by Ian Mortimer
POETRY
The fourteenth century is not just the cradle of English poetry, it is its first golden age—or, at least, its first since the Conquest. Early in the century the most popular French pieces, like the old Breton lays, are translated into English versions. These are normally about a thousand lines in length and deal with a tale of King Arthur’s court. The most popular titles are the anonymous Sir Orfeo, Sir Tristrem, and Sir Degaré, and Thomas Chester’s Sir Launfal. The much-loved French classic Roman de la Rose is translated into English a little later (in part by Chaucer). But the real glory lies in the original English poems. These really are of quite an extraordinary range, especially considering how recent the idea of writing in the English language is. On the one hand you have the clumsy poems of the ardent nationalist Laurence Minot: hymns in praise of Edward Ill’s military victories in Scotland and France between 1333 and 1352. On the other you have the technical brilliance of the author of Gawain and the Green Knight. In between you may come across devout writers like Richard Mannyng. His twelve-thousand-line poem, Handling Sin, has a powerful literary directness—”the tavern is the devil’s knife”—and is much more than a vehicle for mere moralizing.
Such is the wealth of talent that it is difficult to know where to begin to describe the century’s greatest literary creations. But one way to proceed is to draw up a shortlist for the title of the most creative writer of them all. So, with due acknowledgment of the high quality of many writers who do not fall among the top four of the century, the following should give you something to go on when looking for great literature in fourteenth-century English.
JOHN GOWER
A friend of Chaucer, who describes him as “moral Gower,” he is from a family of Kentish knights—although not a knight himself. He comes to London at a relatively young age and dedicates himself to writing.
What is remarkable is that he does not just write in English, he also writes poems in French and Latin—and these are not just occasional pieces to show off. His satirical Latin poem Vox Clamantis (The Voice of One Clamoring) extends to more than ten thousand lines, commenting on the state of England. It takes the form of a great dream-vision in which the Peasants’ Revolt is likened to a terrible apocalyptic night. All the world is turned upside down. Tame animals become wild, wild animals become frenzied, domestic animals become disobedient, and the peasantry rises. The poet flees from London as they advance, hacking and slaying people with their farm implements. As for his French poems, these include his two books of ballads and his earliest full work, Mirour de l’Omme (Mirror of Man). The Mirour extends to nearly thirty thousand lines on the origin and nature of sin and the spread of corruption through the world.
Gower’s great achievement as far as English literature goes is his Confessio Amantis (Lover’s Confession). Part of the reason for his success is his attentiveness to his audience’s tastes. Although you might think that writing a poem more than thirty thousand lines long is no way to endear himself to his readers, he has a good theme—a complaint about the discord of love—and he elaborates on it in a series of elegant stories and digressions. He states in the prologue that those who try to write pure wisdom manage only to dull men’s wits, and for this reason he declares his intention is to write a book “somewhat of lust and somewhat of lore, that of the less or of the more, some may delight in what I write.” This is good advice to writers in all ages.
The whole great work is begun because of a chance meeting between Gower and King Richard II. As their boats pass on the Thames, Richard beckons Gower on board and asks him to write something for him personally. Of course, Gower is hugely flattered and immediately starts writing “a book for King Richard’s sake, to whom belongs my allegiance, with all my heart’s obeisance.” After a few years, however, Gower realizes he has made a big mistake. The king is turning into a despicable tyrant and deserves no respect from Gower, let alone the dedication of his greatest literary work. Thus he scrubs out his lines promising allegiance to Richard and writes instead a dedication to Richard’s cousin and rival, Henry of Lancaster (the future Henry IV). From then on until the end of his life, he is an ardent Lancastrian supporter and pours out poems in all three languages, praising the new king.
WILLIAM LANGLAND
Next on our shortlist is the writer who epitomizes medieval social criticism. William Langland is from Shropshire, born around 1325, poetically gifted and haunted by his religious conscience. He is the very opposite of a court poet like Gower. He would not be seen dead praising the king or his nobles. His Piers Plowman is a dream-vision on one level but it is more accurately described as a passionate and savage indictment of hypocrisy, self-aggrandizement, greed, and corruption, especially with regard to the clergy. Like much fourteenth-century English poetry, it is written in alliterative verse—that is to say that the lines are not sewn together with rhymes but with alliteration, a balanced line of two halves, with an alliterative pair of syllables in each half. A good example is the melodious first line, “In a summer season when soft was the sun”; another example is the famous line in which he sees “a fair field full of folk.”
As soon as the poem begins to be copied in the 1370s it is recognized as a masterpiece. Langland’s personal conviction and sense of injustice, combined with a commensurate literary skill, guarantee its success. He directly addresses the sinful ways people live their day-to-day lives. Their own characteristics and foibles are personified and addressed. He is unstinting in his criticisms of the wealthy who “in gaiety and gluttony themselves gulp down their wealth, breaking no bread for the beggar.” As for the growing tendency for lords and their families to withdraw from the hall and live more private lives in their apartments, he rails against it, declaring:
Dull is the hall, each day of the week
When the lord and his lady like to sit elsewhere.
Now the rule of the rich is to eat by themselves
In a private parlour, avoiding the poor,
Or in a chimney’d chamber, leaving the chief hall
That was made for meals and men to eat in
And all for sparing what will be spent by another.
In this he is like an earlier social commentator, the author of a poem called Winner and Waster, in which it is stressed how important it is for lords to maintain a great household (and thereby maintain their servants and the poor). In contrast, self-made men like lawyers and doctors are selfish, for they do not spend anything on anyone but themselves. But Langland’s literary skill is far superior to every other social-protest poet and almost every other writer of alliterative verse. “We have no letter of our life, how long it shall last,” he declares, meditating on those who take long life for granted, as if it could be conferred by royal charter, or “letter.” His criticisms of the clergy for their hypocrisy are stinging:
I teach every blind buzzard to better himself
Abbots, I mean, and priors, and all kinds of prelates
And parsons, and parish priests, who should preach and instruct
All men to amend themselves, with all their might. . .
Unlearned men may say of you that the beam lies in your eyes
And the speck of filth has fallen, by your fault, mainly
Into all manner of men’s eyes, you maledict priests!54
A second edition of the poem follows in the 1380s (following the Peasants’ Revolt) and a third about 1390. Chaucer clearly knows of it, and several other poems are written imitating it. By the time of his death, William Langland might not be rich, and he might not have eradicated priestly hypocrisy, but he certainly has his supporters and is famous.
The Gawain Poet
If Langland has any rival as the greatest writer of alliterative verse then it is the third poet on our shortlist. Unfortunately we do not know his name. He comes from Lancashire or southern Cheshire and is well read in French romances. He knows the Roman de la Rose, quotes from Sir John Mandeville’s travels, and is familiar with the operations of a great household, so h
e is almost certainly connected to a knight or a man of higher rank. But in many ways his actual identity does not matter. In four poems—Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Cleanliness, and Patience—he has left a body of poetry which has a timeless appeal, so that his most famous work has become his name. Consider this description of Jonah entering the body of the whale:
Like a speck entering by a minister door, so mighty are its jaws,
Jonah passes by the gills, through slime and gore,
He reels in through a gullet, that seems to him a road,
Tumbling about, yes, head over heels,
Till he staggers to a place as broad as a hall,
Then he finds his feet and gropes all about
And stands up in its belly, which stinks like the devil,
His is a sorry plight, amid grease pungent as Hell.
The greatness of this poet lies in his range. He can describe the inside of a whale in a vivid poetic manner. And he can describe, with great tenderness, a little pearl, neatly enclosed in gold, which is beyond comparison with any to be found, even in the East.
So round, so radiant in each array
So small, so smooth her sides were,
Wheresover I judged gems gay,
I set her singly above them all.
Alas! I lost her in a garden,
Through grass to ground she fell away
Wounded by love, by love forsaken,
I mourn that pearl without a flaw
And only as you read the following stanzas do you realize, with a tender but painful shock, that he is not talking about an actual pearl but about his infant daughter, Marguerite, who has died although not yet two years old. She is the one who has fallen “through grass to ground.” Now she lies in that garden, amid flowers, under a mound of earth. And it is heart-wrenching “to think of her colour, clad in earth—oh earth, you mar a merry jewel.” As he mourns her, he grows chill with cold, and a terrible grief touches his heart, and despite the power of his reason and belief in the comfort of Christ, he is overcome. In the dream-vision which follows he sees his daughter as a little queen of Heaven, and, from the far side of a stream, she speaks to him, teaching him through faith to accept her death. But he cannot resist going forward, to try and touch her. On entering the cold water of the stream, he awakes suddenly—only to find himself stretched on her grave.
Pearl, together with Cleanliness and Patience, would be enough to secure a place on this shortlist for this poet. However, a still greater work may be ascribed to him: the greatest Arthurian poem of them all: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
The setting is the New Year feast at Camelot, and Arthur and all his knights are looking forward to some new event, when in strides a huge knight clad entirely in green. This knight is carrying an axe, and he challenges any man dining at Arthur’s table to exchange blows with him. He will accept the first blow and then, after twelve months, the man who wielded it must seek him out at the Green Chapel and accept a blow from him in return. Sir Gawain, Arthur’s youngest knight, accepts the challenge and steps forward. “Take now your grim tool,” the Green Knight says, “and let’s see how you knock.” “Gladly, sir, forsooth,” says Gawain, as he lifts the axe. The Green Knight exposes his neck, ready for the blow, and remains steady as Gawain brings the axe down and cuts off his head. To the astonishment of all, the knight’s headless body does not fall. Instead it steps forward, reaches down, and lifts his head (which has rolled under the table). Laughing loudly, the head repeats the grim challenge. Sir Gawain must accept a blow from the knight at the Green Chapel in twelve months’ time.
At this stage, it looks as if Sir Gawain’s readiness to accept the knight’s challenge was a big mistake. Nevertheless, when the time comes he does not flinch. He rides off on his horse, Gringolet, “far from his friends a forsaken man, scaling many cliffs in country unknown,” challenging the guardians of river crossings to duels and winning them all. On Christmas Eve, after many days searching for the Green Chapel, he comes to a castle. He asks for accommodation, and the lord of the castle allows him to stay for three days, telling him that his quest is over, for the Green Chapel is just two miles away. The only condition of his stay is that Gawain must share with the lord everything he receives in the castle.
The lord goes hunting each day, leaving Sir Gawain in the company of his beautiful wife. Despite her ardent attempts to seduce him, all he gives her are kisses. Mindful of his promise to share everything he receives, he exchanges these kisses with the lord each evening, receiving in return the game caught during the day’s hunt. On the third day, the lady gives him her girdle as a token of her desire to sleep with him. This Gawain conceals from his host, exchanging only the day’s kisses.
Then he goes to the Green Chapel. There he meets the Green Knight and, true to his promise, Gawain lays his neck bare to the axe. The Green Knight swings his axe and brings the axe down suddenly. But he gives him just a nick with the blade. The Green Knight then takes off his helmet and reveals himself to be Gawain’s host, the lord of the castle. He is fully aware of the secret gift of the girdle. The whole episode has been a test of loyalty and courage, and Gawain has come through in style, with nothing against his honor but the concealment of the lady’s love token.
Any prospective traveler in medieval England will be delighted by this poem. It is not just the narrative structure and the subtlety of the twists of the plot, the commentary on men being snared by feminine charm, nor even the full characterization of the main players. Fourteenth-century England comes alive more in this poem than perhaps any other single work of literature. Small evocative details come across as tapestry-like delights, such as the point where Gawain is seated on a chair beside the fireplace in the castle, with cushions beneath him and a large fur-lined mantle thrown over his lap. Or the evocative description of the morning in the castle:
In the faint light before dawn folk were stirring
Guests who had to go gave orders to their grooms
Who busied themselves briskly with the beasts, saddling,
Trimming their tackle and tying on the luggage.55
That this writer was the same man who described the inside of Jonah’s whale and the poignant loss of an infant daughter is deeply impressive. Not many poets have the ability both to convey intense personal emotion and to write entertainingly and meaningfully on a popular subject for a wide audience. That an unknown man can do both so brilliantly is something of a marvel. And so it is astonishing that almost no one knows these works. If you wish to pickup a copy of Pearl or Gawain and the Green Knight, you will ask the copyists in the London and Oxford bookshops in vain. Just one manuscript survives down the centuries, in the dark and quiet, keeping this poet’s genius alive.
GEOFFRE CHAUCER
Finally we come to the man himself, a true genius of the English language, the great poet of love between men and women, of carnal desire, of men’s talents and follies, of the virtues and foibles of women, and—above all else—of good-humored wit. Without Chaucer, any visit to the fourteenth century would be a less enjoyable experience.
He is a Londoner by birth. His father is John Chaucer, a vintner, who sails to the Low Countries in Edward Ill’s household in 1338. Because of this link with the royal family, Geoffrey is placed in the household of Elizabeth, the king’s daughter-in-law. He does not go to university, and from this he no doubt takes his healthy skepticism of scholarship (as he puts it, “the greatest clerks be not the wisest men”). At about the age of eighteen, in 1359, he goes to France in the king’s army. There he gets captured. Fortunately Edward III comes to his rescue and pays £16 towards his ransom. In the mid-1360s he marries Philippa de Roët, sister of Katherine Swynford. Soon afterwards he begins a series of journeys to France and Italy on behalf of the king. In this way he acquires a great familiarity with Italian vernacular literature—particularly the works of Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch—as well as the metrical rhymes of French poetry. These give him the necessary forms and struct
ures in which to create an English style which is harmonious to listen to and completely flexible, enabling him to express wit, observation, emotion, and ideas.
It is the human interest in his poetry which places Chaucer at the very pinnacle of English medieval literature. In his Book of the Duchess, written about 1369 or 1370, after the death of the young duchess of Lancaster, he writes very movingly of her loss, of her “goodly sweet speech,” and how she was “the chief mirror of all the feast,” and how a gathering in her absence was “like a crown without jewels.” This is no mere forelock tugging—he knew the duchess well—it is genuine elegy. When you read his description of her countenance—where he describes her eyes as “good, glad and sad”—you know he is recalling the way she looked at him and remembering her presence with great affection.
