Anglia 21:255-57, and Hammond in Decenn. Publ. Univ. of Crowell. Chaucer's Complete Works, with an introduction by The same work, with the introduction, is pub. by Crowell in one vol., 1900, in both the Astor Series and the Gladstone Scries, the difference between which is merely one of price. The announcements of these series speak of the ed. as "Lounsbury and Skeat." The introd. is of 18 pages; there is a glossarial index. World's Classics. The Poetical Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. London, Grant Richards, 1903 ff., 2 vols. No notes. The text of Skeat, reprinted by permission. Very low-priced; even in limp leather costs but one and sixpence a volume. Frowde. Works of Chaucer; in three vols., 12mo., Frowde, 1906. One shilling a volume. SECTION III THE CANTERBURY TALES A. Introduction Stories in a Framework. This literary form is Oriental in its origin. The most conspicuous examples current in Europe in the latter Middle Ages are the Fables of Bidpai, the Seven Wise Masters or Seven Sages, and the Disciplina Clericalis. In the Fables of Bidpai or Pilpay, originally written in Sanskrit, the thread connecting the separate stories is didactic in character; the philosopher Bidpai narrates the tales to a king whose adviser he is. In many of the stories the personages are animals; some of the fables are Aesopic, and one or two have parallels in the Thousand and One Nights, or Arabian Nights, a work which did not reach Western Europe until after Chaucer's day. The work was translated into Latin about 1270. See Max Müller, On the Migration of Fables, vol. IV of his Chips from a German Workshop. See Ward, Catalogue of Romances, II: 149 ff. The Seven Wise Masters was a still more widely circulated medieval work. Its framework has somewhat more plot than that of the Fables. The son of the emperor Diocletian, falsely accused by his stepmother, is rescued from his father's anger by the narratives of the Seven Sages. See Wright's edition for the Percy Society, 1845; Ellis, Metrical Romances, vol. III; Weber, Metrical Romances, vol. I; the dissertation prefixed to Warton-Hazlitt; Furnivall's summary in the Captain Cox volume of the Ballad Society; Ward, Catalogue of Romances II: 199 ff. and the references to Paris, Keller, Petras, etc., there given; Campbell's study of the Middle English versions, Publ. Mod. Lang. Ass'n 14:1-107 (1899), cp. Napier's note ibid. pp. 459-464; Fischer's dissertation, Greisswald, 1902. The Disciplina Clericalis, a series of didactic narratives addressed by a father to his son, was written by Petrus Alfonsus, a converted Jew, in the 12th century. See Ward, Cat. of Romances II: 235 ff., and the references there given. These sets of framed stories are much earlier than the work of Chaucer; two compilations by his contemporaries invite closer comparison, the Decameron of Boccaccio and the Confessio Amantis of Gower; nor should we forget that Chaucer's own Legend of Good Women preceded his Canterbury Tales. In Boccaccio there is a very great advance in vivacity and picturesqueness of framework over any preceding set of framed stories. Ten young people, seven women and three men, all of rank, leave Florence to escape the horrors of the pestilence there raging, and pass ten days at a country villa, whiling away the time by telling stories. For each day there is chosen a sort of Master or Mistress of the Revels, who dictates the general subject of the stories for that day, and calls upon the group in turn. The superiority of this plan to any of those above mentioned will be recognized; first, the tales are not didactic, but narrated for amusement; next, there is some differentiation of character among the narrators, though this is not carried to any great extent; and in the choice of a "sovereign" for each day we may see a faint and far-off resemblance to Chaucer's Host. There is also in Boccaccio an atmosphere of out-of-doors not dreamed of in any of the Oriental compilations, which again reminds us of Chaucer. Nevertheless, the development of the framework-idea in Chaucer's hands is so great that no comparison can be made, even of the Decameron, with the Canterbury Tales. The choice of a pilgrimage as the scene, the only possible stage upon which all classes could then meet as equals; the variety and vividness of the figures introduced; the masterstroke which appointed as literary dictator the roughtongued, keenwitted Host, the faithful representative of the "hearty positive genius of the English people"; the skill with which the bits of framework between the Tales are differentiated from one another, here a quarrel, there the riding up of other pilgrims, here a comment or an interruption by the Host, and again the Knight, or the Merchant, or the Franklin, appearing as the critic; finally, the adaptation of most of the Tales to their tellers, from the coarse narratives of Miller and Reeve, the pious legends of the nuns, and the romance of the Squire, to the tale of disloyal love narrated by the Knight with a shrewd sideglance at his son,-such considerations as these have tempted many students into affirming the dramatic power of Chaucer. Notwithstanding all this, some critics have opined that Chaucer was indebted to Boccaccio for his idea.-"It is probable that most of the Tales were written as so many distinct poems at different times . . . . and afterwards collected into one body in imitation of Boccace's Decameron, whence the Arguments of some of them were taken." (Life of Chaucer prefixed to the Urry Chaucer of 1721.) "The Canterbury Tales was in all probability composed in imitation of the Decameron", said Tyrwhitt, Introd. Disc. § ii. -“Chaucer undoubtedly intended to imitate Boccaccio, whose Decameron was then the most popular of books." (Warton-Hazlitt, II :336.)—“A performance with which Chaucer was familiarly acquainted." (Godwin, Life, chap. 35.) But Wright, ed. Cant. Tales p. xvi, says, "with which I think it doubtful if Chaucer were acquainted", and Sandras, Étude, p. 135, says "inconnu peut-être à Chaucer." Sandras thinks that collections such as the Disciplina Clericalis and the Seven Sages had more influence on Chaucer; Ebert, reviewing Sandras, rejects this opinion, see Ch. Soc. Essays pp. 26-28; Koch, Engl. Stud. 1: 292, also disagrees with Sandras. Kissner p. 74 ff. thinks that Chaucer did know the tales of the Decameron; certainly the plan influenced him. Landau, in Beiträge zur Geschichte der italienischen Novella, Vienna 1875, treats Chaucer as an imitator of the Decameron, as do Hortis, op. cit., Rajna in Romania 32: 244 ff. Ten Brink, Hist. Eng. Lit. II: 139, 141, does not decide. Lounsbury, Studies II: 229, asserts that "there is not the slightest proof that Chaucer had a knowledge of its existence"; Skeat III: 371, VI: xcix, considers it highly improbable that Chaucer knew the Decameron; and Pollard, Globe Chaucer p. xxvii, says there is "no shred of evidence to prove that Chaucer copied his plan from the very inferior plan of Boccaccio's Decameron." The opinion expressed by Pollard as to Chaucer's superiority over Boccaccio is no more undisputed than is the theory of Chaucer's debt to Boccaccio. See for instance Dunlop's comparison of the Decameron and the Canterbury Tales, History of Prose Fiction II: 60; see Ginguené, Historie littéraire de l'Italie, III: 110. Landau, in his Beiträge above cited, says that Chaucer's wit is of a lower order than Boccaccio's, and that the English novelist is much more rarely lofty and touching, much oftener common and vulgar than is the Italian. See also the notes on the Troilus, the Knight's Tale, here, for comparisons of those poems with Boccaccio; but observe that Dryden felt that "Chaucer has refined on Boccaccio, and has mended the stories, which he has borrowed in his way of telling." Another set of stories in a framework immediately contemporary with Chaucer was Gower's Confessio Amantis. This poem is in a prologue and eight books, with a total of nearly 33,500 lines in short couplets. The stories are related by a priest or confessor, admonishing a lover and narrating tales to point his monitions. The idea, as Macaulay says in his ed. of Gower vol. II p. xi, is no doubt taken from the Roman de la Rose, where "Genius" hears the confession of Nature. The prologue is not so closely related to the poem as in other framework treatments, and the plan is not worked out; as is frequently the case in medieval dialogues or disputes, no conclusion is reached; cp. the Owl and Nightingale, the Parlement of Foules, the Eye and Heart, the Assembly of Ladies, etc. The series of stories has much the character of the favorite medieval list, or accumulation of instances and authorities for any general statement, also seen in the example-books. Jerome's examples of unfaithful women, the lists of the fallen great in the poems on death or in Boccaccio's De Casibus and Chaucer's Monk's Tale, even the Processus Prophetarum of medieval miracleplaycycles, are parallels to Gower's essentially medieval and didactic conception; his separate narratives, however, are often well told. Chaucer's own Legend of Good Women, intended to consist of a prologue and 20 stories in praise of loyal women, was perhaps in hand when Gower's poem appeared, in 1390. From the fact that two forms of the prologue exist, it has been inferred that Chaucer worked upon the scheme at two different times; that he wearied of the less vivid and varied idea after that of the pilgrimage had occurred to him is very possible. This poem, like that of Gower, has much the effect of a list; the "surprise and contrast" so characteristic of the Cant. Tales plan are lacking. See Section IV here for discussion of the work. The "framework" enclosing tales is found subsequent to Chaucer in many English works; a few are here mentioned. Tarleton's Newes out of Purgatorie. About 1590, again 1630. To the writer in a dream appears Tarleton pale and wan, back from Purgatory; he is asked whom he saw there, and narrates the history of each. All the tales are in prose, except that of Ronsard; the only framework is Tarleton's remark, that he walked further and saw another personage, etc. The Cobler of Canterburie. 1590, again 1608. The preface praises Chaucer and avows the imitation. A party sailing down the Thames tell the stories, which are in prose; descriptions of the narrators, in Skeltonic short couplets, precede the tales. The personages are: the Cobbler, the Smith, Gentleman, Scholar, Old Woman, Summoner. Frequent echoes or imitations of Chaucer appear in the descriptions. Greene's Vision, by Robert Greene, shortly after 1590. Το Greene asleep, after his penitent confessions of misdoing, appear Chaucer and Gower. Each is described in verse; 16 lines are given to Chaucer, beginning: His stature was not very tall etc. The poets converse with Greene, each narrating a prose tale on jealousy; at the close of the dream Solomon appears and counsels wisdom. Greene asserts to Chaucer that people have wrongly fathered the Cobler of Canterburie upon him, Greene. The Tinker of Turvey. London 1630. Plan like the Cobler |