"Equivocations of Kynde": The Medieval Tradition of Nature and Its Use in Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde" and Gower's "Confessio Amantis."

Author/Editor
Hiscoe, David Winthrop.

Title
"Equivocations of Kynde": The Medieval Tradition of Nature and Its Use in Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde" and Gower's "Confessio Amantis."

Published
Hiscoe, David Winthrop. "'Equivocations of Kynde': The Medieval Tradition of Nature and Its Use in Chaucer's 'Troilus and Criseyde' and Gower's 'Confessio Amantis'." Ph.D. Diss. Duke University 1983. DAI 44(5): 1447A-1448A.

Review
"The difficulties generated by appeals to "kynde" in medieval English literature are usually attributed to a supposed equivocalness at the heart of medieval conceptions of 'natura.' Medieval rhetoric allows, however, for an equivocation that, as a holding together of two distinct ideas under one name, is a method of knowing truth instead of a logical blunder. The word 'natura,' accordingly, balances two conceptions of nature under one term to reveal man's essential condition as a creature caught between the nature inherited from his creation in God's image and the nature inherited from the Fall. This 'equivocation of kynde' holds two messages. Most obviously, the individual Christian must not confuse the inclinations of his fallen nature with the pull of his true essence. One's cares to identify the sense in which one is using the term and to attempt to restore "nature" are unerring measures of one's spiritual condition. Nature's equivocation also paradoxically functions to insist on the difficulty of such a restoration. The movement to break down the separation of man's fallen 'kynde' from its divine heritage is likely, in a fallen world, to be fraught with disasters of his own making. This ability of the concept of 'kynde. to unfold a central paradox of medieval Christianity provides poets with two persistent motifs and narrative strategies. First, medieval writers constantly create characters who separate the natural inclinations from the desire to return to the divine. The audience is expected to correct such abuses. Secondly, the equivocation's insistence on the difficulty of returning to one's proper nature encourages medieval poets to construct situations that deliberately mislead the audience into accepting an improper view of the natural. Should such a misleading occur, the audience is forced to acknowledge its own complicity in the fallen world. After examining the manner in which Augustine establishes 'natura' as an equivocal concept and the consistent way the later middle ages reflect his doctrine, my essay uses Chaucer's 'Troilus and Criseyde' and Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' as examples of the fruitful ways that medieval artists used the equivocation of 'kynde' to structure their poems." [eJGN 39.1]

Date
1983

Gower Subjects
Confessio Amantis