[In the following excerpt, Arrathoon discusses and analyzes a preaching exemplum by Jacques in the context of medieval fiction that is ethically oriented.]

Tria sunt item, quae praestare debeat orator ut doceat, moveat, delectat.

Quintilian, Institutionis Oratoriae, 3. 5. 2.

In the third book of his Institutio Oratoria, Quintilian turns to the duties of the orator and to the kinds of questions an orator is likely to treat.¹ The purpose of an oration, he says, is to instruct, to move the emotions, or to delight the audience. This tripartite division of rhetorical purpose, Quintilian thinks, is better than the usual division of oratory into (1) that which relates to things, by which I assume he means objective facts, and (2) that which concerns the emotions, “because both ‘things’ and emotions will not always be present in the subjects the orator has to treat.”² While this is true enough since some orations certainly will be factual and instructive, while others will produce strong emotions, it is also true that still other speeches will both instruct and “move” the emotions at the same time and that all speeches are capable of charming or delighting the listener.

When we try to classify the generic shapes of specific works we want to choose categories that overlap with each other as little as possible in order that we may distinguish one literary kind from another. Although Quintilian's three duties of the orator are clearly capable of overlapping in any oration, I hope to show that they nevertheless provide invaluable principles for the classification of medieval narrative fictions when viewed and defined in a way that is more modern and precise than Quintilian's way of looking at them.

Quintilian's duties of the orator were passed down to the Middle Ages as part of the course in rhetoric. Rhetoric and grammar were eventually taught as accessories to dialectic which dominated the thinking of the thirteenth century. Even the narrative poetry of the period began to take its structural organization from the dialectically organized university disputation.³ The result was a blurring of the distinctions between the prodesse or ‘useful’ function of poetry and the justa persuadere or ‘persuasive’ function of rhetoric.⁴ We should not be surprised to find then that the duties of the orator were assumed by the medieval narrative poet whose recited stories were fashioned with the intention of instructing, moving, or delighting a listening audience.⁵

Since Quintilian's concern in the passage cited above is with what is expected of an orator, he does not speak of genera or kinds of orations in connection with these three oratorical purposes. In fact, ancient and medieval theoreticians never thought to classify kinds of narrative according to authorial intention. To infer a writer's intentions on the basis of the text he produces is a subtle process, requiring the tools of modern critical analysis, for unless what the critic says can be backed up by the text, it is bound to be subjective. Moreover, authors usually do not state their intentions clearly or even honestly in some cases. However, we can know what effect an author hoped his narrative would have upon his audience if we study the way in which his devices function together in the narrative as a whole. I will have much more to say about devices throughout the course of this paper. But, for the moment, let me return to Roman and medieval theoreticians who believed that poems could be distinguished from one another according to the style—humble, middle, or sublime—in which they were written.

Narratives whose aim was to instruct were supposed to be in the humble genre, with a simple, clear style that appealed to the reason. Narratives that delighted were expected to be in the middle genre, written in an adorned, charming style. These narratives would appeal to the hearer's sensibility. Finally, the kind of narrative that moved an audience was supposed to represent the sublime genre, written expressively and forcefully. It would affect the listener's will and move him to tears.⁶ As will soon become apparent, narratives that move us in Quintilian's sense of the word can make us laugh, cry, or snicker—they can even make us very angry—and so, for that matter, can narratives that teach us things. In short, the medieval genres, humble, middle, and sublime, simply don't describe medieval works in a way that enables us to distinguish them from one another. Nevertheless, as I said a little earlier, ancient and medieval rhetorical theory does offer a means for classifying narratives in a more meaningful way than even modern genre critics have done to date.

Among modern theoreticians, the emphasis has been upon the value of isolating organizing principles—that is, central principles which govern all the functions of the various parts of the work—in order to classify different kinds of stories.⁷ Mary Doyle Springer, for example, is a holistic critic who, following in the footsteps of the late Sheldon Sacks of the Chicago School, discerns “mutually exclusive principles of wholeness” amongst the contemporary stories she attempts to classify in her Forms of the Modern Novella.⁸ Although there are some things in Professor Springer's book with which I strongly disagree, her main point—that all of the devices in a story function together in the service of the organizing principle—has proven, for me at least, extremely useful. Taking the narrative aims which medieval writers inherited from Quintilian—docere, movere, or delectare—as my set of organizing principles, I found that the medieval narratives I looked at—and incidentally modern ones as well—fell into three mutually exclusive categories.

Having suggested that Quintilian's docere, movere, and delectare were by no means mutually exclusive, that in fact they were likely to overlap in any given work, let me now show why they become mutually exclusive when viewed in a more enlightened perspective than Quintilian's.

If the chief purpose of a narrative were to be instructive, then, in the jargon of holistic critics, all of its devices would theoretically function together at the service of this narrative aim. Thus while we might be emotionally moved or delighted by such a work, or both moved and delighted by it, that which moved or delighted us would be subordinate to the narrative purpose which was to instruct. As an example, most of us love a good story. The better the story, the more delighted we are. But let us suppose that the aim of that story were to point out a kind of behavior to which we were susceptible and which the author considered foolish or reprehensible. Rather than tell us directly to avoid such behavior, a skilled writer might create a character who behaved in just the way he wanted us to avoid behaving, and rather than be heavy-handed or serious about it, he might try to “move” us to laughter. Clearly, the more we laughed at the character, the more delighted or entertained we would be by the story, and the less willing we would be to behave in the foolish way the character was behaving. Thus in moving us to laughter and by entertaining us in order to reach his chief narrative goal, which was to instruct us, the author would have transformed the other two possible narrative goals—Quintilian's “movere,” and “delectare”—into devices which functioned together with all the other devices in the work at the service of the propadeuctic aim of the work.

The kind of narrative that instructs is clearly ethically oriented, by which I mean that it is concerned with the morality or wisdom of human actions or behavior. I decided to name the kind of tale which fulfilled the orator's duty to instruct (Quintilian's “docere”) “apologue” because Sheldon Sacks had already used the term to designate a form that subordinates all of its fictional devices to the making of a statement.⁹ The kinds of tales that would be included in this category are stories we call fables, exempla, parables, and apologues.

It is easy to see that there could also be non-ethically oriented narratives which were not in the least concerned with instruction.¹⁰ These kinds of stories would seek to entertain or delight an audience, and, not containing any lesson, would be quite distinct from apologues. The only tales that come to mind at the moment are jokes like La Male honte and Du chevalier qui fit. … Such narratives are non-ethically oriented because their sole purpose is to get a laugh. It is also possible, in theory at least, to have a non-ethically oriented anecdote that is primarily a mood piece, almost a lyric poem in prose. Marie's “Chievrefoil” comes close to being just that, but because “Honeysuckle” is a picture of perfect earthly love, it falls into the docere category—we learn a lot about how to love from this very short story.

It is clear that a story whose narrative aim was Quintilian's “delectare” would very likely seek to “move” us emotionally in order to achieve its special ends. But, as in apologue, the author's attempt to elicit an emotional response from us would be a device which, like all the other devices in the work, was subordinate to the chief narrative purpose. This second kind of story had no name in traditional criticism that I could find. In fact, I was hard pressed to discover good examples of the type, perhaps because, as John Gardner argued in On Moral Fiction, narratives that are not moral tend to be trivial. They are usually not great works of art.¹¹ In search of a neologism for the kind of narrative that merely seeks to delight or charm, i.e., to elicit a purely emotional response from us, I decided I needed a word with a Greek root and the suffix “logue” to complement the term “apologue.” My friend, Thomas Bergin, forthwith produced the wonderfully apropos “rhapsologue.”¹² Henceforth all those narratives whose principal aim was to inspire pity, fear, ridicule, laughter, or any other emotion rather than to teach a lesson or agitate the listener with an unresolved problem—my third kind of narrative fiction—would be “rhapsologues” in my mind.

Now it is clear that all fictions must reach us emotionally in some way in order to achieve their particular narrative goals. This being the case, then Quintilian's third oratorical aim would seem meaningless in the scheme of things I have been outlining. However, the Latin “movere” has a number of meanings which help us to discern a third mutually exclusive category of narrative fiction. The kind of story I have in mind is written by the sort of author who likes to act as a gadfly. He wants to move his audience in the sense that Latin “movere” has of ‘stirring up trouble,’ ‘tormenting,’ or ‘upsetting’ them. “Movere” has yet another meaning which very precisely describes the kind of tale I am talking about: that of ‘causing’ the hearer ‘to turn what has been said over and over in his mind,’ to ‘ponder’ the values being set forth at various levels of the narrative.¹³ As we might expect, such stories can be instructive as well as upsetting, but their didactic function is subordinate to the quizzical function, as in the case of the Yvain where what we learn about the proper uses of chivalry is overpowered by our feelings of uneasiness about what Chrestien tells us were the “good old days” when people knew how to love. Similarly, in the Chastelaine de Vergi (= ChV), although the narrator persona's lesson about discretion is useful as far as it goes, the rigidity with which he presents that lesson becomes a device, the function of which is to underscore the fact that the lesson is inappropriate to the circumstances detailed in the tale proper.

The author of my third kind of story is an agitator; he does not tell his listener what he means by his tale. On the contrary, he often lies to him, telling him anything that furthers his desire to reach his audience through indirection. But once the listener has “heard the tale with his heart” as Chrestien de Troyes' Calogrenant would say, he knows there is something wrong with the arguments that have been put before him. In a satirical story like Chrestien's tale of Calogrenant the hearer/reader may laugh heartily at the foolishness of the narrator, but once he stops laughing, he is left with a very uneasy feeling. What did it all mean? In a tragic tale like ChV, it is the sense of the narrator persona's inequity that leaves the hearer/reader feeling agitated, perhaps even enraged, if he becomes really involved in the story. The medieval listener knew the narrator persona in ChV, who was performing the tale before him, had said things that were unfair and wrongheaded. Far from being an open and shut case—an “exemplum,” or subtype of apologue, as the narrator persona calls his story at l. 951, the tale as a whole is open-ended.¹⁴ While the narrator argues that the tragic incidents of the poem are the fault of the knight who failed to keep his love affair secret, the events of the exemplum that is supposed to prove this hypothesis very plainly show that the poor knight was a victim of tragic circumstances beyond his control. It was clear to me that if this tale was an exemplum, it had been deliberately turned on its ear. I wondered if the poet had inverted the genre of his principal source, Marie de France's “Lanval,” an elegant apologue, the way he had so many of its structures.¹⁵ As it turned out, this is exactly what he had done. Although space did not permit me to analyze both ChV and “Lanval” here, it was possible to do a detailed comparison between ChV and one of Jacques de Vitry's sermon exempla. The exercise proved extremely fruitful because, in comparing and contrasting these opposing tale types, I was able to discern a watershed for the directions taken by ethically oriented narrative fiction. On the one hand was the traditional exemplary tale that teaches a lesson: the apologue; on the other hand, the quizzical story that questions its own norms and perhaps disconcerts a too complacent audience. To my surprise and delight, the medieval tales I had chosen to examine stood shimmering on the threshold of the modern novel. The gap between these stories and later representatives of the same kinds of tales suddenly closed for me because I had begun to see them all in a new perspective: from a viewpoint that was able to take in and then move beyond the idiosyncracies of individual devices and narrative surfaces.

My third kind of narrative was the most difficult to name. For a very long time I felt that it ought to be designated by some form of the word “novel” because Henry James, whose theory of the novel has traditionally set the trends in modern criticism of that form, was apparently aware of the principle I had discovered.¹⁶ Unfortunately, the term “novel,” as it is used by modern critics, is applied indiscriminately to all three of my genres of narrative fiction so that it seemed psychologically unwise to attempt to redefine it. Once again Professor Bergin came to my rescue, this time fashioning the splendid “aenigmalogue” for me: indeed, a tale that “troubles” its audience by causing them to “turn it over and over in their minds” long after the poet's voice is still—a profoundly disturbing, puzzling, enigma of a tale.

In the pages that follow, I will be concentrating upon the kinds of tales that either instruct or agitate the audience because I am only interested, for the moment, in ethically oriented fiction. It was Martianus Capella who said that in the larger sense, the result of all discourse is to raise doubts and to cause the hearer to assent to a proposition.¹⁷ I will take issue with Martianus only for not having gone far enough, because what I have found is that the chief result of all ethically oriented discourse is to raise doubts and to cause the hearer to assent to a proposition, or to raise doubts in order to undermine a proposition. In the latter case, the audience is sometimes left dangling, the problem is left unsolved, the tale remains open-ended. And it is not just the satirist who wishes to puncture myths. Literature has many moods, and artists have different temperaments. Since medieval literature in particular is a kind of game the rules of which are embedded in the text, the author is capable of donning many disguises and playing many tricks.¹⁸ He may tell us the truth if he plays the preacher, but he can choose to play any part he wishes because he is the master of the game. One thing we as readers can do is to study the way in which his devices function within the text as a whole. Is he being ironic? Or can he be being serious? If ironic, why? to what purpose? How does this instance of irony affect our view of his characters? of his narrator? the way we view the text as a whole? What is he trying to say to us, and why can't he just say it and be done with it?

Fortunatus said the rhetor veiled his thought on account of modesty or fear or both.¹⁹ Medieval writers believed that veiled thought was superior to plain speech when the lesson to be learned was precious. They spoke enigmatically in order that the unworthy might not besmirch the bright truth that lay hidden beneath the veil of fiction.²⁰ But sometimes, as in the case of Chrestien's tale of Calogrenant, the truth might be so painful for the audience to hear that they would not hear it unless it were veiled. This is usually the reason for an author's choice of indirection. Human defensiveness does not allow us to see our own faults unless we can forgive ourselves for them. An author lets us forgive ourselves by showing us a character who behaves like us. We laugh at the character because we see ourselves in him, but, at the same time, we stand back and deny that we ever behaved like that. That we fault the fictional character for the vices that lie within ourselves is healthy and good because it allows us space to grow and change.

Satire, tragedy, comedy, irony, and allegory have variously been called genres and modes throughout the ages. Without wishing to quarrel with these terms, I do know that I have found in my enquiry into the kinds of stories that either instruct or agitate an audience that satire, tragedy, comedy, irony, and allegory have all turned out to be devices that function at the service of the narrative purpose. For this reason, I would like to call them “moods.” In Volume 2, Chaucer and the Craft of Fiction, I will be focusing upon Chaucer's Merchant's Tale which is a very sophisticated apologue that proceeds, as aenigmalogues usually do, through indirection. An example of remarkable sustained irony, and thus of indirection, this tale communicates its statement through a complex allegorical system that nevertheless spoke very clearly to Chaucer's audiences. After analyzing this tale, it becomes clear that although the mood of the story is satiric, Chaucer's aim is not merely to ridicule his Merchant narrator. Rather, he is concerned with the proper uses of marriage as these relate to the attainment of the supreme Good, which is God. As Professor Springer was at pains to demonstrate in her book, “satires” usually have a moral standard built into them, and the good in these works is not only visible, but conspicuous.²¹ The purpose of satiric narrative then is to instruct or to question through the devices of irony and ridicule and the use of a moral standard against which to measure the ridiculed object. The same is true in narratives we call tragedies and comedies. Unless the tragic or comic narrative is non-ethically oriented, i.e., purely for entertainment and nothing else, then the pity, fear, laughter, and tears we are made to experience are all a means to an end. We either learn something from the experience of such narratives, or else we are left to puzzle out a meaning the author never tells us.

Before turning to Jacques de Vitry's preaching exemplum, it is perhaps expedient to address the objections of the many critics who believe that genres are in a constant state of flux and that literary kinds may be distinguished from one another on the basis of their content. What I am arguing here is that there are only three kinds of narrative fiction and that these appear to remain constant throughout literary history.

First a word about content as a basis for generic classification. If we accept the concept that a genre is a form, it is illogical to classify a literary kind according to what the story is about. As far as I am concerned, genres are shapes, formal constructs or “moulds,” to use Henry James' word for it,²² into which the author pours his thoughts, if I may be permitted the metaphor. Because unconscious human thought tends to be fragmentary, the writer needs these forms in order to limit and direct his artistic choices. Thus while it is perfectly true that devices and the anecdotal content or the superficial trappings of narratives come and go with the ebb and flow of cultures, the generic categories I have been describing here do not vary, being fundamental to the way in which the human mind deals with complex verbal constructs. Once I had selected the moral thrust of the work as my organizing principle, the resulting paradigm revealed itself to be extremely flexible. The author could use any devices he chose, as long as these devices functioned together in the service of the narrative purpose. In both kinds of ethically oriented tales I had chosen to focus upon—apologue and aenigmalogue—the behavior of the characters could have tragic, comic, or ridiculous consequences, and, in both kinds of tales, the attitude of the author or narrator towards his characters might be caring or detached. In other words, both the apologue and the aenigmalogue could be composed in any mood the author liked without his having to alter the generic paradigm within which he had chosen to work. It seemed that I had discovered a fundamental pattern for the process of literary creation. The pattern I was observing appeared to reflect the way in which the mind of the literary artist organizes formless thought and disparate narrative materials into mutually exclusive communicable wholes. It was so simple that the reader had no difficulty in correctly apprehending the narrative and yet so complex that the author could create within his chosen paradigm to his heart's content.

Critics will argue that stories with special names and distinctive surfaces, like lays and fabliaux, form generic categories of their own. Nevertheless, when we think about it, this isn't true. Most of Marie de France's lays, for example, are really elegant apologues. As with “Chievrefoil,” we learn a great deal from the experience of these stories whose protagonists serve as exempla of the kinds of behavior to emulate or avoid in love and marriage. As for the fabliau, ‘little fable,’ the name of this type of tale may be ironic because some fabliaux, far from being moralistic are ribald stories. But, whether or not the tale is naughty, it is the form of the story, not its content, that determines its generic shape. Thus if a given fabliau turns out to be a purely delightful ribald tale, then it is non-ethically oriented—a rhapsologue. If it instructs us in some way—and Roy Pearcy's paper shows that the sentence of a number of fabliaux involves a lesson in expediency or practical wisdom—it is an apologue.²³ Finally, if it is open-ended or enigmatic, designed like ChV to agitate its public, it is an aenigmalogue.

To illustrate the importance of logical classification in genre studies, let me quote Hans Robert Jauss' opinion of Jean de Meun's portion of the Roman de la Rose: the book is, he tells us, “du genre de l'encyclopédie laïque” … “où se croisent—réunies dans le cadre traditionnel de l'allégorie amoureuse—des formes de la satire et de la parodie, de l'allégorie morale et de la mystique (à la suite de l'école de Chartres) du traité philosophique et des scènes de comédie. …”²⁴ In the first place, the encyclopedia is not a fictional genre, and Jean de Meun's book is eminently fictional. Further, I have explained why, from my point of view, allegory and satire are moods, or bundles of devices which are subordinate to the moral thrust of the work, and not genres. Parody, of course, is a device, and mysticism and philosophy are matters of content, not form. This lumping together of moods, devices and subject matter results in Jauss' viewing great literary masterpieces as generic salads, and this kind of thinking impedes our understanding and appreciation of the artistry of medieval narrative. For it is certain that Jean de Meun had a definite purpose in mind to which all the other materials in his book are subordinate. Charles Muscatine, for example, has called Jean's Roman an overt and serious disputation.”²⁵ As I have already suggested, it was the medieval university disputation that served as the exemplar for much medieval moral fiction, open-ended tales being the most faithful to the spirit of their non-fictional model because they stimulate inquiry into the truth, while propadeuctic tales are presentations or representations of moral truths.²⁶ Surely it is in the Boethian construction—the juxtaposed dramatic monologues of the various characters, Reason, Friend, False Seeming, Nature, Genius, the Duenna, which form a dialectic on the proper uses of love and generation—that the unifying principle of the Roman is to be found and hence the generic category of the work.

While I agree with Jauss that “Entre les formes et les genres du Moyen Age et la littérature actuelle, il n'existe pas de continuité historique visible ou réperable,”²⁷ (italics mine), I hope to show that there is indeed an invisible continuity; that the forms of medieval narrative fiction are very much those of modern fiction. What differs is the content, the thematic preoccupations of the age, and some of the devices, though not all.

If my explanation of the genres of medieval narrative fiction has appeared somewhat simple, the business of classifying actual stories is extremely complex, requiring an intimate knowledge of the author's devices and the way in which these function together within the work as a whole. One thing, however, makes the task easier: although the apologist and the “aenigmologist” may employ the same devices—a formal quaestio or disputation topic posed within the tale proper, a dialectical gross structure, unreliable narrators, allusiveness to create that telescopic kind of narrative economy so typical of the best medieval tales, bits of lyric poetry enchased within the story, rhetorical constructs such as exempla, enthymemes, epicheiremes, and figures of thought and diction—these function in entirely opposite ways, depending upon whether the narrative is an apologue or an aenigmalogue. Thus, while the appearance of an unreliable narrator in a tale does not ensure that the narrative is an aenigmalogue, the function of that unreliable narrator within the generic paradigm helps to classify the work. For example, the ChV narrator persona adopts a patently untenable stance against the male protagonist. Because, as we shall see, all the other devices in the story function together to undercut the narrator persona's condemnation of the knight, his “lesson” or “exemplum” as he calls it is rendered irrelevant. The tale is an aenigmalogue because the public is left to ponder an insoluble issue. Chaucer's Merchant narrator is also unreliable, for while claiming that women are responsible for the woe that is in marriage, the tale he tells clearly demonstrates that lecherous men are the cause of their own marital misery.²⁸ The reason Chaucer's narrative is not an aenigmalogue is that all the devices in the tale, including the unreliable narrator, are made to function at the service of a complex moral statement which is clearly communicated through the intricately wrought allegorical system of the work.

In short, because the same device functions differently within different generic paradigms, the way it functions may be considered a clear generic signal.²⁹ This being the case, I would like to focus upon just a few of these signals to show how they work in two opposing tale types, Jacques de Vitry's exemplum about Aristotle being ridden by one of Alexander's concubines, and ChV. Among the devices I have singled out are the relation of the frame or prologue-epilogue arrangement to the tale, the degree to which the reader is made to sympathize with or “care” about the characters,³⁰ the reliability of the narrator, the organization of fundamental concepts and of the diction deployed to evoke those concepts, and the use of allusion and lyric. Ideally we would expect to find an identity between the frame and the tale it encloses, that the narrator is thoroughly trustworthy, that we are kept at a fair distance from the characters—if their behavior is reprehensible—that allusions to other texts and lyric bits lend authority to the “lesson,” or moral, and that the organization of important concepts and the key words used to accent these concepts—the verbal structure or “conjointure”³¹—drive home the main point in propadeuctic narrative. By contrast, one would expect that in open-ended narrative the frame would jar with the tale, as it does in ChV, allusions and lyric would undermine the narrator, as they do in ChV, that we would be made to care very much for the wronged characters, as we are for the ChV knight, and that the verbal conjointure would underline the fact that the central problem has no solution, thus keeping the audience in a state of anxiety, which once again turns out to be the case in ChV.

However, the fact of the matter is that ChV is an ideal specimen, which is why I have chosen to analyze it. In the hands of an extremely skilled apologist like Geoffrey Chaucer, the aenigmologist's devices may be made to serve the moral to the apologue. Thus we get not only unreliable narrators teaching us a moral lesson in spite of themselves, but the whole bag of aenigmologist's tricks to undercut that narrator—allusions he doesn't understand, lyric he debases because he is too crass to appreciate it, the use of outlandish language or dramatic impropriety, and the mock moral.

It was probably because Saint Augustine was disposed to accept rhetoric among other worldly devices as a viable method for communicating the word of God that the exemplum became something of an institution during the Middle Ages. Indeed, it would be difficult to imagine a medieval treatise or literary piece of any seriousness that did not employ examples to illustrate the argument or theme of the work. The subject matter of these anecdotes was rich and varied, being drawn from the nearly inexhaustible wealth of story materials that flooded Western Europe: eastern apologue, biblical narrative, classical myths and fables, histories and religious tales of all kinds were all pressed into service by writers and moralists alike.³² But whatever the content of the exemplum, its structure was rhetorical in origin, ultimately stemming from Greek oratory.

In Book 1 of his treatise, the “Art” of Rhetoric, Aristotle defined the exemplum as one of two viable modes of rhetorical demonstration: “Now all orators produce belief by employing as proofs either examples or enthymemes i.e., rhetorical syllogisms and nothing else. …”³³ In recording how central the exemplum was to rhetorical argumentation as practiced in his day, Aristotle was to ensure its role at the very core of literature, because all narrative fiction tends to be “exemplary,” being fundamentally an anecdotal art of persuasion.³⁴ As I said earlier, even enigmatic fictions set examples for us, although this kind of story is distinguished by the fact that, despite its exemplary qualities, some basic issue is left unresolved or is resolved in such a way that nothing in the narrative tells us what the right solution might have been. Thus, for example, Yvain learns the proper uses of chivalry, but his relationship with Laudine, which is one of the focal points of the narrative—indeed the prologue is about love during the golden age of chivalry—left a great deal for a courtly public to wonder and argue about.³⁵

The classical exemplum, it must be remembered, was often precisely an “example,” that is, a very brief evocation of real or fictional authorities, places, or events to illustrate an abstract point. Such an example could be as short as a proper name or a proverb and as long as a fable. While it never achieved the status of a literary genre, the exemplum in the hands of medieval apologists became an extended dramatized narrative with surprisingly developed literary qualities.³⁶

With this necessarily brief account of the exemplum, let me turn to Jacques de Vitry's retelling of the tale of Aristotle being ridden by Alexander's wife. The piece is found in the Sermones Feriales et Communes (ca. 1229-40) and is based upon Henri d'Andeli's Lai d'Aristote (before 1225).³⁷ Exhibiting marked literary qualities, among which, its rhetorical balance, the use of lively, believable bits of dialogue, and the freshness of its very brief descriptive material, de Vitry's exemplum is typical of the kind of highly developed little narratives found in other medieval collections such as Le cento novelle antiche o Libro di novelle e di bel parlare gentile detto anche Novellino, whose diminutive tales are remarkable for their compression.³⁸ The exempla of the “Novellino” are viewed by Italian critics as precursors of the Boccaccesque tale, and, as I hope to show, the narrative technique of the French preaching exemplum is very much related to that of the early French apologue and aenigmalogue. But let us eavesdrop on the sermonist as he endeavors to wake up his congregation:

DE ARISTOTILE ET UXORE ALEXANDRI

… in Ecclesiastico: “Qui se iungit fornicariis, erit nequam” et Apostolus Ia ad Corinthios: “Modicum fermentum totam massam corrumpit.” Quod certo experimento, ut dicitur, probavit Aristotiles. Qui instruens Alexandrum adhuc adolescentem inter alia dixit ei, ut non multum frequentaret uxorem suam quam nimis diligebat, eo quod pulcerrima erat. Cumque se a frequentibus eius amplexibus subtraheret, illa valde cepit dolere et studiose inquirere, unde proveniret in viro suo tanta et tan subita mutacio. Cumque pro certo didicisset quod magister eius Aristotiles istud procurasset, post multas cogitaciones et cordis anxietates viam et modum repperit, quibus se de Aristotile vindicaret. Et cepit ipsum frequenter intueri deambulans in orto; et respiciens per fenestram camere in qua studebat homo ille, et oculis ridentibus et verbis lascivie cepit robur eius emollire; et aliquando discalciata et vestes elevans atque tibias denudans coram ipso ambulabat. Et ita in amorem et concupiscenciam suam mentem eius enervatam voluntati. Cui illa respondit: “Credo quod temptare me vis et decipere. Nullo enim modo credere possem quod homo tanta sapientia preditus talia vellet attemptare.” Cumque ille perseveraret pulsans, dixit illa: “In hoc sciam quod ex corde me diligis, si ea que tibi dixere pro amore meo facere non recusaveris. Cras hora matutina domino meo adhuc dormiente ad me in ortum istum exibis et super pedes et manus ambulando, ut te quitare possim, incurvaberis.” Cum autem miser carnali concupiscencia captivatus, illectus et abstractus consensisset, illa voti compos effecta accessit ad Alexandrum et ait illi: “Cras mane parati estote, et videbitis, utrum magistro vestro qui a vobis alienare me volebat, credere debeatis!” Cum igitur mane facto regina Aristotilem equitaret, rege superveniente et ei improperante ac mortem comminante, post multam erubescenciam et confusionem ad se tendem reversus magister respondit: “Nunc pro certo perpendere debes, quod fideliter adolescencie tue consului. Si enim versucia mulieris et malicia tantum prevaluit, quod senem et prudentissimum inter omnes mortales decepit et captivum duxit, et qui multis et magnis conclusi magistris michi conclusit: quanto magis te decipere, allicere et circumvenire prevaleret, nisi exemplo meo tibi caveres.” Quo audito rex ira sedata magistro suo prudenter respondenti pepercit.

According to Eccles. 19: 3, “And he that joineth himself to harlots will be worthless, and the Apostle Paul in 1 Cor. 5:6, “[Know you not that] a little leaven is enough to leaven the whole batch!” In fact Aristotle demonstrated it by certain proof, so the story goes. Instructing Alexander, when he was still a young man, he said to him, among other things, that he should not frequent one of his wives so much whom he loved excessively because she was very beautiful. And when [Alexander] drew away from her frequent embrace, she began to grieve exceedingly and to enquire anxiously how such a great and sudden change had come over her husband. But when she found out for certain that [it was] his tutor Aristotle who had brought it about, after much thought and anxiety she discovered a way to get even with Aristotle. And strolling in the garden, she began to gaze upon the master him[self]. Frequently looking through the window of the room in which the man studied she began to weaken his will with smiling eyes and lascivious words. And she would walk barefoot from time to time, lifting her dress and revealing her legs in front of him. And she even led his weakened mind into such a state of love and desire for her that he began asking [her] to comply with his wishes. [Then] she replied to him, “I think you wish to tempt and deceive me. For in no way could I possibly believe that a man endowed with so much wisdom should wish to seduce someone like me.” As he persisted, she said, “In this I shall know that you love me sincerely, if you do not refuse to do what I shall ask [of] you for Love's sake. Tomorrow at matins, while my lord is still sleeping, you will come to me to this garden, [and you will] bend [over] so that I may ride you like a horse.” However, when the unhappy man, seized by carnal desire [led astray and witless] consented, having gratified her wish, she went to Alexander and said to him, “Tomorrow morning be ready and you will see whether you ought to believe your tutor who wanted to alienate me from you!” Thus, when it was morning, the queen rode on Aristotle's back with the king arriving unexpectedly and abusing him, threatening death to him. Returning at last to his senses after much blushing and confusion, the master answered, “Now surely you must consider how faithfully I was watching out for your youth. If indeed the malice and cunning of the woman so prevailed that she deceived and held an old man captive, the most prudent of all mortals, and who has argued with many great masters, it demonstrated to me how much more power she might have over you [whom she could so much more easily] deceive, allure, and defraud, unless you guard against her [through] my example.” When he heard this, the king's anger was assuaged, and he spared his tutor who was replying so prudently.³⁹

Unlike modern narrative where the prologue-epilogue arrangement has been subsumed by the story, medieval narratives very frequently were framed by thematic materials. This device of conditioning the public to respond to the tale in certain ways is significant for determining the generic category of the tale depending upon the way in which it functions. In the case of the sermon exemplum, the public is given a theme to contemplate, and that theme is then illustrated by the tale. In the aenigmalogue, the frame may be made to jar visibly with the tale, as in ChV, where the so-called exemplum seriously undermines the lesson being taught in the prologue and epilogue.

The frame of de Vitry's preaching exemplum is made up of those general remarks, proverbs and maxims surrounding the anecdote enchased within the larger sermon. In this particular exemplum, since the editor was interested primarily in the stories themselves, we have the preacher's opening commentary, but not the moralizing remarks which perhaps followed the relation of Aristotle's misadventure. As stated in the text, the purpose of the tale about to unfold will be to illustrate two biblical aphorisms: (1) that lust, or “the joining of oneself to harlots,” renders all men worthless (Eccles. 19:3) and (2), that “a little leaven is enough to leaven the whole batch” (1 Cor. 5:6) by which Saint Paul meant that a fornicator must be excommunicated from among the Corinthians lest he contaminate all of them. At the very outset of the exemplum proper, then, the pagan Aristotle is made to assume a Jeromian stance when he warns Alexander not to be a too ardent lover of his wife.⁴⁰ Since the formidable seductive powers of Alexander's queen are able to confound the reason of Aristotle himself, the most rational of men, “prudentissimum inter omnes mortales,” the exemplum illustrates very well how a little leaven can make the whole batch rise and that women are potentially dangerous to a man's soul. So treacherous is this woman that she even succeeds in causing a momentary rift between her powerful husband and his famous tutor. Alexander's queen is obviously the leaven “fermentum” in the tale. Because we are made to see how carnal desire confuses both Aristotle's and Alexander's judgment, the story certainly demonstrates how great a danger woman, as sex object, is to all men, if even the most prominent representatives of clerisy and chivalry from one of the greatest civilizations in human history, become weak and worthless in her power. In short there is an absolute identity between what the preacher/narrator tells us in the frame and what his exemplum shows us.⁴¹ As in other medieval exempla, the anecdote serves as a paradigm for future human conduct. The listener learns what to expect from the fair descendants of Eve and how to guard against the wiles of women by avoiding their frequent perilous embrace.

The exemplum proper begins with an admonition by Aristotle to his pupil, Alexander, to avoid the woman, and it ends with a second admonition, this time offering reasons demonstrated by Aristotle's fall, for avoiding the woman: “quanto magis te decipere, allicere et circumvenire prevaleret, nisi exemplo meo tibi caveres.” In a word, the gross structure of this exemplum forms three concentric circles: the biblical maxims of the frame, introducing the tale, and which probably found an echo in the continuation of the sermon, surround Aristotle's warnings against the woman, which, in turn, enclose Aristotle's own experience as irrefutable proof: “Quod certo experimento … probavit Aristotiles” and “nisi exemplo meo tibi caveres.” It is not unusual to find this kind of structure in short narrative. We will see it again in ChV for example. But when we come to study that aenigmalogue, it will become apparent that while the frame structure will still describe a circle, the “lesson” to be gleaned from the inscribed “exemplum” will be at odds with that of the frame. In other words, although the frame and the tale have the same gross structural configuration in both the exemplum and the aenigmalogue, this device functions in opposite ways in the two kinds of narrative.

The second most significant device I would like to examine here is that of making the reader care for certain characters, or, alternately, keeping him at a fair emotional distance from them. The characters in the Aristotle exemplum are much more vivid than was usual in the classical rhetorical exemplum, but, for all that, they are still extremely flat.⁴² We are never allowed to develop any sympathy for them. Rather we are expected to accept unquestioningly the authority of the preacher/narrator and to identify with either Alexander or Aristotle. If anything, we are supposed to be terrorized by what the woman represents. As the Wyf of Bath's fifth husband, the good clerk Jankyn, knew, lechery, even with a wife, imperils the soul. “Never give thy soul into a woman's power, and let her command the fortress of it, to thy shame” (Eccles. 9:2)!

If we are kept at a fair emotional distance from the “harlot” in the story, her wicked power is nevertheless colorfully described in a lively gesture portrait. As in the fictional gospels of the Apocryphal New Testament, the preacher lingers over the description of the temptation. This is because he wishes to dramatize, as graphically as possible, how dangerous the woman is. She must be made to seem so delightful that even the congregation is tempted by her. As the late Salvatore Battaglia explained in his Giovanni Boccaccio …,⁴³ medieval man did not shrink from the Enemy (i.e., the Devil) rather he believed it was necessary to confront evil in order to be truly good. Except for the narrator's explanation that Alexander loved her because she was so beautiful, the portrait of the queen is all gesture: “deambulans in orto,” “respiciens per fenestram,” “oculis ridentibus et verbis lascivie,” “discalciata et vestes elevans atque tibias denudans.” This dramatization of her seductive power through the crystallization of her gestures is preceded by an inside view of her maliciousness, a technique the ChV poet uses in his handling of the duchess, another of Eve's literary sisters: “post multas cogitaciones et cordis anxietates viam et modum repperit, quibus se de Aristotile vindicaret” (cf. ChV ll. 551-64, where the duchess plots how to get the secret out of the duke by using the wiles of her sex).⁴⁴ This inside view of Alexander's queen and the gesture portrait are capped with a sample of her deceitful words to Aristotle: “Credo quod temptare me vis et decipere” (!) (Again, compare her taunt, “In hoc sciam quod ex corde me diligis, si ea que tibi dixere pro amore meo facere non recusaveris” with the ChV duchess's temptation of the duke, ll. 577 ff.). Of course, ironically, it is the woman who seeks to tempt and deceive, not poor old Aristotle. Finally, having dealt with the master, we witness her manipulation of the pupil. We hear her prick Alexander to come see for himself whether or not Aristotle is to be trusted. Thus we have seen and heard how this “harlot” degrades men, makes wise men behave foolishly and turns them against one another through her treachery. We are now fully prepared for Aristotle's condemnation of her: “Si enim versucia mulieris et malicia tantum prevaluit … quanto magis te decipere etc. …” The preacher/narrator has carefully calculated his audience's response to the woman: she corrupts and must therefore be avoided, no matter how beautiful, regardless of how tempting.

It must be clear from all I have been saying that the reliability of the preacher/narrator is unimpeachable. Every word that drips from his lips is THE TRUTH. Even so, the narration of this exemplum is a bit more complex than at first appears. Ostensibly, the tale is told by de Vitry, whose vision is omniscient (he sees into the minds and hearts of his characters and he knows how all men and women behave). However, the experience he relates is Aristotle's, and it is his example from which we must profit. Thus, to resort to Jamesian terminology, when Aristotle's discovery in the garden by his young, irate pupil, Alexander, embarrasses him into recovering his senses, he becomes a “reflector” for the preacher. Our extended inside view of his temptation establishes him as a second narrator. In fact, his personal experience, as dramatized for us in the story, coupled with his renown as the wisest man, makes Aristotle a more reliable witness than de Vitry himself: “Quod certo experimento … probavit Aristotiles.” Coming from Aristotle, then, the condemnation of the woman carries enormous authority: “If she deceived me, who am the wisest of men, then how dangerous she must be to simple men!”

A number of critics have remarked that the novella seems to have a polarized structure which revolves about a central symbol.⁴⁵ Nevertheless, as I hope will become apparent by the end of this paper, while this kind of structure may be typical of a number of short narratives, it is not generically significant in and of itself. However, the way in which the tension between the narrative poles is maintained or resolved may signal generic differences. In the exemplum we are examining, Alexander represents the chivalric pole while the significantly more loquacious Aristotle stands for the clerical pole of the tale. Critics who look for central symbols in short fictions would perhaps find that this story revolves about the woman, or Eve figure at its center as she casts her malicious spell over both knight and cleric alike. Certainly it is significant that although there is a certain amount of tension between the two men because of the woman, this conflict is resolved when Aristotle manages to demonstrate through his own foolishness the truth of the lesson he had attempted to teach his pupil at the beginning of the story. It is because the initial polarization or dialectic is resolved that we cannot apprehend this tale as anything but exemplary. If the author pitted the world's greatest philosopher against the world's greatest knight, it was because the knight and the cleric represented the highest professional goals that medieval society had to offer. If these two great pagan authorities could arrive at the same conclusion as the narrator/preacher, namely that woman (i.e., lechery) is to be avoided, then what must the common man think except that this is the absolute truth?

The polarization between clerisy and chivalry forms part of the rhetorical balance one finds in many well-wrought tales throughout the early history of western narrative. Major concepts, sometimes embodied by characters, tend to be juxtaposed to one another. Naturally, such antitheses are reflected in the diction that is used to express these concepts. Thus in the Aristotle exemplum, adolescens and rex are set in opposition to magister, senex, and prudentissimus. …

Although, as I said before, the tale might be said to revolve about the woman, my diagram of the verbal structure depicts the medieval listener at the very heart of the tale. The reason for this is that the preacher has deliberately involved his listener as deeply as possible in the narrative by claiming that apprehension of the meaning will determine the destiny of his mortal soul. By employing characters with whom this implied listener would have identified, the narrator ensures the involvement he seeks from his audience. The fact that the usually prudent Aristotle and the more sensuous Alexander find themselves in the same dilemma, and that that dilemma is one which the medieval Christian listener was certain to have experienced himself, shows that no matter how disciplined or what the estate of the man in question, he is still capable of losing his soul through the sin of fornication.

A little thought quickly reveals that whereas the polarization of concepts in the de Vitry exemplum is intentional, the antithetical treatment of diction is sporadic and unsystematic, indicating that it was probably unconscious. By contrast, the rhetorical patterning of the diction in ChV is both intricate and deliberate, as we will see presently.

In addition to antitheses as both figures of thought and figures of speech, the little sermon exemplum we have been examining utilizes the kind of convoluted repetition typical of rhetorical argumentation and which was to become a major device in narrative fiction.⁴⁶ Through the figures of thought known as commoratio, or dwelling on the point, and expolitio, refining or polishing an idea through varied repetition, the main theme of the exemplum, the treacherousness of the woman, is reworked again and again, but in such varied ways that we do not notice how the point is being driven home. The theme is introduced in a general way via the two biblical maxims of the frame. Our first glimpse of the queen's feminine wiles comes very early on when, through the narrator, we enter her mind as she realizes Alexander suddenly shrinks from her embrace. Through the preacher, we see the lustful strumpet's tearful efforts to discover the reason for his behavior, and we become a party to her vengeful nature. Such an inside view would immediately have evoked in the medieval listener's mind a certain type of woman. We have already seen how through a gesture portrait and two snatches of her conversations with Aristotle and Alexander we are made to see and hear how dangerous she is. All these instances are examples of varied repetition or expolitio, and, of course, of dwelling on the point. Further, by dramatizing her corruption of the two men, the point is made yet again. After so many repetitions in such varied guises, Aristotle's warning has the force of truth. In short, the public has been artfully manipulated and persuaded. Alexander's queen, upon whom this narrative centers, becomes an emblem for all the mischief of which womankind is capable.

Naturally, a good deal of the persuasive force of the piece is lost on us moderns because most of us, at least, no longer harbor superstitious fears of women. Moreover, in this egocentric age we live in, it is difficult for us to visualize human beings as pure types in the manner of a theocentric culture like that of medieval Europe. Neither do we fancy being visibly manipulated by an intrusive author/narrator. Nevertheless, if we are to enter into the medieval imagination, it is necessary to understand and to accept as viable literary devices, these fundamental, albeit dated, features of the psychology and style of the age.

By now I hope it is clear that in spite of its sermonizing tone, the exemplum we have been examining is a piece of literature. Its dramatic qualities, at least partly attributable to the connection between pulpit and stage, the economical description of gestures, rudimentary dialogue, and inside views of the characters' minds are all “novelistic” techniques, that is, devices characteristic of those fully developed fictional narratives I call apologues and aenigmalogues. The polarization of concepts and of the words which express these concepts, around a central character or emblem, is a structure derivable from classical forensic rhetoric or legal narrative, where the lawyer had to argue round and round the point adjudicate.⁴⁷ It is this distinctive rhetorical patterning which was to become typical of much short narrative fiction. However, the verbal system of correspondences, usually a network of synonyms and antonyms, has a very special function in an aenigmalogue like ChV. Whereas the apologist may use convoluted repetition to get his statement across, the function of expolitio in the aenigmalogue is to dwell upon both sides of a question, as in a medieval disputation, so that the central problem is never resolved.

Notes

1. ed. H. E. Butler, 1 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965), 399-401. The questions an orator may treat are either legal or rational. These questions in turn are divided into indefinite questions (which the Greeks call “theses” and the Romans call propositions, general or philosophical questions) and definite questions (for which the Greek word is “hypotheses,” and the Roman word, “causes”). An indefinite question, or thesis, is non-specific as in “Should a man marry?” A definite question, or hypothesis, is specific as in “Should Cato marry?” For a more detailed discussion of oratorical theses and hypotheses, see Wesley Trimpi, Muses of One Mind: The Literary Analysis of Experience and Its Continuity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), pp. 3-79. I wish to thank Professor Trimpi for his useful comments on the rough draft of this paper. I am also grateful to Peter Haidu whose comments and suggestions proved very helpful indeed.

2. Quintilian, p. 397.

3. See Tony Hunt, “The Dialectic of Yvain,” Modern Language Review 72 (1977), 285-99 and “Aristotle, Dialectic, and Courtly Literature,” Viator 10 (1979), 95-129.

4. Edgar De Bruyne, Etudes d'esthétique médiévale: De Boèce à Jean Scot Erigène, 1 (Bruges: “De Tempel,” 1946), 46.

5. ibid., 1:60.

6. ibid., 1:235.

7. On organizing principles, see Sheldon Sacks, Fiction and the Shape of Belief (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1964), John F. Reichert, “Organizing Principles and Genre Theory,” Genre 1 (1968), 1-12, Judith Leibowitz, Narrative Purpose in the Novella (The Hague: Mouton, 1974), E. San Juan, Jr., “Notes Toward a Clarification of Organizing Principles and Genre Theory,” Genre 1 (1968), 257-68, Mary Doyle Springer, Forms of the Modern Novella (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975).

8. op. cit., n. 7, p. 22.

9. Springer, p. 22.

10. Glending Olson, Literature as Recreation in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982). See also Roy J. Pearcy, “Sentence and Solas in the Old French Fabliaux,” The Craft of Fiction: Essays in Medieval Poetics, pp. 231-80.

11. (New York: Basic Books, 1978), pp. 5-6.

12. Private conversation in February 1984.

13. My definitions of movere are taken from John C. Traupman, The New College Latin and English Dictionary (New York: Amsco School Publications, 1966).

14. See Emilie P. Kostoroski, “Quest and Query and the Chastelaine de Vergi,” Medievalia et Humanistica, n.s., 3 (1972), 179-97.

15. See Arrathoon, “The Elegant Apologues of Mary of France,” to be published.

16. Henry James also seems to have been aware of the docere-movere dichotomy because, in the critical prefaces he distinguishes between “obvious apologues” like “Flickerbridge” and “The Story In It,” which he describes as a “deep and straight … dive into the deep sea of a certain general truth …” (Theory of Fiction: Henry James, ed. James E. Miller, Jr. [Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1972], pp. 284-5) and Daisy Miller, which I would consider an aenigmalogue and which James calls a “shapely nouvelle.” In fact, in his preface to this tale, James wrote of his heroine that she was “… a figure of which the only fault is touchingly to have transmitted so sorry a type to have, by a poetic artifice, not only led our judgment of it astray, but made any judgment quite impossible.” (p. 269) Finally, James' constant concern for the story shows his awareness of the third medieval narrative purpose, entertainment (delectare).

    While finding the kind of obviously manipulative rhetoric used by medieval writers distasteful—the “goody” moralizing as he called it—James was certain that morality is essential to the success of the work. A writer needs a natural sense of morality—a moral imagination, he thought:

    Be the morality false or true, the writer's deference to it greets us as a kind of essential perfume. We find such a perfume in Shakespeare; we find it, in spite of his so-called cynicism, in Thackeray; we find it, potently, in George Eliot, in George Sand, in Turgenieff. They care for moral questions; they are haunted by a moral ideal … Charles de Bernard's talent is great—very great, greater than the impression it leaves; and the reason why this clever man remains so persistently second-rate is, to our sense, because he had no morality. By this we of course do not mean that he did not choose to write didactic tales, winding up with a goody lecture and a distribution of prizes and punishments. We mean that he had no moral emotion, no preferences, no instincts—no moral imagination, in a word.

    (ibid., pp. 302-3.)

17. De Bruyne, 1: 98.

18. Per Nykrog, “Playing Games with Fiction: Les Quinze Joyes de Mariage, Il Corbaccio, and El Arcipreste de Talavera,” The Craft of Fiction: Essays in Medieval Poetics [edited by Leigh A. Arrathoon, Rochester, Mich.: Solaris Press, 1984], pp. 423-52 and John Gardner, On Moral Fiction [New York: Basic Books, 1978], passim.

19. De Bruyne, 1: 47.

20. ibid., 1:97. Cf. Charles G. Osgood, Boccaccio on Poetry, Being the Preface and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Books of Boccaccio's Genealogia Deorum Gentilum, an English Version with Introductory Essay and Commentary (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1930), pp. 42, 61, and 79.

21. Springer, p. 97. Unlike me, Springer and Sacks consider satire a genre. Cf. Robert Scholes, “Les modes de la fiction,” Poetique 32 (1977), 507-14.

22. James, p. 107.

23. Pearcy, “Sentence and Solas in the Old French Fabliaux.”

24. Hans-Robert Jauss, “Littérature médiévale et théorie des genres,” trans. Eliana Kaufholz, Poétique 1 (1970), 83.

25. Chaucer and the French Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), p. 74.

26. Hunt, “Aristotle, Dialectic, and Courtly Literature,” p. 106. For the ancient and medieval traditions of declamation, see Trimpi, esp. pp. 46, 235, 253, 306, 307, 309-13, 321-23, 328-29, 334-35. Although we disagree as to the organizing principles and genres of narrative fiction (see his pp. 211-12, 255-56, and 358), like me, Professor Trimpi sees rhetorical quaestiones as providing the basis for the “novella,” or what I would call narrative fiction (both long and short). See his pp. 306, 340-43. Unlike Professor Trimpi, I do not think that just because a tradition exists, it must be “right.” The traditional terms for literary kinds are, for the most part, useless and confusing, which is why I am attempting to erect an entirely new system here.

27. p. 98.

28. See Malcolm Pittock, “The Merchant's Tale,” Essays in Criticism 17 (1967), 26-40, Emerson Brown, Jr., “Biblical Women in the Merchant's Tale: Feminism, Antifeminism, and Beyond,” Viator 5 (1974), 387-412, and Arrathoon, “The Two Saras of Chaucer's Merchant's Tale,” Ball State University Forum (1984), in press.

29. Springer discusses signals, pp. 24, 40, 126.

30. Springer, citing Sacks, p. 104. Cf. Peter Haidu, Aesthetic Distance in Chrétien de Troyes: Irony and Comedy in Cligés and Perceval (Geneva: Droz, 1968).

31. See F. Douglas Kelly, “The Source and Meaning of Conjointure in Chrétien's Erec 14,” Viator 1 (1970), 179-200, Sens and Conjointure in the Chevalier de la Charrette (The Hague: Mouton, 1966). See also Arrathoon, “Antinomic Cluster Analysis and the Boethian Verbal Structure of Chaucer's Merchant's Tale,” Language and Style (1984), in press, Arrathoon, The Lady of Vergi, Edited and Translated with an Introduction, Variants, Notes, and a Glossary (Merrick, N.Y.: Cross-Cultural Communications Press, 1984), Paul Zumthor, “Recherches sur les topiques dans la poésie lyrique des XII^e et XIII^e siècles,” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 2 (1959), 409-27, and Springer, pp. 28, 120, 122, 123. In this paper I shall be dealing with theme words rather than isotopies. See Peter Haidu, “Text and History: the Semiosis of Twelfth-Century Lyric as Sociohistorical Phenomenon (Chrétien de Troyes: ‘D'Amors qui m'a tolu,’)” Semiotica (1980) for the semiotic approach to the verbal structures of medieval literature. Another interesting approach is J. D. Burnley's in his “The Morality of the Merchant's Tale,” Yearbook of English Studies 6 (1976), 16-25 and “Chaucer's Termes,” Yearbook of English Studies 7 (1977), 53-67.

32. Robert J. Clements and Joseph Gibaldi, Anatomy of the Novella: The European Tale Collection from Boccaccio and Chaucer to Cervantes (New York: New York University Press, 1977), and Janet Levarie Smarr's introduction to her Italian Renaissance Tales (Rochester, MI: Solaris Press, 1983).

33. Aristotle, The “Art” of Rhetoric, trans. J. H. Freese (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), p. 19.

34. See Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), Salvatore Battaglia, Giovanni Boccaccio e la riforma della narrativa (Naples: Liguori, 1969), p. 11, n. 1: “La esemplarità, insomma, e appannaggio inalienabile della narrativa in quanto tale,” Gardner, whose principal thesis is that art instructs (see, for example, his pp. 30 and 108-09), and Trimpi, who treats the rise of literary fiction, and, in particular, the drama and “novella,” from the fusion of ancient philosophical and rhetorical discourse, especially forensic rhetoric. See pp. 68-71 of his “The Quality of Fiction: The Rhetorical Transmission of Literary Theory,” Traditio 30 (1974), and Muses of One Mind, pp. 371-81 on the exemplum. Pp. 382-90 of the same book deal with the morality of medieval fiction. Perhaps it is useful to say here that I began to work on the passage from controversia to medieval narrative fiction in 1970 when I was still in graduate school, but not having the fine classical background that Professor Trimpi has, I abandoned the project until I discovered his two Traditio articles in 1975, which gave me the confidence to pursue my original course. The first of these articles, “The Ancient Hypothesis of Fiction: An Essay on the Origins of Literary Theory,” Traditio 30: 1-118, appeared in 1971.

35. Tony Hunt, “Beginnings, Middles, and Ends: Some Interpretative Problems in Chrétien's Yvain and Its Medieval Adaptations,” The Craft of Fiction: Essays in Medieval Poetics, pp. 83-117, shows that the problems raised in the Yvain are far from being resolved by the conclusion to the romance which fails to reconcile love and chivalry. In fact, the reason Hunt gives for Chrestien's having utilized Calogrenant's tale in place of a conventional prologue is that he wanted to “alert his audience to the complexities in this most sophisticated and problematic romance.” Cf. Peter Haidu, “Romance: Idealistic Genre or Historical Text?” The Craft of Fiction: Essays in Medieval Poetics, pp. 1-46. The Charette can also be viewed as problematic, if we accept the very tempting interpretation of A. H. Diverres, in his “Some Thoughts on the Sens of Le Chevalier de la Charrette,” Forum for Modern Language Studies 6 (1970), 24-36. Finally, the hypocrisy of Fenice in the Cligés must certainly tell us that Chrestien was at odds with his female patrons. Surely the men in the audience held their sides with laughter when the nude Fenice was rudely awakened by a pear falling from the tree above her because they certainly would have viewed the pear in this context as a phallic symbol. On pear symbolism, see Karl Wentersdorf, “Imagery, Structure, and Theme in Chaucer's Merchant's Tale,” Chaucer and the Craft of Fiction (Rochester, MI: Solaris Press, 1985) and Bruce A. Rosenberg, “The ‘Cherry-Tree Carol’ and the Merchant's Tale,” Chaucer Review 5 (1971), 266-76. Further, how could they have taken the scene as anything but a burlesque of courtly love when an intruder's leg is hacked off by the lover/hero and made to fall into the locus amoenus? I should think the women in Chrestien's public would have been amused or infuriated or both, and I can easily see a heated battle of the sexes following the recitation of the author's quizzical tale.

36. On the exemplum, see Salvatore Battaglia's “Premesse per una Valutazione del ‘Novellino,’” Filologia Romanza 2, no. 6 (1955), 259-86, Giovanni Boccaccio, “L'esempio medievale, l'esempio nella retorica antica,” Filologia Romanza 6 (1959), 45-82, Trimpi, Muses of One Mind, pp. 345, 378-81, and Roger Dubuis, Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles et la tradition de la nouvelle en France au moyen âge (Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 1973), p. 488: “L'exemplum connaît une évolution logique et inéluctable: cessant d'être considéré comme un moyen de démonstration il trouve en lui-même sa propre raison d'être. Sa valeur ‘exemplaire’ n'est pas, pour autant, necéssairement abolie, mais le plus souvent, elle passe au second plan.”

37. Die Exempla aus den Sermones feriales et communes des Jakob von Vitry, hg. von Joseph Greven, Sammlung mittellateinischer Texte, hg. von Alfons Hilka, 9 (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1914), 15, also cited by Maurice Delbouille, Le Lai d'Aristote de Henri D'Andeli (Paris: Société d'Edition “Les Belles Lettres,” 1951), p. 39. Delbouille is rather harsh in his criticism of de Vitry's exemplum (see his pp. 50-53), when he compares it to d'Andeli's Lai, objecting to the fact that the exemplarist makes Alexander's concubine into a legitimate wife.

38. See Smarr.

39. I would like to thank Professor H. C. Kim of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at Washington State University for correcting my English translation of the Latin. Let me hasten to assume responsibility for any liberties taken with the original.

40. Jerome, Adversus Jovinianum, trans. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Ser. 2, 6 (Grand Rapids, MI.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.), 281. See also John T. Noonan, Jr., Contraception. A History of Its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists (New York: Mentor-Omega, 1965), for the classical influences on the doctrine.

41. See Booth, chap. 1, “Telling and Showing.”

42. E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1927), esp. pp. 67-69.

43. p. 5.

44. The line numbers cited in the text refer to my edition of the poem as it appears in the Lady of Vergi.

45. It should now be clear that those critics who look for the “falcon” or central symbol in “novellas” because they believe Boccaccio's ninth tale on the fifth day, which revolves about a falcon, is a model novella, are merely pointing to a rhetorical scheme that is typical of much short narrative fiction. In fact, Boccaccio's famous falcon tale is really a fable or species of apologue. The “falcon” theory is Paul Heyse's, see E. K. Bennett, A History of the German Novelle, (London: Cambridge University Press, 1934, rpt. 1949, 2nd ed. revised and continued by H. M. Waidson, 1961, rpt. 1965, 1970, 1974), pp. 13-16.

46. See Springer, pp. 45, 64, 122-23.

47. See Eren Branch, “Rhetorical Structures and Strategies in Boccaccio's Teseida,” The Craft of Fiction: Essays in Medieval Poetics, pp. 143-60 and Trimpi, chap. 12.