Rewriting Old Age from Chaucer to Shakespeare: The Invention of English Senex Style Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by William Auther Youngman January 2014 Rewriting Old Age from Chaucer to Shakespeare: The Invention of English Senex Style William Auther Youngman, Ph.D. Cornell University 2014 In L’envoy de Chaucer a Scogan, Chaucer, evidently an old man, playfully announces the end of his writing career, declaring that his muse rusts in its sheath and claiming that age stops narration, symbolized by the rust and disuse of Chaucer’s “muse.” Yet describing in elegant verse this muse’s senescence actually reinforces the idea that this old, textualized Chaucer never stops writing, and that age supplies the real subject of the envoy. The posture of an aged writer or speaker composing his end is far from unique in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and indeed defines a set of key elements of literature in that period. My dissertation, “Rewriting Old Age from Chaucer to Shakespeare: The Invention of English Senex Style,” explores the connection between literary and material form as it traces the paradoxical treatment of old men from the Reeve in The Canterbury Tales to John Gower’s reanimated role in Shakespeare’s Pericles. Incorporating fifteenth century authors, such as Thomas Hoccleve, and scribes and printers, such as John Shirley and William Caxton, together with Chaucer, and Gower, my dissertation argues that what I call senex style connects these images of old men from Chaucer to Shakespeare through a study of rhetorical postures, employing style in a capacious fashion. By focusing on a set of elements, which although shared are deployed differently, I contend that authors and speakers employ in new ways a paradoxical set of characteristics in depictions of old men taken from classical literature. As a reflection of a historical relationship between impairment and ability, senex style served as a response to a period of history which witnessed media changes from script to print. By attending both to the limitations of patrilinear literary history and the construction of time and history through the images of broken bodies, and, poised as an intervention between early English and disability studies, this examination of senex style demonstrates how the figure of the old man bridges categories of language and body, by examining non-normative and less-than- able selves that are defined not only by bodily impairments but also rhetorical postures of disability and prosthesis. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH William Youngman, a native Texan, originally started research work on 19th Italian Literature at the end of his undergraduate career. He followed a circuitous path to medieval literature through the “selva oscura” of Dante, Petrarch, and the saints, eventually finding a home in late-medieval English literature. iii To Andy Youngman, whose immense patience made this dissertation possible. iv Acknowledgements The only task more difficult than writing this dissertation is thanking those who helped me through long stages of creation, revision, and rewriting. I owe Andrew Galloway and Masha Raskolnikov the highest thanks for working with me throughout my time at Cornell. The importance of their perceptive comments and their wisdom in shepherding me through seminars and dissertation writing cannot be overstated. Samantha Zacher has proven both an incisive reader and caring committee member, an advocate who has no peer. Cary Howie and Jenny Mann stepped outside their disciplinary homes to give feedback and suggestions that have proven invaluable. Credit for this dissertation’s success belongs to these five scholars, while responsibility for any infelicities remains my own. Personal debts, like professional ones, accrue in graduate school, and I would like to acknowledge my partner Andy and his patience and support. Writing a dissertation took me away from our life, and he gladly welcomed me back after I finished it. I am grateful for his understanding of my writing process and tolerance for stacks of books. He did his best to comfort me when the writing was hard and made me celebrate when I worked through difficult moments. I am honored that John and Theresa, Andy’s parents, accept me and consider me a son. I consider them parents and have cherished their support more than they know. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Biographical Sketch.........................................................................................................iii Acknowledgements..........................................................................................................v Table of Contents.............................................................................................................vi Introduction The Rhetorical Question of Age: What is Senex Style?..................................................1 Chapter One No Texts for Old Men? Caxton’s Of Olde Age and Shirley’s MS Ashmole 59..............44 Chapter Two Occluding Occleve? Fully Lacking in Senex Style.........................................................84 Chapter Three Chaucer’s “Latere Age”? Dirt, Rust, and Anger in Chaucer’s Corpus...........................139 Chapter Four Mor(t)al Gower? Revising the Poet from Confessio Amantis to Pericles.......................183 Conclusion Old Books, Again? New Media(eval).............................................................................224 Works Cited....................................................................................................................238 vi The Rhetorical Question of Age: What is Senex Style? Reading late-medieval and early modern English literature, one frequently encounters the paradoxical status of old age and those things considered old, ancient, or belonging to a past, long dead. On one hand, medieval and early modern authors treasure the past: it is a storehouse of timeless ideals, courageous figures, and monuments to an earlier, golden age. On the other hand, old age might also be feared and viewed in the most negative of light. Indeed, as authorities such as Cicero and Seneca make clear, age might also be hated. Humans might wish to achieve it, but they often regret that their bodies can fail and they are closer to death. The anonymously-authored Elde Maki! Me Geld animates in the early fourteenth century the refrain voiced in the late republic by Cicero and the early empire by Seneca: if men desire to be old, then why is old age hated? One might answer this question a number of ways. The desire for old age is actually a desire for extended life, and like Tithonus, those seeking a long life desire a long youth. But as I demonstrate in this examination of the old author and speaker from The Canterbury Tales to Pericles, it is not as simple as declaring old age to be brutish, nasty, and short. Old age, like the past and the golden age to which it often is tied, can also be viewed as a time of unparalleled wisdom. For Cato of Cicero’s De Senectute, old age, he argues, has made him stronger, releasing him from the bonds of lust and physicality. For Chaucer and Gower, they imagine the oldness of books and authorities to be a signal that they possess real authority and power; Hoccleve can reimagine Chaucer and Gower, supposedly his old masters and teachers, to be giants upon which newer practitioners of poetry must work; and Caxton repeatedly uses his new technology to print classical narratives of the past. 1 What remains constant, I argue, for presentation of old age through the period of 1390- 1492, the range of the materials which I study, is an emphasis on the impaired nature of old age. Whether a social, cultural, and biological truth is conveyed in these depictions of masculine old age is besides the point. Rhetorical claims of impairment color the use of old age from Chaucer through the 16th century, and into Shakespeare’s reading of Gower in Pericles. This tie between depictions of old age and the embrace of impairment is, however, not merely an old construction. A recent instance is the confusion and speculation that attended the resignation of Pope Benedict. On February 11, 2013, Pope Benedict XVI officially resigned as head of the Roman Catholic Church and God’s chosen delegate on earth. That the tradition-loving pontiff resigned in Latin was not out of the ordinary. That he resigned, however, at all was revolutionary and close to unprecedented. The radical self-removal of the highest authority of the Catholic church has now happened just a handful of times, and before Benedict, the last pope to resign was Pope Gregory in 1415, in order to avoid papal schism. Benedict resigned, according to his “Declaratio,” “because of burdensome age,” [“ingravescente aetate”] and noted that the “both a certain strength of mind and body is necessary” [vigor quidam corporis et animae necessarius est] for managing the papacy, which in the “last months has somewhat lessened in me” [ultimis mensibus in me modo tali minuitur].1 The explosion of theories that this declaration created deserves some discussion here; nominally, Benedict was following the example of Pope Celestine, the reluctant pope, who resigned, due to his wish to die with a spotless life, and due to “personal infirmity.”2 An apt student of history would definitely notice the parallels: a church plagued by scandal, the machinations of the Roman Curia interfering with the pastoral mission of 1 Benedict XVI, “Declaratio,” http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2013/february/documents/hf_ben-