Desiring Truth: The Process of Judgment in Fourteenth-Century Art and Literature 041597240X, 9780415972406, 113801169X, 9781138011694

Table of contents :
Series Editor's Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter One. Sympathetic Participation and the 'Via Positiva'
Chapter Two. Visual Fascination and Two Illustrated Prayer Books
Chapter Three. The Multiple Modes of 'The Parlement of Thre Ages' and 'Piers Plowman'
Chapter Four. The Cinematic Consciousness of the 'Pearl'-Poet
Condusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Back Cover

Citation preview

STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL HISTORY AND CULTURE

Edited by

Frands G. Gentry Pennsylvania State University

A

ROUTLEDGE SERIES

STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL HISTORY AND CULTURE FRANCIS G. GENTRY, General Editor

FAIR AND VARlES FORMS

RACE AND ETHNICITY IN ANGLO-SAXON

ViSUdl Textuality in Medieval lllustrated Manuscripts Mary C. Olson

LITERATURE

Srephen J. Harris AsPECTS OF loVE IN JOHN GOWER'S

THE CONTESTED THEOLOGICAL A UTHORlTY

CONFESSIO AMANTIS

OF THOMAS AQUINAS

Ellen Shaw Bakalian

The Controversies between Hervaeus Natalis and Durandis ofSt. Pourfain

THE MEDIEVAL TRADlTlON OF THEBES

Elizaheth Lowe

History and Narrative in the OF Roman de Thebes, Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Lydgate

BODY AND SACRED PLACE IN MEDIEVAL

Dominique Bardes

EUROPE, 1100-1389

Dawn Marie Hayes

WORLDS MADE FLESH

Reading Medieval Manuscript Culture WOMEN OF THE HUMILIATI

Lauryn S. Mayer

A Lay Religious Order in Medieval Civic Lift Sally Mayall Brasher

EMPOWERlNG COLLABORATIONS

CONSUMING PASSIONS

Writing Partnerships between Religious WOmen and Scribes in the Middk Ages

The Uses ofCannibalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe Merrall L1ewelyn Price

Kimberly M. Benedict THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF THE MONSTROUS IN THE MIDDLE AGES

LITERARY HYBRlDS

Lisa Verner

Crossdressing, Shapeshifting, and Indeterminacy in Medieval and Modern French Narrative

THE WATER SUrPLY SYSTEM OF SIENA, ITALY

Erika E. Hess

The Medieval Roots ofthe Modern Networked City Michael P. Kucher

THE KING'S Two MAPS

Cartography and Culture in ThirteenthCentury Engblnd Daniel Birkholz

DESIRING TRUTH

The Process offudgment in FourteenthCentury Art and Literature Jeremy Lowe

PESTILENCE IN MEDlEVAL AND EARLY MODERN ENGLISH LrTERATURE

Bryon Lee Grigsby

DESIRING TRUTH The Process of Judgment in Fourteenth-Century Art and Literature

Jeremy Lowe

I~ ~~o~;~;n~~~up LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2005 by Routledge Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright © 2005 Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permi ssion in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Credits and acknowledgments borrowed from other sources and reproduced, with permission, in this textbook appear on appropriate page within text. ISBN: 9780415972406 (hbk) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lowe, Jeremy, 1969Desiring truth : the process of judgment in fourteenth-century art and literature I by Jeremy Lowe. p. em. -- (Studies in medieval history and culture ; v. 30) Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. English literature--Middle English, 1100-1500--History and criticism. 2. Visions in literature. 3. English literature--Middle English, 1100-1500--Illustrations. 4. Art and literature--England--History--To 1500. 5. Books and reading--England--History--To 1500. 6. Prayer-books--History and criticism. 7. Manuscripts, Medieval--England. 8. Visual perception in literature. I. Title. II. Series. PR317.V58L69 2005 820.9'001--dc22

2005018823

Contents

Series Editor's Foreword Acknowledgments Introduction

Vll

IX

1

Chapter One Sympathetic Participation and the Via Positiva

13

Chapter Two Visual Fascination and Two Illustrated Prayer Books

45

Chapter Three The Multiple Modes of The Parlement ofThre Ages and

Piers Plowman

87

Chapter Four The Cinematic Consciousness of the Pearl-Poet

139

Condusion

215

Notes

221

Bibliography

243

Index

255

v

This page intentionally left blank

Series Editor's Foreword

Far from providing just a musty whiff of yesteryear, research in Medieval Studies enters the new century as fresh and vigorous as never before. Scholars representing a11 disciplines and generations are consistently producing works of research of the highest caliber, utilizing new approaches and methodologies. Volumes in the Medieval History and Culture series include studies on individual works and authors of Latin and vernacular literatures, historical personalities and events, theological and philosophical issues, and new criticaI approaches to medievalliterature and culture. Momentous changes have occurred in Medieval Studies in the past thirty years, in teaching as weil as in scholarship. The Medieval History and Culture series enhances research in the held by providing an outlet for monographs by scholars in the early stages of their careers on a11 topics related to the broad scope of Medieval Studies, while at the same time pointing to and highlighting new directions that will shape and dehne scholarly discourse in the future. Francis G. Gentry

vii

This page intentionally left blank

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my mentors and friends, MkeaI Vaughan, Rick Emmerson and Robin Chapman-Stacey, for their constant advice, support and encouragement, and for giving me the faith to produce this book. Additional thanks must also go to John Coldeweyand Ranji Khanna, whose comments and editorial suggestions were invaluable ro me in the revision process. I owe an intellectual debt to Steven Shaviro, without whom this medievalist might never have become a theorist; and of course, no record of my time at the University ofWashington can be complete without acknowledging the departmental secretary, Kathy Mork, who kept us all moving in the right direction. To Frank Gentry and Mark Andrew Henderson at Routledge I extend my gratitude for asking me to submit my manuscript, and for helping me ro produce a final version for publication. Thanks also go to Richard Tressider at CRC Press and Rich Hale at IßT, for their work on producing the manuscript. I would also like to thank the librarians and staff of the University Library, Carnbridge, the Bodleian Library Oxford, and the British Library, for their support and assistance in my research. Friends and colleagues have contributed directly or indirectly co the production of this book, and so my love and thanks go to Sean Taylor, Thaine Stearns, Tilar Mazzeo, Kevin Murray, Clinton Atchley, Jeremie Fant, Myles Nolan, Mike Byrnes, and the extended MPhil "family" David Griffith. Your friendship has been constant and invaluable to me. Finally, immense gratitude goes to my family: to my parents and parents-in-Iaw, and above all to Paula and Conor. The life of a peripatetic academic is not an easy one, and it is still harder on the family, yet they have shown me nothing but support, love, and understanding. This has truly been a "perle of prys."

IX

This page intentionally left blank

Introduction

This is a book inspired by frustration and delight in almost equal measure, provoked by the elusiveness of much of the great art and literature of the fourteenth century. I initially came to the literature of this period expecting to find systematic order and coherent structure underpinning the wealth of narrative detail; I hoped eventually to be able to "crack the code" of Rlcardian texts, and define their meaning once and for all. I What I found instead, of course, seemed closer to bedlam: unstable narrators; multiple authorial revisions; scribal variation; tangential marginalia; bewildering programs ofillustration; unsatisfactory conclusions, to name but a few familiar, irreconcilable elements of fourteenth-century art, which confront the readerlviewer with detail that seems to proliferate even as he or she engages with it. Eventually, though, it was the realization that we do still engage with fourteenth-century art, despite its complexities and the lack of closure, that encouraged me to approach these texts in a different way. I came to believe that fourteenth-century texts invite us to interpret them, to reach conclusions, but offer no hope of satisfaction, so that the participation of the reader or viewer (who is sometimes one and the same) becomes integral co each work as a whole. Texts from this period very often demand and depend upon such a relationship in the production of meaning: judgment, the willed act of moral engagement, therefore becomes a process, a living, evolving relationship, an open circuit between text and respondent. In this book I put forward a methodology for articulating this relationship, and look at ways in which it can be applied, in the belief that we need to find a new way of responding to medievalliterature, one that is more attuned to the organic nature of the texts themselves and the ways in which they interweave. Despite the sophistication of contemporary critical theory, we stilllargely attempt to decode these texts, trawling them for clues that allow us to build a secondary narrative and so construct hidden or latent meaning, rather than respond to them in their own terms. The efforts of Piers Plowman

1

2

Desiring Truth

scholars, say, to look for signs of a reformist agenda in the poem, or for evidence of fraternal/anti-fraternal polemic; the work of art historians to interpret the rhetorical structures of Psalters and Books of Hours-a11 stern from adesire to map the hidden structures within medieval texts. Recently, these efforts have been extended to the interstices between the written and the visuaI: to the marginalia, the physical evidence of medieval readers at work: if we can interpret the "programs" of marginalia successfully, the thinking seems to be, we can reconstruct authentie, stable systems for the interpretation of annotated texts. Following the logic of post-structuralism, the "voiees" of medieval readers will show us how to read medieval texts and reveal to us the forces of representation that define them. Thus Kathryn Kerby-Fulton and Maidie Hilmo, in a book devoted to medieval readership, talk about marginalia as offering "an alternative grid or map of a text we know quite well."2 Even the late Michael Camille, whose prolific work has invigorated scholarship on marginalia, essentially preserves Bakhtinian distinctions between "high" and "Iow," inside and outside, text and margin, maintaining the idea that manuscripts are structured pi aces containing discrete but interlocking systems of representation. So Camille interprets the Luttrell Psalter, for example, like a Venn diagram: image and text occupy their own domains, but meet where image responds to text; both systems are contained within the presiding structure of the patron's own ideological program. The danger in scouring texts and manuscripts for evidence of latent rhetorical structures is that we can easily impose an order that is not there; to paraphrase Ralph Hanna, we can presume too much about what we shouldbe finding, and thus prove unreliable guides about wh at is to be found. 3 No-one who has read Sylvia Huot's brilliant analysis of the design and structure of French manuscripts of the Romance 0/ the Rose can doubt that in these artifacts, form and function are beautifully interwoven, each element contributing to the coherence of the whole. 4 On cuerent evidence a1one, however, such manuscripts would seem to be the exception rather than the rule. Anyone who has spent any time examining a fourteenth-century Book of Hours or other prayer book, crawling with grotesques and images of ordinary life, can help but be bewildered by the very lack of system or order within them. Literary texts and manuscripts are similarly resistant to the im position of order: they demand attentiveness and reward repeated viewings, but verifiable structure and meaning remain tantalizingly beyond our grasp.5 As yet, this basic truth does not stop historians, art historians and literary theorists from attempting to decode fourteenth-century texts and so "fix" them in place. My approach is somewhat different, and sterns from the conviction that many fourteenth-century texts require us to respond in complex

Introduction

3

and individuated ways, to be less concerned with structures of representation and ideology and more involved with reading andlor viewing as a process of continual judgment: one that cannot necessarily be assimilated within a coherent and defined world view. Part of the polemic of this study is that Ricardian texts provoke response: they demand that we engage with them immediately, viscerally, repeatedly, and that this quality in turn reflects changing philosophical attitudes towards truth and human perception current towards the end of the fourteenth century. Despite the frequent homilies, injunctions, warnings and sententia they contain, these texts are not necessarily didactic, in the sense of demanding closed readings: they do not reflect a faith in revealed truth, but in the need for perpetual human enquiry. Very often they express thoughts and ideas that are partial or self-contradictory; very often we find ourselves returning to ideas that are revised and reconsidered. For many of these texts, the particular moment counts for more than the overall message; most often, truth itself seems unattainable. Of far greater importance is that we participate in these works, engaging in a relationship with them, and, through them, with God, an idea that ultimately can be traced to Franciscan thinkers and mystics influential in the fourteenth century. Marginal images in manuscripts very often reflect this engagement: where theyappear in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century vernacular manuscripts written in English-which is hardly at all-they betoken an individuated, critical response to apoern, or a physical intrusion into the order of the text: less a "map" chan che expression of a relationship. Where marginalia appear in religious texts-which is often-they often express a living, affective engagement wich the spiritual core of the book, redolent of a time when religion was an integral part of everyday life, involving all members of a community. Inspired by the idea that in fourteenth-century art unitary truth is less attainable, and even less desirable, than the exploration of the relationships between objects, throughout this book I give more weight to those instants when immediate events overthrow the narrative structure, and pay greater attention to moments of sensory engagement that upset the prevailing order. I use visual theory in my analysis of texts, images and manuscripts to break down the theoretical boundaries we have established between these elements, in the belief that we need to see them as forming a complex whole in wh ich the readerlviewer plays a part. Film theory is useful in describing this whole because it helps us to articulate the affective response of an audience, and also to interpret the mise-en-scene, the shot composed of multiple elements not all of which contribute to the narrative or are focused by the individual. Indeed, the engagement of the viewer/reader of fourteenth-century texts (or "participant") is doser in spirit to the modern experience of watching a film than

4

Desiring Truth

reading a book, because the senses are enjoined almost as much as the intellect. Ichallenge the orthodoxies of psychoanalytic visual theory, however, precisely because psychoanalysis insists upon a rational order, centered upon and animated by the individual ego. We need to get away from ideas of representation, the structure of the ego through absence or lack, the obsession with self that dominates much modern theory, if we are to respond to medieval texts more intuitively and in the ways that they themselves demand. That Ricardian texts do ask us to respond more affectively and dynamically is perhaps the least contentious argument of this study. Nearly ten years ago, A. C. Spearing characterized Ricardian poetry as ambitious and exploratory, and engaged in an uIti mately fruitless search for a unified and transcendent perspective. Spearing argues in his study that Ricardian poetry lacks a sense of the finite, and expresses open-endedness and irresolution rather than dosure. Discussing the major works of the Ricardian Age, Spearing suggests that: In each case the work's greatness is associated precisely with the absence or failure of a "unifYing vision"; and the first-person subject, to the degree of its importance, is the focus of instability and conflicting allegiance: a fragmented "I" gives access to fragments of a merely putative unitary truth. 6

For Spearing, the lack of a stable narrator figure in the most important narrative poems of the period provides a useful articulation of the incondusive quest for this unifying vision. Spearing in his artide specifically discusses Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde". Nevertheless, he insists that the narrative subject of Chaucer's poem is a "Ricardian '1''' because "this unstable first person, wh ich recent criticism has valiantly attempted to turn into a stable persona, belongs to the Ricardian Age, not just to Chaucer."7 Spearing's main argument is that the narrator of"Troilus" is unstable by design: through the mobility of the narrator's shifting persona Chaucer explores the different levels of narrative and encourages his readers to participate in the meaning of the poem. The narrator figure is not a fixed characterization, and his fluidity provokes the reader to question the text more dosely. The lack of certainty on a narrative level engages the reader more directly in the interpretive process, and the mobility of the narrative voice allows Chaucer to exploit the potential of poetry to embrace multiple perspectives. Although Chaucer was undoubtedly interested in the ways in which narrative expression (or enonciation) may be attributable to a speaker, Spearing argues that there is often no reason to attribute enonciation to one identifiable individual. There is arealm of consciousness freed from subjective articulation, like the roving camera of cinema and television. 8

Introduction

5

Chaucer is unique among Ricardian poets, in Spearing's eyes, because he is the only writer who moves beyond "unstable equilibrium" to "an acceptance of fragmentation, pluralism, and relativism" and then only in The Canterbury Tales. 9 As the fourteenth century drew to a dose, philosophers, theologians, and poets no Ion ger placed their faith in "unitary truth," or at least the attainment of that ideal in human life. Instead, they lived in an age learning to accept the conditional nature ofhuman knowledge. Chaucer, who in Spearing's account takes his customary place as a forward thinker, was me only poet of his age to transcend the epistemological uncertainties of the Ricardian Age and affirm them wimin a new way of thinking. The "unstable equilibrium" of the other Ricardian poets, on the other hand, suggests that they were aware of a new pluralism or subjectivism, but were still finding ways to exploit this philosophical development. Ricardian poets as a whole reveal the transitional nature of their age, but only the Chaucer of The Canterbury Tales expresses a more modern pluralism. Spearing is dismissive of most Ricardian texts, effectively accusing them of aesthetic incoherence whilst valorizing Chaucer's work. Indeed, most scholars now embrace the idea that Chaucer anticipated modernity in his work, incorporating multiple voices and even relative moral values. Unfortunately, non-Chaucerian texts have been left on the shelf, seen as failed Chaucerian prototypes mat experiment with plurality and polyphony, but remain restrained by a reactionary didacticism, a suffocating moral certainty. In Spearing's account, the other Ricardian poets simply "fail" to embrace the possibilities for more "realistic" fiction in this new world order, and thus in his defense of the poetry, Spearing unfortunately winds up patronizing it. Spearing condudes that to try to make most Ricardian texts fit the concept of a unitary "I" involves an "impoverishing distortion of the poets' real achievements."10 Yet, he nevertheless positions his writers as secondary recipients of a changing oudook, rather than instigators of it. Textual ambiguity is a feature of many fourteenth-century texts, as is a lack of dearly defined endings and an accompanying attention to often highly digressive detail (what J. A. Burrow calls "pointing").ll Yet, these works should not be judged by their supposed failure to express a forward-thinking enmusiasm for plurality and relativism. The discursive nature of fourteenth-century narrative poetry should be seen as a deli berate poetic strategy, rather than as a symptom of a cultural shift from the simple certainties of the past to the open-ended complexities of the modern age. Ir is the successes offourteenth-century literature, rather man its perceived failures, which form the subject of this study. We can start by moving away from the idea that fourteenth-century poems are proto-modern and so demonstrate a delight in open-endedness for

6

Desiring Truth

its own sake, replacing this with the idea, current among many fourteenthcentury thinkers, that investigation and affective response were both valid and even necessary elements of an informed moral attitude. Scholars writing about such thinkers-William of Ockham and the other theologians influential in the fourteenth century-have had to defend these philosophers from the charge of moral relativism, in order to demonstrate that empiricist philosophers were engaged in a serious inquiry into the limits of human knowledge, in response to the scientific and cultural advances of the time. 12 Ockham in particular argued that God could only be known through His works, rather than absolutely, and so human comprehension of the divine will is necessarily contingent and uncertain. Rather than liberate the individual from a requirement to learn about God, however, this fact increases human responsibility, because each Christian believer has his or her own part to play in a deeper understanding ofGod. Whether through scripture, science, or the proper interpretation of experience, the individual has a duty to explore a relationship with the divine will that does not consist in waiting for revelation. In fact, to wait for truth can easily lead the believer into acedia, or sloth, and so diminish his or her chances of attaining salvation. The lack of certainty in the world is a consequence of humanity's fallen state, and so a matter for concern. Nevertheless, because God is revealed through His works, there is much in this world to delight the believer, and it is a blessing as weIl as a responsibility to learn from sensory experience. Rather than engage in a thoroughly modern concept of moral and cultural relativism, then, ambiguity has a crucial role to play in human spiritual destiny. The poets that I examine in this study often demonstrate a conscious understanding of this process of discovery that is at the heart of our quest for salvation, in full awareness that unitary truth may welliie beyond the individual's grasp: ambiguity becomes, in these works, an instrument o[foith. This understanding is not always consoling. In the case of Piers Plowman, for instance, the absence ofTruth often exposes the very worst of humanity, so that the quest itself can become distracting, and lead to the abnegation of the will and eventual despair. Nevertheless, the ho pe remains that the human will can transcend its limitations and singularities and achieve a more satisfying vision. All of the texts considered in the ensuing chapters are connected by a similar sense ofhope: offaith in the human capacity to learn, and God's capacity to show mercy when humans fail in that endeavor. The lack of certainty and even stable order within these texts is therefore both a consequence of empiricist thought and a response to it: the individual's engagement with the text is vital, echoing the pilgrim's relationship with God, but it is never finite or concrete. Where relativism holds that all truths

Introduction

7

are equally valid, in these texts truth does not reside on earth and is not 10catable: the crucial thing is that we engage in the quest, even when it does not lead to the attainment of truth in this life. Crucial to the articulation of this relationship in the texts I consider is the role of the reader, or, in the case of the visual images, the spectator/viewer. In modern theories of "reader response" the text is never monolithic, and the role of the reader is crucial in the production of meaning. This is also true of the texts in this study, in which the reader is often addressed on a separate level to the characters. Where a represented character (Sir Gawain in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, for example, or a figure in the margin of the Luttrell Psalter) has only a single perspective, or a particular "line of sight," the audience enjoys a more panoramic view. The audience is able to comprehend a system of relationships that undermines the potency of any one view. Such complexity is fundamentally opposed to the logic of perspective, the moment when the endless movement of multiple vantage points became ratified through the focus of a single, steadying gaze. My study is therefore "about" the way we see a fourteenth-century text as weil as how we read it. Our eyes, like the Ricardian "I," do not occupy a stable position or a privileged vantage point, but take in many lines of sight and contributes towards them As Mary Carruthers puts it, reading a book in the medieval period: ... extends the process whereby one memory engages another in a continuing dialogue that approaches Plato's ideal (expressed in Phaedrus) of two living minds engaged in learning. Medieval reading is conceived to be not a "hermeneutical circle" (which implies mere solipsism) but more like a "hermeneutical dialogue" between two memo ries. 13

The involvement of the reader in the production of meaning, like the ambiguity of human experience in a fallen world, involves responsibility rather than a bland moral relativism. In an essay pointing to the "overabundance of meaning" in the symbol of the pentangle in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Ross G. Arthur argues that the Gawain-poet does not give his audience "carte blanche" to interpret the symbol however they wish. Although the poet's words allow a multiplicity ofinterpretations, nevertheless they "anticipate and even request a particular sort of structuring collaboration by the audience." 14 Arthur does not speculate what the consequences of this structuring collaboration might be, but his essay does make the important point that ambiguity and the articulation of multiple viewpoints are not necessarily the same as a postmodern relativism. I am concerned, then, with the kind of structured collaboration that Arthur delineates here, and in particular the ways in which many fourteenth-

8

Desiring Truth

century texts-whether literary or visuaI, or even a combination of the twoconsciously manipulate audience perspective. The material that I have chosen to illustrate the dynamic and fluid relationship between audience and text are varied, ranging from illustrated secular manuscripts and prayer books, to narrative poems and even an altarpiece. These "texts" are not connected in any formal way, and they are not all definitively "Ricardian." As much as we might like to think of great artistic movements in which poets and artists are aware of one another's work and respond to it, we have no evidence to support such a notion. In most cases, "authorship" itself is unknown, and even when it can be stated with some certainty (as in the case of Chaucer), the attribution of individual poems to their canon is often challenged. What does connect these texts is a shared concern with the problem of human knowledge and understanding. Frequently this problem is articulated through a visual epistemology, suggesting that human knowledge is very much a product of what we see. This raises the obvious paradox that, given that our understanding is imperfect, we cannot always know what it is we see. We are left with the responsibility to make judgments based on our experiences, even though we know that such judgments may weil be false. There is a sense in which time is running out, and some of the texts (The Parlement o[ the Thre Ages, for example) seem to be overshadowed by a darkness at odds with the playful ambiguity of their content. This is not really a contradiction at all, of course, because "playfulness" is never quite what it seems. Within a Christian context, when we are most off our guard, then we are also most vulnerable to fall, and the highly engaging freeplay at work in these texts often masks a sense of sin and imminent judgment. As Jeanne d'Evreux witnessed, the most seemingly innocent of activities may conceal tiny monsters. Even "ludic" poems such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Parlement o[ the Thre Ages address serious issues, despite their occasionally amusing content. Although all of the literary texts in this study are secular, they reveal a passionate interest in the relationship between this world and the next that connects them to religious works such as the Luttrell Psalter and the Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux. All of these works reveal a deep awareness of the relationship that exists between the audience and the text. I want to avoid, however, any suggestion that we are dealing with the emergence of the humanist subject, the arrival of the idealized viewer of Renaissance perspective for whom the spectacle is arranged. Foucault describes the relationship between modern subjectivity and art in his essay "Las Meninas": the viewer highlighted by absence, silhouetted by a criss-crossed network of glances. For Foucault, the subject of Vel:izquez's painting is not present; the viewer for whom all the elements of

Introduction

9

the composition are arranged has been elided. The space opened up for the viewer thus becomes an essential void, so that "representation, freed finally from the relation that was impeding it, can offer itself as representation in its pure form."15 According to Foucault, the humanist subject stands on a threshold, his arrival anticipated by the painting, which comes to stand in the place of representation, as something distinct from the viewer. Velazquez's painting dramatizes the moment of that arrival, having carved out the space that the humanist subject will come to occupy. The medieval viewer, by contrast, occupies no distinct place and is forever marginal. A medieval painting is not arranged for one single point of view, and so the viewing subject does not occupy an exalted position relative to an image. Yet this very "placelessness" provokes interpretive strategies: the subject remains free to explore every aspect of each composition; as in a medieval church, his or her engagement becomes a crucial element in the production of meaning. Thus lexamine some of the ways that fourteenth-century texts negotiate this ambivalent relationship, in which the viewer/reader occupies an uncertain place, yet remains integral to the very vitality of each work. In some cases, as we shall see, this relationship comes co embody the precarious state of humanity in medieval cosmology. Often, medieval artists and writers seem consciously to manipulate and draw attention to this uncertainty, what I term, following Oeleuze and Guattari, the deterritorialization of the reader or viewer. In this way they dramatize, not the foi/ures of a unifying vision, but the possibilities offered by the absence of adear, authoritative line of sight. 16 With these possibilities come responsibilities, and these works invite the reader to look more dosely and to engage more direct1y with what he or she sees. The spectacor does not stand apart from the spectade; the gaze is not directed. Instead, the readerlviewer is enjoined into affective, immediate participation with the text, through adesire for truth expressed as an ever-changing relationship. The reader who is free from the modern urge to identify with any one line of sight has the capacity to understand more than the so-called protagonists of these poems. For too long, we have regarded the successes and failures of individual characters within fourteenth-century texts as the key to interpreting "meaning" in such works. A need to theorize our own escape from the particular viewpoint in order to negotiate a network oflooks provides the basis for this study. The reader is able to transcend the immediate, localized percepdons of particular characters and arrive at the place of judgment, where fallible human understanding must give way to a more complex vision. This call to judgment is signaled in a variety of ways, and to differing ends, but the texts I examine share a capacity CO involve the reader on a variety of percep-

10

Desiring Truth

tual, intellectual, and spiritual levels. This can often involve us in a number of paradoxes: we are liberated from the "gaze" but still engaged by our senses; we can escape the limited and partial but remain human and prey to human failings. Very often, these texts remind us of the difficulty of the spiritual quest as weil as its importance. In arecent book, Gillian Rudd explores the influence of the mystics on the textual ambiguity of Piers Plowman. 17 She suggests that of the two spiritual paths open to the mystics-the via negativa and the via positiva-it is the latter that has most bearing on Langland's poem. Where the via negativa exhorts the individual to reject the earth entirely, the via positiva involves combining earthly images in order to transcend them. The immediacy of visual images, allegories and symbols communicate a truth simply and direcdy, piercing to the very heart of a matter rather than arriving at an answer through a process of deductive reasoning. The so-called emotive path, according to Rudd, "guides its adherents by advice and exhortation, encouraging its followers to experience the states of understanding it describes rather than defining them and offering a sure route to attaining them."18 Furthermore, the mystical writers of Langland's day-such as the unknown author of The Cloud of Unknowyng, Walter Hilton, and Richard Rolle-all demonstrate the belief"that the higher levels of spiritual awareness cannot be taught but must be experienced directly."19 This reflects St. Bonaventure's theory of the "multiple mode" (multiplex modus) of Scripture, expressed in the Breviloquium. 20 The consequence of this theory, according to Minnis, is that our disposition (affectus) "is moved more by examples than by ratiocinative argument, by promised rewards than by reasoning, by devotion than by dogma."21 The work of Rudd, Minnis, and others a1lows us to chart the influence that the mystical tradition had on the reading process. The discursiveness of mystical texts is an expression of the journey of a human soul towards wisdom, and it is possible to think of the "open-endedness" of fourteenth-century texts and images in a similar vein. Such a journey has a fixed ending in God, but this ultimate goal cannot ever be perfectly articulated by ehe human intellect. Instead, the soul is engaged on a number of levels in its mystical quest, and consequendy judgment does not depend on rational argument or dialectic alone. The human capacity to think and feel, and above a11 to recognize God, is the mystical hope. Jose de Vinck expresses this idea clearly in his introduction to Bonaventure's Breviloquium: Bonaventure is interested, not in the distinction between theology and philosophy, but in the love of God, revealed in the Scriptures, accessible

Introduction

11

through reason, but also communicated directly to loving souls through the channels of mystical grace. 22

Although I do not claim that they operate within the mystical tradition, the poems and other artworks in this study do draw upon a similar sense that there are manifold ways to truth: theyare influenced by, and even respond to, mysticism. The lack of finite conclusions in these works is never the same as a postmodern concept of relativism, then, because-as St. Bonaventure makes clear in his commentary on Ecclesiastes-the individual still has a responsibility to judge. 23 Rudd believes that the presence of God as the spiritual destiny of the Christian quest becomes the logos or "founding subject" of textual discourse in Piers Plowman, drawing on the idea that God functions as the ultimate guarantee. He is the Truth that we seek, and this is enough to ensure that our efforts are worthwhile. With the Truth "banked," as it were, any quest within a text becomes "a search for, or exploration of, the possible ways of expressing this Truth. "24 This ultimately fails to convey the vital and immediate nature of the call to judgment, however, which rarely becomes a simple matter of form or means of expression. Judgment is crucial, and hinges upon the delicate interaction between the reader and the text; it is also immediate, and vital to our spiritual destiny. The various works in this study all evoke a kind of via positiva, calling for our dynamic, affective participation in what we see and read, but this is not merely a search to articulate aversion of the Truth. That is a lapse into relativism. Instead, the need for judgement is seen to be the central quest ofhuman life: to search for something that cannot be expressed or known completely. Because the individual's own engagement with these texts and images is so important, my study begins with a largely conceptual introduction in which I articulate a methodology for understanding the relationship between audience and text in a pre-perspectival culture. Here and throughout, the work of Gilles Oeleuze and Felix Guattari provides a theory of seeing and reading that is not dependent on the idealized subject, supported by a system of representations designed to assure him of his place in the universe. 25 Fourteenth-century texts rarely aim to reassure their audience that their identity and position are safe. The use of film theory also helps to construct a concept of perspective that cannot be reduced to the single, monolithic gaze (although this necessitates a rejection of psychoanalytic film theory, which insists on the tyranny of the male gaze). Film is particularly appropriate to the study offourteenth-century texts because it deals with the immediate, sensory involvement of the spectator. Like many of these texts, film offers a play of surfaces in which the spectator is enmeshed, and which the spectator must

12

Desiring Truth

learn to navigate in order to comprehend the work's deeper crises and schisms. Far from being supported by such a narrative, the spectator is forced to negotiate his or her complex and often antithetical responses to it, but without the safety of critical distance. In all cases, "seeing" leads to "judging;" the "eye" prepares the ground for the existence of a deciding, willing "I." Following this conceptual introduction, I turn to some examples of"visual" texts to demonstrate art that does not invoke the fixed gaze of a classical spectator. Chapter one involves a fuHer examination of the concept of the gaze in order to demonstrate both its continued use in modern art history and its inappropriateness as a tool for interpreting medieval ways of seeing. In chapter two, I apply this revised approach to the spectator and reader in examining two illustrated prayer books, the Luttrell Psalter and the Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux. These manuscripts all involve the spectator through the eyes, but do not restrict that involvement by constructing a fixed, stable response. Instead, they challenge and provoke, while reasserting certain fundamental guidelines that avoid any lapse into mere "open-endedness." The two poems that I consider in chapter three, The Parlement 0/the Thre Ages and Piers Plowman, both involve the reader in the production of meaning, but in these works the possibilities for structured collaboration through language emerge. These poems exploit the figure of the narrator, and the varied characters that he meets, to explore the shifting responses of the reader to the text and evoke a strong sense of the need for judgment. Whereas The Parlement 0/ the Thre Ages ends in a fitful rejection of this world and all its vanities, however, Piers Plowman demonstrates a central faith in the role of humanity in God's covenant with the earth. We, the readers, must learn not only from the narrator's mistakes, but also from our own. Throughout the study, I keep the manuscript firmly in mind, and in particular the ways in wh ich it reveals contemporary responses to the poetry. In the case of the illustrated manuscripts of Piers Plowman (MS Douce 104) and the Pearl-poems (MS Cotton Nero A.x), text and image intersect in ways that reveal just the sort of participation in the poems' meaning that I describe. Finally, then, I turn to the poems of the Pearl-manuscript, which demonstrate a fully articulated, complex response to the problem ofhuman knowledge and divine will. Like all spiritual dialogue, the Pearl-cycle is inconclusive, ever changing, and perpetually alert to the joys and sorrows of this world and its relationship with the next. These poems demonstrate in the most sublime possible way the chasm that exists between the Christian concept of uncertainty and the modern notion of ambiguity. Although the Pearl-poems may suggest that we cannot "know" anything completely, they chart a relationship between humanity and God that is both intimate and fully, completely alive.

Chapter One

Sympathetic Participation and the Via Positiva

One of the pictures in a thirteenth-century Apocalypse depicts an angel offering St. John avision of Christ enthroned in the Heavenly Jerusalem. The angel cups the saint's chin with one hand and points to the divine figure above with the other, so that the line of the angel's crossed arms guides St. John's own line of sight, directing his gaze towards the heavenly vision. In his analysis of this picture, Michael Camille suggests that the "pleats of matter" in the picture-the folds of the angel's clothes and the criss-crossed pattern of his arms-"are constructed to lead the eye through a restless path of line, light, and shadow."1 Crucially, according to Camille "[t]heir movement not only conforms to an underlying order, but takes place in a single direction. It has an aim.,,2 Camille chooses this miniature to support his thesis that Gothic art represents a particular way of seeing, reflecting the relationship between humans and the divine. In this instance, whoever looks at the picture identifies directly with the figure of the kneeling saint, finding his or her gaze led inexorably towards heaven and away from earth. According to Camille, this picture epitomizes one of the functions of "Gothic" art, which is to direct the viewer's gaze and lead it heavenwards. Although mortals may be isolated in the sublunary sphere, their eyes should be constantly trained on God and their unsteady gaze supported by pictures that act like the supporting hand of the angel, showing them where and how to look. One of the implications of Camille's argument is that God and man stand on opposite sides of a divide, and that only through extraordinary means can that divide be bridged. A saint might experience visions through the grace of God, but for ordinary folk the heavenly realm would seem impossibly remote. Sacred images, then, stand in as surrogate visions, offering the medieval spectator a chance to see what is normally hidden. According to 13

14

Desiring Truth

Camille, these images remind the viewer that he or she must look one way, rejecting the earthly in favor of the divine, and this in turn reinforces the idea that humans are remote from God in time and space. Like St. John, we must turn or gaze heavenwards, but we cannot ho pe to experience avision through our own efforts a1one. This picture, and Camille's brief analysis of it, is interesting because it hel ps highlight some of the pre-suppositions we bring to the study of medieval art. In Camille's analysis, Gothic art presents movement in one direction, from earth to heaven, and it represents the division of these two spaces. One of the clearest implications of Camille's analysis is that the image of the angel directing St. John's gaze is designed to educate or instruct the viewer; the picture serves an edifying purpose, encouraging us to contemplate higher things. Camille's brief interpretation of this miniature brings to mind Emile MaIe's unequivocal statement that "[t]o the Middle Ages art was didactic."3 Many have shared MaIe's view that the medieval period was a time of system and order, of received wisdom and trenchant dogma. To paraphrase C. S. Lewis, this was an age, not merely of authority, but of authorities,4 rigidly patrolled by the Church on the one hand, and by a complex but limited system of Classical texts on the other. This rather general understanding of a loosely defined historical period persists today: one recent commentator describes medieval society as a "culture with its eyes permanently fixed on the ideal unities of the divine."5 The preponderance of religious imagery and visible signs of devotion from the medieval period suggest that art of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries performed a chiefly instructive role. The rise in importance of mysticism du ring this period, however, complicates this picture of an age governed by faith and reason a1one. Franciscan writers such as St. Bonaventure, William of Ockham, and Peter Olivi suggested that God is only visible and apprehensible in the physical elements of Creation, a development that affirms the importance of human will in charting a relationship with God. The interior life of the individual who could apprehend the traces of God in the natural world became as important as an exterior adherence to received wisdom and scriptural authority. St. Bonaventure, writing in the thirteenth century, promulgated a belief that God was recognizable in Creation, and that our spiritual hope was to achieve greater understanding of the divine will through a gradual process of discovery. In the words of Etienne Gilson, St. Bonaventure insisted that "the whole of nature proclaims God's existence as a truth beyond the reach of doubt, if only we will take the trouble to 100k."6 God is manifest in a11 His works, and exists most clearly in the human soul, and is interior to the soul. For St. Bonaventure, God is not an object to

Sympathetic Participation and the Via Positiva

15

be pursued by the intellect; instead, we arrive at knowledge of God illumined from within. As Gilson puts it, according to St. Bonaventure ... the human inteUect is not a nucleus of white light which casts out its rays over objects to outline their contours: it is rather the direct movement of an intelligible substance (which is the soul), this substance being rendered intelligible by the presence of the divine action."?

This philosophy had a profound effect on the way Christians of the later Middle Ages explored their relationship with God. Rather than receive instruction and thereby attempt to comprehend God through the intellect, the Christian participates in God and returns to Hirn by degrees. The human soul is not divided from God, but it is not possible for the ordinary mundane faculties to experience a perfect knowledge ofHim: therefore, the soul discovers God gradually, in a process of ecstasy. The Franciscan belief in the kinship of God with His creation affects the way a Christian thinks and even reads: humanity has an active role to play in the interpretation of the Word, because this interpretation forms the sours gradual journey back to God. Reason and faith alone cannot chart the mysteries of creation. Instead, the active will is illumined through meditation, guided by the example of Christ, instructed by Scripture, and supported by the certainty of God's presence in the physical world. The eyes take in experience that forms the first stage of the soul's journey, according to this belief, but this journey involves the gradual movement from the concrete to the universal. This theory becomes highly significant for my purposes because I suggest that fourteenthcentury visual and written texts reflect this process, encouraging an active engagement with complex material, perhaps in the hope that this engagement will eventually give way to a transcendent vision, but more importantly with a sense that the act of participation itself is the act of the true Christian viator. Eventually, the reader or viewer may escape the linearity of a single viewpoint in order co affirm something richer and more universal: one that comprehends the elements within it as a complex whole. The visual and written texts that are the subject of this studyare made up of multiple viewpoints that are not arranged to form one linear, coherent, or didactic message. Instead, the reader or viewer comes into affective contact with a jumble of perspectives, and a wide array of sensory perceptions that exceed the control of any one individual. We often derive our analyses oflate-medieval images and texts from the accepted idea that the "medieval period," which is rarely very concretely defined, was chiefly influenced by the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas and others who emphasized the primacy of the intellect over the will. Consequently,

16

Desiring Truth

we have tended to undermine the significant contribution ofFranciscan writers who place humans within an organic Creation that expresses God innately. To such thinkers, humans could not simply "Iearn" about God as an external fact, but discover Hirn through gradual illumination. To cite Gilson again, St. Bonaventure distinguished true philosophy from all others in that "it knows how to avoid that empty curiosity which has only itself for its object and loses itself in the wilderness of detailed facts."8 True illumination comes from avoiding the temptation to pursue the knowledge of mundane things as an object in its own right. Many of the characters in the texts I look at fall into just such a temptation, and it is my argument that the reader is signaled to avoid such lapses and remain above and beyond the snares of the limited, partial view. Encouraged to abandon the localized viewpoint of particular characters and negotiate the complexity of the texts without falling into the "black hole" of subjective consciousness, the reader discovers a new way of reading and an idea of judgment as a process, a participation in the search for meaning rather than the acceptance of received truth.

DISCURSIVE READING AND THE RElATIONSHIP BETWEEN TEXT AND IMAGE How we see, and how we theorize the act of seeing, influences the ways in which we understand the act of reading, and this was as true to medieval thinkers as it is now. Few scholars, however, incorporate theories of sight into their analyses of medieval texts and images. V. A. Kolve's still prominent account of text-image relationships and their impact on our reading ofChaucer's The Canterbury Tales remains one of the few works of scholarship to address the issue.9 Kolve largely derives his account of the function of memory and sight from St. Thomas Aquinas and Hugh of St. Victor, however, and makes no reference to the Franciscan writers who would also have had an influence on Chaucer's society. Lawrence Clopper's recent book on Langland's debt to Franciscanism offers a more precise analysis of the impact specific ideas and doctrines had on late-medievalliterature, but his approach is still the exception rather than the rule. I 0 Although historians such as Robert Pasnau and Katherine Tachau recognize the great influence that the Franciscans had on theories of sight and cognition, many literary scholars remain wedded to a rational, rather than affective, notion of medieval cognitive theory. Yet, it would seem that the work of the empiricists had an arguably greater influence on fourteenth-century English thought. Pasnau argues that the following passage from the Bible helped establish so-called "natural theology," wh ich inferred "the nature of God from what can be known about the created world."11

Sympathetic Participation and the Via Positiva

17

For the invisible things ofhim, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also, and divinity: so mat they are inexcusable. 12 God's hand in creation appears in the visible signs of His work: in created things themselves. Human beings can "see" the traces of God in the elements of nature all around them, and this suggests that the individual can become actively engaged in the world and leam to read it. Scripture helps to direct the growth in human understanding, but does not alone guarantee its success. Peter John Olivi, considering this issue, believed that we could see directly what was all around us, without mediation, and this had the effect of placing the human will at the heart of any profound relationship with God. Individuals were no longer considered simply to "receive" an image and its associated meaning, but were thought to be directly involved in any act of interpretation. By the end of the fourteenth century, then, the belief was that sensory experience was not simply revelatory, unearthing God's plan, but vibrandy involved in providential design that was alive and constandy evolving. This has a bearing on how we interpret late-medieval images. Martin Jay, writing about the stained-glass windows of Canterbury Cathedral, suggests that "their visual splendor was always in the service of the narratives they were meant to illustrate."13 Jay cites Norman Bryson's argument that the stained-glass window, "displays a marked intolerance of any claim on behalf of the image to independent life,"14 and so he explicidy relegates the image to a secondary role, as mere illustration. Bryson goes so far as to suggest that the role ofimages "is that of an accessible and palatable substitute" for the Word that they are meant to communicate to the unlettered. 15 The assumption that religious images merely literalize the written word or give it concrete form is part of the rational interpretation of medieval images as didactic and hierarchical, and belies the evidence that late-medieval Christians actively participated in their faith. Bryson andJay do not take into account the possibility that images may weil have been designed to encourage an affective participation in the Gospel message, engaging with the text as weil as simply illustrating it. Furthermore, by choosing co focus on the stained-glass windows, they also elide the subversive elements in medieval marginalia, wh ich often crawl and twist their way across prayer books, Psalters, and even church buildings of the period. The illuminated window, like the ilIuminated image or historiated initial in a prayer book, is almost always situated within a wider network ofimages that compete with it for our attention, so that the participant never simply receives a simple, straightforward message. As we shall see in both the Lumell Psalter and the Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux, traditional pictures illustrating scenes from the Bible could stand side-by-side

18

Desiring Truth

with images of apes and grotesques, undermining the possibility that such illustrated manuscripts offered the reader a linear interpretation of a sacred text, but the evidence is also there in the churches of the period, where a dazzling array of colorful images demanded that the visitor engage with God powerfully, immediately and affectively. More recently we have come to realize that medieval images did not merely translate the text into visual terms to reach out to the unlearned, but offered a more challenging response to textual authority. This is especially true in our understanding of the miniatures that appear in manuscripts and which accompany the texts, images once taken to illustrate the literature, in the manner of modern book illustrations. As Richard K. Emmerson points our in his survey ofilluminated Gower manuscripts, the frontispiece-like miniatures situated at the head of the text "do not so much illustrate the poem as introduce and highlight its major concerns."16 In an earlier essay on the portraits of the pilgrims in the Ellesmere manuscript Emmerson distinguishes twO types of image. Discursive images show the influence of narrative over the image; figural images show features proper to visual experience independent of language, a "being-as-image." No miniature is ever entirely one or another sort of image, because although it may derive substance from the text it accompanies each miniature also does "shape the response of the readers of the manuscript to the text it now introduces."17 Even where images are directly tied to a written text they do more than provide a visual reproduction of the narrative. Images engage direcdy with the memory of the viewer, who draws on innumerable associations suggested by the image in order to deepen his or her understanding of the text. Similarly, Stephen J. Nichols describes the manuscript page as a "quintessential field of conflicting desires,"18 pointing to the collision of illuminator and scribe, rubricaror and illustrator, text and image in the illuminated manuscript. Traditional criticism, however, requires that we read one way, limiting the range of possible meanings in a text to one demonstrable interpretation. One of the achievements of later medieval art is the capacity it has to offer us multiple perspectives, and a variety of approaches to the same end. Where the use of perspective often freezes space, rendering statk a tableau ordered for a single, idealized gaze, much of medieval art is organic and fluid. The viewer's position is not simply to look, but to engage. Forced to contemplate events in all their complexity, the participant is not allowed the comfort of easy truths, nor does God appear impossibly remote from the mundane world. The faithful believer therefore becomes privileged but also marginal, encouraged to trace the many connections that exist between the disparate elements of a literary or visual text.

Sympathetic Participation anti the Via Positiva

19

Turning to the picture ofSt. John and the angel again, we can see something of the effect that this revised approach has on our understanding of the picture. Camille's interpretation aligns our viewpoint with that of St. John, so that, like him, we follow the line of the angel's pointing finger and "look and see." Yet our view is not the same as the saint's, because unlike him we are able to take in several elements of the composition at once. We see Christ enthroned, as St. John does, but we also see the saint looking, which reminds us that the divine vision does not liberate us from the constraints of the flesh. The angel's hand cupped under St. John's chin, seemingly twisting the saint's head in the right direction, reinforces the corporeality of the scene. The folds of the saint's cloak unfurl to either side of him, intertwined with the ground beneath his feet; behind his head a tree grows, the colors of its trunk mirroring those of St. John's clothes. The angel lifts the saint's gaze away from this earthiness, as though St. John's body itself were being raised from its own fleshiness to enter the world of the spirit, echoing the words of the Apocalypse: "And immediately I was in the spirit."19 To our eyes, though, he remains connected to the earth, so that we cannot forget the human element of the vision. Nor is our gaze focused in one particular direction, as Camille suggests. The angel's arms do not simply point towards heaven and away from the earth: they are crossed, so that the arm nearest Christ supports St. John's chin, and the arm nearest the apostle points at the vision. The effect of this is to establish the reciprocity that exists between the human figure and the divine: Christ reaches down to St. John just as the saint raises himself upwards. Movement does not take place in one direction alone, and for us it cannot simply be a matter of turning our gaze towards the heavens. Nor is this what Foucault calls "representation in its pure form,"20 because this is not simply a visual representation of an encounter between saint, angel, and God. It cannot express the message "look and see," as Camille believes, because something escapes, something that is not caught up in the interchange between God and saint. Our own view, looking on, adds an extra and essential dimension to the picture. We are called upon to witness the full significance of the vision, wh ich involves the gift of God's grace in revealing the New Jerusalem to our eyes as weil as the requirement that we e1evate our vision in order to comprehend it. The picture is not anthropocentric: St. John is not the focal point of the composition and our view is not aligned with his. Instead, the scene celebrates the beauty of divine grace and the perpetual, ever-living relationship that God has with fallen humanity. The criss-crossed arms of the angel remind us that love does not move in one direction alone, nor is jt ever static.

20

Desiring Truth

Our view, then, is not St. John's view. The saint is offered something that we are not: direet apprehension of the heavenly kingdom. Nevertheless, our role is vital and immediate, in that we escape the confines ofhis gaze. "Blessed is he, that readeth and heareth the words of this prophecy," aeeording to the biblical text,21 suggesting that we bring something to the overall significanee of the spiritual event. Preeisely because we are not the Apostle we have a different perspeetive: one that takes in the riehness of the event and its significanee in human terms but whieh remains alert to its spiritual implications. The vision beeomes, in the words of Suzanne Lewis: .. . a means through which the contemplative might be brought to a realization of the divine presence . .. to enable the reader to share John's visions on a perceptual level and lead the eye, intellect, heart, and soul to experience and understand on a spiritual plane.22

The reader's experienee of the text is both informed by, and eontributes to, its overall meaning, whieh is infinite and ever changing. Yet, the image of St. John funetions in a different way again. The illustrated figure of the saint wanders from frame to frame in the illumination eyde, perpetually seeking satisfaetion without ever finding it because he remains bound to the earthly frame. He remains on the outside, apart from heavenly eonsolation, whieh recalls the argument ofBernard of Clairvaux that union with God is realized in desire and beeomes inseparable from that desire. The image of the saint moves laterally, from one event co the next, and ean never aehieve greater spiritual wisdom. He remains forever marginal, and always looking on. The illustrated saint therefore cannot embraee the higher truth that is offered to the aetual saint, or--equally importantly-to the reader of the text. The figure of the saint does not quite mediate the vision to us, nor does it represent our own view of the text. Unlike the represented human figure, we can eontemplate what we read and bring our aetive mental faeulties to bear, drawing on our memory and imagination to ereate assoeiations that grow rieher with every reading. The eyde of illustrations therefore ereates wider possibilities for the reader, who is able co move in more than one dimension. The question that illuminated Apoealypse cydes posed co the reader-viewer was, aeeording to Lewis, "no longer how to become dead to the world but alive to the possibilities of using human desires, memories, and experienees to spiritual advantage."23The medieval text is set in motion by the individual response of the reader, who emerges as an essential element in the produetion of meaning whieh remains forever beyond absolute eomprehension.

Sympathetic Participation and the Via Positiva

21

The image of the peripatetic St. John in illuminated cyeles may partially represent our point of entry into the narrative, but the figure also seems to function as a representation of unenlightened human understanding. The image of ehe saint (as opposed to St. John hirnself) is essentially a dumb witness: it may look and point, kneel, cower, or even read. It performs all of the activities that the reader should also engage in while contemplating the mysteries, but it can learn nothing from those activities, nor tell us what we can learn from them. It can only encourage us to partake of the vision on a multitude of levels, in the hope that we will achieve greater understanding and so transcend its own marginal viewpoint. We are exhorted to embark on our own spiritual journey, guided by the images but never defined by them. It is not a simple matter of gazing with rapt wonderment on the face of God; our journey is lifelong and never to be satisfied on this earth, but it depends upon our human potential to grow and learn.

GAZE, GLANCE, AND BEYOND Oeleuze and Guattari argue that literature is "a process and not a goal, a production and not an expression."24 Their argument involves an explicit rejection of the Oedipal subject that tends to channel the myriad possibilities in life into one e1early defined, linear system. To Oeleuze and Guattari, "expression" is equivalent to "definition," which is to cut off avenues of enquiry and contain the self-generating forces of life. Avowedly postmodern thinkers, Oeleuze and Guattari nevertheless unconsciously evoke the philosophy of St. Bonaventure, who insisted that life was a continual process of productivity and generation in which objects express ideas, and ideas express God. St. Bonaventure's belief that God is the eventual goal of this process of discovery does not see God as a finite conelusion, but as the absolute expression of all things and the relations that exist between them. Oeleuze and Guattari echo St. Bonaventure in their shared belief that human consciousness cannot be divorced from the perceptible world. They also see the dangers inherent in the individual ego, divided from life and seeking knowledge as an objective thing to be acquired, as alandscape to be mapped. The modern belief that sight represents our division from the world, which becomes objectified by our gaze, thus emerges as an expression of this fundamental error. Theories of sight and its role in cognition therefore become cent rally important in our analysis of late-medieval images and written texts. Recognizing the visual nature of much fourteenth-century literature, scholars such as A. C. Spearing have drawn analogies with film, unaware that they are often then reproducing modern notions of seeing antithetical to ideas current in the fourteenth century. Much modern film theory depends upon

22

Desiring Truth

an essentially concrete relationship between the subject who perceives and the object that is perceived. Subject and object become fixed by this relationship: the idealized subject who sees objectifies the thing perceived, and the resulting structure is both dyadic and egocentric. This concept, primarily derived from psychoanalytic theory, diverges from fourteenth-century attitudes to human perception, which stress the individual's capacity to re-evaluate what is seen. To later medieval thinkers, human sight was a mechanicaI, rather than an ideological, process, which brought images to the mi nd to be interpreted. Because human sight and understanding are limited and partial, humans can never "know" what they see with absolute certainty, and so any relationship with what the individual experiences is fluid and inconstant. The modern notion of the gaze, on the other hand, depends more heavily on a fixed relationship between subject and object, a1though that relationship is influenced bya range of ideological forces . Ir is worth questioning the notion of the gaze, the active mastery of what is seen, in greater detail, because we very often invoke it subconsciously, unaware of the ideological baggage it brings with it. The dogma of the gaze now occupies a position of almost total dominance in contemporary visual theory, and yet it is of little or no use to us in interpreting later-medieval texts and images. Nevertheless, it remains one of the foremost attributes of the humanist subject, and retains a central role in western culture, and it forms the basis of many modern critical approaches to literature and art. One discipline that draws heavily on the gaze is psychoanalysis, which insists that through the gaze, the subject enters a system of representation that supports the ego. Lacan's insistence that this entry into signification is based on a misrecognition (or meconnaissance) does not reduce the importance of this process. Through the gaze, the complexity of the worId is ordered into a system that reflects and also defines the subject. This dyadic, narcissistic relationship between the ego and the viewed object, which becomes misrecognized as an image of the self, Lacan calls the Imaginary. Lacan equates this with the "mirror stage" of human development, because it corresponds to the time that the child sees itself in the mirror and imagines its reflection to be an image of a perfectly realized selE Only the arrival of the Father, as the crucial third term, breaks the false reassurance of this system and "introjects" the subject into the Symbolic, which is equated with the Oedipal drama and with language. 25 On one level, then, the gaze supports and defines the ego, and assigns meaning to the material world by way of representation and signification. The primacy of the ego in psychoanalysis, in ordering sense experience within a coherent system of representation and constructing a "master narrative," emerges indirectly from the philosophy of Heget. As Steven Shaviro

Sympathetic Participation and the Via Positiva

23

points out, Hegel's discussion of"Sense-Certainty" leads hirn to argue that immediate experience is impossible, and that we can only identif)r a "here" and "now" when we have first assumed universal, abstract concepts. 26 For HegeI, and for psychoanalysis, what we perceive has no truth-value other than that which we assign it, either correcdy or incorrecdy. Lacan's theory of the gaze, in particular, goes further in its insistence that perception is formed around the subject. Because the subject is split by the arrival of the Father, it suffers a perpetual desire (or demand) for the imaginary plenitude that it has lost. This desire becomes focused on a "lost object," the objet petit a, which comes to be associated with the object of the gaze. Lacan insists that the gaze and the eye become separate, representing two mutually intertwining parts that express the divided ego. Perception becomes inextricable from our sense of self, and this sense of self is articulated through language, the primary system of representation. Modern conceptions of the viewer and even the reader are frequendy informed by Hegelian notions of the intellect and psychoanalytic inquiries into the formation of the subject. The centrality ofboth ego and intellect does not offer us much help in interpreting later-medieval texts and images, however, because the formation of the human subject is of no consequence to their purpose. The texts and images in this study are not constructed around the human subject as the defining element in a composition; neither do they seem to represent a faith in coherent, unambiguous narratives that would correspond to an individual's defining viewpoint. In poems such as Piers Plowman and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, incidental details very often have as great a significance to the reader as the linear story, and our attempts to make intellectually satisf)ring readings out of a wealth of diverse detail very often fall Rat. Because, to the fourteenth-century thinker, God is the u1timate goal of human life, but human intellect is fallible and prey to deception and sin, there are innumerable paths to truth, and God cannot be apprehended by the intellect a1one. Many fourteenth-century works of art chart a process of discovery by which the individual can come to know God: an inner journey that does not lead to self-knowledge as much as to spiritual wisdom. Prayer books such as the Hours ofJeanne d'Evreux, which I examine in the following chapter, chart a very personal relationship with God, but one that is not principally defined by the ego and the context in which it exists. Rather, the images that accompany the text open up the reader to new inRuences and new possibilities for understanding. Our engagement with the text, and our capacity to make judgment, therefore, depends upon an open sense of self that seeks the truth beyond itself, rather than a concrete sense of self that seeks the truth

24

Desiring Truth

about itself. To arrive at a new way of articulating this relationship we need new terms that take us away from the gaze, and the idealized system of representation that it invokes. Leon Battista Alberti is credited as being the first to articulate a thorough concept of the gaze, based upon the relationship between a putative viewer and the ordered reality of a painting. Alberti published two versions of his treatise on painting, called Della Pittura in Italian and De Pictura in Latin, around 1435, and in it he advanced the idea that the great work of the painter was the "historia," the arrangement of elements within a painting to form a satisfactory composition. The development of the Renaissance understanding of perspective allowed painters to represent the world, or a partial view of it, so that it corresponded to a single line of sight: the spectator stood at the point of convergence of all the elements within a painting. This was an idealized conception of vision and spectatorship, because it depended on stable notions of the viewer, and the purity of artistic representation and its fidelity to objective reality (wh ich itself had to be stable and accessible to the mind). Alberti thought that the canvas or picture frame represented a "window" onto the world of the painting, and that perspective ensured that this world was indistinguishable from the world that the viewer norrnally saw through his or her own eyes. The world of the painting was therefore ordered for this hypothetical viewer, who was a vitally important element of the composition, but who stood at a very definite remove from it, separated by this transparent "window." Alberti considered the relationship between painting and viewer to be clear and unmediated, but by theorizing about the window that divided them he effectively encapsulated subject and object within their own space, and rendered the relationship between thern stable. 27 As Martin Jay puts it: The reduction of vision to the Medusan gaze (or often the male gaze contemplating the female nude) and the loss of its potential for movement in the temporal glance was now ratified, at least according to the logicif not always the actual practice-of perspectival an. 28 We should not underestirnate the significance of these developments, which arguably help define the Renaissance idea of painting, and certainly influence the developrnent of the humanist subject in art. Michael Ann Holly suggests that: Perspective exemplifies not just the physics of the eye but the metaphysics of Renaissance culture, for it is an expression of the desire to order the world in a certain way: to make incoherencies coherent, to ob-

Sympathetic Participation and the Via Positiva

25

jectify subjective points of view, to turn the shimmering world of visual experience into a richly fixated construct. 29 Clearly, Holly believes that the "shimmering world" of the medieval conception of space was comparatively freer than that conceived by the theory of perspective, which insisted on a static, linear model of the experience of seeing. According to the feminist film critic Teresa Oe Lauretis: A veritable social technology, linear perspective produces and confirms a vision of things, a Weltanschauung, inscribing the correct judgment of the world in the act of seeing; the congruence of sociality and the individual, the unity of the social subject, are borne out in the very form and content of the representation. 30

Linear perspective does not merely fix points in space; it actually assigns a particular place to each point. More crucially, the use of perspective enabled painters to create works of art that would arrest movement, situating the viewer in place and time, and simultaneously satisfy his or her gaze, rewarding the spectator with pleasure. In A1berti's words, a painting must be attractive "ut oculos docti atque indocti spectatoris diutius quadam cum voluptate et anim motu detineat" ("so as to hold the eye of the learned and unlearned spectator for a long while with a certain sense of pleasure and emotion").3l Through the medium of perspective the viewing subject is partially constructed by the viewed object, which traps and positions hirn or her by way of identification. As Oe Lauretis points out, to identify is to be "actively involved as a subject in a process,"32 to enter into aseries of relations supported by specific practices-textual, discursive, or behavioral-in which this system of relations is inscribed. Though to speak critically of the work is to challenge that point of view, effectively the work still mandates the term of the discussion. The concept of the gaze, then, and the system of representation that supports it, effectively narrows our interpretive possibilities when we read a text or look at a picture. We can offer only resistance or compliance to this coercion: the master narrative retains its defining role. Art historians such as Emile Maie, who refer to the "didacticism" of medieval art, accept that such a master narrative exists, and Camille's analysis of the St. John miniature proceeds in a similar direction. Because medieval religious art has a dear purpose, it defines its ideal interpreter and fixes the terms of that interpretation. There is, ultimately, only one way to read such images. Both Holly and Oe Lauretis look to undermine the linearity of narrativization and find new ways to articulate the relationship between painting and observer. They collapse the gap between viewing subject and viewed ob-

26

Desiring Truth

ject, insisting that text and criticism are joined in a discursive relationship involving a circularity that undermines the fixed polarity of inside and outside, text and observer. Because the gaze can never be at a distinct remove from the viewed object, interpretation can never be unmediated-there is a1ways some element that enters the act of looking and influences it. Where Alberti's gaze is objective and dispassionate, Holly and Oe Lauretis think of the act oflooking as subjective and open to a wide array of forces. Yet, a1though they succeed in characterizing perception as a fluid system, one where subject and object continually influence one another, and where meaning consequently shifts from observer to observer, essentially the dyadic structure remains. The viewer and the viewed object remain the two poles around which meaning is woven, even though these interpretive loci are not rigidly placed as they are in Alberti's ideal system. In fact, efforts to deconstruct the gaze very often serve to re-affirm its power, a problem that psychoanalytic film theory is still trying to negotiate. Critics, who argue that the gaze should not necessarily privilege an idealized male spectator, rarely challenge the role of the gaze itself Instead, they attack one component of the system: typically the notion that the spectator can remain isolated and that the gaze can therefore be truly objective. Perhaps the most obvious example of this in film theory is Laura Mulvey's seminal article "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," in which she argues that the best method to undermine the power of the gaze is to attack the pleasurable impulses that drive it.33 By continuing to insist on the dominance of the gaze, however, she ends up constructing, as Steven Shaviro points out, "an Oedipal, phallic paradigm of vision that is much more totalizing and monolithic than anything the films she discusses are themselves able to articulate."34 To justify her argument that the tyranny of the male gaze must be overthrown, she must insist on the absolute power of that gaze, and she thereby a1locates it to a position of central, indisputable authority. Far from displacing the gaze from the center, she assigns it a central role in her theory of spectatorship. Clearly we need a fresh approach to the subject of perception if we are to understand a way oflooking that is not dependent upon the gaze: attempts to undermine its power only work within, and even rein force, the dominant system. Medieval spectatorship was not governed by perspective, and I will argue that medieval art did not privilege an ideal viewing subject. Though the locus of interpretation resides within the observer, he or she is not constructed bya medieval text, but rather engages with it to produce something new. The ambiguity and lack of closure in narrative poems of the period comes in part from the fact that meaning becomes something that involves both text and interpreter. It is therefore a continuing process of discovery rather than a move-

Sympathetic Participation and the Via Positiva

27

ment towards a finite condusion. To understand this fully we need a new way of seeing: one that does not merely "fine-tune" theories of the gaze, but steps outside it completely. One critic who offers an alternative to the gaze is Martin Jay. He states that developments in visual perspective initiated by Alberti meant that "the medieval assumption of multiple vantage points from which a scene could be painted, which at times meant no real vantage point at all, was replaced by one, sovereign eye."35 Jay argues ehat the consequences of this development were that the visual field replaced ehe visual world: in other words, the fluidity and openness of actual perception was reduced to a single, static image. The sovereign eye, in addition, was transcendent, and thus eternalized the image in an atemporal stasis. Through the influence of perspective relationships between objects within a frame became fixed, and were severed from any connection with other images. Where a cyde of illumination in a medieval manuscript allowed images to change in relation to one another across a temporal field, Renaissance art largely reduced such possibilities by reifying the image and dictating its parameters. Consequently, according to Jay, the idealized gaze replaced the corporeal glance. 36 Jay defines the glance as the physical act oflooking, whereas the gaze is ideologically charged and refers to the viewer's comtructed look. Taking the implications ofJay's distinctions further, we can say that Alberti's "window"his belief that a painting mediates between a viewer and the world of experience-establishes the viewer in aspace and orders reality according to this idealized viewpoint. It also separates the viewer from the thing viewed, reducing the affective contact between the two. Developments in perspective have the effect of channeling a given viewer's perceptions and defining them, and also of placing a division between the perceiver and what he or she perceives. The ideological basis of ehe gaze is a c1ear and helpful contribution to our understanding of the effect that the introduction of perspective had on Renaissance culture. The problem in Jay's account, however, comes from the raeher hazily defined "glance," which seems to refer to a sort of"pure" perception, ehe act oflooking as a simple biological operation. The medieval viewer, according to Jay, seemingly enters the system of the painting and occupies no stable point of reference within it, and is thus effectively defined by the painting's own ideological strucrure. 37 This is why Jay can suggest that the de-centered subject often has no vantage point at all, as though he or she is caught up in a web and literally unable to gain any perspective on the viewed object. Unfortunately, it does not allow the medieval viewer an active role in the production of meaning, and thus returns us to the prevailing idea that medieval an was "didactic," in the

28

Desiring Truth

sense that it permitted the viewer no autonomy of judgment. The term "glance," then, can offer little to our account, because it insists on the radical passivity and even immersion of the putative viewer within the prevailing ideology of the image, a stereotypical theory of the disenfranchisement of the medieval viewer that is all too familiar. Although "gaze" and "glance" are both visual terms, they do have im plications for the reader of a text, and it is possible that textual theory can offer a way out of deterministic theories of subjectivity. In particular, the ideological role of the gaze in the formation of master narratives centered upon protagonists with whom we identify has c1ear associations with textual narrative. The reader's relationship with central figures such as the DreameriNarrators of Pearl, Piers Plowman and The Parlement o[the Thre Ages seemingly depends upon the structure of the gaze, because through our identification with the narrator we enter into the narrative. Yet, I would argue that our engagement with such figures is far from stable, and that the text frequently offers us the opportunity to depart from the narrative viewpoint. Useful here is Mieke Bal's analysis of the viewer's engagement with painting, in which she attempts to break the tyranny of the gaze and formulate a theory in which the viewer's engagement is more active and fluid. Bal recognizes that a painting may weil "suggest" a particular reading, but she theorizes the possibility for the viewer to resist this coercion. Her work offers a way of articulating resistance to the dominant ideology of the text, although its usefulness is ultimately undermined by its dependence on the rigid structures it seeks to oppose. Bal, like Jay, also distinguishes between the "gaze" and the "glance," and follows Norman Bryson in arguing that the gaze is "the look that ahistoricizes and disembodies itself and objectifies, takes hold of, the contemplated object." The glance, on the other hand, "is the involved look where the viewer, aware o[and bodily participating in the process o[looking, interacts with the painting. 38 Awareness of one's own engagement in the act oflooking entails awareness that one is seeing a representation and not "the real thing." This formulation does confer some autonomy on the viewing subject, the "owner" of the glance, but by insisting that this subject remains aware of his or her engagement Bal and Bryson reproduce the fundamental binary at the heart of Alberti's perspectival system. Bai and Bryson insist that the viewer in some way stands outside the act of looking, occupying a stable position from which to interpret the process of engagement with the viewed object. In short, their theory insists that viewer and text, subject and object remain divided at a fundamental level; it is only the locus ofinterpretation that changes when we move from gaze to glance. In the gaze, interpretation takes place at some point between text and viewer; in

Sympathetic Participation and the Via Positiva

29

ehe glance, text and interpretation collide within the body of the spectator, but ehe spectator remains free and able to articulate this collision dispassionately. The two modes oflooking are not mutually exclusive, according to Bal: the glance resides in the spectator on a discursive level, whereas the gaze freezes the spectator in a typical aspect. Bal reminds us that for Lacan, the gaze is a sodal construct, and therefore cannot be stable, which therefore allows room for a look that is not an appropriation. Bal distinguishes this more fluid and inddental act of looking from the rigid gaze, the "act of looking of the colonialist variety."39 For all its theoretical sophistication, therefore, Bal's theory of the glance really only offers us a more subtle reading of the gaze. This effectively allows her to keep the gaze as a fundamental component ofher theory of spectatorship. She suggests that ehe gaze functions in two ways: as a look that renders interpretation concrete; and as a look that involves the viewer more intimately. Bal reduces the gap between viewer and painting created by Alberti's window, but her system remains dyadic in structure. Gaze and glance form parts of a structured system that circumscribes the relationship between the image and the viewer, who enters the narrative system of the work of art by what Bal terms Jocalization. Focalization refers to an act oflooking that strings elements together in a narrative form. 40 In a similar way to identification, one element within a text helps us to focalize disparate elements, stringing them together into a coherent narrative. The overall structure that the act of focalizing produces need not be fixed, but ehe various elements are usually combined in such a way as to direct interpretation. Focalization is not necessarily agendered act, as identification is: the focalizing point directs our gaze and hel ps us to read in a particular way, but does not require us to see as a man, for instance. Instead, the body of our own experiences-which are necessarily socially constructed-and the myths that surround ehe painting that we are looking at all contribute to the overall narrative. Traditionally there is one dominant reading of any text: it is this reading that the gaze typically articulates. Focalization merely supplies the lens that direets the gaze in a particular direetion. Post-structuralist approaches to interpretation do remind us of other, equally valid readings of a text, which emerge when different readers bring divergent perspectives to bear on the image. Nevereheless, the painting still offers us a representation of its subject, even ehough different viewers emphasize different elements in that representation. Bai insists through her theory of the relationship between the viewer and a painting that a viewer's freedom to interpret wh at he or she sees largely depends upon resisting the dominant narrative of the work of art. Bai calls this an "hysterical semiotic":

30

Desiring Truth Rather than reading for the plot, a "hysterieal" semiotic reads for the image; rather than reading for the main li ne or the proposition, it reads for the detail; and rather than reading for the hero or main character, it reads for the victim. 41

Yet, what of those medieval religious images in which the dominant narrative does not go uncontested, as in the case of the St. John miniature? Are the viewer's interpretive options denied? Bal's emphasis on resistance, like Laura Mulvey's theory of film narrative, produces a totalizing schema based on dialectic between the authoritative text and the reader who resists. This formulation cannot help us with any of the texts or images in this study, which provoke a fluid, active engagement and do not offer a clear direction to the reader or viewer (which is why they are often seen as "open ended" and "ambiguous"). Rather than Jocalize elements in a composition and so direct them towards narrative, medieval images leave the objects depicted and the relationships between them as open as possible. As Suzanne Lewis demonstrates, the medieval concept of image, in the thirteenth-century sense of the Latin similitudo, should be understood not as a "picture" but as a "likeness" or "species." This neo-platonic idea deals with the outward form of a thing necessarily drawn from, and linked to, that thing's inner essen ce: the image does not represent a likeness of a given object, but rather teIls us something about its fundamental nature. 42 St. Thomas Aquinas derives the term "species" from Aristotle, and it is fundamental to his theory of cognition. Species are representations of an object that can be apprehended by the mind, and all cognition takes place through some species of the perceived object. Grosseteste, followed by Bacon, formulated a notion of the multiplication of species, generated by the object and forming a causal chain that links object to percipient. 43 The resulting process of abstraction involves the diversification of effects depending upon the diversity of a recipient. 44 In other words, different viewers apprehend a thing differently, but not merely by offering divergent readings of the way that thing is represented by an image. The medieval image simply serves to bring a given object and the viewer into contact with one another, at which point the viewer is enjoined to engage his or her faculties in order to apprehend the object in its entirety. As Lewis remarks, this gave a "raison d'etre for ehe medieval scopic regime that enabled the gaze, intellect, and soul to gain spiritual insight and power and insight from its object of vision."45 The viewer does not simply decode the system of representation at work in an image, but uses it as a means to meditate deeply on the essence of things and their relationships with one another. The image is therefore, for Grosseteste at least, a transparent picture that mediates

Sympathetic Participation and the Via Positiva

31

between the thing and the intellectual and sensitive parts of the soul. This differs from Alberti's window in the extent of the intimacy that exists between the percipient and the thing perceived. The notion of the species does not divide the two quite so radicallyas Alberti's window; it merely provides the medium of transmission between the object and the eye, and mind, of the beholder. Towards the end of the fourteenth century, philosophers had begun to question the concept of species. As an abstraction, its actual function and essence were undear, and to the so-called "natural philosophers" such as Peter John Olivi and William of Ockham, it represented an unnatural division between humans and the created world. In particular, they rejected the idea that humans gain access to the extern al world only through mediation. William of Ockham argued for action at a distance, believing that physical objects make a direct impression on our sense organs without necessarily making an impression on the intervening medium. Robert Pasnau suggests that both Olivi and Ockham criticized the standard theory "for placing inside the percipient a further percipient-an audience capable of enjoying the representations forming within uso "46 In other words, during the later medieval period philosophers were moving away from the idea that images represented the natural world to our senses, and were beginning to examine the direct relationship between humans and the world around them. In essence this springs from the belief that humans can apprehend particulars, but not universals, and by evaluating and meditating upon particulars and the relationships between them, they can draw doser to understanding universal concepts. This has a profound bearing on this study, because it connects to the reader's ability to make judgments by interpreting, and perhaps eventually transcending, the particular outlooks of individual characters and narrative elements. In the later accounts of Olivi and Ockham, the viewed object does not reach us by way of a representation, and we are able to apprehend an object directly. Olivi in particular challenged the so-called "perspectivist" theory on the grounds that it entails the passivity of the cognitive faculties; instead he argued that perception occurs by way of the "actual attention" of the soul's powers. 47 The viewer enters an open-ended, ever-changing relationship with the viewed object alert to the endless possibilities offered by such a dialogue. If this idea is to help us understand our relationship with medieval images and artifacts, we have to see these texts as objects in their own right, rather than as representations of objects that are not accessible to our senses (the "lost objects" of psychoanalytic theory). By invoking the notion of species in her account of the visual images that accompany thirteenth-century Apocalypses Suzanne Lewis implicitly makes the case for seeing these images as objects with which we have a relationship, rather than as representations of the written text.

32

Desiring Truth

Thirteenth- and fourteenth-century theories of cognition were far less deterministic than the modern psychoanalytic argument, and interpreted the seeing of an object as a sort of open system of communication. The viewer participates in what he or she sees: by way of species in earlier accounts, more direcdy in later belief Through the application of the art of memory, the silent reader could make sense of his or her complex relationship with the text, by incorporating an immediate response into a wider tradition or frame narrative. This in turn both confirmed and legitimized the social and moral preconceptions of the subject, who came to see hirn or herself as part of a tradition. In the thirteenth century, images and cydes of illumination helped replace the lost community of readers, by establishing the lone reader within an interpretive system. Suzanne Lewis interprets this in psychoanalytic terms, suggesting that the solitary reader "is thus supplied with a satisfying unified image of selfhood by identifying with an object that reflects this dose, narcissistic cirde as mirror (speculum). But the image involves a misrecognition, because it idealizes the subject's reality."48 Eventually, like Lacan's subject, the reader metaphorically "grows up" and recognizes that what s/he is seeing and reading does not reflect his or her ideals. The resultant gap between the ideal and the real eventually provokes the reader to start making his or her own interpretive judgments. The individual response of the reader must give way to collective understanding, but this never elides his or her individual viewpoint. Instead, this view contributes to the collective understanding, adding to the combined experience of the text. This is neither the gaze that controls, nor the glance that assigns the text to the place of pure representation. It is something different: an active look, but one which is intimately engaged with the text; a subjective experience, but one which sees the notion of "self" inscribed within a wider interpretive schema. For Lewis, the thirteenth-century Apocalypse helped constitute a discourse of subjective perception and inner vision that informs later medieval theories of individualism, focusing on the personal and private rather than the communal and public. The question posed to the readerviewer, she argues, was "no Ion ger how to become dead to the world but alive to the possibilities of using human desires, memories, and experiences to spiritual advantage."49 Lewis's account of the role played by illuminated Apocalypses in the construction of the subject is erudite, and her analysis of the images themselves masterful. Nevertheless, the use of psychoanalytic terms to frame this discussion is ultimately an impediment, if only because Lacanian psychoanalysis depends so heavily on the notion of Lack, and the subject's consequent desire for astate of illusory plenitude. Lewis's suggestion that illuminated cy-

Sympathetic Participation and the Via Positiva

33

des provoke the individual into making his or her own judgments and responses is certainly right, and bears out the rise in importance of the readeras we shall see. NonetheIess, psychoanalysis defines this search for truth as a quest to discover the "lost object" that would restore the seIf to wholeness: an impossible search and one absoluteIy centered on the self. Yet, to later medieval thinkers the quest is for God in whom the seIf is made whole, and therefore charts a movement towards a transcendent truth rather than expresses a basic and irreconcilable division. Although Christian thinkers believed that humanity could not achieve truth in absolute terms, the reassuring presence of God and the limitless powers of grace provided the foundation for individual speculative enquiry. The subject, or ego, is not the focus of the images and texts in this study, but the reIationship between the subject and the created world often iso Lacan refined his theory of lack through the notion ofjouissance, a notoriously difficult and problematic theory that assigns a place for 4e woman outside language ('the' is crossed out to denote that woman has no place within the law if signification). Jouissance is the realm of the mystic and of femininity, an indefinable state of plenitude desired by the ego and doser to God. According to Lacan, within the framework of courtly love male desire for the female can be interpret as the ego's desire for this mystical union, rather than for the 'lost object' (or objet petit a) of the divided seIf. Although doser in spirit to medieval mysticism than the brutallogic of lack, jouissance is problematic because it does not deny Lacan's basic insistence on the law of the phallus and the central drive of the ego towards seIf: for Lacan, "in loving God it is ourselves we love. "50 Jouissance, on the other hand, is "that which goes beyond, which signifies nothing," it's position beyond the law of signification only lending that law greater definition and authority. UltimateIy, jouissance remains predicated on the constructed seIf: Lacan is too concerned with the needs of the (male) ego for plenitude and satisfaction to help us chart a movement away from seIf, where the individual activeIy participates in a never-ending quest the failure of which does not necessarily entail alienation and lack. 51 Mary Carruthers offers us a more promising way to articulate medieval subjectivity in her recent book on the art of memory. In particular, her analysis of the ways in which medieval readers approached texts and images allows us to suggest that they practiced a more associative, and less representational, war of reading and seeing. In other words, images were often read in terms of their reIationships with one another and the ways in which ther provoked the mind, rather than in terms of what they strictly represent. The power that many marginal images, in particular, have to shock (that they maintain to this

34

Desiring Truth

day, as we shall see) is related to this function . The subjectivity of the reader is not affirmed by that reader's ability to structure images and text into a master narrative; instead, he or she is enjoined to embark upon a limitless quest for truth through an endless chain of associations. Carruthers argues that a medieval person was almost literally "composed" from fragments of exemplary authors, in that each person built up his or her house of memory and slotted each new experience into it by relating these experiences to exemplary stories. Thus the "self" was constructed, and though capable ofindividuality (the very nature of the construction remained essentially personal), each individual was dependent upon memory as a prerequisite of character. 52 Ethical issues were transmitted in a system as wide as literature itself, always open to interpretation, always reflecting individual choices. Thus, "instead of the word "self" or even "individual," we might better speak of a "subject-who-remembers," and in remembering also feels and thinks and judges."53 Carruthers outlines a reading process that involves a continual and active engagement with the text, where "meaning" emerges as the collaboration between text and reader. At first this sounds similar to the theory of the glance suggested by Holly and Bai, in which acts of interpretation take place within the viewer, who is influenced by what he or she sees and by what he or she has experienced. For the medieval interpreter, however, the movement takes place in the opposite direction, whereby the subject translates his or her experience through reference to the wider interpretive schema offered by the texts. In other words, reading becomes a Deleuzian process of de-centering, whereby the subject grows to recognize its place within a wider network of relationships that include it. The subject is liberated from itself, in Carruthers's analysis, and grows in wisdom by learning that the human tendency to make a coherent narrative out of experience is to limit that experience. Referring to Heloise's use of the figure of Cornelia from Lucan's Pharsalia to epitomize her situation, for instance, Carruthers argues that Heloise does not "see herself as" Cornelia, in the sense of acting a role; rather, Cornelias experience is also hers. 54 The act of reading is therefore a public act: Heloise "re-presents" Cornelia in her own present situation, and the text from Lucan gives her a temporal and spatial meeting point-a way of articulating her personal experience by way of a "public" memory-the story of Cornelia. Heloise's act of reading is not focalized through the figure of Cornelia, and she does not identify with her. The act of identification, in many ways identical with the employment of the gaze, inverts the process that Carruthers outlines here by requiring that the character with whom we identify to interpret the story for uso Instead, Heloise participates in Cornelias story, making it hers,

Sympathetic Participation and the Via Positiva

35

yet also seeing herself in it. The story now enters a new realm that indudes both Heloise and Cornelia, who become points within this superstructure. As Carruthers points out, the medieval reader assigns roles to various figures within a text that translate a personal experience into a public one. Though a subjective act, this is not an attempt to concretize elements into a coherent narrative pattern that supports a stable notion of the self. Instead, the self is projected into a wider context that indudes it, an open system of communication that affirms the distinctness of each element but simultaneously shows how these elements continually influence one another. Identification, gaze and glance center all interpretive acts on the self and ultimately affirm the security and isolation of the viewing subject, funneling interpretation in one direction. Where the fourteenth-century model is fluid, the psychoanalytic model is striated, subject to the law of the individual and personal. This is not to suggest that the medieval model is not personal, or does not have personal elements to it. In fact, Carruthers points to the very affective engagement between the reader and the text, and the text and the image. My argument is that the subject does not provide the locus of interpretation, but that the reader's response is distracted, or what Deleuze and Guattari refer to as nomadie thought. 55 This is thought that turns away from systems of representations and established structures and pursues its own path, drawing understanding from the chain of associations between diverse elements. It is this affective engagement with texts and images in a gradual movement away from the restricted viewpoint of the individual subject that offer a better model of reading and seeing for my study. The gaze and the glance that are so rooted in the self, and in theories of lack and the patemal law of the signifier, do not embrace the relationships that exist in the medieval reading process. It is the purpose of the rest of this chapter to attempt to introduce new terms to help us understand this process.

SYMPATHETIC PARTICIPATION As we have seen, Camille's analysis of the picture of St. John and the angel depends heavily on the alignment of our gaze with that of the depicted saint. I have suggested that Camille's analysis requires that we identi./J with St. John, drawing upon a term fundamental to psychoanalytic film theory. The theory of identification insists that there is always one--typically male--character in a film with whom we identify, or whose point of view we share. We the audience interpret the adventure through his eyes, and our response to the action is typica1ly his response. 56 We are not free to escape the dominant gaze of this character because we are sutured into the action by means of the tightly controlled composition of the cinema frame or mise-en-scene. In film this is

36

Desiring Truth

brought about via an "establishing shot," whereby the camera "looks" from the point of view of the dominant character, then cuts to the character receiving that look, then returns to the dominant character who is now established as the bearer of the controlling gaze. Through this system, according to classical film theory, the audience is now woven, or sutured, into a relationship with the dominant character. The concept of suture provides an account of the way in which subjects emerge in discourse. The theory was originally formulated by Jacques-Alain Miller, a disciple of Lacan, and is now most frequendy applied to cinematic texts. Suture is defined by Kaja Silverman as that moment when the subject "inserts itself into the symbolic register in the guise of a signifier."57 The signifier designates that which is lacking, and operates in the form of a stand-in. This corresponds to the same event in language, when a signifier such as a pronoun grants the subject access to the symbolic order whilst simultaneously alienating it from its drives and needs. In other words, access to the symbolic is gained at the expense ofbeing, and the signifier stands in for the absent subject "whose lack it can never stop signifying."58 Jean-Pierre Oudart brought the concept to film studies as an answer to the question: "what is the equivalent in film for language in the literary text?"59 Theorists agree that in film the subject-position is articulated by means of connected shots, which are the equivalent of syntactic relationships in linguistic discourse. According to psychoanalytic film theory, we can only see a film through the eyes of characters whose gazes form a network into which we are woven (or sutured). We can never escape this dominant system, and our view is always subordinate to that of the protagonist of the film-the character with whom we identify. The psychoanalytic basis of this theory is predicated on a Lacanian idea of lack, and a supposed correspondence between the cinema screen and Lacan's "mirror stage" ofhuman deveiopment. 60 The work ofJeanLouis Baudry and Christian Metz in particular drew upon Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to suggest that the film spectator regresses when watching a film, and becomes like the chained captives in Plato's allegory of the cave. 61 The viewing subject is then reconstructed by the network oflooks negotiated by the camera, that construct an illusion of reality corresponding to the "lost object" of the viewer's psychological identity. The subject comes to identify with the roving camera eye, which acts as a tool in the ideological "apparatus" of the cinema by contributing to the sense of false recognition in the viewer. In short, the viewer engages in a regressive fantasy, and is passively constructed by the camera eye that, in the words of Martin Jay, "negates differences and produces a singular subject effect. "62

Sympathetic Participation and the Via Positiva

37

Feminist theorists such as Laura Mulvey developed me ideas of Baudry and Metz, focusing especially on the ideological effects of film. Mulvey stressed mat the subject who is constructed and affirmed by the system of looks in a film is ideologically male, and that the spectator, even when female, is forced to identify with the dominant character in me narrative. This character is typically male, and his look men objectifies a female character who cannot return mat look. The feminist interpretation of me theory of identification, and its subsequent re-negotiation by a wide number of feminist writers, is not central to our concerns here. What does concern us is the fact that, consciously or not, Camille invokes some of me principal elements of the theory of identification in his analysis of the picture of St. John and the angel. By insisting upon the alignment of our gaze with that of St. John, Camille implies that we identify with the image of the saint, who then directs our view and thus our interpretation of the picture as a whole. Yet, the idea of the active mastery o[the gaze seems alien to this picture, because the system of reciprocallooks does not establish one dominant viewpoint. As we see, St. John's position is secondary and even passive-he receives the vision, and exercises no control over it. Furthermore, the power of the visual tableau depends in part upon the reader/viewer's ability to escape the saint's gaze and see things unavailable to his marginal view. Our relationship with the kneeling figure is contested, and our view is panoramic where his is linear. With whom should we identify? The marginal saint who receives the vision, the angel who directs his gaze, or God, who presumably could lay daim to the controlling viewpoint? The system of identification is furmer undermined by the fact that the image of St. John proliferates ac ross aseries of pictures that constitute a cyde of illustration. The miniature mat Camille and I consider in isolation actually connects to the other images in the cyde, each of which positions the saint in a different way. Our relationship with hirn is contested within each picture and across the cyde as a whole. The analogy with film is obvious here, where a fluid narrative replaces a single coherent image. Even film, however, can daim that a given character is consistent from one frame to the next, even though that character may not have areal identity. The image of St. John, on the other hand, may have a similar appearance in each miniature, but its role and relationship with the viewer differs from frame to frame, according to context. It is this ever-changing "character" that invites the reader to explore the text more direccly, opening it up for more discursive enquiry, and undermines the widely accepted idea that medieval art is necessarily didactic and structured around a dominant and rigidly enforced narrative.

38

Desiring Truth

Camille suggests that our gaze corresponds exacdy with that of St. John, so that we see what the kneeling figure sees. Rather than mediate the experience for us, permitting us entry into the complex system of relations that is the apocalyptic vision, the image therefore offers areading of that vision, effectively circumscribing the interpretive possibilities open to uso Consequently, we must then view things "second hand," at a remove, and so by the time it reaches us the divine message has become rather watered down: we are now encouraged merely to indine our thoughts in a heavenly direction, rather than contemplate the godhead directly as the saint does. Aligning our gaze with his, therefore, undermines our own affective responses to the text and ignores the complexities of the picture: the elaborate system of relationships is reduced to one linear master narrative. Yet this picture charts a pattern of reciprocal exchanges that involve the viewer direcdy. The relative placement of the figures in the tableau teIls us something of the relationship between them, but we can derive further significance from those elements seemingly peripheral to its didactic message. The colors of the characters' robes, the presence of the tree and earth, and the pattern of glances and gestures aIl provide material for contemplation, and for comparison with later pictures in the cyde. We are intimately involved in an interpretive process that cannot be reduced to a single strand of meaning, but one that rewards the richness and fluidity of achain of associations. Rather than identify with one figure within a scene, which then directs our reading of the picture as a whole, we participate more direcdy and more fluidly in a system that does not simply construct a stable ideological subject. We are not told what to think or how to read, but we are encouraged to engage wi th what we see. In doing so, the gap between "subject" and "object," "text" and "reader" is reduced: we are intimately involved in the production of meaning through a process of what Steven Shaviro calls mimesis or contagion. 63 Following Walter Benjamin's formulation, Shaviro explains that mimesis involves "a participatory and tactile contact between what post-Cartesian thought calls the object and the subject" in a movement that cannot be reduced to "the canons of meaning and representation."64 Crucial to our study is the challenge that Shaviro offers to theories of identification. He remarks that: According to orthodox psychoanalysis, the subject is stabilized and rigidifted by means of its identiftcations; but ... we must radically redeftne the very notion of identiftcation, and say rather that the subject is captivated and "distracted," made more fluid and indeterminate, in the proccss of sympathetic participation.65

Sympathetic Participation and the Via Positiva

39

Following Shaviro, then, I would argue that we do not identify with St. John, but that we engage in a process of sympathetic participation in his vision. His presence creates a path for our own involvement in the revelation, but our experience remains uniquely our own. The notion of sympathetic participation is of central importance in my analysis of fourteenth-century texts, images and manuscripts because it pi aces our affictive involvement with what we see and read at the center of the process. Yet, the concept of sympathetic engagement does not require stable meanings or demand that our subject position to be secure and untroubled. Shaviro's work on film explicitly challenges the prevailing orthodoxy of psychoanalytic film theory, and turns instead to an analysis of our own bodily engagement with film. In his own words, Shaviro attempts to evoke "the capacity of the cinematic apparatus to produce and multiply "lines of flight" instead of dwelling on its role in conforming and enforcing oppressive standards and ideologies. "66 His approach to film unconsciously echoes Franciscan definitions of meditation, which stress the human capacity to learn and grow rather than accept finite conclusions handed down as 'received truth.' The active engagement of the participant with fourteenth-century texts and images depends upon the fluidity and mobility of the roving eye and the need to continually re-evaluate the objective work, rather than upon identification with one authoritative point of view. Crucially, this was as true for the medieval participant as it is for us: medieval texts require an active, participatory engagement in order fully to 'come alive.' Consider the example of the Wilton Diptych, the farnous panel often thought to have been painted for King Richard. 67 In the left-hand panel, Richard is depicted kneeling at prayer; while behind hirn stand the figures of St. Edmund, St. Edward the Confessor, and St. John the Baptist. In the right-hand panel stands Mary, the Blessed Virgin, holding the infant Jesus thronged by angels. The king and the three saints are situated in a dark landscape, with a forbidding wood behind them in the background. The holy figures on the right, in contrast, stand in a field dotted with bright flowers. All the eyes in the group on the left seem directed towards Christ and his mother to the right, but it is far from certain that the two groups occupy a contiguous space. In fact the Diptych seems to offer us a view of both landscapes-the dark wood that may symbolize the earthly sphere, and the meadow that may symbolize heaven-simultaneously, yet without suggesting that they occupy the sarne order of space and time. The viewer's eye certainly travels from one side to the other, following the lines of sight of king, saints, angels, and the mother and child, as though the two frarnes of reference co-existed.

40

Desiring Truth

Yet for all this, the scenes in each panel remain distinct, so that although elements from one side echo those in the other (one angel holds the flag ofEngland, for example, and Christ's gold swaddling dothes are echoed in the king's robes), each panel is self-contained. Even the gold backgrounds are of different patterns. This is not, then, the representation of an actual meeting, and the Diptych does not synthesize disparate elements into one coherent whole. Instead, the panel explores the connections between diverse characters and situations that share the common ground of the Christi an faith, whilst continuing to affirm that they are diverse. The viewer's eye can explorethe relationship between King Richard and his faith, accepting that the human figures and the divine "meet" on a spiritual frame, while remaining separated on the bodily level. The Wilton Diptych is notoriously impervious to decoding, and scholars still do not agree upon the "meaning" of the painting. Perhaps it is time to surrender the search for finite meaning, and the attempt to narrow down something that celebrates complexity so gloriously. The Wilton Diptych actively resists dosure, and instead explores relationships that perpetually flourish. It is worth noting that, although the panel was seemingly designed for Richard 11 and was possibly even intended for his private use, it is less than certain which is the most important figure in the painting. Many of the angels, the Christ-child, and the Blessed Virgin all seem to look at the kneeling king, but Richard's "own" saints seem to gaze in the direction of the Holy Family. All of the an gels wear Richard's own emblem, the white hart, which suggests that he is more important than Christ hirnself. Alternatively-and perhaps less shockingly-the fact that the angels wear Richard's badge may simply suggest that they "represent" his court in heaven, like celestial ambassadors. It is as though Richard already has one foot in heaven, making this artifact a symbol ofhis power and divinity as much as an expression ofhis piety. Certainly, the Wilton Diptych explores a living relationship between a king, his ancestral spiritual guardians, his current political identity, and his eternal faith via a complex system of inter-connected glances. There is more than a suggestion that the painting establishes the king at the center of a Foucauldian network of power, connecting Richard's own emblems with the symbols ofhis kingship and uniting these with the royal house of France. Personal and national saints stand behind the king, wedding Richard's individual faith to that ofhis country. In the person ofRichard they kneel before, or prepare to receive, the Christ child, establishing a final connection with future life and spiritual glory. Ir is as though the altarpiece was designed to make a spectade 0/the king, placing hirn on view at the center of an elaborate network that amounted to nothing less than a focalization of re-

Sympathetic Participation anti the Via Positiva

41

ligious, political and historical power. As Nigel Saul points out in his biography of Richard, the king "showed an almost obsessive interest in projecting and manipulating his own image" in response to the Appellant crisis of 1387, which had exposed the hollowness of royal power. 68 Richard's concerns are to reinvest royal power with meaning by controlling its visual representation. His own image comes to represent the divine status of kingship, just as it would later become a tool to legitimize the authority of the Lancastrian court: if we see the Wilton Diptych simply as an expression of the individual ego, of Richard's own desire for self-promotion, we miss the point entirely. If, on the other hand, the Wilton Diptych was created after Richard's reign, then this lends further credence to the idea that it depicts a network of relations that move through and yet culminate in the body of the king. The theory of identification is inadequate to explain this movement, which continually escapes the controlling gaze of any one character. We do not identif}r with the kneeling Richard, but bear witness to his position as anode within a complex web of relationships. The king's body bears the imprint of social and historical forces in the insignia that he wears, and he receives the look of the Virgin and Child as though he is as much an object of veneration as they are. Yet, the diptych does not become mere spectade: it is too intimate for that. We are drawn in by the affective piety that passes between the figures, and ravished by the richness of the colors and decoration. Our look is woven into the structure of the painting, which depends in part for its power on our willingness to respond to the complexities of the relationships it charts. If the Wilton Diptych speaks of power and piety, history and blessed expectation, it does so by rousing fervent emotions in the viewer, rather than by orchestrating a single, authoritative point of view. THE VIA POSITIVA AND THE JOURNEY TO TRUTH

The Wilton Diptych offers a demonstration of the need to participate in the meaning of fourteenth-century art, charting as it does the union of various forces that find their ultimate expression in the king. Each element retains its own identity, however, and so the painting becomes like the sound of many voices in harmony, a multi-vocal chorus in which each note rings dear, yet contributes to the power of the whole. 69 The painting converges on a meeting that never takes place, where a kneeling king both offers obeisance and receives the blessing of the infant Christ. The movement between these two groups has no beginning and no end, and has no dear direction. Instead, it expresses a constant, living relationship, each element informed by and touching upon the other. Our own involvement is participatory, denying true objectivity. Our point of view is restless and ambulatory: at once apprehending

42

Desiring Truth

the collision of various lines of sight and contributing to that collision; aware of a visual and spatial network and engaged within it. The participant is engaged but willing, and ideally does not become lost within the network of looks and glances that he or she explores. In the other texts, images, and manuscripts that comprise this study, the reader or viewer's ability to transcend the interaction between marginalized viewpoints becomes of central importance. This, ultimately, prevents us from thinking of these visual and written texts as "open ended," or delighting in multivocality for its own sake. The convergence of multiple viewpoints, or the dialectic between contrasting voices, in these works express a sort of Bonaventuran "multiple mode": something that hel ps us to achieve wisdom by offering proliferating avenues of enquiry. The works themselves often help us to transcend the 10calized view and achieve something like wisdom, but not through the process of dialectic. Indeed, ratiocinative argument often becomes an impediment to such transcendence, as in The Parlement of the Thre Ages and even Piers Plowman. Ultimately, however, the multivocality of the works that we will look at functions affirmatively, offering the hope that an aggregation of images and voices can aid us in the process of judgment. These works involve the reader or viewer in a sort of via positiva through the hope that an image or voice may help the participant, who we can take to be a Christian believer, to apprehend a more universal truth, and so escape the endless trap of relativism. 70 The viewing or reading subject emerges as a crucial component of textual meaning, brought to a moment of revelation bya succession of striking moments. The marginalia in the Luttrell Psalter and the Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux offer ever-multiplying possibilities for discovery, and in their combined or individual effect these images may deepen the reader's understanding of Scriptural authority more than any amount of interpretation can. Similarly, the sheer physicality of the descriptive passages in many of the poems in Cotton Nero A.x reveal a more total human engagement with Scripture than the homiletic tradition is often thought to a1low. In each case prayer, meditation, and the reading process itselfbecomes a lifelong engagement that involves the body as weil as the mind, in a quest that is both personal and universal. Physical descriptions, images, allegories, and even the intrusion of alternate voices into a poetic narrative provide points of entry and departure that deepen our reading experience. Following Deleuze, I refer to these moments as privileged instants, those components of movement that push the narrative towards crisis, and escape the linear order of time.?! Privileged instants reveal an intelligible world beyond the narrative, rather than actualize that world in concrete form. In other words, they lead us away from the text, into the realm

Sympathetic Participation and the Via Positiva of association rather than definition. Ricardian poetry, points out that:

J.

43

A. Burrow, in his seminal book on

The Ricardian poet deals in happenings-happenings which he has experienced oe deeamed oe eead oe learned about, oe simply happenings.72

Such textual events often break the narrative flow, leading us to conclude that fourteenth-century poetry is digressive and discursive. This discursiveness emerges, however, as a means of attaining "truth" that does not rely on fixed arguments or verdicts, but which promotes the need for us to judge what we read. Privileged instants are shocking moments that arrest our sensibilities, jolting us from the complacency of our secure and uncontested, but necessarily limited, 'world view' and forcing us to acknowledge the "conjunctive synthesis," a sudden and vertiginous "moment of truth." The "conjunctive synthesis" is Deleuze and Guattari's term for a moment of revelation that cuts through the douds of dialectic and offer a glimpse of the complex truth of the matter, the interaction of a11 elements, induding the individual, within a complex and dynamic Whole.7 3 This is not a firm conclusion, but the sudden realization that a world of relationships exists beyond ordered rea1ity that the individual often constructs for her or himself.74 Deleuze and Guattari point to the tendency of "Oedipal" subjects to order the universe into conventional structures, whilst the truly alert individual (or "schizophrenie") rejects such ordering and seeks to affirm life as a constant process of evolution or becoming. The correspondence between this theory and the via positiva comes from the shared belief that human reason is inevitably suspect, and that we cannot "know" anyching absolutely, or with absolute ass urance. The wise individual, then, seeks to learn, and to engage in judgment that remains alert to the world and the complexity of experience, aware that this activity takes pi ace within the reassuring grace of God. The Christian of good will and active faith, Iike the ideal individual theorized by Deleuze and Guattari, must constantly explore the world for dues that help reveal the dynamic interactions that animate the universe, rather than passively a1low dogma and ideology to define truth. The approach that I propose to take in the subsequent chapters is perhaps unusual, drawing on the theories of Deleuze and Guattari, Maurice Blanchot, Georges Bataille, and Michel Foucault to help explain the art of fourteenth-century poetry, art, and manuscript culture. Yet, the approach of these theorists and the philosophies offourteenth-century mystical writers are strikingly similar. All investigate a concept of truth that is complex and multivocal, and that escapes the control of any one individual: one that is counterintuitive, restive, and suspicious of master narratives. The film theories of

44

Desiring Truth

Shaviro and Deleuze also challenge the psychoanalytic basis of modern theories of perception and so evoke a more affective response to narrative. In this way, I draw upon medieval patterns of resistance, not merely elucidating the obviously dissenting texts, like Piers Plowman, but examining the moments of transgression and upheaval in works traditionally assumed to be more "straightforward" or conservative, such as Cleanness. It is my belief that when these texts speak against themselves we are motivated to engage with them, to participate in their meaning and explore a relationship that is the only accessible expression of universal truth. The crucial difference between postmodernism and medieval mysticism, of course, is that the mystics believed that the meditative journey ended in God, whereas postmodern thinkers reject all absolutes. Such theories, then, can only offer us a means of articulating an interpretive response to discursive texts and images, rather than a final analysis of such works; I therefore use contemporary theory provocatively, in order to stimulate debate. What postmodernism and mysticism do share is a sense that the truth is never finite, and that the human intellect does not have the capacity to comprehend the complex patterns by wh ich it is composed. For postmodernists, human attempts to define truth lead to fascism; for mystics they would have led to failure and despair. Both systems of thought would prefer that humans engage with life more intuitively and expressively, trusting to what the senses reveal and freed from the need for rational order. It is these points of connection where contemporary critica1 theory has most value to our understanding of fourteenthcentury art and literature. Jonathan J. G . Alexander suggests that St. Bernard of Clairvaux's famous denouncement of the profusion of images in medieval churches had less to do with the luxury of such images, than in the "emphasis on uniformity in the Cistercian community."75 The proliferation of secular imagery was formless, unsettling, and lacking c1ear religious significance. For the poets and artists in this study, however, the profusion and physica1 immediacy of images contribute to a richer understanding, not a collapse into doubt and uncertainty. A shift in emphasis from Scriptural authority to human interpretation, a dominant feature of fourteenth-century England, goes hand in hand with this development. Spiritual truth gradually became no longer a matter of what could be learnt, it came to be about what the individual sees and experiences, and how this experiential knowledge brings each believer to a fuHer apprehension of God. This journey into truth connects the diverse elements of my study.

ChapterTwo

Visual Fascination and Two Illustrated Prayer Books

In this chapter I focus on two manuscripts, both designed and created in the fourteenth century-though in different parts of Europe-in order to explore the ways in wh ich they involve the reader in the production of meaning. Both are illustrated, which allows us to examine the role that images play in the relationship between the reader and the text. Both are what we might call "personal" works, in that they were designed for, and certainly in one case commissioned by, particular individuals. 1 This allows me to examine the notion of subjectivity and explore the possibility that the modern notion of the "personal," with its dependence on the individual ego and its isolated, defining gaze, differs sharply from the medieval. As I began to show in the preceding chapter, we need to approach a conception of the individual that does not center upon the constructed seil. In different ways, these manuscripts help us to see both vision and reading as a process of discovery, through wh ich the individual transcends the limitations of the self and explores a wider frame of reference. The Psalter and the Book of Hours that form the basis of this chapter also highlight one of the problems in examining the relationship between vision and reading in a late-medieval context. Both are unusual for the breadth and scale of their programs of illustration, and for the sheer profus ion of images that fill the borders of every page. Most fourteenth-century manuscripts are not so richly decorated, particularly those that originate in England. Nevertheless, the fact that these books were produced for particular individuaIs, and seem to construct a reading practice whereby images engage the vi ewer in a complex interpretive network, allows us to make the connection between visual perception and textual interpretation. 2 The pictures in these manuscripts, I would argue, fulfi1 a similar role to the wealth of characters,

45

46

Desiring Truth

incidents, and voices that interact within the proliferating narrative of the poems I will be looking at in the following chapters. The reader of the illustrated manuscript, like the reader of the debate poem or dream narrative, embarks on a journey that maps an endless series of connections between disparate elements, rather than pursues a straightforward path towards meaning. Yet, this is not a postmodern, open-ended process that affirms the validity of all points within the system. Instead, by provoking the reader and forcing a response to what he or she sees and reads, the images encourage the participant to engage directly and affectively with the text, not in order to reach conclusions, but to explore matters of living faith . Above all, there is no uniformity to the pattern of illustrations within these manuscripts, just as there is no ordered system to the events in the narrative poems that we will be looking at later. The progress of Piers Plowman, for instance, is continually interrupted by the arrival of a succession of characters who offer the dreamer different points of view. The dreamer's own development is undermined by his consistent inability to stay awake, and by his resistance to making judgments that could allow hirn to escape his fruitless search for final definitions of truth. In the Pearl-poems, the aggregation of details into a coherent pattern or story often appears to be a dubious undertaking that leads to an arbitrary and contingent viewpoint. For the Pearl-poet, stories seem to rdlect the human tendency to shut one's eyes to God and so to the possibilities for growth and spiritual development. The illustrations in the Lumell Psalter and the Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux, which are the focus of this chapter, have a similar function to the conAicting voices and events within these poems. In both manuscripts there are both sacred and profane images: some are funny, some are shocking, whilst some are grotesque and unusual. The images can be characterized, overall, by their lack of uniformity either of design or function, and this suggests that they were intended to destabilize the reader. They do not support the construction of master narratives through coherent systems of representation, but involve the reader in an endless process of discovery that very often transcends the intellect and the correspondences that it seeks to make. Given the lack of uniformity in the marginalia and framed illustrations in these two manuscripts, it is interesting to note that recent scholarship on the artifacts has sought to decode the images and establish them within a straightforward, linear scheme. Two scholars-Michael Camille and Madeline H. Caviness-have, either consciously or unconsciously, employed psychoanalytic theories of the gaze and the faith in the subject supported by systems of signification in their analyses. Consequently, they center their discussions on the patrons-and therefore the putative readers-

Visual Fascination and Two Illustrated Prayer Books

47

of these manuscripts, who then become the "ideal readers" around whom interpretations of meaning can be constructed. In his predominantly Marxist analysis of the Luttren Psalter, for example, Michael Camille explores the ways in which the visual design of the manuscript reflects, and consequently literalizes, Sir Geoffrey Luttrell's "world view": his political concerns, his family history, and his manorial environment. Madeline Caviness, on the other hand, employs a feminist approach to demonstrate that Jeanne d'Evreux is constructed as a "good wife" and future mother by the images in the margins of her prayer book. Far from being a patron, in Caviness's account Jeanne emerges as a "matron," a passive subject to be manipulated and controlled. I introduce the Luttren Psalter and Jeanne's Hours at this point, then, partly to show that psychoanalytic theories of the gaze are still current and, indeed, often influence the ways scholars still look at the reader's response to textual or visual imagery. Both Camille and Caviness are wrong, it seems to me, precisely because they use psychoanalytic theories of the construction of the subject to order diverse elements within these manuscripts and supply a coherent "narrative" where there is none. In doing so, they risk fulfining the very role that they purport to undermine, and supply the very system of signification that they then proceed to analyze. In Camille's case, the proliferating possibilities of the marginalia in the Luttren Psalter are aggregated to Sir Geoffrey's controlling gaze, and so Sir Geoffrey enjoys the kind of authority in Camille's analysis that the scholar's Marxist interpretation decries. Similarly, Jeanne's autonomy and even identity are submerged in Caviness's account, and the queen becomes the product of her book. Paradox ical ly, Caviness's feminist approach actually establishes Jeanne's powerIessness and passivity more determinedly than other interpretations that do not depend upon the rigidity and determinism of the prayer book. Rather than center my own analysis on the individual reader and the ways in which he or she constructs, or is constructed by, the text and images, I look instead at the ways that the reader becomes distracted, and drawn away from linear readings. In both instances, the notion of sympathetic participation is important as a way of understanding the intimacy with which areader engages with the text and the freedom he or she has to explore divergent interpretations and meditative possibilities. The Lumen Psalter and the Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux are particularly useful because they demonstrate how a personal involvement within the very structure of a work can still produce the kinds of fluid and decentered interpretive strategies that I outline elsewhere. The rise of private, meditative reading that Suzanne Lewis sees as crucial to our understanding of illustrated Apocalypse cycles seems to continue in these

48

Desiring Truth

two manuscripts. Yet, the ceaseless provocation of the marginal imagery never permits self-absorption or the reassurance of a coherent philosophy. Instead, the sheer physicality and vibrancy of the images demands the reader's affective involvement, paving the way for a more intimate connection with the divine will. The reader's personal involvement feeds into and draws upon text and image in an endless dance that undermines traditional divisions and conventional structures in order to construct a living relationship. Such a movement anticipates the discursive reading practices that I want to examine in the latter stages of this study. Before we get there, however, we must first examine how the notion of sympathetic participation helps us to reconsider the illustrations in the Luttrell Psalter.

SYMPATUETIC PARTICIPATION IN TUE LUTTRELL PSALTER Art historians generally believe that the Luttrell Psalter was made for Sir Geoffrey Luttrell, of Irnham in Lincolnshire, before the death of his wife Agnes Sutton in 1340. The Psalter is known for the vast number of elaborate images that fill its pages, which detail fabulous, chimerical monsters alongside more traditional elements common to Psalters and breviaries. Scenes of rustic peasant life seemingly drawn from daily events on Sir Geoffrey's estate mingle with elaborate portraits of the Luttrell household. There are also pictures of musicians, roman ce themes like the storming of the castle of Love, and a variety of games and pastimes. The Psalter seems to capture the essence of medievallife in all its variety and vibrancy, and images from its pages often adorn textbooks and editions of later-medieval poems. The lavish illustrations appear to be the work of five hands, as most scholars generally agree: the principal artist who produces the most diverse array ofimages on fols. 145r-214v and four, less talented artists.3 The date of the Luttrell Psalter is slightly contested, and does have a bearing on its function . Eric Miliar believes that the grotesques and other marginal figures represent the decline of the East Anglian style of illumination, the tradition to which the illustrations most closely belong, and so places its date midway through the fourteenth century. Lucy Freeman Sandler also ties the Psalter to the East Anglian styles of the 1320's but pI aces it firmly within that tradition, stating "it is hard to escape the conclusion that the Luttrell Psalter was done considerably earlier than is usually supposed, probably in the years between 1325 and 1330."4 Michael Camille argues for a date somewhere in the 1330's in the belief that the visual imagery in the Psalter refleets the Luttrell families dynastie concerns during this period. 5 Most recently, however, Richard K. Emmerson and P. J. P. Goldberg have suggested that the first two phases of the Psalter's production occur in the 1340s, and

Visual Fascination and Two Illustrated Prayer Books

49

were terminated in 1345 on the event of Sir Geoffrey's death. 6 The third phase then takes place after his death and remains unfinished: indeed, it does not appear in Sir Geoffrey's will, and thus may not have been fully paid for. This leads to the possibility mat Sir Geoffrey never actually owned it at all.7 This raises interesting questions about the possible function of the Psalter, and invites inquiry into the particular issue of the relationship between the individual reader and the visual imagery within the manuscript. If Emmerson and Goldberg are correct, the lavish illustrations and unusually large lettering in the Luttrell Psalter, that together a1low only a few lines of text on each page, suggest a possible Iiturgical function. They hypothesize that the Psalter was designed to be read in church rather than by a solitary reader at home. 8 Yet, this very public function does not seem to prevent the personal influence of Sir Geoffrey in me design of many of the illustrations. Scenes such as the famous equestrian portrait of Sir Geoffrey on fol. 202v and the bas-de-page tableau depicting the Luttrell family seated at table on fol. 208r reveal how Sir Geoffrey's Iife, his family and his estate are woven into the very structure of the Psalter. Rather than reflect Sir Geoffrey's personal, private relationship with God, me Lumell Psalter seems to embody the Luttrell family as a visible structure, a nexus in which various strands of lordship, familial power, and piety connect in a living testament. The focus of this orchestration of forces may weil be Sir Geoffrey hirnself, as we shall see, but his appearance wimin certain illustrations expresses his position within this network, rather than reflect his personal control of the prevailing ideology of the manuscript. The Luttrell Psalter does not construct its ideal reader, therefore, so much as it constructs a visible symbol of the Luttrell family comprised of a multitude of forces-religious, social, military and feudal-that interact. The reader does not simply follow a single line of thought, but participates within mis system of relationships that continually strain with one another. This is a living, dynamic system, one that escapes the control of a single viewpoint and resists c1osure, and this reflects the Psalter's possible function as a testament to the Luttrell family that was intended to last long after the death of individual family members. Yet, even ifSir Geoffrey read the Psalter, this does not essentially alter the structure and role of the visual imagery, which captivates and involves the reader in the complex interwoven spectacle of power and piety. The Luttrell Psalter, like the texts and manuscripts that we will be looking at e1sewhere in mis study, does not support or define the point of view of a c1early defined subject. Nor does the imagery reflect the constructions of an individual ego. Instead, they fascinate the reader, involving hirn or her in the Psalter's elaborate and endless production of meaning. Just as the pictures arrest the viewer's gaze, his or her judgment is invoked in exploring the relations

50

Desiring Truth

of power and piety at work. In the pages of the Luttrell Psalter, the personal and the public, the individual and the universal, the temporal and the eternal, all meet and interact. Michael Camille's book on the Lumell Psalter, Mirror in Parchment, plays a central role in this chapter because in it Camille orders the heterogeneous forms within the Psalter around the controlling gaze of its patron, Sir Geoffrey Lumell. Where I argue that the complex imagery within the manuscript es capes the regimen of pure representation and functions on multiple levels of meaning, Camille refers to the Psalter as a "regime of signs and an object of medieval self-fashioning."9 The "self" in question is Sir Geoffrey Luttrell, who famously ordered the manuscript to be made in the early part of the fourteenth century.lO Because of the profusion of marginal seen es "representing" ordinary life in the Psalter, the manuscript has often been assumed to reflect the reality of medieval society in the per iod of its construction. Camille insists, however, that we should see the Psalter as producing, rather than reflecting, reality. In Camille's account, the Lumell Psalter becomes a representation of the dynastie and personal anxieties of its patron, who becomes the focal point for any interpretation of the "meaning" of the manuscript. Towards the beginning of his account, Camille outlines his theoretical approach in a passage that is worth quoting at lengeh: ... most of the marginal images in the Psalter can be explained as 'wordpictures' or 'memory-images,' as Mary Carruthers calls this type of marginal image in her study of the workings of medieval memory ... But not all. The Luttrell Psalter is not simply aseries ofLatin texts wich their visual equivalents arranged around the edges. Ir is exacdy the tensions or disjunctions that arise between the psalms and their monstrously distorted, and always allusive, pictorial progeny that are most important. Ir is in the ftssures or cracks between visual and verbal discourse, the 'breaks' of ideology, that we begin to see history opening up before us. 11

Through his express intention to "read between the lines," Camille looks to construct an inner reality to the Psalter that can connect the disparate images and order them in a coherent fashion. If an image does not have a specific connection CO a particular line of text, then it has a secondary role in exposing the secret history of the manuscript. Most importantly, Camille intends to read the Psalter as a speculum, a metaphorical mirror that reflects the ideology of a viewer rather than objective "reality." The Psalter is an active ideological instrument of Sir Geoffrey's power and authority, rather than a mirror of social reality in the fourteenth century.12

Visua! Fascination and Two Illustrated Prayer Books

51

Sir Geoffrey therefore helps to Jocalize the Psalter for Camille, following Bal's terminology, so that the images variously reflect the viewpoint of the patron who caused them to be made. In Camille's analysis Sir Geoffrey Luttrell represents the index of interpretation, and the images within the Psalter refleet his own personal ideology. For instance, Camille points to the pieture of a man-headed fish that lurks in a line just above the equestrian portrait, and suggests that such grotesques were designed: .. . out of concern to separate what is true from what is false, what is surface from what is depth, outside from inside, mask from face. Chivalric anxiety focused on the maintenance of one's own signs in a world increasingly filled with multiple and conflicting ones, many of them usurped by those who had no right to bear them. 13 Camille argues that the fish represents the fluidity of signs in an unstable world, where the Luttrell Psalter itself reflects Sir Geoffrey's efforts to establish his own mark of authority within such a world. Camille effectively gives the Psalter a dyadic structure with this statement: the hybrids and grotesques represent the mutable world of slippery signs; whereas the figures of lords and peasants represent the assertion ofhis own authority. Both "si des" of the Psalter seemingly revolve around the subject at the center: Sir Geoffrey himself. The monstrous figures from the margins represent his id, the dark side of his subconscious, whereas the more conventional images drawn from the world all around hirn represent his ego, the conscious expression of his ideology. Thus a babewyn with the body of a beast, the head of a king with a crown, and a tail ending in a fleur-de-Iys (fol. 205r) possibly represents, according to Camille, the French king, a symbol of the "other." It may also represent the "perverse, deposed Edward 11," who also can be assumed to stand for the "other."14 This psychoanalytic term refers to that which lies beyond the borders of the self, or the subconscious element in the construction of the ego that resists definition or assimilation. The grotesques in the margins reflect an aspeet of Sir Geoffrey's own psyche, and show signs of his particular beliefs and concerns. Elsewhere, Camille suggests that babewyns like the "ox-man"-a standing figure with shaggy legs, a bridle, and the head of an ox--on fol. 173v is a mummer, and that folk ritual and performance permeate the Psalter. According to Camille, their presence is a consequence of the appropriation of folk ritual by the landed dass, and so such images revea1 Sir Geoffrey's own efforts to assimilate folk culture and make it his own. 15 Again, the numerous images ofblack men and other "foreigners," for instance on fols. 83 v, 91v, 92v, 107r, and 157 r, represent Sir Geoffrey's enemies: Jews, Scots, Saracens and others with whom he would have come into contact during his knighdy career. 16

52

Desiring Truth

Like the beast-king and the masked mummers, Camille situates these figures in the place of the "other," or that which is not Sir Geoffrey. What Camille's analysis reveals, then, is a tendency to interpret the disparate images in the Luttrell Psalter as a reflection of the mind of its patron. Sir Geoffrey Luttrell's gaze defines and circumscribes the manuscript as a whole, so that, rather than see the Psalter as a mirror of the fourteenth century, Camille sees it as a mirror of one man. Yet, the recent work ofEmmerson and Goldberg cast doubts on the theory that the Luttrell Psalter is a personal manuscript at all, stilliess one that revolves around the subjectivity of its patron so c1early and unequivocally. Although Emmerson and Goldberg accept that, at times, the interrelationship between text and image within the Psalter was "made to inform the patron's ideology of lordship," they doubt that Sir Geoffrey ever read the manuscript. 17 Rather than reflect Sir Geoffrey's very personal concerns, they suggest that the Psalter constructs an ideology that connects various aspects of lordship, and situates the Luttrell family, with Sir Geoffrey at its head, as the focal point of these forces. Whether Sir Geoffrey Lumell held the Psalter in his hands or not, the manuscript is undoubtedly composed of a network of forces that exceed the control of any one individual. Emmerson and Goldberg posit that the manuscript contributes to the Luttrell family's image ofitself, a valuable point that demonstrates how the "meaning" of the book is best understood in terms of its relationship with other aspects of the Luttrell legacy, including Sir Geoffrey's tomb and will. I would like to push this argument still further and suggest that the images within the Psalter continually exceed the control of any one individual, and even exceed Sir Geoffrey's own "self-fashioning." The Luttrell Psalter is not merely an instrument of power; it is also a prayer book containing many traditional images relating to sacred themes. 18 As Camille himselfremarks, the "most important fact about the Luttrell Psalter, which is often overlooked, is that it is a Psalter."19 If Mary Carruthers is right in her analysis of the mnemonic function of many marginal images, then even those figures that do not have a c1ear spiritual function may nevertheless inspire the mind to deeper reflection on the sacred text. The spiritual element within the Psalter, though inextricably woven with the Lumell family's ideology of power, pushes towards more universal concerns and eternal verities. Rather than analyze the ideological signification of the Lumell Psalter, then, I would like to focus on the ways in which the images in its pages explore more dynamic relationships. Because the Psalter has a c1ear religious function, it must in part involve the reader in a process of spiritual meditation on the written word, and in fact, this involvement is structured in intimate and affective terms. Camille reveals that the ten historiated initials that appear at the

Visual Fascination and Two Illustrated Prayer Books

53

conjunction of each textual division may be traditional in their subject matter, but are often unconventional in their design. Many of the scenes emphasize a very physical spirituality, such as the illustration for Psalm 26, which depicts Christ pointing to His eye (fol. 51 r). In the initial to Psalm 51, which speaks ofGod's intention to pluck out the iniquitous like a tongue, David extracts the tongue of a seated figure with a pair of pincers (fol. 97v). Camille connects such scenes, and others throughout the Psalter that also emphasize the body, to an "intensely somatic strain of mystical devotion" that was growing at this time, epitomized by the hermit Richard Rolle. Camille thus connects some of the imagery in the Psalter to the rise in affective spirituality, and positions the manuscript within this developing tradition. 20 The focus on the body within many of the miniatures and historiated initials in the Psalter, along with the vibrant and physical affecting marginal images, point to an emphasis on personal, affective piety, a spirituality that emphasizes the relationship between an individual and God. Although I do not doubt the ideological element within the illustrations, I do not believe that Sir Geoffrey's own subjective viewpoint controls the form and function of the manuscript as a whole. Nor does his personal vision define the meaning of the individual images-even those that seemingly reflect hirn most personally. Instead, Sir Geoffrey's body is iconic, an element of the complex Whole that contains both the lord and his manuscript, a microcosm of the estate at work in the production of a living faith. Thus, the Lumell Psalter demands a very personal, even visceral response from the reader that engages hirn or her within the production of meaning. Although the sheer volume of proliferating forms and images, both marginal and framed, undermines conventional structures and readings, the destabilized subject is provoked to chart his or her own pathways towards truth. At least in part, then, the Luttrell Psalter embodies its own via positiva: it is at once intensely personal, yet universal in its scope and aims. 21 By attempting to discover the particular associations that various images within the Psalter make, Camille ignores their capacity to elicit responses in a variety of readers. More significancly, perhaps, he positions particular images as referents, referring to past events or associations: what psychoanalytic theory calls the "lost object." In film theory, Christian Metz, in whose "scopic regime" images are seen as hollow, referring only to an absence or "thing" beyond them, best expresses this process. Images are not to be trusted; they are to be interpreted, decoded, robbed of their mystique, and pushed aside in the quest to decode the text that lies behind them. In Metz's account, as in Camille's, the viewer/reader experiences a "double withdrawal," separated from the object itself and from its representation in visual form. 22 The view-

54

Desiring Truth

ing subject remains assured and in control, able to "see through" the transparent image to gaze upon the lost object beyond. Yet, the most obvious characteristic of the marginalia in the Luttrell Psalter is not the hollowness of the images, but their immediacy and vibrancy. Eric Millar attempts to dismiss the marginal monsters and grotesques-of which the man-headed fish is but one-as the product of a sick mind; Margaret Rickert describes them as "repulsive. "23 In both cases they are clearly affected by what they see and provoked into giving a visceral response. It is not the representational nature of the images that provokes this SOrt of reaction but the fact that they seem to stand for nothing but themselves. They do not signif)r one particular thing but connect the viewer to an open sign system that includes many disparate elements, challenging us to think about the context of the Luttrell Psalter in new and productive ways. Meyer Schapiro articulates this most effectively when he says that medieval marginalia demonstrate "the artist's liberty, his unconstrained possession of space, which confounds the view of medieval art as a model of systematic order and piety."24 These images continue to confound the reader, and provoke hirn or her into new ways of thinking and seeing. The marginal images do not refer to "lost objects," but instead have wh at Shaviro calls "an excessive capacity to seduce and mislead, to affect the spectator unwarrantedly."25 Certainly these images do not simply refer back to their creator (Millar's artist-as-madman) or their patron (Camille's unconsciously coercive Sir Geoffrey). Such a reduction of diverse elements to a commentary on or reflection of a centrally placed subject (or "ego") Deleuze and Guattari cal1 Oedipalization and state that: ... [elverything takes place as if Oedipus itself had two poles: one pole characterized by imaginary figures that lend themselves to a process of identification, and a second pole characterized by symbolic functions that lend themselves to a process of differentiation. But in any case we are oedipalized: if we don't have Oedipus as a crisis, we have it as a structure. 26

The system is closed, self-perpetuating, endlessly self-referential, so that in the case of Camille's interpretation the Luttrell Psalter looks inwards rather than outwards, circling around its central theme rather than expanding the mnemonic associations available to its readers. As Mieke Bai and others recognize, Oedipalization leads to narrativization, and vice versa, the twO connected in a tightly controlIed structure that corresponds to Deleuze and Guattari's socius. The socius arranges everything within a coherent framework, it "explains" everything. 27

Visual Fascination and Two Illustrated Prayer Books

55

It would be unfair to suggest that Camille is not alive co the possibilities for open-ended exchange in the margins of the Psalter. Referring to the marginal monstrosities in the later stages of the manuscript Camille argues that "[i]conography, wh ich is meant to 'stamp' textual meaning upon images, is useless when dealing with forms that lack any surface fixed enough to bear labels and which constantly evade being through becoming."28 Nevertheless, he also makes the important point that the conventionality of many of the marginal images that appear in medieval manuscripts encourages us to argue against their being associated with the realm of"free expression." He is right to insist that we do not dismiss marginalia as meaningless or allow its superficial humor to blind us to the social implications of what is often depicted. The problem comes, however, when he connects all of these discursive elements together into one coherent narrative that "teils" its subject. Though Camille insists that the Lumell Psalter does not reflect medieval England, he does believe that it represents medieval England, or at least represents one individual's version of it. This reduces the scope of the Psalter to its smallest possible point, aligning it directly and absolutely with the gaze of Sir Geoffrey Lumell himself. The images in the Lumell Psalter do not and cannot represent Sir Geoffrey's personal ideology. Instead, they bring the reader into immediate, personal contact with the text, continually raising the possibility that the reader can perceive the truth in ways that are particular to the individual and do not necessarily depend upon received wisdom. Often the images are visceral and immediate; sometimes they offer an intellectual response co the text, and so engage the mind as weil as the body. The meditative piety that grew in importance during this period is partly founded on the idea that because human understanding is partial and prone to error it can only perceive glimpses of the truth. A variety ofimages-both textual and visual-allow the reader to draw connections between disparate elements and even, perhaps, to gain such a glimpse. This is not to deny the very particular influence of Sir Geoffrey and the Lumell familyon the structure and ideology of the Psalter, but it is to say that the images in the manuscript continually exceed the parameters of that influence. This would be true of Sir Geoffrey himself, if indeed he ever read the manuscript: in its pages, he becomes an object of scrutiny, not the owner of a gaze. Yet, according to Camille the Luttrell Psalter is Sir Geoffrey's gaze, reflecting the patron's prejudices and concerns, his personal history, his fears for the future, and his relationship with the land and people. At one point in the manuscript Camille believes this very gaze is given concrete representation: the banquet scene on fol. 208 r. In his discussion Camille isolates one part of

56

Desiring Truth

the tableaux-the figure of Sir Geoffrey Lumell himself-and displays it as a portrait on a separate page, including with this isolated image the caption "Geoffrey Lumell's gaze. "29 In an inversion of the traditional order of the gaze it is the image that bears the look that transfixes the viewer. According to Camille the image positions us: like the Medusan gaze it turns us to stone, becoming "the focal guiding gesture, the gaze that fixes us."30 This image also "speaks," delivering the words of the psalm written in the text above its head, as though it were perpetually transmitting Sir Geoffrey's message to us across time. The text is Psalm 115, which includes the lines: "The sorrows of death compassed me, and the perils of Hell have found me; I met with trouble and sorrow and I called upon the name of the Lord."31 This sorrow is reflected in the banquet scene, and Camille suggests that these words represent Sir Geoffrey's state of mind at the time the manuscript was commissioned. Here Sir Geoffrey becomes the focalizing point par excellence: looking out at us, he holds us rapt and attentive, alerting us to the sorrows that "he" is expressing through the Psalmist's words. Camille's discussion of this picture becomes confused by its adherence to the notion of the gaze, which reduces disparate elements to one coherent, linear narrative. Because the gaze depends so heavilyon the subject who controls it, and so orders the world according to his or her own perceptions, Camille's dependence upon it in this context renders the Psalter a rather solipsistic exercise in self-definition. Thus the "gaze that fixes us" is not actually directed at us at all, but "at God, and, because he was the intended reader of the Psalter, at hirnself," encapsulating a dyadic, hermetic interchange between Sir Geoffrey and God. 32 With this statement, Camille reproduces the very structure of the subject as Lacan defines it, before that subject enters into language. Sir Geoffrey gazes upon God, who stands in the place of the Imaginary and so supports Sir Geoffrey's ordering of realiry, reflecting his notion ofself It is as though, in Camille's analysis, the Psalter functions as an elaborate meconnaissance on wh ich Sir Geoffrey's fragile ego is supported, rather than as a prayer book intended to aid a potential reader in the quest for truth. Yet, Camille himself acknowledges that such a c1ear ordering of realiry is not possible, and that the banquet scene evades literal readings. Camille suggests, for instance, that Sir Geoffrey "speaks" the words of the psalm, and that Sir Geoffrey hirnself had experienced the sorts of sorrows suggested by them. Yet, the image also represents, for Camille, a projected ideal of a family feast that never took place in a future that never came to pass. 33 Furthermore, the feasting scene gives concrete form to "a kind of family tree, an image of lineage," suggesting that it does capture the Lumell family in a particular aspect-one that is intended for posteriry. 34 1t also has an ecclesiastical context,

Visua/ Fascination and Two Illustrated Prayer Books

57

possibly offering us a solemnizing sacral portrayal of the family to connect with the martial and political one of the famous arming scene. The rigid linearity of the gaze-whether our own, Sir GeofFrey's, or that held by Sir Geoffrey's image-cannot reallyarticulate these divergent but a11 equally valid potentialities at work within the banquet scene. According to Camille, the banquet scene appears to depict the Luttrell household at table. Camille hypothesizes that the two Dominican friars to Sir Geoffrey's right might be his chaplains Robert ofWilford and lohn ofLafford; one of them could possibly be his confessor, William de Ford. Agnes Luttrell sits immediately to the right ofher husband and looks up at hirn, while to his lett sit Andrew, his son and heir, Robert, his fourth son, and Beatrice-nee Scrope-his daughter-in-Iaw. By dating the Psalter to the mid-point of the 1330's Camille can justify these associations, despite his claim that he is concerned not so much with the "personalities depicted as the space and time of the event. "35 By this date Sir Geoffrey's second and third sons were dead and his daughters married into other families, and this is why there appear only two "sons" and one "daughter." Yet, it is clear that in Camille's analysis the significance of the event is directly related to the personalities depicted. Camille suggests, for example, that Sir Geoffrey looks so doleful and "speaks" the words of Psalm 115 because of "the anxieties surrounding one particular family's spiritual and social status."36 The two servants who serve the family at table present a greater challenge to the name-game, and in attempting to identify them Camille sets off down a blind a1ley. In his will, Sir Geoffrey indicates that one man, lohn of Colne, acted as both pantryman and butler, whereas in the picture these tasks are performed by two distinct individuals. Having clearly identified the characters at the table, Camille now feels obliged to justify this discrepancy. He reminds us that the picture is not actually a representation of a specific event, but that "what the artist has represented here are not so much individuals as stations."37 It is not clear, however, why we should take the seated figures to be representations ofindividuals, while the images of servants merely function as generic representations of the lower dasses. Camille is in danger here of reinscribing the same sorts of e1itist preconceptions (pictures of lords and ladies depict people, whereas pictures of those from the lower orders do not) that he assiduously tries to avoid. In essence, Camille wants it both ways. He identifies particular characters and accounts for their presence at the dinner table by drawing upon events specific to one particular time and place. Yet, he also insists that the banquet scene is a symbolic image, representing an imagined banquet rather than a particular event. Camille struggles to negotiate these two aspects of the

58

Desiring Truth

picture, aspects that are, because of the rigid parameters of the gaze, mutually incompatible. The problem is ultimately connected to the idea of the Jocalizing gaze, which is a rigid construction that supports the construction of a dear master narrative. Because Camille places Sir Geoffrey at the center of this image, and at the center of the Psalter as a whole, the lord's gaze circumscribes the complexity of the relationships they explore. The network of forces within the Psalter conforms to the particulars of Sir Geoffrey's view. Not only does Camille's argument hinge upon his hypo thesis that Sir Geoffrey was the idealized reader of the manuscript, it also insists that the Luttrell Psalter acts as a form of self-expression for its patron . This works in precisely the opposite direction to the way Mary Carruthers argues that medieval readers approached text and image. She insists that the medieval readerlspectator was able to universalize his or her experience by placing it within a wider context, in a process of sympathetic participation. The Psalms are particularly appropriate for this endeavor because they offer a resonance with every situation, a110wing someone with very particular experiences to find solace by establishing those experiences within a wider context. This movement does not e1ide the individuality of each person's experiences, but a110ws them to find a resonance with more universal human emotions and thoughts. The Psalms help translate personal events into a wider context, connected to, not demarcated from, the experiences of others. This is a movement away from the self and towards more universal and even eternal concerns. Yet, the selfis not surrendered entirely, but finds a more permanent horne within God, and in so doing transcends the artificial boundaries created by the human frame of reference. This movement is of central concern to the Pearl-poems, as we shall see. In these works, human perception often leads to the construction of a narrative that stands in the way of the soul's communion with God. The reader's journey in these poems involves escaping these narrow and artificial constructions and achieving a wider conception of truth. Contrary to Camille, I would argue that the banqueting scene offers the viewer a profound, universal image of a family uni ted in faith, an image that incorporates many elements from the Luttrell estate, both high and low, religious and secular, in a dehistoricized context. Thus the image projects the ideal of the noble family onto a plane 0/ consistency that rises above localized troubles and suffering. 38 This reflects the words of the Psalm following on from those Camille quotes: "I was humbled, and he delivered me." Whatever troubles the Luttrell family experienced in the fourteenth century-and it is dear that they experienced quite a few-it would have been important to be able to establish these sufferings within a wider con-

Visual Fascination and Two Illustrated Prayer Rooks

59

text. The Luttrell family members that sit at this feast are accompanied by their confessors and spiritual advisors, and display in their gestures and looks a proper reverence and sobriety, which suggests that they live within the Lord. Long after the particular circumstances that afflicted the family had passed, perhaps even after Sir Geoffrey hirnself had passed away, the image would continue to resonate with family members and servants alike, each participating in the idea of a devout family composed of multiple elements, each contributing towards the identity of the Whole. The richly decorated blue background bordered with gold that surrounds the seated figures-and to which Camille does not draw our attention-adds weight to this interpretation. The background places this family within a spiritual realm, contrasted with, but not divided from, the earthly realm represented by the servants and by the trestle legs that support the table. In the words ofPsalm 115: Turn, 0 my soul, to thy rest: for the Lord hath been bountiful to thee. For he hath delivered my soul from death: my eyes from tears, my feet from fa/ling.

Faith is composed of the concerns of the individual, but ultimately it transcends their !imitations: the image provides a graphie demonstration of a universal faith composed of individual human figures. The image also charts relationships across the pages of the manuscript, demonstrating the idea that the Psalter is itself a dynamic and living text. Emmerson and Goldberg draw attention to the striking similarity between the feast scene and an earlier image, the depiction of the Last Supper on fol. 90v. They also connect both images to Sir Geoffrey's tomb, which they believe was intended to have a dual function as an Easter Sepulchre. 39 This would have housed the consecrated host, and so had a continued spiritual function throughout the year. Within the tomb, Sir Geoffrey's remains lay beside the body ofChrist, leading them to conclude that "[c]ommemoration of the dead lord was combined with commemoration of the Iiving Deity. "40 This reciprocal pattern is echoed in the relationship between the two feast scenes, and later in the juxtaposition of the equestrian portrait of Sir Geoffrey and the historiated initial containing an image of Christ and David (fols. 202v and 203r). A1though this undoubtedly confers great glory on Sir Geoffrey's own lordship, as Emmerson and Goldberg point out, it also suggests a wider context for that lordship. Sir Geoffrey imitates Christ and even lives the life of Christ, as the echoes of the Last Supper in banquet scene suggest. 4 ! Eventually, after his death, he lives in Christ, and his personal concerns eventually give way to universal harmony.

60

Desiring Truth

Emmerson and Goldberg's argument demonstrates the points of contact between images within the Luttrell Psalter, and between the Psalter and other artifacts within the Luttrell estate. These correspondences undermine Camille's efforts to insist that the Luttrell Psalter reflects Sir Geoffrey's personal gaze, and that it was intended for purely private use. The echoes of the life of Christ in the representations of Sir Geoffrey and his family reflect an imitatio dei, suggesting that the family hoped that this living movement in Christ would be the salvation of their souls for eternity. This is the very personal element of the Psalter. Yet, the very visibility of the Psalter and the sepulchral tomb in which this drama is played out can only survive in perpetuity if there are witnesses who can continue this memory long after the individuals are gone. What is personal gives way to the universal; individual concerns are sublimated into a more profound eschatological framework. The Luttrell family lives on in the observers who participate in the visual spectacle, and so the Psalter in some ways charts a journey away from the earth and towards spiritual certainties, as every Psalter should. 42 In contrast, Camille charts a movement towards Sir Geoffrey, and his analysis remains confined by the subject that he also rigidly defines. Because of this, Camille is unable to affirm the possibilities for movement and liberation within the Psalter: the traces of the universal in the imagery disappear through the black hole of Sir Geoffrey's gaze and are rendered static. 43 Yet, if we are to find a way to articulate the system of co rrespondences at work in the Psalter we must see the individual subject as contributing to, and participating in, this movement towards a universal truth. Like Oeleuze and Guattari's interpretation of the Nietzschean subject, the reader of the Luttrell Psalter "spreads itself out a10ng the entire circumference of the circle, the center of which has been abandoned by the ego.,,44 All elements on the page collide with the viewer, marking hirn or her in some way, no matter who that viewer iso Sir Geoffrey's gaze is no more privileged than ours, because there is no definitive way to read the images, because a1though they are produced by individuals, they are never circumscribed by one point of view. If we employ the logic of the gaze when we look at the banquet scene, we deny the rich spiritual associations that it offers. The individuals depicted at the table escape the confines of representation and enter a more universal plane of association: the image does not trap them in space and time but suggests wider themes: of tribulation and salvation, sin and redemption. Likewise we do not identiJj with any of the individuals, but receive the imprint of them. As we turn the pages of the manuscript each new image touches us in some way, so that our subjectivity becomes a succession of states through which we pass. There is no such thing as either a subjective response or an objective re-

Visual Fascination and Two Illustrated Prayer Books

61

ality; instead, subjectivity and objectivity become fluid states that affect one another. The manuscript is polyphonie, the meeting place of multiple voices and multiple modes that cannot be organized under one master narrative; the viewer's own participation becomes an act of decentered exploration or freeplay, susceptible to nuance and suggestion and so able to return to the manuscript again and again, drawing fresh impetus with each visit. Our look corresponds to Deleuze and Guattari's Body without Organs, the point of tkparture not arrival. The depiction of the Lumell family in the feast scene is one of many starting points in the manuscript, from which we push outwards in order to translate localized, immediate experience and establish it on aplane of consistency. Sir Geoffrey therefore makes sense of his own experiences, not by defining them in time and space and making them concrete but by opening them out into the wider system of trial and tribulation. These experiences therefore become more fluid, more immediate: witk rather than tkep. The only act of focalization is the sacramental aspect of the picture, which reminds us of the direction this translation of experiences should head: the all-encompassing love of God. It is wrong to speak of individual faces in the composition or single out one figure to stand for its "meaning." Instead we should see the composition as a Whole, a network of relationships that combine to dramatize and universalize the concept of grace as a liberation from immediate, personal suffering. The notion of the gaze, and the faith in identification that accompanies it, cannot explain this process, because the gaze is intrinsically associated with the idealized, concrete subject and that subject's personal history. The manuscript page corresponds to what Deleuze and Guattari term a "smooth" space, an open system of connections and flows that can be distinguished from a "striated" space, where everything is categorized and fixed in place. The proliferation of marginal images overburdened with possible meanings emerges within a smooth space because they provoke a variety of responses and cannot be reduced to one, single meaning. Perhaps they reflect an aspect of the text; perhaps they strike off an association in the memory of the viewer, but they open up the page precisely by "striking a chord" with something. They demand an affective, immediate response, challenging order and certainty and so working to undermine the stable, Oedipalized subject. Their onslaught provokes an exteriority of thought, a process that takes one out of oneself precisely because they approach us so intimately. Of course, the Luttrell Psalter contains ideological structutes-it is, undoubtedly, reflective of a Christian faith. Yet it is the way in which this faith is articulated that concerns me: as a religious artifact reflecting the influence of the more affective spirituality emerging during the foutteenth century.

62

Desiring Truth

Thus it begins with the particular and strives towards the divine; physica1, immediate, and personal responses are engaged, and then pushed towards a wider system of correspondences. The various scribes and illustrators who participated in the production of the manuscript, the family and servants on the Luttrell estate, and the reader who engages with the Psalter all playa part in the continuation of an ideal of faith that is living and affective, and where individual response is established within the context of a relationship that exists between God and the material world. The complexities of this network are clearly revealed in the famous equestrian portrait, depicting Sir Geoffrey Lumell armed as a knight on horseback (fol. 202v). This image is strikingly physical, representing Sir Geoffrey as a proud knight astride a noble, caparisoned steed, receiving his arms from his wife and daughter-in-Iaw. Yet, although the image seems to offer a concrete representation of the lord in a particular aspect, it actually informs and is informed by a wider system of correspondences that resonate throughout the Psalter. Despite the viewer's inclination to situate the image in time and space and interpret it as a representation of a specific event-to assign it an 'historia-the picture is best read as a locus, a point at wh ich various forces interest, and wh ich in turn contributes to the wider system of relationships between these forces. The picture is usually taken to 'depict' Sir Geoffrey and his wife, Agnes, and daughter-in-Iaw, Beatrice, who bear their own coats of arms. Ir would be wrong, however, to regard these representations as "portraits," whether idealized or not. In the scene "Agnes," who bears the arms of Sutton impaled with those of Lumell on her gown, hands the knight his lance, whilst "Beatrice," who bears the arms of Scrope impaled with those of Luttrell on her gown, holds his shield. The knight hirnself bears the Luttrell arms on his surcoat, ailettes, and pennon, and on the crest ofhis helm; they also appear on the saddie, fancrest and trapper of his warhorse. The lions of Sutton "meet" the mardets ofLumell on "Agnes'" gown and in the border on the facing page of the Psalter, as Camille points out. But there is another union, depicted in the act of the transference of the helm which passes from one hand to another, from Sutton to Luttrell but also back again, opening a line of communication between these two families. The figure of "Beatrice" holds the shield bearing the Lumell arms and so also enjoys this communication, which symbolica1ly extends beyond the seated figure, perhaps demonstrating that the Scrope family stands in a secondary degree of intimacy to the person of the Luttrell family embodied by Sir Geoffrey himself Crucially, the individuals themselves are secondary to the heraldic devi ces that flow around the figures and over them, weaving the human figures

Visual Fascination and Two Illustrated Prayer Books

63

into me very structure of the familial devices. If me knight does represent Sir Geoffrey, it is only because Sir Geoffrey embodies the Luttrells at that time: the historical individual is secondary to the iconography that defines hirn. The image mus reflects the "marriage" of three families in the "person" of the Luttrell family, embodied in all its majesty by the knight on the horse. Because me figures are scarcely individuated, mey represent a timeless aspect of the mree families, a suggestion reinforced by me idea that the image looks "back" to an ideal of knighthood, and thus in so me ways stands outside time. An image that looks back to an ideal of a golden age of chivalry also in some ways looks forward to the hope mat such an ideal may come again. The image literalizes an aspiration, a perfect union that cannot be undermined by me vicissitudes of the here and now. The picture of me arming of Sir Geoffrey therefore acts as a perfect companion piece to me banquet scene in locating the Luttrell family in a timeless, placeless place. The Psalter itself provides an open system of communication mat transcends time, weaving the Luttrell family into a wide system of relationships mat extends to the families with which it is joined, the servants who supply its needs, and the faith that permeates their lives. The viewer participates in mis living ideology and bears witness to it. The essays by Camille and Emmerson and Goldberg on the equestrian portrait point to the way this framed illustration-the only framed free-standing miniature in the manuscript-displays marked similarities to the historiated initial containing Christ and David. 45 The situation of both these images in relation to Psalm 109, wh ich faces the equestrian portrait on fol. 203r, is also significant, with the text reading Dixi dominus domino meo: sede a dextris meis. Text and images weave a complex fabric that equates Sir Geoffrey's lordship with the supreme Lord, God. As in the banquet scene, this legitimizes Sir Geoffrey's feudal authority, but also transcends such localized claims in order to establish the Lumell family wimin a universal, eternal order. While we cannot help but participate in this drama, however, the picture ofSir Geoffrey does not exist in isolation, but in relation to other images: in particular the marginal images, with their scenes from folk life and ritual, which continually threaten this harmony and offer the viewer a physical sense of the complex Whole that lies beyond and even contains the master narrative. The marginal images interpose themselves on the reader, nudging and provoking us, forcing us to engage with them directly. The French philosopher Georges Bataille defines the process by which visceral images encroach on the stable order of the act of reading as one of contagion: in Bataillean terms, such images infect us, encroaching on our senses and undermining any attempt to keep them at a safe distance. Bataille's critique of objective analysis offers an extremely useful way to arriculate the effect that the physical pres-

64

Desiring Truth

ence of the manuscript has on the viewer. Bataille objects to the analysis of human emotion and sexuality-our physical responses-from the outside. This is because there is a contagion in such experiences that rules out the possibility of dispassionate, objective critique. The agitation of the individual experiencing an emotion "easily induces in a witness a feeling of participation"46_yawns make us yawn, a laugh makes us want to laugh, and so on. This is why we refer to laughter as "infectious," and it can be contrasted with identification-we do not identify with the person laughing, thereby stepping outside ourselves in a sem i-rational, conscious way, but experience a disturbance within ourselves. Crucially, within the Luttrell Psalter the marginal images both reflect and provoke the physicality of the viewer; they are as much an integral part of the manuscript as the ideologically framed 'authorized' images. The viewer, both medieval and modern, is forced to confront the multiplicity of forces at work within any earthly, human endeavor, bearing witness CO folk rituals and activities and responding affectively to grotesques and monsters. The marginal chimaeras and the scenes of peasant life are as much apart of our experience of the spiritual trajectory of the Psalter as the idealized images of the Luttrell family. The marginalia in the manuscript do not oppose or transgress the ideology of the Psalter, then, they energize it: through them, the viewer participates immediately and vitally in the manuscript, provoked by laughter, horror, or even familiarity. Without the marginalia, the static images would appear iconic, abstract, and distant; with the marginalia, the Psalter bursts with life, reflecting an idea of spirituality as a dynamic and sometimes chaotic process. The viewer's response co the marginalia works through what Maurice Blanchot calls fascination: But what happens when what you see, even though from a distance, seems to touch you with a grasping contact, when the matter of seeing is a SOft of touch, when seeing is a contact at a distance?47 Such a direct, almost physical contact with the image leads to the rupture of the ego. As Shaviro puts it: The release of the image takes place when we are no longer able to separate ourselves, no longer able to put things at the proper distance and turn them into objects. The distance between subject and object is at once abolished and rendered infinite.48 The subject no longer stands alone, intact, at a safe distance from what is seen. Instead, we become inextricably connected to what is seen, and the text

Visual Fascination and Two Illustrated Prayer Books

65

emerges on new plane as a spectacle that includes the viewer. Meaning escapes the subject's gaze and opens out like a flower, above and beyond human perspective. The images in the manuscript take on a material reality a11 of their own: we establish an intimate, affective relationship with them because of their immediacy and vibrancy, because they refuse to remain merely objective representations. This has the effect ofblurring the distinction between subjective and objective, as Oeleuze and Guattari reveal: We run in fact inco a principle ofindeterminability and of indiscernibility: we no longer know what is imaginary or real, physical or mental, in the situation, not because they are confused, but because we do not have co know and there is no longer even a place from which to ask. Ir is as if the real and the imaginary were running after each other, as if each was being reflected in the other, around a point of indiscernibility.49

The marginal images that 611 the pages of the Luttrell Psalter similarly blur the distinction between subject and object, inside and outside. A1though the prevailing ideology of the manuscript may be to assign such images a subordinate pI ace, they refuse to stay put. The spectator involved in the drama of Sir Geoffrey's lordship also witnesses the vibrant presence of the grotesques and monsters that permeate it, so that, instead of one clear master narrative, the Luttrell Psalter embodies a fluid system of relationships. Sir Geoffrey may have attempted to impose categories and order on his world, but the profusion of images in the Psalter precludes any such stability. Sir Geoffrey Luttrell is woven into the fabric of the Lumell Psalter, and thus the patron becomes inextricably connected to the created artifact. Yet he does not focalize the Psalter, and the theory of the gaze cannot fully explain the relationship between the patron and the manuscript he ordered to be made. The Luttrell Psalter therefore encourages the reader to negotiate the connections that exist between the personal and the universal on a number of different levels. The Psalter is "personal" to Sir Geoffrey because it is informed by his ideology and contains references to his family and environment. Yet, these localized particulars offer only the slightest basis for the Psalter's wider treatment of lordship, whereby Sir Geoffrey's authority is legitimized by his associations with the supreme Lord. This political relationship is also mirrored by the spiritual connections between Sir Geoffrey and Christ: a reciprocaI, two-way process in which Christ lives in Sir Geoffrey, and Sir Geoffrey in Christ. In a11 of these cases, the Psalter charts a movement from the particular to the universal, so that Sir Geoffrey's immediate concerns give way to an everlasting satisfaction in God. Yet, the Psalter also sets up a pattern of correspondences, both between images within its pages, and between it and the

66

Desiring Truth

tomb of Sir Geoffrey. The Psalter takes its place within a system that does not correspond to a single gaze, but which charts a network of fluid relationships that weave together the personal, the political, and the spiritual. The reader of the Psalter participates in this exchange, bearing witness to Sir Geoffrey's ideology of lordship, as he no doubt intended. Yet, we cannot avoid the fact that the Psalter is a prayer book and that the images it contains strike their own associations in the reader, which may be at variance to Sir Geoffrey's intentions. The involvement of the reader within the spectacle opens avenues of escape and resistance, as does the presence of the lord's own folk within the pages of the Psalter. The manuscript may not have been intended for private, solitary contemplation, as the Jeanne d'Evreux's prayer book seemingly was. Nevertheless, Sir Geoffrey Luttrell intended that others would bear witness to the power and authority of his family, and in many ways we do so to this day. The reader's own capacity to judge is therefore an integral part of the Psalter's design. As we look at the pages of the manuscript, we negotiate the Luttrell family's symbolic map, but our journey retains its personal associations. The ultimate achievement of the Luttrell Psalter is that it does not transmit authority, but opens the reader to judgment that is both personal and universal.

PICTURES WITHOUT STORIES: JEAN ROLLIN The Luttrell Psalter contributes to an understanding of the nature of judgment that is central to my study. In reading the Psalter we participate in its ideology, but the images on its pages cootinually threaten to escape any attempts to shackle them. In particular, the vibrancy of many of the marginal illustrations provokes an affective, immediate response in the viewer that is not easily channeled ioto a comfortable system of representation. In part, this is due to the religious function of the Psalter, which mediates between the reader and God. The prevailing ideology of lordship that informs many of its illustrations can be transcended by the very personal nature of the reader's response to the images, and to the psalms that form the textual basis of the manuscript. Overall, it is the fluidity of the network of corresponden ces that is significant, because this fluidity generates a sense that judgment is not afinite act, but a continuing one. Judgment involves examining one's own relationship with elements within a system, and in charting relationships between those elements. Through this process, the reader is continually led away from the particular and towards the universal. The particular Sir Geoffrey Luttrell gives way to a more universal idea oflordship; the particular family at table gives way to a more universal sense of spiritual

Visual Fascination and Two Illustrated Prayer Books

67

devotion; and so on. The act of judgment is an act of participation within a fluid and proliferating system. One of the ways in which the images destabilize straightforward readings is hinted at by Michael Camille, who says that: ... although this manuscript is an official construct planned to present the patron's ideological positions within an ecclesiological frame, those who painted it stood outside both the manorial and the ecclesiastical economy. This raises the complex question of whether the images in the Psalter present the peasants sympathetically or critically.50

Camille sees the potential for resistance within the mode of production: the workers that the lord seeks to marginalize are the ones who are contracted to represent this marginalization in visual terms. Yet, this argument is unnecessary: the images themselves--of the agrarian populace and the rituals and games in which they are engaged--occupy a very important role in the reader's response to the Psalter. In effect, ideology cannot contain them, because of their immediacy and vitality. These images embody a political resistance to any attempts to impose a straightforward ideology on the Psalter. In so doing they alert the reader to the many "lines offlight" that lead away from the center, and towards more complex judgments. Marginalia inspire a similar, but perhaps more personal sense of judgment in the Hours ofJeanne d'Evreux, which I will consider at the end of this chapter. In this tiny Book of Hours, grotesques, babewyns, and other marginal figures continually unsettle and destabilize the reader, pushing hirn or her (originally "her"-Jeanne d'Evreux-if we believe that she owned and used the prayer book) away from conventional readings. The Book of Hours embodies the "emotive path," challenging the text and reader a1ike to transcend complacent belief and narrow understanding. The tiny prayer book is more obviously meditational than the Psalter: its size alone (it rests comfortably within the palm of the hand) suggests a more intimate reading process than the spectacular Luttrell Psalter. In the preceding section, Iwanted to suggest that the notion of judgment in the fourteenth century involves a movement from the particular to the universal, and that even ideologically charged artifacts embrace fluid relationships that undermine stable notions of authority. Yet, this notion of judgment also works within the individual, private reader, who is captivated by the imagery within a work and distracted from comfortable readings and stable interpretations. The Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux embodies judgment within a more intimate, affective context. Both the Psalter and the Hours are connected by the profusion of their marginalia, and the role of powerful images in the acts of

68

Desiring Truth

deterritorialization I describe cannot be underestimated. In particular, these images escape stable notions of the gaze, and confound attempts to order them within systems of representation. In turn, this creates a sense that modern notions of the stable subject are inadequate to chart the reader's relationship with such marginalia. Briefly looking at the work of a modern filmmaker, Jean Rollin, may illuminate the way the artists of these two medieval manuscripts use visual imagery, because for all of these artists the visual image can be both tactile and, occasionally, shocking. Rollin's work offers more to my analysis than this, however, because his films undermine the stability of the spectator even as they are engaging hirn or her in an affective response to the images on the screen. This "double movement," in which the viewerlreader is addressed in the most intimate way while simultaneously forced to transcend stable boundaries and categorizations erected by the intellect, informs all of the works in this study in one way or another. Appropriately enough, the films of Jean Rollin defy categorization. Combining elements of avant-garde surrealism and the visceral shocks of exploitation cinema, films such as Le Viol du Vampire (1967), Le Frisson des Vampires (1970), Requiem pour un Vampire (1971), and Levres de Sang (1975) transcend both of these cinematic genres. Their camp humor and frequent excursions into sex and violence ren der them too cheaply sensational for the arthouse crowd, but they are too lyrical and pretentious for lovers ofhorror or sex films, for whom the outre moments do not come frequently enough. Instead, the visceral shocks ultimately become indistinguishable from the endless profusion of tactile images that undermine all sense of narrative coherence. As in a dream boundaries become blurred: though these films fall into the genre of "horror," many of the incidents that take place in them seem to have no obvious definition, a fact made more obvious by the deliberately affectless performances of the films' main players. As one commentator puts it: Rollin imbues his films with a sense of surrealist cinephilia that transforms them into aseries of striking, poetic images at the expense of narrative coherence and weaves a highly decorative fetishistic eroticism into the compositions, which are often reminiscent of comic-strip art. 51 Rollin's films fetishize color, shape, and texture, and the bodies framed by the camera lens are reduced to formal elements divorced of any human attributes. The first significant element ofRollin's films for my purposes is that they repeatedly undermine the structures of cinematic spectatorship articulated by psychoanalytic film theory. The viewer cannot identify with any one character, and the film narrative-such as it is-never corresponds to one authoritative gaze. Rollin keeps characterization to aminimum, often allowing his actors to

Visual Fascination and Two Illustrated Prayer Books

69

extemporize scenes without dear direction or purpose so that the viewer is unable to identify with any one character. In Le Frisson des Vampires, for instance, the putative protagonists are a newlywed couple who arrive in a mansion occupied by two eccentric characters that later turn out to be vampires. As the film unfolds, the virgin bride is slowly seduced by another (female) vampire who enters her room through a grandfather dock. The conventions of the vampire gente suggest that we should identify with the husband who attempts to save his wife from the dutches of the vampire, but his wife succumbs to the vampire's embrace quite willingly and appears to turn her back on her husband. However, we are also denied a masochistic identification with the victim because the film voyeuristically fetishizes her body, rendering it a spectade in the manner ofMulvey's "to-be-Iooked-at-ness."52 Under these circumstances the gaze becomes unmoored, freed from any association with one character. Denied ownership of the gaze the spectator is cut free: those characters with whom he or she might identify become marginalized or objectified, and the film becomes an extended play of surfaces lacking all psychological depth. We bear witness instead to the act of looking itself, as each attempt to gain purchase becomes surrendered to the delirious pleasures of spectatorship. Those who look are also looked at, they are rendered objects that exist in a continuum that also indudes other objects of fascination: the blood of a dove spilt on a coffin, for instance, or the coldness of the stone slab on which a body lies. Tactile images captivate the gaze, which roams across this visuallandscape just like the figures of the vampire twins who wander through all of Rollin's films. Deleuze treats the unowned look as one of the fundamental components of the cinematic movement-image, likening it to a consciousness. The "sole cinematographic consciousness is not us, the spectator, nor the hero; it is the camera,"53 because the camera offers us an act of seeing that does not confer mastery over what is seen. The constant play of surfaces within Rollin's films avoids entering the realm of free association because the viewer is "moored" by certain keyevents, and by the super-structure of genre conventions. Characters die and time passes, for example; equally, although traditional boundaries between "good" and "evil" disappear, vampires stilliargely behave in accordance with their traditional roles. It is the presence of such structures and incidents that allow the viewer to negotiate the films and to draw meaning from them, just as in the Luttrell Psalter the texts of the Psalms and the iconography of the 'authorized' images provide a structure that supports our reading process. It is through the images that escape the master narrative that most excite the viewer's relationship to that narrative, by forcing us to explore our human responses to what we see and read.

70

Desiring Truth

üf course, in the Luttrell Psalter the affective participation of the viewer leads inevitably in the direction of God: the master narrative is never fatally undermined; Rollin, on the other hand, has no interest in preserving the status quo. Nevertheless, the images in the Psalter and those that flicker in Rollin's films have a tactile immediacy in their very lack of depth: they do not refer to some "lost object" and refer to nothing outside of themselves. Instead, they provoke association in the viewer's mind by drawing on religious and mythological themes and by embodying scenes imbued with eroticism and vioience. In this way they are akin to images that aid in the art of memory, which, as Carruthers remarks, abound with sex and violence and are always extreme. The one thing that cannot be tolerated in such images, Carruthers claims, is "dullness or quietude or any fai/ure to rivet the attention. These are shocking images but their shock value is useful."54 Titillation is an essential component of the art of memory; though it does not serve a pious function in Rollin's films it still serves to incite the viewer by escaping social norms. As in the act of reading, the subject is asked to em bark on a journey of discovery that recognizes the !imitations of the self and the social and perceptual boundaries that circumscribe it. In essence, then, we can see that images, even those that appear licentious or disordered, often transcend reason and strike at a deeper truth. Crucially, the important aspect of marginal images is not how we interpret them, but that we respond to them directly: differently to the ways in which others respond, and even differently each time we respond. In this way the particular can reveal some essence of the universal. üf course, in Rollin's case it is probably fair to say that his work often confounds reason, rather than transcends it-his films often make little or no sense, and seem to consciously work against logical structures and relationships. Nevertheless, the use of imagery to achieve a profound moment without recourse to narrative exposition offers a modern echo of the medieval contemplative tradition. These echoes are strengthened by Rollin's focus on the body, suggesting the importance of human tactile, perceptual responses at the expense of more consciously articulated ideas. Rollin's images do not transcend reason, because they are often symbolic and draw upon our associations, but their power comes from their immediacy and visceral appeal. Jarring, provocative, and even absurd, Rollin's films cause us to surrender what we know and see things in a new way. Clearly, Rollin's compositions can be seen as the product of fantasy, dream visions that eschew the body and occupy an oneiric real m of phantasmagoric effects. Yet they do not entail an escape from the body, because they play upon our associations and so draw us into their milieu. This is what Deleuze and Guattari refer to as exteriority o[thought: the subject does not es-

Visual Fascination and Two Illustrated Prayer Books

71

cape the imaginary plenitude of the body into a hallucinatory realm of pure fantasy, but enters an associative chain in which elements impinge upon his or her consciousness. The association of images frees us from the urge to normalize and explain away, a1lowing us instead to make "a dreamlike connection through the medium of the liberated sense organs. It is as if the action floats in the situation, rather than bringing it to a conclusion or strengthening it."55 Connections involve our perceptions but are no longer reducible to what we "know" with certainty. Thus Rollin's "obsession with erotic and evil female vampires who perform perverse acts of sexuality in surrealistic settings," to quote one reviewer ofhis work,56 takes the personal element of this fantasy and connects it to the lexicon of vampire lore, adynamie process that renders his individual obsessions open to influence from this wider genre. As Deleuze points out, a dream is subjective, but in it the elements a11 stand in varying relation to one another, and so approach "a materiality made up ofluminous wave and molecular interaction. "57 The recurrence of a scene of waves crashing on a pebble beach, an image that haunted Rollin from his childhood, allows his personal vision to resonate with wider mythologica1 and archetypal ideas, just as in the Luttrell Psalter Sir Geoffrey's "self-image" invokes the themes of chivalry, familial power, and history. The film director who is personally invested in a film that escapes his control thus offers an excellent metaphor for the medieval patron. The "cinematic consciousness" of these works a1lows the readerlviewer to grow nearer to a comprehension of the Whole. The Whole, for Deleuze, is the product of the relationships between disparate elements yet transcends all of them, remaining beyond definition. Our role within this system is crucial, because our reactions contribute to the production of meaning in a way that involves us and yet escapes our control. In this way we are similar to Deleuze and Guattari's schizophrenie who opens out and, "Iike a spore case inflated with spores, releases them as so many singularities that he had improperly shut off."58 Similarly, iIIustrated medieval manuscripts, like Rollin's films, often draw attention to ourselves, placing us at the center of the action without reassurance that we are in control. We are opened out by our physica1 connection to what we see and are unable to feel complete or secure. Our minds remain perpetually alert, perpetually on the move, adrift in the text and open to its possibilities, drawn nearer to a sense of universal harmony by the participatory process of reading.

12

Desiring Truth

THE WORD AND THE FLESH IN THE HOURS OF JEANNE D'EVREUX A tiny prayer book currently in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York embodies the lack of mastery in the dispossessed look. The manuscript is the Hours of}eanne d'Evreux, a beautifully illustrated codex measuring just 3x2 inches 59 notable both for the beauty of its grisaille illustrations and for the astonishing profusion of marginal images that crowd every page. The marginalia, like those in the Lumell Psalter, display great range of imagination: each page is peppered with images that are by turns comic, grotesque, homely, nightmarish, and conventionally religious. There are three basic types of illustration in the Hours: the illustrations of scenes with sacred themes (depicting the Passion, the Infancy, and the life ofSt. Louis); illustrations of secular activities that often occupy the bas-de-page; and the tiny marginalia. Twice we see a young woman kneeling at prayer-a figure generally taken to be Jeanne herself. The illustrations of sacred events are mostly framed while the secular images are not, and the effect of this, as Madeline Caviness remarks, is to give the sacred pictures the status of "a series of icons or holy pictures removed from other orders of existence. "60 The spiritual or heavenly realm is set apart from the rest of the illustrations, and seems to occupy aspace all its own: a plane of existence that is associated with order and peace. In contrast, the earthly, fallen world represented by figures which seem to know no boundaries, and which crawl and clamber all over the pages, occupies a plane of existence which appears disordered, potentially violent, and chaotic. The book is generally believed to have been a gift from Charles IV le Bel, king of France, when, in 1324, and at the age of fourteen, Jeanne became his third wife. Though it is therefore clearly of French provenance, Jeanne's book is relevant to my study because of the way it graphically foregrounds the relationship between text and reader. Its minute size, and the fact that it was designed to be the very personal possession of a solitary reader, raises the question of the ownership of the gaze in a similar way to the Lumell Psalter and the Wilton Diptych. If it is flr a specific reader, does it position that reader in time and space, defining the ideal viewing subject? Or does the patron control the meaning of the text? In the case of the Luttrell Psalter and the Wilton Diptych I have tried to demonstrate that neither of these alternatives helps us to understand medieval approaches to reading, to subjectivity, or to spectatorship. Instead, I have suggested ways in which these artifacts dramatize the non-ownership of the gaze, but do so affirmatively, providing a way out of the "double articulation" that sees the subject either as a producer or a product of meaning. Instead, the personal element

Visual Fascination and Two Illustrated Prayer Books

73

within these artifacts contributes to an overall design that charts a system of relationships, escaping the control of the individual and re-inscribing the subject within a wider system of correspondences. The same is true of Jeanne's Hours, which provoke a sort of Deleuzian nomad-thought: a resdess wandering that expresses a very human search for God. In this way, the Hours help connect the open systems of the manuscript page that I have examined so far to the literary journeys in the succeeding chapters. Her book produces a sense of judgment as a continual, living process, in wh ich the reader is both intimately engaged and perpetually distracted. The "self" that reads and meditates upon the prayers is not restricted to an intellectual approach co prayer, but is intimately and totally involved in an active meditative journey. The vast array of tiny grisaille figures that swarm all over the pages of the book interrupts the flow of the text, but also demands that the reader negotiate and responds to them. Likewise, Jeanne is personally invested in the prayers she reads by way of her connections to King Louis IX, whose Iife--culminating in his beatification-provides the basis of a cyde of miniatures and hourly devotions. Jeanne truly participates in the book, which does not support a tighdy constructed ego but establishes open points of connection between the individual reader and the spirirual context of prayer. Jeanne, or any reader of the Hours, does not own a gaze, because the marginalia and framed miniatures continually undermine such stable notions. Nevertheless, the question of ownership of the gaze is one that Madeline Caviness attempts to answer in her recent essay on the Hours. Her artide demands some consideration because, like Camille's interpretations of the Luttrell Psalter, it reveals the sort of restrictions that the theory of the gaze imposes upon our understanding. The very tide of the artide invokes the duality of this system: asking us to decide if Jeanne is a "patron" who controls the production of the text, or a "matron" who is largely produced by it. Caviness argues for the latter, suggesting that the prevalence of phallic imagery in the margins and the frequent references to procreation and sex were designed to educate the young Jeanne in her role as wife and future mother. At the same time constant references to the sinful nature of woman were designed to keep her "within the lines" and mindful of her prayers: "[e]mbedding didactic images in the devotional text that was in constant use would keep the lessons in mind."61 Caviness' insistence that the "invasive and aggressive" marginal images drive the reader back to the text is in marked contrast to that expressed by St. Bernard of Clairvaux in the Apologia. His concern with the profusion of images within the church is that:

74

Desiring Truth .. . everywhere so plentiful and astonishing a variety of contradictory forms is seen that one would rather read in the marble than in books, and spend the whole day wondering at every single one of them than in meditating on the law of God.62

St. Bernard insists that marginal images distract from ehe spiritual purpose at hand, drawing the viewer away from meditation and into astate of abject wonderment. Yet as we have seen, marginal images can aid spiritual endeavor by inspiring the ars memorativa to make associations between the image and the text, wh ich seems to support Caviness's reading of the Hours. Caviness does not suggest that the images in the prayer book connect to the text in any meaningful way, however; instead, she argues that the images are so intimidating that Jeanne-a female reader-would take refoge in ehe text. As she says: In the book as a whole, the accumulative impact of the grotesques is the most telling element. The marginalia are so invasive and aggressive that the only safe havens from the nightmarishness of the pages' shivaree are the tiny places assigned to Jeanne d'Evreux for prayer ... As areader, she would also find a safe place in the written word. 63 The images do not serve a mnemonic function and support Jeanne's meditation on the text; instead they coerce her, driving her away from the realm of possibility and into the realm of orthodoxy. Initially it would see m that Caviness, who admits to finding the marginalia disturbing and invasive, is unsure how to articulate the role they have in the Hours. This leads her into a fundamental incoherence: the images that tug at her sleeves insistently like a hoard of children (implying a drawing away from the text) are the very ones that are repellent, driving the reader baek to the center. Repellent though these images are, they are also persuasive and pervasive enough to eontrol the reader through the insistent use of phallic imagery. The marginalia control and repeI, tug and coerce, and drive Caviness to attempt a "woman's reading" that insists on their power and so rescues them from the "metaphoricallocker room" of male fantasy and humor. 64 Caviness' reaction is essentially phobie: Iike early film theorists she regards the image as something with an evanescent, mysterious power to be resisted. Her argument that images should be taken seriously is valuable, but by insisting on their negative influence on the reader she runs the risk of inscribing an interpretive system that is more totalizing and restrictive than anything suggested by the images themselves. Apart from imparting a structural and thematic unity to the marginalia that they do not possess, Caviness's argument has the secondary effect of diminishing Jeanne's role as areader, suggest-

Visual Fascination and Two Illustrated Prayer Books

75

ing that she can only have played a passive role in the book's reception. While this supports a feminist politics of the status of women in the medieval period it is unnecessarily deterministic: there is no reason to suggest that Jeanne could not have participated active!y in her prayers, and in fact every reason to suggest that the images on the pages encouraged her to do just that. We should look at the marginalia affirmatively, as productive signs that shock and disturb our certainties, rather than as struts in the construction of an overarching and oppressive interpretive edifice. If the images were there to construct Jeanne, to channe! the flows and regulate the desires, then they should proceed in one direction, they should regularize and systematize the pages of the book. Anyone who has seen the Hours, however, can testif}r that the marginalia display no sense of order or cohesion. They do act like ti ny children, they are provocative, unsettling, and profoundly distracting images that push at the text and very often lead away from it. Sometimes the marginalia help us to understand the significance of a framed illustration, but very often they intrude on our view and corrupt it. Sometimes they even appear to have no relationship with either text or illustration at a11. In one instance a monster seems to be swallowing a line ending, for example (fol. 160r); e1sewhere a dog seems to burst through the page in pursuit of a rabbit (fol. 167v). Neither image refers to the text in any obviously meaningful way. It is hard, therefore, not to agree with Katherine Morand when she says that Pucelle's manuscripts have a dual aspect: the main miniatures which depict religious themes, and the margins which "enjoy the freedom of expression usually accorded to carvers of misericords, roof bosses, gargoyles and the like."65 When the marginal images do seem to re!ate co the text or main-page illustrations, they deepen our understanding by requiring us to think more intensely about the depicted subject. Lilian RandalI points to occasions when the bas-de-page illustrations amplif}r the action of the miniatures, arguing that they do so in a11 but one instance in the Passion Cyde (the Crucifixion). They correspond to the miniatures in three instances in the Infancy Cyde (Terce, Sext, and Vespers; fols. 62r, 69r, 83r); at Lauds, Prime, and None (fols. 35r, 54r, and 76r-Compline is lost) they do not. Yet even at those times when we cannot connect the bas-de-page illustrations to the miniatures above them, we can still draw associations to the miniatures on the opposite page, suggesting that the prayer book conforms to a system irreducible to the dictates oflinear order. For instance, the musicians at Lauds (fol. 35r) link to the miniature of Christ before Pilate, suggesting perhaps the cacophony of the Passion Plays. According to RandalI, then, "the predominant verticalline of communication

76

Desiring Truth

linking miniatures and bas-de-page cannot be relied upon as the only system of ideological connection in the Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux."66 Such spatial complexity demands an alert reader, one who is alive to the many possible connections between images on the page. Areader who is enjoined to read so actively, to make conscious associations between images and think of their relationship to one another, is not a victim of bullying, coerced into one way of reading. Caviness refers to the Book of Hours as "a far more effective schoolbook than aseparate treatise on the virtues and vices," insisting that it "never relinquishes its controlling ideology."67 This reading undermines not only the provocative and proliferating interchanges between the various images within the margins of the book, but also Jeanne's own active engagement in her prayers. Furthermore, by insisting that the Book ofHours reifies the reader, Caviness charts a movement from the universal to the particular-from the world of forms to the limited world of the reader. This is exacdy opposite to the movement that we see expressed in the Luttrell Psalter and other fourteenth-century manuscripts, which open up the individual to a wider system of relationships. The images in Jeanne's book do not encourage her to think privately, to accept a single line of interpretation without question, but to experience outside thought, exteriority of thought. Whereas a linear "method" of reading is the striated space of the cogitatio universalis which draws a path that must be followed from one point to another, exteriority of thought "situates thought in a smooth space that it must occupy without counting, and for which there is no possible method, no conceivable reproduction, but only relays, intermezzos, resurgences."68 A good example of this is on fol. 62r, which contains a framed illustration depicting the Annunciation to the Shepherds. Here, the marginal figures reflect and even extend the feelings of joy among the shepherds who hear the Annunciation within the frame. In the bas-de-page illustration, three rustic figures, depicted in a rural setting (indicated by the tree and hillock) turn their faces up to the scene above them. The left-hand figure blows a horn, his upturned face open to the divine music above hirn; the one on the right is accompanied by a dog that leaps up with delight. In the left and right margins two more figures gaze upon the annunciation scene, while above them two angeIs announce the good news, their scrolls curling down towards the flowering borders that proliferate in the margins. The diversity of this scene, or more accurately this intersection of scenes and images, exemplifies the array ofhuman responses to this most significant spiritual event. The mundane world can be characterized by a total lack of conformity and order, reminding the reader of her humanity, her affinity with the shepherds who only hear the Word imperfecdy {and the

Visual Fascination and Two IlLustrated Prayer Books

77

central figure in the bas-de-page illustration cups his hand to his ear, as if demonstrating this fact}. Even such an event as this, the birth of the Savior, reaches all Christians in different ways, fails to reach some humans at all. One figure on the Annunciation page seems not to have heard: a recalcitrant bagpipe player curled up in the "D" of Deus, his face turned away from the joy an around hirn. (His position within the text, and the sexual allusion to male genitalia in his testicular bagpipes, suggests that physical sin comes from within as much as from without). The range of forms within the margins and in the bas-de-page undermines Caviness's argument that the images in the Hours are didactic; instead, they open up a fluid, dynamic space that dramatizes the varied responses of individuals to the Word. This scene can usefully be contrasted with the bas-de-page image of the Annunciation to the Shepherds that occurs in the Lumen Psalter (fol. 87r). Here, two shepherds tend their flocks with the help of a small dog, and are turned to face an angel who holds a blank scroll in his left hand and points to a star with the other. The first shepherd reacts to the angel's words by holding his hand to his head, in what "seems co be a gesture of incomprehension," in the words of Emmerson and Goldberg. 69 They suggest that although the shepherds have a clear role, they do not understand the spiritual message, and their responses are "mute and uncomprehending."7o They function as mediators, pointing the way to Christ, but not participating in the scene of His Adoration. Their role contributes to Sir Geoffrey Luttrell's ideology of lordship: it is the ariscocrats-represented by the Three Kings-who truly comprehend the significance of Christ's life, and therefore enjoy a loftier role in the story. Shepherds "know their place," which is as facilitators for the more significant work of their lord. Yet, need they be 'placed' so firmly? The depiction of the Annunciation scene in Jeanne's Hours explores the range of possible meanings co be drawn from the event, and reflects the crucial engagement of the shepherds in the production of meaning: without human ears and eyes, the miracle of Christ's birth would go unrecognized. Furthermore, the unrestrained joy of the shepherds in the scene in Jeanne's Hours effaces the claim that the margins are places of masculine power, and that they are structured along patriarchallines. In comparison to the corresponding scene in the LumeH Psalter, the shepherds in the Haurs evoke the wide significance of the Christian mysteries. Looking at this page Jeanne would have witnessed some of the consolations of humanity, expressed through the birth of Christ, the instrument of redemptive Grace. She would also have seen the 10ca1ized and imperfect nature of these consolations: each figure is contained within itself and so cut off from

78

Desiring Truth

true communion either with one ofits companions, or with the angel who delivers the news. Nor would her engagement with this scene have rested entirely on the images on one solitary page. Looking across to the facing page, she would have been reminded of the sorrows that are fundamental to Christ's birth: his eventual death on the cross. Lilian RandalI points out that it is unusual to see the Cycles of the Infancy and of the Passion both accompanying the Office of the Virgin: normally either one or the other was used a10ng with the Office of the VirginJI The dual presentation has a dramatic effect in Jeanne's Hours by collapsing narrative time and setting the mundane world in direct contrast to the spiritual realm. Here, the moment of Christ's birth confronts the imminence ofHis death, in the scene ofChrist carrying the cross (fol. 61 v). Jeanne would have been encouraged to acknowledge the great sacrifice that Christ made for man kind, humanity's unworthiness to receive that gift, and the imperfect human understanding of its magnitude. The earthly realm, with a11 its limited joys and imperfections, must eventually give way to something more complete and true: the delight of the shepherds gains eternal realization in the gravitas of Christ's passion. Meditation on the pages of this prayer book does not produce a model of absolute truth on this earth-the soul's relationship with God is never static and never definitive. Instead the relationship is a condition of becoming. Though God is universal, True, and Just, He is not so in human terms, in the sense of being c1ear, finite, fixed. The individual's relationship with Him is fluid and perceptions ofHim imperfect, but this does not imply a radical separation between the human and the divine. God is not an objective truth to be attained. The act of reading the prayer book is an engagement in nomadie thought. For the nomad the path "is a1ways between two points, but the inbetween has taken on all the consistency and enjoys both an autonomy and a direction ofits own."72 For the nomad, like the medieval Christian, deterritorialization constitutes his relation with the earth: the nomad is never "at home," never satisfied or offered a condition of plenitude. The act of praying must therefore be a discursive process opening onto a smooth space, and it is this space that Deleuze and Guattari's State system wishes to striate, putting it into the service of order. Caviness inadvertently becomes an agent of the State: by articulating the power of orthodox religion (embodied by Jeanne's Dominican confessor) to channel the flows, she has to channel the flows. Caviness regulates the margins, harnessing them to one purpose-to striate Jeanne's body and fix her in place and time. In the Book ofHours the world is imperfect: it is also profoundly distracting. The Christian's attempts to achieve a more profound relationship

Visual Fascination anti Two Illustrated Prayer Books

79

with God are perpetually undermined by the distractions of the fallen world: temptations, vices, fears, and pleasures both innocent and impure. The pages of Jeanne's book dramatize these distractions with great power, demonstrating the immediacy and vitality of the material world, just as the images of humans, animals and monsters do in the Luttrell Psalter. Again, the power of these images acts as aspur, a provocation to our reading, not opposing the central Christian ideology but inspiring the reader's engagement with it, by demanding that the reader respond, and bear witness to the contribution of the physical order to spiritual destiny as weil as its power to seduce and distract. On folios 173v-174r, for example, we see an illustration detailing the procession at Saint-Denis (when King Louis IX was beatified) facing a text page containing a variety of chimerical beasts. The "cosmic" order represented by the framed religious illustration is linked to the evetyday, mutable order represented by the grotesques and babewyns on the horizon of the manuscript page. The solemnity of the procession is captured within an ornate frame, where a group of stately figures carries a gold casket containing the relies of the saint. Though the tiny frame is crowded with figures, they are symmetrically arranged around a vertical axis, their tall, stately forms expressing the essential order of the scene. The two catyatids that hold up the frame on this page refleet the theme or mood of the illustration: they look on as though enraptured, and they seem fuHy immersed in the occasion that unfolds above them. The procession appears to be "moving" from left to right: the faces of most of the crowd and the bearers of the casket aH face in that direction. They are thus heading towards the text page, and the first obstacle in their path is a monkey, hanging onto the vertical text border, from which vantagepoint it stares rudely at the procession and scratches its backside. EIsewhere on the page, grotesque figures mock the stately seriousness of the procession. In the bas-de-page a figure riding-or with the body of-a shaggy monster (gryllus) plays the flute. Another, in the top left-hand corner, sits astride a grossly discorted set ofbagpipes, his head twisted at a 180( angle. Yet another, in the right-hand margin, emerges from the end of a line and is engrossed in spinning a plate. Within the larger initial a man plays the harp while a monster gnaws at his leg-a possible parody of the Psalmist. The smaller initial contains a hunchbacked gryllus. Other creatures even invade the lines of text, physically interrupting the reading process with their bodies. Not only are these all figures of distortion, they seem specifically there co mock the orderly procession that moves towards them. The musicians undermine the gravity of the occasion in their grotesque forms and attitudes. The plate-spinner clearly prefers his mindless fun CO any profound meditation on the drama

80

Desiring Truth

unfolding on the opposite page. If the reader follows its line of sight, the monkey seems to be staring directly at the lead casket bearer. The figures are rude, ribald, and solipsistic. Initially it appears as though the pages depict a simple contrast between the mundane world of sin, ignorance, and foolishness and the spiritual realm of peace, saintliness and order. Yet Pucelle offers the reader more than this simple dichotomy, and does so through skilful manipulation of the space on the page. In particular, the framing of the miniature contributes to an illusory sense of depth by allowing the reader to look through it, and gaze upon an apparently "real" world. Ir is as though the frame is a window onto threedimensional space; in contrast, the diegetic space that contains the figures on the facing page seems Aat and two-dimensional. As Jonathan J. G. Alexander argues, this conforms to a development in illumination technique that took place in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, wherein the space within the frame deepened and became more three-dimensional. The frames themselves became, according to Alexander, "like the frames of wall or panel paintings, windows through which the spectator seems to look onto areal world. "73 This sense of depth is intensified in our picture by the use of a dark background, and by suggestion that some members of the procession stand behind others, and so are further away from us in space. The arm of the casket bearer on the left hand side overlaps the frame, subtly suggesting that he is partly "out" of the frame and so slightly "nearer" to us, increasing the sense of organic connection between reader and image. The figures on the right-hand page, by comparison, appear to be f1atter precisely because they do not see m to occupy any "real" space. Even though the use of grisaille gives these characters a certain depth in themselves, they seem to hang in limbo: isolated from one another, and in a "non" -place. This is the same two-dimensional plane occupied by the frame itself, and so the page seems to be divided into foreground and background as weIl as left and right. The foreground contains the frame and the marginal grotesques whereas the background contains the sacred scene, and consequently the procession does not so much walk towards these figures as behind them. For all their energy, mockery, and indifference, the monsters appear unable to influence the solemnity of the procession, their demonic activities rendered impotent by the physical plane on which they are trapped. But the matter is not even so simple as that, because these two-dimensional figures do influence the reader, not only because they brim with vitality, but also because they seem so "near." They crowd out the text itself, the thing that we are supposed to be reading, and they insist that we acknowledge their presence, all the time pulling us away from any deep meditation on the

Visual Fascination and Two Illustrated Prayer Books

81

spiritual scene within the frame. The procession may take no heed of these monsters, for it inhabits another order of space and time, but for us the issue is more complex. The two orders coexist and cannot easily be separated-we cannot simply focus on the sacred and ignore the mundane, or vice versa. As Oeleuze and Guattari point out: Doubdess eaeh organ-maehine interprets the entire world from the perspeetive of its own flux, from the point of view of the energy that flows from it .. . [But] a eonneetion with another maehine is always established, along a transverse path, so that one maehine interrupts the eurrent of the other or "sees" its own eurrent interrupted.74 On this page three "machines"-the procession, the marginalia, and the act of reading itself-interrupt each other, the currents breaking up the free passage of each flow, so that no one system prevails. The mundane world infects the other two "machines. " It physically distracts us from meditating either on the illustration or the text; it reaches out to touch the hallowed center of the procession (note that one figure inside the frame raises an arm a1oft, looking the wrong way, holding what appears to be a club). The procession ebbs onto the page, connected to the mundane world by the arm of the casket-bearer, reminding us that nothing is pure and untrammeled. This is what Oeleuze and Guattari term stratification, where systems of order do not conform to the State apparatus but are everywhere, "effecting formalizations of content and expression, the segments of which they intertwine."75 The suggestion of flowering borders connecting disparate elements on the page is unmistakable, and it is important to see the illuminated page as an organie Whole that encompasses and transcends its constituent elements. One of these elements is of course Jeanne herself, both as the intended reader of the Hours and as a depicted object on the manuscript page. Like Richard 11 in the Wilton Oiptych, and Sir Geoffrey Lumell in the Luttrell Psalter, Jeanne is actually represented by the artist. She appears twice, once on the page depicting the Annunciation (fol. 16r) and once in the Hours of Saint Louis (fol. 102v). Both tim es she kneels in prayer, though in ehe second scene she appears in the main-page illustration, whereas in the first she is situated within the "0" of Domine. Caviness argues that this position establishes Jeanne "in another (time)-frame" to ehe main-page illustration of the Annunciation.76 Michael Camille, on the other hand, argues that the figure so depicted is situated on the edge, in between the two worlds of the sacred and profane.77 Jeanne's position is physically "marginal" and yet it is also privileged· she remains on the outside, cut off from both the sacred and the profane realms, but simultaneously enjoys a window on both worlds. She looks up to the spir-

82

Desiring Truth

itual order and stands aloof from the mundane, at a remove from both but irrevocably divorced from neither one. The spiritual realm is open to, and permeated by, the human frame: the space occupied by the Virgin is not closed off to the kneeling figure below, suggesting that it remains accessible to Jeanne through the efficacy of prayer. The permeability of the sacred space and its connection to this world is reflected in the Betrayal scene on the facing page (fol. 15v) showing Christ surrounded by his accusers. This illustration has no borders, demonstrating how at this moment, when God falls into human hands, all boundaries between them collapse. 78 All of the elements on these two facing pages thus revolve around the idea of connection, of lines converging and of systems of order being overthrown. The children playing Frog in the Middle in the bas-de-page of the Annunciation scene show movement and disorder, and the game itself relates to the buffeting of Christ in the Betrayal scene. 79 Beneath the Betrayal scene itself two figures riding goats converge on a barrel in the center. Convergence is also met by resistance: the guard with the spear on the leh-hand side of the initial, for instance, seems to be on the lookout for incursions from the rabble that surrounds Jesus on the opposite page. But this world breaches the best defenses: both he and the kneeling figure of Jeanne seem entirely unaware of the tiny ape clambering up through the foliage seemingly intent on transgressing the sacred space of the letter. 80 In this criss-crossed space where order cOllapses and orders converge there can be no room for a gaze-nothing imposes structured coherence upon these scenes. In many ways this epitomizes the medieval reading process itself, the deterritorialized, nomadic journey through the text. Perhaps this is why Jeanne is represented with a book in her hand: not only does this offer a picture of conventional piety to remind Jeanne of her "duty," it also establishes her as areader, someone embarked on a journey. The represented reader holds the book that the "real" reader also holds, with the effect that the "real" reader is drawn in and enters the realm of prayer. As Joan Holladay says of the second image depicting Jeanne at prayer, the image works "as a visual metaphor for the use of this part of the manuscript and expresses eloquently the relationship between the owner of the codex and its function."81 The crucial aspect of these representations is that they do not fix Jeanne in space or time, and Caviness and Camille make too much of Jeanne's marginal position in these illustrations. Jeanne engages in an act that transcends time in these pictures, and wh ich is essentially placeless. Prayer brings her into communion with the heavenly sphere in a ceaseless process of becoming. Nonetheless, this is not a pure, metaphysical act: Jeanne is bodily involved in her prayers and woven into the very fabric of the codex. Like Sir

Visuat Fascination and Two Illustrated Prayer Books

83

Geoffrey Luttrell, Jeanne's connections to the manuscript involve a variety of forces that connect through her: forces that are political, social, and historical. Caviness stresses the dynastie pressures on Jeanne after her marriage to CharIes IV-in particular the need to produce an heir-but despite the various images in the Hours that may or may not suggest fecundity, it is important not to make too much of these localized tribulations. As we saw in the Luttrell Psalter, images in an illuminated manuscript transcend any one particular moment, and the prayer book would surely have been a comfort to Jeanne throughout her life-a fact borne out by the reference she makes to the Hours in her will. The pressures on her to produce an heir would not have impressed her so deeply as the need to reconcile herself to her faith and direct it in the right manner, and this is perhaps why we see her at prayer. If the Hours represent Jeanne's life, it is not her personal "life" so much as her interior life, her life in God. More signif'icant than the images suggesting procreation, then, is the presence of the Hours of Saint Louis among the cydes ofillumination, which, as Holladay points our, associates Jeanne direcdy with the most illustrious member of the French royal household. 82 Holladay details the ways in which the Life ofSaint Louis has been tailored to emphasize his charitable acts which then would have served as a model ofChristian piety for Jeanne to follow. The scene in which she prays to her saindy ancestor echoes and also anticipates the scene on the facing page, depicting Saint Louis kneeling before his own spiritual confessor and submitting to his guidance. In this way, "Jeanne's devotion to her forefather becomes both the unavoidable sequel to and the fulfillment ofLouis's extreme personal piety."83 Just as in the miniatures depicting the Betrayal of Christ and the Annunciation the "cyde within a cyde," where each picture comments upon and draws influence from the other, collapses linear notions of time and space and translate the subject matter onto a universal level. The images thereby enjoin the reader to explore the ramifications of and possibilities inherent in these connections, an active process that demands the highest level of meditation and contemplation. Jeanne would have meditated upon the pages of her book every day, and it denies the very foundation of prayer to suggest that she was simply bullied into a literal reading of her prayers in the way that Caviness suggests. We should also remember that submission co a confessor was considered a willed act, and that acts of contrition and confession must be undertaken consciously and without imposition for them to be efficacious. Caviness is right to stress that Jeanne would not have enjoyed a position of mastery relative to the images in her book, but the same is true ofSir Geoffrey Luttrell and even King Richard 11. Stressing this lack of mastery is to miss the

84

Desiring Truth

point, co emphasize the centrality of the gaze when medieval ways of reading engaged the reader in an interpretive system wider than the personal view. The kneelingJeanne saw herselfkneeling, forever engaged on a quest for illumination, intimately involved but open on all sides. The Hours embody all of the elements in the reading process that I have discussed so far. Within the pages ofJeanne's book reading emerges as an open system of communication between disparate elements, a fluid state ofbecoming in which the reader participates, bodily swept up and brought onto a new level of understanding. Identiflcation, focalization, and all the trappings of the gaze cannot explain this exteriority of thought, the stepping out of oneself and the establishment of oneself in relation to other aspects of the Whole. In part marginal images in an illuminated manuscript help the reader by adding an extra dimension co the text, encouraging us to make associations and to employ the faculties of the mind in ways that deepen our experience of what we read. But they also have a life of their own, a fullness that affects us immediately in sometimes shocking ways. Ir is hard not to see the distorted forms that curl around the lines in the Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux or in the Luttrell Psalter as occupying a stratum that pursues its own agenda, no longer accompanying the text, but invading it. Rather than see text as central and marginalia as peripheral, we then see two competing orders of reality impressing upon one another and imprinting us, the reader. We are then actively enjoined to pick our way through this entanglement in search of meaning. In this sense marginalia keep our feet flrmly planted on the ground, reminding the Christian viewer of his or her fallen state, and preventing the viewer from focusing his or her mind properly on the job in hand, in the way that St. Bernard suggests. The excellent suggestions made by Camille and Carruthers about the ways in which marginalia enhance the reading process should not blind us to their nefarious intrusion, and we should not attempt to explain away St. Bernard's objection to their role as a phobic or politically motivated reaction. His reaction is also a visceral reaction, the acknowledgement that something undeniably corrupt, undeniably human interrupts and distorts even the most hallowed spaces. 84 Chimerical monsters are, as scholars accept, the product of human minds and human artistry, and do we not see ourseLves reflected in these grotesque forms, in all our folly? Marginal images swallow the gaze, or, as B1anchot says, man is unmade according to his image: Not only is the image of an object not the meaning of that object and of no help in cornprehending it, but it tends to withdraw it frorn its rnean-

Visual Fascination and Two Illustrated Prayer Books

85

ing by maintaining it in the immobility of a resemblance that has nothing to resemble. 85

In this resemblance, "which is no-one's and which has no name and no face,"86 marginal images offer the most sustained attack on the freedom of the reader, who must negotiate their distorted forms: they are provocative precisely because they threaten our autonomy. Hybrids and chimeras literalize human impotence and insist on an absolute lack of mastery by resisting c10sure and denying interpretation. While this sometimes provokes us to see new possibilities and opens up the text to a variety of connections, it also insists upon our fundamental impotence. What we decide has no ultimate power and no stability. Marginalia therefore bring to the forefront of our minds the richness and variety of mortallife, but also its transitory nature, its impermanence and frailty. Opening up the possibilities for discovery, the grotesque forms that dweil in the margins remind the faithful that they stand on the edge of creation in a place of darkness and confusion. The world, our physical inheritance, therefore emerges as both our gift and our curse, a spur to the individual's relationship with God and the potential snare to impede it. How fourteenth-century literature comes to terms with this ambivalence and finds ways to transcend the potential impasse it involves the subject of the next chapter.

This page intentionally left blank

Chapter Three

The Multiple Modes of The Parlement ofthe Thre Ages and Piers Plowman

In the previous two chapters, I considered the question of the viewer's participation in a number of fourteenth-century visual works in the belief that art created in this period involves the viewer in the production of meaning, a process that is intimate and yet involves the establishment of individual perceptions within a wider system of relationships. The images and illustrated manuscripts that I have looked at invite the viewer to explore the relationship between elements within a work, a relationship that is not centered on the view of an idealized, single spectator. Instead, the vi ewer charts his or her responses to the network of interconnected elements whilst actively engaged within that network. The viewer does not occupy a fixed place or dispassionate vantage point from which to evaluate a work, but is intimately implicated in its meaning. The fluidity of this system undermines the viewer's attempts to control or coerce the various elements into a coherent structure: fourteenth-century art continually escapes the gaze. The psychoanalytic concept of the gaze, at least as the term is applied in film and visual theory, works to assign elements a stable position within a system that reflects the particular view of an individual vi ewer. The art that we have looked at so far avoids such "narrativization" by moving away from linear readings that construct, or are constructed by, the individual reader. Instead fourteenth-century art involves the viewer in a fluid process of discovery in which all points and relationships are subject to constant re-evaluation. The viewer is intimately involved in this journey of discovery, and very often the Christian foundation of these works encourages the individual to chart his or her relationship with the divine will. In other words, tk-centered art, or art that is not structured around an idealized gaze, explores the relationships

87

88

Desiring Truth

between the particular and the universal. The end-point and foundation of the viewer or reader's quest is God, who guides the intellect and the will in the process of judgment. This relationship echoes what Ross Arthur refers to as a "structuring collaboration" between audience and text. Emphasis on the supposed "postmodern" elements of fourteenth-century art-its ambiguity, its unstable narrators, and its open-endedness-leads to the idea that each interpretation is as valid as another. Yet, the Christian beliefs that underscore the art and literature from this period remind us that individual, human responses are not valid in themselves, but only insofar as they partake of the truth. St. Bonaventure and Henry of Ghent both acknowledge the human capacity to be deceived, and admit that even when addressed by divine representatives, humans can misunderstand the message. 1 Whilst all of the texts lexamine encourage the participation of the readerlviewer, then, they do so with a profound sense that such participation is prone to error and subject to confusion. Indeed, very often this graphie understanding of human frailty animates these works, providing tension through the sense that human intellectual engagement walks a knife-edge between revelation and despair. Thus, although I have repeatedly stressed the intimate involvement of the viewer in the meaning of medieval art, ultimately Iresist the idea that we should use the theory of "reader response" to understand them. My account is not focused on the identity of the reader, and I do not want to offer an analysis of the forces that construct him/her. Instead, I have stressed the idea that judgment, which is fundamental to all the works I examine in this study, involves an attempt to pierce the douds of human uncertainty that lead to relative beliefs and to apprehend some aspect of the truth that lies behind human experience: in an Ockhamist way, seeing individual elements in relation to one another, and this system as an aspect of universal truth. This is in li ne with the mystical hope that the physical realm and our perceptions ofit form a ladder to God, the faith that although Truth may be inaccessible in life, the journey itselfis worth taking (an idea that might weil have reconciled the dreamer and the Maiden in Pearl, as we shall see). Although St. Bonaventure and other contemplative writers stressed that complete understanding is never possible for mankind, they remained hopeful that an individual could perceive something of the truth, however briefly. Those things-both verbal and visual-that we perceive undoubtedly affect this transcendent movement. Through the belief that God resides within the human soul, many medieval empirieist philosophers stress that images can always offer the individual the chance to see something that he or she already knows, but has temporarily forgotten, jolting the viewer out of his or her complacency. Images therefore cause the viewer to see things in a new way,

The Multiple Modes

89

and so to transcend the human structures of convention that are so often the result of fallen human sight. 2 There is a strongly perceptual basis to judgment within fourteenth-century art, then, and one that is founded on precisely the opposite movement to the gaze and its associated structures. As the work of Michael Camille and Madeline Caviness reveals, the notion of the gaze leads scholars to interpret what a particular text "means" for or about a single individual. Perceptions do form the basis ofjudgment in fourteenth-century art, but they eventually give way to universal ideas and correspondences; the gaze demands, on the other hand, that interpretations reduce the universal potential within a work to a narrative schema structured around a perceiving individual. Lawrence Clopper, in his book on the Franciscan influences on Piers Plowman, points to Bernard ofClairvaux's articulation of the role that human perception has to play in the spiritual life. He argues that Bernard's "affective piety begins with the physical suffering of Christ as the point of psychologicaI entry to contemplation; however, one is not to remain there but to move beyond the physical to the contemplation of God in his essence." The meditative path of the via positiva suggests that this movement can be affected by a singular moment or striking image that shatters the subject's limited world view and offers abrief glimpse of the divine. "Judgment" in this context becomes a perpetual process, a contemplative a1ertness that remains open to the possibility for enlightenment through grace. Judgment is not equivalent to a decision, or a finite conclusion at which the intellect arrives, because human intellect is prone to error and because human constructions foreclose the limitless possibilities of Grace. In this chapter and the next, I turn to discuss this concept of judgment as it applies to certain fourteenth-century literary texts, under the assumption that this Christian, contemplative practice can help us to understand works that are not memselves explicitly religious. My aim is to show that what appears as "open-endedness" in these texts can in part be explained through recourse to me concept of the via positiva. The sense in which these texts seem to "circle," offering a near endless succession of detail without apparent synthesis, and the fact that this places the reader firmly within the interpretive process, a11 reflect the "emotive path" to judgment. The poems mat I will be looking at- The Parlement o[the Thre Ages, the texts of Piers Plowman, and me poems of me Pearl-manuscript-may be vernacular, "popular" poems ramer than religious works, but a11 of them explore Christian themes and concerns. Piers Plowman and three of the Pearl-poems (Pearl Cleanness, and Patience) firmly belong within the Christian tradition, whilst ehe others evoke concepts of trum and judgment central to my discus-

90

Desiring Truth

sion. It is therefore fair, I think, to examine the influence that the meditative path has on these works, especially since its contribution to the development of thought in the fourteenth century has been acknowledged by historians, but seldom by literary scholars. In addition, the writings of mystics such as Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, and the unknown author of The Cloud ofUnknowyng blur the distinctions between "secular" and "religious" writings. Piers Plowman in particular has been extensively analyzed for its social realism, but those who treat it purely as a social poem risk dosing their readings to the spiritual context that informs that social context. Certainly, I believe that the concept of judgment as a process, and a movement from the particular to the universal, offers much to our understanding of visual art from this period. The poetic texts in this chapter and the next add a new dimension to my inquiry, however, because they reveal the tensions between narrative constructions and the need for fluid judgment. In particular, these poems invoke the reader's abiliry to remain alert and to transcend localized concerns in pursuit of a wider conception of truth. In each case, a central narrator or protagonist is assailed by a succession of events and characters, and the reader's relationship with this central character mediates his or her participation in the text. Each text negotiates this relationship in a different way, but by-and-large the central protagonist functions in a similar way to the mediating figure of St. John in the Apocalypse cydes. That is, the character provides a point of access into the text, but does not focalize or in other ways structure either the text or the reader's response to it. Instead, the central character provides a point of departure for the reader, promoting each reader's response to the text by negotiating the various elements that interact within each work. The dreamers in dream visions like Piers Plowman and Pearl, like the viators in poems like Patience and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, energize the narrative elements within each poem, providing a reason for their existence and offering a viewpoint on the interactions between them. This viewpoint is often highly localized and even marginal, and protagonists within these poems often struggle to achieve something like a transcendent perspective on narrative events. Their responses provoke the reader's own, inspiring the reader to participate in the meaning of the poem and strive for judgment that rises above the damor of individual voices. I have referred to this process as an exteriority of thought, following Deleuze and Guattari: that is, thought that deliberately pushes beyond conventional structures in order to map the correspondences between elements within a wider context. This form of judgment resists individual narrative constructions, or what Deleuze and Guattari refer to as Oedipalization, in

The Multiple Modes

91

order to strive for a more universal conception of truth. Human systems of representation give way to spiritual insight guided by God. In this chapter, I look at two poems that explore the need to make such judgments. In both The Parlement o[ the Thre Ages and Piers Plowman, a dreamerlnarrator encounters a succession of narrative voices that offer opinions and ideas. In both poems, the radical need for judgment is signaled bya foreshadowing of the Apocalypse that brings each narrative to a dose. The Parlement o[the Thre Ages, a debate poem, reveals the potential endlessness of human dialectic and casts the dreamer firmly within the human realm, the realm of fallen humanity. The poem doses with a sense that such debates, when not accompanied by judgment, run the risk of ignoring the passage of time and the imminence of death-and with it, the Final Judgment. The B and C-texts of Piers Plowman also end with a sense of human time running out and the pressing need for judgment. These versions of the poem difFer from the other texts in this study, however, in the degree of confidence they reveal in the human capacity to make such judgments. This is especially true of the C-text, which is the version of the poem that I will be looking at most dosely in this chapter. The Parlement o[ the Thre Ages ends in an optimistic mood, despite the sense of lengthening shadows, and so in some ways it anticipates the more fully realized hopefulness of the Pearl-poems. 4 The C-text of Piers Plowman, on the other hand, ends equivocally, and with a sense that the world accessible to the senses can divert the pilgrim as weil as guide hirn or her towards judgment. I have chosen to consider these poems in aseparate chapter because they are hoth more dearly o[ the world than the other works in this study. Both poems are permeated by a succession of human voices that ofFer varied and often conflicting ideas and viewpoints, and so epitomize the struggle to transcend the human realm. In The Parlement o[the Thre Ages, this takes the form of a debate that ends incondusively; in Piers Plowman the bewildering array of characters that the dreamer encounters obscure truth as much as they reveal it. I refer to this infinite-in the sense ofhaving no firm condusion-sequence of voices a "jumble of vanishing centers," deriving the term from Deleuze's analysis of the Orson Welles film, Touch o[ EviL 5 The term is useful when applied to these poems because it captures the sense that while a particular character is speaking, his or her viewpoint seems persuasive and even authoritative. Yet, once that character falls silent, he or she is replaced byanother character that ofFers another, equally valid viewpoint. The poetic narrative proceeds in dreamlike fashion, with insistent voices ebbing away before their words can properly be understood or evaluated. This "falling away" seems to suspend judgment in the dreamerlnarrator, but the poems signal

92

Desiring Truth

that we, the readers, similarly suspend judgment at our peril. The jumble of vanishing centers therefore has a dual effect, potentially bewildering the reader (and narrator) as weil as provoking the SOrts of transcendent judgment that are crucial to the contemplative process. Deleuze employs this phrase to explore the movement within the long opening sequence of Touch o[EviL: one of the longest continuous shots in cinema history. Ir shows a nerwork of streets thronged with cars and people all moving in different directions, their paths crossing as they move through the town, groups or individuals pursuing their own paths. The camera, which provides our access into the scene, weaves in and out, hovering above the scene as a whole and then swooping into intimate contact with characters. We see courting couples, policemen, pedestrians crossing the road, and briefly followeach one of these situations before being carried away again. As the camera's view touches each character that person becomes, for a brief instant, the center of the action, but then we move on, above and beyond, and the character becomes a component of a wider visual tableau. According to Deleuze, in this sequence "short shots constantly toppie to the right and left and the sequence shot likewise throws up a jumble of narrative centers." What is perhaps most remarkable about the opening shot of Touch o[ EviL is the way that WeHes manages to hold every character in view. When the camera leaves each character that figure does not disappear from the panorama, but remains part of a fluid landscape comprised of many elements. Characters continue to move, their paths crossing and re-crossing within a nerwork of relations that does not proceed in one linear direction: a perfect metaphor for the political and jurisdictional complexities of the film. We are never sutured into the action: we briefly follow one car as it heads for the Mexican border and learn about the occupants, some of their hopes and fears, and even something of their relationship with one another. But we also see another figure that briefly crosses our line of sight and appears to drop something into the car: abornb, which violently detonates, destroying the characters to whom we have become attached just as they cross the border. Our expectations and certainties are violently shattered, for just as we settle into complicity with the characters of the car they are violently removed from our frame of reference. Welles, according to Deleuze, "through his conception of bodies, forces and movement, constructs a world which has lost all motor centre or a3 he nolde suffer no sore, his seele is on anter" (242). This does not "emphasize that Jonah's fate results from a lack of patience," as Andrewand Waldron suggest,28 so much as it indicates that desire produces an intensification of its own causes rather than an abatement of them. Jonah seeks to avoid sorrow, but gains more sorrow. Desire in the service of individual comfort can only result in the exacerbation of desire. Spiritual contentment, on the other hand, involves the surrender of the wish for gratification and the recognition of the continuity of all things that exceeds physical boundaries. Jonah's descent into the body of the whale mimics his descent into the slavery of the body, and not for the first time we see a punishment that does not so much fit the crime as emerge from it. Sarah Stanbury describes Jonah's time in the whale to great effect. She points out that inside the monster, Jonah's conception of his environment is fragmentary and self-reflexive. There is no order inside the whale because Jonah can only comprehend what he can see and feel, and he now sits in darkness in a vast area whose boundaries he cannot map. Stanbury argues that: "Willfully severed from God, Jonah is visually cut off from a spatial construct he can understand, resident of an interior whose outline and structure he cannot even see."29 Within the belly of the whale, it is as though Jonah is trapped within a fleshy tomb. He enters the whale's maw "hele ouer hed hourlande aboute" (271), demonstrating his spatial disorientation. Once inside the "stomak pat stank as pe deuel" (274), in a place that "sauoured as helle" (275) Jonah makes his "bour" (276). Man and monster become one, the whale's monstrous body merely extending Jonah's own. Jonah is now woven into a material reality that engages only the sense of smell, basest of all senses: most notably he cannot see. Jonah is now very much a body with organs, a stomach, a naveI, and a labyrinthine gut filled with "rarnel and rnyre" (279). As he says, the "abyrne byndes pe body pat I byde inne" (318). Yet, though Jonah is imrnersed within hirnself, he is never entirely separated from God's care. He acknowledges to God in his prayers that:

170

Desiring Truth Pou diptez me of pe depe se into pe dymme hert, Pe grete flem of Py flod folded me vmbe; Alle pe gotez of Py guferes and groundelez powlez, And Py stryuande stremez of stryndez so mony. (308-311)

The body is endosed within a deeper and more profound system, and with this speech, Jonah demonstrates the possibilities for redemption. He may not know precisely what he is saying, but to the reader these words sound a resonant note, bringing us back from the depths ofbodily despair to the immensity of God's ordinance. Jonah's position is not an absolute statement of human nature, nor even a judgment upon his own soul, but a transitional state from which he can emerge. We have experienced the physical privations within the whale's belly, but now we gain a double vision, witnessing the man in the whale and the ocean that surrounds him simultaneously. It is avision denied us in Cleanness, when we remain outside the ark with the doomed. In Patience, however, we come to see the position of the body at the center of creation, not remote from God, but connected to Him. Patience repeatedly returns us to the relations that exist between things, and to the wider continuity in which we move. In this sense it offers a more fuHy realized vision of an organic whole than Cleanness, which is more concerned with the gradual growth in understanding between God and His creation. Nevertheless, Patience also offers us agraphie depiction of the fruitlessness of human desire, a condition into which we slip if we turn away from God. Patience explores both the relations that exist between God and the created world, and the capacity mankind has to reject those relations. Patience may stress the continuity of Creation, but it focuses on the bodily resistance that the corrupt nature of man kind frequently offers to such continuity. Our judgment, as readers, involves seeing ourselves in Jonah, as weil as seeing beyond him: Patience brings us into affective contact with human imperfection in order, perhaps, that we might better understand God's mercy. We never entirely escape Jonah, then, just as Jonah never entirely achieves transcendent wisdom, in spite ofhis faith in God. His prayer to God within the body of the whale seems to demonstrate that he recognizes his division from God, and that he wishes to return to Him. He says, '''Careful am I, kest out fro Py der Y3en/And deseuered fro Py sY3t'" (314-315), and admits to his Lord that "Pou my lyf weIdes" (322). Ir is when he accepts his dependence on God, rather than on his own desire, that God causes the whale to spit him out. Once he reaches dry land he agrees to go to Nineveh, and there he preaches the imminent destruction of the city, prodaiming '''Pe verray vengaunce of God schal voyde pis place!'" (370). At this point jt appears

The Cinematic Consciousness ofthe Pearl-Poet

171

as though the prophet has grown in understanding, and has now conformed his will to God's ordinance. The profound understanding that he demonstrates in the body of the whale is short lived, however. Because the Ninevites repent their sins, God chooses to stay His hand and spares them, wh ich enrages Jonah. In his anger, the prophet once more separates hirnself from God and delivers a speech that reflects that division. He repeatedly addresses God using "Pou" and "Pi," and uses one form of the pronoun eleven times in his sixteen-line speech (413-428). Just as significantly, he focuses less upon the sins of the Ninevites than on his own suffering. Once again, his emphasis in criticizing God is principally on himse/f he asks God co destroy hirn because it would be "swetter to swelt as swype, as me pynk,l.Pen lede lenger pi lore pat pus me les makez''' (427-428). He derives his anger from the feeling that God has undermined his status: where he has prophesied God's vengeance, God has displayed mercy. He sees hirnself in isolation both from God and from the Ninevites, and believes that his "reputation" is an intrinsic attribute. In this speech, then, Jonah once more mistakes accidence for substance: he treats his individual status, Iike his physical body, as though it defined hirn. Jonah's wish that God might destroy the Ninevites also denies his affinity with the rest of mankind. He cannot see that by asking God to pass judgment on the Ninevites, he is asking God to pass judgment on hirn. In the words of Blanch and Wasserman: Failure to perceive commonality, the "we" of shared experience, is what leads the formerly sinful, albeit now repentant, prophet to view the regenerate Ninevites as separate and apart from himself, and, hence, to call for their destruction. 30 Jonah's refusal to "join the community of"we/us" leads inexorably to the separation of "I" and "thou" that marks the exchanges between God and Jonah in the dosing stages of the poem."31 Blanch and Wasserman argue that the "I" of the narrator is communal, and defines an ideal, shared response to the homiletic message of the poem. The dissolution of this community into "I1thou" reminds us how far we have to go to dose the gulfbetween ideal and reality. Similarly, Blanch and Wasserman argue, Jonah must leam to bridge the gap that separates hirn from God-a gap of his own making. The dialectical movement of the poem involves the need for Jonah to move doser to God, the still point at the heart of the cirde. Yet, I would question that there is such a "dialectical movement" that charts Jonah's growing understanding. Although he never denies God, Jonah perpetually centers his hopes and fears on his own body. In the flight from

Desiring Truth

172

God and on the ship tossed by the storm, Jonah is principally driven by fear. When he becomes angry at God's refusal to destroy the Ninevites, he is driven bya sense of his own importance and reputation: he believes that his words to the Ninevites should carry weight above God's mercy to His creation. Once more Jonah interposes his own desires between God and creation; once more, the consequences for Jonah are greater vexation and distress. Jonah's trajectory is not a gradual movement towards God, but the violent oscillations of an individual who cannot transcend the limits ofhis own body in order to express his faith. As a figure, then, Jonah is more complex than the "fallen human" narrator of the Parlement. Jonah dearly believes in God and enjoys a dose relationship with Hirn, but he remains doubtful of his Lord and prefers the comfort ofhis own body to the satisfaction of God's grace. Because Jonah will not make a leap of faith, he remains confined by his body and prey to its vicissitudes. His isolation is marked by a denial of the correspondences that connect the created world to God: he cannot see that the world moves in God, and that God moves in the world. In this way, Jonah represents the frailty of human nature that is a consequence of the Fall: in essence his division from the community of God is not his fault, but mankind's fault. This is why we as readers are never entirely allowed to escape his point of view: in Jonah we see ourselves. Yet, the hope of Patience, revealed in God's dosing speech stressing the correspondences between the natural world and Himself, suggests that our judgment also lies in avoiding Jonah's trap. Where he remains circumscribed by the body and sees only division, we should acknowledge the mercy of God that transcends limited human concerns. Jonah demonstrates that he perceives his relationship with God to be characterized by radical division in his response to the loss of the woodbine. His angry speech expresses his sense of separation and isolation, and once more his words move between the two poles of"l" and "thou":

'A, Pou Maker of man, what maystery Pe pynkez Pus Py freke to forfare forbi alle oper? With alle meschef pat Pou may, neuer Pou me sparez; I keuered me a cumfort pat now is ca3t fro me, My wodbynde so wlonk pat wered my heued. Bot now I se Pou art sette my solace to reue; Why ne dY3ttez Pou me to di3e? I dure to longe' (482-488) .

Jonah is trapped in a recursive binary system, where "I" reflects "thou" and vice versa. The focus of his attack is on what he perceives to be God's efforts to destroy his comfort, a comfort that he believes he obtained ("keuered") for

The Cinematic Consciousness ofthe Pearl-Poet

173

himself He sets hirnself in opposition to God, but tries to argue that his anger is a response to God's opposition to hirn: he maintains that God deliberately sets out to harm hirn. God's response is clear: 'Is is ry3twys, pou renk, alle py ronk noyse, So wroth for a wodbynde to wax so sone? Why art pou so waymot, WY3e, for so Iyttel?' (490-492) With these words, God makes it understood that Jonah identifies hirnself with the woodbine: Jonah's anger at its destruction comes from the association he makes between it and his own body. Jonah suggests that when God destroys the woodbine, He harms hirn directly: the man diminishes hirnself in the belief that his earthly, physical body represents the parameters of his identity. This certainly reflects Jonah's earlier attitude to the woodbine: when he first sees it, he is delighted by the shimmering leaves and gende winds that play around it; he lies down and looks out on Nineveh, laughing with pleasure (461). His bodily comfort seemingly assured, he hopes that "hit were in his kyth per he wony schulde" (463): he wishes that he lived inside the woodbine, or at least remained within the protection it affords hirn. His anger with God when the woodbine goes is similarly a bodily response, suggesting that Jonah sees hirnself only in terms of his material being. Eventually he cries out "'I wolde 1 were of pis worlde wrapped in moldez'" (494): he wishes to be encased in the world, reduced to the state of a corpse rotting in the grave. Yet, God's argument does not rest with the suggestion that Jonah debase hirnself. God also draws upon the connection that Jonah makes between his own identity and the woodbine and shows how a similar correspondence obtains between Himself and creation: 'Pou art waxen so wroth for py wodbynde, And trauayledez neuer to tem hit pe tyme of an howfe, Bot at a wap hit hefe wax and away at anoper, And 3et lyke3 pe so luper, pi lyf woldez pou tyne. Penne wyte not Me for pe werk, pat I hit wolde help, And rwe on po redles pat remen for synne; Fyrst I made hem Myself of materes Myn one.' (497-503) God points out that Jonah does recognize a connection between hirnself and the world around hirn, no matter how base that recognition may be. Furthermore, this connection is analogous CO that between God and creation,

174

Desiring Truth

but with the added significance that creation parcakes of His own essence, an idea that we have seen expressed in Cleanness. With these lines, therefore, God reveals how individuals can apprehend Hirn by exploring their connections to the world, because human relationships echo God's own attachment to the earth. This is perhaps why no particular judgment attaches to Jonah: his "fault" in adhering to the body is a consequence ofhis fallen humanity, but it also reflects, in impoverished form, the divine love for the world. Jonah perpetually turns inwards and away from God, but his self-Iove retains an element of goodness that redeems hirn in God's eyes. 32 Of a11 the Pearl-poems, Patience is dosest in spirit to a prayer: a recognition of human failings that fade into a contemplation of divine mercy. Our own view eventually departs from Jonah as we listen to God's words at the end of the poem, which replace the fragmentary realities of the physical world with the eternal realities of Creation. Creation, we learn, affirms the connections between things we believe to be fragmented, and a11 things connect in God. Like Piers Plowman and the Parlement, Patience stresses that the physical realm expresses God, a1though human nature ohen denies that expression. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight we leam to act upon this knowledge and transcend the limited view of our human counterpart in the poem. For now, though, Patience asks us co watch and to listen, to bear witness to the limitations of the body in order that we might one day transcend them.

TURNING OUR BACKS ON GAWAIN33 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight begins where Patience leaves off: firmly within the world. The opening lines of the poem follow a line of descent from the destruction ofTroy to the establishment ofBritain, a line marked by a succession of wars and inheritances-the physical signs of earthly human history. It is amistake, however, to believe, as Sandra Pierson Prior does, that Sir Gawain and the Green Knight remains rooted in the human and earthly realm. 34 Patience immerses us more completely in the "human condition," and offers fewer avenues for escape. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight pursues two trajectories, our own and Gawain's, and where Gawain remains resolutely of the world and even retreats into its comforting embrace, we achieve something more comprehensive and transcendent. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight extends the possibilities for "lines of flight" implied by Patience but not fully articulated in that poem. Where the narrative of Patience demands a passive engagement with physical events, but suggests that another realm exists, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight encourages us to abandon the linear order of the narrative and take flight into this realm.

The Cinematic Comciousness 0/the Pearl-Poet

175

Like Jonah, Gawain stands at the center of his physical environment, but Sir Gawain anti the Green Knight provides us with a c1ear sense of a diegetic space that exceeds the boundaries of his individual perception. As Sarah Stanbury points out, description in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is at the center of: ... a complex interpretive process that engages both the pilgrim [i.e. Gawain} in the poem and the reader of the text. On the one hand, characters choose to act according to what they know, their choices constrained in part by those sensory fields detailed through description. On the other hand, the audience, which sees through the focalized gaze of the fictional witness, also brings to the text a broader view, one that can visualize a wider panorama than the pilgrim can see and, on a thematic level, one that can guess at consequences and at the moral or spiritual ramifications of a character's choices. 35 The audience draws from the individual perspective of characters within the poem-all of whom have their own particular view of events-but can encompass all of these viewpoints within a wider frame that exposes their limitations. The result is that "shifting lines of sight generate an extraordinarily complex mimesis of vision as uncertain ground ofknowing;"36 with so many perceptual shifts in the poem, no single character can truly claim to have access to the "truth." The crucial point here is that the audience gains access to this complex system, suggesting a more active engagement with events than either Cleanness or Patience permit. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight moves away from its rigidly ordered, concretized opening into a world of multiple perspectives, in which meaning is produced bya series of overlapping looks and glances. R. Allen Shoaf points out that in a: ... poem of comparisons and measurements, of doublings and tests, of games and covenants, Sir Gawain structures avision of relativity and relationship in human exchange."37 Robert Hanning goes one step further, arguing that the elaborate artifices that confront the audience of the poem, and Gawain hirnself, disguise the "truth" behind the adventure. Thus: ... the very ambiguity that invites, nay requires, interpretation of the civilized processes of embellishment contrives to thwart interpretation ... In our frustration we are also thrown into affective contact with Gawain hirnself, whose experience of living in this world, like ours of reading about it, embodies both the necessity and the perils of interpretation. 38

176

Desiring Truth

The poem provokes us to question what we see, to doubt systems of representation, and to strive for an understanding that can embrace the complexity of lived experience. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight takes the logic of Patience a step further, encouraging us to negotiate what we see with a c1ear sense of purpose. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is concerned with judgment, but this question also emerges from an examination of human perception at the heart ofGod's "ordenaunce" that informs the preceding two poems in Cotton Nero A.x. The reader who is immersed in the world in Cleanness and Patience, now gains the opportunity to explore conflicting lines of sight. Both Hanning and Shoaf demonstrate how the narrative dislocations in the poem challenge the audience to recognize that there is more to things than meet the eye, suggesting that the poem operates on many different levels of interpretation. Scholars generally agree that Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a poem thoroughly engaged with the way in which multiple perceptions and multiple aurhorities converge to generate meaning. To apply Michael Camille's description of manuscript marginalia to this new context, the poem depicts "a world ... of horizontal multiplicity rather than vertical hierarchy."39 Crucial to this new sense of extraordinary multiplicity is the figure of Gawain, the character with whom we "identify," if much scholarship on the poem is to be believed. Identification does not work to explain our involvement with Gawain because our ability to expand our perceptual horizons depends upon our departure from his limited point of view. Nevertheless, most interpretations of the poem slavishly follow Gawain wherever he goes, in the belief that he is central to the poem's meaning. We need to articulate a response to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight that does not involve a re-examination of Gawain's departure and return to Camelot. We also need to avoid the other danger, of simply lapsing into a recapitulation of the supposed "open-endedness" of the poem. Like The Canterbury Tales, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is one of the key "Ricardian" texts that supposedly celebrate realism and relativism, and it is normally considered a very "human" poem. As Cleanness and Patience reveal, however, being "human" does not mean avoiding responsibility, but rather it means engaging with the very stuff of life in the knowledge that it is through the living world that God is made manifest. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is not simply "open-ended," but provokes its audience to take a brave step beyond the comfort of their expectations and attempt to transcend ordinary experience. This will not achieve anything profound-for that we have to wait for Pearl-but there is a sense in which Sir Gawain and the Green Knight grappies with the very essence of wh at it means to be human. The first and last step that we take on this journey is to turn our backs on Gawain.

The Cinematic Comciousness ofthe Pearl-Poet

177

We perpetually renegotiate our relationship with Gawain throughout the poem, in fact, looking at hirn as much as we look with hirn. We are his restless companions: one moment we see hirn through the eyes of the courtiers at Camelot who criticize his advent ure (674-683), but at another we feel his cold as he sleeps in his irons on the bare hillside (729). Gawain's very identity is always under review, and we cannot identifY with hirn; if this were a film, the camera would not suture us into an intimate relationship with hirn, but would be roving around, freed from its moorings. Because our relationship with hirn is inconsistent-because we cannot get a "fix" on himGawain becomes another one of those elements in the poem about which we are uncertain. Consequently, his own subjective vision is secondary: incidental not central to our understanding of the poem. According to Deleuze and Guattari, the subject: ... is not at the center, which is occupied by the machine, but on the periphery, with no fixed identity, forever decentered, defined by the states through which it passes. 40

Deleuze and Guattari challenge the centrality of the Oedipal subject in postmodern society, but their words can apply equally to Gawain, who occupies a fluid, transitional state at the edge of the narrative. He does not shape events, but is shaped by mem. Even Gawain's own self-analyses reflect this: they produce "Gawain" as an object of scrutiny; they are not the product of a central ego. Take, for instance, the very first speech that Gawain delivers in the poem. In it, he says of hirnself: 'I am pe wakkest, I wot, and of wyt feblest, And lest lur of my Iyr, quo laytes pe sope.' (354-355)

There is no denying the courtesy of this speech, which allows Gawain co rescue his king while leaving Arthur's reputation intact, as many have noted. Equally clear, however, is the fact that Gawain does not express the "truth" about hirnself with these words. This is a rhetorical speech, intended to construct an idea of Gawain. It does not express his inner thoughts, but fashions an image of an expendable knight who can then take up the ax without causing offense. This definition is eventually exploded by the words of the courtiers, who mark his departure for the Green Chapel a year later by reminding us that "[t]o fYnde hys fere vpon folde, in fayth, is not epe (676). One assessment ofGawain replaces another; furthermore, the court undermines Gawain's own self-assessment, denying us any chance to "see" things from his point of view. The court's

178

Desiring Truth

mournful rhetoric supplants Gawain's own formal exercise in humility, but the constructed nature of each demonstrates that we have no access to Gawain as a definable subject. Neither view is ontologically or psychologically "correct;" instead, both attitudes emerge as possible variant readings of Gawain's character and actions, so that Gawain hirnself becomes flattened out, as though he were a screen onto which characterizations are projected. Like Deleuze and Guattari's subject, and like Jonah in Patience, Gawain passes through states that define hirn. The courtiers assemble hirn piece by piece in the arming scene (567-591), as though they are constructing the ideal martial chivalrous knight, building hirn from the ground upwards. 41 The pentangle that he bears on his shield reflects the virtues that literally adorn hirn, so that he is "wyth vertuez annourned" (634) as gems adorn an artifact. The pentangle seems to "define" Gawain at this stage; characteristics are formed around hirn, rather than express an inner, psychic reality. Thus, Gawain's character emerges as a product of the connections between these attributes, and merely one element in a larger scherne. 42 The courtiers build an image of the ideal knight who is to represent thern, and it is this construction that they are sorry to see leaving. They larnent Gawain's passing only after they have finished arming hirn, and their words no more point to a character "Gawain" than do Gawain's own. The arrning scene is an extreme exarnple of the way in which Gawain is constructed, although various other "readings" ofhis character punctuate the poem as the knight passes frorn one location to the next. As he rnakes his way across the wilderness of the Wirral, he combats the monsters in his path and is "du3ty and drY3e" (724), maintaining a consistent obedience to God's plan. This is Gawain the good Christian knight-steadfast, dedicated, and truethe Gawain reflected by the image ofMary he bears on the reverse ofhis shield (648-650). When Gawain arrives at Bertilak's castle, however, the co urtiers offer us a new interpretation of his character, saying: 'Now schal we semlych se sle3tez of pewez And pe teccheles termes of talkyng noble. Wich spede is in speche vnspured may we lerne, Syn we haf fonged pat fyne fader of nurture.' (916-919)

Gawain's identity as the "fyne fader of nurture" is less a se/f-projection than the expression of a role allotted to hirn by the court. The courtiers do not simply "bear witness" to an intrinsic part of his personality, or to a persona that Gawain consciously projects. Instead, Gawain's courdiness at Bertilak's casde is something that others project onto hirn. The members of Bertilak's

The Cinematic Consciousness ofthe Pearl-Poet

179

court express adesire to be educated in the manners of Camelot, and their words reveal more about their provincialism than they do about Gawain's character (who never does give them any "sle3tez of pewez"). Gawain is inscribed within an interpretive system, he is the product of the views of others. Like Oeleuze and Guattari's Body without Organs he is "crisscrossed with axes, banded with zones, localized with areas and fields, markedoff with gradients, traversed by potentials, marked by thresholds. "43 The character who most aggressively inscribes Gawain in this way is of course the Lady. She begins her exchanges with the knight by triumphantly declaring that she will trap hirn in his bed (1210-121 1), as though rendering hirn powerless to resist her authority. Gawain duly capitulates, saying "'[mJe schal worpe at your wille and pat me wellykez'" (1214), and though he attempts to get up so that he can dress hirnself and meet her on more equal terms, she will not let hirn. He asks if the Lady will give hirn leave to rise from her "prysoun" (1219), so that he can meet her in greater comfort, but she refuses (1223). We have seen how Gawain is constructed by his own court through an act of dressing, and his identity is dependent upon what he wears. His nakedness in this scene is significant, therefore, because it suggests the absence of a definite persona. As a naked knighe, Gawain is helpless in ehe Lady's hands. Immediately after the Lady departs on the first day, Gawain "rapes hym sone" (1309) and "choses his wede" (1310) before he does anyehing else, an act which symbolizes his release from the Lady's control. The Lady cannoe allow Gawain to define hirnself, because her goal is eo establish ehe circumstances by which he will accept ehe girdle and fall into ehe erap. For thae she needs a truly malleable subjece, a subjece who cannoe express his own desires, but who is inscribed with the desires of others: a Body withoue Organs. Oenuded, and pinned in his bed by ehe Lady-who ensures ehat his world now extends no further than the limits of the bed curtain-Gawain is now at ground zero, a blank page ready to receive her imprint. This is far from being the "Adamic" state of original innocence. Gawain is not returned to the state of a pure subject, because he has never been such a subject. Instead, his nakedness and vulnerability are produced by the Lady, who effectively strips hirn bare and reinvents hirn according to her own wishes. The Lady produces Gawain as a Body without Organs, which is, according to Oeleuze and Guattari, the "ultimate residuum of a deterritorialized socius.,,44 Far from his own court and cut off from the outside world, Gawain is ready to have his perceptions shaped by the Lady. At ehe beginning of the poem, Gawain emerges from within the socius of Arthur's court as a representation of that court, embodying its codes and its ideals, and bearing the marks ofits interpretive glances on his body.45 The Lady strips hirn of these codes in

180

Desiring Truth

order to establish hirn within her own system, in which Gawain becomes the chivalric knight, the lover whose desires are channeled in a strictly controlled direction. In order to control Gawain's responses, the Lady must codify the f10ws of desire, and see that "no f10w exists that is not properly dammed up, channeled, regulated."46 She begins this process by saying: ' ... I wene wel, iwysse, Sir Wowen 3e are, Pat alle pe worlde worchipez.' (1226-1227)

With these words, the Lady introduces the element of courtliness that characterizes their exchanges. On her departure on the first day, however, she exclaims '''pat 3e be Gawan hit gotz in mynde!'" (1293), because he does not offer her a kiss. She explains that a knight renowned for his courtesy could not have conversed with a lady for so long and not offered her a kiss (1296-1301). Here, she introduces a new element in the definition of Gawain's character: he is the ideal lover, noted for his ability to woo women according to the rules of courtly behavior. Again, Gawain does not introduce these terms, but he does respond to this new definition ofhis character by immediately giving the Lady a kiss. On successive days he gives her similar kisses in response to her requests for them, demonstrating in physical terms that he is malleable to her requests. By defining Gawain as the chivalrous lover, the Lady establishes the conditions for his testing. Gawain is now alert to the dangers ofhis situation: he must act out his role as a lover, without betraying his host. Having trapped Gawain and codified his responses by defining hirn as a chivalric knight, she renders her kisses desirable. Yet Gawain's other subject positions-his role as the chaste knight of the pentangle, and as the honored guest-encourage hirn to resist those kisses, or at the very least their carnal implications. This movement between attraction and repulsion-desire for the kisses and resistance to their possible implications-marks the movement of the bedroom scenes, wh ich in turn have their counterpoint in the hunting scenes. Gawain is caught between these two poles, unable to resist the Lady, but unwilling to surrender to her completely. He is enmeshed in a system by which his desires are articulated for hirn in order that they might be contained. We never get the sense that Gawain is autonomous in these scenes: he is a1ways passive, reacting to the Lady's suggestions that press upon hirn with greater and greater insistence. Ultimately the conflict is not resolved: a1though he refuses to accept the Lady's ring (1822-3), he does take her girdle, and thereby reveals his entrapment within this binary system. Throughout the bedroom scenes, Gawain tri es to chart amiddIe course, resisting the Lady as

The Cinematic Comciousness o[the Pearl-Poet

181

far as he can, but complying with her wishes enough to ensure that he does not offend her. The refusal of the ring and the acceptance of the girdle represent the final stage in this movement, and by taking the girdle, Gawain accepts his inscription within the dosed system. Her work done, the Lady visits hirn no more. Yet, what does this mean for us, the audience of the poem? Unlike Gawain, we have been able to escape the bed, on three separate occasions. The hunting scenes that occupy approximately 150 lines of this section of the poem appear in three sections, each ending with a variation on the li ne "Gawayn pe god mon in gay bed lygez" (1179). Fitt III actually begins with the hunt, the pursuit of the deer at lines 1126-1178. The pursuit of the boar occupies lines 1415-1467, and the fox hunt runs 1561-1618. In each case the section ends by drawing a direct contrast between the vigor of the hunt and the indolence of the knight who lies on his bed. The moral implications have long been a fertile source of debate, but the most interesting thing for our purposes is that for a large section of the poem we leave Gawain entirely. Because of the balance between the hunting and bedroom scenes, it is not dear which has priority in our minds. 00 the hunting scenes reflect upon Gawain's activities, as some scholars suggest, or do they occupy a divergent and even discrete reality? Clearly the energy and excitement of the hunting scenes carry us away, if only briefly. We have seen this sort of thing before, in The Parlement o[the Thre Ages, where so-called "digressive" elements divert us from the linear path of the narrative. This is Burrow's "pointing," a feature of many Ricardian narrative poems. Here, as in the Parlement, this divergent trajectory has a specific purpose, and it is misleading to term it "digressive." The term "digressive" has dear connotations, suggesting subordinate status and even pointlessness. Yet, in the third fitt the scenes in which Bertilak pursues wild animals, and the scenes in which Gawain interacts with the Lady, are equal, suggesting two alternate courses of action. Neither one appears necessarily more valid than the other, and, as we have seen elsewhere, when two equal but contrasting courses of action appear side by side, the narrative calls for us to judge. Bertilak's wild ride in the cold, crisp morning air stirs our senses, whilst Gawain's predicament engages our minds. Like Oeleuze and Guattari, who believe that a "schizophrenic out for a walk is a better model than a neurotic Iying on the analyst's couch," we may prefer Bertilak's day out.47 The point is, however, that we, unlike either Gawain or Bertilak, get to see both sides of the situation. There is another aspect to this contrast that only emerges when we consider the Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in the context of the poems that precede it in Cotton Nero A.x. The hunting and bedroom scenes do not

182

Desiring Truth

merely represent a contrast between public and private or inside and outside. The hunt takes place in a natural setting, in the forest, where beasts and men pursue ancient activities. Bertilak enters into intimate contact with the animals he slaughters, and the poem details the britding of the deer and the duel with the boar in great detail, stressing the physicality of the scene. Gawain, on the other hand, resides in a man-made setting, effectively cut off from the natural world, and circumscribed by agame of codes and rules. Nature and society have never been so remote from one another in the Pearl-poems: both Cleanness and Patience explore the intimacy between mankind and creation, as we have already seen. Now, for the first time, these realms begin to diverge. This movement has been anticipated, when Jonah willfully distinguishes hirnself from the Ninevites and denies his kinship with them. His self-absorption leads hirn into spiritual danger, but perhaps more importandy it traps hirn within a self-reflexive system, where every action is contingent on an immediate, localized perception. For Gawain the effect is much the same: divorced from any sense of a wider context than what he can perceive, he makes decisions solely based upon his myopie frame of reference. The Lady's characterization of the girdle and her insistence that it represents a private contract between the two of them only make sense to someone denied the opportunity to check these "facts" against a wider interpretive system. Because Gawain chooses to align hirnself with the world of signs, he enters a circular system cut off from the moorings of "objective" reality, and, thus, cut off from God. There are no absolutes in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, however, as there is none in the other Pearl-poems, and so Gawain is not absolutely cut off from the heavenly realm. His first action after the departure of the Lady is to attend confession, demonstrating that he is still inclined towards Godj Gawain is not a damned soul beyond redemption. As we saw in Patience, human beings tend to take their lives, and their sins, more seriously than God, a dangerous habit that can lead them towards despair. This tendency will return to haunt Gawain at the Green Chapel. Gawain even pays lip service to the concept of universal or objective truth, saying to the guide who encourages hirn to flee and promises never to tell, "[b]ot heide pou hit neuer so holde, and I here passed" says Gawain, "} were a knY3t kowarde" (2129-2131). The fact that he acknowledges the potential for such objective judgments reveal that he is not beyond hope, but this is the last time in the poem he makes such a gesture towards objectivity. His dealings with the Green Knight at the Green Chapel reveal that he has come to accept his, and the Lady's, human construction of events, which rest on the divisions between things rather than their points of connection. He

The Cinematic Consciousness ofthe Pearl-Poet

183

proceeds in the belief that his relationship with the Lady is a private matter, for instance, and that Bertilak and the Green Knight are two distinct individuals. Because Gawain, like Jonah, denies the connections between elements within his environment, everything is true in absolute terms. The fact that the promises he makes to his host and to the Lady are mutuaHy incompatible does not occur to hirn, because he can only comprehend something that is immediately accessible to his perceptions. Gawain sees only what is in front ofhim; we see the connections that link him to the world, and above aH to God. Consequently, the Green Knight's revelations at the Green Chapel have a dramatic and even overwhelming effect on the knight. They introduce a dear demonstration of the connections that exist between things, where Gawain has proceeded on the belief that there are none. Here we have a concept of relativism that lies at the furthest possible distance from postmodern "open-endedness" and realism. The contingent nature of the world demonstrates that physical harmony exists between all things, not the absence of objective reality. Relativism in the Pearl-poems pushes us towards a growing awareness of universals; the contrary movement is adescent into moral relativism and solipsism. The Green Knight destabilizes Gawain's subjective perceptions and exposes them as a fraud, and in so doing, he shatters the rigid boundaries that circumscribe the knight and ushers in a world of complex relationships. For Deleuze and Guattari this is a great moment, the "conjunctive synthesis of consummation in the form of a wonderstruck "So that's what it was!""48 This is a revelation, when everything is suddenly moved onto a new level. Here, there is "a celibate misery and glory experienced to the fuHest, like a cry suspended between life and death, an intense feeling of transition, states of pure, naked intensity stripped of all shape and form.,,49 This is neither delirium nor hallucination, but a moment of feeling, of primary emotion, which only experiences "intensities, becomings, transitions."50 For Gawain, the need to reassess his relationship with his environment requires a great leap of faith. The "moment of truth," that glimpse of the Whole conferred by the conjunctive synthesis is an overwhelming event precisely because it shatters the comfortable boundaries supplied by the ego. It is a harrowing, overwhelming experience, which brings us to the burning heart of matter, whereupon we can celebrate this moment of becoming or retreat from it. Gawain dearly experiences this moment in all its intensity: Pat o~er stif mon in study stod a gret whyle, So agreued for greme he gryed withinne; Alle ~e blode of his brest blende in his face, Pat al he schrank for schome ~at ~e schalk talked. (2369-2372)

184

Desiring Truth

All the elements hidden by that carefully controlled narrative re-emerge with full force, requiring Gawain to accept that the whole adds up to more than his representation of it. Gawain must now move in one direction or the other: embrace the possibilities opened up by this sudden shock of recognition, or retreat from it. As Deleuze and Guattari point out, the individual who makes the leap of faith: . . . does not confine himself inside contradictions; on the contrary, he opens out and, like a spore case inAated with spores, releases thern as so many singularities that he had improperly shut off, some of which he intended to exclude, while retaining others, but which now becorne pointssigns (points-signes), aIl affirmed by their new distance. 51

This is a difficult task, because it requires the individual to surrender in a flash everything that he or she has carefully constructed. Ir requires a new way of seeing, and a sudden acceptance of a new world order that is not, in fact, new, but has existed a11 along, a1though the individual has been too blind to see it. This sort of realignment therefore requires that the individual accept that the world adds up to more than what he or she can see. Gawain cannot make this required leap of faith. The intense, visceral reaction he has to the Green Knight's revelations, reflected in the sudden rush ofblood to the head, is succeeded bya speech containing an extended self-accusation that reorders his experience into a more stricdy controlled form. Most strikingly, this verbal realignment is centered on hirnself: Gawain accuses hirnself of "cowarddyse and couetyse" (2374) in which there is "vylany and vyse, pat vertue disstryez" (2375). He takes off the girdle and violendy flings it aside, before completing his self-denunciation with the words: For care of py knokke, cowardyse me ta3t To acorde rne with couetyse, my kynde to forsake: I>at is larges and lewte, pat longez to knY3tez. (2379-2381)

What we see here is an attempt made by a suddenly destabilized character to re-inscribe hirnself in terms that he understands and that he himself has introduced. Ir scarcely seems to matter that the Green Knight has explicitly absolved hirn of most of these sins at 2367-68; what matters is achieving stability in a world of sudden uncertainty. Where the boundaries that separate worlds (Camelot, the castle, the bedroom, the Green Chapel) and that separate individuals (the Green Knight, Bertilak, the Lady) collapse, Gawain must rebuild them. Gawain gains an instantaneous glimpse of the wider network of relationships and his position within this system, but he retreats from what he sees into the parameters of the self.

The Cinematic Consciousness ofthe Pearl-Poet

185

According to Catherine Batt, this speech, "can be interpreted as an attempt to reclaim control by constructing another 'space' for himself ... one so limiting as to make possible only one reading ofhis behavior."52 Gawain's words mark a retreat from the challenges presented by the destruction of the narrative and areturn to the structures of repression. The crystalline structure of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight cracks, if only for amoment, releasing Gawain from the closed circuit of Lady and host, promises and agreements, girdle and ax, in which he is trapped. At this moment, what Deleuze would term the Real appears beyond the closed circuit of Gawain's own interpretations, revealing the complex relations between things when freed from the narrative system. 53 Gawain balks at this "liberating if also fearful indeterminacy," to appropriate Shoaf's excellent phrase, 54 and quickly moves to assert a single, comprehensible reading of events. The Green Knight brings this crucial moment into sharper focus for Gawain when he invites the young knight back to his casde to resume the New Year festivities (an offer he makes at 2400-2402 and again at 2467-2470). In effect, he dares Gawain to confront the implications of his adventure and to return to the site ofhis slight failure. The challenge that the Green Knight places before Gawain is to return to face the woman who has, in his own formulation, betrayed hirn, and to accept that her "enmity" was never intended to bring hirn any harm. The introduction of Bertilak's court at this stage is a clear demonstration that elements within the real world cannot be reduced to one simple, linear order. There are always flows and counter-flows, and things that escape the confines of our narrow perceptions. In the light of the Green Knight's revelations, Gawain must re-assess what he "knows" about the Lady, and also what he "knows" about the purpose of his adventure. The fact that the plot is intended to humiliate Guinevere suggests that Gawain is not even central to the action, but peripheral. Gawain will not relinquish his position at the center, however. His response to the Green Knight's invitation is immediate and uncompromising: with a "[n]ay forsope" (2407) he puts his hel met on his head, marking the limits of his world both literally and figuratively, and retreats to the safety of his own narrow construction of events. In the very act of invoking the truth, he turns his back on it and prefers instead to deliver a conventional misogynist diatribe (2414-2428) so unconvincing, so myopic that it receives no comment from his opponent. Characteristically, this speech reveals the effects of a worldview centered on the self, rather than one in which the self appears in relation to other things. Gawain does not cite the cases of Adam, Solomon and David to transcend his experience, but to excuse himself. Rather than establish a continuity of error that connects all of these men, he argues that

186

Desiring Truth

these men were all "wrathed" with women's wiles and so not really at fault. Like them, "Me pink me burde be excused" (2428), even though he has not been beguiled, but has deluded himself. The circularity of his reasoning demonstrates that he is truly caught within a closed system. Gawain's retreat into self-definition is completed when he once more takes up the girdle, and says "Pat wyl I welde wyth guod wylle" (2430). He intends to take it, not for its monetary value, nor for its elaborate workmanship, but "in syngne of my surfet" (2433). Gawain has certainly not learnt his lesson: he adopts an arbitrary sign of his own making to define him, just as the co urtiers at Camelot once created him from his armor and the Lady created him with her words. Gawain displaces himself onto the girdle, but he fails to realize that the meaning that he attaches to it cannot correspond to its meaning for others. Like Holy Chirche's response to Will's questions in Piers Plowman, Gawain provides a nominal definition, not a real definition: he moves away from Truth and towards his own arbitrary human interpretation of reality: aversion ofevents. Out response can and must diverge from Gawain's in this scene: in fact, Out movement proceeds in the opposite direction to his. The poem has carefully prepared us to recognize a wider system of relationships, and we have periodically left Gawain and experienced another world in which mankind and nature interact. The Green Knight's revelations are thus not a shock to the system: we may not expect them, but our identity and stability as subjects do not depend upon a fixed reading of events. Our moment of divergence from Gawain as a textual authority occurs just after the Green Knight has struck the third blow, and Gawain jumps up defiandy to challenge him. The narrative immediately and dramatically undermines our alignment with Gawain's point of view. We abandon his perspective and turn instead to the Green Knight, leaning on his ax and laughing at the Gawain as an adult laughs at a child. This provokes what A. C. Spearing terms an "almost vertiginous shift of perspective"55 whereby we no longer see with Gawain, we look at him. The sight of another character laughing merrily at the distraught knight prevents us from identifying with Gawain, and we hover in an indeterminate space between the two characters. For Deleuze, "[i]t is always a great moment ... when the camera leaves a character, and even turns its back on him."56 At such amoment, the audience is reminded that the camera is not aligned completely with one character; instead, the film is composed of a network of components that map out aspace beyond the scope of any one viewpoint. Cinematic consciousness is not the preserve of one character, or even the audience of the film, it is the camera itself, unchained from the restrictions of the localized gaze, and able

The Cinematic Consciousness 0/the Pearl-Poet

187

to roarn freely in this open space-the Whole. The Whole itself is a product-it establishes "aberrant paths of communication between noncommunicating vessels ... [but] there is never a totality of what is seen nor a unity of the points of view. "57 The schizophrenie who shatters the boundaries of social order and ehe camera that destabilizes the linear narrative hoth approach an understanding of the Whole. The "privileged instants" that jolt us from our stable viewpoint allows us to step outside narrative boundaries and exarnine the mise-en-scene freed from the subjective perception of any one character. The "privileged instant" at the Green Chapel makes c1ear what is implicit throughout Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: we are not restricted to following Gawain, and our view can and should see more than his. This is where the poem is truly "cinematic"-we, the audience, are freed from the tyranny of the gaze, and able to comprehend the Whole. The moment when the Green Knight looks at Gawain provides us with a privileged instant that explicitly makes the break from Gawain complete. As we have seen, however, we are continually reminded in the poem that Gawain has a limited perception of events, and we never truly identify with hirn. His trajectory through the narrative ends in a retreat into the narrowness of subjective perception, whereas the audience has frequently been in contact with the complex but harmonious system that connects aliliving things in God. The poem grants us a view of the "bursting forth oflife,"58 the constant multiplication of possibilities wiehin a living system of relation. We typically reside in the cinematic consciousness of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, gaining access to things beyond the viewpoint of particular characters. From ehe very opening of the poem, when the narration teils us that "[m]o ferlyes on pis folde han fallen here oft/fJen in any oper pat I wot, syn pat ilk tyme" (23-24), we start to believe that there is arealm of magie that lies just beyond the boundaries of ehis earth, and it is a feeling reinforced many times throughout the poem. The intrusion of the Green Knight into the conventional splendor of Arthur's court, for exarnple, suggests co us the realm of possibilities that lie beyond the social structure: he irrupts from the great unknown into the order of the hall. He also embodies this duality within hirnself, because, as Marie Borroff points out, he belongs to two worlds at once: On the one hand, he belongs (0 the real world, as medieval human beings experienced it and as we experience it today. On the other hand, he represents an ilIusory perception, likewise universal, of that real ity. 59 Similarly, the description of Bertilak's house suggests to us that there is more to it its construction than meets ehe eye. The miraculous appearance of the castle in response to Gawain's prayers, and the unearthly beauty of its design,

188

Desiring Truth

certainly indicates that it may come from area1m beyond Gawain's frame of reference. The description may even bring the New Jerusalern to mind. 60 Given our privileged position, we should not try to reduce these seeming contraries, but affirm their distance as enriching the poem. 61 More than one interpreter has suggested that Bertilak's castle presents a contrasting model of courtlY behavior to that employed at Camelot, bringing forward the question of"which way is best" while offering no answers. 62 Instead of seeking closure, or admitting with a sense of failure that we will "never understand," we should be prepared to accept that several things may be true at the same time. Deleuze and Guattari call the affirmation of two points-marked by their difference-within an open system of interpretation an "inclusive disjunction."63 The Green Knight's invitation to Gawain to return horne with hirn is achallenge to establish the two courts within a wider framework, to affirm the distance between each element and thereby recognize the complexity of the Whole. On one level, the invitation presents a clear choice between two types of community-the palace of"berdlez chylder" (280) versus the vibrant court of active provincials. On another, deeper level it challenges the myopie world-view that places Gawain-and by extension Arthur's courtat the center of things. The poem asks us, finally, not to choose one court before the other, but to recognize the co-existence of both points within a disjunctive network. This is why it is unnecessary to argue, as Sheila Fisher does, that by making the green girdle stand for a token of his sin, Gawain effectively elides the Lady, a process continued by Arthur's court, which: ... collectively rehabili tates the girdle by making it a public sign of honour ... (consequentlyl the woman is safely placed within the court, safely placed specifically because she is removed from the dangerous realm of the private and the feminine and published as a token within the masculine world .64

Ir is not really a matter of whether or not the court excludes the dangerous irruption of the feminine into their stable world, but whether this female figure can ever be elided from our view of the poem. Gawain's perception, like any subjective perception, is subtractive, and restores the stability of the master narrative by suppressing those elements that do not support it. His version of events aligns the Lady with conventional "temptress" figures, and places hirnself at the center of the action, as the man who has been duped. We have been offered a window on the Whole, however, and we have seen the world outside Gawain's window. The Lady cannot be dismissed so lightly, and that is why Gawain's anti-feminist rant appears so unconvincing to us,

The Cinematic Consciousness 0/the Pearl-Poet

189

and why his refusal to return to Hautdesert seems so significant. Though we perhaps do not know why the Lady acts as she does, we suspect that she escapes Gawain's dismissive characterization of her. This is an important development in the Pearl-cycle, because for the first time we are called upon to negotiate the world by remaining alert to things not limited to what we can perceive. Although Sir Gawain and the Green Knight engages the body, it is not rooted in the body, and this is demonstrated most dramatically by our sudden departure from Gawain's point of view. The poem does not simply show us that the individual ego is a sham, it allows us to escape from the confines of the ego and witness a more panoramic landscape. It thus reveals to us how the physical realm can lead us towards greater spiritual understanding, if we do not remain bound by our bodily perceptions. The scene is set for our sophisticated response to Pearl in which we see and feel what the dreamer experiences and "read" the words of the maiden intellectually, but witness a more profound understanding that connects these two approaches. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight hints at our potential to involve our perceptions in an understanding that transcends the limited viewpoint; Pearl reveals to us that such harmony resides in God. By returning to Camelot, Gawain turns away from the opportunity to transcend his limited vision, and re-enters the conventional world of signs and representations. Shoaf argues that Gawain learns to accept his relationship to others at the Green Chapel, and his position within a social context structured around the exchange of meaning. According to Shoaf, Gawain learns to accept the sodal order, aware that meaning is relative and conventionallyassigned, but also aware that to stand alone, believing that all meaning is subjective, is a sin. Gawain returns to the sodus, accepting that he is, "just Iike Everyman, in between, in relation to."65 Certainly the court insists on a sodally acceptable interpretation of Gawain's adventure, "translating" the girdle from a "token of vntrawpe" (2509) to a symbol of renown. In effeet, the court "closes down" the possibilities opened up by the adventure and reduces all its possible meanings to one linear interpretation. Whether Gawain accepts this interpretation or not, the problem here is that Shoaf's movement towards accepting the relativism of human exchange is a movement away from ehe radical possibilities opened up by the Green Knight's offer. In effect, Shoafis saying that Gawain leams that to be human is to embrace relativism and the arbitrariness of sign/signifier-in other words, the whole system of representation. The court therefore represents the sodus, the body that attempts to "recodify" multiple possibilities into one master narrative. The sodus reproduces in large form what the ego attempts to do for the individual: it

190

Desiring Truth

subsumes conflicting perspectives within its controlIed order. This is the capitalist system of representation at work, which Deleuze and Guattari term the relative limit of every society: ... for capitalism it is a question of binding the schizophrenie eh arges and energies into a world axiomatic the always opposes the revolutionary potential of decoded flows with new interior limits.66

We counter any threat to order with arevision of the system that brings these anomalies back within the fold. This is what Gawain does at the Green Chapel: he explains away contradictions in order to produce a "safe" reading that will keep him from harm. Similarly, if we theorize that the poem reminds us of the need for social order, we potentially turn our backs on the revolutionary impact of the deterritorialization implicit in the poem's ending. Such deterritorialization, or freedom from narrative structures centered on the self, drives us away from such narrow, human constructions and towards a more comprehensive judgment. I believe that Shoafis right to see the court as a representative of normative social order; I do not believe, however, that we return to its safety along with Gawain. When Gawain refuses the Green Knight's offer and chooses to go back to Camelot, he backs away from the opportunity to expand his horizons. For us, the audience of the poem, his decision establishes both courts on a continuum, so that although Gawain turns his back on Hautdesert, it lingers in our minds as a vibrant alternative to Arthur's court. We do not entirely follow Gawain back to Camelot-part of us goes with Bertilak, whose court remains rich and vibrant in our minds. We find ourselves turning to questions about Hautdesert: what does it represent? Who is the Lady? And what exactly is Morgan's role? Despite Gawain's search for closure, the moment of conjunctive synthesis cannot be eradicated entirely. Of course, Gawain does not find the closure that he seeks. Even at Camelot, meanings proliferate, and even the closed system of representation bound by a common sign system breaks down. This is consistent with the Pearlpoet's view ofhuman life separated from any sense of the interconnectedness of all things: relationships based on exchange in purely human terms inevitably disintegrate into incoherence. When Gawain tries to explain his failure and shame to his fellow knights, they take no notice ofhim, and their immediate response is to laugh (2514). It seems that Gawain's particular interpretation of the meaning of the adventure is so personal and private that the court seems hardly able to comprehend it, much less embrace it. The court simply has no context for Gawain's unique interpretation of the girdle and cannot accept that it symbolizes his "couardise," "couetyse," and "vntrawpe" (2508-2509). Two worlds

The Cinematic Consciousness ofthe Pearl-Poet

191

diverge: human sign systems are arbitrary and contingent, and so because Gawain and the court do not share a common context for these ideas, they remain mere abstractions. 67 Instead, the court can only adopt the girdle as a sign ofirs general, but uncritical, approval of Gawain: from now on "[u]ehe burne of pe broperhede" (2516) is to wear one just the same "for sake of pat segge" (2518). By emphasizing the proud singularity ofhis experience, Gawain finally suffers the ultimate indignity of watching its mass appropriation. The poem closes with three verdicts on Gawain's adventure-that of the Green Knight, Camelot, and Gawain hirnself, and, as Elizabeth D. Kirk points out: The presence of three contradictory and unmediated verdicts on Gawain's deed presents so conspicuous achallenge to received notions of how medieval texts transmit meaning that there is a natural temptation to explain the comradiction away by tuming to historical context to show that the apparent indeterminacy does not actually exist. 68

Not only does the indeterminacy exist, it is affirmative: it opens up the text, allowing several things to be true simultaneously. Gawain's "failure" to establish hirnself back at court a1lows all of these interpretive possibilities to coexist; none of the interpretations is universally accepted, and none is categorically denied. In fact, all are true within their own terms. Gawain does commit a very slight transgression, as the Green Knight says; his shame is great and reflects cupidity, as he insists; and he is a hero at Camelot, as Arthur's court claims. Only we, the audience, see all of these points simultaneouslyand in relation to one another. There is no need to argue, then, as Sarah Stanbury does, that in the Pearl-poems "description becomes a powerful narrative tool for dramatizing the limitations of human experience. "69 Stanbury also suggests that the lack of a fixed sense of an ending in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight points to the radical disjunction between human and divine perception. Sandra Pearson Prior expresses a similar "morbid eschatology"-to appropriate lohn Ganim's term-when she argues that God is "absent" from the poem. 70 To be human is not necessarily to be severed from God, although humans seem always prone to believe that such a division exists. An acceptance of the human condition is not necessarilya matter of resignation, but a time of endless and proliferating possibilities, a joyous rehearsal of the heavenly delights to come. The key is to remain alert, and to take note of what is all around us, without lapsing into self-serving verdicts that close off the continuity that exists between things. A sense of movement, and of continual becoming rather than static division, that best captures the heart of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

/92

Desiring Truth

This is perhaps why the Green Knight hirnself seems to be so much wiser than Gawain at the Green Chapel. He demonstrates that Gawain's fault is only minor within the scheme of things and suggests that the knight put the matter aside and enjoy life. Gawain should pay for his sin, as we all must, but then move on and not allow his sorrow to bring his life to a halt. The Green Knight's paternalism is like the patience of God with Jonah, who similarly takes hirnself so seriously to equally comic effect. Yet the immediacy and intensity of Gawain's own reaction is also valuable, representing a true step in life, which explains why he in turn seems that much more "mature" than the courtiers back at Camelot. They stay within the sphere of the court and never escape it, even for one moment. Ultimately, though, all three responses appear to us side by side, as stages in a journey that involves us at the most visceral level, for they are stages on our journey: the journey of becoming. The figure of Gawain, suspended awkwardly between two societies, ushers in our own privileged instant, challenging us to respond to the wonders of this world on as many levels as we are able. Stanbury and Prior both fail to acknowledge the crucial role of the reader, who is liberated from the controlling gaze and can embrace multiple possibilities. Paradoxically, their emphasis on "open-endedness" actually produces a closed reading, which insists on the deadening effect of relativism that represents the division between God and mankind. Yet, the disjunction between the divine order and the fallen world exists only within Gawain, and not within the poem, and the reader is able to acknowledge this fact. Critics who insist that the "open-endedness" of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight represents a crisis of interpretation demand an identification with Gawain as a protagonist that the narrative takes great pains to undermine. We see more than he does, and as we reach the end of the poem we achieve a liberating, if slighdy uncomfortable, feeling of wonder. The poem's "open-endedness" is therefore not a collapse into moral relativism or an apocalyptic sense of crisis. It is a breathtaking flight into judgment, in which the reader is encouraged to engage the world as a living sign offering innumerable traces of God. The poem offers us, the audience who can return to it again and again, the chance to benefit from its privileged instants, its shifting relationships, its flows and chains and becomings. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight opens for us a windowon the divine, but charts the very human nature of desire: "a process and not a goal, a production and not an expression."?! The tenth illustration in Cotton Nero A.x. depicts Gawain and the Lady in Gawain's bedchamber. The knight lies back on the richly arrayed bed, his eyes closed. Above hirn the Lady, dressed in an evanescent spotted robe, hovers in a pose that suggests intimacy and affection. Around them both, the

The Cinematic Consciousness ofthe Pearl-Poet

193

room is represented as an expanse of color. The sleeping Gawain is blissfully unaware that his eyes will soon be opened onto a world of unimaginable complexity-for now, he appears to sleep untroubled. We are sympathetic participants in this drama, but we cannot identiJY with hirn: now, as always, we see more than he does. We see the knight's position relative to the Lady, and the places they both occupy within the wider frame. The picture effectively illustrates what marks the cinematic consciousness of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: the realm beyond the limited human frame of reference; the whole in which the characters move, and in which they are all connected. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight shows us the points of connection between things that appear disconnected to the human representative in the poem, Gawain. In a sense, then, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight reveals the unity of creation, and shows that by transcending the limited and the partial, we can embrace that unity. The scene is set for the enraptured vision of Pearl, where the mutable things of this earth find their perfeet expression in Christ.

"SO WATZ I RAUYSTE WYfH GLYMME PURE": DESIRE AND SATISFACTION IN PEARL No one may enter the heavenly Jerusalem by contemplation unless he goes in through the blood of the Lamb as through a door. Nor is one prepared in any way for divine contemplation that leads to the ecstasies of the mind unless he is, like Daniel, a man ofdesires. -St. Bonaventure, Itinerarium Mentis in Deum72 Desire is the set of passive syntheses that engineer partial objects, flows, and bodies, and that function as units of production. The real is the end product, the result of the passive syntheses of desire as autoproduction of the unconscious. Desire does not lack anything; it does not lack its objecL -Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipul3

I begin with two passages that express desire as an affirmative, positive movement away from human isolation and individuality, because this new sense of desire informs my reading of Pearl In Patience, Jonah's desire appears as a negative force, a retreat from God and into the confines of the self, adesire rooted in the ego. Gawain's movement in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight also refleets a retreat from the positive affirmation of experience into a particular, and narrow, conception of reality. Yet, in this latter poem, the reader's divergence from Gawain's point of view reveals the possibility for expressing truth in perceptual, human terms freed from such restrictions. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight invites us to make judgments that embrace the Real, the transcendent realm in which elements connect and reflect upon one another. Pearl

194

Desiring Truth

continues and fulfils this movement, showing us two opposing figures engaged in a debate that cannot be resolved, and then revealing to us the vision of the New Jerusalern in which these divisions disappear. This final vision is expressed in affective, even ecstatic, terms, demonstrating adesire that brings the self into harmonious contact with creation, rather than adesire that represents an unsatisfactory quest for fulfillment in human terms. The two passages that begin this chapter articulate this desire in broadly similar ways. For Deleuze and Guattari, it is a process of continual production, something that escapes the limitations of the subject and instead expresses reality as a proliferating network of relationships. Desire expresses the real: reality that escapes the particular constructions of the individual bound by conventional systems of representation,74 and as such is markedly different to the psychoanalytic theory of desire, which is predicated on the subject who lacks a particular object, just as Jonah, for instance, lacks comfort in Patience. Deleuze and Guattari see desire as an expression, not of the self, but of that which transcends the self In a similar manner, St. Bonaventure indicates that desires are aroused in us in two ways: The first is through the outcry of prayer, which makes us roar with anguish o[ heart; the second, through the flash of intuition, by which the mind turns itself most directly and intendy toward the light.7 5

For St. Bonaventure, desire impels the contemplative towards God, and desires express the yearning for God within uso Again, this is an unearthly desire, one that transcends the self Is the dreamer in Pearl a man of desires? Does he experience divine contemplation that leads to the ecstasies of the mind? The c10sing lines of Pearl seem equivocal about this. The dreamer is eventually ravished by a vision of the New Jerusalem, so that "Delyt me drof in Y3e and ere,lMy manez mynde to maddyng malte" (1153-1154). Yet, this "delyt" impels hirn to join his pearl on the far side of the water, suggesting that, even at this late stage in the poem, the dreamer seeks to acquire or possess the jewel that he has lost. On awakening from the dream, his rueful analysis bears this out: "To pat Pryncez paye hade I ay bente,lAnd 3erned no more pen watz me geuen," he says (1189-1190), "[tJo mo ofHis mysterys I hade ben dryuen" (1194). St. Bonaventure stresses that, for the "boundless and absolute rapture of the unencumbered mind," one must consult, "not light, but the fire that completely inflames the mind and carries it over to God in transports of fervor and blazes of love."76 For a true mystical vision, one must transcend earthly limitations by degrees and meditate upon the living traces of

The Cinematic Consciousness ofthe Pearl-Poet

195

God in order to gain eventual union with Hirn through the Synderesis Scintilla or "spark of discernment." The dreamer in Pearl falls far short of this mystical goal, and awakes in ignominious fashion, driven out of his dream by his own "brathpe" or impetuosity (line 1170). The dreamer's desire certainly does lack something: it lacks a tangible object, the peart, and the finallines of the poem sound a note of resignation rather than joy: Quer pis hyul pis lote I la3te, For pyty of my perle endyin, And sypen to God I hit byta3te, In Krystez dere blessyng and myn, Pat in pe forme of bred and wyn Pe preste vus schewez vch a daye. (1205-1210)

For the astute reader, of course, this unhappy result hardly comes as a surprise: the dreamer has interpreted spiritual matters in physical, earthly terms throughout the poem, and cannot transcend the limitations ofhis private feelings of grief and loss. St. Bonaventure and Deleuze and Guattari both deny that desire is predicated on lack. Instead, it is a transcendent thing, leading to mystical union with God for St. Bonaventure, and to astate of continual production for Deleuze and Guattari. The dreamer's desire, because it is focused upon a lesser object, falls short of the highest form of contemplation-what Deleuze and Guattari term the real-and withers and dies. The dreamer's failure to achieve something transcendent in Pearl is not new to scholars, who have generally taken great delight in pointing out the pilgrim-narrator's faults. Yet, denigrating the dreamer for what are, after alt, his very human limitations does not seem to me to be a very rewarding avenue of approach to PearL Is it merely a poem about human failure? As we have seen in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ambiguous endings are rarely what they seem in the works of the Pearl-poet, and often mask more complex meditations on spiritual truths. Barbara Nolan is right to suggest that in Pearl, a "secret "cnawyng," veiled and hidden, implied rather than demonstrated in the Iiteral story, appears to be the poem's central organizing principle."77 Pearl evokes a sense of eternal truths that exist beyond the narrative, which focuses primarily on the debate between the dreamer and the maiden. The reader is encouraged to transcend the partialities of these two interlocutors and so become a person of desires, a witness to the ever-living God who eradicates all divisions. In Pearl, we witness two characters engaged in a debate, which, like the debate in The Parlement ofthe Thre Ages, ends inconclusively. Yet, also like the Parlement, Pearl ends with a prayer, an invocation of the Eucharist: "In

196

Desiring Truth

Krystez dere blessyng and myn,/I>at in pe forme of bred and wyn/l>e preste vus schewez vch a daye" (1208-1210). Through the Eucharist, that which is divided becomes reunited, and so Pearl reveals that the divisions that separate the dreamer from his pearl, and ultimately also from the heavenly kingdom, are essentially human divisions. They are real, but they are the consequence of mankind's fallen nature: in God, no such divisions exist. The debate between the dreamer and the maiden is in many ways a debate between the two contrary states of the human soul: the rational mind and the affections. In Cleanness we saw how these states could and should be brought into harmony: in Pearl, they remain divided. Both positions, represented by the dreamer and the maiden, are equally valid; each can only express a partial truth. Pearl is therefore founded on a doubled consciousness: a self divided in two parts. For the reader, however, the veiled and secret "cnawyng," that is eventually unveiled in the vision of the procession of the Lamb in the New Jerusalern, informs and underscores this debate. We see both points of view as partial reflections of a greater truth that connects them. Both the maiden and the dreamer express God in their own way, and so the debate provokes our own movement towards judgment, which is, as it has been throughout this study, a proass rather than a finite conclusion. Pearl embodies the relationship between God and mankind that runs through all the Pearl-poems, and it realizes in graphie terms the imprint of God that inheres in the natural world. As Blanch and Wasserman remark, Pearl "both prefigures and concludes, is both initiator and capstone, beginning and end of the sequence of poems that progress from Pearl to Gawain, from forme to fYnisment. "78 Yet, Pearl also prefigures and concludes the journey of this study, by involving the reader in a judgment that recognizes the reciprocity of God and his creation. I see Pearl as much a debate poem as a dream vision (the genre with wh ich it is traditionally associated), an interpretation that necessitates taking a revised approach to the maiden and her function in the poem. To those who see Pearl as a dream vision the maiden functions as the repository of Truth, the voice of divine authority, and the character who most clearly "defines" the meaning of the poem. Most scholars who "judge" the dreamer, tend to do so from the maiden's viewpoint: the dreamer's "failures" are largely failures to act according to the maiden's instructions, after all. Few, if any, readers seem troubled by the not ion that the maiden stands for authority in Pearl, even though her speeches stress wholesale rejection of human life at variance with God's expressed attitude towards Creation expressed in the other poems. Nor are they struck by the fact that divinely inspired authority figures are notable by their absence from fourteenth-century poetry. Finally, few, if any, interpreters have noticed that the debate in Pearl tends towards

The Cinematic Consciousness ofthe Pearl-Poet

197

division, rather than union, because it centers on a dialogue that is ultimately unresolved, and seemingly ends with the dashing of the dreamer's hopes. If Pearl is a religious poem, as it certainly seems to be, then perhaps we should look e1sewhere for its meaning than the "debate" that ends so sorrowfully. Rather chan view the meeting between the maiden and the dreamer as a meeting between a frail and selfish man and a transcendent representative of heavenly wisdom, it is possible to view both characters as expressions of contrasting religious attitudes. Barbara Nolan draws our attention to changing theological attitudes in the fourteenth century, pointing out that: William of Ockham and his followers defended the power of free will to merit heaven, while neo-Augustinians like Gregory of Rimini and Thomas Bradwardine argued that God could only be known and gained through faith and grace. 79

This summary neatly encapsulatesthe central debate that takes place between the dreamer and the maiden: in particular, the central sections IX-XII. The dreamer argues that the maiden, who seemingly died early in life, cannot possibly merit her exalted status in heaven. The maiden retorts that "innoghe of grace hatz innocent" (625); in the midst of this section, which has the concatenation line "I>e innosent is aye saue by ry3te," she suggests that no man should attempt to seek salvation through justification. "Alegge pe ry3t, pou may be innome" (703), she says, because only the innocent have a right to heaven, and those who live fulllives must commit sin and so forfeit any claim to salvation. Only through God's grace can such an individual be saved. The dreamer and the maiden represent two extreme views of the way co attain salvation. The dreamer, focused on earthly life and attitudes, expresses his spirituality in physical terms. The maiden insists upon a God who cannot be known, and a heaven that cannot be comprehended in human life: a rational approach c10ser in spirit to the homilist in Cleanness. Inevitably, there is a detente. The dreamer, requesting avision of the New Jerusalern, says "Bryng me to pat bygly bylde/And let me se py blysful bor" (963-964). She replies "ytwyth to se pat c1ene c1oystorlI>ou may, bot inwyth not a fote" (969-970). He requests the chance to experience this city first-hand, to verilY its existence and so, perhaps, to distinguish it from a "gostly drem" (790). His requirements are physical, recalling William of Ockham's belief that humanity cannot understand universals or abstractions, but must first interpret the world around ehern through their senses. The maiden's words are characteristic of an older, less affective form of piety: he can look, but must stay physically separated from his vision.

198

Desiring Truth

The maiden effectivelyevokes the via negativa, a rejection of the world, whereas the dreamer expresses the via positiva, the attainment of knowledge through concrete or sensory things. Yet, both characters ultimately remain trapped by the limitations of their own positions, and neither one can embrace the ideas of the other. The maiden cannot accept that the dreamer needs physical verities to support his spiritual journey, whilst the dreamer cannot make a leap of faith that might allow hirn to transcend his earthly desires. Where both the via negativa and the via positiva are aimed at achieving transcendental truth, then, the dreamer and the maiden pursue their own versions of the truth. Their modes of expression come to be ends in themselves, and thus trap them within narrow distinctions rather than liberate them. Only the reader can affirm the truth that escapes each character. It is fair to say that the dreamer and the maiden never learn from one another, and their dialogue ends, as dialogue usually does in debate poetry, with a conditional standoff followed by the end of the dream. The dreamer's own failures are the subject of many scholarly analyses, although I certainly believe that he has been treated unfairly as I hope to demonstrate. The maiden's own philosophy, however, comes in for considerably less scrutiny, partly because it is taken without argument as being the word of God and so unquestionably "true." Yet, what strikes me is that the maiden's arguments may be true in their own terms, but they offer nothing to the dreamer, who frequently remonstrates with the maiden for her rhetorical style and her extreme beliefs. If the maiden expresses objective truth, then her arguments still cannot bridge the gap that separates dreamer from God, and it is clear that this is not simply a matter of the dreamer's failure to understand her message. Too often the dreamer understands the maiden, but disagrees, often quite violently, with what she has to say. This suggests that we have in the dialogues between these two characters a very human debate between contrasting systems of belief. Like most such debates, conflict is irresolvable precisely because neither participant has recourse to definitive, objective truth that might end the discussion. The maiden's argument depends heavily on an outright rejection of the world, which markedly contrasts with the dreamer's immersion in the world. Her philosophy does not merely depend upon the absolute need for grace, it also suggests that living is a direct impediment to salvation. Her views are ultimately unworkable because they can offer no practical help to the dreamer, who is, after all, alive whether he likes it or not. Pearl seems to offer us two extreme and absolute positions on Christian life in order to reveal the more hopeful possibilities offered by a spiritual journey that weds body and soul together, a union that takes place in the Eucharist. This suggests Franciscan systems of thought in which mind and body unite in pursuit of a spiritual

The Cinematic Consciousness ofthe Pearl-Poet

199

destiny that transcends human limitations, not by rejecting human life, but by incorporating it within God; it also implicitly espouses the very affective participation that lies at the core of this book. Pearl expresses the fulfillment of this idea, which is also implicit-and sometimes explicit-in the other poems in the manuscript. The growing accord between God and creation in Cleanness, the frailty of humanity in contrast to God's mercy in Patience, and the emphasis on community and judgment in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, all stern from, and lead back to, the hypostatic union at the heart of PearL The reader witnesses the vision of the Larnb that brings the physical and the spiritual together, expressing harmony rather than the division that characterizes the debate between the dreamer and the pearl. The maiden's status as an impartial expounder of "truth" depends upon her objective distance from the dreamer. In most accounts of Pearts meaning, interpreters emphasize the dreamer's desire for his lost pearl, adesire that is contextualized and eventually dismissed by the maiden. Where the dreamer speaks from the heart, in words filled with longing, the maiden seems to speak on behalf of God, exposing the dreamer's limited human value system. She seems to exercise authority precisely because she is not the pearl that the dreamer has lost: she insists that she has become something else, something that escapes earthly systems of judgment and understanding. In response to the dreamer's plaintive ''Art pou my perle" (242), the maiden replies: 'For pat pou lestez watz bot a rose Pat f10wred and fayled as kynde hit gef; Now pur3 kynde of pe kyste pat hyt con dose To a perle of prys hit is put in pref.' (269-272) The maiden underlines her difference, stressing the transformation that has taken place in her translation from an earthly to a heavenly body. Is the division between maiden and dreamer really so absolute? When the maiden first appears, she emerges in a direct response to the dreamer's gaze: "On lenghe I loked to hyr pere;/Pe lenger, I knew hyr more and more" (167-168). The more he examines her face and notices her form, the more "gladande glory" sweeps over hirn (171). She slowly appears like the sun from behind a doud, as though illuminated by his sight. The description emphasizes the dreamer's feelings, and in particular his heart, which suffers a blow ("brunt" 174), is stunned ("blunt" 176), and is stung ("stonge" 179). He wishes to call to her, but "drede" challenges "lyste" (181) and he stands still "[w]yth Y3en open and mouth ful dos" (183). The poem focuses on the dreamer's desires and physical sensations, centering the action upon hirn and his body.

200

Desiring Truth

The maiden emerges as a response to these feelings, and cannot escape contamination by the dreamer's sensory engagement. Her role as an absolute, independent authority is undermined by the fact that we cannot entirely disassociate her from the dreamer. The maiden reflects the dreamer, reflecting his desires and hopes and fears: she receives the imprint of his gaze. Not for the first time we see a pilgrim-narrator whose involvement in an adventure is compromised by his affective proximity to what he sees, but Pearl takes the situation one step further. The dreamer is overwhelmed by what he encounters and can neither assimilate it nor escape from it. When he first sees the maiden he says: "I hoped pat gostly watz pat purpose;/I dred onende quat schulde byfalle" (I 85-186), suggesting a level of uncertainty, and even the paralysis of the will. In Kristevan terms, the dreamer is abject, unable to assimilate this challenging object, nor to expel it entirely. Instead, the maiden threatens his autonomy, and the safe, stable categorizations that support his identity.80 She subjects hirn to constant reappraisal, in which his look is continually engaged and then thwarted. The dreamer's gaze becomes a kind of fascination, in Blanchot's terms. Shaviro's understanding of fascination seems dose to the dreamer's experience: On the one hand, I am no longer able to evade ehe touch or contact of what I see, but on the other, since the image is impalpable, I cannot take hold of it in return, but always find it shimmering just beyond my grasp.81

The maiden, who seems to represent the dreamer's lost pearl, stands dose and insistent, at once a product of his gaze and yet escaping from it. The object of the dreamer's fascination renders hirn passive and unable to act. Her very existence challenges his certainties, and her words force hirn to reappraise what he thinks he knows. The pearl that the maiden wears on her breast seems to concentrate the dreamer's sensory limitations. He says: "A mannez dom m03t dry31y demme/Er mynde m03t malte in hit mesure" (223-224), and that he believes that "no tong m03t endure" (225) to articulate such a sight. It is literally beyond his comprehension, and cannot even be described. When he struggles co interpret his sensory impressions, the maiden undermines hirn again, saying '''I halde pat jueler Iyttel to prayse/I>at leuez wel pat he sez wyth Y3e" (301-302). Yet, his eyes are the first stage in his understanding, and ifhe cannot depend upon them, his cause seems hopeless. The maiden encapsulates the impossibility of the dreamer's situation. To understand the heavenly realm, he must abandon his human perceptions; yet, he cannot abandon these perceptions while he remains alive. The maiden, ehe garden in which they stand, and eventually even the New Jerusalem, are arrayed

The Cinematic Consciousness ofthe Pearl-Poet

201

for the dreamer's senses, which are--according (0 the maiden at least-the impediment to his understanding. Nothing is quite as it seems: the maiden describes the garden that the dreamer believes to be the Earthly Paradise as a "cofer" (259), a "forser" (263), and a "kyste" (272). These words carry the connotation of "coffin," suggesting that the garden retains aspects of the physical realm, and can even be associated with death. Commentators have long noted the transformation in the dreamer's values when he moves from the mound to the "erber grene" ofhis dream. The cydical rhythms of nature's dedine and resurrection are replaced by the timeless perfection of the garden. The maiden suggests, however, that this dream-place cannot be taken at face value, because what we see cannot ever be free of its earthly associations. Rather than appear as an independent figure, or even as a representative of divine authority, the maiden emerges in response to the dreamer's despair. Her physical appearance captivates and distracts his look, exposing the schism between outward appearance and inner realiry: she has an outwardly perceptible form, but this does not reveal her actual nature. The maiden thwarts the dreamer's gaze, introducing the problem of human perception that, for the dreamer at least, remains irresolvable. He tries to attain knowledge through the senses alone, and therefore has no recourse to objective truth by wh ich such "knowledge" can be judged. What he sees is inevitably contaminated by what he desires. The situation is a delicate paradox: humans can only "know" what they sense, but the senses can be deceived. Ir is therefore impossible for humans to "know" what they "know." There are signs that the dreamer recognizes the problems attendant upon his humanity, even before he enters the dream. In his grief, he reveals that he is caught in a trap, and unable to escape the distincdy personal emotions and feelings that prevent his consolation. He admits that: A deuely dele in my heft denned, I>a3 resoun sette myseluen sa3t. I playned my perle pat per watz penned, Wyth fyrce skyllez pat faste fa3t. I>a3 kynde of Kryst me comfort kenned, Mywreched wylle in wo aywra3te. (51 - 56)

Andrewand Waldron have this to say about this passage: The contrast between ehe responses prompted by reason and those prompted by passion anticipates the theme of the centraI debate between the dreamer and the maiden, through which he is brought by reason to an understanding of Christian doctrine and acceptance of God's will. 82

202

Desiring Truth

Their analysis is slightly misleading, because the dreamer does not merely acknowledge that his passion conflicts with his reason, he also admits that his reason, or "wreched wylle," conflicts with the "kynde ofKryst." The dreamer reveals his despair in this speech, in which his reason is blighted by his "deuely dele," and his natural sympathy with the divine will turned aside by his "wreched wylle." Reason interrupts passion, and passion interrupts reason: a state of perfectly balanced conflict. The "erber grene" that the dreamer enters first when he falls asleep perpetuates this conflict and extends it. In the magical garden, the dreamer cannot understand what he sees, although it still appears to his senses. The wood seems to be made of crystal, and it gleams and shimmers: it is a place of scents, sights, and sounds, seemingly arrayed for the senses. On the other hand, however, it exceeds the physical realm. The birds that fly around are beautiful, but "sytole-stryng and gyternere/Her reken myrpe m03t not retrete" (91-92). The place is so beautiful that "Pe derpe perof for to deuyse/Nis no WY3 worpe pat tonge berez" (99-100). There are stones in the river "[a]s gIente pur3 glas pat glowed and glY3t" (114), suggesting that their light is not innate, but originates elsewhere. It is not the dreamer's fault to conceive this real m in physical terms, as that is how it appears to hirn. Yet, it escapes the physical and stands on the edge of the spiritual realm. It is not limited by his perceptions-it is not of his making. This is why he is eventually "rauyste" at 1088-the physical realm overwhelms hirn, escaping the confines of his perceptions. The maiden's appearance at this point focuses the paradoxical situation in which the dreamer finds hirnself She is his lost pearl, and yet she is not. She is something more, something that escapes his understanding. As the dreamer says, "Schal I efte forgo hit er euer I f)rne?/Why schal I hit bope mysse and mete?" (328-329). She stands before his eyes, but she insists that he does not really "see" her at all. She is his and not his, and not so much an embodiment of loss as a trace of it. She represents something that is not there, and so is both nostalgic and hopeful, existing in the future or the past, but never in the present. The dreamer's anguish is that she is not physically present, although she seems to be real. His gaze is captivated, but she remains apart from hirn, on the other side of the river. Our view transcends the dreamer's-we recognize his despair, and see it for what it iso All humans potentially succumb to this sort ofblinkered vision, enmeshed in the senses. Our recognition of the haplessness of the dreamer may not prevent us from falling into the same trap, but within the scope of the poem, this recognition allows us to transcend his all too human sorrow. Yet, the maiden's own words offer us little in the way of an alternative to a condition of perpetual ignorance. What is interesting is that she

The Cinematic Consciousness ofthe Pearl-Poet

203

expresses a radical interpretation of human incapacity to act, to effect any change through the operation of the will. Anger and sorrow are useless, she says, because when suffering is decided one "moste abyde pat He schal deme" (348). This is not the same as the logic of causality in Patience and C!eanness, because in these poems human actions specifically and explicitly get the reward that they deserve. Here, the maiden suggests that suffering and sorrow are fated to happen by divine ordinance. The maiden practically rejects the possibility for human agency, thus undermining our own departure from the dreamer's point of view. We may think that we understand more than the dreamer, but we must still abide by what God ordains for us-we have no greater freedom to act. The initial signs are that, where the dreamer embodies the human confinement within the senses and the impossibility of attaining knowledge in purely physical terms, the maiden expresses this very idea in mystical terms. The dreamer admits to a tangle of subjective emotions and feelings that ocdude his vision; the maiden, on the other hand, insists that humans can never attain knowledge because of their physical natures. The dreamer says that he wishes to learn, but he cannot escape his earthly sentiments; the maiden teils hirn that he must learn, but insists that he will never be able to escape the carnality that defines hirn. The maiden and the dreamer share an outlook, but approach the problem from opposite perspectives: because they see only division, rather than points of correspondence, neither can find a way out of the difficulty. Neither can suggest a way to express the spiritual through the physical, and so they talk at cross-purposes, standing each side of a river that marks the intellectual, and ontological, boundary that separates them. The dreamer responds to the maiden's insistence that humans are incapable of achieving truth in life by lamenting that "My precios perle dotz me gret pyne" (330). He says "My herte watz al with mysse remorde,/As wallande water gotz out of welle" (364-365), suggesting an affinity with God who "lauez Hys gyftez as water of dyche" (607). A1though the maiden purports to speak for the divine will, it is the dreamer who demonstrates greater kinship with God at this point. The unhappy dreamer asks the maiden not to rebuke hirn with unkind words, but to offer hirn comfort (367-369), indicating that the maiden's words are cold and harsh. Whatever we may say about God in the other poems in the manuscript, he is never cold or impersonal, but generally displays His affinity with human beings, even when angry. The maiden's impersonal theology strikes a false note: it may be justifiable, but it does not spring from the heart, and it seems at odds with the affective vision of the Lamb that doses the poem. In contrast, the dreamer's sorrow, although selfcentered, does partake of some aspect of the divine.

204

Desiring Truth

Clearly, Pearl does not present a simple homiletic vision, but shows two interlocutors who each demonstrate their limitations as weil as their understanding: they emerge as fragmented aspects of each other. The dreamer's overwhelming emotions and bodily sufferings connect hirn to Christ, but he remains rooted in the self and unable to transcend his physical limitations. The maiden, on the other hand, offers a profound understanding of the necessity for Grace, but simultaneously expresses a basic lack of sympathy with the human condition. Her "advice" cannot help the dreamer, because it depends for its success upon his not being human (or at least not being a1ive). To the reader, neither approach offers a pragmatic theology. It is as if we see a dialogue between the heart and the head, where each contributes to Out relationship with God, but neither expresses an absolute truth. In this light, it is striking that the debate takes place in a non-specific "erber." Neither human nor divine, but showing elements ofboth, the "erber" is a placeless place that perfecdy expresses the encounter between the dreamer and the maiden. The dreamer expresses the essential contrast between the two when he says: lla3 cortaysly,e carp con, I am bot mol and manerez mysse;

Bot Crystes mersy and Mary and Jon, llise arn pe grounde of alle my blysse. (381-384) This reveals that the dreamer does not draw explicidy upon Christian teaching, but grounds his faith in an affective correspondence with Christ, Mary, and John rather than in an intellectual understanding of his spiritual path. 83 He contrasts his own rough manners with the maiden's courdy speech, but where he needs some intellectual engagement, she could benefit from some human sympathy. Accordingly, the maiden instructs the drearner that the Lord hates "[m]aysterful mod and hy3e pryde" (401), suggesting that he practice "mekeness" (406) instead. She reveals to the drearner that she is crowned queen in heaven, and united in marriage co the Lamb, a status that she has not earned, but gained by right because ofher youthful innocence. She insists that her early death meant that she effectively avoided the sins that darken the souls of those who live to a great age. Thus, she suggests that the best means of attaining heaven is not co live a life, but to die in childhood. She argues that: 'More haf I of joye and blysse hereinne, üf ladyschyp gret and Iyuez biom, llen alle pe wY3ez in pe worlde mY3t wynne By pe way of rY3t to aske dome.' (577-580)

The Cinematic Consciousness ofthe Pearl-Poet

205

She enjoys more bliss because of her early death and entry into heaven than any man could gain through good works alone. Nor does she stop there. In fact, she says, there may be others who: ' ... toke more tom, Pat swange and swat for long 30re, Pat 3et of hyre nopynk pay nom, Paraunter n03t schal tO-3ere more.' (585-588)

It is unsurprising that the dreamer says "Me pynk py tale vnresounable" (590)-the maiden practically argues that life is an impediment to salvation, and that we would be better bypassing it completely. Those who "swange and swat" throughout a long life may weIl receive no reward at all, according to the maiden. The basis of her argument is dear: individuals do not earn heavenly reward by right, but through the free dispensation of Grace. She echoes neo-Augustinian philosophers like Thomas Bradwardine, who stress the overwhelming need for grace in the light of mortal sin; curiously, however, her words could almost stand as Ockhamism taken to its extreme: it is beyond the power of humans to apprehend universals, and they depend entirely upon Grace for salvation. The affective mysticism of the via positiva offers a way out of this impasse, but the dreamer is no theologian; to him she makes no sense, and her argument flies in the face of everything he understands. As the maiden continues to speak, so the gulfbetween her view and the dreamer's becomes more apparent, and the more opposed to Lift she sounds. In sections IX and X the maiden introduces the parable of the vineyard to explain the nature of salvation and the extent to wh ich human merit it in life. In her summary (581-588), the maiden reworks the traditional interpretation of the story to add further weight to her argument that death in childhood is far preferable to a long life. The maiden inverts the orthodox reading of the parable, which stresses that the workers who are hired at the eleventh hour represent Christians converted at the end of their lives. The maiden aligns herselfwith those who came into the vineyard at "euentyde" (582) in her interpretation, suggesting that she is Iike those workers who worked for a short space of time. She effectively ignores the fact that those who come late to the Lord's work in the parable still stand the whole day in the hot sun. The time that the workers enter the lord's pay in the parable refers co the point of conversion, rather than point of death. Andrewand Waldron point out that the twelfth-century commentator Bruno Astensis argues that the workers who come at the eleventh hour may include children, but that the concept still refers to a late conversion in Iife. 84

206

Desiring Truth

The maiden inverts the central message of the parable. 85 Christ employs the story to reveal that all mankind can enter into eternallife no matter what age they believe: judgment is equal for all. The maiden, however, uses it to argue that the longer a person lives, the more he or she is likely to forego salvation. Christ points to eternallife that transcends human values by which notions such as "reward" are evaluated. The maiden invokes those very human values in order to argue that the longer the life, the less the chance for salvation. She makes this c1ear when she says that people often forfeit the reward of heaven and "ay pe ofter pe alder pay were" (621). Her argument that "innoghe of grace hatz innocent" (625) falls into line with the current teaching of the Catholic Church, which regards infants and babies who die as saints, but here it implies a rejection of affective values and a denunciation of the corporeal nature of mankind. She suggests that it is possible to die without doing wrong, saying "Pat wro3t neuer wrang er penne pay wente/Pe gentyle Lorde Penne payez Hys hyne" (631-632), and that those who die innocent have a right to salvation; all others must pray for God's grace as their only hope of salvation. The maiden pursues her line of argument by defining the nature of these "rights" to eternal reward. She says: "Resoun, of ry3t pat con not raue,/Sauez euermore pe innossent" (665-666), c1aiming that the innocent are safe and have a right to salvation through their righteousness. In the midst of this section, whose concatenation line is "Pe innosent is aye saue by ry3te," the maiden quotes David to the effect that no man should attempt to seek salvation through justification. "Alegge pe ry3t, pou may be in norne" (703), because only the innocent have a right to heaven. Although the innocent appear in heaven by right, no living person can insist on their rights, because this surrenders them to absolute judgment.86 Her radical philosophy is summed up by the line "I rede pe forsake pe worlde wode"(7 43). Reject the world that corrupts the soul, she says, which of course contradicts her other argument that the dreamer cannot simply reject the world, but must live through it. The maiden's argument leads the dreamer nowhere, because it insists on the absolute eradication of his constituent nature. As Susan Clark and Julian Wasserman put it, the reader: ... is confronted with not only the jeweller's earth-bound expectations concerning the spatial and temporal conventions that he assumes carry over into Paradise, but also with the consistent refutation of those prospects by the Pearl-maiden. 87

Ir is only by charting a path between the dreamer and the maiden that we can see that PearL evokes a spiritual journey of the kind espoused by St.

The Cinematic Consciousness ofthe Pearl-Poet

207

Bonaventure and other mystical writers, in which the soul attempts to grow nearer to God through the progressive illumination of the senses. The dreamer seeks to attain understanding through what he perceives, but his spiritual efforts are continually undermined by the maiden, who describes a God "not primarily concerned with inner transformation, but with outer submission," in the words of one commentator. 88 If the dreamer fails to transcend his immediate grief, or sublimate it within a wider context, the maiden is partly responsible, because she insists upon the rejection of earthly values rather than their evolution into a more profound understanding. Matters come to a head when the dreamer requests physical confirmation of the maiden's new status. He says: "Haf 3e no wonez in castel-walle'/Ne maner per 3e may mete and won?" (917-918). Andrewand Waldron believe that this passage demonstrates the transformation of the dreamer's mind "from rebellious pride to obedient humility. "89 Yet, this does not seem like a concession to her viewpoint so much as a demand to understand her spiritual state in human terms. The impasse between them is now explicit: the dreamer wants to experience the New Jerusalem physically, to see it and even walk within it. In a group of Iines-notably introduced by an extra initial in the otherwise tightly ordered sequence in the manuscript-the dreamer says "Bryng me to pat bygly bylde/And let me se py blysful bor" (963-964).90 The maiden replies "Vtwyth to se pat dene doystor/I>ou may, bot inwyth not a fote" (969-970). He requests the chance to partake in the heavenly vision in an immediate, bodily sense, whereas the maiden insists that he can look, but cannot touch. Neither understands the nature of this final revelation, which permeates a11 boundaries and transcends a1llimitations. Both characters reveal their final position in this passage, and inevitably must give way to the transforming sign of the New Jerusalem. To the maiden, revelation and received truth are enough for any human; to the dreamer, however, the desire for knowledge overwhelms his faith. It is a critical moment in the development of the poem because we can see now the Iimitations of both viewpoints. The dreamer remains circumscribed by a desire that cannot be appeased, bringing us back to the point at which we began this chapter. His desire is not, ultimately, Bonaventuran: it does not involve the transformation of earthly wants into a higher form. It remains focused on what it lacks, as the dreamer himself confesses on awakening: To pat Prynces paye hade I ay bente, And 3erned no more pen watz me geuen, And halden me per in tewe entent, To mo of His mysterys I hade ben dryuen. (1189-1194)

Desiring Truth

208

He recognizes the essential difference between earthly and spiritual desire: with spiritual desire, the more content you are, the more you receive. Spiritual desire is based on union, not division. Ir is a constant mode of production within God: a never-ending and free-flowing expression of love, like the bright river that flows from God's throne. Earthly desire is based on the division that comes from the focus on the self and its wants, and the need to acquire something that remains just outside one's grasp. Whereas spiritual desire is perpetual, earthly desire is ceaseless and never to be satisfied. The dreamer does seem to arrive at this distinction, but he learns the lesson too late to save hirnself from jumping into the river. At the point of ravishment he turns back towards his troubled, earthly desire: Quen I se3 my frely, I wolde be pere, BY30nde pe water pa3 ho were walte. I p03t pat nopyng mY3t me dere To fech me bur and take me halte. (1155-1158)

At the moment of revelation the dreamer chooses to pursue the maiden, symbol of what he has lost, and now seeks to reacquire, in human terms. 91 He is not enraptured by a higher love at this point, but "mad" (1166), driven by his physical needs and desires. Like Gawain before hirn, the dreamer resists the possibilities for a reconfiguration of his perceptions presented to hirn by the vision of the New Jerusalem. His movement corresponds to what Deleuze and Guanari would term subjectification: . . . subjectification imposes on the line of flight a segmentarity that is forever repudiating that line, and upon absolute deterritorialization a point of abolition that is forever blocking that deterritorialization or diverting it. 92

This is because forms of expression are strata, ordering the "smooth" spaces of deterritorialized experience into conventional sign systems. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Gawain resisted the deterritorialization invoked by the Green Knight, who revealed the truth that existed beyond Gawain's own interpretations. Similarly, the dreamer orders the overwhelming experience of the New Jerusalern within a conventional system of interpretation. When he first sees the company with the Lamb he says, "To loue pe Lombe His meyny immellelIwysse I la3t a gret delyt" (1128-1129): he wishes to join the community of the elect in praising Christ. By the end of this passage, however, the dreamer's attitude shifts: now he says that the sight of the mirth among the

The Cinematic Comciousness ofthe Pearl-Poet

209

company of virgins "me gart to penk to wade/For luf-longyng in gret delyt" (1151-1152). The dreamer's "delyt"-delight or desire-has shifted from the enraptured desire of which St. Bonaventure speaks to a concupiscent desire for earthly joy. He is now aware of his physical relationship to the company on the other side of the river, and it is this sense of self that interposes between the dreamer and his contemplative vision. Yet, even as the vision unfolds, the dreamer cannot surrender his earthly concerns, and he interprets the New Jerusalern wim reference to a relative system of values. As he looks at the heavenly city, the dreamer draws comparisons based on the explicit contrast between the sun and moon and the divine light within the walls. "Sunne ne mone schon neuer so swete/As pat foysoun Bode out ofpat flet" (1057-1058), he says, indicating that he cannot articulate a sense of what the New Jerusalern is, but what the earth is not by conrrast. Finally he seems to want to reject the earth entirely, saying "The mone may perof acroche no my3te;/To spotty ho is, ofbody to grym" (1069-1070). Yet, he cannot escape the earth, because he is human, and so his appraisal of his spiritual vision is paradoxically to bring it within a human sphere of reckoning. The great moment when his mind is "rauyste" (1088) and he cannot think, is the nearest he comes to the surrender of earthly values. After that there is only a falling away; areturn to the body and with it a sense of opportunity lost. Yet, for that brief instant when the dreamer is "rauyste," he reveals his capacity to achieve salvation. No characters in the Pearl-poems are ever beyond redemption if they are indined in the right direction, and certainly, the dreamer desires me heavenly kingdom. His failure is a human failure, just as Jonah's is a human failure: his natural desire for the ultimate good tips over into an earthly desire, and he returns to the bodyas he dives into the water. The point at which the dreamer is "rauyste" brings to mind Walter Hilton's Scale ofPerfection. In this work, Hilton uses the term "ravysshed" to communicate, in the words of Gillian Rudd, "the strength of feeling occasioned by his fervent belief in God."93 Hihon's mystic is "y-rauished out of pe bodili wittes," reflecting ehe idea thae ehe strengeh of feeling of Se. Bonaventure's "man of desires" leads ehe soul away from ehe body and towards God. 94 As ehe dreamer in Pearl is "rauysee," he becomes for ehat moment a man of desires and so shows us the potential for human nature to apprehend the divine. Thus, we see mat the opportunity for understanding is not lost, because it was not someming to be acquired in the first place. The dreamer who returns to earm so sadly believes that the vision of the New Jerusalern is but a dream, and that the "doel-doungoun" (1187) in which he lives is the true reality. Our own vision of the New Jerusalern, however, suggests eo us that the heavenly

Desiring Truth

210

kingdom is the "Real," and that it is accessible to uso "Delyt" overwhelms us, as it overwhelms the dreamer: "delyt" of the eyes, of course, but also of the ears and nose. We smell the sweet smell of the incense (1122), and hear the beautiful song of the heavenly host (I 124). This "salvific feast of the senses," as one colleague of mine has described it,95 culminates in a sight of the Lamb himself, who weds both beauty and suffering in one overwhelming sign of affective spirituality and love. Not marring his beauty, but completing it, a: ... wounde ful wyde and weete con wyse Anende Hys hert, l)Ur3 hyde torente. OfHis quyte syde His blod outsprent. (1135-1137)

Christ unites human and godly elements and so transcends earthly systems of representation, not by denying human values, but by exceeding them. Christ is the living denial of the maiden's words-which stress that we must reject the earth-because His suffering is so very human. It is in Him that the human and the divine realms meet; through Him the maiden and the dreamer can accord. Although the dreamer himself seems unable to act upon what he has seen, the poem ends with this expression of union in the form of the Eucharist, reminding us that God and humanity come together through this sacrament. The debate between the dreamer and the maiden reveals the heavenly kingdom to us, and the dreamer's final vision of the New Jerusalem demonstrates that this kingdom is where human perceptions come to eventual fruition. The dreamer himself touches upon this truth and then falls back, but his failure paves the way for our own vision of salvation. The centrality of Christ in this hypostatic union between God and man suggests a Bonaventuran form of exemplarism, similar to that demonstrated in Cleanness, and a way of uniting the opposed ideas of the dreamer and the maiden. The invocation of the Eucharist at the end of Pearl, which is taken up at the beginning of Cleanness, suggests a shared belief that Christ is placed at the center of the living covenant that exists between God and man. The maiden denies the possibility for such a movement, and argues that God and humanity are irreconcilably divided. To the reader, however, the wounded Lamb is a living sign of the potential for humans to reproduce the hypostatic union through the example of Christ. 96 The debate that takes place between the dreamer and the maiden seems to be a dialogue between the physical appetites and the reasoning faculties, between lived experience and academic, abstract absolutes. The Trinitarian appearance of the Godhead in the New Jerusalem, however, demonstrates a higher form of understanding where these divisions disappear. God sits enthroned, with the fountain of the Holy Spirit flowing from Him (1055-1060), whilst the Lamb leads His company,

The Cinematic Consciousness ofthe Pearl-Poet

21I

demonstrating that union does not entail the eradication of difference: instead, the various elements accord through a principle ofharmony. lust as with the other fourteenth-century texts in this study, the Pearlpoems explore the need for union, reconciliation, harmony, and synthesis in spiritual and earthly matters. The Pearl-poet celebrates movement towards community, and prizes the plurality of vision above the particular view. The ending of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight negotiates the intersection of multiple viewpoints, and reveals the folly of insisting upon isolation and self-regard, and, crucially, asks us to affirm the complexity of the system. An individual figure within a poem, whether it is the protagonist Sir Gawain or the dreamer-narrator, can only offer us one partial view. We embrace the need for a more thorough judgment that escapes immediate, localized concerns and charts lines of flight into new regions of understanding. This is not "openendedness," but a higher form of contemplation. In the Pearl-poems, just as in The Parlement ofthe Thre Ages and Piers Plowman, vernacular, secular literature offers acha11enge to received wisdom and revealed truth. In its place, these poems celebrate human participation in a living covenant with God, originating in kynde as a creative principle and culminating in the union of God and man through the Eucharist. The invocation of the Eucharist at the end of Pearl just like the call to prayer at the end of The Parlement ofthe Thre Ages, reveals to us the physical and spiritual intimacy that exists between God and humanity. For the narrator figures within the poems, these dosing prayers seem to come too late: they dose off the events of the dream and so suggest an envoi. They are not integral to the experiences of these characters, but are secondary and contingent, as though they are the inevitable consequence of the narrators' failure to comprehend. After revealing that his "joye watz sone toriuen" (1197), the dreamer in Pearl says: To pay ~e Prince o~er sete sa3te Hit is ful e~e to ~e god Krystyin; For I haf founden Hym, bo~e day and na3te, A God, a Lorde, a frende ful fyin. (1201-1204) This is not, dearly, what we have seen throughout the poem, and it suggests an intellectualized response to the dreamer's failure and lack of consolation. As Sarah Stanbury points out, at the end of the poem the dreamer still seems to believe that he could have remained in the heavenly realm, and cannot accept that "living in the world is a condition of exile. "97 The ending of Pearl thus fails to be convincing, argues Stanbury, because it stresses reconciliation where the preceding stanzas have embodied desire and loss.

212

Desiring Truth

The dreamer's words may be unconvincing as an index ofhis own spiritual journey, but they do offer us an alternative to the binary structure that prevails throughout the poem. The horn that blows at the end of The Parlement 01 the Thre Ages indicates that imminent judgment must bring an end to words, offering us a sign of a more complete understanding that transcends earthly division. Similarly, the appearance of the New Jerusalern and the bodily sign of the Lamb in PearL suggest that a profound union is ultimately possible, even while we admit that human frailty can prevent it. Scholars increasingly see PearL as a failed journey, a quest that ends in defeat and despair, but this is to interpret the poem through the eyes of the dreamer alone. Sandra Pierson Prior argues that the endings of PearL and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight remind us how far we are from the eventual return to God's kingdom promised in providential history. Neither poem is part of a genre of"restoration and return, except potentially, and only in fallen human versions."98 Yet, this is only true if we take the pilgrim-narrator as our definitive guide to the dream. In fact, all of these poems show us a way out of the dyadic structures that can only reproduce conflict. By revealing the traps into which human understanding can lead us, they sound a positive note of hope for our spiritual destiny. The maiden's own limitations are not exposed so much as they are subsumed. Despite her insistence that the New Jerusalern will appear in outward form only, and thus express the ineffable grace of God, when it does appear its form is overwhelming, ravishing the senses and permeating the dreamer. The maiden's own voice, that has been so c1ear and unequivocal, joins the company of virgins that "glod in fere" (I 105), a11 dressed identically and singing as one. She has stressed the community of the elect throughout the poem, but her words cannot prepare us for the immediacy and physical presence of the vision that overwhelms us with light and sound. These sensory impressions are gloriously vital, suggesting both the immanence of the eternal reward and its perpetual state of becoming. Salvation does not occur in the here and now, but tips over into the future, expressing adesire that proliferates and is forever satisfied, but never satiated. The contrast between the dreamer's nostalgie vision, rooted in earthLy desire and loss, and this condition of desire that expresses the hope and potential of life, is absolute. Steven Shaviro draws a comparison between two films that explore a very similar contrast: BLade Runner and BLue SteeL. BLade Runner is grounded in nostalgia, its fetishistic visions focused on adesire for a lost world. BLue SteeL, on the other hand, "strains towards the explosive instability of the coming moment, rather than being turned back upon the ungraspable remnants of an ever-receding past."99 Although the scenes of the

The Cinematic Consciousness 0/the Pearl-Poet

213

New Jerusalern partake of the coldness and purity of the maiden's arguments, and an earthly beauty that entices the dreamer, the heavenly city exceeds them hoth. The Lamb who is most grievously wounded and yet still suffused with delight expresses this most perfectly: in his body contradictions are both affirmed and yet projected into a wider field of significance. The dreamer says: The Lombe delyt non lyste to wene; I>a3 He were hurt and wounde hade, In His sembelaunt watz neuer sene, So wem His glentez gloryous glade. (1141-1144)

It is this vision of the Lamb that completes the union of God and man that the other poems in the manuscript negotiate. Here, individuality finds expression within a community, and human nature moves within the divine will. Finally we, the readers, can transcend the limitations of the individual protagonist and see the possibility for salvation that suffuses all life. The dreamer lets us go, admitting the failure of his own spiritual journey, but not the dashing of his hopes. He reminds us to think of the Eucharist, where Christ's bodyand the human body meet. Pearl expresses the essential hope that lies behind all of the other poems in Cotton Nero A.x, a hope that, I believe, informs many other examples of fourteenth-century art and literature, and in its circular form reminds us that our journey can only be successful if we strive always to escape the facile certainties of life. In helping us to escape the looks and glances ofhis own characters, the Pearl-poet offers us a glimpse of such a journey. The "cinematic consciousness" of the Pearl-poems celebrates avision that transcends sight, and trails off into eternity.

This page intentionally left blank

Conclusion

In our present condition, the created universe itself is a ladder leading us toward God. Some created things are His traces; others, his image; some of them are material, others spiritual; some temporal, others everlasting: thus some are outside us, and some within. -St. Bonaventure, Itinerarium Mentis in Deum l In this book I have looked at how a variety of fourteenth-century texts and manuscripts act as "ladders towards God." The works that I have looked at are disparate, but connected by the extent co which they involve the reader in the process of judgment: This judgment entails a gradual movement away from the limitations of the self, and towards a more profound contemplation of truth. The reader is encouraged to surrender expectations and earthly concerns, to explore meaning beyond the confines of a single, narrow viewpoint. The prayer books and the secular poems in this study all invest the physical rea1m of the senses with meaning, and so explore the relationship between the human and the divine rather than the tensions between them. Judgment, in this context, consists of seeing the universal rea1m through the traces of God: to be alert to God, and to engage in an active search for Hirn rather than to look for finite, earthly certainties. In textual terms this means looking for points of correspondence between elements that seem discrete, and to bear witness to the proliferating wisdom of the text. The reader is encouraged to look and to discover meaning actively, engaging in the production of meaning that charts new possibilities and points of connection. The two prayer books that I examined in chapter one both involve the physica1 world within a spiritual quest for fulfillment. The Luttrell Psalter is partly a spiritual testament to Sir Geoffrey Luttrell, and in some ways reflects his ideology of lordship. Consequently, Sir Geoffrey hirnself is represented through his kinship with Christ: the earthly lord finds correspondences with the heavenly Lord. The particular ideas and feelings of the man find comfort and sol ace in the divine, just as the Psalms translate the individual emotions

215

216

Desiring Truth

of isolated individuals into a universal correspondence with the divine realm. Prayer the Psalms liberates the sens es, and makes universal what is personal. The reader of the Lumell Psalter may participate in Sir Geoffrey's ideology, but the particular gives way, under the force of prayer, to a more transcendent contemplation of the divine mysteries. Jeanne's tiny Book ofHours is also rooted in concrete realities that eventually give way to a sense of universal order and harmony. The queen who is depicted kneeling at prayer amid a profusion of secular and bestial images represents the soul enmeshed in the chains of the world. The soul finds solace through prayer, but the prayer book demonstrates that this is a gradual journey of enlightenment rather than the sudden sublimation of desire into a mystical context. The religious figures in the framed miniatures in the book are notable for their physica1ity and the connections they have with the earthly figures around them, revealing that the spiritual realm exceeds and fulfils the physica1, rather than opposes it. The presence of St. Louis, with whom Jeanne had a particular physica1 affinity through ties of blood, further reinforces the idea that the spiritual journey of the soul is but a continuation, in higher form, of the journey of the body. Yet, ultimately, Jeanne's prayer book reveals that the earthly life, in all its incoherence and carnality, is but a pale shadow of the next. The flat, two-dimensional images of chimerical beasts and vivacious peasants stand in contrast to the three-dimensional harmony of the framed miniatures. The prayer book reveals that the true life of the Christian pilgrim lies above and beyond the physica1 realm, even if that realm intersects and, occasionally, unbalances it. The Parlement ofthe Thre Ages also stresses that the life is a dream, a pale shadow of the mysteries of Creation. The caricatures of the three ages themselves-conventional portraits that express the hollowness of the materiallife of mankind-reflect how foolish it is to invest meaning into arbitrary human ideals and mutable worldly goods. Yet, the Parlement makes a bold step that moves the poem in a different direction to the prayer books, but which draws the literary texts in this study together. The dream narrative in the Parlement turns away from the materialiife, but the poem as a whole invests the created realm, to which mankind belongs, with significance. In the Parlement, we get a real sense that the created realm reflects its Creator, and that both are connected to one another in a continuous and proliferating system. The Parlementencourages the reader to abandon the dreamer, representative of the carnal man, and look at ways in which the real m of nature can express God. In asense, then, the Parlement embodies the starting point of St. Bonaventure's mystical journey, which begins by following "the traces which are material, temporal, external."2

Conclusion

217

The Parlement does not pursue (he implications of this journey to their eventual fulfillment. Although I believe it to be a religious poem, it is more content to show the folly of the externallife than reveal the profundity of the inner life. In this sense, the Parlement displays an affinity with Piers Plowman, which also looks at the earthly distractions that can impede the spirituallife of the Christian soul. Through the dreamer-narrator, Will, Piers Plowman reveals how the individual who pursues truth in earthly, material terms, unsupported by God, can lose his or her way through the captivation of physical desire. Just as in the Parlement, however, the reader is encouragedto learn from and rise above the dreamer's narrow vision and embrace arieher and more fulfilling truth. In Piers Plowman, the figure of Piers represents the way in which the physical life of an individual can express God. His role in the poem points to a Franciscan faith in the way that the concrete particulars of life offer the necessary building blocks towards an apprehension of the divine. Yet, the absence ofTruth within the poem, and the apocalyptic movement towards disharmony and fragmentation with which it ends, reveals that Piers Plowman remains essentially rooted within the fallen realm ofhumanity. Political systems and, even more importantly, the ordinance of the Church concern Langland just as much as the state of the individual soul. Before the particulars of concrete human devotion are dealt with, the poem suggests that no mystical journey is possible. Piers himself represents areturn to a simpler, more affective form of earthly piety, and the church he looks to found is based on the fundamental Christian values of community and joint effort. His living imitatio Jei is worth more than the intellectual abstractions and ceaseless desire of Will. The poem examines the potential for human life to express God, but the inevitable tendency it also has to reject the Word and become enslaved to self-interest and private motive. The reader of Piers Plowman may weil find that his or her role is less clearly defined, and the textual goal more obscure, than in any of the other poems in this study. No other work involves the reader more: in reading Piers Plowman, we must negotiate the political and social realities of the Church as weil as the abstract intellectual concepts that inform religious discourse. We must explore a complex and ambivalent relationship with a textual narrator who is by turns a genuine Christian viator and a hapless "jangeler," and who often recedes from view completely. Piers Plowman embodies the first stage ofSt. Bonaventure's tripIe journey to God: an interaction with the material traces of God's ordinance on earth. Yet, the poem demonstrates just how hard this stage is to negotiate, much less transcend. Seldom does the poem afford us a direct view, or even a glimpse of the divine mysteries that must inform the Christian soul's spiritual quest. Thus, it reaffirms the need

218

Desiring Truth

that humanity has for God's support and love; the need that humanity has for faith and ho pe and charity. This need is, ultimately, the quality that liberates us from Will, who remains rooted in desire of an earthly kind. The character of Need within the poem advocates exercising the Spiritus temperancie, the virtue ofTemperance, and reveals that both Need and Temperance sit beside one another in heaven. Indeed, Need insists that Christ expresses the words '''nede hath ynome me pat y moet nede abyde/And soffre sorwes ful soure, pat shal to ioye torne))' (C.XXlI, 46-47).3 Temperance and restraint go hand in hand with a simple life of devotion that represents the model of Christian behavior, expressing Christ in fundamental terms. Piers's efforts on behalf of the community of souls contrasts with Will's quest for his own personal satisfaction, and so Piers Plowman ultimately rejects the contemplative journey in favor of a life of simple piety. Piers Plowman focuses on such a life in order to stress that, without this foundation, the spiritual life will go awry. The poem does not reject a Bonaventuran journey, but instead examines the tools we need to undertake such a spiritual quest, through which the Christian soul reveals God's ordinance on earth. If Piers Plowman focuses on the world and the human institutions that both support and potentially confound the spirituallife of the individual, the Pearl-poems explore the inner li fe of the Christian pilgrim in more depth. The Pearl-poems are, ultimately, less worldly and political than Piers Plowman, but instead they advance, as a complex and interconnected whole, a meditation on the mystical journey to God. The most worldly of the Pearl-poems, Cleanness, charts the developing relationship between God and humanity, but the large-scale movements it describes are never allowed to take place at the expense of the individual. Each story in Cleanness is focused on a particular character, whether it be Noah, Abraham, or Belshazzar, so that the relationships ofindividual characters to the Lord reflect the overall theme of the growing afflnity between creation and Creator. In this way, Cleanness reveals that historical events are tied to individuals; the journey of a single soul reflects the world's journey. Most profoundly, it is us, the readers, who are able to embrace this fundamental truth, and so Cleanness inspires our own meditative quest. The visual narratives inspire and direct our own engagement with the biblical texts from which they are drawn, and the profound truths that they reveal. St. Bonaventure identifles the three-part journey of the soul, corresponding to the tri pie existence of things: that is, "existence in physical reality, in the mind, and in the Eternal Art.,,4 In Cleanness, the story ofNoah and the Flood corresponds to physical reality and the material world, because it focuses on the law of kynde and the failure ofhumanity to express God in their physical nature.

Conclusion

219

The story of Abraham corresponds to the spiritual operation of the mind, because it centers upon the individual's ability to recognize God and obey His laws. Finally, the story of Be1shazzar's feast corresponds to the Eternal Art, expressed through the mystical vesse1s that transcend and sublimate earthly artistry in their eternal form. Cleanness dramatizes this deve10ping relationship, involving the reader in "cinematic" engagement with narrative history, so that rather than communicate wisdom through reve1ation or impersonal authority, the poem involves the reader in the interpretation ofScripture. If Piers Plowman encourages us to put down the book and to imitate Christ in life, the Pearlpoems invite us to find Christ in the very act of reading. The Pearl-poems are therefore the dosest in spirit to the illustrated prayer books with which this study begins, because they involve the reader directly in the meditations they offer on biblical texts. Patience and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight continue to deve10p the reader's own responses by encouraging a free and fluid engagement with the narrative that transcends individual concerns. The limited protagonists of these works provoke the reader's own participation in the meaning of the stories, encouraging us to look for God in what we see and fee!. As in all the Pearl-poems, the senses are engaged in enraptured fashion, provo king us to become alive to the world. The contrasts we draw with the physical surrender of the Gawain and Jonah, and our own sensory engagement with the text, prepares us for the fuHyfledged mystical vision in Pearl, which both condudes and inspires our journey. The Pearl-poems embody a living expression of God's ordinance, a covenant in which we are immediate1y and affective1y involved. The Pearl-poems therefore provide the dearest example of the so-called via positiva, the use of concrete visual images to inspire the mind to contemplation. Neverthe1ess, all of the works in this study engage the reader in an examination of the spirituallife through a succession of striking physical details. To return to the point at which I began this inquiry, these texts, whether explicitly "Ricardian" or not, are "open-ended" because they involve the reader in a complex and recursive process of discovery. They proceed towards a fuH and alert engagement with God through the world, or with Scripture through the specifics of prayer and meditation. These poems and manuscripts embody desire in its fuHest spiritual sense: adesire for God and the possibility of articulating it in human terms. Desire is not rooted in the body, but leads the body into contact with the wider forces of creation that contains it. Where human perceptions see division and disunity, desire expresses continuity and reciprocity: a living expression of the mind of God. The positive, affirmative possibility for such an expression informs the works in this study, from Jeanne's prayer book to Piers Plowman, from the LumeH Psalter to Pearl.

220

Desiring Truth

This process leads us away from particular representations and interpretations, and away from finite meaning. In this sense, the expression of desire is de-personalized, or, as I have pur it elsewhere in this study, deterritorialized. Yet, the act of deterritorialization does not elide individual responsibility, but engages it directly, and above all the reader is called upon to judge, and to act. The absence of finite conclusions within poems such as the Parlement and Piers Plowman, and the odd mix of the secular and the divine in the Luttrell Psalter and Jeanne's Hours, do not point to the relativity of values. These works do not, as A. C. Spearing would have it, reveal a society moving from subservience to received truths to a humanist acceptance of pluralism and relativity. Instead, they point to the growing influence of personal, affective forms of devotion at the end of the fourteenth century, in which the individual contributed to a living expression of God that witnessed His presence within the created realm. The poems and manuscripts that comprise this study share a common concern with the spiritual destiny of the Christian soul, and so they frame their exploration of judgment as a process in explicitly Christian terms. These works appear "open-ended" because objective truth is inaccessible to fallen human perception, but human perception can still playa fundamental part in the articulation of God's covenant with the earth. This relationship emerges in the works that I have examined, and it could be that a reconsideration of other texts and manuscripts from the period would reveal similar patterns of thought. Medieval drama and vernacular romances, as weH as the works of Chaucer, all reflect a fourteenth-century sense of certainties becoming surrendered, and a growing need for human involvement in the framing of truth. The vernacular poets of this period celebrate life, expressing its beauty and potential in joyous terms, and in so doing they raise their readers' eyes to God.

Notes

NOTES TO INTRODUCTION 1. The term "Ricardian" was coined to refer to me age of Richard 11, and the "Ricardian poets" are Chaucer, Langland, Gower, and the Pearl-Poet, due in large part to me approximate dates of meir writing careers. J. A. Burrow's seminal work on the literature of the period Ricardian Poetry: Chaucer, Gower, Langland and the Gawain Poet (London: Routledge, 1971) attempts to chart more formalliterary relationships between these poets. 2. Kathryn Kerby-Fulton and Maidie Hilmo, eds. The Medieval Professional

3. 4. 5.

6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

Reader at WOrk: Evidence from Manuscripts 0/ Chaucer, Langland, Kempe and Gower. English Literary Studies 85 (Victoria, BC: University of Victoria Press, 2001), 8 (emphasis mine). Ralph Hanna, III. "Piers Plowman and the Radically Chic." The Yearbook 0/ Langland Studies 13 (2000): 190. Sylvia Huot. The Romance of the Rose and lts Medieval Readers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). C. David Benson's recent article, "What Then Does Langland Mean? Authorial and Textual Voices in Piers Plowman." Yearbook 0/Langland Studies 15 (2001): 3-13, for instance, offers an overview of some of the schizophrenie elements of Piers Plowman, incompatible with the idea of consistent authorial "voice." A. C. Spearing. "A Ricardian '1': The Narrator of'Troilus and Criseyde,'" in Essays on Ricardian Literature in Honour 0/J A. Burrow, ed. A. J. Minnis, Charlotte C. Morse and Thorlac Turville-Petre, 22 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997). Spearing contrasts the Ricardian "I" with Dante's pilgrim, who does achieve a sort of unity at the end of the Divine Comedy, and enjoys an all-encompassing perspective on his journey. Spearing, "A Ricardian 'I,'" 20. Ibid., 17. Ibid., 22. Ibid., 22. Burrow, Ricardian Poetry, 92 ff.

221

222

Notes to Chapter One

12. See in particular Marilyn McCord Adams, William Ockham (2 vols.) (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987) and Katherine A. Tachau, Vt'sion and Certitude in the Age 0/ Ockham: Optics, Epistemology and the Foundations o/Semantics, 1250-1345 (New York: E.J. BriH, 1988). 13. Mary Carruthers. The Book 0/ Memory: A Study 0/ Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 169. 14. Ross G . Arthur. "Gawain's Shield As Signum," in Text and Matter: New Critical Perspectives o/the Pearl-Poet, ed. Robert J. Blanch, Miriam Youngerman Miller, and Julian N. Wasserman, 225 (Troy, NY: Whitston, 1991). 15. Michel Foucault. "Las Meninas," in The Order o/Things: An Archaeology 0/ the Human Sciences, 16 (New York: Vintage Books, 1994). 16. "Deterritorialization" is Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's term, which they employ in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism 6- Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (London: Athlone Press, 1988). Ir can be taken to refer to a way of thinking that escapes conventional structures and patterns, and that embraces a more fluid and open-ended process. I draw upon the term more substantiaHy in chapter two. 17. Gillian Rudd, Managing Language in Piers Plowman (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994). Rudd's distinction between the via negativa and the via positiva can be found on pp. 123-125. 18. Rudd, Managing Language, 134. 19. Ibid., 177. 20. I foHow the analysis by A. J. Minnis, in Medieval Theory 0/Authorship, 2nd ed. (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1988), 126-127. 21. Minnis, Theory 0/Authorship, 127. This is a translation of St. Bonaventure's words in the Prologue to the Breviloquium. 22. St. Bonaventure, The Breviloquium, trans. Jose de Vinck (Paterson, NJ: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1963), x. 23. See Minnis, Theory 0/Authorship, 111. 24. Rudd, Managing Language, 223. 25. "Hirn" becausc this idealized subject is traditionally male. This idea will be discussed in greater detail in subsequent chapters.

NOTES TO CHAPTER ONE 1. Michael Camille, Gothic Art: Glorious Visions. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996),15. 2. Camille, Gothic Art, 15. 3. Emile Male, The Gothic Image: Religious Art in France 0/ the Thirteenth Century, trans. Dora Nussey (New York: Harper & Row, 1958), vii. 4. c. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), 5. 5. Larry Scanlon, Narrative, Authority, and Power: The Medieval Exemplum and the Chaucerian Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994),53.

Notes to Chapter One

223

6. Etienne Gilson, The Philosophy of St. Bonaventure, trans. Dom IIltyd Trethowan and Frank J. Sheed (Paterson, NJ: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1965),114. 7. Gilson, St. Bonaventure, 124. 8. Ibid., 127. 9. V. A. Kolve, Chaueer and the Imagery ofNarrative: The First Five Canterbury Tales (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1984). 10. Lawrence M. Clopper, "Song,5 ofReehelesnesse':· Langland and the Franciseans (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997). 11. Robert Pasnau, Theories of Cognition in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 12. Romans Ch. 1, v. 20. All references to the Bible are to the Douay-Rheims Version (Rockford, IL: Tan Books, rep. 1989). This is a modern translation of the Vulgate, and so the dosest rendition of the text with which medieval readers would have been most familiar. 13. Martin Jay, Downeast Eyes: The Denigration ofVision in Twentieth-Century Freneh Thought (Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press, 1994), 50. 14. Norman Bryson, WOrd and Image: French Painting of the Ancien Regime (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 1. 15. Bryson, WOrd and Image, 1. 16. Richard K. Emmerson. "Reading Gower in a Manuscript Culture: Latin and English in IIlustrated Manuscripts of the Confessio Amantis." Studies in the Age of Chaueer 21 (1999): 143-186. 17. Richard K. Emmerson. "Text and Image in the Ellesmere Portraits of the TaleTellers," in The Eilesmere Chaueer: Essays in Interpretation, ed. Martin Stevens and Daniel Woodward, 147 (San Marino, CA: Huntingdon Library, 1995). 18. Stephen G. Nichols, "The Image as Textual Unconscious: Medieval Manuscripts." L'Esprit Createur 39, No. 1 (Spring 1989): 7. 19. The Apocalypse of St. John the Apostle, Ch. 4 v. 2. 20. Foucault, "Las Meninas," 14 (emphasis mine). 21. The Apocalypse, Ch. 1 v.3. 22. Suzanne Lewis. Reading Images: Narrative Diseourse and Reeeption in the Thirteenth-century IliuminatedApoealypse. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995),237. 23. Lewis, Reading Images, 241. 24. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Sehizophrenia, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (Minnesota: University of Minneapolis Press, 1983), 133. 25. See Jacques Lacan, "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience," in Ecrits: A Seleetion, trans. Alan Sheridan (London: Tavistock, 1977). The Symbolic is commonly understood as the "adult" world oflanguage and signiftcation.

224

Notes to Chapter One

26. Steven Shaviro, The Cinematic Body (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 26-27. 27. Alberti states that when he paints a picture, "quadrongulam rectorum inscribo, quod quidem milu pro aperta finestra est ex qua historia contueatur" ("I draw a rectangle of whatever size I want, which I regard as an open window through which the subject to be painted is seen"). Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, ed. and trans. Cecil Grayson (London: Phaidon, 1972), Liber

I, 19,54-5. 28. Jay, Downcast Eyes, 56. 29. Michael Ann Holly, Past Looking: Historical Imagination and the Rhetoric of Image (CornelI: Cornell University Press, 1996), 50. 30. Teresa Oe Lauretis. Alice Doesn't: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema (London: Macmillan, 1984), 66. 31. Alberti, De Pictura, Liber 11, 40, 78-9. 32. Oe Lauretis, Alice Doesn't, 141. 33. Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," in Feminism and Film Theory, ed. Constance Penley, 57-68 (New York: Routledge, 1988). 34. Shaviro, Cinematic Body, 12. 35. Jay, Downcast Eyes, 54. 36. For a further analysis of the relationship between "gaze" and "glance," see also Norman Bryson, Vision and Painting: The Logic of the Gaze (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983). 37. Jay describes the vi ewer of art before developments in perspective as "absorbed in the canvas." aay, Downcast Eyes, 56) . 38. Mieke Bal, Reading "Rem brandt ": Beyond the Word-Image Opposition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 199), 142 (emphasis mine) . 39. Bai, Reading "Rembrandt," 143. Bai follows Kaja Silverman's account of

40.

41. 42. 43. 44.

45 . 46.

Lacan's argument in "Fassbinder and Lacan: A Reconsideration of Gaze, Look, and Image." Camera Obscura 19 (1989): 54-84. See Bai, Reading "Rembrandt, " 167 for a clear definition of focalization . She uses the term throughout the book, however, later referring to "diegetic focalization," whereby a viewer enters the narrative of a text by way of a single character who directs the gaze. Bai, Reading ''Rembrandt, "63. Suzanne Lewis, passim. Lewis's account of"species" appears on 7-8. See Pasnau, Theories ofCognition, 9, for a succinct account of the notion of species and its role in medieval theories of cognition. Robert Grosseteste, On Light [De Lucej, trans. Clare C. Reidl (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1942). According to Grosseteste, Form completes, perfects, and actualizes matter, thus he calls it the species and perfectio of the object. Lewis, Reading Images, 8. Pasnau, Theories ofCognition, 26--7.

Notes to Chapter One 47. 48. 49. 50.

51.

52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

57.

58. 59. 60.

61.

225

I derive this summary from Tachau, Vision and Certitude, 40-41. Lewis, Reading Images, 208. Ibid.,241. Jacques Lacan, "God and the Jouissanee of +lote Woman," in Feminine Sexuality, ed. Juliet MitchelI, trans. Jacqueline Rose, 142 (New York: Norton, 1984). Those wishing to pursue Lacan through the courts are advised to consult the monumental Jaeques Lacan: Critieal Evaluations in Cultural Theory (4vols.), ed. Slavoj Zizek (New York: Routledge, 2002), which draws together all of the significant debates about Lacan's cultural and philosophicallegacy over the last 35 years. See Carruthers, Art 0/Memory, 180. Ibid., 182. Ibid., 179 (emphasis mine). Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus; in particular Chapter 12"1227: A Treatise on Nomadology," 351-423. See especially Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema;" according to Mulvey, however, pleasure in looking ("scopophilia") can only be gained through watehing "in an active and controlling sense, an objectifted other" (60) that is typically female. Kaja Silverman, from The Subjeet 0/ Semioties [On Suturel (1983), repr. in Film Theory and Critieism, eds Gerald Mast, Marshall Cohen and Leo Braudy, 199 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th ed., 1992). Silverman, Subjeet o/Semioties, 199. Jean-Pierre Oudart, "Cinema and Suture." Sereen Vol. 18, No. 4 (1977/8): 35-47. For an account of the development of Lacan's thought, that ultimately took hirn away from this formulation, see Jacqueline Rose, Sexuality in the Field 0/ Vision (London and New York: Verso, 1986). For an analysis of the ways in which film theory has misappropriated Lacan's theories, see Joan Copjec, ''The Orthopsychic Subject: Film Theory and the Reception of Lacan." Oetober 49 (1989): 53-72. Baudry's essays on the "ideological apparatus" of the cinema are: "The Apparatus: Metapsychological Approaches to the Impression of Reality in the Cinema," trans. Jean Andrews and Bertrand Augst, in Narrative, Apparatus, ldeology: A Film Theory Reader, ed. Philip Rosen, 299-318 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986); and "Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus," trans. Alan Williams, in Narrative, Apparatus, ldeology: A Film Theory Reader, ed. Philip Rosen, 286-298 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986). Metz's attacks on ehe "scopic regime of the cinema" nuanced Baudry's earlier work, placing less emphasis on the viewer's regression and more on his/her disavowal and fetishism. Christian

226

Notes to Chapter Two

62. 63.

64. 65. 66. 67.

68. 69.

70.

71.

Metz, The lmaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema, trans. Celia Britton, Annwyl Williams, Ben Brewster, and Alfred Guzzetti (B1oomington: Indiana University Press, 1982). Jay, Downcast Eyes, 474. Shaviro, Cinematic Body, 52. Ibid., 52. Ibid., 53 (emphasis mine). Ibid., 24. The provenance of the diptych has recently come into question, and this does have some bearing on its purpose, and on the question of whose gaze it engages most fully. Nigel Saul, Richard IJ. Yale English Monarchs Series (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 238. Such "polyphony" is also a marked feature of late fourteenth-century musical composition. Sylvia Huot offers an excellent discussion on the function of various voices in medieval motets in her book Allegorical Play in the Dld French Motet: The Sacred and the Profane in Thirteenth-century Polyphony (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997). The "fact" of Christian faith is the one defining constant at work in this dialectic of vision and truth, the search for truth being commensurate with a search for God. In this context 'we' when we read or look at fourteenth-century texts, must constantly remain aware of the Christi an context that binds uso Gilles Deleuze, Cinema I: The Movement-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986),

3-6. 72. Burrow, Ricardian Poetry, 47. 73. Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Dedipus, 18. 74. This is what Deleuze elsewhere refers to as "the whole." Thewhole is not selfcontained, like a set; rather it is perpetually flourishing as the elements within it alter their relationship with one another. Thus, "[i)f one had to define the whole, it would be defined by Relation." Deleuze, Cinema 1, 8. 75. Jonathan J. G. Alexander. Medieval Illuminators and Their Methods ofWork (Harvard: Yale University Press, 1992), 99.

NOTES TO CHAPTER lWO 1. Doubts ex ist about the extent to which the Luttrell Psalter, in particular, was intended for private use, as we shall see. 2. Richard K. Emmerson and P. J. P. Goldberg, in their article '''The Lord Geoffrey had me made': Lordship and Labour in the Luttrell Psalter," in The Problem ofLabour in Fourteenth-Century England, eds James Bothwell, P. J. P. Goldberg, and W M. Ormrod, 43-63 (York: York Medieval Press, 2000), suggest that Sir Geoffrey Luttrell may never have read the Luttrell Psalter. They believe that the absence of prayers and other devotional texts in the

227

Notes to Chapter Two

vernacular, and the use of Latin throughout, raise the possibility that the book was intended for clerical use at Sir Geoffrey's burial, and to remember hirn posthumously. Yet, I do not consider the private reading practices of an individual reader to be as important as the way that reader connects to a wider system of relationships. 3. Emmerson and Goldberg, "The Lord Geoffrey,'" 44. The principal art historians who have worked on the Psalter are Eric G. Miliar, The Luttrell Psalter (London: Printed for the Trustees of the British Museum, 1932); Lucy Freeman Sandler, Gothic Manuscripts 1285-1385: A Survey 0/ Manuscripts Illuminated in the British fsles 5, vol. Ir, 118-121, cat. no. 107 (London: Harvey Miller, 1986); and Janet Backhouse, The Luttrell Psalter (London: British Museum Publications, 1989). Michael Camille's recent book Mirror

in Parchment: The Luttrell Psalter and the Making

4. 5.

6. 7.

8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

0/ Medieval

England

(London: Reaktion Books, 1998) is a lavishly illustrated account, and is of crucial importance in this chapter. Camille believes that he can detect a sixth hand, responsible only for completing the decoration of one page, fol. 215r (Camille, Mi"or in Parchment, 327). Sandler, Gothic Manuscripts, 120. See Michael Camille, "Labouring for the Lord: The Ploughman and the Social Order in The Luttrell Psalter," Art History 10 (1987): 440-441. In Mirror in Parchment he is much more equivocal about the date of production, however, and mentions only that it "could have been begun as early as the early 1330s" (Camille, Mi"or in Parchment, 324). Emmerson and Goldberg, "The Lord Geoffrey,'" 48. This is Emmerson and Goldberg's contention, which they admit is potentially controversial. They draw upon the essay by Lynda Dennison, ""The Fitzwarin Psalter and its Allies": A Reappraisal," in England in the Fourteenth Century: Proceeding.s 0/ the 1985 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. W M. Ormrod, 42-63 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: BoydelI and Brewer, 1986) in support of this later date. Emmerson and Goldberg, '''The Lord Geoffrey,'" 50-51. Camille, Mi"or in Parchment, 46. The Latin inscription above the equestrian portrait ofSir Geoffrey reads Dns Galfridus louterell me fieri ftcit-"The Lord Geoffrey Luttrell caused me to be made." Camille, Mi"or in Parchment, 45. Ibid., 46. Ibid., 56-7. Ibid., 77. See chapter 5 of Mirror in Parchment, "The Lord's Folk: Masks, Mummers and Monsters," 232-275, where Camille outlines this argument. See Chapter 6 of Mi"or in Parchment, "The Lord's Enemies: Saracens, Scotsmen and the Biped Beast," 276-308. Emmerson and Goldberg, "The Lord Geoffrey,'" 54.

228

Notes to Chapter Two

18. Emmerson and Goldberg note the long series of bas-de-page images detailing scenes from the life of Christ on fols. 86r-%v. Ibid., 56. 19. CamilIe, Mirror in Parchment, 140. 20. I have condensed Camille's discussion from pages 140-147 of Mirror in Parchment. The quotation is from page 145. 21. As I have already noted, Emmerson and Goldberg argue that the Psalter was intended for public performance rather than private devotion. Yet, I do not believe that my argument and theirs is necessarily incompatible, if we can assume that individuals would have had access to the manuscript. They do suggest that the Psalter participates in the ideology of lordship, which does depend upon readers looking closely at the manuscript and exploring the relationships between text and image on its pages. 22. Christian Metz, The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema, trans. Celia Britton, Annwyl Williams, Ben Brewster, and Alfred Guzzetti (Bloomington: fndiana University Press, 1982). 23. Eric G. MilIar, The Luttrell Psalter, 16. Margaret Rickert. Painting in Britain: The Middle Ages. (London: Penguin, 1954), 148. 24. Meyer Schapiro, "Marginal Images and Drolerie." Speculum 45 (1970): 684. 25. Shaviro, Cinematic Body, 17. 26. Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 82. 27. The "prime function incumbent upon the socius has always been to codifY the flows of desire, to inscribe them, to record them, to see to it that no flow exists that is not properly dammed up, channeled, regulated." Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 33. 28. CamilIe, Mirror in Parchment, 245. 29. Ibid., 83. 30. Ibid., 89. Needless to say, the image appears out of context, frozen in a particular aspect and made to bear the mark of a single interpretation. If it is Geoffrey's gaze, then it is he who is frozen, not uso 31. It is worth noting that Camille selects those words from the psalm that best support his reading of the picture. They are the lines nearest to the tableaux on the page, but they should not, I think, be taken as some sort of "speech bubble" emerging from "Sir Geoffrey's" head. 32. CamilIe, Mirror in Parchment, 114. 33. Ibid., 121. 34. Ibid., 95. 35. Ibid., 83. 36. Ibid., 89. Such anxieties stern in part from the fears that Sir Geoffrey Luttrell had contravened the strict laws of consanguinity in marrying his second cousin, according to Camille. Sir Geoffrey appealed to Pope John XXII for dispensation to continue the marriage, and was finally granted permission by the Archbishop ofYork in 1334. This allows Camille to locate the date of the manuscript even more precisely: the lord at the table is so sorrowful, Camille

Notes to Chapter Two

37. 38.

39. 40. 41.

42.

43.

44.

45.

229

intimates, because he had not received word that his marriage is lawful by the time the image was commissioned. Sir Geoffrey is thus still overshadowed by the possibility that his soul is in astate of mortal sin. Ibid., 85. The "plane of consistency" is Deleuze and Guattari's term, used throughout A Thousand Plateaus. It is an abstraction, opposed to the plane of organization, and consists of points that stand in relation to one another without form or structure. Inscribed on the plane of consistency are haecceities; becomings; smooth as opposed to striated spaces. Loosely speaking, it refers to the wider context in which objects, and the correspondences between them, exist and influence one another. In the banqueting scene, the family group is not the culmination of the meaning of the picture, but its point of departure, and so I use the term "plane of consistency" to refer to all the possible meanings of the picture that involve, and yet extend beyond, its localized meaning for the Luttrells. The terms that Deleuze and Guattari employ resist stable definition, however: they are the philosophical equivalent of musical "riffs" and operate by allusion, provoking thought by association rather than closing down an idea. Attempts to define these terms concretely lead to deepening confusion and heavy-handed pedantry (unfortunately demonstrated by D. N. Rodowick's analysis of Deleuzian cinematic theory, Gilles Deleuze's Time Machine. [Durharn: Duke University Press, 1997]). As Brian Massumi points out in his introduction to A Thousand Plateaus, xv: ''The question not: is it true? But: does it work?" Emmerson and Goldberg, "'The Lord Geoffrey,'" 51-52. Ibid., 52. The feast is ample, but not lavish, and the dishes are simple and without extravagance, so that we cannot say that "[ih snewed in his hous of mete and drynke;/Of alle deyntees that men koude thynke," as Chaucer does of the Franklin's dinner table (General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, 11, 345-6). Might this suggest that Sir Geoffrey equates the life of Christ with a life of poverty? Ir is worth noting here that the poems ofCotton Nero A.x-the Pearl-poems--also trace a similar movement. Cleanness is centered on the need for humans to practice imitatio dei, and Pearl concludes with the salvation of man through the Eucharist. This idea will be analyzed in greater depth in chapter foue. Deleuze and Guattari point to the black hole of the face as a key element in the process of subjectification, which is a narrowing, a division of the individual from humanity in general, They argue that "[wlhat is called central perspective in particular plunged the multiplicity of escapes and the dynamism oflines into a punctual black hole" (A Thousand Plateaus, 298). Deleuze and Guattari. Anti-Oedipus, 21. See Emmerson and Goldberg, "'The Lord Geoffrey,'" 53-54, for an account of these similarities.

230

Notes to Chapter Two

46. Georges Bataille, Eroticism, trans. Mary Dalwood (London: Marion Boyars, 1987),152. 47. Maurice Blanchot, The Gaze o/Orpheus, ed. P. Adams Sitney, trans. Lydia Davis (Barrytown, N.Y.: Station Hili, 1981), 75, quoted in Shaviro, The Cinematic Body, 47. 48. Shaviro, Cinematic Body, 47. 49. Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 7. 50. Camille, Mirror in Parchment, 199. 51 . Phil Hardy, ed. The Aurum Film Encyclopedia: Horror. Revised ed. (London: Aurum Press, 1993), 193. 52. Carol J. Clover, in her book on horror cinema and spectatorship Men, WOmen, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), discusses the figure of the "Final Girl," the supposed victim of the monster who triumphs at the end of the movie. According to Clover, the (male) viewer of the horror film who identifies with this (female) hero allows himself to be represented as anatomically female. Horror films that utilize the "Final Girl" therefore challenge the phallocentric orthodoxy of the gaze, but Clover does not focus in great detail on the masochistic pleasures to be derived from the surrender of mastery. Rollin's films deliberately confuse subject and object in ways that undermine control and invoke the pleasures of fascination. 53. Deleuze, Cinema 1, 20. 54. See Carruthers, Art 0/ Memory, 137, for this description of the mental image-in particular that employed by Thomas Bradwardine. Horror films are thus connected to medieval images by a common contravention of normal social boundaries and codes. 55. Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 4. Deleuze refers specifically to Visconti's films here, where images take on an autonomous, material reality no longer subordinate to narrative. 56. Alain Silver and James Ursini, The Vampire Film /rom Nosferatu to Bram Stoker's Dracula (New York: Limelight Editions, 1993), 190. 57. Deleuze, Cinema 1, 76-7. 58. Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 77. 59. The measurements are taken from Madeline H. Caviness, "Patron or Matron? A Capetian Bride and a Vade Mecum for Her Marriage Bed." Speculum 68 (1993): 333-362.Though I have seen the Hours while it was on loan to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, it was in the process of being rebound, and so I have not held it in my hands as Caviness has. 60. Caviness, "Patron or Matron?" 334. 61. Ibid., 343. In contrast, the Luttrell Psalter has only one free-standing framed miniature, the equestrian portrait on fol. 202v. This possibly reflects the absence of clearly defined orders of reality in the Psalter.

Notes to Chapter Two

231

62. St. Bernard, Apologia 29, trans. Conrad Rudolph. In The "Things o/Great Importance':· Bernard 0/ Clairvaux's Apologia and the Medieval Attitude Towards Art (Philadelphia: University ofPennsylvania Press, 1990), 12. 63. Caviness, "Patron or Matron?" 334. 64. Ibid., 358. 65. Kathleen Morand, Jean Pucelle (Oxford: C1arendon Press, 1962). 66. Lilian M. C. Randall, "Games and the Passion in Pucelle's Hours of Jeanne D'Evreux." Speculum47 (1972): 248. 67. Caviness, "Patron or Matron?" 356. 68. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 377. 69. Emmerson and Goldberg, '''The Lord Geoffrey,'" 56. Their discussion of this scene is on 56-58. 70. Ibid., 58. 71. See RandalI, 246. As time wem by, the Infancy gradually supplamed the Passion. 72. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 380. 73. J. J. G. Alexander, The Decorated Letter (New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1978),21. 74. Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 6. 75. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 68-9. 76. Caviness, "Patron or Matron?" 334. 77. Michael Camille, Image on the Edge: The Margins 0/ Medieval Art. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 10. 78. The other main-page illustration without a border is the Crucifixion (fol. 68 v), another moment when heaven and earth meet and the boundaries between mem collapse. The Crucifixion scene, modeled on Duccio's Maesta, as many scholars have recognized, stands out from the other illustrations because it seems both static and yet dramatic, an object to be gazed at rather than a seductive image that draws the viewer into a system oflooks. This conforms to Deleuze's op- or son-sign, which "does not extend into action, any more than it is induced by an action. Ir makes us grasp, it is supposed to make us grasp, something intolerable and unbearable" (Deleuze, Cinema 2, 18). 79. Lilian Randali makes this connection in "Games and the Passion." 80. We might also note that Jeanne appears in the letter "0" just Iike the bagpipe-player in the Annunciation to the Shepherds. This certainly offers us a correspondence beyond the immediate parameters of the facing page, and may also suggest that Jeanne, like any human being, has a corruptible, sexual nature. The "0" of "Domine" offers encircling protection, but cannot protect from sin that comes from within. 81. Joan A. Holladay, "The Education of Jeanne d'Evreux: Personal Pietyand Dynastie Salvation in her Book of Hours at the Cloisters." Art History Vol. 17, No. 4 (December 1994): 597.

232

Notes to Chapter Three

82. Holladay, "Education," 588. 83. Ibid., 598. 84 . We could even say that this is subhuman, because from a Christian perspective such impulses emerge from the debasement of human nature caused by Original Sin. 85. Blanchot, Gaze ofOrpheus, 85. 86. Maurice Blanchot, When the Time Comes, trans. Lydia Davis (Barrytown, NY: Station Hili, 1985), 71.

NOTES TO CHAPTER THREE 1. St. Bonaventure, Breviloquium, Prologue 5; Henry of Ghent, Article IV, quaestio iii, discussed by Rudd, Managing Language, 34-37. 2. In this sense, meditative writing shares similarities with Lacan's treatment of the Imaginary and the Symbolic. Lacan argues that the human ego is initially constructed on the basis of a meconnaissance, whereby the Imaginary reAects the subjects own self-perceptions and the subject mistakes this reAection for reality. Only the arrival of the father introjects the subject into the realm of the Symbolic, freeing it from its narcissistic view of the world. The models diverge, however, at the point where Christi an writers insist that God inheres in the subject. Consequendy, the developing subject does not get a more realistic sense of set[ and the structures that surround it, but a clearer understanding of God. 3. Clopper, "Songes ofRecheiesnesse, "7. 4. It is also worth noting that this poem is not normally considered a "Ricardian" work, and it is interesting in part because it is a "minor" poem that explores many of the same themes that inform the other works in this study. The term "Ricardian" is not ultimately very helpful, therefore, in articulating the correspondences between literary and visual texts in the latter part of the fourteenth century. 5. Deleuze, Cinema 2, 142. 6. Ibid., 143. 7. Larry D. Benson, Art and Tradition in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1965), 158. 8. Deleuze, Cinema 2, 141. 9. Minnis, MedievaL Theory ofAuthorship, 111. 10. I use the term "break" here to refer to the expert cutting of the game into pieces, a process also known as "brittling." A medieval hunter would have been expected to be able to practice this skilI, and a similar scene of "britding" appears, more famously, in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. 11. Thomas L. Reed, Jr., Middie EngLish Debate Poetry and the Aesthetics of Irresolution (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1990), 3. 12. We could extend the range of poems that fit Reed's description to include both The OwL and the Nightingaie and Chaucer's Pariement ofFouies, both of

Notes to Chapter Three

13. 14.

15.

16.

17. 18. 19.

233

which end inconclusively. The Owl anti the Nightingale ends with the suggestion that only "maister Nichole" can judge the debate successfully, suggesting that truth cannot be found within the poem. The Parlement ofFoules, on the other hand, ends with the lady eagle postponing her judgment and so provoking continued debate after the poem ends. Neither is suitable for my analysis because they do not implicate the reader in the process ofjudgment, or at least do so only obliquely. Reed, Debate Poetry, 15. "See my reflection in your mirrors, men, by your word;IThis image in my glass ignore at your periI," 290-1. All references to the poem are to the TEAMS edition, ed. Warren Ginsberg (Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan University, 1992). See Lisa Kiser, "EIde and His Teaching in The Parlement of the Thre Ages." Philological QJJarterly 66 (1987): 303-314, for a useful summary of the critical tradition on this issue. Thorlac Turville-Petre, "The Ages of Man in the Parlement ofthe Thre Ages." Medium Alvum 46 (l977): 72 and Dennis Moran, "The Parlement ofthe Thre Ages: Meaning and Design." Neophilologus 62 {I 978), 620-33. Turville-Petre, "The Ages of Man," 75. Ibid., 75. David V. Harrington, "Indeterminacy in Winner and Waster and The

Parliament ofthe Three Ages." Chaucer Review 20 (1986): 256. 20. Parlement, 654. 21. His response echoes the retreat of Gawain from the implications of his adventure in Sir Gawain anti the Green Knight, as we will see in the next chapter. 22. Russell A. Peck, "The Careful Hunter in The Parlement of the Thre Ages." English Literary History 39 (1972): 333-341. 23. The Prayers anti Meditations ofSt. Anse1m, trans. Benedicta Ward (New York: S. L. G., 1973), 222. See the discussion by Richard K. Emmerson in "The Apocalypse in Medieval Culture," in The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, ed. Richard K. Emmerson and Bernard McGinn, 293-332 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992). 24. See David E. Lampe, "The Poetic Strategy of The Parlement ofthe Thre Ages." The Chaucer Review (l973): 173-183. Lampe examines the symbolic significance of the flowers and animals in the description of the wood, bearing out the suggestion that earthly things can indine the reader towards the presence ofGod. 25. "[mJumbled and moaned and asked for mercy,lAnd eagerly called to Christ and said his creed" (Parlement 160-161). 26. Turville-Petre, "The Ages of Man," 72. 27. Beryl Rowland, "The Three Ages of The Parlement ofthe Thre Ages." Chaucer Review 9 (1975): 345. Her essay indudes a helpful summary of the history of the ''Ages of Man" legend.

234

Notes to Chapter Three

28. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 179. All references to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight are to Malcolm Andrewand Ronald Waldron. The Poems o/the Pearl Manuscript. Rcv. ed. Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1996. 29. Parlement 112-114; SGGKI43-146 . 30. Parlement 122-132; SGGKI57-172. 31. Parlement 122; SGGK 151. Scholars have noted the connections between the Parlement and the works of the Gawain-poet, and even discussed the possibility that they inAuenced one another. Without a precise date for these works, however, this is a fruitless search, and ultimately misses the point: these texts enter a system that includes them, with a shared vocabulary and metrical structure. 32. John Scattergood, "The Parlement 0/ the Thre Ages." Leeds Studies in English 14 (1983): 172. Scattergood's argument is that the narrator's liminal position (he is apoacher) affords hirn a unique position as an impartial observer of the debate, and so allows hirn to learn about the precariousness of life. This is achallenging argument, undermined by the fact that the narrator does not actually "learn" anything. I would argue that we occupy the marginal role and discover these "facts oflife." 33. This argument is made most famously by Morton W Bloomfield, in Piers Plowman as a Fourteenth-century Apocalypse (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1961). More recently Mary J. Carruthers, in her essay, "Time, Apocalypse, and the Plot of Piers Plowman," in Acts 0/Interpretation: The Text and Its Contexts 700-1600, eds Mary J. Carruthers and Elizabeth D. Kirk, 175-188 (Norman, OKL: Pilgrim Books, 1982), and Kathryn KerbyFulton in her book, Reformist Apocalypticism and Piers Plowman (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990) have expanded upon Bloomfield's original theory. 34. Richard K. Emmerson, ""Coveitise to Konne," Goddes Pryvetee," and Will's Ambiguous Dream Experience in Piers Plowman," in Suche WCrkis to WCrche: Essays on Piers Plowman in Honor o/David C. Fowler, ed. MfceaI F. Vaughan, 89-121 (East Lansing, MI: Colleagues Press, 1993). 35. Emmerson, ''''Coveitise to Konne," 113. 36. Adams, William Ockham Vol. 11, p. 1010 states that we "acknowledge and worship" God as a mystery; we do not "know" God in a cognitive sense. 37. Clopper, "Songes o/Rechelesnesse," 10. 38. Britton Harwood, "Langland's Kynde Knowyng and the Quest for Christ." Medieval Philology 80 (1983) : 243. All references to the B-text are to The Vision 0/ Piers Plowman: A Critical Edition 0/ the B-text Based on Trinity College MS B. 15. 17, ed. A. V. C. Schmidt (London: Everyman, 1995). 39. I have summarized pp. 248-249 ofHarwood's article here. Harwood derives the distinction between real and nominal definitions from Ockham's Theory o/Terms.

Notes to Chapter Three

235

40. Laurie A Finke, "Truth's Treasure: Allegory and Meaning in Piers Plowman," in Medieval Texts 6- Contemporary Readers, eds Laurie A. Finke and Martin B. Shichtman, 61 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987). 41. Introduction to Piers Plowman: The C-text, ed. Derek Pearsall (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1994), 17. All references to the C-text are to this edition. 42. J. A Burrow, Langland's Fictions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993),3. 43. See chapter one. I use the term to mean any attempt to move away from marginal, partial viewpoints and towards a more fluid and inclusive sense of judgment. 44. Ralph Hanna, III. "Reading Prophecy/Reading Piers." Yearbook 0/ Langland Studies 12 (1998): 157. Hanna discusses Piers Plowman B.l 0.331-32; 334-35 and me prophecy of Clergy and Reason. The tendency to interpret these lines as referring to material disendowment follows a reading practice established in me sixteenm-century, argues Hanna, mat ignores me textual implications of me passage in favor of pursuing its relationship wim "real" events. 45. Mkdl F. Vaughan, "The Ending(s) of Piers Plowman A," in Suche ~rkis to Werche: Essays on Piers Plowman in Honor 0/ David C. Fowler, ed. Mied.! F. Vaughan, 241 (East Lansing, MI: Colleagues Press, 1993). Burrow's comment comes from Langland's Fictions, 12. 46. All references to the A-text are to Piers the Plowman: A Critical Edition o/the A- ltersion, eds Thomas A Knott and David C. Fowler (Baitimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1952). 47. Knott and Fowler, A- ltersion, 169, note to AXI, 250. 48. B,X, 457-465. To paraphrase: the lines in the B-text indicate that a learned clerk is no more likely to be saved than a plowman, a pastor, or a common laborer, which waters down the radical import of the ending of the A-text. In the B-text, these words seem to indicate Will's uncertainty as to how to proceed in his quest. 49. Pearsall, C- Text, 203, note to line 196. 50. Shaviro, Cinematic Body, 172. 51. Ibid., 185. 52. Ibid., 186. 53. Lawrence Clopper's book "Songs 0/Rechelesnesse" contains a sustained analysis of this figure's role in the C-text. Clopper believes that Rechelesnesse comes to represent a kind of "false friar," who does not practice what he preaches. Gillian Rudd, in Managing Language, refers to Rechelesnesse as an "ambivalent" figure . Clopper, 188. 54. Emmerson, ""Coveitise to Konne,"" 121. 55. Susan K. Hagen. Allegorical Remembrance: A Study ofThe Pilgrimage of the Life of Man as a Medieval Treatise on Seeing and Remembering (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1990). Hagen briefly summarizes John Pecham's theories of optics and the function of mirrors on pp. 26-27.

236 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64.

65 . 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75 .

76. 77. 78.

79.

80.

Notes to Chapter Three Pearsall, C- Text, 202, note to Passus XI, line 170. See Rudd, Managing Language, 123-125. Ibid., 223. This anticipates Piers's close kinship with Christ as a founder of Holy Chirche in Passus XXI. "Learn, teach, love God." Carruthers, "Time, Apocalypse, and the Plot of Piers Plowman, " 176. Ibid.,184. Ibid., 186. James Simpson, "Oesire and the Scriptural Text: Will as Reader in Piers Plowman," in Criticism and Dissent in the Middle Ages, ed. Rita Copeland, 215-243 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Simpson, "Oesire and the Scriptural Text," 219. Ibid., 232. Ibid., 234. Burr KimmeIman, The Poetics o[ Authorship in the Later Middle Ages: The Emergence o[the Modern Literary Persona (New York: Peter Lang, 1996),224. Burrow, Langland's Fictions, 109. Ibid., 111. John M. Bowers, The Crisis o[WiII in Piers Plowman (Washington, OC: Catholic University of America Press, 1986). Bowers, The Crisis o[Will, 1-2. Ibid., 30. Ibid., 95. One possible explanation for the absence of the "tearing of the pardon" scene in the C-Text is that in the later revision Langland invokes the reading process, although as with everything else he remains ambivalent about its role. The tearing of the pardon in the earlier versions cerrainly demonstrates a rejection of literal readings, and oflosing sight ofTruth in a debate over interpretation. But, perhaps it could too easily be interpreted as a condemnation of reading as an activity in itsel f, in favor of living a good life. The C-revision is not so radical in its conclusions, yet also embraces the potential of reading to escape the literal and the mundane. Oerek Pearsall, from the Introduction to Piers Plowman: A Facsimile o[ Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Douce 104 (Cambridge: O. S. Brewer, 1992), x. Pearsall, MS Douce 104, ix. Maidie Hilmo, "Retributive Violence and the Reformist Agenda in the IlIustrated Oouce 104 MS of Piers Plowman. Fifteenth-Century Studies 23 (1996): 13. From Scott's examination of the illustrations in Piers Plowman: A Facsimile o[ Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Douce 104 (Cambridge: O. S. Brewer, 1992), lvi-lvii. Scott, MS Douce 104, lxiv.

237

Notes to Chapter Four

81. Ibid., lxxxi. 82. Stephen G. Nichols, "The Image as Textual Unconscious: Medieval Manuscripts." L'Esprit Createur Vol. XXIX, No. 1 (Spring 1989): 14. 83. Nichols, "Image as Textual Unconscious," 19. 84. "The miniatures almost certainly represent a double response to the poem." Scott, MS Douce 104, lxxxi. 85. Kathryn Kerby-Fulton and Denise L. Despres, lconography and the Professional Reader: The Politics 0/ Book Production in the Douce Piers Plowman (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999). 86. Kerby-Fulton and Despres, lconography, 33. 87. IfI were brave, I would call this an "extra-textuallove affair" with Mede, because the pictures are so vibrant and draw so little on the text. It is as though the artist is captivated by Mede in this section, and thinks of her in all of her aspects. 88. $cott, MS Douce 104, lxvii. NO~TOC~RFOUR

1. E. Randolph Daniel, "Joachim of Fiore: Patterns of History in the Apocalypse," in The Apocao/pse in the Middle Ages, eds Richard K. Emmerson and Bernard McGinn, 72-88 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992). This is a summary of Daniel's account on 75-76; quotation, 76. 2. St. Bonaventure, The Journey 0/ the Mind to God (Itinerarium Mentis in Deum), in The W0rks 0/Bonaventure Vol. I (Mystica1 Opuscula), trans. Jose de Vinck (Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press, 1960),7. 3. Robert J. Blanch and Julian N. Wasserman, in hom Pearl to Gawain: Forme to Fynisment. (Gainesville: University Press ofFlorida, 1995),4. 4. Sarah Stanbury, Seeing the Gawain-Poet: Description and the Act 0/Perception (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), 2. 5. Stanbury, Seeing the Gawain-Poet, 4. 6. Alain Renoir, "Descriptive Techniques in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." Orbis Litterarum 13 (1958): 126-132; "The Progressive Magniftcation: An Instance of Psychological Description in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." Moderna Sprak 54 (1960): 245-253; "An Echo in the Sense: The Patterns of Sound in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." English Miscellany 13 (1962): 9-23. 7. Andrewand Waldron, The Poems o/the Pearl Manuscript, 23. 8. St. Bonaventure, Breviloquium IV, 1, 144-145. 9. Blanch and Wasserman, From Pearl to Gawain, 14-15. 10. Ibid., 46. 11. See Clopper, "Songr 0/ Rechelesnesse, 105-112. Chapter three of Clopper's book is entitled "Langland's Exemplarism," and provides a succinct account of exemplarism, and Bonaventure's speciftc interpretation of it. 12. Ibid., 107. JJ

238

Notes to Chapter Four

13. Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 41, 523 (Sermon 48). Quoted in Jane K. Lecklider, Cleanness: Structure and Meaning (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997),220. 14. Lecklider, Cleanness: Structure and Meaning, 220. 15. David Wallace, "Cleanness and the Terms ofTerror," in Text and Matter: New Critical Perspectives of the Pearl-Poet, eds Robert J. Blanch, Miriam Youngerman Miller, and Julian N. Wasserman, 96 (Troy, NY: Wh itston , 1991). 16. Stanbury, Seeing the Gawain-Poet, 58. 17. Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 6. 18. Stanbury, Seeing the Gawain-Poet, 65. 19. Ibid, 52. 20. St. Bonaventure, Breviloquium VII, 7, 308. 21. Daniel, "Joachim ofFiore," 76. 22. Deleuze, Cinema 2, 17. 23. Lynne Staley Johnson, "The Voice ofthe Gawain-Poet (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), 139. 24. C. David Benson, 'The Impatient Readerof Patience," in TextandMatter: New Critical Perspectives on the Pearl- Poet, eds Robert J. Blanch, Miriam Youngerman Miller, and Julian N. Wasserman, 148 (Troy, NY: Whitston, 1991). 25. Editors cannot decide between line 527 (Gollancz) and 523 (Bateson and Anderson). Andrewand Waldron state that a "definitive argument either way is difficult to envisage" (Andrewand Waldron, Pearl Manuscript, 206, note to line 524). 26. Stanbury, Seeing the Gawain-Poet, 75. 27. Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 21. 28. Andrewand Waldron, Pearl Manuscript, 195, note to line 242. 29. Stanbury, Seeing the Gawain-Poet, 82. 30. Blanch and Wasserman, From Pearl to Gawain, 133. 31. Ibid., 133. 32. The Green Knight makes a similar point to Gawain in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, but the knight rejects the implication and burrows still deeper into himself, as we shall see. 33. This is a revised version of my earlier article, 'The Cinematic Consciousness of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." Exemplaria Vol. 13, No. 1 (Spring 2001): 68-97. 34. Sand ra Pierson Prior, The Fayre Formez ofthe Pearl Poet (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1996), 117. Prior refers to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as a "human story, a ferlye in pis folde." 35. Stanbury, Seeing the Gawain-Poet, 5. 36. Ibid., 105. 37. R. Allen Shoaf, The Poem as Green Girdle: Commercium in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1984), 2.

Notes to Chapter Four

239

38. Robert W Hanning, "Sir Gawain and the Red Herring: The Perils of Interpretation," in Acts 0/ Interpretation: The Text in Its Contexts 700-1600, eds Mary J. Carruthers and Elizabeth D. Kirk, 5 (Norman, OKL: Pilgrim, 1982). 39. Camille, Image on the Edge, 132. 40. Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 20. 41. See especially Clare R. Kinney, "The (Dis)Embodied Hero and the Signs of Manhood in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," in Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middie Ages, ed. Clare A. Lees, 50 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994). Kinney notes, following A. C. Spearing, that we are never given a physical description of Gawain, and she remarks that in the arming scene he court builds Gawain "bit by bit." 42. Steven Shaviro, discussing Kathryn Bigelow's movie Blue Steel, points to a "delirious" use oflighting in ehe film, so that it "no longer expresses subjectivity; it is instead almost as if subjectivity were an effict of atmosphere." Shaviro, Cinematic Body, 3. 43. Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 84. 44. Ibid.,33. 45. It is worth noting here that Gregory Gross employs Foucault's not ion of "ascending" individualization to explain Gawain's emergence as a subject, i.e. a self-determining entity. My argument is that Gawain's "identity" is the product of social forces. See Gregory W Gross, "Sex, Confession, and Truth in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." Arthuriana 4, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 146-174. 46. Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 33. 47. Ibid., 2. 48. Ibid., 18. 49. Ibid., 18. 50. Ibid., 19. 51. Ibid., 77. 52. Catherine Batt, "Gawain's Antifeminist Rant, ehe Pentangle, and Narrative Space." The Yearbook o/English Studies 22 (l992): 117-138. 53. My use of the term "Real" here suggests universal, objective truth as opposed to subjective perceptions of that truth. Ir therefore corresponds to God, or to judgment that transcends particular human concerns. I have used the term to connote the "rea1m" in which Piers seems to reside in Piers Plowman. 54. R. Allen Shoaf, "The "Syngne of Surfet" and ehe Surfeit of Signs in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," in The Passing 0/ Arthur: New Essays in Arthurian Tradition, eds Christopher Baswell and William Sharpe, 160 (New York: Garland, 1988). 55. A. C. Spearing, The Gawain-Poet: A Critical Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 189. 56. Deleuze, Cinema 1,23.

240

Notes to Chapter Four

57. Oeleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 43. 58. Oeleuze, Cinema 2, 91. 59. Marie Borroff, "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: The Passing ofJudgment,"

60.

61.

62.

63. 64.

65 . 66.

67.

68.

69. 70.

71.

in The Passing 0/Arthur: New Essays in Arthurian Traditions ed. Christopher Baswell and William Sharpe, 107 (New York: Garland, 1988). The dual nature of the Green Knight makes her nervous, however, and her essay is devoted to explaining how the poem "demystifies" the Green Knight. We "learn" from this that "we are not quite all we had hoped we would be," a process that Borroff calls "maturation" (120) . In Pear4 the dreamer gazes upon the New Jerusalem "pat schyrrer pen sunne with schaftez schon" (982). When Gawain first catches sight ofBertilak's cast1e, "hit schemered and schon pur3 pe schyre okez" (772). Scholarly examinations of the "ambivalence" of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight are arguably derived from the same impulse to establish a closed reading of the poem. The argument holds that we desire closure, but that the poem/poet thwarts our endeavors. See, for instance, A. C. Spearing, "Public and Private Spaces in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." Arthuriana 4, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 138-145. Spearing seems unwilling to acknowledge that the poem may offer both models affirmatively, and so establish their distinctiveness within a whole that includes them both. Spearing suggests that the poet celebrates the provincialism of Bertilak's castle at the expense of the rarefied atmosphere of Arthur's court. Oeleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 77. Sheila Fisher, "Leaving Morgan Aside: Women, History, and Revisionism in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," in The Passing 0/Arthur: New Essays in Arthurian Tradition," ed. Christopher Baswell and William Sharpe, 145 (New York: Garland, 1988). Fisher, "Leaving Morgan Aside," 64. Oeleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 246. Shoaf's analysis, which focuses on motifs of commercial exchange, is the best exploration of the logic of capitalism at work within the poem. Robert J. Blanch and Julian N. Wasserman, in From Pearl to Gawain, argue that the crisis that plagues Camelot on Gawain's return is born of a failure of linguistic interpretation. Elizabeth O. Kirk, '''Wel Bycommes Such Craft Upon Cristmasse': the Festive and the Hermeneutic in Sir Gawain an the Green Knight." Arthuriana 4, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 100. Stanbury, Seeing the Gawain-Poet, 2. John N. Ganim, Style and Comciousness in Middle English Narrative (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 75. Ganim is referring to Gawain hirnself Oeleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 133.

Notes to Chapter Four

241

72. St. Bonaventure, Itinerarium, 7. 73. Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 26. 74. "The objective being of desire is the Real in and of itself." Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 26-27. 75. St. Bonaventure, Itinerarium, 7. 76. St. Bonaventure, Itinerarium, 58. 77. Barbara Nolan, The Gothic Visionary Perspective (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), 157. 78. Blanch and Wasserman, From Pearl to Gawain, 147. 79. Nolan, Gothic Visionary Perspective, 156. 80. Julia Kristeva, Powers ofHorror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982). 81. Shaviro, Cinematic Body, 47. 82. Andrewand Waldron, Pearl Manuscript, 56, note to lines 51-56. 83. Jesus entrusts Mary to John from the Cross, and John to Mary. This "line of

84. 85.

86.

87. 88.

89. 90.

transmission" connects those who live on after Christ's death to Hirn, just as His death reveals the continuity of life in God. This has implications for the dreamer's own argument, as we have seen. I am grateful to Miceil F. Vaughan for this observation. Andrewand Waldron, Pearl Manuscript, 81, note to lines 581-588. In one real sense the maiden never "entered" the vineyard, in that she died before she attained the age of reason, when her actions and works could be judged her own in any moral sense. Again, I am grateful to Mice.lI F. Vaughan for this observation. The maiden's words in this section seem almost childlike in their logic: "I can get in, but you can't!" Susan L. Clark and Julian N. Wasserman, "The Spatial Argument of Pearl: Perspectives on a Venerable Bead." Interpretations: 5tudies in Language and Literature 11 (I979): 1. Nicholas Watson, "The Gawain-Poet as a Vernacular Theologian," in A Companion to the Gawain-Poet, ed. Derek Brewer and Jonathan Gibson, 305 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997). Watson also provides a useful summary of some of the mystical writers who emphasize "affective religious experience" (296). Andrewand Waldron, Pearl Manuscript, 97, note to Iines 901-904. The extra initial appears on the "M" of Motelez on line 961. This is unlikely to be a scribal error, as Andrewand Waldron suggest, because the initial faces the "N" of Neuerj>elese at line 913 in the manuscript. The consistent placement oflarge initials before and after this point in the manuscript suggests that the scribe knew what he was doing, and that the placement of the decorated "M" was deliberate. It seems signifkant that this "stanza" (or group of lines) comprises the ultimate point of contact between dreamer and maiden.

242

Notes to Conclusion

9l. In Lacanian terminology this could be viewed as the lack on which his (deluded) ego is based, the mythical objet petit a that is the symbol of unquenchable earthly desire. I would argue against the idea that the dreamer is psychologically realized in any modern sense, however. 92. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 134. 93. Rudd, Managing Language, 125. 94. Walter Hilton, Scale ofPerfection, Book I, Chapter 8. 95. Sharon Albert, unpublished M.Phil dissertation, University College, Dublin (1991). 96. Kevin Marti's book Body, Heart, and Text in the Pearl-Poet (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Meilen, 1991) offers a thorough analysis of the Eucharistie imagery in Pearl, and the consequent importance of Christ in the poem. Marti makes no attempt, however, to align the poem with the exemplarist doctrine or Franciscan theology. 97. Stanbury, Seeing the Gawain-Poet, 32. 98. Prior, Fayre Formez, 16. 99. Shaviro, Cinematic Body, 5.

NOTES TO CONCLUSION l. St. Bonaventure, Itinerarium, I, 2, pp. 9-10. 2. Ibid., I, 2, p. 10. 3. Derek Pearsall believes that the "authority ofNeed as a witness in this episode is in fact throughout debatable" (C-text, Passus XXII, note to li ne 37, p. 363) . Pearsall implies that the Franciscan ideology that informs Need's argument undermines Need's status as an independent authority. I would argue, however, that in this passage Need makes explicit the communal values and life of diligence and restraint that mark Piers's activities. These ideals may have been at the center of a political debate between the Friars Minor and the established Church, but they also seem to represent the ideal Christian life within the poem. 4. St. Bonaventure, Itinerarium, I, 3, p. 10.

Bibliography

MANUSCRIPTS AND FACSIMILFS London, British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x. London, British Library Additional MS 31042. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters 54.1 .2 (Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux). Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Oouce 104. Piers Plowman: A Facsirnile ofBodleian Library, Oxford, MS Oouce 104. Carnbridge: O . S. Brewer, 1992.

PRIMARYTEXTS AND TRANSLATIONS Alberti, Leon Battista. On Painting and On Sculpture: The Latin Texts ofDe Pictura 6Oe Statue, ed. and trans. Cecil Grayson. London: Phaidon, 1972. Andrew, Malcolrn, and Ronald Waldron. The Poems ofthe Pearl Manuscript. Rev. ed. Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1996. Anselrn, St. The Prayers and Meditations ofSt. Anse1m, trans. Benedicta Ward. New York: S. L. G., 1973. Augustine, St. Sermons (20-50), ed. John E. Rotelle, trans. Edrnund Hili. New York: New City Press, 2003. Bible, The. Oouay-Rheirns Version. Rockford, IL: Tan Books, repr. 1989. Bonaventure, St. The Journey ofthe Mind to God (Itinerarium Mentis in Deum), trans. Jose de Vinck. Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press, 1960. Bonaventure, St. The Breviloquium, trans. Jose de Vinck. Paterson, NJ: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1963. Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales, in The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry O. Benson. 3rd ed. Boston: Houghton Miffiin, 1987. Ginsberg, Warren. Wjmnere and Wastoure and The Parlement of the Thre Ages. Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan University for TEAMS, 1992. Grosseteste, Robert. On Light [De Luce}, trans. Clare C. Reidl. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1942.

243

244

Bibliography

Hilton, Walter, Scale 0/ Perfection, ed. Halcyon Baekhouse. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1992. Knott, Thomas A., and David C. Fowler, eds. Piers the Plowman: A Critical Edition 0/the A- ~rsion. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1952. Oekham, William of. Philosophical Writings, trans. P. Boehner. Indianapolis, IN: Haekett Publishing Co, Ine, 1990. Oekham, William of. Quodlibetal Questions, trans. Alfred J. Freddoso and Francis E. Kelley. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. Olivi, Petri Iohannis. Quaestiones in secundum librum Sententiarum (Bibliotheca Franeiscana Seholastiea 4-6), ed. B. Jansen. Quaraeehi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1922-26. Olivi, Petri Iohannis. Quaestiones logicales, ed. S. Brown, Traditio 42 (1986) 335-88. Pearsall, Derek, ed. Piers Plowman, by William Langland: An Edition 0/ the C-text. London: Edward Arnold, 1978. Sehmidt, A. V. c., ed. The Vision o/Piers Plowman: A Complete Edition o/the B-Text. Rev. ed. London, ]. M. Dent & Sons, 1984.

SECONDARY TEXTS Aers, David. Community, Gender, and Individual Identity: English Writing 1360-1430. London: Routledge, 1988. Aers, David and Lynn Staley. The Powers 0/the Holy: Religion, Politics, and Gender in Late Medieval English Culture. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996. Alexander,].]. G. The Decorated Letter. New York: George Braziller, Ine., 1978. Alexander,].]. G. Medieval Illuminators and Their Methods ofWork. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992. Alexander, ]. ]. G. "Iconography and Ideology: Uneovering Social Meanings in Western Medieval Christian An." Studies in !conography 15 (1993): 1-44. Baekhouse, ]anet. The Luttrell Psalter. London: British Museum Publieations, 1989. Bai, Mieke. Reading "Rembrandt": Beyond the Word-Image Opposition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Banone, Richard C. "Variations on Arthurian Legend in Lancelot du Lac and Excalibur," in Popular Arthurian Traditions, ed. Sally Slocum, 144-155. Bowling Green, 0 H: Popular, 1992. Baudry, ]ean-Louis. "Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographie Apparatus," trans. Alan Williams, in Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology: A Film Theory Reader, ed. Philip Rosen, 286-298. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. Baudry, ]ean-Louis. "The Apparatus: Metapsychological Approaches to the Impression ofReality in the Cinema," trans. Jean Andrews and Bertrand Augst, in Narrative, Apparatus, ldeology: A Film Theory Reader, ed. Philip Rosen, 299-318. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. Bäumt Franz H. "Varieties and Consequences of Medieval Literacy and Illiteracy." Speculum 55 (1980): 237-265.

Bibliography

245

Bennett, Adelaide. "A Book Oesigned for A Noblewornan, an Illustrated Manual des Plches of the Thirteenth Century," in Medieval Book Production: Assessing the Evidence, ed. Linda L. Brownrigg, 163-182. Los Altos Hills, CA: AndersonLovelace, 1990. Benson, C. Oavid. "Piers Plowman and Parish Wall Paintings." Yearbook ofLangland Studies 11 (1997): 2-41. Benson, C. Oavid. "What then does Langland Mean? Authorial and Textual Voices in Piers Plowman." Yearbook ofLangland Studies 15 (2001): 3-13. Benson, C. Oavid, & Lynne Blanchfield. The Manuscripts ofPiers Plowrnan: The Bversion. Carnbridge: O. S. Brewer, 1998. Benson, Larry o. Art and Tradition in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1965. Blanch, Robert J. and Julian N. Wasserman. From Pearl to Gawain: Forme to Fynisment. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1995. Blanch, Robert J., Miriarn Youngerrnan Miller and Julian N. Wasserman. Text and Matter: New Critical Perspectives ofthe Pearl-Poet. Troy, NY: Whitston, 1991. Blanchot, Maurice. The Gaze ofOrpheus, trans. Lydia Oavis. Barrytown, NY: Station HilI,1981. Blanchot, Maurice. When the Time Comes, trans. Lydia Oavis. Barrytown, NY: Station HilI,1985. Blenkner, Louis, O. S. B. "Sin, Psychology, and the Structure of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." Studies in Philology Vol. 74, No. 4 (Fall 1977): 354-387. Bloornfield, Morton W. Piers Plowrnan as a Fourteenth-century Apocalypse. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1961. Borroff, Marie. "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: The Passing ofJudgrnent," in The Passing ofArthur: New Essays in Arthurian Tradition, eds Christopher Baswell and Williarn Sharpe, 105-128. New York: Garland, 1988. Bowers, John M. The Crisis ofWill in Piers Plowrnan. Washington, OC: Catholic University of America Press, 1986. Brewer, Oerek. "The Reconstruction of Chaucer." SAC Proceedings, No. 1: 1984 (1985): 3-19. Bryson, Norman. Vision and Painting: The Logic of the Gaze. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983. Bryson, Norman. "Serniology and Visual Interpretation," in Visual Theory: Painting and Interpretation, eds Norrnan Bryson et al., 61-73. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. Bryson, Norman. "Art in Context," in Studies in Historical Change, ed. Ralph Cohen, 18-42. Charlottesville: University Press ofVirginia, 1992. Burr, Oavid. "Petrus Ioannis Olivi and the Philosophers." Franciscan Studies, 31 (1971): 41-71. Burrow, J. A. Ricardian Poetry: Chaucer, Gower, Langland and the Gawain Poet. London: Routledge, 1971. Burrow, J. A. Langland's Fictions. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993.

246

BibLiography

Calkins, Robert G. "Narrative in Image and Text in Medieval IIIuminated Manuscripts." Medieval Perspeetives 7 (1992): 1-18. Camille, Michael. "Seeing and Reading: Some Visual Implications of Medieval Literacy and IIIiteracy." Art History 8 (1985): 26-49. Camille, Michael. The Gothie Idol. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Camille, Michael. Image on the Edge: The Margins 0/Medieval Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992. Camille, Michael. Gothie Art: Glorious Visions. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1996. Camille, Michael. Master 0/ Death: The Lifeless Art 0/Pierre Remiet Illuminator. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. Camille, Michael. Mirror in Parehment: The LuttrelL Psalter and the Making 0/ Medieval England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Carruthers, Mary J. "Time, Apocalypse, and the Plot of Piers Plowman," in Aets 0/ Interpretation: The Text and Its Contexts 700-1600, eds Mary J. Carruthers and Elizabeth D. Kirk, 175-188. Norman, OKL: Pilgrim Books, 1982. Carruthers, Mary. The Book 0/ Memory: A Study 0/ Memory in Medieval Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Caviness, Madeline H. "Patron or Matron? A Capetian Bride and a Vade Mecum for Her Marriage Bed." Speeulum 68 (1993): 333-362. Clark, Susan L., and Julian N. Wasserman. "The Spatial Argument of Pearl: Perspectives on a Venerable Bead." Interpretations: Studies in Language and Literature 11 (1979): 1-12. Clifton, Linda J. "Struggling with Will: Jangling, Sloth, and Thinking in Piers Plowman B," in Suehe ~rkis to ~rehe: Essays on Piers Plowman in Honor 0/ David C. Fowler, ed. Mied.1 F. Vaughan, 29-52. East Lansing, MI: Colleagues Press, 1993. C1opper, Lawrence M. "Pearl and the Consolation ofScripture." Viator: Medieval and RenaissaneeStudies 23 (1992): 231-245. Clopper, Lawrence M. "Songes 0/ Reehelesnesse':· Langland and the Franeiseans. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997. Clover, Carol J. Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. Coleman, Joyce. Publie Reading and the Reading Publie in Late Medieval England and Franee. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Copjec, Joan. "The Orthopsychic Subject: Film Theory and the Reception ofLacan." Getober 49 (1989): 53-72. Crawford, Donna. "The Architechtonics of Cleanness." Studies in Philology Vol. 90, No. 1 (Winter 1993): 29-39. Davlin, M. C. "Kynde Knowyng as a Major Theme in Piers Plowman B." Review 0/ English Studies n.s. 22 (1971): 1-19. DeHamel, Christopher. A History 0/ llluminated Manuseripts. 2nd rev. ed., London: Phaidon, 1994.

Bibliography

247

De Lauretis, Teresa. Alice Doesn't: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema. London: Macmillan, 1984. Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986. Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 2: The Time-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Roben GaIeta. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989. Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983. Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi. London: The Athlone Press, 1988. Dennison, Lynda. ''''The Fitzwarin Psalter and its Allies": A ReappraisaI," in England in the Fourteenth Century: Proceedings o[the 1985 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. W M. Ormrod, 42-63 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 1986. Edwards, A. S. G. "The Manuscript: British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x," in A Companion to the Gawain-Poet, ed. Derek Brewer and Jonathan Gibson, 197-219. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997. Emmerson, Richard K Antichrist in the Middie Ages: A Study o[MedievaIApocalypticism, Art and Literature. Seattle: University ofWashingron Press, 1981. Emmerson, Richard K ""Coveitise to Konne," Goddes Pryvetee," and Will's Ambiguous Dream Experience in Piers Plowman," in Suche Ulerkis to Ulerche: Essays on Piers Plowman in Honor o[David C Fowler, ed. Mkeal F. Vaughan, 89-121. East Lansing, MI: Colleagues Press, 1993. Emmerson, Richard K "Text and Image in the Ellesmere Portraits of the TaIeTellers," in The Ellesmere Chaucer: Essays in Interpretation, eds Martin Stevens and Daniel Woodward, 143-170. Yushodo: Huntingdon Library, 1995. Emmerson, Richard K "Visualizing Peformance: The Miniatures of the Besanc;:on MS 579 Jour du Jugement." Exemplaria 11 (1999): 245-284. Emmerson, Richard K "Reading Gower in a Manuscript Culture: Latin and English in IIIustrated Manuscripts of the Confessio Amantis." Studies in the Age o[ Chaucer 21 (1999): 143-186. Emmerson, Richard K, and RonaId B. Harzman. The Apocalyptic Imagination in Medieval Literature. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992. Emmerson, Richard K, and Bernard McGinn, eds. The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992. Emmerson, Richard K, and P. J. P. Goldberg. '''The Lord Geoffrey had me made': Lordship and Labour in the Lumell Psalter," in The Problem o[ Labour in Fouruenth-Century England, eds James Bothwell, P. J. P. Goldberg, and W M. Ormrod, 43-63. York: York Medieval Press, 2000. Evans, Murray J. Rereading Middie English Romance: Manuscript Layout, Decoration, and the Rhetoric o[ Composite Structure. Montreal and Kingston: McGillQueen's University Press, 1995.

248

Bibliography

Fein, Susanna, ed., Studies in the Harley Manuscript: The Scribes, Contents and Social Contexts o[ British Library MS. Harley 2253. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute (Western Michigan University), 2000. Finke, Laurie A. "Truth's Treasure: Allegory and Meaning in Piers Plowman," in Medieval Texts 6- Contemporary Readers, eds Laurie A. Finke and Martin B. Shichtman, 51-68. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987. Finlayson, John. "Pearl: Landscape and Vision." Studies in Philology 71 (1974): 314-343. Fisher, Sheila. "Leaving Morgan Aside: Women, History, and Revisionism in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," in The Passing o[ Arthur: New Essays in Arthurian Tradition," ed. Christopher Baswell and William Sharpe, 129-151. New York: Garland, 1988. Fletcher, Alan. "The Essential (Ephemeral) William Langland: Textual Revision as Ethical Process in Piers Plowman. Yearbook o[ Langland Studies 15 (2001): 61-84. Foucault, Michel. "Las Meninas," in The Order o[ Things: An Archaeology o[ the Human Sciences, 3-16. NewYork: Vintage Books, 1994. Fry, Donald K. "The Authority of Eide in The Parlement o[ the Thre Ages," in Hermeneutics and Medieval Culture, eds Patrick J. Gallacher and Helen Damico, 213-221. Albany, NY: State University ofNew York Publications, 1989. Ganim, John N. Style and Consciousness in Middle English Narrative. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. Gellrich, Jesse M. The ldea o[the Book in the Middle Ages: Language Theory, Mythology, and Fiction. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985. Gilson, Etienne. The Philosophy o[St. Bonaventure, trans. Dom Illtyd Trethowan and Frank J. Sheed. Paterson, NJ: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1965. Green, Martin. "The Dialectic of Adaptation: The Canterbury Tales of Pier Paolo Pasolini." LiteratureiFilm Quarterly 4 (1976): 46-53. Grindley, Carl James. "Reading Piers Plowman C- Text Annotations: Notes towards the Classification of Printed and Written Marginalia in Texts from the British Isles 1300-1641," in The Medieval Proftssional Reader at WOrk: Evidence from Manuscripts o[ Chaucer, Langland, Kempe and Gower, eds Kathryn KerbyFulton and Maidie Hilmo, 73-141. English Literary Studies 85. Victoria, BC: University ofVictoria Press, 2001. Hagen, Susan K. Allegorical Remembrance: A Study ofThe Pilgrimage of the Life of Man as a Medieval Treatise on Seeing and Remembering. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1990. Hanna, Ralph, In. Pursuing History: Medieval Manuscripts and Their Texts. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996. Hanna, Ralph, III. "Reading Prophecy/Reading Piers." Yearbook o[ Langland Studies 12 (1998): 153-157. Hanna, Ralph, III. "Piers Plowman and the Radically Chic." Yearbook o[ Langland Studies 13 (1999): 179-192.

Bibliography

249

Hanning, Robert W "Sir Gawain and the Red Herring: The Perils ofInterpretation," in Aets of Interpretation: The Text in Its Contexts 700-1600, eds Mary J. Carruthers and Elizabeth D. Kirk, 5-23. Norman, OKL: Pilgrim Books, 1982. Hardy, Phil, ed. The Aurum Film Encyelopedia: Horror. Rev. ed. London: Aurum Press, 1993. Harrington, David V. "Indeterminacy in Winner and Waster and The Parliament ofthe Three Ages." Chaucer Review 20 (1986): 246-257. Harwood, Britton. "Langland's Kjnde Knowyng and the Quest for Christ." Medieval Philology 80 (1983): 242-255. Hilmo, Maidie. "Retributive Violence and the Reformist Agenda in the Illustrated Douce 104 MS of Piers Plowman." Fifteenth-Century Studies 23 (1996): 13-48. Hilmo, Maidie. Medievallmages, Icons, and Illustrated English Literary Texts: From the Ruthwell Cross to the Ellesmere Chaucer. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003. Holladay, Joan A. "The Education of Jeanne d'Evreux: Personal Piety and Dynastie Salvation in her Book of Hours at the Cloisters." Art History Vol. 17, No. 4 (December 1994): 585-611. Holley, Linda Tarte. Chaueer's Measuring Eye. Houston: University of Texas Press, 1990. Holly, Michael Ann. Past Looking: Historieal Imagination and the Rhetorie of Image. Cornell: Cornell University Press, 1996. Huot, Sylvia. The Romance of the Rose and Its Medieval Readers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Huot, Sylvia. Allegorieal Play in the Old Freneh Motet: The Sacred and the Profone in Thirteenth-eentury Polyphony. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. Irvine, Martin. The Making of Textual Culture: "Grammatiea" and Literary Theory 350-1100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Jay, Martin. Downcast Eyes: The Denigration ofVision in Twentieth-Century Freneh Thought. Berkeleyand Los Angeles, California: University of California Press, 1994. Johnson, Lynn Staley. The V0ice of the Gawain-Poet. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984. Kamerick, Kathleen. Popular Piety andArt in the Late Middle Ages. London: Palgrave, 2002. Kerby-Fulton, Kathryn. Reformist Apoealypticism and Piers Plowman. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Kerby-Fulton, Kathryn, and Denise L. Despres. Iconography and the Profissional Reader: The Polities of Book Produetion in the Douee Piers Plowman. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. Kerby-Fulton, Kathryn, and Maidie Hilmo, eds. The Medieval Profissional Reader at

WOrk: Evidence from Manuseripts of Chaucer, Langland, Kempe and Gower. English Literary Studies 85. Victoria: University ofVictoria Press, 200 I. KimmeIman, Burr. The Poeties ofAuthorship in the Later Middle Ages: The Emergenee ofthe Modern Literary Persona. New York: Peter Lang, 1996.

250

Bibliography

Kiser, Lisa. "Eide and His Teaching in The Parlement of the Thre Ages." Philological

Quarterly 66 (I 987): 303-314. Klassen, Norman. Chaucer on Love, Knowledge and Sight. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer,

1995. Kolve, V.A. Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative: The First Five Canterbury Tales. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1984. Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992. Lacan, Jacques. Ecrits: ASelection, trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Tavistock, 1977. Lacan, Jacques. The Four Fundamental Concepts ofPsycho-Analysis, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Norton, 1978. Lacan, Jacques. "God and the Jouissance of ~ Woman," in Feminine Sexuality: Lacan & The Ecole Freudienne, ed. Juliet Mitchell, trans. Jacqueline Rose, 137-148. NewYork: Norton, 1984. Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar XX Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits ofLove and Knowledge, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Bruce Fink. New York: Norton,

1998. Lampe, David E. "The Poetic Strategy of The Parlement ofthe Thre Ages." The Chaucer

Review (I973): 173-183. Le Goff, Jacques. The Medieval Imagination, trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Lecklider, Jane K. Cleanness: Structure and Meaning. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997. Lee, J. A. "The Illuminating Critic: The Illustrator of Cotton Nero A. X." Studies in

lconography III (1977): 17-46. Leff, Gordon. William ofOckham. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1975. Leff, Gordon. The Dissolution of the Medieval Outlook: An Essay on Intellectual and Spiritual Change in the Fourteenth Century. New York: New York University Press, 1976. Leicester, H. MarshaJl. The Disenchanted Se/f Representing the Subject in the Canterbury Tales. Berkeley: CaJifornia University Press, 1993. Lewis, Robert. "The Date of the Parlement of the Thre Ages." Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 69 (I 968): 380-390. Lewis, Suzanne. Reading Images: Narrative Discourse and Reception in the Thirteenthcentury IliuminatedApocalypse. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Lowe, Jeremy. "The Cinematic Consciousness of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." Exemplaria Vol. 13, No. 1 (Spring 2001): 68-97. Marti, Kevin. Body, Heart, and Text in the Pearl-Poet. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Meilen,

1991. McCord Adams, Marilyn. William Ockham (2 vols.). Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987. Metz, Christian. The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema, trans. Celia Britton, Annwyl Williams, Ben Brewster, and Alfred Guzzetti. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982.

Bibliography

251

Middleton, Anne. "The Audience and Public of Piers Plowman," in Middle English Alliterative Poetry, ed. David Lawton, 101-23. Suffolk: Brewer, 1982. Miliar, Eric G. The Luttrell Psalter. London: Printed for the Trustees of the British Museum, 1932. MitchelI, J & Jacqueline Rose, eds. Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the ecole freudienne. New York: W. W. Norton, 1985. Moliterno, Gino. "Novel into Film: The Name ofthe Rose," in Fields ofVision: Essays in Film Studies, VisualAnthropology, and Photography, eds Leslie Devereaux and Roger Hillman, 196-214. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Moran, Dennis. "The Parlement ofthe Thre Ages: Meaning and Design." Neophilologus 62 (1978), 620-33. Morand, Kathleen. Jean Pucelle. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962. Morgan, Gerald. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Idea of Righteousness. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1991. Morse, Ruch. Truth and Convention in the Middle Ages: Rhetoric, Representation and Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," in Feminism and Film Theory, ed. Constance Penley, 57-68. New York: Routledge, 1988. Nichols, Stephen G. "Piccure, Image, and Subjectivity in Medieval Culture." MLN 108 (1993): 617-637. Nichols, Stephen G. "The Image as Textual Unconscious: Medieval Manuscripts." L'Esprit Criateur 39, No. 1 (Spring 1989): 7-23. Nolan, Barbara. The Gothic Visionary Perspective. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977. Norris, J. Lacy. "Arthurian Film and the Tyranny of Tradition." Arthurian Interpretations 4, No. 1 (Fall 1989): 75-85. Oudart, Jean-Pierre. "Cinema and Suture." Screen Vol. 18, No. 4 (I977/8): 35-47. Pasnau, Robere. Theories of Cognition in the Laur Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Patterson, Lee. Negotiating the Past: The Historical Understanding of Medieval Literature. Madison, WI: University ofWisconsin Press, 1987. Pearsall, Derek, and Elizabeth Salter. Landscapes and Seasons of the Medieval World. Toronto: University ofToronto Press, 1973. Pearsall, Derek. "Courtesy and Chivalry in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: the Order of Shame and the Invention of Embarrassment, " in A Companion to the Gawain-Poet, eds Derek Brewer andJonathan Gibson, 351-362. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997. Pearsall, Derek. "Manuscript Illustration of Late Middle English Literary Texts, with Special Reference to the Illustration of Piers Plowman in Bodleian Library MS Douce 104," in Suche werkis to werche: Essays on Piers Plowman in Honor of David C Fowler, ed. Mfceal F. Vaughan, 191-210. East Lansing, MI: Colleagues Press, 1993.

252

Bibliography

0/ the Thre Ages." English Literary History 39 (1972): 333-341. Prior, Sandra Pierson. The Fayre Formez o/the PearL Poet. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1996. Purdon, Liam 0., and Robert Blanch. "Hollywood's Myopie Medievalism: Excalibur and Malory's Morte d'Arthur," in Popular Arthurian Traditions, ed. Sally Slocum, 156-161. Bowling Green, OH: Popular, 1992. Randall, L. "Games and the Passion in Pucelle's Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux." Speculum 47(1972): 246-257. Reed, Thomas L., Jr. Middle English Debate Poetry and the Aesthetics o/Irresolution. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1990. Reichardt, Paul F. "Paginal Eyes: Faces among the Ornamented Capitals of MS Cotton Nero A.x, Art. 3." Manuscripta Vol. 36, No. 1 (March 1992): 22-36. Reichardt, Paul F. '''Several Illuminations, Coarsely Executed': The Illustrations of the Pearl Manuscript." Studies in lconography 18 (1997): 119-142. Rendall, Thomas. "Gawain and the Game of Chess." The Chaucer Review Vol. 27, No. 2 (1992): 186-199. Renoir, Alain. "Descriptive Techniques in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." Orbis Litterarum 13 (1958): 126-132. Peck, Russell A. "The Careful Hunter in The Parlement

Renoir, Alain. "The Progressive Magnification: An Instance of Psychological Description in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." Moderna Sprak 54 (1960):

245-253. Renoir, Alain. "An Echo in the Sense: The Patterns of Sound in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." English Miscellany 13 (1962): 9-23. Reprinted in CriticaL Studies 0/ Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, eds Donald R. Howard and Christian Zacher, 144-158. Norre Dame: University of Norre Dame Press,

1968. Rickert, Margaret. Painting in Britain: The Middle Ages. London: Penguin, 1954. Rider, Jeff. "The Arthurian Legend in French Cinema: Lancelot du Lac and Perceval le Gallois," in Cinema Arthuriana, ed. Kevin J. Harty, 41-56. New York: Garland, 1991. Riffaterre, Michael. "The Mind's Eye: Memory and Textuality," in The New Medievalism, eds Marina Brownlee et al ., 29-45. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. Rodowick, D. N . Gitles Deleuze's Time Machine. Durharn: Duke University Press,

1997. Rose, ]acqueline. Sexuality in the Field o/Vision. London and New York: Verso, 1986. Rowland, "The Three Ages of The Parlement 0/ the Thre Ages." Chaucer Review 9

(1975): 342-352. Rudolph, Conrad. The "Things ofGreat Importance": Bernard o/Clairvaux's Apologia and the MedievalAttitude Towards Art. Philadelphia: University ofPennsylvania Press, 1990.

Bibliography

253

Ruffolo, Lara. "Literary Authority and the Lists of Chaucer's House 0/ Fame: Destruction and Definition through Proliferation." The Chaucer Review Vol. 27, No. 4 (1993): 325-341. Saenger, Paul. "Silent Reading: Its Impact on Late Medieval Script and Society." Vzator 13 (1982): 367-414. Salter, Elizabeth. English anti International: Studies in the Literature, Art and Patronage 0/Medieval England, eds D. Pearsall and N. Zeeman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Sandler, Lucy Freeman. "Reflections on the Construction of Hybrids in English Gothic Marginal Illustration," in Art the Ape 0/Nature: Studies in Honor 0/H. W. Janson, eds Moshe Barasch and Lucy Freeman Sandler, 51-65. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1981. Sandler, Lucy Freeman. Gothic Manuscripts 1285-1385: A Survey 0/ Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles 5, 2 vols. London: Harvey MilIer, 1986. Sandler, Lucy Freeman. "The Word in the Text and the Image in the Margin: The case of the Luttrell Psalter." The Journal 0/ the Walters Art Gallery, LIV (1996): 87-99. Scanlon, Larry. Narrative, Authority, and Power: The Medieval Exemplum and the Chaucerian Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Scattergood, John. "The Parlement 0/ the Thre Ages." Leeds Studies in English 14 (1983),167-81. Scott, Kathleen L. "Design, Decoration and Illustration," in Book Production and Publishing in Britain 1375-1475, eds Jeremy Griffiths and Derek Pearsall, 31-64. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Schapiro, Meyer. "Marginal Images and Drolerie." Speculum 45 (1970): 684. Shaviro, Steven. The Cinematic Body. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. Shoaf, R. A. The Poem as Green Girdle: Commercium in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Gainesville, FL: University of F10rida Press, 1984. Shoaf, R. A. "The "Syngne of Surfet" and the Surfeit of Signs in Sir Gawain anti the Green Knight," in The Passing 0/Arthur: New Essays in Arthurian Tradition, eds Christopher Baswell and William Sharpe, 152-169. New York: Garland, 1988. Silver, A1ain, and James Ursini. The Vampire Film /rom Nosferatu to Bram Stoker's Dracula. New York: Limelight Editions, 1993. Silverman, Kaja. "Fassbinder and Lacan: A Reconsideration of Gaze, Look, and Image." Camera Obscura 19 (1989): 54-84. Silverman, Kaja. Male Subjectivity at the Margins. New York: Routledge, 1992. Silverman, Kaja. Threshold 0/the Visible World. New York: Routledge, 1996. Simpson, James. "Desire and the Scriptural Text: Will as Reader in Piers Plowman," in Criticism anti Dissent in the Middle Ages, ed. Rita Copeland, 215-243. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Smith, Kathryn. Art, Identity and Devotion in Fourteenth Century England. Three Women anti Their Books 0/Hours. London: British Library, 2003.

254

Bibliography

Spearing, A. C. "Symbolie and Dramatie Development in PearL" Modern Philology 60 (1962): 1-12 Spearing, A. C. The "Gawain"-Poet: A Critical Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970. Spearing, A. C. The Medieval Poet as voyeur: Looking and Listening in Medieval Love Narrative. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1993. Spearing, A. C. "A Rieardian '1': The Narrator of Troilus and Criseyde," in Essays on Ricardian Literature in Honour 0/j. A. Burrow, eds A. J. Minnis, Charlotte C. Morse and Thorlae Turville-Petre, 1-22. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. Stanbury, Sarah. Seeing the Gawain-Poet: Description and the Act 0/ Perception. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991. Stanbury, Sarah. "Regimes of the Visual in Premodern England: Gaze, Body, and Chaueer's Clerks Tale." New Literary History Vol. 28, No. 2 (Spring 1997): 261-289. Steiner, Wendy. Pictures 0/Romance: Form against Context in Painting and Literature. Chieago: University of Chieago Press, 1988. Sturges, Robert S. Medieval Interpretation: Models 0/ Reading and Literary Narrative 1100-1500. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991. Taehau, Katherine A. Vision and Certitude in the Age o/Ockham: Optics, Epistemology andtheFoundationso/Semantics, 1250-1345. NewYork: E.J. Brill, 1988. Travis, Peter W "Affeetive Critieism, the Pilgrimage of Reading, and Medieval English Literature," in Medieval Texts and Contemporary Readers, eds Laurie Finke and Martin Sehiehtman, 201-215. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987. T urville- Petre, Thorlae. "The Ages of Man in the Parlement 0/the Thre Ages." Medium kvum 46 (1977): 66-76. Uhart, M-C. The Early Reception ofPiers Plowman. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Leieester, 1987. Vaughan, Mied.! F. 'The Ending(s) of Piers Plowman A," in Suche werkis to werche: Essays on Piers Plowman in Honor 0/David C Fowler, ed. Miedl F. Vaughan, 211-241. East Lansing, MI: Colleagues Press, 1993. Watson, "The Gawain-Poet as a Vernaeular Theologian," in A Companion to the Gawain-Poet, ed. Derek Brewer and Jonathan Gibson, 293-313. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997. Whitaker, Muriel A. "Pearl and Some Illustrated Apoealypse Manuseripts." Viator 12 (198 I): 183-196. Wieek, Roger S. Painted Prayers: The Book 0/Hours in Medieval and Renaissance Art. New York: George Braziller, Ine., 1997. Wieek, Roger S. Time Sanctified: The Book o/Hours in MedievalArt and Lift. 2nd edn. New York: George Braziller, Ine., 2001. Williams, David J. "Sir Gawain in Films," in A Companion to the Gawain-Poet, ed. Derek Brewer and Jonathan Gibson, 385-392. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997. Zizek, Slavoj, ed.Jacques Lacan: Critical Evaluations in Cultural Theory (4vols.). New York: Routledge, 2002.

Index

A aadia, 6,128, 129, 135-7 Alberti, Leon Battista, 24-31 Alexander, Jonathan J. G., 44, 80 Andrew, Malcolm, and Ronald Waldron, 143,169,201,205,207 Anse1m, St., 101 Apocalypses, illustrated, 13, 20, 31, 32, 47, 90, 126, 157 Aquinas, St. Thomas, 15, 16,30 an memorativa (art of memory), 32, 33, 70, 74 Arthur, Ross G., 7, 88 Augustine, St., 97, 151

B Bacon, Roger, 30 Bal, Mieke, 28, 34, 54, 142 focalization, 29-30, 51, 56, 58,61,65, 84,90,119,157,164,175 Bataille, Georges, 43, 63-64 Batt, Catherine, 185 Baudry, Jean-Louis, 36-37 becoming, process of, 43, 55, 78, 82, 84, 131,142,152,183,191-192, 212 Benson, C. David, 164 Benson, Larry, 93 Bernard ofClairvaux, 20, 44, 73-74, 84, 89, 119 Bible, the, 16-17 Blade Runner (Scott), 212 Blanch, Robert, and Julian Wasserman, 141, 142, 145, 171, 196 Blanchot, Maurice, 43, 84

fascination, 49, 64-65, 69, 107, 118, 122,200 Blut Steel (Bigelow), 212 Body without Organs. See Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari Bonaventure, St., 14-16,21,42,88,121, 142,148, 195,207,209, 216-18 Breviloquium, 10, 144, 161 commentary on Ecclesiastes, 11, 96 Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, 140, 193-94,215 Bowers, John, 128-29, 135 Bradwardine, Thomas, 197,205 Bryson, Norman, 17,28 Burrow, J. A., 5, 43, 114-15, 128, 181

C Camille, Michael, 2, 25, 48, 67, 73, 81-84, 89,176 debt to psychoanalysis, 35-38, 46-47, 55-60 Mirror in Parchment, 50-63 on Gothic art, 13-14, 19-20 Carruthers, Mary, 7, 33-35, 50-52, 58,70, 84, 126 Caviness, Madeline H., 46-7, 72-78, 81-83,89 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 4, 5, 8, 16, 220 "Troilus and Criseyde", 4 Canterbury Tales, The, 5, 16,94-96 Christ, role of 13-15, 19, 39-41, 53, 59-65,75-78,82-83,89, 110-13, 116, 119, 125, 132, 144-50,158-62,193,204-19

255

256

Index

cinematic consciousness, 4, 69, 71, 95,

141 - 42,186-93,213 Clark, Susan, and Julian Wasserman, 206 C!eanness, 44, 89,142-63,166,168,170,

174- 76, 182,196- 97,199, 203,210,218- 19 C1opper, Lawrence, 16,89, 112, 148 CLoud ofUnknowyng, The, 10,90

o Daniel, E. Randolph, 140, 162 De Lauretis, Teresa, 25- 26 de Vinck, Jose, 10 debate, as a genre, 44, 46, 91, 96-101,

105- 08,113,117,125,181, 194- 199,201,204,210 Deleuze, Gilles, 44, 69, 73, 91 - 93, 100 lines offlight, 39, 67, 106,174, 211 privileged instams, 42- 43, 110, 122, 124, 187, 192 the Whole, 15,43, 53, 59,61,63, 71, 81 , 84,110,124,142,183, 187-88 Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Gumari, 11, 21, 60,65,81,156,177,178,181, 183,184,188,193,194,195 Body without Organs, 61, 179 deterritorialization, 9, 68, 78, 82, 141, 143,190,208,220 exteriority of thought, 61 , 70, 76, 84, 90, 115 nomadic thought, 35, 78, 82,131,143 Oedipalization, 43,54,61,90,168 desire, 23, 127-28, 194,207-12 Despres, Denise L., 137 deterritorialization. See Deleuze, GiIles, and Felix Guattari discursive images (Emmerson), 18

E ego, 4, 21-3,33,41,45,49, 51-6,60,64,

73,110,164,177, 183,189, 193 Ellesmere manuscript, 18 Emmerson, Richard K., 18,60,110-11, 119

Emmerson, Richard K, and P. J. P. Goldberg, 48- 49, 52, 59-60,

63, 77 erber. See garden Eucharist, 144, 147, 150, 195-96, 198, 210-11,213 exemplarism, 148,210 exteriority of thought. See Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari

F fascination. See Blanchot, Maurice figural images (Emmerson), 18 film theory, general, 3, 11,21 , 26,36,39,

53 film theory, psychoanalytic. See psychoanaIytic visual theory Finke, Laurie, 114 Fisher, Sheila, 188 focalization. See Bai, Mieke Foucault, Michel, 8- 9, 40, 43, 121 "Las Men inas", 8, 19 founeenrh-cenrury texts. See Ricardian texts Fowler, David, 116 Franciscan theology, 3,14-16,39,114-115,

198,217 Frisson des Vampires, Le (Rollin), 68-69

G Ganim, John, 191 garden, 200-2, 204 Gawain-poet. See Pearl-poet gaze, theory of, 7, 9- 14, 18,20-41,45-61 ,

65-75,82,84,87,89,93,106, 108,118,130,186-87,192, 199- 202 Gilson, Etienne, 14, 15, 16 glance, theory of, 24, 27-29, 32, 34--35, 155 Gregory of Rimini, 197 Grosseteste, Roben, 30

H Hagen, Susan K., 120 Hanna, III, Ralph, 2, 115 Hanning, Roben, 175, 176 Harrington, David, 100 Harwood, Britton, 112, 113

Index

257

Henry of Ghent, 88 Hilrno, Maidie, 132, 137 Hilton, Walter, 10, 90, 209 Holladay, Joan, 82, 83 Holly, Michael Ann, 24, 25, 26, 36 Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux, rne, 8, 12, 17,

23,42,46-47,66-67,72-85, 93,100,108,120,142,216, 219-20 Huot, Sylvia, 2

I identification, 9, 23, 25, 28-29, 34-41, 60,

61,64,68-69,84,101,106, 114, 118, 128, 142, 158, 162, 164, 176-77, 187, 192-93 imitatiodei, 60,113,147,162,217

J

Jay, Martin, 17,24,27-28,36 Jeanne d'Evreux, 8, 47, 67, 72-78, 81-84,

216 Johnson, Lynne Staley, 162

K Kerby-Fulton, Karnryn, 134 Kerby-Fulton, Kathryn, and Maidie Hilrno,

2 KimmeIman, Burt, 127 Kirk, Elizabeth 0.,191 Kolve, V. A, 16 Kristeva, Julia, 200

kynde, 112, 143-63, 184, 199-2,211,218

L Lacan, Jacques, 22-23, 29, 114

jouissanu, 33, 110 lack, theory 0[, 4, 32-36, 55,70,76,92, 110,159-60,169,191,193-95 mlconnaissance, 22, 32, 56 lack, theory of. See Lacan, Jacques LangIand, William, 10, 16, 112, 114, 117, 121, 127-31, 148,217 Lecklider, Jane, 151 Lewis, C. S., 14 Lewis, Suzanne, 20, 30-32, 47 Iines of flight. See Oeleuze, Giltes

Lumell Psalter, the, 2, 7, 8, 12, 17, 42,

46-66,67,69-72,76-84,93, 108,120,134,142,215,216, 219

M Mate, Ernile, 14,25 rnarginalia, 1,2,3,9,17,18,33,42,46,47,

54,61,68,70,84,85,100, 108,120,131,133-32,176, 216 in the Hours ofleanne d'Evreux, 67, 72-76,80-81,93 in the Lumell Psalter, 48, 50, 51-52, 53, 55,63-66 McCord Adams, Marilyn, 111 mlconnaissance. See Lacan, Jacques Metz, Christian, 36-37, 53 Miliar, Eric, 48, 54 Miller, Jacques-Alain, 36 Minnis, A J., 10,96 mise-en-scene, 3, 35, 187 Moran, Oennis, 99 Morand, Katherine, 75 MS Cotton Nero Ax (Pcarl-rnanuscript),

12,42,131,140,141,181, 192, 213 MS Oouce 104 (Piers Plowrnan C-text), 130-37 Mulvey, Laura, 26, 30, 37, 69 rnysticisrn, 3, 10, 1 1, 14, 33, 43-44, 90, 194-95,205,207,209

N New Jerusalern, the, 14, 19, 188, 193, 194,

196,197,200,207-10,212, 213 Nichols, StephenJ., 18, 134 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 93 Nolan, Barbara, 195, 197 nornadic thought. See Odeuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari

o Ockham, William 0[, 6, 14, 31, 111, 114,

140,197, 205 Oedipalization. See Oeleuze, Giltes, and Felix Guattari

258 Olivi, Pcter, 14, 17,31 open-endedness, 4, 5, 10, 12, 88,89,96,

98,130,140- 42,176,183,192 Oudan, Jean-Pierre, 36

p Parfement 01the Thre Ages, The, 8, 12, 28, 42,89,91,95,96- 109,111, 118,129, 130, 136, 139, 141, 149,172, 181, 195,211,216, 217,220 participant, 3,17-18,39,42, 46 participation, of the reader. See sympathetic participation Pasnau, Roben, 16, 31 Patience, 89,90,144,162- 76,178,182, 193- 94,199,203,219 Pearl, 12,28,46,88,89- 91,142- 147, 165- 76,182,189, 191, 193- 213,218- 19 Pearl-poems, the, 12,46,58,89,91,109, 129,130,139-213,218- 19 Pearl-poet, the, 7, 131 Pearsall, Derek, 114, 117, 120, 131 Peck, RusselI, 101 perspective, visual, 7, 8, 11, 18,24,25, 24-25,26,27,65,81,100, 128,142,186 Pharsalia (Lucan), 34-35 Piers Plowman, I, 6, 10, 11, 12, 23, 28, 42, 44,46,87-91,95- 96,100, 109-41,147,149,161,167, 174,186,211,217,218, 210- 20 Prior, Sandra Pierson, 174, 191, 192, 212 process ofjudgment, 1,3, 4,6,9,11,16, 23,26,35,38- 39,42,45-46, 52,64-67,69,73,78,82-84, 87-90,93-98,106,109, 121 - 22,127- 131,139,143, 176, 192,196,215,219-20 Psalms, in the Luttrell Psalter, 56-59 psychoanalytic visual theory, 4, 11, 22- 24, 32,33,35- 38,68, 87 Pucelle, Jean, 75, 80

Q Querelfe (Fassbi nder), I 18

Index

R Randali, Lilian, 75, 78 Reed, Jr., Thomas L., 97, 98 Renoir, Alain, 142 representation, visuaI, 2-4, 9, 19,21- 25,

28-32,38,40- 41,46,50, 53-57,60,62, 66,68,91,118, 120,135,162,176,189,194, 210 Ricardian "I", 4-5, 7, 12,96 Ricardian texts, 1-5,8-11,15,21,39,41, 43,85,89,92-95, 106, 116, 122, 140, 196,211,215 Richard II, 39-41, 83 Ricken, Margaret, 54 Rolle, Richard, 10, 53, 90 Rollin, Jean, 66-71 Romance olthe Rose, 2 Rudd, Gillian, 10-11, 121,209

S Sandler, Lucy Freeman, 48 Saul, NigeI, 41 Scanergood, John, 107 Schapiro, Meyer, 54 Scon, Kathleen, 131-36 Shaviro, Steven, 26, 38- 39, 44, 54,64, 118,

200,212 on HegeI, 22 Shoaf, RAllen, 175- 76, 185, 189-90 Silverman, Kaja, 36 Simpson, James, 127 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 7, 8, 23,

90,104,174-93,195,199, 211 Sioth. See acedia Spearing, A. c., 4,5,21,92,96, 130, 186,

220 Sc John, figure of, 14-15, 19-21,25,30,

35-39,90 Sc Victor, Hugh of, 16 Stanbury, Sarah, 141-42, 156, 159, 161,

167, 169, 175, 191-92,211 structured collaboration, 7, 12, 88 suture, 35 , 176 sympathetic panicipation, 1,3-4, 9, 11-12,

15- 17,38- 39,41,44-48,58, 60,61,64-64,66-67,70-71,

259

Index 87-90,95,101, 108, 109, 111, 122, 126, 129, 130, 143, 148, 164, 193, 199, 219

T Tachau, Katherine, 16 Touch ofEvil (WeHes), 91-93

via negativa, 10, 102, 149, 198 via positiva, 10, 11, 42-43, 53, 89, 102, 107,121,143,149,198,205, 219 viator. 15,96, 107, 1l0, 162,217 vision, medieval theories 0[, 16-18, 30-32

trawpe, 146-47, 150-54, 157

W

Turville-Petre, Thorlac, 99-100, 102-3

Waldron, R. A., 103 Wallace, David, 152 Wi/ton Diptych, the, 39-42, 72, 81

V Vaughan, MlceaJ, 115 Vehizquez, Diego Rodrfguez de Si/va y, 8, 9

\fYnnere anti Wastoure, 97