Hardcover
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780691632438 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Princeton University Press |
| Publication date: | 04/19/2016 |
| Series: | Princeton Legacy Library , #494 |
| Pages: | 396 |
| Product dimensions: | 8.30(w) x 10.20(h) x 1.40(d) |
Read an Excerpt
Renaissance Perspectives in Literature and the Visual Arts
By Murray Roston
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 1987 Princeton University PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-06683-7
CHAPTER 1
THE PILGRIMAGE TO CANTERBURY
THE ANCIENT GREEKS, IT HAS BEEN REMARKED, LABOURED UNDER a peculiar misapprehension — a failure to realize that they were ancient. Those categories and periods to which we assign past writers are for our own convenience, an indulgence of the historian's proclivity for schematic tidiness for the most part imposed retrospectively and only rarely acknowledged by the authors themselves. Chaucer, we may suspect, would have viewed with wry amusement ("Men may divine and glosen up and down") the modern dispute among scholars concerning his historical affinities, the problem whether he should be classified as culturally indigenous to the Middle Ages or as an early exponent of Renaissance sensibilities. Yet in this instance the determining of his milieu does carry implications beyond mere period-labelling, and is of major relevance in the interpretation of his texts. For a poet so elusive in the ambiguities of his moral stance, whose pervasive use of unresolved irony is a hallmark of his verse, a knowledge of the author's cultural setting, of the contemporary moral and religious assumptions upon which he would have drawn as a writer and relied for audience response could prove invaluable for modern assessment of the intent behind the irony and of the meanings which his work would have conveyed to a fourteenth-century reader.
In the recent controversy over Chaucer's cultural allegiance, the proponents of the "allegorical" reading of The Canterbury Tales, insisting on the essentially medieval character of the work, have posited it as fraught with the theological and literary conceptions of the schoolmen, and to be read within the context of the iconological principles prevailing in the Church-dominated literature of that time. In a provocative study, modestly termed a preface to Chaucer but in fact constituting a brilliant and wide-ranging exploration of the cultural lineaments of the period in which Chaucer wrote, D. W. Robertson, Jr., has argued against the popular belief that in the later Middle Ages a conflict or tension existed between the religious asceticism advocated by the Church and a growing desire among the people, pagan in tendency and often folkloristic in source, to celebrate worldly pleasures. Those lively scenes of music-making, of courtly amorousness, or even of frank carnality which found their way into the moralistic literature of the time did so, he maintains, not as an intrusive secularism which ecclesiastical authority was powerless to exclude as a new generation began to delight in a faithful mirroring of human activity. He sees them rather as part of an integrated and ordered didactic system, in which such scenes would have been immediately comprehended by the reader in condemnatory terms, as warnings against waywardness and the evil consequences of immorality.
The practical effects of such an approach for an evaluation of the poem are potentially far-reaching. The seemingly casual comment with which Chaucer concludes his description of the burly Miller:
A baggepipe wel koude he blowe and sowne,
And therwithal he broghte us out of towne.
(Gen. ProL, 565-66)
had traditionally been seen as exemplifying Chaucer's graphic realism, conveying the conviviality of the pilgrims as they joyfully set out on their way. However, in the light of the code of religious allegory which the Church had disseminated throughout the media, it has been argued that, since the wrestler was in the manuscript illustrations of the day an acknowledged "type" of moral disorder and discord and since the bagpipes signified (partly by their shape) the Old Dance of carnality as opposed to the New Dance of Christian harmony, that scene would have evoked from a contemporary audience a response contrary to that of the modern reader, a sad recognition of the ill-omened start to the pilgrimage and Chaucer's disapproval (as author, if not as narrator) of the frivolous direction it had taken.
Others, in extending this symbolic reading, have suggested a more solemn intent for the overarching pattern of the work as a whole. On the principle of fourfold scriptural exegesis, in which the surface meaning was a husk concealing a kernel of truth, the Tales have been seen, notably by Ralph Baldwin, as an emblem of the spiritual journey of mankind, with the opening description of the springtime engendering of flowers symbolizing the Creation, the pilgrimage itself representing man's movement through this temporal world on his way to heavenly judgment, the Parson's treatise redirecting the pilgrims after they have strayed from the true path, and Chaucer's own retraction at the conclusion marking a momentary pause at the threshold of eternity.
As critics were quick to point out, some of the assumptions behind this theory need to be examined with caution. To regard the allegorical view, the interpreting of this world in symbolic terms as the "medieval" context from which Chaucer wrote, is to attribute to the Middle Ages a homogeneity, an unchanging, monolithic structure which they did not possess, and thereby to underplay the numerous theological variations and shifting emphases occurring during the long period included within that term. Morton Bloomfield has expressed doubts whether the principle of multilevel exegesis employed for reading the scriptures, as simultaneously conveying a literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical meaning, was regarded at that time as applicable to literature in general, since it seems to have been recognized as specific to the divinity of the biblical text. It was a sacred quality which no human author was presumed to possess. R. E. Kaske similarly questions the denial of tension or complexity of response in medieval literature on the grounds that, as in all times, both society and human nature were many-faceted. Augustine's condemnation of cupiditas or interest in worldly objects for their own sake, while it may have been the ideal for living enunciated by theologians, was in practice not a firm principle adhered to by all men. Secular texts from that era should therefore not be forced by the interpreter into a preconceived pattern which they probably were not intended to possess. Nevertheless, most literary historians have recognized the potentiality of this symbolic reading as a valuable tool for exegesis, not least as a corrective to the popular view of Chaucer as chafing at the aesthetic restrictions of the Church and basically sympathizing with the sensuality of his more earthy characters. If the Wife of Bath is not entirely, as the allegorist school has asked us to believe, an iconographic figure of carnality intended to be duly condemned by the reader for her misinterpretation of patristic sources, it is certainly illuminating to recognize, within Chaucer's description of her, echoes of medieval symbolism which add a richness and subtlety to her depiction. Her being "somdel deef" is seen no longer as a casual descriptive detail, but as evoking for contemporary audiences the long-eared ass seated before a harp in many illuminated manuscripts to signify those who have ears but cannot hear the word of God.
As that last instance indicates, the argument for the allegorical reading of Chaucer has relied for much of its evidence on a close analysis of medieval art. While historians have responded and continue to respond to the theological and literary implications of Robertson's argument, his discussion of the visual arts of the period, of the illuminated manuscripts and medieval misericords, has been generally accepted as valid. Such approval is certainly justified in part. His perceptive comments on the many illustrations he brings before the reader prove beyond doubt that the animal figures and fantastic hybrid creatures to be found within the foliage ornamenting the text of a sacred manuscript were frequently not the idle invention of some irreverent or inattentive scribe, as many historians had believed, but in fact possessed a symbolic significance directly related to the text itself, the connexion having been apparent to any alert medieval reader. Thus a page from the fourteenth-century Ormesby Psalter (fig. 1) is shown by him to depict the contrast between the heavenly harmonies, represented within the decorated initial where King David plays on a harp accompanied by his musicians, and the human discord depicted within the borders of the page. Below the text, two men wrestle, urged on by a snarling ass-eared monster; above, a goat-footed (lecherous) husband clashes with his leonine (irascible) wife as she heraldically wields her cooking-pot and spoon; and to the right a warrior, lacking the courage inspired by such celestial music, drops his sword in terror at the appearance of a mere snail. So too, the scenes of hunting decorating the margins of many such illuminations were not secular encroachments, it is argued, a mundane realism distracting from the sacredness of the religious work, but rather allegorical depictions of the love-chase, with the rabbit (perhaps through a pun on cony and the French con) representing the pursued female. The scene as a whole is thus intended to contrast the depravity of sexual licence with the divine love advocated within the text.
The problem lies not in the argument itself, with its persuasive evidence that there was often a much greater integrity in such illuminations than had previously been believed, but in its extrapolation into a general theory, the assumption that all art of the period was therefore similarly subordinated to the solemn moral message of the Church. Any instances of realism in such art, it is asserted, were included only to exemplify the relevance of the moral lesson to the reader's own world, as in the depiction of a contemporary alehouse in the Taymouth Hours to localize a scene of lechery, and they do not indicate any growing interest in the actuality of this world. The question remains whether the evidence adduced is sufficient to warrant such a conclusion.
It is surprising, for example, that of over one hundred instances from art of that period selected and reproduced for analysis in Robertson's book, there appears not one from the famed Luttrell Psalter of about 1340, which is so rich in lively marginal scenes drawn from everyday life that it has served, and continues to serve, as a major source for illustration in countless history books. It contains the vivid drawing of a bear-baiting scene (fig. 2) presented with a cool, uncritical observation which would seem to deny any didactic or symbolic overtones. There are some less sophisticated sketches of assorted activities within a contemporary kitchen (fig. 3) again free from moral associations, of a physician treating a patient, of a travelling coach so detailed that it has improved our knowledge of transportation in that era, and numerous depictions of seasonal agricultural tasks being performed with the simple implements then in current use. All of these, we should recall, appeared as illustrations in a sacred Book of Psalms. Any theory denying that the later Middle Ages developed a growing interest in the physical world would need to explain the existence of such drawings and their intrusion into a holy text. Indeed, it has long been recognized by historians that the attractiveness of English art in the fourteenth century is to be found less in the monumental achievements of that period than in the incidental. 5 There are the numerous carvings beneath misericords, as well as the marginal illuminations of texts with mimetic scenes that display not only an eye for precise detail and accuracy of form but often a puckish humour which clearly places the work outside the solemn religious symbolism now being claimed for all art of the period.
In the Gorleston Psalter from Norfolk, dating from about 1305, the artist playfully sketches a funeral in which rabbits are the officiants wearing the robes of clerical office and solemnly carrying the cross, candles, and incense-burner, while two dogs, also walking on their hind legs like humans, carry the bier between them (fig. 4.) In the Luttrell Psalter, one of the many "babwyneries" or monkey-pictures abounding in this period whimsically replaces the human figure by that animal in an otherwise sharply realistic drawing (see fig. 5 with its careful shading of the horses' haunches). And in a misericord from Winchester, a shepherd embracing two sheep (fig. 6) is mischievously viewed from above in a manner which ludicrously foreshortens him, enlarging the upper portion of his body at the expense of the lower. These might be thought minor instances, the marginalia of art in a figurative as well as a literal sense; but in the broader range of European painting at this time, there are firm indications that the long-established distrust of sensory experience advocated by the schoolmen was being weakened not only in the popular mind but also in the attitudes of those engaged more directly upon religious tasks and upon disseminating the moral messages of the Church.
The exploration of contemporary painting in search of evidence helpful for literary analysis has, in connexion with Chaucer, a twofold justification. Most obviously, the claim for a medieval reading of The Canterbury Tales, by having rested much of its own case upon the manuscript illuminations of that time, invites further such evidence from anyone contending with the view. Yet for negative reasons too, that claim, by the nature of its argument, diverts the critic to non-literary sources; for the theory employs a process of reasoning which strangely allows no exit from its assumptions, an inbuilt defence mechanism which not only discourages attempts to question or even modify its conclusions by recourse to the text, but disconcertingly places such reservations outside the bounds of literary controversy. The interpretive principle it insists upon for that era is, indeed, made automatically to disqualify in advance any contrary evidence drawn from Chaucer's writings. The fourteenth-century reader, we are authoritatively informed, belonged to a world knowing nothing of tensions, only of morally directed synthesis. It was a period continuing uninterruptedly the tradition of Peter Abelard's Sic et Non which posited dialectic polarities only in order to conclude by reconciling them. On that assumption, it is claimed, any interpretation of Chaucer's work which appears to contradict this principle must ipso facto be the result of a modern misreading, a projection upon the text of our post-romantic propensities towards pluralism, class struggle, conflict and ambivalence, of which the fourteenth-century reader was innocent.
The axiom thus dictates the reading, and where the evidence of a counterthrust in the text is so explicit as to be undeniable — when Chaucer's narrator states openly his sympathy with a rebel against Church doctrine ("And I seyde his opinion was good. / What sholde he studie and make hymselven wood / Upon a book in cloystre alwaye to poure") — the passage, we are told, must, by reason of that overarching didactic intent, be an instance of antiphrasis, or what Isidore of Seville called alieniloquium, arguing ironically for the reverse. Such a reading may or may not be true for the specific instance adduced, but as a principle it closes the door on flexibility in interpretation and by such anticipatory invalidation of alternate readings precludes the normal recourse of the critic to search for counter-evidence within the text itself. Under such circumstances, the general axiom must be examined first. More broadly, we shall need to question the hypothesis that no basic change in outlook had occurred between the period of the medieval schoolmen and Chaucer's composition of the Tales, and in such matters of broader cultural significance an examination of the visual arts is certainly relevant.
An especially valuable tool for gauging shifts in philosophical, ethical, or religious patterns of thought is what may be termed the principle of "thematic convergence" — the identification of any sudden prominence or popularity of a theme, topic, or scene to which writers, painters, novelists, poets, and musicians are attracted, often quite independently, presumably because it answers in some way to the specific concerns of their time. Those vignettes of the eighteenth-century aristocracy at play in the works of Pope, Watteau, and Lancret, the recurrent deathbed scenes in the Victorian novel, the cluster of animal fantasies in nineteenth-century music and ballet, may reveal more of the deeper preoccupations of each age than was consciously intended by the artist individually drawn to the subject. When, as in the Middle Ages, the Bible prevailed as thematic source, fluctuations in the popularity of its variegated themes is particularly significant, together with the refocussing of emphasis in the artistic treatment accorded to them.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Renaissance Perspectives in Literature and the Visual Arts by Murray Roston. Copyright © 1987 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
- FrontMatter, pg. i
- CONTENTS, pg. v
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, pg. vii
- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS, pg. ix
- INTRODUCTION, pg. 3
- CHAPTER I. The Pilgrimage to Canterbury, pg. 13
- CHAPTER 2. Hierarchy in the Mystery Plays, pg. 63
- CHAPTER 3. The Ideal and the Real, pg. 101
- CHAPTER 4. Spenser and the Pagan Gods, pg. 143
- CHAPTER 5. A Kingdom for a Stage, pg. 193
- CHAPTER 6. Shakespeare's Artistic Allegiance, pg. 239
- CHAPTER 7. Varieties of Seventeenth-Century Prose, pg. 279
- CHAPTER 8. The World as Anagram: The Poetry of George Herbert, pg. 301
- NOTES, pg. 343
- INDEX, pg. 369
What People are Saying About This
"Sweeping broadly through two centuries of art and literature, Roston has clarified and ‘reified' distinctions, comparisons, and theories in useful ways, and has produced what I believe will be one of the basic books in its field. A reader finds substance here, and a stimulation that should materially advance the current discussion."—Roland Mushat Frye, Professor Emeritus, University of Pennsylvania"Roston is unfailingly intelligent. His work presents a series of insights through its method of juxtaposition of verbal and visual materials—insights that are always interesting and sometimes startling in their penetration of cultural complexities and their revelation of valuable ideas. What is more, and especially welcome, his book is written with the utmost clarity and flow."—James V. Mirollo, Columbia University