Unit 1 - Medieval Poetry

1.1 INTRODUCTION

The term ‘Middle Ages’ is known to have originated sometime in the fifteenth century. Scholars in those days—mainly in Italy—were engaged in an exhilarating movement of art and philosophy. They viewed themselves stepping into a new era, reviving the long-forgotten culture of ‘classical’ Greece and Rome. This period, that lay in between the ancient era and their own was called the ‘middle’ age. Unfortunately, they ridiculed it besides dissociating themselves from it as well.

Ultimately, the term and its adjective associate, ‘medieval’ started to become popular. However, in case the period of time that fell under the term was never clearly marked, the selected dates were never unquestionable. It may appear logical to be ending the age at the juncture where scholars started viewing themselves in a different light; but, this could bring us to the assumption that they were right in viewing themselves so. However, it can be seen that this was not essentially the case.

Presently, there are no specific dates with the historians, authors and educators which mark the beginning and end of the medieval era. The duration that is most popularly concluded upon is estimated to be between 500 –1500 C.E. However, one can frequently see differences in the dates of significance that mark the era’s parameters.

The causes for this ambiguity gain a slight advantage, under the consideration that the Middle Ages as a time of study has evolved over centuries of scholarship. Medieval times were initially known as the ‘Dark Age’, followed by being known as a ‘Romantic Era’ and then the ‘Age of Faith’. Historians and writers of the twentieth century viewed it as an era which was complicated and comprehensive, with several scholars pursuing new and more fascinating topics. Every view of the Middle Ages had its own defining characteristics, which in turn had its own turning points and associated dates.

The period that extended from 1066 to 1485, is significant for the widespread influence of French literature on native English forms and themes. From the Norman–French conquest of England in 1066 until the 14th century, French was rapidly replacing English in general literary composition. The role of Latin as the language of learned works stayed. The fourteenth century, saw the English language regaining its lost popularity mainly among the ruling strata. However, by this time most of its Old English inflectional system had gone. Besides, the sound changes that it went through made it to acquire the characteristics that it now continues to possess—of liberally take into the native stock many foreign words, in this case, French and Latin ones. Thus, the various dialect of Middle English that became colloquial in the fourteenth century were similar to the Modern English, the reading of which can be done easily even today.

Middle English literature during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is considerably diverse in comparison to the earlier Old English literature. Several French and also Italian rudiments influenced the Middle English literature, most significantly so, in southern England. Moreover, they took care in maintaining the styles of several regions, as literature and learning still needed to undergo standardization. These reasons and also the dynamic and irregular growth of national life, made the Middle English period to possess a wealth of literary monuments, the categorization of which is not that easy.

It was during this period, when a poet named Geoffrey Chaucer, rose to fame. Chaucer who is also known as the ‘Father of English Literature’, besides the other authors of the age, is given the credit for assisting in the standardization of the Middle English language. Middle English was an amalgamation of the Kentish and Midlands dialects. However, there is a great possibility of this being an overestimation of his works. Standard English is known to have developed, more probably, by the influence of the court, chancery and bureaucracy—of which Chaucer was a part. There is a distance between the Modern English and the language of Chaucer’s poetry. This distance was a result of the influence of the Great Vowel Shift, which took place shortly after his death. This change in the dialect and pronunciation of the English language renders the studying of Chaucer’s literary works, tough for the modern reader.

In this unit, you will learn about poetry in the Middle Ages and Chaucer as a poet.

Objectives

After studying this unit, you should be able to:

· trace the history of English poetry to the medieval age

understand the significance of Chaucer as a poet

1.2 ENGLISH LITERATURE: A BRIEF PREVIEW

English literature is the literature that originated in England. It can be traced back to the time when the Anglo-Saxons introduced the Ancient English during the 5th century till the current times. The writings of those Irish and Scottish authors that are almost identifiable with English life and letters are also considered as a portion of English literature

The duration of this period is, in approximate terms from 450 to 1066, the time when the Norman–French invaded England. The very basis of what we today call Modern English, was laid by the Germanic tribes from Europe. The Germanic tribes in order to populate England in the 5th century, after the Romans withdrew their troops, carried with them the Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, language, which formed the foundation of Modern English. They even carried a particular poetic tradition. Its formal nature continued to be amazingly unvarying until their reign ended by the Norman–French invasion after six centuries.

The 12th century witnessed the development of a new kind of English, presently called the Middle English. This was the first form of English literature, which although can be understood by modern readers and listeners, cannot be done so effortlessly. Middle English continues until the 1470s. This was when the Chancery Standard, a kind of London-based English, grew popular and the printing press standardized the language. Middle English Bible translations, notably Wyclif's Bible, enabled the establishment of English as a literary language.

Self-Assessment Questions

1. English literature is the literature that was produced in ________.

2. The very basis of what we today call Modern English, was laid by the ______ _____ from Europe.

3. The 12th century witnessed the development of a new kind of English, presently called the _______ _______.

4. Middle English can be easily understood by modern readers. (True/False)

1.3 MEDIEVAL POETRY

The oldest poetry, that is known to have survived, is generally presumed to be from the region that is presently called England. There is a great likelihood, of the poetry spreading through the oral method, later being written in versions. These versions are not present anymore. Therefore, giving a specific date for the oldest form of poetry continues to remain a challenge and a reason for controversy. The oldest manuscripts, that are known to be surviving till date, can be traced back to the tenth century. Poetry in Latin, Brythonic (an antecedent language of Welsh) and Old Irish continues to remain and can be traced back to as early as the sixth century. The oldest form of poetry that is known to have survived till date, composed in Anglo-Saxon, that happens to be the immediate antecedent of modern English, could have been written as early as the seventh century.

Most of the old English poetry was mostly meant to be chanted, to the accompaniment of the harp, by the Anglo-Saxon scop, or bard. Generally bold and strong, and at the same time mournful and gloomy in spirit, the old English poetry laid emphasis on the sadness and eventual pointlessness of life. It also showed the ultimate victory of fate over human life. This poetry was composed, without any rhyme scheme, in a typical line, or verse of four stressed syllables that alternated with an indefinite number of unstressed ones. The line struck strangely on the ears that had got used to the general modern pattern. In this kind of poetry, the rhythmical unit or foot, in theory had a fixed number (either one or two) of unaccented syllables. These paved the way or pursued any stressed syllable. Yet another new but a similar incredible structure in the formal structure of Old English poetry is structural alliteration. Structural alliteration is the usage of syllables with similar sounds in two or three of the stresses in every line.

All these features of form and spirit are shown in the epic poem ‘Beowulf’. The poem was written in the eighth century. It starts and concludes with the funeral of a mighty king, with an impending disaster forming its backdrop. It describes the bravery and heroism of a Scandinavian cultural hero, Beowulf. He is the protagonist, and the story describes his exploits, his victory over the villain—monster Grendel, his mother and a fire-breathing dragon. Beowulf, in the series is portrayed not only as a worthy hero, but also as the one who has the power in him to redeem mankind. The series also portrays the mutual devotion between a leader and his disciples, which is also an ancient Germanic moral value, in a manner that touches the soul. An excellent example of this is the part where, Beowulf sacrifices his life, with those that deserted him in this war, being profusely accused. This also forms the climax of the story. The kind of creativity used in this story was not accepted till recently. This creativity involved the incorporation of various stories of heroism for illuminating the main action. This resulted in the entire plot getting reduced to symmetry.
Another feature that this story portrays is that of the declining intellect besides emphasizing on the aspect of an uncertain future that awaits mankind. The story also introduces the Christian faith that believes that God is a just God and deals with every human being in a just manner. He is a God of justice. This religious aspect can also be seen in other ancient English literature, which has been preserved by monastic copyists. Many of the literary works were written by religious authors thereby resulting in the conversion of people from their faith in the ancient Germanic gods. Besides these religious works of art, Old English poets produced a number of similar lyrical poems of shorter length. These poems do not have any particular Christian doctrine and they evoke the Anglo–Saxon sense of the severity of situation and the grief of the human race. ‘The Wanderer’ and ‘The Seafarer’ are among the most beautiful of this group of Old English poems.

Beowulf has no ‘English’ characters. Scholars and authors from England did not have any clue about the poem, before its discovery and subsequent editing in the nineteenth century. Though the work was originally composed in a language, named, ‘Anglo–Saxon’, Danish and German made their claims as the poem being their oldest national the poem. Subsequently, it came to be recognized as an ‘Old English’ poem. A consequence of the Norman Conquest was that the structure and vocabulary of the English language got modified to a great extent. The change was so great that Chaucer, despite seeing a manuscript of Old English poetry, may have found it much more difficult to construe the language as compared to construing works written in medieval Latin, French or Italian. In case there was actually ever a King Arthur, he probably might have conversed in a Celtic language that would have probably made sense to the original speakers of Middle Welsh but not to Middle English speakers.

1.3.1 Alliteration

The northern and western parts of England saw poems written in a style that were much similar to the Old English alliterative, four-stress lines, in form. William Langland’s Piers Plowman is considered by many critics to be one of the early great works of English literature along with Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (most likely by the Pearl Poet) during the Middle Ages. Let us take a look at these poems:

· The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman, better known as Piers Plowman, is the most famous poem of this form. Many believe that the poem was composed by William Langland. It is a lengthy, tedious work in the form of dream visions (a favourite literary device of the day), which spoke about the condition of the poor, protesting it, the pride of the powerful and the sinfulness of human beings as a whole. The stress, however, is placed on a Christian vision of the life of activity, of the life of union with God and of the merging of these two under the rule of a purified church. As such, in spite of its many flaws, it bears a striking comparison with the other great Christian visionary poem, La divina commedia (The Divine Comedy), by Dante. For both, the mottos are ‘heavenly love’ and ‘love operative’ in this world.

· Another shorter alliterative vision poem, is The Pearl. It was written in north–west England in approximately 1370. This poem too has doctrines, but the poet has been mindful to keep the tone of the poem delightful and much more purposely artistic. The poem which is an elegy on the death of a young girl (although widely differing religious allegorical interpretations have been recommended for it), describes the glorious state of childlike innocence in heaven. It emphasizes on the need for all souls to be as children for entering the pearly gates of the New Jerusalem. The poem concludes with an incredible vision of heaven, from which the dreamer awakes. In general, poetry and prose that expressed a mystical yearning for and union with the divine was a common characteristic of the late Middle Ages, particularly in northern England.

· A third alliterative poem, probably by the same anonymous author who wrote The Pearl, is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (late 1300s). The poem is a romantic one—of knightly adventure and love, of the usual medieval kind ushered in by the French. A majority of the English romantic works were obtained, as this one evidently was, from French sources. A majority of these sources have to do with the knights of King Arthur. The works seem to go back in time to the Celtic tales of great ancient times. The work Sir Gawain, against a backdrop of chivalric valour, speaks about a knight's strong will as he resists the advances and persuasions of another man’s lovely wife. It is also the first allusion to a literary tradition of the legendary English archer, swordsman and outlaw Robin Hood.

Middle English Literature can be divided into three primary classes: Religious, Courtly love and Arthurian.

The most notable Middle English author was Geoffrey Chaucer. In the fifteenth century, a number of writers were greatly influenced by Chaucer. However, in general, medieval literary themes and styles had got exhausted in this period. Sir Thomas Malory, is famous for his great work, Le morte d'Arthur (The Death of Arthur, 1469–1470). The work saw the continuation of the tradition of Arthurian romance. This was taken from French sources. He loosely tied the tales of the different knights of the Round Table together. However, the story that creates the greatest impact is that of Arthur himself, of Galahad and of the forbidden love of Lancelot and Arthur’s queen, Guinevere. Despite there being a variety of events and complexities of plot in his work, the theme calls for the sacrificing of individual desire for the sake of national unity and religious salvation. The latter is envisioned in terms of the dreamlike but intensely mystical symbolism of the Holy Grail. Some of the romantic poems
of the times are as follows:

· One of the first poems to be written in a romantic form was La Chanson de Roland (the Song of Roland)— an epic about the nephew of Charlemagne. Scenes at the battlefield were converted into those of ideal love.

· Arthurian legends carried the tale of Tristan and Iseult. A complete copy of this poem does not exist. Composed in French and surviving till today, present German translations helped in putting together this poem of overpowering guilty passions.

· Aucassin and Nicolette, the author of which is unknown, was one of the first to narrate a love story with a blissful conclusion. Aucaussin, son of a noble Provencal count, falls in love with Nicolette, the captive servant and goddaughter of a neighbouring nobleman. The work concludes with the revelation that Nicolette is actually the daughter of the King of Carthage—she happened to be a princess.

· Le Roman de la Rose (Story of the Rose) was an allegory of a love affair. What was strange about this poem was the fact that in it the central characters do not ever come out as real people. Instead they come out as different voices that represent their characteristics. This style was extremely famous, dictating a style that would be copied in France and England for two centuries.

· The troubadors and the minstrels helped in spreading romantic stories of courtly love in the whole of medieval Europe. This new poem used language that was actually supposed to be sung to the accompaniment of musical instruments. These musical instruments were obtained from the crusades. This became the latest style of expressive writing.

1.3.2 WORKS DURING THE MIDDLE AGES

The Middle Ages is like no other period in The Norton Anthology of English Literature in terms of the time span it covers. Caedmon’s Hymn, the earliest English poem to survive as a text belongs to the latter part of the seventh century. The morality play, Everyman, states the date as ‘after 1485’ and there is great likelihood of it belonging to the early sixteenth century. Besides, the absence of any central event, for instance, the English Reformation, the Civil War, or the Restoration, did not allow for any of the works to be established on the historical approach to the period.

English literature is a construction of literary history, a concept that changed over time. The literary culture during the Middle Ages happened to be international to a very great extent as compared to it being national. Its divisions were more on the basis of class and audience than language. It was the church that used Latin to communicate and it was also the language used by scholars and intellectuals. Following the eleventh century, it was the French language that gained more importance, becoming the main language of secular European literary culture. The king of France was taken as a prisoner by Edward, the Prince of Wales. This took place at the battle of Poitiers in 1356. The prince shared common interests with his royal prisoner rather than his own people—the people of England. The legendary King Arthur is an international figure. Tales about him and his knights were initiated in the Celtic poems. The tales saw their adaptation and expansion in Latin chronicles and French romances, much before Arthur gained the status of an English hero.

The texts that form a part of this belong to ‘The Middle Ages’ and they make fervent attempts at conveying the diversity. The works can be traced from the 6th to the late 15th century. 8 were initially in Old French, 6 in Latin, 5 in English, 2 in Old Saxon, 2 in Old Icelandic besides 1each in Catalan, Hebrew, Greek and Arabic.

‘The Linguistic and Literary Contexts of Beowulf’ exhibits the affinity between the Anglo-Saxon poem and the versification and literature of various beginning branches of the Germanic language group. An Anglo–Saxon poet, while composing his work, the basis of which was the book of Genesis from the ‘Holy Bible’ could also somehow, include in his writing the incidents of the fall of the angels and also of man. He had actually taken these episodes, making a few minor changes to it, from an Old Saxon poem. This poem was actually considered lost, till some parts of it were discovered in the later part of the 19^th century, in the Vatican library. Germanic mythology and legend that have been kept under preservation in the Old Icelandic literature many centuries after Beowulf , give us an improved insight into stories that the poet knew as compared to anything in ancient Greek and Roman epic poetry.

Great emphasis was laid on religious orders and ascetic ideals. These were what ruled the lives of men and women in the religious society (like Chaucer’s Prioress, Monk and Friar, who honour those rules more in the breach than in the observance) and anchorites (like Julian of Norwich) living apart. The Rule of Saint Benedict, composed for a 6^th century religious community, may help the modern reader by serving as a guidebook to the ideals and daily practices of monastic life. The reciprocal effect of those principles and new aristocratic principles of chivalry can be seen prominently in the selection from the Ancrene Riwle (Rule for Anchoresses, NAEL 8, [1.157–159]) and The Book of the Order of Chivalry. Medieval social theory does not make too much mention of women, but women were at times given a satiric treatment. It was as if they formed their own estate and profession, in order to revolt against, who people believed, were specially ordained by heaven. A brilliant example is the ‘Old Woman’ in the Romance of the Rose, who saw her incarnation by Chaucer, as the Wife of Bath. The 10^th century English Benedictine monk Aelfric has come up with one of the earliest formulations of the theory of three estates—clergy, nobles and commoners—who worked in harmony with each other and were always at peace. However, the seething bitterness between the upper and lower estates burst out in a dramatic manner in the Uprising of 138. It was revealed by the slogans of the rebels, given here in selections from the chronicles of Henry Knighton and Thomas Walsingham, and by the attack of the poet John Gower on the rebels in his Vox Clamantis. In the late-medieval genre of estates satire, all three estates are projected as selfishly corrupting and disrupting a mythical social order believed to have prevailed in a past happier age.

The selections under ‘Arthur and Gawain’ can be seen to be tracing the way in which French writers in the 12th and 13th centuries changed the Legendary Histories of Britain (NAEL 8 , 1.117–128) into the narrative genre, presently called ‘romance’. The writings of Chrétien de Troyes are centered on the adventures of each knight of the Round Table and the way in which their expeditions are seen to be intruding upon the cult of chivalry. These kind of ventures frequently assumed the shape of a quest for achieving honour or that which Sir Thomas Malory frequently makes references to as ‘worship’. However, in romance, the adventurous quest is frequently combined, for better or for worse, with personal fulfillment of love for a lady—accomplishing her love, guarding her honour and in certain rare cases, for example, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, meeting a lady’s advances with stiff resistance. In the 13th century, the sagas of Arthur and his knights were immensley transformed — especially Sir Lancelot—into extremely long prose romances. These romances ridiculed worldly chivalry and the love of women and took to advocating spiritual chivalry and sexual purity. These were the ‘French books’ that Malory, as his editor and printer William Caxton tells us, ‘abridged into English’, giving them the definitive form from which Arthurian literature has survived in poetry, prose, art and film into modern times.

‘The First Crusade’, that was initiated in 1096, was the first in a series of holy wars which deeply influenced the philosophy and culture of Christian Europe. Pope Urban II who was the preacher, propogated, that the crusade’s objective was that of uniting Christian factions, that were at war with each other, into the same objective—liberation of the Holy Land from its Moslem rulers. The chronicle of Robert the Monk is one of the several versions of Urban’s address. The Hebrew chronicle of Eliezer bar Nathan provides a heart-rending explanation of the attacks on the Jewish communities in Rhineland by certain crusaders. This was the beginning of trouble for the European Jews in the later Middle Ages. In the biography of her father, the Byzantine emperor Alexius I, the princess Anna Comnena provides us with yet another viewpoint of the leaders of the First Crusade whom she met on their passage through Constantinople en route to the Holy Land. European authors of history and epic poems began to celebrate the capture of Jerusalem by the crusaders as being one among the supreme heroic accomplishment of all times. The accounts by the Arab historian, Ibn Al-Athir and by William of Tyre state the events that took place post the crusaders breaching the walls of Jerusalem from complementary but very different points of view.

1.3.3 SALIENT FEATURES OF MEDIEVAL POETRY

The salient features of medieval poetry can be listed as follows:

Since manuscript paper was very expensive in the medieval period, much of the poetry that survives till the present is religious. The primary exception to this was the poem songs of the Troubadours which sang of courtly love.
Much of the verse that survived was set to music. They were actually ballads. Latin being popular among the elite and educated classes, soon became the chosen language for poems.

The period following the medieval period was the Renaissance. It would be of great use for to know what changes in the medieval period brought about great works during the Renaissance, which are as follows:

The use of vernacular or the language of the common people grew.
The setting of epic stories set in the local area that dealt with legends and history. Moreover, their design was such that they created a national identity.
Liberty from the restrictions of Latin gave them freedom of innovation. It specifically applied to German poetry as the influence of Latin on it was not much.
However, literature is not complete without the mention of ‘Chanson de geste’. The epic poems made their appearance at the dawn of French literature and glorified heroic deeds. There was much mention of Charles Martel, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious. They stressed majorly on the battles with the Moors and the Saracens.

With the passage of time, there was a decline in the subjects of history and military, as topics for writing. Instead, more fantastic stories including monsters, giants and magic started replacing them.

Self-Assessment Questions

5. The oldest manuscripts, that are known to be surviving till date, can be traced back to the ______ ______.

6. ________ __________is the usage of syllables with similar sounds in two or three of the stresses in every line.

7. Most of the old English poetry was mostly meant to be chanted. (True/False)

8. A majority of the English romantic works such as, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, were obtained from (Pick the right option)

(a) Italian sources

(b) French sources

(d) Unknown sources

1.4 Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer, more popularly known, as the ‘Father of English Literature’, is the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages. He was the first poet who was buried in Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey. Chaucer gained popularity during his lifespan as a philosopher, alchemist author and astronomer. He also composed a scientific exposition on the astrolabe for his son who was 10 year-old, namely Lewis. He was even known to maintain an active career in the civil service as a bureaucrat, courtier and diplomat. His compositions include The Book of the Duchess, the House of Fame, the Legend of Good Women and Troilus and Criseyde. However, his most famous work remains The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer played a prominent role in making the colloquial language legal. He did this during the time when languages such as French and Latin dominated England.

Chaucer was certainly familiar with poetry that had its roots in the Old English period. He read popular romances in Middle English, most of which were derivatives of the more sophisticated French and Italian sources. However, during the 1360s and 70s, when he actually started to compose his works, he straightaway looked for inspiration from the French and Italian models besides the classical poets (specially Ovid). English poets, during the 15th and 16th centuries, considered Chaucer and the contemporary, John Gower, as the ones who had founded English literature. They were the ones who were credited as the ones responsible for making English language, suitable for educated readers. The Renaissance called Chaucer as the ‘English Homer’, while Spenser referred to him as the ‘well of English undefiled’.

Nonetheless, Chaucer and other contemporary poets, such as, Langland, Gower and the Gawain poet, wrote in the later third of the 14th century. Each one of these poets is considered to be the heir to classical and medieval cultures, which was undergoing evolution for several centuries. The deliberate use of the plural cultures, leaves no room even for that part of the medieval thinkers, who had the tendency to refer to the Middle Ages as one culture. The age was symbolized by the Great Gothic cathedrals, wherein architecture, art, music and liturgy appeared as if joining in splendid expressions of a united faith — an approach, referred by a recent scholar as ‘cathedralism’. This viewpoint ignores the variety of medieval cultures as well as the political, social, religious, economic and technological changes that occurred during this greatly long period.

The Canterbury Tales was Chaucer’s masterwork, and a soaring accomplishment of Western culture. He was the first to associate Valentine’s Day with romantic love as can be seen in his Parlement of Foules 1382.

The multilingual audience for literature in the fourteenth century can be demonstrated by the example of John Gower, who works were written in Latin, Middle English and Anglo-Norman. The Katherine Group and the writings of Julian of Norwich and Richard Rolle also belong to many religious works of literature.

Till at least the fourteenth century, poetry in English was written in Ireland and by Irish writers in foreign countries. The first poem in English by a Welsh poet can be traced back to approximately 1470.

There are two more prominent non-alliterative verse romances which form part of the work of Geoffrey Chaucer—Troilus and Criseyde (written in about1385) and The Knight’s Tale (1382, which became a part of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales). The former is known to penetrate psychology. It is a story of the lethal course of a noble love, set in Homeric Troy and is based on Il filostrato, a romance by the fourteenth century Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio. The Knight’s Tale also was said to be based on Boccacio.

Immensely busy with his court life and given the charge of handling several governmental duties that saw him travel as far as Italy, Chaucer somehow did find time for translating French and Latin works. He also found time for writing under French influence several secular vision poems of a semi-allegorical nature (The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, The Parliament of Fowls) and, above all, to compose The Canterbury Tales (probably after 1387). This later work contains twenty-four stories or parts of stories (mostly in verse in almost all the medieval genres) recounted by Chaucer through the mouths and in the several manners of a group of pilgrims bound for Canterbury Cathedral, who represented a majority of the classes of medieval England. Marked by an extraordinary sense of life and fertility of invention, these narratives range from The Knight's Tale to the sometimes indelicate but significant tales of low life. Moreover, they concern a host of subjects: religious innocence, married chastity, villainous hypocrisy, female volubility—all illumined by great humour. With extraordinary artistry the stories are made to characterize their tellers.

1.4.1 Chaucer’s Life

Geoffrey Chaucer was born in London, in approximately 1343. However, the exact date and his birthplace are not yet known. Both his father and grandfather were London vintners; several previous generations had been merchants in Ipswich (His family name is derived from the French chausseur, which means ‘shoemaker’.). In 1324, John Chaucer, Geoffrey’s father, was abducted by one of his aunts. She wanted to marry the 12-year-old boy to her daughter so that the property coud be retained in Ipswich. For doing this, his aunt was put in the prison. A fine of £250 that they paid, shows that the family was well-off—bourgeois, though not elite. John Chaucer married Agnes Copton. In 1349, a huge amount of property came to her as inheritance that included twenty-four shops in London, from her uncle, Hamo de Copton. His description according to a will with date April 3, 1354 found in the list in the City Hustings Roll is that of a ‘moneyer’; it is said that he was a moneyer at the Tower of London. In the City Hustings Roll 110, 5, Ric II, June 1380, Geoffrey Chaucer is known to refer to himself as ‘me Galfridum Chaucer, filium Johannis Chaucer, Vinetarii, Londonie’.

There are almost no documents that record the years of other poets of Chaucer’s times, such as, William Langland and the Pearl poet. On the other hand, Chaucer’s life is well documented. There are almost 500 items in writing that speak about his career. One of the reasons for this is also because he was a public servant. The first of the ‘Chaucer Life Records’ appeared in 1357. It appeared in the household records of Elizabeth de Burgh, the Countess of Ulster. Chaucer was the page of the noblewoman; a position which he attained with the help of associations of his father. Her husband was Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the second living son of King Edward III. The status resulted in the introduction of the teenaged Chaucer, to the close court circle. It was here that he remained for the remaining part of his life. He also worked as a courtier, a diplomat, and a civil servant, as well as working for the king, collecting and inventorying scrap metal.

In 1359, in the initial times of the Hundred Years’ War, after the invasion of France, Edward III and Chaucer went on a tour with Lionel of Antwerp, first Duke of Clarence, Elizabeth’s husband, as part of the English army. It was during 1360, that Chaucer was taken captive in the siege of Rheims. A significant amount of £16 was paid by Edward as ransom for the release of Chaucer.

A clear account of Chaucer’s life is not known. However, it is believed that je took to extensive travelling, visiting places, such as, France, Spain and Flanders. He visited these places as a messenger. He probably even undertook a pilgrimage journey to Santiago de Compostela. Sometime in 1366, Chaucer married Philippa (de) Roet. She was the lady-in-waiting for Edward III’s queen, Philippa of Hainault, and a sister of Katherine Swynford, subsequently who became (ca. 1396) became the third wife of John of Gaunt. As for the children of Chaucer and Philippa, nothing is known clearly, although there are common references to around three or four children.

It is believed that Chaucer studied law in the Inner Temple (an Inn of Court). He gained membership of the kingly court of Edward III by attaining the post of a varlet de chambre, yeoman, or esquire on 20 June 1367. This post endowed upon him diverse responsibilities. Chaucer’s wife to got a pension for being employed in the court. He went on voyages out of his country to far-off places, several times, and at least some of them were in the status of a valet. In 1368, Chaucer probably was present at the marriage of Lionel of Antwerp with Violante Visconti, in Milan. The bride’s father was Galeazzo II Visconti. Two more extremely popular people of the literary age too attended the wedding, namely, Jean Froissart and Petrarch. It is believed, that it was sometime during this time, that Chaucer composed The Book of the Duchess to honour Blanche of Lancaster, the late wife of John of Gaunt, who died in 1369.

Chaucer then took up a travel to Picardy, in the subsequent year as a part of a military mission, visiting Genoa and Florence in 1373. Several scholars, such as, Skeat, Boitani, and Rowland recommended that, it was during this Italian trip that he came across Petrarch or Boccaccio. It was they who showed him the world of medieval Italian poetry, the forms and stories that he purposed to bring into use subsequently. There are mysteries concerning the reasons for Chaucer’s expedition during 1377, since the facts given in the historical record are contradictory. Records of later times state that it was a mission, in partnership with Jean Froissart, of arranging a matrimonial alliance between the future King Richard II and a French princess. They believed that this alliance would bring an end to the Hundred Years War. In case, the reason was actually this, then their trip appears to not have brought them much success since nothing of the sort really did occur.

During the year 1378, Richard II sent Chaucer as a representative (secret dispatch) to the Visconti and to Sir John Hawkwood, English condottiere (mercenary leader) in Milan. According to speculations, it was Hawkwood who was depicted by Chaucer as the Knight in the Canterbury Tales, for the way Chaucer has described the Knight bears resemblance with that of a 14^th century condottiere.

1.4.2 A Nineteenth Century Depiction of Chaucer

Chaucer was given the grant of ‘a gallon of wine daily for the rest of his life’ by Edward III for some unknown task. This indicated that Chaucer was praised as an author. This grant was not a usual one, but since it was done on a day of celebration, St George’s Day, 1374, when artistic accomplishments were traditionally rewarded, it was presumed to be another early poetic writing. As to which of Chaucer’s work earned him the grant is unknown, but his being the poet to a king makes him a predecessor to the poet laureates who arrived later. Chaucer kept on collecting the liquid stipend till Richard II’s ascension to the throne, following which it was changed to a monetary grant on 18 April 1378.

Chaucer procured the post of Comptroller of the Customs for the port of London. He started work in this capacity on 8 June 1374. It was known to be a very significant post. It is believed that he might have fit into the role easily as he held the post for 12 years which was considered to be a long duration in those days. There are no records for the next ten years of his life after this. However, it is said that a majority of his popular compositions were composed at this time. The law papers, dated, 4 May 1380 state his involvement in the raptus of Cecilia Chaumpaigne. The meaning of raptus is not clear; however, it appears that the issue was settled very soon, leaving Chaucer’s image untarnished. Whether Chaucer was present or not in London during the Peasant’s Revolt is unknown; but in case he was there, he would have witnessed its leaders walk directly under his apartment window at Aldgate.

While still working as comptroller, Chaucer appears to have moved to Kent, being appointed as one of the commissioners of peace for Kent, at a time when French invasion was a possibility. He is thought to have started work on The Canterbury Tales in the early 1380s. He also became a Member of Parliament for Kent in 1386. There is no further reference after this date to Philippa, Chaucer’s wife, and she is presumed to have died in 1387. He survived the political upheavals caused by the Lords Appellants, despite the fact that Chaucer knew some of the men executed over the affair quite well.

On 12 July 1389, Chaucer was appointed the clerk of the king’s works, a kind of foreman who was responsible for the organization of most of the king’s building projects. No major works were begun during his tenure, but he did conduct repairs on Westminster Palace, St. George's Chapel, Windsor, continue building the wharf at the Tower of London, and build the stands for a tournament held in 1390. It may have been a difficult job, but it paid well: two shillings a day, more than three times his salary as a comptroller. Chaucer was also appointed keeper of the lodge at the King’s park in Feckenham, which was a largely honorary appointment.

In September 1390, records say that he was robbed, and possibly injured, while conducting the business, and it was shortly after, on 17 June 1391, that he stopped working in this capacity. Almost immediately, on 22 June, he began as deputy forester in the royal forest of North Petherton, Somerset. This was no sinecure, with maintenance an important part of the job, although there were many opportunities to derive profit. He was granted an annual pension of twenty pounds by Richard II in 1394. It is believed that Chaucer stopped work on the Canterbury Tales sometime towards the end of this decade.

Not long after the overthrow of his patron, Richard II, in 1399, Chaucer's name fades from the historical record. The last few records of his life show his pension renewed by the new king, and his taking of a lease on a residence within the close of Westminster Abbey on 24 December 1399. Although Henry IV renewed the grants assigned to Chaucer by Richard, Chaucer's own The Complaint of Chaucer to his Purse hints that the grants might not have been paid. The last mention of Chaucer is on 5 June 1400, when some monies owed to him were paid.

He is believed to have died of unknown causes on 25 October 1400, but there is no firm evidence for this date, as it comes from the engraving on his tomb, erected more than one hundred years after his death. There is some speculation—most recently in Terry Jones' book Who Murdered Chaucer? : A Medieval Mystery—that he was murdered by enemies of Richard II or even on the orders of his successor Henry IV, but the case is entirely circumstantial. Chaucer was buried in Westminster Abbey in London, as was his right owing to his status as a tenant of the Abbey's close. In 1556, his remains were transferred to a more ornate tomb, making Chaucer the first writer interred in the area now known as Poets' Corner.

1.4.3 Works

The first main composition of Chaucer was The Book of the Duchess—an elegy for Blanche of Lancaster (death: 1369). There are presumptions stating that the composition was probably funded by her husband John of Gaunt, because he gave a grant of £10 annuity to Chaucer on 13 June 1374. According to this, the composition is estimated to have been written sometime during the years 1369 and 1374. Chaucer wrote two other compositions in the early times, namely, Anelida and Arcite and The House of Fame. Chaucer wrote many of his major works in a prolific period when he held the job of customs comptroller for London (1374 to 1386). His Parlement of Foules, The Legend of Good Women and Troilus and Criseyde belong to this time. It is even believed that he began writing The Canterbury Tales in the early 1380s. Chaucer is most popular as the author of The Canterbury Tales. It is a collection of stories narrated by fictional pilgrims while they are travelling towards the cathedral at Canterbury; these tales helped in the shaping of English literature.

The Canterbury Tales is in stark contrast with other literature of the period in the way it’s been narrated naturally, the diversity of tales that each pilgrim narrates and the various characters that are a part of the pilgrimage. Several tales told by the pilgrims appear to befit their own nature and their position in the society. On the other hand, there are some tales that do not suit their personal nature and social status. The reason could be the partial completion of the work. Chaucer’s pilgrims belonged to actual life; the innkeeper’s name is the same as that of an inkeeper in Southwark. There have been suggestions that state that the Wife of Bath, the Merchant, the Man of Law and the Student all bear resemblances to people from real life. The several posts that Chaucer worked as—page, soldier, messenger, valet, bureaucrat, foreman and administrator—possibly gave him the exposure to several of the class of people that he depicts in the Tales. By shaping their dialects and satirizing their speech, he composed a work that earned him much fame and made the work extremely famous among the masses, both then and in the generations to come.

The compositions of Chaucer have been at times classified into a French period followed by an Italian period lastly followed by an English period. This was done because Chaucer was greatly influenced by the literature of those countries. Undoubtedly, Troilus and Criseyde is the work of the middle times. It relied heavily on the various types of Italian poetry which was not very well known in England in those days. However, Chaucer, it is said was exposed to this, when he frequently went on tours to these places on court matters. Moreover, his dealing with a classical subject and its sophisticated, courtly language distinguishes it as one of his most complete and well-formed works. In Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer draws heavily on his source, Boccaccio, and on the late Latin philosopher Boethius. However, it is The Canterbury Tales, wherein he focuses on English subjects, with bawdy jokes and respected figures often being undercut with humour, that has cemented his reputation.

Chaucer’s translation of works like Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy and The Romance of the Rose by Guillaume de Lorris (extended by Jean de Meun) also brought him much popularity. It was believed by many scholars that Chaucer also translated a certain portion of the composition of Roman de la Rose as The Romaunt of the Rose, but many have disagreed with it. Many of his other works were extremely loose translations of, or simply based on works from continental Europe. It is in this role that Chaucer receives some of his earliest critical praise. Eustache Deschamps wrote a ballade on the great translator and called himself a ‘nettle in Chaucer’s garden of poetry’. In 1385, Thomas Usk mentioned Chaucer in a highly appreciative manner while John Gower, Chaucer’s main poetic opponent of the days, also applauded him. The applause was later excluded from Gower’s Confessio Amantis while there have been suggestions by a few that this happened due to ill feelings between them, while others claim that the exclusion was only because of stylistic issues.

Another work of Chaucer worth mentioning is his Treatise on the Astrolabe. It is believed that this composition was in all probability written for his son. It gives a description of the form and use of that instrument in detail and is sometimes cited as the first example of technical writing in the English language. Although much of the text may have come from other sources, the treatise indicates that Chaucer was versed in science in addition to his literary talents. Another scientific work discovered in 1952, Equatorie of the Planetis, has similar language and handwriting compared to some considered to be Chaucer's and it continues many of the ideas from the Astrolabe. Furthermore, it contains an example of early European encryption. The attribution of this work to Chaucer is still uncertain.

Influence: Linguistic

Portrait of Chaucer from a manuscript by Thomas Hoccleve, who may have met Chaucer.

‘Chaucer wrote in continental accentual-syllabic meter, a style which had developed since around the twelfth century as an alternative to the alliterative Anglo-Saxon metre. Chaucer is known for metrical innovation, inventing the rhyme royal, and he was one of the first English poets to use the five-stress line, a decasyllabic cousin to the iambic pentameter, in his work, with only a few anonymous short works using it before him. The arrangement of these five-stress lines into rhyming couplets, first seen in his The Legend of Good Women, was used in much of his later work and became one of the standard poetic forms in English. His early influence as a satirist is also important, with the common humorous device, the funny accent of a regional dialect, apparently making its first appearance in The Reeve's Tale.

The status of the final -e in Chaucer's verse is uncertain: it seems likely that during the period of Chaucer's writing the final -e was dropping out of colloquial English and that its use was somewhat irregular. Chaucer's versification suggests that the final -e is sometimes to be vocalised, and sometimes to be silent; however, this remains a point on which there is disagreement. When it is vocalised, most scholars pronounce it as a schwa. Apart from the irregular spelling, much of the vocabulary is recognisable to the modern reader. Chaucer is also recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary as the first author to use many common English words in his writings. These words were probably frequently used in the language at the time but Chaucer, with his ear for common speech, is the earliest manuscript source. Acceptable, alkali, altercation, amble, angrily, annex, annoyance, approaching, arbitration, armless, army, arrogant, arsenic, arc, artillery and aspect are just some of the many English words first attested in Chaucer’.

Literary

Widespread knowledge of Chaucer’s works is attested by those several poets who copied or responded to his writing. John Lydgate was one of the earliest poets to write continuations of Chaucer’s unfinished Tales while Robert Henryson's Testament of Cresseid completes the story of Cressida left unfinished in his Troilus and Criseyde. Many of the manuscripts of Chaucer’s works contain material from these poets and later appreciations by the romantic era poets were shaped by their failure to distinguish the later ‘additions’ from original Chaucer. Seventeenth and eighteenth century writers, such as John Dryden, praised Chaucer for his tales, but not for his rhythm and rhyme. This was because only a few critics could then read Middle English and the text had been butchered by printers, leaving it in some kind of a mess. It was not until the late nineteenth century that the official Chaucerian canon, accepted today, was decided upon, largely as a result of Walter William Skeat’s work. One hundred and fifty years after his death, The Canterbury Tales was selected by William Caxton to be one of the first books to be printed in England.

English

Chaucer is sometimes considered the source of the English vernacular tradition and the ‘father of modern English literature’. Chaucer’s accomplishment of the language may be viewed as being a part of a general historical trend towards the creation of a vernacular literature, following Dante, in several parts of Europe. A parallel trend in Chaucer’s own lifetime was underway in Scotland through the work of his slightly earlier contemporary, John Barbour. It was probably even more common, as the example of the Pearl Poet in the north of England refers to it.

Although Chaucer’s language is much closer to modern English than the text of Beowulf, it differs enough that most publications modernise his idiom. Following is a sample from the prologue of ‘The Summoner’s Tale’ that compares Chaucer’s text to a modern translation:

1.4.4 Critical reception

The poet Thomas Hoccleve, who possibly met Chaucer and considered him his role model, claimed Chaucer as ‘he firste fyndere of our fair langage’. John Lydgate referred to Chaucer within his own text The Fall of Princes as the ‘lodesterre ... off our language’. Approximately after two centuries, Sir Philip Sidney highly appreciated Troilus and Criseyde in his own Defence of Poesie.

Manuscripts and Audience

The fact that a huge amount of Chaucer’s works still survive testifies the continuing interest in his poetry before the printing press arrived. There are eighty-three manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales (in whole or part) alone that still survive, along with sixteen of Troilus and Criseyde, including the personal copy of Henry IV. Considering the ruin caused by time, it can be safely concluded that these manuscripts that still survive represent hundreds since lost. The original audience of Chaucer was a courtly one, and would have included women as well as men of the upper social classes. However, even before his death in 1400, Chaucer’s audience had begun to include members of the rising literate, middle and merchant classes, which included many Lollard sympathizers who may well have been inclined to read Chaucer as one of their own, particularly in his satirical writings about friars, priests, and other church officials. In 1464, John Baron, a tenant farmer in Agmondesham, was brought before John Chadworth, the Bishop of Lincoln, on charges he was a Lollard heretic; he confessed to owning a ‘boke of the Tales of Caunterburie’ among other suspect volumes.

Printed editions

William Caxton, the first English printer, was the one who printed the first two folio editions of The Canterbury Tales published in 1478 and 1483. The next edition of Caxton, according to him, was brought out due to a customer complaint that the printed text was different from a manuscript he knew; Caxton willingly made use of the customer’s manuscript as his source. Both the editions bear the equivalent of manuscript authority. Caxton’s edition underwent a reprint by his successor, Wynkyn de Worde. However, this edition does not have an autonomous authority.

Richard Pynson, the King’s Printer for Henry VIII for approximately 20 years, was the first who collected and sold a certain thing that bore resemblance to an edition of the compiled compositions of Chaucer. In the procedure, he introduced five earlier printed texts, which we presently know do not belong to Chaucer. (The compilation is in fact three individually printed texts, or collections of texts, bound as a whole to form a volume.) Possibly there does exist an association between Pynson’s product and William Thynne’s merely after six years. Thynne had a soaring career from the 1520s till his death in 1546. During this perion, he was one of the masters of the royal household. His editions of Chaucer’s Works in 1532 and 1542 were the first chief contributions to the prevalence of a popularly recognised Chaucerian canon. Thynne represents his edition as a book sponsored by and supportive of the king who he praises in the preface by Sir Brian Tuke. Thynne’s canon made the number of apocryphal works associated with Chaucer reach a sum of twenty-eight, even if he had not intended to do so. As with Pynson, once included in the Works, pseudepigraphic texts remained inside it, irrespective of what their first editor intended.

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Chaucer was the highest printed English author. He was also the first author whose compositions were compiled in complete single-volume editions wherein a Chaucer canon started cohering. There are certain scholars who claim that the 16^th century editions of the Works of Chaucer established a prototype for all other English authors in terms of presentation, prestige and success in print. These editions certainly established Chaucer's reputation, but they also began the complicated process of reconstructing and frequently inventing Chaucer's biography and the canonical list of works which were attributed to him.

Probably the most significant aspect of the growing apocrypha is that, beginning with Thynne’s editions, it began to include medieval texts that made Chaucer appear as a proto-Protestant Lollard, primarily the Testament of Love and The Plowman's Tale. As ‘Chaucerian’ works that were not considered apocryphal until the late nineteenth century, these medieval texts enjoyed a new life, with English Protestants carrying on the earlier Lollard project of appropriating existing texts and authors who seemed sympathetic—or malleable enough to be construed as sympathetic—to their cause. The official Chaucer of the early printed volumes of his Works was construed as a proto-Protestant as the same was done, concurrently, with William Langland and Piers Plowman. The famous Plowman's Tale did not enter Thynne’s Works until the second, 1542, edition. Its entry was surely facilitated by Thynne's inclusion of Thomas Usk’s Testament of Love in the first edition. The Testament of Love imitates, borrows from, and thus resembles Usk's contemporary, Chaucer. (Testament of Love also appears to borrow from Piers Plowman.) Since the Testament of Love mentions its author's part in a failed plot (book 1, chapter 6), his imprisonment, and (perhaps) a recantation of (possibly Lollard) heresy, all this was associated with Chaucer. (Usk himself was executed as a traitor in 1388.) Interestingly, John Foxe took this recantation of heresy as a defence of the true faith, calling Chaucer a ‘right Wiclevian’ and (erroneously) identifying him as a schoolmate and close friend of John Wycliffe at Merton College, Oxford. (Thomas Speght is careful to highlight these facts in his editions and his ‘Life of Chaucer’.) No other sources for the Testament of Love exist—there is only Thynne’s construction of whatever manuscript sources he had.

John Stow (1525–1605) was an antiquarian and also a chronicler. His edition of Chaucer’s Works in 1561 brought the apocrypha to more than fifty titles. More were added in the seventeenth century, and they remained as late as 1810, well after Thomas Tyrwhitt pared the canon down in his 1775 edition. The compilation and printing of Chaucer's works was, from its beginning, a political enterprise, since it was intended to establish an English national identity and history that grounded and authorized the Tudor monarchy and church. What was added to Chaucer often helped represent him favourably to Protestant England.

Engraving of Chaucer from Speght's edition

In his 1598 edition of the Works, Speght (probably taking cues from Foxe) made good use of Usk's account of his political intrigue and imprisonment in the Testament of Love to assemble a largely fictional "Life of Our Learned English Poet, Geffrey Chaucer." Speght's "Life" presents readers with an erstwhile radical in troubled times much like their own, a proto-Protestant who eventually came around the king's views on religion. Speght states that "In the second year of Richard the second, the King tooke Geffrey Chaucer and his lands into his protection. The occasion wherof no doubt was some daunger and trouble whereinto he was fallen by favouring some rash attempt of the common people." Under the discussion of Chaucer's friends, namely John of Gaunt, Speght further explains:

Yet it seemeth that [Chaucer] was in some trouble in the daies of King Richard the second, as it may appeare in the Testament of Loue: where hee doth greatly complaine of his owne rashnesse in following the multitude, and of their hatred of him for bewraying their purpose. And in that complaint which he maketh to his empty purse, I do find a written copy, which I had of Iohn Stow (whose library hath helped many writers) wherein ten times more is adjoined, then is in print. Where he maketh great lamentation for his wrongfull imprisonment, wishing death to end his daies: which in my iudgement doth greatly accord with that in the Testament of Love. Moreover we find it thus in Record.

Later, in ‘The Argument’ to the Testament of Love, Speght adds:

Chaucer did compile this booke as a comfort to himselfe after great griefs conceiued for some rash attempts of the commons, with whome he had ioyned, and thereby was in feare to loose the fauour of his best friends.

Speght is also the basis of the popular incident when Chaucer was imposed a fine as he beat up a Franciscan friar in Fleet Street, and also a fictitious coat of arms and family tree. Paradoxically—and maybe consciously so—an introductory, apologetic letter in Speght’s edition from Francis Beaumont is seen to defend the unseemly, ‘low’, and bawdy bits in Chaucer from an elite, classicist position. Francis Thynne noted some of these inconsistencies in his Animadversions, insisting that Chaucer was not a commoner, and even raised objections to the friar-beating tale. Yet Thynne himself underestimates Chaucer’s support for famous religious reform, relating Chaucer’s opinion with his father William Thynne’s attempts to include The Plowman's Tale and The Pilgrim's Tale in the 1532 and 1542 Works.

The myth of the Protestant Chaucer continues to bear an enduring impact on a huge body of Chaucerian scholarship. It is extremely rare for a modern scholar to make suggestions that Chaucer supported a religious movement that did not exist until more than a century after his death. However, the prevalence of this thinking for these many centuries, made it clear that Chaucer was at least highly hostile toward Catholicism. This assumption forms a large part of many critical approaches to Chaucer's works, including neo-Marxism.

Another work that draws its parallel with Chaucer’s works is the most-impressive literary monument of the age namely, John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments. As with the Chaucer editions, it was critically significant to English Protestant identity and included Chaucer in its project. Foxe’s Chaucer both derived from and contributed to the printed editions of Chaucer’s Works, particularly the pseudepigrapha. Jack Upland was first printed in Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, and then it appeared in Speght's edition of Chaucer's Works. Speght’s ‘Life of Chaucer’ echoes Foxe’s own account, which is itself dependent upon the earlier editions that added the Testament of Love and The Plowman's Tale to their pages. Like Speght's Chaucer, Foxe's Chaucer was also a shrewd (or lucky) political survivor. In his 1563 edition, Foxe ‘thought it not out of season ... to couple ... some mention of Geoffrey Chaucer’ with a discussion of John Colet, a possible source for John Skelton's character Colin Clout.

While he was in all probability making reference to the 1542 Act for the Advancement of True Religion, Foxe stated that he ‘marvel[s] to consider ... how the bishops, condemning and abolishing all manner of English books and treatises which might bring the people to any light of knowledge, did yet authorise the works of Chaucer to remain still and to be occupied; who, no doubt, saw into religion as much almost as even we do now, and uttereth in his works no less, and seemeth to be a right Wicklevian, or else there never was any. And that, all his works almost, if they be thoroughly advised, will testify (albeit done in mirth, and covertly); and especially the latter end of his third book of the Testament of Love ... Wherein, except a man be altogether blind, he may espy him at the full: although in the same book (as in all others he useth to do), under shadows covertly, as under a visor, he suborneth truth in such sort, as both privily she may profit the godly-minded, and yet not be espied of the crafty adversary. And therefore the bishops, belike, taking his works but for jests and toys, in condemning other books, yet permitted his books to be read.’

Another matter of great significance was that Foxe’s discussion of Chaucer is known to lead into his history of ‘The Reformation of the Church of Christ in the Time of Martin Luther’ at a time when ‘Printing, being opened, incontinently ministered unto the church the instruments and tools of learning and knowledge; which were good books and authors, which before lay hid and unknown. The science of printing being found, immediately followed the grace of God; which stirred up good wits aptly to conceive the light of knowledge and judgment: by which light darkness began to be espied, and ignorance to be detected; truth from error, religion from superstition, to be discerned’.

Foxe understates Chaucer’s coarse and ardent composition. He also insisted that it all speaks of his piousness. Material that is troubling is deemed metaphoric, while the more forthright satire (which Foxe prefers) is taken literally.

John Urry was the man responsible for producing the first edition of the entire compositions of Chaucer in Latin, which was published after his death in 1721. According to the editors, the inclusions were many stories. for the first time printed, a biography of Chaucer, a glossary of old English words and testimonials of writers concerning Chaucer, that dated back to the sixteenth century. According to A.S.G Edwards, ‘This was the first collected edition of Chaucer to be printed in roman type. The life of Chaucer prefixed to the volume was the work of the Reverend John Dart, corrected and revised by Timothy Thomas. The glossary appended was also mainly compiled by Thomas. The text of Urry’s edition has often been criticised by subsequent editors for its frequent conjectural emendations, mainly to make it conform to his sense of Chaucer's metre. The justice of such criticisms should not obscure his achievement. His is the first edition of Chaucer for nearly a hundred and fifty years to consult any manuscripts and is the first since that of William Thynne in 1534 to seek systematically to assemble a substantial number of manuscripts to establish his text. It is also the first edition to offer descriptions of the manuscripts of Chaucer's works, and the first to print texts of ‘Gamelyn’ and ‘The Tale of Beryn’, works ascribed to, but not by, Chaucer.’

Modern scholarship

Though many admired the works of Chaucer for several years, no one actually began the serious scholarly work on his compositions till the 19th century. Scholars, like, Frederick James Furnivall, founder of the Chaucer Society in 1868, was the pioneer in establishing diplomatic editions of Chaucer’s major texts, besides careful records of Chaucer’s language and prosody. Walter William Skeat, also known to be closely associated with the Oxford English Dictionary, established the base text of all of Chaucer’s works with his edition, published by Oxford University Press. Later editions by John H. Fisher and Larry D. Benson have offered further refinements, along with critical commentary and bibliographies.

Self-Assessment Questions

9. The first person to associate Valentine’s Day with romantic love was (Pick the right option)

(a) Edmund Spenser

(b) Lord Tennyson

(d) Geoffrey Chaucer

10. _____ _____________was Chaucer’s masterwork, and a soaring accomplishment of Western culture.

11. The first main composition of Chaucer was The Book of the Duchess. (True/False)

12. ___________ was one of the earliest poets to write continuations of Chaucer’s unfinished Tales.

1.5 SUMMARY

Let us recapitulate the important concepts discussed in this unit:

· The term ‘Middle Ages’ is known to have originated sometime in the fifteenth century. Scholars in those days—mainly in Italy—were engaged in an exhilarating movement of art and philosophy.

· The period that extended from 1066 to 1485, is significant for the widespread influence of French literature on native English forms and themes. From the Norman–French conquest of England in 1066 until the 14th century, French was rapidly replacing English in general literary composition.

· The 12th century witnessed the development of a new kind of English, presently called the Middle English. This was the first form of English literature, which although can be understood by modern readers and listeners, cannot be done so effortlessly.

· The oldest poetry, that is known to have survived, is generally presumed to be from the region that is presently called England. There is a great likelihood, of the poetry spreading through the oral method, later being written in versions.

· The northern and western parts of England saw poems written in a style that were much similar to the Old English alliterative, four-stress lines, in form.

· William Langland's Piers Plowman is considered by many critics to be one of the early great works of English literature along with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Sir Gawain

and the Green Knight (most likely by the Pearl Poet) during the Middle Ages.

· Middle English Literature can be divided into three primary classes: Religious, Courtly love and Arthurian.

· The First Crusade, that was initiated in 1096, was the first in a series of holy wars which deeply influenced the philosophy and culture of Christian Europe.

· Geoffrey Chaucer, more popularly known, as the ‘Father of English Literature’, is the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages.

· Chaucer was the first poet who was buried in Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey. Chaucer gained popularity during his lifespan as a philosopher, alchemist author and astronomer.

· There are two more prominent non-alliterative verse romances which form part of the work of Geoffrey Chaucer—Troilus and Criseyde (written in about1385) and The Knight’s Tale (1382, which became a part of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales).

· Chaucer was given the grant of ‘a gallon of wine daily for the rest of his life’ by Edward III. The first main composition of Chaucer was The Book of the Duchess—an elegy for Blanche of Lancaster.

· The Canterbury Tales is in stark contrast with other literature of the period in the way it’s been narrated naturally, the diversity of tales that each pilgrim narrates and the various characters that are a part of the pilgrimage.

· Several tales told by the pilgrims appear to befit their own nature and their position in the society. On the other hand, there are some tales that do not suit their personal nature and social status.

· Chaucer is sometimes considered the source of the English vernacular tradition and the ‘father of modern English literature’.

· Chaucer’s accomplishment of the language may be viewed as being a part of a general historical trend towards the creation of a vernacular literature, following Dante, in several parts of Europe.

· Another work that draws its parallel with Chaucer’s works is the most-impressive literary monument of the age namely, John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments.

· Though many admired the works of Chaucer for several years, no one actually began the serious scholarly work on his compositions till the 19th century.

· Scholars, like, Frederick James Furnivall, founder of the Chaucer Society in 1868, was the pioneer in establishing diplomatic editions of Chaucer’s major texts, besides careful records of Chaucer’s language and prosody.

1.6 GLOSSARY

Middle English: It was an amalgamation of the Kentish and Midlands dialects.

Structural alliteration: It is the usage of syllables with similar sounds in two or three of the stresses in every line.

The First Crusade: It was initiated in 1096, and was the first in a series of holy wars which deeply influenced the philosophy and culture of Christian Europe.

Geoffrey Chaucer: More popularly known, as the ‘Father of English Literature’, he is the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages.

1.7 TERMINAL QUESTIONS

1. Why is the period that extended from 1066 to 1485 significant?

2. Write a short note on ‘Beowulf.’

3. Write a short note on the romantic poems of the medieval times.

4. Why have the compositions of Chaucer have been at times classified into a French period followed by an Italian period lastly followed by an English period?

1.8 ANSWERS

Self-Assessment Questions

1. England

2. Germanic tribes

3. Middle English

4. False

5. tenth century

6. Structural alliteration

7. True

8. (b)

9. (d)

10. The Canterbury Tales

11. True

12. John Lydgate

Terminal Questions

1. The period that extended from 1066 to 1485, is significant for the widespread influence of French literature on native English forms and themes. From the Norman–French conquest of England in 1066 until the 14th century, French was rapidly replacing English in general literary composition. The role of Latin as the language of learned works stayed. The fourteenth century, saw the English language regaining its lost popularity mainly among the ruling strata. However, by this time most of its Old English inflectional system had gone. Besides, the sound changes that it went through made it to acquire the characteristics that it now continues to possess—of liberally take into the native stock many foreign words, in this case, French and Latin ones. Thus, the various dialect of Middle English that became colloquial in the fourteenth century were similar to the Modern English, the reading of which can be done easily even today.

2. Beowulf an epic poem was written in the eighth century. It starts and concludes with the funeral of a mighty king, with an impending disaster forming its backdrop. It describes the bravery and heroism of a Scandinavian cultural hero, Beowulf. He is the protagonist, and the story describes his exploits, his victory over the villain—monster Grendel, his mother and a fire-breathing dragon. Beowulf, in the series is portrayed not only as a worthy hero, but also as the one who has the power in him to redeem mankind. The series also portrays the mutual devotion between a leader and his disciples, which is also an ancient Germanic moral value, in a manner that touches the soul.

3. Some of the romantic poems
of the medieval times are as follows:

4. The compositions of Chaucer have been at times classified into a French period followed by an Italian period lastly followed by an English period. This was done because Chaucer was greatly influenced by the literature of those countries. Undoubtedly, Troilus and Criseyde is the work of the middle times. It relied heavily on the various types of Italian poetry which was not very well known in England in those days. However, Chaucer, it is said was exposed to this, when he frequently went on tours to these places on court matters. Moreover, his dealing with a classical subject and its sophisticated, courtly language distinguishes it as one of his most complete and well-formed works. In Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer draws heavily on his source, Boccaccio, and on the Late Latin philosopher Boethius. However, it is The Canterbury Tales, wherein he focuses on English subjects, with bawdy jokes and respected figures often being undercut with humour that has cemented his reputation.

Syllabus of Distance Education Universities in India

Pages

Monday 31 May 2021

English Literature - Medieval Poetry Chapter

1.4 Geoffrey Chaucer

1.4.1 Chaucer’s Life

1.4.3 Works

Influence: Linguistic

Literary

English

1.4.4 Critical reception

Manuscripts and Audience

Printed editions

Modern scholarship

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