Chaucer and Gower

Geoffrey Chaucer, a Londoner of bourgeois origins, was at various times a courtier, a

diplomat, and a civil servant. His poetry frequently (but not always unironically) reflects the
views and values associated with the term courtly. It is in some ways not easy to account for
his decision to write in English, and it is not surprising that his earliest substantial poems, the
Book of the Duchess (c. 1370) and the House of Fame (1370s), were heavily indebted to the
fashionable French courtly love poetry of the time. Also of French origin was the octosyllabic
couplet used in these poems. Chaucer’s abandonment of this engaging but ultimately jejune
metre in favour of a 10-syllable line (specifically, iambic pentameter) was a portentous
moment for English poetry. His mastery of it was first revealed in stanzaic form, notably the
seven-line stanza (rhyme royal) of the Parliament of Fowls (c. 1382) and Troilus and
Criseyde (c. 1385), and later was extended in the decasyllabic couplets of the prologue to the
Legend of Good Women (1380s) and large parts of The Canterbury Tales (c. 1387–1400).
Chaucer’s cultivation of courtly love is elaborately, if humorously, expounded in the
allegory The Parlement of Foulys (1382), meant to be a witty, elegantly formed,
complimentary dedication to the marriage of King Richard II to Anne of Bohemia. It creates a
vision of birds gathered on St Valentine’s Day in order to choose their suitable mates in front
of the goddess of Nature; they are shown to behave in conformity with ‘natural’ law, by
courting, disputing and pairing off according to the their rank in the stratification of avian
society. The royal eagles take precedence over all, the others following in descending order
from birds of prey to the humblest fowl and smallest seed-eaters. The heated debate on how to
choose a proper mate remains unresolved, but the central message is that the more majestic
the bird the more formal and sophisticated its rituals of courtship and mating. For instance,
eagles look for more elevating things in their definition and exploration of love, looking down
on the crudely pragmatic common sense of the simple-minded, unpretentious ducks (‘“Thy
kynde is of so low a wretchednesse/That what love is, thow canst nat seen ne gesse” ’... ‘“Ye
quek!” yit seyde the doke, full well and feyre,/There been mo sterres, God wot, than a
payre!”’). Obviously, this allegorical dramatization of notions of hierarchy and degrees of
amatory sophistication and decorum in the avian world transparently extols the elevating
refinement of matrimonial sentiment and conduct underlying the royal union.
Though Chaucer wrote a number of moral and amatory lyrics, which were imitated by
his 15th-century followers, his major achievements were in the field of narrative poetry. The
early influence of French courtly love poetry (notably the Roman de la Rose, which he
translated) gave way to an interest in Italian literature. Chaucer was acquainted with Dante’s
writings and took a story from Petrarch for the substance of “The Clerk’s Tale.” Two of his
major poems, Troilus and Criseyde and “The Knight’s Tale,” were based, respectively, on the
Filostrato and the Teseida of Boccaccio.
Living in an age of political and social disruptions, which he engages both as a man of
state and a man of letters, Chaucer is deeply concerned with ideas of order and decorum at all
levels of human and social experience. His poetry both expresses and embodies a firm sense
of order, evident in his twin masterpieces, Troilus and Criseyde (mid-1380s) and The
Canterbury Tales (planned c. 1387), as well as in his minor poems or prose work. This
preoccupation with order is manifest in his reflections on the nature and workings of the
cosmos, which inform the prose treatise on the astrolabe he wrote for his son Lewis; in his
frequent allusions to Boethius’s De Consolatio philosophiae, which he translated in c. 1380),
but also in his steady affirmations of an orthodox Christian belief in divine involvement in
human affairs.
Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer’s single most ambitious poem, is a moving story of
love gained and betrayed set against the background of the Trojan War. As well as being a
poem of profound human sympathy and insight, it also has a marked philosophical dimension
derived from Chaucer’s reading of Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae, a work that he
also translated in prose. His evocation of the time of the Trojan war and of the ‘payens corsed
olde rytes (the accursed rites of the pagans) is transcended by a vision of Troilus in the next
life looking with serene mirth upon the his wailing mourners. Thus tragedy turns into a divine
comedy, while pagan rites recede before the pious invocation of the Holy Trinity at the end, a
prayer reminiscent of Dante, which proclaims the Triune God’s eternal reign over all things
and setting his mysterious seal on human aspiration. His entire work is pervaded by the faith
in the symbiotic harmony of natural and human worlds, essentially interrelated in the divine
scheme of things and ordered in hierarchies like the kingdom of heaven.
His consummate skill in narrative art, however, was most fully displayed in The
Canterbury Tales, an unfinished series of stories purporting to be told by a group of pilgrims
journeying from London to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket and back.
The Canterbury Tales describes a world whose existence and perceptions are
determined and conditioned by degree and rank. The ‘General Prologue’ inducts us to the
circumstances bringing the pilgrims together at Tabard Inn. Presenting the pilgrims according
to their rank, from the highest to the humblest, Chaucer evinces the same preoccupation with
social degree and order.
 The three estates or established social strata are clearly represented. Due precedence is
given to the first estate, the king’s military nobles, represented by the knight. The first to be
introduced, the deserving knight is followed by his son the Squire and their attendant
Yeoman. The Knight’s portrait appositely presents him as the true human model of feudal
society, a paragon of virtue for the age of chivalry and its values. His professional career
recommends him as a worthy servant to his king and the cause of Christendom, even if its
evocation enumerates campaigns marked by military disasters, which has been held to suggest
that his portrait and tale could be read ironically. Another line of opinion has it that Chaucer
seems to be bent on enhancing his exemplary dignity.
The second estate, the Church, is represented by the fastidious Prioress, her
accompanying nun and personal chaplain, and three other priests. There follows a Monk, who,
being the outrider in his monastery, is shown to enjoy extra-mural luxuries rather too much.
The worldly and mercenary Friar is also somewhat at a remove from the prescribed canons of
demeanour of his calling.
The third estate is also stratified to include the urban lucrative class, with its rich,
middling and poor. Higher among these are a shifty Merchant, a bookish Oxford Clerk,
Sergeant of the Law, a Franklin (a landowner of free but not noble birth). The intrepid urban
guildsmen are represented by the Haberdasher, the Carpenter, the Weaver, the Dyer and the
Tapicer). Next are introduced the skilled tradesmen: Cook, Shipman, Doctor of Physic. There
is also a feminine version of progressive industriousness, ushered in by the Wife of Bath, a
rich widow with a trade of her own.

Last, but no least, the Parson and the Ploughman are fondly placed at the very
foundation of the social edifice, as meek, but praiseworthy pillars of the nation, which they
help nourish, spiritually and materially, through their honest labour of soul and soil. The
narrator’s stress on the due humility of the Parson and the Ploughman proclaims their
exemplary fitness for modest but essential roles – one for the true mission of the Church to the
poor, the other for the blessedness of holy poverty. They are described as brothers whose
fraternity is rooted in Christian meekness and closeness to God. Both of them are considered
to act out the Gospel, one as a ‘noble ensample to his sheep’ and the other ‘lyvynge in pees
and parfit charitee’. Their humble status is duly ennobled by the meekness of their
demeanour, and Chaucer envelops them in an aura of sanctity.
They are followed by the Manciple and a bunch of reprobates (Reeve, Miller,
Summoner, Pardoner), who are relegated to the end because of their morally objectionable
character and occupational dealings. This last group contrasts the previous paragons of virtue
with those whose very calling prompts periodic falls from grace. For instance, it is suggested
that the Manciple’s wit and acquired administrative skills render him worthy of better things.
Even worse, their misdemeanour invariably involves the spoliation of the poor and the
complete lack of a moral conscience. The Reeve strikes fear into master’s tenants while
feathering his own nest; the Miller steals corn and overcharges clients; the lecherous
Summoner parades his limited learning; the Pardoner sells false relics. Out of sheer,
unfeigned modesty, Chaucer takes care that the narrator himself is placed at the very rear of
the troupe, as a high-ranking royal official whose worth is enhanced by his unassuming
positioning and demeanour.
The pilgrims’ tales themselves are apposite to their social station, beliefs and moral
character. Each pilgrim was supposed to tell two stories on the way to Canterbury and two on
the way back. However, this section remains unfinished, fragmentary, with only 24 tales.
The knight’s taking precedence is not incidental. His tale is an abbreviated version of
Boccaccio’s Teseida, a high-minded story of the rivalry of two noble cousins for the love a
princess, elegantly complemented by accounts of supernatural intervention and elegant
decisive human ceremonial. The Ploughman is allotted no tale at all. The Parson’s concluding
tale is a long prose treatise on the seven deadly sins, a careful sermon about devout gravitas
and earnest learning.
The stories are loosely fitted to the tellers’ tastes and professions, and tailored to fit
into the overarching narrative shape by prologues, interjections or disputes between the
characters. For example, the Parson’s worthy discourse is complemented by the shadowy
Nun’s Priest’s lively story of a wily cock caught by a fox, ending with the clerical insistence
on ‘the moralite’. Other tales ironically illuminate the character’s own weaknesses. The
Pardoner tells a tidy moral tale warning against covetousness, thus directly reflecting on his
own avarice, which he spiritedly and frankly confesses to. The Prioress’s short devotional tale
of Christian child whose throat is cut by the Jews, but who continues to sing a Marian hymn is
well received by the company.
By contrast, other tellers are not so ingenuous. The Merchant, prompted by the Clerk’s
adaptation of Boccaccio’s story of the trials of patient Griselda, offers the tale of an old
husband, January, and his ‘fresse’ young bride May, an impatiently frisky wife who exploits
her husband’s sudden blindness and lets herself seduced in a pear tree; January’s sight is
mischievously restored by Pluto, while Proserpine inspires May to claim, in her defence, her
husband’s best interest. Such earthier stories are allocated to the Miller, Reeve, Friar, and
Summoner, thus placing them at the lower end of the social and moral scale. Many of the
stories are set in counterpoint, coming to counteract or qualify the ideas expressed by the tales
of the other pilgrims. Thus, the Miller drunkenly intrudes after the Knight’s story with a tale
of dull-witted carpenter, his tricksy wife and her two suitors, which ostensibly offers a
diametrically opposed view of courtship. This, in turn, provokes the Reeve into telling an
anecdote about a cuckolded miller. The same mutually subversive exchange is evident when
the Friar tells the story of an extortionate summoner carried to hell by the devil, which causes
the enraged Summoner to respond by the story of an ingenious friar obliged to share out the
unexpected legacy of ‘the rumblynge of a fart’ with his brethren.
While the other tales are shown to display the storytelling talents of the tellers,
Chaucer casts himself as incompetent storyteller. There is a refined irony of in his extended
self-deprecatory ruse. His shyness is repeatedly challenged by Host. He falteringly begins
tells a tale of Sir Thopas, a parody of contemporary romance, told in awkward singsong 6 line
stanzas. Then he begins another long weighty prose homily of imprudent Melibeus and his
wife Prudence. This pretence of incompetence is a very effective device, echoing the
discussion on the virtues of truthful representation expounded in the General Prologue, with
its insistence on frankness and proper representation.
The illusion that the individual pilgrims (rather than Chaucer himself) tell their tales
gave him an unprecedented freedom of authorial stance, which enabled him to explore the
rich fictive potentialities of a number of genres: pious legend (in “The Man of Law’s Tale”
and “The Prioress’s Tale”), fabliaux (“The Shipman’s Tale,” “The Miller’s Tale,” and “The
Reeve’s Tale”), chivalric romance (“The Knight’s Tale”), popular romance (parodied in
Chaucer’s “own” “Tale of Sir Thopas”), beast fable (“The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” and “The
Manciple’s Tale”), and more—what the poet John Dryden later summed up as “God’s
plenty.”
A recurrent concern in Chaucer’s writings is the refined and sophisticated cultivation
of love, commonly described by the modern expression courtly love. A French term of
Chaucer’s time, fine amour, gives a more authentic description of the phenomenon; Chaucer’s
friend John Gower translated it as “fine loving” in his long poem Confessio amantis (begun c.
1386). The Confessio runs to some 33,000 lines in octosyllabic couplets and takes the form of
a collection of exemplary tales placed within the framework of a lover’s confession to a priest
of Venus. Gower provides a contrast to Chaucer in that the sober and earnest moral intent
behind Gower’s writing is always clear, whereas Chaucer can be noncommittal and evasive.
On the other hand, though Gower’s verse is generally fluent and pleasing to read, it has a thin
homogeneity of texture that cannot compare with the colour and range found in the language
of his great contemporary. Gower was undoubtedly extremely learned by lay standards, and
many Classical myths (especially those deriving from Ovid’s Metamorphoses) make the first
of their numerous appearances in English literature in the Confessio. Gower was also deeply
concerned with the moral and social condition of contemporary society, and he dealt with it in
two weighty compositions in French and Latin, respectively: the Mirour de l’omme (c. 1374–
78; The Mirror of Mankind) and Vox clamantis (c. 1385; The Voice of One Crying).