Recovering the Classic: Twelfth-Century Latin Epic and the Virgilian Tradition by Justin Allen Haynes A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Medieval Studies University of Toronto © Copyright by Justin Allen Haynes 2014 Recovering the Classic: Twelfth-Century Latin Epic and the Virgilian Tradition Justin Allen Haynes Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Medieval Studies University of Toronto 2014 Abstract This dissertation considers how ancient and medieval commentaries on the Aeneid can give us new insights into four twelfth-century Latin epics—the Ylias by Joseph of Exeter, the Alexandreis by Walter of Châtillon, the Anticlaudianus by Alan of Lille, and the Architrenius by John of Hauville. Virgil’s influence on twelfth-century Latin epic is generally thought to be limited to verbal echoes and occasional narrative episodes, but evidence is presented that more global influences have been overlooked because ancient and medieval interpretations of the Aeneid, as preserved by the commentaries, were often radically different from modern readings of the Aeneid. By explaining how to interpret the Aeneid, these commentaries directly influenced the way in which twelfth-century Latin epic imitated the Aeneid. At the same time, these Aeneid commentaries allow us a greater awareness of the generic expectations held by the original readers of twelfth- century Latin epic. Thus, this dissertation contributes to our understanding of ancient and medieval perceptions of the Aeneid while exploring the importance of commentaries in shaping poetic composition, imitation, and reading. The first chapter presents evidence that the allegorical interpretation of the Aeneid, as presented by Servius, Fulgentius, and ii Bernard Silvestris, served as an important structural model for the plots of the Anticlaudianus and the Architrenius. The second chapter examines how the twelfth- century understanding of history and myth in the Aeneid influenced the Alexandreis and the Ylias. The final chapter explores how these medieval epics respond to the twelfth- century ethical reading of the Aeneid and suggests possible links to modern ‘pessimistic’ interpretations of the Aeneid, building on the work done by Craig Kallendorf in The Other Virgil and Richard Thomas in Virgil and the Augustan Reception. iii Acknowledgments I would like to thank, first and foremost, my dissertation committee of David Townsend, John Magee, Alison Keith, and Jarrett Welsh. They have been tireless in their support throughout many drafts, and I consider myself enormously lucky to have had a committee both so kind and so deeply learned. Many thanks also go to Joseph Farrell and Michael Herren, my external and internal examiners respectively. They not only provided me with helpful notes which have saved me from some embarrassing blunders, but they also asked many insightful questions, which have given me some wonderful ideas for the future direction of my work. I wish also to thank my father for being a constant source of support and for proofreading each and every one of my translations from Latin into English that appear throughout this dissertation. I hasten to add, however, that any remaining errors and stylistic roughnesses are my own. I would also like to thank all of my friends and family; I could not have written this without so much love and support! Finally, I would like to offer special thanks to A.G. Rigg. While reading Tiberius Donatus’ paraphrase of the Aeneid and discussing the nature of the Aeneid’s commentary tradition with George, I began to formulate many of the ideas that have come to fruition in this thesis. Many, many thanks! iv Table of Contents Acknowledgments.............................................................................................................. iv Table of Contents ................................................................................................................ v Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 Precedents and goals ....................................................................................................... 1 The authors...................................................................................................................... 7 Dates of composition .................................................................................................... 10 Dueling/dualing poets ................................................................................................... 22 Chapter summaries........................................................................................................ 28 Texts and translations ................................................................................................... 30 Chapter 1: Allegorical Mimesis ........................................................................................ 32 The Allegorized Aeneid in the Anticlaudianus and Architrenius ................................. 32 Virgilian allegory in the Anticlaudianus and Architrenius? ......................................... 35 Reading the allegorized Aeneid as a structural model for allegorical poems ............... 40 Relating the allegoresis of the Aeneid to the plots of the Architrenius and Anticlaudianus .............................................................................................................. 44 Alan’s allegoresis of the whole Aeneid (Anticlaudianus 7-9) ...................................... 47 Aeneid 6 and Anticlaudianus 1-6: Descensus as ascent to God .................................... 56 Interpreting the structure of the Anticlaudianus ........................................................... 76 Aeneid Book 6 and the Architrenius: The philosophic descent .................................... 80 Interpreting the structure of the Architrenius .............................................................. 100 Chapter 2: Truth Behind Lies ......................................................................................... 104 Historia and Fabula in the Alexandreis and Ylias ...................................................... 104 Historia ....................................................................................................................... 113 Servius on creative anachronism ................................................................................ 115 The Aeneid and Joseph’s “true” history of Troy ......................................................... 119 Historia in the Alexandreis ......................................................................................... 127 Historia in the ecphrases of the Alexandreis .............................................................. 131 Fabula: The divine apparatus in Virgilian commentary ............................................. 136 Contextualizing the divine apparatus in later Latin epic ............................................ 142 Walter’s invocation in the Alexandreis ....................................................................... 145 The gods in the Alexandreis ........................................................................................ 148 Walter’s Servian katabasis .......................................................................................... 150 The gods in Joseph of Exeter’s Ylias .......................................................................... 154 Lucanian or Virgilian? ................................................................................................ 171 Chapter 3: Didactic Heroics ............................................................................................ 173 Ethical imitation of the Aeneid in twelfth-century epic .............................................. 173 The importance of ethics to the twelfth-century interpretation of epic ...................... 174 The legacy of antiquity on the moral character of Virgil’s Aeneas ............................ 177 Aeneas’ character in allegorizations of the Aeneid ..................................................... 184 The moral character of Virgil’s Aeneas in the twelfth century .................................. 187 Joseph of Exeter’s Aeneas .......................................................................................... 198 Virgil’s Aeneas in Walter’s Alexander? ..................................................................... 205 Alan’s allegory: Redeeming the classic ...................................................................... 215 An Epic of Everyman: the Architrenius and the Aeneid ............................................. 231 v The ‘Harvard’ school in the twelfth century? ............................................................. 242 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 244 Virgilian commentary and ‘Chartrian’ humanism ...................................................... 245 Continuity of the Virgilian tradition ........................................................................... 250 Reintegration of Medieval Latin epic into the canon .................................................. 254 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 260 Primary Sources .......................................................................................................... 260 Secondary Sources ...................................................................................................... 262 vi vii 1 Introduction Precedents and goals This dissertation focuses on four of the most influential and classicizing Latin epics from the late twelfth century. Although these epics are well-known to Medieval Latinists, their importance in the history of Latin epic has not received much acknowledgement outside of specialist studies.1 Most surveys not only of Latin epic but of the entire history of epic therefore suffer from an enormous lacuna.2 It is my hope to stimulate interdisciplinary interest in these medieval epics by situating them in the historical reception of the Aeneid. Recently, the well-known classicist Mary Beard succinctly described the imperative of reception studies for all classicists—whether we are aware of engaging in reception studies or not: The study of the classics is the study of what happens in the gap between antiquity and ourselves. It is not only the dialogue that we have with the culture of the classical world; it is also the dialogue that we have with those who have gone 1 The history of Medieval Latin epic has yet to be written. Unfortunately, the monumental scale of such an undertaking is inversely proportional to the number of Medieval Latinists. Max Manitius, in his Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1911), and F.J.E. Raby, in A History of Secular Latin Poetry in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), mention many Latin epics but they do not systematically treat them as a genre separate from other poetry. To date, the fullest and most systematic consideration of Medieval Latin epic as a genre may be found in Jan Ziolkowski’s article, “Epic,” in Medieval Latin: An Introduction and Bibliographical Guide, ed. F. Mantello and A. G. Rigg (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 547-55. See also the section subtitled “overview” in the article by John O. Ward, “After Rome: Medieval Epic,” in Roman Epic, ed. A. J. Boyle (London: Routledge, 1993), 261-7. 2 To cite but a handful of important examples, W. P. Ker’s Epic and Romance: Essays on Medieval Literature (London: 1896), in spite of frequent references to Homer and Virgil, makes not a single mention of a Medieval Latin epic. Ninety years later, the same lacuna is in evidence in J. K. Newman’s The Classical Epic Tradition (Madison: 1986), J. B. Hainsworth’s The Idea of Epic (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), and David Quint’s Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993). Failure to consider Medieval Latin epic also severely mars and distorts the conclusions of important works on classical reception in early modern epic such as Charles Martindale’s John Milton and the Transformation of Ancient Epic (Totowa, N.J.: Barnes & Noble Books, 1986); Michael Murrin’s The Allegorical Epic: Essays in its Rise and Decline (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Tobias Gregory, From Many Gods to One Divine Action in Renaissance Epic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). 2 before us who were themselves in dialogue with the classical world (whether Dante, Raphael, William Shakespeare, Edward Gibbon, Pablo Picasso, Eugene O’Neill, or Terence Rattigan).3 Considering Virgil’s almost unparalleled influence, it should be no surprise that a large subset of classical reception focuses on the reception of Virgil. Indeed, two great monuments to the medieval conception of Virgil exist in the form of Comparetti’s Virgilio nel medio evo and Jan Ziolkowski and Michael Putnam’s The Virgilian Tradition: The First Fifteen-Hundred Years.4 Whereas my own study focuses on Virgil’s poetic legacy, these books are primarily concerned with tracing how Virgil, the man and his works, was perceived in the Middle Ages. Most importantly for my argument, these books reveal how much Virgil was admired in the twelfth century: consistently ranked above all pagan poets, save Homer, and presumed to have possessed deep philosophical knowledge. The poetic reception of Virgil’s oeuvre in the Middle Ages has received less systematic treatment; most existing studies focus on instances of Virgil’s reception in vernacular poetry, not Latin. Surveys of Virgil’s reception, such as those found in the companions to Virgil published by Cambridge University Press and Blackwell, similarly ignore Latin epic composed between the fifth century and the fourteenth.5 This omission is all the more remarkable because once direct access to Homer’s epics was lost in the 3 “Do the Classics Have a Future,” The New York Review of Books, Jan. 12, 2012. Cf. Charles Martindale Redeeming the Text: Latin Poetry and the Hermeneutics of Reception (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 54: “Again—and this is one of the principal theses of the book—the reception of a text, including the poetic revisions it engenders, is inseparable, in ways that are often ignored, from our current readings of it; T.S. Eliot’s Virgil, for example, is in part created by his study of Dante’s, and in general, both through Eliot and in other ways, the Comedy has left its traces in the Aeneid as many read it today.” 4 Domenico Comparetti, Virgilio nel medio evo (Florence: B. Seeber, 1896); J. Ziolkowski and M. Putnam, eds., The Virgilian Tradition: The First Fifteen Hundred Years (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008). 5 See Joseph Farrell and Michael C. J. Putnam, eds., A Companion to Vergil's Aeneid and Its Tradition, (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010); Charles Martindale, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Virgil, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 3 West—as far as the majority of Western European poets were concerned, from approximately the fifth to the fifteenth century—the Aeneid came to define not just Latin epic, but the epic genre as a whole.6 This imbalance has resulted in scholarship which frequently assumes the “novelty” of Virgil-imitation in early modern literature, especially in epic. For example, Tobias Gregory voices a commonly held assumption when he claims that “it is the degree of formal, stylistic, and thematic imitation of classical models, the Virgilian above all, that distinguishes the epics of the Renaissance from those of the Middle Ages.” 7 By placing twelfth-century Latin epic in the context of the Virgilian tradition, I hope to begin bridging this gap in Virgilian reception scholarship, at the same time linking late antique epic to early modern epic. Besides Virgil’s unique place in the history of epic and in the twelfth-century canon, there is another reason to assume that the Aeneid was an important model for the four medieval epics in my study: the already documented fact that all four epics contain extensive verbal echoes of the Aeneid.8 Yet, the scholars who have addressed the question of Virgilian influence on twelfth-century Latin epic have concluded that Virgil’s 6 An essentially literal Latin translation of Homer did not appear, so it seems, before Boccaccio commissioned one from Leonzio Pilato in 1360. See Agostino Pertusi, Leonzio Pilato fra Petrarcha e Boccaccio; Le sue versioni omeriche negli autografi di Venezia e la cultura greca del primo umanesimo (Venezia, Rome: Istituto per la collaborazione culturale, 1964). Around the same time, of course, Western scholars were beginning to study Greek, but this knowledge was not initially wide-spread. For the claim that most people even in the sixteenth century were not well acquainted with Homer, see, for example, Christiane Deloince-Louette, Sponde: Commentateur Homère (Paris: Champion, 2001), 43. 7 From Many Gods to One, 24-5. David Wilson-Okamura, in Virgil in the Renaissance (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010), goes against the orthodoxy in stressing that “the idea of Virgil that was current in the sixteenth century is largely the same one as was current in the fourth and fourteenth centuries” (p. 8), but he still offers suggestions for concrete ways in which readings of Virgil did, in fact, change. See especially Virgil in the Renaissance, 215-47. 8 For echoes of Virgil in the Ylias, see Thomas Gärtner, Klassische Vorbilder mittelalterlicher Trojaepen (Stuttgart: B.G. Teubner, 1999). For echoes in the Alexandreis, see Heinrich Christensen, Das Alexanderlied Walters von Châtillon (Halle a.S.: Verlag der buchhandlung des Waisenhauses, 1905), 195-200. For echoes in the Architrenius, see Paul Gerhard Schmidt, ed., Architrenius (Munich: W. Fink, 1974), 57-8. For echoes in the Anticlaudianus, see Robert Bossuat, ed., Anticlaudianus: texte critique (Paris: J. Vrin, 1955), 38-9.