Lies, Slander and Obscenity in Medieval English Literature: Pastoral Rhetoric and the Deviant Speaker (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature)

The four major Middle English narrative poets - Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, William Langland, and the Patience poet - build into their texts central figures who voice and contest the clerical discourse designed to analyze and control the speech of all Western Christians: that on the Sins of the Tongue. Drawing extensively on manuscript sources, Lies, Slander, and Obscenity examines for the first time how this socially powerful discourse uses Augustinian sign theory and scholastic ethics to demarcate deviant from salvific speech and what rhetorical resources it offered the medieval priest to convert deviant speakers - liars, blasphemers, slanderers. Then it analyzes how The Canterbury Tales, Piers Plowman, and Patience use different strains of this pastoral discourse not only to expose the destructive power of speech in political and social life, in entertainment, in love, and in religious experience, but also to judge clerical claims to authority and efficacy in formulating and applying codes for speech.

CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL LITERATURE 31

Lies, Slander, and Obscenity in Medieval English Literature

CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL LITERATURE General editor. Professor Alastair Minnis, Professor of Medieval Literature, University of York Editorial board Professor Patrick Boyde, FBA (Serena Professor of Italian, Cambridge) Professor John Burrow, FB A (Winterstoke Professor of English, Bristol) Professor Rita Copeland (Professor of English, University of Minnesota) Professor Alan Deyermond, FBA (Professor of Hispanic Studies, London) Professor Peter Dronke, FBA (Professor of Medieval Latin Literature, Cambridge) Dr Simon Gaunt (University of Cambridge) Professor Nigel Palmer (Professor of German Medieval and Linguistic Studies, Oxford) Professor Winthrop Wetherbee (Professor of English, Cornell) This series of critical books seeks to cover the whole area of literature written in the major medieval languages - the main European vernaculars, and medieval Latin and Greek - during the period c. 1100-c. 1500. Its chief aim is to publish and stimulate fresh scholarship and criticism on medieval literature, special emphasis being placed on understanding major works of poetry, prose and drama in relation to the contemporary culture and learning which fostered them. Recent titles in the series 19 The Making of Textual Culture: Grammatica and literary theory<, 350-1100, by Martin Irvine 20 Narrative, Authority, and Power: The medieval exemplum and the Chaucerian tradition, by Larry Scanlon 21 Medieval Dutch Literature in its European Context, edited by Erik Kooper 22 Dante and the Mystical Tradition: Bernard of Clairvaux in the 'Commedia', by Steven Botterill 23 Heresy and Literacy, 1000-1530, edited by Peter Biller and Anne Hudson 24 Virgil in Medieval England: Figuring the 'Aeneid' from the twelfth century to Chaucer, by Christopher Baswell 25 Sciences and the Self in Medieval Poetry: Alan of Lille's Anticlaudianus and John Gower's Confessio amantis, by James Simpson 26 Public Reading and the Reading Public in Late Medieval England and France, by Joyce Coleman 27 Medieval Reading: Grammar, rhetoric and the classical text, by Suzanne Reynolds 28 Editing 'Piers Plowman': The evolution of the text, by Charlotte Brewer 29 Vernacular Literary Theory in the Middle Ages: The German Evidence, 8001300, by Walter Haug, translated by Joanna M. Catling 30 Texts and the Self in the Twelfth Century, by Sarah Spence 31 Lies, Slander, and Obscenity in Medieval English Literature: Pastoral Rhetoric and the Deviant Speaker, by Edwin David Craun A complete list of titles in the series is given at the end of this volume.

Lies, Slander, and Obscenity in Medieval English Literature Pastoral Rhetoric and the Deviant Speaker

EDWIN D. CRAUN Washington and Lee University

CAMBRIDGE

UNIVERSITY PRESS

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521496902 © Cambridge University Press 1997 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1997 This digitally printed first paperback version 2005 A catalogue recordfor this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Craun, Edwin D. Lies, slander, and obscenity in Medieval English literature: pastoral rhetoric and the deviant speaker / Edwin D. Craun. p. cm. - (Cambridge studies in medieval literature: 31) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0 521 49690 X hardback 1. English poetry — Middle English, 1100—1500 — History and criticism. 2. Pastoral poetry, English — History and criticism. 3. Gower, John, 13257-1408 - Political and social views. 4. Langland, William, 13307-1400? Piers the Plowman. 5. Chaucer, Geoffrey, d. 1400. Canterbury tales. 6. Christianity and literature — England. 7. Deviant behavor in literature. 8. Patience (Middle English poem). 9. Point of view (Literature). 10. Semiotics and literature. 11. Narration (Rhetoric). 12. Rhetoric, Medieval. I. Title. II. Series. PR317.P38C73 1997 821'.l-dc20 96-20416 CIP ISBN-13 978-0-521-49690-2 hardback ISBN-10 0-521-49690-X hardback ISBN-13 978-0-521-02201-9 paperback ISBN-10 0-521-02201-0 paperback

For Marlys, Meg, and Liz, and in memory of Carol Craun Nicholson (1951-1993), librarian

Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me Playground jingle Mors et vita in manu linguae Proverbs 18:21

Contents

Acknowledgments Note on quotations and translations Standard abbreviations

page x xii xiii

Introduction

1

1 The pastoral movement and deviant speech: major texts 2

The lies of the Fall, the tongues of Pentecost: typing and converting the deviant speaker

25

3 Exemplifying deviant speech: murmur in Patience 4 5

6

10

73

Confessing the deviant speaker: verbal deception in the Confessio Amantis Reforming deviant social practices: turpiloquium/scurrilitas

113

in the B Version of Piers Plowman

157

Restraining the deviant speaker: Chaucer's Manciple and Parson

187

Bibliography Index

231 250

IX

Acknowledgments

Several years ago, when I returned to a crowded manuscripts reading room after three years of working elsewhere, the man staffing the desk recoiled: "Oh no, not you again - pardon me, I didn't mean to imply ..." Clearly the making of this book created debts which I ought to acknowledge, not the least of which are to libraries. For access to manuscripts in their keeping, I am grateful to the following: the Bodleian Library; the British Library; the Bibliotheque Nationale; the Syndics of the Cambridge University Library; the Master and Fellows of University College, Oxford; the Master and Fellows of Oriel College, Oxford; the Principal and Fellows of Jesus College, Oxford; the Master and Fellows of Caius College, Cambridge. Several sections of the second chapter appeared in Augustinian Studies 20 (1989), and I am grateful to the editors for permission to publish a revised version here. The staff of the Bodleian Library was heroically patient with many inquiries and orders as I was finding my way around in hundreds of texts on the vices. So was the staff of Leyburn Library, Washington and Lee University, throughout this eight-year project; Betsy Brittigan in Interlibrary Loans and Jo Ann Wilson in Circulation were indefatigable. No scholar, not even a humanist at a liberal arts college, works alone or unassisted. John W. Elrod, former Dean of the College and now President at Washington and Lee, has supported this study since its inception with generous interest and repeated willingness to let a department head disappear into the Middle Ages. The National Endowment for the Humanities enabled me to do the bulk of my research in manuscripts with a 1986-7 Fellowship for College Teachers, and the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges supported further manuscript research in 1990 with a Mednick Fellowship. Washington and Lee University kept my work alive in the interstices, with a Kimbrough Grant for study in Oxford in 1992 and Glenn Grants in 1986, 1991, 1993, and 1994. The Master and Fellows of University College, Oxford, showed me unstinting hospitality as a Member of their Senior Common Room in Hilary Term, 1987, and as Visiting Fellow in Trinity Term, 1992; there, Helen Cooper, always the most generous of medievalists, was a sure resource at many points. A trinity of Princetonians - John

Acknowledgments Fleming, D. W. Robertson, and, especially, my dissertation director Tom Roche - taught me by example that scholarship worth the doing involved total immersion in sources. My colleagues Harlan Beckley (theological ethics), Lad Sessions (philosophy), Kary Smout (rhetoric), and James Perrin Warren (critical theory) helped to tighten my thinking in several chapters. Eugene Vance talked through the second chapter with me during an NEH Summer Seminar, and Teresa Tavormina read the chapter on Piers Plowman with a sure eye. Sandy O'Connell performed hitherto unknown feats in preparing the typescript, which was proofread by Christopher Tricarick, Liz Craun, Marlys Craun, Kerry Egan, and Adrienne Hall Bodie. Two readers for Cambridge University Press, together with my resourceful editors Katharina Brett, Alison Gilderdale, and Victoria Sellar, saved later readers from many unanimated parentheses. Most importantly, my wife Marlys and my children Meg and Liz gave me lives outside of the libraries into which I retreated at the end of the teaching year, yet made those retreats possible.

XI

Note on quotations and translations

When quoting from manuscripts and early printed books, Latin and vernacular, I have expanded abbreviations, but have preserved the punctuation, capitalization, and spacing (the latter as nearly as possible) of the original. All translations are mine unless otherwise noted, except for those of the Vulgate Bible, taken from the Douai version because it adheres closely to the syntax of the Vulgate.

xn

Standard abbreviations

CCSL CSEL DML Du Cange EETS MED OED OLD PL

Corpus Christianorum Series Latina (Turnholt, 1954 ff) Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (Vienna, 1866 ff) Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources Glossarium ad scriptores mediae et infimae latinitatis, Charles du Fresne Du Cange, ed. (1840) Early English Text Society Middle English Dictionary Oxford English Dictionary Oxford Latin Dictionary Patrologiae Cursus Completus, series latina, J. P. Migne, ed.

Xlll

Introduction

Early in the fourteenth century, the English priest Robert Mannyng wrote down in his catechetical manual Handlyng Synne the story of a woman who cursed her daughter. As she was preparing to bathe in open country, she gave the child her clothes, bidding her to bring them as soon as she called. When she finished bathing and the child failed to come at her first call, she, "ful of yre and of wrafc," cursed her child with "J>e deuyl come on \>e, I Forfc>ouart not redy to me." The devil immediately claimed the child "t>at t>ou me betaghte [yielded] wyt> euyl," manifesting his possession by maddening her on the spot. The literal sense of the woman's words and the malicious fury which generated them gave the devil lifelong power over her child, who, in turn, was given a diabolical power of speech: she exposed the secret sins of everyone whom she encountered.1 For Mannyng, the woman's utterance is more than an instance of what J. L. Austin and John Searle would call the performative, of language which does something in the saying, as excommunication was sometimes believed to do. 2 Mannyng's presentation of her speech shares with the speech act theorist interest in utterances as social acts, but it also manifests the late medieval discursive practice, to which priests were especially given, of examining utterances in ethical terms. What does a speaker will? How does what she signifies relate to what she believes to be true? What does she intend to be the effect of her utterance? What are the actual consequences for her, for listeners, for the subject of her speech? For clerics, speech and its instrument the tongue were powerful agents, as a literal rendition of our Vulgate epigraph, common in clerical literature, conveys: "Death and life are in the hand of the tongue." In Mannyng's world, a curse could inflict 1 2

Robert Mannyng, Handlyng Synne, lines 1252-306. On excommunication, see Aron Gurevich, Medieval Popular Culture, pp. 211-15, and Alexander Murray, Excommunication, pp. 7-33.

l

Lies, slander, and obscenity demonic possession as surely as a false oath could enable a rich merchant to seize the small landholding of an economically marginal man or as the preaching of a divinely given word could avert the destruction of Nineveh.3 Given these social and religious consequences, Mannyng insists on seeing speakers, his audience as well as his figures, as moral agents responsible for vigilantly controlling their speech. His horrible tale, with its moral anatomy of the curse and its solemn prohibitions of cursing, is designed to be received and used by parents as a conscious counter to the urge to speak angrily to disobedient children ("3e wyuys tenkyj) on bys cas"), as a restraint on culturally induced habits of unreflective speech ("For to leue 3our cursyng bold / Y shal 30W telle what me was told"). When late twentieth-century readers encounter late medieval texts like Mannyng's which foreground utterances, we are quick to look for the inherent limitations of language. Since nothing puts language to the test as readily as speaking about God, let us take as an example the Middle English Patience, in which Jonah imagines angrily what sort of God would send him to the savage Ninevites. In a brilliant essay, R. A. Shoaf traces how the renegade prophet misrepresents the God of the poem in speech which exploits the temporality of utterances and the equivocity of words. Words uttered in time inevitably separate attributes which may be fused in God, so that Jonah can speak of God's mercy releasing him from the whale while His justice sleeps ("t>ou schal releue me, renk, whil \>y ry$t slepe3, / t>ur3 my3t of by mercy"). Although Shoaf observes that Jonah "wants his God fragmented in just this way because he is impatient," he chooses to develop not Jonah's impatient use of words but "the adequacy of language to reality" as it is explored by medieval grammar.4 We, creatures (like Shoaf) of "the linguistic turn" in literary studies and students of recent scholarship on medieval theories of signification and fallacy, digest such a reading readily. But the text recurrently brings to the fore Jonah's will in misrepresenting God and the consequences for him and for others of doing so - the ethical dimensions of his speech. In Patience, as in many late medieval narratives which are constructed around acts of speech, speaking puts the speaker, as well as - no, even more than - the spoken word, to the test. As Eugene Vance writes, for medieval poets "ethical questions 3 4

Mannyng, Handlyng Synney lines 2670-720; Patience in The "Pearl** Poems, vol. II, lines 345-405. R. A. Shoaf, "God's 'Malyse,'" pp. 261-79. Patience, lines 322- 3.

Introduction of semiosis bearing on our motives and intentions in the way we exploit the equivocity of signs are uppermost in importance."5 To explore the ethical dimensions of speech in medieval texts, it is necessary for us to attend to the relations between interlocutors, relations eclipsed by the structuralist program of language as a selfcontained system of difference and, before that, the Enlightenment preoccupation with referentiality, the relations of signs, things, and minds. Our analysis of specific utterances must embrace what speech does and is intended to do, how it is used by speakers in social situations to achieve certain effects. Such an approach is essentially rhetorical, although semiotic in the limited sense that it analyzes how texts invoke and use theories of the verbal sign. In Terry Eagleton's terms, it sees "language as a practice rather than as an object" and so attends to human subjects, speakers and listeners.6 Late medieval texts particularly invite such a reading when they, like Handlyng Synne and Patience, include patently clerical discourse which analyzes utterances in ethical terms. One of the most powerful discourses shaping the lives of late medieval Westerners was that on sin, constructed from the thirteenth century on, by the new, university-educated higher clergy, for priests, especially parish priests, to apply in preaching, in directing confessions, and in admonishing - ubiquitous pastoral means for effecting social formation. Emerging from the Fourth Lateran Council's program to define the Christian community more sharply and to catechize and discipline individuals more effectively, it set forth what it claimed to be universally valid norms for conduct, it demarcated what was deviant, and it labored to awaken revulsion against the deviant.7 This discourse on sin, along with other types of pastoral discourse, was used to create a large and loose "textual community," a social group in which a small literate core instructs the whole in 5 6 7

Eugene Vance, "Mervelous Signals/* p. 280. Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory, p. 114. In The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950-1250, R. I. Moore has argued that the clergy of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the two centuries before the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), labored to draw - and enforce sharper boundaries for the Christian community, which included conforming to a range of moral norms. This process involved defining, identifying, and labelling groups which deviated from communal beliefs and practices: lepers, Jews, heretics. While Moore does not consider the thirteenth century, his study of cultural formation provides a broad context for the Council's directives on teaching basic norms of Christian belief and practice and disciplining those who violate them. I say "broad context" in part because he treats the church, especially the clergy, as monolithic.

Lies, slander, and obscenity authoritative texts in order to establish systematic, text-based ways of constructing a moral self, of regulating human conduct.8 Sometimes this hegemonic discourse on the vices contained a sharply demarcated subdiscourse on deviant speech, the Sins of the Tongue: uncontrolled speech in general and specific verbal sins. Although most fully presented in encyclopedic treatises on the vices and equally vast collections of preaching materials (the sources, Latin and vernacular, described in chapter 1), it is found in many types of pastoral literature, especially collections of exemplary stories, lists of questions for priests to pose to penitents (interrogationes), and alphabetized topical handbooks of various kinds. In all of these pastoral genres, authoritative written texts, dominantly the Christian Bible, provide the basic norms, injunctions, prohibitions, and stories for constructing deviant speech and its types. In narratives like the half-breed's blasphemy in Exodus or Miriam's gainsaying of Moses' priesthood in Numbers, the Bible affixes labels to specific utterances (blasphemy and murmur in these cases), and it interprets the emotions, intentions, and fates of speakers. Particularly in the New Testament, it establishes norms for speech formulated according to the speaker's will and intentions and according to the social consequences of utterances. Absorbing these scriptural texts about speech, together with ten centuries of exegesis, this pastoral discourse is insistently ethical. In its most general sections, it can also be explicitly semiotic, concerned with how words are produced and interpreted, especially when it draws on patristic treatises on types of speech, like Augustine's De mendacio. Despite its cultural power, this pastoral discourse has been little known and less examined, perhaps because much of it survives only in manuscript. De lingua, a vast, late thirteenth-century treatise on speech - Sins of the Tongue and divine eloquence alike - had not, I believe, been written about in modern culture until the early 1980s, save for Harrison Thomson's note dropping it from the canon of Robert Grosseteste's works.9 I began reading the literature on the Sins of the Tongue with an eye only for blasphemy, driven by curiosity about why Robert Henryson's Cresseid is punished so harshly for what my students call "mere words," her blasphemy against Venus and Cupid. I was bent on 8 9

On the nature of textual communities, see Brian Stock, Literacy, pp. 1-31, 88-240, 522-7. De lingua's chapter on blasphemy was a major source for my "Inordinata Locutio" pp. 135-62.

Introduction interpreting this corner of "medieval culture as 'another' culture, admitting that it is not our culture and that the criteria for evaluating it must be sought within itself."10 Then the puzzling centrality of acts of errant speech in late medieval English and Scottish narratives prompted me to read about the various deviant types, some still central in our culture, like the detraction/slander of John Gower's lover, others almost invisible to modern eyes, like Jonah's murmur in Patience, still undetected as a pastoral Sin of the Tongue after several generations of scholarly interest in the text. Simply to juxtapose the pastoral texts with the fictive was to become aware of how pastoral discourse shaped structure, supplied images and terms, suggested the moral psychology of characters, and even, as in the case of Patience and Gower's "Tale of Ahab and Michaiah," provided the tale itself as an exemplification of a deviant type. Often these juxtapositions illuminated what was obscure to modern readers. Yet even as I began constructing them, I was directed by more than curiosity about the radical otherness of certain late medieval texts and was practicing more than intertextual reading. As the rhetorical theorist Paolo Valesio reminds us, "No dedicated and continued observation is free from ultimate belief."11 And ultimate belief is surely shaped in part by public discourse on what matters to us. The modern Benedictines, according to Paul Gehl, "took up themes of silence in answer to the propaganda excesses of the two world wars."12 As I have been reading and writing about the Sins of the Tongue for over a decade, several cultural debates have prompted me to look more analytically, and to look in certain ways, at pastoral discourse. From articles in Time to books by ethicists like Sissela Bok, writing on calculated deception in law, medicine, and political life has encouraged me - especially through its pleas to return to a more rigorous ethical analysis of speech — to examine how deviant types like lying had been constructed out of a scholastic moral theology rooted in Augustinian notions of will, intention, and social consequences (set forth in chapter 2, part II). This orientation was reinforced by the Iran/Contra hearings (perhaps more so, by the journalistic coverage), with their crude exchanges over what constitutes a lie and under what circumstances lying might be justified. More recently, the popular resurgence of speech norms, 10 11

Gurevich, Popular Culture, p. 216. Edwin D. Craun, "Inordinata Locutio," and "Blaspheming," pp. 25-41. 12 Paolo Valesio, Novantiquay p. 20. Paul Gehl, "Competens silentium" p. 128.

Lies, slander, and obscenity seen variously in the death threats against Salman Rushdie, in the revulsion against rap lyrics about killing cops, and in campus speech codes, has prompted me (much as it has David Lawton in his recent Blasphemy) to consider how the deviant is defined and how people are persuaded to accept that definition. What functions of speech are regarded as normative? By what social groups? What sign theory underlies such judgment? How does each aberrant type deviate from normative social practices? How does the dominant discourse establish authority for its metalinguistic claims? How does it model itself as normative discourse? In pursuing these questions, my second chapter moves beyond Carla Casagrande and Silvana Vecchio's largely descriptive approach to each pastoral treatise as systematic ethical instruction in the only extended study of the Sins of the Tongue, / Peccati della lingua. This discourse was constructed not simply to promulgate what is normative and errant, but to convert the errant speaker, particularly as it was used in preaching, directing confession, and other acts of oral instruction. In keeping with its basic Augustinian sign theory, it presents itself as a social instrument designed to achieve certain effects. Therefore, my second chapter (again moving beyond Casagrande and Vecchio) also examines its rhetoric, the means of persuasion (to adapt Aristotle's definition of rhetoric) which it makes available to the priest: its topoi, its means of establishing authority, its figural language, its ontological gestures.13 By way of example, I use only one deviant type, lying, since, in the words of John Gower's Genius "He [the tongue] hath so manye sundri spieces / Of vice, that I mai noght wel / Descrive hem be a thousendel."14 In this rhetorical analysis, I have benefited from the work of Jacques Le Goff, Roberto Rusconi, Thomas Tender, and other social historians (chiefly French) on the social uses of some pastoral genres, especially as construed from the texts themselves. Apart from that and some studies of treatises on preaching, I have chiefly worked alone in the largely uncharted area of pastoral rhetoric. Current rhetorical theory is too radically ahistorical (Valesio's Rhetorics is an example) to be of much use in examining a discourse so self-consciously produced by a newly ascendant reformist elite. 13

14

The term "ontological gesture'* comes from John D. Lyons' masterful Exemplum, p. 14, where it is defined as the reality a rhetoric claims to share with readers/listeners in their culture. John Gower, Confessio Amantis, III, 466-8.

Introduction My third chapter examines how this discourse on deviant speech is appropriated in Patience, the first of four extended Middle English narratives I treat. Such a dominant discourse permeates medieval texts of all genres in which some figure or a narratorial voice judges the speech of others. For example, Detraccio, "t>e werldys messengere," serves as the go-between of The Castle of Perseverence; in another Macro play, Mankind, the quartet of New Guise, Mischief, Nought, and Nowadays labors to manipulate Mankind with the seemingly spontaneous speech which he labels "japyng." I have chosen Patience and the other three narratives because, in them, clerical figures (priests, parodies of them, catechizing laics) mount the pulpit in order to label, interpret, and, often, seek to control the errant speech of the "medieval sinners" who take center stage in fourteenth-century English fiction.15 These whole texts - or crucial segments of them are dominated by the deviant speaker and the pastoral rhetoric of control. The narrator in Patience constructs his whole exemplary tale around Jonah's two bouts of murmur, speech which creates a false god out of the circumstances and emotions of the moment. John Gower's not altogether likely pastor, Genius the priest of Venus, directs the confession of a lover who gleefully uses deceptive speech to discredit his younger, more sexually experienced rivals (chapter 4). William Langland peoples the first four visions of Piers Plowman with somewhat authoritative, but non-priestly, figures - Will the Dreamer, Study, and Piers himself - who adopt pastoral discourse on turpiloquium (lewd talk) and scurrilitas in order to turn magnates against the seductive speech of the minstrels whom they foster with their power and wealth (chapter 5). At the end of The Canterbury Tales as we have it, Geoffrey Chaucer juxtaposes two catechists addressing the pilgrims on deviant speech, the ventriloquistic Manciple who subversively preaches verbal restraint in his mother's crudely prudential and disjunctive "clerical" idiom and the Parson who embeds a discourse on "the sinnes that comen of the tonge" in his instruction on confession. With each narrative, I examine how the clerical figure appropriates traditional topoi, similitudes, sententiae, and exempla - the resources pastoral texts make available on that particular deviant type or on verbal restraint in general - in order to achieve certain rhetorical effects with his audience.16 15 16

The term "medieval sinner*' is Mary Flowers BraswelFs in Sinner, p. 69. Although each narrative I consider up to "The Manciple's Tale" presents a different type of deviant speech, I do not aim to treat representative Sins of the Tongue. These are simply the

Lies, slander, and obscenity In the first two of these chapters, particular types of pastoral literature supply rhetorical paradigms for the clerical speaker. Patience is presented as an exemplum, a narrative which manifests a generalization in particular actions and utterances. In the Confessio Amantisy Genius interrogates the lover on types of sin, probing and instructing in ways dictated by interrogationes; the lover's confession follows the model formae confessionisy forms for penitents to use in making a "complete" confession. Then Genius tells exemplary tales in order to convert the lover from his deviant practices. Piers Plowman, in contrast, presents a loose melange of pastoral rhetoric on a specific sin directed to a particular social group {status), a rhetorical practice developed by thirteenth-century writers on preaching and directing confession. In all four texts, the pastoral figure promotes an alternative to the deviant word, even a remedy for it: the narrator's own self-abnegating scripturalism (and the voice of God itself) in Patience, the truthtelling speech of confession in the Confessio Amantis, the preaching of "goddes wordes" in Piers Plowman, the Manciple's self-serving closemouthedness, the Parson's pastoral discourse on sin as a penitential instrument. All these versions of pastoral discourse make its claims: to give authoritative instruction in verbal norms, to identify the deviant, to convert the sinful speaker. But the fourteenth-century narrative poet, as John Burrow has discerned in studying poetic style, builds preachers into loosely woven texts;17 in them, he juxtaposes the pastoral with other discourses and develops social relations between the preacher and other speakers. These complex contexts place the hegemonic pastoral discourse on deviant speech so that it is not only produced but, variously, extended, affirmed, recuperated, contested, subverted, and even trashed. In the process, its claims to be a metalanguage and its rhetorical efficacy - its two fundamental means of social formation - are measured and judged, sometimes straightforwardly byfictionalfigures,always obliquely by the poet. The pastoral speech code was not the only one to be woven into late medieval texts. A romance like Amis and Amiloun celebrates

17

types which interest the major Middle English poets the most. More obviously, I do not aim to treat all of the sins, some twenty-four in the most widely read pastoral text, Guillaume Peyraut's Summa de vitiis (more, in some other influential texts). Casagrande and Vecchio devote the last half of Peccati to the major Sins of the Tongue, surveying their genesis and treatment in the most influential theological, as well as pastoral, texts after the Fourth Lateran Council. John Burrow, Ricardian Poetry, p. 37.

8

Introduction chivalric reasons for shunning lying or keeping an oath, while, in thr Roman de la rose, the God of Love teaches commandments to his new vassal (Do not gossip. Rebuke those who malign women.) so that he will gain a reputation as a man worthy of being loved.18 Medieval culture was as plural in its codes for speech as figures in fourteenthcentury English fiction are in their responses to the pastoral code. Nevertheless, pastoral discourse on deviant speech had an uncommon power because of its composition by a militant literate elite, its claims to govern all speech, its authorities (biblical, patristic, philosophical), its use in confession (the gateway to the Eucharist), and its advocacy by (supposedly) every priest as a religious teacher. To examine its discursive character - that is, its semiotic foundation and, especially, its rhetoric - is to begin to decipher its social functions. To examine its production and placement within English narratives is to see how some literate late medievals judged its universalizing claims amid the contemporary Babel of contending discourses. 18

Amis and Amiloun, lines 914-24, 936-48, and 1093-104. Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, Le Roman de la rose, II, lines 2011—264. Another example: in a manual on the art of speech, the powerful legal counsellor and civil servant Albertano da Brescia advocates using a classical rhetorical device, the seven circumstances of speech, to screen potential utterances for any damage to one's social standing or commune (De arte loquendi et tacendi, pp. 94-118). On Albertano's concern for protecting his commune, see James M. Powell, Albertanus of Brescia, pp. 56-70.

The pastoral movement and deviant speech: major texts

THE PASTORAL

BATTLE OF OUR LORD AGAINST THE VICES

As literacy increased among Western Europeans in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries, so, Brian Stock argues, did scripturalism, the practice of using the written word to establish norms and values and so to control conduct. Then scripturalism was used to shape fairly small reformist communities like the Cistercians and the followers of Peter Waldo: "textual communities." In the thirteenth century, beyond the reach of Stock's studies, the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) and its offshoots, local synods, designed a movement of pastoral care to practice scripturalism within a far larger community: the entire Western Church.1 Its cadre of religious teachers were parish priests and mendicants, evangelists whose orientation differed greatly from that of the inward-looking monks who had dominated the church in the preceding centuries.2 Its central texts were catechetical formulas like the Creed, the Seven Works of Corporeal Mercy, the Seven Sins, and, behind them all, the Christian scriptures. Its basic scripturalist activities were preaching, directing confession, and admonishing individuals. This movement also produced its own texts, pastoral writing which presented catechetical material for priests to use in the religious/social formation of themselves and the laity. Although vast in quantity and varied in type, this pastoral literature constructs a "corporate social definition" of sin, one for all Christians to know and to use in governing their conduct.3 In it, sin in general is 1

2 3

Stock, Literacy, pp. 1-31; also Listening for the Text, pp. 1-5 and 23-9. Although Stock's eleventh-century textual communities and the pastoral movement throughout the West differ greatly in size, number of texts, and number of literate teachers, I think it is useful, for several reasons, to think of the Christian community which the higher clergy sought to reform as a textual community: a highly literate core created pastoral materials for the community; cultural formation was its goal; its catechetical materials were based on written authorities. Andre Vauchez, "Presentation," in Faire croire, pp. 10-11. Jonathan Hughes, Pastors, p. 143. See Thomas Tender, "Summa," pp. 122-3.

10

The pastoral movement and deviant speech defined most often in Augustine's dictum "Omne peccatum ... est dictum vel factum vel concupitum contra legem dei" [Every sin ... is something said or done or desired against the law of God].4 Sin is a criminal act against God, a deviation from divine law, especially as known in Christian scripture. In fact, series of brief definitions of sin - in treatises on the Seven Sins, distinctiones, and pastoral manuals alike - often include explicitly deviation from divine precepts ("Peccare est in preceptis ueritatis errare" [To sin is to stray from the precepts of truth]).5 What follows in all these pastoral texts is systematic exposition of types of sins, with virtually every definition, every metaphor, every specific prohibition justified by specific biblical passages and, often, other Christian texts, especially the Latin fathers. This scripturalism is not surprising in a pastoral movement initiated by a council which itself grew in part from Pierre le Chantre's drive, in the late twelfth century, to reform the Christian community with its own scripture.6 The agents in disseminating, and in enforcing, this corporate and authoritative morality were preachers/confessors, both parish priests and mendicants. When Pierre le Chantre urged Innocent III to convene a general council which would send out preachers, he characterized them as "predicatores bonorum morum et extyrpatores malorum" [proclaimers of good conduct and uprooters of evil]. His contemporary, Peter of London, saw preaching as directed against "crimina"; it was reproof or refutation of vices ("redargatio uitiorum"). So did Alain de Lille in his influential early "art of preaching." Several centuries later, a French vernacular sermon studied by Herve Martin images preachers as combatants "en la bataille Nostre Seigneur contre les vices."7 This combat against the vices, as Martin observes, benefited from 4

5 6 7

Alexander Carpenter, Destructorium, f. air; from Augustine, Contra Faustum, 22.27. See also the redaction of Guillaume Peyraut's Summa de vitiis with the incipit "Quoniam, ut ait Sapiens," ff. 50 v -l r , and the pastoral manual Speculum iuniorum, f. l l v . Sometimes this formula is stated exactly as in the Contra Faustum, "contra aeternam legem," or "legem" is glossed in Augustine's terms "eternam que est ratio diuina uel uoluntas" (Speculum iuniorum, f. ll v ). In these versions, sin is understood ontologically "as a derangement of the divine order," as Lee Patterson argues in "The Parson's Tale," p. 341. However, the general phrasing "contra legem dei" is far more common in pastoral literature. Speculum iuniorum, f. llv. For other definitions of sin as deviation from divine law, see Heinrich von Freimar, Summa, f. 85r, and Gilbert the Minorite, Distinctions, f. 85r. John W. Baldwin, Masters, I, pp. 315-16. Pierre le Chantre in Baldwin, Masters, II, p. 77. Peter of London, Remediarium conversorum, ff. 30M r . Alain de Lille in James J. Murphy, Rhetoric, pp. 304-5. Herve Martin, Metier, p. 197.

11

Lies, slander, and obscenity the close connection between preaching and confession established by the Fourth Lateran Council and the pastoral movement.8 "Predicare" was itself a broad term. It did, of course, signify delivering sermons, which increased in number and status during the thirteenth century. But it also conveyed, more generally, teaching others how to live a Christian life - catechesis in any form, like direct instruction and questions during confession.9 In all these ways, preaching was the principal means used by priests to move the laity (and, sometimes, other priests) to contrition and, then, to auricular confession.10 After the Fourth Lateran Council had required annual auricular confession and communion of all Christians, English diocesan statutes established a clear connection between preaching about sin in the vernacular and confession. For example, a statute from Worcester (1240) states that, since observing the Decalogue and fleeing the Seven Sins are necesssary to salvation, they must assume an important role in confession, and they must be preached frequently to the people.11 Many other English decrees, the work of over two dozen synods and councils from 1219 to 81, included the Sins and the Decalogue as required catechetical materials; the provincial constitutions among them, which applied to all English dioceses, were revived and enforced in the middle of the fourteenth century during pastoral initiatives by Archbishops Simon Islip of Canterbury and John Thoresby of York.12 In this way, religious teaching on sin and the act of confession itself were often tied to a series of authoritative written precepts, with their standards for conduct. Not only did this catechetical practice systematize the confessional process, but it also, as Roberto Rusconi argues, gave more personal control of lay religious life to clerics. As he directed confession, the priest applied the collective model to individual actions, based on the circumstances that were confessed, and he determined penances accordingly. His task, thus, was both educational and judicial. As religious teacher, he transmitted divine law, so that it could be observed for the sake of the believer's soul; as confessor, he worked 8 9 10 11 12

Ibid., p. 620. On the connection between preaching and confession in the conciliar documents, see Richard and Mary Rouse, Preachers, pp. 56-8. Roy Martin Haines, "Ecclesia," pp. 135-7. Vincent Gillespie, "Doctrina," pp. 40-6. Lester Little, "Les Techniques," pp. 88-9; David L. d'Avray, Preaching, pp. 50-1. Roberto Rusconi, "Predication," pp. 72-3. The provincial constitutions and conciliar decrees may be found in F. M. Powicke and C. R. Cheney, eds., Councils, II. On Islip's and Thoresby's pastoral programs, see Hughes, Pastors, pp. 143-61.

12

The pastoral movement and deviant speech to ensure that the law was respected and that transgressors were punished.13 As the frequent use of Augustine's tripartite dictum on sin suggests, sins of speech were an important category within this collective catechetical material. Christian fathers, Western and Eastern, had written on specific verbal sins prohibited by the Bible, like lying and blasphemy; monastic culture, with its valorization of silence and separation from the world, had enlarged on the perils of others, like murmur and scurrility. After Peter Lombard and his disciples made definitive for scholastic theology this tripartite way of analyzing sin in terms of its "matter," often in the mnemonic "peccatum cordis oris vel operis" [sin of heart, mouth, and work], it entered the new thirteenth-century literature on confession.14 In addition to this formula, specific verbal sins were also sometimes named in pastoral legislation. Archbishop John Pecham's basic catechetical syllabus (in the well-known Lambeth Council constitution "Ignorantia sacerdotum" of 1281) lists three among the progeny of the Seven Sins (boasting under pride, detraction and murmur under envy) and four under the Decalogue (blasphemy, perjury, false testimony, lying).15 Pecham's syllabus, like other lists of fundamentals in legislation, was designed as "a 'terminus a quo' rather than a 'terminus ad quern'" (in R. M. Haines' words).16 Of a half dozen thirteenth-century Latin manuals for parish priests which circulated widely in England, only one hews to Pecham's minimal seven verbal sins, while four include, under the Seven Sins, the nine designated as their "daughters" by Gregory the Great: boasting (under pride); whispering and backbiting (under envy); insults, outcries, and blasphemy (under anger); perjury (under avarice); scurrility and loquacity (under gluttony). The sixth manual, the pre-Pecham Speculum iuniorum written by the English Dominican Simon of Hinton about 1250-60, lists under the ancient tripartite formula some twenty-eight verbal sins, along with divisions of some and authorizing biblical passages.17 Naming, teaching, and extirpating verbal sins had become a fundamental pastoral activity. 13 14 15 17

Rusconi, "Predication," pp. 72-9 and 81-2. See also Tender, Sin, p. 346. Casagrande and Vecchio, Peccati, pp. 176-80; for a brief history of the Sins of the Tongue, see pp. 6—9. 16 Powicke and Cheney, Councils, II, pp. 902-4. Haines, "Ecclesia," p. 134. Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, CCSL 143, 31.45. The six pastoral manuals, in the order cited, have the following common titles, incipits (short form), and number of manuscripts, all as given (unless otherwise noted) in Morton W. Bloomfield et alia, Incipits. See the bibliography for the manuscript consulted; the folios are those containing the Seven Capital Sins and their offspring.

13

Lies, slander, and obscenity THE SINS OF THE TONGUE: PASTORAL TEXTS

A pastoral literature on deviant speech grew with these conciliar/ synodal decrees and with the rising status (and practice) of preaching and confession.18 At the turn of the century, several prominent French and English clerics - Alain de Lille, Pierre le Chantre, and Peter of London - had urged priests to labor at controlling speech, their own and that of others. These general writings on practical morality - sections from Alain's summa on preaching, Pierre's Verbum abbreviatum, and Peter's Remediarium conversorum include both a chapter (albeit a brief one) on "the sin of the tongue" or "the sin of speech" and chapters on a few specific verbal sins, usually Gregorian ones. All three texts survive in enough "English" manuscripts (that is, manuscripts extant in English libraries, no matter what their provenance) to justify drawing on them in this study when they contain material particularly germane to a Middle English narrative.19 However, their treatment of verbal sin is brief and subordinate in comparison with that in the Summa de vitiis of the

18

19

1. Oculus sacerdotis of William of Pagula (c. 1320), "Cum ecclesie"; 54 mss.; ff. 74r-90v. 2. Quinque verba, "Volentes simplicium sacerdotum"; 12 mss.; ff. 283 r -4 r . For the manuscripts, see Vincent Gillespie, "Manual," p. 112. 3. Papilla oculi of John de Burgh (1385), "Humane conditio nature"; 42 mss; ff. 149v-52r. 4. Summa de doctrina sacerdotali of Richard of Wetheringsett (early 13th century), "Qui bene presunt presbyteri"; 42mss.; ff. 12r~v. 5. Speculum sacerdotum, "Quoniam circa Deum"; 5 mss.; ff. 15r~v. 6. Speculum iuniorum, "Rationalem creaturam"; 15 mss; ff. 14V-21V. On Simon of Hinton as its author, see Leonard Boyle, "Notes," p. 260, and "Three English Pastoral summae" pp. 141-4. The Speculum's extensive material on the Sins of the Tongue synopsizes the second part of the ninth tractate of Guillaume Peyraut's Summa de vitiis. As Richard Newhauser observes in Vices, p. 144, vernacular literature was not only used in pastoral activities but also read, increasingly in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in households and religious communities. Vincent Gillespie summarizes research on lay interest in and ownership of catechetical books in "Vernacular Books," pp. 317-44. In the Summa de arte praedicatoria (1198), Alain de Lille wrote brief sequential, but discrete, chapters on verbosity, lying, and detraction (cols. 162-4). Just a few years before, Pierre le Chantre, writing his popular manual of ethics, Verbum abbreviatum (1191-2), added a brief chapter "De uitio lingue" to two on when a priest should keep silent and should speak out (f. 35V). Unlike Alain, he moves beyond setting restraints on loquacity to devising means for distinguishing good speech from evil speech. Both works survive in English manuscripts ten of the Summa and twenty of the Verbum (G. Raynaud de Lage, Alain de Lille, pp. 179-80; Baldwin, Masters, II, pp. 246-65). In the same decade, Peter of London compiled a moral treatise, Remediarium conversorum, from the Moralia of Gregory the Great, organizing it by the schema peccata cogitationis, locutionis, and operationis. In his eighteen chapters on "the sin of speech," he creates a sequence akin to Peyraut's: several chapters on verbal restraint in general, followed by a chapter each on a deviant type (six) and then a few remedies, ff. 30 v -40 r . Unlike Peyraut's Summa, the Remediarium treats the types briefly and is largely constructed from one text. It, too, survives in English libraries (Bloomfield, Incipits, p. 245).

14

The pastoral movement and deviant speech Dominican Guillaume Peyraut (Peraldus), the first massive compendium on the vices to be written after the Fourth Lateran Council (in the 1230s).20 Except for the idiosyncratic and uninfluential Speculum universale of the Poitevin preacher Raoul Ardent,21 Peyraut's Summa is the first text to treat, encyclopedically and expansively, both verbal sin in general and its particular types, furnishing abundant material for pastoral activities. Peyraut's great aim, as he explains in the opening tractate on sin in general, is to make all the vices known because "vicia summo studio at summa diligentia sunt vitanda.vitari autem non sunt nisi prius cognoscantur" [vices ought to be shunned with the greatest effort and attentiveness, but they are not to be shunned unless first known].22 To expound them all, he constructs for each of the Seven Sins a vast tractate, elaborately systematized by analytical classification, division, subordination and definition, and he appends a ninth and last, the "tractatus de peccato lingue." In a headnote, he carefully demarcates its three parts: the first, a general discourse on verbal restraint ("de custodia lingue in communi"); the third, a shorter one on remedies ("de remediis contra peccatum lingue"); and, in between them, as the bulk of the tractate, twenty-four chapters on specific Sins of the Tongue:23 blasphemia murmur defensio peccati (excusing sin) periurium mendacium (lying)/falsum testimonium detractio adulatio (flattery) maledictio (cursing) convicium (insult) contentio (quarrelling) 20 21

22 23

bilinguium (hypocrisy) rumor iactantia (boasting) revelatio secretorum indiscreta comminatio (blunt threats) indiscreta promissio ociosa verba (idle words) multiloquium (loquacity) turpiloquium (base talk) scurrilitas

For the generic characteristics of the treatise on the vices, see Newhauser, Vices, pp. 55-92. The Speculum universale, written in the 1190s, contains a book " D e moribus lingue" which resembles Peyraut's Summa de vitiis in setting forth norms for speech which enable deviant types - at least as many as in the Summa - to be distinguished and treated (161 r -81 r ). See Casagrande and Vecchio, Peccati, pp. 35-72. Since no later treatise k n o w n to me uses the Speculum's ethical system and since only five manuscripts survive, none of them in British libraries, it cannot serve as a major text for this study. Guillaume Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. air. Ibid., ff. E4 v -F2 r (part one), F2 r -I3 r (part two), and I3 r -I5 v (part three).

15

Lies, slander, and obscenity bonorum derisio (mocking good (people) pravum consilium (evil counsel) seminatio discordiarum (sowing discord)

indiscreta taciturnitas (imprudent taciturnity)

With this tractate, Peyraut frees verbal sins from the subordinate position they held in the Gregorian scheme, where they were relegated to a secondary level (as only daughters of the Capital Seven - or Eight at first) and their number was limited to nine, chiefly those seen as dangerous within a monastic culture.24 Not only does he elevate the Sin of the Tongue to the level of the Capital Sins by giving it a separate tractate structured like theirs but he stresses its gravity in the first part by valorizing the normative functions of speech from which it deviates and by cataloging its destructive consequences for all within the circle of speech: audience, subject, speaker. Then he multiplies the number of verbal sins, at once confronting the multifarious speech of a new, vital urban life25 and incorporating many sins central to biblical and patristic culture, as we shall see in the case of lying. Finally, to control speech with its extraordinary potential for good and for evil, he suggests a series of rhetorical, indeed ethical, practices.26 Peyraut's Summa circulated widely and quickly throughout Western Europe, not least of all in England. Hundreds of manuscripts survive, and redactions of all or part are still being discovered.27 The 24 26

27

25 Casagrande and Vecchio, Peccati, pp. 104-110. Ibid., p. 110. T w o other texts attributed to Peyraut contain several chapters o n keeping one's tongue. De eruditione religiosorum is a treatise o n the training of novices, not a pastoral text on the sins to be mediated to all Christians. Its two chapters o n the necessity for verbal restraint contain, in a reduced form, much material which appears in the first part of Peyraut's Summa (ff. 9 8 r 100 r ); one chapter advocates screening speech o n the basis of its circumstances and proscribes some verbal sins (ff. 100 r -2 r ); two final chapters present, again in a reduced form, material o n silence and other methods of verbal self-control used in the Summa (ff. 102 r -3 v ). The second text, De eruditione principum, contains much of the same material, adapted to educating princes (ff. 122 v -5 r ). In "Guillaume Peyraut," pp. 193-7, Antoine Dondaine lists over 320 extant manuscripts of the Summa de vitiis or the combined Summa de vitiis et virtutibus, including abridgments but not extracts. The actual number far exceeds his list, and currently there is no sure figure. Of Dondaine's 320 manuscripts, 33 survive in England. N o t all manuscripts contain the ninth tractate, but the numbers are so great that clearly it circulated widely in England. In "Continuing Life," pp. 140—1, Siegfried Wenzel records several redactions of it, extant in England, which include the ninth tractate. In addition, I have found in England three redactions of the ninth tractate. O n e , an undated Latin treatise o n the Seven Sins with the incipit "Nisi hoc vicium," concludes with a forty-page digest of the whole (ff. 151 r -71 r ). T w o Middle English treatises o n the vices derived from the Somme le roi contain closely related adaptations of much of it: one with the incipit "frende ne sybbe" (ff. 128 V -54 V ); the

16

The pastoral movement and deviant speech Summa seems to have been particularly valued by Peyraut's fellow mendicants as a tool in their work of preaching and directing confession.28 As a result, his ninth tractate gave definite shape to, even dominated, the post-Lateran tradition of analyzing and controlling acts of speech, finding its way into nearly all types of pastoral literature for over two centuries. In the mid-fifteenth century, when the Carthusian Dionysius von Rijkel composed a very late Summa de vitiis et virtutibus in the Low Countries, he rounded off his tract on the vices with a "Peyrautian" sequence on the Sins of the Tongue: a chapter on verbal restraint and sections on fourteen specific sins.29 Because of its wide use, its authority, and its comprehensiveness, Peyraut's Summa will also shape my semiotic and rhetorical analysis of pastoral discourse on deviant speech in the next chapter. A shorter but similarly structured and placed tract on "la male langue" was included in the Somme le roi (1279) by another French Dominican, Lorens d'Orleans (or de Bois), the powerful confessor to King Philip III. Compiled at the request of the king, this vernacular collection of catechetical matter falls into six largely unconnected treatises. The one on the Seven Sins concludes with "les pechiez de la guele" (in Middle English, "J)e synne of mout>"), divided into gluttony and "les pechiez de langue." After linking the two with a denunciation of the tavern as the well of both sins, Lorens briefly counsels verbal restraint and treats ten Sins of the Tongue: idle words, boasting, flattery, backbiting, lying, forswearing, chiding, murmur, rebellion, and blasphemy.30 So, while Lorens, like Peyraut, finds a distinct place for verbal sin among the Seven Sins, he integrates them more fully into the authoritative scheme by tapping the patristic and monastic association of uncontrolled speaking with uncontrolled eating and, especially, drinking.31 This miniature vernacular treatise on "la male langue" seems to have been read almost as widely as Peyraut's much grander Latin one

28

29 30 31

second with the incipit "Seynt Iohon \>e euangelist" (ff. 57 r -68 v ). Finally, the abbreviated version of the Summa de vitiis which Wenzel calls Quoniam contains much of the ninth tractate dispersed throughout (ff. 50 r -407 v ); it survives in t w o manuscripts. I will refer to it occasionally when it contains additional material. In "Guillaume Peyraut," p. 165, Dondaine cites Bernard Gui, the Dominican historian and bishop (also inquisitor), proclaiming that the Summa was "perutilis ad predicationem." Leonard Boyle records in "Notes," p. 257, that the great preacher and General of the Dominican Order Humbert de Romans wrote in his Instructions de officiis (1265) that librarians of chapters should have good copies of the Summa for ready reference. Dionysius von Rijkel, Summa, p. 148 ff. Lorens d'Orleans, Somme le roi> ff. 21 r -6 v . Casagrande and Vecchio, Peccati, pp. 142-5.

17

Lies, slander, and obscenity - partly in eleven Middle English translations and derivatives of the Somme.32 Some of the freer reworkings of the Somme create, in effect, a three-part Peyrautian sequence by appending, as a remedium to all the Sins of the Mouth, Lorens' interwoven material on the gift of wisdom and the virtue of temperance, which includes "mesure in word and speche." To furnish a fourteenth-century Middle English idiom for discourse on the Sins of the Tongue, I will use, instead of the Somme, one of these looser derivatives, the widely disseminated Speculum vitae (c. 1350-75),33 supplemented, where they differ significantly, by the contemporary but considerably less popular translation of the Somme, The Book of Vices and Virtues (c. 1375). In the Somme and all of these versions of it, verbal sins are presented in the vernacular as an essential part of fundamental catechesis, to be learned by all Christians through pastoral teaching or through reading.34 A third widely transmitted thirteenth-century text, the De lingua which is sometimes ascribed to John of Wales,35 follows the Somme in linking unrestrained speech to inordinate eating and drinking, 32

33 34

35

T h e Somme proper survives in seventy-nine manuscripts, containing all or parts, and the derivative n e w Mireour du monde, in ten, according to W . N e l s o n Francis in The Book of Vices and Virtuesy pp. xix—xx. Robert R a y m o lists all of the Middle English offshoots of the Somme, pp. 2258-65; I have found the Laurentian Sins of the T o n g u e in eleven: 1. Translations of the Somme: a. Asenbite oflnwit; surviving ms. finished in 1340. b. The Book of Vices and Virtues (c. 1375); three mss. c. Incipit "Sent Ion t>e Ewangelist in a boke t>at he made J>at men clepyn \>e Apocalips"; one ms. d. Incipit "Mi dere lord seynt Iohan in t>e b o o k of reuelaciones l>at is cleped t>e apocalips"; one ms. e. William Caxton's Ryal Book. 2. Derived works: a. Speculum vitae (c. 1350-75); forty mss. b. A Myrour to Lewde Men and Wymmen, a prose abridgment of the Speculum (c. 1350-75); four mss. c. Jacob's Well (early fifteenth century); one ms. 3. Version of the Mireour. Mirroure of the World, one ms. of the fifteenth century. 4. Works derived from the Mireour. a. Disce mori (early fifteenth century); t w o mss. b. Ignorancia sacerdotum, an abridgement of Disce mori; one ms. of the fifteenth century. Gillespie, "Vernacular B o o k s , " p. 333. In the "Speculum vitae: A n Edition," the Sins of the Mouth are found in lines 13824-14893, "mesure in word and speche" in lines 15661-784. In a colophon t o the w h o l e tract o n the Seven Sins o n p. 68, The Book of Vices and Virtues stresses individual study of sin, presumably both b y clerics and laypeople, as a prelude to confession and a life of self-control. The compiler of De lingua almost certainly also constructed the Summa iustitiae, according to Wenzel in "Continuing Life," p p . 142-3. Jenny Swanson, in her recent John of Wales, pp. 12-14, considers the Summa iustitae John's. If she is correct, De lingua is probably also his.

18

The pastoral movement and deviant speech but it is alone among my major sources in treating verbal sin apart from the Capital Sins. Its second book, which fills eighty large manuscript leaves (counting recto and verso), deals with the Sins of the Tongue in a three-part sequence akin to Peyraut's and, probably, indebted to him for its major arguments. A general section on the nature of verbal sin quickly gives way to sizeable separate chapters on twenty-four specific sins, followed by related material on hearing, undisciplined talk, taciturnity, and, finally, remedies. In addition, the first book treats self-control both in speaking and in eating and drinking. Almost all of the specific verbal sins in De lingua may also be found in Peyraut's Summa, and both contain nine of the Somme's ten.36 De lingua survives in at least twenty manuscripts, mainly of the fourteenth century and virtually all in English libraries.37 Less widely circulated in England, judging from its four manuscripts extant in English libraries,38 was the Tractatus de diversis materiis predicabilibus, written by yet another French Dominican, the preacher and inquisitor Etienne de Bourbon. Not the mere collection of folk tales which Lecoy de la Marchers nineteenth-century edition of its exempla would suggest, but a massive potpourri of preaching materials, it contains extensive catechesis on every topos it introduces. Under the gift of fortitude, treated chiefly as resistance to temptation, Etienne places many chapters on sin, including one on "the sin of the tongue in general" (between ones on sins of thought and deed). While his five specific verbal sins (flattery, blasphemy, detraction, murmur, and perjury) are dealt with separately under the Seven Capital Sins, Etienne begins his general chapter by referring both to them and to silence, their opposite and remedy. Silence then forms the following 36

37

38

In Oriel College Oxford MS. 20, the general section appears on ff. 151 V -5 V , the sins on ff. 155 v -88 r , the remedies on ff. 191 V -2 V , and the opening section on ff. 140 r -51 v . The sins not treated by Peyraut are colloquium cum mulieribus, vana laus bumana, and praedicatio peccati. Harrison Thomson lists twenty-two manuscripts of De lingua in Writings, pp. 252-3, but, of them, I have found that University College Oxford MS. 62 contains, o n ff. l r -63 r , the collection of distinctiones entitled De lingua et de corde ("Adulacio est D e o detestabilis"), while British Library MS. Harley 5369 does not contain De lingua. Bloomfield's Incipits adds one manuscript to this list, for a total of twenty-one. Thomson dates the earliest manuscript at 1300. De lingua et de corde and another alphabetized collection of distinctiones ("Accidia. Adversatur hominis salvatione") contain extensive extracts from almost all of the chapters on specific sins in De lingua. Bloomfield lists two manuscripts of the former, one of the latter. Bloomfield lists eleven manuscripts of Etienne's Tractatus (plus nine of an abridgment), of which three survive in British libraries; I have discovered a fourth: MS. Oriel College Oxford 68, ff. 5 r -434 v , which I will use below.

19

Lies, slander, and obscenity 39

chapter. As this Peyrautian grouping would suggest, Etienne's discourse was greatly influenced in its argument (on close inspection, even in its exempla) by the Summa de vitiis; indeed, he wrote it at the convent at Lyons, where Peyraut lived during the 1240s. In addition to these four widely disseminated pastoral writers, scholastic theologians and the master confessors of the summae confessorum wrote somewhat extensively on verbal sin during the thirteenth century. But their discourse is of other kinds. The specialized De lingua set aside, the three pastoral tractates or chapters on the Sins of the Tongue are contained within general treatises on the vices. In fact, their tripartite structure (and that of De lingua) resembles the texts' treatment of each of the Seven Capital Sins: an introduction to the sin in general showing its "abominabilem detestationem"; then chapters on the many subtypes ("daughters," "species," "branches") of the sin; finally, an exposition of the "remedia ad destructionem eiusdem peccati."40 As a result, their discourse on deviant speech is a subtype of their general discourse on the vices, designed less to define sins (establish their rationesy their fundamental characteristics) than to convert and control the sinner. They are, in the militant term of the fifteenth-century pastoral writer Alexander Carpenter, destroyers of the vices. In this, they differ sharply from scholastic theology, which cites authorities and reasons from them, using the disputative methods of question, arguments on opposite sides, solution, and answers to objections. Moreover, the major theological texts treating verbal sins - the Summa fratris Alexandria the Summa de vitiis et virtutibus of Jean de La Rochelle, the Summa theologiae of Albert the Great, and the Summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas - rarely consider the Sin of the Tongue in general (Jean alone does, and that briefly), and they never analyze deviant speech in a comprehensive, unified way, as the pastoral texts do when they elaborate reasons to restrain the tongue. Similarly, the summae confessorum stick to specific sins (and to only an inescapable few, like lying and backbiting), and they supply only a patchwork of passages, often quite lengthy, from theologians and canonists. Their approach is largely juridical, in the tradition of Raimondo de Pefiafort.41 39 40 41

The general chapter is on ff. 153 r -6 v , that on silence on ff. 156V-8V. The phrases come from Alexander Carpenter, Destructorium, f. aiiiiv, where he sets forth his modus procedendi in his introductory chapter on sin. Of the two earlier theological summaey the Franciscan Summa fratris Alexandri contains a series of quaestiones entitled "de peccatis oris" (III.III.III), all, as the plural suggests, analyzing specific types of verbal sin (ten, plus taciturnity). The kindred Summa de vitiis et

20

The pastoral movement and deviant speech The three thirteenth-century scholastic theologians who considered specific sins of the tongue at some length were members of the newly powerful preaching orders, as, almost certainly, were the associates of the Franciscan Alexander of Hales who compiled the Summa fratris Alexandri. As we have seen, Guillaume Peyraut, Lorens d'Orleans, and Etienne de Bourbon were all Dominicans, and, if De lingua was constructed by the Franciscan master John of Wales, all of our four major pastoral texts on the Sins of the Tongue came from the preaching orders. Particularly invested in the catechetical and evangelical speech of preaching and confession, the Dominicans and Franciscans came to frame sins of speech as its opposite, its other: speech which not only deviates from inscribed divine law, but also diverts listeners from sacred speech and pollutes the very God-given medium of teaching. The next chapter will explore this binary opposition in pastoral discourse itself. Now it is simply worth echoing Richard Newhauser, the typologist of the treatise on the vices and virtues: as Christians who valorized the spoken word, Franciscans and Dominicans "came to understand the need to instruct preachers, confessors, and the laity alike in the dangers inherent in the use of speech and in the necessity of safeguarding the tongue as occupying the same degree of importance as that of the more conventional categories of ethics [like the Seven Sins or the Cardinal Virtues]."42 Although "no other period [than the thirteenth century] witnessed such concentrated, complex, and systematic concern" with the Sins of the Tongue as a "system of sins,"43 later compilers also constructed extended pastoral discourse on deviant speech. However, they did so by drawing on thirteenth-century scholastic theology. From the 1290s to the late 1400s, post-scholastic encyclopedic pastoral treatises popularized a Thomas Aquinas and a Bonaventura, much as the penitential summae of the early thirteenth century popularized the

42

virtutibus of Jean de La Rochelle also focuses on specific types (five), although a first chapter "de peccatis oris," f. 105v ff., sets forth norms for speech which these sins violate: veritas, honestas, utilitas, rectitudo. Albert the Great's Summa organizes material on the sins under the Seven Sins, where several types are examined, but then it tacks on tractate XX, "de peccatis quae in verbis consistent," which considers four more. In Thomas' Summay thirteen verbal sins are scattered throughout as opposites of the virtues, though most are linked to a Capital Sin or two. The predominantly juridical and theological cast of the summae confessorum can be seen by a glance at the articles on lying: Raimondo de Penafort, Summa, pp. 97-100; Johannes von Freiburg, Summa, pp. xxixv-xxxr; Niccolo da Osimo, Supplementum, not paged but arranged alphabetically; Johannes von Saxony, Summa de poenitentia, ff. 176 v-7r; and Astesano da Asti, Summa, ff. 54V-7V. 43 Newhauser, Vices, p. 197. Ibid., pp. 195-6.

21

Lies, slander, and obscenity theological and legal thinking of the twelfth century.44 Expansive discourse on the Sins of the Tongue survives in two later treatises: the little-studied Speculum morale,45 for which I cannot discover any "English" manuscripts and which I must therefore use only in an ancillary way, and Alexander Carpenter's Destructorium viciorum (1420s), extant in three manuscripts, two of them in English libraries. The encyclopedic Speculum includes within its book on sin a general distinctio on verbal sin ("de custodia linguae"), followed by one on silence and other remedies; in between lies a list of thirty sins of the tongue, most shared with Peyraut's Summa and De lingua. The list refers the reader to chapters on each sin under one of the Seven Capital Sins.46 In effect, we have another Peyrautian sequence within a tract on the vices. Similarly, Carpenter's books on the Seven Sins contain chapters on thirteen specific Sins of the Tongue. General discourse on restraining the tongue, however, is confined to a brief subsection.47 Perhaps because the Speculum and the Destructorium import great chunks of scholastic theology (especially from Thomas Aquinas) and because they place specific verbal sins under their root vices, they develop more systematically than the thirteenth-century treatises matters of will, intention, and degrees of awareness in the deviant speaker. If we examine these later texts together with Peyraut's tractate, the Middle English derivatives of the Somme, De lingua, and Etienne de 44 45

46

47

Leonard Boyle, "John of Freiburg," p. 246. In many early printed editions, the Speculum morale appears as the third part of the widely read Speculum maius of Vincent de Beauvais. (Vincent himself appends a short section o n the Sins of the Tongue to his treatment of the Seven Sins in the popular Speculum doctrinale, cols. 395-401, but it is confined to specific types and is t o o brief to be used as a major text.) The Speculum morale has rested in scholarly limbo since the eighteenth-century Dominican scholar J. Echard argued convincingly from manuscript variants and from thirteenth-century texts cited in it that it was written b y a "forger" - probably several compilers (Scriptores, I, pp. 215-32). Serge Lusignan, Preface, pp. 91-111, n o w dates its beginning just before 1290.1 cannot find any census of surviving manuscripts, although three authorities each list one, apparently different ones: Jacques Quetif and Echard, Scriptores, I, p. 234; Bloomfield, Indpits, p. 228; B. Haureau, Initia, Appendix I, f. 228 V . The distinctio "de custodia linguae," Speculum morale, cols. 866-71; that o n silence, cols. 871-4. In col. 871 comes the list of the Sins of the Tongue: jactantia, ironia, simulata confessio, peccatorum defensio, contentio, impugnatio veritatis agnite — all under pride; detractio, susurratio, derisio, murmuratio, prauum consilium, secreti reuelatio — under envy; blaspbemia, conuitium or contumelia, litigium, clamor, maledictio, improperium, discordiarum seminatio - under anger; adulatio, multiloquium, vaniloquium, scurrilitas, indiscreta promissio, indiscreta comminatio, taciturnitas — under sloth; mendacium, periurium, falsum testimonium - under avarice; turpiloquium - under lust. The Destructorium treats extensively these verbal sins: adulatio, blasphernia, clamor, detractio, excusatio or defensio peccati, iactantia, iuramentum, maledictio, mendacium, periurium, susurratio/murmur, stultiloquium, and multiloquium. T h e subsection o n verbal restraint is on f. svr~v.

22

The pastoral movement and deviant speech Bourbon's Tractatus - four products of the period in which the higher clergy worked to privilege and standardize (somewhat) the activities of preaching and directing confession - we can see the range of expansive discourse on deviant speech which fourteenth-century English narrative poets and their audiences could have known. All of these texts are expansive enough to convey the cultural norms which shape this discourse and to run through the full rhetorical keyboard available for priests to shape, in turn, the speech of English Christians. Not one of these texts speaks with a single voice, but with the voices of the monastic culture of silence and restraint, the Augustinian crusade against lying by religious teachers, the Pentateuchal stories of a largely unknown deity who listens to how His people speak about Him, the Pauline admonitions against lascivious talk, the Aristotelian analysis of speech as a cognitive tool, and many other traditions transmitted by authoritative texts. They also, as I have begun to suggest, differ significantly from each other, often in the extent to which they appropriate each tradition. None the less, they witness to fundamental continuities in this discourse over two centuries: the Augustinian sign theory which directs it, a concern (Augustinian, too) with ethical intentionality and with consequences, a prudential discipline of verbal restraint, rhetorical material (exempla, similitudes, sententiae, enthymemes) designed to elicit revulsion for verbal sin. This discourse was also disseminated in more condensed forms, as I will show, in other pastoral genres: alphabetized collections of distinctiones, summae for preachers, shorter treatises on the Seven Sins, collections of exempla, and materials for priest and penitent to construct confessions (interrogationes and modi).48 Texts of these kinds I will draw into my rhetorical readings of pastoral discourse within English narratives when their formal characteristics or topoi invite such juxtaposition. Finally, these sources, compendious and 48

Several genres of condensed pastoral discourse have been omitted from this study because they can contribute little. The general manuals for parish priests do little more than list Sins of the Tongue, except for the Speculum iuniorum with its digest of chapters from Peyraut's secunda pars. Treatises on the Decalogue consider verbal sins only under appropriate commandments: blasphemy and perjury under the second, detraction under the fifth, lying and false testimony under the eighth. Their treatment is often brief and always dictated by the commandments. The structure contains no space for general discourse on deviant speech. In addition, I have omitted the vast country of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century sermons. Pastoral material on the Sins of the Tongue surely reached English narrative poets through sermons; sermons on detraction and lying, for example, have survived. But extant sermons are largely uncharted, while the pastoral literature for preaching and confession has been somewhat mapped out by Bloomfield's Incipits and by P. S. Joliffe's Check-List and Raymo's "Works."

23

Lies, slander, and obscenity (sometimes) reduced, Latin and vernacular, present subdiscourses on the specific verbal sins which engage the narrative poets: murmur and blasphemy (the Patience poet), flattery and detraction (Gower), scurrility and its near cousin base talk (Langland), idle words (Chaucer). Disce mori, an early fifteenth-century compendium of reading for a religious, declares that "l>e. leeues of forestes. / l>e fedres of briddes / \>e dropes of \>e rayne andfcegrauel of \>e see. if a man may nombre. / Jjan may he nombre l>e synnes. /fcatspringe of l>e tunge," and the Somme derivative A Myrour to Lewde Men and Wymmen (c. 1350-75) lists sixty-four "synnes of \>e mouth" (granted, an ampler category).49 Nevertheless, in this forest, these seven sins of the tongue are prominent, perhaps because they are extensively scriptural, even biblical, in origin and because most are Gregorian or monastic. Because of its distinctive history in texts, each has its own discourse, with characteristic sententiae, enthymemes, exempla> and metaphors, as well as definition and consequences - all to be examined within the chapters on Middle English narratives. But first we must attend to those basic discursive continuities, some of those main voices. 49

Disce mori ("Vnwilfully he deyethe," f. 177r). A Myrour, p. 126.

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The lies of the Fall, the tongues of Pentecost: typing and converting the deviant speaker By claiming that post-Lateran pastoral texts on the Sins of the Tongue constituted a type of discourse to be reproduced in pastoral speech, I mean to convey several interwoven dimensions of the texts this chapter will explore. As I have established, these texts were produced by a powerful social group within an institution at a historical moment, and they mark out a position of knowledge and authority for the speaker: the priest as preacher, confessor, and allaround catechist. This position involves certain conceptions of the verbal sign and certain categories of analysis, insistently ethical, which together draw the boundaries between the salvific or normative in speech and the destructive or deviant. As they represent speech in sharply defined, value-laden ways, these texts also present a rhetoric which works to persuade the authoritative speaker and, through him, individuals in his cure to adopt these concepts, values, and categories - above all, to adopt the verbal practices dictated by these ways of framing speech. Thus, discourse on the Sins of the Tongue is an instrument of pastoral power as presented by Michel Foucault: it aims to insure the salvation of individuals by imposing on them a "law of truth" which they recognize as valid in their consciences.1

Michel Foucault, "The Subject and Power," pp. 212-14. In his 1970 inaugural lecture, Foucault spoke suggestively about religious doctrine subjecting speakers to a certain kind of discourse but also subjecting that discourse to the group of speakers ("L'ordre du discours," trans, as "The Discourse of Language," p. 226). For discourse genres as linguistic systems which consciously work to finalize and control reality, see Mikhail Bakhtin and P. M. Medvedev, The Formal Method, pp. 133-5. Diane Macdonell formulates usefully the institutional origin and uses of types of discourse in Theories of Discourse, pp. 1-4, 23-42, although she gives a more deterministic account of the mastery dominant discourses exert than the medieval narratives I analyze below would support.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity THE WORD AS "MESSENGER OF REASON": AN AUGUSTINIAN SEMIOTIC

Pastoral discourse on the Sins of the Tongue is shaped by the simple fact that its subject involves its medium: words. As words claiming to identify what is deviant in speech, pastoral discourse must exemplify what is normative. And as catechesis, it must also expound the normative, treating the nature and proper function of speech. In its own terms, drawn from sacred history, it must recall the creation of humans as speaking animals and the re-creation of speech at Pentecost before recalling the lies of the Fall, all the while realizing in itself the ancient and Pentecostal functions of speech. And, as that very paradigm suggests, it creates a metalanguage by founding itself on the scriptural: ea que dixit dominus ad linguam cohibendam per semetipsum que in euangelio continentur et per suos prophetas et apostolos et doctores et ad earn iustificendam quid taceat et quid loquitur ... quecumque scripta sunt ad nostram doctrinam scripta sunt.2 [those things which the Lord spoke to restrain the tongue by Himself (contained in the Gospel) and by his prophets and apostles and doctors to show what should be kept silent about and what should be spoken ... (what things soever were written were written for our learning, Rom. 13:4).] For Guillaume Peyraut, deviant speech in and of itself also demands this far-reaching, many-sided treatment because it is the least eradicable of evil habits, as he claims in a headnote justifying why he has placed his tractate on it last in his vast summa on the vices: Ultimo inter peccata dicendum est de peccato lingue.quia istud peccatum remanet post alia peccata.Multi cauent sibi de aliis peccatis.qui non cauent a peccato lingue.3 [The sin of the tongue must be spoken about last among the sins because it persists after other sins. Many people who keep themselves away from other sins cannot guard against the sin of the tongue.] The difficulty of controlling the tongue is Peyraut's constant note. No biblical sententia is more often cited by him and his legion of 2

Etienne de Bourbon, Tractatus, f. 153V

3

26

Guillaume Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. E4V.

The lies of the Fall, the tongues of Pentecost followers than James 3:7,8: "For every nature of beasts and of birds and of serpents and of the rest is tamed and hath been tamed, by the nature of man. But the tongue no man can tame, an unquiet evil, full of deadly poison." This untameability the famous preacher Jacques de Vitry, Peyraut's near contemporary, amusingly illustrates with an exchange between a woman and her confessor, who has just prohibited her from swearing: "Per Deum de cetero abstinebo." Cui sacerdos ait: "Sit sermo tuus, est, est, non, non, sicut precepit Dominus, quod etiam amplius est a malo est." Cui ilia: "Domine, verum dicitis et ego vobis dico per beatam Virginem et omnes sanctos amodo faciam sicut injunxistis mihi et nunquam me jurare audietis."4 ["By God, 1*11 abstain from now on." To her the priest says: "Let your words be 'Yes, yes, no, no,' just as the Lord commanded." "Father, you speak the truth and I tell you by the Blessed Virgin and all the saints I'll do just as you enjoined me from now on and you'll never hear me swear."]

Peyraut, like the compilers of our other five major texts, begins by presenting general topoi to move the catechizing priests and, through them, the laity to the exacting practice of examining their words, those spoken and, better yet, those about to be spoken (his prima pars). The chapters on twenty-four specific Sins of the Tongue which follow in the secunda pars anatomize each type in moral terms and then cram in rhetorical material designed to sway the will of the deviant. The burden rests, then, on PeyraAit's prima pars (and comparable sections in the other long texts) to set forth compelling norms for speech, to valorize its nature and its function, both for individual speakers and for society. This Peyraut does throughout his eighteen topoi but especially in the first five, for, although his compilation lacks the logical structure of a theological summa, the order of its topoi, in keeping with the ordinatio of other late medieval compilations, manifests his sense of the nature of his subject.5 In this crucial metalinguistic labor, Peyraut and his fellow compilers authorize their discourse with that of St. Augustine, who, "constructed the basic medieval theory of words as signs in the enterprise of acquiring and transmitting religious knowledge."6 4 5 6

Jacques de Vitry, Exempla, pp. 91-2. A. J. Minnis, "Qompilatio" pp. 404—5; Malcolm Parkes, "Ordinatio" pp. 127-31. Marcia L. Colish, Mirror\ p. 8.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity Aristotle, as the great authority on the natural world and on ethics, is cited at times, especially in De lingua and usually to construct physiological arguments about the nature and function of the tongue. But it is Augustinian sign theory which informs most pastoral discourse, supplying its very ways of approaching speech, enabling it to distinguish what is deviant from what is normative. Augustinian semiotics can sustain this pastoral metalanguage because it is more capacious than modern structuralism. Like a Ferdinand de Saussure, Augustine constructs a semiologie: he integrates words into a general sign theory embracing "tous les objects de l'univers," defines the sign as both signifier and signified, distinguishes between the signified and the referent, and explains the differences between natural and conventional signs.7 Yet even in these matters, Augustine prefers to conceive of linguistic signs not so much in terms of how they refer to "un segment du monde" (a "relation de designation") but of how they establish a "relation entre deux interlocuteurs." 8 Given this social and functional approach, his theory of verbal signs also includes the social genesis of speech, the role of words in cognition, and the will and intent of speakers. In working toward such a comprehensive theory of communication for over twenty years (from at least De ordine in 386 to the final sections of De trinitate in 419), Augustine was driven by his desire to explore the roles of grammar, dialectic, and, especially, rhetoric in acquiring religious knowledge and, after 390, also by his pastoral concerns as a priest and bishop engaged in and supervising religious teaching. The pastoral compilers turned to one of their own. Peyraut begins establishing norms for speech by valorizing it as the instrument of discursive reason, given by God only to humans as rational creatures: Primum est quod dominus hominem in lingua honorauit pre ceteris creaturis.Nulli enim creature dedit deus linguam materialem ad usum loquele nisi homini.quod non paruus honor est... Secundum est hoc quod lingua quantum ad usum loquele organum est rationis.verbum vero nuncius est rationis sicut dicit Augustinus.et in solum rationem habentibus inuenitur naturaliter.9 [First, God has honored man in the tongue above other creatures for He has not given to any other creature except man a material tongue for the use of speech, which is no small honor... Secondly, 7 8 9

Marc Baratin and Franchise Desbordes, "Semiologie," p. 75. Tzvetan Todorov, "signe," p. 212; Symbol, p. 36. Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. E4V; also f. H10 v .

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The lies of the Fall, the tongues of Pentecost the tongue is the organ of reason inasmuch as it is used for speech. The word truly is the messenger of reason, just as Augustine says, and is found by nature only in those possessing reason.] In a similar vein, De lingua invokes Aristotle, "Locucio appropriatur homini soli" [Speech is assigned as a property to man alone]. Of the tongue's two Aristotelian "works of nature," taste and speech, De lingua continues, the latter is uniquely human, advancing us above all other creatures.10 Through speech, it continues, the tongue ministers to reason - in this context, as often in scholastic texts, that power or activity which moves discursively from one thing to another as it seeks to know truth in some intelligible form. Although Aristotle is used often in pastoral discourse to authorize this view of speech and of the tongue as the "proprium instrumentum rationis," Peyraut turns to Augustine to convey, in the metaphor of the messenger {nuncius\ the relationship between the spoken word and the reasoning mind of the speaker. This metaphor prefaces Augustine's account of how and why speech was created in his early De ordine (386). In it, he affirms the Aristotelian definition of humans as rational beings, conceiving of reason, like the pastoral compilers later, as "the mental operation capable of distinguishing and connecting things that are learned" and so a guide that we may use in knowing God or the soul.11 The activity of reason, he argues, is conveyed to others by two corporeal messengers: Duo igitur video, in quibus potentia uisque rationis possit ipsis etiam sensibus admoueri, opera hominum, quae uidentur, et uerba, quae audiuntur. in utroque autem utitur mens gemino nuntio pro corporis necessitate, uno, qui oculorum est, altero aurium.12 [I see therefore two things by which the faculty and power of reason can even be brought before the senses: the works of man which are seen and his words which are heard. In each case the mind uses a twin messenger, the one being for the eyes and the other for the ears, because of the body's needs.] As beings endowed with reason, Augustine argues, we were able to create verbal signs by associating certain sounds with certain things 10

De lingua, f. 140r; also Etienne de Bourbon, Tractates, f. 153V. Speech as uniquely human appears throughout Aristotle's works, including Problems 9.1 and 10.39, Generation of Animals 5.7, and Politics 1.2; so does the "two works of nature" topos (e.g., On the Soul 2.8 and Parts of Animals 2.16). 1 * Augustine, De ordine, trans, as Divine Providence and the Problem of Evil, p. 131. 12 De ordine, 11.32. The translation is mine.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity (res, that is, all objects of understanding [intelligibilid] or sense perception13): namque illud, quod in nobis est rationale, id est quod ratione utitur et rationabilia uel facit uel sequitur, quia naturali quodam uinculo in eorum societate adstringebatur, cum quibus illi erat ratio ipsa communis - nee homini homo firmissime sociari posset, nisi conloquerentur atque ita sibi mentes suas cogitationesque quasi refunderent - uidit esse imponenda rebus uocabula, id est significantes quosdam sonos, ut, quoniam sentire animos suos non poterant, ad eos sibi copulandos sensu quasi interprete uterentur.14 [Now that which is rational in us, that which uses reason and either produces or seeks after the things that are reasonable - since by a certain natural bond it was held fast in the fellowship of those with whom it possessed reason as a common heritage, and since men could not be most firmly associated unless they conversed and thus poured, so to speak, their minds and thoughts back and forth to one another - saw that names, or meaningful sounds, had to be assigned to things, so that men might use the sense almost as an interpreter to link them together, inasmuch as they could not perceive one another's minds.]

In this account of the origin of speech, reason, as a power which can connect things learned (sounds and res), not only made language possible, but, as the faculty which seeks to comprehend and then manifest what is true, it also drove us to know the thoughts of other rational beings and to convey ours to them. Similarly, when reason later differentiated all the sounds of the mouth and invented letters to associate with them, it did so to enable us to know the words of those who are absent. In these ways, Augustine emphasizes "the discursive character of signs, in themselves and in their effects."15 In De ordine, words are simply "signifying sounds," the medium for communicating from one intellect to another through the sense of hearing, of value to us only for their signifying function, not as a source of pleasure in themselves. Indeed, Augustine opens his great hermeneutical treatise, Books II and III of De doctrina Christiana (written ten years after De ordine), by claiming that humans should attend only to what signs signify - not to what they are in themselves ("ne quis in eis adtendat, quod sunt, sed potius, quod signa sunt, id 13 14 15

R. Darrell Jackson, "Signs," p. 102. Augustine, De Ordine, 11.35. The translation is Russell's, pp. 139-40. Mark D. Jordan, "Words," p. 192.

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The lies of the Fall, the tongues of Pentecost est quod significant"). The famous definition of the sign as dual object, signifier and signified, which follows, distinguishes the sign from other things which the senses may apprehend precisely by its effect on thought, its power, through its relation to some res, to prompt thought about something beyond itself in someone's mind: Signum est enim res praeter specium, quam ingerit sensibus, aliud aliquid ex se faciens in cogitationem uenire.16 [A sign is a thing which causes us to think of something beyond the impression the thing itself makes upon the senses.] In the argument of De ordine, we are sign-making and sign-using beings because we are, by divine gift, both social and rational beings for whom the highest form of sociability is expressing what we think to each other. To return to the Augustinian metaphor Peyraut appropriates, the spoken word, the signifier, has power and value because it is used by reason in disseminating knowledge to others and gaining it from them. In this process, it is the messenger of what really matters: the signified - a thought or a conception of an object or of a sign - which is ontologically prior to it.17 As they appropriate Augustine's insistence on the cognitive function of speech in society, the pastoral compilers stress that every act of speech is, by its very nature, ethical. "Finis locucionis est docere aut discere" proclaims De lingua as it introduces its subject: [lingua] per gustum ministrat corpori et per loquelam rationi quia secundum Augustinum libro de magistro finis locutionis est docere aut discere.18 [Through taste the tongue ministers to the body and through speech to the reason because, according to Augustine in De magistro, the end of speech is to teach or to learn.] The term "finis" is added by the compiler, giving this dictum a more teleological cast than it has in De magistro, an Aristotelian and scholastic stress on the ends which speakers pursue as they employ speech. Nevertheless, Augustine, too, considered speech - indeed, all use of signs - volitional. Consider his phrasing of the question that 16 17 18

Augustine, De doctrina Christiana, ILL The translation, On Christian Doctrine, is by D. W. Robertson, Jr., p. 34. See also Augustine, De magistro, 1.10, and Rudolph de Rijk, "Language," p. 101. De lingua, f. 140r. The Oriel College Oxford 20 manuscript of De lingua has "dicere" instead of "docere," but Jesus College Oxford MS. 110 reads "docere" (f. 5a), as does Lincoln College Oxford MS. 105 (f. 48r).

31

Lies, slander, and obscenity elicits that famous "docere aut discere" reply from his son Adeodatus: "Quid tibi videmur efficere velle, cum loquimur?" [What do we seem to you to will to accomplish when we speak?].19 The user's will to signify, he observes in De doctrina Christiana, is what distinguishes conventional signs (signa data) from natural signs. Smoke makes us aware of fire without any will or desire to signify ("sine uoluntate atque ullo appetitu significandi"), but humans will to signify every time they give a sign. And, he adds, with every sign given they seek to transfer to another mind what is in their own.20 Speech is inherently ethical because it always involves the will to communicate something to someone. It is not surprising that these pastoral writers found congenial the functional, cognitive, and ethical strains in the early Augustine's thinking on signs. Except for Alexander Carpenter, all of the compilers of compendia embracing Sins of the Tongue (as distinguished from those who digested established ones) were writing in the thirteenth century - and Carpenter draws extensively from thirteenth-century texts. Their contemporaries who theorized about language, the speculative grammarians, took from Augustine the dual nature of the verbal sign, the ontological priority of cognition, and the sign's central function in gaining knowledge from others, and, especially, transmitting it to them. L. G. Kelly even argues that they read Aristotle on speech and hermeneutics with Augustine in mind.21 Among the scholastic theologians, Thomas Aquinas despite his Aristotelian formulation of the relation of signs, minds, and res - continued the latter two Augustinian positions, arguing that words are subordinate to the "conceptus intellectus," which they were created to express by humans as "social craftsmen."22 Certainly, Augustine's definition of the sign became central to theological training once it had been included in the Sententiae of Peter Lombard.23 For grammarians, logicians, and theologians, as for the compilers, speech is the tool of reason, both in the sense that reason as the discursive faculty refers signifying sound to what is signified and in the broader sense that speech is used fundamentally for cognitive purposes. So, the Augustine of De magistro, De ordine, and, as we shall see, De mendacio is the Augustine the pastoral 19 21 22 23

20 Augustine, De magistro, I.I. Augustine, De doctrina Christiana, II. 1. O n the grammarians, L. G. Kelly, "Linguistic Sign," II, pp. 517 and 522; for more Augustinian presence in thirteenth-century sign theory, see Craun, "Verbum" pp. 149-50. Mark D . Jordan, Ordering Wisdom, pp. 13-25. John Deely, Semwftc, p. 18.

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The lies of the Fall, the tongues of Pentecost writers appropriate, not the Augustine who, in the late De trinitate sees language - first the inner word of mentation and then the spoken word it expresses - as conceived by love, not reason.24 Given the subservience of the spoken word to reason, Peyraut, Etienne de Bourbon, and the compiler of De lingua all argue from natural fact that only reason, the schoolmaster (pedagogus) of the tongue in Etienne's metaphor,25 should dictate what humans speak. De lingua constructs an argument grounded in Augustine's De genesi ad literam: since the author of nature created every organ to be directed by its own mover or power, the order of nature prescribes that the tongue, as the "proprium instrumentum rationis," be governed only by reason.26 If it is not, speech is inordinata, contrary to the laws of an orderly universe and as swift to introduce chaos as a seditious soldier in an army. After a similar argument, Peyraut reverts to his key Augustinian metaphor: to utter a word, the messenger of reason, without reason's control reduces the speaker to a beast (a iumentum, a plodding beast of burden), undeserving of the power of speech.27 Why would nature have given man erect stature and placed the mouth in the upper part of his body, if it were not to signify that speech is the servant of the rational soul?28 As they proceed in valorizing speech, the pastoral compilers promote certain rational uses of speech by prescribing the officium of the tongue (that is: proper function, imposed duty, sanctioned work, as in the "divine office"). For Peyraut that includes only four Goddirected uses, one of them, omitted here, non-verbal: "Est [lingua] enim deputata ad orandum.et ad deum laudandum ... et ad pertractanda verba sacra"29 [The tongue is assigned to pray, to praise God ... and to handle holy words]. In an exhaustive treatment of "the good tongue" of the just man covering 120 folio pages, De lingua adds only confession to these uses.30 Of these divinely instituted functions of speech, "handling holy words" is further valorized by being linked to Augustine's fundamental work of teaching and learning and by being specifically ascribed to divine inspiration. Sacred words, explains the Speculum morale, can be used for either sacramental or instructional 24 25 27

28 29

O n language in Augustine's early and late texts, see Craun, "Verbum," p. 160. 26 Etienne de Bourbon, Tractates, f. 153 V . De lingua, f. 152 r . Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. E5 r . The Speculum morale neatly digests these opening arguments, varying Peyraut's metaphor in an interesting way: "Item loquela in solis rationem habentibus inuenitur & lingua est rationis interpres [agent between t w o parties; expounder O L D ] ; & ideo nunquam debet homo sine ratione proferre sermonem," cols. 1222 and 1047. De lingua, f. 140 v , quoting Augustine's De civitate dei, XXII.24. 30 Peyruat, Summa de vitiis, f. E5 r . De lingua, ff. 192 V -252 V .

33

Lies, slander, and obscenity ends. While the former have the power to cure the sick, remit sins, and convert material things into the Body of Christ - all by sanctifying "creaturae visibiles per verbum Dei" - the latter can transform human conduct and even human destiny: Tertio dedit Deus nobis linguam ad proximorum salutem procurandam, docendo, monendo, consulendo, corripiendo, arguendo, consulendo [sic], & huiusmodi. Isa. 50. Dominus dedit mihi linguam eruditamy &c. Eccl. 6. Lingua eucharis in bono homine abundat, qua scilicet per Dei gratiam sciat, & possit proximos a malo retrahere, & ad bonum attrahere. [Thirdly God gave us a tongue to look after the salvation of our neighbors by teaching, admonishing, advising, rebuking, asserting, and such like. "The Lord hath given me a learned tongue" (Isa. 50:4). "A gracious tongue in a good man aboundeth" (Ecclus. 6:5). With this he, through God's grace, knows how to and is able to draw his neighbors from evil and to good.] In such apostolic instruction, the speaker's tongue becomes the instrument of the Holy Spirit, who moves others by speaking through him. Pentecost - always, with Babel, an index to a medieval writer's approach to speech - is interpreted by the Speculum as the divine gift of speaking words which are empowered to convert minds, wills, and acts: Vnde in linguis igneis descendit Spiritus sanctus in Apostolos, aliosque discipulos, ut ignea verba loquendo, infidelium mentes per errorem excaecatas illuminarent, obduratas ad poenitentiam emollirent, frigidas ad amorem diuinum vehementius inflammarent, & pigras ad bene operandum fortius excitarent.31 [The Holy Spirit descended in fiery tongues on the apostles and the other disciples, so that by speaking fiery words they might illumine the minds of the unbelieving (made blind by error), might soften the hardened for penitence, might inflame more passionately the cold to divine love, and might arouse more strongly the sluggish to do good works.] Whereas Augustine argues extensively in De magistro that all speech inevitably involves teaching and learning in the broad sense of conveying and seeking knowledge, the pastoral writers, then, develop 31

Speculum morale^ col. 867. See also Peyraut's Summa de vitiis, f. E5V and Etienne de Bourbon's Tractatus, f. 153V.

34

The lies of the Fall, the tongues of Pentecost only evangelical instruction modelled on that of the apostles, prayer, praise, confession, and liturgical utterances.32 The effect is first to privilege these types of speech over any other non-deviant ones (teaching geometry or buying bread), as the Summa does tacitly by ignoring others in its general discourse (the prima pars) and the Speculum does openly by demoting them: dedit nobis Dominus linguam ad conceptus nostros inuicem exprimendum, et ad corpus alendum et sustentandum, secundum duo opera naturae ad quae nobis est data, gustum, videlicet et loquelam; et quod est adhuc maius et melius, dedit earn nobis ad veniam impetrandam in confessione, ad gratiam et merita promerenda in oratione.33 [God gave us the tongue to express our thoughts to each other, and to nourish and sustain the body, according to the two works of nature given to us - namely, taste and speech - and, what is greater and better still, he gave it to us to entreat for pardon in confession and to earn grace and merits in prayer.]

(True to its word, the Speculum devotes only this bare clause to exchanging thoughts, but separate entries, to which the reader is referred, to confession and prayer, and surrounding paragraphs to praise, evangelical instruction, and sacramental speech.) Either way, other types of speech fade away, leaving only the salvific and the deviant. This embedded binary opposition is promoted by some theological formulations (e.g., peccatum locutionis/bonum locutionis as that which furthers salvation, in the Summa fratris Alexandri34) and by exempla drawn into pastoral texts from monastic culture, especially from the ascetic Vitae patrum. Etienne de Bourbon's Tractatus exemplifies how verbal sin makes the speakers odious to God, angels, and other men with an old, revered monk's vision from the Vitae: cum fratres conuenissent et loquerentur de eis que pertinebant ad edificacionem. uidebat sanctos angelos inter eos stantes et letantes. delectabantur in eloquio dei et leuabant et agitabant manus quasi deo gracias referentes. Cum autem de secularibus loquerentur uel de impertinentibus. statim angeli indignantes longius I recedebant et 32

33

Augustine may also have provided the pastoral compilers direction in valorizing only G o d directed acts of speech. When he considers h o w w e teach and learn through speech in De magistro, he analyzes at length the nature of prayer and of instruction directed to n o n believers; in both, the words stimulate the memory so that it recalls knowledge of God. 34 Speculum morale, cols. 866-7. Casagrande and Vecchio, Peccati, p. 191.

35

Lies, slander, and obscenity demones in specie porcorum accedebant et delectabantur uolutantes et pleni fetoribus polluebant eos. I Cum autem loquerentur de edificacione uerum ueniebant angeli ut prius agentes et mouentes manus lauabant eos a sordibus.35 [When the brothers came together and spoke about things pertaining to edification, he saw holy angels standing among them and rejoicing; they delighted in the language of God and lifted up their hands and moved them as if returning thanks to God. However, when they spoke about worldly things or about things not pertaining [to edification], immediately the angels, full of righteous anger, drew back quite far and demons in the form of pigs drew near and were delighted; turning about and full of filth, they defiled them. However, when they spoke about edifying matters, truly the angels came as before; putting forth their hands and moving them, they washed the filth from them.] Made powerful here by the idiom of pollution, in which the perfect or holy is juxtaposed with the incomplete or defiled,36 this dichotomy is tied even more closely to the binary categories of salvation and damnation in more condensed pastoral discourse. Jacob's Well, an early fifteenth-century version of Lorens' Somme, descants in this way on the popular Sin-of-the-Tongue text "Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall render an account for it in the day of judgment" (Mt. 12:36): 3if JJOU haddyst openyd t>i tunge & stynkyng mowth to haue praysed l>i god, t>ou schuldest haue sungyn wyth aungellys in heuen, wyth-outyn ende, "Sanctus! sanctus! sanctus! dominus deus omnipotens" ... & for l>ou hast no3t openyd \>i mouthe to prayse J>i god, but spekyn ydell woordys, & iapys, lesynges & ofrere slaundere, terfore 3ellyng, roryng, & wepyng, J)ou schalt cryin wyth feendys in helle, wyth-outyn ende, "ve! ve! ve! quante sunt tenebre."37 A scholastic version of this binary opposition prompts Casagrande and Vecchio to claim that discourse on Sins of the Tongue is less about speech per se than about "privilegio e . . . monopolio clericale sulla parola" for it vindicates the dignity of speech used for a religious 35

36

37

Etienne de Bourbon, Tractatus, f. 156 r ; also Speculum morale, col. 869. In reduced versions, this vision occurs in several collections of exempla, like the one with the incipit "Quando h o m o habet filium." Mary Douglas, Purity, pp. 51-7. Pastoral compilers, like Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. E5 r " v , and those w h o put together the Speculum morale, cols. 867-9, often resort to the idiom of pollution when they urge readers to shun verbal sin. Jacob's Well, pp. 228-9.

36

The lies of the Fall, the tongues of Pentecost function, especially preaching.38 In one sense, of course, this is so. Pastoral discourse on deviant speech is metalinguistic, and with it some clerics set norms for all speech which valorize the salvific word. In another sense, their claim is misleading, skewing the texts because of their own binary opposition of the lay and the clerical. Except for liturgical speech (often subordinated), sacred speech is, in the treatises, the proper language for all humankind. Even the Pentecostal eloquence of the Speculum morale is not limited to preachers or the learned; all Christians, the Speculum urges, ought to use it to edify their fellows, as the saints have done.39 THE DEVIANT WORD: THE CASE OF LYING

This Augustinian social and cognitive view of speech which conceives of the spoken word as the "messenger of reason" informs pastoral typification and analysis of transgressive speech. In the chapters on specific Sins of the Tongue linked to this general discourse, varieties of speech are labelled as deviant and then proscribed because they depart from, even subvert, the communally assigned, divinely approved norms. In the process, the types, like flattery, backbiting, or perjury, are often anatomized in terms of what they signify, the will of speakers, speakers' intended effects, and the actual consequences. While this pastoral analysis is sometimes given precision by scholastic dialectical modes derived from Aristotle, especially in the post-scholastic compilations, its basic ways of approaching the process of signifying are dictated by Augustinian sign theory, particularly by its social and ethical dimensions. In the treatises, a deviant utterance is a fall, not a slip, of the tongue. Particular types are often traced not to the Babel of Genesis, that story of linguistic multiplicity which fascinates fabulists like Dante and Gower, but to the Fall of Genesis, where the first sins involve the conscious abuse of words. Satan's "You shall not surely die" is recalled by Carpenter as the first lie on earth, the prototype of all human lies, while in a redaction of Peyraut's Summa de vitiis it is Cain's lying answer "I know not. Am I my brother's keeper?" which brings down God's curse of exile - not his murder of Abel. Adam's first words after he disobeys God are commonly seen as the Ur-excuse for sin: "The 38

Casagrande and Vecchio, Peccati, p. 192.

37

39

Speculum morale, col. 867'.

Lies, slander, and obscenity woman, whom thou gavest me to be my companion, gave me of the tree, and I did eat." 40 It is the will to abuse verbal signs and the intended effect - in these three cases the intention to deceive others with signs - which fundamentally make speech deviant for the pastoral compilers, as for Augustine as both a theorist of signs and a religious teacher using signs. Let us take the case of lying, central in catechetical literature because of the Eighth Commandment ("Do not bear false witness") and because it is closely related to other forms of deceptive speech. (Carpenter, for example, groups it together with evil judgment, unjust accusation, unjust advocacy [chiefly at law], false testimony, excusing sin, and flattery, giving it pride of place.) In one respect lying is a special case. Because of the overwhelming influence of Augustine's two treatises on lying, De mendacio and Contra mendacium, Augustinian sign theory dominates pastoral discourse on lying more explicitly and completely than that on any other verbal sin. That recognized, we will find this very explicitness useful in seeing how the pastoral compilers draw on it in analyzing transgressive speech and how they modify it, given their own pastoral concerns and contemporary social conditions. 41 "Quid sit mendacium?" The treatises usually begin by setting forth the ratio of any Sin of the Tongue, its essential elements as expressed in a pithy and authoritative definition. In the post-scholastics, this definition may be expounded at length, each element analyzed in a paragraph or so; in the earlier writers, exposition is usually brief, and, at times, they omit definitions altogether, especially with readily graspable types like loving rumors and sowing discord. On lying, Peyraut invokes Augustine: "Est autem mendacium secundum augustinum. Falsa significatio vocis cum intencione fallendi"42 [Indeed, according to Augustine, lying is using a sign to make someone think of something false, with the intention of deceiving]. (There is no adequate translation, as a glance at discussions of the term significatio in the Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy will show.43) 40 41

42 43

Satan in Carpenter, Destructorium, f. ev r ; Cain in Quoniam, f. 301 r ; Adam in Destructorium, f. fiiiir and Speculum morale, col. 1011. T w o of our major pastoral treatises will not appear in this section. O n lying, De lingua eschews analysis, directing readers to "the masters of the schools" for that and confining itself to biblical sententiae, metaphors, and tales. Etienne de Bourbon omits lying altogether, treating only Gregorian verbal sins - and not all of them. Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. G6 r . See also Speculum morale, col. 1277; Carpenter, Destructorium, f. eii v ; Vincent de Beauvais, Speculum doctrinale, col. 395. Norman Kretzmann, ed., Cambridge History, pp. 161-73 and 188-96.

38

The lies of the Fall, the tongues of Pentecost This compact, memorable formula was derived from De mendacio (and perhaps also the later, derivative Contra mendacium\ in which Augustine argues knottily the radical position that no one should utter a lie, no matter what the intent or the circumstances - even to save the life or the chastity of another. As in De magistro, he approaches speech from the angle of what the speaker seeks to accomplish by using signs; from De ordine as well as De magistro he takes the notion that humans invented spoken signs so that, as social beings endowed with reason, they could express their thoughts to each other. What De mendacio explores is why speakers transgress this normative purpose and practice by uttering what they know to be false. This deviant act Augustine traces to the speaker's will and intention, focusing on the speaker's moral defect, not on the false statement.44 Like Augustine, the pastoral writers turn their attention only briefly, though first, to the actual expression of what is false with a vox, a technical term from Augustinian sign theory defined by Carpenter as any sign, even a nod, which is capable of signifying the true and the false.45 This "enunciatio falsi" the post-scholastics among them term the "matter" of the lie, the first of three Aristotelian causes - material, formal, and efficient - which they, following Thomas Aquinas, use to anatomize the lie as Augustine defines it. (The fourth cause, the final or teleological, finds no part in this anatomy.) But unlike their avowed master Thomas, they do not discuss the material aspect of the lie in terms of falsity in general, exploring the relation between the perceiving mind and extramental objects and that between signs and thoughts.46 At times, especially when considering the Aristotelian position that lying consists of transgressing the truth by excess (boasting) or defect (selfdepreciation), the later Speculum and Destructorium use the Thomistic term aequalitas, stating the relation of mind to thing and sign to thing thought in terms of correspondence.47 As the word aequalitas suggests, for true speech to occur, the intellect must first of all take a reasonably exact measure of something intelligible; then it signifies 44

45 46 47

In Tradition, pp. 189-98, Marcia Colish traces the various reformulations of lying which Augustine hammered out in works with different polemical purposes or different foci. What is constant is his insistence on intention and a wrong moral attitude toward truth; what varies is whether or not objective untruth is a necessary part of the definition. Carpenter, Destructorium, f. eii v . Thomas Aquinas, Summa tbeologiae, II.II. 109 and 110. Carpenter, Destructorium, f. eiiir; Speculum morale, col. 1278; Thomas Aquinas, Summa tbeologiae, II.II. 110,2.

39

Lies, slander, and obscenity that thought, and through it that something intelligibile, in voces which can convey them to others because of conventionally created associations between voces and thought and things.48 Outside of contexts where such scholastic thinking on this triadic relation of mind, sign, and res is invoked, all of the pastoral texts on lying - and indeed on all deviant speech - simply assume that spoken words are associated sufficiently in our minds with things, conceptions, and other signs that they can direct us to them - or help us to recollect them, as Augustine would insist.49 In short, the treatises are too interested in falsehood to explore the nature of falsity. (This is surely one reason why the elaborate contemporary studies on the theory of signification and the theory of fallacy, the labor of grammarians and dialecticians, are not drawn into pastoral discourse on deviant speech.) The traditional etymology which Carpenter gives for mentiri tells all: "mentiri est contra mentem ire.&inde mendacium quod est falsum mentis signum"50 [to lie is to go against the mind, whence the lie, which is a sign false to the mind]. For him and for the compiler of the Speculum, both citing Thomas Aquinas, lying always springs from the will to express a falsehood, the will to use a sign to convey what is incongruous with what one actually perceives or thinks.51 This is the formal aspect of the lie: that which gives an utterance the particular nature {species) of lying. Their essential liar, then, is Augustine's: a man with a "duplex cor," one part of him thinking what he knows or (in some Augustinian formulations) thinks to be true but does not express, one part what he knows or thinks to be false yet expresses as true.52 Even if someone who wills to express a falsehood happens to utter what is true because he believes it to be false, he is still a liar. He is only truthful incidentally {per accidens, in scholastic terminology).53 Just as Augustine insists in general that acts of speech involve the will to utter something and so are inherently ethical, so 48 49

50 51 52 53

Thomas Aquinas, Expositio... Peri Hermeneias, I.III.7. Augustine, De magistro 9-10, 20, and 40; see R.A. Markus, "St. Augustine," pp. 67-72. For Augustine's early thinking about the relation of signs to signijicata, see Baratin and Desbordes, "Semiologie," pp. 97-8, and Jackson, "Theory of Signs," p. 135 ff. Carpenter, Destructorium, f. eii v ; in a reduced version, Speculum morale, col. 1277, Jean de La Rochelle, Summa de vitiis, f. 105 v , and Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II.II. 110,1. Also Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. G6 r . O n the willful misuse of signs in Augustine, see Timothy Reiss, Discourse, pp. 85-90. Carpenter, Destructorium, f. eii v ; Augustine, De mendacio, III. Speculum morale, col. 1277; De mendacio III.

40

The lies of the Fall, the tongues of Pentecost the pastoral writers maintain that the will to utter a falsehood gives an expression the moral nature of a lie. In this Augustinian tradition, then, lying involves speakers' moral dispositions toward what they believe to be true and false. The lie is generated by "a misguided sense of what is to be loved or hoped for" 54 and is associated in pastoral texts with certain passions which can move the will more than truth. Fear, Peyraut notes, prompted Peter to deny Christ; anyone who wishes to shun lying must remove all fear of other humans. Above all, in the ubiquitous Gregorian metaphor expressing the relationship between a Capital Sin and sins to which it leads, lying is the daughter of avarice, the Capital Sin under which it is placed in the Speculum morale and Carpenter's Destructorium. Avarice in Peyraut's Summa moves Judas to testify falsely against Jesus, Ananias and Saphira to lie to the Apostles, and Cain to speak that first human lie. Because of the circumstances of their work, certain trades are most inclined to lie out of greed: merchants (according to Peyraut and the Fasciculus morum), lawyers (according to Carpenter), minstrels and heralds "tat tellen bourdes and lesynges and laughtres to solase wit> folke," according to The Book of Vices and Virtues.55 While this willed deviation from what a speaker believes to be true constitutes lying as a moral act per se, the authoritative Augustinian definition emphasizes the intention to deceive someone. From the Stoics, Augustine derived the belief that intentionality was "the norm of ethical acts," a position reinforcing the New Testament stress on "ethical intentionality." 56 From his early De dialectica on, he distinguishes between the spoken, corporeal word (verbum, as a type of vox) and intentions, intramental knowledge voiced only to the self. This distinction operates in all of his works which examine "negative or privative statements": lies, heresies, fables.57 So engaged is he with intentionality in speech that he considers at length whether or not someone lies if he tells what he believes to be the truth in order to deceive, as in the case of a man who tells an acquaintance who mistrusts him that there are bandits on a certain 54 55 56 57

Marcia L. Colish, " T h e o r y / ' p. 30, and Tradition, p. 191. All references to Peyraut are from the Summa de vitiis, f. G8 r ; Fasciculus morum, pp. 163 and 344; Carpenter, Destructorium, f. fiiii v ; Book, p. 61. Colish, "Theory," pp. 34 and 42. Colish, Mirror, pp. 39 and 51; o n the distinction between verbum and intention, see her Tradition, pp. 181-90.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity road so that he, distrusting the speaker, will take that road and fall into their hands.58 This Augustinian stress on ethical intentionality informs pastoral treatment of most verbal sins, as the Speculum morale indicates when it begins assessing the moral nature of detractio with this principle: "peccata verborum maxime sunt iudicanda ex intentione dicentis" [sins of words ought especially to be judged by the intention of the speaker].59 The intended effect could be used by the pastoral treatises, as it is by Augustine, to gauge the relative moral gravity of different types of lies: three general types - the helpful, humorous, and malicious - and eight subtypes from De mendacio XIIII and XXI, with the two Aristotelian types (boasting and self-depreciation) added by the post-scholastics. The helpful (officiosum) lie is the lightest. Although speakers of the helpful lie intend to deceive others, argues Carpenter (citing Augustine), they also act from some good will toward still others, as in the Augustinian cases of liars who tell thieves that someone's goods are in the wrong location or who tell someone planning to seduce a virgin that she is a leper.60 No matter what distinctions can be made in a liar's intentions, the pastoral texts follow Augustine in judging every lie as inherently sinful: For Saynt Austayn frat haly man Says bus, as I shewe can, I>at how euer a man goode dose To stir thurgh leesfcathe vse, Alle way his awn harme dose he Wharfor byrnand lees syn may be. 61

Their grounds are the very principles used to valorize speech in Augustine's early treatises, De lingua, Peyraut's Summa, and the Speculum: every lie involves consciously and willingly misusing spoken words, which are signs of thought. On this basis, Jean de La Rochelle's scholastic Summa de vitiis dismisses acts of dissimulation 58 59

60 61

Augustine, De mendacio, IIII. Speculum morale, col. 1145; see also Carpenter o n detractio and adulatio, Destructorium, ff. Dvii v and gii v . The Speculum, col. 1278, and the Destructorium, f. eii v , follow Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II.II.110,1, in reducing the liar's intention to deceive to a "finishing touch," as the Blackfriars translation has it: an intended effect which fully realizes their conception of lying but is not a necessary element. This intent to deceive, like the utterance itself, springs from the will, but in secondary movement of appetite. Carpenter, Destructorium, ff. eiii v -eiiii r ; o n the helpful lie, see also Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. G7 V , and Speculum morale, col. 1278. Speculum vitae, lines 14289-94.

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The lies of the Fall, the tongues of Pentecost as lies, arguing from Augustine's metaphor of the nuncius: "opus non est proprie nuncius mentis" [an action is not properly a messenger of the mind].62 Words, like the mental language which generates them, are. primarily seen as a "medium for truth."63 As rational creatures, Carpenter argues, we naturally desire to know what is true and consequently hate every lie as the opposite of truth. Even the devil, he adds, had enough sense of decorum to shun the form of a rational being when he took shape in Eden in order to tell the first lie. In explaining why every lie is sinful, Carpenter also recalls the social genesis of language set forth by Augustine, in this case in a lucid synopsis of his thought on lying in the late Enchiridion (421-3): in suo encheridion vtique inquit verba propterea sunt instituta non vt per ea seinuicem homines fallant: sed vt eis quisquis in alterius notitiam cogitationes suas proferat.verbis igitur vti ad fallatiam non ad quod instituta sunt peccatum est.64 [In his Enchiridion he certainly says that words were instituted not so that men might deceive one another with them but so that with them anyone might bring his thoughts into the knowledge of another. Therefore, to use words for the purpose of deception, not for what they were instituted for, is a sin.]

To pervert words by using them to convey what is not in the mind, then, is to commit a fundamental injustice against other humans and against the natural order as reason perceives it. To lie is to violate the communion of minds which speech makes possible. As the opposite of what is true, every lie also involves an injustice against God. The liar, Peyraut argues, not only assumes a false outward appearance, like the devil, but also shuts up in his heart truth which is the likeness of God ("dei similitudo"). From this Augustinian perspective, anything true can serve as a sign of God, a vehicle for knowing him. Displeased with what truth is provided by inner illumination sparked by speech or sense experience, the liar degenerates into a corrupt Satanic maker of that which is not: 62 63

64

Jean de La Rochelle, Summa de vitiis, f. 107 r . Colish, Mirror, p. 25. In an interesting variation on Peyraut, the fourteenth-century English derivative Quoniam draws in Plato's Timaeus on the communicative function of signs. Lying is a mortal sin, it argues on f. 300 r , because the liar "abutitur que data est homini ut exprimat mentis conceptum.ut ille uoces sunt uoces passionum que sunt in anima et plato in thimeo dicit quod ad hoc ordinata est sermonis communicatio ut presto sint uoluntatis inditia." I have not seen elsewhere in pastoral discourse Plato's concept that voces convey the soul's passions, although it appears in theological summae and speculative grammars. Destructorium, f. eiiiir; Carpenter is quoting Augustine, Enchiridion 22. 43

Lies, slander, and obscenity Multum videtur esse corruptus mentiens cui potius placet quod non est quam quod est.Et multum videtur habere oculos infirmos.cum tenebre falsitatis ei placeant.et lumen veritatis ei displiceat.corruptionem hominis mendacis insinuat Augustinus.super illud Psalmiste. Perdes omnes qui loquuntur mendacium.dicens.Merito perditur mentiens. quia declinat ab eo quod est in illud quod non est.65 [The liar, whom what is not pleases rather than what is, greatly seems decayed. And he seems to have very weak eyes since the darkness of falsity pleases him and the light of truth displeases him. Augustine conveys the depravity of the man who lies when he says about the Psalmist's "Thou wilt destroy all that speak a lie" that he who lies is destroyed deservedly because he deviates from that which is into that which is not.] In choosing to utter what is false, the liar authors non-being, the privation of what is created by God and what humans require to fulfill themselves - always, for Augustine, the nature of evil. So, the pastoral texts follow Augustine in proscribing all lies for Christians. N o matter what the intent of the speaker, the conscious expression of what is false disrupts the essential work of teaching and learning through words, the end of which is the knowledge of truth and thus God. 66 While any false statement may inhibit an auditor's cognitive growth, it is the general social effects - intended or not - of the deceptive word on religious instruction and on speech as a whole that most concern Augustine and the pastoral writers as evangelists of a revealed religion. Perhaps because of his position as the episcopal overseer of preachers and catechists, Augustine restricts his analysis of the consequences of lying to supposedly helpful lies told by the teachers themselves either to save people from death or sin or to convert them to Catholic orthodoxy. Time and again he argues that the religious teacher who lies not only makes himself ineffective by destroying others' trust in his word, but also undermines that trust in authoritative witnesses which is necessary if one is to accept revealed doctrine. 67 Peyraut removes this onus from catechists alone. His more generalized discourse presents the church as only one victim, though

65 66 67

Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. G7 r , quoting Augustine's Enarrationes p. 22; the preceding argument is o n f. G6 r . C. Jan Swearington, Rhetoric, pp. 195-203. De mendacio, VIII and XIX; Contra mendacium, IIII.

44

in Psalmos, X X X V I I I ,

The lies of the Fall, the tongues of Pentecost a crucial one, of all those who lie, destroying trust in everyone who uses signs: peccatum istud valde nociuum est ecclesie dei facit enim quod vix alicui fides adhibeatur.Iero.Mendaces faciunt vt vera dicentibus non credatur. [That same sin is especially harmful to the church of God for it leads to faith being granted scarcely to anyone. Jerome: "Liars cause those speaking true things not to be believed."] In an untrustworthy world of lies, moreover, people suspect that their own words are mistrusted so they turn to oaths, even perjury, in a desperate attempt to secure belief. In these ways, Peyraut concludes (using a metaphor from Jeremiah), "The tongue of a lying man is like the bow of the devil, shooting arrows at the interior eyes of God's sons." Once people lose faith in what others speak, they are at once immune to the illuminating teaching of the clergy and prone to multiply Sins of the Tongue in daily transactions and in the law courts. 68 Peyraut's fierce concern with the consequences of lying extends, then, to the whole social order. Lying in a court of law (false witness), for example, is analyzed in terms of how it victimizes others: the innocent party who is deprived of justice, the judge who is deceived, and God, whose presence is denied. 69 This analysis Peyraut takes from Augustine, as he acknowledges. However, by placing it in a general discourse on lying, not in a treatise focused on the problems of whether or not Scriptural figures ever lied or religious teachers ever should lie, he moves outside the church to an institution whose survival and just workings are also crucial to his society. Similarly, he and other pastoral compilers use much of their opening sections on verbal restraint, as we shall see, to set forth the ways in which malicious words can destroy contemporary communities. So, deviant speech becomes what disrupts the community, what threatens the types of speech which make it possible: merchants' solemn oaths, lawyers' claims about the law and the facts of a case, sound advice from royal or episcopal councillors, the vows of the religious, civility to servants, a mother's benevolent rebuke of a child. 70 So, in analyzing types like lying, pastoral texts implicity extend normative speech 69 Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. G7\ Ibid., f. G8r. On merchants' oaths, ibid.; on lawyers' claims, Carpenter, Destructorium, ff. fmiv-vir; on the other types of speech, Summa de vitiis, ff. H7V, H10 r , F4V, and H5 r .

45

Lies, slander, and obscenity beyond the confines they seem to establish in their general discourse valorizing the salvific functions of speech. In extending Augustine's analysis of lying, the clerical compilers are directed, as they are in tracing the consequences of other transgressive types of speech, by late medieval social circumstances, pastoral practices, and theological modes of analysis. They are concerned with attributing lying to one of the Seven Sins, the roots of all vice in scholastic theology. They anatomize lying by means of the dominant Aristotelian causality and the Philosopher's ethical principles of excess and defect. Furthermore, when they identify lying with certain social groups, like merchants, minstrels, and lawyers, whose work is likely to tempt them to utter falsehoods for gain, they are reflecting contemporary social conditions, like the growing trade of medieval cities and the dependence of minstrels on the generosity of their audiences. This very practice also prompts the clerics for whom they write to turn sermons to lying when members of these social groups are present and to interrogate them about lying during confession.71 Just as Anselm and Thomas Aquinas "adapt [Augustine's] theory of language in the light of contemporary issues and their own interests,"72 so the pastoral compilers modify his analysis of lying. (As we have seen, they modify similarly his valorization of speech - for example, by exalting the sacramental word.) For all of these modifications, pastoral discourse on lying, together with that on the normative functions of speech from which it deviates, remains fundamentally, even overwhelmingly, Augustinian. It is not ever speculative, only occasionally theoretical, whereas De magistro, De ordine, De doctrina Christiana, and even De mendacio are often both. Augustine's definition of a sign is not even included by the compilers, as it is by Peter Lombard or Roger Bacon, although Carpenter does include his definition of a vox and refers specifically to De doctrina Christiana on why voces are the dominant type of sign among humans.73 Their interests are exclusively pastoral; their mode of discourse is simply accretive, expository, and rhetorical. They may not even have read a De ordine or De mendacio as originalia; they may simply have picked Augustinian sententiae out of summae or even out of distinctiones. Nevertheless, as members of the universityeducated clergy concerned with establishing norms for the spoken word before they analyze deviations in it, they appropriated 71 72

Maria Corti, "Structures," pp. 152-60; Jacques Le Goff, Time, pp. 118-20. 73 Colish, Mirror, pp. 7-8. Carpenter, Destructorium, f. eii v .

46

The lies of the Fall, the tongues of Pentecost Augustine's conviction that the spoken word was created by rational beings so that they could acquire knowledge and transmit it to others. Every act of speech for these followers of Augustine is intrinsically moral, for every use of a verbal sign grows out of the will to signify something to someone, often accompanied by a specific intention. So thoroughly have they absorbed this cognitive and ethical approach to speech that they develop the consequences of lying more broadly than Augustine does in the two treatises on lying. Because deceptive speech violates the fundamental social and divinely sanctioned compact on the function of speech, for them it threatens not just religious teaching but all honest communication between human beings, all basic social institutions which depend upon trust in the spoken word. THE IMPRUDENT TONGUE AND RHETORICAL NORMS

While Augustine's cognitive and social semiotic is invoked by pastoral texts to begin and sustain general discourse on verbal sin and also to construct the analysis of many types of deviant speech (boasting, backbiting, murmur, false witness, unjust accusations, and many others besides lying), all of this pastoral discourse is heterogeneous, peppered by authorities from Genesis to Seneca to Bernard of Clairvaux, shaped by many rhetorics, theologies, religious cultures, and scriptural traditions. Moreover, some texts, as we have begun to see, are colored by a dominant mode of learning: De lingua by the Aristotelian biology of the universities and Carpenter's Destructorium and the Speculum morale by Thomistic moral theology. Deviant types of speech are identified, even named, by different authorities, as we shall see: Paul on turpiloquium (dirty talk), the Pentateuch on murmur (grudgingly speaking against a superior), Solomon on multiloquium (loquacity). Amid these many voices, another major discursive strain, runs, like the Augustinian, through discourse on deviant speech as a whole, constructing general topoi as well as deviant types. One English redaction of Peyraut's Summa, Quoniam, acknowledges two dominant strains by dividing in two Peyraut's eighteen topoi on keeping the tongue: it treats "the sin of speech" in three categories, placing the first five under the heading maliloquium and most of the remaining thirteen under multiloquium.74 (The third category, vaniloquium, 74

Q«om*m,ff.55 v -7 r and51 r -5 r .

47

Lies, slander, and obscenity

contains specific sins of the tongue only.) What the redactor detected is a fundamental division, present in the four texts with sustained discourse on verbal sin in general, between topoi concerned with the normative function of speech and topoi concerned with the destructive consequences of utterances. Outside of Peyraut's Summa, this division is articulated by headings identifying who is affected by the transgressive speech: God, speakers themselves, their neighbors. Etienne's Tractatus includes the nobility of the tongue, reason as its proper guide, and praise and preaching as its proper uses (all with Augustinian dicta) under the rubric "it displeases God," moving on then to "it harms the speaker especially," "it inflicts many injuries on one's neighbor," "it greatly horrifies good angels," and "it greatly pleases our enemy the devil" - allfivebeing set forth at the beginning, where the scribe picks them out with the paragraphus. De lingua has similar divisions; the Speculum morale, the first three.75 The Summa groups destructive effects on listeners and subjects, the speaker's "neighbors," under those to the speakers themselves, any harm the speaker inflicts on others intensifying his own. Because of its immense popularity and influence, I will follow its order. "Mors et vita in manu lingue" [Death and life are in the power of the tongue] (Prov. 18:21) is the Solomonic refrain for all of this pastoral discourse on the consequences of deviant speech, which is usually authorized by Wisdom literature. As a model, the treatises advance the prudent speaker of the Wisdom books, "for whom the careful use of language is seen as a practical moral discipline."76 Prudence has two basic senses in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: showing foresight in governing anything, especially by avoiding traps, and recognizing consciously "the moral course of action."77 In that second sense, prudence is the Stoic virtue, highest of the cardinal four, elaborated by the scholastics as a virtue of the practical intellect. In Thomas Aquinas prudence involves ars: know-how based on knowledge of what humans create. When directed by a moral virtue, like justice, it also includes right judgment or right reason (ratio recta) in acting and, transcending ars, right love or appetite (rectitudo appetitus). Working in this comprehensive way, it can give good counsel regarding human life as a whole, especially as it is governed by its last end. Prudence is essential for the good life because it 75 76 77

Etienne de Bourbon, Tractatus, f. 153 r ; De lingua, f. 152 r ; Speculum morale, col. 866. R. H . Ayers, Language, p. 4. Alexander Murray, Reason, pp. 134—5.

48

The lies of the Fall, the tongues of Pentecost ensures that humans act from right choice; it is concerned with how a good act is performed, not just whether or not it is good.78 In our pastoral texts, prudence dictates that speech is an ethical art, with its own norms grounded in learning but also with its genesis in the affective life of the speaker. This Solomonic strain begins not with the word of Augustinian semiotics but with the physical organs which produce speech, especially the mouth and the tongue. First it appeals generally to selfpreservation by arguing that speaking leaves us vulnerable to enemies. Its keynote is the text "Qui custodit os suum: custodit animam suam" [He that keepeth his mouth keepeth his soul] (Prov. 13:3), with its emphatic paralleling of physiological cause and spiritual effect.79 It relies on scriptural analogy: the open mouth is a city without walls, a camp or house without a gate, a vase without a lid.80 As figures from James are added to those from the Wisdom books, the locus becomes the tongue, not a vulnerable space but a directionless organ driven to loquacity by its natural energy: a horse without a rein, a ship in high winds without a rudder.81 It is made semiautonomous and demonized, seen as the generator of all evil actions, as in this often-quoted marginal gloss on James 3:5: Lingua nostra ignis est vniuersitas iniquitatis.vbi dicit glossa.Vniuersitas.quia per earn fere cuncta facinora aut concinantur vt latrocinia stupra aut patrantur.vt periuria.aut falsa testimonia.aut defenduntur vt cum quilibet scelus impius suum excusat. quod admisit.82 [Our tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity - where the gloss says "world" because through it almost all evil deeds either are cooked up, as in robberies and debaucheries, are executed, as in perjury or false testimony, or are defended, as when any impious person excuses the evil act which he has committed.]

The tongue's physiology is often used to account for its proclivity for evil: it is moist and slippery and so falls easily ("Lingua enim in humido est siue in lubrico et ideo de facili labitur").83 78 79 80 81 82 83

Summa theologiae II.II.47,3-15. Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. E5 V ; De lingua, f. 141 r . Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. E5 V ; De lingua, ff. 1 4 0 r - l r and 154 V ; Etienne de Bourbon, Tractatus, f. 154 r ; Speculum morale, col. 868; Speculum vitae, lines 15739-48. Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. E5 V ; Speculum morale, col. 868; De lingua, f. 154 r ; Etienne de Bourbon, Tractatus, f. 154 r . Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. E6 r ; see also De lingua, f. 155 r , and Etienne de Bourbon, Tractatus, f. 154 r ; the gloss may be found in Biblia, cum glosis, IV, f. 1351 r . Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. E6 r ; Speculum morale, col. 866.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity In all extended pastoral discourse, the physiology of the tongue and the mouth provides signs, insistent in their corporeality, that God and nature intend for humans to control their speech. De lingua invokes Aristotle on how nature both used economy in giving the tongue two functions, taste and speech, and made it small to signal that it should be used with moderation, while Peyraut claims that the tongue, unlike the hands and other parts of the body, is naturally enclosed to show its need for confinement, its proclivity for evil.84 In the commonest argument, which recalls the central figures from the Wisdom Books, God enclosed the tongue with a double defense of teeth and lips. In Etienne's Tractatus, that defense is quadruple: hance bestiam inclusit deus in palato I uallauit muro dencium I clausit hostiis labiorum et obserauit seribus preceptorum ut bene teneretur et custodiretur.85 [This beast God shut in the palate; he walled it in with teeth; he shut it with the gates of lips; and he guarded it with fastening bars of precepts so that it should be well defended and guarded.] Thus, the treatises insist that verbal restraint is a natural law by which all are bound. 86 In this Solomonic and Jamesian strain, to speak heedlessly, in defiance of nature and of God, is to harm all within the circle of speech: speaker, listeners, those spoken about. 87 In this rhetorical approach, utterances are first of all the manifestations of character, to be judged by audiences. Words are signs (signa) of the inner self, speech a mirror of character (speculum morum), argues the florilegist Bartolomeo da San Concordia, citing, as the pastoral writers do, Luke 6:45: "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." 88 Peyraut's prima pars ends with the dictum of St. Jerome "In pondere verborum probatio existit humane vite," anglicized and interpreted in

this way by A Myrour to Lewde Men and Wymmen:

And seynt Ierom seith fcat by \>e weighte of wordes is comune lyf attempred, tat is to seie after l>e wordes of a man may men knowe be 84 85 86 87 88

De lingua, f. 140 r , and Etienne de Bourbon, Tractatus, f. 156V; Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. E6 r . Etienne de Bourbon, Tractatus, f. 153V; also 156V. See chapter 6 for other pastoral versions of this metaphor. Casagrande and Vecchio, Peccati, pp. 151-3. In "Le metafore," pp. 638-9, they list many pastoral figurative readings of the tongue's physiology. Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. E6 r . Bartolomeo da San Concordio, De documentis, p. 221.

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The lies of the Fall, the tongues of Pentecost witte or J>e foly of him fcat spekej) hem, as me[n] may knowe l>e weighte of a J)ing by J>e tonge of a balance.89 In the treatises, the loquacious man of Wisdom Literature strikes his listeners as a graceless fool, not to be taken seriously or trusted because his endless chatter seems "vain fables/' 90 The Speculum morale interprets loquacity as a parody of that central miracle of language which it celebrates, Pentecost: tongues of malignant fire empty the speaker of the Spirit's grace and make him hateful to all other humans. At this point the Speculum includes its first exemplum, as does Etienne's Tractatus (with which it shares many stories, especially from the preacher Jacques de Vitry). When a man burdened with a talkative wife on board ship hears the sailors cry out that heavy objects should be tossed overboard, immediately he pushes her forward, claiming that nothing on board is heavier than her tongue. 91 Given the power of the loose tongue, social exchanges have their dangers, as well as irritations, for listeners. If they do not judge idle or, especially, vicious speech carefully, they may become complicit in it, their emotions moved by its force: those inflamed to wrath by lawsuits or threats or those whose sexual imaginations are stirred by lewd talk.92 While utterances may alienate or pollute the audience (the Speculum uses vivid language of pollution), they may also inflict loss of life and reputation on innocent subjects, consequences conveyed with dominant figures from the Psalms and Wisdom Books: the tongue as sword, whip, snake, arrow. Here most treatises develop the rhetorical force of the tongue with its impact on societal institutions: the one evil councillor who destroys his country, the lawyer who hands over an archepiscopate to an alien, the liars who banish Athanasius from Alexandria or who destroy the Eastern Church (the heresiarch Mohammed), Ahithophel who sows discord between father and son. 93 Since, in this Christian construct, words may prompt others to evil or force them to suffer it, just as they may prompt others to truth, the use of them is "an enormous divine responsiblity which God places 89 90 91 92 93

Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. E6 r ; A Myrour, p. 228; see also Speculum vitae, lines 15667-76. Speculum morale, col. 868; Speculum vitae, lines 15661 ff.; Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. E6 r ; Etienne de Bourbon, Tractatus, ff. 153 V and 154 V ; Carpenter, Destructorium, f. Sv v . Speculum morale, col. 868; Etienne de Bourbon, Tractatus, f. 154 r . Ibid., ff. 155 r " v ; Speculum morale, cols. 869-70; De lingua, f. 153 V ; Peyraut's Summa develops this topos under deviant types like insults and scurrility. Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. E6 r ; Speculum morale, cols. 870-1; Etienne de Bourbon, Tractatus, f. 154 r .

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Lies, slander, and obscenity upon every man." 94 In the treatises God is the audience whose judgment matters most, as he will demand justification for every word every human utters. And those who sin in the tongue will be punished in that instrument of sin, like the blasphemers of the Apocalypse chewing their tongues or Dives denied water to cool his burning tongue. 95 Dives provides an interesting case for the parable in Luke 16 supplies no reason for the particular punishment. Following Gregory the Great, the Speculum asserts that Dives was punished for his loquacity, indulgent talk being associated with the banqueter's indulgence in food and drink as another sin of the flesh and one which loosens the tongue. In this loosely rhetorical approach, where what matters is the "many eueles l>at corned of an euele tonge," the treatises appropriate from the Wisdom Books a way to control the tongue: And J>erfore seifr \>e wise in holi writ \>zt J>e wordes of l>e wise ben weye in a balauns, J>at is to seiefratt>e wise schal weye his wordes in \>e balauns of resoun and discrecion t>at j>er be no ting to vndertake ne to reproue hem wifc>.96 The work of judging and witholding "t>e watre of folie wordes and outrageous [exceeding proper limits, MED 1], !>at J>ei ne passe not bi J>e mylle of \>e tonge" is the work of prudence (or wisdom, loosely associated with it in pastoral texts).97 As a cognitive act of foresight, it depends upon norms drawn from knowledge which it can apply to particular utterances. A great part of wisdom, the pastoral treatises insist, lies in moderation of the tongue: moderation that is, setting and applying modi (standards, bounds, or ways of measuring, OLD).9S The pastoral texts may derive these standards from the speech of biblical figures, like the Virgin Mary, who speaks only seven words in the Gospels,99 or from what J. C. Payen terms "une sagesse pragmatique," Stoic precepts transmitted through popular early thirteenthcentury florilegia like the Proverba Seneci or the Distiche Catonis}00 Peyraut's Summa urges infrequent speech because Seneca does: "Use 94 95 96 97 98 99 100

M u r p h y , Rhetoric, p . 290. Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, ff. E 6 v - F l r ; Speculum morale, col. 869; Etienne d e B o u r b o n , Tractatus, f. 154 V ; Craun, "Inordinata Locutio" p. 159. Book, p . 282, referring t o Ecclus. 21:28; see Speculum vitae, lines 15677-87; Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, ff. I3 v -I4 r ; De lingua, f. 140 r . Book, p . 283. Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, F l v ; De lingua, f. 140 v ; b o t h follow Prov. 10:19 and 17:27. Speculum morale, col. 872; Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. I3 r . Jean Charles Payen, " L a Penitence," p . 421.

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The lies of the Fall, the tongues of Pentecost the ears more often than the tongue/'101 Such precepts - speak briefly, speak rarely, deliberate before speaking (the mnemonic breviloquium, rariloquium, tardiloquium) - limit sharply the number of words, restricting the occasions and length of utterances. Most are marshalled in the array of remedies which may close off a treatment of deviant speech.102 One recommended practice dominates most treatises: silence, characterized in Etienne's Tractatus and the Speculum as the oppositum of Sins of the Tongue, that which intervenes in the way of them, like a barrier, or is set against them as an enemy (OLD). This silence is mainly that practiced in the cloister, the rhetorical and moral discipline recently described by Paul Gehl. It was taken as the sign of the truly religious from the time of the Egyptian ascetics, whose sayings and stories primarily authorize its value in pastoral literature (although Seneca and other philosophers find a place). In the monastery, according to Peyraut's Summa, Etienne de Bourbon's Tractatus, and the Speculum morale, silence prevents conflict and anger among the religious and permits interior conversation with God, opening one to revelation.103 Above all, the habit of silence is seen by them, as it was among the desert monks and in the Benedictine rule,104 as a way of breaking the tongue's habit of sinning. All three recount the exemplum of the powerful knight who petitions an abbot not only to enter the religious life but also to live mute because he fears that his tongue, accustomed to "offending," would take away all good things he might do as a monk. And all three repeat the words heard by one Arsenius who prayed to God for salvation: "Fuge.tace. quiesce.Hec enim sunt radices non peccandi" ["Flee. Keep silent. Be still." These are the roots of not sinning].105 Silence, the Tractatus proclaims, is the rein of James, the way to check the wild energy of the tongue so that it does not utter the word which would be subject to God's punishment (sermo penalis).106 Although the treatises 101

102 103 104 105

106

Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. I3V. Most of these verbal practices are also developed in Peyraut's tract on prudence in the Summa de virtutibus, as Joan Heiges Blythe recently observed in "Sins of the Tongue," pp. 122-3. Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, ff. I3 r -I4 v ; De lingua, ff. 191v-192r; Etienne de Bourbon, Tractatus, ff. 156 v -8 r . Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, ff. I 4 r - I 5 v ; Etienne de B o u r b o n , Tractatus, ff. 156 v -8 r ; Speculum morale, cols. 871-4. Paul Gehl, "Competens Silentium," p p . 127 and 136. T h e knight and Arsenius are found respectively in Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, ff. I 4 r and I4 V , and in Etienne d e B o u r b o n , Tractatus, ff. 157 r a n d 156 V ; b o t h are in t h e Speculum morale, col. 872. v r Etienne d e B o u r b o n , Tractatus, ff. 156 -7 .

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Lies, slander, and obscenity celebrate silence as a monastic virtue, even as a reason to enter the religious life, they sometimes universalize it into a prudent practice, if not a requirement, for the active life. Neither the Tractatus nor the Speculum confine their injunctions to the religious, and the Summa advocates, as a general practice, keeping silent during the times in which one sins the most easily with the tongue, like the hours after dinner.107 Silence allows humans to realize their longing for innocency of life and, as it opens the self to instruction, is a sign of wisdom among philosophers, as well as ascetics.108 While these practices may curtail loquacity and create time to reflect before speaking, some pastoral compilers also supply in their general discourse means for judging the worth of a possible utterance, means appropriated from the rhetorical tradition of the circumstances of speech. These essential attributes of persons and actions in classical judicial rhetoric were passed on to the twelfth-century rhetoricians. After the Fourth Lateran Council stipulated that the pertinent circumstances of sinner and sin ought to be divulged fully in confession so that confessors could weigh them and assign appropriate remedies, confessional literature of all types included, as a grid, these circumstances: quis, quid, ubi,per quos, quotiens [sometimes omitted], cur, quomodo, quando [who, what, where, through whom, how often, why, how, when]. Before that, the Latin Fathers and monastic writers had advocated that the wise and disciplined apply them to speech.109 Only in The Book of Vices and Virtues, of the longer tracts on deviant speech, have I found a direct listing of circumstances.110 107 109

110

108 Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. I3 V . Ibid., f. I5 V ; Speculum morale, col. 873. F o r t h e medieval history of t h e circumstances of speech, see D . W . Robertson, Jr., " C i r c u m s t a n c e s , " p p . 7-10; Casagrande and Vecchio, Peccati, p p . 7 5 - 9 1 ; Tender, Sin, pp. 116-20. In the widely disseminated Ars loquendi et tacendi (1245), the legal counsellor and civil servant Albertano da Brescia advocates on p. XCIII using a set of rhetorical circumstances to weigh words "before the breath brings forth words at your mouth" [antequam spiritus ad os tuum verba producat]. Although the prudent speaker of Wisdom literature often appears in the Ars, Albertano's treatise is not pastoral. His rhetoric is a forensic one, like Cicero's and Quintillian's. For example, when he gauges the consequences of words for both speaker and audience, he looks only at the probable effects on the speaker's reputation, given the audience's habits and disposition toward him. The Ars shows no concern for the welfare, spiritual or otherwise, of the audience or the subject of speech. In Peccati, p. 94, Casagrande and Vecchio do not see Albertano's model as essentially different from what monastics and then mendicants advocated for centuries, but they are approaching it simply from the tradition of disciplined speech, in which the circumstances played a crucial role; they do not examine the rhetorical use of the circumstances with respect to the pastoral treatises or even monastic texts. Neither the Ars nor Albertano's earlier Liber de amore et dilectione dei et proximi (1238), which is somewhat closer to the pastoral treatises in its arguments for governing speech, ever refers to the Sins of the Tongue.

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The lies of the Fall, the tongues of Pentecost However, Peyraut's Summa uses several of them to develop precepts for moderating preaching, and its English derivative Quoniam does so for speech in general, urging speakers to be certain of their aims, to wait for the opportune time, to gauge the intelligence of their audience.111 The Book's circumstances preface the ten chapters on the Sins of the Tongue, supplying means for speakers to assess the moral nature of utterances, especially will and consequences: Who-so wole wyte and weyefcesynnes of J>e tonge, hym bihouej) to conne weye and haue also a contrepeys of alle his wordes: wher-of t>ei wexen, what t>ei ben, and what yuele t>ei don. f 3if frou wys be wil, six kep t>ou whilke I \>e kenne: what frou seist, whom til, of whom, how, why, where, whenne. 112

The most essential circumstances - when, what, who - guide Peyraut's hierarchial setting of norms for the prudent speaker as he gathers together his entire prima pars: Prudens est qui loquitur quando loquendum est.Unde ecclus.xx Homo sapiens tacebit vsque ad tempus. Prudentior est.qui loquitur talia qualia debet loqui.vt qui loquitur verba pura a falsitate et a proximi nocumento et a contumelia dei.Unde prouerbiorum. xv Sermo purus pulcerrimus est.Prudentissimus vero est ille qui modum seruat in verbis qui scilicet dulciter loquitur absque clamore et asperitate quod non parum est vtile... non potest esse sermonis moderacio absque cordis moderacio.113 [The prudent person is the one who speaks when he ought to speak. Whence Ecclus. 20:7: "A wise man will hold his peace till he see opportunity." The more prudent person is the one who speaks such things as he ought to speak, as he who speaks words pure from falsehood and from harm to his neighbor and from insults to God. Whence Proverbs 15:26: "A pure word [is] most beautiful." The most prudent truly is he who preserves a measure in words, namely he who speaks sweetly and without clamor or harshness what is not a little useful... Moderation of discourse cannot exist without moderation of the heart.]

The lowest level of prudent speech observes pragmatic norms which check the flow of words, as we have seen. The next level involves 111 112

113

Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, ff. Fl v -F2 r ; Quoniam, ff. 52 v -3 r . Book, p. 54. A similar set of circumstances (omitting how) appears in a fifteenth-century Middle English lyric with the refrain "Whate euer thow sey, A-vyse the welle!" printed in Religious Lyrics of the Fifteenth Century, Carleton Brown, pp. 280-2. Peyruat, Summa de vitiis, f. Fl v .

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Lies, slander, and obscenity using knowledge about speech to censor what might be spoken: the word which might falsify (and so not function as the "messenger of reason") or might have destructive consequences for others. (The Summa's first two remedies for deviant speech also comprehensively restate these two main burdens of the prima pars.114) Finally, the most prudent word also offers good counsel to others: the useful word, utilis signifying, in clerical works on speech from the 1190s onward, words which edify and save. Prudent speech, in the Summa, is more than the calculatedly innocent word which spares ourselves and others suffering, even more than the truth: it is the proclamation of the sacred word. At their very end, these regulations for wise speech, and the whole prima pars leading up to them, seem to be subverted, for only the well-regulated heart will embrace them. The Summa's scholastic prudence knows that in speech, as in all things humans produce, right love is necessary for executing what is good in a good way. Even the rebuking of vices, the Summa goes on to argue, can be done with too much fervor unless moderated by the heart. But what moves the heart to love rightly? The Summa's final three topoi provide a cue. The sixteenth, "the exhortations of holy scripture," the seventeenth, exempla from it, and the last, God's just judgment - all are prefaced with the refrain of the whole prima pars: "quod debet hominem mouere ad custodium lingue . . . " [that which ought to move one to keep the tongue is ... ]. 115 Written religious authority is invoked as a moving power in itself and as a source of rhetoric. Pastoral discourse on the Sins of the Tongue does more than set forth universalized norms for the word and the tongue, identifying what is deviant for the more sharply defined Christian community initiated by the Fourth Lateran Council. It aims to control and reform the speaker with its own rhetorical force. A PASTORAL RHETORIC OF DETESTATION

When the pastoral treatises expound what constitutes a verbal sin like lying, they provide readers, and, in turn, their auditors, with tools for weighing their words, just as surely as when they stipulate norms for the prudent speaker. The general preface to the ten sins of the tongue in the Speculum vitae makes this quite plain: 114

11

ibid.,fi.iy-\

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The lies of the Fall, the tongues of Pentecost Who so wille a wyse hym wele And knawfresyn of tong and fele, He shuld weghe and countir pais With skille ilk word t>at he says, What it ys, wethyn commes it, What ille it duse he shuld wytt, For t>e word may be syn by skille In it self for it ys ille, It may be syn for it commes namely Of t>e wicked hert in J>e body, And at be last it may so be I>at J)e word, as men may se, Ys grete syn forfeeille vse For l>i bat it grete ille duse.116 Anyone who practices the constant, vigilant analysis of speech which the pastoral treatises advocate must be able to typify a particular act of speech (identify "What it ys"), to understand its affective origin, and to judge its effects. But the treatises envision this moral calculation as part of a more comprehensive act of mind and will and this proper naming of an act of speech as prelude to that. Peyraut's preface to his chapter on lying states explicitly the aims of his discourse: Sequitur de peccato mendacii de quo hoc ordine dicemus. Primo quid sit mendacium.et ponemus ea quae possint valere ad detestationem huius peccati.Secundo tangemus aliquid de diuersis diuisionibus mendacii. [We will speak of the next sin, lying, in this order. We will place first what lying is and what avails for detestation of this sin. Secondly, we will touch on the various divisions of the lie.] All of Peyraut's chapter, save the preliminary "quid sit" definition and a list of the various ways of classifying lies, is devoted to rhetorical material which he believes will create aversion to lying. Lest his aim be missed, he prefaces each of his twelve points with the formula "Secundo [or "tertio," etc.] potest valere ad detestationem huius peccati hoc." 117 Some readers did not mistake him. A marginal note in a late thirteenth-century manuscript of Peyraut's De eruditione religiosorum, found by Antoine Dondaine, declares that the 116

117

Speculum vitae, lines 13852-68.

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Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. G6 r .

Lies, slander, and obscenity Summa as a whole is "perutilem valde ad peccatorum detestationem."118 Detestatio is not a term Peyraut's Summa, Carpenter's Destructorium, the Speculum morale, or the compiler of De lingua define, although all of them use it freely. In all but the last, limited to speech, it first appears in the book on sin in general, often paired with abhominatio to indicate the will's intense movement away from sin. In the Speculum, it is the opposite of the delight which attracts humans to sin.119 The supplement to the Summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas is more explicit; detestation is the reason's aversive reaction against sin during the process of contrition: "in contritione est duplex dolor: unus rationis, qui est detestatio peccati a se commissi; alius sensitivae partis, qui ex isto consequitur" [in contrition there is a twofold sorrow: one that of reason, which is a detestation of sin committed by it; the other of the sensitive part, which follows from that]. Similarly Thomas himself states that the virtuous man responds to evil with a "detestatio rationis," followed by grief in the sensitive appetite. Detestation is clearly a powerful aversion to the moral nature of some act or person, for Thomas' blasphemer reacts against God's inherent goodness with detestation. So, detestation of sin involves a rational appraisal as part of an act of will in which one chooses at once to withdraw from evil and to desire the moral life. As such, detestation is so crucial a part of penitence that the supplement actually defines penitence in terms of it: "aliquis actus voluntatis ... quo quis detestatur quod facit."120 Pastoral discourse on deviant speech, general tractates and chapters on specific types alike, aims at nothing less than the conversion of the will, the will of those who read it and of those who hear it applied in the pastoral acts of preaching, directing confession, and catechizing. It may inform, but, in the process, it also aims to move, both the reason and the emotions (not simply letting the aversive emotions follow from rational aversion, for even in Thomistic moral theology, where reason is prime mover, the passions may affect one's disposition toward an object and so set the will in motion121). What other aim 118 119 120

121

Dondaine, "Peyraut," p. 166. Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, ff. al r ff.; Carpenter, Destructorium, ff. air~v, Speculum morale, col. 969. Supplementum to Summa theologiae, 4.1; Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae 1.11.59,3, ILII.13,4 (for the blasphemer), and 1.11.113,5 (choosing to withdraw from evil); Supplementum 16.3 (penitence as detestation); see also Tender, Sin, pp. 236—9. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae 1.11.9,2.

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The lies of the Fall, the tongues of Pentecost could the compilers have, given their Augustinian and scholastic view of what moves us to abuse words? If lying is essentially the will to utter what one believes to be false, accompanied by the intent to deceive someone, only a discourse which creates revulsion toward lying in all the appetites, rational and affective, will succeed in curing a habitual liar. The pastoral rhetoric of deviant speech is, as we saw from its placement in treatises on the vices, fundamentally a "rhetoric of the vices," no different in its characteristics than discourse on envy or usury - to take at random two sections of Peyraut's Summa and the Speculum morale which I have read by way of comparison. Its style is mixed, plain to expound definitions or subtypes, grand or impassioned (in Augustine's terms, derived in part from Cicero) in order to move adverse minds from evil.122 A second look at lying in the six treatises will establish its main means of persuasion, aided by Etienne de Bourbon's eloquent explanation of his aims as a compiler of materials for preaching.123 Peyraut's first move in his rhetoric of conversion is to establish commonplaces, simplified ways of approaching reality (sieves through which reality is filtered, in Paolo Valesio's metaphor 124 ). After his definition of lying, Peyraut proceeds to his commonplaces: that lying is diabolical, that it befouls that part of the body which should be clean, that it makes the liar false.125 Within each topic Peyraut usually appeals first to a sententia, a general statement of a moral, religious, or doctrinal character from an auctory & text, usually written, which has currency in clerical culture as a transmitter of knowledge and wisdom. "Ad detestationem vero huius mendacii primo valuere possunt verba sacre scripture.quae dissuadent nobis mendacium" [First the words of Holy Scripture which dissuade us from lying truly have power to elicit detestation for this lying]. The naked scriptural injunction ("Be not willing to make any manner of lie," he quotes from Ecclus. 7:14) should suffice to move the will.126 Pastoral sententiae are often cast in

122 123

124

126

Augustine, De doctrina, IV.XIX. Casagrande and Vecchio, Peccati, p. 124, briefly mention that Peyraut's Summa creates detestation for specific Sins of the Tongue, but, perhaps in keeping with their method of surveying ethical systems, they d o n o t examine rhetorical practice in any other text, let alone link it to the norms for speech which the texts establish. 125 Valesio, Novantiqua, p. 24. Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, ff. G6 r " v .

Ibid.J.GV.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity the imperative, as injunctions or prohibitions, the better to elicit a passionate response. In his prologue to the Summa de virtutibus Peyraut characterizes himself, in the manner of many encyclopedists from the twelfth century on, as a humble compiler of written material: "Ideo ego minimus de ordine fratrum predicatorum desideraui colligere alique que diffuse in scripturis inueniuntur de virtutibus" [Therefore I, least in the order of the brother preachers, have longed to gather together some things about the virtues which are found scattered about in writings]. As his auctores, he takes the "philosophers," as well as the Christian scriptures, neatly justifying his practice by quoting one of them, Seneca: "In aliena castra transiens non tanquam transfuga:sed tanquam explorator" [Going through foreign camps not as a deserter but as a scout]. Yet he feels compelled to justify this practice with biblical precedent, invoking Augustine's famous argument about God's chosen despoiling the Egyptians.127 As this suggests, pride of place in the Summa is always given to the Bible and the Fathers, often used for prooftexting or for generating an argument so that sections of discourse are begun or rounded off in an aphoristic, authoritative manner. On the relative gravity of lying as a sin, Peyraut cites Ecclus. 20:27, a simple comparison between the habitual liar and the thief which he expands into a three-part argument: whereas the thief, in seeking his own good, only harms something temporal (another's possessions), the liar, maliciously desiring that another experience evil, leads eternal souls into error.128 At every point in his discourse Dondaine's observation holds true: "la somme des vices et des vertus ne perd pas un seul instant le contact avec les sources scripturaires et patristiques."129 So clerkly is his and his fellow compilers' use of sententiae that, unlike G. R. Owst's preachers,130 they almost never resort to the proverb, shunning folk wisdom for the authoritative texts to which they conscientiously refer their readers. The rhetorical end of collecting these authoritative materials is to modify human conduct so that it conforms to the models they sanction, as Etienne de Bourbon explains in his prologue, echoing the title Tractatus de diversis materiis predicabilibus: Quoniam multi multipliciter.subtiliter.et utiliter elaborauerunt auctoritates diuersas ueteris ac noui testamenti et expositorum 127 129

128 Peyraut, Summa de virtutibus, ff. bi r " v . Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. G7 r . 13 Dondaine, "Peyraut," p. 189. ° G. R. Owst, Literature and Pulpit, pp. 40-7.

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The lies of the Fall, the tongues of Pentecost eorundem et sanctorum diuersorum sub diuersis tytulis et de diuersis materiis compilare.necnon et raciones diuersas auctoritatibus connectere.ut homines instruerent.monerent. mouerent.et promouerent.ut mala futura metuerent.et cauerentet per hoc a peccatis recederent.et bonum appeterent.et de malis commissis ueraciter peniterent temptaciones uiriliter repellerent.ut in bonum perseuerent.honeste uiuerent.discrete agerent.ut discrete bona et saluti uicinora aliis preeligerent et praeponerent.ut recte intelligerent. crederent et sentirent.131 [Because many people have, in many ways, with good judgment, and for our profit, taken pains to compile, under various headings and on various subjects, various authoritative texts from the old and the new testaments and from their exegetes and various holy people, and also to link various arguments by authoritative texts in order to instruct, warn, move, and move forward people so that they might dread and shun future evils, and through this draw back from sins and desire good and repent truly evils committed, driving away strongly temptations, so that they might persevere in good, live virtuously, act with judgment, and prefer, with judgment, good things and those things close to salvation, setting them before others, so that they might rightly understand, believe, and perceive.] In this rhetorical process of transforming behavior, the first effect of pastoral discourse, as we might expect from its prudential treatment of speech, is to awaken fear and aversion for "future evils," the consequences of behavior to be abandoned. This pastoral sententiae (or, in Etienne's terms, auctoritates132) often do by proclaiming temporal and, especially, eternal punishments for lying. Peyraut, for instance, ends with Augustine's favorite text on lying, "Thou wilt destroy all that speak a lie" (Ps. 5:7), followed by Augustine's gloss.133 Whether they warn of future evils or not, sententiae are usually welded to analogy or narrative. Etienne justifies this practice on scriptural grounds: summa Dei sapiencia Christus Ihesus primo docuit factis quam uerbis.et subtilitatem predicacionis et doctrine grossam.quasi 131 132

133

Etienne de Bourbon, Tractates, f. 5 V . Etienne de Bourbon's first sentence, o n f. 5 V , indicates that, b y auctoritates, he means excerpts from written texts which had authority in clerical culture - a c o m m o n definition of sententiae and our working one. T h e relative equivalency of the terms is indicated b y Hugutio da Pisa's definition of auctoritas around 1200: "sententia digne imitatione" (Mary J. Carruthers, Book, p. 190). Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. G7 r .

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Lies, slander, and obscenity corpoream et uisibilem reddidit muniens et uestiens earn diuersis similitudinibus parabolis miraculis.et exemplis.ut eius doctrina cicius caperetur facilius cognosceretur.forcius in memoria retineretur.et efficacius opere adimpleretur.134 [The great wisdom of God, Jesus Christ, first taught with deeds rather than with words, and he re-presented the acute plainness of preaching and teaching in a full-bodied way, corporeally and visibly (as it were), supporting it and clothing it with various similitudes, parables, miracles, and examples, in order that his teaching might be more swiftly grasped, more easily understood, more strongly retained in memory, and more efficaciously fulfilled in deed.] Subtilitas, as a quality of teaching and preaching, conveys at once (although not in translation) keenness of argument and a pleasing slenderness, with, in the rhetorical tradition, the precision and plainness of a dialectical style (OLD). In this sentence, it suggests that argument and its generating sententiae may be appealing to a knowing elite but that, in order to effect cognitive and behavioral change the more readily in people in general (called "simple men" in the earlier part of the sentence), they must be supported by two basic means, comparison and narrative.135 (I am reckoning miracles as narratives, parables as comparisons and narratives, following medieval pastoral practices.) Jesus' habitual recourse to both figures not only authorizes them but binds every religious teacher to use them. Both serve to make teaching, often first presented generally as sententiae, apprehensible through a particular manifestation in action and speech or through analogy, appealing to sense experience. Both, brief narrative and similitude, are termed interchangeably exempla and figurae in pastoral texts,136 suggesting their common rhetorical function. And both are justified, for Etienne, by God becoming incarnate, by incorporeal and eternal Wisdom clothing Himself in a body so that He could be known more easily by humans through their senses ("ut 134 135

136

Etienne d e B o u r b o n , Tractatus, f. 5 V . I n Narrative, p p . 6 6 - 7 , L a r r y Scanlon quotes several passages in w h i c h examples are recommended for use with those weak in learning and crude of faith, w h o cannot digest theoretical statements. O w s t , Pulpit, p . 151. I n Exemplum, p . x, L y o n s defines exemplum as " a dependent statement qualifying a m o r e general and independent statement b y naming a m e m b e r of t h e class established b y the general statement." This definition is constructed t o embrace b o t h types of example, narrative and comparison. T h e current flexibility in the usage of the term exemplum for metaphor as well as narration may stem from J. T h . Welter's definition in t h e only comprehensive study of the rhetorical figure before the 1980s, L'Exemplum, p . 1.

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The lies of the Fall, the tongues of Pentecost ab hominibus facilius posset cognosci et comprehendi humanis sensibus"137). While pastoral examples have cognitive functions, they are of most value to the pastoral writers, as Etienne's climactic series suggests, for their effect on conduct through memory. To justify his claim that examples are more strongly held in memory than generalizations, Etienne appeals to a sententia of Dionysius: sapientes philosophi incorporant sermones suos uestiendo eos similitidinibus et exemplis.sermo enim corporeus facilius transit de sensu ad ymaginatiuam et de ymagine ad memoriam.138 [Wise philosophers give their words a body by clothing them with similitudes and examples, for the corporeal word passes more easily from sense to imaging power and from image to memory.] Because an auditor can retain the specific and visibile more strongly in memory, she may more easily reproduce it - or avoid reproducing it in the case of "future evils" - in daily religious practice.139 Here memory serves the ethical function Mary Carruthers describes: it retains cultural wisdom so that it can be realized in action.140 But pastoral rhetoric must first imprint that wisdom on the memory, chiefly through examples. Of the two types of pastoral example, the short narrative will be examined in the next chapter. There it will be designated by the Latin term exemplum, following most modern scholarly practice and some medieval usage;141 the English "example" will be used, as in the preceding sentence, to refer to both types as a figure of rhetoric. The similitude's function in this pastoral rhetoric of exemplification can be sketched out here, illustrated by the "future evils" the liar incurs. On its first page De lingua sets forth its modus procedendi^ a threepart method (justified by scripture) for presenting didactic material: Modus procedendi Et quia funiculus triplex difficile rumpitur eccles 4 et sapientia tripliciter discribitur prou 22 discripsi earn tripliciter Idcirco modus procedendi ac propositum ostendendi in hoc opusculo est triplex ut quod hie intenditur tripliciter ostendatur uidilicet 137 139 141

138 Etienne de Bourbon, Tractates, f. 6 r . Ibid., f. 6r. 140 Jacques Berlioz, "Le Recit," pp. 127-30. Carruthers, Book, p. 182. Thomas Crane, editor of the narratives within the sermons of the popular preacher Jacques de Vitry, observed a century ago that the word exemplum was used by medieval ecclesiastical writers in two senses: example (as I have defined it) and, after the end of the twelfth century, an illustrative story (p. xviiin.). On scholarly usage of the term, see Lyons, Exemplum, pp. 9-12.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity primo per exemplum in natura secundo in arte tertio in figura siue sacra scriptura quia ut dicit philosophus in principio celi et mundi per hunc numerum scilicet ternarium adhibuimus nos magnificare deum unum creatorem eminentem proprietatibus eorum quae creata sum.142 [Method of proceeding: because "a threefold cord is not easily broken" (Eccles. 4:12) and wisdom is described in three ways ("I have described it... three manner of ways," Prov. 22:20), the method of proceeding and the design for exposition in this little work is threefold so that anything maintained here may be shown in three ways: namely, first by example in nature, secondly in occupations, thirdly in figure or Holy Scripture. Because, as the philosopher states, in the beginning the heaven and the earth [were made] through this number, that is the ternary, we have devoted ourselves to praising God, one creator revealed by the properties of created things.]

Sacred history, nature, and human crafts, trades and learning - this abundance in a visible universe where everything is a sign of the creator generates discourse which values copiousness, especially in example. Comparisons and embryonic tales are piled upon each other in catalogues in the pastoral texts, ticked off by "per exemplum" and by "item ... item ... iterum." After De lingua argues from a host of scriptural sententiae that God hates liars because, as truth itself, he hates his opposite, falsity, it turns to example in the form of several biblical tales and these comparisons: lies are like flies or venemous reptiles in a corpse's mouth; the liar is like a traitor to a king or a forger of money.143 Suchfigures,as De lingua's repeated "ostenditur" suggests, are used as a tool of exposition: just as a king hates the man who forges his coinage, so God hates those who substitute falsehoods for the true word that is the currency in his world, what is of value and necessary for social intercourse. In Etienne's terms, such a comparison makes an idea visible and readily knowable. The similitudes of De lingua and other pastoral texts on speech are often formed to have a pronounced emotional, as well as cognitive, impact. They specialize in the vile, even grotesque. (Interestingly, the influential writer of confessional materials Raimondo de Penaforte claims that the vileness of sin is what the will detests.144) De lingua's image of the poisonous reptiles crawling out of the mouth of a corpse 142 144

143 De lingua, f. 140r. Ibid., f. 161 r . Tender, Sin, p. 238; Lee Patterson, "Chaucerian Confession," p. 159.

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The lies of the Fall, the tongues of Pentecost is chosen by Carpenter as the capstone for his lengthy chapter on lying.145 Often, fabulous natural history, especially from Aristotle's De animalibus, was the source for such figures, perhaps because, as Thomas of Chobham argues in his influential treatise on preaching, similitudes formed from the novel properties of animals move the soul more easily than plain statements.146 Certainly, natural "fact" had particular authority in treatises where God is presented repeatedly as the author or designer/craftsman (artifex) of the physical world. According to De lingua, the lie is conceived as vipers are: just as the male spews its seed in the mouth of the female and then their progeny destroys her by ripping open her womb, so the Devil conceives a lie in the mouth of liars, destroying their souls in the process.147 Playing on visceral associations, as Spenser does when he writes of the dragon vomiting in The Faerie Queene Li, and on cultural taboos against pollution, such images transfer disgust to lying. But they also awaken fear for the consequences, associating spiritual death with venomous reptiles and the ripping open of the womb. In both ways, they create detestation for lying. Moreover, the very vehemence of the reader's or auditor's emotional reactions imprints them sharply on the memory, like those images of violence and lust which clerics devised as part of their mnemonic schema.148 In pastoral discourse on deviant speech, examples, metaphorical and narrative, and sententiae are joined with reasoning to form a rhetorical ensemble. Let us return to Etienne's first sentence. While most of it is devoted to the power of examples, he begins by claiming that both raciones and auctoritates may instruct, warn, and move people, affecting knowledge and conduct. According to the full title of the Tractatus, just above that sentence in the manuscript I read, the Tractatus is "refertus au[c]toritatibus et racionibus et exemplis diuersis ad edificacionem pertinentibus animarum" [filled with authoritative texts and arguments and diverse examples pertaining to the edification of souls].149 This list of essential discursive elements reflects consensus in thirteenth-century clerical culture. To take one prescriptive clerical genre, the artes praedicandi advise preachers that arguments in sermons should rest on all three.150 Raciones in the 145 147 149 150

146 Carpenter, Destructorium, f. ev r . cTAvray, Preaching, p. 23In. r 148 De lingua, f. 161 . Carruthers, Book, pp. 131-41. Etienne de Bourbon, Tractatus, f. 5V. Michel Zink, La Predication, p. 208; Le Goff, "UExemplum" pp. 11-12; Berlioz, "Le Recit,"p. 117.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity Tractatus or Peyraut's Summa are of many types, even fully articulated syllogisms,151 but enthymemes are most common. Although arguments will be played down in this study because pastoral discourse in fiction usually attenuates or omits them, we should at least consider one discursive unit in which all three elements appear together. Here is Peyraut's last topos on lying in general, quoted in part in the second section of this chapter and referred to early in this section: Duodecimo potest valere ad detestationem huius peccati hoc quod grauiter vulneratur iste qui cadit peccato isto.Unde ecci.xx.Lapsus false lingue.quasi.qui in pauimento cadit.Multum videtur esse corruptus mentiens cui potius placet quod non est quam quod est.Et multum videtur habere oculos infirmos.cum tenebre falsitatis ei placeant.et lumen veritatis ei displiceat.Corruptionem hominis mendacis insinuat Augustinus.super illud Psalmiste.Perdes omnes qui loquuntur mendacium.dicens.Merito perditur mentiens.quia declinat ab eo quod est in illud quod not est.152 [The twelfth thing that can have power for detestation for this sin is that he who falls by it is wounded gravely. Whence Ecclus. 20:20: "The slipping of a false tongue is as one that falleth on the pavement." The liar, whom what is not pleases rather than what is, greatly seems decayed. And he seems to have very weak eyes since the darkness of falsity pleases him and the light of truth displeases him. Augustine conveys the depravity of the man who lies when he says about the Psalmist's "Thou wilt destroy all that speak a lie" that he who lies is destroyed deservedly because he deviates from that which is to that which is not.]

The announcement of the topos (and its potential effect on the will of an auditor/reader) is followed directly by a confirming scriptural analogy. Then comes the main enthymeme: he who is pleased with what is not rather than what is (the stated premise) is marred or injured (the result). As is characteristic of the enthymeme, other premises are not mentioned here because they are assumed in the culture or developed elsewhere in the text (for example, that God is the creator of what is or that He is known through what he has created). This enthymeme is then developed by the metaphorical 151

152

I have grouped raciones, especially in the c o m m o n pastoral form of enthymemes, under rhetoric because some thirteenth- century commentary o n classical rhetorical texts does so when reasoning (especially the enthymeme) has to d o with moral matters and with appeals to the emotions. See O s m u n d Lewry's survey of mid-century commentaries in "Rhetoric." Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. G7 V .

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The lies of the Fall, the tongues of Pentecost example of sight, introducing the terms of truth and falsity. Two sententiae, the biblical developed by the patristic one which uses the language of the enthymeme, round off this subdiscourse. This discourse of sententiae, examples, and arguments aimed at the mind, the will, and the memory of the deviant speaker appears in the extended pastoral treatises in a concentrated and fragmentary form, as the topos above suggests. Even when topoi are ordered carefully and enumerated, suggesting a graspable body of knowledge,153 as in the prima pars of Peyraut's Summay they contain a jumble of propositions, injunctions, sententiae, tales, metaphors, and bits of scholastic argument. Structure is largely additive; style, often paratactic, with conjunctions omitted between clauses presenting diverse material. Like rhetoricians, the pastoral writers love to list and aim for copiousness, for representing, as much as possible, the culturally authoritative "dicta et facta" in a topos. The repetitiveness that results is itself a means of persuasion, conveying how insistent an ethical formulation is in texts, in readings of the natural world, even in human society as shaped by God the artificer. The genres of pastoral literature which digest material from treatises like Peyraut's Summa present this discourse in an even more fragmented way, although they reproduce many of its basic concerns, ethical distinctions, and rhetorical characteristics. The most obvious of these genres, the much-used alphabetized Latin collections of distinctiones and their kindred summae praedicantium> became veritable encyclopedias in the fourteenth century. (The summae, as handbooks of homiletic material, should be distinguished from the artes or formae praedicandi, technical treatises on composing sermons.) Although drawing in various materials (from bestiaries, lapidaries, Cato's maxims), these compendia basically served as intermediaries between treatises on "practical morality" like Peyraut's double Summa and the less well-educated priests and their lay auditors.154 Of the thirteen I have examined, all include entries on a few Sins of the Tongue - usually backbiting and often boasting, lying, and flattery - and eleven, a general entry on verbal restraint under "Lingua" or "Locutio."155 Here is a representative passage, taken 153 154 155

Laurie Finke, "The Parson's Rhetoric," pp. 97-105. Louis-Jacques Bataillon, "Intermediates," pp. 2 1 3 - 1 6 . See also Parkes, "Ordinatio," p. 137, and Christina v o n Nolcken, "Compendia," pp. 2 7 1 - 8 3 . Entries o n "Lingua" or "Locutio" appear in these distinctiones: Rosarium tbeologiae, ff. 73 r ~ v ; the collection with the incipit "Duplex est abstinentia," f. 70 v (the ms. actually begins

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Lies, slander, and obscenity from "De locutione" in a collection of distinctiones which survives in over eighty manuscripts: Loquens debet attendere.quid dicat.quomodo dicat.cui dicat.et quando dicat.Quid debet homo loqui docetur 2 pe.4/Si quis loquitur quasi sermones dei et Eph.4 Omnis sermo malus non procedat ex ore uestro.sed qui bonus est ad edificacionem fidei ut det gratiam audientibus.Qui enim non timet coinquinare linguam suam plus quam alia membra pocius porcus uidetur quam homo.Porcus enim ita cito ponit rostrum suum in luto.sicut pedem.Item porcus semper habet os apertum ad stercora et non ad flores.sic mali ad stercora peccatorum non ad flores uirtutum.Ex habundancia cordis os loquitur.de ore latrine et sepulcri non egreditur nisi fetor.Paulus. corrumpunt bonos mores colloquia mala.Item porcus reprobatur propter grana que habet in lingua sic homo propter mala uerba. Ieronymus.In uerborum pondere probacio constat vite eterne et humane.Item sicut canis macelli qui labia habet semper sanguinolenta. abhominabilis debet esse homo.qui os suum habet apertum. muscis et aliis immundis.et quecumque uolunt intrare permittit.156 [A speaker ought to pay attention to what he should speak, how he should speak, to whom he should speak, and when he should speak. What a man ought to speak is taught in I Pet. 4 ("If any man speak, let him speak as the words of God") and in Eph. 4 ("Let no evil speech proceed from your mouth, but that which is good to the edification of faith, that it may administer grace to hearers"). He who does not fear to foul his tongue more than other members seems to be a pig rather than a human being, for a pig puts his snout in filth as readily as his foot. Likewise a pig always has his mouth open to dung but not to flowers, just as the mouths of the evil are open to the dung of sins and not to the flowers of virtues. "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh" (Mt. 12:34). Nothing passes out of the mouth of a latrine or sepulchre except a stink. St. Paul: "Evil communications corrupt good manners"

156

"abstinencia est duplex"); Distinctiones pro sermonibus, f. 174V; the Compendium moralitatem ascribed to Jacob de Lausanne, f. 86r; the Distinctiones theologicae ascribed to William of Leicester, f. 78V; the Distinctiones ascribed to Gilbert the Minorite, ff. 59 r -60 v ; the Distinctiones theologicae ascribed to Nicholas Biard, ff. 85v-6r; the Distinctiones ad praedicandum ascribed to Nicholas Gorran, ff. 92 r -3 r ; the Distinctiones theologicae of Simon of Boraston, ff. 77r~y; John Bromyard's Summa praedicantium, ff. CLXXXVIII 1 CXCI r ; and the Fasciculus morum, pp. 46-8 ("De superbia oris"). The two compendia without such an entry are the popular Manipulus florum of Thomas of Ireland and the distinctiones with the incipit "De abstinentia. Corruptela igitur." Treatises on the Seven Sins, like Heinrich von Freimar's Summa vitiorum or the Expositio libri de electionibusy also contain chapters on most of the nine Gregorian verbal sins, placed in order among the other offspring of the capital seven. Incipit "Duplex est abstinentia," f. 70v.

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The lies of the Fall, the tongues of Pentecost (I Cor. 15:33). Just as a pig is disdained because of the grain it has on its tongue, a person is disdained because of evil words. Jerome: "The test of eternal and human life lies in the weight of words." Also just as the marketplace dog, with his ever bloody lips, is revolting, so should be a human being who has a mouth open to flies and other unclean things and who allows anything that wants to to enter his mouth.] Virtually all the weapons of a discourse designed to identify and create aversion for deviant speech are presented in this short entry: the normative function of speech (placed first even in this jumble), prudential considerations (auditors' and God's judgment of the speaker's character), injunctions and prohibitions, biblical and patristic sententiae, revolting metaphors invoking the idiom of pollution. Tales are absent, but not in other texts, like the Fasciculus morum, which has an entry on maliloquium ending with three highly condensed ones. 157 Both entries may very well be derived, perhaps at some remove and perhaps by memory, from Peyraut's Summa and other treatises on verbal sin.158 Vernacular texts for the English laity (and perhaps for priests whose Latin was shaky or who simply used vernacular materials since they were directed to teach the laity "in lingua materna") usually produce an even more abbreviated and fragmented discourse. For example, Robert Mannyng's catechetical manual with tales, Handlyng Synne, follows its main source, the Anglo-Norman Manuel des pechiez, in devoting just a few couplets to ten types of verbal sin, presented in Peyraut's order and probably also derived, at some remove, from the Summa.159 Only one, backbiting, is treated extensively and given a detailed narrative. Flattery's single metaphor, loose definition, and single injunction form a typical entry: 157 158

159

Fasciculus morum, pp. 4 8 - 9 . Bataillon has argued from other entries, "Intermediates," pp. 215-21, that the compiler of the distinctiones lifted bits and pieces from Peyraut's Summa, intercalating them with material from other sources. Of the three exempla from the Fasciculus, the latter two appear in Peyraut's Summa (ff. I4 r " v ), Etienne's Tractatus (ff. 156V-7V), and the Speculum morale (col. 872), while the first, that of the praising angels and polluting demons included in the first section of this chapter, appears in the latter two treatises (f. 156r; col. 869). Handlyng Synney lines 3481-685. M a n n y n g places this sequence of Sins of t h e T o n g u e u n d e r Pride in his tract o n t h e "sevene dedly s y n n e s . " N o general discourse o n verbal sin finds its w a y into this loose collection of catechetical material, although some other types are introduced elsewhere: lying and swearing false oaths u n d e r the Second C o m m a n d m e n t (lines 607-800), cursing u n d e r t h e F o u r t h (lines 1239-306), backbiting u n d e r the Fifth (lines 1514 ff.), lying, false testimony, and perjury (lines 2635-902) u n d e r t h e Eighth - all in t h e tract o n t h e Decalogue; excusing sin (Peyraut's excusatio peccati) in t h e tract o n confession (lines 12347-418).

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Lies, slander, and obscenity What seye men offreseloseniours Pat haue here wrdys feyr as flours? Now ysfreflour whyte and rede And now hyt ys bofre drye & dede. Pe loseniour spekfr nowfrypay And behyndefrybak hyt ys away. Per one hafr smylyng semlaunt And behetyfrfreto holde cunniaunt, Kepefrefranfro losengrye, For feyr spekyng man kan weyl lye.160 How could such a fragmented, rudimentary entry be used readily? The prologue to Handlyng Synne specifies as its audience (again, listeners and readers) c
Ibid., lines 3503-12. Murphy, Rhetoric, p. 289.

161

162 Ibid., lines 52-6. Ibid., lines 13-18. 164 Carruthers, Book, pp. 182 and 1 9 3 ^ .

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The lies of the Fall, the tongues of Pentecost Latin texts, then, were also designed, in their very fragmentariness, to be used rhetorically by the clergy (and by the laypeople who could read them, like John Gower and Geoffrey Chaucer). Christina von Nolcken's study of fourteenth-century sermons has shown that preachers used entries from distinctiones for frameworks, tales, sententiae.165 Like the longer treatises, these pastoral texts presented themselves as compilations of authoritative materials, worth retaining in memory (or also script, if one could) and, in turn, adapting for pastoral occasions: directing a confession, catechizing someone, preaching on a certain subject to a specific audience. (In The Book of Memory, Mary Carruthers traces how composition grew out of memorized reading. 166) Their very fragmentariness, Ralph Hanna argues, gives the cleric great freedom in constructing a discourse: But the very lack of focus within the presentation, its tendency to fall into separable items, insures its usefulness: in the dissipation of the announced context, the individual priest is left free to construct his sermon, to provide connections which would yoke any single piece of virtue lore to the announced sermon division, to insert additional figurae or exempla which the allusiveness of cited materials calls to mind.167 Some pastoral genres were designed to prepare priests, and sometimes laypeople, for these pastoral discursive practices. Collections of exempla for preachers, set questions for confessors to consider posing to penitents, forms of confession - all channelled discourse on deviant speech, still fragmentary and so the more easily adapted, for a rhetorical situation. These genres we will take up with the fourteenthcentury English fictions which present these pastoral acts: the catechist of Patience exemplifying a Sin of the Tongue with an extended tale, Gower's Genius directing the confession of the lover, Chaucer's Manciple appending to his tale of Phebus and the crow Solomonic discourse on verbal restraint. In each of these fictions, and in both Piers Plowman and the Parson's catechesis on confession, a cleric, pseudo-cleric, or catechizing laic confronts a somewhat recalcitrant audience which, he or she judges, needs instruction on either a specific sin of the tongue or verbal restraint in general - the two basic discursive modes of Peyraut and his fellow compilers. In these four fictions, different pastoral situations engage different strains and different rhetorical characteristics of this pastoral 165 167

von Nolcken, "Compendia," pp. 275-82. Ralph Hanna, "Patience," p. 67.

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166

Carruthers, Book, pp. 189-92.

Lies, slander, and obscenity discourse, just as they bring to the fore particular types: the murmur of a renegade prophet in Patience; the turpiloquium, flattery, and lies of Langland's minstrels, keen to wheedle gifts and status from magnates eager for diversions; the backbiting of Gower's lover, bent on eliminating rivals for his lady and winning her love. In all of them, however, this discourse is presented as instructional and salvific, devoted to confronting its audience with the nature and consequences of deviant speech, to swaying it with a clerical rhetoric of comparisons, injunctions, prohibitions, arguments, exempla, and sententiae largely derived from Christian scripture. In the process, it enacts what it celebrates as normative speech: the discursive, other-directed seeking and transmitting of knowledge and the prudential use of cultural wisdom from texts to prevent future evils. In introducing his book "De moribus lingue" in the 1190s, the Poitevin preacher Raoul Ardent explicates the leitmotif of this pastoral discourse: "Mors et vita in manibus lingue. Mors: quia lingua que mentitur occidit animam. Vita: quia ore conuersio sit ad salutem" [Death and life in the hands of the tongue: death because the tongue which lies slays the soul, life because by the mouth may come conversion to salvation].168 So, while the pastoral treatises may set forth such remedies for the errant word as cloistral silence or slowness in speech, they also present themselves as remedial, converting and saving with their rhetoric, with their norms, with their prohibitions, but, above all, with their model of speech, trustworthy because it labors at the socially and divinely ordained purpose for signs: establishing a communion of minds. Their semiotic theory becomes their discursive practice. 168

Raoul Ardent, Speculum universale, f. 161r

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Exemplifying deviant speech: murmur in Patience

"Et surrexit Ionas, ut fugeret in Tharsis a facie Domini" [And Jonas rose up to flee into Tharsis from the face of the Lord]. So the Vulgate's Jonah answers the abrupt, unglossed, and absolute imperative of God: "Surge, et vade in Niniven, civitatem grandem, et praedica in ea" [Arise, and go to Ninive the great city and preach in it]. In contrast, the Jonah of the anonymous fourteenth-century Patience responds to this imperative to preach not by taking to his heels, but by speaking. In direct defiance of God's "Nym by way to Nynyue wythouten ofrer speche"1 - the prohibition is the Patience poet's addition - Jonah uses speech to invent, first a probable grim future for himself in Nineveh, then a god who would ordain such a future for his prophet, and finally a way to evade such a god. In this way, he replaces the word of God which he is called to utter with words about God. This major addition to the spare biblical account begins a narrative in which different types of speech about God are juxtaposed with each other and with the events they interpret so that their authenticity - their reliability and their claims as to what they do - may be judged. All the while, these divergent acts of speech are contained within the controlling discourse of a catechist which presents the story of Jonah as an exemplum of impatient speech. In interpreting and adding to the scriptural story, even in choosing, for a discourse on patience, example as his chief rhetorical figure and Jonah as his example, this narrator adheres to pastoral discourse on deviant speech, both as it shapes example and as it expounds impatient speech in the form of murmur. In Patience, a pastoral discourse which 1

Quotations from all poems contained in British Library MS. Cotton Nero A.x are taken from The "Pearl" Poems. Line numbers will be given in the text.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity mediates the scriptural becomes the vehicle for authorizing how a story from Christian scripture is presented. Working within an alliterative tradition of storytelling in which the fiction of oral performance is still important, the Patience poet creates a prominent speaker. Unlike the reserved biblical narrator, this speaker surrounds, with his own interpretive discourse, events and speech - especially those of Jonah, but even those of God, the Alpha and Omega of the biblical text. The absence of a framing fiction in which several disputing voices are heard, as in the Confessio Amantis or the prologue to "The Manciple's Tale," gives this voice center stage. There the speaker claims authority, like the compilers of the pastoral treatises we have examined, by founding his discourse in the scripture of clerical culture, especially the Bible. No sooner does he round off his opening generalization on the value of patience in adversity than he appeals to the Beatitudes as promulgated by the clergy: "I herde on a halyday at a hy3e masse, / How Mathew melede l>at his Mayster his meyny con teche" (lines 10-11). He does not present himself as literate in Latin. He heard, not read, the Beatitudes, and they may have been expounded in English within a sermon, even if read in Latin as the Gospel. Nevertheless, he knows the revealed word well enough to paraphrase each Beatitude with its accompanying reward. Then he interprets his own experience of poverty and subservience in terms of the first (on poverty of heart) and, especially, the last, which commends patience as control of the will and the emotions: "Pay ar happen also ^at con her herte stere, / ffor hores is fce heuenryche" (lines 27-8). So, while he transmits the scriptural, assuming a catechetical role, he presents himself as embracing it first, submitting his life as a text to its authority. Just as surely as his culture's scripture gives the speaker a sententia to conform to and then to proclaim, it affects his choice of a story to exemplify the inverse of that very Beatitude and its promised reward (so stressed in his paraphrase). Seeking the exemplary at first in his own experience, he sets forth a hypothetical instance where he would be tempted to impatient speech by an overlord's command: 3if me be dyjt a destyne due to haue, What dowes me \>e dedayn o^er dispit make? Ot>er 3if my lege lorde lyst, on lyue, me to bidde Ot>er to ryde ot>er to renne to Rome on hys ernde, What gray^ed me ^e grychchyng, bot grame more seche Much, 3if he me ne made, maugref my chekes, 74

Exemplifying deviant speech AndfrenneJ>rat moste Ifrole,and vnfc>onk to mede, Pe had bowed to his bode, bongre my hyure. (lines 49-56) Then he shifts abruptly to the story of Jonah, which parallels his instance in that it was initiated by a lord's command to ride to an alien city to perform a task: Did not Jonas in Jude suche jape sumwhyle? To sette hym to sewrte, vnsounde he hym feches. Wyl 3e tary a lyttel tyne and tent me a whyle, I schal wysse yowfcerwyth,as Holy Wryt telles. (lines 57-60) At this critical juncture of general discourse (lines 1-60) and extended tale, where discursive practices are revealed and rhetorical claims made, the speaker presents himself again as the religious teacher of pastoral treatises: he submits his moral discourse, like his life, to the authoritative instruction of the Bible. At the same time, he derives from it the rhetorical power to seize his auditors' attention and to promise them crucial knowledge. Like the French vernacular preachers whom Michel Zink has studied, he presents a discourse which would be daunting and powerful to those many auditors who would not have had at their command the knowledge or the tools to check its teaching, especially its scriptural sources, or to control it in any way.2 Moreover, he suggests that his auditors are not well versed in the Bible, even in so fundamental a text as the Beatitudes or so well-known a story as that of Jonah. For all this stance as a clerically instructed pedagogue who uses example as "un instrument d'enseignement et/ou d'edification,"3 the reality that the speaker appeals to as he turns from general discourse to story is one which he represents his auditors as sharing with him: history and Christian scripture. Medieval exempla commonly begin with such a double claim to authenticity: through historical verity4 and through a written source which the culture regards as a reliable witness to the past. "Damianus tellis" or "Cesarius tellis" are two of these introductory formulas from the Middle English Alphabet of Tales (fifteenth century). However, such formulas are preceded by Latin headings in the Alphabet: in the case of blasphemy, "Blasfemia in deum grauiter punitur," "Blasfemus visibiliter a deo punitur," "Aliquando blasfemus corporaliter punitur," and "Blasfemus aliquando 2 3 4

Zink, La Predication, throughout but especially pp. 305-40; also Vauchez, "Presentation/* p. 14. Claude Bremond, Jacques Le Goff, and Jean-Claude Schmitt, L'«exemplum»i p. 28. Ibid., p. 44.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity statim vita privatur."5 These introductory sentences (almost sententiae) suggest that the power of exemplary story lies in more than verifiable history: it lies in its reproducibility - that is, its perceived correspondence with another story "across chronological boundaries." In Patience, the speaker invokes the principle of reproducibility by juxtaposing his experience with a story which is, he stresses, removed in time and place ("in Jude sumwhyle"). He insists on a sameness across temporal and cultural distance: as we shall see, the sameness of subservience to a demanding superior, the sameness of the temptation to reject that superior's command in impatient speech, the sameness of consequent misfortune. Such sameness suggests that the past event can be copied, making time itself "subordinated to a higher, more powerful order/' 6 In Patience, that order is the moral teaching of Jesus, more specifically the eighth Beatitude as the sententia on which the speaker's life is founded and which Jonah fails to embody. The speaker's claims for his story's instructive validity, then, rest on an ontology he presents his auditors as sharing with him: the witness of the Bible and the reproducibility of example. For them, example is "the figure that tied past to future through the present,"7 historical event to their future conduct through a telling. As the narrator calls attention to this "ontological dimension" of his exemplary story,8 he also assumes control of its interpretation, giving it a focus on deviant speech and on unforeseen consequences. Jonah, the audience is told, "did suche jape." A "jape" is something foolish, often involving words {MED: examples under 4b); it recalls the speaker's temptation, four lines earlier, to "grychchyng" instead of obedience. "Grychchyng" is glossed in Middle English/Latin 5 6

7

Alphabet of Tales, pp. 82-3. Lyons, Exemplum, pp. 11-12. In the early texts on Sins of the Tongue, discourse with exempla has an insistently timeless quality. In Peyraut's Summa and De lingua, biblical story is usually varied only by the Vitae patrum, with its heroic figures from the great age of primitive piety, and, somewhat rarely, by the Dialogues of Gregory the Great. Exemplary action is placed not in Peyraut's thirteenth-century Lyons but in the Eden and exile from Eden of Genesis 3 and 4 and in the wilderness of the monastic life - landscapes which, figuratively understood, were very near. As a result, the exemplary seems universal. All liars are like that Father of Lies, the Devil, according to the Speculum vitae, lines 14259-72. As a penitent using a model confession based on Peyraut's Summa would have read, Per quod [mentiendo] Dei adversatrix Facta sum et imitatrix Versuti seductoris, Qui, cum mentiens seduxit Evam opera destruxit Benigni conditoris. Analecta Hymnica MediiAevi, XXXIII, p. 250. 8 Lyons, Exemplum, p. 237. Valesio, Novantiqua, pp. 20—4.

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Exemplifying deviant speech wordlists as murmur, a pastoral Sin of the Tongue defined as "oblocutio indebito modo facta contra deum vel factum alicuius."9 So, Jonah's forbidden verbal response to God's command (which follows directly in the text) is identified as an instance of this pastoral sin of gainsaying God unjustly. These words and the action which follows, the speaker then proclaims, are Jonah's attempts to secure his safety, but they end up bringing the opposite, adversity ("vnsound"). Exemplifying always involves "selecting, framing, and regulating (that is, subordinating to a rule)" the event that the speaker and audience regard as real.10 But in Patience the poet makes us acutely aware of the speaker's doing so, of his controlling his audience's perception of the authoritative story, because his rule of life, the eighth Beatitude, mentions neither speech nor misfortune. Thus, the narrator, in this prominent rhetorical framing of the story, not only proposes to illustrate through Jonah's speech the inverse of the Beatitude (not steering the heart), but he proposes consequences which are not clearly the inverse of the Beatitude's reward ("t>e heuenryche"). This ostentatious subordination of exemplary story to a general moral statement at some remove from the earlier biblical sententia accentuates the narrative's dependence on catechetical discourse which extends the scriptural. That discourse is, throughout Patience, z. traditional pastoral one in its techiques of controlling the story, in its ways of analyzing what is deviant in speech, even in its speaker's choice of focus, rhetorical figure, and the story of Jonah itself. This the opening general passage manifests in more ways than in its dominating clerical voice and scripturalism. Some modern editors head the first sixty lines with "prologue,"11 a practice they do not justify any more than dividing the narrative into four parts. This editorial decision tends to obscure the nature of the text, leading modern readers to see it in generic terms as "narrative" so that they interpret it according to narrative theories or their general expectations for the genre. Instead of being discrete narratives, clerical exempla are often part of a textual collage created by the rhetorical act of exemplification. In their typological study of the medieval exemplum, Bremond, Le Goff, and Schmitt derive as an essential 9

10 11

Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. F5V; Etienne de Bourbon, Tractatus, f. 25 l v ; Speculum morale, col. 1223. "GrutchanMurmurator" is the entry in the Promptorium Parvulorum, a fifteenthcentury English-to-Latin wordlist, col. 203. "Murmurare" is glossed by "gruche" in English Glosses, p. 40. See also "Seynt Iohon," f. 59V. Lyons, Exemplum, p. 4. The "Pearl" Poems, p. 7; Patience, J. J. Anderson, ed., p. 31.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity characteristic "la dependance relative de Y exemplum par rapport a un discours dans lequel il vient s'inserer comme un element formant un tout, mais un tout subordonne a un ensemble englobant; c'est un collage''12 This discourse may be a sermon, but it may also be a collection of various materials used for preaching or other pastoral purposes, like Etienne's Tractatus, Peyraut's summae on the vices and the virtues, the Speculum morale, or Handlyng Synne. This effect of collage is often lost for those who approach a text like Patience by reading printed "collections" of pastoral exempla, for they tend to use ones edited by nineteenth-century scholars with a folklorist bent that leads them to omit almost all of the instructional matter in which the narratives are often embedded. The Legoy de la Marche edition of Etienne's Tractatus, for example, drops more of the manuscript than it prints.13 Even the historian of the exemplum J. Th. Welter provides a Speculum laicorum riddled with ellipses. For example, Welter presents its four exempla on murmur accompanied by just a few sentences from the manuscript, giving little sense that the text sets forth a definition of murmur, identifies four species based on their root vices, appends four typical circumstances for the last of these (murmur from impatience), briefly illustrates each species and set of circumstances as they are introduced, and expounds four consequences of murmur, each confirmed by several biblical sententiae - all before the first exemplum of any length is told.14 Indeed, while some pastoral texts present exempla with little controlling discourse (like An Alphabet of Tales), many so-called collections of exempla are really heterogeneous preaching materials, like the Tractatus or the Speculum laicorum. II

If we approach Patience as such a collage, the fifty-six lines which precede the introduction of Jonah establish general norms for judging his speech and its consequences. In this, the Patience poet is following clerical convention, as we can see from an exemplum of deviant 12 13

14

Bremond, L'«exemplum», p. 37. New scholarly editions of the exempla of Etienne de Bourbon, Jacques de Vitry, Arnold of Liege, and Jean Gobi which include the enveloping pastoral discourse are being prepared by the historical anthropology team at the Centre de Recherches Historiques de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. See Bremond, L'«exemplum»y p. 76, and Le Goff, "L:'Exemplum," pp. 7-8n. v r Speculum laicorum, ff. 113 -15 .

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Exemplifying deviant speech speech in Mannyng's Handlyng Synne. After stating the Eighth Commandment, "Pou shalt no fals witnesse bere," Mannyng expounds various ways of violating it: false witness by jurors, belief in the sayings of witches, several types of lies. The last, swearing false oaths, consists of eighteen lines of general discourse, a two-line linking of the generalizations and tale, and twenty-two lines of narrative (followed by considerably more discourse, but that is out of our ken): But sum men synne greuusly Yn t>ys comaundement so hy, Pat of gret byng fals wytnes beren And frar to also grete ofces sweren. Swych synne greuyj) now mykyl For manyon are bojje fals & fykyl, Pat ofcer for loue or for awe Wyle men swere falsly a sawe. And bere wytnes of swych a fals To make a man hange be \>e hals. God haj) sent for swych veniaunce, But many trusten of lang suffraunce. Men hope so moche hys mercy to Pat some neuer recche what J>ey do; But be wys man seyt> yn hys lore Pat here synne ys moche J>e more 3yf J>ey synne custummably, Yn J>e hope of hys mercy. Y shal 30W telle how hyt fore Of a man l?at hym forswore. Yn londoun toune fyl swych a chek, A ryche man & a pore were at cuntek, And pletede aboute a lytyl land, Tyl a day was take yn hand. Pat day was so nygh dreue Pat \>e oth was to J>e ryche man 3eue. Wytnes J>ey alle gan hym bere Pat he ne wide falsly swere, For ryche men are holde trewe Pogh here falsnes be neuer so newe. Whan he was chargedfcesoj>e to seye Pat he ne shulde for loue ne eye, N o for lef no for loth, A noujjer ban was yn hys l>oght 79

Lies, slander, and obscenity For falshede he wide haue furj) broght. And god toke veniaunce apertly I>at alle hyt saye J>at stode hym by, For whan he hadde hys oth swore And kest t>e boke hem alle before, Vp ne ros he neuer more But lay ded before hem tore.15 The general discourse recalls the scriptural sententia (the commandment), names the verbal type, sets forth its genesis in the will ("for loue or for awe"), the intended consequences (besting an adversary) and the actual ones. The tale then details the circumstances which tempt the rich man to swear the false oath and the consequences for him. Despite its brevity, key words ("loue," "falshede," "l>oght," "veniaunce") link narrative details to the preceding catechesis. Although the englobing normative discourse in Patience does not name the verbal type until line 53, as the speaker gives his first example, the opening eight lines alert the audience to a focus on impatient speech, to its genesis (anger against adversity), and to its consequences (more adversity). Patience may be introduced here as the "poynt" of the text - a clerical term for a virtue, an authoritative teaching, and a subject of discourse {MED 10c, 6a, 6c) - but, from the outset, the speaker sees patience in terms of its moral opposite:16 foolishly expressing anger over destined hardships, like the speaker's poverty and his lord's hypothetical command. Recent criticism has accented the commonsensical, even expedient cast of the speaker's thinking:17 impatient speech cannot alleviate his poverty (lines 41-4) and will only provoke trouble with his overlord (lines 51-6). Yet this prudential mode of arguing aligns him with what we have seen to be a major strain of pastoral discourse on deviant speech: the harsh consequences of speaking unrestrainedly. Like the pastoral writers, he has his eye, in the present, on potential "future evils" and on the moral norms transmitted from the past (like the Beatitudes) which can prevent those evils if they are realized now in his life. Approached from the pastoral treatises on verbal sin, this normative prudentialism also accords with the speaker's focus on "grychchyng'Vmurmur as he makes exemplary first his own life and then the scriptural story of Jonah. In pastoral literature of all types, even 15 16 17

Mannyng, Handlyng Synne, lines 2679-720. Charles Moorman, "Narrator," p. 94. W. A. Davenport, Gawain-Poet, pp. 111-12.

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Exemplifying deviant speech episcopal lists of fundamentals to be taught to the laity, 18 murmur is the besetting sin of the chosen people, the Israelites of the Old Testament and those, like monks, who also have a vocation. 19 They have entrusted their lives to a hidden God, whose inexplicable commands provoke their contentious objections - as do the hardships which threaten if the commands are obeyed. In the exempla from Numbers which dominate and shape discourse on murmur, such gainsaying provokes even greater suffering as punishment from God: fiery serpents when the Israelites protest their years of wandering in the wilderness, leprosy and earthquake when Miriam and Korah question the divinely ordained leadership of Moses. 20 Joined to these cautionary tales are clusters of sententiae on murmur from anger and impatience, almost all taken from the Wisdom books, the main pastoral source, as we have seen, of a prudential strain. None is cited more than Wisdom 1:11: "Custodite ergo vos a murmuratione quae nihil prodest" [Keep yourselves therefore from murmuring which profiteth nothing]. The first biblical text cited by both Peyraut's Summa and De lingua when they take up murmur, it is glossed as saying that murmur not only cannot halt tribulation but instigates more, all the while depriving the speaker of its cleansing and reforming benefits.21 The Summa then explicitly identifies the person who refuses to murmur over punishment as the prudent speaker of Ecclus 10:28, looking always to the future and to his own benefit: prudens est qui futura prouidet.et premiaiet tormenta.et talis non murmurat de flagello.Libenter enim virgam tolerat qui a gladio pene 18

19 20

21

All of the six major sources for this book, except Carpenters Destructorium, have a chapter on murmur or "grychchyng": Peyraut's Summa de vitiis on ff. F 5 v - G 3 r , De lingua on 180 r -2 r , Etienne de Bourbon's Tractatus on 251 V -3 V , the Speculum vitae in lines 14611-736, the Speculum morale in columns 1223-8. Shorter treatments of murmur may be found in almost every type of pastoral literature: catechetical manual (for example, Mannyng's Handlyng Synne, lines 3487-92), distinctiones (Thomas of Ireland's Manipulus florum, f. 405 r ), treatises o n the Seven Sins (Expositio libri de electionibus, ff. 7 0 r - l v ) , collection of V V exempla (Nicolaus de Hanapis' Liber de exemplis, ff. 66 -7 ), form of confession (in Pe Clensynge of Marines Soule, f. 75 V ), and episcopal list of fundamentals (Bishop Peter QuiviPs Summula for the diocese of Exeter, in Councils, II, p. 1067). O n monks, see Casagrande and Vecchio, Peccati, pp. 2 4 1 - 3 . Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, ff. F6 r " v ; De lingua, ff. 181 r " v ; Speculum morale, col. 1227; Expositio... electionibus, ff. 70 r ~ v . De lingua, f. 180 v . Peyraut's full gloss on Wisdom 1:11, ff. F5 v -6 r : Sap.i.Custodite vos a murmure.quia nihil prodest murmur quod fit contra ea quae deus facit.Nihil enim prodest homino plerisque nocet.Non enim propter murmurxessat tribulatio.sed quod potuit esse meritorium.propter murmur fit demeritorium.Et inquinatur h o m o vnde debuit mundari destruitur vnde debuit emendari.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity eterne eum conseruat.patienter eciam sustinet ab eoflagellari.aquo celestem hereditatem expectat.22 [he is prudent who looks to future things, both rewards and torments, and such a person does not murmur about a scourge. For he freely bears the rod who saves himself from the sword of future punishment; he endures patiently being beaten by him from whom he anticipates a heavenly inheritance.] This sapiential strain, together with the examples from Numbers, creates a cautionary, pragmatic approach to impatient speech in a clerical world, like that of the speaker of Patience, in which humans have little control over their harsh destinies. Self-restraint, guided by scriptural norms, is necessary if one is to avoid multiplying hardships. From this prudential clerical stance, the speaker views Jonah as his opposite, a man whose choice of angry speech over patient silence "feches" adversity as a consequence. Yet he is an opposite within a kind: as a Christian, the speaker is one of God's chosen, like Jonah the Jew and the wandering Israelites before him prone to murmuring against a hidden God. Like him, also, he is a bearer of the revealed word to those who need to be instructed. Pastoral discourse on deviant speech not only impregnates chapters on murmur with its characteristic prudentialism, it brings that verbal type, largely forgotten by modern readers of medieval texts, to the fore by treating it amply and prominently. In Peyraut's Summa, for example, murmur is the second sin to be treated, following its twin blasphemy among the four sins committed directly against God. It occupies over eight pages in the 1479 Quentel edition, four more than lying, and is examined in a more elaborate way than any other sin, with subchapters on the sin in general, on subtypes, on the murmuring of monks and nuns, and on remedies.23 So, the catechist's focus on "grychchyng" in Patience is not eccentric, although I have yet to find a critic who has even recognized it as a pastoral Sin of the Tongue. Just as pastoral tradition designates impatient speech as a kind of murmur and links it to adversity, it dictates narrative example as the dominant rhetorical figure in a discourse which takes up murmur. 22

23

Peyraut, Summa de vittis, f. G l r . Like Peyraut's Summa, Etienne's Tractatus, f. 252 V , and the Speculum morale, col. 1255, argue that patiently bearing adversity earns rewards: in them, forgiveness of sins, glory, and escape from eternal punishment. Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, ff. F 5 v - G 3 r . This study's other major sources (note 18) also treat murmur amply.

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Exemplifying deviant speech Like blasphemy, murmur is first identified and given a name in the Pentateuch.24 Pastoral discourse founded on these historical books inevitably is dominated by story, just as discourse on turpiloquium^ which is named in the Pauline epistles, takes on their admonitory mode (as the fifth chapter will show). Peyraut, for instance, includes nineteen exempla of murmur, most of them (fourteen) from the Bible, whereas his chapter on lying contains only a few embryonic tales. In such pastoral discourse, biblical tales from the historical books assume what the schoolman Eudes Rigaud calls "the warning mode." All biblical modes, he argues along with other thirteenth-century theologians, were designed to move the will, but each works differently on the emotions - the modus commonitorius in the historical books by representing historical instances of goodness or its inverse.25 (The Summa fratris Alexandri terms this mode in the historical books exemplificativus.) Although narrative examples are assigned many functions in artes praedicandi and collections of preaching materials,26 Etienne de Bourbon argues in the prologue to the Tractatus that they have particular power to move audiences first to shun future evils and then to detest the vices. Having justified in his first sentence clothing the acute edge of doctrine with the concrete (as we have seen), he turns later to narrative examples as one means, drawing on his earlier language: Ipsa si quidem exempla ualent ad omnes homines... ad omne malum dissuadendum et ad omne bonum suadendum et adipiscendum et promouendum in omni loco et tempore predicacione et monicione. ualent eciam exempla ad futurorum malorum euitacionem ad uiciorum detestatacionem... ad peruersorum conuersionem et prouocacionem ad penitenciam.27 [Indeed, those exempla have power over all people... by preaching and admonition in every time and place, to dissuade from every evil and to persuade and reach and move to every good. Exempla even have power for flight from future evils and for detestation of vices ... for conversion of the perverse and provocation to penitence.] According to the great preacher of the early thirteenth century 24 25 26 27

On the naming and identifying of blasphemy in the Pentateuch, see Craun, "Blasphemy," Dictionary, p. 92. A. J. Minnis, "Formae Tractandi," pp. 134-43. In "Exempla" in Context, pp. 61-90, Fritz Kemmler surveys the functions assigned exempla. Etienne de Bourbon, Tractatus, f. 6V.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity Jacques de Vitry, even when clerics wrangled over the use of exempla to provide recreation and so arouse a sleepy audience unreceptive to "serious and useful words," they all agreed that exempla incite auditors to sorrow for sin.28 Indeed, as Etienne asserts in his opening sentence, it is their very efficacy in moving an audience and in modifying its beliefs and practices that makes examples a crucial part of the pastoral rhetoric of persuasion. In biblical exempla on murmur, as we have seen, this persuasive power comes from representing concretely the harsh consequences incurred by murmur. Pastoral practice may help us understand the speaker's focus on murmur, the prudential cast of his normative introduction, and his consequent use of narrative example - and how all of these rhetorical choices cohere. But why, finally, does he choose the story of Jonah to exemplify impatient speech when the Vulgate Book of Jonah does not even use the word murmur? Or, to begin first with the larger and more familiar question (among readers of Middle English literature, at least), what does Jonah have to do with patience? Jonah, we are often told, is a surprising, brilliantly innovative choice for the central figure of a poem about patience.29 For Job is the conventional medieval example of patience drawn from the Old Testament, while Jonah is the patristic and, later, popular type of Christ.30 But what the Patience poet creates is a vernacular paraphrase (a close one when it does not expand or add) of the Vulgate Book of Jonah which, like the exegesis of the influential Nicholas of Lyra (d. 1346), contains few "allegorical or typological flourishes."31 To write such a text demands attention to the literal sense of the Vulgate. Near the end of that often elliptical and riddling text, Jonah, angry over God's pardoning of the Ninevites, claims that he had voiced an objection to God's command to preach on the grounds that God is "patiens et multae miserationis" (4:2). By providing a God who enacts His attribute of patience in sparing the Ninevites He has threatened, this passage licenses a writer concerned with the literal sense of the story to represent God as patience itself.32 Yet, in a retelling which does not pretend to be the Bible but is founded on it 28 29 30 31 32

Jacques de Vitry, Exempla, p. xlii. Recently Edward Wilson, Gawain-Poet, pp. 56-7, and Myra Stokes, "Suffering," p. 354. Charles Moorman, Pearl-Poet, p. 68. R. H . Bowers, in Jonah, pp. 20-50, thoroughly documents the patristic and early medieval tradition of Jonah as a type of Christ. Ibid., pp. 61-2. Several patristic and early medieval texts develop the patience of G o d as the sparer of the Ninevites: the Contra haereses of Irenaeus of Lyons (Paul Szarmach, " T w o N o t e s , " pp. 126-7), Augustine's De catechizandis rudibus (Isamu Saito, "Bible," p. 50), and t w o

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Exemplifying deviant speech (as Piero Boitani says of the Cursor Mundi33\ it also authorizes that writer to invent an earlier speech in which Jonah protests against His patience and mercy. Such a speech would be entirely in keeping with the moral psychology of Jonah in the biblical text, for he is given to wrath, disobedience, and willfulness.34 So, the biblical original might suggest patience as a controlling theme for a retelling, with a God who exemplifies the virtue and an unwilling prophet who exemplifies its opposite, first of all in a speech which rejects God's command. Futhermore, Francis Cairns has shown that Nicholas of Lyra attributed to impatience Jonah's two biblical protests against God (one over the pardoning, the other over the wilting of the woodbine); he suggests that this was a homiletic and exegetical tradition in the fourteenth century. 35 The Patience poet may have found specific direction to create such a Jonah uttering such a "new" speech in pastoral texts on murmur, texts unnoticed by modern students of the poem. The Speculum laicorum and the Expositio libri de electionibus both exemplify murmur because of the command of a superior, one of their four subspecies of murmur impaciencie, with Jonah's initial - and extrabiblical - outcry. [Murmur] sit respectu precepti superioris contra cuius preceptum salubre murmurans impaciens est. sic ionas murmurans contra preceptum domini ceti [scribal error for "ceto"?] traditur deuorandus.36 [Murmur may occur with respect to the command of a superior; murmuring against a superior's wholesome command is impatient. So Jonah murmuring against the command of the Lord is handed over to be devoured by a whale.] Both works were widely circulated in England in the fourteenth century.37 Neither the Speculum, a late thirteenth-century collection

33 35 56

37

analogues to Patience, the early Christian Carmen de Iona, p. 221, and the eleventh-century Naufragium Ionae prophetae of Bishop Marbod of Rennes, col. 1676. 34 Piero Boitani, Narrative, pp. 4-5. F. N . M. Diekstra, "Jonah," pp. 205-6. Francis Cairns, "Latin Sources," p. 14. Expositio, f. 71 r ; the wording of the sentence on Jonah is very close to the Speculum laicorum, f. 114r. If "ceti" is not emended, it is possible, as Philip O'Mara has suggested to me, to read the sentence "So Jonah murmuring against the command of the Lord of the whale is handed over to be devoured." Herman Taylor also helped me in construing this passage. The Speculum laicorum survives in twenty manuscripts, seventeen of them in English libraries, according to J. Th. Welter's edition, pp. x-xix, and Bloomfield, Incipits, p. 125. The Expositio libri de electionibus survives in eight manuscripts, six of them in English libraries and the other two of English provenance, ibid., p. 503, while the very same commentary on

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Lies, slander, and obscenity of exempla embedded in extensive catechesis, nor the Exposition a phrase-by-phrase commentary on the Seven Sins from the Tractatus de electionibus of the late thirteenth-century canonist Guillaume de Mandagout, is a work devoted exclusively to the Sins of the Tongue. Nevertheless, each presents an extensive catechesis on murmur which is indebted in some ways to Peyraut's chapter on murmur. Given the brevity of their exempla of Jonah, these two works cannot of course be claimed as sources for Patience, but together they provide convincing evidence that, in pastoral texts, Jonah's rejection of God's command sometimes exemplified murmur uttered in impatience against the command of a superior. in

The pastoral literature which, following the Bible, develops murmur into a major (and grave) type of deviant speech, which (again following the Bible) dictates example as the central rhetorical figure in speaking about murmur, and which, in some texts abroad in England, finds a murmurer in the impatient Jonah of the Vulgate also provides ways of analyzing what is deviant in Jonah's speech and of controlling his story to foreground that deviancy. These rhetorical and analytical techniques appear both in chapters on murmur and in exempla in which speakers represent falsely their ontological, moral or social superiors. Even in the catechetical shorthand of the treatises, exempla of murmur begin by reporting the circumstances which engender violent emotions and so tempt humans to act on them in speech. "Ortum est murmur populi, quasi dolentium pro labore, contra Dominum" (Num. 11:1) [There arose a murmuring of the people against the Lord, as it were repining at their fatigue] is the standard example of murmur in general and, often, murmur stemming from impatience.38 Like the Book of Numbers itself, the treatises record first the fatigue and grief of the wandering Israelites. The actual words of murmur and their consequences for the speakers then follow. Following this paradigm, which gives narrative form to the pastoral concern with the genesis (will, intended effects) and consequences of deviant speech,

38

murmur/susurratio also appears in the so-called Septuplum ascribed to John Acton, extant in two Cambridge manuscripts, ibid., p. 509. Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. F6r; De lingua, f. 181r; Speculum morale, col. 1223; Etienne de Bourbon, Tractatus, f. 25l v ; Expositio... electionibus, f. 71v; Speculum laicorum, f. 114r.

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Exemplifying deviant speech longer exempla detail the circumstances, presenting the prelude to the verbal act through the eyes of the speaker as a moral agent.39 (Almost all exempla of deviant speech focus on a single utterance.) As an example, consider this tale from the Dialogus miraculorum of Ceasarius von Heisterbach (1219-21):40 Ante hoc quinquennium, quando valida ilia erant tonitrua, et pene a quotidiana aeris intemperie messis impediebatur, miles quidam provinciae nostrae, homo liber, de villa satis nobis vicina, videns a parte occidentali aerem obscurari nubesque imbriferas oriri, iratus dixit: Ecce ubi iterum diabolus ascendit. Vix sermonem finierat, et ecce orta tonitrua filium eius in sinu nutricis percusserunt, ipsa incolumi permanente. Sed et in aliis, aedificiis scilicet et iumentis, blasphemus ille satis flagellatus est, ut disceret de cetero non blasphemare.41 [Five years ago, when there were violent thunderstorms and the harvest was hindered by almost daily rains, a certain knight of our area, a free man from a neighboring estate, seeing the atmosphere darkened in the west and rainclouds arising, cried out in anger: "See where the devil is arising once again." As soon as he had uttered those words, behold, thunderbolts were born and struck his son at the breast of his nurse, while she remained unharmed. And that blasphemer was also sufficiently punished in other things, namely buildings and cattle, so that he might learn not to blaspheme in the future.] 39

40

41

In L'«exemplum», pp. 124-8, Bremond, Le Goff, and Schmitt find in the exempla of Jacques de Vitry a typical sequence somewhat similar to the one I adumbrate for exempla of deviant speech. T o obtain a sufficient sample of h o w pastoral exempla treat deviant speech, I read the following collections of exempla or of diverse preaching materials (in addition to examining exempla in the six major sources for this study): 1. Middle English a. An Alphabet of Tales b. Jacob's Well c. Mannyng's Handlyng Synne 2. Latin a. Caesarius von Heisterbach's Dialogus miraculorum b. The collection with the incipit "De superbia et presumptione" c. Jean Gobi, La Scala coeli d. The collection with the incipit "Incipiunt narraciones et exempla quedam edificatoria" e. Jacques de Vitry's exempla f. Liber exemplorum ad usum praedicantium g. Nicolaus de Hanapis' Liber de exemplis h. The collection with the incipit "Quando homo habet filium" i. Speculum laicorum Caesarius von Heisterbach, Dialogus^ I, p. 192.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity Here the oncoming rain clouds, the immediate circumstances, are set against the daily rains which threaten the harvest, crucial to survival in an agricultural society before swift and sure means of transportation. The speaker is identified as a landowner, dependent on the harvest, but also as a man and a knight - "miles" emphasized by "homo liber." Blasphemers in medieval exempla are almost always men of power, accustomed to rule and to control events: kings and emperors like Dante's Capaneus and Boccaccio's Julian the Apostate, knights, and the wealthy clergy.42 The uncontrollable event provokes the man accustomed to control to vilify a god who seems to cross his will. This vilification, labelling the power who governs the weather as diabolical, constitutes a different point of view from that of the teller, a monk. For him, these words are an act of blasphemy: they misrepresent the divine nature and, in doing so, insult God. 43 The extensive recent French criticism and scholarship on pastoral exempla has stressed their univocite, their tightly controlled interpretation of what they record: "Afin d'imposer a l'auditeur une verite morale utile a son salut, le predicateur se doit de fixer le sens de l'histoire, du recit qu'il rapporte en eliminant toute possibility d'interpretations multiples."44 Exempla of deviant speech present a challenge to tellers intent on the univocal, for they contain within them the words which deviate from the orthodox. In Patience, the circumstances which prompt transgressive speech are contained within speech - that of God, expanded significantly from the Vulgate's simple command to preach at Nineveh. In this way, the narrator begins his exemplum not only by exploring the events and emotions which elicit murmur but also by contrasting that speech with God's directive as to how to speak about Him: Hit bitydde sumtyme in J>e termes of Jude, Jonas joyned wat3frerinneJentyle prophete. Goddes glam to hym glod, J?at hym vnglad made, Wyth a roghlych rurd, rowned in his ere. "Rys radly," he says, "and rayke forth euen. Nym J>e way to Nynyue wythouten oj>er speche, And in bat cete my sages soghe alle aboute, Pat in l>at place, at t>e poynt, I put in J)i hert, For, iwysse, hit arn so wykke, J)at in J)at won dowelle3, 42 43 44

Dante Alighieri, Inferno, canto 14, lines 46-75; Giovanni Boccaccio, De casibus, p. 119; for knights and wealthy clergy, see Alphabet, pp. 82-3. In "Inordinata Locutio" pp. 140-62,1 present the pastoral analysis of blasphemy. Berlioz, "Le Recit," p. 118; also Le Goff, "V exemplum" p. 15.

Exemplifying deviant speech And her malys is so much, I may not abide, Bot venge me on her vilanye and venym bilyue. Now swe3e me J>ider swyftly and say me J>is arende." When t>at steuen wat3 stynt, frat stowned his mynde, Al he wrathed in his wyt, and wy^erly he tx>3t: "If I bowe to his bode and bryng hem J>is tale, And I be nummen in Nuniue, my nyes begynes. He telles mefcosetraytoures arn typped schrewes; I com wyth t>ose tyfcynges, J>ay ta me bylyue, Pyne3 me in a prysoun, put me in stokkes, Wryfre me in a warlok, wrast out myn y3en. I>is is a meruayl message a man for to preche Amonge enmyes so mony and mansed fendes. Bot, if my gaynlych God such gref to me wolde, For desert of sum sake, l>at I slayne were, At alle peryles," quoj)fceprophete, "I aproche hit no nerre. I wyl me sum oj>er waye t>at he ne wayte after. I schal tee into Tarce and tary J>ere a whyle, And Iy3tly, when I am lest, he letes me alone." (lines 61-88)

The catechist-narrator begins without the verisimilar detail of time, place, and landscape which occupies, in a typical way, half of Caesarius' exemplum. Attention is directed entirely to speech, to the unexpected voice of the transcendent and its abrupt imperatives - and then to the speech which Jonah is commanded to utter, the speech of a "Jentyle prophete." This phrase designates, in the second line of the exemplum^ his status^ his social role and line of work, much as Caesarius' monk does with his landowning, free knight. His prophetic language for the Gentiles is to be given directly by God ("my sa3es") in a specific situation in order to disclose whatever He chooses of His intended acts and nature. Jonah's position as a prophet may be "predicated on submission of his will to that of God,"45 but that involves submitting his words to those of God. In contrast, Jonah chooses to be the initiator and the source of his speech about God, violating God's specific injunction to depart "wythouten ofrer speche." Of course it is God's repeated references to the Ninevites' wickedness which goads him.46 But the narrator is interested in what Jonah's subjective consciousness - and what the speech which now becomes its tool, rather than God's - makes of what God says. At exactly the point where Caesarius' monk labels his 45 46

S. L. Clark and Julian Wasserman, "Beatitudes," p. 18. Davenport, Art, p. 116.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity knight's emotion as anger, between the circumstances and the deviant speech itself, the narrator in Patience does the same. Thus, he controls the future that Jonah invents for himself by framing it as the verbal fabrication of a vice: anger. In this, of course, he follows the pastoral practice, itself directed by scholastic theology (as we have seen with lying), of attributing deviancy to a perverse will, to a root vice. Later treatises, like Carpenter's Destructorium and the Speculum morale, carry out this scholastic concern with volition by placing each verbal type under one of the Seven Capital Sins, instead of grouping all types in a tractate, as Peyraut and Lorens d'Orleans do. The ubiquitous short treatises on the vices, like that of Heinrich von Freimar, naturally do the same. Moreover, the roots of murmur are explored more deliberately and extensively than those of any other verbal sin. Peyraut's Summa de vitiis explores five, all with exempla: the Capital Sins of pride, avarice, and envy; impatience; and, in bono, a healthy conscience. The Tractatus and its derivative on murmur, the Speculum, trace it to all Seven Capital Sins, using exempla or explanations. In all of these biblical exempla, short as they are, the root vice precedes the speech.47 In Patience, Jonah's anger generates thought and then speech which is fierce, hostile, contrary, rebellious and therefore perverse - all related senses of "wifcer" (OED), which thus neatly, in line 78, conveys the pastoral sense of murmur as "oblocutio indebito modo facta contra deum." Jonah begins with a privy verbum mentis and then breaks into audible words, but words spoken apart from God, as murmurers often do, according to pastoral treatises, when they want to keep a superior from hearing.48 Driven by this complex of emotions, his speech becomes progressively more detailed; its details become more threatening; its syntax becomes more concentrated and parallel. Although this speech opposes what God commands, the "murmur preceptionis" which the Speculum laicorum and the Expositio exemplify with Jonah, it does so because of the adversity which Jonah foresees for himself. Anger over adversity, leading to a refusal to accept how God has disposed things (that is, impatience), is the most common cause given for murmur in pastoral treatises. 47 48

Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. F6V; Etienne de Bourbon's Tractatus, f. 252V; Speculum morale, cols. 1225-6. The Speculum vitae begins its chapter on "grucchynge" by distinguishing it from the neighboring sin of "stryuynge" on the basis of its private expression (lines 14611-20). For other instances of murmur as words spoken out of a superior's hearing, see Expositio... electionibus, f. 70 v , and Mannyng's Handlyng Synne, lines 3487-92.

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Exemplifying deviant speech Peyraut claims that God's chosen - the Israelites, the saints, and the prophets whom he quotes (Jeremiah and Habakkuk, after Job) - are especially inclined to murmur over the adversity which good men, especially themselves, suffer. Tribulation is the first cause why all men "grucchyst or spekyst a3ens" God in Jacob's Well, an early fifteenthcentury adaptation of the Somme.49 The Somme's major Middle English offshoots all list the adverse circumstances that prompt murmuring: storms, sickness, lean years, poverty - the latter a common cause in pastoral treatises, as we might divine from the speaker's poverty in Patience.50 All such murmuring against tribulation involves, according to the Speculum vitae and other derivatives of the Sommey loss of patience - that is, asserting one's will over God's: For a man J>at is of ille conscience And has tynt grace and pacience, He wille alle way thurgh maistery Be a boue Gode allemyghty, Sofratwhat so God wille fullefille If be it no3t after his wille, He gruches and thynkes God duse wrange.51 Likewise, Jonah wills another course of action ("I aproche hit no nerre. / I wyl me sum ofrer waye"). But unlike the protesting saints and prophets of Peyraut's Summa or the ordinary men of the Somme's descendants, Jonah just imagines, not experiences, adversity. His tribulations are created by a vivid rhetoric dictated by anger and contrariness. By the concept of patience invoked in the normative text, "l>ay ar happen also t>at con her hert stere," Jonah's speech springs from, enacts, and engenders impatience. In his speech, Jonah's fate becomes so definite that he also invents a god who would ordain it, a god who avenges himself not only on the Ninevites but on his own prophet. Furthermore, his god is inconsistent, both gracious and vengeful (lines 83-4). This god goes clean against the exegetical tradition, which followed what the Vulgate Jonah said of God at the end: that he objected to God's command to preach to the Ninevites because God is "patiens et multae 49 50 51

Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. Gl v ; Jacob's Well, p. 94; De lingua, ff. 180r"v, also develops anger over adversity as a cause of murmur. For the list of adverse circumstances, see Speculum vitae, lines 14680-92; on poverty, see Peyraut's Summa de vitiis, f. Gl r , and Speculum morale, col. 1223. Speculum vitae, lines 14661-7.

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miserationis" (4:2). But in the pastoral tradition, murmurers, like blasphemers, often ascribe false attributes to God. The author of Jacob's Well claims that murmur in tribulation involves "demynge t>at god is vnry3tfull or vnmy3tfull, for he grauntyth \>e no3t t>I wyll anon at \>i luste."53 So, unlike the Jonah of the exegetes, whose reasons for flight are based on an exact sense of God's nature, the narrator's Jonah, once he has placed his own word against the divine word, takes flight because of the verbal images his emotions create: torture by the Ninevites, vengeance from an angry god. IV

When the narrator heads his retelling with speech which objects to a divine command and misrepresents the divine nature, he brings to the fore a concern with how humans speak about the transcendent which is central in the biblical text, two thirds of which is given over to speech about God. The voice of God, of course, initiates the events with His command and, in the end, explains His sparing of Nineveh. Within the tale, Jonah confesses his faith to the sailors, they pray to God, Jonah cries out from the belly of the whale in praise and prayer, he prophesies at Nineveh, the king of the Ninevites reasons that God may pardon the penitent, and Jonah protests against God's mercy and later the withering of his vine. To this sequence of acts of speech (most expanded by him), the narrator adds an earlier prayer from the whale and the sailors' confession of faith when they arrive safely on land, as well as Jonah's first murmur. Up to the end of this first, and crucial, human utterance about God, the narrator keeps his role of catechist to a minimum. Like Caesarius' monk in our paradigmatic pastoral exemplum, he performs only the essential catechetical acts of labelling the verbal sin and identifying the 52

53

For the exegetical tradition, see David J. Williams, "The Point," p. 133n. Other exegetes extenuate Jonah's flight o n other grounds b y attributing it to patriotism: he fears that N i n e v e h will conquer Israel if it survives (Jerome, Qommentariorum in Ionam 1.3 and 4.3; Nicholas of Lyra in Biblia cum glosis, III, 935 r ). N o exegete k n o w n t o m e attributes it to a false conception of G o d , although a verse analogue t o Patience, Marbod of Rennes* Naufragium, col. 1676, entertains the possibility that Jonah fled out of fear for his life. O n blasphemy, see m y "Inordinata Locutio," p p . 140-4. Jacob's Well, p. 94. In the early fifteenth-century vernacular treatise o n the Decalogue, Dives et Pauper, part 1, p. 226, Pauper explains that different, even contradictory, attributes are ascribed to G o d b y murmurers in different situations: "whan men grochyn ajenys Godis d o m y s in sekenesse, tribulacioun & dishese & seyn feat G o d is vnry3tful and cruel or grochyn a3enys his mercy whan bey m o n nout han venchance of here aduersarijs as feey w o l d y n han and seyn feat G o d is to pacient & to merciable."

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Exemplifying deviant speech root vice - and does so briefly. First the voice of God and then the voice of Jonah, as we have seen, are used to set forth the circumstances, real and imagined, which prompt and then feed his murmur. While this withdrawal heightens the contrast of revealed and invented speech about God's nature and His stances towards His creatures, it seems to threaten the narrator's rhetorical control, his effective use of the story to exemplify murmur. How can he maintain the univocite which makes pastoral exempla, in Jacques Berlioz' argument, efficacious in their work of affecting auditors? Pastoral exempla are usually brief. The more detail, the greater the possibility that a particular might suggest a different "verite morale" (Berlioz' term) than the teller's or "cast an entirely new light on the apparently simple generality being illustrated."54 As Caesarius' exemplum suggests, tales of deviant speech heighten this danger for their clerical tellers: the very words of the speaker could suggest another way of interpreting the circumstances - or even provide forbidden words for an auditor to utter. Therefore, such utterances are brief, like that of Caesarius' blaspheming knight, or they are omitted altogether, especially if they are directed against God.55 However, in the extended exemplum of Patience not only are the circumstances, God's abrupt speech, presented as they were to the moral agent, without explanation, but the supposed consequences and then God's supposed intention and will are voiced by him in what is almost a parody of a pastoral analysis of an act of speech. Modern readers are certainly attuned to any "tension" which might arise between the tale and the "verite morale." Often what guides our approach to exempla of any length (besides the Romantic distrust of generalization56) is the sense that the general statement illustrated is relatively narrow, like a heading in An Alphabet of Tales, "Blasfemia in deum grauiter punitur," or like the grossly inappropriate and reductive moralitas of one of Chaucer's tellers. The Friar, for instance, ends his mocking tale of a corrupt and thickheaded summoner with the biblical "The leoun sit in his awayt alway / To sle the innocent, if that he may."57 However, what Patience presents at the outset is eight lines of general reflection on the virtues of patience, in part by contrast with its opposite, especially as that is manifested in speech. 54 55 56 57

Lyons, Exemplum, p. 34. For example, see the four exempla of blasphemy in Alphabet, pp. 82-4. A. C. Spearing, "Exemplum," p. 161. Geoffrey Chaucer, The Riverside Chaucer, Tales.lll. 1657-8.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity Then follow the Beatitudes and the author's general meditation on the value, for him, of patience and poverty. The "poynt" of Patience is not a point in the modern sense of a sharply defined idea but its general subject {MED 6a), the virtues of a virtue, especially in terms of the disadvantages of its opposite vice. What the catechist presents in this normative text, much as Mannyng does in that englobing his exemplum of the rich Londoner who swears falsely, is a complex of related ideas and apposite texts. That practice continues after he narrows his discourse to the exemplary story of Jonah and to "grychchyng": he keeps extended speech and action within the general "poynt." The catechist's first move after Jonah's murmur is somewhat indirect, given in Jonah's words, though those are controlled by the narrator's framing: Penne he ryses radly and raykes bilyue, Jonas toward Port Japh, ay janglande for tene I>at he nolde bole for no i>yng non of t>ose pynes, I>a3 J)e Fader bat hym formed were fale of his hele. "Oure Syre syttes," he says, "on sege so hy3e, In his glowande glorye, and gloumbes ful lyttel, Pa3 I be nummen in Nunniue and naked dispoyled, On rode rwly torent wyth rybaudes mony." (lines 89-96) In this addendum to Jonah's murmur, Jonah is made a "subfulfillment" of the Jesus whose resurrection he prefigured in Christian tradition.58 Unlike the Jesus of the cross, he substitutes his own action for the one commanded by God - line 89 pointedly recalling God's "Rys radly... and rayke forth" (line 65) - and so refuses to accept the will of his superior, that fundamental aspect of patience in the introductory catechesis. Jesus endures the suffering which Jonah only imagines for himself, patient in the most basic sense of bearing what is painful (patior), and He does so out of trust in God, whereas Jonah believes that God is indifferent to his welfare. This much several modern readers have perceived.59 But the narrator also underscores, by contrast with Jesus, Jonah's disputatious speech and its root vice, anger: "janglande for tene." In the pastoral treatises, the Jesus of the Passion, silent in His suffering, is advanced as the great antitype of the murmurer: "quasi agnus coram tondente se 58 59

Malcolm Andrew, "Christ," p. 231. John T. Irwin and J. D . Kelly, "Contemplative Life," pp. 34—7; Diekstra, "Jonah," p. 208.

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Exemplifying deviant speech 60

obmutescet." In this indirect way, the narrator realizes the pastoral strategy of countering examples of murmurers with ones of the patient: after Jesus, Job, Aaron, Zachariah and Elizabeth - also chosen people confronted with an equally inscrutable but demanding God.61 In Patience, the allusion to Jesus as example also elides time and different circumstances, conveying the transcendental power and worth of patience. Open rhetorical control of the example follows, just after the first detailed description. Against Jonah's ship setting sail, the narrator sets a jeremiad which claims to expose authoritatively how Jonah's speech has misrepresented God. In this way, be begins to establish within the narrative, now a collage like the entire poem, "hierarchies both of discourse and of human understanding."62 Wat3 neuer so joyful a Jue as Jonas wat3 t>enne, Pat t>e daunger of Dry3tyn so derfly ascaped. He wende wel J>at J>at Wy3fcatalfreworld planted Hade no ma3t in t>at mere no man for to greue. Lo, J>e wytles wrechche, for he wolde no3t suffer. Now hat3 he put hym in plyt of peril wel more. Hit wat3 a wenyng vnwar frat welt in his mynde, I>a3 he were so3t fro Samarye, bat God se3 no fyrre. 3ise, he blusched ful brode, t>at burde hym by sure. Pat ofte kyd hym, J>e carpe tat kyng sayde, Dyngne Dauid on des, J>at demed t>is speche In a psalme l>at he set fre Sauter wythinne: " O ffole3 in folk, fele3 oj>erwhyle, And vnderstondes vmbestounde. Pa3 he be stape fole, Hope 3e tat he heres not J>at eres alle made? Hit may not be J>at he is blynde tat bigged vche yse." (lines 109-24)

In his distanced, ironic stance towards Jonah, so carried away by the emotion of the moment that he has no fears for his journey, the narrator recalls his counterpart in the companion poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. When Sir Gawain is about to set off on his journey, the narrator contrasts his eager acceptance of the Green Knight's game while he was drinking at King Arthur's Christmas feast with the heavy fate that seems to await him (lines 491-9). Yet 60 61 62

Etienne de Bourbon, Tractatus, ff. 157 r and 253 r ; Speculum morale, cols. 873 and 1227; see also Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, ff. F6 r and G3 r . Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. F6 r ; Etienne de Bourbon, Tractatus, f. 253 r ; Speculum morale, col. 1227. Vance, Signals, p. 230; he is describing medieval literature in general.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity whereas the natural and liturgical cycles give the romance narrator vision wider than that of his protagonist, it is the Bible once again that informs the catechist's vision - and, he sarcastically observes, ought to have informed Jonah's. In this, he is once again hewing to the pastoral exempla of verbal sin. Like this brief one from the Speculum laicorum, such exempla often conclude with biblical sententiae which authoritatively mark what is errant in characters' speech: Legitur in uita sancti amandi episcopi quod cum quidam eidum predicanti detraheret mox a demonio correptus propriis dentibus linguam diserpens culpam manifestando miserabiliter expirauit.Exo.21.diis non detrahes et principi populi tui non maledices.Exemplum de maria sorore moysi.Num.12.que propter detraccionem lepra percussa est.63 [It is read in the life of Saint Amandus the bishop that when a certain man was backbiting him while he preached, he was suddenly snatched by a demon, and, mangling his tongue with his own teeth, he died wretchedly, manifesting his own guilt. Exo. 21 (actually 22): Thou shalt not speak ill of the gods; and the prince of thy people thou shalt not curse. The example of Miriam the sister of Moses (Num. 12), who was stricken with leprosy because of detraction.]

The psalm from which the narrator of Patience takes his sententiae, 93 in the Vulgate, was interpreted by Augustine and later exegetes as an affirmation of God's patience and an admonition against impatient grumbling at His disposition of earthly affairs.64 While the psalm is apposite to the poem in its general theme in ways Lynn Staley observes, the two verses which the poem paraphrases are also the psalmist's corrective for those chosen people who complain, when they see the unchecked power of the wicked to persecute them, that God is either unaware of or indifferent to their suffering. In fact, Augustine, the late medieval marginal gloss, and some later exegetes, as well as the pastoral writers on murmur, identify the complainers of this psalm as murmurers.65 Following the psalmist, the narrator uses this rebuke, just after reporting the speech of those chosen who protest against their suffering, to expose a false conception of God. Jonah's limited tribal deity, shortsighted and impotent outside of Israel, was first invented in his murmur when he sought a way to 63 64 65

Speculum laicorum, f. 51 V . See also "De superbia," f. 5 r . Lynn Staley Johnson, "Psalm 93," pp. 67-9. Ibid., p. 68; Biblia cum glosis, II, ff. 508 v -9 r ; Speculum morale, col. 1224; Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. G l v .

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Exemplifying deviant speech evade God's command (lines 85-8), just as he invented, somewhat contradictorily, first a vengeful god (lines 83) and then an indifferent Sky God to account for his forthcoming persecution by the Ninevites (lines 93-6). That last misconception is indirectly subverted by the details which recall the Passion of Jesus - that is, by the narrator's and, following him, the audience's - ethical process of remembering apposite scripture and applying it in interpretation. Now the narrator ostentatiously uses remembered scripture in his retelling, making it his auctoritas as he corrects Jonah's continued false image of God. Against speech which misconstrues God because its signs are generated by the emotions and perceived needs of the speaker, by a malleable subjective consciousness always acted upon by circumstances, he sets a word authorized by God Himself and then reproduced by memory in an act of instruction. Jonah is thus exposed as a prophet who has failed to access his own culture's sentential wisdom and so to read virtuously the text of his own experience. While the narrator's extended exemplum represents erring speech about God, that speech is contained within and interpreted by a pastoral metalanguage sanctioned by God's self-disclosure in the Bible. In Augustine's Enarrationes in Psalmos and in the exegetical tradition springing from it, the murmurers of Psalm 93 are committing blasphemy when they claim, as Jonah does, that God does not see or attend to human affairs.66 Such claims, Augustine argues, amount to a denial of God's essential attributes: "immitis est autem homo, cum uult contradicere aut bonitati Domini, aut patientiae, aut potestati, aut iustitiae iudicis" [Man is harsh, moreover, when he wishes to gainsay either the goodness of the Lord, or the patience or the power or the justice of the judge].67 Blasphemy, often conflated with murmur outside the specialized treatment given verbal sins in the treatises,68 specifically involved misrepresenting God by assigning an attribute to Him which does not conform with His nature, denying one that does, or crediting a created being with one of His attributes.69 Another companion poem to Patience, Cleanness, presents as fully developed an exemplification of blasphemy as can be found in Middle English narrative. Like the story of Jonah, it is a biblical one. 66 67 68

69

Peter Lombard, Commentaria in Psalmos, col. 866; Biblia cum glosisy II, ff. 508 v -9 r . Augustine, Psalmos, X X X I X , p. 1317. Blasphemy is conflated with murmur b y Thomas Aquinas in his Expositio super Iobam ad literam, 1.10, and by the author of Dives and Pauper, I, part 1, p. 226. Murmur was so loosely defined (gainsaying God) that conflation is not surprising. Craun, "Inordinata Locutio," pp. 140-4.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity In the midst of its last extended exemplum, drawn like the story of Jonah from the prophetic books, Daniel rebukes Baltazar for desecrating the temple vessels, recalling how his father Nabugodenozar was deposed when he blasphemously claimed equality of power with God: "Til hit bitide on a tyme towched hym pryde For his lordeschyp so large and his lyf ryche. He hade so huge an insy3t to his aune dedes I>at l>e power of \>e hy3e Prynce he purely f o r t e s . Penne blynnes he not of blasfemy, onto blame \>e Dry3tyn. His my3t mete to Goddes he made wyth his wordes: 'I am god of l>e grounde to gye as me lykes, As he bat hy3e is in heuen, his aungeles t>at weldes. If he hat3 formed J>e folde and folk fcervpone, I haf bigged Babiloyne, bur3 alj>errychest, Stabled J>erinne vch a stone in strenkj>e, of myn armes, Mo3t neuer my3t, bot myn, make such anoj)er.'" (lines 1657-68)

Cleanness, like pastoral exempla of blasphemy I have considered elsewhere,70 presents the blasphemer's punishment as God's revelation of the very attribute he had denied. Nabugodonozar's bestial madness, coming right on the heels of the blasphemy in which he godded himself, is an irrefutable sign of God's omnipotence. It belies the limited god invented by his subjective consciousness when fed by his pride over Babylon. Faced with such a theophany of power, Nabugodenozar acknowledges "who wro3ht alle my3htes" (line 1699). Theophany followed by confession (three times by Jonah) is also what the narrator of Patience gives us (lines 125-336), as he exemplifies the consequences of impatient speech, which so engross him in the opening general discourse. Once he has exposed Jonah's false god with scripture, he greatly expands the Vulgate's storm at sea in order to present it as a visible sign in which God acts to correct Jonah's errant speech. In this, he once again follows pastoral exempla of verbal sin. In them, the act of speech, preceded by circumstances and root vice, is always followed by its consequences for speakers: usually an immediate physical punishment by God, who intervenes in the natural order in order to instruct them. From the thunderbolts which kill his son while leaving a nurse untouched and which then destroy 70

Ibid., pp. 159-60.

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Exemplifying deviant speech his cattle and his buildings, Caesarius' knight in our paradigmatic clerical exemplum "learned... not to blaspheme." Other exemplary punishments are equally unmistakable: pepper and sauce bespattering blasphemers at a meal blossom into leprosy, a conventional image of sin; a blaspheming knight's mouth is twisted until it reaches his neck.71 When the offense is a public one, these corporeal signs also serve to manifest a usually hidden God to the audience, as in the cases of Mannyng's perjured Londoner and of a habitual dicer and blasphemer who, shaking off his comrade's rebukes, "was sodanlie strekyn with a wown J>at all men myght se." 72 Exempla of murmur itself, usually limited to pastoral treatises on verbal sin, are taken largely from the Book of Numbers and so bear its emphasis on divine punishment and divine disclosure through natural forces, including storms. 73 In Patience, the storm which disrupts Jonah's flight manifests the power of God and His knowledge of Jonah's whereabouts. 74 The winds readily obey God's bidding; the waves overmaster every attempt to keep the ship afloat. In this passage, correlation is established between "les elements narratifs et les principes moraux que le predicateur veut lui faire supporter." 75 In this way, the narrator retains an interpretive univocite even when the text becomes its most richly concrete. Faced with such an unmistakable natural sign of divine power, even the sailors, heathens who did not witness Jonah's murmuring, realize that Jonah is being chastized by his powerful god. Jonah, as a Jew, responds by replacing the false verbal image of a limited deity produced by his emotions with the all-knowing and all-seeing Creator God: "I am an Ebru," quoj> he, "of Israyl borne. Pat Wy3e I worchyp, iwysse, t>at \vT03t alle J>ynges, Alle l>e worlde, wyth J>e welkyn, J>e wynde and \>e sternes, And allefcatwone3 t>erwythinne, at a worde one. Alle J)is meschef for me is made at t>ys tyme, For I haf greued me God and gulty am founden." (lines 205-10) In this confession of faith, Jonah represents God not only as his 71 72 73 74

The leprosy in Alphabet, p. 83; the contortion in the collection with the incipit " D e superbia," f. 5 r . Alphabet, pp. 83-4; see also Jacob's Well, p. 100. Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, ff. F6 r ~ v ; Etienne de Bourbon, Tractatus, ff. 253 r ~ v ; De lingua, ff. 181 r " v ; Speculum vitae, lines 14625-62. 75 Spearing, The Gawain-Poet, p. 91. Berlioz, "Le Recit," p. 121.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity experience and nature discloses Him, but also as all of what is seen in terms of the scripture he can recall as a Jew. ("At a worde one," a phrase not in the Vulgate, alludes, of course, to the creation story of Genesis.) Like the catechist of the introduction, he has learned to authenticate his discourse with his own experience as it is seen through the revealed word, controlling his emotions (steering his heart, in the catechist's metaphor for patience) so that not they, but the natural order and revelation, shape speech. The utterance which results contains three types of speech celebrated, as chapter 2 shows, by the pastoral writers as divinely sanctioned: a public profession of faith, praise, and confession of sin. With this God-directed speech, Patience moves beyond the typical pastoral exemplum of deviant speech, which only gives narrative form to pastoral moral analysis of attendant circumstances, a speaker's will, what is signified, the speaker's intended effects, and actual consequences. Amidst the consequences of Jonah's murmur, the narrator presents a sequence of reformed speech, culminating in Jonah's preaching of the prophetic word at Nineveh, the salvific word which is the opposite, in the narrator's pastoral scheme, of the deviant word.

Jonah's progress in speaking of and comprehending the God he has so misconstrued is slow and disjunctive, dependent on instruction by natural signs and counterpointed by more adequate speech from others. The limits of this initial confession begin to be exposed when the very heathen sailors it directs to the Hebrew God recognize from visible signs - the sudden ending of the storm and their safe landing that God is merciful, as well as omnipotent and retaliatory (lines 237-8). Their "alternative" confession of faith contrasts with Jonah's view that God uses His power only for punishment - just as he first imagined Him in his "grychchyng." To counter this view, the narrator breaks off his lively account of Jonah in the whale to underscore how God's providential care is enacted by His power over nature: For nade \>e hyje HeuenKyng, t>ur3 his honde my3t, Warded bis wrech man in warlowes gutte3, What lede mo3t lyue, bi lawe of any kynde, Pat any lyf my3t be lent so longe hym wythinne? 100

Exemplifying deviant speech Bot, he wat3 sokored by bat Syre bat syttes so I>a3 were \vanle3 of wele in wombe of bat fissche. (lines 257-62)

By recalling, in line 261, Jonah's murmur ("cOure Syre syttes,' he says, 'on sege so hy3e'"), the narrator pointedly corrects Jonah's image of God, then and in the whale, as a Sky God indifferent to human suffering.76 Only prolonged meditation on his experience, preceded by recognition of his treacherous and shifting emotions ("I>a3 I be fol and fykel, and falce of my hert," in the confessional prayer of 282-8) brings Jonah to a knowledge of those divine attributes which he had falsified: So in a bouel of bat best he bide3 on lyue Pre dayes and be ny3t, ay benkande on Dry3tyn, His my3t and his merci, his mesure benne. Now he knawe3 hym in care, bat coube not in sele. (lines 293-6)

Even the order of these attributes reflects Jonah's experience: first he was aware of God's power (the storm), then His mercy (survival in the whale), finally his restraint in not using his power for vengeance ("mesure"). This passage and the preceding confession, neither found in the Vulgate, mark the end of the delusions generated by the language of his subjective self. Once the narrator has constructed Jonah's undeceiving in these reworkings of the biblical text, he gives him its grand prayer (lines 305-36), a confession of both God's power and His mercy which proceeds not just from his experience but from scripture.77 Now that he has accepted these divinely given signs, natural and written, as the proper basis for speaking about God, he is ready to accept also the burden of prophetic discourse as words directly given by God in and for a specific moment of human affairs ("Ris! Aproche ben to prech. Lo, be place here. / Lo, my lore is in be loke. Lauce hit berinne," lines 349-50). In his speech, Jonah conforms his will to God's. In this way, in an unusual twist of the pastoral technique of appending to examples of murmur examples of obedient service ("sine querela"), the narrator fashions him into an example of patience. He becomes his own antitype, the converted murmurer who speaks the truth about God in prayer and preaching. 76 77

Anderson in his edition of Patience, p. 12. Malcolm Andrew and Ronald Waldron note, in their Poems, p. 198n., that Jonah's confession recalls Psalm 68.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity VI

By inventing an initial act of murmur and then by developing the Vulgate account of the storm and the whale into a theophanic punishment which leads Jonah to reform his speech, the catechizing narrator converts the other major acts of speech in the biblical text, Jonah's paired protests over the salvation of Nineveh and the destruction of the woodbine, into relapses into impatient speech. Goaded by immediate experiences which strike him as adverse, Jonah twice allows self-absorption and violent emotions to dictate what he says about his own history and hence the God who has acted in it. Pastoral exempla often present intractable sinners in word, especially when a hidden God is their subject: diceplayers blaspheming throughout every game or murmuring ascetics given to doubt the justice of God's actions.78 But the exemplum is usually confined, in its brevity, to one critical act of speech. Patience gives us three examples of murmur in its exemplum. Such multiplication of incidents exposes the intractability of human habits of speech, but it also allows the narrator to develop other circumstances and root vices which, in the pastoral tradition of murmur, may generate speech which questions, even contests, the divine will. In these multiple episodes, he again maintains a general univocite with pastoral rhetorical techniques and related ideas from pastoral moral psychology. In the first of these exemplary instances, the narrator simply paraphrases Jonah's scriptural protest over Nineveh's preservation, speech which openly rejects God's nature and acts in human history. But in Patience, such a speech blatantly falsifies what Jonah said in his initial murmur: "I biseche be, Syre! Now l>ou self jugge. Wat3 not J)is ilk my worde bat worsen is nouj>e, f»at I kest in my cuntre, when bou l>y carp sende3 I>at I schulde tee to bys toun J>i talent to preche? Wei knew I J>i cortaysye, by quoynt soffraunce, J>y bounte of debonerte, andfrybene grace, Py longe abydyng wyth lur, by late vengaunce, And ay by mercy is mete, be mysse neuer so huge. I wyst wel, when I hade worded quatsoeuer I cowfre To manace allefrisemody men bat in bis mote dowelle3, 78

The diceplayers in the collection with the incipit "De superbia," f. 5r"v; the ascetics in Alphabet, pp. 281-2.

102

Exemplifying deviant speech Wyth a prayer and a pyne, bay my3t her pese gete; And, J>erfore, I wolde haf flowen fer into Tarce. Now, Lorde, lach out my lyf. Hit lastes to longe. Bed me bilyue my bale-stour, and bryng me on ende, For me were swetter to swelt as-swyt»e, as me fcynk, Pen lede lenger l>i lore tat Jms me les make3." (lines 413-28) Jonah's falsification of his original sense of God as vengeful and indifferent and so of his reasons for flight is quite in keeping with a second falsification, which has no precendent in the Vulgate. Whereas Jonah claims to have been the source of prophetic eloquence ("when I hade worded quatsoeuer I cow^e"), in the narrator's account of his prophecy, God supplied the word which Jonah merely uttered. 79 This false claim elevates his stature as a prophet, as the first does more subtly by making him a seer who can divine both God's nature and the future. As the last line indicates, both spring from his fears that his reputation as a prophet will be lessened because the Nineveh he threatened with destruction is spared. Nicholas of Lyra, following earlier commentators, attributed this protest to such fears: "timuit diffamari et vilipendi [compare "me les makes"] sicut falsus propheta quod erat sibi afflictio maxima" [he feared being maligned and thought little of as if a false prophet - the greatest affliction for him]. 80 The narrator in Patience makes him so concerned with his status and so carried away with anger when it is threatened that he grossly exaggerates his own powers. Following the pastoral tradition that the most common occasion for murmur from impatience was, in the words of Chaucer's Parson, "that shrewes han prosperitee, or elles for that goode men han adversitee,"81 the poet creates a murmurer obsessed by the difference between the mercy shown to those whom he regards as wicked ("mody") and his own potential suffering as the righteous bearer of the prophetic word. While the narrator allows the patent discrepancies between Jonah's speech and his actual experiences to reveal the genesis of his relapse, he reintroduces himself as a catechist to trace the emotional and moral roots of first this, and then Jonah's third, outcry. Twice he attributes the first of these and once the second to anger, the most common root vice, as we have seen, of murmur impatientiae in the pastoral tradition. (Both times God responds to Jonah by questioning whether it is just to be so angry with His actions - lines 431, 490-1). In 79 81

Jay Schleusener, "History/' pp. 963-4. Chaucer, Tales.XA99.

103

80

Biblia cum glosis, III, f. 937V.

Lies, slander, and obscenity addition, in keeping with a clerical moral psychology in which one vice could spring from another, the narrator traces that anger, in both cases, to another vice of the will, acedia: "Muche sor3e ^enne satteled vpon segge Jonas" (line 409) and "He weped for sor3e" (480). Acedia was the vice opposed to patience in some patristic and, later, pastoral texts.82 Not surprisingly, pastoral texts of various types - Etienne de Bourbon's Tractatus, the derivative (at least on murmur) Speculum morale, and Bishop Peter Quivil's Summula or list of essential catechetical matter for his diocese of Exeter - root murmur in "acedia et vite tedium."83 In the first two, the occasion for that sorrow is the loss of some external solace ("exterioris consolacionis defectu"), like the various foods which the journeying Israelites of Numbers had forfeited by leaving Egypt. That is exactly what Jonah accuses God of in his third act of murmur: depriving him of "a cumfort" and "my solace," the woodbine in which he had taken such delight. Just as when he anticipated losing his reputation as a prophet, he loses control of his emotions: they drive him, like the typical murmurer of the Speculum morale quoted above, to pit his will against God's and then to formulate an unjust God whom he may justifiably reject. For Jonah, this need to see God as a wrongdoer leads him once again to use speech to refashion his own past, this time repressing his miraculous preservation so God will be only a destroyer: "A, t>ou Maker of man, what maystery l>e t>ynke3 / Pus fry freke to forfare, forbi alle ofrer, / Wyth alle meschef frat frou may? Neuer J>ou me spares?" (lines 482-4). Here, as when he rejected how God chose to use him - and so God Himself - in his second murmur, his sorrow ultimately involves the aversion to God and one's own spiritual good found in scholastic and post-scholastic writing on acedia.84 In both cases, this aversion and the increasingly vehement speech feeding his sorrow leads him to crown his murmur with highly rhetorical pleas for death (lines 425-8, 488-94). As in his first murmur, letting his immediate emotional responses to adversity (real or imagined) dictate his speech makes Jonah finally the victim of his own incomplete or patently false versions of his experience and of the God who shapes it. 82 83

84

Lorraine Kochanske Stock, " T o y n t , ' " pp. 164-6. Etienne de Bourbon, Tractatus, f. 251 V ; Speculum morale, col. 1223; Councils, II, p . 1067. The Speculum morale reads "acediam" ("hoc autem generat saepe acediam & vitae tedium"), but the " m " is almost certainly a misprint. T h e Speculum places murmur under "acedia" as one of its daughters, and, in col. 1225, w h e n it proposes an exemplum for murmur from "acedia," it uses the same one as in this line: the Israelites in N u m b e r s 11. Siegfried Wenzel, "Acedia,"pp. 48-50.

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Exemplifying deviant speech And these radical misconstruals drive him into further adversity, this time not physical tribulation imposed by God, but the self-imposed weariness with life of a broken man who has renounced his own prophetic vocation and the God who summoned him to it - a severe acedia just anticipated by his earlier escapist sleep when the storm rises.85 As the catechizing narrator takes pains to underscore, the spiritual sorrow which generates Jonah's final two acts of impatient speech becomes their harshest consequence: "Jonas, al joyles, and janglande, vp ryses" (line 433). Coming on the heels of the salvation of Nineveh, these two related examples of murmur, occasioned by the wilting of a vine and Jonah's fears for his reputation, convey vividly "the littleness of human concerns" which John Burrow sees as characteristic of humankind in late fourteenth-century English literature. Even more forcefully, they expose "the often unsuspected weakness and perversity of human nature."86 When the unexplained actions of God threaten his immediate comforts, Jonah fails to control his emotions and his will, letting them generate speech which fabricates not the unknown future of his first murmur, but his known past. As a result, speech, with its power to make the imagined seem likely or even true, plunges him into greater suffering, a pattern which he had earlier experienced and which the catechist had set forth in his introductory normative discourse (line 6). These relapses make his habit of impatient speech seem irremediable. Exempla of murmur, like those of other types of speech which misrepresent others, end frequently with a voice which, in addition to or in place of a natural sign, corrects the speaker's cognitive and affective misperception. None of these are more widespread, in both pastoral treatises and collections of exempla, than that of the hermit who is tempted to murmur or blaspheme by the seemingly unjust judgments of God, "l>at sufferd synners & ill men to hafe prospertie & welefar of l>is warlde, & gude men & rightwus to hafe disease & tribulacion." An angel appears to him promising to show him "t>e privay Iugementtis of almitti God." Here is the third of the angel's judicial actions and explanations from the version in the Alphabet of Tales: And on \>e iij nyght frai wer hostid at a gudemans howse i>at reseyvid l>aim with gude will & made^aim wele at fare. And on \>e morn he 85

John Bowers, "Patience," p. 10.

86

105

Burrow, Ricardian Poetry, pp. 110-11.

Lies, slander, and obscenity sent a servand of hys furth with bairn to teche baim be way, & when t»ai war all on a bryg t>is aungell kest bis mans servand our be bryg & drownyd hym ... And whenfeehermett saw all bis, he thoght bat he wolde sodanlie stele away & lefe hym, & trowid bat he had bene rather ane aungell of be devull ban off God. And ban be aungell bad hym abyde; & sayde vnto hym; "Almi3tti God sent me vnto be at I mot shew be His privay domys ... And our thrid oste servand bat I drownyd, he was purposid als tite as he had commen home, to hafe slayn his maister. And so I delyverd oure gude oste fro dead, & be toder fro mansslaghter, at his punyssment myght be les in h e l l . . . " And when be hermett hard bis, he thankid God & tuke his lefe at be aungell; & fro thens furth he was delyverd fro al maner of suche temptacion.87 As in this tale, the corrective voice is often a transcendent one which intervenes abruptly in a human life. In Patience, the voice is that of God, who first asks terse questions to provoke Jonah to reflect on his speech (lines 431-2, 490-2) and then discloses himself directly in an expansive, closely reasoned discourse (lines 495-523, amplified from the Vulgate's two verses) which concludes the narrative and, save for a brief bit of catechesis, the text. "Penne bybenk be, mon, if be forbynk sore, If I wolde help my hondewerk, haf bou no wonder. Pou art waxen so wroth for by wodbynde, And trauaylede3 neuer to tent hit be tyme of an howre, Bot at a wap hit here wax and away at anober; And 3et Iyke3 be so luber, bi lyf wolde3 bou tyne. Penne wyte not me for be werk bat I hit wolde help, And rwe on bo redles bat remen for synne." (lines 495-502) The wordplay with which God begins ("bybenk" / "forbynk") urges Jonah to take a different course than he has taken in his speech.

87

Alphabet, p. 282. Latin versions of the story of the hermit and the angel may be found in Etienne's Tractates, ff. 252r"v, and in the Speculum morale, col. 1224, where they exemplify the temptation to murmur; for another Middle English version, see Jacob's Well, pp. 285—7. Sometimes the corrective voice is a human one, as in the common tale of the hermit and his olives, included in Peyraut's Summa de vitiis, f. Gl r , the Speculum morale, cols. 1223-4, and Etienne de Bourbon's Tractatus, f. 252r. In an exemplum from the Scala coeli, the voice is that of God, Who explains His punishment of a gamester who is blaspheming Him and the Virgin Mary: "vox audita est de celis : « M e u m injuriam quodammodo sustinui, sed matris non dissimulabo»" (p. 228).

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Exemplifying deviant speech Whereas Jonah's emotions of acedia and anger have impelled him to speak precipitously, God directs him to make emotions the object of reflection, and then, as he reflects, to connect one experience to another, carefully assessing the facts (such as Jonah's investment in a vine he never labored over vis-a-vis God's creation and continual care for humankind). His manner of speaking recalls that of the catechist in the prologue, as he carefully connects and reasons from his experiences: hearing the Beatitudes at mass, enduring poverty, being subservient to an overlord, knowing the story of Jonah. Like the catechist, too - or the angel in the exemplum - God uses this discourse on experience to teach another by example. His speech is generated not by the desire to express emotions, like that of Jonah, but by Jonah's need, by his inability to reflect on all that he has recently experienced in the way that he did in the belly of the whale. God's speech is, in its manner and its genesis, the rational discourse of teaching celebrated by the pastoral texts as the proper use of the word. Although this way of speaking provides a self-absorbed and unrestrained Jonah with a remediating model for speech, God focuses not on Jonah but on what he misrepresents in his speech: God's nature. "Why schulde I wrath wyth hem [the Ninevites], sy^en wy3e3 wyl torne, And cum and cnawe me for Kyng, and my carpe leue? Wer I as hastif afcou,heere, were harme lumpen. Coufce I notfcolebot asfcou,frerjjryued ful fewe. I may not be so malicious and mylde be halden, For malyse is no3 to mayntyne boute mercy wythinne." (lines 518-23) God's attributes are one of the poem's most fundamental concerns.88 The narrator certainly foregrounds such attributes as power and providential care as he expands narrative elements like the storm at sea and Jonah's survival in the whale. Above all, his most striking additions to the story - almost always in his characters' speech (the sailors' confession of faith, for example) - depict how humans conceive of the divine nature as it impinges on their lives. And his invention of new speech for Jonah, beginning with his first murmur with its limited tribal god and indifferent sky god, exposes human limitations in speaking of God. Perhaps nothing makes this clearer 88

Schleusener, "History," p. 964.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity than the one addition to the Vulgate's psalmodic prayer from the belly of the whale: "Pou schal releue me, Renk, whil fry ry3t slepe3, / I>ur3 my3t of fry mercy, frat mukel is to tryste" (lines 323-4). Even though his reformed speech is generally rooted in his experience and in the Bible, Jonah fails to speak of God's attributes accurately; for him, seemingly opposite qualities must be exclusive in action, God's mercy able to operate only when His righteousness (sense of justice) sleeps89 - one of his more comic anthropomorphisms. Certainly the inherent temporality of utterances compels humans to "parcel" God's attributes out "into distinct words," and, once Jonah has separated these attributes, that separation "becomes erroneously a condition of God's being and, in particular of his being in a relationship with man."90 But such a separation suits his supposed needs as someone who perceives that he has been chastised by God's "ry3t" and longs to be released from the whale. The emotion of the moment tempts him to exploit the limitations of language, fragmenting God's nature, just as he does in his final outcries, where he labels God as merciful only in his dealings with the Ninevites, harsh, only with him. In contrast, in the narrator's final addition to the Vulgate (which stops abruptly with Nineveh's dumb beasts, the poem's line 517), God uses human language, with all of its limits, to reveal that His attributes work together as He shapes human destiny. In response to human evil, He threatens to exercise His ill will in punishing severely ("malyse" conveying both ill will and severity springing from righteousness - a nice instance of harnessing the equivocity of words to convey intertwined meanings). But He withholds its execution out of His longsuffering, in order that humankind will repent and He in turn will show mercy by sparing it. Through the interaction of these attributes, He enacts providential care for all His creatures, the burden of the middle of His speech. So, this final speech in the text reveals, despite the manifest limits of language, enough of the workings of God's nature in human history to correct His chosen prophet, who has glimpsed them in bits and pieces in his own speech - when he has not wholly obscured them. Juxtaposed with Jonah's last two acts of murmur, it demonstrates the need for a revealed word as the foundation for human speech about God and one's own fate. In this very manner of speaking and in this very argument, the pastoral narrator achieves more than exposing Jonah's deviant habits 89

90

Laurence Eldredge, "Space," p. 130.

108

Shoaf, "God's 'Malyse/ " p. 265.

Exemplifying deviant speech of speech and correcting his false image of God. He exemplifies patience in God. General discourse on deviant speech, our second chapter shows, completes itself in offering remedies, as in Peyraut's pratical steps for controlling speech in the tertia pars of his tractate or Etienne de Bourbon's and the Speculum morale's advocacy of silence as its opposite. Chapters on some specific deviant types do the same. At the end of his long chapter on murmur, Peyraut, not content to offer remedies mixed in with other discourse as Etienne and the compiler(s) of the Speculum do, places a section with the prominent heading "De remediis contra murmur."91 The first remedy is "exemplum christi," Jesus' exemplary patience in adversity, which the narrator had developed earlier (quoted above). In words, the God of Patience enacts this virtue in multiple ways: by mediating His Being in limited human language,92 by making his speech other-directed (God begins with what matters to Jonah at the moment, his anger and grief at the loss of the woodbine), by expounding events without letting violent emotions color them, by recalling His "positive, creative" patience with the Ninevites.93 In all respects, the God who speaks "steers the heart," as His revealed word enjoins in the Beatitude with which the catechist first presents patience (lines 27-8). If the only examples of patience in his discourse are divine (discounting Jonah's rather coerced and grudging variety in the belly of the whale), does not the catechist finally undermine his crucial rhetorical and moral claim on his audience: that example is reproducible in their experience? In linking the hypothetical example of disobeying his overlord!s command to the story of Jonah, he asserts that the generalization "murmur brings further adversity" is realizable in anyone's life (lines 49-60). So, he is able to instruct and guide his audience by telling the tale. But how can a transcendent God serve as a model for human conduct? Furthermore, the narrator's very juxtaposition of Jonah's speech and God's creates, at the poem's end, a vast gulf between human pettiness, fears, and falsehoods, and the transcendent. Peyraut and other writers may begin with the example of Christ, but they add Job, Zachariah, and a host of ascetics - even the whole church as it endures suffering. The only example that seems to be reproducible is Jonah's impatient speech, with its root of anger and consequent misfortune. But he of course repeats the pattern unawares - and twice - scarcely an example of being instructed or 91 93

92 Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, ff. G3r"v. Shoaf, "God's 'Malyse,'" pp. 277-8. Elizabeth Kirk, "Patience," pp. 88-9 and 94-7.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity guided by the concrete instance. On whether he is affected by God's own multifaceted example of patience, the narrator is silent, closing the exemplum proper with God's exhortation to patience: "Be no3t so gryndel, god-man, bot go forth J>y wayes, Be preue and be pacient in payne and in joye. For he J>at is to rakel to renden his clones Mot efte sitte wyth more vnsounde to sewe hem togeder." (lines 524-7)

Pastoral examples in collage frequently end with such an injunction, in which the pastoral figure turns to his audience or readers, exhorting them to avoid the vice, or follow the virtue, exemplified. Mannyng, for instance, closes with this injunction his contemporary tale of a backbiting monk who appears after his death gnawing his burning tongue: "Of £>ys synne y rede we vs shryue / And take oure penaunce by oure lyue."94 By giving this rhetorical task to God (in a departure from the Vulgate, which ends the Book of Jonah with God's compassion for the ignorance of the Ninevites and their helpless beasts), the catechist of Patience at once employs a greater authority (by far) and removes the "clerical" (whether he is in orders or not, he is a purveyor of clerical wisdom) distance between himself and his audience. Then, after this conventional closure by injunction, he reenters the text, simply and briefly applying to his own experience of poverty and hardship God's exhortation to "be pacient in payne and in ioye." Forty, when pouerte me enprece3, and payne3 inno3e, fful softly, wyth suffraunce, sa3ttel me bihoue3, For^y penaunce and payne, to preue hit in sy3t Pat pacience is a nobel poynt, t>a3 hit displese ofte. (lines 528-31)

Though headed "EPILOGUE" in Vantuono's edition and often misleadingly referred to as "the epilogue" by critics with generic expectations of a "narrative," these four lines, as the "Forty" marks, constitute an immediate response to God's speech. Absent is any reference to Jonah and to the generalization declared at the outset and maintained in all three examples of murmur: that impatient speech brings on adversity. Gone too are the mainly prudential reasons for embracing patience. Instead of recalling the extended and multiple human example, the narrator submits his life to God's 94

Mannyng, Handlyng Synne, lines 3631-2.

no

Exemplifying deviant speech example of patience and His exhortation, bridging not only the usual gap of time and culture between exemplary figure and audience, but that between human and divine being. But their different circumstances are not effaced. God's experience as creator of the Ninevites and their cattle is unknown to him, just as God does not live in his poverty and hardships. Yet these different circumstances are the very means by which the speaker - and God - achieve the steering of the heart which is patience in this text. What he appropriates is the "nobel poynt,"95 a powerful good which transcends temporal and ontological differences. In setting up such a "normative resonance"96 between his story and his life, he presents himself as a model for his audience, an exemplary reader/hearer of a tale: no all-knowing pedagogue but an afflicted man instructed by the scriptural and acting on it. Up to these four lines, the catechist, as narrator, has given his audience a sharp contrast between God's patient way of addressing Jonah and Jonah's relapses into murmur as they develop the moral psychology of impatient speech found in pastoral treatises. By so doing, he, like Chaucer and Dante in Eugene Vance's analysis,97 offers his audience a choice between different modes of discourse which have different ethical bases. Moreover, as the subject of both types of discourse is God's intervention in human affairs and, so, ultimately, His nature, the contrast also reveals a vast gulf between "human fallibility and limited perspective" and "the absoluteness of God's being."98 That gulf is the dominant concern of not only fourteenth-century nominalist philosophy, as E. Kirk claims, but also of the pastoral treatises as they anatomize speech which misrepresents God's nature: murmur and blasphemy. Such a juxtaposition also confronts the poem's audience with the choice of using speech to fashion an incomplete, even totally false god out of one's own malleable consciousness (false and fickle, as Jonah says of himself in the whale) and relying wholly on a transcendent God's revelation of Himself in human language. At the end of this juxtaposition, the catechist makes his choice. Despite its different focus, this choice confirms the nature of his whole discourse as the pastorally valorized and directed work of teaching. He has enacted patience in word by telling, as his extended exemption, the divinely 95 96 97

O n the significance of "nobel," see James Rhodes, "Vision," pp. 1-2. O n "normative resonance," see Judson B. Allen, Ethical Poetic, p. 33. 98 Vance, Signals, pp. 280 and 321. Elizabeth Kirk, "Chaucer," p. 122.

Ill

Lies, slander, and obscenity given story of Jonah, rather than his own experience of poverty, and he has developed it along the lines of a pastoral tradition, found in treatises and collections of exempla, which itself mediates the revealed word." 99

Sermons and biblical paraphrases may also have provided ways for the Patience poet to have his catechist/narrator develop the biblical story, as Cairns suggests, "Latin Sources," pp. 8-14. But we have not yet discovered in such texts the major rhetorical techniques that pastoral exempla of deviant speech offered him or the anatomy of impatient speech that the pastoral treatises contained in their chapters on murmur.

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Confessing the deviant speaker: verbal deception in the Confessio Amantis

John Gower endows his pastoral voice with a name and a specific priestly task, if not a local habitation. Genius may come out of nowhere, like the speaker of Patience, but he has an identity. Gower makes a priest of Venus out of a figure created - and recreated variously - by classical and high medieval texts: a tutelary spirit incarnate in every human and a figure representing generation as the natural force of material existence (most notably in Alain de Lille's De planctu naturae and, focused more insistently on procreation, in Jean de Meun's part of the Roman de la rose).1 Summoned by Venus to conduct a confession, this Genius becomes even more complex when he announces that he not only will serve Venus by speaking of love but will also adhere to a priest's office by speaking of vice. Moreover, his discourse, not on a single sin but on all the Capital Seven and their offspring, is directed to a specific hearer: a lover who seeks release from lovesickness but who is commanded by Venus to tell first the full truth about his experience in love. The confessional dialogue gives this lover, as well as the controlling priest, a voice. The Confessio Amantis presents sequences (nearly forty) of interrelated acts of speech: the confessor's exposition of a type of sin, culminating in an invitation to confess it; the lover's confession; one or more tales directed by the confessor, as part of pastoral counsel, at what has been confessed. Within each, the lover counters his priest's discourse, accepting, adapting, modifying, subverting, contesting, ignoring. As such a protean figure himself - servant of Venus, priest instructing a supposed penitent in the vices, tutelary spirit (universal and the 1

On the ancestry and nature of Gower's Genius, see Jane Chance Nitzsche, Genius Figure; Denise Baker, "Priesthood of Genius"; A. J. Minnis, "'Moral Gower*"; Winthrop Wetherbee, "Genius"; and Katherine Lynch, Dream Vision.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity lover's), maker of images, figure for generative nature - Genius has complex and constantly shifting relations with the sins he expounds, with what the lover confesses, and with the tales he tells. Of these sequences, seven are devoted primarily to Sins of the Tongue. Each is first defined; its practice is presented in a highly colored way, using pastoral rhetorical resources; then it is applied to the experience of lovers. In each case, the lover is encouraged to practice the informed and "naked" self-disclosure which was, in confessional literature, proclaimed as the cure for deviant speech: "Aseyn yuel wordus and yuel speche-f-bihouefc opyn knowlachyng/ and schrift of mouthe."2 In the tales within these sequences, indeed in many others from "The Tale of Mundus and Paulina" (the first in a sequence on a type of sin) to the final "Tale of Apollonius of Tyre," speech is the tool of a man (always a man) who deliberately deceives his hearer in order to acquire what he desires. In most of these tales, the man "with tonge affiled" is a lover; "the word [which] to the conceipte / Descordeth" (VII, 1554-5)3 is his fundamental means of winning love; and the sufferings of both deceiver and victim are interpreted in such a way as to dissuade the lover from misusing speech in his pursuit of his lady. In all these ways, Genius makes speech, especially deceptive speech, a recurrent object of moral analysis in the whole confessional process. So central is reflection on the use of speech in the Confessio that Genius devotes one of the three sections of his encyclopedic exposition of human knowledge (Book VII) to rhetoric. This first discussion of rhetoric in English4 does not analyze or reflect on language as a semiotic system, unlike much medieval writing on "the arts of discourse": grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Following the pastoral treatises on deviant speech, to which it is akin, it takes up the central concerns of such analysis - "the nature, the functions and the limitations of the verbal sign as a mediator of human understanding"5 - but declares basic norms for using words instead of 2

3 4 5

Memoriale Credencium, p. 156. Casagrande and Vecchio, pp. 179-80, trace how Peter Lombard's disciples associated the three modalities of sin - thought, word, and deed - with the three stages of confession: compunctio cordis, confessio oris, satisfactio operis. The Middle English Cursor Mundi pairs the two threes in its "Boke of Penance," vol. 68, lines 25932-6001 in the Cotton ms. John Gower, Confessio Amantis, The Complete Works, G. C. Macaulay, ed. All citations to the Confessio will be to this edition. Book and line numbers will be given in the text. James J. Murphy, "First Discussion," pp. 401-11. Since Murphy, this tractate on rhetoric has been oddly neglected by scholars. Vance, Signals, p. x.

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Confessing the deviant speaker proceeding analytically. Genius then uses these norms to guide his whole treatment of rhetoric. Genius' nearby discourse on politically deceptive speech, related to that on rhetoric in its concern with the cognitive function of speech and the ethical intentions of speakers, also draws on the pastoral treatises, this time for a concept of flattery, central images, and even a tale. Together, these sections convey, in their different ways (normative and "practical" - the latter term from Genius), how deceptive speech threatens communal life with its seductive appeals, its violation of semiotic assumptions, its personal and political consequences. In the other seven books of the Confessioy Gower's treatment of verbal sin is shaped even more by pastoral literature, both the treatises on deviant speech and, naturally in a fictional confession, those texts devoted solely to confession. Many students of the Confessio have been quick to recognize that "the structure and content of the penitential manuals determined to a large extent the form and content of the work."6 Oddly, none of them have more than begun to act on that scholarly piety. At least no one writing on it indicates reading more than a few confessional texts. Each segment of Genius' confessional sequence is shaped by a different type of pastoral literature: the interrogations, the forma (or modus) confitendi, and the exemplum. The interrogations offers a model for the confessor's speech. In it a master confessor can be observed in action. He mimes how the priest should structure the penitent's confession and questions him on specific sins so that the confession will be complete and well informed. As John Mirk's wellknown Instructions for Parish Priests (about 1400) reveals, this inquisition often involved a rudimentary catechesis when necessary, probably in obedience to ecclesiastical legislation.7 So, the interrogationes contain skeletal accounts of many sins (their essential elements, usually, with a few ways of committing them), drawn, in the case of Sins of the Tongue, from longer pastoral treatises. They serve, then, to disseminate material on deviant speech in ways readily usable by priests in the particular pastoral task of conducting confession. For the rhetorical purposes of his confessor, Genius also appropriates similitudes and other material from these longer treatises, which were 6

7

Braswell, Sinner; p. 85. Also John H. Fisher, John Gower, p. 138; John T. McNally, "Penitential and Courtly Traditions," p. 74; Gerald Kinneavy, "Penitentials," p. 144; P. J. Gallacher, Love, p. 1. John Mirk, Instructions for Parish Priests, lines 923 ff. On legislation, see Gillespie, "Doctrina," p. 36.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity often designed as aids for confessors.8 Like the interrogationes, the forma contains a paradigm - but for the penitent's speech. Designed to prepare the laity for confession, its first-person confession was designed "to help implement the decree of the Fourth Lateran Council [requiring auricular confession yearly] and support the subsequent conciliar and episcopal efforts to instruct the laity as to which actions constitute sin."9 The lists of sins in both interrogationes and formae are so consistent that "one is forced to conclude that such lists both reflect and determine attitudes toward sin."10 In contrast, the effect of collections of exempla on the practice of confession has not been, and probably never will be, documented adequately. Nevertheless, they supply rhetorical models for priests exemplifying material during oral instruction, as Genius does in his post-confessional counsel. All such confessional texts, then, conveyed authoritatively standards for Christians to conform to, just as the treatises on deviant speech did. As Thomas Tender writes, the authorities, the expert catechists who wrote confessional literature, "knew what they wanted to go on in Christian hearts, and their expertise and power were devoted to achieving those goals." Indeed, what he says of the summae confessorum applies to all pastoral literature on sin: "They taught in their massive, encyclopedic way that morality was definable; that human authorities could define it; that all men were responsible for knowing and practicing it; that those who did not were guilty and should feel guilt and remorse."11 As a priest directing a confession, Genius is engaged in expounding moral norms and persuading the lover to adopt them, both to analyze his experience in confessional speech and to regulate his life. Gower may have absorbed pastoral attitudes toward sin and observed confessors' rhetorical strategems simply by practicing confession. If so, the influence of pastoral texts would be indirect: through confession as they shaped it.12 Even so, these types of 8 9 10 12

Leonard Boyle, "Summae Confessorum" p. 233. Raymo quoting P. S. Jolliffe, "Works," p. 2359; see also Tender, Sin, pp. 110-13, and Payen, "Penitence," p. 423. n Tentler, Sin, p. xv. Ibid., p. xiv; Tender, "Summa," pp. 122-3. The speaker in Gower's Mirour de Vomme, examining confession as a means of gaining knowledge, advocates reading through texts about conscience ("rescript du conscience") so that one's confession may be complete (Complete Works, I, lines 14893-7). Since the confessional texts designed to enable laypeople to present a complete confession were the formae confitendi, we may be tempted to think that this injunction indicates that Gower read them. But even if we can take the speaker as voicing Gower's own practice, his

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Confessing the deviant speaker literature still present to us the norms for confessional speech in the ways in which the higher clergy intended literate priests and laypeople to apprehend them. The interrogationes, if read in sufficient number, can give us a sharp sense of Genius' rhetorical strategies as a catechist engaged in inculcating and awakening detestation for the Sins of the Tongue. To a lesser extent, assessing the lover's confession in terms of the formae can alert us to how he conforms to or resists clerical expectations. Given the bulk of the Confessio, even a chapter treating deviant speech must have its limits. One limit is justified by Gower's practices as a writer. In examining how Genius reproduces and adapts discourse on the Sins of the Tongue, we need not quest for specific sources. As Siegfried Wenzel's studies of the source for the remedial virtues in Chaucer's "The Parson's Tale" indicate, pastoral texts are interdependent and key ones are often lost to us.13 Happily, that very interdependence makes source study unnecessary, given our purposes. All of Gower's images for flattery that Elfreda Fowler traces to the Mireour du monde can also be found in Peyraut's Summa de vitiis.14 Moreover, Gower had a habit of "eclectic composition"; he drew on a variety of pastoral texts on the vices in his earlier Mirour de Vomme and often reshaped that material for the Confessio.15 Therefore, it should suffice to juxtapose Genius' catechesis and the longer, often widespread, pastoral texts on verbal sin used in the first three chapters. A second limit is a limitation. To examine, in one chapter, the complexities of Genius' catechesis and the lover's confession in the light of all of this pastoral literature forces us to concentrate on one confessional sequence. The sequence I have chosen is that on detraction (II.3). Of the six verbal sins to which Gower devotes a division of a book (one prefaced by Latin verses), only three - "avantance" (1.4), "cheste" (III.2), and detraction - are not joined to other sins. (Hypocrisy is not exclusively a verbal sin in the Confessio.) The sequence on "cheste," which includes the tale of Phebus, his wife, and the crow, will be examined in the chapter on Chaucer, together with the Manciple's retelling of the same Ovidian tale. Detraction has the

13 14 15

language is so general that it might also embrace pastoral treatises on the vices, some of which (including a version of the Somme le roi) Gower drew upon in both the Mirour and the Confessio. Siegfried Wenzel, "remedial pp. 422-53. Elfreda Fowler, Une source frangaise, pp. 129-31. J. B. Dwyer, "Gower's Mirour" p. 482.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity advantages of being the most often and most extensively treated Sin of the Tongue in pastoral literature and of involving deception, heavily emphasized in the Confessio. In all of the Confessio, the Sins of the Tongue which Genius dwells upon are those committed publicly against other human beings: boasting, detraction, flattery, and contention. Unlike Robert Henryson or the Patience poet, he is not fascinated with speech which misrepresents a divine nature. 16 Indeed, he omits blasphemy altogether and treats false witness and perjury almost wholly as speech which injures human beings, not the transcendent (unlike Peyraut and the author(s) of De lingua). Instead, as Eugene Vance has said of Chaucer, he chooses "to explore the horizontal, ethical dimensions of language/' 17 making, for example, the perjurer Jason a cavalier discarder of a vulnerable young Medea, who has abandoned land and family because of his vows. Given this pervasive concern with the social and political, inherent in the Augustinian model of communication and developed in all the pastoral treatises on deviant speech, it is not surprising that Genius includes rhetoric as part of Aristotle's instruction of the young Alexander in the political Book VII. Although this book offers general remedies for vices explored and confessed in the earlier six books 18 and although it manifests the political dimension of ethical issues raised there, I will consider it first. In it Genius delivers norms which he uses to measure the speech of the lover and the figures in his tales and which he labors to realize in a confessional discourse bent on eliciting, but also controlling, the speech of the lover. II

As a priest employing pastoral discourse on the vices in directing a confession, Genius begins treating rhetoric (VII, 1507-640) exactly where pastoral treatises on deviant speech begin: with the origin and function of speech. Indeed, he frames this introduction in normative terms, as Peyraut and his fellow clerical compilers do: what the word should signify. In the Aristotelian educational schema which he presents to the lover as a cleric of some learning,19 he has already 16 18 19

17 Craun, "Blaspheming," pp. 27-35. Vance, Signals, p. 256. Russell Peck, Kingship, pp. 139-59. Like Kinneavy, "Penitentials," p. 155, I take Genius' disclaimers about knowledge (e.g., at the end of VI) as instances of the modesty or inability topos, especially given the amount of encyclopedic knowledge in Book VII.

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Confessing the deviant speaker given rhetoric an exalted place as one of the three basic categories of knowledge, along with the theoretical (theology, natural philosophy, and mathematics) and the practical (ethics, economics, and, chiefly, governance). The other artes sermocinales, grammar and logic, are subordinated to rhetoric - in effect, as its subspecies. In this, Gower is articulating the implicit scheme of knowledge in his source, Li livres dou tresor (around 1265) of the Florentine magistrate and teacher of rhetoric Brunetto Latini.20 For Genius, who knows the significance, in his culture, of where a "science" is placed vis-a-vis other bodies of knowledge, rhetoric is fundamental knowledge about speech which determines why and how it is used in communal life. Although Gower adopts Latini's divisio textus, he departs from Latini by having Genius enthrone ethics in the kingdom of rhetoric, manifesting in Book VII his concern throughout his writing with the moral use of language.21 In J. J. Murphy's analysis, Book III of the tresor contains "a complete exposition of Ciceronian rhetoric" organized around the parts of a speech.22 In this Ciceronian approach, the end ("la fins") of rhetoric is to induce listeners to believe what one wishes them to believe ("a faire croire par sa parleure"), and its function is to employ speech artful enough to compel belief: "Li office de cestui art, selonc ce que Tuilles dist, est de parler penseement por faire croire ce qu'il dist."23 This treatment of rhetoric as "a secular art, divorced from ethics" is part and parcel of Latini's approach to speech throughout the tresory24 even when he writes at length of verbal self-control.25 In contrast, Genius establishes an ethical foundation for rhetoric in the cognitive function of words before he turns to its use in political discourse. Above alle erthli creatures The hihe makere of natures The word to man hath yove alone, So that the speche of his persone, 20 21 22 24 25

Rita Copeland, Rhetoric, pp. 208-10. Gower's concern with the proper moral use of language, especially in poetry, is the burden of R. F. Yeager's final chapter in Poetic. 23 Murphy, Rhetoric, p. 113. Brunetto Latini, Li livres dou tresor, p. 319. Elizabeth Porter, "Ethical Microcosm," p. 154. When Brunetto Latini writes of verbal self-control under the virtues (2.62-7), he condenses Albertano da Brescia's Ars loquendi et tacendi, a strictly prudential treatise which does not even use the term "Sins of the Tongue" (see note 110 to chapter 2). In contrast to Latini, when Gower takes up verbal restraint ("Bonnegarde en parole") in his Mirour de Vomme, lines 16609-80, he presents unadulterated pastoral discourse, complete with its leitmotif "El main du lange est vie et mort" (line 16645).

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Lies, slander, and obscenity Or forto lese or forto winne, The hertes thoght which is withinne Mai schewe, what it wolde mene; And that is noghwhere elles sene Of kinde with non other beste. So scholde he be the more honeste, To whom god yaf so gret a yifte, And loke wel that he ne schifte Hise wordes to no wicked us; For word the techer of vertus Is cleped in Philosophic Wherof touchende this partie Is Rethorique the science Appropred to the reverence Of wordes that ben resonable. (VII, 1507-25) Given its context in an educational discourse for a future ruler and at the head of a Ciceronian account of rhetoric (complete with a study of the senate's debate over Catiline's fate), Genius' account of origins surprises because of what it omits: a primal social compact which generates verbal signs as part of the forging of society (as in Augustine's De ordine). Instead, as in the pastoral treatises, language is simply bestowed upon humankind as its unique property by a divine creator. Likewise, its function of manifesting "The hertes thoght" and hence its nature as the bearer of reason is determined by the creator, not by humans longing to express thoughts to each other. In this, Genius' preface is Aristotelian, as he promised the lover his whole educational discourse would be. Not that it is based on Aristotle's Rhetoric, which J. J. Murphy believes Gower did not know, 26 but that it follows the Aristotelian sententiae on speech transmitted by the pastoral treatises. From the Generation of Animals, the Politics, the Problems, and perhaps elsewhere comes the dictum that speech, in Mirium Larkin's paraphrase, is "proper only to man [among the animals] by reason of his intelligence" and, with it, that the tongue is the instrument of reason.27 Like the pastoral compilers, Genius uses the magnitude of such a unique gift to drive home the enormity of using words for evil purposes, although he augments that argument by explicitly invoking philosophy, which assigns words the specific function of acquiring and transmitting knowledge about the 26 27

M u r p h y , " D i s c u s s i o n , " p . 409. Mirium Larkin, Language, p . 18-19. Aristotle, Works, I, p . 1215; II, p p . 1988 and 1393. O n the instrument of reason, see chapter 2, part 1.

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Confessing the deviant speaker good. Whether it serves one's advantage or not ("Or forto lese or forto winne"), words ought to signify what one thinks. So, Genius uses Aristotle's "lore" and his cultural authority as "the philosopher" to establish normative principles within which to treat rhetoric, even though he does not subordinate rhetoric to ethics in his schema, as some medieval commentators on rhetoric do.28 Although this brief but pivotal prologue to rhetoric may not be overtly Christian and pastoral, it preserves in its Aristotelianism the post-Lateran concern with the moral uses of speech, given its cognitive function. It even assigns a divine origin to speech. Furthermore, by placing this discourse in a book on the education of a prince and at the head of a section on political rhetoric, Genius appropriates the pastoral for the political, much as he draws on the clerical, as well as public, exemplum to construct royal authority.29 Specifically, he appropriates the pastoral office of teaching virtue and proclaiming what one perceives to be true. Rulers, like priests, can speak a divinely sanctioned discourse. Given this preface, Gower approaches rhetoric and its fellow arts of discourse as tools designed to insure that speech signifies what the speaker thinks and intends, as well as artfully pleases (VII, 1322-44). Rhetoric is first defined as knowledge about the careful handling ("reverence") "Of wordes that ben resonable." The play of sense in "resonable" links the cognitive function of words to rhetoric: in rhetoric, words both "pertain to the faculty of reason" {MED lb) and are eloquently expressed {MED 5). And for this art schal be vailable With goodli wordes forto like, It hath Gramaire, it hath Logiqe, That serven bothe unto the speche. Gramaire ferste hath forto teche To speke upon congruite: Logique hath eke in his degre Betwen the trouthe and the falshode The pleine wordes forto schode, So that nothing schal go beside, That he the riht ne schal decide. (VII, 1526-36) Rhetoric's subsidiary art, grammar, serves speech by teaching 28

29

It is possible to trace in Lewry's "Rhetoric" (chiefly in the footnotes) w h y some thirteenthcentury commentators on classical rhetorical texts classified rhetoric under ethics. Scanlon, Narrative, pp. 1-134 and 245-97.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity humankind to speak "upon congruite" - that is, in traditional and modist grammar, to speak using a proper combination of parts of speech so that the construction can express a mental concept comprehensible by others.30 Logic enables the speaker to distinguish between truth and falsity, to judge in every case what is accurate (MEDy "rihte" 8) - the task of logic in medieval semantics of propositions as it was derived from Aristotle's De interpretation ?x For Genius, as for the medieval semanticists, truth consists of the matching {adaequatio or aequatio or similitude) the mind to the thing perceived; the speaking of truth, of matching mental language (for thought was conceived of, as in Augustine, as mental language) to the sign (see chapter 2, part II).32 Without the cognitive verification which logic provides, Genius claims, rhetoric does not have the power to please with "goodli wordes," just as it cannot without grammatical congruity.33 Truth in speech is later developed more fully by Genius under practical philosophy as he explains why "trouthe" is, in a ruler, "the vertue soverein of alle" (VII, 1723-82). Again the cognitive functions of word as sign dictate norms for speaking: "The word is tokne of that withinne, / Ther schal a worthi king beginne / To kepe his tunge and to be trewe" (VII, 1737-9). In the context of the virtues of rule, truth in speech involves more than the mental work of judging correspondence; it is also the affective habit by which one speaks what one perceives. And it is realized by the practical moral discipline of "keeping the tongue," the phrase which flags the pastoral effort to teach verbal restraint for prudential reasons (chapter 2, part III). Indeed, the contemporary and widespread Speculum vitae argues that the weighing of words to achieve correspondence between "heart and 30 31

32 33

G. L. Bursill-Hall, Speculative Grammars, pp. 44—5 and 303-7. Thirteenth- and fourteenth-century semantics followed Aristotle in defining a proposition as "A combination of words that is used to make known something that is either true or false" (Kretzmann, Cambridge History, p. 197). As such, it involves first judging and then asserting that a thing is so in the extramental world. The task of speakers was to perceive if a proposition, conceived in a universal mental language, was true and, if it were, to signify it in words which corresponded, according to linguistic conventions, to the mental proposition (pp. 197-9). So, late medieval philosophy of language was focused, at the level of the sentence, o n the truth and falsity of statements. Mary J. Carruthers, St. Truth, p. 18. The Latin verses which head the tract o n rhetoric distinguish between what pleases atfirst— verbal eloquence - and what pleases in the end - truth (VII, 1506a-b). The Latin voices a slightly different perspective o n truth and eloquence than Genius does in the vernacular text, but the perspectives are complementary. O n the relation of the Latin verses to the Middle English text, see Derek Pearsall, "Gower's Latin," pp. 13-25.

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Confessing the deviant speaker mouth" and the habitual will to speak that despite the pull of gain or of any emotion constitute keeping the tongue.34 Given Genius' concern with ascertaining and speaking what is true, what function does he assign to rhetoric? At the end of his treatment of rhetoric, he argues that "Rethoriques eloquences" serve to valorize true statements in public discourse, artfully using words and arguments "Which mai the pleine trouthe enforme / And the soubtil cautele abate, / Which every trewman schal debate" (VII, 1638-40). A cherished word for Genius, "enforme" suggests, in this context, at once teaching and perfecting or developing {MED s.v. "enfourmen" 4 and 3), here in response to an adversary's subtle verbal tricks. In the larger context, coming after an exemplum in which Genius approves of a rhetorical plain style and expresses distrust of verbal display, this passage suggests that truth is most fittingly "enformed" by direct but artfully pointed statement.35 To return one last time to Genius' account of the three arts of discourse, both the accuracy with which speech represents thought and things (and so wins trust) and its rhetorical power matter so much because in public discourse the stakes are nothing less than civil concord or discord (VII, 1537-40). Throughout the confessional dialogue, Genius insists that the trustworthy and eloquent word wins peace, as in "The Tale of Athemas and Demephon," where Nestor's oration, pitted against "the wild unwise tonge / Of hem that there weren yonge," turns fortune's "dedly whiel / Fro werre ... into pes" (III, 1799-1800, 1840-1) and does so by declaring plainly but forcefully the consequences of war. It is because of such communal benefits of rhetoric, Genius asserts, that Aristotle "commendeth this science" (VII, 1543). Such acts of rhetorically empowered truth-telling help to create, locally and for the moment, a harmonious society like that in the golden "tyme passed" which the voice of Gower celebrates in the Prologue's survey of social history: The poeple stod in obeissance Under the reule of governance, And pes, which ryhtwisnesse keste, 34 35

Speculum vitae, lines 15755-84. Genius retells Brunetto Latini's extended "ensample" of the debate over Catiline's fate (Tresor 3.34-5), coloring Latini's neutral, textbookish case study of the differing rhetorical styles of the accusers Cato and D . Junius Silenus and the defender Caesar (VII, 1588-1640). Gotz Schmitz has argued ably that Genius sympathizes with the plain style of the accusers (Stil- und Aufbauformen, pp. 30-1).

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Lies, slander, and obscenity With charite tho stod in reste: Of marines herte the corage Was schewed thanne in the visage; The word was lich to the conceite Withoute semblant of deceite. (Pro., 107-114)

In this social vision of "common love,"36 the sign, countenance as well as word, realizes the function of making known the inner world of thought that Genius claims as normative and divinely given in Book VII. In the Prologue this universal resemblance between signifier and the signified rests on a primal civil amity, lost in Gower's own world where sin is the "moder of divisioun" and division in turn "moder of confusioun." Interestingly it is linguistic division and confusion, the babble of many languages at Babel, which Gower uses to develop this pattern (sin-division-confusion) most fully in the Prologue: And over that thurgh Senne it com That Nembrot such emprise nom, Whan he the Tour Babel on heihte Let make, as he that wolde feihte Ayein the hihe goddes myht, Wherof divided anon ryht Was the langage in such entente, Ther wiste non what other mente, So that thei myhten noght procede. And thus it stant of every dede, Wher Senne takth the cause on honde, It may upriht noght longe stonde; For Senne of his condicioun Is moder of divisioun. (Pro., 1017-30)

Within the confessional dialogue, linguistic division is produced by sin, as at Babel, but it is not punishment for sin. It is the tool of Mary Flowers Braswell's medieval sinner, a man who, divided from others by his desire to "winne" at any cost to them, attempts deliberately to deceive them by misrepresenting what he knows to be true, by authoring discord between his words and his thoughts and intentions. In Gower's earlier social anatomy, the Latin Vox Clamantis, the third estate is plagued by linguosus, the man who spreads slander and truth indiscriminately, instigating both civil and marital quarrels.37 His is 36 37

Anne Middleton, "Public Poetry/' p. 96. John Gower, Vox Clamantis, Complete Works, IV, 5.883-948.

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Confessing the deviant speaker the "wicked tongue," the mala lingua of the pastoral treatises, especially of their opening sections on the social and political consequences of unrestrained speech (chapter 2, part III). In the Confessioy the deviant speaker is most often a more calculated and rhetorically savvy deceiver. Gower may have "languished for an unrhetorical world of proper significations"38 and, short of that, had his confessor advocate a rhetoric that practiced "proper significations," but Genius acts as priestly confessor in a world largely made up of deviant speakers. No sooner does Genius explain to the lover the proper use of rhetoric than he turns to its abuse by such deceivers: For if the wordes semen goode And ben wel spoke at mannes Ere, Whan that ther is no trouthe there, Thei don fulofte gret deceipte; For whan the word to the conceipte Descordeth in so double a wise, Such Rethorique is to despise In every place, and forto drede. (VII, 1550-57)

The immediate exemplar of such verbal deceit is that great rhetor of antiquity, Ulysses, whose inveigling of Antenor destroys Troy. He is only cited briefly (VII, 1558-63) because Genius is focusing on the power of words. Elsewhere, Genius' treatment of specific verbal sins involving what Gower's near contemporary Alexander Carpenter calls fallacia ("dictio vel factio alicuius cum intentione fallendi")39 and what Gower englishes as "fallas," uses catechetical metaphor and detailed exempla to develop the seductive power and devastating consequences of the deceiving word. In the political Book VII, the central "fallas" is that of the flatterer (2165-689),40 the deviant opposite of the proper speech of the rhetor as it has been described by Genius. Genius begins instructing the lover in flattery as the pastoral 38 40

39 Vance, Signals, p. 309. Carpenter, Destructorium, f. eiiv. Save for a few incidental references, all of the pastoral material on flattery comes from the six major sources for the study and from Dives and Pauper (about 1405-10). I have added the latter because its extensive treatment of flattery in the vernacular (1, part 2, pp. 2-13) supplements the one major source in the vernacular, the Speculum vitae. The six chapters on flattery are found on the following pages of the editions or manuscripts used: Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, ff. H2 V -H4 V ; Speculum vitae, lines 14049-142; De lingua, ff. 163 v -5 r ; Etienne de Bourbon, Tractatus, ff. 231V-2V; Speculum morale cols. 1039-44; Carpenter, Destructorium, ff. giiv-iiiv.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity writers begin, by constructing a type of deviant speech in terms of the signification of words and the will and intended effect of its speaker: The covoitouse flaterie, Which many a worthi king deceiveth, Er he the fallas aperceiveth Of hem that serven to the glose. For thei that cunnen plese and glose, Ben, as men tellen, the norrices Unto the fostringe of the vices. (VII, 2168-74) The actual word of the flatterer is the "fallas," the word which misrepresents what the speaker perceives (MED 2), conveying what is false. As in Carpenter's definition, the term also conveys the speaker's intention to deceive (MED 1), central in pastoral thinking because of the many influential Augustinian texts dealing with lying (chapter 2, part II). What differentiates flattery from lying are the two effects of the deceiving word intended by the speaker: to please the ruler and so to bring reward to the flatterer.41 For this reason, those pastoral treatises which are organized around the Seven Sins place it either under avarice, as in the Speculum morale, or pride (the ruler's), as in the Destructorium viciorum. (It has no place in the original Gregorian schema.) Exploiting this flexibility in placing flattery, Genius neatly manages to make room for both intentions but, at the same time, to direct attention to the victim: for him, flattery is an abuse of the royal virtue of Largesse. Similarly, Genius' statement of the essential elements of flattery conveys both intended effects, rapidly with an adjective ("covoitouse") and a relative clause. Like the pastoral writers, Genius constructs a discourse of authoritative similitude and example which develops the destructive personal and communal consequences of a deviant type of speech, first exploring the appeal of the "fallas" for the ruler. "Meschief" befalls Whan thei [flatterers] be sleihte and be fallas Of feigned wordes make him wene That blak is whyt and blew is grene Touchende of his condicion: 41

Speculum morale, col. 1040; Carpenter, Destructorium, f. giiv. Carpenter defines flattery in terms of the intention to please another ("[adulatio] consistit in sermone laudis alteri exhibito cum intentione complacendi") but also indicates that it springs from greed by placing it as a species of avaritia. In a long definition, the Speculum morale invokes Aristotle in distinguishing between the simple intent to please another and the intention to do so in order to obtain some reward (lucrum).

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Confessing the deviant speaker For whanne he doth extorcion With manye an other vice mo, Men schal noght finden on of tho To groucche or speke therayein, Bot holden up his oil and sein That al is wel, what evere he doth; And thus of fals thei maken soth, So that here kinges yhe is blent And wot not hou the world is went. (VII, 2186-98)

Like the fawning counsellors of Sir Thomas More's French Court or Castiglione's Italian despotisms over a century later, Genius' parasites gain their hold on their master by fostering his vicious inclinations, especially toward rapacity. Using the central metaphor of the pastoral tradition of adulatio, Gower describes them in his definition as the nurses who foster vices in the king, a metaphor which places on them the moral responsibility for corrupting his character.42 Still, it is the seductive appeal of their verbal tool, the "fallas," that Gower explores, especially through the crucial metaphor of holding up the oil, which recurs in his final and most fully developed exemplum of flattery, the biblical tale of Ahab and Micaiah (VII, 2527-685). In the pastoral tradition of adulatio, oil is the recurrent metaphor for the false praise of the flatterer, his knack for pleasing by attributing to others what is "supra modum debitum" [beyond what they deserve].43 Peyraut derives this image from the oil of anointing in Exodus 30, which is reserved for the priests and the tabernacle, for the service of God; God alone, he concludes, should be the object of praise - not a created being.44 By "holding up the oil" to a temporal king, by praising him no matter what he does, Genius' flatterers are tempting him to act as if he were a god, an ultimate authority, and so to abuse his power by doing whatever he pleases. Such false praise, according to St. Augustine's much-used interpretation of the metaphor of oil, is bound to soften the mind so that one, no longer grasping firmly the truth about himself and the world, inevitably commits evil.45 Therefore, the "fallas," in Genius' exposition of 42 43 44 45

Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. H 3 r ; De lingua, f. 164 r ; Etienne de Bourbon, Tractates, ff. 231 v -2 r ; Speculum vitae, lines 14051-6; Speculum morale, col. 1042. Speculum morale, col. 1040. Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. H2 V ; see Quoniam, f. 140 v . Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. H3 V ; De lingua, f. 164 r ; Etienne de Bourbon, Tractatus, ff. 231 v -2 r ; Speculum morale, col. 1040; Dives and Pauper, vol. I, part 2, p. 7. Peyraut's explication is worth quoting: "Adulatio oleo comparatur U n d e in psalmo.Oleum peccatoris non impinguet caput meum.de q u o oleo diabolus vngit suos qui in extremis laborant.hoc

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Lies, slander, and obscenity flattery, as in the pastoral treatises, prevails in the royal court precisely because it misrepresents the moral nature of the king's deeds and, ultimately, his own stature. In the pastoral tradition of flattery, the man who praises royal vice is commonly contrasted with the man who rebukes it. In the ConfessiOy this contrast is narratized in Genius' "Tale of Ahab and Micaiah," a common pastoral exemplum of flattery. Here those who "bere up oil" to King Ahab are the false prophets whom he has advanced and enriched because they "couthe glose softe / And flatre" (VII, 2531-2). While Genius hews closely to the events and words in the biblical original (3 Kings 22), he follows the pastoral writers in interpreting them in terms of the appeal of the deceiving "good word."46 (Flattery is not even mentioned in Kings, which simply contrasts the false prophets of Baal and the prophet of the true God of Israel.) In Genius' telling, when the Assyrian king threatens Israel and Ahab's ally Josaphat asks for the counsel of "Som trew prophete," one of the flatterers puts on an elaborate visual stratagem, donning brass horns and going "rampende as a leoun" to show how Ahab will easily destroy the Assyrians. This image of bellicose virility, as well as the prophecy of his success, wildly pleases Ahab, who "yaf hem yiftes al aboute." With Flaterye in The Pilgrimage of the Lyfe of the Manhode (a fourteenth-century translation from Guillaume Deguileville), Genius' false prophets could say "l>er is neifcer jogelour ne jogelouresse tat maketh grettere solas l>ere ^an I doo."47 They are essentially verbal tricksters, entertainers who provide illusory images of the self which amuse and divert while they comfort, unlike the words of the prophet Michaiah, whom Ahab has imprisoned because "Him liketh nevere yit to sein / A goodly word to mi plesance." To a king so accustomed to indulging himself with words that please, the unpleasant prophetic word must arise from Michaiah's own perverse personal pleasure ("Him liketh nevere"). Naturally Michaiah's truthtelling, which represents the king as a dupe of his prophets as well as the victim of his enemies, is dismissed once again by Ahab. In his upside-down kingdom, the function of speech is to make one feel at ease: his henchmen, taking their cue from him, beg Michaiah not to

46

47

oleo vngit etiam diabolus homines quos flectere n o n potest vt ad malum eos molliat.vnde augustinus.Oleum est falsa laus adulatoris Q u e mentes a rigore veritatis emollit ad noxia." De lingua, f. 164V; Carpenter, Destructorium, f. giii r ; Raoul Ardent, Speculum universale, ff. 172 v -3 r ; Dives and Pauper•, vol. I, part 2, p p . 10-11. Like Genius, Pauper develops the contrast between the flattery of false prophets and the truth-telling "conseyl" of Michaiah. The Pilgrimage, 3.4360-1.

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Confessing the deviant speaker contradict the flatterers "For so schal every man ben esed." It is not to reveal what one actually perceives - the "hertes thought" of Genius' tract on rhetoric. As a result of its seductive appeal, the deceived Ahab is slain and his people dispersed. Although the pastoral treatises provide, directly or at some remove, Genius' concept of flattery, his central metaphors, and his major exemplum, Genius is more interested than they in the victim. Throughout the eight books, Genius presents humans as vulnerable to the deceiving word, not just because they indulge in the pleasant delusions it creates but because their culture has molded them to trust in words as signs of thought and intent, especially when uttered by religious authorities.48 The first vice on which Genius examines the lover is "the derke untrew Ypocrisie" (1.5), Peyraut's bilinguium, where the predator's verbal weapon is the generic "fallas," the word which "descordeth to his thoght" (II, 1893). In this strategically placed confessional sequence, Genius' "Tale of Mundus and Paulina" presents an innocent woman who is seduced by playing upon her piety (I, 761-1059). The beguiling of Paulina is a parody of the Annuciation story with the predatory Mundus as an Unholy Spirit and the priests of Ysis as unangelic messengers whom he bribes to proclaim that Anubus wills to beget a divine child on her.49 Unlike the skeptical Queen Olympia from the pivotal tale of Nectanabus (VI, 17892376) who asks for "betre prieve" when the sorcerer Nectanabus announces that she is to bear a divine child, Paulina readily believes "an hevenely message." She is a woman of "gret holinesse," whose well-known trust in and devotion to the goddess Ysis makes her the instant victim of the priests who play on it (I, 830-60). So pervasive is her piety toward communally authoritative institutions, customs, and people that she not only accepts what the gods, in her Rome, are likely to ask for from beautiful devotees but she promptly goes to ask permission from her husband, "hire sovereign." It is precisely her trust in others and the utter fidelity which underlies it which prevents her from suspecting the words of Mundus disguised as Anubus: 48

49

Genius begins t o explore the h u m a n inclination t o accept automatically w h a t w o r d s convey in his brief opening confessional sequences o n the senses of sight and hearing. H e advocates careful rational scrutiny of others' speech, based in a distrust of potential p r e d a t o r y motives (I, 539-40). Gallacher, Love, p p . 3 5 - 7 .

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Lies, slander, and obscenity With suche wordes and with mo, The whiche he feigneth in his speche, This lady wit was al to seche, As sche which alle trowthe weneth: Bot he, that alle untrowthe meneth, With blinde tales so hire ladde, That all his wille of hire he hadde. (I, 922-8) Moreover, trust in signs is so much a part of living in a community that even the not-so-pious in the Confessio readily accept what they signify. In Book III, Gower's Greeks read the signal fires of their enemy King Namplus as signs that they can safely land their stormtossed ships on his rocky coast (III, 973-1084). Like Paulina, they are so accustomed to accept the communally imposed significance of the sign that they never question the user's intent. After the nocturnal climax to this tawdry version of the Annunciation, Genius manipulates his readers so that they, along with Paulina's community, are disgusted by this exploitation of her trust in signs, especially those of communal authorities.50 The next morning she prays "Upon the bare ground knelende" and gives gifts to the priests, consistent in her piety, while Mundus taunts her with her piety, revealing that it has led her to submit to that "which thou hast evere eschuied" and, with mock chivalry, offering her his future services as the god's lieutenant (I, 934-51). The Emperor, judges, and citizens are so horrified by his deceit that they exile him. But the priests are given the greater penalty of death because they broke the trust reposed in them as "Duistres [guides] of the weie." Using the word, especially the sacred word, to create illusions and then victimize the innocent with them, subverts the trust in speech on which religious teaching and all communal institutions depend, as it does in the pastoral treatises and in Genius' tales of Ahab's deception by the false prophets and of Pope Celestine's deception by a supposedly divine voice (II, 2803-3084). Like flattery (VII, 2177-203), this form of verbal deceit is a crime against the whole community and the divine bestower of speech, as well as against the individual. Throughout the Confessio Genius reveals the fragility of the spoken word as a mediator between humans in social and political life. If the piety of a Paulina can make her the dupe of those who create illusions with the "fallas" just as readily as Ahab's vicious 50

Peck, Kingship, pp. 42-5.

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Confessing the deviant speaker indulgence in self-pleasing images, what can protect humankind from deception and from the exploitation that follows, given its communally reinforced trust in signifiers and in the priests, prophets, and kings who use them authoritatively? In his five tales on flattery, Genius pits against the false, inflated speech of verbal seducers the "pleine trouthe" spoken by truth-tellers, like the prophet Michaiah with his divinely given message and the free-speaking fool who customarily interrupted Roman triumphal processions to urge the emperor "know thiself" (VII, 2389). Indeed, from the Prologue on, Gower's ideal political team is the ruler who listens to "good consail on alle sides" (Pro., 146) and the learned adviser whose teaching of virtue is empowered by a plain-style rhetoric. Together their speech secures "comune profit," the opposite of the "harm comune" wrought by Genius' flatterers in Book VII. Throughout Book VII, the Ruler and the Sage are the young Alexander and Aristotle.51 Throughout the rest of the Confessio, they are Amans, whose rule of himself, including his tongue, is at issue, and Genius, the confessor whose instrument is the truth-telling speech of pastoral discourse adapted to confession and whose great measure of others' speech is the rule of "trouthe" propounded in Book VII. in

Outside of Book VII, the speech of the deceivers who people the Confessio is contained within the confessional sequences. It is the lover's confession, especially the priest's work of interrogating, counselling, and recalling exempla, which takes deceptive speech as one of its major subjects for moral anatomy. More importantly, Genius presents confessional discourse itself as a practice which has the power, analytical and rhetorical, to root out habitual verbal deception, even in the case of a lover who is so intent on winning his "diere ladi" and, at the same time, so disinclined to forceful action of any kind that he resorts to "mispeche" as the chief means of discrediting and outdistancing his younger, more savvy, and more sexually experienced rivals. Moreover, as speech which strives to tell the "pleine trouthe," the priest's about human conduct in general and the penitent's about his past, the confessional dialogue provides a model of what, as we know from Book VII, speech should be: the 51

M. A. Manzalaoui, "Mirror for Princes/* p. 162.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity signifier of "hertes thoght" and "the techer of vertus." As a confessorial catechist who shapes another's speech about speech, Genius practices what he teaches as a priest who knows at least some Aristotle, just as the pastoral compilers engage in the acts of teaching and persuasion which their Augustinian semiotics and scholastic moral psychology advocate. And the individual experience of the lover reveals the seductive appeal and destructive consequences of the deceiving word, paralleling the politically deviant speech of the flatterers. In the realm of speech, the general knowledge Genius inculcates is, as he claims linking Book VII to the confession, applicable "In loves cause and elleswhere" (VII, 17). The terms which are to govern the speech of both lover and confessor, as they are established first, in general, by Venus and then by Genius and the lover together in the opening dialogues, both hew to the norms inculcated by the interrogationes and the forma confitendi and depart from them in significant ways. 52 It is Venus who 52

Before using the interrogationes and formae to indicate the conventions the clergy had established for confession, I should explain how I chose my sources and then list them. To achieve some representativeness in my sampling of interrogationes, I included roughly equal numbers from three types of pastoral works: widely circulated manuals for parish priests, short composite confessional works, and interrogationes which are not explicitly connected to the surrounding texts, often confessional, in their manuscripts. All dated works come from the fourteenth or early fifteenth century. All survive in British libraries. Since the genre was created for priests, most are in Latin, but I have included a few in Middle English, as the tongue of Gower's confessor. 1. Pastoral manuals. i. Guido de Monte Rocherii, Manipulus curatorum, ff. ciiiv-cxiiv. Over 160 manuscripts of all or parts. ii. John Mirk, Instructions for Parish Priests, pp. 28ff. 7 mss. iii. John de Burgh, Pupilla oculi, ff. 45 r -8 r . 42 mss. iv. William of Pagula, Oculus sacerdotum, ff. 6 r -7 v . 54 mss. For other variants of this interrogationes, see Bloomfield, p. 39. 2. Composite confessional works. i. Andreas de Escobar, Interrogationes. Excerpted from the Lumen confessorum (35 mss). ii. Jean Rigaud, Formula confessionis. 14 mss. iii. Johannes von Freiburg, Confessionale. 57 mss. 3. Freestanding interrogationes. i. "Haue youe bene proud." One ms. ii. "In the begynyng." One ms. iii. "Interrogationes faciende in foro penitentiali." 14 British mss. and many variants. iv. [No incipit. First part missing.], British Library MS. Harl. 4172, ff. 116 r -22 v . One ms. The nine modi (or formae) confitendi which I read were roughly split between Latin and Middle English ones. All are extant in British libraries. 1. Latin. i. "Ad primam dicat sacerdos." 3 mss. ii. "Ad rectam et sanctam confessionem." One ms. iii. "Et primo recurrendum est." One ms. iv. "Primo debet confkeri." One ms.

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Confessing the deviant speaker initiates the confession. In response to the lover's plea for "som wele after my longe woe," she issues a demand: that, given lovers' inclinations to deceive, he "seie hir trouthe" about his lovesickness (I, 16497). Confession is the device she presents to achieve this candid and complete account, quite in keeping with the pastoral stipulation that confession must be nudaP Once designated as confessor by Venus, Genius takes control of the terms of the confession. Subordinating the lover with a pastoral "Mi Sone," he demands what all confessional literature demands: a full and candid ("Tell pleinliche") self-disclosure.54 In response, the lover first kneels before the seated priest - the action is marked by the Latin marginal gloss55 - conveying his subjection to a priestly authority.56 His greeting - "Dominus, / Min holy fader Genius" suggests what he acknowledges as the grounds of this authority: pastoral position and learning. ("Dominus" was traditionally used by a vassal of a lord; then university doctors and masters were so addressed and, by extension, all priests - DML.) Worrying about disordering his confession and so not meeting the requirement of completeness, the lover invites the priest to question him in an orderly way:

53 55

2. Middle English. i. Pe Clensing of Manes Sawle, 74 V -115 V . 7 mss. of all o r parts, ii. Cursor Mundi, lines 1551 ff. iii. " I knowlech & 3elde m e gylty." 3 mss. iv. " I knowleche t o J>ee." O n e ms. v. " W h a n t>ow J>enkest t o p u r g e . " O n e ms. 54 T e n d e r , Sin, p . 106. Ibid., p p . 109-10. Derek Pearsall argues, in "Gower's Latin," p p . 122-4, that the Latin commentaries in the margin present directions for a correct reading of the Middle English text according to a clerical " c o d e . " Since this is a commentary which G o w e r apparently constructed as part of his text, it is worth noting what it finds significant in this crucial passage in which the lover submits to clerical direction: Hie dicit qualiter Genio p r o Confessore sedenti prouolutus Amans ad confitendum se flexis genibus incuruatur, supplicans tamen, vt ad sui sensus informacionem confessor ille in dicendis opponere sibi benignius dignaretur. (Begins opposite I, 208)

56

The gloss stresses the lover's physical action of kneeling, suggesting abasement before authority with "prouolutus," especially when followed b y "supplicans" and "dignaretur." Then it draws attention to what the lover seeks - again from a clerical perspective: questioning from his confessor to instruct and shape his thought and powers of perception ("ad sui sensus informacionem"). Roberto Rusconi argues in "confession," p . 80, that the physical posture shown in thirteenth-century miniatures of confession, the penitent crouching before the priest, conveys clerical dominance. According to Tentler, Sin, p p . 8 2 - 3 , fifteenth- and sixteenthcentury illustrations generally show the penitent kneeling and the confessor seated, the postures in the Confessio Amantis. That position, too, emblematizes clerical authority and lay acceptance of it, as does the raised pulpit for preaching.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity Bot if thou wolt my schrifte oppose Fro point to point, thanne I suppose, Ther schal nothing be left behinde. Bot now my wittes ben so blinde, That I ne can miselven teche. (I, 225-9) In this invitation to structure the confession, the fluid term "point" conveys not only topic or even authoritative teaching (as it does in the first line of Patience) but also "item in a list," "constituent part or branch of a subject" {MED 7a). What Amans seeks is what the interrogatory type of confessional literature, new with the thirteenth century, and what preaching after the Fourth Lateran Council demanded of all Christians: comprehensive introspection organized around a standardized religious model covering all thoughts, words, and deeds.57 One Middle English interrogationes, for example, insists that every confessor conduct an orderly rehearsal "of al maner off synnys & ye brauchys" so that the penitent "can better tell what syn [he] has don."58 What Genius offers as "The pointz of schrifte" or "the forme of his apprise" (I, 288, 293) are the Seven Sins and their offspring, the structure prescribed by all the interrogationes I consulted (listed in note 52) probably because they encompass all sin in scholastic thinking. (They may, however, be supplemented by other catechetical schema to ferret out sin.) It is not Venus or the lover but Genius, as he explains his priestly obligations to the lover, who first uses the word "vice," focusing the confessional dialogue on transgression of moral and religious norms and his priestly task on teaching the vices (I, 233-88). Despite prescribed models, the priest after the Fourth Lateran Council had considerable latitude (and power) in directing any confession. Without the old lists of tariffs, of course, the priest would assess the penance based on the gravity of the sin (lists of circumstances in confessional literature supplied some guidance - chapter 2, part III) and throughout the process the priest had to size up the person who had come to confession, especially in determining what errors he needed to correct, what lack of knowledge he needed to address.59 And he must devise the rhetorical means to do so, given the person's state. Genius exercises his pastoral freedom by departing from normative practice in where he places his questions. All of the interrogationes I have examined, adhering to the comprehensive, 57 59

58 Rusconi, "confession," pp. 77-83. "In the begynyng," f. 50 r . Little, "Techniques," pp. 94—5; Rusconi, "confession," pp. 78-83.

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Confessing the deviant speaker authoritative works of Raimondo de Penafort and Johannes von Freiburg, insist that the priest should resort to this structured questioning only after the penitent has finished his confession and only if he suspects that it is incomplete, usually because of ignorance or shame.60 The confessor must, as Johannes von Freiburg claims, "Make [the confession] complete by diligently and cautiously asking questions" ["... diligenter et caute inquirendo suppleri facias"].61 Genius undertakes to be far more directive, first by taking the initiative with his interrogations and then by addressing the lover's lack of the fundamental moral knowledge which should have been inculcated by preaching and other pastoral acts. When the lover and Genius come to the first of the "points" of the confession, hypocrisy as a subspecies of pride, the lover is unable to respond to Genius' imperative "If thou art of his compaignie, / Tell forth." I wot noght, fader, what ye mene: Bot this I wolde you beseche, That ye me be som weie teche What is to ben an ypocrite; And thanne if I be forto wyte, I wol beknowen, as it is. (I, 588-93)

In the pinch, the lover realizes that, in order for his confession to be complete, he must be able to measure his own experience against a moral typology which Genius can supply by expounding its ratio, its basic elements. With this request, the lover falls in line with his confessor, who earlier had insisted that, as a priest, he was bound to "schewe" the vices (ostendere is the term in pastoral literature for expounding the vices) so that the lover may "take evidence [a model for conduct, an instructive example - MED] I To reule with thi conscience" (I, 238-45). Only if he "enformes" the lover's confession with such conceptual knowledge of the vices and then "remenes" (applies) them to love, Genius claims, will the lover be 60

61

Raimondo de Penafort, Summay p p . 462-3; repeated in the Manipulus of G u i d o d e M o n t e Rocherii, f. ciii v , Johannes v o n Freiburg, Confessionale, f. 139 V , and the freestanding interrogationes with the incipit " I n the b e g y n y n g , " ff. 49 v -50 r . While the early thirteenthcentury confessional Summa of T h o m a s of C h o b h a m places some priestly instruction before confession (Rusconi, "Ordinate" p . 303), the summae T e n d e r examines all insist that clerical questioning and any instruction that it involves must come after the penitent's confession (Sin, pp. 88-104). Johannes von Freiburg, Confessionale, f. 139 V .

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Lies, slander, and obscenity able to meet the requirement that he declare the truth about himself (I, 275-88).62 Genius begins his interrogation on backbiting by providing the lover with exactly what he asked for and what the model priests of the longer interrogationes provide: a moral typology, complete with root vice, ratio, and the common techniques of the backbiter.63 His placement of detraction under Envy (the conventional one in treatises on the vices) initiates a discourse concerned with speakers' wills, their intentions, and their awareness of what they utter. Genius first characterizes detraction by the speech of his servant "Malebouche," who never speaks "A plein good word withoute frounce / Awher behinde a mannes bak" (II, 392-3). Genius' Malebouche, as Macaulay recognized, is the inveterate, unrestrained spreader of derogatory tales in the Roman de la rose, who discredits the lover by informing Jalosie of how Bel Acueil has granted him access to the rose.64 In Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, his speech may be founded on observation, but he adopts always the most negative construction, representing the lover as a mere seducer. (Genius adds the outright lie to his repertoire.) Although Genius begins with "the matter of love," he conveys with Malebouche the essential characteristics of detraction as it is defined in longer interrogationes, in Gower's own Latin verses prefacing this confessional sequence, and, at greater length, in Gower's Mirour and the pastoral treatises: denigratory words, frequently lies, which are spoken in envy about someone absent with the 62

63

64

Some critics take at face value G e n i u s ' statement in I, 2 6 2 - 8 0 that, outside of love, h e k n o w s little of w i s d o m , including the vices (most recently, Wetherbee, " G e n i u s , " p . 243). Like Kinneavy, "Penitentials," p . 155, I read it as an instance of t h e inability topos (akin t o that prefacing B o o k V I I ) . Like the encyclopedic k n o w l e d g e of B o o k V I I , G e n i u s ' actual catechesis o n vice t h r o u g h o u t seven books, sometimes detailed and extensive and certainly comprehensive in overall reach, surely indicates some m o d e s t y in this disclaimer. The six major sources for this study all have chapters on detraction: Peyraut's Summa de vitiis, ff. G 8 r - H 2 v ; the Speculum vitae, lines 14143-228; De lingua, ff. 165 V -8 V ; Etienne de Bourbon's Tractatus, ff. 228 v -30 v ; the Speculum morale, cols. 1144-51; Carpenter's Destructorium, ff. Dvii v -Dviii v . In addition, I have drawn on the entries on detraction in two popular alphabetical compendia of fourteenth-century England, the Fasciculus morum, pp. 158-62, and John Bromyard's Summa praedicantium, ff. L X X F - L X X X I I I F , and in Robert Mannyng's fourteenth-century vernacular manual Handlyng Synne, lines 1239-1306 and 3529-646. I have not scrupled to add incidental material on detraction which I came across in my reading of pastoral texts. T w o longer interrogationes which provide this basic moral typlogy are those in the Manipulus curatorum of Guido de Monte Rocherii, f. cvii r , and the Confessionale of Johannes von Freiburg, f. 146 r . Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, Le Roman de la rose, II, lines 3511-30, and III, lines 12097-370.

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Confessing the deviant speaker intention of injuring her reputation.65 Then, once again like the model confessors, Genius sets forth two basic ways (in addition to lies) in which detraction is committed: "Bot al the vertu which he can, / That wole he hide of every man, / And openly the vice telle" (II, 433-5). Compare this confessor's question mandated in the interrogationes of Johannes von Freiburg: "si unquam alicui detraxit ipso absente dicendo de eo aliquid ad peccatum... uel et bonum ipsius negando" [if ever he has committed detraction against someone absent by speaking something about his sin... or by denying something good about him].66 With these general techniques of the backbiter in mind, as well as with his will, his intended effect, and the significatio of his words, the lover is now in a position to measure and then judge his own speech against the moral type. Surprisingly, Genius withholds the question or the command that would prompt the lover to do just that. Indeed, he departs from the normative practices inculcated by the interrogationes by casting his discourse not as a series of questions designed to elicit immediate answers (as Johannes von Freiburg directs the confessor to do just above) but as the kind of all-purpose exposition found in the pastoral treatises. Once Genius has defined detraction, he moves into fullblown pastoral rhetoric, making the detractor's verbal habits specific and memorable with the example of the dung beetle: He sprat his wynge and up he fleth: And under al aboute he seth The faire lusti floures springe, Bot therof hath he no likinge; Bot where he seth of eny beste The felthe, ther he makth his feste, And therupon he wole alyhte, Ther liketh him non other sihte. Riht so this janglere Envious, Thogh he a man se vertuous And full of good condicioun, Therof makth he no mencioun: Bot elles, be it noght so lyte, 65

66

G o w e r , Mirour, lines 2677-748. G u i d o de M o n t e Rocherii, for example, places detraction as a rames of invidia in his interrogationes and provides this definition, f. cii r : " D e t r a c t i o est alterius per verba manifesta infamatia tamen in absentia eius." (See also J o h a n n e s v o n Freiburg, Confessionale, f. 146 r , and Speculum morale, col. 1145.) Johannes v o n Freiburg, Confessionale, f. 146 r . T h o m a s Aquinas distinguishes six w a y s of committing detraction (St. II.II. 73; vol. X X X V I I I ) , and some post-scholastic w o r k s rehearse all of them (John B r o m y a r d , Summa, f. L X X X r ; Speculum morale, col. 1145).

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Lies, slander, and obscenity Wherof that he mai sette a wyte, Ther renneth he with open mouth, Behinde a man and makth it couth. (II, 417-32) This simile, extended and drawn from natural history, is a striking departure from the unadorned style of the Confessio as a whole and from the conversational exchanges of Genius and Amans, where figurative language is rare. But such disgusting figures of insects and beasts are the staple of discourse on detraction, as on lying (chapter 2, part IV) in treatises on the Sins of the Tongue. The same image appears in the brief chapter on backbiting in The Book of Vices arid Virtues (as it had in the Somme le roi): "[detractors] ben t>e biteles tat flen t>e floures and louel> \>e dong of an hors or a best, as men seen alday bi \>e weye." 67 In the most expansive treatises - and even in collections of distinctions - this revolting and commonly observed natural fact is developed with detail and an interpretation similar to that of Genius, although the animal is the catechists' favorite black beast, the pig (see chapter 2, part IV): nam experientia docente si porcus viridarium intret in quo ex una parte flores videat suauiter redolentes:&ex alia parte fetentia stercoraifloribus neglectis properanter ad stercora accurrit&illa in ore suo assumit&rostro subuertit.sic detractor si in aliquo viderit aliquas virtutes&imitationis dignas que velut flores redolent.&ex alia parte reprehensibilia&fetida vitia dimissis virtutibus imitatione dignis que reprehensibilia et fetida sunt versat in ore et rostro sue detractionis subuertit&sic in volutabro turpitudinis viciorum ad modum porci se inuoluere delectatur.68 [For experience teaches that if a pig enters a garden in which he sees on the one side sweetly smelling flowers and on the other stinking dung, he ignores the flowers and runs hastily to the dung, putting it in his mouth and turning it over with his snout. So if the detractor sees in someone some virtues worthy of imitation, which smell sweetly as flowers do, and on the other side reprehensible and stinking vices, he sets aside the virtues worthy of imitation and he turns over in his mouth those things which are reprehensible and stinking and destroys them with the snout of his detraction. So he delights, like a pig, to roll in the wallowing-place of the foulness of vices.] 67 68

Book, p. 59. Carpenter, Destructorium, f. Dviii v . See also Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. G9 r ; Analecta Hymnica, XXXIII, p. 250; De lingua, f. 167 r ; Etienne de Bourbon, Tractatus, f. 229 r ; Gilbert the Minorite, Distinctiones, f. 28 V .

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Confessing the deviant speaker Playing, like the pastoral compilers, on sensory associations and cultural taboos on pollution, Genius uses this similitude as the speaker in Gower's Mirour does: to elicit revulsion against the detractor as a moral type and against the kind of devious practices he habitually employs.69 (Other similitudes in Genius' discourse on detraction function the same way but are brief and less graphic.) As a glance at his detestatory metaphors on Cheste (III.2) and Ypocrisie (1.5) - to take two opposite Gowerian Sins of the Tongue - will confirm, this is not an isolated instance but a consistent practice in the confessor's opening exposition of the moral type. (In Book VII, where Genius is not directly pressing the lover to confession, he presents flattery without developing any of the revolting metaphors for it, like the lamia tearing apart her pups, which the pastoral treatises amply supply.) In Genius, Gower creates a fictional catechist who does more than delineate a moral type, more even than provide prudential arguments (as we shall see) or break "habitual ways of thinking,"70 appealing "to the logical, the ratiocinative element in the lover" and fostering self-understanding through confession.71 As the pastoral writers on the vices advocate, he seeks, as confessor, to move the lover to cease committing vices; indeed, the whole sequence on detraction ends with the blunt imperative "with al thin hole miht, / Mi Sone, eschuie thilke vice" (II, 1864-5). Therefore, he resorts to a pastoral rhetoric designed to create detestation for vice in the will, both by encouraging rational appraisal and by inducing emotions like disgust and fear (chapter 2, part IV). In a final step in his exposition, Genius deftly directs this general knowledge of backbiting to the experience of lovers (a movement he has skillfully prepared the lover for by introducing, at the outset, the Malebouche of the Roman and of his own Mirour): In loves Court a man mai hiere Fulofte pleigne of this matiere, That many envious tale is stered, Wher that it mai noght ben ansuered; 69 71

70 Gower, Mirour, lines 2893-904. Kurt Olsson, Structures, p. 28. J. A. W. Bennett and Douglas Gray, Middle English Literature, p. 421. While Olsson, Structures, pp. 28—9, recognizes that Gower aims "to move adverse minds to conversion," he believes that Genius uses only a plain style, without "'colours' or 'figures' designed to kindle 'ardor of heart.'" In making such a judgment, he relies only on Gower's avowal of a plain style (1.71-84), scanting rhetorical analysis of Genius' speech in the later confessional dialogues, where his style, like that of pastoral treatises on the vices, is mixed, sometimes plain to expound material, sometimes impassioned to move adverse minds and wills (chapter 2, part IV).

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Lies, slander, and obscenity Bot yit fulofte it is believed, And many a worthi love is grieved Thurgh bacbitinge of fals Envie. (II, 445-51) This turn to love is accompanied by a turn to the innocent victim of verbal deception, not the hearer, as in the case of flattery, but the subject of the detractor's tale. With this turn to the victim, the whole exposition concludes, as do the pastoral treatises on deviant speech (chapter 2, part III), with the actual destructive effects of backbiting. And with this turn to love Genius fulfills his initial compact with the lover, in which he undertook to guide, even shape ("enforme"), his confession: I wol thi schrifte so enforme, That ate leste thou schalt hiere The vices, and to thi matiere Of love I schal hem so remene, That thou schalt knowe what thei mene. (I, 276-80) In the few lines which situate the backbiter in "loves Court," Genius brings his discourse back to, and applies it to, love (two senses of "remene," according to Macaulay72), neatly carrying over all that he has said about detraction's root vice, signification intended effect, techniques, and reprehensibility, while at the same time shifting attention to its destructive consequences for lovers. As artes praedicandi urged preachers to do, he has accommodated his exposition to the specific discourse of the social group he is addressing, making the vice graphic for the lover in "its amorous incarnations."73 In insisting that the lover examine detraction as a crime committed by lovers against lovers, Genius is following a practice advocated in all types of confessional literature since the Summa of Raimondo de Penafort: examination of the penitent's status, "la fonction que l'individu exerce dans la societe."74 Many of the longer interrogationes append to their model inquisitions on the Seven Sins and other confessional formulae questions for penitents of various lines of work and ways of life: bishops, the cloistered, knights, lawyers, merchants, tailors, the poor, witnesses in a legal cause, unmarried women, husbands. The very circumstances in which one works and acts, Johannes von Freiburg argues, tempt one to commit certain particular 72 73 74

Confessio Amantis, I, p. 467n. Yeager, Poetic, p. 264; o n the artes, see Murphy, Rhetoric, p. 304. Raimondo de Peiiafort, Summa, p. 467; see Le Goff, Time, p p . 118-20; Pierre MichaudQuantin, "Methodes," pp. 88-9.

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Confessing the deviant speaker sins,75 just as pastoral writers observe of lying (chapter 2, part II) and other Sins of the Tongue. According to interrogationes, merchants are inclined to swear falsely in order to sell damaged goods; artisans customarily indulge in lewd talk {turpiloquium) in order to lighten their labor; peasants often curse or murmur against God because of intemperate weather.76 Of Gower's figure, we know only that he is a lover. This is his status, the way of life which places him in certain sin-inducing circumstances (amid other lovers in "loves Court"), the role in which he may affect other members of the community (planting envious tales so that worthy lovers experience sorrow). And only when Genius directs him to recognize that his life as a lover makes him especially prone to detraction - and to the envy of rivals which generates it - does the priest exhort him to confess that sin. Seen as a whole and seen in terms of both the interrogationes on which it is modelled and the pastoral discourse on detraction on which it draws, Genius' exposition of detraction has a definite rhetorical strategy. Like the prudent inquisitors of the interrogationes, Genius first clearly establishes the moral type of the backbiter, setting forth essential characteristics and common techniques. Only when the generic act can be fully grasped does he move on to awaken revulsion against it with the pastoralists' sharpest weapon, the disgusting metaphor, and only then does he squarely place it in the lover's domain, confronting him with the likelihood that he has committed it. While the interrogationes, or the experience of confession modelled on them, may have furnished Gower with this general technique of moving from definition to status, Gower does not reproduce their form. Instead of grilling the penitent on all of the subspecies of the Seven Sins before he turns to the specific sins to which his status is prone, his Genius immediately directs the lover to analyze his conduct as a lover in terms of the moral type he has just developed. Like omitting constant interrogation, this alteration of standard practice serves to create an unbroken unit of catechetical discourse on a specific sin which prepares the mind and will for confessing it. Within this general strategy, Gower's confessor is no more given to reproducing unadulterated catechetical discourse than he is to 75 76

J o h a n n e s v o n Freiburg, Confessionale, f. 147 r . Merchants a n d artisans in J o h n d e B u r g h , Pupilla, f. 47 V ; peasants in the interrogationes with the incipit "In nomine," f. 283 r . Preaching, often co-ordinated with confessional practice, examined the besetting sins of specific professions in sermones ad status, a new genre which emerged in the early thirteenth century (Rusconi, "confession," p. 84; Vauchez, "Presentation," p. 15).

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Lies, slander, and obscenity slavishly following the interrogationes. That Gower was quite capable of such simple reproduction we know from the vast treatise on the vices and the virtues in the earlier Mirour, where the compendious and loose exposition of detraction includes the usual pastoral baggage of multiplied metaphors, biblical and patristic sententiae, etymologies, eternal punishments, and exempla.77 In the Confessio, Gower limits Genius to one detailed similitude, prefaced by a few compressed ones. Absent too are many of the set topics of pastoral discourse on detraction, like the preciousness of a good reputation and the complicity of those who listen to detraction.78 Even though the lover had given him a carte blanche with the opening admission of his moral ignorance and confusion, Genius confines himself to a bare minimum of what might directly bear on the here-and-now, notoriously obsessive experience of a lover using speech to win his lady's favor. In this confessional sequence, Genius artfully suits his discourse to his auditor's state of mind, occupation, and immediate need: to have the rudimentary moral knowledge to analyze his experience in confession and the will to turn from his "mispeche." His entire exposition of detraction is less than one fifth the length of that in the Mirour. Peter Nicholson has recently directed attention to the Confessio Amantis as confessional dialogue in which the text explores "the relationship between Genius' general moral truth and the realities of his [the lover's] own experience."79 In the sequence on detraction, at least, Gower develops this interplay by having the lover govern his confession of "mispeche" according to Genius' discourse on deviant speech and the conventions inculcated by the formae confitendi, although not always in a way that the confessor might approve. Following Genius' - and the traditional pastoral - emphasis on the genesis of deviant speech, the lover begins by tracing in detail how the circumstances of his pursuit of love have prompted him to defame his rivals, divulging most of the seven circumstances of the confessional grid "Who, what, where, through whom, why, how, when" (chapter 2, part III): Bot wite ye how? noght openly, Bot otherwhile prively, Whan I my diere ladi mete, 77 78 79

Gower, Mirour, lines 2617-3025. For example, Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, ff. G10 r and H2 r . Peter Nicholson, "Confession," p. 196.

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Confessing the deviant speaker And thenke how that I am noght mete Unto hire hihe worthinesse, And ek I se the besinesse Of al this yonge lusty route, Whiche alday pressen hire aboute, And ech of hem his time awaiteth, And ech of hem his tale affaiteth, Al to deceive an innocent... Whanne I thes comun lovers se, That woll noght holden hem to thre, Bot welnyh loven overal, Min herte is Envious withal, And evere I am adrad of guile, In aunter if with eny wyle Thei mihte hire innocence enchaunte. Forthi my wordes ofte I haunte Behynden hem, so as I dar, Wherof my ladi may be war. (II, 455-65 and 475-84) While admitting with astonishing candor how his own sense of his rivals' advantages awakens the root vice of envy and prompts him to commit detraction by retailing their attempted deception, the lover is somewhat less than open about what he intends to accomplish with his speech. In fact, he adopts far more from Genius' catechesis on hypocrisy, depicting his lady as an untutored innocent like Paulina, apt to be victimized by deviant speech, than from his catechesis on detraction. And he uses it adroitly first to direct moral judgment at the rivals' "double entente," the discord between words and thought and intention which is Genius' recurrent way of perceiving verbal sin, and then to cast himself as the wise counsellor unmasking it. When he finally turns to his own speech, he grants that it may be "wicked," but claims that it is justified because it exposes "hem that wicke mene" (II, 496-7). In this delicious comedy, the "pleine" speech of confession and the confessor's artful discourse become the lover's tools for telling the moral truth about his rivals, not about himself, leaving his self-analysis in terms of the moral type provided by Genius comfortably incomplete. Then, in an abrupt shift, the lover turns entirely to his own speech, fully analyzing a hypothetical worst case in Genius' terms: And natheles, the soth to telle, In certain if it so befelle That althertrewest man ybore, 143

Lies, slander, and obscenity To chese among a thousend score, Which were alfulli forto triste, Mi ladi lovede, and I it wiste, Yit rathere thanne he scholde spede, I wolde swiche tales sprede To my ladi, if that I myhte, That I scholde al his love unrihte, And therto wolde I do mi peine. For certes thogh I scholde feigne, And telle that was nevere thoght, For al this world I myhte noght To soffre an othre fully winne, Ther as I am yit to beginne. For be thei goode, or be thei badde, I wolde non my ladi hadde. (II, 497-514) Here the lover, following Venus' command to tell the truth about his conduct in love, completely turns the unflattering terms of pastoral discourse on himself. He is now the amoral pursuer of a woman who is willing to use words with "double entente" ("telle that was nevere thoght") to misrepresent and to deceive. And he now admits openly the effect he intends: to ruin the reputation of his competitors, even when they intend to love his lady faithfully. Playing on the word "backbite," he portrays himself as a ridiculous, cowardly, and certainly unheroic assailant: "For evere on hem I rounge and gknawe / And hindre hem al that evere I mai" (II, 520-1). With this final admission, he fulfills all of the aspects of truth-telling demanded by the confessional formae or modi: identifying the circumstances which prompt one to sin, the various manners in which the sin is committed, the victims, the root vice, and the intended effects.80 80

This vernacular form for confessing envy may provide a sense of clerical expectations for what a complete and candid confession should contain: I knowlech to god & to 30W feat I haue synned also in envie be speche be priuy and open detraccions or bacbitinges. t ffor somtyme I haue denied such J>at I loued nat in her absence and spoken of hem wors t>an they deserued & ofeerwise fran I wolde or durst sey in her presence.And 3if thei were comendid in my presence I haue enpeired her name to my power and be my will be sum maner euel answer or somme euel word spekinge of hem.And 3if eny euel hath be spoken of hem or eny despreising seide of hem.I haue be more redy to encrese her bad name be my envious speche.than to excuse hem in charite. f All such envious speche or sclaundrous speche I haue used openly & bodily in her presence and in presence of ot>er and somtyme of manye where and when I wist wele or suposed t>at thei schulde be enpeired or haue moost vilenye and also wher my speche might haue forthered her persones or name or wurschip ffor haterede & euel will I haue holden my pees for thei schule be hindred of her profite or wurschip. (Clensing, ff. 95 v -6 r )

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Confessing the deviant speaker Since it is clear that the lover has acquired the knowledge of detraction which enables him to recognize the moral type in his own speech, what rhetorical purpose can Genius have in offering, as a final and quite lengthy step in the confessional process, a series of prudential considerations (II, 552-86) and two exempla (II, 5871871)? The lover may close his confession by submitting himself to whatever penance his ghostly father imposes and by promising "to forbere / What thing that ye wol noght allowe" (II, 538-9), but he scarcely evinces the shame or the hearty desire to abstain from sin which the confessional literature requires of a penitent.81 Indeed, he exults throughout his confession in the power that detraction has given and will give him over his rivals. In the lover, pastoral discourse has met its match. Despite Genius' skill in selectively appropriating and adapting pastoral rhetorical models, he has not affected the lover's will to the point that he will exercise verbal self-control ("evere kep thi tunge stille" [II, 553]). In his counsel (II, 552-86), Genius begins a direct assault on the lover's will by taking up the unintended consequences of detraction for the speaker. Deftly playing to the information provided by the lover's confession and laying aside the generic catechetical discourse to address the particular case (something critics often deny him), Genius begins by arguing against detraction in terms the obsessive lover most readily comprehends: success or failure in love. Since the lady, as the lover has acknowledged frankly in his confession, is wary of verbal deception, detraction is not only unnecessary but makes him lose grace in her eyes (II, 562-3). Even here pastoral discourse is the fount of Genius' rhetoric: the speaker's loss of grace among his hearers is a standard prudential consequence developed by Peyraut and his followers (chapter 2, part III). Peyraut's Summa reads "Aufert [lingua] etiam graciam hominum."82 Continuing in this vein, Genius warns the lover against the other destructive consequences, vengeance and disgrace, that follow "wicke speche," offering to tell a tale "wherof thou miht ensample take" (II, 586). In turning to narrative to move the lover to "flight from future evils and detestation of vices," Genius is following the rhetorical practice advocated by Etienne de Bourbon and adopted by the speaker in Patience?2* Indeed, admonition (monicio) is one of two 81 83

82 Tentler, Sin, pp. 106-8 and 236-9. Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. E6r. Etienne de Bourbon, Tractates, f. 6V; see chapter 2, part IV.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity pastoral situations (preaching being the other) in which Etienne advocates using exempla for this purpose. Unlike the speaker of Patience, Genius does not subordinate his tale, as he introduces it, to a sharply formulated general principle. Instead he promises to direct the tale to the lover's specific situation as someone seeking amendment for the sin just confessed. So, we are invited to read "The Tale of Constance" that follows (and later "The Tale of Demetrius and Perseus") not as a self-governing tale on the subject of detraction or (as tales in the Confessio are so often read) as a tale supposedly reducible to a general meaning crystallized in its moralitaSy but as a rhetorical performance by a priest attempting to move a specific penitent to cast off speech that he is powerfully drawn to by habit and by the circumstances revealed in his confession. These tales, then, are to be read in terms of the interplay between the confession and Genius' counsel, and, less immediately, the interplay between Genius' general discourse on detraction and the confession. These are not exempla as they are conventionally defined, short narratives illustrating a moral point or even expanded versions of that, like Patience. Pastoral instruments of teaching, religious formation, and persuasion, they are narratives shaped by shifting and multiple rhetorical strategies (in the first tale, over a stretch of above 1,000 lines) so that the lover, exercising prudence, will be able to find patterns applicable to his own conduct. Directing the exempla to the lover's particular case, Genius chooses tales in which characters commit detraction in the way that the lover is inclined to - by lying, the "fallas" intended to deceive. Then he stresses the "mischief" that the lie brings upon its author. In the "Tale of Constance" the first detractor, a trusted knight of the royal chamberlain Elda, no sooner falsely accuses Constance of murdering her host's wife and swears a false oath than he is publicly exposed and punished by God: With that the hond of hevene him smot In tokne of that he was forswore, That he hath bothe hise yhen lore, Out of his hed the same stounde Thei sterte, and so thei weren founde. A vois was herd, whan that they felle, Which seide, "O dampned man to helle, Lo, thus hath god the sclaundre wroke 146

Confessing the deviant speaker That thou ayein Constance hast spoke: Beknow the sothe er that thou dye." (II, 874-83) Such immediate physical punishment for a sin of speech is the stockin-trade of exempla for pastoral compilers, as we saw in chapter 3. Often the sin is detraction: in the Middle English Alphabet of Tales, a pregnant woman who falsely accuses a deacon of fathering her child undergoes labor for seven days and cannot give birth until she reveals his innocence; in Etienne's Tractatus> a bishop falls down dead after slandering St. Ambrose; and, in the Speculum laicorum, a backbiter is snatched by a demon as Saint Amandus preaches.84 The specific punishment Genius assigns to his lying knight can be found in the popular - and certainly memorable - exemplum of the blaspheming gambler whose eyes pop out when he swears by the eyes of God. 85 Such horrible, public punishments vindicate the victim of deceptive speech, which had seemed to her all-powerful and unanswerable. As visible signs ("In tokne of '), they expose that the verbal signs convey what the speaker knows to be false (as, in this case, does the bloody knife planted next to the sleeping Constance). To this, Genius, like the speaker in Patience, adds the corrective voice of God, which underlines the specific verbal sin and compels the detractor to tell the truth, a demand not in Gower's likely source, friar Nicholas Trivet's Chronique.86 (The knight's words can technically be considered detraction because Constance has swooned and cannot reply.) These events, with their threat of imminent death, hell, and public exposure for detractors, are also designed to instill terror in the lover. As a confessor using exempla for admonition, Gower's Genius is quite explicit, in the expected injunctions, about how his representation of temporal punishment is designed to warn the lover of what awaits him and to convert both will and habits of speech: The false tunges weren lore, Whiche upon love wolden lie. Forthi touchende of this Envie Which longeth unto bacbitinge, 84 85

86

Alphabet, pp. 261-2; Etienne de Bourbon, Tractatus, f. 230 v ; Speculum laicorum, f. 51 V (see chapter 3). The collection of exempla with the incipit "Incipiunt narraciones," f. 72 V ; also Jean Gobi, Scala coeli, p. 227. The knight's sudden punishment also recalls that of Robert Mannyng's wealthy Londoner, who, like the knight, is struck down just after he swears falsely o n a book (chapter 3). Sources and Analogues, W. F. Bryan and G. Dempster, eds., p. 172.

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Liesy slander, and obscenity Be war thou make no lesinge In hindringe of an other wiht. (II, 1602-7; see II, 1862-5) As Charles Runacres has astutely observed, we moderns, with our empiricist trust and delight in particulars as a source of knowledge, tend to find these direct injunctions which Genius, following collectors like Etienne, delivers at the end of his tales discordant with the narrative mode of the tales themselves and narrowing in their apparent claim that only some details of the story matter. 87 This habitual reaction tends to keep us from recognizing that we are witnessing a rhetorical performance within a confessional sequence. In Genius' exemplifying of detraction to the lover who has just exulted in the power such speech gives him over rivals, univodte is a technique derived from the brief pastoral exemplum (though not, as often in sermons or pastoral treatises, a way of controlling the tale as a whole) which makes the tale efficacious as it impresses on him "une verite morale utile a son salut." 88 Even giving point to the tales for this pastoral purpose can be done artfully, intermingling dynamically the two modes of exemplification, similitude and narrative. In the second tale, the Roman consul Paulus Emilius comes upon his daughter grieving for her "litel hound" Perseus just after he learns that Perseus, newly ruling Macedonia, has been so emboldened by his successful lies that he has attacked Rome. The consul reads the event as a "prenostik" of Perseus' death, for the hound images his "kinde" as a detractor: someone who injures another by barking behind his back (II, 1793-1808) - a reading which Genius recalls in a smooth transition from the particulars of the tale to the moralitas and injunctions: In strong prisoun... he [Perseus] was leid In Albe, wher that he was ded For hunger and defalte of bred. The hound was tokne and prophecie That lich an hound he scholde die, Which lich was of condicioun, Whan he with his detraccioun Bark on his brother so behinde. Lo, what profit a man mai finde, Which hindre wole an other wiht. Forthi with al thin hole miht, Mi Sone, eschuie thilke vice. (II, 1854-65) 87

Charles Runacres, "Art," pp. 111-14.

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88

Berlioz, "Le Recit," p. 118.

Confessing the deviant speaker This technique of generating story from image and of converting event to similitude in order to give point to a story is a device common in pastoral discourse, just as the image of the hound itself is a common - the most common - pastoral figure for the detractor. After developing many ways in which the dog signifies the detractor (biting, becoming rabid, having a filthy mouth, smelling the hindquarters of other dogs), Etienne de Bourbon briefly relates the traditional tale of how St. Andrew, preaching at Patras, drove away seven demons in the form of dogs. Detractors, he says at the end of the tale, ought to be ejected from human society like barking dogs.89 If we read "The Tale of Demetrius and Perseus" not as a ding an sich but as an exemplum with particular rhetorical functions within the confessional sequence, we can perceive the skill with which Genius, at his best, uses conventional catechetical techniques to direct his narrative to the lover's immediate, post-confessional state. This pointing of "The Tale of Demetrius and Perseus" by its final events, by the similitude that interprets them, and by the moralitas, does not mean that only some particulars in the tales matter (here, the "future evils" Perseus suffers), as modern readers of the Confessio often think.90 Nor does it mean that Genius always confronts the lover so directly with the moral significance of the tale. Genius' two tales of detraction have an indirect, fairly complex relationship - as well as a "one-voiced" relationship - to the somewhat impenitent lover to whom they are directed and to the entire confessional sequence which they crown. In a pastoral exemplum of deviant speech, like that of Caesarius von Heisterbach's blaspheming knight examined in chapter 3, punishment is only the last stage in a narrative paradigm which begins with the circumstances which arouse a root vice and so incline people to commit verbal sin. In Genius' "Tale of Constance," the lying knight has been King Allee's trusted confidant whom he had kindly raised and nurtured from childhood. While he is moved in part by frustrated lust for Constance, the knight chiefly defames her because he envies her advancement by the chamberlain who had utterly relied on him before (II, 811-13), a motive and emotion not present in Trivet's Chronique, where the knight acts to cover his sexual advances.91 Similarly Perseus is filled with envy of his brother Demetrius because 89 90

Etienne de B o u r b o n , Tractates, f. 229 r ; later in Speculum morale, cols. 1147-8. F o r another narratized image in an exemplum, see Liber exemplorum, p . 105. 91 Runacres, "Art," pp. 113-14. Sources, p. 171.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity he is the "betre knyht" and the heir who will eventually rule over him (II, 1613-34). In this prelude to the verbal act, all is seen through the eyes of the moral agent, a technique from Genius' first tale, that of Acteon.92 Only after this "sympathetic" prelude does Genius, like the speaker in Patience, either summarize or recount the defamatory words themselves, briefly alluding to the ratio, the essential elements which typify it as detraction: the absence of the victim (silence in the case of Constance), the falsity of what is said, the intent to ruin reputation (II, 852-73 and 1636-70). In these long exempla, the earlier parts are, it is true, only briefly recalled by the events and moralitas at the end, but we, as readers, following the lover as auditor, encounter and interpret them in the context of the Genius' earlier normative discourse and the lover's confession. Like the Patience poet, Gower read exempla embedded in extensive catechetical discourse, certainly in pastoral works on the vices (as his Mirour reveals). While such exempla are pointed, usually with a biblical sententia (as in the exemplum of Saint Amandus quoted in chapter 3), the earlier general catechesis also bears on the tales, for it presents the knowledge necessary to recognize the act of speech as detraction. But the reader or perhaps the preacher retelling it - must do the work of interpreting the tale in terms of the catechesis. Similarly, once Genius has given the ratio of detraction in his opening exposition, he briefly recalls it in a few words - if at all - when Elda's knight, King Allee's mother, and Perseus commit it. The reader, like the lover, is equipped to typify the speech properly. And it is the lover himself (although at a hint from Genius) who alerts us to the typical circumstances leading up to the act, when he recalls how passionate rivalry for affection and the competitive urge to "winne" awakened envy and tempted him to backbite his competitors. So, instead of the exposition and confession being recalled by the moralitas and all three singling out what is typical in the narrative,93 in the sequence on detraction, at least, readers are invited to apply actively what they have learned about the genesis and the ratio of the vice as they read the tales. Unlike Patience, no clerical voice maintains tight control over interpretation as the tale is told, counterpointing speech and events with scripture or counter exempla. Until the moralitas, the burden of discerning the typical in the particular is the reader's, just as it was the lover's when he

92

Maria Wickert,/o/m Gower, pp. 217-20.

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93

Runacres, "Art," p. 113.

Confessing the deviant speaker reviewed his speech during the confession proper and just as it is his again as the tale is told. For all his adherence to a pastoral paradigm of circumstances/ speech act/punishment, Genius develops in his exempla, as the titles conventionally given them attest ("The Tale of Constance/' "The Tale of Demetrius and Perseus"), an interest in the victims of verbal deception absent from pastoral exempla. In the second, Genius treats the deceived father as the victim, tracing, as he does in other tales of verbal deception (Mundus and Paulina, Ahab and Michaiah), how the hearer, in this case an experienced king who demands proof, was duped by a clever falsehood. In Perseus' speech to his father, the artful protestations of a "good son" ("Mi diere fader, I am holde / Be weie of kinde, as resoun wolde") create enough trust that the king falls for his shrewdly calculated story of usurpation and agrees to imprison Demetrius without giving him the opportunity to speak (II, 1653-70). Then Perseus plays upon his father's faith, as a ruler, in his own legal institutions in order to demand a public trial. But he has bribed both the judge and the great lords so that the king cannot escape deception. As in the "Tale of Mundus and Paulina," humans are vulnerable to deceptive words which artfully play upon their natural piety and their trust in social institutions and authorities. As in that earlier tale, too, Genius also awakens sympathy for the victim by depicting the loss and suffering caused by deception. Perseus rebels against his father; the king discovers Demetrius' innocence but is unable to take vengeance because of the strength of the traitors' party; and the king dies "Of pure sorwe" with the land "torned up so doun" by division, the greatest misfortune for a ruler in Gower's works. Even the far longer first tale is somewhat unified by the sufferings of Constance: exile, "sea change," loss of those she loves, even loss of identity. Beyond her are other victims: the Souldan slain with his advisers by his own mother, Elda coming upon his wife with her throat cut, King Allee mourning the loss of his beloved wife and child ("his yonge unlusti lif / He dryveth forth so as he mai" [II, 1308-9]). What part do these additions to the pastoral paradigm for the exemplum of deviant speech play in Genius' rhetorical strategy? Up to this point in the narratives, Genius has been non-directive, for the lover has shown himself, in his confession, quite able to recognize detraction and the circumstances that engender it. It is the consequences both for himself as a backbiter and for his victims that he 151

Lies, slander, and obscenity does not comprehend, even though Genius had ended his initial exposition with the cost to "many a worthi love." So, once the act itself is committed in the tales, Genius elicits in turn sympathy for the deceived and fear for the deceivers as they are punished (though, in the case of Constance, he returns to the victims for a long denouement). Finally, he uses the moralitas to drive home to the lover the "future evils" which destroy the deceivers, not so much creating a controlling signification for the whole tale (pace Runacres94) as using the rhetorical moment provided by the end of the narrative to confront the lover directly with what he needs to know before he faces the imperative which closes the tale, and in the case of the second tale, the sequence: "Forthi with al thin hole miht, / Mi Sone, eschuie thilke vice." Such a change of tack does compel us to leave off interpreting for ourselves the narrative by applying what we have learned about detraction from the exposition and confession, but it should not confuse us, for we have observed in Genius from the outset a skilled rhetorician who speaks to the lover's immediate needs as a confessant. Indeed, as the tale is pointed by increasing explicitness and emphasis, we are alerted to shift more to interpreting actively the confessor's rhetorical moves. Perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of Gower's tales - and Genius' rhetorical strategy - is their subject. Since the lover is the audience, we are told, they ought to be about love. But two of the three detractors in "The Tale of Constance" are not lovers, although their victims, Constance and King Allee, are. And in the final "Tale of Demetrius and Perseus" even the victims, a defamed brother and a deceived father, are not. Indeed, in these two stories Genius moves progressively away from "the matiere of love," just as his initial exposition of detraction edged into it. There he was manipulating the lover so that he would be prepared to recognize the genre of detraction in his experience of sexual rivalry. In the tales he slowly distances him from the particulars of his confession (the tales, of course, are also distant in time and place), enabling him to see the typical in foreign particulars. In this way, he manipulates the lover into seeing the generic circumstances, the verbal characteristics, and, with special point, the punishment involved in detraction. So, he avoids touching the self-justifying lover too nearly while he is 94

Ibid., p. 109.

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Confessing the deviant speaker awakening detestation for the very Sin of the Tongue which he habitually commits. In choosing his tales, as in exploiting and modifying the pastoral exemplum of deviant speech, Genius is a master catechist and director of confession in this sequence. Such tales, moreover, suggest by their very foreignness to the lover that "vice is vice, in love's cause as elsewhere," as Alastair Minnis pointedly writes of the Confessio in general, viewing it from the late medieval accessus to Ovid, with their conflation of Christian and pagan morality.95 \ s in Patience^ the temporal and cultural gap between example and audience conveys a moral order transcending time and cultural particularity. Genius accents that transcendence by the religious and cultural differences between the two tales. One is Christian hagiography, presenting a vulnerable woman adrift in a hostile world; the other, a classical struggle for power between males within a clan. Like the basic fiction of a lover's confession to an agent of Venus who is also a priest and like the interplay between that priest's general catechesis on detraction and the speech of Gower's lover, these tales, as they are told to and for the lover, juxtapose normative moral claims and conduct in love. It is, moreover, by its universality that Genius strives to authenticate this whole discourse on detraction. Absent throughout the confessional sequence is the catechists' usual way of claiming authority for his knowledge of verbal sin: the "sentence" with its appeal to biblical texts, to a monastic exemplar like St. Bernard or to a Paris master like Thomas Aquinas. Genius, unlike the speaker of the Mirour de I'omme, no more quotes David "as my authority" ["J'en tray David a mon auctour"]96 on why God curses the detractor's tongue than he marks, in Book VII, the biblical genesis of the image of the oil of flatterers. The Old Testament (Ahab and Michaiah) and even Christian conversion (Constance's many disciples) are overtly present in the Confessio as history, but the particularly scriptural is absent in Genius' discourse on moral types, opening the way for him to present it as valid and compelling for all sorts and conditions of men. In his discourse on rhetoric, Genius does so by invoking, as we have seen, "the philosopher," who grounds his whole system of knowledge in its "feme cause," the "hihe makere of natures" (VII, 86 and 1508). In his sequence on detraction he appeals, as a skilled rhetor, to shared 95 96

Minnis, " 'Moral G o w e r , ' " p. 66; see Yeager, Poetic, pp. 263-4. Gower, Mirour> line 2761.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity realities: nature (the ways of the dung beetle), social life (what one hears in "loves Court"), and history, particularly the chronicles that contain the stories of Constance and of Demetrius and Perseus. "As the Cronique seith" (II, 597), with the exemplum's expected claim to veracity, replaces the particularly Christian "J'en tray David a mon auctour." What Genius advocates is a universal ethics of speech, as readily discernible in a lover's experience of sexual competition as it is in incidents from Macedonian and late Roman Christian history. In the very process of authenticating his discourse, as in his skillful deployment of the elements of catechetical discourse to suit the lover's immediate needs - from the opening ratio which gives him the knowledge of detraction necessary to analyze his speech in confession to the final "pointing" of the exempla - Genius manages to "enforme" the "pleine trouthe" about detraction, to give persuasive force to what he perceives as a universally valid ethics of speech. He is at once the truth-telling counsellor of Book VII and its trained rhetorician. The power of this discourse is acknowledged finally by the lover himself in the last words of the entire confessional sequence, just after he abjures backbiting as a weapon in his hitherto amoral speech about his rivals: Mi Sone, eschuie thilke vice. Mi fader, elles were I nyce: For ye therof so wel have spoke, That it is in myn herte loke And evere schal. (II, 1865-9) If the simplicity of Genius' particular catechetical utterances often blinds us to the considerable skill and force which the lover acknowledges, it is in part because we are unaware of the conventions of this confessional discourse as established by the interrogations, by treatises on deviant speech, and by pastoral collections of exempla. As a result, we are inattentive to the rhetorical function each utterance serves. At first he reproduces or adapts the normative elements of the interrogations to address his penitent's acknowledged confusion and his social role as a lover. Once the lover delivers his confession, Genius' rhetorical moves are generally justified by their relation, sometimes oblique and sometimes direct, to what he has expounded and the lover has said in reply. As John Burrow writes of late fourteenth-century poetry in general, "the simplicity of the individual 154

Confessing the deviant speaker utterance is the measure of its dependence upon a complex and interesting context."97 Here those contexts are at first the opening exchanges in the confessional dialogue (in Book I), later the preceding parts of this confessional sequence, always the conventions of confessional discourse and discourse on detraction. While reading in these contexts may not provide a rhetorical justification for every detail of the sequence, especially of the tales, it does reveal a dynamic process of instruction and persuasion which ought to replace critics' usual models for the sequences, in which confession is merely the occasion (best ignored) for storytelling, like the plague of the Decameron, or general ethical discourse is set in static contrast to narrative.98 Even if we attend to the whole text and intertextuality, it is clear, as many critics have recently argued, that in some sequences Genius' discourse and elements of his tales are inconsistent or comically inappropriate to the lover's situation,99 calling into question not only his reliability as a moral guide but also the efficacy and validity of the pastoral discourse on the vices which he employs. (Such ironic readings of individual sequences, however, are only fully convincing when they are grounded in the pastoral tradition of specific vices as well as in the conventions of confessional discourse.) Undeniably, Genius, like the lover, has a shifting and often ambivalent relation to the great range of moral material he expounds. Then why should Gower have made Genius a consistently masterful (and successful, in the lover's eyes) rhetorician in the sequence on detraction? Combating detraction, of course, is quite in keeping with Genius' advocacy, throughout the Confessio (not to mention the Roman de la rose), of generative love. It is Malebouche, the enemy of the Lover in the Roman, who grieves and threatens "many a worthi love" in Genius' opening exposition; it is the backbiting of King Allee's mother which disrupts Constance's marriage, just as his knight's accusations originally threatened it. In the Confessio, detraction is a crime committed against lovers, indeed one that separates lovers, so that a priest of Venus who is a figure for generative sexuality (among other things) may fittingly and tellingly espouse conventional clerical 97 98 99

Burrow, Ricardian Poetry, p. 35. The former is Derek PearsalFs practice in "Narrative Art," pp. 475-84; the latter is Runacres* position, "Art," throughout. O n the limits of Genius as narrator and confessor and the consequent incongruities for the reader to detect, see Farnham, Hatton, Hiscoe ("Heavenly Sign" and "Ovidian Comic Strategy"), Kuczynski, Lynch, Olsson (Structures, " 'Gentilesse,'" and "Natural Law"), Simpson, Wetherbee, and White.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity discourse on the vice. But detraction is also a crime usually committed by "false wordes": the lies of Malebouche, of the villains in the exempla, and of the lover, in his potential worst case assault on his rivals ("For certes thogh I scholde feigne, / And telle that was nevere thoght"). Like the speech of Genius' flatterers in the political Book VII and of Mundus and the priests in Book I, these lies are the "fallas," the word which not only is intended to deceive but which does so by misrepresenting what the speaker actually perceives. For Genius as priest, the speaker "Whos word descordeth to his thoght" (II, 1893) violates the divinely given medium for communication between humans, committing a primal social sin. So, too, for the poet, whose voice assigns to the Prologue's "posited early forms of human relations... the status of ethical models or ideals,"100 prominent among them speech in which "The word was lich to the conceite / Withoute semblant of deceite" (Pro., 113-14). In his Genius, Gower valorizes and universalizes the discourse on deceptive speech created and disseminated by the post-Lateran treatises on Sins of the Tongue. In the sequence on detraction, his confessor enacts the cognitive function and ethical use he assigns to words in the tract on rhetoric as he accurately represents the circumstances, the root vice, the intended effect, the signification, and the actual consequences of words which misrepresent. In so doing, he fulfills the aim of the confessor as Gower describes it in the Mirour. the imparting of science.101 In that exposition and in the tales that follow confession, Genius also exploits the dominant position ceded him initially by the lover (confused but also following social expectations), just as he exploits the resources of pastoral rhetoric and the confessional structure, to move the lover to feel detestation, even fear, for detraction and to bow to his injunction to cease speaking it. The sequence on detraction is as naked an instance of a confessor imposing a set of norms and prohibitions for speech - admittedly derived from priestly books - as can be found in medieval fiction. This concerted and candid effort of social control may at first provoke in the lover a devious and then defiant response, but, ultimately, as befits a text which idealizes "pleine trouthe" in signification and presents recurrently the social and personal disasters caused by deviating from that, it secures his assent. 100 101

Anne Middleton, "Heritage," p. 11; she is writing about Piers Gower, Mirour, lines 14593-5096.

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Plowman.

5 Reforming deviant social practices: turpiloquiumlscurrilitas in the B version of Piers Plowman

Piers Plowman is peopled with dozens of figures who set about catechizing and reforming the uninstructed: from Reason preaching to the whole realm at the beginning of the second dream ("wifr a cros afore J>e kyng comsede frus to techen," B.5.12) to the friar who "glosefc fcere he shryueb" (B.20.368) at the end of the last dream.1 Some of them, most notably Study rebuking Wit in passus 10 and Will addressing powerful magnates in passus 13, adopt pastoral discourse on deviant speech. Many of the folk whom they instruct or confess are given to Sins of the Tongue, 2 especially those which assault humans (not God) with words. Backbiting, lying, chiding, false witness, murmur, sowing discord, casual swearing of oaths, idle talk, and "harlotrie" are all confessed in passus 5, under the guidance of Repentance, while Conscience fingers enough liars, flatterers, and false witnesses in the Mede episodes. Nevertheless, these speakers do not follow the exemplary mode of Genius or of the narrators of Patience and Cleanness: presenting and analyzing specific utterances in a carefully controlled way in order to modify the speech of their auditors. Furthermore, none of Will's eight dreams, with their many scenes of confession, even present a priest aiming a discourse at errant speech which is recalled and typified but not divulged, like that of Gower's lover. Not that the text refuses to voice the forbidden word: 1

2

I have chosen to use the B version of Piers Plowman because, of the three extended passages on minstrels, A contains only two (not extending to the dreamer's exhortation, B.I3.420-56 and C.7.82-118), while C sharply prunes one (Study's jeremiad in A.14.24-37, B.10.30-50 and C.I 1.28-35). To clarify or extend some ideas, I have cited, usually parenthetically, A and C. All citations to the B version are to the edition by George Kane and E. Talbot Donaldson; those to the A version, to the Kane edition; those to the C version, to the edition by Derek Pearsall. Joan Heiges Blythe catalogues instances of deviant speech throughout the poem, using Peyraut's Summa de vitiis as a gloss, in "Sins of the Tongue," pp. 124-42.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity snatches of nuns' gossip, for example, surface in confession. It is that Piers Plowman generally directs persuasive pastoral discourse, not to figures within the text (save sometimes to the dreamer as a social type), but to offending social groups and to the text's public, the readership imagined by Langland as he created Piers "for a certain effect within certain perceived historical conditions."3 Its mode is monitory, not exemplary. Moreover, as my examples suggest, those who voice pastoral discourse on deviant speech are personifications of human faculties and practices who have clerical learning but are not specifically constructed as priests, like Chaucer's Parson - or even Genius. Indeed, because they are named with polysemous words, they cannot be sustained actants within a narrative;4 they are not individualized even in their status, their lines of work and social group. Are Study or Conscience clerical or lay? Pastoral discourse on deviant speech is thus declericalized in the sense that it is removed from specifically clerical acts of preaching and directing confession, from ecclesiastical space, and from strictly clerical assertions of discursive authority. It becomes the proper language of all, just as, we shall see, scriptural catechesis becomes, opening the way for Piers to insist upon lay, as well as clerical, responsibility for the ethical nature of public speech. It is in the Prologue, and in the mouth of the dreamer, that pastoral discourse on deviant speech first appears. There it is used to typify the speech of a social group, minstrels, the versatile popular entertainers to whom John Southworth has recently devoted a book: instrumentalists, singers, oral poets and tellers of tales, fools, jugglers, acrobats, dancers, mimes and mimics, conjurers, puppeteers, and animal trainers.5 They appear early in the dreamer's survey of the field of folk (in the A, B, and C versions), after three other distinct estates - plowmen, anchorites and hermits, and merchants - a placement especially striking, as E. T. Donaldson observed in his influential account of the poem's minstrels,6 because of what must have been their comparatively small numbers. They are allotted more lines than any of the earlier estates, giving them even more prominence: And somme murfres to make as Mynstralles konne, And geten gold with hire glee [giltjlees, I leeue. Ac Iaperes and Iangeleres, Iudas children, [Fonden] hem fantasies and fooles hem makej), 3 5

Anne Middleton, "Audience," p. 102. John Southworth, Minstrel, pp. 1-19.

4 6

Lavinia Griffiths, Personification, throughout. E. Talbot Donaldson, C-Text, p. 148.

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Reforming deviant social practices And han wit at wille to werken if [hem liste]. That Poul prechet) of hem I [dar] nat preue it here; Qui loquitur turpiloquium is luciferes hyne. (B.Prol.33-9) The potentially innocent practice of this multifarious craft, with instrumental music and song ("glee"), is set aside quickly - and with the equivocal qualifier "I leeue." In contrast, the invocation of biblical authority and the Latin sententia - the first instances of both in the text - together with the references to the archbetrayers Lucifer and Judas give pronounced authority and gravity to the dreamer's appraisal of some minstrels as "Iaperers" and "Iangeleres" who speak turpiloquium. These three words focus the abuses of the minstrel's craft on speech, although the dreamer goes on to mention abuses of the imagination and gesture, even of forms of self-presentation, which go along with it. Loose words for types of speech, "Iaperers" and "Iangeleres" are used by the narrator of Patience to typify Jonah's first speech in a more general way than the pastoral term "grychchyng." The noun forms here convey speech and action so habitual that it shapes the person and his life: deceivers, tricksters, and scoffers ("Iaperes," MED) and idle or excessive talkers, gossipers, and tellers of dirty stories ("Iangeleres," MED). The pastoral term turpiloquium^ together with the reference to Paul, finally identifies, in the generally deviant speech of these minstrels, a specific Sin of the Tongue. In pastoral texts, discourse on turpiloquium is insistently Pauline, authorized and shaped by his Epistles.7 Peyraut's De vitiis and the Speculum morale begin their brief chapters on turpiloquium with a 7

Chapters on turpiloquium may be found in Peyraut's Summa (f. I2r) and in De lingua (ff. 158V-9V), while the Speculum morale has a paragraph within a chapter on several sins (col. 1046). The Summa has a chapter entitled "scurrilitas et risus" (ff. I2r~v), De lingua one on scurrilitas (ff. 159v-60r), and the Speculum morale z paragraph on scurrilitas (col. 1046). A reduced version of Peyraut's chapters on the sins appears in Quoniam (chapter 1, note 27), prominently placed in the opening discourse on verbal sin at f. 55r; Quoniam survives in two manuscripts, one dated around 1300 and the other late fourteenth or early fifteenth century (Siegfried Wenzel, "Source of Chaucer's Seven Deadly Sins," pp. 352-3). For reasons explained in this chapter and chapter 1, I have also drawn on relevant texts by Pierre le Chantre and members of his circle, especially Pierre's chapter on giving to entertainers from the Verbum abbreviatum (ff. 27 v -8 r ) and Raoul Ardent's chapter entitled "de sermone iocoso" (Speculum universale, ff. 163r~v). Neither turpiloquium nor scurrilitas is among the ten verbal sins in the Somme le roi or its many Middle English derivatives of the fourteenth century. To furnish a Middle English idiom, I will occasionally quote from three texts which derive their Sins of the Tongue, at some remove, from Peyraut's Summa: Mannyng's Handlyng Synne, Chaucer's "The Parson's Tale" (see chapter 6), and the fifteenth-century catechetical manual which begins "Seynt Iohon J>e euangelist" (chapter 1, note 27). Because Gregory the Great included scurrilitas among the nine verbal sins which were daughters of the Seven Capital Sins (chapter 1), it appears briefly in pastoral manuals and more fully in commentaries on the sins.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity sententia from Ephesians 5:3-4: "Fornicatio autem & immunditia nee nominetur in vobis, sic decet sanctos neque turpitudo" [But let not fornication and uncleanness be named among you, as becomes saints - or obscenity].8 Both texts introduce the next chapter and the next sin, scurrilitas^ with the same Pauline passage, which continues its list with "stultiloquium, aut scurrilitas." Even vernacular texts which treat both sins briefly specifically associate them with Paul and with each other.9 Of these yoked Pauline sins, turpiloquium is base talk of a sexual cast, scurrilitas "iocularitas in verbis prouocantibus auditores ad risum" [verbal jocularity inciting listeners to laughter].10 In these treatises, scurrility and, by overt connection, base talk are the speech of scurrae (buffoons), hangers-on in the households of the wealthy who make their masters laugh with their ridiculous and foolish talk (Du Cange). Scurrae was one Latin term of at least five used somewhat interchangeably to designate Southworth's versatile professional entertainers.11 From classical Latin on, it suggested primarily fools who amuse audiences with words and tricks. At the end of the twelfth century, when these entertainers had become a common fixture of court and town life, they were attacked in a concerted way by Pierre le Chantre and his circle of high ecclesiastics, Parisian masters, and popular preachers as part of their drive to make social life conform to biblical norms (chapter 1). Citing Pauline texts like that above, as well as patristic objections to the Roman theater, they argued that acting was wholly devoid of social utility (it met no 8

9

10 1J

I have not found the clause "Qui loquitur turpiloquium" in any pastoral treatise, although sometimes clauses are fairly close (for example, "qui turpiter loquit" in Peyraut's Summa, f. I2r). Several recent editors refer readers to Eph. 3-4 (e.g., Piers Plowman, Pearsall, ed., p. 30, who suggests sensibly that the biblical wording is "adapted to fit the syntax of the line"); several scholars argue for Col. 3:8 (Judson Allen, Poetic, pp. 276-7; John Alford, Quotations, p. 33). Since turpiloquium is a pastoral sin authorized by both passages (De lingua quotes Col. 3:8 on f. 158V) and by others from Pauline epistles, the clause seems to me a general gesture towards Pauline Scripture following "That Poul prechefc) of hem." For example, Handlyng Synne, Englishing turpiloquium as "foule wrdys" and scurrilitas as "rybaudy": Hyt ys also gret pryde & herte hy To speke foule wrdys yn rybaudy. Seynt poule seyt> vs to chastyse: "Kepyt> 3oure tunges on al wyse And spekyt> no fyljse out of skore Pat noun oufrer synne t>ar fore." (lines 3677-82) See "Seynt Iohon," f. 67V. Speculum morale, col. 1046; see Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. I2r, and De lingua, f. 159V. All five of the terms for entertainers which Southworth gives appear in pastoral texts. Of the remaining four, histriones conveyed primarily acting and mimi miming or mimicry (OLD; Baldwin, Masters, I, p. 198). Two terms, joculator and ministrellus, were more general.

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Reforming deviant social practices basic human need), that it was shameful insofar as it involved contorting body and face to represent others, and, especially, that all these related (and often combined) forms of entertainment incited uncontrolled laughter, wantonness, gossip-mongering, laziness, and prodigality.12 Consequently, they regarded the craft (officium) of entertainers, like that of usurers and prostitutes, as inherently sinful.13 These commonplaces, developed in sermons, confessional summae, biblical commentaries, and, especially, compendia of practical morality like Pierre's Verbum abbreviatum (chapter 1, note 19), found their way into the mid- and late-thirteenth-century pastoral texts on deviant speech. In the pastoral chapters on base talk and scurrility, the dominantly Pauline prohibitions, entreaties, warnings, rebukes, and exhortations about evil (especially salacious) speech establish a monitory mode of discourse, which the popular Franciscan Summa fratris Alexandria written just before Peyraut's Summa, identifies as the mode of the apostolic epistles (modus commonitorius). This mode, the biblical commentator Eudes Rigaud claims, works on the affections, moving the will to goodness and away from vice with general warnings (as opposed to cautionary exempla from the historical books).14 In pastoral texts, Latin and vernacular, from Peyraut to the fifteenth century, this mode is specifically applied to entertainers as a group, perhaps following Pierre le Chantre's insistence that the clergy ought to rebuke and correct entertainers as Paul does those who shirk manual labor.15 Given this widespread pastoral discourse on the speech of entertainers, the dreamer's "Qui loquitur turpiloquium" following "That Poul prechej? of hem," invokes, early in the Prologue of Piers Plowman, both a Pauline verbal sin and a monitory pastoral discourse directed against it. Over half the poem later, the dreamer again uses the Latin pastoral term: he closes off his extended exhortation against listening to minstrels by branding their speech as ccturpiloquioy a l[a]y of sorwe, and luciferis fi^ele" (B.13.456). These are the only two instances of the word in the text. In both passages, the dreamer demonizes the speakers of turpiloquium, although only in the second does he direct the full resources of pastoral rhetoric against them, 12 13 14

Pierre le Chantre, Verbum, ff. 27v-8r; Baldwin, Masters, I, pp. 198-204; Carla Casagrande and Silvana Vecchio, "Clercs," pp. 914-17. Thomas of Chobham, Summa confessorum, p. 290. 15 Minnis, "Literary Theory," pp. 134-5. Pierre le Chantre, Verbum, f. 27V.

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ieSy slander, and obscenity measuring the social consequences of their deviancy and seeking to break its power over the wealthy. In between these passages, the dreamer, once simply as teller of dreams and once as interlocutor as well, reports two other attacks on minstrels5 speech, by Piers (briefly) in passus 6 and by Study in 10, both of whom place minstrels in a specific social situation: performing at meals in the halls of magnates, seen as complicit in their deviant speech and its destructive consequences. Setting the pastoral chapters on turpiloquium and its constant companion scurrilitas alongside these four diatribes will enable us to see how Langland's speakers - critical voices in the first four dreams - select pastoral topoi and devices in specific rhetorical situations.16 I realize that in placing these antiminstrel polemics in this pastoral tradition of turpiloquium and scurrilitas, stretching back to the late twelfth century and realized most extensively in mid- and latethirteenth-century texts, I am reading a discourse within Piers Plowman in ways which Wendy Scase has forcefully stigmatized in Piers Plowman and the New Anticlericalism: "generically and genealogically" "in relation to earlier writings, as continuations of traditions found there." 17 Unlike the anticlerical polemics she considers, which are transformed by new mid- and late-thirteenth-century conflicts between groups of clerics (monks versus friars, regulars versus seculars), by the increased power and wealth of the clergy, and by lay political and religious aspirations, discourse on the Sins of the Tongue is fairly constant. The major texts which construct turpiloquium and scurrilitas, like Peyraut's Summa de vitiis and De lingua, continue to be copied, circulated, and raided to produce new texts in the mid- and late-fourteenth century. The legislation which demands 16

17

In juxtaposing pastoral chapters on turpiloquium/scurrilitas with Langland's passages on the speech of minstrels, I am not claiming that he sat down to write with Guillaume Peyraut's or De lingua's chapters beside him, although, thanks largely to John Alford and Judson Allen, scholars have come to accept a poet who had at hand clerical tools, at least biblical commentaries, concordances, and distinctions. Langland may very well have encountered discourse on these Sins of the Tongue by listening to (or reading) sermons, by practicing confession, and by reading pastoral compendia. However, encyclopedic pastoral treatises on the vices may be more readily found than sermons on specific vices (because of the trailblazers Morton Bloomfield and Siegfried Wenzel), and of the thirteen compendia I examined (listed in note 155 to chapter 2), none contain a sizeable entry on these sins. Although confessional materials usually treat scurrilitas for reasons explained in note 7, these yield only a few blunt questions and compact definitions, which I will use incidentally. Exempla of these two sins are rare. Therefore, the more encyclopedic treatises - Peyraut's Summa, De lingua, and the Speculum morale - and their offspring may acquaint us more fully and more easily with discourse on these verbal sins than any other pastoral genre. Wendy Scase, Anticlericalism, pp. 2 and ix.

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Reforming deviant social practices that sins be taught in pastoral situations continues to be enforced, even renewed (that is, repromulgated and implemented through new catechetical materials) in the middle of the century.18 But to claim continuity for the discourse and its institutional uses is not to claim that Piers presents it as a mid-thirteenth-century Dominican preacher might - or even as Reason in the Roman de la rose. These pastoral materials are loose grabbags of similitudes, topoi, sententiae - fragmented rhetorical resources for clerical speakers (chapter 2, part IV). As we shall see, in Piers non-priestly figures employ some of these materials out of the same social and religious concerns which animate the text's anticlerical attitudes, as Scase has illuminated them: the needs of the involuntarily poor, the charitable reponsibilities of clergy and laity alike, the authority of biblical discourses of penance and charity. But they do so because the minstrels practice a seductive discourse which threatens to displace the biblical among the powerful in society. Perhaps this is why Piers Plowman exploits this subdiscourse on verbal deviancy and not that on flattery or lying when the flattery of the friars and the lies of the lawyers pepper the text and when it, like Gower's Confessio Amantisy is so engrossed in the importance of truth-telling.19 II

In Langland's Prologue, the dreamer shies away from fully realizing pastoral rhetoric about the speech of minstrels ("That Poul prechet of hem I [dar] nat preue it here"). In keeping with the rest of his survey of estates, he confines himself to observing and evaluating the group's general conduct with an eye to what constitutes socially productive labor. Yet even this sharply limited treatment draws pastoral topoi into the text. In demonizing minstrels because of their foul speech, Langland's dreamer is following pastoral practice, even adopting a dominant pastoral metaphor: "luciferes hyne." Our three major sources with chapters on turpiloquiumlscurrilitas all brand minstrels as "operarii diaboli," the devil's laborers or, more precisely, underworkmen (the exact sense of "hyne").20 Moreover, their minstrels, like the dreamer's 18 19 20

O n the texts, see chapter 1, part II, and note 7 above. Hughes recounts the pastoral programs of Archbishops Thoresby and Islip in Pastors, pp. 143-61; see also chapter 1, part I. Blythe lists many passages about truth-telling in "Sins of the Tongue,'* pp. 125-42. De lingua, f. 159V; Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. I2 r ; Speculum morale, col. 1046; Casagrande and Vecchio give some earlier instances in "Clercs," p. 925n.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity "Iaperes and Iangeleres," who "[Fonden] hem fantasies," utter turpiloquium in the course of a repertoire which involves uncensored garrulity, mockery, and the feigned or fictive.21 ("Fantasies" may suggest, under the general sense of an image or idea formed out of sensory data by the faculty of "fantasie," falsehoods, illusory images, and artistic creations [MED 2 and 3]). Why such speech in the mouths of entertainers is diabolical is not analyzed here by the dreamer any more than the "glosing" or lying of the Prologue's other dubious workers with words, the friars and pardoners. (Such analysis will come from Study and the dreamer himself in other rhetorical situations.) Like "glosing" and lying, the type of speech is just identified, associated with a social group, and generally condemned as destructive to society. One social consequence of minstrels' performances is brought forward at this point: that their verbal juggling enables them to evade what the dreamer considers proper work. "Ac Iaperes and Iangeleres, Iudas children, / [Fonden] hem fantasies and fooles hem maket>, / And han wit at wille to werken if [hem liste]." Here Langland draws into the Prologue a Pauline topos significant in some pastoral texts. Peyraut's influential Summa and its English derivative Quoniam (which survives in two manuscripts of the fourteenth century) follow Pierre le Chantre in identifying scurrae with Paul's mysterious offenders "nihil operantes, sed curiose agentes" [working not at all but curiously meddling], whom he commands to work in silence and eat bread earned with manual labor (2 Thess. 3:10—12). 22 Pierre contrasts these entertainers with Paul as an itinerant preacher: although he works by preaching, he also does manual labor lest he scandalize others. In the pastoral texts, this Pauline phrase is used to expose entertainers' dependence on their lords and their practice of gathering gossip to tell, sing, or enact in performances, both later concerns of Study and the dreamer. But here the dreamer focuses on a 21

22

T h e dreamer's loose linking of foul talk to idle and excessive prating and to deceptive and mocking speech — even the order in which he does so - follows pastoral practices observable even in the ordinatio of treatises. Peyraut places his chapters o n turpiloquium and scurrilitas directly after ones o n multiloquium (loquacity) and ociosa verba (idle speech); the Speculum morale groups all four in the same chapter, w i t h multiloquium before the others. Within chapters, scriptural sententiae and similitudes associate t h e m further (Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. I2 r ; De lingua, ff. 159 V and 160 r ). Placement in these treatises, as in the dreamer's discourse, suggests that garrulity generates foul and scurrilous w o r d s . Pierre le C h a n t r e , Verbum, f. 27 V ; Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. I2 r ; Quoniam, f. 55 r . T h u s , the use of this Pauline text to stigmatize the vagrancy and idleness of minstrels b o t h antedates and is c o n t e m p o r a r y w i t h its use to s h o w that religious mendicancy was non-apostolic, explored b y Scase, Anticlericalism, p p . 6 0 - 7 8 .

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Reforming deviant social practices specific practice of entertainers: impersonating "natural fools," the witless men whom Langland's figures so often exhort society to provide for and protect (e.g., Wit in B.9.68-72).23 Such conterfeiting enabled entertainers to "profit from the idiot's immunity from work in the houses of the great."24 By recalling this practice, the dreamer indirectly contrasts them with the first estate, the plowmen, who labor with their hands (as Paul enjoins). In Piers Plowman, entertainers, like the wasters before them and the beggars after, emerge as parasites in a vision where the kind of work a group does and how it is done is measured by its effects on the economic, moral, and religious life of the community. While later parts of the survey may be shaped by estates satire and by "a common stock of generalised portraits of malefactors in society,"25 the dreamer's identification of Paul as his authority and of monitory preaching as Paul's mode of discourse makes his pivotal sketch of minstrels more pastoral in character, more closely tied to the Bible. The dreamer's adoption of specifically pastoral speech when he dwells on the verbal deviancy of an estate follows the established pastoral practice, especially in preaching and directing confessions, of specifying and developing the sins to which the auditors' social group {status) was prone by the very nature of its work. The congregation or penitent could then be exhorted and persuaded to shun the daily occasions for them.26 Although numerically small in comparison with the usual social groups examined in confessional literature (monks, wives, nuns, agricultural laborers, knights, priests, merchants), popular entertainers are given a niche in some of the longest, most widespread, and most durable interrogationes and summae for confessors: Thomas of Chobham's Summa confessorum of about 1216 and the late-thirteenth-century Confessionale and Summa confessorum of Johannes von Freiburg.27 These texts, like the pastoral texts treating deviant speech, are concerned with identifying what is sinful in entertainers' acts and speech, especially its lewdness and baseness.28 23 24 25 26 27

28

D e r e k Pearsall, " ' L o l l a r e s , ' " p p . 163-78. Sandra Billington, Social History, p . 20; see Enid Welsford, Fool, p p . 115-20. Paul Miller, " G o w e r , " p . 87. See chapter 4, part III; Rusconi, "confession," p . 8 3 . Bloomfield's Incipits lists sixty-nine extant manuscripts of t h e Confessionale o n p . 498, seventy of Johannes v o n Freiberg's Summa confessorum o n p . 452, and t h i r t y - t w o of T h o m a s of C h o b h a m ' s Summa confessorum o n p . 111. J o h n Baldwin states that over o n e h u n d r e d manuscripts of T h o m a s ' Summa survive, although some are abridgments (Masters, II, p . 26). Johannes v o n Freiburg includes one required question a b o u t entertainers in his Confessionale,

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Lies, slander, and obscenity

Parenthetically, both writers, unlike the pastoral treatises with their fix on deviant speech, also set the condemnable against a norm of innocent recreation. Thomas of Chobham ends his typology of entertainers by describing a subgroup of those who play musical instruments (ioculatores): their songs of the deeds of princes and of the lives of the saints give solace to those in sickness and difficulties, and they do not act out or speak anything lewd (turpitudines).29 So, the dreamer's practice of briefly and grudgingly admitting that professional minstrels who live by their "glee" may win gold sinlessly but of dwelling on the types of speech and action which make it more often deviant - that is, mortally sinful - is a pastoral practice rooted in confessional literature on the estates. In keeping with its revisions and additions satirizing wanderers who shirk work, the C version omits these sinless minstrels, reducing the entire estate to the Pauline strain: a single breed whose verbal deviancy and shirking of manual labor is accentuated by the new line "Wolleth neyther swynke ne swete, bot sweren greate othes." All of their "fantasyes" are "foule" in C, linking their use of imagination in entertainment more tightly to their turpiloquium (C.Prol.35-6). in

While the Prologue places minstrels first among those who make their living with speech - mainly deviant speech - and while no other fourteenth-century poem contains so much "imagery of minstrelsy,"30 minstrels and their speech are largely absent from the rest of the first dream, as societal corruption is anatomized in the adventures of Lady Meed.31 In the second dream, the minstrels are located in the social situation which will be developed in the third and fourth dreams, that described in the pastoral chapters on scurrility: performing at meals in the halls of magnates, who maintain them with hospitality, lavish gifts, and, above all, a conspicuous position.

29

30 31

f. 152 r : "Ab ystrionibus inter cetera quaere si usus est in ludo uerbis uel factis improbis.ut puta.vituperationibus detractionibus." His Summa proclaims as sins their habitual flattery and "illicit words" (f. lix v ). O n their lewd speech, see Thomas of Chobham, Summa, pp. 291-2. Ibid., p. 292. Johannes von Freiburg in his Summa, ff. lixr"v, cites Thomas Aquinas: the craft of entertainers may be licit, and they may even earn a legitimate reward for their labor if it is used to provide solace for others, especially the sick and troubled (from St. II.II. 168,3; see Summa fratris Alexandri III.III.II.IV). Donaldson in his pioneering study of Langland's minstrels, C-Text, p. 147. Minstrels are mentioned in B.2.218-31 and B.3.132-3.

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Reforming deviant social practices This social context is first presented in the text by Piers himself, layman and plowman, as he instructs the knight seeking Truth in his social and economic obligations. Once the knight pledges fidelity to him and promises, as a fighter and justiciar, to protect him as a laborer, Piers shifts from the work that the knight does to his treatment of tenants, pulling together many of the poems' central concerns in his injunctions against unjust assessments, taking gifts from the poor, insulting or offending bondsmen. The climax in this series, and the last of the knight's obligations overall, is to shun scurrilous minstrels: "And £at l>ow be trewe of J)i tonge and tales l>ow hatie But if [it be] of wisdom or of wit \>i werkmen to chaste; Hold wife none harlotes ne here no3t hir tales, And namely at mete swiche men eschuwe, For it ben be deueles disours, I do l>e to vnderstonde." 32 (B.6.50-4)

Here the deviant speech is lewd tales. Pastoral texts commonly list tales {fabulae) as a vehicle for scurrility, and Alain de Lille's popular treatise on preaching associates with scurrility the "unsuitable and base tales" ["ineptas et viles fabulas"] proscribed by Paul. 33 The (Inversion Piers takes pains to distinguish these "harlotes tales" from admonitory tales and from one type Thomas of Chobham found allowable, virtuous deeds of princes: "of bounte, of batayles or of treuthe" (C.8.49).34 As a feudal lord, the knight is responsible for controlling his speech, earlier for not insulting his bondsmen and here for exemplifying chivalric values in speech ("trewe of £>i tongue" suggesting first in this context manifesting the obligations of his estate in speech). But Piers' knight is also responsible as feudal lord for other speech which his tenants hear and which he hears. As Southworth details, professional entertainers appeared regularly at feasts in royal, chivalric, and even ecclesiastical households. Often they were maintained, as the term ministrellus suggests, as minor servants, but even wandering minstrels survived off of gifts from magnates.35 Indeed, they were so firmly located at lay and ecclesiastical courts that Peyraut, citing the interlinear gloss on Ephesians 5:4-5, claims that their scurrilous speech was considered courtly conduct, curialitas, by 32

33 34

While "disours" signifies minstrels, especially as storytellers (MED), "harlotes" is the vernacular for scurrae or joculatores (Promptorium parvulorum, p. 214; English Glosses, p. 17). r V Summa de vitiis, f. II ; De lingua, f. 159 ; Alain de Lille, Summa, p. 162; from 1 Tim. 4:7. 35 Thomas of Chobham, Summa, p. 292. Southworth, Minstrel, pp. 57-117.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity the foolish.36 Given this entrenched social position, Piers resorts to pastoral rhetoric to demonize them, much as the dreamer does in the Prologue: the entertainers' true overlord is the devil, their speech his instrument. (To this, C adds, for the first time in any version, an explicit reason why their speech ought to be avoided: "l>e deueles dysors to drawe men to synne" [C.8.52]). In this way Piers works to move the knight, as a feudal overlord seeking to realize his obligations, to help to break the social power of minstrels by refusing to associate with them, especially at feasts. This means of protecting society from their speech is traditional, both in its recourse to a feudal social order and in its advocacy of a remedy urged by the clergy since Pierre le Chantre and the twelfth-century canonists: excluding entertainers from noble households. 37 These obligations and this remedy are most fully developed in Piers Plowman by the dreamer. But first he dreams of being instructed by Study, who constructs a rivalry between the seductive speech of entertainers and the salvific speech of those teaching Christian scripture, placing both in the social situation Piers has introduced. When Langland recasts the search for a society in which every group realizes its obligations to others and to God as Will the dreamer's quest to know and enact "do well," he launches Will on a journey into the mind, into the processes of "kynde knowyng" and formal education. There Study, as the mental power of application, concerned with the perverse use of "wisdom and wit," leads him once again to minstrels. The third of the imposing and seemingly authoritative figures who address Will, Study takes to task the first, her husband Wit, for instructing Will in Dowel. She peremptorily classes Will among the flatterers, fools, liars, and deceivers in general who value their native intelligence and knowledge only for the temporal gain they bring. In her discourse covetousness dictates how the intellect is applied in public life, both by powerful and wealthy lords and by those who entertain them: "Lo!" seij) holy lettrure, "whiche [lordes] bej) J)ise sherewes"; Thilke t>at god [moost gyueb] leest good t>ei delet>, And moost vnkynde to l>e commune tat moost catel weldefr Que perfecisti destruxerunt; iustus autem &c. Harlotes for hir harlotrie may haue of hir goodes, 36 37

Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. I2 r ; also Speculum morale, col. 1046. Pierre le Chantre, Verbum, ff. 27 v -8 r , where he attributes the remedy to Paul; Baldwin, Masters, I, pp. 200-3.

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Reforming deviant social practices And Iaperis and Iogelours and Iangleris of gestes, Ac he t>at hat> holy writ ay in his moufre And kan telle of Tobye and of [fee] twelue Apostles Or prechen of be penaunce tat Pilat wro3te To Iesu J>e gentile J>at Iewes todrowe [On cros vpon caluarye as clerkes vs techej)], Litel is he loued [or lete by] J>at swich a lesson [techet>], Or daunted or drawe for^; I do it on god hymselue. But too J>at feynen hem foolis, and wij> faityng libbefc Ayeinfcelawe of oure lord, and lyen on hemselue, Spitten and spuen and speke foule wordes, Drynken and dreuelen and do men for to gape, Likne men and lye on hem t>at lenefc hem no 3iftes, Thei konne na moore mynstralcie ne Musik men to glade Than Munde t>e Millere of Multa fecit deus. Ne [holpe hir] harlotrye, haue god my troupe, [W]olde neuere kyng ne kny3t ne [c]anon of Seint Poules 3yue hem to hir yeressyue t>e [value] of a grote. Ac [mynstralcie and murfre] amonges men is nout>e Lecherie, losengerye and losels tales; Glotonye and grete ofces, tis[e arn games nowadaies]. (B.I0.27-51) Twice Study identifies scurrility as the means entertainers use to exact gifts from the great, clerical as well as lay.38 Her general word "goods" evokes a whole range of gifts customarily, and often impulsively, lavished on entertainers after performances: sumptuous clothing (often noble castoffs), fine wines, food and lodging, horses, and coins (the A version explicitly mentions gold), all of which John Southworth discovers in the records of royal and episcopal courts.39 "yeressyue" indicates that such lords act as patrons, maintaining entertainers, probably as liveried servants, in their households.40 Such a position would give them "the protection of a well-known name to serve as a stamp of approval and passport of admittance to monasteries, castles, guildhalls and manors," where they would be 38

39 40

Diocesan statutes on clerical conduct from the thirteenth century forbade clergy to pay any attention at all to joculatores, mimes, and bistriones {Councils, II, pp. 63, 151, 271, 348, 407, 431, 440, and 565), let alone inviting them to perform at feasts. Bishop Peter Quivel of Exeter even enjoined priests not to go to meals at which entertainers performed unless they were specifically invited by the head of the household (Records of Early English Drama: Devon, p. 5). Katherine Walsh notes that, in 1355, Archbishop Robert FitzRalph of Armagh absolutely prohibited clerics from listening to or maintaining entertainers - and, apparently, included the laity, as well (FitzRalph, p. 320). Southworth, Minstrel, pp. 57-86; also Baldwin, Masters, I, p. 202. Piers the Plowman, W. W. Skeat, ed., II, pp. 44 and 133.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity welcomed and rewarded.41 This is exactly the social situation the dreamer later describes in passus 13, where clergy and knights admit into their halls "kynges minstrales, / And for loue of [hir] lorde litet hem at festes" (B.13.436-7). In passus 13, the dreamer develops more fully the lords' complicity in their minstrels' performances, together with its social and personal consequences, with him drawing on pastoral discourse on base speech/scurrility as a tool of ethical analysis and reform. Here Study limits herself, as the power of mental application, to observing generally that the lords' gifts to minstrels are part of a social pattern of misusing wealth. In contrast, the C-version's Study, in keeping with its more fully articulated concern for the involuntarily poor,42 explicitly speaks of lords neglecting their responsibilities to the needy when they indulge minstrels: "Harlotes of here harlotrye aren holpe ar nedy pore' / And tat is no riht ne resoun, for rather me sholde / Helpe hym tat hath nauhte then tho that haen nonede"(C.11.28-30). In her diatribe, the B-version's Study, with her interest in the uses of speech, largely devotes herself to cataloging the types of speech the entertainers shrewdly employ to win gifts from the powerful. Although she, like the dreamer of the Prologue, focuses on the lewd talk of minstrels as what is most objectionable in their generally loose and mocking speech (the words "Iaperis" and "Iangleris" again typify them), she expands their verbal repertoire, as versatile as the rest of their craft, into deceptive speech: flattery and lying. Although the thirteenth-century Latin treatises on deviant speech, in their concern to define each Sin of the Tongue sharply and to differentiate one from another, rarely concatenate them as Study does, later vernacular treatises and other clerical texts do. Study's new term for the professional entertainers is "Iogelour," which sometimes in Piers Plowman has the literal sense of juggling, a basic trick of the medieval entertainer's trade (B.13.232 and A.7.64), but which also may signify a verbal illusionist, a juggler with words who deceives people (C.I7.310). The Book of Vices and Virtues, the translation of the Somme le roi made in the 1370s when Langland was writing, terms "jogeloures" or "enchauntoures" those who speak its third kind of flattery, false praise: "for key iogelen so a man tat he leuet hem betere tan hymself; for he leuet bettere tat he here]? tan tat he seet, and tat tei seyn bi hym tan tat he vnderstondet hymself."43 The tools of 41 43

Southworth, Minstrel, p. 94. Book, p. 58.

42

170

Scase, Anticlericalism, pp. 47-160.

Reforming deviant social practices "jogeloures" are exaggeration and lies, their audiences the rich and "men of grete state," easily "enchanted" with inflated self-images, according to the roughly contemporary Speculum vitae.44 By firmly associating such "losengerye" with foul talk (50), Study sees verbal deception as part of the fool's seductive trade.45 One form minstrels' lies commonly take in clerical texts of all sorts is, as in Study's jeremiad, detraction, usually in the form of lies. Alain de Lille's popular summa on preaching (chapter 1, note 19) glosses nicely Study's accusation that minstrels "Lye on hem l>at lenefr hem no 3iftes," as well as portraying flattery and detraction as their two related verbal weapons: Ad scurras pertinet detractio, qui adulantur ut emungant pecuniam; qui detrahunt ut divites stimulent ad largitiones faciendas; qui per adulationes in auribus potentum citharizant, qui juxta doni mensarum laudes ponderant, qui per detractiones acquirunt quod per virtutes non possum. Horum lingua quae cibos venatur, erit cibus ignis aeterni; et quae per detractionem attrahit munera, gehennali distrahetur poena.46 [Detraction suits entertainers, who flatter so that they may cheat people out of their money and who utter detraction so that they may incite the rich to make donations. They sing to the harp with flattering words in the ears of the powerful; equally, they meditate praise for the gift of meals; they gain through detraction what they cannot through virtue. Their tongue, which hunts for food, will be the food of eternal fire, and it, which draws gifts through detraction, will be drawn apart by the punishment of hell.] In Study's "nowadays" polemic, like Alain's, not only do the minstrels seek out the laden tables of the rich, 47 but they, unlike the 44

45

46

47

Speculum vitae, lines 15811-22 and 15881-4. Like Study, the Speculum uses the term "losengerye." In his discourse on flattery, John Gower's Genius firmly attributes flattery of the great to minstrels (Confessio Amantis 7, 2412-40). Similarly, a version of the Somme le rot, Jacob's Well, links lying, spreading false tales, and flattery with scurrility as the characteristic speech of minstrels (Owst, Literature, p. 13; also Alain de Lille, Summa, col. 163). The whole range of entertainers' speech which Study catalogues - base talk, scurrility, detraction, vain praise ("the praises of wolves") - can be found in Roger de MortivaFs early fourteenth-century statutes for the cathedral at Sarum, referred to by E. K. Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, II, p. 40n. Alain de Lille, Summa, col. 167; see also Johannes von Freiburg, Confessionale, f. 152 r , and Thomas of Chobham, Summa, p. 291. Like Alain and Study, pastoral writers on deviant speech often attribute verbal deception of all kinds to greed for lucrum. Under avarice, Alexander Carpenter's Destructorium places fallacia in general (the word uttered out of the intention to deceive), lying, flattery, and false testimony; Peyraut's Summa de vitiis and De lingua trace most lies to avarice (chapter 2, part II). Just as Study follows clerical practice in placing deception as well as scurrility in the mouths

171

Lies, slander, and obscenity trivializers of theological discourse who follow them at these tables and the assorted gyrovagi whom the C version satirizes even more than A or B, also reduce entertainment to the lecherous and deceptive verbal routines which wheedle or extort gifts. In her analysis, they live by "faityng," deceiving - perhaps also the related sense developed by Wendy Scase: begging and obtaining alms under false pretences.48 Despite the poem's pervasive interest in the social effects of verbal deception, Study directs her attention not to the social and personal consequences of speaking or hearing minstrels' polymorphous misrepresentations, but to the steady integrity of speech conformed to the Scriptures: "he J>at hat> holy writ ay in his mou^e" - "ay," always and forever (MED sv "ai"). What varies in this speech is only the particular biblical story. Study conveys this monology by speaking of it only in terms of its subject: all attention is on the scriptural. This speech is always authoritative, always truthful (in the sense of reporting events which have occurred, as opposed to minstrels' tales/ lies), and always edifying, used in teaching. Thus, it is Study, concerned with the proper application of knowledge, intelligence, and so speech, who draws the first explicit, literal, and extended contrast between catechetical speech and deviant speech, just as she later contrasts empty theological disputations with speech which instructs people in their religious obligations, especially in dispensing their goods to the poor, and elicits contrition (B.I0.73-94). Her binary

48

of entertainers, she associates such deviance with gluttony, another abuse of the mouth. The authoritative Gregory the Great had classified both scurrility and loquacity (multiloquium) as daughters of the Capital Sin gula (Moralia 31.45). Gregory's genesis for scurrilitas is followed by post-Lateran compilers of treatises on the Seven Sins (e.g., Expositio... electionibtiSy f. 137V) and pastoral manuals (Guido de Monte Rocherii, Manipulus, ff. cviv-cviir). (For the tradition that it is born of lechery, see Casagrande and Vecchio, Peccati, p. 399.) Monastic literature, with its concern for restraint (or total abstinence) in all forms of bodily life, developed this association amply in ways that are drawn on by texts like the Somme le rot and its derivatives, which place the whole book on "wikked tonge" under gula, and by De lingua, which devotes an entire chapter to how loquacity follows from a libido awakened by banqueting (ff. 145V-7V). This authoritative and long-standing connection led confessional literature of all genres, conventionally organized around the Capital Sins, to attribute uncontrolled speech of this kind to overeating and overdrinking. {Multiloquium was often glossed as detraction and insults in pastoral literature, as in John de Burgh's Pupilla oculi, f. 151v, making deceptive speech, too, generated by gluttony.) So, under gluttony, a vernacular interrogationes directs the priest to inquire whether his penitent has "fallen into bacbityng & ofte with gret delite toolde & herkened false tales & tit>inges.& also talked of ofeere unclene materes and so t>orou3 excesse in etynge & drynkynge & ydel talkynge wasted thy tyme atte mete" (No incipit, British Library MS. Harl. 4172, f. 118V). A similar passage placing backbiting, false tales, and lewd talk at the table appears under gula in a vernacular modus confitendi: "[I have] longe seten atfeemete & spoken wordes of uanite.& also fallen in to bacbityng.and ofte wife grete delite told & herkened.fals talus & tydynges.& also talked of ofeer unclene materes" ("I knowlech & 3elde," f. 160v). Scase, Anticlericalism, pp. 69-71.

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Reforming deviant social practices opposition is that of the post-Lateran pastoral treatises, where the salvific speech founded on scripture is presented as the normative nuncius rationis engaged in the work of teaching and learning and where deviant speech emerges as its "other" (chapter 2, part I). In the previous passus, Wit, as native intelligence, had recognized that God has designated certain proper, salvific functions for speech (B.9. 103-4). Here Study, as application, simply denounces the actual perversion of words chosen with an eye to social and financial gain, a perversion which leaves the scriptural word unheard, as well as the nation's wealth misdistributed. An opposition between preaching priest and minstrel runs throughout the treatises on deviant speech. Peyraut's Summa, for example, insists, in its chapter on idle speech (ociosa verba)y that the lips of a priest should never utter fables or scurrility, the speech of scurrae.49 Moreover, the rivalry Study constructs, in which minstrels aggressively attract audiences with their deviant words and acts, is developed in pastoral exempla. As the Scala coeli tells the common tale of the backbiter who noisily disrupts the preaching of St. Amandus (chapter 3), he is a ioculator. In the same collection, a ioculator actually draws the whole populace out of the church by spreading out his marionettes before it.50 By contrast, Study's scriptural speaker is not specifically clerical, although she observes that "clerkes" mediate the Bible ("as clerkes us techej>"), nor does his speech take place in a specifically pastoral context or ecclesiastical space. This declericalizing is quite in keeping with the pastoral treatises on speech, which, as we have seen (chapter 2, part I) enjoin all Christians to utter all forms of salvific speech, except those parts of liturgy assigned only to priests. Its effect is to remove any possiblity of seeing this rivalry as one between clerical and lay forms of discourse; it stands forth starkly as one between the scriptural and the deviant. IV

In the fourth dream, Will recreates the social scene Study realizes in detail in the third. Unlike Study, Will takes the full measure of the 49 50

Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. II r . For the discourse of ociosa verbay see chapter 6. Scala coeliy pp. 351 and 410. In both exempla, the intruding entertainer is demonized. In the first, he is carted off to hell as a detractor; in the second, a demon informs a woman that entertainers are his agents (procuratores) in drawing humans to evil.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity

deviancy of the entertainers' speech and finally stamps it firmly, as he did in the Prologue, as turpiloquium. Reading pastoral discourse itself explicitly as minstrelsy for the first time in the poem, he creates a sustained opposition between the salvific and the deviant which gathers the text's concerns about minstrels and extends them by probing both the intentions of listeners (as well as speakers) and the consequences, personal and social, of speech which earlier he and Study had simply observed, named, and anathematized. As he does this, he addresses directly those who are responsible for minstrels' public performances, the wealthy patrons, adopting the monitory mode of Pauline pastoral discourse to which he alluded in the Prologue. Thus, he appropriates pastoral discourse on deviant speech as the instrument of an ethical analysis of a complex social situation centered on a powerful rival public discourse. Moreover, by openly directing full-blown pastoral discourse, with its scriptural sententiae and similitudes designed to elicit detestation, at those members of society whom clerics since Pierre le Chantre had held responsible for minstrels' abuses, he aims at nothing less than reforming minstrelsy by converting their wills. By doing so, he realizes the pastoral discourse of the treatises, which sometimes mentions magnates as the supporters of entertainers but never is directed to them in a specific rhetorical situation. But he, like Study, does so not as a priest, but as a more general figure. In Piers Plowman as a whole, the narrator is what David Lawton terms an "open persona," presented with a "bewildering number of attributes"; in this passus, he becomes almost a personification, figuring forth the human voluntas as it struggles to articulate and counter social disease. Throughout the text, in Lawton's words, "subjectivity is constituted out of discourses of power and the individual's relation to them." Here the text presents Will not only as an agent reproducing a dominant discourse - that is, not only formed by it, receptive to it, and voicing it - but as a speaker using it in different ways than Study for a different rhetorical purpose.51 Will's exhortation is triggered by his encounter with Haukyn/ Actiua Vita, who presents himself first as a minstrel and then as a waferer, identifying himself in terms of his crafts and how he practices them, but who then is observed by Will to be spotted with sin. What is striking in Haukyn's portrayal of himself as minstrel in B, is that, while he creates the same social situation as Study, he distances 51

David Lawton, "Subject," p. 16. On the narrator as an open persona, see pp. 11-13; as subject, pp. 8-28.

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Reforming deviant social practices himself from both minstrels' performances and the lavish gifts they receive for them: "I am a Mynstrall," quod t>at man, "my name in Actiua vita. Al yde[l] ich hatie for of Actif is my name. A wafrer, wol ye wite, and serue manye lordes, [Ac] fewe robes I fonge or furrede gownes. Coufce I lye [and] do men Iau3e, Jjanne lacchen I sholde Oufcer mantel or moneie amonges lordes Mynstrals. Ac for I kan neifcer taboure ne trompe ne telle no gestes, Farten nefifcelenat festes ne harpen, Iape ne Iogele ne gentilliche pipe, Ne neijDer saille ne [sautrie] ne synge wij>fcegyterne, I haue no goode giftes offcisegrete lordes For no breed bat I brynge forfr." (B.13.224-35) As a composite figure for the active life, Haukyn works with his hands as well as with words: he is at once waferer and minstrel.52 When Haukyn later describes baking and selling bread, he claims that he, like Piers Plowman, provides necessary food for society (B.13.235-70); he seems to embody the ideals Piers articulated and enacted as he strove to reshape society in the second dream: working hard and faithfully fulfilling social obligations.53 The minstrel's craft as practiced before "fcise grete lordes" is somehow at odds with these social ideals. Just as Haukyn's self-portrait foregrounds this social unease about entertainers, the ensuing account of the sins that stain his coat (B.13.271-459) ends by anatomizing prominently the state which they engender in their audiences: "wanhope." This account is given variously by an " I " that could be Haukyn (or perhaps Conscience) and by the voice of Will, as he conveys what the " I " says and what his companions Patience and Conscience, as well as he himself, observe. Unlike the confessions of passus 5, where the Seven Sins are personified and speak, this account focuses attention on Will's perception. What he sees, through the eyes of a consciousness concerned with moral integrity (Conscience) and a moral life dominated by submission to the divine will (Patience) as well as of the will searching for a fit object of love and work, is "that the sins lodged 52

53

This conflation of waferer and minstrel is easily made in a text which frequently connects food and words as what nourish. O n this connection in Piers Plowman as a whole, see Pamela Raabe, Imitating God, p. 118; in passus 13, see Simpson, Introduction, pp. 157-60. Stella Maguire, "Haukyn," pp. 197-9.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity within the human affectus are at the root of man's repeated social regressions."54 At the end of the account, Will alone, with his distinctive concern with moral choice, widens the scope from Haukyn to all humankind and develops what causes "wanhope," the branch of sloth defined by John Bowers as a "paralysis of human will in the midst of urgent circumstances of moral choice/'55 In his analysis (B.I3.409-20), habitual practices - resisting religious teaching, being unaware of sin and so not having sorrow for it, not giving alms, violating divine law - prevent the sinful person from confessing and being cleansed of all the sins, making sloth in its subtype "wanhope" "the vice toward which all other vices move, if not erased, as their grim spiritual end."56 Crowning these habits is listening to "an Harlotes tonge" and hating to hear of "Penaunce and pouere men and \>e passion of Seintes" (B.I3.414). What Will then does - quite in keeping with the whole account's concern with the social dimensions of sin - is to focus on the social situation which most seriously generates such paralysis and despair, minstrels' performances:57 Ye lordes and ladies and legates of holy chirche That fedet> fooles sages, flatereris and lieris, And han likynge to li^en hem [in hope] to do yow Iau3e— Ve vobis qui ridetis &c— And 3yuet> hem mete and mede, and pouere men refuse, In youre deefr deyinge I drede me soore Lest t>o frre maner men to muche sorwe yow brynge: Consencientes & agentes pari pena punientur. Patriarkes and prophetes, prechours of goddes wordes, Sauen i>oni3 hir sermo[n] mannes soule fro helle; Ri3t so flatereris and fooles arn J)e fendes disciples 54 55

56 57

Joseph Wittig, "Development," p. 65. J o h n M . Bowers, Crisis of Will, p p . xi-xii. Bowers in ibid., p p . 82-96, and Siegfried Wenzel in Sloth, p p . 136—7, have demonstrated that sloth is the most p r o m i n e n t of the Seven Sins t h r o u g h o u t Piers Plowman, the last and often the most fully developed. Bowers, Crisis of Will, p . 88. I n Sloth, p p . 145-7, Wenzel examines several other episodes where the t h o u g h t that one cannot make restitution drives figures t o " w a n h o p e " . A s Judith A n d e r s o n observes, " t h e speaker of this exhortation is n o t explicitly identified" (Personal Voice, p . 93). Lawton assumes that it is Conscience in "Subject," p . 12; Raabe, Patience, in Imitating God, p . 128; Anderson, either of them o r t h e dreamer. B u t it is the dreamer w h o has recounted w h a t both the ambiguous " I " a n d t h e observers perceived t h r o u g h o u t t h e episode, and nothing in the text indicates that another voice begins " A c whiche b e n \>e braunches." Conscience had n o t been clearly designated a speaker since 314, and Patience, since before the meeting with H a u k y n . That it is Will's voice w e hear in the exhortation is suggested further b y the close of the passus, clearly in t h e voice of the dreamer/narrator, which follows the exhortation's final line (B.I3.457-9).

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Reforming deviant social practices To entice men i>oni3 hir tales to synne and harlotrie. Ac clerkes bat knowen holy writ sholde kenne lordes What Dauid seit> of swiche men as t>e Sauter tellet>: Non habitabit in medio domus mee qui facit superbiam & qui loquitur iniqua. Sholde noon harlot haue audience in halle n[e] in Chambre Ther wise men were, witnessed goddes wordes, Ne no mysproud man amonges lordes ben allowed. [Clerkes and kni3tes welcome^ kynges minstrales, And for loue of [hir] lorde lij)et> hem at festes; Muche moore, me J>ynkel>, riche men sholde Haue beggeres bifore hem \>e whiche ben goddes minstrales As he seijj hymself; seynt Ioh^n beret witnesse: Qui vos spernit me spernit... [There] flateres and fooles J>oni3 hir foule wordes Leden l>o bat [lifced] hem to Luciferis feste Wib turpiloquio, a l[a]y of sorwe, and luciferis fifrele. (B. 13.421-41, 454-6; C.7.82-101,115-17 is close in wording) Just as Haukyn has presented laughter as the aim of minstrels' deviant speech ("Coufre I lye [and] do men Iau3e") and as the response which moves the audience to reward them, laughter is the point where Will begins his exhortation and the point from which he traces the multiple consequences of their speech. But how does laughter lead to "wanhope"? The pastoral discourse on scurrility presents a series of concatenated effects, beginning with laughter and ending with despair and damnation. Laughter is the effect by which scurrility is often defined in the pastoral treatises: "Scurrilitas... est iocularitas in verbis prouocantibus auditores ad risum" [Scurrility is facetiousness in words provoking listeners to laughter]. 58 Peyraut's central metaphor for the entertainer, the trained ape, conveys his intention to awaken laughter: "japeres... been the develes apes, for they maken folk to laughe at hire japerie as folk doon at the gawdes of an ape" (the condensed version in "The Parson's Tale"). 59 By identifying the entertainers first as "fooles sages" - that is, as professional fools, as defined against "natural fools" - and as flatterers and liars, Will focuses on how the 58

59

Speculum morale, col. 1046; De lingua, f. 159 V ; Expositio... electionibus, f. 137 V . T h e persistent identification of scurrility in terms of its effect of laughter may be due in part t o the interlinear gloss o n the w o r d in Ephesians 5:3-4: "quae risum mouere solet" (Biblia cum glosis, IV, f. 1261 r ). Chaucer, Tales.X.G51; see Peyraut's Summa de vitiis, f. I2 r , De lingua, f. 159 V , and Speculum morale, col. 1046. Peyraut's Summa places scurrility and laughter in the same chapter.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity socially powerful sponsor deception in self-representation and in word for the sake of laughter. Similarly, the contemporary Speculum vitae and its kin find the whole verbal repertoire, but especially deception, sinful because performer and listener intend to give or embrace pleasure and solace, no matter what the truth status of what is said, or its effects.60 The multiple reasons for Will condemning such solace, especially laughter, emerge most clearly in a condensed fifteenth-century English version of Peyraut's chapter on scurrilitas: [BJourdynge is be twentebe uice J>at crafte is of iugeleres wherbi bei leueb & nou3t elles bei do bot make lesynges to make riche men to laushe ... here what sen poule seibe bat some bub amonge yow walkynge bat haue no reste & yit bei worcheb not bot busi bei buj> bourdes to forge of bynge bat neuer schul be to stire to Iau3hter all hem bat hem hereth ... be iogeleres bub like be gote or be ape wib whom be fende pleyeb all jogeleres crafte is to make men to laush foule so is be ape foule be gote stynkeb//So suche myster men bat of suche office semen stronge beuus bei bub bat fro men hure tyme bei steleb & makeb hem to lufe bat bey schul neuer rekenere be preciouse bynge bat god hab 3euen to men in bis lif with lesyngs & trewflus bat Ii3tenb hure wey bat ledeb hem to helle & makeb hem so to do synne & leseb be mede of hem self bat bei knowe not be perel bat bey bub ynne.61

Entertainers' performances not only blot out moral and religious awareness by distracting the sinful with solace, but they induce sins. De lingua compares the alacrity with which hearers are moved to vice 60

The Speculum vitae groups together such speech as Augustine's "plesand lie" (chapter 2, part II), which he distinguished from t w o other types by the intention of the speaker: Bot lees of lossyngers garres [talkative people] Of |)is truffilars and lehers, Pat bourdes and lessynges oft telles For men solace and no3t elles, Er propirly syn thurgh t>e lykynge Bath in sayng and in herynge. (lines 14295-300)

61

In its version of Augustine's pleasing lie, The Book of Vices and Virtues specifically identifies minstrels, along with flatterers and heralds, as the social groups which author "likynge lesynges" (p. 61). The court functions of minstrels and heralds were often interchangeable, according to Southworth, Minstrels, p. 135. "Seynt Iohon J>e euangelist," p. 59 V . The last effect of minstrels on their audiences, that they provide pleasure for those bound for hell and so keep them on that path, is stated more fully in the Latin chapters o n scurrility: "Ipsi consolatores sunt eorum:qui laborant seruicio dyaboli.Ipsi releuant falsis recreationibus labores eorum qui vadunt in infernum ne deficiant in via" (Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. I2 r ; see Quoniam, f. 55 r , De lingua, f. 159 V , and Speculum morale, col. 1046).

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Reforming deviant social practices by entertainers' speech to a type of entertainer, the joculator who swallows fire and then breathes out flames and sparks, showering the audience.62 As "laush foule" suggests, the pastoral treatises maintain that the carnal laughter (risus corporis) generated by such scurrilous speech and gestures often leads to debauchery. 63 Many pastoral texts use metaphors of infection, poison, or pollution to convey the effect of lewd speech on listeners, often using it to illustrate the general argument that deviant speech corrupts the character of listeners (chapter 2, part III). 64 Because of this corruption of others, Langland's dreamer calls entertainers "the fendes disciples, / To entice men J>oni3 hir tales to synne and harlotrie" or, in C, "fendes procuratours." 65 Reasons for demonizing them have finally surfaced in the text because Will manifests a fully pastoral concern for the consequences of speech, for its impact on the affective life of audiences. Given these effects of lewd laughter, it is not surprising that Peyraut's Summa caps its treatment of scurrilous laughter by quoting Christ's curse "Ve vobis qui nunc ridetis quia lugebitis" (Luke 6:25). De lingua points the curse toward the social situation which the treatises and Langland describe, quoting more of the string of curses in order to direct them at the wealthy: scurra uidetur esse quoddam ydolum abhominacionis quod a magnatibus atque curialibus colitur ac fouetur causa fede ac uane consolacionis sed eis ue a Xristo dicitur luc ue uobis diuitibus qui habetis hie consolacionem uestram ue uobis qui ridetis quia lugebitis et flebitis.66 62

63

64 65

66

"Item sunt ioculatores diaboli qui more quorumdam ioculatorum ignem in ore concipiunt ac quodam artificio succendunt ac sic sintillas fumum et flammas in alios exsufflant et dum alios nocent alios ad risum et derisum excitant Sic tales ignem diabolicum intra omne conceptum in alios sintillant" (De lingua, f. 160 r ). De lingua also links entertainers to the devil byclaiming that they resemble demons in paintings when they distort their mouths, stick out their tongues, and "deform" their bodies during performances. Peyraut's Summa de vitiis first sets up the connection between lewd speech and conduct, f. I2 r , b y quoting Ephesians, which groups fornication and uncleanness with scurrility. Earlier, in his chapter o n useless words, Peyraut had argued that scurrility should not be heard, as well as spoken, lest it move base laughter and, from that, base conduct (f. Il r ; also Carpenter, Destructorium viciorum, f. Sv r ). Often the clerical Latin suggests that lewd talk dissolves (dissolvere) steadiness of mind (gravitas) and moral rectitude (honestas), with loud, uncontrollable laughter as the first effect and more grave "dissolution" following (Raoul Ardent, Speculum, f.l63 v ; Expositio... electionibus, f. 137 V ). De lingua, f. 153 V ; Bromyard, Summa, f. C X C ; Expositio... electionibus, f. 137V. In the first exemplum from the Scald coeli mentioned in note 50, a demon uses the simile of procuring when he glosses a scene in which an entertainer, spreading out his marionettes in front of a church, draws out all of the congregation: "Tune demon ad mulierem.«Isti sunt procurators mei et pre eorum industria impleo curiam m e a m » " (p. 410). De lingua, f. 160 r . The Kane and Donaldson edition of the B version has only "Ve vobis qui ridetis &c." As John Alford writes in "Quotations," p. 82, such incomplete Latin quotations

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Liesy slander, and obscenity [The entertainer seems to be a certain idol of abomination which is worshiped and cherished by magnates and courtiers because of filthy and empty consolation. But "woe" is spoken to them by Christ in Luke: "Woe to you rich who have your consolation now. Woe to you who laugh for you will mourn and weep."] While the dreamer follows suit in laying the curse on the wealthy maintainers of minstrels, he does so at the beginning of his exhortation, gaining scriptural authority for directing his suasion against them and the scurrilous laughter in which they indulge. But he also uses it to introduce two further effects of minstrels' performances: neglect of the poor and deathbed despair. Throughout his exhortation Will insists that giving to minstrels defrauds the poor of the alms and hospitality the Scriptures enjoin, making it not just an injustice but an act of religious disobedience. The guilty he, like Study, fingers are both clerical and lay lords, for all versions of Piers portray the clergy as trustees of church possessions on behalf of the involuntarily poor and portray lay lords, as responsible for how they dispose their own alms.67 In dichotomizing clerical/lay giving to minstrels or to the poor, the dreamer again voices a common pastoral topos. His near contemporary John Bromyard complains that the poor go away empty after feasts at which histriones perform because the lords reward the entertainers, as they do lapdogs and prostitutes, with rich food and presents. And the popular manual for English parish priests by John de Burgh (c. 1385) instructs confessors to ask priests if they have given their own goods - or those of the church - to entertainers or prostitutes rather than to the poor ("si libencius ioculatori uel meretrici quam pauperi sua uel bona ecclesie dederint"). 68 The most common pastoral exemplum

67 68

o w e "more to standard scribal practice than to the author himself"; lengths of particular quotations vary in the manuscripts. Each quotation is "incomplete" in the sense that it may be a "tag" for a larger biblical context which provides the theme. So, w e may read this fragment from Luke 6:25 as invoking at least the earlier curse (from verse 24) which De lingua includes - especially given the etcetera in many manuscripts. Scase, Anticlericalism, pp. 84-119. Bromyard from Owst, Literature, p. 10; John de Burgh, Pupilla, f. 47 V . Behind these fourteenth-century prohibitions lies a long tradition that giving to entertainers robs the poor, a tradition renewed b y Pierre le Chantre and other pastoral moralists w h o sought to ban entertainers from the tables of the clergy and of lay lords. For instance, in Verbum, f. 28 r , Pierre pointedly condemns "ii qui nutriunt histriones... cum esuriant Christi pauperes." For this tradition, see Chambers, Stage, I, pp. 38n-39n; Baldwin, Masters, I, pp. 200-2; Casagrande and Vecchio, "Clercs," p. 915. For a fifteenth-century example, see Wenzel, "Fool," p. 233. Clearly this had become a pastoral topos.

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Reforming deviant social practices about minstrels records a conversion, a royal one, from the practice of giving to minstrels to giving to the poor: Histrionibus nichil est dandum We rede in 'Gestis Francorum' how Philypp, at som tyme was kyng of France, on a tyme when he saw mynstrallis & jogullurs hafe gay clothyng & grete giftis giffenfcaimoute of courte; and he promysid with all his harte, l>at als lang as he liffid, l>er sulde no mynstrall were no clothe at langed vnto his bakk. For, he said, hym had levur clethe Criste J>er-with, or pure men, t>an for to giff fraim to mynstrallis. "For," he said, "it was no noder to giff to mynstrals bod for to offyr to fendis."69 In keeping with these pastoral texts and the poem's general polemics on charity, Will dwells upon the social and religious responsibilities of the wealthy, not blaming "unworthy minstrels" for "directing charity from the poor," but warning the lords of the consequences of their neglect of the poor. 70 In Will's final lines, the social situation he, Study, and Piers have created, the minstrel singing and playing at his lord's feast, becomes a metaphor for the eternal destiny of those who listen to minstrels: "Luciferis feste." This concluding metaphor, entertainers' speech as "a l[a]y of sorwe," brings Will's exhortation back to its immediate genesis: Haukyn's "wanhope." John Bowers finds it "odd" "that the c foule wordes' of flatterers and entertainers have done the most to soil [Haukyn's] coat and leave him in a state of near desperation." 71 Yet, in this episode, "an harlotes tonge" does more than induce sin; it creates the solace which seduces listeners into forgetting about their sins.72 The pastoral treatises compare this morally unconscious state to sleep, a state traditionally associated with sloth: "Ipsi [scurrae] etiam faciunt obdormire homines in peccatis.ut a dyabolo portentur in infernum et non excitentur" [They make men sleep in sins so that they are carried by the devil to hell and not aroused]. 73 The result of 69

70 71 73

Alphabet, p . 245; from the Gesta francorum. T h e phrase " t o offyr t o fendis" is the vernacular for the harsh Latin sententia o n giving t o entertainers which the dreamer recalls in closing his exhortation in t h e C version: "Paria sunt histrionibus dare, et demonibus i m m o l a r e " (7.119 and note). N o t only is this sententia c o m m o n in t h e writings of Pierre le C h a n t r e and his circle (Pierre, Verbum, f. 28 V ; R a o u l A r d e n t , Speculum universale, f. 163 V ; T h o m a s of C h o b h a m , Summa, p . 293), b u t confessional literature often declares as sinful giving t o entertainers w h o use "illicit w o r d s a n d jests," in part because t h e giver nourishes t h e m in their sins (e.g., Johannes v o n Freiburg, Summa, f. lix v ). Priscilla Martin, "Piers Plowman/' p . 64. 72 Bowers, Crisis of Will, p . 198. David Lawton, " U n i t y , " p p . 72-94. r Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. I2 ; see Quoniam, f. 55 r , and De lingua, f. 159 V .

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Lies, slander, and obscenity such a spiritual stupor is the very despair in which Bowers is interested: the deathbed paralysis of will, which is contrasted with the entertainers' seductive performances in both the exposition of sloth and the exhortation and which is a prelude to the eternal damnation of the impenitent. What might arouse these patrons before the end Will envisions is the biblical word, shut out by the "wordes of murt>e" (B.13.417), yet another consequence of their speech which Bowers fails to register. The contrast between these rival discourses, already introduced in the text by Study, runs throughout this textual unit, from the man who angrily closes his ears to people speaking "of crist or clennesse of soul[e]" to the deathbed solace elicited by the story of Good Friday, which counters the deathbed "wanhope" induced by minstrels (B.13.409-56). This sharp opposition of the salvific and the deviant appears commonly in more condensed entries on verbal sin which lack the leisurely normative prefaces of a summa on the vices. Chaucer's Parson closes his whole exposition of "the synnes that commen of the tonge," derived ultimately from Peyraut's Summa, with this distillation of Peyraut's chapter on scurrility (he omits turpiloquium altogether): After this comth the synne of japeres, that been the develes apes, for they maken folk to laughe at hire japerie as folk doon at the gawdes of an ape. Swiche japeres deffendeth Seint Paul. / Looke how that vertuouse wordes and hooly conforten hem that travaillen in the service of Crist, right so conforten the vileyns wordes and knakkes of japeris hem that travaillen in the service of the devel.74 Brief as it is, this passage establishes the basic characteristics of scurrilous speech as it appears, conflated with the more general "base words"/turpiloquium, in Piers Plowman: its habitual practice by entertainers as a social group, its defining characteristics (jesting, bawdy, trivial), its immediate effect of laughter, the solace it offers auditors, its speakers as servants of the devil, St. Paul's authoritative prohibition of it, and, dominating all, its contrast with sanctioned speech about religious matters. As Will constructs this contrast at the outset, the counter discourse is generally pastoral: learnedly scriptural, catechetical, directed to the salvation of its hearers. Toward the conclusion of his exhortation, Will develops its potential effect on rich auditors by converting the social situation into a metaphor. If 74

Chaucer, Tales.X.651-2.

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Reforming deviant social practices those learned in the scriptures, clerical or lay, are heard, their biblical teaching has the same effect as feeding the poor and caring for the infirm: it provides comfort for the soul at the point of death. So, all three groups are like minstrels in that they provide solace but unlike them in that this is not temporary solace, distracting auditors from sin and death, but one that endures through sickness and death, "welhope" as opposed to "wanhope" (B.13.434-53). This evangelical discourse is what Will himself practices, in a version derived from pastoral texts, in the exhortation and the preceding list of the branches that induce "wanhope." Will is teaching biblically derived religious fundamentals exactly as Anima later urges on all clerics (instead of friarly theological disputations); his topic is even one Anima introduces by way of illustration: "And tellen men offceten comaudement3, and touchen \>e seuene synnes, / And of i>e braunches bat burionefc of hem and bryngen men to helle" (B.15.745). Although Will appropriates a discourse which is specifically clerical in origin and often part of a strictly sacerdotal act, directing confession, he does so not as a cleric, but as a Christian who derives authority from scripture itself, especially the Bible - quite in keeping with the biblical basis of the central social polemics on poverty, charity, and dominion which Wendy Scase has observed.75 In fact, Will's indeterminate status highlights the universal claims and use of this discourse, which, as we have seen, sanctions, even insists upon, appropriation by the laity when it presents itself as part of the normative speech of all Christians (chapter 2, part I). As Will practices this discourse, he aims to induce penance in the magnates, just as Piers Plowman as a whole "aspires... to induce penance in its readers."76 For him, discourse on deviant speech is first of all an analytical tool, which, in contrast to Study's lists (or his own in the Prologue) specifies will, intention, immediate effects (social and individual), and eternal consequences. All of this ethical analysis is achieved with rhetorical force. Similitudes and blunt reminders of "future evils" are designed to elicit fear and detestation for sin, an intellectual and affective response which may lead to contrition. Scriptural sententiae in the learned tongue contest the rival discourse while they authorize (as we have seen) the speaker. Thus, Will comes to enact what Lewte advises in his previous dream: that if vice is widely known and longstanding and if Will is himself free of it, "wherfore sholdestow spare / 75

76

Scase, Anticlericalism, throughout.

183

Lawton, "Alliterative Poetry," p. 77.

Lies, slander, and obscenity To reden it in Retorik to arate dedly synne?" (B.11.101-2), the only use of the word rhetoric in Piers Plowman, as Joan Blythe has noted. 77 Why is Piers Plowman, especially its Will the dreamer, so passionately invested in the speech of entertainers? Since Donaldson's 1949 study of minstrelsy in all three versions, critics have been of one mind (a rare state in Piers Plowman studies) on this: Langland is preoccupied with minstrels because he is uneasy about the status of poetry, especially his. 78 Despite its general validity, this approach has limited how we perceive the text. For example, the "lered man" of Will's exhortation (B.13.444-5) has been read often only as an actual reciter of pious tales in verse.79 Certainly, it has deflected us from seeing how Langland's interest in entertainers may also spring from other central concerns in the dreams in which minstrels appear: the care of the poor and powerless (especially when feasts are made), the proper uses of speech, the need for evangelical instruction, even reproof - all of which appear in Lewte's conversation, say, and Conscience's dinner party. Subsuming these are the "two questions [which] remain mutually implicated throughout the poem," those the dreamer raises in the first passus: how society's wealth should be used and how one can save his soul.80 Addressing both in his new awareness of "the role of affectus in reform," 81 Will uses pastoral rhetoric to move the entertainers' patrons to the moral self-knowledge and contrition entertainers have dulled. The "amendment of life" he proposes excluding the deviant speakers from social life, especially from the halls of clerical and lay lords, and listening, in their place, to scripture - lies in pastoral chapters on turpiloquium and scurrilitas, especially their biblical leitmotif, Paul's "let n o t . . . so much as be named among y o u . . . obscenity or foolish talking or scurrility." Such advocacy of communal reforms on biblical models might very well have appealed to the nationwide audience of middle-rank devout clerics and laics which scholars believe read Piers Plowman*2 But 77 78

79

80 82

Blythe, "Sins of the T o n g u e , " p . 131. F o r example, George E c o n o m o u , "Poetic Activity," p . 189; Bowers, Crisis of Will, p . 201. Given that minstrels were often singers o r reciters, even composers, of tales and that L a d y H o l y C h u r c h regards the dreamer as a minstrel w h o might sing of G o d ' s love at a meal (A. 1.136-8), such an approach is certainly justified. D o n a l d s o n , C-Text, p . 114; B o w e r s follows h i m in Crisis of Will, p p . 2 0 1 - 5 , as does E c o n o m o u in "Poetic Activity," p . 189.

81 Middleton, " A u d i e n c e , " p . 104. Joseph Wittig, "Inward Journey," p. 242. Middleton, "Audience," pp. 101-11; Janet Coleman, Readers, pp. 62-5; John Burrow, "Audience," pp. 102-3 and 113-14.

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Reforming deviant social practices what kind of effect does such exhortation have in a text in which the dreamer continues his spiritual journey and in which, as David Lawton argues, many other discourses jostle, even supplant, this one?83 After all, minstrels disappear from the text at this point, as does extensive treatment of any type of deviant speech until the Seven Sins (and the friars) attack Unity. The effect of Will's exhortation against complicity in the minstrel's turpiloquium must be local and so, in that sense, limited. In Piers Plowman, pastoral discourse on the deviant word does not shape, even dominate, a whole narrative, as it does in Patience, or a discrete narrative unit, as it does in the Confessions confessional sequence on detraction, in both of which the deviant speaker is controlled or even persuaded to reform. It is true that here and elsewhere in Piers Plowman the claims of its rival discourse are never made directly: the solace, the laughter, the salacious story of minstrels. They are filtered through the sieves of pastoral commonplaces (to use Paolo Valesio's metaphor): solace and buffoonery distract from moral knowledge; laughter and the salacious story inflame listeners to lecherous conduct. Unlike Jonah or Amans, the deviant speakers are never even given a voice. Instead, other discourses are juxtaposed with the pastoral, "placing" or judging both. Study is "placed," of course, by her own admission that Clergy and Scripture, not she, must address Will's questions. Likewise, Will's exhortation is superseded by Patience's praise of the life of voluntary poverty. Although Will may target a social practice which impedes penance and offer a remedy, and although Langland may even give this a climactic position in an account of the Seven Sins (one it holds in the C version as well, though not in the Haukyn episode), in the B version Haukyn is converted by Patience from the active life altogether, the life of labor in which sin seems inevitable even if the catechetical word replaces minstrels' performances. Nevertheless, simply to say that the text moves on to "higher" discourses at these points or even (with David Lawton) that it is radically dialogical is not to dismiss either the authority or rhetorical force of such pastoral discourse, especially when it is voiced by nonclerical figures at specific points. Toward the beginning of his survey of estates, the dreamer adopts Pauline terms and topoi to expose how one social group uses lewd speech to avoid productive labor; Study 83

Lawton, "Subject," throughout; see also Middleton, "Audience," pp. 111-21.

185

Lies, slander, and obscenity records how entertainers use a range of deviant speech as a medium of exchange at feasts; Will probes the social and spiritual consequences of their hold on the wealthy. In all these passages devoted to minstrels, Pauline pastoral discourse on deviant speech possesses a countervailing power to that absent, rival discourse: if turpiloquium inflames the passions, the dreamer of the Prologue, Piers, Study, and the Will of passus 13 believe pastoral discourse has the rhetorical force, including persuasive moral analysis, to reform a corrupt social practice by stirring the wills of, if not the deviant speakers, at least the powerful who connive in their performances. Its claims may be relative to those of other discourses in the text, but they are made persuasively: that is, in specific rhetorical situations by somewhat authoritative speakers for specific rhetorical effects on the poem's public, its imagined readership.

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Restraining the deviant speaker: Chaucer's Manciple and Parson

"Thou getest fable noon ytoold for me, For Paul, that writeth unto Thymothee, Repreveth hem that weyven soothfastnesse And tellen fables and swich wrecchednesse. Why sholde I sowen draf out of my fest, Whan I may sowen whete, if that me lest? For which I seye, if that yow list to heere Moralitee and vertuous mateere, And thanne that ye wol yeve me audience." (Tales.X.31-9)1

When the Parson of The Canterbury Tales refuses to tell a fable, he does more than announce his non-fictive catechesis, more than reflect indirectly on the Manciple's Ovidian fable of Phebus and the crow. Addressed by the Host as "Sire preest," he speaks as a priest about the speech appropriate for a priest. Although pastoral discourse on deviant speech, as we have seen, singles out certain social groups as prone to certain Sins of the Tongue (lawyer to lying, monk to murmur, entertainer to scurrility), it rarely distinguishes between cleric and laic, setting different, or stricter, norms for the clergy. On fables, it does. Under ociosa verba (idle or empty words) or vaniloquium^ six pastoral texts, including one of the two which Siegfried Wenzel has found to be the closest, of known texts, to the Parson's treatment of the Seven Sins, forbid fables (fabulae) and other trifling speech (nugae) to priests, lest such idle words compromise their authority as religious teachers.2 This prohibition is always authorized with Jerome or Bernard of Clairvaux, and, in some late-twelfth1

2

The Riverside Chaucer•, Larry D. Benson et at., eds., Tales.X.31-9. All citations of Chaucer's works are to this edition. Fragment and line numbers for The Canterbury Tales will be given in the text; other works will be identified by short titles in the text. The text closest to the Parson's discourse on the sins is Quoniam, as demonstrated by Wenzel

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Lies, slander, and obscenity century precursors of these pastoral texts, with Paul's counsel to Timothy. In The Canterbury Tales, the Parson's setting of norms for his speech in these socially expected terms comes, in most manuscripts,3 directly after the Manciple's notoriously prominent exhortations to control "wikked tonge," which contain a marked pastoral strain that has escaped scholars. And it prefaces a discourse containing a prominently placed segment on "the synnes that comen of the tonge" derived, directly or at some remove, from Peyraut's Summa de vitiis.4 Pastoral sins of the tongue crop up often enough in the Tales, especially in the tales told by pilgrims associated with the church. (Of course, Bakhtin's "language of the marketplace" - curses, illicit swearing, insults, "harlotrie" - peppers the links and the more carnivalesque tales,5 but it is rarely labelled, let alone glossed, in a pastoral manner.) The Pardoner's three rioters violate their sworn oaths almost as easily as they commit blasphemy.6 The Nun's Priest has a few cautionary words about flattery (VII.3325-30, 3436-7), and Chaucer's Dame Prudence more than a few (VII. 1175-8); the Priest's fox curses all who "jangle" (VII.3434-5). Despite all this deviant speech, often even labelled in a pastoral manner, none of Chaucer's clerical figues, except for the Pardoner with his "word or two" on the various types of vicious swearing (VI.629-57), unbuckle the "male" of pastoral discourse on deviant speech until the Manciple and the Parson. No deviant utterance is anatomized, as are those of Jonah and Nabugodenozar; no group of habitual offenders is denounced, as are the entertainers in Piers Plowman. It is the Manciple, with his much-trumpeted (and lately muchexamined) self-consciousness about speech, who initiates this 3

4 6

in "Source," pp. 351-78. For the pastoral proscription of fables among priests, see notes 69 and 70 below. "The Manciple's Prologue and Tale" (fragment IX) immediately precedes "The Parson's Prologue and Tale" (with Chaucer's Retraction, fragment X) in all complete manuscripts and in all but five of the manuscripts in which both appear. While a few scholars have argued against this order on the basis of internal inconsistencies, the traditional order has been defended convincingly on textual, thematic, and structural grounds. For summaries of this debate and the textual evidence, see Variorum, Donald C. Baker, ed., pp. 15-17, and Helen Cooper, Tales, pp. 383, 395-6. Viewing the Tales as a compilation, Lee Patterson and David Lawton recently have given interesting reasons for working with the Ellesmere order, which includes fragment X following IX (Subject, pp. 42-3; "Two Ways," pp. 3-24). 5 Wenzel, "Source," p. 364. Mikhail M. Bakhtin, Rabelais, pp. 27 ff. and 167 ff. In Social Chaucer, pp. 96-109, Paul Strohm studies acutely the debasement of sworn oaths in the Tales, and in Law, pp. 33-55, Joseph Hornsby examines verbal pledges of faith in the light of canon law, especially its concern with intent.

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Restraining the deviant speaker exchange of pastoral discourse. Chaucer has the Manciple devote the moralitas of his fable to parodying the prudential "Solomonic" strain in general arguments for controlling speech (chapter 2, part III), and then he has the Parson, as a post-Lateran-IV parish priest, present, as a tool for confession in a subtreatise on the Seven Sins, unadulterated Peyrautian discourse on specific verbal sins. If we examine the pastoral discursive practices which each one adopts, it will sharpen our sense of his rhetorical strategies and effects: that the Manciple parades jeeringly the inherent contradictions and limits of discourse on deviant speech in general, gutting its claims to provide comprehensive, binding norms for speech and to arouse detestation in the deviant speaker for violating them; that the Parson, in response, asserts that pastoral discourse on specific sins is a powerful instrument for moral analysis and religious/social formation. Before both tales, prologues place the speakers in rhetorical situations which they aggressively wrest control of and mold in order to set their own terms for speaking. Like the prominently placed discourses on controlling speech, these prologues draw attention to the kinds of discourse the Manciple and the Parson choose - to the authority, uses, and rhetorical force of those discourses. Moreover, when the Manciple first speaks, he speaks deviantly, establishing his immunity to a supposedly powerful pastoral discourse - an immunity which he flaunts throughout his tale-with-moralitas. II

The Manciple's verbal manipulation of the drunken Cook and, indirectly, of the Host and the whole company, dominates the first prologue, winning for him the position of tale teller which the Host had offered to the Cook. Stephen Knight and Louise Fradenburg have traced how the Manciple inserts himself adroitly into the dialogue with a courtly offer to replace the protesting Cook and then reduces the Cook to helpless silence by bluntly exposing the drunkenness he had sought to conceal. And Carl Lindahl has demonstrated how rarely such openly abusive speech occurs in the face-to-face encounters of the Tales, due to strong social taboos against slander.7 Although the Host allows the Manciple to occupy the verbal space he has cleared so skillfully, he calls the verbal spade a spade: "But yet, 7

Stephen Knight, "rymyng craftily," pp. 166-8; Louise Fradenburg, "Servant Tongue," pp. 95-6; Carl Lindahl, Earnest Games, pp. 79-96.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity Manciple, in feith thou art to nyce, / Thus openly repreve hym of his vice" (IX.69-70). This normative judgment about an utterance is framed in terms of a pastoral type appropriate to the situation, public reproof. Chaucer criticism has finally recovered sufficiently from Frederick Tupper's sweeping and inaccurate glossing of tales by the Parson's Seven Deadly Sins and some of their progeny - it is now eighty years old - that some recent critics have noted in passing that the Parson's account of "chidynge and reproche" corresponds closely at some points with the Manciple's speech.8 If we examine the pastoral commonplaces on public reproof in "The Parson's Tale" and major pastoral treatises, we can see how the Host's labelling raises crucial questions, in the context, about the norms governing reproof of another's conduct. The Parson's long paragraph on "chidynge and reproche" pulls together, in a reduced form, material from two Peyrautian chapters on Sins of the Tongue, convicium and contentio. (I do not mean to imply that Chaucer worked directly from Peyraut's ninth tractate; his immediate source may have been a redaction of all or part of the Summa de vitiis.) In it, the Host's term "reprevynge" is used regularly for Peyraut's convicium (X.623-6, 628-9), although "chidynge," the term which consistently renders contentio (X.629-34), is also twice used in material taken from convicium (X.623-6, 628-9). Convicium/ "reprevynge" is a definite and amply presented Sin of the Tongue in those pastoral treatises which treat more than a handful of sins.9 Even so, the Parson's treatment is surprisingly full, with chiding and reproving three times the length of flattery and four times that of lying. Proportionately, it is one of only two major Sins of the Tongue - swearing is the other - to be treated more extensively in the Tales than in Peyraut's Summa. While this emphasis may have been In 1914, Frederick Tupper argued that, in the Manciple's tale and his rebuke of the drunken Cook, Chaucer illustrates chiding, a Sin of the Tongue, as it is treated in "The Parson's Tale" ("Seven Deadly Sins," pp. 109, 112-16); his slipshod use of evidence from "The Parson's Tale" was exposed one year later by John Livingston Lowes ("Seven Deadly Sins," pp. 33-6). Two recent critics who have registered some correspondences between the Manciple's speech and the Parson's Sins of the Tongue are Chauncey Wood, "Speech," p. 222, and Paul Taylor, "Tongue," p. 407. Chapters on convicium appear in Peyraut's Summa de vitiis, ff. H5V-6V (some of this material is reproduced in Quoniam, ff. 185r"v), De lingua, ff. 173r-4r, and the Speculum morale, cols. 1176-9 (under contumelia). It is even included in the Sommeys English versions and adaptations as a branch of "chiding or striving": Book, p. 64, and Speculum vitae, lines 14585-92.

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Restraining the deviant speaker established by Chaucer's immediate source, clearly Chaucer has the Parson present public reproof as an especially significant verbal sin. The fundamental characteristics of the clerical convicium/"reprevynge," faithfully conveyed by the Parson, emerge in the Manciple's speech and its effects on the Cook: "For, in good feith, thy visage is ful pale, Thyne eyen daswen eek, as that me thynketh, And, wel I woot, thy breeth ful soure stynketh: That sheweth wel thou art nat wel disposed. Of me, certeyn, thou shalt nat been yglosed. See how he ganeth, lo, this dronken wight, As though he wolde swolwe us anonright. Hoold cloos thy mouth, man, by thy fader kyn! The devel of helle sette his foot therin! Thy cursed breeth infecte wole us alle. Fy, stynkyng swyn! Fy, foule moote thee falle! A, taketh heede, sires, of this lusty man. Now, sweete sire, wol ye justen atte fan? Therto me thynketh ye been wel yshape! I trowe that ye dronken han wyn ape And that is whan men pleyen with a straw." And with this speche the Cook wax wrooth and wraw, And on the Manciple he gan nodde faste For lakke of speche, and doun the hors hym caste, Where as he lay, til that men hym up took. (IX.30-49) What the Manciple utters is public reproof for vice (as the Host construes it); the Parson, and all pastoral writers who treat convicium, develop faults or sins (culpae) as one of the two major topics of reproof (X.624-6).10 The Manciple's riotous mocking of the Cook's body discloses a perverse and base disposition, a gleeful violation of social expectations: what the Parson calls a "vileyns herte" and Peyraut a perverse, impious, and coarse (rusticus) one (X.627).11 His tongue is "deslavee" in the Parson's words (unbridled, immoderate, loose in speech [MED]\ immoderatus in Peyraut's 10 11

Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. H6r; De lingua, f. 173V; Speculum morale, col. 1177; Speculum vitae, lines 14587-9. Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. H6r. The Parson, like Peyraut, quotes Mt. 12:34 to confirm that "reprevynge" is a manifestation of the speaker's basic disposition: "And certes, chidynge may nat come but out of a vileyns herte. For after the habundance of the herte speketh the mouth ful ofte" (X.627; Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. H6 r ). The Speculum vitae also uses the word "vileyn" (the adjectival form) to convey the reprover's base and antisocial disposition (line 14587).

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Lies, slander, and obscenity (without restraint; see chapter 2, part III). Its immediate effect is to move the Cook to speechless fury, just as wrath is the foretold consequence of convicium in some treatises (X.628).12 As a result, it threatens to break fellowship between two of the pilgrims; the Parson's "chidynge and reproche" "unsowen the semes of freendshipe in mannes herte" (X.622).13 For all these correspondences between the Manciple's speech and discourse on public reproof, especially that of his fellow pilgrim the Parson, I do not wish to claim that the Manciple's prologue constructs a pastoral exchange, even in a secular parody with the Host as a worldly shepherd of his flock, a guardian of mores who enforces them with a recognizably pastoral rhetoric. The Host simply names the appropriate deviant type, without voicing its characteristics (as the Parson does later), let alone appealing to scripture and employing established figures, like the wound of insult or the fire of wrath (X.622 and 628).14 Indeed, whereas pastoral discourse moves on from characterizing reproof to voicing concern for the souls of the speaker and his victim, the Host directs the Manciple's attention to another type of consequence altogether: retaliatory speech, with the Cook in turn revealing publicly the Manciple's dishonest dealings (IX.60-75). The Manciple, he judges, is "to nyce / Thus openly repreve hym of his vice" - too foolish, imprudent in his utterance. He does not reckon how the Cook can also use speech to gain as much control of him as a falconer does of his bird. Faced with verbal strife potentially damaging to himself, the Manciple prudently abandons his pose of plain speaker/dealer ("Of me, certeyn, thou shalt nat been yglosed"), claiming that he spoke only "in my bourde"; then he cynically violates his reproof of the Cook's drunkenness by offering him, already so unsteady that he has fallen off his horse, more wine as a means of reconciliation. In this way, he manages to enjoy both his coarse abuse of the Cook and its fruits: the opportunity to tell the next tale. This dark comedy of degradation is far from the pastoral treatises with their warnings on how difficult it is to accord the reprover and the insulted, how dangerous the insulted may become. The verbal exchanges in the Manciple's prologue establish definite concerns which his tale, both narrative and commentary, develops: the power of speech, the human tendency to unrestrained speech, its 12 14

13 Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. H6 V . See ibid., f. H5 r , and De lingua, ff. 173V-4V. Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, ff. H5 V and H6V; De lingua, ff. 173r"v.

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Restraining the deviant speaker potential clangers for the speaker - all often registered by critics.15 In this, it foregrounds what is constantly raised in the often insulting exchanges between the pilgrims engaged in their various social contests: rivalries between storytellers, antagonisms between occupations at war by their nature (like cook and manciple16), contempt for those who violate one's social expectations, disgust for others' appetites and bodies, random "on the road" invitations to dominate and humiliate. But this prologue brings to the fore something more specific than that. The Manciple's gleeful abuse of the Cook before the whole company, his proclaimedly virtuous stance as a speaker who avoids flattery, the Cook's speechless anger, the Host's labelling of his speech as a deviant type together raise questions about what norms ought to govern speech which faults others for violating communal norms. Who ought to reprove others? In what situations? What should be the speaker's intentions? What emotions ought to dictate his or her words? What effects should they have - or should they not have - on the hearer? To say that the Manciple's prologue itself turns on an open reproof of vice, a deviant type characterized by pastoral texts as it generally appears here, and that the Host invokes the pastoral type to judge the Manciple's speech as a violation of social standards (as the Manciple had judged the Cook's drunkenness) is not to assume that Chaucer wrote the prologue with the Parson's discourse on "chidynge and reproche" at hand or in mind, although he may have done either. The prologue is almost universally assumed to be late, part of the Tales from its penning, but there is no external evidence for the date of "The Parson's Tale" - or, for that matter, "The Manciple's Tale."17 Therefore, we cannot assume that the Parson's discourse was composed first. Nevertheless, pastoral discourse on deviant speech, oral and written, was widespread enough in the culture and familiar enough to Chaucer that he could, at some point, imagine a priest delivering orally a very thorough catechesis on "the synnes that comen of the tonge." Why should he not also imagine a Manciple whose speech - in its tone, its words, and its effects - broadly follows a pastoral type, which is then named exactly, but applied lightly, by a shrewd social arbiter? 15 16 17

Wayne Shumaker, "Manciple's Tale," pp. 148-51; V. J. Scattergood, "Manner of Speaking/' pp. 124-44; Baker, Variorum, p. 18; Cooper, Tales, p. 383. Frederick Tupper, "Quarrels," pp. 264-5. Baker, Variorum, pp. 11-14; Riverside Chaucer, pp. 952 and 956-7.

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Liesy slander, and obscenity in

Like his prologue, the Manciple's Ovidian fable of the crow's metamorphosis turns on an act of speech which discloses another's violation of communal norms and which is later judged as deviant: the crow's revelation to Phebus that his wife is unfaithful. This time the judge is the Manciple himself, his vehicle general pastoral discourse on restraining the tongue. As in such pastoral exempla as Caesarius' story of the blaspheming knight (chapter 3) or Genius' of the knight who commits detraction against Constance, the crow's utterance itself is prefaced by the circumstances which prompt it, followed by the consequences for others (hearer, people spoken about), and concluded with the speaker's punishment. But the fable is not a pastoral literary type. Although collections of exempla had become more variegated by Chaucer's time and although the moralized beast fable crops up as early as Etienne's Tractatus, I have never encountered an Ovidian metamorphosis in pastoral treatises on deviant speech or among exempla of deviant speech in collections. On the other hand, the Manciple's basic technique of appending a long moralitas to his narrative follows the standard practice in some fourteenth-century collections of exempla, many of them popular in England, like Nicholas Bozon's Contes moralises (1320), Robert Holcot's Moralitates (1323-35), and the Gesta Romanorum (1340). As Bremond, Le Goff, and Schmitt observe in their typology, in the fourteenth century, for the first time, moralitates were joined to exempla in collections - as distinguished from preaching materials, like the Speculum laicorum, where exempla were always en collage (see chapter 3). 18 These contes moralises were generally folktales, legends or history (often set in antiquity), beast fables, and fabulous bits of natural history. However, it is true that other late medieval narrative genres, most importantly the moralized myth, also had long moralitates and that this very tale was given a closing moralitas of fifty lines in the Ovide moralise, which Chaucer may have known. 19 Therefore, although the Manciple's narrative is structured like pastoral exempla of deviant speech and his moralitas contains distinctively pastoral material (as we shall see), the Ovidian 18 19

Bremond, Le Goff, and Schmitt, L>«exemplum», pp. 63-4. The version of the tale of Phoebus and the crow in the Ovide moralise is printed in Bryan's and Dempster's Sources and Analogues, pp. 702-9; in Tales, pp. 385-7, Helen Cooper exposes the slenderness of the arguments for Chaucer's use of it.

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Restraining the deviant speaker myth is a very unpastoral genre and the practice of a concluding moralitas is not distinctively pastoral. Given these mixed generic and structural signals, how does the Manciple present the crow's speech and the ensuing pastoral discourse on verbal restraint? Most of the changes that Chaucer makes in Ovid's tale from the Metamorphoses have to do with language, speech, and song, as critics have observed for decades. His Phebus, a master singer and instrumentalist, teaches the pet crow to sing and to speak; when he slays his wife after the crow speaks roundly of her adultery, he breaks his instruments and deprives the crow of both speech and song. His transmutation of the crow from white to black is played down, and Chaucer omits the birth of Aesculapius altogether, focusing the end of the narrative on the crow's punishment for speaking. Other changes, first examined by J. Burke Severs, minimalize blame for the crow and blacken the wife's character. In Chaucer's most extensive addition, the direct speech of Phebus' lament, the god deceives himself into believing what he longs to believe, that his dead wife is innocent, and he interprets the cause of the disaster, in Louise Fradenburg's words, as "a lapse in 'discrecioun' engineered ultimately by a villainous servant."20 All of these changes, as Severs first argued, emphasize that, no matter what the moral situation, it is not expedient - indeed, it is disastrous for all involved - to inform someone of a painful truth.21 Despite this consistent bent in the tale, Phebus' crow, as a speaker, resembles his fictive creator, the Manciple, in his prologue.22 His intentions in speaking are hidden, like the Manciple's in ridiculing the Cook. Indeed, the crow's character is not realized at all.23 What we do know is that the crow, like the Manciple, reveals openly a physical fact - indeed, a violation of social norms - which the doer would prefer to remain unvoiced. Moreover, the crow, again like the Manciple, moves adroitly from courtly style to the coarse, magnifying Phebus' shame by contrasting his status-giving qualities with the insignificance of his wife's lover (IX.248-55). The crow's "wordes bolde" also register the physical in as blunt and emphatic a way as 20

21 22 23

Fradenburg, "Servant Tongue," p. 108. O n Phebus' re-creation of reality, see William Rogers, Ways, p. 118, and Lois Ebin, "Myrie Tale," p. 329. Ovid's tale is in Metamorphoses 2.531-632. J. Burke Severs, "Success?," pp. 7-8; see Helen Cooper, "Chaucer and Ovid," p. 79. Scattergood, "Manner of Speaking," pp. 134-5; Richard Hazelton, "Parody," p. 28; Patterson, "Parson's Tale," p. 377. John J. McGavin, "Phoebus's Crow?," 445-7.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity possible: his long comparative sentence is followed by the terse run of monosyllables "For on thy bed thy wyf I saugh hym swyve" (IX.256). Small wonder that the Manciple's crow raises Phebus' anger, just as the Manciple raises the Cook's. The crow's brutally plain speech is what the Manciple has claimed for himself as a "boystous" [crude, lacking in polish or art - MED l(a)] teller of tales just before he represents the adultery and the crow's utterance. In his conversational disquisition on word and deed, considered a digression only by those who devalue rhetoric and exalt the "realistic," deed is what it is in the narrative: an action which grossly violates social mores, adultery the first of them (then murder and house-burning): The wise Plato seith, as ye may rede, The word moot nede accorde with the dede. If men shal telle proprely a thyng, The word moot cosyn be to the werkyng. I am a boystous man, right thus seye I: Ther nys no difference, trewely, Bitwixe a wyf that is of heigh degree, If of hir body dishonest she bee, And a povre wenche, oother than this — If it so be they werke bothe amys — But that the gentile, in estaat above, She shal be cleped his lady, as in love; And for that oother is a povre womman, She shal be cleped his wenche or his lemman. And, God it woot, myn owene deere brother, Men leyn that oon as lowe as lith that oother. (IX.207-22)

The Manciple's last line, blunt in its monosyllables, enacts what he preaches: that speakers should choose words to convey the action in the moral terms society has adopted, no matter what the status of the doer. Anything else serves to falsify. The Manciple is working, of course, from the orthodox scholastic concept of aequalitas or adaequatio: that a speaker should choose the socially constructed vox which most closely corresponds to what he perceives (chapters 2, part II and 4, part II).24 However, the Manciple's examples - "wench" and "lady," later "outlawe" and "capitayn" - are all 24

Possible sources for "Plato's" dictum, also cited in "The General Prologue" (1.741-2), are presented in Baker, Variorum, p. 110n., and in Paul B. Taylor's '"Cosyn/" pp. 317-24. Whatever the source or sources, "accorde with" suggests scholastic ideas of the speaker seeking close correspondence between vox and res (chapter 2, part I).

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Restraining the deviant speaker vocabulary of social difference, so that only those given to preserving courtly and politically oppressive distinctions (the captain is a "titelees tiraunt") would use the latter - and they do so, he suggests, in violation of moral consensus. He admits no examples which consider such moral issues as intent, will, mitigating circumstances, just as he omits those wholly from the wife's deed and the crow's utterance. Not only does this passage imply "that low style is a closer representation of the physical fact than high style,"25 but it also represents what he presents as clear-eyed, honest moral judgments. The levelling last line, with its lying "low," is at once a physical and, for the Manciple, moral statement. The attitude of "tell the ugly moral truth (and it always is ugly if we have the nerve to face it)" which pervades the tale and is aggressively trumpeted to the audience in this disquisition is brought up short by the Manciple's emphasis on the crow's punishment and its nature: loss of speech. This, in turn, prompts the Manciple to draw the narrowest possible moral generalization: Lordynges, by this ensample I yow preye, Beth war, and taketh kep what that ye seye: Ne telleth nevere no man in youre lyf How that another man hath dight his wyf; He wol yow haten mortally, certeyn. Daun Salomon, as wise clerkes seyn, Techeth a man to kepen his tonge weel. (IX.309-15)

So restrictive is this admonition that the Manciple's own brutal truthtelling, paraded in the last direct address to the pilgrims before this, escapes the net. He may have unmercifully exposed the physical effect of another person's appetites, but that was drunkenness and a spouse was not the audience. And he has represented straightforwardly Phebus' wife with her "lemman" - but that was in fiction. And, of course, the crow did the nasty speaking. So the cagey Manciple, a master manipulator of words, emerges as clean at the end of the story, as he does in the prologue. As self-licensed plain dealer, he has his fun aggressively exposing others, without facing any social consequences,26 while at the same time he can mockingly warn others to avoid truth-telling with its inevitable dangers. Like the Pardoner, he practices with impunity (although more indirectly and slyly) what he warns against. 25

Cooper, Tales, p. 393.

26

Scattergood, "Manner of Speaking," p. 139.

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y slander, and obscenity Having engineered this rhetorical triumph, what does the Manciple achieve by widening the generalization to the need for verbal restraint, ostentatiously authorizing the move with his mother's teaching of what "wise clerkes" have proclaimed about Solomon's teaching: Daun Salomon, as wise clerkes seyn, Techeth a man to kepen his tonge weel. But, as I seyde, I am noght textueel. But nathelees, thus taughte me my dame. (IX.314-17) And what is the effect of appending forty-five lines on the topos, all in his mother's voice? Perhaps we can begin to explore these questions, raised insistently by readers of the tale, by glancing at how John Gower's Genius uses the same Ovidian fable to exemplify deviant speech in the Confessio Amantis. The "matter" of the sequence in which Genius tells the fable (III.2) is "cheste" or Us, not a sharply defined Sin of the Tongue, like lying or detraction, nor one rooted in a cluster of related biblical texts, as murmur is in Numbers or scurrility in the Pauline epistles. In the pastoral treatises, "cheste'V/w is a loose term for verbal strife, especially quarrelling, or for any words which generate anger.27 The Middle English versions of the Somme le roi, for instance, include seven types of speech under "cheaste" (sometimes "chidynge" or "stryvyng"): striving, chiding, despising, speaking evil, reproving (The Parson's and Host's "open reproof"), menacing, and exciting discord.28 Genius, too, includes a range of verbal conduct in his sequence: the chiding of Socrates' wife Xantippe (full of insults, as the gloss notes), the quarrelling of Jupiter and Juno, Tiresias divulging his own "counsel" heedlessly, Phebus' crow and the nymph Laar revealing secrets.29 Given this whole gamut of speech and the pastoral avoidance of definition not only for "cheste" but also for revealing secrets, Genius' catechesis, at the outset and in his admonitory links 27

28 29

In Peyraut's Summa de vitiis, as in Gower's Confessio, Us is presented as a sin which springs from wrath and, in turn, generates wrath. However, Peyraut does not treat it under wrath, referring the reader to the tractate o n the Sins of the Tongue (f. D5 r ). In it, Us is not one of the twenty-four specific sins, although the term is used in the chapters on contentio (f. H6 V ) and convicium (f. H5 V ). For similar use, see the Manipulus curatorum of Guido de Monte Rocherii, f. cv r . In texts that hew closely to the Summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas o n specific verbal sins, the related word litigium became a term for quarrelling, in the strict sense of contradicting the words of another, a specific Sin of the Tongue (St. II.II.116; Speculum morale, col. 1176). Book, p. 64; Speculum vitae, lines 14499-610. Gower includes a similar range of speech under "Tencoun," the second daughter of "ire" in the Mirour de Vomme (lines 4044-332).

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Restraining the deviant speaker between the four tales, draws heavily on general pastoral discourse on controlling the tongue. Its overriding concern with the disastrous consequences of unguarded speech (chapter 2, part III), conveyed by images like the unwalled city and the boneless tongue breaking bones (III, 417-71), allows Genius to move easily to pastoral types like chiding and revealing secrets, which are also sharply focused on the consequences.30 All of this discourse is heavily Solomonic. Genius' opening lines contain four images ultimately derived from Proverbs 25:15-28: the unwalled city, the soft tongue breaking bones, the sharp arrow, the tempest of anger provoked by the tongue. Genius supplements these with English proverbs (some of the biblical images had become proverbs), which give his discourse an even more prudential cast. Within Genius' four tales, the pivotal utterances, like that of the Manciple's crow, precipitate disastrous consequences for the speaker and, often, all others involved, usually by kindling anger. (The exception is Socrates, whose patience, the remedy against "cheste," averts domestic strife, overcoming female provocations.) The shorter the tale, the more blatantly the consequences are glossed in terms of self-interested prudentialism - especially as Genius, acting as the protector of generative love, uses the tale to dissuade the lover from any speech which might cause conflict with his lady. His thirty-five lines on Phebus, Cornide, and the crow conclude with a general appeal to self-interest: "Be war therefore and sei the beste, / If thou wolt be thiself in reste" (III, 816-17). The narrative itself is a simple cautionary tale of punishment for revealing treacherously the counsel of another. Corvus, as the speaker of "cheste" is presented with Aesopian simplicity: it is Cornide's pet, touchingly "kept in chambre of pure yowthe," so it is a traitor to its mistress, as well as an unrestrained revealer of others' private lives, "a fals bridd, which... Discoevereth all that evere he cowthe" (III, 792-4, reinforced by 798-9 and the Latin gloss). Unlike the Manciple's wife of Phebus, Cornide is presented as a victim of male dominance and predatoriness: "A yong kniht tok hire aqueintance / And hadde of hire al that he wolde" (III, 791-2). Whereas the Manciple passes no judgment on the crow's speech - only the agonized, self-deceiving Phebus does in his version - Genius not only brands it a traitor in causa amoris (as the gloss adds) but marks its transformation from white to black as done 30

For example, Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, ff. H6 r -7 r and H9 v -10 r .

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Lies, slander, and obscenity "in tokne and remembrance / Of hem whiche usen wicke speche" (III, 804-5). Despite treating the crow as a moral agent, he avoids the kind of moral anatomy pastoral sources usually encourage and which he does, as we have seen, with the knight who defames Constance and with Demetrius. Circumstances, will, intended effect are all absent here and in the two surrounding short tales. He attends only to consequences.31 Genius states clearly his rhetorical aim when he introduces his tale: to persuade the lover through this "olde ensample" to "Hold conseil and descoevere it noght." The deviant type is named both there and in the marginal Latin gloss. The tale, presenting only act and consequences, is embedded in controlling catechesis: the brief introduction on the type (III, 775-82), the general discourse on "cheste" as unrestrained speech inciting anger and strife, the brief closing admonition on the type (III, 815-17), and a general warning against all the amalgamated types of "cheste" (III, 831-5). Like the focus on the suffering of the female victim and the crow's punishment, this catechesis is designed to sway the lover against disclosing secrets about love. In contrast, the Manciple never identifies the crow's speech as a pastoral type and only introduces general discourse on verbal restraint when he has completed the narrative itself, although it is punctuated by generalizing comments on other subjects, like the power of natural appetites and fitting the word to the deed. Unlike Genius' version of the same tale, his is not governed by discourse on deviant speech, nor does it exemplify a deviant type. Instead, he flaunts the pleasures of plain speaking, both in propria persona and through the crow's utterance. Then, he presents a conclusion (the crow's punishment) and moralitas which blatantly warn against that very practice, creating a discourse similar to Gower's: generalities about the destructive consequences of unrestrained speech, laden with proverbs (and sententiae from Proverbs), admonitions, and warnings. However, manifesting his rhetorical powers and wiliness, he presents this prudential speech in ways that allow him to distance and dissociate himself, as a speaker, from them - dissociation being one way in which "the manner implicitly denies, modifies, or casts doubt upon 31

In attending only to the consequences of the crow's speech, Genius may be hewing to pastoral discourse on revealing secrets. Perhaps because of their brevity, the chapters on revelatio secretorum do not provide the tools for ethical analysis of the type, either through expanded definition or example (Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, ff. H9 v -10 r ; Speculum morale, col. 1046).

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Restraining the deviant speaker what is explicitly being stated."32 In the moralitas, unlike the internal generalizations, the Manciple achieves this distance first by ventriloquism, voicing what "wise clerkes seyn" in his mother's idiom. He produces an illusion of another speaking, entertaining in its distortions, while his auditors know that the voice is "really" his - or at least one of his voices. "My sone, thenk on the crowe, a Goddes name! My sone, keep wel thy tonge, and keep thy freend. A wikked tonge is worse than a feend; My sone, from a feend men may hem blesse. My sone, God of his endelees goodnesse Walled a tonge with teeth and lippes eke, For man sholde hym avyse what he speeke. My sone, ful ofte, for to muche speche Hath many a man been spilt, as clerkes teche, But for litel speche avysely Is no man shent, to speke generally. My sone, thy tonge sholdestow restreyne At alle tymes, but whan thou doost thy peyne To speke of God, in honour and preyere. The firste vertu, sone, if thou wolt leere, Is to restreyne and kepe wel thy tonge; Thus lerne children whan that they been yonge. My sone, of muchel spekyng yvele avysed, Ther lasse spekyng hadde ynough suffised, Comth muchel harm; thus was me toold and taught. In muchel speche synne wanteth naught. Wostow whereof a rakel tonge serveth? Right as a swerd forkutteth and forkerveth An arm a-two, my deere sone, right so A tonge kutteth freendshipe al a-two. A j angler is to God abhomynable. Reed Salomon, so wys and honurable; Reed David in his psalmes; reed Senekke." (IX.318-45) What the Manciple's mother's "wise clerkes" say about controlling the tongue has a definite pastoral cast unnoticed by scholars unacquainted with pastoral texts on deviant speech.33 Undoubtedly, some of these forty-five lines are close to apothegems in the schooltext 32 33

Scattergood, "Manner of Speaking," p. 140. A n exception is Cooper's Oxford handbook to the Tales, p. 387, which, crediting me in the acknowledgments, mentions, among other possible sources, pastoral discourse and several specific pastoral texts.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity Distichs of Dionysius Cato, to lines in the Roman de la rose, and to some English proverbs.34 The Cato may even have been familar to Chaucer through the Roman or Albertano da Brescia's Ars loquendi et tacendi.35 However, the first similitude which the Manciple attributes to the teaching of clerks appears in none of these sources, while it is one of the commonest in pastoral texts on deviant speech: " 'My sone, God of his endelees goodnesse / Walled a tonge with teeth and lippes eke, / For man sholde hym avyse what he speeke'" (IX.322-4). In the pastoral tradition, this constitutes an "Aristotelian" physiological argument: that the corporeal signifies the creator's will (chapter 2, part III). The metaphor appears not only in the longer treatises but in condensed entries in distinctiones and other collections of pastoral materials. The anonymous Distinctiones pro sermonibus, for example, includes it in a general entry on "Lingua" of only fifteen lines: "quod debet [lingua] diligenter custodiri ponit earn dominus quasi in carcere et posuit ante murum dencium et ante murale labiorum cum omnes alii sensus sint in aperte" [that (the tongue) ought to be kept diligently, the Lord places it, as it were, in a prison and placed before it a wall of teeth and an outer wall of lips, although all other senses are in the open].36 Sometimes, this distinctively pastoral metaphor is joined to other material which the Manciple uses, especially in later texts compiled by Englishmen which mingle material from the thirteenth-century treatises and other sources. Quoniam, that redaction of Peyraut's Summa which Siegfried Wenzel has demonstrated to be one of the two closest known texts to "The Parson's Tale" on the 34

35

36

Richard Hazelton, "Chaucer and Cato," Speculum 35 (1960), pp. 362-78. With exemplary scholarship, Hazelton has argued, pp. 376-80, that the glosses o n Cato's Distichs are an important source for the moralitas. For proverbs and the Romany see the notes in the Riverside edition, p. 954. The current Riverside edition registers, o n p. 954, "parallel" passages in Albertano da Brescia's Ars originally marshalled b y Koeppel over a century ago. The second edition had noted, o n p. 764, that they are widely scattered and not always close in phrasing. See note 110 to chapter 2 for several major differences between Albertano's approach to verbal selfcontrol and that of the pastoral writers. Incipit "Accidia," f. 174 r ; the wording in Etienne de Bourbon's Tractatus (see chapter 2, part III) is closer to Chaucer's. T h e metaphor may also be found in De lingua, f. 140 v ; in Quoniam, f. 54 r ; in Fasciculus morum, p. 48; and in Simon of Boraston, Distinctiones, f. 77r. While Gower comes close to this similitude in the Vox clamantis, which Chaucer may very well have known, even there it functions as part of a markedly pastoral discourse o n the destructive power of mala lingua (5.15.901-10). The similitude also appears in the De proprietatibus rerum of Bartholomaeus Anglicus and in its English translation b y John Trevisa: "And he is iclosid wife doble wal, and in many beestes ischape as a schiep" (I, p. 208). A s the second clause indicates, the similitude appears within a physiological description of the tongue (a chapter in length), and is not read as a sign that speech should be guarded.

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Restraining the deviant speaker vices, ends its opening discourse on multiloquium with this similitude and Prov. 10:19, which the Manciple anglicizes in line 338: "duplici muro labiorum et dentium est inclusa.ut fugiat multiloquium ubi non deerit peccatum" [it (the tongue) was enclosed with a double wall of lips and teeth so that one ought to flee loquacity, in which sin will never be absent].37 The Fasciculus morum, in its brief segment on "Pride of Mouth," includes Prov. 10:19, the Catonic distich "virtutem primam esse puto compescere ligwam" (Englished by the Manciple in 332) and, finally, the similitude.38 Even in the thirteenth century, the major pastoral texts are peppered with Prov. 10:19, and Pierre le Chantre's Verbum abbreviatum links it to the two Catonic distichs used by the Manciple.39 This verse - and other material in these lines - may have been mediated to Chaucer through nonpastoral texts, yet it carries, amalgamated with some distinctively pastoral materials in a moralitaSy the mark of pastoral discourse on deviant speech.40 I do not wish to propose any specific sources for the Manciple's moralitas, which is, like the whole tale, "a composite of many remembered things, some from obvious sources that Chaucer and any other educated medieval writer would have known, but more generally absorbed from a tradition of wisdom literature 'lerned yonge'."41 To this composite, I would simply add pastoral discourse on deviant speech, specifically the prudential strain on verbal restraint that is shaped by biblical Wisdom literature (chapter 2, part III). "The Parson's Tale" shows that, at some point, Chaucer certainly knew at least discourse on specific Sins of the Tongue in written form, and he must have heard it much of his life (to indulge in a locution common to Chaucerians) in the specific pastoral situations of preaching and confession. In addition to the distinctively pastoral material in the moralitas, its 37 39

40

41

38 Quoniam, f. 54 r . Fasciculus morum, pp. 46 and 48. Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, ff. I l v and 13 v ; De lingua, f. 157 r ; Speculum morale, col. 1046; also the early fifteenth-century Destructorium, Sv v . Pierre le Chantre, Verbum abbreviatum, f. 35 V . Let me give another example of the pastoral cast of the heterogeneous material in the moralitas. Scholars have attributed the Manciple's mother's admonition "My sone, thy tonge sholdestow restreyne / A t alle tymes, but whan thou doost thy peyne / T o speke of G o d in honour and prey ere" (IX.329-31) to the Roman de la rose, lines 7037-43, where the topos is used by the semiclerical Reason, with many pious flourishes about praise and prayer (lines 7044-52). In the Manciple's moralitas, where the topos o n restraint closely follows the distinctly pastoral metaphor of double closure, surely it would recall, for Chaucer's contemporaries, the pastoral arguments on the proper functions of speech, especially praise and prayer (chapter 2, part I). Baker, Variorum, p. 10.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity general concerns and rhetorical devices are those of pastoral texts "de custodia lingue in communi" [on keeping the tongue in general]. Their leitmotif - more, their usual rhetorical aim - is what the Manciple voices, in his own words, at the outset and then repeatedly attributes to his mother: "Daun Salomon, as wise clerkes seyn, / Techeth a man to kepen his tonge weel" (IX.314-15) (chapter 2, part III). Here the Manciple has his mother authorize her admonitions with the most pervasive authority in pastoral texts on restraint, Solomon; David and Seneca, also common pastoral "auctors," are added later (IX.344-5).42 Significantly, Cato, rarely cited by pastoral writers, is not mentioned here, nor is any nonpastoral text or writer. The Manciple's mother's rhetoric is a pastoral one of sententiae, similitudes, and enthymemes often presented as exhortations, prohibitions, and admonitions and usually focusing on "future evils" (chapter 2, part IV). As in pastoral treatises on restraint, Godward speech, prayer and praise, is promoted as the only kind of utterance where restraint need not be exercised (chapter 2, part I). And her remedies for garrulity - the opposite virtues and the practices which militate against it - are pastoral ones: "litel speche avysely" and, occasionally, silence (chapter 2, part III). Altogether, the general discourse on verbal restraint which the Manciple presents as his mother's is comprehensively, as well as markedly, pastoral. Moreover, it is openly scriptural, predominantly biblical ("Reed Salomon... Reed David in his psalmes") - unlike that of Genius, who does not cite written authorities. Finally, it invokes God frequently in arguing for restraint. If we recognize these elements of pastoral discourse "de custodia lingue in communi," how does that extend and sharpen our sense of the Manciple's rhetorical strategies and effects in his moralitas'i First of all, what the Manciple's mother advocates is not "silence in all instances," as recent critics so often maintain,43 but the prudent restraint in speech which the pastoral treatises offer as a major remedy against a loose tongue (chapter 2, part III). The often-cited prohibition "be noon auctour newe of tidynges," fascinating because of its echo of The House of Fame at the end of Chaucer's last (in placement) narrative, does not counsel silence but counsels not spreading tales. (The only other admonition which might suggest silence is "spek nat," 42 43

See, for example, Peyraut's prima pars, ff. E4 v -F2 r . Mark Allen, "Penitential Sermons," p. 77; Marc Pelen, " 'Cosyn/ " p. 345; James Dean, "Dismantling," p. 754; Robert Jordan, Poetics, p. 157.

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Restraining the deviant speaker but that is limited to an auditor's response to loose talk about "perilous mateere," IX.346-8). The conclusion drawn from the double wall of teeth and lips is not silence, but that "man sholde hym avyse what he speeke" (IX.324). "Avyse" (also X.327 and 335) conveys looking mentally at potential utterances, prudently deliberating about what ought to be spoken {MED l;3a,c). Its moral opposite is "janglyng,"44 later defined by the Parson as "whan a man speketh to muche biforn folk, and clappeth as a mille, and taketh no keep what he seith" (X.406), a definition encapsulated in the Manciple's "muchel spekyng yvele avysed" (IX.335).45 The Parson also uses "janglyng" as the vernacular for the pastoral sin multiloquium (X.649-50), in his Peyrautian treatment of the Sins of the Tongue. The cause and sum of all sinfulness in speech, multiloquium (or one of its near synonyms: loquacitas, verbositas, linguositasy garrulitas) heads lists of Sins of the

Tongue from Gregory the Great until the scholastics. They demote it to one of many, seeking to differentiate it from sins like vaniloquiumy as it is in Peyraut's Summa and De lingua.46 Despite this dethronement, multiloquium remains a general term for speech which is not examined or governed by norms and, as a result, has destructive consequences. For example, Quoniam amalgamates Peyraut's chapter on multiloquium and most of his last thirteen general topoi on keeping the tongue, creating a general discourse on restraining loquacity which begins the whole treatise on sin.47 Similarly, the Manciple's mother constructs loquacity - not merely talebearing and backbiting, as L. A. Westervelt would have it48 - as the root of all evil (as, by the way, did the Ovide moralise in its moralitas49). To counter it, what she presents is not so much "the twenty statements of a theme" which Richard Hazelton and others have read50 as a series of 44

45

46 47 48 50

The semantic field of "janglyng/* in Chaucer and elsewhere, includes tale-telling, as William Quinn demonstrates in " 'Janglerye,'" pp. 309-20. Both the crow's tale of adultery and the Manciple's mother's parting admonition, "be noon auctour newe / O f tidynges" (IX.359-60), clearly place tale-telling in the range of speech she is warning her son against. However, when she uses the term "janglere" twice and "janglyng" once in eight lines in the midst of the moralitas (IX.343-50), it is, in the immediate context, roughly equivalent to "muchel speche" (IX.338). The Middle English redaction of Peyraut's ninth tractate renders Peyraut's multiloquium as both "muchel speche" and "ianglyng" (incipit "Seynt Iohon," f. 67 r ). The Parson's image of the clapping millwheel, which may be proverbial, also appears as a figure for unrestrained speech in English versions of the Somme le rot (Book, p. 282; Speculum vitae, lines 15693-708). Casagrande and Vecchio, Peccati, pp. 411-16. Quoniam, ff. 51 r -4 r , from Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, ff. E5 v -F2 r ; see chapter 2, part III. 49 L. A. Westervelt, "Janglery," pp. 112-14. Sources and Analogues, pp. 708-9. Hazelton, "Cato," p. 378; see Knight, "rymyng," p. 18.

205

eSy slander, and obscenity

topoi designed, like those in pastoral treatises, to persuade her son to practice restraint (mixed helter skelter with some specific advice, as in IX.346-8). Despite the number of her topoi, the Manciple's mother's range is not that of a Peyraut. She omits any semiotic claims about the words, refers only glancingly to prayer and praise among the functions of speech (and that simply to mark off types which do not require restraint) (see chapter 2, part I). Instead, she begins with the nature of the tongue, as it is suggested by the story of the crow: "My sone, thenk on the crow, a Goddes name! / My sone, keep wel thy tonge, and keep thy freend. / A wikked tonge is worse than a feend; / My sone, from a feend men may hem blesse" (IX.318-21). For her, the tongue is the potent mala lingua of pastoral discourse (chapter 2, part III), autonomous and demonized, an alien power within the body which must be controlled to prevent loss. Like the pastoral writers, she turns next to a physiological argument, as we have seen, reading the corporeal relation of tongue to teeth and lips as a sign of the Creator's intentions for the created's speech. Then come the destructive consequences of unbridled speech, so central in Genius' telling and use of the tale, but expressed by her so generally ("But for litel speche avisely / Is no man shent, to speke generally") that it is not clear who suffers or how (speaker, auditor, object) - except friends at IX.342 and the speaker himself in IX.351-8, betrayed by and bound to his own "wikked word." This topos, developed at three times the length of any other and in penultimate place, is blatantly selfinterested, and, together with the opening "keep thy freend," gives a cast of expediency to the whole prudential discourse. The pervasive New Testament sententiae which, in pastoral treatises, develop the destructive effects of speech on others or the soul of the speaker from James, Paul, the Gospels (chapter 2, part III) - are omitted altogether. In telling the same tale, Gower's Genius may have had an expedient edge: his reason for restraint, "If thou wolt be thiself in rest" (III, 816), is more nakedly self-interested than her "litel janglyng causeth muchel reste" (IX.350). Nevertheless, he prefaced his four tales with the wide range of those affected by "wicke tunge" - from the married to "The Cites and the policie" (III, 440-65) - a practice akin to pastoral discourse with its concern for the "neighbor," as well as for the speaker himself. Just as topoi on verbal restraint are limited and, as a result, lowered (at least in the realms of the moral theology and scripture which 206

Restraining the deviant speaker generated pastoral discourse on deviant speech), the whole discourse is lowered by how the Manciple presents his mother as speaker. The context is antifeminist.51 The Manciple's nameless "Phebus wife," unlike Genius' Cornide, is actively promiscuous, sending for her "lemman," and the Manciple's examples of animal appetites are jeeringly directed to women by his notorious disclaimer "Alle thise ensamples speke I by thise men / That been untrewe, and nothyng by wommen" (IX.187-8). At the very least, the Manciple's practice of deriving moral opinions from his mother, unique among the pilgrims,52 clashes oddly with his representation of women in the tale - a tale supposedly told at least in part by his mother. Within the discourse he attributes to her, the vocative "My sone," repeated relentlessly, and the terse, syntactically simple admonitions ("keep wel thy tonge, and keep thy freend") create the rhetorical situation suggested by the first Catonic distich she paraphrases: " 'Thus lerne children whan that they been yonge.'" Thus, her speech is cast in the genre of versified parental instruction of the very young, extant in such fifteenth-century texts as The Babees Book, Peter Idleys Instructions to his Sow, "Symones Lesson of Wysedom for all Maner Chyldryn," and "How the Wise Man Taugt His Son."53 All involve exhortations to restrain the tongue; some, warnings directed specifically against "many wordes and yangelyng."54 Often the prudential concerns and admonitions are those of the Manciple's mother: And sonne, where J>at euerefcougo, Be not to tale-wijs bi no wey, I>in owne tunge may be J>i foo; I>erfore be waar what i>ou doist say, Where, & to whom, be ony wey, Take good hede iffcoudo seie ou3t, For J>ou my3te seie a word to-day I>at .vii. 3eer after may be for-t>ou3t.55

In all of these texts I have found, the direct speech is that of a father, with the model of Solomon's prudential instruction of his son often invoked. To place this parental discourse in a woman's mouth 51 53 54

55

52 Spearing, "Exemplum," p. 174. Cooper, Tales, p. 391. The latter two are printed with The Babees Book, pp. 399-402 and 48-52. "Symones Lesson," lines 47-81. Richard Hazelton traces the compescere linguam topos in several "getting of wisdom" lyrics, including one by Eustache Deschamps ("Cato," p. 378), but the lyrics of parental instruction seem a much closer model for the Manciple's mother for reasons given in the text. "Wise Man," lines 25-32.

207

Lies, slander, and obscenity deprives it of the general scriptural parallel with Solomon the wise man (despite the Manciple's and his mother's invoking of Solomon on the topos at hand) and so reduces its authority, as the antifeminist context does. This rhetorical situation, prudent parent instructing young son, allows the Manciple to create a pastiche of conventional instructional materials - folk proverb, Catonic distich from the schools, biblical sententia - and to cast it in a low style. 56 The mother's discourse is openly proverbial at times ("The Flemyng seith..."), and the style of the whole follows suit. Syntax is simple; utterances are terse. Where the mother ventures beyond simple declaration, she carefullly emphasizes and repeats, drawing the sentence together. "Wostow wherof a rakel tonge serveth? Right as a swerd forkutteth and forkerveth And arm a-two, my deere sone, right so A tongue kutteth freendship al a-two. A jangler is to God abhomynable. Reed Salomon, so wys and honurable." (IX.339-44) The effect is disjunctive. Pastoral texts, as repositories of instructional materials for the minimally educated cleric, rather than finished rhetorical productions, lend themselves to such parody. The structure is additive; the style, paratactic; the material, diverse and disjunctive. The writers' aim of copiousness makes them repetitive and often truncated, especially on specific sins of the tongue. Here are several of Peyraut's reasons to

shun multiloquium:

HQuinto hoc quod multiloquium signum est stulticie.Vnde in ecclesiastes.Stultus verba multiplicat.Et ecclesiastes.xxix.Totum spiritum summ profert stultus. ^fSextum est hoc quod dicitur in psalmo.Vir liguosus non dirigetur in terra. ^fSeptimum est hoc quod frequenter accidit.quod vbi est multitudo verborum ibi est indigentia operum. sicut vbi multum est de paleis ibi sepe paruum est de grano.Prouerbiorum.xiii.Vbi verba plurima ibi frequenter egestas Et xix Qui tamen verba sectatur nichil habebit.57 [ijThe fifth is that speaking much is a sign of foolishness. Whence in 56

57

While folk proverbs (as distinguished from biblical ones) are absent in the thirteenth-century pastoral texts o n the Sins of the Tongue (chapter 2, part IV), they are drawn into later compendia of preaching materials, like the Fasciculus morum, which condense and transmit pastoral discourse o n deviant speech. Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, ff. I l v - I 2 r .

208

Restraining the deviant speaker Ecclesiastes [10:14]: "A fool multiplied! words." And Ecclesiastes 29 [actually Proverbs 29:14]: "A fool uttereth all his mind." fThe sixth is that said in the Psalm [139:12]: "A man full of tongue shall not be established in the earth." ifThe seventh is what frequently happens: that where there is a multitude of words, there is a poverty of deeds, just as where there is much chaff, there is often little grain. Proverbs 13 [actually 14:23]: "But where there are many words, there is oftentimes want." And 19 [19:7]: "He that followeth after words only shall have nothing."]

In the mouth of the Manciple's mother these stylistic characteristics are relentless, eliminating the more complex rhetorical and logical elements of the pastoral treatises, like the leisurely syllogism or conversation from the Vitae patrum. Even the simple enthymeme, losing its causal connections, becomes banal assertion ("A wikked tonge is worse than a feend; / My sone, from a feend men may hem blesse"), while sententiae can become so brief and vacuous as to be unrecognizable. (Where does Solomon say "A jangler is to God abhomynable"? There are a dozen possible candidates.58) Similitudes are so overcontrolled, so emphatic, and so stripped down (like the whole discourse) that they lack any detestatory force and seem crude or grotesque ("as a swerd forkutteth and forkerveth"). So, although specifically pastoral material and most of the topoi on restraint recall pastoral discourse, the style reduces pastoral logic and rhetoric to the crudely childish speech of a "wise" parent laboredly stooping to a child's "level" for his or her benefit. Further, the pastiche removes pastoral material from its usual rhetorical situations of preaching and directing confession (governed by religious ritual in ecclesiastical spaces) and mingles it indiscriminately with materials from the schoolroom and household. Situation, form, associated materials, style - all lower the cleric to the overly cautious and overbearing parent: platitudinous, monotonous, repetitive. The contradictions between the rhetoric the subversive Manciple gives his mother and her topoi are easily registered by readers. She claims that restraint should only be laid aside for God-directed prayer and praise (IX.329-31), but she abandons it in speech directed to a very different use: prudential advice. (The Manciple omits instruction/admonition/preaching from the mother's approved, salvific functions for speech, whereas the pastoral texts often develop it the most fully.) Her discourse is extended so far - we are given twenty reasons 58

See the Riverside Chaucer, p. 954, for some candidates.

209

Lies, slander, and obscenity to restrain our tongues or snippets of how-to advice - that its sense is utterly contradicted.59 And it is inflated with expansive Chaucerian fillers, adroitly placed to belie what has just been advocated: " 'My sone, of muchel spekyng yvele avysed, / Ther lasse spekyng hadde ynough suffised, / Comth muchel harm; thus was me toold and taught'" (IX.335-7). The disjunctive syntax thrusts forward the fillers and underscores each addition and, with increasing insistence, the length. These ridiculous contradictions work to highlight the fissures inherent in general pastoral writing on restraint, as it exists in these "raw" treatises. While it advocates a restraint in speech issuing in "little speech" and "rare speech" (chapter 2, part III), it does so copiously.60 In his flagship general discourse on keeping the tongue, Peyraut multiplies topoi and, within them, sententiae, figures, and enthymemes, as Etienne de Bourbon does in his Tractatus. More seemingly inconsistent is the extended suasio on silence, Peyraut's lasting three and a half large pages and the Speculum morale's accumulating ten arguments. Simply by lifting such discourse from the treatises and reconstructing it in direct speech, the Manciple makes tensions into gaping contradictions: "My sone, spek nat, but with thyn heed thou bekke. / Dissimule as thou were deef, if that thou heere / A janglere speke of perilous mateere" (IX.346-8). This farce of the prudent, self-disciplined speaker nodding jerkily or faking deafness in order not to be contaminated by dangerous talk encapsulates another fundamental feature of pastoral discourse which the Manciple subverts: its sweeping claims. All speech save the Godward is to be governed vigilantly lest the sinful or, as the Manciple's mother is made to emphasize, the self-betraying word escape, a single utterance for which the speaker will be "yvele apayd" (IX.351-8). The tongue is always diabolical, always in league with fiends. Even listening to the deviant is deviant, as the pastoral writers argue on detraction. In the day-to-day world of casual human interchanges, such an approach to speech makes the scrupulous person into a comic figure in a dumb show. Such broad clerical 59

60

Hazelton, "Parody/* pp. 2 0 - 1 , and "Cato," p. 378; Jordan, Poetics, p. 157; Cooper, Tales, p. 394. Casagrande and Vecchio's history of multiloquium, Pecatti, pp. 407-17, may point to a cultural reason for this prolix advocacy of speaking rarely. The monastic tradition initiated an aversion to multiloquium; centuries later, after the Fourth Lateran Council, the n e w urban preachers elaborated, as they did any homiletic topos, the inherited prohibitions from monastic texts.

210

Restraining the deviant speaker metalanguage is also a wholly inadequate guide to daily speech - or any utterance - because of its generalizations: " cMy sone, ful ofte, for to muche speche / Hath many a man been spilt, as clerkes teche, / But for litel speche avysely / Is no man shent, to speke generally'" (IX.325-8). Without the treatise, or more likely the sermon or personally directed monition during confession, to elaborate who is harmed and how (chapter 2, part III), this central pastoral topos is useless, as the slyly subversive last half line suggests. With such boldfaced undermining of a discourse in which the speaker is of dubious authority and the structure is grotesquely incongruous, the Manciple contemptuously guts the metalinguistic claims of pastoral discourse: that it provides comprehensive, morally binding norms for human speech. Moreover, without their semiotic and ontological basis, these claims seem unmoored; without their Pentecostal model, ennervated; without their social and political dimensions, disgustingly self-regarding. Even more insistent, in the Manciple's mother's version, is the impotence of pastoral rhetoric, too crude to sway the will, to elicit detestation for the deviant practice, to control social conduct. The Manciple has been seen to be using his moralitas, with mocking indirection, to silence or to spite the Cook whom he has outraged,61 and its expediency and bent to not give anything away is certainly consistent with the Manciple of the General Prologue and the prologue to his tale - and with the fates of Phebus, his wife, and the crow. But more insistent is his flaunting of his lack of verbal restraint while arguing for it - not just an egregious parading of the inherent fissures of pastoral discourse on deviant speech but, as with the Pardoner's cynical and open use of pastoral discourse on greed to feed his greed, a jeering demonstration that he is immune to its moral claims and that its rhetoric is impotent. (That very immunity, of course, has been vividly displayed by his open reproof of the Cook, more indirectly by his blunt revelations of secrets through the crow.) Just as he has told an exemplary tale only to draw an application at first so ridiculously narrow and then so general as to deny the value of the exemplary, he has constructed a pastiche of a moralitas which trashes the very pastoral elements it invokes - as well as the commingled sententious schoolroom reading, proverbial wisdom, and parental advice. In a masterstroke, the Manciple dissociates himself 61

Paul Olson, Good Society, p. 278; R. D. Fulk, "Reinterpreting," pp. 485-93.

211

Lies, slander, and obscenity from his own rhetorical product by attributing it to this mother (he never returns to his own voice), just as he had claimed that his open reproof of the Cook was "seyde... in my bourde," or as he had noisily denied that the teller of his heavily intertextual tale and moralitas was "textueel" and that the bent of his animal exempla was antifeminist. In all of this, the Manciple, like the Pardoner, celebrates his own rhetorical mastery and its reward: immunity from the social mores, often clerically imposed, governing and restraining the speech of ordinary men and women. Yet his rhetorical assault on what "wise clerkes seyn" about keeping the tongue is more devastating, touches the clergy more nearly. In his prologue, he had already perverted that fundamental clerical practice of using discourse on the vices in public reproof, raising questions about its practice. Now he has gutted the less direct clerical approach to deviant speech: general pastoral admonition. To what extent is the Manciple's stance as storyteller and rhetorician his creator's? What signals does the Manciple's moralitas give at this, the end of the penultimate tale, and the last fiction, of The Canterbury Tales - an end of admonitions, not the conventional Canterbury Tale's blessing, as Helen Cooper observes?62 It is clear that Chaucer constructs a character who plausibly, skillfully masters and then subverts the prudential strain in pastoral discourse, just as he practices deviant speech with impunity. But with what effect at this point in the Tales} For that, we must return to the Parson's prologue and the tale that follows, which, with the Retraction (not considered here), form what most Chaucerians acknowledge to be a complementary group.63 IV

"Daun Salomon, as wise clerkes seyn, Techeth a man to kepen his tonge weel. But, as I seyde, I am noght textueel. But nathelees, thus taughte me my dame." (IX.314-17) "But nathelees, this meditacioun I putte it ay under correccioun Of clerkes, for I am nat textueel. I take but the sentence, trusteth weel." (X.55-8) 62

Helen Cooper, Structure, p. 200.

212

63

Riverside Chaucer, p. 955.

Restraining the deviant speaker "I am not textueel" is the Parson's one verbal echo of the Manciple. Before him, the Manciple echoes his own use of the disclaimer earlier, where it was doubled ("But for I am a man noght textueel, / I wol noght telle of textes never a deel," IX.235-6). There it served to break off his excursus on word and deed, which began by citing "wise Plato." Characteristically, it functions in both places to withdraw mockingly what it calls attention to: that his subdiscourse is based on the most appropriate scriptural authority, Plato on language and Solomon on verbal restraint. Moreover, it underscores the Manciple's subjection of those texts, traditional repositories of wisdom ("the wise Plato," "as wise clerkes seyn"), to uses altogether alien to them: as pretexts for coarse language and mindless loquacity. The untextual man is the master of texts. The Parson's parodic echo of this rhetorical tick - and trick - stands it on its head. His protested lack of textual learning proclaims that his discourse will be based on the substance, if not the exact words, of authoritative texts and so contain edifying matter. And, of course, his desire that his speech be "corrected" manifests a loyalty to texts and their learned keepers utterly at variance with the Manciple's contemptuous trumping of both. The Parson enacts this staunch defense of authoritative texts early in his own speech where he begins to mark out his own rhetorical territory. His blunt rejection of fables for a priest is authorized by Paul's words to Timothy: "Thou getest fable noon ytoold for me, For Paul, that writeth unto Thymothee, Repreveth hem that weyven soothfastnesse And tellen fables and swich wrecchednesse. Why sholde I sowen draf out of my fest, Whan I may sowen whete, if that me lest? For which I seye, if that yow list to heere Moralitee and vertuous mateere, And thanne that ye wol yeve me audience, I wol ful fayn, at Cristes reverence, Do yow plesaunce leefful, as I kan." (X.31-41) "The Parsons' reference sweeps in the whole context of both Epistles."64 Together, the Epistles present the religious teacher as the promulgator of a divinely inspired scripture, which generates salvation and good works in its hearers. Against him is set not only the 64

Cooper, Tales, p. 396.

213

Lies, slander, and obscenity teacher of errors but also the disputer, the utterer of "profana et vaniloquia" - any speech which deviates from the scriptural. Among these types of speech Paul mentions fables three times, as Chaucerian editors have duly noted.65 One of these, 1 Tim. 4:7, is a key text in several late twelfth-century chapters on unrestrained speech. Alain de Lille's popular Summa de arte praedicatoria begins with it and several other biblical exhortations to avoid loose and morally corrupting speech: Si quis a verbositate et effrenata linguae evagatione cavere studet, haec quae sequuntur diligenter attendat. Ait Apostolus: Ineptas et viles fabulas devita (I Tim.IV). Hieronymus ait: «Scurrilitas atque lascivia, te praesente, non habeant locum.» Omne quod non aedificat audientes, in periculum vertitur audientium; Corrumpunt enim bonos mores colloquia prava.66

[If anyone applies himself to guarding against verbosity and the unrestrained wandering of the tongue, let him diligently attend to what follows. The Apostle says "But avoid foolish and old wives' tales" (I Tim. 4:7). Jerome says "Scurrility and lascivious things should not have a place where you are present." Everything which does not edify hearers turns to their peril: "Evil communications corrupt good manners" (I Co. 15:33).]

This passage sets forth the central concerns of what becomes, already in the Speculum universale of Alain's contemporary Raoul Ardent, pastoral discourse on empty or idle words (ociosa verba or, occasionally, the Paulinian term vaniloquium). Idle words are defined consistently as "quod sine utilitate loquentis dicitur aut audientis" in the Parson's English, "that is withouten profit of hym that speketh tho wordes, and eek of hym that herkneth tho wordes" (X.647).67 Christians are to avoid the unprofitable out of concern for others' spiritual welfare, the basic principle of medieval Christian rhetoric in J. J. Murphy's account.68 As in chapters on multiloquium, with which idle words were always closely associated, lack of self-control looses a floodgate of uncensored words which are at best useless and which 65 67

68

66 Riverside Chaucer, p . 955. Alain de Lille, Summa, cols. 162-3. Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. H 1 0 r . See also Quoniam, f. 54 r ; Speculum

morale,

col. 1047;

Carpenter, Destructorium viciorum, f. Svv; from Jerome's Commentariorum in Matheum. Chapters on ociosa verbal vaniloquium may be found in Peyraut's Summa (ff. H10 r -Il r ), Quoniam (ff. 54r~v), De lingua (placed first among the twenty-four Sins of the Tongue, ff. 155V-6V), the Speculum morale (cols. 1046—7 - a section in a composite chapter), The Book of Vices and Virtues ("ydele wordes": pp. 55—6), and the Speculum vitae ("idelle speche": lines 13891-951). Murphy, Rhetoric, throughout.

214

Restraining the deviant speaker may corrupt others. Fables are always among these dangerous words: "Tales sunt ociose fabule.cantilene.inania carmina" (Raoul Ardent just before citing 1 Tim. 4:7); "nugas vel fabulas"; "si omissis seriis de rebus frivolis loquamar et fabulas narremus antiquas."69 Peyraut's Summa and Quoniam follow Bernard of Clairvaux in insisting that priests, as teachers whose lips are dedicated to proclaiming the Gospel, ought to be especially bound to follow these norms and avoid fables. Their context is the power of speech in affecting the religious welfare of auditors, a reason (Peyraut's seventh) to avoid empty words: vnde ber.Inter seculares nuge sunt.in ore sacerdotis blasphemie. Interdum si incidant ferende.forsitan sunt referende numquam Consecrasti os tuum euangelio talibus iam aperire illicitum est assuescere sacrilegium.Labia sacerdotum custodiunt scientiam et legem requirunt ex ore eius non nugas vel fabulas Verbum scurrilitatis quod faceti urbanive nomine colorant.non sufficit ab ore peregrinari.procul ab aure est relegandum.fede ad chachinnos moueris fedius moues.70 [Whence Bernard: Among laymen frivolity is frivolity; in the mouth of a priest, frivolity is blasphemy. Sometimes if frivolous language occurs, it may have to be tolerated, but it should never be repeated. You have consecrated your mouth to the Gospel: to open it for such trifles is unlawful, to do so frequently is sacrilege. The lips of priests are guardians of knowledge and from their mouth men seek the law - not frivolity or fables. It is not enough to keep from your mouth the scurrilous language which some disguise by the name of wit or urbanity. It must even be kept far from your ears. It is disgraceful for you to be moved to derisive laughter; it is more disgraceful for you to move others to such laughter.]

Throughout chapters on vain words, the edifying and consoling Pentecostal word of the religious teacher, "the word by which the Holy Spirit is given," is contrasted with garrulity: manna with the 69

70

Raoul Ardent, Speculum universale, f. 163 r ; "nugas vel fabulas" in Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. I I r , and Quoniam, f. 54 V (see also De lingua, f. 155 V ); "fabulas antiquas" in Carpenter, Destructorium, f. Sv v (from Jerome, Matheum, p . 96). In his study of late medieval French priests, H e r v e Martin quotes t w o vernacular texts o n priests' obligations t o avoid fables. O n e , the Mirour des cures, simply exhorts priests " G a r d e s vous de o y r bourdes et fables," while the other, a recommendation from Bishop G u i Bernard of Langres (1453-81), prohibits preachers from exposing their auditors t o " d e s fables, des plaisanteries (?) [sic], et autres choses semblables," as opposed t o "la doctrine vrai et sainte, utile et necessaire a leurs consciences" (Le Metier, p p . 209-10). Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. I l r ; Bernard, De consideratione, PL 182, col. 756.

215

Lies, slander, and obscenity croaking of frogs. Peyraut gives particular force to this contrast, just after designating the tongue the pen of the Holy Ghost, by recalling the argument (from his prima pars) that, since speech is found only in rational creatures, it ought not to occur without being governed by reason - that is, it ought to be employed only in teaching and learning.71 The Parson is presented in the General Prologue as a parish priest. Within his parish, he is given to the pastoral speech of teaching and preaching: "He was also a lerned man, a clerk, / That Cristes gospel trewely wolde preche; / His parisshens devoutly wolde he teche" (1.480-2). Admonition, as a type of teaching, is developed later (1.515-21), and his text is given as "Cristes loore and his apostles twelve" (1.527). In rejecting fables when his turn comes to speak, the Parson hews to type, the catechizing priest as introduced in the General Prologue and as originally constructed by the movement for pastoral care, including treatises on deviant speech: he uses the Bible to define what he should not - and should - speak. In doing so, he is demonstrating more than his commitment to revealed words ("soothfastnesse") or to the spiritual welfare of his hearers. Avoiding fables and related types of empty words is presented in the treatises, for all people but especially for priests, as a practical moral discipline, a means of restraining the tongue from thoughtless, and therefore inevitably vain and corrupting, garrulity.72 The Parson establishes his norms as speaker from the binary opposition of salvific teaching and loquacity constructed by Alain in his summa on preaching and by Peyraut and his followers throughout their treatises, but especially in their general section on verbal restraint (chapter 2, part III) and their chapters on ociosa verba.73 For the Parson, as for the pastoral writers, speech is either "soothfastnesse" / "moralitee and vertuous mateere" or "fables and swich wrecchednesse," nourishing wheat or chaff. Finally, staking out his rhetorical claims in all these ways enables the Parson to be seen as a speaker who can be trusted: conformed to scriptural models, committed to his audience's welfare, disciplined. 71 72

73

Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. H 1 0 v ; see Speculum morale, col. 1047. Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, ff. H 1 0 r - I l r ; Quoniam, ff. 54 r ~ v ; Etienne de Bourbon, Tractatus, ff. 153 v -4 r ; De lingua, ff. 155 V -6 V ; Carpenter, Destructorium, f. Sv r ; Speculum morale, cols.

1046-7.

In the pastoral treatises, this opposition of salvific teaching and loquacity is related to, and can be conflated with, that of the salvific word and the deviant word. See the passages quoted at the end of the first part of chapter 2, especially those from Etienne de Bourbon's Tractatus and Jacob's Well.

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Restraining the deviant speaker Thus he begins to meet social expectations for how a post-Lateran-IV parish priest would speak.74 Since the Parson proceeds to utter catechesis, not fiction, many Chaucerians have taken his forthright rejection of fables to signify his rejection of all "narratives with fictitious plots." 75 Does pastoral discourse on ociosa verba clarify at all what a priest declining an invitation to tell a "fable" might take that term to mean? Raoul Ardent's Speculum universale, the least accessible text for fourteenthcentury Englishmen, is the only one to do more than list forbidden types. After grouping fables with "songs" and "empty verses" as words which do not pertain to the honor of God or to the utility of the speaker or his neighbor, he claims that those who write, sing, and make up audiences for them ("inuentores.cantatores.auditores cantilenatum.inanum fabularum et carminum") sin more than anyone just speaking vain words impromptu. So, for him, fables are texts composed to entertain others, a sense developed when he goes on to make exceptions on the grounds of the Pauline term "inanes": Inanes uero ideo dicoiquoniam apologatie.id est. prouerbiales fabule auctorumrut esopi et aviani ociose non sunt:quoniam in perutilem nos instruunt moralitatem.76 [Therefore, I say "empty" truly because apologues - that is, proverbial fables of authors, like those of Aesop and Avianus - are not empty because they teach us very useful morality.] Raoul Ardent's exception is what we might expect from his context: fictive works which teach useful morality, specifically including the moralized beast fable. By contrast - again, in RaouPs context "inanes fabule" must be fictions which are not morally instructive, but merely entertaining. Although there is no evidence that RaouPs Speculum was read in England, it is interesting that some of our 74

75

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In the so-called "Epilogue t o T h e M a n of Law's T a l e , " present in s o m e manuscripts of t h e Tales, w e also find t h e Parson speaking acccording t o social expectations for a catechizing parish priest. When he rebukes the Host for swearing, what the Host suspects (besides a Lollard, in his dismissive mockery of religious reformers) is that the Parson will speak a "prediccacioun" as a tale, some type of religious teaching (11.1163-84). Strohm, Social Chaucer, p . 176, and " G e n e r i c Distinctions," p . 325. F o r t h e view that t h e rejection of fables involves t h e rejection of all t h e previous tales - indeed, all of "belletristic literature" - see Carol V. Kaske, "Getting Around," p. 165. Throughout Chaucer's writing, there is a sizeable range in his use of the term "fable": a narrative with mythological basis (Boece 3.m.l2.60); story in general (BD 52); an untrustworthy story (LGW 722); fiction (Tales VI.155); falsehood (Sted. 15). (I do not mean to imply a simple, "one sense" glossing of these passages; in each, senses of "fable" overlap.) Raoul A r d e n t , Speculum universale, f. 163 r .

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Lies, slander, and obscenity pastoral treatises, which labor to enact the norms they set, include an occasional beast fable (Etienne de Bourbon, for instance, tells a fable of a lion and a wolf in his chapter on flattery77) alongside the standard exemplary narratives from the Bible, the Vitae patrum, and, after Etienne, history and contemporary life. They never, to my knowledge, include a mythological tale or any tale which they represent to be fictive, except the beast fable. Therefore, pastoral practice would seem to follow RaouPs proscription of any fictitious narrative which is not an apologue. In the debate over whether or not the Parson is rejecting fiction totally, his opposed terms have often been skewed. 1 Tim. 4:7, key to his discourse and that of pastoral writers on priestly speech,78 does not focus on the fictive but on the "ineptas" in fables: they are inappropriate for Timothy as a "minister of Christ Jesus nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine" (4:6) because they are without serious judgment or wisdom ("ineptas" in the OLD).79 Such fables are associated by Paul with old women {aniles\ almost certainly because he takes them to be credulous vehicles of gossip and rumor a sense of "fable" in both Latin and English {DML 1 and MED 3a). As we have seen, under the pastoral "empty words," fables are paired with trifles and frivolous things - what the Parson calls metaphorically "draf" - by authorities like Bernard and Jerome. What he consistently contrasts as a religious teacher is the unedifying and insubstantial (though entertaining), what has no moral utility for its audience, with what the pilgrims understand to be "some vertuous sentence." (Given pastoral practice, much "narrative with fictitous plots" would fall into the former category - but not all, and certainly not "The Nun's Priest's Tale.") To utter the former is to turn aside from "soothfastnesse" - not reality ("sooth"), as some readers suggest, but the condition of being "soothfast": fidelity. An eschatological atmosphere in the prologue lends urgency to the Parson's insistent choice of nakedly moral discourse rather than "empty fables" for his audience. The pilgrims are approaching some kind of end for both a journey and the game of storytelling. The day 77 78

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Etienne de B o u r b o n , Tractatus, f. 232 r . Of the other two verses which contain the word "fabula," 1 Tim. 1:4 contrasts fables with what is edifying ("aedifkationem Dei") and 2 Tim. 4:4 contrasts them with "veritas" (not "the nonflctive," but "sanam doctrinam"). So, in all three verses, fables are the opposite of edifying religious teaching. I n A Preface to Chaucer, p p . 335-6, D . W . Robertson, Jr., cites t h e Glossa major o n t h e epistles t o T i m o t h y : it interprets "fabula" as fables w i t h o u t a n y meaning o r w i t h heretical meaning.

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Restraining the deviant speaker is waning. The narrator refers to Libra, a figure of divine judgment (and justice),80 and the Parson prays for the grace to show his fellow pilgrims "the wey, in this viage, / Of thilke parfit glorious pilgrymage / That highte Jerusalem celestial" (X.49-51). In the pastoral tradition of "empty words," warnings about imminent divine judgment usually accompany injunctions to avoid telling fables. "Empty words," as a type of verbal sin, stems from Jesus' warning in Mt. 12:36, quoted in all chapters on the type: "omne verbum otiosum, quod locuti fuerint homines, reddent de eo rationem in die judicii" [every idle word that men shall speak, they shall render an account for it in the day of judgment]. 81 Raoul Ardent strategically places this warning between his categories of empty words (including "ociose fabule") and Paul's proscription of "ineptas et aniles fabulas."82 This sententia authorizes the pastoral writers to weave together two key topoi from general discourse on verbal restraint: God's strict judgment of speech and its proper function as the ambassador of reason (chapter 2, parts I and III). Concerned with God's imminent judgment of the insignificant word and with the power of a single word to win grace, they turn to Bernard's eschatological rebuke of those who indulge in idle speech: Sed que ratio poterit reddi de verbis ociosis.cum ipsa sine ratione dicantur.vnde bern.Si propterea verbum ociosum est quod nullam racionabilem causam habeat quam rationem reddere poterimus de eo quod est preter racionem. licet confabulari aiunt donee pretereat hora.quam tibi ad agendam penitenciam adobtinendam veniam:ad adquirendam graciam ad promerendum gloriam miseracio conditoris indusserat.83 [But what account could be given for idle words when they are spoken without reason? Whence Bernard: If, therefore, the empty word is that which has no reasonable cause, what account could we give for that which is contrary to reason? It is permissible, they say, to confabulate until the hour passes which the mercy of the creator grants you to do penance, to obtain pardon, to deserve glory.] Given the nearby proscription of fables in these three treatises, it is difficult to resist seeing a pun in confabulari: to talk casually with 80 81 82 83

Chauncey W o o d , Stars, p p . 272-92; R o d n e y Delasanta, " J u d g m e n t , " p p . 301-7; Russell Peck, " N u m b e r Symbolism," p p . 213-14. Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. H10v; Quoniam, ff. 54r~v; Speculum morale, col. 1047; Book, p . 55; Speculum vitae, lines 13906-15; De lingua, f. 156 V . R a o u l A r d e n t , Speculum universale, f. 163 r . Peyraut, Summa de vitiis, f. II r ; see Quoniam, f. 54V; Speculum morale, cols. 1322 and 1047.

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y slander, and obscenity others and to utter fables. Whether that is so or not, the religious teacher's obligation to reject the unedifying for the salvific word is given an eschatological urgency in the pastoral treatises: he must face judgment for what he speaks and he must prepare others for judgment. Thus, Chaucer's Parson again acts rhetorically according to type when he redirects the pilgrims, approaching several ends, to "Jerusalem celestial," as he prepares them for catechetical discourse. Despite the Parson's blunt speech throughout the prologue, his rhetorical choices are not linked directly to the Manciple's performance. Although the Manciple's Ovidian fable surely falls among the types rejected by the Parson (Chaucer unmistakably uses the term elsewhere to signify a mythological tale [Boece 3.m.l2.60]),84 the Parson does not single it out. (We shall see one reason why when we examine his discourse on admonishing others.) Even his "I am nat textueel" is parodic, registering a different stance toward authoritative writing with deft indirection, not explicit reference. Nevertheless, the immediate juxtaposition of the Manciple's moralitas with the Parson's prologue sharply contrasts two different pastoral traditions on verbal restraint, the Manciple's multiplication of general and, usually, selfserving arguments and the Parson's avowal of a practical discipline appropriate for his status as a religious teacher. In both texts, the speaker uses the pastoral to stake out a rhetorical claim: the Manciple to a personal mastery of a rhetorical mode which denies jeeringly its validity as metalanguage and rhetoric, the Parson to edifying, authoritatively scriptural instruction in faith and morals - the claims, if we wish to be reductive and global, of Stanley Fish's rhetorical man and serious man.85 From the twelfth century, pastoral discourse on deviant speech had constructed the restrained speech of the religious teacher by, in part, demonizing his opposite, the vir linguosus who finds restraint and silence a punishment and mocks rightly directed speech when his vices are reproved.86 In the Manciple, Chaucer gives the vir linguosus his own voice and has him adopt his "mother's" voice in subversive, pseudo-pastoral ventriloquism. Then he introduces immediately a post-Lateran-IV pastor, who unapologetically 84

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O n e sense of t h e Middle English " f a b l e " a n d t h e medieval Latin fabula is fiction based o n myth or legend {MED la; DML 2). Jerome's phrase placing "fabulas antiquas" among frivolous subjects specifically indicates classical myth {Matheum, p. 96), but I have only found it quoted in one pastoral treatise: Alexander Carpenter's Destructorium, f. Svv. Stanley Fish, What Comes Naturally, pp. 471-502. Peter of London, Remediarium conuersorum, ff. 30 v -l r ; Pierre le Chantre, Verbum abbreviatum, f. 35V.

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Restraining the deviant speaker converts the opportunity for tale-telling into a pastoral situation, a rhetorical move which the Host and his fellow pilgrims accept readily. Does the Parson use this situation to counter, directly or indirectly, the Manciple's subversion of verbal restraint - a significant topic for a teaching priest - or his outrageous earlier indulgence in open reproof?

The discourse the Parson presents accords with his rhetorical choices, as priest, in the prologue: instruction in confession directed to laity and clergy alike - an oral version of "the manual intended exclusively for penitential use."87 Like Genius in the Confessio Amantis, the Parson advocates "Confessioun of Mouth" as a lingual discipline focused on truth-telling in light of authoritative norms. In this, he is conceiving of sin in general as it usually is conceived of in catechetical literature after the Fourth Lateran Council, deviation from divine law (chapter 1): Now for as muche as the seconde partie of Penitence stant in confessioun of mouth, as I bigan in the firste chapitre, I seye, Seint Augustyn seith, / "Synne is every word and every dede, and al that men coveiten, agayn the lawe of Jhesu Crist; and this is for to synne in herte, in mouth, and in dede." (X.958-9)

In addressing the violation of divine norms, the Parson often resorts to this tripartite formula: with it, he structures some remedia (most obviously those for pride and envy) and, especially, he organizes his whole catechesis around the three parts of penitence (contrition of heart, confession of mouth, satisfaction by deed), which traditionally were paired with these three ways of sinning (chapter 4, part I). Within this framework, the Parson initially presents the controlled speech of confession itself as a means of doing penance for, combating, and eradicating "reccheleesnesse in spekynge," speech sinful because it is unregarded (X.I06-10) - the speech which the Manciple's mother tries to control with general prudential admonitions. Although he does not refer to the Manciple, the Parson establishes confessional speech as an alternative to the type of pastoral discourse the Manciple has subverted, another instrument for controlling the tongue. 87

Patterson, " 'Parson's Tale/ " p. 339.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity The discourse of confession, as the Parson presents it, depends on a fundamental type of pastoral discourse, that on the vices, which, as chapter 2 described, presents types of sin in such a way as to enable the penitent to see them in his own experience and to elicit revulsion against them. As Kathleen Ashley says, the Parson insists that "the process of repentance begins with correctly naming one's sins and acknowledging one's culpability."88 In his "tale," as in the ecclesiastical legislation following the Fourth Lateran Council, confession is to follow pastoral instruction in sin (chapter 1). Hence the sub treatise on the Seven Sins embedded in the Parson's "secunda pars Penitentie." Among the three ways of sinning so often invoked in the treatise, only the Sins of the Tongue are identified and treated as a group in the subtreatise on sin, giving them a prominence akin to that in Peyraut's Summa, which was, at some remove, the source for most of the Parson's discourse on sin.89 Virtually all of the second part of Peyraut's ninth tractate is presented, in reduced form, but in his order: seventeen of the twenty-four specific sins, four minor (briefly treated) Peyrautian ones being omitted and three major ones treated elsewhere.90 Thus, the Parson emphasizes in his treatment of sin (and confession) the very pastoral discourse which the Manciple mockingly eviscerates: that on deviant speech. Yet he speaks only of specific verbal sins, not the Sin of the Tongue in general. With what rhetorical strategies and resources? Let us first consider the placement of the group, unprecedented, in my ken, in literature on the Sins of the Tongue: as part of the discourse on Ire (579-653).91 The Parson takes pains to weave the 88 89 90

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Kathleen Ashley, " R e n a m i n g the Sins," p . 287. Wenzel, " S o u r c e , " p p . 351-78; Sources and Analogues, p . 724. I n t h e seventeen Sins of the T o n g u e , I have included convicium and contention jointly treated as "chydynge and reproche." Imprudent taciturnity, imprudent promises, loving rumors and base speech are omitted; boasting is considered under pride (X.393), backbiting and murmur under envy (X.496-7; X.497-509). These three placements are the traditional Gregorian ones, and catechetical imperatives justify each; they are subspecies of a capital sin, means of committing it. Interestingly, whereas the Sins of the Tongue under "Ire" are very close to Peyraut's Summa in figurae, sententiaey and even wording, the three separated ones are not (save for the first part of murmur). Peyraut's prima pars on verbal restraint, in general, would have no place in such a carefully delimited discourse on penitence, in which all material has to do with the process, the Seven Sins and their "braunches" and "twigges" covering all that needs to be confessed (as the Parson suggests when he declines to expound the Decalogue [X.956-7]). Scattergood claims that "In works on the Deadly Sins the 'sins of the tongue* are sometimes treated independently, but in many collections they are discussed under Anger" ("Manner of Speaking," p. 124). He offers no evidence, but does go on to conclude that "This classification was evidently accepted by some of Chaucer's contemporaries" because Langland treats talebearing under Ira> in the Confession of the Seven Sins (Piers B.5.172-6) and

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Restraining the deviant speaker Sins of the Tongue into the discourse on anger, tying the first three of them - blasphemy, excusing sin, swearing - to an Augustinian definition of anger which presents speech as a tool of vengeance: "This synne of Ire, after the discryvyng of Seint Augustyn, is wikked wil to been avenged by word or by dede" (X.535; e.g., in 580, 583, 587). In this way, the Parson integrates discourse on deviant speech into the standard framework of "the sevene deedly synnes... [the] chieftaynes of synnes" (X.387), keeping the time-honored schema and the scholastic stress on the genesis of sin in the will (chapter 2). Yet the Sins of the Tongue are not scattered under their "heads" and, thus, submerged, as they are in many post-scholastic treatises on sin like Carpenter's Destructorium or Heinrich von Freimar's Summa vitiorum. Interestingly, the closest known text to the Parson's on the sins in general, Quoniam, manages both to foreground the Sins of the Tongue and to place them under their "heads." In it, the opening Augustinian tripartite definition of sin introduces a long discourse on peccata oris, which includes much of Peyraut's general discourse on Gower groups "a variety of sins of the tongue" under "cheste" in the book on wrath (pp. 124-5). First the evidence from the fictive confessions. Langland's sinners confess a variety of verbal sins in passus 5; Envy, for example, speaks of "chidynge and chalangynge... Wit> bakbitynge and bismere and berynge of fals witnesse" (B.5.87—8), as well as lying (133). Of the six verbal sins to which Gower devotes a division of a book, "avantance" and "murmur and compleignte" are placed under pride (1.4; 1.7), detraction under envy (II.3), perjury and false witness under avarice (V.4), and flattery outside the sequence (in Book VII); only "cheste" falls under anger, although it is a composite sin of the tongue, as I argued earlier in this chapter. So, neither Gower nor Langland can be said to "discuss" the Sins of the Tongue under anger. Just as Gower follows, roughly, Gregory the Great's schema for the "daughters" of the Seven Sins (chapter 1 and chapter 4, part I), so do catechetical texts on the sins. None of the eleven interrogationes for confessors or the eleven modi for penitents which I examined (note 52 to chapter 4) group all or most of the Sins of the Tongue under anger or any other capital sin. On the other hand, sometimes the largest and most varied group is found under anger, as in Johannes von Freiburg's Confessionale, which includes cursing, derision, sowing discord, blasphemy, insult, defamation, perjury, and temerarious oaths (f. 143r). Among encyclopedic texts, the two latest of our six main sources, the Speculum morale and the Destructorium viciorum, distribute their sins of the tongue under all seven capital sins (with the Speculum grouping one more under accidia than under ira). It is not surprising that pastoral writers gathered a large number of sins of the tongue under anger, for the authoritative Gregorian scheme had lodged three of its nine there (chapter 1). I have found one precedent for placing the Peyrautian sins - in their Peyrautian order under ira. The redaction of the Summa de vitiis with the incipit "Nisi hoc vicium" merges Peyraut's ninth tractate on peccata linguae with his eighth on anger (ff. 151r-70v). However, unlike "The Parson's Tale," this redaction digests the whole tractate, including the prima pars on verbal sin in general, and it does not offer a transition linking the peccata linguae to ira. (Also ira is last among the Seven Sins, as in Peyraut's Summa - not third, as in "The Parson's Tale.") Therefore, "Nisi hoc vicium" cannot be considered in any sense a source for "The Parson's Tale," although it provides an instance for gathering all verbal sins under anger, thus subordinating them, along with all other sins, to the Capital Seven.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity verbal restraint, together with his chapters on multiloquium, ociosa verba, turpiloquium, and scurrilitas.92 In addition to this substantial section, fifteen of Peyraut's specific sins are treated separately, each under the appropriate Capital Sin. So, while the Parson's treatment of verbal sin is least like that in Quoniam because it gathers rather than disperses most of them, like Quoniam it gives them a prominence akin to that in Peyraut's final tractate or the book of la male langue in Lorens' Somme le roi (and its many Middle English offshoots). Following suit, the Parson also treats them, as a group, more expansively than some of the Seven Sins themselves, like Gluttony or even Avarice. To move the will of the deviant speaker, the Parson's discourse on verbal sin, like that in the major treatises, works on the reason and the emotions together (chapter 2, part IV). Truncated as his treatments of sin are in comparison with that in those treatises, the essential elements of the more complex types are given first so that auditors have the knowledge to identify them in their own speech during confession: lying is "fals signyficaunce of word, in entente to deceyven his eveneCristene" (X.608; see chapter 2, part III); flattery is "wrongful preisynge" which "ne comth nat gladly, but for drede or for coveitise" (X.612-13; see chapter 4, part II). Signification, intended effect, will - all are seen as essential elements. The rest is given over to the rhetoric of detestation, employed sparingly, in this reduced version, rather than with the copiousness of the extended treatises like De lingua. Just as we would expect from the prologue, the "olde sentences," with the authority named, provide scriptural authority for the Parson's urgent claims on attention and for his prohibitions: chiding is "a ful grisly synne, as Crist seith in the gospel" (X.623) and "Seint Paul seith eek, 'The servant of God bihoveth nat to chide'" (X.630).93 Rooted in the Bible and the Fathers of the Church, the discourse seems timeless and universal in its claims. Arguments, chiefly in the form of enthymemes, work to move the will to aversion for verbal sins: the chastiser should be wary of reproving because "he may ful lightly quyken the fir of angre and of wratthe, which that he sholde quenche, and peraventure sleeth hym which that he myghte chastise with benignitee" (X.628). Similitudes, necessarily brief, work on the emotions, as well as the reason ("For certes, swiche scornerers 92 93

QuoniamJL 50r-6v. The various ways in which the Parson links sententiae in his treatment of swearing and "chidynge and reproche" are traced by Anthony Luengo, "Synthesis," pp. 226-31.

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Restraining the deviant speaker faren lyk the foule tode, that may nat endure to smelle the soote savour of the vyne whanne it florissheth," X.636), as do nuggetal exempla, so common in Peyraut's Summa and De lingua, recalling a well-known biblical story ("Flaterers... been lyk to Judas that bitraysen a man to sellen hym to his enemy," X.616).94 With such exempla, as with sententiae, the Parson points to a moral order which transcends time: all flatterers do what Judas did, re-enacting the biblical events (chapter 3). Neither wholly expository nor wholly rational, as critics commonly claim,95 the Parson's discourse on "the synnes that comen of the tonge" is constructed to move the will (as it instructs) to that detestation of sin which the Parson sees as a cause of contrition ("desdeyn of synne," X.142-57).96 In this conventional pastoral discourse on verbal sin, the Parson enacts what he exhorts of others: "benigne amonestynge and chastisynge" of one's neighbors, a form of loving them in word (X.517-18). (This mode of speech is what "The General Prologue" has led us to expect: the Parson is portrayed as "in his techynge discreet and benygne," not "daungerous" or "digne" [1.517-18]. David Lawton argues that he practices "temperance of speech."97) In his subdiscourse on "chidynge and reproche," he voices traditional clerical norms for such speech when he takes pains to distinguish between improper reproving and proper chastising of others: And certes, chidynge may nat come but out of a vileyns herte. For after the habundance of the herte speketh the mouth ful ofte. / And 94

95 96

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Scanlon, Narrative, p . 14, has recently followed Patterson (" 'Parson's T a l e / " p p . 345-6) in claiming that "the tale differs from its models in its exclusion of specific hortatory rhetorical effects, most notably in its exclusion of the exemplum." While I have n o t scrutinized confessional literature as a " m o d e l " for the Parson's tale, I can point t o the recurrent use of the embryonic exemplum, almost always a reference t o a w e l l - k n o w n biblical story, in general pastoral discourse o n verbal sin. In some quite expansive texts, like Peyraut's Summa de vitiis and De lingua, virtually all narrative is recalled briefly, usually in a clause, rather than told at length. A n d in all of them, even Etienne de B o u r b o n ' s Tractatus, with its m a n y paragraph-long exempla from the Vitae patrum or contemporary life, the biblical tale is recalled briefly. F o r example, Peyraut's rather full chapter o n flattery, ff. H 2 r - H 4 r , with dozens of similitudes, contains only a few biblical exempla of a clause o r t w o , including a reference t o Judas' betrayal as brief as that in the Parson's short section o n flattery. Similarly, the fourteenth-century English pastoral manual the Fasciculus morum contains only t w o nuggetal exempla, both biblical, in its discourse o n flattery (pp. 168-73; see also De lingua, ff. 164 r -5 r ). So, general pastoral discourse o n verbal sin at least, which is what the Parson is presenting, n o t only uses the nuggetal exemplum instead of a m o r e fully realized narrative, but uses it sparingly, as the Parson does. Patterson, " 'Parson's T a l e , ' " p . 347; Finke, " T h e Parson's Rhetoric," p p . 97-105. O n l y lying, given over t o Augustinian subtypes (X.608-11; see chapter 2, part II) and some of the minor Peyrautian sins (reduced b y Chaucer to a sentence o r two) lack his conventional pastoral rhetoric. Lawton, " T w o W a y s , " p p . 28-36.

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Lies, slander, and obscenity ye shul understonde that looke, by any wey, whan any man shal chastise another, that he be war from chidynge or reprevynge. For trewely, but he be war, he may ful lightly quyken the fir of angre and of wratthe, which that he sholde quenche, and peraventure sleeth hym which that he myghte chastise with benignitee. / For as seith Salomon, "The amyable tonge is the tree of lyfe" - that is to seyn, of lyfe espiritueel - and soothly, a deslavee tonge sleeth the spirites of hym that repreveth and eek of hym that is repreved. (X.627-8) All the major pastoral treatises labor to make this distinction clear: the unbridled speaker venting hostile emotions rudely, as opposed to the kindly disposed speaker concerned with the spiritual welfare of others. The one elicits wrath; the other, the desire for religious or social reform.98 Such a distinction, of course, clears the way for that reproof or refutation of vice ("redargatio uitiorum," in Peter of London's words") which is a basic pastoral mode exercised in preaching, directing confession, and admonishing people privately (chapter 1), including the Parson's own discourse on the sins. More broadly, it establishes norms for speech which rebukes others for violating communal values and practices: norms for the will and the intention of the speaker, norms for the consequences of speech. How do these pastoral norms relate to the Manciple's open reproof of the drunken Cook? As we have seen, his words bear the fundamental marks of convicium/" reprevynge" in the Parson's discourse and pastoral treatises in general. Since the Parson illustrates uncharitable reproof with "thou dronkelewe harlot" (X.625), it raises the question even more sharply.100 By way of answer, let us look at the Parson's own pastoral practice in terms of his distinctions between improper reproof and benign chastising. While laboring to move the will against sins with the full resources of the rhetoric of detestation, the Parson never singles out 98

99 100

The Parson's few sentences condense only part of Peyraut's contrast of proper correctio — mild (mansuetus), restrained (moderatus), pleasing (placabilis) — with a mixture of convicium and correctio: immansuetus, immoderatus, full of insults, heedless - all characteristics of a wrathful person's speech (ff. H6 r " v ; see Speculum morale, cols. 1177-8, and De lingua, ff. 173 v -4 r ). Peter of London, Remediarium conuersorum, ff. 3 0 v - l r . The illustration of abusive speech ("thou dronkelewe harlot") is not in Peyraut's Summa or other known texts which may be sources for "The Parson's Tale," as Siegfried Wenzel notes in The Riverside Chaucer, p. 961. This does not suggest that Chaucer added this example to establish a specific connection to the Manciple's reproof of the Cook; he could have found it in some source, perhaps a reworking of Peyraut's original (for some different ways of reworking the Summa, see WenzePs "Continuing Life").

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Restraining the deviant speaker an individual sinner,101 a discursive technique of the Manciple - and the Pardoner (or so the latter says). Consequently, the often gross or demeaning pastoral figurae - scornful speakers as toads, flatterers as Judas - never function as insult and so ignite "the fir of angre." So carefully general a discourse is necessary, of course, to set forth norms broad enough to cover a whole range of deviant utterances and move all auditors, but it is also impersonal, not a vehicle for settling scores or dominating others. Indeed, the very fact that the Parson never refers directly to the Manciple allows him to offer, with integrity, an alternative to the Manciple's insulting, manipulative open reproof of sin in his prologue. And, in that the Parson urges others to "benigne amonestynge and chastisynge" of their neighbors (a form of loving them "in word," X.518), his discourse on sin serves as a model for lay speech, as well as a vindication of pastoral speech. This practice of offering alternative models of speech instead of "answering" the Manciple operates more broadly in the Parson's whole treatise. In it, as in his treatment of the Sins of the Tongue, the Parson follows the practical moral discipline of hewing to scriptural "knowledge and the law" (as Peyraut says, himself hewing to Malachi) and so eliminating the superfluous word. This rhetorical discipline, as we have seen, he openly adopts in the prologue in ways developed in the pastoral tradition of idle words. By doing so, the Parson proclaims and embodies in oral discourse an alternative to the Manciple's way of controlling a tongue dangerous in its volubility: rapid-fire arguments based in a self-regarding prudentialism derived from various supposed authorities. So, the Parson seeks to eliminate words which are superfluous in that they are not scriptural and salvific, whereas the Manciple's mother sees the superfluous as that which threatens the speaker. Without directly fingering the Manciple, the Parson juxtaposes to the Manciple's moralitas on loquacity a discourse on confession which includes, as part of its "vertuous mateere," the specific Sins of the Tongue in the order, matter, and even (roughly) proportion given them by their most influential pastoral expositor. (Far from the Manciple's practice, "janglynge" is here given its Peyrautian place - second to last - and its proportionate length - two sentences.) Even in reduced form, this discourse functions to enable full moral analysis of intent, will, consequences, and signification, whereas the Manciple disjoins the crow's speech 101

Taylor, "Tongue," p. 408.

227

Lies, slander, and obscenity from the moralitas by never subjecting it to moral analysis in the tale and by beginning the moralitas in terms ludicrously narrow and broad, in turn. Thus, he manages to reduce moral analysis to consequences - and those only to the speaker's social and physical welfare - unlike the Parson's insistence on the speaker's eternal destiny, and the material and spiritual welfare of others, especially the audience. Further, the Parson presents this discourse on the Sins of the Tongue as Will the dreamer presents that on minstrels' scurrility in Piers Plowman: as a powerful instrument in effecting detestation for sin and so contrition. As priest and pastor, the Parson embraces, within the context of confession, the metalinguistic norms and the instrumental rhetoric derived from scripture in an act of salvific instruction, a sanctioned form of speech adroitly omitted by the Manciple whose admonitory speech gave the lie to its own moral imperatives (unrestrained speech should be used only in prayer and praise). In this contrasting speech about speech, Chauncey Wood has argued, Chaucer presents us with its improper and proper uses: "the good pedagogical and religious uses of speech in his [the Parson's] tale may be contrasted with the slanderous and self-serving uses of speech in the Manciple's Prologue and Tale."102 The Parson's speech, although that of one pilgrim among many, is privileged by its placement (last in all manuscripts) and by other means registered by many readers.103 Certainly in its scripturalism and its "coherent and all-inclusive analysis of human conduct," it "lays claim...to a complete and even absolute view of experience as a whole" 104 - with speech prominently part of that whole. Despite this somewhat privileged monology, with its countering of the Manciple's moralitas, Chaucer has subjected a strain of pastoral discourse to mockery, at least as used in general prudential instruction which, outside the church, had a powerful place in his culture: in the school, in models of parental advice, in the literature of moralized fable (like that analogue 102 103

104

W o o d , "Speech," p. 216; see also Britton H a r w o o d , "Language," pp. 276-9. T h e "perspectivists," w h o believe that the Tales invites an ironic, even satiric, perspective on the Parson, see his discourse as of n o greater weight than the tales of other pilgrims "separate but equal," in Kaske's words ("Getting Around," p. 109; see also Finlayson, Finke, Judson Allen in "The O l d W a y , " and Aers). However, Siegfried Wenzel argues convincingly that the Parson's prologue contains "rhetorical pointers that clearly prepare the reader for something of higher significance than what has gone before" ("Parson's Tale," pp. 86-98). In addition, the eschatological atmosphere lends more weight to the Parson's discourse, as does (most readers believe) the idealizing of the Parson. Patterson, " 'Parson's Tale,'" p. 346.

228

Restraining the deviant speaker to "The Manciple's Tale," the tale of Phoebus and Coronis from the Ovide moralise). The Manciple's parody demonstrates that, divorced from both its semiotic basis and the analysis of specific sins, general prudential discourse on restraining speech is contradictory in its very prolixity, exaggerated in its claims to govern all speech, nauseatingly self-serving, tediously admonitory, and easily reducible to disjointed babble. The Manciple may have his evident self-serving strategies, not least of which is his demonstration of rhetorical power over a clerical tradition which claims to subject all to its norms and rhetoric, but that very demonstration still exposes the fissures and rhetorical limitations of pastoral discourse. What the Parson does is to put pastoral discourse on deviant speech in its proper place. It is uttered by a post-Lateran-IV teaching priest. It functions in an exclusively pastoral activity: instruction in morality as preparation for sacramental confession, the use of speech to tell the truth about one's own conduct in terms of clerical norms. (Not telling the "truth" about others, as the Manciple would have it.) There it is fully scriptural, its prudential strain melded, as in all pastoral treatises, with other strains derived from the Bible.105 On "chidynge and reproche" Solomon may be cited ("there is nevere reste" between a chiding wife and her husband), but Jesus and Paul have been used to supply authoritative exhortation against reproach. Concomitantly, it is separated from other prudential genres beloved (or so we are told) by the Manciple's mother: the proverb, the Catonic distich, and the moralized fable in which "moralitee" is reduced to admonition in an appendage to the narrative. In fact, the brief recollection of biblical story is its only form of narrative. It is succinct, catalogic, carefully exploited for its uses, instructional and suasive, in constructing confession and thus in preparing the soul for the New Jerusalem. Unadulterated, in an appropriate rhetorical situation, it regains its authority, its integrity (it enacts its own norms), and, therefore, its claims to set valid norms for the speech of all Christians. Its claims, of course, are not accepted as valid, as binding on the conscience, by a figure within the narrative, like the catechizing narrator of Patience and the lover of the Confessio Amantis, who embrace pastoral constraints on particular verbal sins to which they 105

In his subsection on deviant speech, the Parson not only uses a full range of authorities from the Bible, but he acknowledges only it as a source of sententiae. The rest of the "tale" also draws extensively on the Christian Fathers, as the Parson acknowledges in his attributions and as Wenzel's notes in The Riverside Chaucer demonstrate. Other texts and writers are quite rare.

229

Lies, slander, and obscenity are prone, the one at the end of a text, the other at the end of a confessional sequence. Chaucer's method is not exemplary, with the exemplum's inevitable focus on consequences, designed to elicit fear or at least prudential caution - in an auditor or teller who models a response for audiences, the narrator shunning "vnsounde" like that which Jonah incurs for murmur, the lover fearing destruction like that visited upon the slanderers of Constance and Perseus. (Both exempla, of course, are far too sophisticated rhetorically to evoke simply that response.) Indeed, Chaucer constructs the Manciple's speech so that it eviscerates prudential exemplarity. His Tales does not present revulsion against, or repentance of, verbal sin, except insofar as the Retraction involves verbal sin - and that certainly does not invoke a specific verbal type, let alone its characteristic discourse. Nor does Chaucer the narrator adopt discourse on a specific verbal sin like the dreamer of Piers Plowman, addressing it, at a prominent ending, to an audience ("Ye lordes and ladies and legates of holy chirche") responsible for current abuses of public speech. Neither, then, is his method admonitory, a practice also subverted by the Manciple's ventriloquistic clerical voice. Instead of extended discourse on a particular sin realized in exemplum or direct admonition, the full Peyrautian range of verbal sins is presented by Chaucer embedded within discourse on the Seven Sins, and that within discourse on confession. What Chaucer attempts, as the Manciple's moralitas and the Parson's prologue, as well as this contexualized presentation suggest, is to present discourse on the Sins of the Tongue in a way which allows it a consistency, authority, and rhetorical force his Manciple has denied it. His vehicle is an exemplary figure, a teaching parish priest who adopts consciously and practices strictly the very scriptural norms for the tongue which he advocates. He gives that figure the prominent place and the full rhetorical resources his discourse demands. Yet the very embedding which gives that discourse a proper pastoral place in a catechetical treatise both reduces it to a digest and removes it from the speakers of the Tales, including the narrator, so that, unlike his three great contemporaries - the Patience poet, Gower, and Langland - he leaves its effect unwritten, neither presented in an epilogue nor registered in any voice.

230

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249

Index

aequalitas, see sign, correspondence with Alain de Lille, Summa 11,14,167,171-2, 214 Albert the Great, Summa theologiae 20-1 n Albertano da Brescia, De arte loquendi 9n, 54n, 119n,202 Alford, John 160n, 179n-80n Allen, Judson B. 11 In, 160n Allen, Mark 204n Alphabet of Tales, An 75-6, 88n, 93, 99n, 102n, 105-6,147,181 Anderson, J. J. lOln Anderson, Judith H. 176n Andrew, Malcolm 94n, lOln Ardent, Raoul, Speculum universale 15, 72, 128n, 159n, 179n, 181n, 214-15, 217-18 Aristotle 27-9,118-22 Ashley, Kathleen 222 Augustine, Aurelius 11, 59, 96-7; lying 38-47; sign theory 27-33, 37-8 Ayers, R. H. 48n

Bernard of Clairvaux, De consideratione 215, 219 Bible, Sins of the Tongue in 4,11; Genesis 37-8; James 49-50; Jonah 73-117; Numbers 81-3, 86,104; Pauline epistles 158-62,164-6, 213-14, 217; Psalms 96-7; Wisdom Literature 48-55, 81,198-212 Billington, Sandra 165n Bloomfield, Morton 19n, 85n, 165n Blythe, Joan 157n, 163n, 184n Book of Vices and Virtues, The 18,41,52,54-5, 138-9,170-1,178n, 198n, 205n, 214n Bowers John M. 105n, 176,181-2,184n Bowers R. H. 84n Boyle, Leonard 14n, 17n, 22n, 116n Braswell, Mary F. 7n, 115n Bremond, Claude 75n, 77-8, 87n, 194 Bromyard, John Summa praedicantium 68n,

Babees Book, The 207-8 Baker, Donald 188n, 193n, 203n Bakhtin, Mikhail 25n, 188 Baldwin, John W. l l n , 14n, 160n-ln, 165n, 168n Baratin, Marc 28n, 40n Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De proprietatibus rerum 202n Bartolomeo da San Concordio, De documentis antiquorum 50 base talk/scurrility 141; definition 160, 177; Pauline authority 158-62,164-6; social consequences 160-1,167-70,175-83; sources 13,15, 22n, 159n; will 168-72 Bataillon, L.-J. 67n, 69n Bennett, J. A. W. 139n Berlioz, Jacques 63n, 65n, 88n, 93, 99n, 148n

Caesarius von Heisterbach, Dialogus miraculorum 86-90 Cairns, Francis 85,112n Carpenter, Alexander Destructorium viciorum: deceptive speech 125-31,171n; detraction 136n, 138n; fables 215n-16n, 220n; lying 37-43; sin l l n , 20, 58; Sins of the Tongue 22 Carmen De Iona 85 Carruthers, Mary J. 61n, 63, 65n, 70-1,122n Casagrande, Carla 6, 8n, 13n, 15n-17n, 35n, 36-7, 50n, 54n, 59n, 81n, 114n, 161n, 172n,205n,210n Chambers, E. K. 171n, 180n Chaucer, Geoffrey:

137n, 179n-80n Burrow, John A. 8,105,154-5,184n Bursill-Hall, G. L. 122n

"THE MANCIPLE'S PROLOGUE AND TALE": -

dissociation from discourse 200-1,206-8,

250

Index 211-12; - exemplum 194-8; - fable, Ovidian 194-5,220; - Gower's "Phebus and Cornide" 198-20; - moralitas 188-9, 194-5,197-212,227-9; - pastiche 208-9; - pastoral parody 200-12, 228-9; - public reproof of Cook 189-93,226-7; speech: — consequences of deviant, 197-212; - norms for 209-12; prudence in 200-11, 228-9; - restraint of 7-8,188-9,192-3,197-212, 227-30;tongue, power of 191-3,206, 210; unrestrained speech of 195-7,200, 220; "THE PARSON'S PROLOGUEAND TALE": —

confessional discourse 221-2; eschatological atmosphere 218-20; fables 187, 213-21; - idle words 214-21, see entry; - order 188n; - Prologue 187-9,212-21; - public reproof 190-3; restrained speech of 225-30; scripturalism 213-14,216-18, 224, 227-9; - scurrility 177,182; - Sins of the Tongue 7-8,188-9, 222-6,229-30; speech: - norm of evangelical teaching 215-21,225-30; - restraint of 214-21 227-30; - salviflc/deviant dichotomy 215-21;status as parish priest 187-8, 216-17, 220-1,228-30 Clark, S. L. 89n Cleanness 97-8 Clensing of Manes Sawle, Pe 144n clergy 3-4,10-11, 36-7; see also pastoral care Coleman, Janet 184n Colish, Marcia 27n, 39n, 4In, 43n, 46n confession: annual 12; literature of 8,115-17, 221-2; -formae confitendi 115-17, 132-3,142-5; - interrogationes 115-17, 132-7,140-2; - summae confessorum 20-1 n, 116; normative speech 33-5, 221-2; preaching and 11-12, 221-2; priests' roles in 12-13,132-6 Cooper, Helen 188n, 193n, 194n, 197n, 201n, 207n,210n,212,213n Councils 3,10-13 Copeland, Rita 119n Corti, Maria 46n Crane, Thomas 63 n Cursor Mundi 114n Davenport, W. A. 80n, 89n D'Avray, David 12n, 65n

Dean, James 204n Deely, John 32n Delasanta, Rodney 219n De lingua: base talk/scurrility 159n, 167n, 177n-80; flattery 125n, 126n, 128n; idle words 214n, 216n; insult 190n-2n; murmur 81-2, 86n, 99n; similitudes 63-5; Sins of the Tongue 18-19; speech: consequences of deviant 48-52; - norms for 29, 31-3 "De superbia" 99n, 102n detraction 7,157,171-2; consequences 139-42,145-53; definition 136-7; detestation for 137-42; intention 136-45; signification 136-7; sources 13,14n, 15, 17,19,22,136n, 149-50; will 136-45 Diekstra, F. N. M. 85n, 94n Dionysius von Rijkel 17 Disce mori 24 Distinctiones pro sermonibus 202 Distiche Catonis 52, 202-4,207-8 Dives et Pauper 92n, 97n, 125n-8n Donaldson, E. T. 158,166n, 184 Dondaine, Antoine 16n-17n, 57-8, 60 Douglas, Mary 36n "Duplex est abstinentia" 67-9 DwyerJ. B. 117n Eagleton, Terry 3 Ebin, Lois 195n Economou, George 184n Eldredge, Laurence 108n Etienne de Bourbon, Tractatus: detraction 136n, 147,149; exempla 61-3, 83-4, 145-6; flattery 125n-8n; murmur 81n-2n, 86n, 90, 95n, 104; pastoral rhetoric 60-3; Sins of the Tongue 19-20; speech: - consequences of deviant 48-52; - norms for 33-6; - restraint of 26n, 49-56 exemplum 8, 61-3, 225; circumstances 86-92, 102-4,149-50,194-5; collage 77-80, 95, 110-11,150-1,154-5; consequences 83, 98-100,104-5,145-53,194-7,229-30; historical verity 75-6,153-4; moralitas 146-52,194-5,197-212; reproducibility 75-6,109-12,146,153; sin, detestation for 83,145-53; univocity 88, 92-100,102, 148-9; see also Gower, Confessio Amantis, and Patience Expositio libri de electionibus 85-6, 90n, 172n, 177n, 179n

251

Index Hazelton, Richard 195n, 202n, 205n, 207n, 210n Hornsby, Joseph 188n Hughes, Jonathan lOn, 12n, 163n

Fasciculus morum 41, 69, 203, 225n Finke, Laurie 67n, 225n flattery 15,17,19, 22n, 125n-9,157,170-2, 188 Foucault, Michel 25 Fowler, Elfreda 117 Fradenburg, Louise 189,195 Fulk,R.D.211n

"I knowleche" 172n idle words 157, 164n; consequences 213-15; definition 214; fables 173, 213-21; judgment of 218-20; sources 15,17, 22n, 214n; see also Chaucer "In nomine" 141n "In the begynyng" 134n "Incipiunt narraciones" 147n Irwin, John 94n Islip, Simon 12, 163n

Gallacher,P.J. 129n Gehl, Paul 5, 53 Gilbert the Minorite, Distinctiones lln, 68n Gillespie, Vincent 12n 14n, 18n, 115n Gobi, Jean, Scala coeli 106n, 147n, 172, 179n Gower, John: Mirour de Vomme 116n, 117, 119n, 136,139,141-2,153,156,198n; Vox clamantis 124, 202n; Confessio Amantis: Amans 7, 131-6, 139-55; confessional sequence 113-14,154-6; clerical catechesis 131-42,154-5, 198-9; - exempla 145-56,198-200; penitent's speech 131-6,142-5; confessional literature: - interrogationes 115-17, 132-7,140-2; -forma

confitendiU5-\7,132-3,142-5; Genius as priest 7-8,113-16,131-42, 145-56; - rhetoric 114-15,118-23; signs, trust in 123-4, 129-31; - Sins of the Tongue 114-15,117-18, 222n-3n; "cheste" 117-18,197-20; - deceptive speech 7,114-15,124-31,142-5, 154-5; - detraction 117-18,136-56; flattery 118,125-9,171n; - hypocrisy 117,129-31;speech: - cognitive function 118-22; norms for 114-15,119-20; - prudence in 198-200;tales: - "Ahab and Micaiah" 127-9; "Constance" 146-8; - "Demetrius and Perseus" 146-53; - "Mundus and Paulina" 129-31; - "Phebus and Cornide" 197-200;tongue 198-200; - truth 122-4,128-31, 154 Gregory the Great 13-14,172n Griffiths, Lavinia 158n Guido de Monte Rocherii, Manipulus curatorum 136n, 172n Gurevich, Aron In, 5n Haines,RoyM. 12n, 13 Hanna, Ralph 71

Jackson, R. D. 30n Jacob's Well 36, 91, 92n, 171n Jacques de Vitry, Exempla 27, 83—4 Jean de La Rochelle, Summa de vitiis 20-21 n, 42-3 Jerome 50-1, 92n, 220n Johannes von Freiburg 135,137,140-1, 165-6,181n,223n John de Burgh, Pupilla oculi 14n, 141n, 172n, 180n Jordan, Mark 30n, 32n Jordan, Robert M. 204n, 21 On Kaske, Carol 217n,228n Kelly, L. G. 32 Kemmler, Fritz 83n Kinneavy, Gerald 118n, 136n Kirk, Elizabeth 109n, 111 Knight, Stephen 189 Kretzmann, Norman 38n, 122n language: genesis of 29-30,119-21; limitations of 2,107-8; see also sign, speech Larkin, Mirium 120 Latini, Brunetto 119,123n Lawton, David 174,176n, 181n, 183n, 185, 188n,225 Le Goff, Jacques 46n, 65n, 78n Lewry, P. Osmund 66n, 121n Lindahl, Carl 189 Little, Lester 12n, 134n Lorens d'Orleans 17-18 Lowes, John L. 190n Luengo, Anthony 224n Lusignan, Serge 22n

252

Index lying 157, 164, 170-2; consequences 44-6; definition 38-9; falsity 3 8 ^ 0 , 42-5; intention 41-3; pastoral rhetoric on 58-67; sources for 13, 14n, 15, 17, 22n, 37-46; will 39-44 Lyons, John D. 6n, 62n-3n, 76n, 77n, 93n Macaulay, G. C. 140 Macdonnell, Diane 25n Maguire, Stella 175n Mannyng, Robert, Handlyng Synne 1-2, 69-70, 78-80, 90n, 110,160n Manzalaoui, M. A. 13In Marbod of Rennes Naufragium Ionae 85n, 92n Martin, Herve 11-12, 215n Martin, Priscilla 181 n McGavin, John J. 195n memory 70-1 Memoriale credencium 114n mendicants 10-11, 21 Middleton, Anne 124n, 156n, 158n, 184n Miller, Paul 165n Minnis, A. J. 27n, 83n, 153n, 161n Mirk, John, Instructions 115 monastic life 53-4, 81, 172n Moore, R. I. 3n Moorman, Charles 80n, 84n murmur 7, 141, 157; biblical exempla 80-4, 86-7, 99; circumstances 86-92, 1 0 2 ^ ; consequences 98-100, 104-5; corrective voice 105-8; definition 76-7; Jonah as exemplum 84-6; remedies for 109-10; sources 13, 15,17,19, 22n, 81n; suffering 80-2, 86, 90-2,103; will 89-92,102-5 Murphy, James l l n , 52n, 70n, 114n, 119-20, 214 Murray, Alexander In, 48n Myrour to Lewde Men and Wymmen, A 24, 50-1 Newhauser, Richard 14n, 21 Nicholas of Lyra 84-5, 92n, 103 Nicholson, Peter 142 "Nisi hoc vicium" 223n Nitzsche, Jane Chance 113n Olson, Paul 21 In Olsson, Kurtl39n Owst, G. R. 60, 62n, 171n, 180n Parkes, Malcolm B. 27n

pastoral care: literature (general) 4, 10—14; Decalogue, treatises on 23n; distinctiones 67-9; - manuals 13, 14n, 23n; - summaepraedicantium 67; treatises on the vices 14-17, 22; - see also confession, literature; movement 3-4, 10-13,25 Patience: God's attributes 91-2, 94-105; God's speech 88-90,106-11; Jesus as example 94-5,109; Jonah's speech 2; confession 99-101; - murmur 7, 73, 84-6, 88-92,102-5; -prophecy 88-9,102-3; narrator 7, 73-7, 80-2, 92-101, 103, 106-12; patience 74, 80, 84-5, 93-4,101, 108-12; "prologue" 74-7, 80-2; scripturalism 74—6, 96-7,111-12; see also exemplum, murmur Patterson, Lee l l n , 64n, 188n, 195n, 22In, 225n, 228n Payen, Jean C. 52 Pearsall, Derek 122n, 133n, 155n, 160n, 165n Pecham,John 13 Peck, Russell 118n, 130n, 219n Pelen, Marc 204n Pentecost 34, 51 Peter Lombard 13, 32, 97n Peter of London 11, 14, 220n Peyraut, Guillaume (Peraldus): De eruditione principum 16n; De eruditione religiosorum 16n; Summa de virtutibus 60; Summa de vitiis base talk/scurrility 159-60, 164,167-8,177-8,181n; detraction 136n, 145n; flattery 125-8, 225; idle words 173, 214n-16n, 219n; influence 16-19; insult 190-2, 226n; lying 38-46; loquacity 205, 208-9; murmur 81-2, 86n, 90-1, 95n-6n, 99n, 109n; quarrelling 198n-200n; redactions/adaptations 16n; rhetoric, pastoral 58-67; sin, detestation for 58; Sins of the Tongue 14-16, 222; speech: cognitive function of 28-33; consequences of deviant 48-52; - norms for 28-9, 33-4; - restraint of 26-7, 47-56 Pierre le Chantre 11,14,159-61,164,168, 180n,203,220n Piers Plowman: base talk/scurrility: Prologue 158-66; passus 6 162,166-8; passus 10 162,168-73; passus 13 161-2, 173-86; consequences of: debauchery 178-9; -

253

Index Piers Plowman (cont.) despair 175-7; - laughter 177-80; neglect of poor 169-70,180-1; see also separate entry; declericalized discourse 157-8,163,172-4, 183-6; Dreamer/Will 158-66,168,173-86; minstrels: audiences 166-72,175-83; Haukyn 174—5; licit entertainment 165—7; magnates as sponsors 162,166—86; performances 158-61,163-5,168-72, 176-83; Sins of the Tongue and 170-3, 177-8, see also base talk; work and 164-6; monitory discourse 157—8,161-2,183-6, 230; Piers 166-8; readership 158,184-6; scripturalism 172-3,182-4; Sins of the Tongue 157-8,164,170-2, 222n-3n, see also base talk; speech: cognitive function 172-3; salvific/deviant dichotomy 172-3,182-6; statusrestzte" 158,165-6; Study 169-73 Pilgrimage of the Lyfe of Manhode, The 128 Plato 43n, 196-7 Porter, Elizabeth 119n Powell, James M.9n praise/prayer 33-5, 99-101, 2 0 3 ^ preaching as catechesis 11-12 prudence, see speech, prudence in Quetif, Jacques 22n Quinn, William 205n Quivil, Peter 104,169n Quoniam l l n , 17n, 37-8n, 47-8,159n, 164, 202-3,205, 214n-16n, 223-4 Raabe, Pamela 175n, 176n Raimondo de Penafort, Summa de poenitentia 20, 64,135,140 Raymo, Robert 18n, 116n Raynaud de Lage, G. 14n Reiss, T. 40n rhetoric: art of discourse 114-15,118-23; definition of 6; norms for tongue and 52-6; pastoral 3, 6-8, 25, 57-72,183-6, 204,209,224-5; - commonplaces 59; exemplum, see entry; - reasoning 65-7, 209,224; - sententiae 59-63,209, 224; similitude 61-7,137-9,148-9,209, 224-5; - style 58-9, 66-70,208-11 Rhodes, James 111 n Rigaud, Eudes 83,161

Robertson, D.W., Jr. 54n Rogers, William E.I 95n Roman de la rose 9,136, 202-3n Rouse, R. and M. 12n Runacres, Charles 148-52,155n Rusconi, Roberto 12-13,133n-5n, 141n Saito, Isamu 84n Scanlon, Larry 62n, 121 n, 225n Scase, Wendy 162-3,164n, 170,172,180n, 183 Scattergood, V. J. 193n, 195n, 197n, 201n, 222n-3n Schleusener, Jay 103n, 107n Schmitz, Gotz 123n scholastic theology and Sins of the Tongue 20-2 scripturalism 10-12, 74-6, 96-7,111-12, 172-3,182^, 204, 213-14,216-18,224, 227-9 scurrility, see base talk sermons 23n Severs, J.B. 195 "Seynt Iohon" 16n-17n, 178n, 205n Shoaf, R. A. 2,108n-9n Shumaker, Wayne 193n sign: correspondence with thought 39-40, 122,196-7; definition 31; theory 2-3, 27-33, 37-8; trust in 44-6,123-4,129-31; see also language silence 19,20, 53-4,204-5, 210 Simon of Hinton, Speculum iuniorum l l n , 13, 14n Simpson, James 175n sin: definition of 10-11, 221; detestation for 57-67, 83,137-42, 222, 224-5; discourse on 3 ^ ; preaching on 11-12,225-6; Seven Sins 12-13, 41, 46,134, 223n; - acedia 103-5; - avarice 41,126,168-72; - envy 136-45,149-50; - gluttony 172n; - wrath 86-91,222-3; tripartite division of 13, 114n,221 Sins of the Tongue: coverage of 7-8; gluttony and 17-19,171n-2n; history of 13n; pastoral texts 13-24; remedies for 15,18, 20, 52-6,109-10,192-3,198-212, 214-21; see also speech, deviant; specific 13,15-17,19, 22n; - base talk, see separate entry; - blasphemy 4-5, 86-8, 97-8,188; - boasting 117-18; - chiding and reproach, see insult and quarrelling; "cheste" 117-18,197-200; - cursing 1-2,

254

Index 141; - detraction, see separate entry; false witness 78-80,118, 157; - flattery 125-9,157, 170-2,188; - hypocrisy 117, 129-31; - idle words, see separate entry; insult 190-93; - "janglyng" 158-9,188, 205; - "japyng" 7, 76,158-9; - loquacity 51,164n, 172n, 205-6, 210n, 214-16; lying, see separate entry; - multiloquiumy see loquacity; - murmur, see separate entry; - perjury 118; — quarrelling 198; — revealing secrets 198, 200n; - scurrility, see base talk; - sowing discord 157; swearing 157,141,188 Southworth, John 158-60,167,169-70,178n Spearing A. C. 93n, 99n, 207n Speculum laicorum 85-6, 96, 147 Speculum morale-, base talk/scurrility 159-60, 177n-8n; detraction 136n-7n; flattery 125n-7n; idle words 214n, 216n; insult 190n-ln; lying 39-40; murmur 81n-2n, 86n, 90-1, 95n-6n, 99n, 104; quarrelling 198n; revealing secrets 199n-200n; sin, detestation for 58; Sins of the Tongue 22; speech: - consequences of deviant 48-52; - norms for 33-7 Speculum vitae 18, 42, 57, 81n, 90-1, 99n, 122-3,125n, 127n, 136n, 170- 1, 198n, 205n,214n speech: circumstances of 53-5, 142—3; codes 8-9; cognitive function of 26, 28-33, 42-7,118-22,172-3, see also speech, norms; deviant 4-9, 25; - consequences 44-52, 98-100,145-53,160-1,167-70, 192-3,198-212, 214-15, 227-8; intention 41-3,136-45; - signification 38-40,136-7; - will 39-44, 89-92,102-5, 136-45,149-50, 168-72, 222-4; see also Sins of the Tongue and tongue; deviant/ salvific dichotomy 21, 35-7,172-3, 182-6; ethical analysis of 1-6, 31-2, 37-47, 56-7, 183-4, 227-8; norms for 5-6, 26-7,114-15,119-20, 209-12; instrument of reason 28—34,106-7, 172-3,215-16; - evangelical teaching 31-2,33-7,172-3,215-21; prudence in 48-9, 52-6, 80-2,198-200; restraint of 2, 7,15-16,26-7, 49-56, 192-3,198-212, 214-21; sacramental 33-5; see also language Staley, Lynn 96

status/" estate" 8, 41, 46,140-1,158,165-6, 187-8,216-17,220-1 Stock, Brian 4n, 10 Stock, Lorraine K. 104n Stokes, Myra 84n Strohm, Paul 188n, 217n Summafratris Alexandri 20, 35 Swanson, Jenny 18n Swearington C. Jan 44n Szarmach, Paul E. 84n Taylor, Paul B.I 90n,227n Tentler, Thomas 54n, 64n, 116,133n, 135n, 145n textual community 3-4,10-11 Thomas Aquinas 20-2In, 32, 39-40n, 42n, 48-9, 58, 97n, 137n, 166n, 198n Thomas of Chobham, Summa confessorum 65,135n,161n, 165-7,181n Thomson, Harrison 19n Thoresby, John 12,163n Todorov, Tzvetan 28n tongue: evil 49,124-5, 206, 210; physiology of 49-50,202-3, 206; power of 1-2,49-52, 191-3,198-20, 206; see also speech Trivet, Nicholas, Chronique 147,149 Tupper, Frederick 190,193n turpiloquium, see base talk Valesio, Paolo 5, 59, 76n Vance, Eugene2-3, 95n, 111, 114n, 118 Vauchez, Andre lOn, 141n Vincent de Beauvais, Speculum doctrinale Tin von Nolcken, Christina 71 Walsh, Katharine 169n Welter, J.Th. 62n, 78, 85n Wenzel, Siegfried 16n-18n, 104n, 117,159n, 176n, 180n, 187-8n, 222n, 226n, 228n Westervelt, L. A. 205n Wetherbee, Winthrop 136n Wickert, Maria 150n Williams, David J.92n Wilson, Edward 84n Wittig, Josephs. 176n, 184n Wood, Chauncey 190n, 219n, 228 Yeager,R.F. 119n, 140n Zink, Michel 65n, 75

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CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL LITERATURE General Editor. Professor Alastair Minnis, Professor of Medieval Literature, University of York Editorial board Professor Patrick Boyde, FBA (Serena Professor of Italian, Cambridge) Professor John Burrow, FBA (Winterstoke Professor of English, Bristol) Professor Rita Copeland (Professor of English, University of Minnesota) Professor Alan Devermond, FBA (Professor of Hispanic Studies, London) Professor Peter Dronke, FBA (Professor of Medieval Latin Literature, Cambridge) Dr Simon Gaunt (University of Cambridge) Professor Nigel Palmer (Professor of German Medieval and Linguistic Studies, Oxford) Professor Winthrop Wetherbee (Professor of English, Cornell) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Titles published Dante's 'Inferno': Difficulty and dead poetry, by Robin Kirkpatrick Dante and Difference: Writing in the 'Commedia', by Jeremy Tambling Troubadors and Irony, by Simon Gaunt 'Piers Plowman' and the New Anticlericalism, by Wendy Scase The 'Cantar de mio Cid': Poetic creation in its economic and social contexts, by Joseph Duggan The Medieval Greek Romance, by Roderick Beaton Reformist Apocalypticism and 'Piers Plowman', by Kathryn Kerby-Fulton Dante and the Medieval Other World, by Alison Morgan The Theatre of Medieval Europe: New research in early drama, edited by Eckehard Simon The Book of Memory: A study of memory in medieval culture, by Mary J. Carruthers Rhetoric, Hermeneutics and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic traditions and vernacular texts, by Rita Copeland The Arthurian Romances of Chretien de Troyes: Once and future fictions, by Donald Maddox Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority, by Nicholas Watson Dreaming in the Middle Ages, by Steven F. Kruger Chaucer and the Tradition of the 'Roman Antique', by Barbara Nolan The 'Romance of the Rose' and its Medieval Readers: Interpretation, reception, manuscript transmission, by Sylvia Huot Women and Literature in Britain, 1150-1500, edited by Carol M. Meale Ideas and Forms of Tragedy from Aristotle to the Middle Ages, by Henry Ansgar Kelly The Making of Textual Culture: Grammatica and literary theory, 350—1100, by Martin Irvine Narrative, Authority, and Power: The medieval exemplum and the Chaucerian tradition, by Larry Scanlon Medieval Dutch Literature in its European Context, edited by Erik Kooper

22 Dante and the Mystical Tradition: Bernard of Clairvaux in the cCommedia\ by Steven Botterill 23 Heresy and Literacy, 1000-1530, edited by Peter Biller and Anne Hudson 24 Virgil in Medieval England: Figuring the 'Aeneid* from the twelfth century to Chaucer, by Christopher Baswell 25 Sciences and the Self in Medieval Poetry: Alan of Lille 3s Anticlaudianus and John Gower's Confessio amantis, by James Simpson 26 Public Reading and the Reading Public in Late Medieval England and France, by Joyce Coleman 27 Medieval Reading: Grammar, Rhetoric and the Classical Text, by Suzanne Reynolds 28 Editing lPiers Plowman': The Evolution of the Text, by Charlotte Brewer 29 Vernacular Literary Theory in the Middle Ages: The German evidence, 8001300, by Walter Haug, translated by Joanna M. Catling 30 Texts and the Self in the Twelfth Century, by Sarah Spence 31 Lies, Slander, and Obscenity in Medieval English Narrative: Pastoral Rhetoric and the Deviant Speaker, by Edwin David Craun