Chaucer and His Times

by Grace E. Hadow

That frothen whyte as foom for ire wood.

Of Arcite we are told,

There nas no tygre in the vale of Galgopheye,
Whan that hir whelp is stole, whan it is lyte,
So cruel on the hunte, as is Arcite.

Such comparisons are very different from Spenser’s:—

Like as the sacred Oxe that carelesse stands
With gilden hornes and flowry girlands crownd
Proud of his dying honor and deare bandes,
While th’ altars fume with frankincense arownd,
All suddeinly, with mortal stroke astownd,
Doth groveling fall, and with his streaming gore
Distaines the pillours and the holy grownd,
And the faire flowres that decked him afore:
So fell proud Marinell upon the pretious shore.

To Chaucer the interest does not lie in the pomp and pageantry, nor even in the chivalry of it all, but in the human emotion, in Emily waiting to know which of the lovers will claim her hand, in the knights filled with the lust of battle, in the quondam friends who seek each other’s life. Chivalry has, indeed, little glamour in Chaucer’s eyes. Gower’s story of Florent has a certain stateliness which is lacking in the Tale of the Wyf of Bathe. It has none of Chaucer’s digressions, none of the homeliness of his version. A description of the elf-queen and her jolly company dancing in the green meadows would perhaps be out of place in the mouth of the Wife of Bath, but it is evident that Chaucer sacrifices the dainty grace of Mab and Puck without a pang in order to allow himself a sly hit at the “limitours and othere holy freres” who have replaced them.

The same principle underlies his description of people. In the Book of the Duchesse he gives us a detailed account of Blanche’s charms; probably he felt it incumbent on him to do so. She is fair, as a heroine should be, but even in this, the most conventional of all his descriptions, he contrives to give life and individuality to the conventional type:—

For every heer [up]on hir hede,
Soth to seyn, hit was not rede,
Ne nouther yelw, ne broun hit nas;
Me thoughte most lyk gold hit was.
And whiche eyen my lady hadde!
Debonair, goode, glade, and sadde,[146]
Simple, of good mochel,[147] noght to wyde;
······
And yet more-over, thogh alle tho
That ever lived were now a-lyve,
[They] ne sholde have founde to discryve
In al hir face a wikked signe;
For hit was sad, simple, and benigne.

This is no stereotyped model of feminine beauty, but a picture of the good fair White as she was when she lived.

In describing Cressida, Chaucer keeps fairly close to his original. We realise her beauty rather from the effect it produces on others than from any particular details. She is tall, but so well made that there is nothing clumsy or “manish” about her, and she dresses in black, as beseems a widow; this is practically all that we are told about her. The strong impression of sensuous beauty which she undoubtedly produces, is due to Chaucer’s power of creating an atmosphere rather than to actual description. We hear the nightingale singing her to sleep, or watch her colour come and go as Troilus draws near, and our mind is so filled with an image of youth and beauty that we never stop to think if she is fair or dark. It is the same with Troilus. We get a gallant impression of him as he rides past Cressida’s window, his eyes down-cast, and a boyish shyness tingeing his cheeks with red, but Chaucer thinks of his feelings rather than his looks. Later in the poem, as he rides towards the palace at the head of his men, the poet’s impatience of mere description shows itself still more clearly:—