THE NEW MIDDLE AGES BONNIE WHEELER, Series Editor The New Middle Ages is a series dedicated to transdisciplinary studies of medieval cultures, with particular emphasis on recuperating women’s history and on feminist and gender analyses. This peer-reviewed series includes both scholarly monographs and essay collections. PUBLISHED BY PALGRAVE: Women in the Medieval Islamic World: Power, Crossing the Bridge: Comparative Essays on Patronage, and Piety Medieval European and Heian Japanese edited by Gavin R. G. Hambly Women Writers edited by Barbara Stevenson and The Ethics of Nature in the Middle Ages: On Cynthia Ho Boccaccio’s Poetaphysics by Gregory B. Stone Engaging Words: The Culture of Reading in the Later Middle Ages Presenceand Presentation: Women in the by Laurel Amtower Chinese Literati Tradition by Sherry J. Mou Robes and Honor: The Medieval World of Investiture The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard: edited by Stewart Gordon Perceptions of Dialogue in Twelfth-Century Representing Rape in Medieval and Early France Modern Literature by Constant J. Mews edited by Elizabeth Robertson and Understanding Scholastic Thought with Christine M. Rose Foucault Same Sex Love and Desire among Women in by Philipp W. Rosemann the Middle Ages For Her Good Estate: The Life of Elizabeth de edited by Francesca Canadé Sautman Burgh and Pamela Sheingorn by Frances A. Underhill Sight and Embodiment in the Middle Ages: Ocular Desires Constructions of Widowhood and Virginity in by Suzannah Biernoff the Middle Ages edited by Cindy L. Carlson and Angela Listen, Daughter: The Speculum Virginum Jane Weisl and the Formation of Religious Women in the Middle Ages Motherhood and Mothering in Anglo-Saxon edited by Constant J. 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Milner THE EROTICS OF CONSOLATION DESIRE AND DISTANCE IN THE LATE MIDDLE AGES Edited by Catherine E. Léglu and Stephen J. Milner palgrave macmillan THE EROTICS OF CONSOLATION Copyright © Catherine E. Léglu and Stephen J. Milner, 2008. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2008 978-1-4039-7619-2 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published in 2008 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-73787-1 ISBN 978-1-137-09741-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-09741-5 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The erotics of consolation : desire and distance in the late Middle Ages / edited by Catherine E. Léglu and Stephen J. Milner. p. cm.—(The new Middle Ages) Includes bibliographical references. 1. Literature, Medieval—History and criticism. 2. Love in literature. 3. Consolation in literature. 4. Desire in literature. I. Léglu, Catherine. II. Milner, Stephen J., 1963– PN682.L68E76 2008 8099.02—dc22 2007031593 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: April 2008 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Transferred to Digital Printing in 2013 CONTENTS Introduction: Encountering Consolation 1 Catherine E. Léglu and Stephen J. Milner Part I Consolation and Desire 1 Touching Singularity: Consolation, Philosophy, and Poetry in the French dit 21 Sarah Kay 2 The Doubled Joys of Troilus and Criseyde 39 Jessica Rosenfeld 3 The Consolation of Beatrice and Dante’s Dream of the Siren as Vilification Cure 61 Olivia Holmes 4 Yearning and Learning: Spaces of Desire in Jean Lemaire de Belges’ Concorde des deux langages (1511) 79 Adrian Armstrong 5 Coming Together: Consolation and the Rhetoric of Insinuation in Boccaccio’s Decameron 95 Stephen J. Milner Part II Consolation and Loss 6 Stoic Psychotherapy in the Middle Ages and Renaissance: Petrarch’s De Remediis 117 Letizia A. Panizza 7 Tamainte consolation / me fist lymagination: A Poetics of Mourning and Imagination in Late Medieval dits 141 Helen J. Swift viii CONTENTS 8 Horizons of Loss: Consolation and the Person in the Ackermann by Johannes von Tepl 165 Mark Chinca 9 Maternal Consolatio in Antoine de La Sale’s Le Réconfort de Madame de Fresne 185 Catherine E. Léglu 10 Boethius Goes to Court: The Consolatio as Advice to Princes from Chaucer to Elizabeth I 205 Deanne Williams Select Bibliography 227 Notes on Contributors 235 Index 237 INTRODUCTION: ENCOUNTERING CONSOLATION Catherine E. Léglu and Stephen J. Milner What is consolation? Is it the action of an individual offering solace to another? Is consolation a moment of empathy, or an expression of sympathy? Do we console someone in person in silence, through ges- ture, or through speeches? Or do we console them from a distance by sending words or things: letters, poems, or gifts? Do we imagine that these things are effective? Or can consolation only be experienced and not given? For there is a power relation at stake as I explore the hierar- chies of consoler and consoled. If I offer comfort to my friend, my role must be established in advance, my words borrowed from a common fund of expressions. I may invoke the ineffability of the other’s emotions: “I know my words cannot express your pain . . .” But if mere words can say nothing that counts, then why do we associate consolation with the sounds we make or symbolize, and why do we think a song can console, or a poem? I send my friend a picture in the hope that it may express whatever it is words cannot say. The picture has its own rhetoric, but I cannot control my friend’s reading of it. So, would my wordless presence be more consolatory than my verbose absence? After all, does consolation bring individuals together, or does it remind them that they are apart and do not know each other at all, merely bridging the gap through a fantasy of union and common experience? If I turn up at my friend’s bedside, his prison window, eremitical cell, even his tomb, what will my presence do to this other person at such a moment, in such a place? I am afraid of seeming ridiculous or (worse) voyeuristic, the passer-by gaping at the spectacle of another’s distress. My friend’s suffering becomes a pillory, and I am his torturer. Perhaps it is because I do not wish to appear to torture my friend that I chase away his music, poetry, pictures, and imag- ination, and choose to offer him stern words, a form of sharp medicine.