The Life and Times of Chaucer

by John Gardner

  At its most advanced, grammar dealt with the interpretation of texts, biblical, religious, or literary, and with what was known as “translation” (translatio), not in our sense but instead in the sense of retelling old stories in a way that reinterpreted them or heightened their original meaning. Interpretation was grounded on the standard view, which was to some extent correct, that the Bible, properly understood, is composed not entirely on a literal level but in more poetic fashion, using language “other than that of the market place” (the meaning of the two Greek words from which we get the word “allegory”). To understand this poetic speech, which might be found not only in scripture but also in certain pagan poets, notably Virgil and Ovid, one had to understand the principal ways in which “deeper meanings” are expressed in poetry. The clue came from ancient studies of Homer, and by the third century A.D. something approximately like the method of early Homeric critics was established as the method of Christian exegesis. The Bible could be read on four “levels,” namely: (1) the literal or grammatical, what the words say letter by letter, in other words the level on which the Bible says exactly what it means; sometimes called the “historical” level; (2) the allegorical or figurative, as when the Philistines’ hearts are said to be stone but no physiological miracle is implied, or, again as when man is figuratively represented by the Garden of Eden, and his rational, irascible, and concupiscent faculties are represented by (respectively) Adam, the serpent, and Eve; (3) the anagogic or mystical, wherein Old Testament and New Testament events are found to be harmonious, the Old Jerusalem foreshadowing the New, as when Noah’s ark is recognized as an ante-type of the Body of Christ, or the Church; and wherein “last things”—death and resurrection, etc.—are subtly revealed; and (4) tropological or figuratively moralizing—the parables of Christ, for instance. Needless to say, this complicated way of reading scripture made for heresies and confusions, yet it is not altogether unfaithful to the way Jewish thinkers, as well as other Mediterranean writers like Homer, and much more obviously Virgil, did in fact sometimes express themselves. For authority for such a way of reading one need look no further than St. Paul.

  The allegorical approach to reading had become also, early in the Middle Ages, a way of writing. The man from whom the young Chaucer got his first instruction on the parts of speech, Aelius Donatus, also wrote books (now lost) interpreting the allegory in Virgil, and, as the teacher of St. Jerome (early fifth century), helped foster among Christians a tendency to see pagan literature as poetry composed, unwittingly, under the true God’s inspiration. This led immediately to imitation, chiefly of Cicero and Virgil, and to exegetical “translation,” poems in which men like the Beowulf-poet (seventh or eighth century) and later Dante (1265-1321)—and soon after him Petrarch and Chaucer—turned old or original stories, or in Dante’s case real-life experience, to new allegorical uses by introducing symbolic elements, puns, and allusions. Thus the monster in the source of Beowulf becomes a devil-figure, and so on.

  Chaucer was to make fun of this sort of grammatical “translation” in the first major section of his rich and complex House of Fame. (In the second and third sections of the poem, he parodies “logic” and “eloquence.”) What Chaucer’s “translation” does—as we might expect, knowing his essential impishness—is confuse rather than clarify, since part of his purpose in the House of Fame is to dramatize, with much tomfoolery, the nominalist notion that all human knowledge is suspect, mainly (according to Roger Bacon and others) because fallen man is stupid. Chaucer caricatures himself as not just dim-witted but magnificently dim-witted, an unexpected proof, in fact, of God’s grandeur, for, to paraphrase William Blake, “What immortal hand or eye / Dare frame such Vast Stupidity?” For a man like the “Geffrey” of Chaucer’s poem, not even the “divine theologian” Virgil is above the improvement and clarification of translatio. With high-spirited jingling he reduces the prince of poets to—

  “I wol now singen, yif I kan,

  The armës, and also the man Arma…virum.

  That first cam, thurgh his destinee, primus…

  Fugityf of Troy contree,

  In Italyé, with ful mochë pynë [much pain]

  Unto the strondës of Lavynë.” [shores of Lavinium]

  Though he jokes about the exegetical method of translation, Chaucer of course took it very seriously. His epic poem Troilus and Criseyde, drawn from a poem by Boccaccio, is an example of the method, and though the Troilus has wonderfully funny passages, it is finally a philosophical poem whose author history has indeed judged worthy to follow in the steps of “Virgile, Ovide, Omer, Lucan, and Stace [Statius].”

  As its title suggests, the second general course of study, or second branch of the trivium, “logic,” dealt with the critical analysis of true and false arguments and the valid construction of original argument. The basic matter of the course was no doubt less lively then than now—Charles Dodgson’s (Lewis Carroll’s) style of making logical terms of gorillas, uncles, and alligators was still centuries away—but the texts Chaucer read were anything but dreary. It was here that he met writers he’d go on reading all his life—Aristotle, Boethius, and Macrobius—and it was here that he was encouraged, almost incidentally, to reflect on how the universe is built. The question would fascinate him for the rest of his days, would lead him to the study of astrology and alchemy (the legitimate astronomy and chemistry of the day), to pursuit of arithmetic, physics, and “musical” relationships (from angels and planets to the notes on a scale; we have no related branch of study now), and would lead him, through Roger Bacon and the Oxford rationalists, to fundamental questions of epistemology—how we know what we know if, in fact, we know anything. He was on his way to becoming a “noble, philosophical poet,” as his disciple Thomas Usk would call him—the first philosophical poet in English and founder of a line that would include some of England’s noblest minds, among them John Milton, William Blake, and William Wordsworth.

  It was no doubt also his work in “logic” that gave Chaucer his lifelong love, like Dodgson’s, of loblogic. He has in the House of Fame a splendid piece of clown philosophy. The great, golden eagle bearing the worried, wide-eyed Geffrey higher and higher above the shrinking earth proposes to explain how the legendary House of Fame, toward which they’re ascending, can really exist. His disquisition is a masterpiece of late fourteenth-century reasoning, except that it’s nonsense. In his first verse paragraph the eagle appeals to “experience” (Roger Bacon’s term for scientific experiment), and in the second verse paragraph he supports “experience” with “authority” (Bacon’s secondary test for knowability), in this case ludicrously misapplied Boethius. The eagle says, extravagantly proud of his own brilliance, poor Geffrey unhappily wriggling in his claws:

  “Now hennësforth y wol the techë[I]

  How every speche, or noyse, or soun,

  Thurgh hys multiplicacioun,

  Thogh hyt were pipëd of a mous,

  Mot nedë comë to Famës Hous. [Must needs]

  I preve hyt thus—take hedë now—

  Be experiencë; for yf that thow [By]

  Throwe on water now a stoon,

  Wel wost thou, hyt wol make anoon [knowest…soon]

  A litel roundell as a sercle,

  Paraunter brod as a covercle; [pot-lid]

  And ryght anoon thow shalt see wel,

  That whel wol cause another whel, [wheel]

  And that the thridde, and so forth, brother,

  Every sercle causynge other

  Wydder than hymselvë was;

  And thus fro roundel to compas, [small circle]

  Ech aboute other goyngë, [going]

  Causeth of othres steryngë [stirring]

  And multiplyinge ever moo,

  Til that hyt be so fer ygoo [gone]

  That hyt at bothë brynkes bee.

  Although thou mowe hyt not ysee [may]

  Above, hyt gooth yet alway under,

  Although thou thenke hyt a gret wonder.

  And
whoso seyth of trouthe I varyë,

  Bid hym proven the contraryë.

  And ryght thus every word, ywis, [in truth, or assuredly]

  That lowd or pryvee spoken ys,

  Moveth first an ayr aboutë,

  And of thys movynge, out of doutë,

  Another ayr anoon ys mevëd,

  As I have of the watir prevëd,

  That every cercle causeth other.

  Ryght so of ayr, my levë brother; [dear]

  Everych ayr another stereth [srirreth]

  More and more, and speche up bereth,

  Or voys, or noyse, or word, or soun,

  Ay through multiplicacioun,

  Til hyt be attë Hous of Famë—

  Take yt in ernest or in gamë.

  “Now have I told, yf thou have myndë,

  How speche or soun, of purë kyndë, [nature]

  Enclynëd ys upward to mevë;

  This, mayst thou felë, wel I prevë.

  And that samë place, ywys,

  That every thyng enclynëd to ys,

  Hath his kyndelychë stedë:

  That sheweth hyt, withouten dredë,

  That kyndely the mansioun

  Of every speche, of every soun,

  Be hyt eyther foul or fair,

  Hath hys kyndë place in ayr.…”

  Clearly if there is no House of Fame, there ought to be.

  The third segment of the trivium was eloquence, or rhetoric. (In some medieval schools this course of study came before logic, in others, after. In the experience of the Englishman John of Salisbury, the courses came in the order I’ve given, and Chaucer’s House of Fame reflects this order.) I need say nothing here of what “eloquence” covered except to mention that it dealt with making an argument in prose or verse not only convincing but attractive to the hearer, that is, more specifically, well thought out in terms of what traditional and original materials were selected (inventio); well and persuasively organized (dispositio); and stylistically appealing (amplificatio, etc.). It was in connection with the amplification or development of the outline, probably, that the first principles of “music” began to be introduced. For a child like Chaucer, who had apparent talent in “poetic enditing” (that is, writing verse), a shrewd teacher might introduce parts of some such work as Boethius’ De Musica, where the student might begin to consider the mystical relationships of stresses, rhymes, numerology, and so on. The poetry gives evidence that Chaucer did at some point come to study these matters, though it may well have been much later.

  In the third section of the House of Fame Chaucer demonstrates with comic gusto his mastery of “eloquence,” his ability to make up or steal and alter elegant figures—great catalogues like Homer’s, allegorical figurae like Boethius’ “Lady Philosophy,” and grand similes. Even though he’s joking, his figures are very fine. He says of a great castle that it is as “ful eke also] of wyndowës / As flakës falle in gretë snows”; and describing the entrance of those who seek judgment by Lady Fame, he writes, boldly misappropriating an image from Homer, Virgil, and Dante—

  I herde a noyse aprochen blyvë, [quickly]

  That ferde as been don in an hivë [fared…bees]

  Ayen her tyme of out-fleyngë;

  Ryght such a maner murmuryngë,

  For al the world, hyt semed me.

  And for allegorical description of the spread of undeserved bad fame, Geffrey with glorious self-confidence snatches not only from the classics but from the Bible itself (the trumpet of Doom in the Apocalypse):

  What didë this Eolus, but he

  Tok out hys blakë trumpe of bras [black trumpet]

  That fouler than the devel was,

  And gan this trumpë for to blowë

  As al the world shulde overthrowë,

  That thurghout every regioun

  Wentë this foulë trumpës soun,

  As swifte as pelet out of gonnë, [gun]

  Whan fyr is in the poudre ronnë.

  And such a smokë gan out wendë

  Out of his foulë trumpes endë,

  Blak, bloo, grenyssh, swartish red,

  As doth where that men meltë led,

  Loo, al on high fro the tuel. [chimney]

  And therto oo thing saugh I wel, [one…saw]

  That the ferther that hit ran,

  The gretter wexen hit began,

  As dooth the ryver from a wellë,

  And hyt stank as the pit of hellë.

  Allas, thus was her shame yrongë,

  And gilteles, on every tongë!

  A medieval education need not end with the end of the seven-year course in elementary school. One might work on the trivium for a scholarly lifetime or one might shift in early adulthood (or at any other point) to some second educational program, either civil law, the course to which Chaucer turned next, as we’ll see in the next chapter, or the quadrivium, the higher university course of study, where the student investigated in more detail the four classical subjects arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. Few got as far as serious work at this level, and fewer still got to the three highest university programs, medicine, canon law, and theology. But introduction to these subjects, within the grammar, logic, and rhetoric segments of the trivium, gave a child a start, so that if he was curious and diligent, he could do a good deal even without formal university training. Chaucer, as I’ve said, probably did get at least some training at university level and became later the personal friend of several Oxford scholars. His fair knowledge of math and astronomy is shown in the book he wrote for his “little son Lewis” when the boy was at Oxford, a treatise on the astrolabe, and tradition says he wrote a later book, which may or may not be the extant treatise The Equatorie of the Planetis. He may have written a third book, on the planet Earth. He shows something approaching a specialist’s knowledge of philosophical nominalism (on which more hereafter) and other hard matter, including even the philosophy of “music”—material not easily available outside Oxford or Cambridge. Tradition in fact makes him one of the most learned men of his century. He was reported by Holinshed to be “a man so exquisitely learned in al sciences, that hys matche was not lightly founde anye where in those dayes. . . .”23 And he was considered, down into the seventeenth century, one of the “secret masters” of alchemy. Recent critics of the Second Nun’s Tale and Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale have shown that he did know at least some alchemy. If he was familiar with these sciences, from his own study or from discourse with scholars like his friend the Oxford logician Ralph Strode, he got his first whiff of them in his boyhood study in the trivium.

  The seven years of Chaucer’s study in elementary school, despite shattering experiences—the death by pestilence of family and friends—was on the whole a period of extreme happiness. For young Geoffrey it established the habits of a lifetime: the flying, too-short hours of reading and rereading, the intense though seemingly casual questioning of anyone who might answer, whether about trades and occupations or the Spanish landscape or the darkest mysteries of philosophy. He had entered as a child who, like all his kind, loved “playing, and games, and vanity”—a defect we may be thankful he never completely lost—and left a young man filled with visions and lines of poetry, his soul brimful almost to tears with a love of books and of the bustling world they reflected and made him see with new eyes. Other poets had written of how love of a woman might make a man wonder, Do I float or sink? Chaucer would write—joking but in earnest—of how the anguish of the artist, art so long, life so short, and the anguish of the philosopher, the “dredful joye” of knowledge that always so swiftly slides to new questions, to ignorance, has the same effect. Love, the Boethian universal principle.

  Astonyeth with his wonderful werkynge

  So sore, iwis, that when I on hym thynke,

  Nat wot I wel wher that I flete or synke. [I truly know not whether]

  Such was the general character of Chaucer’s early education. It was by no means as varied as modern education, nor was it as rich or even as
accurate, since medieval texts were full of errors that later generations have been able to remove. But it was an education deeper, less frivolous than ours, one that encouraged seriousness and the habit of hard work toward some noble purpose. In many respects, it was as good an early education as any period could offer: in a time of unpropitious weather, famine, recurrent plague, and endless, devastating war, it encouraged a philosophical approach to life’s most troublesome questions—gave noble and dignified arguments on the meaning of life and death (in Boethius and the writing of the wiser churchmen); gave a combined pagan and Christian view of Creation that, except in trivial technical respects, still holds today, a view of man as responsible moral agent in a baffling but orderly universe; gave cultural emphasis to great poetry, painting, music, and architecture—all that makes the medieval period, despite its faults, the most eloquent moment of pain and courage and high aspiration in the life of Western man.

  * * *

  *On the outlawing of Jews in most European countries, see chapter 1, n. 24.

  Three: Chaucer as Young Courtier, Soldier and, in some Sense, Lover (1357-1360)

  LIKE THE KING AND QUEEN OF ENGLAND, EDWARD III’S third son, Prince Lionel, and his wife Elizabeth, countess of Ulster, kept separate servants and separate account books—or such was the case until 1359, when the two households merged. Part of the countess’s record survives, freakishly preserved as the binding paper of another book held by the British Museum; and by means of it we know that on Easter 1357, Geoffrey Chaucer was a minor member of Elizabeth’s household and received as a gift from her a complete set of clothes—tight, parti-colored breeches of black and red, a short jerkin, or “paltok,” which cost the countess 4s. (about $48), and a pair of shoes. Until fairly recently it was assumed that he served as a page, and a picture was composed presenting “a normal teen-age youngster…gratified to find that he could bend over in his new clothes only with the greatest difficulty.”1 That picture is not quite accurate. In the Middle Ages, a young man of sixteen was considered an adult (Chaucer was now at very least sixteen) and was given adult responsibilities—not those of a page, a mere boy. Chaucer is not in fact identified as a page in the countess’s Household Accounts (or identified as anything else, for that matter), though other servants are repeatedly described both here and in other such records as pagettus (page) or as the higher-ranking valettus (yeoman). One servant John Hinton, who like Chaucer is listed as receiving a paltok and other gifts, is described as the countess’s valettus. And though some of the countess’s employees received gifts far more costly than Chaucer’s, several also received rather less, including the servant twice identified as a page, Thomas, who received a gift worth 16d. (about $15).2 In May, Chaucer and others in the countess’s retinue again got new outfits, and the following December Chaucer was given 2s. 6d. for “necessaries at Christmas.”