Isidore is among those, and there are some among the moderns, who—while they are prepared to accept a metaphor like fluctuare segetes—consider its opposite, segetare fluctus inacceptable,4 as if its unprecedented boldness were an offence to metaphorical common sense, while they find the interchange of a bird’s wings and a ship’s oars reciprocal, precisely because both are said: “alae navium et alarum remigium dicuntur” (ibid., my emphasis). A good metaphor, then, is something that “is [already] said.” It appears, then, that there is little room left for uncodified daring, which evidently “non dicitur …”(“is not said”).
Donatus’s definitions are found almost verbatim in the De schematibus et tropis of the Venerable Bede, and from there they are handed on with minimal variations to a number of later medieval texts. Compared to Donatus, what changes, if anything, are the citations and the comments on them.5
It is never made explicit whether the trope is witty because of its difficulty, though it is implied that it should be clarified by the reading of the text’s interpreter. The tradition will tend to privilege readily comprehensible tropes over obscure and ingenious ones.
An invitation to moderation could already be found in the Rhetorica ad Herennium (IV, 45): Translationem pudentem dicunt esse oportere, ut cum ratione in consimilem rem transeat, ne sine dilectu temere et cupide videatur in dissimilem transcurrisse” (“They say that a metaphor ought to be restrained, so as to be a transition with good reason to a kindred thing, and not seem an indiscriminate, reckless and precipitate leap to an unlike thing”).6 Alcuin (De rhet., in Halm 1863: 37) reminds us that we must learn the good things that past authors have done, and when one has become accustomed to their manner of speaking, one will inevitably speak in an ornate style.
Alcuin affirms that the function of good metaphors is to make clearer something that could not be said in any other words, though exaggerations are to be avoided. Literary education, at least as organized from the Schola Palatina on, is based on imitation of the ancients, and the metaphorical arsenal too must stick to tried and true models. The examples given are the canonical ones (gemmare vites, luxuriari messem, fluctuare segetes), and the question of how far one may experiment with overbold metaphors is answered with an appeal to moderation, and a provocative metaphor such as the term of abuse stercus curiae (“the droppings of the curia or court”) is consequently rejected.7
Centuries later, a refined proto-humanist like John of Salisbury in his Metalogicon will inform us that grammar provides the tropes, but “solis eruditissimis patet usus eorum: unde et lex eorum arctior est, qua non permittuntur longius evagari. Regulariter enim proditum est, quia figures extendere non licet” (I, 19) (“The employment of tropes, just as the use of schemata, is the exclusive privilege of the very learned. The rules governing tropes are also very strict, so that the latitude in which they may be used is definitely limited. For the rules teach that we may not extend figures”) (I, 19).8
He will cite Quintilian reminding us that “virtus enim sermonis optima est perspicuitas et facilitas intelligendi” (“what is desirable first and foremost in language is lucid clarity and easy comprehensibility”) and he will say that tropes are motivated by necessity or ornament.
Again, it is John (Metalogicon III, 8) who, while he praises metaphors which highlight what we would call the physical resemblance between two things, condemns expressions like “the law is the measure (or image) of things that are just by their very nature” because in the concept of law there is nothing that resembles either measure or image (in point of fact he takes the example from Topics VI, 2, 140, 7 et seq.).
Does this perhaps mean that medieval poets were incapable of inventing unprecedented metaphors? Naturally, the whole history of medieval poetry is there to affirm the opposite, and we still find Dante’s “aiuola che ci fa tanto feroci” (“the garden plot that makes us so aggressive,” Pd 22, 151) or “Galeotto fu il libro e chi lo scrisse” (“Galahad was the book and whoever wrote it,” Inf 5, 137) admirable in their boldness. And that is not alclass="underline" much of medieval poetry and prose frequently succumbed to the fascination of enigmatic expression. We have only to think of the so-called Hisperica Famina (cf. De Bruyne 1946: 1:4, and Herren 1974), or of the Epitomae of that bizarre seventh-century rhetorician Virgil of Bigorre (cf. Polara 1979), not to mention the hermetic trobar clus of the Provençal poets.
Nevertheless, it seems that the very authors who show their appreciation for enigmas and obscurity by composing such texts or quoting them admiringly are far more circumspect when it comes to theory. Virgil of Bigorre, for instance, says that there are poetic compositions which aspire to wit and whimsy, which he calls leporia (calling to mind Aristotle’s asteia), but he reminds us that in so doing poetry is distinct from rhetoric because it is cramped and obscure (“angusta atque oscura,” Epitomae IV, 6). The word-polishers (“tornores logi,” IV, 7), are therefore to be condemned; the leporia displays a certain mordacitas but does not always escape mendacity. Can we say “sol in occasu metitur maria,” when no created thing, not even the setting sun, can plumb (metiri) the depths of the seas? Better to say “sol in occasu tinguit mare.” Can we say “ventus e terra roborum radices evellit altas” (IV, 8), when we know that the wind only makes oaks quake and does not tear them up by their roots? We might say that for Virgil inventing neologisms, coming up with outlandish etymologies, and composing riddles in cipher was all in a day’s work, but when it came to metaphors you had to watch where you were headed.
Among the Provençal poets (cf. De Bruyne 1946: 2:332), Allégret warns us that his verse will seem incomprehensible to fools, and Bernart de Venzac promises veridical words that will be a source of perturbation for the wise and scandal for the foolish, unless they accept a double reading. Guiraut de Borneill, however, while defending on the one hand the obscure style (“I will seek and lead by the reins fair words burdened with a meaning at once strange and natural that not everyone will discover”), on the other hand opts for the trobar plan or leu chanso over the trobar clus, and recognizes that it makes more sense to write intelligibly than to tangle up the words (“Qu’eu cut c’atretan grans sens / es, qui sap razo gardar, / com los motz entrebeschar” [“I think that it’s just as much good sense / if one can keep to the point, / as to twist my words around each other”]).
It is true that, in the various discussions of the lofty style, the perplexity that must be aroused in the mind of the reader, in such a way that the diversity of the examples may dispel boredom, is often praised and “tamquam cibum aurium, invitet auditorem” (“like food for the ears, invite your listeners”) (Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Documentum de modo et arte dictandi et versificandi Faraclass="underline" 272);9 usually, however, the examples do not concern difficult metaphors, but amplifications and descriptions that produce hypotyposis, as when, to say that travelers go on board ship and prepare for the voyage, the writer is advised to compose eight lines describing the action and making it vivid.