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Guilt and Creativity in Late Medieval Literature

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Guilt and Creativity in Late Medieval Literature Guilt and Creativity in the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities 2012 Robert Mitchell School of Arts, Languages and Cultures 1 Contents Title Page 1 Contents 2 List of illustrations 3 List of abbreviations 4 Abstract 5 Declaration 6 Copyright Statement 7 Introduction: Guilt and Creativity in Late Medieval Poetry 8-44 Chapter 1: Allegory and Anxiety in The House of Fame 45-94 Chapter 2: Chaucer’s ‘Human Comedy’ 95-146 Chapter 3: Closure and Repentance in the Final Fragments 147-194 Conclusion 195-198 Bibliography 199-213 Word Count: 80745 2 List of Illustrations Figure 1: The ‘Little Tramp’ about to fall. A scene from Easy Street, dir. by Charles Chaplin and Edward Brewer (Mutual Film Corporation, 1917) p. 146 3 List of Abbreviations BD The Book of the Duchess CYT The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale CT The Canterbury Tale HF The House of Fame LGW The Legend of Good Women NPT The Nun’s Priest’s Tale ParsT The Parson’s Tale PF The Parliament of Fowls SNT The Second Nun’s Tale Troilus Troilus and Criseyde Abbreviated forms are used after one full reference to the text in each chapter. ChRev Chaucer Review PMLA Publications of the Modern Language Association of America SAC Studies in the Age of Chaucer 4 Abstract The late Middles Ages saw the development in Europe of increasingly complex, ambitious, and self-conscious forms of creative literature. In the works of poets such as Dante, Petrarch and Chaucer new models of authorship and poetic identity were being explored, new kinds of philosophical and aesthetic value attributed to literary discourse. But these creative developments also brought with them new dangers and tensions, a sense of guilt and uncertainty about the value of creative literature, especially in relation to the dominant religious values of late medieval culture. In this thesis I explore how these doubts and tensions find expression in Chaucer’s poetry, not only as a negative, constraining influence, but also as something which contributes to the shape and meaning of poetry itself. I argue that as Chaucer develops his own expansive, questioning poetics in The House of Fame and The Canterbury Tales, he problematises the principle of allegory on which the legitimacy of literary discourse was primarily based in medieval culture and the final fragments of The Canterbury Tales see Chaucer struggling, increasingly, to reconcile the boldness and independence of his poetic vision with the demands of his faith. This struggle, which emerges most strongly and polemically in the final fragments, I argue, runs in subtle and creative forms throughout the whole of Chaucer’s work. By seeing Chaucer in this light as a poet not of fixed, but of conflicted and vacillating intentions – a poet productively caught drawn between ‘game’ and ‘earnest’, radical ironies and Boethian truths – I attempt to account, in a holistic manner, for the major dichotomies that characterise both his work and its critical reception. 5 Declaration No portion of the work referred to in this thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree of qualification of this or any other university or institute of learning 6 Copyright Statement i. The author of this thesis (including any appendices and/or schedules to this thesis) owns certain copyright or related rights in it (the “Copyright”) and s/he has given The University of Manchester certain rights to use such Copyright, including for administrative purposes. ii. Copies of this thesis, either in full or in extracts and whether in hard or electronic copy, may be made only in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) and regulations issued under it or, where appropriate, in accordance with licensing agreements which the University has from time to time. This page must form part of any such copies made. iii. The ownership of certain Copyright, patents, designs, trade marks and other intellectual property (the “Intellectual Property”) and any reproductions of copyright works in the thesis, for example graphs and tables (“Reproductions”), which may be described in this thesis, may not be owned by the author and may be owned by third parties. Such Intellectual Property and Reproductions cannot and must not be made available for use without the prior written permission of the owner(s) of the relevant Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions. iv. Further information on the conditions under which disclosure, publication and commercialisation of this thesis, the Copyright and any Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions described in it may take place is available in the University IP Policy (see http://documents.manchester.ac.uk/DocuInfo.aspx?DocID=487), in any relevant Thesis restriction declarations deposited in the University Library, The University Library’s regulations (see http://www.manchester.ac.uk/library/aboutus/regulations) and in The University’s policy on Presentation of Theses 7 Introduction: Guilt and Creativity in Late Medieval Literature . I bieseke yow meekly, for the mercy of God, that ye preye for me that Crist have mercy on me and foryeve me my giltes; and namely of my translacions and enditynges of worldly vanitees, the whiche I revoke in my retracciouns: as is the book of Troilus; the book also of Fame; the book of the XXV. Ladies; the book of the Duchesse; the book of Seint Valentynes day of the Parlement of Briddes; the tales of Caunterbury, thilke that sownen into synne;/the books of the Leoun; and many another book, if they were in my remembrance. .’1 (X.1080-1087) It is one of the peculiar ironies of English Literature that the man who was quickly named its father, and to this day still preserves something of that reputation, should have repudiated in this fashion the bulk of the literary accomplishments on which that reputation was based.2 Like so much of Chaucer’s work, this passage is rich with contradiction and ambiguity, even if unintentionally so. It is at once a strangely assertive and self-erasing gesture, a resolute ending and an inauspicious beginning. Chaucer steps forward here, self-consciously, as author of The Canterbury Tales, but only to relinquish that role; he claims ownership of his literary works– his ‘giltes’ as he calls them– and their meaning, but only in order to give them up. In this sense, guilt and repudiation are problematically present at the heart of the English literary tradition. If Chaucer does indeed stand at its source, that tradition begins not simply with Renaissance self-confidence – not with something like Henry Bradshaw’s exclamation ‘What were mankynde without lytterature?’ or Philip Sidney’s defence of 1 Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, in The Riverside Chaucer, ed. by Larry D. Benson, 3rd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). All future Chaucer quotations are taken from this edition and cited with Roman numerals (indicating book or fragment number) and line numbers in the main body of the thesis. 2 The Retraction appears in almost all complete manuscripts of CT and is closely linked, both textually and thematically, with The Parson’s Tale from which it follows. Despite a tendency in eighteenth- century criticism to see both as spurious (see Thomas Hearne and Tyrwhitt), manuscript evidence suggests and critical opinion generally affirms their authenticity; for a good historical overview of critical responses to the Retraction see Anita Obermeier, The History and Anatomy of Auctorial Self- Criticism in the European Middle Ages (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999), pp. 210-11; on the case for viewing the Retraction as a document of personal penitence, separate from Chaucer’s literary work see Douglas Wurtle, ‘The Penitence of Geoffrey Chaucer’, Viator, 11 (1980), 335-9; on the case for the Retraction as sincere utterance, rather than rhetorical or ironical formula see James Dean, ‘Chaucer’s Repentance: A Likely Story’, ChRev, 24 (1989), 66-74; conversely for the Retraction as chiefly rhetorical and strategic see Olive Sayce, ‘Chaucer’s Retractions’, Medium Aevum, 40 (1971), 230-48. 8 poetry as ‘full of virtue-breeding delightfulness’ – but with a rather more troubling spirit of self-doubt and remorse.3 The tradition has at its beginnings both creativity and guilt, self-assertion and disavowal: not just the joyful welcoming of spring that opens CT but also the inaugural sacrifice that closes it. How is this ambivalence to be accounted for? Part of the answer to this question may lie not just with Chaucer but his successors and what they made of him. For however equivocal Chaucer’s own relation to his work, its future and the literary tradition he was helping to shape may have been, the English poets of the fifteenth century were determined to find in him an impeccable father-figure through whom they could model and authorise their own literary endeavours. What the living father may have lacked in paternal assurance his sons made up for in eulogy. Courtly, authoritative, virtuous, and brilliantly accomplished: Chaucer was fashioned in an image which embodied everything his followers aspired to and felt in need of themselves.4 A counter-image of their own insecurities, Chaucer provided the noble lineage on which they relied for validation. Naturally, there was no place for doubt or guilt in this image; there could be no question of Chaucer’s ambivalence toward the laurel crown with which he was being honoured. Canonical images of Chaucer have altered over the centuries, inflected by the changing values and experiences of different epochs, but a strong sense of this originary self-assurance has persevered. It is implicit, for example, in the famous fifteenth-century frontispiece to the Corpus Christi manuscript of Troilus and Criseyde, which illustrates the prestigious poet addressing his courtly audience; in Robert Greene’s late-sixteenth century vision of a jovial Chaucer exclaiming ‘poets’ wits are free’ in response to Greene’s own anxiety about the moral value of his work.5 It is there too in the robust and affable ‘sunny soul’ envisioned by Furnivall, in 3 Henry Bradshaw, Life of St.
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