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< Previous Page | Next Page > Chapter 3b: Visual AllegoriesOne of the most characteristic features of The Assembly of Gods is the way that it uses visual images and symbols to represent characters and present themes. O’Reilly talks about the rise of the “New Iconography” in the fifteenth century which was static, non-narrative and relied more heavily on established visual symbols to identify characters (120-24).*One example she cites is a manuscript of Christine de Pisan’s Epitre d’ Othéa. This connection is interesting in light of Curt F. Bühler’s argument that the author of The Assembly of Gods was influenced by Christine de Pisan in his choice to include the goddess Othea among the gods at Apollo’s banquet. And Gradon, in her explanation of the close relationship between literature and the visual arts during the late Middle Ages, cites The Assembly of Gods as an example of literature from the period with a “picturesque quality” (62) and a shallowness in its use of visual images (369-71). It is true that the poem’s use of visual elements is characteristic of the literature of its day, but in The Assembly of Gods, visual elements are used in a particularly conscious way, emphasizing their ambiguous nature and the need to use reason in the interpretation of the information they provide. As a result, visual allegory becomes another illustration of the theme of the accord of reason and sensuality. On a few occasions The Assembly of Gods focuses attention on the role of the visual arts by talking about them directly. During the second episode, as the narrator is giving the catalogue of Virtue’s host, he says that he saw “Konnyng with hys genalogy” (854) come to the side of Virtue. Cunning and his group are unique in the catalogue because Virtue refuses to allow some of them to fight for him. The first list, those who are allowed to fight for Virtue, includes characters like Grammar, Geometry, Music and Noble Theology and ends with “Profounde Poetry and Drawyng of Picture” (861). In the next stanza, the list of those rejected by Virtue begins with Necromancy, Magic, Palmistry and others. Placing the literary and visual arts in this marginal group, in fact right at the dividing line between those which are acceptable and those which are not, illustrates their potential for good or bad. In the arbor, after Doctrine has explained “the verrey sentence” of the vision, she says, “The pycture also yeueth clere intellygence,/ Theof beholdyn with good discresyoñ” (1863, 1865-66). Doctrine continues to express confidence in the walls’ ability to teach the narrator even after he seems to be incapable of deriving any significance from them (1903-18). The poem’s direct statements about the visual arts indicate that they can aid virtue and can instruct, if those who view them do so with discretion. The association with the literary arts and the instruction to view with discretion connect the visual arts with the negative example that Doctrine gives of the ancients who were fooled because they did not use discreet reason, “refusyng the fygure” (1725) presented to them. The poem’s use of visual description also emphasizes the role of the visual arts and the need to use both reason and sensuality to understand visual allegory. Descriptions of the characters in The Assembly of Gods are rarely truly ekphrastic*Possible exceptions are the description of the gods as they sit down around Apollo’s banquet table (254-385) and the description of Doctrine in her arbor (1603-1612). nor do they rely heavily on the actions of the characters. Instead, as Gradon points out, they rely on symbolic or iconographic connections that readers would recognize from painting or sculpture. The above quotation of the description of the seven deadly sins is a good example of this iconographic approach and stands in sharp contrast to the narrative description of Gluttony and Sloth that Langland gives in Piers Plowman (B, V) and the ekphrasis employed by Chaucer to describe the paintings on the garden wall in his translation of The Romance of the Rose (Benson 688-92 ll.147-474). The static and visual nature of The Assembly of Gods is typical of the literature of the period, but as with the dream-poem form, this style seems to be the perfect compliment to the theme of the accord of reason and sensuality. The visual nature of the description in this poem emphasizes the fact that, on the literal level, the narrator experiences his dream through his senses, specifically sight. He sees and recognizes characters in the battle and on the wall’s of Doctrine’s arbor with the help of visual symbols common in paintings and sculptures of the day. He then transmits the information to the reader in a way that recalls those visual images rather than promoting the power of language to describe. The description of the cardinal virtues as they gather for the battle is a good example,
The list continues in much the same way and, as is the case with the vices, these descriptions are the only information that we get about the characters: a name; a brief description of their expression and two symbols to represent them, one in the beast they ride and the other in the crest they bear. The narrator easily identifies the characters with the help of their symbols, but his inability to understand the meaning of what he sees consistently reminds the reader that the images of the characters as represented in the visual arts, without the help of reason, are insufficient to explain any deeper significance they may have. The choice of a psychomachia is ideal for connecting this poem to the visual arts because the vivid detail of Prudentius’ poem gave rise to visual representations ranging from illustrations in manuscripts to complex painted and sculptural programs in medieval churches. The development of the psychomachia in the Middle Ages was an intricate interaction between the visual, literary and dramatic arts. The nature of the description of the virtues and vices in The Assembly of Gods and many exact details, are taken from illustrations in manuscripts and from painted and sculpted images that were common in medieval churches.*The development of representations of the vices and virtues has been discussed at length by many authors. For example, Bloomfield, O’Reilly and Norman devoted entire books to the discussion of this theme. To summarize their work and describe the way that the portrayal in The Assembly of Gods fits into the historical development of the psychomachia theme would require a separate paper. For examples of the paintings and sculptures of the virtues and vices generally (including psychomachias) see Bloomfield, Seven, Tuve 57-143 and O’Reilly. For examples of the development of psychomachia motifs specifically see Norman. O’Reilly and Norman include some illustrative examples (O’Reilly figs. 1a-7b, Norman figs. 1-107). For descriptions of paintings of virtues and vices in English churches contemporary with The Assembly of Gods, see E. W. Tristram 95-107 and M. D. Anderson 143-47. For discussion of the influence of the psychomachia on drama, see Spivack, especially 71-95. Gradon argues that symbols such as these “speak primarily, not to the emotions, but to the intellect,” because they make oblique references to objects, stories or interpretations (53). However, here we are provided with not only the oblique reference, but the name of the character. The dreamer has already identified the references. As a result, these characters may remind readers of something that they have seen before or of a connection that they made before, but readers are not asked to employ their intellect to identify a character from his or her symbols. At times the poet’s description of the character’s symbols seems to be a device to explain how he recognized them and to establish his authority to explain the vision. But more importantly, the prominence of the symbols and the poet’s reliance on them to recognize the characters effectively emphasize the visual, and therefore sensual, nature of the description and connect the poem to visual depictions with which medieval readers would be familiar. The level of detail in the descriptions of various characters seems to emphasize the unreliability of the visual aspect of the poem. In the first section, the dreamer sees and describes the pagan gods as they are seated at the table of Apollo (253-385). These are the most complete descriptions in the poem, and they include various details that are significant and interesting.*For example, Bloomfield notes the alchemical symbolism of the metals in the description (Seven 227-28). And yet, these are descriptions of the characters who, even on the surface of the poem are shown to have no literal existence. At the other extreme, the only descriptions of historical characters in the poem do not describe the characters themselves at all, but paintings of the characters on the walls of the arbor of Doctrine. Even the Lord of Light, who represents God, the being who for the medieval Christian had the most complete existence, never appears or speaks in the poem. By giving the most substantive portrayal of the least substantial characters, the poem exaggerates the sensual nature of the information given in what is always a vision and undercuts the reliability of the senses. The clearest use of the visual arts in the poem comes in the extended description of the paintings on the walls of Doctrine’s arbor. The painted walls allow the author to extend the scope of his poem to include the entire history of the world (Assembly lvii). They symbolize visual allegory and connect the poem not only to other literature which contains descriptions of painted or sculpted walls, but also to the visual representations on the walls of the churches in medieval England. The first wall in Doctrine’s arbor contains the images of people who lived from Adam to Moses. The next has representations of those who lived from Moses to Christ. On the third are portrayed people who have lived from the time of Christ until the poem’s present. The fourth wall, behind Doctrine, holds a painting of the vision of the battle between Vice and Virtue that the narrator has just seen.*This placement of the picture seems to support the idea that the battle is intended to represent, at least on one level, the final battle and judgement and not just an internal struggle common to all people. Throughout the third episode, the poet reminds the reader that these are only pictures. Doctrine stresses the mimetic nature of the images, saying, “Thus hast thow in vysyon the verrey fygure/ Of these iii tymes here shewyd in purtrayture” (Assembly 1770-71). The images are portraits of figures seen in a vision, four steps removed from reality, and the reader is constantly reminded of their illusory nature.*E.g. 1514, 1520, 1554, 1597, 1767, 1784-85, 1865, 1877, 1880, 1884, 1886, 1904,1905-15. The dreamer’s describes the images as they might be found depicted in paintings or sculptures found in churches of the time: Furst, to begyñ, there was in portrature The list continues, but these characters, like the virtues and vices, are not identified through their actions or even their physical characteristics, but with the help of standard icons associated with them in painting and sculpture. The other walls are the same: Jonah comes out of a whale, the evangelists have their signs and church fathers have their “pylyons.” These biblical and historical people are not characters in the poem; they are paintings of figures, removed from reality even within the fiction of the vision, and the poet emphasizes their status by using standard visual indicators of their identity rather than by describing them more carefully or giving them life. E. W. Tristram describes the medieval practice of using biblical figures, particularly Old Testament figures, allegorically in wall painting from the fourteenth century on (26), but as Gradon observes, the people pictured on the walls in Doctrine’s arbor, “are actual, historical realisations and not exemplary or allegorical and their emblems are purely historical also” (371). As a result, the characters are left undeveloped and serve primarily as a contrast for the gods described in the first section and to emphasize the visual or sensual nature of the vision. The poet also uses these paintings as examples of the inadequacies of sensual stimuli. After telling the dreamer that the walls contain the figure of the vision in portraiture, Doctrine tells him that, “The pycture . . . yeueth clere intellygence,” and invites him to, “beholdyn with good discresyon” (1865-66). The reference to figures and the exhortation to discretion recall the problems that arose when the ancients refused the figures they were given because they lacked discreet reason and emphasizes again that to understand, the dreamer will need to apply reason to the images that have come to his eyes. The inadequacy of sight alone is reemphasized when the narrator, after he, “had long beholde that pycture” (1884), still does not understand the intent of the paintings. Throughout his viewing of the walls, the narrator has been able to identify the characters depicted with the help of their purely historical symbols, but he can not seem to understand “what they represent” (1904), until his vision is combined with the instruction he receives from Doctrine, who represents reason. As with the literary allegories, The Assembly of Gods makes careful use of conventional visual images to reveal the differences between the senses and reason and to stress the need for them to work together. The static descriptions of the characters and the emphasis on the visual nature of all that the dreamer experiences, combined with his inability to gain any deeper understanding from the images until they are combined with reason, in the form of Doctrine’s instruction, repeat the poem’s insistent message that reason and sensuality must work together to reveal underlying meaning in allegory. < Previous Page | Next Page > |
ContentsChapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3: Literary, Visual and Dramatic Allegories Chapter 4: Death and the accord of Reason and Sensuality Appendix 1 Appendix 2: Critical response to The Assembly of Gods |
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