Architrenius

by Johannes de Hauvilla, Winthrop Wetherbee (Translator)

Architrenius , a satirical allegory in dactylic hexameters completed in 1184 by the Norman poet Johannes de Hauvilla, follows the journey of its eponymous protagonist, the “arch-weeper,” who stands in for an emerging class of educated professionals tempted by money and social standing. Architrenius’s quest for moral instruction leads through vivid tableaux of the vices of school, court, and church, from the House of Gluttony to the Palace of Ambition to the Mount of Presumption. Despite the allegorical nature of Architrenius , its focus is not primarily religious. Johannes de Hauvilla, who taught at an important cathedral school, probably Rouen, uses his stylistic virtuosity and the many resources of Latin poetry to condemn a secular world where wealth and preferment were all-consuming. His highly topical satire anticipates the comic visions of Jean de Meun, Boccaccio, and Chaucer.

This edition of Architrenius brings together the most authoritative Latin text with a new English translation of an important medieval poem.

576 pages, Hardcover

First published November 17, 1994

Reviews

[Joey · Rating 5 out of 5]

You get what you pay for with Dunbarton Oaks and then some. Wow. Like experiencing the gestation period of Finnegans Wake in the dreams of a man centuries Joyce's senior. Idk if this is macaronic, or whatever the term is, as technically the English is a very cleaned up and relatively straightforward translation as far as all things go and it is not of Italian descent. More akin to the reading experience of a translated bilingual edition of Larva than Bottoms Dream. The Latin ( at least the scant pages I could afford energy and time to devote to. This will be my major project for the reread) however is riddled with Rabelaisian puns and euphemisms and cultural jabs and historical satires through myth that show the colors of the text. Far more fulfilling a read than Bottoms Dream considering I actually decided this was worth finishing but it reminds me much of Schmidt and Joyce's projects in that these figures all found such utterly unique ways to utilize boredom and restriction as taproots for pure ideation and invention. Please buy this book so I don't have to be the one to crack all the pliable parts of the spine till I can distill its contents. Someone please join me

[Jared · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the few 12th century Medieval Latin “masterpieces” cited in medieval poetics manuals as superior to the work of the ancients, this poem amounts to a dreamlike celebration of human ingenuity and artifice—tempered by the moderations of ancient moral philosophers, the tragic aspect of human life discovered in the exempla of classical epic, and the unveiling order of Nature’s many mirrors, especially the recent developments in cosmology received from the Arab world. This interplay of nature and artifice is exemplified by the poem’s own endlessly intricate satirical style, a virtuosic display of the twelfth-century ornatus difficilis:

“Velificatur Athos, dubio mare ponte ligature,
Remus arat colles, pedibus substernitur unda,
Puppe meatur humus, pelagi Thetis exuit usum,
Salmoneus fulmen iaculatur, Dedalus alas
Induit: ingenii furor instat et invia preceps
Rumpit et artifici cedit natura labori.”

“Ships sail over Athos, the ocean is spanned by a shaky bridge, oars furrow the hillsides, the waves are subject to walking feet, the dry land is surveyed from the stern, Thetis has forsaken the deep. Salmoneus hurls his thunderbolt, Daedalus dons his wings, a frenzy of ingenuity is upon us, bursting headlong into regions uncharted, and nature yields to the onslaught of art.”

The virtuosity and vexations of this style, at least in the late-medieval view of the poem, are best described by his student Gervase of Melkey in his Art of Making Verses (Ars versificatoria):

“Master John of Hauville, at the breast of whose learning my read infancy was weaned, came up with many refinements and passed on several to his pupils. In his little book about the itinerant philosopher he falls Architrenius, he heeded many of them. A careful reading of that book is enough to educate a rude mind.”

And yet:

“Certainly although in Architrenius there are many hard metaphors (durissimae translationes), I heard a man of discretion call that book faulty precisely because it doesn’t have a single faulty line.”

[Alper Yılmaz · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I got started on this book, I thought I would end up giving it 2 stars, and that it would be just a preachy, uninteresting book of nothing. The further I got, though, the more I noticed my perspective on all the issues handled in this book broadening, and the more I got lost in the poetry of the lavish, beautiful descriptions and dialogue.

The satire and morality on display here are also remarkably universal. This 12th century Latin poem may as well be the 21st Century Guide to Being a Decent Person. The story hardly exists, and is pretty much an excuse for the author to take on whatever issues he wants to at a time, but it still manages to come to a genuinely exciting and awe-inspiring climax before winding down with some medieval pseudoscience (the only non-universal bits of the book) and ends on a cheery and satisfying note with the wedding.

[Lulu]

1184