“And if that in myn owne lust I brenne,
From whennes com’th my wailing and my pleynte?
If harm agree me, wher-to pleyne I thenne?
I n’ot, ne why unwery that I fainte.
O quike deth! O swete harm so queynte!
How may of thee in me swich quantite,
But if I consente that it be?”
The Hous of Fame, a shorter poem in octosyllabic couplets, is of the dream-allegory type, as most of Chaucer’s poems of this period are; and it is of special importance because it shows gleams of the genuine Chaucerian humor. In this group is also included The Legende of Good Women, in which Chaucer, starting with the intention of telling nineteen affecting tales of virtuous women of antiquity, finishes with eight accomplished and the ninth only begun. After a charming introduction on the daisy, there is some masterly narrative, particularly in the portion dealing with Cleopatra. The meter is the heroic couplet, with which Chaucer was to familiarize us in The Canterbury Tales.
(c) The third or English group contains work of the greatest individual accomplishment. The achievement of this period is The Canterbury Tales, though one or two of the separate tales may be of slightly earlier composition. For the general idea of the tales Chaucer may be indebted to Boccaccio, but in nearly every important feature the work is essentially English. For the purposes of his poem Chaucer draws together twenty-nine pilgrims, including himself. They meet at the Tabard Inn, in Southwark, in order to go on a pilgrimage to the tomb of Thomas à Becket at Canterbury. The twenty-nine are carefully chosen types, of both sexes, and of all ranks, from a knight to a humble plowman; their occupations and personal peculiarities are many and diverse; and, as they are depicted in the masterly Prologue to the main work, they are interesting, alive, and thoroughly human. At the suggestion of the host of the Tabard, and to relieve the tedium of the journey, each of the pilgrims is to tell two tales on the outward journey, and two on the return. In its entirety the scheme would have resulted in an immense collection of over a hundred tales. But as it happens Chaucer finished only twenty, and left four partly complete. The separate tales are linked with their individual prologues, and with dialogues and scraps of narrative. Even in its incomplete state the work is a small literature in itself, an almost unmeasured abundance and variety of humor and pathos, of narrative and description, and of dialogue and digression. There are two prose tales, Chaucer’s own Tale of Melibœus and The Parson’s Tale; and nearly all the others are composed in a powerful and versatile species of the heroic couplet.
To this last stage of Chaucer’s work several short poems are ascribed, including The Lack of Stedfastness and the serio-comic Compleynte of Chaucer to his Purse.