Dinadan, Clothes, & Gender (Again)
this is probably just the cultural difference between early 1200s france and mid 1300s italy, but it's so fascinating to me that when dinadan is forced into a women's clothes in the prose tristan it's meant to be humiliating, whereas in la tavola ritonda tristan willingly dons a dress, passes as a woman, and doesn't find it shameful at all:
this incident is retold in the tristan panciatichiano (italian, 1300s), with a slight change– in this text, tristan is found sleeping under isolde's mantle after they've had sex.
'curtains are blue' moment, I know. but stick with me here– tristan is permitted by the italian narratives to wear women's clothes, without derision, if it's 1) for the purpose of sleeping with a woman or 2) after having done so. within the text, his attraction to isolde reinforces his identity as a Man and engaging in courtly love reinforces his identity as a Knight. but what about dinadan, who is neither sexually attracted toward women nor a believer in courtly love? he is the laughingstock of his friend group and the entirety of camelot for being romance-averse in a system that runs on m/f attraction (i.e, knights pledging themselves to ladies and following their orders). in the panciatichiano, tristan makes a point to bring up romance when dinadan is around and even tells isolde to do the same, just because his nonconformity is amusing to them:
in addition to being pointedly Not Heterosexual, dinadan also tends to avoid physical altercation in a manner that is unbefitting of a knight– and on the occasions that he is pressed into jousting, he's usually the one who gets unhorsed. this, like his railing against amatonormativity, is a general theme across pretty much all prose tristan adaptations including le morte d'arthur. I like how his distaste for (and fear of) fighting is demonstrated in the following excerpts (from Joyce Coleman's Fooling with Language: Sir Dinadan in Malory's Morte D'arthur and the panciatichiano, respectively).
bringing this back to tristan. in la tavola ritonda, there's a part where tristan decides to 'prank' dinadan by pretending to be a girl and kissing him awake. when dinadan very understandably freaks out and runs to the host, he is met with nothing but dismissal and a jab as his masculinity:
tristan is the one who pretends to be a maiden here, but ultimately dinadan is the one who is emasculated; the people around him believe that not being attracted to women makes him less of a man, and that not willingly engaging in battle makes him less of a knight. therefore, tristan is 'allowed' to wear women's clothing without it impugning on his knighthood– for the very same reasons dinadan doesn't conform to knighthood in the first place. which leads us to the dress incident. as told in le morte,
dinadan is– presumably– forced into women's clothing, then brought out in front of the entire court (including guinevere herself) so that everyone can share a belly-aching laugh at his pansy expense. it's not fun! yet even in le morte, dinadan doesn't seem too upset about it. why?
I really like the way this scene has been analyzed by Hannah Piercy in Resistance to Love in Medieval English Romance: Negotiating Consent, Gender, and Desire. she points out that it's not a man in a dress that's funny to them, it's dinadan in a dress:
lancelot and tristan can wear women's clothes without being mocked because people are confident in their identities as a knights/men, but dinadan in a dress scans differently because they don't think of him as either. and the burning question is: does he agree with them?
I have my own opinions. this is amateur literary analysis pieced together across over two century's worth of italian, french, and english literary tradition. I sincerely doubt individual medieval authors were consciously coding him in a way that would read as queer and/or gender-nonconforming to modern sensibilities– and yet. in the prose tristan (as translated into modern french by Eilert Löseth), he refuses to be ashamed by the dress incident and instead pronounces himself a lady in front of the entire court, much to everyone's delight.
as Piercy notes, he doesn't bother to hide his gendered differences, because he knows he can't. instead, he exaggerates them to the point of what seems like absurdity to his medieval courtly audience and then, whether he likes it or not, performs.
personally, I think this is less of an actual exaggeration and more of a pretended exaggeration– hiding in plain sight, if you will. if he plays into the things they're subtly accusing him of then obviously it's not real, it can't be real, they are laughing with him instead of at him now because isn't it all just a joke? isn't he so funny and clever? never mind the way he runs his hands over the fabric like it's the finest thing he's ever felt, or the way he twirls like he was born to wear a gown, or the radiant smile on his face. he is a Cowardly Knight and he was Forced Into This and it's Just All a Big Joke!!! Right? Right?? Right??? :D
