Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index


  • Record Number: 45526
  • Author(s)/Creator(s): de Lille , Alain, and David Rollo
  • Contributor(s):
  • Title: The Plaint of Nature (De planctu Naturae)
  • Source: Medieval Writings on Sex between Men: Peter Damian's The Book of Gomorrah and Alain de Lille's The Plaint of Nature.David Rollo, translator.  Brill, 2022.  Pages 103 - 173. Available with a subscription from Brill: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004507326_003
  • Description: What happens if a cleric breaks his vows of sexual abstinence? What happens if the cleric in question does so repeatedly with other men of his vocation? Eleventh-century theologian Peter Damian provides a response. What happens if an author uses metaphor as a metaphor signifying and excoriating male same-sex relations, yet does so in a text showing an exuberant and unabashed orientation towards metaphorical language? Is the author in question rhetorically perpetrating precisely the so-called affront to nature he grammatically denounces? Twelfth-century poet Alain de Lille enacts an ambiguously enigmatic response.— [Reproduced from the book page on the Brill website: https://brill.com/view/title/57406]
  • Article Type: Translation
  • Subject (See Also): Alain de Lille, Author- De Planctu Naturae Homoeroticism Homosexuality Latin Literature Literature- Verse Marriage Nature (Literary Figure) Sexuality
  • Award Note: Feminae Translation of the Month, September 2022
  • Geographic Area: France
  • Century: 12
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  • Author's Affiliation: University of Southern California
  • Conference Info: - , -
  • Year of Publication: 2022.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN/ISBN: 9789004429659 (print); 9789004507326 (online)