Sodomy, Masculinity, and Law in Medieval Literature
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19. The De planctu is in the form of a Menippean satire, a serio-comic examination of a philosophical topic in which prose and verse sections alternate. Alain was familiar with this classical form from his study of Martianus Capella, Boethius, and Peter of Compostella (Sheridan, Plaint, p. 35). The appearance of Lady Nature is, as we have seen, a clear sign of the influence of The Consolation of Philosophy, but Alain also strays from that model in significant ways.
20. See Rollo, “Gerald of Wales,” pp. 178–179 n.25 for an excellent short discussion of Alain’s excesses and his possible influence on Gerald of Wales. Rollo cites the follow- ing passage as an example of Alain’s “sequential antithesis, terminal repetition, cog- nate modulation of the paronomeon, and ubiquitous recourse to metaphor for the expression of any substantive” (emphasis added): Cum enim iam Epicuri soporen- tur insomnia, Manichei sanetur insania, Aristotilis arguantur argutie, Arrii fallantur fallatie, unicam dei unitatem ratio probat, mundus eloquitur, fides credit, Scriptura testatur. In quem nulla labes inuehitur, quem nulla uicii pestis aggreditur, cum quo nullus temptationis motus congreditur. Hic est splendor nunquam deficiens, uita indefesse non moriens, fons semper scaturiens, seminale uite seminarium, sapientie principale principium, initiale bonitatis initium (citing Haring, De planctu, 837–838,
143–149).
21. Ziolkowski, Alan of Lille, p. 142.
22. Ibid., p. 142.
23. The format does suggest, however, that it could have been used as an instruction manual on the art of pedagogy. The dialectical interplay between teacher and student within the text reflects how this type of question/answer instruction should work. The intended audience, on the other hand, is never clear. One can never besure whether Alain’s narrator is talking to himself, addressing a student, a particular individual, or a community.
24. See Michael Camille’s Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (London: Reaktion Books, 1992) for discussion of examples in manuscripts and sculpture, and Claude Gaignebet and J. Dominique Lajoux, Art profane et religion populaire au moyen aˆge (Paris: Presses Universitaries de France, 1985) for more on transgressive border imagery in medieval churches.
25. Derrida emphasizes a similar reading practice in Glas, trans. John P. Leavey and Richard Rand (Lincoln, Nebr.: University of Nebraska Press, 1987; originally pub- lished Paris: Galile´e, 1974). Duane Michals has spent his career exploring the inter- play between photographic image and written commentary. See, for example, his Homage to Cavafy (Danbury, NH: Addison House, 1978) or the The Essential Duane Michals (London: Thames & Hudson, 1997). Michel Butor traces such practices throughout Western art in Les mots et la peinture (Geneva: Skira, 1981).
26. Andrew Cowell (“The Dye of Desire: The Colors of Rhetoric in the Middle Ages,” Exemplaria 11, 1 [1999], p. 131) argues convincingly that this is because Alain, while claiming to subscribe to ideas espoused by Matthew of Vendoˆ me (that words must always be the marks of meanings or senses which are prior to them) is actually veering closer to Geoffrey of Vinsauf’s position, which insists “on the ways in which texts can play with or hide such meanings, expressing them in multiple fashions whose own multiplicity is more important than the meaning per se.” That Alain was writing before either of these theoreticians of rhetoric problematizes the dichotomy but lends weight to the argument that the De planctu is an anomalous and extraordinary composition, regardless of whatever meaning we ascribe to it.
27. Ziolkowski suggests such a progression from disorder to order:
Alan’s subtle symbolic interpretation of dactyls shapes the whole structure of the De planctu naturae. In the course of the work, there is a steady movement from elegiac couplets to dactylic hexameters. This progression could be viewed as one from dactyls in disorder to dactyls in order, since the second line of an elegiac couplet incorporates fragmented dactyls. The shift from the one meter to the other corresponds to the gradual restoration of the natural order, as exemplified by the dreamer’s increasing awareness and the approach of Genius’s judgment. Elegiacs alternate regularly with other meters in the first half of the De planctu and suit the material covered there, since one elegiac section deals with the dreamer’s sentiments about sexual perversion, another with the beauties of spring, and the third with the nature of Cupid. (Alan of Lille, p. 26)
28. “Que non ex pruritu Affrodites promiscuo propagata, sed hoc solo Nature natique geniali osculo fuerat deriuata” (Haring, De planctu, 877, 94–97).
29. “‘Que uirgineo corpori tanta fuerant conexione iugate, ut nulla exuitionis diere-
sis eas aliquando a uirginali corpore faceret phariseas” (Haring, De planctu, 877,
101–102).
30. “Alie uero, tanquam aduenticie nature precedentibus appendices, nunc oculis uisus offerebant libamina, nunc oculorum sese frabantur indagini” (Haring, De planctu,
877, 103–104).31. “An ignoras, quomodo poete sine omni palliationis remedio, auditoribus nudam falsitatem prostituunt, ut quadam mellite delectationis dulcedine uelut incantatas audientium aures inebrient? Aut ipsam falsitatem quadam probabilitatis ypocrisi palliant, ut per exemplorum imagines hominum animos inhoneste morigeneratio- nis incude sigillent? Aut, in superficiali littere cortice falsum resonat lira poetica, interius uero auditoribus secretum intelligentie altioris eloquitur, ut exteriori falsi- tatis abiecto putamine dulciorem nucleum ueritatis secrete intus lector inueniat” (Haring, De planctu, 837, 128–136).
32. “Huius igitur imaginarie uisionis subtracto speculo, me ab exstasis excitatum
insompnio prior mistice apparitionis dereliquit aspectus” (Haring, De planctu, 879,
164–165).
33. Andrew Cowell (“Dye,” p. 130) again attributes this confusion between substance and adornment to a refusal of the idea of a “‘natural,’ literal, linguistic body which bears the essential meaning of the text prior to a ‘figuration’ which rhetoric may impose upon it. . . . Rhetoric and the body are inseparable, and it is at this point of inseparability where meaning is produced, rather than along any path to the allegorical.”
34. Marriage was only gradually added to the official roster of sacraments over the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries but the narrator of the De planctu, and perhaps Alain as well, is already pushing for marriage as a sacred institution in
1160.
“In quibus picturarum fabule nuptiales sompniabant euentus, picturatas tamen ymagines uetustatis fuligo fere coegerat expirare. Ibi tamen sacramentalem mat- rimonii fidem, connubii pacificam unitatem, nuptiarum indisparabile iugum, nubentium indissolubile uinculum, lingua picture fatebatur intextum. In picture etenim libro umbratiliter legebatur, que nuptiarum iniciis exultationis applau- dat sollempnitas, que in nuptiis melodie sollempnizet suauitas, que connubiis conuiuarum arrideat generalitas specialis, que matrimonia Citheree concludat iocunditas generalis” (Haring, De planctu, 866, 25–33).
35. “An interrogationem, que nec dubitationis faciem digna est usurpare, quaestionis
querendo uestis imagine?” (Haring, De planctu, 837, 124–125); “ista nube tacitur- nitatis obduxi, illa uero in lucem uere narrationis explicui” (838, 153–154).
36. “Sed postquam uniuersalis artifex uniuersa suarum naturarum uultibus inuestiuit, omniaque sibi inuicem legitimis proportionum connubiis maritauit” (Haring, De planctu, 840, 217–219).
37. “in qua stili obsequentis subsidio imagines rerum ab umbra picture ad ueritatem sue essentie transmigrantes, uita sui generis munerabat” (Haring, De planctu, 876,
71–72).
38. “In quibus imaginaria picture probabilitas sophistico picturationis sue presti- gio homines notorio auaricie crimine laborantes . . .” (Haring, De planctu,
869, 125–126); “Ibi fabulosis picture commentis legebatur inscriptum” (870,
147–148).
39. “Illic aries, tunica nobiliori trabeatus, uxorum pluralitate gauisus, matrimonii defraudabat honorem” (Haring, De planctu, 818, 265–267).40. “Has animalium figuras, hystrionalis figure representa
tio, quasi iocunditatis conuiuia, oculis donabat uidentium” (Haring, De planctu, 819, 279–280).
41. “Illic noctua tante deformitatis sterquilinio sordescebat, ut in eius formatione
Naturam fuisse crederes sompnolentam” (Haring, De planctu, 815, 168–169).
42. “Hec picture tropo eleganter in pallio figurata sculpture natare uidebantur mirac- ulo” (Haring, De planctu, 817, 228–229).
43. “Lapis primus lumine noctem, frigus incendio pati iubebat exilium. In quo, ut
faceta picture loquebantur mendacia, leonis effigiata fulminabat effigies” (Haring,
De planctu, 810, 56–58).
44. “quorum primus, sudoris guttulis lacrimas exemplando, quodam imaginario fletu contristabat aspectum”; “in quo, ex caprinae lanae adulterino uellere, capricorno tunicam pictura texuerat”; “rosam visibus presentabat”; “In qua sub imaginario flumine pisces sue nature nando exercitium frequentabant” (Haring, De planctu,
811, 68–69, 72–73, 79, 83–84). Jordan (Invention) notes other anomalous features
of the images on the dress in the course of his discussion (70–71).
45. Ziolkowski, Alan of Lille, p. 18.
46. “in me uiolentas manus uiolenter iniciunt et mea sibi particulatim uestimenta diripiunt et, quam reuerentie deberent honore uestire, me uestibus orphanatam, quantum in ipsis est, cogunt meretricaliter lupanare” (Haring, De planctu, 838,
167–170).
47. Jordan, Invention, p. 68.
48. Roland Barthes, L’Empire des signes (Paris: Seuil, 1970).
49. “Sicut autem quasdam gramatice dialecticeque obseruantias inimicantissime hostil- itatis incursus uolui a Veneris anathematizare gignasiis; sic methonomicas rethorum positiones, quas in sue amplitudinis gremio rethorica mater amplectens, multis suas orationes afflat honoribus, Cypridis artificiis interdixi, ne si nimis dure translationis excursu a suo reclamante subiecto predicatum alienet in aliud, in facinus facetia, in rusticitatem urbanitas, tropus in uicium, in decolorationem color nimius conuer- tatur” (Haring, De planctu, 848, 108–114).
50. “nolo ut prius plana uerborum planicie explanare proposita uel prophanis uerborum
nouitatibus prophanare prophana, uerum pudenda aureis pudicorum uerborum faleris inaurare uariisque uenustorum dictorum coloribus inuestire” (Haring, De planctu, 839, 183–186).
51. “Consequens enim est predictorum uiciorum scorias deauratis lectionibus pur- purare, uiciorumque fetorem odore uerborum imbalsamare mellifluo, ne si tanti sterquilinii fetor in nimie promulgationis aures euaderet, plerosque ad indignationis nauseantis uomitum inuitaret” (Haring, De planctu, 839, 186–190).
52. Ziolkowski, Alan of Lille, p. 17.
53. See, for example, this citation, in which Nature blames antiphrasis for making two (monk and adulterer) into one, yet uses antiphrasis herself, calling a “miracle” what she actually sees as an act of treachery and vice:
“Nonne per antifrasim miracula multa Cupido / Efficiens, hominum protheat omne genus? / Cum sint opposita monachus mechator eidem / Hec duo subiecto cogit inesse simul.” (Haring, De planctu, 842–843, 21–24)[Does not Cupid (Desire), performing many miracles, to use antiphrasis, change the shapes of mankind? Though monk and adulterer are opposite terms, he forces both of these to exist together in the same subject.] Translation cited in Ziolkowski, Alan of Lille, p. 34. See Epp (“Learning to Write With Venus’s Pen: Sexual Regulation in Matthew of Vendoˆ me’s Ars versificatoria,” in Murray and Eisenbichler, eds., Desiring, p. 270) for similar tactics in Matthew of Vendoˆ me’s 1175 treatise, Ars versificatoria.
54. Though natural law arguments were already in use before Alain, Thomas Aquinas would solidify them in the Summa theologica one hundred years later. There he ranks sexual behavior according to its distance from a natural model, finding that masturbation (“uncleanness”) is the least offensive deed for “it consists only in not having intercourse with another person.” Bestiality is the worst, preceded by sodomy, “since it does not involve the right sex” and then that of “not using the right method of intercourse – which is worse if it is not in the right place than if it relates to other aspects of the method of intercourse” (Ques. 154.12 in Sigmund, St. Thomas, p. 80).
55. “Cum enim, attestante gramatica, duo genera specialiter, masculinum uidelicet et femininum, ratio nature cognouerit, quamuis et quidam homines, sexus depau- perati signaculo, juxta meam oppinionem, possint neutri generis designatione censeri . . .” (Haring, De planctu, 846, 43–46).
56. Sheridan, Plaint, p. 158; Haring, De planctu, 846–847.
57. Sheridan, Plaint, p. 41.
58. “ex similibus similia ducerentur” (Haring, De planctu, 840, 223). The Latin rhetor- ical and poetic theory studied by Alain was, no doubt, resolutely prescriptive and normative; “all speech acts were defined as embedded in a ‘natural’ ontological and social hierarchy” (Schnapp, “Dante’s,” p. 202). This idea is still with us. See Angus Gordon, “Turning Back: Adolescence, Narrative, and Queer Theory,” GLQ 5, 1 (1999), pp. 1–24, in which he discusses similarly grammar-based arguments on the naturalness of grammar and its usefulness as a metaphor of sexual order, citing Nietzsche, Derrida, and Butler as authorities.
59. Ziolkowski, Alan of Lille, p. 68.
60. Boswell thinks that this song preceded the De planctu and that Alain is responding to some of its arguments (Christianity, p. 259 n.60). Ziolkowski (Alan of Lille, p. 36) notes that most critics see it the other way around: that it is Alain’s text that inspired the Ganymede and many others. Peter Dronke, ed., Cosmographia ([Leiden: Brill, 1978], pp. 11–12), noting that Alain’s Vix nosodum stages a similar debate in which the value of girls over married women is defended, and that it was composed in the same strophic form as the Ganymede and Helen, speculated that Alain might actually have been the author of both, certainly an intriguing possibility.
61. Text is from Etienne de Barbazan and D. M. Me´on, eds., Fabliaux et contes des po`etes fran¸cais des XI, XII, XIII, XIV, et Xme si`ecles, tir´es des meilleurs auteurs, 4 vols. (Paris, 1808; rpt. Geneva: Slatkine, 1976), I, 310. It is cited in Boswell, Christianity, p. 259 n.60. Translation is from Ziolkowski, Alan of Lille, p. 35.62. Ziolkowski, Alan of Lille, p. 68. Alain’s Anticlaudianus is a response to Walter of Chaˆtillon’s Latin epic, the Alexandreid, dated to 1181. Walter’s text reads: “Res specie similes in sexu dispare jungit; / Articulos genere sexus paritate coequat / Sintasis, ex toto cupiens concinna videri . . .” (Boswell, Christianity, p. 259 n.60).
63. “sic quatuor complexionum compar disparitas, inaequalis aequalitas, deformis con- formitas, diuersa idemptitas, edificium corporis humani compaginat” (Haring, De planctu, 826, 48–49).
64. “Et sicut contra ratam firmamenti uolutionem, motu contradictorio exercitus mili- tat planetarum, sic in homine sensualitatis rationisque continua reperitur hostilitas” (Haring, De planctu, 826, 52–54).
65. “Sed ab huius uniuersalitatis regula solus homo anomala exceptione seducitur, qui
pudoris trabea denudatus, impudicitieque meretricali prostibulo prostitutus, in sue domine maiestatem litis audet excitare tumultum, uerum etiam in matrem intestini belli rabiem inflammare” (Haring, De planctu, 833, 12–16).
66. Wetherbee, Poetry, pp. 49–50, and “Implications,” p. 50.
67. Wetherbee, “Implications,” p. 50. See, for instance, in Marie de France’s Lanval, how the spurned Queen brings her complaint to the King and similar scenes in the Roman de Silence and Gilles de Chyn.
68. Wetherbee, “Implications,” p. 51.
69. Bernardus Silvestris, Cosmographia, trans. and intro. Winthrop Wetherbee (New
York and London: Columbia University Press, 1973), p. 108.
70. When Alain re-creates a similar journey in his Anticlaudianus (Anticlaudianus or The Good and Perfect Man, trans. and commentary James J. Sheridan [Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1973], p. 132) he drops any discussion of the sexuality of Mercury or the products of his planet while retaining the de
scription of how Venus and Mercury are bound to one another (105). In his version, Mercury and Venus have been heterosexualized: they “cling in close embrace” and the song of one responds to the song of the other.
71. “(16) Intrant igitur, neque enim fas erat divertere Mercurii Venerisque circulos, ad se invicem et ad Solem perplexius intricatos. Et nisi conmissuras nodosque inter- sectionum Urania intentior deprehendisset, viarum ambagibus ad Solem, unde venerant, ferebantur. (17) De contiguo proximoque Mercurius, solaris orbite cir- cumcursor, ab eadem quam prevenit prevenitur, et, pro lege circuli reportantis, nunc supra Solem promovet, nunc inferior delitescit. Comunis ambiguusque, Cil- lenius in rebus quas siderea qualitate convertit venientem de moribus malitiam non ostendit, sed sodalis eum societas vel iustificat vel corrumpit: fervori Martio vel Iovis indulgentie copulatus, de proprietate participis suam constituit accionem. Epichenon – sexusque promiscui in comuni – signoque bicorpore ermofroditos facere consuevit. Huic igitur deo virga levis in manibus, pes alatus, expeditus accinc- tus, quippe qui deorum interpretis legatique numeribus fungebatur” (Dronke, ed., Cosmographia, 131: V, 16–17).