Nature, Sex, and Goodness in a Medieval Literary Tradition by Hugh White

Abstract

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER ‘‘ ‘Arthurienne Extraordinaire,’ ’’ in their introduction to Donald L. Hoffman’s concluding tribute to her as ‘‘Teacher, Scholar, Friend,’’ it is clear that, in the boldness and passion she brought to her work and her life, Professor Fries was a force with which to be reckoned. Repeatedly, contributors cite the particular generosity she showed young colleagues in her mentoring relationships to them, a generosity that is amply documented in the substance and tone of these essays, as well as in their footnotes to Professor Fries’s many articles and essays. Bonnie Wheeler, Fiona Tolhurst, and Donald Hoffman all end their tributes to Professor Fries by noting that E. Y. Harburg’s ‘‘Lydia, the Tatooed lady’’ was her favorite song. Its first line, of course, creates a neat internal rhyme between ‘‘Lydia’’ and ‘‘‘En-cy-clo-ped-ia.’’’ This volume, then, is a fitting festschrift for the woman Arthurian who loved this song. In its pluralistic approaches, diverse methodologies, and copious range of topics, On Arthurian Women not only makes an important contribution to Arthurian studies, it becomes something of an ‘‘‘En-cyclo -ped-ia’’’ itself. Sheila Fisher Trinity College Hugh White, Nature, Sex, and Goodness in a Medieval Literary Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. ix, Pp. 278. $65.00. Hugh White’s new book on Nature (he published one on Nature and Piers Plowman in 1988), has a long first chapter on ‘‘Academic Natures,’’ followed by shorter chapters on Middle English vernacular writings; Boethius and twelfth-century Latin poets like Alan de Lille; Jean de Meun; and ‘‘Further French Natures’’; and concludes with longish chapters on John Gower and Chaucer. I will concentrate on the last chapters because, though the early chapters are interesting in themselves, there is little carry-over, with a few expected exceptions (e.g., the influence of the Roman de la Rose). A word on his method: he produces great swatches of text (slavishly following previous editors’ punctuation) followed by a few observations, rather than walking us through passages. He translates all non-English passages but does not gloss even the most difficult Middle English texts. 450 ................. 10286$ CH15 11-01-10 13:55:33 PS REVIEWS In an introduction, White begins by listing several accounts of nature , personified or not, in medieval literature, by J. A. W. Bennett, C. S. Lewis, and others, which he considers erroneous, because they associate the natural exclusively with what is reasonable, beautiful, and moral, whereas in fact nature is sometimes taken to be just the opposite. He emphasizes the polysemous character of the word. In practice, however , he often treats nature as a single concept with contradictory attributes . He assumes that the tradition he deals with considers both good and bad aspects of nature to exist in a postlapsarian world, whereas, it seems to me, nature and the laws of nature are often taken to exist as if no fall had ever taken place, and as if morality were simply a matter of human effort. Often such presentations are influenced by pre-Christian philosophical conceptions. (White does not mention the pagan alternative to the Fall, the gradual decline of the world from a primordial Golden Age.) Chapter 3, ‘‘Natura vicaria Dei,’’ begins with Boethius’s accounts of beneficent natural instinct in the Consolation of Philosophy, especially of personified Nature (in book 3 metrum 2) as the regulating force of the universe. When we come to the twelfth-century poets such as Bernard Silvester and Alan de Lille, White makes no attempt to integrate their accounts of nature with theological concepts. He acknowledges in a note that Alan was an original theologian, but he does not treat his theological views either here or in Chapter 2, and we are left to conjecture how he would reconcile his sublime view of Natura with the fallen nature of Christian doctrine. He can only point to a vague unease with nature: ‘‘As well as registering what Nature cannot do, we experience discomfort about the arrangements Nature actually does make’’ (108–9). In Chapter 4, on the Roman de la Rose, White finds a more ambiguous nature. He argues that Le Vielle parodies the Boethian nature, in...