Ebook: Alain de Lille, The Plaint of Nature, Translation and Commentary

The Plaint of Nature (De planctu Naturae) is, perhaps, the most influential work of Alan of Lille. References to it are to be found in later writers down to and including Chaucer. Natura, which fascinated so many writers in the Middle Ages, reaches full stat ure when she is given a moral dimension here in the work of Alan of Lille. The present work consists of an introduction, a translation, a bibliography and an index. The introduction contains a short life of Alan with abundant notes, and a list of his works with a short summary of the contents of each. This is followed by a discussion of the date of composition of the Plaint, its background, philosophical and literary, its contents and the various possible interpretations of the text. Further, in the translation itself, an attempt is made to provide a faithful rendering of Alan in readable English, and to this end some 600 explanatory notes have been added to support the rendering. The bibliography lists some 250 items and attempts to include all available literature bearing on the interpretation of the author.