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This Thesis Has Been Submitted in Fulfilment of the Requirements for a Postgraduate Degree (E.G This thesis has been submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for a postgraduate degree (e.g. PhD, MPhil, DClinPsychol) at the University of Edinburgh. Please note the following terms and conditions of use: • This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, which are retained by the thesis author, unless otherwise stated. • A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. • This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author. • The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. • When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. Writing animals, speaking animals: the displacement and placement of the animal in medieval literature. Submitted for the degree of PhD University of Edinburgh 2003 David Moses ACKNOWLEDGMENTS DEDICATION To my parents for their unwavering love, and for daring us to believe that all things are possible. To my wife Clare, and sons James and Ethan for making it all worthwhile. To my sister Caroline for believing that it does matter. To my beloved dog Flash, who is missed so much: 'In that day I will make a covenant with the beasts of the field, with the birds of the air ... I will betroth you to Me forever; Yes I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and justice, in lovingkindness and mercy' (Hosea 2. 18- 19). ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank Professor R. D. S. Jack, for the invaluable advice and guidance which allowed me to contemplate and undertake this thesis, and for proving the most diligent mentor and valued friend. Thanks and the greatest respect must go to Miles Wright for always making me realise how much there is to understand, and for the inspiration he has given to me over the last few years; and to Alan Freeman for his lucid conversation, long into the night. Thanks also, to Sergi Mainer, Miranda Anderson and Karen Kay, for listening, reading, commenting, and for their support and friendship. Sarah Dunnigan and David Salter have provided the moral support, advice, and coffee, which has been so very important. I feel particularly indebted to the English Literature Department at Edinburgh for their assistance in so many areas, and to the staff for tolerating my constant questions and requests for advice on this thesis, as well as on other projects. In particular, Sarah Carpenter, Penny Fielding and Anne Mason have always acted with n1y interests in mind. I cannot begin to express my gratitude for their care, and for the most valuable thing they could have given -their time. 11 ABSTRACT ABSTRACT This thesis examines the way the absence of moral consideration of the animal in Christian doctrine is evident in Middle English literature. A fundamental difference between the theology and literature of the medieval period is literature's capacity to present and theorise positions that cannot, for various reasons, be theorised in the official discourses provided by commentators and theologians. Patterns of excluding the animal from moral consideration by Christianity are instigated with the rejection of the ethics of late Neoplatonism. Highlighted by Neoplatonists, and evident in the stylistic differences in reading scripture and philosophy, is an early Christian ideological predisposition toward purely humanocentric concerns. The disparity between a definite Hellenic ethic of the animal and its absence in Christian thought is most evident in the contrast between an outward looking Neoplatonic understanding of creation, and the closed matrix of scholastic interpretative thought. Influential textual representations of the universe require that creation is interpreted through a fideistically enclosed system of signs. The individual must have faith before approaching knowledge. The animal is placed into a system dominated by the primacy of faith in God, which paradoxically produces the predetermined answers supplied by Christian doctrine and selective scriptural and doctrinal suppositions. In literary texts, the animal provides an obvious method of Christian debate. Contemporary theological values~ such as the doctrinal commonplace of comparing man with animal in the corporeal context highlights the uncomfortable similarity to, yet prescribes that man aspire to distance himself from, the animal. The primacy of man and the importance of his salvation, is a doctrine which countermands the theocentric basis of Christian theology, in which God is understood as a presence in all his creation. Such conflicting perspectives result in animals in medieval literature being used to test theological and philosophical parameters, illustrating the inadequacy of sharp theological boundaries, and demonstrating the ability of literary expression to escape that which has already been enclosed. Ill CONTENTS CONTENTS Declaration Acknowledgements 11 Abstract 111 Contents IV Preface V11 Abbreviations X PART ONE: Displacement INTRODUCTION: Approaching and interpreting the animal and its associated literature in early Christian thought CHAPTER 1: PATTERNS OF EXCLUSION IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 1.1 Excluding the animal in early Christianity 21 1.2 Porphyry's On Abstinence From Animal Food 26 1.3 Porphyry's Exclusion from the Christian canon and selective reintroduction 35 1.4 Neoplatonism and Augustine: who is really left out? 39 1.5 Against the Christians: allegory and interpretative strategies 44 1.6 Summary 61 PART TWO: 'Placement' CHAPTER 2: THE PLACEMENT OF THE ANIMAL AT THE LITERAL SENSE IN BARTHOLOMAEUS ANGLICUS DE PROPRIETATIBUS RERUM iv CONTENTS 2.1 De proprietatibus rerum 66 2.2 The substance of De proprietatibus rerum 74 2.3 The problem of universals 83 2.4 Species (n)or genus 86 2.5 Habeas corpus: did imaginary animals really exist? 93 2.6 Are animals fallen? 108 2.7 The Augustinian perspective 111 2.8 The scholastic rejection: Thomas Aquinas' argument from design 114 2.9 The microcosm - macrocosm correspondence 118 CHAPTER 3: BEAST FABLES 3.1 Signa pro re bus: Augustine and contemporary theological values 126 (a) Literary theory and interiority 128 (b) Bestiaries and beast fables 135 3.2 Animals as a perfect sign in William Langland's Piers Plowman 139 (a) Langland's representation of the animal as Sign 144 (b) Bartholomaeus Anglicus and the influence of literal sense 150 (c) Langland' s theocentric version of the animal 154 3.3 'Be figure of ane vther thing' Roberts Henryson and the anitnal as Figure 159 (a) The rhetoric of fiction 161 (b) Metaphor as Doctrine 169 (c) Fables and ideal forms 173 (d) Henryson's use of the animal as analogy 174 (e) Summary 183 3.4 The fall and a 'repreif ofthi misleveing' in the fables 186 (a) Do the Fables conform to a traditional view of creation as fallen? 188 (b) Augustine's understanding of the fall 190 (c) The scholastic rejection and the argument from design 195 (d) The n1icrocosm- macrocosm relationship 198 (e) Summary 201 V CONTENTS CHAPTER 4: MAN AS ANIMAL 4.1 The doctrinal commonplace in Middle English Romances 202 (a) Sir Gowther: caninisation to canonisation 204 (b) Culpability of the womb and hybridity of the man 208 (c) Hybridity as allegory 214 (d) Caninisation to canonisation 219 (e) Fighting the Saracen foe 223 (f) Summary 227 4.2 The place of the animal in The Wedding ofSir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle 228 (a) Thys huntyng lykys me not we/le: the conventions 232 (b) Whate is your meaning? 238 (c) Summary 250 CONCLUSION 251 BIBLIOGRAPHY 257 RETRACCIOUNS: after words Appendix A: Constantine' s sponsorship of Christianity 276 Appendix B: Why is a cow below a lettuce? The anomalous placement of the animal in Bartholomaeus Anglicus' De proprietatibus rerum 282 Appendix C: The placement and displacement of the feminine in Bartholomaeus Anglicus' De proprietatibus rerum 286 Appendix D: De proprietatibus rerum: lectio as context 289 vi PREFACE PREFACE In this thesis, I have followed the academic conventions outlined in the MLA 1 Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (5 h edition) edited by Joseph Gibaldi (New York: The Modem Language Association of America, 1999). The subject matter of the thesis has required some considerable dependence upon biblical analogues and authorities. In the interests of working within the medieval literary tradition, and with textual material contemporary to the period, scriptural citations are extracted from the Latin vulgate bible: Biblia Sacra Vulgatce Editionis, Sixti V Pont. Max. iussu Recogniti et Clementis VIII (Torino: Marietti, 1959). To use the King James Version would have been anachronistic to the period covered by the thesis, though in addition the King James Version often varies slightly in sense, and on occasion considerably, in substance. In these cases, I have provided citation from both in order to demonstrate the differences between the two: The New King James Bible (London: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1985). My use of Saint Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologice is essential to my discussion of the displacetnent of the animal in medieval literature, and quotations are taken predominantly from a scholarly Latin edition: Summa Theologice, cura et studio Instituti Studiorum Medievalium Ottaviensis S. pii Pp. V issu confectum recognita, 5 vols. (Ottawa: 1941-1945). In some instances however, reference to the Summa Theologice is complementary to a broader line of argun1ent and for the sake of brevity in these cases I have used a modem English translation: Summa Theologice: A Concise Translation, edited and translated by Timothy McDermott (Texas: Alien Christian Classics, 1991). Since completing the initial research relating to canon formation and the exclusion of Hellenic ethics from Christian thought in chapter one and its relevant appendixes, a significant work has been published which touches on many of these areas, and at titnes, maintains a similar thesis- though with a much broader parameter of discussion.
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