Playing at death : the suspended subject of Middle English lyric [PhD thesis]

400 Pages·2000·19.873 MB·English

by  Ashby Kinch

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PLAYING AT DEATH:
THE SUSPENDED SUBJECT OF MIDDLE ENGLISH LYRIC
by
Ashby Kinch
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
(English Language and Literature)
in The University of Michigan
2000
Doctoral Committee:
Associate Professor Karla Taylor, Chair
Professor Michael Schoenfeldt
Associate Professor Elizabeth Sears
Associate Professor Theresa Tinkle
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To Amy:
Tutte adunateparrebber ni'ente
ver' lo piacer divin die mi refulse,
quartd o mi vo/si al suo viso ridente.
All would seem as nothing
compared with that divine delight
that glowed on me when I turned
to see her smiling face.
ii
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
At many points in this process, I felt like Dante attempting to capture Beatrice’s
beauty: “It seemed to me that I had undertaken too lofty a theme for my powers, so much
so that I was afraid to enter upon it; and so I remained for several days desiring to write
and afraid to begin.” To those who made it easier to begin, and end this project.
To Karla: "Se'savio; intendimech 7’non ragiono'' What is good in my prose is
to your credit; what is bad is a symptom of my incomplete digestion of your best
guidance. Your probing skepticism forced my hand in countless instances to re-defme an
idea that remained cloudy; the results have always been worth the struggle. The
intellectual debt cannot be repaid. To Terri: you have been a model for the pleasures and
rigors of true intellectual exchange. Our conversations stand out as major events shaping
my development as a scholar and a teacher. To Mike: you were the first audience for
these ideas, and your subtle hand has guided much of the work found here. To Betsy: I
owe to you the origin of my interest in manuscript organization and lay-out. Your genial
demeanor has been a blessing when I most needed a friendly smile and earnest talk.
To the members of the medieval reading group: collectively and severally, you
helped shape this project into something more than a mere mass of ideas. To Michael
Sharp: you certainly have earned your surname in ever-incisive comments on my work as
it progressed. As a model intellectual peer, you have earned my respect and gratitude. To
Jim Crowley: the creativity of your scholarship inspired me even as its rigor shamed me.
But above all, your continued friendship has fulfilled my highest expectations for
intellectual exchange beyond the parameters of the Academy. To Tim Bahti and the
members of the Seminar in Comparative Lyric: I am still processing the intellectual
iii
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ferment of that course, which continues to provide new ideas for reshaping my work. I
would also like to thank Sadia Abbas, Julia Carlson-Federhoffer, and Colin Jager for their
late-hour input: I imposed and you all graciously indulged.
To Vince: your extraordinary generosity of spirit is a continued inspiration.
Though I cannot hope to match the commitment and mastery of your scholarship, I will
continue to try. I consider myself lucky to have encountered such intellectual grace.
To Sean P.: “Lately it occurs to me...” You have played to perfection every part I
have thrust on you during my time at Michigan: mentor, comrade, goad, salve, respite.
Put simply, I would not have made it were it not for you. May we share the glow of
friendship for years to come. To Malek: the banter has not ceased for 12-odd years, nor is
there an end in sight, Buddha willing. There is nobody in the world to whom I would
rather talk at 2 a.m. when the chips are down. To Johnny Mac: when I needed reality, or
an escape therefrom, you eagerly provided it.
To my family: I will say for the record what goes without saying: you are what I
know of love and support, without which, I am nothing. Especially to my brother, who is
truly ilmigliorfabbro delparlar materna since our earliest days, we have been engaged
in an ongoing conversation few could appreciate, even when they could understand. From
dinner-table chatter to experimental prose, you have taught me more about the art of
language than all my writing teachers combined. Your singular devotion to verbal craft
remains my model for intellectual style.
Finally, certainly not least, to Shelby and Amy: the one provided the motive, the
other the means, without which I would still languish. Here’s to the future!
iv
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
DEDICATION..........................................................................................................................ii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS....................................................................................................iii
CHAPTER
I. “WITH SUCH ART I LIVE AND DIE”: PLAYING AT DEATH
IN THE MEDIEVAL LYRIC........................................................................1
II. “MY DETH I LOVE, MY LYF ICH HATE”: DIALOGISM AND
DYING FOR LOVE IN THE HARLEY LYRICS...................................61
III. “ALWAYS DYING BUT BE NAT DED” CHAUCER’S
“COMPLEYNYNG” SUBJECTS.............................................................121
IV. “DE L’OMBRE DE MORT EN CLARTE DE VIE”: ALAIN
CHARTIER’S REDEMPTIVE POETICS...............................................181
V. “DETH AS YN LYVES LYCKNESSE”: THE DYING FEMALE
VOICE OF THE FINDERN LYRICS......................................................253
VI. “THUS BY FEIGNED DEATHS TO DIE”: JOHN DONNE’S
ART OF LYRIC DYING............................................................................308
BIBLIOGRAPHY...............................................................................................................367
v
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CHAPTER 1
“WITH SUCH ART I LIVE AND DIE”:
PLAYING AT DEATH IN THE MEDIEVAL LYRIC
“There is no death....Death exists only figuratively.”
—Marquis de Sade
In a celebrated bragging poem, ox gap, the twelfth-century troubadour Marcabru
writes, “Chascun si gart/ Cab aital art/ Mi fatz a vivre e morire” (55-7; Let everyone take
note for with such art I make myself live and die).1 Frederick Goldin, the major
anthologist and translator of troubadour verse, renders the final line “I play at living and
dying,” which captures the jocular irreverence of the poem.2 Yet what is lost is equally
important: the reflexive verb “mi fatz,” which focuses readerly attention on Marcabru’s
poetic self-construction through his use of conventional poetic language. “C’ab aital art”
(with such art) trumpets his distinctively irreverent and flamboyant style, which he
describes as a mastery of the art of eloquent speech: “Des plus torz fens/ sui pies e prens,/
de cent colors per mieills chauzir” (49-51; I’m teeming with the snakiest tricks, with a
hundred [rhetorical] colors from which to choose the best). Marcabru’s artful play with
the rhetorical tradition stimulates a moment of self-reflection in which he defines the
underlying art of poetry as a game of living and dying in words.3
What is the figurative tradition to which Marcabru refers when he claims to make
himself “live and die”? Readers of medieval lyric immediately notice the ubiquity of the
figure of dying for love, which often underpins a rhetoric of intensity: by claiming to die
for love, the poet simultaneously draws attention to his suffering and rhetorically
reinforces his sincerity and commitment. The figure of dying for love is one of those
1
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2
poetic conventions that, from the distance of centuries, seems to mark the arch formality
and naive sensibility of medieval poetry. Under our more rigorous standards of poetic
originality, poets must break conventional language and “make it strange,” as the Russian
Formalists liked to say. A close scrutiny of the medieval lyric tradition, however, shows
that poets like Marcabru, far from being naive conduits for conventional poetic language,
actively engage in a reflexive dialogue about their art through a response to that shared
poetic idiom. This reflexivity is critically linked to the way they imagine their distinctive
identities as poets. Marcabru, for example, elsewhere marks his irreverent approach to the
figure of dying for love by suggesting a more tangible, and less noble, purpose for the
rhetoric of extremity in “Estomel, cueill ta volada” (Starling, take flight):
ieu morrai
si no sai
consi jai
nuda o vestia
(52-5)
(I will die unless I know how she lies down at night: naked or dressed).
Such play suggests an ironic detachment and a rhetorical self-awareness that modem
scholars have all too often denied medieval lyric poets. By substituting a raw desire for a
noble plea, Marcabru makes the figure of dying for love visible as a convention whose
terms can be manipulated to create alternative responses. Here, that response is glib and
erotic, but Marcabru by no means exhausts the rhetorical positions with respect to this
complex poetic thought.
The longevity of the figure in the European poetic tradition attests to a sustained
fascination that merits attention.4 The figure of dying for love, though central to the
conceptual framework of medieval European poetry, has never been the object of an
independent study.5 This dissertation demonstrates that this neglect has obscured the
provocative formal and conceptual play medieval lyric poets develop from a close
analysis of the central terms of the figure: love and death. I argue that the figure is the
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