Ethical reading and the medieval artes amandi : the rise of the didactic in Andreas Capellanus, Jean de Meun, and John Gower [thesis]

229 Pages·2011·2.8 MB·English

by  Annika Farber

The Pennsylvania State University
The Graduate School
College of the Liberal Arts

ETHICAL READING AND THE MEDIEVAL ARTES AMANDI:
THE RISE OF THE DIDACTIC IN ANDREAS CAPELLANUS, JEAN DE MEUN, AND
JOHN GOWER

A Dissertation in
Comparative Literature
by
Annika Farber

© 2011 Annika Farber

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements
for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

December 2011
UMI Number: 3584663
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The dissertation of Annika Farber was reviewed and approved* by the following:

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Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English and Comparative Literature
Dissertation Adviser
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Caroline D. Eckhardt
Professor of Comparative Literature and English
Head of the Department of Comparative Literature

Norris J. Lacy
Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of French and Medieval Studies

Stephen Wheeler
Associate Professor of Classics

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Abstract

Ovid, in his Ars amatoria, adopts the didactic framework in order to elevate the tradition
of Latin love elegy and make a name for himself as a poet. In contrast, three of his most famous
medieval successors—Andreas Capellanus, Jean de Meun, and John Gower—invert the balance,
exploiting the subject of love to instruct their readers in other topics, such as religion,
philosophy, and morality. This shift in balance is related to the practice of ―ethical reading,‖
which emerged in medieval grammatica as a way of approaching classical authors by
emphasizing the ethical (and thus educational) potential of their texts. Previous scholarship has
established the ethical focus of medieval grammar education and the ways in which that ethical
focus influenced medieval readings of classical texts, but this scholarship has rarely continued on
to discuss the influence of grammar education on medieval authors. Andreas, Jean, and Gower
first encountered imaginative literature in the medieval curriculum, where the texts of classical
authors were used to teach students the Latin language. In the grammar classroom, they would
have been taught interpretive methods that trained them to identify the utility of what they were
reading, whether that utility was conceived of in philological, ethical, philosophical, or even
theological terms. Conditioned to read imaginative literature for these didactic purposes,
Andreas, Jean, and Gower discovered, in Ovid‘s Ars amatoria, a text that used love as a platform
for didacticism, and a model around which to build their own literary inventions. The literary
works that they created—Andreas‘s De amore (late 12th c.), Jean‘s continuation of Roman de la
Rose (late 13th c.), and Gower‘s Confessio Amantis (late 14th c.)—are dense, challenging, and
multilayered texts that illustrate the process of learning through reading and dialogue, and use
the literary discourse of love to teach their students the art of reading.

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Table of Contents

Introduction: Love and Didacticism in Ovid, Andreas, Jean, and Gower ..................................... 1
Chapter 1: Literature, Ethics, and the Grammar Curriculum ...................................................... 26
Chapter 2: Reversing Roma: Ovid‘s Ars amatoria and the Glorification of Love ...................... 55
Chapter 3: Ovid and the Medieval Artes Amandi ........................................................................ 82
Chapter 4: Andreas Capellanus and the Sapiens Amans ............................................................ 102
Chapter 5: Reson, Amant, and the Reader in Jean de Meun‘s Roman de la Rose ..................... 135
Chapter 6: Educatio Amantis: Genius and the Practice of Ethical Reading .............................. 166
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 194
Works Cited ................................................................................................................................ 200

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To my parents, Maddie and Jerry,
for their constant love and support
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Introduction:
Love and Didacticism in Ovid, Andreas, Jean, and Gower
omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci,
lectorem delectando pariter que monendo.
hic meret aera liber Sosiis; hic et mare transit
et longum noto scriptori prorogat aevum.
(Horace, Ars poetica, 343-46)1

―He gets the vote who combines the useful with the pleasant, and who, at the same time he
pleases the reader, also instructs him. That book will earn money for the Sosii, this one will
cross the sea and extend immeasurably the life of a famous writer.‖2

This project is a study of the interaction between love and didacticism in four texts:
Ovid‘s Ars amatoria (1st c. BC-1st c. AD), Andreas Capellanus‘s De amore (12th c.), Jean de
Meun‘s continuation of Roman de la Rose (13th c.), and John Gower‘s Confessio Amantis (14th
c.). Attempting to blend dulce and utile, these four authors carved out a place for their works in
the history of literature, but they also sparked endless controversies, angered authorities, and
challenged generations of scholars. What links these texts is the way they achieve the mixture of
contrasting elements that Horace calls for. Dulce and utile refer to two distinct effects, each of
which corresponds to a wide range of textual possibilities; in the texts under consideration, the
synergy of these two effects is achieved by the combination of love as pleasing subject matter
with a didacticism that shapes the text both in its broad outlines and in its particulars. (One
might even say that this combination of love and the didactic amounts to a kind of formula that
ensures the presence of both of the elements that Horace prescribes.) In these texts, the two
elements create a tension tht the author must resolve by playing the two off against each other,
and it is this tension that simultaneously intrigues and challenges their readers. Despite these

1 De arte poetica (epistula ad Pisones), ed. D.R. Shackleton Bailey (Leipzig: Teubner, 1995).
2 Translated by Leon Golden, in Horace for Students of Literature: The “Ars Poetica” and its Tradition, ed. O.B.
Hardison and Leon Golden (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1995), 18.
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similarities, however, there is an obvious disparity between Ovid‘s playful lessons on how to
find a girl and the dense, encyclopedic discourse of Andreas, Jean, and Gower. This disparity
cannot be sufficiently explained by referring to Andreas, Jean, and Gower as ―medieval‖ Ovids,
especially since we have Old French adaptations of the Ars amatoria which do little more than
transport Ovid‘s praeceptor amoris from the streets of ancient Rome to the streets of medieval
France. In the hands of Andreas, Jean, and Gower, Ovid‘s praeceptor is, in effect, taken off the
streets and placed in the medieval classroom. These authors are ―medieval‖ Ovids, but more
specifically, they are ―scholastic‖ Ovids.
In this study, I make two overall arguments: 1) Ovid, in his Ars amatoria, adopted the
didactic framework in order to elevate the tradition of Latin love elegy and make a name for
himself as a poet, while three of his most famous medieval successors—Andreas Capellanus,
Jean de Meun, and John Gower—inverted the balance, exploiting the subject of love to instruct
their readers in other topics, such as religion, philosophy, and morality; and 2) this shift in
balance is related to the practice of ―ethical reading,‖ which emerged in medieval grammar
classrooms as a way of justifying the use of classical authors by emphasizing the ethical (and
thus educational) potential of their texts. Previous scholarship has established the ethical focus
of medieval grammar education and the ways in which that ethical focus influenced medieval
readings of classical texts, but this scholarship has rarely continued on to discuss the influence of
grammar education on medieval authors. Bridging the gap between education and literature, this
project situates literary texts within a specific intellectual context. What happens when a
medieval author, thoroughly trained in Latin and raised on the ethical interpretation of the
auctores, goes on to write a classically inspired text? How does education shape a medieval
author‘s understanding and use of classical literature? By studying Andreas, Jean, and Gower as
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readers who have become writers, we can gain new insight into the complexities of their
intriguing and demanding artes amandi. And by studying Andreas, Jean, and Gower as students
who have become teachers, we can learn more about the nature of ethical reading and about the
didactic potential of love literature.

Ovid and the Medieval Artes Amandi
Despite the extensive scholarship on Ovid‘s Ars amatoria and its medieval reception,
there is no definitive study on the artes amandi as a category of literature. This project, which
focuses on the interaction between love and didacticism in Ovid and three of his medieval
successors, cannot attempt to fill that need. However, it is my intention to lead the way for such
a discussion by providing a definition of ars amandi and by sketching the outlines of this literary
tradition.
The category of literature that I am calling ars amandi can be defined as a type of
literature that uses the didactic mode to address the subject of love. The primary examples are
Ovid‘s Ars amatoria, Andreas Capellanus‘s De amore, and the adaptations of those two texts,
such as Maître Elie‘s Ci commence de Ovide de arte (early 13th c.) and Drouart la Vache‘s Livre
d‟amours (late 13th c.), that stay fairly close to the original and claim to be teaching their readers
about love. Taken more broadly, the term artes amandi can also be used for texts which
combine elements from this primary group of texts with elements from other literary traditions
and genres—that is, texts for which instruction in love is only part of the agenda. The Roman de
la Rose of Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, for example, brings together the ars amandi
and courtly narrative, and Aurigenia‘s Facetus (12th c.) includes the ars amandi as part of its
general instruction on courtliness. In both of those texts, the concept of an ars amandi still plays
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a major role, but at the farthest reaches of the literary tradition we also find texts that use ars
amandi only as a topos, sometimes citing Ovid, as in the Concilium Romarici Montis (12th c.),
where the instruction provided in Ovid‘s Ars amatoria is referred to as ―praecepta Ovidii,
doctoris egregii‖ (―the precepts of Ovid, illustrious teacher‖; ln. 27), and sometimes without
citing Ovid, as in Carmina Burana 1 (12th-13th c.), which contains a brief reference to ―Veneris
gymnasia‖ (―the school of Venus‖; stanza 2).3 In Chapter 3, I provide an extended discussion of
the artes amandi, with examples drawn from the categories described above. In this
introduction, I will summarize the scholarship on Ovid, Andreas, Jean, and Gower, with an
emphasis on studies of love and didacticism in these texts, and then I will discuss the relevance
of medieval education and classical reception to the study of medieval authorship.
Ovid‘s Ars amatoria is, on the surface, a didactic poem on the art of love, written in
elegiac meter. The novelty of this enterprise has led scholars to question every aspect of Ovid‘s
stated intentions. Scholars who write on the didactic nature of Ovid‘s text find themselves
having to prove to their readers that the Ars is indeed didactic (or at least mock-didactic).
Confronted by the poem‘s lack of seriousness and its unsuitable subject matter, some scholars
(Jerzy Krókowski, Alexander Dalzell, Katharina Volk) make their arguments for the poem‘s
inclusion in the genre of didactic poetry by situating it next to more canonical didactic works and
drawing comparisons in tone and rhetorical technique.4 Other scholars (Molly Myerowitz,
Duncan F. Kennedy) focus solely on Ovid‘s poem and take up the issue of what exactly Ovid is
claiming to teach.5 The question of subject matter is a highly contentious one, and the most

3 Concilium Romarici Montis, ed. Paul Pascal (Bryn Mawr: Bryn Mawr Latin Commentaries, 1993); Love Lyrics
from the Carmina Burana, ed. and trans. P.G. Walsh (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993).
4 Jerzy Krókowski, ―Ars amatoria—poème didactique,‖ Eos 53 (1963): 143-56; Alexander Dalzell, The Criticism of
Didactic Poetry: Essays on Lucretius, Virgil, and Ovid (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996); and Katharina
Volk, The Poetics of Latin Didactic: Lucretius, Vergil, Ovid, Manilius (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
5 Molly Myerowitz, Ovid‟s Games of Love (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1985); and Duncan F. Kennedy,
―Bluff Your Way in Didactic: Ovid‘s Ars Amatoria and Remedia Amoris,‖ Arethusa 33 (2000): 159-76.
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