Andreas Capellanus, Scholasticism, and the Courtly Tradition

1. The Problem of Genre: Description versus Prescription

1 ≥ THE PROBLEM OF GENRE Description versus Prescription What kind of a work is the De amore? Leaving aside for the moment the question of its specific content, I believe we can agree that it is, at least ostensibly, a didactic work, one that purports to teach something.1 That intention is conveyed from the very first sentence of the preface through the use of the word docere, “to teach.” Andreas feels compelled, as he explains, to teach his disciple Walter all the things that the latter needs to know about love (DA 0.1 [30]). This same intention is reinforced throughout the treatise through the repeated use of docere and its derivatives, particularly the noun doctrina (“teaching, instruction”), which is often used to describe the contents of the work.2 To say that the De amore is a didactic work does not advance us very much, however, for didactic literature is a broad and varied category, particularly for the Middle Ages, which were much given to this type of writing. Within this very broad class of texts, can we assign the treatise to a particular subgenre? In what sense or senses is it didactic, and what is the general nature of the teaching that it seeks to impart? 11 1. For the place of didactic literature in relation to the traditional tripartite division of genres, as well as an elementary discussion of didactic subgenres, see Seidler, pp. 438–55. 2. With its participial forms, the verb docere occurs 36 times, to which may be added 18 occurrence of derivatives such as edocere. We find one occurrence of documentum , 49 of doctrina. In the dialogues the latter term often refers to the “teaching” of the male suitors by the women being wooed. Elsewhere it often designates the content of the treatise itself (e.g., DA 3.117 [322]: nostra .l.l. doctrina). In 11 cases the expression is amoris doctrina, which may or may not refer to the treatise. The question may be viewed in various ways. From a twelfth-century perspective, we may ask, in the terms of the medieval academic prologues (accessus ad auctores), “To what branch of learning does it belong ?” (Cui parti philosophiæ supponitur?). That is, where does it fit into the various schemata for classification of the sciences that were current in the twelfth century?3 Or, in terms of the modern linguistic science of “pragmatics,” which examines the ways in which linguistic utterances interact with the world, we may ask, what is the “illocutionary force” of the treatise? In other words, what general kind of effect can it be expected to produce on the reader?4 Manuscript rubrics: Ars versus scientia One obvious place to look for indications as to the work’s genre is the titles and rubrics that accompany it in the medieval manuscripts. For medieval writers in the accessus tradition, the title plays an important role in the elucidation of a text. Remigius of Auxerre sees the title as a “key” to the work that follows. For Gundissalinus, the title enables one to know what the book treats and hence to form an idea of its intention . For Bernard of Utrecht the title indicates, among other things, the “genre of writing” to which the work belongs.5 More recently Gérard Genette has stressed the importance of what he calls the “paratext ,” a category that includes titles, for both the pragmatic and the generic dimensions of a work.6 Of course, the titles found in the medieval manuscripts of the De amore cannot be ascribed to Andreas himself, but rather to the scribes and rubricators responsible for the transmission of the text. The earliest of the extant manuscripts date from the thirteenth century, and most can be assigned to the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries. The rubrics may or may not be older than the extant manuscripts; in any case, they do not prove anything about Andreas’s intention. Nevertheless, they 12 p ro b l e m s o f f o r m 3. Minnis, Medieval Theory, pp. 23–27; Weisheipl. 4. For a general introduction to pragmatics, see Searle, Speech Acts. 5. Remigius, p. 2; Gundissalinus, p. 141; Bernard of Utrecht, Commentum in Theodolum, in Huygens, p. 60. Cf. Minnis, Medieval Theory, pp. 19–20. 6. Genette, Palimpsests, pp. 3–4; idem, Paratexts, pp. 55–105. can provide a suggestive indication of the generic...