Medieval Adaptation Research Articles

The limits of medieval translation: Juan de Mena’s use of the Imago mundi in the Laberinto de Fortuna English

This article examines a case of medieval adaptation which is not usually considered as a translation but forms part of a translation continuum in that is loosely adapts its base text into a different context through the insertion of translated extracts into a new narrative. Such ‘translation’ results in an interplay between rewriting and respect for authority which produces new works which are paradoxically both original and derivative at the same time. A particularly illustrative case in that regard is the insertion of translated extracts from the geographical section of the twelfth-century Latin encyclopaedia Imago mundiinto vernacular works of different genres. This article takes as its case study the incorporation of Imago mundimaterial into Juan de Mena’s Laberinto de Fortuna.

Beowulf as Children's Literature ed. by Bruce Gilchrist and Britt Mize (review)

Reviewed by: Beowulf as Children's Literature ed. by Bruce Gilchrist and Britt Mize Anna Smol (bio) Beowulf as Children's Literature, edited by Bruce Gilchrist and Britt Mize. U of Toronto P, 2021. This volume of ten essays, an interview, and an extensive bibliography is an outstanding resource that lays the groundwork for future research in the field of medieval adaptations for young readers. Situated at the intersection of scholarship on children's literature, Beowulf, medievalism and adaptation studies, this collection covers a long history, from the first Beowulf adaptation for Danish children in 1820 to works by twenty-first-century writers and illustrators, and it suggests various theoretical and critical approaches to the topic of Beowulf adaptations for children. Britt Mize's "Introduction: Beowulf in and near Children's Literature" points out what some may find a surprising fact: that the largest category of Beowulf adaptations (other than direct translations) is those made for children. Bruce Gilchrist's extensive bibliography at the end of the book, listing over 150 adaptations made for young readers from 1820 to 2018, provides evidence of the Old English poem's continued appeal. Mize points out that, aside from a few previous publications on this topic, this volume marks the first time a collection of essays tackles the issues of "transmuting" the Old English poem for child readers and for the adults who provide those readings (5). Mize surveys some key issues that should prompt more scholarly attention: the unique character of every adaptation; its ideological goals, including its educational paratexts; the materiality of the book and its intended audience; and the relation of children's literature to young adult (YA) literature. The following essays each examine one or more of these issues, although Mize does point out, especially in the light of recent developments in early medieval English studies, that "[a] fully theorized, historicizing study of race and racism in Beowulf adaptations for children remains to be written" (7). The first two essays both deal with nationalist ideologies that shape Beowulf for young readers and, in this way, can serve as foundations for future studies of race and racism, as Mize hopes. It is fitting that [End Page 182] these first two essays deal with firsts, as their titles indicate: "'A Little Shared Homer for England and the North': The First Beowulf for Young Readers" by Mark Bradshaw Busbee and "The Adaptational Character of the Earliest Beowulf for English Children: E.L. Hervey's 'The Fight with the Ogre'" by Renée Ward. Busbee examines the work and influence of the Danish scholar N.F.S. Grundtvig (1783–1872), a name that will be familiar to most Beowulf scholars as the man who wrote the first full translation of Beowulf in a modern language (Danish), corrected some of the errors in the Thorkelin transcripts, and explained some of the poem's characters. According to Busbee, Grundtvig is also the man who first identified the poem as suitable for children. His Bjowulfs Drape, published in 1820, claimed to provide for children a "little shared Homer for England and for the North" that would introduce them to their Scandinavian, and specifically Danish, heritage as an alternative to the classical Greek and Latin that had dominated education previously. In this nationalistic goal as well as his belief that the Beowulf-poet wrote in a stage of history analogous to childhood, Grundtvig expresses themes repeated in children's adaptations throughout the nineteenth century and beyond. Busbee examines Grundtvig's translation choices, the development of his considerable influence on Danish education, and the political subtexts of his adaptation. He concludes with some thoughts about Grundtvig's influence, including on J.R.R. Tolkien's notion of a shared Northern heritage. Pointing to another first, Renée Ward presents the work of Eleanora Louisa Hervey (1811–1903), a children's writer who was particularly interested in medievalism. Ward posits that Hervey's story "Roderic's Tale: The Fight with the Ogre," published in 1873 in her volume The Children of the Pear-Garden, may be the first English adaptation of Beowulf that identifies children as its intended readers. Just as Grundtvig was inspired by cultural concerns about national...

John Holbroke, the Tables of Cambridge, and the “true length of the year”: a forgotten episode in fifteenth-century astronomy

This article examines an unstudied set of astronomical tables for the meridian of Cambridge, also known as the Opus secundum, which the English theologian and astronomer John Holbroke, Master of Peterhouse, composed in 1433. These tables stand out from other late medieval adaptations of the Alfonsine Tables in using a different set of parameters for planetary mean motions, which Holbroke can be shown to have derived from a tropical year of $$365\frac{1}{4} - \frac{1}{132}$$ or $$365.\overline{24}$$ days. Implicit in this year length was a 33-year cycle of repeating solar longitudes and equinox times, which has left traces in other astronomical tables from fifteenth-century England. An analysis of the manuscript evidence suggests that Holbroke owed his value for the “true length of the year” to a certain Richard Monke, capellanus de Anglia, who employed this parameter and the corresponding 33-year cycle in an attempt to construct a perfect and perpetual solar calendar, leading to his Kalendarium verum anni mundi of 1434.

Wędka króla Rusinów (Gall Anonim, ks. 1, rozdz. 7)

A fi shing rod of the king of the Ruthenians (Gallus Anonymus, Book I, chapt. 7) The purpose of the article is an attempt to solve the following question: why did Gallus Anonymus present the king of the Ruthenians fishing with a fishing rod at the very moment of Boleslaw Chrobry’s attack, which inflicted a catastrophic defeat upon Rus’? In the Chronicle the king of the Ruthenians is presented as an unwarlike and cowardly man, but this in itself does not explain, why the chronicler placed him in a boat, fishing. The matter is not made clear by the medieval adaptations of this anecdote by Wincenty Kadlubek and Jan Dlugosz. None of them understood the sense Gallus gave to the motif of fishing rod and both changed its meaning. Also the cases of fishing described in the Bible have a different character altogether. But a useful context is given by motif of fishing rod and fishing people in stories certainly unknown to Gallus Anonymus. The article presents a choice of texts where fishing refers to military matters and brings disgrace to the king or hero: Le roman de Perceval ou le conte du Graal by Chretien de Troyes (the Fisher King), Plutarch’s Life of Antony , Waltharius , the story about Arnulf conquering Rome in the Antapodosis by Liudprand of Cremona. The comparison makes it possible to say that in the medieval literature the fishing rode quite often plays the role of anti-attribute that given to a king or warlike hero becomes a clear sign of the lacked or lost ability to command the army and fight war, or of the betrayal of the honour of a brave soldier. On the other hand, the association with fishing or with using a fishing rod is not disgraceful for people who do not aspire to military functions or actions, as illustrated by the examples of Wanda-Weda in the Chronica Poloniae maioris ( Chronicle of Greater Poland ), and of Saint Zeno of Verona in De Zenonis vita sermo Coronati Notarii .

Romance, Exemplum, and the Subject of the Confessio Amantis

Romance, Exemplum, and the Subject ofthe Confessio Amantis William Robins University ofToronto T,ve,s;on of the story of Apollon;u, of Tyre that John Gowe, presents in book 8 of the Confessio Amantis is an ancient romance con­ strued according to the expectations for an exemplum.1 Many of the other medieval adaptations of this ancient romance may have been "ex­ emplary" in a wide sense ofthat term, referring in a loose fashion to any stories that were presented so as to engage the reader morally. Gower's version, however, is the first to be couched in the more precisely defined structure of an exemplum, such as was developed in late thirteenth­ century sermons and thence introduced into fourteenth-century narra­ tives as a device for linking a story to a specific moral argument.2 Employed as one element in a sermon or moral treatise, an exemplum bears both a narrative and a rhetorical burden: through a narrative em­ plotment it must present a particular case of the operation of some abstract vice or virtue, while at the same time it is also meant to warn A slightly different version of this paper originally appeared in my "Ancient Romance and Medieval Literary Genres: Apollonius of Tyre" (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1995), pp. 167-200. I wish to thank John V. Fleming, Robert Hollander, Seth Lerer, Thomas Pavel, and the members of the Seminar on Contemporary Critical Theory at Princeton for their comments and advice. 1 Citations of the Confessio Amantis are by book and line number from John Gower, Confessio Amantis, ed. G. C. Macaulay, vols. 2-3 of The Complete Works ofJohn Gower (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1899-1902). 2 "This is the first version . . . in which the story is presented explicitly as a moral ex­ emplum, albeit in a style which owes much to romance conventions"; Elizabeth Archibald, Apollonius ofTyre: Medieval and Renaissance Themes and Variations (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1991), p. 192. On the history of the Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri and its adaptations see Archibald, Apollonius ofTyre; G. A. A. Korrekaas, ed., Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri (Groningen: Brouma's Boekhuis, 1984); and Elimar Klebs, Die Erzahlung von Apollonius aus Tyrus: eine geschichtliche Untersuchung iiber ihre lateinischen Urform und ihre spciteren Bearbeitungen (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1889). On the history of the exemplum, the standard work remains J.-Th. Welter, L'Exemplum dans la litterature religieuse et didactique du moyen age (Paris: Guitard, 1927). 157 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER listeners from, or exhort them to, a course ofbehavior through the moral­ isatio following a tale. Gower's "Tale of Apollonius" has such a moralisa­ tio and is set within a larger exemplary framework, yet there is a strik­ ing dissonance between the emplotment inherited from this ancient romance and the moral attached to it. For a reader who might be determined to find a moral in every story, the moralisatio of this tale will seem no more exceptionable than other tenuously linked conclusions common in medieval literature, and might appear, as it does to A. J. Minnis, "obvious."3 But for a reader mindful of the way an exemplum ought to match its narrative and ex­ hortatory purposes ("solum quodfacit ad rem est narrandum"4), as is gen­ erally the case in the other tales ofthe ConfessioAmantis, the relation be­ tween this romance and its proffered moral seems, as it does to Charles Runacres, "uninformative and confusing."5 Dramatically opposed strat­ egies of reading, according to which this moralization of ancient ro­ mance can appear as obvious or as confusing, are already present within Gower's poem, voiced respectively by the teller, Genius, and the lis­ tener, Amans. This opposition, I will argue, produces the conditions by which ancient romance becomes a tool with which Gower can investi­ gate the nature ofexemplarity, both in the "Tale of Apollonius" and in the Confessio Amantis as a whole. I will claim that the goal of Gower's strategy to contrast romance and exemplum is to prompt his readers to recognize their situation at the intersection of two discursive modes, a situation which I will describe, in the terms of recent theories of sub­ jectivity, as the...

L’ «Histoire naturelle» dans le Roman d’Enéas: Cinq notes sur Pline et les merveilles au XIIe siècle

This brief and somewhat anecdotal note analyzes five instances drawn from the Roman d’Eneas (a high medieval adaptation of Virgil’s Aeneid) in relation to descriptions in Historia naturalis of Pliny the Elder. The examples illustrate the twelfth-century anonymous romancer’s exploitation of: murex, the marvelous horses of Messapus, bitumen, chalcedony and scammony.

Translation or Adaptation?: Parcevals saga as a Result of Cultural Transformation

In a medieval context, it is often difficult to distinguish between a translation and an original work. Is it appropriate to call the Old Norse version of Chrétien de Troyes' Le Conte du Graal a translation? Or do we need entirely new terminology to discuss medieval adaptation, transformation, and translation of texts?

Luke Barber and Greg Priestley-Bell. Medieval Adaptation, Settlement and Economy of a Coastal Wetland: The Evidence from around Lydd, Romney Marsh, Kent. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2008. Pp. xvii+317. $60.00 (cloth).

Luke Barber and Greg Priestley-Bell. Medieval Adaptation, Settlement and Economy of a Coastal Wetland: The Evidence from around Lydd, Romney Marsh, Kent. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2008. Pp. xvii+317. $60.00 (cloth).

The Development of the Early Recensions of the Damascus Document

The work entitled Damascus Document was first discovered in Cairo Genizah, in manuscripts copied in Middle Ages. Two manuscripts of composition were found in Genizah: MS A containing 16 pages, and MS B, 2 pages. There is a partial overlap between two texts. However, at certain points, there are also significant differences between two. Carmignac has justifiably concluded from a comparison of two texts that the rarity of these interventions obliges us to conclude that two extant manuscripts A and B are generally two witnesses of same text transmitted by two different lines, but at same time presence of these interventions obliges us to conclude also that these manuscripts constitute, here and there, two distinct recensions, both from time of Qumran sect.' The fragments of Damascus Document discovered at Qumran (and published eighty-six years after publication of Genizah material) did not solve mystery: there are no significant differences which possibly hint to existence of different literary recensions of this work at Qumran, such as those preserved in MSS A and B from Genizah. The passage in which MS A and MS B differ is similar in Qumran scroll of Damascus Covenant to text of MS A. Yet, it is clear from content of MS B that it reflects an early version of text (rather than a medieval adaptation). The relation between MS A and MS B is still puzzling. A number of scholars have attempted to identify origins of large-scale differences between two manuscripts, which center on

Abandoned Women: Rewriting the Classics in Dante, Boccaccio, and Chaucer by Suzanne C. Hagedorn

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER tice, for some of Chaucer’s poems but which is not discussed). Chaucer’s range and richness are not of course to be caught in a reference book even as good as this and such omissions are not to be taken as serious adverse criticism, or, I hope, as a captious desire to paint the lily by gilding it with refined gold. There is only one error that I noticed (nine minor misprints are insignificant in so large and magisterial a work). The error is the entry on Artoys. The Knight is said to have fought there, that is, in Flaundres and in Picardie, whereas a major point in his portrayal, as somewhat less clearly emerges in the entry on the Knight himself, is precisely that he has never fought in France (like so many of Chaucer’s fellow courtiers and Chaucer himself ), but only on the borders of or beyond Christendom . In the entry on Artoys, he has become confused with the Squire. One might also query the entries on the identification of Ruce and Pruce in the formal description of the Knight (see Derek Brewer, ‘‘Chaucer’s Knight as Hero and Machaut’s Prise d’Alexandrie.’’ in Heroes and Heroines in Medieval English Literature, ed. L. Carruthers [Cambridge, 1994]). The full entry on the Knight rightly dismisses recent nonsense about him being presented as a mercenary thug. The comments on the Squire have a similar polite robustness. Gray’s work includes sketch maps, some tables, and a useful, if inevitably incomplete, bibliography. It is beautifully produced, yet another instance of OUP’s outstanding contribution to Chaucerian studies over many years. There are other excellent Companions to Chaucer studies already available, by aventure yfalle/ In felaweshipe, like the Canterbury pilgrims, like them with their own differences, being based on different principles of compilation (and perhaps I ought to confess an interest in one). Chaucer may be said to have a genial relationship to each. They do not cancel each other out, but Gray’s work will always be a monument of learned and civilized literary Companionship. Derek Brewer Cambridge University Suzanne C. Hagedorn. Abandoned Women: Rewriting the Classics in Dante, Boccaccio, and Chaucer. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. Pp. ix, 220. $60.00. Suzanne Hagedorn constructs a compelling case for the richly complex medieval reception of Ovid’s theme of abandoned women, as well as for PAGE 312 312 ................. 11491$ CH13 11-01-10 14:02:30 PS REVIEWS the comparative thinness of our knowledge of that reception. In a series of detailed, witty, and insightful readings, she demonstrates the pervasive and often unsuspected lines of influence, echo, and transmission that link the authors of her title to one another and to their common classical past. Not the least of her achievements in this book is to delineate a Chaucer who is very much a European writer. This Chaucer, rather than writing under the tutelary influence of Italian sources, emerges as an author fully their companion in the project of late medieval adaptation of classical sources. All wrote within a received tradition that they altered to suit their present and various literary purposes. Such writers in turn imply an audience not only literate but also familiar with the particular literary traditions they appropriate, an audience sensitive to the potential significance of ellipses, shifts, and lacunae. Audience and reception are central in this work. At the beginning of the book, Hagedorn lays out the theoretical context in which she has read the works she discusses. Given the essential project of the book, to argue the presence of literary tradition in the most elliptical and apparently skewed medieval narratives of classical stories, her invocation of Eco, Iser, and Jauss signals her interest in reception as well as in creation . Her argument depends upon a critical aesthetic of reader response and semiotic dynamics that in turn assumes a degree of uniformity in the referents, interpretants, and signifieds that late medieval audiences would have called forth as, for example, they heard echoes of Penelope’s timor in Criseyde’s fear. The project of this book, to recover the ‘‘powerful and sympathetic views of women’’ to...

FÉCAMP AND VERNACULAR HISTORIOGRAPHY

Peter Damian-Grint's study of Anglo-Norman historiography, with its subtitle 'Inventing vernacular authority',1 sets out to depict authorial consciousness and self-presentation in a series of pioneering chronicle texts.2 At the end of his consideration of 'dynastic histories' he makes a passing reference to the Geste de Burch and the Histoirie de l'abbaye de Fecamp,3 but they receive no further consideration. The truth is that the Histoirie de l'abbaye de Fecamp (first half of the thirteenth century) has been totally neglected since it was first published in 1928,4 although it offers an instructive and substantial contribution to the subject of Damian-Grint's investigation, as well as raising a number of more general issues connected with translation. There is an undeniable need, therefore, for an appreciation of the work to appear in print.Students of medieval adaptations and compilations of source texts arc familiar with the problem of the ambiguous nrst person: does it represent the voice of the source or of the adaptation?5 Embarrassing mistakes have been made through failure to recognize that a nrst-person anecdote in a medical compilation may not involve the compiler at all but simply be a feature of the source, unacknowledged. This raises the question of how, without the source to hand, a medieval or modern reader could be expected to interpret correctly the nature and status of the authority being utilized. Such problems can only be clarified by detailed study of the individual text as a micro-system, important in such study will be the evidence of authorial awareness, that is, the manner in which the author demonstrates his conception of his task, expresses his approach to his source, and, more particularly, seeks to distinguish his own voice from that of his predecessor(s). Are there any medieval terminological conventions which help to clarify the distinction? What is the function of source references? How is the first-person pronoun to be contextualized? Does the translator want any relationship to the source-author to be clearly defined or is there a planned ambiguity in the relationship as part of a rhetorical strategy? Inevitably, these issues acquire particular prominence in historiographical texts and the question of sources plays a prominent part in characterizing the nature and value of such texts.In the present study of what is a previously unexplored text by an anonymous Norman historiographer-translator my intention is to examine the self-consciousness of the writer, who utilizes at least three different Latin sources, to see how clearly he defines, or wishes to be defined, his relationship to, and dependence on, his sources. How does he envisage his relationship with his audience, and what help does he give them to chart their way through the chronology of his narrative?In his monograph on the Norman abbey of Fecamp, which he published in 1840, Leroux de Lincy edited an Old French poem of 750 octosyllabic lines from a fifteenth-century manuscript (Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale de France, MS f. fr. 1555) on the legend of the Precious Blood which was associated with the foundation of the abbey.6 Almost forty years later, Paul Meyer identified a much longer poem (6,068 lines, incomplete), also in Old French octosyllables, in MS 9446 (olim Ee 150) of the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, a much earlier manuscript, dated to the middle of the thirteenth century.7 Half a century after Meyer's discovery a Finnish scholar, Oskari Kajava, studied the longer poem in Madrid and published detailed notes on the work with a full summary of its contents in modern French together with a new edition of the shorter poem already published by Leroux de Lincy.8 This paved the way for the edition of the long poem which was published by Kajava's mentor, Arthur Langfors, himself a distinguished pupil of Meyer, who established the Old French text and identified the poem's major sources.9Langfors saw that the vernacular work fell into three parts, or books, corresponding to three distinct sources. …

Valla's Elegantiae and the Humanist Attack on the Ars Dictaminis

Renaissance humanists modified rather than rejected the medieval adaptation of classical rhetoric to letter writing, but they came to scorn the “barbaric” grammar of the ars dictaminis. This development followed the widespread dissemination through printing, beginning in 1471, of the Elegantiae of Lorenzo Valla and its imitators. Niccolò Perotti incorporated Valla's approach to language in a section on epistolography of his Rudimenta grammatices, and soon letter writing and elegantiae became closely associated in textbooks. By about 1500, not only medieval writers but even humanist pioneers of an earlier generation and contemporary professionals who dared to defend established epistolary etiquette were under attack. By 1522, when Erasmus published his De conscribendis epistolis, medieval formulas had become merely comic.

Ideal Government and the Mixed Constitution of the Middle Ages (review)

BOOK RZVXZWS 667 scholarship on Avicenna. Certainly ~man's book is one of the most truly philosophiCal thus far in the Rout.ledge series: the concerns and the tone are philosophical, but not at the expense of historical sensitivity. Unfortunately, truly philosophical studies of the major medieval Islamic philosophers are still all too rare, and it is to Goodman's credit that he has provided both specialist and general readers with such a philosophical appreciation of Avicenna's thought. DEBORAH L. BLACK Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto James M. Blythe. Ideal Government and the Mixed Constitution of the Middle Ages. Princeton : Princeton University Press, 1992. Pp. xvi + 343. Cloth, $45.oo. In a wide-sweeping survey of political writings from Aquinas to Machiavelli, Guicciardini and Gianotti, Robert Blythe convincingly demonstrates the continuing influence of the theory of mixed government as the best political arrangement for human society. Drawing on the research of medievalists such as the Carlyles, McIlwain and Tierney, as well as on that of scholars of early modern political thought such as Pocock and Skinner, Blythe develops an original thesis through the examination of original sources. Although it comes as no surprise that, while favoring monarchy as the best form of government, individual medieval thinkers espoused monarchical exercise of power within the framework of a mixed constitution, Biythe's thorough analysis of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century political thought reveals a strikingly wide consensus on that position. At the same time the author sees in the medieval Aristotelian tradition the primary source of ideas on which Machiavelli and his contemporaries based their own theories of mixed government. Consequently, acknowledging that these sixteenth-century thinkers articulated their theories in Polybian terminology, he rejects the current view that they took it directly from the ancient Greek historian. Blythe is quick to point out that, if basically using Aristotle, medieval proponents of government commingling monarchical, aristocratic and democratic elements varied widely in their understanding of its composition and the functioning of its different parts. Indeed, the response of each writer reflected the results of a reciprocal relationship between Aristotle's text and the individual's approach to previous interpretations and his own needs and experiences. Subtle differences in vocabulary and meaning relate intimately to political and intellectual milieux. If at times Blythe's analysis of an author's position comes perilously close to burying the reader in detail, the basic theme of the medieval adaptation of the classical tradition of mixed government and its effect on early modern thought provides coherence throughout. After a brief discussion of the doctrine of mixed constitutionalism in Plato, Aris.toile , and Polybius, and the disappearance of the terminology in the early Middle Ages, Biythe devotes the second portion of the book to tracing the reformulation of the concept by Scholastic thinkers following the translation of Aristotle's Politics in the 126os. At the very outset, a profound "disjunction" (3o2) in interpreting Aristotle 668 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 32:4 OCTOBER 1994 became embedded in the famous commentary on the Politics partially written by Aquinas and continued by his disciple, Peter of Auvergne. Thomas read Aristotle as favoring a "political" king tempered by the power of the wise few and of the body of citizens. Each cidzen would be loyal to the government because each had a stake in its success in attaining the common good. With its checks and balances this government was best for any people, because it prevented tyranny of the one, few, and/or many. By contrast, Peter saw a mixed constitution as best only for a virtuous people because its essence depended on uniting the virtues of each element in society: the king provided unity, the few, wisdom, and the many, power. The confusion of positions within this one commentary generally ascribed to Aquinas provided a broad range of options for subsequent thinkers, most of whom agreed with Peter in allowing only the virtuous to participate in government. Some of these same men, however, were attracted to Aquinas's concept of a balance of power. Torn between his allegiance to Augustine and the attraction of Aristode, Giles of Rome confusingly endorsed both absolute monarchy and a mixed re#me...

Estimation (Wahm) in Avicenna: The Logical and Psychological Dimensions

One of the chief innovations in medieval adaptations of Aristotelian psychology was the expansion of Aristotle's notion of imagination orphantasiato include a variety of distinct perceptual powers known collectively as the internal senses (hawâss bâtinah). Amongst medieval philosophers in the Arabic world, Avicenna (Ibn Sînâ, 980–1037) offers one of the most complex and sophisticated accounts of the internal senses. Within his list of internal senses, Avicenna includes a faculty known as “estimation” (wahm), to which various functions are assigned in a wide variety of contexts. Although many philosophers in the Arabic world as well as in the Latin West accepted Avicenna's positing of an estimative faculty, Avicenna's best-known critics, al-Ghazâlî (1058–1111) and Averroes (Ibn Rushd, 1126–1198), found Avicenna's arguments in support of a distinct estimative faculty problematic. For different reasons, both Averroes and Ghazâlî raised the basic question of whether one needed to posit a distinct faculty of estimation to supplement the perceptual abilities of the other internal senses, and whether the notion of an estimative power as defined by Avicenna was internally coherent. Such criticisms suggest that the Avicennian conception of estimation is not entirely unambiguous, and that a correct understanding of Avicenna's motivations for delineating an estimative power requires a careful study of the diverse activities assigned to it throughout Avicenna's philosophical writings.

The Genius Figure in Antiquity and the Middle Ages

Nitzsche's survey of the Genius figure touches on Gower as the last link in a chain of medieval adaptations. After reviewing the Geniuses of Bernardus Silvestris, Alanus de Insulis (Alain of Lille) and Jean de Meun, Nitzsche turns to the CA. Gower's Genius appears to be an Orpheus figure who wishes to rescue Euridice (concupiscence, or Amans) from the underworld of demonic and disruptive love fantasy (128). Gower's poem is original in having Amans, not Natura, complain to Venus. It also offers the most optimistic view of the problem of sin and its solution (133). Amans is able to move from the Venus of courtly love or lust to the Venus of caritas (132). By doing so he becomes a poet, an artificer, a role frequently associated with Genius. [CvD]

‘Amor and His Brother Cupid’: The ‘Two Loves’ in Heinrich von Veldeke's ‘Eneit’

Most scholars who have studied the medieval adaptations of Virgil's epic masterpiece agree that the principal change introduced to the story by the Roman d'Eneas and Heinrich von Veldeke's Eneit involves the Dido and Lavinia episodes. In general terms, the first four books of the Aeneid have been reduced in scope to the story of Dido, whereas Virgil's brief references to Lavinia in later books have been expanded into an independent love intrigue several thousand lines in length, creating a bipartite epic which anticipates the structure of Arthurian romance. There is considerably less unanimity of opinion concerning the nature and function of these two episodes in Veldeke's Eneit. The argument has circled for the most part around the question whether the loves of Dido and Lavinia for Eneas can be differentiated in terms of ‘unrehte’ and ‘rehte minne’ or in terms of fate and external circumstances. The following study focuses on a basic element of the work which has largely been ignored but could clarify the dispute: the distribution and roles of the gods of love in the two episodes.

JOHN GOWER'S USE OF THE 'MEDIÆVAL OVID' IN THE "CONFESSIO AMANTIS"

Mainzer argues for Gower's usage of medieval texts of Ovid's Metamorphoses, Fasti, Heroides, and Ibis for many of the exempla in the CA. Much of the body of Mainzer's essay consists of a series of close comparisons between Gower's Ovidian tales and their equivalents in Ovid's Metamorphoses and various versions of the Ovide Moralise. By means of verbal parallels and shared narrative details a picture emerges of extensive borrowing from the medieval adaptations of Ovid. In addition, Gower appears to get the names of Eolen (Hercules' love interest) and Arrons (Tarquin's son) from some thirteenth-century glossed manuscripts of the Fasti. Similarly, Gower's telling of the story of "Demophon and Phyllis" was likely influenced by medieval commentaries on the Heroides, even though he could have borrowed the same details from Boccaccio's Genealogia Deorum. Lastly, Gower's knowledge of a glossed version of the Ibis may be established by his substitution of Dionysius in the place of Diomedes as the tyrant condemned in Book 7 for feeding human flesh to his horses. [CvD]

The Source and Significance of "The Jew and the Pagan"

Ames opens her essay with Thomas Warton's comment in his History of English Poetry that Gower must have borrowed his Tale of Jew and the (Book 7 of the CA) some Christian legend, which was feigned, for a religious purpose, at the expense of all probability and propriety (37). Ames suggests instead that the story, particularly popular from the Secreta Secretorum tradition, was originally a piece of pagan propaganda against Judaism. Ames' evidence for a pagan origin includes the tale's geography (even Gower's version is set in Egypt), the frequent identification of the Pagan as one of the (Persian) Magi, and the fact that Christians never charged the Jews or Judaism with an unethical code since they themselves were invested in the validity of the Mosaic law. Medieval authors therefore took up the story not necessarily as part of an anti-semitic agenda (although Ames does not deny some element of prejudice), but rather because of the non-religious meanings that might be ascribed to the story. For instance, James Yonge’s prose translation of the Secreta (dating from 1422) employs the exemplum to illustrate his advice that a prince should not trust his enemy. As it turns out, the Jew is most like the Irish, whose treachery is well-known (45-46). Likewise, Gower's account tells us more about his politics than about his attitude to the Jews. After all, Moses is mentioned in Book 7 as one of the first lawgivers, and in Book 5 Gower praises the beliefs of the Jews in contrast to the worship of idols. Gower was thus more interested in making the point that mercy is greater than justice. In this he followed the Secreta, in which the Pagan was associated with Aristotle, who advised Alexander on the principles of kingship. The only medieval adaptation that Ames has difficulty explaining is John Bromyard's Summa Predicantium, where the Mosaic Law is simultaneously praised and condemned. Ames' conjecture about this troubling mixture is that “the friar nodded, and garbled half-recollected stories and sources (45). Despite the opacity of Bromyard’s motives, the general pattern Ames finds is that medieval Christians were less interested in the validity of Jewish law than in promoting an Aristotle who conformed to their own aims in writing mirrors for princes. [CvD]