fin' amors, arabic learning, and the islamic world in the work of geoffrey chaucer

294 Pages·2014·2.66 MB·English

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FIN’ AMORS, ARABIC LEARNING, AND THE ISLAMIC
WORLD IN
THE WORK OF GEOFFREY CHAUCER

Thesis submitted for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
at the University of Leicester

by

Shazia Jagot

School of English
University of Leicester

December 2013
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Fin’ Amors, Arabic Learning, and the Islamic World in the Works of Geoffrey
Chaucer

Shazia Jagot

ABSTRACT

This thesis examines the influence of Arabic learning, in Latin translations, on
Chaucer’s oeuvre. That Chaucer drew on Arabic sources has long been acknowledged
by Chaucerians, but there has been little scholarly engagement with them, particularly
in relation to his highly technical, diagnostic concept of fin’ amors. This study
demonstrates Chaucer’s portrayal of fin’ amors is informed by Arabic learning in the
related fields of medicine, natural philosophy, astrology and alchemy, disseminated
through Latin translations from the Iberian Peninsula in particular. This study
demonstrates that whilst Chaucer has the utmost respect for the scholarly achievements
of the Islamic world, he adopts a condemnatory attitude toward the religious milieu that
gave birth to these achievements, grounded in the contemporary context of the later
crusades. Chapter One considers the influence of Arabic medical texts on Chaucer’s
diagnosis of amor hereos, love as a life-threatening illness, in Troilus and Criseyde and
the Knight’s Tale. Chapter Two examines Aristotelian natural philosophy and the effect
of the 1277 Condemnations at the University of Paris on the genesis of love as a
cerebral illness. Chapter Three turns to the diagnostic aspect of Arabic astronomy
evinced in the Treatise on the Astrolabe, focusing on judicial astrology and saturnine
melancholia in the Knight’s Tale. Chapter Four concentrates on the technical
transmission of Arabic alchemical sources in the Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale, which act as
a metaphor for fin’ amors. Chapter Five examines Chaucer’s dichotomous attitude
toward Arabic learning and Islam as a religion.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Over the course of the past four years there are many people to whom I am indebted for
their help and support. My greatest debt is to my supervisor, Dr Anne Marie D’Arcy,
whose undergraduate seminars first ignited my interest in medieval literature and whose
encouragement, support and unwavering belief in me gave me the impetus to continue
on to postgraduate study. I cannot thank her enough, nor express adequately my
gratitude for her words of wisdom, patience and generosity with her time. I am grateful
to the School of English at the University of Leicester who provided me with the
financial support needed to undertake this research, in the form of a Fee Waiver and
funds for training. I would like to thank Professor Norman Housley for his invaluable
comments and advice on the later crusades. Special thanks go to the Council for British
Research in the Levant, whose generous funding and support allowed me to undertake
six months of research in the British Institute in Amman as a Junior Research Fellow
and the chance to develop my Arabic language skills at the Qasid Institute for Classical
and Modern Standard Arabic. In particular, I would like to thank the director, Dr Carol
Palmer and the numerous colleagues and visitors who passed through the Institute who
enriched my research immeasurably. I am also grateful to the staff at the libraries of the
Warburg Institute, the School of Oriental and African Studies, the Wellcome Institute
and the British Library. I am particularly grateful to Jennie Bradbury and Farrah
Sheikh, for locating resources when needed, as well as to Faisal Hanif, Alice Saje,
Zaheera Fadra, Zoë Enstone and Irina Kyulanova, for their friendship and continued
support. Lastly, my sincerest thanks go to my parents, Aniza and Anwar, and my
siblings, Adam and Suraiya, for fostering my intellectual curiosity, and above all, for
their patience and love.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION 1

ABBREVIATIONS 2

INTRODUCTION 5

CHAPTER ONE 16

CHAPTER TWO 69

CHAPTER THREE 110

CHAPTER FOUR 149

CHAPTER FIVE 185

CONCLUSION 220

APPENDIX I 222

BIBLIOGRAPHY 228
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NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION

All Arabic terms follow the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies’
transliteration System for Arabic, Persian and Turkish, because of its simplicity and
ease of understanding for a non-Arabist reader, apart from Arabic quotations which
remain as they appear in context in cited works. All Arabic terms, including names,
will be kept in the Arabic original and transliterated fully, apart from ʿAbū ʿAli Husayn
ibn Abdullah ibn Sīna; Muhammad ʿAbū al-Wālid ibn Ahmad ibn Rūshd; Ibn al-
Haytham; ʿAli ibn al-ʿAbbās al-Majūsi and Muhammad ibn Umail al-Shaikh who will
be referred to as such in the first instance and thence after in their Latinised forms;
Avicenna, Averroes, Alhazen, Haly Abbas and Senior Zadith, respectively. The Arabic
definite article will remain as al- (‘the’) throughout.

al- definite article (‘the’)
ʿ refers to the letter ﻉ (‘ʿayn’)
ʾ refers to the letter ﺀ (‘hamza’)
j refers to the letter ﺝ (‘jeem’) as in the English term ‘jam’
ā long vowel referring to long ﺍ (‘alif’) or ﻯ (‘alif maksura’)
ū long vowel referring to ﻭ (‘waw’)
ī long vowel referring to ﻱ (‘yaa’)

All Medieval names follow the form given in the International Medieval
Bibliography and all Middle English terms are given in the original. Biblical quotations
remain as they appear in context in cited Latin works. All other Bible quotations in
Latin are taken from Biblia sacra iuxta vulgata versionem, ed. Robertus Weber et al.,
3rd edn (Stuttgart, 1983). All Bible quotations in English are taken from the Douay-
Challoner translation of the Vulgate.
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ABBREVIATIONS

AB Art Bulletin
AH Art History
AHDLMA Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littèraire du moyen âge
AHR American Historical Review
AnB Analecta Bollandiana
ASNSL Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen
ASQ Arab Studies Quarterly
BBSSMF Bullettino di bibliografia e di storia delle scienze matematiche e fisiche
BEC Bibliothèque de l’école des chartes
BHM Bulletin of the History of Medicine
BHR Bibliotheque d’humaniste et Renaissance
BPM Bulletin de philosophie médiévale
BSMES British Society for Middle Eastern Studies
CHR Catholic Historical Review
CL Comparative Literature
CN Chemical News
CR Chaucer Review
CUP Chartularium Universitatis Parisensis, ed. H. Denifle and E. Chatelain, 4
vols (Paris, 1889)
DS Dante Studies
DSB Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. Charles Coulson
Gillespie, Frederic L. Holmes and Noretta Koertge, 7th edn, 27 vols
(New York, 2008).
EETS Early English Text Society
EHR English Historical Review
EI² Encyclopaedia of Islam, ed. C.E. Bosworth et al., 2nd edn (Leiden,
1960- 2004).
ER European Review
ESM Early Science and Medicine
FZPT Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie
HR Hispanic Review
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HTR Harvard Theological Review
IJMP International Journal of Modern Physics
IR Iranian Studies
JAL Journal of Arabic Literature
JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society
JBS Journal of Baltic Studies
JCE Journal of Chemical Education
JCS Journal of Church and State
JE Journal of Ethnopharmacology
JEGP Journal of English and Germanic Philology
JEH Journal of Ecclesiastical History
JHB Journal of the History of Biology
JHI Journal of the History of Ideas
JNES Journal of Near Eastern Studies
JRAS Journal of Royal Asiatic Society
JWCI Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes
M&H Medievalia et Humanistica
MD Memorie domenicane
ME Medieval Encounters
MED Middle English Dictionary, ed. Hans Kurath, Sherman M. Kuhn et al.
(Ann Arbor, MI, 1956-)
MH Medical History
MKIF Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz
MLN Modern Language Notes
MLR Modern Language Review
MP Modern Philology
MS Medieval Studies
N&Q Notes & Queries
ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004-)
OL Orientalistische Literaturzeitung
PCP Pacific Coast Philology
PL Patrologiae cursus completus. Series Latina, ed. J.P. Migne, 221 vols in
222 (Paris, 1844-1902)
PMLA Proceedings of the Modern Language Association
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PR Philosophical Review
PRSM Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine
RES Review of English Studies
RHP Revue de l’histoire pharmacie
RHS Revue d’histoire des sciences
RHR Revue de l’histoire de religions
RPL Revue philosophique de Louvain
RR Romanic Review
RT Revue Thomiste
RTPM Recherches de Thèologie et Philosophie Médiévale
SA Sudhoffs Archiv
SAC Studies in the Age of Chaucer
SHPBBS Studies in History and Philosophy of Biology and Biomedical Sciences
SI Studia Islamica
SP Studies in Philology
ST Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, ed. and trans. T. Gilby et al., 61
vols (London, 1964-76)
TAPS Transactions of the American Philosophical Society
YES Yearbook of English Studies
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INTRODUCTION

It has long been acknowledged that the scientific achievements of the Islamic world
influenced the development of medicine, astronomy and natural philosophy in the
medieval West. The dissemination of Arabic learning in England was first suggested by
Charles Homer Haskins, augmented by J.C. Russell’s investigations into the
dissemination of Arabic science in the cathedral schools of Hereford and Worcester,
while Charles Burnett has returned to the topic most recently.1 That Chaucer was
familiar with the Latin translations of the studium Arabum was first acknowledged in
John Livingston Lowes’ pathfinding articles regarding Chaucer’s concept of amor
hereos, and Julius Ruska’s initial investigations into Chaucer’s depiction of alchemy.2
Several critics went on to discuss Chaucer’s engagement with astronomy, especially the
didactic Treatise on the Astrolabe, which R.T. Gunther associated with a Latin
compilation based on a lost Arabic source, De compositione et utilitate Astrolabii,
ascribed to the eighth-century Jewish astronomer, Mashāʾāllah.3 Moreover, Walter
Clyde Curry and John North widened the discussion concerning Chaucer’s use of
astronomical and astrological sources, demonstrating the breadth and depth of his
knowledge of the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic universe across a range of works.4
However, scholars have paid less attention to the influence of the wider parameters
of Arabic learning on medieval European literature, and English literature in particular,
with the notable exception of Dorothee Metlitzki.5 Metlitzki not only considers the
influence of Arabic scientific material on Chaucer’s oeuvre, and such medieval
romances as The Sowdane of Babylon, but also draws attention to the possible influence

1 C.H. Haskins, Studies in the History of Medieval Science, 2nd edn (New York, 1961); J.C. Russell,
‘Hereford and Arabic Science in England about 1175-1200’, Isis 18 (1932), 14-25; Charles Burnett, The
Introduction of Arabic Learning into England (London, 1997).
2 John Livingston Lowes, ‘The Loveres Maladye of Hereos’, MP 11 (1914), 491-546, and Julius Ruska,
‘Chaucer und das Buch Senior’, Anglia 61 (1937), 136-7.
3 See R.T. Gunther, Early Science in Oxford: Volume V, Chaucer and Massahalla, On the Astrolabe
(Oxford, 1929).
4 See Walter Clyde Curry, Chaucer and the Mediaeval Sciences, 2nd edn (London, 1960), and J.D. North,
Chaucer’s Universe (Oxford, 1988).
5 Dorothee Metlitzki, The Matter of Araby in Medieval Literature (New Haven and London, 1997).
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of the Arabic philosophical tradition on Chaucer.1 Metlitzki’s study paved the way for
this current examination of the influence of Arabic learning on all aspects of Chaucer’s
oeuvre, through a close analysis of the sources available to him in Latin translations,
which informs the discussion of his paradoxical, condemnatory attitude toward Islam in
Chapter Five. Certainly, in recent studies, the critical tide has turned from a
consideration of the influence of Arabic learning on Chaucer toward his depiction of
Islam, particularly in the light of Edward Said’s discussion of Orientalism.2 Much
emphasis has been placed on Said’s brief comments on Dante’s condemnatory view of
Islam as barbarous, idolatrous paganism at worst, and a misguided Abrahamic heresy at
best.3 In particular, Sheila Delany applies Said’s discussion of the background to
eighteenth-century Orientalist discourse in developing her concept of ‘Chaucerian
Orientalism’, which is predicated on the notion that Chaucer’s East was not influenced
by scholarly writings, ‘Chaucer did not write political treatises but poems – not even
political treatises in verse, but poems. The rational-scholarly approach to the Orient is
far less useful poetically than the mythic one’.4 However that might be, this polemical
approach chooses to ignore the fact that Chaucer’s oeuvre was consistently informed by
intellectually complex ideas, appropriated directly from Arabic texts in Latin
translations. As this study will demonstrate, Chaucer’s deep, scholarly engagement
with Arabic learning differentiates his poetic approach to the East from that of his
literary contemporaries. However, whilst he has the utmost respect for the scholarly
achievements of Islamic culture, he takes a condemnatory attitude toward the religious
milieu which gave birth to these achievements. This dichotomy is exemplified in
Chaucer’s deployment of Arabic learning to authorize his rich and exceptionally erudite
depiction of fin’ amors. Until now, no detailed, systematic study has been undertaken

1 Cf. Matter of Araby, esp. pp. 74-5, 80-2; 182-7.
2 See Edward Said, Orientalism (London, 1978). See also Kathryn L. Lynch, ‘Storytelling, Exchange and
Constancy: East and West in the Man of Law’s Tale’, CR 33 (1999), 409-22; Suzanne Conklin Akbari,
‘Orientalism and Nation in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales’, in Chaucer’s Cultural Geography, ed. Kathryn
L. Lynch (London, 2002), pp. 102-34, and Carol Falvo Heffernan, The Orient in Chaucer and Medieval
Romance (Cambridge, 2003). See also the various essays in The Postcolonial Middle Ages, ed. Jeffrey
Jerome Cohen (New York, 2001), and Postcolonial Approaches to the European Middle Ages, ed.
Ananya Jahanara Kabir and Deanne Williams (Cambridge, 2005).
3 In addition to Said, Orientalism, p. 55; see Kathleen Biddick, ‘Coming out of Exile: Dante on the Orient
Express’, in The Postcolonial Middle Ages, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (New York, 2001), pp. 35-52.
4 Sheila Delany, The Naked Text, Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women (Berkeley, 1994), p. 186.