72. Theories of sexual difference in the Middle Ages characterized males as hot and dry, while moistness and cold are associated with the female. It is the heat of the male body that accounts for the production of sperm from nutriment. That Venus cancombine both qualities is already a sign of gender imbalance or excessive passion. See Cadden, Sex Difference, pp. 170–171.
73. “Cum Venus in Venerem pugnans, illos facit illas: / Cumque suos magica deuirat arte uiros” (Haring, De planctu, 806, 5–6).
74. Ziolkowski, Alan of Lille, p. 68.
75. “ut mee actionis manum dextera supreme auctoritatis dirigeret, quia mee scripture calamus exorbitatione subita deuiaret, nisi supremi Dispensatoris digito regeretur” (Haring, De planctu, 840, 233–234).
76. “In lateritiis vero tabulis arundinei styli ministerio uirgo uarias rerum picturaliter
sociabat imagines. Pictura tamen, subjacenti materiae familiariter non cohaerens, uelociter euanescendo moriens, nulla imaginum post se relinquebat vestigia”; “Tunc illa cedulam papiream huius epistolaris carminis inscriptione arundinis interuentu signauit” (Haring, De planctu: 821, 3–5; 871, 184–186).
77. “ne ab incudibus malleos aliqua exorbitatione peregrinare permitteret” (Haring,
De planctu, 845, 29–30).
78. “Incudam etiam nobiles officinas ejusdem artificio deputaui precipiens, ut eisdem eosdem malleos adaptando rerum effigiationi fideliter indulgeret, ne ab incudibus malleos aliqua exorbitatione peregrinare permitteret. Ad officium etiam scripturae calamum prepotentem eidem fueram elargita, ut in competentibus cedulis eiusdem calami scripturam poscentibus quarum mee largitionis beneficio fuerat conpotita iuxta mee orthographie normulam rerum genera figuraret, ne a proprie descriptionis semita in falsigraphie deuia eumdem deuagari minime sustineret” (Haring, De planctu, 845, 27–34). See Elizabeth Pittenger’s brilliant, gendered reading of Alain’s writing practices in “Explicit Ink.”
79. “Multi etiam alii iuuvenes mei gratia pulchritudinis honore uestiti, debriati pecu- nie, suos Veneris malleos in incudum transtulerunt officia. Talis monstruosorum hominum . . . ; “Hic nimis est logicus per quem conuersio simplex / Artis, nature iura perire facit. / Cudit in incude, que semina nulla monetat / Horret et incudem malleus ipse suam” (Haring, De planctu, 835, 78–81; 807, 25–28).
80. “cum Antigenio cepit concubinarie fornicari suique adulterii suggestionibus irretita
letiferis liberale opus in mechanicum, regulare in anomalum, ciuile in rus- ticum inciuiliter inmutauit meumque disciplinare inficiata preceptum, malleos ab incudum enheredans consortio adulterinis dampnauit incudibus” (Haring, De planctu, 849, 132–136).
81. Alain is more properly talking about the clerical milieu in general. He did not join the Cistercians until late in life so an early work like the De planctu was probably written for other clerics and reflects clerical as well as monastic interests.
82. G. Raynaud de Lage, Alain de Lille: po`ete du XIIe si`ecle (Paris: J. Vrin, 1951), pp. 182–
184. Sheridan notes that all commentators from 1220 to 1270 mention the Anti- claudianus while none mentions the De planctu. This would seem to invalidate Ziolkowski’s speculation that the text might have been written for, and used in, classroom instruction.
83. See Larry Scanlon’s discussion of euphemism and Alain’s association of the term
“nefandum” with homoeroticism: “To render something unspeakable is not only tospeak of it but to give it a paradoxical prominence, and Alain not only acknowledges this paradox but revels in it” (“Unspeakable,” pp. 218–219).
84. Jordan, Invention of Sodomy, p. 165.
85. “Non igitur mireris si in has uerborum prophanas exeo nouitates, cum prophani homines prophanius audeant debachari. Talia enim indignanter eructuo, ut pudici homines pudoris caracterem uereantur, impudici uero ab inpudentie lupanaribus commerciis arceantur” (Haring, De planctu, 836, 94–98).
86. “Quam postquam michi cognatam loci proximitate prospexi, in faciem decidens,
mentem stupore uulneratus exiui totusque in extasis alienatione sepultus sensu- umque incarceratis uirtutibus nec uiuens nec mortuus inter utrumque neuter lab- orabam. Quem uirgo amicabiliter erigens, pedes ebrios sustentantium manuum confortabat solatio meque suis innectendo complexibus meique ora pudicis osculis dulcorando mellifluoque sermonis medicamine a stuporis morbo curauit infirmum” (Haring, De planctu, 824–825, 4–10).
87. Though this opening is clearly an homage to Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy,
Alain’s Nature actually offers little consolation. Instead, she uses her appearance as an opportunity to vent her own rage and frustration.
88. “Et per hanc ammonitionem uelut quodam potionis remedio omnes fantasie reliquias quasi nauseans stomachus mentis euomuit” (Haring, De planctu, 830,
172–174).
89. “Sed potius eius apparentia uelut monstruosi fantasmatis anomala apparitione per- cussus, adulterina extasis morte fueram soporatus . . .” (Haring, De planctu, 830,
183–184). Note once again the association of Nature with the monstrous, an associ-
ation that accompanies the mention of sodomy in almost all of the texts discussed in this book.
90. Wetherbee suggests that allegories of Nature from the period always conflate two genders within the same figure: “a feminine appeal for recognition, vindication or fulfillment is set in confrontation with a masculine ratio, a principle or faculty responsible for realizing the implications of this appeal through order” (“Implica- tions,” p. 47).
91. “Huius in facie nulla feminee molliciei resultabant uestigia sed sola uirilis dignitatis regnabat auctoritas” (Haring, De planctu, 865, 10–11).
92. “in femineam degenerare uideretur molliciem” (Haring, De planctu, 865, 15–16).
93. As Mark Jordan (Invention of Sodomy, p. 169) notes: “It is difficult to find a single condemnation in the theological tradition that does not rely on misogynistic logic. They condemn violently anything feminine, but especially anything that seems to surrender masculine privilege.”
94. “Quid tuti superest, cum dolus armat / Ipsas in propria uiscera matres? . . . Esse pudicum / Iam cunctis pudor est absque pudore / Humanos hominis exuit usus / Non humanus homo. Degener ergo / Bruti degeneres induit actus / Se sic exhom- inans exhominandus” (Haring, De planctu, 852, 37–48).
95. “Que ab orthographie semita falsigraphie claudicatione recedens, rerum figuras
immo figurarum laruas umbratiles, semiplena picturatione creabat” (Haring, De planctu, 876, 84–85). Paris is the Trojan hero whose lust led to the Trojan war.Sinon brought the wooden horse into Troy, and Ennius and Pacuvius are poets who suffered from a lack of discipline.
96. “Cur decore deifico uultum deificaui Tindaridis, que pulcritudinis usum in mere- tricationis abusum abire coegit, dum regalis thori fedus defederans, fede se Paridi federauit?” (Haring, De planctu, 835, 68–70).
97. “Veneris tirones inuitabant ad oscula” (Haring, De planctu, 809, 21); “Vt ipse
tamen uultus loquebatur, non Dionea clauis eius sigillum reserauerat castitatis” (809, 34–35).
98. “ne maritus, sue coniugis turpitudine fastiditus, eius refutaret coniugia” (Haring,
De planctu, 825, 31–32).
99. Sheridan (Plaint, pp. 169–170 n.1) summarizes Nature’s thinking: “To sum up, gluttony is the daughter of idolatry; it leads to lust and is contrary to Nature.”
100. The gendered active/passive dichotomy is inherited from classical antiquity but it received new impetus in the writings of Thomas Aquinas, who declares in the Summa Theologica: “In every kind of reproduction there is an active and a passive principle. Since in all things in which there is a difference between the sexes, the active principle is in the male and the passive in the female, the order of nature demands that the male and female reproduce by sexual intercourse” (Question 98.2 in Sigmund, ed., St. Thomas Aquinas, p. 40).
101. Using different terms, Trevor Hope (“Sexual Indifference and the Homosexual
Male Imaginary,” diacritics 24, 2–3 [Summer/Fall 1994], p. 172) criticizes psycho- analytic and anthropological theories (Freud, The Origins of Religion; Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which is Not One, trans. Catherine Porter [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985]) which posit an occluded homosexuality as the origin of the symbolic, the base myth of patriarchal culture. In such theories, the founding of patriarchal culture “is troubled by evocations of passivity, loss, masochism, melancholia, and submission to judgment.” The De planctu naturae could be seen as an antecedent to such psychoanalytically informed theories of culture in that Alain, too, suggests that there is a homoerotic element inherent in human creation (symbolized here by language itself, grammar, and art) which must be overcome before the subject can attain agency.
102. Holsinger, Music, Body, and Desire, p. 163.
103. “Que michi pressa semel mellirent oscula succo, / Que mellita darent mellis in ore fauum. / Spiritus exiret ad basia, deditus ori / Totus et in labiis luderet ipse sibi, / Vt dum sic moriar, in me defunctus, in illa / Felici uita perfruar alter ego” (Haring, De planctu, 807–808, 45–50).
104. It is not surprising that the kiss signals a moment of semiotic meltdown. What
Glenn Burger pinpoints in the Pardoner’s kiss (Canterbury Tales) could be said as well of the De planctu: “If the Pardoner dangerously inverts ruling binaries, the kiss makes his otherness proximate and thus brings to consciousness our implication in the politics of inversion and perversion” (“Kissing,” p. 1152). See also Dinshaw on another pivotal kiss (“Kiss”).
105. “Qui a regula Veneris exceptionem facit anomalam, Veneris priuetur sigillo” (Haring, De planctu, 878, 150–151).106. “Sed quoniam ex matre sacietatis idemptitate fastiditus animus indignatur, cotid- ianique laboris ingruentia exsequendi propositum appetitus extinguitur, unitas operis tociens repetita Cytheream infestauit fastidiis continuateque laborationis effectus, laborandi seclusit affectum” (Haring, De planctu, 848, 120–124).
107. “Predicta igitur theatralis oratio, ioculatoriis euagata lasciuiis, tue puerilitati pro
ferculo propinatur. Nunc stilus, paululum ad pueriles tue infantie fescenninas digressus, ad seriale prefinite narrationis propositum reuertatur” (Haring, De planctu, 845, 17–20).
108. This is what might be called the traditional view but no recent critic has maintained this stand without many qualifications.
109. See n. 17 to this chapter.
110. Most readers acknowledge that this is true to some degree. Jordan (Invention of Sodomy, pp. 98–99), for example, notes the presence of jokes and mutations throughout the text, despite the condemnation of Jocus as a character (bastard offspring of Venus and Antigenius, the final blow against traditional marriage).
111. This is a simplification of Jordan’s (Invention of Sodomy) finely argued thesis.
112. Scanlon, “Unspeakable,” p. 226.
113. Ibid.
114. Ibid., p. 227.
115. In this regard, see David Rollo (“Gerald of Wales,” p. 180) on Gerald of Wales’ derivative (from Alain) stylistic maneuvers in his Topographia Hibernica. Con- cerning the referential integrity of that text, a text which in a similarly extravagant style accuses the Irish of perverse sexual practices and hermaphrodism: “the rel- evant chapters of the Topographia would be consistent with the De planctu, a particularly new and venereal sexuality emerging as the signified corollary of an equally new and venereal writing.”
116. Z izek, Plague, p. 7.
117. According to Z izek: “Fantasy is an attempt to fill out this lack of the Other, not of the subject: to (re)constitute the consistency of the big Other. For that reason,
fantasy and paranoia are inextricably linked; at its most elementary, paranoia is a belief in an ‘Other of the Other,’ in another Other who, hidden behind the Other of the explicit social textures, programmes (what appears to us as) the unforeseen
effects of social life, and thus guarantees its consistency . . .” (Z izek, “Da Capo,”
p. 253)
118. Z izek, Plague, p. 7.
119. Ibid., p. 8.
120. “Quidam uero, quasi etherocliti genere, per hyemem in feminino, per estatem in masculino genere, irregulariter declinantur. Sunt qui, in Veneris logica dis- putantes, in conclusionibus suis subiectionis predicationisque legem relatione mutua sorciuntur. Sunt qui, uicem gerentes suppositi, predicari non norunt” (Haring, De planctu, 835, 85–89).
121. “Miror cur poetarum commenta retractans, solummodo in humani generis pestes
predictarum inuectionum armas aculeos, cum et eodem exorbitationis pede deos claudicasse legamus. Iupiter enim, adolescentem Frigium transferens ad superna,relatiuam Venerem transtulit in translatum . . . Bachus etiam et Apollo, paterne coheredes lasciuie, non diuine uirtutis imperio sed supersticiose Veneris prestigio, uerterunt in feminas pueros inuertendo” (Haring, De planctu, 836–837, 115–122).
122. “Nec in hoc poeta a suae proprietatis genere degener inuenitur” (Haring, De
planctu, 837, 141–142).
123. “An interrogationem, que nec dubitationis faciem digna est usurpare, questionis querendo uestis imagine, an umbratilibus poetarum figmentis, que artis poetice depinxit industria, fidem adhibere conaris?” (Haring, De planctu, 837, 124–126).
124. “Aut in superficiali littere cortice falsum resonat lira poetica, interius uero audi-
toribus secretum intelligentie altioris eloquitur, ut exteriori falsitatis abiecto putamine dulciorem nucleum ueritatis secrete intus lector inueniat” (Haring, De planctu, 837, 133–136).
125. See n. 14 to this chapter (Haring, De planctu, 837–838, 143–145). But, as Jeffrey Schnapp points out: “sexual solecism . . . becomes the privileged site of the sacred body” (“Dante’s,” p. 205). “The incarnation is the solecism to beat all other solecisms, an exercise in poetic license so inordinate and striking that only one truly possessed with authorial authority, such as God, could get away with it” (Ibid., p. 206).
126. “Poete tamen aliquando hystoriales euentus ioculationibus fabulosis quadam ele- ganti sutura confederant, ut ex diuersorum conpetenti iunctura ipsius narrationais elegantior piectura resultet” (Haring, De planctu, 837, 137–139).
127. “Sed tamen, cum a poetis deorum pluralitas sompniatur uel ipsi dii Venereis ferulis
manus subduxisse dicuntur, in hiis falsitatis umbra lucescit” (Haring, De planctu,
837, 139–142).
128. “tanquam mundi elegans architectus, tanquam auree fabrice faber aurarius, uelut stupendi artificii artifex artificiosus artifex, uelut admirandi operis opifex . . .” (Haring, De planctu, 839, 202–203).
129. “Hee sunt ueris opes et sua pallia, / Telluris species et sua sidera / Que pictura suis
artibus edidit, / Flores effigians arte sophistica” (Haring, De planctu, 820, 21–24).
130. “Sed pocius se gramaticis constructionibus destruens, dialecticis conuersionibus destruens, dialecticis conuersonibus inuertens, rethoricis coloribus decolorans, suam artem in figuram, figuram in vitium transferebat . . .” (Haring, De planctu,
849, 142–144).
131. The more familiar Neoplatonic use of mirror imagery surfaces in the description of Truth: “the offspring of the generative kiss of Nature with her son at the time when the eternal idea greeted Hyle as he begged for the mirror of forms” (217–218) (“sed ex solo Nature natique geniali osculo fuerat deriuata, cum Ylem formarum speculum mendicantem eternalis salutauit Ydea, eam Iconie interpretis interuentu uicario osculata” [Haring, De planctu, 877, 94–97]).
132. “Narcisus etiam, sui umbra alterum mentita Narcisum, umbratiliter odumbratus,
seipsum credens esse se alterum, de se sibi amoris incurrit periculum” (Haring,
De planctu, 835, 76–78).
133. Frederick M. Goldin, The Mirror of Narcissus in the Courtly Love Lyric (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967).134. “Multi etiam alii iuuenes, mei gracia pulcritudinis honore uestiti, siti debriati pecunie, suos Veneris malleos in incudum transtuler
unt officia” (Haring, De planctu, 835, 78–80).
135. “Quoniam similia cum dissimilium aspernatione similium sociali habitudine grat- ulantur, in te uelut in speculo Nature resultante similitudine inueniendo me alteram . . .” (Haring, De planctu, 871, 189–191).
136. On the question of excommunication, see Scanlon, “Unspeakable,” p. 236–242.
Citing Elizabeth Vodola (Excommunication in the Middle Ages [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986]), he notes that the Second Lateran Council of 1139 instituted a new form of excommunication which took effect immediately upon commission. Though this was primarily a move to combat heresy, the link between heresy and sodomy was well established, and Alain might have been thinking along these lines when he instituted the figure of Genius to deliver his anathema. Death was not yet a usual sentence for heresy in Alain’s day but that was soon to change. Thomas Aquinas advocates that next step in the Summa Theologica: “As for the heretics themselves they have committed a sin that deserves not only excommunication by the Church but their removal from the world by death” (Question 11.3 in Sigmund, St. Thomas Aquinas, p. 63).
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