Authorship and First-Person Allegory in Late Medieval France and England 1843843137, 9781843843139

Table of contents :
Acknowledgements ix
Abbreviations xi
A Note on Names, Sources, and Translations xii
Introduction 1
1. “Comment ot nom”: Allegory and Authorship in the 'Roman de la Rose' and the 'Pèlerinage de la Vie Humaine' 19
2. “What so myn auctour mente”: Allegory and Authorship in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Dreams 59
3. “Thereof was I noon auctour”: Allegory and Thomas Hoccleve’s Authority 103
4. 'Verba Translatoris': Allegory and John Lydgate’s Literary Tradition 139
Coda 173
Bibliography 177
Index 197

Citation preview

BOYDELL & BREWER Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge IP12 3DF (GB) and 668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620-2731 (US) www.boydellandbrewer.com

AUTHORSHIP AND FIRST-PERSON ALLEGORY IN LATE MEDIEVAL FRANCE AND ENGLAND Stephanie A.Viereck Gibbs Kamath

Stephanie A.Viereck Gibbs Kamath

STEPHANIE A. VIERECK GIBBS KAMATH

is Assistant Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

AUTHORSHIP AND FIRST-PERSON ALLEGORY IN LATE MEDIEVAL FRANCE AND ENGLAND

The late medieval emergence of vernacular allegories recounted by a first-person narrator-protagonist invites both abstract and specific interpretations of the author’s role, since the protagonist who claims to compose the narrative also directs the reader to interpret such claims. The particular attributes of the narrator-protagonist bring greater attention to individual authorial identity. But as the authors of the allegories adapt elements found in each other’s works, their shared literary tradition unites differing perspectives: the most celebrated French first-person allegory, the erotic Roman de la Rose, quickly inspired an allegorical trilogy of spiritual pilgrimage narratives by Guillaume de Deguileville. English authors sought recognition for their own literary activity through adaptation and translation from a tradition inspired by both allegories. This account examines Deguileville’s underexplored allegory before tracing the tradition’s importance to the English authors Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Hoccleve, and John Lydgate, with particular attention to the mediating influence of French poetry by authors including Christine de Pizan and Laurent de Premierfait. Through comparative analysis of the late medieval authors who shaped French and English literary canons, this book reveals the cross-linguistic, communal model of vernacular authorship established by the tradition of firstperson allegory.

Gallica

Gallica Volume 26

AUTHORSHIP AND FIRST-PERSON ALLEGORY IN LATE MEDIEVAL FRANCE AND ENGLAND

Gallica ISSN 1749-091X General Editor: Sarah Kay

Gallica aims to provide a forum for the best current work in medieval and Renaissance French studies. Literary studies are particularly welcome and preference is given to works written in English, although publication in French is not excluded. Proposals or queries should be sent in the first instance to the editor, or to the publisher, at the addresses given below; all submissions receive prompt and informed consideration. Professor Sarah Kay, Department of French, New York University, 13 University Place, New York, NY 10003, USA The Editorial Director, Gallica, Boydell & Brewer Ltd., PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the end of this volume.

AUTHORSHIP AND FIRST-PERSON ALLEGORY IN LATE MEDIEVAL FRANCE AND ENGLAND

Stephanie A. Viereck Gibbs Kamath

D. S. Brewer

© Stephanie A. Viereck Gibbs Kamath 2012 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner The right of Stephanie A. Viereck Gibbs Kamath to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 First published 2012 by D. S. Brewer, Cambridge ISBN 978 1 84384 313 9 D. S Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate Papers used by Boydell & Brewer Ltd are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests

Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

Contents Acknowledgements ix Abbreviations xi xii A Note on Names, Sources, and Translations Introduction 1 1 “Comment ot nom”: Allegory and Authorship in the Roman de la Rose and the Pèlerinage de la Vie Humaine

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2 “What so myn auctour mente”: Allegory and Authorship in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Dreams

59

3 “Thereof was I noon auctour”: Allegory and Thomas Hoccleve’s Authority

103

4 Verba Translatoris: Allegory and John Lydgate’s Literary Tradition

139

Coda 173 Bibliography 177 Index 197

For Ravi and Teo with all my love

The author and publishers are grateful to the Office of the Vice-Provost for Research and Strategic Initiatives, University of Massachusetts, Boston, for generous financial assistance towards the production costs of this volume.



Acknowledgements I count myself fortunate to have been introduced to the joys of medieval literature by Per Nykrog, Kathryn Karczewska, Derek Pearsall, Dan Donoghue, Larry Benson, Becky Krug, and Susie Phillips, whom I thank for their teaching and for showing me the differing paths medieval scholarship could take. Direction for the path taken in this book came from my later mentors, Rita Copeland, David Wallace, Kevin Brownlee, and Emily Steiner, who offered me dedicated care, wise advice, and scholarly inspiration. Along the way, the following scholars generously shared work in advance of publication with me, or offered feedback on my work-in-progress, without which this book would have been the poorer: Fabienne Pomel, Frédéric Duval, Stéphanie Le Briz, Géraldine Veysseyre, Émilie Fréger, Julia Drobinsky, James Simpson, Ardis Butterfield, Larry Scanlon, Richard Emmerson, Sarah Kay, Jean Devaux, Jean-Pascal Pouzet, Caroline Boucher, Marco Nievergelt, AnneMarie Legaré, and Philippe Maupeu. I am deeply grateful to these scholars and to Jan Ziolkowski, Stella Panayotova, Julia Boffey, Adrian Armstrong, Alessandra Petrini, Matilda Bruckner, Jessica Boon, Mary-Jo Arn, and John Friedman, who offered crucial support in a myriad of forms, both intellectual and, in some instances, bureaucratic. Special acknowledgement is due to Derek Pearsall, Amanda Walling, Monica McAlpine, Mary-Jo Arn, and Jon Hsy for their service as readers in the last months of preparation. I also thank Sarah Kay and the anonymous readers for the press for their interest and constructive responses, and I thank Elspeth Ferguson and Caroline Palmer together for their patience and assistance with the transitions between project editors and into print. A preliminary version of the first chapter of this book appeared in Studies in the Age of Chaucer 32 (2010) and portions of the fourth chapter appeared in pieces published in The Chaucer Review and Glossator. I thank the editors and publishers of these journals for permission to rework these materials for publication here. The University of Massachusetts, Boston, granted me research release time and subvention support for this book, and particular thanks are due to the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs and the Dean’s office of the College of Liberal Arts; I am also grateful to my colleagues in the English department

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for their support and many kindnesses. Work on this book would not have been possible without fellowships from the University of Pennsylvania, the British Academy’s Neil Ker Memorial Fund, and the Huntington Library, and the conversations as well as the archival research that these fellowships enabled. Conducting research would have been not only more difficult but far less enjoyable without the kind hospitality extended to me by Jon Hsy and Colin Warner, Jennifer Higginbotham, Raeleen Chai-Elsholz, Clare Costley-King’oo, Marion Turner, and Nicolette Zeeman. I also appreciate the welcome and access to resources given to me by the community of scholars at King’s College, London, during my time there. My thinking on this project has benefited significantly from discussion with fellow participants in the University of Pennsylvania’s Medieval and Renaissance Studies Seminar, the London Old and Middle English Research Society, the Cardiff Conference Series on the Practice of Medieval Translation, the British Academy’s Poetic Knowledge in Late Medieval France Project, the Medieval Academy of America, the New Chaucer Society, the Centre d’études médiévales anglaises at Paris IV, the Harvard Medieval Seminar, the Dartmouth Medieval Studies Colloquia, and the 2011 colloquium on Guillaume de Deguileville’s allegories held at the Université de Lausanne; my gratitude belongs to all those who offered input and inspiration. My acknowledgements would not be complete without some recognition of how much this book owes to the encouragement that my family and friends gave me during the research and writing process. In particular, for their remarkable gifts of affection, care, and good sense, I thank Valerie Viereck Gibbs and Mignon Kamath, and I dedicate this book to my beloved Ravi and Teo Kamath.

Abbreviations Journals, Libraries, and Societies ChR MA MAe MLN MP N&Q PMLA SAC

The Chaucer Review Le Moyen Âge Medium Aevum Modern Language Notes Modern Philology Notes and Queries Publications of the Modern Language Association of America Studies in the Age of Chaucer

BnF Bibliothèque nationale de France British Library BL Bodl. Bodleian Library Cambridge University Library CUL Huntington Huntington Library New York Public Library NYPL EETS MRTS SATF

Early English Text Society Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies Société des Anciens Textes Français

Works by Guillaume de Deguileville (Digulleville) PA PJC PVH

Pèlerinage de l’Âme Pèlerinage de Jhesucrist Pèlerinage de la Vie Humaine PVH1 Pèlerinage de la Vie Humaine, c. 1331 PVH2 Pèlerinage de la Vie Humaine, c. 1355

A Note on Names, Sources, and Translations I follow the scholarly convention of referring to most medieval authors by their patronymic or toponymic bynames, e. g., “Chaucer” rather than “Geoffrey.” In the case of certain medieval authors, notably Guillaume de Lorris, Jean de Meun, Dante Alighieri, and Christine de Pizan, the vast majority of scholarship opts for first name reference, however, and I reproduce this practice. I should also note that the naming of the author of the Pèlerinage trilogy varies in current as well as medieval literature; I employ the name “Guillaume de Deguileville,” the spelling drawn from surviving manuscripts and employed in the editions cited, but the modernized spelling “Guillaume de Digulleville” also appears in my sources. In general, I have reproduced, instead of attempting to standardize, the presentation of texts found in the differing critical editions from which I quote, as well as the even more variant textual presentation seen in the manuscripts, incunables, or early print editions from which I have transcribed in the absence of a critical edition (as is the case for Deguileville’s PVH2, a number of early translations from Deguileville’s PVH, and Jean Molinet’s Roman de la Rose adaptation) or when only portions of a relevant text have been edited (as is the case for the Middle English prose translation of Deguileville’s PA and for Laurent de Premierfait’s Des Cas des Noble Hommes et Femmes). I have aimed to make quotations from non-English sources more readily accessible, however, by providing modern English translations within the main text. In many cases, I have been able to cite published modern English translations; modern English translations without citation are my own.

Introduction Le romant de la rose … est louurage tant incorpore en la memoire des hommes que de le coucher en aultre stille ne sera moindre nouuellete que de forgier vng nouuel .a.b.c. (The Romance of the Rose … is a work so fully incorporated into human memory that to couch it in another style will be no less of a novelty than to forge a new alphabet.) Jean Molinet, Cest le Romant de la Rose Moralise, fol. 5v1

The impact of history is present in every encounter with literature; literary works do not appear in an informational vacuum and are not static in their meaning. Yet the historical relevance of literature cannot be determined simply through reference to a coterminous series of events. The significance of literature depends upon the interactive process of literary reception, which is irreducible to external chronological progress. Literature has its own internal historiography, as authors and readers conceive of their objects through their intertextual experience, through the patterns and innovations of literary traditions. In this book, I trace the history of a seminal literary tradition defined as a network of textual affiliation, concerned not only with the interrelation of texts but also with their representation of that interrelation. My focus rests on the uses of allusion, citation, and translation within texts, rather than on the external timelines and situational preconditions enabling textual interrelation, and my basic assumption is that we are best able to reflect upon the way we engage with literature today when we pursue knowledge of how authors of a past era were reading, “imitating, outdoing, or refuting” as they read.2 1 All quotations from Molinet’s text refer to the 1503 edition printed in Lyons by Guillaume Balsarin. 2 I refer to the formulation of Hans Robert Jauss: “a literary object is not an object which stands by itself and which offers the same face to each reader in each period … a literary event

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The social, political, geographic, and economic contexts surrounding textual production draw ever increasing attention in recent literary studies, enriching our field of reference for textual meaning. But there is also value in literary history devoted to reflection on the contiguity of past and present readings, which aims “to present the historical sequence of works in the way in which they determine and clarify our present literary experience.”3 In this book, I present a sequence of works offering a new perspective on current literary discussions regarding form, authority, and language. I seek to show how a tradition of allegory spanning late medieval French and English literature invites interpretation of the authors engaged in its production and of their relationships to one another. The inaugural allegory for this tradition is the Roman de la Rose (Romance of the Rose), begun by Guillaume de Lorris, c. 1225–1245, and continued by Jean de Meun, c. 1268–1285. My focus in this book is the importance of the Rose to later medieval French and English authorial representation, but I should acknowledge at the outset that the influence of the Rose extends across Europe, shaping literary contexts throughout and beyond the medieval period. Jean Molinet, writing at the close of the fifteenth century, does not exaggerate too greatly in describing this late thirteenth-century dream vision as achieving the familiarity of an alphabet during the intervening span.4 One of the most widely read works composed in the Middle Ages, the Rose survives today in more than 250 manuscripts. Aside from Dante Alighieri’s Commedia, few medieval vernacular compositions can claim more surviving copies.5 The need for the qualification “vernacular” in describing the broad has no lasting results which succeeding generations cannot avoid. It can continue to have an effect only if future generations still respond to it or rediscover it—if there are readers who take up the work of the past again or authors who want to imitate, outdo, or refute it.” “Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory,” trans. Elizabeth Benzinger, New Literary History 2 (1970): 10–11. 3 Ibid., 9. 4 Molinet also promotes interest in his own labor as adaptor through this claim. In contrast to earlier critical neglect, no less than three essays in a 2006 collected volume on the Roman de la Rose discuss Molinet’s adaptation; the contribution of Jean Devaux, in particular, also announces his preparation of the first critical edition of the text. See “Tradition Textuelle et Techniques de Réécriture: Le Roman de la Rose Moralisé et Jean Molinet,” in De la Rose: Texte, Image, Fortune, ed. Catherine Bel and Herman Braet, Synthema 3 (Louvain: Peeters, 2006), 377–92. 5 Concise recognition of the wide readership of the Rose appears in Frédéric Duval, Lectures Françaises de la Fin du Moyen Âge. Petite Anthologie Commentée de Succès Littéraires (Geneva: Droz, 2007), 139. Catherine Bel and Herman Braet also reflect on the text’s popularity in the introduction to their collection: see “Quinze Ans Après,” in Bel and Braet, De la Rose, vi. Certain medieval readers considered Dante’s Commedia a by-product of the Rose, as I demonstrate in discussion of Laurent de Premierfait in the fourth chapter of this book.

INTRODUCTION 3

dissemination of the Rose points to one important aspect of that influence: the Rose demonstrates the flourishing of literary production in commonly spoken languages during the late Middle Ages. Scholars have devoted considerable energy to the investigation of how vernacular literatures gained prestige in this period, in relation or in contrast to the Latin literature empowered by the historic use of that language in classical and scriptural sources and by Latin’s medieval functions as the pre-eminent pan-European language for scholasticism, theology, and government.6 Indeed, the term “author” as used for the producers of the literature that forms the subject of this book does not carry the same weight that the term held in the Middle Ages, when selective use of the Latin term auctor expressed particular regard for a certain set of closely studied ancient and patristic sources.7 In a sense, however, my study of how vernacular allegory represented its producers reveals how valorizing notions of authorship came to be more widely applicable. The Rose claims greater attention and authority for vernacular authors through its innovative allegorical structure; it elevates the status of its authors, as well as that of the vernacular text, through the presentation of both as worthy of exegetical examination, ascribing to vernacular readers the role of interpreters. I offer a brief introduction to the Rose’s structure and its sources and reception here, subjects to which I will return throughout this book as I show how later authors, not only those writing in French but also writers of English, found in the allegory of the Rose a model for representing their literary activity and interrelations. The term allegory, designating “other-speaking” discourse, has been applied to many modes of reading and writing that discover, imply, or invent multiple layers of meaning for a text, fundamentally positing a difference between what is said and what is meant that requires interpretation.8 During the Middle Ages, the most striking kind of compositional allegory involved literary personification, a term used here in the broadest sense of granting voices and visualized forms to abstract ideas, emotional states, ethical 6 The foundational survey of medieval Latin literature remains Ernst Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard R. Trask (1953; reprint, New York: Harper & Row, 1963). Valuable scholarship focused more specifically on late medieval literary production in English and French includes Jocelyn Wogan-Browne et al., ed., The Idea of the Vernacular: An Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory, 1280–1520 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999) and Virginie Greene, ed., The Medieval Author in Medieval French Literature (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006). 7 On the Latin term, see Alastair J. Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages (London: Scolar, 1984), 10–12. 8 For a useful overview of allegory in its many forms within the European tradition, see Rita Copeland and Peter T. Struck, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Allegory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

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entities, euhemerized mythic deities, and absent or ancient historical or exemplary figures.9 The Rose presents a narrative structured by encounters with personifications, combined with the framework of a dream vision and a remarkable use of first-person voice; it is, as Sylvia Huot observes, “the first known example of extended first-person narrative in the French language.”10 The first-person voice, typically witnessed only in short fixed-form lyrics and dits in French, found a new role as both a character and a carrier of the author’s identity in the Rose. The voice of the Rose is fractured by participation in differing diegetic levels, as the narrator of the poem not only claims to be its author but also acts as the protagonist of the dream, subject to the control of personifications within it. Another kind of fracture in the identity of the poem’s first-person voice, the continuation of the text by Jean de Meun following the death of Guillaume de Lorris, is indicated at a central point in the conjoined Rose when both authors are named by the mythic personification, the god of Love, in a passage echoing Ovidian lament.11 The first-person narrator-protagonist of the conjoined Rose thus represents two different French poets, aligned with ancient Latin poets, yet also represents the “universal” male experience of subjection to love. The allegory’s readers are presumed to share this experience; the same passage that names the Rose poets describes the text as a mirror for lovers. Identifying its readers as lovers and inviting them to perceive their reflection in the text, the Rose claims to figure communal as well as individual experience. As the relation between 9 On the derivation and long history of the term and its correspondence to the rhetorical term prosopopoeia, as well as its importance to allegory, see Jon Whitman, Allegory: the Dynamics of an Ancient and Medieval Technique (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 4–6, and Appendix II, 269–72. Whitman’s particular attention to personification finds extension in the reappraisal of personification’s theoretical importance offered by James Paxson, The Poetics of Personification (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Although Paxson adopts a transhistorical approach of juxtaposition in place of tracing direct influence and avoids deific figures, his argument that personification in late medieval English texts encourages scrutiny of narratorial consciousness offers an intriguing complement to my study of the first-person narrator-protagonist of allegory in this book. 10 Sylvia Huot, From Song to Book: The Poetics of Writing in Old French Lyric and Lyrical Narrative Poetry (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987), 93. 11 Kevin Brownlee draws particular attention to the effect of the classical allusion in this passage, noting how the Rose deals with “the issue of authorial identity by setting the poem’s only instance of the authors’ names within a literary genealogy, a translatio.” “The Conflicted Genealogy of Cultural Authority: Italian Responses to French Cultural Dominance in Il Tesoretto, Il Fiore, and the Commedia,” in Generation and Degeneration: Tropes of Reproduction in Literature and History from Antiquity to Modern Europe, ed. Valeria Finucci and Kevin Brownlee (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 277. Alastair J. Minnis offers more extensive study of the relation between the Rose and Ovidian authority in Magister Amoris: The “Roman de la Rose” and Vernacular Hermeneutics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

INTRODUCTION 5

voice and authorial presence is signaled within the visionary landscape, not confined to the narrative of events exterior to the dream, the process of reading vernacular allegory necessitates investigation of the author’s identity and nature, directing attention to the author’s relation to the text as well as to readers and to the longer literary tradition. The Rose draws from earlier literature encompassing a range of erotic, scholastic, and ethical aims. In addition to Ovidian allusion, adaptation from the notable Latin precedents of Boethius and Alain de Lille shapes the Rose’s vision of encounters between authority-claiming personifications and a first-person interlocutor who bears the author’s name. Inviting the forms of interpretation granted to Latin literature through such intertextual continuity constitutes a claim to the earlier literary tradition’s authority, and it is thus a mark of success that one of the Rose’s fifteenth-century critics, Jean Gerson, includes in his complaints the accusation that speeches made by the allegorical characters in the Rose contradicted what they had said in Alain de Lille’s twelfth-century Latin allegory.12 Moreover, although the Rose is far from the first medieval text to incorporate the proper names of its writers, the Rose represents a highly significant development of authorial representation in vernacular poetry as its strategic use of first-person allegory is both widely influential and markedly different from earlier vernacular modes of inserting author-naming riddles or puzzles to engage the attention of readers. The first-person voice of the Rose received a new kind of presentation format not seen in earlier manuscripts of French works; medieval manuscripts of the Rose often feature rubricated divisions of the first-person voice that call attention to its multiple referential functions but that are far from stable in their placement.13 Like the presence and variability of medieval rubrics marking functions for this first-person voice in manuscripts, the complexity and multiplicity of the terms used in modern scholarship to describe the narrating voice in the Rose witness the challenges of attempting to retrieve from the allegory the internal image of its creator. In 1973, Evelyn Birge Vitz divided her discussion of the “I” of the Rose into the perspectives of narrator, dreamer, 12 Jean Gerson himself adopted the voice of a personification, that of Eloquance Theologienne (Theologian’s Eloquence), to express this complaint in his 1402 treatise. For Gerson’s text, see Christine de Pizan et al., Le Débat sur “Le Roman de la Rose,” ed. and trans. Eric Hicks, Bibliothèque du XVe Siècle 43 (Paris: Champion, 1977). For a helpful overview of Gerson’s treatise in context, emphasizing the significance of his choice to employ allegorical form and the French language, see Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, “Jean Gerson and the Debate on the Romance of the Rose,” in A Companion to Jean Gerson, ed. Brian Patrick McGuire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 317–56. 13 See Sylvia Huot, “‘Ci parle l’aucteur’: The Rubrication of Voice and Authorship in Roman de la Rose Manuscripts,” SubStance 17 (1988): 42–48.

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hero of dream, and real life hero.14 Attentive to the poem’s resonance with multiple genres, Sylvia Huot’s 1987 study sought to consider the functions of romance narrator and romance protagonist as distinct from the doubled aspect of the lyric persona, as a lover and as a poet, as well as from the scholastic roles of compiler or authority subsumed in the term a(u)cteur.15 Eva Martin in 1999 dubbed the voice of the Rose a hybrid collectif of authorial presence that was “essentially plural.”16 And Daniel Heller-Roazen’s 2005 work on the Rose almost despairingly described the medieval first-person voice as “something without any determined nature or properties, a work of artifice and fictio in every sense.”17 The art of the voice in the Rose lies in making the identification of the voice the product of interpretation, so each reading of the allegory asks for new investigation of the representational connections of this voice to extradiegetic author and reader roles as well as to the intradiegetic realm and what it conveys. I do not develop a new schema of categorization for the functions of the first-person voice in the Rose, the sort of detailed analysis appropriate to a study devoted exclusively to this element in the Rose; instead, I describe how the strategy of forging authorial representation through an interpretation-inviting voice traverses the intertextual nexus of an English tradition constantly re-infused with fresh borrowings from French allegory modeled on the Rose.18 My argument is that we cannot understand what vernacular authorship meant without attention to how it was represented via the voice of visions. 14 15 16

Evelyn Birge Vitz, “The I of the Roman de la Rose,” Genre 6 (1973): 49–75. Huot, From Song to Book, 83–105. Eva Martin, “Away from Self-Authorship: Multiplying the ‘Author’ in Jean de Meun’s Roman de la Rose,” MP 96 (1998): 15. 17 Daniel Heller-Roazen, Fortune’s Faces: The “Roman de la Rose” and the Poetics of Contingency (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 33. More radical readings of the voice of the Rose have been put forth by Roger Dragonetti and A. C. Spearing. Dragonetti proposes that the account of the transition between Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun provided in the Rose is entirely a fictional invention by a single author. “Pygmalion ou les pièges de la fiction dans le Roman de la Rose,” in Orbis Mediaevalis: Mélanges de Langue et de Littérature Médiévale Offerts à Reto Raduolf Bezzola à l’Occasion de Son Quatre-Vingtième Anniversaire, ed. Georges Güntert, Marc-René Jung, and Kurt Ringger (Bern: Francke, 1978), 89–111. A. C. Spearing posits what might be termed a “subjectless subjectivity,” according to which “the narrating ‘I’ is not constituted as a self or a character at all, but is merely a function of the process of narration.” Textual Subjectivity: The Encoding of Subjectivity in Medieval Narratives and Lyrics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 154. Neither external empirical truth nor subjectivity in the phenomenological sense is essential to the claims I am making about how the voice of the Rose mattered to the literary tradition, although both seem to me to have been of interest to medieval readers. 18 I tend to employ the term first-person narrator-protagonist, as the awkward hyphen gestures to the contingency in functions, the linked rather than fully unified roles articulated by this voice.

INTRODUCTION 7

The first-person narrator-protagonist of allegory as a figure for its author is an overt fiction, acting in the unreal realm of embodied abstractions, but this fiction is nonetheless the means of defining, and repeatedly redefining, a French and English literary lineage. Recognition of the vernacular author’s role within the medieval literary tradition did not transpire through greatly expanding mimetic reference to a historical life outside the narrative, but rather by more closely interweaving the author’s identity with the matter presented for interpretation. As the first-person voice claims to speak both within and beyond the imaginary world of the vision, the image of authorial identity presented by this voice takes shape only within the mind of the reader exploring the conflicting elements of such narration. Because these allegories claim to represent the sphere of action defining and producing the work within the work itself, they direct attention to the literary context and control of the extradiegetic textual creator. Allegory in this period brings its creator’s identity to the attention of readers through such internal figuration and thus differs from the frequently-cited model of authorial discourse developing out of a system based primarily on the external legal processes of ownership and responsibility established through payment or punishment, the historical background assigned to modern conceptions of the author-function by the theorist Michel Foucault.19 Denying, displacing, and fragmenting textual authority in figurative ways, allegory’s first-person narrator-protagonist invites readers to seek out the ties between the voice of this figure embedded in the text and its author(s), with reference to the intertextual community forged through literary production. This kind of allegory does not replace the representation of exemplary subject position(s), open to readers, with guidance to the recognition of the particular 19 The argument is most concisely expressed in Michel Foucault, “Qu’est-que c’est un Auteur?” Bulletin de la Société Française de Philosophie 63 (1969): 73–104. Roger Chartier’s more detailed study, while still centered upon juridical, repressive, and material evidence of authorship, represents a significant development of Foucault’s approach, suggesting the importance of textual affiliation and translation to early authorship as he claims that “la trajectoire de l’auteur porrait être pensée comme la progressive attribution aux textes en langue vulgaire d’un principe de désignation et d’élection qui, longtemps, n’avait caractérisé que les seules œuvres référées à une auctoritas ancienne et devenues des corpus inlassablement cités, glosés, commentés” (“the trajectory of the author can be thought of as a gradual change in the way texts in the vernacular were regarded, attributing to them a principle of designation and election that had long been characteristic only of works that were referred to an ancient auctoritas and that had become part of a corpus of works continually cited and tirelessly commented upon”). See Chartier, L’Ordre des Livres: Lecteurs, Auteurs, Bibliothèques en Europe entre XIVe et XVIIe Siècle (Aix-en-Provence: Alinea, 1992), 65–66; for the modern English translation, see Chartier, The Order of Books: Readers, Authors, and Libraries in Europe between the Fourteenth and Eighteenth Centuries, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), 58.

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authors and circumstances of production, but rather links these functions.20 Studies of authorship in late medieval English literature have recognized the flourishing use of first-person allegory after the Rose and the complexity in the function of this voice, yet typically contrast interest in authorial reference and allegorical aims. For example, J. A. Burrow’s survey of Middle English literature acknowledges that in poems structured as visions “the conventions of the genre dictated that the dreamer, if identified at all, should be identified with the poet himself” then cautions that “in many medieval first-person poems, the “I” speaks not for an individual but for a type.”21 My interest lies in what the conventions of first-person allegory mean for authorship, questioning the function of the attribution of authorial proper names or identifying features to voices that also claim to speak for others. Although interested in authorial self-reference, this book is not a study of autobiography or even “pseudoautobiography,” considering how allegory may represent the shape of an entire individual life.22 Instead, it investigates the conception of authorship conveyed by the first-person narrator-protagonist of allegory as a figure for 20 The classic statement on the medieval “I” holding an exemplary function rather than indicating particularity, in certain categories of literature, is expressed in Leo Spitzer, “Note on the Poetic and the Empirical ‘I’ in Medieval Authors,” Traditio 4 (1946): 414–22. George Kane influentially argues for a more complex interrelation of these categories, most directly in The Autobiographic Fallacy in Chaucer and Langland Studies: the Chambers Memorial Lecture, delivered at University College London, 2 March 1965 (London: Lewis, [1965]). In a brief survey of fifteenth-century English and French love poetry, Helen Phillips usefully characterizes the role of the narrator “from the Roman de la Rose onwards” as “above all the point of reception, combining writer and reader: an alter ego of the author certainly (as decades of debate about ‘autobiographical’ dream-narrators have exhaustively explored), but also … the alter ego of the reader or audience, experiencing the process of gradually entering the realm of fiction.” “Frames and Narrators in Chaucerian Poetry,” in The Long Fifteenth Century: Essays for Douglas Gray, ed. Helen Cooper and Sally Mapstone (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 71–97. Phillips suggests that this duality in function displays the survival of an “ancient detachment of the narrator-presenter from the narrative” inherited from a culture of oral tradition (ibid., 80); I read the duality as more directly connected to the articulation of a late medieval conception of authorship as inextricable from an on-going process of textual reception. 21 J. A. Burrow, Medieval Writers and Their Work: Middle English Literature and Its Background 1100–1500 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 43, 61. 22 The later term, posed in relation to the less specific category of fiction, rather than allegory, is proposed by Laurence de Looze, Pseudo-Autobiography in the Fourteenth Century: Juan Ruiz, Guillaume de Machaut, Jean Froissart, and Geoffrey Chaucer (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997). Philippe Maupeu offers a thoughtful consideration of how individual empirical and subjective life finds allegorical expression in the later Middle Ages, in Pèlerins de Vie Humaine: Autobiographie et Allégorie Narrative, de Guillaume de Deguileville à Octovien de Saint-Gelais (Paris: Champion, 2009). Although differing in focus, both studies gesture to the Roman de la Rose as an inaugural text for these forms and the importance that Maupeu accords to Guillaume de Deguileville’s allegory also coincides with my own approach, discussed further below and in the first chapter.

INTRODUCTION 9

textual production and interpretation. Late medieval allegories gesture to the identity of the author and create particular and individual textual attributions, but they do not do so in order to enable a stable, external guarantee of the boundary between a fictional world and a reality in which an author resides with an established coherent identity. Instead, authorial attribution created within allegory opens a space of negotiation between textual and extratextual reality. Allegory writes a kind of literary history that depends upon the fictionalizing of textual production, overriding while registering material and temporal barriers to communication: the figurative structure of allegory enables authors in the vernacular to imagine entry into dialogue with ancient poets and patristic fathers, allows geographically or linguistically separated individuals to inhabit one another’s voices, and, by complicating the process of creating meaning through language, dramatizes the interaction between authors and readers.23 Later authors reveal themselves as readers through their ability to encode their own identities through this structure. Allegory thus provides a communal model of author-function: authors enter into the same visionary landscapes, character voices, even texts (through translation) and reform them as their own, implanting their proper names or attributes in a way that begs attention and interpretation and yet leaves the imagined space open for further reformation. I argue that the function of these vernacular allegories most important to literary history is precisely their direction of the attention of readers toward their creation and creators, in addition to their more abstract moral, spiritual, even psychological (in its most impersonal sense) hermeneutic agendas. There is an increasing recognition of the new role assumed by allegory in the late medieval period. Studies of allegory that are attentive to historical development mark a significant change during this time, albeit a change heretofore described in relatively general terms. Jon Whitman’s masterful survey of dominant trends in allegorical figuration, beginning in late antiquity, hints in closing that allegory’s role alters in the late medieval period. Whitman suggests that “with the Romance of the Rose and the Divine Comedy, the individual’s constant movement outward to explore the figurative 23 Like the conception of vernacular authorship, the literary history produced by late medieval allegory matters more to current literary history than overt differences in form might suggest. The relation, as well as difference, is registered, somewhat obliquely, in Gordon Teskey’s argument that “the practice of literary history begins when the history of allegory ends.” Allegory and Violence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), 150. Teskey’s proposal that allegory disintegrates into literary history focuses on the violence allegory enacts on the materials of past visions in appropriating them for the expression of current thoughts and voices, rather than the perhaps equally brutal amputation of the past from the present that Teskey appears to posit as the distinguishing feature of the post-Enlightenment approach to earlier literary production, the approach described as allegory’s successor.

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world coincides with his constant movement inward to compose himself.”24 Christiania Whitehead’s study of architectural allegory, investigating the symbolic use of physical structures, similarly discovers a “new preoccupation with personal circumstances” that allegory begins to accommodate in the late Middle Ages, speaking more specifically of a “pull toward subjectivity in English poems of the fifteenth century.”25 Armand Strubel’s overview of the medieval French corpus of allegorical works and commentaries opens by remarking of the medieval dream vision that lorsqu’il est écrit à la première personne, il engage une modalité originale de la subjectivité, vide et universalle: le “moi” est dédoublé en narrateur et acteur, et les deux instances se projettent dans une temporalité différente; le sujet, confronté aux autres acteurs, personnifiés, acquiert un degré de généralité comparable à celui de ces figures. 26 (when written in the first person, it engages an original mode of subjectivity, empty and universal: the “me” doubles as narrator and actor, and the two instances project into a different temporality; the subject, confronted with other, personified, characters, acquires a degree of generality comparable to those of these figures.)

Yet Strubel notes a significant difference in the allegory of the Rose, which encodes “l’ingéniosité du poète” (the skill of the poet), and acknowledges that in the late Middle Ages, the play of personifications found in the Rose becomes almost ubiquitous and “a côté de ces tendances collectives, se multiplient désormais des œuvres qui témoignent d’une certaine originalité … elles portent la marque d’une voix singulière, derrière laquelle il est de plus en plus facile de découvrir un individu” (aside from these collective tendencies, there is henceforth a multiplication of works that witness a certain originality … these carry the mark of a singular voice, behind which it is more and more easy to discover an individual).27 Suzanne Conklin Akbari’s look at the intersection of allegory and optical theory likewise observes the remarkably self-referential nature of certain allegories, “particularly those of the later Middle Ages.”28 Scholars Rita Copeland and Kevin Brownlee 24 25

Whitman, Allegory, 262. Christiania Whitehead, Castles of the Mind: a Study of Medieval Architectural Allegory (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003), 260. 26 Armand Strubel, “Grant senefiance a”: Allégorie et Littérature au Moyen Âge (Paris: Champion, 2002), 45. 27 Ibid., 91, 172. 28 Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Seeing through the Veil: Optical Theory and Medieval Allegory (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), x. Akbari describes these allegories as those that

INTRODUCTION 11

have elucidated important medieval models of auto-exegesis, demonstrating how such models begin to serve vernacular texts and authors.29 We are ready to take a closer look at the ways in which medieval texts employ the selfconscious artifice of allegorical veiling to direct attention not beyond the text but into the text, crafting an examination of the text as a nexus of writing and reading selves. The tradition of first-person allegory encourages such metatextual reflection on the nature of vernacular authorship through the use of three interrelated figurative strategies, suggested above but worth itemizing here. First, the author’s name and other recognizable extradiegetic features are attributed to the narrating protagonist of the allegory. Such naming sets forth the author’s identity as part of the text to be interpreted, since the protagonist of an allegory, even when named, participates in an “other-speaking” narrative in which identities operate on multiple levels. The protagonist’s name or particular features typically appear in the context of encountering personifications. The invitation to interpret the relation of the external author to the first-person narrator-protagonist is thus conjoined with reflection upon the nature of what is personified, deploying the signifying functions of abstract and proper names simultaneously. Second, the narrator-protagonist claims to perform textual composition in the role of a servant or scribe for powerful personifications within the allegory. The allegories thus identify the narrator-protagonist as a scribe of divinely inspired words or as a copier or glossator of earlier authoritative texts; these roles resemble the literary activities already familiar in medieval scholastic and patristic traditions and also suggest the importance of patronage to textual production. Such internal figuration of composition asks readers to examine carefully the posture and conditions proper to vernacular authorship. Indeed, since the narrator-protagonist linked to the author’s extradiegetic identity and control serves the intentions ascribed to the intradiegetic characters of the allegory, the figuration of literary service constructs a vision of authorship that acquires coherence and authority only through the interpretation of readers. Third, certain textual passages within these allegories are presented as separate documents, ascribed forms such “pursue a different end, amplifying what should be the imperceptible mediation of the text into something which calls attention to itself, even at the expense of the allegory’s other, deeper meaning” (x). I consider the increasing self-reference as part of the deeper meaning that these allegories invited readers to discover through interpretation. 29 Copeland analyzes the relation of rhetorical figures and the authority claims made through vernacular translation in Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Brownlee offers a seminal account of authorial self-presentation in his study of the French poet Guillaume de Machaut: Poetic Identity in Guillaume de Machaut (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984).

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as charters, sermons, lyrics, or prayers. The creation, attribution, and use of documents thus embedded within the surrounding narrative serves to figure the external production of the narrative in which they appear, again directing attention toward the vernacular author. These embedded documents offer an especially fertile method of textual self-reference, encouraging reflection on the genre and the material form of the text. Although my argument rests for most part on the reading of texts, I give emphasis to passages that depict the material forms of text within the fictional framework of allegory. Such attention to the material form of texts was an increasingly important component of allegory in the late Middle Ages, and the greater recognition and authority granted to vernacular authors correlates with their growing involvement in aspects of physical production, such as layout and design, during the transition of medieval vernacular literature into primarily written forms of transmission.30 Where feasible, I support literary arguments with observations drawn from surviving manuscripts, through reference to relevant features of the visual layout or marginal comments and rubrics. In this way, I employ codicology as a servant rather than a dictator of literary study. Once devoted to the task of recovering a definitive, authoritative text from the variability of manuscript witnesses, codicology today often serves to encourage recognition and discussion of the multiple and divergent roles held by those involved in medieval textual creation.31 Material evidence reflects the special attention granted to the beginning of the literary tradition analyzed here; as noted above and discussed in the first chapter of this book, the rubricated presentation format in manuscripts of the Rose bear witness to its innovative form. I make an effort to consider manuscript presentation in relevant contexts; however, the flourishing of different material expressions of allegory is an absorbing subject of research in itself, best discovered in studies ordered by the dates and provenance of surviving material records rather than in studies ordered by literary composition and textual reception, as this one is. My focus on the shared figurative strategies of the allegories considered, and the representation of vernacular authorship these strategies generate, also takes precedence over discussion of the thematic engagements of

30 A useful, English-centered account of the importance of attention to the figurative power of material form appears in Emily Steiner, Documentary Culture and the Making of Medieval English Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). For the correlation between authorial status and forms of written production in relation to French literature, see Huot, From Song to Book. 31 Derek Pearsall offers a personal account of the shift in approach to manuscript study, allowing conjoined consideration of authorial intention and reception history, in “The Value/s of Manuscript Study: A Personal Retrospect.” Journal of the Early Book Society 3 (2000): 174.

INTRODUCTION 13

the allegories, the axiological pull exerted by the author’s veiled or overt ecclesiastic, didactic, civic, social, or gender-defining agendas. As authorial identity is figured within allegory, the strategies of authorial representation are also involved in advancing such agendas. But my aim is to demonstrate how allegory provides a means of envisioning the relationships of an author to literary activity, to other authors, and to readers; I emphasize this shared function rather than divide the tradition according to diverse thematic threads. Although the Rose represents an important contribution to the thematic tradition of Ovidian erotic lyric from which later dits amoreux also drew, the influence of the Rose’s allegorical strategies of authorial representation extends beyond courtly, love-centered narratives.32 Authors interested in conveying spiritual or moral messages through allegory also sought to present themselves as participating in the literary tradition through the figurative strategies found in the Rose, combining the direction of attention to salvific, sapiental, and ethical concerns with self-figuration, rather than choosing between the two. This study does not restrict its purview to allegories of amatory desire; instead it shows the interconnection of vernacular allegories more typically divided into the categories of sacred and secular. Although medieval scholastics drew a theoretical distinction between pagan fable and scriptural exegesis, also distinguished as the allegory of poets and the allegory of theologians, the application of this distinction to the actual practice of vernacular composition has been challenged repeatedly by detailed studies of late medieval texts.33 In the French and English tradition, the fourteenth-century pilgrimage allegories 32 Even C. S. Lewis’s The Allegory of Love, the study that codified the position of the Rose within a literary tradition defined by its concern with erotic passion, notes such expansion. Lewis suggests that Guillaume de Deguileville may be “the worst writer with whom the present study will have to deal” and does not distinguish John Lydgate’s English translation from Deguileville’s French poetry, but he nonetheless identifies Deguileville’s salvific allegory as playing a role worthy of recognition in the transmission of the influence of the Rose, a point too often unheeded today. The Allegory of Love (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1936), 268. 33 Although Jon Whitman posits that the distinction between “human texts and divine Scripture” is “never wholly resolved,” he argues that the processes of allegorical composition and interpretation repeatedly impact one another (Allegory, 105). For example, the Psychomachia of Prudentius is at once “the first to expand … personifications into continuous narrative” and “the first to compose a sustained allegory reflecting the figural interpretation of the Bible” (ibid., 85). David Aers states more bluntly that “the rigorous separation of non-Christian symbolical methods from Christian ones seems quite meaningless”; he notes, with reference to Boccaccio’s works, that “in spite of theoretical differences, the dominant allegorical modes of exegetes, preachers and poets showed a great deal in common, sharing figurative practices and models.” “Piers Plowman” and Christian Allegory (London: Edward Arnold, 1975), 10–11, 56–57. Rita Copeland and Peter Struck suggest that the distinction was deliberately blurred by medieval authors, particular those of the Rose: “medieval vernacular authors, notably Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun (authors of the Roman de la Rose), and spectacularly Dante, found that they could play with accepted distinctions between allegory as verbal trope and allegory

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of Guillaume de Deguileville exemplify how interest in the poetic voice forged through allegory traverses not only language but also such theoretical distinction. One of the earliest poets to respond extensively to the Rose, Deguileville crafts an allegory centered upon spiritual rather than erotic experience, Le Pèlerinage de la Vie Humaine (PVH) (Pilgrimage of Human Life), later revised and then set into an allegorical trilogy. Deguileville’s PVH re-employs the strategies of the Rose to encode authorial presence and to define literary lineage. Although both Deguileville’s PVH and the Rose contain the proper names of their poets, the names are not directly spoken or claimed by the first-person voice identified as the allegory’s narrator and protagonist but are instead introduced in a manner that ruptures the poem’s literal sense to demand allegorical interpretation of poetic identity. Deguileville’s allegorical trilogy represents an understudied but crucial conduit for the dissemination into English of the Rose’s innovative form; although only fragments survive of the fourteenth-century English translation of the Rose, the multiple extant translations from Deguileville’s allegories reveal the interest of English poets in adapting this complex form of authorial representation. I open this book with a chapter offering an overview of allegory and authorship in Rose and more extended analysis of how Deguileville’s first allegory and its later revision rework the Rose’s figurative discourse of poetic identity. I then structure my study of the interwoven French and English allegorical tradition into three chapters, each devoting particular attention to one of the self-naming poets whose first-person verse helped to define the Middle English literary canon in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: Geoffrey Chaucer (c.  1340–1400), Thomas Hoccleve (c.  1366–1426), and John Lydgate (c. 1371–1449). Each of these poets read and translated portions of Deguileville’s allegories as well as other French works inspired by the Rose. The Rose and the poetry of Deguileville had a remarkable influence on English authors, sparking a new movement in the history of allegory, and the difference in thematic grounds and axiological aims in the French allegories modeling this form for English authors suggests both the versatility and the pervasiveness of the form. In translating the first-person voice of French allegory, English poets created a new “I” incorporating their own individual perspective into an on-going tradition, not directly making authorial claims but encoding them through allegory. The fascinating interwoven tale of this tradition is purposefully broken into pieces that fall roughly chronologically with culminating focus on fifteenth-century English literature, least often given prominence in studies of the Rose’s influence.34 This is not the only way as theological or cosmological truth, in order to lay claim to much greater authority than traditionally accorded secular poetry.” Introduction to Cambridge Companion to Allegory, 5. 34 More substantial coverage of French Rose response appears in the foundational studies

INTRODUCTION 15

the story of this tradition can be told, nor does it even begin to incorporate all relevant texts; there are many other possibilities, from the productions of Chaucer’s contemporaries John Gower and William Langland to the sixteenth-century work of Stephen Hawes.35 I have chosen to focus on the group of works most tightly interlinked by the practices of translation and citation, in particular on the most recognized fifteenth-century formers of the English canon, Thomas Hoccleve and John Lydgate, because I want to provide a cohesive working model of the tradition for future study. Setting out this model, I conjoin consideration of how English authors respond to the strategies of authorial representation in their translations from French allegory with attention to the way in which these same strategies matter to other compositions by these authors, even works that do not conform to the visionary structure of allegory in other respects. I seek to show that the strategies explored through the translation of allegory also find expression through allegorical intrusions into other textual structures, such as tale collections. Delineating the tradition of first-person allegory in this fashion offers a new vision of the literary context for Geoffrey Chaucer’s poetry. The influence of the Rose on Chaucer is well recognized in scholarship, as Chaucer draws attention to his relationship to the Rose in his work, and early responses to Chaucer’s poetry by fourteenth- and fifteenth-century French and English authors repeat this emphasis.36 In addition to translating at least a section of the Rose, Chaucer also translated a section of Guillaume de Deguileville’s allegorical response to the form of the Rose, the PVH. Deguileville’s influence on Chaucer is less frequently remarked than that of the Rose, yet considering what these French allegories share makes more visible the way Chaucer’s strategies of authorial self-presentation participate in a cross-vernacular literary tradition. Drawing upon the earlier responses of Deguileville and of Pierre-Yves Badel, “Le Roman de la Rose” au XIVe Siècle: Étude de la Réception de l’Œeuvre, Publications Romanes et Françaises 153 (Geneva: Droz, 1980), and Sylvia Huot, The “Romance of the Rose” and its Medieval Readers: Interpretation, Reception, Manuscript Transmission (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). A number of late medieval French responses to the Rose, specifically intertextual relationships shaped by issues of gender, receive detailed attention in Helen Swift, Gender, Writing, and Performance: Men Defending Women in Late Medieval France, 1440–1538 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 35 Marco Nievergelt, for example, offers a detailed examination of the connection of Hawes to the allegory of Deguileville, in terms of a French and English allegorical tradition defined by the motif of quest. See Nievergelt, “Spiritual Knighthood, Allegorical Quests; The Knightly Quest in Sixteenth-Century England” (PhD diss., University of Oxford, 2007). 36 Charles Muscatine’s formative investigation of Chaucer’s French influences, for example, characterizes the poet as “the culminating artist of the French tradition” and identifies the Rose as the key representative of this tradition. Chaucer and the French Tradition: A Study in Style and Meaning (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957), 247.

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other French poets to the Rose, as well as the Rose itself, Chaucer crafts visionary narratives that direct readers to investigate his identity as a translator and an author, his relation to the literary tradition and to figures of English literary patronage. The strategies deployed in these visions remain important to Chaucer across the span of his corpus, including his best known work, The Canterbury Tales. The mediated nature of Chaucer’s relationship to the Rose is mirrored by the practice of the English poets who engage in translating and adapting later French Rose responses even as they depict Chaucer as the primary transmitter of the Rose. As I situate Chaucer’s practice within this legacy of more continuous transmission, I outline an English tradition open to a thematically-diverse array of French influence and describe the significant role this influence plays in the way later English poets signaled their own identities as well as their relation to Chaucer. Both Thomas Hoccleve and John Lydgate invoke Chaucer’s engagement with the Rose’s allegory, using the image of Chaucer as a translator to create a model of English allegorical writing as they perform their own readings of French works inspired by the Rose. Thomas Hoccleve, celebrated as the first autobiographical poet in English, translates portions of Guillaume de Deguileville’s and Christine de Pizan’s allegorical responses to the Rose, drawing strategies from these French allegories for representing himself and his relation to English readers. Hoccleve’s translation of Christine de Pizan’s allegory alludes to the role of Chaucer as the Rose’s English translator, adapting French allegory to create a model of English literary heritage. Moreover, the formation of authority through the figurative voicing of complaint found in Christine’s allegory and Deguileville’s embedded lyric is foundational to the form of introspective authorial discourse Hoccleve crafts, not only in his translations but also in other portions of the collection known as his Series. Although Hoccleve’s later writings are very much attuned to readers outside the text, directly addressing and also discussing his patrons, Hoccleve’s rhetoric of self-presentation relies upon first-person encounters with abstract personifications, displaying the close relation between the literary tradition inspired by the Rose and Hoccleve’s complex figurative claiming of authority. John Lydgate, even more concerned with the display of his literary heritage than Hoccleve, interpolates new allusions not only to his patron but also to the Rose and to Chaucer as he translates the allegory of Deguileville, interweaving the allegorical tradition and English literary history in The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man. The interest in first-person allegory, personifications, and the patterns of embedded text shaping this translation also extends to later works, notably Lydgate’s Fall of Princes; the Rose in truth provides more guidance than is commonly recognized for the form of authorial presentation found in the Fall’s immediate sources, Giovanni Boccaccio’s De Casibus Virorum

INTRODUCTION 17

Illustrium and its rendering in Laurent de Premierfait’s expanded Des Cas des Nobles Hommes et Femmes. Although Lydgate explicitly differentiates the English translator’s voice from the first-person voice attributed to his sources for the Pilgrimage and the Fall, he calls attention to what the voices share through his adaptations of the text’s allegory and guidance on its interpretation. Exhibiting the English translator as a contributor to French allegory, Lydgate writes a vernacular literary lineage through allegorical reading. Uniting consideration of these translations from different Roseinspired sources thus makes visible the significant relation of French allegory and the development of the first-person poetic perspective in English. As the growing field of translation studies attests, the act of translation is never merely linguistic; it is also a translation of reading practices and of the culturally-specific relationship between readers and authors.37 In tandem with the Latin literary models so successfully integrated into the allegory of the Rose, late medieval French literature represents an essential condition of development for literary production in English.38 It was, after all, during the late medieval surge in French to English translation that English became more fully established both as a language in the courts and as a language of courtly literature.39 Without joint examination of French counterparts, we 37 Lawrence Venuti’s manifesto on translation, for example, seeks “to explore the ways in which translation redefines authorship in literature” in conjunction with how translation “creates identities receptive to cultural difference.” The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference (London: Routledge, 1998), 3. Translation manuals also note that the form of translation from French and English, in particular, necessarily reflects cultural correlations. For example, Jean-Paul Vinay and Jean Darbelnet state that “if literal translations arise between French and English, it is because common metalinguistic concepts also reveal physical coexistence, i.e. periods of bilingualism, with the conscious or unconscious imitation which attaches to a certain intellectual or political prestige, and such like.” Comparative Stylistics of French and English: A Methodology for Translation, trans. Juan C. Sager and M.-J. Hamel (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1995), 34. 38 William Calin offers a masterful survey of influences to make this point in The French Tradition and the Literature of Medieval England (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994). More recently, Ardis Butterfield has enriched our understanding of the Francophone context of English writing, with sensitivity to the cultural nuances of French dialects including those native to England. The Familiar Enemy: Chaucer, Language and Nation in the Hundred Years War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 39 Douglas A. Kibbee identifies changes in the late medieval legal context as an important motivation for the teaching of French in England in For to Speke Frenche Trewely: The French Language in England, 1000–1600: Its Status, Description and Instruction (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1993). (For a challenge to Kibbee’s accompanying interpretation of the rise of this teaching as a sign of declining French use, cf. Butterfield, Familiar Enemy, particularly on p. 327 note 64.) As noted by Rita Copeland, “the persistence of the rhetorical theory of translation as ennobling exercise combines with the new prominence and respectability of English in teaching contexts to fuel the rising interest in translation as a literary practice.”

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cannot understand the full significance of medieval English literature. Whereas previous studies of the Rose’s influence on English literature have examined direct responses to the Rose or focused upon its thematic importance, I argue for a greater interrelation of French and English Rose reception crafted by English translation of the French allegories that most dramatically adapted the Rose’s strategies. Late medieval English translators created a new canon through undertaking the challenge of rendering French allegorical literature so as to reflect English participation in literary production. The allegorical tradition forged through such endeavor reveals the profound and crosscultural interest early readers had in the role of the vernacular author and the definition of poetic lineage.

“Vernacular Translation and Instruction in Grammar in Fifteenth-Century England,” in Papers in the History of Linguistics, ed. Hans Aarsleff, Louis G. Kelly, and Hans-Josef Niederehe (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1987), 152.

1

“Comment ot nom”: Allegory and Authorship in the Roman de la Rose and the Pèlerinage de la Vie Humaine Guillaume de Deguileville’s fourteenth-century pilgrimage allegories were among the most widely traveled literary texts of the Middle Ages. The Pèlerinage de la Vie Humaine (PVH) (Pilgrimage of Human Life), composed c. 1331, describes the journey through life as a pilgrimage toward the heavenly city of Jerusalem; Deguileville revised this allegory (c. 1355) before he composed two more pilgrimage allegories.1 The Pèlerinage de l’Âme (PA) (Pilgrimage of the Soul) (c.  1355) continues the first allegory, recounting the journey through heaven and hell taken by the pilgrim’s soul, while the Pèlerinage de Jhesucrist (PJC) (Pilgrimage of Jesus Christ) (c. 1358) envisions the life of Jesus in the form of another pilgrimage. Before the mid-sixteenth century, portions of the pilgrimage trilogy had inspired translations in English, Dutch, German, Latin, and Castilian, in addition to adaptations into drama and prose forms in French.2 Philippe de Mézières proclaimed Deguileville’s allegory necessary to those seeking the holy sites of the East and Deguileville’s allegory also drew near to the far West when Christopher Columbus drew names for new world islands from the Castilian translation.3 But the foreign shore offering the warmest literary reception to 1 On the basis for dating the trilogy, see Edmond Faral, “Guillaume de Digulleville, Moine de Châalis,” Histoire Littéraire de la France 39 (1962): 1–132. A few difficulties in dating are noted in the second chapter, on p. 69 note 30. 2 The most recent list of manuscripts, restricted to the texts of the French trilogy, and a list of editions and facsimiles for adaptations and translations from Deguileville’s trilogy in French, English, Dutch, German, and Castilian are provided in Frédéric Duval and Fabienne Pomel, ed., Guillaume de Digulleville: Les Pèlerinages Allégoriques, Actes du Colloque de Cerisy-La-Salle, 5–8 Octobre 2006 (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2008), 425–53 and 455–59. A list of manuscripts and incunables, including those representing unedited or reproduced adaptations and translations, appears at the opening of Guillaume de Deguileville, The Pilgrimage of Human Life, trans. Eugene Clasby, Garland Library of Medieval Literature, Series B, 76 (New York: Garland, 1992), xxxv–xlv. 3 For references to Deguileville as an exemplar, see Philippe de Mézières, Le Songe du

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Deguileville’s pilgrim was certainly England. Deguileville’s allegory shares structural and thematic elements with Piers Plowman and, as the next chapter will discuss, had an indisputable influence on Geoffrey Chaucer, whose only known complete translation from a single French source, the ABC, renders an acrostic lyric from the PVH.4 In fifteenth-century England, prose translations of the entire PVH and the later PA circulated along with verse translations from Deguileville’s allegory by Thomas Hoccleve and John Lydgate, two self-proclaimed disciples of Chaucer, whose uses of the allegory are the subjects of subsequent chapters. Widely recognized for its role in popularizing the literary pilgrimage genre, Deguileville’s allegory also witnesses another feature important to English readers: like the “Will” who narrates the vision of Piers Plowman, or the “Geoffrey” who recounts travel within the House of Fame, the narrator-protagonist of Deguileville’s allegory bears a name that readers interpreted as an authorial signature. Deguileville’s narrator-protagonist reflects the author’s source of inspiration as well as his name, declaring his dream to have been inspired by “le biau roumans de la Rose” (the beautiful Romance of the Rose).5 Deguileville’s PVH indeed constitutes one of the earliest substantial responses to the Roman de la Rose, the first major vernacular allegory to make extensive use of firstperson narration. As noted in this book’s introduction, the Rose presents a dramatic development in creating a first-person narrator who acts diegetically not only as the poem’s protagonist but also as an author, or rather as two authors, specific in identity and name, since the Rose acknowledges within its allegorical narrative that Jean de Meun continued and ended the poem more Vieil Pelerin, ed. G. W. Coopland, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 1:278, 304, 307, 377, 404, 405, 452, 455, 546, 572, 588, and 2:203, and Philippe de Mézières, Le Livre de la Vertu du Sacrament de Mariage, ed. Joan B. Williamson (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1993), 258–59, 332, 382. On the relation to the new world, see Valerie I. J. Flint, “Columbus, ‘El Romero’ and the So-Called Columbus Map,” Terrae Incognitae 24 (1992): 19–30. For an unpublished edition of Vincente de Mazuelo’s Castilian translation of the PVH, see “El Pelegrinage de la Vida Humana: A Study and Edition,” ed. Maryjane Dunn-Wood (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1985). 4 For study of Deguileville’s relation to Piers Plowman, see Guy Bourquin, “Piers Plowman”: Études sur la Genèse Littéraire des Trois Versions, 2 vols. (Paris: Champion, 1978); Dorothy L. Owen, “Piers Plowman”: A Comparison with Some Earlier and Contemporary French Allegories (London: University of London Press, 1912); J. A. Burrow, Langland’s Fictions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), especially pp. 113–118; and Steiner, Documentary Culture. 5 For the French text, see Le Pèlerinage de la Vie Humaine de Guillaume de Deguileville, ed. J. J. Stürzinger, Roxburghe Club Publications 124 (London: Roxburghe Club, 1893), line 11. All subsequent citations of the PVH1 refer parenthetically by line number to this edition. For the English translation, see Pilgrimage of Human Life, p. 3. All subsequent citations of the modern English PVH1 translation refer parenthetically by page number to this edition.



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than forty years after the death of Guillaume de Lorris. Forms of signature practice that require reader interpretation are not new to the late Middle Ages, but the particular manner of signature popularized by the Rose marks a significant change. Although twelfth-century romance writers, including Chrétien de Troyes, Béroul, Thomas d’Angleterre, and Marie de France, name themselves within their works, such naming typically appears as exterior to the story in some fashion, in a third-person prologue or colophon, or as an aside within the text. The names of these writers are not presented as part of the protagonist’s identity and these texts do not present the entire narrative primarily as a subject for readers’ interpretation, frequently affiliating their matter with history instead.6 Naming in the Rose links authorial identity to the first-person narrator-protagonist through the interpretation of readers and the significance of this development to later representations of authorship has been widely recognized.7 Deguileville’s PVH is only beginning to gain recognition as a significant influence on models of vernacular authorship, despite its explicit citation of the Rose and the breadth of its medieval reading community.8 The lack of modern editions may have contributed to the low profile of these allegories

6 For study of Chrétien de Troyes’s naming and narration, representing this alternative tradition of authorial self-reference, see David F. Hult, “Author/Narrator/Speaker: The Voice of Authority in Chrétien’s Charrete,” in Discourses of Authority in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, ed. Kevin Brownlee and Walter Stephens (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1989), 76–96. 7 Michel Zink, citing H. R. Jauss, argues that in the “Roman de la Rose, allegory for the first time expresses not the movements of the soul in general, but rather the narrator’s own subjectivity.” “The Allegorical Poem as Interior Memoir,” trans. Margaret Miner and Kevin Brownlee, Yale French Studies 70 (1986): 118. Zink speaks of Guillaume de Lorris’s Rose; I also discuss Jean de Meun’s continuation of the Rose. Cynthia Brown’s account of authorial development in sixteenth-century France similarly emphasizes the seminal role of the conjoined Rose, claiming “the narrator’s voice gained prestige … through its association with the firstperson voice of the protagonist.” Poets, Patrons, and Printers: Crisis of Authority in Late Medieval France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), 202. 8 Important steps in this direction can be found in Ursula Peters, “Geistliche Kontrafaktur des Roman de la Rose: die Eingangsbilder des Französischen und Deutschen Pèlerinage de la Vie Humaine,” in Das Ich im Bild: Die Figur des Autors in Volkssprachigen Bilderhandschriften des 13. bis 16. Jahrhunderts. Pictura et Poesis 22 (Cologne: Böhlau, 2008), 140–62, and Maupeu, Pèlerins de Vie Humaine. Peters approaches the relation through the lens of manuscript art and describes authorial indications as opposed to the dictates of allegory. Maupeu’s masterful survey of a French tradition of allegories offering autobiographical reflection points to Deguileville’s allegory as the first significant exploration of the combination. Although Maupeu’s study differs from mine in its interest in the autobiographical as a category exceeding authorial representation and in its restriction to the consideration of French works, his emphasis on the importance of Deguileville’s experimentation with allegory as a means of self-characterization is a complement to my own approach.

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in literary studies today, but the common description of Deguileville’s work as “moralizing” may also play a role in obscuring the complexity of Deguileville’s response to the Rose and his allegory’s subsequent influence.9 Both the earliest version of the Pèlerinage de la Vie Humaine (PVH1 hereafter) and its later recension (PVH2 hereafter) have been characterized as a monastic corrective to the Rose’s questionable morality. Scholarship on the Rose imagery reworked in Deguileville’s allegory has concentrated on the moral implications of alterations, sometimes citing the differences between the PVH1 and the subsequent and less widely dispersed PVH2 as evidence of Deguileville’s increasingly sharp critique of ethical laxity in the Rose.10 One often noted alteration in the PVH2 is the removal of the opening passage from Deguileville’s PVH1 that identified the Roman de la Rose as its inspiration. In fact, Deguileville’s PVH2 both removes the name of the Rose from its opening and later withholds the names of the Rose authors, Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, despite the addition of a claim that the allegory’s narrator-protagonist could name the author of the Rose: “Scay bien / Qui le fist, et comment ot nom” (55v-56r) (I know well who made it and what his name was).11 This claim typifies Deguileville’s wider 9 In contrast to adaptations of Deguileville’s allegories, the allegories themselves are less accessible to modern scholars. The Roxburghe Club’s nineteenth-century editions of Deguileville’s trilogy do not include the recension of the PVH. Moreover, the projected fourth volume of notes was never completed due to the deteriorating mental stability of the editor, J. J. Stürzinger. No modern edition of the recension of the PVH exists, although two printed editions appeared in the sixteenth century. 10 Most studies focus on the more accessible first version. See, for example, Steven Wright, “Deguileville’s Pèlerinage de Vie Humaine as ‘Contrepartie Édifiante’ of the Roman de la Rose,” Philological Quarterly 68 (1989): 399–422, or Rosemond Tuve, Allegorical Imagery: Some Mediaeval Books and their Posterity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966), 145–218. Exceptions that give detailed attention to both versions suggest varying ways of understanding their differences. Pierre-Yves Badel suggests that Deguileville’s original, despite its opening description of the Rose as beautiful, was “implicitement … déjà un Anti-Roman de la Rose” (implicitly … already an Anti-Romance of the Rose). “Le Roman de la Rose” au XIVe Siècle, 375. John V. Fleming relies upon the hypothesis of Deguileville’s “slowly maturing personal pique” to explain the difference in Rose characterization. “The Moral Reputation of the Roman de la Rose before 1400,” Romance Philology 18 (1965): 433. Sylvia Huot’s ground-breaking study of the Rose presents a more extended codicological consideration of Jean de Meun’s and Deguileville’s texts, speculating that the Deguileville’s “greater uneasiness in 1355 might even be explained by his having encountered the Rose in an unexpurgated, non-B manuscript.” “Romance of the Rose” and its Medieval Readers, 228. Most recently, Philippe Maupeu hypothesizes that Deguileville’s alterations as a whole represent a greater commitment to the autobiographical elements of the narrative brought on by accusations of necromancy. Pélerins de Vie Humaine, 92–96. 11 For ready access in the absence of a modern edition, all quotations from Deguileville’s PVH2 refer parenthetically by folio to the PVH2 in the early printed edition of the trilogy, Le Romant des Trois Pelerinaiges (Paris: Barthole Rembolt and Jean Petit, [c. 1510–1511 or 1514–



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explorations of the power to reveal, or to conceal, the figure of the author within allegorical narrative, explorations that bear a striking similarity to the manner of signaling author names within the Rose. Although the poems of Jean de Meun and of Guillaume de Deguileville contain the proper names of these poets, the names are not directly claimed by the first-person voice that interjects as an author in both of these poems. In the PVH, as in the Rose, proper names create poetic identity only through rhetorical estrangement, rupturing the poem’s literal sense and the diegetic framework to demand allegorical interpretation. Deguileville’s poem draws upon the allegorical strategies employed to figure authorship within the Rose and incorporates these strategies into his program of ideological rewriting. As I note in subsequent chapters, studies of Deguileville’s influence on English writers have frequently been couched in terms of shared moral or religious interests, often to the exclusion of attention to poetic practice. But Deguileville’s interest in the Rose extended beyond moral reformation and Deguileville’s signature practice within his edifying allegory matters to the development of authorial representation. The allegories inspired by the Rose form the very first coherent, inter-referential tradition of narratives routinely employing the device of a first-person narrator-protagonist to arise in French or English literary history, so the relationship between the new role of the first-person voice and authorial self-naming merits careful consideration.12 After describing the naming strategy within the Rose, I will demonstrate how Deguileville’s engagement with the Rose shapes his own use of naming and develops from the PVH1 to the PVH2. Given the importance of readers’ interpretation to the discovery of the author’s identity within these 1518]). The comma in the second line quoted here represents a slash mark in the source. The printed PVH2 is a text modified by an anonymous monk of Clairvaux, altering Deguileville’s Anglo-Norman metrical patterns and phrases in numerous instances; on these alterations, see Josephine Elizabeth Houghton, “The Works of Guillaume de Deguileville in Late Medieval England: Transmission, Reception and Context with Special Reference to Piers Plowman” (PhD diss., University of Birmingham, 2006), 91–107. Aside from such minor modification, the content of the early printed edition I cite corresponds to what I have seen in medieval manuscripts (Paris, BnF, F. Fr. MSS 825, 829, 1138, 3646) and in a transcription of Paris, BnF, F. Fr. MS 377, courteously provided by Philippe Maupeu, except when otherwise noted. For a discussion of the relative dating of the Rembolt and Petit edition in comparison with the other early printed edition of the PVH2, Le Pelerinage de l’homme (Paris: Anthoine Vérard, 1511), see Edmond Faral, “Guillaume de Digulleville, Jean Galloppes et Pierre Virgin,” in Études Romanes Dédiées à Mario Roques par Ses Amis, Collègues et Élèves de France, Publications Romanes et Françaises 25 (Paris: Droz, 1946), pp. 96–97 note 2. Philippe Maupeu presents an argument for the anteriority of the Vérard edition in his Pèlerins de Vie Humaine, p. 316 note 1. 12 There are natural affinities to the first-person voices of earlier lyric and riddling traditions, of course. On the integration of the lyric model with the narrative drive of romance in the Rose, see Huot, From Song to Book, 83–105.

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allegories, I support the conclusions reached through literary analysis with brief references to codicological evidence of reception. A closer examination of Deguileville’s narrator-protagonist and his naming ultimately offers us a new understanding of how—and why—the form of allegorical authorial representation found in the Rose traversed not only linguistic boundaries but also sacred and secular agendas in the late Middle Ages. Allegorical and Authorial Logics in the Roman de la Rose Current accounts of developments in medieval authorship theory commonly predicate an oppositional relationship between authorial recognition and allegorical interpretation. The opening of the thirteenth century, the context in which the Roman de la Rose emerges, is typically depicted as a time of expanding interest in human authorship and of a simultaneous decline in the extensive allegorical exposition of scripture, exegesis that directed attention away from human writers’ intentions toward God as author of all.13 Allegorical exegesis like that applied to scripture, however, is the means of disclosing the human author within the vernacular allegory of the Rose. The narrator of the Rose claims to be protagonist, poet, and exegete of the text, demanding the attention of readers. The first-person voice of the Roman de la Rose is fractured not only through encounters with psychomachiac forces but also by its connection to two different authors. Yet both Rose poets describe their endeavors in terms that playfully invoke the varying definitions of authorship within scholastic traditions of exegesis. Guillaume de Lorris opens the Rose with the narrator’s promise that there is a hidden meaning enclosed within his dream. Suggesting that his dream is worthy of such serious consideration and commentary as Macrobius devoted to Ciceronian dream narrative, he insists that it is prophetic of later events. The promise of hidden prophetic meaning is repeated immediately before the narrator-protagonist recounts the commandments given to him by the dieu d’Amours (god of Love); he declares that a glose (gloss) will demonstrate the fulfillment of all that happens in the dream. The posture of conveying the words of a god and the promise of revelation resemble the claims of gospel writers and the typological terms 13 This view is most directly expressed in Alastair J. Minnis’s seminal account, reflecting the focus on scholastic sources. Minnis claims that in the twelfth century “the primacy of allegorical interpretation had hindered the emergence of viable literary theory” concerning authorship, by attributing authorship to God, a connection unfathomable by human understanding. Exegetes, in Minnis’s terms, “cleverly allegorised away” the role and problems of human authorship and a new interest in human authorship arose only in the wake of the “decline in extensive allegorical exposition of Scripture.” Medieval Theory of Authorship, 5, 48, 143.



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of scriptural exegesis.14 Jean de Meun’s continuation further delineates the narrator-protagonist’s pose with the added claim of being a compiler, merely reproducing with minor additions the words of “li poete” (15207) (the poets [259]) who served the same god.15 This argument appears when the firstperson narrator-protagonist of the Rose pauses in describing the action of the allegory in order to address female readers, declaring that his role is merely that of recounting ancient, authoritative texts: s’il vos samble que je di fables, por manteür ne m’an tenez, mes aus aucteurs vos an prenez qui an leur livres ont escrites les paroles que g’en ai dites. (15186–90) (if it seems to you that I tell fables, don’t consider me a liar, but apply to the authors who in their works have written the things that I have said. [259])

Commenting upon or compiling texts were literary activities famously distinguished from full authorial responsibility in St Bonaventure’s early argument for the recognition of Peter Lombard’s role as the author of the Libri Sententiarum (Books of Wisdom). In Bonaventure’s formulation, the greatest role is clearly that of the auctor (author), defined as one who writes and arranges his or her own material in addition to that of others. The least activity is that of the scriptor (scribe), one who does no more than recopy the words of others. Between these two roles fall those of the compilator

14 I do not claim more than a playful resemblance; the posture is not stable and the promise is not recognizably fulfilled. The Rose employs the rhyme pair of “songe” (dream) and “menconge” (lie) repeatedly, as observed in Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, “Remarques sur Songe / Mesonge,” Romania 101 (1980): 386. The initial promise of a dream that is not a lie must be reconsidered in the context of other poetic passages; in the section of Guillaume de Lorris, for example, the god of Love tells the lover he will have bewildering, false dreams and, in the addition of Jean de Meun, Nature describes lovers’ dreams as deceptive and Ami (Friend) instructs the narrator-protagonist to pretend to his lady that he has had unusual dreams about her. 15 All quotations from the Rose refer by line number to Le Roman de la Rose, ed. Felix Lécoy, 3 vols., Classiques Français du Moyen Âge, 92, 95, 98 (Paris: Champion, 1965–1970, repr. 1982–1985). Modern English translations refer by page number to The Romance of the Rose, trans. Charles Dahlberg, 3rd ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995). The term “poet” in medieval literature typically identifies authoritative producers of classical verse, instead of simply a composer of verse, the more general modern sense of the word used in this study.

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(compiler), who arranges and joins others’ works, and the commentator, who adds explanations to the work of the compiler.16 Each of these differing levels of activity assumes a prior text, producing an image of the medieval text as inevitably mediated, the expression of ancient knowledge re-written by many hands. The inextricable connection of the divine with this model of textual production further distances the role of the human writer from textual genesis, as God is recognized as the ultimate author of both the cosmos and the book most central to Christian culture.17 David F. Hult has related these scholastic formulations of literary activity to the combination of poet and protagonist roles in the vernacular Rose, arguing that “an abstract philosophical conception of authorship certainly contributed to the view of writing as a symbolic gesture and to the resultant elimination of the boundary between the ‘internal’ fictional account and the ‘external’ circumstances of its creation.”18 The conception of authorship as service to a deity becomes a dramatic element in the allegory of the Rose, particularly in Jean de Meun’s continuation. Jean connects the narrator-protagonist’s posture as exegetical commentator with this model of authorship. Just before the bold disclaimer of primary authorship before female readers, the narrator-protagonist addresses male lovers, urging them to listen in order to receive the favor of the god of Love: “Or antandez, leal amant, / que li dieu d’Amors vos amant” (15105–6) (Listen now, loyal lovers, so that the God of Love may help you [257–58]). This address reminds readers of a speech delivered by the god of Love, significantly positioned by Jean de Meun at the mid-point of the conjoined Rose texts. In this speech, Love refers to the text as a favorable service to loyal lovers, declaring the Rose to be worthy of the new title, “le Miroër aus Amoreus” (10621) (The Mirror for Lovers [188]). This same speech, re-naming the work, is also the only passage that records the names of Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun. Exploiting the supposedly neutral or “non-authorial” nature of allegorical interpretation, Jean inscribes authorial control through the words attributed to the allegorical character Love, who

16 Not only the application of these terms but also the passage defining them was subject to medieval textual mouvance, however; more surviving manuscripts have the reading “commentator et auctor” than the more contextually correct “commentator non auctor” at this point due to careless (or creative?) scribes. See Bonaventure, Opera Omnia, ed. Quaracchi friars, 10 vols. (Florence: Quaracchi Order of Friars, 1882–1902), 1:15 note 1. 17 Bonaventure’s delineations of literary activity used to affirm Lombard as an auctor are in fact posed as a response to the claim that “Solus Christus est doctor et auctor” (Christ alone is teacher and author). Ibid., 1:15. 18 David F. Hult, Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: Readership and Authority in the First “Roman de la Rose” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 61.



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claimed emotive control over the narrator-protagonist from the start of the Rose and who claims authority over its readers here. Love both names the Rose’s authors and usurps their authority.19 He begins by lamenting that Guillaume de Lorris, who began the work, is on the point of dying, and that Love’s other literary servants, Ovid, Gallus, Catullus, and Tibullus, have died. Love then predicts that Jean de Meun, who is not born, will finish the work as his clerk, writing the words Love plans to sing over Jean’s cradle. Speaking of the writing of the Rose in the future, and the action of the quest in the present, Love depicts roles of both Guillaume and Jean not as compositors but as scribes and exegetes. He claims to direct their actions and inspire their words, declaring that once the quest of the dream has finished Puis vodra si la chose espondre que riens ne s’i porra repondre. Se cist conseill metre i peüssent, tantost conseillié m’en eüssent; mes par cestui ne peut or estre, ne par celui qui est a nestre, car il n’est mie ci presanz. (10573–79) (Then he [Jean de Meun] will want to explicate the affair in such a way that nothing can remain hidden. If they [Jean or Guillaume] could have given their counsel in this matter, they would have given it to me immediately; but that cannot now take place through Guillaume nor through Jean, who is yet to be born, for he is not here present. [188])20

Jean de Meun thus uses the figure of Love claiming control to signal the text’s authorship within its allegory, simultaneously presenting the names of the authors and denying the presence and control of the authors within the narrative frame. Rather than the text being overtly explicated and controlled by an authorial “master,” readers must interpret the actions and dialogue ascribed to personifications to determine the role of the text’s author(s) and to perceive their own textual engagement as readers. The quotation above, in which a personification declares the absence of the authors, is set within the first-person narration of a dream by a figure

19 Daniel Heller-Roazen similarly calls attention to this passage as central in staging “a double movement in which identification and the loss of identity, the ascription of names and their withholding, cannot be told apart, a movement in which the constitution of the poetic subject provokes his simultaneous deconstitution as such.” Fortune’s Faces, 53. 20 The names in brackets are added to this passage from Dahlberg’s translation for the sake of contextual clarity.

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who claims the text as his composition. This condition must not be forgotten: the apparent absence of the author position within the allegory is an overt literary device, like the dream frame itself. The explicit declaration within the narrative that Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun are absent, not ci presenz, points to their authorial presence and extradiegetic control of the narrative. Here the practice of signature is exploiting the semantic duality of allegory, a mode of writing that promises a meaning that exceeds and can even contradict the words of the text. Staging the meaning of the text as beyond the interpretative control of the author invites the interpretative control of the reader, but the subject of interpretation is the author’s identity. Indeed, interpretation is the only method of discovering the author(s) within the text. Read figuratively, the insistence of Love on the absence of his “scribe” Jean de Meun reveals the presence of Jean de Meun as an author, the creator of the personification of Love who names the poet as his absent servant and describes exactly where Jean’s verse begins. To discover authorial presence we must read by contraries, as Love’s prophecy not only disrupts the first-person frame of the dream but also its temporal progression: the lines cited by Love as marking the transition between the verses of Guillaume and those added by Jean have already occurred in the poem. A similar conflicting mixture of temporalities marks the opening of the Rose by Guillaume de Lorris. Guillaume’s first-person voice combines and shifts between the temporal perspectives of the dreamer, the loverprotagonist within the dream, and the poet-narrator who recounts the dream. The complex first-person voice in Guillaume’s poem, identified as a writer and an exegete as well as a character, may well have inspired Jean to mark his own distinct presence within the first-person voice as a continuer, using the temporal disruption of Love’s after-the-fact prophecy. Medieval readers read the authorial claims staked within the first-person voice and the prophecy of the god of Love attentively. As the pioneering codicological work of Ernest Langlois, Lori Walters, David F. Hult, and Sylvia Huot demonstrates, visual markers such as rubric divisions distinguish perspectives within the firstperson voice in medieval manuscripts, and various kinds of authorial portraits are inserted in the passage containing the central speech of Love and at the earlier point of authorial transition that the speech indicates.21 21 Important studies include Ernest Langlois, Les Manuscrits du “Roman de la Rose”: Description et Classement (Paris: Champion, 1910) and Ernest Langlois, Origines et Sources du “Roman de la Rose” (Paris: E. Thorin, 1891); Lori Walters, “Author Portraits and Textual Demarcation in Manuscripts of the Romance of the Rose,” in Rethinking the “Romance of the Rose”: Text, Image, Reception, ed. Kevin Brownlee and Sylvia Huot (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), 359–73, and Lori Walters, “Gui de Mori’s Rewriting of Faux Semblant in the Tournai Roman de la Rose,” in The Medieval Opus: Imitation, Rewriting, and



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Particularly striking evidence of attention to the speech of Love is found in the case of Gui de Mori, celebrated by Sylvia Huot as the “only known Rose poet who preserved the distinction between Guillaume and Jean while still creating his own explicit presence in the text.”22 Gui recognizes that the speech Jean attributes to Love indicates authorial presence through describing Jean’s (and Guillaume’s) absence. Gui, revising the poem, mimics Jean’s strategy to encode his own presence by interpolating further prophecy within this passage. Gui first claims his name is present at the opening of the dream, through linguistic play on the gate or “guichet” that leads to the garden of Love.23 Yet Gui also depicts himself as absent and unborn, since he has Love declare desci en sui devins. Guis de Moiri avra a non, Mais il n’ert pas de tel regnon Com cis Jehans ne chil Guillaumes.24 (I know of him through divination. He will have the name Gui de Mori, but he will not be of such renown as this Jean nor that Guillaume)

Like Jean’s use of proper names or Guillaume’s first-person voice, Gui’s interpolation conveys knowledge of his poetic role only when interpreted figuratively by readers. Gui’s identity as a reviser of the allegory becomes recognizable only through disruption of the literal sense and linear temporal progression in Love’s speech. The staking of authorial claims within the Rose in a figurative, rather than a literal manner, was not only noted but also imitated by its medieval readers.25 Transmission in the French Tradition, ed. Douglas Kelly (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996), 261–76, and Lori Walters, “Illuminating the Rose: Gui de Mori and the Illustrations of MS 101 of the Municipal Library, Tournai,” in Brownlee and Huot, Rethinking the “Romance of the Rose,” 167–200; Hult, Self-Fulfilling Prophecies; and Huot, “Romance of the Rose” and its Medieval Readers and Huot, “Rubrication of Voice and Authorship in Roman de la Rose Manuscripts.” 22 Huot, “Romance of the Rose” and its Medieval Readers, 332. 23 Hult, Self-Fulfilling Prophecies, 48–49. 24 Gui de Mori’s interpolation is reproduced in Le Roman de la Rose, ed. Ernest Langlois, 5 vols., SATF (Paris: Firmin-Didot / Champion, 1914–1924), vol. 2, p. 256. 25 Indeed, David F. Hult ascribes medieval interest in the Rose to the very aspect of the text enlarged upon by Gui de Mori. Observing this new authorial inscription within the first-person voice of the allegory, Hult remarks: “Considering that Jean de Meun performs precisely the same reversal on Guillaume de Lorris, who in turn predicated his account on the intimate and interchangeable relationship established between lover and writer at the outset, we might here be approaching an understanding of the fascination exercised by the Rose fiction on its succession of readers.” Self-Fulfilling Prophecies, 50. Of course, the Rose itself may have developed its

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Rewriting Reason: Self-Naming in the PVH1 Guillaume de Deguileville’s PVH1 and PVH2 constitute the first extended creative response to this allegorical technique of naming, reproducing the textual as well as the codicological effects of the Rose. Deguileville’s representation of his own authorial role and his discussion of authorial-naming in Rose once again insert attention to authorship in the context of allegoresis. Interpreting his allegory requires negotiating the complex interaction between divine inspiration and human intention, the present and absent function of the author, and the relative authority granted to personifications and to the narrating protagonist in order to create allegory. One character takes a central role in guiding the narrator-protagonist through Deguileville’s first exploration of authorship within allegory: Raison, the personification of reason. In the Roman de la Rose, the personification of Reason claims to be the daughter of God, acts as an unsuccessful rival to Love, and memorably explores the logical relation of divine creation and human language in a discussion sparked, in most manuscripts, by Reason’s explicit and colloquial naming of male genitals as “les coilles” (5507) (testicles [113]), much to the surprise of the narrator-protagonist. In Deguileville’s PVH1, Reason does not rival a god of Love but rather Grace de Dieu (God’s Grace), and Deguileville names this character as God’s daughter, identifying Reason as subordinate to Grace.26 Deguileville’s Grace names Reason, grants her the commission necessary for her to carry out her task, and exceeds Reason’s comprehension and power to interpret for the narrator-protagonist at times. Although Deguileville’s Reason thus no longer claims all the authority of Christian divinity, she retains from the Rose both her interest in the logic of naming and her ability to surprise the narratorprotagonist. In the PVH1, Reason’s explorations of naming relate even more specifically to the formation of allegorical and authorial identity and this former rival of the god of Love assumes a role in authorial presentation like that held by the god of Love in the Rose. Reason’s arguments about the difference between the human and the divine in Deguileville’s text provides the most explicit clue to the author’s technique through borrowing from Raoul de Houdenc’s Songe d’Enfer, which opens with a meditation on the truth of dreams, features a first-person narrator-protagonist who travels to Hell as a pilgrim and serves as a clerk by reading aloud for the king of Hell, who names him as Raoul only in the context of revealing that he comes from everywhere on earth. See The “Songe d’Enfer” of Raoul de Houdenc: An Edition Based on All the Extant Manuscripts, ed. Madelyn Timmel Mihm (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1984), lines 1–7, 411–16, 613–29. 26 The debate over the Eucharist between Aristotle, ally of Reason and Nature, and Sapience, ally of God’s Grace, establishes the greater authority of Grace. As this chapter notes, Grace’s authority is also emphasized by the extension of her role in Deguileville’s PVH2.



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name and the manner in which Reason suggests the author’s name is reminiscent of the Rose moment of naming. Both transpire in an allegorical context that requires rhetorical estrangement. To discover the author’s name and to understand the narrator-protagonist’s role, readers must consider the meaning of the claims within the narrative and their converse, extradiegetic meaning. Moreover, codicological evidence demonstrates medieval readers’ particular interest, and even participation, in the strategy of authorial naming voiced by Deguileville’s Reason, reinforcing the significance of the attention to authorial naming witnessed in Rose manuscripts. As noted above, Deguileville’s PVH1 cites the Rose by name at its opening. The first-person narrator-protagonist claims that he read the Rose immediately before falling into the sleep that produced the PVH’s allegorical dream and declares: “Bien croi que ce fu la chose / Qui plus m’esmut a ce songier / Que ci apres vous vueil nuncier” (12–14) (I am sure that this was what moved me most to have the dream I will tell you about in a moment [3]). The intertextual relation thus woven into the framework of the allegory was also emphasized in many manuscripts by a colophon reminding readers that Deguileville’s allegory was inspired by the Rose.27 Aside from such rubrics, however, after the initial mention of the Rose, Reason is the only character to invoke the Rose explicitly within Deguileville’s PVH1. She cites the Rose within her early sermon as a demonstration of her opposition to Carnal Love: “Amour charnel (tout) hors m’enchace … Ce verrez vous tout sans glose / Ou roumans qui’est de la Rose” (879, 881–82) (Carnal Love drives me out completely … You can see this plainly in the Romance of the Rose [14]).28 Reason’s citation of the Rose as a source that demonstrates her nature encourages readers to examine Deguileville’s personification Reason 27 “Chi fine le romans du moisne / Du pelerinage de vie humaine … Prins sur le roman de la rose / Ou lart damours est toute enclose” (Here finishes the monk’s Romance of the Pilgrimage of Human Life … drawn from the Romance of the Rose in which the art of love is entirely enclosed); Stürzinger reproduces this colophon and others in the notes to his PVH edition, p. 423. Arras, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 845, which contains selected excerpts from the Rose, along with the PVH1, offers a more specific interpretation of the relation of the two texts: a rubric describes Deguileville’s text as “fais par poeterie, comme li Livres de le Roze, qui est en grant partie de philozofie, mes cilz pelerinages est de theologie” (fol. 103r) (composed in poetry, like the book of the Rose, which concerns philosophy for the most part, but this Pilgrimage concerns theology). For analysis and description of scribal activity in this manuscript, see Huot, “Romance of the Rose” and its Medieval Readers, 231–38. 28 Contemporary scholars have read Reason’s citation of the Rose here in differing ways; as noted above, Fleming sees it as rather neutral, Badel as implicitly condemnatory. See Fleming, “Moral Reputation of the Roman de la Rose,” 430, and Badel, “Le Roman de la Rose” au XIVe Siècle, 375. Whether or not the allusion constitutes a critique of the Rose’s contents, this naming of the Rose demonstrates Deguileville’s interest in the earlier work’s poetic techniques, borrowing a salient rhyming pair (“rose / glose”) from the Rose.

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in the specific context of the Rose. Moreover, it is Reason, the character who names the Rose, who includes Deguileville’s name within the allegory, during a debate with the narrator-protagonist concerning the relation of body and soul. The context of Reason’s speech on this matter within the PVH1 establishes both the complexity of the identification and its resemblance to the logic of naming found in the Rose. The debate is found in the second book of the allegory, which opens with the narrator-protagonist wondering why he finds the armor of virtues that Grace entrusted to him too heavy to bear, given that his maidservant, Memoire (Memory), can carry it with ease. Immediately thereafter, Rude Entendement (Poor Understanding) obstructs the way until Reason counters his obstruction. The narrator-protagonist asks Reason to help him understand his weakness in comparison to Memory. In good philosophic tradition, Reason answers his question with another set of questions.29 Did he pay attention to the earlier teaching of Grace, who gave him both the armor and Memory? Does he know whether he is single or dual in nature? As the confused narrator-protagonist begs explication from her, Reason unfolds an account of internal division, claiming that he cherishes an enemy who destroys his strength. The narrator-protagonist twice asks Reason to tell him the name of this enemy, expressing his intention to find and to kill the enemy (5802, 5843). Reason then names the enemy as the narratorprotagonist’s own body and flesh, declaring “autrement nommer ne le sai” (5874) (I do not know what other name to call him [80]). The narratorprotagonist cries out, “Ai je songie ou songiez vous?” (5876) (Have I been dreaming? Or are you dreaming? [80]), but Reason insists that this is not “c’on doie appeler songe” (5886) (anything that could be called a dream [80]). Reason’s further questioning displays the narrator-protagonist’s selfdivision through conflicting desires for his spiritual goal and for his physical comfort. When the narrator-protagonist asks who he is, if he is not his physical body, Reason’s response is an emphatic negation of human lineage: “Dieu est ton pere et tu son fil, / Ne cuides pas que soies fil / (A) Thomas de Deguileville” (5963–65) (God is your father and you are his son. You must not think that you are the son of Thomas de Deguileville [81]). These lines, naming Thomas de Deguileville, the father of Guillaume de Deguileville, are the most explicit clue to authorial identity found in the PVH1. Readings of the allegorical relation of body and soul in this passage must therefore recognize that the moment at which the narrator-protagonist learns 29 There is a particular resonance between the response of Deguileville’s Reason and the discourse Boethius attributes to Philosophy in De Consolatione, especially as Reason asserts the value of self-knowledge as foundational to all learning and greater than any other possession (see lines 5937–40).



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who he is not—his body—is simultaneously the moment at which the author reveals to his readers who he is, namely, the son of Thomas de Deguileville.30 The “literal” identification of the narrating figure in this passage is as the fragmented Everyman, the universal soul of psychomachiac drama; the “figurative” meaning affirmed by the specificity of the overt denial is in fact the author’s personal name. The logic bears a striking resemblance to the moment in the Rose when the allegory of the quest becomes a figure of the text’s composition, and the personification Love denies the textual control of both authors, thus inscribing a record of it. In the Rose, the firstperson narrator-protagonist (and initial author) is named as Guillaume de Lorris only after death disrupts the united identity of Guillaume and this character; Love predicts that Guillaume will die before Jean’s portion of the narrative begins. In Deguileville’s PVH1, the naming scene suggests that the narrator-protagonist within this dream must “kill” his body in order to be himself, revealing identity through rupture. Like its counterpart in the Rose, the naming scene in the PVH1 also clashes with the dream frame device of the text. Once again, a personification argues for a reality that exceeds the fiction of the framing text. Love within the Rose insists that both the narrating figures who dream of him are absent, their bodies entombed or unformed; Reason insists that the narrator-protagonist of Deguileville’s dream is neither dreaming in the dialogue with her, nor defined by his bodily identity, the enemy who has his name. Moreover, the later direct debate between the narrator-protagonist’s body and soul at an allegorical crossroads occurs at the mid-point of Deguileville’s text, the point that the author-naming speech of Love occupies in the Rose. Looking at the context of the passage presenting the names of the authors in the Rose reveals how Deguileville’s own self-naming takes form through rewriting it. Immediately prior to Love’s speech, the narrator-protagonist of the Rose complains of a doubled self, lamenting his confusion about how to act: “Ainsinc m’entencion double oi, / n’onc mes nul jor ne la doubloi” (10271–72) (In this way I had a double intention, but it was never I, on any occasion, who made it double [183]). When Love thereafter accuses him of treachery for listening to Reason, the narrator-protagonist declares he will henceforth never follow Reason but live and die according to the law of Love

30 In this introduction of named identity, Deguileville’s allegory provides a marked contrast to the vast majority of body and soul debates, although Hildebert of Lavardin’s twelfth-century Liber de Querimonia offers perhaps the earliest precedent. For a useful recent consideration of the complications posed by Hildebert’s association of his name and his body, see Masha Raskolnikov, Body against Soul: Gender and “Sowlehele” in Middle English Allegory (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2009), 56–63.

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(10337–38). Intending to die in the act of serving Love, he imagines those who behold his corpse saying or est il voirs, sanz point de fable, bien iert ceste mort convenable a la vie que tu menoies quant l’ame avec ce cors tenoies. (10351–54) (now it is true, without any fable whatever, that this death is indeed suitable to the life that you led when you kept your soul together with this body. [184])

These lines, which announce an involuntary division within the first-person narrator-protagonist and imagine his corpse after he rejects Reason, are traditionally read as ironic foreshadowing of the following passage in which Love announces that Guillaume will die after writing the first debate with Reason. Deguileville’s allegory takes up this program of elaborating upon fissures in the universal or moral self—the opposition between Love and Reason, the discord between body and soul—to signal allegorically a specific poetic identity for the increasingly fragmented first-person voice. The narratorprotagonist of the Rose imagines himself as a deserted corpse before Love names the authors and denies their bodily presence; Deguileville’s allegory echoes the strategy of naming and denying and also reworks the Rose narratorprotagonist’s vision, since Reason concludes her negation of human lineage by temporarily extracting the soul of Deguileville’s narrator-protagonist from his body, enabling him to see it as a corpse. Deguileville’s allegory, like the Rose, thus depends upon the fragmentation of the speaking subject in creating moments of authorial identification.31 Deguileville’s first-person voice combines the perspective of dreamer, narrator, and protagonist; of soul and body; of the universal pilgrim in whose identity the reader can participate and also of Thomas de Deguileville’s son, the individual poet. Codicological attention to the authorial naming passage of Deguileville’s work does not witness quite the same level of activity as the Rose’s moment of authorial naming, perhaps in part due to the smaller number of extant manuscripts.32 Nonetheless, there is significant evidence of 31 On the relation of the debate with Reason to other elements within the poem—most notably, the Eucharistic debate between Sapience and Aristotle—representing an idea of the medieval subject as inherently fragmented, see Sarah Kay, The Place of Thought: The Complexity of One in Late Medieval French Didactic Poetry (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 79–81. 32 Certain manuscripts of the PVH1, including Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 5071, do place a marginal “nota” beside this passage.



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interest in this passage as a clue to authorial identity. One fourteenth-century manuscript, for example, draws attention to the name “Deguileville” in this passage, placing a hand pointing to this line in the left margin immediately beside it.33 A similar hand appears beside the name of “Guillaume,” when it is indirectly introduced in the earlier passage in which the narrator-protagonist receives the armor Memory bears for him. Here, Grace presents the armor as inherited, giving the gorget of Sobriety along with the reminder that “De ceste gorgiere jadis / Fu arme l’abbe de chaalis / Saint Guillaume to(n) bo(n) parrin” (4153–55) (Once, the Abbot of Chaalis, Saint Guillaume, your good patron saint, was armed with this gorget [55]). The scribe here has chosen to spell out the nature of his interest in these lines below the pointing hand in the bottom margin: “no(ta), que p(ar) ce peut on dire que lacteur de ce liure ot non Guill(au)m(e) et fu moinne de Chal[is]” (35v) (note, by this one can tell that the author of this book had the name Guillaume and was a monk of Chaalis). The same scribe also displays an evidently compatible interest in the allegory’s application to readers: for example, the scribe glosses the narrator-protagonist as the universal “pelerin,” and a trimmed away rubric only slightly earlier in the text shows that the scribe was equally eager to call attention to the more abstract moral message of the arming passage: “Gorg[ie]re c[e] est l[a so]br[i]ete” (35r) (This gorget is Sobriety). But the hands in the manuscript located so as to draw special attention to the names “Guillaume” and “Deguileville” clearly point to a medieval desire to discover authorial identity through the interpretation of allegory. Recognition of the debate between Reason and the narrator-protagonist as an authorial naming scene is also demonstrated by an emendation found in two fifteenth-century manuscripts of a French prose translation of the text. Here a name has been added to the line denying the narrator-protagonist’s human identity: “Tu es filz et enfant de dieu ne cuides pas que tu soyes filz a thomas de deguilleuille ne a pierre gaultier” (You are son and child of God; do not think that you are son to Thomas de Deguileville or Pierre Gaultier).34 This may be the name of the person who adapted the poem into prose but refused to name himself or herself in his dedicatory prologue, or of a later reviser or reader; the insertion is not witnessed in all prose manuscripts, so its relation to the translation’s creator is not certain.35 The 33 34

New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M 1038, fol. 51r. See Geneva, Bibliothèque publique et universitaire, MS fr. 182, fol. 75v, and Paris, BnF, F. Fr. MS 1646, fol. 72r. Emphasis mine. 35 Tuve noted the appearance of this emendation in the 1504 Lyons printed edition produced by Claude Nourry and argued for its adoption as the name of the prose translator. See Tuve, Allegorical Imagery, 216. Having examined the manuscripts as well as the editions, I am more cautious about such attribution, as the name appears in only two of the eight extant manuscripts

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presence of the insertion where it does occur, however, shows that this passage definitely acted as an authorial signature for at least one medieval receiver of the text, who sought to participate in the text through the adoption of this technique. Like Gui de Mori’s insertion of his name when the Rose’s authors are identified as absent, the addition of Gaultier’s name beside the Deguileville’s denied paternal name supports the idea that the interpretationinviting placement of proper names in the mouths of personifications was a significant method of marking authorial identity within allegorical narrative. Both the Rose and the PVH also found similar responses in instances of foreign language translation, although these translations typically replace the proper names found in passages of these works with different names, instead of adding to the names that appear. One Middle Dutch translation of the Rose, for example, replaces the allegorically-encoded naming of Guillaume de Lorris with a passage in which Love gives the narrator-protagonist the name of the translator, “Siet hier van Brusele Henrecke” (See here Henrecke from Brussels), and Love prophesys the creation of a Dutch, rather than a French, text, declaring that Heinric “noch wille dienen alse mijn vrient, / Ende maken te Dietsch, daer in sal staen / Mine gebode” (still wants to serve as my friend, and write in Dutch, in which my commands will be written).36 A medieval Italian adaptation of the Rose similarly erases the with known current locations. I have also seen the additional name in two early print editions of the prose adaptation, Le Pelerin de Vie Humaine, produced by Anthoine Vérard in Paris, pre-1499, and by Matthais Huss in Lyons, 1485. For a more extensive comparison between this prose translation and the authorial recension, see my “Deversifying Knowledge: The Poetic Alphabet of the Prose Pèlerinage de la Vie Humaine,” in Poetry, Knowledge and Community in Late Medieval France, ed. Rebecca Dixon et al. (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2008), 111–24. Philippe Maupeu offers the very interesting suggestion that the denial may reflect the interest of a daughter rather than a son of Gaultier, proposing attribution of a significant role in textual production to the Jehanne Maillart named in the colophon of Paris, BnF, F. Fr. MS 1646, based on his research in genealogical tables. Pèlerins de Vie Humaine, 303–5. 36 For the Middle Dutch, see Die “Rose” van Heinric van Aken, ed. Eelco Verwijs, 2nd ed. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1868), lines 9901, 9918–20. I quote the English translation from Karin Lesnik-Oberstein, “Adapting the Roman de la Rose: Was the Middle Dutch Adaptor Careless or Ambitious?” Translation & Literature 1 (1992): 135. Lesnik-Oberstein argues for the Dutch translator’s complex appropriation of authorial identity within the poem. She demonstrates the translator’s reworking of proper names and linguistic reference and also the allegorical allusion to pagan deities in order to render the passage appropriate to his identity and intention. She also concurs with scholars who argue that the name “Mechiel” that occurs within this passage in one manuscript refers to “a scribe (or assistant?) anxious to have his work recognized,” claiming “this further suggests the importance medieval writers attached to having their efforts acknowledged” (ibid.,140). The inserted ascription to Heinric is also noted by Huot, “Romance of the Rose” and its Medieval Readers, 332 note 9. For analysis of this translation in relation to the fragments of a different, Flemish Dutch, medieval translation, see Dieuwke van der Poel, “The Romance of the Rose and I: Narrative Perspective in the Roman de



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proper names of the French authors; Love asks his court of personifications “pur convien ch’i’ soccorra Durante” (to offer help to Durante) rather than to Guillaume de Lorris.37 Deguileville’s self-naming in the PVH meets an equivalent fate in one of its German translations, which renders Reason’s line about the narrator-protagonist not being the son of Thomas de Deguileville with the line “En dencke neit dat du son sijs / Peters van Meroede” (And do not think that you are the child of Peters van Meroede), leading Rosemond Tuve to concur with editor Adriaan Meijboom’s suggestion that the “priester Petrus” who created this German version must have been the son of Peters van Meroede of Cologne.38 Like the addition of the names of Gui de Mori or Pierre Gaultier to the poems, the insertion of new names into translations of the Rose and the PVH suggests that the technique of signaling authorship la Rose and its Two Middle Dutch Adaptations,” in Courtly Literature, Culture, and Context: Selected Papers from the 5th Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society, ed. Keith Busby and Erik Kooper (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1990), 573–83. Van der Poel disputes the identification of the Heinric who translates the Rose with Heinric van Aken in De Vlaamse “Rose” en “Die Rose” van Heinric: Onderzoekingen over Twee Middelnederlandse Bewerkingen van de “Roman de la Rose,” Middeleeuwse Studies en Bronnen 13 (Hilversum: Verloren, 1989), 16–17. 37 “Il Fiore” e “Il Detto d’Amore,” ed. Claudio Marchiori (Genoa: Tilgher, 1983), sonnet 82, line 9. For study of the Rose’s influence on Italian poets, noting the debate about the authorship of the Italian translation, sometimes attributed to Dante, see Brownlee, “Italian Responses to French Cultural Dominance.” 38 Peters van Meroede, trans. “Die Pilgerfahrt Des Träumenden Mönchs,” Nach Der Kölner Handschrift, ed. Adriaan Meijboom (Bonn: Schroeder, 1926), lines 5988–89. In addition to her observation about the German translator “Petrus,” Tuve convincingly interprets the addition of the name “Richard” within this same passage in a seventeenth-century prose version of the PVH as an identification of its scribe as William Baspoole (this name for the scribe of the work appears in another manuscript’s colophon), specifically the William Baspoole recorded as the son of a Richard Baspoole by documents from that period and locality. Allegorical Imagery, 215–16. Kathryn Walls adopts Tuve’s identification as the name of the seventeenth-century English translator in her recent edition of his text: Guillaume de Deguileville, The Pilgrime, trans. William Baspoole, ed. Kathryn Walls and Marguerite Stobo, MRTS 337, Renaissance English Text Society, 7th Series, 31 (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2008), 7–9. One manuscript containing a fifteenth-century Middle Dutch translation witnesses another kind of attempt to transform this name: “God es dijn vader, du best zijn soene. En wanet niet dattu bist Thomas’s Backers sone” (God is your father, you are his son. Do not think you are son of Thomas Baker) (Berlin, Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, germ. fol. MS 624, fol. 28r). For discussion of this manuscript in terms of two other Middle Dutch translations, see Die Pilgrimage vander Menscheliker Creaturen, ed. Ingrid Biesheuval (Hilversum: Verloren, 2005), p. 130. I have also seen the insertion of the name “Claes” in Dat Boeck vanden Pelgrim, a Middle Dutch translation printed in 1498 by Hendrik Eckert van Homberch (Oxford, Bodl., Douce 46, fol. 66v), not discussed by Biesheuval. Interest in participation through this technique by persons involved in adapting and disseminating Deguileville’s text thus extends across Europe and reaches from the Middle Ages into the era of the English reformation.

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through the voice of the personifications describing an allegory’s narratorprotagonist was both recognized and widely adopted by those who read and transmitted the vernacular allegories of the late Middle Ages. Manuscript presentation helped to call attention to the complexity of the role played by the narrator-protagonist within the PVH. In addition to the special attention attracted by the naming passage discussed above, many manuscripts of the poem divide sections of the first-person discourse with the rubrics of “l’aucteur” (the author) and “le pelerin” (the pilgrim), reminiscent of the innovative employment of the rubric divisions of “l’acteur” (the author) and “l’amant” (the lover) found in Rose manuscripts.39 Further division of the first-person voice between the speech of “le corps” (the body) and “l’esperit” (the spirit) of the narrator-protagonist occurs at the dramatic moment of self-debate at the mid-point of the PVH1 when the narrator-protagonist must decide which path to follow, the path of Oiseuse (Idleness) or that of Labour.40 Reason’s earlier speech also alludes to the different directions pursued by the body and soul, and Deguileville’s division at the crossroads may reflect his reading of the Rose since, in the Rose, the narrator-protagonist (following the counsel of his body) is led into the garden of Love by Idleness, heedless of Reason’s urging.41 Deguileville takes the fragmentation of the self and the psychomachiac logic of personification further through extended meditation on the relationship between the narrator-protagonist and the personification Reason.

39 On Rose rubrication, see Huot, “Rubrication of Voice and Authorship in Roman de la Rose Manuscripts.” 40 The treatment of naming and identity in the French prose redaction of the text is particularly worthy of closer consideration at this point. At least five manuscripts of the 1465 prose version of the PVH feature a switch in the rubric regularly used for the speeches of the first-person voice, from “l’aucteur” (the author) to “le pelerin” (the pilgrim), after this division between body and soul. See Kamath, “Poetic Alphabet of the Prose Pèlerinage,” 121. AnneMarie Legaré, in a personal communication, informs me that this same pattern of a switch in voice rubrics can be found in the oldest surviving manuscript of the prose PVH; a partial facsimile of this privately-owned manuscript has been published as Le Pèlerinage de Vie Humaine en Prose de la Reine Charlotte de Savoie, ed. Anne-Marie Legaré, Illuminationen 6 (Ramsen: H. Tenschert, 2004). On different patterns observable in the chapter titles and summary rubrics of prose PVH manuscripts, demonstrating the interrelation of manuscript and print layout, see Anne-Marie Legaré, “Les rapports du Maître d’Antoine Rolin avec l’imprimé. L’exemple du Pèlerinage de Vie Humaine en prose (Genève, Bibliothèque publique et universitaire, ms. fr. 182),” in Richesses Médiévales du Nord et du Hainaut, ed. Jean-Charles Herbin (Valenciennes: Presses Universitaires de Valenciennes, 2002), 65–123. 41 For further consideration of the motif of two paths, see Fabienne Pomel, “Le Roman de la Rose comme Voie de Paradis. Transposition, Parodie et Moralisation de Guillaume de Lorris à Jean Molinet,” in Bel and Braet, De la Rose, 355–76.



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Reason’s Clerk: Personification and Narrator-Protagonist In the PVH1, as we have seen, Reason is the only character to cite the Rose by name and the only character to introduce Deguileville’s name within the text, in a manner similar to author identification in the Rose. Moreover, just as the Rose’s Love had claimed both Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun as scribes of his words when naming them, Reason calls forth the narratorprotagonist as her “clers” (5205) (clerk [71]) in the passage immediately preceding the debate that contains the author’s name. Deguileville’s PVH1 adopts from the Rose the strategy of having a personification define the narrator-protagonist’s identity and claim to control textual meaning. Acting as a clerk to a personification, Deguileville’s narrator-protagonist encounters the antiphrastic logic found in the corresponding portion of the Rose’s allegory, allowing the words of the text to hold a figurative meaning that is in contradiction to their literal meaning. Deguileville also develops the Rose strategy of depicting portions of verse as separate documents within the allegory, using such embedded texts to direct attention beyond the immediate narrative. One well-known meta-discursive instance of this strategy in the Rose occurs when the god of Love quotes verses he describes as written by his “scribes,” the authors of the Rose (10525–30, 10565–66). The sermon of the character Genius (19475–20637) is also presented as a written document that the character reads aloud. Both serve as models for figuring the composition of the text being read, making the Rose’s composition one of the subjects of the allegory. In the PVH1 the passage that identifies the narrator-protagonist as Reason’s clerk and the subsequent debate between the narrator-protagonist and Reason are both introduced by the narrator-protagonist’s contemplation of his weakness in relation to Memory, although each passage answers the question of his relation to Memory only indirectly.42 As we have seen, 42 Questioning the nature of the personification Memory leads to the simultaneous introduction of the author’s name and the denial of his human identity in Deguileville’s poem. Deguileville’s allegorical investigation of memory’s role thus resembles Augustine’s influential presentation of himself as a paradox in the face of the divine. “Et ecce memoriae meae vis non comprehenditur a me, cum ipsum me non dicam praeter illam” (Yet the power of memory in me I do not understand, though without memory I could not even name myself). See Augustine, “Confessions”: Text and Commentary, ed. James Joseph O’Donnell, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), vol. 1, 10.16.25; for the modern English translation, see Augustine, Confessions, trans. Francis Joseph Sheed, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2006), 202. For a brief consideration of the importance of Augustinian semiotics to Jean de Meun’s Rose, see Noah D. Guynn, “Authorship and Sexual/Allegorical Violence in Jean de Meun’s Roman de la Rose,” Speculum 79 (2004): 628–59, especially 639–40. More extended discussion of Deguileville’s allegorization of the faculties in relation to Augustine can be found in Kay, Place of Thought, 73–94.

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the question is answered within the debate by Reason’s (un)naming of the narrator-protagonist, fragmented by both his human and his textual condition. Questioning the relationship between the narrator-protagonist and Memory illustrates the difference between the divine and the human, willing intellect and weak flesh, as well as the difference between the voice of “l’acteur,” who remembers and recounts his dream, and the un-dreaming, incomplete voice of “le pelerin,” who is separate in identity from Memory and reads and writes only under the direction of Reason. The meaning of the voice thus divided and the significance of clerkly service becomes a subject for interpretation; the revelation of the author’s identity and intention does not preclude the role of readers as interpreters but rather depends on it. The narrator-protagonist’s subjection to the process of allegoresis lies at the heart of his encounter with Rude Entendement (Poor Understanding), from whom he escapes by acting as Reason’s clerk. Situated between the first question concerning Memory and Reason’s response, the narrator-protagonist’s encounter with Poor Understanding draws attention to the significance of names and how they are understood within allegory. Poor Understanding, like Memory, appears as a function of the self dramatized externally. When the narrator-protagonist asks why Poor Understanding obstructs his way, the figure answers: “la destourbance / Vient de ta outrecuidance” (5119–20) (the trouble comes from your insolence [70]). Poor Understanding presents himself as the product of the narrator-protagonist’s boldness in adopting the staff and satchel of a pilgrim since, according to Poor Understanding, the New Testament’s prohibition of literal staffs and satchels also prohibits the figurative items—the staff of Hope, the satchel of Faith—granted to the narrator-protagonist within the allegory.43 Poor Understanding assumes that every name signifies a thing to which it uniquely corresponds—a staff is a staff is a staff—and insists on a literal, corporal, reading of the narratorprotagonist’s quest. This personification is thus doubly obstructive, blocking the progress of the journey within the narrative frame and also denying the figurative aspect of language upon which the allegory’s meaning depends. In order for both allegory and allegoresis to advance, both this character and the aspect of the subject he represents must be controlled and corrected. To allow the narrator-protagonist to move past Poor Understanding, Deguileville’s Reason must demonstrate not only that the quest should be not be read literally but also that a word can be used antiphrastically, to name its 43 The scriptures to which Poor Understanding appears to refer are Matthew 10.9–10; Luke 10.4. On the importance of these scriptures to the pilgrim figure in the medieval writings of Dante, Langland, and Chaucer, see Julia Bolton Holloway, “The Pilgrim in the Poem: Dante, Langland, and Chaucer,” in Allegoresis: The Craft of Allegory in Medieval Literature, ed. J. Stephen Russell and Julian N. Wasserman (New York: Garland, 1988), 109–32.



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opposite.44 These demonstrations are what grant the personification Reason both her identity and authority. When Poor Understanding refuses to recognize who Reason is, interpreting her name according to an alternative meaning of raison (an unjust measurement of goods), Reason denies the singular identity of her name and her person: “Je tenoie une opinion / Que n’est pas un moi et mon non” (5365–66) (I was of the opinion that my name and I were not the same thing [73]). The personification Reason argues that she is not the unjust lack of measure that is given the name raison by fraudulent millers but rather its opposite. Indeed, the unjust measure is so named precisely because of this opposition.45 As Reason states: Entre non et existence Vueil (je) bien faire difference. Autre chose est estre Raison Et autre chose avoir son non. Du non faire couverture Puet on pour couvrir s’ordure. ...................... Touz vices volentiers le font Et mainte foiz couvert se sont Du non de (la) vertu contraire ...................... Ainciez est signe que bonne est, Quant le vice s’en pare et vest. (5291–96, 5301–3, 5307–8) 44 Deguileville’s Reason, in being intertextually linked to the Rose and advocating antiphrastic reading—reading for a meaning that is the opposite of the literal meaning— anticipates the figure of Reason in Christine de Pizan’s Cité des Dames, who also draws attention to the antiphrastic reading of allegory, specifically in terms of the Rose. Christine de Pizan’s Reason counsels her to read the Rose and fables composed by misogynist poets “par une figure de grammaire qui se nomme antifrasis … quelque fust leur entente” (“according to the grammatical rule of antiphrasis, … no matter what the author’s original intention was”). See Christine de Pizan, La Città delle Dame, ed. Earl Jeffrey Richards and trans. Patrizia Caraffi, Biblioteca Medievale 2 (Milan: Luni Editrice, 1997), 48; for the modern English translation, see Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies, trans. Rosalind BrownGrant (London: Penguin Books, 1999), 8–9. This book’s third chapter explores Christine’s positioning in relation to the Rose as a model for Thomas Hoccleve; more extended analysis of Christine’s position on “antiphrasis” as well as a proposed antiphrastic reading of the Rose can be found in Douglas Kelly, Internal Difference and Meanings in the “Roman de la Rose” (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995), 40–44, 157–58. 45 For discussion of how this passage might also serve as a commentary on the “dishonest” use of the pilgrim’s satchel as a sign for the scrotum in the Rose, see Huot, “Romance of the Rose” and its Medieval Readers, 215. Per Nykrog describes how the Rose’s pilgrimage allegory participates in the direction of attention to the lover’s body in L’Amour et la “Rose”: Le Grand Dessein de Jean de Meun, Harvard Studies in Romance Languages 41 (Lexington, KY: French Forum, 1986), 73–76.

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(I would like very much to distinguish between name and existence. It is one thing to be Reason and another thing to have that name. People can use a name as a covering to hide their filth. … All the vices do it eagerly. Many times they cover themselves with the name of the contrary virtue … It is a sign that it is good when vice dresses and clothes itself in it. [72])

Describing how her name can also refer to her opposite, Reason demonstrates the multivalent nature of the verbal sign and explicitly encourages textual allegoresis that operates antiphrastically. These lines have been discussed in terms of Reason’s insistence on the separation between name and thing when she declares the innocence of the words that name sexual members in the Rose.46 But these lines are not simply important markers of the intertextual resonance between Deguileville’s and Jean de Meun’s Reason; they also prepare the reader for the immediately subsequent debate between Reason and the narrator-protagonist, in which antiphrastic reading of the denied father’s name is the only reading with the power to reveal the author’s identity and intent.47 Reason’s argumentation here is thus integral to figuring authorial identity in Deguileville; her character’s rhetoric of naming represents a development of allegorical logic found within the Rose, as does her employment of the narrator-protagonist as her clerk in her triumph over Poor Understanding.48 When Love describes the Rose’s authors as his literary servants or scribes, 46 For examples, see Huot, “Romance of the Rose” and its Medieval Readers, 218–20 and Steiner, Documentary Culture, 35–47. 47 These lines also examine personification as a device, creating characters through the correct interpretation of their names. Emily Steiner offers closer analysis of the use of documents as a strategy of identity and its relation to personification; she argues “the scene of Reason’s commission questions the method by which documents authenticate persons and, by extension, the various ways in which personification may be received, recognized and named” and ultimately concludes that “Reason’s commission effectively reconciles allegoresis and hermeneutics: it proves that the pilgrim in a personification allegory-cum-psychomachia may literally carry stick and satchel because Luke is meant to be read allegorically.” Documentary Culture, 35, 45. 48 For comparison of Reason’s churlish opponent, Poor Understanding, to the Rose’s churl Dangier (Resistance), see Huot, “Romance of the Rose” and its Medieval Readers, 220. (On the semantic duality that makes it difficult to offer an accurate modern English translation for Dangier, see Lewis, Allegory of Love, 364–66.) As Huot perceptively notes, in the Rose, Resistance accuses the narrator-protagonist of “rude antandement” (14834) (rude understanding [254]) for interpreting the courtesy of Bel Acueil (Fair Welcome) as carnal invitation. The subject of misunderstanding in Deguileville’s allegory is no longer the physicality of the amatory quest, as in the Rose, but rather the physical as opposed to spiritual significance of the pilgrim’s possessions and quest. In Deguileville’s allegory, the narrator-protagonist’s misunderstanding itself takes corporal form in the personification Poor Understanding. This churl’s obstruction is



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he also renames the text itself. By advising the adoption of the title of The Mirror for Lovers, Love claims control of not only “l’amant” (the lover), the first-person narrator-protagonist of the Rose, but also the text’s extradiegetic authors and its audience, whose experiences as lovers are reflected and predicted in his text. As “l’amant” (the lover), the first-person narratorprotagonist of the Rose acts as a character within the allegory, subject to the text’s personifications. Yet the first-person narrator-protagonist also figures the author and exegete of these personifications, promising guidance for the allegorical interpretation of the readers, who are invited to identify themselves with the first-person narrator-protagonist, controlling and controlled. Deguileville’s text exhibits a similar representation of composition through the drama of personification in the PVH, but the effect is created not by renaming the text but by figuring the text in the form of the charter that Reason asks the narrator-protagonist, as her clerk, to read. Deguileville’s narrator-protagonist describes how Reason calls him forth as her clerk to read a charter asserting her authority over Poor Understanding: “Vien avant, clers, dist elle a moi” (5205) (“Come forward, clerk,” she said to me [71]). The PVH depicts the charter as a document authored by God’s Grace, who grants Reason authority over Poor Understanding. Yet this charter figuratively signifies Deguileville’s entire PVH, which presents itself from the start as a project made possible by the grace of God. Moreover, this passage in which Reason identifies the narrator-protagonist as her clerk also plays upon the temporal relation of the allegorical narrative and its recording as text, as Love’s speech naming the Rose poets as his clerks within the Rose had done. The charter concludes with a date: “Donne en nostre an que chascun / Dit M. CCC. et xxxj” (5255–56) (Given in our year that everyone calls 1331 [71]). Frequent marginal rubrication draws attention to the charter’s date as revealing the allegorical poem’s date of composition, showing that medieval readers interpreted the embedded charter as figurative of Deguileville’s larger text. One scribe, for example, writes “Note icy lan qui ce liure du pelerin fut fait” (Note here the year that this book of the pilgrim was made).49 The figuration of composition presented by the charter Reason carries in Deguileville’s allegory struck medieval readers as noteworthy, just as the textual relevance of Love’s prophecy in the Rose had. Discovering the date of Deguileville’s poem in the date of the charter means identifying the poet with the first-person narrator-protagonist at the moment when he becomes Reason’s clerk. Interpretation connecting intradiegetic and extradiegetic time frames renders this passage oddly prophetic. The narratorcounteracted by the charter treasured in Reason’s coffer, whereas gold silences the character of Resistance in the Rose. 49 See Paris, BnF, F. Fr. MS 1646, fol. 62v.

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protagonist of the poem, acting as Reason’s clerk within a dream, reads a charter issued by Grace, which teaches how to understand the poem that he is to write when he awakes and which also shares its future date. The charter signals the correct reading of Deguileville’s allegory by granting authority to the allegorical reading practices of Reason rather than literalist assertions of Poor Understanding, an endorsement of antiphrastic reading that also ensures the recognition of Deguileville’s allegorical self-naming. Authorial presence is the product of allegorical interpretation: the figurative actions of the narratorprotagonist, who reads an embedded text in service to a personification, signal the date of composition and the name of the composer. Like the Rose’s Love, Deguileville’s personifications claim control over the narrator-protagonist; Reason and Grace assume authorial roles and assign the role of a clerk to him. Both the narrator-protagonist’s role as a reader and the charter he reads signal the external reality of textual composition and authorial control, however; like Jean de Meun’s characterization of the narrator-protagonist as a lover writing a mirror for lovers, Deguileville’s narrator-protagonist represents the experience of reading, as well as writing, the self within allegory. The narrator-protagonist’s role in reading the charter is to learn to read correctly, to control Poor Understanding and allow both allegory and allegoresis to continue. After the narrator-protagonist reads the charter in the PVH1, Poor Understanding foolishly concedes to Reason that he is the figure described in her charter, becoming angry when she pretends not to recognize him.50 She then declares that the distinction she claimed between herself and her name must not operate in his case, quipping that he must indeed be one and the same as his name. Since the allegorical character Poor Understanding admits to being one and the same as the Poor Understanding named and described in Reason’s charter, he must also submit himself to the authority of the charter, to Reason and to Grace. Ultimately Poor Understanding loses his authority through his literal reading, insisting that each name refers exactly and only to one thing, since he concedes the power of literal definition to the figurative charter held by Reason; it contains his name and thus refers to him. Reason gains control over Poor Understanding through the text spoken by the narrator-protagonist, which establishes the correct reading of Deguileville’s work, employing the multiple meanings of allegory, both antiphrastic and direct, championed by Reason. When Reason claims the narrator-protagonist 50 More unredeemable and uncontrollable in the PVH2, Poor Understanding denies he is the figure described in the charter as well as his name. He claims “ceulx qui mappellent ainsi / Sont plus rudes que ie ne suy” (48r) (those who call me thus are more ignorant than I am). In this version, the churl is vanquished only by being ignored after Reason gives her court summons to him.



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as her clerk to rescue him from Poor Understanding’s literal reading, she teaches the multiple readings of his own first-person voice. Grace’s charter is the key to finding the correct level of interpretation not only for doctrinal scripture but also for the narrator-protagonist himself, his satchel and staff, as well as his participation in the natures of the personified Reason and Poor Understanding. Only after the text within the text has given the correct level of reading, affirming reason and rebuking poor understanding, can the narrative proceed. Reason in the PVH1 acts as central figure in signaling authorial identity within the allegory, employing similar logic to that found in the Rose. Reason’s explicit citation of the Rose suggests the textual connection, and her identification of the narrator-protagonist demonstrates a sophisticated response to the figuration of authorship in the Rose. Her authority to name, however, as seen in her encounter with Poor Understanding, is ultimately authorized by the charter that resembles Deguileville’s entire allegory (bearing its date of composition and voiced by its narrator-protagonist), and this charter is in turn authorized by the personification God’s Grace. By ascribing the figurative charter to Grace, Deguileville secures a spiritual author and authority for his allegory even as his narrator-protagonist’s clerkship signals human authorial identity, reworking the Rose’s innovative creation of a first-person voice that is both specific and universal within its allegory. Venus’s Clerk: Personification and Narrator-Protagonist in the PVH2 The link between authorial naming and Rose allusions in Deguileville’s PVH1 remains present in the recension (PVH2), although aspects of Reason’s function are reassigned to other characters. As noted, the Rose is not cited by name in the PVH2’s opening lines, so Reason’s citation of the work is the first reference to the Rose in the PVH2. Yet Reason is no longer the only allegorical character to call upon the Rose as a source demonstrating her nature. The PVH2 expands the discourse of Venus, who now not only cites the Rose but takes a role in the text’s exploration of authorial naming, since her citation introduces a debate over the name of the Rose’s author. In the PVH2, Venus appears to usurp Reason’s role in interpreting the Rose and the allegorical author. The narrator-protagonist of Deguileville’s text is not invoked as Reason’s clerk in the PVH2; instead, Venus assigns the Rose author the posture of her clerk. Venus, not Reason, claims to demonstrate the relationship of personification allegory to textual creation. A new debate with Venus now exposes the authorial control hidden in the Rose’s device of a personification-controlled narrating protagonist, even as Deguileville adopts the same device to serve his own ends.

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In Deguileville’s allegory, Venus appears in a series of personified sins, representing “Luxure” (Lust). She gives this as an alternate name for herself and is sometimes rubricated by this name. Several PVH2 manuscripts also employ the term “Luxure” or “Venus” in place of “Amour Charnel” (Carnal Love) within Reason’s citation of the Rose, linking the two Rose citations and sharpening the contrast between Venus and Reason.51 In the PVH2, Venus (or Lust) opposes Reason not only by her very nature but also by her claim of textual control: Venus overtly seeks to supplant any reading of the Rose that does not accord with her “authorial” intent. Citing the Roman de la Rose as her own work, Venus admires the way it reflects her hatred of Chastite (Chastity) by its slanderous depiction of Chastity in the character Faux Semblant (False Seeming).52 The narrator-protagonist directly questions her startling assumption of the text’s authorship: Pour quoy (dis ie) reputes tien Le rommant quas dit, que scay bien Qui le fist, et comment ot nom. (55v-56r) (Why, I said, do you call the romance you mention yours, for I know well who made it and what his name was?)

Venus’s response redefines the understanding of textual ownership. The romance is rightly hers, she claims, because from beginning to end it speaks of her; Lust is its substance. In speaking of her “scribe” for the Rose, however, Venus immediately cites an exception to her control. She admits that her scribe, against her will, digressed from her description and stole from others’ works, rather than writing of his own invention.53 She then reports that a Norman accused her scribe of this theft. Venus claims her scribe hated Normans for this reason and argues that this hatred motivates his lying description of the character Male Bouche (Foul Mouth) as originating in Normandy.54 51 For example, the early edition cited in this chapter reads “Luxure” (8r) and the name “Venus” appears in Paris, BnF, F. Fr. MS 377, fol. 8v. 52 Deguileville is perhaps thinking here of both Faux Semblant (False Seeming) and Abstinence Contrainte (Constrained Abstinence), who travel as a pair in the Rose. 53 Philippe Maupeu draws special attention to this admission, interpreting it as a criticism signaling that “toute œuvre morale est une œuvre sans mélange” (moral works are not composite works). “Bivium: L’Écrivain Nattier et le Roman de la Rose,” in Duval and Pomel, Guillaume de Digulleville: Les Pèlerinages Allégoriques, 36. 54 For brief references to anti-Norman satire in the Rose, written by both Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, see Matthew Bennett, “Stereotype Normans in Old French Vernacular Literature,” Anglo-Norman Studies 9 (1987): 25–42. Norman satire is well attested from the earliest surviving manuscripts; whatever the motivation for either author’s depiction of Normans, criticism of plagiarism within the Rose is thus unlikely. The claim



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Both the statement inviting the narrator-protagonist’s question and its answer thus suggest that ulterior, deceitful purposes govern the depictions of Rose personifications: whether praising her enemy Chastity’s slanderous portrayal under a false name or alleging that Foul Mouth’s Norman origin is a grudge-driven lie, Venus opens doubt as to the credibility of her own characterization, particularly her claim of a voice independent from that of her “scribe,” the allegory’s author.55 The assertion of authorial control on the part of Venus imitates the assertion of control by Love at the mid-point of the Rose; indeed, the passage containing this assertion by Venus falls at the new mid-point in Deguileville’s extended and revised PVH2. Once again, authorial presence is discovered by reading for contradictions: Venus presents herself as a personification with intertextual and even extra-textual reality, claiming authorship of the Rose, yet she also complains of her lack of full control over mortal writers. Both her assertion and her complaint reveal the biases of authorial intention that can direct an allegory’s use of sources and manner of identifying allegorical personifications. The narrator-protagonist responds to this puzzle of who is speaking by once more asserting his ability to name the author of the Rose. But when the narrator-protagonist at last names the author of the Rose, he does not untangle the relation of Venus and her scribe/author or reveal the individual names of Jean de Meun or Guillaume de Lorris. Instead he declares that the human “scribe” and the personification claiming authorship must share the identity of Foul Mouth, the most ill-speaking allegorical character. Discounting the alleged Norman origin of Foul Mouth, Deguileville gives Foul Mouth a new origin of his own choosing by having the narratorprotagonist declare that both the scribe of Venus and Venus herself are recognizable as no one other than Foul Mouth, precisely because of their manner of creating this character: … veritablement dy Male bouche est ton escripuain En male bouche son prochain Appellant … Et tu male bouche as aussi Quant contre chastete mesdy Tu as, et ton clerc fait mentir. (56r)

made by Venus in the PVH2 challenges the order of temporality as flagrantly as Love’s celebrated speech in the Rose. 55 Venus in fact openly informs the narrator-protagonist that she will lie to him; her aim is to deceive: “ie te mentiray / Et en mentant te deceuray” (56r) (I will lie to you and in lying I will deceive you).

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(truly I say Foul Mouth is your scribe when he calls his neighbor Foul Mouth … And you have a foul mouth also since you spoke ill of Chastity and made your clerk lie.)56

Edmond Faral’s early study and most subsequent considerations of this passage note Deguileville’s probable Northern origin as a reason why he might have taken offence at the depiction of Normans as drunken soldiers and companions of Foul Mouth, an image found in both Guillaume de Lorris’s and Jean de Meun’s sections of the Rose.57 My interest in the passage renaming the Rose authors as their personification Foul Mouth lies not in Deguileville’s extra-textual biographical details, however, but in how this passage shapes Deguileville’s presentation of authorship within the allegory. The claims that Venus makes concerning the writing of the Rose in the PVH2 call to mind Love’s inversion of personification and author roles in the Rose and Reason’s similar inversion in the PVH1. In this conversation with Venus, the worlds of author and allegory intersect: the creation of the Foul Mouth character in the Rose becomes the act of a foul mouth, which leads to the Rose author’s renaming as Foul Mouth. This passage borrows the impossible allegorical logic of the Rose to reinvent the Rose author as the personification featured by this author in the Rose. Deguileville thus playfully challenges the Rose’s slippery use of the supposedly neutral role of the exegete or compiler in medieval allegory. In Deguileville’s allegory, personifications again claim to control authorial intention, and the mid-point is again a place of renaming, although Deguileville renames not the Rose but its authors. The function of renaming remains an allegorical invitation to envision the first-person narrator-protagonist as at once specific and universal, fragmented in identity by the multiple levels of allegorical reading. As noted, when Love advises that the Rose be renamed as The Mirror for Lovers, the new name invites readers to see themselves as the lover depicted in the text. But in the same passage of the Rose, Love identifies another, individual name for the internal character of the lover (Guillaume de Lorris), simultaneously assigned the role of textual creator. In the mid-point 56 Certain manuscripts (including Paris, BnF, F. Fr. 829 and 12466) have the reading “Male bouche ot ton escripuain” or “Male bouche a ton escripuain” (your scribe has an evil mouth). The association of the poet and this personified quality, however, remains strong. The most complete medieval manuscript of the English verse translation, British Library, Cotton Vitellius C.xiii, renders the lines as “trewly thy skriyveyn / Hihte malë bouche”; see John Lydgate, The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man, ed. F. J. Furnivall and Katharine B. Locock, 3 vols., EETS e.s. 77, 83, 92 (London: Kegan Paul, et al., 1899, 1901, 1904), lines 1327–28. 57 Faral, “Guillaume de Digulleville, Moine de Châalis,” 2, 37 note 2. Badel, for example, refers to Guillaume’s patriotism and says “la réaction du Normand peut faire sourire” (the reaction of a Norman is perhaps risible). “Le Roman de la Rose” au XIVe Siècle, 374.



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renaming passage from the PVH2, Foul Mouth is simultaneously identified as an abstract quality any reader may embody, as a character in the Rose revealing authorial intention, and also as the Rose author who is both the narrator posing as a scribe and the abstract personification claiming authorial control. Foul Mouth, a means of satire upon Normans in the Rose, becomes a means of mocking the satire’s author as lustful and deceitful in Deguileville’s PVH2, recasting the Rose allegory through antiphrasis to mean its opposite. Responding to the Rose through the very strategies the Rose inspired, Deguileville’s allegory reveals intertextual affiliation, and offers intertextual critique, in a figurative, rather than explicit, manner. Given by Grace: Self-Naming in the PVH2 Deguileville’s PVH2 not only renames the Rose author through further exploration of interrelated personification and author figuration; it also expands Deguileville’s self-naming strategies. Just as Venus expands the once singular role of Reason in naming the Rose, God’s Grace supplants Reason by naming Deguileville no less than three times in the PVH2. As Deguileville enlarges the role of God’s Grace, he increases recognition of his name by elaborating upon the allegorical play of author presentation begun by borrowing personifications from the Rose. The PVH2 introduces Deguileville’s name more fully than the PVH1 and begins the process of naming sooner. Early in the PVH1, the narratorprotagonist follows God’s Grace to her house suspended over water; entrance into the house of Grace requires passing through water, a figuration of baptism. The narrator-protagonist asks if he can avoid the water, but Grace declares he is filthy from his nine-month home, alluding to the womb. In the PVH2, immediately after this exchange, the narrator-protagonist desires to know more about why washing in the water is necessary. Grace, referring to Adam and Eve as his mother and father, explains “la damnation / Que tout lhumain lignaige auoit” (5r) (the damnation that the entire human lineage shares). Later, describing how Christ allows her washing to cleanse those who keep their marriage vows, Grace declares “ton pere et ta mere lauez / Y furent” (5v) (your father and your mother were washed here). In the course of the conversation, the parentage Grace invokes thus slips from the universal ancestry of biblical Eden to a respectably wed medieval couple. When the narrator-protagonist submits to Grace and finds he is unable to do anything other than cry loudly, he introduces his namesake godparent as his surrogate voice: ung aduocat me suruint Qui pour moy la parole print Disant que pour moy parleroit

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..................... Icellui guillaume auoit nom Mais pas ne sauoie son surnom. (5v) (an advocate came to my aid, who took the oath for me, saying that he would speak for me. … This one had the name Guillaume, but I did not know his surname.)

Like Jean de Meun, who envisions Love claiming that Jean will be unable to write the Rose unless Love gives words to Jean while he is a child in a cradle, Guillaume de Deguileville, narrating his own baptism, summons another voice to speak for him and to name him when a child. The narratorprotagonist’s account of his speechlessness at this moment of his naming resembles Jean de Meun’s depiction of his own birth through the voice of one of his characters, the one who gives his name. Deguileville’s narrator-protagonist is given a name, and an unforgettable tie of kinship, at the very moment of seeking escape from sinful human lineage through baptism: Adonc cest aduocat me prit Et ie luy dis quil mapellast Tout ainsi com luy / et nommast .................. Et laduocat sen fut ale Qui me fist si grant courtoisse Quobiler iamais ne doy mie. (5v) (then this godparent took me and I asked him to call me after him and he named me … and the godparent went away, who did me a service so courteous that I should never forget it.)

In the revised baptism passage, the narrator-protagonist’s renunciation of human lineage introduces the author’s first name, albeit voiced and bestowed by another character. Deguileville’s depiction of the narrator-protagonist as an infant remains open to the allegorical participation of readers even as it reveals the author’s name. The simultaneously universal and specific nature of the narrator-protagonist is clear in the alphabetic subject index added to the allegory in the early sixteenth-century printed edition of the trilogy. This passage, marked by the exact same folio number and letter of alphabetic tabula, is listed in section B, as “Baptesme est le premier sacreme(n)t de chascun pelerin.fo.v.B” (Baptism is the first sacrament of each pilgrim, fol. 5b), and in section G, as “Guillaume parrain du pelerin se presente a laider a lauer par le sacrement de baptesme foeillet.v.B” (Guillaume, godparent of the pilgrim,



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presents himself to help to bathe him in the sacrament of baptism, fol. 5b). Readers are thus invited to identify the narrator-protagonist as both as a universal representative of “each pilgrim” and as the godson of “Guillaume,” the author Guillaume de Deguileville. The surname Deguileville, the final clue to authorial identity, is withheld, however, until the debate about the narrator’s division between body and soul, also significantly revised in the PVH2. The revisions here affect the context and the speakers of the debate. The debate now takes place immediately after the introduction of Memory and before the encounter with Poor Understanding. The debate transpires not between the narrator-protagonist and Reason but between the narrator-protagonist and God’s Grace.58 Although the name of the author’s father is presented in much the same way as in the PVH1, assigning these lines to Grace subtly shifts the text’s presentation of how identity is formed. In both the PVH1 and the PVH2, Grace provides a literary model for the narrator-protagonist. As noted above, she is attributed the authorship of the charter read to correct Poor Understanding and, as the next chapter will consider in greater detail, Grace also offers the narratorprotagonist an alphabetic acrostic prayer, linking the learning of reading and salvation. In the PVH2, Grace, the internal textual authority, introduces both the first name and the surname of Guillaume de Deguileville in a fashion resembling authorial representation in the Rose. The Rose’s vision of the god of Love presiding over Jean de Meun’s cradle is mirrored by the PVH2’s vision of God’s Grace instructing the voiceless but narrating “Guillaume” from his allegorical birth.59 The alteration, in which Grace replaces Reason as an authority on the author’s name,60 appears to work in concert with the 58 These changes follow from suggestions seen in the PVH1. The debate with Reason originally concluded with the narrator-protagonist claiming he now understands what Grace taught him earlier, clarified by Reason’s teaching, and Reason insists that she can do nothing without Grace, from whom all her teaching comes. Substituting Grace for Reason as the guiding interlocutor in the debate eliminates the need for such clarification of allegorical relation, as does the change of context that places the debate directly after Memory’s introduction, rather than referring back to these scenes after the encounter with Poor Understanding. 59 Perhaps in response to Deguileville’s use of this image, Jean Molinet’s interpretative commentary on the Rose, c.  1499, interprets the crossing of a river within the Rose as an allegory representing the narrator’s birth and glosses the fountain of the locus amoenus as “vne fontaine clere et nette qui est le saint fons de baptesme” (a clear clean fountain that is the sacred font of baptism). Cest le Romant de la Rose Moralise, fol. 8r. 60 Deguileville’s subsequent allegory in the trilogy, the PA, features another lyric acrostically naming the author. This lyric takes the form of a letter ascribed to Grace, thus further developing the connection between this character and authorial identity. Perhaps the very form of this character’s allegorical name was chosen for the initial letter resemblance to the author’s. In the PVH2, Grace de Dieu (God’s Grace) undertakes the role formerly ascribed to Reason of persuading the narrator-protagonist that he is not the son of Deguileville but

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PVH2’s use of Venus to replace Reason’s function as a personification who reads and challenges the Rose. Although part of the challenge that Venus issues to the Rose is her depiction of the Rose’s literary borrowing as theft, Deguileville’s PVH2 freely borrows, drawing more lines from other authors than the PVH1, including Latin lines from the poetry of Ovid, a key source for the Rose.61 Indeed, the introduction of Ovid as a character provides the context for the final instance of authorial naming in Deguileville’s PVH2, the instance perhaps most overtly concerned with intertextual authorial relations. As noted above, the central passage of the Rose created a literary lineage through naming authors but also through “killing” these literary fathers, naming them within Love’s eulogistic lament. The last passage in Guillaume de Deguileville’s PVH2 to draw attention to the author’s name also deals with the question of literary lineage, presenting a contest between Ovidian patrimony and the parentage of Grace. In the PVH2, the narrator-protagonist encounters Ovid after entering the ship of Religion (a Cistercian monastery) with the help of God’s Grace. Within the ship, the narrator-protagonist is attacked by personifications representing envy, conspiracy, detraction and treachery. Prostrated by his wounds, the narrator-protagonist sees “vng vieil clerc” (84r) (an old clerk) appear with the sunrise. The clerk expresses compassion and love and names himself as “Ovidius.” Ovid has come to deliver a curse upon the narratorprotagonist’s attackers, saying “En latin la prononceray / Selon la coustume que iay” (84r) (In Latin I will pronounce it, according to the custom I have). Latin verse from Ovid’s Ibis, the curse composed in exile, then appears as an insertion. The narrator-protagonist responds warmly to Ovid’s expression of affection but refuses to curse, hoping instead for the return of a king who will redress the wrongs committed against him. When the ancient poet departs, the pensive narrator-protagonist decides to express his sorrow in a lament.62 Declaring that no one knows his sufferings save he himself, he of God: in a sense, as he becomes Guillaume de Dieu (Guillaume of God), the developing connection of this character to his personal identity renders her the Grace de Deguileville (Grace of Deguileville). 61 On the extent of Ovidian borrowing in the Rose, see Thérèse Bouché, “Ovide et Jean de Meun,” MA 83 (1977): 71–88. 62 The departure of Ovid in the PVH2 echoes the departure of Reason in the Rose, and the passage has been read as part of Deguileville’s critical response to the inspiration of the Rose by pagan poetry; see Huot, “Romance of the Rose” and its Medieval Readers, 229. There is a warmth of affection expressed for Ovid here, however, and the interpolation of Ovid’s Latin verses immediately prior to the author’s use of Latin in his own verse composition, pairing Latin and French in couplets, invites an image of inspiration. Moreover, the sixteenthcentury printed editions of the PVH2 contain a prologue that compares the style of Ovid and Deguileville explicitly, as two worthy poets: “Touteffois ainsi quen latin / Ouide son langaige



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makes a request of the reader: “… ne tienne nul a despit / Sen icelluy dueil iay assises / Les lettres de mon nom …” (84r) (Do not take it amiss if in this lament I have placed the letters of my name). The lyric conveys the author’s name in an acrostic of twenty-four stanzas with a rhyme scheme of couplets systematically linking alternating Latin and French lines. In this manner, the lyric is not only metrically but also linguistically distinguished from the rest of Deguileville’s text, suggesting the influence of Latin verse, like the lines just attributed to Ovid.63 The lyric’s contents, however, are a microcosm of the text’s allegory, providing a summary of the action up to this point: the acrostic describes the narrator-protagonist’s entry into monastic life with the aid of Grace, the attacks he then suffered, and his plea for succor. Just as the lyric registers both difference and unity with the surrounding text, it represents both the distance between the narrator-protagonist and the external author and their connection. Ovid encourages the narrator-protagonist as an author, scorning his detractors in both French and Latin, and the subsequent poem by the narrator-protagonist, also employing French and Latin, represents a bid for authorial status, linking the name of the author with the internal pilgrim character.64 In the PVH1, the narrator-protagonist’s reading of Grace’s charter enables him both to interpret and be interpreted correctly. In the PVH2, the narratorprotagonist’s reading of his own acrostic lyric, although authorized by knowledge he claims only he can have, also invokes the allegorical authority of Grace, in a manner reminiscent of this character’s role in the earlier

fainct / Semblablement de pres attainct / Poesie nostre deguileuille” (Just as Ovid made Latin his language, similarly to attain esteem our Deguileville used poetic discourse). As a preface to Le Romant des Trois Pelerinaiges, these lines appear on fol. 1r–1v; with some variation, the lines also appear before Le Pelerinage de l’homme, on fol. 1r. Early readers, it seems, would not necessarily have viewed Ovid as an entirely rejected influence in Deguileville’s allegory. 63 Deguileville’s interweaving of Latin and French seems to have posed a challenge for scribes (as well as readers) not familiar with Latin verse, as a recent study of the macaronic acrostic Deguileville composed for the PA reflects. See Stéphanie Le Briz and Géraldine Veysseyre, “Composition et Réception Médiévale de la Lettre Bilingue de Grâce de Dieu au Pèlerin (Guillaume de Digulleville, Le Pèlerinage de l’Âme, vers 1593–1784),” in Approches du Bilinguisme Latin-Français au Moyen Âge: Linguistique, Codicologie, Esthétique, ed. Stéphanie Le Briz and Géraldine Veysseyre (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 283–356. 64 The growing use of acrostics as “copyright” assertions or contestations in early French print culture renders the attention to this lyric in early printed editions all the more significant. Le Romant des Trois Pelerinaiges, for example, lists the lyric under multiple entries in its prefatory alphabetic subject index. The name is identified in some entries as belonging to “le pelerin” (the pilgrim), in others as that of “lacteur” (the author); the entry under “N” calls attention to the interrelation of these identities, referring to the acrostic as showing the “nom and surnom du pelerin cest assauoir de lacteur” (name and surname of the pilgrim, that is to say, the author).

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passages that present the author’s first and last names. The acrostic lyric’s second stanza draws attention to authorial naming in relation to the process of textual interpretation as it introduces Grace as a figure represented in writing, who calls the narrator-protagonist by name: Vidi scriptum in margine Ou cestuy escript senracine Mirandam pulchritudine Grace dieu du ciel royne digne Me vocantem ex nomine Vien auant et si tachemine Mecum, quia regimine Tu as mestier et de doctrine. (84r-85r) (I saw a wonderful beauty written in the margin where this writing roots itself. God’s Grace, worthy queen of heaven, called me by name: “Come forth and I will lead you to me since you need direction and teaching.”)

Written in the margin of the folios containing this acrostic, in a manuscript with marked initial letters for each stanza, is the Latin form of the author’s name, GVILLERMVS DE DEGVILVILLA. (The V at the start of the stanza quoted above serves as the second letter of the author’s name.) Deguileville presents the narrator-protagonist of the allegory as heir to Ovid’s language and literature but ultimately chooses Grace once again as his naming authority; Deguileville’s readers re-enact the role attributed to Grace as they call forth his name from the textual margin. The process of exegesis, far from being inimical to interest in human authorship, provides Deguileville with the means of signaling his identity within his allegory, greatly developing the Roman de la Rose’s playful presentation of the author as an exegete and a narrator-protagonist in service to personifications.65 65 In light of the text’s allusion to marginal exegesis, it is worth noting that the imagery of Deguileville’s trilogy was adopted as a marginal gloss for liturgical texts in at least one medieval book of hours. Michael Camille notes how the recognizable illumination cycle developed for Deguileville’s trilogy is painted into the margins of Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 62. “The Illustrated Manuscripts of Guillaume de Deguileville’s Pèlerinages, 1330–1426,” 2 vols. (PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 1985), 1: 227–34. More study of the integral role Deguileville’s images play in this manuscript’s schema of textual interpretation and reader representation can be found in Susan K. Hagen, Allegorical Remembrance: A Study of “The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man” as a Medieval Treatise on Seeing and Remembering (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990), 126–28, and Richard K. Emmerson, “A ‘Large Order of the Whole’: Intertextuality and Interpictoriality in the Hours of Isabella Stuart,” Studies in Iconography 28 (2007): 51–110.



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In Deguileville’s allegory, passages depicted as separate compositions— Grace’s charter, the narrator-protagonist’s lament—emblematize the text in which they are contained and teach more complex strategies of reading.66 This innovation may also have a root in Deguileville’s engagement with the Rose, if Grace’s authorship of Reason’s charter and Grace’s authority within the narrator-protagonist’s lament were crafted in response to the activity of the Rose’s priest Genius, who delivers and authorizes Nature’s charter, which similarly serves as a textual microcosm. Genius seeks control of the entire Rose allegory, explicitly contrasting the garden he describes in his charter with the Rose’s initial depiction of Love’s garden. His speech thus seeks to replace Guillaume de Lorris’s opening, a rivalry drawing a likeness between the intradiegetic character and the extradiegetic author, as Kevin Brownlee has noted.67 Deguileville’s development of Grace’s role in literary activity may reflect his appreciation of how the charter of Genius raises the question of authorial identity in the Rose, as well as a desire to differentiate his own work. Deguileville’s techniques of signaling authorial control within allegory are drawn from the intensely Ovidian Rose, as the love of the character Ovid for the narrator-protagonist suggests. But Deguileville’s self-naming in the recension establishes that the Rose’s source Ovid is neither fully departed nor the father of Deguileville’s narrator-protagonist, a child of God named by Grace. Deguileville thus contests the Rose on its own terms, masterfully creating a specific authorial identity within an allegory that nonetheless functions as an allegory. Imitating the complexities of authorial signature in the erotic allegory of the Rose, Deguileville first signs his own name as the clerk of reason rather than a foolish lover in the PVH1 and then revises his work to incorporate his full name in the PVH2, in more extensive figurative passages that challenge Jean’s scribal posture and dependence on Ovid. Deguileville quickly recognized the form of first-person allegory as a means of inviting the extension of interpretation from the voices of personifications to the voice of 66 In the PVH2 the narrator-protagonist’s relation to texts within the allegory shifts from the role of reader toward that of author: Reason, not the narrator-protagonist, reads the charter in the revised scene with Poor Understanding and, as we have seen, the narrator-protagonist is introduced as the author of the PVH2’s acrostic complaint. 67 Brownlee describes the reversal of personification and author positions, stating “Genius the character (in Jean de Meun’s text) becomes a poet figure. But, at the same time, Genius’s rewriting of Guillaume de Lorris works to transform the latter (a ‘real’ poet, with a privileged extratextual existence in terms of the entire Rose enterprise) into a ‘character,’ also ‘contained’ by Jean de Meun’s poetic summa.” “Jean de Meun and the Limits of Romance: Genius as Rewriter of Guillaume de Lorris,” in Romance: Generic Transformation from Chrétien de Troyes to Cervantes, ed. Kevin Brownlee and Marina Scordilis Brownlee (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1985), 129.

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the one claiming to hear and to record these voices, so the actions, attributes, and embedded texts associated with the narrator-protagonist become a vehicle for envisioning the vernacular author. The removal of explicit Rose citation from the opening of Deguileville’s PVH2 is in truth part of Deguileville’s deeper integration of the earlier poem’s model of authorial self-presentation through allegory.68 The new opening for the PVH2 explores the relation of the waking and dreaming self further, in this sense more closely resembling the Macrobian-inspired opening meditation on the nature of dreams at the start of the Rose. The PVH2 now opens with a lament that the textual account of the dream circulated before its completion and correction. This lament creates greater temporal division within the firstperson voice, since it emphasizes the association of the voice with the author exterior to the allegorical dream, who desires to make changes to its textual expression, rather than the association of the voice with the protagonist who narrates actions within the dream. Yet the opening lament also fosters a closer connection between roles of the dreaming author and that of the journeying narrator-protagonist, since the process of textual dissemination is described as a pilgrimage undertaken by both the text and its author. Deguileville’s introduction to his allegory in this way resembles the prophecy Guillaume de Lorris places at the start of the Rose, which links the textual record of the dreamed quest for the rose to the fulfillment of an extradiegetic quest for a lady, also designated by the name of “Rose” (28–30, 39–44). Using imagery from the dream narrative to depict the text’s composition at its opening encourages interpretation of the narrator-protagonist’s experience within the allegory as a gloss on that of the extradiegetic author. Moreover, Deguileville heightens the association of the lament that now opens the PVH2 with the self-naming acrostic lament embedded later within the allegory, as each recasts Ovidian influence according to the demands of Christian Grace. Resembling Ovid’s metatextual address in Tristia 1.1.1, in which the Latin poet commands the book composed in exile to go to Rome and expresses his longing to follow his text, Deguileville’s new PVH2 opening directs a metatextual address to the dream narrative now identified as a pilgrim en route to Jerusalem, followed by an assurance that he will follow it: “Va doncques tost ou ie tenuoye / Car mieulx y scez que moy la voye” (2r) (Go thus now where I send you, / You know the way there better than I do).69 Forth it went 68 For an alternative perspective on the changes between the openings, cf. Fabienne Pomel, “Enjeux d’un Travail de Réécriture: Les Incipits du Pèlerinage de Vie Humaine de Guillaume de Digulleville et leurs Remaniements Ultérieurs,” MA 109.3–4 (2003): 457–72. 69 For a brief survey of this trope in Ovid’s poetry and its medieval adaptation, focused on Chaucer’s usage and on the distinctive application of the trope to narratives, see John S. P. Tatlock, “The Epilog of Chaucer’s ‘Troilus’,” MP 18 (1921): 627–30. On the developing use



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indeed: the pan-European distribution of Deguileville’s allegory extends the influence of the complex first-person voice of the Rose well beyond the French dits amoureux tradition and merits comparison with many later responses to the Rose. Recognition of Deguileville’s sophisticated authorial self-representation should revise, for example, the idea that “Deguileville’s capacity to absorb the literary techniques of the Roman de la Rose was much more limited than Chaucer’s.”70 Deguileville’s PVH1 and PVH2 reveal to us that the rhetorical play of claiming authorship within an allegory, moral or otherwise, was one of the Rose’s most important legacies for the vernacular literature of late medieval France and England. In subsequent chapters, we will witness how three influential authors of late medieval England claim their literary inheritance from the Rose and Deguileville’s allegories.

of similar metatextual address as part of shorter lyric composition in fourteenth-century French and English, in terms of its immediate political context, see Butterfield, Familiar Enemy, 187–200. These sources do not refer to the use of the trope in Deguileville’s PVH2 but offer an instructive presentation of its literary context. 70 Wright, “Deguileville’s Pèlerinage de Vie Humaine as ‘Contrepartie Édifiante’,” 399. This claim perhaps reflects the predominant focus on the PVH1.

2

“What so myn auctour mente”: Allegory and Authorship in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Dreams By the final quarter of the fourteenth century, the interpretation, citation, and circulation of the Rose had reached a level unprecedented for a vernacular text, and the strategy of attributing authorship to the first-person narratorprotagonist of an allegorical vision was widespread.1 The previous chapter studied the deployment of this strategy in one of the earliest and most widely read allegories directly citing the Rose, the mid-fourteenth-century Pèlerinage de la Vie Humaine (PVH), written and revised by Guillaume de Deguileville. Deguileville continued experimentation with the strategy in the two later allegories completing his Pèlerinage trilogy, and his abiding interest in the Rose and in what we can term “first-person allegory” was far from singular, shared by other influential vernacular authors including Dante Alighieri, Guillaume de Machaut, and Giovanni Boccaccio.2 Even European manuscript art of this period, witnessing efforts to depict both the intradiegetic and the extradiegetic roles of the narrator, reflects the influence of the Rose’s innovation.3 This is the cultural climate in which Geoffrey Chaucer (c.  1340–1400) began writing first-person narratives in 1 Frédéric Duval, for example, describes the Rose as “sans conteste l’œuvre en langue française la plus diffusée du Moyen Age” (indisputably the most widely diffused French language work of the Middle Ages). Petite Anthologie Commentée de Succès Littéraires, 139. 2 For earlier studies of the debts these authors owe to the Rose’s form, see Earl Jeffrey Richards, Dante and the “Roman de la Rose”: An Investigation into the Vernacular Narrative Context of the “Commedia” (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1981); Brownlee, Poetic Identity in Guillaume de Machaut; and David Wallace, Chaucer and the Early Writings of Boccaccio (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1985). 3 As one archival survey demonstrates, manuscript illumination at the close of the fourteenth century offers “absorbing testimony to the creative literary influence of the Romance of the Rose…. The concept of the dreaming narrator really mattered to the illustrator of that period.” See Alcuin Blamires and Gail C. Holian, The “Romance of the Rose” Illuminated: Manuscripts at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, MRTS 223 (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2002), 41.

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English.4 Today, Chaucer’s corpus is recognized as foundational to later English literary history. Yet it is in terms of a wider European tradition that Chaucer defines his authorship within his works, and the allegorical strategies inviting attention to authorship in the Rose and in Guillaume de Deguileville’s poems are of particular importance to Chaucer, as his choices in translation and in composition reveal. Indeed, Chaucer’s Rose translation and his translation of an alphabetic acrostic lyric from Deguileville’s PVH, the ABC, represent the only known instances in which Chaucer translates directly from a single French source.5 These translations are conventionally treated as early works in the Chaucerian corpus, written before 1372.6 What Chaucer drew from translating and reading these allegories, however, is clearly influential across the span of his literary career. The prologue to Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women, probably begun in the 1380s, is one of the English poet’s most self-referential dream visions, featuring a first-person narrator-protagonist. In the Legend prologue, Chaucer alludes to his earlier translation work and encourages the comparison of his literary efforts with the Rose. The narrator-protagonist of the Legend prologue defends his translation by distinguishing his intention in writing “of the Rose” in English with “what so myn auctour mente.”7 The description of the Rose poet(s) as “myn auctour” employs the language of established 4 The diffusion of the Rose’s influence added to its authority; as David Wallace concludes, after examining Chaucer’s relationship to the Rose reception of five Italian poets, the Rose serves as “the great foundation text of the European Middle Ages, the secular tree of Jesse upon which all illustrious poets sit.” “Chaucer and the European Rose,” in SAC, Proceedings, No. 1, 1984, ed. Paul Strohm and Thomas J. Heffernan (Knoxville, TN: New Chaucer Society, 1985), 67. 5 The only other known Chaucerian work that resembles such direct translation from a single French source is the interesting brief but tripartite Complaint of Venus, modeled on a combination of ballades composed by Oton de Graunson. Although the ballades are not, strictly speaking, part of the tradition of narrative allegory seen in the Rose and Deguileville’s trilogy, Chaucer’s translation does demonstrate interest in the first-person voice of his model. Chaucer alters the lyric to address a male Love, rather than, as in Graunson’s ballades, a female. For study of this alteration’s significance in light of John Gower’s ballades and the relations of French and English lyric more broadly, see Butterfield, Familiar Enemy, 252–54. 6 I draw dates for Chaucer’s poems from The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson, 3rd ed. (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), although the dates are better described as conventional than as certain. I am interested in demonstrating a commonality across Chaucer’s corpus rather than invested in establishing particular dates or a definite order of composition to the poems. I do think it is worth noting that Kathryn L. Lynch’s study of difficulties in Chaucerian chronologies concludes by advising “temporal agnosticism”; see “Dating Chaucer,” ChR 42 (2007): 17. 7 Riverside Chaucer, version F, line 470. All subsequent references to Chaucer’s works, unless otherwise noted, refer parenthetically to Riverside Chaucer by line number. In the case of Troilus and Criseyde, references are by book and line number, and, in the case of the Canterbury Tales, by fragment and by line number.



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authority for the creators of the vernacular poem, while the insistence on a discernable difference in meaning between text and translation in this same passage dramatizes the allegory as beyond authorial control, dependent upon later interpretations. Moreover, Chaucer’s differing versions of the Legend prologue feature an inset ballade with alternate attributions, and such representation of authorship through the deployment of embedded texts also aligns Chaucer’s poetry with the first-person allegory of the Rose authors and Deguileville.8 This chapter traces the manner in which Chaucer’s authorial representation, particularly in his dream visions, participates in the allegorical tradition represented by the Rose and Deguileville’s trilogy. Chaucer’s use of sources was complex and not limited to these French allegories, of course; nor was Chaucer unique among his contemporaries in exploring the possibilities of first-person allegory in English. The allegorical narratives of Piers Plowman and John Gower’s Confessio Amantis have already attracted considerable study and both are relevant to the growth of the tradition and to Chaucer. Gower encourages the comparison of his Confessio with the Rose not only by borrowing elements of its form and its characters but also through references to the allegory by name, while William Langland in a sense owes his name to the allegorical tradition initiated by the Rose. When the scholar George Kane set out his case for attributing three versions of the English allegory Piers Plowman to a single author known as “William Langland,” represented by the narrating protagonist’s self-naming, his argument depended upon reference to what he called the curious “practice of signature” seen in the Rose and in the works of Deguileville, among other poetic exemplars.9 Rather than seeking to elucidate the wider range of literary influences on Chaucer’s poetry or adding to investigations of Chaucer’s relation to the allegorical explorations of his English contemporaries, this chapter takes as its focus Chaucer’s relation to the two French exemplars that served as objects

8 Unless otherwise noted for the purposes of comparison, quotations from the prologue to the Legend of Good Women refer to version F, which survives in more manuscripts than version G. On the particular difficulties in dating the versions in relation to one another, and the often questionable assumptions underlying proposed priority, see Sheila Delaney, The Naked Text: Chaucer’s “Legend of Good Women” (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 34–43. 9 George Kane, “Piers Plowman”: The Evidence for Authorship (London: Athlone Press, 1965), 53. Subsequent studies of signature in Piers Plowman have built upon Kane’s suggestions, primarily in terms of its English socio-historical context, notably Anne Middleton, “William Langland’s ‘Kynde Name’: Authorial Signature and Social Identity in Late Fourteenth-Century England,” in Literary Practice and Social Change in Britain, 1380–1530, ed. Lee Patterson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 15–82, and James Simpson, “The Power of Impropriety: Authorial Naming in Piers Plowman,” in William Langland’s “Piers Plowman”: A Book of Essays, ed. Kathleen M. Hewett-Smith (New York: Routledge, 2001), 145–65.

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of his direct translation. I adopt this focus because of the special importance that Chaucer’s translations and explorations assume for later English authors and also because Chaucer represents, in a certain sense, a critical blind spot in studies of this allegorical tradition.10 That Chaucer’s poetry is indebted to the Rose has long been recognized in critical scholarship. The scholars who first rendered medieval English literature a subject of academic investigation were quick to observe the connection between Chaucer and the Rose, from Thomas Tyrwitt’s 1775 edition of The Canterbury Tales, which devotes special attention to parallels between Chaucer’s verses and the Rose in its extensive footnotes, to the still more detailed investigations of the dedicated philologist Walter William Skeat in the 1890s. The legacy of these early medievalists remains current: the Riverside Chaucer, for example, teaches students newly encountering Middle English verse that “Geoffrey Chaucer was more deeply influenced by the Roman de la Rose than by any other French or English work.”11 Through the years, scholars have credited Chaucer with many forms of borrowing from the Rose, from themes and styles to vocabulary and even bibliography.12 Yet most criticism only reluctantly calls allegorical the Chaucerian works so heavily indebted to the earlier allegory. This reluctance appears to stem from the tendency to define the medieval allegorical tradition broadly, encompassing the characteristics of the didactic psychomachia exemplified in the fourth10 Investigations of Chaucer’s relation to English allegory include the reassessment of Helen Cooper, who saw more similarities in Chaucer’s and Langland’s practice than were acknowledged by “earlier generations of medievalists who thought of Langland as allegorical (and therefore boring) and Chaucer as literal and naturalistic (and therefore interesting).” “Langland’s and Chaucer’s Prologues,” Yearbook of Langland Studies 1 (1987): 72. Another argument for greater resemblance appears in Frank Grady, “Chaucer reading Langland: The House of Fame,” SAC 18 (1996): 3–24. The emphasis on Chaucer’s difference from his contemporaries in later reception becomes a subject of study in John M. Bowers, Chaucer and Langland: The Antagonistic Tradition (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), whereas Rebecca L. Schoff, while observing differences, finds that “multiple attitudes toward Chaucer, as an author whose text should be kept intact, and as a maker whose work should be available for appropriation, went hand-in-hand from the beginning” and that “there can be little question that the idea of an author is written into Piers Plowman. Remarkably, it is written in a manner that does not prevent others from reading themselves in as well.” Reformations: Three Medieval Authors in Manuscript and Moveable Type, Texts & Transitions 4 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 41, 201. 11 Larry D. Benson, introduction to The Romaunt of the Rose, in Riverside Chaucer, p. 685. 12 Charles Muscatine argues for Chaucer’s stylistic and thematic relation to the Rose in Chaucer and the French Tradition. Joseph Mersand ascribes to Chaucer an important role in bringing Romance vocabulary into English, citing the Rose translation as a part of this process, in Chaucer’s French Vocabulary (New York: Comet Press, 1937). Dean Fansler advances the idea that the Rose provided Chaucer with “a list of authorities worthy of study.” Chaucer and the “Roman de la Rose” (New York: Columbia University Press, 1914), 23.



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century Latin verse of Prudentius and those of exegetical commentaries on biblical parables and scriptural text as well as on classical and historical works. In allegory thus broadly defined, the voice of the author is rarely a focus of attention and the first-person narrator, when present, does not often serve as an actor central to a narrative arc. The late Middle Ages, however, saw the formation of a different allegorical tradition in European vernacular writing, one that borrowed formal features from the earlier psychomachiac and exegetical traditions but had new aims. Late medieval authors employ the self-conscious artifice of allegorical veiling to direct attention not only to universal truths lying beyond the text but also to authorial identity and to the interactive process of poetic production.13 Critical studies of Chaucer’s poetry are particularly vulnerable to the terminological dilemma posed by the intertwined allegorical traditions. D. W. Robertson, Jr., produced a widely discussed interpretation of Chaucer’s works that defined all medieval allegory in terms of the elevated aims of Christian scriptural exegesis, insisting that “literary allegory, although it remained a distinct entity, became closely associated with the allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures.”14 Few scholars interested in the representation of human rather than divine authorship seem willing to apply the term “allegorical” to Chaucer’s invitations to interpretation, although, frequently, the reasoning excluding Chaucer’s poetry from the category of allegory would also rule out the Rose, the most popular vernacular allegory composed in the Middle Ages, as well as almost all Rose-inspired poetry. Susanne Conklin Akbari, for example, reflects the broader definition when noting that “in general, allegory is a genre designed to be accessible only to the elect, following the model of Jesus’ parables.”15 Yet her study perceptively reveals that Jean de Meun’s Rose offers a “new formulation of the genre of allegory,” one that “demonstrates that figurative language can never reveal truth,” and her description of Chaucer’s allegory, even at its most “vestigial,” identifies it with the Rose in terms of the shared characteristic of openness to indeterminate, polyvalent interpretation.16 13 C. S. Lewis suggests this transition indirectly in his assertion that “the ‘abstract’ places and people in the Romance of the Rose are presentations of actual life.” Allegory of Love, 115. 14 D. W. Robertson, Jr., A Preface to Chaucer: Studies in Medieval Perspectives (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962), 289. Kathy Cawsey analyzes Robertson’s approach, granting him the title of “The Allegorical Reader,” in Twentieth-Century Chaucer Criticism: Reading Audiences (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 85–108. 15 Akbari, Seeing through the Veil, 232. 16 Ibid., 78–79, 232. Akbari traces the allegorical use of optical imagery across the wider allegorical tradition; she concludes that the imagery declines in the later medieval period, especially the fifteenth century, due to “changes reflecting an increased focus on human persons in the present time rather than transcendent ideas which exist eternally” (ibid., 237).

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Chaucer’s relationship to allegory appears much closer when considered in the context of the Rose’s new formulation of allegory, particularly its adaptation of exegetical models to encourage reflection on the activities of vernacular authors and readers. The distinction is important because the aspects of Chaucer’s poetry frequently described as being non-allegorical—in the above instance, interpretative openness—are signal features of late medieval allegory as it was practiced in the Rose and in Deguileville’s work. Maureen Quilligan, for example, in her generally sensitive study of allegory, disbars Chaucer’s poetry because it is too centered upon examination of an individual author’s voice and its place within a larger literary tradition. Speaking of Chaucer’s “unallegoricalness” in the context of such models as the Rose, Quilligan argues that Chaucer’s House of Fame is not allegory because “Chaucer’s concern is not the nature of human speech, or even its social function … rather he considers the whole literary tradition he has inherited, and with deft, devious wit places himself within it.”17 Quilligan usefully identifies the requirement and manipulation of an interpreting reader as allegory’s defining feature, but reading the Rose and Deguileville’s trilogy and Chaucer’s poetry together reveals that all of these texts are concerned with representing their authors in relation to a larger literary tradition. Allegory, demanding close interpretation from readers, serves as the means of accomplishing this representation.18 When we take the Rose and the response of Deguileville as our starting point for thinking about the form and function of this late medieval allegorical tradition, inclusive of erotic and salvific axiomatic grounding, we are able to 17 Maureen Quilligan, The Language of Allegory: Defining the Genre (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979), 247. 18 Quilligan also insists that allegory is necessarily written rather than oral in nature. Language of Allegory, 245–46. The distinction is worth contemplating but it reflects a notion of “text” that does not seem entirely applicable to late medieval literature; readers are repeatedly addressed as auditors within the Rose. Quilligan’s idea of the reader’s role as an essential part of allegory’s definition, however, accords well with both earlier and later studies focused more specifically on the medieval period. Paul Piehler, for example, distinguishes medieval visionary allegory from its classical and modern counterparts by reason of the reader’s assumed participation in crafting textual meaning and by the location of an interpretative figure within the vision, rather than an outside judge. The Visionary Landscape: A Study in Medieval Allegory (London: Edward Arnold, 1971), 4–5. Anne W. Astell argues that addressing the expectations of readers should be considered part of the composition process for allegory as it inextricably encodes both historically specific and philosophically abstract meaning in the late Middle Ages. Political Allegory in Late Medieval England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999). Whereas Piehler and Astell identify the consequences of allegory’s involvement of readers in terms of its reflection, respectively, of psychic or of political realities, I am interested in the way a specific tradition of allegory arising in the wake of the Rose directs participating readers to think about authorial identity and intent.



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perceive that the many so-called “vestiges” of allegory seen in late medieval writing constitute a shared practice with an important role in literary history. These allegories do not simply picture in concrete terms more universal ideas, whether these are ideas about the psychological or carnal experience of desire, or ideas about the message of Christian salvation, or ideas about the patterns of power and its abuse. All of these claims for the function of Roseinspired allegory do bear some truth, reflecting the near encyclopedic range of the Rose as well as its hermeneutic openness. But in addition to such ideas, the innovative form of allegory central to this cross-linguistic tradition serves the self-presentation of vernacular authors, their representations of literary history as they saw it and as they saw themselves making it. In the tradition inspired by the Rose, allegory can be expected to direct interpretation toward the question of the author’s identity and authority as well as toward any other spiritual or philosophical agenda. This tradition of uniting allegory with attention to authorship forms a key element of Chaucer’s presentation of himself and of English poetry as integral to a wider literary tradition. The previous chapter argued for the importance of looking beyond the difference posed by salvific rather than erotic aims to see the allegory of Guillaume de Deguileville as participating in the Rose tradition of authorial representation. Failure to consider Deguileville’s first-person allegory as influential in relation to authorial representation has obscured our understanding of how Chaucer developed his own representational techniques. Chaucer, like Deguileville, explores the role of the vernacular author through the device of a first-person narrator and protagonist who is engaged in literary activity, reading as well as composing; yet Chaucer’s similarity to Deguileville as well as to the Rose tradition in so doing is rarely acknowledged. The opening of the Rose memorably hints at a connection between the role of the author and the experience of reading and commentary; it refers to the commentary of Macrobius on the literary dream of Scipio before it presents the narrator as the protagonist, author, and glossator of the vision, as briefly noted in the first chapter.19 Chaucer routinely represents his first-person narrator-protagonist as a reader, of Macrobius and others, entering visionary landscapes under the acknowledged influence of an often quite specific experience of reading. The clearest examples are the Ovidian narrative of Ceyx and Alcyone, heavily mediated by French poetic adaptation, which serves as the source of dream-inducing sleep in Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess (c. 1368–1372), and the careful recapitulation of the dream of Scipio, inflected by Macrobian commentary, which is the precursor to dreaming in 19 For more detailed consideration of the importance of Macrobian rhetoric, see J. Stephen Russell, The English Dream Vision: Anatomy of a Form (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1988), 102–9.

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Chaucer’s Parliament of Fowls (c. 1380–1382). In addition, the meditation on reading and dreaming that inaugurates Chaucer’s entry to the House of Fame (c. 1378–1380) finds development throughout this most “bookish” of poems, with its text-dazed narrator.20 The affection for books expressed at the opening of Chaucer’s Legend prologue only momentarily appears to be displaced by more literal flower-gathering: “daisy worship turns out to be a very much more bookish experience than at first appears.”21 So notable is this pattern that A. C. Spearing’s seminal study of Chaucer’s dream visions declares … Chaucer’s major innovation in the tradition of medieval dream-poetry was to identify this point of contact … with the reading of a book. There are one or two examples of reading a book in fourteenth-century French poems (Machaut’s Voir Dit and Froissart’s Espinette Amoureuse), but there is never that detailed connection between the contents of the book and the contents of a following dream which we find not only in The Book of the Duchess but in The Parliament of Fowls and in some dream-poems influenced by Chaucer.22

Spearing refers for confirmation to an often cited note penned by Marshall Stearns.23 Stearns argues that there is no equivalent connection between prior reading and dreams in “love-vision literature” before Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess, making this device “highly original … although the opening lines of the Roman de la Rose may have suggested it to him.”24 James Wimsatt’s more detailed investigation of Chaucer’s sources confirms the judgment of Stearns as “basically sound,” adducing only a passage in Guillaume de Machaut’s Voir Dit, also indebted to the Rose’s influence, which “among the dits antedating the Duchess … is easily the nearest analogue to Chaucer’s reading of a book.”25 Current perspectives on Chaucer depend on these influential studies, cited prominently in editions such as the Riverside Chaucer. An important anthology of fifteenth-century visionary works, seeking to identify their Chaucerian inheritance, thus suggests “Chaucer seems to have been 20 Christopher Baswell describes the House of Fame as Chaucer’s “most obviously bookish book” in Virgil in Medieval England: Figuring the “Aeneid” from the Twelfth Century to Chaucer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 224. 21 Florence Percival, Chaucer’s Legendary Good Women (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 25. 22 A. C. Spearing, Medieval Dream-Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 58. 23 Marshall Stearns, “Chaucer Mentions a Book,” MLN 57 (1942): 28–31. 24 Ibid., 31. 25 James Wimsatt, Chaucer and the French Love Poets: The Literary Background of “The Book of the Duchess” (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968), 85.



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the first European writer to experiment with the possibilities of significant overlap between bedtime reading and the dreams which it can prompt.”26 Chaucer’s experimentation is influential and worthy of attention, but he only “seems” to be the first in the undertaking because the scholarly purview has been limited to love-visions rather than the wider host of Rose-tinted visions. Scholars of Deguileville, such as Steven Wright, note that roughly a decade before Chaucer’s birth, Guillaume de Deguileville’s first version of the Pèlerinage de la Vie Humaine (PVH1) develops the meditation on reading and dreams suggested by the opening of the Rose.27 At the opening of the PVH1, reading of the Rose itself becomes the impetus for the dream: En veillant avoie lëu, Considere et bien vëu Le biau roumans de la Rose. Bien croi que ce fu la chose Qui plus m’esmut a ce songier. (9–13) (While I was awake, I had read, studied, and looked closely at the beautiful Romance of the Rose. I am sure that this was what moved me most to have the dream. [3])

As discussed in the previous chapter, Deguileville later revised his allegory, removing this passage. The recension, the PVH2, has an opening more reminiscent of the reference to Macrobian commentary found at the Rose’s opening, while the vision itself is enlarged to include a debate about the interpretation and the authorship of the Rose as well as the introduction of Ovid as a character, inducing reflection on the author’s reading in this fashion. By the time Chaucer began his Book of the Duchess, Deguileville had crafted connections between visions and reading in the introductions to each of the remaining two sections of his allegorical trilogy. In the c. 1355 PA, Deguileville boldly presents his own previous vision in place of the Rose or Macrobian reading as the prompt for his cosmic vision of the afterlife. Recapitulating the narrative events of his PVH as already “escris” (written) and seemingly true, the narrator-protagonist declares

26 Julia Boffey, Introduction to Fifteenth-Century English Dream Visions: An Anthology, ed. Julia Boffey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 7. Boffey’s introduction does present an earlier description of the importance of Deguileville’s allegory as a French response to the Rose (ibid., 4). 27 Wright, “Deguileville’s Pèlerinage de Vie Humaine as ‘Contrepartie Édifiante’,” p. 420 note 13.

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En pensant a ces chose(te)s ci Soutainnement me rendormi Et n’avoit guaires que tourne M’estoie sus l’autre couste Un autre songe ressongai Que cy apres vous compterai, Et me semble que deppendant Est de l’autre songe devant.28 (While thinking about these same things, I suddenly fell back asleep. I had scarcely turned over on my other side when I again dreamed, another dream, which I hereafter will recount for you, and it seems to me that this dream depends on the other, earlier dream.)

Despite the somatic specificity that turns the speaker’s body like the page of a text, the veil of the visionary fiction is stretched especially thin here; the segue into a sequel is rather obvious. Nonetheless, the posture of uncertainty embodied in the narrator-protagonist’s use of the phrase “me semble” (it seems to me) is important, as it invites readers to investigate the relationship of narrative, narrator, and dream. This posture and the specificity of the reading connected with dreaming develop further in Deguileville’s c. 1358 PJC. The third part of the trilogy, the PJC recasts the gospel narrative along with a vision of the last judgment in the form of dream. At the opening of the allegory, the first-person narrator begins with a careful summary of his reading from scripture and scriptural commentary, before connecting this reading with the opening and nature of his own dreams: Entre pluseurs paraboles Que Jhesus en ses escoles A ses deciples ensegnoit Et a cui ouir les vouloit Il dist quë un homme jadis Fu qui ala hors du päis En pelerinage lointain .................. Et de ce s. Gregoire di[s]t En l’omelie qu’il en fist Que de li mesme ce disoit 28 Le Pèlerinage de l’Âme de Guillaume de Deguileville, ed. J. J. Stürzinger, Roxburghe Club Publications 127 (London: Roxburghe Club, 1895), lines 14, 21–28. All subsequent references to Deguileville’s PA refer to this edition parenthetically by line number.



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Jhesus qui pelerin estoit, .................. Or vous di qu’a ceci pensant Une volenté me vint grant De regarder quel voiage Il fist et pelerinage; Mesmement quar en une nuit L’an mil ccc. lviii. Songié m’estoie pelerin Où avoie fait grant chemin, Et point ne l’avoie vëu En ce chemin ne percëu. Si m’en alai a ce pensant …29 (Jesus in his schools taught his disciples several parables to which he wished them to listen; in one, he said there was once a man who departed from his country on a distant pilgrimage … and concerning this, St Gregory said, in a homily he made upon it, that Jesus was this same pilgrim. … Now I tell you that as I was thinking about this, a great desire came to me to see what journey and pilgrimage he made, particularly because, one night, in the year 1358, I dreamt that I was a pilgrim who had travelled a long way and I did not see or perceive him anywhere on the way. As I went along, thinking about this …)30

The connection between reading and dreaming becomes more complex through what follows, as another dream begins after the weary pilgrim narrator falls

29 Le Pèlerinage de Jhesucrist de Guillaume de Deguileville, ed. J. J. Stürzinger, Roxburghe Club Publications 133 (London: Roxburghe Club, 1897), lines 5–8, 9–12, 17–27. All subsequent references to Deguileville’s PJC refer to this edition parenthetically by line number. 30 J. A. Burrow identifies the dream described in this passage as the dream of the PA, in which the pilgrim narrator-protagonist does not behold Christ’s pilgrimage, and Burrow therefore argues that the date of composition for the PA is 1358 and that of the PJC must be shortly thereafter. See Langland’s Fictions, 113 note 1. Burrow’s argument is plausible, but it remains possible that the date of 1358 applies to the PJC, given the complexities and ambiguities of Deguileville’s temporal references both here and elsewhere and the absence of external evidence for dates. Deguileville’s opening to the PA describes the dream recorded in this text as happening on the same night as the dream recounted in the PVH, although the prologue to the PVH2 claims 25 years have passed since the PVH1 circulated and the PA alludes internally to text found only in the later PVH2. In the PJC passage cited above, no mention of awakening follows the mention of the dreamed journey experience, so the journey seems to continue. The continuity is even stronger in a number of manuscripts, which read “quant” (when) instead of “mesmement quar” (particularly because), as shown in marginal notes on line 21 in the cited edition.

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asleep under an apple tree.31 This plant becomes the symbolic site of Adam’s fall later within the dream, incarnating the scriptural narrative mentioned at the opening rather than digressing from it; similarly, still later within the dream, Christ takes on the pilgrim-protagonist role the Deguileville’s narrator holds in the earlier pilgrimage allegories and evokes at the introduction of the PJC dream. The multiplication of textual and situational prompts at the opening, however, enables Deguileville’s narrator to meditate in seeming confusion on the ultimate cause for his dream. Et en dormant mervelles vi En songant songe mervelleus Selonc le tesmoing de touz ceuz, Si com croi, qui l’orront dire Ou qui ci le voudront lire. Ne sai dont me vint a songier Ce, forz pour cause du pommier Souz qui endormi estoie .................. Ou pour la cause de Jhesu Qui com est dit pelerin fu (54–61, 63–64) (And while sleeping I saw marvels, dreaming a marvelous dream, according to the testimony of all those, I believe, who will hear it told or who will deign to read it. I do not know how I came to dream this, unless by reason of the apple tree under which I was sleeping … or because of Jesus, who was a pilgrim, as mentioned earlier.)

The expression of doubt about the cause of the dream forces the readers, to whom the marvels of the dream are explicitly referred, to ponder the narrator’s sources. The possible origins for the dream connect the vernacular account to the authoritative literary tradition of homilies based on scriptural narratives as well as to the tales of marvels proper to romance.32 The categorization of different causes for the dream also recalls, more distantly, the opening 31 There is a certain correspondence here to Chaucer’s narrator in the House of Fame, in the sense that Chaucer’s narrator falls asleep “wonder sone” (114), and in the manner of a weary pilgrim, but the destination of Chaucer’s narrator is not the new Jerusalem, as the rest of the vision bears out. 32 Sharon Coolidge lists a number of romances exemplifying “a person becoming vulnerable to the supernatural realm by sleeping beneath a particular tree.” See “The Grafted Tree in Sir Orfeo: A Study in the Iconography of Redemption,” Ball State University Forum 23 (1982): 65 note 16. Coolidge also notes that both Deguileville’s PA and the English romance Sir Orfeo demonstrate interest in the symbolic potential of dry trees (ibid., 66).



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Macrobian allusion of the Rose; it seems no coincidence that the PJC’s narrator responds to the first incident of the vision that follows this opening with astonishment expressed through the end rhyme of “songe” (dream) and “menconge” (falsehood) (83–84), a rhyme notably deployed at the opening of the Rose narrative.33 Deguileville’s practice of relating reading and dreaming across his trilogy, not simply in the first text, presents a much closer parallel to Chaucer’s practice than the proposed instances found in the later works of Machaut. Here is an analogue for the attention to a plant that turns out to be yet another book in disguise, as in the Legend prologue. Here is an insistence on the ambiguous nature of a carefully presented correspondence between reading and dreaming, comparable to the opening of Chaucer’s Parliament of Fowls, in which the narrator follows a long introduction summarizing his reading of the dream of Scipio by questioning the reason the guide figure of the text appears within his own dream: “Can I not seyn if that the cause were / For I hadde red of Affrican byforn / That made me to mete that he stod there” (106–8).34 Chaucer does not explicitly cite Deguileville’s trilogy within his visions and it is possible that the minds of Chaucer and Deguileville simply happened to tread a similar path in response to the Rose, a path not taken by so many other Rose-imitators. We can only speculate about the questions of when Chaucer first encountered Deguileville’s allegory, which versions of the PVH Chaucer knew, and whether he knew the rest of the trilogy. Chaucer’s fellow poet Eustache Deschamps, who composed a ballade on the subject of Chaucer’s Rose translation, certainly knew the full span of Deguileville’s works.35 Evidence of later knowledge of the full trilogy and particular 33 On this repeated rhyme in the Rose, see Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, “Remarques sur Songe / Mesonge,” 386. 34 Josephine Elizabeth Houghton remarks on another resemblance between these two texts, suggesting that Chaucer’s court of debating birds may have found inspiration in Deguileville’s allegorizing of Christ and Caiaphas as an eagle and gerfalcon debating before a host of birds in the PJC (7453–7522). See “Guillaume de Deguileville in Late Medieval England,” 174. 35 No. 285, in Œuvres Complètes de Eustache Deschamps, ed. le Marquis de Queux de Saint-Hilare, vol. 2, SATF (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1880), pp. 138–40. For an excellent analysis of the ballade Deschamps addresses to Chaucer, with modern English translation, see Butterfield, Familiar Enemy, 143–51. I offer a small excursus here since the acknowledgement of Chaucer’s English Rose translation in this French ballade is a tantalizing exception to the general absence of evidence for the direct influence of English allegory on French literary production in the late Middle Ages; there is no set of interconnected French translations from first-person allegories written in English comparable to the reverse transmission studied in this book. As Butterfield observes, there are unresolved questions concerning the extent of Chaucer’s Rose translation and the knowledge that Deschamps had of it, as well as the date, tone, and even the meaning of particular words in the ballade. Yet certain points can be drawn from this ballade, which are worth noting here. The Rose represents an authority that exceeds the bounds of its own text and,

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interest in the trilogy’s opening passages can also be found in the writings of another contemporary concerned with the relations of the French and English courts, Philippe de Mézières. Mézières praises the first two sections of Deguileville’s trilogy explicitly, and the same scriptural parable and homily described at the start of Deguileville’s last allegory inspires the narratorprotagonist of the lengthy dream vision written by Mézières, the Songe de Vieil Pelerin, c. 1398.36 In the case of Chaucer, the English translation of the ABC is the most incontrovertible witness that Chaucer did encounter a version of Deguileville’s allegory and read it attentively.37 The idea that Chaucer particularly noticed and emulated Deguileville’s manner of framing his first-person allegorical dreams becomes more convincing in light of the notable parallel between the ending of one of Chaucer’s dream visions and the ending of Deguileville’s PVH. Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess not only envisions its narrator-protagonist reading before dreaming but also shares the striking closure for the dreaming experience found in both versions of the PVH: the final awakening is occasioned by the ringing of bells, located both within and beyond the frame of the dream.38 As Chaucer forges connections indeed, the French literary tradition, and the translation of the Rose asserts the English poet’s claim on that authority; the ballade addresses Chaucer as not only a grant translateur (great translator) but also an Ovides grans (great Ovid), for example. Moreover, figuring the authority of the English poet depends on his identification with the personification represented in the Rose as controlling the poem’s authors; as Butterfield notes, Deschamps declares “Chaucer is the earthly God of love in Albion, and the God of the Rose which he translates into ‘bon anglès’ (good English)” (146). Deschamps was aware of Deguileville’s adaptation of the Rose, as well as Chaucer’s. There is a record of Deschamps receiving a copy of Deguileville’s three Pèlerinage texts destined for Louis of Orléans in 1389, the same year in which Deschamps becomes bailiff of Senlis, the nearest metropolis to Deguileville’s monastery of Chaalis. See Ian S. Laurie and Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi, “A Life,” in Eustache Deschamps: Selected Poems, ed. Ian S. Laurie and Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi, trans. David Curzon and Jeffrey Fiskin (New York: Routledge, 2003), 18. 36 For the deployment of the parable and homily, see Mézières, Le Songe du Vieil Pelerin, 1:83–84. For explicit laudatory allusions to Deguileville’s allegory in the Songe, see the previous chapter, pp. 19–20 note 3. 37 The ABC may also be one of the earliest datable Middle English works addressed to a member of the upper aristocracy; the claim that Chaucer translated the ABC for Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster, appears in The Workes of our Ancient and Learned English Poet, Geffrey Chaucer, Newly Printed, produced by Thomas Speght (London: Islip, 1602), fol. 347r. On Chaucer’s ABC translation and its dissemination, see John Thompson, “Chaucer’s An ABC in and out of Context,” Poetica 37 (1992): 38–48. Although the PVH1 circulated more widely, Helen Phillips argues that the close relationship between Deguileville’s allegorical narrative and the imagery added in Chaucer’s translation of its inset lyric “suggests Chaucer was familiar with Vie2 [PVH2].” “Chaucer and Deguileville: The ABC in Context,” MAe 62 (1993): 10. Alternate title abbreviation inserted in brackets for clarity. 38 L. A. J. R. Houwen briefly notes the shared element of final bell-ringing in “Flattery and the Mermaid in Chaucer’s Nun’s Priest’s Tale,” Animals and the Symbolic in Mediaeval



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between reading and dreaming, he presents the first-person vision as a form of literary commentary in a manner that encourages readers to interpret the authorial significance of the narrating figure. This feature is indeed important to Chaucer’s manner of claiming a place for the English author within a larger literary tradition, but it does not represent a “highly original” departure from earlier literature so much as participation in the allegorical tradition in which Deguileville also played a part. To elucidate Chaucer’s relation to this tradition and its signal features, this chapter first examines how Chaucer’s Rose translation relates to the strategies for authorizing vernacular composition found in the Rose and in Deguileville’s allegory. This examination sets the stage for joint consideration of Chaucer’s poetic experimentation and translations. In his more innovative verse as well as in his direct translations, Chaucer claims authorial attention through three of the strategies also used by the Rose poets and Deguileville. First, Chaucer attributes his name or other recognizable features to the narrating protagonists of dream visions, crafting a particular form of authorial representation dependent upon the interpretation of readers. Second, Chaucer’s narrating protagonists also claim to perform textual composition in the role of a servant or scribe to mythic or moral personifications whose presentation borrows from earlier texts, making authorial representation inherently related to participation in a larger tradition. Third, Chaucer’s poetry features texts such as documents, lyrics, or prayers, embedded within the larger narrative in a way that encourages reflection on the nature and relationship of textual attribution and interpretation. Chaucer’s representation of himself as an English author repeatedly emphasizes his relationship to a wider textual tradition, taking shape through the interpretation of readers, and this style of self-representation reflects Chaucer’s careful reading of the allegorical tradition. Translations of Allegory, Translations of Identity Chaucer’s poetry not only operates within a new language but draws attention to his work of translation. Chaucer dramatizes his relation to the Rose and its

Art and Literature, ed. L. A. J. R. Houwen (Groningen: Forsten, 1997), 89. There is another English allegory, the Piers Plowman B-text, which employs bell-ringing as a dream’s closure, followed by a swift return to dreaming. J. A. Burrow notes Deguileville’s poetry is a “near analogue” for this aspect of Piers Plowman in Langland’s Fictions, 17. The B-text seems likely to have been composed after Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess, although dates are uncertain in both cases. On the B-text date of c. 1377–1381, see Anna P. Baldwin, “The Historical Context,” A Companion to “Piers Plowman,” ed. John A. Alford (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 67–86.

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tradition in terms of translation so successfully that fourteenth- and fifteenthcentury writers laud him for his translation, although the representation appears to have had greater circulation than any actual direct translation ever had. Chaucer’s emphasis on his role as a translator redefines the language and location of the narrating voice newly important to the allegorical tradition, turning attention to English and England. Chaucer’s call for attention to his English has won a notable place for him in the history of the language as told today. Yet calling attention to language and to location is a feature already present in French allegory, as becomes apparent when we examine the manner in which Chaucer introduces a new focus on English in what remains of his direct translation from the Rose. Only fragments survive of the Rose translation associated with Chaucer, but what does survive reveals sensitivity to allegory’s ability to signal the identity of the poet and of the poem’s readers in relation to a wider literary tradition. One of the early passages gesturing to linguistic and geographic identity in the section of the Rose composed by Guillaume de Lorris describes the beautiful music heard in the garden of Delight. Here, the French poem suddenly addresses its readers, saying that “la veïssiez” (745) (there you would have seen [40]) a musician singing “notes lohorenges, / por ce c’on fet en Loheraigne / plus beles notes qu’en nul raigne” (745–50) (an air from Lorraine, for in Lorraine they have more beautiful airs than in any other kingdom [40–41]).39 This boast of the sweetness of Lorraine’s lyrics is an indirect invitation by Guillaume de Lorris to praise the compositions of French contemporaries. Chaucer’s English Romaunt of the Rose takes the passage as an opportunity to mark subtly the distance of the translator and his readers from his source’s context. Instead of reproducing the idea of Lorraine’s lyrics having loveliness surpassing all realms, Chaucer places both the narrator-protagonist and the narrative’s readers in England by rendering the passage with the claim that “in Loreyne her notes be / Ful swetter than in this countre.”40 39 The notes are not “beles” (lovely) but “cointes” (delicate) in some manuscripts, including the single manuscript containing the Rose of Guillaume de Lorris without Jean de Meun’s continuation, Paris, BnF, MS 12786. See Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, Le Roman de la Rose, ed. Armand Strubel (Paris: Le Livre de Poche, 1992), line 750. 40 The “Romaunt of the Rose” and “Le Roman de la Rose”: A Parallel Text Edition, ed. Ronald Sutherland (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967), lines 767–68, emphasis mine. All subsequent quotations from Chaucer’s Romaunt of the Rose refer to this edition parenthetically by line number. I follow Sutherland and later scholars in attributing the “A” Fragment to Chaucer. For more extensive consideration of authorship, see Xiang Feng, “Chaucer and the ‘Romaunt of the Rose’: A New Study in Authorship” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1990) and Charles Dahlberg, “Authorship,” in The Romaunt of the Rose, ed. Charles Dahlberg, Variorum Edition of the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer 7 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 3–24.



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Chaucer’s insistence here on a new location for the Romaunt, distinctly outside Lorraine’s sphere of influence, echoes a choice made earlier in the translation when rendering another passage descriptive of song and thereby linked to notions of lyric composition. In the French poem, a comparison between the beautiful song of birds in the allegorical garden and the song of sirens features an explanation of the name “siren” as deriving from the voices of these creatures being “saines / et series” (671–72) (clear, pure [39]). This positive interpretation uses an invented French etymology to compete obliquely with the traditional negative connotations of singing sirens, connotations that shade the figurative meaning of this comparison. Chaucer’s Romaunt enlarges the French etymology for this name with specific reference to English vocabulary: “Though we mermaydens clepe hem here / In Englisshe, as in our vsaunce, / Men clepe hem sereyns in Fraunce” (682–84). This expanded translation of the French “seraines” exceeds an explanation of the terminology in Chaucer’s source as it once more unites both speaker and audience in English identity through deictics, speaking of our English usage here. Chaucer’s introduction of the term “mermaydens” is not necessary for the basic comprehension of the French term by English readers, as Christopher Cannon has shown. The noun “siren” was already in recorded use in English writing; novelty instead lies in Chaucer’s description of English usage, since Cannon finds that there is “no earlier use of ‘meremaiden’ ” than this passage. 41 Although the word’s components are of Old English origin, Cannon argues that they are “joined here to make a word for the first time.”42 Rather than simply borrowing again a French term found in his source and already in English use, Chaucer renders the term a second time with an English-rooted invention, making explicit its native origin, and thus his own. In Chaucer’s translation, describing the lyrical sounds of the allegorical garden is an occasion for advertising a specific geographic and linguistic identity for a poet and his readers, as it was in Guillaume’s French verses. But Chaucer’s emulation of the technique of identification found in his allegorical source allows him to redirect the attention from Guillaume to himself. As Chaucer translates the garden’s description, he insinuates a widening of the tradition it figures, acknowledging that Guillaume’s neighboring Lorraine may be sweeter in song but suggesting that those in England also know such songs

Simon Horobin describes the rediscovery of a single leaf containing part of the “B” Fragment in “A New Fragment of the Romaunt of the Rose,” SAC 28 (2006): 205–15. 41 Christopher Cannon, The Making of Chaucer’s English: A Study of Words (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 82. 42 Ibid.

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and have their own native names for sweet singers.43 Like the Astrolabe’s technical calculations, the universal truth (and appeal) of the allegory resides precisely in its ability to adapt to new particularities, suggesting the importance of identifying the poet’s specific contextual and linguistic identity as well as the importance of relating each poet to others.44 Reflecting on acts of translation is a recognizable feature of the Rose tradition before Chaucer’s poetry introduced English as the new linguistic target of such translation. The literary tradition Chaucer enters already employs translation as an authorizing strategy for the vernacular poet, using allegorical techniques. For example, Jean de Meun’s first-person narrator-protagonist specifically requests that the personification Reason advise him in French rather than in Latin: “Or me dites donques ainceis, / non en latin, mes en françois.” (5809–10) (Now tell me, not in Latin, but in French [117]). This request directs attention to the poem’s language; it is not necessitated by the use of any Latin in the preceding passage, as Reason has not delved into Latin more than any other character in the allegory. Moreover, Reason’s most recent allusion to classical narrative, made in French, refers to the story of Echo, an element of the Narcissus myth recounted at a significant moment in the opening of the Rose and ultimately retold multiple times within it.45 The first-person narratorprotagonist’s request for translation, following the reference to this myth, thus indirectly reminds readers of the translation the allegory has already begun to perform. The request and its self-reflexive effect match an earlier passage in Reason’s discourse, which also draws attention to Jean de Meun’s activity of translation. Reason introduces the idea of translation’s

43 L. A. J. R. Houwen’s observation that sirens, like those found in the Rose, are particularly associated with pride in both Deguileville’s allegory and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (as well as Thomas Hoccleve’s work) represents another interesting resemblance in the depiction of sirens within this allegorical tradition. “Flattery and the Mermaid,” 87–89. 44 Roger Ellis makes this point about the nature of Astrolabe translation, arguing “the original text, that is, exists only as differently realised in different locations and languages.” “Figures of English Translation, 1382–1407,” in Translation and the Nation: Towards a Cultural Politics of Englishness, ed. Roger Ellis and Liz Oakley-Brown, Topics in Translation 18 (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2001), 10. Andrew Cole makes clear that interest in localized translation was not a subject of only continental interest in his informative reading of the Astrolabe’s translation within the context of Wycliffite translation debates in England. “Chaucer’s English Lesson,” Speculum 77 (2002): 1128–67. 45 On the effect of this myth’s iteration within and beyond the Rose, see James Simpson, “The Economy of Involucrum: Idleness in Reason and Sensuality,” Through a Classical Eye: Transcultural and Transhistorical Visions in Medieval English, Italian, and Latin Literature in Honour of Winthrop Wetherbee, ed. Andrew Galloway and R. F. Yeager (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 390–414.



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worth, informing the narrator-protagonist that a French translation of De Consolatione would be a great benefit: ce puet l’en bien des clers enquerre, qui Boece de Confort lisent et les sentences qui la gisent, dont granz biens aus genz lais feroit qui bien le leur translateroit. (5006–10) (You can easily learn this from the clerks who explain Boethius’s Consolation and the meanings which lie in it. He who would translate it for the laity would do them a great service. [105])

Such hypothetically-phrased praise for a person undertaking this work of translation, set in the mouth of the personification of Reason, refers the reader to Jean de Meun, who adapts a good portion of “les sentences” of Boethius into the French speeches of Reason within the Rose and who had also begun creating or would create a more direct and full translation of the Latin De Consolatione for Phillip IV.46 The dialogue of personification and narratorprotagonist not only resembles Boethian dialogue but also works to identify and to commend the vernacular author by drawing attention to his reading and translating of the earlier Latin allegory. Such self-citation through the mouth of a personification is notable in the Rose, not only in the case of Reason; as discussed in the previous chapter, Love names both the authors and the work in which he appears, and Genius offers a critical comparison of the Rose to the sermon he delivers within the Rose. Jean de Meun’s figurative references to his literary activities did not pass unnoticed. Like Jean de Meun, Guillaume de Deguileville crafted personifications whose linguistic interests and textual artifacts are indicative of their author’s identity. The most striking example, discussed in the previous chapter, is the self-naming macaronic (Latin-French) acrostic verse identifying Grace summoning the author, added in the PVH2. This acrostic lyric enlarges on the example already set by another acrostic lyric 46 For a comparison of Jean de Meun’s approaches to Boethius in these works, see David F. Hult, “Poetry and the Translation of Knowledge in Jean de Meun,” in Dixon et al., Poetry, Knowledge and Community, 19–41. Peter Dronke points out that Jean de Meun “interpreted Boethius’s arguments with Philosophia as a dialogue between the author and his own reason” in his translation. Verse with Prose from Petronius to Dante: The Art and Scope of the Mixed Form (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 8–9. Dronke examines closely the central poetic prayer—asking Philosophy to give expression to Boethius, the character who represents the author of both characters—to argue that De Consolatione “not only features allegorical figures but is the first prosimetrum, to my knowledge, where allegory plays a vital rôle in the whole imaginative organization of the work” (ibid., 38).

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found in both the PVH1 and the PVH2, the ABC translated by Chaucer. Deguileville’s ABC resembles his self-naming macaronic verse not only in its acrostic form and association with Grace but also through its suggestions of bilingual reading. Although not macaronic, Deguileville’s ABC brings into French the instruction of Latin auctores, alluding to patristic sources as well as citing Aristotle’s Ethics by name. Deguileville’s PA takes this linguistic mobility even further into the allegorical drama. At the close of the PA, the narrator-protagonist declares that he will compose prayers in Latin because he desires to turn away from Oiseuse (Idleness) and to turn toward Penitence, a declaration that extends his engagement with characters in the allegory beyond the narrative as well as beyond the vernacular (11150– 61).47 Deguileville, like Jean de Meun, uses the framework of allegory to draw attention to his role as a bilingual composer, versed in different languages, encouraging readers to envision poetic activity in the vernacular as reflective of engagement with the Latin tradition. When Chaucer deploys allegory to represent to his authorship, the attention to first-person voice and to language seen in his Romaunt translation is very much in evidence. Chaucer calls attention to himself as a translator and uses the strategies that Jean de Meun and Deguileville had employed to call attention to their own mediation between languages. Chaucer shares Jean de Meun’s interest not only in Boethian translation but also in the Boethian model of figurative first-person narrative. Chaucer makes his name a subject of interpretation through a dramatic dialogue between a narratorprotagonist and a “friend” within a visionary framework; Chaucer also brings his vernacular compositions to the attention of readers by envisioning them being named and discussed by mythic characters and personifications, who attribute these works to the dreaming narrator-protagonist. The relation between Chaucer’s writing and his readers, moreover, gains emphasis through the presentation of lyric texts as embedded within a visionary frame in the fashion of Deguileville’s ABC. A careful reader of both the Rose and the pilgrimage allegory it inspired, Chaucer translates the allegorical tradition into English to fashion a vision of vernacular authorship in the minds of his readers, a vision inclusive of his own activities as author and as reader.

47 This longer conclusion and the Latin prayers are not witnessed in all manuscripts. For remarks on Deguileville’s Latin and an edition of two of the Latin poems circulated with PA, see Frédéric Duval, “Deux Prières Latines de Guillaume de Digulleville: Prière à Saint Michel et Prière à l’Ange Gardien,” in Duval and Pomel, Les Pèlerinages Allégoriques, 185–211. Like the PVH2, the PA also features a macaronic self-naming acrostic; on this instance of Deguileville’s skill in bilingual composition and its reception, see Le Briz and Veysseyre, “La Lettre Bilingue de Grâce de Dieu au Pèlerin.”



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The “I” of Allegory: Author Names and Authority The allegorical tradition rooted in the Rose demands consideration of vernacular authorship through the presentation of a first-person narratorprotagonist: this figure interacts with the personifications of visionary narrative yet conveys the identity of the extradiegetic poet by assuming the poet’s name or individualized features. The use of first-person narration is one of the most frequently discussed features of Chaucer’s poems, yet the role of such a narrator is seldom explicitly acknowledged as a form of allegory, in contrast to the way in which this same feature has been received in Piers Plowman.48 George Kane, when noting the shared element of the author-identifying narrator-protagonist, described the tradition as one of “various kinds of narrative poems in which a first-person narrator recounts a succession of fantastic incidents represented as experienced either awake or in a dream.” 49 I apply the term “allegorical” to this tradition, since it concisely and usefully indicates that the nature of the connection created between the poet and the poem’s first-person voice is necessarily ambiguous, demanding of interpretation, figurative rather than direct. The use of this innovation becomes so popular as to be conventional in late medieval literature, and it is so much a part of textual expectations that we sometimes fail to realize just how much this curious form of allegory shapes our scholarly readings of Chaucer’s first-person voice, even when these readings diverge. Chaucer’s name is not among the features gesturing to authorial identity in most of his dream vision poems, but it does significantly appear in the poem arguably most concerned with the legacy of literary production, the House of Fame.50 The fashion in which Chaucer’s name is introduced in the House of Fame demands that we interpret the relationship between the poet and the poem. The most vociferous proponents of reading the first-person narrator-protagonists in Chaucer’s poems as the historical Chaucer’s autobiographical reflection do not typically argue that the historical Chaucer received recompense for his writings from Jupiter, the god of thunder, even though a talking eagle

48 David Lawton’s study of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is one noteworthy exception. Lawton argues “The narratorial ‘I’, sometimes persona, always voice, is a personification of the text or … an allegory of the author’s presence in the text. Both presence and author are thereby allegorised, signified by unstable, because shifting, abstractions.” Chaucer’s Narrators (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1985), xiii. 49 Kane, “Piers Plowman,” 53. 50 Helen Cooper notes scholarly recognition of the House of Fame as something akin to “Chaucer’s own statement of poetic theory” or, alternatively, “his exploration of the problems of writing poetry.” “Chaucer and Ovid: A Question of Authority,” in Ovid Renewed: Ovidian Influences on Literature and Art from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century, ed. Charles Martindale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 74.

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makes this claim about the dreaming narrator-protagonist in Chaucer’s House of Fame. On the other hand, this same talking eagle attributes the name “Geffrey” to the narrator-protagonist he describes as rewarded by Jupiter, and even adherents to a conception of Chaucer’s narrators as conventional or ironic personas, quite distinct in identity from their author, generally accept that the eagle’s use of the name “Geffrey” does refer readers to the proper name of the historical Chaucer. Reading Chaucer’s first-person allegory requires us to focus interpretation on the poet-poem relationship; like the Rose, Chaucer’s poetry guides readers to negotiate the questions the figurative play of allegory raises about the author’s identity, authority, and relation to literary predecessors. Chaucer’s complex self-naming fits the obsession with literary lineage visible in his House of Fame from the first glimpse of the dwelling that now names the work, which stands upon a melting cliff of ice inscribed with “famous folkes names” (1137). These inscriptions are a detail that Chaucer apparently originated as he reworked his multiple sources for the poem’s central conceit; the dissolving names seem an appropriate metaphor for the way in which Chaucer’s poetic edifice acts as a kind of intertextual melting pot.51 Chaucer’s image of Fame’s dwelling draws notably from the first medieval vernacular depiction of Fortune’s dwelling, found in the midst of Reason’s speech in Rose, a depiction which is in turn heavily indebted to De Consolatione, as well as to the Anticlaudianus and Book 12 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.52 The range of Latin and vernacular authorities Chaucer’s poem invokes, and their interconnections, have generated considerable study, particularly the echoes of Dante Alighieri’s invocation of the classical Muses.53 51 Nicole de Margival’s Dit de la Panthère also features Fortune as dwelling on ice but depicts no names therein. Albert C. Baugh argues that Margival, like Chaucer, drew his conception of Fortune’s home from the Rose and may not have been an intermediary source. “Chaucer and the Panthère d’Amours,” in Britannica: Festschrift für Hermann M. Flasdieck, ed. Wolfgang Iser and Hans Schabram (Heidelburg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1961), 55–61. 52 On the Rose and Anticlaudianus, see Whitehead, Study of Medieval Architectural Allegory, 159. 53 For the argument that Chaucer’s invocation of the Muses in the House of Fame borrows from Dante’s Commedia, see J. A. W. Bennett, “Chaucer, Dante and Boccaccio,” in Chaucer and the Italian Trecento, ed. Piero Boitani (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 108. Early study of the House of Fame’s relation to classical literature appears in Charles P. R. Tisdale, “The House of Fame: Virgilian Reason and Boethian Wisdom,” Comparative Literature 25 (1973): 247–61. On the portrayal of Aeneas in Chaucer’s House of Fame in relation to the medieval commentary tradition on Virgil and Ovid, see Baswell, Virgil in Medieval England, 228. Jamie Fumo argues for greater continuity in the poetic self-presentation of Virgil, Dante, and Chaucer, making brief reference to Chaucer’s echoing of Dante in the House of Fame. The Legacy of Apollo: Antiquity, Authority, and Chaucerian Poetics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), 15–17, 184–85.



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Although it draws prominently on many sources in addition to the poetry of the Rose, Chaucer’s House of Fame resembles the equally broad-ranging Rose in its interest in earlier first-person voices from the Latin tradition, including De Consolatione. Indeed, the House of Fame’s translation of figurative imagery concerning Fortune from De Consolatione into English can be seen to herald Chaucer’s Boece, the full English translation of De Consolatione, and Chaucer’s Boece draws upon its French counterpart, the translation created by the Rose-poet Jean de Meun. Certainly, the eagle who names Chaucer’s narrator-protagonist also assures him that envisioning the workings and dwelling of Fame is intended to “solace” him (2008), like the consolation that Lady Philosophy offers Boethius or the comfort Reason offers the Rose’s narrator-protagonist. Moreover, the influence of the Rose and of its Latin models for authorial self-reference provides a significant context for one passage of the House of Fame that is particularly relevant to the ascription of the poet Chaucer’s first name to his narrator-protagonist: within Fame’s dwelling, a character addressed only as “frend” (1873) asks the narrator-protagonist both what his name is and if he desires fame. The use of the first-person voice in this passage is striking; as Frank Grady has observed, 29 first-person pronouns appear in a dialogue consisting only of 30 lines.54 The narrator-protagonist does not tell his name; instead he claims he does not seek fame and expands this denial into an explanation that raises more questions than it answers: Sufficeth me, as I were ded, That no wight have my name in honde. I wot myself best how y stonde; For what I drye, or what I thynke, I wil myselven al hyt drynke, Certeyn, for the more part, As fer forth as I kan myn art. (1876–82)

The echoes of Boethian dialogue in the denial have long been recognized.55 But if the “art” of Chaucer’s first-person narrator-protagonist lies in his ability to keep his name and his experiences to himself, the poem he narrates is artless indeed, as his name has already been revealed within the dream narrative he relates, set in the revelatory voice of the talking eagle. In truth, asserting the author’s veiling of self-knowledge and name, hinting that these features are discoverable, if only partially and indirectly, through 54 55

Grady, “Chaucer reading Langland,” 15. See, for example, Gardiner Stillwell, “Chaucer’s ‘O Sentence’ in the Hous of Fame,” English Studies 37 (1956): 153–54.

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interpretation of a first-person narrator-protagonist who thinks and “dryes” (suffers) in a imaginary realm among fictive others, constitutes the art of the new vernacular allegorical tradition. As discussed in the first chapter, Deguileville’s PVH2 also features a passage in which the first-person narrator-protagonist asserts veiled selfknowledge when he denies a friend interested in his fame, a passage concerned, like Chaucer’s House of Fame, with negotiating the influence of classical authorities. The poet Ovid is hailed as an inspiration in the Rose and also depicted as one of the poets who jostle for authority in the House of Fame; in Deguileville’s PVH2, Ovid appears as a character who identifies himself as a friend to the narrator-protagonist and declaims Latin verses from the Ibis against the forces harming his reputation. Deguileville’s narrator-protagonist rejects the curses offered by this friend on his behalf and then reflects upon his position in terms that resemble the way the House of Fame’s “Geffrey” responded to his “frend.” Deguileville’s narrator-protagonist conveys the name of the poet to the allegory’s extradiegetic readers, not to the character of Ovid in his capacity as a friend, by declaiming a naming acrostic lyric, which he justifies by asserting that no other individual knows his suffering: … ne tienne nul a despit Sen icelluy dueil iay assises Les lettres de mon nom … .................. Car a nul tel dueil appartient Fors qua moy seul dont le dueil vient. (84r) (Do not take it amiss if in this lament I have placed the letters of my name… For such suffering can be known by none save myself alone, to whom the suffering came.)

The ancient poet Ovid, composing in exile, identified his experience of suffering as an impetus for writing to keep his name alive, in direct contrast to his stated denial of a name for the enemy cursed in his pseudonymemploying Ibis.56 Yet the suffering dramatized by vernacular poets in the late medieval allegorical tradition is not that of exile or, as in De Consolatione, of impending execution, but rather the suffering of interpretation by readers and of potentially negative literary fame. The experience of suffering that justifies intruding reference to an individual authorial identity is thus the 56 On Ovid’s play with naming in relation to Deguileville’s allegory, see Philippe Maupeu, “La Tentation Autobiographique dans le Songe Allégorique édifiant de Guillaume de Digulleville: le Pèlerinage de Vie Humaine,” in Songes et Songeurs (13e-18e Siècles), ed. Nathalie Dauvois and Jean-Philippe Grosperrin (Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 2001), 64.



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experience of authorship itself.57 The Rose reveals the names of its authors in the context of revealing their suffering in literary service to the god of Love. This mythic personification of Love names the Rose poets and laments their suffering, but he is far less concerned with the physical ordeals he predicts for them (one shall suffer death, the other the pains of birth) than with the anguish caused by the poem’s incomplete state, left without a conclusion or guidance to interpretation. Love declares that the poets wish to finish and gloss the work but that they are unable to do so, necessitating his controlling role. Deguileville similarly depicts his PVH2 narrator-protagonist as suffering from difficulty in controlling his interpretation; he has been attacked by personifications including Detraction and thrown from the horse, Renown, at the moment when Ovid offers him sympathy. The individual suffering that justifies directing attention to the individual vernacular poet is the potentially painful experience of entering into the tradition of self-figurative display and becoming subject to the interpretative work of readers. Narratives of service to allegorical characters or to allegorical narrative itself are forms of self-service, since the authorial role claimed by the first-person narratorprotagonist of an allegory fixes interpretative attention on the allegory’s author. Yet the allegorical nature of the relationship means that the author cannot fully control this interpretation. The allegorical tradition thus keeps in tension opposing interpretative impossibilities, namely, the two extremes of reading the “I” as functioning purely as autobiography and of refusing to read the “I” as a gesture to the individual poet. Many modern readings of Chaucer’s poetry are particularly cautious about autobiographical assumptions. Colin Wilcockson, for example, introduces one of the most widely circulated modern editions of Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess by first acknowledging that “critics have argued about the possibility that Chaucer’s depiction of the narrator in The Book of the Duchess may contain autobiographical elements” and then declaring “the highly formalized narrator-persona of French courtly poetry, often melancholy and lovesick, is such a common figure that we should be very wary of assuming that the I of The Book of the Duchess represents Chaucer himself.”58 However, as J. A. Burrow has observed, we must also be wary of assuming that the

57 Dante Alighieri’s often-cited justification of first-person self-reference also invokes the fear of suffering disgrace, explicitly likened to the example of Boethius protesting his exile. Il Convivio, ed. Maria Simonelli (Bologna: Riccardo Pàtron, 1966), 1.2.13–15. When the Boethian justification for self-representation is applied to Dante’s own auto-exegesis, the feared disgrace subtly shifts from the realm of life experience into the realm of literary interpretation, as Dante protests potential misunderstanding of not only his actions but his compositions (ibid., 1.2.16–21). 58 Wilcockson, introduction to The Book of the Duchess, in Riverside Chaucer, p. 330.

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figuration found in French poetry, being common to a poetic tradition, does not gesture to an individual.59 Close study of allegories affixing proper names to their first-person narrators demonstrates that what these allegories have in common was precisely such a gesture. Arousing interest in the poet’s identity remains a possible function of this first-person allegorical form even when the poet’s name is not invoked, through the choice of those characters with whom the “I” of the poem interacts, and it is to this element in Chaucer’s dreams that we now turn our attention. The “I” of Allegory: Literary Self-Service Although Chaucer’s first-person visions never involve the narrator-protagonist in the dramatic interaction of allegorical characters to the same extent or at the same length as the Rose, Chaucer’s poetry does feature controlling personifications. Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess repeatedly envisions mythic pagan divinities as powerful influences and the knight who appears within the narrator-protagonist’s dream recounts to him an encounter with Fortune that is more dramatic, more direct, and less historicized than the depiction of Fortune in the Rose. The Rose, like the Book of the Duchess, fits the depiction of Fortune into the reported speech of a character, but in the Rose Fortune is the subject of Reason’s admonitions and Fortune’s operations are illustrated by the chronicled downfall of ancient and recent rulers.60 The narrator-protagonist of each text thus functions at a different diegetic level from this controlling personification. Yet when Fortune’s twin sister, the very image of Fortune, appears as the character Fama in Chaucer’s later House of Fame, there is less diegetic distance between the narrator and the personification than lies between the narrator and Fortune in the Rose, despite the above-mentioned denial of the House of Fame’s narrator that he seeks her. In this alteration, Chaucer resembles Deguileville, who adds a disheartening encounter between 59 Burrow’s warning against what he terms the “conventional fallacy” (in imitation of George Kane’s “autobiographical fallacy”) points out that it is a mistake to “talk as if non-literary experience were not itself shaped by conventions.” “Autobiographical Poetry: The Case of Thomas Hoccleve,” Proceedings of the British Academy 68 (1982): 394. 60 Observing this difference is not meant to obscure Chaucer’s evident interest in the representation of Fortune in the Rose, particularly its adaptation from De Consolatione. On the relevance of Boethian adaptation in this passage to Chaucer’s Monk’s Tale, for example, see Monica McAlpine, The Genre of “Troilus and Criseyde” (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978), 90–93. Chaucer’s depiction of Fortune also responds to the later French poetry of Guillaume de Machaut and Jean Froissart, similarly influenced by the Rose. For a concise account of the frequently noted intertextual relationship, see Calin, “Machaut’s Legacy: The Chaucerian Inheritance Reconsidered,” in Chaucer’s French Contemporaries: The Poetry/ Poetics of Self and Tradition, ed. R. Barton Palmer (New York: AMS, 1999), 281.



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the narrator-protagonist and Fortune when revising his PVH; moreover, the encounter with Fortune in the PVH2 introduces Deguileville’s alphabetic acrostic prayer, the lyric that Chaucer translated. The depictions of Fortune in Chaucer’s visions are not so similar as to render certain Chaucer’s borrowing from Deguileville rather than mutual sources, however, and, as demonstrated below, Chaucer’s most extensive first-person depiction of encountering a mythic personification, in the prologue of the Legend, draws more overtly from the Rose than from Deguileville’s allegory.61 Nonetheless, Chaucer’s poetry reflects what both works share: Chaucer follows the Rose poets and Deguileville not only in the naming of the narrator-protagonist, as discussed above, but also in the narrator-protagonist’s encounters with personifications, crafting a picture of literary legacy through envisioning earlier poets, or the characters of their poetry, as his predecessors in such meetings. In Chaucer’s prologue to his Legend, the first-person narrator-protagonist recounts a dream in which his life is threatened by the god of Love and a beautiful queen persuades Love to reduce his punishment to the task of recounting stories of good women, presumably the stories that follow the Legend’s prologue and form what remains of this incomplete work. The Legend’s stories of good women retell the tragic end of many Ovidian heroines, although Chaucer’s use of sources ranged further, here as in his House of Fame. The allegory of this dream, which overtly cites the Rose, rewrites the most famous passage of the Rose, the central speech of the god of Love, and does so in order to direct the attention of readers toward Chaucer’s identity and poetic authority. Although the prologue consists of only about 600 lines of verse, these are among the most studied verses of Chaucer’s corpus since they appear to offer a list of Chaucer’s literary works. The identities of the dream’s narrator-protagonist and the historical writer Chaucer are connected by this list of works attributable to Chaucer, rather than by the use of Chaucer’s proper name. Just like the revelation of authorial names in the Rose, however, the list of Chaucer’s works is not claimed by the dream’s narrator-protagonist directly but is instead credited to him by allegorical voices. The first such allegorical speaker is the god of Love, important in the Ovidian lyric referenced at the Rose’s mid-point as well as in the classical stories that are retold in the body of Chaucer’s Legend. Just 61 One intriguing, unnoted resemblance is found at the closing of Chaucer’s description of the authorial pillars of Fame’s hall: the narrator-protagonist of the House of Fame cannot enumerate all the authors present because there are as many “as ben on treës rokes nestes” (1516). Deguileville’s PVH2 envisions Fortune as presiding over a tree crowded with nests, although these nests seem to represent the hierarchy of rulers rather than authors (66v-78r). Rosemond Tuve calls attention to other instances of imagery found in both the House of Fame and the PHV2 in “Guillaume’s Pilgrim and the Hous of Fame,” MLN 45 (1930): 518–22.

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like the god of Love who speaks at the Rose’s mid-point, the god of Love in Chaucer’s work claims to be no mere character but the arbiter of the entire textual project, demanding power over the compositions of the first-person narrator-protagonist and over his readers. Unlike the Rose’s Love, however, Chaucer’s Love does not declare the figure of poet within the text worthy of praise and one of his best servants.62 Love instead rails against him, calling him a betrayer of Love’s servants who offends Love with his translations: “Of myn olde servauntes thow mysseyest, / And hynderest hem with thy translacioun” (323–24). Expounding his complaint more fully, the god of Love names the Rose as an offending translation, saying: … Thou maist yt nat denye For in pleyn text, withouten nede of glose, Thou hast translated the Romaunce of the Rose, That is an heresye ayeins my lawe, And makest wise folk fro me withdrawe. (327–30)

Chaucer’s god of Love radically transforms Jean de Meun’s depiction of this character in terms of the textual judgment he issues. Instead of prophetically telling how another vernacular writer enters his service, joining the ranks of classical poets by completing a vernacular poem, Love condemns Chaucer for offending against Love’s ancient servants through vernacular translation. Chaucer’s god of Love describes the reception of Chaucer’s Rose translation as the opposite of the reception predicted by the god of Love at the center of the French Rose: readers are not drawn to Love through the poem but are rather alienated from Love. Instead of claiming that Love’s help is indispensable to the poetic project, Chaucer’s Love claims the English poet created translations without obeying Love. Indeed, at the prologue’s conclusion, the character Alceste raises doubt about whether the narrator-protagonist is a lover and nonetheless commands him to deliver praise of “love,” referring to the personification or the idea or both: “And thogh the lyke nat a lovere bee, / Speke wel of love; this penance yive I thee” (490–91). The relationship between the god of Love and the vernacular medieval author, so famously staged at the center of the lover’s quest in the Rose, is re-enacted in this prologue. But the relationship has become far less erotic in its translation into English and even more overtly concerned with the process of textual transmission. 62 To be sure, even Jean de Meun’s Love offers some criticisms, which may have inspired Chaucer. In the Rose, Love notes, in the midst of his praise, that Guillaume de Lorris lacks wisdom and attributes a rather dubious form of wisdom (one entirely lacking reason) to Jean de Meun, foreseeing that Jean may need to repent failures in his literary service; see lines 10501, 10541–42.



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As Love bewails not only the translation of the Rose but also the English account of Criseyde and Troilus, Chaucer’s heightened attention to the textual, rather than the erotic, involvements of the first-person narrator becomes more notable.63 The god of Love also appears in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde (c. 1382–1386), during a semi-allegorical first-person interjection, which similarly describes a textually-mediated relationship between the personification and the author. Although the voice claiming to be the author is not the main protagonist of the Troilus narrative, he nevertheless identifies himself in relation to the god of Love. He identifies himself not as Love’s servant, however, but instead as the servant of Love’s servants, distant from this god and “unlikly” in terms of love, rather than “lyk a lover” as the Legend prologue’s narrator-protagonist is urged to be: For I, that God of Loves servantz serve, Ne dar to Love, for myn unliklynesse, Preyen for speed, al sholde I therfor sterve, So fer am I fro his help in derknesse. (1.15–18)

This allusion to “unliklynesse” in the Troilus resembles a passage in Chaucer’s House of Fame, which also describes the relation between the first-person narrator-protagonist and the god of Love. The talking eagle, who names the narrator-protagonist “Geffrey” and claims that Jupiter will reward him, also identifies him, in a rather disparaging way, as one who records how servants of the god of Love, both past and present, offer service. The eagle declares that all “Geffrey” does is To make bookys, songes, dytees, In ryme or elles in cadence, As thou best canst, in reverence 63 The source from which Chaucer translates most extensively in his Troilus and Criseyde is Giovanni Boccaccio’s Il Filostrato, itself influenced by the Rose. On the Rose as an influence on Boccaccio, see Wallace, Chaucer and the Early Writings of Boccaccio, and Butterfield, Familiar Enemy, 296. In contrast to the already noted reference to the “auctour” of the Rose in the prologue to the Legend (470) and, as discussed later in this chapter, the reference to “he that wroot the Romance of the Rose” in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (4.2032), Chaucer’s poetry does not feature acknowledgement of Boccaccio as an authorial model, despite extensive borrowing. Nicholas R. Havely contrasts this omission with Chaucer’s allusions to Petrarch and Dante, suggesting the possibility that “while Chaucer regarded Petrarch and especially Dante reverentially as auctours, he saw his relationship to Boccaccio more as a working partnership between equals.” Introduction to Chaucer’s Boccaccio: Sources of “Troilus” and the “Knight’s” and “Franklin’s Tales,” ed. and trans. Nicholas R. Havely (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1980), 12. Chaucer’s references to the Rose and omissions of reference to Deguileville and other Rose-inspired poets may reflect a similar differentiation.

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Of Love and of hys servantes eke That have hys servyse soght, and seke. (622–26)

If Jean de Meun employs allegorical voices to encode his poetry as service to Love in the company of ancient poets, Chaucer uses allegorical voices to claim more distant service, working for Love’s servants rather than for Love, suggesting more strongly the influence of earlier texts and of the practice of translation in his poetry. In both the House of Fame and the Legend prologue, Chaucer’s writing practice is depicted as growing out of textual engagement, even too much so. The House of Fame’s eagle famously berates “Geffrey” for sitting silently before books, having no fresh or direct tidings of Love’s servants. The narrator-protagonist of Chaucer’s allegory does not act like a garden-variety lover, as in the Rose, but rather like a bibliophilic hermit. Fittingly, Chaucer presents a defense against the anger of the god of Love in the Legend prologue that yet again underscores his relationship to books: he places between Love and his narrator-protagonist an allegorical intermediary of a very textual nature. Before the narrator-protagonist of Chaucer’s Legend prologue offers an account of his dream, he claims his attention can only be drawn away from his beloved books by flowers, particularly by the daisy. In his dream, he is saved from Love’s anger by a queen who wears a crown of pearls that makes her look, as the narrator-protagonist wonderingly says, “for al the world, ryght as a dayesye” (218). The marvelous pearl-clad queen with the look of a daisy in Chaucer’s vision has been readily identified as an intertextual nod to the “marguerite” poetry composed by Rose-inspired French authors, including Jean Froissart and Guillaume de Machaut, as well as Eustache Deschamps, poetry that plays upon the fact that the French word “marguerite” means both “daisy” and, through its Greek etymology, “pearl,” as well as being a woman’s name. Interpreting readers quickly find that no true plant, but rather French poetic practice, draws attention away from ancient books in this vision; indeed, the daisy-queen of Chaucer’s dream incarnates Chaucer’s response to both contemporary and ancient texts. As Chaucer recreates the Ovidian god of Love found at the Rose’s mid-point, he presents the figure of the daisyqueen as his own classical textual intermediary by naming her Alceste. The mythological connection of Alceste and the daisy appears to be Chaucer’s own invention. As John Fyler and others have noted, the claim that Alceste was turned into this flower is not found in Chaucer’s likely sources for her story.64 What, then, is the significance of having the mythological character Alceste rescue the writer from the god of Love? V. A. Kolve and Lisa Kiser 64 John Fyler, Chaucer and Ovid (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979), 116–23; see also James Wimsatt, Chaucer and His French Contemporaries: Natural Music in the



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have provided theologically-sensitive responses to the question, but this insertion of the character Alceste between the narrator-protagonist and the god of Love in the allegorical drama of the Legend’s prologue also works to create an image of Chaucer as a skilled inheritor of the classical literary tradition.65 In the conclusion to this chapter, I have more to say about the relation that Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales bears to his dream visions and to the Rose tradition, but a look at one passage from the Tales here clarifies the significance of Alceste in the Legend. In the prologue to the Man of Law’s Tale (c. 1386–1391), the Man of Law declares that Chaucer has told more stories of lovers than are found even in Ovid’s ancient Epistulae Heroidum (2.53–55). Alluding to Chaucer’s Legend, the Man of Law lists a host of famous lovers to be found there, and he ends this list with an apostrophe to a trilogy of good women including Alceste, rhyming “Alceste” with “beste” (2.75–76). Alceste is a mythological good woman whose story Ovid’s famed collection of epistles, and the Rose, fail to recount.66 Chaucer’s emphasized depiction of Alceste thus upstages the literary legacy out of which Chaucer writes, authorizing Chaucer through the intertextual allusion of a dramatic encounter within a dream. Within this dream, Alceste reveals more of Chaucer’s literary production, listing other works seemingly in his defense, beginning with his dream visions and specially noting his Boece, as a comparable form of “other” activity (424). Her arguments offer little praise for Chaucer, however, instead encouraging readers to examine the circumstances of textual production closely. She posits that the narrator-protagonist is not very bright (340) and she claims that his writing may reflect the will of a patron and the views of ancient clerks more than his own will or talent (366–67, 369–70). Like the quotations from earlier lines of the Rose uttered by the god of Love at the mid-point of the Rose, Alceste’s defense of the dreaming author within the Legend encourages readers to re-read, to ponder the relationship between Fourteenth Century (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), 165–68, and Calin, French Tradition, 297. 65 See V. A. Kolve, “From Cleopatra to Alceste: An Iconographic Study of the Legend of Good Women,” in Signs and Symbols in Chaucer’s Poetry, ed. John P. Hermann and John J. Burke, Jr. (University: University of Alabama Press, 1981), 130–78, and Lisa Kiser, Telling Classical Tales: Chaucer and the “Legend of Good Women” (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983). 66 Moreover, Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, the text so harshly condemned by the Legend prologue’s god of Love, invokes the character of Alceste as a foil for the different behavior of Criseyde (5.1777, 5.1527–33), and, in so doing, mirrors Ovid’s identification of Alceste as a counter-example to the subject of his poetry in the Remedia. For further discussion of the mention of Alceste in Ovid’s Remedia in relation to Alceste’s role in Chaucer’s Legend, see Fyler, Chaucer and Ovid, 98.

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the figurative depiction of writing and reception within the dream-frame and the extra-textual conditions of an author creating vernacular verse. Alceste is thus an important hybrid figure. She represents Chaucer’s mastery of more classical myth than is found in Ovid as well as Chaucer’s skill in the “daisy” worship of his Rose-inspired French contemporaries. But Alceste also raises questions concerning Chaucer’s working conditions, directing attention to contextual complications with production and authority. Alceste as a figure and a defender claims a place for Chaucer in the classical and romance literary tradition at the same time as she locates him in a more immediateseeming English context, particularly in the longer version of the prologue, in which she orders that the Legend be given to England’s queen. Reading how the god of Love challenges Chaucer’s relationship with his ancient servants and is successfully softened by the mediation of Alceste, we see Chaucer, like the Rose poets, use allegory to direct attention to the value and authority of his poetry in relation to his predecessors and his context. The amatory perspective rules the notions of divinity, devotion, and heresy at issue in this poem—the courtly daisy rather than the scriptural apple tree shifts its form to emblematize textual borrowings and rebirth here—but the theologicallyinflected discourse with Love emphasizes the threat of suffering posed by literary service in a fashion not far distant from Deguileville’s more earnestly salvific narrative. Learning from the allegorical tradition of the Rose, and its deployment of classical as well as Boethian imagery, Chaucer prompts readers to examine his position as an English author and translator. In Chaucer’s imaginative figuration, the god of Love’s sphere of mastery, as well as the tradition it represents, extends to the production and patronage of fourteenthcentury English writing.67 The “I” of Allegory: Embedded Lyrics Chaucer’s extension of the tradition of first-person allegory to include English finds expression not only through the (re)fashioning of controlling personifications but also through another strategy common to both the Rose and Deguileville’s trilogy: particular passages are framed as embedded texts, distinguished from the surrounding narrative through their designation as 67 Depicting challenges to the mastery claimed by Love is an important part of this tradition and such challenges to authority may be particularly significant in terms of Chaucer’s English context. Scholars have read Chaucer’s depiction of Love in relation to Richard II; see, for example, David Wallace, Chaucerian Polity: Absolutist Lineages and Associational Forms in England and Italy (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), 349–78; and James Simpson, The Oxford English Literary History Volume 2: 1350–1547: Reform and Cultural Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 171–75.



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lyrics, complaints, letters, prayers, charters or other specified forms. Such passages provide an interior model for the reception of the entire narrative in which they appear, offering a mise-en-abyme that threatens diegetic stability at times, posing complications similar to those created by the identification of narrator, protagonist, and author. As discussed in the first chapter and noted above, Deguileville’s allegories feature many such embedded texts, expanding on the example of the Rose; the device would become increasingly popular in fifteenth-century allegories. Most studies of Chaucer’s embedded texts consider their resemblance to the lyrics set within the works of contemporaries such as Guillaume de Machaut, Jean Froissart, and Giovanni Boccaccio.68 But Chaucer also encountered the technique when he translated the ABC, one of the texts embedded within Deguileville’s PVH. The ABC is perhaps the most dramatically presented lyric within the allegory.69 In the PVH1 the ABC is described as a sealed document handed to the narrator-protagonist by God’s Grace, who is hidden from him within a celestial cloud; in the PVH2, the ABC has an even more compelling arrival, flown down from Grace to him courtesy of a white dove. The ABC is a prayer imploring the aid of the Virgin Mary and plays a significant role in the plot as it enables the narrator-protagonist to escape from personifications that have attacked him. In the PVH1, these personifications are the seven deadly sins; in the PVH2, the threat is the personification Fortune. Set in first-person voice like the narrative, this prayer shows in microcosm the explorative enfolding of multiple perspectives within a first-person text. Within the allegorical framework, the ABC is a gift of the personification God’s Grace; like the charter discussed in the previous chapter, the ABC can be read as voiced by Grace, the character identified intradiegetically as its 68 James Wimsatt, for example, explores all three influences in examining Chaucer’s lyrics. See Wimsatt, Chaucer and His French Contemporaries, 141–73. 69 The ABC is a passage differentiated not only by its diegetic depiction as a separate text but also by its acrostic stanza system. Although it shares the meter of the narrative verse, the ABC employs a more complex rhyme scheme (aabaabbbabba) than the couplets used in the narrative verse and sets the letters of the medieval scribal alphabet in order at the beginning of each twelve-line stanza. The ABC was also set apart visually for medieval readers. Many PVH manuscripts distinguish the initial letters of the acrostic stanzas in some fashion, and, in some manuscripts, the number of columns or lines on the page change. On the treatment of initial letters in manuscripts of the English translation, see George B. Pace, “The Adorned Initials of Chaucer’s A B C,” Manuscripta 23 (1979): 88–98. Some PVH manuscripts also employ a descriptive rubric at this point or an illumination showing the narrator-protagonist kneeling before the Virgin or the delivery of the document from the cloud. Oxford, Bodl., MS Douce 300 displays a particularly nice example on fol. 98r, as it marks the initial letters of stanzas with alternating red and blue versals and depicts in the margin the narrator-protagonist kneeling and holding in both hands a scroll that runs perpendicular to the text but is clearly inscribed with the first two lines of the ABC.

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author. Yet the ABC is also identified as voiced by the narrator-protagonist and, potentially, by the extradiegetic reader, in the lines that introduce the lyric: Or vous di que l’escrit ouvri Et le desploiai et le vi. De touz poins fis ma priere En la formë et (en la) maniere Que contenoit le dit escrit Et si com Grace l’avoit dit. La forme de l’escrit orrez, Et se vostre .a.b.c. (ne) scavez, Savoir le porrez de legier Pour dire le, s’il est mestier. (10883–93) (Now I tell you that I opened the scripture and unfolded it and looked at it. I made my prayer exactly in the form and fashion that scripture contained, and as Grace had said. You shall hear the form of the scripture and if you know your ABC’s, you will easily know how to say it, if there is need. [147])

This passage insists on the material form of this embedded text and its dramatic importance to the first-person narrator-protagonist within the allegorical diegesis; at the same time, the first-person voice here speaks as an author, gesturing beyond the narrative frame to refer to the use of the ABC by external readers. The ABC within the allegory is a physical object and a defense important to the plot, spoken by Grace and the narrator-protagonist, but the ABC floats simultaneously into an extradiegetic temporality. The formal differentiation of the embedded text, distinguished by stanzaic acrostic and rhyme from the surrounding couplets, helps to create a moment that particularly invites participation, calling attention to the overlaid voices of authors, characters, and readers.70 The ABC’s translation is significant as a mark of the attention Chaucer paid to Deguileville as well as the Rose poets: as noted above, apart from Chaucer’s Rose translation, the ABC is the only known instance of Chaucer translating directly from a single French source. Chaucer chose to retain the alphabetic acrostic form of Deguileville’s lyric, in contrast to the fifteenth70 I see this invitation to participation as encouraging interpretive attention to the relation of these voices and thus authorship; in the fourth chapter, I describe how John Lydgate’s later rendering of the ABC’s introductory passage supports this reading. For an alternative view, associating participation with Chaucer’s “free-standing” ABC as opposed to Deguileville’s and contrasting this response to interpretation, cf. Georgia Ronan Crampton, “Chaucer’s Singular Prayer,” MAe 59 (1990): 208.



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century Castilian and Dutch translations that render the lyric’s content but do not recreate the alphabet spelled out by the initial letters of its stanzas.71 Yet despite retaining certain formal features of his source, Chaucer’s translation attempts to fit elements of Deguileville’s surrounding allegorical narrative into the lyric rather than reproducing a frame for it.72 The imagery added expands upon salvific themes without rendering the poetic identity of the ABC’s first-person voice a subject of special attention. Although Chaucer’s translation adds hunting imagery, for example, its inclusion does not obviously gesture to literary significance in the manner of the allegorical hunt added in Deguileville’s PVH2; Deguileville’s huntress is Detraction, her prey the narrator-protagonist and his renown, and his would-be-comforter is Ovid. Even the intertextual reference to Aristotle’s Ethics found near the conclusion of the French ABC does not appear in Chaucer’s truncated version.73 The association of the voice of the ABC with the poet Chaucer through translation has nonetheless excited attention from readers, both medieval and contemporary. As the final chapter of this book will discuss, the fifteenth-century translator John Lydgate shows great interest in setting the English ABC into a context that identifies it as Chaucer’s creation;

71 See Vincente de Mazuelo, Ele pelegrino de la vida humana (Toulouse: Henricus Aléman [Mayer], 1490), fol. 52v, and Het Boec vanden Pelgrym (Haarlem: Jakob Bellaert, 1486), fol. 65r. Despite Chaucer’s retention of the acrostic in this instance, however, Chaucer’s poetry does not employ embedded acrostics gesturing to his identity in the manner of the naming stanzaic acrostics found in Deguileville’s PVH2, PA, and PJC. 72 As noted above, see Phillips, “Chaucer and Deguileville.” Piero Boitani observes that the first-person voice of Chaucer’s ABC “has become impersonal” in its removal from Deguileville’s setting. “His desir wol fle withouten wynges: Mary and Love in FourteenthCentury Poetry,” in Chaucer’s Frame Tales: The Physical and the Metaphysical, ed. Joerg O. Fichte (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1987), 100. I concur with this conclusion although I differ from Boitani’s identification of the “literariness” of Deguileville’s prayer (its presentation as an embedded text) as “flat,” diminishing rather than increasing the drama of the allegory (ibid.,102). Boitani uses Lydgate’s translation as the basis for his observations about Deguileville’s narrative allegory, which may color his observations. 73 The omission may be a result of a difference in alphabetic convention. The allusion to the Ethics appears in the first of the two stanzas that follow the one beginning with “Z”; these stanzas begin respectively with the symbols for the syllables et and con. Early comparative readings of the two ABCs are not quite accurate in designating Deguileville’s additional stanzas as miscellaneous or et cetera; cf. Crampton, “Chaucer’s Singular Prayer,” 195. The omission of the last two stanzas of Deguileville’s ABC may represent a deliberate choice by Chaucer, however, as there are English alphabetic acrostic poems that feature concluding stanzas begun by abbreviation symbols. One example, featuring a stanza beginning with the symbol for “and,” appears in London, BL, Harley MS 3954, fol. 87r-88r. For discussion of this English poem, as well as Chaucer’s ABC and Deguileville’s acrostics, in relation to alphabetic primers and the significance of “littoral” reading more generally, see Martha Dana Rust, Imaginary Worlds in Medieval Books: Exploring the Manuscript Matrix (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007), 53–67.

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modern scholars, notably William Quinn, have examined the poet’s relation to the ABC as a basis for assertions about Chaucer’s religious sincerity.74 Chaucer’s translation does not in itself emphasize intertextual relations or the interpretation of textual identity in the manner of the ABC embedded within Deguileville’s overarching first-person allegory. These emphases can be found, however, in Chaucer’s use of embedded texts in his own works. Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess strategically employs embedded text to prompt meditation on the relationship of the vernacular poet, his patron, and their textual environment. In the Book of the Duchess, the narrator-protagonist hears and records lyrics performed by the character of the knight, typically identified as a representation of the intended reader, John of Gaunt.75 Like the introduction to the ABC in Deguileville’s allegory, which breaks the diegetic temporal progress in its address to readers, the introduction to the first lyric embedded within the Book of the Duchess advertises the mediating voice of the narrator-protagonist able to “reherse hyt” (474) for readers. Just as the narrator-protagonist promises imitation of the embedded lyric attributed to the knight, the knight’s literary activity also represents response to prior authorial voices. The knight’s responsiveness reaches beyond the immediate inspiration of his lost lady, the elegiac function attributed to this lyric by the knight within the Book of the Duchess and extended to the entire poem by the interpretation of external readers.76 The knight describes himself as a desiring subject before encountering his lady, claiming to have sought to serve Love “many a yer / Or that my herte was set owher” (775–76). This inclination toward desire in personified form before encountering any beloved object presents the knight’s relation to the desire that spurs his lyric production as imitative, and further elaboration clarifies that it is imitative in the manner of visual texts. When Chaucer’s knight meditates upon the cause of his early devotion, he envisions himself as an impressionable canvas or tablet: Paraunter I was therto most able, As a whit wal or a table, 74 William Quinn, “Chaucer’s Problematic Priere: An ABC as Artifact and Critical Issue,” SAC 23 (2001): 109–41. 75 Identification of John of Gaunt as Chaucer’s patron and model for the bereaved knight within the dream rests on the reading of the poem as having been written to commemorate Blanche of Lancaster. The sixteenth-century bibliophile John Stowe identifies the Book of the Duchess as having been written to lament “the deathe of the sayd dutchess blanche” in Oxford, Bodl., MS Fairfax 16, fol. 130r-147v. 76 The interpretation of the Book of the Duchess as an elegy is also bolstered by Chaucer’s Legend prologue, in which Alceste refers to the writing of a poem called “the Deeth of Blaunche the Duchesse” (418) as a service to Love.



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For hit ys redy to cacche and take Al that men wil theryn make, Whethir so men wil portreye or peynte, Be the werkes never so quenynte. (779–84)

Service to love is thus likened to reflecting the image of other men’s artistic “werkes.” These lines recall the opening of the dream in which the knight is encountered, when the narrator awakens in a bed chamber in which “alle the walles with colours fine / Were peynted, bothe text and glose, / Of al the Romaunce of the Rose” (332–34). Ready to be “peynted” like these walls, the knight figures literary activity as inevitably colored by the patterns of literary tradition, even when also functioning as an elegy with ties to the expression of an individual lived experience. As discussed earlier, the first-person narrator-protagonist whose dream opens within the textually-patterned chamber also explicitly alludes to an Ovidian tale as the inspiration of his dream, connecting reading and dreaming as Deguileville had at the openings of his trilogy of dreams. Indeed, Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess echoes a range of French verse from its opening, notably the Rose-inspired poetry of Guillaume de Machaut and Jean Froissart, so the incorporation of the name of the Rose within the dream simply acts as the most visible sign of Chaucer’s interest in participating in a literary tradition authorizing vernacular literary production.77 As the narrator-protagonist of the Book of the Duchess recites the lyrics attributed to the knight, the depiction of both overlaid voices heightens the correspondence between the roles assigned to intradiegetic and extradiegetic authors and readers. The activities of the vernacular poet, and of the reader for whom he writes, are both figuratively represented as simultaneously produced by and productive of the textual tradition of the Rose. Chaucer appears to have been greatly interested in the kind of embedded texts found in the Book of the Duchess, texts attributed to other characters rather than directly set into the first-person narrator’s voice. Julia Boffey has noted that in comparison with French or Italian near contemporaries, Chaucer is sparing of embedded texts and also “seems careful always to allot them to voices other than those of his narrators.”78 Yet, as Boffey points 77 Ardis Butterfield offers a perceptive discussion of the “I” that is the first word of Chaucer’s poem, suggesting that this innovation in English poetry translates the opening of Froissart’s Paradis. She argues that in the poetry of Machaut, as well as of Froissart, “subtle reinterpretation of the Rose’s double authority shows Chaucer a vernacular literary history of immense collaborative power of which, as yet, there is no echo in English. Chaucer’s response, to translate Froissart’s bold initiating ‘je’ is not, however, particularly humble … This English ‘I’ is at once new and borrowed.” Familiar Enemy, 283. 78 Julia Boffey, “The Lyrics in Chaucer’s Longer Poems,” Poetica 37 (1993): 27.

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out, Chaucer’s use of an embedded ballade in the prologue to the Legend of Good Women shows atypical experimentation, as one version of the Legend prologue (known as version F) does set the ballade in the voice of the narrator-protagonist.79 Having the first-person narrator-protagonist of the allegory compose poetry during the dream experience encourages readers to reflect on the nature of Chaucer’s poetic activity. The Legend prologue, also the site of Chaucer’s most explicit discussion of his translation of the Rose, raises complex questions about how the voice of a text represents not only the poet but also his readers. The first-person poet-narrator makes a ballade in praise of the daisy queen, Alceste, whose figurative importance has been discussed above. The ballade lists legendary beauties and virtuous figures as unworthy of comparison with the woman it praises; its refrain is “My lady cometh, that al this may disteyne” (255). After the ballade, the narratorprotagonist declares that the lady of his vision is so wonderful that she can sing this song. This declaration, valorizing the ballade and its creator as well as the lady, suggests the close interrelation of the voices of the narratorprotagonist and the lady: this song is proper to both. The embedding of this text resembles Deguileville’s extra-textual gesture in introducing his ABC, but it replaces Deguileville’s indeterminate image of readers with a more singular, patron-like figure, as in the Book of the Duchess.80 In version F of the Legend prologue, Chaucer incorporates criticism of the embedded ballade into the surrounding narrative. In doing so, Chaucer draws attention to the metatextual relationship between the ballade and the prologue containing it. This metatextual relationship mirrors, inversely, the metatextual 79 Moreover, the “Ballade to Pity,” which features another instance of an embedded text attributed to the voice of the narrator, was one of Chaucer’s most popular works in the Middle Ages. Tony Davenport’s consideration of the fifteenth-century genre of complaint persuasively demonstrates that modern notions of Chaucerian style may not reflect the canon as constructed by fifteenth-century readers. Davenport observes that “ironically, The Complaint unto Pity, which perhaps seems the least effective to the modern reader, provides, in its combination of personified abstraction and the ‘Bill of Complaint’, the most imitable pattern for other poets” in the fifteenth century. “Fifteenth-Century Complaints and Duke Humphrey’s Wives,” in Nation, Court and Culture: New Essays on Fifteenth-Century English Poetry, ed. Helen Cooney (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001), 135. Julia Boffey similarly refers to the “Ballade to Pity” as “a strategical blueprint for later writers,” in “The Reputation and Circulation of Chaucer’s Lyrics in the Fifteenth Century,” ChR 28 (1993): 28. Despite its form and the presence of Rose personifications, the embedded “Bill of Complaint” does not draw attention to the question of individual author identity in this instance but rather exaggerates the disturbing dramatic effect of the ballade’s allegorical narrative, as the imploring document is disclosed only after the narrative has revealed that its intended recipient, personified Pity, is dead. 80 As noted earlier, Chaucer may have created his ABC translation for Blanche of Lancaster and his Book of the Duchess as a memorial for Blanche, which suggests both were intended for particular, closely connected English readers.



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relationship created in the Rose by the sermon of Genius, an embedded text that contains criticism of the surrounding narrative. In Chaucer’s poem, as in the Rose, the metatexual criticism is voiced by a personification. In the Legend prologue, the ballade is the subject of Love’s final complaint against the Legend’s narrator-protagonist, following Love’s earlier complaints about the translation of the Rose and the composition of Troilus. Love cites the ballade by its first line and claims it does not adequately represent Alceste: Thanne seyde Love, “A ful gret necligence Was yt to the, that ylke tyme thou made ‘Hyd, Absolon, thy tresses,’ in balade, That thou forgate hire in thi song to sette.” (537–40)

Since the ballade consists entirely of praise of this lady, Love’s accusation of forgetfulness may seem odd. But the meaning of Love’s complaint becomes clearer through comparison of this version of the prologue to version G, in which Love makes no complaint concerning this ballade. In version G, the ballade is sung by a female chorus, representing the beauteous and virtuous figures named within the song.81 The single-line refrain also changes, slightly but significantly: it now gives a specific name to the lovely lady of the dream, declaring “Alceste is here, that al that may desteyne” (G 208). Chaucer’s narrator-protagonist has august precedent for the omission of Alceste’s name from his ballade in version F, since, as noted earlier, both the Rose and Ovid’s Epistulae Heroidum lack Alceste’s name and story; it is, moreover, not atypical in the lyric tradition to leave the addressee nameless. For this reason, the god of Love’s insistence that the ballade should name the lady who is its subject raises questions concerning not only the interrelations of texts but also the interrelation of textual composition and readers. The complaint of forgetfulness is couched in terms of the narrator-protagonist’s debt to Alceste for the assistance she offers him within the dream, reading and defending his literary works, discussing his relationship to patrons, and ultimately bidding him to write more and to offer his writing to the queen. Love’s criticism of the ballade thus gestures to the extra-textual relationship between the poet and his readers, inviting examination of how their voices and identity are represented within the verses he makes. The special attention to the relative roles of the reader or patron and the poet continues throughout the Legend, as first-person interjections continue to call attention to the poet’s role in 81 Nicolette Zeeman’s examination of song and gender in Chaucer’s poetry advances the idea that it is the single male figure who is most at risk in performing lyric; the more “poetic” the figure, the harsher the internal threats and critique. “The Gender of Song in Chaucer,” SAC 29 (2007): 141–82.

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mediating between competing textual traditions, the service assigned to him by the powerful mythic figures in the opening allegorical dream. A Waking Pilgrimage When we look beyond the dreams of Chaucer’s Legend and Book of the Duchess to the work for which he is best known today, the Canterbury Tales, we find that Chaucer continues his service to the allegorical tradition here, too. Chaucer’s poetic project shares with Deguileville’s allegories the theme of pilgrimage, and the textual structure of the Canterbury Tales depends upon embedded texts, presented as the tales of characters.82 The Canterbury Tales features a first-person narrator who both is and is not identified with the poet, interacting with fictional characters who claim control over him and his text. Yet Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales differs in its action and narration; the dream frame common to earlier works disappears and the characters with whom the narrator directly interacts are not overtly figurative personifications, despite borrowing many features from exemplary Rose characters like Le Jaloux (Jealous Man) or La Vieille (Old Woman).83 Readers are not pushed to interpret the text as a veiled narrative from the start; there is no demand for or promise of an explanatory gloss, no guiding personification or imaginary landscape looms. For these reasons, the Canterbury Tales as a whole is not best described as an allegory; nonetheless, I argue that the strategies of authorial representation made popular by the Rose, and employed by Chaucer in his dream visions, remain absolutely essential in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. The use of the first-person narrator-protagonist in the Canterbury Tales shares the same purpose this form has in the Rose-inspired late medieval allegorical tradition: the function of directing the attention of readers to the questions of vernacular poetic authority and lineage. As David Lawton has argued, in the Canterbury Tales, “Chaucer has derived the most important aspects of his self-portrayal—and of his standing within his own work—from dream poetry, his own and Jean de Meun’s.”84 Much like the French and English 82 William Calin cautiously suggests the thematic similarity may represent a literary debt, observing that “since Digulleville’s masterpiece was the first ‘Pilgrimage of Life’ book and since it launched the pilgrimage of life subgenre of the sacred allegory, it may even have given Chaucer the idea for his masterpiece.” French Tradition, 185. 83 Chaucer’s opening for the Canterbury Tales also shows the influence of the Rose and other dream visions, despite the absence of the dream frame, as noted in a classic article by J. V. Cunningham, “The Literary Form of the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales,” Modern Philology 49 (1952): 172–181. 84 Lawton, “Chaucer’s Two Ways: The Pilgrimage Frame of The Canterbury Tales,” SAC 9 (1987): 19. Lawton draws a distinction between Chaucer’s and Jean’s first-person narrator-



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allegories we have examined, the Canterbury Tales deploys a framework in which intradiegetic characters become critics of the compositions of the extradiegetic poet who invents them. Moreover, as many critics have noted, Chaucer borrows a great deal from the Rose as well as later Rose responses in creating the characters of the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner; although less overtly figurative in their English incarnation than their equivalents within the dream of the Rose, these two characters serve the same function of drawing attention to questions of voice and authority by twisting and co-opting opposing or restraining voices through intertextual allusion.85 Much less discussed than the voices of these two characters, the most direct citation of the Rose in the Canterbury Tales displays a similar concern with interpretation-inviting figurations of voicing. By complicating the framing of an embedded text, this citation of the Rose forces readers to examine the question of who speaks, and on what authority, within the English text. In the Merchant’s Tale (c. 1395), first-person narration suddenly appears within the predominantly third-person discourse of the tale during the account of the garden belonging to the character of January, in order to describe this garden as beyond the descriptive powers of the Rose poet: He made a gardyn, walled al with stoon; So fair a gardyn woot I nowher noon. For, out of doute, I verraily suppose That he that wroot the Romance of the Rose Ne koude of it the beautee wel devyse; Ne Priapus ne myghte nat suffise, Though he be god of gardyns, for to telle protagonists, however, arguing that the absence of a dream frame means that “unlike Jean de Meun, [Chaucer] has mortgaged his right to interpret the past as its sole narrator. There is no narrator left for the valedictory act of closure—except in the very role of author, set apart from all fiction” (21, name inserted in brackets for clarity). Although there are significant differences in the narration of the Canterbury Tales and the Rose, the narration of closure seems equally difficult; as discussed in the first chapter, Jean figuratively assigns the post-dream “present” invoked at the poem’s opening to the experience of the deceased Guillaume de Lorris. 85 William Calin’s overview of similarities and differences between Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales characters and their Rose counterparts remarks Guillaume de Machaut’s intervention in this tradition. On the Wife of Bath, see Calin, French Tradition, 328–30; on the Pardoner, ibid., 337–46. On the function of the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale in exploring authority, see Christopher Baswell, “Talking Back to the Text: Marginal Voices in Medieval Secular Literature,” in The Uses of Manuscripts in Literary Studies: Essays in Memory of Judson Boyce Allen, ed. Charlotte Cook Morse, Penelope Reed Doob, and Marjorie Curry Woods (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1992), 121–60, and Ralph Hanna, III, “Compilatio and the Wife of Bath: Latin Backgrounds, Ricardian Texts,” in Latin and Vernacular: Studies in Late Medieval Texts and Manuscripts, ed. Alastair J. Minnis (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1989), 1–11.

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The beautee of the gardyn and the welle That stood under a laurer alwey grene. (4.2029–37)

The passage making explicit reference to the Rose is diegetically disruptive, as the use of first-person voice here advertises the fiction of the narrative, the garden’s place in literary invention rather than in the actualities of the tale. Within the context of the tale, the garden described is locked away from all eyes, save the characters of May, January, and Damyen. The description of the garden—or rather the denial of description—in first-person voice, rather than in impersonal terms, calls attention to the openness of this garden’s inexpressible beauty to another set of eyes, not clearly identified. These lines shift both access and narrative approach to the garden, moving from consideration of a solid stone-walled object, one of the “honeste thynges” (4.2028) proper to the status of the character January, to a competition in poetic making, the question of who could “well devyse” or “telle” adequately a garden’s beauty. The invention of competitors is at least as interesting as the invented competition; the creator of the Rose is set in company with the mythic Priapus, better known as a god of genitals than of gardens.86 This reflection on the authors of the Rose, made in the form of a sudden first-person interruption, is not the only moment that challenges the reality of textual framing. Chaucer’s figurative challenge to the Rose authors through citation is accompanied by an equally disruptive citation of his own framing narrative within the Merchant’s Tale, also blurring the boundaries dividing external authorial control from internal narrative. The tale features a contest between two figuratively-named advisors, Placebo (I will please) and Justinius (Man of Justice), who offer their counsel on marriage to the character of January.87 Devoid of the flattery found in Placebo, Justinius mocks January’s folly briefly and directly, “… for he wolde his longe tale abregge, / He wold noon auctoritee allegge” (4.1658–59). Yet as Justinius closes his satirical discourse, telling January that his suffering in marriage may bring him closer to heaven, he does allude to the authority, as well as the “brevity,” of another counselor on the same subject: “The Wyf of Bathe, if ye han understonde, / Of mariage, which we have on honde, / Declared hath ful wel in litel space” (1685–87). These lines, and the voice of their 86 Helen Phillips calls attention to the manner in which Chaucer’s naming of the Rose here suggests “the classic status of authoritative Latin texts” yet “challenges readers” to question and to interpret, identifying it as an example of complex French and English intertextuality. “Fortune and the Lady: Machaut, Chaucer and the Intertexual ‘dit’,” Nottingham French Studies 38 (1999): 133, 134. 87 Michael Calabrese emphasizes the figurative naming throughout the tale in his effort to read both the frame and tale as a moral exemplum. “May Devoid of All Delight: January, the Merchant’s Tale and the Romance of the Rose,” Studies in Philology 87 (1990): 261–84.



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speaker, pose a question scholars have long pondered; in the first complete nineteenth-century edition of Chaucer’s works, Walter William Skeat notes that these lines “interrupt the story rather awkwardly. They obviously belong to the narrator, the Marchant, as it is out of the question that Justinus had heard of the Wife of Bath. Perhaps it is an oversight.”88 Upon examination, the reference does not look much like an oversight. The Wife of Bath’s Prologue is pertinent to both the style and substance of the speech made by Justinius, since the prologue features the phrase “on honde” no less than six times, and each instance relates to the words a wife has, ready to hand, in order to increase her husband’s suffering with beguiling or berating. For example, the Wife finishes her explanation of how she instructed her third husband to “suffreth alwey” (3.437) by saying “swiche maner wordes hadde we on honde” (3.451).89 Relevant in content and phrasing, the reference made by Justinius is a diegetic interruption, as a character within an embedded text (the Merchant’s Tale) is himself observing the connection between his speech and that of a character in the overarching narrative frame (the Canterbury Tales). The observation is no more “out of the question” than other notable instances of internal textual figuration within the first-person allegorical tradition, however, such as the metatextual commentary in the sermon of Genius, in the Rose, or the source-text reversing image of Ovid addressing the medieval author’s woes with his ancient verses, in Deguileville’s PVH2. In this context, the rupture of the diegetic boundaries between embedded tale and frame in the Merchant’s Tale marks Chaucer’s inheritance of the conflicting diegetic levels and fragmented first-person voice used to invite attention to the identity and authority of the vernacular poet in the Rose and in Deguileville’s allegories.90 Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales explores voice and composition—both how characters are formed by text and how characters form text—and it is precisely 88 The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. Walter William Skeat, vol. 5, Notes to the Canterbury Tales (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894), 359. Skeat’s construal of these lines as a mistake leads to his editorial decision (reproduced in the Riverside Chaucer) to adopt the phrase “which we have on honde” in place of “which ye have on honde,” although the latter is witnessed in more manuscripts. 89 The echoing of this phrase may have been intentional. Aside from this citation of the Wife of Bath in the Merchant’s Tale (4.1685–86) and the six uses within the Wife of Bath’s Prologue (3.226, 232, 380, 393, 451), the phrase “on honde” occurs in only two other instances in the Canterbury Tales, when the pagan Sultaness of the Man of Law’s Tale undertakes her enterprise of betrayal (2.348) and in the Tale of Sir Topas, in a literal sense, when the hunting bird of Topas is depicted as sitting on his hand (7.738). 90 Morton W. Bloomfield similarly interprets the citation of the Wife of Bath in this tale as intentional and relevant to the tale’s subject matter, although he does not connect this feature with counterparts in the French allegorical tradition. “The Merchant’s Tale: A Tragicomedy of the Neglect of Counsel - The Limits of Art,” in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, ed. Siegfried Wenzel (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1978), 47.

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in this interest that it resembles the earlier French allegorical tradition and Chaucer’s own dream visions. French allegory provides Chaucer with the strategies to record his literary interrelations with a wide range of sources, extending even to the discussion of his own works through auto-citation. This brief examination, discussing only a selection of Chaucer’s dream visions and a brief passage from his Canterbury Tales, demonstrates the inescapable connection of the allegorical tradition to Chaucer’s poetry, in particular to the ways in which his practice resembles the earlier response of Guillaume de Deguileville to the Rose’s allegory. David F. Hult has argued that “the medieval corpus that we have assembled is largely beholden to modern tastes in fiction … Were we to give popular works their due in our survey courses, we would have to include such moralizing fictions as the Pèlerinage de la vie humaine.”91 Without faulting modern lecturers for being unable to recapture the international attention and acclaim Deguileville’s works attracted in their time, I argue that if we wish to understand the development of the medieval corpus we have assembled, particularly the importance of Geoffrey Chaucer, our accounts of medieval literary history should include more attention to the simultaneous popularity of Deguileville’s allegory and the Rose. Only such attention can enable us to recognize fully the interrelation of allegorical innovation and the growth of interest in vernacular authorship during the late Middle Ages. Chaucer’s laudatory fifteenth-century successors, Thomas Hoccleve and John Lydgate, demonstrate such recognition as they widen the English allegorical tradition, and it is to the contributions of these later poets that our study now turns.

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“Thereof was I noon auctour”: Allegory and Thomas Hoccleve’s Authority Thomas Hoccleve (c. 1366–1426) is famed as the “first autobiographical poet” of the English language.1 His three major works, La Male Regle (c. 1406), the Regiment of Princes (c. 1411), and the compilation of texts known as the Series (c. 1419–1421), all employ a first-person voice that assumes the name of the poet and expresses a wealth of self-referential detail unparalleled in fifteenth-century poetry. The most remarkable quality of Hoccleve’s poems, however, is their curious expression of topical and personal concerns through a language of “small-scale personification”: the poems regularly invoke abstract 1 See Jennifer E. Bryan, “Hoccleve, the Virgin, and the Politics of Complaint,” PMLA 117 (2002): 1185. Many scholars have devoted attention to Hoccleve’s focus on his own life in writing, in studies that build upon J. A. Burrow, “Autobiographical Poetry,” as well as Burrow’s studies of surviving records in Thomas Hoccleve, Authors of the Middle Ages 4 (Aldershot: Variorum, 1994) and “Thomas Hoccleve, Some Redatings,” Review of English Studies 46 (1995): 366–72. David C. Greetham emphasizes the quality of “self-referentiality” in Hoccleve’s writings in “Self-Referential Artifacts: Hoccleve’s Persona as a Literary Device,” MP 86 (1989): 245. Ethan Knapp claims that the “most distinctive element of Hoccleve’s verse” is his “obsessive interest in the representation of the self” in The Bureaucratic Muse: Thomas Hoccleve and the Literature of Late Medieval England (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), 164. Lee Patterson argues “Hoccleve’s obsessive concern with representing his own inner life is not a strategy directed to some larger literary goal but is the goal itself” in “‘What is Me?’: Self and Society in the Poetry of Thomas Hoccleve,” SAC 23 (2001): 440. Jeremy Tambling even speculates that the mental malady Hoccleve describes in his Complaint may have been rooted in hyper self-awareness, referencing Louis Sass’s description of schizophrenia as “not a loss but an exacerbation of various kinds of self-awareness” in “Allegory and the Madness of the Text: Hoccleve’s Complaint,” New Medieval Literatures 6 (2003): 227. Anne M. Scott argues that Hoccleve’s autobiographical focus is not in keeping with medieval literary practice; she declares “what seems early modern rather than medieval about this expression is Hoccleve’s acute consciousness of himself as a being with responsibility to himself as well as to society,” observing that he “writes himself into poetry in ways that make the self an important consideration in its own right, not only material for salvation.” “Thomas Hoccleve’s Selves Apart,” in Early Modern Autobiography: Theories, Genres, Practices (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006), 97, 100. But such dual concern with self-reference and salvation has significant roots in medieval allegory, as comparative study of the tradition of first-person allegory reveals.

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or imagined figures as characters, although their interaction never develops into an extended, continuous narrative.2 Hoccleve’s narrator describes very concrete, socially-specific motivations for writing but does so by envisioning his struggle with forces whose reality is far from concrete. La Male Regle writes the repentance of a spendthrift in seeking arrears in pay from Lord Furnivall, but the narrator directs his pleas to Health and Fortune more often than to Furnivall. The Regiment of Princes introduces advice offered to the ascendant Henry, Prince of Wales, in the context of the poet’s anxious desire for a reliable court pension in old age. The Regiment initially expresses this desire, however, not by direct petition but by depicting the narrator actively wrestling with the blood-sucking horror of Thoghte (Anxiety). The Series purports to stake Hoccleve’s claim to sanity and his willingness and ability to serve his patron, Duke Humphrey. Yet within the complaint that opens the Series, such figures as Wit, Memory, and Fortune all depart from the much disturbed narrator. Modern scholarship has puzzled over this distinctly odd combination of material and spectral forces, immortalized in C. S. Lewis’s memorable description of Hoccleve’s later writing as unallegorical yet “much infected with allegory.”3 Scholars have looked to Hoccleve’s immediate environment, the conditions of his occupation within the Lancastrian regime, to uncover a rationale for the way Hoccleve’s first-person voice emerges through such illusionary encounters. James Simpson interprets the struggle between Thoghte and the narrator in Hoccleve’s Regiment as exhibiting the text’s politicallysensitive creation through “personifications of a diminished authorial self, a self which has been taken over by pathological forces that distort relations of true benevolence between subject and king.”4 Ethan Knapp argues that Hoccleve’s Series employs such devices at least partly in response to the compartmentalizing force of the fifteenth-century’s burgeoning bureaucracy, seeing in Hoccleve’s work “the irresolvable fragmentation of the self and the intricate connections between his poetic project and the specific cultural milieu of the Privy Seal.”5 Sarah Tolmie similarly looks to Hoccleve’s fragmentary reading of many different voices in his recopying duties as a 2 The phrase “small-scale personification” derives from A. C. Spearing’s description of Hoccleve’s language in Medieval to Renaissance in English Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 119. Spearing notes the feature briefly in relation to Middle English literary precedents. 3 Lewis, Allegory of Love, 238. Lewis addresses the opening of Hoccleve’s Regiment of Princes in particular, anticipating the trans-thematic study of allegory offered in this book as he ponders the “impossible to prove” influence of “erotic allegory” on a production “not concerned with love at all” (ibid., 238). 4 Simpson, “The Power of Impropriety: Authorial Naming in Piers Plowman,” 152. 5 Knapp, Bureaucratic Muse, 163.



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clerk to suggest that Hoccleve’s style, his “creation of fleeting demi-characters … may well owe something to this manner of receiving and processing information.”6 Although Lee Patterson argues for recognition of Hoccleve’s self-representation as his objective rather than a secondary consideration, Patterson nonetheless also explains Hoccleve’s “spasmodic psychomachia” with reference to the political difficulties of the Lancastrian era and the social constraints of Hoccleve’s unique situation within London and Westminster.7 Such study has established Hoccleve as the quintessential poet of the fifteenthcentury English milieu.8 I argue, however, that to understand Hoccleve’s style and his contribution to English literary culture we have to recognize his participation in a seminal cross-linguistic tradition of first-person allegory, rooted in Ovidian and Boethian traditions but refreshed through contemporary vernacular French expression. In truth, Hoccleve’s poetry could be said to represent the fifteenth century’s most dramatic response to the Roman de la Rose, the first major French poem to employ the first-person voice as both narrator and protagonist. Thematically, the amatory quest of the Rose appears distant from the busy bureaucracy of Hoccleve’s poetry. The Rose’s innovative exploration of poetic identity and authority through allegory, however, bears a significant resemblance to Hoccleve’s remarkable self-referential and “allegoricallyinfected” poetry. Most accounts of English literary reception of the Rose center upon the fourteenth-century response of Geoffrey Chaucer, who dramatizes his position as a translator of the Rose within his poetry, as discussed in the previous chapter. But the case of Hoccleve makes it clear that the influence of the Rose on later English literary culture did not depend entirely upon emulation of Chaucer or even upon direct reading of the Rose. Hoccleve’s translation of poetry by Christine de Pizan and Guillaume de Deguileville brings into English literature two of the most extensive fourteenth-century French critical responses to the Roman de la Rose; both translations were recorded in Hoccleve’s own hand among his collected works. In this chapter, I demonstrate the importance of these translations to Hoccleve’s self-presentation and to his alignment of his literary activity with that of Geoffrey Chaucer. Studies of Hoccleve’s voice typically examine his later works without detailed consideration of his translations from French allegory.9 6 7 8

Sarah Tolmie, “The Prive Scilence of Thomas Hoccleve,” SAC 22 (2000): 290. Patterson, “‘What is Me?’,” 444. Of the scholarship cited in this chapter’s first footnote, only Knapp’s book considers at length any work beyond the immediate English context. 9 Bryan’s “Politics of Complaint” is a notable exception, productively reading Hoccleve’s own complaint in the context of the lyric complaint he translates from Deguileville’s allegory, in order to emphasize the devotional, as well as political, context of Hoccleve’s writing.

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My aim is to address that omission, rather than to add to investigations of Hoccleve’s somewhat less direct, although fascinating, engagement with the allegories of Chaucer’s English contemporaries, William Langland and John Gower.10 I focus on the relationship of Hoccleve’s translations from French allegory to his final major work, the Series, which reflects the influence of both Christine’s and Deguileville’s earlier responses to the Rose. When French authors are invoked as models for Hoccleve, attention typically rests on the works of fellow male courtiers, such as Guillaume de Machaut, Jean Froissart, and Eustache Deschamps.11 Hoccleve’s translation activity, however, demonstrates his interest in first-person poetry composed by the Italian widow, Christine de Pizan, and the Cistercian monk, Guillaume de Deguileville. Like the courtiers whose poetry frequently shares the erotic themes of the Rose, Christine and Deguileville reflect awareness of the model established by Rose in their allegorical writing. Yet each introduces new perspectives and different axiomatic grounds for their first-person compositions, even as they both invoke the imagined voices of abstractions to define their roles in literary production, rendering the authority of the vernacular poet a subject of allegorical interpretation. Hoccleve’s reading of French allegory is equally attentive to the Rose-inspired role granted to the first-person voice and to its axiomatic flexibility; he adapts the strategies of allegorical self-reference found in his sources to address his own position. Translating the French allegories of authors inspired by the Rose, Hoccleve demonstrates his interest in the allegorical representation of authorship, in the strategies that we see reappear in his efforts to gather his own writings and to record English literary history. The allegorical strategies of the Rose enable Hoccleve’s representation of the literary relationship between Chaucer, who translates from the Rose and Deguileville’s allegory, and himself, a later English translator of Rose-inspired allegories, including Deguileville’s. Hoccleve’s interest in envisioning a place for himself within a literary lineage 10 This choice does not mean the conclusions reached about Hoccleve’s authorial representation are without relevance to the question of Hoccleve’s position in relation to these English contemporaries; for example, the quasi-visionary presentation of voices with unstable authority and identities found in Hoccleve’s translations from Rose-inspired allegory seems to have influenced Hoccleve’s manner of contextualizing dialogue in the Regiment of Princes, which, as Nicholas Perkins has observed, both recalls the dialogue of the Series and represents a departure from the more stable apparatus Gower crafts for his Confessio Amantis. Hoccleve’s “Regiment of Princes”: Counsel and Constraint (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2001), 194–95. 11 See, for example, discussion of these authors in J. A. Burrow, “Hoccleve and the Middle French Poets,” in Cooper and Mapstone, Long Fifteenth Century, 35–49. Burrow mentions Hoccleve’s translation activity at the essay’s opening, although his central argument is that “in some respects Hoccleve may be better understood as … an English Deschamps than as a latter-day Chaucer” (ibid., 38).



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that includes English writing is visible within his translations from French, as well as in his manner of collecting and displaying these translations in his autograph manuscripts. Ultimately, Hoccleve draws from the complex relations of abstract and personal voices found in allegorical translation to express the “autobiographical” voice so remarkable in his later works, particularly in his final collection, the Series. I begin with close examination of Christine’s response to the first-person voice of the Rose, in order to reveal Hoccleve’s attentive response to her discourse on poetic responsibility in his translation from her allegory. This same discourse shapes the Series, into which Hoccleve incorporates discussion of his translation. Hoccleve’s Series also reflects his particular interest in the allegorical tradition of complaint, employed by both Christine and Deguileville. Christine’s allegory envisions the complaint of Love, embodied in the form of Cupid, son of the pagan goddess Venus, on behalf of all women, particularly mothers. Deguileville’s allegory incorporates the lament of Christ’s mother, Mary, who is also personified as Virginity, on behalf of her divine and mortal son and all other mortals. Both of the poems Hoccleve chooses to translate invoke powerful symbolic speakers enmeshed in familial relations and both advance an agenda at once proper to the writer’s personal condition and applicable to readers. Hoccleve demonstrates mastery of this duality in first-person voice when he adapts the strategies of French allegory to reflect his own position in relation both to earlier poets and to his English readers. Emerging through such productive contact with the figurative tradition of Rose-inspired allegory, the voice of the first-person narratorprotagonist in Middle English literature invites interpretation of literary authority instead of asserting a transparent relation to historical reality. Appropriating the Authority of Amours: Christine’s Epistre The connection between Hoccleve’s first-person narration and his work of translation is suggested by Hoccleve’s own reference, within the Series, to his earliest major translation, the Epistola Cupidinis, composed in 1402.12 Hoccleve’s Epistola translates Christine de Pizan’s French allegory, the Epistre au dieu d’Amours (Letter of the god of Love), composed only a 12 The English translation’s Latin title, Epistola Cupidinis, appears (lightly abbreviated) in the colophon of the poem in the autograph copy, San Marino, Huntington, MS HM 744, fol. 50v. The title heading the poem in this manuscript, reproduced in the edition I cite, is “Lepistre de Cupide.” (The edition also employs The Letter of Cupid as the title for the poem as well as for the accompanying modern English verse translation.) In this chapter, I use the Latin title, rather than the modern English or the French title, to avoid the potential confusion of the Middle English translation with its source or its modern English verse translation.

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few years earlier, in 1399. Christine de Pizan’s Epistre signals its need for allegorical interpretation by employing the mythical god of Love as its speaker throughout. The poem contains an explicit condemnation of misogynistic literature, particularly of the misogyny found in Jean de Meun’s portion of the Rose and in Jean’s Ovidian sources. For this reason, critical discussion of Christine’s poem and Hoccleve’s translation in terms of the Rose tends to focus on the expression of misogynist, feminist, or even “anti-antifeminist” perspectives in the three texts, questioning the terms of Christine’s Rose critique or debating whether Hoccleve’s translation redirects the poem’s sarcasm toward women.13 Here, I argue that the Epistre and the Epistola explore not only gendered representation but also the issue of poetic voice and authority so important to the anxious narrator of Hoccleve’s later works, and the latter issue is my primary concern. The poem Christine ascribes to the mythical god of Love reexamines the way the Rose defines poetic activity in terms of scholastic discussions concerning authorial roles in the Christian scriptures and classical poetry. Both Christine and Hoccleve, revisiting the discourse of authority found within the Rose, direct close attention to their individual positions as contemporary poets writing in commonly spoken languages. Christine de Pizan takes up the question of authorial position in her allegorical Epistre, offering a response to Jean de Meun’s depiction of the god of Love through the voice she adopts in this poem.14 The letter she writes and attributes to Love represents a radical posture of authorship in the context of allegoresis, troubling the assumed interaction between divine inspiration 13 The neologism “anti-antifeminist” appears in John V. Fleming, “Hoccleve’s ‘Letter of Cupid’ and the ‘Quarrel’ over the Roman de la Rose,” MAe 40 (1971): 21. Fleming’s work contributes to the range of studies examining the discourse of gender in these texts. See Diane Bornstein, “Anti-Feminism in Thomas Hoccleve’s Translation of Christine de Pizan’s Epistre au Dieu d’Amours,” English Language Notes 19 (1981): 7–14; Lori Walters, “The Woman Writer and Literary History: Christine de Pizan’s Redefinition of the Poetic Translatio in the Epistre au Dieu d’Amours,” French Literature Series 16 (1989): 1–16; Roger Ellis, “Chaucer, Christine de Pizan, and Hoccleve: The Letter of Cupid,” in Essays on Thomas Hoccleve, ed. Catherine Batt, Westfield Publications in Medieval Studies 10 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996), 29–54; and Dhira B. Mahoney, “Middle English Regenderings of Christine de Pizan,” in Kelly, Medieval Opus, 405–27. Catherine Batt usefully extends such exploration to Hoccleve’s wider corpus in “Hoccleve and … Feminism? Negotiating Meaning in The Regiment of Princes,” in Batt, Essays on Thomas Hoccleve, 55–84 (ellipsis present in source title). 14 Christine’s writing also significantly explores the ethical implications of gender in relation to authorship. For further discussion of this interrelation, see Jill Mann, Apologies to Women, Inaugural Lecture, delivered 20 November 1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) and Maureen Quilligan, “The Allegory of Female Authority: Christine de Pizan and Canon Formation,” in Displacements: Women, Tradition, Literatures in French, ed. Joan DeJean and Nancy K. Miller (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 126–43.



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and human intention. We can better understand the relation of the Epistre to Christine’s perspective on authorship through joint examination of the Epistre and the prose letters Christine later wrote on the subject of the Rose, gathered in the debate collection known as the Querelle de la Rose (Debate on the Rose). In the Querelle, Christine cites her earlier allegorical poetry, introducing a critique with the phrase “comme autrefoys ay dit sur ceste matiere en un mien dictié appellé L’Epistre au Dieu d’amours” (as I have said before on this matter in my treatise called the Letter of the god of Love).15 Although the Querelle is a debate centered upon textual morality and the misogyny of the Rose, it also examines the question of where and how the voice of the author appears within the allegorical text. In the same Querelle letter that refers to the Epistre, Christine reports a defense of the Rose predicated on the presentation of the author’s voice as distinct from that of the poem’s allegorical figures. Christine’s response specifically expresses contempt for the comparison the reported argument suggests between Jean’s allegorical drama of personifications and the literary activity of scriptural authors. Christine repeats the comparison with derisive exclamation: “et la laidure qui la est recordee des femmes, dient pluseurs en lui excusant que c’est le Jaloux qui parle, et voirement fait ainsi comme Dieu parla par la bouche Jeremie … Hahay!” (15) (and concerning the nastiness recorded there of women, many people say in excuse that it is the Jealous Man who speaks, and that truly it’s done just as God spoke through the mouth of Jeremiah … Ha!).16 Christine argues that Jean is responsible for the misogyny in his poem even if the voice expressing it is that of an allegorical character (in this instance, the Jealous Man). Her allusion to the Epistre as “mien dictié” (my writing) supports the point she makes; Christine here claims as her own the words attributed within the poem to the character of the god of Love. Christine forms her argument about Jean’s voice within allegory by disputing that Jean’s position is analogous to the limited responsibility of the human prophet expressing the voice of a god. Christine’s gesture toward the question of scriptural authorial responsibility indicates the larger theoretical stakes of her response to the Rose. Indeed, the specific analogy she disputes, that of the prophet Jeremiah, directly reflects the terms of scholastic authorial debates in the fourteenth century. In the years between the Rose’s composition and Christine’s response, the role of the human writer in relation to scriptural writings was a frequent subject of debate, and one particularly clear example of such debate within 15 Christine de Pizan et al., Le Débat sur “Le Roman de la Rose,” p. 17. Subsequent quotations from the Querelle are cited parenthetically by page number from this edition. 16 The exclamation follows Christine’s intervening remark on the lack of any relation of Jean’s “prediction” to the actual condition of women.

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late medieval university culture can be found in Richard FitzRalph’s Summa in Questionibus Armenorum at Oxford, created shortly after 1349.17 The Summa is a dialogue concerning the extent to which statements within scripture are authored. The speakers propose three roles with regard to statements: the writer could be the assertor (assertor), one who asserts the truth of a statement, or merely the editor vel compilator (editor or compiler), one who arranges a statement’s place within a work or within multiple works, or the writer may hold both functions, making his own assertions as well as arranging the statements of others. The one with this dual role is termed the auctor (author). Thus, a character within scripture can be the assertor with regard to a recorded statement but should not be confused with the auctor. The relatively clear propositions of the Summa are complicated, however, by a discussion of prophecy that includes specific reference to Baruch who wrote the prophecies of Jeremiah. The conditions of prophecy, in which scriptural meaning lies in a future fulfillment, beyond the words of the text, mean that neither Baruch nor Jeremiah acts as an author. Each merely serves as scribe or compiler in respective relation to Jeremiah or to God: “Baruch wrote from the mouth of Jeremiah; Jeremiah wrote from the mouth of the Lord.”18 The interpretive debates concerning authorial intention in the Rose’s allegory thus touch upon the most complex model of literary activity in exegetical discussion, demonstrating the interest with which Jean’s mock defense of himself as a compiler was received. Christine’s Querelle collection does not contain the letter expressing the prophetic mouthpiece defense of Jean de Meun, to which her letter responds with criticism. But Jean Molinet’s dérimage of the Rose, composed c. 1499, demonstrates the continuance of such a line of defense, even at the close of the fifteenth century. Whereas Christine de Pizan’s prose letter disputes the relevance of the prophet Jeremiah as a model for the discourse of Rose characters, Molinet’s prose adaptation of the Rose interprets the prophetic speech of Love with the role of the prophet Jeremiah specifically in mind. Molinet follows a summary of Love’s central speech with a section identified as its moralité (moralized meaning).19 Here, Molinet declares the dead literary servants mourned by Love “pourroit prendre pour Jheremie et aulcuns prophetes” (can be understood as Jeremiah and other prophets); in particular, Moses and the Old Testament are figured by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, the continuer of the Rose, figures John the evangelist and the New Testament.20 The prophetic posture of a contemporary poet 17 18 19 20

Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship, 100–103. Ibid., 101. Cest le Romant de la Rose Moralise, fol. 71r. Ibid.



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claiming to serve the god of Love within a dream definitely invoked scriptural exegetical models in the minds of medieval readers; Molinet extends the significance of the literary posture to its extreme as he translates the narrative of the poem’s creation into an anagogical reflection on the process of scriptural compilation. In light of contemporary debates on prophetic voice and Molinet’s allegorical reading of the Rose, Christine’s Epistre represents a challenging meditation upon poetic voice within allegory. The Epistre illustrates Christine’s mockery of those who take seriously the Rose’s definition of its voice according to the theorizations of authorial presence within scriptural exegesis. It is significant that Christine cites her Epistre in the letter from the Querelle that critiques the defense of the Rose in prophetic terms, because the allegory of Christine’s Epistre cleverly enacts the problems inherent to such a defense. In the Epistre, Christine reallocates the interpretation of texts not to the human author, either to Jean or to herself, but to the same god presented as Jean’s author, the god of Love. Christine’s poem envisions this god condemning Jean’s work according to “le tesmongne lescript ou je le lui” (the witness of the scripture that I read).21 Moreover, this god specifically objects to the reading of those who would “par historie ou par Bible / Me remprover” (650–51) (by history or the Bible argue against me). Rather than this character granting the task of his representation to Jean, Love declares Jean unfit and biased, explicitly condemning him and his work by name: “Jehan de Meun ou Rommant de la Rose” (389).22 Love identifies the Rose as allegorical in its operation, stating that it holds “scïences et cleres et obscures” (393) (learning, both open and obscure). He claims, however, that the text is wrong in its action and interpretation because of authorial bias, declaring “se femmes eussent li livre fait, / Je sçay de vray qu’aultrement fust du fait” (417–18) (if women had made the texts, / I know truly that their making would be otherwise). Kevin Brownlee has drawn attention to the significant placement of this statement at the mid-point of Christine’s Epistre.23 The Epistre’s mid-point lament over the absence of female authors 21 Poems of Cupid, God of Love: Christine de Pizan’s “Epistre au Dieu d’Amours” and “Dit de la Rose,” Thomas Hoccleve’s “The Letter of Cupid” with George Sewell’s “The Proclamation of Cupid,” ed. and trans. Thelma S. Fenster and Mary Carpenter Erler (Leiden: Brill, 1990), line 213. Subsequent quotations from the Epistre are cited parenthetically by line number from this edition. I provide my own translations rather than reproducing the modern English verse translation provided in this edition. 22 The poem’s incisive mockery of Jean’s figuring of divine worship begins in the very first line of the Epistre with the god’s use of circular reasoning to claim for himself the power of conferring his own divinity: “Cupido, dieu par la grace de lui” (1) (Cupid, god by his own grace). 23 See Brownlee, “Discourses of the Self: Christine de Pizan and the Romance of the

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recasts the god of Love’s lament over the absence of the Rose poets at the mid-point of the conjoined Rose: in both texts, the report of diegetic absence suggests authorial control, of the named Rose poets or of a text-producing female, respectively. Christine launches her first critique of the Rose not in her own voice but in the voice of one of Jean’s characters because the use of this voice imitates and challenges the play of the Rose upon the supposedly neutral role of the compiler in medieval allegory. If one assumes, as proposed in scholastic debate, that the assertions of characters are beyond the control or responsibility of one who merely records them in writing, then not Jean de Meun but his characters are responsible for the misogyny they express in his work. But assuming fictional personifications, including Love, have voices separate from the poet Jean’s dangerously reassigns authorial control. Christine’s Epistre envisions one of Jean’s characters interpreting and condemning Jean’s poetry. If the argument used to deny Jean’s responsibility for Rose misogyny holds true, and characters speak for themselves rather than for their authors, then not the woman Christine but the god of Love himself, and his entire divine court, denigrates Jean’s poetic service in the Epistre. The criticism delivered by Christine’s Love also mimics the manner in which Love in the Rose allegorically authorized the worth of the text. As noted in previous chapters, Jean’s Love suggests that the Rose should be renamed the “Mirror for Lovers” and presents its place in a literary tradition by claiming Ovid and other authors as his servants in addition to the Rose poets, a skillful intertextual allusion to the earlier lyric tradition claiming the mythical god of Love as its inspiration. Christine’s Love assumes the same authority to reevaluate the literary tradition of the Rose, renaming Ovid’s poetry from The Book of the Art of Love to The Book of the Art of great deception … and false appearance and rejecting the value of such service.24 As rewritten in Christine’s Epistre, the character Love challenges the authority of the Rose and its sources. The terms of Jean’s own allegory are neatly exploited in Christine’s allegorical riposte, which exposes the illogic of Jean’s defense by positing his central character Love as not merely god-author but exegete and critic of the poem in which he appears.25 Rose,” in Brownlee and Huot, Rethinking the Romance of the Rose, 241. 24 “Livre de l’Art d’amours … Livre d’Art de grant decevance … et de faulce apparence” (371, 377–78). 25 Maureen Quilligan notes a corresponding challenge to Jean de Meun’s figuration of Reason posed by Christine’s depiction of Reason in her Cité des Dames, making the interesting suggestion that the specificity of the replacement and Christine’s authorial identity together make it possible for “the gender of the figure in Christine’s text to assume a literalness that recuperates some of the materiality lost to the abstraction in the process of personification.” “Allegory and Female Agency,” in Thinking Allegory Otherwise, ed. Brenda Machosky (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010), 172.



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Christine’s strategy here resembles that found in the Rose responses discussed in earlier chapters; Christine’s practice confirms the interest that this aspect of the Rose attracted through its resemblance to Deguileville’s employment of Venus as a Rose critic in his PVH2 and Chaucer’s employment of Love as a critic of his Rose translation in his Legend prologue. As the Epistre deploys the voice of Love to expose Jean’s control as an author of the Rose, it also exploits the allegorical strategies of the Rose to suggest Christine’s own authorial control. As noted above, the mid-point lament of Christine’s Love hints at Christine’s role as a female author, borrowing from the mid-point of the conjoined Rose the technique of indicating authorial control by declaring narrative absence. In the Epistre, Love even more completely usurps the place of his human author Christine, as the Epistre’s documentary form presents the entire text as the speech of Love and relegates Christine to the role of scribe. A list of gods and goddesses subscribing to Love’s petition at the end of the text mimics the juridical formula further and extends the number of powerful figurative voices the work claims to represent. Yet even as the documentary form elaborates on the allegorical pretense of providing an unmediated record of the perspective properly ascribed to the forces of love and divine will, the form itself also becomes a vehicle for signaling the identity of the human author. As the poem records the date and place of the document’s issue (France, 1399), as well as incorporating comparative references to contemporary French writers admired by Christine (Huon de Vermeille, Oton de Graunson), the documentary “evidence” purportedly establishing the will of Love in fact conveys details about the context in which Christine wrote. Deguileville’s similar use of a documentary formula in his PVH, as discussed in the first chapter of this book, received marginal comments in some manuscripts, explicitly identifying the date ascribed to the charter of Grace as the date for the poem’s composition, so we know that medieval readers were attentive to this technique. In one later manuscript, the name Creintis, an anagram for Christine, also appears after the god’s signature couplet, positioned like a scribal signature.26 This playful hint acquires greater force when we recall the placement of this text within one of the authorial collections for which Christine is famed.27 The manuscript just cited was united in the early fifteenth century with materials today divided into four different manuscripts (Paris, BnF, F. Fr. MSS 606, 836, 605 and 607) and in this form presented no fewer than twenty-six works by Christine to the eye of her patron, Jean, duke of 26 27

See Paris, BnF, F. Fr. MS 835. See James Laidlaw, “Christine de Pizan and the Manuscript Tradition,” in Christine de Pizan: a Casebook, ed. Barbara K. Altmann and Deborah L. McGrady, Routledge Medieval Casebooks 34 (New York: Routledge, 2003), 231–49.

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Berry. Not only Christine’s later reference to the Epistre as “mien dictié” (17) (my writing) but also its manuscript transmission thus encouraged readers to find the voice of Christine in the allegorical letter of Love. Christine’s Epistre demonstrates her objection to the poem’s misogyny and, in doing so, shows a sophisticated understanding of how Rose’s allegory signaled the authority of its poets.28 Jean’s Rose represented its poets as scribes, compilers, or commentators. But the fictional god-author controlling the poets within the allegory invited recognition of their actual authorial control. Christine also poses as less than an author in her allegory, a mere scribe, as she pretends to record how the same god-author, along with other divinities, complains about his servants, citing Jean’s Rose and its sources as a critic rather than as a controlling force. Even as the Epistre puts into question the way the Rose figures authorial control within allegory, the allegorical strategies of the Epistre also draw attention to its own author’s name and perspective. In the Epistre, Christine demonstrates her own authority through her redirection of the Rose’s allegorical strategies.29 Translating Amours into Albion: Hoccleve’s Epistola Thomas Hoccleve’s transformation of the Epistre in translation responds attentively to Christine’s figurative encoding of authorial voice. Hoccleve assumes the same scribal posture of Christine with relation to the voice of Love but he reworks the god-author’s complaint to display his own authorizing agenda. Unlike Christine, Hoccleve does not use the strategies of allegory with the primary aims of authorizing a female poet and deconstructing the defense of misogyny in Jean’s Rose. Instead, Hoccleve’s translation uses the allegory to present English poetic authority. Hoccleve’s Love delivers his 28 The Epistre is thus a more complex poem than modern readers such as John V. Fleming or Lee Patterson have assumed. It is particularly surprising that Patterson’s more recent article claims “by rejecting the absolutist categories of Christine’s Cupid—men are all bad, women all good—and by removing from her poem its firm moral basis in the equality of the sexes, Hoccleve created a text that was open to a variety of interpretations.” “‘What is Me?’,” 453. Patterson’s characterization of Hoccleve’s translation as open to interpretation seems more accurate than his characterization of Christine’s work as “absolutist.” As noted, Christine’s French text offers specific examples of praiseworthy male writers (Huon de Vermeille and Oton de Graunson) as a contrast to those who are a subject of complaint, examples that Hoccleve’s translation fails to incorporate. This difference is observed by Roger Ellis, who describes Hoccleve’s translation as simplifying in this respect. “Chaucer, Christine de Pizan, and Hoccleve,” 45–47. 29 Christine de Pizan’s response to the manner in which the Rose made reference to its authors through allegory remains significant in her wider corpus, as well. Philippe Maupeu offers a worthwhile consideration of autobiographical interests within Christine’s longer allegorical works, set in the context of Guillaume de Deguileville’s example, in Pèlerins de Vie Humaine, 401–74.



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complaint about the Rose in order to glorify by contrast the English literary service that has pleased him, specifically the poetry of Chaucer. Hoccleve’s rewriting of Christine’s allegory of authority in the Epistola reveals his interest in the figurative discourse on authorship initiated by the Rose, an interest equally important to Hoccleve’s more explicit self-presentation in his last major work. Hoccleve’s Epistola appropriates Christine’s strategy to “liberate” once more the character of Love. The mid-point lament for women authors and the scribal signature disappear as the English text is reshaped. No longer under the control of Christine, Love in Hoccleve’s Epistola responds to English, rather than French, concerns about allegorical interpretation and authorship. Beyond the simple linguistic movement into English, there is a geographic alteration in the god’s address, now directed “passying alle lands / on thys yle … Albioun,” rather than “sur tous pays … de France” (23) (more than all countries … concerning France), as in Christine’s Epistre.30 Hoccleve’s transformation of the poem also changes the favored reading matter of Love, eliminating overt references to Huon de Vermeille and Oton de Graunson and incorporating indirect allusion to the celebration of a female character in the allegorical prologue to Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women. As observed in the previous chapter, the Legend prologue contains Chaucer’s most extended reference to his translation of the Roman de la Rose, dramatizing its own quarrel over the status and meaning of the Rose. The Legend prologue depicts the narrator-protagonist’s worship of a queen, resembling a daisy crowned in pearls, who protects him from Love, after the god declares himself angered by the narrator-protagonist’s translations, naming the Rose as the first and foremost example. Hoccleve replicates the worship of the “marguerite,” the pearl flower, found in Chaucer’s Legend by adding praise of a Margaret to the Epistola; Hoccleve inserts a passage in praise of the virgin martyr St Margaret at the poem’s conclusion, an insertion that is problematic for the voice of desire as demonstrated by the disclaimer Love quickly adds to his praise, withholding his approval from Margaret’s chastity. The Epistola’s god of Love differs from his counterpart in Christine’s poem in displaying fondness for Margaret/marguerite and in recommending “our legende of martirs” (316), a recognizable reference to Chaucer’s Legend, described in the introduction to Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale as “the Seintes Legende of Cupide” (2.61). 30 The Middle English quotation refers to the edition of Hoccleve’s translation in Christine de Pizan et al., Poems of Cupid, God of Love, lines 15–16 (slash present in source). Subsequent quotations from Hoccleve’s Epistola are cited parenthetically by line number from this edition. See note 12 above on the source and use of the Latin title for Hoccleve’s Middle English poem.

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Rather than, as in the Epistre, posing a direct attack on the authorial posture of Jean’s Rose allegory by having the main character of the work borrow its exegetical postures to disown it, Hoccleve’s Epistola is working through the problem of the translator’s posture and responsibility within allegorical texts. The god of Love depicted in Christine’s work, rewritten from character to critic of the Rose, is thus rewritten once more by Hoccleve: Hoccleve’s god of Love has been translated from the Rose into Chaucer’s Legend and is now envisioned as a reader of the Chaucerian text in which he appears. Both Christine and Hoccleve, in re-animating Love, reshape his voice to draw hermeneutic attention to the question of locating authorial voice within allegory. Hoccleve imagines the god of Love claiming to be a judge not only of the poet who created the god of Love in the French Rose but also of the English poet Chaucer, who employed the character as the judge of his Rose translation in introducing the Legend. Hoccleve thus brings Christine’s discourse on authorship through allegory to a group of readers expected to draw upon intertextual connections created in English allegory as much as in French. The association also found expression in manuscript circulation; no less than five manuscripts containing Hoccleve’s translation, slightly less than half of all surviving copies, also contain Chaucer’s Legend.31 It seems significant that Hoccleve’s poem renders the title of Jean de Meun’s work, found in his source, in English as the “Romance of the Rose” (283), perhaps referring equally to the Rose and to Chaucer’s fourteenth-century English translation.32 Hoccleve’s practice indeed resembles the way in which the existing fragment of Chaucer’s translation, which survives in only one manuscript today, deploys deictics and linguistic references within the first-person narration to insist on the Englishness of the allegory’s narrator and readers.33 Hoccleve’s treatment 31 The two are often placed in proximity as well. See Cambridge, CUL, MS Ff.1.6, Legend, fol. 64r-67v, Epistola, fol. 71r-76v; Oxford, Bodl., MS Bodley 638, Legend, fol. 48r-95v, Epistola, fol. 38v-45v; Oxford, Bodl., MS Arch. Selden B.24, Legend, fol. 152v-191v, Epistola, fol. 211v-217v; Oxford, Bodl., MS Tanner 346, Legend, fol. 1r-40v, Epistola, fol. 41r-48v; and Oxford, Bodl., MS Fairfax 16, Legend, fol. 83r-119v, Epistola, fol. 40r-47r. For further notes on the Legend’s circulation in relation to other manuscript contents, see M. C. Seymour, “The Manuscripts of Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women,” Scriptorium 47 (1993): 73–90. At least one early print edition suggests the attribution of the Epistola to Chaucer, as Roger Ellis notes in his introduction to Thomas Hoccleve, “My Compleinte” and Other Poems, ed. Roger Ellis (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2001), p. 4. 32 The Englishing of Jean de Meun’s name in certain manuscripts of Hoccleve’s translation also appears to have aroused referential ambiguity in the minds of later readers; for an explanation of how Hoccleve’s Epistola gave rise to later assertions that the Rose had been written by an Englishman living in Paris, see Albert Friedman, “Jean de Meun, An Englishman?” MLN 65 (1950): 319–25. 33 The “A” Fragment, the section of text recognized as Chaucer’s translation, survives in



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of Love, naming his location as not only Albion but as “thys yle” (16, emphasis mine) and noting the use of proverbs “in englissh” (183), reflects Chaucer’s technique of Englishing Rose characters in translation, as well as reflecting the concern with location and contemporary discourse found in Hoccleve’s immediate source, Christine’s text. Hoccleve envisions Love not simply as an exegete or excoriator of the Rose or its translation, however. In the Epistola, the allegorical character seems to adopt the role of a literary patron, as he refers to Chaucer’s Legend as “oure legende” (316, emphasis mine), using the sovereign plural in a possessive fashion. The complex encoding of the author’s role within the allegory of Christine’s Epistre is here reworked to refer the attention of readers not only to the role of the translators but also to that of their English patrons. These rewritings of Love’s figurative authority demonstrate the intimate connection between the fictions of allegory and the medieval theorization of authorship and, more specifically, the importance of allegory to Hoccleve’s representation of English literary history. Hoccleve’s interest in deploying French allegory to convey English literary history may have extended into awareness of Christine’s careful crafting of her works’ manuscript transmission; Christine’s practice resembles Hoccleve’s own striking combination of his works, including his Epistola, into an author-centered, even author-copied, manuscript collection. Building on the earlier study of John M. Bowers, J. A. Burrow draws attention to the innovative nature of Hoccleve’s endeavor within his English context. Yet even while declaring that Hoccleve’s autograph manuscripts “represent a novelty in the record of English poetry: a single-author collection of poems gathered, ordered and copied by the poet himself,” Burrow footnotes Christine as a “contemporary French parallel.”34 We cannot be certain as to whether Hoccleve was aware of the material connections Christine created for her works, but the auto-collective practices of the two authors resemble one another, as does their pattern of auto-citation. As noted above, just as Christine cites the Epistre in her Querelle collection, Hoccleve cites the Epistola in his longest interconnected collection of works, the Series, crafting a closer connection between this allegorical meditation on authorship and the first-person voice identified with the author’s proper name. Glasgow, Glasgow University Library, Hunter MS 409; for notes on the debate concerning the extent of Chaucer’s authorship and on the rediscovery of a leaf containing part of the “B” Fragment of the Romaunt, see the previous chapter. 34 Burrow, Thomas Hoccleve, p. 31, p. 31 note 128. Bowers describes the San Marino, Huntington, MSS HM 111, 744 as “the earliest extant” collection of self-authored poems “made by a known English author” in “Hoccleve’s Huntington Holographs: The First ‘Collected Poems’ in English,” Fifteenth-Century Studies 15 (1989): 27.

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Serial Complaint: Christine as “Auctor” and Chaucer’s Questionable “Auctrice” Hoccleve’s Series, produced roughly two decades following his translation of Christine’s poem, demonstrates his long-lasting engagement with the expression of authorial voice through allegory, connecting his early translation with his final and fullest literary depiction of himself as an author. The Series is a textual compilation that features small-scale personification within the voice of the first-person narrator as well as more embedded texts (sections of text set apart as created within the framework of another text) than are present in any previous work by Hoccleve. The thinness of the connections between the textual components is suggested by the compilation’s modern title, the Series. Hoccleve’s Epistola is one of a number of subjects debated in the second part of the Series, the Dialogue that follows the opening Complaint. The Dialogue begins with the appearance of a character identified only as a “good freend,” who reveals the narrator’s identity by referring to him as both “Hoccleve” and “Thomas.”35 The Friend criticizes Hoccleve’s much earlier Epistola. Claiming this work has outraged women, the Friend advises the narrator to translate a narrative more favorable to women. The Friend delivers his criticism of the translation in terms that not only reopen the gender debate of the earlier work but also reintroduce the questions of author/character voice explored within the Rose and its responses. Indeed, the character of the Friend may owe his inspiration to the Rose. Current scholarship treats the advising Friend with whom the narrator debates as a useful fiction in Hoccleve’s work.36 The Friend of Hoccleve’s Dialogue resembles the unnamed character, also identified as a friend, who advises the narrator “Geffrey” in the more overtly fictional setting of the dreamed castlein-the-air within Chaucer’s House of Fame allegory.37 Yet both Chaucer and 35 Thomas Hoccleve’s “Complaint” and “Dialogue,” ed. J. A. Burrow, EETS o.s. 313 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), line 8. For the initial instances of the Friend’s use of the author’s patronym and first name, see ibid., lines 3, 10. All subsequent quotations from the Dialogue and the Complaint of Hoccleve’s Series refer to this edition parenthetically by line number; slash marks are used as punctuation within the source and in the case of this text are reproduced rather than introduced, except when otherwise noted. Burrow provides a transcription of Oxford, Bodl., MS Selden Supra 53 as a parallel text to his edition for the section of the Complaint missing from Hoccleve’s autograph copy in Durham, University Library, MS Cosin V.iii.9; I cite the edited version when the two differ. 36 Tambling, for example, notes that Hoccleve’s Dialogue has exactly double the number of lines found in the opening Complaint, suggesting that in this text Hoccleve “has split his identity between himself as the subject of the Complaint and a Friend.” “Allegory and the Madness of the Text,” 247. 37 On the resemblance of Chaucer’s and Hoccleve’s unnamed friends in these poems, see David Mills, “The Voices of Thomas Hoccleve,” in Batt, Essays on Thomas Hoccleve, 107.



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Hoccleve would have been aware of another fictional Friend whose dubious advice directs attention to the question of poetic authority: the Ami (Friend) who advises the narrator at length within the Roman de la Rose.38 Like the Rose’s Friend, the Friend in Hoccleve’s Dialogue troubles the relative authority of internal characters and the Dialogue’s narrator, since the Friend cites a fictional character as an authoritative speaker in criticizing Hoccleve’s Epistola. The Friend abuses Hoccleve’s translation through reference, not to the poet Chaucer, but to a character in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: “The Wyf of Bathe take I for auctrice” (694). The curious inversion raises the question of who speaks and who asserts, as the Friend repeats what he argues to be the sense of the Wife of Bath’s words, saying “I woot wel so / or lyk to þat seith shee” (697). Hoccleve thus chooses to have the same character who labels the first-person voice of the Series with the specific name of its external poet also name the fictional Wife of Bath as a quotable author. This choice again places in question the extent to which authorial voice can be distinguished from the voices of characters.39 In this sense, Hoccleve’s deployment of the 38 In the Rose, Friend advises the narrator-protagonist to invent lying dreams for successful seduction, saying that one who loves “doit faindre noveaus songes, / touz farsiz de plesanz mençonges” (9853–54) (must pretend to have unusual dreams, all stuffed with pleasing falsehoods [176]). The Rose opens with the first-person narrator-protagonist’s assertion that his dream holds truth, saying those who believe dreams are full only of lies “por fol m’en tiegne” (14) (may … think me a fool [31]). As the narrator-protagonist also asserts at the opening that he hopes his true dream will win him favor with his lady, Friend’s advice within the dream challenges the authority claims made about the dream by the narrator-protagonist at the outset, insinuating a different function for the dream narrative in which both appear as characters. 39 Such citation resembles the citation of the Wife as an authority within Chaucer’s Merchant’s Tale, which also cites the Rose, as discussed in the previous chapter. Hoccleve’s autograph manuscript draws special attention to the debate that invokes the Wife’s authority. The passage representing the discussion of Hoccleve’s Epistola is the only part of the surviving Dialogue that features multiple paraph symbols within a verse line. This visual feature draws attention to close conjunction of speaking voices in the Dialogue even as it separates them, dividing the narrator’s question “No, freend?” from the response “No, Thomas” (782). Nicolas Perkins draws attention to how medieval annotators of Hoccleve’s texts made “their own attempts to elucidate the identity of the protagonists and the meaning” of the dialogue found in the Regiment of Princes (Hoccleve’s “Regiment of Princes,” 185). Perkins notes that three of the manuscripts containing both the Series and the Regiment use similar rubrics to identify the narrator-protagonist’s voice in the Dialogue of the Series and in the dialogue found at the opening of Hoccleve’s Regiment; the rubrics for the narratorprotagonist refer to the author’s particular proper name (“Thomas” or “Occleve”), while the interlocutor is designated with the less specific Latin rubric Amicus (Friend). Perkins points out how the application of rubrics resembles John Gower’s Confessio Amantis in its resulting emphasis on visual rather than verbal reception, although it also draws attention to the purportedly spoken nature of the dialogues, marking a significant difference from Gower’s text. See Hoccleve’s “Regiment of Princes,” 183–85. I find another interesting point of contrast in that Confessio rubrics more typically designate the narrator-protagonist’s voice

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Friend resembles Christine’s use of Love in the poem that is the subject of discussion in the Dialogue, in addition to recalling Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. The Chaucerian character the Friend invokes as an author, moreover, draws extensively from the Rose characters, or caricatures, of La Vieille (the Old Woman) and Le Jaloux (the Jealous Man), as many scholars have observed.40 The characters derive their features, history, and intentions from a long tradition of misogynist diatribes, yet, within the Rose, La Vieille insists upon her knowledge base as experiential as opposed to academic, a feature exaggerated in Chaucer’s portrayal of the Wife of Bath. Her actual derivation from the compilation of misogynistic material also appears yet more notable in Chaucer’s text, as the Ellesmere and other related manuscripts treat this character’s prologue to some of the heaviest marginal glossing with Latin sources found in the entire work.41 Ralph Hanna argues that the relation between scholastic compilation and this character creates Chaucer’s own challenge to readers to question the authority of the literary compiler. Although the Wife is not allegorical in the same sense as La Vieille, who is set within a dream frame, Chaucer’s character engages with the questions of gloss and interpretation and “forces one to consider what the depersonalized voice of the compiler actually means,” as Hanna concludes.42 Studying the Wife’s citation of the story of the Samaritan woman retold by Jerome in Adversus Jovinianum (a source frequently used for the marginal glossing of this character), Hanna argues “the Wife calls attention to aspects of Jerome’s voice which place it, which show it to be, not God’s voice, but simply that of another human being. At that level, it has become desacralized, has lost any position beyond appeal which it might have occupied, and has become analyzable.”43 The Wife’s prologue creates an effect very similar to the effect of Love’s relation to the narrator in the Rose and the Epistre: the Wife’s discussion of interpretation encourages readers to examine the intention and authority of the vernacular poet who claims merely to compile or to record the assertions of others. with the less specific Latin auctor (author), despite the presence of Gower’s proper name within the Confessio’s English verses. 40 For early recognition of the debt, see Fansler, Chaucer and the “Roman de la Rose,” 168–74. 41 See Graham D. Caie, “The Significance of the Early Chaucer Manuscript Glosses (With Special Reference to ‘The Wife of Bath’s Prologue’),” ChR 10 (1976): 350–60; see also Stephen Partridge, “The Manuscript Glosses to The Wife of Bath’s Prologue,” in Chaucer: “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue” on CD-ROM, ed. Peter Robinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 42 Hanna, “Compilatio and the Wife of Bath,” 6. 43 Ibid., 8.



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Hoccleve’s return to the tradition of Rose response through the invocation of this particular character reopens its long-standing questions: Who speaks within the seemingly absolute voices of abstractions, pagan divinities, or sacred scripture? What kind of identity is possible between the poet and the play of voices encoded within the text? Hoccleve’s echoing of Chaucer in this passage as Hoccleve seeks to create a debate over his work from twenty years previously could be read as a kind of nostalgia for the Ricardian era, which some scholars see depicted by Hoccleve as a time of more simple, direct, and socially disinterested writing.44 Yet Hoccleve’s discussion of his earlier work in terms of this character from Chaucer’s writing also reveals a similar complexity in the relation between voice and authority in Chaucer’s work and in his own translation from Christine, an intertextual continuity that responds to the fractured voice of the Rose as well as to the challenges of court life. Hoccleve’s defense of his Epistola within the Series echoes earlier exploration of voice and authority and adds a new dimension, by distinguishing the form of his writing as that of complaint. The Friend’s accusatory citation of the Wife of Bath indirectly encourages readers to reconsider the independence of characters and the supposed neutrality of the recording compiler; the defense Hoccleve issues in the voice of his self-named narrator refers even more specifically to the divisions of literary activity borrowed from the scholastic tradition and explored as fictional postures in the allegories of Jean de Meun, Christine de Pizan, and Geoffrey Chaucer. Acknowledging that the Epistola records uncomplimentary statements regarding women, the first-person narrator of Hoccleve’s Series implores: Considereth / therof / was I noon auctour. I nas in þat cas / but a reportour Of folkes tales / as they seide / I wroot: I nat affermed it on hem / God woot. (760–63)

When Hoccleve defends his translation of the Epistola by claiming he did not assert the passages critical to women found therein, he imitates the defense offered by Jean de Meun in the Rose or Geoffrey Chaucer in the Legend prologue, the kind of defense that Christine’s Epistre mocks.45 The text’s earliest editor, Frederick J. Furnivall, drew attention to the way the chosen 44 For discussion of Hoccleve’s voice and Lancastrian experience, see Patterson, “What is Me?’,” 447, and Paul Strohm, “Hoccleve, Lydgate and the Lancastrian Court,” in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. David Wallace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 640–61. 45 The distinction between reporting and asserting also recurs in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales; it is at issue in the Wife of Bath’s case, as discussed above, and other salient instances include the general prologue opening the tales and the Manciple’s Tale. Roger Ellis remarks

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defense evokes Hoccleve’s English literary predecessor, musing that Hoccleve “adopts Chaucer’s excuse when he is blamed for abusing the women he means to defend … Why didn’t he confess that he had but adapted the poem from Christine de Pisan? The influence of Chaucer is felt all thro Hoccleve.”46 But Hoccleve’s response demonstrates the influence of a tradition that included both French and English predecessors, a commonality that the plurality of Hoccleve’s reference to “tales” may suggest. Hoccleve borrows the same terms from scholastic debate found in multiple earlier poetic defenses; he claims to be merely a “reportour” compiling others’ statements, not an affirming assertor or “auctour” in his translation. Hoccleve then exceeds both Chaucer’s and Jean de Meun’s defenses as he explains his intention, drawing attention to a significant difference in Christine de Pizan’s allegory, namely, its invocation of the rhetoric of complaint.47 As discussed in the first chapter, Jean de Meun’s Rose represents the narrator-protagonist as merely reproducing the words of ancient poets; he also argues that these poets had only delight and benefit as their intention.48 In the Legend prologue, Chaucer’s narrator-protagonist, although not claiming purity in his putative author’s intention, argues that his own motive in reproducing the work was honest: he declares that in the matter “of the Rose; what so myn auctour mente, / … yt was myn entente / To forthren trouthe in love” (460–62). The claim made by narrator of the Series is similar in identifying his role as a mere “reportour” (761) of the offending matter. Hoccleve’s description of his intention in reporting criticism of women adds another element to his defense, however, as he claims “whan I it spak / I spak conpleynyngly” (772). Identifying his speech within Love’s voice as a complaint, Hoccleve looks to another tradition of non-normative assertions connected to the layering of character speech within allegory. A complaint entails repetition of the source of complaint, placing a speaker’s intention and words in opposition; the petitioner speaks that which she or he wishes not to be spoken or enacted.49 Because Christine’s Epistre took the form of on the resemblance of this Series passage to the Legend and to the Canterbury Tales in his introduction to “My Compleinte” and Other Poems, pp. 8–9. 46 Hoccleve’s Works I: The Minor Poems, in the Phillipps MS. 8151 (Cheltenham) and the Durham MS. III.9, ed. Frederick J. Furnivall, EETS e.s. 61 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co, 1892), p. xxxiv. 47 The rhetoric of complaint shapes more of Christine de Pizan’s allegory than the lyric translated by Hoccleve; one notable example is her Cité des Dames, also founded on a complaint against the existing defamation of women, which enacts the antiphrastic reinterpretation of misogynistic literature encouraged by the personified virtues at the text’s opening. 48 “profiz et delectacion, / c’est toute leur entencion” (15211–12) (the whole intent … is profit and delight [259]). 49 Indeed, Hoccleve’s translation heightens the crudeness of the speeches against women



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a complaint, the personified voice of the poem and its frequent use of ironic laments require careful interpretation.50 In the Rose, Love’s prophecy calls attention to the identity of the poem’s authors. In the Epistre, Love utters a complaint rather than a prophecy, but Love nonetheless calls attention to authorial identity, albeit in a more negative manner. Love hints at Christine’s identity when he complains that works are not written by women at her poem’s mid-point, although he does not prophesy that she shall write; as noted earlier, Christine later refers to her allegory as a gloss on her less figurativelycouched prose letters, but within the Epistre itself there is no overt promise to reveal a relationship between Love’s laments and Christine’s authorial intent. Hoccleve’s translation of Love’s complaint mirrors this negative manner of author-encoding; he reworks the complaint to represent his own English context but he does not include internal reference to the poet’s or translator’s proper names. The Dialogue’s discussion of Hoccleve’s Epistola, pondering the special quality of assertions made as complaints, draws attention to this aspect of Love’s voice. Readers can thus readily perceive a resemblance between the voice Hoccleve assigns to Love in this early translation and the first-person voice to which Hoccleve assigns his own name in later works, a voice that frequently speaks “conpleynyngly.” The rhetoric of complaint specifically links the Epistola, the text in which the Series narrator claims he “spak conpleynyngly,” to the fascinating text that opens the Series, the passage to which the narrator refers, in the following Dialogue, as “my conpleynte” (1).51 The Complaint details Hoccleve’s suffering and isolation following his recovery from mental illness, a “wyld infirmytie …which me out of myself / cast and threw” (40, 42). The narrator’s claim that the Friend has misunderstood the complaining speech reported as blameworthy within Love’s complaint; this difference in tone and treatment contributes to the varying scholarly assessments of the translation’s attitude toward women noted above. 50 A long tradition of complaint literature precedes Christine’s foray into the genre and in light of Christine’s reference to the prophetic voice of Jeremiah, it may be worth noting here that the Lamentations ascribed to Jeremiah served as an important scriptural example of this form of writing. Philippe de Mézières, who may have known Christine, refers explicitly to this example, declaring “en la sainte Ecripture telle histoire est appellee lamentation, comme il appert en la lamentation de Jheremie le prophete” (in holy scripture, such writing is called lamentation, as appears in the lamentations of Jeremiah the prophet) at the moment when the first-person narrator of his allegorical dream engages in a moment of complaint and appeal. Le Songe du Vieil Pelerin, 3.27–32. 51 Although the folio containing the opening portion of the text is missing from the autograph manuscript, replaced with Stowe’s sixteenth-century copy, it does seem relevant that all surviving copies also use a heading that describes what follows as a complaint, increasing attention to this characterization. J. A. Burrow records this feature in his notes to Thomas Hoccleve’s “Complaint” and “Dialogue,” p. 74.

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of the Epistola echoes the earlier debate between the narrator and the Friend over the Complaint initiating the Dialogue. Instead of reading Hoccleve’s Complaint as arguing he should no longer be treated as mad, the Friend reads it as reinforcing the idea that Hoccleve is mad.52 In the Dialogue, the Friend urges Hoccleve not to make his complaint public: “Keepe al þat cloos / for thyn honoures sake” (28). Hoccleve expresses his dissatisfaction with this interpretation of his complaint forcibly: … greete meruaille haue I / of yow þat yee No bet of my conpleynte / auysed be. (39–40)

He claims to have recorded the statements of his detractors as proof of their untruth, not their truth. Within the Series, the full complexity of assertion within the first-person voice equally troubles the interpretation of Love’s voice in the Epistola and the Complaint’s more direct self-narrative. The Friend who interprets Love’s complaint as reinforcing, rather than rebuking, misogynist speech also reads Hoccleve’s complaint of being thought mad as showing his madness. The Friend’s disputes with Hoccleve demonstrate that the tricky questions of who speaks and who asserts are as relevant to investigating the intention and authority of the contemporary English poet as they are to scriptural allegoresis. Hoccleve’s Series extends the initial contention between the Friend and the “Hoccleve” narrator on how to interpret the relation of voice and authority throughout the assembled texts and dialogue connecting them; the narrator repeatedly employs personified debate in self-expression, defends his translation of Christine’s allegory, and ultimately translates from Latin an allegorical dialogue between the personification of Wisdom and a disciple and a dying man, despite the Friend’s advice against it.53 In contrast to this dialogue, the two other complete texts Hoccleve translates within the Series, known as Jereslaus’s Wife and the Tale of Jonathas, each presented as tasks undertaken at the insistence of the Friend, are not what we have considered allegorical. Neither overtly demands interpretation: the narratives do not feature powerful personifications or 52 James Simpson describes the strategic importance of depicting this potential reading within the Series in “Madness and Texts: Hoccleve’s Series,” in Chaucer and Fifteenth-Century Poetry, ed. Julia Boffey and Janet Cowen (London: King’s College London Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies, 1991), 21–22. 53 Hoccleve renders the Latin allegorical dialogue with additional mirror imagery, strengthening the resemblance between this text and the voice of “Hoccleve” in the Complaint and the Dialogue, as noted by Steven Rozenski, Jr., “‘Your Ensaumple and Your Mirour’: Hoccleve’s Amplification of the Imagery and Intimacy of Henry Suso’s Ars Moriendi,” Parergon 25 (2008): 12–14.



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a dream framework or a first-person narrator who crosses diegetic bounds to participate in the narrative action. Each of these texts, however, is granted a prose moralization, which explicitly sets out an abstract spiritual meaning for readers. Hoccleve’s self-named character appears unaware of the need for any appended interpretation but the Friend accused of misreading his complaints urges the addition of a universal and separable key to the meaning of Jereslaus’s Wife, wrenching interpretation away from questions of actual and current gender debate toward the realm of spiritual abstractions. The relevance of these moralizations seems questionable in light of the earlier dialogue with this Friend; this dialogue encourages readers to examine the meaning of Hoccleve’s translation practice in relation to his examination of authorial voice, an examination that takes shape through figurative debate on the question of female authority, responding to the literary lineage Hoccleve finds in Chaucer, Christine, and the Rose. There are inescapable inconsistencies between the meaning that the figurative debate, through its intertextual alliances with French and English allegory, suggests for Hoccleve’s translations, and the meaning of these same texts according to their appended moralizations. In offering these two manners of interpreting the assembled texts, the Series significantly associates the voice of “Hoccleve” with the reading prompting reflection on the conditions of literary production and the ties of literary lineage. Hoccleve’s ending of Jereslaus’s Wife undercuts the preceding exemplary narrative through reference to the Wife of Bath, the fictional “autrice” and representative of those whom the narrator “Hoccleve” supposedly seeks to conciliate. The text thus continues the complex debate over interpreting authorial voice initiated with discussion of the Epistola. Yet this aspect of the text is entirely excised from the Friend’s exegetical rubric, the moralization that claims the text figures only the state of a universalized soul. Similarly, the moralization appended to the subsequent Tale of Jonathas leads interpretation away from the figure of a deceiving female to an abstract meditation on the nature of the devil, even though the preceding dialogue with the Friend presents the request for the tale as a request for a warning against actual women. The entire interlaced structure of Series thus reflects the issues raised by the brief debate over the interpretation of Hoccleve’s Epistola, as the narrative moralizations associated with the character of the Friend are set in contrast to the guidance for interpretation given to readers by the dialogues, which feature the interaction of personifications with Hoccleve’s self-named first-person voice.54 54

In its narrative tension between moralizations and other kinds of figurative interpretation,

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As the Series presents an unnamed character who insists on interpreting narrative according to the universal and abstract frameworks of moralizations yet leaves the voices of personifications without such imposed interpretation, overtly figurative discourse appears to have the greatest potential for revealing the individual identities, intentions, and desires of the poet and his readers. Hoccleve’s Series directed fifteenth-century English readers to ponder the position of the vernacular author through the strategies drawn from the tradition of first-person allegory, in which the narrator-protagonist’s figurative suffering under the control of abstract, fictional characters invites attention to the nature of literary activity. The first-person narrator who bears Hoccleve’s name and conveys so much detail about his life represents Hoccleve as “noon auctour,” his authority subject to the Friend’s challenges; in the Series, as in his Epistola, Hoccleve inscribes his authority through the mock-defensive strategies of Rose and the figurative terms of critique he found in Christine’s allegory. Hoccleve invites readers to investigate the relationship of narrative voice and poetic identity through the expression of “autobiographical” narrative in the terms of the allegorical tradition. Serial Complaint: Wandering Wit and Rational Reading with Deguileville Christine’s complaint was not the only French allegory influential to Hoccleve’s Series: as Jennifer E. Bryan demonstrates, Hoccleve’s translation of a complaint lyric from the allegory of Guillaume de Deguileville mirrors the language and structure of the complaints made by the first-person narrator in the Series and the Regiment of Princes.55 Bryan argues that Hoccleve makes interiority itself into a commodity transferable through text, in translating Deguileville’s work and in composing personal complaints to

Hoccleve’s Series resembles another of Christine de Pizan’s works, the Epistre d’Othea. Christine’s Othea offers two sections of moral and spiritual interpretation for each of its brief verse segments. Yet the Othea also encodes reference to the identities of its author and readers through its framework as an epistolary gift from the goddess Othea to Hector, since the relationship between the two was interpreted in the dedication and through the suggestions of glosses as representative of Christine and her patron(s). Significantly, the mid-fifteenthcentury English translators of the Othea were attentive not only to the moral and spiritual interpretations of the text but also to this figuration of textual production, rewriting it to address a new English context. For a full discussion of this aspect of the Othea and its translations, see my “Christine de Pizan’s Epistre d’Othéa in England: The Manuscript Tradition of Stephen Scrope’s Translation,” in Contexts and Continuities: Proceedings of the IVth International Colloquium on Christine de Pizan (Glasgow 21–27 July 2000), Published in Honour of Liliane Dulac, ed. Angus J. Kennedy et al. (Glasgow: University of Glasgow Press, 2002), 397–408. 55 Bryan, “Politics of Complaint.”



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offer his patrons.56 Certainly, the nature of Hoccleve’s first-person voice, not only in his Complaint but also in the Series as a whole, bears a significant relationship to his translation from Deguileville’s allegory. We cannot be certain as to exactly how much of Deguileville’s trilogy Hoccleve read beyond the lyric lament that he translated and copied into his autograph manuscript. Nonetheless, the translated lyric is a more certain indication of Hoccleve’s reading than we have of his attentiveness to other French poets often mentioned as models, such as Machaut, Froissart, and Deschamps, and there is evidence that both versions of the first allegory in Deguileville’s trilogy, the PVH1 and the PVH2, as well as the second allegory, the PA, circulated in England in the late Middle Ages.57 Hoccleve’s engagement with Deguileville’s allegory in the Series is less overt than his relation to Christine de Pizan’s; there is no citation or discussion of his earlier translation of Deguileville’s lyric within the Series, for example. Nonetheless, Deguileville’s allegories provide an important context for understanding how Hoccleve employs the first-person perspective in the Series. Earlier chapters have discussed Deguileville’s strategic appropriations from the Rose in the PVH, as well as their influence on the first-person narrative of Hoccleve’s predecessor, Chaucer, shedding light on this context. Indeed, Hoccleve’s translation of a lyric that appears, with slight variations, in both the PA and the PJC has been considered, with some justification, as an emulation of Chaucer’s translation of a lyric from the PVH.58 Each translation may have been composed in the service of a 56 Unnoted by Bryan, whose focus lies on the Complaint that opens the Series, when the Friend who interrogates the narrator “Hoccleve” in the Dialogue expresses the greatest confidence in his recovery, he uses imagery also found in Hoccleve’s translation from Deguileville. The Friend rejoices that the narrator “Hoccleve” has recovered by saying “now haue I God, me thynkith, by the lappe” (490). The expression “by the lap,” although proverbial, is distinctive enough in its use that the editor J. A. Burrow remarks in a note on the passage that “the present line apparently expresses the Friend’s general satisfaction at the way things are going; but the exact sense is unclear” (p. 100). In Hoccleve’s translation of a lyric from Deguileville’s allegory, the phrase is employed to the same end as in the complaint that opens his Series. Virginity begins her complaint to God by expressing her lost confidence in secure happiness, described through the concrete metaphor of holding to the sleeve of Joy: “I wend, in sothfastnesse, / Have had for euere joye be the lappe.” “Conpleynt Paramont,” in“My Compleinte” and Other Poems, lines 10–11. The language Hoccleve uses to render Deguileville’s allegory thus recurs in Hoccleve’s innovative self-expression within the Series. 57 The most striking evidence lies in the English translation of all three, as noted in the first chapter; the translation of the PVH2 receives more detailed discussion in the next chapter. 58 Rosemarie Potz McGerr, for example, notes that “Hoccleve may very well have tried to model his own early career on Chaucer’s by translating a passage from the Ame [PA],” in her introduction to The Pilgrimage of the Soul: A Critical Edition of the Middle English Dream Vision, ed. Rosemarie Potz McGerr (New York: Garland, 1990), vol. 1, p. xxvii. Alternate title abbreviation is inserted in brackets for clarity. McGerr and the editors of Hoccleve’s translation

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particular noble laywoman, although this patronage information is later and less reliable in the case of Chaucer than in Hoccleve’s case.59 There is also a similarity in the patterns of manuscript distribution for the two translations in late medieval England, as each lyric circulated in collections of works by the respective translator as well as within complete prose translations of relevant portions of Deguileville’s allegory.60 Our discussion will focus on the translated lyric Hoccleve copied into his autograph manuscript, since it is uncertain whether Hoccleve was involved in the fifteenth-century English prose translation of the PA that also incorporates a slightly expanded version of this same translated lyric.61 It is worth noting, however, the narrative contexts Deguileville provides for the source lyric when it appears within the PA and the PJC, since both of these allegories deploy strategies of directing attention to authorship found in Deguileville’s PVH, for example, distinguishing certain passages as separate compositions. One such passage is the lyric Hoccleve chooses to translate; Hoccleve’s translation is known as the “Conpleynt Paramont,” a title drawn by a modern editor from the closing colophon in the autograph manuscript, since the opening of the text is missing due to the unfortunate loss of the manuscript’s first folio.62 assume that Hoccleve translates the lyric from the PA, but Josephine Elizabeth Houghton argues convincingly that Hoccleve’s immediate source is the revised version of the same lyric found in Deguileville’s PJC. See “Guillaume de Deguileville in Late Medieval England,” 180–87. 59 The previous chapter mentions the suggestion that Blanche of Lancaster was the intended recipient for Chaucer’s ABC. In Hoccleve’s autograph manuscript, the concluding colophon of the “Conpleynt Paramount” declares that the translation was undertaken for “ma dame de Hereford,” Joan Fitzalan. See “My Compleinte” and Other Poems, colophon following line 245. 60 On the circulation of Chaucer’s ABC, see Thompson, “Chaucer’s An ABC,” 38–48. Rosemarie Potz McGerr notes the circulation of Hoccleve’s lyric within the English prose translation of the PA in her introduction to Pilgrimage of the Soul, vol. 1, p. xxvi. I discuss John Lydgate’s interest in incorporating Chaucer’s ABC into his verse PVH2 translation in the next chapter of this book. 61 Jessica Brantley notes the differing perspectives on the extent of Hoccleve’s translation from Deguileville’s allegory in analyzing the excerpts of the English PA translation found in a fifteenth-century Carthusian manuscript. Reading in the Wilderness: Private Devotion and Public Performance in Late Medieval England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 240–59. The PA translation does adapt Deguileville’s text in ways that suit Hoccleve’s milieu; at least one manuscript features an additional passage that describes the mystery of how a human soul reflects God’s image with the following analogy: “ffor as myche may þe sonne sendyn into a lytil hows which hath euery wye skarce a manis lengthe as he may in to westmest(er) halle” (for the sun sends as much light into a little house scarcely a man’s length in any direction as it does into Westminster Hall). Cambridge, CUL, MS Kk.1.7, fol. 82r-v. 62 It seems unlikely that this rubric would have been the same as those employed in manuscripts that present the lyric within the English prose translation. The ending of the lyric here differs from the autograph manuscript copy; additional stanzas more relevant to the allegorical context of the PA are added. The varying rubrics at the start often refer to imagery



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If Hoccleve did select this lyric for translation in emulation of Chaucer’s translation of the ABC lyric found in Deguileville’s PVH, there are good reasons why readers might have considered these two lyrics as companions.63 Distinguished from the surrounding text by anaphoric patterning, both the lyrics call attention to littoral play at stanzaic openings.64 Deguileville also deploys littoral play in the self-naming acrostic lyrics that appear at key moments in the PVH2, the PA, and the PJC; like the lyrics translated by Chaucer and by Hoccleve, moreover, Deguileville’s self-naming lyrics also all contain first-person laments or warnings concerning great suffering. In the lyric Hoccleve translates, the voice speaking the lament is that of the Virgin Mary, to whom the appeal of the ABC acrostic in Deguileville’s PVH is primarily addressed.65 The two lyrics as a pair thus represent inverse relations of human speaker and biblical/allegorical character, a technique

that appears in the additional concluding stanzas but not in the “Conpleynt Paramont” as copied in Hoccleve’s autograph manuscript. The manuscript that McGerr selected as the basis for her PA edition, for example, has the heading “A lamentacion of þe grene tre compleynynge of the lesyng of hir appil.” See New York, NYPL, Spencer MS 19, fol. 193r. 63 For a differing perspective on the relation, focusing on the difference in tone between Chaucer’s ABC and the lament translated by Hoccleve, cf. Jennifer E. Bryan, Looking Inward: Devotional Reading and the Private Self in late Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 180. 64 There are manuscripts of Deguileville’s PA and PJC that decorate the text of the lyric source for Hoccleve’s “Conpleynt Paramont” with patterns of paraphs or versals, calling attention to the anaphoric opening of each stanza with the cry of “He” (Woe) or “Helas” (Alas) in a manner similar to the visual emphasis given to the ABC’s stanzaic acrostic in numerous manuscripts of the PVH. Hoccleve typically translates the repeated cry as “O” and his autograph manuscript may represent another indication of sensitivity to the pattern of visual layout. In all but two instances, a small marginal mark signals the start of each passage equivalent to a stanza’s opening in Deguileville’s verse, even when, due to Hoccleve’s introduction of uniformity in stanza length and other alterations in translation, these appeals do fall not at the start of every stanza or appear, as in one instance, within a stanza. The mark does not appear at the opening of stanzas not equivalent to Deguileville’s textual divisions and the instances of the mark’s omission are aligned with the passages closest to the most significant omissions or alterations to the source. A dot in one instance, the mark typically takes the form of interlocking “cc,” which the editors of the manuscript facsimile interpret as an indication that paraph decoration was envisaged for these points. See Thomas Hoccleve: A Facsimile of the Autograph Verse Manuscripts: Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino (California), MSS HM III and HM 744; University Library, Durham (England), MS Cosin V. III. 9, ed. J. A. Burrow and A. I. Doyle, EETS s.s. 19 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), HM 111 fols. 3r–7v. 65 When the lyric appears in the PA, the speaker is the personified virtue of Virginity, figuratively represented by the fruitful green tree identified with the Virgin Mary. Deguileville’s PJC identifies the speaker of the lyric more directly as Mary but reminds readers about the lyric’s appearance earlier in the trilogy: “Ci ensuiant je l’ai escrit / Non obstant qu’ailleurs l’aie dit” (9149–50) (I have written it below, even though I have said it elsewhere).

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characteristic of Deguileville’s allegory and particularly notable in the third section of the trilogy, the PJC, in which Christ, as the representative of Charity and Mercy, assumes the pilgrim role held by the narrator in the previous allegories.66 Like Christine’s critical re-consideration of the relation between the Rose authors and Love through crafting a complaint voiced by Love, Deguileville’s inversely addressed complaints appear designed to force a comparative reconsideration of the narrator’s self-presentation. Bryan observes how Hoccleve modifies the “Conpleynt Paramont” to render the Virgin’s complaint more similar to the complaint of “Thomas” that begins the Series; for example, Hoccleve reworks a passage of third-person selfreference replete with homophonic wordplay on amere (bitter), mer (sea), mere (mother), impossible to reproduce exactly in English, by introducing the cry, “Poore Marie, thy wit is aweye” (216).67 Although Hoccleve’s added emphasis on the instability of mind introduced by distress is innovative in this instance, Deguileville’s trilogy provides an overarching model of exploring the division of wit and self and inviting comparative reading of collected first-person complaints in both personal and universal terms. If Christine de Pizan demonstrated allegory could serve as a means of exploring authorial responsibility, Deguileville offered Hoccleve insight into how an author could model critical self-inspection through allegory. Deguileville’s allegory shows a particular interest in how the Rose split the “self” of the first-person narrator through encounters with personifications, dwelling upon the theological, rather than the erotic, meaning of such division and its implications for authorial voice. Hoccleve’s Series uses allegorical dialogue both to express the author’s own experience and to give his readers spiritual guidance. Hoccleve’s use of allegory, like Deguileville’s, invites readers to see the first-person narrator as both an instructive model of inner conflict and a specific reflection of an individual poet’s life and

66 The stanzaic acrostic lyrics that spell out the poet’s name in Deguileville’s allegories make this poetic technique very salient. As noted in the first chapter, the self-naming acrostic lyric of the PVH2 represented the narrator’s plea for divine justice through appeal to God’s Grace. In contrast, the self-naming acrostic lyric of the PA is presented as a plea for the narrator’s reformation composed by God’s Grace and produced by Justice. Unlike the selfnaming acrostics of the PVH2 and PA, Deguileville’s self-naming acrostic in the PJC is entirely in French rather than macaronic. Nonetheless, this acrostic’s verse form distinguishes it from the surrounding text and its content reminds readers of the role reversal enacted in this part of the trilogy. The dreaming speaker, addressing Christ, declares: “Se fait es pelerin pour moi, / Je ausi le sui fait pour toi” (3841–42) (As you become a pilgrim for my sake, I also become one for your sake). 67 Hoccleve does successfully transfer elements of the wordplay in translation; in particular, the punning on the letter “I/J” later in this stanza is potentially enriched by its function as a pronoun in English. See Knapp, Bureaucratic Muse, 151.



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activity. Both the Rose’s Reason and the Reason of Deguileville’s trilogy draw from the role Boethius crafted for Lady Philosophy in De Consolatione, contesting the control of Fortune through directing attention to inward selfcontrol. Like Lady Philosophy, the character Reason of French allegory urges the narrator to know himself, even as her very appearance splits this self, playing out internal divisions through personification. In both the Rose and Deguileville’s work, Reason appears as an emissary of the Christian God and although, in the PVH2, the more markedly divine character Grace absorbs some of Reason’s functions, Reason nonetheless has a role in the heavenly court of Deguileville’s PA. Reason’s role in the PA reprises her encounter with the narrator in the PVH1 as she again rebukes the narrator for improper control of his dangerously fragmented self, saying the narrator has sinned by not guarding “ses .v. postis” (1867) (his five gates) or, as the English translator phrases it, “he myghte ful wel haue avoyed al þis gret mischief and perilous disese … ȝif he hadde wel and thriftily kept his fyue wittes.”68 The allegory later reiterates the danger of self-fragmentation when another heavenly guide puts an end to an argument between the narrator and his own body, explaining he must end “la dissencion de vous deux, / Car a vostre salut n’est preux” (4335–36) (the dispute between you two because it is not good for your health).69 The complaint of Hoccleve’s narrator describes his malady as an experience of self-fragmentation resembling the personified encounters of Deguileville’s allegory. Hoccleve, like Deguileville, envisions personified fragmentation of the self as both dangerous and instructive. Hoccleve describes his recovery from illness in the Complaint by explaining that divine grace made his memory “retourne / into the place / Whens it cam” (54–55)70 and by likening his wit to an independent, pilgrim figure: Right so / thogh þat my wit / were a pilgrim And wente fer from hoom / he cam agayn. (232–33) 68 Pilgrimage of the Soul, 1.37, 38. In Deguileville’s PJC, a parable envisions a more elaborate relationship between Reason and the five senses, describing the senses as scholars who attend either the school of Reason or the school of Sensuality (5965–92). 69 The partial modern edition of the Pilgrimage of the Soul does not extend to the comparable passage of the text. In the manuscript that serves as the basis for the modern edition, this passage is translated as “it is ful high tyme that the discencion of ȝow bathe stynte. And take an ende for it is not ȝoure hele availynge.” See New York, NYPL, Spencer MS 19, fol. 179r. Jessica Brantley’s well-illustrated demonstration of how the visual design granted to English translations from Deguileville’s PA place emphasis on the dialogic nature of voice in the allegory is relevant in this context; among the images accompanying English PA translations reproduced by Brantley are two of the confrontation with the body. Reading in the Wilderness, pp. 253–54, figures 6.23 and 6.24. 70 The line break is marked by the second slash, not present in the source.

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Lee Patterson has rightly noted that “by personifying memory and wit as distinct from the self, Hoccleve’s spasmodic psychomachia posits a division within the very self that he wants to present as unified and self-identical.”71 But such shifts between the narrator’s identity with the poet and his role as a character divided by interacting with personifications are a signal feature of Deguileville’s allegory as much as Hoccleve’s voice. Hoccleve’s moments of externalizing figures like Wit and Memory render his self-representation parallel to the alternately specific and universal narrator of Deguileville’s allegory. Like Deguileville’s narrator, Hoccleve’s narrator also encounters the personification of Reason as an aid to understanding his divided self. Hoccleve describes within his complaint the consolation he derives from reading a dialogue between Reason and a man, part of the Synonyma of Isidore of Seville. He pictures the personification Reason as speaking to the universal “man,” but takes the speech directly to himself: This othir day / a lamentacioun Of a woful man / in a book I sy, To whom wordes / of consolacioun Resoun yaf / spekynge effectually; .......................... … whan I had a whyle / in the book red With the speeche of Resoun / was I wel fed. (309–12, 314–15)

Reading, rather than dreaming, Hoccleve receives the speech of Reason, a prominent character in the allegories of the Rose and Deguileville. Hoccleve introduces his reading of this fragment from the Synonyma in the context of his interior struggles with anxious thought: … now myself / to myself haue ensurid For no swich wondrynge / aftir this to mourne. (304–5)

Reading the debate between Reason and the woeful man prompts a consoling promise of the self to itself, making explicit the way the personified debate inspires the narrator’s internal self-dialogue. In fact, the portion of the Synonyma Hoccleve’s narrator describes reading within the Complaint appears to shape the overall structure of Hoccleve’s Complaint: Hoccleve’s description of his despair, its cause, and its possible cure all resemble those discussed by the universal figures. Hoccleve’s declaration “hy tyme is me / to creepe into my graue” (261) closely resembles the opening lament of the man in the dialogue, who decides “gretter plesance 71

Patterson, “‘What is Me?’,” 444.



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/ were it me to die” (330). Reason’s advice to the man, “out of thyn herte / voide wo and care” (339), echoes Hoccleve’s emphasis on his heart as the source of his trouble, and even his complaint: The greef aboute myn herte / so swal .......................... þat nedes oute / I muste therwithal. (29–31)

The final recommendation of Reason that the man of the allegory should say “lord God / I haue agilte … Lord, I repente” (366, 371) is followed by Hoccleve a few stanzas after his translation of the allegorical dialogue. The narrator describes God’s aid, saying “He grauntid me / my giltes to repente” (403). The structure of the internal dialogue in Hoccleve’s Complaint is indeed “wel fed” by Hoccleve’s reading of Reason’s allegorical dialogue. Reason’s speech also influences Hoccleve’s first-person narrator in the Dialogue following the Complaint. In the Dialogue, the narrator argues most vehemently against the Friend’s continued doubt of his sanity by declaring … he lyueth nat þat can Knowe / how it standith with anothir wight So wel as himself. (478–80)72

This formulation of self-knowledge in fact borrows from the allegorical dialogue of the Synonyma. As J. A. Burrow noted in comparing the rest of the Synonyma with Hoccleve’s ensuing dialogue, this statement echoes Reason’s instruction: “Nemo magis scire potest qualis fueris quam tu qui conscius es tui” (No one can know better what you are like than you who know yourself).73 The Synonyma’s Reason here recalls the emphasis on self-knowledge also found in De Consolatione, and echoed within the speech of Deguileville’s Reason when she urges the narrator to know himself, even as she reveals his fragmented nature. Hoccleve’s predecessor Chaucer emphasized the passage in his De Consolatione translation, the Boece, and, as noted in the previous chapter, Chaucer’s House of Fame reintroduces the idea when the dialogue with the unnamed friend prompts the narrator’s declaration that his 72 James Simpson considers Hoccleve’s treatment of the translated dialogue to be critical of the consolation genre, claiming the above line concerning self-knowledge as evidence that Hoccleve relies ultimately not upon the resignation preached by personified Reason but upon reference to his “coherent self.” “Madness and Texts,” 26. The close affinity between this line and a later passage of Reason’s speech, however, reveals Hoccleve’s apparent abandonment of the consolation genre to have been staged through the very strategies he finds at work in his source. 73 Burrow, “Hoccleve’s Complaint and Isidore of Seville Again,” Speculum 73 (1998): 428.

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self-knowledge suffices for him.74 The language of self-knowledge employed by Hoccleve, even when apparently gesturing to a self beyond text, is thus drawn from a much wider tradition of allegorical dialogue connecting the interpretation of texts and of self. Hoccleve’s interest in the Synonyma marks his participation in the Boethian tradition of allegorical debate recast within the Rose as well as in the writings of Deguileville and Chaucer. Modern critical scholarship has noted the insistent textuality of Hoccleve’s interiority in the Series.75 Looking back to Deguileville’s allegory, we see Hoccleve’s depictions of reading and composition within his Complaint as developing out of the figurative narratives of self-exploration Hoccleve read. Deguileville, like Hoccleve, presented a first-person narrator learning about himself through reading universal dialogue in one of his most personalized complaints. In the PVH2, in which the personification of God’s Grace assumes the role that the PVH1 granted to Reason, expounding the narrator’s fragmented self, the narrator also describes how he encounters Grace through reading a text, within a complaint. Deguileville’s narrator, like Hoccleve’s, insists on the personal application of this complaint; Hoccleve’s mention of precise dates and locations connect his Complaint to his immediate experience, and Deguileville demonstrates a relation between his authorial identity and the complaint of the PVH2 through incorporating an acrostic of his name. As noted in previous chapters, the narrator justifies the naming acrostic of the lyric by declaring the complaint to be necessarily the expression of a single self: “Car a nul tel dueil appartient / Fors qua moy seul dont le dueil vient” (84r) (For such suffering can be known by none save myself alone, to whom the suffering came). Just as Hoccleve structured his personal complaint to resemble the allegorical dialogue inserted within it, Deguileville structures his personal complaint as a mirror of the allegory in which it appears. The personal complaint is expressed in the same abstract terms of the drama that led up to this moment, and the complaint’s conclusion foreshadows the remedy that follows in the allegory. Moreover, Deguileville, like Hoccleve,

74 As noted in the previous chapter, Gardiner Stillwell connects this House of Fame passage with the work of Boethius in “Chaucer’s ‘O Sentence’,” 149–57. Nicholas Perkins draws attention to how Hoccleve’s Regiment of Princes recalls Chaucer’s Boethian borrowings in the Troilus, the work Chaucer’s Legend prologue paired with his Rose translation; Perkins sees less overt echoing of Chaucer’s Boethian interests in the Series, however, citing other “intertexts” and “Chaucerian connections.” “Haunted Hoccleve? The Regiment of Princes, the Troilean Intertext, and Conversations with the Dead,” ChR 43 (2008): 139 note 58. 75 For example, David C. Greetham describes the Series as conveying “self-referentiality … not merely of the work to the artist but of the work to itself.” “Self-Referential Artifacts,” 245. James Simpson claims that “if ever there was a poem whose composition is part of its own subject, it is Hoccleve’s Series.” “Madness and Texts,” 16.



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relates abstract drama and personal experience through a portrayal of the narrator as a reader within this complaint. Like Deguileville’s invocation of all readers in the form of his pilgrim narrator, Hoccleve’s narrator suggests that his textual creation will inspire interior debate in his readers. The recuperating task he proposes for himself following his encounter with personified dialogue is to return to such dialogue: he tells the Friend of his intention to translate a Latin debate between Wisdom, a disciple, and a dying man, which directs the disciple (and readers) to the city of new Jerusalem, meaning heaven, the same ultimate goal found in Deguileville’s allegorical trilogy. In this context, Hoccleve extends the interior debate he experiences in allegorical encounters to the minds of his imagined readers, stating his intention to translate the treatise by saying, For I nat oonly / but, as þat I hope, Many anothir wight / eek therby shal ............................. … with himself acounte … (218–21)

Both Hoccleve and Deguileville use play between interior and surface texts to suggest how the narrator’s self-splitting dialogue can create the same effect within readers, using the same figurative strategies for salvific direction and for self-depiction. Allegory with an “I” for English Patrons Hoccleve’s encoding of his readers in the Series moves beyond Deguileville’s play of figuration, however, as Hoccleve introduces a moment of allegory that emphasizes his activity of translation in order to reflect a specifically English context. Hoccleve’s restructuring of Christine’s allegory in translation alluded to Chaucer by presenting a new vision of a mythic god of Love who not only praised English translation but also posed as its patron. In the Series, Hoccleve more explicitly presents his patron, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, within the text, naming him as an intended reader of the spiritual allegory he proposes to translate. Hoccleve encodes the chivalric nature he ascribes to this patron by returning to mythic figuration, portraying the narrator as again recording the speech of a god. The narrator declares “this conceit is in myn herte alwey” (591), namely, that Mars, god of War, entitled the duke at birth with his name, Humphrey. Treating “Humfrey” as if it were the French phrase “Homme feray,” Hoccleve translates his patron’s name into English as a speech of Mars: “Man make I shal” (597). Hoccleve thus names his reader and interprets his character by inventing a mythic character’s speech and envisioning himself translating it out of French into English. Just as

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in his translation of Christine’s Epistre, Hoccleve connects the voice of his narrator in the Series explicitly to the English literary landscape as well as to the voices of personifications, emphasizing his role as a translator of French allegory for English readers. Hoccleve’s representation of both himself and his English contemporaries thus continues to build upon his experience as a translator of the tradition of allegory inspired by the Rose, specifically of works by Christine de Pizan and Guillaume de Deguileville.76 Examination of Hoccleve’s relation to this tradition shows Hoccleve’s “allegorically-infected” first-person perspective is not simply a reflection of Lancastrian social struggle or merely an imitation of English poetry by Chaucer or Langland. Instead, Hoccleve’s practice is a sophisticated intervention into a cross-cultural literary discourse about poetic authority taking shape within allegory. The puzzle of Hoccleve’s “autobiographical” poetry being expressed through “small-scale personification” becomes less puzzling once we acknowledge that the tradition of allegory developing in response to the Rose regularly took the function of directing readers to examine a poet’s identity and intention. Through the figures of allegory, poets debated the application of scholastic literary models to the rising use of the vernacular and explored the nature of the individual self as much as the human soul. In the late Middle Ages, dream frameworks and allegorical characters are fundamental in theorizing the relationships of textual production, as personifications who claim control over a first-person narrator figuratively dramatize the poet’s activity for readers.77 Although Hoccleve is unique in the sheer amount of detail he provides concerning his immediate social, political, and economic needs, his strategies for self-presentation ultimately borrow from a tradition of inviting readers to think about the role of the vernacular author and the complexities of interiority through allegory. Hoccleve’s self-presentation as a narrator-protagonist responds to the legacy of Boethian consolation literature 76 Hoccleve’s interests in the allegories of Christine and Deguileville also may have guided his translation of a much shorter anonymous Anglo-Norman lyric, the only piece other than the Deguileville lyric to be identified explicitly as a translation from French in the autograph manuscripts. Charity Scott Stokes observes that as Hoccleve renders his source “some of the distinctively feudal imagery of the Anglo-Norman text is replaced in his version by other familiar images of the Christian pilgrimage, wayfaring and seafaring.” “Thomas Hoccleve’s Mother of God and Balade to the Virgin and Christ: Latin and Anglo-Norman sources,” MAe 64 (1995): 81. 77 In this respect, my study complicates the literary history of authorship proposed by scholars such as Cynthia Brown, who traces the emergence of an early modern discourse on authorship to the development of a first-person voice that “standing apart from characters within the text, reacts instead with readers outside and identifies with the author himself.” Poets, Patrons, and Printers, 197.



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and Ovidian lyrics received and re-expressed in late medieval first-person allegory; indeed, Hoccleve’s first-person voice represents an important development in the tradition of allegory springing from the innovative selfreflexivity of the Rose. Hoccleve’s final work, the Series, appears removed from love-centered or dream-framed allegories and is very much attuned to readers outside the text, directly addressing and also discussing his patrons. Yet Hoccleve’s rhetoric of self-presentation still relies upon encounters with abstract voices, displaying his close relation to the tradition of authorizing the vernacular poet through allegory represented by the writings of Christine de Pizan and Guillaume de Deguileville, literature Hoccleve read and translated. Hoccleve’s innovations reflect this heritage: Hoccleve’s “I” is neither devoid of personal reference nor divorced from universal meaning but invites multiple levels of interpretation. Hoccleve creates an image of Chaucer as a literary predecessor and explicitly represents his English patrons, but he does so through translating and appropriating the self-authorizing strategies of French poets Christine and Deguileville. The voice of the “first autobiographical poet” in English literature thus emerges through reaction not only to fifteenth-century Westminster contemporaries but also to the spectral figures of allegorical dreams.

4

Verba Translatoris: Allegory and John Lydgate’s Literary Tradition John Lydgate (c. 1371–1449) is indisputably the most prolific English poet of the fifteenth century and arguably the most prolific poet to write in the English language, as he is credited with some 140,000 lines of verse.1 Literary scholarship on John Lydgate, while noting the heterogeneous nature of his abundant textual production, has focused on the fifteenthcentury Benedictine’s evident interest in valorizing the English vernacular and asserting authority for authors composing in English.2 Mindful of the 1 Important studies delineating Lydgate’s extensive corpus include Derek Pearsall, John Lydgate (London: Kegan Paul, 1970); Alain Renoir and C. David Benson, “John Lydgate,” in A Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050–1500, ed. Albert E. Hartung (Hamden, CT: The Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1980), 6:1809–1920, 2017–2175; A. S. G. Edwards, “Lydgate Manuscripts: Some Directions for Future Research,” in Manuscripts and Readers in Fifteenth-Century England: The Literary Implications of Manuscript Study (Essays from the 1981 Conference at the University of York), ed. Derek Pearsall (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1983), 15–26; and A. S. G. Edwards, “Additions and Corrections to the Bibliography of John Lydgate,” N&Q n. s. 32 (1985): 450–52. 2 James Simpson makes the heterogeneity of Lydgate’s production part of its value in representing the formulation of authority in the period, describing his writing as “highly mobile, traversing different discursive jurisdictions with agility.” Reform and Cultural Revolution, 67. James Simpson and Larry Scanlon together celebrate Lydgate’s “contributions to literary history,” envisioning Lydgate as writing “in a vernacular with newly emergent authority and … an emergent sense of its own poetic tradition.” Introduction to John Lydgate: Poetry, Culture, and Lancastrian England, ed. James Simpson and Larry Scanlon (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2006), 8. Claire Sponsler notes “Lydgate’s frequent conflation of biblical and classical examples” as part of the way he “established structures of power” and orthodoxy for English. “Lydgate and London’s Public Culture,” in Lydgate Matters: Poetry and Material Culture in the Fifteenth Century, ed. Lisa H. Cooper and Andrea Denny-Brown (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008), 21. Maura Nolan asserts that Lydgate’s “authoritative literary references” appear to have been a particularly “desirable” part of his compositions. John Lydgate and the Making of Public Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 100. Nigel Mortimer references the praise of later English poets to demonstrate that Lydgate “occupied a privileged position in the canon of poetic authority.” John Lydgate’s “Fall of Princes”: Narrative Tragedy in its Literary and Political Contexts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 3. Robert Meyer-Lee argues that Lydgate’s practice constitutes “a

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sixteenth-century Reformation and Renaissance movements, many studies of what has been termed Lydgate’s “laureate” poetics look to the auctoritas of Latin texts, to the example of Italian humanists, and to the surrounding English political climate for the English poet’s inspiration in this endeavor.3 The question of what Lydgate’s strategies of self-authorization owe to the French allegorical tradition has attracted less attention, yet Lydgate’s role as a translator of French allegory is an essential part of his presentation of English poetry and its readers.4 In passages at times explicitly marked as verba translatoris (words of the translator) by the rubrics of surviving manuscripts, Lydgate crafts English literary history by deploying the allegorical strategies that encode authorship within the late thirteenth-century Roman de la Rose.5 The Rose devotes the central portion of its allegory to the internal figuration of transactions between author, text, and reader; the revelation and reworking of these transactions in translation stages the development laureate performance, the very first such successful performance in English.” Poets and Power from Chaucer to Wyatt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 10. 3 Here I borrow Meyer-Lee’s term, used as the title of his first chapter in Poets and Power. Other worthwhile considerations of Lydgate’s poetics in the context of classical literature and humanism appear in Alessandra Petrina, Cultural Politics in Fifteenth-Century England: The Case of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester (Leiden: Brill, 2004) and in Daniel Wakelin, Humanism, Reading, and English Literature 1430–1530 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Both follow, in different ways, the precedent set by early Lydgate scholars Walter Schirmer and Alain Renoir, who considered Lydgate the advance guard of England’s Renaissance. See Schirmer, John Lydgate: A Study of the Culture of the Fifteenth Century, trans. Ann E. Keep (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961), and Renoir, The Poetry of John Lydgate (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967). This perspective has been enriched, and its difficulties in definition acknowledged, by Andrew Galloway, “John Lydgate and the Origins of Vernacular Humanism,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology (2008): 445–71. 4 Robert Meyer-Lee, for example, identifies the Lancastrian political climate and ideologies of Petrarch and Boccaccio as prime motivations for Lydgate and his followers to innovate “the fifteenth-century poet’s self-representation as an empirical, historically specific auctor” (Poets and Power, 27). Although he cites the self-naming dedication of Christine de Pizan’s allegory as an important model, Meyer-Lee primarily associates “give and take between particular and general” identities with “the Ricardian ‘I’” of Lydgate’s English predecessors (ibid., 32). Here, I seek to demonstrate that fluidity in the identities represented by the firstperson voice derives from a longer, cross-cultural allegorical tradition and remains vital to Lydgate’s self-representation, accompanying extradiegetic self-reference in the Pilgrimage and in the allegorical passages of the Fall. 5 I am not able to offer a complete study of how verba translatoris rubrics function across the Lydgate corpus here, although my preliminary investigations suggest the contribution such a study would offer to our understanding of how his authorship was presented to, and noted by, early readers. J. A. Burrow footnotes an intriguing instance of the rubric as a division between the writings of Hoccleve and Lydgate in three medieval manuscripts. See “Hoccleve’s Series: Experience and Books,” in Fifteenth-Century Studies: Recent Essays, ed. Robert F. Yeager (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1984), p. 273 note 12.



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of a newly complex textual hermeneutics in English. Geoffrey Chaucer’s successors are eager to associate him with the Rose, referring to Chaucer’s Rose translation in commendations of his poetry. Perhaps due in part to the symbolic importance of Chaucer’s English translation, the Rose continues to play a significant, albeit mediated, role in meditations on authorship in fifteenth-century English literature. Foremost in production, Lydgate draws upon this aspect of the Rose’s allegory, not through direct translation from the Rose but through translating allegory inspired by the Rose. I open this chapter with examination of Lydgate’s lesser-known Pilgrimage of the Life of Man (1426), before I turn to Lydgate’s last and longest major work, the Fall of Princes (c. 1431–1438).6 In each of these translations, Lydgate extends and transforms allegorical passages that draw attention to the work of textual production; Lydgate thus joins with other French and English poets writing in the Rose tradition through his use of allegory to write a self-authorizing literary history. That the Rose was among the myriad sources informing Lydgate’s broadranging corpus is not news; scholars are already sensitive to the importance the Rose held for the authority claimed by Lydgate’s love-centered dream visions and lyrics, particularly in relation to his response to Chaucer.7 Yet 6 Scholars may be more hesitant to write about the Pilgrimage because Lydgate is not named as the translator within the text itself but in other manuscript evidence. On the question of attribution, see Kathryn Walls, “Did Lydgate Translate the ‘Pèlerinage de Vie Humaine’?” N&Q 222 (1977): 103–5, and Richard Firth Green, “Lydgate and Deguileville Once More,” N&Q 223 (1978): 105–6. Derek Pearsall sums up the current scholarly view, declaring “there can be no real doubt that Lydgate was commissioned to write it and had a major hand in it.” John Lydgate (1371–1449): A Bio-bibliography, English Literary Studies Monograph Series 71 (Victoria, BC: University of Victoria, 1997), 27–28. The lack of a critical edition of the PVH2 initially hampered the differentiation of Lydgate’s translation from its source in scholarship. Susan K. Hagen’s study of the PVH draws its quotations from John Lydgate’s translation rather than Deguileville’s poem on the grounds that the translation is more “readily available to readers.” Allegorical Remembrance, ix. Lydgate’s translation is similarly identified with Deguileville’s poetry in Boitani, “Mary and Love in Fourteenth-Century Poetry.” Studies devoted to the Pilgrimage as a translation do more to elucidate the particular relevance of its religious themes and artisanal figures to Lydgate’s immediate English context. See Shannon Gayk, Image, Text, and Religious Reform in Fifteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 87–95; Michael Camille, “The Iconoclast’s Desire: Deguileville’s Idolatry in France and England,” in Images, Idolatry, and Iconoclasm in Late Medieval England: Textuality and the Visual Image, ed. Jeremy Dimmick et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 151–71; and Lisa Cooper, “‘Markys … off the Workman’: Heresy, Hagiography, and the Heavens in The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man,” in Cooper and Denny-Brown, Lydgate Matters, 89–112 (ellipsis present in source title). 7 For example, Larry Scanlon argues that Lydgate’s “Temple of Glass reiterates the House of Fame’s invocation of a previous European tradition, reading back to Virgil and Ovid and up through more immediate predecessors, although here Lydgate replaces Dante with the Roman

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the full impact that the Rose’s innovative use of allegory had in English literature can only be understood by recognizing the way in which Lydgate’s Pilgrimage appropriates the allegorical techniques of his source, Guillaume de Deguileville’s PVH, one of the first allegories produced in response to the Rose. Lydgate’s Fall of Princes, at first glance, seems more distant from the realm of allegory. Framed not as a dream but as a collection of historical narratives designed for the advice of rulers, the Fall renders Laurent de Premierfait’s revised French prose translation, Des Cas des Nobles Hommes et Femmes (1409), drawn from Giovanni Boccaccio’s Latin prose De Casibus Virorum Illustrium (c. 1355–1360).8 The most frequently noted connection between the Fall and the Pilgrimage is that Chaucer translated short sections from the sources for both; Chaucer incorporates an much-abridged adaptation from the Fall’s sources into his Canterbury Tales in the form of the Monk’s Tale, and, as I discuss in the second chapter of this book, Chaucer’s ABC renders an alphabetic acrostic prayer from Deguileville’s PVH.9 Chaucerian precedent for translation is not the only correspondence between the Fall and the Pilgrimage, however; like the Pilgrimage, the Fall includes reference to the Rose, by name, and makes significant use of first-person allegorical narrative. Lydgate’s Fall as well as his immediate sources for this translation are in truth important witnesses to the pervasive influence of the model of authorial representation found in the Rose tradition.10 Close examination of these translations reveals that allegory serves as a means for the medieval English author to establish his connections to predecessors and to readers, his claim to a place in literary history. Many of the allegories responding to the innovative authorial discourse of the Rose considered in previous chapters present themselves as, and de la Rose and Petrarchan discourse of laureation. But the poem also makes Chaucer’s work the new center of that tradition.” “Lydgate’s Poetics: Laureation and Domesticity in the Temple of Glass,” in Simpson and Scanlon, John Lydgate: Poetry, Culture, and Lancastrian England, 71. Susan Bianco’s short examination of courtly lyrics associated with Lydgate suggests Lydgate’s literary “contribution derived not only from his knowledge of Chaucer, but from a firm understanding of, and familiarity with, the tradition of the French dits amoureux.” “A Black Monk in the Rose Garden: Lydgate and the Dit Amoreux Tradition,” ChR 34 (1999): 60. 8 Boccaccio revised De Casibus c. 1374; the earlier version, however, served as the basis for both versions of Premierfait’s French prose translation and for Lydgate’s English verse translation. 9 M. C. Seymour argues for Chaucer’s derivation of the Monk’s Tale from a “virtually unrevised early poem” that Chaucer drew from Boccaccio’s De Casibus; see “Chaucer’s Early Poem De Casibus Virorum Illustrium,” ChR 24 (1989): 165. 10 Maura Nolan draws attention to the Fall’s use of an array of sources, beyond Premierfait and Boccaccio, in two articles devoted to particular passages in the Fall’s first book: “Lydgate’s Literary History: Chaucer, Gower, and Canacee,” SAC 27 (2005): 59–92, and “‘Now wo, now gladnesse’: Ovidianism in the Fall of Princes,” English Literary History 71 (2004): 531–58.



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to a great extent are, creative responses or adaptations, even when forged through translation. Although there are important ways in which Lydgate’s Pilgrimage resembles these earlier allegories, the Pilgrimage differs in that it calls attention to itself as a translation, a rendering of a source produced by another, named author, despite retaining the first-person voice found in the source. As noted above, manuscripts of the Pilgrimage distinguish certain interpolations with eye-catching rubrics as the words of the translator. In the Fall, the difference in voice is more systematically presented throughout the translation; the first-person narration of Boccaccio’s De Casibus, translated by Premierfait in Des Cas, becomes the subject of the first-person narration of the English translator, who names and attributes passages to each of these predecessors.11 Both of the English translations considered in this chapter thus identify and differentiate the voice of the English translator, so the English translator’s voice adds another diegetic layer to the allegorical passages of the source text, in contrast to the more direct and incorporative engagement with first-person allegory of the Rose seen in the works of Guillaume de Deguileville and Christine de Pizan, or even (to a more limited extent) in those of Geoffrey Chaucer and Thomas Hoccleve. Unlike such earlier responses, Lydgate’s engagement with Rose allegory in these translations is indirect; the translator does not often appear as a character within the action of the allegory and no Rose personifications name the translator or offer hints about his extradiegetic identity. Yet even as Lydgate renders his voice as a translator distinct from the narrative voice, he also depicts himself as crafting his source’s allegory anew. The voice of the translator acts as a guide to interpretation and insists on the allegory’s reflective relationship to English readers and authors, specifically translators, as each of these translations connects the work of Chaucer as a translator to an allegorical passage. The Pilgrimage and the Fall each begin with a prologue that specifies an English patron as the text’s audience and each incorporates explicit citation of earlier English poetry as well as the immediate source(s) for translation, but such direct reference alone does not complete Lydgate’s portrayal of English literary history. The figurative language used within these prologues mirrors the allegorical passages Lydgate expands and alters within his translations, linking the representation of English textual production to the matter presented for interpretation. Beginning with Lydgate’s earlier Pilgrimage, I show how allegorical strategies drawn from 11 Such diegetic distance may have been inspired by Chaucer’s treatment of his De Casibus translation; the pilgrim-narrator of the Canterbury Tales attributes the Monk’s Tale to the Monk, who in turn attributes his account to prior textual sources. The Rose similarly fits its series of examples illustrating Fortune’s overthrow of ancient and recent rulers into the reported speech of the character Reason, as I note in this book’s second chapter.

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the translation’s source are employed both to emphasize the presence of the Rose as an underlying source and to direct interpretation toward English contributions to the Rose tradition; I then examine how the strategies important to this presentation of the English translator’s authority as an intermediary hermeneutic guide correspond to the use of allegorical passages in Lydgate’s Fall and its sources. Lydgate’s verba and Chaucer’s ABC: Allegory and the Author in the Pilgrimage Guillaume de Deguileville’s PVH is one of the earliest large-scale allegories that engage critically with the Rose, and Deguileville’s adoption of the Rose’s allegorical strategies of representing authorship developed considerably between the earliest version of his poem, the PVH1, c. 1331, and his c. 1355 recension, the PVH2.12 An anonymous English prose translation of Deguileville’s PVH1 appeared before the mid-fifteenth century, but Lydgate’s 1426 verse translation of the PVH2 offers insight into how Deguileville’s most extensive representation of authorship through allegory entered English literature.13 Lydgate’s alterations in translation do not engage critically with Deguileville or present Lydgate as Deguileville’s successor so much as they serve to integrate both Deguileville and his allegorical source, the Rose, into a lineage encompassing English literary endeavor; moreover, the integrative effect is heightened by the visual presentation witnessed in surviving manuscripts. Lydgate’s Pilgrimage demonstrates his awareness of the allegorical strategies of his source and his interest in redirecting their effect. As discussed in the first chapter, Deguileville conveys his interest in the Rose and his mastery of this source’s authorial discourse by inviting recognition of the resemblance between his personifications and those of the Rose, specifically Reason and Venus, and by introducing a new personification (Grace) who is ascribed greater control over the narrator-protagonist. Deguileville further emulates the Rose in designating certain passages within his allegory as discrete texts, embedded so as to refer to the external conditions of textual production in addition to advancing the allegorical narrative. Deguileville’s PVH2 also encourages attention to his authorial identity by using the allegory of pilgrimage not only within the dream narrative but also when describing the text’s creation in an opening prologue. Lydgate’s translation appropriates 12 13

For extended consideration of this development, see the first chapter of this book. For study and an edition of the English PVH1 translation, see The Pilgrimage of the Lyfe of the Manhode: A Critical Edition of the Middle English Prose Translation of Guillaume de Deguileville’s “Pèlerinage de la Vie Humaine,” ed. Avril Henry, 2 vols., EETS o. s. 288, 292 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985, 1988).



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these strategies. Lydgate shows close attention to the personifications that Deguileville’s allegory borrows from the Rose, introducing certain characters earlier in the Pilgrimage than they appear within PHV2 and altering their presentation to reflect his own reading of the Rose and mastery of his immediate source. Lydgate also employs the imagery and personifications shared by both allegories in a new prologue that describes his task as a translator, encouraging the extension of interpretation to his conditions of textual production. More specifically, the new prologue resembles the altered introduction Lydgate provides for an embedded lyric within the allegory, using similar figurative language to identify the translator in relation to his poetic predecessor, Chaucer, and to his English patron, Thomas of Salisbury, at differing diegetic levels. In the two most complete surviving Pilgrimage manuscripts, Lydgate’s innovations within the hermeneutic system of his source gain emphasis through rubrication.14 Rubrics in the margins and the textual columns of the translation identify certain new figurative passages as the translator’s additions, encouraging readers to perceive the translator as both a subject of, and authority on, the allegory drawn from his source.15 Lydgate’s Pilgrimage forges a stronger resemblance between the characters of Deguileville’s allegory and their counterparts in the Rose; certain Rose characters, notably the god of Love, are even newly interpolated into the allegory. As discussed in this book’s first chapter, the initial reference to the Rose by name in Deguileville’s PVH2 appears in the sermon of Reason, when Reason cites the Rose as a source demonstrating her opposition to a personification identified as “Amour Charnel” (Carnal Love), or, in some manuscripts, “Luxure” (Lust) or “Venus.” The English translation retains this citation of the Rose and identifies Reason’s opponent in this passage as “Venus,” the name most directly relevant to the Rose’s allegory.16 Lydgate may have drawn the mythic name from his source here, but he certainly departs from his immediate source in his later description of Venus, which now incorporates more reminders of the role that this character plays within the Rose. In the PVH2, Grace briefly warns against “Venus a toute sa mesgnye” (31r) (Venus with all her company) as a danger to pilgrims. Lydgate’s translation opts to increase the connection of this passage to the Rose, diminishing the relevance 14 The manuscripts are London, BL, Cotton MS Vitellius C.xiii and London, BL, Stowe MS 952. Sizable portions of the translation text also appear in the fragmentary London, BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A.vii. A dedicatory drawing, without text, appears in London, BL, Harley MS 4826. 15 For a description of all the passages thus marked, see my “Periphery and Purpose: Fifteenth-Century Rubrication of the Pilgrimage of Human Life,” Glossator 1 (2009): 36–56. 16 Lydgate, Pilgrimage of the Life of Man, lines 2079–84. All subsequent citations refer to this edition parenthetically by line number. Rubrics and notes are not assigned line numbers in this edition; where necessary, I provide the closest possible line number.

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of this passage to the rest of Deguileville’s allegory. For example, the Pilgrimage omits Grace’s advice to escape on a horse representing Renown, a figure found here and elsewhere in the PVH2 (73r). Instead, the Pilgrimage expands Grace’s warning by adding two new references to the mythic son of Venus, Cupid, mentioning “hys arwes fyled kene” (8136), and by adding allusions to the “ffyry brond” (8155) of Venus and to “hyr dartys and hyr brondys” (8180). Cupid, his arrows, and the fiery torches of Venus are not part of Deguileville’s allegory. In the Rose, however, Venus brings about the textual conclusion with her burning arrow at the intercession of Cupid, and this god of Love takes control over the Rose’s narrator-protagonist with his arrows, names the extradiegetic authors, and orders the literary production of the Rose itself. Moreover, as earlier chapters have demonstrated, the god of Love plays an important role in the allegorical representations of authorship crafted by Geoffrey Chaucer, Christine de Pizan, and Thomas Hoccleve. Bringing Deguileville’s allegory closer to the Rose, Lydgate’s translation also suggests awareness of other poetry in the Rose tradition.17 Like her opponent Venus, Reason appears earlier in the Pilgrimage than in the PVH2 and Reason’s earlier appearance represents an addition to the immediate source with even greater importance for the authorizing of the English translator. In the PVH2, shortly after the dream begins, the narratorprotagonist sees that the gate to the heavenly Jerusalem has a portcullis stained with blood, indicating martyrdom as a path to salvation. The narratorprotagonist of the PVH2 declares none passed that gate while he watched, figuratively denoting the absence of contemporary martyrs. In the Pilgrimage, the declaration that none passed the gate is replaced by an interpretation of the gate as a representation of the “gret vyolence & myght” necessary for all human salvation (449). The figurative language guiding readers to this interpretation mimics the larger structure of Deguileville’s allegory. The virtue that “makyth a man conquere” (458) the gate to heaven is suddenly personified and the Pilgrimage describes how Reason serves as Virtue’s guide “to lede hyr also and to dresse / in hyr pylgrymage” to heaven (464–65). The gate now represents not martyrdom but the overarching salvific message of the entire allegory, conveyed through the metaphor of pilgrimage and the personifications of Reason and Moral Virtue, all important components found later in the PVH2. In the two most complete surviving manuscripts of the Pilgrimage, the Latin rubric “verba translatoris” appears for the first time 17 Lydgate’s interpolation of a Rose character, not found in his immediate source, into his translation here is not an isolated instance. Lydgate adds references to the character Genius in his Reason and Sensuality and his Troy Book, in a manner emphasizing not only his reading of the Rose but also his emulation of English literary predecessors. See my “John Lydgate and the Curse of Genius,” ChR 45 (2010): 32–58.



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in the textual margin beside this passage (557), making the alteration all the more salient to medieval readers. Marked as the translator’s words, this passage indicates the translator’s control of the allegory and allegoresis of his source, crafting new meanings for the figurative landscape and new entrances for the personifications inhabiting it. In addition to the marginal notation described above, manuscripts of the Pilgrimage feature English rubrics, within the columns of the written text, which mark two passages as the translator’s additions. The first marks the end of Lydgate’s additional prologue and the second marks Lydgate’s addition to the introduction of an embedded lyric within the allegory. The two additional passages correspond in far more than their rubrication, as I will demonstrate, but their rubrics help to identify the translator’s voice as an integral component in the first-person narration of the allegory, part of what is presented for interpretation, in a manner resembling the rubricated divisions of the firstperson voice seen in manuscripts of the Rose and the PVH. The first English rubric announces the end of the translator’s prologue and another rubric, immediately below, announces the beginning of Deguileville’s PVH2 opening: “Here endyth the prologue off the translatour” appears above “Her be-gynneth the prologue of the auctour” (184–85). The last line of the translator’s prologue, immediately preceding the rubrics, elides the two voices separated by the rubrics, announcing the beginning of the text as the translator’s task: Lydgate concludes his prologue by saying “Wyth yowrë gracë thus I wyll be-gynne” (184), an action echoed in the rubric found further below, “Her be-gynneth the prologue of the auctour,” so the beginning of the translator’s task is marked as his assumption of the author’s voice. The author’s voice in turn takes on a new identity according to these rubrics; when the allegorical dream begins, a rubric announces a division between the narrating voice of the author and the narrating voice labeled in these manuscripts as “the pilgrim,” the role played by the narrator-protagonist within the dream. The rubric “Here begynneth the pilgrime” marks the author’s assumption of this character’s voice (184). Although apparently dividing the continuous use of first-person voice, the rubricated demarcation of two prologues at the text’s opening makes more visible the affinities claimed across the narration of both prologues and the dream. The sequence of English rubrics applied to the firstperson discourse at the opening of the Pilgrimage suggests that the relation between the translator and the author deserves as much consideration, even interpretation, as the relation between the author and the allegory’s narratorprotagonist, the relation so vital to Deguileville’s self-presentation.18 18 Although sometimes seen in manuscripts of the PVH1 that feature rubrics ascribing passages to the character or author throughout the text, the distinction between the intradiegetic and extradiegetic roles of the first-person voice with a rubric naming the pilgrim character at

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The translator’s voice in the prologue draws even closer to the voice(s) of Deguileville’s allegory as the prologue appropriates imagery from a passage found within the dream. Lydgate’s prologue begins by emulating Deguileville’s overarching metaphor, likening his readers to pilgrims in terms of the journey through life. Shortly thereafter, the prologue depicts the personification Fortune to illustrate the dangers that readers face. Lydgate describes Fortune at length as two-faced and tempestuous: “ffortune ys lady, with hyr double face … thys stormy quen, wych callyd ys Fortune” (19, 34). This description of Fortune corresponds to Fortune’s appearance as a personification menacing the narrator-protagonist of Deguileville’s dream.19 Here, as Lydgate’s translation shows, she appears in the midst of a stormy sea, divided in her countenance: there I sawe a lady stonde Amonge the wylde wawys trowble ........................... And hir vysage eke also Was departyde euene a two. (19470–71, 19479–80)20

In the new prologue explaining his labor of translation, Lydgate addresses readers with the same allegorical imagery found in the dream narrative of Deguileville’s protagonist. Lydgate’s prologue warns readers “wych in thys lyff ne ben but as pylgrimes” (2) that Fortune’s “sugre ys vnder-spreynt wyth galle” (25). These lines of the prologue reprise the final words spoken by Fortune to the narrator-protagonist within the Pilgrimage’s dream-narrative: “Or thy pylgrymage be do,— / Tourne yt to sour, outher to swete,— / Onys I shal yet with the mete” (19664–66).21 The English translator’s summoning this particular point is not typical in French PVH2 manuscripts; see Kamath, “Periphery and Purpose,” 8–9 note 20. Its presence in the manuscripts of the English verse translation may thus represent a particular interest in voicing on the part of English readers. 19 Howard Rollin Patch notes this sea-surrounded image in the context of a survey of postclassical treatments of Fortune’s dwelling, reproducing the manuscript illumination of Fortune found in London, BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A.vii, fol. 59v. The Goddess Fortuna in Mediaeval Literature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927), pp. 104–5 note 4, and p. 130 plate 6. 20 “Or vous dy ie que ainsi nageant / Et les flotz de mer regardant … Celle part vne dame auoit … Le visaige aussi my partiz” (66v-67r) (Now I tell you that as I was thus swimming and watching the waves of the sea … Here there was a lady … her face also divided) 21 Lydgate heightens the resemblance of the passages through alterations in translation. Deguileville’s PVH2 does not feature a bitter-sweet analogy at this particular point and the idea of a future encounter with Fortune is implied rather than stated explicitly: after describing how she spares no one, Fortune dismisses the narrator-protagonist, saying, “Va ten car rien ne te feray / Maintenant mais tespargneray / Eslys quel chemin tu voulras / Plus dire ne mappartient



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of a bitter-sweet Fortune before his readers in the prologue connects the experiences of his readers with the narrator-protagonist’s experiences in the dream allegory, heightening the reference of the allegory to the translator’s envisioned literary circle and presenting the translator as an authority on both intradiegetic and extradiegetic pilgrimages. The translator’s identity becomes more closely interlinked with interpretative guidance through another alteration that Lydgate makes to Deguileville’s description of the encounter with Fortune, one that is marked with an English rubric similar to that of the prologue. In the PVH2, the narrator-protagonist escapes from Fortune by means of an embedded text, an alphabetic acrostic prayer. The PVH2 narrator-protagonist simultaneously reads and records the prayer that saves him: as a character, he is set free by learning the alphabetic acrostic prayer Grace sends him; as the author, he records this same prayer within his work for its readers. The dual function assigned to the prayer in its introduction thus emphasizes the specific and the abstract qualities of the allegory; the first-person text of the prayer and its protection against Fortune can be claimed by the allegory’s internal narrator-protagonist and by the external author and reading audience. The Pilgrimage expands the function of this particular embedded text through additions to its introduction. Deguileville’s alphabetic acrostic prayer is the source of Geoffrey Chaucer’s ABC and Lydgate reminds readers of Chaucer’s translation in the Pilgrimage’s introduction to this prayer.22 In manuscripts, a rubric appears in the textual column at this point, for the first time since the prologue, identifying the passage containing this reminder as belonging to “the translator” (19751). The passage thus identified in truth sets forth a complex interrelation of prayerful voices. Recalling Chaucer’s translation of Deguileville’s prayer to Mary prompts Lydgate to pray that Mary will pray that Chaucer may join the celestial court “for A memórye” (19771). Lydgate boldly presents his commemoration of Chaucer in this passage of the pas ” (68r) (Go on, for I will spare you and do nothing to you now. Choose whatever road you wish; it befits me to say no more). 22 Chaucer’s ABC does not, however, appear in surviving Pilgrimage manuscripts, despite Lydgate’s introduction. On the manner in which this “intriguing” lacuna may represent “a kind of institutionalized blank space,” see John Thompson, “After Chaucer: Resituating Middle English Poetry in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Period,” New Directions in Later Medieval Manuscript Studies: Essays from the 1998 Harvard Conference, ed. Derek Pearsall (York: York Medieval Press, 2000), 197. (Martha Dana Rust offers an alternative reading of the absence, suggesting that the initial letters of the poem are sufficient for prayerful intent and the space is “less the lacuna than it is usually thought to be,” in Imaginary Worlds, 64.) Shannon Gayk discusses the importance of documentary forms across Lydgate’s corpus, noting the potential influence of both Chaucer’s ABC and Deguileville’s deployment of these forms. Image, Text, and Religious Reform, 110–11.

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Pilgrimage as both directing and helping to fulfill the will of heaven, since, after this prayer, Lydgate declares that memory of Chaucer binds him to set Chaucer’s translation of Deguileville’s prayer within his own translation of Deguileville’s poem. According to Lydgate’s expanded introduction to Deguileville’s alphabetic acrostic prayer, the prayer’s first-person discourse belongs not only to the allegory’s narrator-protagonist, and to the external author and to the external readers he represents, but also, specifically, to two English translators.23 The PVH2 grants considerable power to this prayer, depicting it as able to save its reader(s) from Fortune’s harms. In the expanded introduction to the prayer in the Pilgrimage, Lydgate lays claim to this power; he presents the prayer as emblematic of the literary labor of English translators, of their mutual connections to the translation’s source and its addressee and also to each other and to English readers. In the Pilgrimage, as in the PVH2, the prayer delivers the narrator-protagonist from Fortune; Lydgate’s expanded introduction, however, encourages English readers to interpret the prayer as equally representative of how Chaucer’s “rethorykës swete” (19774) merit the remembrance of Lydgate as well as the eternal celestial court “aboue the sterrys bryht and clere” (19768), a poetic triumph over the bitterness and sublunar instability that Fortune represents. Moreover, Lydgate’s expansions strengthen the resemblance between this passage of the allegory and Lydgate’s presentation of Fortune within his prologue. As noted, in the Pilgrimage’s dream narrative, after Fortune’s menacing appearance to the narrator-protagonist, Lydgate first introduces the alphabetic acrostic prayer as a textual means of salvation and then describes how his role in translating this text is tied to commemorating Chaucer and the nobility Chaucer brings to “Breteyne” (19754). Lydgate declares “ffor memoyre off that poete / … as I am bounde off dette / In thys book I wyl hym sette” (19773, 19777–78). In the prologue that opens the Pilgrimage, Lydgate similarly presents a menacing image of Fortune and claims that all pilgrims beset by Fortune need the text that follows, in this case, the entire Pilgrimage. Thereafter, Lydgate describes how he undertakes its translation at the request of the earl of Salisbury “whom God & grace han ful well ffortunyd” (126). 23 In perceiving this voice as a model of salvific accretion rather than narrowing restriction, I differ from the reading of exterior self-reference Robert Meyer-Lee offers when analyzing Lydgate’s Commendation, arguing that the poet’s self-reference “restricts this elevation to the historically unique poet, relegating the reader to the role of vicarious author rather than participant subject.” Cf. Poets and Power, 59. The specificity of Chaucer’s naming stands in contrast to the absence of other techniques Lydgate could have deployed to associate the narrator-protagonist of the Pilgrimage with a named individual: the Pilgrimage does not name its translator within the allegory, for example. The author-naming acrostic prayer that appears later in Deguileville’s PVH2 is unfortunately one of the portions of text missing from the surviving manuscripts of Lydgate’s Pilgrimage.



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The prologue identifies the purpose of Lydgate’s Pilgrimage simultaneously as a defense against Fortune and a commemoration of Salisbury: “in hys worschepe, for a remembrance, / As I am bovnde for to be hys man, / I wyl translate hyt sothly as I kan” (132–34). Both the Pilgrimage prologue and the Pilgrimage dream narrative depict the menace of Fortune, offer reading the text in hand as a means of finding salvation from this menace, and tie the translator’s role in this text’s creation to commemorating the exemplum of an Englishman victorious over Fortune’s vicissitudes. Just as the prologue presents the entire translation as a “remembrance” of Lydgate’s bond to the earl of Salisbury, the introduction to the translated alphabetic acrostic prayer presents the embedded document as a demonstration of how the translator is bound to such textual production to safeguard the memory of Chaucer, another English admirer of Deguileville’s French allegory.24 Lydgate’s determination to “sette” Chaucer within “thys book” of allegory is all the more interesting in the context of Chaucer’s poetry, specifically, his prologue to the Legend of Good Women. As noted in the second chapter, the F version of the Legend prologue presents the god of Love’s complaint that Chaucer has not only translated the Rose but also failed to “sette” his mythic patron Alceste in the ballade she inspires (540). Lydgate elects to set both Chaucer and also Lydgate’s own patron within a new Rose-inspired translation, in a manner that subtly connects the effects of these named influences. The prologue ascribes to the earl of Salisbury the desire “that men scholde se, / In ovre tonge” Deguileville’s allegory (135–36).25 Within the dream narrative, the translator replicates his patron’s desire by desiring that “men may knowe and pleynly se” Chaucer’s prayer (19789). These passages echo the lines that translate Deguileville’s introduction of the ABC prayer before the translator’s intrusion, directly explaining to readers that “ye may knowe yt sone and rede” (19749).26 The embedded prayer retains its dual function of saving the narrator-protagonist from Fortune within the allegory and of teaching external readers, but now the prayer bears the additional hermeneutic burden of embodying the translator’s English literary ties. The use of allegorical imagery from the dream to describe the creation of the text at its opening and the use of an embedded text to link the multiple identities participating 24 The resemblance of the passages that concern Lydgate’s ties to Salisbury and Lydgate’s ties to Chaucer may represent an effort to reflect the familial as well as the literary connection of Chaucer and Salisbury: Salisbury was the second husband of Alice, daughter of Thomas Chaucer. Indeed, an inventory listing books possessed by Alice records a paper copy of “the pilgrymage translated by daune Iohn lydgate out of frensh.” See Green, “Lydgate and Deguileville,” 106. 25 On the wider resonance of this emphasis on sight within the Pilgrimage and in relation to Lydgate’s lyric corpus, see Gayk, Image, Text, and Religious Reform, 89–90. 26 “De legier le pourrez aprendre” (68r) (You can learn it easily).

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in the first-person voice, two techniques employed by Deguileville, are appropriated by Lydgate to inscribe a narrative of English literary endeavor. The placement of rubrics indicating the translator’s voice at these particular sections of the text encourages readers to consider the translator’s figurative prologue as a guide to interpreting the allegorical dream narrative. The laudatory introduction Lydgate provides for Chaucer’s ABC within the Pilgrimage has been described as an example of “spongy line-filling” that turns “bracing narrative into laxness.”27 Yet the patterning of the passage is quite deliberate and quite powerful, and Lydgate’s Pilgrimage prologue emulates its structure and language to describe his own work of translation. Lydgate drew from the PVH2 to create this homage, endeavoring to tie English literary recognition to the allegorical action of his translation and of its French source. Lydgate’s choice to personify Fortune in the translation’s prologue appears inspired by the textual defense against Fortune in Deguileville’s allegory but may also represent Lydgate’s interest in Deguileville’s underlying source, the Rose. Lydgate does explicitly associate the double-faced figure of Fortune with the Rose in a dramatic work that represents another English triumph over her power. Lydgate’s most script-like mumming presents Fortune “lyche as þe Romans of þe Roose / Descyveþe hir, with-outen glose” being conquered by the English king Henry V, accompanied by the cardinal virtues.28 Jean de Meun’s Rose was significant as the first appearance in the vernacular of a description of Fortune detailing her dwelling place and appearance as well as her powers.29 But unlike the Rose, which mentions the downfall of powerful medieval figures to demonstrate the impossibility of escaping Fortune, 27 See Kay Gilligan Stevenson, “Medieval Rereading and Rewriting: The Context of Chaucer’s ‘ABC’,” in “Divers Toyes Mengled”: Essays on Medieval and Renaissance Culture / Études sur la Culture Européenne au Moyen Age et à la Renaissance, ed. Michel Bitot et al. (Tours: Publication de l’Université François Rabelais, 1996), 29. 28 John Lydgate, “A Mumming at London,” in The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, Part II: Secular Poems, ed. Henry Noble McCracken, EETS o. s. 192 (London: Oxford University Press, 1934), line 167 (slash present in source). Maura Nolan demonstrates the complicated negotiation of the Rose and Chaucer as sources throughout this play; after this citation of the Rose, for example, Lydgate replaces the historical exemplars of Fortune (Socrates, Seneca, Nero) found in the Rose with the list Chaucer’s Monk’s Tale borrows from Boccaccio (Alexander, Caesar, Gyges). Lydgate and the Making of Public Culture, 138. Andrew Galloway complicates Nolan’s reading by demonstrating the potential contribution of classical and pseudo-classical Latin sources. “Origins of Vernacular Humanism,” 458–71. On the distinctively dramatic nature of these verses, see Gordon Kipling, “Lydgate: The Poet as Deviser,” in Chaucer and the Challenges of Medievalism, ed. Donka Minkova and Theresa Tinkle (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2003), 73–101. 29 This first vernacular representation appears almost a century after the first medieval Latin representation of Fortune’s dwelling, in the Anticlaudianus; see Whitehead, Study of Medieval Architectural Allegory, 159.



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Lydgate’s mumming refers to recent history as an exemplum of triumph.30 The triumph of Henry over this personification, explicitly linked to the Rose, may thus represent a triumph for English literature as well. Certainly, in his Pilgrimage prologue, Lydgate links the representation of his patron’s triumph over Fortune to the defeat of Fortune’s snares within the allegory he translates. “God & grace” give good fortune to the text-sponsoring Salisbury in the prologue (126); the personification God’s Grace offers the pilgrim a textual means of salvation from Fortune within the allegory. In the Pilgrimage prologue, Lydgate also describes Salisbury’s martial triumph “in Fravncë … in the werre” (124–25). Commemorating Salisbury’s metaphoric and martial victories and depicting his English literary circle as what Deguileville’s text ultimately represents, Lydgate translates French allegory into English triumph, subjugating the language and compositional context of his source. The literary and political triumph of Lydgate, his patron, and Chaucer, as a “poete off Breteyne” (19754), are incorporated as part of the meaning that the allegory holds in Lydgate’s Pilgrimage. The enshrining of Chaucer in the Pilgrimage before the acrostic prayer has another counterpart in Lydgate’s Pilgrimage prologue, since an imitation of Chaucer’s verse appears just before the end of the “prologue of the translatour” (184/5). Lydgate’s prologue here draws attention to his authorial role with a denial of rhetorical skill couched in classical allusion: Ffor in metre I ha ne with me no muse: Noon of the nyne that on Parnase duelle, Nor she that ys [the] lady of the welle, Calliopë, be sydë cytheron, Gaff to my pennë, plente ne fuson Of hyr licovr, whan thys work was [be]gonne. (170–75)

This denial of inspiration by the Muses of Parnassus echoes a passage in the Satires of Persius and appears as a trope in medieval Latin compositions but, before this instance in Lydgate’s work, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales presents 30 Moreover, Lydgate’s mumming features a type of ocular allegory in describing two of virtues helping to expel Fortune: Prudence has three eyes (representing past, present, and future) and Justice has none (representing impartiality). The mention of such iconographic details may have been inspired by Chaucer’s reference to Prudence’s eyes in his Troilus and Criseyde (5.744–45) or by extrapolation from Latin sources, as suggested by Galloway, “Origins of Vernacular Humanism.” It may also reflect interest in Deguileville’s attention to ocular imagery: for example, in the PVH, Memory’s eyes are described as situated at the back of her head (looking to the past) and, in the PVH2, Grace sets the narrator-protagonist’s eyes into his ears, so he may “see” allegorical truth. Whitehead suggests that Lydgate’s mumming “can be compared” to Deguileville’s allegory as she argues that both introduce a Rose-inspired Fortune figure into a landscape of “Christian signs.” Study of Medieval Architectural Allegory, 168–69.

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the only known Middle English rendering of the denial, a counterpart to Chaucer’s Dantean invocation of the Muses in his House of Fame.31 Lydgate’s Fall uses the same rhetorical denial when Lydgate compares himself directly to other authors, culminating in comparison with Chaucer: I nevir was aqueynted with Virgyle ........................... Nor with the souereyn balladys of Chauceer ........................... I me excuse, now this book is I-doo, How I was nevir yit at Cytheoun, Nor on the mounteyn callyd Pernaso.32

The incorporation of this rhetoric plays a crucial role in the pattern of Lydgate’s self-representation in the Fall, as later analysis in this chapter will demonstrate. Here, however, it is worth remarking the close connection of the Muses with Chaucer as figures of literary inspiration, since it supports the view that the allusion to the Muses at the close of the Pilgrimage prologue is an imitation of Chaucer’s similar allusion. Imitation of the Rose’s Macrobian opening marks the opening of Deguileville’s PVH2; for readers who found echoes of Chaucer’s Parnassian allusions in Lydgate’s prologue to the Pilgrimage, English literary precedent has moved into the inaugural place once held by the Rose. Lydgate’s treatment of Deguileville’s allegory establishes a hermeneutic connection between the translator’s literary world and the allegorical dream, so Lydgate’s presentation of his labors, praise of Chaucer, and recognition of his patron and English readers do not stand apart as empirical, historically specific referents but are woven into the allegory and its offering of salvific doctrine. In Lydgate’s translation, the Rose’s allegorical figuration of textual production, mediated by the work of Deguileville, becomes a means of directing attention to the new setting of textual hermeneutics in English. Recognizing Lydgate’s strategies as a translator of allegory counters earlier notions of Lydgate’s importance to the English poetic tradition as 31 In the Canterbury Tales, see The Franklin’s Tale (5.720–22); see also the House of Fame (518–22). On other instances of the trope of Muse reference in Lydgate’s corpus and its important synthesis of the approaches to classical authorities found in Chaucer’s poetry, see Fumo, Legacy of Apollo, 186–87. A useful survey of the wider medieval reception of the trope appears in Tanja Kupke, “Où sont les Muses d’antan? Notes for a Study of the Muses in the Middle Ages,” in From Athens to Chartres: Neoplatonism and Medieval Thought. Studies in Honour of Edouard Jeauneau, ed. Haijo Jan Westra (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 421–36. 32 Lydgate’s Fall of Princes; Daunce of Machabree, ed. Henry Bergen, 4 vols., EETS e. s. 121–24 (London: Oxford University Press, 1924–1927), 9.3401, 3405, 3436–38. Subsequent quotations from Lydgate’s Fall refer parenthetically to this edition by book and line numbers.



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an accidental by-product of the desires of his patrons and also helps reveal the kind of poetic tradition Lydgate presents through translation, one that integrates English into a wider literary framework rather than resting upon difference.33 Between the Rose and the Fall: the Allegory of Boccaccio and Premierfait Lydgate’s longest single work, the Fall of Princes, looks beyond the tradition of verse allegories emulating the Rose, turning instead to Laurent de Premierfait’s French prose translation from Giovanni Boccaccio’s multivolume Latin prose work, specifically Premierfait’s second, expanded translation of this text.34 The Boethian-inspired passage of the Rose in which Reason narrates the ruin of ancients and contemporaries as examples of Fortune’s power is recognized as one of the “earliest instantiations” of the kind of tale collection that Boccaccio crafts in his De Casibus, and scholars frequently compare this passage from the Rose with De Casibus and its later translations and imitations to elucidate medieval conceptions of tragedy, providence, history, and politics.35 Far less recognized, however, is the extent to which the allegorical representation of authorship found in the Rose also mattered to Boccaccio’s De Casibus and its French and English translations. Boccaccio, Premierfait, and Lydgate each identify themselves by name and dedicate their endeavors to particular readers. Premierfait takes Boccaccio’s dedication to Mainardo dei Cavalcanti as the basis for the dedication of his initial translation to Louis of Bourbon, then, departing further from his source, dedicates the recension of his translation to Jean of Berry; Lydgate 33 Derek Pearsall, for example, draws attention to Lydgate’s translation activity and its close connections to readers as innovative, yet presents such innovation as transpiring in opposition to Lydgate’s poetic intention and ability: “much of the activity of innovation was in translating poems from Latin and French. There can be no other English poet whose poetic career was so dictated by the circumstances of patrons and commissions … somehow, accidentally, he invented the English poetic tradition.” “Lydgate as Innovator,” Modern Language Quarterly 53 (1992): 21–22. 34 Premierfait first translated the text in 1400. On Lydgate’s extensive use of Premierfait’s 1409 revised translation in crafting his English translation, see Mortimer, John Lydgate’s “Fall.” The influence of the French intermediary translation on English readership even shaped manuscript production as “some of the decorators of Lydgate’s Fall took details from Laurent and incorporated them into their pictures.” Edwards, “Lydgate Manuscripts,” p. 16 note 5, citing unpublished observation by Lesley Lawton. 35 Paul Strohm, Politique: Languages of Statecraft between Chaucer and Shakespeare (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 90. Strohm’s argument that Lydgate’s Fall breaks from the Rose and De Casibus in its contribution to English political language and thought represents one influential example from this wider field of scholarly investigation.

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translates neither existing prologue, instead crafting a new prologue that identifies his translation as a service to Humphrey of Gloucester, warden of England for Henry VI at the time of composition.36 Yet these specific first-person addresses to external readers complement rather than replace figuratively expressed demands on the attention of readers. The Fall not only names Lydgate, his sources, his literary predecessors, and his patrons, but also, like the earlier Pilgrimage, carefully reworks and expands passages of personification allegory to establish the authority of the English translator and his place within the wider literary tradition, demonstrating the pervasive power of the strategies found in the less frequently studied allegorical source and translation considered above.37 Fully understanding this aspect of Lydgate’s practice in the Fall, however, depends upon recognizing how Boccaccio’s De Casibus and its French translation invoke allegory’s potential for directing attention to authorial voice. Boccaccio’s De Casibus draws its matter from chronicles and asserts affiliation with classical auctores, specifically Cicero, through its language and prose style; it thus adheres most closely to a different tradition of authorial representation than the vernacular tradition to which this book is devoted. Nonetheless, on closer consideration, De Casibus demonstrates that Boccaccio’s interest in the first-person voice and personifications of allegory’s visions continued beyond his early vernacular writings, which were more directly emulative of the Rose.38 Boccaccio presents himself as the firstperson narrator of his De Casibus, a narrator who is also a character in the narrative, if not its protagonist, as he sees and converses with the historical personages whose downfall he recounts. Fortune, the central concept of De Casibus, frequently finds expression as a personification and two extended passages of personification allegory divide Boccaccio’s nine-book De Casibus into thirds; the first is an encounter between Fortune and Poverty, which the narrator recounts as a fable at the start of Book 3, and the second is an encounter between Fortune and the text’s narrator, at the start of Book 6. Both passages play a significant role in establishing Boccaccio’s authority 36 On the differing expectations implied by each version’s dedicatee, see Strohm, Politique, 94. 37 Larry Scanlon offers a useful and influential account of how direct references to literary predecessors and patrons participate in a model of political authority, particularly in the prologue to the Fall. Narrative, Authority and Power: the Medieval Exemplum and the Chaucerian Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 322–50. 38 David Wallace describes the “fundamental importance” that the Rose held for Boccaccio, as well as Chaucer. Chaucer and the Early Writings of Boccaccio, 151. The suggestion that the Rose influenced Boccaccio’s early self-naming is repeated in a useful survey of differing signature forms in Victoria Kirkham, Fabulous Vernacular: Boccaccio’s “Filocolo” and the Art of Medieval Narrative (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), 130.



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in the context of a contemporary as well as classical literary tradition; the encounter of Boccaccio’s narrator with Fortune in particular prefigures later encounters with the Italian authors, Dante and Petrarch, who, like Fortune, suddenly appear, offer direction to the narrator, and then depart, in Books 8 and 9 respectively. At the opening of Book 3, the narrator introduces the allegory of Fortune and Poverty as a fable that holds truth: “veramque probavi fabelle sententiam quam olim ab adolescentia mea audisse memineram” (I have found the essence of a fable I remember hearing as a young man to be true).39 The truth found in fables is central to the defense of poetic authority offered later in this same book of De Casibus.40 Boccaccio’s narrator laments that foolish critics say that “poetas mendaces et fabulosos homines esse” (3.14.11) (poets are liars, are men addicted to the use of fables [106]). He then glorifies the hermeneutic, “other-speaking” properties of fictive narratives: “Nam prout illa divine mentis archana prophetis futurisque sub figurarum tegmine reseravit, sic et hec celsos suorum conceptus sub figmentorum velamine tradere orsa est” (3.14.13) (For as scripture reveals the secrets of the Divine Spirit and the prophecies of things to come under the guise of figures of speech, so poetry tries to relate its lofty concepts under the veils of fictions [106]). Boccaccio’s description of the veiled allegorical operation shared by scripture and poetry is reminiscent of his earlier description of dream visions as both potentially veiled and potentially prophetic.41 The dream vision and the poetic fable are thus associated and lauded as authoritative in De Casibus. Indeed, the historical matter of the text becomes subject to the authority of the fable. Boccaccio’s fable of Fortune’s fight with Poverty concludes with 39 The Latin text refers to Giovanni Boccaccio, De Casibus Virorum Illustrium, ed. Pier Giorgio Ricci and Vittorio Zaccaria, vol. 9 of Tutte le Opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, ed. Vittorio Zaccaria (Milano: A. Mondadori, 1983), book 3, prologue, phrase 2. This edition represents Boccaccio’s later revision of his work, but I have checked for the presence of quoted passages in the first version of the work, from which Premierfait and Lydgate worked, comparing Zaccaria’s edition with the most readily accessible form of this first version, Giovanni Boccaccio, De Casibus Virorum Illustrium: A Facsimile Reproduction of the Paris 1520 Edition, with an Introduction by Louis Brewer Hall (Gainesville, FL: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1962). For the English translation, see Giovanni Boccaccio, The Fates of Illustrious Men, trans. Louis Brewer Hall (New York: Ungar, 1965), 67. Subsequent quotations from De Casibus refer parenthetically to Zaccaria’s edition by book, section or chapter number, and phrase number; subsequent quotations from its English translation refer by page number to Hall’s translation, except when otherwise noted. 40 On Boccaccio’s repeated defense of fabulous narrative across his corpus, with particular relation to Macrobius and medieval allegory, see Kirkham, Fabulous Vernacular, 11. 41 De Casibus states that while sleeping it is possible “aut visione certissima, aut tenui sub velamine audimus videmusque futuri” (2.18.4) (we hear and see the things that will take place either in actual visions or under the veil of allegory” [64])

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Fortune defeated and forced to tie Misfortune to a stake, and reference to the fable’s conclusion recurs as a hermeneutic thread in the following chronicle narratives. For example, the narrator describes Alcibiades as one who “a palo infortunium soluturus” (3.12.23) (was about to release Misfortune from his stake [101]), exiting the specifics of human history and re-entering into the allegorical fable. The expected gloss and text roles of the literal and figurative narratives are for the moment reversed, as chronicles of human history are interpreted through reference to the interaction of personifications. In De Casibus, Boccaccio claims recognition as an author through envisioning himself as a subject of the allegory thus praised and granted authority. The encounter of the first-person narrator with Fortune at the opening of Book 6 refers readers back to the passage of personification allegory at the opening of Book 3, since Fortune rebukes the narrator for warning against her and declares “quod egrius tuli, risisti iam plurimum, dum a paupertate me superatam audisti” (6.1.18) (what is even more painful to me, you have gotten a good laugh hearing that I was conquered by Poverty [140]). Issuing this rebuke, Fortune identifies herself as the character featured in the fable recounted by the narrator even as she enters into the level of textual reality occupied by the narrator. Disrupting the diegetic framework further, Boccaccio depicts Fortune taking control of the narrative in which she appears; Fortune decides that she will make the author’s name famous if he continues as she instructs and then presents historical personages as her captives, commanding the narrator to follow her order in telling their tales. Like the god of Love in the Rose, Fortune in De Casibus asserts control over the intradiegetic narrator-as-character by revealing her knowledge of his extradiegetic authorial identity. Boccaccio’s name is given in his dedication before the work but here it is recalled to the minds of readers as Fortune refers to her power over the recognition of the author’s name and identifies his native city, Certaldo.42 De Casibus asserts the connection between the author and the narrator across the bounds of diegesis at the very moment when the narrator describes a desire to sever the two. The narrator, identified as Boccaccio by Fortune’s mention of Certaldo, 42 Fortune promises “quin et Certaldum tuum et tuum nomen inter clara veterum nomina numerentur” (6.1.19) (your name and that of Certaldo will be numbered among the famous names of antiquity [141]). One other moment calls attention to naming within the books of Boccaccio’s De Casibus; as in Deguileville’s work, the name of the author is suggested through the naming of the author’s father. In Book 9, the narrator attests the truth of the execution of the Templars master through reference to “Boccaccius, genitor meus” (9.21.22) (Boccaccio, my father) as an eyewitness. (The English translation provided here is my own, as this section is omitted in Hall’s abridged translation.) Lydgate’s Fall removes this reference; at least some manuscripts of Premierfait’s 1409 translation include the name, but it may have been omitted in the text from which Lydgate translated.



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admits to Fortune that he writes in order to separate his name and his body, to keep his name as living as those of his characters even though he must suffer physical death. To achieve this desired, fragmented but eternal self, the narrator feels compelled to follow Fortune’s instructions for completing his literary task, allowing her commands to order the subsequent stories. Here, as in the allegorical tradition of the Rose, readers are presented with an encounter between a personification and a narrating character identified with the author; the intradiegetic yielding of narrative control to the personification encourages readers to consider the nature and authority of the extradiegetic author. The allegory comments on authorship by directing readers to look for another, contradictory, layer of meaning. The driving thesis of Boccaccio’s De Casibus is a warning about the sway of Fortune; depicting Boccaccio as following Fortune’s commands in ordering his work offers a parallel to Jean de Meun’s depiction of himself as instructed in his very acquisition of language by the god of Love, if one interprets the Rose as an antiphrastic warning about the foolishness of love.43 The resonance that I suggest between De Casibus and the tradition of allegory begun by the Rose becomes more salient in Laurent de Premierfait’s translation.44 Premierfait refers to the Rose in the first and the last book of his translation, identifying the Rose as a source essential to the interpretation of both classical works and contemporary vernacular literary production. Premierfait’s first Rose reference expands upon Boccaccio’s terse reference to Narcissus through citation of the Rose; as Premierfait attributes to Jean de Meun the portion of the Rose ascribed in the allegory to his predecessor, Guillaume de Lorris, and significantly differs from the Rose’s account of the Narcissus story, it seems that the actual source value of the Rose and the differing contributions of its authors meant less to Premierfait than the recognition of French authorities on the classical subject matter recounted

43 On the varied responses of medieval readers, see Huot, “Romance of the Rose” and its Medieval Readers. Huot’s study complicates readings of the Rose’s Reason as offering a stable source of instruction, put forward most directly by John V. Fleming, Reason and the Lover (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984). 44 Here and henceforth, except when otherwise noted, I refer to Premierfait’s expanded and revised translation of 1409, the source Lydgate used in translation. The interest of Premierfait’s literary network in the Rose becomes increasingly demonstrable in the years between Premierfait’s initial Des Cas translation and his revised translation. The advent of the Querelle de la Rose is discussed below, but it is also worth noting that Martin Gouge, who offered Jean of Berry the earliest presentation manuscript of Premierfait’s recension in 1411, offered a manuscript of the Rose as a gift to the duke in 1403. See Anne D. Hedeman, Translating the Past: Laurent de Premierfait and Boccaccio’s “De Casibus” (Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2008), 56.

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by Boccaccio.45 Premierfait’s more extended reference to the Rose in his Des Cas follows the visionary encounter between the narrator and Dante. Whereas in De Casibus the encounter with Dante glorifies the influence of an Italian author, Premierfait’s translation turns this passage into an occasion for glorifying Paris in allegorical terms and for asserting the influence of the French Rose over both Italian authors. In De Casibus, the narrator follows his encounter with Dante by declaring that he will obey Dante’s request to tell the story of Walter, the duke of Athens, whom Dante points out over his shoulder before disappearing. The French translation, instead of immediately beginning to recount Walter’s story, follows the encounter with Dante by adding an account of this inspiring poet’s own poetic inspiration. Premierfait’s continuous use of first-person voice seamlessly weaves his additions into the material drawn from his source as he identifies Dante as a world traveler who was drawn to Paris, allegorized and interpreted by Premierfait as tripartite city: its places of theological and philosophical studies represent a terrestrial paradise, its noble churches and sacred places represent a celestial paradise, and the two judicial courts represent a liminal space, part paradise and part hell. Premierfait designs his allegory of Paris as a vision of heaven, hell, and purgatory to parallel Dante’s division of his Commedia into these three realms; moreover, Premierfait posits the discovery of French allegory in Paris as Dante’s direct inspiration for the Commedia: Cestuy poete dant entre plusieurs volumes nouueaulx estans lors a paris rencontra le noble liure de la rose en quoy iehan clopinel de meun homme dengin celeste peignyt vne vraye mapemonde de toutes choses celestes et terriennes. dant doncques qui de dieu et de nature auoit receu lesperit de poetrie aduisa que ou liure de la rose est descript le paradis des bons et lenfer des mauuais en langaige francois, voult en langaige florentin soubz autre maniere de vers rimoiez contrefaire au vif le beau liure de la rose, en ensuiuant tel ordre comme fist le diuin poete virgile ou vi.e liure que len dit Eneide. Et pour ce que le poete dant selon sa profession dampnoit et reprenoit les vices et les hommes vicieux il qui estoit noble et bien meriz fut dechassie de florence et forbanny dyllec et mourut en la cite de Rauennes. Or vueil ie doncques venir a compter le cas de gaultier noble duc dathenes.46

45 In Premierfait’s Des Cas, Narcissus does not die in a fountain, as in the Rose, but as a result of Eco’s denial of love. See Laurent de Premierfait’s “Des Cas des Nobles Hommes et Femmes,” Book 1, Translated from Boccaccio: A Critical Edition based on Six Manuscripts, ed. Patricia May Gathercole, Studies in Romance Languages and Literatures 74 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968), 168. 46 London, BL, Add. MS 35321, fol. 314r–314v. Subsequent quotations from Books 2–9



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(This poet Dante found among the many new volumes then available in Paris the noble book of the Rose in which Jean Clopinel, of Meun, a man of heavenly invention, had painted a true mappa mondae of all things, celestial and earthly. Therefore Dante, who from god and from nature had received the spirit of poetry, aware that in the book of the Rose the paradise of the good and the hell of the bad was described in the French language, wished to create a living reworking of the fair book of the Rose in the Florentine language in another manner of rhymed verse, following such order as the divine poet Virgil used in the sixth book of the work called the Aeneid. And because the poet Dante in his profession condemned and rebuked the vices and vicious men, he who was noble and worthy was chased out of Florence and exiled thence and died in the city of Ravenna. Thus I now wish to begin recounting the example of Walter, the noble duke of Athens.)

Dante’s Commedia does reflect the influence of the Rose, but the influence appears most markedly in its last third, so Premierfait’s account of the Rose and Paris as foundational to Dante’s allegory is highly questionable.47 Premierfait’s equally imaginative description of Dante’s exile as a reaction against the Commedia calls to mind the quarrel over the Rose’s morality and impact transpiring in Paris around the time Premierfait was crafting this extended version of his Des Cas.48 Premierfait’s account portrays both the Rose and the Commedia as intended to condemn departures from virtue, the same purpose he claims for his Des Cas. Premierfait thus anchors the literary lineage and the function of Boccaccio’s De Casibus in the allegory of the Rose. Premierfait’s rendering of Boccaccio’s explanation for his book divisions in De Casibus also suggests inspiration by the allegorical tradition of the Rose. At the close of Book 1, Boccaccio likens the progress of the writer and his readers through the text to the labor of a journey and compares the textual divisions to rest stops. This analogy recurs at the start of Book 3, introducing the fable of Fortune and Poverty as a diversion intended to refresh resting textual travelers. Premierfait’s Des Cas retains the analogy in both places and specifically identifies the textual journey as a pilgrimage.49 The Latin description is already suggestive of pilgrimage, noting a “sacello” (1.19.2) of Premierfait’s De Cas (the portion not edited by Gathercole) refer parenthetically by folio to this manuscript. 47 For a study of the Commedia’s indebtedness to the Rose, see Richards, Dante and the “Roman de la Rose.” 48 Gontier Col, an active participant in the Querelle de la Rose, annotated his manuscript of Premierfait’s Des Cas to call attention to the passage on Dante. See Hedeman, Translating the Past, p. 268 note 42. 49 The identification of the textual journey with pilgrimage represents an alteration

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(small chapel [47]) as a possible landmark for travellers, and Boccaccio did experiment in an earlier vernacular work with “the all-encompassing narrative framework of one long, historical pilgrimage.”50 Premierfait goes beyond the hints found in the text and its context as he translates Boccaccio’s De Casibus, likening both author and readers to pilgrims. In doing so, Premierfait brings his Des Cas even closer to the Rose tradition.51 The analogy between textual progress and pilgrimage may recall the famed (or should I say infamous?) use of pilgrimage as a metaphor for another kind of enjoyable diversion at the conclusion of the Rose; it could also have brought to mind the trilogy of pilgrimage allegories that Deguileville produced in response to the Rose.52 Premierfait made in expanding and revising his initial translation of Des Cas, as Anne D. Hedeman notes (ibid., pp. 255–56 note 41). 50 Wallace, Chaucer and the Early Writings of Boccaccio, 60. Discussing this aspect of Boccaccio’s Filocolo, Wallace suggests a connection to the Rose and other extended vernacular narratives that respond to the Rose and share the theme of pilgrimage, including Deguileville’s (ibid., 53–60). 51 Might Geoffrey Chaucer, like Premierfait, have read Boccaccio’s rationale for De Casibus book divisions not simply as an analogy between textual progress and travel but, more specifically, as an analogy between textual progress and pilgrimage? Chaucer sets his De Casibus translation, the Monk’s Tale, into the pilgrimage framework of the Canterbury Tales. Unlike Boccaccio’s text, however, the Monk’s Tale recounts a continuous sequence of downfalls, rather than interposing textual divisions, fables, or first-person narratives of encounters with personifications. Chaucer depicts the Monk’s Tale being broken off by the Monk’s fretful fellow pilgrims who despair of finding any “desport or game” in his narrative (7.2791). Could Chaucer have deliberately fashioned the Monk as a poor textual pilgrim, in that the Monk offers none of the figurative refreshment demanded by Boccaccio’s De Casibus and also featured in the Rose? Chaucer’s interest in Boccaccio’s book division practice certainly bears further exploration. As Ardis Butterfield notes, Chaucer’s Troilus, another Boccaccian translation, is the “first (completed) poem in English” to employ book divisions; see “Mise-enpage in the Troilus Manuscripts: Chaucer and French Manuscript Culture,” Huntington Library Quarterly 58 (1995): 61. As this chapter demonstrates, Lydgate’s Fall takes a different route from Chaucer’s Monk’s Tale, offering additional refreshing narrative divisions to readers in the form of interpretative envoys and personification allegory. At least one fifteenth-century reader chose to interpolate excerpts from Chaucer’s Monk’s Tale into the perhaps more appealing Fall, as described in Schoff, Reformations, 13–15. 52 Premierfait’s awareness of Deguileville’s allegory seems more likely in light of the recognition given to Deguileville by Jean de Montreuil. Montreuil participated in the Rose debate, and he knew Gontier Col and Premierfait well, as noted in Hedeman, Translating the Past, 131. Montreuil describes Deguileville’s allegories in a letter written around the same time that Premierfait was engaged in his recension. See Epistola 197, in Jean de Montreuil: Opera, ed. Ezio Ornato, vol. 1 (Turin: G. Giappichelli, 1963), 292. Early print editions also suggest a connection between Des Cas imagery and Deguileville’s allegory: The 1538 edition of Premierfait’s translation, Boccace des Nobles Malheureux, printed in Paris by Nicholas Couteau, illustrates the start of Book 3 with a woodcut showing a pilgrim and Fortune on fol. 46v. (The woodcut is reproduced in Bergen’s edition of Lydgate’s Fall, vol. 4, p. 185.) The woodcut is from a series produced to accompany Deguileville’s PVH2 in the 1511 edition



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Even more minor features of Premierfait’s Des Cas and its manuscript presentation serve to call attention to the resonances of this text with the allegorical tradition. In Premierfait’s Des Cas, there is a stronger connection between the surrounding narrative and the first extended passage of personification allegory that Boccaccio provides in De Casibus and there is also a stronger connection between this passage and the later passage of personification allegory. Des Cas personifies Fortune just before the opening of the fable and encourages recognition of the connection between this fable and the narrator’s own encounter with Fortune through adding specific citation to Fortune’s later complaint about the fable.53 Manuscript presentation encouraged medieval readers to pay attention to the authorial representation offered by these allegorical passages: in two manuscripts that entered the collections of medieval English kings, the fable provides the first occasion for the textual rubric “Lacteur parle” (the author speaks), used so often in the Rose.54 The style of rubrication up to this point specifies the subject of each chapter in a fashion that, even when invoking the authorial voice, distances it diegetically through reference to the formal divisions of the text; for example, printed by Anthoine Vérard, Le Pelerinage de l’homme, identifiable by the distinctive bells on the pilgrim’s satchel. Here, the woodcut of the pilgrim and Fortune occurs on fol. 76v. Readers of Couteau’s edition of Premierfait’s translation may have recognized the image from Deguileville’s allegory being used to illustrate Boccaccio’s fable. 53 The narrator of the Latin text introduces the fable after he remarks that the people in the stories already told seem have drawn their adverse fortune upon themselves; the French text foreshadows the fable, rendering this as “ilz auoient acteinne dame fortune contre eulx mesmes” (67v, emphasis mine) (they themselves have drawn Lady Fortune against them). When Premierfait’s personified Fortune begins speaking, her metatextual perspective has a more indexical function than the Latin: “tu es mocque de moy dont ie suis plus mal contente pour ce que ia pieca tu as ouy dire que pourete me luita et vainquy dont tu as escript la fable au commencement du tiers liure precedent” (182r, emphasis mine) (I am all the more unhappy because you mock me; once you heard it said that poverty fought and vanquished me so you have written the fable at the beginning of the prior, third book). 54 I refer to London, BL, Royal MS 20.C.iv, created in the early fifteenth century and belonging to Henry VII or VIII, and to London, BL, Royal MS 14.E.v, created c. 1470–1483, “doubtless at Bruges, for a King of England [Edward IV?], whose arms, with Yorkist badges, occur frequently in the borders, once (fol. 174) accompanied by another shield differenced with a label of three points, probably for his eldest son, afterwards Edward V.” George F. Warner and Julius P. Gilson, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Old Royal and King’s Collections (London: British Museum, 1921), 2.141. Anne D. Hedeman argues the frequent emphasis given by rubrics to this debate with Fortune, as well as to the later, mirroring debate with Petrarch, represents Premierfait’s intended design. Translating the Past, 155–56. Hedeman also describes the illumination of these debates as particularly relevant to Premierfait’s presentation of the roles played by Boccaccio and himself in textual creation, noting that the design of early presentation manuscripts “includes an image of Boccaccio only when he speaks to Fortune, the powerful force driving everyone’s fall in Des Cas, and to Petrarch, the quintessential Italian author who had achieved fame as a poet in Avignon as Laurent also had” (ibid., 78).

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“Le xiiiie chappitre contient lexcusation de laucteur” (The fourteenth chapter contains the author’s justification).55 The fable, however, is rubricated with more dramatically active phrases, such as “Fortune parle” (Fortune speaks) and “Pouerete parle” (Poverty speaks) as well as “lacteur parle” (the author speaks), connecting the voice of the author to the action of the allegory and envisioning both as more dramatically present to readers. Musing on Fortune’s English Fame: Allegory and the Author in the Fall of Princes What kind of reading does the allegory of Premierfait’s Des Cas receive in Lydgate’s Fall? Lydgate does not restrict his sources in translation to Premierfait’s text, or even to Boccaccio’s, and a full study of the complex array of choices made in this massive endeavor lies beyond the scope and subject of this section. Nonetheless, comparison of the Fall with Lydgate’s primary sources does establish that the Rose tradition features emphasized by Premierfait—first-person narration, pilgrimage imagery, personification allegory, and reference to the Rose by name—are also important to Lydgate’s representation of the English translator, his predecessor Chaucer, and his English readers. As noted at this chapter’s opening, Lydgate differs from Premierfait’s approach in translation as he distinguishes his first-person voice throughout from that of his source, creating diegetic distance between the English poem’s narrator and the text he attributes to “Iohn Bochas” or in a few instances “Laurent.” In passages thus specifically attributed to the voice of the English translator within the Fall, Lydgate repeatedly denies inspiration by the Muses. The pattern of this trope’s appearance associates the translator’s labors with those of Chaucer and calls attention to Lydgate’s self-naming at the close of the Fall; the pattern also directs readers to notice Lydgate’s appropriation of the pilgrimage imagery and passages of personification allegory found within his source. As noted above, Lydgate’s prologue for the Fall and prologue to the Pilgrimage both echo Chaucer in denying inspiration by the Muses. In the Fall, this denial appears immediately before a lament for Chaucer’s death and praise of the Fall’s English patron (1.239–45) and again in the conclusion of the prologue (1.456–59). The denial of inspiration by the Muses is repeated in the envoy to the last book of the Fall (9.3436–39), where it echoes Lydgate’s denial of ability in relation to Chaucer and other great poets of antiquity and of Lydgate’s own era (9.3401–7). Here, between denying his inspiration by the Muses and denying his claim to Chaucer’s mastery, Lydgate names 55

London, BL, Royal MS 14.E.v, fol. 159v



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himself. Like Boccaccio’s encoding of his identity through reference to Certaldo in De Casibus, Lydgate’s self-identification depends on presenting his eponymous home town’s name: “I that stonde lowe doun in the vale / … born in a vyllage which callyd is Lydgate” (9.3428, 3431).56 The opening and the conclusion of the massive Fall repeat the rhetorical denial of the mythic fount of inspiration found in Chaucer’s poetry, and Lydgate closely associates the denial of the Muses in both of these Fall passages with a denial of Chaucerian presence or skill. The self-naming English translator, through such repeated denials, thus invites comparison of his work to classical and to vernacular literary precedent. Yet the relatively explicit representation of authorship crafted through this pattern of repetition in the prologue and the last book’s envoy does not stand alone. Within the books of the Fall, the translator’s most extensive denial of the Muses appears at the opening of Book 3, just before the fable of Fortune and Poverty. This passage combines the trope of denial with pilgrimage imagery to introduce a new passage of personification allegory representing the English translator. In Lydgate’s Fall, the opening of Book 3 is the first appearance of the analogy between textual progress and geographic travel that had organized both Boccaccio’s and Premierfait’s texts. The rationale for book divisions as resting places for textual travellers is found at the end of Book 1 in Lydgate’s sources, but it disappears in the English translation. Instead, Lydgate first refers to the use of book divisions at the start of Book 2, when he recounts his patron’s request for the envoys that conclude the Fall’s books and chapters within books. These envoys, sometimes dependent on material in the source and sometimes wholly invented, address the work to an audience envisioned as noble rulers. The translator and his readers are connected through such direct address but they are differentiated by social role rather than united as textual pilgrims. Lydgate does translate the use of travel imagery found at the opening of Book 3 in his sources, but he alters the imagery in translation to enhance his representation of the English translator as the servant of English aristocratic readers. The opening stanza of Book 3 offers a reasonably accurate translation of the corresponding passage of Premierfait’s French translation, conveying the

56 Larry Scanlon calls attention to how Lydgate’s “final adumbration of the literary tradition concludes with the inscription of his own name” and emulates the style of Boccaccio’s selfnaming. Narrative, Authority, and Power, 334. Alexandra Gillespie refers to this same passage in arguing that Lydgate “names himself in more texts than any other Middle English writer, but in ways that, like Chaucer’s moments of self-identification, suggest that authors control the response of the world to more-or-less freely circulating texts but also become themselves fictions, free to circulate, liable to change.” Print Culture and the Medieval Author: Chaucer, Lydgate, and Their Books, 1473–1557 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 21.

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idea of pilgrims requiring rest on their journeys. Yet unlike the French text, which employs the pilgrimage imagery to present the fable of Fortune as a refreshing rest stop for the author and for readers on their textual journey, the English translation declares there is “no socour” within the text at this point (3.8). The following stanzas direct attention to the plight of the English translator, making a complete departure from the French Des Cas. Lydgate’s description of the lack of refreshment repeats the trope of denying the Muses found in the Pilgrimage prologue and in the introduction and closure of the Fall: I meene as thus: I haue no fressh licour Out off the conduitis off Calliope ........................... nor off the sustren, in noumbre thries three, Which with Cithera on Pernaso duell,— Thei neuer me gaff drynk onys off ther well! (3.8–9, 12–14)

Lydgate appropriates the pilgrimage imagery of his source, combining it with rhetorical denial, to represent his work as translator in a manner that suggests his participation in a poetic tradition inclusive of English predecessors, since, as noted, direct allusions to Chaucer accompany the trope of Muse denial in its first and last instances in the Fall. Lydgate also enlarges upon the pilgrimage analogy, now employed to represent the work of translation, by recounting struggles with personifications. Oblivion is accused of casting a shadow over the translator’s reason, denying him “cleer direccion / In translatyng” (3.33–34). The Fall’s first-person narrator stands at a figurative crossroads, “the meetyng of feerful weies tweyne” (3.37), torn between the good will impelling him “Bochas taccomplisshe” (3.40) and the threat of Ignorance’s dreaded mace arresting his pen (3.41–42). This depiction of the English translator’s role rivals Boccaccio’s self-depiction in De Casibus as an author encountering Fortune, borrowing the same characteristic details Boccaccio employed, the pale face and shaking hands (3.43–46). The final personification oppressing the English translator is not Fortune, however, but Poverty: “Pouert approchid … Mi purs ay liht and void off al coinage” (3.65, 67). In Boccaccio’s De Casibus and its French translation, the imagery of travel leads to a fable demonstrating that Poverty has the strength to withstand Fortune. In the Fall, the textual pilgrimage of the English translator introduces personification allegory with a very different message: Lydgate tells how his patron’s “bounteuous largesse” drives off False Indigence and allows the translation to continue (3.74). Like the envoys that replace Premierfait’s pilgrimage imagery in Book 1, the allegorical discourse Lydgate alters and adds at the start of Book 3 directs attention to the particular relation



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of the English translator to his aristocratic English audience, triumphing over fortune’s vicissitudes through virtuous textual production. Following this new figural introduction, Lydgate assumes hermeneutic control over the fable of his source as well as over the definition of poetic endeavor that emphasizes the fable’s importance later within the book. The prologue to Book 3 does follow its sources after the English translator’s receipt of largesse; Lydgate’s Fall reproduces the transition from Boccaccio’s textual journey to his fable of Fortune and Poverty (3.92–131). Yet just as Lydgate alters the initial application of the pilgrimage imagery, he also makes a different use of the allegorical fable that follows, changing the manner of its ending to call attention to the translator’s role as a hermeneutic guide. In Premierfait’s translation, the narrator ends the fable by describing how the teacher who told him the story left it to his students to interpret. Rather than leaving open the interpretation of the fable to its audience, Lydgate transitions immediately from Poverty’s triumph into direct address to the fools who untie Misfortune; six interpolated stanzas interpret the fable’s meaning as a denial of Fortune’s power and divinity in terms of Christian belief. The section of Des Cas that defines poetic endeavor is also reworked to envision the English translator as a moral authority. Much of Boccaccio’s defense of figurative narratives, rendered in Premierfait’s translation, is omitted by Lydgate, and Lydgate adds a line requiring that poets “studie in bookis of moral disciplyne” (3.3827) to Boccaccio’s conception of the poet. Whereas Boccaccio’s De Casibus deploys allegory to claim a classical and Italian lineage for the author, and Premierfait’s translation identifies the French Rose as the root of this lineage, Lydgate’s Fall creates a lineage that moves from classical and Italian sources to English poets, in order to assert their need for financial support: Daunt in Itaille, Virgile in Rome toun, Petrark in Florence … ........................... And prudent Chaucer in Brutis Albion ........................... Support of princis fond hem ther dispence. (3.3858–59, 3860, 3864)

Instead of presenting a theory of allegory that underscores the importance of the fable to Boccaccio’s authority, this passage now bears more resemblance to the allegorical passage Lydgate adds to the opening of Book 3: it ends with a direct address to readers in the first-person voice of the translator who is “oppressid with pouert” (3.3869). The section on poetic endeavor no longer refers primarily to Boccaccio’s fable of Fortune and Poverty but rather to

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what we might call Lydgate’s fable of Poverty and the Translator. Once more Lydgate issues an appeal to readers as princes who can ward off poverty from the English poet as he studies in books, treating the glorification of poetic fable as the basis of a grant proposal for English translators.57 Lydgate’s alterations and additions to allegorical imagery thus work in concert with his reframing of Boccaccio’s discussion of figurative poetry to signal the social contract that Lydgate seeks for literary production in England.58 Lydgate’s reworking of the fable of Poverty and Fortune is matched by his treatment of the other extended allegorical passage, in which Fortune and Boccaccio meet; here, again, Lydgate transforms his source’s allegory to present his vision of English literary production. Premierfait, while retaining the first-person narration of the encounter, maintained the identification of the first-person narrator with the author Boccaccio.59 Lydgate similarly describes the encounter as one between “Bochas” and Fortune, although their firstperson speeches are now set within the English translator’s own first-person narration. Yet if Lydgate does not here imagine himself as a translator directly encountering a threatening personification, he does fashion a Boccaccio to match Lydgate’s own, Chaucer-inspired image. The Latin and French texts recount Boccaccio’s defense of his prose style to Fortune with deference to the loftier eloquence of Cicero, but in the Fall no mention of Cicero is made until after “Iohn Bochas” has offered a new excuse for faults in composition, inescapably familiar to any reader of the Fall: … of langage I hadde but smal fauour, Cause Caliope dede me no socour. (6.319–20)

Boccaccio’s new style of authorial self-description here echoes the Chaucerian rhetoric so frequently invoked by Lydgate.60 Like Lydgate’s Muse-denying 57 Lydgate also eliminates later references back to Boccaccio’s fable in the case of Alcibiades and others, present in Premierfait’s Des Cas, perhaps in keeping with this redirection of attention. 58 Further analysis of Lydgate’s depictions of the writer-patron relationship appears in Nicholas Perkins, “Representing Advice in Lydgate,” in The Lancastrian Court: Proceedings of the 2001 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Jenny Stratford (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2003), 173–191. Perkins points out that Lydgate’s interest “in literary inheritance and legitimacy” adds complexity to a poetic role too often dismissed as “apologist for the Lancastrian court” (ibid., 188). 59 In Premierfait’s translation, Fortune addresses the narrating figure by name as Boccaccio multiple times, as do other characters. 60 Nor is this the only addition that Lydgate makes here, prior to the reference to Cicero and without direct correlation in the Latin and French sources. In Lydgate’s Fall, “Bochas” now issues a rather impolitic rebuke of fools who consider Fortune a goddess while addressing Fortune (6.271–73), echoing the conclusion Lydgate offers for the fable of Fortune and Poverty.



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Boccaccio, the Fortune he faces receives a “Chaucerizing” makeover, for Fortune’s speech identifies her with the eponymous character of Chaucer’s House of Fame. Neither Lydgate’s French source nor the Latin De Casibus refers to Fortune’s dwelling place, nor is there any mention in either the Latin or French text of two trumpets blowing different smokes.61 Both are features of Chaucer’s Lady Fame, however; Lydgate’s Fall invokes Chaucer instead of following his source texts when Fortune specifically refers (somewhat redundantly) to her “hous callid the Hous of Fame” (6.109) and her “goldene trumpet with blastis of good name” (6.110) before she describes “anothir trumpet,” saying “of malis I do that trumpet blowe” (6.113, 119). Lydgate casts Boccaccio in the role Chaucer assigned to Fame’s visitors, describing him as a petitioner in terms borrowed from the House of Fame: “this was the bille which that Iohn Bochas / Made vnto Fortune with ful humble stile” (6.442–43). Fortune’s final offer is also transmuted so that both the petitioner “Bochas” and the personification who addresses him fit Chaucer’s poetic scheme. Lydgate’s Fortune does not decide to enshrine the name of the author from Certaldo; like Premierfait before him, Lydgate omits mention of Boccaccio’s city. Instead, Fortune promises “Bochas”: “thi name and also thi surname, / With poetis & notable old auctours, / May be registrid The mirroring of translator and author during the encounter with Fortune is part of a more extensive schema. Later in Book 6, when the narrator embarks on the last task Fortune assigns to him, to recount the fall of Cicero, Lydgate interpolates descriptions of Cicero as Museinspired and as acclaimed by the golden trumpet of the House of Fame (2957–61, 3092–94). Lydgate’s “Bochas” describes his own rhetorical colors as merely black and white by contrast (6.2981), a claim not explicitly found in the corresponding French or Latin passages, which employ the imagery of clouds and illumination here. This claim of white and black rhetoric matches Lydgate’s descriptions of his own skill in the prologue to the translation (465) and in the concluding envoy to his patron (3400, 3441). 61 Mary C. Flannery surveys Lydgate’s repeated mentions of the “hous of fame” throughout his Fall and observes that on “only one occasion does he refer to the poem in a way that evokes some of the uncertainty of Chaucer’s dream vision,” namely, in the encounter of Fortune and Boccaccio. “Brunhilde on Trial: Fama and Lydgatean Poetics,” ChR 42 (2007): 151–52. Although Flannery does not observe that this passage also represents a significant alteration of Lydgate’s sources, her argument complements mine. Lydgate’s Chaucerian additions to Fortune are noted briefly as an example of Fortune’s medieval connection to reputation in Patch, Goddess Fortuna, 111–12. Victoria Kirkham compares Lydgate’s description of Fortune to Boccaccio’s Latin text, suggesting that Lydgate drew his interpolated reference to Fortune’s divided physical features from the Anticlaudianus. “Decoration and Iconography of Lydgate’s Fall of Princes (De Casibus) at the Philadelphia Rosenbach,” Studi sul Boccaccio 25 (1997): 308. Lydgate’s physical description of Fortune does seem to depart from Premierfait’s translation of Boccaccio’s text; I have not found the noted alterations in the manuscripts I examined. Lydgate’s additions in description closely resemble the image of Fortune found in Deguileville’s PVH2, however, so these alterations may also reflect the mediation of another vernacular allegory rather than the direct influence of the Anticlaudianus.

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in the Hous off Fame” (6.512–14, emphasis mine).62 The movements of this newly Chaucerian Fortune received special attention from Lydgate’s English readers: San Marino, Huntington, MS HM 268, one of the two Fall manuscripts to include a visual depiction of Fortune, also features tiny notes in the margins around the main text of this passage, calling attention to Fortune’s own description of her wheel near 6.581 with the phrase “rota fortune” (fol. 123r) and marking the moment at which Boccaccio is impelled to write by Fortune’s departure with the phrase “the goying away of ffort[une]” placed near 6.982–87 (fol. 126r).63 As Lydgate makes over the allegorical figures of interest to his readers, reshaping his sources in order to present literary lineage in Chaucerian terms, Lydgate also alters the way in which the Rose is cited. Neither of Premierfait’s references to the Rose by name is present in the equivalent passages of the English translation.64 Lydgate does correct Premierfait’s extended account of the Narcissus story so that it corresponds to the Ovidian version, which is, perhaps not incidentally, the version found in the Rose. But rather than directly citing the Rose within Book 1, as Premierfait did, Lydgate cites the Rose in his opening prologue. The Rose to which Lydgate refers is not the French Rose, however, but Chaucer’s translation of it. Lydgate’s prologue creates an English poetic Rose lineage through Chaucer, rather than through Boccaccio’s inspiring figure, the poet Dante; indeed, Lydgate presents Chaucer as recreating not only the Rose but also Dante’s poetry in English. The stanza of the prologue that begins by praising Chaucer for rendering Dante’s works in English, typically interpreted as a reference to the House of Fame, ends with praise of Chaucer’s Rose translation:

62 Lydgate’s rewriting of Boccaccio as a supplicant in terms of Chaucer’s House of Fame in this passage corresponds to his practice in other poems. Christopher Baswell draws attention to how Lydgate assigns both Chaucer and Henry IV a place in the “hous of fame” in the Troy Book, identifying this figurative discourse as an imperial strategy that names “Chaucer as the new voice of Lancastrian classicism.” “The Troy Book: how Lydgate translates Chaucer into Latin,” Translation Theory and Practice in the Middle Ages, ed. Jeanette Beer, Studies in Medieval Culture 38 (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997), 237. 63 This manuscript lacks the fable of Fortune and Poverty, but there are other instances of attention to the personification’s more minor appearances in the surviving text: for example, at 5.431, an interlinear gloss of “fortune” appears just above the pronoun “she” in describing how Fortune liked being contrary in her treatment of ancient Italians and Africans, ensuring no doubt about whose whims are indulged here (fol. 104r). 64 It is possible that Lydgate may not have had a copy of Des Cas that included the passage on the Rose as Dante’s inspiration. Patricia May Gathercole notes the omission of this passage in some Premierfait manuscripts in her editorial introduction to Laurent de Premierfait’s “Des Cas,” p. 39.



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He wrot also ful many day agone, Dante in Inglissh, hymsilff so doth expresse ........................... And notabli dede his bisynesse, Bi gret auys his wittis to dispose, To translate the Romaunce off the Rose. (1.302–3, 306–8)

Lydgate’s prologue to the Fall lists almost all of Chaucer’s works, beginning with translations, but the explicit praise of Chaucer’s rendering of Dante and the Rose in English, in particular, changes the significance of subsequent allusions to Dante and material drawn from Rose, setting such allusion into the context of an English poetic tradition from the start.65 As Derek Pearsall observes, the currency of Lydgate’s work “helped to advance and consolidate the process that Chaucer had begun: the assertion of the status of English as a competent literary language and the extension of its range.”66 What study of Rose-inspired allegory tells us is how the history of English literary inspiration was written in the fifteenth century. The influence of the Rose was not restricted to Lydgate’s love-themed or dreamframed pieces. Rose-resembling elements of Deguileville’s salvific allegory are attentively recreated in the verba translatoris Lydgate claims for himself and for Chaucer in the Pilgrimage. And Lydgate’s representation of English poetry in his translation from Des Cas and De Casibus is not only pervasive but also, even perhaps primarily, allegorical. To present his role as an English translator, Lydgate reshapes the pilgrimage imagery of his sources to introduce an encounter with personifications narrated in the translator’s own distinct first-person voice. The poetic fable of personifications that follows becomes a vehicle for the translator to demonstrate his ability to interpret. The other allegorical passage in De Casibus, the encounter between Fortune and Boccaccio, becomes a means of evoking the figurative invention found in the poetry of Lydgate’s English predecessor, primarily Chaucer’s Rose-inspired, Dantean, Muse-invoking House of Fame.67 The single explicit reference to the Rose’s allegory recalls the recreation of the Rose in Chaucer’s poetry. Set in the opening prologue, Lydgate’s references to Chaucer’s translations, particularly from the Rose and from Dante, allow his English predecessor to 65 Moreover, the final stanza concerning Chaucer’s compositions in this prologue echoes the introduction Lydgate provides for Chaucer’s ABC in the Pilgrimage, as it speaks of the many “dite, / Compleyntis, baladis, roundelis, virelaies / Ful delectable to heryn and to see” that should inspire Chaucer’s readers to “preie onto God to yiue his soule good reste” (352–54, 357). 66 Pearsall, “Lydgate as Innovator,” 8. 67 On the Muse invocations of Chaucer’s House of Fame and Dante’s Commedia, see Bennett, “Chaucer, Dante and Boccaccio,” 108.

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become the new focal point of the long literary lineage depicted figuratively within the translation. Lydgate’s presentation of Chaucer as Dante’s English successor alters the significance of Boccaccio’s inspiring encounter with Dante no less than Premierfait does when he describes the Rose’s allegory as Dante’s inspiration. Study of Lydgate’s translations thus reveals the importance of the allegorical tradition to English literary history, developing through translation from the Roman de la Rose and the texts it inspired. The model of authorship conveyed by allegory allowed authors to implant their proper names or attributes in a way that demands individual attention in the context of a wider literary tradition, depending upon the cooperative investigation of readers. The list of Lydgate’s patrons “reads like a Who’s Who of fifteenth-century England” and the range of early owners of Lydgate manuscripts suggests “a full spectrum of potential fifteenth-century readership.”68 In minor and in massive works, Lydgate introduced the English translator as at once the guide and the subject of the interpretation he invited from the powerful and would-be-powerful readers of fifteenth-century England.

68

Edwards, “Lydgate Manuscripts,” 22.

Coda “Syker,” quod rude Entendëment ............................ “I knowe kanvas, I knowe sylk, I knowe the flye dreynt in the mylk, I knowe A mesour, fful & halff, I knowe the kowh & ek the kalf Affter that men by name hem calle ............................ I vnderstonde noon other wyse Touchyng thy name, nor neuer shal, Than I ha told: lo, her ys al!” -John Lydgate, Pilgrimage of the Life of Man (10673, 10677–81, 10710–12) Je congnois bien mouches en let, Je congnois a la robe l’omme, ........................ Je congnois cheval et mulet, Je congnois leur charge et leur somme, Je congnois Bietrix et Belet, ........................ Je congnois tout [fors que moy mesmes.] (I know well flies that are in milk, I know the man by what he wears … I know horse, also a mule, I know the charge and load they bear, I know Beatrice and Isabel, … I know all things except myself) -François Villon1 1 The French text and its modern English translation refer to item 6 of Les Poèmes Variés, in François Villon: Complete Poems, ed. and trans. Barbara N. Sargent-Baur (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), lines 1–2, 17–19, 24. Lydgate’s Pilgrimage expands upon the sing-song proverbs found in his source and resembles Villon’s ballade even more closely than Deguileville’s PVH2.

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“I know all things, except myself”: so runs the mocking refrain of a lyric by François Villon, a fifteenth-century poet whose roguish first-person selfcharacterization and prominent citation of the Rose have attracted extensive study.2 Unnoted, however, is the way Villon’s ballade finds its match in an earlier boastful voice, that of Rude Entendement (Poor Understanding), the personification who shouts so boisterously within the allegorical verses penned by the medieval monks Guillaume de Deguileville and John Lydgate. In this book, I have traced an outline of the first inter-referential literary tradition in French and English to employ the first-person voice routinely as both a narrator and a character within extended narrative, examining closely the practice of a few of the authors who, in turn, identified the narratorprotagonist’s “I” with their proper names or attributes. The work done thus far indicates that we have more to learn about the figurative function of first-person discourse within medieval allegory and also more to learn about the complex interrelation between the many French and English authors who responded to the allegory of the Rose in the late Middle Ages. It is perhaps fitting, therefore, to conclude this study with a brief look back at this tradition’s most striking representation of an inability to learn how to understand the first-person narrator-protagonist’s nature: the refusal and failure of interpretation embodied in the character of Poor Understanding. There is a long history of figuring misunderstanding in these allegories, texts so explicitly dependent on the interpretation of their readers. As noted in the first chapter, rude entendement troubles the first-person narrator-protagonist’s progress in the Rose before the concept takes on personified flesh and obstructs the progress of Deguileville’s first-person narrator-protagonist in the PVH and its subsequent recension and translations. This personification’s function is to perform poor interpretation and to reject reasonable readings, as the allegory depicts him refusing to heed the personification of Reason or to read her charter. He is first introduced as a “grant villain mal faconne” (5095) (a 2 See, for example, Stéphane Gompertz, “‘Je’ est un Autre: Contradiction et Médiation dans la Poésie de François Villon,” in Villon: Hier et Aujourd’hui, ed. Jean Dérens et al. (Paris: Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris, 1993), 149–60; C. Mela, “Je, Françoys Villon … ,” in Mélanges de Langue et de Littérature du Moyen Âge et de la Renaissance Offerts à Jean Frappier par Ses Collègues, Ses Élèves et Ses Amis (Geneva: Droz, 1970), 775–96 (ellipsis in source title); and Georg Roellenbleck,“Le Temps dans le Testament de François Villon,” in Villon at Oxford: The Drama of the Text, ed. Michael Freeman and Jane H. M. Taylor (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999), 312–30. The last studies Villon’s use of clashing temporalities to create a poetic identity. The importance of Villon’s purposeful misquotation of the Rose to the creation of his first-person voice is a particular focus in Nancy Freeman Regalado, “Villon’s Legacy from Le Testament of Jean de Meun: Misquotation, Memory, and Wisdom of Fools,” in Freeman and Taylor, Villon at Oxford, 282–311; and in Tony Hunt, “Villon’s Last Erection (Testament, vv. 1996–2023),” in Freeman and Taylor, Villon at Oxford, 150–58.

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big mishapen churl [69]). Depicted as a peasant, he is a marginalized figure who misreads the text into which he intrudes. In this manner, he occupies a position shared by Geoffrey Chaucer’s Wife of Bath in the Canterbury Tales, along with her model La Vieille in the Rose and her reincarnation as an “auctrice” in Hoccleve’s Series; assigned bodies that seem to set them apart from the authorities of the textual tradition, by reason of gender or class, each represents profound concern with the troubling mysteries of textual interpretation and its power. As Poor Understanding seeks to enforce his reading of Christian scripture within Deguileville’s allegorical drama, he challenges assumptions about the operations of historical difference and figurative speech. To this character, a staff that is a physical object and the allegorical staff of faith are one and the same and the protagonist of a dream vision’s pilgrimage quest must adhere in every aspect to the requirements made of the scriptural apostle. Moving beyond such flattening of the textual tradition to misconstrue the nature of language itself, Poor Understanding insists not only that each thing should have one name but also that a name should not be an unanchored multivalent signifier such as the word “reason,” the word that names the personification opposing him, whom he refuses to recognize. The personification Poor Understanding is thus a creation of figurative language who denies language its figurative function. It is impossible for Poor Understanding to know himself because his very identity is predicated on the lack of such knowledge. He is unable to recognize his misunderstanding because he is Misunderstanding; he resembles the “Je” of Villon’s ballade who also sees the obvious but cannot understand the very first word of each of his claims of knowledge. The blind “I” of Poor Understanding cannot fail to recognize the proverbial black-on-white contrast of flies in milk, as he claims, but he does not read. From him, the dark marks of letters on a pale page elicit no more complex semantic response than the dead insects.3 Poor Understanding’s ignorance figures the puzzling nature of the poetic “I” as a self created through language, writ large. Declaring that he arrives through the boldness of Deguileville’s first-person narratorprotagonist, Poor Understanding’s obstruction incites a debate concerning the identity of the figure he challenges, one that culminates in the revelation of the author’s name through its denial. This personification’s problem is, in a sense, the problem of first-person allegory. He represents the ultimate 3 The textual association of this proverbial contrast is particularly familiar to continental medievalists, as the paraph symbols that break up medieval texts into segments of meaning and draw attention to citations are routinely described as “pied-de-mouche” (footstep of a fly). See Denis Muzerelle, Vocabulaire Codicologique: Répertoire Méthodique des Termes Français relatifs aux Manuscrits (Paris: CEMI, 1985; Hypertextual Version 1.1, 2002–2003) 4.2.421.11, figures 131a, 131b, and 131c.

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impossibility of self-knowledge on the part of any poetic “I” associated with the author’s name or person; the author who exists through writing cannot know himself within it as he is envisioned through the interpretation of readers. The fractured subject formed within allegory reflects the inherently broken perspective necessary to any form of self-knowledge. Dividing the perceiving “I” from the “I” it perceives, subjective experience belies its own subjectivity. As the voice of these texts is both a guide and a subject of interpretation for its readers, passing between fiction and reality, medieval allegory dramatizes exploration of the self and invites speculation about the nature of poetic control. This seminal allegorical tradition crafts a discourse of poetic authority and lineage allowing for self-perception and self-representation through the figurative techniques of embedded narrative frameworks, personifications claiming narrative control, and most importantly, the simultaneously abstract and yet recognizably individual first-person voice of a narrator-protagonist who brings attention to the vernacular author’s identity through encounters with allegory’s imaginary landscapes and impossible temporalities. This tradition constantly invokes images and rhetoric borrowed from both ancient and near contemporary works, creating a first-person voice highly conscious of its contrived and communal nature. Allegory’s interlocking of personal experience and literary artifice rests on allusion, adaptation, and translation. A vision of the author’s identity takes shape only within the mind of the reader exploring the conflicting elements of the interpretation-inviting narration in the context of the wider literary tradition. We, as readers, are responsible for seeking an understanding of the “I” of these texts, the “I” who generates and resists the anti-figurative figure of Poor Understanding. Although there is no more fictive or conventional figure than the first-person narrator-protagonist of late medieval allegory, this figure encodes a position of literary authority essential to generations of French and English authors in their depictions of themselves and their literary history. Reading and writing allegory in this period forms a vibrant critical discourse on poetic identity and responsibility, one that shapes early vernacular literary history and can open for today’s readers new paths toward an understanding of authorial self-knowledge.

Bibliography

Primary Sources Medieval translations are attributed to the translator, if known; if the translator is unknown or not widely recognized, the translations are listed by title. Bracketed descriptions clarify source relations. I provide references to print or digital facsimiles for incunables and early modern printed editions, when available, or refer to the copy consulted. Aken, Heinric van. Die “Rose” van Heinric van Aken. Edited by Eelco Verwijs. 2nd ed. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1868. [Dutch translation of Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun’s Rose associated with a “Heinric,” possibly not Heinric van Aken] Augustine. Confessions. Translated by Francis Joseph Sheed. 2nd ed. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2006. ———.“Confessions”: Text and Commentary. Edited by James Joseph O’Donnell. 3 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. Baspoole, William. The Pilgrime. Edited by Kathryn Walls and Marguerite Stobo. MRTS 337. Renaissance English Text Society, 7th Series, 31. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2008. [Seventeenth-century adaptation of the anonymous Middle English prose translation of Guillaume de Deguileville’s PVH1] Boccaccio, Giovanni. De Casibus Virorum Illustrium. Edited by Pier Giorgio Ricci and Vittorio Zaccaria. Vol. 9 of Tutte le Opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, edited by Vittorio Zaccaria. Milano: A. Mondadori, 1983. ———. De Casibus Virorum Illustrium: A Facsimile Reproduction of the Paris 1520 Edition, with an Introduction by Louis Brewer Hall. Gainesville, FL: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1962. ———. The Fates of Illustrious Men. Translated and abridged by Louis Brewer Hall. New York: Ungar, 1965. Het Boec vanden Pelgrym. Haarlem: Jakob Bellaert, 1486. Boston, Boston Athenaeum, Rare Book $XA.G945.1486 [Anonymous Dutch translation of Guillaume de Deguileville’s PVH] Dat Boeck vanden Pelgrim. Delft: Hendrik Eckert van Homberch, 1498. Oxford,

178 bibliography Bodl., Bodley Douce 46 [Dutch translation of Guillaume de Deguileville’s PVH, associated with “Claus”] Bonaventure. Opera Omnia. Edited by Quaracchi friars. 10 vols. Florence: Quaracchi Order of Friars, 1882–1902. Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Edited by Walter William Skeat. 5 vols. and a suppl. vol. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894. ———. The Riverside Chaucer. Edited by Larry D. Benson. 3rd ed. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1987. ———. The Workes of Our Ancient and Learned English Poet, Geffrey Chavcer, Newly Printed. Produced by Thomas Speght. London: Islip, 1602. STC 5080. Early English Books Online. Chaucer, Geoffrey, Guillaume de Lorris, and Jean de Meun. The “Romaunt of the Rose” and “Le Roman de La Rose”: A Parallel Text Edition. Edited by Ronald Sutherland. Oxford: Blackwell, 1967. [A parallel text edition of the Middle English Rose translation, partly by Chaucer, and the relevant sections of Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun’s Rose] Christine de Pizan. The Book of the City of Ladies. Translated by Rosalind Brown-Grant. London: Penguin Books, 1999. ———. La Città delle Dame. Edited by Earl Jeffrey Richards and translated by Patrizia Caraffi. Biblioteca Medievale 2. Milan: Luni Editrice, 1997. Christine de Pizan, Jean Gerson, Jean de Montreuil, Gontier Col, and Pierre Col. Le Débat sur “Le Roman de la Rose.” Edited and translated by Eric Hicks. Bibliothèque du XVe Siècle 43. Paris: Champion, 1977. Christine de Pizan, Thomas Hoccleve, and George Sewell. Poems of Cupid, God of Love: Christine de Pizan’s “Epistre au Dieu d’Amours” and “Dit de la Rose,” Thomas Hoccleve’s “The Letter of Cupid” with George Sewell’s “The Proclamation of Cupid.” Edited and translated by Thelma S. Fenster and Mary Carpenter Erler. Leiden: Brill, 1990. Dante Alighieri. Il Convivio. Edited by Maria Simonelli. Bologna: Riccardo Pàtron, 1966. Deguileville, Guillaume de. Le Pèlerinage de l’Âme de Guillaume de Deguileville. Edited by J. J. Stürzinger. Roxburghe Club Publications 127. London: Roxburghe Club, 1895. ———. Le Pèlerinage de Jhesucrist de Guillaume de Deguileville. Edited by J. J. Stürzinger. Roxburghe Club Publications 133. London: Roxburghe Club, 1897. ———. Le Pèlerinage de la Vie Humaine de Guillaume de Deguileville. Edited by J. J. Stürzinger. Roxburghe Club Publications 124. London: Roxburghe Club, 1893. ———. Le Pelerinage de l’homme. Paris: Anthoine Vérard, 1511. Gallica Digital Library [PVH2 modified by a monk of Clairvaux]

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Index

Aken, Heinric van  36 Alain de Lille  5 Anticlaudianus  5, 80, 152 n.29, 169 n.61 antiphrasis  39, 40–42, 47–49, 122–23, 159 Aristotle character, in allegory  30 n.28, 34 n.31 Ethics  78, 93 Augustine, Saint  39 n.42 author, medieval terminology a(u)cteur (Medieval French)  25, 35, 38, 40, 53 n.64, 163–64 auctor (Latin)  3, 25–26, 78, 110, 119–20 n.39, 140 n.4, 156 auctour (Middle English)  60–61, 87 n.63, 121–22, 126, 147, 169–70 autobiography  8, 21 n.8, 22 n.10, 79–80, 83–84, 103, 114 n.29 Baspoole, William Pilgrime, The  37 n.38 Berry, Jean, duke of  113–14, 155, 159 n.44 Bible see scripture (Christian) Boccaccio, Giovanni secular and sacred allegory  13 n.33, 157 Chaucer, and  87 n.63, 91, 152 n.28

Dante Alighieri, and  170, 172 dream vision, and  157 Fortune, and  152 n.28, 155–59 Lydgate, and  16–17, 140 n.4, 142–44, 152 n.28, 155–56, 164–72, 168–69, 172 naming, authorial, and  156 n.38, 158–59, 165, 168 n.59, 169–70 personification, and  156–59, 166–70 Premierfait, and  16–17, 59, 87 n.63, 142, 155–59, 161, 162 n.50 Roman de la Rose, and  17, 59, 87 n.63, 156, 159, 162 n.50 scripture (Christian), and  157 see also Boccaccio, works Boccaccio, Giovanni, works Casibus Virorum Illustrium, De book divisions, in  156–57, 161–62, 165 Cicero, and  156, 168 dedication of  155 Petrarch, and  157 Roman de la Rose, and  16–17, 59, 87 n.63, 142, 155–59, 161, 162 n.50 translation, English, by Chaucer  84 n.60, 142, 143 n.11, 152 n.28, 162 n.51 translation, English, by Lydgate, 16–17, 141–44, 152 n.28, 155–56, 158 n.42, 162 n.51, 164–72

198 INDEX translation, French, by Premierfait  17, 142, 155, 159–64, 168 n.59, 170 n.64, 172 Filocolo, Il 162 Filostrato, Il  87 n.63 Boec vanden Pelgrym, Het 93 Boeck vanden Pelgrim, Dat  37 n.38 Boethius (Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius)  5, 32 n.29, 77, 81, 83 n.57, 131, 134 n.74, 155 Consolatione, De  32 n.29, 77, 80, 81, 82, 83 n.57, 84 n.60, 131, 133 Fortune, and  81, 131, 155 Reason, and  155 translation, French, by Jean de Meun  76–77, 81, 155 translation, English, by Chaucer  79, 81, 89, 133 Bonaventure, Saint  25–26 Chaucer, Geoffrey  14, 15–16, 20, 40 n.43, 57, 59–62 allegory, and  62–65, 79–80, 83–84, 90, 98, 102 Boccaccio, and  87 n.63, 91, 152 n.28 dates of works  60 n.6 Dante Alighieri, and  87 n.63, 141–42 n.7, 154, 170–72 Deguileville, and  14–15, 64–73, 84–85, 87 n.63, 91–95, 102, 143 dream vision, and  65–73, 88–90, 95–96 embedded text, and  73, 90–98, 99–101, 149–52 Fortune, and  80–81, 84–85, 169–70, 171 Guillaume de Machaut, and  6, 71, 84 n.66, 88, 91, 95, 99 n.85 Hoccleve, and  16, 76 n.43, 105–6, 115–17, 118–20, 121–22, 127–29, 133–34, 175 Langland, Piers Plowman, and  62 n.10, 72–73 n.38, 79

Love, and  60 n.5, 85–90, 94, 115–17, 135, 146, 151 Lydgate, and  16–17, 141–44, 149–55, 162 n.51, 164–72 naming, authorial, and  20, 73, 79–82, 85, 93 n.71, 118 Ovid, and  56–57 n.69, 65, 72–73 n.35, 80, 82, 85, 88, 89–90, 95, 97 patronage, and  89, 90, 94, 96–97 personification, and  73, 78–79, 84–90, 97–98 Roman de la Rose, and  15, 60–61, 62, 63–65, 71, 73–76, 78, 80–81, 84–90, 95, 98–102, 113, 116, 134 n.74, 141, 170–72, 175 scribal posture of  73, 86–90 scripture (Christian), and  40 n.43 Venus, and  60 n.5 see also Chaucer, works Chaucer, Geoffrey, works ABC  20, 60, 72, 78, 91–94, 96, 128 n.59, 128 n.60, 129, 142, 149, 151–52, 171 n.65 Astrolabe, The 76 “Ballade to Pity”  96 n.79 Boece  79, 81, 89, 133 Book of the Duchess, The  65, 66, 72, 83, 84, 94–95, 96 Canterbury Tales, The  16, 60 n.7, 62, 76 n.43, 79 n.48, 87 n.63, 89, 98–102 Man of Law’s Tale, The 89, 101 n.89, 115 Merchant’s Tale, The 99–101, 119 n.39 Monk’s Tale, The  84 n.60, 142, 143 n.11, 152 n.28, 162 n.51 Wife of Bath’s Tale, The 99 n.85, 101 (see also Wife of Bath) Complaint of Venus, The  60 n.5 House of Fame, The  20, 64, 66,

INDEX 199

70 n.31, 79–82, 84, 85, 87–88, 118, 133–34, 141–42 n.7, 154, 169–71 Romaunt of the Rose, The 15, 60, 62 n.12, 71, 73–76, 78, 86, 113, 116, 134 n.74, 141, 170–72 Legend of Good Women, The  60–61, 66, 71, 85–90, 94 n.76, 96–98, 113, 115–17, 121–22, 134 n.74, 151 Parliament of Fowls, The  66, 71 Troilus  56 n.59, 60 n.7, 87, 89 n.66, 134 n.74, 153 n.30, 162 n.51

Christine de Pizan Deguileville, and  143 embedded text, and  123–26 Hoccleve, and  16, 105–8, 114–17, 119–20, 121–23, 125–27, 130, 136–37 Love, and  107–114, 116, 119–20, 123, 130, 135, 146 Lydgate, and  140 n.4, 143, 146 naming, authorial, and  113–14, 140 n.4 Ovid, and  108, 112 patronage, and  125–26 n.54 personification, and  109–17, 136–37 Reason, and  41 n.44, 112 n.25 Roman de la Rose, and  108–14 scribal activity and posture of  113–14, 117 scripture (Christian), and  108–11, 123 n.50 Venus, and  107 see also Christine de Pizan, works Christine de Pizan, works Cité des Dames, La  41 n.44, 112 n.25, 122 n.47 L’Epistre au dieu d’Amours  107–9, 111–14, 115–17, 119–20, 121–23 L’Epistre d’Othea  125–26 n.54

Querelle de la Rose, La (contributor)  109–11, 117 Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero)  156, 168 Somnium Scipionis 24 Col, Gontier  161 n.48, 162 n.42 Cupid (allegorical character) see Love Dante Alighieri character, in allegory  157, 160–61 Boccaccio, and  170, 172 Chaucer, and  87 n.63, 141–42 n.7, 154, 170–72 first-person allegory, and  59 Lydgate, and  141–42 n.7, 170–72 naming, authorial, and  83 n.57 Roman de la Rose, and  59, 160–61 scripture (Christian), and  40 n.43 scholastic and scriptural traditions, and  13–14 n.33 see also Dante Alighieri, works Dante Alighieri, works Commedia, Il   2, 59 n.2, 80 n.53, 160–61, 171 n.67 Convivio, Il  83 n.57 see also Fiore (debated authorship) Débat sur “Le Roman de la Rose”, Le see Querelle de la Rose

Deguileville, Guillaume de Chaucer, and  14–15, 64–73, 84–85, 87 n.63, 91–95, 102, 143 Christine de Pizan, and  143 dating of works  69 n.30 dream vision, and  31, 32–33, 40, 56, 67–73, 95, 154, 175 embedded text, and  39, 43–44, 52–56, 90–92, 101, 126, 134–35, 149–52 erotic allegory, and  13 n.32

200 INDEX first-person allegory, and  14–15, 64–65, 174 Fortune, and  84–85, 91, 148–53, 162 n.52 Grace, and  30, 43–45, 49–56, 77–78, 91–92, 113, 130 n.66, 131, 134, 144–46, 149, 153 Hoccleve, and  14, 16, 76 n.43, 105–7, 126–35, 136–37, 143, 175 Langland, Piers Plowman, and  20, 72–73 n.38 Love, and  31, 46, 145 Lydgate, and  14, 16–17, 48 n.56, 93 n.72, 144–55, 169 n.61, 174 Montreuil, and  162 n.52 Ovid, and  52–53, 55, 56, 67, 82–83, 93, 101 personification, and  30–38, 39–45, 45–49, 49–52, 53–56, 83, 91–92, 130–37, 144–53, 174–76 Premierfait, and  162 Reason, and  30–38, 39–45, 46, 48, 49, 51–52, 55, 131–34, 144–46, 174 Roman de la Rose, and  14, 20, 22–23, 30–57, 64–65, 67, 71, 77–78, 143–45, 162, 174 rubrics, and  31, 35, 38, 43, 46, 91 n.69 scribal posture of  46–8 scripture (Christian), and  19, 40, 45, 49, 68–70, 72, 90, 129–30, 175 Venus, and  45–49, 52, 113, 145–46 see also Deguileville, works; naming, authorial Deguileville, Guillaume de, works Pelerinage de l’homme, Le (modified PVH2)  22–23 n.11, 52–53 n.62, 162–63 n.52 Pèlerinage de Jhesucrist, Le (PJC)  19, 68–71, 93 n.71, 127–30, 131 n.68

translation, English, by Hoccleve 126–30 see also Deguileville, works, Romant des Trois Pelerinaiges Pèlerinage de la Vie Humaine, Le (PVH)  14, 15, 19–23, 59–60, 71–72, 102, 113, 127–29, 142, 144, 153 n.30, 174–75 adaptation, in French prose  35–36, 38 n.40 initial version, c. 1331 (PVH1)  19, 20 n.5, 22–23, 30–45, 48, 49, 51, 52, 53, 55, 57, 67, 72 n.37, 78, 91, 127, 131, 134, 144, 147 n.18 recension, c. 1355 (PVH2)  22–23, 44 n.50, 45–57, 67, 72 n.37, 77 , 78 n.47, 82–3, 85, 91, 93, 101, 113, 127, 129, 141 n.6, 144–54, 162–63 n.52, 169 n.61, 173 n.1 (see also Deguileville, works, Pelerinage de l’homme and Romant des Trois Pelerinaiges) scribal interventions  31 n.27, 35, 43 translation, Castilian  19–20, 93 translation, Dutch  19, 37 n.38, 93 translation, English, in fifteenthcentury prose  19–20, 128, 144 translation, English, in fifteenthcentury verse  13 n. 32, 16, 48 n.56, 93 n.72, 141–44, 144–55, 166, 171, 173–74 translation, English, by Chaucer, see Chaucer, works, ABC translation, English, in seventeenth-century prose  37 n.38

INDEX 201

translation, German  19, 37 Pèlerinage de l’Âme, Le (PA) 19, 67–68, 69 n.30, 70 n.32, 129, 131 author-naming lyric  51–52 n.60, 93 n.71, 129, 130 n.66 bilingualism  53 n.63, 78 scribal error  53 n.63 translation, English, in fifteenthcentury prose  127, 128, 131 n.69 translation, English, by Hoccleve (debated)  127, 128 n.61 see also Deguileville, works, Romant des Trois Pelerinaiges Romant des Trois Pelerinaiges, Le (modified PVH2, PA, and PJC)  22–23 n.11, 52–53 nn.62–64 Deschamps, Eustache  71, 88, 106, 127 dream vision artistic representation  59 n.3 Boccaccio, and  157 Chaucer, and  65–73, 88–90, 95–96 Deguileville, and  31, 32–33, 40, 56, 67–73, 95, 154, 175 first-person voice, and  8–10, 65, 136 truth of  29–30 n.25, 32–33, 56, 71, 119 n.38, 157 Lydgate, and  154 Mézières, and  72 Roman de la Rose, and  4–5, 24–25, 27–28, 59 n.3, 65, 67, 71, 98–99 n.84, 119 n.38 Durante (Italian translator)  37 embedded text self-referential strategy  12, 176 Chaucer, and  73, 90–98, 99–101, 149–52

Christine de Pizan, and  123–26 Deguileville, and  39, 43–44, 52–56, 90–92, 101, 126, 134–35, 149–52 Hoccleve, and  118, 123–26, 132–35 Isidore of Seville, Synonyma, and 132–34 Lydgate, and  149–52 Ovid, and  52, 101 Roman de la Rose, and  39, 55, 90, 96–97, 101, 144 fable  13, 25, 157–58, 163–64, 167–68 Fiore, Il 36–37 FitzRalph, Richard Summa in Questionibus Armenorum 110 Fortune (allegorical character) Alain de Lille, Anticlaudianus, and  80, 152 n.29, 169 n.61 Boccaccio, and  152 n.28, 155–59 Boethius, Consolatione, and  81, 131, 155 Chaucer, and  80–81, 84–85, 169–70, 171 Deguileville, and  84–85, 91, 148–53, 162 n.52 Froissart, and  84 n.60 Guillaume de Machaut, and  84 n.60 Hoccleve, and  104 Lydgate, and  148–53, 167–70, 171 Margival, and  80 n.51 Ovid, and  80 Premierfait, Cas de Nobles Hommes et Femmes, and  162 n.52, 163–64 Roman de la Rose, in  80, 84, 143 n.11, 152–53, 155 Foucault, Michel  7 Froissart, Jean  66, 84 n.60, 88, 91, 95, 106, 127

202 INDEX Gaultier (French prose adapter) 35–36 Genius (allegorical character) Lydgate, and  146 n.17 Roman de la Rose, in  39, 55, 77, 97, 101, 146 n.17 Grace (allegorical character) Deguileville, and  30, 43–45, 49–56, 77–78, 91–92, 113, 130 n.66, 131, 134, 144–46, 149, 153 Lydgate, and  146, 153 Roman de la Rose, and  30, 146 Gerson, Jean  5 Gower, John  15, 60 n.5, 106 Confessio Amantis  61, 106 n.10, 119–20 n.39 Graunson, Oton de  60 n.5, 113, 114 n.28, 115 Gui de Mori  29, 36, 37 Guillaume de Lorris  24–25, 28, 34, 55, 56, 74, 86 n.62, 159 see also Roman de la Rose; naming, authorial, Roman de la Rose Guillaume de Machaut auto-exegesis, model of  11 n.29 Chaucer, and  6, 71, 84 n.66, 88, 91, 95, 99 n.85 Fortune, and  84 n.60 Hoccleve, and  106, 127 Roman de la Rose, and  59, 66, 84 n.60, 88, 95, 99 n.85 Hawes, Stephen  15 Heinric (German translator)  36 Hildebert of Lavardin  33 n.30 Hoccleve, Thomas Chaucer, and  16, 76 n.43, 105–6, 115–17, 118–20, 121–22, 127–29, 133–34, 175 Christine de Pizan, and  16, 105–8, 114–17, 119–20, 121–23, 125–27, 130, 136–37 Deguileville, and  14, 16, 76 n.43,

105–7, 126–35, 136–37, 143, 175 embedded text, and  118, 123–26, 132–35 Fortune, and  104 Guillaume de Machaut, and  106, 127 Love, and  114–17, 122–24, 123, 135, 146 Lydgate, and  14–15, 140 n.5, 143, 146 naming, authorial, and  103, 117–19, 123, 125–26 Ovid, and  105, 137 patronage, and  104, 117, 126–27, 127–28, 135, 137 personification, and  16, 103–4, 118, 124–26, 130–37 Reason, and  132–34 Roman de la Rose, and  16, 76 n.43, 105–8, 116, 118–22, 175 rubrics, and  119–20 n.39, 128 scribal activity and posture of  114, 117, 128, 129 n.64 see also Hoccleve, works Hoccleve, Thomas, works “Conpleynte Paramont”  126–30 Epistola Cupidinis  108, 114–18, 121–24, 126 Letter of Cupid, The, see Epistola Cupidinis Male Regle, La 103–4 Regiment of Princes, The 103–4, 126 Series, The  103–4, 106, 118–27, 131–35, 135–37, 175 Houdenc, Raoul de Songe d’Enfer, Le  29–30 n.25 Isidore of Seville, Synonyma 132–34 Jean de Meun allegory, secular and sacred, and  13 n.33, 63

INDEX 203

Augustine, and  39 n.42 Consolatione (Boethius), translator of  76–77, 81, 155 Roman de la Rose (Guillaume de Lorris), continuer of  25, 26, 28, 34, 55, 76–77, 86 n.62, 116, 159 (see also Roman de la Rose, authorial representation in) scribal posture of  27–28, 39, 55, 110–1, 114 see also naming, authorial, Roman de la Rose Lancaster, Humphrey of, first duke of Gloucester  104, 135, 156 Langland, William  15, 40 n.43, 61, 106, 136 Piers Plowman Chaucer, and  62 n.10, 72–73 n.38, 79 Deguileville, and  20, 72–73 n.38 naming, authorial, and  20, 61 scripture (Christian), and  40 n.43 Love (allegorical character) Chaucer, and  60 n.5, 85–90, 94, 115–17, 135, 146, 151 Christine de Pizan, and  107–14, 116, 119–20, 123, 130, 135, 146 Deguileville, and  31, 46, 145 Durante, and  37 Graunson, and  60 n.5 Gui de Mori, and  29 Heinric, and  36 Hoccleve, and  114–17, 122–24, 123, 135, 146 Lydgate, and  145–46 Molinet, and  110–11 Roman de la Rose, in  4, 24–29, 30, 31, 33–34, 38, 39, 42–43, 44, 47–48, 50–52, 55, 83, 97, 108–14, 120, 123, 158–59

Lydgate, John  139–40

Boccaccio, and  16–17, 140 n.4, 142–44, 152 n.28, 155–56, 164–72, 168–69, 172 Chaucer, and  16–17, 141–44, 149–55, 162 n.51, 164–72 Christine de Pizan, and  140 n.4, 143, 146 Dante Alighieri, and  141–42 n.7, 170–72 Deguileville, and  14, 16–17, 48 n.56, 93 n.72, 144–55, 169 n.61, 174 dream vision, and  154 embedded text, and  149–52 Fortune, and  148–53, 167–70, 171 Genius, and  146 n.17 Grace, and  146, 153 Hoccleve, and  14–15, 140 n.5, 143, 146 Love, and  145–46 naming, authorial, and  143, 150 n.23, 156, 164–65, 169–70 Ovid, and  141–42 n.7, 170 patronage, and  150–5, 155–56, 164–65, 166–68, 170 n.62, 172 personification, and  16, 144–47, 148–53, 156, 165–70, 171, 174 Premierfait, Cas des Nobles Hommes et Femmes, and  16–17, 142, 155–56, 158 n.42, 164–72 Reason, and  144–46 Roman de la Rose, and  14, 16–17, 140–46, 152–53, 154, 164, 170–72 rubrics, and  140, 145, 146–47, 149, 152, 170 scribal posture of  166 scripture (Christian), and  139 n.2 Venus, and  48 n.56, 144–46 see also Lydgate, works Lydgate, John, works Fall of Princes, The  16–17, 141–44, 155–56, 158 n.42, 162 n.51, 164–72

204 INDEX “Mumming at London, A” 152–53 Reason and Sensuality  146 n.17 Pilgrimage of the Life of Man, The  13 n. 32, 16, 48 n.56, 93 n.72, 141–44, 144–55, 166, 171, 173–74 Troy Book, The  146 n.17, 170 n.62 Macrobius (Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius) Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis  24, 65, 66, 157 n.40 Manuscripts Arras, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 845  31 n.27 Berlin, Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, germ. fol. MS 624  37 n.38 Cambridge, CUL, MS Ff.1.6  116 n.31 Cambridge, CUL, MS Kk.1.7  128 n.61 Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 62  54 n.65 Durham, University Library, MS Cosin V.iii.9  118 n.35, 119 n.39, 123 n.51 Geneva, Bibliothèque publique et universitaire, MS fr. 182  35 Glasgow, Glasgow University Library, Hunter MS 409  116–17 n.33 London, BL, Add. MS 35321  160 n.46 London, BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A.vii  145 n.14, 148 n.19, 150 n.23 London, BL, Cotton MS Vitellius C.xiii  48 n.56, 145 n.14, 146–47, 149, 150 n.23 London, BL, Harley MS 3954  93 n.73 London, BL, Harley MS 4826  145 n.14

London, BL, Royal MS 14.E.v 163–64 London, BL, Royal MS 20.C.iv 163–64 London, BL, Stowe MS 952  145 n.14, 146–47, 149, 150 n.23 New York, NYPL, Spencer MS 19  128–29 n.62, 131 n.69 New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M 1038  35 Oxford, Bodl., MS Arch. Selden B.24  116 n.31 Oxford, Bodl., MS Bodley 638  116 n.31 Oxford, Bodl., MS Douce 300  91 n.69 Oxford, Bodl., MS Fairfax 16  94 n.75, 116 n.31 Oxford, Bodl., MS Selden Supra 53  118 n.35 Oxford, Bodl., MS Tanner 346  116 n.31 Paris, BnF, F. Fr. MS 377  23 n.11, 46 n.51 Paris, BnF, F. Fr. MS 605  113 Paris, BnF, F. Fr. MS 606  113 Paris, BnF, F. Fr. MS 607  113 Paris, BnF, F. Fr. MS 825  23 n.11 Paris, BnF, F. Fr. MS 829  23 n.11, 48 n.56 Paris, BnF, MS F. Fr. 835  113 n.26 Paris, BnF, F. Fr. MS 836  113 Paris, BnF, F. Fr. MS 1138  23 n.11 Paris, BnF, F. Fr. MS 1646  35, 43 n.49 Paris, BnF, F. Fr. MS 3646  23 n.11 Paris, BnF, F. Fr. 12466  48 n.56 Paris, BnF, F. Fr. MS 12786  74 n.39 Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 5071  34 n.32

INDEX 205

San Marino, Huntington, MS HM 111  117 n.34, 129 n.64 San Marino, Huntington, MS HM 268 170 San Marino, Huntington, MS HM 744  107 n.12, 117 n.34 see also rubrics; scribes (of extant manuscripts) Margival, Nicole de Dit de la Panthère, Le  80 n.51 Mazuelo, Vincente de Pelegrino de la Vida Humana, Ele  19–20, 93 Mechiel (Dutch scribe)  36 n.36 Meroede, Peters van Pilgerfahrt des Träumenden Mönchs, Die  19, 37 Mézières, Philippe de Livre de la Vertu du Sacrament de Mariage, Le  19–20 n.3 Songe du Vieil Pelerin, Le 19–20 n.3, 72, 123 n.50 Molinet, Jean Cest le Romant de la Rose Moralise  1, 2, 51 n.59, 110–11 Montreuil, Jean de  162 n.52 Muses  80, 153–54, 164–66 naming, authorial Augustine, and  39 n.42 Baspoole, and  37 n.38 Boccaccio, and  156 n.38, 158–59, 165, 168 n.59, 169–70 Chaucer, and  20, 73, 79–82, 85, 93 n.71, 118 Christine de Pizan, and  113–14, 140 n.4 Dante Alighieri, and  83 n.57 Deguileville, and  14, 20, 22–24, 30–39, 40, 42, 44–45, 46–49, 49–56, 61, 77–78, 82, 93 n.71, 129–30, 134, 175 Durante, and  37 Gaultier, and  35–36 Gower, and  119–20 n.39

Gui de Mori, and  29, 36, 37 Heinric, and  36 Hoccleve, and  103, 117–19, 123, 125–26 Houdenc, and  29–30 n.25 Langland, Piers Plowman, and  20, 61 Lydgate, and  143, 150 n.23, 156, 164–65, 169–70 Mechiel, and  36 n.36 Meroede, and  37 Ovid, and  52, 82 Premierfait, and  168 n.59 Roman de la Rose, and  4–5, 14, 20–21, 23–24, 26–29, 32–38, 39, 46–49, 50–55, 56, 61, 83, 111, 116 n.32, 146, 156 n.38 technique, allegorical  8, 9, 11, 84, 172, 176 Ovid (Publius Naso Ovidius) Chaucer, and  56–57 n.69, 65, 72–73 n.35, 80, 82, 85, 88, 89–90, 95, 97 Christine de Pizan, and  108, 112 Deguileville, and  52–53, 55, 56, 67, 82–83, 93, 101 embedded text, and  52, 101 Fortune, and  80 Hoccleve, and  105, 137 Lydgate, and  141–42 n.7, 170 naming, authorial, and  52, 82 Roman de la Rose, and  4–5, 13, 27, 52 n.61, 55, 82, 85, 88, 108, 112 see also Ovid, works Ovid (Publius Naso Ovidius), works Episotulae Heroidum  89, 97 Ibis  52–53, 82 Metamorphoses 80 Remedia  89 n.66 Tristia 56 patronage 11 Chaucer, and  89, 90, 94, 96–97

206 INDEX Christine de Pizan, and  125–26 n.54 Hoccleve, and  104, 117, 126–27, 127–28, 135, 137 Lydgate, and  150–55, 155–56, 164–65, 166–68, 170 n.62, 172 personification authorizing function of  11, 27–28, 36, 42 n.47, 176 definition of  3–4 innovations in use  4–5, 13 n.33 prosopopoeia, and  4 n.9 Boccaccio, and  156–59, 166–70 Chaucer, and  73, 78–79, 84–90, 97–98 Christine de Pizan, and  109–17, 136–37 Deguileville, and  30–38, 39–45, 45–49, 49–52, 53–56, 83, 91–92, 130–37, 144–53, 174–76 Hoccleve, and  16, 103–4, 118, 124–26, 130–37 Lydgate, and  16, 144–47, 148–53, 156, 165–70, 171, 174 Premierfait, Cas des Nobles Hommes et Femmes, and  156, 163–64 Roman de la Rose, and  4–5, 27–28, 33–34, 45–49, 49–52, 77, 109–17, 144–46 see also Fortune; Genius; Grace; Love; Reason; Venus Persius (Aulus Persius Flaccus) Satires 153 Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca) authorial presentation  87 n.63, 140 n.4, 141–42 n.7 character, in allegory  157, 163 n.54 Pilgrimage of the Lyfe of the Manhode, The  127, 128, 131 n.69 see also Chaucer, works, ABC Pilgrimage of the Soul, The 127, 128, 131 n.69

see also Hoccleve, works, “Conpleynte Paramont” Pilgrimage vander Menscheliker Creaturen, Die  37 n.38 Premierfait, Laurent de Cas des Nobles Hommes et Femmes, Des Boccaccio, and  17, 142, 155, 159–64, 168 n.59, 170 n.64, 172 book divisions of  163–64 date of  142 dedication of  155 Deguileville, and  162 Fortune, and  162 n.52, 163–64 naming, authorial, and  168 n.59 personification, and  156, 163–64 printed edition (1538) of  162 n.52 Roman de la Rose, and  17, 159–64, 170 n.64 rubrics, and  163–64 translation, by Lydgate  16–17, 141–44, 155–56, 158 n.42, 164–72 Prudentius Psychomachia  13 n.33, 62–63 psychomachia (literary technique)  24, 33, 38, 42 n.47, 62–63, 105, 132 Querelle de la Rose, La  5 n.12, 109–10, 117, 159 n.44, 161 n.48 Reason (allegorical character) Boethius, Consolatione, and  155 Christine de Pizan, and  41 n.44, 112 n.25 Deguileville, and  30–38, 39–45, 46, 48, 49, 51–52, 55, 131–34, 144–46, 174 Hoccleve, and  132–34

INDEX 207

Isidore of Seville, Synonyma, and 133 Lydgate, and  144–46 Roman de la Rose, and  30–38, 42, 52 n.62, 76–77, 80–81, 84, 112 n.25, 131–32, 143 n.11, 145, 155, 159 n.43 Robertson, D. W., Jr.  63 Roman de la Rose, Le adaptation, in French prose  1, 2, 51 n.59, 110–11 allegorical innovation of  3, 4–5, 8 n.22, 9–10, 12, 20–21, 23, 59, 63, 79 anti-Norman satire in  46 n.54, 48 authorial representation in   4–5, 6 n.17, 10, 20–21, 23, 24–29, 33–34, 36–39, 42–43, 50, 55, 56, 65, 76–77, 83, 86, 110–11, 114, 119 n.38 Boccaccio, Casibus Virorum Illustrium, and  16–17, 59, 87 n.63, 142, 155–59, 161, 162 n.50 Chaucer, and  15, 60–61, 62, 63–65, 71, 73–76, 78, 80–81, 84–90, 95, 98–102, 113, 116, 134 n.74, 141, 170–72, 175 Christine de Pizan, and  108–14 Dante Alighieri, and  59, 160–61 Deguileville, and  14, 20, 22–23, 30–57, 64–65, 67, 71, 77–78, 143–45, 162, 174 dream vision, and  4–5, 24–25, 27–28, 59 n.3, 65, 67, 71, 98–99 n.84, 119 n.38 embedded text, and  39, 55, 90, 96–97, 101, 144 first-person voice in  5–6, 20, 23, 24, 28–29, 105, 147 Fortune, in  80, 84, 143 n.11, 152–53, 155 Genius, in  39, 55, 77, 97, 101, 146 n.17 Grace, and  30, 146 Guillaume de Lorris, and  24–25,

28, 34, 55, 56, 74, 86 n.62, 159 (see also Roman de la Rose, authorial representation in) Guillaume de Machaut, and  59, 66, 84 n.60, 88, 95, 99 n.85 Hoccleve, and  16, 76 n.43, 105–8, 116, 118–22, 175 Jean de Meun, and  25, 26, 28, 34, 55, 76–77, 86 n.62, 116, 159 (see also Roman de la Rose, authorial representation in) Latin literature, and  4–5, 7, 13, 27, 52 n.61, 55, 65, 76–77, 80–82, 85, 88, 108, 112, 122, 131 Love, and  4, 24–29, 30, 31, 33–34, 38, 39, 42–43, 44, 47–48, 50–52, 55, 83, 97, 108–14, 120, 123, 158–59 Lydgate, and  14, 16–17, 140–6, 152–53, 154, 164, 170–72 misogyny in  108, 111 Molinet, and  1, 2, 51 n.59, 110–11 obscenity in  30, 41 n.45 Ovid, and  4–5, 13, 27, 52 n.61, 55, 82, 85, 88, 108, 112 personification, and  4–5, 27–28, 33–34, 45–49, 49–52, 77, 109–17, 144–46 popularity of  1, 2, 59, 63 Premierfait, and  17, 159–64, 170 n.64 Reason, and  30–38, 42, 52 n.62, 76–77, 80–81, 84, 112 n.25, 131–32, 143 n.11, 145, 155, 159 n.43 rubrics, and  5, 12, 28 scholastic and scriptural traditions, and  13, 24–26, 56, 65 scribal intervention, and  31 n.27, 36 n.36 translation, Dutch  36 translation, English, see Chaucer, works, Romaunt of the Rose

208 INDEX translation, Italian  36–37 Venus, and  45–49 Villon, and  174 see also naming, authorial; Querelle de la Rose; vernacular rubrics 12 Deguileville, and  31, 35, 38, 43, 46, 91 n.69 Hoccleve, and  119–20 n.39, 128 Lydgate, and  140, 145, 146–47, 149, 152, 170 Premierfait, Cas des Nobles Hommes et Femmes, and 163–64 Roman de la Rose, and  5, 12, 28 scribes (of extant manuscripts) Baspoole  37 n.38 Christine de Pizan  117 Hoccleve  117, 128, 129 n.64 Pèlerinage de l’Âme, of  53 n.63 Pèlerinage de la Vie Humaine, of  31 n.27, 35, 43 Roman de la Rose, of  31 n.27 Roman de la Rose, Dutch translation, of  36 n.36 see also rubrics; manuscripts scribe (as literary posture)  11 auctor, differentiation from  25, 26 n.16, 110 Chaucer  73, 86–90 Christine de Pizan  113–14 Deguileville 46–48 Hoccleve 114 Jean de Meun  27–28, 39, 55, 110–11, 114 Lydgate 166 scripture (Christian) Boccaccio, and  157 Chaucer, and  40 n.43 Christine de Pizan, and  108–11, 123 n.50 Dante Alighieri, and  40 n.43 debated interpretation of  40, 45, 175

Deguileville, and  19, 40, 45, 49, 68–70, 72, 90, 129–30, 175 Langland, and  40 n.43 Latin authority, and  3 literary allegory, and  13, 24–26, 63, 90, 108–11, 121, 124, 157, 175 Lydgate, and  139 n.2 Mézières, and  72, 123 n.50 signature practice see naming, authorial Spearing, A. C.  6 n.17, 66, 104 n.2 Suso, Henry Ars Moriendi 124 Teskey, Gordon  9 n.23 Venus (allegorical character) Chaucer, and  60 n.5 Christine de Pizan, and  107 Deguileville, and  45–49, 52, 113, 145–46 Graunson, and  60 n.5 Lydgate, and  48 n.56, 144–46 Roman de la Rose, and  45–49 Vérard, Anthoine  23–24 n.11, 35–36 n.35, 162–63 n.52 vernacular authorizing strategies  3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 12, 76, 82–83, 90, 94–95, 120–22, 136, 139–40, 165, 168, 176 Roman de la Rose, and  2–3, 5–6, 11–13, 24–26, 59, 71–72 n.35, 76–77, 95, 159 scholastic and scriptural traditions, and  3, 5–6, 13, 24–26, 63–64, 68–70, 90, 109–12, 120–24, 136, 156–57, 168, 175–76 translation, from Latin  17, 76–78, 80–81, 90, 124, 152, 159 (see also under names of individual works) translation, French to English  17–18, 73, 78, 80–81,

INDEX 209

86, 73, 105, 135, 152 (see also under names of individual works) Villon, François  173–74, 175

Wife of Bath (character)  99, 101, 119, 120–21, 125, 175 see also Chaucer, works, Canterbury Tales, Wife of Bath’s Tale

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Postcolonial Fictions in the ‘Roman de Perceforest’: Cultural Identities and Hybridities, Sylvia Huot A Discourse for the Holy Grail in Old French Romance, Ben Ramm Fashion in Medieval France, Sarah-Grace Heller Christine de Pizan’s Changing Opinion: A Quest for Certainty in the Midst of Chaos, Douglas Kelly Cultural Performances in Medieval France: Essays in Honor of Nancy Freeman Regalado, eds Eglal Doss-Quinby, Roberta L. Krueger, E. Jane Burns The Medieval Warrior Aristocracy: Gifts, Violence, Performance, and the Sacred, Andrew Cowell Logic and Humour in the Fabliaux: An Essay in Applied Narratology, Roy J. Pearcy Miraculous Rhymes: The Writing of Gautier de Coinci, Tony Hunt Philippe de Vigneulles and the Art of Prose Translation, Catherine M. Jones Desire by Gender and Genre in Trouvère Song, Helen Dell Chartier in Europe, eds Emma Cayley, Ashby Kinch Medieval Saints’ Lives: The Gift, Kinship and Community in Old French Hagiography, Emma Campbell Poetry, Knowledge and Community in Late Medieval France, eds Rebecca Dixon, Finn E. Sinclair with Adrian Armstrong, Sylvia Huot, Sarah Kay The Troubadour Tensos and Partimens: A Critical Edition, Ruth Harvey, Linda Paterson Old French Narrative Cycles: Heroism between Ethics and Morality, Luke Sunderland The Cultural and Political Legacy of Anne de Bretagne: Negotiating Convention in Books and Documents, ed Cynthia J. Brown Lettering the Self in Medieval and Early Modern France, Katherine Kong The Old French Lays of Ignaure, Oiselet and Amours, eds Glyn S. Burgess, Leslie C. Brook Thinking Through Chrétien de Troyes, Zrinka Stahuljak, Virginie Greene, Sarah Kay, Sharon Kinoshita, Peggy McCracken Blindness and Therapy in Late Medieval French and Italian Poetry, Julie Singer

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AUTHORSHIP AND FIRST-PERSON ALLEGORY IN LATE MEDIEVAL FRANCE AND ENGLAND Stephanie A.Viereck Gibbs Kamath

Stephanie A.Viereck Gibbs Kamath

STEPHANIE A. VIERECK GIBBS KAMATH

is Assistant Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

AUTHORSHIP AND FIRST-PERSON ALLEGORY IN LATE MEDIEVAL FRANCE AND ENGLAND

The late medieval emergence of vernacular allegories recounted by a first-person narrator-protagonist invites both abstract and specific interpretations of the author’s role, since the protagonist who claims to compose the narrative also directs the reader to interpret such claims. The particular attributes of the narrator-protagonist bring greater attention to individual authorial identity. But as the authors of the allegories adapt elements found in each other’s works, their shared literary tradition unites differing perspectives: the most celebrated French first-person allegory, the erotic Roman de la Rose, quickly inspired an allegorical trilogy of spiritual pilgrimage narratives by Guillaume de Deguileville. English authors sought recognition for their own literary activity through adaptation and translation from a tradition inspired by both allegories. This account examines Deguileville’s underexplored allegory before tracing the tradition’s importance to the English authors Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Hoccleve, and John Lydgate, with particular attention to the mediating influence of French poetry by authors including Christine de Pizan and Laurent de Premierfait. Through comparative analysis of the late medieval authors who shaped French and English literary canons, this book reveals the cross-linguistic, communal model of vernacular authorship established by the tradition of firstperson allegory.

Gallica