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University of Notre Dame Press - Barbara Newman

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235 pages

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The sacred and the secular in medieval literature have too often been perceived as opposites, or else relegated to separate but unequal spheres. In Medieval Crossover: Reading the Secular against the Sacred, Barbara Newman offers a new approach to the many ways that sacred and secular interact in medieval literature, arguing that (in contrast to our own cultural situation) the sacred was the normative, unmarked default category against which the secular always had to define itself and establish its niche. Newman refers to this dialectical relationship as "crossover"—which is not a genre in itself, but a mode of interaction, an openness to the meeting or even merger of sacred and secular in a wide variety of forms. Newman sketches a few of the principles that shape their interaction: the hermeneutics of "both/and," the principle of double judgment, the confluence of pagan material and Christian meaning in Arthurian romance, the rule of convergent idealism in hagiographic romance, and the double-edged sword in parody.

Medieval Crossover explores a wealth of case studies in French, English, and Latin texts that concentrate on instances of paradox, collision, and convergence. Newman convincingly and with great clarity demonstrates the widespread applicability of the crossover concept as an analytical tool, examining some very disparate works. These include French and English romances about Lancelot and the Grail; the mystical writing of Marguerite Porete (placed in the context of lay spirituality, lyric traditions, and the Romance of the Rose); multiple examples of parody (sexually obscene, shockingly anti-Semitic, or cleverly litigious); and René of Anjou's two allegorical dream visions. Some of these texts are scarcely known to medievalists; others are rarely studied together. Newman's originality in her choice of these primary works will inspire new questions and set in motion new fields of exploration for medievalists working in a large variety of disciplines, including literature, religious studies, history, and cultural studies.

Sujets

Religion

Christianisme

the Arts

Medieval

criticism

Philosophie et théologie

Idioma inglés

Edad Media

Literature

Middle Ages

English

Christianity

History

ART

Anglais

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Publié par	University of Notre Dame Press
Date de parution	15 mai 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780268161408
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

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MEDIEVAL CROSSOVER
The Conway Lectures in Medieval Studies 2011
The Medieval Institute gratefully acknowledges the generosity of Robert M. Conway and his support for the lecture series and publications resulting from it .
PREVIOUS TITLES IN THIS SERIES:
Paul Strohm Politique: Languages of Statecraft between Chaucer and Shakespeare (2005)
Ulrich Horst, O.P. The Dominicans and the Pope: Papal Teaching Authority in the Medieval and Early Modern Thomist Tradition (2006)
Rosamond McKitterick Perceptions of the Past in the Early Middle Ages (2006)
Jonathan Riley-Smith Templars and Hospitallers as Professed Religious in the Holy Land (2009)
A. C. Spearing Medieval Autographies: The I of the Text (2012)
MEDIEVAL CROSSOVER
Reading the Secular against the Sacred
B ARBARA N EWMAN
University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
www.undpress.nd.edu
All Rights Reserved
Copyright 2013 by University of Notre Dame
Published in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Newman, Barbara, 1953-
Medieval crossover : reading the secular against the sacred / Barbara Newman.
pages cm. - (The Conway Lectures in Medieval Studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-268-03611-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) - ISBN 0-268-03611-X (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Literature, Medieval-History and criticism. 2. Secularism in literature. 3. Holy, The, in literature. I. Title.
PN671.N49 2013
809 .02-dc23
2013000468
ISBN 9780268161408
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources .
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at ebooks@nd.edu .
C ONTENTS
Preface
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
Theorizing Crossover: Principles and Case Studies
A Hermeneutics of Both/And
Felix Culpa and the Principle of Double Judgment
Pagan Matiere , Christian Sen , and Secular Conjointure
Hagiographic Romance: Everything That Rises Must Converge
Chapter 2
Double Coding: Knights of Arthur, Knights of Christ
Chr tien s Charrette : Double Coding, Double Judgment
Perlesvaus : The Grail and Christendom s Old Laws
Lancelot and the Grail: Chr tien s Ambiguous Legacy
Le Morte Darthur : Double Coding, Double Ending
Chapter 3
Conversion: The Literary Traditions of Marguerite Porete
The Puys of Picardy and the Valenciennes Prize Poems
Beguine Lyrics, Recycled Songs, and the Mirror
Roses, Crimson and White
The Mirror and the Rose
From 1277 to 1312, or the Perils of Crossover
Chapter 4
Parody: From Profane Communion to Blasphemous Passion
Parodia Sacra and the Principle of the Two-Edged Sword
Obscene Communion: Le lai d Ignaure
Mocking Mass Murder: The Passion of the Jews of Prague
A Lawsuit in Heaven: The Dispute between God and His Mother
Chapter 5
Convergence: Ren of Anjou and the Heart s Two Quests
Mortifying Vain Pleasure: The King as Vernacular Theologian
The Grail, the Rose, and the Love-Smitten Heart
Converging Quests
Conclusion: A Backward and a Forward Glance
Appendix 1. The Passion of the Jews of Prague according to John the Peasant (1389)
Appendix 2. La Desputoison de Dieu et de sa m re / The Dispute between God and His Mother
Notes
Works Cited
Index
P REFACE
Jack shall have Jill;
Nought shall go ill;
The man shall have his mare again ,
And all shall be well .
-A Midsummer Night s Dream , III.ii.461-64
A Midsummer Night s Dream is the perfect secular comedy. It ends with a few marriages, resolves the absurd twists of its plot, and lets everyone live happily ever after. The supernatural is present, as it must be in every fully imagined world-but the fairies are not angels, and Puck is no devil. Rather, he is the mischievous sprite who declaims these lines as complication bends its merry course toward resolution. Such a comedy is inconceivable in the Middle Ages. Though all shall be well is a celebrated medieval refrain, it occurs in a wholly different context where the agent of restoration is-not Puck. The reason that purely secular comedy (or tragedy) cannot exist in a medieval frame of reference is simple, but this kind of simplicity can be so obvious as to elude our sight. Sacred and secular coexist in our world, after all, just as they did in the Middle Ages. But for us, the secular is the normative, unmarked default category, while the sacred is the marked, asymmetrical Other. In the Middle Ages it was the reverse.
In American culture, sacred music and gospel are niche markets within the wide world of music, which is presumed secular unless stated otherwise. The same holds true of spirituality and Christian fiction as publishers categories. So thoroughly has secularism become our default that even the religious speak of giving God a place in their lives, as if he were lucky to get a slice of the pie. This way of thinking would again have been impossible in a medieval context. By saying this I do not wish to revive the old clich about an Age of Faith, for levels of faith varied then as they do now, if less openly. 1 What I mean is rather that the sacred was the inclusive whole in which the secular had to establish a niche. That is why the profane appears so ubiquitously in the mode of parody: gargoyles on cathedral roofs, obscene marginalia in books of hours, marital squabbles on misericords, lecherous monks in fabliaux, foxes preaching to hens in beast epics, and so forth. Despite generations of wishful thinking by scholars, little if any of this is transgressive, any more than the shelves of spiritual self-help books at Barnes Noble are subversive of capitalism. For to parody the sacred is emphatically to engage with it, not to create an autonomous secular sphere. The sacred might be viewed with skeptical, profane, or jaded eyes, but it was still the sacred.
In many ways, the Middle Ages needed the classical world in order to imagine a secular one. Only a pre-Christian worldview, complete in itself, might compete-if not on equal terms, then at least on its own footing-with the sacred world bounded by Creation and Doom. But even so, the sacred tended to reemerge at the very least as a framing device. Medieval chroniclers could fit all of classical history within a narrative framed by the six biblical ages, just as allegorists could accommodate any number of pagan deities in their Christian mythographies. Dante s Commedia encloses a capacious secular sphere, both ancient and modern, within the sacred without remainder. Chaucer s Troilus and Criseyde , which for most of its gorgeous length is humanistic, classical, and pagan, ends with a jarring Christian turn, just as the Knight s Tale ends with Boethian providence, the Canterbury Tales as a whole with the Parson, and the poet s career with the Retractions. Even Boccaccio s Decameron , the closest thing to a secular comic masterpiece that the Middle Ages produced, begins with the Black Death and ends with Griselda, whose allegorical purport was obligingly spelled out by Petrarch. But if A Midsummer Night s Dream still classicizes, it is in name only, for there is little of the Athenian about Shakespeare s befuddled lovers. What sets Renaissance humanism apart from medieval humanism is neither a love of the classical nor a penchant to mock the holy, for both had been alive and well for centuries. It is rather the imagining of a secular realm that could, but did not necessarily, engage in any way with the sacred.
This book is about the terms of engagement between sacred and secular before the early modern shift. It interprets the secular as always already in dialogue with the sacred, and it probes that dialogue s many modes. For convenience I refer to this dialectical relationship as crossover by analogy with contemporary works that combine distinct genres, such as the graphic novel and the rock opera. In those genres an elite art form (literary fiction, opera) melds seamlessly with a popular one (comic books, rock music). Without pushing the comparison too far, such modern forms furnish analogies for medieval hybrid genres like the motet, the hagiographic romance, and the literature of la mystique courtoise , or courtly mysticism. This is not to say that the modern distinction of elite vs. popular maps onto the same categories in the Middle Ages, much less those of sacred and secular. Yet crossing the boundary between them creates a similar sense of novelty and excitement, of being where the action is, that attracts avant-garde audiences while provoking a few sniffs of disapproval from conservatives. Crossover is not a genre in itself, but a mode of interaction, an openness to the meeting or even merger of sacred and secular in a wide variety of forms. In chapter 1 I sketch a few of the principles that shape their interaction: the sic et non principle, or hermeneutics of both/and; the principle of double judgment, governed by the paradox of felix culpa; the confluence of pagan matiere and Christian sen in some Arthurian romances; and the rule of convergent idealism ( everything that rises must converge ) in hagiographic romance. Examples are supplied by a wide range of texts, including Amis and Amiloun, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight , a Czech Life of St. Catherine, Hartmann von Aue s Gregorius, Sir Gowther , and episodes from the Prose Lancelot . The four chapters that follow analyze case studies in greater depth.
In chapter 2 I continue my exploration of romance, concentrating on the technique of double coding: the propensity of certain texts to enable both sacred and secular readings, rewarding a hermeneutic strategy of double judgment. The chapter deals with selected Lancelot-Grail romances, from Chr tien de Troyes Knigh