“Raskolnikov deftly shows how gender is staged in the context of allegorical debates on death and life. Raskolnikov’s brilliance is to show how voices are split and allocated to various figures, often personified as male and female, and how these talking figures debate not only the place and meaning of the body, but questions of moral harm and the possibility of true knowledge. These debates are hardly philosophy in a recogniz- able sense, but they do engage philosophical questions through giving voice to various gendered characters. What emerges time and again is a self in a distanced relation to itself, often embattled, often split, for these dialoguing characters are and are not sepa- rate. What becomes clear throughout these debates is that the action involved is often capricious and arbitrary, and so the question of free will, of the efficacy of human action in the face of contingency, is posed again and again in a dramatic and dialogic genre whose action or plot lacks all signs of Aristotelian likelihood and probability. The book works in a subtle and surprising way to locate gender as a point of view, showing how personifications essential to the debate genre show the contours of gender and subjec- tivity as they are assumed through speech. This is a disorientingly smart and engaging text, essential to the early modern understanding of gender.” —Judith Butler, Maxine Elliot Professor at the University of California, Berkeley “In Body Against Soul: Gender and Sowlehele in Middle English Allegory, Masha Raskol- nikov offers a theoretically bold and historically responsive understanding of the self in medieval English allegorical literature. As a historical alternative to modern psycho- analysis, sowlehele allows her to make brilliant sense of Foucault’s famous inversion of the Platonic dictum: ‘the soul is the prison of the body.’ As a literary preoccupation, sowlehele brings Raskolnikov closer than others have gotten to the strange operations of medieval prosopopeia. Persistently engaging and finely discriminating, Raskolnikov’s book-long treatment of allegory exhilaratingly shows what is so abundantly productive and useful about this hoary form.” —Carolyn Dinshaw, professor of English and social and cultural analysis, New York University “A fresh, smart look at some medieval English allegories that focus on the split self. Full of subtle readings and challenging insights.” —Barbara Newman, Northwestern University In medieval allegory, Body and Soul were often pitted against one another in debate. In Body Against Soul: Gender and Sowlehele in Middle English Allegory, Masha Raskol- nikov argues that such debates function as a mode of thinking about psychology, gen- der, and power in the Middle Ages. Neither theological nor medical in nature, works of sowlehele (“soul-heal”) described the self to itself in everyday language—moderns might call this kind of writing “self-help.” Bringing together contemporary feminist and queer theory along with medieval psychological thought, Body Against Soul examines Piers Plowman, the “Katherine Group,” and the history of psychological allegory and debate. In so doing, it rewrites the history of the Body to include its recently neglected fellow, the Soul. The topic of this book is one that runs through all of Western history and remains of primary interest to modern theorists—how “my” body relates to “me.” In the alle- gorical tradition traced by this study, a male person could imagine himself as a being populated by female personifications, because Latin and Romance languages tended to gender abstract nouns as female. However, since Middle English had ceased to inflect abstract nouns as male or female, writers were free to gender abstractions like “Will” or “Reason” any way they liked. This permitted some psychological allegories to avoid the representational tension caused by placing a female soul inside a male body, instead creating surprisingly queer same-sex inner worlds. The didactic intent driving sowle- hele is, it turns out, complicated by the erotics of the struggle to establish a hierarchy of the self’s inner powers. Masha Raskolnikov is associate professor in the Department of English at Cornell University. InterventIons: new studIes In MedIeval Culture ethan Knapp, serIes edItor Gender and Sowlehele In MIddle enGlIsh alleGory the ohIo state unIversIty press • ColuMbus Copyright © 2009 by The Ohio State University. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Raskolnikov, Masha, 1972– Body against soul : gender and sowlehele in Middle English allegory / Masha Raskol- nikov. p. cm.—(Interventions : new studies in medieval culture) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8142-1102-1 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-8142-9200-6 (cd-rom) 1. Allegory. 2. Body and soul in literature. 3. English literature—Middle English, 1100– 1500—History and criticism. I. Title. II. Series: Interventions : new studies in medieval culture. PR275.A4R37 2009 820.9'15—dc22 2009005373 This book is available in the following editions: Cloth (ISBN 978-0-8142-1102-1) CD-ROM (ISBN 978-0-8142-9200-6) Cover design by Laurence J. Nozik Text design by Juliet Williams Type set in Adobe Minion Pro Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the Ameri- can National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48–1992. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is dedicated, with love and admiration, to the memory of my father, Felix Raskolnikov (1930–2008), and, in loving gratitude for her inspiration and support, to my beautiful mother, Lenna. Con te nts Acknowledgments ix Thought Enfleshed: Philosophy and Psychology as Figured in Latin Allegory 31 Allegorizing the Split Self: A Middle English Debate Between the Body and the Soul 70 “The Soul Is the Prison of the Body”: Pedagogy, Punishment, and Self-Love in a Middle English Debate 105 Defending the Female Self: “Sawles Warde” and Sowlehele 139 Promising the Female, Delivering the Male: Transformations of Gender in Piers Plowman 168 197 Appendix In a Thestri Stude I Stod (I Stood in a Dark Place), Translation by Masha Raskolnikov 203 Bibliography 207 Index 219 aCKnowledGMents Writing for an imaginary “ideal reader” is one of the conditions of producing a long piece of writing. This book began in an attempt to respond, using medieval literature as an archive, to Judith Butler’s work on gender, embodiment, and, from my first semester in gradu- ate school onward, the question of power’s psychic life, always-already an allegorical situation; as I have moved forward on my own, it has been an honor to continue calling her my teacher. Anne Middleton has set for me an extraordinary and challenging example of scholar- ship and has given of her time, thought, and energy with an amazing generosity: she opened up the Middle Ages as a treasure trove for me, but without her guidance, I would still be lost in it. My work, both present and future, is inspired and informed by that of these advisers, both separately and in juxtaposition, in more ways than I can express. This book’s finished version owes a great deal to questions Steve Justice posed at its early stages. I would also like to thank Andy Gal- loway, Tom Hill, and Pete Wetherbee, whose examples have taught me how to be a colleague as well as a writer of books. Their insight, support, and suggestions were invaluable, as were those of my warm community of interlocutors and friends at Cornell University, partic- ularly Laura Brown, Jason Frank, Roger Gilbert, Becky Givan, Sabine Haenni, Ellis Hanson, Molly Hite, Cary Howie, Rayna Kalas, Nick Salvato, Shirley Samuels, Lyrae Van-Clief Stefanen, Amy Villarejo, Sara Warner, and Dag Woubshet, each of whom has taught me a great deal. I am grateful to Ethan Knapp for his enthusiasm for this book, which permits my study of the past to have a future. I am lucky to have many friends to thank for reading and responding to this manuscript; thanks to Greg Tomso, Elizabeth Schirmer, and Holly Crocker for their sensitive reading of chapters and support along the way to writing them. I am also deeply grateful to Kate Washington for her thoughtful editing and suggestions for revision. In the larger community of medievalists, I also owe a debt of gratitude to Bridget Balint, Louise Bishop, Rita Copeland, Jody Enders, David Hult, Brenda Machosky, Barbara Newman, Bob Mills, Tison Pugh, Elizabeth Robertson, Emily Steiner, Nicolette Zeeman, and Katherine Zieman. This gratitude is partly for the pleasure of engagement and conversa- tion, and partly because their work has in so many ways inspired my own. No acknowledgment is sufficient thanks for Katy Breen, my dissertation-writing partner. Her generosity as a reader has been, in itself, an extraordinary edu- cation, as has the privilege of listening to her think aloud through her own project. I was lucky to have had a rich, varied, and sustaining experience of graduate education at the Rhetoric Department at the University of California Berkeley: inside and outside that program, thank you, Gillian Harkins, James Salazar, Dale Carrico, Homay King, and Lon Troyer. This book would not have been completed without the love and support of a large network of friends, although being in any one place meant miss- ing those whose lives are based elsewhere. In my San Francisco life, thank you for the long, rich friendships, Kami Chisholm, Deb Cohler, Anastasia Coon, Debra Farrell, Alex Fraser, Sandra Lim, Sasha Merritt, Kate Morris, and Mazzy Thompson. For making my New York City life possible, and for years of wonderful conversation, thank you, Michele Gershberg, Cheryl Stewart, Enna Eskin, and Somjen Frazer. And, far away or close, it helps to be known by old friends: thank you, Ailsa Craig, Anna Korteweg, Emily Spring, Mark Freedman, Kristen Summers, Alec Badenoch, Sergei and Katia Kuznetsov, Alan Kanner, and Peggy Dieter. I wish there were room here to thank all of the students, both graduate and undergraduate, who challenged me to think beyond myself: nothing has pushed my thinking forward as much as engagement with all of you. I would like to thank Caetlin Benson-Allott for choosing me as her mentor. Thank you, Jamie Friedman, Angela Furry, Tricia Har, and Misty Urban for being such able research assistants and advisees. Thank you, James Lee and Luke Terlak-Poot, Michael Barany, and the rest of the 2004 “Pleasure and Danger” seminar at the Telluride Association Summer Program, and thank you to the students who took various iterations of the “Bodies in the Middle Ages” class, enriching my life by their discussion and debate.