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September 12
Introduction to Chaucer
In today’s class, after dealing with course
business, class lists and evaluation, and plagerism, we began
to talk about the Middle Ages. When did it begin and when
did it end? After some discussion and suggestions for dates
we settled on the sack of Rome in 410 (after which St Augustine
wrote The City of God) as a convenient marker for the start,
keeping in mind that the shift from the Roman Empire to the
Holy Roman Empire was already underway during the reign of
Constantine (324-37), and that the Nicean council took place
in 325. Johann Gutenberg’s Bible was printed in 1453
and with it comes the beginning of the printing age, as good
a place as any to mark the end of the medieval period. These
markers are arbitrary and conventional and by the end of the
course we will no doubt have a much more complex view of the
Middle Ages that crosses the boundaries historians find it
convenient to draw, between classical and medieval on the
one hand, and medieval and renaissance on the other. There
is even much that could be termed "postmodern" about
the Middle Ages, as Chaucer’s writing will reveal.
Geoffrey Chaucer was born in 1340 and died
in 1400. He lived through the reigns of Edward III (1327-1377),
Richard II (1377-1399) and Henry IV (1399-1413), managing
to stay in favour throughout all three. This is a not insignificant
accomplishment since several of his friends and acquaintances
lost their heads during the crises that occurred towards the
end of the century. Thomas Usk, for example, a writer who
called Chaucer "the noble philosophical poete in Englissh,"
was found guilty of treason for his involvement in the Appellant
movement against Richard II and given what was the typical
execution of traitors at the time—disembowelment followed
by hanging followed by decapitation with a none too sharp
instrument. More of the specifics of the history of England
during Chaucer’s life will come up over the next months.
Today we concentrated on the development of the English language.
<to top>
England was not culturally separated from Europe
the way, in spite of the Chunnel, it is today. French writers
such as Chrétien de Troyes and Marie de France wrote
about King Arthur and the Matter of Britain. Edward III was
the son of Isabelle of Aquitaine and claimed to be heir to
the throne of Gascony, one of the ongoing disputes that fired
the Hundred Years War (1339-1453). The language of the English
court was French and had been since the Norman invasion in
1066. Throughout Europe the language of church, university
and court of law was Latin well into Chaucer’s century
and beyond. Henry IV was the first English king to leave a
will in English. Chaucer himself read Latin and was fluent
in French and perhaps Italian, travelling on business throughout
Europe several times. His friend and fellow poet John Gower
wrote in Latin, French and English. Chaucer chose to write
in English but a great bulk of his material was translated
from Latin, Italian, and French literature. <to
top>
After break we began to look at some of the
features of Middle English, beginning with a brief overview
of the history of the English language. England’s original
inhabitants were Britons and spoke a variety of Celtic languages
that survive today as Welsh, Breton, Cornish (up to the eighteenth
century) and the related Gaelic languages of Irish and Scottish.
The Romans came to Britain in 55 BC, governing the island
from Rome in Latin. In the seventh century the conversion
of the Britons to Christianity was undertaken in the north
by Irish monks and in the south by Augustine of Canterbury,
thus confirming Latin as the language of cultural ascendancy.
But by the end of the eighth century, Britain was almost entirely
settled by Angles, Saxons and Jutes, each bringing their own
language which contributed to three dialects throughout what
were then the seven kingdoms of Britain: Anglian, spoken in
Northumbria and Mercia; the Kentish dialect of the Jutes,
and the West Saxon dialect of the Saxons. Next came the waves
of Nordic invaders in the ninth century, contributing their
own influences on the language of the island before the Norman
invasion of 1066 turned the official tongue to Anglo-Norman.
We talked about the three letters the ‘eth’ (a
d with a line through the curved staff, pronounced like the
unvoiced ‘th’ in ‘father’) the ‘thorn’
(a ‘p’ with a somewhat triangular bowl, pronounced
like the voiced ‘th’ in ‘theatre’)
and the ‘yogh’ (close to a ‘3’ written
hanging below the line like a g and usually pronounced like
the gutteral ‘gh’ in Middle English ‘thought,’
no longer articulated in modern English). This history goes
a long way towards explaining some of the features of English—its
spelling for example—that make it difficult to learn.
<to top>
We now turned our attention to the handouts,
generously provided by Prof. Ruth Harvey. We looked quickly
at several features of word order, negation, noun cases and
plurals, weak and strong verb forms and tenses. We spent some
time going through the Great Vowel Shift, trying out the shift
of Modern English "forward" and practicing the shift
back to Chaucer’s (probable) pronunciation with the
mnemonic aid of "My feet ache" "So do ours"
pronounced "Mee fate ahke" "Sah doh oours,"
more or less.
After a reading by the professor of "Chaucer’s
Wordes Unto Adam, His Owne Scriveyn," everyone set to
practising the Great Vowel Shift, taking turns reading "Fortune,"
out loud with a partner. At the end, Angela and Andrew volunteered
to demonstrate a stanza, pulling off excellent renditions
of Chaucerian English, to great applause. The professor reminded
the class not to forget the ‘k’ in "knewe"
and "knowe"—like our canoe—and we talked
about Socrates, philosophy, friendship, reversals of fortune
and the mutable sub-lunar sphere of earthly existence.
Next week, Boethius’s Consolation
of Philosophy. <to top>
To listen to recitations of Chaucer's poetry, go to http://academics.vmi.edu/english/audio/audio_index.html
September 19
Boethius’ Consolation of
Philosophy
We began by looking at the cosmology of Ptolemy (2c), the
earth at the centre circled by the moon, the planets and sun,
the Firmament, the Crystalline Sphere, the Prime Mover and
the Empyrean. Dante (1265-1321) placed his hell at the frozen
centre of the earth. The tendency in Western thought to see
things in circles is an ancient one: in Homer the stuff of
fate was spun out and then bound around the thing fated. Parmenides
described the physical extension of the One as bound into
a sphere by Necessity and Fate. Plato (4c BCE) and Aristotle
(a generation or so younger than Plato) spoke of the bond
as soul or mind, engaged in the intellection of necessity.
The word “zones” used of the heavenly vault or
zodiac comes from words for a belt or girdle. Plotinus (b.
204 BCE) spoke of the soul setting out from the central hub
of divine reality for the lower world of Fortune. A second
circle, thus, shows the relationship of the divine centre
to the outer rim of the wheel of Fortune, a kind of inside-out
version of the Ptolomaic universe. Both must be held in mind
together. The theme of the departure from the soul’s
homeland, its exile in the material world, and its return
to the patria runs throughout Boethius’ Consolation
of Philosophy. The self looks inward by looking upward
at the stars. [key source: Magee, John C. “The Boethian
Wheels of Fortune and fate.” Mediaeval Studies
49 (1987): 524-533.] <to top>
Chaucer wrote a treatise on the astrolabe and makes astronomical
references throughout his work. We think of Renaissance humanism
as a rediscovery of the classical inheritance but some works
of philosophy survived into the Middle Ages, Plato’s
Timaeus, for example, though it was not until the twelfth
and thirteenth century that the West retrieved the bulk of
Aristotle through Islamic and Jewish translations. Chaucer
read Vergil, Ovid, and Boethius (he translated the Consolation
into Middle English as Boece) and felt the weight of classical
tradition as well as its richness. He was very interested
in the possibilities of different forms and this may have
been one of the things that attracted him to the Consolation,
which is by genre a consolation but also Menippean satire,
a medley of verse and prose (prosimetrum), points of view,
material, and characters. It often involves a dialogue between
someone who knows everything and someone who knows very little.
The satire is generally directed against human smugness, our
tendency to confuse the things we have constructed with ultimate
truths. [key source: Payne, Anne. Chaucer and Menippean
Satire: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981.]
Sometime after 523 Boethius was accused of the Roman Senate
of treason, imprisoned and executed (Richard Green outlines
his basic biography and oeuvre in the introduction to his
translation of the Consolation). Book I opens with
the prisoner lamenting his condition. The early scene of Philosophy’s
dismissal of the lyric muses as “whores of the theatre”
introduces a problem that fascinated Chaucer: poetry can serve
self-pity and self-indulgence as well as lift the mind above
the limitations of the self. In Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer
explores the limitations of the romantic vision of love, for
example. In Book One, Philosophy clears the eyes of the weeping
prisoner so that he can see the stars and the sun and begins
to lead him, through a series of difficult questions, on a
course of introspection that is connected to the stable concord
of the heavens. He has forgotten his true homeland but there
is hope for him since he believes in divine reason.
Book Two explores the nature of Fortune, with Philosophy
playing the role of the goddess who turns the wheel according
to her law of constant change. One by one Philosophy points
out the inadequacy of material goods to satisfy desire, concluding
by suggesting that bad fortune is a better friend than good
since through it you learn who are your true friends. From
here it is a small leap to the sacred bond of divine love.
Chaucer will constantly refer to the connection between human
and divine love, generally through characters who cannot make
the leap from human to divine. <to top>
Book Three explores the way to true happiness and is the
beginning of a kind of intellectual pilgrimage back to the
homeland, Philosophy as guide. Philosophy further questions
honour, power and fame and marvels that while other creatures
of nature follow their natural course (IIIm2), human beings
are like a drunk who can’t find his way home. She urges
the prisoner to fix his gaze on the heavens rather than on
the base things of earth (IIIp8). Although we give different
names to the things we crave such as self-sufficiency, power,
fame, reverence and joy, in substance they are all one and
the same thing (IIIp9). It is time now to follow the model
of the Timaeus and implore divine aid. We may remember at
this point the prisoner’s premature prayer in Book Im5
asking that the Ruler of all things make earth as stable as
the heavens. The prayer of IIIm9, the structural and thematic
centre of Consolation of Philosophy, is a paraphrase of Plato’s
account of the world soul as it moves out and back from the
centre. By the end of Book III Philosophy has linked God with
Providence, the wheel and rudder by which the vessel of the
world is kept stable and undamaged (IIIp12). But the story
of Orpheus in meter 12 questions the role of love that Philosophy
has attempted to set up. Rather than a bond common to all
things, love seems here to be a power beyond the law: “who
can give lovers a law?” (III.m12). This question is
an important one in Troilus and Criseyde (as well
as Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Caesar and
Cleopatra. . .).
In Book IV, the individual soul mimics the movement of the
world soul out from its homeland and then back again, using
the wings of Philosophy to soar beyond the heavens (IVm1).
The traveller now recognizes the country of his birth and
can look down on the tyrants of earth. The first part of the
book is concerned primarily with the problem of evil. Boethius
follows Plotinus in denying a positive reality to evil—rather,
it is an absence of light. Evil men are weak and criminals
crave justice. In prose 6 Philosophy makes a new beginning
as she prepares to address the relationship of Providence
and human free will. This requires that she first explain
that Fate is the unfolding of events worked out in time. She
uses the metaphor of a wheel whose very centre hub is the
motionless Providence; the rim swiftly spinning is Fortune
and the network between is Fate. “Therefore, the changing
course of Fate is to the simple stability of Providence as
reasoning is to intellect, as that which is generated is to
that which is, as time is to eternity, as a circle to its
centre” (page 92). The final poem of the Book insists
once more on the order of the stars and the common bond of
love. <to top>
Book V continues to explore the problem of divine foreknowledge.
How do random events fit in with the order of Providence?
Is there a conflict between divine foreknowledge and freedom
of the human will? If so, all our endeavors at justice and
a good society fall apart. God becomes responsible for all
vice and it’s pointless to pray (IIIp3). In prose 4
Philosophy explains the hierarchy of knowledge: “If
uncertain things are foreseen as certain, that is the weakness
of opinion, not the truth of knowledge. . . Everything which
is known is known not according to its own power but rather
according to the capacity of the knower” (page 110).
This is an important premise of dramatic irony, where the
character, Oedipus say, only partly knows what the audience
knows more fully. The Boethian ladder of knowing moves up
from the senses, through imagination which can retain images
of things without their material, reason, which can extract
the universals from particulars, and finally, the intellect
of pure mind—a state only angels achieve. In medieval
philosophy of the mind a most important rung of this ladder
was memory, which sorted, evaluated, organized, and stored
the images provided by imagination. We can see how different
this hierarchy is from our own, so influenced by the Romantic
Movement of the late eighteenth century. Philosophy argues
that “eternity is the whole, effect, and simultaneous
possession of endless life” (p. 115). Here the professor
waxed enthusiastic about Spielberg’s “Minority
Report” and the Precogs. If you can see events as they
are happening you can call them as they unfold. God sees all
things past and future as eternally present. “His knowledge
transcends all movement of time and abides in the simplicity
of its immediate present.” He knows what will happen
because even in the past and future he is always “here-now.”
(Doesn’t this mean that we are co-creators of the divine
plan?)
Next week we read The Book of the Duchess, written
to console the rich and powerful John of Gaunt upon the death
of his first wife, Blanche.
September 26
The Book of the Duchess
Minutes by Murray Gamble
The class began with Sissy volunteering to be our class representative
for the English Students’ Union (ESU). Next, we were
introduced to Amy, our Teaching Assistant. Amy will be available
to answer questions and help with essay preparation. She will
also be marking some of the papers, and will be leading tutorials.
Office hours will be posted once a key to the office in the
Medical Arts building has been obtained. Meanwhile, she can
be contacted via email: amy.airhart@rogers.com.
Genevieve provided the class with a presentation on "The
Black Death" in England. Jennifer then provided us with
a discourse on John of Gaunt.
Then we wrote the quiz, after which Professor Sutherland recommended
that, as we read Chaucer, we should focus not just on the
ideas, but on the language itself.
The Book of the Duchess was commissioned by John
of Gaunt to commemorate the death of his first wife, Blanche.
It may have been written as a memorial service. As we read
The Book of the Duchess, we need to ask ourselves
what kind of a consolation this is, and does it work? Is this
a consolation of philosophy, or is it different? There are
definitely differences from Boethius’s Consolation of
Philosophy. <to top>
Chaucer was called the "great translator", working
with direct translations or adaptations of works from the
continent. Thus, we should question what it means to Chaucer
to be a writer. We should think of what makes him the "father
of English poetry", considering the significant amount
of his work that was taken from various sources on the continent.
These are issues to keep in mind as we read his Chaucer’s
works.
The Book of the Duchess has its basis in French
"dream poetry". Two Frenchmen, Guillaume de Lorris
and Jean de Meun, wrote the Roman de la rose (Romance
of the Rose), a very famous book which employed "dream
vision". This dream vision was useful as an allegorical
tool in literature. There was much dream theory in the Middle
Ages, and the use of dreams in literature allowed for allegorical
presentation, in which the writer was free to talk about gods
and various figures with a sense of authority. Dreams also
provided the writer with a way to distance himself from ordinary
life. As the genre progressed, people like Guillaume de Machaut
started to insert more real life into dream poetry. (Machaut
wrote about the plague, referring to "horrible marvels".)
Chaucer in particular is less purely allegorical than previous
writers of dream poetry had been. <to top>
At the outset of the poem The Book of the Duchess,
Chaucer presents his narrator as a man with insomnia. He is
suffering from a condition of melancholic, and is in a state
of extraordinary sadness. The narrator is also very elusive,
and cannot talk about his affliction. In the tradition of
French court writers, melancholy and sleeplessness were commonly
employed as the effects of unrequited love of the heart. Because
Chaucer was a court writer, he knew quite well the conventions
of French court writing. Machaut wrote "dits amoreux",
which debated issues such as "is it worse to suffer unrequited
love, or to live in the knowledge that one’s love is
dead and buried?" This question is explored in The
Book of the Duchess.
In studying Chaucer, we must look for his departures from
established literary conventions. One of these departures
in The Book of the Duchess (which, incidentally,
is Chaucer’s earliest major poem) occurs at lines 47-8,
where the narrator starts reading. The "romaunce"
that the narrator selects to read is from Ovid’s Metamorphoses:
the story of Ceyx (Seys in Chaucer’s version) and Alcyone.
Chaucer alters Ovid’s account by condensing the longer
story into a brief summary. Seys loses his life in a shipwreck,
and Alcyone, in her despair, prays to the goddess Juno. Chaucer
blends the pagan gods and Christianity in Alcyone’s
prayer to Juno: "A, mercy, swete lady dere!" (line
108). This would be a common way to address to the Virgin
Mary. (As an aside, when reading, Professor Sutherland advised
the class to refer to the Glossary at back of the Riverside
Chaucer. It is also helpful to read these works aloud, and
to remember that the orthography (i.e. correct spelling) in
Chaucer’s day was very unstable: different dialects
equated to different spellings.) <to top>
Chaucer alters Ovid’s scene in which Juno sends her
messenger, Iris (the goddess of the rainbow) to Morpheus,
the god of sleep. Chaucer makes Juno’s messenger masculine,
and creates a very funny scene (lines 153-185). The messenger
blows his horn in Morpheus’s ear, and this is painful
and loud! The result is a loud, brash, quite unsubtle scene.
Chaucer also diverges from Ovid by not repeating the story
(whereas Ovid does so). Chaucer’s narrator says: "As
I have told yow here-to-fore; | Hyt ys no nede reherse it
more" (lines 189-190). Yet another key difference in
Chaucer is the lack of transformations, which abound in Ovid’s
Metamorphoses. Chaucer leaves Alcyone with the realization
that her husband is dead, without reuniting the lovers as
birds.
After reading the story of "Seys and Alcyone,"
Chaucer’s narrator falls asleep. (The book containing
the story of Seys and Alcyone frames the poem The Book of
the Duchess. The work begins and ends with a book.) The narrator
remarks that he wakes up in bed (but in fact this is a dream-within-a-dream).
The narrator advises the reader that neither the biblical
Joseph nor Macrobeus (both noted interpreters of dreams) could
explain the dream that the narrator is about to convey –
it is up to us (the reader). This is a very Chaucerian technique,
which we shall see again in The Canterbury Tales.
<to top>
The narrator describes the birds that are engaged in song
as he lies in bed. We need to remember that music in Chaucer’s
day would have been a rare occurrence, so this is a remarkable
moment. The long, specific, tactile description (beginning
around line 290) is very Chaucerian, and very English. The
room, decorated with glass, contains windows with scenes from
Virgil’s Aeneid, and the paintings on the walls
are from the Romance of the Rose, probably the most
famous French story of the day. The narrator abides in a very
textual setting. Here Chaucer employs ekphrasis, the narration
of art (a story behind the main story). This textual "layering"
is common in Chaucer’s works.
The narrator becomes aware that a hunt is taking place outside.
Chaucer was adept at using puns, one of which appears in the
word "herte", meaning both a male deer and the human
heart. This was very conventional in French poetry, where
the hunting for the hart and the romantic search for the heart
(love) coincided in romance poetry. Joining in the hunt, when
the ‘hert’ eludes the hunters, the narrator becomes
distracted by a whelp (lion cub), and finds himself in an
enchanted place of fresh spring (winter seems just to have
passed); it is full of woodland creatures. Chaucer loves animals,
and we shall encounter more in his other works. It is in this
enchanted place that he comes upon the "Man in Black"
(a knight). <to top>
The narrator ponders how this young man could "have
such sorwe and be not ded" (line 469). The knight is
blunt and plain, saying that his true love is "ded and
ys agoon" (line 479). (Throughout their discourse, the
narrator repeatedly comes across as stupid, not acknowledging
that he understands the cause of knight’s sorrow –
even though the knight has stated the cause quite clearly.)
The aspect of consolation becomes apparent here, when the
narrator promises to do what he is able to make the knight
"hool" (line 553). His objective is to get the man
in black to reveal his story. Although he is uncooperative
at first, the knight does tell his story, revealing that he
is someone who is consumed by despair. As in Boethius’s
Consolation of Philosophy, here in The Book of
the Duchess is a character who has been betrayed by "fals
Fortune" (line 618).
Notice also the difference in the way the two characters address
each other. The man in black addresses the narrator as "the"
(line 520), whereas the narrator addresses the man in black
as "yow" (line 524). The term "the" (or
"thee") was considered the intimate form; the term
"yow" ("you") was used by individuals
when speaking to someone who was of a class above them. Thus,
there is an obvious class distinction between the knight and
the narrator: the knight is of the noble class, while the
narrator is of a class below him. This difference of address
continues as the two men speak to each other. (Keep in mind
that, although the knight is talking down to the narrator,
this is not to be interpreted as derogatory; it is simply
the appropriate manner of address based on his social rank.)
<to top>
Chaucer’s narrator is able to employ pity (a specifically
Christian value?) while blending it with objectivity, which
is a tricky thing to do. The narrator is able to empathise,
but with emotional distance. There has been considerable literary
debate over whether the narrator is slow, or whether his behaviour
is a ploy to draw out the knight’s story. This narrator
is not like the "know-it-all" found in Menippean
satire; rather, he seems to use the opposite strategy in getting
the knight to tell his tale, by coming across as knowing nothing
at all!
Finally, the man in black agrees to tell his story, and a
confession-style format ensues. (Confession developed in the
Middle Ages in 1215 – the Fourth Lateran Council put
forth a law (canon): "omnis utriusque sexus fidelis"
– all people had to make an annual confession. Before
this time, a person may have confessed only once in their
lifetime, probably with the last rites. This resulted in a
tremendous education project. People began to turn inward,
and describe what was going on inside them.) Back to the story:
the Man in Black blames fortune for his despair. Chaucer uses
hyperbole as the knight describes "the fayrest companye"
of women (line 807). He also uses effictio, which is a convention
in which the portrait of a lady is described: her hair must
be gold, her feet small, and all in between must be white.
Chaucer copies the convention, but tones down the physical
description. The knight’s description is full of rhetorical
device,including frequentatio (repetition): he calls his love
"My suffisance, my lust, my lyf, etc." (line 1038).
<to top>
The knight tells how he wooed his lady with songs. Chaucer
was famous for his love songs throughout England (they are
lost to us, unfortunately). Chaucer has fun with the knight,
by having him produce a very bad song (lines 1175 to 1180).
Although she rejects him at first, eventually, both the knight
and his lady mature and she bestows upon him the gifts of
her mercy and a ring. It is a happy story, which the narrator
brings to an abrupt turn, when he asks, "where is she
now?" The knight, remembering his loss, says that "She
ys dead!" (line 1309). Finally, the knight has said it,
to someone who is acting as his confessor. We think again
of the "dits amoreux", and realize the knight had
been truly happy – and this happiness is his consolation.
Chaucer wrote The Book of the Duchess with specific
references to John of Gaunt. He mentions a "long castel",
"on a ryche hil" (which stand for Lancaster, who
is John of Gaunt, and Richmond Hill, which is where he lived).
And of course, the knight’s lady is named "White"
("Blanche" is French for white). Chaucer probably
read The Book of the Duchess in front of John of Gaunt, so
if we take the narrator to be akin to Chaucer, then the author
is certainly mocking himself. In a diplomatic move, Chaucer
withdraws from the story very quickly, returning through the
frames of the dream narratives, back out to the original story
of the insomniac, with his book in hand, who now in turn will
write a poem.
Mini
Reports
Brief History of John of Gaunt (Ghent)
Jen Garbin (ENG300Y)
John of Gaunt (Ghent), 1340-399
John, by the grace of God, King of Castille and Leon, Duke
of Lancaster and Aquitaine, Earl of Derby, Lincoln and Leicester,
Lord of Beaufort and Nogent, of Bergerac and Roche-sur-Yon,
Seneschal of England and Constable of Chester.
"He was a tall spare man, reserved and
proud. He was courageous in battle, and easily roused, but
he was loyal to a degree and chivalrous in every sense of
the word. He loved the tournament, and specialized in absolutely
fair play, a quality rare in his day. He was a great patron,
of poets, scholars, clergy, monks, and indeed of the poor.
. . . he was nevertheless the ideal Englishman, and like all
of his type he did not see where his own virtues lay: a soldier
who was far and away at his best at a peace conference, a
hot tempered fighting man who restrained the tempers of others."
-- John Fines
Who's Who in the Middle Ages
(Source: http://www.labelle.org/bio_JohnG.html)
John of Gaunt was born the fourth son of Edward III of England,
and was one of the most influential political figures in England
during Chaucer’s time. In 1359, John of Gaunt married
Blanche, Heiress of, and later Duchess of Lancaster. After
Blanche’s father’s death, John became Earl and
Duke of Lancaster, making him one of the wealthiest and most
powerful nobles in all of England. He was a soldier and served
under his brother, Edward the Black Prince, in the Hundred
Years War and against Peter the Cruel of Castille. After his
first wife, Blanche, died in 1369, John made a political marriage
(1371) with Constance of Castille, heir of Peter of Castille,
thus giving him a claim to the Castillian throne. <to
top>
Upon his return to England in 1375, he allied himself with
the corrupt court party led by Alice Perrers, mistress of
Edward III and for all intents and purposes, ruled England
for a short time until being ousted from power by the Good
Parliament of 1376. John rebounded and put together a handpicked
parliament in 1377, about the same time his nephew, Richard
II, ascended the throne. It was thought by many that John
would make a claim to the crown for himself, since young Richard’s
ability to reign was in doubt. However, John was a strong
advocate for legitimate inheritance and held strong devotion
to his brother and family. In addition, his focus was on his
own claims in Castille. Upon his return to England in 1389,
he was named Duke of Aquitane as a reward, and helped restore
peace between Richard II and the hostile barons led by the
Duke of Gloucester, and which included his son, Henry of Bolingbroke
(ironically, later to usurp the throne of England as Henry
IV). In 1396, John of Gaunt married Catherine Swynford, the
governess to his children by Blanche, as well as his long
time mistress.
So, how did he come to be the chief patron of Chaucer? The
connection developed as Chaucer served in a number of positions
in the royal court at the time. In 1357, Chaucer became page
in the household of Elizabeth de Burgh, Countess of Ulster.
Later, both John of Gaunt and Chaucer served in the retinue
of Prince Lionel (1359) in the war in France, in which Chaucer
was captured (and then ransomed in March 1360 for 16 pounds).
They were the same age. In 1365-1366, Chaucer married Philippa
Roet who was a chamber lady to Queen Philippa, and later to
Gaunt’s second wife, Constance. Chaucer’s wife
was also the sister of Katherine Swynford, long time mistress
and third wife of John of Gaunt. <to top>
In 1367, Chaucer became a valet in the household of Edward
III. When Lionel died in 1368, Chaucer transferred his services
to John of Gaunt. He was well known as part of the literati
of the court at the time, and hence John of Gaunt would have
been well acquainted with his work.
It is popularly believed that Chaucer wrote The Book of
the Duchess upon the request of John of Gaunt as a eulogy
for his late wife, Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster.
List of Works Cited
http://www.infoplease.com/ipd/A0500957.html
http://www.online-literature.com/view.php/richardII/6?term=gaunt
http://www.labelle.org/bio_JohnG.html
http://www.librarius.com/chauchro.htm
http://members.tripod.com/~midgley/gaunt.html
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