Chaucer’S Birth—A Book Went Missing
© Copyright, Princeton University Press. No part of this book may be distributed, posted, or reproduced in any form by digital or mechanical means without prior written permission of the publisher. •CHAPTER 1 Vintry Ward, London Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience. — James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man In the early 1340s, in Vintry Ward, London— the time and place of Chaucer’s birth— a book went missing. It wasn’t a very important book. Known as a ‘portifory,’ or breviary, it was a small volume containing a variety of excerpted religious texts, such as psalms and prayers, designed to be carried about easily (as the name demonstrates, it was portable).1 It was worth about 20 shillings, the price of two cows, or almost three months’ pay for a carpenter, or half of the ransom of an archer captured by the French.2 The very presence of this book in the home of a mer- chant opens up a window for us on life in the privileged homes of the richer London wards at this time: their inhabitants valued books, ob- jects of beauty, learning, and devotion, and some recognized that books could be utilized as commodities. The urban mercantile class was flour- ishing, supported and enabled by the development of bureaucracy and of the clerkly classes in the previous century.3 While literacy was high in London, books were also appreciated as things in themselves: it was 1 Sharpe, Calendar of Letter- Books of the City of London: Letter- Book F, fol.
[Show full text]