Alain de Lille (Alan of Lille or Alanus de Insulis; c. 1128 – 1202/1203) was a French theologian and poet. His works of interest here are De Planctu Naturae (The Complaint of Nature, The Plaint of Nature), and a short text with questions about nature, titled Questiones Alani.

De Planctu Naturae

This text focuses on "unnatural" sexual conduct among humans, particularly homosexuality. The text uses a mystical maiden to show how humanity has fallen from a perfect state into sin. In one long poetical passage at the beginning of the text Alain uses animals to illustrate some of his themes. The animals are seen as images displayed on the garments of the maiden, as though on a screen. The nature of the animals is described in terms familiar from the bestiaries. The animals are divided into birds, fish and marine creatures, and quadrupeds.

In the preface to his English translation of De Planctu Naturae, Douglas Maxwell Moffat says:

The connection of the De Planctu Nature with Chaucer's Parlement of Foules and with the Roman de la Rose, the increasing frequency of references to it in works of scholarship, and its inaccessibility save in its peculiar Latin, have furnished the reasons for this translation. The importance of Alain’s work lies wholly in what it prompted; by itself it would have long since been justly forgotten. The theologian whose great stores of recondite learning made him the ‘Doctor Universalis' of his day, the ‘Alain who was very sage,’ the ‘Doctor SS. Theologize Famosus,’ is now known chiefly because of two lines in the blithe and famous poet of early England. He is distinctly of that number to whom the interests of scholarship alone give any present life. Still, in the eye of scholarship his importance is not inconsiderable. Not only the great interest attending everything which has to do with Chaucer, with the sources from which he drew, and with the very hints which he throws out so lightly, but also the extensive influence which the De Planctu Nature exerted on Jean de Meun’s part of the Roman de la Rose, give him a position which all investigators in these fields of literature must recognize. The statement of Langlois that 'more than five thousand verses of the Roman de la Rose are translated, imitated, or inspired by the De Planctu Nature' is excellent authority that this mysterious scholar of the Middle Ages, whose very identity is unascertained, was of those who beget kings in literature, though he himself were none.

Questiones Alani

This text is found in one manuscript, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, lat. 18018 (folio 210v-227r), with the title Questiones Alani. Thorndike attributes this to Alain de Lille, though whether this attribution is correct is uncertain. Thorndike says (page 181):

In a manuscript of the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris between two standard works of medieval science, the Questiones naturales of Adelard of Bath, composed before 1133, and the somewhat earlier Liber lapidumm of Marbod, who died aged 88 in 1123, [is found] "Incipiunt questiones Alani." But this intervening text appears to be almost completely unknown. For its author the name of Alanus de Insulis (Alain de Lille) naturally suggests itself, although he lived considerably later than either Adelard or Marbod, from about 1128 to 1202. ... these Questiones have not been attributed to him.

In this text the author asks such questions as:

• Why is the unicorn captured by embracing a virgin?
• Why is the mule sterile?
• Why is there is only one phoenix?
• Why do birds not walk like other animals?
• How does the weasel heal itself after being bitten by a snake?
• How can the salamander live in fire?
• How do vultures detect a corpse from a great distance?
• Why does the bear sleep for two months in the winter?
• Why does the stork spend the winter under water with its beak stuck in the mud?
• Why is a diamond only broken by the blood of a he-goat?
• How is the basilisk generated from the egg of a cock?

Samples of Alain's work can be seen under the Texts tab above.