pn JUDSON BOYCE ALLEN The Ethical Poetic of the Later Middle Ages: A decorum of convenient distinction UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London© University of Toronto Press 1982 Toronto Buffalo. London Printed in Canada ISBN 0-8020.2370-3 ‘Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data ‘Allen, Judson Boyce, 1932- ‘The ethical poetic ofthe later Middle Ages ‘neludes index. ISBN 0-8020-2370.3 1. Criticism ~ Europe ~ History. 2, Poetry, Medieval ~ History and entism. 3. Poetics History 1. Tile. PNOSB.A4 —901.9510902_C81.094850-8 648628 - ostomy UNIVERSITY LIARARIES APR 26 1962 Publication of this book is made possible by a gran! from the subsidized pubica- tions fund of the University of Toronto Press. In piam memoriam HATTIE BELL McCRACKEN ALLEN 1896-1981Contents INTRODUCTION ix. 1 Ethical poetry, poetic ethics, and the sentence of poetry 3 2 Poetic thinking and the forma tractandi 67 3 Poetic disposition and the forma tractatus 117 4 Assimitatio and the material of poetry 179 5 The assimilation of the real world 248 6 Consideratio and the audiences of poetry 288 INDEXES 315Introduction 1 first began to be a medievalist in the Bodleian Library, seated before a ‘manuscript | could not read, written in a language | could but laboriously translate. In that experience, despair was mitigated by the pleasure that I was in physical contact with something medieval, and the hope that if 1 were patient 1 would learn what the manuscript could teach. The nature of my project forced me to begin with manuscripts, and being in Bodley encour- aged me to continue in that habit. As a result, 1 made in ignorance a large ‘number of discoveries which had already been made, and probably wasted a 00d deal of time. But there is one inestimable benefit to be gained from getting first impres- sions directly from the primary evidence - one is considerably less likely 10 be betrayed by false expectations. When Beryl Smalley first began to work on the exegetes she calls the ‘classiciing friars,” she did not expect secular storytellers. Her classic study of them was, as she says, "bom in a trap.” Its excellence is the result of the great historian's willingness to give up expecta- ‘tions in the face of what was, in this instance, a new kind of fact. ‘In my own case, 1 had no settled expectations, except those rooted in my ‘own modem sensibility, which | soon learned ! had axiomaticaly to distrust. Eventually, of course, I found out from modern scholarship what 1 was sup- posed to expect, but by that time the manuscripts themselves had had their way, and | was able clearly to realize that medieval ideas were more various and more different from our own, than we had thought This book is a report on fifteen years’ reading of what medieval commen- {ators wrote about their classi literature, and about the making of their own. This material includes a few texts which have long been familiar, such as the Poetria nova of Geofivey of Vinsauf and Dante's letter to Cangrande. Most of i, however, comes from manuscript, and occurs as the introductions andx Introduction losses which preserve with poetry the medieval version of its reading, It is this kind of reading ~ this theory of literature, which I will define here. Its a theory which will seem strange to modern crties in the habit of presuming, as the basis of their work, an autonomous category of literature, toward which one relates with some kind of aesthetic attitude. But itis the theory which the medieval evidence insists on, with a clarity that derives in part from the strong impression made by contact with manuscripts in large num- bers. My work has been based on one obvious assumption: that the fiterary criticism of an age will, after an interval of time, cease simply to explain the texts to which it was addressed, and become evidence for the particular liter- ary attitudes and presumptions which were, when it was made, satisfied with ‘Thus, in architecture, the nineteenth-century designers of Balliol College Jooked upon their work as medieval, and we see it as Victorian, Thus, in literary biography, Johnson's Lives of he Poets now tell us more about John- ‘son than about Shakespeare and Milton. Only Aristotle's Poeries and perhaps the Biographia of Coleridge have escaped this voracious progress of context: iff so, it is because they have been canonized as true, and are adapted by ‘commentary after the manner of all sacred texts to speak to the needs of the commentator. We do not now, however, write poetry under the guidance of the Poetria nova of Geoffrey of Vinsauf, nor indeed of any other rhetoric, though the Rhetoric of Fiction may tell us what we have implicitly done when we have finished our work. Geoffrey's book, and the others which were in the Middle \ Ages followed to the same end, address themselves to medieval problems and medieval needs; through it, and others like it, 1 propose, we may dis- cover and define those problems and needs, and with them in mind, under- stand the late medievel theory of literature. My work is new in two ways. First, | have taken medieval commentaries, ‘which survive in large numbers, as my central evidence for the character of ‘the medieval understanding of the texts which were then read. | have tried read as many commentaries as possible — on literary texts representing a vari- ety of genres, and having some claim to be widely admired by medieval readers. One of these texts, naturally, is the Poeiria nova, which context of commentary makes me understand in a medieval way. In modern terms, the ‘analogous procedure would be to read, as a way of making certain that | understood Derrida, Krieger, Wellek, and Wimsatt, et a., the critical appara- tus of a large number of sophomore survey textbooks, and a large sample of book review pages from the more provincial newspapers, as well as the Times and the New York Review. in the second place, | have presumed that xi Introduction what medieval critics wrote about poetry was for them not only a true accounting but also a sufficient accounting. | have not, of course, read every surviving commentary. But | have read enough to have some confidence ‘that 1 wll not be surprised by any new one | might read. Since the evidence 1 have read is remarkably consistent in its concer, | have reported it as such. Matters which medieval critics discussed with concern, ! presume concerned them - matters which they ignored, dismissed, or seemed unable to see, 1 presume did not concern them, and did not need to concern them. ! have felt ‘obliged to construct my definition of medieval literary theory, therefore, out ‘of what the critics said, and 1 have felt obligated to refrain from supposing ‘what they should have said, had they ‘really’ understood poetry. My results were starting, and at first unwelcome. 1 went to the medieval ‘commentaries on literary texts, and to the manuals for writers, expecting to finda theory of poetry. l expected, for instance, to find discussions ofimagina- ‘tive metaphor, end for this expectation at least | had some encouragement from the twelfth-century allegorists and from such modern expositors of twelfth-century doctrine as Brian Stock and Winthrop Wetherbee. But | did rot find what | expected. In the largest sense, 1 expected three things, which, of course, seem to me 80 obviously intrinsic to any discussion of poetry that one might claim to find ‘no poetic where they were not discussed. 1 expected fist to find a category for poetry ~that is, an entity corresponding to what we call literature or belles-lettres, in which we could securely find such texts as the Divina com- ‘media and the Canterbury Tales, and in which we could confidently fail to find any Summa theologica or treatise de regimine princinin, or metely ‘mnemonic verse, or any other such *nor-literary’ text. In the second place, | expected to find a sense of literary form which was intra-textual. | expected ‘medieval critics to see that any given poetic text hes its own integrity, and that its form and coherence should be generated and defined by constraints, intentions, and forces intemal to that text. Third, 1 expected the discourse of ‘poetry, in so far as it was rhetorical, to achieve or enact with audience an instance of contact with an Other. In short, ! was essentially a New Critic, though 1 was in this position compromised by having some awareness of the literary problems caused by the existence, in our own day, of the possibilty of solipsism. My project, to trace the notion of poetry past the twelfth cen- tury, was a classic exercise in the history of ideas. But the evidence refused to behave. | knew intuitively that Piers Plowman ‘and the Romance of the Rose, different as they are, are more like each other than either is like the Anticlaudianus. | should not have been surprised 10 find substantial discontinuity in literary attitudes after the end of the periodxii Introduction dominated by the sensibility we define as Chartrean. But I was indeed sur- prised, and for a tong time baffled, by the fact that the late medieval com- mentators refused to satisfy any of my three basic expectations: for discourse from an Other, for a literary form defined by its text alone, even fora single category which might properly be called “literature.” ‘What the evidence finally forced me to see was that, if 1 would give up “Titerature,” I could have everything back, and in an even more powerful and ‘admirable mode: This mode, as the ttle of my book announces, is the mode ‘of the ethical. | shall not attempt to define it here; the medieval commenta- {ors must do that, in their own words, as they are given their turn. But by ‘way of introduction to what they say, ! must try to explain two things: how it can be that one can give up the category “literature” and still keep for poems their full richness, power, and value; and, in a factual and historical way, ‘what presence and manner of address gave to these medieval commentators. that 1 quote the right to be, for medieval writers and readers, a sufficient accounting for poetry. First, then, how can one begin a book on literary theory by giving up literature? For some readers, | know, this attitude is and will remain an a priori impossibility. No one who went first hand through the wars that rescued poetry from Irving Babbit and the McGuffey readers can easily face ‘the possibility that what one rescued does not exist. These readers will feel, ‘on a priori grounds, that the medieval commentators are talking beside the point, and that even when their talk actually illuminates, or permits me to illuminate, some medieval poem, this happy result has occurred because a poet has been able to exploit for the sake of poetry something alien to it. ‘With this attitude there can, obviously, be no communication, since what is involved is a basic difference of ideology. ‘ean at Jeas illustrate this difference, and perhaps defuse it, by resorting toa deliberately frivolous analogy. A motorcycle may be deemed, with equal propriety, a mode of transportation ora sex symbol. Ineither case, the object itself remains the same. It is a two-wheeled thing, with hendlebars, a saddle which usually accommodates no more than two inline embracing pas- sengers, and an internal combustion engine, usually noisy, capable of lively acceleration and quite dangerous speeds. In riding it, one is exposed to con- siderable kinetic stimulation, and in owning it, to the insistent presence of obviously well-made and finely tuned machinery. Both in owning and in riding, one is stimulated to an awareness ofthat virlue which Plato defined in terms of virtuous skill if one does not deal with one’s motorcycle expertly, cone willbe killed. xiii Introduction Beyond this is context and ideology. In a poor country, the motorcycle is a ‘mode of transportation whose real alternative is a bicycle; in a rich one, itis frivolous and dangerous alternative to the automobile. When one trades up from bicycle to motorcycle, one attains a mode of getting around which is no ‘more exposed in wet weather, and otherwise vastly superior. But one gains this improvement at a price ~there is greater speed, greater danger, and therefore a greater requirement of virtuosity. All these achievements, how= ever, are subsumed under transportation, and give to the act of simply getting from place to place a certain mythic quality which comes with the virtuosity required in operating the beast. Ina rich country full of automobiles, a motorcycle is an inferior mode of transportation, which one chooses, if at all, as a deliberate exercise of the virtuosity it requires, for the sake of that virtuosity alone. That is, one extracts from the existence of the motorcyclist those features which ean be enjoyed aesthetically, and prizes them only. Being on the road is more important than the destination, and because of the danger, power, and posture involved, this being is very often interpreted in terms of metaphors of sexuality. 11 is important to see that, because the motorcycle is what itis, every feature of the aesthetic use of it persists when one uses it as transportation, One does not make the trip any less dangerous and exciting and kinetic, simply because one intends to get somewhere ~ rather, one transforms the practical act of travelling into something with a mythic dimension. In giving up the use of the motorcycle for its own sake, one gives up nothing — rather, ‘one is forced to transform the practical by experiencing it, as such, by includ- ing a dimension whose content might, iftaken separately, be called aestheti To do so does not abolish or omit the aesthetic. Rather, it de-trivalizes it by integrating it into the very essence of the real. ‘What the medieval critics asked me to do was give up literature, in order that | might get back poetry de-trivialized, delivered from that dismissal into which the category ‘literature" had put it. Poems, of course, in so far as they are objects, oF instances of human behaviour, remained the same ~ all their decorum, virtuosity, textual richness, emotional power, remain, But under the definitions of the medieval critics, they enjoy a different status, they benefit from a different ideology. They are not literature, but ethics; thus their presence to and in affairs we are pleased to call practical transforms the practical iseff into something pleasing as well as useful. These critics were present to medieval poets and to the audience of medi- eval poetry in two ways. First these critics were schoolteachers, and so deter-xiv Introduction mined what readings of schoo! poetry would be made. Second, their glosses ate pervasively present in book margins: it would be possible to conceive of a medieval reader who had never read commentary on some single poem, but ‘not possible to believe one could remain innocent of commentary if he read many poems, Thus Dante, Langiand, Chaucer, Jean de Meun, or whoever ~ no medieval poet could have learned his Letin without having submitted his reading to a school accessus, nor could he have read at all widely without having encountered more or less marginal commentary. One may as litle imagine that a medieval poet could be unaffected by these experiences as imagine that a modern one could have passed through sixteen years of nor- ‘mal, lberal education without ever having acquired an aesthetic atitude ‘These facts become obvious to anyone who will ake the trouble to order up, from any great manuscript collection of Europe, ten random medieval copies of Ovid's Metamorphoses? The extensive quotations from the medi- eval crites, which T have arrayed in this book, ar intended to reproduce, in organized and accessibie form, the sense ofthe being of poetry one gets from reading it in a glossed manuscript, with the mind of one trained by the ‘methods of the medieval accessus. My claim that medieval poets both did and necessarily must have read inthis way i ist and most fundamentally the result of my having read behind them, out of the same physical books which in general they read, and made to read. My modern sense, at last at first, that this way of reading was both unnatural and unpoetic, is utterly beside the point; the fact that the manner of reading whose clear nature and procedure medieval books preserve seems 10 be eccentric is a problem ‘which I must overcome, and not a cause for rejecting medieval evidence. In these manuscripts, many glosses betray explicily that they are schoo! lectures, or lecture notes*On the other hand, itis clear that some material is more advanced than others. The classic and well-known example is that given by Alanus in his introduction to the Aniciaudlanus, in which he distin- auishes several diferent levels of ability and appreciation in his expected audience.’ Even when @ reader finds some one poem in # copy with clean margins, he will know from elsewhere the usual way of reading. Robert Holkot, who apparently read his Metamorphoses without commentary, or at Jeast without repeating material from any commentary now known, invented {or his advanced clases in theology the same kinds of interpretation which ‘the commentaries would have taught him.* Dante, writing to his patron, clearly thinks that schoo! procedures of commentary explanation are suitable for the presentation of his Paradiso 1o Cangrande;® he also formed his Vita ‘nuova after the model of text and gloss. Whether created by schoolmasters ‘or made up by adult readers following their example; whether transcribed in xv Introduction 2 formal school situation or encountered when "inventing" from some auctor the matter of one’s poem—the glosses of the commentators, and theit implicit theoretical attitudes, would have been unavoidable. Of this pervasive presence of a fore which exists between school and life ‘and partakes of both, the existence of Vatican manuscript Vat. lat. 1479 is an ‘excellent ilfustration. This book, an elegant large folio, on vellum, made in fourteenth-century France, is obviously some wealthy adult's personal tibrary. The volume contains the ars major of Donatus, with other grammati- cal material and an anonymous treatise on prosody. plus the Distichs of Cato, the Eclogues of Theodulus, the Remedia amoris and the Metamorphoses of Ovid, the versified Tobias of Matthew of Vendome, and the Alexandrels of ‘Walter of Chatillon. Ail but the first two texts are elaborately surrounded by ‘commentary. Such a book, partly reflecting the elementary curriculum of the schools and partly the cultivated reading of the schooled adult, set in a dense frame of gloss and commentary written large for old eves, is ideal testimony to the character of medieval literary culture, In collecting glosses, 1 have tried to cast as wide a net as possible. At the same time, | have tried to find some valid focus in this wilderness of glosses, by choosing certain texts whose commentary tradition might be covered with something like completeness. The most important of these texts was Ovid's ‘Metamorphoses. Medieval reading of Ovid, particularly in the later period of his greatest popularity, brings into convenient focus a number of major liter- ary questions - the problem of fable and fiction, the problem of unity posed. by miscellany poetry, the problem of allegorical commentary, the problem of the Christian use of pagan culture all in connection with a text which Fumished tate medieval authors with more stories than any other single source with the possible exception of the Bible. Other then the Meta ‘morphoses, the texts on which 1 have studied a substantial and representative ‘number of commentaries are the Consolation of Philosophy of Boethius, the Thebaid of Statius, the De mupis of Martianus Capella, the medieval Chris- tian hymn-book, and the Poetria nora of Geoffrey of Vinsauf. Other texts and other commentaries will be referred to from time to time, but they are of the same sorts as these. Altogether they represent fairly the kinds of litera- ture which cover the medieval range: a story book, an epic history. a per- sonal meditation, an allegorical encyclopedia, a piece of criticism, and 2 collection of Christian lyric. in addition, 1 have used the Averroistic version of Aristotle's Poetics, which medieval critics knew in the transiation of Hermann the German, and on which there survives one Paris commentary. As a parallel, and control, 1 have used also at least some of the major collections of commentary on the Bible: the Glosa ordinaria, the compila-