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Animal Speech and Political Utterance: Articulating the Controversies Of Animal Speech and Political Utterance: Articulating the Controversies of Late Fourteenth-Century England in Non-Human Voices Sharon Fulton Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2012 © 2012 Sharon Fulton All rights reserved ABSTRACT Animal Speech and Political Utterance: Articulating the Controversies of Late Fourteenth-Century England in Non-Human Voices Sharon Fulton This dissertation analyzes the function of animal speakers in political poetry by William Langland, Geoffrey Chaucer, and John Gower, and it claims that late fourteenth-century poets describe the marginalized voices of emerging politicians by using animal expressions and noises. These writers invent a playful yet earnest poetics of acknowledgment in comparing politicians’ calls to animal cries. In unveiling novel interpretations of Langland’s mouse, Chaucer’s goose, and Gower’s jay, I argue that the speeches of animals contribute to significant argumentative strains within several late fourteenth-century poems, which remain obscure if the reader ignores the signal contribution of the animal. Finally, I study the use of animal speech in the Lancastrian poem, Richard the Redeless, to understand the ways in which the anti-Ricardian regime appropriated this malleable animal imagery to pursue its own political agenda. Table of Contents: Introduction Chapter One: The Mouse that Roared: Rodent Authority in Piers Plowman’s “Belling of the Cat” Fable Chapter Two: Political Birdsong in The Parliament of Fowls Chapter Three: John Gower’s Vox Clamantis: A Rebel Bird and a Poet’s Struggle against Animal Discourse Chapter Four: Richard the Redeless, and Birds Giving Voice to Lancastrian England Conclusion Bibliography i Acknowledgements: Sheilah M. Crowley Alyssa Meyers David L. Fulton Paul Strohm Susan Crane Bob Hanning Amanda Johnson Megan Gleason Kathleen Smith Cristina Cammarano Beth Bonnette Eliott Lockhart Denise Fulton Elizabeth MacLennan Pat Crowley Lori Fulton Amy Fulton Rick MacLennan Mark Fulton Carol Perlman ii Dedication: To my mother who always says, “You’re Wonderful!” no matter what I do. iii 1 Introduction “Animal Speech and Political Utterance: Articulating the Controversies of Late Fourteenth-Century England in Non-Human Voices,” argues that William Langland, Geoffrey Chaucer, and John Gower took advantage of the complex literary and linguistic traditions associated with animal speakers to ape, analyze, and allegorize the emerging types of political discourse that appeared during the reign of Richard II. The convenient ability for animal speakers to suggest literary tradition even as bestial voices demonstrated the potential to introduce strange, new sounds into discourse made animals apt agents for describing the pioneering speakers who were starting to play crucial roles in political life at the end of the fourteenth century. In rendering animal speech, poets could dramatize the startling impact of new political voices without writing incendiary or revolutionary texts. Although scholars have tended to underestimate the serious political deliberation signaled by the presence of silly, humble, or unsavory animal upstarts in these poems, I argue that it is the meek, coarse, and recognizably bestial animal speakers who reveal the most novel and critical forms of political debate in this period.1 My first chapter contends that Langland portrays a rodent parliamentary assembly debating the wisdom of curbing and belling a young cat in the Prologue of the B-Text of The Vision of Piers Plowman in order to question the English government’s prudence in crowning a boy as king. Given the political instability attending the rise of the ten year- old Richard II when he ascended to the English throne in 1377, remarking upon the danger of entrusting the realm to a young monarch would be a pointed political move. 1 These views are especially popular among scholars commenting on the interjection of the lower fowl in The Parliament of Fowls and the graculus (or jay) in John Gower’s Vox Clamantis. This dissertation uncovers the appreciation (in the case of Chaucer) and grudging respect (in the case of Gower) revealed in the poems themselves towards these disturbing, outspoken animal characters. 2 Langland employs the famous “belling of the cat” fable as an authoritative and disarming source-text; parliamentarians become diminutive mice that complain about a kitten reigning instead of a cat. While the disturbing image of swarming, outspoken rodents insinuates that the king’s court and parliament were being infested by noisy and noisome hordes as the Commons gained power, the rational mouse advisor speaks with such lucidity that the poet also suggests that men of great intellect assembled in the lower levels of parliament. The natural predatory relationship between a cat and mouse alludes to the dangerous hierarchies embedded in the king’s government, and the mouse’s squeak epitomizes both the nuisance and sharp incisiveness of parliamentarians who braved giving advice to a cat-like king. I extend this examination of the brash voices beginning to “cry” and “clamor” in parliament in my second chapter on Chaucer’s 1380s dream vision The Parliament of Fowls. Various species of birds symbolize the increasingly diverse social composition of parliament, and I argue that every bird’s speech denotes the political trend of private petitions being presented as relevant to the entire commonwealth. In critiquing the petitionary rhetorical technique by it saves declaring the common good advancing a private agenda, Chaucer reworks the genre of bird debate by illustrating the tension that arises between three members of the nobility who make competing claims. Despite their rhetorical flourishes, noble eagles ignore the welfare of the bird community as they pursue their own desires. The animalistic lower fowl famously interrupt the refined debate of their social superiors as they demand acknowledgement, and the poet implies that the noisy squawks of the lower fowl are shrewder assertions of common purpose. Moreover, Chaucer invests a goose with the skill of philosophical casuistry to suggest 3 that the lower class’s linguistic ability extends beyond a comic “quek”. Although the goose is taunted mercilessly by the noble birds, the cleverness and persistence of her remarks demonstrate the extent to which Chaucer recognizes the widening range of parliamentary voices, which included those of mercantile representatives and burghers. Chaucer also shows respect for the increasingly important role that the ‘mediocres’ and common petitioners played late fourteenth-century politics in his portrait of the cuckoo. The noble fowl decry the cuckoo as the immoral leech of society, but Chaucer refuses to eject the bird from the assembly. This inclusive view of society suggests that a parliament in which the opinions of every parliamentary speaker are given weight, but this vision offers no assurances that the voices of either the noble or the lower fowl will effect progressive resolutions. Moving from the sheltered forum of the Commons where relatively well-to-do parliamentarians spoke publicly to improve their own circumstances and sometimes those of the community at large, my third chapter turns to the Rising of 1381. I leave the comparatively modest outcry of the lower fowl to examine the speech of revolution that inspired peasants, tradesmen, and commoners from all over England to shout out against government corruption and taxation. In his frightened denunciation of this radical populist movement, John Gower integrates motifs from Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Peter Riga’s Aurora to transform the protesters into a ravaging animal pack that overruns London. Amidst derogatory portraits of the rebels as unthinking and crude beasts, Gower uses the image of a jay that can mimic human speech patterns to render a negative but nuanced portrait of the Wat Tyler, the rebels’ leader. The figure of the partially acculturated bird that has flown from its cage provides an essential image to Gower in his 4 fear-mongering endeavor because it alludes to one of the largest mysteries associated with the rebellion – how did the rebel forces mount such a successful and targeted revolt? The jay attacks in a nearly human mode of speech, and the image implies Gower had the horrified realization after 1381 that laboring rustics could produce men intelligent and literate enough to overthrow the government. The jay’s clarion call changes men into beasts, and Gower fears that every authoritative personage and speaker (including the poet himself) is susceptible to the linguistic contagion of rabid, rebellious, and most of all animalistic language. Classical tomes and Biblical texts provide a salvific subtext during the horrifying metamorphosis of the afflicted dreamer, and Gower cannily organizes his poem so that reason-bound quotations from authoritative sources stand in opposition to every maddened rebel shout. My fourth chapter turns from this mass rebellion to the political crisis of Richard II’s 1399 deposition. Although Gower used bird imagery to denounce his dreaded enemy Wat Tyler, the anonymous Lancastrian poet of Richard the Redeless appropriates the figure of the outspoken bird to defend Henry IV’s seizure of Richard’s crown. Just as Langland, Chaucer, and Gower employed animal speakers to express hitherto unheard voices arising from the political commune, Commons, and discontented local communities in
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