Part 8 (1/2)
CHAPTER IX CHAUCER
Chaucer has sometimes been represented as a French poet writing in English-not only a 'great translator' as his friend Eustache Deschamps called him, but so thoroughly in sympathy with the ideas and the style of French poetry that he is French in spirit even when he is original. This opinion about Chaucer is not the whole truth, but there is a great deal in it. Chaucer got his early literary training from French authors; particularly from the _Romance of the Rose_, which he translated, and from the poets of his own time or a little earlier: Machaut, Deschamps, Froissart, Granson. From these authors he learned the refinements of courtly poetry, the sentiment and the elegant phrasing of the French school, along with a number of conventional devices which were easier to imitate, such as the allegorical dream in the fas.h.i.+on of the _Roman de la Rose_. With Chaucer's poetry, we might say, English was brought up to the level of French. For two or three centuries English writers had been trying to be as correct as the French, but had seldom or never quite attained the French standard. Now the French were equalled in their own style by an English poet. English poetry at last comes out in the same kind of perfection as was shown in French and Provencal as early as the twelfth century, in German a little later with narrative poets such as Wolfram von Eschenbach, the author of _Parzival_, and lyric poets such as Walther von der Vogelweide. Italian was later still, but by the end of the thirteenth century, in the poets who preceded Dante, the Italian language proved itself at least the equal of the French and Provencal, which had ripened earlier. English was the last of the languages in which the poetical ideal of the Middle Ages was realized-the ideal of courtesy and grace.
One can see that this progress in English was determined by some general conditions-the 'spirit of the age'. The native language had all along been growing in importance, and by the time of Chaucer French was no longer what it had been in the twelfth or thirteenth centuries, the only language fit for a gentleman. At the same time French literature retained its influence and its authority in England; and the result was the complete adaptation of the English language to the French manner of thought and expression. The English poetry of Gower is enough to prove that what Chaucer did was not all due to Chaucer's original genius, but was partly the product of the age and the general circ.u.mstances and tendencies of literature and education. Gower, a man of literary talent, and Chaucer, a man of genius, are found at the same time, working in the same way, with objects in common. Chaucer shoots far ahead and enters on fields where Gower is unable to follow him; but in a considerable part of Chaucer's work he is along with Gower, equally dependent on French authority and equally satisfied with the French perfection. If there had been no Chaucer, Gower would have had a respectable place in history as the one 'correct' English poet of the Middle Ages, as the English culmination of that courtly medieval poetry which had its rise in France and Provence two or three hundred years before. The prize for style would have been awarded to Gower; as it is, he deserves rather more consideration than he has generally received in modern times. It is easy to pa.s.s him over and to say that his correctness is flat, his poetical art monotonous. But at the very lowest valuation he did what no one else except Chaucer was able to do; he wrote a large amount of verse in perfect accordance with his own critical principles, in such a way as to stand minute examination; and in this he thoroughly expressed the good manners of his time. He proved that English might compete with the languages which had most distinguished themselves in poetry. Chaucer did as much; and in his earlier work he did no more than Gower.
The two poets together, different as they are in genius, work in common under the same conditions of education to gain for England the rank that had been gained earlier by the other countries-France and Provence, Germany and Italy. Without them, English poetry would have possessed a number of interesting, a number of beautiful medieval works, but nothing quite in the pure strain of the finest medieval art. English poetry would still have reflected in its mirror an immense variety of life, a host of dreams; but it would have wanted the vision of that peculiar courteous grace in which the French excelled. Chaucer and Gower made up what was lacking in English medieval poetry; the Middle Ages did not go by without a proper rendering of their finer spirit in English verse.
But a great many ages had pa.s.sed before Chaucer and Gower appeared, and considered as spokesmen for medieval ideas they are rather belated.
England never quite made up what was lost in the time of depression, in the century or two after the Norman Conquest. Chaucer and Gower do something like what was done by the authors of French romance in the twelfth century, such as Chrestien de Troyes, the author of _Enid_, or Benoit de Sainte More, the author of the _Romance of Troy_. But their writings do not alter the fact that England had missed the first freshness of chivalrous romance. There were two hundred years between the old French romantic school and Chaucer. Even the _Roman de la Rose_ is a hundred years old when Chaucer translates it. The more recent French poets whom Chaucer translates or imitates are not of the best medieval period. Gower, who is more medieval than Chaucer, is a little behind his time. He is mainly a narrative poet, and narrative poetry had been exhausted in France; romances of adventure had been replaced by allegories (in which the narrative was little worth in comparison with the decoration), or, more happily, by familiar personal poems like those in which Froissart describes various pa.s.sages in his own life. Froissart, it is true, the contemporary of Chaucer, wrote a long romance in verse in the old fas.h.i.+on; but this is the exception that proves the rule: Froissart's _Meliador_ shows plainly enough that the old type of romance was done. It is to the credit of Gower that although he wrote in French a very long dull moralizing poem, he still in English kept in the main to narrative. It may have been old-fas.h.i.+oned, but it was a success.
Gower should always be remembered along with Chaucer; he is what Chaucer might have been without genius and without his Italian reading, but with his critical tact, and much of his skill in verse and diction. The _Confessio Amantis_ is monotonous, but it is not dull. Much of it at a time is wearisome, but as it is composed of a number of separate stories, it can be read in bits, and ought to be so read. Taken one at a time the clear bright little pa.s.sages come out with a meaning and a charm that may be lost when the book is read too perseveringly.
The _Confessio Amantis_ is one of the medieval works in which a number of different conventions are used together. In its design it resembles the _Romance of the Rose_; and like the _Romance of the Rose_ it belongs to the pattern of Boethius; it is in the form of a conversation between the poet and a divine interpreter. As a collection of stories, all held together in one frame, it follows the example set by _The Book of the Seven Wise Masters_. Like the _Romance of the Rose_ again it is an encyclopaedia of the art of love. Very fortunately, in some of the incidental pa.s.sages it gets away from conventions and authorities, and enlarges in a modern good-tempered fas.h.i.+on on the vanities of the current time. There is more wickedness in Gower than is commonly suspected.
Chaucer is not the only ironical critic of his age; and in his satire Gower appears to be, no less than Chaucer, independent of French examples, using his wit about the things and the humours which he could observe in the real life of his own experience.
Chaucer's life as a poet has by some been divided into three periods called French, Italian and English. This is not a true description, any more than that which would make of him a French poet merely, but it may be useful to bring out the importance of Chaucer's Italian studies.
Chaucer was French in his literary education, to begin with, and in some respects he is French to the end. His verse is always French in pattern; he did not care for the English alliterative verse; he probably like the English romance stanza better than he pretended, but he uses it only in the burlesque of _Sir Thopas_. In spite of his admiration for the Italian poets, he never imitates their verse, except in one short pa.s.sage where he copies the _terza rima_ of Dante. He is a great reader of Italian poems in the octave stanza, but he never uses that stanza; it was left for the Elizabethans. He translates a sonnet by Petrarch, but he does not follow the sonnet form. The strength and constancy of his devotion to French poetry is shown in the Prologue to the _Legend of Good Women_. The _Legend_ was written just before the _Canterbury Tales_; that is to say, after what has been called the Italian period. But the ideas in the Prologue to the _Legend_ are largely the ideas of the _Roman de la Rose_.
As for the so-called English period, in which Chaucer is supposed to come to himself, to escape from his tutors, to deal immediately in his own way with the reality of English life, it is true that the _Canterbury Tales_, especially in the Prologue and the interludes and the comic stories, are full of observation and original and fresh descriptive work. But they are not better in this respect than _Troilus and Criseyde_, which is the chief thing in Chaucer's Italian period.
The importance of Chaucer's Italian reading is beyond doubt. But it does not displace the French masters in his affection. It adds something new to Chaucer's mind; it does not change his mind with regard to the things which he had learned to value in French poetry.
When it is said that an English period came to succeed the Italian in Chaucer's life, the real meaning of this is that Chaucer was all the time working for independence, and that, as he goes on, his original genius strengthens and he takes more and more of real life into his view. But there is no one period in which he casts off his foreign masters and strikes out absolutely for himself. Some of his greatest imaginative work, and the most original, is done in his adaptation of the story of Troilus from an Italian poem of Boccaccio.
Chaucer represents a number of common medieval tastes, and many of these had to be kept under control in his poetry. One can see him again and again tempted to indulge himself, and sometimes yielding, but generally securing his freedom and lifting his verse above the ordinary traditional ways. He has the educational bent very strongly. That is shown in his prose works. He is interested in popular philosophy and popular science; he translates 'Boece', the Consolation of Philosophy, and compiles the Treatise on the Astrolabe for 'little Lewis my son'. The tale of _Melibeus_ which Chaucer tells in his own person among the Canterbury pilgrims is a translation of a moral work which had an extraordinary reputation not very easy to understand or appreciate now Chaucer took it up no doubt because it had been recommended by authors of good standing: he translates it from the French version by Jean de Meung. The _Parson's Tale_ is an adaptation from the French, and represents the common form of good sermon literature. Chaucer thus shared the tastes and the apt.i.tudes of the good ordinary man of letters. He was under no compulsion to do hack work; he wrote those things because he was fond of study and teaching, like the Clerk of Oxford in the _Canterbury Tales_. The learning shown in his poems is not pretence; it came into his poems because he had it in his mind. How his wit could play with his science is shown in the _Hous of Fame_, where the eagle is allowed to give a popular lecture on acoustics, but is prevented from going on to astronomy.
Chaucer dissembles his interest in that subject because he knows that popular science ought not to interfere too much with the proper business of poetry; he also, being a humorist, sees the comic aspect of his own didactic tastes; he sees the comic opposition between the teacher anxious to go on explaining and the listener not so ready to take in more. There is another pa.s.sage, in _Troilus_, where good literary advice is given (rather in the style of Polonius) against irrelevant scientific ill.u.s.trations. In a love-letter you must not allow your work for the schools to appear too obviously-
Ne jompre eek no discordant thing y-fere, As thus, to usen termes of physik.
This may be fairly interpreted as Chaucer talking to himself. He knew that he was inclined to this sort of irrelevance and very apt to drag in 'termes of physik', fragments of natural philosophy, where they were out of place.
This was one of the things, one of the common medieval temptations, from which he had to escape if he was to be a master in the art of poetry. How real the danger was can be seen in the works of some of the Chaucerians, e.g. in Henryson's _Orpheus_, and in Gawain Douglas's _Palace of Honour_.
Boethius is a teacher of a different sort from Melibeus, and the poet need not be afraid of him. Boethius, the master of Dante, the disciple of Plato, is one of the medieval authors who are not disqualified in any century; with him Chaucer does not require to be on his guard. The _Consolation of Philosophy_ may help the poet even in the highest reach of his imagination; so Boethius is remembered by Chaucer, as he is by Dante, when he has to deal solemnly with the condition of men on earth.
This is not one of the common medieval vanities from which Chaucer has to escape.
Far more dangerous and more attractive than any pedantry of the schools was the traditional convention of the allegorical poets, the _Rose_ and all the attendants of the _Rose_. This was a danger that Chaucer could not avoid; indeed it was his chief poetical task, at first, to enter this dreamland and to come out of it with the spoils of the garden, which could not be won except by a dreamer and by full subjection to all the enchantments of the place. It was part of Chaucer's poetic vocation to comprehend and to make his own the whole spirit and language of the _Roman de la Rose_ and also of the French poets who had followed, in the century between. The _Complaint to Pity_ shows how he succeeded in this; also the _Complaint of Mars_ and the poem called the _Complaint of Venus_, which is a translation from Oton de Granson, 'the floure of hem that maken in France'. Chaucer had to do this, and then he had to escape.
This sort of fancy work, a kind of musical sentiment with a mythology of personified abstract qualities, is the least substantial of all things-thought and argument, imagery and utterance, all are of the finest and most impalpable.
Thus am I slayn sith that Pite is deed: Allas the day! that ever hit shulde falle!
What maner man dar now holde up his heed?
To whom shall any sorwful herte calle, Now Crueltee hath cast to sleen us alle In ydel hope, folk redelees of peyne?
Sith she is deed, to whom shul we compleyne
If this sort of verse had not been written, English poetry would have missed one of the graces of medieval art-a grace which at this day it is easy to despise. It is not despicable, but neither is it the kind of beauty with which a strong imagination can be content, or indeed any mind whatsoever, apart from such a tradition as that of the old 'courtly makers'. And it is worth remembering that not every one of the courtly makers restricted himself to this thin, fine abstract melody. Eustache Deschamps, for example, amused himself with humorous verse as well; and for Froissart his ballades and virelais were only a game, an occasional relief from the memoirs in which he was telling the story of his time.
Chaucer in fact did very little in the French style of abstract sentiment. The longest of his early poems, _The Book of the d.u.c.h.ess_, has much of this quality in it, but this does not make the poem. _The Book of the d.u.c.h.ess_ is not abstract. It uses the traditional manner-dream, mythology, and all-but it has other substance in it, and that is the character of the d.u.c.h.ess Blanche herself, and the grief for her death.