ALEYN2. Alanus de Insulis or Alain de Lille, a Cistercian, was professor at Paris and Montpellier. The traditional date of his birth, c. 1128, has been revised to 1116 or 1117. Alain died between April 14, 1202, and April 5, 1203. He was called Doctor Universalis because of his great learning. His two great works, De planctu Naturae and Anticlaudianus de Antirufino, were popular during the Middle Ages and influenced Jean de Meun and Chaucer. De planctu Naturae shows Boethian influence in its form, a mixture of prose and poetry, and in its conception of Dame Natura, who is modeled on Lady Philosophy. Alain's Natura is also kin to Natura in Bernard Silvester's Microcosmos. In Bernard's work Natura creates Man at Providence's command, assisted by Urania and Physis; Mercury creates hermaphrodites in his sphere of Cyllenius. Alain's Anticlaudianus de Antirufino, written about 1182, is a counterpart to Claudian's In Rufinum (A.D. 396). Alain describes his poem as a scientific one, an amalgam of the Seven Arts.
The lines from CYT 962-965 and HF I.272 are influenced by Parabolarum III.1. In contrast to Natura, who laments man's unfruitfulness in De planctu Naturae, Chaucer's Dame Nature presides over the birds' mating in The Parlement of Foules. She sits on a hill, exactly as Aleyn describes her, PF 316-318. Chaucer mentions the Anticlaudianus as if it were the name of the author, HF II.985-990; the flight of allegorical figures appears in Anticlaudianus IV.
Aleyn is mentioned once, in medial position, PF 316; the Anteclaudian, the English form for Latin Anticlaudianus, appears in HF II.986, in final rhyming position; the Pleynt of Kynde, the English translation of the Latin De planctu Naturae, appears in PF 316.