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Chaucer and the Roman De La Rose '""^"' ^IfHLiiii G^_l^ltl^LZwr?, /i /^ - Book f €l. Gop)iighl]^'.__Zi/^ COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY STUDIES IN ENGLISH AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE CHAUCER AND THE ROMAN DE LA ROSE :: COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS SALES AGENTS NEW YORK: LEMCKE & BUECHNEE 30-32 West 27th Street LONDON HUMPHREY MILFOED Amen Corner, E.G. TORONTO HUMPHEEY MILFOED 25 Richmond Street, W. CHAUCER AND THE ROMAN DE LA ROSE BY DEAN SPRUILL FANSLER, Ph.D. u Nrw fork COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 1914 All rights reserved 71? 11'^ l-^lAr Copyright, 1914 By Columbia University Press Printed from type, January, 1914 FEB 21 I9i4 ©CI.A362662 i T r- • ^ ji f f 1 T/wa' Monograph Jms been approved hy the Department of English and Comparative Literature in Columbia Uni- versity as a contribution to knowledge worthy of publi- cation. A. H. THORNDIKE, Executive Officer. To My Father and Mother This hook is affectionately dedicated PREFATORY NOTE I take pleasure in acknowledging in print my indebted- ness to Professor Harry M. Ayres, Professor George P. Krapp, and Professor William W. Lawrence, of Columbia University, who have generously read both the manuscript and the proof-sheets of this book and have made many suggestions of value. My greatest obligation is to Professor Lawrence, under whose immediate direction this disserta- tion has been prepared. He has unselfishly at all times given me the benefit of his wide acquaintance with medieval literature, and has been most courteous and helpful. I am also grateful to Professor William E. Mead, of Wesleyan University, for a number of useful bibliographical refer- ences. D. S. P. Manila, 1913. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE Introduction 1 Chapter I. The Influence of the Eomnn de la Hose on Chaucer's Beading 11 Chapter II. Allusions to Historical and Legendary Persons and Places 24 Chapter III. Mythological Allusions 48 Chapter IV. Chaucer 's Style as Affected by the Roman 73 Chapter V. Situations and Descriptions 123 Chapter VI. Proverbs and Proverbial Expressions 175 Chapter VII. Influence of the Boman de la Bose on Chaucer's Philosophical Discussions 203 Conclusion 229 Bibliography 235 Appendices for Eeference: A. Comparative Table of Meon's, Michel's, and Marteau's Numbering of the Lines of the Boman de la Bose 240 B. Table showing corresponding lines in Ellis's translation of the Boman de la Bose, the Middle English Bomaunt of the Bose, and Marteau's edition of the Original French text 244 Index of Passages from Chaucer's Works and the English Bomaunt of the Bose quoted or referred to in the text 249 Index of Passages from the Boman de la Bose quoted or referred to in the text 261 INTRODUCTION Much has been written on the subject of Chaucer and the Roman de la Rose; but there is considerable diversity of opinion on the relative influence of Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung upon the English poet. Some commentators hold that the author of the first part of the Roman, around whose work a large school of followers sprang up, exercised a dominating effect on the minor and earlier poems of Chaucer; others maintain that only the part written by Jean de Meung appealed to Chaucer, and that Guillaume 's production was made little use of not only by the author of the Canterbury Tales but even by the comparatively young and inexperienced poet of the Booh of the Duchess. As illustrations of the contradictory views held, we may glance at the conclusions a few of the investigators have reached, Sandras was the first to make a wholesale attribution of Chaucer's work to the influence of the early French poets. Near the beginning of his Etude he says: "II imite les poetes latins, Virgile, Ovide, Stace, Lucain, Juvenal ; il fait des emprunts a Dante, a Petrarque, a Boccace ; il traduit une grande partie du Roman de la Rose, et, a chaque page, a chaque ligne de ses ecrits, se trahit, tantot deguisee, ' tantot manifeste, une reminiscence de nos trouveres. ' But what the French savant had to say about Chaucer and the authors of the Roman de la Rose is more to the point for our 1 2 CHAUCER AND THE ROMAN DE LA ROSE study, and may be repeated here: "II [Chaucer] en tra- duisit une partie, et il y prit des inspirations continuelles. C'est au point que ce'poete, qui sentait les beautes de la nature, qui savait les peindre, se content souvent dans ses 'etre la descriptions d eopiste de G. de Lorris ; que cet erudit, qui certainement avait lu des Decades de Tite-Live, alors mises en faveur et par Petrarque et par le traduction de Pierre Bercheure, reproduit Thistoire romaine telle que J. de Meung la lui transmet, alteree par 1 'imagination des con- teurs; que cet homme de genie, qui merite d'etre place entre Aristophane et Moliere, arrive a la vieillesse, toujours sous le joug de I'imitation, et n'ayant guere compose que des poemes allegoriques. Quand il renonce a cette poesie de cour si fausse, si manieree, et qu'il ecrit le Pelerinage de Canterbury, drame vivant et populaire, on retrouve dans son ceuvre les traits saillants qui caracterisent la seconde partie du Roman de la Rose, de longues tirades contre les femmes, et le ridicule jete a pleines mains sur les ordres religieux. Sans doute il remonte aux sources premieres oii ont puise ses maitres, sans doute il etudie les ouvrages de leurs disciples, ses contemporains ; mais c'est a I'ecole de G. de Lorris que son gout s'est forme ou, si I'on veut, altere; c'est a I'ecole de Jean de Meung que s'est faeonne ' ^ son esprit. ' Eighty years before Sandras wrote, Tyrwhitt had called attention to the fact that a number of passages in the Canterbury Tales appear to have been taken from the Roman de la Rose. He did not discuss his parallels, how- 1 Etude sur G. Chaucer considere comme iMitateur des trouveres, by Etienne Gustave Sandras (Paris, 1859), p. 36. CHAUCEK AND THE ROMAN DE LA ROSE 3 ever; they took the form of brief notes on the text. It is really with Sandras's bold and sweeping assertions that critical investigations into the relations of Chaucer and his French contemporaries and predecessors started. Students in other countries began to look for proofs of Chaucer's indebtedness to the Roman de la Rose, and as a result of diligent search, the number of parallels has grown to a very large total. But the emphasis in nearly every case has been on the side of the influence either of Jean de Meung or of Guillaume de Lorris; the critics ajiparently have not been able to reconcile Chaucer to both at once. Van Laun writes : "Of his two originals, Chaucer decid- edly preferred the first [Lorris], both from the natural bent of his mind and also because he would readily per- ceive that Englishmen would not tolerate the license of Jean de Meung, . Indeed, his genius was cast in a different mould from that of Jean de Meung, who was nat- ural philosopher first, and romancist afterwards. Chaucer, like Guillaume de Lorris, was before all a romancist." - Lounsbury, writing some ten years later, remarks: "It ought to be said that it [i. e., the Roman de la Rose] is his [Chaucer's] favorite work, as regards adaptation, only so far as it is the composition of Jean de Meung. The portion of it composed by Lorris receives from him scant attention in this respect. From that part of the poem that exists for us in the English translation, he drew but little, and that little consists of nothing more than single words and ' ^ phrases. ' ^History of French Literature (London, 1883), I, pp. 183, 184. 3 Studies in Chaucer, by T. R. Lounsbury (London, 1892), II, p. 220. 4 CHAUCER AND THE ROMAN DE LA ROSE Skeat refers the student to Lounsbury for a discussion of the learning of Chaucer, but in his brief account of Chau- cer's authorities, says: "He [Chaucer] was perfectly' familiar with the French of the continent, and was under great obligations to Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de ' * Meung, and to Guillaume de Machault. ' On the whole, criticism since 1890 has tended to make prominent Chaucer's borrowings from Jean de 'Meung and to reduce his debt to Guillaume de Lorris. Koeppel, writing in 1892 on Jean de Meung 's influence on Chaucer, con- cludes: *'So sind wir unserem dichter an zahllosen stellen auf den wegen Jehan de Meung 's begegnet. Aber weder des meisters noch des sehiilers andenken hat durch die voile erkentniss ihres verhaltnisses gelitten. Chaucer's kunst, die feine massigung, mit welcher er die schonungslose weisheit der Franzosen verwertet, fordert unsere aufrichtige bewun- derung, und Jehan de Meung 's bedeutende, aber wenig anziehende gestalt wird von dem strahl, der von Chaucer's glanzender erscheinung auf sie zuriiekfallt, vcrschonernd getroffen." ^ Miss Cipriani believes that the influence of the Roman de la Rose on Chaucer shows itself more distinctly in the Troilus than in any other single poem ; of the Troilus she '^ says in summary : (a) There is an indirect influence of the Roman (Ze la Rose through Boccaccio, which introduces ele- ments characteristic of the first part of the French poem, (b) The changes in the character of Pandarus all show tendencies which coincide with the satirical attitude of 4 Complete Works of Chaucer, VI, pp. xcviii, c. (1894). 6 Chauceriana, by E. Koeppel, in Anglia, XIV, p. 267. ' GHAUCEE AND THE EOMAN DE LA EOSE 5 Jean de Meung toward love.
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