Narrative, Authority, and Power (Larry Scanlon)

Exempla are, for most readers, the dullest sort of medieval literature: micro-narratives existing to reinforce what was already a foregone conclusion long before their introduction into the discussion. Scanlon, however, thinks they demand closer inspection.

First, he argues that the exemplum was not merely a narrative that reinforces the principles of a static authority, but instead an instrument of authority in the creation of itself and the enacting of the principles that support it. While authority claims to derive its standing from the past, it is the present holders of authority who assert their connection to that past and articulate the ways it legitimates them in the present. (Gramsci’s hegemony figures in here.) The exemplum, with its simultaneous appeal to historical moment and timeless meaning, was an effective tool for the Church to position itself as authoritative in the minds of the non-clerical classes of the laity.

Next, Scanlon examines two types of exempla: the sermon exemplum and the “public” exemplum (his term). The sermon exemplum is primarily a means of situating the Church’s authority in relationship to the lay commons. The exemplum was seen as an effective way to communicate truth to the “vulgar”: a sermon exemplum was always “talking down”. The public exemplum, on the other hand, attempts to position the Church as an influence over the king. This may be seen especially in the Fürstenspiegel (mirror of princes) and de causibus (fall of princes) traditions, which remind kings of the temporal and capricious nature of their own power.

Finally, Scanlon argues that the secular “Chaucerian tradition” (embodied by Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, and Hoccleve) appropriated the sermon and public exempla as a means of diluting and relocating Church authority with the laity and the locus of lay power, the king: “it reclaims the monarch as the source of lay political authority” (138).