born, great youth!”is followed a few lines later by a kletic“Ecce ades”
“Behold, you are here!”.
In Carmeliano’sSuasoria Laeticiae, the peace-bringing dynastic union is
subtended by a more private eroticism authorized by classical precedent:
Quae Cassandra sibi, vel quae Lucretia, vel quae
Penelope similis, aut Galathea fuit?
Quamvis ille prius speciem formamque futurae
Coniugis audierat pictaque mente foret,
Ante oculos tamen illa suos magis urget amantem
Vicinoque magis fomite crescit amor.
Nec minus ipsa suum spectans dominumque maritum
Ardet amore sui regia virgo viri;
Ambobus pariter sunt vincla iugalia curae,
Et damnant taciti tempora longa nimis:
Obstabat tantum sacrae reverentia legis,
Nam fuerat quarto iunctus uterque gradu. ( 239 – 50 )[What Cassandra, or what Lucretia, or what Penelope or Galatea was like to her
[Elizabeth]? Although he had heard before of the face and form of his future bride,
and she was pictured in his mind, before his eyes she stirred the lover yet more, and
with such tinder nearby his love increased. No less did the royal virgin herself burn
with love for her husband as she looked on her lord and spouse; both alike are eager
for the bonds of matrimony and silently they curse a wait too long: but there stood
in the way a reverence for holy law, for they were related to one another in the
fourth degree.]
Carmeliano’s poem attempts to serve two masters; its overt impulse is to
idealize the love that will produce erotic and political union, but poetic
fervor–translated here into his subjects’“burning”desire–cannot allow
the royal couple to anticipate dispensation and infringe the“sacrae rever-
entia legis”and its gradations.^15
Gigli employs similar tropes in theGenethliacon, which reflects on the
Epigram(they appear together in the same presentation manuscript, BL MS
Harley 336 ):
O quantum superis, Britanne, debes;
O quantum pariter parenti utrique,
Lux per quos micuit tibi salutis,
Pignus perpetue datum quietis. ( 32 – 35 )[O, how much, Britain, you owe to the gods, how much to each parent alike,
through whom the light of your safety shone forth, a pledge of perpetual peace.]
Thisfigure, in which Arthur breaks through the parental bodies like the
sun, also reads Gigli’s other exegesis of the maternal body. From the
24 Court Poetry in Late Medieval England and Scotland