Speculative Grammar and Stoic Language Theory in Medieval Allegorical Narrative: From Prudentius to Alan of Lille (Studies in Medieval Hstory and Culture)

Speculative Grammar and Stoic Language Theory in Medieval Allegorical Narrative

Studies in Medieval History and Culture FRANCIS G. GENTRY, General Editor

Fair and Varied Forms Visual Textuality in Medieval Illustrated Manuscripts Mary C. Olson The Contested Theological Authority of Thomas Aquinas The Controversies between Hervaeus Natalis and Durandis of St. Pourçain Elizabeth Lowe Body and Sacred Place in Medieval Europe, 1100–1389 Dawn Marie Hayes Women of the Humiliati A Lay Religious Order in Medieval Civic Life Sally Mayall Brasher Consuming Passions The Uses of Cannibalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe Merrall Llewelyn Price Literary Hybrids Crossdressing, Shapeshifting, and Indeterminacy in Medieval and Modern French Narrative Erika E. Hess The King’s Two Maps Cartography and Culture in Thirteenth-Century England Daniel Birkholz Pestilence in Medieval and Early Modern English Literature Bryon Lee Grigsby

Race and Ethnicity in Anglo-Saxon Literature Stephen J. Harris Aspects of Love in John Gower’s Confessio Amantis Ellen Shaw Bakalian The Medieval Tradition of Thebes History and Narrative in the OF Roman de Thèbes, Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Lydgate Dominique Battles Worlds Made Flesh Reading Medieval Manuscript Culture Lauryn S. Mayer Empowering Collaborations Writing Partnerships between Religious Women and Scribes in the Middle Ages Kimberly M. Benedict The Water Supply System of Siena, Italy The Medieval Roots of the Modern Networked City Michael P. Kucher The Epistemology of the Monstrous in the Middle Ages Lisa Verner Desiring Truth The Process of Judgment in Fourteenth-Century Art and Literature Jeremy Lowe

The Preaching Fox Festive Subversion in the Plays of the Wakefield Master Warren Edminster Non-Native Sources for the Scandinavian Kings’ Sagas Paul A. White Kingship, Conquest, and Patria Literary and Cultural Identities in Medieval French and Welsh Arthurian Romance Kristen Lee Over Saracens and the Making of English Identity The Auchinleck Manuscript Siobhain Bly Calkin Traveling through Text Message and Method in Late Medieval Pilgrimage Accounts Elka Weber Between Courtly Literature and Al-Andalus Matière d’Orient and the Importance of Spain in the Romances of the TwelfthCentury Writer Chrétien de Troyes Michelle Reichert Maps and Monsters in Medieval England Asa Simon Mittman Rooted in the Earth, Rooted in the Sky Hildegard of Bingen and Premodern Medicine Victoria Sweet “She, This in Blak” Vision, Truth, and Will in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde T. E. Hill

Through the Daemon’s Gate Kepler’s Somnium, Medieval Dream Narratives, and the Polysemy of Allegorical Motifs Dean Swinford Conflict and Compromise in the Late Medieval Countryside Lords and Peasants in Durham, 1349–1400 Peter L. Larson Illuminating the Borders of Northern French and Flemish Manuscripts, 1270–1310 Elizabeth Moore Hunt Speculative Grammar and Stoic Language Theory in Medieval Allegorical Narrative From Prudentius to Alan of Lille Jeffrey Bardzell

Speculative Grammar and Stoic Language Theory in Medieval Allegorical Narrative From Prudentius to Alan of Lille

Jeffrey Bardzell

New York

London

First published 2009 by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2009 Taylor & Francis All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Bardzell, Jeffrey. Speculative grammar and stoic language theory in medieval allegorical narrative : from Prudentius to Alan of Lille / by Jeffrey Bardzell. p. cm. — (Studies in medieval history and culture) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-415-97852-1 1. Allegory. 2. Hermeneutics—History. 3. Ethics in literature. 4. Prudentius, b. 348. Psychomachia. 5. Latin literature, Medieval and modern—History and criticism. 6. Alanus, de Insulis, d. 1202. De planctu naturae. I. Title. PA8027B37 2009 873'.0309—dc22 2008023904 ISBN 0-203-88651-8 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10: 0-415-97852-1 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-203-88651-8 (ebk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-97852-1 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-88651-9 (ebk)

Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction 1

2

3

4

ix 1

Stoic Linguistic, Cosmological, and Ethical Doctrine as Precursor to Medieval Allegory

11

Language and Abstraction in Prudentian Allegory

32

The Presence of Stoicism in Eleventh and Twelfth Century Language Theory

53

Alan of Lille’s Plaint of Nature and the Grammar of Cosmic Bonding

81

Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

108 115 123 131

Acknowledgments

I would like to extend my gratitude to two people in particular, who both mentored me in writing this particular work, and more generally who helped me appreciate the interplay between medieval literature and philosophy: Paul Spade and Rosemarie McGerr. In very different ways, they helped me read more sensitively, and with greater care, than I was able to on my own. I also wish to thank the late Clifford Flanagan, whose dazzling lectures and gentle humanity got me started on this path in the fi rst place. Finally, I’d like to recognize the people who have helped me remain true to myself in a context where knowing how to do so is not always obvious: Marty Siegel, Erik Stolterman, Eli Blevis, John Paolillo, and David Hakken. In the end, it is hard to separate the many and profound contributions of one’s mentors from oneself.

Introduction

In Alan of Lille’s Plaint of Nature (De planctu Naturae), his leading speaker, Lady Natura, bases much of her argument against sin in general and homosexuality in particular on the claim that both amount to bad grammar. Researching that claim—its appeal to Alan and his audience, its literary use within his allegory, and its historical antecedents—is the germ of this project. What lies behind Natura’s claim, I believe, is a belief in a series of correspondences among several branches of philosophy: cosmology, ethics, and language theory. These correspondences echo the Stoics in ancient Greece and Rome, who divided their philosophical system into a similar triad: physics (including cosmology), ethics, and logic (including language theory and epistemology). Perhaps more importantly, the Stoics posited deep connections among these three branches, so that they were not considered in isolation of one another; further, they elaborated these connections with a systematic technical vocabulary. This system, and its supporting technical vocabulary, was transmitted into the Middle Ages, albeit in convoluted and disruptive ways.

THE STOIC UNDERPINNINGS OF ALAN’S USE OF GRAMMAR THEORY Alan’s use of certain cosmic, ethical, and linguistic ideas and Stoic uses of these ideas have more than a passing similarity. Using available fragments of Stoic thought remaining to us (as will be discussed in Chapter 1, most of the Stoics’ writings have been lost), I will argue that several Stoic doctrines lend support to, and may have helped to shape, Natura’s claim. I lay out most of these individual Stoic claims in their original contexts in Chapter 1. I have not found the grouping of Stoic doctrines I identify as relevant to Alan explicitly put together in ancient Stoic writings, in any allegories of late antiquity, or even in Alan himself. The only scholar who has taken up any aspect of this collection of doctrines in the context of medieval poetry is Jan Ziolkowski, in his Alan of Lille’s Grammar of Sex, but while he explores some of them in detail in Alan, he does not trace them outside

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Alan and the twelfth century, nor does he associate them with the Stoics. Therefore, the following five doctrines are offered as a reconstruction of an argument, an argument that will be developed throughout this book, and whose genealogy from ancient Greece to Alan’s late twelfth-century France will be explained as much as possible: 1. The cosmos is guided by a rational principle (the logos), which ensures the ultimately providential nature of the universe and all that happens within it. 2. The summum bonum is to live in accordance with that rational principle—though we have to understand the cosmos to do so. 3. Language maps isomorphically to reality, so to study language is to study reality. However, as time passes and humans degenerate, the relationship between language and reality becomes increasingly distant. 4. Bad grammar leads to mistaken ideas about reality; misunderstandings about reality lead to false assent to impressions, and false assent in turn causes unethical behavior. 5. Grammar and ethics are linked in such a way that deficiencies or strengths in one imply deficiencies or strengths in the other. The gulf between (1) and (2) is the underlying challenge for the adherent of this system; one cannot achieve (2) without correctly grasping (1). Thus, the greatest challenge that a Stoic faces is epistemological in nature. Unethical behavior, whether the result of malicious intent or even simple ignorance, manifests a rejection of the logos and internal opposition to the course of history (Verbeke 45).The Stoic solution to this epistemological problem, as shown in Chapter 1, is dialectic. Dialectic is not, for the Stoics, an intellectual tool for advanced disputation; it is an indispensable discipline of the good life (Atherton, Ambiguity 93). Points (3) through (5) can all be seen as mediating between (1) and (2); language is the bridge between the universe and the individual, empowering the individual to assent correctly to impressions. Ethical matters clearly turn on internal assent, rather than outward behavior, and assent is dependent upon a person’s philosophical, and more specifically dialectical, evaluation of her or his experience. The difference between the actions of a sage and the same actions of a fool is that the sage has “the cognitive apparatus he can bring to bear in any situation calling for action” (Atherton, Ambiguity 53). This calls to mind an important Stoic notion, that to know something is to be able to create a demonstrable proof of it. The same idea appears to be motivating the grammarian Apollonius Dyscolus’ (ca. 110–175) response to “those who, like Sextus Empiricus, would deny the necessity of learning the rationales of orthography and syntax and would learn by observation what they should say and write, that this is not good enough, for they would err and not be able to correct themselves or they may come upon conflicting usages and have no way of

Introduction 3 deciding between them” (Blank, Ancient 17–8). In life as in grammar, it is not enough to know and abide by the rules; we must also know—and be able to demonstrate—why the rules are rational.

The Transmission of Stoic Linguistic Theory Via the Grammarians When Alan characterizes human vice as a rebellion against nature, and he further examines human vice as bad grammar, he establishes a connection between language and reality. Debates on the extent to which language represents thoughts and intentions versus extramental reality date back to the pre-Socratics and continued for centuries. As explored in Chapter 1, Aristotle takes the position that language is arbitrary and signifies the thoughts or intentions of the speaker. The Stoics, in contrast, believed that linguistic signs were natural and not conventional. That is, the connection between language and extramental reality is much stronger and more direct for the Stoics than for Aristotle. As explored in Chapters 3 and 4, medieval intellectuals, following the grammatical tradition of Priscian, also appear to see strong connections between language and extramental reality. At a minimum, the shared understanding of linguistic reference suggests that Stoic linguistic theory may be an important source for gaining an understanding of how medieval intellectuals viewed the operations of language, a topic to which Chapter 3 is devoted. That linguistic theories identifiable as Stoic in origin survived into the Middle Ages is not hard to demonstrate. For the Stoics, verbal expressions signify something they called the lekton, which as elaborated in Chapter 1 is the what-gets-said, and this lekton itself corresponds closely and naturally to things as they are disposed in external reality. That is, the Stoics adopted a set of notions that in today’s vocabulary we might call signifier, signified, and referent. Beyond adopting these three concepts, the Stoics posited a natural, non-arbitrary, and largely reliable set of correspondences among the three. In their efforts to explain this theory, the Stoics elaborated a sophisticated technical vocabulary that went beyond the linguistic theories found in Plato or Aristotle. Eventually, the Stoic technical vocabulary was adopted by early grammarians. For the most part, the ancient grammarians who adopted the Stoic technical vocabulary rejected the doctrine of lekta, keeping only the technical vocabulary (M. Frede, “Lekton” 15). That is, these early grammarians evidently felt that some of the metaphysical or broader philosophical implications that preoccupied the Stoics were beyond the scope of grammar. Nonetheless, by adopting the Stoic technical vocabulary, even stripped of much of its philosophical roots, grammarians promulgated Stoic thought at least indirectly into the Middle Ages. A surprising aspect of the emergence of grammar as a discipline in the ancient world is that major grammatical advances, including the notion and terminology of grammatical case, were made not in the service of describing

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how a linguistic community uses a language, which is how we typically think of grammar, but rather as an elaborate theory of knowing in the context of the Stoic philosophical system. In her article, “What Every Grammarian Knows,” Catherine Atherton argues that ancient grammarians were not at all concerned with the language that a community of speakers actually spoke; they did not even regard native speakers in their own communities as experts at language (243, 247). She writes that for ancient grammarians, “it is inconceivable that anyone could be an expert, a technikos, in something which, of its very nature is irreducible to rule” (247, emphasis in original). Grammarians were experts, then, of an ideal language, which none of us speaks, and it is this idealized language that maps so rationally onto reality for grammarians such as Apollonius Dyscolus (Blank, Ancient 12). The language that we speak is not so far removed from this pure language that it has no bearing on reality; even our flawed language is sufficient for “apprehending the world and communicating our findings” (Atherton, Ambiguity 93). Further, the grammarian knows more than the rules of this ideal language: the grammarian can also provide a technical explanation about why the rules are as they are (Atherton, “Every Grammarian” 247, 249). Inasmuch as the discipline of grammar must provide technical explanations of the rules, and not simply the rules themselves, the discipline of grammar recapitulates the Stoic notion that knowledge requires dialectical demonstration. Another area in which grammar recapitulates Stoic doctrine is in the notion of an idealized language, which is a primordial language whose words and grammar are closer to reality than any language that humans have spoken since. Both Stoics and grammarians share the project of trying to return language back to its mythical origins, where it maps directly to reality. One implication of this notion is that linguistic change is inherently bad. Etymology and appeals to authority—which today are excluded from the domain of grammar—were key aspects of the discipline (Curtius 43–4). As mentioned earlier, ancient grammarians recast those harbingers of linguistic change, barbarisms and solecisms, as “vices” (vitia) of speech, along with a corresponding set of “virtues” (virtutes) of speech (Law, History 69). And so grammar comes back full circle to ethics, using terminology (the virtues and vices) that will become prevalent in the genre of allegory. Scholars of ancient grammar recognize that many innovations in technical grammar were Stoic in origin, and that grammar moved away from Stoic epistemological and logical doctrine over time. Yet as the preceding discussion demonstrates, even when supposedly removed from grammar, Stoic themes persist. Four grammarians in particular—Diogenes of Babylon (fl. second century b.c.), Dionysius Thrax (fl. 100 b.c.), Varro (fl. 116–27 b.c.), and Apollonius Dyscolus—were deeply influenced by Stoic language theory, and each of these was enormously influential in later grammatical theory. For example, Priscian (fl. 500) quotes syntax theories of Apollonius Dyscolus at length in his Institutiones (Blank,

Introduction 5 Ancient 6) and exhibits knowledge of how the Stoics classified different parts of speech (Lloyd 66–7). Augustine’s De dialectica elaborates a theory that seems strikingly similar to the Stoic theory of lekta (Kirwan 210–11). Stoic notions of the relationship between grammar and reality also appear in modified form in the writings of the neo-Platonists, including Porphyry and Boethius (Lloyd 61). Though its exact genealogical lines leading into the late Middle Ages may be obscured from us, Stoic doctrine certainly informed the tradition of grammar, whose genealogical lines into the Middle Ages are much stronger and clearer.

The Stoic System and Medieval Latin Allegory As a student of medieval literature and philosophy, I have often been surprised at the overwhelming attention scholars of literature pay to Platonic and Aristotelian influences in medieval literature, at the exclusion of other ancient schools of thought, including Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Skepticism. The pioneering works of Chenu, Wetherbee, Lewis, Southern, Haskins, and Curtius are a major part of this trend, and it appears in more recent works in the sometimes uncritical use of Platonic or Aristotelian vocabularies, as if their appropriateness were given. An example of this uncritical use is Carolynn Van Dyke’s otherwise outstanding reading of Prudentius (in her Fiction of Truth), which as I argue in Chapter 2 is marred by just such a misuse of Aristotelian terminology. Of course, the study of Platonic and Aristotelian influences in medieval literature is not in itself misguided; unfortunately, it has come at the expense of an exploration of the influence of other philosophical systems. The need to consider other philosophical schools is especially important because their influence was particularly strong during the flowering of Roman literature, which was to have a profound influence throughout the Middle Ages. Thanks to the work of Von Arnim, Long, Sedley, Colish, Lapidge, and others, the doctrines and lines of influence of Stoicism are becoming more accessible to non-specialists.

Stoic Ethics, the Aeneid, and the Latin Allegorical Tradition Like so many other philosophical schools, Stoicism started in Greece and later moved to Rome. Stoicism began with Zeno in the third century b.c. After Zeno (d. 262), Stoicism was further developed and formalized into a system by Cleanthes (d. 230) and Chrysippus (d. 206). By the time of Chrysippus’ death, the three branches of Stoicism—physics, ethics, and logic—were relatively stable (Sedley, “The School” 13–17). Later, in early imperial Rome, Stoicism continued to be active, though its system of ethics clearly had more appeal for Romans than the other two parts of the system (Gill 34). Indeed, the three greatest Stoic philosophers in Rome—Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius—focused on ethics in their writings.

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Grammar and Language Theory in Medieval Allegorical Narrative

Not surprisingly, then, the aspect of Stoicism that had the most visible impact on Roman literature was ethics, and for the same reason, one of the most visible Stoic trends running through medieval literature is ethics as well. This study is not primarily about the overall influence of Stoicism in medieval allegory; rather, I have focused on the survival and/or use of Stoic linguistic theory within the medieval grammar and literary traditions. I cannot, therefore, do justice here to the transmission of Stoic ethics from Roman literature into medieval literature. However, a sketch of this genealogy is worthwhile, because it is likely to have contributed, albeit indirectly, to the transmission, effects, and functioning of other Stoic doctrines in medieval literature. In his article “Aeneas and the Stoic Ideal,” Bowra explores, but ultimately stops short of asserting, the notion that Aeneas embodies the Stoic human ideal. Bowra outlines a Stoic four-part division of ethical goodness—justice, moderation, courage, and wisdom—and then observes that the only area in which Aeneas does not fail is justice (11). However, Bowra cites two points that mitigate the importance of Aeneas’ failures: Augustan Stoicism varied somewhat from traditional Stoicism, and Aeneas is closer to the former ideal (18), and the Stoics held a doctrine that no one achieves the ethical ideal without trials and failures (15). Beginning in Book VI, Aeneas appears to have reached that ideal, or a close approximation of it, whereas Books I-V show him struggling toward that ideal (15, 19). It is Aeneas’ Stoic perfection, according to Bowra, that underlies the stiffness of character that leaves so many modern readers cold. Further supplementing his case, that Aeneas is at least in part modeled on the Stoic ideal, Bowra notes Virgil’s use of Stoic technical vocabulary, including exercite (“tested by ideal”) and praecipere (“foreseeing”) (15). In a more recent article, Mark Edwards expands Bowra’s reading of the Aeneid and its Stoic influences. Edwards compares the Stoic doctrines of fate and providence (which I summarize in Chapter 1) with the notions of fate and providence that appear in the Aeneid. Like Bowra, Edwards fi nds Virgil using Stoic technical vocabulary, in this case the metaphor of “following” (sequi or comitari) fate (151–4). In Edwards’ reading, however, Virgil uses the Stoic notion of fate as a poetic device, which enables the poet to evoke sympathy. That is, rather than embracing this notion of fate, which a good Stoic would regard as the foundation of ethics, Virgil uses the cruelty of fate to evoke the reader’s sympathy for the poem’s “sinners”: Dido, Turnus, Mezentius (160). This reading implies, Edwards argues, that Virgil rejects a central tenet of Stoic philosophy: that a rational and benevolent force is driving the cosmos and the fates. These two readings show that Stoic thought is pervasive in the Aeneid, even if Virgil does not always appear to be in agreement with it. The Aeneid’s legacy can hardly be overstated. Aeneas was held to be the human ideal in Roman education for four centuries (Bowra 9). His impact on Roman literature, from Ovid to Statius and beyond was pervasive.

Introduction 7 Grammars, especially that of Donatus and later Priscian, used the Aeneid as a model of both grammar and syntax and also morality. The legacy of the Aeneid makes it clear that Stoic ethics were widely disseminated in a number of contexts, making them readily available in the Middle Ages to anyone with even a basic education. Moreover, and I explore this more in Chapter 1, many Stoic ethical precepts are consonant with Christian ethics, which only amplified their prevalence. Textual evidence also shows an allegorical legacy of the Aeneid, which stretches all the way through the twelfth century and beyond. Servius, writing a commentary on the Aeneid in the fourth century, offers brief allegorical interpretations of various passages, though he does not develop a comprehensive allegorization of the entire work (Hardison 325). In the sixth century, Fulgentius wrote an allegorical interpretation of the Aeneid, called the Exposition of the Content of Vergil According to Moral Philosophy (Expositio Virgilianae continentiae secundum philosophos moralis). Fulgentius’ method is to reinterpret the twelve books of the Aeneid as stages in the life of everyman, which also corresponds to the three states of life: “prima natura, secunda doctrina, tertia felicitas” (“fi rst nature, second learning, and third success”) (90, 332).1 Book 1, which opens with a shipwreck, represents the pains of birth and the infant’s first experiences. Books II and II represent early childhood, while Book IV, which details Aeneas’ relationship with Dido, represents first lust and its ultimate expulsion by reason. Fulgentius continues through twelve books in much the same way. Through it all, Fulgentius extracts morals, many of which, including reason’s control over lust, are Stoic in spirit. We see in Fulgentius’s reading many of the key ingredients that drive Alan’s Plaint: allegorical interpretation, etymology-based interpretation, Stoic ethics, the moralization of the cosmos (seen in Fulgentius’ reading of Book VI), and a work centered on grammar school education: as the narrator says to Virgil when the latter fi rst appears, “tantum illa quaerimus leuia, quae mensualibus stipendiis grammatici distrahunt puerilibus auscultatibus” (“I seek only the easy things taught by grammarians to their childish pupils for monthly fees”) (86, 330). In the twelfth century, Bernardus Silvestris (fl. 1136) wrote another allegorical commentary on the Aeneid. Bernardus looks at the text on two levels: its philosophical truth and the literal narrative, in which the narrative is seen as a veil (integumentum) over the underlying truth, a distinction that is vital to understanding both of Alan’s major allegories, the Plaint and the Anticlaudianus. In Bernardus’ reading of Book I, which he follows Fulgentius in interpreting as signifying the birth and fi rst days of everyman, he distinguishes between two Venuses, a lawful and a wanton goddess, another distinction that Alan uses heavily in his Plaint. Bernardus reads Books II through V much the same way Fulgentius had before him. Where he diverges from Fulgentius is in his reading of Book VI, which is disproportionately long. One reason for its length is that, rather than adding another chapter to the fi rst five books, in Bernardus’ reading, among other

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things it recapitulates the fi rst five books. Bernardus begins seeing iterative correspondences that add great complexity to the linear schema developed by Fulgentius. This interpretive use of circular correspondences is typical of Bernardus’ thought, and it appears also in his Cosmographia. It has an analogue, I believe, in the way the Stoics interwove different branches of their system—physics, ethics, and logic—which, if not integrated necessarily in a circular way, developed their ideas in a dynamic, mutually supportive system of thought that emphasized interdisciplinary correspondences. The Stoic interweaving of correspondences appears to be at least latent throughout the medieval grammar tradition. In his Plaint, Alan brings these elements together and creates a narrative fiction that thinly veils an inquiry into philosophical truth, a truth that emerges from the pursuit of correspondences between the cosmos, human behavior, and grammar. Again, it is not within the scope of this study to trace the Stoic lineage via the Aeneid because the Aeneid’s Stoic influence was strongly in the area of ethics, and my study focuses instead on linguistic theory. Nonetheless, the medieval reception of the Aeneid is clearly an important source contributing to an understanding of how Stoic thought helped shape medieval allegory and reading in general. Allegorical Language in Prudentius, Boethius, and Alan Since the 1980s, the availability of primary and secondary literature on the Stoics has increased dramatically. Since 1990, the availability of secondary literature on the medieval grammar tradition has seen a similar increase. 2 Thanks to these two trends, it is possible both to connect medieval grammar theory to ancient Stoic logic and linguistic theory and also to analyze medieval literature in light of these connections; such an effort constitutes the main purpose of the present study. To understand how Stoic linguistic theory, as disseminated through the medieval grammar tradition, may have influenced medieval allegorical narrative, I study the use of language as well as any explicit statements about language within medieval allegorical texts. Fortunately for the purposes of the study, a number of secondary resources study the use of language in allegory, including Maureen Quilligan’s The Language of Allegory, Carolynn Van Dyke’s Fiction of Truth, and Morton Bloomfield’s “A Grammatical Approach to Personification Allegory.” Other studies examine language within the specific allegories included in this project, including Brenda Machosky’s “The Face that is not a Face,” Martha Malamud’s A Poetics of Transformation, Ann Astell’s Job, Boethius, and Epic Truth, and Jan Ziolkowski’s Alan of Lille’s Grammar of Sex. This collection of works provides an excellent starting point for my analysis, and while I occasionally disagree with individual claims, these works facilitate an understanding of allegorical language. Nevertheless, none of these works makes more than a passing reference to the Stoics; indeed,

Introduction 9 several rely on contemporary critical theory to elaborate theories of allegory, and when ancient or medieval philosophy is used, it is Platonic or Aristotelian. As for medieval grammar theory, only Ziolkowski in this group contains significant coverage. While I make no claim that any connections among Stoic linguistic theory, medieval grammar theory, and certain medieval allegories can be extended to explain allegorical signifi cation in general, the present study provides new insights into the nature of allegorical signification in Prudentius’ Psychomachia and Alan’s Plaint of Nature. Signification is a, if not the, central problem of allegory. If a text not only contains a number of different meanings, but also functions as a system that sustains multiple levels of meaning, then the ability to encode and decode these levels is prerequisite to the allegory working at all. The allegories of Prudentius, Boethius, and Alan all contain personifi cations, in which words—“faith,” “greed,” “philosophy,” “nature”—turn into flesh-and-blood characters who interact with other personifi cations as well as human characters. They also produce more words by speaking, taking on the problematic authority of pure abstractions, both absolute spokespersons for what they are and also perhaps also limited to what they are (e.g., can Lady Nature speak with authority about anything supernatural or unnatural?). By acting in the world, personifications may appear to lose some of their purity as abstractions (e.g., can the modest and chaste Lady Faith brutally kill an epic foe without becoming something besides Faith?). Questions such as these prompt a broader question: can allegorical signification itself sustain the complex meanings it is assigned to bear? If so, what are the mechanisms of allegorical signification that enable the genre to work? Rather than attempting a general, one-size-fits-all answer to these questions, I answer them for these two allegories (Psychomachia and Plaint of Nature) using theories of language that appear to have been available to the authors themselves. In both cases, I fi nd that Stoic (or Stoic-like) linguistic doctrines help demonstrate how allegorical signification works. This study is organized as follows. In Chapter 1, I identify several key features of Stoic linguistic doctrine within the context of the Stoic system. At the same time, I emphasize several elements that may shed light on medieval allegory. In Chapter 2, after an analysis of the secondary literature on allegory, I read Prudentius’ Psychomachia, exploring the mechanisms of its allegorical signification. I skip ahead several centuries in Chapter 3, exploring the play between two rival traditions of signifi cation in late eleventh- and twelfth-century language theory. One of these traditions is the Aristotelian “old logic,” and the other is the grammar tradition, which, as I argue, contains distinct traces of its Stoic origins. Chapter 4 contains a reading of Alan’s Plaint of Nature, leveraging the insights of the fi rst three chapters to explore his enigmatic use of grammar and allegory. As a school, Stoicism had long ceased to function by

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Grammar and Language Theory in Medieval Allegorical Narrative

the start of the Middle Ages, yet many aspects of its system—including their interrelatedness as parts of a coherent philosophical system—persisted in Christian thought, grammar theory, and literature; these chapters reveal how Stoic linguistic theories made that transition and affected medieval allegorical narrative.

1

Stoic Linguistic, Cosmological, and Ethical Doctrine as Precursor to Medieval Allegory

Allegory is a literary genre that thrived from late antiquity through the eighteenth century. During the Middle Ages in particular, a number of important allegories were written, including Prudentius’ Psychomachia, Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, Alan of Lille’s Anticlaudianus and Plaint of Nature, Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun’s Romance of the Rose, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Christine de Pizan’s Book of the City of Ladies, among others. Among the challenges facing the modern reader of these medieval allegories is the broad-ranging education they seem to presuppose. Whereas today we pigeon-hole different academic disciplines into narrowly construed departments and fields, writers of medieval allegory have, and appear to assume of their audiences, a broad liberal education, knowledge of literary, philosophical, artistic, grammatical, historical, and theological works and trends. Elements from these disciplines are interwoven into allegories, which often strive to be inclusive and even encyclopedic in nature. For the modern reader, these allegories therefore require a sensitivity to a wide array of intellectual concerns, some of which are studied in different academic disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics, anthropology, art history, religion, and history, and thus are not always readily available to readers in departments of literature. In many cases, secondary literature helps fi ll in a number of these gaps, either by citing works in other disciplines or by building bridges between disciplines, bringing together the latest research from different disciplines with the hope of yielding new insights. The present work is an attempt to build such a bridge, connecting recent work in the history of philosophy with recent work in literary theory in readings of two medieval allegories: Prudentius’ Psychomachia and Alan of Lille’s Plaint of Nature. Specifically, I examine how several philosophical doctrines, methods, and tendencies, which originated with the Stoics, are reflected by certain aspects of these allegories. While I believe that the same concepts and trends examined here would likely apply to other medieval allegories as well, I have excluded other allegories from this project. My emphasis on the Stoics should not be read as a claim that medieval

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allegories, or even the medieval allegories just mentioned, are fundamentally Stoic in nature, or that readings that do not consider the potential influence of the Stoics are intrinsically deficient. Nor do I claim that of the Hellenistic philosophical schools, Stoicism was the most important for medieval allegory. Rather, my goal is to show that Stoic doctrines provide some insight into certain problematic aspects of allegory, particularly those pertaining to language and signification, just as readings that focus on Biblical allusion, classical imagery, or medieval theology can shed light on other aspects of allegory. My starting point is Stoic linguistic doctrine, in particular as it connects the cosmology, ethics, and epistemology in the Stoic system. Allegory is a genre that constantly calls attention to the use of language, how and what words signify, and understanding how an allegory (mis-)uses language is arguably the most important problem that a reader of any allegory faces. This chapter explores Stoic linguistic theory within the broader context of the Stoic system, and it also relates a number of key aspects of Stoic linguistic theory to medieval allegory, both genealogically and thematically. In the course of this chapter, I demonstrate a baseline compatibility between Stoic language theory and allegory as a narrative mode, showing why Stoic linguistic theory would generally be appealing to a Christian allegorist in the Middle Ages. Subsequent chapters explore the transmission and use of Stoic ideas as they appear in the Middle Ages.

ARISTOTLE VERSUS THE STOICS: RIVAL THEORIES OF SIGNIFICATION Questions surrounding the origins of language and its relationships with reality have been a central concern of the Western intellectual tradition since the Pre-Socratics. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries have seen advances in philology, logic and analytic philosophy, linguistics and semiotics, and continental philosophy that have given us, if not yet any universal consensus, at least vocabularies and discursive frameworks for analysis of this topic. One key distinction, which comes up regularly in this study, is the difference between reference and meaning. Reference is the relationship between words and things, and it connects language to external reality. Meaning is the relationship between words and intentions, what the speaker is trying to say. This question occupied the ancients as well. For Aristotle, words are “symbols or signs of affections or impressions of the soul”; that is, for Aristotle, words represent thoughts in the mind of the speaker (Aristotle, On Interpretation 115 [16a3–8]). Signification for Aristotle emphasizes meaning, intention, and concepts in the minds of conversants. Ackrill criticizes Aristotle’s defi nition here as having “grave weaknesses,” on account of its dependence on psychology (113). The Stoics, in contrast, ground meaning

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in external reality, rather than in the mind of the speaker, a position that has its own problems, as discussed later in the chapter. One should be careful not to overstate the differences between the two: Aristotle believes that the thoughts to which words refer themselves are derived from reality, while the Stoics believe that the things to which words refer are also understood by the speaker. Nonetheless, it is fair to say that Aristotle emphasizes meaning over reference, while the Stoics emphasize reference over meaning. Aristotle’s theory fits into his broader epistemological and logical scheme, in which individual words or names represent the essence of an object or kind understood in the mind of the speaker, understood in itself, and not in combination with other things or thoughts (Charles 38–43). Aristotle’s theory of linguistic reference is important, because it was transmitted throughout the Middle Ages as textbook logic (Spade, History ix). Medieval intellectuals inherited many aspects of his system, both from the few of his texts translated into Latin and through a tradition of commentaries on his works. An enduring example of this inheritance was the debate on universals, an issue that largely arose in the course of teaching his logic (Spade, History viii-xv). Universals are important in this study not only because they raise a number of rich and thorny philosophical issues that prompted debate throughout the Middle Ages, but also because a number of recent literary critics discussing allegories have used universals as a means of theorizing about the nature of allegorical abstractions. For Aristotle, universals are that which may be predicated of many, and include abstractions such as humanity, animality, and apparently even attributes such as whiteness or snub-nosedness (On Interpretation 125 [17a38–17b1]). If universals such as humanity and whiteness exist, then the world becomes a much more crowded place, for not only is it filled with Plato and Socrates, this horse and that horse, but it also contains humanity and equinity. In addition, it opens up questions about whether two things can be in the same place at the same time: Can snub-nosedness, whiteness, mortality, risibility, and rationality all be in Socrates? On the other hand, if universals do not exist, that is, they are merely mental or linguistic constructs with no direct relation to reality, then what we know and say about reality and its actual structure are radically different; in that case, how do we really know anything? In short, accepting the reality of universals seems to entail problems of ontology; rejecting the reality of universals seems to entail problems of epistemology (Spade, History viii). Aristotle’s logical writings are contained in a collection of texts, later grouped and named the Organon, which were the only writings of Aristotle to survive in medieval Europe until the late twelfth century.1 The Organon leaves unresolved fundamental problems about the ontological status of universals. Aristotle believes that humans come to recognize universals through encounters with many instances (R. Smith 50). By linking universals with knowing, Aristotle grants universals—whatever their exact status may be—a critical position in his epistemology. Because

14 Grammar and Language Theory in Medieval Allegorical Narrative words refer to thoughts, what is critical in epistemology for Aristotle is likewise critical for language theory. Indeed, Aristotle’s description of a universal itself, which he characterizes as that which is predicated of many, is expressed in the context of logic and language (R. Smith 33, Barnes 96–7, Spade, History x). The rich and complex topic of Aristotle’s theory of linguistic reference is beyond the scope of this chapter, but a few aspects of it are important to identify for my project: the dependence of linguistic reference on psychology and the speaker’s intention; the importance of the individual word and the essence of the species/genus to which it refers; Aristotle’s underlying theory of ontology, which is largely static, abstract, and hierarchically ordered; and the problem of universals, in which all these aspects of Aristotelian thought are featured. The importance of these theories is two-fold. They are clearly active in debates throughout the Middle Ages and are available to most educated medieval authors, both via Latin translations and a commentary tradition, especially the commentaries by Porphyry and Boethius. In addition, modern scholars of medieval literature (e.g., Van Dyke, Lewis, among others) often rely on Aristotelian theories when exploring philosophical influences in later medieval texts. By contrasting the relatively familiar Aristotelian theory with Stoic theory, it becomes easier to distinguish between Aristotelian and Stoic influences in literature, and to assess more critically the extent to which Aristotelian theory is perhaps overused in recent scholarship on medieval literature. A major goal of this chapter is to outline an alternative view of language and linguistic reference, grounded in alternative views of ontology and epistemology. This theory of language, Stoic in origin, is a central cog in the Stoics’ elaborate philosophical system. It was transmitted into the Middle Ages both as the dominant basis for much early grammar theory and philosophical commentary, as well as in the writings of numerous religious thinkers, including Augustine, Boethius, and others. Though the Stoic system was not preserved per se—Christian intellectuals did not consider themselves Stoics by any means—many of its doctrines underlie key aspects of medieval intellectual tradition, especially with regard to theories of language and its relationships with reality.

STOIC PHILOSOPHY AS A SYSTEM The collection of Stoic thought, perhaps more than that of any other school, is commonly called a “system” (e.g., Sandbach; Long, Hellenistic Philosophy), with its connotations of comprehensiveness and interrelatedness. According to Diogenes Laertius, a Greek doxographer who flourished in the early 3rd century, the Stoics themselves employed a number of metaphors to describe their three-part system of logic, ethics, and physics: The Stoic curriculum is a walled garden, in which logic is the wall, physics is

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the trees, and ethics is the fruit; it is an egg, where logic is the shell, ethics is the white, and physics is the yolk; it is a living being, where logic is the bones, ethics is the flesh, and physics is the soul (Long and Sedley 26B).2 Each of these metaphors conveys the overall integrity of the whole system, though it may be composed of distinct parts. Not only can Stoic thought be characterized as a system, but it is also a doctrine. Sextus Empiricus, a skeptic who flourished in the second century, when referring to the Stoics, often called them “the dogmatists” (e.g., SVF II, 80; SVF II, 118; SVF II, 166). One anecdote has it that Chrysippus asked his teacher Cleanthes only for the official doctrine, but not the arguments that support it, so that he could work out the arguments himself. The Stoics also had a reputation for boorish pedantry. These anecdotes support the thesis that Stoic doctrine, though certainly not without internal disagreements and controversies, was relatively crystallized into a coherent and stable curriculum, at least by the time of middle Stoicism, if not yet in early Stoicism.3 The comprehensive and systemic nature of Stoic thought makes it difficult to discuss any given topic in isolation, which in turn makes it difficult to fi nd a good entry point when explaining the Stoics’ system. Ethical, physical, and logical doctrines are deeply intertwined and seldom make sense without reference to one another. The Stoics themselves disagreed on the order in which the three subject areas should be taught. Because of the interconnectedness of their doctrines, I cannot lay out Stoic theories on the relationships between language and reality without a discussion of how the Stoics conceived reality, how they believed human beings come to know about it, and why proper understanding of reality matters (that is, the ethical implications). Equally important, many of the connections between language, cosmos, and ethics in the Stoic system appear in one way or another in allegory. Thus, having at least a basic idea of the entire system not only makes it easier to understand Stoic linguistic theory, but it also makes the Stoic influence on medieval allegory more apparent.

Physics and Cosmology The domain of physics within the Stoic system includes what we would call natural philosophy, cosmology, and metaphysics (White 125). To the Stoics, the universe is materialistic and governed by a benign and rational god or logos (SVF I, 110–112). The implications of this simple precept are deep and far-reaching. It simplifies ontology considerably, because in place of a hierarchical system of universals, divided into Aristotelian categories,4 the Stoics simply have bodies (and a handful of incorporeals, which I discuss later), all gaining their identity and reason for being from a single logos. Universals for the Stoics are merely concepts (Long and Sedley 30A-I [see also their commentary], Brunschwig 224–5). Looking forward to medieval literature, the worlds projected by allegories have a similar ontology: the characters are all bodies who act in accordance with the narrative logos,

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which could correspond to a given author’s intentions as informed by her or his theological predispositions. In contrast, the complex hierarchies of increasingly general universals or forms stamped on matter—that is, the view of ontology we typically associate with Aristotle—are alien to the cosmos projected and enacted by most allegories. The notion of a benignly governed universe also puts deterministic pressures on the Stoics, since a universe governed by a benevolent, all-permeating logos leaves little room for free will. It leads the Stoics to dismiss the concepts of chance or luck and to claim that instances of them are rationally caused, but in a way that eludes human understanding (SVF II, 965–73). This principle also leads the Stoics to argue that every substance participates in the universal telos, in contrast to Aristotle, who argued that each substance has its own telos (D. Frede 182–3). Christian theology is in this regard closer to the Stoics than to Aristotle. Because God is omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient, Christians, too, have to explain the problem of free will as well as the nature of chance, luck, or fortune. In addition, each person’s telos is tightly bound into the universal trajectory of Christian history, from creation to the Last Judgment. The themes of fate, free will, and divine providence appear again and again in medieval allegory, from Boethius’ dialogue with Philosophia to Chaucer’s dialogue between the troubling figure of Fortune and the human “plaintiff” in the triple ballade called “Fortune.” The Stoic explanation of causality also arises as a consequence of this notion of a benignly governed material universe. All things are bound together through a complex and interconnected network of causes, which is also how the Stoics defi ne fate (Long and Sedley 55A-S, especially N). It is on this account that luck and chance are excluded from the system: because everything has a cause, and all causes are ultimately connected, and the cosmos is rationally governed, nothing can happen by chance. The Stoic theory of causality is also revealing: everything that acts or is acted upon is a body (Long and Sedley 45A-C), and all effects are incorporeal facts, or states of affairs. The classic Stoic example is the scalpel and the cut: a material body (the scalpel) causes an incorporeal effect (the disposition of being cut) (D. Frede 189; Long and Sedley 55A-C). One interesting consequence of this theory is that the Stoics consider many things to be corporeal bodies that most others do not: the soul, truth, and virtues are all bodies, because they can be causes (Brunschwig 210–1). A key idea raised here will be a recurring theme throughout this study. The Stoics are interested in understanding interactions between bodies, as opposed to understanding the bodies per se, within themselves. M. Frede summarizes Aristotle’s theory of predication as “an ontology of entities, rather than facts or states of affairs,” in contrast to the Stoics (Lekton 114). In the Stoic system, all bodies are caught up in an endless causal network working toward the same goal (telos). The consideration of bodies or things per se, which is Aristotle’s approach when he seeks to define substances,

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makes little sense in the Stoic system. The Stoics’ preoccupation with facts, that which has happened, as opposed to Aristotle’s focus on substances, that which is, underlies much of their language theory. In addition, it affects the nature of Stoic definitions: Brunschwig observes that many Stoic definitions both name the body and specify “the way it is affected or disposed,” the primary fact of its existence (212). This interest in disposition also sets the stage for allegory, a genre in which abstractions become actors, in which the structure of the cosmos becomes narrative.

Ethics The central doctrine of the Stoic ethical system is that, since the universe is rationally and benignly governed, ethical behavior means living in accordance with that logos (SVF I, 179A-G; Colish, Stoic Trad. I 36; Sandbach 37). Of course, this doctrine pushes the Stoics toward a theory of determinism in which it is difficult to fi nd room for free will. If all events are caused within the great network of a divinely ordered cosmos, how can humans take responsibility for their actions, good or bad? The Stoics answer this with a metaphor: Imagine a dog tied by a rope to a moving cart. If the dog moves himself along willingly with the cart, it will be more comfortable for him. But if the dog does not go willingly, the cart will drag him and he will go along all the same (Long and Sedley 62A-B). The key point in this doctrine is the notion of assent; for the Stoics, living in accordance with the logos means above all assenting to it, which means recognizing and embracing events from the standpoint of the logos, rather than from the standpoint of one’s own position. As unsatisfying as their answer to the charge of determinism may be, the Stoics are credited with an important move in the development of interior consciousness: their emphasis on assent changed the focus of ethics from actions and behavior to an internal act (Taylor 137; Long, Stoic Studies 266). Colish describes this move as a “radical internalizing” of ethics: “Although virtue ought to express itself in outward acts, ethics deals primarily with inner motivations, motivations which lie fully within man’s conscious control” (Colish, Stoic Trad. I 43). In their commentary on a series of fragments concerning Stoic attitudes toward virtue and vice, Long and Sedley note that vice is conceived as “mental sickness, manifesting itself in emotional disturbances. . . . The foundation of such ‘sickness’ is ignorance, or errors of value judgment” (385). One implication of this theory is that vice is understood as a kind of unconformity with the logos, a rejection of one’s place in the greater system, especially caused by a failure to recognize that a given fact is a part of the divine system. The role of assent in the act of sin becomes especially important in the thought of Augustine, where his defi nitions of caritas and cupiditas center on the difference between embracing things for God, equivalent here for the Stoic logos, or for themselves, or as the Stoics would say,

18 Grammar and Language Theory in Medieval Allegorical Narrative for the gratification of the passions.5 Likewise, assent to divine providence is a theme of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy. In the twelfth century, Abelard goes so far as to make assent to sin even more important than the act itself (Abelard, Ethics 24). For both traditions, Stoic and Christian, the guarantee of a rational and benevolent cosmos means that any confl ict between what is good for the system as a whole (logos or God) and the individual is illusory; what is good for the whole is by definition good for the individual. Likewise, human vice, conceived as a misguided and unnatural self-assertion, both goes against the cosmos and is self-negating for the individual who commits it. Several ethical themes that preoccupied the Stoics also appear in medieval allegorical narratives. The topic of assent to behavior is more or less visible throughout the Middle Ages. Whereas Abelard arguably takes the idea to a logical extreme, that sin subsists entirely in the assent and not in the act, clearly assent is an important aspect of sin even in a more orthodox view. Thus, Sobrietas in Prudentius’ Psychomachia upbraids the soldiers for assenting to replace the tunicam inmortalem of faith with the serica pallia (“silken robes”) of Luxuria (363–4). Another Stoic ethical concern that appears in medieval allegory is the notion of sin as alienation. An example of this occurs in Prose 3 of Alan of Lille’s Plaint of Nature, where Natura describes how reason and sensuality urge people, one towards the fatherland, and one into exile from it. Likewise, in Boethius’ Consolation, Philosophia characterizes the narrator’s journey toward an embrace of God’s amor as a return to his fatherland.

Epistemology Because the ethical system rests on acting in accordance with the logos, or nature, a fundamental consideration becomes how one comes to know the logos, so that one may act in accordance with it. In answer to this, the Stoics had an elaborate theory of epistemology. Stoic epistemology is fundamentally empirical. The basic process is as follows. Something out there in the world (phantaston, “impressor”) stamps an impression (phantasia, also translated as “presentation” or “representation”) of itself on the soul, “altering” the soul, usually though not necessarily through the senses.6 Repeated impressions from certain types of things, for example, white things, enables us to process the impressions from memory to experience, and from there to a preconception (prolepsis) and/or a conception (ennoia) (Long and Sedley 39A-G). The difference between the latter two is that a preconception arises naturally, whereas a conception arises through instruction or careful attention. When humans are fi rst born, their minds are a blank slate, or as the Stoics said, “a sheet of paper ready for writing upon,” awaiting the impressions from an outside world (Long and Sedley 39E). The Stoics distinguished an impression from a figment (phantasma), such as one perceives in dreams, based on the difference of their origin:

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Impressions are caused by existing things out there in the world, while figments are just made up (Long and Sedley 39A). In addition, before sense data can lead to a bona fide impression, the soul must assent to it (Long and Sedley 41A). Thus, the Stoics can explain how we deal with the illusion of a bent stick in the water: the senses may deliver the wrong sense data, but the resulting impression is still not mistaken. Knowing when to assent to perception becomes the key issue. The Stoics claim that some impressions are so “clear and distinct” that they practically guarantee their own truth.7 However, for those impressions that do not compel assent, the discipline of dialectic provides tools for weighing their merits. Some Stoics also tie ethical practice to impressions; for example, Epictetus identifies the purpose of the Stoics as “making correct use of impressions” (cited in Long, Stoic Studies 265). The Stoics at times struggle to explain exactly how the mind could be certain about its grasp of impressions and the things out there in the world that cause them. Hankinson traces the Skeptic attacks on this theory and the Stoics’ response to it as an almost symbiotic dialogue that lasted two centuries (“Stoic Epistemology” 67ff.), but the intricate details of the resulting system are beyond the scope of this chapter. Whatever its philosophical merits as a whole, Stoic epistemology has several features that are important for our purposes here. First, it is an empirically based system that rests on a simple ontology. Knowledge arises from bodies, from things out there in the world,8 and not from super-forms out there or nativist concepts that are already in our minds at birth (Hankinson 63). But though the cause of knowledge is external, the mind is not entirely passive, either. The mind fi rst assents to the impressions. And over time, the mind also develops conceptions. Through dialectic, the mind is also able to prove or disprove a set of impressions demonstrably; this demonstrable proof constitutes the highest level of knowledge. True knowledge of the world is possible, according to the Stoics, and it is characterized by the mind assenting to and developing to a greater or lesser degree conceptions around these impressions created by objects out there in the world. Ignorance or opinion in contrast are defi ned as weak or changeable assent (SVF I, 68). Universals are simply these conceptions developed in the mind; they have no external ontological status.9 The Stoics extend these conceptions into art (technê), by defi ning art as a system of “expert” impressions (Long and Sedley, 39A; SVF II, 96). Connecting Epictetus’s claim that ethics entails making the correct use of impressions to this notion of art as a system of expert impressions, it becomes clear that the Stoic sage10 is above all a trained craftsman or professional expert, who has developed great skill at perceiving reality directly (Long, Stoic Studies 208). The sage is not, then, some superhuman born with amazing abilities. Rationality is present all along in all of us; the Stoic sage cultivates it as a mental discipline. Finally, it is worth pausing to note that the Stoics consistently use a metaphor to characterize the relationships between an object out in the world, an impression, and the soul: the seal-ring/stamping metaphor.

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This metaphor is used in Plato’s Timaeus (50c), which played a formative role in the Stoic system (Sedley, “School” 21). The metaphor reappears in medieval allegory, in particular that of Alan of Lille, who uses it repeatedly in the Plaint of Nature (e.g., in Prose 3, Natura describes how God stamped the human species into a body molded from primordial matter to create the narrator). As a metaphor, it is normally used to denote reproduction, but like most metaphors, it carries additional baggage in the form of connotations. One connotation is that each impression is unique, since the results of any two stampings are never exactly alike. Another connotation is that what gets stamped, the wax, is a clump of impressible matter, and that whatever form the matter takes comes about separate from the matter itself. That is, the matter is ontologically prior to its fi nal form, which is again a rejection of a rationalist or nativist position, in which an encounter with a stimulus reminds the observer of a form or universal.11 As the analysis of impressions, including the seal-ring metaphor, makes clear, for the Stoics, the proper object of knowledge is bodies, or facts about bodies, as opposed to universals or Platonic forms.

STOIC THEORIES OF LANGUAGE Stoic language theory is both rich and influential. Along with epistemology and rhetoric, the Stoics teach language theory under the category of dialectic. If acting rationally is a professionally honed craft, then dialectic is the primary tool used for the honing. In developing their theories of dialectic, the Stoics improve upon Aristotle in their analysis of the parts of speech and their logic; indeed, nineteenth-century advances in logic were in some ways anticipated by the logic of Chrysippus in the third century B.C: in ancient times, it was claimed that if the gods practiced logic, it was the logic of Chrysippus that they practiced (Diogenes 289 [VII.180]). Historical accident left the logic of Chrysippus unused for millennia, in favor of Aristotle’s. But Stoic language theory was not without legacy. Ancient grammarians were deeply influenced by advances in Stoic language theory, and the grammatical tradition continued into the Middle Ages, often carrying with it an undercurrent of the Stoic worldview. The remainder of this chapter lays out the principal currents in Stoic logical and linguistic doctrine, relating it to the Stoic system as a whole, and then identifies several Stoic seeds in the grammatical tradition that followed—a tradition whose influence would extend to and even temporarily dominate the language debates of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The Stoics study language theory on two different levels: the utterances themselves and what gets said (M. Frede, “Lekton” 109), superficially at least corresponding to Saussure’s signifi er and signified. For the Stoics, the signifier, that is, the utterance, is easy enough to defi ne: “utterance is air that has been struck by an impulse. . . . Also, according

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to the Stoics, utterance is a body . . . for everything that acts is a body” (Diogenes Laertius, in Long and Sedley, 33G, =SVF II, 183). The signified takes a bit more work to explain: the gist of it, though, is that for the Stoics, the signified includes both the sayable (lekton), or the content of the meaning, and the thing itself. Perhaps simplifying somewhat, for the Stoics language refers simultaneously to both what is in the mind of the speaker and external reality, with the caveat that what is understood in the mind and what is out in reality should correspond. For the Stoics, an account of the parts of speech belongs to the branch of dialectic concerned with utterance; but an account of syntax belongs to the branch of dialectic concerned with what gets said (Long and Sedley, 31A; =Diogenes Laertius VII 41–4; M. Frede, “Lekton” 109). In other words, if syntax were associated with the utterance, it would be little more than a conventional artifact of a given language, but because the Stoics associate syntax with what gets said, it has deep implications for extramental reality, whose structures become, in some sense, syntactical. The basic notion of the workings of language involves a triad: the utterance, the sayable (lekton), and the thing out there in the world, called in this context the name-bearer (tunchanon). For example, spoken aloud the words /Dion is walking/ are a corporeal utterance. The lekton is the fact that Dion is walking; this fact is not corporeal, and I will discuss the nature of its existence momentarily. Finally, there is the name-bearer, the walking Dion, a body out there in the world that actually is walking, assuming the utterance and the lekton are true.

Lekta The Stoics, especially when contrasted with Aristotle, believe that language truthfully represents reality, as opposed to mental images or intentions. To understand why the Stoics (and later Augustine12 as well as the medieval grammatical tradition13) maintain this belief, one must understand the doctrine of lekta. A few aspects of lekta have already been mentioned: they are incorporeal, they are separate from utterances and things out there in the world, and they are also associated with the mind/intent of the speaker. The Stoics grant lekta an interesting ontological status: they subsist, but they do not exist. Only bodies truly exist for the Stoics. But the Stoics recognize that some things are not bodies, and so they can’t exist; yet these things are not nothings, either. The Stoics posit a genus above Being called Something (ti), which includes both existing things (bodies) and subsistent things. Into this special category, the Stoics include place, time, void, and lekta (Long and Sedley 27A-G; SVF II, 329–335). A lekton is the fact itself that is expressed by an utterance14: Diogenes Laertius writes, “For utterances are voiced but it is states of affairs that are said—they after all are actually sayables” (Long and Sedley 33A). The locus classicus

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for the Stoic doctrine on lekta is a passage from Sextus Empiricus (Against the Professors 8.11–12; =Long and Sedley 33B; =SVF II, 166). Long and Sedley translate the passage as follows: The Stoics . . . [say] that three things are linked together, “the signification,” “the signifier,” and the “name-bearer.” The signifier is an utterance, for instance “Dion”; the signification is the actual state of affairs revealed by an utterance, and which we apprehend as it subsists in accordance with our thought, whereas it is not understood by those whose language is different although they hear the utterance; the name-bearer is the external object, for instance, Dion himself. Of these, two are bodies—the utterance and the name-bearer; but one is incorporeal—the state of affairs signified and sayable, which is true or false. Species of lekta include assertibles, questions, inquiries, oaths, curses, and puzzlements, among others (Bobzien 86, citing Diogenes Laertius VII, 65–68). A lekton may be thought of as the fact that an utterance is about. I have stressed that Stoic ontology is interested in facts and relationships, more than substances in themselves; the notion of a lekton corresponds to this emphasis in ontology. The Stoics also hold that the lekton is ontologically distinct from thoughts (Brunschwig 218). More precisely, as both Sextus Empiricus and Diogenes Laertius report, a lekton is “what subsists in accordance with a rational impression” (Long and Sedley 33C, F). Impressions are caused by things out there in the world; therefore, the cause of the lekton is not in the mind, but rather is out there in the world. As Frede observes, lekta subsist whether or not they actually get said (Lekton 110). This doctrine is consistent with the seal-ring metaphor used frequently when describing impressions. The metaphor is not consistent with a theory in which the mind must actively abstract or construct a complex idea out of raw sense data. Instead, as the metaphor is intended to communicate, objects present or imprint themselves as they are situated in the world, and the mind has to do little work to cognize them, though it may have to work to assent to them and/or explain them rationally. In their commentary, Long and Sedley write, “rational impressions themselves represent their objects in ways that presuppose language and concepts” (240); in other words, for Long and Sedley, the impression itself is a kind of signifier, one that human cognition can grasp and in turn translate into and articulate using another type of signifier: speech. It may be clearer now why the Stoics grouped lekta with void, place, and time; each one of these incorporeals provides a rational framework in which bodies are situated or disposed, a framework that enables both cognition and linguistic expression, without itself becoming reified. The precise nature of the Stoic linguistic triad is now more evident. The utterance plays the role of signifier, and it is a corporeal body. The signified

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is split into two parts, the lekton and the name-bearer. The lekton is the state-of-affairs in the world, which has impressed itself upon the mind of the speaker, and it is incorporeal. The name-bearer, again, is the body out there in the world. This bifurcation of the signified appears to correspond more or less to the modern distinction in logic between extensional and intensional meaning. Extensional meaning, which roughly corresponds to the concept of denotation, refers to the elements in the set specified in the words. In the sentence, “Several people were in the room,” the extensional meaning refers to those actual people who were in the room. The intensional meaning, which corresponds roughly to connotation, is more abstract and provides defi ning information about the members of the set. Returning to the “Several people were in the room” example, intensional meanings might include “Several mortal, rational animals were in the room,” or “A group of risible, featherless bi-peds were in the walled-in building enclosure.” In this vocabulary, the name-bearer half of the signified corresponds to the extensional meaning, while the lekton half corresponds to the intensional meaning.15 Seneca appears to be making the same kind of distinction when he writes, “plurimum autem interest utrum illud dicas an de illo” (Long and Sedley [33E] translate: “There’s a very great difference between naming it and speaking about it”). In this passage, Seneca is talking about the difference in meaning when we talk about “wisdom” versus “he is wise,” and what seems to be at work is a distinction between the body “wisdom” (extension) and the fact of a man’s being wise (intension). The Stoics have been credited with introducing this distinction into logic, specifically to solve the Elektra paradox (Allwood, Andersson, and Dahl 125–7).16 As Allwood, Andersson, and Dahl relate, the Elektra paradox can be summarized as follows: a. Elektra does not know that the man in front of her is her brother. b. Elektra knows that Orestes is her brother. c. The man in front of her is identical to Orestes. Conclusion: Elektra both knows and does not know that the same man is her brother. The solution to this paradox rests on the difference in reference in the fi rst two premises. Both have the same extension; that is, the set of individuals to which the terms refer is the same, the individual Orestes. But they have different intensions: in one, the intension of Orestes is “the man in front of her,” while in the second, the intension is “her brother.” These two intensions, or lekta, which we might paraphrase as “Orestes qua the man in front of Elektra” and “Orestes qua Elektra’s brother” both correspond correctly to Elektra’s rational impressions. As facts, neither intension/lekton is corporeal, and yet both provide a frame of reference, a point of view, from

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which to comprehend and articulate an individual body, Orestes. In their commentary, Long and Sedley refer to lekta as abstractions: “In saying ‘is walking’ of Cato, we abstract a feature of that body, and that abstraction or incorporeal predication is the only way in which the unitary body of Cato can be meaningfully described in a sentence. Thus, sayables can be regarded as abstractions from bodies” (200). The lekton isn’t the only meaning conveyed by the utterance; there is also the name-bearer. The name-bearer can be considered the extension, the entity out there in the real world, which in Stoic ontology must be a body.17 In the sentence “Socrates is white,” the Stoics do not see it having as its extension two things, the substance “Socrates” and the quality “whiteness,” as does Aristotle; rather, they see the sentence having one body as its extension: “the white Socrates.” Sorabji characterizes this move as a strong “reductionism” in which attributes are inseparable from the bodies with which they are associated (Matter 90). More precisely, attributes are dispositions of bodies; they are not reified (Sorabji, Matter 91). As I will explore in Chapter 2, this way of thinking about the relationship between bodies and attributes provides an interesting way of thinking about the nature of allegorical abstraction: rather than seeing abstractions as walking universals, as do many critics, perhaps they can be seen as bodies (e.g., Aeneas) disposed in a certain way (e.g., pius), where the disposition (e.g., Piety) is more important than the body itself.

Language and Reality Having connected reality, knowledge, and language, what do the Stoics hope to get from their theory? Stoic dialectic—the discipline that includes the theories of language and epistemology that I have been discussing—is of foundational importance to the Stoic system as a whole. That is, achieving the exalted status of Stoic sage presupposes mastery of dialectic (Long and Sedley 31C, =SVF II, 130). Even though the theories of impressions and lekta make it possible for us to understand and articulate facts about reality truthfully, the Stoics do not naively suggest that the system always works out that way. That is, they hold that it is theoretically possible for humans to comprehend the true nature of the cosmos, but they do not hold that everyone (or perhaps even anyone) actually has. A major problem that humans face is that some impressions do not reliably represent their objective sources; as mentioned earlier, a classical example is the illusion that a stick is bent when it is put in water. Some impressions, according to the Stoics, reliably present their external objects to the soul, while others do not. The question, then, is how do we know which impressions are reliable? I mentioned earlier that the Stoics held that impressions had to be assented to before the mind accepted them—the cognition of impressions is not an automatic process. Thus, assent becomes the mechanism through which we distinguish the true impressions from the misleading ones. A major aspect

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of Stoic dialectic, again in the words of Diogenes Laertius, is “the science of when one should and should not assent” (Long and Sedley 31B). Dialectic enables us to distinguish the true from the false, and thus it is for the Stoics the gateway to discovery of the truth of the cosmos, without comprehension of which one cannot live ethically, since ethical living entails living in accordance with the logos. The Stoic sage “is not subject to persuasion, he does not change, he does not err in respect of any sense organ, he does not deceive and is not deceived” (Long, Stoic Studies 93). Long observes that, whereas Plato conceives dialectic primarily as a creative tool, for the discovery of truth, Aristotle conceives dialectic as a discipline used to defend arguments against counterarguments. But the Stoics, according to Long, combine these two uses of dialectic, so that it has the discipline in the Aristotelian sense, but it is used as a tool for the discovery of truth (Stoic Studies, 94; Long and Sedley 190). Perhaps one of the most celebrated achievements of the Stoics in the area of logic is their development of propositional logic, particularly that of Chrysippus. Prior to the Stoics, Aristotelian logic was the state of the art. Aristotle’s logic centers on terms, typically subjects and predicates. Terms might include more than one word, but they refer to one thing, which may be an individual, group, or even a fictional entity: “Socrates,” “all Siamese cats,” and “the present king of France” are all terms. Aristotelian logic examines the validity of sets of propositions built out of these terms. A typical example: “All P are Q; R is P; Therefore, R is Q.” In this example, each capital letter represents a term. For this analysis to work, it must be possible to express propositions in the form of categorical statements. There are four categorical statements: All P are Q; Some P are Q; No P are Q; and Some P are not Q. The problem with this approach, a problem that Aristotle himself seems not to have realized, is that many propositions cannot be expressed in categorical form (R. Smith 35). As an improvement over Aristotle’s term logic, the Stoics, Chrysippus in particular, developed propositional logic. In propositional logic, the basic units are not terms but propositions, which are a species of complete lekta, called assertibles (axiômata) (Bobzien 101–102). An assertible is a complete lekton that is statable and which has a truth value (Bobzien 86–7). Assertibles can be simple (“It is day”) or non-simple (“If the sun is up, it is day”); a non-simple assertible is two or more simple assertibles joined by a connective (syndesmos), which is an indeclinable part of speech, such as “and,” “or,” and “not” (Bobzien 92). Arguments (logoi) are collections of premises and a conclusion built out of assertibles, as in the following example: If it is day, it is light. But it is day. Conclusion: Therefore it is light.

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Chrysippus proposed five argument forms, called the indemonstrables (anapodeiktoi), that don’t need to be proven, because they are obvious (SVF II, 239a, 241; Bobzien 104). The preceding example (“If it is day, . . . ”) fits into the first of the five forms: If P, Q But P Therefore, Q Demonstration, for the Stoics, means either showing that all of one’s argument fits into these five forms, or converting one’s argument so that all of its elements fit into these five forms. Once the assertibles are converted to capital letters, all that remain are the connectives; the Stoic logical system is derived from these connectives, so that, for example, a conditional proposition is linked by the conditional “if,” while the disjunctive proposition is linked by the word “either” (Long and Sedley 35A). The concept of linkage, which comes up in Alan of Lille, guarantees the meaning of the whole, through the correct use of these connectives.18 The Stoics also lay out several principles (themata) of valid conversion from one propositional form to another; this technique is useful in building valid arguments that start from accepted premises and move toward logical conclusions. For example, the fi rst thema, as characterized by Apuleius, is as follows: “When from two (assertibles) a third follows, then from either of them together with the contradictory of the conclusion the contradictory of the other follows” (cited in Bobzien 111). The Stoics even provide a sequential method for attacking complex subjects, which involves converting arguments to indemonstrables through increasingly complex conversion techniques. Stoic logic is highly technical, and the preceding brief summary is not intended to do justice to their logical method. Instead, I want to point out several features of it, because they lend support for theses to which I’ll return throughout my analysis. Stoic logic is about relationships; their analysis of connectives and their bearings on valid inference is today still considered a major contribution to logic. For the Stoics at least, the connectives have more than formal validity: Connectives accurately represent actual relationships between objects in the real world (Blank and Atherton 315). Another variation on this theme is that because the units of analysis, assertibles and arguments, are species of lekta, and lekta involve facts or states of affairs abstracted from substances in themselves, that is they are intensional, we can infer that logic is a tool used in the discovery of things as they are disposed in the world, again, as opposed to the things considered in the abstract, purely mental constructs, or purely linguistic structures. Finally, though the content of the analysis consists of facts about bodies in the world, the analysis itself is mediated at every turn by language, which

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enables the training that results in an increasingly sophisticated comprehension of the world.

THE STOIC CONNECTION IN ANCIENT GRAMMAR The Stoics were a primary influence in the emergence of grammar as an ancient intellectual discipline. The Stoics offer numerous theories of language that would be of interest to a grammarian, including their claim that language is natural, rather than conventional, as Aristotle had maintained; their analysis of the parts of speech; their theories of case, and their literary theory. Historical evidence also shows extensive connections between the Stoics and ancient grammarians, some of which are discussed later in this chapter. At the same time, when considering the historical lines of influence, we must be cautious not to overreach. Blank (“Analogy” 149) points out that in spite of the considerable overlaps between the Stoics and early grammarians, the two groups are working toward different ends. The Stoics’ analysis of language is oriented towards semantics, subordinate to their dialectic goal of analyzing and articulating impressions and the cosmos and logos that cause them. Ancient grammarians are more interested in studying poetry, including a basic analysis of the language used in poetic texts as well as a deeper art of interpretation. Nonetheless, the Stoics appeal to the grammarians, because the Stoics are “pioneers” who help “to systematize much that was previously unsystematic” (Long, Hellenistic Philosophy 131). In this section, I discuss a handful of topics on which there is convergence between Stoicism and ancient grammar study, especially in those cases where the convergence has significance for medieval literature or linguistic theory.

The Origins of Language The ancients were interested in, and had many theories about, the origins of language. A classic, if enigmatic, example is Plato’s dialogue Cratylus, which centers on a debate about whether names signify naturally or conventionally. In it, Cratylus is of the opinion that names are natural, while Hermogenes argues that they are conventional. Socrates enters the argument, pointing out the absurdities of extreme versions of both arguments. Along the way, he posits the existence of the name-giver, a “legislator” whose job it is to fi nd the proper name for each thing (217 [429]). Socrates then provides a series of etymologies, many of which are notoriously absurd, leaving scholars to argue whether to interpret Plato in this dialogue as joking.19 Two related issues in particular emerge from this dialogue: the question of whether language is natural or conventional, and the related question of the utility of etymological analysis. While Plato doesn’t ultimately appear

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to take a side in the debate, Aristotle does: In On Interpretation, he posits that language is conventional. 20 For Aristotle, language has to be conventional for logic to be sufficiently separable from external reality to be useful (Law, History 29). For their part, the Stoics are “staunch” in their support for the theory of natural signification (Colish, “Stoic Theory” 20). Evidence of the Stoics’ adherence to this doctrine is available in Origen: “the primary sounds [are] imitations of the things of which the names are said” and this “is the basis on which they introduce some elements of etymology” (Long & Sedley 32J). Modern scholars (e.g., Long, Stoic Studies 71–2; Long and Sedley 195) claim that the Stoics had nuanced views of etymology and found it useful but not ultimately reliable. In support of this claim, they cite the Stoics’ own use of etymological study in readings of Homer as well as their stance on linguistic ambiguity. Chrysippus claims language is ambiguous by pointing out that two or more meanings could be understood from every word (Long and Sedley 37N). This kind of ambiguity may seem hard to explain in a system where names are held to be naturally derived, but the Stoics’ answer is that even if the origins of language are natural, usage has since moved it away from its origins (Atherton 93; Long, Stoic Studies 68–75). But the Stoics’ view on the natural signification of language is not always nuanced. Galen quotes Chrysippus explaining that in saying “ego” the chin points to the heart, which to the Stoics represented “the place in which we declare thought to be,” and that this pointing constitutes “demonstrative reference” (Long & Sedley 34J). 21 Galen, however, is unimpressed by Chrysippus’ reasoning and accuses him of lacking scientifi c rigor (Hankinson, “Usage” 170–1). In “Stoic Readings of Homer,” Long examines Stoic readings of poetry and analyzes their method and implicit linguistic and even literary theory. The essay begins by debunking the notion that the Stoics read Homer as if he were a “crypto-Stoic” who secretly encoded Stoic doctrine under a veneer of myth. Long claims that the Stoics’ treatment of Homer and Hesiod is “ethnographical” and not literary (82): Nothing is said about what Homer or Hesiod themselves meant. The Stoics are interested in their poems as sources of pre-existing, pre-philosophical views of the world—what we might call “true myths”. . . . (Long, Stoic Studies 70; italics in the original) The interest is not at all in the intention of the poet or the aesthetic value of the language; rather, the Stoic project is to recover meanings embedded in the text regardless of the poet’s intentions. The ancient poem thus becomes an artifact, a bi-level signifier that expresses the story of the wrath of Achilles or the wanderings of Odysseus but that also expresses reality during a time when language and reality were at a much earlier stage of their drift

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apart from one another. The Stoic attitude toward etymology fits easily into this program: “Etymology . . . enables the Stoic philosopher to recover the beliefs about the world held by those who fi rst gave the gods their present names” (71). One distinction that Long emphasizes throughout the essay is the difference between etymology, in which a more authentic meaning of a single word is sought, and allegoresis, in which a more authentic meaning of a narrative is sought. According to Long, the Stoics practice only the former and reject the latter. The Stoic preoccupation with discovering pure language is consistent with ancient notions of what the discipline of grammar actually comprises, as I will discuss in the next section. The myth of the name-giver comes up in medieval discussions on the origin of language and the nature of reference, including Priscian and Abelard, as I will explore in Chapter 3. In addition, one might consider whether the radical use of language in medieval allegory constitutes an experiment in writing a purified language that is somehow more natural, closer to reality.

The Parts of Speech Their position on the natural/conventional reference debate leads the Stoics to a program of etymological ethnography ultimately incompatible with the practice of ancient grammarians, who are primarily interested in poetic texts in a more conventional, literary sense. David Blank provides a series of ancient defi nitions of the discipline of grammar, in the words of the grammarians themselves (“Analogy” 155–7). 22 The defi nitions reveal that the grammarians evolve toward a claim that they offer a science of analyzing poetry, and that later they extend the claim to cover non-specialized language in general. This science is different in its scope and goals from Stoic dialectic, so one is entitled to enquire into the nature of the Stoic influence on ancient grammar, an especially difficult question to answer, given that the Stoics’ writings on grammar have not survived at all. One area of convergence is in the analysis of the parts of speech. Aristotle makes early distinctions regarding the parts of speech in his identification of the parts of a proposition (Law, History 29). Thus Aristotle defi nes the noun (onoma) and the verb (rhema): • A noun is a sound having meaning established by convention alone but no reference whatever to time, while no part of it has any meaning, considered apart from the whole. (On Interpretation 117 [16a20]) • A verb is a sound which not only conveys a particular meaning but has a time-reference also. No part by itself has any meaning. It indicates always that something is said or asserted of something. (On Interpretation 119 [16b6])

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Aristotle’s purpose here is to provide an analysis of the constituents of propositions, so that he can “explain what is meant by denial, affi rmation, proposition, and sentence” (On Interpretation 115 [16a1]). He is not attempting to elaborate a theory of syntax that would be useful in explicating, say, a given line of Homer. The Stoics go beyond Aristotle in defi ning several parts of speech, including proper nouns, common nouns, verbs, conjunctions, articles, and the mean. 23 A passage of Diogenes Laertius follows Chrysippus’ student Diogenes of Babylon in summarizing several parts of speech, which I divide into a list for readability, though these are all taken from a single passage: • A common noun or appellative . . . [is a] part of a sentence signifying a common quality, e.g., man, horse. • A name [proper noun] is a part of speech expressing a quality peculiar to an individual, e.g. Diogenes, Socrates. • A verb is . . . a part of speech signifying an isolated predicate or . . . an undeclined part of a sentence that can be attached to one or more subjects, e.g. “I write,” “I speak.” • A conjunction is an indeclinable part of speech, binding the various parts of a statement together. • An article is a declinable part of speech, distinguishing the genders and numbers of nouns. (167; =Book VII, 58; =SVF III, 22) For the Stoics, one important role conjunctions (earlier I used the translation “connectives”) play is combining lekta. Long credits the Stoics with identifying the five inflections of Greek nouns and adjectives, and claims that their analysis of case and verb tense and accompanying vocabulary (e.g., “nominative” and “accusative,” “present” and “perfect”) became canonical (Hellenistic Philosophy 138). This list of the parts of speech according to the Stoics is quite different from the defi nitions provided from Aristotle’s On Interpretation. Not only is the list more comprehensive, but it clearly considers issues that we recognize as grammatical: declension, gender, number. We can see why early grammarians would fi nd such a classification attractive. Still, much of the list is semantically oriented, and ancient grammarians modified it to suit their needs; for example, they collapsed the distinction between common and proper nouns back into one part of speech (Blank and Atherton 324). As mentioned earlier, the Stoics separated discussions of word forms and parts of speech from syntax. The former are grouped with utterances, while the latter is grouped with what gets said. This separation appears in early grammars as well. Blank observes that Apollonius Dyscolas treats syntax as rational and philosophically discoverable and argues that word order reflects the nature of the thing which is said (Blank, “Analogy” 163). Also reflecting this distinction, Apollonius first treats the parts of speech semantically and then the sound-structure (Blank, “Analogy” 162). Finally, Apollonius is

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preoccupied with explaining anomalies; his method is to translate the surface structure of anomalous syntax to a more regular, more proper structure (Blank, “Analogy” 164). This method is consistent with the Stoic theory about the slow devolution of language, in which language becomes increasingly less isomorphic with external reality. On a related note, Blank also observes that ancient theories of punctuation are based on the notion of distinguishing complete from incomplete lekta (Blank, “Analogy” 150).

Speaking Correctly Another area in which the Stoics and ancient grammarians hold a common cause is the area of speaking correctly. The Stoics’ linkage of language and epistemology places a special emphasis on speaking correctly, and the Stoics develop elaborate analyses to identify and counter fallacy. In addition, the Stoic myth of the name-giver and consequent corruption of language likewise emphasizes the importance of linguistic correctness. For the Stoics, linguistic vices such as barbarisms and solecisms can only accelerate the corruption of language, threatening its linkage to reality. Seen from this angle, the use of the terminology of “virtues” and “vices” to describe grammatical error is not merely a colorful term for the prickliness of the primary school grammarian; the use of language implies certain responsibilities, and so uses and abuses are appropriately classified using the moral vocabulary of virtues and vices. For the grammarians, of course, incorrect speech does not represent the same metaphysical and ethical dangers that it does for the Stoics, but they are interested in classifying different forms of linguistic deviation. Alan of Lille in his Plaint of Nature, takes the linkage between grammar and ethics to stunning extremes, where he explains sexual deviance in terms of grammatical deviance, as will be discussed in Chapter 4. Allegories both in late antiquity and arguably throughout the Middle Ages appear to share several important themes with Stoic and ancient grammatical theories, including a belief in a deep connection between language and reality; a cosmos guided by a benevolent force (logos or God); an epistemological interest in recognizing truth among appearances; a system of ethics grounded on the ability to distinguish between and assent to true over false impressions; an inward focus on conscious assent and intellectual mastery instead of external action; an interest in relationships between things, and facts or states of affairs, as opposed to things taken individually and abstractly; systematic use of the vocabulary of virtues and vices; use of virtues and vices as corporeal entities; and perhaps above all a sense that the correct use of language is the key to leading the happy or Christian life. At a minimum, medieval allegories have a baseline compatibility with the Stoic intellectual system and its tradition, and thanks to the connections between Stoic linguistic theory and ancient grammar, we also know at a minimum that writers of allegory had at least indirect access to Stoic linguistic theory.

2

Language and Abstraction in Prudentian Allegory

Modern readers of Prudentius (348-~410) face several challenges. Little is known about Prudentius biographically1 and, given his importance both as a late Classical poet and as an early medieval allegorist, one might expect more scholarly resources than are available on his poetry or his intellectual context. Part of the problem is that Prudentius falls into the cracks between modern disciplines: he is too late (and, according to Macklin Smith, too Christian) for most classicists, and too early (and perhaps too Roman) for most medievalists. By writing early Christian theology into allegory in the form of Virgilian epic poetry, Prudentius also places heavy demands on modern readers. Recent scholarship focuses on his literary sources (e.g., Hanna, Lana, Malamud, Rivero García, Witke, and Cunningham) or considers him as a literary precursor to other allegorists (e.g., Van Dyke, Lewis, Machosky). Given the powerful cosmological vision that the Psychomachia projects, it is unfortunate that more scholarship is not available that explores connections between philosophical trends, especially trends in cosmology, ethics, and epistemology, in late antiquity and Prudentius’ poetry. 2 Another difficulty is that some of the scholarship on Prudentius is hostile. The Psychomachia is frequently dismissed as a lesser work. For example, Lewis variously refers to it as “an anticlimax,” “unworthy of the great utterances which lead up to it,” “a poor thing,” and “the crudest allegory” (Lewis 66, 68). Another writes that the Psychomachia is “aesthetically the weakest, but the most important from a literary and historical standpoint” (Raby, cited in Macklin Smith, 16). Scholars such as Van Dyke and Nugent preface their work by defending Prudentius’ poem against scholarly hostility to it, claiming that scholars project an idea onto it and then accuse it of failing to live up to that idea (e.g., Van Dyke 33). Books on allegory by Lewis, Tuve, Fletcher, Quilligan, and Van Dyke all at least mention Prudentius, though in some cases the analysis is dismissive, using him as a foil with which to analyze Spenser, Coleridge, and Kafka. The Psychomachia seems at times overburdened as a seminal text, read from the hindsight of the generic tradition it is supposed to inaugurate. Part I of Van Dyke’s book is called “The Paradigm,” and it contains

Language and Abstraction in Prudentian Allegory 33 only a single chapter, called “The Psychomachia and the Nature of ‘Pure’ Allegory.” These titles make an implicit claim: whatever it is that defi nes allegory, it is to be found in its most pristine state in Prudentius. While not quite so explicit, Prudentius’ treatment in Quilligan, Lewis, Bloomfield, and Machosky, all of whom explore the functioning of allegory within the Psychomachia, also appear to be reading Prudentius in this way. One disadvantage to examining the allegories of late antiquity through genre scholarship is that the methodology is often modern or postmodern, while the allegories covered range from the Middle Ages through the twentieth century. However, late antiquity is widely regarded as the era that presided over the birth of allegory as an independent literary genre, so it is unfortunate that the scope of these works prevents them from examining the allegories of late antiquity in their proper cultural context. No single chapter can redress all these problems. However, by narrowing the scope from allegory in general across time and national borders to one Latin allegory in late antiquity, I hope at least to provide fresh insight into the intellectual context in which Prudentius was writing, exploring some of the roles that Stoicism and the grammar tradition may have played in shaping this new genre. Specifically, I will focus on the tension between the so-called literal and allegorical levels, the ontological status of allegorical abstractions, and the ambiguous relationship between the search for philosophical truth and the aesthetics of a literary text. I begin by discussing existing theories of allegory, and in particular readings of Prudentius’ Psychomachia, to reveal some hidden yet fundamental disagreements on the nature of allegorical abstraction. I propose an alternate defi nition of abstraction, which is grounded in Stoic logic and ancient grammar theory, and which was historically available to European writers in late antiquity. Finally, I apply this new defi nition in a reading of Prudentius’ Psychomachia to demonstrate that the allegory shares several key strategies and goals with Stoic dialectic.

THE ONTOLOGY OF ALLEGORICAL ABSTRACTIONS In many handbooks of literature (e.g., Preminger, Warnke, and Hardison), allegory is commonly defi ned as a genre of literature that has as least two “levels” of meaning. One is the literal level, which presents the action of the narrative. It often relates a journey, dialogue, or battle. Another is the allegorical level, which contains a hidden or veiled, yet deeper or truer meaning. Thus in Dante’s Inferno, the narrator describes how he is led on a walking tour of Hell by the poet Virgil, and yet we are supposed to understand that this guide represents something in addition to the poet Virgil, such as Virgil’s poetry or human reason. Each of the two levels, though distinct on this theory, signifies at the same time, or, to shift metaphors, signifies in parallel to the another, so that item X in the literal level corresponds

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to item Xa in the allegorical level. In addition, the allegorical level is usually privileged in the sense that it is believed to have the truer meaning. Recent scholars of Prudentius or allegory in general (e.g., Quilligan, Van Dyke, Machosky, Nugent) challenge the applicability of this handbook defi nition to Prudentius or more generally. They emphasize that the literal and allegorical levels can never quite be separated, and they never seem to line up schematically. Quilligan (26) argues against the handbook defi nition as follows: The “other” named by the term allos . . . is not some other hovering above the words in the text, but the possibility of an otherness, a polysemy, inherent in the very words on the page; allegory therefore names the fact that language can signify many things at once. It does not name the many other things language means, or the disjunction between saying and meaning, but the often problematic process of meaning multiple things simultaneously with one word. Rather than seeing an allegory as signifying on several discrete and coordinated levels, Quilligan instead emphasizes polysemy, words having multiple simultaneous meanings. This change in emphasis suggests, in Van Dyke’s words, that “a text that says and means two things must say and mean one complex thing” (42). In spite of this criticism of the naïve bi-level notion of allegory, most critics (including Quilligan and Van Dyke) continue to refer to different “levels” of meaning, which implies that the handbook defi nition of allegory has at least some utility, even if it overstates or over-schematizes the differences and correspondences among the levels. Indeed, if allegory merely consists of polysemous words with no coordinated levels of meaning at all, allegorical narratives would become quite difficult to read, if not utter nonsense. If one assumes, then, that allegorical polysemy has some pattern to it, if not a totalizing schema, then naturally one challenge is to identify what that pattern is. Quilligan often emphasizes the distinction between a source text representing Truth, such as the Bible, and an interpretation of it, expressed as a narrative. She introduces the term “pretext” to describe what an allegory reenacts and claims it is not building upon. For example, Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress reenacts aspects of its pretext, the Bible, but it does not claim to add new truth to it. In a related approach, Honig introduces the notion of a threshold emblem, which is a sign or image that inaugurates a series of references back to it (72). Quilligan claims that Honig’s emblem and writing allegory in general is an act of literary criticism in narrative form. Thus, one candidate for a defi nition of allegorical levels is the difference between (a) the pretext, threshold emblem, or other source text and (b) its interpretation—or more properly, the act of its interpretation. In Quilligan’s analysis, allegory is a process approach to teasing out meaning from a source sign that is itself loaded with meaning. Put another

Language and Abstraction in Prudentian Allegory 35 way, allegory is the narrative of a process of abstraction. This project is at least compatible with the Stoic notion of dialectic’s role in epistemology, as well as the role of language in articulating what is known. For the Stoics, the senses are confronted with many, and often confl icting, impressions. Dialectic offers the knower a process through which she or he can rationally assent to the correct impressions. Dialectic engages at the level of lekta, and as I have shown, lekta can be characterized as facts attributed to aspects of (or abstractions from) objects in external reality. Allegory on Quilligan’s analysis and Stoic dialectic appear to have three key components in common: both engage with an object of authority (a rationally ordered external reality or a doctrinally true text) that threatens to exceed our capacity to understand it; both abstract aspects of that object, so as to investigate or comprehend the object in a particular context; and in both, this interpretive process is temporal, step-by-step, and rational, as opposed to instant and intuitive. Van Dyke criticizes Quilligan for not going far enough in her defi nition to enable readers to distinguish between allegorical and non-allegorical works (22). Van Dyke extends Quilligan’s theory of polysemy, arguing that an allegorical abstraction is an undifferentiated universal capable of generating an infi nite number of common and proper nouns. She uses Prudentius as an example, saying that a given Virtue can be variously represented as an amazonian warrior, a biblical figure, and multiple male soldiers (40). That is, a Virtue is capable of radical changes in gender, number, and historical setting. Each of these representations is an instantiation of a deeper, undifferentiated universal, such as Sobriety or Patience. She pushes this argument to the conclusion that “literary allegory in general is the set of genres that are based on the synthesis of deictic and nondeictic generic codes” (40). Van Dyke is not the fi rst to stress the distinction between deictic and nondeictic as a key to understanding allegory. Bloomfield uses the same distinction in his influential article, “A Grammatical Approach to Personification Allegory.” He writes that with personification, “when we make inanimate nouns animate, we are making deictic (or pointer) nouns out of non-deictic nouns,” and he continues to say that “we are making proper nouns out of our source nouns, that is making them one member class nouns, and giving them an existential quality” (164–5). Nugent concurs, writing that “the allegorical strategy depends so much upon reifying words, turning them into objects to be manipulated” (63). One pattern that emerges from all these writers is that personification manifests a violation of grammar (e.g., Quilligan 42, Bloomfield 165, Van Dyke 39), in which the use of a verb clause normally predicated of a deictic noun is predicated of a non-deictic noun. Allegory generates realities based on a misuse of grammar. As allegorical language creates realities, we are prompted to ask, what is the ontological status of a personification? The focus on grammar, including the discussion of deictic and non-deictic nouns and the idea of

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predicating one type of verb of a different type of noun, suggests that personifications have no ontological status; they are, as Malamud describes them, “mere words” (10). And yet several scholars grant a more substantial being to personifications: for example, Quilligan writes, Allegory will not exist as a viable genre without this ‘suprarealist’ attitude toward words; that is, its existence assumes an attitude in which abstract nouns not only name universals that are real, but in which the abstract names themselves are perceived to be as real and as powerful as the things named. (156) C. S. Lewis also characterizes allegorical abstractions as having an ontological status; in his analysis of how the gods in Statius have ceased to be agents in their own right and instead have become “state[s] of mind,” he refers to allegorical personae as “accidents occurring in a substance” (53). For Lewis “accidents” refers to the states of mind/allegorical characters, while the “substance” refers to the soul that has these states of mind. Van Dyke also uses the language of substance and accidents, but in a different way: “In the philosopher’s realm of being, an object is compounded of substance and accident; in the semiotic system of allegory, an agent can take physical form without ceasing to be also a universal” (39). This appears to suggest that the universal is the substance, and each of its manifestations is an accident. Parsing aside, one might ask which “philosopher’s realm of being” Van Dyke is talking about, and even more pertinently, why she has reason to believe Prudentius or any given writer of allegory would have had access to it and furthermore subscribed to it. Perhaps she is alluding to Aristotelian metaphysics, which at least uses the vocabulary of “substance” and “accidents.” For Aristotle, as noted in Chapter 1, one way of defi ning universals is that which is predicated of many (On Interpretation, 125 [17a38-b1]). Van Dyke’s theory of allegory may be compatible with this notion of universal. On this interpretation, one might say patientia is a single universal, even though it may be used as a predicate for different substances: Job is patientia; the act of enduring the furious attacks of ira is patientia, to provide sufficient support for other virtues to succeed is patientia. Yet Van Dyke also appears to have in mind a Platonic metaphysics, when she emphasizes the idea of participation. In rejecting Bloomfield’s claim, followed to a certain extent by Quilligan, that allegory is about using an abstract noun with a predicate usually associated with a concrete noun, Van Dyke asserts that allegory is instead about “a shift of perspective to include both concrete agents and the intelligible realities in which they participate” (39). Here universals are not merely a kind of predicate (as in the Aristotelian defi nition), but they are the intelligible reality in which the concrete subject participates. With these two notions of universals, Van Dyke seems to be switching from a predication model to a participation model of universals.

Language and Abstraction in Prudentian Allegory 37 To summarize, scholarship on allegory appears to be recapitulating aspects of the debate on universals, albeit in a muddled way. Some, such as Malamud and arguably Bloomfield and Nugent, take something like a nominalist position, claiming that personifications are mere words, where abstract or universal entities are no more than the result of a certain misuse of language. Others, including Van Dyke and (in places) Quilligan, claim that allegory is intrinsically realist, asserting the existence of universals and making them central to the allegorical code. 3 Such fundamental disagreements pose a challenge to the reader of allegory attempting to present a theory of allegory. A further concern is that many modern theories of allegory are based at least in part on contemporary critical or linguistic theory; for example, Van Dyke uses Todorov’s theory of the “ideal proper noun” as a springboard for her discussion on universals, Quilligan is clearly indebted to poststructuralist theories of signification, and Machosky relies on Heidegger for many of her insights into the functioning of allegory in Prudentius’ Psychomachia. From the standpoint of literary theory, both the nominalist and realist theories of allegory have their own strengths. The nominalist position provides a technical vocabulary for describing how allegorical language works. Quilligan, though she elsewhere embraces a realist position, makes heavy use of this vocabulary as she explores the idea of allegory as linguistic play. At the same time, the nominalist position provides few tools for exploration of the metaphysical implications of allegorical abstractions, a significant setback, given the cosmological and encyclopedic nature of so much allegory. In contrast, the realist approach makes it easier to situate allegorical abstractions in the cosmos projected in the allegories themselves, and it throws into relief the distinction between the mimetic and philosophical aspects of an allegory, which corresponds to the distinction between deictic and non-deictic as well as the distinction between manifestations of universals in the temporal world and universals as they exist in intelligible reality. However, this approach tempts one to concentrate on metaphysics at the expense of the language of the poem. It also appears to presuppose that allegorical abstractions are real universals, at least within the confi nes of each allegory’s projected cosmos: if one adopts the position that allegory is not realist, a position worth serious consideration, this entire theoretical framework loses its value. These two theories of allegorical abstraction are ultimately unresolved in recent scholarship on allegory. Indeed, some scholars, such as Quilligan, can be accused of using both opportunistically, ultimately creating a theory logically at odds with itself. One way to approach the problem is to consider theories to which the writers of the allegories themselves could have had access and look for evidence of them in the texts themselves.4 However rich the vocabulary and methods of poststructuralist literary criticism or continental philosophy may be for us, certainly they were never available to Prudentius. At the same time, while scholars have made use of Platonic

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and to a certain extent Aristotelian metaphysics to explain allegories in late antiquity, it is worth remembering that neither had been dominant schools for centuries. Of the Hellenistic schools, only neo-Platonism was active—and decreasingly so—in late antiquity. By Prudentius’ time, though no one was writing as a Stoic or explicitly advocating its system, many of Stoicism’s doctrines had been transmitted into late antiquity via grammar theory, classical literature, and to a certain extent neo-Platonist and early Christian thought. As I suggested in Chapter 1, the Stoics put forth powerful and original theories about the interplay of language and the cosmos, some of which lend themselves to the allegorical method. We should therefore not be surprised to fi nd their influence in the works of early Christian allegorical writers.

THE CASE OF EMBODIED VIRTUES In spite of consensus among scholars that allegorical language hinges on a structured polysemy born of a deliberate misuse of traditional language, the metaphysical implications of the genre remain unresolved. 5 In this section, I propose one way of understanding personification allegory in late antiquity in which the linguistic and metaphysical aspects of allegory work together, rather than on different levels or even against each other. Thanks to its Stoic origins, ancient grammar theory links what we consider to be superficial linguistic features, such as declensions, to a theory of reality. This linkage suggests that early medieval writers, educated in a tradition where grammar is the foundation discipline and at a time when these ideas were comparatively active, may have been influenced by or even have embraced elements of the originally Stoic linkage between language and reality. By examining traces of Stoic philosophy in early medieval allegories, it may be possible to gain additional insight into these works, if not to provide a universal theory that explains all allegory. One Stoic theory that may shed light on how allegorists of late antiquity might have linked grammatical forms to cosmic truth is that of grammatical case. Today, we learn case strictly in the context of grammatical morphology: how do we decline virtus in the singular genitive or plural dative? However, as the pioneering work of Michael Frede has shown, the Stoics, who fi rst invented the notion of case, had something radically different in mind. Beginning with the insight that the Stoics never discussed case in the context of utterance, but rather as a feature of what is signified (i.e., the lekton), Frede concludes that “the doctrine of case cannot be about declension” (“Case” 14). Instead, as Frede makes clear, the Stoic doctrine of cases has metaphysical implications: the Stoics “distinguished between ideas or concepts and some other non-linguistic items, mainly cases, which somehow fall under these ideas or concepts and hence are called ‘cases’” (“Case” 16). In

Language and Abstraction in Prudentian Allegory 39 other words, morphology is not an arbitrary surface feature of grammar; instead, it corresponds to an arrangement of objects in external reality. The case is also separate from an object itself out there in reality. Thus, for the Stoics, case is not a concept or thought, an object in reality, or a linguistic entity. So what is it? Frede speculates6 that cases pertain to how objects “enter into facts or truths about them. . . . But they are constituents of truths in quite different ways” (“Case” 18). If Frede is correct, case for the Stoics would appear to be the role that a body plays within a lekton (e.g., the agent, or a passive object), but this role is a metaphysical something (ti), and as with the lekton, a case is an incorporeal. This notion is quite distinct from both Platonic and Aristotelian notions; the Stoics distinguish case from the Platonic notion that an object participates in a concept, as well as from the Aristotelian notion that an object may have a property or quality; that is, not only does an object participate in a concept and have properties and qualities, but it also has a case. Frede explains what this case may be: Kinds or ideas, whether species or genera in the Platonic or Aristotelian sense, for the Stoics are mere concepts, constructs of the mind. But, in addition to general concepts, they also assume individual concepts. And so, just as talk about the kind or genus man is understood as talk about the general concept man, so talk about the species Socrates is to be considered as talk about the individual concept (of) Socrates. So we have to distinguish between the individual Socrates, the species or individual concept Socrates, and the genus or general concept man. (“Case” 19–20) The Stoic notion of case applied to Socrates appears to return the notion of Socrateity, the individual essence of Socrates, as distinct from the body that is Socrates himself. The lekton, on this reading, would appear to contain as its constituent not Socrates the man, but rather his individual essence, disposed in a certain way. The Stoic notion of case appears to set aside the distinction between deictic and non-deictic in favor of a distinction between extension and intension. Proper names do not point to objects, but rather to individual essences as they are disposed or arranged within a given fact. Later in his essay, Frede contrasts how Stoics and Aristotelians would respectively parse the following sentence: “Dion is in Athens” (“Case” 20). For the Aristotelian, “Dion” is the subject of the expression, or what the expression is about. But for the Stoics, [T]he statement is true if there is an object such that this object is Dion (or: a man) and it is in Athens. So ‘Dion’ or ‘(a) man’, on their view, is not referring to an object the statement is about, but rather makes reference to a qualification an object has to meet, if the statement is to be

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Grammar and Language Theory in Medieval Allegorical Narrative true in virtue of the predicate’s being true of it. And this does explain why the Stoics think that ‘Dion’ or ‘(a) man’ make reference to a particular case, rather than to a particular object. (“Case” 21)

The purpose of the distinction between objects and cases, Frede speculates, is that “it is supposed to allow us to deal with terms which have no reference,” for example, in the situation where Dion is dead but we still need to talk about him (“Case” 22). What we talk about, and the lekton behind it, is a case of Dionicity (an intension), rather than Dion himself (deictically). Lloyd also claims that, for the Stoics, a proper name “could not correspond to the category of subject . . . because it was connotative” (69). The idea that proper names are connotative is radically different from the modern grammatical notion that proper names are deictic, denotative, and even (according to Bloomfield) “unisemous,” and this point alone would differentiate a concept of allegory based on Stoic philosophy from the theories of Bloomfield, Quilligan, Van Dyke, all of which depend on the notion that proper names are deictic (165). Frede’s reconstruction of this Stoic theory is elaborate, and it is probably too much to assume that someone like Prudentius would have known it and embraced such a theory. Evidence nonetheless exists that supports the claim that much of this linguistic theory was available and embraced in late antiquity, in both grammatical and philosophical circles. Lloyd claims that Porphyry, Boethius, and Priscian stand “halfway between the Lyceum and the Stoa” because they all accept that “nouns and verbs are part of the logos, while the rest [of the parts of speech] are part of lexis, because they have no meaning in themselves” (59). Frede observes that both Porphyry and Boethius make use of the Stoic notion of individual essence: Boethius, for example, talks about the Platonitas of Plato in his Second Commentary on Aristotle’s De interpretatione (“Case” 20). In that commentary, Boethius hypothesizes being in the position of namegiver, and asserts that when individuals are named, they are named after their unique, incommunicable quality (e.g., Plato’s Platonitas).7 Boethius here combines several Stoic linguistic theories into a single idea: the myth of the name-giver, the individual essence, and a non-deictic theory of individual reference. Prudentius may not have had interest in Stoic linguistic theory, but as an educated poet with connections to Roman culture, he likely had at least indirect exposure to these ideas and may have been influenced by them. A couple of important elements are at work in Frede’s reconstruction of Stoic theory: the extension/intension dichotomy appears to be more important than the realist universal/mere word dichotomy or the deictic/non-deictic dichotomy. In addition, it is apparent that for the Stoics, every sentence is already an abstraction, because the lekton it refers to has its objects already arranged in a certain disposition relative to each other. The concept of disposition also had a theoretical backdrop: Stoic

Language and Abstraction in Prudentian Allegory 41 categories, in contrast to Aristotle’s, apply to the lekton, not the structure of reality in the abstract (Lloyd 61–2). Lloyd writes, “In Stoic thinking the designation of each of the four categories was the designation of some object such as Diogenes, from four points of view” (66). The four Stoic categories—Subject, Quality, Disposition, and Relative Disposition— appear to be different ways of looking at an object. From this, Lloyd concludes that “a standard subject-predicate sentence, exemplified for the Stoa . . . by a noun and a verb rather than a noun, copula, and adjective, would be attributing a disposition to a particular quality or qualified subject: e.g., ‘Dion walks’” (70).8 From a Stoic perspective, allegorical abstraction can be seen as a mode of communication in which intension overwhelms extension, so that the aspect of or disposition through which an object enters the facts is more important than the object itself. That is, if an epic hero such as Aeneas in a scene exemplifies piety, and his piety matters more than his person, the sentence suppresses extensional reference to the hero altogether and becomes a sentence about Piety. This notion becomes more credible when one takes into account the Stoics’ belief that virtues, vices, and other attributes are bodies. As discussed in Chapter 1, the Stoics defi ne bodies as that which can act or be acted upon. On their account, since virtues can cause a person to act in a certain way, virtues must themselves be bodies. If it is his piety that makes Aeneas leave Dido, then on the Stoics’ theory, it is literally true to say that “Piety left Dido,” or, to be intensionally consistent across both halves of the sentence, “Piety left Selfish Dalliance,” “Piety left Lust,” or (depending on how one interprets the act) “Piety left True Love.” This is neither a grammatical violation nor an invocation of a Platonic form or realist universal. “Piety” in these sentences refers to a qualified substance (pius Aeneas), and it is used to express the disposition of a body as it acts in the world. The Stoics would not, of course, argue that this is idiomatic language (understood as language that members of the linguistic community speak on a day-to-day basis), but they might be willing to view it as a legitimate attempt at natural language (understood as language that maps correctly to the logos of the cosmos).

VIRTUOUS BODIES IN PRUDENTIUS’ PSYCHOMACHIA The Psychomachia contains many narratives. The primary narrative is the description of the battle between the Virtues and Vices, but the poem opens with a narrative about Abraham, and often the battle described in the main narrative pauses long enough for a triumphant Virtue to relate one or more Biblical stories. These narratives do not appear to correspond as literal and allegorical narratives in the handbook sense of allegory. All of them, in fact, seem to be literal, though moral paraphrases of them are sometimes provided. Prudentius’ use of Biblical narratives in his allegory

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would seem to suggest that the literal level is actually more important than the allegorical level, since the former is the word of God, while the latter was written by a poet. Even in this supposedly pure and simple allegory, the relationships among the levels of meaning are dynamic.

Preliminary Narratives The poem opens with Abraham, who urges us to battle, on the grounds that we cannot bear a child pleasing to God until we have conquered evil spirits in a slaughter (strage).9 Immediately following this imperative, the poem relates a Biblical story that enacts what Abraham has just urged us to do. The story is Abraham’s rescue of Lot from Sodom, concluding with Abraham’s victory, the visit of three angels in his hut, and the surprising pregnancy of Sara. After this narrative, the narrator asserts that this story has been told to serve as a model (figuram) for our own lives. He explains his meaning: Our bodies (like Lot) are captive to foul desires (Sodom), and we have to muster a force (Abraham’s servants) in our hearts (literally domi) to set our bodies free. Thereafter, Christ can visit us, and the hitherto childless soul will become fertile and provide an heir. The opening sets up a typological relationship between the story of Abraham and the main narrative battle between the Virtues and Vices, which is also summarized in the preface. This relationship may tempt the reader to think of one narrative as the literal (the story of Abraham and Lot), and one as the allegorical (battle in the soul). However, such a reading is problematic. The story of Abraham and Lot is not specifically mentioned again in the remainder of the poem, so if we read these two narratives as a pair of literal and allegorical levels, they take place in a series, rather than simultaneously and in parallel. In addition, the literal level, on this reading, takes up about three percent of the poem as a whole, a disproportionately small amount that sets up another problem: the main battle narrative has a number of emphases wholly absent from the Abraham narrative, so the correspondence between these two levels, if they can be so called, is not maintained. Perhaps a better way to think of these narratives is not that one is an allegorization of the other in the traditional sense, that one is a literal narrative whose value is exclusively per aliud, pointing to a truer, veiled narrative, which is valuable per se. In the opening preface, it is clear that both narratives are literal, and both have value per se. Yet both of them also point to another meaning. More importantly, that other meaning is the same for both narratives, and it becomes visible when the two narratives are placed side-by-side: slavery attacks from without; forces of liberation counter and defeat it from within; and internal liberation prepares the way for divine communion and spiritual fertility. Prudentius’ allegory is calling attention not so much to metaphysics, but rather to meta-narrative. By translating the story of Abraham to the inner battle for the soul, the narrator is modeling an interpretive methodology, in which the reader

Language and Abstraction in Prudentian Allegory 43 learns to recognize narrative truths. These truths are understood as facts, or sequences of cause and effect, rather than objects or things. The notion of truth found in narrative, of a cosmos of events, is deeply compatible with Stoic cosmology and dialectic. Prudentius is surely thinking of Christian, not Stoic, historicity; but it is likely that, in this regard, the Stoic tradition helped early Christian intellectuals add philosophical rigor to their sense of historicity, much as Platonic and Aristotelian ideas helped them develop other Christian positions. The Stoic influence on early Christian cosmology and ethics is unmistakable. For example, one fi nds parallels between Boethius’ Consolation and Seneca’s On Tranquility of Mind (De tranquillitate animi), especially in the discussion of Fortune. Astell observes that Boethius in his Consolation borrows and expands Seneca’s interpretations of mythological stories— Orpheus, Odysseus and Circe, and Medea—in support of her argument that Boethius begins with a Stoic position and gradually expands it to a neo-Platonic vision (53–64). Boethius’ analysis of the problem between fate and free will also closely parallels that of the Stoics. Tertullian, too, is often associated with the Stoics (e.g., Ayers 11–24; Colish, Stoic Trad. II 9–29), and he is cited as a major source for the Psychomachia (Rivero García 108). In addition, the Stoic overtones of Virgil’s Aeneid, another major source for the Psychomachia, surely contributed to Prudentius’ development of a literary narrative that projects a vision of fate and the cosmos. If Prudentius’ poem is true to its introduction, and it is, one would expect the poem to position several narratives side-by-side, creating a redundancy that reveals the narrative truths of the cosmos. The task of the reader is to learn to recognize those events that fit the pattern, and those that do not. In other words, to rephrase using a more Stoic vocabulary, the poem trains the reader how to assent to impressions, and these impressions are not things by themselves, but rather things disposed in the world, participants in the facts and events that make up the chain of fate/providence. Just as the Stoics turn their ethical gaze inward to assent, so Prudentius emphasizes internal mastery from the start of the poem: the force gathered to expel the Vices comes from within, just as Abraham called on servants from within his own household in his battle against Sodom.10 Analyzing Prudentius’ use of Ephesians 6 in the sections of Fides and Pudicitia, Hanna points out that Prudentius inverts the details of Paul’s martial description to emphasize, where Paul does not, that “self-mastery must precede any true resistance of external forces” (111). While many critics note the importance of discernment, especially in the later battles, few recognize how pervasive it is as a central theme throughout the poem. One important effect of the poem is epistemological, to train readers how to look at reality and infer sacred and/or ethical patterns. To achieve this effect, Prudentius uses language in a revolutionary way: he expresses Biblical and internal events using language that is both unconventional and yet still grammatical to expose patterns in real world events. In other

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words, Prudentius uses a seemingly artificial language to provide insight into reality. However, if language naturally mirrors reality as the Stoics and grammatical tradition held, and if the connection between the different types of real-world event that Prudentius reveals is true, then the language might not be artificial in the privative sense (i.e., an idiosyncratic deviation from normal language, as Bloomfield, Quilligan, Van Dyke, and others seem to think), but rather artificial in an experimental sense, an attempt at rearticulating reality in a radically faithful way. According to this reading, Prudentius has found a truer language than ordinary language, and he uses the remainder of the poem to show us how to become members of its linguistic community.

The New Eyes of Fides The main battle narrative opens with the confrontation between Fides and Fides Veterum Cultura Deorum. This battle is unique among the poem’s battles in a number of ways. It is by far the shortest of the battles, taking up a mere 19 lines. In them an eager Fides appears on the field, and then her opponent. Immediately, Fides rises up and utterly defeats her opponent, without speeches, posturing, or a blow-by-blow account. The significance of this battle is clearer only upon rereading, when one can contrast it with the subsequent battles. Whereas each of the remaining battles has recognition (or correct assent) as a key aspect of its virtue’s success, the issue of discernment is largely absent here: Fides knows her enemy and simply defeats her. This battle also lacks any speeches or embedded Biblical episode, the parallel narratives that Prudentius uses to reveal truth in events. The placement and short treatment of this battle seem to reflect something like Anselm’s credo ut intelligam: faith precedes and enables understanding. Understanding will come in later battles, but prior to them, faith is simply asserted. Textual evidence for this interpretation comes in one of the details of Fides Veterum Cultura Deorum’s death: “et pede calcat / elisos in morte oculos,” (“and [she] tramples the eyes under foot, squeezing them out in death”) (32–3). By specifically destroying the eyes of paganism, Faith makes it possible for us to see with new eyes.

Pudicitia and the Spiritual Volatility of Flesh The next battle, between Pudicitia and Libido (lines 40–108) is much more representative of the remaining battles. In it, Libido attacks the wellarmored Pudicitia’s eyes with a flaming brand. Attacks on the Virtues’ eyes is a running theme in the Psychomachia (Machosky 27). This theme underscores the epistemological underpinnings of the poem. Pudicitia knocks away the flaming brand and impales the Vice’s throat with her sword. After a speech, she washes the sword in a nearby stream, and she is unwilling to put the sword back into its sheath, lest the sword begin to

Language and Abstraction in Prudentian Allegory 45 rust. Pudicitia’s use of arms and weaponry calls attention to the importance of her corporeality. Of all the Virtues, Pudicitia’s corporeality is the most important and the most vulnerable. To protect it, she is resplendent “speciosis . . . in armis”; however, Libido does not attack her armor: she attacks the Virtue’s eyes. Further, even after defeating the Vice, Pudicitia is still not safe in her armor. Her sword, the instrument of her victory, threatens her from within its sheath. Even without the obvious sexual connotations of a sword in its sheath, the description of the sword communicates the vulnerability of the body: Nec iam contenta piatum condere vaginae gladium, ne tecta rubigo occupet ablutum scabrosa sorde nitorem (104–6) no longer content to sheathe the purified sword, lest its rust unseen engross the clean, bright surface with its dirty scurf Rust is a corporeal form of corruption: it attacks the body of the sword itself. The very instrument of triumph over the Vice becomes the scene of the Vice’s next attack—an attack that once again comes as a form of blindness: concealed (tecta) in its sheath the sword may rust unnoticed. Vision, or correct internal assent, and not shining or imposing armor, is the only reliable defense against Libido. Thus the sword is placed in a temple, “aeterna splendens ubi luce coruscet” (“there to shine and flash with unfading light”), in a place where Libido cannot reach it: in plain sight. Far from a realist reading, in which the poem would be seen to assert the nature of universals, the poem seems to destabilize the ontological clarity of things in the poem. The sword can be both the weapon that defeats the Vice and the vulnerability that the Vice can next attack. The imposing armor turns out to be unnecessary (Faith, in the preceding battle, was so eager to get to battle that she failed even to put it on; in a later battle, Patientia will depend on it entirely). The Vice most associated with attacks on the body attacks instead her victim’s vision. In short, a body in itself is neither an intrinsically good or bad thing. Even a body that is good now can later corrupt. Stated in logical terms, while the extension of a given body remains the same, its many intensions can shift and be in confl ict. Indeed, I would argue that this is the central epistemological problem that the poem confronts: bodies are good or bad as they are disposed in facts or events, rather than in themselves. In case we miss this point, Pudicitia delivers a lengthy speech on the subject in her moment of triumph. She relates two Biblical stories, both about bodies. The fi rst is the story of Judith, who beheads (with a sword, no less) the lustful General Holofernes in his own chamber. Pudicitia’s choice is interesting because the reason (unstated in the poem) that Judith is in his

46 Grammar and Language Theory in Medieval Allegorical Narrative chamber in the fi rst place is to seduce him in order to conquer him. This aspect of the narrative oddly puts Judith in the role of Libido, though her intent is to save her besieged people, and is not amorous or lustful. The general (and as a consequence, his entire army) meets his defeat on account of his seduction and lust at her hands. More interesting is the notion that Libido herself can have benevolent intensions, in the right sort of event.11 Based on this reading of the story of Judith, we might speculate that if lust itself is good or bad only as it is disposed in events, then the body, taken in the abstract in itself, is morally indifferent. The second half of Pudicitia’s long speech examines this idea. The active narrative in the sequence is the birth of Christ through a virgin. This narrative supercedes that of Judith, because on the day of Christ’s birth, the human body lost its original nature and was replaced with a new flesh (novam carnem) (73). Pudicitia’s argument is that when the Word became flesh, it was still the Word, so rather than the Word fundamentally changing in nature, instead flesh itself did. The new flesh is capable of resisting lust, thanks to its divine aspect; and yet Pudicitia does not assert that this flesh is immune from temptation. Whether we use our bodies qua bodies in their primitive state or as bodies qua the divine flesh of Christ is up to us. The human body, lust, the sword, the torch12 —all of these are bodies (single extension) that are benevolent or malevolent based on the way they are disposed in a given event (i.e., their intension). Further, that disposition depends on an internal ethical decision that we are empowered (through Christ, the Logos) but not compelled (because of free will) to make.

Avaritia Biformis Perhaps the most striking example of an intensional transformation occurs when Avaritia turns herself into Frugi. This sequence is the final battle in the main battle narrative; after the defeat of Avaritia/Frugi, the Virtues declare victory and put away their armor, unaware that yet another battle will prove necessary. Of all the battles in the poem, this one takes the most lines, involves the most sub-narratives, and involves the most characters. Avaritia/Frugi also requires two Virtues to defeat her: Ratio and Operatio. All of these characteristics suggest that the problem of greed is of central importance in the poem. Avaritia’s entrance in the poem is unwarrior-like. In contrast to Ira’s enraged charge on Patientia, Superbia’s prancing about on her warhorse, or even Luxuria’s perfumed entrance in her deceptive yet still martial chariot, Avaritia’s purpose on the battlefield seems to be unrelated to battle at all. She is there to plunder, paying no heed to the army of the Virtues. That she is a martial participant at all only becomes apparent long after she has begun her work. At her side attends a long list of fi ends: Cura, Famis, Metus, Anxietas, Periuria, Pallor, Corruptela, Dolus, Commenta, Insomnia, Sordes, assorted other monsters, and Crimina (a rare

Language and Abstraction in Prudentian Allegory 47 plural abstraction that acts as a group of individuals). The diversity of abstractions in the list suggests that greed appears in a tremendous variety of forms, perhaps suggesting that its intensions range so far from their extension that they become hard to recognize. In typically Prudentian fashion, Greed’s place on the battlefield and the way we learn to recognize her despite her various forms become apparent through a series of sub-narratives. Lines 470 through the appearance of Ratio in line 502 are devoted to a series of stories: a soldier who kills his comrade for his jeweled helmet; a son who plunders his own father’s fallen body; the actions of Civilis Discordia, Amor Habendi, and Famis; a man whose eyes have been gouged out is left to stumble without even a staff; the many that Avaritia sends into open flames, including the man who reaches for burning gold only to burn with it; all mortal humankind (omne hominum . . . mortalia cuncta) whom she brings to ruin; and the priests of the Lord (sacerdotes Domini) whom she attacks. A few lines later, Avaritia gives a speech in which she relates two more stories: Judas’ betrayal of Christ for thirty silver pieces, as well as Achar’s fall in the midst of his victory in Jericho because some gold caught his eye.13 These narratives mix and match several types of subject with their predicates: the narratives’ actors are Biblical (Judas Iscariot, Achar), epic individuals (the soldier who kills his comrade, the son who plunders his father), common (the many people Avaritia sends to the flames, priests), universal (all of mortal humankind), and abstract (Civilis Discordia, Famis). Several scholars, including Bloomfield, Cunningham, and Dronke, emphasize that in personification allegory, we are drawn more to the predicates, rather than to the subjects. That is, what makes an abstraction interesting is not its name, but rather what it does (Dronke 38). This way of reading personification allegory makes interpreting abstractions based on their actions, rather than their names, more compatible with the Stoic lekton (in which things enter facts and events) than the realist universal (which is understood as a static entity). In each instance, the actor (e.g., the soldier, son, or Judas) appears to be another name for the individual essence of greed, as it is disposed in a given situation. The arrival of Ratio is sufficient to defeat Avaritia as she has acted up till this point. With her shield (clipeus), Ratio takes the role of a defensive Virtue, similar to Patientia, but unlike Patientia, Ratio is not sufficient to withstand vice. Whereas Ira wears herself out and destroys herself in the face of Patientia, Avaritia is frustrated by Ratio but certainly not destroyed. Instead, she transforms into Frugi, “vultuque et veste severa” (“with austere mein and dress”) (553). Prudentius is careful to emphasize that in becoming Frugi Avaritia is merely donning a disguise, “ut candida palla latentem / dissimulet rabiem,” (“so that the white mantle shall disguise the raging that lurks beneath”) and a false name, “natorum curam dulci sub nomine” (“under the pleasing name of care for her children”) (560–1, 563). The body, the extension, remains the same; what changes is the intension, or how the body is presented, or disposed, in the action.

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This disguise is sufficient to befuddle credulous men, who “monstrumque ferale sequuntur / dum credent Virtutis opus” (“follow the deadly monster, believing hers to be a Virtue’s work”) (565–6). By implication, the shield of Ratio is insufficient to defend against this Vice: her “biformis” (“twofold figure”) and “anceps” (“double form”) appearance causes doubt and confusion, and her adversaries are unable to distinguish friend from foe, though they seem at least to recognize both elements in her. At this point, Operatio appears on the scene.14 Avaritia/Frugi realizes that she cannot deceive Operatio (“nam quae fraudis via restet . . . ?”; “For what method of trickery would be left . . . ?”), because Operatio has rejected the possession of material goods, altogether freeing herself from their influence (586). Operatio then kills the Vice—in two ways. She strangles the Vice, crushing her throat, and then she also stabs the Vice while pinning her down. The dual death-blows appear to correspond to the Vice’s two intensions, with the crushing of the throat perhaps corresponding with the silencing of the lying Frugi and the more conventional stabbing corresponding to the customary form of Avaritia. Nonetheless, even if Operatio destroys Avaritia/Frugi’s body in two independent ways, it is clear from the text that it is still the same body. Operatio is like Ratio in that she has a powerful defense against Avaritia/Frugi. Yet in contrast to Ratio’s shield, which is an external form of armor, Operatio’s defense is internal: she simply has no interest in material goods. At the same time, Operatio strikingly resembles Avaritia herself, because she appears to have an unquenchable desire for goods: iam loculos ditata fidem spectabat inanes, aeternam numerans redituro faenore summam. (582–3) And now, enriched in faith, she was looking at her empty purse and reckoning the sum of her eternal wealth with the interest that would accrue. Operatio is “rich” (ditata), only with faith rather than money. Interestingly, she is depicted as a miser at her money box, hungrily counting her coin and making allowances for the interest (faenus) she will accrue. Furthermore, her spiritual coin appears to grow as she gives away her material coin, which implies that spiritual wealth is available in exchange for material generosity. This exchange, on a hostile reading, might seem to impugn Operatio’s motives, though such cynicism is not needed to see the deep similarities between Avaritia and Operatio. Conversely, the most significant differences between Avaritia and Operatio are the object of desire, material versus spiritual goods, and the consequence, unrest versus rest. The latter is apparent, because attendant on Avaritia are Cura, Famis, and so on, but Operatio offers rest: “lucrandi / ingluvie pereunte licet requiescere sanctis” (“Now that the lust of gain is dead, the pure may rest”) (607–8). Avaritia,

Language and Abstraction in Prudentian Allegory 49 Frugi, and Operatio are all intensions of a hypothetical body we might call Endless Desire, but Endless Desire’s relationships to the objects and cause/ effect sequences of its environment determine which of several radically different forms it takes.

The Attack on Concordia and the Building of the Temple The poem contains two episodes after the end of the main battle: the attack on Concordia and the building of the temple. Each of these reiterates the themes described in this chapter, in particular, the tendency to destabilize extensional reference with contradictory intensional meanings, and to leave these at most partially resolved, even while providing glimpses of the divine story that is the underlying bond that connects God, the universe, and humanity. Martha Malamud’s reading of the Discordia/Concordia episode explores two related themes: liminality/ambiguity and binding. Observing that Discordia attacks Concordia in the moment Concordia crosses the wellmarked threshold into the camp, Malamud writes that she is a character who thrives on liminality: “Discordia, by her very nature, is best suited to functioning in just such an ambiguous area, for it is characteristic of her to be neither one thing nor another” (59). The last battle, then, is one of identity, a notion enforced by the similarity between the names of the principal actors: Discordia and Concordia. It is a battle with troublingly ambiguous results, because although Discordia is defeated in the battle, the Virtues’ victory is less than satisfying. As Malamud notes, Discordia is the one Vice who actually wounds a Virtue; all of the other Virtues remained physically unscathed in their encounters. Her twisting language also ensnares the Virtues in ways that are not undone by her eventual defeat. Once they surround Discordia, the Virtues demand to know who she is. In spite of her Allecto-like ability to disguise herself, Discordia gives a remarkably straightforward answer to the question, identifying herself on the one hand as Discordia/Heresis, all the while punning and engaging in elaborate wordplay on the other. Her speech is not deceptive, but it is nevertheless characteristic of her nature. Instead of trying to maintain her disguise, Discordia chooses an even more radical and unsettling move: she tries to undermine language by revealing its arbitrary nature. (Malamud 65) Rather than engaging in a losing verbal battle, she attacks discourse itself, in part through a defi nition of God that applies contrary predicates to him: “ . . . Deus est mihi discolor,” inquit, “nunc minor, aut maior, modo duplex et modo simplex,

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Grammar and Language Theory in Medieval Allegorical Narrative cum placet, aërius et de phantasmate visus, aut innata anima est quoties volo ludere numen;” (710–3)

The God I have is variable, now lesser, now greater, now double, now single; when I please, he is insubstantial, a mere apparition, or again the soul within us, when I choose to make a mock of his divinity. According to Thomson’s notes in the Loeb edition, these predicates represent various heretical beliefs. Perhaps just as dangerous, though, is the fact that as far as human language is concerned, God is subject to seemingly contrary predication. To take a non-heretical example, Christian doctrine predicates both “is one” and “is three” of God, and unless one understands the nuance of Christian doctrine in which God is one and God is three, the apparent contrariness of the predicates reduces the doctrine to absurdity. To avoid the absurdity, and grasp the doctrine, one has to wrestle with the extension/intension dichotomy and modes of signification. That is, one must express the doctrine within the context of the disposition under which one is talking about God: “inasmuch as God exists, he is one,” and “inasmuch as God comprises the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, he is three.” This problem becomes the source of a scandal in the late eleventh century, when Roscelin applies a certain theory of signification to the Trinity and ends up with an apparent doctrine of tritheism. Anselm counters Roscelin by distinguishing between extensional and intensional reference to God, as I explain in Chapter 3. For early Christian readers as well, Discordia’s simple answer to the question of her identity opens a theological Pandora’s box, calling into question any theology expressed in language, on account of language’s innate ambiguity. Anxiety over the ambiguity of language exercised many ancient philosophical schools, and I have already shown how the Stoics used etymology, the myth of the name-giver, and a radically conservative grammar theory in an effort to combat it. In the Psychomachia, Fides’ solution to the problem of Discordia is more direct: she impales the Vice’s tongue with a spear. Immediately after, the remaining Vices dismember her. This dismemberment is troublingly ironic, as Malamud points out, because Discordia in the moment of her defeat, turns the army of the Virtues into agents of unbinding and discord (65–6). Concordia, in contrast, is depicted as the epitome of binding. The interweaving links of her armor are described in detail; she is enclosed in a crowd of soldiers, and she is heading toward the center of camp (Malamud 62). In her long speech after the Discordia affair, she emphasizes unity and transparency. She also posits Jesus as the binding force between God and humankind, as well as positing unity of spirit as the binding force between body and soul (764–767). As outlined in Chapter 1, the Stoics posit a binding between the rational logos of the cosmos and all of the

Language and Abstraction in Prudentian Allegory 51 bodies within it, a binding that Christians embrace by replacing God for the logos. Discordia and Concordia can both be seen as reflecting aspects of this cosmic binding: for though the Stoic cosmos is guided by the divine logos, assent to the many false impressions that are a part of the human experience leads to error. Discordia is the force behind the problems of signification manifested in impressions, while Concordia is the force that asserts the underlying unity that is really there according to both Stoic and Christian doctrine, even if we fail to perceive it. As long as we are bound to the limitations of human knowing, Discordia and Concordia unfortunately imply one another, two intensional aspects of the human experience of the bond that connects us to God and the universe. The Virtues’ immediate response to the problem of Discordia is to destroy her tongue and dismember her. Their long-term solution is to convert their camp into a more permanent temple. The purpose of the temple is to be a place for God to come and visit, that is, a means to facilitate and make unambiguous the bonding between God and human with more stable signifiers than those of the battlefield (814–5). In the Abraham narrative at the beginning, the divine visit after the battle leads to the unexpected fertility of Sara. These metaphors seem to bring together the Stoic notion of cosmic binding with the marriage in the Song of Solomon, which for medieval Christians signified not only the marriage described in the poem, but also the metaphorical marriage between Christ and the soul or Christ and the Church. The temple itself, described in elaborate detail in lines 827 through 887, is an edifice of signifiers, including inscriptions of the twelve apostles; four sides, representing the four stages of a person’s life; twelve gems, one for each of the apostles, the seven pillars of the Proverbs; and a flowering rod with intermingling roses (representing the martyrs and implying Fides) and lilies (representing virgins and implying Pudicitia), a symbol in which “Prudentius’ allegorical composition reaches its greatest intricacy” (Hanna 114). The temple does not so much represent the attainment of wisdom as it does the foundation for the search for wisdom. Even Sapientia herself, sitting on her throne in the inner chamber of the temple, worries about the future, “tutandique hominis leges sub corde retractat” (“meditating in her heart laws to safeguard mankind”) (877). Not only does Sapientia recognize that the threat of vice is far from over, but she does not seem to have all the answers herself, so she has to think about them. This calls to mind an important medieval distinction, seen in Augustine through Aquinas, and especially important in Boethius’ Consolatio,15 between reasoning and intellection (or intuition). Reasoning is linear, temporal, and partial, while intellection is all-at-once and comprehensive. God and the angels have intellectual knowledge, while humans have only rational knowledge. Sapientia, her name notwithstanding, appears to be engaging here in rational inquiry, rather than pure intellection. Thus, the construction of the temple does not indicate that the battles are over and the Vices defeated

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once and for all. As the episode with Discordia proved, Vices can turn up just about anywhere, and when they do, they are likely to try to muddle senses, reason, and language in such a way that we behave unethically. The temple, with its abundant signifiers, serves as a powerful and permanent reminder of the divine bond that rules the universe, and yet it does not and cannot compel us to resist the Vices and live in accordance with the bond, though it certainly has the potential to help. In the play between extension and intension, signified and signifiers, Prudentius is able to achieve his ethical and epistemological goals. The Psychomachia is deeply concerned with the originally Stoic notion of correct assent to impressions, and the ability to recognize the cosmic bond of the logos/God underlying them. His personification allegory provides a framework in which he can situate parallel narratives to bring certain patterns to light. Because he is working in a narrative, as opposed to a discursive framework, he is able to weave Biblical material into his work side-byside with his own narratives, using each the same way. Prudentian allegory is not a museum of universals sprung to life from a misuse of grammar. Rather, it is a poem of action, a poem that seeks to identify those actions that are compatible with, and indeed propel, Christian historicity. Once identified, these actions are immortalized as constitutive of epic heroism. In this vision of heroism, the person of the hero is secondary to the divine chain of causes and effects in which she or he actively participates.

3

The Presence of Stoicism in Eleventh and Twelfth Century Language Theory

By the latter half of the eleventh century, connections between Western intellectual traditions and their classical precursors are tenuous and in many cases broken. Virtually no one in the Latin West at this point read Greek, forcing intellectuals to rely on the small handful of translations that are available. Of the entire Greek logical tradition, all that is available is a pair of works by Aristotle: Categories and On Interpretation. Supplementing these were Porphyry’s introduction to Aristotelian logic, the Isogoge; a handful of commentaries written by Boethius on Aristotelian logic, and Cicero’s Topics; and a small number of monographs on related subjects, mostly by Boethius (e.g., On Topical Differences and On Division), Augustine (e.g., On Dialectic), and Apuleius (e.g., On Interpretation) (Ebbesen 104-5). Notably absent are any works on Stoic logic, which are at this point permanently lost (Lapidge 83). Also missing is the entire corpus of Plato’s writings, with the exception of a portion of the Timaeus, translated into Latin by Calcidius. Supplementing these logical works are the works of grammarians. These include the works of Donatus, the Ars minor and Ars maior in particular, and Priscian, especially the Institutiones grammaticae, which were ubiquitous and had served as the foundation of medieval education for centuries. In addition to these grammars are a number of commentaries and glosses on them, many of which date back to the Carolingian renaissance, which witnessed a particular interest in the study of Priscian’s grammar, thanks to Alcuin’s reintroduction of Priscian’s Institutiones (Luhtala 145ff., Passalacqua 193ff.). New treatises on grammar appeared throughout the eleventh and twelfth centuries, including the Glosulae (late eleventh century), the Tractatus glosarum, the writings of William of Champeaux, Abelard, William of Conches, Peter Helias’ Summa super Priscianum, Ralph of Beauvais, the Totius eloquentiae, the Ars meliduna, and the Promisimus and Tris sunt (King 101). Each of these two traditions—logical and grammatical—provides important linguistic theories, including especially theories of meaning and reference. One complication is that the two traditions provide largely incompatible linguistic theories (Henry, Commentary 8). Perhaps the

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greatest conflict between the two theories is that whereas in the tradition of Aristotle and Porphyry, words and logic are used primarily to express inner experience and thought (i.e., meaning), for the grammarians words express extramental things (i.e., reference). If words are thought to refer to things, as the grammar tradition following the Stoics held, then language has important ontological implications. The implication, and this is explicit in the Stoics and implicit in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, is that we can learn about extramental reality just by studying language. This in turn opens the door to all sorts of difficult questions. For example, if we say, “Socrates is a man,” and we understand (here following Porphyry and Aristotle, not the Stoics) that a man is a rational, mortal animal, and we understand that an animal is a sensate organism, which is a living body, which is in turn a corporeal substance, does “Socrates is a man” signify animality, organicity, and body, and substance? If it does, and holding that words refer to extramental reality, that would seem to mean that somewhere out there in the world there is a thing animality, a thing organicity, a thing body, and a thing substance. The underlying issue is the assumption that all meaningful words have extramental referents (Henry, “Predicables” 130). In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the incompatibility between the two traditions’ linguistic theories became entangled in broader theological disputes, and as a result, the period saw a lively series of debates, leading to increasingly sophisticated answers to the underlying problems, until Abelard (d. 1142) provided the most rigorous solutions to date. One trend throughout the period is that the confl ict between the grammatical and logical traditions gradually resolves itself in favor of logic, and the grammar tradition slowly loses sway (Fredborg 179). Shortly after Abelard, a wave of new translations of ancient texts became available, particularly Aristotelian texts or ones derived however indirectly from Aristotle, fundamentally changing the nature and direction of the discourse. In this chapter, I will trace some of these debates in the context of another trend: the reappearance of Stoic or Stoic-like ideas. Whether the emergence of ideas compatible with or once embraced by Stoicism was genealogical (that is, eleventh and twelfth century intellectuals had sufficient access to Stoic doctrine to be influenced by it) or coincidental (that is, eleventh and twelfth century intellectuals rediscovered Stoic doctrines independent of influence) is difficult to answer, and the two options are not exclusive. On the one hand, if the appearance was genealogical, then perhaps it was through traces of Stoicism in the grammar tradition and in rare sources like Apuleius’ On Interpretation, which contains Stoic elements.1 On the other hand, one argument that supports the coincidental thesis proceeds by way of analogy: just as the Stoics in ancient Greece elaborated sophisticated linguistic and logical theories to address perceived shortcomings in Aristotelian logic, so it is possible that medieval logicians, with access to a more sophisticated technical vocabulary in grammar than Aristotle had,

Stoicism in Eleventh and Twelfth Century Language Theory

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might have been trying to address shortcomings in his logic on their own. I speculate that it is indeed a combination: the dearth of available texts coupled with the originality of twelfth century logic makes a purely genealogical connection unlikely, while the formative role Stoic thought played in early grammar probably exerted pressures that helped push eleventh and twelfth century thinkers toward using and even rediscovering a number of Stoic positions. Connecting medieval linguistic theory to the Stoics is challenging, because the context—examinations of dialectic—was in the Middle Ages largely Aristotelian, though it also showed strong affi liations to Priscian’s theories of syntax. Nonetheless, several important (and originally Stoic) preoccupations and doctrines are evident as strands within broader arguments. I survey a number of important writers—Garland the Computist, Roscelin of Compiègne, St. Anselm, and Peter Abelard—to reveal several of these strands. In the next chapter, I will analyze an allegory by Alan of Lille in light of them. Alan, who wrote during the latter half of the twelfth century, incorporates many of these elements much more holistically, especially in the Plaint of Nature, than any of the other philosophers and theologians of his era. Perhaps Alan’s relatively strong use of originally Stoic grammatical notions can also be attributed to the affi nity between Stoicism and allegory that I posited in Chapters 1 and 2.

GARLAND AND THE SIGNIFICATION OF THE CATEGORIES In the latter half of the eleventh century, Garland the Computist wrote a treatise on logic entitled Dialectica. The treatise provides an interesting starting point for a discussion of eleventh century linguistic theory, because he makes a number of claims about the relationships between words and reality. Garland is a nominalist in the predicational sense of the word, because he treats universal terms (and all other terms of logic) as words, not existing entities. For Garland, dialectic is a science of the utterance (vox). His nominalist inclinations are clear in his discussion of genera, in a section on the five predicables. 2 [G]enus est quod predicatur de pluribus differentibus specie in eo quod quid sit; “quod predicatur” facit differe ab illis que non predicantur, scilicet a rebus, non vocibus, que non habent poni in propositione. (3) A genus is what is predicated of many items differing in species in respect of what they are. The phrase “what is predicated” differentiates genera from those items which are not predicated, i.e., from things (as opposed to utterances), which do not get placed in propositions. (369)3

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In other words, predicates are utterances, not things; in this defi nition, genera are predicates; therefore, genera are utterances, not things. One consequence of this move, especially when paired with a full-blown nominalism that rejects universals both in the predicational and ontological senses of the word, is that it avoids a cluttered ontology fi lled with odd entities such as animality, humanity, asininity, risibility, whiteness, corporeality, and so on, because these are all just words. Garland’s innovations go beyond his predicational nominalism. He posits some interesting relationships between things, categories, and words. In normal Aristotelian parlance, as passed to the Middle Ages by Porphyry and Boethius, there are ten categories: substance, quality, quantity, relation, place, time, posture/position, state/having, action, and being acted upon/affection. Within each of these categories is a most general genus (e.g., substance), some subalternate genera (e.g., body, organism, animal), and most specific species (e.g., human being).4 Individuals are thought to belong to their species, which fall under their genus, which in turn falls under its genus, and so on until the most general genus. In this way, human being falls under animal, organism, body, and substance. This falling under is commonly thought in the Middle Ages to be an ontological relationship: a human being is a kind of animal (a rational mortal one, to be specific), which is a kind of body (a living and animate one), and so on. When we correctly predicate a genus of an individual or species (“A human being is an animal”) or a species of an individual (“Socrates is a human being”) we are indicating this ontological relationship. Garland’s innovation5 in this area is to distinguish between falling under and signifying categories. He does so in two different ways. One way he makes this distinction is in answering the question of whether individuals (e.g., Socrates) fall under a category. Garland writes, “Esse quidem dicimus de predicamento indigne quia omnibus superioribus subiciuntur, digne vero esse abnegamus, quia de nullo lege predica<men>ti predicantur” (“On the one hand, we say they unworthily belong to the category because they fall under all the higher items; on the other hand, we deny that they worthily belong, because they are not predicated of anything in the strict sense” (6-7, 371). He acknowledges that individuals fall under categories (e.g., inasmuch as Socrates is a man, and human beings fall under animals … and eventually substance, Socrates can be said to fall under substance); however, he calls that belonging unworthy, because particulars are not predicated of anything—species and genera are. Species and genera signify in ways that individuals do not, and yet individuals nonetheless fall under the categories. The second way Garland distinguishes falling under and signifying categories occurs in his discussion of artifacts. The problem can be motivated as follows: imagine a house that comprises a floor, a ceiling, and four walls. How many things are there, six (the parts) or seven (the parts plus the house)? In other words, is the house a thing in the same way that one of its walls is a thing? Garland answers as follows:

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Sic tamen dico omnia generalissima res omnes significare ut non omnia nomina earum rerum supponantur ipsis generalissimis, sed aliqua, ut hic potest videri: istud generalissimum quod est “substantia” significat omnia, igitur domum significat, idest rem illam que appellatur domus; “domus” tamen ista vox nomini illius rei substantie non supponitur ut predicamentalis vox, sed per alias voces que supponuntur substantie, designatur, ut per hanc vocem que est “hec substantia,” “hoc corpus” et per istas voces etiam que supponuntur substantie, designatur res illa que appellatur “domus,” sed divisim: lapis, lignum, terra. (23)

When I say that every completely general genus signifies all things, I do not mean to imply that all the nouns denoting those things are placed under those completely general genera; rather I intend that only some are, as we can see in the following case: This completely general genus “substance” signifies everything; therefore, it signifies a house, i.e., the thing which is called “house.” Nevertheless, this utterance “house” is not placed under “substance,” a noun denoting that thing, as a categorial utterance is, but rather [what it designates] is designated by other utterances which are placed under “substance.” For example, the thing which is called “house” is designated by the utterances “this substance,” “this body” that designate it by its parts, like “stone,” “wood,” “earth.” (377) The category substance signifies “house,” and yet “house” does not fall under substance, because only its constituent parts do. Other nominalists, including the eleventh century’s most notorious nominalist, Roscelin of Compiègne, agree with Garland, also holding that a house has no whole separate from its parts (Normore 204; Jolivet, “Trois variations” 115; Picavet 43) The effect of this nominalist move is to make the set of significata greater than the set of individuals in categories; as Normore puts it, “Nominalists resist multiplying things when they multiply terms,” and elsewhere, “there are more true sentences than truths” (216, 208). The reductionist tendencies of nominalists superficially at least resemble the reductionism of the Stoics. For the Stoics, with the exception of a few incorporeals, such as lekta, time, and the void, everything in the universe is a body, though their conception of bodies is somewhat broader than what we might call body, since they include under the heading of body things like virtues and vices. Intellectual abstractions such as universals are mere concepts for the Stoics: we may call Socrates, Plato, and Dio human, but we are not asserting that there is a thing, “human being,” that is out there in extramental reality. The Stoics develop complex doctrines (such as their theory of cases, discussed in Chapter 2) to deal with situations where sentences refer to things that do not exist, such as unicorns and Dion, once Dion is understood to be dead. They also elaborate theories of extension

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and intension, to enable existing bodies to be denoted, and concepts or abstractions to be connoted. For the nominalists, intellectual abstractions such as universals are mere words. They, too, seem to advocate a comparatively lean ontology that clearly emphasizes individuals over abstractions.6 The Aristotelian terminology of categories and the related system of predicables is not at all Stoic, and Christian doctrine also makes important claims about the nature of reality, so similarities between their respective understandings of the cosmos should not be overstated. It is sufficient for now to point out that both had reductionist tendencies when it comes to ontology. Both the Stoics and nominalists posit a stronger connection between words and things (that is, a more referential model of signification), than does Aristotle. The referential model of signification has some interesting implications. If words refer to things, then on this theory, the things have to exist to be referred to. This model presents no problem as long as one is talking about “this human being” or “some human beings,” assuming they are present. However, other words pose diffi culties: on this theory, it is difficult to explain lies, simple errors, and words like nihil (“nothing”) (Colish, “Stoic Theory” 21). In Stoic linguistic theory, proper nouns are said to be connotative, and the Stoics have language refer not so much to things in some abstract or pure sense, but rather to things as they are disposed in facts and events, which deflects some of the undesirable implications of their theory of reference. For the Stoics, reference to things is always mediated by categories7 of disposition; words do not point to the substantial nature of individuals (e.g., the rational mortality attached to animality, thought to defi ne humanity in the medieval interpretation of Aristotelian logic). Garland also moves his theory of reference to take into account aspects of meaning such as dispositions. In discussing how categories signify, Garland writes, “Illud non videtur esse pretermittendum quod ‘substantia’ ista vox, eo respectu quod est generalissimum genus, significat omnia quecumque sunt” (“We should not neglect to remark that the utterance ‘substance’ in its role as a completely generic genus, signifies everything whatsoever that there is”) (20, 375). Garland takes this argument to some interesting conclusions, arguing that substance signifies itself. Of greater interest for our purposes here, though, is the phrase, “the utterance ‘substance’ in its role as a completely generic genus.” Substance here is not conceived in a stable Aristotelian sense of a certain kind of entity; rather, it is a mode of signifying, a role it plays in certain kinds of signification. By implication, substance can be something besides the completely generic genus; it would just do so by playing a different role. Garland uses this kind of language in other places, suggesting the notion that categories, genera, and species are just roles that certain utterances can play. In explicating the relationships between species and genera, Garland writes, “quicquid significat species, inquantum est species ipsius generalissimi, significat ipsum generalissimum” (“Whatever

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the species, insofar as it is a species of that completely generic genus, signifies also the completely generic genus signifies” (21, 376). A few lines later, he parses the phrase “inquantam est species ipsius generalissimi” (“insofar as it is a species of that completely generic genus”) as follows: [S]ed “inquantum est species substantie” sic est intelligendum, idest: eo respectu quo est species, idest secundum eam impositionem qua fuit imposita species manens. (21) But the phrase “insofar as it is a species of ‘substance’” is to be interpreted as meaning “in its role as a species,” i.e., “in virtue of the imposition by which it was imposed on it to be and stay a species” (376). A species falls under a genus, but only with respect to the fact that it is a species. Considered in a different way, this passage suggests, the species may not fall under its genus at all. Conceiving Aristotle’s categories as a framework of linguistic role playing is quite different from the way Porphyry and Boethius use the categories, and on some level it resembles the Stoic use of categories, which are used to express dispositions, that is, the ways in which things enter into facts. Garland here also alludes to the myth of the name-giver, the theory that utterances are imposed on things, which though not exclusively Stoic, is embraced by the Stoics and passed to the grammar tradition through them. That words signify via roles is also important in grammar, since the parts of speech, declensions, conjugations, and other linguistic features correlate to these roles. One implication of this line of thinking is that if a word fails to play its designated role correctly, both that word and the sentence as a whole may be reduced to nonsense, as in “Socrates is a Plato” or “Socrates is an ablative.” In the The Plaint of Nature, Alan forcefully makes an analogy between this violation of grammatical roles and human sin, a topic to which I’ll return in detail in Chapter 4. This Stoic tendency to consider the nuance of meaning/reference systematically is more clearly seen in Garland’s discussion of how the categories signify things. Having proven that each of the categories signifies itself (i.e., substance signifies substance, quantity signifies quantity, and so on for all ten categories), Garland makes the following argument: Sciendum est quod omnia generalissima idem significant, sed diversis modis.... Diversis, inquam, modis idem significant omnia generalissima, quia substantia significat rem id quod est tantum, idest purum esse rei. Quantitas vero eamdem rem significat secumdum mensuram, idest secundum quantitatem, idest quanta est, sive parva sive magna. (22-3) We have to realize that all completely general genera signify the same items, but in different ways…. All the completely general genera, I say,

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Grammar and Language Theory in Medieval Allegorical Narrative signify the same items in different ways, because “substance” signifies the thing which merely is, i.e., the pure being of the thing. “Quantity” signifies the same thing as “measured,” i.e., as a quantity, i.e., as it is quantified, whether small or big. (377)

He continues this argument through each of the ten categories. Garland’s attitude toward categories in this argument is clear: they are not structures of metaphysical reality but are rather modes of signifying. In the sentence, “Socrates is white and five feet tall,” substance signifies Socrates qua being; quality signifies Socrates qua color; and quantity signifies Socrates qua height. Underlying this theory of reference is the originally Stoic distinction of extension and intension. By “signifies” (significat) Garland means what we call extension: all three categories signify the same thing, Socrates (Tweedale, “Logic” 200). Where the signification of the categories differs is not in extension, but in intension; they signify aspects about Socrates (his existence, measurement, and so on), or the ways in which Socrates is disposed in the world.

Roscelin Versus Anselm on Reference and the Trinity One of the more colorful episodes of the late eleventh century occurred when Roscelin of Compiègne applied his logical-grammatical theories to the Trinity, and ended up with an apparent doctrine of tritheism.8 Anselm’s summary of Roscelin’s position appears at the beginning of his On the Incarnation of the Word (De incarnatione Verbi)9 and is as follows:10 ‘Si, [Roscelin] inquit, in deo tres personae sunt una tantum res et non sunt tres res unaquaeque per se separatim, sicut tres angeli aut tres animae, ita tamen ut voluntate et potentia omnino sint idem : ergo pater et spiritus sanctus cum filio est incarnatus’. (4) “If” he [Roscelin] said, “the three persons are only one thing and not three things, each intrinsically separate, like three angels or three souls, such that they are none the less identical in will and power, then the Father as well as the Holy Spirit as well as the Son became flesh.” (233) Roscelin’s argument proposes a dilemma: on the one hand, we can be monotheists, and allow the consequence that the Father and the Holy Spirit were incarnated with the Son, or we can insist that only the Son was incarnated, which entails that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit must have sufficient distinction between them as to constitute three things. Nothing in Roscelin’s argument as stated is explicitly connected with problems of language or reference, though recent reconstructions of his thought (see footnote 10) show strong influence by the grammatical tradition.

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Characteristically, Anselm undertakes to respond to this argument using reason, that is, without appealing to authority or Scripture, and almost immediately, he uses linguistic theory as a tool to address Roscelin’s dilemma. He begins by claiming that he need only show that how the Father and Son are one and yet distinct enough for only the former to be incarnated. His reason for excluding the Holy Spirit from his analysis follows: [L]oquar tantum de patre et fi lio, quoniam hae duae personae suis propriis vocibus aliae ab invicem aperte designantur. Nam nomen spiritus sancti non est alienum a patre et filio, quia uterque est et spiritus et sanctus. (11) I shall speak only of the Father and the Son, since these two persons by their own names are openly denoted as distinct from one another. (For the name “Holy Spirit” is not foreign to the Father or the Son, since each of them is both spirit and holy.) (238) The criterion for distinguishing between the Father and the Son is the denotation of their names (i.e., two distinct names refer to two distinct somethings, the exact nature of which Anselm has yet to explain). The Holy Spirit cannot be so easily separated from the Father and the Son, because each of the words that comprises the name of the Holy Spirit can be predicated of the Father and Son. Oddly enough, this argument as stated would seem to imply that angels are also not distinct from part of the godhead, because they, too, are holy and spirit. Nonetheless, the important point in this is that Anselm is relying on a theory of reference as his starting point for analysis of the metaphysical conundrum of the Trinity. Moreover, if he allows his theory of reference to coincide with extension, then “Father” and “Son” point to two separate things, and he will end up with the same problem Roscelin had: an apparent tritheistic doctrine of the Trinity. Anselm solves the problem using an analogy. He writes that among people, a man may be the father of one man, and the son of another. There is only one man (extensional reference), who is both father and son; yet there are two relationships: the man qua father and the man qua son (intensional reference). Anselm concludes: Hoc igitur modo nihil prohibet dicere duas personas, patrem et fi lium, esse duas res; si tamen intelligatur cuiusmodi sint res. Non enim sic sunt pater et fi lius duae res, ut in his duabus rebus intelligatur eorum substantia, sed eorum relationes. (12, emphasis mine) In this way, therefore, nothing prevents us saying that the two persons, the Father and the Son, are two things, provided that we none the less

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Grammar and Language Theory in Medieval Allegorical Narrative understand how they are things. For the Father and the Son are not two things in such a way that we in the case of these two things understand their substance, but that we understand their relations. (239, emphasis mine)

Anselm is accusing Roscelin of confusing extension and intension, in effect of reifying relationships as substances; ironically, the realist Anselm is rebuking the nominalist Roscelin for not being sufficiently reductionist. The underlying point that Anselm is making is that the persons are dispositions of God. In doing so, he is able to claim that the persons are distinct (intensionally) and yet one (extensionally). This suggests that an intensional reference (God qua the Son) was incarnated, or that is to say a certain disposition of God was incarnated, while other intensional references/dispositions were not. Anselm’s argument goes beyond the human father/son analogy described here, but the majority of it hinges on similar strategies, so I have summarized enough for the purposes of this chapter. Stepping back, one might say that, like Garland, Anselm is using the category of relation as a means of talking about dispositions of things in the world, rather than as a means for thinking about things abstractly. The three persons are not distinguished on the basis of what, but rather on the basis of how. This similarity notwithstanding, there is an important difference between the ways that Garland and Anselm use the categories to articulate dispositions. Whereas for Garland, dispositions in categories are merely utterances, Anselm would go further and state that these relationships, or dispositions, capture something true about relationships in reality. That is, the intension/extension dichotomy can be applied to logic/epistemology (i.e., how we in our thoughts or speech distinguish between things themselves and their dispositions) or it can be applied to ontology (i.e., how there are extramental differences between things in reality and the ways those things are disposed). This is an important point, because without it, one might misread Anselm as saying that the relationship between the Father and the Son is merely a linguistic convention, which is certainly not his position. The Stoics are probably closer to Anselm in this than they are to Garland; that is, intensional reference points to dispositions of things out there in reality. Anselm’s response to Roscelin is interesting precisely because it depends on grammar theory. Anselm theoretically could have responded that the Trinity is a divine mystery that humans cannot comprehend. He could have accused Roscelin of using human language theory to explore a reality well beyond its scope. He could have used Aristotelian logic to posit and defend the standard church doctrine. He uses none of these strategies. By engaging with Roscelin on grammatical terms, Anselm implicitly but inevitably asserts that language corresponds to extramental reality, granting grammar enormous epistemological power and privileging the

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linguistic theories of Priscian (and the commentary tradition) in intellectual and theological inquiry.

Anselm on Truth and Rectitude Anselm’s treatise On Truth (De veritate)11 is a dialogue between a student and teacher that seeks to provide an answer to the question, what is truth? In the course of the dialogue, Anselm (or, rather, the teacher) espouses several doctrines that the Stoics also embrace. The teacher does not profess to know the answer to the question, so he begins his exploration with the statement (enuntiatio), since it can be called true or false. The fi rst hypothesis is that true statements are true insofar as statements correspond to the states of affairs they signify; that is, the statement “It is day” is true if it is indeed day. But the student and teacher realize that this defi nition is incorrect, because then truth of something would be dependent on language. Thus, they see that a given state of affairs is the cause of true statements, but it is not itself the truth of statements. The student and teacher come up with a second hypothesis, and that is that a statement has truth insofar as it is semantically coherent. Vera quidem non solet dici, cum significat esse quod non est; veritatem tamen et rectitudinem habet, quia facit quod debet. Sed cum significat esse quod est, dupliciter facit quod debet: quoniam significat et quod accepit significare, et quod facta est.... Alia igitur est rectitudo et veritas enuntiationis, quia significat ad quod significandum facta est: alia vero quia significat quod accepit significare. Quippe ista immutabilis est ipsi orationi; illa vero, mutabilis...; istam enim naturaliter habet; illam vero, accidentaliter et secundum usum. (470C-D) But although it is not customary to say that it [a statement] is true when it signifies what is not is, still it has truth and rectitude insofar as it is a well-formed sentence. But when it says what is is, it doubly does what it ought to, since it signifies both what it undertakes to signify and is a well-formed sentence.... A statement is right and true either because it is correctly formed or because it fulfills its function of signifying correctly. The former belongs immutably to it, the latter is mutable.... The former it naturally [naturaliter] has, the latter accidentally and according to use [accidentaliter et secundum usum]. (154 [Ch. 2]) The fi rst (and primary) criterion of truth in a statement is simply whether it is well-formed, and hence capable of meaning anything. Thus formulated, it sounds something like the Stoics’ complete lekton (Colish, “Stoic Theory” 39). A lekton, which is understood as an incorporeal that corresponds to a rational impression, can be false, according to the Stoics, in the sense that it might not correspond to something in reality, but it is nevertheless

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the sayable, the that-which-gets-said, and as such has a natural integrity not unlike what Anselm describes here. Implicit in Anselm’s distinction between natural and accidental truth is a way of distinguishing between the disciplines of grammar and logic; that is, grammar could be construed as the science of naturally true statements, while logic could be construed as the science of accidentally true (that is, correctly signifying that what is, is) statements. Anselm does not make this claim, but something like it appears to underlie the allegorical descriptions of grammar and logic at the end of Alan’s Anticlaudianus Book II and the beginning of Book III.12 Another aspect of his distinction between the two types of truth in statements is the corresponding distinction between signifying naturally and according to use. This distinction is also important in Anselm’s De grammatico as well as Abelard’s Logica “ingredientibus,” and as discussed later in this chapter it appears to echo the Stoic distinction between names as originally imposed (naturally) and as they have evolved over time. With this distinction established, the student and teacher of On Truth apply it to opinion, will, action, the senses, and the essence of things, moving ever closer to defi ning truth itself (Colish, Mirror 79-80). The teacher and student explore some interesting consequences of the theories of truth and rectitude that they are creating. One problem is whether Jesus ought to have suffered death. The teacher argues that he ought not to have suffered death insofar as he alone was innocent, and yet he ought to have suffered death because he wished to suffer it. The teacher concludes, “Multis enim modis eadem res suscipit diversis considerationibus contraria” (“There are many ways in which the same thing receives contrary appraisals from different considerations”) (476B, 161 [Ch. 8]). Likewise, the teacher ponders the paradox in which the sinner is struck by someone who has no right to strike her or him: “debet et non debet esse percussio” (“the blow ought to be and ought not to be”) (477A, 162 [Ch. 8]). Here again contradictory modes appear to be applicable to one and the same thing. An appeal to something’s disposition, rather than an absolute nature, appears to explain each of these paradoxes. The last third of the dialogue explores the deeper implications of the working defi nition of truth and rectitude. The teacher helps the student identify a number of individual theses with Stoic undertones, gradually pulling them all together into a holistic system linking ethics, signification, and cosmic order. In Chapter 9, Anselm expands signification beyond traditional signs to include actions and even things’ essences. He describes an example in which someone is in the woods looking for mushrooms to eat, but does not know which are poisonous and which are not. Now, another person is present who knows the difference, and tells the fi rst to eat one kind of mushroom, but he himself eats the other. The fi rst person knows to trust the actions, not the words. The teacher points out, though, that even if the fi rst person initially did not know that lying is wrong, he would correctly infer this fact from the actions of the other, in addition

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to inferring which mushroom he should eat. Speaking more abstractly, the teacher claims, “eo ipso quod aliquis aliquid facit, dicit et significat hoc se debere facere” (“by the fact that someone does something, he says and signifies that he ought to do it”) (478A, 163 [Ch. 9]). Going one step further, he claims, “In rerum quoque existentia est similiter vera vel falsa significatio; quoniam eo ipso quia est, dicit se debere esse.” (“There is true and false signification in the existence of things too, since by the fact that a thing is, it says it ought to be” (478C, 164 [Ch. 9]). This claim, that actions and things signify truth, simply by virtue of happening or existing resembles the Stoic notion that chance does not exist, but rather that all things and actions are tied in a great benevolent chain of fate. The teacher has not yet in this dialogue actually tied this signification to a greater cosmic truth, but he does so in the coming chapters. In the next two chapters, 10 and 11, the teacher identifies and then defi nes the highest truth. In the fi rst step, identifying the highest truth, the teacher claims that whereas each of the truths discussed so far exist because they ought to, there must be one that exists in and of itself, and which is the cause of all the other truths. The student elaborates: “veritas, quae est in rerum existentia, sit effectum summae veritatis, ipsa quoque causa est veritatis quae cogitationis est, et ejus quae est in propositione: et istae duae veritates nullius sunt causa veritatis” (“The truth that is in the things that exist is the effect of the highest truth, but it is also the cause of the truth which is in knowledge and of that which is in the statement, but these two truths are not the cause of any other truth”) (479A, 165 [Ch. 10]). The teacher agrees, leaving us with an idea of truth that can be thought of as a series of concentric rings: at the center is the highest truth, and that single truth is in things and causes the individual truth of those things, and the truth that is in those things is, in turn, the cause of the truths in our knowledge of and statements about those things. This position is strongly realist and even “naïve”: one and the same truth is found simultaneously and wholly in many different things (Tweedale, “Logic” 210). Although Anselm is claiming the ontological dependencies of these different levels or degrees of participation of truth are one-way from the highest truth on down, he does not claim that the truths in language or our knowledge are arbitrary or even distorted. Thus he leaves open (and in fact makes heavy use of) the epistemological methodology of starting with language and human knowledge and working backwards toward the highest truth, confident that the presence of the highest truth in language makes this methodology possible. With different kinds of truth sorted out and identified, teacher and student are ready to posit a defi nition of truth. The teacher claims that truth is “rectitudo sola mente perceptibilis” (“rectitude perceptible by the mind alone”) (480A, 166 [Ch. 11]). This defi nition has a number of interesting implications. One is that the truth exists whether or not it is ever perceived; it is external to cognition. One might compare this to the Stoic lekton, or

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the “sayable” as it is often translated, which also exists whether or not anyone actually says it. Truth for Anselm and the lekton for the Stoics are both caused by single eternal truth, which is guaranteed to be benevolent and rational. Recalling the linkage for the Stoics between language and understanding—the lekton subsists in accordance with rational impressions—we can say that for both Anselm and the Stoics, the mind is capable of perceiving and expressing the hidden link between the truth as it is expressed in things as they are disposed in reality and the greater, binding truth of the cosmos. Neither Anselm nor the Stoics claim that people routinely make these connections, but both claim that the connections are there to be made and that humans can make them. Anselm and the Stoics both provide theories of truth with a deeply internal emphasis, even while allowing that the truths are grounded in external reality. These ideas are compatible with epistemological patterns found in Psychomachia, where one major difference between the Virtues and Vices is their ability to relate sensible reality back to divine reality, where for example the torch that Libido uses to attack Pudicitia’s eyes is contrasted with the torch of Christ (lines 48-57), or the fi ne silken robes of Luxuria are contrasted with the tunic of faith (lines 363-4). Making this connection becomes an ethical burden that all people bear. Anselm works out the connection in Chapter 12, in which student and teacher turn to a discussion of justice. Towards the beginning of the discussion, the teacher claims that truth, rectitude, and justice “invicem sese diffi niunt” (“mutually define each other”), and that “qui unam earum noverit, et alias nescierit, per notam ad ignotarum scientiam pertingere possit; imo qui noverit unam, alias nescire non possit” (“He who knows one of them knows the others and can from the known go on to knowledge of the unknown. Indeed, he who knows one cannot be in ignorance of the others”) (480C, 166 [Ch. 12]). The parallel of this claim with the famous Stoic notion that whoever has one virtue has them all is striking not only because of the superficial similarity, but because of the apparent logic behind these principles. The underlying logic seems to be the idea that the sage has mastery of the relationship between the deep structures of the cosmos and all the small and superficial expressions of it that the senses perceive. Moreover, expressed in Anselm’s idiom, this mastery is rectitude, inasmuch as it is directed at the internal coherence of things; it is truth, inasmuch as it is directed at the external coherence of things; and it is justice inasmuch as it is directed at embracing of these coherences. Just as Garland sees the categories reducing to certain ways of considering one and the same thing (e.g., Socrates in terms of his being, quantity, etc.), so Anselm sees many ideals acting in a unitary way in the mind as it negotiates between temporal reality and God (e.g., the straightness of sticks or truth of utterances with respect to internal, external, and moral coherence). Establishing these relationships does not substitute for a proper defi nition of justice, so the teacher and student explore the issue of justice in the

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hopes of identifying its own essence. They explore several problematic situations, such as the person who feeds the poor out of vainglory; or someone who acts and wills rightly, but only because he is forced. At fi rst they seem to be working toward a defi nition in which actors must meet a series of criteria before they can be called just: they must act rightly, will rightly, for the right reason, and voluntarily. However, just at the moment when the proliferation of criteria threatens to bloat the defi nition of justice, the teacher finds a way to reduce the problem of justice down to a single criterion: “Voluntas ergo illa justa dicenda est, quae sui rectitudinem servat propter ipsam rectitudinem.” (“Therefore the will is just when it preserves its rectitude for the sake of rectitude itself”) (482B, 169 [Ch. 12]). By reducing the contrary impulses of the will to a simple and unified act of selfcoherence, the human actor brings her or his will into compliance with the divine rule that caused human will in the fi rst place, once again matching internal and external coherence. The pattern that emerges from the dialogue is clear: what appear to be diverse problems or ideas are one at a time shown to have internal coherence, and then that coherence is shown to relate to the coherence of other things in the world, and finally the world itself is claimed to have a unitary coherence in which all these other coherences participate or which they reenact; this pattern is compatible with both Platonism and Stoicism. If Anselm’s realism leads him to believe in ontological oddities such as truth, rectitude, and justice, at least they seem to exist and behave in similar ways. Anselm’s system ties actions, signification, ethics, and truth into a unified system, in which each can be seen as a reflection of the other. Moreover, because of the claim that having one amounts to having them all, then by implication lacking one means lacking all—a claim the Stoics made explicitly. Therefore, identifying a flaw in one area (e.g., signification or will) implies a fundamental and comprehensive flaw in the whole. It is this reasoning, Stoic in origin, that I believe stands behind Alan’s central claim in the Plaint of Nature that homosexuality amounts to bad grammar, as I will discuss in the next chapter.

Abelard: Grammar and Signification If Anselm’s dialogue On Truth is a replication of the essentially Stoic argument laid out at the beginning of Chapter 1, which links proper signification, ethics, and cosmic truth, Abelard posits a theory of language that has the mechanics to perform the role the Stoics assigned to it, simultaneously capturing the disposition of things in reality and our rational comprehension of them. Abelard’s theories tend to reflect predispositions from both the logical and grammatical traditions as they existed in the twelfth century, and these two traditions can be roughly traced back to Aristotle and the Stoics, respectively. Disentangling the two traditions can be helpful both in understanding Abelard’s own theories, which are nuanced and often difficult to understand in their own right, but also in understanding

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the import of the twelfth-century grammatical tradition in general, which received comparatively little scholarly attention until the latter half of the twentieth century, and which today remains an area about which we could stand to learn much more.13 In developing theories of linguistic reference and signification, both ancient and medieval philosophers wrestle with the problem of how words simultaneously refer to aspects of external reality and the intentions of the speaker. While no one (that I know of) positively rules out that words refer to thought and extramental reality, some theories favor one over the other. For example, Aristotle’s linguistic theory favors words as representing thoughts, while the Stoics tend in the other direction, linking words ultimately to extramental reality. Perhaps as a corollary to these theories, Aristotle and the Stoics also disagree on the origin of words: for Aristotle, words signify conventionally, whereas the Stoics believe that words signify naturally, and they back up this belief with the myth of the primal name-giver, who fi rst imposes names on things, and who does so with more direct, less corrupted access to those things than we moderns do. Within the context of twelfth-century debates on language, perhaps the most pressing disagreement between these two traditions is on the significance of nouns: for the grammar tradition, following Priscian, a noun signifies substance and quality,14 whereas for Aristotle a noun signifies only a quality, namely the intention of the speaker.15 The difference between these two notions of the signification of a noun is far-reaching, not only because it was widely debated,16 but also because it may rest on an underlying difference in theories of metaphysics. How was Priscian’s “substance and quality” formula understood? According to de Rijk, medieval logicians understood substantia to mean an individual thing (res), while qualitas meant the nature, class, or type of thing to which the thing belongs or in which it participates (De Rijk, “Origins” 163). Alternatively, in Fredborg’s words, “nouns signify substance (a what) and quality (an of what kind)” (Fredborg 182, italics in original). Peter King analyzes Priscian’s definitions from both Aristotelian and Stoic perspectives. Concerning how someone following Aristotle might read Priscian, King writes, [H]ow can a nomen signify things in two categories, namely substance and quality? disjunctively? or does he mean as a quality inhering in a substance, or perhaps a substance with a given quality? (104, emphasis in original) The Aristotelian’s problem with Priscian’s defi nition is that it makes a mess of her or his metaphysical beliefs. It either contradicts the system of the categories, or it inevitably posits relationships (e.g., of inherence) with farreaching and ultimately untenable implications. Conversely, when we consider Priscian from a Stoic perspective, the definition not surprisingly makes more sense:

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[T]echnically speaking, a proper name such as “Socrates” signifies what we would call the substrate, i.e., a given parcel of matter; this the Stoics called a “substance” (materialists that they were). But again, the fact that there is a proper name is of some importance, for that indicates that the given chunk of matter which is Socrates is qualified in a certain way, namely as having an individual quality, or perhaps “individualizing quality” is a better name for it: that chunk of matter has the property of being an individual, being Socrates—which the Stoics called a “quality.” So to say that “Socrates” signifies a substance and quality means just that “Socrates” signifies something material, not something incorporeal like lekta, and that the matter is organized into an individual, viz. Socrates. (King 104, emphasis in original) From a Stoic point of view, the notion that a noun signifies substance plus quality fits well into their ontology, which is centered on bodies with some individual quality, which as explained in Chapter 2 is that special something that makes a body what it is, e.g., Socrateitas for Socrates. King’s analysis summarizes the problem succinctly, and with the reconstruction of Stoic thought made available over the last fi fty years, the underlying confl ict between the two systems is relatively clear to us. For philosophers in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, though, with no direct access to the Stoic system, and yet fluent in the grammatical tradition—since it was the basis of formal education—and struggling with the logical tradition, the underlying confl ict between Aristotelianism and Stoicism is present but impossible to recognize as such. For Abelard, the two traditions provide two vocabularies with which to tackle some of the most troubling problems of his day: universals, signification, epistemology. Moreover, though Abelard is today known primarily for his “calamitous” story and his dialectic, his reliance on the grammar tradition—and his reactivation of many Stoic ideas and strategies—is undeniable. His influence17 into the latter part of the twelfth century, when Alan was writing, appears to have been limited, but his influence within his own generation was significant, with students such as John of Salisbury, Robert of Melun, Otto of Freising, Geoffrey of Auxerre (who later turned against Abelard), and of course Heloise. He had quite a reputation, his run-ins with church authorities notwithstanding, and was credited as the only one of his generation who truly understood Aristotle. He also appears to have been an important influence on Peter Lombard. His work appears to represent the cutting edge of much twelfth-century logical and linguistic theory, prior to the influx of new translations of Aristotle, and one may presume that much of his logic and linguistic theory would have been current when Alan (b. 1128) was a schoolboy. The remainder of this chapter traces some of these themes as they are played out in two sections of Abelard’s Logica “ingredientibus”: his Glosses on Porphyry and his Glosses on De Interpretatione.

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The Stoic Theory of Imposition and Abelard’s Theory of Status Abelard’s Glosses on Porphyry, taken from his Logica “ingredientibus,” contains a lengthy section on theories of universals, both of his contemporaries and his own theory. Exploring and evaluating his arguments concerning universals is beyond the scope of this project; however, in the course of making these arguments, Abelard frequently relies on certain grammatical theories, themselves not found in Aristotle, to solve problems in the medieval tradition of Aristotelian logic. Of these, one of the most interesting is his use of the Stoic/grammatical theory of imposition. As described in Chapter 1, the Stoics believe that in the distant past, a name-giver imposed names on things. Moreover, the Stoics believe that this name-giver had closer access to true reality than we do now, and as a result that earlier language was closer to reality than the corrupted, ambiguous, and equivocal language spoken nowadays. Aristotle holds no such theory; for him, language is conventional. Accordingly, Aristotle also has no notion that over the course of history, there is variation in language’s connection to reality. Again, as discussed in Chapter 1, one consequence of the different views is that whereas for the Stoics, language signifies naturally and so can be used to gain insight into the inner workings of the cosmos, for Aristotle, language signifies conventionally and does not in itself offer a means of special insight into the structure of the cosmos. The grammatical tradition maintains the myth of the name-giver, and Abelard uses it in his exposition of universals. His defi nition of a universal itself makes use of the myth: “Est autem universale vocabulum quod de pluribus singillatim habile est ex inventione sua praedicari” (“Now a universal word is one that on the basis of its invention is apt to be predicated of many things one by one” (Abelard, Philosophische 16, Porphyry 37, emphasis added).18 This defi nition mirrors Aristotle’s own defi nition of universals in On Interpretation VII,19 except that Aristotle makes no mention of “invention.” Abelard has interjected an idea from the grammar tradition into an Aristotelian defi nition of an issue that pertains to the medieval tradition of Aristotelian logic—but why? The myth of imposition appears numerous times in the Glosses on Porphyry, and its role is of vital importance in Abelard’s solution to the problem of universals, because it is connected with an important doctrine of Abelard’s: the concept of status. Central to the debate on universals, as passed from Porphyry, through Boethius, and into the twelfth century, is the signification of genus words, such as the word “animal” in the sentence “Socrates is an animal.” The question is whether “animal” is a thing (res), a mere concept, or a mere word. Abelard claims that the universal “human” indicates the status of being a human. That is, there is no metaphysically existing humanity that both Plato and Socrates have; rather, they share the status of “being human.” Abelard is explicit in saying that “being human” is not a thing (Abelard, Philosophische 19,

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Porphyry 41). Instead, it is the status of a human: “Statum autem hominis ipsum esse hominem, quod non est res, vocamus” (“Now someone’s being a man, which is not a thing, we call the status of man”) (20, 42, italics in translation). Abelard is trying to avoid the ontological problems of universals as extramental substances, while at the same time seeking to minimize the epistemological problems of that denial. The latter is achieved by asserting this status, which is intended to lend some objective grounding to universal words. If the status is not a thing, and yet it needs to be sufficient to ground language in objective reality, Abelard needs to answer two questions: (a) How does the status relate to objective reality?; and (b) How are we humans supposed to discover the status? Abelard answers question (a) by quoting and then elaborating on Priscian: [Priscian:] ,ad generales et speciales rerum formas, quae in mente divina intelligibiliter constituuntur, antequam in corpora prodirent, haec quoque propria possunt esse, quibus genera vel species naturae rerum demonstrantur‘. Hoc enim loco de Deo sic agitur quasi de artifice aliquid composituro, qui rei componendae exemplarem formam, ad similitudinem cuius operetur, anima praeconcipit, quae tunc in corpis procedere dicitur, cum ad similitudinem eius res vera componitur. Haec autem communis conceptio bene Deo adscribitur, non homini; quia opera illa generales vel speciales naturae status sunt [Dei], non artificis. (Philosophische 22-3) [Priscian:] “The terms by which the genera or species in nature are indicated can also be proper to the general and special forms of things constructed intelligibly in the divine mind before they go forth into bodies.” In this passage God is treated as a builder about to put something together, who conceives beforehand in his soul an exemplary form of the thing to be put together, and operates in accordance with the likeness of this form. The form is said to “proceed into a body” when a true thing is put together according to the likeness of this form. Now this common conception is rightly attributed to God, not to man. For those works—the general or special status in nature—are God’s work, not a builder’s. (Porphyry 45). The objective existence of the status out there in the world is none other than the form of things constructed in God’s mind. This passage is deeply reminiscent of the myth of creation in Plato’s Timaeus, which was also a seminal influence on the Stoic conception of the cosmos. So, according to Priscian, God has certain ideas in his head, and these ideas are transferred into bodies; moreover, the same idea (e.g., human) is transferred into many bodies. The status corresponds to these ideas. These ideas are not the essences of things; Abelard explicitly denies that they are (20, 42).

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Instead, they appear to be akin to the seal ring metaphor used in Plato’s Timaeus; that is, the ideas are stamped onto substances. Lady Nature, in Alan’s Plaint describes herself in remarkably similar terms, but I’ll hold off discussing how these ideas play out in Alan until Chapter 4. For now, Abelard has provided an answer to question (a), which asked how the status, a non-thing, connects to external reality. The second question, (b) how can we humans know anything about it, is a little more difficult. In fact, Abelard admits that he has an epistemological problem: [Q]uia homines, qui per sensus tantum res cognoscunt, vix aut numquam ad huiusmodi simplicem intelligentiam conscendunt et ne pure rerum naturas concipiant, accidentium exterior sensualitas impedit. Deus vero cui omnia per se patent, quae condidit, quique ea antequam sint, novit, singulos status in se ipsis distinguit[.]” (Philosophische 23) For men, who know things only through the senses, scarcely ever—or perhaps never—rise to this kind of simple intelligence. The external sensuousness of accidents prevents men from conceiving the natures of things purely. But God, to whom all the things he created are plain through themselves and who knew them before they existed, distinguishes the single status in themselves. (Porphyry 45, emphasis in translation) Humans are so tied to the senses that it is virtually impossible for us to know status. Abelard does not rule out that humans could know status; perhaps a genuine sage (in the Stoic sense) could have such knowledge. This admission appears to rob Abelard’s theory of much of its appeal. If universal terms really are grounded in reality, what good does that do us if we—and our language—have no connection with that grounding? To resolve this problem, Abelard uses a bona fide Stoic strategy: he appeals to the original imposition of words, specifically connecting the status and the imposition: “quod [status] etiam diximus communem causam impositionis nominis ad singulos, secundum quod ipsi ad invicem conveniunt” (“We also called it [the status] the ‘common cause’ of the imposition of a name on single men insofar as they agree with one another”) (20, 42). The status is not a thing, but a cause, and more specifically, the cause of the imposition of names, a claim which would appear to solve the epistemological problem of how we come to recognize the status of a thing: as long as we understand the words we use, we must be grasping the status that caused them. Another passage makes it clear that Abelard wants to use the status/imposition connection in this way. After acknowledging that “de intrinsecis formis quae ad sensus non veniunt, qualis est rationalitas et mortalitas, paternitas, sessio, magis nos opinionem [quam intelligentiam] habere” (“we have opinion rather than real intelligence of internal forms

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that do not reach the senses, such as rationality, mortality, fatherhood, and sitting,”) Abelard claims, Quaelibet tamen quorumlibet existentium nomina, quantum in ipsis est, intellectum magis quam opinionem generant, quia secundum aliquas rerum naturas vel proprietates inventor ea imponere intendit, etsi nec ipse bene excogitare sciret rei naturam aut proprietatem. (Philosophische 23) Yet any names of any existing things, insofar as is in their power, generate understanding rather than opinion, since their inventor meant to impose them in accordance with certain natures of characteristics of things, even if he did not know how to think out the nature or characteristic of the thing. (Porphyry 46) Elsewhere, Abelard says we are left with opinion “si a statu rei intelligentia deviaret” (“if the intelligence were to depart from the status of the thing”) (Philosophische 26, Porphyry 49). With that defi nition in mind, it appears that Abelard is claiming that the original imposition of names is somehow exempt from the limitations of human opinion and actually generates understanding, even though the inventor her- or himself may lack the understanding requisite to doing so! Abelard appears to accept the Stoic privileging of imposition, i.e., that its reference is more true than that of common language, even though he appears to take away the very foundation of the privileging, viz., that the name-giver had a better connection to reality (at least at the moment of imposition) than those who use the name-giver’s words. That Abelard is privileging the imposition is evident in another passage, where much as the Stoics and early grammarians did in the ancient world, he makes a sharp distinction between a pure language of imposition and the muddled and ambiguous language that speakers often use. Abelard discusses what we might call the use of a metalanguage to describe signification in the logical writings of Porphyry, calling this metalanguage “figurative”; he then appeals again to the myth of the name-giver and latter-day equivocal language, in much the same way the Stoics used these ideas: Unde maxime tractatus tam logicae quam grammaticae ex translationibus nominum ambiguus multos in errorem induxit non bene distinguentes aut proprietatem impositionis nominum aut abusionem translationis. (Philosophische 30) Thus because the treatment both of logic and grammar was made extremely ambiguous because of such a figurative use of names, this led many people into error. They were not rightly distinguishing between correct imposition of names and their figurative misuse. (Porphyry 54)

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Implied in Abelard’s argument appears to be something akin to the notion of grammar discussed in Chapter 1, following Atherton: the true language is the one originally imposed, which mapped onto reality (or at least the status/forms in God’s mind) without ambiguity, and all such problems and confusions were introduced at a later point, as a result of linguistic corruption. Nonetheless, this language still somehow guarantees that our knowledge is connected to reality in deeper ways than our senses alone would seem to allow. As with the Stoics and Anselm, so with Abelard: language retains potential when it comes to discovering truth about God and the cosmos, and its corruption or misuse diminishes our connection to God’s ideas of creation.

Signification Now that we understand how language, thanks to the imposition of names, provides us some access to status, we can look more broadly at how signification works for Abelard. In his discussion of universals in the Glosses on Porphyry, Abelard notes the objection that “Rebus autem nullis videbantur imponi universalia nomina, cum scilicet omnes res discrete in se subsisterent nec in re aliqua, ut ostensum est, convenirent, secundum cuius rei convenientiam universalia nomina possint imponi” (“Universal names did not appear to be imposed on any things, since all things subsisted directly in themselves and did not agree in any thing (as was shown) in such a way that universal names could be imposed in accordance with their agreement in this thing”) (18, 40, emphasis in translation). He continues, “nullam de rebus significationem contrahere videntur universalia, praesertim cum nullum de re aliqua constituant intellectum” (“universal names seem to bring about no signification of things—especially since in addition they establish no understanding of a thing”) (18, 40). In these passages, Abelard is presenting the case against universals and signification; these objections are not, however, his own theory, which he provides shortly afterwards. Within the context of these objections, signification appears to involve reference to things and to cause an understanding of things, so we see both Stoic (i.e., reference to things) and Aristotelian (i.e., causing understandings) notions of signification at work, though universals appear to fail on both counts. Abelard’s answer to these objections is that universals do, in fact, signify, just in different ways than proper names. Nam et res diversas per nominationem quodammodo [universalia] significant, non constituendo tamen intellectum de eis surgentem, sed ad singulas pertinentem (Philosophische 19) For they [universal words] in a way “signify” diverse things by naming them, not by establishing an understanding that arises from them but one that pertains to each of them. (Porphyry 41)

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Abelard not only embraces the dual nature of signification—that it connects to both things and thoughts—but he argues that universal words signify in both ways. Universal words signify things by naming them, so “human” names the individuals Socrates and Plato, in the sentence, “Socrates and Plato are human.” In addition, the signification of universals also causes understandings, but not understandings of things (because “human” is not a thing) but rather of something (or more precisely, some non-thing) that “pertains to” things, viz., the status. Abelard has claimed, however, that the status is not in human thought, but is rather a common form that we might say is “imprinted” on several things at the moment of their creation. Therefore, it follows that words have a third kind of signification, in addition to things (taken as individual substances) and human understandings: words signify status. Abelard makes this argument himself, in his discussion about the relationship between common forms and universal names: Quippe eas concipere per nomina quid aliud est, quam per ea significari? Sed profecto cum eas ab intellectibus diversas facimus, iam praeter rem et intellectum tertia exiit nominum significatio. (Philosophische 24) What is it to conceive these common forms by means of names, other than for them to be signified by the names? But surely, in that sense, when we make these common forms to be different from understandings, there emerges a third signification of names besides the thing and the understanding. (Porphyry 47, emphasis in translation) Taken as a whole, this theory of signification is not particularly Stoic or Aristotelian; it is a mixture of both. Its Stoic influences are visible in the importance of things in his theory of signification. Language for Abelard seems to be primarily about things, as opposed to understanding, and even when he is discussing signification’s role in causing understanding, he usually describes that as understanding of things. For the Stoics, lekta refer both to thoughts and to things, but the distinction is not vitally important, because for the Stoics, the thoughts are of the same things anyway. Another Stoic aspect is manifested in the lengths to which Abelard goes to differentiate modes of signification. In his introduction to his edition of Peter Helias’ Summa super Priscianum, Reilly writes, “The Stoics are the acknowledged masters of word differentiation, of differentiating the different senses that a word can bear” (20). Abelard’s project—one shared in different places and circumstances by Anselm, Garland, Roscelin, and others—involves careful and creative word differentiation, for now we have seen that for Abelard, words can signify things (individual substances, such as Socrates), understandings, and status. These differentiations provide him with some philosophical margin in which to dodge the dilemmas that the problem of universals—and problems of the medieval Aristotelian tradition up to that point—posed.

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Propositions, Dicta, and Stoic Lekta In the Glosses on De Interpretatione portion of Logica “ingredientibus” in which Abelard comments on Aristotle’s On Interpretation, Abelard discusses the signification of propositions (VI.6.3), moving beyond the discussion of words, which dominates much of the Glosses on Porphyry. Abelard’s discussion is interesting, in part because he sees propositions as something different from the sum of their constituent parts. In this, he seems to be following Priscian, who identifies the sentence as the “heart of grammar” (Reilly 20). According to Reilly, Priscian asserts “the correspondence between complete utterance (oratio perfecta) and fullness of meaning (sententia perfecta or plena) as the key syntactic determinant” (21). In this Priscian is following the Stoics, who also distinguish between the meaning of words, which are necessarily incomplete, and the meaning of propositions, which are complete. Reilly elaborates by linking complete sentences to the Stoic epistemological distinction between vague and determinate impressions: “Vague apprehension of reality corresponds to the subject before it is determined by a predicate. At this universal stage, sense (intellectus, thought), reference (res, thing), and self-reference (vox, word) are indistinguishable” (18). Tweedale connects Abelard directly to this grammatical tradition, saying that Abelard, “following traditional grammar, draws a sharp distinction between complete (perfectae) and incomplete (imperfectae) word strings (orationes)” (Abailard’s 220; see also Tweedale, “Culmination” 144). It is not hard to see a parallel between the Stoic lekton and Abelard’s ideas. Reality for the Stoics, after all, is not about essences in themselves, but facts, actions, causes and effects, and the bodies that participate in them. Sentences, including propositions, capture both body and fact, by joining together subjects and predicates. Lekta, as the what-gets-said, constitute the common ground that brings reality, thought, and language together. I begin my summary of Abelard’s theory of propositions with his claim that they signify beyond the sum of their parts:20 Nos vero nolumus propositiones vel solos intellectus significare vel res ipsas, sed cum significatione intellectuum quandam aliam significationem habere quae nil est omnino[.] (Philosophische 365) [W]e do not hold that propositions signify either just ideas or things themselves; rather [we say that] along with a signification of ideas, they have another signification, which is completely nothing. (De interpretatione 394) The last phrase, “which is completely nothing” simply means that this extra signification is not a thing; that is, it shares the same lack of thingness that the status does. It appears to have a similar ontological status to a

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Stoic incorporeal, such as the lekton. As with the signification of individual words, Abelard is positing a third type of signification above and beyond the signification of things and thoughts: what exactly is it? Abelard analyzes a couple of propositions, which he uses to elaborate his theory of the signification of propositions. They are as follows: (a) Socrates is human. (b) If there is a rose, there is a flower. In analyzing sentence (a), Abelard observes that something is signified beyond “Socrates” and “human”; specifically, something which proposes and claims. In other words, propositions make a claim, and this claimmaking is external to the constituents in the sentence (Philosophische 366, De interpretatione 394). That a proposition has this extra signification is made evident by contrasting two sentences: “Socrates currens” and “Socrates currit” (“the running Socrates” and “Socrates is running”) (Philosophische 367, De interpretatione 395). Both contain the same constituents, “Socrates” and “running,” but only one of them makes an explicit assertion about them. In addition, the truth value of a proposition is in this third signification, as is evident in the case of sentence (b), when all the roses have been destroyed (i.e., there are no roses left to which the proposition can refer). The necessity of the sentence still holds, even if there are no roses left to be flowers. The underlying concern here is the same as the Stoic concern about talking about Dion once he is dead, as discussed in Chapter 2. The necessity of sentence (b) cannot be in the constituents, in this case, the roses, because they are transitory. Instead, the necessity is part of the special signification of the proposition itself. Abelard writes, Cum itaque propositionem {(b) above} ex significatione necessariam iudicamus nec haec necessitas secundum intellectus sive secundum res accipi possit, oportet aliud ab eis designari. Unde uniuscuiusque propositionis dictum nullam omnino rem neque etiam plures concedimus esse. (Philosophische 366, curly brackets {} are mine) Therefore, since we judge the proposition {(b) above} to be necessary on account of its signification, and this necessity cannot be derived from either the ideas or the things, something other than those must be designated [by the consequence]. For this reason we allow that the dictum [i.e., what is said by the proposition] of any given proposition is not any thing at all, not even several things. (De interpretatione 394, curly brackets {} are mine, while square brackets [] are in Tweedale’s translation) The dictum for Abelard is external to both thoughts and things and is incorporeal. He later claims that “dicta ... vera sunt vel falsa vel opposita

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invicem vel necessaria vel possibilia” (“it is the dicta that are true or false, or opposed to each other, or necessary, or possible”) (Philosophische 367, De interpretatione 395). Even at this level, the similarity of Abelard’s dicta to Stoic lekta is striking. The dicta are not entirely self-sufficient. A dictum’s signification is not, by itself, sufficient to cause understanding. Abelard writes, Ad quod illud praedicendum est, quod cum propositiones dicta sua proponendo significent, non tamen illae intellectus constituunt. Nam et nomina et verba vel orationes intellectus suos significant, non tamen intellectus alios iterum intellectus constituunt. Sic et propositiones dicta sua proponunt et intellectus compositos ex illis partium constituunt. (Philosophische 370) First, we have to say that although propositions signify their dicta by proposing them, still these propositions do not establish ideas. For nouns and verbs as well as sentences signify their ideas, but these ideas do not go on to establish other ideas. In this way propositions both propose [proponunt] their dicta and establish ideas composed out of the ideas belonging to the parts [i.e., the noun and the verb]. (De interpretatione 397) The picture we are left with is that nouns and verbs cause incomplete or vague thoughts, while when placed in complete propositions, they contribute to cause fi nished or complete thoughts. The proposition provides the structure and disposition, while the nouns and verbs provide the basic grist, the simple ideas. Much of the work of a proposition is accomplished by the verb. In explaining his theory, Abelard weighs in on a topic widely discussed throughout the period, that of the nature and signification of the copula (Tweedale, “Logic” 202, 213; Tweedale, Abelard 224). Abelard explains the role of the copula: “Est” verbum interpositum ad coniunctionem terminorum, unde scilicet est tertium adiacens, nullius rei significationem ibi exercet, plus tamen ad vim affirmationis proficit coniungendo terminos significantes quam ipsi termini, similiter “non est” ad vim negationis, et licet intellectus non constituant, quandam coniunctionem vel disiunctionem non significant, licet haberi faciant, quia intellectum non dant in se sed intellectorum coadiunctionem vel separationem habere nos faciunt. Sunt itaque tres actiones in intellectu propositionis, intellectus scilicet partium, coniunctio vel disiunctio intellectarum rerum. (Philosophische 339) The verb “is” inserted in order to conjoin terms (whence it is a “third term that joins”) has there the signification of no thing, yet it contributes

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more to the force of affirmation by joining the significative terms than do those terms. Likewise, “is not” contributes to the force of negation, and although they [“is” and “is not”] do not establish ideas, they bring about in the mind a conjoining or disjoining of the things that are thought of. But they do not signify the conjoining or disjoining even though they bring it about, for in themselves they do not produce an idea but rather cause us to have a conjoining or separating of what is thought of. Thus there are three activities in the idea associated with a proposition, viz. the ideas of the parts and the conjoining or disjoining of the things that are thought of. (Abelard in Tweedale, Abailard 231-2) The copula performs the function of joining (or disjoining) other elements. It does not signify in itself, but rather causes the mind to think in a certain way. The copula “helps form the complex idea associated with the whole proposition” and it does so by linking two things together (Tweedale, Abailard 233). Again, the role of the copula—much like the signification of the proposition as a whole—is to provide a structure for the things signified, to reveal their relationships or dispositions as they participate in reality. One implication of this theory, explored in detail by Alan, is what happens when the wrong sort of noun is used in the subject or the predicate; the whole sentence becomes absurd, because the copula inevitably joins together what should never have been joined.

A Summary of Stoic Themes in Eleventh and Twelfth Century Linguistic Theory Garland, Roscelin, Anselm, and Abelard represent a diverse group of thinkers, eleventh and twelfth century, Aristotelian and Platonist, realist and nominalist, saint and heretic. All four, however, come together in their use of grammar theory to develop and promote their ideas. Behind these theories stands the influence of Stoic linguistic theory, not fully realized or developed, to be sure, but nonetheless a force in the discourse. That is, medieval philosophers and grammarians surely did not realize that they were using Stoic theories, but by using the linguistic theories of the grammatical tradition, which transmitted Stoic linguistic doctrine, they were using Stoic theories unconsciously. Some of the more prominent themes are as follows: a) Subtle word differentiation: Stoic wordplay—including the distinction between extension and intension, words playing roles, categories as modes of signifying, dispositions of things within the context of given facts—is employed to solve a host of problems, from the meaning of the categories to the incarnation of Christ. b) Language linked to reality: These thinkers, even in those cases where they are exploring Aristotelian logic, insist on the linkage

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c)

d)

e)

f)

between words and reality, making words a tool for the creative exploration of reality, and a guarantee even that our understanding of reality is grounded, albeit imperfectly. Emphasis on things (res): Somewhat like the language theory of the Stoics, with their body-centered conception of the cosmos, epistemology and signification, language theory in this era is grounded on and mediated by things (as opposed to thoughts, ideas, or other abstractions). While often a res appears to be equivalent to an Aristotelian primary substance in defi nition, it factors into signification much more directly than it does in traditional Aristotelian logic, at least in the Categories and On Interpretation. This factoring is more consistent with a Stoic conception of language and signification. The corruption of language: From the moment of their original imposition in the care of the name-giver, words are seen to have been in steady decline, making their connection to reality more tenuous (and conveniently explaining the errors of other philosophers). Using words in accordance with their imposition is an important objective, and rediscovering the reason for imposition, as etymological analysis often purports to do, is an important conduit to discovery. Syntax and facts: Looking beyond the relationship between words and things, these thinkers explore the force of the sentence/proposition, relating syntactic relationships to relationships among things in external reality. Failure to signify among the parts (the nouns and verbs) or the whole (the sentence itself) leads to nonsense and a breakdown between words and reality. Logic and grammar intertwined: Perhaps the underlying reason for all of the preceding points is that in this era, the domains of logic and grammar are mixed and largely inseparable. Given that the medieval grammar tradition derives from the Stoics, who themselves made major grammatical advances in the context of their own logical theory, it is not surprising that many medieval theories exhibit similarities to Stoic linguistic theories, even though the genealogical lines connecting the two eras are anything but clear.

Each of these themes is formative of the notion of grammar, as it is utilized in Alan’s Plaint. The connections between language, reality, and ethics that drive much of Alan’s poem are hard to understand, especially if one expects to fi nd an essentially Aristotelian worldview in Alan’s linguistic theories. An exploration of these issues forms the substance of Chapter 4.

4

Alan of Lille’s Plaint of Nature and the Grammar of Cosmic Bonding

In the latter half of the twelfth century, Alan of Lille composed a pair of allegories, the Plaint of Nature (De planctu Naturae, ca. 1160–1165) and the Anticlaudianus (ca. 1180–1184).1 Both works combine the allegorization of the artes and verbal pyrotechnics of Martianus Capella with a personification dialogue on a large philosophical problem along the lines of Boethius. With their diverse representations of grammar within a philosophical context, both of Alan’s allegories are a rich source for an exploration of the philosophical uses of grammar in the twelfth century. Separated by two decades, the two works also represent opposite ends of a twelfthcentury trend: the diminishing use of grammar as a tool of philosophical inquiry. The Plaint uses grammar extensively to address complex philosophical and theological issues, while in the Anticlaudianus, grammar’s role is much more circumscribed. Accordingly, I will in this chapter focus on the Plaint, since it is a better source of ideas on the connections between grammar and the cosmos. The story of the Plaint is fairly simple. The narrator, a poet, opens with a lament on human vice, exemplified by homosexual intercourse. He observes the approach of a luminous maiden, who we later learn is Natura. Her clothing and accessories are described in great detail. As the world celebrates her arrival, the poet notices that she, in contrast, is weeping. She introduces herself, describes her purpose in the context of the cosmos, and explains why she is weeping: Humans are in open rebellion, flaunting her rules and making up their own. The poet asks for elaboration, and Natura relates the story of Venus, how she has violated her appointed duty and become a monster, and how humans now follow this monster. She then catalogues the vices for the poet. A procession of virtues appears and joins their company. Finally, Genius joins their company and excommunicates sinners. Throughout the narrative, Natura and the poet make many references to the artes of the Trivium: grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. These references typically appear in the form of metaphors; the dialogue is about human sin and cosmic discord, not classroom pedagogy. Most noticeable among these metaphors are grammatical metaphors, which are often not

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only extravagant, but also explicitly sexual. Grammatical metaphors are commonplace throughout the Middle Ages, and indeed there is even a long tradition of grammatical metaphors with sexual content dating from classical Rome (Alford 729, 731). Yet Alan’s use of grammatical-sexual metaphors is innovative because he uses them not for satire or erotic poetry, their most frequent use in medieval literature, but for serious philosophical thought (Ziolkowski 74). Why did Alan feel that these metaphors enabled him to express his ideas, and how seriously should we take them? Ziolkowski’s distinction between Alan’s use of grammatical-sexual metaphors and other medieval uses of these metaphors rests on his claim that only Alan puts them to serious use, whereas others use them as parody. This distinction is arguably undermined by the very genre of Alan’s allegory: the prosimetrum, a mixture of verse and prose, which is often associated with, though not identical to, Menippean satire (Dronke 2). While the writings of Menippus (third century, b.c.) are lost, scholars have identified several features of the genre of satire that he initiated. Peter Dronke, following Northrop Frye, Mikhail Bakhtin, and others, identifies several key features of Menippean satire, most of which apply well to the Plaint: the narrative is exuberant and highly stylized, characters tend to be mouthpieces for ideas, erudition and jargon are overwhelming, and some “mix beings from different kinds of reality” (Dronke 4–6). Perhaps the defi ning criterion of Menippean satire, according to Dronke, is the relativization of Truth; Dronke writes, “I would wish to stress the concepts of relativising and undermining. Truth emerges through testing. . . . The distinction between the well-demarcated regions of the cosmos— heaven, earth, hell, the familiar and unfamiliar parts of the globe—may also be undermined” (6). In defense of this thesis, Dronke cites both Martianus Capella’s Marriage of Mercury and Philology and Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, both of which open with self-undermining discourses (e.g., Boethius’ stylized, literary, and ultimately insincere lament, for which Philosophia chides him as her opening discourse). Whether this criterion—the questioning and relativization of Truth—applies to the Plaint is difficult to answer. On the one hand, the mixture of personifications, Christian doctrine and personae, and Classical figures is clearly consistent with the genre of Menippean satire, as is the notion of a dialogue between a human poet, Natura, and a parade of talking, weeping virtues. Sheridan, the translator, in his notes to the text observes that at times the text there resembles a twelfth-century dialogue between “a somewhat pompous lecturer” and “pertinacious” and “petulant” student (Alan 130 n. 1). On the other hand, Alan’s characters lament that humans disregard Truth, but none of them questions its existence or disagrees on aspects of its substance; a negotiated understanding of truth does not appear to evolve over the course of the work the way it does in Boethius’ Consolation. Moreover, instead of a self-undermining opening, Natura’s entrance and speech reinforce the complaints voiced by the poet at the beginning of the

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work. Still, Alan’s exploration of truth in the work is highly speculative, and though the Plaint never strays far from an orthodox framework, its ingenuity and playfulness clearly distinguishes it from a treatise. Given the Menippean flavor of the work, it is natural to ask whether the extravagant grammatical-sexual metaphors are a symptom of the genre, that is, a purely formal element that we should not take too seriously, or whether one should read them as part of a serious effort to discover or articulate truth. My reading of the grammatical-sexual metaphors in the Plaint is that while admittedly some of them are absurd—probably injected in the spirit of stylistic flair—their role in the work is generally serious. More specifically, between the two extremes of reading the grammatical metaphors as sheer stylistic virtuoso on the one hand and reading them as a sincere attempt to articulate divine truth on the other, I propose that we read them as part of a free-wheeling speculative enterprise, where the speculation is serious, yet unabashedly experimental. The question, then, is why grammar would become an appropriate mode of, and expression of, inquiry into the cosmic disorder wrought by human sin.

NATURE, HUMANITY, AND COSMIC BINDING Boethius opens the Consolation of Philosophy with a poetic lament, and following that, the arrival of an otherworldly luminary. This luminary turns out to be Philosophia, though the poet fails to recognize her at fi rst, and through the application of “medicine” (i.e., guided philosophical dialogue), she leads the poet back to right reason and eventually to an embrace of God. The opening of the Plaint is clearly modeled on the Consolation. After a poet’s lament, a luminary descends from the sky. She turns out to be Natura, though the poet does not recognize her, and through dialogue, she leads the poet to a greater understanding of God, the cosmos, and humanity’s place within it. Alan, too, relies on the medicinal metaphor to characterize the conversation (e.g., Prose 3, where her discourse is described “uelut quodam potionis remedio” [“as by some healing potion”] [Alan 830, 126]). 2 Perhaps the most significant difference between the setups of the two works is in the personae of the otherworldly visitors: Philosophia versus Natura. What is the difference in the works such that Philosophia would be an appropriate spokesperson for God and the cosmos in one, whereas Natura would be appropriate in the other? After all, both works are about humanity’s place in the cosmos, and the individual human’s imperative to embrace God’s system, both rationally and ethically. One significant difference is that whereas Boethius’ work is about error within the poet himself, Alan’s work is about the error of other people. Put more abstractly, the problem of the Consolation is internal, whereas the problem of the Plaint is external. Generally speaking, both works elaborate the Stoic doctrine of

84 Grammar and Language Theory in Medieval Allegorical Narrative internal assent to the cosmic bond of divine love, but whereas Boethius’ prosimetrum emphasizes internal assent, Alan’s emphasizes the cosmic bond and humanity’s rejection of it.

Natura as Agent of Cosmic Bonding The Plaint describes three major divine actors, all of whom can be described as mechanisms of the Stoic/Christian cosmic bond, though they work at different levels: Natura, Venus, and Genius. We learn the most about Natura, the leader of the discourse in the Plaint: her appearance and dress (Prose 1), the earth’s reaction to her (Prose 2, Meter 3), her place in the cosmos (Prose 3), her works (Prose 4). In Meter 4, the poet asks why she has come to earth. In his address, and prior to asking his question, he asserts her role as bond a number of times: “Vinculum mundi stabilisque nexus” (“bond of the universe and its stable link”); “Que, tuis mundum moderans habenis, / Cuncta concordi stabilita nodo / Nectis et pacis glutino maritas / Celica terris” (“you, who by your reins guide the universe, unite all things in stable and harmonious bond and wed heaven to earth in a union of peace”); and “Que, diem nocti uicibus cathenans” (“you, who bind together day and night in the alternations”) (Alan 831–2, 128–9). Natura is the physical bond that holds together the cosmos. In the passage just cited, the poet has described Natura as cosmic bond in terms of what she is. In Prose 3, she describes herself as cosmic bond in terms of what she does. In her lament, she identifies herself as “dei auctoris uicaria” (“deputy of God, the creator”), the creator of each human’s body, and the entity responsible for its marriage to (“copula maritalis”)—and, in death, separation from—the spirit (Alan 825–6, 117–118). She claims, “Ego illa sum, que ad exemplarem mundane machine similitidenem hominis exemplaui naturam, ut in ea uelut speculo ipsius mundi scripta natura compareat” (“For I am the one who formed the nature of man according to the exemplar and likeness of the structure of the universe so that in him, as in a mirror of the universe itself, Nature’s lineaments might be there to see” (Alan 826, 118). Nature is explaining some of the mechanisms of cosmic bonding. She acts in place of God, but by an agreed-upon covenant. She creates humans, but she does so using the structure of the universe itself as a source, so that humans are individually mirrors of the universe as a whole. Elsewhere, and more than once, Natura indicates that these patterns are not only shared among humans and the universe, but also that the patterns are present in governance. In one passage, she says that the head (the seat of wisdom) is like a citadel issuing commands to other powers (as God issues commands to demi-goddesses like herself); that the heart is like the middle of the city, which corresponds to magnanimity and the military; and that the loins are like the outskirts of the city, and they represent desires that do not dare disobey the heart (Alan 827–8, 122–3).3 She specifies several other parallels as well; for example, dawn, spring, and childhood represent

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the same phase in a day, a year, and a human’s life, just as noon, summer, and youth represent a later phase, and so on. The heart is likened to the sun, and the liver is compared to the moon. As the four elements confl ict with one another and the planets appear to move in contrary directions, so human senses and reasons are in conflict. In short, Alan has Natura assert the macrocosm/microcosm theory described in the Cosmographia of Bernardus Silvestris, one of Alan’s chief sources. Another major source for the transmission of the doctrine of cosmic bonding into the Middle Ages is Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy. The poem that closes Book II of the Consolation presents a vision of the cosmic bond. The universe is full of both change and potential confl ict, but a “foedus perpetuum” (“everlasting law”) holds it all together (II.m8.4).4 Were this law to stop functioning, the world would be thrown into a “bellum continuo” (“continual war”) (II.m8.18). Boethius uses two words in the poem that lend it special interest. The first is “amor” (II.8.15) which is the name of the bond. Identifying the bond as God’s love transforms the pagan doctrine into a Christian one. The second word I want to point out in the poem, and it is suppressed in Green’s English translation, is “machinam” (II.8.21). Boethius’ use of this word suggests that although he has transformed the pagan doctrine into a Christian one, he has not changed the underlying mechanistic character of the doctrine. This mode of transmission—where the mechanics or technical details of the Stoics are renamed and put to different purposes by later non-Stoics, such as grammarians or early Christian intellectuals—appears to be one of the primary means of transmission of Stoic ideas into the Middle Ages. We see this process of co-opting the Stoic mechanistic version of the cosmic bond elsewhere in the Consolation: for example, much of the doctrine is reiterated in Book IV, meter 6, and spelled in greater detail in Book IV, prose 6, where Boethius, echoing the Stoic definition of fate as a sequence of interrelated causes, writes of Providence, “Haec actus etiam fortunasque hominum indissolubili causarum conexione constringit, quae cum ab immobilis providentiae proficiscatur exordiis, ipsas quoque immutabiles esse necesse est” (“This same power binds the actions and fortunes of men in an unbreakable chain of causes and, since these causes have their origins in an unchangeable Providence, they too must necessarily be unchangeable”) (IV.p6). Alan’s Natura can perhaps be interpreted as a personification of the mechanistic aspect of Boethius’ amor, because she fulfills its two most important features: she binds God’s law to created things, and she performs this role in a mechanized, and even proto-industrial way (e.g., she uses a set of hammers and anvils to stamp matter into certain shapes).

Plato’s Timaeus and the Fashioning of Humanity One early source for the theory of macrocosm/microcosm is Plato’s Timaeus, the lone dialogue of Plato (partially) translated into Latin and

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widely available in the Middle Ages. This dialogue is a major source for Natura’s descriptions of creation. As noted in Chapter 1, it was also a major source for Stoic cosmology, so the shared ancestry may explain certain deep similarities between the vision of the cosmos articulated by the Stoics and Alan’s Natura. In the Timaeus, Plato provides a lengthy myth of creation. In this myth, the Artifi cer (Jowett translates this somewhat misleadingly as “God,” but certainly medieval Christians interpreted the Artificer as the Christian God) fashions a universe out of the likeness of the Forms. The universe is spherical, and comprises both a benevolent, rational soul and a perfectly spherical, self-suffi cient, and corporeal body (Timaeus 31–37); here the seeds of Stoic cosmology are plainly evident. During this description of the origin of the universe, Plato also provides a myth about the creation of humankind, which the Artificer fashions along the way. The description of the fashioning of humanity is rich and long, providing great detail and rationale for each of the details. The Artificer mixes leftover soul (from the universe) and leftover elements, and divides the mixture so that it equals the number of stars (i.e., one star per individual human). The souls are destined to be placed in bodies, and the mixture has consequences for the soul that may be interpreted as the germ of ethics: [I]n the fi rst place it would be necessary that they should all have in them one and the same faculty of sensation, arising out of irresistible impressions; in the second place, they must have love, in which pleasure and pain mingle; also fear and anger, and the feelings which are akin or opposite to them; if they conquered those they would live righteously, and if they were conquered by them, unrighteously. (Timaeus 42) Plato elaborates that, through reincarnation, those that live unrighteously will return again and again until they learn to live righteously, becoming the “perfect man” who upon his death returns to his star (Timaeus 44). This righteous man probably has an analogue in the Stoic sage, whereas for Christians, the analogue can be found in Christ or in literary constructs, such as the “perfect man” created in Alan’s Anticlaudianus. At this point, the soul has been created out of leftover world soul and elements, and the Artificer has added sensation of impressions, love, pleasure, pain, fear, and anger. He then adds to the mixture a mortal body, initially without intelligence. The Artificer adds two spheres to the mix, one for the head and the other for the body, one to serve the other. Limbs are added for locomotion. A face is added, with organs for sense perception. 5 With eyes comes sight, and the ability to perceive the stars (i.e., higher order), and from that comes the ability to be philosophical. According to this myth, the fashioning of human beings is a mechanical task of mixing

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certain components together to produce a certain result. Human beings are created out of an odd list of ingredients, some metaphysical, some organic, some elemental, some emotional. The fashioning of human beings in the Plaint is strikingly similar. Natura describes how she created the poet (and by extension all humans): que olim tui corporis materiem adulterina primordialis materie essentia in uerum esse produxi? cuius uultum miserata deformem quasi ad me crebrius declamantem humane speciei signaculo sigillaui eamque, honestis orphanam figurarum ornamentis, melioribus formarum uestibus honestaui? In qua ad corporis clientelam diuersas membrorum ordinans officinas in eadem sensus quasi corporee ciuitatis excubias uigilare precepi. . . . (825) [W]ho of old brought your material body into real existence from the mixed substance of primordial matter; who, in pity for your ill-favoured appearance that was, so to speak, haranguing me continually, stamped you with the stamp of human species and that with the improved dress of form brought dignity to that species when it was bereft of adornments of shape? In dealing with that species, I made arrangement for various work-companies of members to serve the body and gave orders that the senses keep vigil there like sentries, so to speak, in the state of the body. . . . (117) Natura replaces the mixing metaphor with a stamping metaphor, but the process of fashioning human beings is otherwise quite similar. In the resulting ontology, there is one chunk of matter, with numerous characteristics stamped into it. Stated more abstractly, this myth is more compatible with the nominalist position in the debate on universals than it is with the realist position, because the characteristics are not considered to be things in their own right, but merely impressions left in matter.6 To use a pedestrian, yet appropriate metaphor, the creator in this myth is like a shoemaker, and all created things are like the resulting shoes: shoes may exhibit similarities, but no two are exactly alike, and at no point does the shoemaker insert a metaphysical universal, e.g., shoestringness, into any shoe. This creator as craftsperson myth has several important philosophical implications. The number of existing things is low (at least compared to the universe envisioned by a realist). Priscian’s defi nition of the noun, as that which signifies substance and quality, matches well with this ontology, because as noted in Chapter 3, the substance is the chunk of matter, and the quality is the uniquely identifying form stamped into it, e.g., humanity. In addition, this myth, whether told by Timaeus or Natura, places its focus on bodies and how they are disposed. In short, by relying on this myth, Alan activates several aspects of the Stoic system: cosmic

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bonding, a relatively lean ontology, the emphasis on the disposition of bodies, and—as we shall see—a notion of ethics defi ned as acting in accordance with nature. The effect of this myth is magnified, because Alan uses it throughout the Plaint. In Prose 4, Natura describes how she fashions things by copying an exemplar:7 Each created thing is fashioned when she strikes matter on that thing’s anvil. She also uses the related metaphors of coining and stamping to describe the same process. Alan connects this notion of creation to a Stoic-like doctrine on cosmic bonding. He does so by elaborating the mechanism of cosmic bonding and by positioning Natura, and later Venus, within that scheme. Once God has created the universe and all the things in it, he recognizes that many things in the universe are in confl ict with one another. To address this matter, God changes from artificer (creator of things) to arranger (creator of laws and dispositions). He assigns species to their designated place within the universe. He “legitimi ordinis congruentia temperauit, leges indidit, sanctionibus alligauit” (“regulated by agreement from law and order; He imposed laws on them, He bound them by sanctions”) (Alan 840, 145). When he is finished, all of creation is bound by “the fine chain of an invisible connection” (“Subtilibus igitur inuisibilis iuncture cathenis”) (Alan 840, 145). With all of creation thus ordered, God adds the fi nishing touch: a system whereby this order can be maintained over time. Stability over time is achieved through the cycle of life and death, where like is produced from like, “ut expresse conformationis monetata sigillo” (“sealed with the stamp of manifest resemblance”) (Alan 840, 145). At this point, Natura introduces her proper role in the cosmos: it is her job to create all the copies in the endless series of propagations. Whereas God created the fi rst human being, Natura creates all subsequent human beings, as one creates new coins from a die. This notion of nature is new to the twelfth century; medieval thinkers begin to see nature less as a source of mystery and more scientifically (Chenu 16). The role of the Neo-Platonic world-soul is, in William of Conches, taken over by nature (Raby 72). Along similar lines, Abelard is careful to distinguish between the creative acts of God and those of nature (Chenu 16). Certainly Alan also distinguishes between the creative acts of God and nature, but he also indicates how they are related to one another: as God is the creator of the original, she creates copies of that original. Once again, Alan asserts the cosmic bond that extends to all creation, and if God is its creator, then Natura is the primary mechanism through which this bond is enforced (Green 666).

From Cosmic Bond to the Immoderate Embrace of Indifferents The system works perfectly well, until Natura decides she needs her own deputy. Her reasoning for this change—and the change has disastrous results—is somewhat enigmatic.

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Sed quia sine subministratorii artificis artificio suffragante tot rerum species expolire non poteram meque in etheree regionis amenante palatio placuit commorari. . . . (840–1) But because without the supporting skill of a sub-delegated artisan, I could not put the fi nishing touches on so many species of things and because I decided to spend my time in the delightful palace of the ethereal region. . . . (146) At fi rst glance, Natura appears to be saying that she sub-delegated her work out to Venus on account of a capricious decision to relax in the ethereal region, which Sheridan deems “a fatal flaw from an artistic point of view” (147 n. 44). A more illuminating interpretation might be that Natura is claiming for herself the rights and prerogatives of God, who, once he had attained a certain level of creative accomplishment, delegated his work to Natura and presumably returned to Heaven (speaking metaphorically, of course). Yet in the same way that Natura’s works are inferior copies of God’s, so her decision to sub-delegate, her system for maintaining the cosmos, and the sub-delegate herself (i.e., Venus) are all inferior to God’s decision, system, and delegate. At the same time, though the cosmic bond weakens each time it is delegated, nonetheless the bond remains and its fundamental nature is unchanged. As she sets up Venus as her delegate, Natura, following God’s precedent with her, provides her with both tools and rules with which to carry on the process of reproduction. The tools come in the form of prefabricated hammers and anvils, specially made for their purpose, workshops in which to use them, and instructions on how to use them (Alan 845–8, 155–162). Just as Natura copies the exemplar created by God, so Venus is supposed to use the tools given by Natura, and so the technologies of reproducing the divine exemplar extend to a new level. The similarity between Natura and Venus does not end there. Just as Natura apparently grows bored with her work, yearning for a holiday in Heaven, so too does Venus grow bored with her work. As God and Natura before her, Venus decides to make a change. Yet rather than further sub-delegating her work, Venus instead perverts it. Where she had been assigned to work with her husband, Hymenaeus, and her son, Cupido, she begins an adulterous relationship with Antigenius, by whom she has a son, Jocus.8 Where she has been assigned to use certain hammers and anvils together, she uses them in new combinations. She turns love into lust, and heterosexual sex into homosexual sex. Interestingly, even the perversion contains the (distorted) imprint of divine patterns, for Venus, even in open rebellion, lacks the power to break the divine bond. Whereas Natura’s transgression and its effects lack the immediately negative consequences of Venus’s transgression, it is clear that Venus has crossed a line. The question is, what exactly is that line? The answer to this

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appears to lie in Alan’s nuanced attitude towards desire. Desire enables the work of Venus (and therefore of Natura and ultimately of God), but it is also the doorway to vice. In Meter 5 (842–4, 149–53), Natura provides a contradiction-fi lled description of desire, reminiscent of Ovid’s oxymoronic characterizations of love: “Pax odio fraudique fides, spes iuncta timori / Est amor9 et mixtus cum ratione furor; / Naufragium dulce, pondus leue, grata Caribdis . . . ” (“Love is peace joined to hatred, loyalty to treachery, hope to fear and madness blended with reason. It is sweet shipwreck, light burden, pleasing Charybdis . . . ”) (Alan 842, 149). This Ovidian list continues like this for dozens of lines, with increasing commentary, mostly in the form of warnings and accusations, from the speaker (Natura) as it proceeds. Yet Natura also claims a blood relationship with Cupido, and she also says at the beginning of Prose 5, “Non enim originalem Cupidinis naturam inhonestate redarguo” (“I bring no charge of dishonorable conduct against the basic nature of Desire”) (Alan 845, 154). Nature’s problem with desire is not in itself, but only when it becomes excessive, when it causes vice. It may be tempting to read Natura’s attitude toward desire as an example of Artistotle’s golden mean, not least because Natura herself refers to the “mean” (mediocritatis) (Alan 845, 155). A classic example of this idea analyzes the quantity of courage in actions: too little courage, and one is a coward, but too much courage, and one is foolhardy. In between the two is the true virtue, bravery. A less philosophical example occurs early in the Plaint, when Natura fi rst appears and is described as having a perfect brow, neither overly bushy nor overly sparse. Is Natura setting up a similar notion of desire, where too little desire results in a Hippolytus-like disdain for love, too much results in unchecked lust, while in the middle is the right amount of desire, resulting in a proper marriage bond? Apparently not: the text does not distinguish between three levels of desire, but only two: a moderated amount of desire and too much. It does not warn against too little desire; indeed, in Meter 5, the narrator claims that desire is universal and unavoidable, suggesting that too little desire is not even possible (Alan 844, 152). A better analogue than the notion of the golden mean might be the Stoic notion of ethical indifferents (also known as “intermediates”). In this doctrine, the world is divided into virtues (which amount to the summum bonum, living in accordance with nature) and non-virtues. In this latter group are not only vices, but many good things, called indifferents, which are not yet virtues (Kidd 150). The class of indifferents includes health, wealth, fame, and other goods. The Stoic position on indifferents is that even though they are not virtues (one can live virtuously and happily without them), they are still “preferred” (proegmena) (e.g., Stobaeus in Long & Sedley 58D; =SVF III, 124). Obviously, if any of these indifferents were desired to the point that it interfered with virtue, then it would be seen as counterproductive; in other words, excessive preference for indifferents is destructive. The Stoics defi ned these indifferents as “in accordance with

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nature” (kata physin), and had some philosophical difficulty defending the difference between these indifferent natural goods that are not virtues and the natural goods that are the virtues (Kidd 151). This same notion appears to be at work in Boethius’ Consolation, Book II Prose 3, where, for example, Philosophia counters Boethius’ lament on his bad fortune by pointing out the pleasure he has taken in the success of his sons; clearly this happiness in his sons is natural and appropriate, but neither should it replace the deeper virtue of embracing God. Alan does not work out a comprehensive theory, but by identifying Cupido as Natura’s nephew, he at least allegorically asserts both familial ties and yet some distance between nature and desire. We also can infer the poet’s attitude toward desire in Prose 1, in the description of Natura as she descends from the heavens. Before his lengthy description of Natura’s clothing, Alan’s poet dwells for a moment on Natura’s body, narrating as he looks her over: Labra, modico tumore surgentia, Veneris tirones inuitabant ad oscula. . . . Mamillarum uero pomula graciose iuuentutis maturitatem spondebant. Brachia, ad graciam inspectoris perspicua, postulare uidebantur amplexus. Laterum equata conuallatio, iustae moderationis impressa sigillo, tocius corporis speciem ad cumulum perfectionis eduxit. (809) Her lips, rising in gentle swell, challenged the recruits in Venus’ army to kiss them. . . . Her apple-like breasts gave assured proof of the fullness of youth with its charms. Her arms, shining from afar for the viewer’s delight, seemed to call for embraces. The gentle curve of her flanks, impressed with the stamp of due moderation, brought the beauty of her whole body to perfection. (75) Though in the presence of a heavenly companion, Alan is not only stupefied by her divine grace, but he is also sexually attracted to her as a woman. Moreover, nothing in the text seems to censure this sexual attraction. At the same time, the text also makes it clear that even better than her sexual beauty is her inner beauty: Cetera uero que thalamus secretior absentabat meliora fides esse loquatur. In corpore etenim uultus latebat beatior, cuius facies ostentabat preludium. (809) As for other things which an inner chamber hid from view, let a confident belief declare that they were more beautiful. For in her body lay hidden a more blissful aspect to which her face showed the introduction. (75) The whole passage rests on a distinction between inner and outer beauty, both of which are good, but one of which is superior. Again, sexual desire

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is not described on a scale between insufficient desire and too much desire, as if it were a golden mean. Neither is sexual desire as opposed to love for Natura’s inner beauty mapped to an Augustinian distinction between per se (or cupiditas) versus per aliud (or caritas). Instead, sexual desire appears to be presented more along the lines of a Stoic indifferent: it is naturally something we are drawn to, but we should not confuse it with the greater beauty. Alan’s attitude towards desire is important, because it is quite similar to his attitude toward literary style and poetry in general. Alan distinguishes between two types of writing: orthography (orthographia) and “pseudography” (falsigraphia). The former is mimetic writing, written in accordance with nature, while the latter is “idolatrous fiction” (Leupin 141). The term falsigraphia (and its morphological variants) appears three times in the Plaint, all three times in opposition to orthographia. In one passage, Natura is describing how she had given Venus a special pen, which she is to use to trace “rerum genera” (“the classes of things”) without deviation; her writing is orthographic when she is successful, and pseudographic when she deviates. This description clearly distinguishes orthography from pseudography along mimetic lines (Alan 846, 156). In another passage, Natura uses the dichotomy to explain human vice: “A Veneris ergo orthographia deuiando recedens sophista falsigraphus inuenitur” (“Abandoning in his deviation the true script of Venus, he is proved to be a sophistic pseudographer”) (Alan 834, 134). Other contrasts in this passage are those between Natura’s cithern and Orpheus’ mad lyre, and between good grammar and the barbarisms introduced by erring humans. Of course, Alan is referring narrowly to homosexual intercourse and broadly to all sin in general. In this context, falsigraphia is writing for the sake of literary pleasure itself without regard for mimesis. Literary style here seems to lead into vice. Yet we must balance our interpretation of Alan’s attitude toward literary style by taking into account his own use of literary style. The Plaint, as noted earlier, is written in a highly stylized genre, the Menippean satire. Moreover, Alan clearly relishes literary style; his text is full of clever linguistic play. According to Leupin, Alan “must produce a topos of bienfacture (‘good production’), both distanced from and analogous to divine production” (141). That is, Alan is trying to work within a literary genre that reveals truth to those with enough wisdom to grasp it, to be sure, but it is also a genre that remains consciously literary. Alan advocates an aesthetic that operates on two levels: superficially, the poetry should stand on its own in the great tradition of poetry, but underneath, rather than treating salacious and fallacious themes (such as Jupiter’s affair with Ganymede), it reveals, or perhaps better still, it imitates the truth of the cosmos. This aesthetic fits in well with the experimental nature of his work: the underlying theme of his work—a castigation of sin—is conservative, while his presentation, the literary experiment in which his narrator experiences an otherworldly visit from Natura, is highly innovative.

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Alan articulates his literary theory via Natura’s response to the poet, when he asks why homosexuality is off-limits for humans, when the gods partake of it, as told by the poets. Natura predictably answers that poets do not always tell the truth. In doing so, she elaborates several different ways that poetry deals with truth or lies, ordered from worst to best: some poetry simply tells naked lies; some tell lies but cover them with a deceptive veneer of probability (in the footnotes, Sheridan cites Ovid as a potential example); some tell lies that cover deeper truths (Sheridan cites Virgil); while others combine historical events and fictional stories (Sheridan cites Lucan) (Alan 836–8, 138–41). The latter two are cited with approval, because both combine mimetic truth with literary style. As amorous desire is an indifferent good that facilitates reproduction, so literary style appears to be an indifferent that facilitates the reading of works containing mimetic truth. Natura’s appealing lips and breasts are akin to the pleasing poetic covering of a Virgil or Lucan, but more important still is the truth hidden within the cover. Once we connect the working of poetry to the works of nature, another implication becomes clear: by virtue of mimesis, poets, too, become agents of the cosmic bond, reproducers of the divine exemplar, who, like Natura and Venus before them, are obligated to prioritize faithful reproduction over innovation and style (Green 664).

The Grammar of the Cosmos John Alford divides his essay, “The Grammatical Metaphor: A Survey of Its Use in the Middle Ages,” into parts based on the distinction between grammatical metaphors that “derive chiefly from grammatical terminology (Part 1) and grammatical theory (Part 2)” (729). As he uses it, the distinction is between the grammatical metaphor as “an extended pun” and grammatical metaphors that “serve both a rhetorical and a deeper, philosophical purpose” (730, 736). Along similar lines, I would divide grammatical metaphors into the following two categories: (i) grammatical metaphors that articulate what is already known, where grammatical metaphors are simply one way to articulate this known; or (ii) the use of grammatical metaphors as a tool for discovering, or learning about, something unknown. To phrase the distinction as a question, are grammatical metaphors used merely in a rhetorical way, or are grammatical metaphors used as a strategy for philosophical inquiry? At a minimum, it is easy to establish that Alan in the Plaint uses grammatical metaphors for rhetorical flourish. For example, in Meter 4, Alan writes, “Sincopans cursum pelagi furori” (“as you cut short the course of the raging deep”), using the grammatical term “syncope” in a clearly rhetorical metaphor about the ocean (Alan 832, 129). Similarly, in Meter 5, Alan writes, “Sicque per afferesim male sincopat illa mariti / Corpus, furtiuo dum metit ense caput” (“Thus by aphaeresis she wrongly shortens her husband’s body when with a stealthy sword she cuts off his head”) (Alan

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844, 152). In yet another example, Natura uses the grammatical concepts of analogy, anastrophe, synaeresis, and tmesis—all in the space of two lines—to lament how homosexual intercourse hurts her (Alan 834, 134). These uses of grammatical metaphors may be rhetorically clever, but they are hardly philosophical. One is entitled to wonder whether all of Alan’s use of grammatical metaphors can be subsumed under the heading of rhetorical flourish. Other passages in the Plaint suggest that though Alan sometimes uses grammatical metaphors in superficial and stylistic ways, nonetheless grammar for Alan is not merely a literary device. Instead, grammar is a sign of the cosmos; as a result, not only does grammar reflect what is right or wrong in the cosmos, but the cosmos also reflects what is right or wrong in grammar. That is, the Plaint sometimes exhibits a convertibility between grammar and cosmic truth, a convertibility that seems strange unless one sees grammatical rectitude not as an arbitrary sign of cosmic truth, but rather as a natural sign, or, alternatively, as another aspect or face of the same pattern. In this reading, the grammatical metaphor is not truly even a metaphor, because a metaphor makes a comparison between two different things on the basis of some shared likeness, and grammar cannot be separated from cosmic truth. The result of this idea—as I have shown in earlier chapters—is that through the study of grammar, the cosmos is revealed.

From Grammar to Reality That Alan sees grammar as a key toward grasping cosmic truth is visible not only in his grammatical metaphors, but in the theories of language that the text implies. These theories, dependent as they are on the grammar tradition, bear the mark of Stoicism. Collectively, they also provide support for my thesis that the grammar metaphors are more than a mere rhetorical flourish. Once Natura has arrived and the poet has fi nished swooning, Natura begins her discourse. In Boethius’ Consolation, Philosophia’s fi rst words are designated with a simple “inquit.” In contrast, when Natura fi rst opens her mouth to speak, Alan provides the following description: mentales intellectus materialis uocis michi depinxit imagine, et quasi archetipa uerba idealiter preconcepta uocaliter produxit in actum (825) she fashioned for me, by the image of a real voice, mental concepts and brought forth audibly what one might call archetypal words that had been preconceived ideally. (116) Natura’s use of language sounds much like the language spoken by the name-giver, in the myth of the imposition of names, described in various

Alan of Lille’s Plaint of Nature and the Grammar of Cosmic Bonding 95 contexts in Chapters 1–3. Presumably she speaks the language of which ancient grammarians sought to be experts. In the course of their dialogue, the poet asks Natura to go off on a digression, and when it is complete, she returns to the main topic with the following words, which echo the tone Virgil takes with Fulgentius’ narrator: “Nunc stilus, paululum ad pueriles tue infantie fescenninas digressus, ad seriale prefinite narrationis propositum reuertatur” (“Now let the mode of narration, that has digressed a little into the trivial, crude pieces suited to your underdeveloped literary ability, return to the prearranged sequence of the prescribed discourse”) (Alan 845, 155). Not only are her words archetypal, but the discourse as a whole appears to be external to the interlocutors’ dialogue, as if the discourse already exists, whether or not Natura gets around to articulating it. Beyond speaking the primordial language of myth, Natura connects herself, grammar, and cosmic truth in many other ways. In Prose 3, after she elaborates the Timaeus-like myth of creation described above, she cautions the poet not to think she is arrogant. In a number of comparisons, in which she asserts God’s infi nite superiority over herself, she says, Ille faciens, ego facta. Ille mei opifex operis, ego opus opificis. Ille operatur ex nichilo, ego mendico opus ex aliquo. Ille suo operatur in numine, ego operor illius sub nomine. Ille rem solo nutu iubet existere, mea uero operatio operationis est nota diuine. (829) He is the creator; I was created; He is the creator of my work, I am the work of the Creator; He creates from nothing, I beg the material for my work from someone; He works by His own divinity, I work in his name; He, by His will alone, bids things come into existence, my work is but a sign of the work of God. (124) By calling herself a sign (nota), she explicitly creates a semiotic relationship between her work and God’s. The cosmic bond is not only a fact, but it is also a representation of that fact. Representations of the cosmic bond are not arbitrary or conventional; they are, in more sense than one, natural. Later in the same passage, she uses grammatical terminology to express the relationships among God, herself, and humankind. Just as she is a poor shadow of God, so a human being is a poor copy of her. To clarify, she says, ut respectu superlatiue dei potentie meam potentiam diminutam esse non dubites. Sed quamuis meus effectus diuine potentie defi cit comparatus, tamen humane potentie profi cit coequatus. Et sic in quodam conparationis triclinio tres potestatis gradus possumus inuenire, ut dei potentia superlatiua, Natura comparatiua, hominis positiua dicatur. (830)

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In his footnotes, Sheridan asks whether this “is an extension of the Aristotelian doctrine of the mean” (126 n. 27). For this to be a doctrine of the mean, nature would have to be superior to God; that is, the comparative would have to be superior to the superlative. A more literal reading is in order: this is a doctrine of grammatical comparison. Grammatical relationships accurately reflect cosmic relationships, and grammatical technical vocabulary suffices to make a philosophical point. Each of these three passages shows that Alan takes language and grammar theory very seriously. As with the Stoics and the ancient grammarians, the language he is most interested in is not the language spoken by a community of speakers, but a greater language, the true archetypal language that maps naturally and truly to the world, mediated neither by human comprehension nor linguistic corruption. With access to this language, we can not only articulate cosmic truth, but we can also grasp it directly, so that our mental concepts, words, and reality correspond perfectly.

The Discord of Torn Syntax Grammar theory also provides a means to explore and articulate the nature of vice, represented by homosexual intercourse, but obviously intended to extend to all sin (Ziolkowski 75). During the poet’s lament, at the beginning of the Plaint in Meter 1, grammar is fi rst used as a means of describing homosexuality, and it opens several themes that appear throughout the work. Actiui generis sexus se turpiter horret Sic in passiuum degenerare genus. Femina uir factus sexus denigrat honorem, Ars magice Veneris hermafroditat eum. Predicat et subicit, fit duplex terminus idem. Grammatice leges ampliat ille nimis. Se neget esse uirum Nature, factus in arte Barbarus. Ars illi non placet, immo tropus. Non tamen ista tropus poterit translatio dici. In uitium melius ista figura cadit. (806–7)

Alan of Lille’s Plaint of Nature and the Grammar of Cosmic Bonding 97 The active sex shudders in disgrace as it sees itself degenerate into the passive sex. A man turned woman blackens the fair name of his sex. The witchcraft of Venus turns him into a hermaphrodite. He is subject and predicate: one and the same term is given a double application. Man here extends too far the laws of grammar. Becoming a barbarian in grammar, he disclaims the manhood given him by nature. Grammar does not fi nd favor with him but rather a trope. This transposition, however, cannot be called a trope. The figure here more correctly falls into the category of defects. (68) The passage begins with a use of grammar that seems merely rhetorical: the two genders are active or passive like verbs. However, Alan uses grammatical terms to do more than articulate ideas; he argues that human actions affect grammar (by extending its laws), so much so, that grammar, suddenly personified, must respond (displeased, she considers the offender a trope). This passage is the fi rst example in the work of the convertibility between grammar and truth. It also exhibits a notion that I mentioned in my reading of Anselm in Chapter 3: human actions signify. Homosexual intercourse is not like bad grammar; it literally is bad grammar. Once actions are seen to signify, ethics and grammar commingle. Alan is not alone in this way of thinking, either. John of Salisbury, in Chapter XXIII of his Metalogicon10 links grammar to ethics: “Vnde constat quod grammatica quae istorum fundamentum est et radix, quodam modo sementem iacit quasi in sulcis naturae, gratia tamen praeeunte” (“It is accordingly evident that grammar, which is the basis and root of scientific knowledge, implants, as it were, the seed [of virtue] in nature’s furrow”) (50, 65 [Chapter 23]).11 Once it is recognized as bad grammar, it can be one of two things: a figure or a vice. As noted in Chapter 1, grammarians during ancient times and throughout the Middle Ages not only worried about the line between tropes and linguistic faults, but they also classified tropes and linguistic faults using the loaded terminology of the “virtutes” and “vitia” of speech, respectively. The narrator of the Plaint classifies homosexual intercourse qua grammatical signifier as a linguistic vice, a barbarism by implication, which in turn constitutes a rejection of its participants’ manhood.12 The convertibility of truth and grammar is suggested in a passage about the tear in Natura’s tunic, a passage that clearly mimics a similar passage in Boethius Consolation of Philosophy. Near the opening of the Consolation, the narrator describes the garment of Philosophia: “Eandem tamen vestem violentorum quorundam sciderant manus et particulas, quas quisque potuit, abstulerant” (“This robe had been torn, however, by the hands of violent men, who had ripped away what they could”) (I.p1). Allegorically, the meaning is clear, especially once she spells it out a little more in Book I, Prose 3: bad people in the past have ill-used philosophy, clutching at parts of her robes, trying to make it their own by force, and claiming that they are philosophers. At least as important for my purposes,

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though, is the literal meaning of the passage: her robes were torn at the hands of violent men. The literal and allegorical meanings are reasonably clear and distinct. Torn robes also appear in Prudentius’ Psychomachia: near the end of the poem, when Discordia sneaks into the victorious retinue to attack Concordia, the narrator notes that she has left her torn mantle (“scissa palla”) behind on the battlefield (line 685). The relevance of the detail is made clear by the nature of Discordia’s attack on Concordia: Discordia stabs her, and the narrative takes eight lines to describe exactly where and how the knife tears Concordia’s garments (lines 673–80). Discordia’s attack on Concordia can be read as an attempt at self-reproduction: once Concordia’s garments are torn, her resemblance to Discordia is that much greater. Boethius’ and Alan’s use of the torn robes suggest that Philosophia and Natura are both figures of concord who have been violently turned into figures of discord, which explains their melancholy and their desire to reestablish the harmony that they once represented and governed. Alan’s use of torn clothing, on his divine persona Natura, goes far beyond Boethius’ use on both the literal and allegorical levels. In Prose 1, Alan’s narrator describes Natura’s clothing: “In qua parte tunica, suarum partium passa dissidium, suarum iniuriarum contumelies demonstrabat” (“In this section the tunic had suffered a rending of its parts and showed the effects of injuries and insults”) (Alan 817, 98). So far, the description is not unlike that of Philosophia in Boethius. The difference is that Alan’s poet, explicitly recognizing that her tunic is of allegorical value (“que texture matrimonio deberent esse confi nes” [“which should approximate the interweave of a marriage”]) asks what the tear means (452B, 142). Natura replies as follows: Jam ex prelibatis potes elicere quid misticum figuret scissure figurata parenthesis. Cum enim, ut prediximus, plerique homines in suam matrem uiciorum armentur iniuriis, inter se et ipsam maximum chaos dissensionis fi rmantes, in me uiolentas manus uiolenter iniciunt et mea sibi particulatim uestimenta diripiunt et, quam reuerentie deberent honore uestire, me uestibus orphanatam, quantum in ipsis est, cogunt meretricaliter lupanare. Hoc ergo integumentum hac scissura depingitur quod solius hominis iniuriosis insultibus mea pudoris ornamenta discidii contumelias paciuntur. (838) From what you have already sampled you can deduce what is the symbolic signification of the representation of the parenthesis-like rent. For since, as we have said before, many men arm themselves with vices to injure their own mother and establish between her and them the chaos of ultimate dissension, in their violence they lay violent hands on me, tear my clothes in shreds to have pieces for themselves and, as far as in them lies, compel me, whom they should clothe

Alan of Lille’s Plaint of Nature and the Grammar of Cosmic Bonding 99 in honour and reverence to be stripped of my clothes and to go like a harlot to a brothel. This is the hidden meaning symbolized by this rent—that the vesture of my modesty suffers the insults of being torn off by injuries and insults from man alone. (142–3) This strange and convoluted argument appears to rest on the distinction between integumentum and inner truth, which I mentioned earlier in the context of sexual desire and literary style as a key to Alan’s aesthetics. The basic setup can be laid out here as a series of correspondences: integumentum/inner truth, tunic/Natura’s body, Natura’s body/her inner beauty. Each of these pairings suggest a physical and a hierarchical relationship between the two levels, where the outer protects and is less worthy than the inner. As this passage about the tear in her tunic makes clear, though, the pairings also have a semiotic relationship: the covering in some sense signifies the inner truth. Thus, Natura’s argument may be interpreted as follows: humans’ giving in to vice signifies violence against nature (the former is the covering while the latter is the inner meaning). In a more specific parallel argument, violent men’s stripping her of her clothing signifies human vice. The tear itself is another sign of human violence against nature. The tear also signifies the suffering of her modesty, which signification Natura explicitly states is hidden under a cover (integumentum). That the tear is “parenthesis”-shaped signifies that this all has something to do with grammar. Parentheses in the modern sense as punctuation are a fi fteenth-century innovation; in the Middle Ages, parenthesis was a grammatical figure of interruption, referring to the insertion of an interruption of syntax by a verbal unit. Perhaps the idea is that as a parenthesis disrupts the flow of a sentence, the tear disrupts the images on her dress, as human vice disrupts the fabric of nature (to use a loaded metaphor). Finally, we should not forget that this tear appears on the tunic (covering) of a personification (which is both the inner truth of what the tunic signifies overall and also an allegorical representation of a scientific concept); that without this tunic, Natura is reduced to a common whore;13 and this tunic itself depicts the animal kingdom in a multilayered narrative; specifically, the tear cuts through a depiction of humankind using its reason to discover divine secrets. Whereas Boethius uses the tear in Philosophia’s dress to make a quick allegorical point, that many make a claim to Philosophia, and Prudentius uses it to depict the nature of internal discord, Alan uses the tear in the dress to create a dizzying array of correspondences, which makes it hard to separate the covering from the inner truth (i.e., one pairing’s inner truth is often another’s covering). Though it is possible to tease out each of the claims, the real point of the argument is perhaps to entangle the correspondences deliberately, so that grammar, human actions, vice, and Natura herself all seem to imply one another. The inclusion of the parenthesis as the shape of the tear is not, in this reading, merely an idiosyncratic rhetorical

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flourish; it is an assertion that grammar is a part of the greater pattern that is torn as the result of vice. Once we understand that the “grammatical metaphor” is not a metaphor at all, but rather that grammar is a—if not the—proper discipline for exploring ethical problems, we are in a better position to understand the passages in which homosexuality is linked to bad grammar. Two passages in particular are worth noting in this regard. One is in Natura’s answer to the poet’s fi rst question: Why are you here, and why are you weeping? Natura answers that only humankind defies her: Humanum namque genus, a sua generositate degenerans, in constructione generum barbarizans, Venereas regulas inuertando nimis irregulari utitur metaplasmo. Sic homo, Venere tiresiatus anomala, directam predicationem per compositionem inordinate conuertit. (834) For the human race, fallen from its high estate, adopts a highly irregular (grammatical) change when it inverts the rules of Venus by introducing barbarisms in its arrangement of genders. Thus man, his sex changed by a ruleless Venus, in defiance of due order, by his arrangement changes what is a straightforward attribute of his [i.e., his gender]. (133–4) This passage considers sex syntactically. Natura is saying that sexual and grammatical rules are in alignment, and this breaking a sexual rule correspondingly breaks a grammatical rule: in changing the gender of a sexual partner, offenders also change the form of a word (Natura uses the term “metaplasm,” an improper change in word-form, though the term is suppressed in the translation) and introduce barbarisms (improper collocations of genders). Alan glosses over a drastic fl aw in Natura’s reasoning: grammatical and sexual genders do not naturally agree. In grammar, masculine goes with masculine, whereas in heterosexual sex, masculine goes with feminine. One could interpret this basic incongruity in a number of ways. In one interpretation, Alan suppresses this problem because it is not convenient to his argument; Alford reads the text in this way, arguing that Alan is not trying, in the Plaint, to do serious philosophy (753–4). This reading is consonant with the interpretation of the Plaint as an experimental work, which does not claim to meet high philosophical standards. Alternatively, given the doctrine that language has corrupted from its original pristine state, it is possible to read this passage as a stronger statement that Latin itself is perverted. Such a bold assertion would demand justification in a philosophical treatise, but in a Menippean satire, the author has more leeway for suggestion and speculation. A third approach to reading this passage would be to interpret it as an ironic revelation of the limitations of Natura’s own understanding of her topic, much in the same way that Jean de Meun’s

Alan of Lille’s Plaint of Nature and the Grammar of Cosmic Bonding 101 Raison’s authority is subtly undercut by the narrator, an interpretation, too, that is consistent with the genre. Perhaps the most radical interpretation is Jordan’s, which claims that Alan fi nds reproductive coupling intrinsically disorderly and even “based on violence”; the Plaint therefore exposes the intrinsic “incoherence” of any attempt to represent the rules of nature rationally (80, 89). As provocative as Jordan’s reading is, I am not sure he makes his case.14 Regardless of how one reads the glaring incongruity between sexual and grammatical agreement, the Stoic conception of grammar appears to be at work in Natura’s argument: language refers to things rather than merely thoughts, it signifies naturally, and grammatical rules express patterns of nature (mostly). Once we add the notion that acts signify, it is no surprise that grammar can be used as an ethical science. Another important passage that connects sex and grammar occurs when Natura describes how she trained Venus (this training occurs before Venus goes awry). connectere teneretur, ut in suis connectionibus artis grammatice constructiones canonicas obseruaret suique artificii nobilitas nullius artis ignorantia sue ferret glorie detrimentum, curialibus preceptis sub magistrali disciplina, eam uelut discipulam instruendam docui, quas artis grammatice regulas in suarum constructionum unionibus artificiosis admitteret, quas uelut extraordinarias nullius figure excusatione redemptas excluderet. (846) I taught her, as if she were a pupil needing instruction, which procedures in the art of Grammar she should adopt in the artistic combinations of her constructions and which she should reject as irregular and unredeemed by any excusing figure, so as to insure that she should use in her connections the regular constructions of the art of Grammar and that the nobility of her artistic work should not suffer impairment from any ignorance of art on her part. (156) Nature’s view of the procreative act closely corresponds to the view of the creative act of art explored earlier: innovation is intrinsically bad.15 As art is strictly mimetic, following the patterns of reality as closely as possible, while providing some room for aesthetic pleasure, so procreation is strictly prescribed by its own grammar, and while it may leave room for sexual pleasure, innovation (represented here by figures) is prohibited. In this argument, one can see a parallel to the Stoic aversion to linguistic innovation. Primordial language, and not the language of a community of speakers, is the language to which we should aspire, and its grammar is the one worth learning. Natural sex, Natura is asserting, and not the sexual practice of the community, is correct. Practicing “unnatural” sex (so defi ned) has serious consequences.

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The Syntax of Identity If we accept that there is a grammar of sexual ethics, and we accept that this grammar is the same thing as grammar in the traditional linguistic sense, then we should be able to discover the consequences of sexual vice using grammar. Alan sets out on just such a project. As I will demonstrate in this section, twelfth-century grammar theory made heavy use of the notion of linking (loosely translating constructio in the grammatical sense), of connecting smaller parts together into a larger whole. Naturally, there are rules for this sort of linking. Grammatical errors, such as barbarisms and solecisms,16 violate these rules, and in the process isolate and alienate the offending words. This isolation destroys the word’s reason for being, leaving the writer/speaker two options: either to correct the error or remove the offending word(s). Natura, through her discourse, puts forth this entire argument, one piece at a time, in her lament about homosexuality and vice in general. Before examining this argument in the Plaint in detail, it is useful to review how grammar was understood in the twelfth century. From the early Middle Ages forward, grammars proceeded from smaller to larger units. For example, Donatus’ Ars Maior is divided into three books, in which the fi rst covers letters, sounds, punctuation, and so on; the second covers the parts of speech; and the third covers barbarisms, solecisms, tropes, and so on. Priscian’s Institutiones likewise works from a smaller-to-larger unit model. Law indicates that this was a common practice and quotes a frequently cited saying of Sergius: “omnis oratio solvantur in verba, verba denuo solvantur in syllabas, rursum syllabae solvantur in litteras, littera sola non habet quo solvatur” (“Every sentence can be divided into words, and words can be divided into syllables, and syllables into litterae, but there is nothing into which litterae can be divided”) (Keil IV 475; Law, History 69–70).17 The underlying idea is that once a student learns basic elements, she or he learns how to combine them into larger units: grammar is the discipline of the correct linking of things. This interpretation can also be found in medieval commentaries, such as the following, from an anonymous preface to Priscian: “His intention is that we should make constructions out of words which fit together properly when linked up . . . so as to make our meaning clear or make the construction complete” (Minnis and Scott 31–2).18 Suzanne Reynolds traces the notion of congruitas throughout twelfth-century grammatical works and glosses and fi nds it a dominant topic; while in some works, it is limited mainly to morphological congruity, in others, including those of Peter Helias and Peter Hispanus, Reynolds writes that the notion is extended to include “both grammatical (voce) and semantic (sensu)” congruence (99). It also resembles Anselm’s concept of rectitude. The notion of grammar as rule-governed linking of smaller units into larger units is widespread throughout the century, found in John of Salisbury, Hugh of St. Victor, William of Conches, and Peter Helias.

Alan of Lille’s Plaint of Nature and the Grammar of Cosmic Bonding 103 The concept and even language of linking appears again and again in the Plaint. I have already cited passages that highlight it: for example, the training that Natura provides Venus is based on the grammatical linking of the sexes. Meter 4 (“O Dei proles”) begins with a poetic description of Natura that emphasizes her role as that which links together the elements of the universe (“stabilisque nexus” [“stable link”], “nodo” [“bond”], and “cathenans” [“bind together”]) (Alan 831–2, 128–9). Natura’s account of the poet’s work also emphasizes linking: Poete tamen aliquando hystoriales euentus ioculationibus fabulosis quadam eleganti sutura confederant, ut ex diuversorum conpetenti iunctura ipsius narrationis elegantior pictura resultet. (837) However, at times poets combine accounts of historical events and entertaining fables in a kind of elegant overlay so that, from an effective combination of diverse elements in their narrative, a more elegant picture may emerge, (140) Creative acts, whether of Natura’s creation, poetic creation, or animal procreation, are all fundamentally acts of linking. It is not surprising that someone would connect these acts of linking to grammar and explore the idea of a syntax of creative acts. Elsewhere, Natura says, Si enim genus masculinum genus consimile quadam irrationabilis rationis deposcat injuria nulla figure honestate illa constructionis iunctura uicium poterit excusare sed inexcusabili soloecismi monstruositate turpabitur. (846) For if the masculine gender, by a certain violence of unreasonable reason, should call for a gender entirely similar to itself, this bond and union will not be able to defend the fl aw as any kind of graceful figure but will bear the stain of an outlandish and unpardonable solecism. (157) The problem with homosexual intercourse is that it is an improper linking, which Natura categorizes as a solecism. Taken by itself, the notion that homosexual intercourse is a vice because it constitutes improper linking seems absurd, but as I have shown, the problem is not merely that homosexual intercourse violates grammar, but rather that in violating grammar, it tears the fabric of the cosmos, breaking the cosmic bond. The consequence of this breaking of the cosmic bond is dire, for in violating grammar in this way this breach leads to self-destruction. The argument for this is as follows: everything in the universe is defi ned according to its function. Homosexual intercourse causes its participants to change their function, thereby obviating the participants’ reason for being. That

104 Grammar and Language Theory in Medieval Allegorical Narrative Natura defi nes things in terms of their function is evident in a few passages. In a passage from Prose 3, already cited above, Natura defines herself in contrast to God. In each of these defi nitions, both she and God are defi ned in accordance with their works (e.g., how each one participates as an artificer of creation). Later, when discussing human corruption, she says, “Attende quomodo fere quidlibet iuxta mei promulgationem edicti, prout ratio natiue conditionis expostulat, michi iuris statuta persoluat” (“See how practically everything, obeying the edict I have promulgated, completely discharges the duties imposed by my law as the raison d’etre of its native condition demands”) (Alan 833, 131). She links reason-for-being with performing duties. As noted in Chapter 1, the emphasis on a given thing’s role or function, rather than an abstract defi nition of it (e.g., the human being as “rational animal”), is highly compatible with Stoic metaphysics, which in contrast to Aristotle is preoccupied with actions, chains of causality, and the disposition of bodies in the world. Once the link is broken, there is a resulting loss of identity and even self-destruction, as seen in many passages of the Plaint. Perhaps the most notable occurs in Prose 5, in which Natura relates the point in the story of Venus in which Venus turns into the monstrous Venus. Sed pocius se gramaticis constructionibus destruens, dialecticis conuersionibus inuertens, rethoricis coloribus decolorans, suam artem in figuram, figuramque in uicium transferebat[.] (849) On the contrary, destroying herself with the connections of Grammar, perverting herself with the conversions of Dialectic, discolouring herself with the colours of Rhetoric, she kept turning her art into a figure and the figure into a defect. (164) Abuse of each of the three Artes of the Trivium has an undesirable effect. For grammar, improper linking (constructio) leads to destruction. Dialectic’s perversion and rhetoric’s discoloration, in contrast, may be undesirable, but they are superficial consequences, hardly as dire as the penalty for bad grammar.19 Of the three, only grammar is fundamentally connected to the core operations of the cosmos, and therefore, only its violation is destructive to a thing’s essence. The loss of identity/destruction of sinners is evident in several other passages. One of them occurs when Natura uses mythology to list several previous offenders, including Helen of Troy (whose adultery turned her beauty into harlotry), Pasiphae, and others as follows: Mirra etiam mitrice Cypridis aculeis stimulata, in patris dilectione a filie amore degenerans, cum patre matris exemplauit officium. Medea uero proprio fi lio nouercata, ut inglorium Veneris opus construeret, gloriosum Veneris destruxit opusculum. Narcisus etiam, sui

Alan of Lille’s Plaint of Nature and the Grammar of Cosmic Bonding 105 umbra alterum mentita Narcisum, umbratiliter obumbratus, seipsum credens esse se alterum, de se sibi amoris incurrit periculum. (835) Myrrha, also goaded by the sting of the myrrh-scented Cyprian, in her love for her father corrupted a daughter’s affection and played a mother’s role with her father. 20 Medea, turning stepmother to her natural son, destroyed a beautiful little product of Venus to produce a work that brought Venus no glory. Narcissus, when his shadow faked a second Narcissus, was reflected in a reflection, believed himself to be a second self, and was involved in the destruction arising from himself loving himself. (135–6) In this passage, Alan uses Ovidian metamorphosis to emphasize the notion of identity destruction. The instances of identity destruction in this passage can be divided into one of two types. In one type, the sinner continues to exist, but with a new identity. In the other, the sinner literally dies. In the Plaint, the former type is more common than the latter. This new identity type can be characterized as a destruction of identity using the terminology of extension and intension: the chunk of matter, or the body that is the sinner (i.e., the extension) remains the same, but its definition (i.e., intensional meaning) is changed. Thus Myrrha trades in “daughter” for “mother”; Medea turns “natural mother” into “stepmother”; Helen turns “god-like beauty” into “a harlot’s beauty.” The story of Medea appears again in Meter 5, where Natura again relates the mother versus stepmother conflict: “Sic in Medea pariter duo nomina pugnant, / Dum simul esse parens atque nouerca cupit” (“thus in Medea two names battle on equal terms when she desires to be mother and stepmother at the same time”) (Alan 844, 152). In another variation on this theme, monstrous Venus, in bearing Jocus, bears a bastard instead of a son (“ab eodem prolem suscipiens pro filio spurio compotitur” “she begat a child from him and gained a bastard instead of a son”) (Alan 849, 164). Another negative consequence of the improper linking that leads to the destruction of identity is that it threatens to destroy not only the sinners, but all of those around them, even if they are not sinners. Myrrha’s father, Cinyras, becomes both husband and father to Myrrha; Medea’s offspring becomes both son and step-son; and so on. Natura states this doctrine herself in Prose 9: “Quare in neutram alicuius iniuria debachatur, que non degrassetur in alteram: neutri alicuius illecebra nouercatur, que non nouercetur et alteri” (“Consequently, no man’s injurious conduct rages against one of us without spreading its fierce attack to the other, no one’s evil seduction plays the stepmother to one of us without playing it to the other, too”) (Alan 874, 213). Here, a grammar comparison is apt, for if a word in a sentence fails to perform its function, not only is the word potentially meaningless, but the sentence as a whole may become gibberish. As a solecism represents a real danger to grammatical rectitude, so vice represents a danger to cosmic order. Recalling Anselm’s distinction between the natural truth of statements (i.e.,

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they signify coherently), which as argued in Chapter 3 corresponds to the Stoic theory of the lekton, and the accidental truth of statements (i.e., they signify that what is, is), we can see that Alan’s concern is that vice does not merely go against truth (that what is, is), but rather that it disrupts the natural truth of statements, that it is a direct assault on signification itself. Natura realizes that this problem needs to be resolved. The resolution occurs in Prose 9, with the arrival of Genius. The choice of Genius for this role could hardly be more apt. A recurring character throughout the Middle Ages, Genius is associated with procreation, cosmic bonding, and moral rectitude. As Denise Baker notes in her survey on the medieval use of Genius, in Apuleius’ The God of Socrates, Genius is a “moral guide” and a mediator between heaven and earth (282); in Martianus’ Marriage of Philology and Mercury, “Genius is obviously a conflation of two essential meanings of the term: the Genius of generation is fused with Genius the tutelary spirit” (283); in Bernardus Silvestris’ Cosmographia, genius is not the proper name of a person, but rather is a “spiritual or heavenly quality” (280). The Genius in the Plaint fuses these characteristics into a single character who is tellingly both a priest (accompanied by his daughter, Veritas) and a scribe (accompanied by a magic pen). As a priest, he is connected to cosmic truth; as a scribe, he is connected to archetypal grammar. Alan includes another detail to emphasize his role as a force for grammatico-cosmic binding; echoing once again the myth of creation from the Timaeus, his speech is created with a stamping: “Consequenter uero in hanc locutionis formam sue uocis monetauit materiam” (“after this he coined from the mint of his voice a speech along the following lines” (Alan 877, 219). The creation of archetypically grammatical speech proceeds in the same way as the creation of created things. Changing into a priestly outfit (indicating a shift in his role, or intension, from scribe to priest), Genius moves to the resolution of the work: the ritual excommunication of sinners. 21 The language of excommunication, consistent with the doctrine of linking and isolation laid out above, emphasizes the rejection of sinners from the community: a superne dilectionis osculo separetur ingratitudinis exigente merito, a Nature gracia degradetur, a naturalium rerum uniformi concilio segregetur (878) let every such be separated from the kiss of heavenly love as his ingratitude deserves and merits, let him be demoted from Nature’s favour, let him be set apart from the harmonious council of the things of Nature (220) In the logic Natura has used all along, the excommunication is largely a formality for the offenders, who are already isolated anyway. However, it does protect the rest of creation from these sinners.

Alan of Lille’s Plaint of Nature and the Grammar of Cosmic Bonding 107 The excommunication may seem anticlimactic, after eighteen sections of poetry and prose, some of them quite long and elaborate. Prudentius at least ends the Psychomachia with the action of building a temple, but Alan ends with a congregation of virtues and a speech. The ending seems more appropriate if one recalls the convertibility of speech and actions that Alan has suggested throughout his work. Just as actions signify (and signify grammatically), so a speech is a form of action. The fi nal lines of the work emphasize that something has happened, though exactly what is not explicit: using the word exterminium to describe the speech, Alan suggests more than merely expulsion, perhaps literally destruction (as Sheridan notes, 221 n. 34). The candles, which had been blazing as if at midday, suddenly sputter. Finally, the vision ends and the poet awakens. The correspondences among language, truth, and actions, which the Plaint is ultimately about, are not new to Alan. As Ziolkowski claims, “Alan’s writings are often innovative in their methods but always orthodox in their results” (8). Alan’s scholarly, philosophical allegory provides insight into some of the mechanisms on which orthodox Christian views depend. By making such extensive use of grammar, Alan provides insight into how grammar is for him (and given his orthodoxy, probably for many others) interwoven into a broader system of ethics and cosmology. Grammar is a technical discipline that examines the structure of relations among things, primarily words, but ultimately any thing that is a part of creation. Grammar enables its users to solve certain philosophical problems as well as to climb toward the fi rmament, to use a metaphor of Alan’s, in the chariot of Reason.

Conclusion

Though medieval writers had virtually no direct access to writings of the Stoics—and those that did, such as Boethius, often explicitly rejected them—the Stoic tradition nevertheless exercised considerable influence in the Middle Ages. The Stoic system, which integrates nature/physics, ethics, and language/logic under the benevolent authority of an omnipresent logos, was sufficiently compatible with Christian philosophy that many of its particular methods and doctrines survived into the Christian Middle Ages, re-branded as doctrines of grammar, Christian theology, neo-Platonic philosophy, and dialectic. These include the Stoic ethical tradition, transmitted through Roman writers such as Virgil and Seneca, and clearly visible in later works, such as Boethius’ Consolation and Fulgentius’ commentary on Virgil. As I have shown in this study, Stoic linguistic doctrines also informed the grammar tradition, surviving well into the Middle Ages. The Stoic ethical ideal is to live in accordance with nature, with the understanding that nature is the physical and corporeal manifestation of the divine logos. Knowing that the universe is benevolently guided, humans should go along with the force of fate. Resistance to fate is, for the Stoics, a manifestation of contempt for the logos, a dangerous and ill-advised assertion of self, doomed to failure. However, living in accordance with fate is not easy, for though humans are able to perceive nature, which is always broadcasting impressions of itself, our senses are fallible, and we may assent to a false impression and adjust our behavior based on this error. The Stoics believe that human reason, natively aligned with the logos, is capable of distinguishing between true and false impressions. They developed dialectic as a tool to aid in this process, but they recognize that the proper use of dialectic requires training and practice. In this system, language and logic mediate between nature and ethics; that is, for the Stoics, ethical behavior is practically impossible without the epistemological benefits of dialectic. Indeed, the Stoics classify epistemology as a subdomain of dialectic. Such a system only works if language has a connection to nature; if language is completely arbitrary, if it is “correct” simply because a given community uses it in a certain way, the human connection with nature, and the possibility of ethical behavior, becomes much more tenuous.

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STOIC LINGUISTIC THEORY FROM CLASSICAL ROME TO THE MIDDLE AGES The Stoic and medieval Christian conceptions of language, including language’s relationships with nature and ethics have many parallels, and Colish and others have shown that they are not coincidental. St. Augustine clearly had access to Stoic linguistic theory; his On Dialectic could almost be considered a treatise on the Stoic lekton. While the On Dialectic does not appear to have had a significant impact in the Middle Ages, linguistic theories expressed in his more influential On Christian Doctrine (De doctrina Christiana) and On the Trinity (De Trinitate) reveal the deep correspondences Augustine saw between words and things in nature (e.g., On Christian Doctrine I.2). Likewise, the grammar tradition was genealogically dependent on Stoic linguistic innovations and posits a strongly referential model of language. The ancient predecessors to Donatus and Priscian also attempted to justify their belief in the rational, non-arbitrary reference of language. They posited theories of the origins of language that supported their theories of reference (and hence claims about connections between words/propositions and reality), and later grammarians and philosophers alike adopted these theories. The Roman Stoic Varro’s (116–27 b.c.) On the Latin Language, a large portion of which survives today, promotes many of these theories, including the theory of imposition, the rational nature of grammar, the natural connection of words and things, the productive role of etymology, and the processes of linguistic corruption. Evidence suggests other Roman grammars contained strong traces of Stoic logic (Law, History 69). Quintilian also supports the doctrine that language is rational, writing, “Sermo constat ratione vetustate auctoritate consuetudine. Rationem praestat praecipue analogia, nonnumquam etymologia” (“Language is based on Reason, Antiquity, Authority, and Usage. Reason is grounded principally on Analogy, but sometimes also on Etymology”) (I.6).1 Medieval philosopher-grammarians such as Anselm and Roscelin used this strongly referential model of language to make words and grammatical structures springboards for investigation into transcendent reality and the nature of God. Abelard, echoing the Stoic use of this doctrine, not only connects language to reality, but he even uses this doctrine to solve the epistemological problem of the status. Alan uses the connections between words and things, grammar and cosmic structures, extensively in the Plaint, pushing them to speculative extremes. Another avenue of transmission of Stoic linguistic theory is the anxiety over figurative language, which depended in part on the myth of imposition and natural language advocated by the Stoics. For example, Quintilian writes that barbarisms and solecisms can sometimes be excused based on authority, usage, or antiquity; notably absent from this list is Quintilian’s fourth grounding of language—reason—which implies that while barbarisms and

110 Grammar and Language Theory in Medieval Allegorical Narrative solecisms may occasionally be excused, they are never rational (I.5). Figurative speech was often classified in terms of virtues and vices of speech, a trend that began with the Stoics, was continued by many grammarians, and which may have been an inspiration for Prudentius’ use of virtues and vices in his Psychomachia. As shown in Chapter 3, both Boethius and Abelard use the issue of figurative language to “clarify the mistakes” of other writers by arguing that they had gotten themselves entangled in figurative language. Alan, in the Plaint of Nature, builds much of his argument about the nature of sin around an analysis of figurative language, the underlying argument of which is that grammatical constructions are rational and that deviation from them is perverted. The Stoics had a scientific approach to language theory, which went well beyond cataloguing word endings. As they sought to ground word and grammatical origins in external reality and human cognition, they inevitably ran into problems, which pushed them to develop highly technical linguistic theories to accommodate their project. One vital innovation was the distinction between extension and intension, between a given chunk of matter and the way that chunk of matter is disposed in the events of the world. This distinction helped drive the discovery of grammatical case and led to the emergence of a technical vocabulary that is still in use today. As suggested in Chapter 2, it is also possible that the distinction between extension and intension may have been a contributing factor in the creation of allegorical signification in late antiquity. As shown in Chapter 3, widespread medieval defi nitions of a noun are more compatible with, and possibly imply, Stoic ontology over Aristotelian ontology. Medieval writers such as Anselm and Abelard also arrived at theories of signification and propositions that are surprisingly similar to Stoic notions; given how different some of these theories are from their Aristotelian counterparts, it seems likely that they were caused by Stoic language theories preserved in the grammar tradition. Certainly in Abelard’s case, the high frequency at which he cites Priscian in commentaries ostensibly on Porphyry and Aristotle provides evidence that he cannot build the argument he wants from his predominantly Aristotelian sources; often, what he pulls from Priscian are arguments (such as the theory of imposition and the close connection between words and reality) that are originally of Stoic origin. Much of the Stoic linguistic theory discussed in this section deals with the general connection of language to reality, high-level concepts that are not entirely distinct from similar thought in other schools. Perhaps it might be objected that I have established merely the possibility, and not the probability, that a strong genealogical line of linguistic theory runs from the ancient Stoics through the Middle Ages. Indeed, given the resources we have today—an incredible dearth of original Stoic texts, a shortage of critical editions and translations of key medieval grammatical works, and a shortage of secondary literature on these topics—making this case is quite difficult. These problems notwithstanding, we can directly connect

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Stoic logic to early medieval allegory. The story begins with Cicero, who had a colleague named Testa, who was interested in Aristotle’s hypothetical syllogistic. 2 Cicero recommended that Testa try reading it himself or that he ask an orator to teach him. Testa later replied that he could not understand Aristotle on his own, and when he asked an orator to teach him, as Cicero relates, [R]hetor autem ille magnus haec, ut opinor, Aristotelia se ignorare respondit. Quod quidem minime sum admiratus eum philosophum rhetori non esse cognitum, qui ab ipsis philosophis praeter admodum paucos ignoretur. (Topica 2–3) [T]hat great orator replied that he did not know these works, which are, as I think, Aristotelian. I am indeed not in the least surprised that this philosopher is unknown to the orator; he is unknown to the philosophers themselves, except to a very few. (Topica 2–3) This episode is important because not only does it show just how obscure Aristotle was in Cicero’s time (106–43 b.c.), but also because it prompted him to write a commentary on it. Interestingly, Cicero composed it at a time when he had no access to Aristotle’s work, and so he composed his commentary from memory; as a result, the work was un-Aristotelian in character. More to the point for our purposes, it also presented Stoic logic in the guise of a commentary on Aristotle; the work included, among other things, a list of the Stoic five indemonstrables. According to Speca, Cicero may have initiated a later trend among the neo-Peripatetics: the conflation of Aristotelian and Stoic logical theory. This episode, and what follows from it, is significant because five centuries later, Boethius wrote a commentary on it, in which, among other things, he examined the Stoic indemonstrables. Scholars such as Frede, Stump, Martin, and Speca have debated how well Boethius truly understood the details of Stoic logic, but there is little doubt that it was available to Boethius. Moreover, Boethius is not the only allegorist who knew about Stoic indemonstrables: Martianus Capella mentions them in his Marriage of Philology and Mercury. Though I have found no direct evidence that Prudentius was familiar with Stoic logic, given that he was a highly educated cosmopolitan poet and politician more than a century earlier than Boethius, it seems reasonable to suppose he at least may have had access to technical Stoic logic. STOIC ETHICS AND COSMOLOGY Strong parallels between Stoic and Christian ethics are also visible. Though for different reasons, both Stoics and Christians believe that any human being is capable of living ethically, that humans are naturally endowed with the capacity to live a wise/blessed life. At the same time, and again for

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different reasons, neither Stoics nor Christians assert that any human actually has achieved this status, with the rather notable exception of Christ for the Christians. Instead, we fi nd in both traditions the intellectual construction of this individual. The Stoic sage is a mental construct and is not based on any historical individual, while Christians also constructed models of the perfect man—Alan’s Anticlaudianus represents one such effort. The personal evolution of Aeneas also fits in this category, if not in the eyes of Virgil, at least as he was read by later Romans and medieval readers. The relationship between fate and ethics is another area where the Stoic influence seems clear. It fi nds its most explicit expression in Boethius’ Consolation, as described in Chapter 4. In the Stoics and Boethius, the idea of fate is more than simply the end-point at which the world will arrive, one way or another. Instead, it is seen as a chain of causes, where the determinism is not in the end itself, but is actually a formative part of each of the causes. That is, the rational design of the cosmos, connected by Stoic pneuma or Boethian amor, shapes all events as they occur, from within. To be ethical is to align one’s will and desire with this shaping. The Stoics were particularly effective at systematizing their thought; they made an effort to connect their cosmic, epistemological, ethical, and linguistic theories together. Thus, pneuma emerge from things in the world and make an impression on the soul; the mind assimilates the impressions and constructs an apprehension of reality; language refers to these impressions as apprehended; and of course ethics is living in accordance with them. One characteristic of many of the strands of Stoicism that I have identified throughout this study is that they interweave in cross-disciplinary ways. For example, grammarians such as Donatus and Priscian used Virgil’s Aeneid as both grammatically and morally exemplary. The same schoolrooms that taught these grammars also used Martianus Capella’s allegory as a textbook. The various works of Boethius bring together Stoic logic (such as his commentary on Cicero’s Topica), ethics, and cosmology (especially in the Consolation). Seneca wrote treatises, satires, and tragedies which projected Stoic ethical and cosmological doctrines into later literary traditions. To summarize, these interdisciplinary lines of transmission did more than project solitary elements of Stoic thought stripped of any context; they projected within the broader context of the Stoic system, nebulously, to be sure, but contextualized nonetheless. THE MENIPPEAN CONNECTION As I have shown throughout the study, acceptance of three components of a philosophical system mark both Stoic and Christian thought: a fi rm belief in an ordered and benevolent cosmos; the recognition that humans have imperfect or limited comprehension of this cosmos (at least in practice); and the belief that the correspondences between grammatical structures and ontological structures provide a rich source for philosophical

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inquiry. Interestingly, late classical and medieval literary meditations on these philosophical problems are often expressed in the form of Menippean satire. Varro, Seneca, Petronius, Martianus Capella, Boethius, Bernardus Silvestris, Alan of Lille and others wrote in the genre, many of whom have a direct or indirect association with Stoic thought. Prudentius’ Psychomachia also has Menippean elements. It is not hard to see why Menippean satire would be a natural genre for philosophical literature by and for people who understand that they are not yet sages. A genre used for experimentation with, rather than confident assertion of, the truth, Menippean satires are thematically appropriate for philosophical speculation. The use of multiple personae as mouthpieces provides a solution for the problem of accepting and/or articulating certain authorities without the need to defend each against intense scrutiny or reconcile apparent differences among them. Like science fiction today, Menippean satire provides a space in which one is free to speculate, without having to justify or defend one’s train of thought with philosophical rigor. As a literary genre written for an educated audience, Menippean satire also provides plenty of opportunity for literary artifice and virtuosity, a feature many of its authors clearly relish. The Menippean satire is well-suited for a writer who subscribes to a certain religious or philosophical system, but who has not yet achieved a sage-like internalization of that system; half inside and half outside of the system, the writer of a Menippean satire has only indirect and artificial access to the truth. This situation is perhaps analogous to the Stoic notion of linguistic reference itself, which also simultaneously claims and denies access to the truth. On the one hand, linguistic reference is supposed to be natural, non-arbitrary, and governed by the logos itself, with words assigned by a mythic name-giver who had more direct access to reality than we do now. On the other hand, Chrysippus and other Stoics asserted the intrinsic ambiguity of linguistic reference. This ambiguity is presupposed by etymological and allegorical approaches to reading; the Stoics “relied on a certain semantic indeterminacy: only if words really did not mean just one thing could etymologists depart from the ‘ordinary’ or ‘literal’ mythical meaning of certain words and names” (Dawson 34). Language provides a means of discovering the secrets of the cosmos, but it also obfuscates them. Only a scholar of a radically conservative concept of language—i.e., a grammarian in the ancient sense of the term—has the tools necessary for this type of inquiry. Language is both part of the problem and part of the solution, because it is both a primary source for truth and a transmitter of false impressions. The more language changes, the more it corrupts; innovation is generally bad. Preventing further decline from—and even recovering— primordial reference is critical to humanity’s ability to remain connected with the cosmos, a notion connected with projects as diverse as Cornutus’ etymological interpretations of Homer and Hesiod, Abelard’s doctrine of

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the status, and Alan’s depiction of homosexuality. This reference extends beyond the simple reference of a noun to its referent; for the Stoics also were careful to preserve the reference of propositions to states of affairs in the world. At whatever level one considers language, the Stoics, medieval grammarians, and many eleventh and twelfth century dialecticians all posit that it has an intimate relationship with extramental reality. This idea of language appears in treatises on language (e.g., grammars, textbooks on logic), in literary works (e.g., Alan’s Plaint of Nature), and in readings of literary works (e.g., Cornutus, Fulgentius, and Bernardus Silvestris). A strongly referential and radically conservative theory of language, which reveals in its very operations the structures of the cosmos, stands as one of Stoicism’s richest legacies in the Middle Ages.

Notes

NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION 1. Latin text from Rudolfus Helm’s edition. English translation by O. B. Hardison, Jr. 2. For example, the works of Vivian Law, Jan Pinborg, R. W. Hunt, Karin Margareta Fredborg, and C. H. Kneepkens. Unfortunately, the availability of primary works of medieval grammar theory has not yet kept up with the release of the secondary literature.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 1 1. The Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, Topics, and On Sophistical Refutations. Of these, only two were widely available: The Categories and On Interpretation. 2. Throughout these chapters, I cite passages by/about the Stoics primarily from two sources. Long and Sedley’s two-volume Hellenistic Philosophy topically organizes hundreds of key fragments about/by the Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics in English translation with commentary (Volume 1) and in the original Greek or Latin with notes (Volume 2), correlating the two with a topic number and fragment letter, as in 26B. Thus 26 refers to a topic, a B is the fragment number. The other source is Hans von Arnim’s Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta [SVF]. It is divided into several volumes, organized by topic, and numbered by the fragment. Thus SVF II, 234 refers to excerpt 234 in Volume II. I used an Italian edition, with the original Greek and Latin facing modern Italian translations, edited by Roberto Radice. 3. Sedley identifies the three major phases of Stoicism as follows: early Stoicism ranged from circa 300 to the late second century b.c.; middle Stoicism ranged from Panaetius (c.180–108 b.c.) to Posidonius (135–51 b.c.); late or Roman Stoicism ranged from Seneca (4 b.c. to 65 a.d.) to Marcus Aurelius (161–180 a.d.). 4. In such a system, we can proceed from a most general genus, such as the category of Substance, and work our way through its subcategories until we get to a definition of human: SubstanceCorporealityLivingSensitivityRation ality. 5. For Augustine’s defi nitions of caritas and cupiditas, see On Christian Doctrine III.10. Interestingly, the Aristotelian notion that each thing has its own telos has an affi nity with Augustine’s cupiditas, while the Stoic notion that everything shares one telos (the logos) is consonant with caritas.

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6. Chrysippus, as reported in Diogenes Laertius, SVF II, 55, seems to be emphasizing that an impression effects some change in the soul, so that an impression has much more impact than if the object merely broadcast an image of itself. 7. Here I am referring to the doctrine of “cognitive impressions,” also translated as “cataleptic impressions.” For source material, see Long and Sedley 40A-T; for analyses, see Hankinson, “Stoic Epistemology” and Long, Stoic Studies 264–287. 8. The group of things out there in the world include incorporeals as well, such as time, the void, and lekta, to which I’ll turn shortly. Stoic epistemology is not limited exclusively to corporeals, though certainly they outnumber incorporeals as a source for knowledge. 9. One might object that conceptions are likely to vary in different people, because no two people have identical experience. But the Stoics steadfastly held that it was possible for humans to have true knowledge about the world, and therefore presumably two sages would have virtually identical concepts. 10. The Stoic “sage” is a philosophical construct, an idealized human incapable of error, possessing all virtues, no vices, and comprehending cosmic truth. 11. The analysis of the seal-ring metaphor here is based on Paul Spade’s observation in a lecture that Plato’s use of the seal-ring metaphor to describe the origin of the cosmos and humanity in the Timaeus is nominalist (Spade, “Lecture” 1994). 12. See De dialectica §5–6. 13. E.g., the medieval legacy of Apollonius Dyscolas, as discussed later in this chapter. 14. Strictly speaking, a complete lekton is the fact itself that is expressed by an utterance. The Stoics distinguished between complete and incomplete lekta; an example of the latter is “ . . . writes,” to which one naturally wonders “Who writes?” A complete lekton provides this information: “Socrates writes” (Diogenes Laertius in Long and Sedley, 33F). For the sake of brevity, I’ll sidestep issues of incomplete lekta and only discuss complete ones. 15. For more on the notion of extensional versus intensional reference, and in particular its use in making defi nitions, see Hurley 78–82, 92–98. 16. See Long and Sedley 37L (=SVF II, 287) for a source fragment, taken from Lucian’s Philosophers for Sale. 17. The Stoics did have a theory that covered figments and by extension statements about them, such as “The centaur is walking.” This statement’s lekton still subsists in the usual way, but its name-bearer doesn’t exist (Long and Sedley 39A-B). Still, the Stoic system is vulnerable to the criticism that it does not seem to leave room for false statements and lies (Colish, “Stoic Theory” 21). 18. This connection will be explored in Chapter 4. 19. The traditional view, offered by Jowett and repeated by Long (Hellenistic Philosophy 133), is that Plato is employing at least some amount of humor. More recently, however, David Sedley has argued that we should take the etymologies much more seriously, as they shed light on Plato’s linguistic theory (Sedley, Plato’s Cratylus). 20. 16a27. 21. Extreme theories like this recur throughout the Middle Ages, as recorded in Law, History; for example, one theory correlates the number of vowels to the number of senses. These theories cannot properly be said to be of Stoic origin, but rather reflect a naïve expression of the natural language doctrine.

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22. Blank cites defi nitions by Dionysius Thrax, Asclepiades, Chares, and Demetrius Chlorus and analyzes them in the context of Sextus Empiricus’ attack on grammarians. 23. In a note in the Loeb edition of Diogenes Laertius, the editor says that the sixth part of speech, the “mean,” which Diogenes does not defi ne, “probably” refers to adverbs, an assessment shared by Blank and Atherton (323).

NOTES TO CHAPTER 2 1. Lana (Due Capitoli Prudenziani) contains the most complete biographical summary that I have found. 2. It would be particularly interesting to see a study on fourth century neo-Platonic thought and its possible influences on the cosmopolitan Prudentius. 3. Van Dyke qualifies her realist position by observing that any assertion about the existence of universals is confi ned to the truth of the poem. For Quilligan, belief in universals isn’t embedded in the poem, but rather in the poem’s cultural context. 4. Of course, this option isn’t available to someone like Quilligan, who is trying to develop a comprehensive theory that encompasses allegories throughout the Western tradition from late antiquity to the present. 5. I also doubt that allegory’s metaphysical problems can be resolved at the level of genre. That is, the metaphysical system projected in Prudentius may be fundamentally incompatible with that of Bunyan or Pynchon, irresolvable no matter how much poststructuralist theory we apply. Thus, any resolution of this matter is likely to depend on individual allegories, rather than allegory as a genre. 6. Frede is quite clear that his project is a speculative reconstruction. Textual evidence on this issue is sparse at best. 7. “[S]i nomen fi ngere liceret, illam singularem quamdam qualitatem et incommunicabilem alicui alii subsistentiae suo ficto nomine nuncuparem, ut clarior fieret forma propositi.” (“If I might make up a name, I would call that certain singular quality, incommunicable to any other subsistence, by its contrived name, in order to make the form of what is being claimed clearer”) (Boethius, “Second Commentary” P.L. 64 col. 463a; translation by Paul Vincent Spade, Notes and Texts 40). 8. The contrast here is with Aristotle, whose categorical propositions always involve a copula: “All P are Q,” “Some P are not Q,” etc. The Stoics, in contrast, use all sorts of verbs in their propositions. 9. Latin text and English translations are all taken from the Loeb edition, translated by H. J. Thomson. 10. The emphasis on inward assent should not be taken for granted. In the ancient world, and in pagan late antiquity in particular, sin was often believed to be caused by external demonic influences (Kimminich 77). 11. This is not the only place in the poem where the line between the Virtues and Vices is blurry. For example, the reason Ira descends on Patientia is that Patientia is a mere spectatrix, failing to fight for one side or the other: Ira does not attack Patientia because she recognizes the other as her enemy, but simply because she does not take any side. Later in the poem, when Avaritia fi rst appears, she does not appear to be a combatant at all; she is merely plundering the battlefield. 12. In this second battle, the flaming torch is both the weapon that Libido thrusts in Pudicitia’s face (46–7) and also the lampade Christi (57) that gives us the

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strength to withstand the corruption in the heart (casti vena animi) that Libido threatens to effect. 13. The story of Achar seems particularly apt, since at this point in the poem, the Virtues appear to have vanquished the Vices, the last of whom, Luxuria, left much to plunder on the field. In their moment of victory, the Virtues are in the same position as Achar; they are now most vulnerable to greed. 14. Nugent suggests that Operatio is really meant to be Caritas, but the name Caritas is unavailable because it is metrically impossible in Latin hexameter (66) 15. E.g., IV.p6.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 3 1. Augustine’s On Dialectic also contains distinctly Stoic theories of language, but its circulation and influence appear to be negligible. 2. The five predicables, following the medieval Aristotelian tradition, are the five kinds of items that can be predicated. They are genera, species, differences, properties, and accidents. Medieval thinkers argue over what these predicables actually are: realists such as Anselm believe that they are things, whereas nominalists such as Garland believe that they are mere words. 3. Latin text from L. M. De Rijk’s edition. English translation by Martin Tweedale. 4. Garland’s defi nition of a species is as follows: “species est maneria individuorum generi supposita” (“A species is what is predicated as answering the what-question for many items differing in number”) (7, 371). He defi nes “number” as follows: “collectionem accidentium alicui propriorum” (“a collection of accidents distinctive of something”), and goes on to list the accidents that distinguish himself from other human beings: “niger, crispus, pulcer, humilis, amabilis, mediocris stature” (“‘dark,’ ‘curly-haired,’ ‘handsome,’ ‘humble,’ ‘lovable,’ ‘of ordinary height’”) (7–8, 371–2). While the items in the list of accidents is a little unusual, the formulation that accidents distinguish individuals can be found in Porphyry’s Isagoge. See also Spade, History 68. 5. “Innovation” is here a manner of speaking. We do not know the degree to which Garland’s ideas are representative or innovative of his times. 6. Garland has an interesting passage in this connection, where he ranks the primacy of substances, in order from most primary to secondary: “Socrates,” “this human,” “some human,” and “human being” (i.e., the species) (18, 374). 7. I am here referring to Stoic categories, not the ten Aristotelian categories described earlier. The Stoic categories, as discussed in Chapter 2, appear to correlate to dispositions in the world, rather than the structure of ontology. 8. I use the word “apparent” because recent scholars have questioned whether Roscelin was literally asserting that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three gods, or whether he was construed as making that assertion by his enemies (see, for example, Mews 6). The issue is open for discussion, because virtually all of Roscelin’s writings are lost, presumably because he was condemned and forced to retract his theories at the Council of Soissons in 1092 (Copleston 145). 9. Latin text from Schmitt edition; English translation by Richard Regan. 10. In this section, I present only Anselm’s side of the story, though there is reason to believe that Anselm distorts Roscelin’s position. Reconstructing Roscelin’s position is not an easy task and doing so is beyond the scope of

Notes

11. 12.

13.

14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19.

20.

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this chapter. Several scholars have tried to reconstruct Roscelin’s position, including Kluge; Mews, “Nominalism and Theology”; Mews, “St. Anselm”; Courtenay; and Jolivet, “Trois Variations.” Latin text quoted comes from P.L. 158 col. 467B ff. English translation by Ralph McInerny. Grammatica is introduced at the end of Book II, Chapters 7–8 in P.L. and pages 84–90 in Sheridan’s English translation. Logica is introduced in Book III, Chapter 1 in P.L. and pages 91–96 in Sheridan’s translation. The depiction of Grammatica focuses on sentence construction and discipline; the personification lacks the broad cosmological and ethical implications of grammar found in Alan’s Plaint, as explored in Chapter 4. The depiction of Logica notes that she is used to distinguish true from false but mostly focuses on her intrinsic contentiousness. Though critical editions of relevant works have begun to appear, such as de Rijk’s edition of Garland’s Dialectica and Reilly’s edition of Peter Helias’ Summa super Priscianum, other works remain without critical editions (e.g., the influential Glosulae, a non-critical edition of which appears as an Appendix in Peter King’s dissertation). Even fewer of these works have English translations and the secondary literature is highly specialized and incomplete. “[P]roprium est nominis substantiam et qualitatem significare,” (Priscian 55 [II.18]). “Words spoken are symbols or signs of affections or impressions of the soul; written words are the signs of words spoken. As writing, so also is speech not the same for all races of men. But the mental affections themselves, of which these words are primarily signs, are the same for the whole of makind, as are the objects of which those affections are representations or likenesses, images, copies.” (Aristotle, On Interpretation 115 [16a3–8]). E.g., Anselm’s dialogue De grammatico, which treats the topic exhaustively and insightfully. The biographical details appearing here and in the next few sentences are taken from Clanchy’s Abelard: A Medieval Life. Glossae super Porphyrium from Logica “ingredientibus.” Latin text from Geyer’s edition, cited hereafter as Philosophische. English translation by Paul Vincent Spade, cited hereafter as Porphyry. As cited in Chapter 1, Aristotle defi nes universals as follows: “Of things there are some universal and some individual or singular, according, I mean, as their nature is such that they can or they cannot be predicates of numerous subjects, as ‘man,’ for example, or ‘Callias.’” (Aristotle 125 [Ch. VII; 17a39]) Glossae super Peri Ermenias from Logica “ingredientibus.” Latin text from Geyer’s edition, still cited as Philosophische. English translation by Martin Tweedale, cited as De interpretatione, following the title of his translation.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 4 1. On the date of the De planctu, see Sheridan (35). On the date of the Anticlaudianus, see Cornog (28). 2. Latin text of De planctu Naturae from Häring’s edition. English translations from James J. Sheridan’s translation of the Plaint of Nature. 3. This analogy is derived from Plato’s Timaeus (44, 69B-72D). The impact of the Timaeus is discussed below.

120 Notes 4. Latin text from the Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli edition, edited by Ovidio Dallera. English translation by Richard Green. 5. The order seems somewhat odd, since apparently sensibility is added to the mix several steps ahead of sense organs, such as eyes. Perhaps this is just an accident of discourse, since as Timaeus, the speaker, says elsewhere, we humans have “a random manner of speaking” (34). 6. Stoic epistemology, as described in Chapter 1, is also described in similar terms, with pneuma emanating from objects in the world and leaving imprints, understood as physical alterations, on the soul. 7. This doctrine of an artificer creating multiple things based on the pattern of an exemplar is cited by Priscian and is used by Abelard to justify his doctrine of the status, as explained in Chapter 3. 8. Many editions, including P.L., call this character Antigamus, rather than Antigenius. Häring’s edition uses Antigenius, and according to Sheridan, there is better manuscript authority for Antigenius (163 n.27). Green also argues that Antigenius is the correct name (671). 9. Though Alan uses the term amor, it is clear from the context that he means amor in the classical sense of cupido, as Sheridan points out in a footnote to his translation (149 n. 1). 10. Latin text from Hall’s edition. English translation by Daniel D. McGarry. 11. The chapter summary is itself telling: “Quae praecipua sint ad exercitium philosophiae et uirtutis et quod grammatica eorum est fundamentum” (“The chief aids to philosophical inquiry and the practices of virtue; as well as how grammar is the foundation of both philosophy and virtue”). 12. A barbarism is a defect within a word. Law uses the following example: “infantibu’ parvis ‘little chil’en,’ for infantibus parvis ‘little children’” (History 69). Another example of a barbarism is using the wrong gender (Sheridan in Alan, Plaint 133 n. 13). 13. Raby notes that in medieval literature, personifications of Nature are “hostile” to open exposure, but they are willing to share their secrets to the wise using an integumentum (75). As an example, he notes that the house of Nature in Alan’s Anticlaudianus is surrounded by a forest (76). 14. One of the underlying distinctions of Jordan’s reading is the natural versus the conventional, e.g., human physical reproduction (which is irregular and morally self-divided) versus artistic reproduction (which is orderly and pleasurable). Into this dichotomy, he opposes grammar to nature, on the grounds that Aristotelian logical doctrine posited this distinction. As I have shown, relying on this Aristotelian doctrine at the expense of the grammar tradition’s reliance on a more natural connection between grammar and reality is problematic. 15. Again, one notices an inconsistency, since Alan’s own use of language is highly innovative. Is philosophical speculation even possible without perverting language? Or is the linguistic innovation that accompanies philosophical speculation supposed to be an approximation of primordial language? Alan’s work leaves these important questions unanswered. 16. A solecism is an improper “collocation of words, e.g., torvumque repente clamat ‘stern and suddenly he cries,’ for torve ‘sternly’” (Law, History 69). 17. Latin text from Keil’s Grammatici Latini; English translation by Vivien Law. 18. Minnis and Scott’s translation is from the revised edition of R. B. C. Huygens’ Accessus ad auctores (Leiden, 1970). 19. Alan appears to consider dialectic as the human verbal activity of working through syllogisms to discover truth, and as such he associates it more

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with disputation than with ontology. Thus, dialectical violations result in perversion, rather than destruction. See Anticlaudianus III.1 and VII.6 for evidence of Alan’s views on dialectic. 20. This interpretation of Myrrha is much less sympathetic than Ovid’s, which relates that her love is caused by one of the Furies, and not by Cupid (Metamorphoses X 311–14), and moreover that she desperately fought her attraction (X 319–55). 21. In this passage, Genius does not single out homosexuality, but rather lists a number of vices. We may read this as evidence that the Plaint is fundamentally about sin, and not primarily about homosexuality. That is, homosexuality is used synechdochally to represent sin in general.

NOTES TO THE CONCLUSION 1. Latin text and English translation from the Loeb edition, edited by Donald A. Russel. 2. This summary is derived from Speca (101–3).

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Index

A Abelard, Peter, 64, 88, 109–110, 113, 119n17, 120n7 on assent to behavior, 18 myth of the name-giver, 29 contribution to linguistic theory, 53–55 on grammar and signification, 67–69 Theory of status, 70–79 Abraham, 41–43, 51 Aeneas, 6–7, 24, 41, 112 See also Virgil Aeneid. See Virgil Alan of Lille, 1, 7–10, 18, 20, 26, 31, 55, 59, 64, 67, 69, 72–73, 79–114, 119n12, 120n9, 120n12–13, 120n15, 120n19 Anticlaudianus, 7, 11, 64, 81, 86, 112, 119n1, 120n16, 121n19 Plaint of Nature, 1, 8–9, 11, 18, 20, 31, 55, 59, 67, 110, 114, 119n2 using the seal-ring metaphor in, 20 and the grammar of cosmic bonding, 81–107 allegoresis, 29 allegory, 1, 32–55, 82, 107, 111, 112, 117n5 amor, 18, 85, 90, 112, 120n9 ancient grammar, 1, 3–4, 9, 20, 27–31, 33, 38, 95–96, 113 Anselm, St., 44, 50, 60–67, 74–76, 79, 97, 102, 105, 109,110, 118n8,2, 118n10, 119n6 On Truth (De veritate), 63–67 Anticlaudianus. See Alan anvil. See seal-ring metaphor Apollonius Dyscolus, 2, 4 Apuleius, 26, 53–54, 106

Aristotle, 3, 5, 9, 12–14, 16–17, 20, 21, 24, 25, 27–30, 36, 38–41, 53–55, 58–59, 62, 67–70, 74–76, 79–80, 104, 110–111, 115n5, 117n8, 118n2, 118n7, 119n15, 119n19, 120n14 Categories, 53, 80, 115n1, 115n4 On Interpretation, 12–13, 28–30, 36, 53–54, 70, 76, 80, 115n1, 119n15 Organon, 13 art (technê), 19 assent, 2, 17–25, 31, 35, 43–45, 51–52, 84, 108, 117n10 assertibles (axiômata), 22, 25–26 See also propositional logic Augustine, St., 5, 14, 17, 21, 51, 53, 109, 115n5, 118n1 De dialectica, 5, 116n12 On Christian Doctrine (De doctrina Christiana), 109 On the Trinity (De Trinitate), 109 Avaritia (Greed), 46–49, 117n11 axiômata. See assertibles

B barbarisms, 4, 31, 92, 97, 100, 102, 109, 120n12 Bernardus Silvestris, 7, 85, 106, 113, 114 Cosmographia, 8, 85, 106 Bible, 12, 34, 41–47, 52 bodies, 15–16, 19–26, 41–42, 45–46, 51, 57–58, 69, 71, 76, 86–88, 104 Boethius, 5, 43, 51, 53, 56, 59, 70, 81–86, 91, 94, 97–99, 108, 110–113, 117n7

132

Index

Consolation of Philosophy (Consolatio), 11, 18, 83, 85, 97 Book of the City of Ladies, 11 See also Christine de Pizan

C caritas (charity), 17, 92, 115n5, 118n14 See also charity case, 3, 27, 38–41 Categories. See Aristotle categories, 62, 66, 68, 79 Aristotelian, 15 Garland on, 56–60 Stoic, 41, 118n7 charity. See charity Chastity. See Pudicitia. Chaucer, Geoffrey, 16 Christ, 42, 46–47, 51, 66, 79, 86, 112 as Son, 50, 60–62, 118n8 Christine de Pizan 11 Chrysippus, 5, 15, 20, 25–26, 28, 30, 113, 116n6 Church, 51 church, 62, 69 Cicero, 53, 111–112 Topics, 53, 115n1 Cleanthes, 5, 15 conception (ennoia), 18, 57, 71, 80, 101, Concordia, 49–51, 98 connective (syndesmos), 25 conjunctions, 25 See also propositional logic copula, 41, 78–79, 84, 117n8 Cornutus, 113–114 Cosmographica. See Bernardus Silvestris cosmology, 1, 12, 15, 32, 43, 86, 107, 112 cosmos, 2, 6–8, 15–18, 24–25, 27, 31, 37–38, 41, 43, 50, 51, 58, 66, 70, 71, 74, 80–94, 103–104, 112–114, 116n11, Cratylus. See Plato critical theory, 9 postmodern, 33 poststructuralist, 37, 117n5 cupiditas. See cupidity cupidity (cupiditas), 17, 92, 115n5

D Dante, 11, 33 Divine Comedy, 11 De dialectia. See St. Augustine deixis, 35, 37, 39

Desire, 49, 90 determinism, 17 dialectic, 2, 19–21, 25, 27, 29, 33, 35, 43, 55, 69, 81, 108, 120n19 dicta, 76–78 Dido, 6, 7, 41 Diogenes of Babylon, 4, 30 Diogenes Laertius, 14, 21, 22, 25, 30, 116n6, 116n14, 117n23, on utterances, 21 Dionysius Thrax, 4, 117n22 Discordia, 47, 49–52, 98 Donatus, 7, 53, 102, 109, 112 Ars minor, 53 Ars maior, 53

E education, 6, 7, 11, 53, 69 Elektra paradox, 23 ennoia. See conception epic, 32 Epictetus, 5, 19 Epicureanism, 5 epistemology, 1, 12, 13, 14, 16, 19, 24, 31, 32, 35, 62, 108, 116n8, 120n6, ethics, 12, 14, 15, 17, 31, 32, 43, 64, 67, 86, 88, 97, 102, 107–112 etymology, 4, 27–29, 50–51, 80, 113, expert, 4, 19, extension, 23–24, 29, 39–41, 45–47, 50, 52, 57, 60–62, 79, 87, 96, 105, 110, 116n17 See also intension.

F faith (fides), 9, 18, 44, 48, 66 fate, 6, 16, 65, 85, 108, 112 fatherland, 18 fides. See faith Fides (Lady Faith), 9, 43–45, 50–51 figment (phantasma), 18 Fortune, 16, 43 fortune, 16, 85, 91 free will, 17 Fulgentius, 7

G Garland the Computist, 55–60, 62, 66, 75–79, 118n2, 118n4–6, 119n13 Genius, 81, 84, 106, 120n8, 121n12 Glosulae, 53, 119n13 God, 16–20, 31, 42, 49–52, 62, 66, 71–72, 7483–96, 104–106, 109,

Index as Father, 50, 60–62, 118n8 Guillaume de Lorris, 11 Romance of the Rose, 11

H Heidegger, 37 heresy, 50, 79 Homer, 28, 30, 113 homosexuality, 1, 81, 89, 92–97, 100, 103, 114, 121n12

I indemonstrables (anapodeiktoi), 26, 111 See also propositional logic indifferents, 88–93 impressions, 2 cognitive, 116n7 cataleptic, 116n7 See also presentation, representation impressor (phantaston), 18 incorporeals, 14–16, 21–24, 39, 57, 63, 69, 77, 116n8 Institutiones grammaticae. See Priscian integumentum. See veil intellection, 51 intension (logical), 23, 39–41, 45–52, 58, 60–62, 79, 105, 106, 110, 116n15 See also extension intention, 3, 12, 16, 28, 68 intermediates. See indifferent Isogoge. See Porphyry

J Jean de Meun, 11, 100 Romance of the Rose, 11 John of Salisbury, 69, 97, 102 Metalogicon, 97

L lekton, 3, 5, 6, 21–26, 30–31, 35, 38–41, 47, 57, 63–66, 69, 75–79, 106, 109, 116n8, 116n14, 116n17 Sextus Empiricus on, 22 species of, 22 Stoic doctrine on, 22 logic propositional, 25, 26 logos, 2, 15–18, 25, 31, 40–41, 50–52, 108, 113, 155n5 Christian, 46 language idealized, pure, or true, 2, 4, 13, 29, 31, 41, 44, 70, 72–4, 79–80, 96, 109–110, 113

133

primordial, 4, 95, 101, 120n15 theory, 1, 9 Stoic, 3–4, 6, 8–9, 12, 14–15, 17, 20–27, 80, 110, 109–110 human, 62, 80 utterance, 20–24, 30, 32, 38, 55–59, 66, 76, 116n14 defined, 20 linguistics, 1, 12 liminality, 49 linking (constructio), 102–104 Lucian, 116n16 lust, 7, 46, 48, 89, 90 Luxuria, 18, 46, 66, 118n13

M macrocosm, 85 Marcus Aurelius, 5, 115n3 Martianus Capella, 81–82, 111–113 meaning, 9, 12–13, 21–24, 28–29, 33–34, 40, 42, 49, 53–54, 58–59, 63, 76, 79, 97–99, 102, 105–106, 113 Menippean satire, 82–83, 92, 100, 112–113 meta-narrative, 42 microcosm, 85 morality, 7, 46, 66, 106, 112, 120n14

N name-bearer (tunchanon), 21–24, 116n17 name-giver (myth of imposition), 27, 29, 31, 40, 50, 59, 68, 70, 72, 80, 94, 113 native speakers, 4 Natura (Lady Nature), 1, 9, 18, 20, 81–106 neo-Platonists, 5, 38, 43, 108, 117n2 nominalism, 37, 55–58, 62, 79, 87, 116n11, 118n2 and Garland, 55 noun, defined, 29–30, 35–37, 40–41, 57,-58, 68–69, 78–80, 87, 110, 114

O old logic, 9 On Christian Doctrine (De doctrina Christiana). See Augustine, St. On Interpretation. See Aristotle On the Trinity (De Trinitate). See Augustine, St. On Truth (De veritate). See Anslem, St. Operatio, 46, 48–49, 118n14

134

Index

opinion as conceptions around impressions, 19 on recognizing the status of a thing, 72 Organon. See Aristotle Origen, 28 orthography, 2, 92 Ovid, 6, 90, 93, 105, 121n20

P paradox, 23, 64 parts of speech, 5, 20, 27, 29–30, 40, 59, 102 Paul, 43 perfect man, 86, 112 personification, 9, 35–37, 39, 47, 52, 81–82, 85, 97, 99, 119n12, 120n13 Peter Helias, 53, 75, 102, 119n13 Peter Lombard, 69 phantasia. See representation phantasma. See figment phantaston. See impressor Philosophia, 16, 18, 82–83, 91, 94, 97–99 physics, 1, 5, 8, 14–15, 36–38, 42, 68, 104, 108 Plato, 3, 5, 9, 13, 20, 25, 27, 26, 39–43, 52, 57, 59, 67, 70–75, 75, 79, 85–86, 116n11, 116n19, 119n3 Cratylus, 27, 166n19 on the seal ring metaphor, 19–20 Timaeus, 20, 53, 71–72, 85–87, 95, 106, 116n11, 119n3, 120n5 Artificer, 86 pneuma, 112, 120n6 polysemy, 34–35, 38 unisemy, 40 Porphyry, 5, 14, 40, 53–54, 56, 59, 69–76, 110, 118n4, 119n18 Isogoge, 53 preconception, 18 presentation (phantasia) 18, 35, 99, 95, 119n5 pre-Socratics, 3, 12 pretext, 34 Priscian, 3–4, 7, 29, 40, 53, 55, 63, 68, 71, 75–76, 87, 102, 109–110, 112, 119n13–14, 120n7 Institutiones grammaticae, 4, 53, 102 prolepsis. See preconception

propositions, 25, 30, 55, 76–78, 109, 110, 114, 117n876 prosimetrum, 82, 84 Prudentius, 5, 8–9, 11, 18, 32, 44, 47, 51–52, 98–99, 107, 110–111, 113, 117n2–5 Psychomachia, 9, 11, 18, 32, 32, 41, 43–44, 50, 20, 66, 98, 107, 113 Psychomachia. See Prudentius Pudicitia (Chastity), 43, 46, 51, 66, 117n12 punctuation, 31, 99, 102 parenthesis, -es, 98–99 ancient theories of, 31

Q Quintilian, 109

R Ralph of Beauvais, 53 Ratio, 46–48 realism, 37, 40, 41, 45, 47, 62, 65, 79, 87, 117n3 rectitude, 63–67, 94, 102, 105 reference, 3, 12, 13–15, 23, 28–29, 39, 40–41, 49–50, 53–54, 58–62, 68, 73, 76, 109, 113, 116n15 linguistic, 3, 13, 14, 28, 68, 109, 113 individual, 40 extensional, 41, 49, 60, 116n15 See also extension intensional, 50, 62, 116n15 See also intension primordial, 113 Stoic, 58, 73 referent, 3, 114 Romance of the Rose. See Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun representation (phantasia), 18, 95, 98–99 reproduction, 20, 89, 93, 98, 120n14 propagation, 88 Roscelin of Compiègne, 50, 55, 57, 60–62, 75, 79, 109, 118n8, 118–119n10

S sage, 2, 19, 24–25, 66, 72, 86, 112– 113, 116n10 seal-ring metaphor, 18–20, 22, 85, 87–89, 106, 116n11 stamping (stamps), 18–20, 87–88, 106 Seneca, 5, 23, 43, 108, 112–113, 115n3

Index Servius, 7 Sergius, 102 sex, 31, 45, 82–83, 89, 91–92, 99, 100 gender, 97, 100 grammatical-sexual metaphor, 81–83, 100–102 sexuality heterosexual, 89, 100 See also homosexuality Sextus Empiricus, 2, 15, 22, 117n22 signification, 3, 7, 9, 12–28, 30, 34, 37, 50–51, 54, 79–80, 95, 97, 99, 101, 106–7, 110 Abelard on, 67–9, 70–4, 74–6, 76–79 Anselm on, 63–7 Garland on, 55–60 Roscelin on, 60–63 sin, 1, 17–18, 59, 81, 83, 92, 96, 110, 117n10, 121n21 Skepticism, 5 Sobrietas, 18 Socrates, 13, 24–25, 27, 30, 39, 54, 56–58, 66, 69–70, 75, 77, 106, 116n14, 118n6 solecisms, 4, 31, 102, 109–110 Something (ti), 21, 39, 75 which is completely nothing, 76–77 soul, 12, 15–16, 18–19, 24, 36, 42, 50–51, 71, 86, 88, 112, 116n6, 119n15, 120n6 substances, 16–17, 22, 26, 36, 62, 71–72, 75, 118n6 syndesmos. See connective. syntax, 2, 4, 7, 21, 30–31, 55, 99, 103

T technê. See art. technikos. See expert telos, 16, 115n5 Tertullian, 43 themata, 26 threshold emblem, 34, 49 ti. See Something Timaeus. See Plato

135

Todorov, 37 Topics. See Cicero Trinity, 50 Trivium, 81 truth, 7–8, 16, 19, 25, 31, 33, 38, 43–44, 63–67, 74, 77, 82–83, 93–97, 99, 106–107, 113, 117n3, 120n19 inner, 99 cosmic, 94–96, 106 natural vs. accidental, 63–4, 106

U universals, 13–16, 19–20, 24, 36–37, 45, 52, 56–58, 69–70, 74–75, 87, 117n3, 119n19

V Varro, 4, 109, 113 veil (integumentum), 7, 42 Venus, 7, 81, 84, 88–93, 97, 100–101, 103–105 verb, 29–30, 35–36, 40–41, 78, 80, 97, 117n8, 120n19 vices (vitia) allegorical figures, 42, 51–52, 66, 117n11 grammatical, 3–4, 31, 97, 105–6, 110 moral, 3–4, 17–8, 41, 47, 51, 57, 81, 90, 92, 96, 98–100, 103, 105–6, 116n10, 121n21 See also sin vitium. See vice Virgil, 6–7, 32–33, 43, 93, 95, 108, 112 Aeneid, 5–8, 43, 112 See also Aeneas virtues (virtutes): of speech, 4 virtutes. See virtues

W William of Champeaux, 53 William of Conches, 53, 88, 102

Z Zeno, 5