Saturday 31 October 2015

Subjectivity, Self-Fashioning and Augustinian Interiority in Chaucer’s ‘The Parson’s Tale;’ A Defence of Stephen Greenblatt.





In the Middle Ages, said Jacob Burckhardt, “man was conscious of himself only as member of a race, people, party, family, or corporation ” (1887. p60.) For Burckhardt, this began to change in the fifteenth century which was “above all that of the many sided men” (p63.)  This idea of a monolithic, hierarchically dominated medieval consciousness superseded by a Renaissance in which individualism and subjectivity emerged, flourished almost unchallenged until the advent of critical theory when postructuralists, Marxists, feminists and other critics are largely believed to have dismissed it along with much of liberal humanist thought.
                However, in the nineties, Lee Patterson and David Aers questioned this assumption and demonstrated a problematic perpetuation of this attitude from Marxist and otherwise ‘radical’ critics looking at literature of early modern England.  Patterson and Aers used, among other arguments, confessional Augustinianism as evidence of a late medieval interiority and subjectivity.  This essay will consider that argument and also that of Stephen Greenblatt who claimed that manipulable, artful self-fashioning and desire for anything other than God was, in fact, antithetical to late medieval Augustinian Christianity. Augustine’s writings about the human subject will be discussed in relation to Chaucer's ‘The Parson’s Tale’ to demonstrate that these two claims are not mutually exclusive.

Speaking of Burckhardt’s notion that, in the middle ages, “man was conscious of himself only as member of a race, people, party, family, or corporation,” Patterson says, “this opinion has resurfaced in contemporary criticism in the form of a Marxist-inspired account of subjectivity, one that thinks to demolish Burckhardtian humanism by reversing the terms of it, but that in fact leaves the humanist master narrative all the more firmly in place”(1990 p95-6.) David Aers, too, argues that Burckhardt’s narrative ‘has been silently, unselfconsciously and uncritically assimilated” by these critics (1992 p195.) The consequences of this, Aers argues, are that “an extraordinarily diversified, complex and profoundly adaptive culture of discourses and practices, was thus turned into a homogeneous, static and uncomplicated monolith” (p178.) Both critics dismiss Stephen Barker’s claim that earlier subjectivity was not a proper subjectivity at all but membership of a hierarchy (LP p97. DA p186. ) Jonathan Dollimore is criticised for making the same claim about hierarchy (LP p97) and speaking of a ‘Christian essentialism’ (DA p188.) Catherine Belsey’s assertion that “The inner space of subjectivity…came into being in the Renaissance” is received very badly by both Patterson (p96) and Aers (189-90.)
To Patterson and Aers, evidence to disprove such claims is readily available and they provide numerous examples convincingly. They both include Augustinian interiority among these. Patterson argues that “Medieval anthropology defined the subject as desire: as the Augustinian will, with its opposed movements of caritas and cupiditas” and points out that “confessional Augustinianism [was] visible throughout the period” ( p100.) Aers suspects the failure of the ‘radical’ critics to appreciate medieval subjectivity is because they are “thoroughly secular and you simply can’t write history of subject unless you take Christianity seriously” (p196.) He adds that, “Anyone seeking to write a history of interiority and the subject must return [to] St Augustine’s Confessions” (p196.) Aers provides evidence of much interiority in the Confessions but also acknowledges that the purpose of this ‘introspective search for self-knowledge’ [is that] we may hope to encounter God” (p183.) To what extent then, are we seeking to know ourselves?
We need first to consider the terms ‘subject’ and ‘subjectivity’.  In contemporary understanding, the adjective ‘subjective’ refers to differing perceptions based on individuals’ own feelings, tastes and opinions. Patterson’s essay argues that complex roles in society are evidence of subjectivity whilst Aers’ focuses more on rich and varied Christian traditions. However, the noun ‘subject’ has a longer history of reference to a person who owes allegiance and obedience to a powerful superior. When one is subjected, one’s own will is suppressed, a place in a hierarchy defined and rules and expectations imposed. This definition is closer to Burckhardt’s claim about the individual as a member of a collective.
This essay will be focusing on Augustine’s writings about interiority and self and showing that, for him, man must only see himself as the subject of God, and feelings, tastes and opinions not related to God must be suppressed. For Augustine, inward reflection is not intended to uncover an individual ‘subjectivity’ but the correctly motivated ‘subject’ who contains the image of an unchanging God. One ‘radical’ critic, discussed by Aers and Patterson, regards late medieval Augustinian Christianity in this light and he is Stephen Greenblatt.
Lee Patterson notes Greenblatt’s nod to Burckhardt when Greenblatt credits him for the earliest perception “that there is, in the early modern period, a change in the intellectual, social, psychological, and aesthetic structures that govern the generation of identities"(in Patterson. p99.)  David Aers takes issue with Greenblatt’s statement that “in the sixteenth century there appears to be an increased self-consciousness about the fashioning of human identity as a manipulable, artful process” (in Aers p191) and that Greenblatt “sees self-fashioned individuals as antithetical to Christianity and Augustine” (p191.) Aers and Patterson do not say that Greenblatt is wrong but point out that evidence for these claims has not been provided.
 However, when Aers says “Only in the sixteenth century do we begin to meet self-fashioned individuals, claims Greenblatt” (p191) and accuses Greenblatt of turning the middle ages into ‘a homogeneous and mythical field’ against which to define Renaissance inwardness and fashioning of identity (192,) we might wonder if this is entirely just.  Greenblatt actually says,
 Christianity brought a growing suspicion of man’s power to shape identity: “Hands off yourself,” Augustine declared. “Try to build up yourself, and you build a ruin.” This view was not the only one available in succeeding centuries, but it was influential, and a powerful alternative began to be fully articulated only in the early modern period (1980.p2. My emphasis.)
We see that Greenblatt does not assert the non-existence of self-fashioned individuals until the sixteenth century, but that the ‘fashioning of human identity as a manipulable, artful process’ was not in accord with Augustinian Christianity which was a dominant discourse.  Neither does Greenblatt deny the earlier existence of interiority but says “What we find then in the early sixteenth century is a crucial moment of passage from one mode of interiority to another” (p84.) This earlier mode of interiority, Greenblatt argues, was prescribed and ordered by the Catholic Church in accordance with the Fourth Lateran council of 1215. Describing this as the “primary Catholic mode of maintaining the obedience of the Christian man by ordering this inward reflection,” Greenblatt speaks of a “systematic, institutionalized form of self-scrutiny” (p85.) He also asserts that “It is a commonplace that for Saint Augustine the essence of evil is that anything should be “sought for itself, whereas things should be sought only in terms of the search for God” (p218.) This is clearly the antithesis of Greenblatt’s concept of ‘self-fashioning,’ and could perhaps best be called ‘self-conditioning.’
Is Greenblatt justified in these assertions? If so, we could not assume that everyone complied with this anti-individualist thinking in the way Burckhardt’s narrative would require. Of course, Patterson’s and Aers’ argument that subjectivity existed at this time and Greenblatt’s that self-fashioning was antithetical to late medieval Augustinian Christianity are not mutually exclusive. This essay intends to provide a little support for Greenblatt’s view without disagreeing with Patterson and Aers.
Augustine’s writing is notorious for the ease with which it can be used as authority for opposing Christian beliefs but, I’d suggest, it would be difficult to read him in favour of ‘manipulable, artful, self-fashioning.’ On the contrary, we find a consistent idea that mankind is fractured and needs to be restored to the pre-lapsarian wholeness lost at the Fall. In his earliest dialogue de Beata Vita, he says in praise of his mother’s religiosity in comparison to his own liberal education “Videtisne, inquam, aliud esse multas variasque doctrinas, aliud animaum adtentissimum in deum”[1] (2:27.)
It is in Confessions that we learn that man differs from the beasts because he has no ‘kind’ but a resemblance to God. “You did not say “according to its kind”, but “according the image and resemblance [to God]”” (13.22.32. in Marion p 30.) Jean-Luc Marion argues that “it is proper to [man] not to appropriate himself or be appropriated to himself; it is proper to him not to resemble himself“(2011 p30.) Man should not aspire to be many-sided or to self-fashion but seek only God. In the City of God, Augustine says   By craving to be more, man becomes less; and by aspiring to be self-sufficing, he fell away from Him who truly suffices him” (14:13.) Man diminishes himself when he identifies with or pursues his own interests. “(B)eing turned towards himself, his being became more contracted than it was when he clave to Him who supremely is. Accordingly, to exist in himself… is not quite to become a nonentity, but to approximate to that” (14:13.) When first man aspired to be more than the subject of God, God granted an independence more akin to slavery  and condemned him to  “instead of the liberty he desired, to live dissatisfied with himself in a hard and miserable bondage” (14:15.)
This idea is seen again in de Trinitate. Augustine says that man should seek to know himself only,
in order that, it may consider itself, and live according to own nature; that is, that it might be regulated according to its own nature, that is, under Him to whom it ought to be subject, and above those things to which it is to be preferred… For it does many things through evil desires, as though it had forgotten itself… (I)t is moved and sinks into being less and less (10.5.7.)
Mateusz Strozynski  argues that “Augustine says the mind does not remain in God, who is the source also of its self-knowledge, but falls into multiplicity… Thus a sort of a false selfhood emerges” (2013 pp292 -293.) It seems that subjective perceptions and artful self-fashioning are very likely to be seen by Augustine as a false selfhood.
Instead, man must look inwardly for God in the Trinity in the mind. Augustine writes, “the mind remembers, understands, loves itself; if we discern this, we discern a trinity, not yet indeed God, but now at last an image of God” (de Trin. 15.8.11.) Marion relates this to a passage in de Civitate Dei   in which Augustine says that man goes through himself to God (quo itur Deus, qua itur homo) (CD 11.12. In Marion p28.) Marion shows “that one must go toward the image through the resemblance: man bears the image of God up to the point that he gives up any resemblance to himself”(p28.) When men give up themselves and seek God, they find a single true nature and the unchanging God.  The theological, Kenneth Boa explains “(T)he bond of a common nature makes all human beings one. Nevertheless, each individual in this community is driven by his passions to pursue his private purposes. “This is ultimately unsatisfying… (N)othing but Absolute Being can satisfy human nature(2004 p320.)
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We can see a consistent theme within Augustine’s writing in which humanity has fallen but possesses the faculty to access God and recover our true unitary nature and place but that we sin by desiring other things instead of keeping our reason focused on God. However, it is difficult to know how Augustine was being read during the fourteenth century. Much of his work was only available in scraps, and misattributions and his own ambiguities complicated the issue further.
Eric Saak’s study Creating Augustine: Interpreting Augustine and Augustinianism in the Later Middle Ages (2012) argues that the true late medieval Augustinianism was that disseminated by the Ordo Eremitarum Sancti Augustini . Formed in 1256, this was an eremitical and scholarly order, sworn to poverty, meditation and rejection of worldly pleasures and material goods.   Linda Olson looks at secular scholars reading Augustine’s Confessions and specifically,  John de Grandisson, borrows Greenblatt’s concept of ‘self-fashioning’ but does not use his theory. de Grandisson, to Olson, does not fashion himself artfully or manipulably but uses the Confessions as an authority, a template and an aid to self-examination.  She concludes “I do not think that Grandisson's way of reading and using the Confessiones as a personal guide and self-shaping text was extraordinarily unusual in fourteenth century England” (1997 p236.) Again, this self-shaping sounds like self-conditioning.
John Martin’s consideration of individuality draws on both Greenblatt and Burckhardt when he traces the shift in meaning of the word ‘prudence’ from the late medieval to the early modern period and attributes the earlier meaning to Augustine. Acknowledging ‘ a deep sense of inwardness and interiority’(1997 p1323) growing in the eleventh and twelfth century, Martin shows ‘prudence’ shift from being an Augustinian Christian virtue of ‘holding the passions and the appetites in check’ (p1323) and a concordance of mind, word and deed  in maintaining Christian values (p1327) to, by the end of the sixteenth century, an ethical strategy in which one projected the most appropriate impression of oneself in any given situation whilst “at the same time preserving his own inner freedom” as epitomised by Machiavelli (p1332-5.) This semantic difference could certainly be seen as evidence of a shift from self-conditioning to self-fashioning in dominant discourses.
However, evidence of eremitical dissemination of Augustine, use of Augustine for self-shaping and language shifts away from Augustinian definitions are more speculative than conclusive and Markus Wreidt’s 2005 study into late medieval Augustinianism concludes that we cannot speak of a certain reception of Augustine’s writings until considerably more systematic study has been done. Wreidt’s recommended methodology includes a systematic review of texts that use phrases like ‘as Augustine says’ and attributes certain ‘motives, thoughts and elements’ to Augustine in relation to the context in which his authority is being claimed (p7.)  One such text is Geoffrey Chaucer’s ‘Parson’s Tale.’ The Canterbury Tales are referred to by Patterson, Aers and Greenblatt and the “Parson’s Tale” refers, above all, to Augustine.  
To Patterson and Aers, Chaucer’s writing provides clear evidence that subjectivity existed in the late medieval period. Although Greenblatt points out that “the verb ‘fashion’ does not appear at all in Chaucer’s poetry” (p2,) Patterson says of The Canterbury Tales that it’s ‘subject is hardly anything other than the subject”(pp99-100.) Clearly, Chaucer does produce complex characters and Greenblatt acknowledges this.   "One need only think of Chaucer's extraordinarily subtle and wry manipulations of persona to grasp that what I propose to examine does not suddenly spring up from nowhere when 1499 becomes 1500” (p1.) This does not mollify Patterson who perceives it as a ‘gesture’ that allows Greenblatt then to fail to consider the historical significance of this (p99.) Aers uses ‘The Parson’s Tale’ as an example of standard teaching following the Fourth Lateran Council, which provides important evidence of ‘self and inwardness’ (p185) but we have seen that Greenblatt considered the orders of the Council to have led to a prescribed and ordered mode of interiority quite different to his artful and manipulable ‘self-fashioning’.   Many editions of The Canterbury Tales have omitted ‘The Parson’s Tale,’ and many critics have regarded it as merely a typical sermon or penitence treatise detailing sins systematically by number and degree with uninteresting orthodoxy. Top of FormPomer
I would suggest that a useful way to look at ‘The Parson’s Tale’ is provided by H. Marshall Leicester in his 1990 consideration of the Wife of Bath's Tale, the Pardoner's Tale, and the Knight's Tale. Like Patterson, Leicester says that ‘Chaucer’s subject is the subject’ (p15) but he differentiates ‘self’ from ‘subject.’ The self resembles the humanist idea of an autonomous, coherent and stable essence but, to Leicester, the "subject" is "a position in a larger structure, a site through which various forces pass" (p14.) It seems a ‘subject’ is a “member of a race, people, party, family, or corporation.”  If we extend Leicester’s analysis to include ‘The Parson’s Tale’, we see that the parson represents the subject in subjection to God. The previous tales have presented us with individual characters of all classes and vocations with distinct and complex personalities. The parson draws them all together and stresses their shared conditions as fallen humans under God and their common aim to achieve salvation.
In a 1978 essay looking at ‘The Parson’s Tale’, Lee Patterson notes "the certainties of the Parson's Tale render the complexities of the tales inconsequential and sophistical" (p370).It does this with suddenness.
This persone him answered al at ones,
“Thou getest fable noon y-told for me;
For Paul, that wryteth unto Timothee,
Repreveth hem that weyven soothfastnesse
And tellen fables and swich wrecchednesse (ll.30-34)
Daniel Pigg argues that “The Prologue sets the stage for such a shift by allowing an hegemonic shift from the expanding world of socio-economic discourses to an older, traditional one” (1997 p252.) This change too is abrupt and explicit. ‘The Parson’s Tale’ begins with Jeremiah 6:16 State super vias et videte et interrogate de viis antiquis, que sit via bona; et ambulate in ea, et in venietis refrigerium animabus vestria[2] before proceeding to cite many biblical and patristical sources but above all, Augustine.  If we discard references to Augustine which are simply support of biblical prohibitions, we are left with a distinctive theology focusing on subjection to God, rejection of all else, the importance of systematic self-examination and the need to recognise a common and corrupt nature and attempt to retain, by penitence and piety, man’s rightful place beneath God.
We saw that Greenblatt had observed that, for Augustine, the essence of evil is anything sought for itself rather than to find God. Chaucer’s Parson says this three times & attributes it to Augustine. ‘Deedly sinne’ as seith seint Augustin, ‘is whan a man turneth his herte fro god, which that is verray sovereyn bountee, that may nat change and yeveth his herte to thing that may chaunge and flitte’ (l.367) Venial sin becomes powerless, Augustine is cited as having said “If man love God in swiche manere, that al that evere he doth is in the love of God and for the love of God” (l.382)  and  Avarice, after the description of seint Augustin is likerousness in herte to have erthely things/ it dooth wrong to Jesu Crist/for it bireveth him of the love that men to him owen “(l.740-744.)
We have seen that Augustine described sin as lowering the status of man and placing him in bondage. The parson describes sin as slavery (thraldom) a total of eight times and first attributes this to Augustine, “Augustinus de civitate libro nono. Sooth is that the condiccioun of thraldom and the firste cause of thraldom Is for sinne” (l.754.)  For Augustine, to sin was to lower oneself from the rightful position below God and become more like the beasts.  Man is subject to God but there is no shame in being a ‘subject’ as there is in being a slave.  Chaucer’s Parson outlines Augustine’s hierarchy of the self,
God and resen and sensualitee, and the body of man been so ordeyned that…/god sholde have lordship over reson, and reson over sensualitee and sensualitee over the body of man. But sothly when this ordre or ordinance is turned up-so-doun./And therefore thane as for-as-much as the reson of man ne wol nat be subget ne obeisant to god, that is his lord by right, therefore leseth it the lordeshipe that it sholde have over sensualitee, and eek over the body of man. (ll.260-64 )

We see a levelling effect when man is placed in a spiritual rather than social hierarchy. This is even more explicit in lines 461-2,
 “We ben alle of o fader and of o moder: and all we been of o nature rotten and corrupt, both riche and povre./ For sothe, oo manere gentrye is for to preise, that appareilleth mannes corage with virtues and moralitees and make him Christ’s child.”
                By reducing man to a single corrupt nature, by dispelling pride of all sorts, the parson re-evaluates human worth.  As Martin had argued, this fourteenth century parson stresses the need for internal thought and external deed to accord and to be virtuous. “And also a man sholde sorwe, namely, for all that evere he he hath desired agayne the lawe of god/ For certes ther is no deedly sinne, that it nas first in mannes thought, and after that in his delyt, and so forth in-to consentinge and in-to deed “(ll. 295-6)  Equally, Augustine is cited as having said that abstinence  is “‘ is litel worth but-if a man have good will ther-to” (l.831.) The parson points out that God not only forbade adultery in deed but also coveting one’s neighbor’s wife. ”In this heeste, seith seint Augustin, is forboden alle manere coveitise to doon lechery “(l.844.) In fact, “Seint Augustin seith sinne is every worde and every dede, and al that men coveiten agayn the lawe of Jesu crist; and this is for to sinne in herte, in mouthe and in dede, by thy five wittes that been sighte, herings, smellings, tasting or savouring, and felinge” (ll.957-8) The parson tells us that sin is all that is natural and material and he attributes this to Augustine.
Daniel Pigg places ‘The Parson’s Tale’ in the genre of ‘aids to confession’ available to men like the Parson.  They were, he tells us, “intended to probe the conditions of the self, not as an autonomous whole, but as the ideological or spiritual battleground for the deadly sins” (1997 p89.) The desired result was “the elimination of those characteristics which would individualize a person, so that the penitent could be reintroduced into the religious community; thus the process was designed to refashion a subject rather than to develop an individual” (1997 p90.) Again, this re-fashioning is very different to Greenblatt’s self-fashioning. Systematically, the parson has broken his audience down, out of their class and out of their social roles. He has reduced them to a common corrupt nature, led them to examine their desires, their speech and their actions and required them to reject all that is not conducive to the pursuit of God.

We could look back at all the other tales and list a vast variety of worldly concerns and personal traits which must now be discarded.  In the confessional, the parson would now shrive the pilgrims of these ‘sins’ and send them back into the world in a uniform state, devoid of the personal traits and drives that made them such compelling subjects.  Of course, these would soon reassert themselves and the penitence process would have to be gone through again and this, I would argue, is what supports the arguments of Aers and Patterson and that of Greenblatt. Of course, subjectivity in the sense of individual perceptions, opinions, feelings and tastes existed. The detailed penitence tracts that catered to the vast variety of sinful behaviour and misdirected desire as demonstrated by the parson would hardly have been necessary if it did not. Patterson and Aers are right to claim that the Canterbury Tales shows the existence of subjectivity before the sixteenth century but, within that text, there is also considerable evidence that Greenblatt’s claim that self-fashioning and desiring anything but God was antithetical to Augustinian Christianity was also true. Augustine’s own writings have confirmed this and Chaucer makes much use of them in ‘The Parson’s Tale’.  Subjectivity and psychologically complex human beings clearly existed in the late medieval period but from an Augustinian point of view, this was undesirable.

 

 

 

 


Bibliography


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Marion. J  (2011) "Resting, Moving, Loving: The Access to the Self according to Saint Augustine." Journal Of Religion 91 (1) pp 24-42. Academic Search Complete. Available at:EBSCOhost.com (Accessed 21/10/2014)
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Olson. L. (1997)  ‘Reading Augustine’s Confessiones  in fourteenth-century England: John de Grandisson’s Fashioning of Text and Self. Traditio, 52  pp. 201-257 JSTOR  Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27831951 (Accessed: 06/11/2014 )
Patterson.L. (1990) ‘On the Margin: Postmodernism, Ironic History and Medieval Studies.’ Speculum.  65. Pp 87-108.
Patterson. L. (1978) ‘The 'Parson's Tale' and the Quitting of the Canterbury Tales’.Traditio. 34. pp. 331-380 JSTOR Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27831048
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Saak.E. (2012) Creating Augustine: Interpreting Augustine and Augustinianism in the Later Middle Ages. Oxford. Oxford University Press
Strozynski. M. (2013) “There is No Searching for the Self: Self-Knowledge in Book Ten of Augustine's De Trinitate.” Phronesis, 58( 3) pp. 280-300. Jstor. Available at:http://0-www.jstor.org.catalogue.ulrls.lon.ac.uk/stable/42000239

Wriedt. M. (2005)  “Late Medieval Augustinianism: A Reassessment.”Contribution to panel 120  “Auctoritas Patrum: The Authority of the Early Church in the Reformation at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference.”  Atlanta, GA, October 20 – 23,


[1] (“Do you see, I say, how different it is to have various and multiple disciplines of learning and to have a mind totally focused on God?” My translation. )
[2]  Stand upon the roads, ask the pathways of old which is the way to good things, and walk it; thus you will find rest for your souls.

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