Avatars of Ugliness in Medieval Literature Author(s): Jan Ziolkowski Reviewed work(s): Source: The Modern Language Review, Vol.

79, No. 1 (Jan., 1984), pp. 1-20 Published by: Modern Humanities Research Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3730321 . Accessed: 06/11/2011 09:42
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JANUARY I984

VOL. 79

PART I

AVATARS OF UGLINESS IN MEDIEVAL LITERATURE

Medieval poets, whether writing in Latin or Old French or Middle English, whether composing love lyrics or narrative works, lavished their efforts on formal descriptions of persons, particularly of young women. When singing the praises of beautiful maidens, the poets followed a rigid canon that determined not only which parts of the body and face they dwelled on and which they omitted from consideration, but also the order in which they examined these features and even the adjectives and similes that they used. This canon, in place from the twelfth century in treatises on poetics and in evidence in the verse of still earlier times, stipulated that descriptions move systematically from the head of the subject downward to the feet. In addition to a particular order of description, the canon fixed criteria for determining what was beautiful. It required that the damsel in question have long blonde hair; a smooth, white, moderate-sized forehead; delicate eyebrows, not joined above the nose; sparkling grey-blue eyes; a rosy or lily-white complexion; a well-formed, straight nose; a small mouth with full red lips and white, well-spaced teeth; a long white neck; long arms and fingers; a white bosom with hard little breasts; slender hips; and well-formed legs tapering to petite feet.1 The order of exposition and the physical characteristics dictated by the canon of beauty can be seen throughout medieval literature - in descriptions of the Virgin Mary, in secular love lyrics, in romances, and in historical poems.2 The most famous medieval examples are probably the portraits of Helen of Troy which Matthew of Edmond Faral, Vendome provides as models for students in his Ars versificatoria.3 du both in his ground-breaking LesArtspoetiques XIIe et duXIIIe siecleand elsewhere, emphasized duly how wide-reaching an influence such catalogues of charms exerted.4 D. S. Brewer, in an article on 'The Ideal of Feminine Beauty in Medieval Literature', has stressed 'the extraordinaryfixity' of formal descriptions of feminine beauty.5 While the methodical enumerations of beauties have received their portion of scholarly attention,6 their constant Doppelganger portrayals of ugliness - have
1 Walter Clyde Curry, The Middle English Ideal of Personal Beauty;As Foundin the MetricalRomances, and (Baltimore, I916), p. 3 and passim.(Curry's book, Chronicles, Legends theXIII, XIV, andXV Centuries of despite its title, is helpful for understanding descriptions of ugliness.) 2 For of lengthy descriptions of the Virgin Mary's beauty, see Carleton Brown, A Register MiddleEnglish and 2 Religious DidacticVerse, vols (Oxford, 1916-20), nos 474, 800, 137, 1652, 2066, 2468, and 2469. For An French Literature: Example in in romances, see Alice M. Colby, ThePortrait Twelfth-Century of descriptions de theStylisticOriginality Chretien Troyes (Geneva, 965). For those in epic poems, see Oskar Voigt, Das of de chansons geste,Inaugural Dissertation (Marburg, und IdealderSchinheit Hisslichkeitin denaltfranzisischen I891). 3 I, 56-57 (as numbered in Faral's edition, cited below in note 4). 4 LesArtspoetiques (Paris, 1924), pp. 75-8I, and Edmond Faral, 'Ovide et quelques autres sources du roman d'Eneas',Romania, (191 ), 6 -88. 40 5 'The Ideal of Feminine Beauty in Medieval Literature, especially "Harley Lyrics", Chaucer, and Some Elizabethans', MLR, 50 (1955), 257-69 (p. 257). 6 The fullest treatments are, besides those of Faral and Brewer, M. B. Ogle, 'The Classical Origin and Tradition of Literary Conceits', American Journal Philology, (1912), 125-52 (with referenceson pages 34 of im der 126 and 152 to his other articles); Hennig Brinkmann, Geschichte lateinischen Liebesdichtung Mittelalter der Ovidsauf dieliterarische pp. 88-93; Winfried Offermanns, Die Wirkung Sprache lateinischen (Halle, I925), Beiheft 3 zum Mittellateinischen des Jahrbuch (Wuppertal, I970), Liebesdichtung ii. und 12. Jahrhunderts,
pp. 129-56.

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been neglected.7 Faral, though he made a few remarks on descriptions of ugliness, announced without hesitation that 'Dans la litterature, les eloges de la beaute sont infiniment plus frequents que les tableaux de la laideur' (LesArtspoetiques, 76). In p. making this assertion, Faral overstated his case, for accounts of ugliness, even if fewer than those of beauty, appear often enough in medieval literature. Indeed, they constitute a distinct tradition that deserves to be traced from its beginnings at the end of the Roman period to its weakening in the seventeenth century. In the Middle Ages, rhetorical descriptions of unsightly men and women are found in tractates, plays, romances, and - above all - lyric poetry. In late medieval English lyric poetry, the ironic description becomes a recognizable sub-genre. Apart from their inherent interest as a commonplace of medieval literature, the descriptions of ugliness shed light on how medieval rhetorical training affected approaches to composition8 and how rhetoric and ethics, now the unlikeliest of associates, spent part of the Middle Ages in each other's company.9 Classical literature contains its share of vignettes devoted to physically repulsive people and among these vignettes we might expect to find a head-to-foot study of ugliness; but such was not, in fact, the customary procedure. We look in vain for a head-to-toe exposition of the deformities of Thersites, whose ugliness Homer mentions (Iliad, II. 216-19), or Socrates, who was held to be a paradigm of ugliness. With equal disappointment we emerge from reading such outstanding characterizations of unattractive women as Catullus's Poem43 and Horace's Epode Not before 8. classical antiquity is emitting its last whimper do we meet an author who anticipates the routine medieval progression from brow to toe. The author is Sidonius Apollinaris, a fifth-century nobleman and man of letters who lived in Gaul. His censure of a parasite named Gnatho (Letters, 13), almost a pendant to his equally II. I. thorough encomium of the Emperor Theoderic (Letters, 2), provided a convenient formula for describing hideousness and must have been influential in the Middle Ages;10after all, his works formed the basis for many other practices prescribed in medieval poetical and rhetorical treatises.11GeoffreyofVinsauf, the twelfth-century rhetorician who produced the Poetrianovaand other handbooks on writing which were soon incorporated into the school curricula, refers repeatedly to Sidonius as a revered auctoritas.12 Matthew of Vendome, Geoffrey's one great twelfth-century predecessor in the field of versification manuals, does not mention Sidonius by name, but he does
7 The only major exceptions are: Hans RobertJauss, 'Die klassische und die christliche Rechtfertigung des Hasslichen in mittelalterlicher Literatur', first printed in Die nicht mehr schonen Kunste:Grenzphdnomene edited by Hans RobertJauss (Munich, 1968), pp. 143-68, and reprintedin Das Groteske desAsthetischen, in derDichtung,edited by Otto F. Best (Darmstadt, 1980), pp. 143-78; Paul Michel, 'Formosa deformitas': desHasslichen mittelalterlicher in Literatur Bewaltigungsformen (Bonn, 976). 8 See Jane Baltzell, 'Rhetorical "Amplification" and "Abbreviation" and the Structure of Medieval 2 Narrative', PacificCoast Philology, (1967), 32-39. 9 For studies on how grammar, a field related to rhetoric, became connected with ethics, see Philippe de ancienne medidvale, (1958), et Delhaye, 'Grammatica et Ethica au XIIe siecle', Recherches theologie 25 I 59-I io, and 'L'Enseignement de la philosophie morale au XIIe siecle', Medieval Studies, I (1949), 77-99. 10References are to Sidonius, Poems Letters, and translated by W. B. Anderson, 2 vols (London, I936-65). The translation below is Anderson's. " Sidonius's portrait of Theoderic was a model for encomia: see Annette Georgi, Das lateinische und deutsche des (Berlin, 1969), pp. 32-40. Preisgedicht Mittelalters 12On Geoffrey's influence, see Karl Young, 'Chaucer and Geoffrey of Vinsauf', Modern Philology,41 see ( 943-44), 172-82. Qn Sidonius as an auctoritas, Edmond Faral, 'Sidoine Apollinaire et la technique ii (Citta del Vaticano, litteraire du Moyen Age', in Miscellanea Giovanni pp. 567-8o. Mercati, I946),

JAN ZIOLKOWSKI

produce five grand cameos of beauty and two of ugliness. (In an uncharacteristic moment of insight into human nature, he maintains that a teacher ought to dwell less on vituperation than on praise, since men are naturally inclined to criticize rather than to laud (Ars versificatoria, 59).) In presenting a scoundrel named Davus, I, Matthew focuses not so much on the man's body as on his nefarious activities, and for this reason manuscripts entitle the piece a Descriptio senilis nequitiae and a Vituperiumstulti.13 The sketch is noteworthy for our purposes only in that, as a denunciation of a sponger, it follows on a road paved by Sidonius's caricature of Gnatho. More pertinent is the description of Beroe, which moves loosely, with occasional digressions and repetitions, from the mangy head to the gouty foot of the reprehensible woman. As in the picture of Davus, Matthew shows no heed for possible squeamishness on the part of his readers. He presents a woman so filthy that her ears are ridden with worms and that her eyelids act as a fly-trap for the insects which swarm around her bleary eyes (Ars versificatoria, 58). I, Such descriptions, composed with unmistakable zest, served several purposes. In the first place, they offered writers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries a harmless means of continuing to produce the violently insulting personal descriptions found in earlier medieval monastic literature and possibly related to vernacular flyting traditions. Froumund of Tegernsee, a monk of the tenth century, left a rather obscure poem which illustrates how revolting the medieval Latin lampoon could be; quotation of the first thirteen lines will suffice to convey the flavour of the poem: Quid totiens me dilaceras, cuculus sine pennis, Aequiperans te homini, testudine pigrior omni? Ecce ut spuma tumes cicius ruiturus in ignes; Qui dudum fueras, nunquam fore desine ad horas; Flegmaticus follis sis foetidus atque putredo. Versificum carmen fingis te ponere stilo: Nugula verba facis, discis que nescio de quo: Si vis, certemus faciendo carmine versus. Huc, rogo, verte oculos, demens, nec suspice nubes. Ecce prius tergenda manus, qua mungio pendet, Non potius purgandus aqua, quia pectora sordent? Si capud inclinas, vetulo de flegmate guttas, Quod tibi pigredo detersit pectore duro.14 Froumund's description does not follow the head-to-toe order that interests us here, but it may be the closest surviving relative of lost curses and invectives which did proceed limb by limb, joint by joint, organ by organ. Head-to-toe curses survive in Latin from ancient times.15 Apart from opening an outlet for a bilious imagination, descriptions of ugliness gave students a well-earned relief from set exercises on charming ladies. That such exercises were common one may infer from the prominence of beauty descriptions in textbooks (see Faral, Les Arts poetiques, p. 76), from extant manuscripts in which students' compositions and teachers' models are sprinkled among treatises,16 and
13 See B. Haur6au, on Bibl. Vat. Reg. Christ. 344 and BN 15155, Noticeset extraitsdesmanuscrits la de nationale, Part 2 (i 88o), 328-29. Bibliotheque 29, 14 Die edited by Karl Strecker (Berlin, 1925), pp. 53-54. (Froumund), Tegernseer Briefsammlung 15See W. Sherwood Fox, Review, (1919), 460-77 (pp. 467-68). 27 'Cursing as a Fine Art', Sewanee 16 See Edmond n.s. Faral, 'Le Manuscrit 511 du Hunterian Museum', Studimedievali, 9 (1936), I8-12I, andA Thirteenth-Century ofRhetorical editedby BruceHarbert Poems, (Toronto,I975). Anthology

in Literature Ugliness Medieval

from the frequency of beauty catalogues in twelfth-century poetry.17But one need not rely on inference alone: already by the end of the twelfth century rhetoricians were issuing explicit statements on how passe the tableaux of beautiful women had become. Geoffrey of Vinsauf grumbled that the 'formae descriptio' was a 'res quasi Elsewhere in the PoetrianovaGeoffrey appears to strive consciously to vary the monotonous head-to-toe description by turning it upside down; in a passage on taste, adjectives he bids the student: 'Say therefore:snowyteeth, flaminglips, honied hair' (Poetria nova,773-75).18 Given the fact that rosycountenance, milkybrow, golden even a schoolmasterly rhetorician like Geoffrey grew impatient with the fixed method of description, we should be prepared to find the convention travestied by younger, freer spirits. The Latin Middle Ages saw lively parody of many liturgical forms and literary genres.19 In the schools students were particularly eager to pervert their basic texts; to cite one amusing example, a tenth-century pupil of produced a barbarous remaniement the famous nightingale poem which is found amid the Cambridge Songs and which was formerly attributed to Fulbert of Chartres. Where the original poem begs the nightingale never to end her mellifluous song, the parody insists that she stop her screeching.20 In fact, the descriptions of feminine beauty were burlesquedas early as the twelfth century. In a poem with the incipit 'Musa iocosa veni, mihi carmina suggere vati' (a composition probably prior to Matthew of Vendome's passages on Helen and Beroe), the poet plays an elaboratejoke on the worn-out conventions of the descriptio The pulchritudinis.21 author puts his tongue in his cheek in the first two lines, as he invokes the Muse to inspire him to write an innovative poem. At first the description which follows seems anything but novel. Quite innocently and predictably, the poet moves from hair to brow, nose to lips, neck to breast, and arms to hands. At this juncture the poet begins the obligatory jump over the female genitalia by saying coyly that no one may talk about that ineffably wonderful, but unspeakably private part of the anatomy. Somehow, though, his bound falls short and in the end he touches on the taboo subject. He writes: Sedquiddicemusde re laudabiliore Cumnequeatdici de causanobiliore Que latet absconsecastoprecincta pudore Hic asstantcoxecumre peramabiliore Cruraquibussubsunt,magnorepleta vigore victalabore Que siquidemnullolassantur
(11. 20-25) trita et vetus' (Poetria nova, 622-23).

Could these remarks on the athletic capability of the woman's thighs have been No. merely an unintentional or naive double-entendre? Lest we think these departures to from the norms of the descriptio have been fortuitous, the poet concludes with a line that completes the bathos: 'Cuncta pedes portant, fulgentes absque pedore' (1.26).
Faral, 'Ovide . ..', Romania, (191 I), I6I-88. 40 translated by Margaret F. Nims (Toronto, The quotation is from PoetriaNova of Geoffrey Vinsauf, of et in de et 1967). Geoffrey remarks further on the need to vary descriptio his Documentum modo artedictandi versificandi 2.5, as edited by Faral, LesArtspoetiques). (II. 19See Paul Lehmann, Die Parodie Mittelalter, im second edition (Stuttgart, 1963). 20 Die edited by Karl Strecker (Berlin, 1926), pp. 29-32 and 'Anhang'. Lieder, Cambridger 21 The LoveLatinandtheRiseof European poem has been edited and translated by Peter Dronke, Medieval
18
2 17

Lyrics, second edition,

vols (Oxford, 1968), nI, 450-52.

JAN ZIOLKOWSKI

The portrait, far from living up to its early promise of being typical, closes with a wholly incongruous observation about the cleanness of the woman's feet! Such mischievous rearrangingof the beauty descriptions was one option for poets who enjoyed writing travesties, but it was not the only one. As the centuries passed, poets grew ever more exasperated with the stale and constrictive lists (Curry, The MiddleEnglishIdeal, pp. o-I ). Now and then they vented their spleen by transmogrifying the lovely blondes into ugly crones and whores, the handsome knights into giants, dwarfs, and wild men. In so doing the poets exhibited the same enthusiasm for the ugly and the monstrous that medieval artists evinced, if wejudge by the bizarre marginalia in manuscripts and the grotesqueries such as gargoyles in medieval cathedrals.22 Thus the describing of ugliness liberated writers from the oppressive weight of beauty and allowed them to indulge in the medieval passion for the outlandish. One can almost hear Chretien de Troyes sigh in relief as he unveils the loathly lady in his Perceval:
onques riens si leide a devise ne fu neis dedanz anfer. Einz ne veistes si noir fer come ele ot le col et les mains, et ancores fu ce del mains a l'autre leidure qu'ele ot. Si oel estoient com dui crot, petit ausi come de rat, s'ot nes de singe ou de chat et oroilles d'asne ou de buef. Si dant resanblent moel d'uef de color, si estoient ros, et si ot barbe come bos.23 Whereas in descriptions of beauty Chretien had to adhere to the narrow set of authorized metaphors and similes, in those of ugliness he was free to invent as he wished; the comparisons had not yet been fixed. Not all elaborate depictions of ugliness were purely for amusement or release. Besides offering an escape from the constraints of beauty, they could serve higher purposes in both literature and art.24 Descriptions of a luscious young woman and a mori (or, to collapsing crone often come together in literature as an emphatic memento be more accurate, mementosenescere). The bluntest example appears in the late medieval English Death and Liffe, in which Lady Liffe is a ravishing beauty while Lady Death is 'the ffoulest ffreake pat formed was euer'.25 The most famous such scene in Middle-English poetry occurs in Sir Gawain and the GreenKnight, where the contrast between the physical states of the two women reminds the reader of man's mortality and futility, two concepts that the reader may have forgotten during the
22 On in marginalia, see Lilian M. C. Randall, Images theMarginsof Gothic Manuscripts (Berkeley, i967). On gargoyles, see most recently Ronald Sheridan and Anne Ross, Gargoyles Grotesques: and in Paganism the MedievalChurch (Boston, I975). On the grotesque in medieval art, see Jurgis Baltrusaitis, Reveilset le Racesin (Paris, 960). On monsters, seeJohn Block Friedman, TheMonstrous prodiges; gothiquefantastique Art Medieval and Thought (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 981). 23 Le Conte Graal du edited by Felix Lecoy, 2 vols (Paris, I979-81), I, 11. (Perceval), 4587-6I3. 24 On the Its significance of grotesques in art, see Willard Farnham, TheShakespearean Grotesque. Genesis and Transformations (Oxford, I97I), pp. 1-46. 25 See Deathand Alliterative DebatePoemin a Seventeenth-Century edited by Israel Version, Liffe: A Medieval Gollancz and Mabel Day (London, 1930), 11.60-97 and I55-70 (1. I57).

Literature Uglinessin Medieval

last extensive description of a person in the poem - the arming of Gawain.26 In other instances the winsome maiden and the hideous hag are glimpses of the same which woman, but at two stages in her life. In the eleventh-century Latin Ruodlieb, has just claim to be called the first extant romance of medieval Europe, the hero's mother admonishes him on the consequences of aging by describing how a woman Adam and how a man change physically as they grow old.27 In the Jeu dela Feuillee, de la Halle recounts how his wife has lost every touch of her youthful grace. His fulllength portrait won great favour with later readers and survives separately from the rest of the play in two manuscripts.28 Whereas the vignettes mentioned above serve to warn of the ineluctable old age and death that await us all, others demonstrate the consequences of low life by tracing the bodily manifestations of moral collapse.29 From the late thirteenth (later translated from Latin into Old century survives Matheolus's Lamentationes French by Jehan Le Fevre), in which the author rehearses in morbid detail the original and present appearance of the prostitute, Petra, whom he married and because of whom he lost his office as priest.30 Later (and also written by a in Frenchman) is FranCoisVillon's Testament, which a section entitled 'Regrets de la Belle Heaulmiere' (11. 453-560) records the sadness of an old harlot as she compares her present unattractiveness with her former splendour. What prompted these diptychs, with their facing panels of the sublimely beautiful and the nauseatingly repugnant?Sometimes we detect a chain of influence, in which one particular description evidently inspired imitations and reactions; Adam de la Halle's two intertwined pictures of his wife Marie perhaps led directly to Matheolus's description and indirectly to Villon's. Yet in the cases of the Ruodlieb and Sir Gawainandthe Green Knight,we need not seek such linkage, for the notion of head-to-foot descriptions of the pretty and the loathsome would have juxtaposing suggested itself to most writers as a result of their rhetorical training. As F. J. E. LatinPoetry theMiddleAges, 'Every schoolboy in Raby noted in his Historyof Secular learned how to describe a woman's beauty, and how to write an "invective" against
women' .31

The descriptions of whores, besides affordingan insight into how set compositionexercises found their way into literature, bring us to the complex issue of how descriptions of a person's body and assessment of his moral state came to be bound together in medieval literature. This question has been raised but left unanswered by many literary historians, among them E. R. Curtius and D. S. Brewer.32The
26 On and the description of the two women, see Derek A. Pearsall, 'Rhetorical "Descriptio" in Sir Gawain theGreen Knight',MLR, 50 (1955), 129-34 (pp. 130-3 ). 27 Ruodlieb. (Darmstadt, Marchenepen Fragment xv (xiv), as edited by Karl Langosch in Waltharius. 1956). 28 Adam le Bossu, Le Jeu de la Feuillee,edited by Ernest Langlois, second revised edition (Paris, 1970), p. ix (on the MSS) and 11. I-174 (the descriptions). 5 29 Note that a 'good' character who turned 'bad' changed accordingly in physical appearance. See the en comments on this kind of transformation in Merlin.Roman proseduXIIIe siicle, edited by Gaston Paris and Jacob Ulrich, 2 vols (Paris, i886), i, i66. 30 Les Lamentations Matheolus, de edited by Anton-Gerard van den Hamel, 2 vols (Paris, I892-I905), I, De edited by Dorothy M. Robathan (Amsterdam, 11. 565-691 of Book I. See also ThePseudo-Ovidian Vetula, 230-336 and 500-508. 1968), Liber secundus, 11. 31 F. J. E. Raby, A History Secular LatinPoetry theMiddleAges,second edition, 2 vols (Oxford, 1957), in of

32 See Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature theLatinMiddleAges,translated by Willard R. Trask and (Princeton, 1973), p. 182, note 37, and D. S. Brewer, 'The Ideal .. .', p. 257, note I.

1, 45-

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answer demands consideration of two large fields, rhetoric and physiognomy, but will have to be restricted to two mere paragraphs here. Let me begin by evaluating the contribution of rhetoric to the 'moral description'. Although the technical term was relatively unimportant in classical rhetorical theory, personal attridescriptio butes were important as supporting evidence, for praise or for blame, in epideictic oratory (see Pearsall, p. I29). In the late classical period epideictic oratory grew in prominence in the rhetorical schools, while forensic rhetoric became the private domain of specialists and deliberative rhetoricwithered under political repression.33 As epideictic oratory rose, so did the habit of lingering over personal attributes - of describing.34Description of physical appearance was pushed to two extremes: those men regarded favourably had to be good and handsome, while those criticized had to be bad and unattractive. Under early Christianity, this tendency in description was confirmed:external appearance was regarded as a mirrorof the soul.35Explicit statements of this theory may be found in Ambrose ('Imago quaedam animi loquitur in vultu'), in Isidore ('Vultus autem animorum qualitatem significat'), and in Rabanus Maurus ('facies autem duobus modis intelligitur, hoc est, corporea et spiritalis').36 Dorian Gray, the man whose body remains pristine as his soul turns cankered from debauchery, would have been incomprehensible in the Middle Ages. Developments not only in late antique rhetoric, but also in ancient physiognomical theories, would have encouraged writers to express qualities of personal characwas ter through description of bodily appearance. Physiognomia in ancient times not the study of facial features, as it is today, but rather the study of how the entire body expresses the personality of the man who occupies it.37According to the anonymous Latina,the goal of physiognomy is 'ex qualitate corporis qualitatem ... Physiognomia animi considerare atque perspicere'.38Physiognomical treatises are a particularly likely source for the medieval descriptive technique, since in addition to emphasizing the moral significance of appearance they proceed from head to foot.39 Their

influence on ancient descriptive technique has long been recognized,40and there is no reason to assume that their influence ceased suddenly in the Middle Ages. Unlike their Greek contemporaries,the Latin rhetoriciansof the Second Sophistic made no comment on either the head-to-foot method or the moral significance of but descriptio,41 the practice of writers such as Sidonius Apollinaris shows that both new developments were taking root. In depicting the Emperor Theoderic, Sidonius moves painstakingly down from the crown of the head to the feet, and he

33 See Robert W. Smith, TheArtof Rhetoric Alexandria in (The Hague, 1974), p. 156. 34On description in the Second Sophistic, see Charles Sears Baldwin, Medieval Rhetoric Poetic(to 400o) and in Education (New York, 1928), pp. 17-20, and Donald Lemen Clark, Rhetoric Greco-Roman (New York, I957), pp.201-203. 35 On Ennodius, see Hilde Vogt, Die literarische des Personenschilderungfrihen Mittelalters(Leipzig and Berlin, 1934), p. 31. 36 For full references, see Offermanns, p. 133. 37 See RolfMegow, 'Antike Physiognomielehre', Das Altertum, ( 963), 2 I 3-2 (p. 215). 9 38 Quoted from Scriptores Graeci Latini,edited by Richard Foerster, 2 vols (Leipzig, 1893), et Physiognomici 39 On the head-to-foot method, see Megow, p. 217. On connexions between medieval descriptions and physiognomic theory, see Lars Lonnroth, 'Kroppen som sjalens spegel- ett motiv i de islandska sagorna' ('The Body as Mirror of the Soul - a Motif in the Icelandic Sagas'), Lychnos 963-64), 24-6i ( (English summary on pages 59-6I). 40 See Elizabeth C. Evans, 'The Study of Physiognomy in the Second Century A.D.', Transactions the of American Association, (I 94), 96- o8. 72 Philological 41 See Hennig Brinkmann's useful words on descriptio ecphrasis Zu Wesen Formmittelalterlicher and in und Dichtung(Halle, 1928), pp. 57-68 (especially p. 65).
II, 4.

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subordinates the physical description to the more general praise of the Emperor's personal integrity (see Vogt, Die literarische Personenschilderung, 26-27). In the pp. of Gnatho, the fifth-century rhetorician first establishes the detestable portrait nature of the parasite and then refutes any possible assertion that Gnatho is physically appealing; underlying the description is the conviction that a man's inward and outward states must coincide. After likening Gnatho to a half-burned corpse, Sidonius gives a picture of the man's face. The passage ought to be quoted, both because it is an extremely early description of ugliness and because it typifies many later depictions of unsightly men:42 ... he has eyes devoidof light,which,like the poolof Styx,roll theirtearsonwardthrough in darkness. Also he has earselephantine theirvastness; two apertures encircledby the are ulcerated curves. skin,and stonyknotsand wartsoozingwithpus project alongthe exterior at Also he carriesa nose thatis largein its openingsand constricted its bridge,gapingwide for enoughto giveyou the creeps,yet toonarrow thesenseof smell.He displaysa mouthwith leadenlips and the ravening jaws of a wild beast,withfestering gumsand yellowteeth;it is befouledby a mephiticstenchexhaledfromthe hollowseat of decayinggrinders; frequently and this stench is reinforced meaty belchingfromyesterday's feast and the sewageof by suppers that keep coming back upon him. He also shows a foreheadwhich has a most the He the growsa beard, disgustingtrickof wrinkling skinand stretching eybrows. likewise whichis already withold ageandyet blackening Sulla'sdisease[i.e., venereal with whitening disease]. This profile places exceptional emphasis on visible physical corruption - pus, ulcers, warts, and abscesses - and on the accompanying stench. It proves to us that Gnatho's physical state is just as depraved as his moral condition, which Sidonius has already characterized. The rhetorical theories which induced Sidonius to describe personal appearance from top to bottom and to connect physical appearance with moral state persisted into the Middle Ages. On the subject of head-to-toe description, GeoffreyofVinsauf stated precisely: 'Et sic / A summo capitis descendat splendor ad ipsam / Radicem, totumque simul poliatur ad unguem' (Poetria Nova, 597-99; see Salmon, Matthew of Vendome is equally clear: 'Hic enim nihil aliud est argumentum, sive locus a nomine vel a natura, nisi per interpretationem nominis et per naturales proprietates de persona aliquid probare vel improbare, personam propriare vel impropriare' (i, 76). Elsewhere Matthew declares that descriptions serve either to or I, praise (praeconium) to blame (vituperium:59). If we search for traces of these two rhetorical techniques in twelfth-century literature, we find them at least once in a fictional character who owes much to Sidonius's Gnatho. Vitalis of Blois, evidently bored after the stock silhouette of his heroine Alda in the comedy Aulularia,moves on to analyse minutely the looks of a slave whose very name - Spurius - betrays the falsity of his nature. Vitalis welds the slave's low social class, moral infelicities, and physical shortcomings into one consistent and abominable whole.43 But not only in the learned Latin heritage do head-to-foot descriptions of hideous men appear; in the twelfth century they were
42 See Paul
520-28.

pp. 520-2I).

On description

as a means of eliciting approval or disapproval,

Salmon, 'The Wild Man in "Iwein" and Medieval Descriptive Technique', MLR, 56 ( 96I ),

43 See La 'Comedie'latine France XlIe siecle,edited by Gustave Cohen, Vol. i (Paris, 193I), pp. 136-37 en au (11. 71-92). The self-description of Geta, in the comedy by Vitalis which is known as the Geta,is similar, 331-52). although less orderly: see Cohen, I, 48-49 (11.

JAN ZIOLKOWSKI

carried into the vernacular languages, presumably thanks to rhetorical training. To name only one salient appearance in Old French, Chr6tien de Troyes follows the rhetorically correct format in recording the facial features of a ghastly giant who As the figures in his Yvain. in the Aulularia, description balances by contrast a rather brief sketch of a beautiful girl that preceded it.44 Through a web of similes and metaphors, Chretien likens his giant to a half-dozen animals: the creature has the head of a horse, ears of an elephant, eyes of an owl, nose of a cat, mouth of a wolf, and teeth of a boar. By means of these comparisons, Chretien heightens the air of bestiality which surrounds the ill-mannered giant, but he does not turn the unprepossessing description into an open denunciation of the giant. Rather, his description is primarily decorative, like a sculpted medieval grotesque in which 'a monster seems to be the result of a breaking down of normal creatures and a recombination of parts of them' (Farnham, The Shakespearean p. Grotesque, 4). In one later case, however, animal comparisons and other elements of the head-to-toe description help a writer to express his condemnation of a giant's character. This later case is the giant in the fourteenth-century alliterative Morte Arthure.45 the space of thirty lines, the monster is likened to a dozen wild animals. In His lower limbs receive an unusually full treatment, when measured against the straightforwardrhetorical descriptions which avoided all mention of the body below the waist: and Schovell-fotede thatschalke schaylande was hymsemyde Withschankez schowand togedyrs; unschaply, in Thykketheeseas a thursseand thikkere thehanche, he as Greese-growen a galte,fullgryslych lukez.46 The pointed mention that the giant has the fat thighs of a pig might incline us to investigate his sexual habits. We find, in fact, that in his first appearance he is squatting by a fire and munching on a man's thigh. When Arthur arrives to punish him for having raped a noblewoman to pieces and for having eaten hundreds of baptized children, a battle ensues in which we learn still more about the physiology and physiognomy of the giant. Unaffected by blows to the brain, the monstrosity does not succumb until struck in his only truly vital organs - the testicles. so The alliterative form of the Morte Arthure, remote from the Latin hexameter and the Old French octosyllabic line, should not trick us into regardingthe description of the giant as an isolated or independent phenomenon.47 Rather, we should realize and that conthat the alliterative poets were well aware of formal descriptio48 stands firmly in the rhetorical continuum leading the MorteArthure giant sequently back to Sidonius and the schools of late antiquity and forward to the Renaissance. or Just like Spurius in the Aulularia like the ladies of ill fame we shall soon see in late he medieval lyric poems, the giant of St Michael's Mount is ugly because is bad. A

in and substantial differences thispassageamongtheeditionsby Brock, Finlayson, ValerieKrishna.)

Mount', Medium Aevum, ( 964), I I2-20. 33 46 MorteArthure,edited by John Finlayson (Evanston, Illinois, 1971), 11.IO98-1IOI.

44 SeeLeChevalierLion au editedby MarioRoques(Paris, 97 I), 11. (Yvain), 224-44 (thegirl)and286-324 (thevilains). 45For an extensivetreatment the giant,seeJohn Finlayson, of 'Arthur the Giantof St Michael's and (There are no

47 SeeJohn Finlayson, 'Rhetorical Descriptio Place in Morte of Modern Arthure', Philology, (1963), I-I I. 56 48 See Pearsall, p. 131, and Curry, TheMiddleEnglishIdeal,passim.

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in Literature Ugliness Medieval

thorough enumeration of a giant's or a dwarf's bodily defects was not only an amusing interlude of teratology; it was also a poet's best way of conveying failings in a giant's or a dwarf's character.49'Few general epithets are wasted on an ugly giant; to know that he is unutterably evil, it is quite sufficient to describe his repulsive person' (see Curry, TheMiddleEnglishIdeal,pp. 6-7). Raoul de Houdenc, the author of the Old French Meraugisde Portlesguez, put an accent on the correspondence between bodily ugliness and moral wickedness when he described: Uns chevaliers, Belchisli lois, Qui a le frontplusnoirquepois. C'estli pluslais qu'onques nature Feistonques,nes creature Ne fu qui tantvousistmalfaire.50 Since the correspondence was taken for granted, it is not surprising that ugly giants call to mind medieval pictorial representations of demons (see Finlayson, 'Arthur and the Giant', p. I 4) and that in Old French romances ugly characters were compared with the devil.l5 After all, Luciferhimself lost his peerless beauty and was turned into the ugliest of beings on account of a moral lapse: his rebellion against God (Dante, Inferno xxxiv). At this point I have explored some dozen representationsof ugliness, mainly from rhetorical handbooks, romances, and plays. I have shown that such tableaux could have originated in the schools, either as assigned compositions to complement descriptions of beauty or as extracurricularburlesques. The schools, keeping alive the late classical habit, taught writers to link the physical and moral nature of mori persons described. By doing so, the schools gave the impulse for the memento and the young whore/old whore pairings as well as for bad and ugly giants. The time has now come to look at the strongest evidence for a tradition ugliness of descriptions: an entire sub-class of late medieval English lyric poems which contain vituperative descriptions that invert the accepted catalogue of charms. In the rest of this paper I shall examine this rich counter-tradition to determine to what extent it combines rhetorical playfulness and moral commentary as the earlier Latin and French examples did. In looking at the rhetoric of the ugliness poems, we may also see how ugliness allowed medieval poets freedoms that beauty could not - how ugliness encouraged individuality of expression when beauty trammelled it. For beauty there was one ideal; for ugliness there were many avatars. The earliest ironic portrait extant among Middle-English lyrics comprises the third section of a triple roundel on Lady Money; the poem is usually ascribed to Thomas Hoccleve (I370?-I 426?). The poet pretends to praise his mistress, who is none other than Lady Money. In the opening stanza, repeated three times subsequently as a refrain, he describes the lady's forehead, brows, and eyes:

(Tiibingen and Stuttgart, I906), pp. I2-38 and 8o-83. Recent research on dwarfs is summarized in Claude Lecouteux, 'Zwerge und Verwandte', Euphorion, (I98I), 366-78. 75 50 Edited by Henri Victor Michelant (Paris, I869), p. I6o. Jahrhunderts, Inaugural Dissertation (Halle, 1890), pp. 132-33.

49For a convenientindex of descriptionsof ugly giants (and dwarfs)in Old French,see Fritz in erzahlenden Wohlgemuth,Riesenund Zwerge den altfranzosischen InauguralDissertation Dichtung, Schonheit denaltfranzosischen bei des Dichtern XII. und XIII. 51SeeJean Loubier,Das Idealdermannlichen

JAN ZIOLKOWSKI Of my lady,wel me reioiseI may: hirgoldenforheed ful narw& smal; is hirbrowesbeenlykto dymreedcoral; And as theIeet/hiryenglistrenay.52

II

Hoccleve relies upon three differentdevices here to underline humorously his lady's ugliness: displacement, antithesis, and exaggeration of the norms of beauty as set forth in the catalogues of charms. Whereas straightforwardlaudatory descriptions often begin by mentioning the maiden's golden hair (with a line such as 'Her heere is yellou as the golde'), Hoccleve takes the golden quality which would be a virtue in blonde hair and applies it to his lady's forehead, which ideally would be lily-white and not sallow.53 Stressing ugliness by displacement, Hoccleve attributes to the wrong area what would be gorgeous in another part of the body. Then playing on the accepted attractiveness of moderately wide and broad foreheads, the poet notes facetiously that his lady has a very narrow and small forehead. On this occasion expressing ugliness by making it antithetical to beauty, Hoccleve again denigrates Lady Money. As his third device, Hoccleve illustrates his lady's hideousness by attributing to her an excess of what in moderation would.be beautiful. In a typical medieval catalogue of charms, the poet extols the woman's rosy facial complexion and delicate grey eyes. One finds, for example, the lines: 'her lovely yen of colour gray/ Her rudy is like the rose yn may'.54 Distorting these features, Hoccleve remarks upon his mistress's coral-red skin and jet-black eyes; the hyperbole would not have been lost on his medieval readers. Hoccleve continues with backhanded compliments, now concentrating his attention on his lady's face. Her cheeks andjaws are big and fat. Her mouth, equally large, has grey lips. Though her chin is almost non-existent, her 'comly body' protrudes like a 'foot-bal' (1. I9). Before the final refrain,Hoccleve concludes with a remarkon her voice: 'And shee syngith/ ful lyk a papeJay' (1.20). Why did Hoccleve choose to compare her singing with a parrot's?The bestiaries and handbooks such rerum as Alexander Neckham's De naturis popularized the conception of the parrot as a big-tongued, talkative, stubborn, and treacherous bird.55These faults all fit well into the picture Hoccleve drew of his faithless and troublesome mistress. After all, Hoccleve meant to criticize money and man's misplaced faith in it. To this end he made use of the medieval association between physical ugliness and moral wickedness, especially in fictional characters. If in the process he could adduce animals connoting both bodily and spiritual deformity, so much the better. At the same time as the London clerk Hoccleve flourished, the monk John Lydgate was producing his ream after ream of verse. Among his more than 145,000 lines is the poem with the incipit 'My fayr lady, so fressh of hewe'. In customarily exhaustive fashion, Lydgate devotes 168 lines to an ironic description of one woman. The poet makes obvious in the second stanza his intention to follow the standard order of description:

52

I der und dasStudium neueren o7 Sprachen Litteraturen, (190 ), 53-55. 55 TheBestiary: BookofBeasts,translated by T. H. White (New York, I960), pp. I2-I4, and Alexander A De naturis edited by Thomas Wright (London, 1863), pp. 87-90 and 378-79. Neckham, rerum,

53 Compare Chaucer, 'The Complaint of Chaucer to his Purse', 11.Io-I I. 54 Lines 25-26 in the poem edited by Bernhard Fehr, 'Weitere Beitrage zur englischen Lyrik', Archivfur

n: Hoccleve's Works, 'The Minor Poems', edited by Israel Gollancz (London, 1925), pp. 37-38.

I2

Literature in Ugliness Medieval

For yif I shuld hire al discrye, Fro the heed to the novyl, and so forth down, I trowe there is noon suych alyve.56

Yet, like Hoccleve, Lydgate displaces, contrasts, and exaggerates the normal feminine charms with heavy irony so that the picture he presents is anything but complimentary. Lydgate far outstrips Hoccleve in animal similes and metaphors. The greenhooded lady boasts of hair shorn like a sheep; brows as soft as swine's bristles; a belly as big as a cow's and as hairy as a goat's beard; skin as rough as a hound-fish; buttocks as broad as a Spanish steed's; and limbs like an elephant's. This animal atmosphere corroborates the strong implication of lechery in the reiterated image of her green hood.57 The woman's torrid sexuality becomes explicit in the hunt imagery that appears near the end of the poem. Lydgate tells us that the lady loves good bowmen, especially those who can shoot both stiff and low. In the following stanzas, the lady metamorphoses from hunted deer into a fowler. To conclude with a light touch, the poet recalls more savoury birds: he says he will not lament his lady until, awakened by the call of the nightingale or cuckoo, he finds himself at her side, looking upon her green hood. In other words, he intends to avoid her bed at all costs. Various literary sources could have inspired the animal similes and metaphors found in 'My fayr lady, so fressh of hewe'. Animal comparisons are prominent in early rhetorical descriptions of ugliness (Sidonius's portrait of Gnatho has three), are a constant in misogynistic literature,58 and receive considerable attention in physiognomical treatises.59 Yet the comparisons may have been suggested by Lydgate's knowledge of Middle-English literature. Indeed, the comparison of the lady's skin with the hound-fish's finds a precise precedent in the description of the giant of St Michael's Mount in the alliterative Morte Arthure: Hire skyn is tendyr for to towche, As of an hownd-fyssh or of an hake ('My fayr lady', p. 201) Harske as a hunde-fisch, hardly who so lukez, So was the hyde of tha hulke hally al over.

(M.A., 11. o084-85)

A more probable source of influence is Chaucer, who often used a combination of physiognomic traits and animal similes to affirm a character's lust. Particularly close to Lydgate's lady is Chaucer'sJanuary, the old man of the Merchant'sTale who burns with desire for his young wife:
Vol. II: 'Early English Poetry, 56John Lydgate, 'A Satirical Description of his Lady', in PercySociety, Ballads, and Popular Literature of the Middle Ages', edited by J. 0. Halliwell and J. Payne Collier (London, I840), pp. I99-205. 57 See Thomas W. Ross, Chaucer's Bawdy(New York, 1972), p. 44 (on the refrain in Chaucer's 'Against Women Inconstant'); but more telling evidence is in Henryson's Testament Cresseid 2 8-24), where (11. of Venus is clad one half in green and one half in black, colours which the poet implies represent her twin traits of inconstancy and perfect reliability. 58 For examples in Greek poetry of the seventh and sixth centuries B.c., see Semonides and his imitator, Phocylides. For comparisons of women with animals in medieval misogynistic literature, see August in Literaturen Mittelalters zum Endedes XIII. des bis Wulff, Die frauenfeindlichen Dichtungen denromanischen (Halle, 1914), pp. 70, 78, 1I2, I 4-15, and 156-58. Jahrhunderts 59 See Foerster, Scriptores I, Physiognomici, 5-91 passim (Bartholamaeus de Messana) and I, 136-45 combines physiognomy (Anonymi de physiognomia liber). Albertus Magnus's treatise, De animalibus, and zoology throughout: see the edition by Hermann Stadler, 2 vols (Miinster, I9I6-20).

JAN ZIOLKOWSKI He was al coltissh,ful ofragerye, Andfulofjargonas a flekked pye. The slakkeskynabouthis nekkeshaketh...
(11.1847-49)

I3

Most telling is the description ofJanuary's newly-shaved face: He lullethhire,he kissethhireful ofte; Withthikkebrustles his berdunsofte, of sharpas brere... Lykto theskynof houndfyssh,
(11.1823-25)

Tales Although no other character in TheCanterbury is compared with the hound-fish, several others have physical features considered indicative of salaciousness and are compared with animals.60 Lydgate's poem was not only a recipient of the literary tradition of ugliness; 'My fayr lady' itself slightly influenced the phrasing of two anonymous lyrics from the second half of the fifteenth century.61Yet in the originality of their conception, these poems resemble Hoccleve's triple roundel more than Lydgate's wordy lyric. Where Lydgate simply described a woman ironically (albeit at great length), Hoccleve went so far as to experiment with poetic form by fitting his ironic description into a triple roundel. Similarly, the nameless poet of these two lyrics made them into an epistolary doublet. A delicate network of similarities and contrasts connects the letter from the girl with her lover's reply. The verse letter from the girl to her lover includes the only ironic catalogue of a man's handsomeness found in Middle-English lyric poetry. After an opening address to her negligent lover, the girl proposes to describe him. She finds this task easy, since her lover has an unusual body. He has a countenance as noble as the owl is among other fowl. His flat nose reminds one of a cat or a hare. His clothes hang upon him as if he were an old goose with a broken wing. As in the poem by Lydgate, the comparisons here, between the person described and animals, tend to emphasize his animal nature. They prepare the way for further indications of the man's base nature, such as the stanza in which the letter-writer details the faults of her lover's legs. The legs, usually played down in straightforwardcatalogues of charms, gain importance here as emblems of the lover's wayward desires: yourshankys mychworse; yourthyghesmysgrowen, Whosobeholdeyourekneesso crokyd As ych of hembadodyrCrystescurse, So go theyoutward; yourehammysbenhokyd; I Sucha peyreChaumbys neueron lokyd! So vngoodly yourehelysye lyfte, witheuylthryfte. Andyourefeetbe crokyd,
(11. 22-28)

In a final vulgar stanza, the girl makes apparent that she is attacking her lover's lust in particular. Curiously, the girl's scornful description of her former lover resembles the stereotyped portraits of ugly giants found in medieval romances. As we have seen,
60 See

and and Alisoun',Traditio, I8 GeorgeB. Page, 'Physiognomy Chaucer'sSummoner

(1962),

417-20. 61

pp. 219-22 (nos 208 and 209), and 'Two Middle English Satiric Love Epistles', MLR, 37 (1942), 415-2 I.

Editedtwice by RossellHope Robbins: Secular and Centuries Lyrics theXIVth XVth (Oxford,I952), of

I4

in Literature Ugliness Medieval

the giant herdsman in Chretien de Troyes's twelfth-century Yvain the same flat has face with eyes like a screech-owl's and nose like a cat's. Likewise, in the attention given to the lover's misshapen legs, the girl's saucy catalogue is reminiscent of the Arthure. monster there, as we saw, is shovel-footed, The giant in the alliterative Morte unshapely in the shanks, and fat-thighed like a hog (11. O98-IIo ). The faithless lover of this lyric and the giants of romance share too many spiritual and physical attributes to be completely unrelated, but the anonymous author of the two epistolary lyrics probably knew neither the work of Chretien nor the alliterative MorteArthure. most plausible explanation for the resemblances between the lyric The and the romances is not that one author influenced the others, but rather that all three writers participated in the same rhetorical tradition. The lover counters the girl's letter with a retaliatoryironic catalogue of charms. In the process he reveals exactly how little he understood the underlying meaning of her letter to him. He begins by addressing his deserted lover 'O fresch floure', a phrase harking back to Troilus's missive to Criseyde (which opens with the words 'Right fresshe flour, whos I ben have and shal' (Book v. 1316)). Yet this lover, lacking in fidelity, does not echo Troilus's pledge, but only the rhetorical opening. Rhetoric, in fact, has mesmerized him; as a result, he does not argue with the logic of his lover's argument, but rather with the phrasing (11. 8-14). For all his knowledge of Chaucer, this rhetorician seems to have forgotten what Criseyde said in her letter to Troilus (Book v. I625-3I). Criseyde emphasized sense over style, but this lover honours a different code of values. Many little touches of the lover's reply recall the girl's letter mockingly. He claims that her teeth are set wide apart as if cursing each other, which is what she said of his knees. She suggested that his clothes hung on him like an old goose with a broken wing; he retorts that when she dances on a holy day her face resembles a wild goose. Yet the two epistolary lyrics avoid tedious repetition, because they describe two contrasting paradigms of ugliness. The man has the flat face and nose of a cat or hare, with poorly-fitting clothes and crooked legs. She, on the other hand, has a huge head, round forehead, crooked nose, enormous nostrils, thick lips, yellow crooked teeth, fat belly, crooked back, splay feet, and ridiculously-styled clothes. Though both are superlatively ugly, they have no identical defects; they confirm that the Middle Ages had more varieties of absolute ugliness than of absolute beauty. In a Cambridge manuscript only slightly more recent than this doublet of letters are two satirical depictions of women.62The first poem ('I haue a lady where so she be') employs oblique criticism with a vengeance. As the frameworkfor this criticism, the poem relies on an inverted catalogue of charms: the lady in question is fat and small, and has hollow green eyes, bent brows, short fingers, and rough skin. It contains many cliches from the typical descriptions, yet reverses their meanings by undercutting them at the last possible moment (a ploy seen often in English misogynistic poetry):63 Thertoshe hathofeuerycomlynesse Suchequantyteyeuynhyrby nature That with the leestshe ys of hyrstature
(11.12-14)
62

(Columbus, Ohio, 1944), nos 136, 307, and 334.

63 On the Rib 'destroying burden' and dispraise 'per antiphrasim', see Francis Lee Utley, TheCrooked

MiddleEnglishLyrics(Seattle, 1953), pp. 38-41 (nos 48 and 49). Edited by Henry A. Person, Cambridge

JAN ZIOLKOWSKI Andof hirwytteas sympyllandinnocent As ys a chyldethatcan no goodat all

(11.I7-I8)

I5

The same juggling of conventions and teasing of the reader appear in other late medieval English lyrics, but this is the only poem that deploys them in an attack on one particular lady. In the penultimate stanza of'I haue a Lady where so she be' the poet subtly discloses his lady's great age. He declares that she was fifteen when the wedding of Joan of Navarre to Henry IV took place in 1403; since he was writing in the late fifteenth century, this fact lends a trenchant irony to the concluding line of the stanza: 'I trow ther are nat many suche alyue' (1.42). If the lady was in truth a nonagenarian, there would not have been many like her alive! The lady's age, more than any other factor, would have suggested one of several animal similes and metaphors in the poem: And slowthnooneshallhauein herentresse So dylygentys she andvirtulesse And so besyay all goodto vndresse That as a she ape she ys harmelesse
(11.29-31)

The simian comparison has a long and rich history in poetry.64In one ofJuvenal's Satires(x. I95) an old person's wrinkles are likened to those of a mater simia. In the an Latin poem Ruodlieb old woman is also likened to a she-ape.65 eleventh-century The description of an old woman which follows the ape simile in the Ruodlieb goes from head to foot enumerating the changes wrought in a woman's body by old age. It with its juxtaposition of the ape would be tempting to hypothesize that the Ruodlieb, simile and 'ugly old age' description, influenced the English poet of'I haue a Lady never circulated widely even within its where so she be'. But because the Ruodlieb native Germany it is clear that the real connexion between the two poems is the centuries-old rhetorical tradition. The tradition provided models not only for catalogues of charms, but also for 'ugly old age' descriptions; thus the tradition accounts for such startling similarities in texts written hundreds of years and miles apart. 'I haue a Lady where so she be' leads smoothly into the lyric that follows it in the Cambridge manuscript ('O mosy Quince hangyng by your stalke'). The two poems share the theme of old age's ugliness as well as the rhetorical structure provided by the inverted catalogue. The second poem begins with an apostrophe to a rotten quince that no passer-by will pick. The next stanza unfolds the theme of old age's woes, while the third details the repulsiveness of one woman's body: Yourvgly cheredeynous& froward and Yourgreneeyenfrownyng nat glad Yowrechekesenbonydlykea melowcostard Colourof Orengeyourbrestyssatournad the Gyltoponwarantyse colourwyllnat fade Bawsynbuttockyd belyedlykea toune
Men cry seynt Barbara at lowsyng of your goune.
(11. 15-21 )
64 It is not examined in H. (London, 1952); W.Janson, ApesandApeLorein theMiddle AgesandRenaissance but see William Coffman McDermott, TheApe in Antiquity (Baltimore, 1938), pp. 142-43. 65 Fragment xv (xiv), 3-4 (as edited by Langosch).

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in Literature Ugliness Medieval

Despite the gravity of the old-age theme, the poet maintains a mocking tone and finishes the stanza on a very light note; St Barbara was invoked in the Middle Ages as protection against lightning, but here she is called upon for mercy when the old lady takes off her gown.66 William Dunbar ( 46o?-I 520?), writing a few years later, devised a unique use for the ironic catalogue of charms, but still struck thejocular tone characteristicof these lyrics. He pictured an actual woman, a negress offeredas first prize in ajoust in 1507. He commences his short poem 'Of ane Blak-Moir' by voicing his boredom with inditing poems about white women. Now he wishes to describe a different sort of woman, the black woman whom the refrain labels insultingly 'My ledye with the mekle lippis'.67 In his depiction, however, he uses only a few concrete descriptive details and does not present them in the traditional order. Her mouth, he says, resembles an ape's as well as a toad's and her nose is short. She shines like black soap and a tar barrel;when she was born, the sun sufferedan eclipse. At the conclusion of the poem, Dunbarjests that, whereas the winner of the match 'sail kis and withe hir go in grippis' (1. I8), the loser will only get to kiss her behind the hips. Roughly a decade after Dunbar wrote 'Of ane Blak-Moir',John Skelton (1460?1529) wrote a song about an ale-wife entitled 'The Tunnyng ofElynour Rummyng' (c. I517).68 This lyric too may well treat of a real person; an infamous barmaid Elynour Rummyng lived during Skelton's period. The collapse of the medieval descriptive method stands out even more in Skelton's poem than in Dunbar's, perhaps because the portrait in 'The Tunnyng of Elynour Rummyng' reveals its disorganization at much greater length. With little apparent thought for structure, Skeltonjumps around from face, to lips, to nose, to skin, to back, to eyes, to hair, to jaws, tojoints, to feet, to legs, and finally to clothes. Like Lydgate, Skelton describes the roughness of the lady's skin in terms of hog's hair, but specifies the hair inside a roast pig's ear.69Throughout, realistic details have entirely replaced the symbolic ones, unless Elynour's Lincoln green cape signifies lechery in the tradition of Lydgate's lady with the green hood. The picture of Elynour's other clothes is so verisimilar, however, that experts believe it to be the earliest surviving description of gypsy attire.70 In the middle decades of the sixteenth century the medieval method of description enjoyed a final moment of glory, thanks to the vogue of blasonand contre-blason.71 and the Greek Anthology played their part in Although the Italian strambotti the blasonniers and providing them with material and techniques, encouraging How medieval descriptions in particular influenced the development of the blason.72 matched the new type of poetry emerges in closely the goals of medieval descriptio Thomas Sebillet's ( 512?-1589) definition of blason:
66 See Donald Attwater, The of Penguin Dictionary Saints(Harmondsworth, i965), p. 57 ('Barbara'). 67 ThePoems William edited by W. Mackay Mackenzie (Edinburgh, I932), pp. 66-67. Dunbar, of 68 Skelton: edited by Robert S. Kinsman (Oxford, 1969), pp. 53-70. For other ale-wife poems, Poems, John see Utley, TheCrooked nos 0o7,172, and 249. Rib, 69 The hair and skin of EnglishIdeal, giants were often compared with parts of a pig: see Curry, TheMiddle pp. 23, 34, 39, and 47. Poems,p. 153 (note to line 78). JohnSkelton: 71 I thank the former English Editor of thisjournal, ProfessorG. K. Hunter, for bringing to my attention the need to consider the blason and contre-blason tradition as well as the passages in Peele and Lyly. 72 On the origins of the blasons,see Charles Kinch, La Poesiesatirique Climent de Marot (Paris, 1940), di Sceve minori Maurice (Parma, 1958), pp. 65-169. pp. 09-29, and Enzo Giudici, Le opere

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Le Blason est une perpetuele louenge ou continu vitupere de ce qu'on s'est propose blasonner. Pource serviront bien a celuy qui le voudra faire, tous les lieus de demonstration escris par les rh6teurs Grecz et Latins.Je dy en l'une et l'autre partie de louenge et de vitupere. Car autant bien se blasonne le laid comme le beau, et le mauvais com le bon: tesmoin Marot en ses Blasons du beau et du laid Tetin: et sortent les deus d'une mesme source, comme louenges et invectives.73 As in the Middle Ages, description seems to be a matter of praising the beautiful and good or blaming the ugly and bad; as in the Middle Ages, this conception of description is regarded as continuing an ancient rhetorical custom. Although blasons exist from before 1535, the heyday of the poems came in the half century between I535 and I585.74 The poem that launched the blason into its brief but spectacular orbit was Clement Marot's 'Blason du Beau Tetin', composed in I535.75 A courtly and elegant praise of a woman's breasts, Marot's blason soon inspired a host of imitators, all eager to lavish their descriptive skills on a single part of the female body. In response to the shower of poems, Marot (I496-I 544) in 1536 wrote an epistle directed 'A Ceulx qui, apres l'Epigramme du Beau Tetin en Feirent d'Autres' and urged his followers to write contre-blasons, poems detailing an exceptionally ugly member of an unattractive woman's body. As an example he sent his 'Blason du Laid Tetin'.76 Between 1535 and 1550, the blasonswere assembled in a collection entitled Blasons du anatomiques corpsfemenin,which grew from ten to thirty-nine poems in the course of describe only one eight reprintings. Although most of the blasons and contre-blasons of the body, two come strikingly close to medieval descending descriptions. One part is reminiscent of the twelfth-century Latin 'Musa iocosa veni, mihi carmina suggere vati' which I mentioned above; in the 'Blason du corps' that begins 'Ma plume est lente, et ma main paresseuse', the poet moves systematically down the body of a woman, until he reaches her pudendum and forgets about the rest. Like his Latin predecessor, the Frenchman attributes great power to the organ too private to name: 'O c. .., o c .. ., que tu as de puissance!'77 Another blason, although a straightforward antifeminist description of ugliness, proceeds in distressingly exhaustive detail from head to foot, with no omissions made for the sake of propriety (Blasons, edited by Meon, pp. 92-97). The blason and contre-blasonhelped to keep alive the rhetorical description of beauty and ugliness in English literature during the second half of the sixteenth century, if we take Shakespeare at his word: When in the chronicle of wasted time I see descriptions of the fairest wights, And beauty making beautiful old rhyme In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,
73Art poetiquefranfoys, edited by Felix Gaiffe (Paris, I90o), p. 169. Claude de Boissiere and Pierre de 39-63.

in of Laudun defineblason (see similarly theirArts poetiques Gaiffe, 69, note ). Fora survey p. d'Aigaliers 'The Rise and Fallof the Sixteenth-Century moderndefinitions, Annetteand Edward see Tomarken,
French blason', 29 Symposium, (1975), Review,27 (1936), 223-42 (especially pp. 230-33). Century', Romanic 75 Clement Marot, LesEpigrammes, v edited by C. A. Mayer (Works, (London, I970)), pp. I56-57. 76 Clement Marot, Les edited by C. A. Mayer (Works, (London, I Epigrammes, 158-59, and LesEpitres, pp. I958)), p. 213-17. 7 The most accessible edition is in anciennes XV et XVImes des de Blasons;podsies siecles,extraites diffdrens auteurs et nouvelle edition, D[ominique] M[artin] M[eon] (Paris, I809), pp. 88-9 . imprimes manuscrits, by

74On the chronology,see Robert E. Pike, 'The "Blasons"in FrenchLiterature the Sixteenth of

Literature in Ugliness Medieval

Then in the blazon of sweet beauty's best, Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow, I see their antique pen would have express'd Even such a beauty as you master now. (Sonnet o06. I-8) In any event, the orderly catalogue of charms appears again and again in the poems of Sir Philip Sidney ( 554-86).78 As we would expect, the ubiquity of such beauty descriptions prompted a reaction. George Peele (I558?-1597?), in The Old VViues tale, includes a description of beauty that seems to be facetiously inelegant: Hir Corall lippes, hir crimson chinne, Hir siluer teeth so white within: Hir golden locks hir rowling eye, Hir pretty parts let them goe by: Hey ho hath wounded me, That I must die this day to see.79 John Lyly ( 554?-1606?), in his Endimion,brings forth a portrait of ugliness which is equally ironic: I loue no grissels; they are so brittle, they will cracke like glasse, or so dainty, that if they bee touched they are straight of the fashion ofwaxe: Animus instat.I desire olde Matrons. maioribus What a sight would it be to embrace one whose hayre were as orient as the pearle! whose teeth shal be so pure a watchet, that they shall staine the truest Turkis! and whose nose shall throwe more beames from it then the fierie Carbuncle! whose eyes shall be enuirond about with rednesse exceeding the deepest Corall! And whose lippes might compare with siluer for the palenesse!80 Whether inspired by blasonsor by the English poetry of his contemporaries, Lyly was ultimately indebted to the Middle Ages for this scrambling of epithets and parts of the body. Although in the sixteenth century poets continued to practise the time-worn methods of description, they faced mounting pressure to revise their procedures. They could easily renounce the need to move from head to foot, since earlier poets had already taken liberties with the descending catalogue.81 More troublesome was to cope with the realization that beauty comes in many forms, not just blonde and blue-eyed. In making the transition to a multiplicity of beauties, poets may have been encouraged by popular poetry, in which the brunette had held her own for centuries.82 For whatever reasons, sixteenth-century poets lost all trace of hesitancy in expressing their fondness and admiration for dark-haired ladies. Once such old
78 See ThePoems Sir edited by William A. Ringler,Jr (Oxford, 1962), pp. 409-10 (notes of Philip Sidney, on poem 62). Sidney's 'What toong can her perfections tell' (Ringler, pp. 85-90) contains a particularly interesting play on the descending catalogue. 79The Malone Society reprints, prepared by the general editor (W. W. Greg) and checked by Frank Sidgwick (London, 1909), 11.838-43. 80 Act v, Scene 2, in TheComplete Works ofJohnLyly,edited by R. Warwick Bond (Oxford, 1902 and 1967), III,70-7I. 81 On the history of head-to-toe description, see Ernest Gallo, ThePoetriaNova and Its Sources Early in Rhetorical Doctrine(The Hague, 1971), pp. 182-87. On the liberties taken by poets in handling the p. descending catalogue, see Colby, ThePortrait, 22, and Kevin S. Kiernan, 'The Art of the Descending Review,Io (1975), i-I6. Catalogue, and a Fresh Look at Alisoun', Chaucer 82 See Rodolfo Renier, II tipoestetico delladonna medioevo nel (i885; reprinted Bologna, I972), 7, - Poesia popolare', and Marcel Francon, Notessurl'esthetique lafemme Chapter 'Arte biondeggiante de auXVIesiicle (Cambridge, Massachusetts, I939).

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standards of beauty as blondeness and of ugliness as darkness had disappeared, less prominent attributes of beauty were bound to come under question. Moreover, as the head-to-toe catalogue of charms became uncertain, so did the previously unshakable conviction that the beautiful and the good, like the ugly and the bad, were merely different names for the same qualities. Not until Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 did the old catalogue, already disintegrating, become totally discredited. Roughly a century earlier, William Dunbar playfully expressed his dissatisfaction with the stock catalogue of charms. Yet in lieu of rejecting the tradition, he discovered a new subject for caricature, his 'Blak-Moir', and inverted the stale expressions that he claimed offended him. In contrast, William Shakespeare (I564-I616) scrutinized the tradition and found it severely lacking. Shakespeare knew the literary convention of beauty well. In TheRape of Lucrece 386-483) he uses many stock metaphors and epithets in an absolutely (11. straightforward way. In the comedies he shows signs of impatience with the Lost (Iv. 3. 81-84) and A Midsummer conventions: in both Love'sLabour's Night's Dream(III. I. 82-97 and v. I. 328-41) he pokes fun at the catalogues of charms. In one sonnet ( o6. 6) he refersto the old catalogue, but (like GeoffreyofVinsauf) takes the trouble to turn it upside down when he speaks 'Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eyes, and of brows'. In Sonnet I30 he goes still further in questioning the catalogue. He points out that his lady does not live up to any of the conventional measures of beauty, but he does not conclude from this observation that his lady is ugly. He implies that the literary canon is at fault, rather than his mistress. Though earlier poets, as has been seen, toyed with the conventional catalogue of charms by ironic inversions and by ignoring the proper order of description, Shakespearewas the first English poet to shatter the commonplaces by discarding them for reality. Yet his rejection recalls the old topoi, since in refuting them it lists them.83 Although poets after Shakespeare gradually moulted the old conventions, they still felt compelled to explain their reasons for so doing. John Donne's elegy 'The Anagram' exhorts a nameless young man to marry and love Flavia, who has all the makings of a true beauty, although the components are misplaced as in an anagram: for, Marry,and love thyFlavia, shee othersbeautious Hathall things,whereby bee, For,thoughhereyesbe small,hermouthis great, Thoughtheybe Ivory,yet herteetharejeat, Thoughtheybe dimme,yet she is lightenough, And thoughherharshhairefall,herskinneis rough; Whatthoughhercheeksbe yellow,herhairis red, Giveher thine,andshe hatha maydenhead.84 Donne (1573-I63 I) argues that plain women are like good angels and are suited for long travels, whereas beautiful women are like fallen angels and are good only for one night's revels. Failure to live up to the catalogue of charms is now a virtue, at

83 Shakespeare is mocking topoi, not parodying a particular poem: see Katherine Wilson, Shakespeare's Sonnets (London, I974), pp. 83-85. Sugared edited by Helen Gardner (Oxford, 1965), p. 2I 84John Donne, The Elegies and The Songsand Sonnets, (11.i-8). Compare Donne's playful handling of the descending catalogue in 'Loves Progress'. For a similar paradox, but in favour of sexual promiscuity, see 'The Fawne' (i 606) in ThePlaysofJohnMarston, edited by H. Harvey Wood, 3 vols (Edinburgh and London, 1938-39), In, I69.

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least in paradoxical poetry,85but although the thinking behind Donne's description of ugliness is new, the terms in which he expresses it are well worn. Knowingly or not, he is bringing forwardthe old medieval displacements, inversions, and exaggerations of the norms of beauty. The tradition of the ironic catalogue began when poets, bored with the conventional descriptions of beautiful women, playfully turned many of the commonplaces inside out for ironic effect. But these ante-Petrarchans were not anti-Petrarchans; the original standards were still taken for granted, a fact which sustained the humour first seen in English in Hoccleve's roundel. Behind the joking remains the certainty that true beauty, for literary purposes at least, should have a white forehead, rosy face, and shining eyes. When Shakespeare and Donne wrote their lyrics, however, newer and more personal concepts of true beauty clashed with the conventional catalogues of charms. Poets could no longer accept the simple equations of 'beautiful is good' and 'bad is ugly'. They were ready both to dispense with the stock elements of feminine description and to break apart the long marriage of rhetorical description and ethical appraisal. At the same time, artists were showing that, if put into reality, the commonplace metaphorsfor beautiful women resulted in a monstrosity.86Still, the very fact that the conflict continued so earnestly into the seventeenth century proves the hardiness of the usages propagated by medieval rhetorical training. Shakespeare and Donne were shattering the very chains with which Hoccleve and Lydgate had fumbled two centuries earlier, but the rattling of the chains lasted, in the form of 'deformed mistress' poems and paradoxical
encomia, into the eighteenth century.87 HARVARD UNIVERSITY
85 The earliest such paradoxical encomium that I have seen is Francesco Berni's 'Sonnetto alla sua Berni.Poesiee prose,edited by Ezio Chi6rboli, Biblioteca dell'Archivum romanicum', donna', in Francesco Serie I, vol. 20 (Geneva and Florence, I934), p. 79. On the tradition behind Donne's praise of ugliness, see and J. B. Leishman, TheMonarch Wit:An Analytical Comparative of thePoetry JohnDonne(London, of of Study

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EditedwithAnalyticCommentary (New Haven, I977), p. 453. 87 See Henry Knight Miller, 'The Paradoxical Encomium', Modern Philology,53 (I955-56), 145-78 (especially years 1637, I656, and I75I in the 'List'), and Timothy C. Blackburn, letter in PMLA, 9I in ( 976), 46 -62. On the course of description in more recent times, see Graeme Tytler, Physiognomy the Novel:FacesandFortunes (Princeton, I982). European

86 See the Shepherd Sonnets, reproduction from TheExtravagant (1654) in Stephen Booth, Shakespeare's

pp. 74-81.