stories, exclusive of the subordinate incidents and conversations; but the pilgrims do not arrive at their destination, and the tales which Chaucer has given us constitute but a fragment of the plan. The stories are twenty-five in number, — three of them, the Cook's, the Squire's, and Chaucer's first, are "left half told." Eleven of the pilgrims are silent. A Canon and his Yeoman unexpectedly join the cavalcade during the journey. The Canon, who is represented as an alchemist, half swindler and half dupe, is driven away from the company by shame at his attendant's indiscreet disclosures; and the Yeoman, remaining with the pilgrims, relates a most amusing story of the villainous artifices of the charlatans who pretended to possess the great arcanum. The stories narrated by the pilgrims are admirably introduced by "prologues," each consisting of remarks and criticisms on the preceding tale, and of incidents of the journey. Two Classes of Tales. - The Tales may be divided into the two classes, pathetic and humorous. The best of the pathetic stories are, the Knight's Tale, the longest of all, in which is related the adventure of Palamon and Arcite; the Squire's Tale, a wild, half-Oriental story of love, chivalry, and enchantment; the Man of Law's Tale, the beautiful and pathetic story of Constance; the Prioress's Tale, the charming legend of "litel Hew of Lincoln," the child who was murdered for singing his hymn to the Virgin; and, above all, the Clerk of Oxford's Tale, perhaps the most beautiful pathetic narration in the whole range of literature. This, the story of Griselda, the model and heroine of wifely patience and obedience, is the tenderest of all the serious narratives, as the Knight's Tale is the masterpiece among the descriptions of love and chivalric magnificence. The finest of Chaucer's humorous stories are those of the Miller, the Reeve, and the Sompnour. Among these it is difficult to give the palm for drollery and ingenuity of incident. The comic stories turn upon events of a kind which the refinement of modern manners forbids us to analyze; but it should be remembered that society in Chaucer's day, though perhaps not less moral in reality, was far more outspoken and simple, and permitted allusions which are proscribed by our sense of decency. Two of these tales are written in prose. * These deviations from what seems to have been the original plan are very naturally made. When Chaucer is applied to by the Host, he begins a rambling, puerile romance of chivalry, entitled the Rime of Sir Thopas, which promises to be an interminable story of knight-errant adventures, and is written in the exact style and meter of the Trouvère narrative poems - the only instance of this versification in the Canterbury Tales. He goes on and on, with promise of unending tediousness, but he is suddenly interrupted, with many expressions of comic disgust, by the merry host: "No mor of this, for Goddes dignite!' This may wel be rym dogerel,' quod he." Chaucer took this ingenious method of ridiculing and caricaturing the commonplace Romance poetry. With great good-nature he immediately offers to tell "a litel thing in prose;" and begins the long allegorical tale of Melibeus and his Wife Prudence, in which, though the matter is often tiresome enough, he appears preeminent among the prose-writers of his day. * Besides these two Canterbury Tales, Chaucer wrote in prose a translation of Boethius's De Consolatione, and an incomplete astrological work, On the Astrolabe, addressed to his son Lewis. The other prose tale is narrated by the Parson. He is represented as a simple and narrow-minded though pious and large-hearted pastor, who characteristically refuses to indulge the company with what can minister only to vain pleasure, and proposes something that may tend to edification, "moralite and vertuous matiere"; and so he begins a long and very curious sermon on the seven deadly sins, their causes and remedies. His discourse is an interesting specimen of the theological literature of the day. It is divided and subdivided with the painful minuteness of scholastic divinity; but it breathes throughout a noble spirit of piety, and in many passages attains great dignity of expression. Chaucer's Verse easily read. The tales in verse exhibit a variety of metrical forms used with consummate ease and dexterity. Chaucer is the father of modern English poetry, because he made his "English pure and undefiled" so pliant to rhyme and measure as to fix many forms of verse, and to show its adaptability to all sorts of metrical art. In him there is the final breaking up of old alliterative poetry and rugged cadence, and an emancipation of the language for use in heroic, Italian, trouvère, and other measures. The difficulty of reading Chaucer has been much exaggerated. The facts to be kept in mind are, that the many French words in his writings had not become Anglicized, and are therefore to be read with their French accent; secondly, that the final e which terminates many English words is to be pronounced lightly, but as a separate syllable where the word following does not begin with a vowel or with the letter h; and, finally, that the terminations ed, es, and en are almost invariably to be made a separate syllable.* *The following metrical division of the first twelve verses of The Prologue gives illustration of these peculiarities of accent and pronunciation : "Whan that | April | le with | his schow | res swoot | e,1 1 sweet. Attempts to reduce Chaucer's writings to modern English are not profitable. Distinguished poets have tried their skill in interpreting him, but with indifferent success. Wordsworth has adhered with tolerable fidelity to the language, and consequently to the spirit of the original. His Prioress's Tale and Troilus and Cresida retain much of Chaucer; but the less sympathetic minds of Dryden and Pope, in attempting to improve the old poet's expression, have impaired his sentiment.* In this chapter we have considered The Life and Writings of Geoffrey Chaucer. 1. The Representative of a Notable Time. —2. His Personal Appearance. 3. His Social and Political Career. -4. His Poems of Chivalric Type.-5. His Poems of the Italian Type. —6. The Canterbury Tales.-7. Chaucer's Verse easily Read. And ba thud eve | ry veyne | in suich | licour1 In these verses the French accent given to the words licour, vertue, nature, corages meets the requirements of the rhythm. Aprille, swete, yonge, halfe, smale, have the final e pronounced as a separate syllable, for the words succeeding them do not begin with vowels nor with the letter h; but in Marche, veyne, holte, nature, the final e is silent. * In this chapter, The Student's Chaucer, by W. W. Skeat (1895), has been followed. It has all the undisputed works of Chaucer, with notes and glossary, and contains the most recent conclusions of Chaucerian scholars. Those who care for more extended critical study may consult T. R. Lounsbury's Studies in Chaucer (3 vols., N. Y., 1892), and The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, by W. W. Skeat (6 vols., N. Y. and London, 1894). See Vols. XXIV.-XXVI. of The Percy Society for a version of these tales. See also James Russell Lowell's essay on Chaucer. 1 moisture; 2 also; 8 woodland; 4 5 7 run; eye; 6 heart or disposition; then. CHAPTER VII. CHAUCER'S CONTEMPORARIES. CHAUCER lived just long enough to see Richard II. deposed by Parliament (1399) and Henry IV. of Lancaster enthroned, an act that later gave rise to the protracted war with the House of York known as the War of the Roses. He was witness of the pestilences called the Black Death, the severest of them ravaging the realm in 1348-49. He lived under the weak reign of Richard II., when Wat Tyler's Rebellion (1381) and other peasant revolts disturbed England. He felt the disgrace of the Babylonish Captivity, as the Popes' seventy years' residence in Avignon was termed; and he shared in the universal shock of Christendom at the scandal, when two pontiffs were contending for papal power. That contention had profound influence upon the history of England; for Englishmen began to look upon the Pope as the representative of France, a hostile nation, and they became critical towards the Church. Their religion and their patriotism prompted a national movement that was destined, a hundred and fifty years later, to release the Teutonic races of Europe from the rule of the Latin Church. Living in such stirring times, Chaucer voiced the educated sentiment of his age. He had contemporaries who wrote the sentiments of the common people in their own language. Of such contemporaries John Wycliffe and William Langlande are the most significant representatives. |