by John Gardner
The so-called Good Parliament of 1376, the year in which Chaucer began negotiating for Marie of France, was the first in history to give representation to all of England’s social classes. Though Sir John Knyvet, the chancellor, did not say so, the purpose of the parliament was to do something about the strained relationship between members of the House of Commons and King Edward’s executives. At a time when those executives were embarking on a new program for England—peace and eventual prosperity through marriage alliance—nothing could be less welcome than parliament’s attack on the chief architects of that program. The Commons took the offensive, leveling charge after charge against the favorites of the king. Conspicuous targets for attack were Chaucer’s main patron John of Gaunt (who led the royalist defense), Chaucer’s old friends Alice Perrers and William Lord Latimer, and Chaucer’s friend and fellow diplomat in France, Sir Richard Stury. Though history has called this parliament “the Good,” we may be sure that is not what Gaunt and Chaucer called it. To them it was a truculent, disorderly, almost treasonously aggressive body. The Commons insisted on informing the king against Alice Perrers and told him she was the wife of William of Windsor (which the now senile king solemnly swore he’d never heard), and despite the king’s plea that Alice be dealt with gently, the Commons insisted on her banishment and the forfeiture of her property. John of Gaunt’s faithful friend and Chaucer’s, William Lord Latimer, was accused of unlawfully levying higher duties on merchandise than was authorized by parliament, he and his accomplices setting prices so high, his accusers said, that they “made such a great scarcity in this land of things saleable, that the common sort of people could scantily live.” (He was the first minister of the crown ever impeached by Commons.) The Commons laid charges not only against John of Gaunt and his circle but also against the king himself, though they prudently kept those charges moderate. By the time it was over, numerous associates of Chaucer’s—Stury, Lord Latimer, Richard Lyons, and Sir John Neville, among others, all members of Gaunt’s circle—had been thrown into prison, to fret there until the “Bad Parliament” of 1377 could set them free.
All this might account for Chaucer’s tone in treating the common birds’ parliament. These lines, for instance:
The noyse of foulës for to ben delyverëd [freed from the session]
So loudë rong, “Have don, and lat us wendë!” [leave]
That wel wende I the wode hadde al toshyverëd. [I really thought the wood might shatter]
“Com of!” they criede, “allas, ye wol us shendë! [kill]
Whan shal youre cursedë pleytynge have an endë? [suit]
How sholde a juge eyther parti levë
For ye or nay, withouten any prevë?”
The goos, the cokkow, and the doke also
So cryedë, “Kek kek! kokkow! quek quek!” hyë,
That thourgh myne erës the noysë wente tho. [then]
Chaucer does not, of course, condemn all birds equally, and if he devotes many lines to the selfishness and stupidity of the lower orders, he also gives a comic view of the tedious and intricate negotiations of the suitor eagles—perhaps a comic reflection of the marriage negotiations in which Guichard d’Angle, Stury, and Chaucer himself were involved. The suitor eagles, at any rate, spend the whole long day from dawn to dusk making “gentil ple [plea] in love and other thyng.”
Professor Edith Rickert worked out the main lines of the political allegory long ago. The “fouls of ravyne,” she points out, represent the nobility in the House of Commons,10 the “water-fouls” the merchants, the “seed-fouls” the country gentry, and the “worm-fouls” the citizenry.
The birds use parliamentary procedure, each group speaking through its representative. The goose, representative of the water-fouls, says boldly:
“Al this nys not worth a flyë!
But I can shape hereof a remedië
And I wol seyë my verdit fayre and swythë [swift]
For water-foul, whoso be wroth or blythë!”
The officious “foul cukoo,” representative of the worm-fouls, says,
“…I wol of myn owene autorité,
For comunë spedë, take on the chargë now…”
And so it goes with the rest of the lower orders. Toward all the lower orders Chaucer displays genial contempt, and in every case they are put down at last by birds of “ravyne,” that is, the noblemen, especially by the “tercelet of the faucon,” chosen by “pleyn elleccioun” by the birds of rapine. Only the tercelet of the faucon addresses himself directly to the three suitors for the lady eagle, saying, as if with full authority,
“Oure is the voys that han the charge in hondë,
And to the jugës dom ye moten stondë.”
He is also the only spokesman who actually reviews the case of the rival suitors and implies that he knows the lady eagle’s inevitable decision:
“And of thesë thre she wot hirëself, I trowë,
Which that he be, for it is light to know.”
The tercel is treated with special respect by Dame Nature, who quotes him twice with approval:
“For sith it may not here discussëd be
Who loveth hire best, as saydë the tercelet…”
And:
“[I] Conseylë yow the royal tercel takë,
As seydë the tercelet ful skylfully…”
Professor Braddy remarks,
We shall probably not be mistaken…in supposing that Chaucer in the “tercelet of the faucon” was describing a real person; and, of course, one to whom the royalist faction would naturally have turned as their leader. And if this supposition is correct, the only person who would have fitted such a role was manifestly John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, who being the son of the aged King might appropriately have been described as “the tercelet of the faucon.” Moreover, at the Parliament of 1376 John of Gaunt actually presided as the deputy of the King.11
All this of course strongly suggests that the Parliament was written around 1377; but ultimately we can be sure of only this: when Chaucer wrote the Parliament he felt at least a touch of scorn for the growing role of the House of Commons, as he would all his life. What seems liberal to us seemed to Chaucer cumbersome and absurd. He learned the idea of humanism in Italy, chiefly from Petrarch and Boccaccio; but when the idea expressed itself politically, Chaucer responded—exactly as Boccaccio and Petrarch did—with disapproval in the form of satire. Then King Edward died, and the son of the late Black Prince became king. He was handsome and brilliant, like all Plantagenets; a faithful husband and a political moderate. He would resist with all his might the new spirit that was abroad in England, the humanism and new liberality that Chaucer both advanced and dreaded. And in the end the new spirit, among other things, would be the death of King Richard II.
Another poem perhaps written in the middle or late seventies, though some parts are still later, is the multi-section work on the fall of the proud which comes down to us as the Monk’s Tale in the Canterbury Tales. Some scholars have thought it possible that this was Chaucer’s Order of the Garter poem in 1374; but since the Monk’s Tale is even more obviously influenced by Italian poetry than is the Parliament, the theory is not very persuasive. The poem of course contains no reference to the Order of the Garter and, except for its general concern with chivalry and Christian doctrine, contains no obvious relevance to St. George’s Day. True, such things, if once included, might have been revised out for the Monk’s presentation on the pilgrimage; and the people whose brief biographies are given might reasonably be viewed in Chaucer’s day as chivalric figures, that is, good or bad knights—even Lucifer, who warred with Christ miles, Christ the Knight. But the poem’s celebration of such an absolutist as Pedro of Castile, and its scorn of upstart commoners, would seem to link it with the period of parliament’s increasing unruliness; and at least one of the poem’s short biographies, that of Bernabo of Milan, whom Chaucer met on his Italian trip of 1378, “God of delit and scourge of Lombardye,” must be very late, since Bernabo died in
1385.
When the poem first appeared it was undoubtedly much admired and must surely have enhanced Chaucer’s reputation as a poet. Though Chaucer would return to French forms from time to time (in the House of Fame, for instance), he made no use here of those favorite genres the dream vision and complaint. To English aristocratic ears, the poem was in some respects a new kind of work, an original and fascinating creation. Englishmen had heard before moralistic rhymes on Lucifer, Adam, Cain, and the like. Such poems had been written back in Anglo-Saxon times and would continue to be written, mainly for schoolboys, down into the eighteenth century. Chaucer’s audience had also heard before various poems (or short sections of larger poems, like the alliterative Morte Arthure) which combined short biographies from the Bible and Christian tradition with short biographies of certain later notables (Alexander, Julius Caesar, etc.)—poems, that is, telling of the so-called Nine Worthies, some biblical, some not, all of them exhibiting in their rise and fall the danger of trusting in Fortune. But Chaucer’s visit to Italy had suggested to him a new way of dealing with these older poetic traditions, as well as providing him with new stories. There, where the spirit of humanism was awakening, Petrarch and Boccaccio were writing short (and sometimes long) histories of great men, histories which focused as much on the character and deeds of the biographical subject as on the moral to be drawn. That was of course a shift of emphasis already visible in Dante, in whose Divine Comedy characters like Farinata or the elder Cavalcanti emerge not simply as representative sinners but as people. In at least one palace Chaucer visited while in Tuscany he saw series-portraits of ancient and more recent great men. (Such portraits hung in Padua, where he may have met Petrarch.) In telling the stories not only of the traditional Nine Worthies or figures from Genesis but also of men as recent as Pedro, Bernabo, or Ugolino of Pisa, Chaucer gave English poetic expression to the new humanistic feeling: he extended old tradition in much the way Giotto had done in progressing from images of Paradise and the Fall of man to a series of pictures on the developing arts of humanity. Thus, in the eyes of his contemporaries, Chaucer proved his poetic mastery by writing well in a conventional way (greatly modifying even that) but also startled his listeners with something new to most of them, in all probability, humanism’s at once intellectual and gossipy love of things current.
Modern readers have not found much to like in the Monk’s Tale and have suggested that in his old age Chaucer himself found the poem wanting, since he gives it to the Monk as a sign of the man’s prudishness, hypocritical sobriety (brought on by remarks of the Host), and intellectual shallowness, that is, his failure to see that Christian and Boethian standard doctrine on Fortune and free will might as readily support comedy (celebration) as tragedy. By standard doctrine—reflected in Chaucer’s tale of Nebuchadnezzar—the enemy is not Fortune but man’s inability to see beyond Fortune (or project his faith beyond Fortune) to the benevolence of God’s plan, or Providence.
It can hardly be denied that the poem is one of Chaucer’s less successful works, partly because it has no real principle of unity. But it is a subtler and more entertaining work than critics have generally noticed. Combining elements of the Nine Worthies tradition (the fall of the proud), the biblical-verse tradition, and humanistic biography, Chaucer moves between the broadly comic and the serious to develop a collection with more variety, more different kinds of interest, than the older forms allowed.
The poem begins casually, if not indifferently. Chaucer dismisses the Lucifer and Adam stories in a few lines each, simply making the orthodox point that one shouldn’t “truste on blynde prosperitee” and bringing forward the age-old tradition that both fell for what might be called political reasons, Lucifer for disobedience, Adam for “mysgovernauncë.” (They come, of course, to the same thing and reflect Chaucer’s normal politics.) The Adam poem contains one curious oddity, though what we ought to do with it heaven only knows. Chaucer, whose later poetry contains innumerable obscene puns, writes here—unwittingly?—that Adam was begotten not “of mannës sperme unclenë” but by “Goddës owenë fynger.” (Conceivably this reflects a late revision and has to do with the character of the self-righteous, slightly stupid monk.)
Chaucer dwells longer on the Sampson story. The key word “blyndë” in “blind prosperity” becomes in the retelling of the story comically literal. Consecrated (like a priest) to God Almighty, Sampson “stood in noblessë whil he myghtë see”; but in marrying a woman—that is, according to one strain in exegetical tradition, turning from the Supreme Good to a lower good, in other words becoming “blind”—Sampson comes to be in fact blinded. He is imprisoned in a “cave,” another stock exegetical emblem for the darkness of the spirit or, sometimes, hell; and there “they made hym at the queernë [mill or ‘quern’] gryndë.” Grinding, as we notice in the Reeve’s Tale and in various remarks by the Wife of Bath, has the common fourteenth-century slang sense “copulate” (compare Bessie Smith’s image, “coffee-grinder”); hence the cave where Sampson labors may also take on sexual meaning. Marriage, if we read allegorically, leads to dreary sexual slavery. The moral of the tale turns out to be that men should never tell their secrets to their wives. Thus the Sampson story becomes comically ferocious antifeminism, the same soft-headed streak in orthodox Christianity that Chaucer would later mock in the paired tales of the Man of Law and Wife of Bath (and in many another place), and the majestic idea of God’s Providence comes to be equated with a husband’s right to secrecy. The Sampson poem has, besides its comic misapplication of the allegorical method and its comically bellicose rant against women (a refrain throughout), some delightful visual imagery, for instance the sharp, economically rendered image of Sampson tearing up the city gates by night and carrying them on his back high onto a hill for all to see, or the image of Sampson imprisoned: “Now maystow wepen with thyne eyen blyndë!” Both the sharp imagery and the humor at the expense of pious antifeminists can hardly have failed to amuse the court of Edward III.
Later poems in the collection work in other ways. Some are quite serious, untouched by the old allegorical method or, so far as I can see, by ironic undercutting—for instance, the brief tragedy praising King Pedro as no other writer of the period chose to do, not even the chronicle-writer Ayala of Spain—but all have, in fact, poetic interest. Consider the image of Nebuchadnezzar in his madness, eating hay like an ox, lying in the rain: “And lik an egles fetheres wax his herës [hairs]; His naylës lyk a briddës clawës werë”; or the touching and shocking story Chaucer retells from Dante (missing the hint of cannibalism), the story of “Hugelyn of Pyze” (Ugolino), imprisoned and starved with his children, a story that gives Chaucer opportunity to try his hand at pathos and dramtaic irony: Hugelyn’s youngest son, three years old, unaware that the family is condemned to starve, asks his father,
“Fader, why do ye wepë?
Whannë wol the gayler bryngen ourë potagë? [jailor]
Is ther no morsel breed that ye do kepë?
I am so hungry that I may nat slepë…”
In their directness and simplicity, the poet’s sure grasp of what people might really say and feel, such passages look forward to Chaucer’s greater series, the Legend of Good Women.
Before leaving this chapter of Chaucer’s life, that is to say, the period of his service under Edward III and his rise to high diplomatic status, it may be well to say a word more about some of his friends mentioned briefly already and add a few words about two or three other government servants who became his friends and, in a minor way, his fellow poets during this period. We’ve spoken already of the Oxford logician Ralph Strode, possibly an influence on Chaucer’s inclination toward nominalism and perhaps the same “Rudolphi” celebrated for a long poem in Latin (probably), now lost. We’ve met too and need say no more of John Gower, the lawyer-poet familiar at court for his poetry readings both under Edward and, later, under Richard, until, toward the end, he lost his admiration for Richard.
Chaucer was well acquainted with br
illiant, idealistic young Thomas Usk, who called Chaucer a “noble, philosophical poet” and followed him as a poetic disciple. From the admiration with which he speaks of Chaucer, one would not guess that he was not of Chaucer’s party in politics, but unluckily he was not. He was ultimately hanged by parliament for the crime of espousing just but unsuccessful causes, that is, for daring to attack openly a grafter, Northampton, who had—whether Gaunt liked it or not—the protection of John of Gaunt. Chaucer had other poetic disciples: his student Thomas Hoccleve (or such is the relationship Hoccleve claims, and he probably told the truth); the monk John Lydgate, too garrulous for great art and too quick to flatter patrons, but an ingenious and talented follower of Chaucer’s rhythmical innovations; and the widely admired French poet Deschamps, with whom Chaucer exchanged letters, poems, and flattering epithets, and from whom he got various poetic techniques and themes.
He also knew the wise old poet and diplomat Sir John Clanvowe,12 author of at least one first-rate minor poem, “The Cuckoo and the Nightingale,” written in (to some extent) the manner of Chaucer. Since Clanvowe and Chaucer shared missions and close friends, since both were staunch supporters of John of Gaunt (Clanvowe was one of the so-called Lollard knights), they undoubtedly knew each other—and each other’s poetry—well. At any rate, they had in some respects similar minds and personalities. Both were poetic humorists and ironists, both were chosen to negotiate when matters were delicate if not downright embarrassing, and both took the usual medieval delight in pomp, display, and glorious deeds, as Clanvowe proved when he took his bold part in the famous tournament of Saint-Inglevert, in 1389 and 1390, in the march of Calais, the tournament begun when three French knights challenged all Christian men of arms to a splendid thirty-day fight in which they vowed they’d take on all comers. Many of Chaucer’s friends were there, though Chaucer probably was not.
