by John Gardner
He had a great deal to do and, he was beginning to suspect, not much time left to do it. He had potched a bit at law, this past few years, increasing his winnings by moderate but not meager attorney’s fees; but he’d given that up now, to devote all his time to settling his finances, watching the leaves change, and, above all, straightening out the clutter of his manuscripts, laboring to make of them one finished book, his polished Complete Works. He was alone in the house now, except for the servants and the endless stream of visitors—Thomas and Lewis, who were now in the retinue of King Henry; sometimes an eager young poet like Hoccleve; or sometimes a fellow public servant from the days under Edward or Richard—some gouty, blear-eyed courtier put out to pasture, like himself, still much honored but half-forgotten—with whom Chaucer would sit up till after dark, playing chess on occasion, or recounting old stories till both their wits were dim and their tongues were half stone from pure weariness.
He talked with priests, occasionally with professors; kept abreast of court gossip; kept writing and revising. First drafts came harder now than formerly, as he’d complained to Scogan. He kept losing the thread, the images that came were less spontaneous, less alive; he was all technique, all irony and self-mockery, fatally drawn not to beauty and truth and the comic light touch, as he’d been when he was young, but to the poem as aesthetic disaster—the poem as written by the most execrable of poets, or the narrative recounted by the confused and unreliable narrator. (At times he secretly believed these things were among the best he’d ever done.) He kept writing, frantically, racing the hourglass, now and then a new piece, but mostly revisions.
He’d fixed already (well, more or less) his Prologue to the Legend of Good Women, discreetly removing the late Queen Anne. But he had much more to do—above all, make sense of his great work, the Canterbury Tales. He’d changed horses midstream (as he’d privately admitted to John of Gaunt one night). He must get the thing in order, get rid of the inconsistencies, all those changes he’d introduced, and fill in, if possible, the missing tales. It was a mountainous project for a man of his years, and in some ways perhaps a foolish one, or so he sometimes thought when he was tired. “An owtlandish thyng of pride,” he said, half in jest, in the confession box. His confessor leaped at it, naturally, and Chaucer, ruefully smiling, let the young fool rail. It was a confessor’s business, after all (he thought), to berate a man, lead him from his wickedness. Who was Geoffrey Chaucer to deprive a gentle priest of his niche in life, his “part in the great universal hymn,” as he’d written one time—or something to that effect. What poem was it? he wondered. He pursed his lips, tapped his forehead with two fingers, but memory failed him. “Welaway,” he thought, “I grow old, I grow old.” Line for a poem. He breathed deeply, closed his eyes; the confessor talked on. There was much he disapproved of in Chaucer’s work…as was natural, natural. Hardly more than a boy, this priest—inexperienced, idealistic…He thought of King Richard and sighed again. The priest was no doubt right, from a certain point of view. Any action, however well intended, could cause some man harm; any poem, however noble, on the pleasures of this world could cause sorrow if it reached the wrong eyes, a dim, unsophisticated wit…The priest was delivering absolution now. Chaucer crossed himself, got up off his knees. He felt once more that curious, light pain, like a mouse peeking cautiously past the edge of his heart. “No time for illness!” he thought in mild alarm.
But a few weeks later, work or no work, the poet saw that he must die. On the night of Chaucer’s death, the confessor and the rest were more insistent than usual, as was right, of course, though tiresome and stupid—like all life, the old poet was tempted to think, mourning the huge book unfinished on his desk, parchments out of order, some of the best parts missing altogether, lent out and not returned—but he carefully resisted the inclination toward despair and prayed for greater strength. Every breath was like flame, and from time to time he could feel himself sliding sickeningly, entering a swoon. He was in no condition to argue theology—and in any case, what difference?—“Whatevere the sooth ys, I wol lerne yt ryght soone,” he thought. He sank into darkness, an ominous rumble like wind or waves or some ancient prayer in Celtic. He remembered, for some reason, a huge sunlit tree. To his surprise, it spoke. Then there was light again, painfully bright, and noise from the street: iron horseshoes, clanging bells. Weakly—they’d bled him again, it seemed, made him weak as a baby—Chaucer raised his head from the bolster, then feebly moved his hand. Blurry faces; voices. No one understood. “Bring my book,” he said. The priests showed nothing, so far as he could see. One offered him—stupid fool—a prayer book. It was Thomas, or perhaps Adam Scrivener who brought him the great thick collection and laid it, heavy as a boulder, on his knees. “Laste page,” he whispered. They eventually understood and took from him all but the final page. There was writing on it, but his eyes refused to focus. “Quill and ink,” he said. Some blurred shape brought them.
Then tortuously, painfully, feeling slightly foxy (though for no clear reason), he gave them their desire, and understood that of course they were right in a way: now that he was dying, following the shadowy, fog-shrouded road of Philippa and Gaunt, poor huffing, bug-eyed Brembre, and that tragic fool Gloucester, it was easy to see that he might have done more for expiring humanity. No one living or ever to be born would escape this painful, slightly frightening, but above all humiliating thing that was happening even to him, Geoffrey Chaucer, his body wasted, his eyes half blind, his voice like an adder’s, old grim Grisel Death shaming him like an old smell of catshit in the house (yes, yes, he should have written poetry to ease men through this, should have written holy saints’ lives, fine, moving songs about the gentleness of Jesus, the foolishness of thinking all one’s life about the world): Letter by letter, he scratched out his message to whomever it might concern:
Now preye I to hem alle that herkne this litel tretys or rede, that if ther be any thyng in it thatliketh hem, that therof they thanken oure Lord Jhesu Crist, of whom procedeth al wit and al goodnesse. And if ther by any thyng that displese hem, I preye hem also that they arrette it to the defaute of myn unkonnynge, and nat to my wyl, that wolde ful fayn have seyd bettre if I hadde had konnynge. For oure book seith, “Al that is writen is writen for oure doctrine,” and that is myn entente. Wherfore I biseke yow mekely, for the mercy of God, that ye preye for me that Crist have mercy on me and foryeve me my giltes; and namely of my translacions and enditynges of worldly vanitees, the whiche I revoke in my retracciouns: as of the book of Troilus; the book also of Fame; the book of the xxv. Ladies; the book of the Duchesse; the book of Seint Valentynes day of the Parlement of Briddes; the tales of Caunterbury, thilke that sownen into synne; the book of the Leoun; and many another book, if they were in my remembrance, and many a song and many a leccherous lay; that Crist for his grete mercy foryeve me the synne. But of the translacion of Boece de Consolacione, and othere bookes of legendes of seintes, and omelies, and moralitee, devocioun, that thanke I oure Lord Jhesu Crist and his blisful Mooder, and alle the seintes of hevene, bisekynge hem that they from hennes forth unto my lyves ende sende me grace to biwayle my giltes, and to studie to the salvacioun of my soule, and graunte me grace of verray penitence, confessioun and satisfaccioun to doon in this present lyf, thurgh the benigne grace of hym that is kyng of kynges and preest over alle preestes, that boghte us with the precious blood of his herte; so that I may been oon of hem at the day of doom that shulle be saved.
When he finished he handed the quill to Lewis. He could see the boy’s features clearly now, could see everything clearly, his “whole soul in his eyes”—another line out of some old poem, he thought sadly, and then, ironically, more sadly yet, “Farewel my bok and my devocioun!” Then in panic he realized, but only for an instant, that he was dead, falling violently toward Christ.9
Appendix: The Pronunciation of Chaucer’s Middle English
ENGLISH HAS NEVER HAD A PRETTIER sound than it had—apparently—in Chaucer’s day, and every seri
ous student of Chaucer’s poetry will eventually want to master the fine details of its phonology. There are various readily available books which treat, among other things, pronunciation of Chaucer’s dialect. For introductory purposes, the best are (for American readers) the standard American editions of Chaucer’s work, that is, especially, the editions by F. N. Robinson, D. W. Robertson, Jr., and Albert C. Baugh. Another excellent, very brief introduction is that of E. Talbot Donaldson in the Norton Anthology of English Literature.
In all such introductions one repeatedly encounters such phrases as “It is important to maintain the distinction between such-and-such and so-and-so,” for instance between “open o,” as in broth (or aw, shucks), and “close o,” as in note. Nothing could be truer, but when one listens to distinguished Chaucerians deliver scholarly papers at medieval conventions, or when one listens to the records made by great Chaucerians past and present, one discovers surprising differences of opinion about how things ought to be pronounced. For instance, some specialists make consonants sound much like consonants in modern English, except clearer, more precise, while other specialists speak consonants as they would in Danish or, God help us, German. For the beginner there’s a valuable lesson in this: Chaucer’s Middle English is relatively easy to fake. What follows here are some notes on how to fake it convincingly, so that one gets pretty clearly the sound of Chaucer’s verse, making people who know the correct pronunciation believe momentarily that perhaps they’ve learned it wrong.
1. Read aloud or recite with authority, exactly as when speaking Hungarian—if you know no Hungarian—you speak with conviction and easy familiarity. (This, I’m told by Hungarians, is what Hungarians themselves do.) This easy authority, however fake, gets the tone of the language, its warmth and, loosely, outgoing character—not pushy, like low-class German, not jaundiced or intimate-but-weary, like modern French, and not, above all, slurred to a mumble, like modern American. Make Middle English open-hearted, like Mark Twain’s jokes.
2. Pronounce vowels like vowels in modern European languages, especially French, German, or Italian (but resist the temptation to drag in the consonant sounds of those languages). Thus a is ah, as in “Ah, so there you are!”; e is ay, as in “Say there!”; i is ee, as in “Gee, it’s Marie!”; o is oh as in “O!”; and u is, for the most part, oo, as in “Who?” That is, the vowels a e i o u are, basically, ah ay eee oh ooh. Make them long or short exactly as you would in modern English. To be extra impressive, add the following complications:
3. Distinguish between “close e” (e with the throat closed, like the sound of an oboe) and “open e” (e wide-throated, like the sound of a clarinet); that is, distinguish between the tight e of eek! or meet, and the easy, breathy e of there when there is pronounced with a touch of Irish, to rhyme with air. (In Middle English, any e followed by r rhymes with air.) For purposes of faking it is fair to say that if a word is spelled ea in modern English (as in sea or beast), it had an open e in Middle English; if spelled ee in modern English (as in see or sleet), it was a close e for Chaucer. And the same goes for close and open o: words now pronounced like note or stone were open for Chaucer, like the o in our word cloth; words now pronounced like mood or good (modern oo either long or short) were close o for Chaucer, like the o in our so. If this is too confusing, try to follow, in general, the pronunciation of the Cisco Kid: “Boot hombray, thees ees nut yoor peesstol.” For the sound al, very common in Chaucer, say ahl, as in “Ah’ll be seeing you.”
4. Final e: Many words in Chaucer have a pronounced final e, as in knowe, fewe, etc. (In this book, final e’s which are pronounced are marked with two superior points: ë.) Pronounce the e like the a in sofa. In a line of verse, this e is silent if the word which follows it begins with a vowel but pronounced if the word which follows it begins with a consonant (except h and sometimes w or y). So that in the line, “That, by my trouthe, I take no kepe,” the final e in trouthe is silent, the final e in take pronounced.
5. Diphthongs (that is, two vowels together, as in cause) can be a problem for the faker. For instance, for Chaucer fewe and newe are not quite rhymes. Short of learning Anglo-Saxon (which is behind the annoyance) or picking up the sounds by ear through listening to recordings, the faker can only depend on these two principles: (a) that au and aw are always ow, as in cow so that cause = cowzuh, drawe = drowwuh, daunger = downjer; and (b) when pronouncing any other diphthong, take the Middle English sounds of the vowels taken separately and squeeze them together, so that iu becomes ee + oo = yew. This works about half the time, which is good odds.
6. As for consonants, the rule is simple, pronounce every one of them except when you’re positive the word is French (one can swallow the gin sign, for instance) or when the consonant is an initial h. With g or gg, pronounce as you’d pronounce the same word in modern English (e.g., juggen, modern judge, has the sound dj, but frogges, modern frogs, has the sound gg).
7. For consonant clusters like th or gh, all you really need is this: Like any consonant or consonant cluster that can be either voiced or unvoiced (z is voiced, sss is unvoiced), th tends to be unvoiced at the beginnings and ends of words but voiced in the middle (between vowels). (F in Middle English is always unvoiced, v always voiced.) Thus that is unvoiced (like the th in thin) but bathed is voiced (like the th in then). Similarly, sis unvoiced (or hissed) in saw and was but voiced in resoun (ray-zoon). The gh sound is slightly but not excessively German, as in ich or nach; and ch, even in French words like chivalrie, is almost always pronounced as in church.
8. Some words in Middle English are accented in peculiar places—for example, coráge or solémpnely—and some can be accented as the poet pleases, as in náture and natúre. Take the pronunciation that makes the rhythm feel right, not, of course, that every line has to be rigidly iambic. In most doubtful cases, no one can really prove you wrong. For instance, one may read either, “For thére is phisícién but oón,” or, “For there is phiŝicién but oón,” or even, “For thére is phisicién but oón” (slightly hovering over the first two syllables of phisicien) and the solemnest phonologist can only muse that he himself would read it somewhat differently. There are of course downright ridiculous readings, but it’s comforting to notice that most of them have been urged, from time to time, by reputable scholars.
9. One last word about e’s. Don’t say nay for nuh (as in “I ne have,” that is, “I haven’t”), or thay for thuh (as in “the cat”). Say thay when Middle English the means the pronoun thee (as in “thee, thou cat”). And watch for occasional long e’s at the ends of words, as in beaute (bay-oh-tay, i.e., “beauty”).
If you do all this, or some of it, and at the same time put across the sense of the lines you read, only pedants and people of mean spirit will notice your errors. You will, of course, make errors. Practice, both alone and with sympathetic friends; listen to records; if you feel desperate, take a good course and, thereafter, blame your teacher.
Notes
INTRODUCTION
1 For modern English versions of the Morte Arthure and other poems: treated here, and for more extensive critical comment, see John Gardner, The Alliterative Morte Arthure, The Owl and the Nightingale, and Five Other Middle English Poems in a Modernized Version with Comments on Poems and Notes (Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, Illinois, 1971) and The Complete Works of the Gawain-Poet (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois, 1965). Some useful earlier critical discussions of the Morte Arthure are William Matthews’s The Tragedy of Arthur: A Study of the Alliterative Morte Arthure (University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, 1960), and the reviews of this by John Finlayson in Medium Aevum 32 (1963) 74-7, and J. L. N. O’Loughlin in Reviews of English Studies, n.s. 14 (1963) 179-82.
For the general notion that Chaucer’s poetry is soberly Christian, see the work of D. W. Robertson, Jr., especially A Preface to Chaucer: Studies in Medieval Perspectives (Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1961); and for criticism of the Robert
sonian method, see, for example, Jean Misrahi, “Symbolism and Allegory in Arthurian Romance,” Romance Philology 17 (1964) 555-69, Francis Lee Utley, “Robertsonianism Redivivus,” Romance Philology 19 (1965) 250-60, Donald R. Howard, The Three Temptations: Medieval Man in Search of the World (Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1966), and R. E. Kaske’s review, “Chaucer and Medieval Allegory,” English Literary History 30.2 (1963) 175-92. At this writing, the standard work on John Gower (somewhat outdated) is that of John H. Fisher, John Gower, Moral Philosopher and Friend of Chaucer (New York University Press, New York, 1964). More modern studies of Gower are in preparation by Russell D. Peck and Thomas J. Hatton.
2 See Barbara Nolan and David Farley-Hills, “The Authorship of Pearl: Two Notes,” Review of English Studies 22 (1971) 295-302.
3 This book is not the place for detailed argument that Chaucer understood the Neoplatonic point of view easily available to any man of his time and place or that he understood the Neoplatonic love doctrine reflected in his poems. All Chaucerian scholars know well the poet’s familiarity with such versions of Neoplatonic thought as those of Macrobius and Boethius; and his understanding of the implications of Plato’s Timaeus—nearly all the Plato that was available in his day—has recently been argued by Robert M. Jordan in Chaucer and the Shape of Creation: The Aesthetic Possibilities of Inorganic Structure (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1967), pp. 10-43. His detailed knowledge of conventional love doctrine has long been recognized. See, for instance, E. E. Slaughter, Virtue According to Love in Chaucer (Bookman Associates, New York, 1957). Rather than replow that ground here, I simply mention, when necessary, the available studies, occasionally pointing out supporting evidence—since the whole concept of courtly love has lately come under fire—and hurry on to the applicability in particular poems of the materials others have collected. Though my analysis at times finds Chaucer a trifle heretical, if it is true that courtly love or any other involvement in the world is heresy, I do not make much of that either but merely note here that my findings lend support to the judgment of, among others, Mary Edith Thomas, presented in her study, Medieval Skepticism and Chaucer: An Evaluation of the Skepticism of the 13th and 14th Centuries of Geoffrey Chaucer and His Immediate Predecessors—An Era that Looked Back on an Age of Faith and Forward to an Age of Reason (William Frederick Press, New York, 1950).
