Aristotle University of Thessaloniki School of English Language and Literature Department of ...

265 Pages·2012·2.2 MB·English

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
School of English Language and Literature
Department of English Literature

TEXTS IN DISTANT CONTEXTS:
THE TALE OF APOLLONIUS OF TYRE
AND TWO LATE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY VARIATIONS,
JOHN GOWER'S CONFESSIO AMANTIS AND
∆ΙΗΓΗΣΙΣ ΠΟΛΛΥΠΑΘΟΥΣ ΑΠΟΛΛΩΝΙΟΥ ΤΟΥ ΤΥΡΟΥ

by
ANASTASIA ZAFRAKA

A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty
in Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

THESSALONIKI 2012
Supervising Committee:

Professor Karin Boklund-Lagopoulou
Professor Tina Krontiris
Professor Maria Litsardaki
Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my supervisor, Professor Karin Boklund-Lagopoulou, for
her guidance and encouragement throughout the process of the thesis' composition.
Fifteen years ago, when I first attended one of her courses, she sparked my keen
interest in the Middle Ages, which continued in my postgraduate studies. During the
time that I worked on my doctoral thesis, her constant support motivated me to
continue and surpass the occasional difficulties.
I am also grateful to the other members of the supervising committee,
Professor Tina Krontiris, who in the final year had an instrumental role in bringing the
project to completion, and Professor Maria Litsardaki for her contribution in the final
stage of my work.
I would like to thank the School of English Language and Literature of the
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki for all the support and resources it provided me
with. For the research of my thesis I am also indebted to the resources and services
provided by the Libraries of the Aristotle University, to Cambridge University
Library, and to the online assistance of the librarians of the Manuscript and Rare
Books Collection of the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford.
I would particularly like to express my gratitude to my family and particularly
to my husband, Wilhelm, for his support, patience and understanding; to my dear
father Apostolos, who is no longer with us, for instilling in me a desire for learning.
Finally, to my mother Alkmini, who in the most difficult circumstances devoted all
her energy to alleviate me from all concerns that lay outside the goal of completing
my work, especially by taking care of our baby, Walter.
στους γονείς µου
CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION
1. The Popularity of the Tale of Apollonius of Tyre........................................1
2. The Medieval Literary Context.....................................................................4

CHAPTER 1: THE ORIGIN OF THE APOLLONIUS TRADITION: HISTORIA
APOLLONII REGIS TYRI.......................................................................................16

CHAPTER 2: THE CONTEXT OF THE ENGLISH ADAPTATION
2.1 Gower's Life and Work..............................................................................32
2.2 Gower's Critical Reception........................................................................40

CHAPTER 3: THE TALE OF APOLLONIUS IN JOHN GOWER'S CONFESSIO
AMANTIS
3.1 Confessio Amantis.......................................................................................48
3.2 The Role of the Tale of Apollonius in Amans' Spiritual Quest..................62
3.3 Gower's Adaptation of the Tale of Apollonius
(cid:1) Gower's Sources....................................................................................70
(cid:1) The Names of Characters......................................................................79
(cid:1) Gower's Alterations to the Tale............................................................83
(cid:1) Medieval Customs and Courtly Elements.............................................95
3.4 The Goddess Fortuna in Gower's Apollonius.............................................104
3.5 The Tale of Apollonius and the Theme of Incest.......................................111
3.6 The Tale of Apollonius and the Theme of Kingship..................................120
CHAPTER 4: THE CONTEXT OF DIEGESIS POLLYPATHOUS APOLLONIOU
TOY TYROU
4.1 Cyprus in the Fourteenth Century...............................................................131
4.2 The Manuscript...........................................................................................141

CHAPTER 5: THE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY GREEK ADAPTATION OF THE
TALE OF APOLLONIUS
5.1 The source: Storia d' Apollonio di Tiro......................................................144
5.2 The Names of Characters............................................................................148
5.3 Characteristics of the Greek Adaptation.....................................................151
5.4 Christianization of the Tale.........................................................................155

CHAPTER 6: COMPARISON OF ENGLISH AND GREEK VERSION
6.1 The Literary Contexts.................................................................................173
6.2 Elements of Culture: Paganism and Christianity, Antiquity and
Middle Ages................................................................................................177
6.3 Poetic Style and Treatment of Characters...................................................202

CONCLUSION.......................................................................................................212

BIBLIOGRAPHY...................................................................................................218
APPENDIX
Apollonius of Tyre by John Gower, ∆ιήγησις Πολλυπαθούς Απολλωνίου
του Τύρου................................................................................................................230
Zafraka 1
Introduction

1. The Popularity of the Tale of Apollonius of Tyre

In a vast historical scale of more than a thousand years, and in a geographical
space that includes the entire European continent, the persistent popularity of a single
tale constitutes a rather exceptional literary phenomenon. The Tale of Apollonius of
Tyre is a narrative that originates in late antiquity, and emerges in various forms and
guises throughout the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance. If one were to attempt
to trace the intricate cultural connections among the European peoples, then the
various versions of the Apollonius narrative from the 10th to the 17th century,
branching out across the continent like an enormous family-tree of texts, could be an
excellent case-study of what makes European culture into one vast continuum.
The origin of the Apollonius tradition is located in two surviving Latin
variants of the Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri, which are dated in the late fifth and early
sixth centuries (Kortekaas, Story of Apollonius 3). The Latin narrative of the Historia
Apollonii became one of the most widely circulated texts in the centuries that
followed. Elizabeth Archibald provides us with a detailed account of the numerous
variations of the Apollonius narrative in Apollonius of Tyre: Medieval and
Renaissance Themes and Variations. Apart from the actual versions that have
survived or that we know of, there is also a great number of casual references to the
tale or its protagonist, which indicate the public’s common knowledge of Apollonius.
Archibald lists 37 medieval and Renaissance allusions to the tale of Apollonius
(Medieval xii-xiii). Such allusions to the text from the 6th, 8th and 9th centuries indicate
that writers expected their audiences to know the story, while testifying to the esteem
Zafraka 2
in which the original narrative of Apollonius was held. No text of the tale survives
between the 6th and 9th centuries, but it is listed in documents such as library
catalogues dated in that period (ibid. 45). At this stage, the text of Apollonius that is
referred to is the Latin Historia Apollonii.
The first vernacular adaptation of the narrative is in Anglo-Saxon and survives
in an eleventh-century manuscript, where it was transcribed from an earlier translation
(Goolden xxxiv). This text initiates a long line of vernacular adaptations of
Apollonius: in English alone, there are seven surviving medieval and Renaissance
variations (ibid. xiii), including the Shakespearean play Pericles. Meanwhile, in the
rest of Europe the tale of Apollonius appears in a number of vernacular languages:
Norse, Danish, Spanish, French, German, Dutch, Czech, Greek, Polish, and
Hungarian. The list of languages is ordered here chronologically, according to the first
adaptation of Apollonius in each of them, but in some cultures the tale was adapted
more than once: there are at least six German versions, six in French, four in Spanish,
three in Italian and two in Greek (Archibald, Medieval xi-xii).
The genealogy of these texts is a rather complicated trail. As Elizabeth
Archibald illustrates, in most cases the variations that appear in one language or
culture do not necessarily derive from each other:1 often the writers go back to the
original Latin text of Historia Apollonii in order to reproduce the tale. The astonishing
fact that more than a hundred manuscripts of the Latin Historia Apollonii survive
(ibid. 46) testifies not only to the popularity of the text, but also to its wide availability
to potential translators or adapters. The medieval Latin versions of Apollonius that
spawned the most translations or adaptations are included in two collections of tales
which became particularly successful among medieval audiences: namely, the

1 Archibald discusses these adaptations and their interrelations in Ch. 3, “The Circulation of the
Apollonius Story in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance”, pp. 45-51 of Apollonius of Tyre. Medieval
and Renaissance Themes and Variations.
Zafraka 3
twelfth-century Pantheon by Godfrey of Viterbo, which is presented as a
compendium of world history, and especially the Gesta Romanorum, a fourteenth-
century collection of exempla.2 In other cases, vernacular adaptations were based on
previous non-Latin versions: for example, the two Greek texts of Apollonius are
translated/adapted from different Italian sources (Kechagioglou 127, Archibald,
Medieval 50), while there are cases of translation from English to Spanish or from
French to English.3
It is obvious that the researcher of any version of the Apollonius story is faced
with a complex grid of intertextual connections. Each version of the tale is based on a
previous one, and in the most straightforward cases, the source is the Latin Historia
Apollonii; the great circulation of the original Latin Historia guaranteed the adherence
of most adapters to the traditional form of the tale. Innovations existed, but they were
rarely imitated, as the original Latin tale was available for many centuries (Archibald,
Apollonius of Tyre 51). However, even when an adaptation is directly linked to the
Historia Apollonii, it is a hard task to determine which manuscript engendered the
next. In some cases the connections have to be traced from one language to another,
as the story traveled along the routes of European cultural exchange. According to
Elizabeth Archibald,
there is no straightforward pattern: from the thirteenth century on every
century offers both traditional and innovative versions, in an increasing
number of vernaculars as well as Latin, in prose and in verse, and
allusions indicate that from an early date the story was read by some as
exemplary, by others as courtly and entertaining (ibid.).

2 Among the Apollonius variations listed by Archibald, the Gesta Romanorum is mentioned six times
as a direct source of a vernacular adaptation or translation.
3 I refer to the 15th-century Spanish adaptation of John Gower’s version of Apollonius from Confessio
Amantis, and the translation of Louis Garbin’s Le roman de Appollin roy de Thir of the same century
into English, by Robert Copland in 1510 (Archibald, Medieval 46, 47-8).
Zafraka 4
2. The Medieval Literary Context

In attempting to discuss the labyrinthine interrelations in the history of the
Apollonius narrative, one is faced with issues that are central to medieval scholarship.
It becomes apparent that when a narrative appears in so many versions, the boundaries
between terms like “adaptation” and “translation” become rather hazy. In the Middle
Ages, even the act of merely copying a preexisting text almost invariably entails some
editing. As J. A. Burrow points out, what is sometimes described today as scribal
"interpolation" is often deliberate, far-reaching editing of the preexisting text on the
part of the scribe (Medieval Writers 31). The same applies to the act of translating,
which often entails an adaptation of the text in its new context, rather than simply
conveying the meaning of the text to the speakers of another language. According to
standard modern practice, the reader of such recycled4 texts is usually alerted to
distinctions between the source text and the print at hand, and it is clarified which is
the product of the author, the translator or the editor; in the medieval context however,
the reader is typically only given the end product, and even when the author of the
source-text is specified, it is left to a potential researcher to discern the
transformations of a text from one manuscript to another. For the writer of a new
version, the adaptability of the text to its new cultural context often took precedence
over preserving the text’s original form. As Jeanette Beer points out in Medieval
Translators and their Craft, “by the criterion of appropriateness to target audience a
treatise properly could become poetry, epic become romance, and sermons drama – or
vice versa!” (2).

4 I use the term “recycling” of texts without the modern ecological connotations of refuse, but as a
cover term for all the forms of rewriting a text: copying, editing, adapting, and translating, activities
which often overlapped in medieval practice.