Nature, Sex, and Goodness in a Medieval Literary Tradition.

Author/Editor
White, Hugh

Title
Nature, Sex, and Goodness in a Medieval Literary Tradition.

Published
White, Hugh. "Nature, Sex, and Goodness in a Medieval Literary Tradition." Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000

Review
White's central concern, he writes, in his introduction to this new study of Nature in late medieval literature, "is with such overlapping questions as whether that provision with which human beings are endowed by nature tends toward their good, whether the natural circumstances of human beings conduce to their happiness, whether by nature human beings are inclined to the good, whether the law of nature directs human beings to the good; in short, is Nature benign and moral?” (5); and the answer that he reaches for each of these questions for the majority of the authors that he examines, to a greater or lesser degree, is “no,” in contrast to the more optimistic view that is as he notes “often . . . taken for granted by modern students of medieval literature” (2). His greatest interest is in Gower and Chaucer, who occupy the last two chapters of his book. The first five chapters survey a very broad range of earlier texts that define the tradition of thinking on Nature on which the two English poets drew. Chapter 1 surveys “academic writings (philosophical, theological, legal, medical) from antiquity to the fifteenth century” (8). In these, Nature is commonly understood to promote virtue and to provide moral guidance for humans in association with Reason. Ulpian’s linking of natural law with animals rather than humans, however, raised semantic and ontological issues regarding both “nature” and what is “natural” in human beings (33) which opened the way for a tendency to see the natural as non-rational. “Whilst it is true that an association between nature and reason is widespread and that nature is frequently seen as good--the natural defining a proper state of being for all things, and human beings possessing natural desires towards God and the good--it is also the case that a far from negligible strain in medieval thought associates the natural with the animal and the irrational and recognizes that there is a sense of nature in which nature can move to the bad” (44). Even the “natural” in this sense, however, was superior to the “unnatural,” introducing what White calls a “three-tier” morality: “there is the natural and the right, the natural but wrong, and the unnatural, which is, just in virtue of being unnatural, wrong” (46). White finds a “basic consonance” (48) with the concept of the natural in academic writing among the authors of the Middle English devotional and moral works that he examines in chapter 2. Drawing upon an impressive array of sources, he demonstrates that “kynde” was often associated with the good – both with “natural reason” and with Biblical morality--but that especially in matters of sexual conduct, nature might “fall short of the highest virtue” (66) and might even have to be restrained. “There seems to be some reluctance among moralists and homiletic writers to allow that sin can be the result of natural pressures, but the explicit rejection of this idea suggests that it was in fact current” (66), leaving unresolved the issues of whether humans are fundamentally rational or fundamentally irrational according to nature. Chapter 3 treats the allegorized or personified “Natura vicaria Dei” in works by Boethius, Bernardus Silvestris, Alan of Lille, and Johannes de Hauvilla, all of whom present a creative Nature working in harmony with the divine and in most cases explicitly on the side of virtue. But even in these authors, White argues, the “ambition for the good does not deny a problematic aspect to the natural” (108). Particularly in the "De Planctu Naturae" and "Anticlaudianus" of Alan of Lille, Nature’s reach is limited, especially in comparison to the power of grace, and her efforts to pass responsibility for the corruption of the system that she instituted onto Venus and others are not fully persuasive. “Her associations with the body and sex are already obscuring her moral glory, and the damaging effects of those associations will be allowed greater play as the Nature tradition develops” (109). Jean de Meun is the central figure in White’s argument, making explicit the moral ambiguity of Nature that is implicit among his predecessors and providing the point of reference for all writers who follow. In chapter 4, White examines the radically different presentation of Nature in the "Roman de la Rose," separated from Reason and aligned more closely with Venus, expressing “a sense of the inseparability of the orthodoxly acceptable end of procreation from the orthodoxly dubious principle of sexual pleasure. Sex is to be regarded as natural even though it does not consciously aim at procreation” (133). This association, he suggests, “in a scenario very possibly designed to contrast with the rebellion of Venus from Nature in the 'De Planctu', seems to be commenting on Alan’s treatment of the two figures. The Nature of the 'De Planctu' seeks to detach herself from Venus and thereby from responsibility for the seamier side of sexual behaviour. Jean suggests that this is an evasion . . . . And Jean’s arrangement of the action of his poem dramatizes how the natural drive towards procreation may indeed go forward through channels less than pure” (133-34). Jean thus lets “the morally problematic association of nature with sex . . . run loose” and presents “a Nature who condones and encourages behaviour orthodoxly regarded as sinful” (139). The French writers who followed Jean, whom White examines in another impressive list of citations in chapter 5, all respond to the "Roman" in some way. Jean Gerson tries to resurrect the morally orthodox Nature and to defend her from what he sees as Jean’s defamation of her; other writers present a Nature that explicitly leads humans to lechery; while a third group seeks to “accommodate two irreconcilable conceptions” of Nature (159), one adhering to Reason and one promoting illicit pleasure, attempting to preserve the notion that what is natural must be good but never satisfactorily resolving her relation to Amours and Venus or managing to countenance legitimate sex under Nature without also countenancing the immoral. White devotes the longest chapter in his book to Gower. He describes how Gower stands as heir to each of these conflicting conceptions of Nature, but Gower’s deepest and most sincerely held view, he argues, is reflected in what he sees as the deliberate failure of the attempt to reach a reconciliation. Nature, he points out first of all, is most often linked to the intuitive, the instinctual, and the pre-rational in CA, differentiated both from Reason and from Grace, and aligned with the body rather than the soul, a version of Nature that is not far removed from Ulpian’s. As such, Nature may be in harmony with Reason and moral law, as the instinctive emotion that binds families together, for instance, or as that which abhors killing and war. White also points to passages that suggest that “the idea of Nature is for Gower the focus for a vision of the healing of the fundamental division between soul and body and hence a talismanic concept” (187); and indeed “the general strategy of 'Confessio Amantis'”--as evidenced in Gower’s deployment of the scheme of the Seven Deadly Sins and in the dual allegiance professed by Genius--“seems to be designed with a view to entertaining claims about the unifiability of aspects of the human being which at first sight might seem irreconcilable” (187-88). But the “idea of the goodness of natural human instinct coexists with darker suggestions about nature-as-impulse” (188), and it is “with sex that Nature’s capacity to stimulate vice, to go against reason and to invite pardon for it, becomes clearly apparent” (189). The tales of “Iphis and Iante” and “Canace and Machaire” both suggest--despite some apparent efforts to redeem the natural, especially in the latter--that Nature presides “over an unconditioned sexual instinct which is capable of expressing itself in behavior contrary to reason and also to the positive human law which demands moral action and which yet cannot adequately constrain the natural impulses which may impel people away from moral behavior” (196). Even the passages in Book 7 that speak of “modifying” the laws of nature with reason “cut two ways” in White’s view and reveal an underlying anxiety: “they suggest that an accommodation of the natural sexual urge can be made, but they point to the necessity of restraint of the natural. Nature may be a domesticable threat to morality, but it is a threat nevertheless” (201). And the tale of “Tobias and Sara” with which Book 7 concludes shows that restraint can be achieved, but that “in the normal course of events” restraint is quite unlikely (202). “That sharp sense of the antagonism between love on the one hand and reason and morality on the other and a consciousness of the unmanageability of the natural sexual impulses are what dominate the ending” to the poem (205). “Because love and reason are incompatible, . . . Genius requires Amans to give up love” (ibid.). Amans’ very inability to choose--and the fact the he obtains his release only through the agency of Venus and Cupid--suggest how little love is governable by reason. Amans’ petition acknowledges Nature’s power over him and the overcoming of his reason; and Venus’ final remarks suggest that Amans remains at risk from Nature despite the restoration of his reason. Despite all of the poem’s optimistic gestures, therefore, division finally triumphs over harmony. Where at the beginning of CA Genius affirms a dual allegiance, at the end he denies his mistress and assumes a role different from any earlier Genius figure, as “the poem’s initial generosity towards love” gives way to “an ascetic vision which focuses on the unsatisfactoriness of human sexual love, its irreconcilability with the claims of morality, and which sees clearly the need to turn to a love beyond the world” (213). And while both the length and structure of the poem express the poet’s wish for reconciliation or at least for some “ultimately benign purpose in the ineluctable and apparently sometimes baneful influence of the sexual impulse on human beings” (218), Gower renounces this purpose as he resumes his own proper identity in the closing lines.
In his final chapter White takes up Chaucer. In the broad variety of his works Chaucer holds a less consistent view of Nature than Gower does. There are several passages (e.g. in Mel and ParsT) in which Nature is invoked without qualification as providing a moral norm. More characteristically, however, White finds that Chaucer expresses a disillusionment with so morally optimistic a view. Such a response is visible in his reworking of a passage in Book 3, Meter 2 of "De Consolatione Philosophiae," in which Lady Philosophy proclaims a natural inclination to the good, in MkT 160-82 and SqT 607-20, where what is natural for both animals and humans turns out to be considerably less benign. It is also apparent in other poems--White cites passages from BD, PF, PhysT, and T&C--in which Chaucer first presents a favorable view of Nature which he then compels us to view it more skeptically, ending “with a vision of humanity let down, or even victimized, by Nature” (254). Chaucer’s view of the relation of the natural and the human, he concludes, is “stalked by despair” (257), while Gower, being less committed to his role as a poet of love, “can walk away from that collision [between reason and morality] relatively unharmed” (ibid.). This is a fine book, because of its clarity, because of its comprehensiveness, and because of its alertness to the variety of manifestations that Nature assumes not only in medieval literature generally--for which it deserves to take its place alongside Teresa Tinkle’s recent book on "Medieval Venuses and Cupids" (see JGN 16, no. 2)--but also in individual works, an alertness that is particularly evident in the illuminating sensitivity to nuance that White brings to bear upon many of the key passages that he examines. His central point--that Nature is not as beneficent as many have assumed--may be taken as proved, but what is most remarkable about this book is the great complexity of the figure that it offers in place of our earlier, simpler view. One must also be impressed with the complexity and the subtlety of some of the strategies with which the authors that White examines attempted to deal with Nature and her role. As some of the quotations above might perhaps suggest, White lays considerable stress upon the morally negative aspect of Nature for the purpose of his argument, sometimes implying either that this is the more correct view of Nature or that it is the one that the authors that he examines wished to affirm. For more than one of the authors that followed Jean de Meun, however, among whom we may wish to include Gower, it appears that Nature might represent a situation of moral ambiguity that might be addressed and even satisfactorily resolved on the moral plane without necessarily reaching a consistent and unitive view of the figure of Nature herself. There is still room for discussion, in other words, of precisely how Nature functions within the moral argument that some of these works present, but that discussion will be considerably aided by the care and precision with which White has presented his examination of how she is defined. This is now the most complete and most reliable source of information on Nature’s appearance in the literary tradition that White examines, and it provides essential background to the study of Gower. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 21.1.]

Date
2000

Gower Subjects
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations
Confessio Amantis