‘Some Like it Hot’: The Medieval Eroticism of Heat ROBERT ALLEN ROUSE T HE LATE fourteenth-century romance Sir Launfal narrates the financial, martial and erotic adventures of one of the lesser-known knights of the Arthu- rian court. In Thomas Chestre’s popularised version of Marie de France’s Breton Lai (Lanval), our hero’s woes begin when he is excluded from the Arthurian court’s largesse after he refuses the predatory Guinevere’s sexual advances.1 Shamed by his resulting poverty, which is only amplified by the financial demands of his role as Arthur’s royal steward, Launfal takes his leave of the court and departs for Caerleon, where he vainly seeks succour at the hands of the city’s mayor, who has benefited in the past from Launfal’s own generosity. However, a knight out of favour in the royal court is of no current use to the mayor, who begrudgingly offers only meagre lodgings, and this is only forthcoming after Launfal sarcastically rebukes him regarding the value of past loyalties. Denied not only the company of men owing to his poverty, but also access to the Church, as he lacks clean clothing in which to visit it, Launfal is approaching the depths of despair. After a final humiliation of being excluded from the invitations to a Trinity feast hosted by the mayor, Launfal rides out into the forest to seek refuge both from the ridicule of the townsfolk and from his own sense of shame. It is in this moment of extreme financial deprivation and social exclusion, the pathos of which is further intensified by his fall into a fen while riding to the forest, that Launfal encounters what turns out to be the unsought answer to his social and pecuniary predicament. Having stopped to rest and to contemplate his woes under a tree in a forest clearing, he is visited by two beautifully arrayed maidens, who greet him nobly before leading him to the pavilion of their mistress, Dame Triamoure. Once there, Launfal comes across a most magnificent scene of exotic opulence: He fond in the paviloun The kinges doughter of Olyroun, 1 The line of textual transmission from Marie’s Lanval to Chestre’s Sir Launfal is by way of the four- teenth-century Middle English Landevale. For a discussion of the relationship of the three texts, see Myra Stokes, ‘Lanval to Sir Launfal: A Story Becomes Popular’, The Spirit of Medieval English Popular Romance, ed. Ad Putter and Jane Gilbert (Harlow, 2000), pp. 56–77. 72 ROBERT ALLEN ROUSE Dame Triamoure that highte. Here fadir was King of Fairie Of Occient, fere and nyie, A man of mochel mighte. In the paviloun he fond a bed of pris Y-heled with purpur bis, That semilé was of sighte. Therinne lay that lady gent That aftere Sir Launfal hedde y-sent, That lefson lemede bright. For hete her clothes down she dede Almest to here gerdilstede; Than lay she uncovert. She was as whit as lilie in May Or snow that sneweth in wintris day – He seigh nevere non so pert.2 The exotic trappings of the scene, with its obvious connotations of wealth and sumptuousness, and above all Triamoure’s half-undressed appearance, combine to present Launfal, and the reader, with an irresistible opening gambit in her offer of romantic love and financial patronage. This scene of apparent erotic tension seems readily accessible to the modern reader, who cannot help but find something familiar in Triamoure’s slow titillating uncovering of her naked breasts, glistening, as it appears to Launfal, as white as the snow on a winter’s day.3 The erotic currency of the exposure of female breasts is a dominant one in today’s exhibi- tionist world, to the extent that the commercial success of certain popular news- papers, chains of bars and the careers of media starlets have built upon the exploitation of this mammarian economy. To the modern reader then, the imme- diate erotic foci of the scene are Triamoure’s naked breasts. However, in the medieval world, the message was somewhat less brazen. Marilyn Yalom has discussed the nature of the symbolism of the female breast, and points towards the primacy of a sacred understanding of the breast in the medieval period.4 The sacred symbolism of the breast is best encapsulated by the tradition of the Madonna del Latte paintings, demonstrating Mary’s privileged position as the maternal provider of Christ. Mary’s breast, and the milk that flows from it, are polysemously symbolic: literally and metaphorically they embody divine suste- nance, representing in the conception of Saint John Cassian firstly Mary’s role as the mother of Christ; secondly, analogously representing the flowing of blood from Christ’s wounds; and finally, in an anagogical sense, the flow of divine Grace 2 Sir Launfal, ed. Donald B. Sands, Middle English Verse Romances (New York, 1966), lines 276–94. All quotations from Sir Launfal are from this edition. 3 Whiteness of skin holds a place of great importance in the rhetoric of female beauty found in the medieval effictio, following patterns articulated by Matthew of Vendôme’s Ars versificatorio and Geoffrey of Vinsauf’s Poetria nova. It might also be noted, in passing, that for a modern reader, the erotic image of Triamoure’s unveiling of her breasts is somewhat reinforced by the sugges- tive, and often collocative, presence of pert in line 294. 4 Marilyn Yalom, A History of the Breast (New York, 1997).  THE MEDIEVAL EROTICISM OF HEAT 73 from God to mankind.5 The other dominant western medieval understanding of the female breast is in terms of its role in the physiology of the body and in the nurturing of infants, and in these medical writings we find little emphasis upon any erotic significance. Danielle Jacquart and Claude Thomasset, commenting on the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville, observe that ‘Nothing in the work of later encyclopaedists could enable one to consider the female breasts as being endowed with any particular erogenous sensitivity: only their function as a source of food was indicated.’6 Given such a cultural context, an erotic interpretation of Triamoure’s display of excessive bodily exposure is problematic, and becomes especially so when exam- ined against the norms of Middle English literature. Firstly, we have the possible reading that Triamoure offers up her naked body not in an erotic manner, but rather as a romance simulacrum of divine grace. Given the widespread appropriation of the rhetoric of religious worship and divine love that we find within the romance genre, with the role of Mary being paralleled by that of the female lover, it would perhaps be within the bounds of interpretative licence to read, on one level, Triamoure’s offering of her naked upper body to Launfal as fulfilling a similar sustaining function as Mary does to Christ. Triamoure does, after all, provide Launfal with access to a form of grace, in a monetary sense, through which he manages rise from his fallen state to reclaim his former spotless chivalric reputa- tion. However, while this reading can of course be made, it is perhaps more a reflection of the intrinsic structural parallels that exist between the modes of chivalric ‘courtly love’ and that of Christian theology. It would also seem unlikely that this reading would be the first to occur to the popular audience of Sir Launfal, which leaves us to consider further the nature of Triamoure’s seduction. In addressing the possible erotic import of Triamoure’s undressing, we also have to take into account the general lack of representations of nudity and sex in medieval romance. As Donald Sands has observed, ‘Tryamour’s seduction of Launfal via semi-nudity is an uncommon thing in Middle English romance’.7 Nakedness in itself seems to rarely take on explicit erotic meaning in romance, perhaps unsurprisingly so given the ubiquity of the naked body in scenes of sleeping and bathing in medieval texts.8 It must also be noted that sex too seems to occupy a less than prominent place in these romances. Lee C. Ramsey notes that ‘Sex occurs in medieval romances because marriage does, but it is understood as a secondary benefit of marriage . . .’.9 However, in texts that are more deeply influ- 5 The anagogical understanding of the milk from Mary’s breast as the blood of Christ is one that is both theologically and medically rational (from the point of view of medieval medicine). The Galenic theory of dealbation held that the milk from a lactating breast was transformed from the blood of the mother. Mary’s milk was sacred owing to the uncontaminated nature of her virginal body (Danielle Jacquart and Claude Thomasset, Sexuality and Medicine in the Middle Ages, trans. Matthew Adamson (Princeton, 1988), p. 12). 6 Sexuality, p. 11. 7 Sands, Middle English Verse Romances, p. 203. 8 Elizabeth Archibald discusses the wider medieval attitudes towards nakedness, and the notable absence of such scenes in Middle English romance, in her article ‘Did Knights have Baths? The Absence of Bathing in Middle English Romance’ (Cultural Encounters in the Romance of Medieval England, ed. Corinne Saunders (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 101–16). 9 Lee C. Ramsey, Chivalric Romances: Popular Literature in Medieval England (Bloomington, 1983), p. 107. 74 ROBERT ALLEN ROUSE enced by continental models of erotic love, we do find scenes of naked eroticism. Geoffrey Chaucer, in Book III of Troilus and Criseyde, presents the following scene of Troilus’ ecstasy as he discovers for the first time the body of his lover: Hire armes smale, hire streyghte bak and softe, Hire side longe, fleshly, smothe, and whit He gan to stroke, and good thrift bad ful ofte Hire snoissh throte, hire brestes rounde and lite; Thus in hevene he gan him to delite . . .10 Here Troilus’ tentative foreplay, presented, as Helen Phillips has observed, ‘pre- dominantly through the male experience’, quite clearly articulates an erotic view of the naked body.11 However, Chaucer, as is often the case, operates in a more sophisticated literary mode than does Sir Launfal, and Launfal’s experience of seeing Triamoure’s naked body seems to hold little in the way of such obvious erotic frisson. So where might we turn next in our search for the significance of Triamoure’s striptease? If there is not an immediate erotic purpose behind her actions, then where else may the significance of her actions lie? This scene of the initial meeting of Triamoure and Launfal, and in particular Triamoure’s letting slip of her upper garments, are explained within the text as being owing to the heat of the day: for hete her clothes down she dede. Of course, how seriously we take this as a reason for her actions depends very much on our reading of Triamoure herself. It is clearly evident from the narrative that she has summoned Launfal to her pavilion for the express purpose of seducing him to be her lover, thus Chestre’s causal phrase for hete seems very much a convenient excuse for her exhibitionism. From the point of view of such a reading, Triamoure’s actions seem very much along the lines of the coquettish ‘Oh my, isn’t it hot in here . . .’ school of seduction techniques. However, if we widen our focus beyond just this one passage for a moment, and consider how this connection between heat and the erotic operates with the narra- tive as a whole, we can see a more intriguing and influential theme emerge. The connection between the heat of the weather and the actions of our two lovers can also be witnessed in the events that lead up to their first encounter. After riding away from Caerleon, and exhausted after extricating himself from the mire in a fen, Launfal takes refuge from the heat of the late morning (undertide) by resting under a tree:12 Poverly the knight to horse gan spring. For to drive away lokinge, He rood toward the west. The wether was hot the undertide; He lighte adoun and gan abide Under a fair forest. 10 Troilus and Criseyde, ed. Larry D. Benson, The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd edn (Oxford, 1988), lines 1247–51. 11 Helen Phillips, ‘Love’, A Companion to Chaucer, ed. Peter Brown (London: Blackwell, 2004), pp. 281–95 (p. 286). 12 Undertide is a time of day that is also associated with an encounter with the faery in Sir Orfeo (line 41), where Herodis falls asleep under the ympe-tree and encounters the faery-hunt.  THE MEDIEVAL EROTICISM OF HEAT 75 And for hete of the wedere His mantel he felde togidere And sette hoim doun to reste. Thus sat the knight in symplité In the shadwe under a tre, Ther that him likede best. As he sat in sorrow and sore He sawe come out of holtes hore Gentil maidens two. (Sir Launfal, 217–31) We might expect, if we were reading another genre of medieval literature, that Launfal might fall asleep and encounter a dream-vision that would involve some kind of gloss upon, or even a solution to, his present worldly cares and worries. Instead, he encounters what in many ways appears to be a waking vision of exotic beauty, and an adventure that certainly would not seem at all out of place if it were to be found within a dream. Triamoure’s two maidens, themselves dreamy visions of exotic beauty, greet Launfal and lead him off towards his fateful rendezvous with their mistress. In this scene, which acts very much to set the dream-like mood of the following seduction scene, the heat of the weather again plays an important narrative role. It is the fact that the wether was hot the undertide that leads Launfal to rest under the tree, and this is re-emphasised when we are told that for hete of the wedere/ His mantel he felde togidere/ And sette hoim doun to reste. From my reading of the scenes of both the seduction and its arboreal prelude within Sir Launfal, there seems to emerge an intriguing correlation between the temperature of the day and the behaviour of both Launfal and Triamoure. Launfal’s encounter with Triamoure is as dependent upon the heat of the day as Triamoure’s actions are, suggesting some kind of important role that this motif of ambient heat plays in their amorous encounter. This potential connection between heat and love, or more particularly, sexual desire, is what I would like to explore further in the remainder of this essay. A possible correlation between heat and sexual desire also seems to be at play in another, decidedly more sexually repressed, Middle English narrative: that of Margery Kempe. At the beginning of the eleventh chapter of her Book, Margery finds herself entangled in a rather heated situation with her long-suffering husband: It befel upon a Fryday on Mydsomyr Evyn in rygth hot wedyr, as this creatur was komyng fro Yorkeward beryng a botel wyth bere in hir hand and hir husbond a cake in hys bosom, he askyd hys wyfe this qwestyon, ‘Margery, if her come a man wyth a swerd and wold smyte of myn hed les than I schulde comown kendly wyth yow as I have do befor, seyth me trewth of yowr consciens – for ye sey ye wyl not lye – whether wold ye suffyr myn hed to be smet of er ellys suffyr me to medele wyth yow agen as I dede sumtyme?’ [Margery replies that she would rather see him dead than see them both return to their uncleanness. She asks him to swear a vow of chastity, but he refuses] . . . Than went thei forth to Brydlyngtonward in rygth hoot wedyr, the fornseyd creatur havyng gret sorwe and gret dred for hyr chastité. And, as thei cam be a cros, hyr husbond sett hym down undyr the cros, clepyng hys wyfe 76 ROBERT ALLEN ROUSE unto hym and seyng this wordys onto hir, ‘Margery, grawnt me my desyr, and I schal grawnt yow yowr desyr. My fyrst desyr is that we schal lyn stylle togedyr in o bed as we han do befor; the secunde that ye schal pay my dettys er ye go to Jherusalem; and the thrydde that ye schal etyn and drynkyn wyth me on the Fryday as ye wer wont to don.’ ‘Nay ser,’ sche seyd, ‘to breke the Fryday I wyl nevyr grawnt yow whyl I leve.’ ‘Wel,’ he seyd, ‘than schal I medyl yow ageyn.’ [Margery prays to God for advice; she then offers to pay her husband’s debts in return for his agreeing to the vow of chastity – an offer with which he is satisfied – one debt can be seen to pay another here].13 In this episode we can see once again a connection between the heat of summer and erotic desire. Margery’s husband’s repeated threats to medele wyth her, and his demands that she grawnt me my desyr, make explicit his sexual intentions. In a similar manner to Sir Launfal, it seems that there is again an environmental compo- nent contributing to his reasons for raising the issue. The emphasis that Margery places upon the rygth hot wedyr as the couple leave from York suggests that she views this hot weather as being at least a contributing factor to her husband’s behaviour. And after their first exchange, the connection is stressed once again when she tells us that they made towards Bridlington in rygth hoot wedyr, the fornseyd creatur havyng gret sorwe and gret dred for hyr chastité. The link here between the temperature and her fears for her chastity suggests that there exists some connection between the heat of the day and her husband’s continual demands for her to resume her marital duties. This connection with the heat of summer is perhaps foregrounded in the passage by the setting of the events upon Mydsomyr Evyn (traditionally 23 June), the night before the longest day of the year.14 Summer, and the hot weather that the season brings, seem to occupy a particular place in the rhetoric of love and desire. Both Sir Launfal and The Book of Margery Kempe draw upon a conceptual associa- tion linking the heat of summer with sexual desire. That these two texts are making use of a similar understanding of this connection suggests that this may be indicative of a literary trope connecting heat, summer and lust. Just such a relation- ship is expressed at the beginning of Sir Thomas Malory’s ‘Knight of the Cart’ episode, where he digresses on the connections between summer, true love, heat and sexual desire: But nowadayes men can nat love sevennyght but they muste have all their desyres. That love may nat endure by reson, and where they bethe sone accorded and hasty, heete sone keelyth. And ryght so faryth the love nowadayes, sone hote sone colde. Thys is no stabylté. But the olde love was nat so. For men and women coude love togydirs seven yerys, and no lycoures lustis was betwyxte them, and than was love trouthe and faythefulnes. And so in lyke wyse was used such love in kynge Arthurs dayes. Wherefore I lykken love nowadayes unto sommer and wynter: for, lyke as the 13 The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. Lynn Staley, TEAMS METS (Kalamazoo, 1996), chapter 11, pp. 37–9. 14 There exists perhaps another example of a connection between the heat of summer and sexual desire in Margery’s account of her sexual temptation with a fellow worshipper on St Margaret’s Eve (20 July), related in chapter 4 of her narrative, pp. 28–30.  THE MEDIEVAL EROTICISM OF HEAT 77 tone ys colde and the othir ys hote, so faryth love nowadayes. And therefore all ye that be lovers, calle unto youre remembraunce the monethe of May, lyke as ded quene Gwenyver, for whom I make here a lytyll mencion, that whyle she lyved she was a trew lover, and therefor she had a good ende.15 Here Malory constructs May, and thus late spring, as the ideal season of love. May is neither colde nor hote, but rather consists of a happy medium of the two, and it is the month’s moderate temperature that lies at the core of Malory’s seasonal meta- phor of love. Malory is, of course, making use of the endemic medieval tradition positing May as the month of love, a tradition that influenced all genres of litera- ture from the courtly romance to the popular lyric. Malory, however, goes further than simply perpetuating this association, and provides a comparative gloss on the merits of May, comparing it with the seasons of winter and summer on the basis of the effects that temperature has on human desire. Malory views the influence of heat, or at least the excessive unrelenting heat of summer, as being the cause of what he terms lycoures lustis in men (and women), echoing the concerns that Kempe holds regarding the behaviour of her husband. As is often his wont, Malory chooses to interpret the connection between heat and lust in a nostalgic and moral- ising context, but he also articulates a clear view of the connection between seasons and types of love: while spring (May) appears to be the season of true or virtuous love, summer seems to be viewed as the season of immoderate and lecherous love. Underlying this connection between heat and disproportionate love, or lust, is of course the theory of the four humours: The physiology of the human body, and the medical treatment of it, were fitted into the traditional way the world was represented. The four elements, and the dual quality that each of them possessed, were correlated with the four humours taken from the Hippocratic school, and it was this system, developed in the great- est detail by Galen, which was to constitute the foundation of medieval science.16 The associations of behaviour and bodily attributes that were associated with the humours and their corresponding seasons are revealing: summer is linked to fire, yellow bile, and the choleric temperament, while spring is allied with the air, blood and sanguinity. Both seasons are marked out by their association with heat, differing in that while spring is hot and moist, summer is construed as excessively hot and thus also overly dry. These seasonal characteristics also impinge upon the understanding of human sexuality. Joan Cadden comments on the essential humoural differences between men and women under the Galenic system.17 Men were considered to be warm in nature while women tended towards the cooler humoural temperament. The act of copulation was viewed by many medical writers as an essential part of the bodily system, regulating both moisture and heat in both participants: ‘just as sneezing keeps the body’s level of phlegm in balance, sexual release regulates the level of generative superfluities. Conversely, the reten- 15 Thomas Malory, Morte Darthur, ed. Eugène Vinaver, Malory: Works (Oxford, 1977), XVIII, 25. 16 Jacquart and Thomasset, Sexuality, p. 48. 17 Joan Cadden, ‘Western Medicine and Natural Philosophy’, The Handbook of Medieval Sexuality, ed. Vera L. Bullough and James A. Brundage (New York, 1996), pp. 51–80. 78 ROBERT ALLEN ROUSE tion of such substances causes imbalance and thus ill health.’18 In appreciating the perils of excessive heat, we can see that Malory’s distinction between spring and summer love is based in the Galenic conception of how heat affects the human body and sexual behaviour. Such a concern for the regulation of bodily moisture can also be seen to underlie the advice found in the popular Secreta Secretorum, in which men are encouraged to partake of baths, blood-letting and women during the moist seasons (winter and spring), while being warned to avoid such danger- ously dehydrating activities as much as possible during the summer months.19 Summer, then, was not viewed as a time for love, but rather a time of immoderate lust. Jacquart and Thomasset note the advice of medieval medical texts such as the Pantegni and the Canon of Avicenna, which advise that, in ‘accordance with the rule similia similibus, the best season for the pleasures of Venus is the spring, since it is hot and moist in nature, and is thus the time when the sanguine humour predomi- nates. Summer and autumn, during which the bile and melancholy abound respectively, are hardly propitious times’.20 It was not only sexual behaviour that was affected by an excess of heat: it was also thought to lead to madness and irrational behaviour. In Thomas Hoccleve’s semi-autobiographical Compleinte and a Dialogue, we witness how Hoccleve’s narrator is plagued by the hazardous reputation of the heat of summer. Although he has recovered from his earlier debilitating mental illness, the narrator is beset by the rumour and gossip of his neighbours, who fear that his madness will return: Thus spake manie oone and seide by me: ‘Althouõ from him his siknesse sauage Withdrawen and passed as for a time be, Resorte it wole, namely in suche age As he is of,’ and thanne my visage Began to glowe for the woo and fere. Tho wordis, hem unwar, cam to myn eere. ‘Whanne passinge hete is,’ quod þei, ‘trustiþ this, Assaile him wole aõein that maladie.’ And õit, parde, thei token hem amis. Noon effecte at al took her prophecie. Manie someris bene past sithen remedie Of that God of his grace me purueide. Thankid be God, it shoop not as þei seide.21 In Hoccleve’s poem we again see the connection between passinge hete, someris and mental siknesse sauage. Although, as Hoccleve complains, while the heat of the summer has not in fact triggered a relapse of his madness, his neighbours’ belief that the summer heat will eventually do just that is indicative of a widely held 18 Cadden, ‘Western Medicine’, p. 58. 19 Secreta Secretorum: Nine English Versions, ed. M. Manzalaoui, vol. 1, EETS OS 276 (London, 1977), cited in Archibald, ‘Did Knights have Baths?’, p. 110. 20 Jacquart and Thomasset, Sexuality, pp. 145–6. 21 Thomas Hoccleve, ‘My Compleinte’, ed. Roger Ellis, ‘My Compleinte’ and Other Poems (Exeter, 2001), pp. 117–18, lines 85–98.  THE MEDIEVAL EROTICISM OF HEAT 79 belief in the connection between heat and irrational behaviour. Lust, glossed by Malory as that love may nat endure by reson, is excessive and unreasonable desire, fuelled by an excessive degree of heat within the body of the amatory miscreants. Summer is constructed in these texts as a component part of a wider rhetoric of the seasons of love, predicated upon the physiological theory of the four humours. In comparison to the way that medieval literature can be seen to make use of spring, and May in particular, for its reputation as the ideal erotic season, summer seems to hold a baser, yet equally important, place within the rhetoric of love. As a season of irrational or immoderate sexual desire, when pious women such as Margery must fend off the unwelcome advances of their husbands, and during which, as Malory admonishes, men can nat love sevennyght but they muste have all their desyres, summer stands as a cautionary foil to its more moist and tame predecessor, spring. In this context, then, we can return to our tableau of Triamoure’s seductive ungirdling before the entranced Launfal, and question again what exactly is the focus of his gaze. If, as I have argued above, it is not Triamoure’s breasts them- selves that are the erotic foci of the scene, then perhaps we need to dramatically reconceptualise our understanding of the erotic nature of the scene. If not Triamoure’s rapidly descending décolletage, what then, if anything, is erotic about the scene? The nature of the erotic is, as has been discussed earlier in this volume, continu- ally evasive and in many cases highly particular to the individual reader or audi- ence. However, what seems to be common to many definitions of what is erotic is an element of transgression. Often that which is viewed as erotic is somewhat transgressive of the norms of conventional sexuality, positioning the erotic at the margins of accepted behaviour, perhaps encapsulated best in the modern notion of that which is considered to be risqué. With this in mind, if we re-examine Launfal’s first encounter with Triamoure, from his resting in the forest to his meeting her in her pavilion, the element most transgressive of medieval norms is in fact the hete of the wedere. Is it perhaps possible that it is in this trope of the excessive heat of summer, with the transgressive sexual behaviour that this foregrounds, that the medieval reader would have found the erotic thrust of the passage? The emphasis upon the heat of summer in the text certainly suggests such a reading, and leads us to a medieval understanding of the Launfal episode as erotic in terms of its trans- gression of the usual norms of the literary seasonal rhetoric of love. Where one might in romance expect a knight to encounter his lady in the springtime, in an atmosphere of virtuous love, when, as Malory tells us, was love trouthe and faythefulnes, instead we witness their meeting in the season of lycoures lustis, signal- ling a very different kind of relationship between the two lovers than one might expect to find in a romance. However, by returning once more to the underlying connection between the weather and the bodily humours, I feel that we can take this reading of the erotic nature of the scene yet one step further. While the rhetorical trope of summer, as envisaged above, seems to colour a medieval reading of the events with erotic overtones, there is also Triamoure’s own nature to be considered. Why, we ask again, does she remove her clothes? Is it in fact due to the hot weather, thereby positing the causal factor of her behaviour as an external force, or can we envisage, 80 ROBERT ALLEN ROUSE perhaps alongside a medieval audience, that she acts thus due to her own internal humoural heat, thus making explicit her own excessively ‘hot’ nature? As a faery-mistress, is Triamoure by her very nature ‘hot’? Do her sexually aggressive actions, transgressive in terms of female norms, present her as innately erotic in her own right? Her active wooing of Launfal, and her highly territorial behaviour during their relationship, supports just such a reading. Triamoure’s transgressive nature is also, of course, marked out by her accoutrements, origin and lineage: Here fadir was King of Fairie/ Of Occient, presenting a conflation of faery-lover and exotic sexuality and opulence. If we attribute her actions to her own internal heat, rather than to the external heat of summer (although, of course the former is necessarily exacerbated by the later), then we find yet another erotic resonance within the text, for hot women in the Middle Ages, by their very nature, were considered sexually attractive. Michael Scot, in the Physionomia, discusses the aspect of heat in relation to the attractive- ness and sexual appetite of women. Drawing on the tradition found in Arab medical texts, Scot presents a number of portraits of different female dispositions, commenting that in order to find the ideal female sexual partner, a man must look for the following: . . . the highest degree of heat must be sought in woman. The best predispositions are found together in the young girl of more than twelve years of age who has lost her virginity. Small and firm breasts, thick hair in the right places and a highly col- oured complexion are good signs. Such a woman likes to behave insolently, shows no sign of piety and is capable of getting drunk; she enjoys singing, going for walks and having fun. She is in a permanent state of desire which she can satisfy in the sexual act. Since her menstrual blood is not very copious, her periods are irregular and she rarely becomes pregnant.22 Once again we find this conception of female sexual aggression grounded in the physiological thought of the period. Such women, owing to their humoural heat and dryness, were thought to be inclined to seek out the carnal act continually, seeking to obtain the moisture contained within the male sperm, in order to remedy their own innate dryness. Hot-blooded women, then, are intrinsically erotic, for the reason that they transgress many of the established and conven- tional norms of female sexual behaviour. Triamoure, in her active and aggressive behaviour, both sexual and otherwise, is suggestive of just the kind of hot-blooded attractive behaviour that Scot describes above, an association that would have been much more readily available to Chestre’s medieval audience than to a reader today. One might suggest, in conclusion, that Chestre’s depiction of Triamoure partakes of an established medieval rhetoric of the erotic, drawing upon the nega- tive (depending upon one’s point of view) sexual stereotypes of both the season of summer and of Triamoure as an excessively choleric woman. Both of these tropes seem to carry a certain erotic force, pointing towards an understanding of the text as erotically charged in a manner that is not immediately apparent to the modern 22 Jacquart and Thomasset, Sexuality, pp. 143–4.  THE MEDIEVAL EROTICISM OF HEAT 81 reader. Triamoure is indeed presented as being a ‘hot’ woman – not only in a modern sense, but also in a medieval one. She is depicted in erotic terms not only on the level of appearance – her lily-white skin, rose-like complexion, hair shining as gold-wire, and beautiful attire – but also in her behaviour. Through her strip- tease on encountering Launfal – aimed at both the knight and at the audience – Triamoure reveals her hot-blooded choleric nature. Highly fitting for a fairy-lover, this hot-blooded temperament manifests in her initial sexual advances, in the highly territorial constraints that she places upon her human lover, and in her jealous punishment of Gwenere at the end of the tale.