MEDIEVAL

Meanings of M. (1985). S.C.; T.V.F.B. ploring these hidden meanings pervades the med. sense of textuality (q.v.). Lactantius and others MEDIEVAL POETICS. Like before them had maintained earlier that the Aeneid, Book Six and Sidney after, the philosophers and poets of in particular, contained Christian allegory (q.v.), med. Europe speculated about the nature, the though for the most part this was ascribed to God's kinds, and the functions of poetry in order to purposes rather than Virgil's. In the 6th c., Ful- illuminate an art they cherished. Their claims for gentius' De continentia Vergiliana proposed that it were, for the most part, comparatively modest. Virgil hid profound philosophical truths in the The notion of a poetic imagination (q.v.) which poem and analyzed it as a vast allegory describing could supplant nature's brazen world with a gold- the three ages of man and the passage from nature en one was not given to them. Artistic originality to wisdom to felicity. (q.v.) was often equated in Platonic thought with Grammar and rhet. are the announced subjects falsification (see FICTION). Lit. was praised for its of the first two chapters ("De metris" and "De didactic efficacy, its ability to offer salutary in- poetis") of Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae (ca. 560- stances of good and evil (see DIDACTIC POETRY), 636), a conscientious but poorly informed digest but nobody imagined that it could modify the of Greco-Roman, late antique, and Patristic doc- moral sensibilities of an audience in the Aristote- trine, distantly related to Aristotelian mimetic the- lian manner. Nevertheless, many learned and en- ory, and med. Europe's most influential encyclo- gaged minds applied themselves during the Mid- pedic statement about poetry. This is a work of dle Ages to questions bearing on p. They kept the conservation rather than original thought, an ef- intellectual trad, of Cl. p. (q.v.) alive and prepared fort to preserve and order the remnants of a shat- the ground for the great theoretical undertakings tered trad. Defining a carmen as a metrical compo- of Ren. p. (q.v.). sition, Isidore offers a shaky generic classification At Byzantium, accurate and perceptive reflec- and settles, for purposes of definition, on the dis- tions on Aristotle's Poetics appear in the (late tinction between poetry, history, and fable. History 10th c.). These did not, however, reach the West deals with what actually happened, poetry with until the 16th c., and indeed, an accurate text of what might have happened, fable with what could the Poetics was not available in the West until 1500 not possibly have happened. Isidore (rather in- (Gr. text 1508, trs. into Lat. 1498 and 1536, and consistently) follows Lactantius in defining the into It. 1549). The substance of Aristotle's , poet as one who disguises historical fact in a grace- considerably simplified, was preserved in Cicero's fully indirect, figurative manner. Not every metri- De oratore and Topica. Throughout late antiquity, cal composition is a poem. Comedy deals with rhet. had as large a role as grammar—which joyous events and private persons of low moral meant basically the study of poetry—in generating character with the aim of reprehending vice. Trag- theoretical reflections about lit. By the 4th c., edy is a mournful song which tells of the deeds and rhetoricians, teachers of the arts of persuasion, the crimes of ancient kings "while men look on." were claiming that Virgil really belonged to them It employs "fictional plots fashioned to an image and that the Aeneid was an argumentative, lawyerly of truth." In drama the characters speak and the defense of its hero's actions. This emphasis on author does not. Only the author speaks in the rhet. maintained itself into the Ren. The text on Georgics. In the Aeneid both author and characters p. best known in the , Horace's Ars speak. Despite its manifest inadequacies, the Ety- poetica, was regularly quoted, and in the 12th c. it mologiae remained a major source of information occasioned a certain amount of emulation, but it throughout the Middle Ages, and was cited with does not seem to have inspired much reflection. great respect into the Ren. The allegorical interp. of poetry was practiced Comparatively well informed Carolingian com- in Cl. antiquity and, following a complicated series ments on drama appear in the 8th-c. Terentian of Jewish and Christian adaptations, magisterially scholia. These contain, untypically, bits of solid applied to Scripture by Augustine. The first half information on staging and dialogue. Their moral of Augustine's De doctrina Christiana is devoted to doctrine is somewhat more inclusive than Isi- a grammatical analysis of the Bible, the second to dore's: drama instructs by offering images of both a rhetorical one. Under the heading of grammar, vice and virtue to be avoided or emulated. This he gives classic expression to the theory, devel- view made a more spectacular appearance in the oped earlier by the Egyptian schools of Scriptural distorted Lat. tr. of ' commentary on Aris- exegesis, that the Old Testament was allegorical totle's Poetics made by Hermannus Alemannus in throughout and that all interpretive difficulties 1256. (The Poetics itself was tr. in 1278 by William could be resolved by an appeal to a hidden Chris- of Moerbecke, but appears to have received al- tian significance placed in the text by God (see most no notice.) Averroes had never seen a play INTERPRETATION, FOURFOLD METHOD) . Elsewhere and probably never read one. He supposed that a he grounds this view in a theory of history, assert- tragedy was a narrative poem recited in public, ing that God has installed meanings not only be- and so rigorously transposed all of Aristotle's dra- neath the words of the Old Testament but within matic terms into strictly ethical ones, beginning by the historical facts it relates. An emphasis on ex- translating tragedy as "praise" and comedy as -[744]- MEDIEVAL POETICS "blame." Tragedy imitates the deeds of virtuous before building the house. One great resource of men in order to inspire virtue in the audience. art is amplificatio (see AMPLIFICATION), the pro- (The tragic flaw is not mentioned.) Comedy imi- cess of turning a short poem into a long one and a tates evil actions in order to reprehend vice and long poem into one even longer. He has little to encourage avoidance. Averroes was read in the say about endings and nothing about middles or Middle Ages and even into the Ren., though evi- about coherent devel. in general. John of Gar- dently not very widely; the extent of his influence land's Parisiana poetria offers a list of topics along is disputed. with advice on amplifying. He recommends the In the 13th c., Vincent of ' Speculum diagrammatic aids to memory which Cicero bor- doctrinale situates Isidore's traditional claims for rowed from Aristotle and provides a diagram of his poetry next to a revolutionary one extracted from own—the so-called Wheel of Virgil—for help in Alfarabi's De divisione naturae: "Alfarabi says that finding images appropriate for each level of style, it is proper to poetry to cause by discourse some- high, middle, and low. As Bede had done long thing which is not really fair or foul to be imagined before in his De arte metrica, John offers informa- as such by an auditor so that he will believe and tion not only about Cl. meters but about contem- either shun it or accept it, since although it is porary accentual ones. These treatises were, to be certain that it is not thus in truth, still the souls of sure, written for schoolboys, but so was the logical the auditors are stirred to shun or desire the thing treatise of Peter of which represented the imagined" (3.109). Imagination—imaginatio or state of the art. Despite their practical tenor, the ingenium—figures prominently elsewhere in 12th- treatises were presented and regarded as major c. Lat. speculation about the powers of the soul, statements. Other important specimens of the but Vincent's citation is the first med. European genre include Alexander of Ville Dei's Doctrinale, text to connect it with the appeal of poetry. He Matthew of Vendome's Ars versificatoria, and the does not explore the connection, however, and Laborintus of Eberhard the German. concludes by reformulating Evanthius' 4th-c. ob- The most popular format for 12th- and 13th-c. servation that tragedy begins in joy and ends in literary commentary and analysis was provided by misery, while comedy does the opposite. the accessus ad auctores. These were partly bio- He also says that Alfarabi took poetry to be the graphical, partly interpretive schoolroom intro- least reliable branch of logic, producing a simula- ductions to major authors, with antecedents in the crum of proof. Alfarabi had in fact removed poetry prologues of Servius. The richest example is the from Aristotle's class of productive arts and placed 12th-c. Dialogus super auctores of Conrad of Hir- it in the Organon, thus associating it with the schau. Among the ancients, Conrad says, seven operations and powers of the mind. This is what things were required for the sufficient discussion Aquinas, a fine poet himself, had in mind when he of a book: author and title, type of poem, intention called poetry the lowest of the sciences and when of the writer, order and number of books, and he observed that it had very little of the truth explanation. The moderns, however, favor an- about it. The poet, he says, "leads the mind aside" other scheme: material treated, author's inten- by his metaphors and figures. This is not a deroga- tion, final cause of the work, and branch of phi- tion of poetry but a reference to its imaginative losophy to which it belongs. In the 12th c., the origins and a crucial advance from the unreflec- branch of philosophy was customarily ethics. An tively mimetic assumptions of prescholastic com- accessus to Ovid's Epistles, for example, would class ments on art, like those of Hugh of St. Victor, it as a work of moral philosophy, maintaining that which tend to treat the poet's craft in much the the author's intention throughout was to praise same terms as the tinker's. It is also a corollary of chaste love, reprehend shameful love, and invite the scholastic view that truth was formalissima, us to live chastely ourselves. In the 13th c., by obtained from the scrutiny of abstract essences contrast, the branch of philosophy is frequently and not from images of everyday reality or the stuff logic. Much 12th-c. Scriptural commentary of concrete experience, and not far removed from adopts the pattern of the secular accessus, a ten- 16th-c. notions about poetry as a tissue of en- dency now thought to be related to the increasing thymemes or "weak proofs." concern of the time with the literal and historical During the 12th and 13th cs., the texts known significance of the Old Testament. collectively as the artes poeticae ("arts of poetry"; , one of the leading spirits the major texts are collected in Faral) employ a of the 12th-c. Neoplatonic revival, followed Ful- strictly rhetorical vocabulary to describe the com- gentius in claiming that Virgil was an allegorist position of a poem. The poet, like the orator of who hid profound philosophical truths beneath Aristotle and Cicero, invents material by consult- the beauty of his poetry. He was no doubt thinking ing the topics or commonplaces (inventio). He of his own cosmological epic De mundi universitate thereupon disposes it (dispositio) and decorates when he distinguished Scriptural allegoria as a the result with appropriate tropes (elocutio). The vehicle for revealed truth from integumentum or best known arspoetica, Geoffrey of Vinsauf's Poetria involucrum, his terms for a hidden philosophical nova, strongly emphasizes premeditation: the wisdom. This sapiential emphasis continued and poet proceeds like an architect, drawing a plan culminated in the poetry of Dante, who distin- - [ 745 ] - MEDIEVAL POETICS guishes in the Convivio between the allegory of the Med. Lat. poetry see LATIN POETRY, Medieval For poets and the allegory of the theologians, claiming discussion of the transition from Med. Lat. poetry that he had covertly installed profound philo- and p. to the vernaculars, see FRENCH PROSODY; sophical statements beneath the surface of his ITALIAN PROSODY; SPANISH PROSODY; SECONDS canzone to the donna gentile, poems which the rest RHETORIQUE; then see ENGLISH PROSODY; GER- of the world had erroneously taken to be expres- MAN PROSODY. See also HEBRAISM; HEBREW PROS- sions of mere passion. The Vita nuova describes ODY AND POETICS; HERMENEUTICS; INTERPRETA- the invention of the dolce stil nuovo (q.v.), which TION, FOURFOLD METHOD; RENAISSANCE POETICS. he regarded as a recovery of the practice of the PRIMARY WORKS: Migne, PL; Migne, PG; Keil— ancients, who were both poets and sages. The texts of the chief Med. Lat. prosodists and gram- foundations of the dolce stil were, he maintained, marians; Bernardus Silvestris, De mundi universi- assiduity in art and the cultivation of knowledge. tate libri duo, ed. C. S. Baruch and J. Wrobel In the 24th canto of the Purgatorio, Dante ex- (1876), Commentary on the First Six Books of The plains the difference between his verse and that of Aeneid, ed. E. Schreiber and T Maresca (1979); his Sicilian predecessors, themselves the continu- Fulgentius, De Virgiliana continentia, ed. R. Helm ators of the troubadour (q.v.) trad. The Occitan (1898); Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae sive originum poets had invented or perhaps borrowed from the libri, ed. W. M. Lindsay, 2 v. (1911); E. Faral, Les Arabs an entirely novel theory of poetic inspiration arts poetiques du XIle et du XIIIe siecles (1924) — (q.v.), locating it in the exalted joy and vigor which texts of the major Med. Lat. treatises on p. with was paradoxically kindled by a socially refined but commentary; K. Abbott, Prolegomena to an Ed. of sexually passionate love for an unattainable lady. the Pseudo-Servian Commentary on Terence, Diss., Dante appears to have seen their exaltations and Univ. of Illinois (1934); Hugh of St. Victor, Didas- laments as insufficiently reflective and analytical. calion, ed. C. H. Bottimer (1939); Conrad of Hir- His own verse, he claims, is a precisely observed schau, Dialogus super auctores, ed. R. B. C. Huygens transcription of the emotions inspired by Love. (1955); Dante, De vulgari eloquentia, ed. A. Marigo, This is what his friend Guido Cavalcanti had in 3d ed. (1957), tr. with commentary M. Shapiro mind when, in his canzone "Donna mi prega," he (1990); Augustine, De doctrina Christiana, ed. G. M. refused to write about affairs of the heart without Green (1963); Hermannus Alemannus, Averrois naturel dimostramento, "scientific demonstration." Cordubensis commentum medium in aristotelis po- The true poet is passionately and accurately wise, etriam, ed. W. F. Boggess, Diss. Univ. of No. Caro- and it is this kind of wisdom which, in Limbo, made lina, (1965); Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum doctri- Dante the sixth member of a company which nale (1624, rpt. 1965); John of Garland, Parisiana includes Virgil, Homer, Lucan, Ovid, and Horace. poetria, ed. and tr. T. Lawler (1974); Cl. and Med. The dedicatory epistle to the Paradiso, ad- Lit. Grit., ed. A. Preminger et al. (1974)—trs. with dressed to Dante's patron Can Grande della Scala, good commentary, esp. Hardison on Averroes. is in outline a traditional accessus, though it is SECONDARY WORKS: C. S. Baldwin, Med. Rhet. probably not by Dante. Its definition of comedy and Poetic to 1400 (1928); G. Pare et al., La Ren. and tragedy is traditional, its account of allegory du Xlle siecle (1933); H. I. Marrou, St. Augustin et Augustinian. Perhaps its most Dantesque asser- la fin de la culture antique (1938); B. Smalley, The tion concerns the method of treatment, which Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (1941); E. de balances five logical modes against five literary Bruyne, Etudes d'esthetique medievale, 2 v. (1946); ones (poetic, fictive, descriptive, digressive, meta- W. F. J. Knight, St. Augustine's De musica: A Synop- phorical). sis (1949); Curtius—magisterial; R. R. Bolgar, The Genuine or not, this allusion to an imaginative Cl. Heritage and Its Beneficiaries (1954); E. Auer- realization of philosophical truth is basic to bach, "Figura," Scenes from the Drama of European Dante's conception of art. In his unfinished De Lit. (1959), Literary Lang, and Its Public in Late Lat. vulgari eloquentia (ca. 1303), he conducts a search Antiquity and the Middle Ages (1965); P. Zumthor, for an It. poetic lang. appropriate to verse which Langue et techniques poetiques a Vepoque romane aspires to the same lasting fame as that of the (1963), Essai depoetique medievale (1972); Murphy; ancients. This would be a standard dialect di- E. Vinaver, A la recherche d'une poetique medievale vested of provincial peculiarity and worthy to be (1971); W. W. Wetherbee, Platonism and Poetry in spoken at the royal court of Italy, if only Italy had the 12th C. (1972); J. Allen, Ethical Poetics in the a royal court. The subjects—lofty ones—fit for Later Middle Ages (1983); W. Trimpi, Muses of One such a lang. are considered. The matter of form Mind (1983); Norden; L. Ebin, Vernacular Poetics and style leads to an unprecedented analytical in the Middle Ages (1984); A. J. Minnis, Med. Theory survey of contemp. poetic practice in Italy, of Authorship (1984); B. Stock, The Implications of Provence, and . This expertly principled Literacy: Written Lang, and Models of Interp. in the and engaged account of verse writing in Dante's llth and 12th Cs. (1986); Med. Literary Theory and time decisively transcends the med. speculative Grit., ca. 1100-1375: The Commentary Trad., ed. A. trad, and indeed makes much 15th-c. It. theoriz- J. Minnis and A. B. Scott (1988); M'. Shapiro, De ing and commentary seem dim by comparison. vulgari eloquentia: Dante's Book of Exile (1990). See now MEDIEVAL POETRY. For discussion of P.D. - [ 746 ] -