DUKE 
 
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 LIBRARY 
 
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 3>ak e University .Press 
 
CHAUCER: A CRITICAL APPRECIATION 
 
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CHAUCER 
 
 A CRITICAL APPRECIATION 
 
 Pauli F. Baum 
 
 DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS - DURHAM, N. C. -1958 
 
(C) 1958, Duke University Press 
 
 The Library of Congress Catalogue Card for this title has been 
 reproduced on page 230 below, following the index. 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 by the Seeman Printery, Inc., Durham, N. C. 
 
2H. n 
 
 Q, "3L U.*! 
 
 THIS BOOK IS PUBLISHED WITH 
 THE ASSISTANCE OF A GRANT 
 FROM THE RESEARCH COUNCIL 
 OF DUKE UNIVERSITY AND A 
 GRANT TO THE DUKE UNIVERSITY 
 PRESS BY THE FORD FOUNDATION 
 
PREFACE 
 
 I F THE whole history of Chaucer studies is ever written, it will 
 show—along with a record of trial and error as the facts of his 
 biography and the essentials of background have been recovered 
 (so far as they are now recoverable)—a surprising phenomenon: 
 that seldom has there been anything but praise.' Other poets 
 abide our question; not Chaucer. It has come now to seem dis¬ 
 loyal to hint a fault in “our incomparable poet”: for if anything 
 in his poetry appeared irregular or unsatisfactory we have studi¬ 
 ously overlooked it or hurried to his defense with ingenious 
 contrivances of interpretation; if there was anything lacking we 
 have generously added it, imputing to him qualities to which he 
 made no claim and of which he never dreamed. Bagehot laid it 
 down a century ago “that the business of a critic is criticism; 
 that it is not his business to be thankful; that he must attempt 
 an estimate rather than a eulogy.” But the critical premise of our 
 professional Chaucerians seems to have been that Chaucer was 
 a great poet and should therefore be adorned with all the high 
 qualities of other great poets. Whatever he did was always right 
 and nothing will do short of proving him so. 
 
 Thus our criticism has taken two wrong turns. One is that 
 of gratuitous supplementation—which I have illustrated specially 
 in the elaborate variations on the Pardoner theme (Chapter n) 
 and in the Note on the Clerk (Chapter m). No doubt by leaving 
 some things uncertain Chaucer has given the critics an oppor¬ 
 tunity, and they have taken every advantage of it. The other 
 turn is that of elevation: the discovery of profound latent philo¬ 
 sophical or ethical meanings. This critical procedure is of course 
 
PREFACE 
 
 viii 
 
 not restricted to Chaucer. It is characteristic of much recent 
 literary criticism, traceable partly to the nineteenth-century diva¬ 
 gations on Shakespeare’s plays and supported by the wide sweep 
 of modern ‘criticism’ as it has enriched itself from the language 
 of psychology and from a return to mediaeval philosophy. [This 
 has led to a fashion of surrounding a work of art with a large 
 phosphorescent nimbus, something outside though seeming to 
 come from within, and producing an illusion of grandeur which 
 would certainly astonish the author. A comprehensive review 
 of the possibilities may be seen in Professor Fry’s Anatomy of 
 Criticism. Some of the encroachments of this fashion on Chau¬ 
 cer will be noted in the following pages. They have culmi¬ 
 nated (up to now) in a whole volume, by Dr. Jack A. W. 
 Bennett, devoted to the ‘Parlement of Foules.’ Its model might 
 have been Macrobius upon Cicero—that work over which the poet 
 fell asleep. 
 
 The ‘Parlement’ is a brilliant little comedy on the theme of 
 love-mating. It contains some of Chaucer’s loveliest poetry and 
 liveliest humor. But the scholars have labored over it as an 
 ‘occasional’ poem, trying to identify the noble suitors and hoping 
 to establish a date, and sometimes finding in the uproar of the 
 lesser birds an echo of the Peasants’ Revolt. They have consulted 
 astronomers about the planet Venus in an unusual position and 
 have added fanciful non-astronomical explanations. Dr. Bennett, 
 however, will have none of “this misdirection of energy.” Yet 
 there seems to be something not quite right in a poem so plainly 
 about love, a St. Valentine’s Day poem of just under seven hun¬ 
 dred lines which takes nearly three hundred lines to get started 
 and comes to its poynt only at line 372; something not quite 
 right in a poem which uses the august Scipio Africanus to intro¬ 
 duce the dreamer into the Garden of Love and the Temple of 
 Venus and which ends wistfully with the hope that some day he 
 will have a better dream than this one produced by reading 
 Cicero and Macrobius. Hence the need of interpretation, to 
 discover some unifying principle. Ten years ago Professor Lu- 
 miansky (not mentioned by Dr. Bennett) found one in “Chaucer’s 
 unsuccessful search for a way of reconciling true and false felicity” 
 
PREFACE 
 
 IX 
 
 or the service of love and orthodox Christianity. Miss Dorothy 
 Everett has taken much the same view. Now Dr. Bennett, with 
 an embarrassing wealth of annotation and far-flung allusion, in 
 which a great deal of the poem is lost sight of, has translated this 
 into the language of Professor Lovejoy: “the poem reflects the 
 great debate of the age between the philosophy of plenitude and 
 the philosophy of other-worldhness”; or, in simpler terms: “for all 
 the values that inhere in love, the world of lovers is not die whole 
 world; love is but a ‘function’ of Nature.” African had pointed 
 to the heavenly rewards of devotion to commune profit and the 
 punishment of brehers of the law and likerous folf: thus the 
 noble birds were without fruition and the commoners, the smale 
 joules, enjoy the delights of plenitude. This indulgence in the 
 intentional fallacy is in amusing contrast to what Chaucer knew 
 of his aristocratic audience. One would like to have his opinion 
 on it. 
 
 In social intercourse humor is a powerful weapon of defense; 
 but on the printed page facing a body of professors after five 
 centuries and more C haucer ’s humor has proved treacherous.!His 
 interpreters, whatever they may be at other times, are eminently 
 serious when they sit down Jo write an art icle. They forget or 
 seem to forget that he was above all a liumoris?. Perhaps they 
 recall his supposed deathbed retractions (a shambling list, as 
 Manly said) of those enditynges of worldly vanitees, the poems 
 which, with a few exceptions, we all read with the greatest pleas¬ 
 ure, and would rescue them from Chaucer’s condemnation (if it 
 was his) and move them over into the list of moralitee, and devo- 
 cioun. 
 
 The grounds for a proper criticism of Chaucer are, it seems to 
 me, fairly simple: recognition of his position as court poet, with 
 the limitations which that position implies; appreciation of his £ 
 technique as prosodist (still neglected) and as narrative poet, ' 
 with its ups and downs; and, negatively, avoidance of zealous ^ 
 effort to find in him aesthetic virtues which his kind of writing 
 does not require or warrant. V Such an approach is neither modern 
 nor mediaeval but rests upon criteria by which all poets are judged. 
 
 It admits the conventions of mediaeval rhetoric and of Courtly 
 
X 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Love as he adapted it to his special purposes; it omits deliberately 
 the mediaeval Four Levels of Meaning as inconsonant with his sub¬ 
 jects and his ways of treating them. It sees him as a comic poet, 
 whether by temperament or by the necessities of his milieu, and 
 probably by both, endowed with very great gifts, and since poetry 
 was his avocation, taking those gifts with a comfortable ease, 
 untroubled by the severities which plague the dedicated artist; in 
 two words, as \an amateur of genius busy man of the world and 
 very human who composed when it pleased him to do so poems 
 which he thought would give pleasure to others. Yet even 
 genius, the other side of the paradox, can be as fickle as Fortune, 
 and we must accept its lapses. “A healthy sagacious man of the 
 world,” as Bagehot calls him, “has gone through the world; he 
 loves it and knows it; he dwells on it with a fond appreciation.” 
 This is what delights us and earns our praise. Be glad, he would 
 say, 
 
 Be glad, thow redere, and thy sorwe of caste. 
 
 ^Chaucer’s art is pre-eminent in giving pleasure. He is com¬ 
 panionable, our fellowman, sharing our whims and weaknesses, 
 with no austere hatreds, no intense passions.J It is his merit to 
 be plain and earthy with our all-too-human earthiness, and we 
 enjoy him for it; we even like to tolerate him when he is dull. 
 Yet this is not to write him down as a mere entertainer. Comedy 
 is never without its serious undertones, and if we somedmes 
 deplore Chaucer’s habit of seeming to laugh out of season, that is 
 only to recognize a technical failure. Seriousness, in spite of 
 Arnold, is not a word frf"conjure with; it is no t a matter of 
 subject but of treatment, of careful attention to getdng the thing 
 said in the b est p ossible way. Has not Mr. T. S. Eliot told us that 
 Villon’s Testament is more serious than In Memoriam? In the 
 same sense the Miller’s Tale is more serious than the Knight’s 
 Tale, the Canon’s Yeoman’s than the Franklin’s. 
 
 At the same time, we cannot safely overlook his historical 
 position, which gave him little incentive to exceed his grasp, or 
 to forget the first audience for which he wrote, an audience 
 which, enveloped as he was in social and political confusions and 
 
PREFACE 
 
 xi 
 
 wishing mainly to be entertained, was easily satisfied with what 
 it cbutd“easily“understand and would not greatly care for political, 
 religious, or philosophical increments. He pleased them first with 
 escape poetry from France and then, as his experience grew, with 
 the comedy of low life, which also was remote from their per¬ 
 sonal concerns. His chosen models were Ovid and Boccaccio, 
 and when he read the greater poets, Vergil and Dante, he used 
 them for more stories and for fine phrases. All this is not to 
 forget a few friends who would relish the philosophical incre¬ 
 ments; but even they encouraged him to no aspiration towards 
 the highest levels of aesthetic experience which yield a sense of 
 reality beyond the reality of appearance, which not only illumi¬ 
 nate but enlarge the spirit. For Chaucer the word is illuminates. 
 He had, as Mr. Coghill says, “an acute and questioning intelli- 
 gence.” His observations of the world are clear and comprehen¬ 
 sive, especially its common frailties, rarely its tragic flaws. His 
 reporting of it is both brilliant and tolerant; but not hortative. 
 Swich is this world is his theme, and there he rested. 
 
 I know I have been accus’d as an enemy of his writings but without 
 any other reason than that I do not admire him blindly, and without 
 looking into his imperfections. For why should he only be exempted 
 from those frailties, from which Homer and Virgil are not free? ... I 
 admire and applaud him where I ought; those who do more do but 
 value themselves in their admiration of him. 
 
 Thus Dryden on Ben Jonson. But it is not dispraise to seem to 
 take away from Chaucer certain qualities which he never had. 
 The aura of uncritical praise—sincere and often disguised as 
 ingenious subtlety—can be rightly diminished without occulta- 
 tion or derogation from his genuine gifts as poet, story-teller, and 
 humorist. Some of the views here expressed may be open to the 
 charge of heresy; they may irritate and offend the upholders of 
 orthodoxy; but they may also (I hope) be servysable as well as 
 lowely. 
 
 P.F.B. 
 

CONTENTS 
 
 PREFACE vii 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 3 
 
 Note on Cecilia Chaumpaigne 41 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 CHAUCER AND THE SCHOLARS: THE PARDONER 44 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE CANTERBURY TALES 60 
 
 1. THE CANTERBURY FELLOWSHIP 60 x— 
 
 2. THE SURPRISE GROUP 74 
 j^THE-KNIGHT^TAfcE S4 
 4. REALISM AND TALES OF THE SUPERNATURAL 104 
 .— Note—em~-C hail c v r s Clcr^r - 7 t~Stu 3 ytn A m biguities A 3 6 
 Note on the History of the Clerk's Tale 140 _ 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE TROILUS EPILOGUE 143 
 
 Note on the Code 165 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 
 
 CONCLUSION 207 * 
 
 NOTES 214 
 
 INDEX 227 
 
CHAUCER: 
 
 CRITICAL APPRECIATION 
 
chapter i. OBSERVATIONS ON THE 
 LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 T HE following observations attempt to collect the glimpses 
 which our fragmentary and equivocal evidence yields 
 into the personality of Geoffrey Chaucer. Fragmentation 
 is necessarily the rule. There is first the record of his life as 
 civil servant, which gives the illusion of fulness yet leaves out the 
 important fact that he wrote poems. This section £i) on Chau¬ 
 cer’s ‘public’ life is followed by a section (ii) giving particular at¬ 
 tention to his last years, with a backward look at the chronology 
 of the poems arid tte reasons why he left the Canterbury Tales 
 unfinished. This leads to a section (iii) on Chaucer’s position as 
 a man close to the Court and the government and familiar, it 
 would seem, with many of the leading figures, yet strikingly 
 silent about the social and political events amid which he lived: 
 in a word, his aloofness, as seen in his poetry, both from the 
 political and the moral questions of his time. Discussion of this 
 requires consideration of the poetical work, but only as evidence 
 of character. In still other ways (section iv) Chaucer’s poetry 
 shows a kind of detachment from the world about him; for it 
 omits a great deal of his immediate surroundings and experiences 
 which might well have left their mark in his writing. Lastly, 
 before the summing up, there is a section (v) on Chaucer and 
 women, especially relevant because we know so little about his 
 married life, because of the Cecilia Chaumpaigne affair, and be¬ 
 cause of his constant pose as an outsider in love. (See the Note 
 on her at the end of the chapter.) Altogether, though we possess 
 so many ‘facts,’ the picture will not come clear. The external 
 facts and the internal evidence of his verse refuse to clarify, and 
 we are left with hypotheses and generalizations which satisfy no 
 one. 
 
 The outline of Chaucer’s life, however, is simple. 
 
4 
 
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 I 
 
 He was born in 1345 or 1346/ of John Chaucer, a prosperous 
 vintner, and his wife Agnes (a widow; her maiden name is un¬ 
 known), probably in London. At the age of eleven or twelve he 
 became a page to Elizabeth Countess of Ulster and wife of Ed¬ 
 ward Ill’s second son Lionel—doubtless a sign both of the boy’s 
 promise and the father’s influence. 2 Two years after this he was 
 with the English army in France and captured near Reims; for 
 (or towards) his ransom the king paid £i 6. 3 By 1366 he had mar¬ 
 ried Philippa Roet, a damoiselle of Edward’s Queen Philippa and 
 sister of Katherine Swynford, 4 who was successively the governess 
 of John of Gaunt’s children, John’s mistress and mother of the 
 later legitimated Beauforts, and John’s third wife. In 1367, when he 
 was twenty-one or twenty-two, he appears as groom in the King’s 
 household (valectus) and two years later as esquire. His educa¬ 
 tion meanwhile, including a knowledge of Latin and French, was 
 such as a young man would get in the King’s household. When 
 the Duchess of Lancaster died in September 1369 he composed a 
 considerable poem in the French manner celebrating her and also 
 her surviving husband. (That he wrote this poem at the Duke’s 
 request or command is at best “a fanciful surmise.”) In 1370 “he 
 entered upon a diplomatic career,” says Manly in rather grandiose 
 terms. He had already crossed the Channel with a traveling ac¬ 
 count of £\o\ and for the next eight years he went abroad on vari¬ 
 ous missions for the King, some of them secret or otherwise 
 unknown as to purpose, sometimes alone and sometimes with 
 more distinguished men, and on some occasions for several 
 month’s duradon. Certainly he was in Italy in 1372—in Genoa 
 for a trade treaty and in Florence. Then in 1374 he settled down, 
 for twelve years, as controller of the Customs on wool, hides, etc., 
 at an annual salary of £ 10, and later as controller also of the Petty 
 Customs on wines. Now his duties brought him into contact 
 with the commercial world, while his connections with the Court 
 also continued and included further missions abroad. In the 
 same year he took, rent free, the “whole mansion” of Aldgate, 
 with the apartments over it and the cellar underneath, provided 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 5 
 
 he keep them in repair—a short distance from the Customs 
 House. These are apparently the only years he and his wife kept 
 house together. During this period fall the appeal against him for 
 raptus in 1380, and in 1381 the great Peasant Uprising, his ap¬ 
 pointment as J.P. for Kent, and his election to Parliament in 
 1386. After this he seems to have retired to Kent (though he 
 held some minor offices) during or because of the rise of Glouces- 
 ■ ter and the decline of the Lancastrian party. His wife died 
 probably in 1387. But when Richard came of age and assumed 
 royal power, in 1389-1391, Chaucer was made! Clerk of the Works 
 at Windsor and other royal palaces. He was the victim of robbery 
 three times in 1390.' In 1390 also he was appointed deputy or 
 subforester of North Petherton. Already in 1396 there are signs 
 of favor from the Earl of Derby, soon to become Henry IV. On 
 Christmas eve 1399 he took a long lease on a house in the garden 
 of St. Mary’s Chapel, Westminster. In June 1400 he drew his 
 last recorded payment, and—according to his tomb in the Abbey 
 (erected in 1556)—died 25 October. He was then fifty-four or 
 fifty-five years of age. 
 
 The enigmas remain; for while we seem to know so much it 
 turns out that we really know so little. Even the documented 
 facts of his life as lay civil servant leave out the biographical es¬ 
 sentials and because they are all we have they are often over¬ 
 worked. That he was in early life—till the age of say thirty—a 
 valued esquire of the King’s household is certain, as is testified by 
 the number, though hardly the importance, of his missions abroad. 
 That he stood well in the favor of both kings is also certain, since 
 for a large part of his life he performed valuable services for the 
 crown—“noster dilectus valectus,” “quamplura ardua et vrgentia 
 negocia nostra.” But this too can be exaggerated, for the language 
 of the documents is formalized. Very many Englishmen, greater 
 and lesser, traveled on the Continent, and when Chaucer’s jour¬ 
 neys are lifted from the larger background they tend to look more 
 significant than they actually were. For twelve years, from the 
 age say of thirty to forty-two, he was employed as controller of 
 the important Customs on wool etc. and at the same time was 
 
6 
 
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 in business contact with the city magnates. He must have had 
 also many personal friends in and around Court; for like his 
 alter ego at the Tabard Inn he no doubt made friends easily. 
 One imagines him to have been ‘good company.’ During these 
 years the rewards in money for his various services were not mu¬ 
 nificent compared with those of other civil servants. Even the 
 perquisites of clothing, an occasional wardship, his daily pitcher of 
 wine, the payment (whether he sat or not) for sixty-one days in 
 the Parliament of 1386, and a few other special gratuides, do not 
 add up to an impressive amount; they mark him as a faithful 
 and competent but not extraordinarily prominent civil servant. \ 
 If he had not been also a poet he would have been lost to pos¬ 
 terity along with the hundreds of others whose names repose in 
 the public records. 
 
 Thus the facts are more teasing than satisfying. We should 1 
 like to know—and the conflicting inferences of the specialists are 
 proof that we do not know—just what were his personal relations 
 with and his attitudes towards Edward III and Edward’s notori¬ 
 ous mistress; and with John of Gaunt and his political “gang”; 
 whether their patronage had anything to do with his poetry; to 
 whose influence the free lease of Aldgate was due; why Lancaster , 
 showed so many favors to his wife Philippa and only once (so far , 
 as the records go) rewarded Chaucer; why he lost or resigned the 
 controllership and the clerkship; what he thought and where he 
 stood through the last years of Edward’s reign and throughout 
 the misrule of Richard, amid the conflicts of political factions and 
 Court intrigues; why he was made J.P. for Kent and whether he 
 actually voted in the Parliament; and so on and so forth; what, 
 in sum, his private life was like. Thesis and hypothesis, con¬ 
 jecture and fanciful surmise, we have in plenty; of certainty very 
 little. To be sure, one may exaggerate downwards as well as 
 upwards, but the tendency towards confident assertion is always 
 a cautionary warning. The clearer things look, the more secure 
 one feels, the more one should be suspicious of error. 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 7 
 
 II 
 
 So far as our records go, the last years are particularly obscure. 
 
 In May 1389 Richard, then in his twenty-third year, assumed 
 full royal power and in July Chaucer received his appointment as 
 Clerk of the Works at the King’s castles and palaces. From then 
 until June 1391, when he resigned the office, he was certainly a 
 busy man; and during that time he was thrice robbed of con¬ 
 siderable sums (and at least once beaten up) and involved with 
 the trials of the robbers. Moreover, the settling of his accounts— 
 which were apparently in some confusion and at one point he 
 was told to cease meddling—took a year. There could thus be 
 two good reasons for resigning. But the confusion was as likely 
 as not due to an inherited system of bookkeeping. 
 
 This was Chaucer’s last office as civil servant. In the same 
 year, however, he was appointed by Roger Mortimer VI (who as 
 grandson of Prince Lionel would have been next in succession 
 after Richard) as deputy forester of the royal forest of North 
 Petherton. Roger died in 1398 and the appointment was renewed 
 by his Countess. But just what his duties were and how much 
 of the time he spent in Somerset is not known. 
 
 In 1394 Costanza, Queen Anne, and the Countess of Derby 
 died; Chaucer’s muse gave no sign. But he received a new an¬ 
 nuity of ^20 from Richard and in the following year a gift of 
 £10 from the Earl of Derby, who four years later seized the 
 throne. In 1396 he seems to have been living at Greenwich. In 
 1398 he seems (as Manly puts it) “to have been in a very peculiar 
 position”: he was sued by two persons for more than ^25, and 
 was granted royal protection for two years on account of “quam- 
 plura ardua et vrgencia negocia nostra ... in diuersis partibus infra 
 regum nostrum.” On 13 October he petitioned successfully to the 
 King for a butt of wine annually. Less than a year later Richard 
 was no longer on the throne and exactly a year later, on the day 
 of his coronation, the new King granted Chaucer an annuity of 
 40 marks in addition to the ^20 from Richard in 1394. Mean¬ 
 while he had “casualiter” lost the patents for Richard’s £20 and 
 the butt of wine; Henry renewed them. On Christmas eve he 
 
8 OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 took out the lease for a house in the garden of St. Mary’s, West¬ 
 minster. 
 
 What these few facts signify is hard to determine. A little 
 more can be gleaned from his verse. The triple balade ‘De 
 Visage sanz Peinture’ petitions the “Princes” to releve him of his 
 peyne and the King to bring him to som heter estat. This is 
 supposed to refer to the robberies of 1390; and in fact he was 
 discharged 6 January 1391 of repayment of £20 taken from him 
 “felonousement pres de le fowle Ok.” The punning ‘Complaint 
 to his Purse’— 
 
 Beth hevy ageyn, or elles moote 1 dye — 
 
 would fit almost any of these last years when, though he may not 
 have been in straits, he was obliged to borrow money frequently. 
 The Envoy however, is a salutation to the new King (whom 
 history regards as usurper): 
 
 O conquerour of Brutes Albyon .... 
 
 But Chaucer adds duly and truly 
 
 Which that by lyne and free eleccion 
 
 Been verray kyng, this song to yow 1 sende, 
 
 perhaps meaning ‘I refurbish my old Complaint with this new 
 Envoy,’ 5 
 
 And ye, that mowen alle oure harmes amende, 
 i.e., all the tragedy of Richard’s last years as well as Chaucer’s, 
 Have mynde upon my supplicacioun, 
 
 which, since Henry was so prompt in granting his annuity and in 
 confirming Richard’s, may refer only and quite pleasantly to his 
 ‘casual’ loss of those patents. 
 
 In two of die so-called minor poems we are permitted as 
 nowhere else to see Geoffrey Chaucer plain and hear his voice. 
 In 1396, one of the blank years otherwise, he rallied his friend 
 Bukton—and whether it was Peter or Robert is no matter—on 
 his approaching remarriage. The sentiments are conventional and 
 are jocularly set forth with considerable solemnity. He began 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 9 
 
 with the question put to Jesus ‘What is truth?’ and inferred from 
 our Lord’s silence that No man is al trewe. ‘And therefore,’ he 
 continues, with remarkable logic, ‘though I promise to tell you 
 about the wo that is in manage (the very words of the Wife of 
 Bath’s text) I must not speak ill of it for fear I should myself 
 falle eft in swich dotage. If Satan were once freed of his chains 
 he would never be bound again! Of course, it is better to marry 
 than to burn, but you will be her slave. I warn you, I beg you to 
 read The Wife of Bath. I pray God you will remain free.’ So, 
 marriage is a bondage, a trap, a dotage; beware. Bukton was 
 probably no older than Chaucer, who was fifty and whose wife 
 had been dead nine years, but probably he had his eye on a young 
 girl. For besides the specific reference to the Wife par excellence, 
 there seems to be an echo in 
 
 Ne no man him bewayle, though he wepe 
 of the Merchant’s bitter cry, 
 
 Wepyng and waylyng, care and oother sorwe, 
 
 as he settled into the shocking story of January and May. Was 
 Master Bukton persuaded? 
 
 This was simple chaff. The poem to Scogan is more lively and 
 more revealing, and has more comic weeping and wailing. The 
 date is set by this diluge of pestilence, which may refer to the 
 heavy rains in the autumn of 1393 or to the wet summer of 1391. 
 The heavenly statutes have been broken, all seven planetary gods, 
 Venus especially, are flooding us with their tears, and I am fright¬ 
 ened. And it is all your fault, for did you not say blasphemously 
 that because your lady showed no mercy you gave her up at 
 Michaelmas ? And you took Cupid to witness of that rebel word. 
 Moreover, Scogan, Cupid will not take vengeance 
 
 On the, ne me, ne noon of oure figure; 
 
 We shul of him have neyther hurt ne cure, 
 
 we who are hoor and rounde of shap. But what really frightens 
 me is that henceforth none of us gray-haired portly fellows will 
 
10 
 
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 ever find success with the ladies. Let the old Grisel joke and 
 rime, you say; but.. . ( and here is the point)— 
 
 Nay, Scogan, say not so, for 1 m excuse — 
 God helpe me so!—in no rym, dowteles, 
 
 Ne thynke I never of slep to wake my muse, 
 That rusteth in my shethe stille in pees. 
 While I was yong, l put hir forth in prees; 
 But al shal passe that men prose or ryme; 
 Ta\e every man hys turn, as for his tyme. 
 
 It is not an affidavit, but it says plainly enough that, still near' 
 fifty, he has abandoned poetry; his Muse—and what a metaphor! 
 —rusts peacefully in his sheath. Poetry is for the young. The 
 Envoy sounds more emphatically the note of discouragement. 
 Scogan is at Windsor where all good things are; Chaucer is at 
 Greenwich, a wilderness, alone, forgotten. 
 
 Mynne thy frend, ther it may fructyfye! 
 
 There may be some private joke in this, some temporary setback. 
 But it does not sound so. The playful exaggeration about Sco- 
 gan’s blasphemies against Love, running through four stanzas, is 
 only the excuse; it leads to a humorously sad admission of age and 
 unshapeliness, with no more love, and then to the confession that 
 he will write no more. One would not take this too seriously if 
 it did not explain so much. 
 
 The chronology is still as vexed as the Bermoothes. The 
 ‘Book of the Duchess’ and the ‘Astrolabe’ are fairly certain, 1369- 
 1370 and 1391 or 1392. What came before the ‘Book of the Duch¬ 
 ess’ ? It may be “comparatively crude” but it is hardly the work of 
 a beginner. And what came after 1391 or 1393? The Troilus is 
 now generally put in 1385, but the arguments are not conclusive. 
 The rest is a tissue of conjectures caught here and there with 
 efforts to find and certify allusions to contemporary events, e.g., 
 the marriage of Richard, or of one of John of Gaunt’s daughters, 
 or the death of Anne. Much of the discussion is necessarily com¬ 
 parative: this before or after that. 
 
 Chaucer’s most settled years were 1374 to 1386, while he was 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 11 
 
 living at Aldgate, broken only by the trips abroad; then after 
 leaving the Customs he was perhaps not too busy; and then 
 again in 1389-1391 he was heavily occupied with the business of 
 Clerk of the Works. The writing of the General Prologue “is 
 generally put in or about 1387 . . . and the Prologue was presum¬ 
 ably written before the main body of the tales” (Robinson, p. 
 751). Some of the tales were already at hand and required only 
 the links and a little touching up. These might be the Man of 
 Law’s Tale, the Clerk’s Tale, the Physician’s Tale, the Monk’s 
 Tale (except the modern instances), the Second Nun’s Tale, the 
 Manciple’s Tale, and probably the Knight’s Tale—leaving some 
 10,000 lines (besides the Melibeus and the Parson’s Tale, which 
 are translations) of the Canterbury Tales for the years from 1378 
 onwards. Now, Tatlock put the Melibeus and the Merchant’s 
 Tale in 1393-1394, and Lowes the Marriage Group (a little over 
 5000 lines without the Clerk’s Tale) in 1393-1396; and apart from 
 these no one has proposed any writing after 1396, save of course 
 the Envoy to his Purse. Hotson’s attempt to associate the Nun’s 
 Priest’s Tale with the duel of Hereford and Norfolk in 1398 has 
 found no favor. Skeat’s “after 1389 the tales continued” and 
 Robinson’s 1393-1400 for the later Tales, including the Marriage 
 Group, are obvious makeshifts. 
 
 For a rapid writer such as we take Chaucer to have been, 
 there is nothing in these figures inconsistent with the assumption 
 that in 1387-1389 and 1391-1393 (‘Scogan’) he could have brought 
 the Canterbury Tales to such a state of incompletion as we 
 now have it. He must always have composed when the spirit 
 moved, and when it moved it moved swiftly. Very roughly speak¬ 
 ing, 10,000 lines in four years is not too much. William Morris, 
 who honored him and who as poet resembled him in many ways, 
 once wrote seven hundred lines in a single day. 
 
 It makes very little difference, 1393 or 1396, seven years or four 
 years of time in which to push on with, if not finish, the Canter¬ 
 bury Tales; and though the question is no doubt idle, it has to 
 be asked: Why? For it tells something about the man which can 
 throw a backward light. One thinks of 1612-1616 when the sue- 
 
12 
 
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 cessful playwright, having turned out nearly thirty plays in 
 twenty years, retired to Stratford. He had done enough. When 
 the aging Swinburne was asked why he no longer wrote with 
 the fire and force of Atalanta and Poems and Ballads, he answered 
 simply that the impulse had ceased. It is easy to see why the 
 ‘Legend of Good Women’ was left unfinished, apart from the 
 relief at the Queen’s death; or why the Monk’s little tragedies 
 never reached the hundred mark, if that was anything but a joke; 
 or why the ‘Hous of Fame’ stopped just short of its climax, if it 
 did; but why the Canterbury Tales was abandoned with only 
 twenty out of the originally stipulated hundred and twenty— 
 diis remains a matter for thought. Somewhere along the way the 
 plan of two tales from each Pilgrim was reduced to one; at I 25 
 the Host said to the Parson: 
 
 For every man, save thou, hath toold his tale; 
 
 and there is nowhere a real hint of tales for the return to South¬ 
 wark, though clairvoyant scholars have thought they saw such 
 hints. It would be flippant to suggest that the solemn Parson, 
 no longer the kindly sympathetic figure of the General Prologue, 
 had blanketed the whole enterprise with his composite tract. The 
 sun was setting; 
 
 But hasteth yow, the sonne wole adoun; 
 
 and more than one good Chaucerian—Miss Hammond and Pro¬ 
 fessor Lawrence, for example—have held that the fructuous 
 
 Moralitee and vertuous matere 
 
 was all along in Chaucer’s mind for a pious ending. Underneath 
 his jesting gaiety our poet had his earnest substratum. It may be. 
 Yet when the disjecta membra are laid out the certain points are 
 too few for plotting a curve. It is true that the list of Pilgrims 
 and the tales themselves begin with the Knight; and the list, as 
 well as the tales, ended at first with the Parson (and his silent 
 brother)—before Chaucer thought of adding five varied scoun¬ 
 drels to be provided for. But the whole scheme was never finally 
 fixed; that also is true. 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 13 
 
 IPerhaps Chaucer came to recognize that the whole scheme was 
 too ambitious. At the start it looked simple, as it grew it became 
 more and more complex. To get on with it there would be not 
 only wholly new tales to write, but no little readjustment of parts, 
 more suitable stories for the Man of Law, the Shipman, and the 
 Manciple, further development of the quarrels, loose threads to 
 pick up, and more . . . more than he and his rusty Muse cared to 
 undertake. 
 
 On the other hand, many improvements would readily occur 
 to him, without attempting extensive or conclusive additions. 
 These also were neglected. The question repeats itself, and the 
 answers are but too obvious. There are no signs in the evidence 
 of a long incapacitating illness. , A failure of the spirit, then, 
 rather than of the flesh is indicated. \ What we now call psychic 
 disturbances should not be overlooked. The whole life of London 
 had changed; the old Court for whom he had written in the 
 eighties and early nineties had dissolved in confusion and tyran¬ 
 ny; he no longer seemed a part of these disturbed affairs, nor 
 cared to be. He had not so much lost favor as lost interest, zest, 
 and zeal. Greenwich was not so much a solitary wilderness at 
 the stream’s end in reality as in his sensitive imagination. He was 
 not forgotten, not at all, but what he remembered was more than 
 what he anticipated with pleasure. His audience was gone. He 
 had grown old and the world was no longer with him. He was 
 ready to flee fro the prees; to say 
 
 That l have had my world as in my tyme. 
 
 But age, alias! that al wole envenyme, 
 
 Hath me biraft my beautee and my pith. 
 
 Lat go, farewell! the devel go therwith. 
 
 The flour is goon, ther is namoore to telle. 
 
 No more Canterbury Tales. Let the muse rust: if gold ruste, 
 what shal iren do? 
 
 hi 
 
 It has long been an open question why Chaucer’s poetry shows 
 so little of the political life with which he seems from the Life 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 14 
 
 Records to have been so closely associated. He was in no sense 
 what later generations called an ‘interpreter of his age.’ But 
 there is not a single patriotic line in all his verse, as Legouis 
 observed: “il n’a pas un vers de patriotisme, et c’est chose sur- 
 prenante dans un temps ou ce sentiment s’eveillait avec force dans 
 Fame anglaise, tour a tour exalte par les victoires et approfondi 
 par les malheurs.” 6 This has troubled many of his staunch admir¬ 
 ers and gained him from some the name of Laodicean. He was a 
 sharp observer and recorder of human weaknesses, and few of the 
 characters he portrayed are wholly admirable, but he was discreet¬ 
 ly silent about Court and political scandals which he must have 
 known all too well. The contrast is striking and the reasons for 
 it call for explanation, perhaps justification. 
 
 There is to be sure one simple explanation. A very large pro¬ 
 portion of his poetry is conventional and derivative. He took his 
 subjects and his models where he found them: Ovid, the popular 
 French poets, Boccaccio, the fabliaux, and so on. A great deal 
 is translation or adaptation. Some of the Canterbury Tales —the 
 fabliaux and Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale notably—deal with the life 
 of the common people, and of course the General Prologue and 
 the links. For the rest, any opportunity for direct criticism of 
 high life would have to be incidental or allusive. 
 
 By temperament he was not a reformer; his whole credo is in 
 the Boethian ‘Balade de Bon Conseyl’: Flee fro the prees, avoid 
 envye and hir that turneth as a bal. What he asked was trouthe 
 (of which he saw so little round about him) and humble resigna¬ 
 tion— 
 
 That thee is sent, receyve in buxumnesse. 
 
 It will not appeal to some as a lofty ideal, but it is honest—along 
 with its slightly ironic smile in the refrain and the punning envoy 
 —and is lifted above ground-level by its sincere though formal 
 prayer 
 
 Crye him mercy, that of his hy goodnesse 
 
 Made thee of noght. 
 
 Perhaps the Host’s adjective elvyssh, in spite of its humorous 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 15 
 
 application to the elderly stout man, in spite also of that man’s 
 fluency and felicity of speech when occasion demanded, is truer 
 to the real Chaucer than we generally suppose. 
 
 This charge of Laodicean has been met and partially answered 
 by Professor Loomis, 7 first with “an array of testimony from some 
 of the best critical minds united in the belief that Geoffrey Chau¬ 
 cer looked upon the stormy spectacle of English life with a smil¬ 
 ing tolerance, was merely amused by abuses in church and state, 
 was inclined to believe that this was the best of all possible 
 worlds”; and then with some special pleading of his own for the 
 defense. Those best critical minds include Lounsbury, Coulton, 
 Root, Christopher Dawson, J. E. Wells, and Aldous Huxley; there 
 are probably others who have not gone on record. They might 
 not quite accept the terms of Professor Loomis’ review but the 
 idea remains: Chaucer was too aloof and took the miseries of 
 mankind, the threats of outrageous fortune, and particularly “the 
 great issues of his day,” with too little seriousness. He never 
 spoke out. And it is true: a good half-truth. But the other half 
 need be neither apology nor extenuation, still less a plea of self- 
 defense. The question “May not Chaucer have reasoned that, 
 when there was so much wrong on both sides, there was no obli¬ 
 gation to offer his career as a vain sacrifice to the cause of the 
 oppressed?” 8 is a petitio with its own Laodicean stain. The an¬ 
 swer is neither personal cowardice nor moral indifference. The 
 answer is Chaucer’s business as a writer of poetry. 
 
 There are in fact numerous incidental allusions to contempo¬ 
 rary affairs which collected would make a fair show; but since 
 they are nearly all incidental they are not impressive. 9 It is easy 
 to make too much of them. In context they do very well for a 
 quick point—a smile, a nudge, a silent ‘I get it’; hardly more. 
 
 A passage in the Prologue to the ‘Legende’ (F 373 ff.; G 353 
 ff.) has frequently been taken as “a serious lecture on the duties 
 of a king addressed to Richard II by Anne in the person of Al- 
 ceste” (Robinson, p. 958). Whether Chaucer so intended it or 
 not, the advice is there, quite explicit and firm, and it is paralleled 
 by the address to Richard in the balade of ‘Stedfastnesse.’ The 
 
j6 OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 historical background of this advice has been fully set forth by 
 Miss Schlauch as illustrating Chaucer’s probable knowledge of 
 theory and his interest in such a matter. 10 In the context Alceste 
 is defending Chaucer from Love’s charges against his followers; 
 she urges that a ryghtwis lord should not be like the cruel tyrants 
 of Lombardy—one of whom appears in the Monk’s Tale—but 
 must regard his liegemen, poor and rich, as part of his treasure 
 and treat them with justice— 
 
 For, syr, yt is no maistrye for a lord 
 To dampne a man without answere of a word ,... 
 
 and thus she brings her exhortation, which might else appear 
 irrelevant, around to her main point. Chaucer must not be con¬ 
 demned unheard. The later G version adds a generalizing note 
 which is a little less appropriate to Chaucer’s situation and more 
 appropriate to that of Richard: a king must remember that it is 
 his duty to listen kindly to the complaints and petitions of his sub¬ 
 jects. The G text was written after the Queen’s death, when 
 Richard’s neuroses began to get the better of his judgment. 
 
 Another queen, in the Knight’s Tale (A 1748 ff.), intercedes 
 for the young knights in distress and urges her husband to show 
 pity even at the expense of justice, and Theseus, with more good 
 nature than the God of Love, says to himself: 
 
 Fy 
 
 Upon a lord that wol have no mercy, 
 
 But ben a leon both in word and deede, 
 
 To hem that been in repentaunce and drede. 
 
 These incidents have been thought to reflect Anne’s softening 
 influence on Richard’s “unstaid youth,” though the dates are 
 not quite right. In a different, and less worthy, cause King 
 Arthur’s queen intercedes for the rapist knight. 
 
 The elaborate double-stopping of the ‘Compleynt of Mars,’ if 
 there is a deadly parallel, is quite exceptional. The Envoy to 
 ‘Stedfastnesse’ is the one significant exception. The underlying 
 moral, along with a plethora of minor ones, of the Melibeus, its 
 warning against the evils of war and revenge, is much the same 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 17 
 
 on a vastly larger scale; but it is difficult to believe that Chaucer 
 translated Le Livre de Melibee et de Dame Prudence and thrust 
 it into the Canterbury Tales for ‘himself,’ just after Sir Thopas, 
 in order to discountenance the Hundred Years’ War, which was 
 already lost. 
 
 Hence Chaucer’s omission of commentary, to say nothing of 
 satire, on the political scene is wholly understandable; nor should 
 it be surprising. A mere glance at the troubled history of Ed¬ 
 ward’s later reign and all of Richard’s is enough to show that for 
 a poet whose business it was to entertain the Court—in which he 
 had grown up and to whose patronage he owed his position and 
 his livelihood—any severe condemnation of public affairs would 
 betray a lack of both gratitude and common sense. He was not 
 by nature a Juvenal, and by ‘predicament’ he was excluded from 
 the role of satirist. He was not by temperament a reformer, and 
 by artistic endowment he was specially fitted for his chosen role 
 of entertainer. Nevertheless, certain limitations are implied, 
 which, if we presume to judge, must be recognized. 
 
 The charge of Laodicean should be directed not against his 
 failure to condemn the public evils of his time, but where it be¬ 
 longs, against his moral attitude, his failure to represent the obli¬ 
 quity of human nature, the wickedness of mankind, with proper 
 indignation and reproof. He constantly exposes, but seldom de¬ 
 plores. He preferred delectare to prodesse. And here too the 
 answer, if we must answer for him, is much the same. 
 
 Charges of this lack of a serious attitude to life, or any sort of 
 idealism or comprehensive view which would draw his fragments 
 together have not been wanting; many of them are included in 
 Professor Loomis’ review. They may be readily elaborated, and 
 exaggerated. Where does he look into the mysterious deeps of 
 human character or where scale the heights of human aspiration P 
 Where does he reveal any profound spiritual insight or concern 
 with “the way of the soul” ? It must be said of him as was said of 
 a lesser poet: his “soul was not lit by sulphur, he did not, like 
 Melville, measure himself against fate or walk on the sea-bottom, 
 ‘left bare by faith’s receding wave’, or wrestle with God, or hang, 
 
^ OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 as Hopkins hung, on the dreadful cliffs of the mind.” He did not 
 “interrogate the universe.” He never dreamed of Byzantium like 
 Yeats or felt the burden of the mystery like Wordsworth. His 
 language, brilliant and felicitous as it so often is, was never trou¬ 
 bled by the incommunicable, never reaching for the unknown. 
 He might never have heard of the Grail; he does not mention 
 Percival, and his allusions to Arthur and Lancelot and Gawain 
 are casual, without the high sense of glory or failure which is 
 felt in the contemporary romances. He seems not to have known 
 the tragedy of Tristram and Iseult. 
 
 There are writers, of poetry and prose, who touch us with the 
 poignancy of the human lot. Chaucer is rarely among them. 
 There are writers who by a word, a phrase, tutto tremente, break 
 our hearts with the sudden revelation of our inadequacy, our 
 futility, our tragedy, and also of our nobility (which haunts us 
 though we fail), and of all the undulating beauty of mind and 
 spirit. Chaucer is rarely, if ever among them. He neither raises 
 nor answers the great troublesome questions. 
 
 This is so and must be set down, not in denigration but in fair¬ 
 ness, not to take away what he never had or claimed to have, but 
 to clear him of false praise. It is the obverse of his air of detach¬ 
 ment, his habit of aloof observation, his way of recording without 
 judging. It places him in the literary firmament and it is proba¬ 
 bly an index of his character. It is true, but it is not all. When 
 we say that he seems not to feel strongly about sin and vice, the 
 emphasis may well be on seems. He could in defense quote 
 Nolite iudicare, ut non iudicemini or Et dimitte nobis peccata 
 nostra, siquidem et ipsi dimittimus omni debenti nobis. He was 
 of a charitable nature and felt that it is more blessed to forgive 
 than to accuse. More than once he told us that 
 
 Pite renneth soone in gentil herte, 
 
 and he set the gentle heart above the inquisitorial temper. “In¬ 
 dignation,” said Coleridge, “is the handsome brother of Anger 
 and Hatred”; and thus Chaucer avoided one of the Deadly Sins. 
 
 If he had no roots very deep in a philosophical faith which he 
 had won for himself, he had no branches exposed to false doc- 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 19 
 
 trine. If charity alone is no sufficient guide-line through the devi¬ 
 ous intricacies of life, it is at least a safeguard against the pitfalls 
 of cynicism and hate. He had in abundance a natural buoyancy, 
 which he communicates. He had a clear mind, which neither 
 soared nor sank, a vivacity which carried him, and his poetry, over 
 rough places. If we miss the depths, and the heights, we can 
 enjoy with him the long fair level places. He could suffice unto 
 his good and show us some of the way. He would have been at 
 ease with Horace; he might have enjoyed Montaigne, though he 
 lacked Montaigne’s power of reflection and of looking over and 
 under; for he was content without decisions. He betrayed most 
 clearly his limitation by what he missed in Dante. Having both 
 Dante and Boccaccio, he chose Boccaccio. His muse was the 
 Comic Spirit; but not Meredith’s Comic Spirit, which was some¬ 
 thing of a termagant. 
 
 ~ On the other hand, he had no gift for tragedy, as the ardstic 
 failure of his most ambitious poem reveals. And this argues a 
 want of depth in his character as in his poetry. His religion is 
 sincere but conventional; when things went wrong in his stories 
 he put the blame on Fickle Fortune not on moral weakness or 
 deficiencies of character. Several times he airs the problem of 
 fate and free will, but either lightly, as in the Nun’s Priest’s Tale, 
 or straight out of Boethius, as in the Troilus, for artistic purposes. 
 He lets Dorigen stir a novel difficulty, the cruelty of nature in the 
 designs of a beneficent creator, and dismisses it with a feeble 
 ‘Let the theologians face it.’ He always praised gentilesse, with or 
 without a direct ‘source,’ yet all his moralizing is borrowed. 
 
 Thus it is the evasions when seriousness is expected which still 
 trouble us. The Wife’s Tale lies in fairyland and a rational solu¬ 
 tion to the peccant knight’s situation would be out of place. But 
 the Franklin’s, though it be a Breton lay, presents a real moral 
 problem along with a deliberate attempt to humanize what was 
 originally an apologue, and Chaucer fobs us off with the dubious, 
 in the circumstances, epigram of Arveragus, Trouthe is the high¬ 
 est thyng that man may \epe, and then leaves us with the imperti¬ 
 nent question, Which was the moste fre? He ruins, either 
 
vj 
 
 20 
 
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 through carelessness or indifference, the tragic story of Virginia; 
 with Dante before him he alters almost beyond recognition the 
 story of Ugolino; he is inclined to laugh at the seductions of Jason 
 and Theseus in his glorious legende; he turns aside the adultery 
 o f May in the Merchant’s Tale with a comic trick; and chiefly, he 
 allows his litel tragedie of Troilus and Criseyde to dwindle into 
 pathos and then leaves us with a brusque apology for the hitherto 
 moving tale of passion and loss. v These are artistic failures, but 
 they rest on that lack of high seriousness which Arnold has been 
 -ridiculed for recognizing. 
 
 There are, however, poems which have no part in this world, 
 such as it is, poems which have only the merest touches of reality, 
 hardly enough to warrant our suspension of disbelief, poems 
 which describe the imaginary land in which he grew up poeti¬ 
 cally. This was the dream world of Guillaume de Loris’ rose 
 garden, which he never quite forsook, where only echoes of quo¬ 
 tidian actuality penetrated, a world without real cruelty and bitter¬ 
 ness and heartbreak; and the faraway world of Ovid’s lovers. 
 This gave his early poems an extra dimension, left the illusion of 
 life still an illusion which called for no depth of thought or feel¬ 
 ing. And it is remarkable how much this world was still with 
 him through his later verse, partly as artistic convention, partly 
 also as a natural convenience. The stylized formalities of Courtly 
 Love, which you neither believed nor disbelieved, and the French 
 borrowings, the exercises in Boethian paraphrase, the compleynts 
 (when not burlesque) are purposefully unreal; the gaiety of the 
 ‘Hous of Fame’ and elaboration of the Prologue of the ‘Legende,’ 
 as well as its remote classical heroines, make no pretense of 
 resembling such a world as ours. The Birds, half human as they 
 are, are isolated by the beauty of their dream setting. 
 
 All this, be it understood, is not apology for Chaucer’s Laodi¬ 
 cean laxness. It is critical perspective. His worst characters, as 
 well as those who belong in the land of dream, exist only on 
 Chaucer’s page. He made them and therefore he likes them, but 
 it does not follow that he would like them in the flesh. That he 
 seems to approve because he does not condemn is due to our faulty 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 21 
 
 attitude. It is praise enough that we are sometimes betrayed into 
 mistaking the image for the flesh, that we are confused by the 
 poet’s transmuting alchemy. Those repulsive characters “cease to 
 be repulsive; they are, to use a transcendental metaphor, uplifted 
 into the world of essences.” 11 
 
 Such a man then was Chaucer, or so it would seem, a mirror 
 to the evil he saw so clearly, only a bright clean mirror. He 
 smiled, he laughed, he did not take to heart the world’s unhappi¬ 
 ness and wickedness. 
 
 Swich is this world whoso it kan byholde; 
 
 In ech estat is litel hertes reste. 
 
 God leve us for to take it for the beste. 
 
 (You can hear his voice. You can see the shrug: whoso it kan by¬ 
 holde, if a man can look at it and not blench.) Such at any rate 
 he seems to be in certain of his poems, chiefly those later poems 
 which we call realistic, written when his eye was on the ground, 
 not on the rose-colored horizon of France. This escape from 
 responsibility into humor, from severity into laughter, is certainly 
 part of him, and if there is a reason we can only guess at it. “The 
 more one suffers,” said Kierkegaard, “the more, I believe, has one 
 a sense for the comic. It is only by the deepest suffering that one 
 acquires true authority in the use of the comic, an authority which 
 by one word transforms as by magic the reasonable creature one 
 calls man into a caricature.” [There is little sign of Chaucer’s per¬ 
 sonal suffering in the official data and little elsewhere. That there 
 were private disappointments and emotional crises, quarrels and 
 heartaches must be assumed because no one is free from them. 
 His satirical observations on the follies of womankind rest largely 
 on literary convendon, on sources. His overemphasis on Cupid’s 
 female saints and on men as lovers of newefangelnesse could also 
 be conventional. These were subjects ready to hand, not the back- 
 spring of personal experience. But his marked sympathy for Cris- 
 eyde’s infidelity could be significant.' 
 
 IV 
 
 There are other ‘silences’ besides the political if one need take 
 account of them—“that roar which lies on the other side of si- 
 
22 
 
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 lence.” The visitations of the plague come in for passing allusion, 
 though there is no reference in the ‘Book of the Duchess,’ where 
 it might legitimately appear; there is passing mention of the 
 Lollards, among whom Chaucer had good friends, but none of 
 Wiclif, whom Lancaster had sponsored, once with serious conse¬ 
 quences. There is nothing on the Great Schism, nor on the noto¬ 
 rious Hawley-Shackwell sacrilege at the beginning of Richard’s 
 reign or the similar case of Tresilian in 1388; nothing on the fam¬ 
 ine of 1390 in the Midlands; nothing on Percy, the stormy petrel 
 of the period and at one time an ally of John of Gaunt. There was 
 a poem on the Duchess’ death, but none on the Queen’s a short 
 while before, or on Edward’s, or on the Black Prince’s, or on 
 Joan’s (which is the more remarkable if credence is allowed to 
 Miss Galway’s persistent claims for his long romantic attachment 
 to her), or on Richard’s accession. There seems to be a sly allu¬ 
 sion to Jack Straw and the murder of Flemings, but nothing on 
 the Mile End or Smithfield incidents. 
 
 If it were not for the balade on ‘Stedfastnesse,’ where Chaucer 
 did speak up, his omission of laureate verse would perhaps not be 
 nodceable. Moreover, Chaucer could dash off a stanza on Adam 
 his scrivener and write balades to ‘Scogan’ and ‘Bukton’ and to 
 his ‘Purse,’ but his muse was not much given to such exercise. 
 There is nothing like Dunbar’s ‘On His Heid-ake.’ We speak of 
 Chaucer’s ‘occasional’ poems—the ‘Hous of Fame’ and the ‘Par- 
 lement of Foules,’ —but we are none too sure about the occasions. 
 Why were all other occasions overlooked or neglected? 
 
 Another curious omission by a man who in his later years was 
 connected with building and rebuilding is that of any reference to 
 architecture. The King himself was much occupied with re¬ 
 modeling Westminster Hall (die work itself dates 1397-1399); 
 there was constant construcdon going on at Ely, Exeter, Lincoln, 
 Peterborough, Salisbury, Winchester, Worcester, and York. Wyke- 
 ham’s buildings of New College, Oxford, were of conspicuous 
 importance. The Pilgrims never reached Canterbury, to be sure, 
 but they came within sight of its towers—without seeing them 
 apparently. Surely one would expect an intimation that Chaucer 
 recognized the colored beauty of die windows and felt the struc- 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 23 
 
 tural beauty of nave and spire and buttress. Did he ever visit the 
 Black Prince’s chauntry chapel at Canterbury, or look at the Wil¬ 
 ton diptych ? In fact, is it certain that he looked attentively at real 
 flowers and meadows and trees? There are some very fine pass¬ 
 ages about them, but the passages have a literary rather than an 
 outdoor air. 
 
 There is another silence, reminding us how little we know 
 about Chaucer. 
 
 This is not merely the omission of those infinite quotidian 
 details of the life around him which a poet admired for his real¬ 
 istic observation might be expected to make note of and use of, 
 and which the modern reader can find with a wealth of detail in 
 Miss Rickert’s Chaucer s World. 
 
 Chaucer had crossed the Alps four times—once in winter— 
 and seen the blue of the Mediterranean, the beauty of Italian skies 
 and Italian landscape. He had been to Florence and perhaps Fie- 
 sole. That he knew the Visconti libraries in Milan and Pavia is 
 a possibility. 12 He knew the hardships as well as the rewards of 
 long journeys in the fourteenth century. What trace have these 
 experiences left on his mind and in his poetry ? 
 
 With great learning and ingenuity Professor George R. Parks 
 has traced, conjecturally, the routes which Chaucer followed in 
 his two trips to Italy and back. Detailed information is meager, 
 but the outlines, though dotted with could and might, with if and 
 or, are valuable. 13 Few as are the known facts, plentiful as are 
 the possibilities of speculation and of inferences, there is still 
 enough reasonably certain for the present purpose. 
 
 Chaucer left London 1 December 1372 for Genoa and Flor¬ 
 ence, and was back 23 May 1373—twenty-five weeks. By Pro¬ 
 fessor Parks’s reckoning he would have reached Genoa early in 
 January and therefore, assuming that the return journey took 
 about the same length of time, he would have had thirteen or 
 fourteen weeks in Italy on this first trip. We do not know how 
 long his business in Genoa required—it was apparently unsuccess¬ 
 ful—nor what business took him to Florence. 
 
 The all-sea route to Genoa is ruled out by considerations of 
 time alone; and it is improbable, owing to the French wars, that 
 
2 4 
 
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 he went down the Rhone to Marseille and by water to Genoa. 
 Hence it seems as certain as such things can be that he crossed 
 one of the Alpine passes in December, and this would be no slight 
 experience. The various routes by which he could have reached 
 Italy are five: (i) Calais, Flanders, up the Rhine to Basel, thence 
 to Lausanne, up the Rhone to Martigny, over the Great St. Ber¬ 
 nard to Aosta. This is favored by Parks for 1372. (2) As above 
 to Lausanne, thence around the west end of Lake Geneva to 
 Chambery and over the Mont Cenis to Turin. Prince Lionel in 
 1368, during a lull in the French wars, proceeded with his huge 
 rednue from Calais just before Easter, to Paris, thence to Dijon, 
 Geneva, Chambery, and over the Mont Cenis to Milan. 14 In 1393 
 Henry Bolingbroke returned from Milan over the same pass. To 
 me it would seem more likely, in 1372, since Chaucer was accom¬ 
 panied by two Italians who would know the passes, that they 
 would risk whatever chances of fighting there might be in Savoy 
 and choose the Mont Cenis, which is a lower and safer pass for 
 December. It is less than 7000 feet; the approach up the valley of 
 the Arc is gradual, though the descent to Susa is very steep (5000 
 feet in less than twenty miles). (3) In 1368 Edmund Rose, one 
 of Chaucer’s fellow esquires of the King’s household, left London 
 27 January and went via Paris and Dijon, but thence to Lausanne 
 and Martigny and on up the Rhone valley to Brig and over the 
 Simplon to Domo d’Ossola, Pallanza, and arrived at Pavia 20 
 March. 15 (4) As in (1) to Basel, thence to Lucerne and over the 
 St. Gothard to Bellinzona, Como, and Milan. 16 This seems likely 
 for the 1378 journey, which was in summer and Milan the desti¬ 
 nation. Chaucer left London 28 May with Sir Edward de Berke¬ 
 ley and nine others, was in Lombardy some six weeks, and re¬ 
 turned to London 19 September. 17 (5) If Chaucer in 1372 was 
 returning from Florence via Bologna and Padua, he could have 
 continued northwards to Verona, Lago di Garda, Bolzano, Me- 
 rano, across the Reschen-Scheideck, to Landeck, to Ulm, Stuttgart, 
 Speyer, and down the Rhine, across Flanders to Calais. This was 
 called the German Way. 18 
 
 For the rest, we have only this little and our imagination. 
 Chaucer crossed either the Mont Cenis or the Great St. Bernard 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 2 5 
 
 in December of 1372; in summer he may have taken either of 
 these passes on the homeward routes and he may have also crossed 
 the Simplon and/or the St. Gothard; possibly also the Reschen- 
 Scheideck. Many others at that time crossed the Alps, but only 
 Adam of Usk left a record of his impressions: he was terrified by 
 the experience. He noted Lucerne “and its wonderful lake, Mont 
 St. Gotthard, and the hermitage on its summit, where I was drawn 
 in an ox-waggon half dead with cold and with mine eyes blind¬ 
 folded lest I should see the dangers of the pass, on the eves of 
 Palm Sunday [9 March] I arrived at Bellinzona.” 19 What Chau¬ 
 cer’s feelings were we can only guess from his namesake’s ex¬ 
 perience in the grymme pawes of the golden Eagle. To-day 
 the road is exciting but not terrifying. It climbs from 1400 feet 
 at Lucerne to nearly 7000 feet at the pass and descends to 760 
 feet at Bellinzona. Even in midsummer one sees the torrents 
 below and hears the avalanches crash and thunder and watches 
 the rain clouds on the Swiss side thin and turn to sunshine on the 
 Italian side. 
 
 The great St. Bernard is equally exciting. From Lausanne 
 the road follows Lake Geneva to its eastern end with fine views 
 of the Dent du Midi, past the Castle of Chillon (13 c.) into the 
 Rhone valley and up to Martigny, with the Savoy Alps on the 
 right and the Bernese Alps on the left; then up to 8000 feet over 
 the pass, and down again to Aosta (1910 feet). From Martigny 
 to the pass the road climbs 6600 feet (nearly 3000 feet in the last 
 eight miles) with gorges and precipicies and every kind of wild 
 scenery. At Bourg-St. Pierre Chaucer would have stopped at the 
 eleventh-century church and been shown the Roman milestone. 
 Perhaps he spent Christmas at the wealthy monastery. If he 
 knew the Roman name of Ferrara he must have known the 
 Roman name of the pass; and if he did not light a candle to St. 
 Bernard, he should have poured a libation to Jupiter Poeninus. 
 From the monastery the descent is equally rapid; 4000 feet in the 
 first twelve miles. At Gignod he would have noted the new 
 tower, then in a few more miles the chestnut and walnut trees and 
 the vineyards: twenty miles from winter to spring. 
 
26 OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 Since the Active Oxford student and Canterbury pilgrim 
 claimed to have got the Griselda story from Petrarch, at Padua, 
 our Chaucerians have been gravely tempted to believe that their 
 poet, having finished his business in Florence, moved north to 
 Bologna and Padua, and there himself heard the Griselda story 
 from Petrarch’s lips. The Latin letter containing it, which we 
 take as Chaucer’s text, was not yet written in the spring of 1373, 
 but Petrarch was fond of telling the story to his friends. The 
 statement of the Clerk is of course not evidence; it tells us only 
 that Chaucer knew of Petrarch’s living at Padua. That he went 
 there and talked with Petrarch cannot be proved or disproved; it 
 remains an “unsettled possibility.” 20 And if Petrarch, why not 
 Boccaccio ? Boccaccio returned from Naples in the early summer 
 of 1371 to his home in Certaldo; he was poor and ill. Nothing 
 seems to be certainly known of him in the spring of 1373, but in 
 August of that year he was appointed to his professorship at 
 Florence. In any case, whether they met in the flesh or not, 
 Chaucer’s failure to mention the name of Boccaccio is a remarka¬ 
 ble ‘silence.’ 
 
 Now these conjectures, more or less futile in detail, are im¬ 
 portant for one thing. They crave the question: What did Chau¬ 
 cer learn from such varied experiences? What did he bring 
 back except the manuscripts of Boccaccio and Dante and Petrarch 
 and a knowledge of the language? (He certainly had manu¬ 
 scripts of Boccaccio at home; we assume that he had die others.) 
 Praz suggests that Chaucer brought home a sense of the vividness 
 of Italian life; “the Italians, have always appeared to foreigners 
 as wonderfully lively beings . . . the wonderful filing Alfieri well 
 expressed when he said that la pianta uomo grows more vigorous 
 in Italy than anywhere else.” 21 Did Chaucer thus learn from Italy 
 the vividness which he gave us in the General Prologue? But 
 what were his impressions of the hazardous Alpine crossing in 
 December 1372, of the Italian lakes and valleys, the churches, 
 all the strange sights and scenes? We do not know. Almost 
 nothing shows dirough in his poetry. Skeat offered a faint guess 
 that the ice mountain in the ‘Hous of Fame’ is a real reminis¬ 
 
 cence— 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 27 
 
 / wol yow al the shap devyse 
 Of hous and site, and al the wyse 
 How I gan to thys place aproche 
 That stood upon so hygh a roc he, 
 
 Hier stant ther non in Spayne. 
 
 But up I clomb with alle peyne, 
 
 And though to clymhe it greved me, . . . 
 
 what he was most eager to discover was the composition of the 
 rock itself. This is very little; it does not suggest climbing a real 
 glacier, and the reference to Spain suggests the need of an easy 
 rime. (Or could it echo some report he had heard from the men 
 who crossed the Pyrenees before the battle of Najara?) He had 
 himself been among the highest ice-capped mountains of Switzer¬ 
 land. 
 
 Landscape, we know, had not much entered into literature by 
 the fourteenth century. But if he had talked with Petrarch he 
 might have learned about landscape something new and useful to 
 a poet. Moreover, he had precedent at home in England. We 
 can only guess what he thought of Gawain and the Green Knight, 
 if he had read it. His Parson’s slighting reference to alliterative 
 verse need not imply his own adverse judgment. In any case, we 
 have a contemporary illustration of the valid use of real landscape 
 description. First, here is the coming of spring: 
 
 Bot penne pe weder of pe worlde wyth wynter hit prepe%, 
 Colde clenge% adoun, cloudep, vplyften, 
 
 Schyre schedep, pe rayn in schowrep, ful warme, 
 
 Fallen vpon fayre flat, flowreg pere schewen, 
 
 Bope grounded and pe greueg grene ar her wedep,, 
 
 Bryddep, bus pen to bylde, and bremlych syngen 
 For solace of pe softe somer pat sues perafter 
 
 bi bonp. 
 
 Seferus, which also brought in the spring of the Canterbury pil¬ 
 grimage, is only a few lines farther on. And then dusty autumn, 
 when 
 
28 
 
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 Wrope wynde of pe welpyn wrastele 3 with pe sunne, 
 pe leuep, lancen fro pe lynde and lygten on pe grounde, 
 
 And al grayes pe gres, pat grene wat% ere. 
 
 Then the winter scene in Wirral— 
 
 a forest ful dep, pat ferly wat% wylde, 
 
 Hige hilleg on vche a halue, and holtwodeg vnder 
 Of hore opeyy ful hoge a hundreth togeder; 
 pe hasel and pe hagporne were harled al samen, 
 
 With ro$e raged mosse ray led ay where, 
 
 With mony bryddes vnblype upon bare twyges, 
 pat pitosly per piped for pyne of pe colde. 
 
 Then the carefully detailed description of the castle and its sur¬ 
 roundings (contrast the general description of the dream castle in 
 the ‘Hous of Fame’), topped off with a figure: 
 
 So mony pynaple payntet wat% poudred ayquere, 
 Among pe castel carneleg, clambred so pip, 
 
 Pat pared out of papure purely hit semed. 
 
 These passages are not meant for invidious comparison. Each 
 man works with his own media. They show, however, a lively 
 interest in realistic description. 
 
 Chaucer has one passage which hints at a similar interest, the 
 grisly feendly roppes blape off the Breton coast which so obsessed 
 Dorigen and produced her remarkable query why a parfit wys 
 God had created such a foul confusion Of werp. Similar thoughts 
 would certainly occur to one whose life had been spent in the flat 
 country around London, when he first made his way up the Great 
 St. Bernard pass. Was there a connection in Chaucer’s mind? 
 
 For further details of Chaucer’s various impressions of Italy 
 one can only draw a bow at a venture. Imagination would reel at 
 the effort to reconstruct Alta Italia in 1372 and 1378. The fighting 
 among the city states can be followed—Professor Parks has done 
 it thoroughly in an attempt to establish the possibility that Chau¬ 
 cer could have met Petrarch at Padua or Arqua—but there is so 
 much else. Manly opined that Chaucer took a side trip to Saluzzo 
 in the interests of his Griselda poem; but the dates are not right, 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 2 9 
 
 unless he had had Petrarch’s letter before he left England. Did he 
 pass through Vercelli? What did he see at Genoa? Perhaps not 
 much besides the harbor, to compare it with the Thames reaches. 
 Later, when he had his Dante open before him at Inferno xxxm, 
 when he was doing the Ugolino story for the Monk’s tragedies, 
 he would see what Dante had said of the Genoese— 
 
 A hi Genovesi, uomini diversi 
 
 D’ogni costume, e pien d’ogni magagna, 
 
 Perche non siete voi del mondo spersi?* 
 
 At Florence he would certainly visit S. Maria Novella, which was 
 completed only some twenty years before; S. Croce, the Duomo, 
 and Or San Michele were still building; Giotto’s Campanile was 
 unfinished, but Andrea Pisano’s door of the Baptistery was at least 
 in place; he should have looked at Fra Angelico’s angels in the 
 monastery of San Marco; and he would not have missed Giotto’s 
 portrait of Dante in the Bargello. He may well have gone up to 
 Fiesole. 
 
 Milan would have impressed him as so much larger than 
 London, and the lavishness of the Visconti was greater than any¬ 
 thing he had ever beheld. Beyond these cities we have to guess. 
 In Pisa there was the Campo Santo and the group of white marble 
 Duomo, Baptistery, and the leaning Campanile. If he crossed the 
 Apennines to Bologna there was another leaning tower which he 
 would recall when he read Inferno, xxxi; for there Antaeus, lean¬ 
 ing down, takes Vergil and Dante in his arms, 
 
 | Qua! pare a riguardar la Car is end a. 
 
 It is not the details after all that matter, but the whole effect on a 
 sensitive agile mind of strange sights and strange people in a dif¬ 
 ferent setting of beauty from anything he had even seen or read 
 about.. They should have affected him profoundly, but when he 
 sat down with his Muse they vanished without a trace./ Or so it 
 seems. For even when he was translating Boccaccio he added no 
 little touches of his own which betray a recollection of what he 
 had gathered from contact with Boccaccio’s country. An addi- 
 
 * Oh, Genoese, men perverse in every way, and full of every foulness, 
 why are you not driven from the earth? 
 
30 
 
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 tional word about Mount Vesulus in special would have been 
 natural in the Clerk’s Prologue; for Monte Viso (12,615 feet) is 
 one of the most beautiful of all the Alps and is celebrated for 
 other reasons than being the source of the Po. 
 
 There are many gardens in Chaucer, but they are picture-book 
 gardens, more like manuscript illuminations than real gardens 
 studied from nature. Or could perhaps that garden near Dori- 
 gen’s castle contain a reminiscence of something he had seen in 
 France or Italy? 
 
 This gardyn ful of leves and of floures; 
 
 And craft of mannes hand so curiously 
 Arrayed hadde this gardyn, trewely, 
 
 That nevere was ther gardyn of swich prys, 
 
 But if it were the verray paradys. 
 
 The odour of floures and the fresshe sighte, . . . 
 
 So ful it was of beautee with plesaunce. 
 
 It hardly seems so. 
 
 It is not that one expects Chaucer to have moved ahead several 
 centuries and found a place in his narrative poems for Byronic 
 descriptions of the Alpine scene or for Shelley’s mingling of 
 natural and mental phenomena or for something like Words¬ 
 worth’s loving pictures of the English lakes. Yet there were 
 opportunities where a touch of nature here and there might have 
 found a response in his audience; and some vivid vignette—he 
 could have learned about this from Dante—of the extraordinary 
 Swiss scenery or the trials of travel might well have astonished or 
 amused the court of Richard. His friend Edmund Rose would 
 have recognized such details, or any of those who had been in 
 Lionel’s entourage or in the suite of Sir Edward Berkeley, or of 
 the many others who had traveled on the Continent. He was not 
 so timid as Adam of Usk, but there was matter for a Canterbury 
 Tale in some such incident, or at least some allusion to be added 
 to the Wife of Bath’s journeyings. 
 
 Much of this may be vain surmise, but it has a point. 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 31 
 
 V 
 
 What has been called (I suppose facetiously) Chaucer and the 
 Woman Question has the same pitfalls as other Chaucer prob¬ 
 lems. 
 
 Chaucer begins his ostensible defense of ‘good women’ by in¬ 
 sisting on his feyth and ful credence in books, and when he makes 
 his selection of examples (such as they are) they come not only 
 from books but from the remote past. This might imply that he 
 knew of no real modern instances, or simply that he preferred, in 
 contrast to the Wife of Bath, auctoritee to experience. As his 
 Eagle explained the matter, Jupiter felt pity 
 
 That thou so longe trewely 
 Hast served so ententyfly 
 Hys blynde nevew Cupido, 
 
 And faire Venus also, 
 
 Withoute guerdon ever yit, 
 
 And never-the-lesse hast set thy wit — 
 
 Although that in thy lied ful lyte is — 
 
 To ma\e bookys, songes, dytees, 
 
 In ryme, or elles in cadence, 
 
 As thou best canst, in reverence 
 Of Love, and of hys servantes eke, 
 
 That have hys servyse soght, and se\e; 
 
 And peynest the to preyse hys art, 
 
 Although thou haddest never part; 
 
 Wherfore, also God me blesse, 
 
 Joves halt hyt gret humblesse, 
 
 And vertu eke, that thou wolt make 
 A-nyght ful ofte thyn hed to aky 
 In thy studye, so thou writest, 
 
 And ever mo of love enditest, . . . 
 
 Although thou maist goo in the daunce 
 Of hem that hym list not avaunce. 
 
 Jove considers all this, and also that you have no present news of 
 Love and lovers at home or abroad; 
 
3 2 
 
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 For when thy labour doon al ys, 
 
 And hast mad alle thy re\enynges, 
 
 In stede of reste and newe thynges, 
 
 Thou goost horn to thy hous anoon; 
 
 And, also domb as any stoon, 
 
 Thou sittest at another boo\ 
 
 Tyl fully das wed ys thy loo\, 
 
 And lyvest thus as an heremyte, 
 
 Although thyn abstynence ys lyte. 
 
 The Eagle’s final fillip is beautifully ambiguous: a text for the 
 Devil when he feels like quoting Scripture; and the picture of 
 Geoffrey Chaucer exhausted by his day’s work at the Customs go¬ 
 ing home to his wife at their ‘mansion’ over Aldgate and sitting in 
 stony silence over his books all evening is very precious. 
 
 So he dreams in his legendary arbor on the May morning that 
 the God of Love and his consort find him watching the resurrec¬ 
 tion of the daisy and he sings (or hears sung) a Balade in praise 
 of his Lady (or Alcestis ). 22 The God attacks him, a very worm, 
 as the mortal foe of lovers, whereas My seruants, He says, ben alle 
 wyse and honourable. The dreamer, who is easily recognized as 
 Chaucer, has been so stupid as to teach that those who love para¬ 
 mours, to harde and hot are proper fools; witness his translation 
 of the Roman de la Rose and his book of Troilus and Criseyde, in 
 defiance of his sixty books with stories of clean women. Alcestis 
 intercedes for him on the ground that he wrote merely from habit, 
 gessyng no malice —or perhaps someone commanded him to write 
 those offensive things. On the other hand, he has written the 
 ‘Hous of Fame,’ the ‘Book of the Duchess,’ the ‘Parlement of 
 Foules,’ ‘Palamon and Arcite’ (which all presumably glorify 
 sacred love?), and many a hymn for Love’s feast days—not to 
 mention sober works like the translations of Boethius and Pope 
 Innocent, the life of St. Cecilia, and Origen on the Magdalen. 
 At this, the God of Love handsomely forgives Chaucer, who, in 
 thanking Alcestis, starts to defend himself and so brings down on 
 his head the lifelong commission of a glorious legende Of goode 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 33 
 
 wymmen. The penalty is severe and Chaucer soon breaks under 
 it; 1072 couplets seemed penance enough. 
 
 Now who can take this at all seriously, considering the nature 
 of the charge and of the defense, the kind of logic which Alcestis 
 uses, and the tone of the Legends themselves? It is all playful, 
 and if it implies some puritanical criticism from Chaucer’s con¬ 
 temporaries it may help to explain the apologetic Epilogue to the 
 Troilus. Assuming that the Legends were composed in the order 
 of their appearance, it would seem that Chaucer started well and 
 in the right spirit: Cleopatra and Anthony, Pyramus and Thisbe 
 are each an honor to the God of Love. Then the scene changes: 
 Dido was too trusting; Hypsipyle and Medea too forward; Phae¬ 
 dra and little Ariadne too eager; Phyllis too simple; Lucretia and 
 Philomel were victims of lustful men, and Hypermnestra a victim 
 in another sense. The subject is not any longer good women but 
 bad men. 
 
 What else? There are first the women he knew personally 
 and about whom we know so little: his wife Philippa and her 
 sister Katherine, Cecilia Chaumpaigne, and no doubt many more 
 who are nameless. His wife has been suspected of adultery. Of 
 her sister we know enough and to spare, not much of it favorable. 
 In court circles there are Blanche, the Duchess of Lancaster, and 
 Queen Anne, good women both; but against them are Alice 
 Perrers, Joan of Kent (in her youth at least; she was not quite 
 certain that her marriage to the Black Prince was legal), Anne’s 
 Bohemian attendant Agnes Launcekron (who carried on an 
 affair with the King’s favorite, Robert Vere, Earl of Oxford), 
 John’s one mistress known by name, Marie de Saint Hilaire, a 
 demoiselle of Queen Philippa. The chroniclers have a rich selec¬ 
 tion, 
 
 And evere an hundred hadde ageyn on goode 
 
 (to reverse the text, G 277). If he looked in his heart before writ¬ 
 ing of women he would see a dark picture. He gave us some of 
 it in the ‘Hous of Fame’: 
 
 And of Loves fol\ moo tydynges, 
 
 Both sothe sawes and lesinges; 
 
34 OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 And moo loves newe begonne, 
 
 And longe yserved loves wonne, 
 
 And moo loves casuelly 
 
 That ben betyd, no man wot why, 
 
 But as a blynd man stert an hare; 
 
 And more jolytee and fare, 
 
 While that they fynde love of stel, 
 
 As thinketh hem, and over-al wel; 
 
 Mo discordes, moo jelousies, 
 
 Mo murmures, and moo novelries, 
 
 And moo dissymulacions, 
 
 And feyned reparacions; . . . 
 
 Such are the tidings of Love’s people he could expect in the home 
 of all tidings, both true and untrue as the case might be, with the 
 balance against honor. 
 
 When in turn we look into the women of his fiction the pro¬ 
 portions are about the same. There is no ideal woman, like the 
 worthy Knight or the perfect Parson. They all belong in their 
 own tales, the tales which he chose to tell. The women in the 
 fabliaux of Miller, Reeve, and Shipman are where they belong; we 
 must accept them with their situation and so leave them, with the 
 wife of Phebus in the Manciple’s Tale. They do not count here, 
 for or against, though Chaucer makes them all rather engaging 
 hussies. Virginia hardly counts; at least he could no nothing with 
 her beyond wringing the soft heart of the Host. St. Cecilia hard¬ 
 ly counts; she had anyway a touch of spiritual pride. Nor 
 Custance, for she also is a saint, though uncanonized. Nor 
 Prudence, who is an allegorical figure. Griselda is in her different 
 way a symbol, out of marchen-lore, of Christian fortitude, and for 
 real life pointing an impractical moral. Canace is too young and 
 Emily too colorless, though she looked 
 
 fressher than the May with floures newe — 
 
 For with the rose colour stroof hire hewe. 
 
 The May of the Merchant’s Tale is what would now be called a 
 little bitch; just what January deserved, but no ornament to her 
 sex. Chaucer, however, with characteristic kindness gives her a 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 35 
 
 gentle pat on the shoulder (which is a warning to all of us) and 
 lets her say: 
 
 Ful many a man weneth to seen a thyng, 
 
 And it is al another than it semeth. 
 
 He that mysconceyveth, he mysdemeth. 
 
 The others, who seem to have form and pressure, are Dorigen, 
 the Prioress, the good Wife, and of course Criseyde. Dorigen is a 
 special case. She comes alive at moments, when her neuroses 
 about the rocks and her single-minded Arveragus take command, 
 and when she sets out to the garden to keep her foolish promise. 
 But she is too submissive to her husband at the crisis and too 
 obedient to the plot when she makes her rash promise, to be a 
 true woman. At best she is a warning to faithful wives. The 
 Prioress is a study in ambiguities, portrayed with delicate skill as 
 no doubt a competent manageress of a ladies’ convent, but some¬ 
 what wanting as a religious. When she comes on the scene with 
 her pathetic miracle Chaucer still shows her a little out of focus. 
 The Wife is a very special case, a paragon of female virility on the 
 verge of breaking. Chaucer uses her with the greatest dexterity to 
 exemplify and repudiate all the faults of her sex; admirable in her 
 vulgarity, but not a woman Chaucer would bring forward for our 
 admiration or one by whom we could estimate his regard for her 
 sex. With Criseyde we tread burning ground. She has her fol¬ 
 lowers, including her creator, and her detractors. With all her 
 brightness she is pitifully weak. She suffers from her heredity— 
 Benoit and Boccaccio—and she also has to obey the plot. Fate 
 and Fortune are against her. Hardy might have called her, as he 
 called Tess, a pure woman, loving and erring. When under strain 
 she proves herself her father’s daughter and her uncle’s niece. She 
 is Chaucer’s one female character; she may well be his typical 
 woman, lively and tender and amorous, and weak when strength 
 is demanded. Chaucer may have seen her in real life more than 
 once; she may have been drawn from the life more truly than we 
 can know; one often fancies that the Criseyde of the first half of 
 the poem (at least) owes something to Philippa Chaucer. 
 
36 OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 If these few specimens in Chaucer’s poetry are not enough to 
 reveal surely his judgment of womankind, there is another part 
 of the garden where better fruit may be found, namely, the 
 chances of love and marriage in the narradves themselves. What¬ 
 ever the origin of the tales, they seemed to Chaucer worth telling, 
 though he cannot be held responsible for their contents. The 
 evidence of the Nun’s Priest’s Tale is oblique: Chanticleer is de¬ 
 voted to Pertelote, the oversolicitous wife, but he has his para¬ 
 mours, like so many husbands. The unfaithful lover is described 
 in ‘Anelida and Arcite’ and in the Falcon-Princess episode of the 
 Squire’s Tale. The ‘Mars’ celebrates adultery. The marriage of 
 Griselda and the Marquis had every promise of being successful; 
 but Walter was obsessed with a passion for testing. The recon¬ 
 ciliation is part of the impressed moral, but it is true that after 
 Walter was satisfied and Griselda martyred they lived long in- 
 concord and in reste. It is the same with Palamon and Emily: 
 their bond 
 
 That highte matrimoigne or marriage 
 
 turned out well finally; only it was, at the end, a political mar¬ 
 riage engineered by Theseus and his barons. Arcite worshiped 
 War and lost, thanks to the machination of Saturn; Palamon 
 worshiped Love and won, thanks to the public policy of Theseus. 
 Emily remained a pawn, but so also were her two lovers the 
 instruments of a game. All sides are represented in the ‘Parle- 
 ment,’ which is dedicated to Love, its hard attempts, its sharp 
 successes, and its dredful joy, alwey that slit so yerne. The lesser 
 birds each gets its mate or mistress happily. The three noble 
 suitors however and the formel are granted a year’s delay: is this 
 a warning against hasty marriage in high life? There may be 
 allegorical adjuncts in the background, but the point still is that 
 the homme moyen sensuel must have his way. Such anyway was 
 my dream, says the poet, after falling asleep over Cicero and 
 Macrobius, and it was disappointing. The marriage of Ceyx and 
 Alcione was happy while it lasted and Alcione followed her hus¬ 
 band even to death; the love of John and Blanche was also a 
 happy one—marriage is not considered in the poem—till death 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 37 
 
 intervened, but the later life of John was different. The marriage 
 of Arveragus and Dorigen seems to be ideal and is set before us 
 as the perfect balance-of-power between man and wife; but it is 
 only saved from the rocks by the lucky last-minute gentilesse of 
 a squire hitherto passionately urgent. Arveragus gave command, 
 Dorigen obeyed, Aurelius withdrew: is this the formula for suc¬ 
 cess in marriage? 
 
 These are to be sure mere straws, but such as they are they 
 underwrite the moral of the Troilus, that in this world there is 
 litel hertes reste. Whether Chaucer’s own experience and his 
 considered judgment confirm it deponent saith not. 
 
 What Chaucer thought of womankind can hardly be deduced 
 from occasional remarks in their narrative context. The reported 
 slanders of the Wife’s Prologue cancel out, and also the pros and 
 cons set forth in the Melibeus. There are good women and bad; 
 in the G prologue of the ‘Legende’ Alceste insists that Chaucer 
 knows both kinds. Sometimes they are 
 
 ful of innocence, 
 
 Ful of pile, of trouthe, and conscience, 
 
 but they yield too easily to importunate men. The Falcon in the 
 Squire’s Tale recognizes Canace’s sympathy as 
 
 Of verr ay wommanly benignyte. 
 
 Theseus asks Emily at the end to manifest her wommanly pitee. 
 And Proserpine, condemning that Jew Solomon for never finding 
 a good woman, asserts that other men have found many 
 
 Wommen ful trewe, ful goode, and vertuous. 
 
 Women are inclined to tearfulness: Theseus was sorry for them 
 for they wepen evere in oon; and when Palamon and Arcite were 
 caught fighting alone, Queen Hippolita for verray wommanhede, 
 Gan for to wepe. They are also sentimental; the Nun’s Priest 
 ridicules them because they holde in ful greet reverence the book 
 of Lancelot of the Lake. They can show moderation; at least 
 Canace went to bed early, for 
 
 She was ful mesurable, as wommen be; 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 38 
 
 but this from the Squire does not quite ring true. The Wife of 
 Bath has her ideas of what women most desire: the obvious 
 things, but chiefly flattery, and above all mastery of their husbands 
 and lovers. Their advice is not to be trusted: 
 
 Wommenes conseils been ful ofte colde; 
 
 thus the Nun’s Priest, but Chanticleer might have done better to 
 heed his wife’s. 
 
 As for marriage, the Wife could speak knowingly of its woes 
 and tribulations, but she managed pretty well for herself. On the 
 other hand, that worthy knight of the Merchant’s Tale, though he 
 had both sides explained to him and at first called it a ful greet 
 sacrament without which a man is helpless and desolate, later 
 came to grief deservedly. The Marquis of Saluces thought of mar¬ 
 riage as servage, the very opposite of freedom; but his son’s 
 marriage was fortunate. Custance, setting out on her devious and 
 troubled wanderings, cried pitifully: 
 
 Wommen are born to thraldom a?id penance, 
 
 And to been under mannes governance. 
 
 The Franklin, however, speaking in dead earnest and possibly 
 with the Wife of Bath in mind, for maistrie was her word also, 
 knew that 
 
 Love wol nat been constreyned by maistrye .... 
 
 Love is a thyng as any spirit free. 
 
 Wommen, of kynde, desiren libertee 
 
 and not to be thralls. It is a nice distinction, and like his epi¬ 
 grammatic juggling phrase, 
 
 Servant in love and lord in manage, 
 
 guaranteed to satisfy both parties. The Wife of Bath could smile. 
 
 Finally, there is the cynical couplet spoken by the perfect 
 Knight but perhaps canceled by Chaucer, 
 
 For wommen, as to speken in comune, 
 
 Thei folwen alle the favour of Fortune. 
 
 This is no compliment to the sex, though it does well enough for 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 39 
 
 the aloof Emily, and is quite unworthy of the Knight. That 
 Chaucer wrote it and then meant to drop it is a fine example of 
 ambivalence; and this word, so far as we can read the evidence, 
 sums up Chaucer’s attitude towards women. 
 
 VI 
 
 Is is of the first importance to remember that Chaucer’s life 
 came between two worlds, one dying, the other still unborn. It 
 seems almost fitting, because it suited his temperament, to find 
 him at the end of a great period, “when the vitality had departed 
 from medieval culture,” when chivalry was more than a memory 
 yet not altogether real, when scholasticism had done its work, 
 when the Church was divided against itself, and when the com¬ 
 mons were beginning to make themselves felt in education, 
 wealth, and power; before the collapse of the fourteenth century 
 in England and also before humanism had reached England in 
 any strength. It was a moment of autumnal decay, when the 
 colors still seemed bright and the sword of winter had not 
 fallen—the most fitting time for Chaucer’s brightness and gaiety, 
 his sense of beauty with a touch of the all-too earthy; for his 
 laughter, in a word, which could be sympathetic without falsifica¬ 
 tion by sentimentality, and his smile which was tolerent without 
 quite condoning iniquity—a moment of delicate balance con¬ 
 genial to his spirit. He witnessed the great schism of the papacy 
 and seems not to have known it. He lived in a period of great 
 building, cathedrals remade or finishing, colleges founding; and 
 he seems to have taken no notice. He lived through a great in¬ 
 surrection, and made two or three fleeting allusions to it. He 
 lived at the corrupt court of one king and through the tyrannies 
 of another. He praised Queen Anne; he said nothing of Alice 
 Perrers. Through three decades of political and social confusion 
 at home and of disastrous wars abroad his muse was devoted 
 chiefly to a gentle policy of entertainment; her satire was without 
 indignation. 
 
 Yet Chaucer was the coeval of William Langland (if that was 
 his real name), who saw these same distresses, felt them earnestly, 
 
4 o 
 
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 and wrote of them in English vigorously. The moment of decay 
 produced both Piers Plowman and the Canterbury Tales. It pro¬ 
 duced also a man whose name we cannot even guess, who wrote a 
 golden elegy of faith and a golden romance in which chivalry, 
 with its old true religious feeling, brightened with fine humor, 
 came back for an instant of poetry. The Knight’s Tale is a 
 small thing beside Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. 
 
 He was to be sure a civil servant and had his posidon to main¬ 
 tain. He was neither all for Apollo nor all for Dionysus; he made 
 token offerings at both altars, bowing and smiling to each. His 
 world did not banish him, but he his world. One can hear him 
 say: “They complain that I took no interest in current affairs 
 because I have so little to say about them in my verses. That is 
 unfair. It is my poetry, not I, which for the most part was un¬ 
 concerned with the contemporary scene. Poetry is not a record 
 but a reflection. You should not look to me for history; those 
 monks who write chronicles in Ladn will have to serve you there. 
 Why does one write poetry at all?” Thus Chaucer was excluded 
 from dealing with certain subjects by his temperament, which 
 inclined him to a cheerful view of both good and evil, and by 
 his surroundings, which encouraged if they did not wholly induce 
 him to write for a special audience. What he felt and kept to 
 himself is not for us to know. 
 
 Nevertheless we persist in making inquiries, in peering be¬ 
 tween the cracks. “To know an author, personally,” said Tre- 
 lawny, “is too often to destroy the illusion created by his works.” 
 We may think that a man’s poetry tells us more of the truth about 
 him than his letters, his friends’ talk, all the accumulations of an 
 intimate biographer; but it is a dangerous assumption. The poet 
 is an amalgam, difficult to analyze, of a human being and a voice. 
 The two often speak a different language. We might argue that 
 a man who could draw such a wily and shifty character as Pan- 
 darus must have had many of the same traits, the same skill in 
 persuasion, the same gift of gab, the same ability to deceive as 
 well as to be a faithful friend; and the impression remains with 
 ever so many readers that Pandarus is in some sense, even if un¬ 
 consciously, a partial self-portrait. We might argue that the 
 
Note on Cecilia Chaumpaigne 
 
 4 1 
 
 creator of the Wife of Bath must have known and enjoyed such 
 company; that the author of the Miller’s Tale and the Reeve’s 
 Tale must have liked dirty stories and probably knew a great 
 many more; and also the man who had translated Boethius and 
 was so familiar with the text that he could add a suitable patch 
 here and there to whatever he was writing, would also himself be 
 saturated with the spirit of the De consolatio; that . . . L But to 
 form a picture from such fragmentary inferences is to ignore both 
 the complex inconsistencies of human nature and the subtleties of 
 imaginative experience . "] 
 
 Note on Cecilia Chaumpaigne 
 
 On i May 1380 Cecilia, daughter of the late William Chaumpaigne 
 (or Chaumpeneys) 1 and his wife Agnes, gave Chaucer a full and 
 formal deed of release from all charges “de raptu meo.” The witnesses 
 to the document were Sir William de Beauchamp, brother of the Earl 
 of Warwick, Sir William Neville, and Sir John Clanvowe, all three of 
 the King’s household and known in other ways as Chaucer’s friends— 
 together with Sir John Philipot, collector of Customs while Chaucer 
 was controller, and one Richard Morel. 2 Evidently Chaucer was well- 
 protected. Now raptus in fourteenth-century legal terminology had 
 two meanings: abduction (raptus heredis ) 3 and rape (concubitus vio- 
 lentus). Since Cecilia was able to sign the release, she was not a minor, 
 nor a ward, and therefore not kidnaped for a forced marriage. If she 
 had been a ward, the release would have been signed by her guardian. 
 If the charge against Chaucer was rape, which was a felony, why was 
 he not prosecuted ? It seems clear from three documents of the follow¬ 
 ing months—a release to Chaucer by Richard Goodchild, a cutler, and 
 John Grove, an armourer; a release to Goodchild and Grove by 
 Cecilia; and a recognizance by Grove of a debt of ^10 to Cecilia— 
 that the case was compromised out of court by a money settlement; 
 and that the sum was considerable has been inferred, perhaps incau¬ 
 tiously, from the fact that Chaucer sold his father’s house in St. 
 Martin’s in the Vintry a year later. (It has also been inferred, if the 
 three later documents are related to the raptus release, that Chaucer 
 may have abducted Cecilia to save her from attack by Goodchild and 
 Grove.) But Chaucer’s friends at Court may have brought influence to 
 bear or some new facts may have come to light which induced Cecilia 
 to modify or withdraw her charge. For instance, she may have become 
 
42 
 
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 pregnant; and under mediaeval law, conception was taken to mean 
 consent. Or indeed she may have consented and then repented. Per¬ 
 haps both parties were not altogether innocent and therefore they did 
 well to settle by compromise. One thing seems clear: the accusation 
 of raptus meant rape and not kidnaping. 
 
 An interesting possibility, usually left as a guess, is that the lyte 
 Lowys my sone for whom Chaucer wrote his unfinished ‘Astrolabe’ 
 was Cecilia’s son. Nothing else is known of him and the conjecture 
 that he was Chaucer’s godson may be dismissed. The dates are about 
 right, for the ‘Astrolabe’ was apparently compiled in 1391, when Lowys 
 was of the tendir age of ten year. 
 
 Where so much is obscure and uncertain, even speculation may be 
 unjustified. Yet considering how little we know about Chaucer’s 
 private life and about his marriage, and how much we do know about 
 the immorality of the Court under Edward and Richard—it would be 
 easy to compile a chronique scandaleuse for the period—it hardly seems 
 necessary to be squeamish. Most of the legal tangles would be less 
 tangled if Chaucer had seduced the lady, if she then lost her temper 
 and threatened suit for rape and then under pressure compromised by 
 releasing him for certain considerations. Legally of course it remains 
 a case not proven, but there is no reason except Christian charity to 
 whitewash the poet. Two legal minds have wresded with the prob¬ 
 lem, without much conclusive result. 4 
 
 Other poets before (e.g., Dante and Boccaccio) and since have been 
 guilty of irregularities. Chaucer need be no exception; he had 
 abundant contemporary precedent. But more interesting are the liter¬ 
 ary implications. Chaucer’s frequent denial of a personal knowledge 
 of love is of course partly a literary pose. It would, however, take on 
 an effective irony for contempory readers if the opposite were well 
 known to be true. For example, when Troilus wishes to abduct 
 Criseyde after the exchange was announced, the audience would recall 
 with a smile the raptus of Cecilia. Pandarus, we know, urged Troilus 
 to run away with Criseyde— 
 
 Go ravisshe here ne hanstow nat for shame? 
 
 (Troilus iv, 530. The word is repeated in this sense at 11 . 637 and 
 643.) Troilus replying uses the same word ravish for the abduction 
 of Helen ( 1 . 548), which had brought on the whole war, and rejects 
 the advice. But Pandarus counters ( 1 . 596): 
 
 It is no shame unto yow ne no vice. 
 
 Here Chaucer first wrote: 
 
 It is no rape in my dom ne no vice. 
 
 Both words bear the same meaning, to carry off by force, and in the 
 
Note on Cecilia Chaumpaigne 
 
 43 
 
 context the revision has no point—in fact rape serves the argument of 
 Pandarus better—unless to avoid the suggestion of raptus in its legal 
 sense of concubitus violentus and a possible reminiscence of Cecilia. 
 (Elsewhere in Chaucer rape is the other word meaning haste.) Then 
 when Chaucer circulated the ‘Legend of Good Women,’ his mock- 
 palinode to the Troilus, with its furious attacks on male seducers, there 
 would be more ironic laughter. In the Prologue the poet insists that 
 he had written Criseyde’s story 
 
 To forthren trouthe in love and yt cheryce, 
 
 And to ben war fro falsnesse and fro vice; 
 but Alceste charges him with the obligation to make a glorious legende 
 Of goode wymmen 
 
 And telle of false men that hem bytraien, 
 
 That al hir lyf ne don nat but assayen 
 How many women they may doon a shame; 
 
 For in youre world that is now holde a game. 
 
 And thogh the lyke nat a lovere be, . . . 
 
 (If, as has been contended, Alceste is the Princess Joan, the irony 
 would take a fresh twist.) 
 
 These are but two of many instances which would titillate an 
 audience, the poet concurring, if he were known for amorous dealings. 
 They add a fine gesture to the literary pose of one who dared not 
 pray directly to the God of Love 
 
 So fer am l from his help in derknesse. 
 
 And Alceste says to the God of Love: 
 
 Whil he was yong, he \epte youre estat; 
 
 / not wher he be now a renegat. 
 
 (‘Legende’ G 400 f.; not in F.) This is richly ambiguous. Such allu¬ 
 sions are certainly not evidence in the Cecilia Chaumpaigne case; 
 though that also, whatever the facts, guilty or innocent, would un¬ 
 questionably enhance the deprecation. In sum, then, while we can 
 have a reasonable interest in Chaucer’s private morals and even a 
 wholly suspended judgment in the raptus affair, the real, the prime 
 interest is in relation to his poetry, its origins and its overtones. 
 
chapter ii. CHAUCER AND THE 
 SCHOLARS: THE PARDONER 
 
 I F Chaucer has suffered much at the hand of copyists,” said 
 Mario Praz, “he has suffered more through the misguided 
 zeal of scholars and would-be scholars.” One is told some¬ 
 times that the younger generation of Chaucerians are falling 
 away from this error, but the signs are still not clear; for though 
 their path is not the path of Cook and Root, of Kittredge and 
 Manly, and those other “noble clerkes,” they have branched out in 
 new directions. Now we hear of aesthetic distance and “cultural 
 relativity” in the Troilus, and of the “tapestry” of the General 
 Prologue with its “two voices” (pace Tennyson), of the “phalli- 
 cism of the opening lines” {pace Freud) and “a designed together¬ 
 ness” of the portraits. No one has yet speculated on the failure 
 of Criseyde’s marriage or on Chaucer and the Nicene Creed, but 
 the Church Fathers have been approached, and only a short while 
 ago (1929) we were told that in the Knight’s Tale and in the 
 Troilus Chaucer “became interested in the deeper problems of 
 life to which he was able to see no solution except through reli¬ 
 gion.” The moral Chaucer as a companion to moral Gower. We 
 are still trying to correlate the Pilgrims’ Tales with the topog¬ 
 raphy of the journey. We are still seeking a unifying principle 
 in the humorous medley of the ‘Parlement’; and just recently 
 (1957) the principal lovers have been identified, on Baconian 
 lines, as Prince Lionel and Violanta Visconti. We are discovering 
 profound aspects of anarchy and “cosmos” in the Knight’s Tale; 
 and when one scholar takes up eighteen pages of PMLA to show 
 that the Tale was revised in 1390, another has to rebut them three 
 years later in eleven more pages. In 1929 a “would-be scholar” 
 came to Criseyde’s defense in PMLA and in the same year he was 
 refuted by two better men, one in PMLA, the other in SP. Some¬ 
 what earlier an eminent Chaucerian offered a theory that Chaucer 
 first planned to begin the Canterbury Tales with the Melibeus, 
 spoken by the Man of Law, but was dissatisfied and substituted 
 
CHAUCER AND THE SCHOLARS: THE PARDONER 
 
 45 
 
 the ‘Palamon and Arche.’ In 1935-1938 there was a curious flurry 
 on Chaucer’s “Wreched Engendring” by four scholars in six 
 articles in three learned journals. In 1947 a British scholar tried 
 to reintegrate, to the advantage of Chaucer’s sublety, the Theseus 
 as a noble due in the Knight’s Tale and the Theseus as a deceiver 
 of women in the ‘Legend of Good Women.’ When Chaucer 
 changed his mind about the St. Cecilia poem and neglected to 
 change the text, we are informed that unworthy sone of Eve was 
 no unusual description of a nun in the fourteenth century. Manly 
 saw the Monk as a “sad-faced pedant” and “a gloomy and unin¬ 
 teresting person”; but Tatlock saw in him a “combination of 
 force, culdvation and high self-respect.” And so on. These are 
 but random ensaumples. The old road is strewn with such parry 
 and thrust, expostulation and reply. Hypothesis begets hypothesis. 
 We have a passion for explaining everything and when no expla¬ 
 nation is at hand we invent one. Interpretation begets interpre¬ 
 tation and so runs into progressions, arithmetical, geometrical, 
 and harmonic. Welcome strictures occur occasionally, such as 
 Lumiansky’s observation: that Chaucer gave us in the Franklin’s 
 Tale his view of the perfect marriage is “a theory which comes 
 from Professor Kittredge rather than from Holy Writ.” (Profes¬ 
 sor Lumiansky is not a Harvard man; but, see below, his eye is 
 not without its beam.) As long ago as 1803 there came from 
 Charles Lamb, writing to Chaucer’s biographer Godwin, a pro¬ 
 test which was also prophecy: "... a conjecturing spirit, a fond¬ 
 ness for filling out the picture by supposing what Chaucer did 
 and how he felt, where the materials are scanty.” 
 
 Evidences, good and otherwise, of this accumulation of exe¬ 
 gesis will occur in later pages, but first a rather special case, that 
 of the poor Pardoner, will serve as a prime exhibit of the scholars 
 collaborating with the poet. 
 
 The Summoner and the Pardoner are introduced together at 
 the Tabard Inn but get separated on the road to Canterbury, when 
 the Summoner is paired off against the Friar and the Pardoner is 
 brought in to follow the Physician. The Pardoner is first de¬ 
 scribed with persistent irony and sarcasm. He is gentil, a friend 
 
CHAUCER AND THE SCHOLARS: THE PARDONER 
 
 46 
 
 and peer of the most repulsive of all the Pilgrims; he has come 
 straight from Rome with his false relics and he is singing a love 
 duet with the Summoner, who bears him a stif bur down, a base 
 accompaniment. He looks like a gelding or a mare. 1 But in his 
 profession he is a complete success; that is, the better the worse. 
 With his preaching he fleeces the country people, and in church 
 he sings the offertory like a master, for his own profit. 
 
 When next we see him he makes a display of himself by rash¬ 
 ly interrupting the Wife’s Prologue. He says, jokingly, that he is 
 planning to marry, but her remarks have frightened him. She 
 replies: Wait till I have finished my story of marital tribulation; 
 and he quickly subsides, with mock courtesy. The passage is 
 almost a draw. Then when the Physician has ended his sad tale 
 of Virginia, with its moral on the ‘merit’ of sin and the worm of 
 conscience— 
 
 Torsaheth synne, er synne yow forsake — 
 
 the Host, sentimentally heartbroken by the tragedy, makes his 
 clumsy comment and turns to the Pardoner for som myrthe or 
 japes as comic relief. 2 The Pardoner agrees, but asks for time to 
 eat and drink at this ale-stake. At this the gentils seem to fear 
 something ribald coming (what else would they expect from him, 
 by this time?) and insist on som moral thyng; and so the Pardon¬ 
 er obliges. These lines have begotten several variations, but they 
 need signify no more than Chaucer’s readjustment of the situa¬ 
 tion when the Pardoner tells the story first meant for the Parson. 
 For the Tale is an honest thyng and is made dishonest only by 
 the Pardoner’s devastating Prologue. 
 
 We were hardly prepared for the Pardoner’s exposure now of 
 his own debasement. Nothing in the General Prologue suggests 
 this kind of rascal and in the Wife’s Prologue we learned only that 
 he could gratuitously make a fool of himself. Hence another 
 variation. But there is perfect consistency between the fact that 
 he deceived the country people and the account of his methods. 
 Only his brazen display of the methods is surprising. 3 
 
 Having thus advertised himself as a ful vicious man, the Par¬ 
 doner proceeds with his moral tale, by which he is accustomed to 
 
CHAUCER AND THE SCHOLARS: THE PARDONER 
 
 47 
 
 get liberal contributions from his audience. He begins with the 
 Flemish rioters, inveighs against drunkenness, gluttony, gam¬ 
 bling, and swearing in no very orderly manner—was he therefore 
 drunk?—and then gets to his story of the Three Rioters, which 
 he tells with great skill. (The voice is now the voice of Geoffrey 
 Chaucer.) Then, at 1 . 889 the problems set in. These difficulties 
 exact interpretation, as Mr. Sedgewick will tell us. First there 
 is the reference to Avicenna on poisoning. The Parson might 
 have made it, for he was a learned man, a clerk. It is certainly 
 unexpected from the Pardoner. But we may frankly label it 
 “Auctor” as in the Ellesmere manuscript, and let it pass. 4 Next is 
 the fine oratorical outburst on the cursed sins of the tavern, so 
 called: a grand climax for the Parson in one sense and for the 
 Pardoner in another. Then the Pardoner speaks clearly: Now, 
 good people, beware of avarice and obtain my pardon by your 
 generous offerings. This has been his exhibition sermon, which 
 he marks beyond any question by turning to the Pilgrims with his 
 And lo, sires, thus I preche. Probably each reader has his own 
 interpretation. As for Chaucer, did he with deliberate malice 
 leave it completely ambiguous, laying a trap for future commenta¬ 
 tors? Or did he think it was all plain enough ? 5 The rest is fairly 
 simple, though open to secondary explanations. The Pardoner 
 has slipped, tries to recover by another brazen display, and boister¬ 
 ously congratulates the Pilgrims on having a Pardoner at hand for 
 any emergency. He goes further, applies directly to the Host as 
 moost envoluped in synne —an easy jest—and the Host loses his 
 temper and his sense of decency. The Pardoner is speechless with 
 anger. The worthy Knight intervenes, everybody laughs, and 
 the opponents kiss anon, all passion spent. 
 
 Thus far Chaucer’s Pardoner. Now the critics’ Pardoner. 
 
 Hardly an item in Chaucer’s account has escaped elaboration, 
 but the present review will try to cover only the principal points. 6 
 
 There has never been any question of the historical accuracy 
 of Chaucer’s picture. Jusserand, in his Chaucer Society Essay, 
 “Chaucer’s Pardoner and the Pope’s Pardoners,” showed, as Skeat 
 restated it, “that Chaucer has not in the least exaggerated; for 
 
CHAUCER AND THE SCHOLARS: THE PARDONER 
 
 48 
 
 exaggeration was not possible.” 7 But in his English Wayfaring 
 Life Jusserand indulged in a “classic fantasy” on the pardoner, 
 which coupled with a realistic touch of Chaucer’s started a train 
 of misstatements. Said Jusserand, giving his imagination wing, 
 but not without an eye on Chaucer’s text: 
 
 On the tavern bench the pardoner is still seated. There come Chau¬ 
 cer, the knight, the squire, the friar, the host—old acquaintances. We 
 are by ourselves, no one need be afraid to speak, the foaming ale ren¬ 
 ders hearts expansive; and the unseen coils of that tortuous soul un¬ 
 fold to view; he gives the summary of a whole life, the theory of his 
 existence, the key to his secrets. What matters his frankness? he know s 
 that it cannot hurt him; time and again has the bishop brought his 
 practices to light, but the crowd always troops around him. And 
 who knows if his companions—who knows if his more enlightened 
 companions, to whom he shows the concealed springs of the auto¬ 
 maton—will, to-morrow, believe it lifeless? (English Transl. p. 189). 
 
 This is so patently Jusserand’s picture that no charges may be 
 laid against the author. But Chaucer had let his Pardoner say 
 he ere at this ale-stake/I wol hothe dryn\e, and eten of a ca\e. 
 Without explicity telling us, Chaucer pretends that the Pilgrims 
 have paused in front of an inn. The inn is there—you_recognize 
 it by the ale-stake. And it is not there, because Chaucer omitted 
 to mention it. Such simple reasoning, however, did not satisfy 
 Professor Gerould. First in 1935 and again in 1952 8 he brought 
 forward the picture of the Pardoner’s friend the Summoner— 
 
 A gerland had he set up-on his heed, 
 
 As greet as it were for an ale-stake; 
 
 A bo\eler had he maad him of a ca\e. 
 
 But this was back in the General Prologue (666-68) at the Tabard 
 Inn. There Chaucer gave us the Summoner both in Soudiwark 
 (in that place, 623) and also riding with the Pardoner (669): 
 Professor Gerould takes the ale-stake from its first appearance in 
 a simile, creates it anew, and contributes to the Canterbury Tales 
 this piece of low comedy: “So the Pardoner, making his little 
 joke about the ale-stake, leaned over and broke off a bit of his 
 companion’s buckler.” 9 
 
CHAUCER AND THE SCHOLARS: THE PARDONER 
 
 49 
 
 But this is not all. Tupper maintained that the Pardoner told 
 his story in a tavern, 10 and Brown agreed; 11 and Legouis said, “il 
 est entre dans la taverne”; 12 and Robinson said (p. 834), “apparent¬ 
 ly ... at the tavern” and then “in a tavern,” to give emphasis, as 
 Tupper claimed, to “the humor of the situation.” At least, says 
 Robinson, “there is no indication that they take the road before 
 the Pardoner begins”; nor, in fact, any indication to the contrary. 
 None was needed, for it is part of the fiction—unrealistic as diat 
 may be—that the Pilgrims all told their tales as they rode. If the 
 scene must be filled in, since Chaucer did not, one may imagine 
 that just as the Host called on the Pardoner the cavalcade was 
 approaching an inn; the Pardoner, pointing up at the ale-stake, 
 said: Wait here while I have a drink and a bite; then they pro¬ 
 ceed on their way. Well, the ale-stake, which is all that Chaucer 
 gave us, implies an inn, and it would of course be outside the inn. 
 The rest is unnecessary embroidery. 
 
 The “Flanders heresy” (Sedgewick) is no more than a sugges¬ 
 tion that “through the Pardoner, a professional moralizer,” Chau¬ 
 cer was “warning his King and country” against contemporary 
 conditions in Flanders. 13 There was reason enough, to be sure, but 
 there is also the exemplum of Thomas of Cantimpre which begins 
 “In marchia Flandrie” and another in the same collection which 
 has “interesting correspondences” with the Pardoner’s Tale. 
 
 The Tale itself has two main parts, one of them, a kind of 
 introduction—Chaucer was given to long introductions—is the 
 tavern scene laid, for local color, In Flaunders whylom with its 
 homiletic attack on the Sins of the Tavern; the other is the 
 exemplum. The transition is abrupt, but need not be called 
 clumsy (Sedgewick, p. 439), and has bothered some because in 
 Flanders, at the outset, there was a whole company of rioters and 
 now only three of which I telle, i.e., I am about to tell. 14 
 
 These are small matters. The ‘sermon’ is more serious, and 
 has brought forth various surmises. The first thing to recognize 
 is that the Tale, both parts of it, is, as the Pardoner says, a dis¬ 
 course which he regularly uses to extract money from his hearers: 
 / preche no thyng but for coveitise. He starts with the Flemish 
 revelers as a sort of text and a pretended audience, for greater 
 
CHAUCER AND THE SCHOLARS: THE PARDONER 
 
 5 ° 
 
 vividness; and having softened up his hearers (not the Flemings, 
 needless to say) with a rousing picture of their sins, drunkenness, 
 gluttony, gambling, and so on, he proceeds to the exemplum 
 which brings home to them the particular vice of avarice, and, 
 for our amusement, the Pardoner’s also. This is plain enough, 
 only it was misleading to call the first discourse a ‘sermon’ and 
 then test it for the six parts of a typical sermon as prescribed by 
 the medieval treatises. 15 It is still worse to say that the sermon 
 “contains nothing designed to induce the congregation to come 
 forward and offer to his relics. Has he, for the time being, com¬ 
 pletely forgotten salesmanship?” The question is already an¬ 
 swered. 
 
 Professor Gerould’s interpretation is quite different and very 
 appealing: the Pardoner was already drunk and having bitten off 
 some of the Summoner’s cake he 
 
 . . . started to think of some ‘honest thing,’ and succeeded in pulling 
 out of his befuddled brain the text of i Timothy vi, io. This set him 
 off, with drunken shamelessness, on an account of his scandalous way 
 of life. The discourse, which is roughly in the form of one of his 
 sermons, suggested to him ensamples and brought back to his mind 
 the tale he had to tell. 16 
 
 This theory, which explains so much, is elaborated with restrained 
 eloquence in the Chaucerian Essays; I will not mar the fuller form 
 by excerpts. It explains the erratic incoherence of the sermon, 17 
 and above all it accounts for the blatant exposure of the Pardoner’s 
 depravity, which without the aid of alcohol would have been 
 incredible. It poses, however, another kind of credibility: whe¬ 
 ther Chaucer would agree; whether Professor Gerould’s empathy 
 has assigned to the poet the skilful execution of a sublety outside 
 of his habitual methods. 
 
 Others have taken the indecent exposure more or less for grant¬ 
 ed. Ten Brink said simply, the Pardoner “unmasks his trade and 
 practices with the shamelessness and bare-faced frankness which 
 the atmosphere of the Canterbury Tales requires,” without justify¬ 
 ing the requirement. Sedgewick undertakes to justify the ex¬ 
 posure by a circuitous route. When the Pardoner asked for time 
 to drink before he starts his Tale the gentles utter a “swift cry”— 
 
CHAUCER AND THE SCHOLARS: THE PARDONER 51 
 
 Nay, lat hym telle us of no ribaudye — 
 
 which 
 
 has a double importance. On its surface it recalls the portrait of the 
 rascal as he has appeared in the respectable part of the Pilgrimage: 
 too clever to be predictable, physically abnormal, disturbingly contra¬ 
 dictory, scoundrelly beyond words, a clear candidate for interdict. 
 Even the Wife of Bath has eyed him darkly. [So far we agree.] As 
 for the bawdry which the Miller has already uttered in their hearing, 
 they had expected he would tell ‘his cherles tale in his manere,’ and 
 they had known the worst he could do before he began. [This allows 
 too little for the brightness of the Miller’s Tale, and nothing for the 
 bold bawdry of the Reeve’s.] But they were troubled by the Pardon¬ 
 er’s duplicity: altogether too visible on the one hand, and on the 
 other a quite unknown quantity. If the inevitable fabliau came from 
 the visible side, no doubt they could stand it; it was the other quarter 
 they feared. Ignotum pro horrendo. This, I believe, is a possible 
 reading of the gentles’ mind, or of what Chaucer thought would be 
 there. 
 
 So they ask for som moral thyng and this command “the Pardon¬ 
 er knows he dare not disobey.” It is “a galling choice,” because 
 to tell a moral tale as such would be out of character; “since he 
 is known to be a charlatan, he can prove he is the cleverest of his 
 kind.” He pauses for his drink. 
 
 But only for a moment. We can easily imagine his rapid thinking as 
 he swallows his ale: ‘I have it! The Wife made a hit with her con¬ 
 fessions. Why shouldn’t I follow her example and give an exhibition, 
 with running comment, of my technique? They have asked for 
 morality and they shall have it; but it will be morality with my special 
 difference, from the mouth of a dark horse. There can be no risk. 
 Here and now I am perfectly secure.’ 
 
 Much of this, Mr. Sedgewick admits frankly is “naked ‘assump¬ 
 tion,’ ” but “By the device of the ‘protest’ Chaucer jockeys his 
 Pardoner into a corner .... The charlatan’s self-revelation is 
 therefore, not only ‘credible’ on other grounds, it is as near to 
 dramatic inevitability as it can be made.” 
 
 This is subtle and ingenious. As special pleading it may not 
 seem cogent, but as private supplementation it is richly imagina¬ 
 tive. The objection to it is that it needlessly imputes to Chaucer 
 
5 2 
 
 CHAUCER AND THE SCHOLARS: THE PARDONER 
 
 an elaborate justification for a simple proceeding. The Pardoner 
 was a noble ecclesiastic and proud of his successes; he welcomed 
 an opportunity to show off before his fellow pilgrims; and Chau¬ 
 cer, knowing also that confession was a recognized literary de¬ 
 vice, gave him free rein. If he had anything up his sleeve, it 
 was the grand climax in which the Pardoner is led from one 
 excess to another and then to complete deflation. 
 
 Professor Gerould put his finger on a tender spot when he 
 spoke of the “complexities” of the Pardoner’s “personality,” and 
 in the same paragraph called him “a murky figure.” In truth, 
 the pardoner whom Professor Manly saw, who “must have been 
 nearly as familiar to Chaucer’s readers as was Rouncival itself, 
 which they passed daily as they journeyed between London and 
 Westminster,” 18 may very well have had a complex personality 
 and Chaucer may have known him very well, even to his “secret” 
 deformity. But the Pardoner of the Canterbury pilgrimage is 
 only what Chaucer made him. The description of him is so 
 circumstantial—his shrill voice, his beardless face, his sparse yellow 
 hair—as to suggest a living model; and it would seem that a 
 pardoner of Rouncival with such a marked appearance should 
 have been easily recognizable. But Chaucer never said that his 
 Pardoner was a eunuchus ex nativitate and Chaucer’s readers 
 journeying between London and Westminster would not be 
 likely to know that he was, however often they passed him. We 
 have actually confused two figures, Chaucer’s Pilgrim and his 
 possible model: one an extraordinary fiction, the other, in so far 
 as he existed, an unusual human being; and only Chaucer knew 
 how much alike the two were. This would seem to be simple and 
 obvious. We must admit then that we know only the Pardoner 
 of our text and we know about him only so much as Chaucer 
 reported. It may be a quibble to insist that a fictional character 
 has no “personality,” but however adroitly genius may mingle 
 appearance and reality the distinction stands; however skilfully an 
 author may create the illusion, the man remains a fiction with no 
 existence off the printed page; and the most we can say is that 
 Chaucer’s Pardoner resembles a complex personality according to 
 those data which Chaucer provided. So we avoid the risk of 
 
CHAUCER AND THE SCHOLARS: THE PARDONER 
 
 53 
 
 fallacy if we ask merely whether those data afford a simplex- 
 complex which is self-consistent and also consistent with our 
 experience of human beings. The Pardoner has no private life 
 except in our imagination guided by Chaucer’s hints, and our 
 imaginadon requires strict surveillance in such matters. We 
 know, for example, that the Pardoner was the kind of man who 
 would boastingly display his worst qualities, but we cannot be 
 sure, nor do we need to be, that he was as black as he chose to 
 paint himself. He had certain evil characteristics which he re¬ 
 vealed, but it does not follow that he was a drunkard or that 
 having paused to drink while he recalled a good story he was so 
 drunk he could not keep his wits about him—undl the poet 
 pushed him aside (as he “pushed his tankard aside”) and soberly 
 told his story for him, only to let the intoxication return when 
 the story was done. 
 
 Would Chaucer accept this interpretation? Is there good 
 ground for supposing that Chaucer meant to depict the Pardoner 
 as drunk and expected us to recognize his intention? This may 
 be a hard question to answer, but surely it is uncritical to evade 
 it. In his chapter on “The Pardoner’s Secret” Professor Curry is 
 careful to anticipate such a quesdon. “Before we can grasp the 
 full meaning of the poet’s purpose ... it becomes necessary to 
 acquire as nearly as possible the point of view with which the 
 fourteenth century Englishman looked upon the world” (p. 56). 
 Then, however, he states his thesis guardedly, that Chaucer’s 
 “selection of both form and feature given to many of his charac¬ 
 ters is determined in large measure or at least influenced, I believe, 
 by” the books on physiognomy. The next step is to show from 
 those books, always assuming that Chaucer was acquainted with 
 them, that many of the features of the Pardoner reveal him as a 
 eunuchus ex nativitate; and from here it looks like an easy step 
 to the position that Chaucer intended to represent the Pardoner 
 as recognizably a eunuch. The textual evidence is 
 
 / trow he were a geldyng or a mare; 
 
 which is plain enough to be no secret, the other details being 
 corroborative, but not plain enough to prove eunuchism. It need 
 
CHAUCER AND THE SCHOLARS: THE PARDONER 
 
 54 
 
 only mean: ‘it is pretty obvious that he was very effeminate.’ 19 
 To go beyond this is interpretation, 20 and nothing that follows 
 requires us to go further. It is amusing to fancy that Chaucer 
 really knew that his Pardoner was a eunuch and took pleasure in 
 saying so with a metaphor, but it is only an amusing fancy. 
 Harry Bailey (who of course had not read the General Prologue) 
 did not think so (C 952). 
 
 The climax, the endlink in which the Pardoner addresses the 
 Pilgrims and provokes the Host’s wrath, has tempted the inter¬ 
 preters beyond their strength. Only Carleton Brown refused to 
 be drawn: “His tale once concluded, the Pardoner, like the Clerk, 
 relaxed into a mood of pure raillery” (p. xxxv). He noted Kitt- 
 redge’s version and Sisam’s observation that it does not take 
 account of the formal purpose of the closing prayer. He dis¬ 
 missed Curry’s version with a remark which might be writ large 
 over what now follows: “The obvious difficulty with this expla¬ 
 nation is that it must be read into Chaucer’s text.” 
 
 Kittredge’s version is itself a kind of climax. It goes back to 
 his Atlantic Monthly ardcle of 1893 and was reproduced as the 
 grand finale of his Johns Hopkins lectures. 21 It is entirely con¬ 
 sistent with his enthusiastic dramatizing of the Canterbury Tales, 
 but I have reason to believe that he was not himself taken in by it. 
 Like the Pardoner, Kittredge had “the histrionic temperament.” 
 The Pardoner’s cynical self-portrait was “dramatically inevitable, 
 a forestalling of the Pilgrims’ judgment”; and he “is willing to 
 pass for a knave, but objects to be taken for a fool.” 22 Then after 
 the display of his pulpit oratory, “suddenly, unexpectedly, without 
 an instant’s warning, his cynicism falls away, and he utters the 
 solemn words: ‘May Christ, the physician of our souls...’ ... and 
 now, under the spell of the wonderful story he has told, he suffers 
 a very paroxysm of agonized sincerity.” Then follows the equally 
 sudden reaction and the Pardoner “takes refuge from himself in 
 a wild orgy of reckless jesting.” Finally, “nobody but Geoffrey 
 Chaucer divined the tragic face behind die satyr’s mask”—nobody 
 except G. L. Kittredge, who made a blank verse line for it. This 
 is real divination; one is delighted to read it; but it is not Chaucer. 
 
CHAUCER AND THE SCHOLARS: THE PARDONER 
 
 55 
 
 Yet Chaucer left the door open and we can all walk through. 
 If he had an interpretation of his own he kept the secret. Robin¬ 
 son simply summarizes Kittredge (p. 837); Lowes follows: “a 
 single sharp moment of revulsion.” 23 Curry calls this “a pleasant 
 but unconvincing” solution of the problem, and adds his own. 
 The turning point is 
 
 only a preparation for his proposed master-stroke of deception. . . . 
 To hypnotize the Pilgrims into buying relics after he has declared 
 their worthlessness and his own perfidy, would constitute the crown¬ 
 ing success of his career. Turning suddenly to them, he says in effect: 
 ‘Lo, sirs, this is the way I preach to ignorant people. But you are my 
 friends; may God grant that you may receive the pardon of Jesus 
 Christ; I would never deceive you! Come, now, and kiss this relic.’ 
 This is, moreover, the correct manner in which to conclude a well- 
 constructed oration; having no customary audience, he is compelled 
 to make shift with an appeal to the Pilgrims themselves. But he 
 reckons without his Host! 24 
 
 Sedgewick rejects the solutions of both Kittredge and Curry. 
 The benedicdonal ending is conventional and also “a thoroughly 
 sincere expression of personal feeling”; for the Pardoner means: 
 “I have proclaimed myself a charlatan but I would not have you 
 think me a heretic.” The rest is “ironic banter” or “impudent 
 horseplay.” “Only an utter fool would seriously ask the Knight 
 and the Monk, not to speak of the Host, to kneel down or else 
 give money ‘at every miles ende.’ ” But here the Pardoner over¬ 
 reaches himself; for “Chaucer, it seems to me, has made up his 
 mind that this lofty rogue should take a fall .... At any rate, 
 the fall was arranged.” “I imagine,” continues Sedgewick, 
 
 that a hush had fallen over the pilgrims as the Pardoner brings his 
 “sermon” to a close. No one, not even the Host, has a word to say. 
 True, there is no basis for this assumption in the text except that a 
 shift is plainly indicated. The preacher evidently intends to stop, does 
 stop in fact—and then goes on. . . . 
 
 Professor Gerould has a fresh variant, with several surprises 
 coming after his first remarks on the Pardoner’s “personality.” 
 With the end of the Tale “his intoxication, whether with ale or 
 with his own acting, appears suddenly to end.” His words about 
 
56 CHAUCER AND THE SCHOLARS: THE PARDONER 
 
 Christ’s pardon “are words of truth and soberness, and puzzling 
 words” as coming from the Pardoner. But 
 
 we should be unwise to assume that they are “out of character.” The 
 Pardoner is Chaucer’s creation .... His unexpected and momentary 
 exhibition of decency must be accepted without reserve, since his author 
 attributed it to him .... One may guess that Chaucer put the words 
 in his mouth because he meant him to be a human being. He was a 
 very wicked man, but no devil. 
 
 And in a moment Professor Gerould says: “the Pardoner is so 
 amusing that he fails to shock us by his wickedness.” 
 
 This adds two new problems: because Chaucer did it, is it 
 therefore right ? and are we amused ? The former is fundamental 
 to nearly all Chaucer criticism; the latter concerning the Pardoner, 
 has already received contradictory answers. Professor Patch says: 
 “His companionship with the horrible Summoner in the song 
 ‘Come hider, love, to me’ is the most violent satire in all Chaucer’s 
 poetry. The insinuation shows the poet’s hatred” (p. 164). This 
 puts the worst possible construction on what may be only reckless 
 levity. If true, it shows the Pardoner as even more brazen than 
 his later revelations do; it makes him flaunt his homosexuality 
 before all the Pilgrims. Sedgewick thinks Patch’s language too 
 strong and comments that “The Pardoner would be quite capable 
 of explaining that he learned his ditty from the Pope.” And 
 how can we be sure that Chaucer hated the Pardoner ? No doubt 
 he disapproved of the contemporary practices which his character 
 illustrates; but this is not the same as hating the character he 
 created. One remembers Chesterton’s quip that the poet was 
 himself “a gentle pardoner.” It is hard to think of Geoffrey Chau¬ 
 cer as capable of hatred. But on the aesthetic side, has he made his 
 Pardoner, the pilgrim invented for the Canterbury journey, a 
 revolting figure? There may not have been any moment of 
 agonized sincerity, but the man had his good points. He seems to 
 have been honest in giving himself away, and his evident vitality 
 is almost enough to save him from our censure. Both he and the 
 Wife of Bath are artistic creations, not real people. And the 
 crowning incident of the final episode is: Anon they \iste, the 
 
CHAUCER AND THE SCHOLARS: THE PARDONER 
 
 57 
 
 bluff hearty Host and the dreadful vicious Pardoner. A beautiful 
 benediction. 
 
 There are more of these critical exchanges, and probably not 
 all the permutations and combinations have yet appeared in print. 
 Let one more suffice. Professor Lumiansky has conjectured that 
 the Pardoner has joined the pilgrimage—of course the Pardoner 
 had no choice in the matter; he is there because Chaucer put him 
 there— 
 
 with the definite purpose of extracting money from his travelling com¬ 
 panions by a refinement of his usual methods of salesmanship among 
 the peasants, directs his actions and words throughout toward that end 
 and fails, after almost succeeding, because he reverts to those usual 
 methods at the crucial moment . 25 
 
 This long report of clashing views would be unwarranted 
 without a moral. The imagination is free, though enthusiasts may 
 sometimes mean license when they cry liberty. There is even 
 room in a crowded world for many “damnable heresies,” if they 
 lie along the pilgrim’s way to St. Truth. One recalls the now 
 dead controversies over a stanzaic ‘Palamon and Arcite,’ over the 
 priority of the F or G prologue to the ‘Legend of Good Women,’ 
 over the schematic treatment of the Seven Sins, and the search for 
 a key to the three suitors of the ‘Parlement’; even the disturbances 
 over the character of Criseyde have abated. 
 
 The Pardoner problem may some day be solved or a general 
 agreement reached, if certain distinctions are observed. For there 
 are levels of the glorious art of glossing, with varying degrees of 
 justification or merit. At the lowest and safest is the exercise of 
 restating in the language of exposition what is actually in the 
 text—the method of parallel lines. Above this is the development 
 or elaboration of what is in the text, from the mere explanation 
 of hard words and historical background to the use of these for 
 illustration and clarification—a method of rising spirals. Further, 
 there is a critically intuitive extension of the text—in parabolic 
 curves—supplementing, enlarging the picture (without distor¬ 
 tion), and adding perspective depth. Lastly, there is a purely 
 tangential kind of interpretation in which the critic, spider-like, 
 
5 8 CHAUCER AND THE SCHOLARS: THE PARDONER 
 
 spins out of his own substance impertinent contributions of his 
 own, supplanting the text^l Between these levels are many grada¬ 
 tions whereby one merges into another, and perhaps the critic 
 himself cannot always say what he is trying to do. Some of these 
 methods involve what Bacon calls the vanities of learning. Often 
 there seems to be a tacit assumption that Chaucer did not know 
 what he was about and therefore is in need of the modern com¬ 
 mentator to supply a native deficiency. This extends from filling 
 in what Chaucer only sketched to the critic’s pitting his own 
 skill against the poet’s, apparently hoping that we shall enjoy his 
 new set of variations as much as we did the original theme . 1 The 
 most daring and not the most uncommon method is that of divin¬ 
 ing what was, or must have been, in Chaucer’s mind when he 
 wrote, though he failed to make it clear, and seeing deeper into 
 Chaucer’s purpose than was apparent to other critics or even to 
 Chaucer himself. The most unfortunate, because so obviously 
 uncritical, attempt to explain Chaucer rests on an assumption that 
 the King can do no Wrong, that Chaucer was always perfect and 
 needs only our patience or ingenuity to make everything artisti¬ 
 cally neat and tidy. The reasons behind this attitude are some¬ 
 times defensive and sometimes genuinely admiring; defensive 
 when they imply a band of the initiate and devout who must 
 maintain the dignity of the cult, and even among the genuine 
 admirers a passion for justifying their poet at all points at all costs. 
 tjBut Chaucer has merits enough to support a few charges of 
 error. It would be more decent and more sane to acknowledge 
 the faults rather than obscure them\ 
 
 Most of all this confusion came of what Chaucer had left 
 undone. Since the Canterbury Tales is an unfinished work, it 
 stands to reason that the Pardoner is an unfinished ‘character.’ 
 Who knows what plans Chaucer had for him before the Pilgrims 
 were reseated at the Tabard Inn, or what might occur to Chau¬ 
 cer’s fertile mind for subsequent development or clarification? 
 The still incomplete pieces may be fitted together in different 
 patterns; but what business have we to arrange them according 
 to our limited knowledge and pretend that such or such must 
 have been the poet’s intention ? The line between legitimate and 
 
CHAUCER AND THE SCHOLARS: THE PARDONER 
 
 59 
 
 illegitimate speculative supplementation may be hard to draw, but 
 the futility of enlarging upon Chaucer’s hints without proper 
 reserve or caution is well illustrated by the scholars’ toying with 
 this Pardoner, some of it ingenious, some of it absurd, and very 
 little of it necessary. One makes a clever guess; another chal¬ 
 lenges it; and voila, a problem, a controversy, and more learned 
 articles. 
 
chapter iii. THE CANTERBURY 
 
 TALES 
 
 i. THE CANTERBURY FELLOWSHIP 
 
 T HE General Prologue, so-called by modern editors, is first 
 of all an introduction to the Tales: it gives the preliminary 
 setting, presents descriptively and analytically the dramatis per¬ 
 sonae, and sets the dramatic machinery in motion; and it does all 
 these things supremely well, with admirable conciseness and 
 clarity. It is consistently admired and has been called Chaucer’s 
 greatest achievement. But it has certain peculiarities which illus¬ 
 trate Chaucer’s way of writing elsewhere. 
 
 The most striking characteristic, at the very outset, is his 
 mingling or contrast of a formal style and the friendly, almost 
 casual, manner, which looks like carelessness; and so cunningly 
 are the two interwoven that one is often at a loss to distinguish 
 between the artless and the well concealed artistry. There are 
 ri m es when as one reads—not only in the General Prologue but 
 throughout the Complete Wor\s —one feels that Chaucer is mere¬ 
 ly extemporizing; and there are other times when both the style 
 itself and also the manuscript evidence show careful workman¬ 
 ship and revision. The best and the less good are so frequently in 
 close juxtaposition as to make one wonder if what one sees is 
 really there. &"*'*'*' 
 
 Nothing could be finer than^the opening sentence of the 
 General Prologue. Its description of spring is both conventional, 
 with a long history , 1 and fresh; the sentence is neatly balanced on 
 the when — then, and the then part is divided into general and 
 particular; and its formalism is relieved by little parentheses and 
 asides. Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth balances Aprille with 
 his shoures soote. The prose order of pilgrimages ... To feme is 
 varied by an intruded but parallel clause: And palmeres for to 
 se\en straunge strondes. It all starts with a metrical attaque on 
 
THE CANTERBURY FELLOWSHIP 
 
 6l 
 
 the stressed first syllable, it ebbs and flows and subsides on the 
 sound of seef{€ echoing soote. It has the breath of spring and it 
 is brightened, to offset a little the conventional mode, with hints 
 of humor. Zephyr inspires the tender buds figuratively and 
 breathes literally on them. The little birds, so moved by the 
 vernal impulse, both sing all night and sleep all night (with one 
 eye open) or seem to. It sharpens the attention to get just the 
 right meaning of April’s sun having run its half-course in the 
 Ram. Yet with these and other excellences there are bothersome 
 details. 
 
 The abstract figure of April piercing the drought of March 
 hardly prepares us for the apparently literal figure of bathing 
 every vein; and veyne must be transfigured to the sense of root, 
 rootlet. Moreover, 
 
 in swich licour 
 
 Of which vertu engendred is the flour 
 
 is so condensed as almost to defy syntax. It must mean ‘in such 
 a liquid as that by whose power or virtue the flower is begotten,’ 
 with a subtle suggestion of insemination (if the word is not too 
 modern); but the correlatives swich . . . which are not clearly 
 handled and if Of means ‘by’ it must be used twice to make 
 which become ‘whose.’ No one misses the general sense, but it is 
 an extremely elaborate way of saying that April showers bring 
 May flowers; and the grammar is less than perfect. Any poet may 
 do slight violence to language; but is it here a conscious forcing 
 or a small carelessness ? And are we to understand that pilgrims 
 visit the Becket shrine chiefly because the saint has helped them 
 in recent illnesses? and that each of the twenty-nine to follow is 
 in some sort gratefully convalescent? Why an emphasis on this 
 particular reason for a pilgrimage to St. Thomas of Canterbury ? 2 
 
 Now the style changes. The first carefully constructed sen¬ 
 tence of eighteen lines is followed by one only half as long and 
 loosely constructed: ‘It happened that one day at that time of year 
 at night a group of fully twenty-nine miscellaneous persons had 
 arrived at the inn, people who had come together by chance, being 
 all pilgrims on their way to Canterbury.’ This is informal truly. 
 
62 
 
 THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 ‘And to be brief about it, by the time the sun had set [it was al¬ 
 ready night, eight lines before, when they arrived at the inn] I had 
 become so well acquainted with them that they invited me to 
 join their party.’ Are we to understand that twenty-nine, a very 
 precise number, sundry persons had united themselves into a 
 felaweshipe before they reached the Tabard? Then the poet 
 says— 
 
 ther as I yow devyse. 
 
 But nathelees, whil 1 have tyme and space, 
 
 Er that 1 jerther in this tale pace, . . . 
 
 The first / is the Active Pilgrim whom we think of as Chaucer 
 though he is never so named, and who is going to tell us about 
 the whole journey; the second both is and is not. 3 Whil 1 have 
 tyme to give you a description of each of die twenty-nine implies 
 that Chaucer the Pilgrim will spend the rest of the night setting 
 down his impressions of the previous evening, but it really says 
 that Chaucer the poet thinks it appropriate to describe his charac¬ 
 ters before the acdon of his story begins. This may be and proba¬ 
 bly is a humorous confusion, but the reader must look sharp to 
 recognize it. Again, when the portraits are finished, the same 
 ambiguity returns. 
 
 Now have l toold you shortly, in a clause, 
 
 Th’estaat, th’array, the nomhre, and ee\ the cause 
 Why that assembled was this compaignyne 
 In Southwer\. . . . 
 
 It is the author speaking; but he continues: 
 
 But now is tyme to yow for to telle 
 How that we baren us that il\e nyght, 
 
 and the author and Pilgrim are reunited. The Host is introduced, 
 the compact agreed upon, and the next morning they are all on 
 their way. 
 
 In between is the long clause containing the famous series of 
 vignettes. We soon discover that the aventure which brought 
 these divers folk together was of the poet’s own making. There 
 
THE CANTERBURY FELLOWSHIP 
 
 63 
 
 are first a Knight, his son, and his Yeoman, a Prioress, a Monk, 
 and a Friar: a natural selection and arrangement; but notice that 
 as they descend the social scale they also diminsh in moral vertu. 
 Next is the Merchant, a somewhat sinister figure, loosely attached 
 to the Friar in that the latter’s name is given at the end of his 
 description and the Merchant’s withheld. Next is the Clerk, a 
 contrast. Then come, higher up the scale, the Man of Law and 
 the Franklin together; but their companionship is not mentioned 
 again. Then the five burgesses and their Cook, and so on. There 
 is order, but it is not too obvious. We share the friendly atmos¬ 
 phere of that first meeting at the Tabard. 
 
 It seems to me, Chaucer begins the series,— 
 
 Me thinketh it accordaunt to resoun 
 To telle yow al the condicioun 
 Of ech of hem, so as it semed me, 
 
 And w hie he they weren and of what degree, 
 
 And ee\ in what array that they were inne. 
 
 Al the-c ondicioun is th us-distr-ihuted-under three heads: general 
 character, rank, and appearance. The first And is epexegetical. 
 
 For the Knight these three, plainly labeled, appear in due 
 sequence, but there is some irregularity in the listing of his cam¬ 
 paigns; they do not follow a geographical pattern nor are they 
 (so far as they can be identified) in chronological order; they 
 begin with the capture of Alexandria in 1365, shift to Grenada 
 and Algezir in 1343 and 1344, and then back to the 1360’s with 
 the lord of Palatye. For the Squire the order is: general state¬ 
 ment, appearance, age, height, physical powers, youthful exploits, 
 appearance, musical accomplishments, general statement, appear¬ 
 ance, horsemanship, other accomplishments, zeal as a lover, and 
 finally his courtesy, humility, and—with a nimble twist dwindling 
 the showy young man—usefulness: 
 
 And carf biforn his fader at the table. 
 
 Altogether a most effective disorder, though more like a bright 
 miniature in a manuscript than the description of. a real person. 
 
THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 64 
 
 The fillip for a last line is duplicated in the next: after a total 
 picture of a professional woodsman— 
 
 A forster was he, soothly, as 1 gesse; 
 
 and a little later, with variation, closing the accounts of the Friar 
 and the Merchant: 7 noot how men him calle, that is, I’d better 
 not name him. A signal specimen of the method of alternation, 
 of separating details one would expect to find together, already 
 seen in the Squire, occurs at the end of the Franklin’s portrait: 
 he was lord at sessions and often knight of the shire, a dagger 
 and a pouch hung from his girdle, he had been a sheriff and a 
 countour; and even more strikingly in the Miller’s: his nostrils 
 were black, he carried a sword and buckler, his mouth was big. 
 
 The tripartite formula, applied carefully for the Knight, aban¬ 
 doned for the Squire and the Yeoman, is taken up again with 
 the Prioress, save that it begins with her smile and her favorite 
 oath; and the last twelve lines, one fourth of the whole, are 
 devoted to her appearance. For the Monk, however, the method 
 is different: the revealing line is 
 
 And 1 seyde his opinion was good. 
 
 Thus we are permitted to hear the narrator conversing with the 
 Monk, exchanging views and drawing him out. The effect is 
 to remind us of the earlier line, 
 
 So hadde I spoken with hem everichon, 
 
 and to confirm our impression that the descriptions were based 
 on personal interviews:—although we had not assumed that the 
 Knight told him about all those campaigns or that the Prioress 
 displayed, on first introduction, some of her personal weaknesses. 
 The device used for the Monk recurs when we learn that the 
 Friar was better acquainted with inn-keepers and barmaids than 
 with the sick and the poor, because, as he said— 
 
 For unto swich a worthy man as he 
 Accorded nat, as by his facultee, 
 
 To have with si\e lazars aqueyntaunce. 
 
 “It is nat honest’’ [said he,] it may nat avaunce 
 For to delen with no swich poraille. 
 
THE CANTERBURY FELLOWSHIP 65 
 
 And there are other slight indications of this conversational 
 method, as with the Merchant: 
 
 His resons he spa\ ful solempnely, 
 
 Sownynge alwey th’encrees of his wynnyng: 
 
 He wolde [he said] the see were kept. . . . 
 
 The Squire’s surcoat like a meadow 
 
 Al ful of fresshe floures, whyte and reede, 
 is one thing, his father’s gypon 
 
 Al bismotered with his habergeon 
 
 is quite another. We are not to wonder, for example, where the 
 Knight landed when he was late ycome from his viage, and why 
 he was in such haste to reach the shrine of St. Thomas, or where 
 and when his son met him dressed in all his finery, or why he 
 had with him his Yeoman fully equipped for his business of 
 woodcraft. These and many more such matters are not so much 
 left to our imagination as not to be considered at all. 
 
 So with the other portraits. We hear almost as much about 
 the wives of the burgesses as about them, and nothing about 
 them individually; the array of the Cook is limited to his mormal 
 and of the Plowman to his tabard; the Manciple’s is omitted 
 altogether. Each portrait has its special merit. Variety is the 
 guiding principle. The formula was introduced only to be neg¬ 
 lected. 
 
 In short, Chaucer uses in alternation or in combination three 
 methods as he finds them convenient, that of personal observa¬ 
 tion, that of question and answer, and that of the omniscient 
 author. Realistic reporting alternates with literary convention. 
 
 Still a different point of view results from the blend of Pil¬ 
 grim-narrator and omniscient author. It was natural to describe 
 the Knight as having good horses and the Monk as having a 
 brown palfrey with jingling bridle and the Merchant as sitting 
 high on his horse, for these are generalizing details. But when we 
 are told (at 1 . 287) that the Clerk’s horse was as lean as a rake, 
 we must look ahead from the gathering at the inn to the fellow¬ 
 ship on the road: the Clerk would not have a horse while pursu- 
 
66 
 
 THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 ing his studies at Oxford. This shift, this double use of time, 
 continues in the pictures of the Man of Law, the Wife of Bath, 
 and the Plowman, who rode a mare. We are both at the Tabard 
 and on the way to Canterbury. Then the method seems to change 
 again, this time with a real difference. 
 
 After presenting the first twenty-one—the Prioress had a Nun 
 and three Priests with her, but they are only mentioned in pass¬ 
 ing—Chaucer pauses to draw breath. The list is already almost 
 too long and varied for easy absorption by even a very attentive 
 reader, to say nothing of listeners. Clear, concise, brilliant as the 
 portraits are, the pace has been so rapid that the final effect, 
 except after repeated rereading, is in danger of becoming con¬ 
 fused. Recognizing this, Chaucer pauses at 1 . 542, reassuringly, 
 as much as to say: we are nearing the end, there are only five 
 more— 
 
 Ther was also a Reve, and a Millere, 
 
 A Somnour, and a Pardoner also, 
 
 A Manciple, and myself—ther were namol 
 
 But this is not all. Long ago Miss Hammond gave us the hint, 
 often neglected, that Chaucer’s first plan included only those 
 foregoing Pilgrims. He later added the final five when he saw 
 the opportunity to enliven the pilgrimage by the interplay and 
 quarrels of five rascals. As the fragments now stand, she ob¬ 
 served, the Miller’s and the Reeve’s tale come at the end of A 
 (barring the unfinished Cook’s), the Pardoner’s at the end of C, 
 the Summoner’s at the end of D, and the Manciple’s is a frag¬ 
 ment by itself. Equally striking is the fact that in the General 
 Prologue the Miller is described as leading the cavalcade out of 
 toune and the Reeve as bringing up the rear. Similarly, in the 
 Miller’s Prologue we are advised, in Chaucer’s second ‘apology,’ 
 that both the Miller and the Reeve told harlotrie. Nowhere else 
 do the signs point ahead; the method is to describe events as they 
 happen. It seems likely then that the Miller and the Reeve were 
 added to the original plan, and probably with them the Summon- 
 er; and it is these three whose tales are of the conspicuously 
 fabliau type. The Pardoner’s Tale is a special case, since it seems 
 
THE CANTERBURY FELLOWSHIP 
 
 67 
 
 to have been first intended for the Parson. The Manciple’s is 
 early work and run in as filler; it is far from appropriate to 
 this Manciple; and we are still in doubt why the Manciple is in 
 the company at all, unless Chaucer had a private reason. 
 
 Thus we are permitted to watch the plan develop as the 
 methods change. It looks as though the first plan was static, 
 and therefore the ‘dramatic’ conception of the pilgrimage, for 
 which Chaucer receives most praise, was an afterthought. More¬ 
 over, the suggestion recently offered by Professor Lawrence, that 
 the general idea of a pilgrimage sprang from Chaucer’s desire to 
 experiment widi the fabliau as literary material, with the addition 
 of moralitee and holinesse for variety and makeweight, loses 
 credence. This is not the only instance of new developments as 
 fresh ideas came to mind. 
 
 There is another kind of variety in these descriptions. Each 
 figure is in its way a type and also an individual: a type in the 
 dual sense that he is not a fully developed character, but a sketch 
 suitable for larger development, and that he may stand for a 
 group; and an individual in that each is given particular marks: 
 the Cook’s ulcer, the Franklin’s coloring, the Shipman’s barge, 
 the Reeve’s identification with Norfolk, the Pardoner’s with 
 Rouncivale, and so on, all with Chaucer’s “deep regard for the 
 concrete.” By a graduating process some of the Pilgrims approach 
 portraiture, as Manly and others following him with greater and 
 lesser success have shown. Harry Bailey and Roger of Ware were 
 real persons, perhaps others also, whom Chaucer could expect his 
 contemporary readers to recognize. But for us there will always 
 be uncertainty and what looks like literal detail may be Chaucer’s 
 literary art. The methods of creative artists are often mysterious 
 to themselves and the element of coincidence, warned against in 
 so many modern novels, is always present. (Meredith had some¬ 
 thing to say on the subject. There is also Henry James’s distress, 
 in the letter to his brother over the supposed resemblance of 
 Miss Birdseye in The Bostonians to an actual, still living Miss 
 Peabody, with the concrete and confessed detail of her misplaced 
 spectacles.) In the General Prologue, as in the ‘Parlement of 
 Foules,’ the ‘Mars,’ and elsewhere, Chaucer could rely on the 
 
68 
 
 THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 attractive possibilities of identification to stimulate interest while 
 honestly denying any intentional portraiture. The Wife of Bath 
 stands out above all the rest: she inherited something from the 
 Roman de la Rose, but how much of her is due to an actual 
 weaver from near Bath we shall never know. The Knight’s 
 campaigns are listed with remarkable fulness, yet part of the 
 effect, and doubtless the purpose, is owing to the accumulation of 
 remote and romantic sounding names. Put beside the knights in 
 Froissart’s Chronicles, his activities are certainly not typical of 
 English knighthood in the fourteenth century, yet he has most of 
 the chivalric virtues. 4 The Parson may resemble the poor priests 
 of Wiclifite persuasion, but he is not representative of the con¬ 
 temporary priesthood any more than his brother of the peasantry 
 as we know them from other sources. About the Manciple there 
 is some question. He was the accomplished purchasing agent of 
 a temple and also a lewed man; but half of the lines devoted to 
 him are curiously indirect. He had thirty masters, of whom a 
 dozen were capable of managing the affairs of any lord and he 
 deceived ( not was capable of deceiving) them all. When he reap¬ 
 pears later he is played off against the drunken Cook with the 
 implication of some business relationship between them and hence 
 perhaps with the Cook’s Guildsmen; but his Tale is not what we 
 should expect of a lewed man and its warning against talking 
 too much requires no little subtlety to fit it to his character. There 
 may be therefore something in the suggestion that Chaucer had a 
 particular manciple in mind. 
 
 Chaucer’s selection of just those twenty-nine Pilgrims has been 
 a matter of speculation. They are often said to constitute a cross- 
 section of life as he knew it. Certainly they are sondry enough, 
 but realistically they form a surprising fellowship, as Crabbe was 
 among the first to note. The Prioress and the Wife of Bath, the 
 Knight and the Pardoner, the Clerk and the Summoner would 
 not mix too well. About a third are drawn from the clergy, not 
 many of whom have the narrator’s ful devout corage; and from 
 what we know of Chaucer he was not specially interested in the 
 clergy. The rest are from the lay ranks, ranging from the worthy 
 Knight to the simple Plowman; but few of these are remarkable 
 
THE CANTERBURY FELLOWSHIP 
 
 69 
 
 for moral virtue and some from both groups are downright un¬ 
 pleasant, even vicious. Would it do to imagine that they are just 
 the sort of motley who would come together by aventure and a 
 little guidance from the poet, for a holiday pilgrimage ? Professor 
 Hulbert has put the usual view in a rather extreme form: 
 
 The sketches were devised to provide representatives of the chief 
 classes of English society under the higher nobility .... The result 
 therefore is a conspectus of mediaeval English society; it would be 
 possible to use the prologue as a basis for a survey of fourteenth 
 century English life. . . . 5 
 
 Some of the Pilgrims do represent a class, but very unevenly. 
 There w'ere knights and squires and monks and prioresses, and 
 so on; some of the individuals may well be typical of their func¬ 
 tions in England of the late fourteenth century, others not. Society 
 is too complex to be generalized so easily. 
 
 As the portraits are arranged in a pleasantly casual order, so 
 they differ in size, not according to importance or intrinsic 
 interest but as the poet found ready materials for them. The 
 largest is the Friar’s (62 lines), and the next the Parson’s (52 
 lines), the Prioress’ (47 lines), the Pardoner’s (46 lines), the 
 Monk’s (43 lines). The Knight, the Reeve, the Physician, and 
 the Wife are done in 36, 36, 34, 32 lines respectively; the Clerk in 
 24, the Shipman in 23, the Squire and the Man of Law each in 22, 
 the Franklin and the Manciple in 20, the Yeoman in 18, the five 
 burgesses (and their wives) in 18, the Merchant in 15, the Plow¬ 
 man in 13, the Cook in 9. These statistics are useful as a correc¬ 
 tive to one’s impression; for the vividness, sublety, penetration, 
 even the fulness of description, is independent of the size of the 
 picture. The Prioress is more distinct than the Friar, who gets a 
 third more lines, and the Cook with his nine lines is as memo¬ 
 rable as the Parson with his fifty-two. 
 
 There they are, then, his nine-and-twenty men and women, 
 about to wend their way, with purpose and cross-purpose, to 
 Canterbury. Yet as we know so well they never arrive; and that 
 is a lesson in itself. What with illness or indolence or preoccupa¬ 
 tion the poet’s muse went rusty in the sheath. 
 
70 
 
 THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 The pilgrims never reached Canterbury and therefore never 
 returned: we may fancy them still as wraiths in their limbo, 
 harried by scholars and critics, in perpetual suspense. Their 
 quota of tales was reduced from four to two, then to one or two 
 (F 657-58), and then to one (I 25). Some never had a chance; 
 and St. Thomas still waits. But actually its whole object was 
 entertainment by the way, of which there was plenty—and the 
 grand climax, to hjiytte up wel a greet mateere was, in spite of 
 the Parson’s long treadse, to be a convivial supper, for Harry 
 Bailey’s profit, at the Tabard Inn. 6 And if all had been said and 
 done, we should still have been in the Field full of Folk, still 
 busy “abouten the mase,” with no vision and no promise of one. 
 
 For the two Prologues invite and defy comparison. Lang- 
 land’s was composed not long after 1362 and was expanded but 
 not otherwise altered in revision. It is therefore some twenty- 
 five years older than Chaucer’s, but the social conditions it reflects 
 had not greatly changed except for the worse in those twenty-five 
 years. Most of the parallels are superficial. Many of the same 
 people appear in both, notably the clergy, with emphasis on their 
 shortcomings; but Langland has no Prioress, and Piers himself, 
 a more vigorous counterpart of Chaucer’s Parson, comes in later; 
 nor any Franklin nor Clerk of Oxford, nor any Wife of Bath. 
 His figures are not introduced by set-piece descriptions; we see 
 them in motion rather than hear about them in advance; they 
 come and go as in a dream, “a merueilouse sweuene.” What 
 strikes us as we read the two Prologues side by side is, after the dif¬ 
 ferences of dialect and meter, the earnestness of the one and the 
 detachment of the other. They are equally bright and vivid, 
 equally clear about the folly and wickedness of mankind, equal¬ 
 ly alive to the humor, especially die low humor, of the people 
 they contain; but Langland is not amused. His sense of humor 
 is as keen as Chaucer’s, but unlike Chaucer’s it is often bitter 
 and barbed; it does not titillate. It exposes the comic and 
 ridiculous without smile or laughter. Even its indignation (which 
 Chaucer hardly shares) is without overemphasis. But after the 
 courtly and polished language of Chaucer his speech seems rough 
 
THE CANTERBURY FELLOWSHIP 
 
 7 * 
 
 and crude. He is too interested in his subject to lavish much 
 embellishment; yet when he choses he can be poetical enough. 
 
 In a somer seson whan soft was the sonne, 
 
 1 shope me in shroudes as l a shepe were, 
 
 In habite as an heremite unholy of worpes, 
 
 Went wyde in pis world wondres to here. 
 
 Ac on a May mornynge on Maluerne hulles 
 Me byfel a ferly of fairy, me thou^te; 
 l was wery forwandred and wente me to reste 
 Vnder a brode banke bi a bornes side, 
 
 And as l lay and lened and loped in f>e wateres, 
 
 1 slombred in a slepyng it sweyued so merye. 
 
 Thanne gan / to meten a merueilouse sweuene, 
 
 That l was in a wildernesse wist / never where; 
 
 As I bihelde in-to pe est an heigh to pe sonne, 
 
 I seigh a toure on a toft trielich ymaped; . . . 
 
 This will surely stand comparison with Chaucer’s spring flourish. 
 
 But the reason for setting the two Prologues side by side is 
 not to disparage one or exalt the other; it is to suggest the great 
 difference between two contemporary revelations of the same 
 world and to show the different purposes of the two pilgrimages 
 which they introduce. 
 
 In spite of the help of many contemporary chroniclers, each 
 writing with his particular, and undisguised, bias, and of the 
 many modern historians who have reinterpreted for us the com¬ 
 plex story of Edward’s declining years and Richard’s tempestuous 
 reign, it is still difficult to understand with any confidence that 
 unhappy period. The weakness of Edward and the power of his 
 mistress, the temperament of Richard and the influence of his 
 favorites, the shifting allegiances of the Court parties, the Lan¬ 
 castrian faction and the anti-Lancastrians and the character of 
 John himself, the Appellants and the counter-Appellants, the 
 French wars and the Spanish campaigns, the Despencer fiasco in 
 Flanders, the threats of invasion, the financial troubles, the 
 rivalries of the guilds and mayors and bishops, the wealthy trades¬ 
 men from one side and the Commons from the other encroaching 
 
72 
 
 THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 on the regalities, the ‘Protestant’ tendencies of Wiclif and his 
 followers, the good and bad Parliaments with their promulgations 
 and retractions, all the forces which culminated in the Peasants’ 
 Revolt—all these and much else have yielded a rich opportunity 
 for confusion and prejudice and misjudgment among both the 
 contemporary witnesses and the modern interpreters. If then it 
 is asked how fully Chaucer portrays and reflects this manifold 
 complex of social and political and military ‘history,’ the answer 
 can only be: Not at all fully. If the same question is asked of 
 the other great poets of the time, the Pearl-Poet, Langland, 
 Gower, the answer must favor Langland and Gower in his Vox 
 Clamantis. It has even been set down as a merit that Chaucer’s 
 muse was unblemished with topicality, though a few eager search¬ 
 ers, feeling no doubt the want of such matter, have discovered 
 contemporary allusions here and there in his verse. But Chaucer 
 was not like Tennyson, a professed interpreter of his age, and the 
 subjects he chose for poetry were not either his personal affairs nor 
 the public business. His interest was in people and their strange 
 ways, not in life with its great aims, its troubles of the spirit, and 
 its “tragical mysteries.” Pis there one of all the characters in all his 
 poetry who seems to have a soul and to be concerned about it?*] 
 One notes this, not in complaining spirit, but only to set the ac¬ 
 counts straight. [ The ways of God to man were not his province, 
 but the ways of man to man,j and he finds them amusing, some¬ 
 times pathetic and often deplorable, but men being what they 
 always are, no worse than should be expected, a 
 
 Chaucer begins his human comedy—as broken and unfinished 
 as life itself—with Whan that Aprille. . . ; Langland begins his 
 great poem, in its way also confused but finished finally after 
 thir ty years of writing and rewriting, with In a somer seson. . .— 
 the one when winter has passed and the restlessness of spring has 
 come; the other when summer is at hand and the labor of sowing 
 and reaping not far off. Chaucer’s pilgrims, assembled by chance 
 at a Southwark inn, set out over the roads of Kent, and to lighten 
 the journey, 
 
 For trewely, confort ne myrthe is noon 
 
 To ride by the weye doumb as a stone, 
 
THE CANTERBURY FELLOWSHIP 
 
 73 
 
 told their various tales of morality and harlotry. If they were 
 greatly interested in “seynt Thomas of Caunterbury” who 
 
 In sauacion of mannys saule in holychurche was sleye, 
 
 they give little evidence of it. The Host says beforehand, with 
 covert irony, 
 
 The blisjul martir quite yow youre meede! 
 
 Langland has his own view of pilgrims and palmers who 
 
 plitfet hem togidere 
 
 To seke seynt lames and seyntes in rome, 
 
 Thei went forth in here wey with many wise tales, . . . 
 
 Heremites on an heep with ho\ed staues, 
 
 Wen ten to Walsyngham and here wenches after. 
 
 (There were no such wenches among Chaucer’s pilgrims.) But 
 Piers, when he had gathered his pilgrims, led them to the shrine 
 of Saint Truth. He was not concerned to shorten the way with 
 amusing or improving stories, but to know the good from the 
 evil in the world, the temptations and sufferings of the poor, the 
 malpractices of the ruling class; all culminating in the successive 
 visions of Do-well, Do-better, and Do-best. The contrast of the 
 two works hardly admits of comparison, butljyhat is significant 
 is that to enliven his series of narratives Chaucer selected the 
 framework of a pilgrimage, a pilgrimage with only a nominal 
 religious intent, a pilgrimage which never arrived—a holiday 
 pilgrimage, a literary convenience, a mockery of devoutness 
 thrown into imbalance by the Parson’s ersatz finale"!) Swiche 
 is this world; such it certainly is: one set of pilgrims lost in 
 speculation, the other foundering in incompletion. To say this 
 darkens in no way the transcendent success of Chaucer’s Pro¬ 
 logue, it merely draws attention to the kind of subject Chaucer 
 chose to undertake. 7 
 
74 
 
 THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 2 . THE SURPRISE GROUP 
 
 T HE Canterbury Tales, usually spoken of and carelessly 
 thought of as one work, is nevertheless a heterogeneous 
 miscellany of nineteen or twenty Tales, besides two long trans¬ 
 lations and the Monk’s Tragedies, with prologues and links 
 here and there. Parts of it are ‘early’ work, parts ‘late.’ Each 
 part has its problems and even the intended order is uncertain. 
 Manly’s study of the manuscripts proves, as nearly as such things 
 admit of proof, that the various arrangements “are due to editorial 
 efforts of the early scribes (or their directors) or to later disar¬ 
 rangements caused by accidental shiftings .” 8 But three fragments, 
 DEF, are commonly regarded (following Miss Hammond and 
 Kittredge) as a kind of unit presenting the pros and cons of 
 marriage—with two unrelated interludes. Another fragment, B 2 , 
 Robinson’s VII, seems also to be a kind of unit, w r ell supported by 
 the manuscript evidence. If it was so designed by Chaucer, it 
 is worth examining as such, even at the risk of creating some new 
 problems. 
 
 Of this Fragment Robinson says simply, “Within the group 
 there seems to be no principle of arrangement save that of con¬ 
 trast or variety” (p. n); whereas Kittredge, who penetrated 
 farther into the dramatic structure of the Tales than most readers 
 and expressed himself with greater certainty, lays it down: 
 
 Two acts in Chaucer’s Human Comedy are so completely wrought 
 that we may study their dramatic structure with confidence. One of 
 these is the group of tales beginning with the Wife of Bath’s Pro¬ 
 logue .... The other is the group that begins with the Shipman’s 
 Prologue. . . . 9 
 
 It is unnecessary to repeat his summary of the action as he saw 
 it; his clue is Chaucer’s delicate and subtle interplay of character. 
 But there is another sort of unity in the Fragment: I should call 
 it the Surprise Group. 
 
 The assignment of the Shipman’s Tale to the Shipman was 
 defended by Kittredge; others prefer to call it “frankly unprofes¬ 
 sional.” As an introduction to the group it is ambiguous; it pre- 
 
THE SURPRISE GROUP 
 
 75 
 
 pares us, if we have not learned anything from the sequence 
 Knight-Miller, for more of the same sort, against which Chaucer 
 had disarmed criticism in the General Prologue, that is, for more 
 vileynye. But Chaucer immediately fools us in the broadest 
 fashion with the Host’s But now passe over .... The Host was 
 thoroughly pleased with the Shipman’s bawdry—Root stigmatized 
 it as “essentially more immoral” than the Miller’s or the Reeve’s 
 Tale—and then turned, with what Robinson calls “without exag¬ 
 geration the politest speech in English literature,” to the Prioress 
 for the next tale. The Prioress replies with one word, Gladly. 
 
 The Prioress begins with a short prayer to the Virgin, humbly 
 comparing her powers of expression with those of a child of 
 twelf month oold, or lesse, and beseeching the Mother of God— 
 
 Gydeth my song that 1 shal of yow seye. 
 
 This song has almost always been accepted at its face value. It 
 is an “infinitely pathetic legend” (Kittredge); it “breathes the 
 spirit of heart-felt religion” (Root); the workmanship is “flaw¬ 
 less,” and Chaucer’s “humor was held completely in abeyance and 
 the story is told in the spirit of consistent pathos” (Robinson). 
 But many years ago Brandi, in the first edition of Paul’s Grundriss 
 (II, i, 680), summarizing rapidly the Canterbury Tales, remarked 
 that “Selbst die Priorin, obwohl sittig bis zu Zimperlichkeit, bringt 
 nichts Sauberlicheres vor als die Legende des stommen Knaben 
 Hugh von Lincoln. . and to this unsympathetic judgment 
 Brandi added: “Jetzt greift der Dichter ein. Auf die unmittelbar 
 vorgehende Verspottung kindischer Legenden. . . .” This section 
 of the Grundriss was not reprinted, but Miss Hammond ( Manual, 
 p. 287) quoted the last phrase, and Professor Robinson (p. 840) 
 says severely: “For the opinion, certainly mistaken, that Chaucer 
 meant the Prioress’s Tale as a satire on childish legends, see A. 
 Brandi” etc.; and in another place (p. 12) “surely that criticism is 
 perverse which maintains that Chaucer wrote the Prioress’s Tale 
 as a satire on childish legends.” The opinion, the criticism, was 
 expressed by Brandi only in those three words “Verspottung kind¬ 
 ischer Legenden,” but apparently they have sufficed. It may be 
 
THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 76 
 
 an exaggeration, but still it is pregnant of direction. At any rate, 
 there can be no harm in suggesting that we may have missed 
 something in the text, and so I shall run through it with tenta¬ 
 tive comment, emphasizing—and of course for the moment over¬ 
 emphasizing—the little touches by which Chaucer hints that the 
 story of Litel Clergeon may be read as something less than com¬ 
 pletely serious. It is not that Chaucer meant to farce the story or 
 to ridicule the Prioress or to make light of the miracle; it is 
 rather that he wrote it with his usual “keen sense of the ridicu¬ 
 lous” and with a twinkle which he trusted us to catch. 
 
 The tale is localized in Asia, among the Asiatic Christians, 
 in a city which has a street open at either end. Somewhere along 
 this street is a ghetto maintained for lucre of vileynye, and at its 
 farther end is a school for Christian children where swich manere 
 doctrine as obtained there (among the Asiatic Christians) was 
 taught to the children, namely, to sing and read. Though the 
 topography is not altogether clear, we know that the seven-year- 
 old Clergeon and his friend have to pass through the ghetto on 
 their way to and from school. 
 
 Through the first ten of the twenty-nine stanzas the tone is 
 carefully pitched; it is neither too high, like the aureate style of 
 the Prioress’ Prologue, nor too low. If we read alertly our suspi¬ 
 cions may be aroused, but there is no overt humor; the mask of 
 perfect gravity has not moved. We may note in passing the 
 extreme delicacy of the Prioress’ allusion to St. Nicholas’ reverence 
 (5 I 3'5 I 5) contrast to her plain language in 1. 573; and we may 
 be touched by the lad’s willingness to accept corporal punishment 
 for neglect of his studies while devoting himself to memorizing 
 the hymn, and at the same time wonder a little that at his age he 
 should have such difficulty in committing to memory a compara¬ 
 tively short poem; and we may be struck by the fact that having 
 learned it he sang it aloud only when he was passing through the 
 ghetto: 
 
 Twies a day it passed thrugh his throte, 
 
 To scoleward and homward when he wente . 
 
 Then with the startlingly mixed metaphor that Satan the serpent, 
 
THE SURPRISE GROUP 
 
 77 
 
 who had his wasp’s nest in the Jews’ heart, swelled up, then we 
 begin to wonder, and the innocent innuendoes of the preceding 
 stanzas become cumulatively effective. Suddenly the narrative 
 leaps forward— 
 
 This cursed ]ew hym hente, and heeld hym jaste, 
 
 And kitte his throte, and in a pit hym caste ; 
 
 and the smiling Prioress, who exerted herself 
 
 to been estatlich of manere 
 And to been holden digne of reverence, 
 
 astonishes us by continuing: 
 
 I seye that in a wardrobe they hym threwe 
 Where as thise fewes pur gen hire entraille. 
 
 After the fine stanza, O martir, sowded to virginitee, with its 
 fragment of the apocalyptic vision and its emphasis on the vir¬ 
 ginity of those who follow the Lamb, we are told that the poor 
 widow, This newe Rachel, who is Litel Clergeon’s mother, after a 
 long night of anxious waiting, inquires about her missing child 
 and learns that he was last seen in the ghetto; but she still con¬ 
 tinues, distraught, to look for him everywhere and at last among 
 the cursed Jews (596-99); and finally Jesus directs her to the pit, 
 where she finds him, this emerald of chastity (aged seven), this 
 ruby of martyrdom, lying on his back his throat cut, singing the 
 Alma Redemptoris 
 
 So loude that al the place gan to ringe. 
 
 Christian passers-by now 
 
 In coomen for to wondre upon this thyng; 
 
 the processes of civil law are brought into action, and all the Jews 
 That of this mordre wiste are drawn by wild horses and then 
 hanged. 
 
 Meanwhile, Litel Clergeon is placed before the High Altar and 
 as soon as the mass is finished 
 
 the abbot with his covent 
 Han sped hem for to burien hym ful faste. 
 
THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 78 
 
 This abbot is, as we are twice told, a holy man; but the Prioress 
 cannot refrain from adding, As monies been, or elles oghte to 
 be, perhaps, as Kittredge says, with a slant at the monk in the 
 Shipman’s Tale, or perhaps with a hard look at her fellow Pil¬ 
 grim; yet he has an inquiring mind and wishes to know why the 
 boy condnues to sing, 
 
 Sith that thy throte is \ut to my semynge. 
 
 Litel Clergeon answers with three stanzas of explanation: he 
 admits that according to the laws of nature he should have died 
 long since, but—and so far in this brief interval has his education 
 progressed— 
 
 But Jesu Crist, as ye in boo\es fynde, 
 
 Will that his glorie laste and be in mynde. 
 
 And when the young martyr gives up the ghost all the convent 
 fall weeping on the pavement of the church, then rise, 
 
 And in a tombe of marbul stones cleere 
 Enclosen they his litel body sweete. 
 
 Ther he is now, God leve us for to meetel 
 
 In closing, the Prioress draws attention to the parallel martyrdom 
 of Hugh of Lincoln but a litel while ago (about a hundred and 
 thirty years), asking him to 
 
 Preye ee\ for us, we synful fol\ unstable, 
 
 That, of his mercy, God so merciable 
 On us his grete mercy multiplie, 
 
 but forgetting, naturally enough, that no mercy had been shown 
 to the Jews. Wordsworth could speak of her “fierce bigotry.” 
 
 Does it not look as though Chaucer, in choosing this tale for 
 the Prioress and in writing it down with her in mind, meant to 
 preserve the same balance between game and ernest that he mani¬ 
 fested in his description of her in the General Prologue ? Just as 
 there he smilingly reveals her little pretensions to elegance and her 
 amiable little weaknesses without malice and without discourtesy, 
 just so he renders her story of the martyred little boy, with ap- 
 
THE SURPRISE GROUP 
 
 79 
 
 propriately smiling gravity which, without altogether sacrificing 
 its moving pathos— 
 
 Whan seyd was al this miracle, every man 
 
 As sobre was that wonder was to se — 
 
 enhances the characterization and the dramatic moment by letting 
 us into the delicate play. The poet touches us with his sympa¬ 
 thetic understanding of the Prioress and his gentle handling of a 
 pious story, and he amuses us with his artistic detachment. It is 
 only because he has caught so nicely the tone and effect of a simple 
 miracle that he can by deft touches of slight exaggeration here 
 and there produce that precarious ambiguity of simplicite and 
 simplesse which allows us to have it all one way, if we wish, and 
 which matches the reverent raillery of our first introduction to 
 the Prioress. 
 
 When the Prioress has finished, the company are all sobre of 
 course—till the Host reacts quickly with his characteristic jesting 
 and, addressing ‘Chaucer,’ asks for a tale of mart he forthwith, 
 and Chaucer produces the Rime of Sir Thopas. About the inten¬ 
 tion of Sir Thopas the scholars and critics have shown little 
 doubt. Attention has centered on identifying the particular 
 romances Chaucer may have had in mind and on the possibility 
 of socio-political satire against the Flemings, which is at best a 
 very subordinate motif. The parody runs from broad burlesque 
 to an almost loving playfulness, a display of the minstrels’ weak¬ 
 nesses as well as of their literary vices. It is the high comedy 
 of criticism, intellectual yet sympathetic laughter. The Melibeus, 
 however, has been somewhat gingerly treated by both scholars 
 and critics. They have hesitated between condemning it as dull 
 and tiresome to the modern reader and condoning it as a form of 
 uplift both palatable and gratifying to mediaeval taste. As Ker put 
 it: “Chaucer’s whole literary career shows him emerging from the 
 average opinion and manner of his contemporaries, and coming 
 out from the mediaeval crowd to stand apart by himself, indi¬ 
 vidual and free.” As an implied defense of the Melibeus this is 
 shrewd and probably sound. The piece itself, said Ker, speaking 
 frankly from the modern point of view, “is perhaps the worst 
 
8 o 
 
 THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 example that could be found of all the intellectual and literary 
 vices of the Middle Ages, bathos, forced allegory, spiritless and 
 interminable moralizing”; but he felt bound to admit with a 
 smile that “there is nothing for it but to believe that Chaucer 
 found some interest in the debate of Melibeus and his wife Pru¬ 
 dence.” That is, when he translated the work Chaucer had not 
 yet emerged “from the mediaeval crowd.” But Ker went further. 
 He offered the suggestion, which he denominated “desperate” and 
 immediately withdrew, and which has since been quoted with 
 disapproval, namely, that “sometimes one is tempted to think that 
 the Tale of Melibeus is a mischievous companion to the Rime of 
 Sir Thopas, and meant to parody a worse kind of ‘drasty 
 speech.’” 10 In similar vein Coulton said: “The monumental 
 dulness of this [Melibeus] ... is no doubt a further stroke of 
 satire, and Chaucer must have felt amply avenged in recounting 
 this story to the bitter end.” 11 The language of Ker’s desperate 
 suggestion may be too strong, but it points a direction. Chaucer 
 could still be mediaeval enough to have translated he Livre de 
 Melibee with approving enthusiasm and at the same time when he 
 thrust his translation into the Canterbury Tales he could have 
 felt sufficiently emergent and “apart” to recognize some of its 
 “bathos, forced allegory, spiritless and interminable moralizing” 
 and use it for comic purposes, just as he saw the faults of the 
 minstrel ballad romances and parodied them for similar effect. 
 In this case, however, it was unnecessary to make his own 
 parody, for he found one ready to hand—or something still better, 
 a serious piece with the germ of parody latent in its very blood¬ 
 stream. He might well have appreciated its cardinal weakness, 
 which is not the extent but the falsity of its moralizing, its 
 “exalting expediency over right.” 12 
 
 It is part of the humor, moreover, though sometimes misunder¬ 
 stood, that Chaucer insists, with an oath, that he cannot avouch 
 for the accuracy of his text; he offers the parallel of the Synoptic 
 Gospels (including John) and implies that the modifications 
 will be noted by the company, who are probably familiar with 
 some version. But the signal comedy of the situation is that the 
 brighter piece was speedily interrupted, thus saving Chaucer from 
 
THE SURPRISE GROUP 
 
 8 l 
 
 the danger of overplaying the joke, whereas the other piece was 
 allowed to continue to its triumphant end. Just as it was “much 
 more modest, and vastly more humorous” (Root) for Chaucer to 
 offer his fellow pilgrims not a masterpiece of narrative but the 
 deliberate burlesque of Sir Thopas, so he “gave proof of consum¬ 
 mate tact and taste ... in assigning to himself . . . nothing more 
 ambiguous than a version of a popular discourse—half narrative, 
 half homily—in prose.” 13 Harry Bailey liked it no doubt, and 
 there is no sign in the following link “that the pilgrims regarded 
 Melibeus as a penance.” True, but to argue that “A prose tale 
 of [more than] 16,000 words forms a pretty extensive practical 
 joke” (Tatlock) rather misses the point. For the modern reader 
 it may seem like a kind of jest that the Melibeus and the Parson’s 
 Tale are included among the stories recited along the Canterbury 
 road; Chaucer as artist may even have regarded them as slightly 
 amusing misfits. If Sir Thopas and the Melibeus had no serious 
 appeal they would miss fire as comedy. They had to be good in 
 one sense in order to produce their special kind of comic catharsis. 
 
 The Host, who impercipiently exposes his bourgeois taste by 
 decrying the downright vulgarity and foul language of Sir Thopas 
 and asks for som murthe or som doctryne in prose, is answered 
 with the Prioress’ word Gladly, here accompanied by an oath to 
 tickle his palate. He gets a litel thyng, a trifle (says Chaucer), 
 which not only pleases him but provokes a surprising domestic 
 revelation. Then he turns to the Monk and in words which recall 
 the Monk’s characterization in the General Prologue offensively 
 bids for another bawdy tale like the Shipman’s. The Monk, how¬ 
 ever, suddenly reacts with dignity; he will not be put upon by a 
 man like the Host; or perhaps he “takes all his [Host’s] broad 
 jesting with the good humour of a man who is used to it” (Coul- 
 ton). He offers to relate two or three stories, including the Life 
 of St. Edward, or first some of his hundred tragedies; and after 
 an apology for their arrangement he begins the series, without 
 waiting for the Host’s or the company’s approval. Having fin¬ 
 ished the seventeenth, he pauses to repeat the already repeated 
 definition of tragedy—when the Knight interrupts, adding his 
 own repetition, and is seconded by the Host. It is significant now 
 
82 
 
 THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 that the Host, confident in his own judgment, requests a hunt¬ 
 ing story from the Monk; significant because it betrays Chaucer’s 
 recognition of the fact that the worthy prikasour ought naturally 
 to have told a hunting story; in other words, that the assignment 
 of the tragedies to the Monk was comic business. One may turn 
 back to The murye wordes of the Hoost to the Mon\ and see 
 that the Host’s ebullient language about the Monk’s valor with 
 Venus paiementz was merely the poet’s prepared joke in order to 
 palm off the tragedies on the fair prelaat who lovede venerie. 
 Both he and the Host knew that from the prikasour was expected 
 somwhat of huntyng. The poet and the Host thus connive to 
 deceive the reader, for a moment, and the Monk compliantly 
 falls in line. As with Sir Thopas, the Monk’s Tale had to be ac¬ 
 ceptable to serious-minded readers or there would be no fun in 
 having it interrupted; and the point is barbed by making the 
 Knight his agent of interference. The Knight, who is both wor¬ 
 thy and wise, has thus his own limitations. 14 
 
 The Host’s saying 
 
 Youre tale anoyeth al this compaignye. 
 
 Swich talking is nat worth a boterflye 
 
 is mere excuse. If any inference is to be drawn from allowing the 
 Melibeus to be heard entire, it is probably that the translation was 
 already at hand; whereas Sir Thopas was composed with the 
 purpose of having it cut short and the Monk’s tragedies were 
 inserted when Chaucer saw the humorous opportunities of their 
 taking off. 15 
 
 Thus the scene of Fragment VII (B 2 ) opens suggestively with 
 a fabliau from the Shipman. The Host is immensely pleased, 
 but to right the balance turns courteously—Tatlock’s word is 
 “obsequiously”—to the Pilgrim least likely to follow in the same 
 strain. The Prioress obliges with a pious Prologue in the best 
 aureate manner and her simple and touching story of the little 
 martyr. This is not quite what we expected, for we were pre- 
 * pared for something more estatlich of manere, something to 
 signalize both her function as a nun and her claims to a superior 
 1 social position. Her tale reveals her sensitivity more than her 
 
THE SURPRISE GROUP 
 
 83 
 
 worldly ambition, and it contains a slight— unnethe it might he 
 lesse —element matching the ambiguous description of her in the 
 General Prologue. The Pilgrims are not supposed to see this; 
 the poet dangles it before the reader. Her story, which followed 
 the undulant line between pathos and bathos (Oliver Wendell 
 Holmes called it “grisly”), left the Pilgrims in a sober frame of 
 mind, none more so than the pilgrim Chaucer; and the Host, 
 seeing an opportunity to relieve the tension by making this Chau¬ 
 cer the butt of his easy humor, jocularly calls for something 
 equally fine: Som deyntee thyng. Chaucer has his mild revenge 
 by producing a bit of satire too delicate for the Host to under¬ 
 stand; and when he is interrupted for his verray lewednesse and 
 drasty speche retaliates in the opposite direction, with his litel 
 thyng in prose, full of proverbial wisdom heavily underlined by 
 repetition, entirely within the Host’s comprehension. Offered the 
 alternatives of som murthe or som doctryne, he obliges with a 
 trifle which is of doctrine all compact. The Host is naturally 
 pleased, and as simple folk will takes the lesson home to himself: 
 would that his wife could have heard this story of Prudence! So 
 we have it both ways: some are gratified for one good reason, 
 some for another, the poet watching with amusement from his 
 point of vantage. And now unbonded is the male. The Host, 
 as though compensating for his indiscreet personal revelations, 
 calls on the Monk, who had earlier missed his turn because the 
 Miller was overcome by the ale he absorbed while not listening 
 to the Knight, all but demanding a dirty story, and the Monk is 
 or pretends to be offended; and he has his revenge by launching 
 into his hundred tragedies. It is the same hoaxing formula which 
 had put the delicacy of Sir Thopas after the delicacy of the Prior¬ 
 ess’ Tale and then the complete Melibeus from the elvish Pilgrim 
 after the broken Sir Thopas. But even the Knight is finally bored 
 and betrays his common humanity by demanding comedy. The 
 Host enthusiastically supports him and begs the Monk to continue 
 with a hunting story, which is just what we had expected in the 
 first place, before the Host provoked him to a punitive recital of 
 tragedies. But the Monk is both firm and courteous in his refusal 
 to continue; so the Host, blocked there and seeking another vie- 
 
THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 84 
 
 tim, addresses the Nun’s Priest with rude boldness and this time 
 gets really the tale of myrthe of which he had been defrauded 
 since the Prioress finished her miracle of the Virgin. The wheel 
 has now completely revolved and the Fragment ends as it began, 
 in the best of humor. Why the Nun’s Priest chose not to be 
 offended is a question outside our knowledge: we had hardly 
 heard of him before. But he must have looked like a cheerful 
 fellow and he fully justified the Host’s hope. 
 
 It is not merely contrast, then, which unites the Tales of this 
 Fragment. There is an element of surprise and reversal running 
 throughout. The Shipman’s fabliau called for something to fol¬ 
 low which would please the less vulgar Pilgrims; the Host ad¬ 
 dressed the Prioress and she surprised both the Pilgrims with her 
 sensitive miracle, for they expected something more in harmony 
 with her courtly ways, and also the reader, who sees through 
 Chaucer’s double-dealing with her pathos; the Host, pretending 
 to expect something equally dainty from Chaucer, is surprised and 
 not a little baffled by a parody which is over his head (and possi¬ 
 bly the reader expected from Chaucer a superior piece of a differ¬ 
 ent sort); the Host surprises the Pilgrims by interrupting Chau¬ 
 cer, who in turn surprises the Host, pleasantly, with a lengthy 
 treatise of moral proverbs, and the reader, less agreeably, with his 
 moral tale vertuous; the Host surprises first the Pilgrims by ex¬ 
 posing his domestic troubles and then the Monk by bearing down 
 on his lust in engendrure; and the Monk in his turn surprises 
 everyone by his complaining tragedies; the worthy Knight, other¬ 
 wise as meeke as is a mayde, surprises us by interrupting; and 
 finally the Host surprises the reader by calling on the hitherto 
 unknown Priest—whose Prioress must have been a little surprised 
 by the Chantecleer story and by the Host’s comment. 16 
 
 3. THE KNIGHT'S TALE 
 
 T HE Knight’s Tale has generally been held in high esteem, 
 but there is still a division of opinion over the grounds on 
 which it is to be praised and enjoyed. For a time it seemed to 
 
THE KNIGHT’S TALE 
 
 85 
 
 have lost favor, owing to disagreements about various aspects of 
 the poem. In recent years, however, critical emphasis has been 
 directed to Chaucer’s ‘intention’ particularly, and a valiant effort 
 has been made to pull the discordant views together. 17 Now, 
 without attempting a formal review of these conflicting opinions, 
 I propose to re-examine the Knight’s Tale as it is, and then pro¬ 
 ceed to a critical synthesis. 
 
 For a start, some of the poems’s shortcomings should be recog¬ 
 nized. First to be noted are the elaborate language here and 
 there, which Chaucer perhaps regarded as essential to his noble 
 theme, and the cue for which he got from Boccaccio; and with 
 this the unrealistic pictures, which he perhaps thought of as 
 equally natural for such a subject. Theseus returning from his 
 victory over the Amazons meets 
 
 A compaignye of ladyes, tweye and tweye, 
 
 Ech after oother, clad in clothes bla\e, 
 
 kneeling beside the highway (with the Temple of Clemency in 
 the background) and loudly lamenting their plight; 
 
 And of this cry they nolde nevere stenten 
 Til they the reynes of his brydel henten. 
 
 The eldest of these ladies, having swooned (and recovered), acts 
 as spokesman and when she has finished they all fillen gruf and 
 cryden pitously. Theseus is sympathetically touched, alights from 
 his horse, 
 
 And in his armes he hem alle up hente, 
 
 And hem comforteth in full good entente. 
 
 This curious situation is followed almost immediately by the 
 extravagant description of Theseus’ banner: 
 
 The rede statue of Mars, with spere and targe, 
 
 So shyneth in his white baner large, 
 
 That alle the feeldes glyteren up and doun. 
 
 Thus the tone is set. When Arcite has been freed and Palamon is 
 still in captivity 
 
86 
 
 THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 Swich sorwe he maheth that the grete tour 
 Resouneth of his youlyng and clamour. 
 
 The pure fettres on his shynes grete 
 Weren of his bittre, salte teeres wete. 
 
 Later, when Palamon recognizes Arcite in the forest, 
 
 For ire he quoo\ . . . 
 
 As he were wood, with face deed and pale ... 
 
 And seide: “Arcite, false traytour witye, . . .” 
 
 There is an element of boyish bluster and violence in his lan¬ 
 guage; 
 
 I wol be deed, or elles thou shalt dye 
 
 has a touch of Almanzor in it. And Arcite replies: I should slay 
 you at once if you were not sick and mad for love, and unarmed, 
 but I will bring you weapons tomorrow— 
 
 And ches the beste, and leef the worste for me. 
 
 (Arcite’s promise to provide food and bedding for the night is 
 apparently not fulfilled.) 
 
 This is followed by a rhetorical outburst from the “auctour,” 
 
 0 Cupide, out of alle charitee! . . . 
 
 in the best high style; and a few lines later by another on The 
 destinee, ministre general to account for the coincidence of The¬ 
 seus hunting just when and where the two lovers are fighting; 
 and then by a sort of footnote, 
 
 This mene l now by mighty Theseus. 
 
 The same high style accompanies the account of Arcite’s death: 
 
 Swelleth the brest of Arcite, . . . 
 
 Shrighte Emelye, and howleth Palamon, 
 
 And Theseus his suster too\ anon 
 Swownynge . . . 
 
 Infinite been the sorwes and the teeres. . . . 
 
 The descriptions of Lygurge and Emetreus are certainly elabo¬ 
 rate and colorful and such exaggerations as there may be—die red 
 and yellow eyes of Lygurge, the bright citryn eyes of Emetreus; 
 
THE KNIGHT’S TALE 
 
 87 
 
 the twenty-odd white wolf hounds, as grete as any steer, with the 
 one and the tame lions and leopards with the other—are well 
 within the bounds of legitimate picturesqueness. 
 
 Over against these samples of fine language must be set others 
 of a less elevated style. Arcite’s compleynt (1223 ff.) contains, 
 apropos of our ignorance of the divine prescience, four lines about 
 the man who is as drunk as a mous. At the beginning of Part III 
 Chaucer addresses the reader (or hearer) colloquially: I think it 
 would be regarded as negligence if I forgot to tell how much 
 Theseus spent on the erection of the amphitheatre. And presently, 
 having named the three altars and oratories (which at once be¬ 
 come full-sized temples) he says he almost forgot to describe the 
 details. And having finished his account of the Temple of Venus 
 he goes on: Why should I not tell you about the pictures in the 
 Temple of Mars. And finally: Now I will hurry on to the 
 Temple of Diana. Here he is somewhat colloquial about Calisto- 
 pee, who was turned into a bear and then into the lodestar—be¬ 
 lieve it or not— 
 
 Thus was it peynted, 1 can sey yow no ferre. 
 
 Her son is also a star, he adds. Next he sees Dane and brightly 
 explains: I mean the daughter of Penneus, not to be confused with 
 Diana the goddess. And after describing the statue of Diana, 
 with a woman crying out in childbirth, he notes 
 
 Wei kpude he peynten lifly that it wroghte; 
 
 With many a floryn he the hewes boghte. 
 
 These specimens are all within the space of two hundred lines. 
 There are of course many others. 
 
 A different kind of stylistic ornament is first met in 1 . 1026. 
 
 He too\ his boost and hoom he rood anon. 
 
 (Thus the Ellesmere manuscript; Robinson and Manly read rit 
 for rood.) And with similar effect: 
 
 O persone alone, withouten mo, 
 
 which brings with it 
 
 And haryed forth by arme, foot, and too. 
 
88 the canterbury tales 
 
 The most studied example occurs in lines 1809 ff.— 
 
 She woot namoore of al this hoote fare, 
 
 By God, than woot a co\\ow or an harel 
 But all moot ben assayed, hoot and coold; 
 
 A man moot ben a fool, or yong or oold ,— 
 
 I woot it by myself ful yore agon, 
 
 For in my tyme a servant was I oon. 
 
 In 1076 we get square as any sparre; in 1331 Thebes with his 
 waste walles wyde —a bit of rum-ram-ruf. 
 
 By way of transition from grave to gay one may cite this 
 lively example of occupatio: 
 
 Who koude ryme in Englyssh propi'ely 
 His martirdom? for sothe it am not I; 
 
 Therefore I passe as lightly as I may. 
 
 But how the grand manner can be made, no doubt deliberately, 
 to sin\ is most clearly shown where the two lovers are fighting. 
 One like a lion, the other like a tiger and both like wild boars— 
 
 Up to the ancle foght they in hir blood. 
 
 And in this wise 1 lete hem fightyng dwelle, 
 
 And forth I wole of Theseus yow telle. 
 
 Or if this is not plain enough, take the manifest burlesque of 
 
 Ne who sat first ne last upon the deys, 
 
 What ladyes fairest been or best daunsynge, 
 
 Or which of hem \an dauncen best and synge, 
 
 Ne who moost felyngly spefeth of love; 
 
 What haukes sitten on the perche above, 
 
 What houndes liggen on the floor adoun ,— 
 
 Of al this ma\e l now no mencioun. 
 
 The origin of this astonishing anticlimax is not far to seek. 
 At the beginning of Book VI Boccaccio tells of a period of re¬ 
 conciliation and high festivity while the warriors are gathering 
 for the grand tournament: 
 
 Altro che canti, suoni e allegrezza 
 nelle lor case non si sentia mai, 
 
THE KNIGHT'S TALE 
 
 89 
 
 e ben mostravan la lor gentilezza; 
 a chi prender volea davano assai; 
 astor, falconi e can di gran prodezza 
 usuvano a diletto, ne giammai 
 erano in casa sanza forestieri, 
 conti e baroni e donne e cavalien* 
 
 This was the seed: but who would have guessed the flower it 
 would bring forth? 
 
 After recognizing this descent we can have no hesitation in 
 singling out the passages of forthright humor, not to say joking, 
 in the poem. There is for example the point—for those who 
 could not see it, it was explained for modern readers by Professor 
 Emerson—in opie of Thebes fyn (1472) by which Palamon’s 
 jailer was put to sleep—the other Thebes, of course. There is 
 the playful echo (or if not an echo, a very curious parallel) of 
 the opening lines of the General Prologue when Palamon set out 
 to the Temple of Venus to offer up his prayer— 
 
 With hooly herte and with an heigh corage, 
 
 He roos to wenden on his pilgrymage 
 Unto the blisful Citherea benigne. 
 
 This is closely followed by the pointed 
 
 Up roos the sonne, and up roos Emelye. 
 
 And there are the amusing innuendoes in the poet’s hesitation to 
 describe the ceremonial rites performed by Emily, and the false 
 reference to Statius as a source. A little later, when just before 
 the tournament, people are commenting on the different warriors: 
 
 Somme helden with hym with the blake berd, 
 
 Somme with the balled, some with the thi\J{e herd. 
 
 The first is of course Lygurge— Bla\ was his berd. The last is 
 similarly Emetreus— His crispe heer ly\ rynges was yronne. But 
 
 * Their houses were never without singing and music and joyfulness, 
 and well they showed their gentilesse; they enjoyed themselves to the 
 utmost; goshawks, falcons, and dogs of great prowess they had for their 
 pleasure, and among the guests there were but counts and barons and ladies 
 and knights. 
 
90 
 
 THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 had any one been described as bald? Two of the epithets fit so 
 neatly that before you get the point you have to turn back and 
 see. And finally there are the two well-known extraordinary 
 lapses into facetiousness. When Arcite is dying— 
 
 And certeinly, ther Nature wol nat wirche, 
 
 Fare wel phisi\l go her the man to chirchel 
 
 and when he is dead— 
 
 His spirit chaunged hous and wente ther, 
 
 As I cam nevere, / \an nat tellen wher. 
 
 Therfore l stynte, 1 nam no divinistre; 
 
 Of soules fynde I nat in this registre, 
 
 Ne me ne list thilke opinions to telle 
 
 Of hem, though that they writen wher they dwelle. 
 
 Arcite is coold. Ther Mars his soule gye! 
 
 (His spirit moved away to a place where I have never been; I 
 cannot tell where it was. I have no competence in divinity or 
 divination. I find nothing about souls [after death] in my index 
 and I don’t care to report the opinions of those who have sent 
 back a written record from where they are. Arcite is dead: let 
 Mars take his soul). But Arcite in his dying words had just 
 prayed devoutly— 
 
 And fuppiter so wys my soule gye, . . . 
 
 So fuppiter have of my soule parte . 
 
 Such things as these are not to be measured by the space they 
 occupy but by the shadow they cast. Their infelicity is enhanced 
 by the serious context in which they stand, and rather than try to 
 explain them away, (one must recognize them as examples of a 
 fault into which Chaucer’s cheerfulness may at any moment be¬ 
 tray hirm It is pleasanter to turn to some illustrations, so obvious 
 that they need little pointing, of the legitimate humor which 
 lightens the poem. At the end of Part II, the decision of Theseus 
 to settle the lovers’ quarrel by a tourney is greeted with an effusive¬ 
 ness of gratitude which suggests rather comedy than romance— 
 
THE KNIGHT’S TALE 
 
 91 
 
 Who looketh lightly now but Palamoun? 
 
 Who springeth up for joye but Arcite? . . . 
 
 But doun on knees wente every maner wight. ... 
 
 Theseus himself is marked throughout by a strong sense of humor. 
 His handling of the bereaved ladies and his later devotion to 
 Diana, after Mars, as shown by his appetit for hunting are but 
 hints. Better is his acceptance of Palamon’s confession (“This is 
 Arcite, my enemy and yours, and I Palamon am also your enemy: 
 we both deserve to die”): “You have put it very briefly,” says 
 Theseus. “There was no need of torture to extract this confession 
 from you. You shall both die.” But the Queen and all the 
 women, including Emily, thought this was a Greet pitee — 
 
 And no thyng but for love was this debaat. 
 
 So Theseus was immediately softened— 
 
 For pitee renneth soone in gentil herte — 
 
 though he could be stern enough towards the two errant young 
 knights. He told himself by way of extenuation that it was 
 proper to make distinctions, but aloud to the company he made 
 light of love and all its works: 
 
 The god of love, a, benedicite! 
 
 How mighty and how greet a lord is he! . . . 
 
 Who may been a fool, but if he love? . . . 
 
 Se how they blede! be they noght wel arrayed? .. . 
 
 But this is yet the beste game of alle, 
 
 That she for whom they han this jolitee 
 Kan hem therfore as muche thank ^ me - 
 
 And he goes on to say that he has himself often been caught in 
 Love’s snare. The lovers are both worthy enough, he says, but 
 obviously they cannot both have her—not now anyway (and the 
 irony of this is as pointed as the jest)—and therefore he proposes 
 the tournament. All of which is in Chaucer’s best comic manner 
 with proper lightness and without forcing the note. 
 
 After Arcite’s death old Father Egeus does more to lessen the 
 pathetic tension by his noble platitudes than the poet’s flippancy 
 
THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 92 
 
 about the destiny of Arcite’s soul. Even the most careless reader 
 has felt this. 
 
 There are a number of needless inconsistencies in the poem. 
 For example, Palamon escapes from prison By helpyng of a freend 
 (1463), but there had been no intimation that Palamon and Arcite 
 were attended (as they were in Boccaccio) by friends and servants 
 during their captivity. And afterwards Palamon says that he 
 escaped by grace (1592) rather than by getting his jailer drunk. 
 On the morning of the single combat the poet says, 
 
 Cleer was the day, as I have toold er this, 
 
 but there had been no mention of the weather. Emily is clothed 
 in green when she goes on the hunt with Theseus and when we 
 first saw her she was described as fairer than the lily on its green 
 stalk; but green is the color of infidelity, as Chaucer well knew; 
 and Chaucer seems not to have been troubled, as Boccaccio was, 
 by Emily’s willingness to marry either suitor. Arcite when he 
 returned to Thebes is laid waste by the Malady of Hereos, but as 
 soon as Mercury suggests his return to Athens, he rises, so dis¬ 
 figured by disease as to be unrecognizable, goes the nexte way to 
 Theseus’ gate and offers his services To drugge and drawe, 
 
 For he was yong and myghty for the nones. 
 
 In their prayers before the tournament Palamon bluntly asks for 
 possessioun of Emily regardless of the outcome of battle which is 
 to decide the issue, and Arcite bluntly asks for victory regardless 
 of Emily’s affection. Just before the grete fight Theseus declares 
 against mortal bataille, though one of the opponents might (per¬ 
 haps accidentally) sleen his mafe; he wishes no destruccion of 
 blood, though he must have expected plenty of bloodshed; yet 
 Arcite attacks Palamon with the fury of a tigress who has been 
 robbed of her cubs and Palamon is as eager to sleen his foo Arcite 
 as a hunted lion is eager to have the blood of his prey. At 11 . 
 2910 ff. Emily appears 
 
 With fyr in honde, as was that tyme the gyse 
 
 To do the office of funeral servyse, 
 
THE KNIGHT’S TALE 
 
 93 
 
 but seven lines below Chaucer begins his long anaphoristic list of 
 what he will not record with how the fyr was ma\ed. But the 
 most curious lapse is the location of the pyre. The amphitheatre 
 stands on the ground where the two lovers were discovered in 
 single combat, but after Arcite’s death Theseus, having given long 
 and careful consideration to the matter, decides on the same spot 
 as most appropriate for the sepulture. 
 
 Many or even most of these are inconsistencies which perhaps 
 need not concern a writer of romance. Some of them spring 
 from Chaucer’s hurry to get through Boccaccio’s long poem, 
 others may be trivial; but altogether they argue a want of atten¬ 
 tion to detail. The reladon of the gods to the characters of the 
 story is, however, a somewhat more serious problem. Palamon, 
 who is the first to catch sight of Emily and be smitten by her, 
 fancies she may be Venus herself and offers a little prayer to the 
 goddess. This is of course as it should be, though later he com¬ 
 plains, rhetorically, that Venus is slaying him with fear and jeal¬ 
 ousy of Arcite. Palamon is throughout a follower of Venus and 
 in the end has his reward. On the other hand, Palamon com¬ 
 plains that he is imprisoned through the jealousy of Juno and 
 Saturn and Arcite complains of the hostility of Juno and Mars— 
 
 Alas, thou felle Mars! alias, Juno! 
 
 Juno is explicable in terms of the Theban story, but why should 
 Arcite accuse Mars, who is the special deity? and why should 
 Palamon accuse Saturn, who is, astrologically speaking, the patron 
 of his chief warrior Lygurge (if Professor Curry is right) and 
 who causes Pluto to introduce the furie infernal which destroys 
 Arcite? It is Saturn who occupies the ambiguous position. He 
 is apparently inimical to both Palamon and Arcite and he is 
 represented as umpire of the Gods; yet he sides with Venus 
 against Mars though he is described in a vivid passage which, 
 though astrologically correct but inappropriate here, reads almost 
 like a replica of the horrors of war as they are depicted in The¬ 
 seus’ newly constructed Temple of Mars. This is an inconsistency 
 which is not beneath the attention of a storyteller; and it cannot 
 be explained as a cynical treatment of pagan deities, for the gods 
 
94 
 
 THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 are a necessary and integral means of resolving the main conflict 
 ofhtjvo equal suitors. 
 
 I Such then are some of the shortcomings of the Knight’s Tale;" 
 a number of inconsistencies, some trivial and some serious, and a 
 most extraordinary mixture of styles, some high and some vert, 
 low, with humor legitimate or misapplied as a kind of connective. 
 It would be convenient to regard the Knight’s Tale in its earlier 
 form as written before Chaucer had quite learned his trade. 
 Whether it was composed soon after his first journey to Italy and 
 he had presumably read Boccaccio for the first time, say between 
 1372 and 1376, or if he obtained his Boccaccio manuscripts only 
 after the second Italian journey, 1378, the case is much the same. 
 Certainly, his use of the Filostrato is vastly superior to his use of 
 the Teseida. Thus the comedy and jocular language might be 
 accounted for as crudities not unnatural to a beginner, especially 
 to a beginner wholeheartedly devoted to the Comic Spirit re¬ 
 handling an elaborate quasi-epic. But such a conjecture, entirely 
 plausible in itself, does not allow for Chaucer’s revision of his 
 early poem for the Canterbury series. 
 
 At the end Chaucer seems to depart significantly from his 
 source. After the burial of Arcite and the funeral games he says 
 he will turn shortly to the point, and thus he omits Boccaccio’s 
 long description of the temple built by Palamone for Arcita’s 
 ashes and the closing stanza of Book XI in which by way of 
 epitaph Arcita says: 
 
 e per Emilia usando il mio valore 
 mori’: dunque ti guarda da amore * 
 
 Book XII begins with Emilia’s mourning: 
 
 Ma poi che furon piu giorni passati 
 dopo lo sventurato avvenimento.\ 
 
 The Greeks agreed by general consent that Palamon and Emily 
 should marry. Chaucer however lengthens the period of mourn¬ 
 ing: 
 
 * And displaying my valor I died for Emily: so beware of love, 
 f But then more days passed after the unfortunate event. 
 
THE KNIGHT’S TALE 
 
 95 
 
 By processe and by lengthe of certeyn yeres, 
 
 Al stynted is the moornynge and the teres 
 Of Grekes, by oon general assent. 
 
 (This is the usual punctuation; the Italian seems to favor the 
 punctuation adopted by a few editors: a period after teres or a 
 semicolon after Grekes.) 
 
 Whereas Teseo has gathered the barons about him, Theseus 
 summons a parliament to consider, among other things, 
 
 To have with certein contrees alliaunce 
 And to have fully of Thebans obeisaunce. 
 
 Theseus sends after Palamon—and with his formal speech Chau¬ 
 cer picks up Boccaccio again. When Palamone comes 
 
 non sappiendo esso pero la cagione, 
 
 it is one thing; when Palamon is sent for, 
 
 Unwist of hym what was the cause and why, 
 
 it is quite another; in either case Palamon might have divined— 
 for it appears that Chaucer’s wise duke is not only rounding out 
 the story as already forecast by the oracle of Diana (more than 
 three hundred lines back) and ratified, as it were, by the council 
 in heaven, but taking shrewd advantage of the opportunity to 
 confirm the subjugation of Thebes (which he had already razed 
 two thousand lines back). This is truly supererogatory. Is it an 
 alteration of Chaucer’s earlier ‘Palamon and Arcite’ poem men¬ 
 tioned in the Prologue of the ‘Legend of Good Women’ with an 
 oblique allusion to the marriage of Richard and Anne, or simply 
 an expansion of Boccaccio’s hint of the gathering of barons to 
 include a formal parliament with ulterior political motives? If 
 the latter, we can only note one more demerit in the poem; if the 
 former, we face the whole question of a larger revision than 
 is now generally assumed when the early poem was assigned to 
 the Knight in the Canterbury Tales' 8 But either way, the mar¬ 
 riage appears to be rather a political maneuver than the foregone 
 conclusion of the preceding story, and Chaucer has risked the 
 charge of twisting his material in the interests of a courtly gesture: 
 of sacrificing art for favor. One then recalls Arcite’s little fable 
 
THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 96 
 
 of the dogs and the kite: the dogs foughte al day, and yet hir part 
 was noon; and his cynical moral: 
 
 And therfore, at the hpynges court, my brother, 
 
 Ech man for hymself. Ther is noon other. 
 
 The symrnetry of the Knight’s Tale is always and justly 
 praised. It inheres in the plot, which may be diagrammed as a 
 double isosceles triangle, with Palamon and Arcite at the common 
 base and Theseus at one peak and Emelye at the other. There 
 are two equal lovers, blood cousins and sworn brothers, discovered 
 by and by when they first appear. They fall in love almost simul¬ 
 taneously. They make parallel compleynts. Each of them has 
 his divinity, Mars and Venus, and each wins according to his 
 desire, one martial glory, the other a wife, at the end. Each has 
 a conspicuous chieftain in the tournament with his hundred fol¬ 
 lowers. The outcome of the jousts is a draw: Theseus so declares 
 it. The story moves on two levels, human and divine—the rivalry 
 of Palamon and Arcite for Emily’s hand, and the rivalry of Venus 
 and Mars in heaven; and as Theseus presides over the one, so 
 does Saturn over the other. As the amphitheatre is provided with 
 three temples—that of Venus at the East gate, that of Mars at the 
 West gate, and that of Diana at the North gate, described in this 
 order—so the two heroes pray to their divinities in prayers of 
 equal length (one is 50, the other is 49 lines) and Emily to hers 
 in an appropriately shorter prayer, though the order of their 
 prayers, being determined by astrological considerations, is differ¬ 
 ent: Venus, Mars, Diana—Palamon, Emily, Arcite. Of the two 
 heroes, Arcite is mentioned first, and so wins Emily first; but 
 Palamon sees her first, is smitten first, and declares his love first, 
 and thus is appropriately rewarded on the grounds of precedence, 
 though only at the end. Similarly, before the tournament, Pala- 
 mon’s chieftain Lygurge is described before Arcite’s chieftain 
 Emetreus. 
 
 Thus balance and symmetry are scrupulously observed. But 
 for variety there are elements of imbalance. Perotheus is a special 
 friend of Arcite, though one might have expected him to be equal¬ 
 ly devoted to Palamon. Palamon however does have a friend 
 
THE KNIGHT'S TALE 
 
 97 
 
 who helps him escape from prison. Arcite suffers conspicu¬ 
 ously from the loveris maladye Of Hereos, whereas Palamori, 
 who is a worshiper of Venus and is ultimately successful in love, 
 does not. Diana is a poor third in every case. The description of 
 her temple is less than half as long as that of Mars; Emily’s pray¬ 
 er is shorter by one third than the prayers of Palamon and 
 Arcite; and at the council in heaven she is not so much as men¬ 
 tioned. All which is quite as it should be. 
 
 For whatever reasons, there seems to be a special emphasis on 
 the martial interests. The description of Emetreus, the chief of 
 Arcite, is twice as long as that of Lygurge, Palamon’s leader; 
 and the description of Mars’s temple is more than a third longer 
 than that of Venus. The account of the lists, the prayers before 
 battle, and the battle itself take up one third of the whole poem, 
 and commencing as they do about midway occupy the climactic 
 position; and when the death and funeral of Arcite are added, the 
 total is nearly half of the whole poem. About half of the poem 
 therefore is devoted to the predicaments of the two lovers, and 
 half—the more lively half—to the grand tournament and Arcite’s 
 end. In a word, the affairs of Venus and the affairs of Mars are 
 about evenly balanced, spatially, but in descriptive and narrative 
 brightness and color Mars seems to be favored, perhaps by way of 
 compensation for his defeat. 
 
 The search for imbalance in the two figures of Palamon and 
 Arcite has brought out conflicting results. 19 Yet when all the 
 details have been gathered and paired off, revealing Palamon as 
 this and Arcite as that, it remains an assumption that Chaucer 
 intended to differentiate the two more than the outline of the 
 story required. The small contrasts add a gentle liveliness to 
 each one, but anything like ‘characterization’ is certainly beside 
 the point. Emily is by all counts but a lay-figure, a necessary con¬ 
 venience to the plot, and a subject for two playfully cynical com¬ 
 ments on the eternal feminine. 
 
 Perhaps a little more can be said of Theseus. Though he in 
 some sense dominates the action and his function is to be the 
 executant of destiny, he exhibits certain traits which make him 
 almost a real person. He is a great warrior and ruler: he has 
 
THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 98 
 
 conquered Femenye and carried off Ypolita as his queen; he de¬ 
 feats Creon and razes Thebes: he is inclined to laugh at love, hav¬ 
 ing now put all that behind him (in my tyme a servant was 1 
 oon) and he laughs at Palamon’s confession of wrongdoing when 
 the two are discovered at their duel and condemns them both to 
 death. But he has a softer side. He has pity on Creon’s victims; 
 although he has refused to ransom the young captives, he yields 
 to the request of Perotheus to release Arcite; he is properly an¬ 
 gered at the two for fighting their duel in secret, though he takes 
 no offense at Arcite for his long imposture as Philostrate; when 
 the queen and her women deplore the fighting of the two lovers, 
 he ordains a grand tournament to darreyne Emily, and mitigates 
 the risks of mortal bataille by forbidding unnecessary slaughter; 
 he constructs an elaborate amphitheater, he entertains the guests 
 handsomely, and after the tournament gives Arcite a splendid fun¬ 
 eral; and at the end he marries Emily to Palamon, reconciling 
 them with a dignified formal speech, but makes a political occa¬ 
 sion of the marriage. These contrasts are easily reconciled and 
 his sense of humor gives him an attractive human quality which 
 the other figures lack. 
 
 In truth, throughout the Knight’s Tale there is implicit under¬ 
 standing between poet and reader that this is a story and therefore 
 somewhat unreal. This is not because the scene is legendary 
 Athens, a place which exists only in books, for there is plenty of 
 minute realism of a sort in the details, 20 and the never-never land 
 of romance is close enough to the chivalric ideas which Chaucer 
 knew directly. It is because the characters are dramatis personae. 
 There is no pretense that they are human beings. There is no 
 attempt at the illusion of real life, for they are not felt as human 
 beings. Rather, they are amusing figures of a pictorial represen¬ 
 tation meant to be decorative and unreal. And this is not so 
 much detachment or aloofness as a principle of artistic procedure. 
 Chaucer’s treatment of the story and its characters is purely liter¬ 
 ary. 
 
 The critical problem of the Knight’s Tale has still to be faced. 
 What, in a word, is its “central conception” ? Why has the poem 
 
THE KNIGHT’S TALE 
 
 99 
 
 raised so many questions, brought out such disparate answers, 
 and left so much uncertainty? Could the fault lie with the 
 modern critics, or possibly with the poet himself? 
 
 In postulating a moral for the Knight’s Tale one might well 
 recall Mrs. Barbauld’s comment on ‘The Ancient Mariner’ and 
 Coleridge’s reply that “It ought to have had no more moral than 
 the Arabian Nights’ tale of the merchant’s sitting down to eat 
 dates. . .” (Table Talf{, 31 May 1830); and then add Miss Bod¬ 
 kin’s discovery in it of the pattern of rebirth and Professor Till- 
 yard’s view of it as a spiritual adventure of crime and repentence 
 and the inexorable suffering which pursues other men even after 
 the criminal has repented. Of such is Professor Muscatine’s con¬ 
 viction that the Knight’s Tale represents the conflict of chaos 
 (Palamon and Arcite) and order (Theseus) and Professor Frost’s 
 similar view that the descriptions of the temples “symbolically 
 extend the misfortunes and grief of the central characters,” that 
 the picture of Mars and Saturn, “chaotic and hideous enough,” is 
 offset by the presence of the gods to give “a degree of order” to 
 human life. For good measure, Emily is seen as “the emblem of 
 vernal innocence.” And further, against the “conflict of an ethic 
 of battle and an ethic of love,” appear the figures of Theseus, 
 Ypolita, and Perotheus “as an emblem of the two kinds of value 
 reconciled and in accord.” Mr. Frost’s position is put a little less 
 vividly earlier in his article. The Knight’s Tale, he says, “develops 
 from three widening concentric circles of interest: the merely 
 human interest of the rivalry between two young heroes. . . ; the 
 ethical interest of a conflict of obligations between romantic love 
 and military comradeship; and finally the theological interest at¬ 
 taching to the method by which a just providence fully stabilizes 
 a disintegrating human situation.” 
 
 On a more mundane view the moral is simply that somehow 
 things come right in the end and even passive love is triumphant; 
 Arcite, who put his trust in Mars, is rewarded by victory in battle 
 and a fine funeral, but the astuteness of Palamon, who put his 
 trust in Venus, is ultimately justified. This is perhaps not very 
 edifying, but it has a Chaucerian flavor. 
 
 More restricted is the view of the Knight’s Tale as “an exem- 
 
100 
 
 THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 plum of the power of love which overrules all fellowship, even 
 that of the truest of knights and devoted friends.” It was suggest¬ 
 ed long since by Pater, was repeated by Mather (1899), ls held 
 now by Professor Wilson. Another critic finds no grand philo¬ 
 sophical solution; for the Knight’s Tale is “a tragedy, an irony of 
 existence whereby virtue has been arrayed, not against vice and 
 evil, but against an equal virtue;... a hero had died so as to make 
 way for another hero. Why a merciful providence had permitted 
 this might well have continued to puzzle Chaucer’s audience even 
 after an exposition of Boethius. . . .” 
 
 Those seeking a lofder position have noted that the conflict 
 of loyalties between Palamon and Arcite is raised to a super¬ 
 natural level, but they can find little satisfaction in the choice of 
 Saturn as umpire, a malignant figure who boasts of fostering the 
 very same calamities as those depicted in the temple of Mars. 
 Others might be content to understand the debate in heaven as a 
 bit of decoration (only forty-five lines long) carried over from 
 Boccaccio’s epic machinery. 
 
 It is true that the gods seem to decide the contest of Palamon 
 and Arcite: they were consulted in the three prayers, and their 
 decisions announced oracularly, before the case was laid before 
 Saturn. But Chaucer was hardly concerned with classical theol¬ 
 ogy. There is however a sense of predestined happenings through¬ 
 out this poem, as elsewhere in Chaucer; but here it is less likely 
 than elsewhere that Chaucer means to certify or illustrate his per¬ 
 sonal belief in Divine Providence. Arcite asks why people com¬ 
 plain of the purveiaunce of God, or of Fortune, which often does 
 better by them than they could do for themselves. Palamon in 
 his parallel compleynt is more bitter. The gods who rule die 
 world are cruel, he says, and he is openly cynical in his quesdon— 
 
 What governance is in this prescience 
 
 That giltelees tormenteth innocence ? 
 
 But he dismisses the problem, as Chaucer usually does, by leaving 
 the answer to dyvynys. 
 
 These are of course dramatic speeches. The most conspicuous 
 appearance of 
 
THE KNIGHT’S TALE 
 
 IOI 
 
 The destinee, ministre general 
 
 That executeth in the world over al 
 
 The purveiaunce that God hath seyn biforn 
 
 occurs when the threefold coincidence has to be accounted for, 
 when Arcite goes a-Maying and Theseus a-hunting to the very 
 place and at the very time when Palamon is lurking in the forest 
 near Athens. In the formal closing speech of Theseus, which is 
 a composite of Boethius and Boccaccio, when the grand harmon¬ 
 izing of all oppositions takes place, the words are Firste Moevere 
 and Prince and fuppiter the Kyng together with purveiaunce and 
 grace; and the general sense is that all things are ordained by 
 divine order and we should thank Jupiter of al his grace and 
 ma\e of sorwes two O parfit joye, that is, the wedding of Palamon 
 and Emily. This fine speech, moreover, is not a model of reason 
 but a display of eloquence—else we might wonder at the curious 
 remark that Arcite was fortunate to die young rather 
 
 Than whan his name appalled is for age. 
 
 The occasion calls for fine language, not logic, and Theseus rises 
 to the occasion. If Chaucer meant us to see here a sign of the 
 loving kindness of Providence rather than merely the happy end¬ 
 ing of his story, one can only admit that he leaves a great deal to 
 interpretation. For the final outcome is properly provided by the 
 answers of Mars, Venus, and Diana and by Arcite’s dying wish, to 
 say nothing of the Athenian parliament. 
 
 One small point remains. At the end of Pars Prima the poet 
 addresses Yow lovers with the question: Which of the two heroes 
 was in worse plight, Palamon, who could at least see his lady 
 from the prison window, or Arcite, who was out of prison but 
 could never see his lady? No more is made of this demande 
 later in the tale—it may have been only a device for ending a 
 chapter—but we do not forget it. When the story is finished we 
 rephrase it: Which of the two equal suitors should win? The an¬ 
 swer is: both won. We are then more than half persuaded that 
 the whole tale, in this form which Chaucer gave it, exists for its 
 ambiguity and its ingenious solution. 
 
 There is general agreement on the many fine qualities of the 
 
102 
 
 THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 Knight’s Tale, ranging from single lines to considerable passages, 
 lyrical, descriptive, and narrative. The poem’s appeal is in large 
 part due to these: the young prisoners in their tower with Emily 
 singing in the garden beneath their window on a May morning; 
 the formalized arguments, the stylized compleynts, the particular¬ 
 ized prayers, the two battle pieces, one a single combat, the other 
 a grand tournament; the elaborate amphitheater with its three 
 temples and their ornamentation; the one emotionally moving 
 scene of Arcite’s farewell; the funeral ceremonies; and above all 
 the plight of the young knights, sworn brothers, both in love with 
 the indifferent Emily, with the courtly but genial Theseus as 
 master of ceremonies. The setting, the figures, the situations 
 are all romantic to the last degree. That the combination of these 
 elements is somewhat artificial does not lessen their attractiveness. 
 But that their effect is mainly decorative and picturesque should 
 be recognized fully and made the starting point of a sound criti¬ 
 cism; and the additional elements which enthusiastic readers have 
 discovered in the poem, the characterization of Palamon and Ar- 
 cite and the profound moral significance should be regarded with 
 caution. 
 
 Another great merit of the poem is its atmosphere. The set¬ 
 ting of the love story is ancient; but the decor of the foreground 
 is pure Chaucerian modern, or only faintly in the recent past with 
 only hints of historical distance. The background of chivalry, 
 which Chaucer himself saw as passing, is described with a clear 
 sense of its departing splendor, with exaggerated emphasis on the 
 variety of armor, and the overcolored accessories of Lygurge and 
 Emetreus. The grand tournament and the knightly virtues are 
 represented with that slight artificiality of conscious revival, or 
 deliberate retention, which he himself witnessed only a few years 
 later, in the two tournaments at Smithfield, a pageantry which 
 suited admirably the romantic remoteness of ancient Thebes and 
 Athens, touched, like that of Malory for us, with the nostalgia for 
 a glory that was slipping away. 
 
 What now will account for the excellence of the parts along¬ 
 side the shortcomings and the want of general coherence? Sup- 
 
THE KNIGHT’S TALE 
 
 103 
 
 pose that in the early or late 1370’s, that is, soon after he had 
 been to Italy and discovered the Teseida, Chaucer felt moved to 
 make over the Italian poem for himself. 21 He would no doubt 
 have been impressed by it and recognized its attractive features as 
 well as some which were to him less attractive; but it was rich in 
 material. He might not be too clear at the outset just what he 
 could make of it, but he would discard most of the epic machinery 
 and concentrate on the main episode of the two sworn brothers 
 and their love of the disinterested heroine. He begins with a rapid 
 sketch of Boccaccio’s opening—in 400 lines he disposes of the 
 first three books, 2500 lines—and incorporates some of the grand 
 style of his model. This grand manner, however, strikes him as 
 slightly comic in its high-flown exaggerations; and his own sense 
 of humor insistendy craves indulgence. Instead therefore of treat¬ 
 ing the material as a noble love story in the artificial fashion of 
 Boccaccio he will see what can be done with the curious situation 
 of two equal lovers who each win the lady though in different 
 ways. This is actually an amusing situation, the more so because 
 Emily was not emotionally involved and neither of the lovers was 
 in a position to approach her directly—a love story without any 
 lovemaking, a love problem which can be solved in two ways at 
 once, a serious subject with opportunides for his natural proclivity 
 towards the lighter vein. Along with this he finds of course all 
 the richness of decoradve description and the whole chivalric 
 background as of the present with the antique flavor of a distant 
 unfamiliar past: Scythia and the Amazons, ancient Thebes and 
 Athens. So he continues to the end, regardless of apparent diffi¬ 
 culties and possible inconsistencies—regardless because his enthus¬ 
 iasm (which he communicates) carries him along. When it is 
 all done he admits its faults; he cannot claim for it any great 
 unity either of conception or of handling, but it is full of variety 
 and color and incident, and certainly a variety of interests, grave 
 and gay. It has a love story, one rather different from those other 
 romances; it has war and knightly combat on a large scale; it has 
 temples full of bright pictures; it has a moving death scene and 
 the ancient burial celebration; it has supernatural adjuncts (the 
 omens and the scene in heaven, in which for a moment the very 
 
104 
 
 THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 gods are baffled); it has coincidence of event requiring double 
 explanation by the powers of Destiny and the divine foresight; it 
 has surprises enough, including the specially satisfying surprises 
 about which there needed to be no suspense or concealment, illus¬ 
 trating how both suitors can win. His people are not very real 
 in themselves, and do not need to be: the passive heroine and the 
 dual hero, two young knights so nearly alike that one can hardly 
 tell them apart yet sufficiently unlike to give the impression of 
 difference, and a king,—the Duke of Athens who had himself 
 had a checkered past (of which nothing is to be said) and has 
 now a mellow humor along with fine instincts for statecraft and 
 speech making. For all this abundance the reader will be grate¬ 
 ful, without looking anxiously or hypercritically for minor flaws. 
 
 So there it is, an imperfect poem, an early work. It will of 
 course find a place in the Canterbury Tales and while not alto¬ 
 gether suitable for his Pilgrim Knight, who had devoted most of 
 his long life to the service of the Church Militant in foreign 
 lands and who would not be much concerned with a demande 
 d’amours or any sort of love tale, still it will do. (It would have 
 done better for the Squire perhaps.) Yet, to go back and revise 
 it, to harmonize the styles to one level, to iron out the incon¬ 
 sistencies, even to remove some of the blots of his pupil pen, might 
 destroy its peculiar qualities. Therefore, let it stand, with only 
 the insertion of a few lines to place it among the pilgrim’s narra¬ 
 tives. 
 
 4. REALISM AND TALES OF THE 
 SUPERNATURAL 
 
 C HAUCER liked to picture himself as a bookish fellow. His 
 Clerk might have been content with twenty books of Aris¬ 
 totle and his lore; Chaucer himself had, towards the close of his 
 life, sixty— 
 
 Yis, God wot, sixty bokes olde and newe 
 about Greek and Roman women alone. He was a constant reader 
 
REALISM AND TALES OF THE SUPERNATURAL 105 
 
 what for lust and what for lore, and he read hopefully to acquire 
 al this newe science that men lere, and also confidently: 
 
 Than mote we to bo\es that we fynde . . . 
 
 And to the doctrine of these olde wyse 
 Y eve credence, in every sky Ifni wise. 
 
 Sometimes on a May morning his worship of the daisy would get 
 him away from his books, but for the most part they kept him 
 from daily contact with the practical business of life, so that he 
 knew almost nothing of the love affairs all around him 
 
 Ne of noght elles that God made. 
 
 What with his accounts at the Customs and his devotion to books 
 he got no rest and no knowledge of newe thynges; he was becom¬ 
 ing a recluse, a hermit; and it took Jupiter and the eloquent Eagle 
 to free him from this bondage—if free him they could. For even 
 when the Eagle had brought him into the very presence of the 
 stellified birds and fish and beasts of the Zodiac and the constella- 
 dons, 
 
 As the Raven, or eyther Bere, 
 
 Or Ariones harpe fyn, 
 
 Castor, Pollux, or Delphyn, 
 
 Or Athalantes doughtres sevene 
 
 (alack, his books betrayed him on that last name), he stubbornly 
 persisted in refusing such intimacies: 
 
 “No fors,” quod y, “hyt is no nede. 
 
 I leve wel, so God me spede, 
 
 Hem that write of this matere, 
 
 As though l knew her places here. . . .” 
 
 Actually, he tells us, he is already (at the date of the ‘Hous of 
 Fame’) too old to learn any more— 
 
 “Wilt thou lere of sterres aught?” 
 
 “Nay, certeynly,” quod y, “ryght naught.” 
 
 “And why?” “For y am now to old.” 
 
 How close to the letter we are to accept all this need not be 
 seriously asked. But certainly he grew up as a page to Prince 
 
io6 
 
 THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 Lionel’s wife and as King Edward’s esquire, he had seen fighting 
 in France, had crossed the Alps, had dealt with the men of big 
 business in London. In truth we find touches of realism in his 
 earliest work, even in the ‘Book of the Duchess,’ which is a distil¬ 
 lation of his reading in French poetry. For example, with all 
 the conventional description of the Duchess’s manners and person 
 he devotes half a dozen lines to her fair throat (939 ff.)—it had 
 no unbecoming boon ne bre\ke; it was not hollow, the collarbone 
 was not visible. The bright and original picture of the dreamer’s 
 room is also a mixture of real and unreal. Skeat felt it necessary 
 to remark that since stained glass was expensive the windows 
 depicting the whole story of Troy were dream windows; but the 
 poet was careful to say that they had no cracks in them. The 
 streaming colors on his bed come from observation, but when he 
 takes his horse and rides out of the room, that is pure dream. 
 A little later Chaucer turns to the Roman de la Rose, where he 
 reads: 22 
 
 Mats li arbre, ce sachiez, furent 
 Si loing a loing come estre durent; 
 
 Li uns fu loing de 1 ’autre assis 
 Plus de cine toises ou de sis. 
 
 This he had translated: 
 
 One from another in assyse 
 Fyve fadome or sixe I trowe so 
 But they were hye and great also, 
 
 and then remade it in the ‘Book of the Duchess’: 
 
 And every tree stood by hymselve 
 Prom other wel ten foot or twelve, 
 
 So grete trees, so huge of strengthe, 
 
 Of fourty or fifty fad me lengthe. 
 
 For the marvelous forest of his dream the trees had to be closer 
 than thirty or thirty-five feet, so he set them only ten or twelve 
 feet apart ( twelve for the handy rime), and he gave them also an 
 extraordinary height—two hundred forty to three hundred feet 
 
 Clene withoute bowgh or sti\\e 
 
REALISM AND TALES OF THE SUPERNATURAL 107 
 
 before the branches began. To confirm the unrealism, these 
 branches, he says, met to form an impenetrable shade, as in the 
 Roman, for the comfort of the numberless animals there. Then, 
 to indicate how many these were, he picked up from a very dif¬ 
 ferent context in the Roman and 12,500 lines away, the Argus- 
 Algus figure and gave the whole his comic twist: there were so 
 many animals that even the noble countour could not reckon up 
 all the marvels of his dream. 
 
 The realistic details, descriptive and analytical, in the fabliaux 
 and the comic Tales need no pointing; a few more, out of many, 
 in less likely places may be noted. Troilus, to forestall comment 
 if he is missed during the nocturnal meetings with Criseyde, gives 
 out 
 
 Ther-while he was aboute this servyse, 
 
 That he was gon to don his sacrifise, 
 
 And moste at swich a temple allone wa\e, 
 
 Answered of Apollo for to be. 
 
 This is not in Boccaccio and it is more than many modern novel¬ 
 ists condescend to. It looks ahead also to the irony that later 
 Pandarus actually finds him in such a temple wrestling with his 
 anguish over the exchange. In case of any disturbance that might 
 arise if Troilus decides to run away with Criseyde, Pandarus 
 pledges active support, 
 
 Theigh ich and al my kyn, upon a stownde, 
 
 Shulle in a strete as dogges liggen dede. 
 
 This is also not in Boccaccio. It recalls the line where Thisbe 
 finds her lover 
 
 Betynge with his heles on the grounde 
 Al blody. 
 
 Throughout the Troilus, with all its airs of remoteness in religion 
 and manners, of payens corsed olde rites, there is so much con¬ 
 temporary realistic detail that Chaucer, even after casting as much 
 blame as he could on one Lollius, felt the pressure of criticism and 
 tried at the end to recant. 
 
108 the canterbury tales 
 
 Chaucer had no theory of realism; the theory is a modern 
 invention. What we see in him of this sort runs to the purely 
 reportorial founded on acute observation, especially of English 
 low life—the Cook’s ulcer, the Miller’s wart, the Squire’s carving, 
 the Knight’s dirty tunic—and analytical insights of motive or 
 action—the Merchant’s chevisaunce, the Friar’s sophistries, the 
 Reeve’s cunning. The old widow, we recall, 
 
 Thre large sowes hadde she, and namo, 
 
 Three \een, and ee\ a sheep that highte Malle. 
 
 This is the very acme of realism. With such accuracy he had to 
 combine the conventional abstractions he accepted from his early 
 models. Sometimes they will cleave but not incorporate, as with 
 the feet of Nebuchadnezzar’s statue. His Custance, Griselda, 
 Dorigen are graduated examples, his Criseyde the most complex 
 and difficult. For the delicate touches by which she comes alive 
 disassociate her from the simple role in which she was originally 
 cast, of amorous fickle young woman. At Chaucer’s best the 
 abstractions are blended with “the rich substance of concrete 
 things.” At his best, furthermore, the exactness is enhanced by 
 imaginative strokes which yield not only verisimilitude but the 
 image of life itself (though that too is an abstraction). 
 
 Realism is of two kinds. One is that which is confected for 
 the common reader, who has no imagination and little memory, 
 who asks no more than that what he is given should resemble 
 what he knows. This is the kind which panders to the secondary 
 merit of recognition, provided the language is vivid enough. It 
 is preoccupied with the phenomenal world, not the real world. 
 The other kind reaches higher, towards die universal by way of 
 the imagination. “Je dis une fleur,” said Mallarme—and Chau¬ 
 cer would not follow him here, but perhaps he would vaguely feel 
 what is meant—“Je dis une fleur et . .. musicalement se leve, idee 
 meme et suave, l’absente de tous bouquets.” Just so: for Chau¬ 
 cer’s unreal meadow of flowers white and red is nothing that he 
 reports from observation and memory, but an ideal Platonic 
 meadow. His Chanticleer and Pertelote are not barnyard fowl, 
 nor human beings slightly disguised; and by a sort of magic fall- 
 
REALISM AND TALES OF THE SUPERNATURAL 
 
 109 
 
 acy the illusion transcends concreteness. The concrete elements 
 are a means given and absorbed. In this sense Chaucer some¬ 
 times achieves the higher realism, beyond the empirical, and 
 along with it comes that detachment and amoral attitude which 
 refuses to be embroiled with moral judgments, which makes his 
 weak characters pardonable and his villains companionable. 
 
 One touch of nature can be very deceptive. Its purpose may 
 be to deceive, and it may be no more than a single detail which 
 is willingly accepted as validating the whole. So the Knight’s 
 gipoun Al bismotered seems to make him more real than all his 
 campaigns in heathendom. Yet he never becomes a person; he is 
 as much a painted figure as his son. The Squire is described full 
 length, with an accumulation of pictorial and characterizing de¬ 
 tail, yet he remains a picture; he never acts like a human being 
 moved by parts and passions from within. And this is true of all 
 his people, save the three pre-eminent exceptions. It places Chau¬ 
 cer as a medieval on the verge of the Renaissance. So in paint¬ 
 ing and sculpture St. Mark had his lion, Luke his heifer, John his 
 eagle, and this sufficed, with only the simplest likeness to the 
 human figure; even the lions, heifers, eagles did not pretend to be 
 very lifelike. But by the late fourteenth century and the early 
 fifteenth something like portraiture has begun. When King 
 Richard in the Wilton diptych is shown adoring the Virgin, the 
 angels are done with conventional faces, John the Baptist is at the 
 same time symbolic and human, but Richard himself is almost 
 certainly a portrait, and the tw f o kings, St. Edmund and St. 
 Edward the Confessor, are so individualized in costume and in 
 feature as to suggest contemporary originals. 
 
 Chaucer’s realism is a paradox. His descriptions of people and 
 things are conventional but often raised “for the moment” by 
 shrewd, well-placed brush strokes to the third dimension of seem¬ 
 ing reality—the cat driven from the ingle bench, January’s sag¬ 
 ging jowls, that gay popelote the carpenter’s wife, the friar kiss¬ 
 ing Thomas’ wife, and a hundred more. Perhaps this was 
 obvious, so obvious as to be overlooked. On the other hand, 
 there are the three people to whom Chaucer allotted time and 
 space for portraiture, as though Nature spoke for him— 
 
no 
 
 THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 lol 1 , Nature, 
 
 Thus can 1 forme and peymte a creature, 
 
 Whan that me list — 
 
 the Wife of Bath and Pandarus and in part Criseyde. Beside 
 these the Clerk is thin, the Prioress pale, the Pardoner merely a 
 rough diamond, and the others nowhere. Those others have 
 their moments, Dorigen, for example, but for the most part they 
 are movable types. 
 
 Much of Chaucer’s admired realism is a matter of vivid imag¬ 
 ery. There is a picture of Jovinyan 
 
 Fat as a whale, and walkynge as a swan. 
 
 The swan could be from observation, but had Chaucer ever seen 
 a whale? There is Chanticleer singing: 
 
 He wolde so peyne hym that with hothe his yen 
 He moste wyn\e, so loude he wolde cryen, 
 
 And stonden on his tiptoon therwithal, 
 
 And strecche forth his ne\\e long and smal. 
 
 This also looks like direct observation and the tiptoes an amusing 
 transfer. There is also Griselda coming home, surprised to find 
 the Marquis there, 
 
 And she set doun hir water pot anon 
 Biside the thresshfold. 
 
 Petrarch had “aquam e longinquo fonte convectans” and the 
 French adds “une croche de l’eaue,” but set doun is Chaucer’s and 
 it vivifies the scene. There is, of a different sort, Mars roused 
 from Venus’ bed donning his armor and shaking his spear so it 
 almost snaps, but 
 
 Ful hevy was he to walken over lond. 
 
 This is a factual detail which nineteenth-century illustrators might 
 have borne in mind. There is, also in ‘Mars,’ the picture of 
 Phebus entering the palace sturdily, 
 
 With torche in honde, of which the stremes bryghte 
 On Venus chambre \noh\eden ful lyghte. - 
 
REALISM AND TALES OF THE SUPERNATURAL hi 
 
 The double meanings, with latent impropriety, befit the pervad¬ 
 ing allegory, but the beams of light knocking lightly on the door 
 is a conceit with realistic backing. Such details abound in Chau¬ 
 cer, from his early work (remember the untrained little dog that 
 fawned on him in the ‘Book of the Duchess’) to his latest (the 
 mixed metaphor of his muse That rusteth in my shethe)’, and 
 they crowd in among the standbys of Cupid and the seven gods 
 and the omnipresent Fortune and all the other inescapable 
 cliches. The sudden bright contrasts produce an illusion of real¬ 
 ism particularly welcome to the modern reader and raise Chau¬ 
 cer in our esteem. 
 
 There is another side, however. His fortune with posterity is 
 due so much to a reputation for realistic modes, his concern is so 
 much with concrete reportage (and so little with reflection) that 
 we have to remember what precious hostages he gave to fortune 
 in every poem, except the General Prologue. 
 
 The General Prologue is his one finest achievement because 
 along with composition, as structure and as expression, it called 
 for the best qualities of his genius and did not require of him 
 qualities which he possessed in limited measure. His fondness 
 for the dream convention may have been due to artistic instinct as 
 much as to fashion; it allowed him to mingle the real and the 
 unreal to the advantage of both without submitting to the stand¬ 
 ard checks of accuracy and reality. His flowers white and red may 
 be sublimated (as I have suggested), but they leave us wondering 
 if he was as careful an observer of natural phenomena as of 
 human. 
 
 He has his lists of birds and trees, but they are literary, not 
 pictorial. Their attributes are not meant to make us see them. 
 He has his surprising examples of synaesthesia, perhaps borrowed, 
 as in the statue of Venus, in the Knight’s Tale, floating on the 
 sea, with doves flickering above her head and on it 
 
 A rose gerland, fressh and wel smellynge; 
 
 and the parallel colored statue of Diana, with little dogs about 
 her feet and under them a waxing moon and before her a woman 
 in childbirth— 
 
112 
 
 THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 Ful pitously Lucyna gan she calle . . . 
 
 Wei koude he peynten lifly that it wroghte. 
 
 Vivid, certainly, yet not real; not done from nature, though with 
 natural adjuncts. There is the Franklin’s beard white as a daisy, 
 with a hint of his ruddy face, and all the daisies of the Prologue 
 to the ‘Legend of Good Women,’ especially those of Alcestis’ 
 crown, whose whiteness was given by Cibella and whose redness 
 by Mars. The flowers are nearly always red and white and the 
 colors are more symbolic or conventional than natural. Here of 
 course he is in the long tradition. A striking example is Dame 
 Pees sitting at the temple door (‘Parlement,’ 239 ff.) with a curtyn 
 in hir bond —you see her holding the curtain aside—and with her 
 Dame Pacience 
 
 With face pale, upon an hil of sond. 
 
 Away goes the picture in a blur of symbolism. There are the 
 grisly black rocks which terrified Dorigen; you feel them, as she 
 did, but you do not visualize them, you are not meant to, for 
 they are emotional accessories, not pictorial. Chaucer saw the 
 shipping in the Thames and crossed the Channel several times, 
 but you find no impression that ships and the sea made on his 
 mind. He picks up a nautical metaphor from Boccaccio and 
 develops it for literary effect. He frequently mentions music, but 
 for a purpose, not for delight in the sound. Is there any evidence 
 that he listened with pleasure to the motets of Machaut ? Is there 
 any sign that he appreciated the beauty of mass, proportion, and 
 decorative elements of Gothic buildings ? The castle in Book III 
 of the ‘Hous of Fame’ is sheer fantasy, and properly so, but with¬ 
 out the realistic vividness or the profusion of technical terms that 
 we enjoy in Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight. And so on, 
 for there is no need to belabor the point. 
 
 It would surprise Chaucer to be told of our modern notions of 
 realism and its poor relation naturalism, the slice-of-life theory— 
 the more disagreeable the better. The idea of reporting con¬ 
 temporary life as a record would surprise him; but so also would 
 the notion that art is a relief from the human situation, a rising 
 from the quotidian to the eternal. The wide spaces between these 
 
REALISM AND TALES OF THE SUPERNATURAL 113 
 
 two, between strict imitation or resemblance and absolute symbol, 
 were his ground. Like all artists he worked from tradition, add¬ 
 ing only his own new and different ways of enlarging tradition. 
 As the painter composes but does not reproduce, as his pictures 
 resemble the landscape, not the other way around, so Chaucer 
 gives us not what his eyes saw but what his creative mind selected, 
 and he is most ‘realistic’ when he chooses from the manifold 
 variety of data the concrete details, necessarily contemporary, 
 which produce the illusion of verisimilitude. It is the quality of 
 his choices and their proportion to the conventional elements 
 which interest us; and it is his constant habit of introducing con¬ 
 crete details, apparently from his own direct observation, though 
 often also from some outlying tradition (proverbs, folk phrases, 
 and such) into the artificial, unnatural settings of his models, his 
 classical borrowings, and the French love visions, which enhances 
 his reputation as a realist. 
 
 On the other hand, this habit of using realistic detail tends 
 to disguise the conventionality of his methods in the larger aspects 
 of narrative structure and characterization. That kind of realism 
 which sticks close to the familiar phenomena of normal life, the 
 actual and plausibly probable activities of men, and the situations 
 which display them as we are accustomed to see them, is not his 
 kind. His plots, in a word, his stories seemingly built on probable 
 and natural events, are thoroughly unreal and unrealistic, the 
 fabliau type as much so as the (Physician’s) story of Virginia and 
 the (Manciple’s) story of the white crow, the ‘Palamon and 
 Arcite’ as much as the Prioress’ miracle or the other nun’s St. 
 Cecilia, the tragi-comedy of Troilus as much as the Ovidian mar- 
 tyrology of Cupid’s saints. His characters are not psychological 
 constructs or complexly consistent artistic creations, but more or 
 less lively simulacra performing their functions predetermined by 
 the plot. 
 
 Moreover, along with his pretensions of ignorance about love 
 and other empirical experience, Chaucer allows himself an almost 
 too positive attitude of aesthetic distance. He will remind us with 
 a wink, an aside, a deprecatory gesture, that this is not a poem, 
 an oeuvre, but an amusing piece of business which he shares with 
 
THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 IX 4 
 
 us as readers or listeners. He will thus “insist that it is only a 
 / story about people, not a representatiorhof^pesphras-they-iive and 
 move and think and feel. This is all very well, he will say, but 
 we know better than to take it seriously; it may seem painful, but 
 we shall not wince; it may seem wicked, but we shall not pretend 
 to judge: remember, this is a story. Like Thackeray, he will not 
 allow the reader to enjoy for long the illusion of reality; lo! he 
 says, the puppets and the strings—operated by Fortune, Purvei- 
 aunce, Lollius, me (Geoffrey Chaucer). It is an amalgam of the 
 ingenuous and the disingenuous, with corresponding advantages 
 and distractions. 
 
 Hence it is worth while to examine some of the ways by which 
 Chaucer deliberately seeks to reduce the improbabilities of his 
 story-matter through realistic levies on the familiar and acceptedly 
 normal or natural matter of ordinary life and the devices which 
 he employs to conceal the palpably implausible while maintaining 
 an air of verisimilitude. 
 
 For a very large proportion of Chaucer’s poetry the question of 
 realism is irrelevant. ‘Realistic’ touches, borrowed and original, 
 may appear anywhere. The Troilus, always a work apart, 
 abounds in them, though it is a kind of mediaeval romance with an 
 antique backdrop. The Knight’s Tale has them, thinly and not 
 too felicitously scattered. In the Canterbury Tales, however, 
 there are five examples, of varied origin, that illustrate a progres¬ 
 sion of technical mastery, which may have nothing to do with 
 chronology, in Chaucer’s handling of unrealistic materials. There 
 is first the Man of Law’s Tale, where he failed, I believe, for want 
 of serious effort; the Clerk’s Tale, where he compromised success¬ 
 fully; the Franklin’s Tale, where he failed by virtue of trying too 
 hard; and the Wife of Bath’s Tale, where he succeeded eminently 
 by total omission; and lastly, for contrast, the Friar’s Tale, where 
 he succeeded by the opposite method. Our criteria now will be 
 purely artistic, divorced of mediaeval standards—modern, if you 
 like, or, if there are such criteria, universal. 23 
 
 It used to be held that the Man of law’s Tale was early work 
 and so its obvious faults could be accounted for; then Skeat’s argu- 
 
REALISM AND TALES OF THE SUPERNATURAL 
 
 "5 
 
 ments for revision were strongly opposed by Tatlock; and latterly 
 it has been taken up by those who would praise Chaucer at all 
 costs. 24 Although Chaucer was a man of his time, he was also a 
 poet who has left us pre-eminently successful narrative verse, and 
 like other poets was capable of inferior work. It is therefore prop¬ 
 er to look at the literary qualities of the poem and later contrast 
 it with his handling of similar artistic problems. His mediaeval- 
 ism may something extenuate, but it cannot wholly shelter him 
 from all-prevailing standards of literary craftsmanship. 
 
 Foremost, then, is the crudity of the story, patterned on or 
 parallel to many and many a saint’s legend and with its ultimate 
 origins in marchen tradition, a story preposterously improbable 
 and acceptable to medieval taste because of its piety. Other 
 stories of Chaucer’s are improbable enough, but in the Man of 
 Law’s Tale he accepted many of his original’s worst elements and 
 when he tried to mitigate them only made them more apparent. 
 That he improved on Trivet’s version in many ways is true, and 
 also that in condensing he added some unimprovements. His 
 improvements leave us wondering why he did not go further. 
 The monotony of the repeated motifs—the two wicked mothers- 
 in-law and the two exposures at sea—was probably no deterrent to 
 mediaeval readers; but one of each, with a little less violent 
 rhetoric for the mothers-in-law and a little more attention to the 
 trials of an extended solitary voyage would certainly have been 
 more effective in bringing home to us the long-suffering virtues of 
 the heroine. Yet worst of all is what Pollard calls “the unreason¬ 
 ing prodigality of time” throughout the tale. The sowdanesse 
 appears to have moved swiftly, but the first voyage from Syria to 
 Northumberland lasted for yeres and dayes (463); a certain 
 amount of time must have elapsed for the conversion of Hermen- 
 gild and the constable, the murder of Hermengild and the mar¬ 
 riage to Alla, followed by the birth of Mauricius, and the machi¬ 
 nations (letters to and from Scotland) of Donegild, though 
 Mauricius is only a crying infant (866) when Custance sets out 
 on the return voyage. This voyage, hardly shorter in miles than 
 the first, lasted more than five years (902), so that it is ten years 
 more or less before the father of Custance learns of the dishonour 
 
116 
 
 THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 done to his daughter by the Syrians and sends an expedition to 
 wreak vengeance—and also unexpectedly to rescue the derelict 
 Custance, who is unrecognized by her own uncle, somewhere in 
 the eastern Mediterranean. Meanwhile, five years after murder¬ 
 ing his mother King Alla is moved to repentance, makes his 
 pilgrimage to Rome to receive penance from the Pope, and when 
 he arrives is welcomed royally (995 ff.) with no mention of guilt 
 or penance. Rather, with some difficulty he and his daughter are 
 brought together and presently, whan he his tyme say, he returns 
 to England and dies a year later. Custance goes back to her 
 father. The action has occupied at least a dozen years, most of it 
 spent in the uncharted drifting of the heroine’s ships. With rea¬ 
 sonable treatment and due allowance for a willing suspension of 
 disbelief, this was material for a good improving story. Chaucer 
 did little enough to give it a proper shape and substance. By the 
 time he had written the Pardoner’s Tale, the Wife of Bath’s Tale, 
 or even the Clerk’s Tale, and above all the Miller’s Tale, Chaucer 
 knew enough of narrative technique to have made something 
 first rate of Trivet’s story—if he had chosen to try seriously. 
 
 Tatlock praised Chaucer for not attempting to rationalize the 
 Tale, especially Custance herself. “To rationalize her would 
 have been to make yet more incongruous than it is a story which 
 is incurably miraculous.” But it is just here that Chaucer showed 
 no little concern. He laid it down in the ninth and tenth stanzas 
 that Custance’s misfortunes were due in the first instance to the 
 stars; he put into her mouth the piteous lines: 
 
 Wommen are born to thraldom and penance, 
 
 And to been under mannes governance', 
 
 he again blamed the stars (O Mars, o atazir) and complained of 
 her father’s imprudence; a little later he saw Satan working 
 against her (365 ff.); he alleged divine intervention (471 ff.) to 
 account for her being spared by the wicked Syrians (with the 
 examples of Daniel, Jonah, the Israelites crossing the Red Sea, 
 and Maria Egyptiaca); and again (932 ff.) he cited Biblical prece¬ 
 dent for her strength—all of which, amounting to thirteen stanzas, 
 are his additions, that is, have no source in Trivet. Their purpose 
 
REALISM AND TALES OF THE SUPERNATURAL 
 
 “7 
 
 if not their effect is to lessen our sense of the improbable. More¬ 
 over, he took pains to enlist our sympathy with the sufferings of 
 Custance, first in her pathetic leavetaking of her father, later in 
 five really touching stanzas (834 ff.) when she is set adrift for the 
 second time, with her infant now, saying to the constable, 
 
 So I{ys hym ones in his fadres name . . . 
 
 And evere she preyeth hire child to holde his pees; 
 
 and also in two stanzas emphasizing her piety. These nine 
 stanzas are likewise additions to the source. Further, he borrows 
 from Innocent a stanza (421 ff.) on the suddenness of sorrow after 
 joy, another on the evils of drink (771 ff.), another on the evils of 
 lust (925 ff.), and another on the brevity of happiness (1135 ff.); 
 and nine lines from Boethius on the prosperity of the wicked (811 
 ff.)—altogether twenty-three stanzas added to Trivet’s material, all 
 meant to soften the miraculous elements and to enhance the piety 
 and pathos of Custance, with commonplace moral observations 
 from the De contemptu mundi and the De consolatione philoso- 
 phiae: enough to manifest Chaucer’s concern with the handicaps 
 of such material; perhaps to offset the horrors of matricide, mur¬ 
 der, attempted rape, two more or less judicial deaths, and the 
 multiple slayings of Christians by Syrians and Syrians by Chris¬ 
 tians. 
 
 Still this is not all; there are other additions of a different cast, 
 notably the explosive rhetoric (358 ff.): 
 
 0 sowdanesse, roote of iniquitee! 
 
 Virago, thou Semyrame the secoundel . . 
 
 and a matching stanza directed at Donegild (778 ff.). Beginning 
 at 1 . 631, when Custance is charged with the murder of Hermen- 
 gild, there is a run of four stanzas of mixed quality. Custance 
 has now no champion to defend her unless Christ (who had 
 bound Satan—who yet lith ther he lay, though more than once 
 active in the story) intervenes with a miracle; she prays to God 
 and to the Blessed Virgin for succor; and Chaucer begs queens, 
 duchesses, and other noble ladies to have pity on Custance, who 
 is of royal blood. This leads to the summary line (693), 
 
118 
 
 THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 And thus hath Crist ymaad Custance a queene, 
 which reminds us of the similarly infelicitous 
 
 Now he we duchesses, hothe I and ye, 
 
 in the ‘Legend of Good Women’ (2127). Just preceding this last 
 effort to touch our hearts is the pale face stanza, remarkable for 
 its direct realism (645 ff.). A quite gratuitous, less worthy bit 
 of realism is the two stanzas (701 ff.) on the celebration of 
 Alla’s marriage: even such good women as Custance must leye 
 a lite hir holynesse aside on the wedding night. 
 
 So much for the embellishments with which Chaucer adorns 
 the “certain crudity” of the “incurably miraculous” story he found 
 in Trivet’s chronicle. The emphasis on pity and piety are to be 
 expected. The explosive rhetoric is explicable but not very effec¬ 
 tive. At a later date it would be called rant. In the Cock and 
 Fox story he could use it happily for comic purposes. Then there 
 are such exclamatory asides as God hym see—as God is trewe — 
 almyghty God thee gyde—ther God yeve him meschance —0 
 my Custance—Thus endeth olde Done gild, with meschance. 
 These and similar ornaments leave an impression of forcing, as 
 though the poet were deliberately raising his voice to conceal an 
 emptiness of feeling. 
 
 To say much about the versification is risky, but certainly the 
 verse of the Man of Law’s Tale is not so stiff and regular as in 
 the Manciple’s Tale, nor so free as in the Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale; 
 it is not so easy and supple as in the Troilus, nor are there so 
 many irregular lines as in the Knight’s Tale. But in the style 
 there is along with much smoothness and characteristic compe¬ 
 tence an unfortunate frequency of such light-hearted insets as 
 this is the ende in the very second stanza and repeated at 1. 255 
 and 1. 965, 1 \an (dar) say yow namoore—Bothe north and south, 
 and also west and est—was blynd and myghte nat see—I \an 
 telle it no hettre. Moreover, the various massacres and murders 
 are disposed of with remarkably brisk brevity, and there is a 
 notable haste when Alla on his wedding night begot his son and 
 went to Scotland leaving his wife with the constable and a bishop, 
 in three lines. 
 
REALISM AND TALES OF THE SUPERNATURAL 
 
 “9 
 
 Palpable humor has been noted by some commentators. A 
 signal instance is the account of the death of that (Spanish) stew¬ 
 ard who tried to violate Custance on her way home. Trivet says 
 plainly: “Custance, pur sa chastete sawer, priueement luy vient 
 rere au dos e le tresbucha en la mer,” but Chaucer has 
 
 For with hir struglyng wel and myghtily 
 
 The theef fil over bord al sodeynly. 
 
 This took place in Spain, as Trivet expressly states, but Chaucer 
 says he could not find the locality in his text (905). Another 
 variation, perhaps more significant, concerns the landing place of 
 Custance in Northumberland. Trivet says that it was “pres 
 Humbre” and that Donegild was at “Knaresbourth, entre Engle- 
 terre e Escoe”; Chaucer says it was a castle that nempnen 1 ne 
 kpin (507). Gower omits altogether the attack on Custance 
 along the Spanish coast, but he twice names “Knaresburgh” ( Con - 
 fessio 11, 443, 1264). Behind this reticence of Chaucer’s has been 
 seen an unwillingness to overpoint the natural association of his 
 heroine with the living Costanza of Castile, John of Gaunt’s sec¬ 
 ond wife. The castle of Knaresborough, earlier a refuge for the 
 murderers of Becket and later owned by Isabella, wife of Edward 
 II and mistress of Roger Mortimer, was now the property of Lan¬ 
 caster; he was there during the London riots of the Peasants’ Re¬ 
 volt and Costanza fled there after being refused entrance into 
 Pontefract. 25 This almost too obvious contemporary allusion for 
 Chancer’s readers, and some parallels which may be coincidental 
 but none the less obvious which Chaucer did not suppress—for 
 instance, the fact that after his marriage Alla left at once for the 
 wars in Scotland, as John of Gaunt had been sent north against 
 Scotland just before the Peasant uprising—were canvassed by 
 Professor Roland M. Smith in a fully documented article. 26 Pro¬ 
 fessor Smith says at the outset that it is “to the credit of students 
 of Chaucer that they have not pressed the identification of the 
 heroine of the Man of Law’s Tale with John of Gaunt’s second 
 Duchess”; and then, having discussed what looks like Chaucer’s 
 attempt to disguise the identification by rejecting certain details 
 he found in Trivet, is himself embarrassed to explain why Chau- 
 
120 
 
 THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 cer even wrote the poem. For the name Constance is conspicu¬ 
 ous throughout, and from 1371, when she reached England, to 
 her death in 1394 the duchess was a prominent figure in court 
 life; and to suppress the words Spain and Knaresborough and 
 leave the other parallels for curious readers to speculate on is not 
 much concealment. Would the removal of those two words suc¬ 
 ceed in “obliterating any presumptions that he had the Castilian 
 Constance in mind”? The question is still embarrassing. 
 
 Where, one may also ask, was Chaucer’s artistic sense when, 
 having chosen the subject, he was not content to leave it on its 
 own ground? The margin of credibility varies from age to age; 
 the miraculous of one day is often the commonplace of the next. 
 But if Chaucer had not felt himself hampered by the improbabili¬ 
 ties of his material, why did he ostentatiously try to cover them up 
 by appeal to Scripture and resort to rhetoric? 
 
 The Clerk’s Tale has been almost submerged in arguments 
 about the Clerk and Petrarch, the Clerk and the Wife of Bath, 
 and the Envoy whether the Clerk’s or Chaucer’s. It is interesting 
 however on other counts: as a study of close translation from 
 Latin prose to smooth, regular, English stanzas with a minimum 
 of padding and alteration; and as an example of Chaucer’s man¬ 
 agement of the humanly improbable. Petrarch’s moral, which 
 implies a deprecation of human interest, Chaucer saved for a kind 
 of surprise ending, as much as to say: If you did not believe in 
 Griselda’s humility, no matter; the real point is the Christian 
 parable. But throughout the narrative he took precautions against 
 losing the reader’s sympathy. Petrarch had shown the way, Chau¬ 
 cer improved on it. In terms of the story Griselda’s submissive¬ 
 ness is one of the data. She is of humble birth and trained to 
 serve; the marquis, after a preliminary understanding with her 
 father, makes obedience a part of the marriage contract, which 
 she accepts freely; her various trials, which Chaucer softens a 
 little, put him and the reader under considerable strain, and in 
 compensation he allows her some expressions of feeling which 
 fall just short of complaints. 
 
REALISM AND TALES OF THE SUPERNATURAL 
 
 12 I 
 
 I have noght had no part of children tweyne 
 But first sikjiesse, and after wo and peyne. 
 
 O goode God! how gentil and how kjnde 
 Ye semed by youre speche and youre visage 
 The day that makpd was oure manage! . . . 
 
 Love is noght oold as when that it is newe. 
 
 This latter exclamation is not in Petrarch. And before the pre¬ 
 tended remarriage she pointedly warns the marquis (as he had 
 warned her earlier), 
 
 That ye ne prikjte with no tormentynge 
 This tendre may den, as ye han doon mo. 
 
 There is also a small note of the rational in Janicula’s premoni¬ 
 tion— 
 
 For out of doute this olde poure man 
 Was evere in suspect of hir manage. 
 
 The nearest to an improbability in the characterization of Gris- 
 elda is her sudden access of executive virtues on her marriage. 
 
 What is usually regarded as the most improbable element is the 
 marquis’s harshness (sturdinesse), but even this is both indirectly 
 and directly accounted for. In the very third stanza, into the ex¬ 
 pected praise of the young lord is injected the hint: 
 
 Save in somme thynges that he was to blame, 
 
 and when he yields to his people’s courteous petition that he 
 marry he firmly insists on making his own choice of a bride. He 
 is called thoghtful when he first addresses Griselda and he wears 
 a very serious ( sobre) look when he presents her to his people. It 
 is his persistence in testing her which troubles most readers and 
 this objection Chaucer faces with a direct admission: 
 
 But ther been folk of swich condicion 
 That whan they have a certein purpos take, 
 
 They \an nat stynte of hire entencion, 
 
 But, right as they were bounden to a stake, 
 
 They wol nat of that firste purpos slake. 
 
122 
 
 THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 This is what we now call an idee fixe. Yet in his defense of 
 Walter Chaucer slips into a structural fault. At 460 ff. he adds 
 (for the idea is not in Petrarch): 
 
 But as for me, I seye that yvele it sit 
 To assaye a wyf whan that it is no nede, 
 
 And putten hire in angwyssh and in drede. 
 
 For this, seen in the light of the concluding moral, has the air of 
 condemning the Most High for suffering us, 
 
 as for oure exercise, 
 
 With sharpe scourges of adversitee 
 Ful ofte to be bete in sondry wise. 
 
 Some readers profess a low opinion of the Clerk’s Tale as a 
 poem, yet the skill with which Chaucer has met the inherent 
 difficulties of the material is remarkable and is favorably com¬ 
 parable with what others who came after him have been able to 
 do with it. His principal failure is in the reconciliation scene at 
 the end. There for five stanzas he enlarges on a few sentences of 
 Petrarch and contrives to make the marquis as unpleasant in ex¬ 
 plaining himself as he was in action. Chaucer harps on his 
 favorite word pitous, but while he cunningly has Griselda think 
 first of her children and then of her husband, he runs a grave risk 
 when she tells them that 
 
 God, of his mercy, 
 
 And youre benygne fader tendrely 
 Hath doon yow kept; 
 
 whereupon she swoons. His chief merit, however, from the 
 present point of view, is his successful compromise with the irra¬ 
 tional. Almost without apology or self-conscious justification he 
 accepts the data, telling the story naturally as though it were 
 natural, and with only a few overt omissions leaving the improba¬ 
 bilities to take care of themselves. This is in significant contrast 
 to his handling of the similarly intractable material in the Man 
 of Law’s Tale. 
 
 The subject of the Franklin’s Tale had many attractions and 
 also certain disadvantages. The critical question would therefore 
 
REALISM AND TALES OF THE SUPERNATURAL 
 
 123 
 
 be: Did Chaucer make the most of the former and do everything 
 possible to mitigate the latter? 
 
 Assuming, as is now generally done, that the Tale was intend¬ 
 ed as a conclusion of the Marriage Debate— an humble, wys 
 accord —we must agree, though with reservations, that the choice 
 was adequate. The wooing of Arveragus has a Courtly Love 
 coloring and his acceptance by Dorigen with due submission to 
 stv'tch lordshipe as men han over hir wyves declares the problem. 
 We may wonder a little at his insistence on the name of soverayn- 
 tee . . . for shame of his degree, but she acquiesces, in the spirit 
 of gentilesse. This leads to the homily on mutual forbearance in 
 both love and friendship and finally to the_yerbal s ophistr y of nc 
 
 Servant in love and lord in marriage. 
 
 The opening lines, moreover, contain many subtle anticipa¬ 
 tions of the situation to follow. Dorigen hopes there will never 
 be any quarrel between them As in my gilt and she promises to 
 be faithful even at the risk of heartbreak— till that myn herte 
 breste. And in the Auctor comment on the virtue of patience, 
 along with anger, illness, and wine as disturbing causes, are 
 named constellacioun and wo and chaungynge of complexioun, 
 any one of which last might account for her playful but rash 
 promise to Aurelius. She had sworn to her knight 
 
 That nevere sholde ther be defaute in here, 
 
 and when the fault did appear it had to be accounted for. 
 
 There can be little doubt that Chaucer saw clearly and faced 
 resolutely this difficulty, the peculiar action of his heroine. He 
 elaborates on her distress, her almost pathological hevynesse, her 
 rage in fact, over the prolonged absence of Arveragus—although 
 this is undermined by the flippancy (to which we are accus¬ 
 tomed)— 
 
 As doon thise noble wyves whan hem li\eth. 
 
 Her neurotic state is still further emphasized by her obsession 
 with the grisly feendly rotyes bla\e and her excited condemna¬ 
 tion of a just God for creating such a maleficent foul confusion 
 Of wer\, and, at the end of her prayer, the quite feminine 
 
124 
 
 THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 (though elsewhere Chaucerian) evasion of this moral issue, by 
 leaving it to the clerkes. Even at the picnic arranged by her 
 friends she is inconsolable. The reader is thus psychologically 
 prepared for her rash promise, uttered in pley, as it were, when 
 Aurelius has worked himself up to a declaration of his love. 
 Some three hundred lines later, when Aurelius tells her that the 
 haunting rocks have disappeared—Arveragus meanwhile is back 
 from England, so that the irony of her wishing them away for 
 his sake is somewhat diminished—and reminds her of her prom¬ 
 ise, she has nothing to say except, after Aurelius has left her, 
 rather feebly to herself, that she had not supposed such a monstre 
 or merveille to be possible. Her two-day-long compleynt (of only 
 a hundred lines, however) may be set aside as a rhetorical con¬ 
 vention, or at least taken as intended, to register her despair. 27 
 But before she resorts to suicide Arveragus returns again and 
 directs her to fulfil her promise; and when she meets Aurelius 
 right in the quykkest strete of the town, she answers his question, 
 
 half as she were mad, 
 
 “Unto the gardyn, as myn housbond bad, 
 
 My trouthe for to holde, alas! alas!" 
 
 This is perfect. C Chaucer has portrayed with complete success a 
 gentle woman and loving wife driven almost to hysterical frenzy 
 by perverse circumstances which she is helpless to escape.] She 
 misses being a tragic figure, but misses only narrowly. 
 
 Has Chaucer done as well by her husband ? Our first hint of 
 the ‘character’ of Arveragus, after the courtly wooing, is that he 
 stipulated for the name of soveraynetee . . . for shame of his de¬ 
 gree; he would be technically Servant in love but still lord in mar¬ 
 riage. And it cannot be denied that his treatment of Dorigen at 
 the crisis is masterful, even though he had sworn that he would 
 never assume any maistrie Agayn hir wyl; nor can it be denied, 
 either, that he did not consult her wishes when he bade her to 
 keep her promise to Aurelius. Less than two years after the 
 wedding he leaves her for knightly exploits abroad, 
 
 For al his lust he sette in swich labour, 
 and remains away two full years, meanwhile sending her occa- 
 
REALISM AND TALES OF THE SUPERNATURAL 
 
 I2 5 
 
 sional letters that he wol come hastily agayn. When he does 
 return he is not suspicious, for he had agreed never to be jealous; 
 and when he hears her story, 
 
 This housbonde, with glad chiere, in freendly wyse, 
 
 Answerde and seyde as I shal yow devyse: 
 
 “Is ther oght elles, Dorigen, but this?” 
 
 “Nay, nay " quod she, “God helpe me so as wysi 
 
 This is to muche, and it were Goddes wille.” 
 
 The first words here are ambiguous: their friendly tone implies 
 comfort, but with an undertone of ‘Are you keeping anything 
 worse from me?’ Dorigen’s answer is just right. His next words 
 are surprising: You have made a promise and you must keep it. 
 I love you so much that I had rather be killed than have you false 
 to your oath, for 
 
 Trouthe is the hyeste thyng that man may l{epe. 
 
 Then he bursts into tears and says: Keep this dark and I will bear 
 up as best I can— 
 
 As 1 may best, I wol my wo endure — 
 
 with no thought of her woe and no recognition that her marriage 
 troth to him should take precedence over such a reckless impulsive 
 promise as that she had given to Aurelius. This looks, on any 
 realistic view, like the ethics of expediency, to say nothing of 
 masculine selfishness and egotism. But realism is out of court 
 here, for our poet finds it necessary to compromise the character 
 of Arveragus in the interests of the story’s requirements. It has 
 been claimed that Arveragus had a sure premonition of the 
 Squire’s generosity; but that is groundless and even absurd. 
 Arveragus, that is, Chaucer, thought only of one thing, to prove 
 the gentilesse of his hero by sacrificing his wife on the altar of an 
 abstract principle. She had made her bed and should sleep on it, 
 whatever the cost to him! Thus trouthe, fidelity to one’s word, 
 is exalted above every natural feeling; one virtue (which may not 
 even be the highest, in spite of assertion) exalted above all others 
 and all other considerations. The Friar would have called this a 
 sc hole-mater e, and so may we. But it is clear that Arveragus is 
 
126 
 
 THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 lord in marriage, for he gives orders to his wife in the crisis; and 
 the humble, wys accord thereby suffers impairment. Everything 
 gives way to a limited concept of trouthe. A narrow logic super¬ 
 venes over common sense and all human decency. As Arveragus 
 sacrifices Dorigen to a principle, so Chaucer sacrifices his Arvera¬ 
 gus. This is th’ ende, which must justify the means. 
 
 The case of Aurelius is different. He is the conventional lover, 
 the third side of a triangle, and might have been so left, a mere 
 appurtenance of the plot. He might have been no more than the 
 squire in the Merchant’s Tale, though disappointed of his aim. In 
 any event, he does not come off too well; for his conversion is 
 rather sudden and unexpected and his ready adhesion to the 
 gentilesse of Arveragus is hardly prepared for. In actual life such 
 flashes of insight may be psychologically valid, but artistically 
 they require careful handling to be made acceptable. 
 
 And in his herte he caughte of this greet routhe, 
 Considerynge the beste on every syde, 
 
 That fro his lust yet were hym levere abyde 
 Than doon so heigh a cherlyssh wrecchednesse 
 Agayns franchise and alle gentillesse. 
 
 He might have thought of this before; or Chaucer should have 
 thought of it before introducing him as right vertuous, and riche, 
 and wys. And at the end his release of Dorigen is couched in 
 needlessly legalistic terms: 
 
 I yow relesse, madame, into youre bond 
 Quyt every surement and every bond 
 That ye han maad to me as heerbiforn. 
 
 This is not the language of a lover under emotional strain. It 
 was unfair, moreover, that he should curse the day he was born 
 because he had forfeited his cost. In his enthusiastic hopes of 
 getting the lady’s favor he might well say to the magician, Fy on 
 a thousand pound! but now, even though he realizes that to pay 
 the thousand pounds will beggar him he might be more philo¬ 
 sophical about it. Would an hour or so in the garden have com¬ 
 pensated for having to sell his heritage? But of course all this is 
 
REALISM AND TALES OF THE SUPERNATURAL 127 
 
 dictated by the requirements of the plot; he must be reduced to a 
 bleak despair in order to justify his appeal to the magician and 
 thereby test the magician’s nobility. 
 
 But in spite of these recessions from art Chaucer has done 
 something quite special for the young squire: he has given Aure¬ 
 lius a touch of that same madness which makes Dorigen also 
 such an interesting study. This first appears in the stumbling 
 incoherence of his declaration of love: 
 
 “Madame,” quod he, “by God that this world made, 
 
 So that l wiste it myghte youre herte glade, 
 
 1 wolde that day that youre Arveragus 
 Wente over the see, that I, Aurelius, 
 
 Hadde went ther nevere I sholde have come agayn. . . . 
 Heere at youre feet God wolde that / were grave! 
 
 I ne have as now no leyser moore to seye.” 
 
 It appears even more plainly in the ravyng of his prayer to 
 Apollo— 
 
 For verray wo out of his wit he breyde. 
 
 He nyste what he spa\, but thus he seyde: .. . 
 
 Lord Phebus, cast thy merciable eighe 
 On wrecche Aurelius, which that am but lorn. . . . 
 Wherfore, lord Phebus, this is my requeste — 
 
 Do this miracle, or do myn herte breste . . . 
 
 Lord Phebus, dooth this miracle for me. 
 
 Preye hire she go no faster cours than ye: 
 l seye, preyeth your suster that she go 
 No faster cours than ye. . . . 
 
 Lord Phebus, se the teeris on my chelae. 
 
 This is the anguisshous language of desperation and despair. One 
 need only recall the conventional stiffness of the prayers of Pala- 
 mon and Arcite and Emily to feel the difference. Although 
 Arcite suffered from the Lover’s Malady of Hereos, we were only 
 told about it; we did not suffer with him. But we share the 
 anguish of Aurelius, unworthy though its cause may have been; 
 and this does much to offset the treatment of him later. 
 
 The two other figures have no particular interest. The brother 
 
128 
 
 THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 of Aurelius introduces the magician and thus the rich astrological 
 details which Chaucer lavished on him for the sake of verisimili¬ 
 tude. The brother seems to have been somewhat dilatory or 
 slow-thinking, for he allowed Aurelius to suffer in languor and 
 in torment furyous Two yeer and moore before he remembered 
 his old fellow student of Orleans; after that he drops out. There 
 is no question of the magician’s competence or of Chaucer’s famil¬ 
 iarity with the subject; and his special knowledge goes a long 
 way to produce our willing suspension of disbelief, if it was really 
 needed. About the actual accomplishment of the miracle Chau¬ 
 cer is deliberately vague— 
 
 for a wy\e or tweye 
 
 It seemed that alle the ro\\es were aweye. 
 
 No more: no one goes to see. Aurelius simply knew it and Dori- 
 gen accepts it sight unseen. Dorigen’s incuriosity may be taken 
 as a reflection of her emotional distress: she is by now ready to 
 believe anything. But Chaucer’s refusal of what would have 
 made a fine dramatic scene calls for some explanation. Here he 
 differs from the Filocolo, which is generally regarded as his 
 source; for there the lady says, “faretelomi vedere domani,” and 
 next day a large company enter the miraculous garden and gather 
 flowers and fruits. (So also he differs from Boccaccio later when 
 the husband is more humane than Arveragus in his treatment of 
 Dorigen.) One might surmise that Chaucer was reluctant to 
 admit the full powers of the magician in spite of his elaborate 
 preparations to enforce plausibility. The splendid display before 
 supper in which Aurelius saw himself dancing with his lady was 
 well enough, but an illusion covering nearly the whole coast line 
 of France was something too much. The more probable reason 
 however is simply that Chaucer was less interested in the story as 
 drama and in its noble precept, 
 
 Trouthe is the hyest thyng that man may kepe, 
 
 than in the final catch question: Which was the mooste fre? 
 
 The story is told to illustrate and enforce a moral, and so it 
 does; more than one, in fact; and it leads to the bright question: 
 Which was the most generous? Yet this same story, when ex- 
 
REALISM AND TALES OF THE SUPERNATURAL 
 
 129 
 
 amined closely, is found to be set up in terms which are question¬ 
 able. The more Chaucer did to make it humanly interesting and 
 not merely an artificial confection, the more he exposed the 
 underlying fallacies. By making Dorigen a real person and Aure¬ 
 lius (in part) a real person he was obliged, in unfortunate con¬ 
 trast, to reduce Arveragus to a plot-ridden fiction. Or else we 
 must find excuses for the conduct of a husband who obliges his 
 wife to fulfil a promise made in circumstances of unusual strain, 
 which she had no reasonable expectation of fulfilling, and in 
 violation of her prior and predominant marriage vow of fidelity— 
 an impossible situation which could only lead to tragedy, and for 
 which the poet substitutes sophistry. In short, what began, before 
 Chaucer took hold of it, as an intellectually amusing apologue has 
 become, when rationalized and transposed into human values, 
 absurd. Moreover, when to this is added the tricky question, 
 which was the most generous, a fresh set of fallacies emerges. 
 Arveragus tried to give what he had no moral right to give (ex¬ 
 cept his own humiliation, which is hardly considered); Aurelius 
 gave up what he had no right to ask; and little is made of his 
 moral rehabilitation, and that little negatived by his later attitude. 
 Where then is their generosity? But the magician did give up 
 his due reward for services rendered; and if it be objected that his 
 services were evil, it may be urged that Chaucer nowhere indicates 
 a desire to condemn them as black magic. He only says that in 
 those days black magic was common, though Holy Church now 
 condemns it. For the purposes of his story Chaucer had to allow 
 it; otherwise his story would collapse. But surely it was not 
 Chaucer’s purpose to exalt the magician. 
 
 The upshot, then, the aesthetic moral, is that nothing artistic 
 can be made of so many complex elements without undue sacri¬ 
 fice of ordinary ethics; and l!he greater the air of naturalness such 
 a story is given, the greater the risk of exposing its unnaturalness. 1 
 
 Thus the Franklin’s Tale, as a treatment of rational and irra¬ 
 tional elements, betrays Chaucer’s predicament. He was drawn 
 to the subject by its obvious or superficial attractions, which he 
 enhanced by calling it a Breton lai with its remote setting in time 
 and place. The remoteness gave him both the picturesque decor 
 
130 
 
 THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 of the rocks and the magic element which could go unquestioned. 
 After a fashion the story offered the appearance of a balance 
 between the extremes of sovereignty and subservience in marriage: 
 husband and wife go through a crisis and come out reconciled 
 and happy. Whatever is fortuitous, arbitrary, and artificial in 
 both plot and characters should be accepted with a most willing 
 suspension of everything which makes a plot credible and a char¬ 
 acter interesting. 
 
 Dorigen comes alive; Aurelius comes alive in two or three 
 passages; Arveragus never. Arveragus plays his part as the story 
 requires: he comes and goes, with too obvious manipulation; he 
 asks no questions when no questions are necessary; he is not 
 jealous or even considerate, for if he had been alert he might 
 have known about his neighbor Aurelius; he says what is expect¬ 
 ed of him; as lord in marriage he plays the selfish, dominant 
 husband, when a word of sympathy to his trapped wife would 
 have given him form and pressure but spoiled the story; he comes 
 out with Trouthe is the hyeste thing that man may \epe, a fine 
 sententia of limited application, when he should have said: ‘My 
 dear, we must find some way to spare you the consequences of 
 this trickery’; he walks into the trap, when he might have said: 
 ‘See here, young man, . . .’ But that would have been a different 
 Arveragus and a different story, an Arveragus insubservient to 
 the plotted ‘moral.’ So much for the character of the hero. 
 
 These strictures are irrelevant and inconsequent from a certain 
 point of view; but they are necessary to offset the florid enthusi¬ 
 asm of such criticism as that which calls the Franklin’s Tale “the 
 last word in the cultivated literature of the fourteenth century” 
 and speaks of “the essential fineness of character, which we would 
 call decency, of Arveragus and Dorigen” and asserts that “the 
 dilemma . . . depends for the credibility of its solution entirely 
 upon the skilful preparation of their characters . .. characters who 
 . . . are so wholly likable.” 28 
 
 Finally, these observations are not, and are not meant to be, 
 adverse criticism. They are not inconsistent with a great admira¬ 
 tion for the skill and care which Chaucer devoted to the task of 
 making the most of the opportunities offered him by the story. 
 
REALISM AND TALES OF THE SUPERNATURAL 131 
 
 For the Franklin’s Tale has peculiar interests hardly found else¬ 
 where in his poetry, and one is bound to wonder if the idea of a 
 Breton lai, whether real or imagined, did not somehow stir his 
 fancy and spur him to try his powers with something exotic. 
 
 If the people of a story are to pass as human beings, the read¬ 
 er’s sympathy must be in the right quarter. As a preparation for 
 the final question it is likely that Chaucer meant our sympathies 
 to be equally divided among all four. Are they? He has suc¬ 
 ceeded with Dorigen, in spite of her rash promise; and with Aure¬ 
 lius, in spite of his attempt to obtain the embraces of a faithful 
 wife by unfair means. But he was not so successful with Arvera- 
 gus and he all but admitted failure when he wrote: 
 
 Paraventure an heepe of yow, ywis, 
 
 Wol holden hym a lewed man in this, 
 
 That he wol putte his wyf in jupartie. 
 
 Herkneth the tale, er ye upon hire crie; 
 
 She may have hettre fortune than yow semeth. 
 
 The subtle shift of point of view upon hir crie instead of upon 
 him crie is very cunning; but neither this evasion nor anything 
 the poet can say quite meets the case. At the beginning of the 
 Tale we were well disposed towards Arveragus, but he gradually 
 loses credibility. As for the magician, we admire his skill and 
 accept his performance with indifference to its ethical bearing. 
 We are not much concerned even if he turns out to have been the 
 most generous. 
 
 But regardless of modern praise and appreciation, it is Chau¬ 
 cer’s own method which is here in question. In his zeal for 
 adding human interest to the apologue, for making the story seem 
 real, he contrived to bring two of his main characters alive, while 
 neglecting the third, who had to play the determining role. For 
 what is perhaps most remarkable is this failure (as I see it) with 
 Arveragus, the seeming failure to recognize that if the poem was 
 to illustrate and enforce the edifying lesson of fidelity to one’s 
 promise it was necessary that Arveragus, who insists on the virtue 
 of trouthe at all costs, should himself have a strong case. His 
 character required not only knightly qualities and the firmness of 
 
J 3 2 
 
 THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 insisting on his rights as husband, but also something of the 
 strangeness which goes a long way towards explaining the con¬ 
 duct of the Marquis of Saluces, and just that narrowness of the 
 conception of right conduct which would almost necessitate his 
 peculiar attitude towards Dorigen’s promise. It may be said that 
 he does exhibit these qualities—but too late. The story as story 
 breaks down just at the crucial point because of his character, 
 that is, because his command to Dorigen is u nmo tivated and .un¬ 
 prepared for. Lord in manage is a mere technical defense: Chau¬ 
 cer does not offer it. We were ready for all the other implausi- 
 bilities of the plot (or nearly all), but there was no provision for 
 Arveragus’ insistence on the great virtue he is supposed to stand 
 for. He should have been the strongest and most redoubtable 
 figure of the poem, with from the outset a marked leaning to 
 literal rectitude or at the least a finical adherence to the minutiae 
 of ethical finesse. This might have made him an unsympathetic 
 figure, but it was inevitable if his attitude and action at the great 
 crisis were to correspond to the dictates of the plot. There is 
 no reason to doubt that Chaucer might have succeeded in this 
 also, or come near succeeding, if he had seen fit to try. At least, 
 one likes to think so. 
 
 Thus the Franklin’s Tale is not to be taken quite seriously as 
 a representation of actual life; it is more like what the French call 
 litterature; and I dare say Chaucer would be the last man in the 
 world to wish it taken seriously. In fact, by turning it all into a 
 game or riddle at end—Which. . . ?—he may have hinted (along 
 with the two not very sly witticisms) that we should regard the 
 Tale as something from the realm of the higher nonsense. This 
 notion could be further developed, remembering Chaucer’s great 
 sense of humor, as a specimen of the kind of joke which leads up, 
 by specious logic, to an anticlimax. Arveragus, of whom we 
 expected so much and from whom we get such a beautiful 
 thought, turns out to be a sovereign fool, but he is saved from his 
 folly by an inferior. Aurelius is willing to risk his fortune to 
 satisfy his youthful infatuation, and loses on the very verge of 
 winning. When the question of greatest generosity is posed, the 
 
REALISM AND TALES OF THE SUPERNATURAL 
 
 133 
 
 answer is not, as you expected, the Knight or the Squire, but die 
 poor clerk. All of which is, as Euclid would say, absurd . 29 
 
 The Wife of Bath’s Tale is a bipartite exemplum to enforce 
 the claims of female sovereignty set forth in her long monologue: 
 the one is auctoritee the other experience, as she had predicted. 
 There is no doubt that the Tale was written for her, though it 
 comes as a surprise to those who expected from her something as 
 bawdy as her talk. Moreover, not to put too much confidence in 
 certain branches of modern psychology, there may be an uncon¬ 
 scious subtlety in her choice of the Loathly Lady as her protago¬ 
 nist, for not only would she fancy herself in that role as a way of 
 renewing her beautee and her pith, but she could disguise a thor¬ 
 oughly immoral story by laying the scene in the other world of 
 faery. Certainly the outline of events, divorced of their seetting, 
 is improper to the point of cynicism: a young knight evades the 
 penalty of rape and wins a beautiful bride, first through the in¬ 
 tercession of King Arthur’s queen and then through the help of 
 an ugly hag who has him at her mercy, and all by answering a 
 tricky question. His only merit is to recognize his position and 
 accept its terms. But this is the rational view of the story. It is 
 not Chaucer’s. The opening lines give the key and, save for the 
 Wife’s little fling at limiters and the overlong sermon on gentil- 
 esse, which is dragged in as makeweight, the key is held con¬ 
 sistently: we are always in the ancient days of King Arthur, when 
 all the land was julfild of fayerye, and elf-queens danced in many 
 a grene mede. Even the inserted incident of Midas, with its 
 covert jest at the end, belongs to the unreal world. (We may 
 suppose that the Wife learned it from her fifth, but she makes it 
 harmonize.) There may be a hinted stricture on courts of love, 
 but it is very slight. There may be a small autobiographical side 
 glance, for Chaucer himself had been up for rape, like the young 
 knight of the Tale, and they both escaped the death penalty— 
 
 Paraventure swich was the statut tho — 
 
 but this also is a mere passing note. For the rest, everything is in 
 keeping, is irrational, is logical with the logic of its own realm. 
 
i34 
 
 THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 What might look like collusion between the queen and the hag 
 and what might look like mere cynical desperation when the 
 knight leaves his option to her judgment are of a piece: they 
 belong to fairyland. There is even a subtle marking of the dis¬ 
 tinction between the two worlds: 
 
 To every wight commanded was silence, 
 
 And that the \nyght sholde telle in audience 
 What thyng that worldly wommen loven best, 
 
 that is, women of the other, the real world. 
 
 This is Chaucer’s achievement: to manage the supernatural 
 without lapsing into even a pretense that it is anything but what 
 it is, without mixing the molds embarrassingly. This is what he 
 signally failed to do in the Man of Law’s Tale, what he almost 
 succeeded in doing in the Clerk’s Tale, and all but botched in 
 the Franklin’s Tale, and what he succeeded triumphantly in 
 doing with the Wife of Bath’s Tale. 
 
 Beyond the misapplied or distracting realism of the Franklin’s 
 Tale, its amalgam in the Clerk’s Tale, and its total absence in the 
 Wife’s Tale, there is one further step, and Chaucer took it in the 
 Friar’s Tale, which is pure realism A per se. The active presence 
 of a devil looks like an invasion, but he is as natural and human 
 a personage as the summoner himself; his simple statement, 
 
 I am a feend; my dwelling is in helle, 
 
 is accepted by the reader with the same indifference to probability 
 as by the poor summoner. The Tale has more criticism-of-life 
 than more ambitious pieces like the Knight’s Tale and is struc¬ 
 turally superior to Chaucer’s other similar poems. It has no false 
 start like the Nun’s Priest’s Tale, with its misleading picture of 
 the poor widow, or the Pardoner’s, with its long prefatory ser¬ 
 mon; it has no padding like the Wife’s, with its story of Midas 
 and its lecture on gentilesse. It is skilfully integrated into the 
 Pilgrimage by means of the sharp altercation between Friar and 
 Summoner at the beginning and the Friar’s mock homily by way 
 of epilogue. It has a steady progress, without interruption or 
 lost motion: the summoner is introduced and described; he meets 
 
REALISM AND TALES OF THE SUPERNATURAL 135 
 
 the devil; their conversation gradually reveals both characters— 
 an attractive curiosity in the one and a certain modesty in the 
 other—and leads naturally to the anecdote, which being only a 
 third of the whole serves rather as a climax than as the essential 
 story. The Tale is thus not an anecdote with a long introduc¬ 
 tion, but a picture of the foolish summoner and the astute devil, 
 to which the closing anecdote gives point. The little ironies in 
 the exchanges between the two are delightful, and the latter’s 
 patient explanation of how devils often forward the Almighty’s 
 business adds a kind of weight. The conversation is easy and 
 natural, like the versification; there is almost no loose syntax or 
 doubtful meaning; the pronouns, in the absence of proper names, 
 are readily understood. There is no grossness as in the Reeve’s 
 Tale or the Summoner’s Prologue. And the language is both 
 appropriately colloquial and also adorned with striking words, 
 phrases, and lines: ribibe, rebe\\e, virytrate, smale tytheres, pe- 
 cunyal peyne, dogge for the bowe, in a chayer rede, 
 
 He was, if l shal yeven hyn his laude, 
 
 A theef, and eef{ a somnour, and a baude. 
 
 As ful of venym been thise waryangles. 
 
 With the kind of poem which this aims to be Chaucer was 
 never more successful. Elsewhere—apart from the ever excep¬ 
 tional Miller’s Tale, which has its own unrealistic indifference to 
 probability—he takes an amusing incident and builds it up by 
 accretion of more or less relevant matter, such as the rhetorical 
 inlays of the Nun’s Priest’s Tale or the discussion of Justinus and 
 Placebo in the Merchant’s Tale. Here in the Friar’s Tale the 
 incident is a functional part of the whole, which he has imagined 
 as a setting for it, and which beautifully complements the descrip¬ 
 tion of the Friar in the General Prologue. And whereas in the 
 Wife of Bath’s Tale the supernatural presides without any intru¬ 
 sion of the natural, here the natural has fully absorbed its one 
 element of supernatural and everything is unified on a single 
 plane. 
 
136 
 
 THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 Note on Chaucer’s Cler\: A Study in Ambiguities 
 
 There may be a little uncertainty about Chaucer’s description of 
 the Clerk. He appears to be a sympathetic figure, wholly admirable 
 in his modest way; and so everyone has taken him. But following a 
 hint from the recognized ambiguities in the description of the Prioress 
 one may cautiously examine the details to see if Chaucer is using a 
 little of the same method for his Clerk. 
 
 First of all, the Pilgrim Clerk is in obvious contrast to Hende 
 Nicholas, also a poure scholer of Oxford (A 3190), for poor Nicholas 
 did himself very well, with his room Ful fetisly ydight, his Almageste 
 and other large and small books, his astrolabe, etc. From John and 
 Aleyn in the Reeve’s Tale one gathers that Chaucer had a low opinion 
 of Cambridge men. The other clerk of Oxenford (D 527) was, like 
 the Pilgrim, not so worldly for to have office; his unworldliness took 
 a different form. 
 
 It is clear from the account of the Pilgrim in the General Prologue 
 that he was_poor and unworldly, and at present unambitious—he had 
 not yet got himself a benefice or a secular office. The yet may refer to 
 the advancement of his studies or more generally to the natural prog¬ 
 ress of his career; a benefice might follow in due course. About his 
 Oxford studies Chaucer is not at all definite: he had long since got as 
 far as logic—from which we can safely infer only that he had been 
 some time at the university. A glance at Rashdell 1 will show how 
 complex was the system or how irregular the procedure. Perhaps the 
 poet himself was not too familiar with the Oxford curriculum. Ordi¬ 
 narily the first two years, at this period, would be devoted to grammar 
 and logic ( logica utens or method, a training in dialectic and disputa¬ 
 tion) ; in the fourth year would come Responsions, followed by Deter¬ 
 mination, which would make the student a Bachelor; and after that 
 he could obtain a license from the Chancellor to teach or give “extra¬ 
 ordinary” lectures in the afternoons. It would seem, therefore, that 
 unto logy\ hadde long ygo can only mean that he had entered on his 
 course of studies at the university a long time since. Now “the aver¬ 
 age age for Determination at Oxford can hardly have been less than 
 19 or 20”; 2 our Clerk would have entered at the age of thirteen to 
 sixteen; and if he was already a Bachelor (which Chaucer does not 
 say) he and the Squire would be the youngest of the Pilgrims. 
 
 Was the Clerk in minor orders? an acolyte? tonsuratus? Since he 
 prayed for the souls of his friends and benefactors he had presumably 
 received the first tonsure. Chaucer does not say so, however, but 
 emphasizes the Clerk’s devotion to study— 
 
Note on Chaucer's Clerks 
 
 137 
 
 Of studie too\ he tnoost cure and moost heede. 
 
 May we gather that he was more interested in study for its own sake 
 than for what it would lead to? that he was the studious type, con¬ 
 tent to learn and learn because he liked learning? The nature of his 
 studies may be partly gleaned from his implied wish to own the works 
 of Aristotle—unless this is only a preparation for the pun on philoso- 
 phre. 
 
 The Twenty booses, clad in blak^ or reed is a puzzle which seems 
 not to have bothered the commentators. In the first place, did he have 
 twenty books or did he not? He would rather have had . . . than . . . ; 
 but a few lines later we hear that he spent on books and learning all 
 he could get from his friends. On the other hand, the indicative, hym 
 was levere, should be significant, and the sense would be that he 
 preferred to have his twenty books rather than fine clothes and musical 
 instruments (like Hende Nicholas); that is, he did have twenty books. 
 In the second place, twenty books, however clad, would be a consider¬ 
 able library for a poor student to possess. His patrons must have been 
 both wealthy and generous. To be sure, booses may mean works or 
 titles rather than volumes; the Wife’s Jankyn, sometime an Oxford 
 student, had six or seven books bounden in o volume. Even so, our 
 Clerk would have had a complete Aristotle. For the list of Aristotle’s 
 works in Appendix B of Ernest A. Savage’s Old English Libraries 
 (London, [1911]), contains only fourteen titles recorded for the twelfth, 
 thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. The concentration on Aristotle 
 is also a little surprising, for one would have expected to hear of a 
 few books on divinity; or perhaps the Clerk had these in addition to 
 his philosophical library. In the third place, his Aristotles (if he had 
 them) were bound in black or red. Most of the manuscript volumes 
 which survive and have not been rebound by collectors are in yellowed 
 skins; the exceptions are the sumptuous bindings for wealthy owners. 3 
 
 Moreover, the Clerk was not only a studious but a silent young man. 
 He spoke only when it was necessary to speak and then only in forme 
 (in a formally correct manner, or with a sort of formal stiffness?), 
 and in reverence (humility or devoutness?)—seven lines below, the 
 < Sergeant of the Law is ironically described as of greet reverence —and 
 brief and qui\ (vivid or lively), and full of profound (real, or apparent, 
 for one so young?) wisdom. 
 
 The final couplet is likewise curious. The Clerk’s speech was 
 Sownynge in moral vertu in apparent contrast to the Merchant’s, a few 
 lines above, which was Sownynge alwey th’ encrees of his wynnyng. 
 And gladly wolde he lerne —this by way of repetition for emphasis or 
 perhaps to suggest that he profited by his conversation with other stu¬ 
 dents— and gladly teche. This last is so neat and so familiar that we 
 
THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 138 
 
 may miss its significance. Does it mean that he looked forward after 
 finishing his university course to a career as teacher ? or that he mingled 
 instruction, freely offered, in his conversation with others? The wolde 
 implies that he was accustomed both to learn and to teach; but gladly 
 teche might also mean that he would be, or was, glad to teach if and 
 when the opportunity offered. Gladly may mean habitually as well as 
 willingly. 
 
 The account of the Clerk in his own Prologue need not agree at 
 all points with his earlier description, but there is actually no great 
 inconsistency. The Host jocularly accuses him of meditating a soph¬ 
 istry and calls for a merry tale without a display of rhetoric—we 
 should hardly expect it, but the Host could have been wrong or 
 merely teasing—and without preaching; and he obliges with the Gri- 
 selda story, in fairly simple language, though it is not exactly merry 
 and certainly has a homilectic ending. One is only surprised that the 
 poor Clerk has some time before this made his way to Padua and been 
 on terms of easy familiarity with the great scholar Fraunceys Petrak. 
 One is also a little surprised at the boldness with which he apparently 
 takes up the Wife of Bath’s challenge and openly rebuts her views in 
 the final stanza and the Lenvoy; but here we face what can only be 
 called a change of plan on Chaucer’s part and is not to be reckoned 
 pro or con in the interpretation of the Clerk’s ‘character.’ Or is it 
 perhaps the other way around ? that Chaucer knew what he was about 
 all the while? The description of his Clerk in the General Prologue 
 was deceptively mild, and the ambiguities, barely visible at first and 
 therefore easily misunderstood as portraying a gentle, studious fellow, 
 now reveal their true colors. Even the Host was a little taken in by 
 his shy reclusive manner; but he spoke truer than he knew where he 
 suspected him of studying aboute som sophyme —for the Marquis, 
 tempting his wife as the Most High tempts and tests us all, for our 
 exercise, is himself a figure of sophistry. 
 
 But the Clerk’s abstraction was only a partial mask. Mixing with 
 the Pilgrims did not so much bring out his hitherto latent tendencies 
 to satire, but rather gave him an opportunity to show the real character 
 which Chaucer had delicately hinted at but cunningly held back. The 
 Clerk was no hypocrite, to be sure: he really enjoyed books and the 
 Oxford life, and all that he could get from his friends he used to 
 keep himself in residence. He was not worldly, neither was he ex¬ 
 cessively religious. He knew how to suffice unto his own good though 
 it was small. He knew also the advantages of travel, yet he was far 
 above the vagabond scholars. He enlarged his scope, modestly of 
 course, by foreign study, stopping probably in Paris and Bologna and 
 elsewhere; and at Padua he met and made himself agreeable to no less 
 
Note on Chaucer's Cler\ 
 
 139 
 
 than the distinguished and elderly Petrarch and doubtless many other 
 notables, including Lignano. (The pilgrimage took place, supposedly, 
 in 1387. The Clerk would have been, if he went up at the age of 
 thirteen—which is likely, considering his eagerness for learning — at the 
 most twenty; that is, at the most, seven years old when Petrarch died, 
 in 1374.) Petrarch, however, showed him, as they were discussing 
 philosophy and more general topics of human conduct (moral vertu ), 
 his Latin prose piece about Griselda; and now years later on the road 
 to Canterbury he remembers it well enough to reproduce it in full 
 detail, with an occasional oblique cut at that Bath Woman (who was 
 likewise deceived at first and thought him harmless). He even speaks 
 with kindly disparagement of Petrarch’s opening paragraph. Only 
 Chaucer had appreciated the Clerk’s subtleties from the outset, but 
 he was in no hurry to set them forth. The Clerk had got as far as 
 logic, he was continuing his studies, but he preferred the life of a 
 student to a real office or the routine of a benefice. He spoke little, 
 but what he did say was lively and properly respectful, and naturally 
 with emphasis on serious subjects; for he was no goliard. We may be 
 sure he was a good talker when occasion arose and when he was with 
 people like Petrarch—from such people he could learn. And now 
 when the Host calls for a story he can make the most of his talents: 
 gladly teach—teach the Wife of Bath that not all clerks are fools and 
 teach the Pilgrims not only how gratifying humility can be in women, 
 but teach them also the larger lessons of Christian patience and forti¬ 
 tude; and finish off with a flourish of transcendant mockery. 
 
 It is ^a highly wrought and shrewdly developed character study 
 which Chaucer here offers us as we now can recognize when all the 
 parts are fitted together, a masterpiece in the Master’s best manner. 
 Or so it would seem if we follow the most eminent Chaucerians, of 
 the line and plummet school, in the glorious art of glosynge. We 
 recall, for example, Manly’s note that if the Prioress was not from the 
 convent of St. Leonard’s at Stratford “she might well have been,” or 
 that “possibly” the Squire’s Tale was a story which his father, the 
 Knight, had heard on one of his campaigns in the Near East. But 
 there is no harm in these embroideries if they are not taken seriously. 
 We recall also Lawrence’s statement that “The satirical passage at the 
 end of the Clerffs Tale is after all spoken by the Clerk . . . and must 
 be considered as characterizing him. The rubric Lenvoy de Chaucer 
 is a scribal blunder.” 4 And though the manuscripts have “Lenvoy de 
 Chaucer,” we recall also Kittredge’s deliverance: “It is not Chaucer 
 who speaks, but the Clerk of Oxenford, and every word is in perfect 
 character.” 5 These are but a few of the many such critical dicta, well 
 meant, but tainted with an air of priestly guardianship which no one 
 would resent sooner than Chaucer. 
 
140 
 
 THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 Note on the History of the Clerks Tale 
 
 The variations in the manuscript tradition of the end of the Clerk’s 
 Tale and the conflicting views of scholars as to the appropriateness of 
 the Envoy to the Clerk leave us with still another unsolved problem. 
 The following hypotheses, so far as they can be justified by what evi¬ 
 dence we have, may throw a little light on Chaucer’s methods and 
 supplement the brilliant work of Mrs. Dempster. 1 
 
 The initial assumption is that Chaucer’s rendering of Petrarch’s 
 Latin into stanzas, the ‘original’ Clerk’s Tale, was an independent 
 poem written either before the so-called Canterbury Tales period or at 
 least not written for the Clerk, and certainly before the conception of a 
 Marriage Group. This poem would comprise the present 11 . 57-1162, 
 or perhaps through 1. 1169. 
 
 The next stage is the assignment of the Tale to the Clerk for its 
 eventual position in the Canterbury Tales . 2 For this Chaucer would 
 have written the Prologue, or a draft of it, and the Host stanza ( 11 . 
 I2i2a-g) to follow either 1 . 1162 or 1 . 1169. 3 Thus far there is no overt 
 mention of the Wife of Bath, although there are latent connections 
 which seem now to have more or less direct reference to her or her 
 Tale. 4 Moreover, at this stage, including Petrarch’s moral, the Tale 
 is an illustrative parable of Christian fortitude and forbearance in the 
 face of God’s way to man. Whatever emphasis on the husband’s 
 sovreignty the story might seem to carry is removed or at least greatly 
 reduced by the Petrarchan moral. 
 
 When the “Lenvoy de Chaucer” was written and added to the Tale 
 can only be conjectured. It must have been, in the first instance—or 
 why the title—just what it says: the poet’s own envoy. It could even 
 have been part of the earlier version; and if so the lat no cler\ (1. 1185) 
 would be a general statement without reference to the Pilgrim. It 
 would be an effective afterpiece for Chaucer’s own oral delivery of the 
 poem, a fine rhetorical flourish and climax, satirically disposing of the 
 whole story—Griselda and Petrarch both. 
 
 The fourth state is Chaucer’s deliberate use of the Clerk and the 
 Clerk’s Tale to answer the Wife’s argument for the submission of 
 husbands. Certainly the Griselda story seems to illustrate the hus¬ 
 band’s ascendancy, though its theme is the wife’s submissiveness, and 
 Petrarch’s moral gives it a different turn. It does well enough, how¬ 
 ever, in its new function; well enough, at any rate, to satisfy Chaucer, 
 and so we may leave it. The hitherto latent connections now take 
 on noticeable emphasis and the addition of 11. 1170-1176 signals the 
 direct attack. This stanza, which contains the only specific reference 
 to the Wife, is lacking in the twenty-four manuscripts of Manly’s 
 
Note on the History of the Clerks Tale 
 
 I4 1 
 
 group d*, and “those having the Envoy arrange the last three stanzas 
 so as to end with 1 . 1200.” 5 Hence it would seem that this group of 
 manuscripts represents a stage of the whole process before the final 
 arrangement, i.e., before the Clerk’s Tale became a reply to the Wife 
 of Bath. That they are all later manuscripts than El-fl, 6 which contains 
 the final arrangement, only signifies that their common ancestor did 
 not have access to the revision which we have in El-fl. 
 
 This stage, with its addition of 11 . 1170-1176, introduces the prob¬ 
 lem of the Envoy, for it makes the Envoy appear as a deliverance from 
 the Clerk himself, or seems to do so. Critical opinion has been sharp¬ 
 ly divided on this point. Tatlock, for example, said flatly: “The En¬ 
 voy is egregiously out of character for the Clerk”; on the other hand, 
 Kittredge and Lawrence accept it enthusiastically as in character for 
 the Clerk, in spite of the manuscript evidence, Lenvoy de Chaucer, 
 followed by all the editors, and in the face of Chaucer’s description of 
 the Clerk in the General Prologue and in the Prologue to his Tale as a 
 quiet young man— Noght o word spa\ he moore than was neede ,— 
 and that was spoken in reverence and Sowning in moral vertu. There 
 are ways of resolving this contradiction, to be sure, but they really 
 amount to admitting that Chaucer for his own reasons altered the 
 character of the Clerk to suit the new situation. 
 
 But another possibility is worth considering, which, while it has 
 its own weakness, is quite as reasonable as assigning the Envoy to the 
 Clerk, and which has the advantage of conforming to the manuscripts’ 
 de Chaucer . 7 Either the Envoy belongs to a pr t-Canterbury Tales 
 version (as suggested above), or it was added to the Clerk’s pre- 
 Marriage Group version and marked as Chaucer’s, not the Clerk’s, in 
 an early manuscript and the heading retained in all its descendants. 
 A corollary to this would be the possibility that the new stanza, 11 . 
 1170-1176, is also the poet’s rather than the Clerk’s. That is to say, after 
 the Clerk has ended his Tale the poet steps forward, addressing both 
 the listeners and the Wife herself —Ne lat no cler \— and delivers his 
 palinode to the Griselda story. The ambiguity of allowing the Envoy 
 thus to seem like the Clerk’s, though plainly marked as his own, would 
 accord well with Chaucer’s often extravagant humor. 
 
 This possibility has of course the drawback of being what Tatlock 
 called, apropos of Justinus’ reference to the Wife of Bath in the Mer¬ 
 chant’s Tale (E 1685), a dramatic impropriety, an intrusion by the 
 poet into the dramatic scheme of the Canterbury Tales framework. 
 Other examples of this impropriety are the Summoner’s My prologe 
 (D 1708) and the punning use of poynt at the end of the Canon’s 
 Yeoman’s Tale (G 1480). And the dual meaning of 1 in the General 
 
142 
 
 THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 Prologue, Chaucer the Pilgrim and Chaucer the poet, may well persist 
 through the subsequent links. 
 
 The fifth and last stage of this history is simple and clear: the 
 cancellation of the Host stanza, with its unimpressive hint of the Host 
 as abused husband, the transposition (if necessary now) of 11. 1207- 
 1212 of the Envoy to the end, the writing of the Merchant’s Prologue, 
 with its echo Wepying and waylyng, and the transfer of the motif of 
 abused husband from the Host to the Merchant, to be used by the 
 Host with more effect in the Merchant’s Epilogue and again in the 
 Monk’s Prologue. This transfer is an obvious device to launch the 
 Merchant’s Tale, but it must have been an afterthought. It provides 
 a kind of reason for the Merchant’s pilgrimage, but principally it forges 
 the links of the discussion of marriage, though not quite on the Wife’s 
 theme of sovereignty. 
 
chapter iv. THE TROILUS EPILOGUE 
 
 T HERE have been divergent views of the so-called Epi¬ 
 logue to Chaucer’s Troilus, ranging all the way from full 
 acceptance to total denial of its appropriateness or con¬ 
 sistency with the poem. Probably no wholly satisfying answer to 
 the questions it raises will ever be found, partly because it involves 
 other questions, equally difficult, concerning the general interpre¬ 
 tation of the poem, and partly also because Chaucer himself 
 has opened the way to conflicting opinions. 
 
 i 
 
 As the story ends, Pandarus has the last word, and it is very 
 effective: I hate, ywis, Cryseyde. But he at once adds what is 
 thoroughly characteristic of him, though otherwise anticlimatic: 
 What I have done I have done in your interests, Troilus, regard¬ 
 less of my own honor or rest; this treason of hers is a grief to me; 
 1 ban namore seye. When Pandarus is speechless we may be sure 
 he is deeply moved. Then the poet adds: Fortune continued her 
 way, leaving Troilus to weep— 
 
 Swich is this world, whoso it \an byholde: 
 
 In ech estat is litel hertes reste. 
 
 God leve us for to ta\e it for the hestel 
 
 The poem continues, however, for seventeen more stanzas, which 
 show, says Tatlock, Chaucer’s “lingering unwillingness to make 
 an end.” 1 Lingering, certainly, and highly miscellaneous. Two 
 stanzas, largely from Benoit, tell us that Troilus often met Diomed 
 in battle. Then come three stanzas, in perhaps too light a tone: 
 the first refers us to Dares for the martial details; the second 
 urges all women readers to absolve the poet for the infidelity of 
 his heroine; and in the third the poet says he would rather write 
 of faithful Penelope and Alcestis— 
 
 N’y sey nat this al oonly for thise men, 
 
 But moost for wommen that betraised be 
 
144 
 
 THE TR01LUS EPILOGUE 
 
 Thorugh false fol\. God yeve hem sorwe, amen!... 
 
 Beth war of men, and herkneth what l seyel 
 
 Then follows a stanza of farewell to his book, litel myn tragedye; 
 then a stanza with the prayer that his poem will be faithfully 
 copied and rightly understood; then a stanza (from Boccaccio) 
 describing the death of Troilus at the hands of Achilles. Now 
 follow three stanzas, not in the first draft of the poem, borrowed 
 from Boccaccio’s Teseida, describing the translation of Arcita; 
 then a stanza taken from the Filostrato: 
 
 Swich fyn hath, lo, this Troilus for love! 
 
 Swiche fyn hath lo his grete worthynesse! 
 
 Swiche fyn hath Jus estat real above, 
 
 Swich fyn his lust, swich fyn hath his noblesse! 
 
 And thus bigan his lovyng of Criseyde, 
 
 As I have told, and in this wise he deyde. 
 
 The emphasis is properly on Troilus, and significantly Chaucer 
 omits Boccaccio’s epithet “vilana” for Criseyde. Next come the 
 two troublesome stanzas exhorting all young people to turn from 
 worldly vanity and love only Him who died on the cross to save 
 our souls. Then a stanza in the very vein of Pandarus, echoing, 
 almost mocking, the anaphoristic Swich fyn ... : 
 
 Lo here of payens corsed olde rites.... 
 
 This is the way Jove, Apollo, Mars, and swich rascaille reward 
 their followers, this is the end of the wretched world’s appetites, 
 this is the poetry of olde clerhjs —but not a word against the god 
 of Love. Finally, the dedication of the poem to moral Gower 
 and philosophical Strode and the impressive prayer to the Holy 
 Trinity, from Dante. A medley of seventeen stanzas, with twelve 
 different subjects, shifting back and forth from grave to gay, this 
 Epilogue may well seem puzzling and leave us wondering what 
 Chaucer meant by it. 
 
 ii 
 
 The first answer is literary tradition: a pious ending to a 
 worldly poem is conventional. There is abundant mediaeval prec- 
 
THE TROILUS EPILOGUE 
 
 145 
 
 edent, and parallels to the Lo here stanza may be found in Guido 
 and Benoit: they may have contributed something indirectly. But 
 we shall agree with Tatlock that here “Chaucer was in no sense 
 following a mere convention,” and perhaps even agree “That 
 Chaucer was sincere in this quasi-retraction of his great love 
 poem goes without saying.” Chaucer’s sincerity is not in question, 
 or rather it is not the question. No doubt there is something here 
 of “the age-long dispute as to the right attitude for a Christian 
 man toward pagan poetry”; the whole poem shows a conflict of 
 pagan and Christian loyalties which was inevitable in the medi¬ 
 aeval treatment of such a story with such a background. More 
 than this, the poem comprises a whole series of dualisms which 
 have been skilfully held in solution until the very end. One 
 solvent was of course the Comic Spirit strongly supported by — 
 Pandarus. Another is the poet’s announced detachment in the 
 proem to Book 1 and his frequent assertion of his own irresponsi¬ 
 bility for everything: the story comes from old books and after 
 all, and in all, he is merely following his author Lollius. There 
 is a great deal, he frequently insists, which is out of harmony with 
 his contemporary standards of conduct; and when he comes to 
 the climactic scene on that rainy night at the palace of Pandarus 
 he issues an express apology: 
 
 / kan namore, but of thise like tweye ,— 
 
 To whom this tale sucre be or soot ,— 
 
 Though that l tarie a yer, somtyme l moot, 
 
 After myn auctour, tellen hire gladnesse. 
 
 Here he is thinking not so much of the conflict of past and 
 present, of pagan and Christian feeling, as of the difference be¬ 
 tween conventional ethics and the conventions of amour courtois 
 which he has taken over from Boccaccio and adopted as a literary 
 convenience and which he has felt obliged to follow, for the 
 purposes of his narrative, in spite of their conflict with his own 
 ethic and that probably of most of his readers. The religion of 
 Love and the religion of the Church, each orthodox in its place 
 and each heterodox to the other, are continually blended all 
 through the poem, until the Epilogue. The poet serves the serv- 
 
THE TROILUS EPILOGUE 
 
 146 
 
 ants of the God of Love but abides himself in outer darkness; 
 he prays to God so dere both for those who are in despair and 
 for those who are at ese in Zion; and over and over again the 
 language of one religion is transposed into that of the other with¬ 
 out any sense of incongruity or blasphemy. Examples are hardly 
 needed, but it will be recalled that when Pandarus first finds 
 Troilus overcome with love he charges him with som remors of 
 conscience or attricioun; in Troilus’ song at the end of Book in, 
 Love is a fine fusion of both Gods; and so on. How far Chaucer 
 will go when it suits his purpose may be seen in the exclamation 
 of Pandarus— 
 
 “Immortal god,” quod he, “that mayst nought deyen, 
 Cupid I mene, . . — 
 
 and more seriously in the prayer of Troilus when he believes 
 Criseyde is dead— 
 
 And Atropos, make redy thow my heere. 
 
 And thow, Criseyde, 0 swete herte deere, 
 
 Receyve now my spirit! 
 
 How boldly he can risk outright blasphemy is revealed in his para¬ 
 phrase of St. Bernard’s supplication to the Blessed Virgin, at the 
 beginning of Paradiso xxxin: 
 
 Donna, sei tanto grande e tanto vali 
 
 Che qual vuol grazia ed a te non ricorre, 
 
 Sua disianza vuol volar senz ali* 
 
 in Troilus’ ‘prayer’ while he first lies with Criseyde in his arms: 
 
 Benigne hove, thow holy botid of thynges, 
 
 Whoso wol grace, arid list the noght honouren, 
 
 Lo, his desir wol fie withouten wynges. 
 
 So much for the mingling of heavenly and earthly love: it is rich 
 in comic overtones. 
 
 Another dualism which Chaucer accepted with great readiness 
 is the treatment of love according to the code and love as a natu- 
 
 * So mighty art thou, Lady, and so powerful that one who desires grace 
 and comes not to thee—his desire would fly without wings. 
 
THE TROILUS EPILOGUE 
 
 M7 
 
 ral human experience, that is, literary convention and simple 
 realism. Chaucer had his English readers to think of. It was well 
 enough for Boccaccio to follow the code: his readers were familiar 
 with many of its practices if not with its formal theories. The 
 Prologue to the ‘Legend of Good Women’ tells us something of 
 how English readers took it, but within the poem itself there are 
 evidences that Chaucer was not at all times comfortable with it. 
 The principal actions of the poem conform and both Troilus and 
 Criseyde subscribe: they nowhere reveal any sense of what ordi¬ 
 nary ethics (and the Victorian critics) would regard as immoral¬ 
 ity; they are guilty of no sin. The emphasis on secrecy is merely 
 part of the code. With Pandarus, however, who is the mainspring 
 of the action as well as the immediate representative of the Comic 
 Spirit, it is different. He looks both ways. He follows the code, 
 he lectures Troilus on it; but he is conscious both of his own 
 cunning, not altogether innocent of downright deception, in stage- 
 managing the two lovers, and of his own ambiguous position: he 
 is a loyal, devoted friend of Troilus but he has also cast himself 
 in the unseemly role of go-between. He seems at times too in¬ 
 decently eager to bring his two lovers to bed. Chaucer recognizes 
 this. The morning after his success there is a brief serio-comic 
 meeting between Pandarus and Criseyde. He rallies her about 
 the storm’s interfering with her sleep and asks her how she feels. 
 
 Criseyde answerde, “Nevere the bet for yow, 
 
 Fox that ye ben! God yeve youre herte \are! 
 
 God help me so, ye caused al this fare 
 
 Trowe l,” quod she, “for al youre wordes white. 
 
 O, whoso seeth yow, kpioweth yow ful lite.” 
 
 Not that she has any regrets for what has just taken place, but diat 
 she wants him to know that she sees through his machinations; 
 and she has always been slightly resentful of his continual push¬ 
 ing her about. Then comes the remarkable line: 
 
 And Pandarus hath fully his entente. 
 
 This is in a way the real climax of the poem. After this there is 
 no more laughter. But Troilus is exalted and sings his glorious 
 
THE TR01LUS EPILOGUE 
 
 148 
 
 song to Love: he has felt a newe qualitee within him and Love 
 has altered his spirit so withinne. He has found salvation, accord¬ 
 ing to his religion. 
 
 A third dualism, akin to the first, but more troublesome be¬ 
 cause so much has been attached to it, is the opposition of Fate, 
 or Fortune, and the Divine Foresight and man’s free-will—what 
 has been called Chaucer’s determinism . 2 It is a subject which ap¬ 
 pears in various places, some appropriate and some not, through 
 Chaucer’s poetry; and usually he is inclined to turn it off with a 
 cheerful “this I leave to the professional theologians.” His long¬ 
 est treatment of it (based directly on Boethius) is in the middle 
 of Book iv of the Troilus: eighteen stanzas which he added both 
 to Boccaccio’s and to his own version of the story. Here, on a 
 generous accounting, it may be said to have a little the effect of a 
 prayer, and to represent Troilus’ desperate attempt to find com¬ 
 fort in his misfortune; but artistically it is a blemish, and the 
 parenthetic nowe her\ne, for I wol not tarie betrays that Chaucer 
 was thinking more of the reader than of Troilus. In truth, the 
 last stanza of it reveals the function of the whole inserted passage. 
 
 And over al this, yet sey l more herto, 
 
 That right as whan I wot ther is a thyng, 
 
 Iwys, that thyng moot nedfully he so; 
 
 E/{ right so, whan I woot a thyng comyng, 
 
 So mot it come; and thus the bifallyng 
 Of thynges that ben wist bifore the tyde, 
 
 They mowe nat ben eschued on no syde. 
 
 This is hardly Chaucer notifying us of the deterministic basis of 
 his poem, least of all Geoffrey Chaucer wrestling with his own 
 soul over a private problem. It is not so much Troilus trying to 
 wring comfort from despair, as the poet facing his artistic diffi¬ 
 culty. What with the fascinations of his heroine and the exalta¬ 
 tion of his hero, transfigured by the beneficent power of Love, 
 he approached the end of his poem with misgiving. Although he 
 announced at the very outset that Criseyde would forsake Troilus 
 and bodi by subtle hints and open declaration frequently re¬ 
 minded us of her eventual infidelity, somehow the story kept 
 
THE TR01LUS EPILOGUE 
 
 149 
 
 moving in a different direction. This is not a matter of the in¬ 
 consistent characterization of Criseyde or even of Criseyde por¬ 
 trayed as a developing character. Chaucer could say, as we can, 
 that with all her good qualities Criseyde was weak ,;— 
 
 Tendre-herted, slydynge of corage, 
 
 and no match for the frontal attacks of sudden swift-moving 
 Diomed. Many a woman before and since has been deeply in 
 love and afterwards faithless. He could also say, in his own 
 defense, if we should urge against him that his Criseyde of Book 
 v is positively not the Criseyde of Book 11 and Book in—he could 
 reply that we misjudged her before we had all the evidence; we 
 saw how she would act at home in Troy with Troilus in love 
 with her, we could not yet see how she would act in the Greek 
 camp in utterly different circumstances. But these are shifty 
 arguments. The point is that as the story developed before our 
 eyes we were not, in spite of the warnings, prepared for Criseyde’s 
 treachery, her treason as Pandarus finally called it. And Chaucer 
 saw this and was unhappy about it; hence, inter alia, his eagerness 
 to defend his heroine. Boccaccio had his reasons, personal and 
 other, for giving us a faithless Criseida; Chaucer had accepted 
 from Boccaccio the data of his story, but he altered and improved 
 so much that his end would not quite fit his beginning. He 
 therefore, somewhat in desperation, turned back for Book v to 
 his other sources and superimposed their Criseyde upon his own, 
 without trying very hard to smooth out the differences, even in 
 such a trifling detail as her height. He was, as one might say, 
 caught in a snare. When he saw it before him he lightly called 
 in predestination: 
 
 E/{ right so, whan l woot a thyng comyng, 
 
 and so on. The change in Criseyde was in her stars; he could 
 appeal to 
 
 Almyghty Jove in trone 
 
 That woost of al this thyng the sothfastnesse, 
 
 and so absolve himself. 
 
 It would be absurd to dismiss the problem of Fate and predes- 
 
150 
 
 THE TROILUS EPILOGUE 
 
 tination as a mere literary convenience, as it would also be idle to 
 raise the question of Chaucer’s personal orthodoxy. But the sense 
 of an over-ruling power pervades the poem, sometimes called the 
 fatal destyne or more poetically Fortune, executrice of wyrdes, or 
 more lightly 
 
 Fortune 
 
 That semeth trewest whan she wol by gyle, 
 and sometimes, as in the soliloquy of Troilus in the temple, 
 
 That for sight of divine purvey aunce, 
 and is summed up in the couplet: 
 
 For al that comth, comth by necessitee: 
 
 Thus to ben lorn, it is my destinee. 
 
 It may be expressed in Christian terms or in pagan: Troilus uses 
 the word God eight times in his seventeen stanzas of argument 
 and ends by appeal to Almyghty Jove. It hovers above the doom 
 of Troy, it dictates the exchange of Antenor and the separation 
 of the lovers, it determines the character of Criseyde and that of 
 Diomed also, the ineluctabile fatum. For a moment Troilus con¬ 
 siders the possibility of free will but is soon lost in the complexi¬ 
 ties of Boethian logic; and elsewhere in the poem Chaucer is 
 silent. It will not do therefore to say (as some have done) that 
 Troilus and Criseyde decide their own fate, that Troilus chose to 
 fall in love with Criseyde and she chose to return his love, or that 
 later she was free to reject the overtures of Diomed. Such is not 
 the sense of the poem, nor is it the philosophy of Boethius, Chau¬ 
 cer’s authority. Almost the last words of Philosophy to her philos¬ 
 opher are: “whiderward that thou torne it, thou ne maist nat 
 eschuen the devyne prescience . . . althogh that thou torne thiself 
 by thi wil into diverse acciouns.” Her admission “thanne is ther 
 fredom of arbitrie, that dwelleth hool and unwemmed to mortal 
 men” is only a subtle evasion: it does not go beyond the paradox as 
 Tennyson put it: “Our wills are ours to make them thine”; the old 
 subterfuge, which Chaucer understood, of conditional necessity. 
 But the question is really of no importance in the Troilus. What 
 must be kept in mind is that the poem, its actors and their actions, 
 
THE TROILUS EPILOGUE 
 
 are under the sway of fate, fortune, destiny, and in some sense the 
 divine will, all intermingled as a general over-ruling power, as 
 elsewhere in this poem the terms of pagan mythology are inter¬ 
 mingled with the terms of Christian theology. 
 
 hi 
 
 If one inquires what is the moral of the poem, assuming that 
 the question is at all a proper one, the answer is not obvious. 
 Chaucer has provided one just before the Epilogue which fits well 
 enough the background of fatalism: philosophical resignation— 
 
 Swich is this world, whoso it kan byholde: 
 
 In ech estat is lit el hertes reste. 
 
 God leve us for to take it for the bestel 
 
 The wheel of fortune stands before us. We had heard this a 
 little before: 
 
 Thus goth the world. God shilde us fro meschaunce, 
 And every wight that meneth trout he avaunce! 
 and earlier still, in Book iv, from Pandarus: 
 
 Swich is this world! forthi l thus diffyne, 
 
 Ne trust no wight to fynden in Fortune 
 Ay propretee. 
 
 But this is hardly enough. Boccaccio also had offered a simple 
 moral drawn not so much from his poem as from his experience 
 with Fiammetta: a warning to young men to take example from 
 Troilo and avoid the “appetito rio,” for “Giovana donna e mo¬ 
 bile”; but there is also the “Perfetta donna” who desires to be 
 loved and delights in loving: “queste son da seguire”; let her 
 pray for Troilo: 
 
 Ch’ el posi in pace in quella regione 
 Dov' el dimora, ed a voi dolcemente 
 Conceda grazia si d’amare accorti, 
 
 Che per ria donna alfin non siate morti* 
 
 *. . . that he may rest in peace where Love dwells, and that Love may 
 kindly grant you the grace so to love that you shall not die in the end for 
 an evil woman. 
 
152 
 
 THE TROILUS EPILOGUE 
 
 The emphasis is on Maria’s failure—“Criseida vilana”—but the 
 hope of a better and wiser love is not excluded. Chaucer gave 
 no heed to this. He borrowed the appeal “O giovanetti,” but 
 altered the rest. 
 
 Reconsider now the story. Troilus, at first a proud scorner 
 of Love, sees Criseyde at the spring festival, is converted, and be¬ 
 comes an ardent worshiper; through the energetic aid of Pandarus 
 and his own merits he wins her love; they are happy together for 
 more than a year; then through the fortunes of the Trojan war 
 they are separated, and while he, faithful always, mourns her loss 
 she falls prey to the wiles of Diomed. Throughout the poem 
 Troilus has but one religion, that of Love. He is neither pagan 
 nor Christian but always a devout follower of amour courtois, an 
 embodiment of the best elements of the code. He has no thought, 
 commits no act, which is not in perfect harmony with the tenets 
 of his religion. He is loyal even unto death. Love rewards him 
 first with the possession of his beloved and also by the spiritual 
 ennoblement of his whole being. The sensual is not minimized, 
 neither is it exaggerated (except by Pandarus), and the spiritual 
 exaltation of Love’s worship is dwelt upon over and over. The 
 beneficent power of Love is announced early in Book i: 
 
 evere it shal byfalle, 
 
 That love is he that alle thing may bynde, 
 
 For may no man fordon the lawe of kynde .... 
 
 Now sith it may not goodly ben withstonde, 
 
 And is a thing so vertuous in hynde, 
 
 Refuseth nat to hove for to ben bonde. 
 
 It is celebrated at the end of Book i, it is hymned in the proem to 
 Book hi, it is glorified in the great Song at the end of Book hi— 
 in these places and elsewhere—but always with reference to Troi¬ 
 lus. We are not permitted to feel the ennobling influence of love 
 in Criseyde, for the simple reason that she is destined to prove 
 false, and also because the story is his story and her role is the 
 subordinate one of being the object of his love. 
 
 Yet the God of Love is not omnipotent. Above him stands 
 Destiny, guiding his affairs now for good, now for ill, and most 
 
THE TR01LUS EPILOGUE 
 
 153 
 
 visible in the greater affairs of Troy. A small incident, the cap¬ 
 ture of Antenor, sets everything wrong. We are brought back to 
 the philosophy of fatalism, with this difference, however, that 
 passive acceptance— God leve us for to ta\e it for the beste —opens 
 the way to tragic protest. In the Epilogue Chaucer called his book 
 a tragedy and added litel only in a mock-modest tone. The 
 central theme now appears to be Fate’s disastrous interference 
 with the course of true love: Fate, fickle Fortune, the Divine 
 Will, the Something-not-ourselves, all combine to overthrow love. 
 But no; this will hardly do. The tragic answer is either abject, 
 crushed submission or proud, unsubmissive defeat, and neither is 
 the proper issue of a romantic love story half of which is told in 
 the spirit of a comedy of manners. It will not do to charge 
 Chaucer with a failure to fuse potentially tragic material and a 
 serio-comic tale of Courtly Love. 
 
 The tragic aspects of the Troilus deserves a further word, and 
 even if the critic now exceeds his commission the risk is worth 
 taking. The chosen components of the poem have been so elabo¬ 
 rately mingled that perhaps no completely harmonious solution 
 was possible; Chaucer may not have foreseen the total complexity 
 of his problem or may even have dismissed it too lightly; but the 
 critic, who has not the same responsibility, can fairly submit his 
 ex post facto analysis as a trial both of method and of ultimate 
 estimate of Chaucer’s success, which is brilliant in so many ways, 
 and of his failure, which is disheartening in comparison. 
 
 Enough has been said of the Courtly Love element; it per¬ 
 vades the poem both as story and as treatment. It is the frame¬ 
 work and without it the story would not exist. But it cannot be 
 blamed for the catastrophe. (See Note on the Code, below.) 
 Troilus is its ideal lover and illustrates the code at its best. Cris- 
 eyde, when she is false to Troilus, is also false to the code. She is 
 the one to cry 
 
 All mine, all mine the sin. The love 
 
 I bore him was not deep enough. 
 
 Pandarus teeters on its edge. He betrays it when he becomes un¬ 
 pleasantly aware of the other ethic, he supports it when in his 
 
i54 
 
 THE TROILUS EPILOGUE 
 
 function as go-between he exerts himself to satisfy the lovers. His 
 genuine friendship for Troilus and his blood relationship to Cris- 
 eyde render his functional duties difficult, but Chaucer has done 
 what could be done to keep him in line—not however without 
 allowing his own awareness of the double standard to show 
 through. It is only the modern moralists who, not accepting the 
 code even as a literary device, fall into confusion between the two 
 modes and impute sin to Troilus for loyalty to his own religion 
 and hence his downfall to his having accepted a code which they 
 regard as immoral. But nearly all the great love stories end un¬ 
 happily and the moral we draw from them is the uncertainty of 
 human happiness. 3 We do not repudiate earthly love; nor did 
 Boccaccio. What he said is that not all women are to be trusted, 
 for some of them are “volubil sempre come foglia al vento.” 
 What Chaucer could well say is that although the loves of Troilus 
 and Criseyde came to grief there is a love which never betrays. 
 What he seems to say is that young people should turn their 
 hearts from earthly vanity to the love of God; but he cannot mean 
 that they should all forsake the love of kind and substitute for it 
 the divine love. /Is it possible that he did not express himself 
 clearly n or that in saying the conventionally expected he gave 
 way to a little too much enthusiasm? Life is a vanity fair, but 
 not altogether. Criseyde did her poet a greater wrong than she 
 did her lover if she betrayed him into generalizing her weakness 
 into a pattern of all women. That this is what some of his readers 
 did is apparent from the Prologue of the ‘Legend of Good Wom¬ 
 en,’—if we can take more seriously the charges of the God of 
 Love than we can take the defense by Alceste. 
 
 Recently the problem has been attacked on a different front. 4 
 Chaucer’s poem on the twin sorrows of Troilus is but the De 
 consolatione philosophiae writ new. The Chaucerian catharsis is 
 not vanitas vanitatum, but the folly of submitting to Fortune; nay, 
 more, Troilus is not the victim of chance or the victim of inevita¬ 
 ble destiny. Like the speaker in the De consolatione, he is the vic¬ 
 tim of his own failure. He forsook reason; for “in alle thingis 
 that resoun is, in hem also is liberte of willynge and nillynge” 
 (Bo. 5, p. 2). Troilus is “a man who has allowed himself to be 
 
THE TROILUS EPILOGUE 
 
 155 
 
 elevated spiritually by ‘good’ fortune. Having achieved this emi¬ 
 nence, he is beset by ‘evil’ fortune or adversity, before which he 
 falls.” He “turns from the way and seeks false worldly satisfac¬ 
 tions, abandons reason and becomes subject to Fortune.” In 
 other words, Troilus sinned in willing to love; he is a replica of 
 Adam, who subjected himself to Eve; he followed Adam’s “tropol- 
 ogical fall”: “the temptation of the senses [Criseyde], the corrup¬ 
 tion of the lower reason in pleasurable thought [the worldly wis¬ 
 dom of Pandarus], and the final corruption of the higher reason,” 
 all lead to “confusion, despair, and death.” But what evidence 
 is there that Chaucer saw his subject in the light of Boethius’ 
 attempt to reconcile free will and divine foresight? Chaucer 
 over and over in the poem emphasized the power of Fortune 
 along with the controlling power of God: Troilus was destined 
 to love and lose. Even in the inserted Boethian passage in Book 
 iv he got no farther than balancing predestination and free will 
 and concluding that what will be will be. A better question 
 would be: From the poem of Troilus what can we infer to have 
 been Chaucer’s concept of tragedy? The simple mediaeval con¬ 
 cept, to be sure, of a fall from happiness to unhappiness. What 
 more? Is the Troilus a tragedy in any other sense? 
 
 In the Greek and the modern sense tragedy springs from a flaw 
 in the hero’s character, a flaw of which he may be unaware, or 
 from some conflict of forces outside himself which he cannot be 
 expected to control. If Troilus and Criseyde were the helpless 
 victims of the combined powers of fortune and divine guidance, 
 or if they sinned in yielding to the power of human affection, the 
 poem has high tragic implications. Chaucer’s adherence through¬ 
 out the poem was plainly with the former alternative, but he 
 never represents them as victims. Only in the last-minute conver¬ 
 sion of Troilus and his contrast of heavenly felicity with the un¬ 
 certainty of earthly pleasure did Chaucer assert that since Troilus 
 had loved and lost it would have been better not to have loved 
 at all, and dismiss his poem as the work of ancient poets and the 
 damnable pagan gods. 
 
 Is this dualism of pagan and Christian theology, so cheerfully 
 accepted by Chaucer and up to the finale so well blended, the 
 
THE TR01LUS EPILOGUE 
 
 !5 6 
 
 double moral of the two religions (the religion of Love which 
 exalts the hero and betrays him because one woman was weak, 
 and the religion of Christ which repudiates the world as a vanity 
 fair) conducive to true tragedy? Or does it so confuse the mind 
 that in the outcome neither element preponderates and each one 
 loses cogency? The answer, it seems to me, must be that Chau¬ 
 cer was an incomparable storyteller, not a tragic poet, that he did 
 not conceive his subject in terms of tragedy in any Aristotelian or 
 Hegelian sense. It cannot be too often repeated that his use of 
 Courtly Love was a literary convenience enabling him to handle 
 a situation sometimes salacious and fundamentally immoral to 
 the common view as though it were genuinely moral and even 
 ennobling to the hero. But this brought with it a series of data 
 inimical to human or tragic interest, a hero who as lover is not 
 heroic, a heroine whose role is to return the love and then betray 
 it, a go-between whose persistent gaiety offsets the sorrows of 
 Troilus in winning his lady. 
 
 “I could think so little,” said Henry James, “of any situation 
 that didn’t depend for its interest upon the nature of the persons 
 situated, and thereby on their way of taking it.” Troilus has in 
 the poem no character to meet this test; he responds to love but 
 not to suffering. Criseyde has two characters, one given by 
 Chaucer and one by the inherited story—however reconciled or 
 reconcilable—but neither quite of natural growth. In truth, the 
 double sorwe of Troilus and the double character of Criseyde 
 yield two different subjects: one (half of the poem) immensely 
 alive with comedy, the other merely pathetic. The happiness of 
 love 
 
 That altered his spirit so withinne, 
 
 at the end of Book in, has made a new Troilus, but when faced 
 with the suffering of Criseyde’s desertion he returns to the ineffec¬ 
 tual pathos with which he was introduced. Troilus is what Pan- 
 darus and Criseyde made him; without them he is uninteresting. 
 
 True, Boccaccio and Chaucer gave him one fine moment, when 
 he cries 
 
 O Criseida mia, dov e la fede? 
 
THE TROILUS EPILOGUE 
 
 157 
 
 and Chaucer following closely but with more moving words— 
 
 “O lady myn, Criseyde, 
 
 Where is youre feith, and where is youre biheste? 
 
 Where is youre love? where is youre trout he?” he seyde .... 
 
 “Who shal now trowe on any othes mo? 
 
 Allas! I nevere wolde han wend, er this, 
 
 That ye, Criseyde, koude han chaunged so; . . . 
 
 Allas, youre name of trouthe 
 Is now fordon, and that is al my routhe. . . . 
 
 “Tborough which l se that clene out of youre mynde 
 Ye han me cast; and I ne ban nor may, 
 
 For al this world, withinne myn herte fynde 
 To unloven yow a quarter of a day!” 
 
 The simplicity, dignity, and moderation of Troilus here are very 
 fine. We feel sympathy for his suffering, but he remains only a 
 pathetic figure. The real tragedy, which was Criseyde’s, Chaucer 
 did not touch. To have developed the latent tragedy of her situ¬ 
 ation, her brightness and beauty dwindling as soon as she leaves 
 Troy, her moment of self-realization in the presence of the crude 
 Diomed, when she acknowledges her weakness, her feeble efforts 
 to recover as she slides backward, would have made a different 
 poem, which was not what Chaucer set out to write and which— 
 one says this hesitantly—he was incapable of writing. He had 
 sowed the seeds of it when at the beginning he emphasized her 
 timidity— 
 
 Criseyde, which that wel neigh starf for feere, 
 
 So as she was the ferfulleste wight 
 That myghte be. 
 
 For a time this seemed to be untrue, but when she was alone, 
 among the Greeks, it returned for her undoing. The seeds of 
 treachery were also in her father’s treason and her uncle’s shifti¬ 
 ness; but Chaucer neglected the opportunities of showing her 
 moral disintegration because his subject was still the double 
 sorrow of Troilus. 
 
i 5 8 
 
 THE TR01LUS EPILOGUE 
 
 It will not do, on the other hand, to excuse Chaucer for missing 
 the tragic import and possibilities of his tale by saying that he 
 came too late to grasp the significance of Courtly Love as tragic 
 material; for we have Malory, a full century later, as witness 
 against him. It is rather that Chaucer’s mind and artistic gifts 
 /■were not tampered towards the tragic conception of human ex¬ 
 perience. cPity he understood. But terror or fear in the Aristote¬ 
 lian sense was not in his reading of life^-not as we know him 
 from his works, and therefore it may be a critical error to charge 
 him with failure in this field. His gifts were for comedy, for a 
 close observation and portrayal of human frailty and a cheerful, 
 smiling condonement of such frailty. We may feel here perhaps, 
 as Matthew Arnold felt, without alleging the right reasons, a 
 want of high seriousness, or of high artistic integrity, which is per¬ 
 haps much the same. It is something of course to recognize his 
 improvements over the Filostrato. But when he took over so 
 much of Boccaccio’s fable and Boccaccio’s code of love, it is to be 
 feared that he did not thoroughly explore the consequences of the 
 alterations and improvements which he added. By making Pan- 
 darus so different and Criseyde so different he assumed responsi¬ 
 bilities for the outcome which he may be thought to have shirked. 
 In Book v he faced a dilemma, looked about for other helps, fell 
 into contradictions and almost seems to have lost interest. He 
 certainly subjected the Book to no careful revision. If we can 
 trust the text (iv, 26-28) he expected to finish the poem in four 
 books, but instead prolonged the story with Troilus’ sentimental 
 excesses of pity and pathos as though he could not bring himself 
 to face the final disaster. And at the end he quite threw up his 
 hands crying ‘All is vanity’—which is not the moral of his fable. 
 
 Another solution was possible, but it was not Chaucer’s, and 
 may appear here as a gratuitous grace-note. Since Chaucer was 
 not bound by Boccaccio’s purpose in writing for his Fiammetta, 
 he was really free to alter the ending; but, as he of course felt, a 
 Criseyde who was not false would make quite a different story. 
 He might have found, however, in Dante a hint for replacing the 
 laughter of Troilus in heaven with a vision of the Criseyde who 
 had failed as a beatified image of the true Criseyde. There he 
 
THE TROILUS EPILOGUE 
 
 159 
 
 would have had a conclusion both logical and consistent—the 
 final glorification of Love—and, if such seemed necessary, a con¬ 
 clusion pious and uplifting in the terms of the essential story. As 
 Dante’s poetry began with romantic love and moved, after the 
 death of Beatrice, to the great vision of the Divina Commedia, 
 so, after the death to Troilus of his Criseyde, she might have 
 become for him the symbol, purified of its human dross, of that 
 merging of earthly and heavenly love which transcends our 
 limited experience and ennobles by the imagination both mind 
 and spirit. For Troilus the love which betrays here below would 
 become an approach, a guide, to the divine love; Criseyde for¬ 
 given and transfigured would become “la gloriosa donna della 
 mia mente.” This would have been the rightful climax and just 
 reward of Troilus’ devotion to his God. 
 
 iv 
 
 Instead, we have the laughter of Troilus in heaven—“a peal of 
 celestial laughter,” Root calls it—his scorn of this wretched 
 world and its earthly pleasures. (It is a wonder that no one has 
 cited the Psalmist: “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh.”) 
 Here is the supreme difficulty. It is only intensified by the appeal: 
 O yonge, fresshe jolkfs. ... It has been condemned as a contra¬ 
 diction and defended as a proper moral “implicit in the whole 
 poem.” 
 
 In Chaucer’s first version there was no celestial laughter. The 
 death of Troilus was immediately followed by Boccaccio’s rhetori¬ 
 cal but natural 
 
 Swich fyn hath, lo, this Troilus for love! 
 
 then the address to all young people, suggested no doubt by 
 Boccaccio’s “O Giovanetti” but going far beyond Boccaccio’s 
 limited warning; and this is followed in turn by the condemna¬ 
 tion (rather mockingly expressed) of the paganism of the poem. 
 Here we recognize the rightness of Tatlock’s stricture: “The 
 feeling in the Epilogue is in no way foreshadowed at the begin¬ 
 ning or elsewhere; it does not illumine or modify; it contra¬ 
 dicts. . . . He tells the whole story in one mood and ends in 
 
j6o the troilus epilogue 
 
 another.” But remembering that Chaucer was a mediaeval, we 
 might find ample extenuation in literary convention and in the 
 mediaeval principle that a good story deserves a good moral, more 
 or less fitting—a Christian, even a Catharist, moral. 
 
 Chaucer was not content, however, to leave it so. He inserted 
 three stanzas meant, as Tatlock charitably suggests, “to avoid too 
 abrupt a shift from sympathy to detachment.” That is, “piety 
 with a pagan touch forms a transition from pagan worldliness to 
 Christian devoutness.” This may well be. Boccaccio set the 
 trap with the closing prayer for Troilo: 
 
 Ch’ el posi in pace in quella regione 
 Dov’ el dimora — 
 
 in that region where Love dwells. The trap was sprung by 
 Chaucer’s recalling Boccaccio’s own three stanzas in the Teseida 
 on the translation of Arcita. We do not know why he rejected 
 these stanzas in the Knight’s Tale (assuming that the ‘Palamon 
 and Arcite’ came first); we can only guess why he introduced 
 them into the Troilus. But here they now are. 
 
 In rendering these stanzas from the Teseida Chaucer takes a 
 few liberties. There is some uncertainty about which sphere 
 Arcita attains: Boccaccio is, as often, not too clear in his language 
 and the Troilus manuscripts are at variance. 5 Chaucer adds pic- 
 toral vividness by his apparent mistranslation of 
 a cui intorno il mare 
 girava e I’aere e di sopra il foco. 
 
 But the interesting difference is between the laughter of Arcita: 
 e seco rise de’ pianti dolenti 
 della turba lernea, la vanitate 
 forte dannando dell’ umane genti, 
 li quai, da tenebrosa cechitate 
 mattamente oscurati nelle menti, 
 seguon del mondo la falsa biltate, 
 lasciando il cielo;* 
 
 * and then he laughed at the sorrowful complaints of the delicate crowd, 
 greatly condemning the vanity of mankind, who, foolishly darkened in 
 their minds, follow, from shadowy blindness, the false beauty, abandoning 
 heaven. 
 
THE TROILUS EPILOGUE 
 
 161 
 
 and the laughter of Troilus: 
 
 And in hymself he lough right at the wo 
 Of hem that wepten for his deth so faste; 
 
 And dampned al oure werf{ that foloweth so 
 The blynde lust, the which that may nat laste, 
 
 And sholden al our herte on heven caste. 
 
 Chaucer’s lough repeats Boccaccio’s risi (and more remotely Lu¬ 
 can’s “risitque,” Pharsalia, ix, 14); but compare Dante’s gentler 
 “sorrisi” in a similar situation {Par. xxn, 135). Boccaccio’s la 
 falsa biltate, however, has become the blynde lust, just as in the 
 preceding stanza 
 
 e ogni cosa nulla stimare 
 a rispetto del del* 
 
 has become 
 
 and fully gan despise 
 This wrecched world, and held al vanite 
 To respect of the pleyn felicite 
 That is in hevene above. 
 
 Chaucer has not only expanded, he has strengthened, intensified 
 the language to match the heightened vigorous language of his 
 appeal to the yonge fresshe folkes. 
 
 The surprise, however, is that Troilus is translated to a Chris- 
 ian heaven and at once made fully acquainted with its pleyn 
 felicite. We were accustomed throughout the poem to a mingling 
 of pagan and Christian terms and the modernization of pagan 
 ideas into mediaeval ideas, always with the solvent of Chaucer’s 
 Jmmor and a pervading sense of the oneness of humanity. 
 Troilus we knew was a devout worshiper of his God and his rec¬ 
 ompense was naturally to be transported to the heaven of Love; 
 but from the heaven of Love he could never look down with con¬ 
 tempt -on this wretched world as a vanity fair. This runs 
 counter to every tenet of his religion and every meaning of the 
 poem. By substituting the blinde lust for “la falsa biltate,” says 
 one scholar, Chaucer has “emphasized Troilus’s confession of his 
 * and everything of no value in respect to heaven. 
 
THE TROILUS EPILOGUE 
 
 162 
 
 own folly.” What folly ? Troilus has been guilty of no folly. He 
 has loved not wisely but too well (if you like), but it is not folly 
 to love a woman with Troilus’ devotion, and it is no derogation to 
 human love such as his that his beloved forsakes him. The same 
 scholar seems to regard the loves of Troilus and Criseyde as “a 
 temporary affair”: that is folly, for it is not true to Chaucer’s 
 text. There is no sign in the poem that Criseyde would have been 
 unfaithful if there had been no separation, no exchange of pris¬ 
 oners, no exposure of her to the desolation of absence and to the 
 masterly seduction by Diomed. She was weak, she was false to 
 love as Troilus was true, she deserves perhaps less excuse than 
 Chaucer, and we, are willing to offer. But while they were 
 together they were bound by the same pledges, the same oaths, in 
 the terms of the ethic to which they subscribed and by which 
 they lived as though their union had the ecclesiastical sanction of 
 
 the bond 
 
 That highte matrimoigne or manage. 
 
 G. K. Chesterton (to leave the scholars for a moment) contrib¬ 
 utes in picturesque language his own twist to this confusion. “In 
 a series of verses of great beauty and power,” he says, Chaucer 
 “gives his ultimate decision that happiness is not to be found by 
 dancing after any heathen god of love; but by looking up ... to 
 where a more terrible but a more tender god of love hangs, not 
 on Olympus but on Calvary.” That is to say, Troilus, son of the 
 King of Troy, should have delayed a few centuries, until after 
 the Crucifixion: he should simply not have been a pagan, for no 
 pagan can find happiness. 
 
 It may be suspected, moreover, that the reason—or part of it— 
 why many readers have welcomed the about-face of Troilus (his 
 “realization of his folly”), and probably Chaucer’s for providing 
 it, is their uncomfortable feeling that there has been something 
 shady and illicit about the whole love affair. They cannot recon¬ 
 cile themselves to the cardinal principle of secrecy in Courtly 
 Love and so cannot accept Courtly Love as a literary convention. 
 This is of course to their credit as moralists but reveals a certain 
 want of detachment as critics. As one scholar exclaims: “Mar- 
 
THE TROILUS EPILOGUE 
 
 i6 3 
 
 riage is so obviously impossible that neither of them suggests it,” 
 neither Troilus nor Criseyde. But if Troilus had gone straight 
 to Priam and said: “Father, I love Criseyde and wish to marry 
 her,” the exchange could have been avoided and everybody made 
 glad. There might have been a small crisis in the government, 
 but no tragedy. The city would still have a valiant defender, a 
 happy warrior, and Love would be doubly triumphant because 
 sanctified by marriage. But no: the lovers insisted on remaining 
 secretive; when the exchange was proposed they were obliged to 
 hide their shame and take the tragic consequences. Yet when 
 Troilus gets to heaven he recognizes his folly; he should have gone 
 to his father, or to a Priest of Holy Church, or better still, he 
 should not have allowed himself to fall in love. Now he repents 
 and condemns his old ways, and all the pleasures of this our 
 transitory life as well. Thus the standards of modern morality 
 are preserved and loose living punished by loss of love and loss 
 of life—at some sacrifice of artistic probity. 
 
 And finally, Chaucer’s hesitation, not to say confusion, is be¬ 
 trayed by the different tones manifest in this patchwork Epilogue: 
 the offhand reference to Dares for martial details; the apology for 
 Criseyde; the leavetaking of his poem; the translation of Troilus 
 to the Fixed Stars (or perhaps the Moon) and his sudden aware¬ 
 ness of Christian jelicite in Heaven, followed immediately by his 
 being turned over to Mercury; the exhortation to all young people 
 to love only Jesus; the sarcastic dismissal of the whole story as 
 ancient paganism; the half-serious dedication to Gower and Strode 
 (let them correcte whatever is amiss); and the wholly serious 
 prayer to Christ and the Trinity. He has finished a romantic tale 
 of simple, sensuous, and passionate love, with an ideal lover be¬ 
 trayed by a weak faithless heroine. The mixed elements remained 
 soluble until now, when he looks back and is not too confident. 
 It is too late to admit embarrassment, but he can at least end 
 with a smiling deprecatory gesture to the benighted heathen and 
 with a genuflection to the High Altar: 
 
 And loveth hym, the which that right for love ... . 
 
THE TROILUS EPILOGUE 
 
 164 
 
 Love may have two meanings. Here it becomes almost a pun: 
 heavenly and eardily love. 
 
 One word more, beyond all the sophistications of argument: it 
 is the word of a man who was a lesser poet but a greater humanist 
 than Chaucer, a poet whose understanding sympathy found the 
 true solution, which (as Sir Herbert Read has told us) produces 
 “a real”—one must even say the real— “catharsis.” For Henryson 
 had the last and the right word. 
 
 O fair Cresseid! the flour and A-per-se 
 Of Troy and Grece, how was thou fortunait,. .. 
 
 I have pity thee suld fall sic mischance! 
 
 Yit nevertheles, quhat-ever men deme or say 
 In scornful langage of thy bru\ilness, 
 l sail excuse, als far-furth as l may, 
 
 Thy woman held, thy wisdom, and fairnes, 
 
 The quilf Tortoun hes put to sic distres. 
 
 Instead of an address to all young people to forsake this world, 
 there is Cresseid’s heart-wrung appeal— 
 
 0 ladyis fair of Troy and Grece, attend 
 My misery, quhill{ nane may comprehend, 
 
 My frivoll fortoun, my infelicitie, 
 
 My greit mischief, quhil\ na man can amend. 
 
 Instead of Troilus’s laughter in heaven there is his epitaph for her: 
 
 ‘Lo! fair ladyis, Cresseid of Troy is toun, 
 
 Sumtyme countit the flour of womanheid, 
 
 Under this stane, late Upper, lyis deid! 
 
 Troikas’ love is once more ennobled by this, and Criseyde’s self¬ 
 punishment, of which leprosy is but a symbol, is the realization of 
 her own failure. What precluded Chaucer from seeing and saying 
 this is not for us to know; We can only guess; but we are re¬ 
 minded by it that nowhere (fcertainly not in his story of Custance 
 or his story of Virginia) does he sound the note of true pity for 
 the men and women who must suffer the strokes of fortune?^ 
 
Note on The Code 
 
 i6 5 
 
 Note on the Code 
 
 The poem ends properly at v. 1750: Criseyde now loves Diomed, 
 great is the sorrow of Troilus, Fortune has had her way, and such 
 (heaven help us) is life. This was enough. But somehow it did not 
 satisfy Chaucer; and so his rescission in the Epilogue and his Retraction 
 at the end of the Parson’s Tale (if the list there is genuine) have given 
 birth to a special heresy. This critical heresy, that the Epilogue is 
 Chaucer’s repudiation of Courtly Love, is advanced with great con¬ 
 fidence by two eminent Chaucerians and is echoed by an impressive 
 list of still others. (See Robinson’s note, 2nd edition, p. 837.) Says 
 Lawrence ( Shakespeare’s Problem Comedies, New York, 1931, pp. 
 1 48 ' 49 ) : 
 
 To Chaucer, on the other hand, the tale reveals uldmately only the 
 hollowness of the service of Love. Troilus dies in profound disillusion; 
 Criseyde lets passion lead her into breaking both the natural and the con¬ 
 ventional laws of true love. What is the answer? Well, Love is not the 
 deity for men to serve; they should put their trust in God, who will treat 
 no man falsely. ... In short, die story is, in the hands of Chaucer, an 
 attempt to analyze the validity of the conventions of love by a minute 
 examination of a specific instance, which leads to the decision that those 
 conventions break down as a rule of life. 
 
 Says Kittredge ( Chaucer and His Poetry, Cambridge, 1915, pp. 
 143-44) : ' Yet we come more and more to suspect that Troilus was 
 right in his first opinion of lovers: 
 
 0 veray jooles, nyce and blynde be ye! 
 
 Ther nys nat oon \an war by other be. 
 
 We come to suspect 
 
 that the principles of the code are somehow unsound; that the god of 
 love is not a master whom his servants can trust. And then, suddenly at 
 the end of the poem, when the death of Troilus had been chronicled, . . . 
 the great ironist drops his mask, and we find . . . that he has no solution 
 except to repudiate the unmoral and unsocial system which he has pre¬ 
 tended to uphold. . . . 
 
 This manifestly involves an utter abandonment of the attitude so long 
 sustained, and therein lies its irresistible appeal. 
 
 One questions how far the appeal of the Troilus lies in the poet’s 
 adoption of the chivalric code, for the purposes of his story, through 
 eight thousand lines and his repudiation of it in an Epilogue. It 
 implies a miracle of genius. Or does it imply that the poem is to 
 be read as a tract? 
 
 To show that Chaucer meant to repudiate Courtly Love at the end 
 of the poem it would be necessary to prove that the tragedy is con- 
 
THE TROILUS EPILOGUE 
 
 166 
 
 sequent on his choice of the code as a basis of his fiction, that the 
 unhappy outcome is due to the acceptance by Troilus and Criseyde of 
 the social and ethical conventions of the code. But this is impossible. 
 Both lovers recognize the statutes of secrecy and honor, but neither of 
 them regards their love as illicit in any moral sense. (Only Pandarus 
 is out of line, when he permits his practical realism to intrude, but 
 even then he follows the rules in his function as go-between.) It is 
 true that the requirement of humility renders Troilus less active as a 
 lover than we should prefer in a hero, but Chaucer offsets this by his 
 martial vigor; and while this may weaken the story for modern readers 
 it in no way precipitates the catastrophe. The catastrophe springs 
 from Criseyde’s weakness, which does not invalidate the code, and 
 even more from the controlling power of Destiny, which separates the 
 lovers and exposes her weakness. Both of these tragic elements are 
 outside the code. 
 
 Even the death of Troilus is curiously detached, almost an after¬ 
 thought picked up from thise olde bokes and following the grand dis¬ 
 missal of the story, Swich is this world. . . . The city has lost one of 
 its stoutest warriors, second only to Hector, but nothing is said of this, 
 or of any general lamentation as at the death of Arcite. And, what is 
 more significant, his death is not presented as a tragic culmination, as 
 his punishment for having lived and loved according to a false code, 
 as it would have to be presented if Chaucer meant to repudiate Courtly 
 Love. 
 
 It is a narrow interpretation, therefore, which would explain the 
 hero’s translation and apparent denial of the faith by which he has 
 lived as a sudden revelation of heavenly felicity and thus the poet’s 
 acknowledgement that one of the important elements of his story was 
 all wrong. It is merely perverse to reason that his God has betrayed 
 him and therefore his was a false god and to be repudiated. Nor does 
 Chaucer hold this: he says that as soon as Troilus reaches heaven he 
 despises all the changes and chances of this wretched world and 
 condemns all our pursuit of transitory pleasures. Neither Troilus in 
 heaven nor the poet in his appeal to young people actually forbids the 
 love of mortals, although Troilus seems to include human love in the 
 blynde lust, the which that may nat laste. It is true that worldly life 
 is al vanite compared with the felicity of heaven, lit is not true that 
 therefore men should forsake the love of kind! 
 
 Just before the Epilogue, says Tatlock, Chaucer “draws a worldly 
 conclusion; then after dismissing his book and rounding off the story, 
 he ends in a loftier vein ... a devout transcending of all earthly love.’’ 
 And finally, “on the whole, the ending is a return from the Renascence 
 to the Middle Ages.’’ Perhaps so. He went back to Boccaccio and 
 
Note on The Code 
 
 167 
 
 transposed Boccaccio’s exciting, heady tale into something unattempted 
 yet in English prose or rhyme; and when it was framed in the sophisti¬ 
 cated assumptions of amour courtois it became almost impossibly 
 complex. But he gave it all he had. He ran full sail before the wind, 
 pennons flying—and then found himself on a lee shore. He had, for a 
 time, the best of both worlds, sacred and profane; he kept them weav¬ 
 ing and unweaving with a dazzling success. What wonder then if 
 having poured his libation to Venus he saw fit to light a candle to the 
 Holy Trinity. But this is far from being a repudiation of the ethics of 
 Courtly Love. It is more like a way of saying that “ancient Troy and 
 modern England are different and you must not think that I advocate 
 Trojan mores for young people nowadays.” It is more like a last 
 minute repetition of what he said at the beginning of Book n— 
 
 if it happe in any wise, 
 
 That here be any lovere in this place 
 That her\neth, as the story wol devise, 
 
 How Troilus com to his lady grace, 
 
 And thenheth, ‘so nold 1 that love purchace,’ 
 
 I noot; but it is me no wonderynge. 
 
 As people say, ecch contree hath his lawes. 
 
chapterv. OBSERVATIONS ON 
 THE ART OF CHAUCER 
 
 T HESE observations, starting with the Chaucerian laugh¬ 
 ter, inquire first by what means and to what ends Chaucer 
 applies his gift of humor to the criticism of life, and then 
 turn to a more general view of his style, its felicities and its way¬ 
 wardness. After this follow a note on the important but still 
 unsettled subject of his audience and a few illustrative notes on 
 his textual borrowings. 
 
 i 
 
 The laughter of Pandarus is usually pointed with malice or 
 innuendo, but Criseyde’s is nearly always genuine. With it she 
 parries his efforts to maneuver her and when he gan his beste 
 japes forth to caste he 
 
 made hire so to laughe at his folye, 
 
 That she for laughter wende for to dye. 
 
 But when the separation is determined we are told that 
 
 The pleye, the laughter, men was wont to fynde 
 In hire 
 
 were all fled. Most remarkable is Troilus’ memory of her laugh¬ 
 ing. When in Book v he rides past her empty palace he cries: 
 
 And yonder have 1 herd ful lustyly 
 My dere herte laugh. 
 
 It is one of his most poignant memories of her. And when she 
 left Troy she left laughter behind: Diomed noticed it— 
 
 nevere, sythen he hire thennes broughte, 
 
 Ne \oude he sen hire laugh or ma\en joie. 
 
 Elsewhere the Chaucerian laughter is touched with scorn, or 
 has something unpleasant behind it. The examples range from 
 lat us laughe and pleye as spoken by the merchant’s wife to her 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 169 
 
 husband, at the end of the Shipman’s Tale, to Woodnesse, laugh- 
 ynge in his rage in the Temple of Mars. There are only half a 
 dozen exceptions. The Host laughs when the Knight’s Tale is 
 ended and things have started well, and the Pilgrims laugh, or 
 most of them do, when the Miller has finished his Tale. The 
 Host laughs when the Manciple has pacified the drunken Cook. 
 The Wife of Bath had a hearty laugh— 
 
 In jelaweship wel \oud she laughe and carpe — 
 
 and her fifth husband laughed when he read his Valerie and 
 Theofraste. It is notably part of the praise of the Duchess that 
 she could 
 
 Laughe and pleye so womanly. 
 
 But this is about all. For most of the laughter is colored with 
 mockery. 
 
 Smiles are not very common. There is the peculiar smile of 
 the Prioress, the sarcastic smile of the miller in the Reeve’s Tale, 
 and the Devil’s smile in the Friar’s Tale, and the old hag’s in the 
 Wife’s Tale, and the God of Love’s in the Prologue to the 
 ‘Legende,’ and Ariadne’s smile at the stedefastnesse (itself a 
 weighted word) of Theseus; and the wicked smile of the assassin, 
 
 The smylere with the fyiyfe under the cloke. 
 
 In the Troilus there is this same obliquity of meaning. Troilus 
 smiles at the folly of lovers and at Pandarus’ quip when Criseyde 
 is brought to his bed of sickness. Pandarus smiles at Criseyde 
 when she betrays her interest in Troilus and she smiles when 
 Pandarus thrusts the letter into her bosom and Cassandra smiles 
 as she expounds Troilus’ dream. Evidently for Chaucer a smile 
 was not a politely unfinished laugh but a signal of malicious 
 pleasure, of something withheld out of contempt or scepticism. 
 Thus, reading backwards, it would seem that the Prioress’ smile 
 was professional rather than sincere; it was simple and coy like 
 her Tale. 
 
 Chaucer does not often invite laughter in the modern reader; 
 both in language and in situation he favors the shared smile. 
 When the situation is gross the temptation to laugh outright is 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 
 
 170 
 
 tempered by other considerations; for as a recent editor of Punch 
 has told us, “Good taste is the enemy of humor.” And so the 
 element of incongruity which most analysts find at the root of 
 humor shows also in the tendre croppes of the reader’s apprecia¬ 
 tion. Emily at her prayers, Pandarus with his cushion, demoiselle 
 Pertelote with her laxatives, the Host with his rude speche and 
 boold, the Shipman with his closing puns, the Wife of Bath with 
 her experience, even Alceste with her gracious but illogical apolo¬ 
 gies, make us smile. Laughter is inhibited by decorum. 
 
 On the other hand, there is wit, which is never quite harmless. 
 It can be coarse and cheap; it can also aspire to the levels of art, 
 when the mutual satisfaction of maker and recipient become 
 esthetic pleasure. For wit is a miniature drama—usually comedy, 
 sometimes melodrama—a situation of meanings, a period of sus¬ 
 pense while the mind reviews the possibilities, and a pleasing 
 denouement—sometimes a catharsis—when the purpose and the 
 effect are recognized. But because its essence is swiftness the 
 pleasure is likely to be ephemeral. Only the finest specimens are 
 cherished in memory. 
 
 11 
 
 The pervasive humor of Chaucer’s poetry sometimes opens 
 him totfieTcharge of not taking serious things seriously. It breaks 
 out in the most incongruehtTplaces. 
 
 A catalogue of these misplaced levities would be tedious, but a 
 certain number must be gathered up. Two of the most notorious 
 occur in the Knight’s Tale and have already been noted— 
 
 Fare wel phisikj go ber the man to chirchel 
 
 and 
 
 His spirit chaunged hous . . . 
 
 Arcite is coold, ther Mars his soule gye! 
 
 (Fancy the gentle Knight talking like this.) In the Franklin’s 
 Tale, after Aurelius’ desperate prayer, the Franklin says: 
 
 Despeyred in this torment and this thoght 
 Lete l this woful creature lye; 
 
 Chese he, for me, wheither he wol lyve or dye. 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 171 
 
 On a larger scale is the brilliant tag to the Clerk’s Tale, the 
 “Lenvoy de Chaucer,” often fathered on the Clerk himself. Then 
 there is the gratuitous impropriety on the wedding night of Cus- 
 tance. After the delicate lightness of the introductory stanzas 
 of the Troilus the serious description of Criseyde is polished off 
 with Chaucer’s 
 
 But wheither that she children hadde or noon, 
 
 I rede it naught, therfore 1 late it goon, 
 
 though he had just read in Boccaccio that she had neither son nor 
 daughter. Nor could he resist the same kind of Byronic flippancy 
 when he summed up her character in Book v, 
 
 Tendre-herted, slydynge of corage; 
 
 But trewely, l kjan nat telle hir age. 
 
 In a spirit of music-hall levity he introduces the very serious first 
 Canticus Troili with 
 
 loo! every word right thus, 
 
 As I shal seyn; and whoso list it here, 
 
 Loo, next this vers he may it fynden here; 
 
 and similarly, though in a more suitable context, the birds’ 
 roundel is introduced: 
 
 The wordes were swiche as ye may heer fynde, 
 
 The nexte vers, as I now have in mynde. 
 
 The closing line of his ‘elegy’ on the Duchess of Lancaster is 
 This was my sweven; now hit ys doon. 
 
 Near the end of the Man of Law’s Tale, he says of Custance: 
 
 I may nat telle hir wo until to-morwe, 
 l am so wery for to speke of sorwe. 
 
 In the ‘Hous of Fame’ gaiety is in order, but 
 
 And nere hyt to long to endyte, 
 
 Be God, l wolde hyt here write 
 
 is rather strong. The ‘Legend of Good Women’ has its own 
 uneven balance between game and ernest. but was it necessary to 
 end the story of Cleopatra with 
 
I?2 
 
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 
 
 Now, or l fynde a man thus trewe and stable, 
 
 And wol for love his deth so frely take, 
 l preye to God let oure hedes nevere a\e! 
 
 Amen .— ? 
 
 The burlesque description of the festivities before the grand tour¬ 
 nament for Emily’s hand has elsewhere been noted; there is also 
 the salacious hint about the maiden rites of Emily in Diana’s 
 temple: 
 
 But hou she dide hir ryte 1 dar nat telle, . . . 
 
 And yet it were a game to heeren al. 
 
 Some of these errancies are explicable as a humorous reaction 
 to formal rhetoric. The emphasis on ingenuity and palpable 
 artifice was bound to produce its own antidote in a mind like 
 Chaucer’s. Hence he could write in the Tale of his Franklin, 
 who explicitly denied knowledge of any flowers save those of a 
 meadow: 
 
 For th’ orisonte hath reft the sonne his lyght ,— 
 
 This is as muche to seye as it was nyght. 
 
 And so of Troilus: 
 
 By day, he was in Martes heigh servyse, 
 
 This is to seyn, in armes as a \ n yght. 
 
 Of the same cast, but more amusing because less facetious, is the 
 little footnote he adds to the poedc flourish (from Dante) in the 
 Proem to Book n: 
 
 Out of thise blake wawes for to say lie, 
 
 0 wynd, o wynd, the weder gynneth clere; 
 
 For in this see the boot hath swych travaylle, 
 
 Of my connyng, that unneth I it steere. 
 
 This see clepe 1 the tempestous matere 
 Of disespeir that Troilus was inne; . . . 
 
 In the speech of the falcon the annotation or gloss is curious, as 
 though a good phrase could not stand on its merits: 
 
 That my wyl was his willes instrument; 
 
 This is to seyn, my wyl obeyed his wyl. 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 
 
 173 
 
 The deliberate parody is obvious in the Merchant’s Tale: 
 
 Now wol I spekje of woful Damyan, . . . 
 
 Therfore l speke to hym in this manere: 
 
 l seye, “O sely Damyan, alias! . . . 
 
 Somewhat different is the familiar formulaic playfulness (ex¬ 
 plained, if not always justified, on grounds of real or pretended 
 oral delivery) of ye get namoore of me—of me namoore—I sey 
 namoore —/ kan sey yow namoore—l wol namoore endite—ther 
 is namoore to telle—ther is namoore to seye. Elsewhere when a 
 convenient phrase comes in naturally he does not hesitate to 
 repeat it, as in the Cassandra scene of Troilus, Book v: er he 
 stente—er he wolde stente—er she stente within thirty-odd lines. 
 The number of lines beginning And namely — Nameliche—But 
 nathelees is striking if one’s memory is set to note them. The 
 word foie occurs eighty-two times in the Troilus, thirty-five of 
 them at the end of a line—a ready rime for Troie. It is by such 
 repetitions that he achieves that ease and flow of narrative which 
 we admire—by avoiding an anxious effort for variety, by accepting 
 convenient shortcuts. 
 
 hi 
 
 The collocation of ernest and game which one thinks of as 
 characteristically Chaucerian occurs actually only seven times, 
 but the juxtaposition of the two moods is pervasive. The phrase 
 occurs first in the ‘Hous of Fame,’ 822; the Eagle explains to 
 Geffrey how all earthly sounds are carried to Fame’s house, be¬ 
 lieve it or not: 
 
 Ta\e yt in ernest or in game. 
 
 In the Legend of Hypermnestra it represents something doubt¬ 
 fully credible: 
 
 Be as be may, for ernest or for game. 
 
 In the Merchant’s Tale it stands for a divided point of view: 
 bitwixe ernest and game January decided on a particular girl for 
 his wife. Similarly, but negatively and in a different context, 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 
 
 174 
 
 Griselda never mentions her daughter’s name in ernest nor in 
 game, and a bit later the Marquis for ernest ne for game would 
 not leave off testing his wife. These five examples turn chiefly 
 on a verbal contrast. The significant use, significant for Chau¬ 
 cer’s almost habitual blend of grave and gay, the serious and the 
 not-so-serious, is found at the end of the Manciple’s Prologue, 
 where the Host, gratified by the reconciliation of the Cook and 
 the Manciple, says with a laugh: 
 
 O thou Bacus, yblessed be thy name, 
 
 That so \anst turnen ernest into game! 
 
 And best of all, in the Miller’s Prologue, when Chaucer in person 
 submits his apology for the harlotrye of his Miller and Reeve, he 
 warns that men shal nat mahen ernest of game. Life is filled 
 
 Y with a certai n gaiety, even foo lish gaie ty, if we will only take it 
 so and not always look on the serious side. This at titude colo rs 
 all the bawdy Tales of the Canterbury Pilgrims, thil\e that sown- 
 erf into synne and also no doubt the translacions and enditynges 
 of worldly vanitees which he felt it proper to revoke, ^here could 
 be no better in troduction to Chaucer’s comic view of life as he has 
 it in his poetry. d‘Ah, take the ga me and let th e ernest go.”"\ 
 That the comic view of life has limitations one can agree; but 
 there is so much to be said for it and we have the worthy Knight’s 
 word for it (though he took the words from the plebeian Host, 
 and neither of them was quite up to the playful use of litel and 
 muche ) that 
 
 litel hevinesse 
 
 Is right ynough to muche folke, I gesse. 
 
 But how much of it was natural and how much a mask ? All 
 that persistent cheerfulness, was it a native gift, a spontaneous 
 overflow of high spirits ? a loving sympathy for suffering human¬ 
 ity which points up the ridiculous to ease the pain ? a half cynical 
 detachment or withdrawal amounting sometimes to studied in¬ 
 difference? a shield to cover his own hurt heart? We cannot 
 know, of course. The apparent self-revelations are probably liter¬ 
 ary convention. Certainly the occasional remarks on his feeble 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 175 
 
 wittedness and on his decrepitude in matters of love are not evi¬ 
 dence. The frequent emphasis on domestic unhappiness is proba¬ 
 bly but a reliance on the universal jest. We cannot help seeing 
 him in the lineaments of Pandarus, with his joly wo, a lusty 
 sorwe, but we cannot be too confident. The advice to Bukton 
 against re-marriage is hedged by as seyne these wise and the 
 authority of the Wife of Bath. The fancy picture of the poet on 
 a May morning— 
 
 Adoun ful softely l gan to syn/^e, 
 
 And lenynge on myn elbowe and my syde, 
 
 The longe day 1 shoop me for t’abide . . . 
 
 until nightfall, when 
 
 in a litel herber that l have . . . 
 
 I bad men sholde me my couche make; 
 
 For deyntee of the newe someres sake, 
 
 I bad hem strawen floures on my bed 
 
 with all its Pre-Raphaelite exactitude is not to be trusted. And 
 the one passage which we accept as veridical, the Eagle’s charge 
 that, his reckonings finished at the Customs, he goes straight 
 home in stony silence to sit 
 
 at another book 
 Tyl fully das wed ys thy look, 
 
 is topped with a witticism, 
 
 And lyvest thus as an heremyte, 
 
 Although thyn abstynence ys lyte. 
 
 This, if read literally, does not make for domestic felicity at the 
 one period of his life when he is supposed to have had a home of 
 his own; but all we are entitled to infer is that like Pandarus he 
 would have his little jest at himself. Is this a literary affectation, 
 like his boasted indifference to love, or a natural trait ? No doubt 
 he found love amusing—others have—both for himself and for his 
 friends; but it is a fact (also) that nowhere did he attempt a 
 story of true love as a thing of beauty—nothing like Aucassin et 
 Nicolete or even like Floris and Blanchefleur —not in the ‘Book 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 
 
 176 
 
 ofthe Duchess,’ where the terms are those of Courtly Love; nor 
 in the Knight’s Tale, where love is only the basis for a situation; 
 nor in the Clerk’s Tale, where it really does not enter; nor in the 
 Franklin’s Tale, where the interest is in a disturbance of married 
 happiness; hardly even in the Troilus, where Pandarus is always 
 intruding his comic sense. Whatever else, this is Chaucer’s way 
 when he writes. 
 
 There is scarcely an interruption to the sustained pathos of the 
 last two Books of the Troilus. After Pandarus has brought his 
 lovers to bed and hath fully his entente there is no laughter in 
 the poem, not even a smile, except Cassandra’s ironic smile. The 
 reader may be permitted to smile when Troilus disdains to hunt 
 the smale bestes and when his anguish leads to extremes in the 
 Hercules furens tradition and when he plans his funeral. Chaucer 
 is serious in condemning astrology, though he may use it for 
 literary decoration; in the ‘Astrolabe’ n, 4 he says these ben observ- 
 aunces of judicial matere and rytes of payens, in whiche my spirit 
 hath no feith. He is serious in condemning alchemy— 
 
 Thanne conclude I thus, sith that God of hevene 
 Ne will nat that the philosophres nevene 
 How that a man shal come unto this stoon, 
 
 I rede, as for the beste, lete it goon. 
 
 For whoso maketh God his adversarie, 
 
 As for to werken any thy?ig in contrarie 
 Of his wil, certes, never shal he thryve, 
 
 Thogh that he multiplie term of his lyve. 
 
 His seriousness in condemning other follies and wickedness of 
 mortals is another matter. 
 
 The paradox of laughter and tears is pointed up in three places 
 which are not Chaucer’s own: in the ‘Complaint of Venus,’ which 
 is a paraphrase, where love is characterized as 
 
 Wepynge to laughe, and sing in compleynyng; 
 
 in the doubtful ‘Complaynt d’Amours’: 
 
 Your plesaunce is to laughen whan I syke, . . . 
 
 It is hir pley to laughen whan men syketh; 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 
 
 I 77 
 
 and in the translation of the Roman (4741): 
 
 A laughter it is, wepyng ay. 
 
 Fortune, who, in the ‘Book of the Duchess,’ is 
 ever laughing 
 
 With oon eye, and that other weping 
 
 is from Machaut. Something better than mere oxymoron is in 
 Criseyde’s feeling when she sees through her uncle’s vicarious 
 wooing and with sobre chere hire herte lough. There is a mix¬ 
 ture of pathos and humor when Troilus finds in bed beside him 
 only a pillow to embrace and when he rides mournfully through 
 Troy, passing Criseyde’s closed palace—a ring without its ruby— 
 whose cold doors he would stop and kiss if there weren’t so many 
 people watching. [But the comedy is too deep for laughteL Has 
 Chaucer touched that anywhere else than here, with Boccaccio as 
 guide? or its obverse? “I thought my problem,” said Yeats to 
 Lady Dorothy Wellesley, “was to face death with gaiety, now I 
 have learned that it is to face life.” This Chaucer knew. But he 
 was hardly one of those who 
 
 know that Hamlet and Lear are gay; 
 
 Gaiety transforming all that dread. 
 
 His laughter is too quick and spontaneous for such a transfigura¬ 
 tion. 
 
 IV 
 
 ^Chaucer’s comedy is bright; it does not penetrate the depths. 
 Enough has been said by others about Chaucer’s irony; on his 
 satire there are still contradictory judgments. Satire is usually 
 understood as indignation tempered with humor, or, better, with 
 wit; for humor and indignation are incompatible. It combines 
 the notions of ridicule and reproof. When it deals with human 
 follies it shares the properties of comedy and when with human 
 vices the properties of tragedy. It ranges from the simple pleas¬ 
 ure of exposing to the bitter determination to castigate; and the 
 proportions are variously mixed according to the author’s inten- 
 
178 OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 
 
 tion, his temperament, and his subject. “Your satirist is mostly 
 a robust fellow, laying about him lustily, for the purpose of hurt¬ 
 ing, of injuring people, who, in his opinion, ought to be hurt and 
 injured”—this from Sir Max Beerbohm. 
 
 Chaucer has a quick eye for faults; hence among all the people 
 in his poetry there are very few without some carefully noted 
 blemish. The Knight has his Al bismotered tunic, the Squire his 
 lavish costume, the Prioress her unprofessional affectations, the 
 Monk his indifference to monastic regulations, the Merchant and 
 the Man of Law their sharp and shady methods, the Franklin 
 his indulgence in high living, and so on. These are not quite 
 damning faults; they are registered without deprecatory comment, 
 without approval or disapproval. The Friar is exposed in elabo¬ 
 rate detail, yet with no sign of condemnation: the last we are 
 told of him is the excellence of his singing and the story assigned 
 to him is one of the best. The Shipman was frankly a pirate, but 
 also a skilful mariner. The Doctor was learned and capable, but 
 also much interested in his fees; perhaps he worked too closely 
 with the apothecaries. The Manciple was a cheat, the Miller a 
 vulgar cheat, the Reeve a highly accomplished cheat; their good 
 and bad qualities are displayed impartially. Lastly, the arch vil¬ 
 lains on the Pilgrimage: they are a good test. Without changing 
 the previous tone of the descriptive analysis, without raising his 
 voice, without sign of indignation or reproof Chaucer expounds 
 their viciousness—save for two couplets, which are unique in the 
 whole Prologue and which have been overlooked or strangely 
 misinterpreted. The Summoner is quoted as saying Purs is the 
 ercede\enes helle and the poet enters a prompt and pointed 
 denial. The I can only be the poet, whether as Active Pilgrim or 
 as Geoffrey Chaucer himself. 
 
 But well I woot he lyed right in dede; 
 
 Of cursyng oghte ech gilty man him drede, 
 
 For curs wol slee right as assoillyng savith, 
 
 And also war hym of a Significavit. 
 
 The last line is a little weak, to say nothing of the rime, but the 
 rest is unmistakable. When the Summoner said that, he lied out- 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 
 
 179 
 
 right. 7 tell you that every guilty man should fear excommunica¬ 
 tion.’ Otherwise the two compeers are self-condemned: no more 
 was needed. The Summoner, repulsive as he appears at first, is 
 recompensed with the lively exposure of wheedling friars, itself 
 a satire evenly tempered by comedy, and with the Summoner’s 
 own grossness at the end. The Pardoner, who escapes now, has 
 his turn later. The Wife of Bath represses him firmly in her 
 Prologue and in his own Prologue he unmasks his evilness so 
 brazenly and so exhaustively that the poet could add nothing— 
 except reward him with a superior Tale. His villainy is counter¬ 
 balanced with his successful energy; he is so honest in his self¬ 
 denigration that one is more amused by his forthrightness than 
 revolted by his vices. Thus the ambivalence holds. Chaucer does 
 not suspend judgment on his villains. One cannot say that he 
 tolerates them, or that he deplores them. There they are. If this 
 is satire, it is satire with a difference; perhaps implied satire will 
 do. We do not know what Chaucer thought of them, only that 
 he saw them plain and whole. In satire there may be an element 
 of distortion to sharpen the effect, and the nearest Chaucer comes 
 to it is in the Pardoner’s Prologue. Yet even there he spits out no 
 venom. It is only part of the portrait that the Pardoner can be so 
 self-crucifying. 
 
 In the picture of the Prioress the ‘satire’ is subdued to a suav¬ 
 ity which hints at irony, the kind of irony which rests on superior 
 knowledge and the pleasure of withholding some of it. Chaucer 
 sees her more clearly than she sees herself or than the reader is 
 likely to see her. He shares part of his understanding and leaves 
 the rest to our intelligence. He passes without pointing. And 
 this dilute satire is common elsewhere. It takes the form of 
 innuendo and occasionally is so potent as to resemble sarcasm 
 with a concealed weapon, depending on the degree of malice we 
 are prepared to recognize. It may be ever so restrained, as with 
 the repetitively worthy Knight (not to mention Arveragus and 
 January, who were also worthy knights), followed by the worthy 
 limitour and the twice worthy Merchant; or with the conscience 
 of the Prioress, which turns out to be a love of little dogs; or the 
 fine casuistry of the Friar; or the Merchant’s costume: 
 
j8o OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 
 
 He rood but hoomly in a medlee cote, 
 
 Girt with a ceint of sil\; 
 
 or the lurking, almost invisible suggestion that the Clerk would 
 rather stay at Oxford as a student than get on with his work in 
 the world; and even the Host’s double-edged 
 
 The blisful martyr quite yow youre meedel 
 
 (one reward for the Parson and another for the Pardoner). Then 
 there is the full-scale compound irony of the Wife of Bath falsely 
 accusing her drunken husbands of accusing women of all their 
 frailties known to man, and herself validating the accusations in 
 her confessional monologue; and the Wife’s own innuendo that 
 nowadays the only incubi are the Friars and they are too enfeebled 
 to do more than dishonour a poor girl; and the repeated flings at 
 the Wife in the Merchant’s Tale, by means of echoing phrases 
 as well as overt allusions, including the so-called Epilogue to his 
 Tale. 
 
 Chaucer’s pretended denials of the experience of love— 
 
 For al be that 1 \nowe nat hove in dede, 
 
 Ne wot how that he quiteth fol\ here hyre. 
 
 Ne dar to hove, for myn unlihlynesse, 
 
 Preyen for speed, al sholde I t her fore sterve, 
 
 So fer am l from his help in derhpiesse — 
 
 are eloquent of innuendo, even if the Cecilia Chaumpaigne story 
 is not invoked. Scipio Africanus is permitted such a side-slap 
 introducing the poet to the Garden of Love: 
 
 Yit that thow canst not do, yit mayst thow se. 
 
 There is obvious innuendo a little later in the poet’s suggestive 
 withholding of three names—actually, in Boccaccio, “il folle 
 Ardire Con Lusinghe e Ruffiani”—as though they might be 
 offensive; and his addition of the sceptre of Priapus; and his satis¬ 
 faction, my pay, in seeing Venus clad in a transparent coverchef 
 from the waist down. And many more. If more examples are 
 wanted, Pandarus offers a rich collection as he treads uncertainly 
 the line between grave impropriety and frank salaciousness. 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 181 
 
 As ‘satire’ slants into irony and harmless innuendo while hu¬ 
 mor keeps the upper hand, it can by indirection at least descend 
 to coarseness implying a judgment. 
 
 The Miller is a cherl, ye kjiowe wel this; 
 
 So was the Reve, and the othere manye mo, 
 
 And harlotrie they tolden bothe two. 
 
 The Cook rejoiced in that jape of malice in the derf{ and enrolled 
 himself with the other churls, but Chaucer cut him short: we 
 leave him with his compeer of his owene sort and his compeer’s 
 wife and her dual profession. How much malice shall we see in 
 their vulgar Tales? The fabliaux deal in practical jokes with a 
 strong element of Schadenfreude. But does Chaucer lead our 
 sympathies to the sufferer, or does he side with the perpetrator? 
 A great measure of the fun is in his exhibition of low caste humor 
 to the gentils of his courtly readers, and it would be difficult to 
 prove Tendenz. Churls will be churls; such is this world, 
 
 God leve us for to take it for the beste. 
 
 So the circle turns and the pointer comes to rest at tolerance. The 
 laughter is light, without bitterness—what Lowell called heat- 
 lightning, without audible thunder, that is, without satire in the 
 ordinary sense. “You have a knife,” says one of Yeats’s characters, 
 “but have you sharpened it?” Chaucer had not. It shines some¬ 
 times with only a faint glimmer; it does not cut. He used it as a 
 pointer, not an edged tool. In apologizing for the Miller and 
 Reeve he was only explaining his plan, to report what he saw and 
 heard; and note that next to the Knight’s their Tales have pride 
 of place. 
 
 He was to synful men nat despitous, . . . 
 
 Ne maked him a spiced conscience. 
 
 He saw, and let it be seen; and so the more Chaucer he. If this 
 is aloofness, detachment, it is still not complacency. 
 
 v 
 
 The notion of a poem as an artifact, something newly created 
 in space and time, came into England with the Renaissance, too 
 
182 OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 
 
 late for Chaucer. For him a poem seems to have been what he 
 wrote out of a desire to write and enjoyed writing. He knew the 
 mediaeval rhetoricians and adopted some of their devices or used 
 them spontaneously. But mediaeval rhetoric was more concerned 
 with ornamentation than with formal structure, and neither per¬ 
 fection of form nor perfection of language seems to have lain 
 within the scope of his thinking. Yet he frequently surprises us 
 with the happiest felicities of expression and the “excellentest 
 artificialities” of form. On the same page he can be slovenly and 
 curiously expert. He will pad his lines impenitently — thus, in this 
 wise — perchaunce—par aventure—atte laste—for the nones—as l 
 gesse —or dilute them: in that seson on a day ... At nyght. 
 Pandarus is known for his Diffusioun of speche. Chaucer will 
 play tricks— 
 
 How may of the in me swich quantite. 
 
 He too\ his boost, and hoom he rood anon. 
 
 He will pile up fillers— 
 
 And here on warde, ryght now, as blyve. 
 
 And further over now ayenward yit. 
 
 Even in the carefully written General Prologue he will put For 
 sothe and sooth to seyn in consecutive lines; and end two lines, 
 with only three intervening, hadde he be, and include hadde he 
 been in the following line. 
 
 He will also write such perfect verses as 
 
 And hope is lasse and lasse, alway, Pandare. 
 
 And clepe ayeyn the beaute of your face. 
 
 Unto the gardyn, as myn housbonde bad, 
 
 My trouthe for to holde, alas! alas! 
 
 He will contrive the metrical bravura of Anelida’s compleynt and 
 set before us such metrical delicacies as the imitation of Anglo- 
 Saxon versification in the Knight’s Tale and in the Legend of 
 Cleopatra; or the three consecutive all-trochaic lines in the pro- 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 183 
 
 logue to the Wife of Bath’s Tale; or the fusion of two different 
 movements (5-stress iambic and 4-stress trisyllabic) in 
 
 Whoso that buyldeth his hous al of salwes, 
 
 And, priketh his blynde hors over the falwes, 
 
 And suffreth his wyf to go seken halwes, 
 
 (as the Wife herself is then doing) 
 
 Is worthy to been hanged on the galwes. 
 
 He will also allow himself such ‘irregular’ lines as 
 TWeschewing is only the remedye. 
 
 Noght wiste this preest with whom that he delte. 
 Consumed and wasted han my reednesse. 
 
 And by eterne word writen and confermed. 
 
 He will turn out such a masterpiece of sarcasm as the Envoy to 
 the Clerk’s Tale, but leave us in doubt whether the Clerk spoke it 
 or the poet inserted it. He will compose a tour de force of grace 
 and sprightly humor, the ‘Parlement,’ and yet leave us puzzled 
 about its total meaning or intention. He will give us in the ‘Hous 
 of Fame’ the gaiety and liveliness of Book 11 and also the dull 
 resume of the Aeneid in Book 1 and the tiresome list of petitioners 
 for fame in Book hi. 
 
 i In large and in small he mingles and juxtaposes both grave 
 and gay, both good and bad, both high and low, to our confusion 
 when we wish to judge him as an artist or even as a skilled crafts¬ 
 man. He seems not to have a style, or a variety of styles, but only 
 a fortuitous mixture of what happened to come from his pen. 
 At one moment he is astonishingly subtle and cunning and care¬ 
 ful; at the next alarmingly indifferent, lax, negligent. Are we to 
 understand these contrasts as a superior kind of art-cum-artless- 
 ness, or are the felicities happy accidents only? (His occasional 
 success with the aureate manner proves that he could and would 
 try, but those examples are not to our taste, nor very much to 
 his.) Can we avoid the conclusion that his artistic conscience 
 
184 OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 
 
 was wanting in rigor, that he satisfied himself too easily, and too 
 often simply refused to make the last effort? 
 
 A twofold extenuation must be allowed. The language of 
 English poetry has been worked upon for several centuries now. 
 Standards of high and low, of tense and easy have been cumula¬ 
 tively set. But for Chaucer the language was immature, fluid, 
 experimental. If he achieved brilliant results, it is only to be 
 expected that he would sometimes fail. He had not our standards 
 to hamper him or to aid him; he is therefore exempted from 
 them. Moreover, poetical composition was for him, as Tatlock 
 and others have emphasized, an avocation. He wrote when he 
 could find time to write amid the pressures of an active life in 
 other endeavors. He was, in the best sense, an amateur, and 
 honestly humble, even at times apologetic. He knew his own 
 limitations better than most of his critics, and if he did not devote 
 himself strenuously to Art, he at least achieved a sweet disorder 
 like that of Nature. And with this swerd, he could say, shal 1 
 sleen envie, envy and overexigent stricture. 
 
 Nonetheless, some illustrations are in order. 
 
 VI 
 
 Landor praised Chaucer for “the broad and negligent facility, 
 of a great master.” It is a fine phrase but leaves unset the Emits 
 of safe negligence. 
 
 Syntax he regarded with tolerance. He can produce, for 
 humorous effect, an encyclopedic sentence of fifty-one lines on 
 dreams at the beginning of the ‘Hous of Fame,’ or, without 
 humorous intention, one of forty-four lines on Arcite’s pyre inter¬ 
 weaving two formulas based on ‘how . . .’ and ‘what . . .’ and a 
 shorter one of similar weaving based on ‘is turned to . . .’ and 
 ‘is . . .’ in the ‘Book of the Duchess,’ and another in the Troilus 
 v, 1373-79. the ‘Book of the Duchess’ also he has a brave sen¬ 
 tence of twenty-one lines which seems to get lost in a series of 
 comparisons and a six-line parenthesis, but is caught up neatly by 
 the repetition of I wolde (1054 ff.). Just before this however is 
 a sentence, or perhaps two sentences, which no editorial punctua- 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 185 
 
 tion can straighten out. He can develop a passage of Boethius on 
 love and a song of Troilo’s based on it into five and a half stanzas 
 for a Proem to Book hi and then into four masterly stanzas as a 
 song of Troilus for a climax to Book hi, in which that is repeated 
 six times in the first and fourth stanzas and seven times in the 
 second and third—twenty-six in all—while preserving the con¬ 
 structions clearly. (In Troilus iv, 1632 ff. the stanza has that 
 eight times, without the excuse of musical effect in the Song.) At 
 the very end of Book in there is a stanza which requires careful 
 reading (Robinson’s punctuation is wrong): he addresses Venus, 
 Cupid, and the Muses— 
 
 That ye thus fer han deyned me to gyde, 
 
 I \an namore hut, syn that ye wol wende, 
 
 Ye heried ben for ay withouten ende. 
 
 That is: ‘Since you now will leave me I can only say, “Praised be 
 ye who have thus far deigned to guide me.” This is the end of 
 Troilus’ joy and henceforth I can expect no help from the Muses 
 or from Venus and Cupid, since it is the end also of love.’ After 
 this the Daughters of Night must be his guide. 
 
 He can manage without serious sacrifice such an intricate 
 periodic sentence as 
 
 Than sey l thus, 
 
 That stondyng in concord and in quiete, 
 
 Thise ilke two, Criseyde and Troilus, 
 
 As l have told, and in this tyme swete ,— 
 
 Save only often myghte they nought mete, 
 
 Ne leiser have hire speches to fulfelle ,— 
 
 That it bifel right as l shal yow telle, 
 
 That Pandarus, that evere dide his myght 
 Right for the fyn that l shal spe\e of here, 
 
 As for to bryngen to his hows som nyght 
 His faire nece and Troilus yfere, 
 
 Whereas at leiser al this heighe matere, 
 
 Touchyng here love, were at the fulle upbounde, 
 Hadde out of doute a tyme to it founde. 
 
186 OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 
 
 When he is consciously trying for the formal style, as in the 
 Prologue to the Second Nun’s Tale, he cleverly puts the main verb 
 in the sixth line and its dependent infinitive two lines above, and 
 in the second stanza builds up a parallel climax on the formula 
 because . . . therefore. . . . 
 
 The ministre and the norice unto vices, 
 
 Which that men clepe in Englissh ydelnesse, 
 
 That porter of the gate is of delices, 
 
 To eschue, and by hire contrarie hire oppresse, 
 
 That is to seyn, by leveful bisynesse, 
 
 Wei oghten we to doon al oure entente, 
 
 Leste that the feend thurgh ydelnesse us hente. 
 
 For he that with his thousand cordes slye 
 Continuelly us waiteth to biclappe, 
 
 Whan he may man in ydelnesse espye ,— 
 
 He kan so lightly cacche hym in his trappe, 
 
 Til that a man be hent right by the lappe 
 He nys nat war the feend hath hym in honde ,— 
 
 Wei oghte us werche, and ydlenesse withstonde. 
 
 (Because he lies in wait to snare idlers—he can so easily catch one 
 that a man doesn’t know until he is fairly caught—therefore we 
 ought to exert ourselves. . . .) 
 
 Another example on the good side occurs in the lively ex¬ 
 changes between the Devil and the stupid but eager summoner of 
 the archdeacon. Why, asks this summoner, do you assume differ¬ 
 ent shapes? Because, replies the Devil, we choose the form most 
 suitable for our prey.—Why do you go to all this trouble? asks 
 die summoner. 
 
 “Ful many a cause, leeve sire somonour,” 
 
 Seyde this feend. 
 
 But, the Devil continues, time is passing and I have accomplished 
 nothing so far to-day. 
 
 I wol entende to wynnyng, if 1 may, 
 
 And nat entende oure wittes to declare. 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF. CHAUCER 
 
 187 
 
 For, brother myn, thy wit is al to bare 
 To understonde, althogh 1 told hem thee; 
 
 {hem goes back to Ful many a cause seven lines before) 
 
 But, for thou axest why labouren we — 
 
 (the summoner had asked this nine lines above), it is 
 For somtyme we been Goddes instrumentz, .. . 
 
 The two for’ s are neatly balanced. 
 
 On the other hand, Chaucer will write such a straggling 
 sentence as 
 
 This passeth yeer by yeer and day by day, 
 
 Til it fil ones, in a morwe of May, 
 
 That Emelye, that fairer was to sene 
 Than is the lylie upon his stalke grene, 
 
 And fressher than the May with floures newe — 
 
 For with the rose colour stroof hire hewe, 
 l noot which was the fyner of hem two — 
 
 Er it were day, as was hir wone to do, 
 
 She was arisen and al redy dight; 
 
 For May wole have no slogardie a-nyght. 
 
 Probably the worst specimen is in Book iii of the Troilus, which 
 Chaucer is said to have revised more carefully than the other 
 Books. 
 
 But right so as thise holtes and thise hay is, 
 
 That han in wynter dede ben and dreye, 
 
 Revesten hem in grene, when that May is, 
 
 Whan every lusty li\eth best to pleye; 
 
 Right in that selve wise, soth to seye, 
 
 Wax sodeynliche his herte ful of joie, 
 
 That gladder was ther nevere man in Troie; 
 
 And gan his loo\ on Pandarus up caste 
 Ful sobrely, and frendly for to se, 
 
 And seyde, “Frend, in A peril the laste ,— 
 
 As wel thow woost, if it remembre the ,— 
 
i88 
 
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 
 
 How neigh the deth for wo thow fownde me, 
 
 And how thow dedest al thi hisynesse 
 To \nowe of me the cause of my destresse. 
 
 “Thow woost how longe ich it forbar to seye 
 To the, that art the man that 1 best triste; 
 
 And peril non was it to the bywreye, 
 
 That wist I wel, but telle me, if the liste, 
 
 Sith I so loth was that thiself it wiste, 
 
 How dorst l mo tellen of this matere, 
 
 That qua\e now, and no wight may us here? 
 
 “But natheles, by that God I the swere, 
 
 That, as hym list, may al this world governe ,— 
 
 And, if I lye, Achilles with his spere 
 Myn herte cleve, al were my lif eterne, 
 
 As I am mortal, if I late or yerne 
 
 Wolde it bewreye, or dorst, or sholde \onne, 
 
 For al the good that God made under sonne — 
 
 “That rather deye I wolde, and determyne, 
 
 As thyn\eth me, now stok\ed in prisoun, 
 
 In wrecchidnesse, in filthe, and in vermyne, 
 
 Caytif to cruel kyng Agamenoun; 
 
 And this in all the temples of this town 
 Upon the goddes able, I wol the swere 
 To-morwe day, if that it like the here!' 
 
 Here all begins well with the simile; then herte has to serve for 
 the omitted subject of gan; then the direct discourse begins with 
 the clause as wel thow woost, which seems to be repeated in the 
 following stanza but turns out differently, for the second woost is 
 the main verb; and the sentence comes to a kind of end with 
 That wist I wel (in false parallelism with the repeated woost). 
 The next stanza is hopelessly confused with interlocking paren¬ 
 theses. Of course Chaucer is here translating, but Boccaccio is 
 reasonably clear and direct until the end of this passage and even 
 then is not difficult: 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 
 
 189 
 
 Ma nondimen per quello Dio ti giuro, 
 
 Che 7 cielo e modo egualmente governa, 
 
 E s’ io non venga nelle man del duro 
 Agamemnon, che se mia vita eterna 
 Fosse, come e mortal, tu puoi sicuro 
 Viver, che a mio poter sara interna 
 Questa credenza, e in ogni atto servato 
 L’ onor di quella che m ha 7 cor piagato* 
 
 Surely this is rough and ready work, still awaiting revision. An¬ 
 other example may serve to show Chaucer more successful in a 
 similar case, though he asks us to turn without warning a nomin¬ 
 ative into a dative. 
 
 Lord, trowe ye a coveytous or a wrecche, 
 
 That blameth love, and halt of it despit, 
 
 That of tho pens that he \an mokre and hrecche 
 Was evere yit yyeven hym swich delit 
 As is in love, in o poynt, in som plit? 
 
 Nay, douteles, for also God me save, 
 
 So perfit joie may no nygard have. 
 
 They wol seyn “yis,” but Lord! so that they lye, 
 
 Tho besy wrecches, ful of wo and drede! 
 
 They callen love a woodnesse or folie, 
 
 But it shal falle hem as l shal yow rede; 
 
 They shal forgon the white and e\ the rede, 
 
 And lyve in wo, ther God yeve hem meschaunce, 
 
 And every lovere in his trouthe avaunce! 
 
 Compare Boccaccio: 
 
 Deh pensin qui gli dolorosi avari, 
 
 Che biasiman che e innamorato, 
 
 E chi, come fan essi, a far denari 
 
 * But nevertheless I swear to you by that God who governs equally 
 heaven and earth—and if I wish not to fall into the hands of strong 
 Agamemnon—that, if my life were eternal as it is mortal, you can be certain 
 that so far as is in my power this secret will remain within me, and in 
 every act of mine the honor of her who has wounded my heart will be safe. 
 
190 OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 
 
 In alcun modo non s’ e tutto dato, 
 
 E guardin se tenedoli ben cari 
 Tanto piacer fu mai da lor prestato, 
 
 Quanto ne presta amove in un sol punto, 
 
 A cui egli e con ventura congiunto. 
 
 Ei diranno di si, ma mentiranno; 
 
 E questo amor, dolorosa pazzia 
 Con visa e con ischerzi chiameranno; 
 
 Senza veder, che sola un ora fia 
 Quella che se e denari perderanno, 
 
 Senza aver gioia saputo che sia 
 Nella lor vita: Iddio gli faccia tristi, 
 
 Ed agli amanti don't i loro acquisti* 
 
 Besides the shift from nominative to dative, there is also the 
 change from singular to plural. Chaucer both omits and supplies: 
 “in un sol punto” becomes in o poynt, in som plit; his wo and 
 drede is padding; his white and rede is decoration out of the 
 common stock; and he missed Boccaccio’s final point. 
 
 When Troilus returned to his own chamber after being smit¬ 
 ten by Criseyde in the temple he daydreamed of her beauty: 
 
 Thus gan he ma\e a mirour of his mynde, 
 
 In which he saugh al holly hire figure; 
 
 And that he wel \oude in his herte fynde, 
 
 It was to hym a right good aventure 
 To love swich oon. 
 
 Boccaccio cannot be blamed here. Does this mean: He could find 
 this in his heart, namely, that he was fortunate in loving such a 
 
 * Now let these unhappy misers who blame those who have fallen in 
 love and who, as they do, have devoted themselves wholly to making 
 money (and) reflect whether, holding it precious, as they do, so much 
 pleasure was ever granted to them as love gives in a single point to one 
 who has this good fortune. 
 
 They will say, Yes. But they will lie. And this love they will with 
 laughter and jesting call wretched folly; without seeing that in a single 
 hour they will lose both themselves and their money without having known 
 in all their life what joy is. May God make them sad and give their 
 gains to lovers. 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 191 
 
 one; or, It was fortunate for him that he could find it in his 
 heart, etc. ? There is a similar uncertainty in the lines describing 
 Arcite’s last moments: 
 
 Oonly the intellect, withouten more, 
 
 That dwelled in his herte sy\ and soore, 
 
 Gan jaillen whan the herte felte deeth. 
 
 Does this mean: Only the intellect failed when . . . , or, the intel¬ 
 lect failed only when. .. ? Neither alternative is satisfactory. Or 
 can only be loosely used as a conjunction? The answer is in 
 Boccaccio. 
 
 sol 71 ello ’ntelletto 
 e nel cuore era ancora sostenuta 
 la poca vita; ma gia si ristretto 
 gli era il tristo cuor dal mortal gielo, 
 ch’agli occhi fe subitamente velo* 
 
 This is different, and clear; but Chaucer atoned by his Dus\ed. 
 
 It could hardly be expected that Theseus would be quite lucid 
 in his brief account of the chain of being; he lacked the Eagle’s 
 leisurely professional manner; but he ends majestically, with a 
 slight air of apology 
 
 This may stow under stonde and seen at ye. 
 
 Some of the incoherence of the Wife of Bath’s speech may be in¬ 
 tentional; there is a kind of madness in Aurelius’ declaration of 
 love; and elsewhere the confusion of syntax matches a mental 
 confusion in the speaker; but often it is Chaucer who fails us. 
 When the guests assemble for the Marquis’ supposed wedding, 
 Griselda welcomes them handsomely, 
 
 And worthily they preisen hire prudence. 
 
 Then she commends the two children 
 
 So wel that no man \oude hir pris amende. 
 
 Does this mean: so well that no one could improve on her praise 
 
 * The little (remnant of) life was sustained only in his intellect and in 
 his heart; but already his sad heart was so constricted by the chill of death 
 that a sudden veil came over his eyes. 
 
192 
 
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 
 
 of them ? or, it was impossible to increase the esteem due to her, 
 to praise her too highly for her treatment of the children? 
 
 Sometimes he will violate an expected parallelism without 
 compunction, as in The hunte strangled .. .The so we freten . . . 
 The cooli yscalded; or reverse a construction without notice: 
 
 If cow, or calf, or sheep, or oxe swelle 
 That any worm hath ete, or worm ystonge; 
 
 or he will vary the expected parallelism by three different formu¬ 
 las, as in be ye redy . . . and that l frely may . . . And nevere ye 
 to grucche it when the Marquis puts the prenuptial contract to 
 Griselda. 
 
 The reference of he in a A 101 is a familiar ambiguity; it ought 
 to be to the Squire but is regularly understood as to the Knight. 
 At the end of the great tournament the pronouns have to be sepa¬ 
 rated by inference (A 2638-42). In the G text of the Prologue to 
 the ‘Legend of Good Women,’ supposed to be a revision, both 
 pronouns and syntax are careless: 
 
 To hem have I so gret affeccioun, 
 
 As I seyde erst, whan comen is the May, 
 
 That in my bed ther daweth me no day 
 That I n am up and walhynge in the mede, 
 
 To sen these floures agen the sonne sprede, 
 
 Whan it up ryseth by the morwe shene, 
 
 The longe day thus wal\ynge in the grene. 
 
 And whan the sonne gynneth for to weste, 
 
 Thanne closeth it, and draweth it to reste, . . . 
 
 The F text is a little fuller and clearer but has an additional con¬ 
 fusion in the feminine pronoun for the daisy. At the beginning 
 of the Friar’s Tale there is the archdeacon’s summoner and the 
 Pilgrim Summoner: which is meant by this somonour of D 1327, 
 and by his in the following line?—But English pronouns have 
 always been troublesome, from the days of Cyneheard down. 
 
 VII 
 
 There are other ways in which Chaucer did not feel himself 
 bound by strict logic. There is an amusing example, doubtless 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 
 
 193 
 
 deliberate, in the ‘Book of the Duchess,’ 434 If.: the forest was so 
 full of various animals that not even Argus could compute the 
 marvels in my dream. In describing the temple of Venus which 
 was part of the amphitheater erected by Theseus, and which was 
 first announced as an auter and an oratorie, Chaucer lists eight 
 instances showing that no power can successfully compete with 
 Venus, and concludes 
 
 Suffiseth heere ensamples oon or two, 
 
 And though 1 foude re\ene a thousand mo. 
 
 In the corresponding temple of Mars the deaths of Caesar, Nero, 
 and Antony are depicted as lovers slain by the influence of Mars: 
 
 Suffiseth oon ensample in stories olde; 
 
 1 may nat reketie hem alle though 1 wolde. 
 
 (Robinson comments here: “The reference is inexact.”) In the 
 temple of Diana there were representations of Calistopee (i.e., 
 Callisto), Dane (i.e., Daphne) not to be confused with Diana, and 
 Acteon and Meleager— 
 
 Ther saugh I many another wonder storie, 
 
 The which me list nat drawen to memorie. 
 
 (Thus Chaucer avoids the risk of inexactitude.) 
 
 Meanwhile, the decorations on the wall of Theseus’ temple of 
 Mars contain First a wild forest in which stood a temple of Mars, 
 which is described; and then one is surprised to read: Ther saugh 
 1 first followed by Yet saugh l twice, and finally, more than fifty 
 lines later: Depeynted was. Even the loyal editors have noticed 
 this blending of the Knight and the omniscient poet narrator. 
 Not comparable is the situation in the ‘Hous of Fame’ where the 
 same formula, First sawgh l, etc. occurs in profusion, with its 
 mixture of possible still pictures and frank narrative as a device 
 to summarize the Dido and Aeneas episode; for all this was a 
 dream. And, a fortiori, the glorious confusion of details in the 
 account of Fame’s castle carved from a single beryl is part of the 
 dream technique, like the strange comings and going in the ‘Book 
 of the Duchess.’ But in the Knight’s Tale no such explanation is 
 proper. The inference that the Knight, or Chaucer himself, had 
 
r 94 
 
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 
 
 seen those temples still intact, or the ruins of them, and so 
 describes them at first hand is merely bizarre. It is true, as 
 Manly says, that the method of first-person direct observation 
 adds vividness, but it would be truer to admit that Chaucer was 
 indifferent to this inconsistency, as he was to others in the 
 Knight’s Tale. 
 
 The numberless loose ends in the unfinished Canterbury Tales 
 hardly call for extenuation or explanation, but diligent critics 
 frequently devote themselves to saving the Master. They have 
 spaced out the Tales from day to day along the Pilgrims’ road. 
 They have divined that the Host called on the Cook towards the 
 end because Chaucer meant to throw out the earlier Cook’s 
 Prologue and incomplete Tale, or that he never meant the Tale 
 to be more than a fragment, or that this was part of the projected 
 return journey. All which and all such vaticinatory efforts are 
 works of supererogation. The inconsistencies in the Troilus are 
 a different matter. They may not seem important, and the rapid 
 reader—or especially the auditor if the poem was read aloud to 
 him—may not even catch them; but they stand as evidence 
 against the poet in his most careful and elaborate masterpiece. 
 In Book i Criseyde is a widow 
 
 and allone 
 
 Of any frend to whom she dorste hir mone. 
 
 But a few lines later she appeals to Hector, who seems to know 
 her, and later Helen and Deiphebus seem to know her well; 
 Deiphebus says clearly Criseyda, my frend. To say nothing of 
 her uncle Pandarus, who stood very high at court. At the end 
 of Book ii Pandarus maneuvers Helen and Deiphebus up to the 
 sick bed of Troilus and then to get them out of the way Troilus 
 happens to find 
 
 at his beddes hed 
 
 The copie of a tretys and a lettre 
 
 from Hector. Helen and Deiphebus obligingly go down to the 
 garden for an hour to consider it, and when they return Troilus 
 passes ful lightly over it, groans, and says he must sleep. This is 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 195 
 
 perhaps good comedy. A little later, when Criseyde has already 
 gone, Helen and Deiphebus have taken their leave, horn went 
 every wight (in, 226), 
 
 And Pandarus, as faste as he may drive 
 
 To Troilus tho com, 
 
 and the two spend the night talking together and next morning 
 go about their separate affairs. Well, Helen goes home, Deiphe¬ 
 bus was home. But has Troilus so speedily recovered from his 
 accesse that he hurries home, with Pandarus in pursuit ? On the 
 great night Pandarus has invited Criseyde to supper whan it was 
 eve; after which she says she must go home, but the heavens 
 open and the huge rayn prevents. Meanwhile Troilus has been in 
 that little room bishet syn mydnyght of the preceding day—that 
 is, eighteen to twenty hours. We are not told when that rain 
 ceased, but by dawn the morning star 
 
 Gan for to rise, and out hire bemes throwe. 
 
 When Troilus returns to his palace there is no mention of a storm; 
 only Pandarus says jokingly that the rain had kept him awake 
 all night. In Book 111 the lovers met at the house of Pandarus; 
 afterwards, without any indication of change, they meet at Cris- 
 eyde’s (iv, 914 f., iv, 1125) as had been the custom from the start 
 according to the Filostrato. In Book v Troilus rides past her 
 closed empty house, with no mention of Antigone and all the at¬ 
 tendants ( meyne, 1, 127-30). At the beginning of Book v, why 
 should her heart bleed, why should Criseyde feel so downcast, 
 when she has every intention of returning in ten days? Why 
 should Troilus escort her from the city, at the grave risk of 
 betraying his special interest in her? Where was Pandarus, her 
 uncle? Where her other friends. Hector, Helen, Deiphebus? 
 It will not do to say simply that Boccaccio is to blame. Chaucer, 
 when he chose, made happy changes in his source; he could have 
 grasped his nettle here also. 
 
 A few lapses elsewhere are worth mention. That Theseus at 
 the age of twenty-three has a marriageable son (‘Legende’ 2075, 
 2099 f.) has provoked frequent comment. That Canace heeld hir 
 
196 OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 
 
 lappe abrood to catch the desperate falcon, yet it fil to grounde 
 (F 441, 473) and had to be picked up later can hardly be mis¬ 
 placed humor. In the Wife’s Tale the hag acknowledges three 
 handicaps: thogh that l be foul, and oold, and poure (D 1063) 
 and in reply the young knight accuses her of being so loothly, and 
 so oold . . . [and] of so logh a \ynde. Then the hag begins her 
 discourse: 
 
 But, for ye speken of swich gentillesse 
 As is descended out of old richesse, 
 
 although he has said nothing about such gentillesse, and continues 
 for nearly seventy lines on the subject. Then she takes a fresh 
 start: 
 
 And ther as ye of poverte me repreeve, 
 
 aldiough all he had said was of so lough a \ynde. Then she 
 devotes a few lines to his accusation of being old and a few more 
 on foul and old, and she is done. Her lecture of no lines in re¬ 
 buttal of his threefold charge that she was ugly, old, and low-born 
 is devoted chiefly to one of Chaucer’s favorite topics, true nobility ( 
 —“a commonplace of Christian literature” (Robinson) which he 
 picked up from Boethius and perhaps Dante. 
 
 Hot and cold, fire and ice afford such a ready contrast that it 
 is easy to be careless with them. Troilus ends his Canticus, from 
 Petrarch, with 
 
 For hete of cold, for cold of hete, I dye. 
 
 This gives the pitch. The fyre of love (1, 436; Fil. 1, 40, “L’ardenti 
 fiamme amorose”) did not spare him; he was so burned that he 
 went pale sixty times a day; he sought eagerly to look upon her, 
 And ay the ner he was, the more he brende; 
 
 and this was apparently only in his imagination. Then the fire 
 image lapses for a few lines, till 1, 488, where he feigns another 
 sickness lest the hote fir of love should be nodced in him. In his 
 following compleynt he supposes that 
 
 also cold in love towardes the 
 Thi lady is, as frost in wynter moone, 
 
 And thow fordon, as snow in fire is soone. 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 
 
 x 97 
 
 Said Boccaccio, 
 
 Fredda come al sereno interza il ghiaccio, 
 
 Ed io qual neve al fuoco mi disfaccio* 
 
 Chaucer has added the winter moon but followed Boccaccio in 
 confusing the roles: first Troilus is fire and Criseyde is ice, then 
 he is ice and she is fire. In Book n, when Criseyde debates What 
 shal l doon? she becomes Now hoot, now cold, and Troilus when 
 Pandarus has brought hopeful news lifts up his eyes to Venus 
 
 right as floures, thorugh the cold of nyght 
 Iclosed, stoupen on hire stalke lowe, 
 
 Redressen hem ayein the sonne bright. 
 
 The simile is from Boccaccio out of Dante, but Troilus is again on 
 the cold side and the warmth is by inference from Criseyde. 
 Later, in Book iv, when Pandarus comes to comfort Troilus after 
 the exchange has been settled, Troilus 
 
 Gan as the snow ayeyn the sonne melte. 
 
 He is again snow, but the warmth is Pandarus. 
 
 Some of Chaucer’s mistranslations may be due to manuscripts 
 which differ from ours, others to haste or indifference, others to 
 imperfect knowledge, and some to real inspiration. In the first 
 Canticus Troili he renders Petrarch’s “S’ amor non e” (if this be 
 not love) and “Ma s’ egli e amor” (if it be love) by If no love is 
 ... And if love is. . . . This looks like undue literalness but it 
 exactly expresses what he wants Troilus to say. For Petrarch’s 
 “a mal mio grado” (in spite of myself) he has If harm agree me, 
 which is certainly a mistranslation, but it carries on the paradoxi¬ 
 cal opposites and may well be the judicious use of a hint rather 
 than a blunder. 1 In a later Canticus he transforms Boccaccio’s 
 “disii porto di morte” (I bear, feel, desires of death) as though he 
 mistook “porto” for port or harbor, into with wynd in steere I 
 saille; but this may be only a continuation of the nautical meta¬ 
 phors he had already gleaned from Boccaccio, and so rather in¬ 
 vention than error. 2 Less can be said for Smo\ynge the temple 
 
 * (She remains) as cold as ice which hardens under a clear sky, and I 
 like snow before a fire waste away. 
 
X 9 8 OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 
 
 (A 2281) for Boccaccio’s “Fu mondo il tempio” {Teseida vn, 72), 
 since a smoking temple hardly makes sense; or for Shippes hop- 
 pesteres (A 2017) for Boccaccio’s “navi bellatrici” ( Teseida vn, 
 37), since dancing ships are hardly suitable in context. But these 
 two from the Knight’s Tale may serve as contributory evidence of 
 an early date for the ‘Palamon and Arcite.’ More amusing, 
 whether a blunder or a picturesque invention, is the Partriches 
 wynges on Fame’s feet (‘Hous of Fame’ 1393), where Vergil 
 (Aeneid iv, 180) has “pernicibus alis.” 
 
 Anyone can extend the list for himself; some may deplore or 
 even censure the undertaking. They are content to leave an im¬ 
 pression of unrelieved excellence, but the attentive reader will 
 catch up with them and wonder at the contrast of Chaucer’s 
 undoubted skill in expression and every so often its opposite. 
 Some poets, of a later time, produce their effects with a conjuror’s 
 air: there it is, but how did I do it? Chaucer has none of this. 
 He is eminently natural. When he does a fine thing we know he 
 did it naturally, just as when he missed we feel sure that the 
 failure was natural. Sometimes we feel sure that he did not care 
 enough, but at his best there is a transparent skill which came of 
 practice more perhaps than from painstaking. So much for 
 generalization, although exceptions are obvious. So much also 
 in spite of Kittredge’s emphatic dictum that “Chaucer always 
 knew what he was about.” 
 
 Thus he disappoints us often enough. He could leave This 
 litel laste boo\ for Book m of the ‘Hous of Fame,’ which though 
 unfinished has 1068 lines and Books 1 and 11 together have only 
 1090. He could introduce Book iv of the Troilus as though it 
 was the last— 
 
 So that the losse of lyf and love yfeere 
 
 Of Troilus be fully shewed heere. 
 
 He would not go back to make sure there were wel nyne and 
 twenty at the Tabard Inn. Even in larger matters he will not 
 make sure beforehand whither he was going and foresee the 
 outcome; he will move in two directions at once. But no sooner 
 has he disappointed us than he pushes on to a triumph. 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 199 
 
 Such notes on Chaucer’s negligent facility are set down for the 
 record, lest they be overlooked or minimized, not for derogation. 
 They are counterbalanced by numberless felicities. The ‘Parle- 
 ment’ is thickly sown with them. The blend of Dante and the 
 Roman de la Rose in the inscription over the gate to the Garden is 
 perfect and worthy to stand at the head of all Chaucer’s works— 
 Lowell wrote it out on the flyleaf of his copy. 
 
 Thorgh me men gon into that blysjul place 
 Of hertes hele and dedly woundes cure; 
 
 Thorgh me men gon unto the welle of grace, 
 
 There grene and lusty May shal evere endure. 
 
 This is the wey to al good aventure. 
 
 Be glad, thow redere, and thy sorwe of caste; 
 
 Al open am l—passe in, and sped thee faste! 
 
 The garden itself has more colors than Chaucer usually puts 
 together: 
 
 A gardyn saw l ful of blosmy bowes 
 Upon a ryver, in a grene mede. 
 
 There as swetnesse everemore inow is, 
 
 With floures white, blewe, yelwe, and rede, 
 
 And colde welle-stremes, nothyng dede, 
 
 That swymmen ful of smale fishes lighte, 
 
 With fynnes rede and skales sylver bryghte. 
 
 Venus lay in a dim corner of her temple on a golden bed— 
 
 Hyre gilte heres with a golden thred 
 Ibounden were, untressed as she lay, 
 
 And naked from the brest unto the hed 
 Men myghte hire sen; . . . 
 
 And so on, with wit and laughter, to the roundel performed by 
 a select choir of birds. Even in unlikely places one meets a 
 startling line: in the third stanza of ‘Anelida and Arcite’ (dis¬ 
 tilled perhaps from Dante and Boccaccio)— 
 
 Singest with vois memorial in the shade 
 Under the laurer which that may not fade. 
 
200 
 
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 
 
 Chanticleer, just before his fall, 
 
 Soong murier than the mermayde in the see. 
 
 Mermaids have always sung, like the sirens; Chaucer had read 
 about them in the Roman and translated 
 
 But it was wonder ly\ to he 
 Song of meremaydens of the see. 
 
 But the magic is in Chanticleer’s singing. So with 
 The soleyn fenix of Arabye. 
 
 The idea is familiar, but soleyn makes all the difference. For 
 craft is al sometimes, or as the Wife put it, in another connection: 
 
 Divers pra\ti\, in many sondry werhes, 
 
 Maheth the werpman parfit sepirly; 
 
 and sometimes the word rises from the deep well. 
 
 The question was how Chaucer’s pervasive humor in its vari¬ 
 ous manifestations and the eccentricities as well as the felicities of 
 his style combine to give his poetry its fundamental character. 
 The answer, implied here and there, will wait on a review of 
 other qualities which determine the whole. 
 
 VIII 
 
 It is often recognized and often forgotten that Chaucer wrote 
 for an ‘audience,’ but just what that audience was and how far it 
 affected his choice of subject and manner of writing are matters 
 of speculation. The mediaeval poet was not a professional, like 
 say Tennyson and Browning; he had no general public, he ad¬ 
 dressed his work “to a very definite and restricted circle ... to 
 his patron, and his patron’s family, friends and neighbours.” 3 
 Sometimes he records his patron in a kind of dedication, but from 
 Chaucer the most we have is 
 
 And whan this boo\ is maad, yive hit the quene 
 
 in the Prologue to the ‘Legend of Good Women,’ with the im¬ 
 plication (but no more) that she had requested something to cor¬ 
 rect the seeming slander of women in the Troilus. There is no 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 201 
 
 record of how the queen received it, and since there are signs of 
 humor in the Prologue and in some of the legends we can only 
 infer that Chaucer took the request somewhat lightly. Shirley 
 gave it as a fact that Chaucer wrote the ‘Mars’ “at the comande- 
 ment” of John of Gaunt. The case of the ‘Book of the Duchess’ 
 is different: John and Blanche are not named; the poem is more 
 than an elegy, it is a celebration of the duke as a courtly lover; 
 and we are left to wonder if Chaucer wrote it in the courtierly 
 spirit of engaging the duke’s favor, or out of feeling for his wife’s 
 attachment to the late duchess, or possibly on a hint from the duke 
 himself, after his return to England, that such a tribute would be 
 acceptable. It seems to be agreed that Edward III was not a 
 literary patron of Chaucer; that John of Gaunt and Richard were 
 his literary patrons remains a case not proven. Various claims, 
 usually in the search for dates of composition, have been put 
 forward, and opposed, that the ‘Hous of Fame’ and the ‘Parle- 
 ment of Foules’ were intended for royal marriages. For the rest, 
 it is taken for granted that Chaucer because of his connections 
 with the Court wrote for the purpose of entertaining the members 
 of the Court, however vague such an endty might be. There are 
 abundant signs that many of his poems were meant for oral 
 delivery, 4 and doubtless were so delivered by Chaucer himself: the 
 frontispiece of the early fifteenth-century Troilus manuscript, 
 C.C.C.C. 6i, 5 is presumptive evidence of other similar occasions. 
 Often we can imagine we see and hear Geoffrey Chaucer reading 
 his poems to a real audience; and this may help to explain the 
 little winks and impertinences which look rather stark on the 
 page but could be very effective as oral asides with a change of 
 voice or an appropriate gesture. 
 
 On the other hand, it is hard to suppose that a man of his 
 poetic temperament did not sometimes write to please himself. 
 He would have felt sometimes a motion of the spirit and com¬ 
 posed because there was something which had to ‘come out.’ 
 His rijacimento of the Teseida and of the Filostrato, for example, 
 would spring from a desire to retell those stories in his own way, 
 not for particular occasion or a special group. He could rightly 
 assume that the ‘Palamon and Arcite’ would entertain any sophis- 
 
i02 OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 
 
 ticated or educated audience, and the Troilus would provide a 
 series of (five) readings very acceptable to his friends; 6 but this 
 need not be his reason for writing. Other poems, the ‘Hous of 
 Fame’ and the ‘Parlement of Foules,’ for example, seem better 
 adapted to silent reading, from a manuscript copy lent by the 
 author. So also the Clerk’s Tale, with its formal division into 
 Parts, looks like a poem written perhaps as an exercise in close 
 paraphrase, but mainly to be just what it is, a verse narrative with 
 a moral. The Man of Law’s Tale may be an early experiment in 
 metrical composition. The St. Cecilia poem and the Manciple’s 
 Tale have likewise the air of being literary exercises. A few 
 poems, moreover, contain some slight evidence of having been 
 meant for a particular audience, for example, the address to 
 goode men (twice) and ye lordes (twice), and the phrase as seith 
 my lord at the end of the Cock and Fox poem; though these may 
 be mere rhetoric. The beginning of the Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale 
 (now called Pars Secunda): 
 
 Ther is a chanoun of religioun 
 
 Amonges us, 
 
 followed by the direct address to worshipful chanons religious, 
 suggests another special audience. The Wife of Bath’s Ye wise 
 wyves (D 275) is only a rhetorical apostrophe and is offset by 
 Lordynges (D 379), who are presumably the Pilgrims; but her 
 Prologue, omitting its interruption by the Pardoner, would with a 
 suitable introduction and an altered last line give vast pleasure 
 to a carefully selected audience. 
 
 But the Canterbury Tales as a whole and as an artistic con¬ 
 ception is certainly a work to be read, not recited, and assumes a 
 reading and not a listening audience. Where did Chaucer expect 
 to find it, when he had finished the work? How would the 
 Court, which took offense at the Troilus (or so Chaucer pretends) 
 receive the Miller’s and the Merchant’s Tales? Some portions of 
 the Canterbury Tales could have been written with an eye to 
 amusing the aristocrats by exposing the follies of their inferiors; 
 ghd the twenty-odd tales which we have (including those which 
 are not tales at all) afford something for every taste. Yet Chaucer 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 203 
 
 must have expected readers, and the history of the manuscripts, 
 although all that we now have were written after his death, justi¬ 
 fies that expectation. To put the matter another way, he had 
 not an audience but audiences. 
 
 The Canterbury Tales in fact mingles rather than combines the 
 moulds. There is an odd compound of both points of view in 
 the Miller’s Prologue which shows that such indications are not 
 to be understood too literally: 
 
 And the rf ore, whoso list it nat y he ere, 
 
 Turne over the leej. 
 
 It would be trying for an audience to listen to those brilliant but 
 short analytical descriptions of the thirty Pilgrims, yet Chauce'r 
 assumes a kind of address— whil l have tyme and space . . . Now 
 have 1 toold you, —and it would be difficult to imagine even 'a 
 series of readings while they listened to the whole nineteen thou¬ 
 sand odd lines, with so much more to come. The “I” both is and 
 is not the poet with pen in hand. But the fiction of oral narra¬ 
 tive along the Canterbury road requires that the Tales themselves, 
 as distinct from the links, be understood as spoken. And here 
 also there are two voices: the Knight, the Miller, the Reeve, and 
 the rest are speaking, but they speak with the voice of Geoffrey 
 Chaucer, with his skill in language and meter. One does not sup¬ 
 pose that the Man of Law could talk in rime royal. 
 
 In sum, two conclusions may be drawn. Certain poems of 
 Chaucer were composed expressly to be read aloud, in the .first 
 instance by the poet himself and later by others if so inclined,; 
 and this manner of oral delivery he employed as a convention or 
 fiction in other poems or parts of poems which were not intended 
 primarily for recitation. It is not always possible or important .to 
 make the distinction; but to this manner may reasonably be attri¬ 
 buted certain peculiarities of his style which seem calculated to 
 get a quick response or which would not be expected in more 
 sober writing but would be easily pardonable by immediate lis¬ 
 teners less exigent than modern readers. Second, Chaucer w^rote, 
 like all poets, with the hope of being heard and read, that is, with 
 a real or a vaguely imagined ‘audience.’ This audience would 
 
204 
 
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 
 
 be first of all his personal friends and their friends, who would 
 naturally be his literary friends—Gower, Clanvowe, Scogan, across 
 the channel Deschamps, and of course many others whom we can¬ 
 not call by name. After these would be his business associates, 
 including the lesser nobility and the politicians who might enjoy 
 a good story well told in verse; and then in the more restricted 
 sense the royal family, with whom he had both business and per¬ 
 sonal relations; a few short poems, ‘Stedfastnesse,’ ‘Purse,’ ‘Com- 
 pleynt of Venus,’ ‘Fortune,’ ‘Rosamounde,’ are clearly addressed to 
 these. But to connect any part of his important work with any 
 part of this audience would be hazardous and unfructuous, al¬ 
 though a few generalizations might be made; and in every case 
 the poet’s own temperament, his experience, his artistic impulses 
 would have to be considered. ^The permutations are hardly worth 
 facing And after all the Court of Richard, the Gowers and Clan- 
 vowes and Scogans, are now no more. Posterity is the audience 
 now, and what counts is his ability to amuse, instruct, regale, 
 entertain, enlighten the successive centuries of readers. Geoffrey 
 Chaucer reading aloud to certain groups in the late fourteenth 
 century is for us a fiction; what remains is Geoffrey Chaucer 
 addressing us from the printed page. It is the same, with a very 
 great difference. 
 
 rx 
 
 It is clear that Chaucer had read Dante attentively; many 
 parallel passages have been noted and tested; but as Mario Praz 
 has said, the Commedia “was to Chaucer primarily a mine of 
 learned information,” as well as a quarry for local borrowings. 
 “Nowhere can the difference of stature between Dante and Chau¬ 
 cer be better gauged” than in their treatment of the Ugolino 
 story, where he courts comparison by declaring his source. 7 But 
 his mind was not saturated with Dante as it was with the Roman 
 de la Rose. A single example will illustrate this. 
 
 The Friar and the Summoner, separated in the General Pro- 
 lague, are brought together in the Friar’s Prologue. The Friar 
 and the Summoner’s compeer, the Pardoner, share a common 
 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 
 
 2°5 
 
 inheritance from Faux-Semblant in the Roman. 9, Says Faux- 
 Semblant (Michel 12489 ff.): 
 
 Car, ains que soit vuis mes tresors, 
 
 Deniers me vienent a resours. 
 
 Ne fais-ge bien tumber mes hours? 
 
 En aquerre est toute m’ entente, 
 
 Miex vaut mes porchas que ma rente. . . . 
 
 Par tout vois les ames curer, 
 
 Nus ne peut mes sans moi durer 
 Et preeschier et conseillier, 
 
 Sans fames de mains traveillier; 
 
 De V apostle en ai le bule. ... 
 
 This is rendered in the Middle English (6834 ff.): 
 
 For whanne the grete bagge is go, 
 
 It cometh right with my japes. 
 
 Make 1 not wel tumble myn apes? 
 
 To wynnen is alwey myn entente; 
 
 My purchace is bettir than my rente. . . . 
 
 Of al the world \the\ cure have I 
 In brede and lengthe; boldely 
 1 wole bothe preche and e\e counceilen; 
 
 With hondis wille 1 not traveilen; 
 
 For of the Pope I have the bulle. 
 
 These ten lines of the Roman are curiously distributed. First 
 note that the English rime in 6836 called for a different animal, 
 which turns up in the description of the Pardoner (A 705 f.): 
 
 And thus, with feyned flaterye and japes, 
 
 He made the person and the peple his apes. 
 
 The next two lines are divided between the Pardoner and the 
 Friar. The Pardoner says in his Prologue (C 403): 
 
 For myn entente is nat but for to wynne , 9 
 
 and in his description of the Friar Chaucer says (A 256): 
 
 His purchas was wel bettre than his rente; 
 
2o6 
 
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 
 
 and this is echoed in the Friar’s Tale, the Devil speaking (D 
 1451): 
 
 My purchas is th’ effect of al my rente. 
 
 Later in his Prologue the Pardoner says (C 443 f.): 
 
 For 1 wol preche and begge in sondry landes; 
 
 I wol nat do no labour with myne handes. 
 
 Such parallels are a tribute to Chaucer’s memory and his creative 
 use of it by combining. What he could do by expanding and 
 developing may be seen in the whole passage, C 439 ff. 
 
 When to this richness are added the direct borrowings from 
 Boccaccio and the direct observations of the daily realities about 
 him, the material for his poedc miscellany is complete. His 
 varied uses of it are controlled by humor, his management of it 
 by the art which comes from practice and that “broad and negli¬ 
 gent facility” which often astonishes and often disturbs the mod¬ 
 ern reader and which seems to have disturbed Chaucer not at all. 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 I N the first chapter there was some attempt to discover the 
 kind of person he was whom we learn about in the Life- 
 Records and who composed the poetry we now enjoy—the 
 pattern of his mind, la qualite de son dme, as well as the pattern 
 of his daily life. They both elude us; the results are fragmentary 
 and approximate. 
 
 Now in this last chapter ‘Chaucer’ has been only a convenient 
 term for the poet: not the man who wrote the poetry but the me¬ 
 dium through whom the the poetry came into being. The two are 
 inseparable, but they are different. Just as the man who audited 
 the Customs accounts was not the man whom Africanus intro¬ 
 duced into the Garden of Love, even so the man who sat for Kent 
 in the Parliament of 1386 was very different from the man who 
 had just written the Troilus. It is too simple to relate the external 
 events of his public life and try after a fashion to fit them into the 
 writing of his poems; they do not mesh. We can only see that his 
 education at Court led naturally to his writing at first in the 
 fashionable aristocratic manner; that his brief acquaintance with 
 Italy as the King’s agent brought him fresh inspiration; that dur¬ 
 ing the twelve years of his residence at Aldgate and his work at 
 the Customs he became gradually less involved with the inti¬ 
 macies of the Court and more familiar with the life of the lower 
 classes, and so wrote less in the fashionable mold and more for the 
 amusement of his audience as they would view the lower classes; 
 that when he lost his position at the Customs and retired (if that 
 is the word) to Kent he had more leisure for writing; and that 
 when he became Clerk of the King’s Works he was brought still 
 closer to the common people and wrote more about the rogues 
 and roguery which we hear about on the road to Canterbury. But 
 these are rough approximations. 
 
 It is even more futile to select passages from his poetry which 
 seem to reveal something of his thought and feeling as a persona; 
 it is tempting, but futile. A start was made long ago by Louns- 
 
208 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 bury, but it has not been followed up, perhaps because the con¬ 
 clusions indicated were negative. There are few places in Chau¬ 
 cer’s whole work where we can securely trust that he is speaking 
 for himself; he was not a ‘subjective’ poet; and even where we 
 may think we have found something revealing we face the alter¬ 
 native possibly that the views were second-hand, or we recognize 
 an undertone of irony. For the rest, he speaks for his characters 
 as their attitudes or situations require. Dreams are safe to believe 
 or not according as Chanticleer or Pertelote, Troilus or Pandarus, 
 is speaking, and in the ‘Hous of Fame’ Chaucer refuses to com¬ 
 mit himself because the hesitation is pertinent there. On the 
 subject of Fortune he follows tradition. On the subject of gen- 
 tilesse he echoes Boethius, Dante, or the Roman. On the subject 
 of freedom and necessity, in which he might seem to be especially 
 interested, he borrows from Boethius direct and has Troilus 
 decide for necessity, as die poem demands, but nowhere does he 
 present the ‘soludon’ for which Boethius argued in his Book v; 
 and in the Nun’s Priest’s Tale he succinctly reviews the three 
 possibilides, with citation of authorities, only to brush the question 
 aside as unsuitable for the story of a cock. His whole attitude on 
 such doctrinal and philosophical questions is to let the cler\es 
 worry—which is also the attitude recommended to Adam by the 
 Archangel—and this may be mere humorous evasion or a per¬ 
 sonal conviction that it is useless to discuss the unknowable. It 
 may mean that he has no fundamental principles of his own, or 
 that the artistic situation of any context was best served by not 
 taking sides or airing his private views. Thus he lays himself 
 open to the charge of wanting high seriousness, that seriousness 
 which “comes from a keen vision of life and a deep feeling about 
 it,” and which is “the vital quality of enduring literature.” But 
 Chaucer has a vital quality the springs of which lie elsewhere .'1 
 He may never have attained to a synthesis which without paradox 
 or oversubtlety comprehends in a unity the multitudinousness of 
 life; he was not greatly concerned with spiritual values or the 
 mysteries of the soul; he was not one of those “whose creative 
 work proceeds from an achieved center of being, and whose con¬ 
 tinual creativeness is the expression of the constant extension of 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 209 
 
 their grasp upon and penetration into reality.” So far forth he was 
 an unfinished man, just as so much of his literary work betrays 
 an unfinished artist. He never cried, with Blake, “O that men 
 would seek immortal moments,” or experienced that moment “ou 
 le dernier trait de lumiere penetre dans l’ame et rattache a un 
 centre commun les verites qui y sont eparses.” Ecstasy and exalta¬ 
 tion and inward illumination he seems not to have known, and 
 does not give] His was no casement opening on the seas of peril¬ 
 ous thought, rlis gaze was on this world, such as it is^ It is his 
 praise that he saw so much of it and reported it so faithfully, its 
 changes and chances, the curiosities of human behavior, while he 
 stood back from its painful anxieties gnd tragic suffering, with no 
 desire to penetrate their dark recesses. \ Instead of Le monde, c’est 
 terrible he said Swich is this world. When he came near to trag¬ 
 edy at the end of the Troilus, he turned aside with a pious plati¬ 
 tude. It may be, it may well be, that his tolerance, his Laodicean- 
 ism reflects his personal unrest, his unwillingness to accept the 
 violence and viciousness he could not help seeing, his protection 
 against the climate in which he had to live. His gift was not for 
 tragedy but for comedy, and one notes that he rarely handles sub¬ 
 jects which are distressing or painful. This may be a matter of 
 temperament or may be due to that ‘audience’ for which he wrote. 
 
 Thus to admit his limitations, the limitations of his art, of 
 his vision, is not to condemn him for what he was not but to see 
 him more clearly. It in no way diminishes the clearness of his 
 eye, the brightness of his smile, the genuineness of his sympathy. 
 His specialty is worldly wisdom, and that is without a trace of 
 contempt. 
 
 There are some critics however who are not satisfied with 
 poetry unless it exhibits moral values, and when these values are 
 not obvious they peer between the lines and bring up from their 
 own ingenious depths the profundities they desiderate. The 
 favored term now is moral imagination; its opposite is a moral 
 vacuum. Chaucer was too mediaeval to admit such a vacuum. 
 He attached a string of morals to the Cock and Fox poem, all of 
 them very practical. He was not content to leave the Griselda 
 story as a parable of wifely patience, although he did everything 
 
210 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 possible to make her actions plausible; he made it a lesson in 
 Christian fortitude, after Petrarch. He solved Dorigen’s dilemma 
 not in terms of the story but by insistence on a sententia of dubi¬ 
 ous fitness. He was not content to end his ‘Palamon and Arche’ 
 as a simple love story, but forgetting that Arcite had recommend¬ 
 ed the marriage and that Palamon’s long patience deserved its 
 reward, he injected the political motive—an element of practical 
 wisdom with perhaps a topical allusion. He quite lost sight of 
 the underlying theme of friendship and sworn brotherhood. This 
 is not vacuum but confusing plenitude. Again, die basic situation 
 of the Merchant’s Tale is itself moral: the folly of a nasty old 
 knight marrying a young virgin; it is developed through argu¬ 
 ments pro and con and resolved through a kind of poedc justice 
 when January is cuckolded. But by the frivolous dei ex machina 
 the justice is reversed, cuckoldry is justified, and immorality palli¬ 
 ated by a hearty laugh. The joke is still on January, but the two 
 young people have had their struggle—albeit in some discomfort 
 —and Chaucer’s last word is 
 
 God blesse us and his moder Seinte Marie. 
 
 If this is not blasphemous flippancy, it is sarcastic self-criticism of 
 a high order. 
 
 What we learn from Chaucer is that men and women in his^ 
 day had much the same foibles and follies as now, and within the 
 range of fourteenth-century opportunity the same vices; whereby | 
 we can perhaps see ourselves more clearly. Whether they had any 
 confidence or serenity, faith or aspiration, or any sense of the 
 dignity of man must be gleaned from inference, without much 
 certainty. He might have said with Sir John Davies: 
 
 And to conclude l \now myself a Man, 
 
 Which is a proud, and yet a wretched thing: 
 
 or with King Lear, “Is man no more than this?” His pride took 
 the form of unconquerable cheerfulness and sympathetic toler- jj 
 ance; but if this was founded on or accompanied by hope he gave ' 
 little sign. His world was too much with him and against him. 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 211 
 
 Trout he is put doun, resoun is holden fable; 
 
 Vertu hath now no dominacioun; 
 
 Pitee exyled, no man is merciable; 
 
 Through covetyse is blent discrecioun. 
 
 The world hath mad a permutacioun 
 
 Fro right to wrong, fro trouthe to fikelnesse, 
 
 That al is lost for lak of stedfastnesse. 
 
 So to himself; and to Sir Philip he said finally, 
 
 Suffyce unto thy good, though it be smal, . . . 
 lool{e up, thank God of al; 
 
 and, with a wry smile, trouthe thee shal delivere, it is no drede. 
 
 There is a twofold corollary. The detachment which comes of 
 amused observation is not the detachment of the artist, who fills 
 his work with his own enthusiasm for the subject while he con¬ 
 trols as from a distance the active creation. Chaucer writes from 
 his own fulness and when the subject moves him he takes us with 
 him; he not only shares with us his enjoyment of it, he cannot 
 help joining in the fun—though at a sacrifice of aesthetic perspec¬ 
 tive—and his high spirits become contagious. But when he is 
 bored he is indifferent to craft and he all but tells us so. Not 
 only does he lack the artist’s arrogance, self-confidence, and sense 
 of vocation, he lacks also the passion for form, for composition, 
 which, as Henry James said, “alone is positive beauty.” What 
 came easily, naturally—which is a great deal because his natural 
 gift was great and was strengthened by the ‘second nature’ of 
 much practice—he communicated with gusto; the rest he left to 
 chance, which often happily supported him and often left him 
 stumbling. [Discipline seems not to have interested him.. 
 
 And the desire to amuse helped to determine the form of his 
 poetry. It led him in his work as a narrative artist to the short 
 narrative, the anecdotal—often worked up with rich observation 
 of human nature as well as with obvious fillers—instead of sus¬ 
 tained narrative; and to the use, almost a habit, of ready devices 
 for the quick response, a diversion of interest, even a substitution 
 of irrelevant interest, the opposite, in a word, of strictly unified 
 composition. This may be well tested in the Wife of Bath’s Tale, 
 
212 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 for example, and the Franklin’s Tale. Only in the Canon’s 
 Yeoman’s Tale was he wholly serious, illustrating two varieties 
 of the malpractice of alchemy, with a severe condemnation at the 
 end; but the long introduction, lively as it is, makes against unity 
 of effect. His one sustained work falls apart both in the double 
 character of the heroine and in the double focus of Troilus as the 
 titular hero and Pandarus as master of the action. In short 
 analytical description of persons he is at his best, as in the General 
 Prologue and the specimens scattered through the Tales them¬ 
 selves. Dr. Empson can speak of “The poignant and in time 
 cloying simplicity of most of the characters of the Canterbury 
 Tales,” and though this is an off-hand judgment based on Chau¬ 
 cer’s vague use of the word honest, it has a substantiating value 
 when one looks closely at the other repetitions which rely on 
 immediate effects suitable for a listening audience which must 
 be kept attentive. 
 
 / When to these reservations is added the apparent want of a 
 
 I serious—serious as the Comic Muse can be serious—criticism of 
 
 I life: the general attitude of tolerance even for what cannot be 
 approved and ought not to be allowed; the absence of a philo¬ 
 sophical foundation, whether secure or insecure; and the failure to 
 ask the questions which wait for no answer; then it would seem 
 that a ‘case’ may be made out against “our incomparable poet.” 
 
 Chaucer has a great deal of “auxiliary brightness”—in the 
 spirit of the Gothic builders who experimented in reducing 
 masonry to accommodate more glass and then to glass added 
 painting which gave color but diminished the light. He has a 
 pervasive ambiguity which might be an ironical position deliber¬ 
 ately taken—both What do I \now? and Why should l care ?— 
 or a token of the divided mind unreconciled to uncertainty. He 
 teases us with evidences of system without symmetry, design with¬ 
 out logic, a plan offered and withdrawn to please that part of 
 the mind which revolts against formalism and to titillate by thwart¬ 
 ing expectancy. He creates people who seem real “for the moment,” 
 but are not part of a surrounding atmosphere which holds them 
 in place; who live and move but cast no shadows. He has an 
 astonishing gift for dispelling the need of illusion. He leaves us 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 213 
 
 with a series of paradoxes and contradictions, such as inhere in 
 mankind. He is devoid of spirituality and filled with a kindly 
 humanity. His is an undisciplined natural genius capable of 
 skill, craft, and telling passages and likely at any moment to 
 disappoint us. It could be taken as an index that his best success 
 in presenting character is with Pandarus and the Wife of Bath. 
 There is then no need to exalt his work as a civil servant to 
 match his genius in another sphere, nor any need to deplore his 
 failings as a genius.^'His imperfections “should be regarded as 
 qualities rather than faults.” He will not suffer from the free 
 recognition of them as much as he has suffered from mistaken 
 eulogy."] 
 
NOTES 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 1. The actual date is of small importance, but the lease on 24 December 
 1399 of a tenement in Westminster for fifty-three years, or until death, for 
 an annual rent of 53s 4 d, looks like a witty corroboration of the two state¬ 
 ments at the Scrope Grosvenor trial, and would place the birth in 1346. 
 See Hazel Allison Stevenson, “A Possible Relation between Chaucer’s Long 
 Lease and the Date of his Birth,” MLN l ( 1935 ), 318-22. 
 
 2. Elizabeth was first cousin of John of Gaunt’s first wife Blanche. The 
 only daughter of Elizabeth and Prince Lionel married in 1368 Edmund 
 Mortimer, third Earl of March, who later took the side of the Black Prince 
 and the clergy against John of Gaunt and the barons. |The political com¬ 
 plications for Chaucer are obvious} 
 
 3. Cf. O. F. Emerson, “Chaucer’s First Military Service—a Study of 
 Edward Third’s Invasion of France in 1359-60,” Romanic Rev. in (1912), 
 321-61 (repr. in Chaucer Essays and Studies, Cleveland, 1929, pp. 182-246) 
 for additional details. 
 
 4. The relationship cannot be proved but is generally accepted as fact. 
 She may have been the Philippa Pau’ mentioned in the Countess of 
 Ulster’s records and therefore a kind of boyhood sweetheart; cf. Haldeen 
 Braddy, “Chaucer’s Philippa, Daughter of Panneto,” MLN lxiv (1949), 
 
 34 2 ' 43 - 
 
 5. The rime scheme of the Envoy is different from that of the balade; 
 hence the Envoy may have been added to an earlier poem. 
 
 6. Emile Legouis, Geoffrey Chaucer, Paris, 1910, p. 27. 
 
 7. Roger S. Loomis, “Was Chaucer a Laodicean?” in Essays and Studies 
 in Honor of Carleton Brown, New York, 1940, pp. 129-48. 
 
 8. In “Chaucer and the Parliament of 1386,” Speculum xvm (1943), 
 80-86, Florence R. Scott, approving Loomis, supplements his essay by em¬ 
 phasizing the actions of the Parliament and the dangers of alluding to 
 them. His failure to do so showed his “high sense of reality.” Which is 
 true, a part of the truth. For further exceptions to Loomis, see Gardiner 
 
NOTES: OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 24] 
 
 215 
 
 Stillwell and Henry J. Webb, “Chaucer’s Knight and the Hundred Years’ 
 War,” MLN lix (1944), 45-47. 
 
 9. Obvious are Chaucer’s references to his friends Gower, Bukton, 
 Scogan, and to lyte Lowys my sone, and the punning reference to Sir 
 Philip de la Vache; to Petrarch and Bradwardine by name; indirectly to 
 John of Gaunt and his first wife in the ‘Book of the Duchess’; and the 
 Knight’s campaigns and his son’s chyvachie. Accepted and of real signifi¬ 
 cance are the Envoy to ‘Stedfastnesse,’ addressed to Richard, and the Envoy 
 to ‘Purse,’ addressed to Henry IV; and the modern instances in the Monk’s 
 Tale (cf. tiraunts of Lumbardye in the Prologue to the ‘Legende,’ F 374). 
 Almost equally definite is the mention of Jack Straw and hence an allusion 
 to the Peasants’ Revolt (but note the context) in the Nun’s Priest’s Tale, 
 B 4584; and cf. blase of straw (Troilus iv, 184), cherles rebellyng, A 2459, 
 and Jankin, B 1172: and also O stormy peple, E 995fT. Likewise accepted 
 is the so-called dedication of the Prologue of the ‘Legende’ to Queen Anne, 
 which brings with it other possible parallels to Richard and Anne, and to 
 which may be added the possible reference to Anne in oure first lettre 
 (Troilus 1, 172). Similarly, allusions to the marriage of Richard and 
 Anne have been seen in the tempest at the homecoming of Theseus and 
 Hippolyta and in the intercession of Hippolyta and Emily for Palamon 
 and Arcite in the Knight’s Tale (A 883-84, 1748-59); and possibly also, 
 though indirect, in A 1018, 1545-51, 2967-74, 3084; to say nothing of the 
 ‘Hous of Fame.’ Uncertain but probable is the identification of Richard 
 as the beste jrende in ‘Fortune’ (though John of Gaunt has also been pro¬ 
 posed). Gloucester has been seen as Nimrod in ‘The Former Age.’ The 
 affair of John Holland and Elizabeth of Lancaster has been seen in the 
 Physician’s Tale (C 72 ff.), and either this or Holland and Isabel of York 
 in ‘Mars.’ Finally, there are the attempts to find contemporary parallels in 
 ‘Anelida and Arcite’ and the ‘Parlement of Foules’; to say nothing of 
 Hotson’s hypotheses regarding the Melibeus and the Nun’s Priest’s Tale. 
 A few of these are discussed below. 
 
 10. “Chaucer’s Doctrine of Kings and Tyrants,” Speculum, xx (1945), 
 I33-5 6 - 
 
 11. J. M. Murry, Pencillings, New York, 1925, p. 161. 
 
 12. Robert A. Pratt, “Chaucer and the Visconti Libraries,” ELH vi 
 (1939), 191-99; “nothing definitely militates against” it, says Professor 
 Pratt. 
 
 13. “The Route of Chaucer’s First Journey to Italy,” ELH xvi (1949), 
 174-89; The English Traveller to Italy, I. The Middle Ages, Roma, 1954, 
 pp. 511 ff. 
 
 14. Albert S. Cook, “The Last Months of Chaucer’s Earliest Patron,” 
 Trans. Connecticut Academy xxi (1916), 1-144. 
 
 15. Edith Rickert, Chaucer’s World, New York, 1948, pp. 272-73. 
 
 16. A variant of this is the route of Adam of Usk a year or two after 
 Chaucer’s death ( Chaucer’s World, p. 278; Parks, p. 522). Adam sailed 
 first to Bergen-op-Zoom, thence went overland to Aachen, Cologne, up the 
 Rhine to Basel, thence to Berne, to Lucerne, over the St. Gothard to 
 
2l6 
 
 NOTES: OBSERVATIONS ON THE LIFE OF CHAUCER 
 
 Vh 
 
 Bellinzona, Milan—and on to Rome. He left London 19 February 1401 [2], 
 reached Milan 18 March and Rome 5 April. His words for the pass are: 
 “in caruca per bovem tractus, nivis frigoribus, oculis velatis, ne loci 
 discrimina conspiceret .”—Chromcon Adce de Us\, ed. E. Maunde Thomp¬ 
 son, London, 1876, p. 72. 
 
 17. Robert A. Pratt, “Geoffrey Chaucer Esq., and Sir John Hawkwood,” 
 ELH xvi (1949), 188-193, with references in n. 1. In the Exchequer Ac¬ 
 counts Chaucer’s name is not given as one of the members of the com¬ 
 mission; cf. Haldeen Braddy, “New Documentary Evidence concerning 
 Chaucer’s Mission to Lombardy,” MLN xlviii (1933), 507-11. 
 
 18. Parks, pp. 523 ff. In 1379 Michael de la Pole and John de Burley 
 were sent to Rome by Richard; they were imprisoned in Germany on 
 their return journey (Chaucer s World, p. 276). 
 
 19. Chaucer s World, p. 278. 
 
 20. To the long vexed controversy Professor Parks adds a nice point 
 (p. 515). Petrarch’s Latin version of the Griselda story, which Chaucer 
 followed very closely, says that the Po flows eastward to “Emiliam, atque 
 Flaminiam Veneciamque.” Chaucer renders this (which has no equivalent 
 in the French version) To Emelward, to Ferrare, and Venyse (E 51). 
 Ferrara is on the road from Bologna to Padua. Had Chaucer been there 
 or did he learn its classical name from some literary source? 
 
 21. Mario Praz, “Chaucer and the Great Italian Writers of the Trecento,” 
 The Monthly Criterion vi (1927), 18-39, 131-57, 238-42; 156-57. 
 
 22. This balade names sixteen ladies (Penelope, Marcia Catoun, Helen, 
 Lavinia, Lucretia, Polyxena, Cleopatra, Thisbe, Hero, Dido, Laodamia, 
 Phyllis, Canace, Hypsyphile, Hypermnestra, Ariadne) of classical extrac¬ 
 tion, along with Alcestis. Iseult is from the North and Esther from the 
 Bible. 
 
 Note on Cecilia Chaumpaigne 
 
 1. This William Chaumpeneys was a wealthy London baker who died 
 1360-61. Cf. Samuel Moore, Angl. xxxvii (1913), 13 f. On her brother 
 Robert, see Kirk, Life-Records, p. xxx. 
 
 2. On Morel, see Kuhl, PMLA xxix (1914), 270 ff. 
 
 3. The case of Chaucer’s father, usually mentioned in this connection, 
 is irrelevant. John was kidnaped when he was less than twelve years old 
 by two Staces and his aunt, Agnes de Westhale, to marry him to her 
 daughter Joan. The offenders paid a fine of £250. Some years later, 
 1387, Chaucer was himself on a commission to investigate the abduction 
 of Isabella, daughter and heir of William atte Halle, out of the custody 
 of Thomas Kershill, at Chislehurst, Kent. 
 
 4. See P. R. Watts, “The Strange Case of Geoffrey Chaucer and Cecilia 
 Chaumpaigne,” The Law Quarterly Review lxiii (1947), 491-515; and 
 T. F. T. Plucknett, “Chaucer’s Escapade,” ibid, lxiv (1948), 33-36. 
 
48] 
 
 NOTES: CHAUCER AND THE SCHOLARS 
 
 2I 7 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 CHAUCER AND THE SCHOLARS: THE PARDONER 
 
 1. Cf. Walter Clyde Curry, Chaucer and the Mediaeval Sciences, New 
 York, 1926. Exactly half of the Pardoner’s lines are given to his character 
 and half to his professional skills. Carleton Brown (cited below) says 
 incautiously that the Pardoner “receives unusually extended treatment in 
 the General Prologue”; but the Friar, the Parson, and the Prioress outrank 
 him in number of lines, and the Summoner equals him. 
 
 2. As the manuscripts are interpreted, the appearance of the Pardoner 
 now was an afterthought. Cf. f. Burke Severs, “Author’s Revision in Block 
 C of the Canterbury Tales,” Speculum xxix (1954), 512-30, with references 
 to Manly and Rickert. 
 
 3. Inconsistencies have been noted between the Pardoner of the Prologue 
 and the Pardoner on the road. For example, in A 688, 691 he has a 
 smale voice like a goat’s, but in C 331 he says he can rynge it out as 
 round as gooth a belle. 
 
 4. This alone might warn those who like to interpret overdelicately. 
 From the modern point of view it is a violation of verisimilitude for 
 either the Parson or the Pardoner to indulge in this bit of learning. But 
 Chaucer, who was after all a mediaeval, could be above such demands of 
 consistency as we now cherish. He followed a convention, added his spot 
 of color, and thought no more about it. 
 
 5. One possibility is that the Pardoner altered his tone, with a wink at 
 the Pilgrims, for just those six words, And lo, sires, thus l preche, and 
 resumed his suave address to the imaginary listeners: And Jhesu Crist, 
 that is oure soules leche . . . —“I have shown you the dangers of avarice, 
 now buy my pardon, for I would not deceive you.” The And favors this 
 reading, rather than the alternative, that the Pardoner means: “This is the 
 way I fool the ignorant, but I will not try to deceive you, fellow Pilgrims.” 
 The pronouns are ambiguous: ye and yow for both audiences. Why should 
 the Pardoner think it in place to offer any pardon to the Pilgrims — until 
 later, when he is carried away by his enthusiasm? On the other hand, 
 will anyone deny that the poet must share the onus of our uncertainty? 
 In one of his exuberant moods, he saw and seized the opportunity for a 
 brisk ending, even at some sacrifice of verisimilitude, as he did with the 
 Envoy after the Clerk’s Tale. The dramatic moment was too tempting; 
 and it is all plausible enough if no sharp questions are asked. The 
 similar situation at the end of the Friar’s Tale should not be overlooked; 
 the narrator addresses the Pilgrims with an ironic or hypocritical prayer. 
 
 6. A convenient summary, up to its date, with fresh contributions, may 
 be found in G. G. Sedgewick, “The Progress of Chaucer’s Pardoner 1880- 
 1940,” MLO 1 (1940), 431-58. 
 
 7. A. L. Kellogg and L. A. Haselmayer, “Chaucer’s Satire of the Par¬ 
 doner,” PMLA lxvi (1951), 251-77, suggest (p. 276) that the satire is 
 directed not so much at the pilgrim Pardoner as at “those who made the 
 Pardoner possible.” 
 
2 l8 
 
 NOTES: CHAUCER AND THE SCHOLARS 
 
 [48 
 
 8. The Prologue and Four Canterbury Tales, ed. by Gordon Hall 
 Gerould, New York, 1935 (a school edition), and Chaucerian Essays, 
 Princeton, 1952, “The Vicious Pardoner.” 
 
 9. 1935, p. 331. In 1952, pp. 55-57, the picture is not withdrawn, nor is 
 it so precise; but doubts are met by way of comparative dates: perhaps 
 Chaucer added the ale-stake passage to the General Prologue to prepare for 
 its reappearing in the Words of the Host. 
 
 10. “The Pardoner’s Tavern,” JEGP xm (1914), 553-65. The last line 
 of the end-link is enough to exclude any tavern interior. The quarrel of 
 Host and Pardoner has halted the cavalcade for a moment; then Anon they 
 kjste, and ryden forth hir weye. 
 
 n.Carleton Brown, ed., The Pardoner’s Tale, Oxford, 1935. “Professor 
 Tupper is right. . . . And during the Prologue it is clear, the Pardoner 
 continued to sip his ale—a procedure hardly consistent with the view that 
 the Prologue formed part of the structure of a sermon.” Then he adds: 
 “Only when he has concluded his Prologue does the Pardoner, pushing 
 back his tankard, . . .” But that tankard was Jusserand’s. 
 
 12 . Geoffrey Chaucer, Paris, 1910, p. 185. 
 
 13. Dorothy M. Norris, “Chaucer’s ‘Pardoner’s Tale’ and Flanders,” 
 PM LA XLvm (1933), 636-41. 
 
 14. Gerould, Chaucerian Essays, p. 69, makes this clear—if it was not 
 sufficiendy obvious. But Brown had said (p. xvi): “The reader will search 
 in vain for any previous mention of the three rioters.” 
 
 15. Cf. Manly, Canterbury Tales, New York, [1928], p. 614; and especial¬ 
 ly Morton Donner, “Pulpit Rhetoric in Three Canterbury Tales,” MLN 
 
 LXXX ( 1955 ), 235-245. 
 
 16. Gerould, 1935, p. 331. 
 
 17. Sedgewick insists that the Pardoner preached for money, not for 
 logic. He quotes the peroration, O cursed synne. . . , and says: “This is 
 something more than ‘logic’—it is demagogic genius” (p. 440). Moreover, 
 if incoherence is a sign of inebriation, one would have to believe that 
 Chaucer was himself abroad when he wrote the Words of the Host before 
 MLT. 
 
 18. Some New Light on Chaucer, New York, 1926, p. 130. 
 
 19. Gerould was doubtful about “mare.” Perhaps, he says, Chaucer did 
 not distinguish between gelding and eunuchus ex nativitate. “The alterna¬ 
 tive surmise that the Pardoner might be ‘a mare’ has escaped comment, as 
 far as I know. Does it mean that he might be suspected of being homo¬ 
 sexual?” Likely enough, but the ground for such a surmise would be his 
 association with the Summoner. 
 
 20. Like Curry’s expansion of C 395-97 (the Pardoner stretches his neck, 
 when he preaches, like a dove sitting on a barn) to mean “his neck is long 
 and scrawny” (p. 55). There are hundreds of such gratuitous embroideries 
 in Chaucer criticism. 
 
 21. Chaucer and His Poetry, Cambridge, 1915, pp. 213-18. 
 
 22. Professor Patch’s comment is a variant of this. The self-portrait “is all 
 defense. He is insecure at many points” and his bravado is a kind of 
 
NOTES: THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 219 
 
 compensation; “outwardly he is a hypocrite; but inwardly he runs a risk of 
 being a cheat with himself when he is trying to be ‘honest’ with the 
 pilgrims” (On Re-reading Chaucer, Cambridge, 1939, p. 164). 
 
 23. Geoffrey Chaucer, Boston, 1934, p. 230. 
 
 24. Similar is Legouis, p. 187. 
 
 25. “Conjecture concerning Chaucer’s Pardoner,” Tulane Studies in Eng¬ 
 lish 1, New Orleans, 1949, pp. 1-49. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 1. Cf. A. S. Cook, “Chaucerian Papers—I,” Trans. Connecticut Academy 
 xxm (1919), 1-27; and also John H. Fisher, “Chaucer’s Use of swete and 
 swote,” JEGP l (1951), 326-31. 
 
 2. Of course the general statement about all pilgrims need not carry over 
 to Chaucer’s special selection. Their motives were certainly mixed. But 
 the line is from any point of view an anticlimax—unless there lurks an 
 irrecoverable (personal) allusion. It can only signify that the chief 
 reason for visiting the Becket shrine was gratitude for past cures, and this 
 does not harmonize either with the situations which follow or with the tra¬ 
 dition of St. Thomas’ miracles. But Chaucer was not much concerned 
 with St. Thomas. He never uses the name Becket; he uses St. Thomas of 
 Kent, or merely St. Thomas, five times in oaths. 
 
 3. The authorial “I” has always confused simple minds. Most readers 
 are aware of the risk of taking Chaucer’s text literally when he uses the first 
 personal pronoun, but here the warning is clearly sounded by Manly’s as¬ 
 sumption that Geoffrey Chaucer the poet was going on the pilgrimage: 
 “Chaucer does not tell us what was the cause of his devotion. He may 
 have received the help of St. Thomas, and have been fulfilling a vow. It is 
 also possible. . .” (Canterbury Tales, New York, 1928, p. 497). At the 
 opposite extreme is the postulation of a fictional character assumed or created 
 by the poet. Cf. E. Talbot Donaldson, “Chaucer the Pilgrim,” PMLA 
 LXIX (1954), 928-36. 
 
 4. He does not, for example, quite match Froissart’s tribute to Sir Gui- 
 chard d’Angle, Earl of Huntingdon: “in his time he had all the noble virtues 
 that a knight ought to have. He was merry, true, amorous, sage, secret, 
 large, hardy, adventurous, and chivalrous.” Cf. further Gervase Mathew, 
 “Ideals of Knighthood in Late-Fourteenth-Century England,” Studies in 
 Medieval History Presented to Frederic ^ Maurice Powiche, Oxford, 1948, 
 pp. 354-62. 
 
 5. Cf. J. R. Hulbert, “Chaucer’s Pilgrims,” PMLA lxiv (1949), 823-28. 
 
 6. The notion that the Parson’s Seven Deadly Sins were meant to provide 
 each and every Pilgrim with matter for reflection in the cathedral is surely 
 gratuitous. 
 
 7. For recent commentary on the Prologue, see W. H. Clawson, “The 
 Framework of The Canterbury Tales,” University of Toronto Quarterly 
 
220 
 
 NOTES: THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 [74 
 
 XX (1951), 137-54; J- V- Cunningham, “The Literary Form of the 
 Prologue to the Canterbury Tales,” MP xlix (1952), 172-81; Arthur W. 
 Hoffman, “Chaucer’s Prologue to Pilgrimage: The Two Voices,” ELH xxi 
 (1954), 1-16; Ralph Baldwin, The Unity of the Canterbury Tales, Anglistica 
 v, Copenhagen, 1955. 
 
 8 . John M. Manly and Edith Rickert, The Text of the Canterbury Tales, 
 Chicago, [1940], 11, 476. Tatlock had earlier reached the same conclusion: 
 “The Canterbury Tales in 1400,” PMLA l (1935), 100-39. 
 
 9. Chaucer and His Poetry, Cambridge, 1915, pp. 167 f. There is of 
 course no prologue to the Shipman’s Tale in Manly or Robinson. 
 
 10. W. P. Ker, in Henry Craik, English Prose, 1, 1907, pp. 40-41. The 
 case for Melibeus as a serious piece was presented by Tatlock, Develop- 
 ment and Chronology, pp. 189 ff. More recently Professor Lawrence came 
 to its defense in Essays and Studies in Honor of Carleton Brown, pp. 100- 
 110. 
 
 11. G. G. Coulton, Chaucer and His England, London, 1927 4 , p. 157. 
 Cf. also Mather, Chaucer’s Prologue, etc., Introduction, and Tatlock’s re¬ 
 proof (p. 189) of the same position. 
 
 12. George H. Cowling, Chaucer, London, [1927], p. 162. 
 
 13. Adolphus W. Ward, Chaucer, p. 113. The fallacy is obvious. 
 
 14. Manly has shown (Manly and Rickert, 11, 410-13) that in the first 
 form of the Prologue to the Nun’s Priest’s Tale the Host himself shut the 
 Monk off. The revised Prologue, as now printed, gives us the additional 
 by-play, not merely of implying that only a man of the Knight’s rank would 
 interrupt the well-oiled Monk, but also of revealing a bourgeois weakness 
 of the Knight himself. For not to be overlooked is the critical observation 
 which follows. To the fourth repetition of the definition of tragedy the 
 Knight adds its contrary: 
 
 As whan a man hath been in povre estaat, 
 
 And clymbeth up and wexeth fortunat, 
 
 And there abideth in pros peri tee. 
 
 Swich thyng is gladsom, as it thyn\eth me. 
 
 This is the common man’s attitude: there is tragedy enough in real life, 
 without reading and writing about it. 
 
 15. it has been suggested that Chaucer composed the tragedies to comfort 
 John of Gaunt’s wife Costanza and that he added the modern instances to 
 bring history down to date. One might rather guess that the tragedies 
 were composed in their own style, ful plat and ee\ ful pleyn, as an exercise 
 after Boccaccio’s pattern and that the modern instances were inserted for 
 the sake of contemporary appeal. Certainly, though some of the manu¬ 
 scripts put them there, they did not stand at the end when the Nun’s Priest’s 
 Prologue was written: cf. 1. 2766 and 1. 2782. 
 
 t6 “On the whole it seems clear,” says Robinson cautiously, p. 857, “that 
 the Nun’s Priest’s Tale was composed when the scheme of the Canterbury 
 pilgrimage was well under way”; and less cautiously: “It was not merely 
 written with the Nun’s Priest in mind, but was adapted with more than 
 
NOTES: THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 221 
 
 114 I 
 
 usual care to the character and calling of the teller” (p. 14). This is hard 
 to understand, since the narrator has no character in the General Prologue, 
 but is only one of three innominate priests accompanying the Prioress. The 
 “homiletic material” in the Tale might suggest a priest, but the mock- 
 heroic tone is not what we should expect from a follower of the dignified 
 Prioress. In fact, certain indications point in a different direction, namely, 
 the address to ye lordes at 11 . 3325 and 3330 (for elsewhere the Pilgrims are 
 addressed by the general term lordings) and the phrase As seith my lord at 
 the end, whether the Archbishop of Canterbury is indicated, as in the Elles¬ 
 mere MS, or, as Manly suggests, my Lord Bishop of London, as being the 
 Prioress’ immediate superior. It is thus not unlikely that the Tale was 
 originally written for the entertainment of a clerical audience, much as the 
 main part of the Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale seems to have been read before a 
 group of Canons Religious—and the Canon and his Yeoman invented for 
 its insertion in the Canterbury Tales. It would be gratuitous to add that 
 Chaucer here meant to embarrass the Prioress a little. 
 
 17. See J. R. Hulbert, “What was Chaucer’s Aim in the Knight’s Tale,” 
 SP xxvi (1929), 375-85; William Frost, “An Interpretation of Chaucer’s 
 Knight’s Tale,” RES xxv (1949), 289-304; H. S. Wilson, "The Knight’s 
 Tale and the Teseida Again,” U. of Toronto 0 . xvm (1949), 131-46; 
 Charles Muscatine, “Form, Texture, and Meaning in Chaucer’s Knight’s 
 Tale,” PMLA lxv (1950), 911-29; and Edward B. Ham, “Knight’s Tale 
 38,” ELH xvn (1950), 252-61, with a review of seventeen critical pro¬ 
 nouncements of extraordinary range. 
 
 18. Some such revision has in fact been argued for recently, and prompt¬ 
 ly rebutted; cf. Johnstone Parr, “The Date and Revision for Chaucer’s 
 Knight’s Tale,” PMLA lx (1945), 307-24, and Robert A. Pratt, “Was 
 Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale Extensively Revised after 1390?” PMLA lxiii 
 (1948), 726-36. 
 
 19. Cf. Albert H. Marckwardt, “Characterization in Chaucer’s Knight’s 
 Tale,” U. of Michigan Contributions in Philology, No. 5, April 1947; an< J 
 Walter H. French, “The Lovers in the Knight’s Tale,” JEGP xlviii (1949) 
 320-28. On “Arcite’s Intellect,” see Curry’s learned article in JEGP xxix 
 (1930), 83-99. 
 
 20. Cf. Stuart Robertson, “Elements of Realism in the Knight’s Tale,” 
 JEGP xiv (1915), 226-55; the author’s claims however are somewhat exag¬ 
 gerated. 
 
 21. Cf. Canon Looten, Chaucer, ses modeles, ses sources, sa religion, 
 Lille, [1931], p. 56: “Mais il est plus facile de discerner dans la redaction 
 du Knightes Tale telle que nous la possedons, des traces d’inexperience 
 qu’on peut attribuer a la jeunesse du poete encore inhabile a manier son 
 outil.” 
 
 22. Langlois, 1365-68; Michel, 1373-76. “Direct copying,” says Fansler, 
 Chaucer and the Roman de la Rose, New York, 1914, pp. 131 ff. Cf. also 
 Brusendorff, The Chaucer Tradition, London, 1925, p. 397. 
 
 23. See. for a different view, George Kane, Middle English Literature, 
 London, [1951], pp. 62-63. 
 
222 
 
 NOTES: THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 ["5 
 
 24. Tatlock, Development and Chronology, pp. 175 ff., recognized “a 
 certain crudity in the plot” (p. 177) and “the remote and fragile character 
 of the subject.” He ventured to claim that “In vividness and realism of 
 detail (except as regards Constance herself) the poem compares not un¬ 
 favorably with any of the non-humorous tales.” “And finally, the Man of 
 Law’s Tale shows an ease and mastery and an artistic aloofness in Chaucer’s 
 attitude to his material which is far different from his earlier manner. The 
 style of the poem is remarkably unified and harmonious. . . .”—The merits 
 of the Tale were emphasized by Bernard I. Duffey, “The Intention and 
 Art of ‘The Man of Law’s Tale,’” ELH xiv (1947), 181-93. To this I 
 entered a brief objection in MLN lxiv (1949), 12-14. More recently 
 Edward A. Block has come to its defense with “Originality, Controlling 
 Purpose, and Craftsmanship in Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale,” PMLA 
 lxviii (1953), 572-616, hoping “to show that the Man of Law’s Tale is a 
 work of superb craftsmanship which embodies throughout various control¬ 
 ling purposes and reflects greater originality, imaginative power, and con¬ 
 scious artistry than has hitherto been recognized.” 
 
 25. See A. C. Edwards, “Knaresborough Castle and ‘the kynges modres 
 court,’” PO xix (1940), 306-9. 
 
 26. “Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale and Constance of Castile,” JEGP 
 XLVII (1948), 343-51. 
 
 27. Cf. James Sledd, “Dorigen’s Complaint,” SP xlv (1947), 36-45. 
 
 28. Kane, Middle English Literature, pp. 84-87. 
 
 29. For another point of view, attributing to Chaucer a display of imagi¬ 
 native symbolism, see Charles A. Owen, Jr., “The Central Passages in Five 
 of the Canterbury Tales: A Study in Irony and Symbol,” JEGP lii (1953), 
 294-311; 295-97. The rocks, Professor Owen holds, are a guarantee of 
 Dorigen’s conjugal fidelity, a sign that she and Aurelius are unwilling “to 
 accept the real world,” and somehow a symbol of that peculiar “firmness” 
 of Arveragus. 
 
 Note on Chaucer’s Cler\ 
 
 1. The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, Oxford, 1895, II, 
 Part 11, pp. 452 ff. 
 
 2. Charles E. Mallett, A History of the University of Oxford, vol. 1, The 
 Mediaeval University, New York, 1924, p. 187 and n.3. 
 
 3. The only reference I have found to red binding is in C. H. Haskins, 
 The Rise of the Universities, New York, 1923, p. 86. It seems that some 
 Paris students, “when it is time to leave Paris, in order to make some show 
 of learning . . . get together huge volumes of calfskin, with wide margins 
 and fine red bindings.” But Chaucer’s Clerk was of a different sort. 
 There remains the possibility that black and red refer to the ink of the 
 manuscript; if so, ‘clad’ is a bold metaphor and one would expect and 
 instead of or. 
 
 4. W. W. Lawrence, in Speculum xxvu (1952), 236. 
 
 5. Chaucer and His Poetry, Cambridge, 1915, p. 199. 
 
NOTES: THE CANTERBURY TALES 
 
 223 
 
 Note on the History of the Clerk’s Tale 
 
 1. Germaine Dempster, “A Period in the Development of the Canterbury 
 Tales Marriage Group and the Blocks B 2 and C,” PMLA lxviii (1953), 
 1142-59; 1143-47. Mrs. Dempster posits a version “before the tale and its 
 frame pieces took standard form,” ending with E 1169 or “much more 
 probably” with E 1162. The Host stanza could hardly have been written 
 after the Envoy. In fact, “were it not for the accidental preservation of the 
 Host Stanza, we would not even suspect that revision took place.” 
 
 2. On “internal revision” cf. Manly and Rickert, n, 500 f. and Severs, 
 Speculum xxi (1946), 295-302. One particular line offers some difficulty: 
 this auctour (I. 1141) would not be clear without some immediate reference 
 to Petrarch. Several manuscripts have the auctor, but this would be only a 
 partial help. It is possible of course that the first version did not include 
 Petrarch’s moral. If so, 1 . 1142 was rewritten to introduce it and the 
 But 0 word stanza, containing some repetition of 11 . 1139 ff., was added to 
 make the conclusion less abrupt. 
 
 3. But “it does not occur in the thr~e MSS which end there,” i.e., at 
 1169 (Manly and Rickert, 11, 265; “two MSS,” 11, 500). These are Bo 1 
 (1450-80; “contributes to the evidence for pre-CT versions,” 1, 60) and its 
 companion Ph 2 (1450-70); and Hk (1440-50) of complex affiliations but 
 “representing a line almost independent, coming off near the top of the 
 large composite group” (1, 287). 
 
 4. One such is the word soveraynetee ( 1 . 114), which is not in Petrarch, 
 though the idea is. Kittredge {MB ix [1912], 435, n. 1) noted this and 
 quoted Petrarch, but commented: “Chaucer may or may not have under¬ 
 stood this Latin, but he certainly did not think he was translating it.” 
 Another is the repeated emphasis on gentilesse and particularly the view 
 that nobility comth al of God rather than by heredity: which corresponds 
 exactly with part of the hag’s ‘sermon’ in the Wife’s Tale, but is also in 
 Petrarch. These and other similar connectives would be noticed by Chaucer, 
 as they are by us, and would weigh heavily with him when the Clerk’: 
 Tale became part of the Marriage Group. 
 
 5. Cf. J. Burke Severs, “Did Chaucer Rearrange the Clerk’s Envoy?” 
 MLN lxix (1954), 472-78. 
 
 6. Manly and Rickert, hi, 473; n, 263. The d MSS are dated from 1430 
 onwards, except Ry 2 , which is dated 1420-50. Only one of the five MSS of 
 a is dated before 1430, viz. Dd (1400-20), which after 1 . 686 of C 1 T is with 
 its group (1, 102). On the relation of a to the b group, see 1, 132. 
 
 7. The Manly and Rickert edition is silent on the presence or absence of 
 this title. It is present in those manuscripts printed by the Chaucer Society, 
 except Ph 4 (HM 140), which ends at 1 . 1162 and continues with the Envoy 
 without title, and Longleat 257 (Lt 1 ), which ends at 1 . 1169 and has the 
 Envoy without title. 
 
224 
 
 NOTES: THE Troilus EPILOGUE 
 
 [*43 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE TROILUS EPILOGUE 
 
 1. J. S. P. Tatlock, “The Epilog of Chaucer’s Troilus,” MP xvm (1920- 
 21), 625-59. Cf. also James L. Shanley, “The Troilus and Christian Love,” 
 ELH vi (1939), 271-81. 
 
 2. Walter Clyde Curry, “Destiny in Chaucer’s Troilus,” PMLA xlv 
 (1930), 129-68. 
 
 3. This is foreseen and forecast repeatedly throughout the poem. It comes 
 first in 1, 197-200 and again in 1, 330-33; it reappears in hi , 813 ff., when 
 the outcome is anticipated apropos of the trumped-up story of Horaste, with 
 a quotation from Boethius; and again in iv, 581; and emphatically in iv, 
 834-35. In these and many other places Chaucer reminds the reader that 
 love is bitter-sweet. 
 
 4. D. W. Robertson, Jr., “Chaucerian Tragedy,” ELH xix (1952), 1-37. 
 
 5. Cf. John W. Clark, “Dante and the Epilogue and Troilus,” JEGP l 
 (1951), 1-10, with a list of discussions from 1915 to 1939. As to which 
 sphere Troilus reaches, cf. Jackson I. Cope, MLN lxvii (1952), 245-46 and 
 Forrest S. Scott, MLR li (1956), 2-5. The evidence is all inconclusive: 
 the moon or the Fixed Stars? Chaucer sometimes reckoned a summo ad 
 imum and sometimes the other way about; and in any case one would 
 expect to find Arcita in the sphere of Mars, his special deity, and Troilus in 
 that of Venus, his special deity. 
 
 chapter v 
 
 OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 
 
 1. Ernest H. Wilkins, “Cantus Troili,” ELH xv 1 (1949), 167-73. 
 
 2. Pauli F. Baum, “Chaucer’s Nautical Metaphors,” South Atlantic 
 Quarterly xlix (1950), 67-73. 
 
 3. Samuel Moore, “General Aspects of Literary Patronage in the Middle 
 Ages,” The Library, ser. 3, iv (1913), 369-92; 391. Cf. Bertrand H. Bron¬ 
 son, “Chaucer’s Art in Relation to his Audience,” in Five Studies in Litera¬ 
 ture, Berkeley, Cal., 1940. 
 
 4. Cf. Ruth Crosby, “Oral Delivery in the Middle Ages,” Speculum xi 
 (1936), 88-110; and “Chaucer and the Custom of Oral Delivery,” ibid. 
 xm (1938), 413-32. Miss Crosby has proved, and to spare, that Chaucer 
 in adopting the methods of oral narrative has used over and over again the 
 tags and colloquialisms of the romances. How far or just where this is a 
 literary device remains an open question. 
 
 5. Cf. Margaret Galway, “The Troilus Frontispiece,” MLR xliv (1949), 
 161-77. 
 
 6. “Thow, redere,” in the Troilus v, 270 is another mark which sets oft 
 Book v as different from the other Books. 
 
NOTES: OBSERVATIONS ON THE ART OF CHAUCER 
 
 225 
 
 205] 
 
 7. “Chaucer and the Great Italian Writers of the Trecento,” The Monthly 
 Criterion vi (1927), 18-39, 131-57, 238-42; 38, 33, 36. On the Ugolino 
 story cf. Theodore Spencer, “The Story of Ugolino in Dante and Chaucer.” 
 Speculum ix (1934), 295-301. 
 
 8. Cf. Skeat, Oxford Chaucer, v, 25; Fansler, Chaucer and the Roman de 
 la Rose, New York, 1914, pp. 162-65; Brusendorff, The Chaucer Tradition, 
 Oxford, 1925, pp. 402-404. 
 
 9. Just below the Pardoner says (C 407 f.): 
 
 For certes many a predicacioun 
 Comth ojte tyme of yvel entencioun; 
 
 which comes from an earlier couplet in the Roman (Langlois 5113 f.). 
 
INDEX 
 
 Adam of Usk, 25, 215 f. 
 
 ‘Anelida and Arcite,’ 215 
 ‘Astrolabe,’ 10 
 
 ‘Balade de Visage sanz Peinture,’ 8 
 ‘Balade de Bon Conseil,’ 14, 211 
 Baldwin, Ralph, 220 
 Bennett, }. A. W., vi 
 Block, Edward A., 222 
 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 19, 26, 128, 
 144 ff., passim, 180, 189-91, 196- 
 98 
 
 ‘Book of the Duchess,’ 4, 10, 106 f., 
 171, 184, 193, 201, 215 
 Braddy, Haldeen, 214, 216 
 Brandi, Alois, 75 
 Bronson, Bertrand H., 224 
 Brown, Carleton, 49, 54, 217 f. 
 Brusendorff, Aage, 221, 225 
 Bukton, Robert (?), 8 f. 
 
 Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale, 176, 202, 
 221 
 
 Canterbury Tales, 11-13, 202 f.; 
 
 Frag. VII, Group B 2 , 74-84 
 Chaucer, Geoffrey 
 Alpine passes, 23-25 
 art vs. negligence, 60 f., 181-200 
 attitude towards women, 31-39 
 audience, 200-204 
 characteristics, 17 ff., 40 f., 207 ff. 
 characterization, of Arveragus, 
 124-26; of Aurelius, 126 f.; of 
 Criseyde, 35, 147 ff., passim; of 
 
 Dorigen, 35, 123-30; of Prioress, 
 
 35 
 
 contemporary allusions, 13-17 
 determinism, 19, 148 ff. 
 humor, true and false, 170-73; 
 
 ernest and game, 78, 173-77 
 Italy, impressions of, 26-30 
 Laodiceanism, 15, 17, 20 
 laughter and smiles, 168-70 
 life, outline of, 4-6; last years, 7-13 
 mistranslations, 197 f. 
 realism, 104-14 
 satire, 17, 177-81 
 silences, 21-23 
 
 Chaumpaigne, Cecilia, 33,41-43, 180, 
 216 
 
 Chesterton, G. K., 56, 162 
 Clark, John W., 224 
 Clawson, W. H., 219 
 Clerk, 136-39, 222 
 Clerk’s Tale, no, 114, 120-22, 140- 
 42, 191 f., 202 
 
 ‘Complaint to His Purse,’ 8, 204 
 ‘Complaint of Mars’, 16, no f., 201, 
 215 
 
 ‘Complaint of Venus,’ 176, 204 
 Cook, A. S., 215, 219 
 Cope, Jackson I., 224 
 Costanza, wife of John of Gaunt, 
 7, 119 f., 220 
 Coulton, G. G., 80 f., 220 
 Courtly Love, 165-67 
 Cowling, George H., 80, 220 
 Crosby, Ruth, 224 
 Cunningham, J. V., 220 
 
228 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Curry, Walter C., 53, 55, 93, 217 f., 
 221, 224 
 
 Dante, 19 f., 29, 144, 146, 159, 161, 
 204 
 
 Dempster, Germaine, 140, 223 
 Donaldson, E. Talbot, 219 
 Donner, Morton, 218 
 Duffey, Bernard I., 222 
 
 Edwards, A. C., 222 
 Emerson, O. F., 214 
 
 Fansler, Dean S., 221, 225 
 Fisher, John H., 219 
 ‘Former Age,’ 215 
 ‘Fortune,’ 204, 215 
 Franklin’s Tale, 19, 30, 37, 114, 122- 
 33> i7 2 
 
 French, Walter H., 221 
 Friar’s Tale, 114, 134 f., 186 £. 
 Frost, William, 99, 221 
 
 Galway, Margaret, 22, 224 
 General Prologue, 11, 60-70, in, 178 
 Gerould, Gordon H., 48, 50, 52, 
 55 f., 218 
 
 Gower, John, 72, 144, 163 
 
 Ham, Edward B., 221 
 Hammond, Eleanor P., 12, 66, 75 
 Haselmayer, L. A., 217 
 Haskins, C. H., 222 
 Henryson, Robert, 164 
 Hoffman, Arthur W., 220 
 Hotson, Leslie, n, 215 
 ‘Hous of Fame,’ 12, 27, 31 f., 33 f., 
 105, 171, 173, 175, 183 f., 198, 202 
 Hulbert, J. R., 69, 219, 221 
 
 James, Henry, 67, 156, 211 
 Jusserand, J. J., 47 f. 
 
 Kane, George, 130, 221 f. 
 
 Kellogg, A. L., 217 
 Ker, W. P., 79 f., 220 
 Kierkegaard, Soren, 21 
 Kittredge, George L., 54 f., 74 f., 
 
 139, 141, 165, 198, 218, 220, 222 f. 
 Knight’s Tale, 16, 36, 84-104, 172, 
 187, 193, 215 
 central conception, 98-100 
 conclusion, 36, 94-96 
 humor, 89-91 
 inconsistencies, 92 f., 
 merits, 101 f. 
 mixed styles, 87-89 
 shortcomings, 85 f. 
 symmetry, 96 f. 
 
 Kuhl, Ernest P., 216 
 
 Landor, Walter S., 184 
 Langland, William, 39, 70-73 
 Lawrence, W. W., 12, 67, 139, 141, 
 165, 220, 222 
 
 ‘Legend of Good Women,’ 12, 33, 
 43, 118, 171 f. 
 
 Prologue of, 16, 32 f., 104 f., 
 147, 175, 192, 200 f., 215 
 Legouis, Emile, 49, 214, 218 f. 
 Loomis, Roger S., 15, 17, 214 
 Looten, Canon, 221 
 Lounsbury, T. R., 207 f. 
 
 Lowes, John L., 55, 219 
 Lumiansky, Robert M., vi, 57, 219 
 
 Mallarme, Stephane, 108 
 Mallett, Charles E., 222 
 Man of Law’s Tale, 114-20, 171, 
 222 
 
 Manciple’s Prologue, 174 
 Manly, John M., 4, 7, 28, 52, 74, 139, 
 194, 218-21, 223 
 Marckwardt, Albert H., 221 
 Mather, Frank J., 100, 220 
 Mathew Garvase, 219 
 Melibeus, 16 f., 79-81 
 Merchant’s Tale, 173, 210 
 Miller’s Prologue, 174 
 Monk’s Tale, 81 f., 215 
 Moore, Samuel, 216, 224 
 Murry, J. M., 21, 215 
 Muscatine, Charles, 99, 221 
 
 Norris, Dorothy M., 218 
 
INDEX 
 
 229 
 
 Nun’s Priest’s Tale, no, 118, 202, 
 215, 220 f. 
 
 Owen, Charles A., Jr., 222 
 
 Pardoner, Prologue, Tale, 44-59, 217- 
 19 
 
 Parks, George R., 23, 28, 215 f. 
 ‘Parlement of Foules,’ vi f., 36, 119, 
 171, 183, 202, 215 
 Parr, Johnstone, 221 
 Patch, Howard R., 56, 218 f. 
 Pater, Walter, 100 
 Petrarch, 26 f., 120-22, 139, 140, 197, 
 216 
 
 Physician’s Tale, 215 
 Plucknett, T. F. T., 216 
 Pratt, Robert A., 100, 215 f., 221 
 Praz, Mario, 26, 44, 204, 216, 225 
 Prioress’ Tale, 75-79 
 
 Rashdall, Hastings, 136, 222 
 Read, Sir Herbert, 164 
 Rickert, Edith, 23, 215, 220 
 Robertson, D. W., Jr., 154 f., 224 
 Robertson, Stuart, 221 
 Robinson, F. N., n, 15, 49, 55, 74 f., 
 165, 185, 193, 196, 220 f. 
 Roman de la Rose, 106, 204-206, 225 
 Root, Robert K., 75, 81, 159 
 ‘Rosamounde,’ 204 
 
 Savage, Ernest A., 137 
 Schlauch, Margaret, 16, 215 
 
 Scogan, Henry, 9 f. 
 
 Scott, Florence R., 214 
 Scott, Forest S., 224 
 Second Nun’s Prologue, 186 
 Sedgwick, G. G., 47, 49-52, 56, 217 f. 
 Severs, J. Burke, 217, 223 
 ^J&anley, James L., 224 
 Sir £ aw ain and the Green Knight, 
 27 f., 112 
 Sir Thopas, 79 f. 
 
 Skeat, Walter W., 11, 26, 106, 114 
 225 
 
 Sledd, James, 222 
 Smith, Roland M., 119, 222 
 Spencer, Theodore, 225 
 ‘Stedfastnesse,’ 16, 22, 204, 2x1, 215 
 Stevenson, Hazel A., 214 
 Stillwell, Gardiner, 215 
 
 Tatlock, J. S. P., 11, 81, 115 f., 141, 
 143, 145, 159 f., 166, 220, 222, 224 
 Troilus, 10, 42 f., 107, 114, 143-67, 
 172, 176, 185-91, 194-97, 215, 224 
 Tupper, Frederick, 49, 218 
 
 Ward, Adolphus W., 81, 220 
 
 Watts, P. R., 216 
 
 Webb, Henry J., 215 
 
 Wife of Bath’s Tale, 114, 133 f., 196 
 
 Wilkins, Ernest H., 224 
 
 Wilson, H. S., 100, 221 
 
 Yeats, W. B., 177, 181 
 
The Library of Congress has catalogued 
 this book as follows: 
 
 Baum, Pauli Franklin, 1886 - 
 
 Chaucer, a critical appreciation. Durham, 
 University Press, 1958 . 
 
 229 p. 23 cm. 
 
 1. Chancer, Geoffrey, d. 1400. 
 PR1924.B3 821.17 
 
 . C., Duke 
 
 58-12587 t 
 
 Library of Congress 
 
I 
 
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