CHAUCER'S DESCRIPTIVE POWER
From the earliest days of pre-Conquest literature, English poetry has
always shown a strong feeling for nature. Nature, in those early days, has
something wild and terrible about her; great forests, haunted by savage
beasts and more savage men, stretch over the land; the sea-birds utter
their plaintive cries as they hover above the desolate salt-marshes;
ice-cold waves break on the iron-bound coast. Yet the sons of the
sea-kings feel the call of the sea in their blood. They know the danger
and the savagery of nature, but something in them responds to her
relentless force, and the spell of the sea holds them. They may picture
Heaven as a place where there is neither hail nor frost, and look forward
to still waters and green pastures hereafter, but on earth the welter of
the waves, and the strange calm of the rime-bound trees, draw them in
spite of themselves. In the charms and riddles a gentler note is sometimes
sounded as the poet watches a cloud of gnats "float o'er the forest
heights," or listens to the whirr of the wild-swan's wings; but on the
whole the impression left upon our minds is one of force rather than of
peace, of man putting forth his might to subdue the wild strength of
nature, and winning a bride by capture.
Often their descriptions of warfare gain an added force from the skilful
use of some natural detail. The wan raven circles above the conflicting
hosts, waiting for his prey; the water-snakes curve and curl in the
seething waters into which Beowulf plunges to meet the monster. Here
again, we have the same mingling of tragic imagination and fierce
exultation.
They delight in picturing actual battle, in describing the hiss of the
javelins through the air, and the gleam of the flashing blade. But while
they often speak of the beauty of curiously wrought armour, or of the
wealth of a king's treasure, they show little power of presenting beauty
for its own sake, and none at all of depicting the beauty of a woman.
Their heroines are fair and gracious and bear the mead cup round the hall
where the warriors feast, and unless they are in some way concerned with
causing or avenging a quarrel, that is all there is to say about them.
To the Anglo-Normans this wilder and sterner aspect of nature seems to
have made little appeal. Nature forms a charming background to many of the
love-lyrics of the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but it is
a far daintier and sunnier nature than that of the Old English poets. The
time has come of the singing of birds:--
Groweth sed, and bloweth med,
And springth the wude nu--
Sing cuccu![132]
In the romances certain definite conventions gradually establish
themselves. It is always May morning when the hero rides into the green
forest, and flowers, of uncertain species but gay colours, flaunt about
his path. A description of a hunt, including minute details as to the
proper method of dismembering the quarry, often finds a place--Tristram
first wins King Mark's affections by teaching his huntsmen the proper
method of cutting up a stag. Detailed descriptions of elaborate banquets
are also popular, but it is evident in these, as in the descriptions of
hunting, that the author's interest lies rather in the actual etiquette
than in any pictorial effect. Nevertheless, the romances show a growing
delight in colour and beauty. The hero and heroine must conform to a
certain conventional standard, but the standard is by no means
contemptible.
"Fair was he and slim and tall" (so we read of Aucassin in Mr.
Bourdillon's translation) "and well fashioned in legs and feet and body
arms. His hair was yellow and crisped small; and his eyes were grey and
laughing; and his face was clear and shapely; and his nose high and
well-set; and so endued was he with good condition, that there was none
bad in him, but good only."
And the fact that the gardens in which these gracious beings wander
conform to no natural laws, does not prevent them from having a charm of
their own. What could be more dainty than the following picture of a
dutiful daughter reading to her parents (from the _Chevalier au Lion_ by
Chrétien de Troyes):--
Thrugh the hall sir Gawain gase[133]
Intil an orchard, playn pase;[134]
His maiden with him ledes he:
He fand a knyght under a tree,
Opon a cloth of gold he lay;
Before him sat a ful fayr may;[135]
A lady sat with them in fere[136]
The maiden read, that they myght here
A real romance in that place ...
Only occasionally do we hear any echo of that deeper note which sounded
through the older poets, and catch a glimpse of winter, when
The leaves lancen from the lynde[137] and light(en) on the ground,
and
Unblithe on bare twigs sings many a bird
Piteously piping for pain of the cold.
(_Sir Gawayn and the Green Knight._)
The battles and tournaments, accounts of which fill so many pages of the
romances, for the most part show considerable sameness of treatment. The
hero is beaten to his knees by the giant, or is almost overpowered by the
poisonous breath of the dragon, when with a supreme effort he recovers
himself and pierces his adversary in whatever his one vital spot may
happen to be. Now and then some flash of ingenuity lights up the story, as
when the Soldan's daughter saves Roland and Oliver and their companions
by flinging her father's plate to the besieging army, thus at once
distracting the attention of the soldiers and making her avaricious father
ready to consent to any compromise; or some touch of real feeling breaks
through all conventions, as when Sir Tristram, as he turns to meet
Marhaus, kicks away his boat, since but one of them will need any means of
leaving the isle; but for the most part the author follows the regular
lines.
Chaucer, while he shows definite traces of the conventions of his day, in
description, as in other matters, follows his own bent. Description for
its own sake has little interest for him. Again and again he cuts short
some passage which his contemporaries would have elaborated. In the
_Squieres Tale_, for instance, a banquet occurs which affords admirable
opportunity for that detailed account of ceremonial so dear to the hearts
of medieval poets. Chaucer tells us that the steward ordered spices and
wine, and then adds impatiently:--
What nedeth yow rehercen hir array?[138]
Ech man wot wel, that at a kinges feeste
Hath plentee, to the moste and to the leeste,
And deyntees mo than been in my knowing.
The dinner given by Deiphebus in _Troilus and Criseyde_ is passed over
equally perfunctorily:--
Come eek Criseyde, al innocent of this,
Antigone, hir sister Tarbe also;
But flee we now prolixitee best is,
For love of god, and lat us faste go
Right to the effect, with oute tales mo,
Why al this folk assembled in this place;
And lat us of hir saluinges pace.[139]
Even the hunt in the _Book of the Duchesse_ is dismissed in little over a
dozen lines:--
Whan we came to the forest-syde
Every man dide, right anoon,
As to hunting fil to doon.[140]
The mayster-hunte anoon, fot-hoot,[141]
With a gret horne blew three moot[142]
At the uncoupling of his houndes.
Within a whyl the hert [y]-founde is,
Y-halowed and rechased faste
Longe tyme; and at the laste
This hert rused[143] and stal away
Fro alle the houndes a prevy way ...
And then the poet turns to the real subject of his poem. Wordsworth
himself does not make hunting seem a tamer occupation.
Nor are Chaucer's descriptions of fighting much more convincing. He tells
us coldly that Troilus and Diomede met in battle:--
With blody strokes and with wordes grete,
and that Troilus often beat furiously upon the helmet of Diomede, but the
stanza which follows this announcement puts the matter in a nutshell:--
And if I hadde y-taken for to wryte
The armes of this ilk worthy mane,
Than wolde I of his batailles endyte.
But for that I to wryte first began
Of his love, I have seyd as that I can.
His worthy dedes, who-so list hem here,
Reed Dares, he can telle hem alle y-fere.[144]
It is emotion, not action, which interests him most. In the _Knightes
Tale_, Palamon and Arcite
--foynen[145] ech at other wonder longe,
but Chaucer has no desire to follow the duel to its end. He remarks that
they hew at each other till they are ankle deep in blood and then leaves
them, still fighting, while he turns to Theseus. There is more vigour in
the description of the tournament at the end. Here the clash of arms does
echo through the verse, and the rapid narrative conveys a vivid sense of
the heat and clamour of battle:--
Ther stomblen stedes stronge, and doun goth all.
He rolleth under foot as dooth a bal.
He foyneth on his feet with his tronchoun,
And he him hurtleth with his hors adoun ...
Possibly the poet was recalling his own fighting days in France. Certainly
there is nothing stiff or conventional about this. But nowhere else does
he give so lengthy and detailed a description of action, and even here it
has a dramatic value, apart from its intrinsic interest, in that it
enhances the suspense. Further, Chaucer, as we know, had himself probably
superintended the erection of such lists, and the ceremonial of the
tournament may well have had a special interest for him. His use of
similes in describing action is worthy of note. He does not, like Spenser,
constantly break the narrative by introducing some beautiful picture drawn
from classical mythology, thus carrying the thoughts of the reader away
from the actual situation at the moment. His similes are few--in this
connection--and are so chosen that they add to the vividness of the whole
impression. Palamon and Arcite fight like wild boars
That frothen whyte as foom for ire wood.
Of Arcite we are told,
There nas no tygre in the vale of Galgopheye,
Whan that hir whelp is stole, whan it is lyte,
So cruel on the hunte, as is Arcite.
Such comparisons are very different from Spenser's:--
Like as the sacred Oxe that carelesse stands
With gilden hornes and flowry girlands crownd
Proud of his dying honor and deare bandes,
While th' altars fume with frankincense arownd,
All suddeinly, with mortal stroke astownd,
Doth groveling fall, and with his streaming gore
Distaines the pillours and the holy grownd,
And the faire flowres that decked him afore:
So fell proud Marinell upon the pretious shore.
To Chaucer the interest does not lie in the pomp and pageantry, nor even
in the chivalry of it all, but in the human emotion, in Emily waiting to
know which of the lovers will claim her hand, in the knights filled with
the lust of battle, in the quondam friends who seek each other's life.
Chivalry has, indeed, little glamour in Chaucer's eyes. Gower's story of
Florent has a certain stateliness which is lacking in the _Tale of the Wyf
of Bathe_. It has none of Chaucer's digressions, none of the homeliness of
his version. A description of the elf-queen and her jolly company dancing
in the green meadows would perhaps be out of place in the mouth of the
Wife of Bath, but it is evident that Chaucer sacrifices the dainty grace
of Mab and Puck without a pang in order to allow himself a sly hit at the
"limitours and othere holy freres" who have replaced them.
The same principle underlies his description of people. In the _Book of
the Duchesse_ he gives us a detailed account of Blanche's charms; probably
he felt it incumbent on him to do so. She is fair, as a heroine should be,
but even in this, the most conventional of all his descriptions, he
contrives to give life and individuality to the conventional type:--
For every heer [up]on hir hede,
Soth to seyn, hit was not rede,
Ne nouther yelw, ne broun hit nas;
Me thoughte most lyk gold hit was.
And whiche eyen my lady hadde!
Debonair, goode, glade, and sadde,[146]
Simple, of good mochel,[147] noght to wyde;
* * * * *
And yet more-over, thogh alle tho
That ever lived were now a-lyve,
[They] ne sholde have founde to discryve
In al hir face a wikked signe;
For hit was sad, simple, and benigne.
This is no stereotyped model of feminine beauty, but a picture of the good
fair White as she was when she lived.
In describing Cressida, Chaucer keeps fairly close to his original. We
realise her beauty rather from the effect it produces on others than from
any particular details. She is tall, but so well made that there is
nothing clumsy or "manish" about her, and she dresses in black, as beseems
a widow; this is practically all that we are told about her. The strong
impression of sensuous beauty which she undoubtedly produces, is due to
Chaucer's power of creating an atmosphere rather than to actual
description. We hear the nightingale singing her to sleep, or watch her
colour come and go as Troilus draws near, and our mind is so filled with
an image of youth and beauty that we never stop to think if she is fair or
dark. It is the same with Troilus. We get a gallant impression of him as
he rides past Cressida's window, his eyes down-cast, and a boyish shyness
tingeing his cheeks with red, but Chaucer thinks of his feelings rather
than his looks. Later in the poem, as he rides towards the palace at the
head of his men, the poet's impatience of mere description shows itself
still more clearly:--
God woot if he sat on his hors a-right,
Or goodly was beseyn,[148] that ilke day!
God woot wher he was lyk a manly knight!
What sholde I dreeche[149] or telle of his array?
Criseyde, which that alle these thinges say,
To telle in short, hir lyked al y-fere
His personne, his array, his look, his chere ...
Troilus's looks are, in fact, of importance only because they win the
heart of Cressida.
But if Chaucer devotes little space to dilating upon mere beauty of
person, he has a keen eye for anything in dress, manner, or appearance
that is in the truest sense characteristic. The _Prologue_ to the
_Canterbury Tales_ shows clearly enough how trifles may reflect
personality. The grey fur that edges the Monk's sleeves, and the love-knot
of gold that fastens his hood, tell their tale, and a single glance at him
gives us considerable insight into his character:--
His heed was balled, that shoon as any glas,
And eek his face, as he had been anoint.
He was a lord ful fat and in good point;[150]
His eyen stepe,[151] and rollinge in his heed,
That stemed as a forncye of a leed;[152]
His botes souple, his hors in greet estat.[153]
Now certainly he was a fair prelat....
The Christopher of silver that gleams on the Yeoman's green coat; the
thread-bare raiment and lean horse of the Clerk of Oxenford; the ruddy
face and white beard of the Franklin, all serve to illustrate the same
point. The very spurs of the Wife of Bath seem to have a subtle
significance of their own.
Once only does Chaucer go out of his way to give a detailed description of
one of his heroines, and the passage is worth quoting in full because not
only does it illustrate his careful observation of detail, but it shows
also a dramatic fitness which is eminently characteristic. The Miller is
describing Alisoun, and there is not a simile, among the many used, which
would not spring naturally to the lips of a peasant:--
Fair was this yonge wyf, and ther-with-al
As any wesele hir body gent[154] and smal.
A ceynt[155] she werede barred al of silk,
A barmclooth[156] eek as whyt as morne milk
Up-on hir lendes, ful of many a gore.
Whyt was hir smok and brouded al bifore
And eek bihinde, on hir coler aboute,
Of col-blak silk, with-inne and eek with-oute.
The tapes of hir whyte voluper[157]
Were of the same suyte of hir coler;[158]
Hir filet brood of silk, and set ful hye:
And sikerly she hadde a likerous ye.[159]
Ful smale y-pulled were hir browes two,[160]
And tho were bent, and blake as any sloo.[161]
She was ful more blisful on to see
Than is the newe pere-jonette[162] tree;
And softer than the wolle is of a wether.
And by hir girdel heeng a purs of lether
Tasseld with silk, and perled with latoun.[163]
In al this world, to seken up and doun,
Ther nis no man so wys, that coude thenche
So gay a popelote,[164] or swich a wenche.
Ful brighter was the shyning of hir hewe
Than in the tour the noble y-forged newe.
But of hir song, it was as loude and yerne[165]
As any swalwe sittinge on a berne.
Ther-to she coude skippe and make game,
As any kide or calf folwinge his dame.
Her mouth was swete as bragot[166] or the meeth,[167]
Or hord of apples leyd in hey or heeth.
Winsinge she was, as is a joly colt,
Long as a mast, and upright as a bolt.
A brooch she baar up-on hir lowe coler,
As brood as is the bos of a bocler.
The poet who wrote this had used his eyes to some purpose. In certain of
his descriptions--notably that of Chauntecleer with his scarlet comb,
black bill, azure legs, white nails, and golden tail--we notice Chaucer's
love of brilliant colour, but this makes the comparative dullness and
tameness of his marvellous palaces and enchanted castles all the more
remarkable. He gives us a list of golden images, "riche tabernacles" and
"curious portreytures" which stand in the Temple of Glass, but it is a
mere auctioneer's catalogue of valuables which conveys no real impression
of beauty or strangeness. We read of Venus "fletinge in a sec," her head
crowned with roses,
And hir comb to kembe hir heed,
and feel as if we were looking up her attributes in a classical
dictionary. The thrill of the Renaissance has not yet swept across Europe.
The gods still sleep, before awakening to their strange sweet Indian
summer of life. Classical mythology serves Chaucer as an additional
storehouse of story and illustration, but it no more intoxicates him with
rapture than does the _Gesta Romanorum_. Spenser's Temple of Venus, in
which:--
An hundred altars round about were set,
All flaming with their sacrifices fire,
That with the steme thereof the Temple swet,
Which rould in clouds to heaven did aspire,
And in them bore true lovers vowes entire:
And eke an hundred brazen cauldrons bright
To bath in joy and amorous desire,
Every of which was to a damzell bright;
For all the Priests were damzells in soft linnen dight ...
glows with colour and warmth. Chaucer's perfunctory statement that the
windows of his chamber were well glazed and unbroken,
That to beholde it were gret joye,
and that in the glazing was wrought
... al the storie of Troye,
* * * *
Of Ector and king Pirriamus,
Of Achilles and Lamedon,
Of Medea and of Jason,
Of Paris, Eleyne, and Lavyne ...
leaves us untouched.
But if Chaucer is ill at ease within four walls, and takes but scant
pleasure in looking at tapestries and pictures, the moment he slips out of
doors he becomes a different being. He is no Wordsworth noting each twig
and leaf, or watching with mystic gaze the shadows fall on the silent
hills. He is content to fill his garden with flowers of the regulation
... whyte, blewe, yelowe, and rede;
And colde welle-stremes no-thing dede,
That swommen ful of smale fisshes lighte
With finnes rede and scales silver-brighte,
and it is probably just as well not to inquire too closely into the
natural order of either blossoms or fish. Cressida's garden is
distinguished by the neatness of its fences, and the fact that its paths
have recently been gravelled and provided with nice new benches. But even
in these trim and formal gardens the spirit of spring is abroad, and once
in the wood, Chaucer abandons himself to the sheer joy of nature. He
passes down a green glade
Ful thikke of gras, ful softe and swete,
With floures fele, faire under fete....
* * * * *
For it was, on to beholde
As thogh the erthe envye wolde
To be gayer than the heven
To have mo floures, swiche seven
As in the welken sterres be.[168]
Hit had forgete the povertee
That winter, through his colde morwes,
Had mad hit suffre[n], and his sorwes;
Al was forgeten, and that was sene.
For al the wode was waxen grene.
Swetnesse of dewe had mad it waxe ...
and his heart keeps tune to the song of the birds. He has something of
Milton's power of giving a general sense of freshness and sweetness, and,
again like Milton, his scenery always strikes one as peculiarly English.
He tells us that Cambinskan reigns in Syria, but his picture of the birds
singing for joy of the lusty weather and the "yonge grene," is that of a
Northern rather than an Eastern spring. His best-loved flower, the daisy,
springs in every English hedgerow.
The description of May in the Prologue to the _Legend of Good Women_ is
particularly charming. The poet declares that one thing, and one alone,
has power to take him from his books. When May comes,
Whan that I here the smale foules singe
And that the floures ginne for to springe,
Farwel my studie, as lasting that sesoun.
Instead of poring over some ponderous tome, he wanders out into the
meadows to watch the daisy open to the sun:--
And whan the sonne ginneth for to weste,
Than closeth hit, and draweth hit to reste,
So sore hit is afered of the night,
Til on the morwe, that hit is dayës light.
All day long he roams till
--closed was the flour and goon to reste,
and then he speeds swiftly home:--
And in a litel erber that I have,
Y-benched newe with turves fresshe y-grave,
I bad men shulde me my couche make;
For deyntee of the newe someres sake
I bad hem strowe floures on my bed.
But here again it is impression rather than actual description.
True to the city-bred instinct, Chaucer sees winter rather as the king of
intimate delights and fire-side pleasures, than as having an especial
beauty of his own. The _Frankeleyns Tale_ contains a picture of December
which brings the comfort of ingle-nook and steaming cup vividly before
us:--
The bittre frostes, with the sleet and reyn,
Destroyed hath the grene in every yerd.
Janus sit by the fyr, with double berd,
And drinketh of his bugle-horn the wyn.
Before him stant braun of the tusked swyn,
And "Nowel" cryeth every lusty man.
We almost feel the pleasant glow of the fire, and hear the great logs hiss
and crackle.
It is impossible to read Chaucer's descriptions of nature without being
struck by his love of birds and animals, and especially of the smaller and
more helpless kinds. Birds occupy a large place in his affections. He is
perpetually pausing to call attention to them and spring is to him
pre-eminently the time when "smale fowles maken melodye." Here again he
shows little minute observation or discrimination, it is birds in general,
rather than any bird in particular, that he loves. To praise the song of a
nightingale can hardly be reckoned any proof of special bird-lore, and
except in the _Parlement of Foules_, Chaucer scarcely mentions any other
bird by name. The crow, who is the real hero of the _Maunciples Tale_, and
who distinguishes himself by singing, "cukkow! cukkow! cukkow!" can no
more be regarded as an ordinary, unsophisticated bird than can the eagle
who acts as Jove's messenger in the _Hous of Fame_, or the princess
disguised as a falcon who seeks Canace's aid. The _Parlement of Foules_,
it is true, shows that Chaucer knew the names of a considerable number of
birds, but the epithets that he applies to each show no more real
knowledge of their habits than the epithets which he (or rather,
Boccaccio) applies to the various trees, in an earlier stanza, show any
love of forestry. The oak is useful for building purposes, and the elm
makes good coffins. In like manner, the owl forebodes death, and the
swallow eats flies, or rather, if we are to believe Chaucer, bees.
Regarded as individuals, the birds are delightfully convincing: regarded
as birds they are dismissed rather carelessly, though, since it is Chaucer
who dismisses them, an occasional happy phrase redeems the passage from
dullness and monotony.
But it is not only in a love of birds, which, after all, is common to most
poets, that Chaucer shows this side of his nature. Reference has already
been made to the whelp and the squirrels which he introduces into the
_Book of the Duchesse_. The little coneys who hasten to their play in the
garden of the _Parlement of Foules_ are due in the first place to
Boccaccio, but the Italian merely tells us that they "go hither and
thither." His picture is dainty and pretty, but it lacks the half-amused
tenderness of Chaucer's. Chaucer, it is evident, loves them all, bird and
beast, sportive coney and timid roe, not forgetting the
Squerels, and bestes smale of gentil kinde.
The following stanza affords illustration of another point in Chaucer's
descriptions. Master of melody as he is, he has not learned the subtle art
of suiting sound to sense, and producing a definite sensuous impression
by sheer music. It is impossible to read of these
--instruments of strenges in acord
which make so ravishing a sweetness, without finding one's thoughts
involuntarily carried on to Spenser's enchanted garden in which
Th' Angelicall soft trembling voyces made
To th' instruments divine respondence meet....
Chaucer's little wind--"unethe it might be lesse"--which makes a soft
noise in the green leaves, is too fresh ever to blow across the flowers of
Acrasia's garden, but the Bower of Bliss casts a spell over us of which
Chaucer has not the secret. He is too frankly of this world to be at home
in fairy-land, and the note of sincerity which sounds throughout his verse
would accord ill with such intoxicating sweetness. Lady Pride and her
followers, Dame Cælia and her fair daughters, Fidelia, Speranza, and
Carita, find a natural home in Spenser's world of wonders. But Chaucer's
allegorical personages must needs either come to life and turn into actual
human beings, like the birds in the _Parlement of Foules_, or remain stiff
abstractions, like Plesaunce, and Delyt, and Gentilnesse, and the other
symbolic inhabitants of the garden of the Rose.