SOURCE: Ziolkowski, Jan. “Grammar in the World of Alan's Metaphors.” In Alan of Lille's Grammar of Sex: The Meaning of Grammar to A Twelfth-Century Intellectual, pp. 13-49. Cambridge, Mass.: Medieval Academy of America, 1985.

In the following essay, Ziolkowski discusses Alan's allegorical use of the rules of grammar and grammatical terminology to represent man's impropriety in nature, concepts, and actions.

1. the Dreamer's Grammatical Lament

In the brief metric section which opens Alan of Lille's De planctu Naturae and previews the action to come, the narrator laments the disobedience of humanity to natural law in general and to those directives governing sexual conduct in particular. The dreamer-poet, judging the practices of homosexual men to be especially odious, devotes the entire introductory poem to detailing the deleterious effects such practices have on humanity. In keeping with his allegorical conventions, Alan does not describe sodomy explicitly but allusively through words and phrases...