SO FAR, we have been concerned with the historical development, mainly in French and English schools of philosophy and theology, of the theory of authorship channelled by two major types of academic prologue. The present chapter is different in nature, because it focuses on the way in which aspects of this literary theory moved beyond their initial intellectual milieu to become available to a wider range of writers and readers. What follows is essentially speculation regarding the dissemination, and to some extent the dilution and transformation, of the literary attitudes described above. A comprehensive survey of all the relevant permutations would require a book in itself. I have, therefore, decided to concentrate on the ways in which two practising poets of fourteenth-century England, John Gower and Geoffrey Chaucer, exploited a few aspects of a vast corpus of sophisticated theory of literature. Scholastic literary theory did not merely provide these poets with technical idioms: it influenced directly or indirectly the ways in which they conceived of their literary creations; it affected their choice of authorial roles and literary forms.
In the fourteenth century, ‘Aristotelian prologues’ continued to be used in commentaries on Scriptural auctores. Good examples were provided by the ‘classicising’ friars of Oxford and Cambridge. When two of these English friars, Nicholas Trevet and Thomas Waleys, introduced their commentaries on non-Biblical auctores with ‘Aristotelian prologues’ they transferred to them the idioms of literary theory which for generations had been developed in commentaries on sacred Scripture1. Trevet’s expositions of, for example, Livy and the two Senecas cannot be appreciated fully unless they are placed in the perspective of the exegetical tradition of literary analysis2.
The types of work which could be introduced with an ‘Aristotelian prologue’ gradually diversified. Of fundamental importance for the dissemination of the literary theory which it channelled is the development of glosses on texts used for teaching in grammar schools, such as the Liber Catonis, the Ecloga of Theodulus, the Liber cartulae or De contemptu mundi (falsely ascribed to St Bernard), the Tobias of Matthew of Vendôme, the Parvum doctrinale or Liber parabolarum of Alan of Lille, the Fabulae of Aesop and/or Avianus and the Floretus Sancti Bernardi3. Lectures on texts like these formed the basis of late medieval ‘elementary’ teaching. If a pupil lacked either the opportunity or the intelligence to progress much further in his studies, he had learned at least some scholastic literary notions, albeit in simplified form. At the other end of the intellectual scale, ‘Aristotelian prologues’ appeared at the beginning of learned commentaries on works as individual and various as Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Livy’s Ab urbe condita, Seneca’s tragedies, Augustine’s De civitate Dei, Walter Map’s Dissuasio Valerii, the prophecies ascribed to ‘John of Bridlington’, and Dante’s Divina commedia4.
Various writers took the ‘Aristotelian prologue’ from the context of commentaries on auctores to provide the basis of introductions to their own works. Some modification was necessary before idioms traditionally used in describing ‘ancient’ and authoritative writers and writings could appropriately be applied to oneself and one’s own writing, as the following examples will illustrate.
The writers of artes praedicandi were especially fond of describing the causae of their works. For example, Robert of Basevorn stated that the four causes of his Forma praedicandi (completed in 1322) were intimated by II Timothy ii. 17, ‘the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me, that by me the preaching might be accomplished’5. Robert’s treatment of the material and formal causes is quite traditional. The material cause is supposed to be designated by the word ‘preaching’ because, in the Forma praedicandi, preaching is considered as the matter. The formal cause is found in the words ‘may be accomplished’: something is formally transmitted and taught when what the beginning of the work promises for investigation is continued through the work in an orderly way, and brought to a conclusion at the end. Anyone who deals with the divine word—indeed, with any orderly treatise—should make sure that, in discussing his subject, he has an organised modus procedendi. Robert’s method of procedure is treated and taught in fifty chapters, which are outlined in a table of contents.
It is in his treatment of the final and efficient causes that Robert moves away from traditional formulae because, here, he must describe his own role and function within the causal scheme of the Forma praedicandi. The final cause is designated when it is said ‘The Lord stood with me and strengthened me’, because a right-thinking man ought to establish as his end and objective the Lord who restores consolation in tedium, provides satisfaction of desires, establishes an alliance in friendship and furthers delight in studies. In turn, the efficient cause is designated when it is said ‘by me’. May God, who is the end of this work, be also the primary efficient cause who influences it in its entirety! With elaborate decorum, Robert refuses to attribute anything to himself as proceeding from himself alone: he prefers to say with the Apostle, ‘I dare not speak of any of those things which Christ works in me’ (Romans xv. 18), and, ‘And I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me’ (Galatians ii.20). Robert has identified himself as a secondary efficient cause working under the primary efficient cause, God; as a humble instrument who executes a divinely-directed task.
The prologues with which certain late medieval compilers introduced their works also display the influence of the literary theory developed by scholastic commentators. Vincent of Beauvais, adapting the ‘type C’ prologue, systematically had explained the causae, materia, modus agendi, titulus, utilitas and divisio of his Speculum maius6. Later compilers adapted the ‘Aristotelian prologue’ to suit the requirements of the genre of compilatio and their personal purposes in writing. Ulrich of Strassburg stated that the efficient cause of his Liber de summo bono was the Holy Spirit who speaks in us, because ‘we are not sufficient of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our sufficiency is from God’ (II Corinthians iii.5)7. As the inept instrument of this Spirit, Ulrich likens himself to the ‘pen of a busy scribe’ mentioned in Psalm xliv.2.
Similarly, in the prologue to Pierre Bersuire’s Reductorium morale, the causae function as part of an elaborate protestation of humility in which all that is useful and worthwhile in the compilation is decorously attributed to its primary efficient cause, God:
I say that in this work the properties of things, figments of the poets and enigmas of the Scriptures constitute the material, while the application to mores constitutes the form; God then constitutes the efficient cause, while the cure of souls constitutes the final cause.8
The same basic procedure was followed in the prologue to an Anglo-Norman compilation, the Lumiere as lais9. The anonymous writer describes himself as an instrument employed by the principal autur, our Lord.
More contrived and eccentric adaptation of the ‘Aristotelian prologue’ is found in the Middle English Testament of Love by Thomas Usk († 1388). There are, in fact, three prologues in this work: the prologue to the first book functions as a general prologue to the whole work, while the first chapters of books ii and iii function as prologues to their respective books. In the general prologue, a celebration of God’s ‘makinge’—in which Usk invokes both Aristotle and David—leads into an explanation of his own ‘makinge’ in the Testament10. One can move lovingly from the properties of things to knowledge of their creator (cf. Romans i.20); the causes of things are thereby comprehended. Usk’s work, he tells us, is concerned mainly with the causes of love, which explains the titulus libri.
Whereof Aristotle, in the boke de Animalibus, saith to naturel philosophers: ‘it is a greet lyking in love of knowinge their creatour; and also in knowinge of causes in kyndely things’. Considred, forsoth, the formes of kyndly thinges and the shap, a greet kindely love me shulde have to the werkman that hem made. The crafte of a werkman is shewed in the werke. Herfore, truly, the philosophers, with a lyvely studie, many noble thinges right precious and worthy to memory writen; and by a greet swetande travayle to us leften of causes of the propertees in natures of thinges . . . And bycause this book shal be of love, and the pryme causes of steringe in that doinge, with passions and diseses for wantinge of desyre, I wil that this book be cleped THE TESTAMENT OF LOVE.
In the prologue to the second book, Usk discusses the theory of final causality in general, then explains that the final cause of his work is to teach about love11. Though his book may be unlearned, it does have this noble end.
Every thing to whom is owande occasion don as for his ende, Aristotle supposeth that the actes of every thinge ben in a maner his final cause. A final cause is noblerer, or els even as noble, as thilke thing that is finally to thilke ende; wherfore accion of thinge everlasting is demed to be eternal, and not temporal; sithen it is his final cause. Right so the actes of my boke ‘Love’, and love is noble; wherfore, though my book be leude, the cause with which I am stered, and for whom I ought it doon, noble forsothe ben bothe.
In sum, Usk has invoked the Aristotelian causes to justify and ennoble the Testament of Love. His creative activity is related to God’s; his writing, though imperfect, is commendable in so far as it is directed by, and towards, a noble final cause or ultimate objective, namely, love. Usk closes his work by attempting (somewhat clumsily) to identify this love with charity, the divine love.
The ‘Aristotelian prologue’ and the literary notions associated with it received further alteration and elaboration at the hands of fifteenth-century writers. For example, Osbern Bokenham (c. 1390—c. 1447) began his Legendys of Hooly Wummen with a full account of the ‘two thyngys’ which ‘owyth euery clerk’
To aduertysyn, begynnyng a werk,
If he procedyn wyl ordeneelly:
The fyrste is ‘what’, the secunde is ‘why’.
In wych two wurdys, as it semyth me,
The foure causys comprehendyd be,
Wych, as philosofyrs vs do teche,
In the begynnyng men owe to seche
Of euery book; and aftyr there entent
The fyrst is clepyd cause efficyent,
The secunde they clepe cause materyal,
Formal the thrydde, the fourte fynal.
The efficyent cause is the auctour,
Wych aftyr his cunnyng doth hys labour
To a-complyse the begunne matere . . .
Certyn the auctour was an austyn frere,
Whos name as now I ne wyl expresse,
Ne hap that the vnwurthynesse
Bothe of hys persone & eek hys name
Myht make the werk to be put in blame . . .12
The fourteenth-century belief in the idea of the duplex causa efficiens as a means whereby writers could decorously describe themselves as mere instruments of the divine will, has now been lost. Bokenham gives himself all the credit for his work. His refusal to reveal his name in the ‘Aristotelian prologue’ does not strike one as a particularly modest gesture, in view of the amount of autobiographical detail which is provided in the Legendys and other works13. There is something mechanical in Bokenham’s application of the four causes; the life seems to have gone out of the traditional idioms14.
By contrast, the exploitations of scholastic literary theory by Chaucer and Gower were altogether more imaginative. But, before we proceed to investigate them, something must be said about the wider context in which they occur, namely, the changing attitudes to literature which characterise the later Middle Ages.
In Italy, a clear line of development may be traced from the early glosses on profane auctores, like Ovid, to the humanistic commentaries on ‘modern authors’, like Dante15. But conditions in Italy, when compared with those prevailing elsewhere in medieval Europe, may be seen to be unique and, therefore, it is impossible to transfer insights gained in studying Italian commentaries to the very different English scene. There is nothing in fourteenth-century England to correspond to such a work as Guido da Pisa’s magnificent commentary on Dante’s Inferno (perhaps written between 1328 and 1333)16. But there was, in fourteenth-century England, a rich tradition of ‘classicising’ Scriptural exegesis. It must be emphasised that such commentaries as Holcot on Wisdom and Ecclesiastes, Lathbury on Lamentations and Ringstead on Proverbs were among the ‘best-sellers’ of their day17. One must also take into account those Scriptural commentaries which, although not written in England, were very popular there, Bonaventure’s commentary on Ecclesiastes being a good example18.
While poets like Chaucer and Gower were not trained theologians, they certainly had some interest in the major theological issues of the day. Chaucer seems to have made use of Holcot’s Wisdom-commentary when writing his House of Fame and the Nun’s Priest’s Tale19. Holcot’s theology would have interested Chaucer: Chaucer’s translation of Boethius, and other writings, attest his interest in predestination and related subjects, and the person responsible for Troilus and Criseyde could have appreciated and would have approved of what Holcot had to say about the salvation of the ‘good pagan’20. There is evidence that Gower also was aware of theological commentaries21.
Quite apart from the theology, these ‘classicising’ commentaries were of interest to practising poets because they contained many extracts from pagan writers, both philosophers and poets. In his poem La Male regle (1406), Thomas Hoccleve took the story of Ulysses and the Mermaids from Holcot’s commentary on Wisdom:
Holcote seith vp-on the book also
Of sapience / as it can testifie,
Whan þat Vlixes saillid to and fro
By meermaides / this was his policie . . .22
Writing in the later fifteenth century, Robert Henryson took the moralitas of his Orpheus and Eurydice from Trevet’s commentary on the De consolatione philosophiae of Boethius:
maister trivat doctour nicholass,
quhilk in his tyme a noble theologe wass,
Applyis it to gud moralitie,
rycht full of fructe and seriositie.23
The ‘classicising’ commentaries are major repositories of scholastic literary theory. To obtain examples of this theory in practice, Chaucer and his contemporaries need have read no further than the prologues. In the prologues and in the commentaries themselves, they would have found pagan auctoritates being employed in the elucidation of pre-Christian ideas and mores, and the expertise of pagan sages constantly being drawn on in the interests of Christian learning. These are aspects of a general ‘coming together’ of sacred and profane auctores in the minds and treatises of late-medieval academics. The sharp distinction made by Albert the Great and others between Scriptural and pagan uses of similar literary devices, was gradually eroded away in subsequent scholarship (see pp. 139–43). The late medieval compilers also contributed to this process, through their juxtaposition of pagan and Christian auctoritates on common subjects. It was generally conceded that many pagan writers possessed considerable auctoritas in such subjects as natural science, ethics and politics. Moreover, styles as well as subjects were regarded as common to both camps. Peter Auriol believed that songs of joy, love and sorrow had been composed by both pagan and Scriptural poets (see p. 135). Ulrich of Strassburg emphasised the importance of the modus poeticus or fabulous mode as a Biblical forma tractandi, while Pierre Bersuire offered examples of Scriptural fabulae (see pp. 140–3).
In such an intellectual climate, a writer could justify his own literary procedure or forma tractandi by appealing to a Scriptural model, without in any way offending against the great auctoritas of the Bible. We have seen above how Thomas Usk invoked both Aristotle and David in describing his own literary activity. When Chaucer justified his practice of speaking ‘rudeliche and large’ after the manner of the Canterbury pilgrims, he was able to cite the precedent of a modus loquendi found in the writings of those auctores with the greatest possible degree of auctoritas, the Four Evangelists who had recorded the life of Christ:
Crist spak hymself ful brode in hooly writ,
And wel ye woot no vileynye is it.24
(General Prologue, lines 739–40)
When defending his translation of Melibee on the grounds that it preserved the sententia of the original text, Chaucer could refer to the fact that, although the words of the Four Evangelists often differ, their profound meaning is single and uniform:
. . . ye woot that every Evaungelist,
That telleth us the peyne of Jhesu Crist,
Ne seith nat alle thyng as his felawe dooth;
But nathelees hir sentence is al sooth,
And alle acorden as in hire sentence,
Al be ther in hir tellyng difference.
For somme of hem seyn moore, and somme seyn lesse,
Whan they his pitous passioun expresse—
I meene of Mark, Mathew, Luc, and John—
But doutelees hir sentence is al oon.
(VII, lines 943–52)
This argument had been reiterated in generations of commentaries on the Evangelists25. To have obtained all the ideas contained in his passage, Chaucer need have looked no further than the general prologue to Nicholas of Lyre’s commentary on the gospels26.
Discussions of the formal causes of literature by commentators, compilers and others provide a major source for the ideas of literary role, style and structure which were available to English writers. Scholastic writers had ‘discovered’ and provided the literary theory for forms or genres of writing for which there was little basis in classical rhetoric and poetics (cf. pp. 126, 136–9). We are now in a position to examine the extent to which some of these genres affected the way in which Gower and Chaucer conceived of their literary roles and literary forms.
Generations of Scriptural exegetes found in prophetic writings certain literary properties which, in their opinion, constituted a literary form (cf. pp. 136–8). Such discussion of the forma prophetialis appears to have influenced commentaries on non-Biblical writings. Hence, the ‘Aristotelian prologue’ which begins a commentary on the prophecies attributed to John of Bridlington draws heavily on exegetical terms of reference:
The second notable thing is about the formal cause of this book, concerning which it must be noted that the author’s mode of procedure is the form of this book which consists in three things. First, in the mode of writing, which is metrical. . . . Secondly, in the mode of understanding, which is obscure and prophetic, because he gives to be understood things other than what the terms signify according to the common usage of speech. Third, in the mode of organising the parts of this prophecy, because he orders the parts according to the order of events which were done in the past and which will be done in the future . . .27
Exegetical discussion of that most enigmatic of all prophetic writings, the Apocalypse, influenced the way in which Gower regarded the final recension of his extensive Latin poem, the Vox clamantis. In the general prologue to this work, Gower appeals to his namesake, St John, for guidance:
Insula quem Pathmos suscepit in Apocalipsi,
Cuius ego nomen gesto, gubernet opus.28
(prologus libri primi, lines 57–8)
[May the one whom Patmos received in the Apocalypse, and whose name I bear, guide this work.]
There is similar word-play with names in the Dedicatory Epistle to Archbishop Arundel, where Thomas Arundel is hailed as successor to Thomas Becket29. But Gower believed that he shared with St John not only a name but also a forma tractandi: both men composed works in the form of visions. Naturally, Gower does not presume to claim the same auctoritas as that enjoyed by the auctor of the Apocalypse, but he does suggest a similarity of literary procedure—a perfectly decorous suggestion in an age which, as we have seen, appreciated the literary virtuosity of the human auctores of Scripture.
In the early thirteenth century, an Apocalypse prologue attributed to Gilbert of Poitiers became one of the standard set of prologues in the ‘Paris Bible’30. It received the attention of generations of commentators, and was translated into several languages, including English31. Gilbert’s prologue and Gower’s general prologue are alike in basic structure. Both begin with the definition of vision, then move to examine the human writer and his mode of writing. Gilbert distinguishes between three kinds of vision as follows:
One kind of vision is corporeal, when we see something by corporeal eyes. Another is spiritual or imaginary, when, sleeping or indeed waking, we discern the images of things by which something else is signified, just as Pharaoh saw ears of corn, and Moses saw a burning bush, the former while asleep and the latter while awake. Another kind of vision is intellectual, when by the revelation of the Holy Spirit, we grasp by the intellect of the mind the truth of mysteries as it really is, in which manner John saw those things which are reported in the book. For he not only saw figures with his spirit but also understood the things they signified with his mind.32
Gower is concerned with the second and third kinds of vision. While asleep, a man may see with the mind’s eye significant images of things, what Gower calls signa rei. Like Gilbert, Gower cites the example of Pharaoh’s dream, to which he adds the examples of the dreams of Joseph and Daniel:
Ex Daniele patet quid sompnia significarunt,
Nec fuit in sompnis visio vana Ioseph:
Angelus immo bonus, qui custos interioris
Est hominis, vigili semper amore fauet;
Et licet exterius corpus sopor occupet, ille
Visitat interius mentis et auget opem;
Sepeque sompnifero monstrat prenostica visu,
Quo magis in causis tempora noscat homo.
Hinc puto que vidi quod sompnia tempore noctis
Signa rei certe commemoranda ferunt.
(prologus libri primi, lines 7–16)
[From Daniel it is clear what dreams can mean, and Joseph’s vision in his dream was not meaningless. Indeed, the good angel who is the custodian of the inner man always guards him with vigilant love; and, although sleep may occupy the outer body, the angel visits the inside of his mind and advances its work; and often, in sleep, it provides prognostications in a vision, so that the man may know better the time by its causes. Hence, I reckon that those things I saw in sleep at night-time furnish the memorable signs of actual events.]
Perhaps this introduction of the ‘good angel’ who guards the inner man was influenced by the traditional view of the angel who inspired St John on Patmos. Gilbert of Poitiers had claimed that the truths contained in the Apocalypse had been revealed by the whole Trinity acting through Christ33. Christ had revealed them to St John through the agency of the angel who visited the saint on his island and, in his turn, John had made them known to the Church. Later exegetes interpreted his statement as referring to the ‘fourfold efficient cause’ of the Apocalypse, namely, God, Christ, the angel and St John. The instructing angel was described as the mediate efficient cause, as in John Russel’s gloss (cf. p. 81).
Indeed, the efficient cause is quadruple in this book, namely God, Christ, the angel, and John. God is the principal and primary efficient cause; Christ, the secondary; the angel, the mediate; and John, the immediate . . .
Gower uses a much more general version of the idea found in the theologians. Decorum required that he should be more indirect than the commentators who, after all, were discussing a Scriptural auctor. He does not claim that he received a vision through a major gift of grace, which included a visitation by an angel. His point is made in an impersonal and indirect manner: the guardian angel who watches over everyone sometimes helps a man to understand the future by a special gift of insight. John Gower, it is strongly implied, is such a man.
In the second part of his general prologue, Gower discusses the nomen scribentis, intentio and materia of the Vox clamantis34. The name of the writer is given in the form of an acrostic, a practice favoured by fourteenth-century commentators on theological texts35 and by writers of artes praedicandi36. Certain basic similarities exist between the way in which Gower describes his intentio and materia and the way in which Gilbert had described the intentio and materia of St John. Here is the relevant part of Gilbert’s prologue:
Therefore, the material (materia) of John in this work is in particular the state of the Church of Asia, and moreover the state of the whole Church, namely those things that it suffers in the present life and what it will receive in the future life. His intention (intentio) is to advise patience, which is to be maintained because brief labour is followed by great reward. The mode of treatment (modus tractandi) is such that, first he sets in front a prologue and salutation, where he causes the hearers to be benign and attentive. This being done, he proceeds to the narration. . . . Subsequently, proceeding to the narration he distinguishes (distinguit) seven visions . . .
Gower’s materia also involves contemporary events. The Apocalypse was concerned with the sufferings and corruption of the Church in general and of the Churches of Asia in particular; the Vox clamantis is concerned with the general sufferings and corruption of the three estates (one of which is the Church) and with the sufferings and corruption of England in particular37. Both writers write in sorrow rather than in anger; both encourage patience and warn of impending divine vengeance. The Apocalypse predicts the age of Antichrist; Gower believes he is living in it38.
It may be added that the chapter-summary (capitulum) which is placed at the head of Gower’s general prologue explains the intentio, materia and modus of the Vox clamantis in a manner reminiscent of Gilbert’s ‘type C’ prologue39.
In the beginning of this work, the writer intends (intendit compositor) to describe how the lowly peasants violently revolted . . . And since an event of this kind was as loathsome and horrible as a monster, he narrates that in a dream he saw different throngs of the rabble transformed into different kinds of domestic animals. He says, moreover, that those domestic animals deviated from their true nature and took on the barbarousness of wild beasts. According to the distinctions (distincciones) of this book, which is divided into seven parts (dividitur partes), he treats furthermore of the causes for such enormities taking place among men.
The mode of treatment is said to take the form of a narrative about beasts which—like the beasts seen in the vision of St John—have an allegorical function. Gower’s basic divisio textus is into seven parts, and one wonders if his final choice of this number of books was influenced by the seven seals on the book depicted by St John (Apocalypse v. 1; vi. 1–viii. 1), and the resultant seven major divisions in the structure of the Apocalypse which were expounded by exegetes.
The prologue to the second book of the Vox clamantis discusses not merely the second book but the work in its entirety: in an earlier recension, it probably constituted the introduction to the entire work40. The nomen voluminis is given:
Vox clamantis erit nomenque voluminis huius,
Quod sibi scripta noui verba doloris habet.
(lines 83–4)
[The name of this volume will be ‘The Voice of One Crying’, because it contains written words about the present sorrow.]
The materia libri is discussed in lines 1–2 and 77–82. Gower says that he has seen and noted many things which his reminiscent pen is now eager to write. As the honeycomb is gathered from the buds of various flowers and as the sea-shell is found and gathered from many a shore, so many different mouths have furnished the writer with the materia for his work. The causae libri (presumably Gower is thinking of the discussions of causality found in ‘Aristotelian prologues’) have been many. Lines 3–10 contain a discussion of the work’s finis. Gower refuses to sacrifice to the muses: his sacrifice is to God alone, who is asked to fire the innermost depths of His servant’s breast. In Christ’s name, Gower will spread his net so that his mind may thankfully seize upon the things which it requires. May this book, begun with God’s help, achieve a fitting end:
Inceptum per te perfecto fine fruatur
Hoc opus ad laudem nominis, oro, tui.
(lines 9–10)
[I pray that this work, begun with your help for the praise of your name, may attain a fitting end.]
Thus, the final cause of the Vox clamantis is established as being divine praise. One is reminded of exegetical discussions of the final cause of sacred poetry (cf. pp. 93, 124–5).
This prologue also contains a complex examination of intentio, first, in relation to Gower’s materia and then, in relation to his mode of treatment. The reader is asked to forgive the writer’s faults; to embrace the matter, not the man; to think of the intention (mens) and not the bodily form (corpus) in which it is expressed:
Rem non personam, mentem non corpus in ista
Suscipe materia, sum miser ipse quia.
Res preciosa tamen in vili sepe Minera
Restat, et extracta commoditate placet . . .
(lines 13–14)
[In this matter, take the product, not the person; the intention, not the bodily form: because I, myself, am a worthless man. But a precious thing often resides in a vile mineral, and the commodity, on being extracted, is valued . . .]
Gower proceeds to apologise for the inadequacy of the corpus, a profession of humility which actually provides the occasion for a discussion of the relationship between his materia and modus agendi. The reader is asked to take what the writer’s honest ability offers him and to refrain from demanding anything further (lines 17–18). If the writer does not use well-chosen words to embellish his verses, at least the reader should notice what they mean (lines 21–2). Whatever formalities of rhetoric the pages may lack, the fruit of the materia will not be the less for that (lines 27–8). Outwardly, the verses may be of moderate worth; their inner worth is the greater (lines 29–30). In this way, Gower implies that anyone who fails to appreciate the quality of his materia is at fault, and draws attention to his skill in style and rhetoric.
Gower seems to be identifying himself as an instrumental causa efficiens working under the primary causa efficiens, God. Although these technical academic terms are not used, the idea of the duplex causa efficiens is there, lending substance and structure to the rhetoricians’ ‘modesty formulas’. It is explained that the man whom Christ’s grace enriches will never be poor, that the man for whom God provides will possess quite enough. Sometimes, thanks to divine grace, lofty things are achieved by a quite ordinary intelligence, and a weak hand frequently manages great affairs.
Gracia quem Cristi ditat, non indiget ille;
Quern deus augmentat possidet immo satis:
Grandia de modico sensu quandoque parantur,
Paruaque sepe manus predia magna facit . . .
(lines 67–70)
[Whoever Christ’s grace enriches does not lack anything; whoever God provides for possesses quite enough: sometimes great things are accomplished by someone of average ability, and a puny hand often manages great feats . . .]
The elaborate nature of Gower’s protestations of humility may be better understood if one is aware of the delicacy of his self-appointed position as instrumental efficient cause. He did not wish to appear to have made a personal claim for divine inspiration. This was the property of those writers with the greatest degree of auctoritas, the auctores of Scripture and the saints. Hence, Gower ascribes any auctoritas his work may have, in the first instance, to the primary auctor, God and, in the second instance, to the ancient auctores who have disseminated truth. Many things in the Vox clamantis are, Gower explains, not written out of his personal experience but are derived from writers of the past (lines 75–82). However, what comes across most strongly from the prologue to book ii is the implication that Gower has not only channelled truth but also has contributed some personal, though God-given, insights to it.
The idea of the duplex causa efficiens seems to lie behind the prologue to the third book of the Vox clamantis also. In Aristotelian fashion, Gower says that everyone ought to consider happenings in the light of their causes (lines 5–6). The causes of his work are stated to be reprehensible faults of people of all three estates. Then, Gower disavows personal responsibility for the truths contained in his work: the voice of the people has reported them to him (lines 11–13); he writes what others say and does not wish anyone to assume that this is a work of his own originality (lines 27–8). Yet this disavowal of responsibility is balanced by the indirect claim for a degree of auctoritas which is made in the remainder of the prologue. Gower’s procedure here is very reminiscent of a technique found in prologues to artes praedicandi, and so we must digress to discuss the delicate balance between the indirect claim of auctoritas and the ostentatious refusal of personal credit which is a feature of these works.
Humbert of Romans, defending and commending the evangelical function of the Order of Preachers, claimed that the office of preacher is the most excellent possible for man41. The apostles are the most excellent among the saints, the angels are the most excellent among creatures, God is the most excellent being in the universe. How excellent, then, is the office of preacher, which is apostolic, angelic and godly! Humbert proceeds to extol the excellence of Scripture, which is said to be superior to all other sciences from the point of view of its auctor, materia and finis.
From the author, because while other sciences were invented from human ingenuity, although not without divine assistance, this is immediately infused from God by inspiration. II Peter i.21, ‘the holy men of God spoke, inspired by the Holy Spirit’.
Since the materia of the preacher is derived from Scripture, it is bound to be excellent; the preacher is the proper instrument of God.
Such high ideals were not confined to the Dominicans. In general, the writers of artes praedicandi claimed a degree of auctoritas on behalf of their office. In the prologue to his Ars componendi sermones, Ralph Higden employed the term duplex causa efficiens in attempting to explain the relationship between the office of the preacher and the authority of God: ‘The efficient cause is twofold, God Himself originating and the preacher himself ministering’42. A similar explanation is provided in John of Wales’s De quattuor praedicabilibus. After explaining that God is the prime mover of preaching, John turns to the human preacher:
The efficient cause which is moving and moved is any preacher who is devoted and imbued by the holy Spirit to the office of such great dignity, apt and suitable as much in manner of life as in science.43
Robert of Basevorn seems to have conceived of a threefold causa efficiens for his Forma praedicandi: God, the various friends for whom the work was written, and Robert himself.
Secondly, the efficient cause is designated when it is said ‘by me’. May God, who is also the end (finis), be principally the efficient cause as universal influence, and you, my friend, be the efficient cause as a special attracting force, and the insistence of my associates be as a certain continual driving force, whereas I am the more immediate instrument, putting the task into execution.44
Robert explains that he had been moved by doubts about his ability to bring to perfection what he had begun. Then he thought of II Timothy iv. 17 (‘The Lord stood with me, and strengthened me, that by me the preaching might be fully accomplished’), and a great part of his sadness was dispelled. When he realised that the first part of this passage was fulfilled in him, i.e. that the Lord stood with him, strengthening him, he had no doubts about the remaining part, and undertook to complete the work. Indeed, because he regards himself as an instrument of God, Robert can to some extent disavow responsibility for what he has written.
However, because the primary cause has more influence, I do not dare to attribute anything to myself as proceeding from me; but I say with the Apostle, Romans xv. 18, ‘I dare not speak of any of those things which Christ works by me’, and, Galatians ii.20, ‘And I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me’.
But then the reader is informed that, if he wishes to know the writer’s name, it can be found in an acrostic. Robert has managed to combine decorous self-abnegation with an explanation of how he came to compose his work.
In the prologue to the second book of the Vox clamantis, Gower compares himself to an ‘ancient’ preacher-prophet, St John the Baptist, the original ‘voice crying in the wilderness’ (lines 83–4). In the prologue to the third book, Gower assumes the office of preacher and, by implication, claims that degree of auctoritas which—according to the writers of artes praedicandi—that office entailed. Like these ‘modern’ preachers, Gower describes himself in terms which enable us to identify him as an instrumental efficient cause. He prays that merciful Christ may grant favour to the undertaking of His servant:
Si qua boni scriptura tenet, hoc fons bonitatis
Stillet detque deus que bona scribat homo:
Fructificet deus in famulo que scripta iuuabunt,
Digna ministret homo semina, grana deus.
(lines 39–42)
[If a piece of writing contains something good, may the fount of goodness distil it and may God grant that a man should write good things. May God make fruitful in His servant those writings which will be of benefit: let man provide the worthy seeds, and God the grain.]
May God make fruitful in His servant those writings which will be of use; where the sensus of the human writer is too weak, may God impart His sensus:
Quo minor est sensus meus, adde tuum, deus, et da,
Oro, pios vultus ad mea vota tuos . . .
(lines 49–50)
[Where my wit is too small add yours, O God, and I pray that you should turn your benevolent face towards my prayers.]
Gower is implying that the Vox clamantis is the result of cooperation between himself and the primary efficient cause ‘as universal influence’ (to use Robert of Basevorn’s idiom). God is addressed as ultimate wisdom, without whom the wisdom of the world is nothing. May the writer become wise in order readily to compose his verses and to write only the truth:
O sapiens, sine quo nichil est sapiencia mundi,
Cuius in obsequium me mea vota ferunt,
Te precor instanti da tempore, Criste, misertus,
Vt metra que pecii prompta parare queam;
Turgida deuitet, falsum mea penna recuset
Scribere, set scribat que modo vera videt.
(lines 83–8)
[O Wise One, without whom the wisdom of the world is nothing, into whose allegiance my prayers bring me, I pray to you at this instant of time, O merciful Christ, to grant that I am able to compose promptly the verses I have striven after. Let my pen avoid what is turgid, refuse to write what is false, but write those things which it sees now to be true.]
May the meaning of the writer be true to God, who is absolute truth. In this way, Gower, like the writers of artes praedicandi, stressed the auctoritas of the office of preacher and so avoided making a direct claim for personal authority.
Gower’s attitude to the authorial role and literary form he adopted in the Vox clamantis, an attitude which is expressed clearly in the academic prologues in this work, may now be summarised. Late-medieval exegetes had come to regard many a Scriptural auctor in the role of preacher; in their eyes, Daniel and his colleagues were preacher-prophets (see pp. 136–8). The Vox clamantis represents a further stage in the dissemination and development of such theory: therein, a ‘modern’ writer adopts the stance of the preacher-prophet, likening his moral position and righteous indignation to those of the two ‘ancient’ preacher-prophets who are his namesakes, St John the Baptist and St John the auctor of the Apocalypse. Commentators on the prophetic books of the Bible expounded the forma prophetialis as a literary form; practising poets recognised this as a literary model to be imitated. Hence, Gower’s ‘self-commentary’ on the Vox clamantis invites comparison between his mode of stylistic and didactic procedures and the procedures found by exegetes in prophetic works of great authority, notably in St John’s Apocalypse.
In the Confessio Amantis Gower set out to produce ‘a bok for Engelondes sake’: a veritable English classic, complete with extrinsic and intrinsic prologues in which a claim to a limited auctoritas was implied, and an elaborate apparatus of glosses and summaries which affirm the unifying moral intention of the work45. If, in the Vox clamantis, Gower portrayed himself as a preacher-prophet, in the Confessio amantis, he assumed the role of the philosopher who was wise in the secular sciences of ethics and politics.
In order to mount this argument fully and clearly, it will be necessary to examine, at the outset, some of the fourteenth-century permutations of extrinsic and intrinsic pairs of prologues. Nicholas of Lyre began his Postilla litteralis with an Aristotelian extrinsic prologue which discusses the relationship of wisdom and science (sapientia and scientia), the hierarchy of the sciences, and the corresponding hierarchy of the books which teach the various sciences46. Lyre states that the philosophers’ knowledge pertains only to this present life, whereas sacred Scripture directs us to that blissful afterlife of which the philosophers are ignorant. A science can be said to be more eminent than another in two ways. According to Aristotle’s De anima, these are the greater nobility of one subject as opposed to another, and the greater certainty of one mode of procedure (modus procedendi) as opposed to another. Sacred Scripture, the basis of theology, clearly excels all other knowledge on both these counts. The Bible has as its subject God, the sum of nobility. It also excels in mode of procedure because, in theology, the first principles from which one proceeds are immutable truths: such certainty is not to be had in the methods of any other science. Theology, the science which seeks the highest wisdom, is most properly called sapientia. The sapientia of catholics and saints, which is holy Writ, is to be distinguished from the lesser wisdom of the philosophers (also called sapientia, but less correctly). What may be concluded manifestly from Scripture is to be accepted as true; what is repugnant to it is simply false.
Then Lyre supplies an intrinsic prologue in which he describes his personal purpose and his modus procedendi in writing the commentary47. He has provided us with parallel discussions of the intentio and modus of the divine auctor, God, and the human writer, himself. The intrinsic aspects of the various books of the Bible are analysed in the prologues which introduce the commentaries on individual books.
Whereas Lyre, in this general introduction to his complete Postilla, was concerned with sapientia as theological truth, commentators on the Sapiential Books of the Old Testament had as their subject the sapientia of the philosophers, whose authority rested on human reasonings rather than on divine inspirations (cf. pp. 113–15). Solomon was held to be a wise man (sapiens) in such philosophical disciplines as ethics, politics and natural science and, in the commentaries on his works, this wisdom was related to an Aristotelian definition of sapientia. For example, in the extrinsic prologue to his commentary on Wisdom, Robert Holcot explained how all the human arts contribute to God’s glory48. He lists the four virtuous dispositions which God, the divine auctor, requires in his audience. The first is simplicity of heart. A man cannot serve two masters; therefore, in the words of Matthew iv. 10, ‘praise the Lord and seek Him alone’. The second virtue is humble judgment. Sapientia puffs up, if charity does not assist. Third, the divine auctor requires in a listener the virtue of accurate reporting: what is said without fiction must be repeated without malice (Wisdom vii. 13). Solomon and Seneca agree on this point. As Seneca puts it, wisdom is a noble possession of the soul which enables its owner to scorn greed and, when it is distributed, it grows and increases. Holcot adds that it is the office of the wise man (sapiens) to instruct the less wise and courteously support the uninformed. Fourth, the listener must practise what he hears in the proper fashion. Once again, auctoritates from both pagan and Scriptural sources are quoted to prove the point. Holcot then moves to state the supremacy of sacred Scripture over philosophical wisdom. This done, he feels obliged to concentrate on philosophical wisdom.
Holcot’s intrinsic prologue focuses on the Book of Wisdom itself:
Concerning this book, which is called the Book of Wisdom, there are in the beginning three things to be noted. The first is about its name, the second about its author, and the third about its end.49
The nomen libri is ‘Wisdom’, and this means many things to many men. The differing views of the peripatetics, of moral philosophers such as Socrates, Seneca and Boethius, and of theologians, are summarised, their opinions being compared and contrasted with those of Solomon. Under the second intrinsic heading, Holcot discusses the problem of authenticity: was Solomon indeed the auctor, or was it Philo Judaeus? Concerning the third intrinsic heading (finis), Holcot explains that Solomon’s ultimate objective was the encouragement of a particular disposition in men. The first facet of this disposition concerns civil government. Cicero is quoted on the bestial life of men before the establishment of good laws; the Orpheus myth, as recounted in Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae, points the same moral. Wisdom is the basis of any good state, so Plato argued that philosophers should be kings, and kings, philosophers. The second facet of Solomon’s intended disposition concerns the expulsion of one’s enemies and the fortification of one’s cities. Because old men are wise, the great Alexander had no nobleman in his army under the age of sixty years; they seemed to be senators rather than soldiers. Aristotle and Solomon agree that wisdom is better than strength, and that a prudent man is better than a powerful man. The third and final aspect of the recommended disposition concerns correction. Proverbs xxix. 15 states that reproof and the rod teach wisdom: a child left to himself will bring his mother to shame.
In his commentary on Ecclesiasticus, Holcot follows the same basic method, a general discussion of sapientia preceeding an excursus on the auctor and the divisio libri50. Other ‘classicising friars’, like Thomas Ringstead and John Lathbury, employed similar introductions51.
This practice of treating wisdom in extrinsic and intrinsic prologues influenced the way in which Gower introduced his Confessio amantis: he may have got the idea from Holcot’s commentary on Wisdom, which he seems to have known. The beginning of the Confessio amantis resembles a commentary on a Sapiential Book, which first treats of the extrinsic aspects of the book in the context of a discussion of wisdom in general, and then proceeds to discuss the book itself under such headings as intentio auctoris, nomen libri, materia and utilitas.
The Prologus to the Confessio amantis is, in fact, an extrinsic prologue about sapientia; the treatise which follows it is about human love, amor:
For this prologe is so assised
That it to wisdom al belongeth . . .
Whan the prologe is so despended,
This bok schal afterward ben ended
Of love . . .
(Prologus, lines 66–75)
Gower links sapientia and amor through the donnish joke that love ‘many a wys man hath put under’. Hence it seems fitting that the Prologus on wisdom should be followed by a treatise on love. Gower’s declared intention is ‘in som part’ to advise ‘the wyse man’: hence the Prologus warns of the ways in which the Church, the commons and the earthly rulers have ceased to follow wisdom. Gower admits that only God has the wisdom necessary for full understanding of worldly fortune:
. . . this prologe is so assised
That it to wisdom al belongeth:
What wysman that it underfongeth,
He schal drawe into remembrance
The fortune of this worldes chance,
The which noman in his persone
Mai knowe, bot the god al one.
(Prologus, lines 66–72)
This point is echoed at the end of the Prologus:
. . . And now nomore,
As forto speke of this matiere,
Which non bot only god may stiere.
(Prologus, lines 1086–8)
By contrast, in his intrinsic prologue (i, lines 1–92), Gower explains what is within his personal compass:
I may noght strecche up to the hevene
Min hand, ne setten al in evene
This world, which evere is in balance:
It stant noght in my sufficance
So grete thinges to compasse,
Bot I mot lete it overpasse
And treten upon othre thinges.
Forthi the Stile of my writinges
Fro this day forth I thenke change
And speke of thing is noght so strange,
Which every kinde hath upon honde,
And wherupon the world mot stonde,
And hath don sithen it began,
And schal whil ther is any man;
And that is love, of which I mene
To trete, as after schal be sene.
(i, lines 1–16)
Thus, Gower admits that he cannot solve all the problems which he canvassed in the extrinsic prologue. A human auctor cannot reorganise the present world in accordance with those principles of order which the divine auctor, God, followed in His creation, but he can impose an appropriate order on his own creation, his treatise on love. The way in which Gower explains what is within his compass parallels the way in which a commentator like Holcot would move from wisdom in general to the particular branch of wisdom pertinent to the text, from the causa causarum, God, to the causes of the text.
The English text of the Confessio amantis is accompanied by a Latin commentary which appears in many of the manuscripts, some of which are contemporary with Gower. The form of Gower’s intrinsic prologue is made absolutely clear by the beginning of this commentary, where the usual intrinsic headings are employed:
Since in the Prologus already has been treated the way in which the divisiveness of our current state has overcome the love of charity, the author intends (intendit auctor) presently to compose his book, the name (nomen) of which is called ‘The Lover’s Confession’, about that love by which not only human kind but also all living things naturally are made subject. And because not a few lovers frequently are enticed by the passions of desire beyond what is fitting, the matter of the book (materia libri) is spread out more specially on these topics throughout its length.52
The heading modus agendi is not mentioned in the Latin commentary, but the relevant literary concept is considered in the English text. Every man should take example of the wisdom that has been given him, and teach it to others. For this reason, Gower will tell of his encounter with love, thereby providing posterity with an example of that unhappy, jolly woe (i, lines 78–88). This accounts for his mode of treatment. To use the technical scholastic idiom, the modus exemplorum suppositivus is being employed (cf. pp. 123–4).
But, is it not incongruous that prologues designed to introduce Scriptural texts should serve as Gower’s models for the prologues in the Confessio amantis? What has ‘the clerke Ovide’, Gower’s main auctor on love, to do with the Solomon of the Sapiential Books? These questions may be answered with reference to certain attitudes to literature current in the later Middle Ages. By the early fourteenth century, commentaries on the Sapiential Books had become repositories of Scriptural and pagan auctoritates on common subjects (as has been illustrated by Holcot’s commentary on Wisdom). Solomon was supported by the pagan philosophers and, indeed, by the pagan poets, including Ovid. These auctores could ‘come together’ in this way because they were supposed to operate on a similar plane. Solomon, Aristotle and Ovid had all used their natural reason; they were philosophers and not theologians. Moreover, they were—according to the medieval commentators—interested in basically the same things (see pp. 115–16).
The conjunction of Solomon with ‘the clerke Ovide’ becomes comprehensible if it is realised that the works of both these writers were believed to pertain to ethics (ethice supponitur). Commentators on Ovid argued that the intentio of his poetry was to recommend good mores and to reprehend evil ways:
The utility is great, since when this book has been perused thoroughly the chaste women may be eager to guard their chastity and those who are unchaste and wanton may adhere to chastity. . . . It is subjoined to ethics, because it treats of morals in teaching good mores and in blaming bad.53
Commentators on the Sapiential Books argued that Solomon’s intentio was to instruct in the ethical and political virtues and vices. Therefore, Hugh of St Cher could describe Ecclesiasticus in these terms:
The intention of the author is to instruct us about virtues and to inform us by examples of the saints, so that by imitating them, with them we might merit eternal life . . . The utility of this book is knowledge of the virtues . . . This book pertains to moral philosophy, because it is entirely about mores or virtues.54
Many of Ovid’s literal statements were quoted as auctoritates on such subjects as ethics and natural science which he was supposed to share with Scriptural auctores, while medieval mythographers showed how allegorical interpretation of his fabulae could yield profound truths which were perfectly compatible with Christian doctrine55.
Therefore, Gower was not original in placing the materia of love in a moral perspective—that had already been done in the scholastic study of Ovid’s love poetry56. His personal achievement consists rather in the fact that he widened the moral perspective found in the ‘Medieval Ovid’. Scholastic commentators had formulated a rather simple classification of Ovid’s love-stories: some teach about legal love, some about illegal love and some about infatuation; certain stories show us what we ought to do, while others show us what we ought to avoid. By contrast, Gower employed a more comprehensive and precise framework, by grouping his love-stories in accordance with the Seven Deadly Sins. Moreover, he managed to include materia relating to politics, a subject which is touched on in the Prologus and the epilogue, and also provides the basis of book vii57.
The political facet of the Confessio amantis was so important to Gower that he drew attention to it in the Latin passage which summarises his major works in turn.
This third book, which out of regard for his most vigorous lord Henry of Lancaster . . . was written in English, following the prophecy of Daniel concerning the mutability of earthly kingships, discourses from the time of Nebuchadnezzar up to the present time. Moreover, it treats according to Aristotle of those things by which King Alexander was instructed, as much in his ruling as in other things. However, the principal matter (principalis materia) of this work is based on love and the foolish passions of lovers.58
Gower’s principalis materia falls within the subject-area of ethics; his other material falls within the subject-area of politics which, according to Aristotle, embraces the subject-area of ethics (or vice versa). As T. A. Sinclair puts it,
For Aristotle, as for Plato, the subject of political philosophy, or politikè, embraced the whole of human behaviour, the conduct of the individual equally with the behaviour of the group. Ethics was, therefore, a part of politics; we might also say that politics was a part of ethics.59
Although there is no evidence that Gower knew Aristotle’s Politica or any of the medieval commentaries on it, he was certainly aware of this belief in the link between ethics and politics. In book vii of the Confessio is found a scheme of the division of the sciences which Gower derived from the Trésor of Brunetto Latini, the teacher of Dante60. Brunetto was ‘exceptionally well acquainted’ with Aristotle’s works, and his division of the sciences into the theoretical, the rhetorical and the practical is ‘in effect the same as Aristotle’s classification of knowledge as Theoretical, Poetical and Practical’. His division of practical philosophy into ethics, economics and politics is also derived from Aristotle. Gower put his own slant on what he took from the Trésor: ‘etique’, ‘iconomique’ and ‘policie’ are considered as aspects of ‘a kinges Regiment’ (vii, lines 1649–83).
Book vii of the Confessio contains a veritable ‘de regimine principum’, a little treatise on the proper methods of ruling a country. Both the English text of book vii and its Latin commentary ostentatiously refer to Aristotle as the great authority on politics, although Gower’s information concerning Aristotle’s views seems to be limited to the account found in Brunetto’s Trésor and to the Pseudo-Aristotelian Secreta secretorum (supposed to have been written by Aristotle for the instruction of King Alexander), which Gower accepted as genuine. From these sources, Gower derived much of the ‘policie’ which he sought to relate to the love-lore which was his principalis materia:
To every man behoveth lore,
Bot to noman belongeth more
Than to a king, which hath to lede
The poeple; for of his kinghede
He mai hem bothe save and spille.
And for it stant upon his wille,
It sit him wel to ben avised,
And the vertus whiche are assissed
Unto a kinges Regiment,
To take in his entendement:
Wherof to tellen, as thei stonde,
Hierafterward nou woll I fonde.
(vii, lines 1711–22)
Pagan and Scriptural auctoritates on politics are grouped together. The sage Daniel is quoted alongside the sage Aristotle; King Alexander alongside King Solomon. In Solomon, one may see the things most necessary for a worthy king, namely, wisdom (see vii, lines 3891–904). Gower could have found such assimilation of pagan and Scriptural auctoritates in any of the ‘classicising’ commentaries on Solomon’s Sapiential Books, as well as the models for his extrinsic and intrinsic prologues to the Confessio amantis.
In sum, Gower’s Confessio seems to work by assimilation of materials which, although they may appear ill-assorted to us, would have been regarded as quite compatible by the learned medieval reader. Diverse exempla of lovers were brought together: some commended chaste love while others warned of unchaste love, thus teaching a quite consistent morality. Was there anything incongruous about a priest of Venus extolling the virtue of chastity and attacking the sin of incest, the main topic of book viii? Not to those medieval readers who believed that Ovid had taught about just love and had reprehended love which was foolish or wicked. Pagan and Christian materials on common subjects are combined, Gower’s rationale being the widespread belief that ‘Ovide’ and ‘Salomon’ shared many assumptions about the classification of the sciences and modes of scientific procedure (cf. pp. 115–16). The materia of ‘policie’ is related to the principalis materia of love: this is acceptable, because Gower believed that his exempla amantum pertained to ethics, and carefully widened his moral perspective to include politics. Those virtues necessary for ‘a kinges Regiment’ are necessary for the moral ‘regiment’ of any man.
We are now in a position to assess the nature of Gower’s claim to auctoritas in the Confessio amantis. This may be effected by a comparison of its epilogue with the ending of the Vox clamantis. At the end of the Vox clamantis, Gower was concerned to disavow responsibility both for what he had said in his book and for what his readers might make of it. He protested that he did not assert his statements as an auctor:
Hos ego compegi versus, quos fuderat in me
Spiritus in sompnis: nox erat illa grauis.
Hec set vt auctor ego non scripsi metra libello,
Que tamen audiui trado legenda tibi:
Non tumor ex capite proprio me scribere fecit
Ista, set vt voces plebis in aure dabant.
(vii, lines 1443–8)
[I have brought together these verses, which a spirit uttered in me while I was asleep: that night was burdensome. But I have not written as an authority these verses in a book; rather, I am passing on what I heard for you to read. A swelling of my own head did not cause me to write these things, but the voice of the people put them in my ear.]
The auctoritas belongs to God or to the divine will as expressed by the voice of the people; he is a humble and unworthy minister of that doctrine. These statements should seem good to good people; what is bad can be left to the bad. The bad man should know Gower’s writings in order that, with their help, he may become good; the good man should seek them out in order to become better (vii, lines 1443–81). Through these fulsome professions of humility, Gower draws attention to his creativity and, in an indirect and impersonal way, claims a degree of auctoritas–‘impersonal’ because the emphasis is placed, not on Gower’s personal achievement, but rather on his assumed office as prophet, preacher and transmitter of truths.
In the ending of the Confessio amantis, there is neither the same evasion of responsibility for what has been said nor the same conviction, underlying all the effusions of humility, of the unquestionable worth of the work in leading men to salvation. Gower assures us that his ‘entente’ is a good one (a point which did not have to be laboured in the prophetic Vox clamantis) and claims that he cannot be blamed for the sad but true fact that some men will read his work simply for what it says of love. The different versions of the epilogue make this point in different ways.
In the first recension both ‘pleye’ and ‘wisdom’ are offered:
In som partie it mai be take
As for to lawhe and forto pleye;
And forto loke in other weye,
It may be wisdom to the wise:
So that somdel for good aprise
And eek somdel for lust and game
I have it mad . . .
(Macaulay, viii, lines 3056*–62*)
According to this version of Gower’s poem, the Confessio is all things to all men. With considerable bravado, Gower refuses to be responsible for the readers’ various interpretations of his work and appears to be quite unconcerned about the possibility of misinterpretation.
The revision shifts attention away from the possibility of different interpretations and focuses attention on the response that Gower would wish from his discerning reader. He asks to be excused for having composed a work ‘in englesch’ which ‘stant betwene ernest and game’ (lines 3106–11) and expresses the hope that his work will not be despised by learned men. Both versions of the epilogue contain a protestation that the poet has used ‘no Rethoriqe’, but the revision is more fulsome, suggesting that Gower had become more concerned to hint ‘to the wise’ that, in fact, he had used a lot of rhetoric.
The essential differences between the endings of the Vox clamantis and the Confessio amantis depend on the different authorial roles adopted by Gower. One had to be more circumspect in assuming the role of preacher-prophet than in assuming the role of sapiens in ethics and politics: the theological truths expressed in St John’s Apocalypse ranked far higher than the philosophical truths expressed in Solomon’s Book of Wisdom. The less the degree of auctoritas claimed, the less was the need for elaborate evasions in the shape of disavowals of responsibility and protestations of humility. But if, in the Vox clamantis, Gower had to evade the possible charge of spiritual arrogance, in the Confessio amantis he had to evade the possible charge of levity in his choice of main subject, namely, love. One of the functions of Gower’s epilogue is to protect himself from this charge.
In the first recension Prologus, Gower had referred to a proverb about beginnings and endings: ‘who that wel his werk begynneth / The rather a good ende he wynneth . . .’ (lines 87*–8*). Presumably this means that whoever begins a work well will finish it well: the Prologus is about wisdom, and the epilogue returns to the subject of wisdom. In viii, lines 2908–40, Venus tells Amans that he is too old for love, and that he should, therefore, go where moral virtue dwells—where, in fact, certain of Gower’s previous works are to be found. What better way to remind us that Amans is a fiction than to refer to Gower’s reputation for moral and didactic works?
Venus finishes her speech with the ambiguous lines:
‘Now have y seid al that ther is
Of love as for thi final ende’
(viii, lines 2938–9)
This could refer simply to the ending of the Confessio amantis, where Gower wanted to emphasise ‘vertu moral’, in order to establish that his treatise on love had moral utilitas. Alternatively, it could refer to the ‘final ende’ of Gower in particular and man in general, in the sense of that divinely-ordained end of man, namely, salvation, to which all men aspire through performance of moral actions. Or, it could refer to the finalis causa of the poem, namely, its efficacy in encouraging ‘vertu moral’ in the reader. These senses of ‘ende’ were probably related in Gower’s mind.
Gower wished to leave his readers with an assurance about the way in which his principalis materia had been handled, about the sapiential context in which amor had been placed. Therefore, after Venus takes her leave, the narrator proceeds to pray for the state of England, to warn against the evils of disunity in the state and to summarise the duties of a king. We have returned to the concerns of the Prologus and the ‘de regimine principum’ which is book vii. The voice of ‘moral Gower’ is speaking, affirming that his work contains some unambiguous ‘lore’. Then he reminds us that his ‘lust’ had been examined from a moral standpoint. The intrinsic prologue is echoed in the statement that love can encourage a man to act contrary to reason and prohibit him from acting wisely (viii, lines 3143–51). This is not to say that amor and ‘vertu moral’ are incompatible. Gower has taken pains to teach about ‘just love’ (as understood by the Ovid-commentators), to praise chaste married love and to condemn vicious love. Some kinds of human love can be unwise and irrational. By contrast, charity, the divine love, is wholly consonant with wisdom (see viii, lines 3162–72). Gower is not retracting his concern with amor (as C. S. Lewis suggested61), but is merely accepting that amor is limited, and that caritas is intrinsically superior to amor. The precise nature of the utilitas or final cause of the Confessio amantis has been clarified: ethice supponitur.
In spelling out the moral utilitas of his poem and suggesting that it pertained to ethics, Gower was aspiring to the same limited degree of auctoritas which contemporary commentators allowed to Ovid. This is the reason why tact was required at the end of the Confessio amantis, a reason very different from that which explains Gower’s behaviour at the end of the Vox clamantis. St John, the auctor of the Apocalypse, did not have to be ‘moralised’ to be believed—Ovid did. Gower had to provide for his Confessio amantis what medieval commentators had provided for Ovid, a clear statement of the didactic utility or finalis causa of love-poetry.
Gower’s claim to a limited auctoritas was implied rather than made explicitly, but I doubt if any learned reader of the Confessio amantis could have failed to appreciate the significance of either the sapiential extrinsic and intrinsic prologues with which Gower introduced his poem, or the clear moral note on which he ‘ended’ it. Anyway, the person who provided the Latin commentary was concerned to make sure that the implications of the English text should not be missed. He says, in the third person, what Gower could not have said with decorum in the first person, thereby making his would-be auctor an actual auctor.
After discussing the intentio auctoris, nomen libelli and materia libri (cf. p. 181), the commentator signals the beginning of Gower’s tractatus in this way:
Here as it were in the person of other people (in persona aliorum), who are held fast by love, the author (auctor), feigning himself to be a lover, proposes to write of their various passions one by one in the various distinctions of this book.62
This derives from a long-established method of defending the good character of a work through reference to authorial use of personae, a good example of which is St Bonaventure’s treatment of Solomon’s role in Ecclesiastes (cf. pp. 110–12). Only the work of a good man has authority, Bonaventure explains: if Solomon was a wicked man, can his work be said to have any authority? It is explained that Ecclesiastes was written by a penitent man who looks back over his sins and regrets them. Sometimes he speaks in his own person, sometimes in the persons of others (in persona aliorum). When, for example, he speaks in the person of the foolish man, he does not approve of this foolishness but abhors it; when he speaks as a wise man his words are directly conducive to correct behaviour. The reader must appreciate the work in its entirety; if so, he will find that his auctor has been entirely consistent. Similarly, the commentator on the Confessio amantis was determined to prove that Gower, though live, was a good auctor. A clear distinction is therefore made between what Gower says in his own person (the sapiens of the Prologus) and what he says in the persons of those that are subject to love (including Amans and Confessor) in the course of the treatise.
At the end of the treatise, the commentator heralds the return of the auctor in his own person:
Here at the end he recapitulates concerning that which at the beginning of the first book he promised for the sake of love that he would treat more specially. Truly, he concludes that the delight of all love apart from charity is nothing. For whoever abides in charity, abides in God.63
In claiming that the pleasure of every kind of love except charity amounts to nothing, the commentary goes further than the English text which, as has been suggested above, recognises the limitations of earthly love and the vices which its abuse can bring, but certainly does not condemn it outright. The commentator seems zealous to assure the reader that, although Amans and Confessor are the servants of love, John Gower is interested in both love and wisdom; that while the work is mainly about love, love has been placed in the context of wisdom.
The Latin commentary is, therefore, less subtle than the English text, and more explicitly moral. It serves to substantiate the claim of limited auctoritas which Gower had implied through his skilful manipulation of certain literary notions which, as we have seen, were developed by medieval scholars in their attempts to cope with the problems of interpretation encountered in reading ‘ancient’ auctores. The Latin commentary is an important feature of the Confessio amantis: when read with the English text, it emphasises the singleness of the writer’s purpose and the essential unity of his materials. Indeed, the commentary is in such complete sympathy with the moral intentio professed in the poem that one is emboldened to believe that Gower himself provided it to accompany his ‘modern English classic’.
It would seem, then, that academic prologues provided Gower with models for the composition of his own prolegomena; the literary theory channelled through these same academic prologues provided him with principles for the description and justification of his own works. By contrast, Chaucer did not employ any of the traditional prologue-paradigms, although many of his literary attitudes seem to have been influenced by scholastic literary theory.
Chaucer’s knowledge of the Aristotelian causal scheme is indicated by a passage in the Tale of Melibee64. While he never discusses the four causes in a specifically literary context, he does seem to have known various literary terms which occur both in the ‘type C’ prologue and in the later ‘Aristotelian prologue’. This point may be made clearly by a comparison of some of Chaucer’s literary terms with Richard Rolle’s translations of several Latin words into English.
When, in the early fourteenth century, Rolle provided glosses to his English Psalter, he rendered in English a simplified version of the ‘type C’ prologue to that text which had been developed by such twelfth-century exegetes as Gilbert of Poitiers and Peter Lombard (cf. pp. 45, 52–4). Rolle describes the Psalter’s ‘mater’ (= materia), ‘entent’ (= intentio), and ‘maner of lare’ (= modus agendi) as follows:
þe mater of þis boke es Crist and his spouse. þat es, haly kirk, or ilke a rightwys mans saule. þe entent es to confourme þo þat ere fyled in Adam tille Crist in newnes of lyf. þe maner of lare es swilke: vmstunt he spekys of Crist in his godhede, vmstunt in his manhede, vmstunt in þat þat he vses þe voyce of his servauntes. Als so he spekys of haly kirk in thre maners: vmwhile in þe persone of parfite men, summe tyme in persoun of vnparfit menne, summe tyme of ille menne, þe whilke are in haly kirk be body noght be thoght, be name noght be dede, in noumbyr noght in merite [italics mine].65
Chaucer also employs ‘entente’ in the sense of intentio auctoris66. Examples of his use of ‘mateere’ in the sense of materia libri are legion67. ‘Maner’ is used in the sense of modus agendi (to designate literary form or style) when, in the Monk’s Tale, the ‘maner of tragedie’ is discussed68. Chaucer may have picked up this term from a gloss on one of the auctores generally described as tragedians by medieval commentators, namely ‘Virgile, Ovide, Omer, Lucan and Stace’69. Moreover, in the Merchant’s Tale, he speaks of a letter written ‘in manere of a compleynt or a lay’70.
But of much greater significance is the apparent influence of an offshoot of scholastic literary discussion, namely, the theory developed by medieval compilers in describing and defending the genre of compilatio.
Of Chaucer’s debt to several of the great medieval compilations there can be no doubt. R. A. Pratt has argued that he took material for the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale, the Summoner’s Tale and the Pardoner’s Tale from the Communiloquium sive summa collationum of John of Wales71. In a series of articles, P. Aiken claims that Chaucer made use of Vincent’s Speculum maius in a number of ways: as a source for the Legend of Cleopatra and the Monk’s Tale, and for scientific lore about dream-visions, medicine, demonology and alchemy, which appears in the Canterbury Tales72. My point is a different one, namely, that Chaucer was indebted to the compilers not only for source-material and technical information but also for a literary role and a literary form. Chaucer seems to have exploited the compilers’ typical justification of their characteristic role as writers, and to have shared, to some extent, the compilers’ sense of ordinatio partium.
When reading the prologue to a major compilation, one is immediately struck by the care with which the writer defines his special literary activity and his distinctive literary role or function as compilator. Whereas an auctor was regarded as someone whose works had considerable authority and who bore full responsibility for what he had written, the compilator firmly denied any personal authority and accepted responsibility only for the manner in which he had arranged the statements of other men. For example, Vincent of Beauvais stated that he had added ‘little and almost nothing of my own’ to the authorial statements he had excerpted73. The auctoritas involved belongs to the auctoritates themselves, while the credit for the ordinatio partium, the organisation and structuring of the diverse extracts, goes to the compiler. The same method of professing personal humility, the same ostentatious deference to sources, occur in the prologue to Brunetto Latini’s Trésor:
And I do not say that the book is drawn from my poor wit or my scanty learning; but it is like a honeycomb gathered from different flowers, for this book is compiled exclusively from the marvellous sayings of authors who before our time treated of philosophy, each according to the part of it that he knew; for no earthly man can know it all, for philosophy is the root from which grow all the kinds of knowledge that man can know.74
The compilator has a forma tractandi all of his own, what Vincent called the ‘mode of the excerptor’ (modus excerptoris)75.
In the prologue to De proprietatibus rerum, Bartholomew the Englishman explained his intention in words very similar to Vincent’s, protesting that he had included ‘little or nothing of my own’76. John Trevisa, who completed his translation of Bartholomew in 1398, rendered the relevant passage in English as follows:
In þis work I haue iput of myne owne wille litil oþir nouzt, but al þat schal be seid is itake of autentik bokes of holy seyntes and of philosophres and compile schortliche witoute idilnesse . . .77
A similar idiom is found in an original Middle English compilation, the short treatise on ‘Actijf Lijf 7 contemplatijf’, which forms one component within the larger compilation known as The Poor Caitiff. The anonymous writer declares that
Alle þese sentencis bifore goynge I haue gaderid of hooly writt 7 of dyuerse seyntis 7 doctouris 7 no þing of myn owne heed to schewe to my pore briþeren 7 sustren . . .78
By the mid-fifteenth century, this type of protestation had deteriorated into cliché, something to be reiterated mechanically. For example, Osbern Bokenham concludes his Mappula angliae (a brief work drawn from the first part of Higden’s Polychronicon) with this over-elaborate statement:
I of no þynge seyde þere-yn chalenge ne desire to be holdyn neythur auctour ne assertour, ne wylle aske no more but to byn holdyn oonly the pore compilatour and owte of Latyne in to ynglyssh the rude and symple translatour . . .79
He proceeds to explain that he has supplied his name in an acrostic.
Fundamental to all these definitions of literary role is the distinction between assertio and recitatio which, since the time of Vincent, was a common feature of the literary theory disseminated with compilations. An auctor was supposed to ‘assert’ or ‘affirm’, while a compilator ‘repeated’ or ‘reported’ what others had said or done (cf. pp 100–2). According to FitzRalph’s intricate excursus on authorial responsibility, Moses, as the editor or compiler of the lies told by Jacob and the serpent, only reported these things without asserting or affirming them.
When justifying his inclusion of the sayings of pagan philosophers and poets, and also of extracts from the Apocrypha, Vincent of Beauvais had warned his readers that he was only reporting such materials. Moreover, he carefully labelled those few assertions for which he was prepared to accept personal responsibility with the term actor. Vincent’s successors were at once more aggressive and more defensive. Ralph Higden, who believed that the mighty compiler had taken the mace from the hand of Hercules, continued the martial metaphor by claiming that the names of his auctores formed his ‘shield and defence’ against detractors80. Personal responsibility was admitted only for those statements which Higden had indicated with his initial, ‘R’. Trevisa, who completed his translation of the Polychronicon in 1387, was even more on the defensive than Higden had been; he had a firmer grip on the protective ‘schelde’ of the compiler:
þe auctores þat in the firste bygynnynge of þis book I take for schelde and defens, me for to saue and schilde azenst enemyes þat me wolde despise strongly and blame; first for my self and for myn owne name I write þis letter [R].81
This desire to avoid ‘blame’ is manifest throughout Trevisa’s translation, though there is usually little basis for it in Higden’s Latin. For example, after Higden told the story about the mace of Hercules, he expressed the hope that the reader would not be offended by his literary efforts. This is the sense which is brought out in the anonymous fifteenth-century English translation of the Polychronicon82. But Trevisa renders the passage as ‘þerfore I pray þat no man me blame . . .’83.
Trevisa was also acutely aware of the assertio/recitatio distinction. He uses the English verb aferme in a technical sense, namely, the sense carried by the Latin verb affirmare as used by such writers as Vincent of Beauvais, Thomas Aquinas and FitzRalph.
I take nouzt vppon me to aferme for sooþ all þat I write, but such as I haue seie and i-rad in dyuerse bookes, I garede and write wiþ oute envie, and comoun to oþere men.84
Trevisa translates the Latin verb recitare with the English reherse, for example, in the course of a reaction against Higden’s use of a story about the philosopher Diogenes85. Diogenes was told that a friend had slandered him. His reaction was to doubt whether his friend had said such things about him, but it was quite clear that his informant had said them. Trevisa complains that, here, no clear distinction is made between the assertor and reporter, between the liar and the person who reveals him as such. Cases from the Bible are cited to prove the point:
Seint Iohn, in his gospel, seiþ nouzt þat þe devel was in Crist; but Seint Iohn seiþ þat þe Iewes seide þat þe devel was in Crist: and Crist hymself despisede not God; but he reherseþ hou me bere hym on honde þat he despisede God: þat it followeþ in the storie.
It is little wonder that Trevisa, so aware of the distinction between assertion and reporting in the treatment of problem-passages of Scripture, should carefully label his personal assertiones in the text of the Polychronicon with his name, ‘Trevisa’86.
Sometimes, the highly controversial nature of the ‘rehearsed’ materials led the compiler to adopt a defensive position and to exploit the conventional idioms for disavowing responsibility. A major case in point is the one in which the ‘rehearsed’ materials concerned the ‘judicial art’ of making particular predictions, i.e. predictions about a particular human personality or about the fate of an individual87. Such material was potentially dangerous because it consisted of, or depended on, the opinions of pagan philosophers who—according to their medieval critics—had advocated a strict determinism in which divine grace could play no part88. The ubiquitous late-medieval criticisms of the ars judicialis make it perfectly clear that any writer who wished to handle this subject had to do so with considerable delicacy and diplomacy.
3 THE WRITER AS REPORTER (see pp. 193–204). Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 213, fol. lr. Lawrence of Premierfait, French translation of Boccaccio’s Decameron.
For example, although the Oxford astrologer, John Ashenden, was not a determinist, he felt obliged to guard against misinterpretation of his work89. In a short treatise found in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 176, a formal protestation is made concerning the contingency of his predictions. The predicted effects, Ashenden explains, will not inevitably or necessarily occur in consequence of the predicted conclusions. He has merely described the signs of future events, ‘in accordance with astronomy and the opinion of those astronomers whom I have cited in this treatise’90.
Ashenden attributed to himself a similar role in his famous Summa judicialis de accidentibus mundi (completed December 1348), which became a standard reference-book on astrology. He complains that his science has often been misunderstood91. Besides, he, himself, is not an auctor: ‘My intention is to compile the wise sayings of astrologers concerning the prognostication of occurrences which happen in this world by dint of the volubility of superior bodies . . .’ . Ashenden will add nothing out of his own head to the compiled rules and sententiae, apart from what seems to follow from the authoritative sayings; his expressed wish is to ‘by no means be reputed to be an author but only a compiler in this work’. The compiler’s typical disavowal of responsibility is functioning here as a defence against those who distrust certain aspects of astrology. As a compiler dependent on his authors’ statements, Ashenden cannot be blamed for the truth or falsity of the contents of his book.
This same kind of defence is found in the Liber judiciorum preserved in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 581. In its prologue, we learn that the compiler prepared this book of divinations for the consolation of King Richard II, but he does not want to be regarded as its auctor92. A good example of the corresponding idiom in Middle English is provided by Chaucer’s Treatise on the Astrolabe. Higden and Trevisa had regarded the compiler’s typical disavowal as a shield against detractors: for Chaucer, it was a sword to slay envy.
But considre wel that I ne usurpe not to have founden this werk of my labour or of myn engyn. I n’am but a lewd compilator of the labour of olde astrologiens, and have it translatid in myn Englissh oonly for thy doctrine. And with this swerd shal I sleen envie.93
Chaucer calls himself a ‘lewd’ or unlearned compiler, presumably to make the point that he is not a learned compiler like Vincent of Beauvais or John Ashenden. Within the treatise itself, Chaucer’s objective role as a ‘rehearsing’ compiler is illustrated by an important comment about the pagan practice of casting personal horoscopes:
Natheles these ben observaunces of judicial matere and rytes of payens, in whiche my spirit hath no feith, ne knowing of her horoscopum.94
Another highly controversial subject was human love: like judicial astrology, it was supposed to be potentially dangerous and conducive to sin, and many of its acknowledged auctores were pagans. The greatest medieval compilation of auctoritates on love is perhaps Jean de Meun’s Roman de la Rose (written between 1275 and 1280). Jean’s compiling activity is one of the main thirteenth-century testaments to the flexible nature of the literary form of compilatio. He was one of the first writers to make a fictitious narrative, namely, the pursuit of the Rose, the occasion for compilation of diverse materiae on a grand scale.
C. W. Dunn writes of the Roman,
the age of Jean de Meun was animated by the Aristotelian dictum, sapientis est ordinare. As a man of learning he instinctively ordered his theme and related love to the whole scheme of things. . . . Reason reveals love’s folly, Genius argues its necessity, the Duenna describes the sordidness of its strategems, Forced Abstinence suggests the unhealthiness of its renunciation, and so on, until every aspect of love has been ordered within the totality.95
What this account misses is that the lover’s pursuit of the Rose provides the opportunity and the rationale for the inclusion of material relating to ‘the whole scheme of things’. Jean’s basic ordinatio partium consists of the various stages in the pursuit of the Rose, stages which enable Jean’s characters to discuss diverse aspects of love, until every aspect has been ordered with the overall structure. Within this general arrangement, other materiae are subordinated: for example, when treating of lovers’ misfortunes, Jean’s ‘Raison’ provides a description of the Wheel of Fortune, a discussion of Wealth and Justice, and stories ‘of the cases of illustrious men’ (see lines 4837–6900).
Jean exploits the compiler’s typical defence in his apologia for the Roman, a statement which has long been recognised as an influence on the General Prologue to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. The noble women in Jean’s audience are asked not to blame the writer for the derogatory things he has said about women, for all that was written was written for their doctrine (lines 15195–203). If any reader thinks that Jean is telling lies about love, she should consult the aucteurs who are his sources: he is dependent on his authors and, if they told the truth, then so has he.
S’il vous semble que je di fables,
Pour menteeur ne m’en tenez,
Mais aus aucteurs vous en prenez
Qui en leur livres ont escrites
Les paroles que j’en ai dites,
E ceus avec que j’en dirai;
Ne ja de riens n’en mentirai,
Se li preudome n’en mentirent
Qui les anciens livres firent.
(lines 15216–24)
[If you think I tell untruths, do not hold me a liar, but search the authors who in their books have written the things that I have said and will say. I shall not lie in any respect as long as the wise men who wrote the ancient books did not lie.]96
All Jean’s aucteurs agree with him, and he should not be blamed for reporting or repeating their words:
Par quei meauz m’en devez quiter:
Je n’i faz riens fors reciter . . .
(lines 15233–4: Italics mine)
[So you should pardon me: I do nothing but report their words . . .]
He has made additions (as all the poets have been wont to do) to order the matire taken from his sources (lines 15235–9).
Obviously, deference to auctores could become a ‘shield and defence’ for the personal opinions and prejudices implied by a compiler’s very choice of excerpts and for the way in which he had handled them. In Jean’s apologia, the traditional protestation of the compiler is well on its way to becoming a ‘disavowal of responsibility’ trope.
We are now in a position to examine the role of ‘rehearsing’ compiler which Chaucer assumed in the Canterbury Tales, wherein the fictitious narrative of a pilgrimage to Canterbury provides the rationale for the compilation. As compiler, Chaucer proposes to ‘rehearse’ the words of other men as accurately as he can, without being responsible for what they say:
But first I pray yow, of youre curteisye,
That ye n’arette it nat my vileynye,
Thogh that I pleynly speke in this mateere,
To telle yow hir wordes and hir cheere,
Ne thogh I speke hir wordes proprely.
For this ye knowen al so wel as I,
Whoso shal telle a tale after a man,
He moot reherce as ny as evere he kan
Everich a word, if it be in his charge,
Al speke he never so rudeliche and large,
Or ellis he moot telle his tale untrewe,
Or feyne thyng, or fynde wordes newe . . .
Also I prey yow to foryeve it me,
Al have I nat set folk in hir degree
Heere in this tale, as that they sholde stonde.
My wit is short, ye may wel understonde.
(General Prologue, lines 725–46: Italics mine)
The idiom in which this self-depreciation is couched displays the influence of the compiler’s stock disavowal of responsibility. One may compare Vincent’s remark, ‘I added little, or almost nothing, of my own’, or Ashenden’s expressed desire ‘to compile sentences, adding nothing out of my own head’ or, indeed, Chaucer’s own protestation that his Treatise on the Astrolabe was not ‘founden of my labour or of myn engyn’. In the General Prologue, Chaucer the compiler seems to be protesting that he has not ‘founden’ the Canterbury Tales ‘of my labour or of myn engyn’.
As compiler, Chaucer cannot be held responsible for, for example, the words of the churlish Miller:
. . . this Millere
He nolde his wordes for no man forbere,
But tolde his cherles tale in his manere.
M’athynketh that I shal reherce it heere.
(I, lines 3167–70: Italics mine)
What he is doing, in the technical sense, is ‘rehearsing’ the materia (‘mateere’) of the pilgrims; the intentio (‘entente’) of the compiler is stated to be a good one:
. . . demeth nat that I seye
Of yvel entente, but for I moot reherce
Hir tales alle, be they bettre or werse,
Or elles falsen som of my mateere.
(I, lines 3172–5: Italics mine)
A reporter deserves neither thanks nor blame for what he repeats without fabrication or alteration: ‘Blameth nat me . . .’ .
But, of course, many medieval compilers were accustomed to including something out of their own heads, of adding some personal assertion to their reportage. Vincent appeared in his Speculum maius as the actor; Ralph Higden indicated personal assertions within his work by the initial ‘R’; in the passages marked with his name, the more aggressive John Trevisa delivered his own opinions and sometimes criticised his sources. The most ostensibly personal assertions of Chaucer the pilgrim are the two tales he tells, namely, Sir Thopas and Melibee.
Chaucer’s sense of combining and organising diverse materials may owe something to the compilers’ theory and practice of ordinatio partium. The major medieval compilations were compendious, containing materiae to cater for a wide range of demands and tastes. Vincent of Beauvais prided himself on the amount of diverse materials he had managed to include in his Speculum maius97. Brunetto Latini explained that his Trésor combined both teaching and delight:
This book is called ‘Treasury’. For, just like the lord who wishes in one small place to collect something of great worth, not only for his delight, but to increase his power and protect his position in both war and peace, places in it the most valuable things and the most precious jewels that he can, to the best of his ability; just so is the body of this book compiled from wisdom, as one which is drawn from all the parts of philosophy concisely into one digest.98
Brunetto’s practice may have influenced Gower’s conception of the scope of his Confessio amantis, which comprises both ‘lust’ and ‘lore’: certainly, the Latin commentary stresses the point that Gower compiled extracts from chronicles, histories and the sayings of the (pagan) philosophers and poets99. When Higden described the ordinatio of his Polychronicon, he explained how he had taken various things from various sources and had reorganised them in accordance with new principles100. His fifteenth-century translator renders the relevant passage as follows:
In whom alle things excerpte of oþer men ar broken in to smalle membres, but concorporate here liniamentally; thynges of disporte be admixte with saddenes, and dictes ethnicalle to thynges religious, that the ordre of the processe may be obseruede . . .101
In the Canterbury Tales also, ‘thynges of disporte be admixte with saddenes, and dictes ethnicalle to thynges religious’. Chaucer aimed at being compendious, at providing ‘Tales of best sentence and most solaas’, ‘cherles tales’ and noble tales, ‘myrie’ tales and ‘fructuous’ tales, pagan tales and Christian tales102. When the host stops Chaucer the pilgrim from completing the Tale of Thopas, he urges him to tell something ‘in which ther be som murthe or som doctryne’ (VII, line 935), making it clear that different standards apply to different types of tale. The major reference-books of the day may be regarded as having provided the general precedents for the combinations of ‘murthe’ and ‘doctrine’, of ‘lust’ and ‘lore’, practised by Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales and, indeed, by Gower in the Confessio amantis and Jean de Meun in the Roman de la Rose.
Of course, the nature of Chaucer’s diverse materiae is not identical with the nature of the diverse materiae of a compiler like, for example, Vincent of Beauvais103. The point is rather that both writers drew on a common corpus of literary theory; they described their different diversities in a similar way. Moreover, Vincent ‘ordinated’ materials in relation to chapters, books and tituli, whereas Chaucer ‘ordinated’ materials in relation to tales and tellers; both writers shared basic principles of hierarchical or ‘encapsulating’ structure104. It is as if Chaucer derived certain principles of order from compilations and from the explanations of ordinatio which accompanied them, principles which he chose to apply in his own way.
Moreover, Chaucer and Vincent (among other compilers) shared the principle of the reader’s freedom of choice (lectoris arbitrium). In the case of Vincent, this means that the reader can isolate and believe whatever things he wishes to believe: no attempt has been made to force the auctores to speak with one voice, and it is up to the reader to make his own choice from the discordant auctoritates offered to him105. Chaucer also is interested in the freedom of the reader. If a reader does not want a tale like the Miller’s Tale, there are many other types of ‘mateere’ on offer:
. . . whoso list it [the Miller’s Tale] nat yheere,
Turne over the leef and chese another tale;
For he shal fynde ynowe, grete and smale,
Of storial thyng that toucheth gentillesse,
And eek moralitee and hoolynesse.
(I, lines 3176–80)
The common principle involved is that a compiler is not responsible for his reader’s understanding of any part of the materia, for any effect which the materia may have on him and, indeed, for any error or sin into which the materia may lead a reader. ‘Blameth nat me if that ye chese amys’, warns Chaucer; ‘Avyseth yow, and put me out of blame’ (I, lines 3181, 3185).
But perhaps the most intriguing facet of Chaucer’s exploitation of the principles of compilatio is the way in which he seems to have transferred the compiler’s technique of authenticating sources to his ‘sources’, the Canterbury pilgrims. All the major compilers habitually authenticated their sources by stating that the ‘rehearsed’ words were the proper words of their auctores, and by carefully assigning the extracted auctoritates to their respective auctores (see pp. 157–8). Likewise, Chaucer has his narrator explain that the words he ‘rehearses’ are the proper words of the fictitious pilgrims. In order to ‘speke hir wordes proprely’, he must give ‘everich a word’ that each pilgrim uttered, ‘al speke he never so rudeliche and large’ (General Prologue, lines 725–42). The ‘wordes’ of a churl like the Miller are proper to the Miller, who
. . . nolde his wordes for no man forbere,
But tolde his cherles tale in his manere . .
The Millere is a cherl, ye knowe wel this;
So was the Reve eek and othere mo,
And harlotrie they tolden bothe two.
(I, lines 3167–84)
The device of organising diverse materiae by distributing them amongst diverse fictional characters was not new: we have already noted its use by Jean de Meun. What was new was the kind of attention paid to what the fictional characters said.
Chaucer’s professed concern for the ipsissima verba of his pilgrims seems to parallel the concern of a compiler like Vincent of Beauvais for the actual words of his auctores. For example, in the first chapter of his apologia, Vincent complains bitterly about textual corruptions in manuscripts, which make it difficult to understand the authors’ meanings and, indeed, to know which auctor is responsible for whatever sententia106. Moreover, he feels obliged to point out that he has used not the originalia of Aristotle but collections of ‘flowers’ extracted from the originalia by brother friars who could not always follow the order of the words in Aristotle’s text, although in every case they tried to follow the meaning107. Merely to preserve the meaning is not good enough for Chaucer the compiler, who is determined to preserve the proper words of each pilgrim without ‘feigning’ anything or adding ‘wordes newe’:
Whoso shal telle a tale after a man,
He moot reherce as ny as evere he kan
Everich a word, if it be in his charge,
Al speke he never so rudeliche and large,
Or ellis he moot telle his tale untrewe,
Or feyne thyng, or fynde wordes newe.
He may nat spare, althogh he were his brother;
He moot as wel seye o word as another.
(General Prologue, lines 731–8)
In sum, it may be argued that Chaucer treats his fictional characters with the respect that the Latin compilers had reserved for their auctores. The ‘lewd compilator’ has become the compiler of the ‘lewd’.
The distinctive quality of Chaucer’s exploitation of the conventions of compilatio may further be illuminated by contrasting it with the more avant-garde practice of Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–75). In the prologue to his Decameron, Boccaccio explains that he has narrated a hundred stories to provide ‘succour and diversion’ for women in love.
In reading them, the aforesaid ladies will be able to derive, not only pleasure from the entertaining matters therein set forth, but also some useful advice. For they will learn to recognise what should be avoided and likewise what should be pursued, and these things can only lead, in my opinion, to the removal of their affliction.108
This idiom is familiar to us from the accessus Ovidiani (see pp. 55–6), but its significance has been altogether altered by the force of Boccaccio’s appeal to the pleasure-principle. The Conclusione places a similar emphasis109. Like Jean de Meun and Chaucer, Boccaccio protests that it is no more indecent for him to have written certain vulgar expressions than it is for people to use them in their everyday speech. But there the similarity with the other writers ends. He proceeds to insist that his stories were told neither in a church nor in the schools of philosophers, nor in any place where either churchmen or philosophers were present. They were told in gardens, in a place designed for pleasure, among mature people who were not to be led astray by stories. So forceful is this appeal to the principle of ‘literature for refreshment’ that Boccaccio comes close to claiming a large measure of autonomy for pleasurable fiction110. Jean de Meun’s apologia and Chaucer’s General Prologue are quite different in spirit.
Boccaccio also claims—rather half-heartedly—that he should be regarded as the mere scribe and not as the inventor of the stories in the Decameron. Because he was constrained to transcribe the stories just as they were told, he cannot be blamed for any of their shortcomings:
There will likewise be those among you who will say that some of the stories included here would far better have been omitted. That is as may be: but I could only transcribe the stories as they were actually told, which means that if the ladies who told them had told them better, I should have written them better. But even if one could assume that I was the inventor (lo’nventore) as well as the scribe (lo scrittore) of these stories (which was not the case), I still insist that I would not feel ashamed if some fell short of perfection, for there is no craftsman other than God whose work is whole and faultless in every respect.111
This passage clearly demonstrates knowledge of the technique for disavowing responsibility as employed in compilers’ prologues, but equally clear is Boccaccio’s impulse to discard the convention and come out in the open as the unashamed inventor of his stories, the self-confessed craftsman whose creativity parallels (in so far as is humanly possible) the perfect creation of God. By comparison, Jean de Meun and Chaucer appear quite conservative. They were content to adopt the role of the reporter who cannot be blamed for what his sources say, to peer out from behind the ‘shield and defence’ of the compiler.
It remains to assess the extent to which Chaucer was influenced by one of the standard ‘final causes’ or ultimate justifications of compilatio. The wish to justify their special literary activity had encouraged some compilers to think not only of the practical utilitas of compilatio (its efficacy in providing doctrine in a convenient and predigested way) but also of its utilitas in a more absolute sense—it is the function of doctrine to bring us eventually to salvation. Each of the formae tractandi discussed by commentators on auctores had its characteristic finalis causa or noble end; why not the forma tractandi characteristic of collection and compilation, the modus excerptoris? Certain fourteenth-century compilers therefore took from the exegetes a sophisticated finalis causa: ‘All that is written is written for our doctrine, that by the steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope’ (Romans xv.4).
The exegetes had produced the finalis causa of compilatio in expounding Scriptural texts which (perhaps due in part to the large number of compilations being written by their contemporaries) they had come to describe as ‘ancient’ collections and compilations of material. Defending the compilation of scraps of truth in the Book of Baruch, Albert the Great had cited the words of Jesus after the feeding of the five thousand: ‘Collect the scraps . . . so that nothing gets wasted’ (John vi. 12)112. We must, Albert insists, not only pick up the books of the prophets but also collect with diligence their fragments or scraps for, as Deuteronomy viii. 13 says, ‘man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord’. All that is written in Scripture, however fragmentary or trivial it may seem, is written for our doctrine.
Nicholas of Lyre adopted Romans xv.4 in expounding the final cause of his archetypal collectio, the Psalter113. Man, he explains, is ordained to a supernatural end, but he would not be aware of this end nor of the means of knowing it through praise and love, were it not for the divinely-inspired Scriptures. As St Paul says, ‘all that is written is written for our doctrine, that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the Scriptures we may have hope’. This hope is the sure expectation of future beatitude. Because the Psalter proceeds ‘by the mode of praise’, it has great utility in the encouragement of this hope.
In these two examples, the materials in question are divinely-inspired writings, and the stress falls on the second part of St Paul’s statement (‘. . . that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the Scriptures we may have hope’). The compilers who adopted this final cause shifted the stress to the first part of the statement (‘All that is written is written for our doctrine . . .’), and the ‘all’ came to mean ‘almost anything’, writings of all kinds. For example, Ralph Higden cited Romans xv.4 in defence of his juxtaposition of pagan and Christian auctoritates on common subjects114. Isidore of Seville is quoted as saying that we should not condemn ‘ancient’ commentators and historians for speaking diversely, for things written in the past are full of errors by reason of their antiquity. The pagans who lived before Christ had a limited auctoritas, and therefore Higden must disclaim responsibility for their views. St Paul did not say that all that is written is true: he said that all that is written is written for our doctrine. The onus is therefore placed on the discriminating reader.
From this it was but a short step to enlisting ‘All that is written . . .’ as a justification of the compilation of pagan fabulae. Between 1316 and 1328 an anonymous Franciscan took the existing structure of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and recompiled its constituent parts, inserting explanations of the moral significance of each part. At the beginning of this work, the Ovide moralisé, the anonymous friar justifies his procedure by appealing to the final cause of compilatio:
Se l’escripture ne me ment,
Tout est pour nostre enseignement
Quanqu’il a es livres escript,
Soient bon ou mal li escript.115
(lines 1–4)
[If the Scriptural passage does not lie to me, whatever is written in books is all for our doctrine, be the writings good or ill.]
All that is written is written for our doctrine, whether what is written is good or bad.
A similar idiom is employed much later than Chaucer, by William Caxton in the prologue to his English ‘Moral Ovid’ (1480). Here, Romans xv.4 is related to the principle (which is a commonplace of the accessus Ovidiani) that evil is described so that one might beware of it, while good is described so that one may follow it:
Alle scriptures and wrytyngis ben they good or evyll ben wreton for our prouffyt and doctrine. The good to thende to take ensample by them to doo well. And the evyll to thende that we shoulde kepe and absteyne vs to do evyll.116
Caxton also applied this argument to a collection of prose tales, the Morte Darthur (printed 1485):
I . . have doon sette it in enprynte to the entente that noble men may see and lerne the noble actes of chyvalrie . . . and how they that were vycious were punysshed and ofte put to shame and rebuke; humbly bysechyng al noble lordes and ladyes wyth al other estates . . . that shal see and rede in this sayd book and werke, that they take the good and honest actes in their remembraunce, and to folowe the same . . . Doo after the good and leve the evyl, and it shal brynge you to good fame and renommee.
And for to passe the tyme thys book shal be plesaunte to rede in, but for to gyve fayth and byleve that al is trewe that is conteyned herin, ye be at your lyberté. But al is wryton for our doctrine, and for to beware that we falle not to vyce ne synne, but t’exersyse and folowe vertu . . .11
By this stage, Romans xv.4 could be used to justify practically everything.
We may now proceed to examine Chaucer’s two applications of Romans xv.4. The first of these, which occurs at the end of the Nun’s Priest’s Tale, need not detain us long. However one wishes to interpret the Nun’s Priest’s Tale, its debt to the genre of moralised fabula is incontrovertible118. Therefore, it is quite fitting that Chaucer should end his tale by echoing the justification of moralisatio found in one of the greatest compilations of moralised fabulae, the Ovide moralisé.
Chaucer could have extended this kind of justification to cover most of the Canterbury Tales; however diverse the parts may be, he could have argued that, ultimately, they serve truth, although not by the same method. But there is no systematic appeal to these terms of reference throughout the fragments of the Canterbury Tales which we have—a point of some substance when we come to consider Chaucer’s other use of ‘All that is written . . .’, in the ‘retracciouns’ which follow the Parson’s Tale and conclude the entire work. The text of the tales found in the Ellesmere Chaucer and subsequent manuscripts may be provided with this final cause, but it is very doubtful if Chaucer himself provided it as such.
At the beginning of the ‘retracciouns’, Chaucer expresses the hope that, if there is anything in his ‘litel tretys’ which appeals to his readers, they should thank Jesus Christ, ‘of whom procedeth al wit and al goodnesse’,
And if ther be any thyng that displese hem, I preye hem also that they arrette it to the defaute of myn unkonnynge, and nat to my wyl, that wolde ful fayn have seyd better if I hadde had konnynge. For oure book seith, ‘Al that is writen is writen for our doctrine’, and that is myn entente.119
The ‘litel tretys’ to which he refers must be the treatise on penitence now known as the Parson’s Tale, for the Canterbury Tales considered as a whole is not a treatise in the technical sense of the term, and it could hardly be called little (though it should be remembered that Chaucer calls his Troilus and Criseyde a ‘litel bok’ at v, line 1789). ‘All that is written . . .’ provides a transition point in the ‘retracciouns’, the point at which Chaucer moves from speaking of his treatise on penitence to discuss his ‘collected works’. In the vast majority of the applications of Romans xv.4 known to me, a grouping together or collection of diverse materials is described or presupposed. For this reason, it seems altogether appropriate that Chaucer, having introduced St Paul’s words by way of apologia for any inadequacies in the work we know as the Parson’s Tale, should proceed to apply these words in an apologia for his writings considered as a whole.
First, the ‘translacions and enditynges of worldly vanitees’ are revoked, including those Canterbury Tales ‘that sownen into synne’. Then Chaucer moves from the bad to the good, including his Boece and sundry ‘bookes of legendes of seintes, and omelies, and moralitee, and devocioun’. Perhaps the way in which numerous compilers had described and justified their ordinatio of ‘lust’ and ‘lore’ influenced the way in which Chaucer conceived of his total output. The ‘entente’ of a writer can be good, he may write with the commendable purpose of providing doctrine, but it is up to the reader to ‘doo after the good and leve the evyl’.
Yet Chaucer chose not to exploit the compiler’s traditional defence in this manner, the manner of the Ovide moralisé prologue and Caxton’s preface to Malory: in the ‘retracciouns’ Romans xv.4 is not used to justify practically everything. The fact that many of Chaucer’s idioms are conventional should not disguise the fact that he is not using them conventionally. Although Chaucer had exploited several aspects of the theory of compilatio in several works, in his ‘retracciouns’ he was not prepared to assume the role of the ‘lewd compilator’ to whom no blame could accrue. On the contrary, he takes the blame for the sinful material that he wrote—the fact that some of it was ‘rehearsed’ is now irrelevant—and hopes that Christ in his mercy will forgive his sins. The ‘shield and defence’ of the compiler has slipped, and for once we see Chaucer as a writer who holds himself morally responsible for his writings.
The ‘retracciouns’ seem to be linked to the Parson’s Tale but not to the Canterbury Tales as a whole; the Parson’s Prologue promises a moral tale (a ‘meditacioun’, to be exact), but not necessarily the penitential treatise we end up with. In the ‘retracciouns’ Chaucer is concerned with his ‘collected works’ in their entirety and not just with those works which he had compiled as the Canterbury Tales. I suspect that, had Chaucer himself expounded Romans xv.4 as the final cause of the Canterbury Tales, he would have related it quite specifically to the forma of this work in the manner of, for example, Nicholas of Lyre and the Ovide moralisé compiler, as cited above. For these reasons I incline to the view that the ‘litel tretys’ on penitence and the ‘retracciouns’ (forming one unit) were added to the Canterbury Tales—probably by Chaucer but possibly by someone else—in keeping with the usual practice of compilatio. (After Chaucer’s death, the compilation of the Canterbury Tales continued, with non-Chaucerian items being incorporated within Chaucer’s structure.)
After the ‘retracciouns’ in the Ellesmere manuscript, the following colophon occurs:
Heere is ended the book of the tales of Caunterbury, compiled by Geffrey Chaucer, of whos soule Jhesu Crist have mercy. Amen.120
The phrase ‘of whos soule Jhesu Crist have mercy’ suggests that it could be posthumous, but the tone does fit in with the pious language of the ‘retracciouns’. Maybe the technical term ‘compiled’ was designed to fit in with Chaucer’s use of Romans xv.4 in the ‘retracciouns’, which the person responsible for the colophon (perhaps one of Chaucer’s ‘literary executors’) recognised as a standard final cause of compilatio. That is, it may have been realised that Chaucer’s apologia for his ‘complete works’ served admirably as an apologia for the diverse materiae which he had brought together in the Canterbury Tales: Chaucer had even specified the ‘tales of Caunterbury . . . that sownen into synne’, and implicitly had referred to the virtuous tales in his mention of ‘bookes of legendes of seintes, and omelies, and moralitee, and devocioun’. Such a (hypothetical) response to Chaucer’s text could be regarded as an important literary judgment on it: the Canterbury Tales may have been interpreted, and edited, as a compilatio.
Finally, we must pose the question, did Chaucer ever think of himself as an auctor, of his work as possessing some limited degree of auctoritas? My impression is that whereas Gower was interested in presenting himself as a ‘modern author’, Chaucer was not. Chaucer was fond of assuming self-depreciating literary roles, and the role of compiler would have been particularly congenial to him.
Yet perhaps there is one exception, namely the claim which Chaucer made for Troilus and Criseyde. This little tragedy is ordered to
. . . kis the steppes, where as thow seest pace
Virgile, Ovide, Omer, Lucan, and Stace.
(v, lines 1791–2)
But this claim is different in nature from those made by Gower. Whereas Gower claimed a limited auctoritas for his major works by assuming the functions of certain kinds of ‘ancient’ auctores, the basis of Chaucer’s commendation of Troilus consists rather in his profession that this work is dependent on ‘ancient’ literature—indeed, at one point he presents himself as a mere translator (ii, lines 12–18).
The ‘modern’ writers who were his main sources (Boccaccio, Benoît, Petrarch) would not serve this purpose, so Chaucer did not acknowledge them, but ascribed material taken from their works to ‘ancient’ auctores. Chaucer did not much care what ‘Omer, Dares and Dite’ had actually said; he did not bother to verify the existence of his ‘auctour Lollius’: he wished to use the names of the auctores, to ‘cash in’ on their antiquity and auctoritas121. Thus, he created the illusion that his ‘storie’ was indeed ‘ancient’, and established himself as the objective historian who sought to describe how certain pagans had lived and loved. The comments on his literary activity which Chaucer provided in the prohemium to book ii and at the very end of Troilus have more in common with the prologues of compiling historians like Vincent of Beauvais and Ralph Higden than they have with Gower’s prologues122.
It would seem, then, that Chaucer and Gower held rather different conceptions of the role of the auctor and of the literary forms which should be their models. Gower presented himself in authorial roles and employed authorial formae, methods which were substantially in line with contemporary Italian practice though, of course, the scale was very different123. Moreover, he ensured that his works were provided with that apparatus criticus (commentary, summaries, etc.) which the discerning reader had come to expect in copies of many ‘ancient’ works. The difference between the sporadic and superficial commentary on the Confessio amantis and the comprehensive commentary which Boccaccio supplied for his own Teseida is a difference of degree rather than of kind124. By contrast, for the most part, Chaucer was content to assume the role of compiler and to exploit the literary form of compilatio. Indeed, so deliberate was he in presenting himself as a compiler that one is led to suspect the presence of a very self-conscious author who was concerned to manipulate the conventions of compilatio for his own literary ends. If Gower was a compiler who tried to present himself as an author, Chaucer was an author who hid behind the ‘shield and defence’ of the compiler.