Divine and Poetic Freedom in the Renaissance: Nominalist Theology and Literature in France and Italy

by Ullrich Langer

Overview

The closely related problems of creativity and freedom have long been seen as emblematic of the Renaissance. Ullrich Langer, however, argues that French and Italian Renaissance literature can be profitably reconceived in terms of the way these problems are treated in late medieval scholasticism in general and nominalist theology in particular. Looking at a subject that is relatively unexplored by literary critics, Langer introduces the reader to some basic features of nominalist theology and uses these to focus on what we find to be "modern" in French and Italian literature of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Langer demonstrates that this literature, often in its most interesting moments, represents freedom from constraint in the figures of the poet and the reader and in the fictional world itself. In Langer's view, nominalist theology provides a set of concepts that helps us understand the intellectual context of that freedom: God, the secular sovereign, and the poet are similarly absolved of external necessity in their relationships to their worlds.

Originally published in 1990.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691602691
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	07/14/2014
Series:	Princeton Legacy Library , #1121
Pages:	226
Product dimensions:	9.90(w) x 6.90(h) x 0.50(d)

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Divine and Poetic Freedom in the Renaissance

Nominalist Theology and Literature in France and Italy

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By Ullrich Langer

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1990 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-06853-4

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CHAPTER 1

THE FREE READER: HYPOTHETICAL NECESSITY IN FICTION

The figure of the poet and the role of the reader in Renaissance fiction have been the focus of critical attention: Robert Durling's classic analysis of the poet in epic and Terence Cave's recent essay on the reader and reading are two emblematic cases. Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, in her recent summa on the cultural effect of printing, rightly characterizes the reading public as "more atomistic and individualistic than a hearing one." The poet and the reader are roughly the two poles of the communicative situation, and the emergence of strong poet and reader figures is a sign of the increased insistence on the process of communication in the early modern period. Increased rhetorical self-consciousness also makes problematic that communicative process, and one may consequently argue for the emergence of epistemological issues in the literature of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Self-conscious narrative and the predominant questions of interpretation and knowledge constitute the ground of early modern fiction, or at the very least those elements that will be developed in postmedieval fiction. The point of this study is not to once again demonstrate these "epistemic" conditions. Neither is it my intention to show their inapplicability or their origin in an earlier period. Rather, I am interested in the way in which a specific self-presentation of the poet projects or implies a certain ontological status of the reader. What kind of communicative process is put into question by the self-conscious rhetoric of the poet? What kind of reader does that process project?

One of the most striking instances of the poet's self-presentation is the analogy Durling sees in Ariosto's Orlando furioso of the poet as God and the text as his creation. The constitution of the fictional text as a second creation in imitation, or in parody, of the creation of the world, is significant mainly because of its intellectual context: from late scholasticism on, the relationship between God and man is felt to be highly problematic—the interminable debates and conflicts over this question are manifestations of its invested nature.

The violence of the confrontations seems to contrast with the complexity of the question that is articulated through a series of distinctions concerning God's grace, man's merit, and man's free will. The abolition of certain conceptual distinctions is associated with the Reformers' logical radicalization of Augustinian doctrine, whereas the maintaining of late medieval scholastic distinctions characterizes the orthodox attempt to preserve a synthesis between man's reason and free will, and God's will. In this chapter I will look at the relationship of one of those distinctions concerning necessity to certain narrative strategies in Luigi Pulci's Morgante, Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando furioso, the novels of François Rabelais, and finally, as a counterpoint, in Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata and in Agrippa d'Aubigné's Les tragiques.

Absolute versus Hypothetical Necessity

In 1517 Johannes Altensteig published a compendium of scholastic theological terms first called Vocabularius theologie, and in later editions Lexicon theologicum. This theological dictionary was reprinted frequently throughout the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and constitutes an accessible sourcebook for scholastic definitions that had become commonplace in the intellectual atmosphere of the Reformation. Under the entry "necessitas" we find a distinction culled most directly from Gabriel Biel between "necessitas absoluta vel simpliciter" and "necessitas ex suppositione vel ex conditione." A couple of pages further, there is an equivalent distinction between "necessitas consequentis" and "necessitas consequentiae." The usual English translation is absolute versus hypothetical necessity and necessity of the thing consequent versus necessity of consequence.

Something is absolutely necessary if its opposite entails a contradiction. The examples given are "homo est risibilis, Deus est [man is capable of laughter, God exists]." Hypothetical necessity is said to characterize only the relationship between the antecedent and the consequent of an implication: for example, if Peter is predestined, then Peter will be saved. However, both the antecedent and the consequent can be contingent events, that is, not determined by any necessity external to the sequence itself. Peter's predestination is not necessary, but contingent upon God's free choice to predestine him. Of course, these events can also be necessary, in theory, but in fact all events linking God's will to his creation are contingent events, according to scholastic definitions.

God's relationship to creation is precisely one of hypothetical necessity. If God wills an event, then it will necessarily take place. The necessity resides in the relationship between his will and the fact of the willed event taking place. This necessity must be distinguished from that conveyed in the following statement: It is necessary that God wills an event, and that event will take place necessarily. Necessity is not outside of or prior to God, but is found only, according to the scholastics, in the connection between his will and the willed event. This is emphasized repeatedly by phrases such as "Deus nihil agit ad extra de necessitate [God never acts towards the outside of necessity]" and "Deus ad extra non nisi contingenter agit [God acts to the outside only contingently]."

The contingency of God's relationship to his creation preserves his free will and his power, for if God were to will an event because he was determined to do so by an external necessity, his power would be limited. A demonstration of God's free will and his concurrent power is provided by the contingency of the events he wills, through hypothetical necessity. God can will an event to take place contingently, that is, as determined by man's will, by his natural effort ("facere quod in se est"). That event will take place. God then foresees the event's taking place; he does not will it to necessarily take place. The difference between the foreknowledge of a contingent event and the willing of a necessary event defines the space of man's free will. Man can will a contingent event even though God has foreseen it to take place. Hypothetical necessity, or the necessity of consequence, includes both God's foreknowledge and man's free will.

To put it in somewhat simpler terms, man's free will is preserved through the distinction between foreknowledge (hypothetical necessity) and cause (absolute necessity). An event foreseen by God can be not caused by him, but is caused by his creature's choice. Moreover, in order to maintain God's omnipotence, one must posit the creation of contingency as one of God's possible acts. In other words, there must be a principle of the unnecessary in what is otherwise a totally necessary structure, for only the unnecessary is a guarantee of God's power. It is tempting to say further that in the Augustinian tradition, and in the scholastic elaborations of that tradition, the necessary structure of God and his universe must maintain at its very origin a principle of the arbitrary, for it is precisely the arbitrary that manifests his power, and it is also the arbitrary that defines the space of man's free will. Finally, one should underline the distinction between a system determined from the outside by (absolute) necessity and a system that stages a causal chain within itself, as hypothetical necessity.

The commonplace distinction between absolute and hypothetical necessity in scholastic theology is one of the paradigms by means of which the late Middle Ages and the early Renaissance conceive of the relationship between a creating consciousness and its creation. Especially in the case of allegory, the connection between poetic creation and the order of the cosmos has been frequently noted, and analogies between the human creative act and divine creation are similarly common. This study is concerned less with any specific representation of these analogies than with a reproduction, in early Renaissance fiction, of the conceptual paradigm of necessity. Whether or not the respective authors were actually conscious of their use of hypothetical necessity is a secondary question: the intentional or unintentional use of conceptual paradigms is less interesting than, simply, their presence in the texts. It is in the communicative status of fiction that the issue of necessity can be raised: How does the textual universe represent its own perimeter, and the outside world reacting to it? How does the authorial consciousness represent something, or rather someone, outside of its creation, that is, the reader? This chapter began with the reiteration of recent observations of the increased role of the reader in Renaissance texts; it will be shown that hypothetically necessary fiction, in representing the reader as a free agent reacting (favorably) to the book, actually projects the real reader as an ontologically distinct entity. This essential distinction, brought on by the gesture of the reader's inclusion, is the ground of a modern notion of fiction as representing reality and, by the very nature of representation, as cut off from that reality.

Pulci, Ariosto, Rabelais: Hypothetical Worlds

Pulci's Morgante (1478 and 1483) blithely posits itself as an imitation of God's creation through the Word. The poem's beginning, as linguistic creation, is identical to the beginning of the gospel of John, which defines all beginning as the Word:

In principio era il Verbo appresso a Dio,
ed era Iddio '1 Verbo e il Verbo Lui:
questo era nel principio, al parer mio,
e nulla si puo far sanza Costui.

(1.1.1–4)

[In the beginning was the Word with God, and God was the Word and the Word was God; this was in the beginning, it seems to me, and nothing can be done without him.]

This well-known self-conscious exordium points to the analogy between poetic creation and divine creation as a secondary, playful parody. For all its serenity, the parody is, of course, not without uncertainty as to the connection between the poet and God ("al parer mio"); however, this beginning is a surface manifestation of what is an implicit analogy between poem and creation in the articulation of the poem's ending, or in the various prologues to the ending, in the final canto of the poem. Pulci repeats a traditional nautical metaphor for the book and elaborates on the connection between book and reader:

Io me n'andrò con la barchetta mia
quanto l'acqua comporta un piccol legno,
e ciò ch'io penso con la fantasia,
di piacere a ognuno è il mio disegno:
convien che varie cose al mondo sia,
come son varii volti e vario ingegno,
e piace all'uno il bianco, all'altro il perso,
o diverse materie in prosa o in verso.

(28.140)

[I will go forward with my little boat, as much as the water will support a small skiff, and it is my design to please everyone with that which I think with my imagination: I agree that there are diverse things in the world, as there are diverse faces and diverse minds, and white pleases one, blue another, or diverse things in prose or in verse.]

As the ending of the Morgante is in sight, the poet reflects on the possible reaction to his book. He makes a distinction between fantasìa, disegno (according to which he would like to please everyone), and mondo (where there is diversity, and where presumably not everyone will like the poem). This distinction is, however, not essential, as the poet does not simply leave the world to itself and thereby exclude it from his poem. Rather, Pulci's poet figure is setting up the reaction to his book as a contingent event, one that will depend on varying taste, as there are various faces and various ingegni. The poet is not predetermining reaction to his book as a necessary event, but is allowing for its immediate causation by various conditions in the mondo.

Contingent events "outside" the book are once again foreseen, and this time specific reactions to the book are listed, in the following stanza:

Forse coloro ancor che leggeranno,
di questa tanto piccola favilla
la mente, con poca esca, accenderanno
de' monti o di Parnaso o di Sibilla;
e de' miei fior come ape piglieranno
i dotti, s'alcun dolce ne distilla;
il resto a molti pur darà diletto,
e l'aiittore ancor fia benedetto.

(28.141)

[Perhaps those who will read will, with this so small spark, light, with litde kindling, the spirit of the Parnassus or the Sybil's mountain; and the learned will gather from my flowers like bees, if any nectar can be distilled from them; the rest of the poem will, however, give pleasure to many, and the author will, in addition, be blessed.]

The future tense of the verbs (leggeranno, accenderanno, piglieranno, darà diletto, fia benedetto) indicates the poet's certainty that diverse reactions will take place, although the series of clauses originates in Forse. The hesitating beginning seems to contradict the assurance of the following statements. Nevertheless, the very accumulation of confident pronouncements, culminating in "e l'aüttore ancor fia benedetto," confirms the emergence of actual foreknowledge of the reaction to his book, underlined by the religious resonance of the final benedetto.

The foreknown reaction to the poem is further detailed when the poet enumerates several readers who will have a favorable reaction to his book (Bernardo Bellincioni, Antonio di Guido, and Poliziano [28.143–47]), although there will also be "detrattori, o spiriti maligni" (28.144.8). In summary, the Morgante determines its reading to be a contingent event but foresees the event anyway. Pulci's fiction stages its communication as hypothetical necessity.

Where does this leave the real reader? In a sense, the text appears to foreclose any reaction to itself other than the one foreseen. If one is not a detractor or evil-wisher, one cannot but find pleasure in the poem and praise its author. In a more profound sense, this staging of foreknowledge forces the reader to realize his ontological difference, as a being whose substance cannot be captured by any text. Even if Poliziano does like the Morgante and will voice a favorable opinion of it, he has done so not because of the foreknowledge of his reaction, but because of his choice to praise a good poem. His favorable opinion represented in the text that he then chooses to praise only demonstrates his distinctness as a being precisely not determined by the text. There is Poliziano1, the real person, and Poliziano2, the represented person, and it is the presence of Poliziano2 that forces Poliziano1 to realize his difference, even if in fact he acts just the way he was foreseen to act, as Poliziano2. The real gesture of reaction is made to be felt as irrecoverable by the fact that the text represents it. So the apparent all-inclusiveness of the fictional world is at the same time an essential demarcation between itself and the "real" world of freely choosing subjects. This silent demarcation is simultaneously a projection of ontological difference.

In the ending of Pulci's poem, the inclusiveness and foreknowledge demonstrated by the figure of the poet is combined, as we have seen, with contingency, with variety, with the forse. It is the defining of events as contingent events which guarantees, in the theological model, man's free will, as contingency is that feature of God's relationship to creation which distinguishes foreknowledge from causation. Contingency is also that feature of God's actions which manifests his omnipotence, for God is not governed by a necessity outside himself ("Deus ad extra non nisi contingenter agit").

Similarly, the presence and exhibition of contingency in Pulci's fiction ("Forse ...," "come son varii volti e vario ingegno") can be understood paradoxically as a denial of any external necessity. The text itself produces necessity as a relationship between events that could have been otherwise—the text decides what will follow what among a variety of possibilities. Nothing outside has dictated this choice; however, once the choice is made, all is foreknown and all is included in the textual universe. This textual imperialism in its denial of exteriority produces the essentially distinct real reader who is characterized by privative freedom, inaccessible to the text because denied by it. Fiction and the real reader have become absolute Others.

(Continues...)

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Table of Contents

• FrontMatter, pg. i
• CONTENTS, pg. vii
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, pg. ix
• INTRODUCTION, pg. 3
• ONE. The Free Reader: Hypothetical Necessity in Fiction, pg. 25
• TWO. Free Reward: Merit in Courtly Literature, pg. 51
• THREE. The Free Creator: Causality and Beginnings, pg. 84
• FOUR. Free Choice in Fiction: Will and Its Objects in Rabelais, pg. 126
• FIVE. The Free Poet: Sovereignty and the Satirist, pg. 149
• EPILOGUE: WILL AND PERSPECTIVE, pg. 191
• BIBLIOGRAPHY, pg. 195
• INDEX, pg. 211