4 In terms of its effect upon the reader, the extended divisio of the

vices or the virtues rather than being "seen" (as with the 1

, : j

"meditational" beast image) is “read".

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There is a sort of loop-stitch effect as the reader moves repeatedly 4 outwards from the paradigmatic beast image through the various

extensions of the "braunches" of each vice— in the case of pride the seven branches are further divided into various "many smale twigges" (p.

' J 13: 1-2)— and then finally back to the beast, the next head and yet j another tree. This manner of proceeding through the text means that the

Clerk, Manciple and Parson. These are clearly linked at connection with the proceeding story, either because it is unfinished or because it ends without clear reference to the

frame. By virtue of their narrative head-links, we can read such stories without difficulty as episodes in the

Canterbury book: yet the absence of end-links for the

proceeding stories makes for a sense of fragmentariness, or a grinding of narrative gears, as we jerk out of one story into another by way of an unspecified moment in the

pilgrimage narrative.3v

3? Roger Ellis, Patterns of Religious Narrative in the Canterbury Tales (London, 1986), p. 5.

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beast image remains central to the extended divisio of each vice (as a "meditational artifact") and both unifies and organises what would otherwise be a series of separate chapters or discourses.

A similar effect may be observed in the way in which Chaucer links together (compiles) the various stories in his Canterbury Tales. The

paradigmatic, containing image or frame of the Tales is, of course, the ] pilgrimage to Canterbury. However, while all the tales show some link

or connection to the narrative frame of the journey, they are not— as a series of events within the journey— always connected with one another in such a way that we can claim any certainty as to their chronological order. As Roger Ellis has noted:

Difficulty attends stories like that of the Man of Law, | their outset to the frame, but have only a notional i

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That the uncertain order of the Tales within the "containing" pilgrimage frame may have had a rhetorical function is supported, I believe, by Chaucer's recommendation that sensitive readers select only those tales which they find appealing, a strategy which, as we have seen in the case of the Orcherd of Syon, encourages the reader to select those tales which match their personal disposition (see above p. 9 4).3.8

The same possibility may also apply to the way in the main text that each of the seven vices is initially connected with the central beast image, but is not linked directly with either the vice which precejës oH* follows it. This is illustrated by the following two extracts where we can see the absence of any link between the conclusion of the treatment of "pride" and the vice which follows it. Instead, the vice of "envy" is introduced with a return to the paradigmatic beast image:

De seuenpe braimche of pride is foly drede . . . j^is drede and schame comeb of an euele likynge b&t a mean wole plese a schrewe, and berfore sche is dougter to pride & be seuenbe principal braunche . . .

De secounde heued of be wikked best of helle is enuye, bat is be addre bat al enuenim^ . . . 5is synne is departed in bre principal braunches . . . (p. 22: 3-22).

This approach to reading the Vices and Virtues would not mean that the various vices would become a series of completely separate sermons or

3s The Riverside Qiauceri " . . .whoso list it [the Miller's Tale] nat yheere,/ Turne over the leef and chese another tale;/ For he shal fynde ynowe, grete and smale,/ 0f storial thyng that toucheth

—

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tracts, since the head-1ink which introduces each vice and its divisio

ftnsures that the central and unifying beast image is recalled as the next vice is introduced. The absence of direct links between vices, however, allows the reader to stop with the completed divisio of any one vice without dismembering the unity between vices. Thus, having read and mentally pictured the initial beast image, the reader could then approach the remainder of the text as a series of topical divisiones to be read and digested one-at-a-time perhaps over a period of several days.3® Such a reading strategy would prevent the dismemberment of the memory image, since the divisio of a single vice would not

necessarily over-extend the tree image or, to use Albert the Great's phrase, "distend" the memory.

The second paradigmatic memory image, the garden of man's soul, functions in much the same way as the beast image except that it has a more elaborate structure necessitated by the numerous doctrinal elements which together help support the seven remedial virtues. As with the beast image, the textual garden image is paralleled by an actual picture

19 Morton W. Bloomfield, Piers Plomnaii as a Fourteenth-Century Apocalypse (New Brunswick, N.J. 1962), pp. 31-32, in a description of the structure of Piers Plowman, refers to the loop-stitch effect of the Biblical conmentary, an aspect he sees as central to the way in which Langland's allegory proceeds: "There is a lack of progression within the commentary, for the progression is in the work commented on— that is, . extrinsic to itself. It expands from a fixed point— the lemma, the | phrase, sentence, or sentences which are to form the exegetical unit—

and then returns to the next fixed point outside itself in the work being explained. There is no necessary connection within the commentary between one comment and the next, although there often may be one." The

same general principle also applies to the Vices and Virtues with the difference that instead of a "lemma", "phrase", "sentence" etc., the "fixed point" to which the commentary repeatedly returns is the

schematic or anatomized beast image. This development suggests, I i;l think, the important role of the "third-type" of distinctio which, when anatomised into its constituent parts, could effectively replace the

Scriptural passage as the point of departure or "fixed point" from which ■ a main text would exp>and.

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of the imago renmi or paradigmatic image. However, this second paradigmatic image— like the beast image— functions as a

‘‘compositional site" T^hich, rather than actually depicting all the various doctrinal elements which follow in the main text, serves as a

"meditational artifact". The garden image and its accompanying picture serve as "fixed jiKjints" or "lemmata" from which the entire main text proceeds.

Before going on to assess the way in which the sacrament of penance is represented in the Vices and Virtues, it will be helpful to consider briefly the arrangement of various doctrinal groups and elements within the garden image according to the relations of cause and effect. The causal linking of doctrinal elements or groups stands, I believe, as one of the unique contributions of the anatomized figurai res (as

compilatio) towards the dissemination and re-organization of pre-

existent doctrinal materials. 1

The compiler, rather than inventing new topics (materia), worked to

synthesize often disparate groups of doctrine, authoritative commentary, I scriptural texts and figures.20 However, as Stephen of Bourbon's

Tractatus de diversis materiis predicabilihus (1261) appears to j demonstrate, the compiler could employ organizing devices which— in the * process of synthesizing their diverse materials— might also further

develop the theoretical aspect of the subjects: i

Tlie Tractatus de diversis materiis predicabilihus . . . is elaborately hierarchical in structure. The Seven Gifts of

23 Ibid., p . 155.

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the Holy Ghost provide the basis of the division of material. Each of the seven books is then subdivided by

tituli which indicate the different topics (materiae), and each materia is subdivided on the principle of "cause and effect".21

The principle of cause and effect allows the compiler not only to

organise doctrine, but to integrate it so that the reader becomes aware of how various elements in the Christian faith (such as penance, the

Pater noater, the remedial virtues, etc.) may be understood in their "real life" causal relations. This contribution accords well with the teaching function of the compilatio, since to describe doctrine

according to the principle of cause and effect presents truth as something which is to be understood in terms of its relation to human experience. Furthermore, as we shall see with regards to the

representation of penance, the schematic image may embody the cause and effect principle in order to integrate the forensic and remedial

functions of penance.

The compiler introduces the garden image with an appeal to the

reader of the text to not only gain a knowledge of the good, but also to do it:

So b^it euery man or womman b^t wole studie and rede bis boke mowe ordeyne his lif by vertues and goode dedes, for elles

it were litel worb for a man or a womman to kunne good, but ] he dide good (p. 92: 27-31).

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The use of the word "ordeyne" to describe the reformation of the reader's life suggests, again, the symbiotic relationship between

"making" a book— that is, constructing a book according to a particular "order of treatment" or ordinatio, and "re-presenting" that same book or

ordinatdo as a nmemonic liahitiw "imprinted" upon the mind (see above pp. 83-84). As A.J. Minnis explains, the literary ordinatdo \>ia.s a

rhetorical ordering or "disposition and arrangement of material to an end or objective (finis)."22 The rhetorical effect of the literary

ordinatdo would initially be that of moving the affectus towards the "end" of piety or virtue, an effect which, as the text was memorised, would be repeated as the intentdones (affective responses) contained by the memory images (imagines) would be repeatedly experienced (see above p. 85). This process would, in turn, lead to a "disposition and

arrangement” or ordinatio of the moral life or habitus of the

individual, a development which would "ordeyne" the reader according to the "end" of virtue and finally eternal life (see above p. 66, note 81). J.B. Allen has lucidly explained the vital mnemonic and ethical function of the image and the exemplim} in his observation that, "the constitution of the text- and the re-constitution of the text which is every reader's experience of it- is precisely the moral experience of the pilgrim".2 3

This close association between "ordeyning" a book, recollecting it, and reforming the moral life is fully supported in the use of the garden image as a figure of the development of the virtuous soul. Instead of

22 A.J. Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship, p. 147.

23 Judson Boyce Allen, The Ethical Poetic of the Later Middle Ages: j A decoriw of convenient distinction (Toronto, 1982), p. 251. |

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merely "standing for” the didactic message of the main text, the garden image has the vital function of becoming an mental imago or phantasm

which, if "recollected" and established as part of a trained memory, would be "imprinted" upon the mind as the habitus necessary to the

exercise of prudence. The point is simply this, the process of "ethical reading" did not involve, at any stage, a complete "abstraction" of the didactic message of the image from its physical "imprint" upon the mind. Indeed, as Albert the Great makes clear, these imagines were necessary if the understanding of the didactic precepts was to produce a virtuous life:

Although literal words make for more accuracy about the thing itself nevertheless the metaphors move the mind more and thus convey more to the m e m o r y.24

The "imprint" of the garden image upon the memory as the condition necessary to the "actualization" of virtue in the life adds a new

significance to the analogy which the compiler of Vices and Virtues ' maltes between the garden and the soul of man:

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