Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1966 The volutE ion of a Concept: 'Gentilesse' in Chaucer's Poetry. Willene Schaefer Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Schaefer, Willene, "The vE olution of a Concept: 'Gentilesse' in Chaucer's Poetry." (1966). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 1219. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/1219 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This dissertation has been microfilmed exactly as received 67-1186 SCHAEFER, Willene, 1937- THE EVOLUTION OF A CONCEPT: GENTILESSE IN CHAUCER'S POETRY. Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, Ph.D„ 1966 Language and Literature, general University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan THE EVOLUTION OF A CONCEPTS GENTILESSE IN CHAUCER'S POETRY A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by Willene Schaefer B.A., Mississippi State College for Women, 1958 M.A., Vanderbilt University, I960 August, 1966 •> ACKNOWLEDGMENT I want to express my appreciation to Professor Thomas A. Kirby for suggesting the topic of this dis­ sertation and for patiently and carefully guiding the writing of it, I am also grateful to Professor Max Goodrich for his role in the awarding of a grant which gave me a summer for research and to the Gottlieb Foundation for providing the funds. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract iv Part IJ Backgrounds of Chaucer's Gentilesse I Chaucer's Sources 1 II Langlandi The Traditional View 21 III The Gawain-poet t A Secular Ideal .... 43 Part II: wThe Moral Chaucer" IV The Minor Poetry; Gentilesse Undefined. 61 v Troilus and Criseydet A Gentil Tragedy. ?4 VI The Canterbury Tales; Gentilesse Defined 96 A. The Knight's Tale 100 B. The Parson's' Tale 112 C. The Prioress' Tale 124 D. The Wife of Bath"*!" Prologue and Tale 130 E. The Clerk's Tale 152 F. The Merchant's Tale I67 G. The Squire' s"*Tale 185 H. The Franklin's Tale 194 VII Chaucer the Humanist 210 Bibliography of Sources Cited 22? Appendix 236 Vita 239 ill ABSTRACT Chaucer drew primarily from three sources for the discussions of gentilesse in the ballade and in the Wife of Bath's sermon; the works of Boethius, of Dante, and of Jean de Meun. These works explain that true nobility, independent of wealth or lineage, transcends social dis­ tinctions and, as a gift of God, manifests itself in virtue. These ideas, which have been amply explored in their historical backgrounds by Alan T. Gaylord ("Seed of Felicity. ,H Unpublished dissertation, Princeton, 1958), were widespread during the Middle Ages. Although the sources of the concept have been agreed upon, there is no consensus about the function of the word gentilesse in Chaucer's poetry. Examination of the works in which it figures most prominently, however, reveals that, after the early period in which gentilesse is a noun desig­ nating any kind of virtue and gentil an adjective describ­ ing anything pleasing, Chaucer uses both words chiefly in relationship to his private secular standard of conduct—a standard governing man's relationship to man, operative in iv V all phases of life, and divorced from its sources. It is a humanistic concept which is by nature inadequate in Christian terms. The tension between gentilesse and hoolynesse contributes most to a misreading of Chaucer's treatment of gentilesse. To perceive the distinctiveness of Chaucer's use of the concept, it is valuable to explore related themes in the works of his contemporaries. Langland writes of the spiritual equality of all men, but the principle as he uses it has little application to social conduct. The Gawaln-poet, with his aristocratic tendencies, is concerned with conduct, but although he implies a secular ideal, he defines it within the established frameworks of chivalry, courtly love, and Christianity. And the common people are outside the realm of his poetry. But Chaucer fully defines a private ideal and dramatizes it in the lives both of gentils and of peasants. Its principles and authority are derived from Christian morality and from the courtly love and chivalrlc codes, but none of them exclusively embodies gentilesse. In the secular world of ancient Troy, Troilus is gentil and Cri- seyde is not, but both are accountable to the ideal of gentilesse. In the Canterbury Tales, gentilesse is the standard embodied and expounded by the Knight, ironically aspired to by the Prioress, discussed by the Wife of Bath, vi and, finally, eloquently defined by the Franklin. It is a secular term denoting a secular virtue, the Christian Inadequacy of which Chaucer acknowledges, not in the Troilus or the Tales themselves, but in the Epilogue and in the Retraction. The debate at the heart of the Canterbury Tales ^ which has been called the "Marriage Group" can more accurate­ ly be called the "Gentilesse Group." It is the gentilesse sermon for which the Clerk takes Allsoun to task; his story as a rebuttal of her ideas of marriage Is self-defeating, but as an elaboration of her definition of gentilesse it is exquisitely successful. The Merchant is a discordant element in the dispute, for in his churlishly cynical tale he negates all values. Balance is restored by the Squire, who in nervous distress with the Merchant's denial of human dignity—the essence of gentilesse—begins a long and luxuriant narrative of nobility. The Franklin praises his gentilesse. And the Franklin—mature, uninvolved with titular nobility and the forms of courtly behavior, falli­ ble but admirable—brings the debate to a conclusion with a definition, not of perfection in marriage, but of gentilesse. PART I. BACKGROUNDS OF CHAUCER'S GENTILESSE PART II BACKGROUNDS OF CHAUCER'S GENTILESSE CHAPTER I CHAUCER'S SOURCES When, to Fitzgerald's comment, "The very rich are different from you and me," Hemingway responded, "Yes, they have more money," the Lost Generation was asking and answering in its own unillusloned way a ques­ tion that democracy had hoped to invalidate. But the twentieth century generally does not concern itself with the effects of hereditary status or wealth on char­ acter (except in the extremely practical matter of sociologists' studies in juvenile delinquency); although in its secret depths a modern mind may harbor a suspi­ cion that ignorance, poverty, and moral depravity beget one another, it takes for granted that all men are cre­ ated equally noble or ignoble, and there is an end of the matter. The idea that each man can choose nobility, which Vogt adjudged neither new nor striking in Chaucer, once ^William Goldhurst, F. Scott Fitzgerald and his Contemporaries (Cleveland, T963), p. 170. 1 2 lent itself well and often to poetic treatment, whether or not it had "little to do with the actualities . of the poet's criticism of life or his practice," Today it is defunct almost entirely, relegated to the intellec­ tual Limbo of the "accepted" theory or fact; one no longer argues even in poetry that the earth is round or that nobility of character is independent of wealth or birth, although, perhaps, the former idea figures more prominent­ ly in our "actualities" than does the latter. It is possi­ bly because of this impatient, if only theoretical, accep­ tance that students of Chaucer have, until the last few years, neglected the implications of his careful attention to a possession of some human beings which he chose to call "gentilesse," Only very recently has the scholarship of Alan T, Gaylord begun to explore in depth the uses that Chaucer made of this concept,* Recognition of generositas virtus, non sanguis was common during the Middle Ages, and had found expression in the Latin of Seneca and Juvenal before appearing in the French of Wace, the Italian of Dante, and the English of Robert of Brunne. The research of Vogt yields many lines 2George M, Vogt, "Generositas Virtus, Non Sanguis." JEGP, XXIV (1925). 102. 3see "'Gentilesse' in Chaucer's Troilus," SP, LXI (1964), 19-3^t and especially "Seed of Felicity; A Study of the Concepts of Nobility and Gentilesse in the Middle Ages and in the Works of Chaucer" (Ann Arbor, 1959). 3 like "Cil est vilains qui fait la vllonnie" or "Ne sont pas tuit chevalier, qui a cheval montent," which are identical in sentiment to "Vileyns synful dedes make a cherl" in Chauoer's Wife of Bath's Tale. The point is frequently argued at some length, with appeal made to common descent from Adam and Eve; it is not logical to say that a man is what his ancestors were, for the ances­ tors of all were Adam and Eve, yet discrepancies do exist. The currency of such reasoning is illustrated, according to Resnikov, by the widespread use of the proverb, Whan Adam dalf, and Eve span, Who was thanne a gentilman?^ And the very frequency of the expression of such opinions implies dissent, which is apparent, for example, in Walter Map's distrust of villeins or in the story of the egg of low degree in the Owl and the Nightingale.-* There can be no doubt that the problem of the source and nature of gentilesse was a popular issue dur­ ing the Middle Ages, Moreover, in at least one case a poetic treatment does reveal something about the poet's criticism of life, Chaucer makes it the subject of two poetic discourses, but its value as a critical tool lies more in his thematic applications than in his dis­ cussions of it.