Fiction and Incarnation: Rhetoric, Theology, and Literature in the Middle Ages (review)

The influence of Christian theological presuppositions on how writers view language is a complex field, well deserving of study. Professor Leupin's book, first published in 1993 in France, aims to show that the concept of the Incarnation produced a Christian epistemological break with the pagan past that 'profoundly affected…art, literature, philosophy, aesthetics, linguistics and so on' (p. xvii). The notion of the God-man 'has no synonym in any thought, system, religion or mythology that preceded it' (p. xvi). Nevertheless, medieval literature never completely disengaged from its pagan past and, indeed, this literature 'contradict[s] Christian knowledge'(p. xxii). This dichotomy leads Leupin to propose 'as a hypothesis, a veritable schizophrenia in medieval culture' (p. xvii). The Christian Church which affirms the Incarnation is contrasted by Docetism and Gnosticism, which asserts only the illusion of Christ. Lucifer is 'the Spirit that always says "no"…Lucifer's negativity, the powerful action of nonbeing, is itself dialectically determined by and determinant of the Incarnation' (p. xxiii). Lucifer escapes to literature. 'The devil in truth is the beingless God of the medieval artists…[and] in the medieval era, artistic creation has a profound rapport with the heresies of Gnosticism and Mannichaeism, which persisted throughout almost the entire age'(p. xxiii).

Despite references to theology, this book describes a very literary, postmodernist concept of Incarnation, and Leupin's literature (sometimes a literary text, sometimes language generally) begins with rhetoric and ends with the scabrous. Within this framework, his readings are stimulating and his thesis coherent. Nevertheless, generalisations and the omission of a wider context compromise the overall argument.

Chapter 1 establishes the rhetoric of Cicero and Quintilian as 'independent of the circumstances to which it refers' (p. 1). Because this rhetoric is fundamentally ahistorical, Leupin concludes that 'the baseless base of literature is located here, and so we are forced to declare that literature itself is a name for everything that resists referential and historical homonymy' (p. 2). For Leupin, Cicero and Quintillian evoke 'a quasi-Nietzschean framework in which language is nothing but metaphor' (p. 24).

However Tertullian (Chapter 2), Leupin writes, 'changes everything' (p. 25). With Tertullian 'A completely unique relation between writing and reference now begins. In evangelical writing, the story of the thing is consubstantial with the thing itself' (p. 27). Tertullian does not eradicate rhetoric, but it 'must now be modeled on a conceptual and incarnate cause, and no longer in reference to the infinite variety of causes and the uncertainty of public opinion' (p. 39). Tertullian is important, yet one could demur that he was not the first to explore incarnational language.

Augustine's Christian discourse (Chapter 3) does not reduce meaning to a unity, but allows an infinity of meanings. He uses metaphor but, unlike the rhetoricians, can distinguish between truthful Christian fiction and the pagan literature of lies. 'Having condemned rhetoric's endless use of metaphor, patristic thought revives it in the very heart of its system. Now the Incarnation plays the double role of legitimizing meaning and giving it the freedom of plurality' (p. 65). The reification of abstract nouns here (and throughout) remains unexplored, unless it is an ironic invocation of the Incarnation in language.

The Marriage of Mercury and Philology is analysed for its attitude to allegory, satire and its attempt to universalize knowledge. Chapter 5 explores Isidore's Etymologies where 'writing works toward that which cannot be spoken and thus forces writing to fall silent. The letter, words and language become the traces of the Other' (p. 99). Yet unevidenced assertions distract: 'For centuries…Theology prohibited the age from creating, so it found its inspiration in the inventive rereading of what was already written' (p. 103). Again, the reification of abstract nouns allows a totalising erasure of the diversity of the period.

Leupin offers perceptive insights of the Old French Sequence of Saint Eulalia. The virginal monks employ the masculine pen to re...