Adaptation, Autobiography, and Divine Passibility in *Patience*

Abstract

This article examines the use of autobiography and adaption to shape reader reception in the Middle English poem Patience. Eleanor Johnson has shown the importance of autobiography in the practice of Middle English authors seeking ethical transformation in their audiences. The exemplar for this approach, The Consolation of Philosophy, serves as a model for the didactic aims of Patience. The poem’s prologue features a suffering narrator who has resigned himself to “pacience” as an inescapable “poynt” (l. 1). He hears a sermon, however, on the Beatitudes that describes patience as a happy state of emotional control where one “con her hert stere” (l. 27). The narrator then compares his situation to Jonah, whose story he proceeds to tell. Through the comparison, the poet makes the story of Jonah more immediate for his audience. Similarly, the poem adapts the Vulgate’s depiction of God to make him a familiar and accessible character. God speaks about his relationship to Nineveh in the language of craft, pregnancy, and child-raising. Although the depiction is at odds with scholastic theology, the God of Patience is a passible figure who suffers the existence of evil and describes his emotions in bodily language. God’s practice of patience not only makes it a “nobel poynt” (l. 531), but one that is accessible to passible humans. Happiness, which in medieval ethics is achieved by aligning one’s perspective with universal truths and with God, is now possible in patience. The epilogue shows the narrator embracing patience, modeling ideal ethical transformation for the reader.