False Fables and Exemplary Truth in Later Middle English Literature PDF
Preview False Fables and Exemplary Truth in Later Middle English Literature
THE NEW MIDDLE AGES BONNIE WHEELER, Series Editor The New Middle Ages is a series dedicated to transdisciplinary studies of medieval cultures, with particular emphasis on recuperating women's history and on feminist and gender analyses. This peer-reviewed series includes both scholarly monographs and essay collections. PUBLISHED BY PALGRAVE: Crossing the Bridge: Comparative Essays on Medieval European and Heian Japanese Women in the Medieval Islamic World: Power, Women Writers Patronage, and Piety edited by Barbara Stevenson and edited by Gavin R. G. Hambly Cynthia Ho The Ethics <if Nature in the Middle Ages: Engaging Words: The Culture <if Reading in On Boccaccio 's Poetaphysics the Later Middle Ages by Gregory B. Stone by Laurel Amtower Presence and Presentation: Women in Robes and Honor: The Medieval World <if the Chinese Literati Tradition Investiture by Sherry]. 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Lee, Jr. Twelfth-Century Woman edited by Bonnie Wheeler False Fables and Exemplary Truth in Later Middle English Literature The Postcolonial Middle Ages by Elizabeth Allen edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen Gender in Debate from the Early Middle Ages Chaucer's Pardoner and Gender Theory: Bodies to the Renaissance <if Discourse edited by Thelma S. Fenster and by Robert S. Sturges Clare A. Lees "'vfalory~< Mortc Darthur: Remaking Arthurian Capctian Women Tradition edited by Kathleen Nolan by Catherine Batt Joan ofA rc and Spirituality The Vernacular Spirit: Essays on Medieval edited by Ann WAs tell and Bonnie Religious Literature Wheeler edited by Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, The Texture of Society: Medieval Women in the Duncan Robertson, and Nancy Warren Southem Low Countries Popular Piety and Art in the Late Middle edited by Ellen E. Kittell and Ages: Image Worship and Idolatry in England Mary A. Suydam 135()-1500 Charlemagne's Mustache: And Other by Kathleen Kamerick Cultural Clusters of a Dark Age Absent Narratives, Manuscript Textuality, and by Paul Edward Dutton Literary Structure in Late Medieval England Troubled Vision: Gender, Sexuality, and S(~ht in by Elizabeth Scala Medieval Text and Image Creating Community with Food and Drink in edited by Emma Campbell and Merovingian Gaul Robert Mills by Bonnie Effros Queering Medieval Gmres by Tison Pugh Representations of Early Byzantine Empresses: Image and Empire Sacred Place in Early Medieval by Anne McClanan Neoplatonism by L. Michael Harrington Encountering Medieval Textiles and Dress: Objects, Texts, Images The Middle A;?es at Work edited by Desiree G. Koslin and edited by Kellie Robertson and Janet Snyder Michael Uebel Eleanor ofA quitaine: Lord and Lady Chaucer~< Jobs edited by Bonnie Wheeler and John by David R. Carlson Carmi Parsons 2\ifedievalism and Orienta/ism: T11ree Essays Isabel La Cat6lica, Queen of Castile: on Literature, Architecture and Cultural Critical Essays Identity edited by David A. Boruchoff by John M. Ganim Homoeroticism and Chivalry: Discourses of Male Queer Love in the Middle Ages Same-Sex Desire in the Fourteenth Century by Anna Klosowska Roberts by Richard Zeikowitz Performing Women: Sex, Gender and the Portraits of Medieval Women: Family, Marriage, Medieval Iberian Lyric and Politics in England 1225-1350 by Denise K. Filios by Linda E. Mitchell Necessary Conjunctions: The Social Self in Eloquent Viogins: From Thecla to Joan ofA rc Medieval England by Maud Burnett Mcinerney by David Gary Shaw The Persistence of Medievalism: Narrative Visual Culture and the German Middle Ages Adventures in Contemporary Culture edited by Kathryn Starkey and Horst by Angela Jane Weisl Wenzel FALSE FABLES AND EXEMPLARY TRUTH IN LATER MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE Elizabeth Allen * FALSE FABLES AND EXEMPLARY TRUTH © Elizabeth Allen, 2005. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2005 978-1-4039-6797-8 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published in 2005 by PALGRAVE MACMILLANTM 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin's Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-73416-0 ISBN 978-1-137-04479-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-04479-2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: August 2005 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Transferred to Digital Printing 2011 CONTENTS Acknowledgments Vll 1. Introduction:Toward a Poetics of Exemplarity 1 2. Anticipating Audience in The Book of the Knight of the Tower 27 3. The Costs of Exemplary History in the Confessio A mantis 53 4. Framing Narrative in Chaucer and Lydgate 83 5. The Pardoner in the "dogges boure": Early Reception of the Canterbury Tales 111 6. Memory and Recognition in Henryson's Testament of Cresseid 133 Notes 159 Bibliography 203 Index 219 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS M any people have contributed time, energy, and encouragement to this project. My greatest debt is to Karla Taylor, who oversaw my senior thesis at Yale University, cultivated my interest in medieval literature, wel comed me into the world of scholarship in graduate school, and provided steady encouragement over the years. The book began as a dissertation at the University of Michigan, where I had the good fortune to garner aid from many quarters. I am especially grateful for the generosity of my teachers Catherine Brown, Michael Schoenfeldt, and Theresa Tinkle. I am also thank ful for the intelligence and engagement ofKenneth Hodges, Ondine Le Blanc, Susan Rosenbaum, Jani Scandura, Will West, and Steven Whitworth. The support of my colleagues at Allegheny College gave me energy and confidence at a crucial time, and for that I thank Jim Bulman, Jeffrey Deshell, Brian Rosenberg, Lisa Sheffield, and especially Laura Quinn, for hours of intellectual argument and pedagogical advice. My students at Irvine, in parti cular Walter Wadiak and Robert McDonie, have challenged me intellectually as well as helping me finish the bibliography and index. Many people have read and commented on parts of this project. I am especially grateful to Richard Kroll and Paul Strohm for reading the entire manuscript with care and understanding. I am also grateful to Hugh Roberts for sympathetic reading and advice on most of the chapters. Sarah Farmer, Susan Rosenbaum, and Victoria Silver helped immeasurably with chapter 1; Jessica Brantley and Jim Steintrager offered sound advice on chapter 3; Karla Taylor commented on chapter 4 and on early stages of the whole project; David Benson helped with chapter 5; Linda Georgianna commented on chapters 1 and 6; and Alexander Gelley, Steven Mailloux, and Marshall Brown gave well-timed encouragement and intervention. Two anonymous readers for Oxford University Press also contributed extremely useful comments. Extended conversations with colleagues at Irvine prompted me to rethink continually: for their intelligence, warmth, enthusiasm, and friendship, I heartily thank Frank Biess, Sarah Farmer, Vivian Folkenflik, Natalka Freeland, Rachel Gamby, Andrea Henderson, Adriana Johnson, Victoria Silver, Jim Steintrager, Hugh Roberts, Ulrike Strasser, V111 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Michael Szalay, Elisa Tamarkin, and Andrew Zissos. I received crucial inspiration from Seeta Chaganti, Rebecca Krug, Sarah McNamer, Susan Phillips, Catherine Sanok, and other participants in the New Chaucer Society seminar on pathos in 2000 and the Medieval Writing Workshops in 2003 and 2004. Many scholars and friends have advised me about intellectual and academic life more generally. For their kindness, good sense, and in some cases hospitality, I thank David Benson, Marie Borroff,Jessica Brantley,John Fyler, John Ganim, Linda Georgianna, Frank Grady, Rebecca Krug, James Simpson, Paul Strohm, and Stephanie Trigg. I am grateful to the series editor, Bonnie Wheeler, for her immediate enthusiasm, and to Farideh Koohi-Kamali at the press. I thank the British Library, the Bodleian Library, the Balliol College Library, the Huntington Library, and the staff at Alnwyck Castle for permission and aid in using their collections, and the University of Michigan and Allegheny College for travel funds. The book was written with the help of a University of California President's Fellowship in 2002-03, and completed with an Irvine Faculty Development Grant in 2004. Finally, I am profoundly grateful for the humor and insight of my brother Ralph. I appreciate the boundless curiosity as well as love and sup port of my mother, Sara Allen, who contributed to this book in many ways. My oldest friend, Christopher Calhoun, has been a steady presence through its many phases. The book had its genesis in argument with my father, Ralph Allen, and was sustained by ongoing conversation with him about the nature of moral education. I wish that he were here to read it. CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: TOWARD A POETICS OF EXEMPLARITY Rychere and Exemplary Narrative Let me begin with an example. In the section on sacrilege in his early fourteenth-century penitential manual Handlyng Synne, Robert Mannyng tells the story of a rich man, aptly named Rychere, who takes sanctuary from his enemies in an abbey, where he and his family are given quarters. When he has sex with his wife there, God is unhappy because it is too near the church. They get stuck together like dogs, and cry out until they are found, whereupon their situation becomes known and they become ashamed. The man begs the monks to pray for them, promising generous gifts in return, and when the monks pray, man and wife are uncoupled. The monks write the event "yn boke, .. ./ For to shewe hyt euer more, I That outher myght beware thar-fore" (8969-72). The narrator concludes that this "chaunce" occurred not for the couple alone, but so that everyone should be warned away from sex in holy places. 1 The momentum with which this brief exemplum moves from specific action to general truth characterizes many of the narratives collected in Latin sermon anthologies of the period and increasingly circulated in vernacular contexts as well. 2 Man and wife fail to give quarter to the sacred, and get stuck in their sinfulness; God punishes the couple by making manifest their animal desire. When Rychere begs the monks to pray, he connects physical circumstance to moral concept. His plea-"That God almyghty graunte hyt be so I That oure synne he wyl vndo" (8965-66)-conflates "undoing" the human physical entanglement with the divine grace that "undoes" sin. God's grace is available not simply through acknowledgment of the sacred but in and through the character's recognition of his error. The narrative pivots on a moment when a concrete error is rendered conceptual, when God's intent is adequately received. 3 This book is about how and why exemplary texts
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