(b Lille, 1114–28; d Cîteaux, ? 12 July 1202 or 1203). French philosopher, theologian and poet. He was a scholar of such encyclopedic learning that he became known as Doctor universalis. He probably taught at the schools of Paris from about 1157 to 1170, at Montpellier from about 1171 to 1185, and then possibly again at Paris. He retired as a simple lay brother to Cîteaux, where he died.
Alain was particularly famed in his day for two of his Latin poems, De planctu naturae (1160–75) – a satire on human vices – and Anticlaudianus (1182–3), a long and elaborate moral allegory on the liberal arts which serves as the basis for his musical importance. In the Anticlaudianus the Seven Liberal Arts, daughters of Prudence, are introduced, and each discusses the particular art she represents. Music is the fifth sister, and Alain, following the philosophical emphasis of his time, has her expound the moral worth of music rather than its practical application. Boethius's threefold classification is combined with contemporary neo-Platonic thought: musica mundana controls the changes of the seasons and the times, conjoins the elements, and produces the motions and melodies of the heavenly bodies. Musica humana builds the members of the human body, unites the rational and irrational parts of the soul, and exercises control in blending soul and body. Musica instrumentalis is not divided in the Boethian manner (string, wind, percussion) but illustrates the combining of voices in harmony, gives sound its quality (enharmonic, diatonic, chromatic), and it makes clear the nature of consonance (diapason, diapente, diatesseron).
Exceptivam actionem, a lyric dialogue for each of the Seven Liberal Arts, has been attributed to Alain in three different sources and appears in a musical setting in the main Notre Dame manuscript I-Fl 29.1, f.444r(ed. in Anderson). It is set strophically, opening with a modest melisma and concluding with a short refrain; these features suggest a time of composition close to that of the Anticlaudianus. Alain's musical importance does not end with these works, for in about 1280 Adam de la Bassée wrote an important Ludus super Anticlaudianum with many musical interpolations.
See also Theory, theorists.
MGG1 (‘Alanus ab Insulis’, H. Hüschen)
PL, ccx
T. Wright: Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets and Epigrammists of the 12th Century, ii (London, 1872)
B. Hauréau: Mémoire sur la vie et quelques oeuvres d’Alain de Lille (Paris, 1885)
C. Bäumker: Handschriftliches zu den Werken des Alanus ab Insulis (Fulda, 1894)
F.J.E. Raby: A History of Christian-Latin Poetry from the Beginnings to the Close of the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1927, 2/1953), 297
P. Bayart: Ludus Adae de Basseia canonici insulensis super Anticlaudianum (Tourcoing, 1930)
M. Manitius: Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters, iii (Munich, 1931/R), 794
G. Raynaud de Lage: Alain de Lille: poète du XIIe siècle (Paris, 1951)
R. Bossuat: Alain de Lille: Anticlaudianus (Paris, 1955)
N.C. Carpenter: Music in the Medieval and Renaissance Universities (Norman, OK, 1958/R), 55, 97, 105
D.S. Chamberlain: ‘Anticlaudianus, III. 412–445, and Boethius' De musica’, Manuscripta, xiii (1969), 167–9
Andrew Hughes: ‘The Ludus super Anticlaudianum of Adam de la Bassée’, JAMS, xxiii (1970), 1–25
J.J. Sheridan: Anticlaudianus; or the Good and Perfect Man (Toronto, 1973)
C. Meier: ‘Zwei Modelle von Allegorie im 12. Jahrhundert: Das allegorische Verfahren Hildegards von Bingen und Alans von Lille’, Formen und Funktionen der Allegorie [Wolfenbüttel 1978], ed. W. Haug (Stuttgart, 1979), 70–89
G.A. Anderson, ed.: Notre Dame and Related Conductus, x (Henryville, PA, 1988), pp.xci, 96, 149–50
J. Ferster: ‘Language and Poetry in Alain de Lille's De planctu naturae’, Brandeis Essays in Literature, ed. J.H. Smith (1983), 1–21
W. Wetherbee: ‘Alan of Lille’, Dictionary of Middle Ages, ed. J. Strayer (New York, 1982–9)
GORDON A. ANDERSON/THOMAS B. PAYNE