Numbers in brackets indicate endnotes; those in parentheses are line numbers.
Justification of literary valuation is
notoriously elusive. Works rise and fall
in the estimation of readers over time based on a number of factors, including
the older text’s real or imagined similarity to current writing or to either the
critic’s (or the society’s) ideology. A
reader’s perception of beauty may be explained but cannot be proven. Analysis of fluctuations in the prestige of
specific poems and novels is likely to reveal as much or more about readers as
about the works in question.
The history of the reputation of
the anonymous fifteenth century poem “The Floure and the Leafe” illustrates a
particularly dramatic alteration in status.
Attributed to Geoffrey Chaucer since at least the end of the sixteenth
century [1], the poem was highly appreciated for several hundred years. Dryden lauded it and wrote a modernization,
Keats wrote a sonnet in response, and the poem was praised as well as by
Hazlitt, Campbell, and others, but, by the middle of the nineteenth century,
doubts had begun to appear about its authorship [2] and in 1900 W. W. Skeat not
only decisively completed the case for a later and anonymous author (whom he
regarded as a woman [3]), but also denigrated the poem in withering terms. He realized he was going against the grain
noting “this poem has so frequently been praised that I feel some diffidence in
saying that too much has been made of it” yet he was sufficiently hostile to
those who maintained the traditional view to use inverted commas when he called
them “critics.” [4]
The drop in value following the discovery
that the poem had not been written by an accepted “great” is, however dramatic,
surely not surprising. The weight which readers
give to authority has led to a host of pseudepigrapha, including the ascription
of the Pentateuch to Moses and over a hundred texts once falsely attributed to
Aristotle, and the art market demonstrates in a clear monetary metric the loss
of value when a painting has been shown to be not by a master, but by his
school or, worse yet, by a forger. Yet
these decisions are socially rather than aesthetically driven, and have nothing
to do with the value of the artwork itself.
Shifts in literary taste also influenced
the poem’s standing. Many moderns, in
fact, many post-Romantics, would, of course, be put off by a defunct genre like
the medieval dream visions. A
superficial view conflates literary convention with lack of imagination and privileges
“realism” (as though any collection of marks on a page is a direct
representation of lived experience). At
the time when Skeat wrote, a leading edge of literature was realism and an
archaic fantasy vision hardly will appeal to one for whom verisimilitude is
important.
Yet the curious fact is that those who
valued the poem prior to Skeat’s comments regularly stressed not its
well-wrought artifice but its outstandingly “realistic” descriptions of
nature. In spite of the fact that the language is
highly formulaic with most phrases being closely paralleled by antecedents so
numerous that no one instance can be seen as the poet’s model, appreciation for
“The Floure and the Leafe” was most often based on the poet’s successful
representation of a nature that corresponds to lived experience. Because of Chaucer’s date, early readers also
often characterized the poem as simple” and “childlike,” ignoring the poem’s
sophistication.
Just as Dryden, in an age that favored
didacticism found the poem’s moralizing its chief appeal [5] during the
Romantic era, when readers prized natural description, they found it in “The
Floure and the Leafe.” For William Hazlitt,
one of the most acute critics of the day, Chaucer’s “characteristic excellence,
what might be termed gusto” lies in his “descriptions of natural
scenery,” so true-to-life that they give “the very feeling of the air, the
coolness or moisture of the ground,” and the poem which best exemplifies this
outstanding quality is “The Flower and the Leaf.” [6] Thomas Campbell found in it “fresh and joyous
descriptions of external nature.” The
setting of the vision, which seems to moderns so distant from lived experience,
is for him “like the recollection of an actual scene.” He comments, “Here is no
affected rapture, no flowery sentiment.” [7]
For Keats , reading “this pleasant tale" is an experience that
feels natural, like strolling into “a little copse.” [8]
The principal effect of the
conventionality apparently invisible to these earlier readers is that scenes
and individuals are highly generic with little specificity. They are largely interchangeable -- one poet
could wander into the locus amoenus of another and scarcely notice the
difference, nor would their ladies find much to motivate a choice between the
men. Detail is replaced by superlatives
in a pattern so pervasive it requires no exhaustive demonstration.
Hyperbolic convention appears from the
outset with the glorious chariot of Apollo whirling across the sky far above a
beautiful scene. Reverdie is in
progress and “every wight/ Of this season wexeth glad and light.” (13-14) The speaker, ”glad of the season swete” (15)
enjoys “heart’s ease.”(20) She steps out
into a very “plesaunt” (36) sight. Indeed,
the poet who devised the entire setting says it “it was more pleasaunt then I
coud devise.” (97) The medlar tree is
“the fairest.” (86) The poet thought herself
in Paradise. (115)
. . . sith the beginning
Of the world was never seen or than
So pleasant a ground of none earthly man.
(124-126)
The women of the company of the leaf and
men are not only themselves beautiful, they sing beautifully as well and, as if
that were not enough, go about draped in gems, fine fabrics, and garlands. The men and the flower party are much the
same. No attempt is made toward what
most readers would mean by “realism.”
Yet such conventional superlatives, far from being limited to allegorical
dream visions, are universal; the popularity of the device signifies that it
has been found highly useful.
Though such obviously artificial
statements may seem to owe their origin to the mindless replication of prior
models, the existence of hyperbole in the rhetorical figures of every nation
suggests that they function as more than decorative ornaments. In certain ways these extravagant statements
are more “real” than the kind that passes for objective.
Most obviously, they represent culturally
accepted ideals to which, it is understood, living people only imperfectly
aspire. Achilles can exemplify the
impossibly brave and competent warrior portrayed as the noblest among men, as
can John Wayne. Medieval romances have
episodes as hyperbolic as any comic book action hero. The dominant desirable qualities for women
are illustrated by the countless surpassingly lovely ladies from Helen through
the most recent film star, though there are supplementary models specifically
for wives such as Penelope and Griselda.
All cultures transmit their beliefs and values through the symbolic
systems of songs, dramas, and visual works.
Hyperbole in art defines very plainly the qualities admired by its
makers.
Furthermore, everyone experiences
subjective states of mind which correspond closely to poetry’s immoderate
claims. An individual may really think
his daughter is the smartest thing around, his sergeant is the bravest man on
earth, and his lover the most beautiful.
Such sentiments seem true to parents, comrades, and lovers. Art represents the human psyche more
accurately than non-aesthetic forms of discourse specifically because it allows
representation of the affective states so significant in lived experience.
Apart from their value in suggesting such
cultural codes and individual passions, the hyperboles of poetry have a ludic
value, providing the reader or listener with play and entertainment. People turn to literature for experiences
unobtainable otherwise. The poster in
the library that tells our children “reading is a magic carpet” does not lie. The pleasure of seeing what is not and never can
be is akin to that experienced by the contemporary film viewer watching special
effects. And when the depiction is
rendered impossibly lovely, this seductive virtual reality can be dazzling in
itself.
Finally, just as people in humble
circumstances often enjoy reading about celebrities, there is likely some effect
resembling sympathetic magic causing the reader to imagine herself as blissful
as the fine ladies in a story. The
reader of “The Floure and the Leafe” thinking of a beautiful bower crowded with
beautiful people resembles the Depression era movie-goer relishing and not
resenting men on the silver screen in high top hats arm-in-arm with women
sparkling with jewels. One can almost
imagine the ladies of the flower doing a Busby Berkeley number.
Whereas the poem’s original readers knew
the relevant codes and, far from being put off by the use of convention, they
regarded it as prestigious as it connects a current work with the laudable
models of the past. For the original
audience the use of convention was appreciated for both entertainment value and
thematic function. Once readers had
forgotten the meaning of the old conventions, having traded them for new, the
poem lost its appeal. As it happens, the
poem lost the authorial sanction of Chaucer’s name at a time when its
conventions were already poorly understood, causing the poem to fall into an
undeserved obscurity.
1.
Included in Thomas Speght’s 1598 The Workes of our Antient and
learned English Poet, Geffrey Chaucer.
7. Specimens of British Poets, 1819.
8 “Written On The Blank Space Of A Leaf At The End Of Chaucer’s Tale Of ‘The Flowre And The Lefe.’”
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