A Preface to Chaucer: Studies in Medieval Perspective

by Durant Waite Robertson

Overview

What were the medieval stylistic, aesthetic, and literary conventions that Chancer drew upon and knew that his audience would understand? In this rich study Mr. Robertson has included 118 illustrations-of medieval sculpture, cathedral interiors, illuminated manuscripts, paintings, ornamental devices and decorations-to show how these conventions affected the visual arts of Chaucer's time. Special attention is directed to fundamental differences between medieval and modern attitudes toward poetry, and to the significance of these differences for an approach to medieval art. By placing Chaucer fully in his own time, Mr. Robertson establishes new perspectives for understanding Chaucer’s poetry. His book is like a rich tapestry weaving together many threads.

Originally published in 1962.

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:	9780691621722
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	12/08/2015
Series:	Princeton Legacy Library , #1976
Pages:	632
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

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A Preface to Chaucer

Studies in Medieval Perspectives

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By D. W. Robertson Jr.

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1962 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-06099-6

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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION: MEDIEVAL AND MODERN ART

A prominent art historian has characterized the Middle Ages as an age of "artistry," an age before "art" in the true sense of the word was finally brought to life again in the Renaissance. Although some students of the Middle Ages may feel that this view is prejudiced, it is, nevertheless, in one form or another, widespread; and on the basis of modern aesthetic presuppositions it embodies a large element of truth. There are profound differences between the arts of the Middle Ages and those of modern times, especially if we consider developments subsequent to the beginnings of the romantic movement. To attempt to explain these differences away so as to make what is medieval seem modern is only to prepare false expectations, and we must guard against the very natural tendency of critics to project modern "truths" concerning the nature of beauty and of art on a past which was entirely innocent of these "truths."

Perhaps a better understanding of what is "medieval" can be achieved, and hence a sounder appreciation for it, if we examine some of the differences between the presuppositions of medieval art and those of modern art, suspending, at least for the moment, our desire to make spontaneous judgments of value. Our judgments of value are characteristically dependent on attitudes peculiar to our own place and time. If we universalize these attitudes, as though they were Platonic realities, and assume that they have a validity for all time, we turn history into a mirror which is of significance to us only insofar as we may perceive in it what appear to be foreshadowings of ourselves, but which are, actually, merely reflections of ourselves arising from reconstructions of the evidence based on our own values. And when this happens, history, although it may seem to flatter us with the consoling message, "Thou art the fairest of all," becomes merely an instrument for the cultivation of our own prejudices. We learn nothing from it that we could not learn from the world around us. True, it may seem to have an easy relevance to our own problems, but this relevance is specious and misleading. To form a sound basis for an appreciation of medieval art, we must first determine some of the chief differences between those attitudes which underlie modern aesthetic judgments and the corresponding attitudes which underlie medieval aesthetic theory and practice.

Changing attitudes manifest themselves most obviously as differences in style. In the past, it has frequently been customary to consider changes in style in terms of progress, evolution, or organic development." Romanesque sculpture was thought to owe its peculiar features to a lack of skill and craftsmanship on the part of the workmen j Renaissance perspective was thought of, not as a peculiar feature of the style of the period, but as a technical advance setting Renaissance painting far ahead of anything produced in the Middle Ages, and so on. But we are beginning to understand that although technical advances are cumulative, style in the arts, taken in this very general sense, is a feature of the age which produces it. It would be difficult to argue that the Church of the Madeleine in Paris, which illustrates the Empire style, is a great advance over its model, a Temple of Mars in Rome; or that the Chrysler Building in New York City, aside from the technological skills which made it possible, represents an aesthetic advance of great magnitude beyond the Church of the Madeleine. Each style must be allowed its own virtues and potentialities, as well as its limitations; and comparisons between works which represent very different styles, although they may prove stimulating with reference to a given aesthetic theory, are basically unfair when they involve questions of value. The Church of the Madeleine represents an entirely different set of assumptions and ideals, among which may be counted an historical attitude toward antiquity, from that which produced the Temple of Mars. If we wish to understand the integrity and coherence of the Church of the Madeleine we must seek to envisage it, so far as we are able, as it was envisaged by its creators. Stylistic change, like linguistic change, may be thought of as a continuing adaptation of the means of human expression to the needs of a changing cultural environment. And this adaptation involves new ways of formulating what is "seen" in the world, both concretely and abstractly. The abstract counterparts of visual styles are difficult to describe, and insofar as a style consists of a taste for various kinds of pattern in design, they elude all analysis. But certain very general features of the style of a period may be shown to be characteristic of that period in other ways. And this may be done without conjuring up "Zeitgeists" or other related metaphysical specters.

Modern semanticists like to inform us that our ordinary thought abounds in conventionalized formulas derived from or coexistent with habitual patterns of language. Whether conventionalized modes of thought and expression are, as some semanticists maintain, harmful and somehow scandalous, is a matter for debate. It is certainly true that each age achieves for itself not only a language appropriate to its needs, but also a vocabulary of patterns large and small by means of which it may describe the conventions of its own society and communicate its ideas about those conventions. If we had to begin from scratch with an unpatterned language and without a set of fairly well-established ways of thought derived from our immediate traditions, we should have a very difficult time attempting to describe anything, to formulate any problem in a useful way, or to communicate our descriptions and formulations to anyone else. On the other hand, if we assume that our ancestors, or even our contemporaries in countries whose cultural development has been different from ours, share exactly the same set of intellectual tools that we have developed for ourselves, we shall inevitably find it difficult to understand them. And when difficulties of this kind arise, our natural reaction is to blame the other fellow. He has somehow failed, we assure ourselves, to achieve that degree of culture and sophistication which we so obviously display. Thus if the Romanesque sculptor had been more skilful, we assume, he would have made realistic and humane statues like those of the nineteenth century ; and if the medieval painter had known better, he would certainly have availed himself of scientific perspective. Perhaps now that sculpture is no longer realistic, and a great many painters have deliberately abandoned perspective, these thoughts may be somewhat less reassuring. Perhaps, indeed, our ancestors were justified in their curious modes of expression even when they do not look forward to our own in any obvious way. It may be that art and literature have "languages" made up of conventions of expression which we should learn to "read" just as we learn to read an earlier language or a foreign language.

To go about describing the differences between medieval ways of thought and modern ways of thought in any systematic fashion would require a great deal of minute analysis. No such systematic investigation is contemplated in this book. It will suffice here for purposes of illustration to contrast a dominant medieval convention, the tendency to think in terms of symmetrical patterns, characteristically arranged with reference to an abstract hierarchy, with a dominant modern convention, the tendency to think in terms of opposites whose dynamic interaction leads to a synthesis. These are best described as tendencies; for not all medieval thought necessarily displays an hierarchical pattern, and not all modern thought necessarily involves dynamically opposed contraries. Nevertheless, when we superimpose dynamically interacting opposites upon medieval hierarchies — and there is plenty of evidence to show that we have wished to do this — the result is inevitably a distortion. And it is also true that these two modes of thought produce very different stylistic conventions in art and literature. Admittedly, a contrast between these two conventions can lead only to very crude results, but it will illustrate in very broad terms some basic differences between medieval and modern styles.

The relevance of order as a fundamental principle of medieval iconography was pointed out long ago by Emile Male in the opening pages of his great work on religious art in France during the thirteenth century. But the hierarchical pattern, which became most obvious in the Gothic period, had its origins far earlier in Patristic times. If it is obvious in the thought of the Neoplatonic followers of Ammonius, it is equally obvious in the thought and expression of St. Augustine. For example, in his treatise On Christian Doctrine, he leads his readers to a conception of God by means of an hierarchical progression (1.6. 6ff.). In the first place, God must be thought of as a being than which there is nothing better or more sublime. That which is superior in nature may be thought of in two ways, either as something which may be perceived by the bodily senses, or as something accessible only to the understanding. First, those who rely on their senses may think of the sky, or the sun, or the world itself as God. Again, they may rise above anything in the world and think of God as an infinite object shaped in accordance with whatever worldly shape most appeals to them. This is a step upward, certainly, but those who rely on the understanding rather than on the senses may go even farther. They may think of God as being above all mutable things. He must be living, since living beings are superior to lifeless beings. Moreover, since sentient life is superior to insentient life, He must be thought of as sentient, or, indeed, as Life itself. But the life of God must be an immutable life, and, at the same time, it must be a wise life. The wisdom of God must transcend the mutable wisdom of man, so that we must think of God as Wisdom itself. This argument, here briefly paraphrased, must have appealed to St. Augustine's readers as an extremely effective one, since it conforms to a pattern of thought that was natural and familiar to pagans and Christians alike. It is noteworthy that there is no opposition between the bodily senses and the understanding; they represent different ways in which the problem may be approached, and the way of the understanding is superior to, but not opposite to, the way of the senses. The two approaches do not interact dynamically to produce the desired solution. Variations and elaborations of the argument are commonplace in medieval metaphysical systems. The pattern of ascent by degrees is familiar throughout the Middle Ages in works as diverse as St. Bonaventura's The Mind's Road to God, Dante's Divine Comedy, or Petrarch's Ascent of Mount Ventoux. It appears in a wide variety of forms in the work of St. Augustine. Thus, to cite On Christian Doctrine again, St. Augustine describes the process by means of which the student of the Bible learns wisdom (2. 7. ff.) as a series of ascending steps, of which wisdom is the last. Even evil, in St. Augustine's mind, is subject to the same hierarchical ordering. We find him saying, for example, that "it is brought about as if by a certain secret judgment of God that men who desire evil things are subjected to illusion and deception as a reward for their desires, being mocked and deceived by those lying angels to whom, according to the most beautiful ordering of things, the lowest part of this world is subject by the law of Divine Providence."

By the second half of the twelfth century it was possible to think of rather obvious hierarchies arranged in accordance with systematic degrees in almost all phases of life and thought. To begin with, a moral hierarchy was envisaged in man himself. In its simplest terms this might be expressed as the ascendancy of the reason over the sensuality, or, more elaborately, as the ascendancy of the higher part of the reason, whose function is wisdom, over the lower part of the reason, whose function is knowledge, and the ascendancy of the latter over the motion of the senses. The analogy between this scheme and the hierarchy of Adam, Eve, and the serpent in Genesis suggested a similar hierarchy in the family, where the relationship between husband and wife is sacramentally a reflection of the relationship between Christ and the Church, a relationship which St. Paul had compared with that between the spirit and the flesh. In the state, moreover, the prince was, as John of Salisbury explains in the Policraticus (5.2), the "head" to which the various parts of the commonwealth should be subject in an hierarchical fashion, and of course in actual practice the feudal system was a loose system of hierarchies. The Church was also organized in an hierarchical pattern, and by the thirteenth century the analogy between earthly hierarchies and the celestial hierarchy as described by Dionysius became explicit. The entire creation was sometimes thought of, as it is, for example, in the philosophy of John the Scot, as a hierarchy descending from God to the lowliest of creatures. To illustrate the prevalence of this pattern in theory, in social organization, and in the arts would require many pages. It will suffice here to point out that it existed, and that its existence was a fruitful source of analogies in thought and expression; for once the idea became established, any single hierarchy inevitably suggested all of the others, and all could be thought of as illustrative of a body of related principles.

In the second canto of the fifth book of Spenser's Faerie Queene Artegall meets a giant with a pair of balances who seeks "all things to an equall to restore." After some argument, in which Artegall adduces various analogous hierarchies, Talus throws the giant down from his eminence and drowns him in the sea, also dispersing a "lawlesse multitude" who followed the giant in pursuit of "uncontrolled freedome." But in spite of Talus and his flail, they were to emerge from the "holes and bushes" to which he scattered them, and, by the second half of the eighteenth century, to begin asserting with some success a new order in defiance of the hierarchical systems of the medieval past. They brought with them not only new social and political theories, but also a new art and a new aesthetic. The extent to which the colorful harmonies and deliberate dissonances of romanticism still influence our historical and aesthetic ideals is not commonly realized. The various aesthetic systems that have arisen since art became an entity in itself have a valid application to post-romantic art and literature, but they have little relevance to the art and literature of the pre-romantic past. This difficulty in a simple form is familiar to all teachers of eighteenth-century poetry. Students seem to expect that poetry should be by nature something suitable to the pen of Wordsworth, or Baudelaire, or Eliot, so that they hesitate to acknowledge that Pope's poetry is poetry at all. And the eighteenth century has become a hunting preserve where one seeks to run down "pre-romantics," who wrote, presumably, the only poetry in the period worth reading. That the eighteenth century had a perfectly valid stylistic language of its own has recently been demonstrated in James Sutherland's Preface to Eighteenth Century Poetry. That a book of this kind was necessary is a striking testimonial to very general failure on the part of modern students to realize that major alterations in intellectual perspective are necessary if one wishes to form any real appreciation for the art and literature of the pre-romantic past. The statement with which this chapter opens owes part of its validity to the fact that it has been possible to turn the Renaissance into a seeming welter of revolutionary pre-romantic movements. The romantic is a rebel against convention; he feels that rebellion, or at least playful mockery, is a natural prerogative of the artist, if not an artistic obligation. Hence for many years descriptions of the Renaissance were dominated by the notion that during that period humanity arose like an awakening giant, to paraphrase a Soviet textbook, which suddenly cast off the shackles of the medieval Church. It is fairly easy, in pursuance of this line of thought, to think of Rabelais as an atheist, to turn Italian paintings into exemplars of "pure art" celebrating the flesh, and so on. The program has included the discovery of "pre-Renaissance" (i.e., pre-romantic) works in the Middle Ages, among the most famous of which is Aucasin e Nicolete as described in the elegant language of Walter Pater.

Romantic criticism, which envisages the artist as a man in dynamic opposition to the conventions of his society, who synthesizes or resolves the tensions thus produced in his art, has sometimes turned medieval artists directly into romantic rebels, without the intervening stage of the Renaissance. They are usually depicted as being rebels against the Church, an institution which many romantics found to be stuffy, oppressive, or downright wicked. Victor Hugo, for example, thought the symbolism of Gothic ornament to be at times foreign or even hostile to Christianity. The more "indecorous" figures on medieval churches were thought to represent a kind of defiance of religious convention. To this conclusion Emile Male has written a most emphatic reply, warning that it is necessary to renounce our habit of making "our old artists of the Middle Ages independent and unquiet spirits always eager to throw off the yoke of the Church." The same sort of thing might be said with equal emphasis about medieval poets. To cite only one instance, it has become commonplace to think of the troubadours as rebels in this way, impatient with the restrictions of the Church, and anxious to "throw off the yoke," perhaps with the aid of those early middle-class nonconformists, the Albigensians. But a careful study of the work of the troubadours shows no evidence of any trace of the distinctive doctrines of the Albigensians with reference to the Trinity, and it is also true that a surprisingly large percentage of them spent their last days in perfectly orthodox monasteries. William IX of Aquitaine may have been intransigent in his amorous affairs and in his relations with ecclesiastical authorities, but his last and most popular song exhibits no trace of rebellion against Christianity. Rebelliousness in the Middle Ages was usually rebelliousness within the limits of the hierarchical ideal. Arnold of Brescia did not wish to destroy the Church; he wished to reform the actual hierarchy in order to make it more harmonious with the ideal. Abelard may have shown the perennial rebelliousness of youth against conventional restraints, but instead of making his lapse with Héloise — if, indeed, anything like what he describes actually took place — a point of departure for an assertion of the individual's right to fulfil his potentialities, he made it the introduction to a treatise on the contemplative life.

(Continues...)

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Table of Contents

• Frontmatter, pg. i
• Preface, pg. vii
• Contents, pg. xi
• Illustrations, pg. xiii
• I. Introduction: Medieval and Modern Art, pg. 1
• II. Some Principles of Medieval Aesthetics, pg. 52
• III. Late Medieval Style, pg. 138
• IV. Allegory, Humanism, and Literary Theory, pg. 286
• V. Some Medieval Doctrines of Love, pg. 391
• Index, pg. 505
• Plates, pg. 523