the truth: best used in fiction

[let this illuminate the nature of the sufferer's particular strain: a condition more of the world than of words, though certainly of words as well.

unedited from spring semester 2008.]

When dealing in “deep truths,” one might intuit the ideal medium to be fact, not fiction. The facts in the case are counterintuitive: Many great minds of Western civilization from Plato onward made liberal use of lies in their conceptually weighty work, and have reaped the benefits of their creativity in the fields of posterity. Authors do not incorporate imaginative elements into their work flippantly. Creative genres such as dialogue and travel narrative hold important advantages over more “honest” forms of commentary, such as treatises or proofs. Francesco Petrarca and “Sir John Mandeville,” among other Renaissance artists, could not have communicated their messages so effectively without their careful utilization of creative writing.

Authors find imaginative elements particularly useful when they write with premeditated rhetorical agendas to consciously chosen audiences, likely composed of readers left unmoved by pure philosophy. If one seeks to incite interest beyond the ranks of the intelligentsia, one might use fictional flourishes to attract attention and to entertain. The author of The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (hereafter referred to as Mandeville) wrote his (mostly fictional) combination of travel narrative and ethnographic account circa 1356 CE, about half a century after Marco Polo and Rustichello de Pisa collaboratively wrote The (mostly factual) Travels of Marco Polo. The former piece was initially met with greater interest, readership, and belief than the latter, not in spite of its creative embellishments, but rather because of them. Mandeville engages the medieval imagination through use of familiar, if false, elements. While Polo attempts to denote geography accurately, Mandeville remarks that “it is commonplace that Jerusalem is in the middle of the earth; it may be proved thus” (129), and goes on to suggest an empirical test and, further, to cite Scripture. Later, he describes the location of Earthly Paradise, in the farthest reaches of the Far East (Mandeville 183). The average literate man may not have followed or appreciated Polo’s efforts to informatively describe political institutions such as the Mongolian mint and postal service. Mandeville’s collection of fantastical races seemed plausible by comparison; after all, he had continued to travel east past Jerusalem, and the further east one travels, the stranger the customs must be.

One highly notable exception to the rule of political fact in Polo and ethnographic fiction in Mandeville exists: Prester John, without whom any tale of Asia would be incomplete in the medieval mind. Both Polo and Mandeville include this king of Christian folklore in their narratives. They both choose to base Prester John’s character and empire loosely upon those of a real emperor, the Ong Khan, who, as Mandeville describes, is “always allied [with the Great Khan of Tartary] through marriage; for each of them marries the other’s daughter or sister” (168). Mandeville provides a page-turning description of Prester John’s empire, filled with gold, precious gems, and a system of theocratic fealty, complete with “the Patriarch of Saint Thomas[, who] is there rather like a Pope” (171).

This synthesis of the familiarly Christian and the lavishly Oriental operates particularly effectively in the description of Prester John’s dining throne: “The steps up which the Emperor goes to his throne where he sits at meals are, in turn, onyx, crystal, jasper, amethyst, sardonyx, and coral; and the highest step, which he rests his feet on when at meat, is chrysolite” (Mandeville 170). With every meal, Prester John ascends seven jewel-encrusted steps, perhaps representative of the seven virtues, to the summit of a culinary Paradise. With this and other fantastical-familiar descriptions, Mandeville at once entertains his reader and makes them comfortable in a world similar enough, or different enough, to be believable.

Extravagance of detail wins the common man; literary authority wins the intellectual. The treatise format necessarily reduces the invocation of authority to a series of citations and explanations. One highly effective way to contextualize one’s work amongst Great Books is to make one’s work resemble a Great Book. Common conventions of imaginative works and the ability they afford their authors to subtly echo past authors allow for a richness in allusion and interpretation that the treatise cannot match. In addition, pieces making use of allusion often can be read and understood without knowledge of their literary pedigree, whereas the authors of treatises sometimes rely heavily upon their philosophical predecessors for their arguments and their language.

As Professor Denis Feeney noted last semester, with particular regard to Greek tragedy, much of art’s meaning is derived from convention of expression, not from resemblance to “real life.” With regard to creative prose as well as poetry, certain conventions serve as flags showing readers how to decipher the text. These conventions, along with allusions, serve to integrate a work into the reader’s understanding of literary and epistemological progression.

When Sir John Mandeville declares that he has toured the Far East, or begins to describe the inhabitants of foreign lands, the informed reader immediately develops a set of expectations for the work by which s/he can evaluate its meaning and effectiveness. Prior travel narratives, especially Polo’s recent one, and established ethnographic accounts, particularly ethnographic allegories such as Tacitus’ Germania, provide this initial insight. Like Tacitus, Mandeville pays particular attention to the sexual customs and clothing of his allegorical “others.” The best among Mandeville’s extraordinary savages are those living in an Edenic state of nakedness, whose austere cultures and moralistic admonitions so greatly endeared them to Alexander the Great that he spared them his military might (178-80). Occasional biblical references, some artfully misquoted by the monk author, infuse the text with a sense of Christian heritage agreeable to the medieval mind.

Similarly, when the audience witnesses Francesco, a man in need of spiritual guidance and uplift, visited by a woman shrouded in light, the foundation of literary understanding is laid. Petrarca’s extensive allusion to Boethius, Seneca, Horace, Juvenal, and Augustine marks Secretum as authoritative to the scholarly. With regard to Secretum’s format, Petrarca claims the classical heritage of dialogue format directly: “I learned this from Cicero, of course, who had learned it from Plato” (39). The many implications of this lineage include outstanding rhetoric, through which the reader is effectively convinced, and the use of Socratic methodology, through which the interrogated party in a dialogue discovers their own latent knowledge through guided questions.

This latter technique, borrowed from Plato via Boethius in particular, proves particularly important to Petrarca’s purpose, for his was the concern of self-knowledge. As a prominent humanist, Petrarca did not merely recycle respectable quotes and conventions in order to win fame, nor did he write to shore up the corrupt establishment. He instead espoused the radical notion that a man should write for himself even before God.

If one wishes to express controversial political or religious views, fiction can be used as both sword and shield: to make the point and to disguise it. Nonfiction commentary deliberately lays bare the bones of the argument, and has therefore caused radical authors such as Martin Luther to require protection from the retribution of authority post-publication. Because Petrarca draped his thoughts in an imaginative cloak, he put himself in far less danger than did Luther.

Petrarca’s use of literary context both highlights and masks his message. Deliberate deviations from literary precedent show themselves at a close reading, but the strong overall evocations of Boethius and Augustine are enough to conceal these departures from some readers. The very combination of these two authors, one as interlocutor and one as literary primer, creates a juxtaposition which initially strikes the informed reader as bizarre and novel: Augustine becomes harshly Socratic, and seeks to reveal his pupil’s knowledge not of a philosophical abstraction or religious truth, but rather of himself. Petrarca reveals the tremendous hypocrisy of his persona, Francesco, through the dialogue following such questions as “As for reading, what is the use of that? Out of all that you have read, how much has really stayed in your mind?” (66) and “Tell me, what can be more childish, indeed more insane, than to be careless and lazy in all other matters, but waste time in the study of words and derive so much pleasure in speaking, while in your ignorance you never see your own reprehensible behavior?” (67). That Augustine’s character speaks in so caustically critical a manner should not surprise us; he, after all, bears witness to his own mistakes relived by Francesco, an immensely frustrating experience. The unusual selection of a male, historically real, dead interlocutor produces this effect. Unlike Dante’s Virgil, Petrarca’s Augustine is fleshed out with actual autobiographical flaws, and actual experience in overcoming them: He is a real person, and the conversation between him and Francesco functions both as a conversation between real people and as Petrarca’s conversation with himself. Only through painstaking use of allusion and convention could such a complex effect be achieved, and only in this art could such new and potentially dangerous ideas be effectively cloaked.

Mandeville borrows his technique of concealed criticism from the influences already mentioned: Marco Polo and Tacitus. Renaissance convention was quite unlike 21st century convention, for as political correctness literally lay elsewhere, thousands of miles overland. By imposing recognizable traits on faraway places, much as Petrarca uses Socratic dialogue as a medium for his humanist ideas, Mandeville criticizes European ecclesiastical authority by creative comparison. The character named “the Sultan,” a representation of Islamic piety, berates Mandeville’s character for his belief that Christian countries are governed “well enough:” “You ought to be simple, meek and truthful, and ready to give charity and alms, as Christ was, in whom you say you believe. But it is quite otherwise” (Mandeville 107). Marco Polo depicts a gentler version of such commentary, as the Great Khan is “most desirous to be converted” (Polo 119-20), and would certainly be baptized if he were sent a handful of respectable, useful Christians from the Vatican. In both cases, the removal of the vocal character to Asia both allows and softens the commentary; at least in Mandeville’s case, the criticism springs fully formed from the mind and quill of a European.

The Reformation brought about a world in which multiple perspectives suddenly seemed valid; in which dissent was dangerous, but not suicidal; in which diversity, no longer inherently impious, might begin to find a favorable place in discourse. While the best of Mandeville’s savages are Christians of a sort, many more, identified as pygmies or otherwise physically unusual, receive favorable words in his account. The acknowledgment of virtue in these fictional Asian races may have been intended as advice to Europeans: Acknowledge as I have the virtue of those who differ from yourself. This advice, offered obliquely and within entertaining fiction, was disseminated more widely and more acceptably than any moralizing treatise on the subject could have been.

Once the Catholic Church was no longer the one and only Church, the traditional Catholic stigma of art had room to decompose. To this day, it has not decomposed fully. To some, fiction remains frivolous, and a poor means through which to communicate valuable ideas. Others acknowledge fiction as the best means: Best for its capacity to influence, for its complexity of meaning, and for its subtle admonition. In fiction’s mirror, we witness reality sharpened. Truths imaginatively, organically represented become, through our interpretation, clearer and more beautiful than any argument crystallized in orderly outline.