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PDF (An Ecocritical Approach to Chaucer To my parents CONTENTS An Eco-critical Approach to Chaucer. Representations of the Natural World in the English Literature of the Middle Ages ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 4 CHAPTER 1 Ecocriticism: What It Is and Why Apply It to Middle English Literature 6 1.1. Ecological Awareness Is Not a Modern Phenomenon 11 1.2. Ecocriticism: Genesis and Theoretical Definition 16 1.2.1. Short Genesis Survey and Purpose of Ecocriticism 16 1.2.2. Definition, Methodology and Theoretical Tools 21 1.3. Why Approach Medieval Literature and Chaucer Ecocritically 24 CHAPTER 2 The Idea of Nature in the Middle Ages: Cultural and Philosophical Background 31 2.1. The Composite Heritage of the Past 36 2.1.1. Classical ideas and representations of nature 40 2.1.2. Anglo-Saxon Ideas and Representations of Nature: The Case of Bēowulf 60 CHAPTER 3 Ideas and Representations of Nature in the Middle Ages 82 3.1. The Natural World from the Christian Perspective 83 3.1.1. Nature in the Twelfth Century Renaissance: 84 the Poets of the School of Chartres 84 3.1.2. Seemingly Ecological: The Natural World for 95 Saint Francis and other Monastic Orders 95 3.2. Literary Images of Nature: The Enclosed Garden and the Wild Forest 103 3.2.1. Garden and Forest in Sir Orfeo: A Functional Reversal 108 3.3. Bestiaries: Animals, Allegory, and Natural History 111 3.3.1. The Example of the Aberdeen Bestiary 113 3.4. Science in the Middle Ages 125 2 CHAPTER 4 Chaucer’s Representation of Nature 131 4.1. The Love-Nature Paradigm: 134 Chaucer‟s Models and Other Middle English Representations 134 4.2. The Poet‟s Words: Chaucer‟s Own Writing and Re-writing of Nature 143 4.2.1. Nature in Troilus and Criseyde: A Cosmic Force Close to Humans 145 4.2.2. Nature as Poetic Material: The House of Fame 154 4.2.3. The Parlement of Foules 162 CONCLUSIONS Chaucer’s Idea of Nature: Can We Talk About an Eco-Chaucer? 201 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES 213 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have endeavored in the slippery task of viewing English medieval ideas and representations of the natural world and of the relationship between humanity and nature from an ecologically-oriented perspective, and along this uncertain path I have been supported by a series of persons that I would like to thank for believing in my project and encouraging me in its completion. First of all, I would like to thank Professor Fulvio Ferrari of Università di Trento for his punctual remarks and for taking up the challenge of tutoring a thesis dealing with a field of literary criticism which is still rather alien to the Italian academic community. My warmest thanks go to Professor Yoshiko Asaka, of the Osaka International University, for her constant accessibility, her insights, suggestions, and advices, and for her great generosity in both academic and human terms: without her support this work would have certainly been harder to carry out. I would also like to thank Professor Marco Paci of Università di Firenze for his kindness, for the inspiration and for the encouraging and reassuring words about my idea and the way I developed it in my writing. His great helpfulness and willingness toward me have been an important support through the process. Other people I need and want to mention are Professors Akiyuki Jimura and Yoshiyuki Nakao of Hiroshima University for their valuable insights and suggestions, and the courtesy and willingness with which they have treated me; I would also like to thank Dr. Anna Re, of Libera Università di Lingue e Comunicazione IULM-Milano, for introducing me to the field of ecological criticism and for her constant accessibility and willingness toward me through the years. I also thank Professor Piero Boitani and Prof. Emilia Di Rocco, of Università La Sapienza - Roma, for their courtesy and valuable suggestions. Other names should probably be added to the list, but I would most likely end up remembering some and forgetting others, so I express my general thanks to all the academic people I met during these past three years for their suggestions and advice. A special thought goes however to Silvia Annavini, who made this doctorate experience more pleasant through our mutual human and academic exchange. Last, but definitely not least, I would like to thank my family, Marco, and my closest friends for their continuous support and encouragement through easier and most of all through harder and darker times; in particular, I would like to thank my father for the significant contribution to my bibliography by means of books which we actually keep in our library at home, and for the valuable contact with experts of ecology (the above- mentioned Professor Paci) that he allowed me to establish. A special thank goes however to both my parents, for stimulating me since early childhood into cultivating my inborn curiosity toward the surrounding world that gives us hospitality, in the firm belief that knowledge of the other inevitably leads to respect for it. 5 CHAPTER 1 Ecocriticism: What It Is and Why Apply It to Middle English Literature Self-awareness, reason, and imagination have disrupted the “harmony” which characterizes animal existence. Their emergence has made man into an anomaly, into the freak of universe. He is part of nature, subject to her physical laws and unable to change them, yet he transcends the rest of nature. He is set apart while being a part; he is homeless, yet chained to the home he shares with all creatures. Erich Fromm The choice to write and present a study of nature in medieval English literature from an ecological perspective has been originated by a personal interest in the urgency of the deep environmental crisis we are faced with and by the drive to expand the eco- oriented study of representations of nature in literature to chronological and spatial areas well beyond those originally typical of ecological criticism. The choice of the Middle Ages besides being motivated by a smaller amount of such kind of critical literature in the area, finds its motivation also in the cultural variety and richness of that historical period. When I first came to know about ecocriticism in the Anglo-American literature class during my final year at university in 2000, this then still new (to Italians) interpretative approach to literature seemed to offer me an ideal solution to join and balance my passion for language and literature with the likewise strong passion for the natural world and the environment. In particular, I have always been fascinated by the ways in which human beings interpret and represent nature, the environment, and their relation to it as portrayed in literature. Although it appears to be rather obvious when brought to attention, it seems at the same time to be often forgotten that the relationship humankind entertains with the environment is not and can not be a marginal issue, because it is instead a fundamental, CHAPTER 1 undeniable and unavoidable matter of fact and reality. There have of course been studies on nature in literature and in Middle English literature, they however mainly looked at and considered nature as a setting or a source or repository of material for figurative representation, metaphors and exempla; scholars did not seem to be particularly interested in investigating the relationship between humankind and the environment, certainly not in ecological terms. As a result of the global environmental crisis, issues concerning the relationship between humankind and the environment have become of paramount importance in order to build a new attitude on the part of human beings based on sustainability and respect. Ideas concerning the relationship between humankind and the environment and the role of humanity in this dynamics, as well as ideas about environmentalism are often based on misconceptions and misunderstandings, and those issues are also often marginalized as statements of radical movements. Environmentalists are in fact often considered as fanatics who want to prevent progress. In order to understand how the relationship between humankind and the environment (and as a reflex, between culture and nature) is not a topic that can be marginalized and ignored, it would be sufficient to do something that has already been done several times before me, and that while we all have it in the back of our mind, we also obviously do not refer to very often. We should remind ourselves of the etymological meaning of the Greek root oikos, Latinized as eco-, and which we can find in eco-nomics as well as in eco-logy. Pokorny (1959) lists the Indo-European root *weiḱ- from which Greek oikos derives, as meaning “village; house” (Skr. विश ् (viś), Av. vīs, Gk. οἶκος (oikos), Lat. vīcus, Germ. weihs, OCS vĭsĭ). The word eco- is thus shared by eco-logy and eco-nomics, so 7 CHAPTER 1 that, etymologically, the first would be the study of the “house” and the second the management and account of the “house”. These two disciplines also share other aspects than the mere etymology though, as Teri Wynn underlines: “Ecologists research natural systems and economists research human systems” (Wynn 2010); the balance and well- being of the general system, of the whole constituted by the natural world and by the human world, depends on the relationship between ecology and economics, that is on the ways in which nature and humans interact. In recent years a growing awareness of the relation of economics and ecology has been observed and has given rise to new approaches toward this interconnection; these days we hear talk about “green economy” a lot, and in general of an economical policy that is sustainable for the natural environment.
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