Translatio: ‘Difficult Statement’ in Medieval Poetic Theory

TRANSLATIO: 'DIFFICULT STATEMENT' IN MEDIEVAL POETIC THEORY MARGARET F. NIMS, IBVM I have chosen to approach the complicated problem of the poetically difficult at a specific but, it seems to me, focal point: the point where the single word and the single concept come together in a union that is at the same time a conflict. Rhetoricians called the trope translatio or metaphora 'difficult' because, as the force of the term suggests, a word is carried outside its normal semantic range into foreign territory. Metaphor is a linguistic mixed marriage - a word from one family gives its own name to an alien conceptual bride, sensing in the very diversity of the partnership the possibility of a vital and vigorous union. If the match comes off well, it re-enacts in minimal form the most widely-celebrated marriage of the Middle Ages - the marriage of eloquent word with perceptive awareness of things: Mercury again meets Philology. Conditions in the intellectual life of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries prOVided a particularly favourable climate for metaphor. Concern for the integrated program of the seven liberal arts, and espeCially for the first three of these, the artes sermocinales, led to intensified and subtle linguistic exploration. The interest of grammar in the semantic and syntactic relationships of words, and in their modes of signifying; the interest of logic in definition and distinction, in modes of predication and concepts of identity and diversity, and in the complex relation of words to the things they signify; the interest of rhetoric in force and charm of expression - all served to render theorist and poet alike sensitive to the metaphoric potential of language. Later, in a study of philosophy, the medieval student would again encounter the versatile metaphoric process, for it has ramifications of great importance in the disCiplines of psychology, epistemology , ontology, and theories of analogy. Most important of all, metaphor finds its ultimate justification for the Middle Ages in its prolific presence on the sacred page, and its ultimate usefulness in theological language. All of these diSCiplines, notably rhetoric, logic, and theology, must be taken into account in a full examination of the use of figurative language in the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. This paper, however, will confine its attention to two areas of particular importance for an understanding UTQ, Volume XLIU. Number 3, Spring 1974 216 MARGARET F. NIMS, IBVM of the poet's use of metaphor: 1/ the potential of words for semantic extension; 2/ the potential of things for symbolic or metaphoric interpretation . 'All discourse is made up of words; says Cicero, 'and we must examine the principles of these, first, when they stand independently, and then, when in combination." The distinction made here between the word as semantic unit and the word in discourse is repeated and expanded down through the Middle Ages. As units, words have, in their semantic range as well as in their grammatical form, a pliable quality. They are, to recall terms Cicero used of language, mollia, tenera, ~exibilia (Orator, xvi, 52)flexible in their openness towards a wide range of contexts, as well as to new contexts which stretch them as significantia to significata, flexible under the circumstances of their chronological and geographical existence ' Geoffrey of Vinsauf expresses this in a startling way: 'Dictio quae sonat una est quasi mater hyle; quasi res nulis et sine forma' ( Poetria nova, 1761-2). A word standing alone has an element of un-definedness analogous to that of prime matter. It is, to be sure, a unit of meaning, but much of its meaning is held in suspension, in potency, until its position in discourse stabilizes its grammatical form and elicits the relevant areas of its meaning. John of Salisbury, drawing On a long tradition of interest in the aequivocatio of words, from Aristotle's Categories and Topics, and Boethius' commentaries On these works, says in the Metalogicon: 'I do not believe that the authors have so done violence to words as to tie them down to a single meaning in all contexts. Rather 1 am confident that they express their teachings so as always to serve understanding, which is highly adaptable to varying meanings.... One who wishes to know...