18=) English Literature
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Geoffrey Chaucer
Literary works
Chaucer’s
great literary accomplishment of the 1390s was The Canterbury Tales. In it a
group of about 30 pilgrims gather at the Tabard Inn in Southwark, across the
Thames from London, and agree to engage in a storytelling contest as they
travel on horseback to the shrine of Thomas à Becket in Canterbury, Kent, and
back. Harry Bailly, host of the Tabard, serves as master of ceremonies for the
contest. The pilgrims are introduced by vivid brief sketches in the General
Prologue. Interspersed between the 24 tales told by the pilgrims are short
dramatic scenes presenting lively exchanges, called links and usually involving
the host and one or more of the pilgrims. Chaucer did not complete the full
plan for his book: the return journey from Canterbury is not included, and some
of the pilgrims do not tell stories. Further, the surviving manuscripts leave
room for doubt at some points as to Chaucer’s intent for arranging the
material. The work is nevertheless sufficiently complete to be considered a
unified book rather than a collection of unfinished fragments. Use of a
pilgrimage as a framing device for the collection of stories enabled Chaucer to
bring together people from many walks of life: knight, prioress, monk;
merchant, man of law, franklin, scholarly clerk; miller, reeve, pardoner; wife
of Bath and many others. Also, the pilgrimage and the storytelling contest
allowed presentation of a highly varied collection of literary genres: courtly
romance, racy fabliau, saint’s life, allegorical tale, beast fable, medieval
sermon, alchemical account, and, at times, mixtures of these genres. Because of
this structure, the sketches, the links, and the tales all fuse as complex
presentations of the pilgrims, while at the same time the tales present
remarkable examples of short stories in verse, plus two expositions in prose.
In addition, the pilgrimage, combining a fundamentally religious purpose with
its secular aspect of vacation in the spring, made possible extended
consideration of the relationship between the pleasures and vices of this world
and the spiritual aspirations for the next, that seeming dichotomy with which
Chaucer, like Boethius and many other medieval writers, was so steadily
concerned.
For
this crowning glory of his 30 years of literary composition, Chaucer used his wide
and deep study of medieval books of many sorts and his acute observation of
daily life at many levels. He also employed his detailed knowledge of medieval
astrology and subsidiary sciences as they were thought to influence and dictate
human behaviour. Over the whole expanse of this intricate dramatic narrative,
he presides as Chaucer the poet, Chaucer the civil servant, and Chaucer the
pilgrim: somewhat slow-witted in his pose and always intrigued by human frailty
but always questioning the complexity of the human condition and always seeing
both the humour and the tragedy in that condition. At the end, in the
Retractation with which The Canterbury Tales closes, Chaucer as poet and
pilgrim states his conclusion that the concern for this world fades into
insignificance before the prospect for the next; in view of the admonitions in
The Parson’s Tale, he asks forgiveness for his writings that concern “worldly
vanities” and remembrance for his translation of the Consolation and his other
works of morality and religious devotion. On that note he ends his finest work
and his career as poet.
For
Chaucer’s writings the subsequent record is clearer. His contemporaries praised
his artistry, and a “school” of 15th-century Chaucerians imitated his poetry.
Over the succeeding centuries, his poems, particularly The Canterbury Tales,
have been widely read, translated into modern English, and, since about the
middle of the 19th century, the number of scholars and critics who devote
themselves to the study and teaching of his life and works has steadily
increased.
Perhaps
the chief characteristics of Chaucer’s works are their variety in subject
matter, genre, tone, and style and in the complexities presented concerning the
human pursuit of a sensible existence. Yet his writings also consistently
reflect an all-pervasive humour combined with serious and tolerant
consideration of important philosophical questions. From his writings Chaucer
emerges as poet of love, both earthly and divine, whose presentations range
from lustful cuckoldry to spiritual union with God. Thereby, they regularly
lead the reader to speculation about man’s relation both to his fellows and to
his Maker, while simultaneously providing delightfully entertaining views of
the frailties and follies, as well as the nobility, of mankind.
Chaucer's
first major work was The Book of the Duchess, an elegy for Blanche of Lancaster
who died in 1368. Two other early works were Anelida and Arcite and The House
of Fame. He wrote many of his major works in a prolific period when he held the
job of customs comptroller for London (1374 to 1386). His Parlement of Foules,
The Legend of Good Women, and Troilus and Criseyde all date from this time. It
is believed that he started The Canterbury Tales in the 1380s.
Chaucer
also translated Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy and The Romance of the Rose
by Guillaume de Lorris (extended by Jean de Meun). Eustache Deschamps called
himself a "nettle in Chaucer's garden of poetry". In 1385, Thomas Usk
made glowing mention of Chaucer, and John Gower also lauded him.
Chaucer's
Treatise on the Astrolabe describes the form and use of the astrolabe in detail
and is sometimes cited as the first example of technical writing in the English
language, and it indicates that Chaucer was versed in science in addition to
his literary talents. The equatorie of the planetis is a scientific work
similar to the Treatise and sometimes ascribed to Chaucer because of its
language and handwriting, an identification which scholars no longer deem
tenable.
Influence
Linguistic
Chaucer
wrote in continental accentual-syllabic metre, a style which had developed in
English literature since around the 12th century as an alternative to the
alliterative Anglo-Saxon metre. Chaucer is known for metrical innovation,
inventing the rhyme royal, and he was one of the first English poets to use the
five-stress line, a decasyllabic cousin to the iambic pentametre, in his work,
with only a few anonymous short works using it before him. The arrangement of
these five-stress lines into rhyming couplets, first seen in his The Legend of
Good Women, was used in much of his later work and became one of the standard
poetic forms in English. His early influence as a satirist is also important,
with the common humorous device, the funny accent of a regional dialect,
apparently making its first appearance in The Reeve's Tale.
The
poetry of Chaucer, along with other writers of the era, is credited with
helping to standardise the London Dialect of the Middle English language from a
combination of the Kentish and Midlands dialects. This is probably overstated;
the influence of the court, chancery and bureaucracy – of which Chaucer was a
part – remains a more probable influence on the development of Standard
English.
Modern
English is somewhat distanced from the language of Chaucer's poems owing to the
effect of the Great Vowel Shift some time after his death. This change in the
pronunciation of English, still not fully understood, makes the reading of
Chaucer difficult for the modern audience.
The
status of the final -e in Chaucer's verse is uncertain: it seems likely that
during the period of Chaucer's writing the final -e was dropping out of
colloquial English and that its use was somewhat irregular. It may have been a
vestige of the Old English dative singular suffix -e attached to most nouns.
Chaucer's versification suggests that the final -e is sometimes to be vocalized
, and sometimes to be silent; however, this remains a point on which there is
disagreement. When it is vocalized , most scholars pronounce it as a schwa.
Apart
from the irregular spelling, much of the vocabulary is recognisable to the
modern reader. Chaucer is also recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary as the
first author to use many common English words in his writings. These words were
probably frequently used in the language at the time but Chaucer, with his ear
for common speech, is the earliest extant manuscript source. Acceptable,
alkali, altercation, amble, angrily, annex, annoyance, approaching,
arbitration, armless, army, arrogant, arsenic, arc, artillery and aspect are
just some of almost two thousand English words first attested in Chaucer.
Literary
Widespread
knowledge of Chaucer's works is attested by the many poets who imitated or
responded to his writing. John Lydgate was one of the earliest poets to write
continuations of Chaucer's unfinished Tales while Robert Henryson's Testament
of Cresseid completes the story of Cressida left unfinished in his Troilus and
Criseyde. Many of the manuscripts of Chaucer's works contain material from
these poets and later appreciations by the Romantic era poets were shaped by
their failure to distinguish the later "additions" from original
Chaucer.
Writers
of the 17th and 18th centuries, such as John Dryden, admired Chaucer for his stories,
but not for his rhythm and rhyme, as few critics could then read Middle English
and the text had been butchered by printers, leaving a somewhat unadmirable
mess. It was not until the late 19th century that the official Chaucerian
canon, accepted today, was decided upon, largely as a result of Walter William
Skeat's work. Roughly seventy-five years after Chaucer's death, The Canterbury
Tales was selected by William Caxton to be one of the first books to be printed
in England.
English
Chaucer
is sometimes considered the source of the English vernacular tradition. His
achievement for the language can be seen as part of a general historical trend
towards the creation of a vernacular literature, after the example of Dante, in
many parts of Europe. A parallel trend in Chaucer's own lifetime was underway
in Scotland through the work of his slightly earlier contemporary, John
Barbour, and was likely to have been even more general, as is evidenced by the
example of the Pearl Poet in the north of England.
Although
Chaucer's language is much closer to Modern English than the text of Beowulf,
such that (unlike that of Beowulf) a Modern English-speaker with a large
vocabulary of archaic words may understand it, it differs enough that most
publications modernise his idiom. The following is a sample from the prologue
of The Summoner's Tale that compares Chaucer's text to a modern translation:
Original Text Modern
Translation
This frere bosteth that he knoweth helle, This friar boasts that he knows hell,
And God it woot, that it is litel wonder; And God knows that it is little wonder;
Freres and feendes been but lyte asonder. Friars and fiends are seldom far apart.
For, pardee, ye han ofte tyme herd telle For, by God, you have ofttimes heard tell
How that a frere ravyshed was to helle How a friar was taken to hell
In spirit ones by a visioun; In
spirit, once by a vision;
And as an angel ladde hym up and doun, And as an angel led him up and ,
down
To shewen hym the peynes that the were, To show him the pains that were , there
In al the place saugh he nat a frere;
In all the place he saw not a friar;
Of oother folk he saugh ynowe in wo. Of other folk he saw enough in woe.
Unto this angel spak the frere tho:
Unto this angel spoke the friar thus:
Now, sire, quod he, han freres swich a grace "Now
sir", said he, "Have friars
such a grace
That noon of hem shal come to this place? That none of them come to this place?"
Yis, quod this aungel, many a millioun! "Yes", said the angel,
"many a million!"
And unto sathanas he ladde hym doun. And unto Satan the angel led him down.
–And now hath sathanas, –seith he, –a tayl "And now Satan has", he said,
"a tail,
Brodder than of a carryk is the sayl. Broader than a galleon's sail.
Hold up thy tayl, thou sathanas!–quod he; Hold up your tail, Satan!" said he.
–shewe forth thyn ers, and lat the frere se "Show forth your arse, and let the friar
see
Where is the nest of freres in this place!– Where the nest of friars is in this
place!"
And er that half a furlong wey of space, And before half a furlong of space,
Right so as bees out swarmen from an hyve, Just as bees swarm out from a hive,
Out of the develes ers ther gonne dryve Out of the devil's arse there were driven
Twenty thousand freres on a route, Twenty thousand friars on a rout,
And thurghout helle swarmed al aboute, And throughout hell swarmed all about,
And comen agayn as faste as they may gon, And came again as fast as they could go,
And in his ers they crepten everychon. And every one crept into his arse.
He clapte his tayl agayn and lay ful stille. He shut his tail again and lay very still.
Valentine's Day and romance
The
first recorded association of Valentine's Day with romantic love is believed to
be in Chaucer's Parlement of Foules (1382), a dream vision portraying a
parliament for birds to choose their mates. Honouring the first anniversary of
the engagement of fifteen-year-old King Richard II of England to
fifteen-year-old Anne of Bohemia:
For
this was on seynt Volantynys day
Whan
euery bryd comyth there to chese his make
Of
euery kynde that men thinke may
And
that so heuge a noyse gan they make
That
erthe & eyr & tre & euery lake
So
ful was that onethe was there space
For
me to stonde, so ful was al the place.
Critical reception
Early criticism
The
poet Thomas Hoccleve, who may have met Chaucer and considered him his role
model, hailed Chaucer as "the firste fyndere of our fair
langage".John Lydgate referred to Chaucer within his own text The Fall of
Princes as the "lodesterre (guiding principle) … off our
language".Around two centuries later, Sir Philip Sidney greatly praised
Troilus and Criseyde in his own Defence of Poesie. During the nineteenth and
early twentieth century, Chaucer came to be viewed as a symbol of the nation's
poetic heritage.
In
Charles Dickens' 1850 novel David Copperfield, the Victorian era author echoed
Chaucer's use of Luke 23:34 from Troilus and Criseyde (Dickens held a copy in
his library among other works of Chaucer), with G. K. Chesterton writing,
"among the great canonical English authors, Chaucer and Dickens have the
most in common."
Manuscripts and audience
The
large number of surviving manuscripts of Chaucer's works is testimony to the
enduring interest in his poetry prior to the arrival of the printing press.
There are 83 surviving manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales (in whole or part)
alone, along with sixteen of Troilus and Criseyde, including the personal copy
of Henry IV. Given the ravages of time, it is likely that these surviving
manuscripts represent hundreds since lost.
Chaucer's
original audience was a courtly one, and would have included women as well as
men of the upper social classes. Yet even before his death in 1400, Chaucer's
audience had begun to include members of the rising literate, middle and
merchant classes. This included many Lollard sympathisers who may well have been
inclined to read Chaucer as one of their own.
Lollards
were particularly attracted to Chaucer's satirical writings about friars,
priests, and other church officials. In 1464, John Baron, a tenant farmer in
Agmondesham (Amersham in Buckinghamshire), was brought before John Chadworth,
the Bishop of Lincoln, on charges of being a Lollard heretic; he confessed to
owning a "boke of the Tales of Caunterburie" among other suspect
volumes.
Printed editions
The
first English printer, William Caxton, was responsible for the first two folio
editions of The Canterbury Tales which were published in 1478 and 1483.
Caxton's second printing, by his own account, came about because a customer
complained that the printed text differed from a manuscript he knew; Caxton
obligingly used the man's manuscript as his source. Both Caxton editions carry
the equivalent of manuscript authority. Caxton's edition was reprinted by his
successor, Wynkyn de Worde, but this edition has no independent authority.
Richard
Pynson, the King's Printer under Henry VIII for about twenty years, was the
first to collect and sell something that resembled an edition of the collected
works of Chaucer; however, in the process, he introduced five previously
printed texts that are now known not to be Chaucer's. (The collection is
actually three separately printed texts, or collections of texts, bound
together as one volume.)
There
is a likely connection between Pynson's product and William Thynne's a mere six
years later. Thynne had a successful career from the 1520s until his death in
1546, as chief clerk of the kitchen of Henry VIII, one of the masters of the
royal household. He spent years comparing various versions of Chaucer's works,
and selected 41 pieces for publication. While there were questions over the
authorship of some of the material, there is not doubt this was the first
comprehensive view of Chaucer's work. The Workes of Geffray Chaucer, published
in 1532, was the first edition of Chaucer's collected works. Thynne's editions
of Chaucer's Works in 1532 and 1542 were the first major contributions to the
existence of a widely recognised Chaucerian canon. Thynne represents his
edition as a book sponsored by and supportive of the king who is praised in the
preface by Sir Brian Tuke. Thynne's canon brought the number of apocryphal
works associated with Chaucer to a total of 28, even if that was not his
intention. As with Pynson, once included in the Works, pseudepigraphic texts
stayed with those works, regardless of their first editor's intentions.
In
the 16th and 17th centuries, Chaucer was printed more than any other English
author, and he was the first author to have his works collected in
comprehensive single-volume editions in which a Chaucer canon began to cohere.
Some scholars contend that 16th-century editions of Chaucer's Works set the
precedent for all other English authors in terms of presentation, prestige and
success in print. These editions certainly established Chaucer's reputation,
but they also began the complicated process of reconstructing and frequently
inventing Chaucer's biography and the canonical list of works which were
attributed to him.
Probably
the most significant aspect of the growing apocrypha is that, beginning with
Thynne's editions, it began to include medieval texts that made Chaucer appear
as a proto-Protestant Lollard, primarily the Testament of Love and The
Plowman's Tale. As "Chaucerian" works that were not considered
apocryphal until the late 19th century, these medieval texts enjoyed a new
life, with English Protestants carrying on the earlier Lollard project of
appropriating existing texts and authors who seemed sympathetic—or malleable
enough to be construed as sympathetic—to their cause. The official Chaucer of
the early printed volumes of his Works was construed as a proto-Protestant as
the same was done, concurrently, with William Langland and Piers Plowman.
The famous Plowman's Tale did not enter Thynne's
Works until the second, 1542, edition. Its entry was surely facilitated by
Thynne's inclusion of Thomas Usk's Testament of Love in the first edition. The
Testament of Love imitates, borrows from, and thus resembles Usk's
contemporary, Chaucer. (Testament of Love also appears to borrow from Piers
Plowman.)
Since
the Testament of Love mentions its author's part in a failed plot (book 1,
chapter 6), his imprisonment, and (perhaps) a recantation of (possibly Lollard)
heresy, all this was associated with Chaucer. (Usk himself was executed as a
traitor in 1388.) John Foxe took this recantation of heresy as a defence of the
true faith, calling Chaucer a "right Wiclevian" and (erroneously)
identifying him as a schoolmate and close friend of John Wycliffe at Merton
College, Oxford. (Thomas Speght is careful to highlight these facts in his
editions and his "Life of Chaucer".) No other sources for the
Testament of Love exist—there is only Thynne's construction of whatever
manuscript sources he had.
John
Stow (1525–1605) was an antiquarian and also a chronicler. His edition of
Chaucer's Works in 1561brought the apocrypha to more than 50 titles. More were
added in the 17th century, and they remained as late as 1810, well after Thomas
Tyrwhitt pared the canon down in his 1775 edition. The compilation and printing
of Chaucer's works was, from its beginning, a political enterprise, since it
was intended to establish an English national identity and history that
grounded and authorised the Tudor monarchy and church. What was added to
Chaucer often helped represent him favourably to Protestant England.
In
his 1598 edition of the Works, Speght (probably taking cues from Foxe) made
good use of Usk's account of his political intrigue and imprisonment in the
Testament of Love to assemble a largely fictional "Life of Our Learned
English Poet, Geffrey Chaucer". Speght's "Life" presents readers
with an erstwhile radical in troubled times much like their own, a
proto-Protestant who eventually came round to the king's views on religion.
Speght states, "In the second year of Richard the second, the King tooke
Geffrey Chaucer and his lands into his protection. The occasion wherof no doubt
was some daunger and trouble whereinto he was fallen by favouring some rash
attempt of the common people." Under the discussion of Chaucer's friends,
namely John of Gaunt, Speght further explains:
Yet
it seemeth that [Chaucer] was in some trouble in the daies of King Richard the
second, as it may appeare in the Testament of Loue: where hee doth greatly
complaine of his owne rashnesse in following the multitude, and of their hatred
against him for bewraying their purpose. And in that complaint which he maketh
to his empty purse, I do find a written copy, which I had of Iohn Stow (whose
library hath helped many writers) wherein ten times more is adioined, then is
in print. Where he maketh great lamentation for his wrongfull imprisonment,
wishing death to end his daies: which in my iudgement doth greatly accord with
that in the Testament of Loue. Moreouer we find it thus in Record.
Later,
in "The Argument" to the Testament of Love, Speght adds:
Chaucer
did compile this booke as a comfort to himselfe after great griefs conceiued
for some rash attempts of the commons, with whome he had ioyned, and thereby
was in feare to loose the fauour of his best friends.
Speght
is also the source of the famous tale of Chaucer being fined for beating a
Franciscan friar in Fleet Street, as well as a fictitious coat of arms and
family tree. Ironically – and perhaps consciously so – an introductory,
apologetic letter in Speght's edition from Francis Beaumont defends the
unseemly, "low", and bawdy bits in Chaucer from an elite, classicist
position.
Francis
Thynne noted some of these inconsistencies in his Animadversions, insisting
that Chaucer was not a commoner, and he objected to the friar-beating story.
Yet Thynne himself underscores Chaucer's support for popular religious reform,
associating Chaucer's views with his father William Thynne's attempts to
include The Plowman's Tale and The Pilgrim's Tale in the 1532 and 1542 Works.
The
myth of the Protestant Chaucer continues to have a lasting impact on a large
body of Chaucerian scholarship. Though it is extremely rare for a modern
scholar to suggest Chaucer supported a religious movement that did not exist
until more than a century after his death, the predominance of this thinking
for so many centuries left it for granted that Chaucer was at least hostile
toward Catholicism. This assumption forms a large part of many critical
approaches to Chaucer's works, including neo-Marxism.
Alongside
Chaucer's Works, the most impressive literary monument of the period is John
Foxe's Acts and Monuments.... As with the Chaucer editions, it was critically
significant to English Protestant identity and included Chaucer in its project.
Foxe's Chaucer both derived from and contributed to the printed editions of Chaucer's
Works, particularly the pseudepigrapha. Jack Upland was first printed in Foxe's
Acts and Monuments, and then it appeared in Speght's edition of Chaucer's
Works.
Speght's
"Life of Chaucer" echoes Foxe's own account, which is itself
dependent upon the earlier editions that added the Testament of Love and The
Plowman's Tale to their pages. Like Speght's Chaucer, Foxe's Chaucer was also a
shrewd (or lucky) political survivor. In his 1563 edition, Foxe "thought
it not out of season … to couple … some mention of Geoffrey Chaucer" with
a discussion of John Colet, a possible source for John Skelton's character
Colin Clout.
Probably
referring to the 1542 Act for the Advancement of True Religion, Foxe said that
he "marvel[s] to consider … how the bishops, condemning and abolishing all
manner of English books and treatises which might bring the people to any light
of knowledge, did yet authorise the works of Chaucer to remain still and to be
occupied; who, no doubt, saw into religion as much almost as even we do now,
and uttereth in his works no less, and seemeth to be a right Wicklevian, or
else there never was any. And that, all his works almost, if they be thoroughly
advised, will testify (albeit done in mirth, and covertly); and especially the
latter end of his third book of the Testament of Love … Wherein, except a man
be altogether blind, he may espy him at the full: although in the same book (as
in all others he useth to do), under shadows covertly, as under a visor, he
suborneth truth in such sort, as both privily she may profit the godly-minded,
and yet not be espied of the crafty adversary. And therefore the bishops,
belike, taking his works but for jests and toys, in condemning other books, yet
permitted his books to be read."
It
is significant, too, that Foxe's discussion of Chaucer leads into his history
of "The Reformation of the Church of Christ in the Time of Martin
Luther" when "Printing, being opened, incontinently ministered unto
the church the instruments and tools of learning and knowledge; which were good
books and authors, which before lay hid and unknown. The science of printing
being found, immediately followed the grace of God; which stirred up good wits
aptly to conceive the light of knowledge and judgment: by which light darkness
began to be espied, and ignorance to be detected; truth from error, religion
from superstition, to be discerned."
Foxe
downplays Chaucer's bawdy and amorous writing, insisting that it all testifies
to his piety. Material that is troubling is deemed metaphoric, while the more
forthright satire (which Foxe prefers) is taken literally.
John
Urry produced the first edition of the complete works of Chaucer in a Latin
font, published posthumously in 1721. Included were several tales, according to
the editors, for the first time printed, a biography of Chaucer, a glossary of
old English words, and testimonials of author writers concerning Chaucer dating
back to the 16th century. According to A. S. G Edwards,
"This
was the first collected edition of Chaucer to be printed in roman type. The
life of Chaucer prefixed to the volume was the work of the Reverend John Dart,
corrected and revised by Timothy Thomas. The glossary appended was also mainly
compiled by Thomas. The text of Urry's edition has often been criticised by subsequent
editors for its frequent conjectural emendations, mainly to make it conform to
his sense of Chaucer's metre. The justice of such criticisms should not obscure
his achievement. His is the first edition of Chaucer for nearly a hundred and
fifty years to consult any manuscripts and is the first since that of William
Thynne in 1534 to seek systematically to assemble a substantial number of
manuscripts to establish his text. It is also the first edition to offer
descriptions of the manuscripts of Chaucer's works, and the first to print
texts of 'Gamelyn' and 'The Tale of Beryn', works ascribed to, but not by,
Chaucer."
List of works
The following major works are in rough chronological
order but scholars still debate the dating of most of Chaucer's output and
works made up from a collection of stories may have been compiled over a long
period.
Major works
The Book of the Duchess , The House of Fame , Anelida
and Arcite , Parlement of Foules , Troilus and Criseyde , The Legend of Good
Women , The Canterbury Tales , A Treatise on the Astrolabe
Translations
Translation of Roman de la Rose, possibly extant as
The Romaunt of the Rose
Translation of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy as
Boece
Short poems
An
ABC , Chaucers Wordes unto Adam, His Owne Scriveyn (disputed) , The Complaint
unto Pity , The Complaint of Chaucer to his Purse , The Complaint of Mars , The
Complaint of Venus , A Complaint to His Lady , The Former Age , Fortune , Gentilesse
, Lak of Stedfastnesse ,Lenvoy de Chaucer a Scogan , Lenvoy de Chaucer a Bukton
, Proverbs , Balade to Rosemounde, 1477 print
Balade
to Rosemounde , Truth , Womanly Noblesse , Poems of doubtful authorship , Against
Women Unconstant , A Balade of Complaint , Complaynt D'Amours , Merciles Beaute
The
Equatorie of the Planets – A rough translation of a Latin work derived from an
Arab work of the same title. It is a description of the construction and use of
a planetary equatorium, which was used in calculating planetary orbits and
positions (at the time it was believed the sun orbited the Earth). The similar
Treatise on the Astrolabe, not usually doubted as Chaucer's work, in addition
to Chaucer's name as a gloss to the manuscript are the main pieces of evidence
for the ascription to Chaucer. However, the evidence Chaucer wrote such a work
is questionable, and as such is not included in The Riverside Chaucer. If
Chaucer did not compose this work, it was probably written by a contemporary.
Works presumed lost
Of the Wreched Engendrynge of Mankynde, possible
translation of Innocent III's De miseria conditionis humanae
Origenes upon the Maudeleyne
The Book of the Leoun – "The Book of the
Lion" is mentioned in Chaucer's retraction. It has been speculated that it
may have been a redaction of Guillaume de Machaut's 'Dit dou lyon,' a story
about courtly love (a subject about which Chaucer frequently wrote).
Spurious works
The Pilgrim's Tale – written in the 16th century with
many Chaucerian allusions
The Plowman's Tale or The Complaint of the Ploughman
– a Lollard satire later appropriated as a Protestant text
Pierce the Ploughman's Crede – a Lollard satire later
appropriated by Protestants
The Ploughman's Tale – its body is largely a version
of Thomas Hoccleve's "Item de Beata Virgine"
"La Belle Dame Sans Merci" – frequently
attributed to Chaucer, but actually a translation by Richard Roos of Alain
Chartier's poem
The Testament of Love – actually by Thomas Usk
Jack Upland – a Lollard satire
The Floure and the Leafe – a 15th-century allegory
Derived works
God Spede the Plough – Borrows twelve stanzas of
Chaucer's Monk's Tale
In popular culture
Chaucer is one of the main characters in the 2001
film A Knight's Tale, and is portrayed by Paul Bettany.
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