From Romance to Vision: The Life of Breath in Medieval Literary Texts.
- Author/Editor
- Saunders, Corinne.
- Title
- From Romance to Vision: The Life of Breath in Medieval Literary Texts.
- Published
- Saunders, Corinne. "From Romance to Vision: The Life of Breath in Medieval Literary Texts." In David Fuller, Corinne Saunders, and Jane McNaughton, eds. The Life of Breath in Literature, Culture and Medicine: Classical to Contemporary (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), pp. 87-109.
- Review
- This wide-ranging article discusses how medical lore on the pneuma/spiritus (the bodily spirit or spirits) became an established theme and plot device, both in medieval European romance, and in personal accounts of profound religious experience. Among the many examples is a paragraph on Gower's "Tale of Apollonius" (99). Saunders begins with a highly complex discussion of the spirits according to Galen, Avicenna's "Canon of Medicine," and European translations of these authorities. Within the heart, in synchrony with the breath, the spirits were formed of mingled air and blood to animate the three-part soul, including the emotions, which were "dramatically written on the body through the flight of breath" (88). In grief or sorrow, the vital spirits withdrew into the heart, bringing cold to the body, as "reflected in pallor or swooning . . . unconsciousness or even death" (91-92). Saunders proceeds to discuss the medically accurate depictions of lovesickness evidenced by death-like swoons in the "Roman de la Rose," the "Parliament of Fouls," several Middle English romances, and especially "Troilus and Criseyde" (93-96). Most relevant to the discussion on Gower, the retreat of spirits might result in a death-like state from which the patient could be revived by a skilled physician. As examples, Saunders discusses the restoration of a seemingly dead lady in Marie de France's "Eliduc," the ancient novel "Apollonius," and Gower's "Tale of Apollonius." In educated medical detail, Gower describes how the physician Cerymon restored the latent spark of life by remedies including the warming of the lady's breast, causing her heart to "flacke and bete" (VIII.1195; qtd. p. 99). To conclude her study, Saunders discusses how the bodily spirits mediated intense religious or visionary experience, e.g., in Richard Rolle's "Incendium Amoris," the Middle English "Pearl," and the "Book of Margery Kempe," with bodily expression that included the swoon (100-05). [LBB. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 43.2]
- Date
- 2021
- Gower Subjects
- Confessio Amantis
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations