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< Previous Page | Next Page > Chapter 4a: The Allegory of DeathIn one sense, reason and sensuality come together in death in a medieval poem about allegory because death is the supreme allegory of the late Middle Ages. The poet includes allegories of all kinds in The Assembly of Gods and makes it clear that the interpretation of any allegory requires the accord of reason and sensuality, but he reserves the central position in the poem for the allegory of death. This is a logical choice given the late medieval love of representations of death. As Spivack notes, “The art of the period teems with death, and so does its literature. Church walls and windows gleamed with the menace of the Danse Macabre; in household and tavern the memento mori thrust its inescapable comment on business or pleasure; the skull on the ring pressed its sermon into the jeweled finger” (64). Allegories of Death were not only popular, they were also extremely effective, particularly when properly understood. As Thomas More said,
More’s statement reveals the ability of images of Death to bring about the accord of reason and sensuality which is at the heart of The Assembly of Gods. He describes a process that uses the senses (he mentions hearing and sight specifically) but then takes the time to let the sentence of the image settle into the heart. The understanding moves beyond the immediate response to a deeper feeling that withdraws the soul from the affections of the body. For More, and for the poet of The Assembly of the Gods, there is nothing that does this so well as the remembrance of Death. Representations of death were common in the earlier years of the Middle Ages, but in the years following the Black Death the popularity of death as an allegorical figure and a reminder of mortality increased significantly. Allegories of death took many forms, but had in common a concrete personification. Philippa Tristram suggests that,
After the plague, images of Death as a skeletal figure with a dart or scythe, sometimes wrapped in loose cloth, sometimes bare boned, selecting individuals, taking them by the hand or striking them down, appeared everywhere. He appeared in pageants and the miracle and morality plays and took various forms in literature.*For some examples see: visual arts–P. Tristram figs. 23-28, Davidson figs. 22-24; drama–Spivack 64-72, Potter 40 and Van Dyke123-32; literature–Triggs (Assembly xliii) and P. Tristram154-83. In his various forms, Death was readily recognizable and served to remind the people of their own mortality and the need to be prepared for the time when they would leave this world. This prevalence of personified representations makes death the perfect allegorical figure to focus attention on, because by connecting to death the poem connects to many of the most popular and powerful allegories of the day. Death took so many forms in the late Middle Ages that it is impossible to trace the influence of each on the poem, but it is possible to look at the way that the poem uses the image of Death to develop the theme of the accord of reason and sensuality in a few specific ways. The description of Death, like that of the rest of the characters in the poem is quite general. He is not thoroughly described in any one place, but there is enough information to connect him with popular images of the day. When Discord meets him, he looks “As he had bene a goste . . . in wyndyng shete” (420), which at one point he removes. He has a “grym countenaunce” (442) and a “darte, callyd hys mortall launce” (1450). When Doctrine interprets Atropos’ complaint to the gods, she metaphorically says that he “cast in a booñ,/ That found theym gnawyng ynough euerychooñ” (1805-6), a nice image in light of the common medieval depiction of Death as a skeleton. Each of these brief descriptions is in keeping with standard late medieval depiction of death in literature, drama and the visual arts. In the first section of the poem Death appears as Atropos, the ancient fate who is responsible for cutting the thread of life. Here the traditional form has been adjusted to make Atropos male, which helps him match medieval depictions of Death and smoothes the later transformation which is important to the development of the character and the themes of the poem. The use of Atropos and his later transformation into Death connects the poem with ancient allegorical forms and illustrates the proper appropriation of pagan allegorical motifs. At the same time, the easy substitution of one of the pagan figures for what is arguably the most popular figure in the late Middle Ages reveals the similarities between ancient and modern allegories. This connection gives new significance to Doctrine’s warning about the potential of the ancient allegories to fool those who lacked discreet reason and to her statement that,
The appropriation of Atropos accentuates the fact that modern allegories are as likely as ancient ones to deceive those who do not employ reason in their consideration of the figures. Another important effect of conflating Atropos and Death is to connect the poem with contemporary literary works which link these two in other ways. For example, in John Gower’s Confessio Amantis the poet speaks of “Atropos,/ Whish is goddesse of alle deth” (P.ii 94, 2756-57). Other examples include Chaucer’s Troilus and Creseyde (IV, 1208) and Lydgate’s Reason and Sensuality (369, 1254-61) and Temple of Glass (782). The poet of The Assembly of Gods appropriates Atropos in the same way that Chaucer, Lydgate and Gower do, which connects the work to theirs, but in this poem the appropriation is dramatized and made explicit. It serves, among other things, to underscore the allegorical nature of both characters and the necessity of looking for their underlying significance rather than just accepting the outward expression of their fables or allegories. The character Death recalls many popular medieval allegories, one of the most interesting and prevalent of which is the Dance of Death mentioned by More in the above quote. The Dance of Death is an allegory intended to illustrate the fact that death comes to all people regardless of their rank or station. It is not clear which form the allegory took first (White ix), but by the time The Assembly of Gods was written the idea and image of the Dance were well known in England. It was a popular theme in drama and literature (see Assembly xlv-l, Fifield 21-23 and P. Tristram 177-83) and was widely used in the visual decoration of English churches. While he was in France, sometime between 1426 and 1433, Lydgate saw the Danse Macabré at the Cemetery of the Holy Innocents in Paris. He prepared a translation of the verses that accompanied the painting and brought it to England where it inspired the painting of a similar mural on the wall of Old Saint Paul’s cathedral. From there it spread to various churches throughout England.*For a list of churches which had or have murals of The Dance of Death see White 97-98. Anderson also describes the popularity of the Dance of Death as a subject for wall painting in English churches (148). See also Davidson Fig. 22. In different mediums the Dance took on different forms, but in each the emphasis was on the indiscriminate and inexorable way in which Death executed his duty. In The Assembly of Gods Atropos’ first entrance draws on the image of the Dance. He explains his office to the gods and says,
He then gives a list of distinguished figures he has smitten to the heart. In the introduction to the translation he made of the French verses, Lydgate says, “Dethe spareth not/ low ne hye degre” (9). In Piers Plowman, Langland writes,
And in the fourteenth-century morality play, The Pride of Life, Death gives a similar list of luminaries whom he has brought low (quoted in Davenport 18). With this connection to the Dance of Death the author draws one of the most popular allegorical representations of the day into The Assembly of Gods, and then varies the motif to draw attention to information that will become important later in the poem. After the catalogue of famous people he has “sesyd” with his mace, Atropos says,
The inclusion of fish, foul and beast goes a bit beyond the traditional lists of the Dance of Death, but when Atropos mentions an exception to his complete power and goes on to say, “oon there ys that wyll nat apply/ Vnto my correccion nor in no wyse bowe/ To the dynt of my dart for doole nor destyny” (485-87), it violates the most basic element of the Dance motif and must have caught the attention of the medieval reader. This modification of the Dance motif brings on the psychomachia of the second episode and plants the seed of Atropos’ transformation into Death. It also highlights the fact that Atropos is aware that his authority extends only to those, “in whom Dame Nature/ Hath any iurysdiccion,” a distinction which will become important later. In these ways, the poet uses the Dance of Death motif to move the plot, reveal the characters and focus attention on details which create incoherencies and draw the reader into the allegorical level of the poem. The summons of Death to the individual is another important theme in medieval arts, particularly in the morality dramas. As noted above, Spivack calls it one of the four themes that make up all medieval morality drama (63). This theme has much in common with the Dance of Death and may have grown directly out of it (Fifield 21). Clifford Davidson describes the way that the morality plays strip the Dance, “down to the most essential action, the arrest of a single individual, Human Genus or Everyman, who represents all the orders of society within the play; that individual thus represents all human beings who must face the ultimate confrontation—the termination of life itself” (121). The morality dramas focus on the struggle of a universal individual to choose how to live and what influences to follow while in this life. The role of Death is generally to bring an end to the time to choose and the beginning of the time to be judged for those choices. Merle Fifield suggests that, “Whatever the spiritual condition of those selected to die, Death does not comfort protagonists and audiences with hope of God’s mercy toward the unabsolved sinner, but evokes terror on His Justice and pity for all those subjected to it” (Fifield 22-23). In the morality plays the summons of death brings a sense of urgency which focuses attention on the need to prepare and the process by which the soul is prepared for death. The appearance of Death in the second episode of The Assembly of Gods and his seizure of Microcosm, the “everyman” of this poem, serves all the classic functions of the summons of death and focuses attention on the theme of the accord of reason and sensuality. The first mention of Atropos in the second section comes when Conscience warns the followers of Vice who are on their way to Confession that they must beware of “olde Attropos” because if he takes them in their current state “lost they [are] for euer” (1202-3). In contrast to those who are not prepared for the summons, when Virtue learns that Death, Atropos newly renamed, is on his way to take control of Microcosm, he is, “plesyd that hit shuld so be” (1423) and sends for Priesthood to make final preparations. The poet sets up a parallel between Microcosm and the repentant followers of Vice to emphasize the process of preparation for death. Microcosm, like the characters counseled by Conscience, was, for a time, under the control of Vice and the expulsion of Vice, from the field is analogous to those characters leaving Vice’s employ. The repentant characters are counseled to avoid Atropos because they are not prepared, but the field is ready when Death’s arrives. In the time between Conscience’s warning and the coming of Death, the field has been cleansed and made ready by the proper ordering of Reason and Sensuality. It is during this interim period that Reason is given lordship over the field and charged to control Sensuality. And it is during this period that,
The proper ordering of the relationship between Reason and Sensuality is what prepares Microcosm for the summons of Death. The connection between death, judgement and the ordering of reason and sensuality is an important idea in the morality dramas as Spivack and Davenport point out (63, 94) and it is central to The Assembly of Gods as well. As the poem opens and the narrator falls asleep pondering the accord of reason and sensuality the first thing he says of his dream is,
The first response to the question about reason and sensuality is to go to Minos’ court, which is in the underworld, to witness a judgment. The moments in the poem when the narrator stops at the climax of each of the three episodes to give further information all center on images of death and judgement and focus attention on the accord of reason and sensuality. And in the final stanza, the poem returns to these three elements again. For Lydgate, Chaucer, the Assembly of Gods poet, the writers of the morality dramas and the people of their day the challenge of bringing the sensual, temporal and worldly under the control of the rational, spiritual and divine was the fundamental challenge of this life. It is expressed in The Assembly of Gods, the morality dramas, Reason and Sensuality, The Parson’s Tale and numerous other works from the period. This ordering of the soul had to be done in preparation for the summons of death because with death came the judgement, and the degree to which a person had turned his or her back on the worldly and embraced the divine was key to that judgement. This process is particularly significant in The Assembly of Gods, because this is a poem about the functioning of allegory. Specifically, it is about the accord of reason and sensuality that is necessary for allegory to function properly. As the above quotes from St. Gregory, Alan of Lille (see chapter one) and Thomas More indicate, the combination of reason and sensuality required to understand allegory trains reason to properly control sensuality in the soul generally. In this way, interpreting allegory prepares the soul for death and for judgement. The poet of The Assembly of Gods centers the poem around the ordering of reason and sensuality required for the interpretation of allegory and then consistently combines the ordering of reason and sensuality with death and judgement to remind the reader of the role that allegory can play in preparing the soul for judgement. But the poem also provides its readers an opportunity to experience this ordering by consistently requiring them to apply their own reason to resolve the inconsistencies in the narrative and by not allowing the characters in the poem to bring the moral of the poem to the surface in a satisfying way. By placing Death and the summons to judgement at the center of the poem, the poet brings this allegory back to the primary function of allegory, the ordering of reason and sensuality in the soul. As Thomas More pointed out, “Nothing is there that may more effectuallye withdreawe the soule fro the wretched affections of the body, than may the rememberance of death” when its sentence is allowed to sink into the soul (Davidson 115). The appearance of common representations of Death in The Assembly of Gods draws some of the most popular late medieval allegorical motifs into the poem. The poet uses these images to universalize the themes of the poem and to emphasize the role of reason and sensuality in the interpretation of allegory. Through its strong connection between reason, sensuality, death and judgement, the poem highlights the potential that allegory has to aid in the ordering of the soul in the preparation for judgement. < 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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