The Idea of the Labyrinth

·THE IDEA OF · THE LABYRINTH · THE IDEA OF · THE LABYRINTH from Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages Penelope Reed Doob CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON Open access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities/Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program. Copyright © 1990 by Cornell University First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 1992 Second paperback printing 2019 All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu. Printed in the United States of America ISBN 978-0-8014-2393-2 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-5017-3845-6 (pbk.: alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-5017-3846-3 (pdf) ISBN 978-1-5017-3847-0 (epub/mobi) Librarians: A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress An open access (OA) ebook edition of this title is available under the following Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by- nc-nd/4.0/. For more information about Cornell University Press’s OA program or to download our OA titles, visit cornellopen.org. Jacket illustration: Photograph courtesy of the Soprintendenza Archeologica, Milan. For GrahamEric Parker worthy companion in multiplicitous mazes and in memory of JudsonBoyce Allen and Constantin Patsalas Contents List of Plates lX Acknowledgments: Four Labyrinths xi Abbreviations XVll Introduction: Charting the Maze 1 The Cretan Labyrinth Myth 11 PART ONE THE LABYRINTH IN THE CLASSICAL AND EARLY CHRISTIAN PERIODS 1. The Literary Witness: Labyrinths in Pliny, Virgil, and Ovid 17 2. The Labyrinth as Significant Form: Two Paradigms 39 A clash of paradigms 40 The multicursal model 46 The unicursal model 48 The essence of the maze 51 3· A Taxonomy of Metaphorical Labyrinths 64 The labyrinth as a sign of complex artistry 66 The labyrinth as a sign of inextricability or impenetrability 72 The labyrinth as a sign of difficult process 82 PART Two THE LABYRINTH IN THE MIDDLE AGES 4· Etymologies and Verbal Implications 95 Vll vm Contents 5· Mazes in Medieval Art and Architecture 101 The three-dimensional labyrinth (buildings and gardens) 103 Diagrammatic labyrinths 112 Tu rf and stone mazes 113 Labyrinths in churches 1 17 Labyrinths in manuscripts 133 6. Moral Labyrinths in Medieval Literature 145 The mythographers 148 Moral labyrinths in other literature 155 Readings of selected texts 165 The Gesta Romanorum 165 Il Corbaccio 167 The Assembly of Ladies 1 71 La Queste del Saint Graal 1 7 5 7. Textual Labyrinths: Toward a Labyrinthine Aesthetic Labyrinthine Inventio 198 Labyrinthine Dispositio 201 Labyrinthine Elocutio 211 Difficult process 213 PART THREE LABYRINTHS OF WoRDs: CENTRAL TEXTS AND INTERTEXTUALITIES 8. Virgil's Aeneid 227 g. Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy 254 10. Dante's Divine Comedy 271 The labyrinthine landscape 281 The labyrinthine journey 287 The myth transformed and reenacted 294 11. Chaucer's House of Fame 307 Appendix: Labyrinths in Manuscripts 341 Index 343 List of Plates I. Prehistoric Cretan-style labyrinth rock carving from Rocky Valley, near Tintagel, Cornwall 19 2. Labyrinth from the Tragliatella wine-pitcher (Etruscan, seventh century B.c.) 28 3· Roman mosaic labyrinth, Via Cadolini, Cremona 42 4· Early multicursal labyrinth, adapted from Claude Paradin's Devises hero'iques <•ss•) 47 5· Circular unicursal diagrammatic labyrinth (ninth or eleventh century) 49 6. The Greek key pattern or meander 51 7· Eye-brain diagram (•350-1 400) 84 8. Diagram of the brain, from Jehan Yperman's Cyrurgie (1328) ss 9· Labyrinth and amphitheater, from Raban Maur's De rerum naturis (late fourteenth century) 105 10. Illustration of a three-dimensional labyrinth (ca. q6o) 108 II. Garden maze, attributed to Pozzoserrato (ca. 1550) Ill 1 2. Turf-maze at Wing, Rutland 114 •3· Diagram of Julian's Bower, turf labyrinth, Alkborough, Lincolnshire 115 •4· Labyrinth roof boss, Saint Mary Redcliffe, Bristol (fourteenth-fifteenth century) 119 •5· Labyrinth on baptismal font, Saint Martin's, Lewannick, Cornwall 120 16. Drawing of labyrinth with figures of architects (ca. 1240) in the nave of Reims Cathedral 122 •7· Diagram of the labyrinth (ca. 1194-1220) in the nave of Chartres Cathedral 132 IX x List of Plates 18. Architectural depiction of the Cretan labyrinth, from a manuscript of the Histoire ancienne jusqu'a Cesar (1250- 1275) 136 19. Labyrinth from a manuscript of the Histoire ancienne jusqu'a Cesar (thirteenth century) 137 20. The Cretan labyrinth, from a manuscript of the Libellum de septem miraculis mundi (late twelfth century) 140 21. The city of Jericho as a labyrinth (late twelfth century) 14 1 22. Labyrinth in a fourteenth-century manuscript of Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy 143 23. Labyrinth in a fourteenth-century manuscript of Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy 256 24. Illumination (1419) from Dante's Inferno 275 25. Labyrinth in a manuscript (14 19) of Dante's Divine Comedy 276 Acknowledgments: Four Labyrinths EOPLE who wander in mazes for twenty years need a lot of P help along the way. But if labyrinths are icons of difficult process, by the same token they are occasions for generosity, and I have encountered more than my fair share of gracious guides. Pliny tells us that four labyrinths existed in ancient times. Taking up his clue, I thank those who have eased my passage through the four mazes I have experienced while imagining and then writing The Idea of the Labyrinth. First came the magnificent, many-folded labyrinth of medieval stud ies, endlessly attractive precisely because of its multitudinous difficulties. It was probably Geoffrey Chaucer, English Daedalus "with his playes slye," who enticed me into this maze, but he had wily accomplices, not least the late R. W. Ackerman of Stanford University, who persuaded me to become a medievalist even though I had no interest in Old Norse. Classical and medieval mazes typically begin where they end and end where they began, as Boethius told Lady Philosophy; hence, appropri ately, my point of entry into medieval studies, the origin of this book, and the final chapter all coincide in that brilliantly eclectic poem Chaucer's House of Fame, which is not only a beginning and ending but also an eccentric thread of Ariadne to the labyrinth of medieval litera ture. B. J. Whiting introduced me to the poem at Harvard University, where English 115 began with his wry line-by-line commentary. Al though our approaches to Chaucer are fundamentally different, it was he who first revealed to me the charm of a work that has captivated me ever since and who inspired me to begin my own Chaucer courses with that poem. (It was while teaching The House of Fame to a group of baffled undergraduates in 1970 that I hit upon the idea that the poem was itself a maze, only to realize how much was yet to be discovered about medieval XI xn Acknowledgments labyrinths.) At Stanford, A. G. Rigg fed my addiction with impromptu soirees where a group of us read the poem aloud, stopping every few lines to explore one or another of the many paths branching out into other medieval texts and traditions. I never studied The House of Fame with V. A. Kolve, but his astonishing Chaucer seminars at Stanford per suaded me of the fruitfulness of looking for controlling metaphors what he would later call "narrative images" -in Chaucer's poetry. And while I never worked with the late E. Talbot Donaldson, his enthusiasm for my research on Chaucer and labyrinths alike often gave me confi dence to forge ahead when I was weary. All writers are necessarily implicated in three .additional labyrinths. First, they are maze-treaders: as the English historian Ralph Higden complained, would-be scholars have to make their way through the laby rinths of invention-their material, their sources-before they can even begin to write. Second, they are maze-makers: as the rhetorician Geoffrey of Vinsauf reminds us, writers are architects, aspiring to design a well-crafted Daedalian domus. This is the labyrinth of disposition, of conceptual order. Third, the text itself is a labyrinth through which readers wander at will, comprehending all or nothing according to the mental fit between text and reader: as the preacher Robert of Basevorn warned, one man's artistry is another man's inexplicable maze. This is the labyrinth of words and of the reception of texts. Writers need help as they tread, create, and entangle others in mazes. In the labyrinth of invention I encountered many tutelary spirits who directed me along unexplored pathways. Regine Astier, Christopher Baswell, Harry Bober, John Leyerle, Guy Lobrichon, Kathryn Kerby Fulton, V. A. Kolve, Ruth Mellinkoff, Brian Stock, David Wallace, and Francis Woodman suggested references, answered questions, or found possible illustrations. Ann and Nollaig MacKenzie traveled to Cornwall to trace a labyrinth of whose existence I was uncertain. Colin Burrow, Terry Hoad, and Charlotte Morse retraced my steps for me when I was unable to do so myself and provided last-minute reference-checking in British libraries. Eleanor Silk, Yvon LePage, and Margaret F. Nims gave me liberal access to unpublished material. Ross Arthur, Christina Hawkes, A. G. Rigg, and Brian Stock helped interpret what I saw darkly in untranslated texts. Readers of U mberto Eco's The Na me of the Rose know that libraries, like texts, are labyrinths in their own right, and I am grateful to the guard ians of such mazes for letting me explore hidden treasures at the British, Bodleian, and Cambridge University libraries and at many Oxford and Cambridge college libraries.

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