Love’s leap: Incarnational poetics in late medieval England

312 Pages·2004·15.378 MB·English

by  Cristina Maria Cervone

Love’s Leap:
Incamational Poetics
in Late Medieval England
Cristina Maria Cervone
Haverhill, Massachusetts
B.A., Williams College, 1987
M.A., University of Virginia, 2000
A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty
of the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Department of English
University of Virginia
January 2004
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UMI Number: 3108797
Copyright 2004 by
Cervone, Cristina Maria
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January 2004
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Abstract
“Love’s Leap: Incarnational Poetics in Late Medieval England” identifies an undercurrent
in medieval thought that points toward the Incarnation as a nexus linking key moments in
salvation history and a model for thinking through the relationship of God and man.
Recent scholarship has tended to reinforce a long-standing perception that affective
Passion devotion was the definitive mode of late medieval piety. “Love’s Leap” shifts
attention to works that envision Christ’s physical, human body as something other than a
human body. When writers incorporate 2‘the Word made flesh” into their writing, they make
language itself a central issue. In late medieval England, such Incarnational experiments
strike at the heart of an important controversy: the latent potential for subversion then
thought to be inherent to religious writing in the vernacular.
“The Word made flesh” (John 1.14) forces an interpretation of metaphor that presumes
there is no metaphor: the formal awareness of an Incarnational poetic must be linguistic,
with a focus on the individual word, and may be rhetorical, with a focus on the struc­
ture of literary works. In the first chapter, deixis is brought to bear on the Charters of
Christ to elucidate how the encoding of time, place, and subjectivity in language can take
on special significance when the incarnate Christ is the subject. The second chapter, on
Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Love, engages language’s capacity to elude the traditional
literal versus figurative divide when qualities or aspects of a subject approach embodiment
through near-personifications. The Piers Plowman chapter further pursues this topic into
language’s embodied manifestations in personification allegory, with particular emphasis
on how related literary and devotional traditions such as the Truelove tradition and the
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leaps of Christ appear to have been linked to a variety of late medieval Incarnational
investigations, both literary and cultural, such as the lily crucifixion.
When Incarnational forms occur together within a work, their meaning can be seen to lie
not primarily in isolated metaphor or verbal patterns but in the connections the underlying
structures invite, in the interpretive leaps inherent to an Incarnational poetic.
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Contents
List of Illustrations v
Acknowledgments vi
I. Introduction: Language, Form, and the Incarnation 1
1. “Mi self I was |>e chartre rede”: the Deictic Center of the Charters of Christ 19
1.1 The Poems and Their Manuscript Witnesses.................................................... 22
1.2 Incarnational Form I:
Deep Structure in an A-text of the Long Charter.............................................. 32
1.3 Incarnational Form II:
Deep Structure versus Metaphor: the Case of “Loue that god loueth” . . . . 49
1.4 Incarnational Form III:
“Thys is chartre and wytnessyng”: the Case of Cooling C astle........................57
1.5 Cultural Context I:
Didacticism and the Penitential Manuals...............................................................76
1.6 Cultural Context II:
Degeneration and Accretion: the B- and C-texts of the Long Charter . . . . 86
1.7 Cultural Context III:
A Gravestone Inscription? A Song? The Legacy of the Short Charter . . . . 93
1.8 Conclusion:
Documentary Culture and the Charters Tradition:
A ‘Flexible Construction Kit’? .............................................................................103
2. The Incarnational Texture of Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Love 112
2.1 The Hermeneutic Divide: Language as Gateway and B arrier..........................115
2.2 Polysemous Words and Thematic Interlace:
The Structural Fabric of A Revelation of L o v e ....................................................119
2.3 Intimate, Protective, Concealing, Decorative, and Structural:
Contexts for the Clothing M etaphor....................................................................122
2.4 “He is oure clotheing” ..........................................................................................136
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iv
2.5 Substance and Sensuality:
Theological Underpinning for “He is oure clotheing” .......................................139
2.6 “Cladde and Enclosydde in the Goodnes of God”: A Crux ..............................143
2.7 Abstraction: A Trope? ...........................................................................................152
2.8 Tribulation, Prayer, Treasure:
Abstraction by Transformation over T im e..........................................................160
2.9 Abstraction as Mean ..............................................................................................166
2.10 Collective Humanity: Christ’s Crown .................................................................172
2.11 Conclusion...............................................................................................................178
3. William Langland and the Leap of Love 180
3.1 Need, Holy Church, and the Three Necessities:
The Frame of Ne soliciti sitis.................................................................................186
3.2 Feeding the Hungry and Clothing the Naked:
The Development of an Incarnational Theme ...................................................190
3.3 An Incarnational Theme Expanded:
Amplification through “Secte” and “Sute” ..........................................................193
3.4 Verbum Caro Factum Est:
Incarnational Addition by Grammatical Metaphor.............................................198
3.5 Springing I (the Leaps of Christ): “And loue shal lepe out...” .......................203
3.6 Springing II (Botanical): “Plonte of pees” .............................................. 211
3.7 Springing III (the Lyrics and the Leaps): Trewe Loue, Rose, Lily...................215
3.8 Springing IV (Wheat): Nisi granum frumenti and “)>e graffe of grace” . . .226
3.9 The Lily Crucifixion: an Analogous C ase..........................................................230
3.10 Springing IV (Wheat) continued: Grace as a Generative F orce......................237
3.11 Language and The Word:
“And fynde hym, but figuratyfly, a ferly me thynketh” ......................................247
E. Epilogue: “Wounden in a soft sendel vndir faire wurdes” 259
A. An A-text of the Long Charter 268
B. Lily Crucifixions in England and Wales 271
Works Cited 273
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V
List of Illustrations
1. Clopton Chantry Chapel, Holy Trinity Church, Long Melford, Suffolk.
Photo: Cristina Maria Cervone.
2. National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, Add. MS 17520A, ff. lv-2r.
Photo: National Library of Wales. Reproduced by permission.
3. Eastern tower of gatehouse, Cowlyng Castle, Kent.
Lithograph by Whiteman & Bass, Holbom, London.
Reproduced from W. A. Scott Robertson, “Coulyng Castle,” Archaeologia Cantiana 11
(1877): 135.
4. British Library, London, Sloane 3292, f. 2r.
Photo: British Library. Reproduced by permission.
5. Chapel, Pembroke College, University of Cambridge.
Photo: James Austin. Reproduced by permission of Pembroke College.
6. Huntington Library, San Marino, California, HM 1125, f. 81r.
Photo: Huntington Library. Reproduced by permission.
7. Huntington Library, San Marino, California, HM 1087, f. 75r.
Photo: Huntington Library. Reproduced by permission
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Acknowledgments
This project has been completed through the generosity of a dissertation year fellowship
from the Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation, for which I am sincerely grateful. I also
owe thanks to the W. M. Keck Foundation for a month’s fellowship at the Huntington
Library, and to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the English Department at
the University of Virginia for their liberal support of my research through fellowships and
travel grants during the past three years.
Although my intellectual debts are many, I especially wish to thank Bob Reeder, Jason
Goldsmith, Val Garver, and Patrice Calise, whose enthusiasm and encouragement kept me
on track. My professors have been unfailingly receptive; I could not have come to see
my project in just this way without their help. In particular, Derek Pearsall gave me the
best of starts in disadvantageous circumstances. Dug Duggan introduced me to manuscript
research, which opened whole new worlds. Elizabeth Fowler gave prodigally of her time
in a difficult year. Most of all, to Tony Spearing I owe the greatest of thanks for many
kindnesses, and for being my intellectual polestar; sine qua non.
My family has supported and helped me in ways they know best; this dedication is for
Mom, Dad, Gian, Davi, Maria, A. Meem, and A. Carol.
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1
Introduction
Language, Form, and the Incarnation
For the hey holi gost heuene shal to-cleue
And loue shal lepe out aftur into Jjis lowe erthe
And clennesse shal each hit... (Piers Plowman C XIV.84-6)1
Whoever, then, can understand the word [uerbum], not only before it sounds, but
even before the images of its sound are contemplated in thought—such a word
belongs to no language, that is, to none of the so-called national languages, of
which ours is Latin—whoever, I say, can understand this, can already see through
this mirror and in this enigma some likeness of that Word of whom it was said: “In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God; and the Word was God.”
(Augustine, De Trinitate, XV.10.19)2
et Verbum cam factum est et habitavit in nobis (John 1.14)
Scholars have long believed that the primary vehicle for late medieval piety was affective
Passion devotion, or reimagining Christ’s Passion in order to feel his suffering personally
and deeply. This focus on the Passion sometimes obscures our perception of other ways
in which writers engage the humanity of Christ. My project identifies an undercurrent in
late medieval English writing that points to the Incarnation as both a nexus linking key
moments in salvation history and a model for thinking through the relationship of God and
1 Unless otherwise noted, quotations from Piers Plowman are taken from Derek Pearsall’s edition of the
C text.
2 “Quisquis igitur potest intellegere uerbum non solum antequam sonet, uerum etiam antequam sonorum eius
imagines cogitatione uoluantur (hoc est enim quod ad nullam pertinet linguam, earum scilicet quae linguae
appellantur gentium quarum nostra latina est), quisquis, inquam, hoc intellegere potest iam potest uidere per
hoc speculum atque in hoc aenigmate aliquam uerbi illius similitudinem de quo dictum est: In principio erat
uerbum, et uerbum erat apud deum, et deus erat uerbum.”
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