Nature, Sex, and Goodness in a Medieval Literary Tradition.(Book Review)

Publication: The Modern Language Review

Publication Date: 01-OCT-03

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COPYRIGHT 2003 Modern Humanities Research Association

Nature, Sex, and Goodness in a Medieval Literary Tradition. By HUGH WHITE. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. 2000. ix + 278 pp. 40 [pounds sterling]. ISBN 0-19-818730-0.

Hugh White demonstrates convincingly that the concept of Nature inherited from the classical period and developed throughout the Middle Ages was morally equivocal. Influenced by the Roman jurist Ulpian, medieval academic writing on Nature associated the natural, and especially human sexual practice, with animal behaviour and placed the laws of Nature in tension with 'the law of nations' (p. 21). Rather than the deputy of God, 'vicaria Dei' in Alan of Lille's famous formulation, Nature thus became a problematic moral middle term; following Nature's prompting may protect humans from some kinds of vice--homosexuality, for example--but cannot...

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