Geoffrey Chaucer

The Critical Heritage Volume 1 1385-1837

Derek Brewer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134784035
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The Critical Heritage gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling students and researchers to read for themselves, for example, comments on early performances of Shakespeare's plays, or reactions to the first publication of Jane Austen's novels. The carefully selected sources range from landmark essays in the history of criticism to journalism and contemporary opinion, and little published documentary material such as letters and diaries. Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included, in order to demonstrate the fluctuations in an author's reputation. Each volume contains an introduction to the writer's published works, a selected bibliography, and an index of works, authors and subjects. The Collected Critical Heritage will be available as a set of 68 volumes and the series will also be available in mini sets selected by period (in slipcase boxes) and as individual volumes.

Comments

1. EUSTACHE DESCHAMPS, GREAT OVID
c. 1385

Deschamps (1340?-1410?), Chaucer’s exact contemporary, was a notable and enormously productive French court poet. His relations with Chaucer are known only through the following poem. Although Deschamps composed some invectives against the English he obviously valued Chaucer’s work highly, and the Clifford referred to, 1. 29, a distinguished English soldier in the French wars, was presumably a friend. The variety of Chaucer’s genius is praised in a set of comparisons with the authors of Rome (as well as with Socrates), very different from those the Humanists would invoke. The comparison with Ovid is particularly apt, and relatively unusual. The poem exists in only one carelessly copied MS, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, No. 84 0 fonds français, f.lxiia and b; printed in Deschamps, ‘Oeuvres’, ed. le Marquis de Saint-Hilaire and G.Raynaud, Société des Anciens Textes Français, 11 vols, Paris (1878-1904), II, 138-9, and T.A.Jenkins, ‘MLN’ 33 (1918), 268-87, with translation and notes. The poem is intensely artificial and rather difficult. The present translation is the editor’s.

AUTRE BALADE

O Socratès plains de philosophie,
Seneque en meurs, Auglius en pratique,
Ovides grans en ta poëterie,
Briés en parler, saiges en rethorique,
Aigles treshaulz, qui par ta theorique
Enlumines le regne d’Eneas,
L’Isle aux Geans, ceuls de Bruth, et qu’i as
Semé les fleurs et planté le rosier
Aux ignorans de la langue Pandras,
Grant translateur, noble Geoffrey Chaucier;

Tu es d’Amours mondains Dieux en Albie:
Et de la Rose, en la terre Angelique
Qui, d’Angela saxonne, est puis flourie
Angleterre, d’elle ce nom s’applique
Le derrenier en l’ethimologique,
En bon angles le Livre translatas;
Et un vergier, où du plant demandas
De ceuls qui font pour eulx auctorisier,
A ja long temps que tu edifias,
Grand translateur, noble Geffroy Chaucier.

A toy pour ce de la fontaine Helye
Requier avoir un buvraige autentique,
Dont la doys est du tout en ta baillie,
Pour rafrener d’elle ma soif ethique,
Qui en Gaule seray paralitique
Jusques a ce que tu m’ abuveras.
Eustaces sui, qui de mon plant aras:
Mais pran en gré les euvres d’escolier
Que par Clifford de moy avoir pourras,
Grand translateur, noble Gieffroy Chaucier.

L’ENVOY

Poete hault, loënge d’escuîrie,
En ton jardin ne seroie qu’ortie:
Considère ce que j’ay dit premier-
Ton noble plant, ta douce melodie;
Mais, pour sçavoir, de rescripre te prie,
Grant translateur, noble Geffroy Chaucier.

Notes

line 2 MS. et anglux

line 13 MS. et puis line

2 5 MS. Qui men

line 31 MS. destruye (?)

TRANSLATION

O Socrates, full of philosophy, Seneca for morality, for practical life an Aulus Gellius, (1) a great Ovid in your poetry; brief in speech, wise in the art of writing, lofty eagle, who by your science enlighten the kingdom of Aeneas, the island of Giants, of Brutus, (2) who have sown there the flowers (3) and planted the rose-tree (4) for those who are ignorant of French; great translator, noble Geoffrey Chaucer.

You are the god of earthly love in Albion; and in the Angelic land, (5) (which from the Saxon lady Angela has flowered into Angle-land–from her this name is now applied as the last in the series of names) you translate the Book of the Rose; and long since you have set up an orchard, for which you have asked plants from those who make (6) in order to be authorities; (7) great translator, noble Geoffrey Chaucer.

From you therefore, I have sought an authentic drink from the fountain of Helicon (8) whose stream is entirely under your control, to quench from it my feverish thirst; (9) I, who will be paralysed in Gaul until you give me drink. I am Eustace; (10) you shall have some of my plants; (11) accept graciously the schoolboy works which you will receive from me by Clifford; (12) great translator, noble Geoffrey Chaucer.

THE ENVOY

High poet, glory of the esquires, (13) in your garden I should be only a nettle: bear in mind what I said first of your noble plants, your sweet music; for me to realise this, I pray you reply; great translator, noble Geoffrey Chaucer.

---

Notes

1 Aulus Gellius; Roman writer of the miscellaneous ‘Noctes Atticae’, f l. c. 130 AD, well known in the Middle Ages as a lawyer and a literary man, who, like Chaucer (cf. ’The House of Fame’, 643-64) had to do his literary work at night.

2 Brutus; grandson of Aeneas, and legendary founder of Britain, which he conquered from giants.

3 I.e., flowers of poetry.

4 I.e., translated ‘Le Roman de la Rose’.

5 I.e., England.

6 Makers, i.e., poets.

7 I.e., authors of repute.

8 ‘Helicon, mountain of the Muses.

9 Or, ‘ethic thirst’, i.e., thirst for philosophy.

10 Eustace was Deschamps’ own Christian name, but there is also a punning allusion to St Eustace, a type of humili ty.

11 I.e. his verses, which one assumes Chaucer has asked him to send.

12 Sir Lewis Clifford, soldier, courtier, Lollard, friend of Chaucer.

13 The esquires were the general body of minor courtiers and administrative officers of the court. Chaucer was an esquire for many years.

2 . THOMAS USK, LOVE PRAISES THE PHILOSOPHICAL POET

c. 1387

Usk (d. 1388) was a City of London official who became embroiled in factional intrigues and was brutally beheaded. His ‘Testament of Love’ is a long prose treatise imitative of Chaucer’s translation of Boethius’ ‘De Consolatione philosophiae’. No manuscript survives. It was first printed by Thynne in Chaucer’s ‘Workes’, 1532, (from which this text is taken, fol. CCCLlXb), and edited by W.W.Skeat, ‘Chaucerian and Other Pieces’, 1897. In the ‘Testament’ Usk praises Chaucer in the following quotation, but the treatise was nevertheless frequently attributed to Chaucer, and is the source of the biographical nonsense about his imprisonment and betrayal of his friends (which Usk confesses to), and which was accepted as part of Chaucer’s life till the nineteenth century.

[The author asks how God’s foreknowledge may be reconciled with free will.]

(Quod Loue) I shal tel the/this lesson to lerne myne owne trewe seruaunt/the noble philosophical poete/in Englissh/ whiche euermore hym besyeth and trauayleth right sore/my name to encrease/wherefore al that wyllen me good/owe to do him worshyp & reuerence bothe/trewly his better ne his pere in schole of my rules coude I neuer fynde: he (quod she) in a treatise that he made of my seruant Troylus/hath this mater touched/and at the ful this questyon assoyled. Certaynly his noble sayenges can I not amende: In goodnes of gentyl manlyche speche/without any maner of nycite of starieres [sic; read storiers] ymagynacion in wytte and in good reason of sentence he passeth al other makers. In the boke of Troylus/the answere to thy questyon mayste thou lerne.

3 . JOHN GOWER, VENUS SENDS GREETINGS

c. 1390

Gower (c. 1340-1408), gentleman and poet, wrote long poems in Latin and in French, and also ‘Confessio Amantis’ in English, of which the first version, finished about 1390, contains the greeting from Venus quoted. Later versions omit this greeting, more probably because of a rearrangement of the MS. to admit other matter than as the result of a quarrel. Text in ‘Works’, ed. G.C. Macaulay, III (1901), p. 466; Book VIII, 2941-57.

And gret wel Chaucer whan 3e mete,
As mi disciple and mi poete:
ffor in þe floures of his 3ouþe
In sondri wise, as he wel couþe,
Of Ditees and of songes glade,
The whiche he for mi sake made,
The lond fulfild is oueral:
Wherof to him in special
Aboue alle oþre I am most holde.
fforþi now in hise daies olde
Thou schalt him telle þis message,
That he vpon his latere age,
To sette an ende of alle his werk,
As he which is myn owne clerk,
Do make his testament of loue,
As þou hast do þi schrifte aboue,
So þat mi Court it mai recorde.

4. JOHN LYDGATE, THE GOTHIC POET

c. 1400-39

John Lydgate (?1370-?1451) , monk of Bury St Edmunds monastery, was a prolific writer of all kinds of verse, including the dramatic and satiric, only excluding indecent fabliaux. He wrote for noble patrons, and for merchants, for court and city; he composed religious and secular verse, in high and low styles. In his variety, and in his modesty, if not in genius, he exemplifies the Gothic poet. He is also the most tediously verbose of English poets. Nevertheless he knows Chaucer’s works well and has important things to say about them. He knows best ‘The Parliament of Fowls’, ‘Troilus’ and ‘The Knight’s Tale’ (cf. D. Pearsall, ‘John Lydgate’, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970, p. 64) , but perhaps his favourite poem is ‘The Legend of Good Women’, whose Gothic femininity may have counterbalanced his monkish antifeminism. But he several times refers to the Wife of Bath. He makes numerous passing allusions to, or echoes phrases from, practically all Chaucer’s works, not all recorded here. The extracts that follow comprise, however, all Lydgate’s substantial and significant comments. He emphasises Chaucer’s great fame (on which chronicles and political sources are silent) . He claims that Chaucer was the first to make English a rich and flexible instrument (in which there may be more truth than used to be allowed) . He emphasises Chaucer’s rhetorical ability, his gay style, ‘sugrid mouth,’ ‘the golde dewe dropes of speche and eloquence’ which reflect both his linguistic and his rhetorical power–the flowers of rhetoric that first illumined our rude English tongue. Implicit in this is the notion that the poet, though a ‘noble Rethor’ must also please, and depend for a living on a patron, and in his ‘Chapitle of the governance of Poetis’ (g: ‘Fall of Princes’, III, 3837ff.) he is glad to note that prudent Chaucer found virtuous ‘suffisance’ . The poet should be a good man, like any other man, and Lydgate praises his ‘wise, prudent’ master, Chaucer, for his wisdom and science, for writing devoutly, and for his wise saws; but he sees him as a teacher only of the craft of poetry, to poets, not to lead mankind as a whole higher. Lydgate recognises Chaucer’s variety–his desport, morality, knighthood, love, gentillesse, perfect holiness, ribaldry to make laughter–and in the Prologue to ‘The Seige of Thebes’, where Lydgate enumerates the variety, he does his best to indulge in a Chaucerian humour. Lydgate’s own frequent self-depreciation no doubt expresses a genuine and attractive personal modesty–so copious a writer had much to be modest about–but it is also the characteristic stance of the Gothic poet and reflects Chaucer’s own (though so much more subtle) self-depreciatory attitude. Lydgate’s sense of the lameness and ‘rudeness’ of his own metre and his request to the reader to ‘favour’ it suggest that he was sharply conscious, as well he might be, of Chaucer’s superior smoothness. It seems unlikely, to judge from the end of section (c) , that Lydgate had ever actually met Chaucer.

All quotations from material published by the Early English Text Society are made by permission of the Council of the EETS.

(a) ‘The Flower of Courtesy’, c. 1400, ed. W.Thynne, 1532, fol. cclxxxiiiib, stanzas 34-5 (cf. ‘Chaucerian and Other Pieces’, ed. W.W.Skeat, 1897).

(34)

Euer as I can supprise in myn herte
Alway with feare betwyxt drede and shame
Leste oute of lose, any worde asterte
In this metre, to make it seme lame,
Chaucer is deed that had suche a name
Of fayre makyng that [was] without wene
Fayrest in our tonge, as the Laurer grene.

(35)

We may assay forto countrefete
His gay style but it wyl not be;
The welie is drie, with the lycoure swete
Bothe of Clye and of Caliope.

(b) ‘The Life of Our Lady’, c. 1410, ed. J.Lauritis,
R.Klinefelter and V.Gallagher, ‘Dusquesne Studies,
Philological Series’, No 2, Pittsburg, 1961.

And eke my maister Chauser is ygrave
The noble Rethor, poete of Brytayne
That worthy was the laurer to haue
Of poetrye, and the palme atteyne
That made firste, to distille and rayne
The golde dewe dropes of speche and eloquence
Into our tunge, thurgh his excellence

And fonde the floures, firste of Retoryke
Our Rude speche, only to enlumyne
That in our tunge, was neuere noon hym like
For as the sonne, dothe in hevyn shyne
In mydday spere, dovne to vs by lyne
In whose presence, no ster may a pere
Right so his dytes withoutyn eny pere
Euery makyng withe his light disteyne
In sothefastnesse, who so takethe hede
Wherefore no wondre, thof my hert pleyne
Vpon his dethe, and for sorowe blede
For want of hym, nowe in my grete nede
That shulde alas, conveye and directe
And with his supporte, amende eke and corecte

The wronge traces, of my rude penne
There as I erre, and goo not lyne Right
But for that he, ne may not me kenne
I can no more, but with all my myght
With all myne hert, and myne Inwarde sight
Pray for hym, that liethe nowe in his cheste
To god above, to yeve his saule goode reste

(c) ‘Troy Book’, 1412-20, ed. H.Bergen, Early English Text
Society (EETS) , ES 97, 103, 106, 126 (1906-20).

And ouermore to tellen of Cryseyde
Mi penne stumbleþ for longe or he deyde
My maister Chaucer dide his dilligence
To discryve þe gret excellence
Of hir bewte and þat so maisterly
To take on me it were but hi3e foly
In any wise to adde more þer-to;
For wel I wot, anoon as I haue do,
þat I in soth no Jsanke disserue may,
Because þat he in writyng was so gay....

Gret cause haue I & mater to compleyne
On Antropos & vp-on hir envie,
þat brak þe þrede & made for to dye
Noble Galfride, poete of Breteyne,
Amonge oure englisch þat made first to reyne
þe gold dewe-dropis of rethorik so fyne,
Oure rude langage only tenlwmyne.
To God I pray, þat he his soule haue,
After whos help of nede I most [e] crave,
And seke his boke þat is left be-hynde
Som goodly worde þer-in for to fynde,
To set...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• GENERAL EDITOR’S PREFACE
• INTRODUCTION
• COMMENTS
• CHAPTER II REPUTATION OF CHAUCER IN VARIOUS AGES
• CHAPTER IV OBSERVATIONS ON SOME OF THE PRINCIPAL OF CHAUCER’S EARLIER POEMS
• CHAPTER V HOW FAR, AND IN WHAT SENSE, THE CANTERBURY PILGRIMAGE MAY BE REGARDED AS DRAMATIC-CHARACTERS OF THE PILGRIMS GENERAL REMARKS ON THE TALES