Satire of counsel, counsel of satire: Representing advisory relations in later medieval literature.

Abstract

Satire and counsel recur together in the secular literature of the High and Late\nMiddle Ages. I analyze their collocation in Latin, Old Occitan, and Middle English texts\nfrom the twelfth to the fifteenth century in works by Walter Map, Alan of Lille, John of\nSalisbury, Daniel of Beccles, John Gower, William of Poitiers, Thomas Hoccleve, and\nJohn Skelton. As types of discourse, satire and counsel resemble each other in the way\nthey reproduce scenarios of social interaction. Authors combine satire and counsel to\nreproduce these scenarios according to the protocols of real-life social interaction.\nInformed by linguistic pragmatics, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics and cultural\nanthropology, I examine the relational rhetoric of these texts to uncover a sometimes\ncomplex and reflective ethical discourse on power which sometimes implicates itself in\nthe practices it condemns. The dissertation draws throughout on sociolinguistic methods\nfor examining verbal interaction between unequals, and assesses what this focus can\ncontribute to recent scholarly debates on the interrelation of social and literary practices\nin the later Middle Ages.\nIn the first chapter I introduce the concepts and methodologies that inform this\ndissertation through a detailed consideration of Distinction One of Walter Map’s De\nnugis curialium . While looking at how Walter Map combines discourses of satire and\ncounsel to negotiate a new social role for the learned cleric at court, I advocate treating\nsatire as a mode of expression more general than ‘literary’ genre and introduce the\niii\ntheories and methods that inform my treatment of literary texts as social interaction,\nconsidering also how these approaches can complement new historicist interpretation.\nChapter two looks at how twelfth-century authors of didactic poetry appropriate\nrelational discourses from school and household to claim the authoritative roles of teacher\nand father. In the third chapter, I focus on texts that depict relations between princes and\ncourtiers, especially the Prologue of the Confessio Amantis which idealizes its author\nJohn Gower as an honest counselor and depicts King Richard II (in its first recension) as\nreceptive to honest counsel. The fourth chapter turns to poets with the uncertain social\nidentities of literate functionaries at court. Articulating their alienation and satirizing the\nploys of courtiers—including even satire itself—Thomas Hoccleve in the Regement of\nPrinces and John Skelton in The Bowge of Court undermine the satirist-counselor’s claim\nto authenticity. In concluding, I consider how this study revises understanding of the\ngenre of satire in the Middle Ages and what such an approach might contribute to the\nstudy of Jean de Meun and Geoffrey Chaucer.

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