Table Of ContentSTUDIES IN MEDIEVAL ' PERSPECTIVES
STUDIES IN
MEDIEVAL PERSPECTIVES
BY D. W. ROBERTSON, JR.
PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 1962 by Princeton University Press
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
L.C. Card: 62-7414
SBN 691-01294-6 (paperbound edn.)
SBN 691-06099-1 (clothbound edn.)
First Princeton Paperback Printing, 1969
Fifth Hardcover Printing, 1969
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Publication of this book has been aided
by the Ford Foundation program to support publication,
through university presses, of work in the humanities
and social sciences.
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Printed in the United States of America by
Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey
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This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not,
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binding or cover other than that in which it is published.
TO THE MEMORY OF
A L AN R O B E R T S ON
1945-1960
C O N T E N TS
Preface vii
Illustrations xiii
I. Introduction: Medieval and Modern Art 3
II. Some Principles of Medieval Aesthetics 52
1. The Aesthetics of Figurative Expression 52
2. The Use and Abuse of Beauty 65
3. The Nature of Beauty 114
III. Late Medieval Style 138
1. The Romanesque Period 138
2. The Gothic Period 171
3. The Fourteenth Century in England 207
4. Chaucer's Literary Background 228
5. Chaucer and the Style of his Period 241
IV. Allegory, Humanism, and Literary Theory 286
1. Christian Allegory 286
2. Chaucer's Exegetes 317
3. Christian Humanism 337
4. Chaucer and Literary Allegory 365
V. Some Medieval Doctrines of Love 391
1. "Courtly Love" and Andreas Capellanus 391
2. "Courtly Love" and Courtesy 448
3. Medieval Love in Chaucer 463
Index 505
XI
PREFACE
wrote David Hume, "are so much the same, in all
times and places, that history informs us of nothing new or strange
in this particular. Its chief use is only to discover the constant and
universal principles of human nature." Although political and
social historians have long since given up the quest for "human
nature," which was, historically speaking, a substitute for Divine
Providence, as the primary goal of their researches into the past,
their colleagues among literary historians frequently assume that
literature is, in whatever time or place, a revelation of "the truth
of human passion." If Greek tragedy does not reflect the same pas
sions and emotional difficulties that we ourselves encounter, how
can it be made relevant or interesting? If Shakespeare did not grasp
universal truths of human nature, wherein does his greatness lie?
Chaucer's art, we are told by one recent writer, is "always mod
ern." Does not art transcend time and place? It is not difficult to
see that the attitude toward literature implied in these instances
may be little more than a romantic projection of the theory of his
tory embraced by Hume and his contemporaries and so brilliantly
described by Professor Carl Becker in The Heavenly City of the
Eighteenth Century Philosophers. There may be, indeed, a "heav
enly city" of more recent literary historians.
Suspicions regarding the continuity of human nature in history
as a constant have been, perhaps, most vigorously stated by his
torians of art. Wolfflin's contention that "even the most original
talent cannot proceed beyond certain limits which are fixed for it
by the date of its birth," and his elaborations of this view, have
stimulated an enormous interest in stylistic change. The problem
of identifying the source of this change, or even of discovering
other changes concomitant with it, is among the most fascinating
puzzles of modern cultural history. As Professor Gombrich re
cently observed, historians and anthropologists "would never ac
cept the idea that man has changed as much within the last three
thousand years, a mere hundred generations, as have his art and
style."1 But Professor Gombrich refers here to biological change.
1 Art ani Illusion (New York, i960), p. 22.
Vll
PREFACE
There is no evidence to indicate that the hundred generations have
produced marked changes in human biological structure. It may be,
however, that "human nature" is not altogether a matter of biol
ogy, unless we reduce it to a series of relatively simple traits,
most of which are shared to a greater or lesser extent by other
mammals. Perhaps the distinctive features of human nature are
those that arise from the character of human relationships. And
these relationships have changed, and changed enormously, with
the profound changes that have taken place in the structure of so
ciety. The importance of social change as a determining factor in
man's psychic constitution has recently been stressed in a brilliant
book by J. H. van den Berg, The Changing Nature of Man, which
sets out to show that "earlier generations lived a different sort of
life, and that they were essentially different."2 Some of the ways
in which social changes have altered human attitudes since the
Middle Ages are suggested in a recent publication in the "Tensions
and Technology Series" issued by UNESCO.3 If, as Professor van
den Berg contends, our ancestors were essentially different, we
need not assume that they exhibited the same sort of "human na
ture" which we take for granted. Their "human passions," al
though not very different from ours biologically, may have been
stimulated and elaborated in ways that seem strange to us, and their
art, in consequence, may have been appealing in ways that we do
not readily understand.
These considerations suggest that the literature of the past may
be interesting not because it is "modern," but for exactly the op
posite reason: because it is different. Perhaps the history of literary
expression may be valuable to us, not because of a monotonous
sameness, but because of a refreshing variety of attitude and tech
nique. It is not the purpose of this book to search into the. causes
of the differences between medieval and modern literature, but
simply to describe some of these differences as a background for
an approach to the poetry of Chaucer. Essentially, the chapters
which follow are concerned with perspectives, with medieval at
titudes and opinions which may be thought to account in part for
the peculiar character of medieval literature. Intellectual perspec-
2 (New York, 1961), pp. 7-8.
3 Jerome F. Scott and R. P. Lynton, The Community Factor in Modern Tech
nology (UNESCO, 1952), pp. 13-19.
