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The Parliament of Birds and the Canterbury Tales
The Parliament of Birds and the Canterbury Tales
Author: Edward Burne-Jones
Source: Archive.org
License: Public Domain
Geoffrey Chaucer’s influence on later British literature is difficult to overstate. The most important English writer before Shakespeare (who re-wrote Chaucer’s version of the Troilus and Criseyde story), Chaucer introduced new words into English (such as “cosmos”), and his stories draw on a wealth of previous authors, especially Ovid and Boccaccio. Unlike Shakespeare, Chaucer’s writing is often translated, since Middle English is substantially different from even the Early Modern English of Shakespeare. The selections in this anthology are focused on a single theme: Chaucer’s revisionist, revolutionary approach to courtly love. Courtly love poetry often focuses on the male perspective exclusively; the female is the object to be obtained, and she usually is not given a voice (or, ultimately, a choice) in the matter. The Parliament of Birds (also called The Parliament of Fowles) gives the female a voice, if not necessarily a choice, while the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales offers, among many other things, a satirical look at how courtly love can be misused: The Prioress and the Monk are only two examples. The Wife of Bath’s Tale and The Franklin’s Tale both offer fascinating alternatives to the regular courtly love scenario, while The Miller’s Tale is a mocking revision of the genre by the Miller, who is responding to the story of courtly love that had just been told by the Knight.
Written by Laura J. Getty
The Parlement of Fowles [The Parliament of Birds]
Geoffrey Chaucer, translated and edited by Gerard NeCastro
License: © Copyright, 2007, All Rights Reserved
The life so brief, the art so long in the learning, the attempt so hard, the conquest so sharp, the fearful joy that ever slips away so quickly—by all this I mean love, which so sorely astounds my feeling with its wondrous operation, that when I think upon it I scarce know whether I wake or sleep. For albeit I know not love myself; nor how he pays people their wage, yet I have very often chanced to read in books of his miracles and his cruel anger there, surely, I read he will ever be lord and sovereign, and his strokes will be so heavy I dare say nothing but, “God save such a lord!” I can say no more.
Somewhat for pleasure and somewhat for learning I am in the habit of reading books, as I have told you. But why speak I of all this? Not long ago I chanced to look at a book, written in antique letters, and there I read very diligently and eagerly through the long day, to learn a certain thing. For, as men say, out of old fields comes all this new corn from year to year; and, in good faith, out of old books comes all this new knowledge that men learn. But now to my theme in this matter: it so delighted me to read on, that the whole day seemed to me rather short. This book of which I speak was entitled Tully on the Dream of Scipio. It had seven chapters, on heaven an