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The Representation of Animals and the Natural World in Late-Medieval The Representation of Animals and the Natural World in Late-Medieval Hagiography and Romance Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Leicester by David Salter BA (Leicester) Department of English University of Leicester September 1998 UMI Number: U113229 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U113229 Published by ProQuest LLC 2013. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 The Representation of Animals and the Natural World in Late-Medieval Hagiography and Romance ABSTRACT This thesis takes as its subject the representation of animals and the natural world in two key genres of medieval literature: hagiography and romance. Focusing on the early Lives of St. Francis of Assisi, the romances Sir Gowther, Octavian, and Sir Orfeo, the Middle English Alexander Romances, and the Collatio Alexandri cum Dindimo, it examines the diverse ways in which animals are portrayed in these texts, and the range of mimetic, symbolic, and representative functions that they fulfil. Rather than endorsing the view that medieval culture was characterised by a unified and homogenous attitude towards nature and the natural, the thesis draws out the diversity of opinion and outlook evident in the imaginative literature of the period, and demonstrates in detail the crucial role of genre in determining the representative strategies of individual texts. Contents Thesis Abstract ii List of Illustrations iv Abbreviations v Acknowledgements vi Foreword 1 Introduction 10 1. Return to Paradise: Animals in the Early Lives of 28 St. Francis of Assisi 2. Knights and the Brute Creation: Nobility and Sanctity in 67 Sir Gowther, Octavian, and Sir Orfeo 3. Nature and Supemature: The Middle English Romances of 128 Alexander the Great Conclusion: Representing Nature in Medieval Literature 175 Appendix: A Note on the Early Lives of St. Francis of Assisi 180 Bibliography 236 List of Illustrations Figure 1. Colantonio, Saint Jerome and the Lion , c. 1450, Naples, National Museum of Capodimonte, between pages 14 and 15. Figure 2. Sassetta, The Stigmatisation of Saint Francis, 1444, London, National Gallery of Art, between pages 202 and 203. Abbreviations AAS - Acta Apostolicae Sedis ANTS - Anglo-Norman Text Society AUMLA - Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association EETS O S - Early English Text Society, Original Series EETS E S - Early English Text Society, Extra Series EETS S S - Early English Text Society, Supplementary Series MS - Manuscript OED - The Oxford English Dictionary FS - Franziskannische Studien JEGP - Journal of English and Germanic Philology JHS - Journal of Hellenic Studies PL - Jacques Paul Migne, ed. Patrologia Latina Cursus Completus, 221 Vols (Paris, 1844-1864) PMLA - Publications of the Modem ILanguage Association of America STS - Scottish Text Society All biblical quotations are taken from the Authorised King James Version of the Bible Acknowledgements I should like to express my deep gratitude to my supervisors Professor Greg Walker and Dr. Elaine Trehame, on whose friendship and support I have relied so heavily during the writing of this thesis. I should also like to thank the many friends and colleagues who have helped and encouraged me over the last few years, in particular Michael Davies, Carina Vitti, Michael and Andrew Hagiioannu, Lucy Faire, Tristram Hooley, Peter Smith, and Sara Schivappa. Foreword As public awareness has grown during the last couple of decades of the increasingly adverse effect that human activity is having on the natural world, whether in the form of deforestation, global-warming, nuclear radiation, or air, water, and soil pollution, a new academic discipline, known as environmental history, has emerged that takes as its field of enquiry the complex and ever-changing relationship between human civilization and the world of nature.1 In attempting to chart both the impact that human societies have had on the natural world, and the effects of such change on the subsequent course of human development, environmental historians have adopted a wide range of perspectives, and applied methods and insights from subjects as diverse as biology, 2 archaeology, and geography. However, while environmental history concerns itself with the many different ways in which human societies have physically affected, and in turn been affected by, the natural world, there is an alternative, considerably older tradition of In his useful overview of the emergence and development of environmental history, Donald Worster has noted that: ‘The idea of environmental history first appeared in the 1970s, as conferences on the global predicament were taking place and popular environmentalist movements were gathering momentum in several countries.’ See Donald Worster, ‘Doing Environmental History’, in Donald Worster ed., The Ends of the Earth: Perspectives on Modem Environmental History (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 290- 291. 2 For instance, see I. G. Simmons’s prefatory comments in his Environmental History: A Concise Introduction (Oxford, 1993), pp. xiii-xvi. historical scholarship that explores not the reality of humanity’s relationship with nature, but the history of men and women’s perceptions of that relationship. Two of the most influential contributions to this history of humanity’s changing attitudes towards the non-human world have been Arthur O. Lovejoy’s The Great Chain of Being: A Study in the History of an Idea , and Clarence J. Glacken’s Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century. Focusing on the Western intellectual tradition from classical antiquity to the enlightenment, both Lovejoy and Glacken examined how nature has been represented and understood in the specialist writings of philosophers, theologians, astrologers, geographers, and scientists, and how these ideas were in turn assimilated into the wider culture. More recently, and with more relevance to my own work, Keith Thomas’s highly-acclaimed study, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500 - 1800, has further developed and refined many of the themes and issues explored 4 by Lovejoy and Glacken. Unlike his two predecessors, Thomas concentrated on a single country and historical era, England during the early modem period, and by drawing on a broad range of literary and documentary sources, he investigated the different, sometimes contradictory ways in which men and women in all strata of society conceived of, and responded to, the natural world. As with much original historical research, Thomas’s study raises many questions as well as offering a new way of 3 See Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study in the History of an Idea (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1957), and Clarence J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century (Berkeley, 1967). 4 See Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500 -1800 (London, 1983). 3 looking at the world, and by briefly considering some of the different arguments that it propounds, it is possible not only to demonstrate the value and usefulness of this type of social and cultural history, but also to suggest certain areas in which it is limited, and in which the present thesis will be able to contribute usefully to the debate. Thomas’s point of departure in Man and the Natural World is the observation that the compassionate and sympathetic attitude towards both animals and nature that has become so prevalent in England at the end of the twentieth century - an attitude that is reflected in the popularity of such organisations as Friends of the Earth, the National Trust, the Council for the Protection of Rural England, and the R.S.P.C.A. - would have been incomprehensible to the late-medieval and early modem inhabitants of the country, who believed that the intensive management of the natural world, along with the wholesale exploitation of its resources, was a sacred duty that had been enjoined on human civilization by God Himself. Thomas therefore set himself the task of drawing out the complex network of beliefs and assumptions about animals and the natural environment that were held by the people of England during the late-medieval and early modem periods, while also offering an explanation, or series of explanations, for the profound shift in human sensibilities that subsequently occurred. As Thomas observed: it was between 1500 and 1800 that there occurred a whole cluster of changes in the way in which men and women, at all social levels, perceived and classified the natural world around them. In the process some long-established dogmas about man’s place in nature were discarded. New sensibilities arose towards animals, plants and landscape. The relationship of man to other species was redefined; and his right to exploit those species for his own advantage was sharply challenged. It was these centuries which generated both an
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