As a rebuke to the Wife of Bath, whose ideal of wedded happiness is for the wife to dominate the home, the Clerk of Oxford tells the appealing story of Griselda- a tale that occurs in Boccaccio and elsewhere in literature. Walter, the Marquis of the Saluces, has wedded Griselda, the daughter of the poorest of his subjects, a girl of noble character who swore never in deed or thought to disobey her husband. After a little daughter is born Walter determines to test his wife's patience by removing the child and telling Griselda that the baby was slain. Six years later her little two-year old boy is similarly taken away, but she does not complain. When their daughter is twelve years old, Walter sends forged documents of divorce to Griselda and announces that he will wed another wife. Griselda patiently prepares the home for her successor. Walter is now assured of her virtues. The pretended bride is introduced and turns out to be her beloved daughter. The boy is restored and all live happily thereafter. What promised to be one of the finest of the tales is that of the Squire, but unfortunately it is a fragment. The romance reflects the spirit of the Arabian Nights and similar literature. Cambyuskan, King of Tartary, has two sons and a lovely daughter Canacee. On the King's birthday a knight brings strange gifts from the King of Araby: a steed of brass that will carry its rider through the air to any destination, a mirror that will reveal friend or foe and give warning of evil, a gold ring that will enable the wearer to speak with birds and animals, and a sword that will give a serious wound, curable only if the wound is struck by the flat side of the sword. Next morning Canacee ventures forth, wearing the magic ring. She hears a female falcon tell a pathetic tale of unhappy love and is able to understand. She takes the bird home and cares for it. The fragment ends before we learn anything more of the other remarkable gifts from Araby. The Parson, evidently convinced that there was too much frivolity about most of the stories told by the other pilgrims, resorts to plain prose and delivers a lengthy discourse on Penitence, with a long-drawn account of the Seven Deadly Sins. There seems to be some ground for the view that Chaucer's revised plan involved the use of the Parson's Tale, dull as it is, for the last of the series. 15. Characteristics of Chaucer. None will question the universal recognition of Chaucer as the greatest artist and the most important figure in English literature up to the time of Spenser and Shakespeare. In him we find for the first time the peer of the French and Italian writers who were enriching their respective literatures. Most conspicuous among his traits is the remarkable talent for description that makes his delineations so clear-cut and unforgettable. His narrative skill was also great in his later work, showing sound judgment of essentials in storytelling. Though he did not undertake to lash the wrongs and abuses of his day with the zeal of an inspired reformer, he did show a hearty contempt for the baser qualities of the characters he drew. Satire and humor were used with excellent effect in reproducing the life of that age. In breadth of view and in his indulgent sympathy with the frailty of well-meaning but misguided creatures, Chaucer anticipated to some extent one great quality that marked the genius of Shakespeare. He knew and delineated with keen insight all phases of the life of his time. Although possessed of extensive general knowledge, Chaucer was not a learned scholar in the narrower sense of the term. read philosophy and dabbled in astrology and dream-lore. Astronomy and allied mathematical branches were familiar to him. Like the author of Mandeville's Travels, he seems to have had some notion of the fact that the earth is round. His verse reveals a degree of smoothness, grace, and variety unknown before his time. To him we owe many new He verse-forms that were either invented or borrowed from continental writers. As for his limitations, it has been said that Chaucer is the poet of the eye, not of the heart or soul. He was not especially concerned about causes and effects. With unerring skill he depicted persons or things as they were, but he did not attempt to go much further. Even in his masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales, he claimed only to set down faithfully what he saw and heard, letting the reader form his own judgments. However, Chaucer's work will remain for all time among the honored treasures of our literature for its variety, vivacity, and most of all for its superabundant good humor. 16. Chaucer's Language. Chaucer did not set out deliberately to reform the English language. He took the current dialect of London as he found it and added words from French or Latin when no native equivalent was at hand, but his borrowings from foreign sources are less numerous than is generally supposed. Passage for passage, the intensely English poem of Piers Plowman contains a larger proportion of foreign words than Chaucer, in spite of the various foreign influences to which the courtly poet was subjected. By producing so large and important a body of poetic literature in the London (East Midland) dialect, he did much to bring about the dominance of that dialect over all others and in helping it to become ultimately the standard speech of England. Had Chaucer accomplished no more than this, he would fairly have won the right to be considered the first great modern English poet. CHAPTER IV THE RENAISSANCE 1. A Fallow Period. The period between the death of Chaucer and the Age of Elizabeth is singularly lacking in important literary figures. There were no quickening impulses like those of the preceding epoch. In the literary world it was a period of transition, when one series of vitalizing influences gradually dies out and new sources of inspiration begin to make themselves felt quite as gradually. Such an age is rarely characterized by a writer of outstanding significance. Among the English poets of the fifteenth century only two call for special mention. Thomas Hoccleve or Occleve (1370?-1450?) was the author of a poem called The Governail of Princes, which he dedicated to that Prince of Wales who is better known as Prince Hal in the pages of Shakespeare. Not only is the poem a frank imitation of Chaucer, but it reveals Hoccleve's regard for his distinguished predecessor, whom he thus addresses: O maister dere and fader reverent, My maister Chaucer! floure of eloquence, Mirrour of fructuous entendement, (intelligence) A poet of far greater merit was John Lydgate (1370?–1451?), a Benedictine monk of Bury St. Edmunds, who wrote a great number of poems that have not yet been printed. His long Troye Book was inspired by Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. He likewise ventured to add himself to the procession of Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims, and wrote his Storie of Thebes as his contribution to the tales told by that party. The Falles of Princes was Lydgate's most popular poem. Among his minor pieces is one entitled |