work of Merlin here is to proclaim to her in private that despite any changes she might have gone through, she nonetheless has a proper being into which he sees. 

(2) Superposition

In due course, Grisolde delivers Merlin to the emperor's court, where he continues to preach his prophecies, performing the work of collapsing the trans maidens into unified male genders. Addressing the King, Merlin unravels the obscure dream that had been plaguing him for some time. "The twelve lyonsewes that ye saugh come oute of a chamber betokeneth the twelve maydenes that be ther with the emperesse. And knowe it for very trouthe that thei be no wymen, for it be men… as ofte as ye go oute of the town, she maketh hem serve in hir chamber and in hit bedde" (PM.M&G.316-332). What began as an uncertain dream that held in tension animality and humanity, female and masculine genders, fidelity and promiscuity, future and present, collapses into a definite narrative. Rather than proliferating meaning, Merlin brings equivocal and analogical visions back into a univocal state. The emperor and the reader are lead to believe that quantum reality, the reassuring fixedness of being must be more true than multiplicity and inconstancy. 

(3) Uncertainty

Invoking the role of the sovereign as the embodiment of the law, the emperor enacts punishment to fix the transgressions against constancy that has been argued for by the embodiment of quantum truth, Merlin. "She sholde be brente and the harlottes hanged; and some seide that thei sholde be flayn all quyk. But in the ende thei acorded that thei sholde be brente in a fier." (PM.M&G.331-337). The proper measure of justice is not definite, leading to a debate between burning, hanging, and being pulled limb from limb - each in a sense fractures the body which is seen to transgress their proper forms and thus loose their right to live according to any form - yet, for the trans maidens, their uncertain position is determined as always already set for death. For the court to speak in one voice, difference must be eliminated. Such is the cost the trans body pays at the altar of univocal being.

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The Once and Future Theory

In the 1945 novel, That Hideous Strength, CS Lewis meditates on the world and being of Merlin, “Did the whole thing [Camelot] fail because he died so soon? Has it ever struck you what an odd creation Merlin is? He's not evil: yet he's a magician. He is obviously a druid: yet he knows all about the Grail.” Indeed, Merlin's ability to bring together discordant aspects into a singular form becomes more than a theme within Lewis's text but a material fact. After an excavation under an old college reveals an forgotten tomb, the shapeshifter suddenly comes back to life in post-World War II England. Merlins return, it is announced through prophecy, signals a great turmoil which threatens to tear the country apart. Only a quantum body, like Merlin, is able to bring together the contradictions, overcoming differences, to see England through a period of great change. Yet, as the name of his book signifies, Lewis was conscious that the terrible power of both Merlin and Science to hold things together and to enforce homogeneity onto the social landscape. The meeting of Merlin and quantum science, in Lewis's imagination, ends with none-other than an atomic explosion that leaves countless dead.

As members of the Humanities, and particular Medievalists, like Lewis, we can speak to our quantum colleagues in the Sciences and remind them of the terrible costs and dangerous implications of looking too hard for totality or unity in Nature. This does not mean that we stand in all places opposed to the observations of physicists in a lab or mathematicians at their white-board. Rather, when science begins working through the complex and sorted world of philosophy, looking to quantum particles for a God's eye image of the Universe, they necessarily step into a sphere that we occupy together. To move too quickly to disregarding one another may lead to yet more lives lost in the swift light of atomic "truth" or the slow fires of "justice."