Preface The past is a foreign country: they do things dif ferently there. L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between This collection of essays aims not only to supply a context for Chaucer s poetry on the basis of well established scholarship in this field but also to challenge assumptions that lie behind much of the continuing work on Chaucer. These relate to matters of textual authority, literary biography, poetic design, political af filiations and sympathies, and religious convictions. It may seem surprising to those familiar with the great editions of Skeat (1894), Robinson (1933 and 1957) and The Riverside Chaucer under the general editorship of Larry D. Benson (1987) that we should still be concerned with the textual authority of editions of the Canterbury Tales. But it seems clear from the work of Charles Moorman (1993) and Roy Vance Ramsey (1994 and 2010) that Skeat s and Robinson s texts (and hence also that of The Riverside Chaucer) have not been based on fresh collations of the copy-text, the Ellesmere MS, and that scholars have not as yet made suf ficient use of Manly-Rickert s monumental edition of 1940 with its wealth of textual detail pointing, among other things, to the Hengwrt MS as a more authoritative basis for an edition of the Canterbury Tales. Simon Horobin (Magdalen College, Oxford) examines the work of Moorman and Ramsey in a review article. The identification of Chaucer as a Ricardian poet is justified perhaps by the f lowering of his work in the 1380s and 1390s, but he was formed as a poet in the great royal households in the late 1350s, 1360s and 1370s, first of all in the household of Lionel of Antwerp and then (from 1367) in that of Edward III himself. Chaucer s wife, Philippa, was in attendance on Queen Philippa until her death in 1369 and then on Constance, the second wife of
2 Preface John of Gaunt, in 1372. His sister-in-law, Katherine Swynford, was Gaunt s mistress in the 1370s when she bore him four children (the Beauforts) and his third wife in 1396 (when the children were legitimised). Chaucer may thus be regarded as an Edwardian no less than a Ricardian poet and perhaps more profoundly Edwardian than Ricardian, for Richard was a mere boy of ten at his coronation on 16 July 1377 and at no time emulated Edward III or his own illustrious father, Edward of Woodstock, Prince of Wales (the Black Prince), as a warrior. Chaucer was at the centre of national and international af fairs from the time of Brétigny (1360) onwards and his diplomatic career up until 1378 is suf ficiently impressive in itself. We are hampered here by a complete ignorance of his whereabouts in the period from 1360 to 1366 when this diplomatic career (with all its cultural implications) was developed. Perhaps at this time he was in Ireland (as argued by Rory McTurk in a recent study)1 or in the households of Edward of Woodstock or of John of Gaunt. His knowledge of Iberian politics (and perhaps also his sympathies) are expressed in the lines on the death of Pedro of Castile (father of Constance) in the Monk s Tale (B2 3565 80). This courtly aristocratic background may explain Chaucer s sympathies for the institutions of chivalry that are now so remote from the modern world. The gap between the worlds of Chaucer s experience and our own and their corresponding preconceptions is repeatedly underlined by Stephen Rigby in his immensely erudite book on the Knight s Tale.2 To read the Knight s Tale in the light of the predominantly Aristotelian system of interrelated ethical, domestic, political and cosmological ideas as set out in Giles of Rome s De regimine principum (c.1280) is to find the tale transformed. From now on (unless we are to dismiss all this learning from view) we must adjust our imaginations to Theseus not as a tyrant but as an ideal ruler. Modern preconceptions need also to be tempered by the facts of Chaucer s own military experience and of his personal knowledge of the knightly class. Wisdom may lead Chaucer to prefer peace to war (as in the Melibee), but wars have still to be fought and we may yet admire the virtues and deplore the vices of the knights who fight them. Chaucer grew up in a world to a great extent shaped by the fame of English knights. The wars in France were initially marked by the great victories at Crécy (26 August 1346) and Poitiers (19 September 1356) and Chaucer s first experience of
Preface 3 battle in 1359 1360 is of this famous moment in English military history in the presence of knights such as Henry of Grosmont and Edward of Woodstock at the height of their powers. In this sense too Chaucer is an Edwardian poet and his attitudes must have been formed by this experience in much the same way as those brought up in England in the 1940s and 1950s by the struggle against Nazi Germany. Thus this collection of essays takes chivalry in a positive sense as an important point of reference for the poetry of Chaucer. Mary Carr (Balliol College, Oxford) makes us aware of this positive sense of knightly ideals even in the context of the fall of the angels and the continuous struggle against the sin of pride in Piers Plowman. Once again we gather a sense of the world familiar to Chaucer in the 1360s and 1370s, that is, the world that produced the poet who wrote the masterpieces of the 1380s and 1390s. Whether we like it or not in reading Chaucer we have to come to terms with the world of medieval battles, not only the chivalric ethos but the practicalities of armed warfare by knights on horseback. Gavin Hughes (Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Trinity College Dublin) addresses these issues directly in his essay Fourteenth-Century Weaponry, Armour and Warfare in Chaucer and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Even in a burlesque piece such as Sir Thopas we must learn to take references to arms and armour seriously, as David Scott-Macnab (University of Johannesburg) demonstrates in his learned essay on Sir Thopas s lancegay. In the real world of political af fairs in which mistaken judgments resulted as often as not in death Chaucer was a nimble and experienced performer. Hence the practical wisdom acquired in diplomatic missions and secret negotiations is to be seen in subtle but revealing ways throughout his poetry. The old may not outrun the young, but (if they have acquired wisdom with age) they can certainly surpass them in counsel (as we learn in both Troilus and Criseyde, IV.1456 and the Knight s Tale, A 2449). Chaucer himself appears on the political stage in the Wonderful Parliament of 1386 as a Member of Parliament for Kent, and the political pressures in the struggle for power in this period are elucidated by William Marx (University of Wales Trinity Saint David, Lampeter). The crisis of 1386 to 1388 when the five appellants (Gloucester, Arundel, Warwick, Bolingbroke and Nottingham) are moved to challenge a young king seeking to assert himself through the promotion
4 Preface of favourites such as Michael de la Pole (created Earl of Suf folk in 1385) and Robert de Vere, 9th Earl of Oxford (created Marquess of Dublin in 1385, the first Englishman to hold such a title, and Duke of Ireland in 1386) is in fact the historical and political background to the writing of the Knight s Tale. Chaucer retains the moral and philosophical authority of Theseus inherited from his principal source, Boccaccio s Teseida (c.1339 1341), but places it in the context of the social distinctions of the English nobility as they had evolved by the 1380s but ref lected only by the presence of the Knight and Squire in the company of pilgrims assembled at Southwark. Thus Theseus is a duke, the son of a king (like the dukes of Clarence and Lancaster in 1362 and York and Gloucester in 1385) and the husband of a queen, and stands at the head of the ranks of earl, baron or lord, knight banneret, knight bachelor and squire. Theseus is an experienced and proven knight and a wise ruler, and no doubt in both respects a telling contrast to the impetuous and wilful Richard II (and especially to the unforgiving and tyrannical Richard II of 1397 in his vengeance on the appellant lords and creation of (ef fectively) a new peerage in the elevation of five earls to the new dukedoms of Hereford, Aumale, Surrey, Exeter and Norfolk and of a sixth to the marquessate of Dorset and in the elevation of four lords to the new earldoms of Gloucester, Westmorland, Worcester and Wiltshire). If the Knight s Tale is rightly assigned to the years 1385 1386 (or earlier) a duke is a rarity in English life and John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the dominant such figure (especially after the deaths of his elder brothers in 1368 and 1376). But from 1386 1389 the Duke of Lancaster is absent from England on his Castilian adventure. Chaucer s (not Boccaccio s) systematic presentation of Theseus as a duke thus carries with it a great deal of contemporary resonance and the detailed modifications of his Italian source in this respect are set out in the essay by Gerald Morgan (Trinity College Dublin). The characteristic voice in a society stratified in this way is not so much that of equal to equal (as of Perotheus to Theseus) but of inferior to superior (as of the duchesses widowed by the conf lict at Thebes or of the queen Ypolita and her sister Emelye). It is the voice as often as not of petition for justice, or mercy or favour. Chaucer s poetry is the poetry of a petitionary culture and it is illustrated at length in the brilliant article by Barry Windeatt (Emmanuel College, Cambridge).
Preface 5 The humanity of Chaucer has been much commented upon over the centuries, but it too has a defining context of ideas, namely, the religious ideas that dominate the culture of England in the second half of the fourteenth century. Although Chaucer may wear his religious beliefs lightly they still permeate his writings, and the failure to acknowledge this (perhaps in reaction to the dogmatism of Robertsonian Augustinianism) makes only for confusion rather than complexity in the celebrated ending of Troilus and Criseyde. Chaucer s poetry is characterised by a sincere and mostly serene faith, not by the doubts of a Matthew Arnold and Dover Beach. There is nothing unorthodox about the matter of the Parson s Tale, a sober and systematic penitential manual based on the Summa de paenitentia (c.1225 1227) of Raymund of Pennaforte and the Summa de vitiis (c.1236) of William Peraldus, both Dominicans. Such sources are eminently traditional and orthodox works, fulfilling the intention of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) in instructing the laity in matters that pertain to the salvation of the soul. The Parson s Tale is fittingly placed last among the Canterbury Tales in the way that the most important matter is placed last. After all the telling of tales and the literary competition are themselves no more than a distraction from the higher purpose and the real intention of the pilgrims assembled at Southwark. There is no element of surprise and also no sense of a special obligation to entertain as distinct from enlightening the reader. Perhaps the subject of the Clerk s Tale (as in the Decameron) would convince more as the ending of a collection of stories. But one can hardly fault Chaucer s logic. He must have assumed that the Parson s Tale would have been read with attention by his medieval readers even if modern readers are inclined to pass it over. This is only one case in which the Canterbury Tales challenges directly a modern sensibility and modern values. The Prioress s Tale does so in a more obvious way and presents a direct ideological challenge.3 So too in their dif ferent ways the Man of Law s Tale and the Clerk s Tale.4 If we wish to continue to praise Chaucer s humanity we must embody this praise within the framework of his religious or theological convictions, as for example does A.V.C. Schmidt (Balliol College, Oxford) in respect of the humanity of the Pearl-poet. Here too lies the significance of the essay by Caroline Jones (Swansea University), A Lesson in Patience, in which the importance of patience as a moral virtue, an heigh vertu, certeyn (Franklin s