Washington University in St. Louis Washington University Open Scholarship Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations Arts & Sciences Winter 12-15-2015 Science and Nature in the Medieval Ecological Imagination Jessica Rezunyk Washington University in St. Louis Follow this and additional works at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/art_sci_etds Recommended Citation Rezunyk, Jessica, "Science and Nature in the Medieval Ecological Imagination" (2015). Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 677. https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/art_sci_etds/677 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Arts & Sciences at Washington University Open Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Washington University Open Scholarship. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS Department of English Dissertation Examination Committee: David Lawton, Chair Ruth Evans Joseph Loewenstein Steven Meyer Jessica Rosenfeld Science and Nature in the Medieval Ecological Imagination by Jessica Rezunyk A dissertation presented to the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences of Washington University in partial fulfillment of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2015 St. Louis, Missouri © 2015, Jessica Rezunyk Table of Contents List of Figures……………………………………………………………………………. iii Acknowledgments…………………………………………………………………………iv Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………vii Chapter 1: (Re)Defining Science and Medieval Ecology…………………………………..1 Chapter 2: Translation, Science, and Chaucer’s Construction of The House of Fame……45 Chapter 3: Allegorical Translation of Science in the Bible Moralisée……………………84 Chapter 4: Piers Plowman and Ecological Cultivation of the Soul ……………………..128 Chapter 5: Conclusion: A Brief Discussion of Hutchinson’s Medieval Ecological Imagination…………………………………………………………………...164 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………...176 ii List of Figures Figure 1.1: Gestalt duck-rabbit……………………………………………………………29 Figure 3.1: John Lowden’s schematic of possible scanning patterns of Codex 2554…….97 Figure 3.2: Genesis 11: The Tower of Babel. ÖNB MS 2554, fol. 3v, roundels Cc……..100 Figure 3.3: Genesis 38: The children of Judah. ÖNB MS 2554, fol. 8r, roundels Aa……102 Figure 3.4: God the architect. ÖNB MS 2554, frontispiece ……………………………..104 Figure 3.5: Genesis 1: The first days of creation. ÖNB MS 2554, fol. 1r .………………109 Figure 3.6: Judges 19: Gibeah’s concubine. ÖNB MS 2554, fol. 65r, roundels Bb .……114 Figure 3.7: Genesis 1: God creates life on earth. ÖNB MS 2554, fol. 1v .………………119 Figure 3.8: Genesis 9: Noah drinking wine. ÖNB MS 2554, fol. 3v, roundels Aa .…….122 Figure 3.9: Genesis 40: The butler’s dream. ÖNB MS 2554, fol.10v, roundels Bb .…...124 Figure 3.10: Numbers 13: Fruit in Jericho. ÖNB MS 2554, fol. 32v .………………….125 iii Acknowledgments I would like to thank my adviser, David Lawton, for his support and kindness throughout my studies. It was in his class on Middle English that I first encountered Langland and became enamored with the spirituality of medieval poetry. He has continually supported work even when geographical distance made it challenging and I am indebted to his patience as I completed this project while supporting my husband’s academic career and raising our children. It is through him that I have become active in the New Chaucer Society, where I have gained further academic support and feedback from Ruth Evans (Saint Louis University), Frank Grady (University of Missouri – St. Louis), and fellow graduate students too numerous to list. I would also like to thank a number of other academic inspirations during my time at Washington University in St. Louis. Jessica Rosenfeld helped me to carefully consider the relationships between medieval texts while Steven Meyer introduced me to Bruno Latour and the possibility of applying science studies to medieval literature. I am also grateful for Joe Loewenstein’s constant encouragement during my time in St. Louis, in both academic and personal matters. I would also like to thank Alicia Walker, who introduced me to the Bible Moralisée and inspired me to include elements of art history in my studies. Each of these mentors provided much feedback in my early graduate studies that ultimately shaped this dissertation. I owe special thanks to my friends and family who provided much moral support. I am especially thankful for the enduring support of Erica Delsandro, who has never hesitated to read iv my work to provide feedback or take time enjoy life with me. Her friendship over the years has truly been invaluable. My thanks also go to Kathy Schneider, who consistently offered her unwavering support and kindness. I am also grateful to have established a strong relationship with the community of graduate students at Washington University in St. Louis, including Susan Lowther, Sarah Noonan, Elon Lang, Rob Patterson, and Rick Godden for their intellectual support and camaraderie. In Toronto I have been blessed with access to the many resources at the University of Toronto as well as ecological inspiration and moral support from my good friend, Kara Brodribb. Finally, I would like to offer endless thanks to my husband, Jason Maynes, for his continual support and to my children, Ewan and Laren, for the love and laughter they have brought into my life throughout this project. Jessica Rezunyk Washington University in St. Louis December 2015 v Dedicated to Anne Whitmore, who shared my passions for literature and biology, and to Steve Haddad and Randy Brooks, who inspired those passions in the first place. vi ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Science and Nature in the Medieval Ecological Imagination by Jessica Rezunyk Doctor of Philosophy in English & American Literature Washington University in St. Louis, 2015 Professor David Lawton, Chair This dissertation explores the intersections between nature and culture in medieval literature and art with particular focus on Geoffrey Chaucer’s House of Fame, the thirteenth- century French Bible Moralisée (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Codex Vindobonensis 2554), and William Langland’s Piers Plowman. Current academic paradigms tend to place the study of nature firmly within the sciences and the study of culture firmly within the humanities, creating a gap between the fields that effectively isolates their respective methodologies and vocabularies from one another. This dissertation seeks to bridge that gap between the sciences and the humanities by approaching medieval literature through the lens of studies in science, technology, and society (STS). Examination of medieval literature reveals just some of the ways that the sciences and humanities overlap to create permeable intellectual spaces for the study of nature and culture. Framed within the ecological analyses of G. Evelyn Hutchinson, this dissertation demonstrates how scientific topics can be approached from a literary perspective and how, in turn, literature can be read scientifically. vii This project uses a highly interdisciplinary approach that relies heavily on the theories in STS developed by Bruno Latour. Latour’s theories, typically applied to writing and procedures found in modern science, provide the initial groundwork for establishing the connections between nature and culture in medieval literary sources. Because much of the previous work on science in the Middle Ages has primarily focused on the history of science through the study of educational texts and treatises, there is relatively little material available that takes on scientific observation of the natural world in medieval literature, poetry, and art. As such, the modern divide between the sciences and the humanities anachronistically separates nature and culture in ways that often unnecessarily isolate the two fields in medieval studies. By first problematizing and historicizing the academic development of science and its perceived animosity with the humanities, I strive to break down modern paradigms of knowledge to demonstrate how a medieval understanding of human culture was inextricably connected to perceptions of the natural world. The study of Chaucer’s House of Fame takes on special attention to the roles of language and translation in literature. My subsequent examination of the Bible Moralisée moves beyond the constraints of language to explore visual representations of science and nature in an explicitly Christian context. Building on the religious influences of medieval portrayals of ecology and science, I investigate Langland’s use of natural imagery in his portrayal of religious enlightenment in Piers Plowman. Each of these works demonstrates how the medieval imagination established a versatile permeability between science and the humanities that is far less common in the studies of modern science and literature. viii Chapter 1 (Re)Defining Science and Medieval Ecology “The imagination is most accurately excited by familiar things, which are well enough known to be picked up from a world where they lie at random, taken apart, reconstructed and redesigned, and put in exact places where they are appropriate.” - George Evelyn Hutchinson1 Research for this project began in 2009, the year that marked the fiftieth anniversary of C. P. Snow’s Rede Lecture in the Senate House at Cambridge. Snow’s lecture addressed the widening gap between the humanities and sciences in higher academic institutions, claiming that the growing divide between the