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Engaging Words The Culture of Reading in The Later Middle Ages
Engaging Words The Culture of Reading in The Later Middle Ages
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vvbrds: 11tc Culture of Read in.~ in the Later !\fiddle A,i,'es
Engagi11.~
by Laurel Amtower
ENGAGING WORDS
THE CULTURE OF READING INTHE LATER
MIDDLE AGES
Laurel Amtower
pal grave
ISBN 978-1-349-31165-1 ISBN 978-0-230-27175-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230271753
ENC;A<;JN(; WORIJS
Copyright © Laurel Amtower. 2001l.
So ftc over reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2000 978-0-230-23068-2
Ackno!I'!C~'(ments IX
Notes 189
Bibliography 219
Index 239
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
I
am greatly indebted to the many people who have shared their
time and knowledge with me. I would like to thank Charles Al-
tieri, Dorothea Kehler, and Miceal Vaughan, who read this manu-
script at several stages along the way and who have offered years
of advice and guidance. I would also like to thank Joseph A. Smith,
who offered invaluable assistance and expertise in deciphering the
Latin I transcribed from various late medieval manuscripts. The
wonderful editors and staff at Palgrave have been supportive and
helpful at every step of the process; I thank especially Bonnie
Wheeler, editor for the New i\1iddle Ages series; Michael Flamini,
Amanda Johnson, Rick Delaney, and Jen Simington. Needless to
say, any errors or omissions are entirely my own.
Many others have provided insight and support along the way:
Amy Michaels-who first alerted me to the possibilities of the
Books of Hours-Bonnie Bade, Laura Emery, John B. Friedman,
Christine Gilmore, Sherry Little, Paul Remley, Jeanette Shumaker,
Eugene Vance, Jacqueline VanHoutte, Carey Wall, and my brother,
Rich Amtower. The students in my Chaucer classes from 1997-99
have offered unflagging enthusiasm and acted as a knowledgeable
sounding board for some of my ideas; I would like to thank espe-
cially Jenny Cantor, Matthew Isom, and Aaron Nielsenshultz.
The editors of Philological Quarterly have graciously granted me
permission to publish a revised version of what is now chapter 4. I
am also grateful to the British Library, the Metropolitan Museum
of Art, the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin, The Vienna Osterreichische
Nationalbibliothek, and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, for
providing photographs for the illuminations and granting permis-
sion to reproduce them. Thanks, too, go to both San Diego State
X ENCAC!NG WORDS
T
he New l\IJ.iddle Ages contributes to lively transdisciplinary con-
versations in medieval cultural studies through its scholarly
monographs and essay collections. This series provides new work in
a contemporary idiom about precise (if often diverse) practices, ex-
pressions, and ideologies in the Middle Ages. In her monograph Etz-
gaging Words: The Culture of Reading in the Later Middle Ages, Laurel
Am tower invites readers to consider the reading practices of the late
medieval lay public in theoretical and material terms. How did
writers as well as manuscript producers imagine and manipulate po-
tential lay consumers? How did they assume and project notions of
a "reader," and what authority did such imagined readers hold over
book production? Late medieval art, like books themselves, are sat-
urated with images of reading, and Am tower finely details reading
itself as a flexible new cultural metaphor. In Engagi11g Words, Am-
tower uncovers and describes some important discursive structures
in the popular cultures of the late Middle Ages.
Bonnie Wheeler
Southern Methodist University
INTRODUCTION
ENGAGING TEXTS
The original senses of the Teut[onic] verb are those of taking or giv-
ing counsel, taking care or charge of a thing, having or exercising
control over something, etc. These are also prominent in OUdJ E[ng-
lish], and the sense of" advise" still survives as an archaism, usually dis-
tinguished from the prevailing sense of the word by the retention of
an older spelling REDE. The sense of explaining or considering
something obscure or mysterious is also common to the various lan-
guages, but the application of this to the interpretation of ordinary
writing, and to the expression of this in speech, is confined to English
and O[ld] N[orse] (in the latter perhaps under English influence). 10
From its earliest appearances, the term "to read" referred to the
interpretation and glossing of signs in a world in which all was text.
Such a sense of the verb indicates a readiness to gloss or interpret
situations, portents, or any other signifYing or significant events, and
to be advised as an individual by correctly interpreting those signs.
The term might be applied to extratextual situations as well as tex-
tual ones. Portents, omens, or signs might comprise nonverbal texts
that demanded interpretation based on the same attention and
analysis of context as the words, events, or figures of scripture.
Hence medieval usage includes instances of reading literal texts, like
the riddles, whose injunction "Raed, hwaet ic maene" [figure out
what I mean] invites interpretation, but also symbolic texts, such as
dreams, as in Aelfric's "Ic raede swefn" [I read dreams], or the Cur-
sor Mundi~ "I haue sou3te neer & ferre to £Ynde a mon my dreme
to rede" [I have sought near and far to find a man to interpret my
dream] _11 In each situation the act of reading functions as a process
of semiotic translation by which signs are glossed and made relevant
to a reader. Dream-reading offers a particularly nice instance of
semiotic crossover, as its images and words were themselves consid-
ered a text of some authority that demanded deciphering. But mys-
tical portents also figured as inscrutable signs that required trained
and receptive readers. One of John Wyclif's sermons promises that
" ... men shal see Crist comyng doun in a cloude wip greet power
and maieste, to men pat can rede pes signes" [men shall see Christ
ENGAGING TEXTS 9
very different from Chaucer's later observation that the "text" of the
face is "hard ... to fYnde." 1<J Whereas Bernard demonstrates his trust
in the written word, and in the capacity of the text to contain the
essence of the soul, Chaucer's distrust of text translates to his assess-
ment of the inscrutability of people. Both kinds of texts require dis-
cerning readers, because the veracity of the material form is always
doubtful. Even as the notion of authority opened new possibilities
both for the interprt'tation of the written word and the enactment
of that word in everyday life, so, too, the concept of human identity
in the Middle Ages was transformed by the idea that the individual
as text might be written or revised by the individual as author.
In the fourteenth century, especially, the act of reading assumes
a place of privilege among secular writers, especially as the
metaphor of reading increasingly came to be seen as a means of
uniting action with disinterested self-reflection. Imaginative por-
trayals of reading delineated a starting point for more engaged for-
ays into contemplative or ethical life. Christine de Pizan, Petrarch,
and Chaucer habitually paint themselves as readers: Christine sit-
ting in her study reading the works of the antifeminists, Petrarch
reminiscing over the experience of reading the pagan authors,
Chaucer reading himself to sleep as the preliminary impetus for
fantastic visions. This topos was imitated by later readers, including
James I, who begins the King's Quair with the description of a
late-night reading of Boethius. For all these authors, reading fig-
ures as an important preliminary act that both prepares the mind
and renders it open to other revelatory experiences that may
change readers' perceptions of their worlds. This conceptual shift
impacts both the way reading is promoted in secular texts and the
way it is represented in visual imagery. Words and pictures func-
tioned symbiotically in the Middle Ages to provide a framework
for understanding the experience of reading as an act that grants
the potential for positive change to the reader.
To some extent, of course, this concept was a form of propa-
ganda, driven by a market that benefited from a growing reading pa-
tronage. The problem of recovering a fully historicized reader's
response is hampered by the observation that writing never takes
place objectively or in a vacuum but is always charged with the in-
ENGAGING TEXTS 11
guiding and reconciling, as many texts claimed, the private and so-
cial roles.
A substantial amount of scholarship has already contributed to
our understanding of medieval manuscript and print culture. 22 To
some extent this book attempts to synchronize these important
studies in order to demonstrate the ways in which social and tech-
nological shifts in book culture intersect with medieval conceptions
of subjectivity and self-awareness. By offering a crossdisciplinary ap-
proach to the practices of everyday readers in the Middle Ages, this
work seeks to provide some sense of the far-reaching implications
reading had upon the way late medieval society and its individuals
conceptualized themselves. The inquiry is limited to what might be
called the age and influences of Chaucer. Thus the materials range
in date roughly from the fourteenth to the mid-fifteenth centuries
and concentrate geographically on England and the northern coun-
tries that served its book needs. Dante, Petrarch, and Christine de
Pizan, whose works had international influence, have been treated
as well.
The first chapter charts the historical presence of medieval read-
ers-that is, what professional role they played in society; what their
interests were; how the book market imagined their desires and re-
actions to books; how authors imagined their reactions to books.
Reconstructing a reading audience from wills and library invento-
ries, accounts of medieval education and estimates of literacy, and
the prologues and epilogues of publishers and authors, this chapter
reveals a reading environment that is somewhat different from the
conception the surviving medieval canon might suggest. Insofar as
the most popular texts lining the shelves of medieval readers are sel-
dom the texts that are read in the modern classroom, our sense of
the medievals and their reading habits has been largely distorted by
a reliance on nonrepresentative texts. Moreover, the physical aspect
of medieval texts, which is largely lost by the creation of modern
classroom editions, can provide us with a great deal of information
about the uses and interpretations of a text. Markers, signals, and
perspectives may be traced through both text and manuscript that
interact to situate new conceptions of reading and that in turn af-
fect the very way in which medieval readers conceptualized them-
ENGAGING TEXTS 13
turns out, are long established; it is instead the institutions, the ide-
ologies, that change.
Certainly by the end of the Middle Ages there exists in England
a new kind of literature, a literature that interrogates and questions
a reader and calls upon a reader's own personal judgment to assess
and reconsider conditions tested through it. In part this literature
signals the status of a different concept of readers and individuals,
whose lives could also be imagined as books, of which the individ-
uals themselves were the authors. As reading and acquiring texts be-
came a way of establishing status and asserting a certain kind of
autonomy in the late Middle Ages, so too does reading become a
metaphor for asserting a new perception about the individual's re-
lationship to society. Margery Kempe legitimizes her visionary ex-
perience by means of a script and a written text documenting her
life experiences. A doomed knight in the Gesta Romanorum is hor-
rified to see his evil deeds written out in full in a giant book in hell.
As individuals increasingly see themselves as authors and texts com-
bined, their worlds transform. The acts of one's life, once inscribed
in word and deed, are irrevocable, but the book of one's future life
remains a metaphor for possibility and change.
CHAPTER 1
F
amous even in his own day for his acquisitiveness as a book col-
lector, the self-described bibliophile Richard de Bury owned,
according to chronicler William de Chambre, "more books than all
England's bishops combined":
Besides those which he has stored in his various residences, there are
heaps of books wherever he and his retinue travel; there are so many
books lying about in his chambers that anyone entering can hardly
walk or even find a place to stand: "summe delectabatur in multitu-
dine librorum" (he takes the greatest delight in large numbers of
books). 1
In truth, while resting they yet move, and while retaining their own
places they are carried about every way to the minds oflisteners ...
by the knowledge of literature, we establish Priests, Bishops, Cardi-
nals, and the Pope, that all things in the ecclesiastical hierarchy may
be fitly disposed. For it is trom books that everything of good that
befalls the clerical condition takes its origin. 4
The public demand for books was certainly lucrative enough in the
Middle Ages to move book production from the monastery into the
private sphere. Medieval manuscripts conjure the image of isolated
monks, laboriously copying out their texts single-handedly over
long spaces of time. However, advances in copying methods were
made necessary by the rise of the universities, whose vast demand
for texts and the ever-proliferating commentaries upon them estab-
lished something of a mass market for books. As early as the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries, production houses that could quickly mul-
tiply scholastic texts began to appear, introducing a technique for a
kind of mass production. In these centers the authorities of the uni-
versity exercised a virtual monopoly over all features ofbook-mak-
ing, establishing wages for copying and overseeing the format of the
design and the quality and purchase of materials. 5 The goal was to
produce texts for their students as quickly and efficiently as possi-
ble; this was achieved through price-fixing at the scriptorium, at
which the exemplar was deposited, separated into quartos, and du-
tifully copied. 6 Texts were divided into pecia that allowed as many as
seven or eight scribes to copy an exemplar at the same time. As each
scribe finished copying his own portion, his text too might be
copied, so that copies proliferated ad infinitum. Upon completion
the manuscript was submitted to the university for inspection and
correction; then it was bound by a stationer. 7 In such a way texts
could be exponentially replicated-though prices still remained
dear enough to prevent many students from purchasing their own
libraries.
But there was also a private demand for books, as evidenced by
the trade in London, where the various craftsmen retained their au-
tonomy from the universities and cathedrals. 8 Members of the trade,
including scribes and illuminators, appear in the public records early
on and were recognized in England as related professionals by 1357,
when the mayor ofLondon released them from the responsibility of
serving on inquests.'~ The scriveners established guilds by 1373; the
illuminators and Writers of the Text-Letters followed suit in 1403. 10
In 1403 these separate guilds were united into a combined guild of
20 ENGAGING WORDS
ture, but rather keeping them only for their value as books. 37 There
were great collections at Canterbury, reformed under Lanfranc and
Anselm, who had reinstituted a policy of studying and therefore
proliferating copies among their monks, and others at Durham and
York. 3H Canterbury owned 698 volumes by the time Henry ofEstry
catalogued them in the mid-fourteenth century. 39 Smaller but also
important collections arose in the monastic libraries at Bury-
Robert Grossteste, the Franciscan, left his books to Bury St. Ed-
munds in 1253-Norwich, Reading, Rochester, St. Albans,
Peterborogh, and Worcester, and in the cathedral libraries of Exeter,
Lincoln, Hereford, Salisbury, Evesham, among others. 40 Such li-
braries tended, of course, toward religious works. In addition to
copies of the Bibles and the standard commentators, the apocrypha
and glossed psalters were found in many libraries, as well as the Rule
of St. Benedict. 41 Many of the works of the church fathers were
present, including works by Augustine, Ambrose, Jerome, and Gre-
gory. Writers in the Christian tradition, such as Boethius, Cas-
siodorus, Petrus Alphonsi, and Hugh ofSt.Victor, were enormously
popular. Selected works by Bernard of Clairvaux were found in
most libraries, but only the largest contained works by Aquinas. 42
Other religious writers included Anselm, Peter of Blois, Rabanus,
Bernard Sylvestrius, Peter Comester, Bonaventure, Robert
Grossteste, and Jacobus de Voragine. Strangely popular were works
now almost entirely forgotten, such as De Conjlictu Viciorum et Vir-
tute~n, an eighth-century work ascribed to Ambrosius Autpertus; De
Clausto Animae, by Hugh de Folieta; and the Rationale Divinorum
Officiomm of Guillaume Durand. 4 -'
But secular and didactic works were in good supply, as well. Most
libraries contained a bestiary and a lapidary, and most owned works
by Bede and John of Salisbury, as well as Sallust and Pliny. Many
texts were devoted to grammar and logic. Works by Donatus,
Priscian, Porphyry, Aristotle, and a few contemporary authors were
generally available. Medical texts and scientific works might be
found as well. Libraries generally contained representative works on
canon and civil law. Classic authors, including Virgil, Horace, some
Ovid, Lucan, Statius, Juvenal, and Martial, could be found in most
libraries; Cicero and Seneca were enormously popular. 44
THE READING PUBLIC 25
Charles's books, Christine tells us, included not only texts, transla-
tions, and commentaries on the Bible, but also the writings of the
Church Fathers, philosophy-including translations of Aristotle's
Ethics and Politics-and writings on politics, science, and manners by
such contemporary Juthors Js Vegetius, John of SJlisbury, and Va-
lerius MaximusY The collection (of which unfortunately only a
fraction remains today) WJS housed in the Louvre, which itself came
to typifY J new kind oflibrary that existed outside the religious mo-
nopoly that had previously made claim to both scholarship and
book ownership. 4 H
The English could not compete with the French, either in terms
of the magnificence of their libraries or in the cultivation the
French nobility projected through their love of books. But biblio-
philes were tound in England, too, particularly in the persons of
Henry IV; Henry's son, Humphrey; and John, duke of Bedford.
Among monarchs, only Henry IV seems to have avidly pursued
book collecting. The extent to which his predecessor, Richard II,
was interested in reading and the cultivation of a literary milieu has
been much debated. Richard's library, which included at least ten
romances and chanson de gestes, suggests a healthy interest in secu-
lar literature and its courtly values, but scholars have recently de-
nied its significance. 49 It has been noted, for example, that Richard
inherited these secular works, commissioning none himself. 5° Yet
several volumes are known to have been presented to Richard, in-
cluding a book "on love" by Froissart and a breviJry illuminated by
Jean Pucelle. Froissart comments that Richard, when presented
with his book, was immensely pleased with it and began reading it
immediately. 51
THE READINC; PUBLIC 27
Courtly reading was more pronounced during the last years of the
fourteenth century. Thomas Woodstock, duke of Gloucester and the
ill-fated uncle of Richard II, was an avid collector of books, build-
ing a library of 126 items by the time of his death in 1397. 52 At a
sum totaling £124,Thomas's books were worth almost 6 percent of
his assets. o.l Henry IV evidently owned a collection large enough to
require a librarian; the records of the King's Bench include a refer-
ence to Robert Bradfelde as Henry's "Custodem librorum." 54
Henry's palace at Eltham contained a special study for his books. 55
His son John, duke ofBedford (1389-1435), acquired the books re-
maining in the Louvre library during his tenure as Regent of France.
He removed the collection to England in 1429 during the remain-
ing years of the Hundred Years War, when it seemed in danger of
being lost again to the French. Several notable women are recorded
as owning and bequeathing copies of Christine de Pizan's works, in-
cluding Alice de la Pole, duchess of Suffolk, and Anne, the wife of
John, fifth Lord Scrape of Bolton. o(, The aforementioned Humphrey,
Henry's fourth son, was probably the most famous collector of the
time, leaving his collection of over five hundred works to Oxford
University upon his death: it became the foundation of the Bodleian
Library. Both collections were unfortunately later dispersed-John's
upon his death, Humphrey's during the reign of Edward VI, who de-
clared Humphrey's collection in the Divinity School to be a super-
stitious Catholic deception. 57
However, even as books came to be seen as symbols of prestige
and culture, their acquisition was mimicked by the class of people
most interested in asserting their own gentility. As ever in societies,
the claim to high culture amounts to a claim for membership in an
international and intellectual "brotherhood" superior to other
classes and individuals. :iK By appropriating books, one of the sym-
bols of prestige with which the aristocracy invested itself, the third
estate, with its propensity for self-fashioning, also began to claim
higher status by means of a claim to high culture. Indeed, it was the
upwardly mobile members of the third estate who were responsible
for creating a climate that necessitated the mass production ofbooks
facilitated by the printing press. Increased literacy, coupled with a
disposable income and a growing cultural appreciation for reading
28 ENG.AGING WORDS
tions. 66 Among the gentry, Sir Simon Burley, tutor to Richard II,
owned a library of 22, including eight romances, as well as various
religious and philosophical works.r, 7 Sir Richard Stury, Sir Lewis
Clifford, and Sir William Trussell all owned and bequeathed books
in their wills; Sir John Clanvowe, while not on record as owning any
specific books. at least attested to the reading preferences of the
courtly milieu when he attacked the reading of romances in his
own work, The 1iuo Ways.('k Sir John Fastolf, who died in 1459,
owned a book collection particularly notable for its inclusion of
secular French texts, including the Chronicles of Froissart, the Ro-
mance cif the Rose, and a book of" de Roy Artour."r' 9 Women in this
class were readers, too. In 1395 Lady Alice West of Hampshire be-
queathed to her daughter Iohane "a masse book, and all the bokes
that. I. haue oflatyn, englisch, and trensch." 711 It is worth noting that
Lady Alice was apparently not only a reader herself but also saw fit
to leave her library to her daughter rather than to her sons-a strik-
ing instance of a family dedication to women's literacy. Lady Peryne
Clanbowe, in 1422, bequeathed another mass book to her brother,
Robert ofWhitney, as well as a "booke of Englyssh, cleped 'pore
caytife,"' to one Elizabeth. 71
By the fifteenth century and even mid-fourteenth centuries the
working "middle class" were able to afford books-and they did so,
in increasing numbers. Several merchants are recorded as commis-
sioning works in the fifteenth century: Robert Chichele commis-
sioned a ballad from Hoccleve, and Caxton began his translation of
"The Mirrour of the World" at the request of the goldsmith, Sir
Hugh Brice. 7 ~ In 1426 John Credy, Esq., left his mass book and bre-
viary to the local church. 73 In 1368, John de Worstede, a London
mercer, left a collection of religious works and saints' lives to his son,
while in 136 7 William Bristowe, a cordwainer, left" all his books" to
his.N Most spectacular of all is what is thought to be the earliest be-
quest of Chaucer's Ca11terbury Tales, by Johannes Brynchele, a tailor
of London, in 1420. 75 Goldsmiths, chandlers, lawyers, scribes, mer-
chants, fishmongers, and even a farmer are listed in Cavanaugh's in-
ventory as bequeathing books between the years 1300 and 1450.
Of course, book bequests are likely to be made on the basis of a
book's relative worth, which means that such numbers might account
30 EN(;AGING WOll..DS
only for valuable books rather than the total number of possessions.
Finely illustrated religious works, such as I3ooks of Hours, might be
worth as much as £10. The books in Thomas, duke of Gloucester's
collection averaged £1, 2s. 7 d.7r' That price put books well out of the
reach of the average laborer. Yet unbound books could be produced
quite cheaply. Presumably these works were in circulation as well,
even if few records or copies survive. Cheap books, especially the ver-
nacular romances and other texts likely to have been frequently read,
reread, and circulated, are less likely to survive or be bequeathed than
care1ully used liturgical or de luxe books. Inventories of two bank-
rupted grocers in the 1390s estimated the four romances in their pos-
session at a worth of 11 s. 4d., while t\VO English books were valued
together at 8d., a calendar at 8d., and a primer at 16d. 77 A male
builder in the late fourteenth century would have made approxi-
mately 4d. per day, which, in relative terms, would have bought four
loaves of bread, a gallon of ale, and a slab of meat. 7 x Thus a relatively
cheap book would not have been entirely out of the range of the
peasantry, though it might have cost almost a week's wages. 7 <J In fic-
tion, certainly, access to books seems to have been accepted as quite
normal. Chaucer's Wife of I3ath, by occupation a weaver, could evi-
dently afford books; her husband Janekyn reads to her nightly from
his Book ofWicked Wives. The Clerk, who is so poor his clothes are
threadbare, has twenty. The poor student Nicholas, in the Miller's Tale,
reads from his Almagest. Books are mentioned throughout the Can-
tcrlmry Tales not as untouchable symbols of status but as commonplace
possessions.
Lollardy also provided a great deal of impetus to acquire books.
The reform-minded Lollard~ valued both literacy and careful atten-
tion to the skills of reading and interpretation, and, additionally, are
recorded as commissioning works important to their study.K11 Even
practitioners who could not read are documented as having gone to
great lengths to obtain books, which they would have read to them
by more literate group members. Anne Hudson has noted the case
of John Claydon, who commissioned copies of The La11teme (if
LiY,ht, a commentary, and a sermon, which Claydon could not read
himself, but, once having had the works read to him, nonetheless
analyzed and discussed with his fellmvs.H 1 Many Lollard texts were
THE READING PUBLIC 31
Such schools were usually intended for those bound for a clerical ca-
reer, though students willing to pay a fee for their education were wel-
come. Indeed, the children of the first estate seem, in Winchester, at
least, to have comprised the majority of the students.'J9 However, cer-
tain subdivisions of the schools emphasized reading and writing lan-
guages for those who were bound for business administration. 10n As
lawyers were increasingly in demand, a mastery of Latin was required,
as well as a university level education and a period of study at court.
Moreover, a certain amount of home schooling seemed to be oc-
curring by the fourteenth century. Among the higher strata it came
to be assumed that a mother would teach her child the Latin
primer. HII Yet despite the grmving a\·ailability of schooling, educa-
tion largely remained in privileged hands; the poor were typically
denied access to the clerical schools, though records of licenses
bought by serfs for their sons' educations do exist.
The degree of literacy varied, of course. At the most humble
level, reading and writing had a practical purpose and were used for
basic business transactions. A great many people may have had the
ability to read and sign their names, though they may not have had
the ability to write. A distinction must be made between the so-
phisticated reading ability of scholars and other professionals and
the more practical abilities of laymen who needed to read in the
course of conducting their businesses. 1' 11 Professional readers, how-
ever, such as the clerks and lawyers, \vhose duties included drawing
up documents and aiding in monarchial decisions, came to perme-
ate late medieval society. And in increasing numbers, too, were
found LlJOse readers who read tor entertainment and whose de-
mand for books created a market for such poets as Chaucer and
John Gower. 111 ·' Whatever the agenda behind the demand for
schooling, it is clear that by the fourteenth century an ability to
read was a necessity for the operation of society, and special per-
sons dedicated to the reading, writing, and analysis of texts-
whether for religious or secuiar purposes-were in great demand.
Although in the fourteenth century clergy might still largely make
up the administration of the king and lords, by the fifteenth cen-
tury this duty belonged to the laymen, among whom the ability to
read came to be seen as a given. 11 i.l
THE READING PUBLIC 3'i
the Latin prayers and devotions repeated during the service, and
would even have some general sense of the prayers' meanings, but
would not be able to translate his or her phonetic understanding of
the texts into exact terms. "Comprehension literacy," on the other
hand, belonged to such people as the clerks and educated laymen.
Those readers were able to read texts on a sophisticated level, rec-
ognizing and comprehending each word on the written page. Inso-
far as readers who could easily comprehend vernacular texts might
have been only able to phonetically read Latin texts, a dual kind of
reading ability, even among those we might designate as readers,
could have existed among book owners. 107
On the other hand, even de luxe Books of Hours are characterized
by the presence of sheer text. A small minority of Books of Hours
lack almost entirely the rich and costly illuminations common to
some of the more ostentatious examples. lliH Might such relative dec-
orative absence suggest less of an interest in creating the book as an
artistic gothic work-intended to be gazed at and contemplated-
than as a text to be read? The pages and pages of unadorned script
one finds in the Books of Hours, separated only by historiated ini-
tials and the captions inserted in red denoting the antiphons ("Ant"),
versicles ("V"), and responses ("R"), would indicate that the owner
had some familiarity both with reading and with reading the gothic
script in particular. Some horae, such as British Library Add. 41061,
are written in a clear and pronounced hand with none of the stan-
dard abbreviations used in other prayer books, and many contain
notes, in hands clearly different from that of the scribe, emending or
adding to the text. 1u<J Both characteristics would indicate the pres-
ence of readers who were interested in texts as well as decorative
possessions. Given the dominant role the liturgy played in medieval
life, one could expect a familiarity with devotional Latin that might
belie the "foreignness" of the text. A certain amount of fluency in the
sacred Latin texts would have been amplified through constant rep-
etition as people participated in services quite familiar to them by
adulthood. This is suggested by a remarkable document now in the
Throckmorton collection that provides precise instructions on the
reading and use of the prayer book for an early fifteenth-century
family. 110 The head of the family is instructed, in Latin, to carry the
THE READING PUBLIC 37
reading in the late Middle Ages, pointing out that one of the pre-
ferred means of enjoying a book was to have it read aloud. 113
Communal experience was perceived as a means of heightening or
invigorating the dynamics of the text. Immediate audience re-
sponse and reaction posed a varying and challenging matrix
through which the literary artifact might reverberate, and added
another level of experience to the text that was welcomed and
even exploited by late medieval authors. Charles V is described by
Christine de Pizan as having his books read to him in his private
chambers; Coleman cites additional examples of public reading
events, ranging fi·om Deschamps's presentation of Machaut's poems
to the court to FroissJrt's reading his mvn works to Gaston de
Foix. 11 -l Professionals among the middle class also enjoyed oral
reading, employing servants or requesting local clergy to read
books aloud to them. MJrgery Kempe, though she could not read
herself, avJiled herself constantly of books that she had read to her
by the local priest, whom she referred to as her "reader." 11 "
But oral performances of reading could not efface the intensely
private reaction readers seem to have fdt in response to books. Not-
ing a preponderance of illuminated readers perusing their texts with
closed mouths, PJul SJenger argues that both reJding and writing
were becoming increJsingly seen JS private and personal activities
and cites important changes in manuscript production that pro-
moted fJcility in private reading in the latter Middle Ages. 11 c' More-
over, the etTect books had on the private sensibility was increasingly
emphasized. The nonmaterial aspect of books and the imaginJry
worlds evoked by them bestowed upon a reader a sensation of su-
periority or ''chosenness" that belied their value as luxury com-
modities.
Reading constituted a new way of conceptualizing the individ-
ual by delineating the separate realms of private and public perfor-
mance. In addition, through the act of reading, interiority came to
be seen as a defining feature of ethics. In reading, one's mind
touches, seemingly, the mind of another, greater person in the fig-
ure of the author. Richard de Bury describes the act of reading as
the unfolding of an entire world in which minds separated by time
and distance are able to meet and converse:
THE READING PUBLIC 39
intentions and may therefore appreciate and understand it. 121 The
Secretum Secretorum promises a similar initiation: the book is com-
prised of "secretes" that will show themselves only to those who
"hede it wele, rede it wele, and undrestande it wele" [heed it well,
read it well, and understand it well]. 122 The author expresses horror
lest those who are "untrewe" read the book and gain access to se-
crets meant only for the initiated.
Other authors, however, saw reading as a way of knowing and
shaping the self. Henryson's Moral Fables are intended "to gude pur-
pais quha culd it weill apply" [to good purpose for whomever can
apply (them) well] .123 The opening of the Pricke of Conscience indi-
cates that its author sees the text as a metaphor for the operation of
the soul. The purpose of the book is "to make pam pam-self first
knaw" [make them (readers) know themselves] that afterwards its
internalized text shall function to "prikke pair conscience with-yn"
[prick their consciences from within]. 124 Guillaume Fillastre, in the
Thoison d'or, imagines a reader who will move responsively and
willingly from one text to the next, forming a fuller spiritual aware-
ness via the interaction of differing authorial voices. Noting that
"knowledge is not acquired by hearing alone, but also is acquired
and increases by study, by reading and by subtly thinking and med-
itating on what one has read and studied," Guillaume links medita-
tion with reading:
Books are not given to men in vain or for amusement, but out of
pure necessity, for they are made to supplement and come to the
aid of the weakness of memory, which flows away and runs like
water in the stream. By which it would profit little to hear or to
ask question to learn if memory does not retain it. Thus, for all its
skill, as it is said, memory does not suffice for retention. This is why
the study of books is necessary in order to retain what one has
learned by inquiry and by hearing. In books there are also often
found doctrines not heard by which man may learn and retain by
reading and studying knowledge and wisdom without a teacher or
instructor. For the sense of sight is much firmer than hearing and
makes man much more certain, because the spoken word is transi-
tory, but the written letter remains and impresses itself more in the
understanding of the reader. 125
THE KEADING PUBLIC 41
[Wherefore, you who desire to feel truly the fruit of this book must
in such a manner, with all your thoughts and all your intentions,
make yourself present in your soul to those things that have been
written, said, or done here of our lord Jesus, and that diligently, will-
ingly, and patiently, as if you heard them with your bodily ears, or
said them with your eyes downcast, putting away and letting go of
all other occupations and concerns.\
In renouncing the senses of the body for the senses of the spirit in
the perusing of a text, Love imagines a different kind of reading act.
The book transports the reader outside the body, becoming the
"eyes and ears" into another time and place. Sacred events materi-
alize in the present as the reader is transformed into a witness of the
figurative reality beyond and learns to perceive contemporary oc-
currences through a transhistorical !em.
Each of these instructional texts constructs an equation between
reading, silent prayer. and intention. The book in essence becomes
the interlocutor in a dialogue that takes place entirely in the mind.
The intercessor in the form of the saint, teacher, or instructor van-
ishes as the book takes his or her place; now readers themselves are
responsible for their own spiritual journeys, for their intellectual
awakening from the world of appear:mces. Self-knowledge is a pre-
requisite for devotional practice: "The first intention of the praying
person suffices, the which God looks principally in relating or re-
flecting one's intention to the use of the one for whom one wishes
to pray, and always under divine Will." 131 God notes the status of the
heart and not merely the speech or exterior actions of the suppli-
cant. Though a confessor's intentions had of course been of ecclesi-
astical concern since the twelfth century, reading instructions
during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries included a slight ad-
THE READING PUBLIC 43
I
n 1545, Henry VIII issued the first national primer: a book, in
English, to be "taught, learned, and read" by all his majesty's sub-
jects. 1 The new book was intended to impose uniformity in read-
ing and praying "for the avoiding of strife and contention," and
instituted an authorized national text replacing the "pernicious" and
"superstitious" contents of the Books of Hours that were currently
so popular among the laity. Insofar as the traditional Books of Hours
had also been commonly used as a first reader, introducing the let-
ters of the alphabet and simple prayers on which to practice, the
new primer was also meant to serve as the official "first book," lay-
ing a firm ideological foundation upon which to build an educa-
tion appropriate to an enlightened society.
The post-Reformation's concern over the contents of the Books
of Hours is particularly noteworthy when we consider that the new
books did not attempt to impose new prayers, or even to change
substantially the way in which people were accustomed to praying.
The king's primers followed the standard format of the traditional
Books of Hours, but in English. There was a calendar; the Little Of-
fice dedicated to the Virgin Mary, with verses and responses to be
recited hourly; the seven penitential psalms; the passion; and the tra-
ditional prayers. Yet nonetheless the king's cabinet found the con-
tents of the Books of Hours disturbing enough to include
"admonishments" to readers that advocated a correct, Protestant
46 ENCAGING WORDS
Among other pestilent and infectious books and learnings, with the
which the Christian people have been piteously seduced and de-
ceived, brought up in divers kinds of diffidence and false hope, I may
judge chiefly those to be pernicious, on whom they have been wont
commonly hitherto in every place superstitiously to pray, and have
learned in the same with much foolish curiosity, and as great scrupu-
losity, to make rehearsal of their sins by heart: and that tor this cause.
For these books, over and besides that they abounded in every place
with infinite errors, and perilous prayers, slanderous both to God and
to all his holy saints, were also garnished with glorious titles, and
with red letters, promising much grace, and many years, days, and
Ients of pardon, which they could never in deed perform, to the
great deceit of the people, and the utter destruction of their souls 2
Office of the Breviary used by the clergy but was shortened for the
layman. By the fifteenth century, when the popularity of the prayer
books had reached its height, the format had become quite stan-
dardized. Typically the books opened with a calendar denoting the
saints' days for each month; a short text or texts might follow, such
as special invocations to patron saints, that would precede the Hours
of the Virgin. Each of the Hours of the Virgin began with an histo-
riated initial and was, in the more luxurious editions, accompanied
with an illumination, which also became fairly standardized over
time: matins accompanied the scene of the Annunciation; lauds the
Visitation; prime the Nativity; tierce the Annunciation to the Shep-
herds; sext the Epiphany; none the Presentation at the Temple; ves-
pers the Massacre of the Innocents or the Flight into Egypt;
compline the Coronation of the Virgin. 12 Though the Hours of the
Virgin formed the basis of the text, and was itself fairly fixed in con-
tent, the remaining texts of the manuscript could be tailored to in-
dividual specification to include other services such as the Office of
the Dead, the Penitential Psalms, or the Hours of the Holy Ghost.
These services, too, would be divided into the canonical hours and
illustrated with appropriate scenes.
The format of the books was thus highly dependent on re-
ceived expectation and the memory of the individual owner, who
would have been accustomed to hearing such prayers and re-
sponses in the divine service. The Goodly Primer of 1535, however,
particularly decried the decorative rubrics promising rewards for
the proper use and recitation of the prayers, which might offer
promise of forgiveness or even, in the case of the Obsecro te-a
popular prayer frequently included among the optional texts of
the prayer books-a glimpse of the Virgin herself. Reformers also
objected to the variable content of the versicles that followed.
Though the primary aim of the office was to recite the 150
psalms, the shortened and tailored nature of office in the medieval
Books of Hours allowed a certain amount of choice in terms of
which psalms were included or excluded or whether a hymn or
prayer might be included in lieu of one of the psalms. The Horae
Eboracences, for example, a York primer dating from the early six-
teenth century and considered to be one of the more complete
.)() ENGAGING WORDS
For what writing supplieth to him which can read, that doth a pic-
ture supply to him which is unlearned, and can only look. Because
they who are uninstructed thus see what they ought to follow: and
things are read, though letters be unknown ... pictures are not to be
put away because they are not to be worshipped: for paintings ap-
pear to move the mind more than descriptions .... Hence, also, is it
that in churches we pay less reverence to books than to images and
pictures. 15
Figure 2.2 Reading cow. Bohun Psalter. London, British Library MS Egerton
3277, f. 46v.
their shared, open book (figure 2.3). Hooded figures beyond follow
along silently. In the historiated initial of the text itself, an en-
grossed man presses his t~1ce into his open book, as if imprinting its
contents upon his soul. Further clerical readers follow along med-
itatively in the margins, their silence depicted by their closed
mouths and downcast eyes. Private, communal, and conceptual
reading occur framed within the same scene, as the tropological
significance of the Mass is repeated and continued through the
open book and its readers. 27
Though serious readers predominate in these books, poly-
morphs, strutting through the pages with the heads and upper tor-
sos of men and women and the lower halves of animals, grotesques,
and animals, read as well. Serious depictions of reading are coupled
with the droll. In the Maestricht Hours, parodies of reading figure
as prominently as the more realistic acts of reading. Though angels
read in this text, and though at least one marginal man reads from
his book and cries aloft in empathic response, in other scenes read-
ing is portrayed as a foolish or even dangerous activity: a woman
reading from a book seems blissfully ignorant of the sneering head
poking out from under her dress (figure 2.4), while later in the
manuscript a monk remains oblivious to the human gryphon tak-
ing aim at him with an arrow below.-'K Such images might attest to
contemporaneous accounts of the various distractions that might
interfere with a reader's concentration-Christina of Markyate
complained of evil visions that imposed upon her meditative read-
ing, for example 2 'J_but they might also warn readers of the forces
that might convene to deliberately disrupt the spiritual salvation of
another.
Indeed, grotesque or inappropriate readers fill the pages of Books
of Hours almost obsessively. The St. Omer Hours and the Bohun
Psalter and Hours both portray reading rabbits at the margins of
their pages (figure 2.5), while reading foxes, monkeys, apes and cows
make appearances throughout various other texts. 30 An English
Book of Hours now in the Bodleian includes several evil-looking
readers, including two men-one dressed like a knight-with ani-
mal bodies and lJrge bat wings reading books.-' 1 In another Oxford
manuscript, a fox attempts to read a book, but finds himself pecked
in the head for his pains by a large bird. 32 The Bohun Psalter and
THE IMAGE OF THE BOOK 59
Figure 2.3 Private and communal reading during the Mass. London, British Li-
brary Add. MS 18,192, f. llOr.
Figure 2.4 Dangerous reading. London, British Library MS Stowe 17, f. 29v.
they hold. As he kneels, the devil is driven away from him. 33 The
"unseeing" figure as readers in the Maestricht Hours, as in the
blindfolded man reading from his book at f. 25v, but so do the
doltish or stupid, who hold their books backward at f. 214.
Such readers satirize both the process of reading, and, perhaps
to an even greater extent, the estates that abuse reading in their
professions. Though clergy appear throughout the manuscripts in
their proper roles, singing from their books and delivering the Eu-
charist or rites for the dead, lone clerics (particularly monks) dis-
play a proclivity for error-whether intentional or not. Such
parody may signify an attempt to undermine the clerical estate
that sought to control religious thought. In such a way noble or
upwardly-aspiring patrons for whom such books were frequently
commissioned might assert their own preeminence over a clerical
class competing for similar riches and territory. 34 Certainly ani-
mals and grotesques are frequently found performing the more
mundane daily tasks, such as spinning or working in the field. Yet
THE IMAGE OF THE UOOK 61
act equated with seeing, with restoring spiritual vision even as the
literal vision of the blind is restored.
Among the full-plate illuminations of the Hours of the Virgin
and the Hours of St. Louis a number of notable marginal readers ap-
pear, interspersed within the text of the prayers accompanying these
images. These form a series of echoes that continue to underscore
the motif of reading throughout the manuscript. The first, in the
Hours of the Virgin, reveals a doctor studiously reading from his
book, while he holds aloft a liquid-filled vial as if comparing his ac-
tua: findings to what he has read. 39 Other marginal readers appear
in the Hours of St. Louis. An old man, holding a closed book in the
upper left margin of one page, gestures heavenward with a pointed
finger. 40 Several pages later a monk sits, looking down upon the
opening ofTerce and accompanying an illumination in which Louis
washes the feet of the poor. Instead of reading he holds his book
open and faces us, his readers. 41 Another reader figures in much the
same manner some pages later; he appears opposite the illumination
depicting the miraculous restoration of the book. As Louis peers
from the confines of his Gothic prison, holding out his hands to re-
ceive the book grasped by the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, in
the text page opposite the marginal half-figure of the monk holds a
prayer book open for the perusal of the reader. While he himself
does not read, it is clear that he intends the bearer of the Book of
Hours to do so. 42
Another droll figure hangs upside down within the historiated
initial "A," reading his book, which he hangs below his head where
he can see it. 43 The verse Annue nobis domine quis ut sicut beatus lu-
dovicus confessor tuus inter[i]us tibi digne Jamulari meruit [Lord, declare
to us who, just like blessed Louis your handservant, deserved to
serve you worthily and more intimately] follows. The figure reading
models just how such intimacy is achieved and recognized-
through diligent and private reading of the miraculous work of oth-
ers. The entranced expression on the marginal reader's face attests to
the transfiguring power of the text; he holds the book close, so that
he sees nothing but the text.
The marginal images provide a self-referential quality through-
out the book that helps draw the reader's attention to various acts
63
Figure 2.5 Reading rabbits. The Hours of St. Orner. London, British Library MS
Additional 36,684, f. 24v.
ENGAGING WORDS
ture use, falcons, leaps astride a horse and shoots arrows from it, only
to return to her most primitive impulses when, near the end of the
sequence, she leaps to her feet and finishes a deer off by hand, gut-
ting him herself in the final miniature.-1-1
What relation can these seemingly disparate marginal sequences
have to the noble scenes from the life of the Virgin that dominate
the pages above? As Camille notes, dividing the medieval con-
sciousness into "binary oppositions" (spiritual/ secular, sacred/ pro-
fane) does little to explain the sophisticated layering of meaning we
witness in these books. -IS Instead, we witness a celebration of both
plurality and difference: readers of the fourteenth-century Books of
Hours lived in a world populated by both the beautiful and the ugly,
the sensible and the ridiculous. Though grotesque, animal, or scato-
logical images might be used to serve an underlying moral purpose,
more often than not such images could appear as something to be
enjoyed simply for their humorous effect. In the age of Chaucer, the
sacred could be read through an eye overwhelmed with mundane
and trivial daily occurrences, with no fear that the integrity of the
central message might be lost. In essence, fourteenth-century man-
uscripts grant greater faith to the discerning abilities of their read-
ers, encouraging both free association and the subversive insights
into repressive ideologies those associations might reveal.
... as mich as Pei lJat been perfidy meke. han Pat proprete lJat !Jei
reward not hire awne venues, bot ra]Jer taken hede to hir awne de-
fautes, wherePorh l)ei mowen algate protlte vertuesly haldyng in
hemself a grete venue lite! & a lite! defmte grete. 47
[those who are perfectly meek have that characteristic that they do
not commend their own virtues but rather take heed of their faults,
so that they might entirely profit virtuously, considering their great
virtues little and their little faults great.]
Mary is associated with both wisdom and literacy. The divine con-
ception occurs through the ear, signifYing Mary's hearing of and sub-
mission to the Divine Word. Mary's readerly ways accustom her to
miraculous visions. In addition, she reads herself--or knows herself-
so that she remains aware of her faults even when told she has been
chosen for the immaculate conception. The book on the table trom
which she reads symbolizes Christ's presence as Logos. Both aural
conception and the open book thus signit)· Mary's status as a reader
who correctly receives and understands the sacred words. So too,
Love admonishes us, must the reader follow Mary's example "to loue
solitary praiere & departyng fi·o men Pat (Jou mowe be worPi ange-
les presence, & forPermore, lore of wisdome to here or Pou speke, &
fort kepe silence & loue litil spech, tor !Jat is a tl.il gret & profitable
vertue" [to love solitary prayer and depart from humanity that you
might be worthy of the angel's presence, and furthermore to hear the
wisdom of learning before you speak, and to maintain silence and
love speech the less, for this is a great and profitable virtuej. 4x
THE IMAGE OF THE l300K h7
[Whoever will have read this oration at night in the presence of the
image of the Blessed Virgin Mary tor thirty days on bent knee, de-
liberately and contrite, without doubt, whatever he has asked from
the consolatrix of all distresses, infallibly he will gain profit and this
truly has been proven many times over by experience.J
Consolation derives not from the belief that the Virgin herself will
appear to intervene in the reader's distress but fi-om the reader her-
self. By imagining the Virgin's woes in her heart and by substituting
herself for the Virgin, the female patron of this prayer book should
experience for herself feelings of consolation and reconciliation.
The Virgin becomes less a conduit for spiritual force than do the
prayer and the Book of Hours in which the prayer is contained. Nor
need the Virgin literally appear to the reader in order to \Vork sub-
stantive change; reading allows the reader to help hcrsc[f Spiritual
transformation and escape fi·om "natural inclination" remain the
prime goal in reading the Books of Hours, but experience replaces
intercession as the mediating activity.
The rise of images of Marian reading in late medieval culture can-
not be coincidentaL Mary's image both inspired and commemorated
68
.
I .._, f
f , ...
,
\'. ..
,.l"'-$
~-
:•
~
'
Figure 2.8 Mary of Burgundy reading. The Hours C!f Mary qf BurJttH1dy. Vienna,
Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod.Vindobonensis 1857, f. 94v.
face, focused and blissful, concentrates on the book she holds before
her and signifies her mental involvement in the imaginary window
behind. Though she does not actually look at the adoration of the
Virgin and child playing out in the framed window behind her, she
74 ENGACING WORDS
[And whoever, rejoicing. will venerate me with these joys, will ob-
tain, at the departure of the soul from the body, me in consolation.
And ! will fi·ee his soul from evil enemies, and I will present him be-
fore mine, so that he shall hold the joys of paradise in perpetuity
with me.J
THE IMAGE OF THE BOOK 75
AUTHORIZED READERS,
OR, READING AUTHORITY
An auctor was one whose words formed both font and origin of all
ethical or universal truths for the thoughtful individual who fol-
lowed him. Though exegetes could rework a text for later audi-
ences, the originary text of an auctor remained, like the Bible itself,
the unquestioned voice of authority. The work of an auctor possessed
a strong sense of authenticity and veracity, not merely because he
was in some sense "right," but also because he held something of an
originary status: an auctor is one who is closer in temporal and spir-
itual time to the word of Christ as Logos.
To some extent this movement toward originary concepts con-
tributes to an overall mystification of both book and text in the
Middle Ages. More importantly, however, was the approach to see-
AU TI-l 0 R I Z E I) REA ll E l~S
his poetry came into being and how it should be read, perhaps would
not ordinarily be considered a part of the medieval commentary tra-
dition. Stylistically Dante follows in the tradition of Boethius and
Alain de Lille, combining poetic language and prose to philosophi-
cally recast lived and dreamed events as revelatory experiences.
The Vita's technique of juxtaposing commentary against these
early attempts at poetry presents an interesting instance of the shift-
ing parameters of authority and reading. By positioning the self as
an enigmatic text willfully constructed by the poet-as-author and
invitingly posing this text as a mystery to be pondered and read,
Dante foregrounds the necessity of training a body of readers capa-
ble of understanding the hermeneutics of poetry. This is a move that
to some extent belies the theory of interpretation outlined in the
Convivio and the spuriously attributed "Letter to Can Grande," both
of which afhrm the scholastic four-fold interpretive approach. 32 In
the Vita Dante combines the dual roles of authoring and reading
and applies the material gleaned through poetic- and self-analysis to
the understanding of future courses of action. Yet even as he at-
tempts to shape a new poetics in his work, crafting a role for him-
self both as auctor and as exegete, he encourages his readers to
participate in the process by themselves becoming adept readers of
a language that transcends traditional limits. Dante creates a distinct
value for poetry even as he decentralizes literary form, posing both
his life and his dreams, translated into lyric poetry, as riddles to be
scrutinized by other readers. By blurring the boundaries between
artifact and knowledge, he makes language into a mode of seeing
that transforms readers' relationships to their own notions of self-
hood, as they witness in the Vita :'\·uova the transformation of stan-
dard tropes into vehicles for theophany.
Strictly speaking, Vita Nuova is a sort of autobiography, the key
moments being commemorated by a series of youthful lyric poems,
which themselves are given meaning through prose commentary.
Both the autobiography and the poems are exceptional in their at-
tempt to break new ground, to find a voice capable of expressing its
own singularity. From the opening chapter of the Vita, in which the
poet declares his intention to copy into written form "that part of
the book of my memory" that defines the beginning of his "new
92 ENGA(;INC; WORDS
life," the poet identifies himself both as poet a11d as exegete, translat-
ing the significance of both written and felt experience into sacred
text. 33 By treating his past self itself as text to be rewritten and rein-
scribed through the double vehicles of poetry and exegesis, Dante
portrays a conversion to God through erotic love that converts the
very reader through the act of reading.
The lyrics, recasting and aestheticizing lived experience for fu-
ture reconsideration, impel the reader along the poet's own path of
development from lover to artist, as Beatrice comes to be revealed
as the "visible sign of invisible grace.''-' 4 Though the poetry itself
does not stray too far from the limits of poetic propriety, the book
as a whole, combining the three acts of confession, poetic creation,
and exegesis, becomes, as it were, a new genre dedicated to defining
through the moments of artistic creation and the recapturing of the
originary artistic context the voice, nature, and purpose of a literary
author. 35 The parameters of this new genre of writing enable the
poet to gloss his own life and works for us and to shape new sym-
bols and signs in poetic language. His beloved BeJtrice is more than
a woman and more than a trope-she is a vessel containing divine
truth as well as an image the narrator can venerate and adore.
Through this conversion of mundane to sacred, human to divine,
rhe Vita Nuova also converts the poetic art itself, putting it to a new
purpose as a vessel for theophany or revelation. In seeking to trans-
form mundane language into a vessel adequate for containing a
trace of the divine essence, the poet treats language and its various
shapes as a type of mediation through which a reader can encounter
something higher. He teaches his audience to read this language,
and to read themselves and their actions, even as he does that those
moments of revelation may be recognized and incorporated into fu-
ture actions. 36
This didactic purpose is, ironically, somewhat concealed by the
literal commentaries that accompany the enigmatic sonnets. Indeed,
there seems to be a curious disjunction between the poet's ex-
pressed desire to gloss the text for us and at the same time withhold
meaning. The Vita Nuova's commentaries, though they concentrate
on explication according to organization and rhetorical technique,
as in the commentary tradition outlined above, at the same time
AUTHORIZED READERS 93
Dante will clarifY later in the work to be real sacred truths. In such
a way we are gradually introduced to the impenetrability of lan-
guage. Language functions much as the veil barely covering the
naked Beatrice. It signals an umvillingness to fully disclose all lest
the value of the interior meaning be debased or lost upon an un-
ready reader. We might conclude that Dante's commentaries serve
to expose the ineffectiveness of the commentary tradition for re-
covering sacred meaning. The strange digression in chapter XXV,
in which Dante quite suddenly departs from his subject matter to
expvund in an unexpectedly scholastic manner upon the treatment
of figurative language, might confirm this suspicion. In his seeming
demystification of the poetic process, he calls attention to the
process of naming itself, so that the reader is motivated to rethink
his or her own relationship to the figurative language that poets as-
sume to be commonplace:"! Instead, the reader must experience
the entire Vita on its own terms, experiencing even with the poet
the transformative nature oflove. Only then will the reader recog-
nize in these lines not only the premonition of the death of Beat-
rice but also her importance to Dante's own spiritual conversion.
This disjunction creates a hermeneutic vacuum demanding the
participation of the reader for its fulfillment; the reader glosses the
poetry in order to understand the series of displacements that
occur through language to effect a subjective transformation. The
textual experience recounted in the Vita has double force, reacting
upon both author and audience, as the author continually with-
holds interpretive commentary and yet tantalizingly reassures us
that "the meaning is quite evident." Dante's poetics require the co-
operation of the reader in order to effect the illusion of conversion
through poetry.
This is a poetics that operates retroactively. Only after experienc-
ing the fullness of Dante's conversion along with him and only after
learning to read the new poetics his art and life invent may we un-
derstand the allegorical operation of Dante's language. Later we rec-
ognize in the central images of the God of Love, the veiled girl, and
the consumption of the heart the iconic prefiguring of Dante's
transformation: the experience of his own material death through
the enactment of the violent imagery of sacrifice as his glowing
AUTHORIZED READERS 95
turns the mind away from evil, or whether the lordship of love is a
negative force, in that it renders the lover abject. In both instances
"love" itself is an empty concept; its value emerges only insofar as
love figures as a conduit for another kind of awareness or physical
state. Dante complicates this debate with another element-that
"names are the consequences of things" [Nomina sunt consequen-
tia rerum]-followed by the revelation that "the lady through
whom Love binds you so is not like other ladies" [la donna per cui
Amore ti stringe cosi, none come l'altre donne]. 41 The incongruity
of these latter statements with the former seems almost absurd. Not
only are they not parallel, so to speak-insofar as they address par-
ticularities rather than the philosophy oflove that purports to be the
subject of contemplation-but they open up other issues altogether.
Dante never elaborates the meaning of this series of disturbances.
Yet the seeming contradictions and incompatibilities are at the heart
of poetic hermeneutics; only by understanding the displacement
enacted by signs as they substitute images for feelings, and feelings
for states of consciousness, can the poetic effect work on the mind
of the reader. Dante's system of tropes uses the function of"nam-
ing" to substitute that which we know-or think we know-for
that which we cannot know except through a gradual exploration
of our metaphorical concepts. The lady is thus a name, following
from the consequence of the real person of Beatrice, who stands in
for love. Yet love itself, figured both as personification and as con-
ceptual sign, is initially posed so as to be deliberately misunderstood.
Gradually, throughout the Vita, both the feeling and concept oflove
are displaced in favor of an unnameable higher force, which posits
transformation and growth through reading as a step toward spiri-
tual epiphany.
The metaphor of the screen appears several times in the Vita.
Dante uses the device of screen ladies to hide the real object of his
veneration, Beatrice, but Beatrice is also a screen for something
more sacred and more personal-spiritual salvation through in-
spired love. If the signification of his poetry is to be screened both
by the literal focus on a lady as love object, and the identity of the
lady is also to be screened for her own honor and protection, then
the commentaries help to aid in this screening function. The poetry
AUTHORIZED READERS 97
original dream nor the poetic resonance of the canzone that renders
the experience aesthetic:
[This canzone has two sections. In the first I tell, speaking to some
unidentified person, how I was aroused from a delirious dream by
certain ladies and how I promised to tell them about it; in the sec-
ond I relate how I told them. The second begins here: "While I was
brooding."The first section divides into two parts. In the first I men-
tion what certain ladies and one particular lady said and did on ac-
count of my dreaming before I had returned to true consciousness;
in the second I tell what these ladies said to me after I had come out
of my frenzied dream, and this part begins here: "I called with
voice" ... ]46
Both poem and final narrative sadly recount the failure ofDante's
language to encompass his purpose. The final chapter provides the
single persuasive interpretive commentary throughout the Vita.
Beatrice is posed as the direct mediation to the divine One, "held
in reverence" and "splendid in light," who allows Dante, in gazing
upon her, to gaze through her to God. The poem laments that the
narrator "cannot understand the subtle words" that the image of
Beatrice would seem to speak to him, but the narrative that follows
clearly identifies the incomprehensible as the "One." Here at last,
then, is interpretation provided for the poem: Dante grieves that his
writing is "incapable" of containing Beatrice's sacramental signifi-
AUTHORIZED READERS 105
Rereading Augustine:
Petrarch and the Book
[ ... as often as I read the book of your Cm!fcssio11s, and am made par-
taker of your conflict between two contrary emotions, between hope
and fear (and weep as I read), I seem to be hearing the story of my
own self, the story not of another's wandering, but of my own.]
[That this discourse, so intimate and deep, might not be lost, I have
set it down in writing and made this book; not that I wish to class
it with my other works, or desire from it any credit. My thoughts
aim higher. What I desire is that I may be able by reading to renew
as otten as I wish the pleasure I felt from the discourse itself. So, lit-
tle Book, I bid you flee the haunts of men and be content to stay
with me, true to the title I have given you of" My Secret": and when
I would think upon deep nutters. all that you keep in remembrance
that was spoken in secret you in secret will tell to me over again.] 5f>
to the public domain, as Petrarch does indeed write down and thus
offer for public consumption an experience that he otherwise pos-
sessively maintains to be intimate and personal. But at the same
time, the text belongs solely to him, because only through his own
private act of reading will the experience and all its connected sig-
nificance revive. Only he, as a privileged reader, will be able to enjoy
fully the secrets of the book. Reading becomes for him then both
a commemorative act, preserving a sacred personal experience, and
an active, pleasurable act, connecting book to reader in an intimate
way that cannot be appropriated by others.
Yet even insofar as writing is commemorative, Petrarch's sense of
the value of discourse differs from his precedents. What is commem-
orated in his book is personal experience or personal revelation that
has immediate and ongoing significance for his life; like Augustine's
ecstatic experience at the end of the Confessions, Petrarch's soul is
transformed by the forward drive of discourse upon truth. But in Pe-
trarch the spirit is not effaced or even transfigured by the supreme
spirit of God. Instead, the discursive pursuits of the Secretum lead to
self-transformation and the reification of personal truth.
As in Dante's world, such transformations take place only
through the realm of discourse, whereby the reading self discursively
moves by means of the words of another into a different plane of
perception and mental experience. Yet Petrarch's approach to read-
ing focuses on rereading the classics and expounding them through
discourse with another mind. It is through talking and considering
the various elocutionary acts of classic auctores that the narrator Pe-
trarch is led to examine himself and to gain insight into his own
predicaments.
The act of reading, then, becomes metaphoric: when one learns
to accept new viewpoints and perceptions and to analyze them
through appropriate interpretive methods and affects, one also
learns to apply that art to oneself. The entire Secretum refocuses its
attention, after its brief excursus on reading, on the necessity of
learning to exercise self-examination, or, in other words, to read the
self for what it is. The narrator himself becomes a sort of text, to be
measured and assessed against other exemplary texts and to be re-
vised and reworked according to their model. Augustine tells the
AUTHORIZED READERS 111
Fr. Nisi et hie fallor, nullus hominum crebrius in has revolvitur curas.
A~1g.Nova lis laborque alius.
Fr. Quid ergo' etiam ne hoc mentior?
Aug. Urbanius loqui velim.
Fr. Hanc tamen sententiam.
Aug. Certe non aliam.
Fr. Ergo ego de morte non cogito'
Aug Perraro quidcm, idque tam segniter, ut in imum calamitatis tue
fimdum cogitatio ipsa non penetret.
The lesson that the unwilling narrator, Petrarch, must learn is that
the world of reality constructed by language is at once feeble and
yet highly seductive; it is a world that deceives its constructor into
believing it to be a real circumstance without recognizing that he
himself stands as the creator of it. Such stories of the self are to be
challenged for what they are: fictions that mistake lies for truths, that
cover reality with a facade of reason that prevents the truth from
being seen.
Quam multa sunt que animum tuum funestis alis extollunt et sub in-
site nobilitatis obtentu, totiens experte fragilitatis immemorem fati-
gant, occupant, circumvolvunt, aliud cogitare non sinunt,
superbientem fidentemque suis viribus, et usque ad Creatoris odium
placentem sibi .... Nunc vero facillime licebit quam pusilla sunt,
quibus superbis, intelligere. Fidis ingenio et librorum lectione multo-
rum; gloriaris eloquio, et forma morituri corporis delectaris ....
Quid enim, queso, puerilius imo vero quid insanius quam, in tanta
rerum omnium incuria tantaque segnitie, verborum studio tempus
impendere et lippis oculis nunquam sua probra cernentem, tantam
voluptatem ex sermone percipere, quarundam avicolarum in morem,
quas aiunt usque in perniciem proprii cantus dulcedine delectari?
114 ENGAGING WORDS
For in the maladies of the soul, as in those of the body, there are
some in which delay is fatal, so that if you defer the remedy you take
away all hope of a cure.] 63
[Yourself have given me the answer for which you look ... why, do
you not see that if a man bears his wound with him, change of scene
is but an aggravation of his pain and not a means of healing it? ...
You must first break off the old load of your passions; you must make
your soul ready. Thm you must fly. t'J
[Like a man on dry land and out of danger, you will look upon the
shipwreck of others, :md from your quiet haven hear the cries of
those wrestling with the waves, and though you will be moved with
tender compassion by that sight, yet even that will be the measure
also of your own thankfulness and joy at being in safety.And ere long
I am sure you will banish and drive away all that melancholy that has
oppressed your soul.J 711
Conclusion
T
hough the commentary tradition continued to constitute both
a documented and official method of reading, it was not the
only type of reading response available to the late medievals-nor
was it necessarily the most prevalent. The inward turn apparent in
the reading practices of Dante and Petrarch marks a general shift in
the relationship of individual response to a received tradition of au-
thority. Readers of vernacular texts and contemporary English writ-
ing were, in general, not fluent in Latin. Comprised of the gentry,
merchants, lawyers, and artisans, these lay readers might not receive
formal instruction in the academic reception of auctoritas-which
rendered a text, in any account, both intimidating and unapproach-
able. Instead models of reading were adopted that were much freer
and more practical in their application than the scholastic mode. In
such a way the layman participated in the culture of reading and, in-
deed, transformed it.
Medieval poets seem to have been aware of the different needs
of their readers, since they actively sought to shape the conditions
of reading that defined and informed taste. The tradition of author-
ity validated by the commentary tradition became increasingly
problematic for the humanists, who saw themselves as participating
in a different kind of tradition. Some late medieval writers publi-
cally positioned themselves as antagonistic toward the scholastics,
suggesting that the commentary approach distorted the act of read-
ing and stripped fiction of its capacity for envisioning different
kinds of humanist activities. Boccaccio, for example, dismissed the
learned approach as an intellectual exercise that ultimately had little
122 ENGA(;ING WORDS
[Can a man without eyes see? Neither can a schobr "see," unless he
first acquires the skill from reading books. l3ooks were made by man,
but it was God who taught what they should contain; it was his Holy
Spirit that provided the exemplar indicating what men should write
down. Well, just as the power of vision enables someone to see the
direction of the road, so literacy and learning teach the ignorant the
road to reason.]"
In Piers Plowman books are equated with mental sight: books are the
eyes that provide insight and understanding into the world and its
people. The third vision of Piers Plowman, in which this passage ap-
pears, suggests, like Boccaccio, that academic learning can involve a
kind of pride or vanity that eclipses whatever knowledge might
have been derived trom the texts read. Yet the vision ends with the
insistence that the misbehavior of certain academics does not lessen
the value of their insights, which can be appropriated and used even
by the "lewed." Reading teaches the skills of objective reflection:
one learns to read, then one learns to read oneself.
Late fourteenth-century writers frequently positioned themselves
against the scholastics, acknowledging both a greater readership, who
might be untrained in the scholastic and allegorical modes of inter-
pretation, and a greater purpose in reading and writing books than
the scholastic tradition would hold. These writers responded to texts
124
... Pe world holt hem worsshipful ~at been greet werreyours and
fi 3teres and ~at distroyen and wynn en manye loondis, and waasten
and 3euen muche good to hem pat haan ynou3. and pat dispended
outrageously in mete, in drynke, in cloo~1ing, in buyldyng, and in
lyuyng in eese, slou ~e, and manye oopere synnes. And also pe world
worsshipep bern muchel pat woln been venged proudly and dispi-
tously of euery wrong pat is seid or doon of hem. And of swyche
folke men makcn bookes and soongcs and reeden and syngen of
hem for to bookie the mynde of here deedcs pe lengere heere vpon
eerth, ffor pat is a ping pat worldely men desiren greetly pat here
naame myghte bste loonge Jfter hem heere vpon eerth. But what so
euere pe world deemcp of swiche forseide folke leerne we wei pat
THE ETHICS Cll' READINC 125
God is souuerayn treul)e and a trewc iugt' pat dcemel) hem ri3t
shameful . . .4
and for the notion of auctoritas. For when the individual's judgment
on ambivalent acts is suspended by a canonical tradition that insists on
validating them-either by rewriting events from the pagan auctor in
allegorical terms or by simply preserving and citing from the textual
record-such texts can have unforeseen repercussions for the non-
sacred world that esteems them. Auctoritas is then not far from its
chivalric counterpart,fama, which exploits the nonsacred surplus of
the text to the detriment of the greater part of the social world.
Chaucer's own concern for the implications of a tradition of auc-
toritas is exhibited throughout his works. Whereas his contempo-
raries in literary endeavors participate in what A. ]. Minnis has
identified as a tradition dependent upon the auctores for its moral
and ethical legitimacy, for Chaucer that very tradition becomes sus-
pect. 5 From the House cif Fame through the Legend of Good U0men
and the Canterbury Tales, authority functions in Chaucer as a dou-
ble-edged constraint. On the one hand, auctoritas is a metaphorical
concept commonly accepted in the Middle Ages as a means of re-
ferring to an abstract form of truth revealed through canonical nar-
ratives. At the same time, however, the term tends to be treated
quasi-ironically in Chaucer's texts, as a construct that retains its
grasp only by the power of human consent. Insofar as it constitutes
a master narrative limiting the potential of creative works and re-
sponses to them, auctoritas in the latter sense hinders the possibility
of humanistic progress by imposing an iron-fisted hold on the imag-
inations of fourteenth-century readers.
This two-sided perspective on the nature of auctoritas manifests in
Chaucer as a healthy skepticism toward all authoritative claims or
narratives. The act of reading thus tends to be privileged over the
act of writing in Chaucer's works, as reading enables the subjective
and yet educated response of the audience to mediate between
claims that either compete factually or demand a problematic ethi-
cal stance. 6 Chaucer's treatment of auctoritas in the House cif Fame de-
flects the impact of the narratives the great auctores produce by
exposing the twin elements of authority and authorship, privileging
the latter as a means of revealing the human dimension underscor-
ing all written texts. More importantly, however, Chaucer's empha-
sis on the acts of authorship foregrounds the role interpretation and
THE ETHICS OF READING 127
In order that what we are thinking may reach the mind of the lis-
tener through the t1eshly ears, that which we have in mind is ex-
pressed in words and is called speech. But our thought is not
transformed into sounds; it remains entire in itself and assumes the
form of words by means of vv·hich it may reach the ears without suf-
fering any deterioration in itself. 1"
The apparent discrepancy here between the "ideJl" with which the
clamorers would have themselves be associJted Jnd the shortcom-
ings they obviously recognize in themselves makes a curious state-
ment about the perpetuation and degradation of societal behaviors
and ethics. Once codes ofbehavior are legitimized through writing,
they begin to clone themselves endlessly in poorer Jnd poorer
models. Despite acknowledging their own poorer status as authori-
ties, living writers clamor to have their own essential identities made
untouchable through the Midas-touch of bme. Canonization places
the actions beyond scrutiny, regJrdless of whJt really happened or
\vhat moral or ethical implications those actions might have had.
in the waking world. The act of seeing, accentuated through the vi-
sual medium of the panels, becomes both an act of perception-the
dreamer views the panels-and an act of reading-he interprets the
movements on the panels by mnemonic reference to the blueprint
of the story in his own mind, and reconciles the interior story with
the exterior through the acts of contemplation and evaluation. 20
The process of viewing the panels thus defines and models the in-
tegrated process of reader-response: Geflrey narrates in specific de-
tail what he sees before him and how he translates those images in
his mind's eye; he justifies his reaction as an engaged and concerned
witness to a troubling set of historical events.
Book I's centrality to the text as a whole. however, lies in the ma-
terial the dreamer peruses. As a reader, Geffrey must not only deal
with the fact that the authorities on the tradition are in disagree-
ment-a problem dealt with long before by Abelard in his famous
Sic ct No11. More importantly. he must also engage the problem that
the authorities valorize acts that seem to him at best unethical and
self-serving. Chaucer's rendition of the Dido and Aeneas story com-
bines the two largely conflicting accounts offered by Virgil and
Ovid. In the former, Aeneas's abandonment of Dido is justified be-
cause a more glorious destiny awaits him, whereas in the latter Dido
is treated more sympathetically and Aeneas's behavior is vilified. The
delineation of the Dido and Aeneas story in Book I is thus divided
equally between presentation of events and puzzlement over how to
interpret them. The emphasis is on salvaging the judgment of a
reader who finds Aeneas's behavior difficult to legitimize, despite
the claims of some of his chroniclers. The dreamer notes that Virgil,
for example, justifies Dido's abandonment because "Mercurie ...
Bad hym goo into Itayle" [Mercury instructed him to go to Italy, 11.
429-39], and remarks (rather ironically, I think) that such a dis-
claimer might "excusen Eneas I Fullyche of al his grete trespas" [ex-
cuse Aeneas fully tor his great wrongdoing, 11. 427-28].Yet his own
empathetic reaction to the plight of the different characters seems
closer to Ovid's. The House of Fame's Dido complains, "Allas, is every
man thus trewe, I That every yer wolde have a newe I ... or elles
three, peraventure?" [Alas, is every man so faithful, that he must have
a new (lover) every year, or even three, perhaps? 11. 301-2]. The con-
THE ETHICS OF READING
transcendent and only grants them validity (if at all) within a cir-
cumscribed historic moment. The issue is not that varying accounts
of Aeneas may all be in some respect correct, but rather that the
moral and imperative message such texts proclaim is no longer cor-
rect for Getfrey's world:
Asserting that such messages no longer hold true requires that they
be de-ontologized. The dreamer refuses to read figuratively: that is,
he refuses to use old, authoritative, or mythologized texts as the
model or frame by which to read contemporary texts or actions.
Thus fame as a legitimate human pursuit becomes a particular issue
in the poem, when it is shown to be the process validating certain
texts and when it becomes a goal to be sought and valorized by cer-
tain authorities or heroes seeking their own claim to immortality.
By valorizing certain human pursuits, writing mythologizes acts
that otherwise might be perceived as partaking in the sins of vanity
and pride. As Stephen Knight observes, the "harm" and "untrouthe"
that emanate from such texts have repercussions not merely tor the
idea of £1me as reputation, but as well as for the "substantive social
force" of "honor" itself.2 3 Both types of fame are legitimized and
made part of the ideological apparatus through the authority of
writing, which, particularly in the Middle Ages, praises honor,
knighthood, and the establishment of a viable reputation as ideal
models for human pursuit. Such writings cannot be taken without
a grain of salt. Instead, the House <?f Fame would seem to suggest that
the answer to justifying conflicting and/ or problematic accounts lies
in the reader, who becomes the real auctorit,Js for the text received-
1-+2
Authorizing Readers
of seeing and expressing and to reenact and perhaps even further ag-
grandize those values through continued publishing.
As the only possible ethical conclusion to his vision, the dreamer
must therefore forego any claim his own writing might make for es-
tablishing authority over the lives of his readers. Like his forerunner
Petrarch, the dreamer Geffrey avers a distrust of fame and its pur-
suits; unlike Petrarch, however, he does not distrust fame because it
indicates his potential succumbing to the pride of the fleshly self.
Rather, he desires to protect the truth of his art from the numbing
artifice of fame:
TEXTUAL SUBJECTS
T
he frontispiece of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS. 61
allegedly portrays Chaucer in the persona of the auctor, reading
or performing his poetry before a court audience (figure 5.1). The
poet stands behind a pulpit, his arms outstretched as if orating. Be-
fore him, exhibiting varying degrees of attentiveness, sit a number of
fashionably dressed listeners, personifYing a possible courtly "audi-
ence" for the author's works. 1 As Derek Pearsall has demonstrated,
the image is a fiction; there is no reason to believe that an exemplar
existed during Chaucer's time from which this fifteenth-century
portrait was copied, nor even that the scene is based on a real event
from the illuminator's memory. 2 Indeed, it is even unlikely that the
court predominantly comprised Chaucer's audience, which seems
much more apt to have been made up of the lesser gentry and in-
tellectuals with whom he was known to associate: Ralph Strode and
Gower, mentioned explicitly in the dedication of Troilus; the knights
John Clanvowe, Lewis Clifford, William Beauchamp, Philipe de la
Vache, and Richard Sturry; the merchants Nicholas Brembre, John
Philipot, and John Hende; and the poets Scogan and Thomas Usk. 3
Yet even as an imaginary rendition of the relationship between
author and audience, the image indicates much about the affective
impact of fiction in social settings. Firmly removed from the domain
of reality by the frame that physically surrounds the central image
on the page, Chaucer's auditors are depicted in assorted postures of
reception: although a red-hooded gentleman on the right appears
engrossed in the performance, as do a trio of open-mouthed fans at
the very front of the pulpit, those on the left side of the page wear
146
Figure 5.1 Chaucer and his audience. Troilus and Criseyde. Cambridge, Corpus
Christi College, MS. 61, frontispiece.
TEXTUAL SUBJECTS 147
\Vite of Bath and the Prioress, frJr e_\,llllplc. t'n?age texts .md as,,u,,~
re'>ponses tmv.1rd them tb,1t delint'ate 1\vo very difierent types of
agency: one active and critical; the other passive, judgmentaL .md
potentially dangerous. By imagining the self as a reader whoc,e own
contlicts, contradiction~, and incongruities are revealed hv the way
she or he engages texts, Chaucer ofF·rs a critique of ;l~t'llt;ty th:o.t
undennines the persona conu~ptiqn ot identity embrac-ed by the
late medievals.; Self-portraval ultinntdy b'.:ccm1es no more ::1;-.n ''
form of te,:tu;1] masking tq h· ipteJ p1 ctr>d, inter rC'P:ated. :1JH! finally
doubted.
Reading as Foresight:
Cassandra and the Book of History
dream Diomede's hcr.1ld, the sign nf the b<):tL '<dll!·h ;]!•' Jl!ldt:r·
stands as signifying that it is Diomnl whu h ::-. ,, ._;, ·.·td Cn~t·;·.Jc.
Cassandra's gifts position her as an interL'Stlil~·; cCJr'-ebcc co "c:r :u?·-
rator, insofar as she proves herself :m admir:tble editor of the "ol<~e
bokes"; she is capable both of sitting through ::he ,,,mrn"; f(,, reJc ..
vance :md truth :md ofrccasting them dmHJgh :·a.-r "'·\·1 .,,._;s:.· :,ri:::-: ..
torical reacbhility. 17 Though hcr pn:\l'JlL·c to scniJL. :. _,.;::c'·lc ·:;L ·;·.s ,_;-,._.
presence of t~lte, \vhich unfolds throughout tfw tak :md whicl' con-
tinues to untold throughout history, at the same time :-:he leave' un-
remarkeclmuch of the psychological t(me of the dr,·:·~''· :<nrl sl1c '"Y'
nothiug about Troilus's willt'ld denial of Its meaning. dc:r llttt·rpret>.·
t10n is incomplete, and the iructinn tl1Jt result:-. fl·on; :t ind:Clte·;
Troilus's recakitr:mce in etTecting Jl tion tlJJt devalut's "·.r ci;sauth(:-·
rizes a prior idealization ofhimselt.'T]·oilus's inability to ~;j,~>pt· LJ•: ,!( --
tions according to any other discourse thaiJ the one that shapes h1~
own identity anticipates his eventual f:1ilure to owrcc1ll>t: hi' fate.
A similar relationship between interpretation and actl;m ink.rms
Diomede's success. Skilled in the proper guises one 111rt't :J~;sume to
seduce women, 1)iomede crafts a courtly lllclsk, :tcun atdy ~·-':ic~'ing
Crio;eyde's demeanor, gue-;siug her relatiomhip to the f()rlorn Trcilus,
and competitively reacting on the basis of these readings. [ -k sh.1pc;
himself into the \Uitor that his reading of tl1c sisns inl(mns h1m '.he
Wcmts him to be. In both instances, accurcltt' reading trambtc:s \;ltu
successf'ld masking; the more successful re:1der prc\-ails. MoLJl H>
tegrity ha<> less to do with survival tlun texmal Llcility.
Chancer's depiction of hin1self ~1s a reader rather than ~!:' an J\1·
thor in his own text may retlect the convi,·ti,m that H'.Hh11g is :;
more viable ;md ethical skill th~m writing. 1~ Like the Ho/1.11' ,f hnn,·,
1i·oilus and Criscydc demonstrates that all acts of anthorohip ha'/t~
consequences. Pandarus is depicted :1s ,\ moully ambivalt:nt creamr
of romance scenarios and involvements, tbemsclvc~ :1ppc~rently g;cn--
erated from a love of romance texts and the willingness to perpet·
uate their tictions. Pandarus reads romanCL'' throughout t:H~
text-most notably during the first scene in which ·rrOilu-; ;1nd
Criseyde unite. He attributes the reading of romances to other c1Dr-
acters, though treCjUt'Iltly, as discussed abuve, t!Jt'ir re.1ding rrekr--
ences dif±er from hi' own. Further, the tlctions be creates as ruse' to
158 ENGACINC WORDS
shapes history. On the other hand, writers can embellish, but they
cannot legitimately change historical events; they are bound to
write as fate demands. Authors can, however, change our percep-
tions of history by carefully reading and extrapolating on varying
depictions of past events. Again it is attention to reading that is the
most crucial skill, as only careful study of the inner complexities of
historical motivations can lead us to the insights that will help us in
the present. Reading is metaphorically enlarged beyond the com-
pass of the text so that it becomes an act replete with social reso-
nance. If the failure to negotiate the reading process (or to
practically and soundly complete texts, in a broad sense of the word)
can result, as in the story of Oedipus, in ultimate tragedy, then the
theme of reading in Troilus becomes something of a warning for
Chaucer's own readers.
Troilus and Criseyde oscillates between the hope of offering re-
demption through the ability to judge accurately and to act upon
that judgment, and the despair of possessing the knowledge but
being unable to change. Even as Troilus regresses and eventually
dies, so does the city ofTroy, which is incapable of correctly read-
ing and responding to the signs of coming change. There is cer-
tainly a premonition in Troilus and Criseyde that Troy's doom is not
unrelated to Troilus's. As the exchange of Criseyde for An tenor re-
veals, the Trojans' ineptitude in judging character eventually costs
them their city. Chaucer's more informed readers know that in the
Latin tradition deriving from Dares, An tenor will later betray the
Trojans in order to negotiate an escape for his own family with the
Greeks. Yet in a characteristically inept fashion, the Trojans badly
misjudge An tenor's character, demanding his release in spite of the
fact that such a move is, as Hector himself points out, morally un-
sustainable: Troy should not be known as a city that traffics in
women. Blind reading is here equated with moral servitude. As
must be obvious to late medieval readers, the immorality of the
Trojans' choice in sacrificing the innocent for the guilty parallels
the New Testament sacritlcing of Jesus to Pontius Pilate so that
Barabas may be freed. The irony of the last line of their dismissal of
Hector is especially painful, cb. ly acknowledging their willing-
ness to sacritlce someone innocent:
160 ENGAGING WORDS
Experiential Poetics:
The Prioress and the Wife of Bath
n:;;ent may re\ c,,j gei!dcr-speciti.c re,1dcr-respome issues. Yet that is not
the purpose here. Rather, Clnucer's use of temak characters as
spokespeople for the diHerent issues their tales raise can be seen as a
means of linking extreme "unlearned" or "untrained" responses to
what we might call the "master narratives" that embody and continue
the ideologit's that constitute a culture's sense of idemit;' :md tradi-
tion.21 As marginalized participants m medieval culture, female speak-
ers (or, at least, the two female speaker'> represented in the Canterbury
Tale.i) are comtrained by those institutions that grant ·women the au-
thority to speak.The Prioress describes her'ielf as but "wJyk" in "kon-
nyng" (1. 481 ), aud compares henelf to "a child of twelf month oold,
or Jesse" (1. 484). She modestly proclaims that she lacks rhetorical
skills. Her tale also suggests that she has the capacity merely to mem-
orize by rote but not to question. The \X!ife certainly avers much
more confidence in her reasoning ~kilb, yet she, too, appears to lack
formal education and is quite possibly illiterate---she reads narratives
that are delivered to her orally by the men in her life. Both women
also are described as being removed fi:om positions of occupational
authority (if not from degrees of social reality). The Prioress lives in
the removed and almost narClssistic world of the cloister, while the
\Vife lives in the world of the village, where a woman's status is con-
ferred by her fm1ily rank or wealth. As dependents, neither can the-
oretically claim authority f(x her tale or it~ moral import. Each is
rather expected to conform to the decorum already established by the
range of stories appropriately available to her.
The different ways in which each is integrated into the pilgrim-
age, however, snggests immediately their opposing approaches to
gendered reading and storytelling. The Wife's prologue is imbedded
in the drama of the pilgri1mge itself. Her story begins abruptly, as
an interruption in the main narrative. Though we cannot be certain
which tale precedes the Wife's in what is known as "'Fragment III,"
there can be no doubt that the Wife's voice begins officiously, even
intrusively, when compared with the entrances of the other pil-
grim\ stories. 22 The Man of Law's exemplary tale of Constant Con-
stance, which precedes the \X!ife of Bath's invective ag<linst male
domination, pruvides the Juthority against which she must react.
Unlike the Clerk, the Man of Law presents his character without
166 ENCACINC WORDS
public utility into a personal one, so that it is the individual lay per-
son who must judge, evaluate, and render into action the texts that
function as authorities over his or her own life. There can be no
such generality as "everyman" in the Wife's lived experience; such
generalizations as the misogynistic commonplaces her husband
flouts before her have dramatic consequences for the individuals
who must live them.
As Carolyn Dinshaw notes, the Wife's dramatized entry into the
forum symbolically foreshadows the appropriation ofboth male au-
thorship and male reading practices in her own prologue and tale. 23
More importantly for this study, the Wife's prologue, contextualiz-
ing a narrative of her own marital experiences within the social im-
perative of understanding the feminine as based on her own gloss of
the clerics, demonstrates the importance reading has for authoring
the text that is one's own life. The Wife's initial forays into the de-
fense of her marital practices fully utilize the auctoritas of the patris-
tic fathers. Her own experiences do not appear until later, though
they form the implicit basis for her concern with the meaning of
the authorities. The Wife has good reason for taking on the author-
ities in her prologue, for she tells us that her fifth husband,Janekyn,
had been an Oxford clerk and has among his possessions a book
about wicked wives, from which he constantly reads to her in an ef-
fort to convince her of the failings of her sex. "It is an impossible I
That any clerk wol speke good of wyves" [it is an impossibility that
any clerk will speak well of wives], she remarks (II. 688-89), con-
firming Dinshaw's own conclusion that "self-interestedness is always
potential in the act of glossing." 24 The Wife's derogatory words,
however self-interested, have the effect of diminishing the more
"authoritative" discourse of the scholars' rhetorical display. Her use
of repetition and context certainly reveals the exegetes' objectivity
as less than objective, her revelation being a magnificent accom-
plishment in itself. For what the Wife accomplishes, essentially, is the
deconstruction of discourse to reveal the structures of ideology and
self-interest that always lay behind it.
The effect of the Wife's preamble on authority is twofold. It sit-
uates her as a reader of culture-that is, as a fully knowledgeable and
concerned practitioner of her culture's deeper values-and it reveals
168 ENGAGING WORDS
541-42]--fears that would suggest that the child has some vague
awareness that his acts will not be perceived benevolently by all.
Yet the personal danger to the child is supplemented by a subtler
transgression: that of assuming one word, language, or perspective
applies to everyone, despite whatever difference others might dis-
play tl-om oneself. The exclusion of an entire neighborhood of the
city from the child's worldview would be consistent with the self-
absorption of childhood, yet at the same time such an attitude is
hardly laudatory. The Prioress's own ready acceptance of this dis-
course, repeated seemingly without concern for some of the tale's
more shocking injustices, emphasizes the discrepancy that ever ex-
ists between speaker and text. She perpetuates without question a
narrative, complete with its resonant language and underlying
agenda, that sustains a potentially dangerous ideology. Chaucer de-
parts from the sources of the Prioress's Tale significantly at the end,
emphasizing the mass scapegoating of the Jews without trial or
mercy by a provost who himself stands to benefit economically by
their removal. The provost's selt-:.interested intervention in the name
of justice again undercuts the legitimacy of the ideological language
used as all-embracing world measure: "Yvele shal have that yevele
wol deserve" [evil shall have what evil well deserves], he cries (1.
632), but of course, little real investigation of the event or its cul-
prits is enacted. The Jews are guilty by association alone.
The controversy regarding the Prioress's anti-Semitism is of
course well documented. Schoeck has perhaps most forcdi.1lly
demonstrated the argument that the Prioress's bigotry is intended
both to horrify and dismay contemporary audiences. The Prioress
mentions one controversial event as an analogue to her tale: the ex-
pulsion of the Jews after the murder of Hugh of Lincoln in 1294.
In the historical event an entire body of Jews were blamed-appar-
ently erroneously-for the murder of a small child, even as they are
in the Prioress's fictitious tale. But other historical events much
closer to Chaucer's own time also exhibit many parallels to the sit-
uation in the Prioress's Tale. The Flemings, successful rivals of the
English weavers and a class of people outside the norms of English
society, were murdered outright by a mob during the Peasant's Re-
volt in 1381 . Chroniclers of the time deplored the hypocrisy of that
172 EN(;ACINC; WORIJS
tifeminists reveals the extent to which she herself has been indoc-
trinated by this discourse. For all its self-conscious presentation, the
Wife's identity is problematic. Her voice is not fully in control of
the discourses it invokes. Her texts sometimes slip, revealing inex-
plicable parallels and consistencies. These, strangely, have a logic of
their own and undermine the master-framework of her own claim
to authority over the self. Abrupt memories and feelings interrupt
the narrative and themselves serve for causes tor both her and us to
revisit her prior utterances, to layer new meaning upon the old
narrative. These surges of seemingly unauthorized disclosure ne-
cessitate the rereading and reworking of our understanding of the
subject before us.
In emphasizing the place of words, signifYing activities, and the
eventual dominance of misogynist ideology. the Wife reiterates the
healthy skepticism presaged in the House 4 Fame. However, in the
Wite of Bath's prologue the signifYing puzzle is further complicated
by the contaminating influence of subjectivity and its own claims to
power. Received discourse gives the Wife her characteristic "femi-
ninity," but she simultaneously uses that discourse to subvert the pa-
triarchal authority her husbands would wield over her like some
outdated but binding rule to which all women must acquiesce. She
is able to read her husbands' fears and allay them, by reiterating and
then dismissing in outrage the very sins of which she acknowledges
herself guilty. She is the one who establishes the rhetorical situation.
Yet at the same time, as Lee Patterson has most famously noted,
sometimes the Wife's authorities get the best of her as her experi-
ential resources contaminate her textbook ones. 3 ~
The Wife's unique ability to cast apparently real concerns within
the false and overgeneralized complaints of the misogynist litany
particularly demonstrate the dangers of establishing authoritative
generalizations over particular cases that need to be particularly
read. The Wife's success as a subject-a subject who will be heard,
rather than silenced, and one who will leave a mark-centers on her
ability to rhetorically control her circumstances, and, specifically, to
dominate her partners through her rhetorical mastery. 3Y The con-
trol resides, as she argues in the famous passage on the example from
Aesop, who paints the picture of reality:
176 ENGAGING WORDS
the same symbolic elements, as though they, too, are but further de-
volutions of the old lion-and-hunter narrative. Though she seeks to
craft her own text and to paint the story according to her own artis-
tic eye, she confronts the reader with the possibility that even self-
authorings are subject to cultural impositions that shape and mold
the speaker toward certain preconceived symbolic frameworks. The
imposition of this fable onto the fight she so graphically represents
reminds us that the questions of authority are always the same: who
is painting the winner, who the aggressor? And can this author be
trusted?
In the end, of course, it is the Wife who gets to tell the tale, and
so it is she who decides what the truth of her own life will be.
Reading assumes a double position in the tale, becoming the stan-
dard by which the Wife measures herself against an authoritarian
discourse that traditionally excludes women, and also a method by
which an active audience may assess and judge the Wife's history
and ethics. Insofar as the Wife is a responsive creature, reacting
against the diatribes against women she reads emanating from the
authorities of the church, she must recapitulate in kind, locked into
the very mode of logic she wishes to reject. 41 Yet our poet realizes
this; he makes us laugh at the Wife's implication within the network
of conflicting narratives and authorities she has cited. This deliber-
ate entanglement forces us to evaluate the Wife's stance as a reader
of the self in light of the gross contradictions her character embod-
ies. Can we argue that the Wife in effect creates a new way of speak-
ing for women, appropriating the force, style, and diction of male
authority for an exclusively feminine purpose? Or does she merely
end up recapitulating and reinforcing the institutions of female re-
pression, and is she herself a manifestation of the ugliest stereotypes
of women in the Middle Ages? Does it matter, considering the
larger issues of authority and textuality that the Wife raises?
The answer is, of course, that it matters very much. Indeed, one
of the major insights of the Canterbury Tales-and especially the Pri-
oress's Tale and the Prologue and Tale of the Wife of Bath-is to re-
veal the mechanisms by which individuals' discursive and readerly
practices reenact the very authority they may seek to repudiate. In
both cases, the discourse suggests a reality beyond the speaker's own
17/l ENCACINC WORDS
devising, one that is not fully under her mastery. The stories of oth-
ers exert a pressure over her actions and fantasies that is not com-
pletely overcome by her own self-interest. Certainly both the Wife
and the Prioress, in the end, prove their discourses to be insufEcient
to free them from the limitations on subjective behavior exerted by
the master-discourse of society.
These words seem thematic for both Troilus and Criseyde and the
Canterbury Tales, for in both works reading is figured as an act that
reveals the opportunities of life's lessons. Even if the Trojans find
themselves deceived by fortune, they, too, are "for to blame" for the
slothful refusal to act decisively. The danger of regressing into
stereotypical personas or roles that foreclose self-analysis or self-
reading are repeatedly thematized in Chaucer's works. There are
negative consequences for reading romances without applying their
lessons to the self and its own actions.
Yet Chaucer posits almost as an inevitability the fact that dis-
courses, genres, and authoritarian positions will at some point be
challenged by readers from the margins, who, like women or the
Jews, may be excluded or disenfranchised by the outmoded values
of certain popular genres and discourses. Such instances of reread-
ing are not necessarily negative, though the Wife of Bath may make
them seem threatening to an audience of her contemporaries. In-
deed, as Troilus and Criseyde and the Prioress's Tale reveal, it might
behoove society at large to rethink some of their generalizations
about sexual stereotyping, ethnic identity, and the like.
If the Wife and the Prioress inadvertently expose the self-inter-
est that governs acts of reading and authorship, the Clerk exem-
plifies the kind of reader whose self-awareness benefits the reading
process. The Clerk contextualizes narratives within social frame-
works and, in doing so, exposes the limitations of fictive ethics.
The Clerk's tale of the long-suffering Griselda, a popular story
immortalized by both Petrarch and Boccaccio, faithfully enumer-
ates the trials Griselda must undergo at the hands of her husband.
Recounting the removal of Griselda's children, the hint of their
murder, and then finally the threatened dissolution of her marriage,
the Clerk constantly intervenes in his own story. He interjects
180 ENGAGING WORDS
}{J live is to read, or rather to commit aJ<ain and again the failure to read which
is the hwnmz lot. We are hard at work trying to fi;!fill the impossible task of
reading from the moment we are bom until the moment we die . .. Farfrom
bciiiJ~ "indeterminate" or "nihilistic," however, or a matter of wanton free play
or arbitrary choice, each readin,!{ is, strictly speaki11g, ethical, in the sense that
it has to take place, by an implacable necessity, as the response to a categori-
cal dmza11d, and in the sense that the reader must take responsibility for it
mzd j(n its nmsequmces in the personal, social, and political worlds.
-]. Hillis Miller, The Ethics of Reading
I
n the fifteenth-century Gesta Romanorum, a dying knight reads
the deeds that have comprised his life in a book brought before
him by four men clothed in white. Reading "but a fewe good
dedes," the man is chagrined; when many devils appear a moment
later, bearing another enormous book filled with the various sins he
has committed during his lifetime, his hellish fate seems assured:
This boke was leyde before him opyn, and the mayster deuyll bade
hym rede, and he Joked there on; and hym thought, thaghe he had
begone at the begynning of his lyfe, he shuld not haue redde it unto
that tyme, for the multitude of synnes that were written there in. 1
as well. The knight above expresses the wish that he had exercised
more of his prerogative in writing the book of his experiences.
Once inscribed in the tome of the past, those experiences are ir-
revocable, and even confession cannot erase them.
The metaphor of writing as a form of psychological enclosure
also appears in Pearl, this tin1e as part of a description in which
memories and insurmountable woes are etched like words into a
mental landscape. The bereaved dreamer/ narrator describes his grief
as an entire world encased within his body, simultaneously exceed-
ing his body's finite limits and "penning" him claustrophobically in-
side it:
The description of the penned Pearl, who causes the narrator great
suffering, embodies both the sense of her own enclosure within an
earthen grave and the sense that she has been written, or "penned,"
into the narrator's heart. The pun brings to Life the sense of a self
who has scripted his own text, who has written a narrative that fixes
past events, himself, and lost loved ones in a storyline that confines
being in static roles. The dreamer has inscribed his Pearl into him-
self, and himself into her, imprisoning them both. Recalling Plato's
warning that what is written down is "dead" and unchangeable, 3 the
narrator temporariJy imagines the metaphor of writing to fix him
in the present moment, so that he is unable or unwilling to move
on or to grow from the experience.
The Gesta Romanon4m is unusual in that it proscribes the possi-
bility of rewriting or emending what has already been written.
However, this sense of stasis is only self-sustained, as Pearl eventually
IDENTITY AND THE BOOK 1k5
Introduction
1. Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies, trans. Earl Jeffrey
Richards (New York: Persea, 1982), p. 3.
2. Michel Foucault, "The Discourse on Language," in The Archeology
of Knowledge (New York: Pantheon, 1972), p. 229.
3. D. W. Robertson, Jr., Priface to Chaucer (Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1962), p. 20-22.
4. Wolfgang Iser, The Act ~f Reading (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity Press, 1978), p. x.
5. Derek Attridge, "Innovation, Literature, Ethics: Reading to the
Other," PMLA 114 (1999):20-31.
6. Attridge, "Innovation," 27; see also Charles Altieri, Canons and Con-
sequences: Rf!fiections on the Ethical Force of Imaginative Ideals
(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1990), pp. 21-47; 272.
7. Jesse M. Gellrich, The Idea of the Book in the Middle Ages (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1985), p. 39. See also Ernst Robert Cur-
tius's discussion of the "metaphorics of the book" in his European
Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard R. Trask (New Jer-
sey: Princeton University Press, 1953, 1963), pp. 310-11; and
Marie-Dominique Chenu, Nature, Man and Society in the Twelfth
Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), p. 102.
8. Jonathan Harthan, Books of Hours and their Owners (London: Thames
and Hudson, 1977), p. 136; Pamela Sheingorn, "The Wise Mother:
The Image of St. Anne Teaching the Virgin Mary," Gesta 32, no. 1
(1993): 69-80.
9. I borrow these terms from Iser, Reading, p. 28.
10. Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971).
11. The text of the riddles can be found in Christian W M. Grein, ed.,
Bibliothek der angelsuchsischen poesie (Kassel: G. H. Wigand, 1897), p.
lxii; for Aelfric's Grammar see Julius Zupitza, ed., Grammatik und Glos-
sar (Berlin: Weidmann, 1880), p. 179; Richard Morris, ed., Cursor
1 90 E N G A C I NG W 0 R D S
Press, 1997), p. 88; see also his The Order of Books, trans. Lydia G.
Cochrane (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), p. ix.
22. In addition to McKenzie's BiblioJ?,raphy and the SocioloJ?,y cifTexts and
the works of Chartier and Darnton cited above, see also Michel de
Certeau's 71ze Practice cif Everyday L[fe, trans. Steven Rendall (Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 1984); and Chartier's Forms and
Meanings (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995).A.J.
Minnis's Medieval Theory cifAuthorship (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1988) and his Medieval Literary 71zeory and Criticism
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988); Rita Copeland's Rhetoric,
Hermmeutics and Translation in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, Cam-
bridge University Press, 1991);Judson Boyce Allen's The Ethical Po-
etic of the Later Middle Ages (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1982); and, more recently, Suzanne Reynold's Medieval ReadinJ?,:
Grammar, Rhetoric, and the Classical Text (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996) have elaborated on scholastic or "institu-
tional" interpretive practices, while Brian Stock's important study in
The Implications cif Literacy (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1983) has documented the extent to which highly individuated
reading communities, motivated by similar goals or doctrinal beliefs,
could legislate reading responses. The practice and performance of
reading in everyday life has been investigated both by Paul Saenger
in Space Between Words: The OriJ?,ins of Silent Readin:< (Stanford: Stan-
ford University Press, 1997) and Joyce Coleman in Public Readin,'(
and the Reading Public in Late Medieval England mzd France (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Michael Camille,
Christopher de Hamel, and Pamela Sheingorn, among others, have
produced studies demonstrating the potential of physical and icono-
graphic evidence for reconstructing medieval aesthetics.
23. Dives and Pauper, EETS o.s. 275, ed. P. H. Barnum (London: Oxford
University Press, 1976), p. 82.
Chapter 1
33. The merchants began making bequests to the guildhalls and hospi-
tals as early as 1368; see Sylvia Thrupp, The Merchant Class ~f Me-
dieval London, 1300-1500, 2nd ed. (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1989), p. 162.
34. Thompson, "Universities," p. 257.
35. Thompson, "Universities," p. 257.
36. N. R. Ker, Books, Collectors and Libraries: Studies i11 the l\1edieval Her-
itage, ed. Andrew G. Watson (London: The Hambledon Press, 1985),
p. 327.
37. See, for example, "Of Clerk's Possessions," "Comment on the Tes-
tament of St. Francis," "How Religious Men Should Keep Certain
Articles," in F. D. Matthew, ed., E11glish Works ~f Wycl!f (London:
Kegan Paul, Trench, Tri.ibner & Co., Ltd, 1880), pp. 4 7-51; 114-40;
219-25.
38. Christ, Handbook, p. 245.
39. Thompson, "Universities," p. 373.
40. Thompson, "Universities," pp. 2()7-309; N. R. Ker, A1edicval Li-
braries of Great Britain: A List L~{ Suwiving Books, 2nd ed. (London:
Offices of the Royal Historical Society, 1964), pp. xi, 233. Thomp-
son notes that Evesham's importance is largely conjectural, as no
catalogue~; have survived, but apparently there was a large scripto-
rium (p. 305).
41. R. M. Wilson, "The Contents of the Mediaeval Library," in The E11-
glish Library Before 1700, eds. Francis Wormald and C. E. Wright
(London: The Athlone Press, 1958), p. 87.
42. Wilson, "Contents," p. 90.
43. Wilson, "Contents," p. 92.
44. Wilson, "Contents," pp. 94-103. On the types of books readily
anilable, also see N. R. Ker, A1cdieval Libraries, and Martin Irvine,
ThL :.faking of Textual Culture: Gmnunmica and Literary Theory,
350-1100 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
45. Christ, Handbook, pp. 279-80.
46. Christine de Pizan, "The Book of the Deeds and Good Character
of King Charles V The Wise," trans. Charity Cannon Willard, in The
Writings ~f Christine de Pizan, ed. Charity Cannon Willard (New
York: Persea, 1994), pp. 240-41.
4 7. Christine de Pizan, "The Book of the Deeds," p. 241.
48. Christ, Handbook, p. 282.
49. Edith Rickert, "Richard II's Books," The Library, 4th series, 13
(1933): 144-7.
50. R. F. Green, "King Richard II's Books Revisited," The Library 31
(1976): 235-39; see also V J. Scattergood, "Literary Culture at the
NOTES 195
107. Paul Saenger, "Books of Hours and the Reading Habits of the Later
Middle Ages," in Tltc Culture <?f Print, ed. Roger Chartier, trans.
Lydia G. Cochrane (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989),
p. 144.
108. Huntington MS. HM 19913, <bting from the first half of the fif-
teenth century, surprisingly contains only four miniatures and none
for the Hours of the Virgin; in late thirteenth- and early four-
teenth-century Books of Hours text rather than images are fre-
quently predominant: see British Library, MS. Eg. 3277, MS. Eg.
3044, MS. Add. 27381, MS. Add. 41061, MS. Add. 40675. In these
texts, illuminations may be relegated to filling historiated initials
only, so that text predominates, or they may be relegated to filling
only a few sparse positions. In addition,'' compilations," such as MS.
Add. 37787, which include the hours and other texts specially col-
lected by a particular patron or family. frequently lack illumination.
109. See, for example, Bodleian Library, MS. Auct. D. 4.4 (c. 1380), MS.
Liturg. 104 (c. 1340), MS. Laud. Lat. 82 (late fourteenth century);
British Library, MS. Add. 27381 (early fourteenth century), Add.
MS. 29407 (c. 1300), MS. Yates Thompson 13 (early fourteenth
century), and MS. Harley 2900 (late 1420s).
110. W. A. Pantin, "Instructions for a Devout and Literate Layman," in
A1cdieval Lcaming aud Litaatttre, eds.J.J. G.Aiexander and M.T. Gib-
son (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), pp. 308-422.
111. Wordsworth, Horae Ehoraccnses, p. xliii; Harthan, Books <?f Hours, p.
136.
112. Eamon DutTy, 'i7lc Strippiu,t;z of the Altars: 'haditiol!al Rcligioll i11 En-
,r;lalld c. 1400-c. 1580 (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1992), pp.
222-23. Duffy cites J. G. Nicholls, ed., .\·arrativcs '!(the Days <?{the
Re{ormatio11 (Camden Society, LXXVII. 1859), pp. 348-50.
113. Joyce Coleman, Public Readi11g a11d tlzc Readi11g Public i11 Late A1c-
dicval E11gla11d mzd Fra11cc (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1996).
114. Christine de Pizan writes about Charles's reading habits in "The
Book of the Deeds," p. 240; Joyce Coleman cites the examples of
Deschamp and Froissart on pages 11 5 and Ill, respectively.
115. T7zc Book <?f }\1/mgery Kempe, EETS, o.s. 212, ed. Sanford Brown
Meech (London: Oxford University Press, 1940, 1961 ), pp. 144 and
147.
116. Paul Saenger, "Silent Reading: Its Impact on Late Medieval Script
and Society," Viator 13 (1982): 36 7-414. See also Jean Leclercq, The
Love <?f Leami11g and the Desire .fin God, trans. Catherine Misrahi
(New York: Fordham University Press, 1961), pp. 89-90; Andrew
NOTES 199
Chapter 2
1. King Henry's Primer, or, The Primer Set Forth by the King's Majesty,
and His Clergy, to be Taught, Learned, and Read: and None Other to be
Used Throughout All His Dominions. For an edition of the text see
Three Primers Put Forth in the Reign of Henry VIII, ed. E. Burton
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1834).
2. The Goodly Primer, in Burton, Three Primers, p. 3.
3. See Paul Saenger, "Books of Hours and the Reading Habits of the
Later Middle Ages," in The Culture of Print, ed. Roger Chartier,
trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1989), pp. 141-73. On the inclusion of indulgences and the like in
the horae, see also V Leroquais, Les livres d'heures: manuscrits de Ia Bil-
iotheque Nationale (Paris: Protat Freres, 1927), p. xxxi.
4. Robert G. Calkins, Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cor-
nell University Press, 1983), p. 243.
5. Richard Marks and Nigel Morgan, The Golden Age of English Man-
uscript Painting 120(}-1500 (New York: George Braziller, Inc.,
1981), pp. 7-8.
6. Janet Backhouse, Books of Hours (London: The British Library,
1985), p. 42.
7. Virginia Reinburg, "Prayer and the Books of Hours," in Time Sanc-
tified, ed. Roger S.Wieck (New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1988),
pp. 39-44; see also Saenger, "Books of Hours," p. 153.
8. Calkins, Illuminated Books, p. 243.
9. These "grande heures" are not typical of the thousands of Books of
Hours that survive. Many of the prayer books of middle- and
lower-class readers were mass-copied from pattern books and
lacked the elaborate degree of illumination and detail exhibited by
their costlier cousins.
10. See Appendix 1 in Jonathan]. G. Alexander's Medieval Illuminators
and their Methods ofWork (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1992),
pp. 179-83, which provides examples of several such contracts.
11. L. M.]. Delaisse, "The Importance of Books of Hours for the His-
tory of the Medieval Book," in Gatherings in Honor of Dorothy E.
Miner, eds. Ursula E. McCracken, Lilian M. C. Randall, Richard H.
Randall, Jr. (Baltimore: Walters Art Gallery, 1974), pp. 203-225.
NOTES 201
48. Love, Mirror, p. 23. See also David M. Robb, "The Iconography of
the Annunciation in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries," Art
Bulletin 18 (1936): 480-526.
49. Translations of both prayers can be found in the Appendix of
Roger S. Wieck, Time Sanct[fied (New York: George Braziller, Inc.,
1988),pp.163-4.
50. British Library, MS. Add. 18213, f. J-1.1.
51. See, for example, British Library. MS. Harley 2900, f. 59v; MS. Eg.
2781, f. 42r; Bodleian Library, MS. Douce 231, f. 3r.John B. Fried-
man notes that these images became common after 1383, when St.
Anne's feast day was incorporated into the calendar. See Northern
English Books, Owners, and .\!fakers in the Late Middle Ages (New York:
Syracuse University Press, 1995), p. 13.
52. Sheingorn, "Wise Mother," 75.
53. Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, vol. 1 (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1953), p. 101;Jonathan Harthan, Books if
Hours and Their Owners (London:Thames and Hudson, 1977), p. 80.
54. Wieck, Time Sanctifzed, p. 94.
55. Wieck cites the instance ofWalters MS. 224, illuminated by the
Master of Geneva, late fifteenth century, Time Smzctlfzed, pp. 95-6.
56. The ermine figure appears in British Library, MS. Add. 18192. See
also MS. Eg. 2781, f. 101 v; the Hours of Yolande (MS. Yates
Thompson 27, f. 13v); MS. Add. 17444, f. 55v; MS. Add. 24681, f.
70r; MS. Harley 2952 18v, 19r, 19v and 20r, showing, respectively,
the patron with his prayer book on left, facing virgin and child on
other page, followed by his wife, with her book; MS. Yates
Thompson 13, fols. 7, 18, 118b, 139; Bodleian Library, MS. Au ct.
D. 4.4 (the "Bohun Psalter and Hours"), depicting a female with
her patron saint behind her at f. 181 v; MS. Douce 231, f. 65a; and
MS. Lat. Liturg. e. 41, fols. 44v and 59 a, depicting a knight other-
wise unremarkable except for his identifying arms. Several Books
of Hours, such as British Library, MS. Add. 23145 f. 44r., show
arms only.
57. Hours of Mary ~f Burgundy, Austria, Osterreichische Nationa!Biblio-
thek MS. E 5610-C(D), f. 16. See also Eric Inglis, The Hours of Mary
~f Burgundy (London: Harvey Miller Publishers, 1995), p. 21.
58. Inglis, Hours if i\1ary of Burgundy, p. 21.
59. Michael Camille, Gothic Art, Glorious Visions (New York: Harry N.
Abrams, Inc., 1996), p. 183.
60. Virginia Reinburg, "Hearing Lay People's Prayer," in Culture and
Identity in Early Modem Europe: Essays in Honor of Natalie Zeman
NOTES 205
Chapter 3
31. Eleanor Hull, The Seven Psalms. EETS 307, ed. Alexandra Barratt
(London: Oxford University Press, 1995).
32. See The Banquet, trans. Christopher Ryan (Stanford: Anma Libri,
1989), II.i. The "Letter to Can Grande" is reprinted in Literary Crit-
icism of Dante Alighieri, trans. Robert S. Haller (Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press, 1973), pp. 95-111.
33. Dante Alighieri, La Vita Nuova, ed. Tommaso Casini (Firenze: San-
soni, 1962), I, 3: "In quella parte dellibro della mia memoria, di-
nanzi a Ia quale poco si potrebbe leggere, si trova una rubrica, Ia
qual dice: Incipit Vita Nova." All further references are to this edi-
tion. Translations are from Mark Musa, trans., Vita Nuova (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1992).
34. Teodolinda Barolini, "Dante and the Lyric Past," in Cambridge Com-
panion to Dante, ed. Rachel Jacoff (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1993), p. 24.
35. Robert Pogue Harrison, "Approaching the Vita 1'\'uova," in Cam-
bridge Companion to Dante, p. 34. See also Thomas Stillinger's chap-
ter on "Dante's Divisions: Structures of Authority in the Vita
Nuova," in his The Song ofTroilus (Philadelphia: University of Penn-
sylvania Press, 1992), pp. 44-72.
36. See especially Charles Singleton's chapter "From Love to Caritas,"
in An Essay on the Vita Nuova, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1977), pp. 55-77.
37. La Vita Nuova III, 20-22 (trans. Musa, Vita Nuova, p. 7).
38. Musa, Vita Nuova, p. ix.
39. Cf. Robert Pogue Harrison, The Body rif Beatrice (Baltimore: The
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), pp. 58-59.
40. La Vita Nuova XII, 47: "Fili mi, tempus est ut praetermittantur sim-
ulacra nostra" (trans. Musa, Vita Nuova, p. 19).
41. La Vita Nuova XIII, 5-6 (trans. Musa, Vita Nuova, p. 23).
42. La Vita Nuova XIX, 99 (trans. Musa, Vita Nuova, p. 38).
43. La Vita Nuova XXIII, 116-18 (trans. Musa, Vita Nuova, p. 46).
44. La Vita Nuova XXVIII: "Io era nel proponimento ancora di questa
canone ... quando lo signore de Ia giustizia chiamo questa gen-
tilissima a gloriare sotto Ia 'nsegna di quella reina benedetta Maria"
(trans. Musa, Vita Nuova, p. 60); see Musa's comments on this pas-
sage, p. XII.
45. La Vita Nuova XXIII, 125-27 (trans. Musa, Vita Nuova, p. 49).
46. La Vita Nuova XXIII, 128-29 (trans. Musa, Vita Nuova, p. 50).
47. La Vita Nuova XLI, 207-8 (trans. Musa, Vita Nuova, p. 83).
48. La Vita Nuova XLII, 208-9 (trans. Musa, Vita 1\iuova, p. 84).
208 ENGAGING WORDS
62. Secretum !, 66: " ... magni autem est ingenii revocare mentem a
sensibus et cogitationem a consuetudine abducere" (trans. Draper,
Petrarch's Secret, p. 44).
63. Secretum ll, 120 (trans. Draper, Petrarch's Secret, p. 98).
64. Secretum II, 122:" ... libro autem e manibus elapso assensio simul
omnis intercidit" (trans. Draper, Petrarch~· Secret, p. 99).
65. Secretum!!, 122 (trans. Draper, Petrarch's Secret, p. 99).
66. Secretum ll, 124-26 (trans. Draper, Petrarch's Secret, p. 102).
67. Draper, Petrarch's Secret, p. 141.
68. Secretum Ill, 164: '"qualis coniecta cerva sagitta, I quam procul in-
cautam nemora inter Cresia fixit I pastor agens telis, liquitque
volatile ferrum I nescius; illa fuga silvas saltusque peragrat I dicteos,
heret lateri letalis harundo."' Petrarch then comments, "Huic ergo
cerve non absimilis factus sum. Fugi enim, sed malum meum
ubi que circumferens" (trans. Draper, Petrarclz 's Secret, p. 141).
69. Secretum III, 164-66 (trans. Draper, Pctrarch's Secret, pp. 141-42).
70. Secrelllm II, 126 (trans. Draper, Petrarciz~, Secret, p.104).
71. Secretum III, 192:" ... aliis scribens, tui ipsius oblivisceris" (trans.
Draper, Petrarclz ~- Secret, p. 170).
72. Secrelllm III, 214: Petrarch remarks, "Sed desiderium frenare non
valeo." Augustine replies, " ... voluntatem impotentiam vocas"
(trans. Draper, Petrarch's Secret, p. 192).
73. Giuseppe Mazzotta, The Worlds ~f Petrarclz (Durham: Duke Univer-
sity Press, 1993), p. 90.
7 4. Petrarch, Letters 011 Familiar l'v1atters, X:4, in A.J. Minnis, ;\1edieval Lit-
erary Theory and Criticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988),
pp. 413-15.
75. Secrctlim III, 198: " ... mortalium rerum inter mortales prima sit
cura; transitoriis eterna succedant."
76. Secretllm Ill, 214:" ... supplexque Deum oro ut euntem comitetur,
gressusque licet vagos, in tutum iubeat pervenire."
77. Donald Howard, Chaucer: His L!fc, His Works, His World (New York:
Ballantine, 1987), p. 188; cf Paul Ruggiers, "The Italian Influence
on Chaucer," in Compa11ion to Chaucer S!lldies, ed. Beryl Rowland
(Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 139-61.
78. See William J. Kennedy, Authorizin,t,z Petrarch (Ithaca: Cornell Uni-
versity Press, 1994).
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
cif History, pp. 135-36; Chauncey Wood, Elements cif Chaucer's Troilus
(Durham: Duke University Press, 1984), pp. 153-63.
14. Criseyde's "slyding corage" has been much discussed; see especially
David Aers, "Criseyde: Woman in Medieval Society," Chaucer Re-
view 13 (1979): 177-200;]. D. Burnley, "Criseyde's heart and the
Weakness of Women: An Essay in Lexical Interpretation," Studia
neophilologica 54 (1982): 25-38; E. Talbot Donaldson, Speaking of
Chaucer (London: Athlone Press, 1970), 65-83; Maureen Fries,
'"Slydynge ofCorage': Chaucer's Criseyde as Feminist and Victim,"
The Authority of Experience, eds. Arlyn Diamond and Lee Edwards
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1977), 45-59; Jill
Mann, Geoffrey Chaucer (London: Routledge, 1971), pp. 21-31; on
the relationship of this ambivalence to Criseyde's reading, see Din-
shaw, Chaucer's Sexual Poetics, pp. 52-56; Elaine Tuttle Hansen,
Chaucer and the Fictions of Gender (Berkeley: University of Califor-
nia Press, 1992), pp. 164-65.
15. Eugene Vance, Mervelous Signals: Poetics and Sign Theory in the Mid-
dle Ages (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986), p. 282; see
also Charles Muscatine, Chaucer and the French Tradition (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 19 57), pp. 132-35.
16. Patterson, Chaucer and the Subject cif History, pp.129-32.
17. In addition to Patterson, above, see Valerie A. Ross, "Believing Cas-
sandra: Intertextual Politics and the Interpretation of Dreams in
Troilus and Criseyde," The Chaucer Review 31 (1997): 339-56, and
Constance Hieatt, "The Dreams ofTroilus, Criseyde, and Chaunte-
cleer: Chaucer's Manipulations of the Categories of Macrobius et
al," English Studies in Canada 14 (1988): 400-14.
18. See Richard H. Osberg, "Between the Motion and the Act: Inten-
tions and Ends in Chaucer's Troilus," English Literary History 48
(1981): 257-70; Richard Waswo, "The Narrator of Troilus and
Criseyde," English Literary History SO (1983): 1-25.
19. Charles Altieri, Canons and Consequences: Riflections on the Ethical
Force cif Imaginative Ideals (Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
1990)' p. 24.
20. Both Alfred David and Robert Worth Frank,jr., for example, point
out that Chaucer the author would have had little real contact with
the Jews, and that instead he would have been reacting to a dis-
torted cultural construct of the Jewish people. See David's The
Strumpet Muse: Art and Morals in Chaucer's Poetry (Bloomington: In-
diana University Press, 1976), pp. 208-9, and Frank's "Miracles of
the Virgin, Medieval Anti-Semitism, and the 'Prioress's Tale,"' in The
Wisdom cif Poetry: Essays in Early English Literature in Honor of Mor-
NOTES 215
Conclusion
1. Sidney J. H. Herrtage, ed., The Early English Version rf the Gesta Ro-
manorum. EETS, e. s. 33 (London: N.Triibner & Co., 1879, 1962),
p. 407.
2. Casey Finch, ed., The Complete Works of the Pearl Poet (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1993), I.49-53. My translation.
3. Phaedws 276a, in Plato: 11ze Collected Dialogues, Edith Hamilton and
Huntington Cairns, eds. (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1961).
4. The Vision rf Piers Plowman: A Complete Edition C?f the B- Text, ed.
A. V. C. Schmidt (London: Dent, 1978), X.3 70.
5. John Wyclif, "How Religious Men Should Keep Certain Articles,"
The English Works r.:fWyclif, EETS, o.s. 74., ed. F. D. Matthew (Lon-
don: Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner and Co., LTD, 1880), p. 221.
6. The Secretum alludes to lines 589-601 from Petrarch's Africa, trans.
Thomas G. Bergin and Alice S. Wilson (New Haven: Yale Univer-
sity Press, 1977).
7. Richard de Bury, The Love r.:f Books, trans. E. C. Thomas (New York:
Cooper Square Publishers, 1966), p. 119.
8. Lynn Staley, Margery Kempe's Dissmting Fictions (University Park:
The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), pp. 11-12.
9. Letters on rlmziliar Matters: Rerum familiarium libri, trans. Aldo S.
Bernardo (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), XV.6,
XX.6.
10. J. R. R. Tolkien, E.V. Gordon, and Norman Davis, eds., Sir Gawain
and the Greell Knight, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1967), I. 373.
11. Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1989), p. 59.
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