Every Reader’s Chaucer

 

     This Every Reader’s Poet, the twenty-first, differs somewhat from other essays in the series.  Though Every Reader’s Poets assumes no knowledge of literature among its readers, aiming at simply acquainting people with a few of the most well-known works by canonical poets, the “Every Reader’s Chaucer” presents challenges unlike any other.  Since Chaucer wrote over six hundred years ago, his language is significantly different from modern usage.  Modernizations convey much information, but no poetry.  I have therefore included below the original Middle English texts and my own prose translations.  I recognize that, even apart from the hurdle the language presents to those new to it, I use rather long samples of Chaucer’s poetry.  Only the ambitious and particularly curious, perhaps, will attempt to make their way through this post, but I prefer to make the reader’s task rewarding, even if it turns out to be a bit arduous as well.   

 

     Geoffrey Chaucer is certainly the most widely-read and influential medieval English poet.  Everyone knows his Canterbury Tales and specialists are aware of his voluminous other works, including narratives like his monumental Trojan story Troilus and Criseyde and allegories like The Parliament of Foules as well as translations of Boethius and Romance of the Rose and the scientific Treatise on the Astrolabe.  Remarkably, he produced this considerable oeuvre while working at full-time government jobs including positions as Comptroller of Customs and Clerk of the King’s Works, as well as serving in Parliament.  Though his own family was of middle-class origin he regularly frequented the court. He received pensions and grants from  the throne beginning with a daily gallon of wine from Edward II, later converted to cash, and patronage continued under Richard II and Henry IV.  Some historians think it likely that he acted as a spy during his European travels.

     Through Chaucer’s time, French was the language of English royalty (and of British legal courtrooms as well).  Poets might choose to write in Latin, Norman French, or English.  Gower, whose dates are close to Chaucer’s, wrote major works in each.  Latin, of course, was associated with scholarship and the great authors of antiquity, while French could boast of greatest current social prestige.  For Chaucer to choose to write in English was an unusual choice, but his use of the language established it for literary usage, inspiring his contemporary Thomas Hoccleve to call him "the firste fyndere of our fair langage."

     Though he advanced the role of their native language in poetry, he also decisively influenced English poets to use Continental models of prosody.   Old English verse like Beowulf had been accentual and alliterative.  Fluent in Latin, competent in French, and knowing some Italian as well, Chaucer imported European verse forms that subsequently came to dominate English poetry, including rhyme, accentual syllabic meters, and, in particular, iambic pentameter.  Most poets who followed Chaucer chronologically followed these aspects of his poetic practice as well.

     Thus the forms of Chaucer’s poetry will seem more or less familiar to modern readers, but his language is likely to look a bit daunting at first.  He falls between Shakespeare’s use of what linguists call Early Modern English, usually readable for today’s readers with a few words glossed, and Old English, which is definitely a foreign language for twenty-first century readers.  At the end of the poet’s life final letter e was just beginning to be elided and the Great Vowel Shift from European values to those in English today was underway, significantly changing the sound of the spoken word.   We need not be concerned with the details of these changes apart from acknowledging that the modern reader of Middle English will face real difficulties at first.  Readers who do not throw up their hands and retire from the field will find that, in a short time indeed, they will read Chaucer with pleasure.  The ease of reading a modernization sacrifices  too great a share of the poetry.  To encourage reference to the original text, I here transcribe the Middle English and provide a following prose translation meant only to facilitate a return to Chaucer’s own words.  Even a first-time reader of Middle English, will, with a bit of effort, find Chaucer intelligible before long. 

    The “General Prologue” to The Canterbury Tales provides a description of the company that had assembled to travel together the sixty miles or so the visit the shrine of St. Thomas.  Such a trip is a device to bring together people of widely varying social classes, amounting really to a microcosm of English society.  Along with the pilgrims’ individual stories, which cover a wide range from  the courtly to the ribald, from the literary to the colloquial, the narration as a whole is a kind of encyclopedia of English types of the era, a comprehensive catalogue of the period’s sociology as well as of human psychology.  Novels as we know them were not to be written for several hundred years, but Chaucer is almost novelistic in his portrayals of his characters.  The depiction, for instance, of the Wife of Bath when she is first introduced, implies a great deal about her in a brief passage. 

 

A Good Wif was ther of biside Bathe,                           

But she was som-del deef, and that was scathe.

Of clooth-makyng she hadde swich an haunt

She passed hem of Ypres and of Gaunt.

In al the parisshe wif ne was ther noon

That to the offrynge bifore hire sholde goon;              

And if ther dide, certeyn so wrooth was she

That she was out of alle charitee.

Hir coverchiefs ful fyne weren of ground;

I dorste swere they weyeden ten pound

That on a Sonday weren upon hir heed.                      

Hir hosen weren of fyn scarlet reed,

Ful streite y-teyd, and shoes ful moyste and newe.

Boold was hir face, and fair, and reed of hewe.

She was a worthy womman al hir lyve;

Housbondes at chirche dore she hadde fyve,          

Withouten oother compaignye in youthe;

But ther-of nedeth nat to speke as nowthe.

And thries hadde she been at Jérusalem;

She hadde passed many a straunge strem;

At Rome she hadde been, and at Boloigne,               

In Galice at Seint Jame, and at Coloigne.

She koude muchel of wandrynge by the weye.

Gat-tothed was she, soothly for to seye.

Upon an amblere esily she sat,

Y-wympled wel, and on hir heed an hat                   

As brood as is a bokeler or a targe;

A foot-mantel aboute hir hipes large,

And on hire feet a paire of spores sharpe.

In felaweshipe wel koude she laughe and carpe;

Of remedies of love she knew per chauncé,           

For she koude of that art the olde daunce.

                                                         (445-476)

 

 

There was a good wife who lived near Bath, but she was somewhat deaf, and that was a pity.  She was so good at cloth-making that she surpassed the producers in Ypres and Ghent.  In her parish no one else could go to make an offering before her.  If anyone beat her, she was so angry she lost all charitable feeling.  Her kerchiefs were very finely woven, I dare swear that what she wore on her head on Sunday weighed ten pounds.  Her stockings were a fine scarlet red, tightly tied and shoes quite supple and new.  She was a respectable woman all her life.  She had married five husbands by the church door, not counting her boyfriends in youth of which we need say no more.  She had visited Jerusalem three times and had been through many a strange body of water.  She had been at Rome and at Boulogne, at St. James in Galicia and at Cologne.  She knew much about wandering the byways.  She was gap-toothed to tell the truth and sat easily on a pacing horse.  On her head over a good wimple she wore a hat as broad as a buckler or shield and around her big hips she had an overskirt while on her feet she had sharp spurs.  In society she knew well how to laugh and gab.  She happened to know many remedies for love, for she knew well the ways of that old dance.

 

 

     Though medieval England was, of course, a patriarchal society, the example of the Wife of Bath proves that a determined woman could enjoy significant autonomy.  Her skill at weaving provided a secure economic base, and her pride at having achieved a certain affluence is evident in her wish to make a show of her offerings in church.  For her Christian charity was incidental to social rivalry and the conspicuous display of wealth.  Thus her clothing also conveys status with elaborate headwear for religious services where she would be seen by all (like some contemporary church ladies).  Her physical vigor is suggested by her having outlived five husbands, not to mention her earlier boyfriends, though she always kept her behavior within bounds, remaining a “worthy woman.”  Her restless energy is also indicated by her extensive travels.  Few people made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land even once, but she has done it three times as well as having visited the chief shrines of Europe.  Though physically imperfect with her partial deafness and gap-teeth, she has lived a full and adventurous life.  Her joie de vivre is indicated by her pleasure in conversation and even more in her character as a lover, one who knows well “that old dance.”

     The many concrete details in her depiction all contribute to a unified and convincing picture of a woman who makes the most of her possibilities, letting neither her husbands’ deaths nor her physical imperfections limit her pleasure in living the good life.  These characteristics are further developed in the tale she later tells, as well as in its prologue, twice as long as the story itself, but virtually all are at least implied in these thirty-one lines of verse in the Prologue.

     Though Chaucer’s fame rests on his long poems, chiefly The Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde, he did leave a number of shorter pieces, among them a love poem, the “Balade to Rosamounde.”  The ballade form was one of the three patterns (the “formes fixes”) developed in fourteenth century France, but the versification was not the only Continental convention Chaucer naturalized for Britain.  The poem’s content, a courtly love lament in which the lover extravagantly praises his beloved while complaining of her coldness, had appeared in poetry since ancient times, but it had been particularly cultivated among the Troubadours, trouvères, and Minnesinger of Europe since the beginning of the twelfth century.  Chaucer explicitly declares his use of such “courtly” conventions by saying he acts “curtaysly.”

 

 

Madame, ye ben of al beaute shryne

As fer as cercled is the mapamounde,

For as the cristal glorious ye shyne,

And lyke ruby ben your chekes rounde.

Therwith ye ben so mery and so jocounde

That at a revel whan that I see you daunce,

It is an oynement unto my wounde,

Thogh ye to me ne do no daliaunce.

 

For thogh I wepe of teres ful a tyne,

Yet may that wo myn herte nat confounde;

Your semy voys that ye so smal out twyne

Maketh my thoght in joy and blis habounde.

So curtaysly I go with love bounde

That to myself I sey in my penaunce,

"Suffyseth me to love you, Rosemounde,

Thogh ye to me ne do no daliaunce."

 

Nas neuer pyk walwed in galauntyne

As I in love am walwed and ywounde,

For which ful ofte I of myself devyne

That I am trew Tristam the secounde.

My love may not refreyde nor affounde,

I brenne ay in an amorous plesaunce.

Do what you lyst, I wyl your thral be founde,

Thogh ye to me ne do no daliaunce.

 

 

Madame, you are a shrine of beauty itself, as much as exists through the map of the world, for you shine like glorious crystal, and your full cheeks are like rubies, besides which you are so merry and jolly that when I see you dance at a party it is a balm to my wounds.  Though you do not make love to me in return, though I weep a bowlful of tears, may that woe not confound my heart.  Your becoming voice that you use so softly makes my thoughts abound in joy and bliss.  So I proceed courteously bound by love that I say to myself in penance, “Let me love you, Rosamond, though you to me give no love back.”  Never was pike so covered in aspic as I am covered in love and wounded.  For this reason I often declare to myself that I am a second Tristan.  My love may not cool down or be destroyed, I burn always in the delight of love.  Do as you please, I wis you would recognize your slave, though to me you give no love in return. 

 

 

     The superlatives, cast in imagery of precious stones, resemble those in dream visions.  The poet’s praise of the woman is thus otherworldly, miraculous, verging on supernatural.  She herself constitutes a “shrine” to a sort of divine beauty.  The second stanza describes the lover’s frustration as a sort of semi-religious penance.  The third stanza compares him, besotted by love, to a fish served in aspic, and then balances this striking and novel image with a reference to Tristan, tragic protagonist of one of the most well-known medieval legends.  The question of to what extent such conventions reflected actual behavior remains debated, but such artificial lyric conventions convey the very real helplessness one may experience with overmastering desire and the mystic power of sexual love.  Chaucer here defines the note later to be elaborated at great length by Elizabethan sonneteers and modern country music composers.

     Such love was not, however the only variety of eros that Chaucer depicts.  The first of the pilgrims’ stories is the knight’s very refined and courtly tale and, after his conclusion, the host asks the monk to follow, but the miller, sufficiently drunk that he has difficulty staying in the saddle, intrudes, wanting to be next.  When the host asks him to allow his “better” to precede him, he threatens to leave the company, promising his tale will be “noble.”  The host then relents and the miller tells an altogether  vulgar story about two lusty youths and an old carpenter’s young wife.  Nicholas, a student, rooms with the carpenter and, noticing that the wife “hadde a likerous ye,” (“had a lecherous eye”), one day when the husband is away, “prively he caughte hire by the queynte” (“he intimately grabs her by the cunt”), and the two plot a tryst. 

     Without describing the details of their rather elaborate plot, it is enough to know that a parish clerk, Absolon, also has his eye on the fair wife and gives her gifts, but she does not care for him, preferring the poor clerk.  He approaches her window at night, asking for a kiss and Nicholas and Alison enjoy a hearty laugh when Absolon is tricked into kissing her bare ass in the dark

 

 

Abak he stirte, and thoughte it was amys,

For wel he wiste a womman hath no berd.

He felte a thyng al rough and long yherd,

And seyde, "Fy! allas! what have I do?"

 

 

Back he jumped, and thought it was amiss, for he knew well that a woman has no beard.  He felt a rough and long-haired thing, and said, “Fie!  Alas! What have I done?”

 

 

When he returns, Nicholas and Alson assume that the trick will work equally well a second time, but Absolon surprises them.

 

 

This Nicholas was risen for to pisse,

And thoughte he wolde amenden al the jape;

He sholde kisse his ers er that he scape.

And up the wyndowe dide he hastily,

And out his ers he putteth pryvely

Over the buttok, to the haunche-bon;

And therwith spak this clerk, this Absolon,

"Spek, sweete bryd, I noot nat where thou art."

This Nicholas anon leet fle a fart

As greet as it had been a thonder-dent,

That with the strook he was almoost yblent;

And he was redy with his iren hoot,

And Nicholas amydde the ers he smoot.

Of gooth the skyn an hande-brede aboute,

The hoote kultour brende so his toute,

And for the smert he wende for to dye.

As he were wood, for wo he gan to crye,

"Help! Water! Water! Help, for Goddes herte!"

 

 

Nicholas had got up in order to piss and thought he would improve the joke and make him kiss his ass before he escapes.  So he rapidly open the window and stealthily puts out his ass, the whole buttock up to the haunch-bone.  And with that this clerk, this Absolon, speaks, “Speak, sweet bird, I don’t know where you are.”  This Nicholas then lets fly a fart as great as a crack of thunder so that he was almost blinded by the stroke.  And he (Absolon) was ready with his hot iron  and off goes the skin for a hand’s breadth around.  The hot plow blade so burned bis butt he thought he would die with the pain.  He began to cry like a crazy person, “Help!  Water!  Water! Help, for god’s heart!”

 

 

     The conclusion, for the story goes on to detail the carpenter’s disgrace, causes “everyone to laugh at this contention” (“every wight gan laughen at this stryf”).  Far from the lofty, idealistic, self-discipline of the ballade, this story is the sort the French call a fabliau, a novel genre with few roots in earlier European literature. Fabliaux typically employ earthy humor with a very indelicate view of love-making and an eye more toward entertainment than didacticism. In such passages moderns may hear the vernacular voice of medieval England directly. 

     Though Chaucer was innovative, he was in some ways a typical  medieval poet.  For instance, though he wrote gritty and realistic stories in colloquial language, he also cultivated the art of rhetoric and wrote a number of allegorical dream visions with no pretense of resemblance to everyday lived experience.  His Parlement of Foules (Parliament of Fowls).  In this story the narrator falls asleep reading Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis (Dream of Scipio) and himself dreams that Scipio himself is leading him through the heavenly realms were, after passing through a temple of Venus, he comes upon a meeting of all the birds called that they might each  choose a mate.  The  following passage illustrates the allegorical technique of personifying abstractions. 

 

 

Tho was I war of Plesance anoonright,

 And of Array, and Lust, and Curteisye,

 And of the Craft that can and hath the might   220

 To doon by force a wight to doon folye:

 Disfigurat was she, I nil nat lie.

 And by hemself under an ook, I gesse,

 Saw I Delit that stood by Gentilesse.

 

 I saw Beautee withouten any attir,                     225

 And Youthe ful of game and jolitee,

 Foolhardinesse, and Flaterye, and Desir,

 Messagerye, and Meede, and other three—

 Hir names shal nat here be told for me;

 And upon pileres grete of jasper longe                230

 I saw a temple of bras yfounded stronge.

 

 Aboute that temple daunceden alway

 Wommen ynowe, of whiche some ther were

 Faire of hemself, and some of hem were gay;

 In kirteles al dischevele wente they there:         235

 That was hir office alway, yeer by yere.

 And on the temple of douves white and faire

 Saw I sittinge many an hundred paire.

 

 Bifore the temple-dore ful sobrely

 Dame Pees sat with a curtin in hir hond,              240

 And by hir side, wonder discreetly,

 Dame Pacience sitting ther I foond,

 With face pale, upon an hil of sond;

 And aldernext withinne and eek withoute

 Biheeste and Art, and of hir folk a route.              245

 

 

Then I was aware of Pleasure nearby, and of Ornament, Desire, and Courtesy, and of the Cunning that can have the power to force people to act foolishly.  She was disfigured, I will not lie, and, by himself, under an oak, I guess, I saw Delight that stood by Nobility.  I saw Beauty, lacking any clothes, and Youth, full of sport and jolliness, Foolhardiness, and Flattery, and Desire, Message-sending, and  pay-offs and three others I shall not mention.  And, with big pillars of lengthy jasper, I saw a temple of brass with strong foundation.  About that temple plenty of women were always dancing all over, of which some were fair themselves and some in fine outfits.  They went there with disorderly gowns .  That was their role always, year by year. And on the temple I saw white and pretty doves sittings, many a hundred pair.  In front of the temple door Dame Peace sat, a curtain in her hand, and, by her side, marvelously discreetly I found sitting, with a pale face on a hill of sand, and right next to her, both within and without, Promise and Subtlety and their entourage.

 

 

     Here his picture of love is more objective, more philosophical, than in the Ballade, but still quite genteel when compared to the down-to-earth desire of the Wife of Bath.  He suggests that love is rarely ideal; it may be motivated by fancy dress, lust, and the use of refined formulas, but it leads people to act foolishly.  This love is therefore to some extent “disfigured,”  Delight, significantly, is sitting alone though not far from the conventions of courtesy that ease human relations.  He mentions then naked Beauty and energetic Youth, likely guarantees of joy in love, but associated here with foolishness, flattery, and the desire that leads to crazy behavior.  The reader can imagine the gambits of lovers by his references to messengers and bribes as well as “three other things I will not mention here.”  One may only guess at such unnamed factors.  Though this locus of love is to some extent disorderly, yet the scene includes as well Dame Patience, the Promise (of a favorable outcome), artfulness, and their followers.

     Whereas the description of the Wife of Bath had been, in a way, realistic and novel-like, implying likely plot-lines for the life of such a woman, and the Balade is a lyric outcry as though direct from the heart, and the Miller’s Tale is a dirty joke, with the allegory of The Parlement of Foules the reader finds an essayistic analysis of love's nature in general.  Together these four texts provide a realistic view, than an idealized one, then a low and comic one, and finally an analytic sketch from top to bottom.

     Chaucer is an encyclopedic artist, like Homer and Shakespeare, aand his own personality is occluded as he strives to present the panorama of lived experience.  No single tone contains his vision; he seeks to cover alevels of society and to embrace self-contradictory themes.  Whereas today poetry is often considered a matter of self-expression and individuality and innovation are prized, Chaucer wrote at a time when precedent and imitation were prestigious and his own practice managed to transform English literature while maintaining a substantial loyalty to tradition at the same time.  The fact that he produced a very large body of sophisticated work while also taking an active professional role apart from writing suggests not only his own considerable talents, but the cultural gap between his era and modernity.  Today it is scarcely possible to imagine a government official who is a poet; then literary accomplishment was thought a desideratum for all gentleman. 

     The task of reading his words in the original Middle English may seem at first demanding, but, for the student who takes the trouble, it yields the great pleasure of hearing Chaucer’s voice directly, across the centuries, in some instructive ways strange, in others very like ourselves.