Chaucer and His Times

by Grace E. Hadow

From the earliest days of pre-Conquest literature, English poetry has always shown a strong feeling for nature. Nature, in those early days, has something wild and terrible about her; great forests, haunted by savage beasts and more savage men, stretch over the land; the sea-birds utter their plaintive cries as they hover above the desolate salt-marshes; ice-cold waves break on the iron-bound coast. Yet the sons of the sea-kings feel the call of the sea in their blood. They know the danger and the savagery of nature, but something in them responds to her relentless force, and the spell of the sea holds them. They may picture Heaven as a place where there is neither hail nor frost, and look forward to still waters and green pastures hereafter, but on earth the welter of the waves, and the strange calm of the rime-bound trees, draw them in spite of themselves. In the charms and riddles a gentler note is sometimes sounded as the poet watches a cloud of gnats “float o’er the forest heights,” or listens to the whirr of the wild-swan’s wings; but on the whole the impression left upon our minds is one of force rather than of peace, of man putting forth his might to subdue the wild strength of nature, and winning a bride by capture.

Often their descriptions of warfare gain an added force from the skilful use of some natural detail. The wan raven circles above the conflicting hosts, waiting for his prey; the water-snakes curve and curl in the seething waters into which Beowulf plunges to meet the monster. Here again, we have the same mingling of tragic imagination and fierce exultation.

They delight in picturing actual battle, in describing the hiss of the javelins through the air, and the gleam of the flashing blade. But while they often speak of the beauty of curiously wrought armour, or of the wealth of a king’s treasure, they show little power of presenting beauty for its own sake, and none at all of depicting the beauty of a woman. Their heroines are fair and gracious and bear the mead cup round the hall where the warriors feast, and unless they are in some way concerned with causing or avenging a quarrel, that is all there is to say about them.

To the Anglo-Normans this wilder and sterner aspect of nature seems to have made little appeal. Nature forms a charming background to many of the love-lyrics of the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but it is a far daintier and sunnier nature than that of the Old English poets. The time has come of the singing of birds:—

Groweth sed, and bloweth med,
And springth the wude nu—
Sing cuccu![132]

In the romances certain definite conventions gradually establish themselves. It is always May morning when the hero rides into the green forest, and flowers, of uncertain species but gay colours, flaunt about his path. A description of a hunt, including minute details as to the proper method of dismembering the quarry, often finds a place—Tristram first wins King Mark’s affections by teaching his huntsmen the proper method of cutting up a stag. Detailed descriptions of elaborate banquets are also popular, but it is evident in these, as in the descriptions of hunting, that the author’s interest lies rather in the actual etiquette than in any pictorial effect. Nevertheless, the romances show a growing delight in colour and beauty. The hero and heroine must conform to a certain conventional standard, but the standard is by no means contemptible.

“Fair was he and slim and tall” (so we read of Aucassin in Mr. Bourdillon’s translation) “and well fashioned in legs and feet and body arms. His hair was yellow and crisped small; and his eyes were grey and laughing; and his face was clear and shapely; and his nose high and well-set; and so endued was he with good condition, that there was none bad in him, but good only.”

And the fact that the gardens in which these gracious beings wander conform to no natural laws, does not prevent them from having a charm of their own. What could be more dainty than the following picture of a dutiful daughter reading to her parents (from the Chevalier au Lion by Chrétien de Troyes):—

Thrugh the hall sir Gawain gase[133]
Intil an orchard, playn pase;[134]
His maiden with him ledes he:
He fand a knyght under a tree,
Opon a cloth of gold he lay;
Before him sat a ful fayr may;[135]
A lady sat with them in fere[136]
The maiden read, that they myght here
A real romance in that place ...

Only occasionally do we hear any echo of that deeper note which sounded through the older poets, and catch a glimpse of winter, when