There are many examples of cost-conscious generosity throughout Jehan et Blonde, demonstrating the care with which the virtuous lord had to balance his attempts to win loyalty and his budget, in contrast with the fantastic, boundless means facilitating the generosity of Lanval and Graelent. The count of Oxford gives each of the twenty-four newly dubbed knights two hanaps or ornamented drinking cups, exactly ten marks, and new fur-lined scarlet robes (lines 5398-405; 5618-19). All this exchange is shown as socially advantageous: both the young knights and the boatman mention their gratitude several times in fairly lengthy speeches, which demonstrates the power of largesse to improve a reputation in very short order.
In a clever moment, Jehan’s companion robin is disguised as a feverish man. He begs from Jehan’s rival’s men and manages to get exactly forty sous: a tidy income for a false beggar seeking to trick his “benefactor” out of an heiress.301 Given this context, when Jehan says to one of Gloucester’s men who was trying to take Blonde’s bridle and take her away, “Vous mentes, Se vous m’espee ne sentes,/ Ja ne me pris un denier” (You are lying. If you do not feel my sword I am not worth a penny, lines 4047-9), it has a sting of double meaning.
The Roman de la Rose ou Guillaume de Dole devotes a significant portion of its narrative to the system of euphoric generosity at the court of the emperor Conrad, as Michel Zink has oberved.302 Ostensibly to enable displays of liberality, the emperor gives the hero Guillaume de Dole very specific sums when he comes to court - 500 livres couloignois (of Cologne) all in coins, deniers (lines 1896-7). Later, Conrad offers Guillaume a thousand marks to spend and give however he likes for the tournament. In contrast with the unlimited budgets granted to Lanval, Graelent, and Desire, in Guillaume de Dole it is the budgetary parameters that are designed to represent impressive wealth. Note that Cologne was gaining wealth in this period through the manufacture of cloth and metal goods and as intermediary between Flemish producers and the German markets, becoming a center for the distribution of fashionable goods.303 The romance constructs a fantasy of realistically hyperbolic wealth in a setting where it could be fashionably appreciated. Yet the fantasy still involves dependence on a lord, and the generosity-based gift system regulates the mechanism of consumption.
World History
