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Reading Between Literary and Medical Discourses in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and John Lydga

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Reading Between Literary and Medical Discourses in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and John Lydga “Termes of Phisik”: Reading Between Literary and Medical Discourses in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and John Lydgate’s Dietary By Jake Walsh Morrissey Department of English McGill University, Montreal February, 2011 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy © Jake Walsh Morrissey, 2011 THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract / Résumé …………………………………………………………………. i Acknowledgments …………………………………………………………………. iv A Note on the Text ………………………………………………………………… vi Abbreviations ………………………………………………………………………. vii INTRODUCTION: Learned Medical Discourses in Middle English Poetry ……… 1 1. Medical Verse ……………………………………………………. 6 2. Lydgate’s “Pageant of Knowledge”: Texts and Genres …………. 11 3. The State of the Field; Methodology …………………………….. 21 4. Overview of My Work …………………………………………… 25 I. “Whan That They Were Seeke”: Plague, Medicine, and the Pilgrim Healers of the Canterbury Tales ……………………………………………….. 30 1. Chaucer and Plague ……………………………………………… 34 2. The Pilgrim Physician …………………………………………… 40 3. John of Burgundy’s De epidemia and the Medical Response to the Plague ………………………………………….. 65 4. Drumming up Business: The Physician’s Poisonous Tale ……… 73 5. The Parson and Religious Healing for the Plague ……………… 83 6. The Pardoner’s Riposte to the Physician…………………………. 90 7. Conclusion ……………………………………………………….. 103 II. A Contradiction in “Termes”: The Englishing of Hereos in the Knight’s Tale …………………………………………………………….. 106 1. Arcite’s Malady ……………….………….………….…………… 108 2. The Pelian Spear: Ovid’s Treatment of Lovesickness …………… 117 3. Discursive Exchange and Resistance in the History of Lovesickness………………………………………….. 130 4. Lovesickness in Chaucer’s England……………………………… 144 a. Bernard of Gordon, John of Gaddesden, and Vincent of Beauvais ………………………………………… 146 b. Lovesickness in English: Henry Daniel Translates Constantine …………………………………………………. 181 5. Conclusion: The Sources and Significance of Chaucer’s Verse Medical Treatise on Hereos ……………………………………… 190 III. “Make Þis Þi Gouernaunce”: Lydgate’s Prescription for a Way of Life in the Dietary ……………………………………………………….……... 199 1. Establishing the Text and Genres of the Dietary ………………… 206 2. The Dietarium and its Sources …………………………………… 223 3. The Gouernaunace of the Dietary ……………………………….. 229 4. Conclusion ………………………………………………………. 252 CONCLUSION: Landscaping the Kingdom of the Ill ..……………………………. 254 APPENDIX: A Working Handlist of the Manuscripts Containing Lydgate’s Dietary ………………………………………………………………. 261 Working Handlist of Manuscripts Containing the Dietary ………… 264 Early and Modern Printed Editions of the Dietary …………………. 301 WORKS CITED .……………………………………………………………………… 304 Manuscripts …………………………………………………………. 304 Primary Sources ……………………………………………………... 305 Secondary Sources ………………………………………………….. 313 Walsh Morrissey i ABSTRACT This dissertation demonstrates that the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer and John Lydgate joined nonliterary medical texts in transporting medical discourse into the English language and culture. In the later-fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the production of Middle English medical and literary texts increased dramatically. These categories overlapped at the site of medical verse. I show that authors of imaginative fiction also wrote what is in effect medical verse by employing medical discourse in stand-alone poems and in passages embedded in longer works. As Chaucer and Lydgate became central in an emergent national literary canon, their texts––and the medical content they contained––enjoyed an especially broad circulation. Thus Chaucer and Lydgate participated in the Englishing and popularization of medical discourse. In the General Prologue and linking narratives of the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer satirizes academic medicine by means of its own discourse––what he calls the “termes of phisik”––and in the context of a larger thematic exploration of healing and illness in post- Black Death England. In the Knight’s tale, Chaucer includes a miniature verse treatise on lovesickness (amor hereos), which, despite its brevity and satiric quality, draws learnedly from contemporary medical theory, in effect constituting one of the best-known technical works on the subject in Middle English. Lydgate’s Dietary, a verse regimen of physical, spiritual, and social health, was one of the most widely circulated Middle English poems. It has been overlooked and misunderstood by scholars, however, because they have neglected to consider the poem’s complex relationship with its sources and analogues and often refer to a highly unrepresentative edition of the text. By locating Chaucer’s and Lydgate’s creative uses of medical discourse within their textual and historical contexts, I Walsh Morrissey ii offer new readings of their poems and reconstruct their respective roles in English medical history. RÉSUMÉ Cette thèse se propose de démontrer que la poésie de Geoffrey Chaucer et de John Lydgate s’allie à des textes médicaux non littéraires dans le processus de passage du discours médical dans la langue et la culture anglaises. Vers la fin du quatorzième et au quinzième siècle, la production de textes dans les domaines médical et littéraire en moyen anglais a augmenté de façon spectaculaire. Ces catégories de textes se sont toutefois chevauchées en regard avec la profession médicale. Dans ce travail, je montre que les auteurs de fiction imaginative ont écrit aussi de façon effective dans le domaine médical et ont employé le discours médical dans des poèmes séparés et d’autres passages ont été incorporés dans des œuvres plus longues. Comme Chaucer et Lydgate sont devenus incontournables dans le contexte littéraire national émergent de l’époque, leurs textes – et le contenu médical qu’ils contiennent – ont connu une diffusion particulièrement grande. Ainsi Chaucer et Lydgate ont contribué au progrès de langue anglaise ainsi qu’à la vulgarisation du discours médical. Dans le prologue général et les récits de liaison des Contes de Canterbury (Canterbury Tales), Chaucer fait la satire de la médecine universitaire par le moyen de son propre discours – ce qu’il appelle les « termes of phisik » – et d’une grande exploration thématique de la maladie et la guérison dans l’Angleterre de l’après-peste noire. Dans le conte du Chevalier, Chaucer inséra un court verset traitant du chagrin d’amour (amor hereos), lequel malgré sa brièveté et sa qualité satirique, use savamment Walsh Morrissey iii de la théorie médicale contemporaine. Ce qui, en effet, fait de lui l’une des œuvres techniques, écrites en moyen anglais, les plus connues sur le sujet. La Diététique (Dietary) de Lydgate, un verset sur le régime de santé physique, spirituel, social, a été l’un des poèmes les plus largement diffusés en moyen anglais. Cependant, il a été négligé et pas très bien reçu par les chercheurs, parce qu’ils n’avaient pas considéré la relation complexe qu’entretient ce poème avec ses sources et ses analogues, et aussi parce qu’ils ont utilisé à une édition fort non-représentative du texte. En plaçant l’utilisation créative du discours médical de Chaucer et de Lydgate dans leur contexte textuel et historique, ce travail propose une nouvelle lecture de leurs poèmes et un meilleur rétablissement de leurs rôles respectifs dans l’histoire médicale anglaise. Walsh Morrissey iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, this dissertation was made possible by the learned and generous supervision of Prof. Jamie C. Fumo. Prof. Fumo’s incisive feedback has frequently inspired and challenged me, and she has been a true mentor. Before I began writing my dissertation, Prof. Faith Wallis made the time to guide me in an independent reading course in medieval medicine, and during my time at McGill I have benefited from her extensive knowledge. Prof. Michael Van Dussen helped me refine my approach to London, British Library, MS Sloane 3534. Dr. Luke Demaitre provided me with information on the Middle English translation of Bernard of Gordon’s Lilium medicinae in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 1505. Prof. Linda Ehrsam Voigts helped me verify the existence of an additional manuscript witness of the Dietary (see the Appendix, no. 58). Valuable input was also furnished by the audiences of conferences at which I presented earlier versions of sections of this work, including the 34th Annual Sewanee Mediaeval Colloquium and the 41st and 43rd International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo. The present work would not have been possible without the efforts of Janice Simpkins and the Interlibrary Loan staff at the McLennan Library at McGill, who promptly located and procured dozens of obscure printed texts and microfilms. The librarians and staff at McGill’s Osler Library of the History of Medicine were also tremendously helpful. This project was funded by fellowships, bursaries, and awards from several sources. Major funding was provided by the Hugh MacLennan Fellowship for the Study of English, and by doctoral fellowships from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Fonds de recherche sur la société et la Walsh Morrissey v culture (FQRSC). Additional funding came from the Alma Mater Fund, the Department of English, the Faculty of Arts, and the Dean of Arts Development Fund. In addition to providing financial support, research assistantships made available by Prof. Fumo and by the research group on Transmission, Translation, and Transformation in Medieval Cultures (through Prof. Robert Wisnovsky), have furnished valuable
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