Peril in Poetry: Plato & Christine de Pisan’s Fears Made Tangible
Although Plato and Christine de Pisan lived centuries apart, both were revered thinkers within their communities that defied popular literary culture by bringing attention to the possible dangers of poetry and literature. Plato discussed his objections with an imaginary Socrates in his book, the Republic, where he outlines his ideal society and declares his "rejection of imitative poetry" (Plato 29). While Plato was concerned with poetry in general while writing his Republic, Christine de Pisan had a focused target in her piece, "La Querelle de la Rose". She wrote against the Roman de la Rose, "... an allegorical love poem begun around 1225 by Guillaume de Lorris and completed and augmented around 1275 by Jean de Meun, which describes the ultimately successful quest of a lover for the mystical and fleshly Rose." (Richter 105). Writing to Jean de Montreuil, an academic leader who "wrote a now-lost treatise extolling the poem" (Ross 52), she would use his praise of the poem as an example of the dangers of poetry. Plato and de Pisan's concerns around poetry varied, yet they both focused on three main facets that made poetry dangerous; the effect of poetic language on morality, on reason, and whether it had any long-term profitability.
One of the biggest concerns for Plato and Christine de Pisan regarding the dangers of poetry was its effect on the morality of its readers or listeners. It must first be understood that Plato and de Pisan did not always share similar views when it came to the specificities of what they found virtuous. For instance, one of the reasons de Pisan found Roman de la Rose so troublesome was because of its misogynistic subject matter; "For Christine, the Rose was also threatening because it reinforced the dominant misogyny of the Middle Ages, representing women as unchaste objects of desire." (Richter 105). In her response to the poem, "La Querelle de la Rose", she uses exclamations to demonstrate her shock that such a poem could receive praise despite being so depraved of morality in her eyes; "And the wickedness which there is recorded of women!... he certainly could not have rendered worse or abased the condition of women more!" (de Pisan 108). To her, the danger of this work is that it could encourage misogynistic behavior and confirm harmful stereotypes that men used to justify the subordination of women.
While de Pisan longed for a society that honored femininity, Plato deeply feared femininity, viewing it as a weakness. Despite decreeing men and women equal in his Republic "in all decisive senses", as stated in Trevor Ross's lecture "Plato and the Harms of Poetry Pt. 1", his other statements regarding femininity reflect a lack of respect for women. In his ideal society, "The best warriors get to mate with the most beautiful women." (Ross 25). It is obvious through this statement that Plato views women as objects only relative to men, a reward to the manliest of soldiers. Plato's Republic has a recurring theme of reverence to male authority and the military, so, considering his fear of femininity, poetry is dangerous because it threatens the power he feels so important to the fabric of his utopia; "... I do not say that these horrible stories may not have a use of some kind; but there is a danger that the nerves of our guardians may be rendered too excitable and effeminate by them." (Plato Republic, Book III). Plato's evidence for poetry's "effeminate" nature is not explicitly stated when describing its threats to morality, however, connections to femininity can clearly be made through his warnings; "And the same may be said of lust and anger and all the other affections... poetry has a like effect; it feeds and waters the passions instead of drying them up; she lets them rule, although they ought to be controlled if mankind are ever to increase in happiness and virtue." (Plato 36). The personification of poetry as a "she" is no coincidence; Plato is using negative stereotypes about women to caution readers of poetry about its deceptive nature, such as "letting passions rule", and its inability to control "lust and anger and all the other affections". This passage is doubly ironic because while discrediting poetry for its manipulative nature, Plato is using rhetoric commonly found in poetry such as personification and polysyndeton to support his claims. The true irony, however, is that this is a manifestation of de Pisan's fears of literature quite literally, "reinforcing the dominant misogyny" not of her own era, but of Plato's own era purely to prove a point.
Despite their disagreements around misogyny, both Plato and de Pisan both feared that poetry posed a threat to their values. A common theme in both of their works is the concern for the ambiguity that is often present in poetry, and that it may blur the lines between good and evil. In "La Querelle de la Rose", de Pisan says of the poem, "... its style poetically is pleasing, but therein lies the greater peril, for the more authentic the good, the more faith one puts in the evil... many learned men have sometimes sown great errors by intermingling good and evil and by covering over the errors with truth and virtue." (de Pisan 100). This statement is important because of the phrase "many learned men"; de Pisan stresses that poetry can be so well written and powerful that it can provoke even the most honorable of people to "put faith in evil", therefore making the threat universal. Her fear is in no way unfounded, as she demonstrates in this next excerpt; "... you call it a mirror of good living and, for men of all classes, an example of good social conduct and of the wise, moral life... I call it an exhortation to vice, a comfort to dissolute life, a doctrine full of deception, the way to damnation, a public defamer..." (de Pisan 111). In this passage, de Pisan is using Jean de Montreuil as a direct example of the "learned man", falling prey to the "doctrine full of deception"; the negative morals encouraged by the Roman de la Rose are made even more dangerous by his praise because he is considered an academic leader. The confusion of good and evil through poetic influence, therefore, is not merely a danger on the level of the individual but can affect entire communities of thought.
Plato makes a similar statement on the danger of poetic ambiguity by inverting our worldview and shocking the reader with the "parallel universe" that poets create; "...they tell us that wicked men are often happy, and the good miserable; and that injustice is profitable when undetected, but that justice is a man's own loss and another's gain- these things we shall forbid them to utter, and command them to sing and say the opposite." (Plato Republic, Book III). The unfortunate thing about Plato's observations is that most of them are true- the world is a corrupt place- yet it seems from his perspective that if the citizens of his Republic are completely censored from this knowledge, they will have no ability to echo it. Similar to de Pisan's statement, Plato's cedes that poetry has strength despite being something he despises; therefore, he advises that his society use it as a tool under certain conditions; "... we must remain firm in our conviction that hymns to the gods and praises of famous men are the only poetry which ought to be admitted into our State." (Plato 36). From this, we can again see how highly he values established authority and order. This may explain why he feels that poetry is dangerous, as the idolization of poets threatens his desired hierarchy; "...we will fall down and worship him as a sweet and holy and wonderful being..." (Plato Republic, Book III). To "worship" a poet for his language, in Plato's eyes, would disregard that God is "the natural author" (Plato 30-31) of everything within the world, and that poets should not be accredited with such piety because they are mere imitators. While poetry's threat to morality was often at the forefront of Plato and Christine de Pisan's concerns, preserving and defining the difference between reality and imitation was equally as important.
The phrase "Fake News" is something ever-present in our current society, especially surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, however, the power of words to create a false reality has always been a concern throughout history; Plato and de Pisan felt that the persuasive nature of poetry could have a negative effect on reason. In Plato's eyes, the more one indulges in the passionate side of themselves through poetry, the more they lose their grip on the real world; "... he awakens and nourishes this part of the soul, and strengthening it impairs the reason." (Plato 35). Once he has established this almost enchanting power of poetry, we are better able to understand one of his previous statements; "... all poetical imitations are ruinous to the understanding of the hearers...". (Plato 29). This is important because it is not simply the spreading of misinformation that he is cautioning, he is directly calling out the method of poetry itself because it is so persuasive and deceptive in his eyes. We can see this manifest today through popular conservative political speakers like Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson, who routinely use rhetoric and logical fallacies (devices that originated in poetry) to spread information that has no root in truth, despite being eloquently presented.
De Pisan uses a different tactic while critiquing the Roman de la Rose, demonstrating how poetry can dismantle one's rational thought by simply stating obvious facts that the manipulative nature of the poem has caused the readers to ignore. She raises that it is common knowledge that "... there have been women well schooled in worldly conduct and virtuous morals... despite the fact that their husbands were crude and brutish towards them. One finds proof enough of this in the Bible and other ancient histories." (de Pisan 109). Citing the Bible as Plato does God as a definitive source of fact adds weight to her argument that literature is dangerous, because the ideas of the Roman de la Rose go directly against truth. By building off "truth" as the ultimate authority, she not only disparages the poem, but Jean de Montreuil's praise of it:
“And do not believe or let anyone else think, dear sir, that I have written this defense, out of feminine bias... my motive is simply to uphold the pure truth, since I know by experience... it is precisely because I am a woman that I can speak better in this matter than one who has not had the experience, since he speaks only by conjecture and by chance." (de Pisan 110)
Framing herself as a more reliable source than Jean de Montreuil, because of her real-world experience as a woman, she is able to discredit both him and the male authors of the poem. While she is correct in her observation that she obviously comes from a more knowledgeable place because she is a woman, it raises concern for the fact that anyone even agreed with the messages of the Roman de la Rose in the first place, even an esteemed academic like Montreuil, who should know better to believe a woman about women's issues over a man. Whether it be from his own preconceived misogyny or the influence of the writing, the poem enabled him to disregard reason and support unfounded criticisms of women. Plato comments on this phenomenon in his Republic, coming to the conclusion that poetry is not to blame for the existence of irrational thought, however, it is the catalyst that allows for truth to be pushed aside; "As in a city when the evil are permitted to wield power and the finer men are put out of the way, so in the soul of each man, as we shall maintain, the imitative poet implants an evil constitution, for he indulges in the irrational nature which... is very far removed from the truth." (Plato 35). He again uses the metaphor of a topsy-turvy world to invoke fear- which is ironically what happens in de Pisan's world; evil ideas like misogyny "are permitted to wield power" through poetry, and "finer [wo]men" like herself are "put out of the way". What we see in this quote is a concern for society at large; it has been established by Plato and de Pisan that poetry can have a negative effect on reason and morality, so the question remains, what purpose does it serve in society?
In Plato's Republic and Christine de Pisan's "La Querelle de la Rose", both thinkers not only advocate against poetry due to its dangers to reason and morals but profess it to be ultimately useless if it does not meet their standards of virtue. De Pisan criticizes the Roman de la Rose from this standpoint, claiming that its beauty alone does not qualify it as good; " For a work without usefulness, contributing nothing to the general or personal good (even though we concede it to be delightful, the fruit of great work and labor) in no way deserves praise." (de Pisan 110). Through this statement, we can see that de Pisan is very concerned with what literature has to offer "the greater good", the very reason why she is writing to criticize a misogynistic poem in hopes of bettering the morals of society. What Plato seems most concerned with in his ideal society is the state of the military, as one of his primary moral objections to poetry was that it may render soldiers "effeminate". Therefore, he critiques Homer, a Greek writer who often featured battle scenes in his work, yet was not involved with the military in real life; "...military tactics, politics, education, which are the chiefest and noblest subjects of his poems... tell us what state was ever better governed by your help'?" (Plato 32). Plato is consistently focused on the real-world applications of writing, which is why he believes that if one is writing on a certain subject, one must also be an expert who contributes that knowledge to society in a beneficial way. Real-world leaders, or "the virtuous" are not only the most morally acceptable subjects to him, but are the basis for the only useful types of writing; "For we mean to employ for our souls' health the rougher and severer poet or story-teller, who will imitate the style of the virtuous only, and will follow those models which we prescribed at first when we began the education of our soldiers." (Plato, Republic, Book III). Just as Plato is intent on highlighting "the virtuous" in society in a utilitarian sense, de Pisan claims that these types of women have had a much more beneficial impact on society than de Montreuil and the Roman de la Rose; "... there are and there will be more virtuous women, more honorable, better bred, and even more learned, and from whom more great good has come forth into the world than ever did from his person." (de Pisan 109). Again, we see the "greater good" questioned in her response to de Montreuil, derailing his argument by pointing out that women throughout history have contributed more than he ever could, rendering his misogynistic perceptions of them useless.
Another word that comes up in both de Pisan's and Plato's works is "profit"; a danger of poetry is that it not only has no societal "profit” but may instead put their communities at a disadvantage. Plato admits that poetry does have value in producing "excitement", but questions the worth of that emotion; "And what will any one be profited if under the influence of honour or money or power, aye, or under the excitement of poetry, he neglect justice and virtue?" (Plato 37). Through this statement, Plato is constructing an antithesis between poetry and virtue to convince the reader that they must pick one or the other. "Justice and virtue", when placed next to "excitement" obviously holds more weight, making his argument that poetry is not profitable very convincing. De Pisan makes a similar, yet fiercer remark on "profit", highlighting the absurdity of de Montreuil's argument for the Roman de la Rose's worth; "...what profit there can possibly be in his excessive, impetuous and most untruthful criticism and denigration of women as exceedingly wicked creatures!" (de Pisan 108). To her, the only feasible outcome is the reinforcement of misogynistic stereotypes that lead to further oppression of women, something that is glaringly non-profitable. Both Plato and de Pisan do an expert job of supplementing their previous arguments of poetry's effect on reason and morality with a reality check for the reader; the danger that poetry holds far outweighs its benefits.
Certainly, from Plato and Christine de Pisan's observations, we can see that there are real dangers to poetry and the use of poetic language. Plato's solution was to censor what could be read and written, while de Pisan's was to examine the facts around the author of the poem and its supporters and the subject matter. Although both solutions are imperfect, they come from a desire for truth. Through censorship, the truth can be highlighted, yet it can also be repressed; through focusing on the author and the subjects, context can provide reasoning, yet it leaves the door open to bias. I believe in our modern age that the best way to prevent the dangers of poetry that Plato and de Pisan were so worried about is education. If people are taught about rhetoric and logical fallacies, they can recognize when others are using them to thwart morality, bend reality, and with more people knowing how to expose deceptive language, society can reap the profit of living without fear of poetry, but power over it.
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Works Cited
De Pisan, Christine. "La Querelle de la Rose." The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, edited by David H. Richter, Shorter Third Edition, Bedford/St. Martin's, 2016, pp. 104-11.
Plato. "Republic, Book X." The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, edited by David H. Richter, Shorter Third Edition, Bedford/St. Martin's, 2016, pp. 29-37.
Ross, Trevor, ENGL 3001: Dante and de Pisan on Reading Poetry. 5 October 2021, Dalhousie University, Halifax. Class lecture.
Ross, Trevor. ENGL 3001: Plato and the Harms of Poetry: Part 1. 9 Sept. 2021, Dalhousie University, Halifax. Class lecture.