Gabriela Badea Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For

Allegories of Selfhood in Late Medieval Devotional Literature Gabriela Badea Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2018 © 2018 Gabriela Badea All rights reserved ABSTRACT Allegories of Selfhood in Late Medieval Devotional Literature Gabriela Badea This dissertation is a study of spatial allegorical representations of inwardness in late medieval devotional texts of the fourteenth and fifteenth century, with a focus on the topos of the garden of the contemplation of the Passion as a landscape of the heart. These representations of the self do not follow the temporal logic of autobiography but are instead organized around matrix spaces: architectures or gardens of inwardness. Named by Beaujour in opposition to life-narratives, these miroirs d’encre or literary self-portraits rely on topoï to express the most intimate contours of the individual. The first part of this dissertation considers how identity is negotiated with respect to the devotional norm in two private devotional exercises penned by cultured aristocrats. The abject vision of the penitential self in Henry of Lancaster’s Livre des Seyntz Medicines is rooted in the requirement to describe a deep self ontologically opaque to consciousness, while in René d’Anjou’s Mortifiement de Vaine Plaisance, the sinfulness lodged in the heart is considered through the lens of an anthropology focused on affect. Because of their intertextual nature, locative tropes of interiority constitute an arena in which the individual shapes himself in relation to foundational texts. Topical representations of the self borrow their form from the setting of a particular text or reference an entire textual tradition, inviting the question of the role of reading practices in self formation. The second part of this dissertation focuses on reading as a spiritual exercise, considering how the literary setting of the Roman de la Rose came to be associated to a devotional representation of the self in the late Middle Ages. In response to the debates on language and allegoresis unfurling in the Quarrel of the Rose, Pierre d’Ailly transforms its garden into an inner Jardin Amoureux de l’Ame Devote, subjecting the infamous secular text to a reading inspired by devotional meditative reading practices. Later on, Jehan Henri mobilizes the topography of the Rose to describe the collective identity of reformed nuns in a series of texts promoting the agenda of monastic reformation ( Le Livre de réformation utile et profitable pour toutes religieuses, Livre de la vie active and the Jardin de Contemplation). Finally, Molinet’s Roman de la Rose Moralisé proposes a spiritual reading of the Rose that testifies to a paradigm shift in the status of secular literature under the influence of devotional reading modes, and which, like Pierre d’Ailly, assimilates the setting of the Rose to an inner garden of the contemplation of the Passion. No longer an innocuous pastime, literature comes to carry high societal stakes because of being invested with a definite role in self-fashioning. The race for controlling the meaning of foundational texts leads to the proliferation of late medieval literary quarrels. An edition of Jehan Henri’s Jardin de Contemplation is provided in the appendix. Table of contents List of illustrations ii Introduction 1 Chapter 1. Geographies of Inwardness in Henry of Lancaster’s Livre des 17 Seyntz Medicines Chapter 2. Affective Inwardness in René d’Anjou’s Mortifiement de Vaine 71 Plaisance Chapter 3. The Hermeneutic Garden: Allegoresis in the Quarrel of the 128 Romance of the Rose and Pierre d’Ailly’s Jardin Amoureux de l’Ame Devote Chapter 4. Spiritual Allegoresis of the Rose after the Quarrel: the Monastic 183 Garden Conclusions 241 Bibliography 244 Appendix. A partial edition of Jehan Henri’s Jardin de Contemplation 264 i List of illustrations 1 Frère Laurent, Somme le roi. (The Garden of Virtues) 97 London, British Library, Add. MS 54180, fol. 69 2. René d’Anjou’s Book of Hours (The portrait of René d’Anjou in prayer 120 3. facing a deposition from the cross on the opposite folio. The emblem of René d’Anjou, a distended sail bordered by thorns featured on both folios) Paris, BNF, manuscript latin 1156 A , fol. 80 v and 81) 4. Recueil des poésies moralisantes. (Staurofores: The estates helping Christ 124 to carry the cross) Paris, BNF, manuscript fr. 2366, fol. 14r 5. Jehan Henri. Le Jardin de Contemplation. (The nuns at Aigueperse 204 contemplate the Tree of the Cross, while Devotion climbs on the ladder of contemplation) Paris, BNF, manuscript fr. 00997, fol. 5r ii Acknowledgements This dissertation would have not come to be without the advice, mentorship and kindness of a large number of people. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my main adviser, Professor Sylvie Lefèvre for her enduring patience, continued interest in my work and the razor-sharp precision with which she read multiple rewritings of all chapters. Her exacting standards of clarity and perceptive criticism greatly improved my work, while allowing me the intellectual freedom to conduct my hermeneutic quests on my own terms. I am also deeply grateful to Professor Christopher Baswell who played a great part in the choice of the subject of this dissertation. His uniquely kind way of providing critique helped me traverse the darkest periods of self-doubt. I am also thankful to Professor Jesus Rodriguez-Velasco for his continued engagement with this project and stimulating suggestions. I would also like to thank Professor Pierre Force for invaluable bibliographic recommendations that shaped the angle of my research in essential ways and for understanding the overall scope and import of my work better than myself. I would also like to acknowledge Professor Souleymane Bachir Diagne’s patient overseeing as I plodded through a difficult reading list on philosophical definitions of the subject. He generously answered all my questions about the intricacies of medieval philosophy. Finally, I would like to extend gratitude to Professor Deborah McGrady for agreeing to act as a reader on such short notice. Conversations with fellow medievalists from the Medieval Colloquium were the catalyst of a number of small revelations and eureka moments. I am especially grateful to Ruen Chuan Ma, Aled Roberts, Yeajung Park, Adam Horn and Emma O’Loughlin Bérat. I would also like to thank my friend Iryna Lystopad for her support and guidance in questions of medieval theology. I am also grateful to Elina Kanellopoulou for her friendship and for the logical and philosophical rigor with which she helped me rework my first article. Nicoleta Marinescu offered precious feedback, iii while Victoria Cambranes also graciously edited the above article. I am also indebted to Alexandru Virastau for his support during the most stressful times of this dissertation and for kindly correcting the Latin in the edition in the appendix. A special debt of gratitude goes to Dr. Maria Wenglinsky, whose generosity and support made my year of teaching high-school French very enjoyable. She most graciously proofread the entire dissertation for submission at a very short notice. Any mistakes that survive are my own. Thanks are also due to non-medievalist friends who patiently put up with me droning for hours about medieval topics: Saliha Boussedra who had many a good laugh over what people were fighting about during medieval literary quarrels, Sarah Myers and Celia Abele who tried to convince me to take an interest in the modern counterpart of medieval hermeneutics, Yayra Sumah and Dominique Sirgy, trusted library buddies and providers of impromptu living-room concerts, whose warmth and kindness illuminated many a day, Mara Lasky for her encouragement and interest in medieval foxes, and Hiie Saumaa, dance teacher extraordinaire and wise friend. My colleagues Rose Gardner and Yohann Ripert were sources of comfort and encouragement in dire straits. I am also grateful to Helen Qiu and Denise Carroll for their caring friendship and for allowing me the space I needed to finish. I especially would like to acknowledge Nicole Briand and the other members of my Haitian prayer group, who were a family away from home and role-models of integrity and delicacy throughout my stay in NY. I would similarly like to extend thanks to Laura Petrache, Steluta Venice and Florina Radu for their continued support and friendship. I would also like to thank Anna Radzikowska, my Polish guardian angel, who can always cheer me up and my long standing friends Viviana Dimcev, Denisa Busu, Bogdana Koiso, Silvia Dinu, Irina Stelea, Miruna Dogaru, iv Bianca Lepsa, Ina Chrita, Alexandra Stafie, Ema Lupusor, Ana Trandafir, Aleca Popa and Catalina Gaidau, who do not need any words to know the place they hold in my life. Lastly, I would like to thank my parents who are always my first audience and my biggest cheerleaders and whose prayers have carried me through thick and thin. v Introduction This dissertation is a study of spatial allegorical representations of inwardness in late medieval devotional texts of the fourteenth and fiteenth century, with a focus on the topos of the garden of the contemplation of the Passion as a landscape of the heart. These representations of the self do not follow the temporal logic of autobiography, but are instead organized around matrix spaces: architectures or gardens of inwardness. Named by Beaujour in opposition to life-narratives, these miroirs d’encre or literary self-portraits rely on topoï to express the most intimate contours of the individual.1 As it seeks to voice its particularity, the self is confronted by a language replete with shared cultural categories and constitutes itself in figura Christi or other patterns implicitly proposed for imitation.

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