Lady Godiva: A Literary History of the Legend

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Summary: The History of a Legend, and The Legend through History
Review: Who is the most famous Anglo-Saxon (real, ancient Anglo-Saxon) of all? Chances are you can't name a thing the kings Aethelred or Alfred the Great did in their reigns. Chances are you never heard of Leofric, Earl of Mercia, or his wife Godgifu. Undoubtedly, though, you have heard of Godgifu under the name by which she has come down to us, Godiva. You might know her chocolates better than her legend these days, but even on the chocolate box, she rides naked on her horse; a legend like that can never die. The life of the legend is traced in _Lady Godiva: A Literary History of the Legend_ (Blackwell Publishing) by Daniel Donoghue. Godiva has been, and will continue to be, more than a hawker of confections, and this summary of the life of the real Godiva, the origin and transformations of her legend, and the use to which her story has been put, makes clear Godiva's importance.

Godgifu was pious and generous, especially to the local convents and monasteries. She did nothing that would have made her famous; there is no history that hints of anything resembling the legend, which was only first written down over two centuries after her death. She saved the people of Coventry from taxation by fulfilling her husband's "impossible" condition that she ride naked through the town. The tale that the villagers agreed to keep their windows shut and not look, except for Peeping Tom the tailor who was thereupon struck blind, is a later addition. Peeping Tom didn't even get that name until the seventeenth century. Godiva became a star of processions through Coventry, processions that had previously featured religious items like transubstantiated bread. Donoghue takes us through bad ballads and Tennyson's poem, to Victoria's enthusiasm for the legend, and to the takes on Lady Godiva by Dr. Freud and Dr. Seuss.

It is clear that Godiva still rides, but her identity has changed for our times. Donoghue shows how the legend has lost the story that concentrated on Godiva's virtue and generosity. There is now no heroism and no coercion. She paraded herself naked, and is understood these days as an exhibitionist. Peeping Tom is only infrequently associated with her legend, and is more a part of legal issues than folklore. Donoghue also explains the attraction of medieval legends in general; Dungeons and Dragons and Harry Potter are part of popular medievalism, which is booming. Serious medieval studies, concerning how this part of our past has been viewed by successive centuries, are still vibrant in academia. This study of a particular legend, clear, serious, and comprehensive, lets Godiva ride on in new intellectual exposure.