Guy Tiphane
Dr. Rogers
EN 216
June 26, 2003
How to Write an Elegy:
Chaucer’s The Book of the Duchess
John of Gaunt,
Earl of Richmond and the king’s third son, married Blanche of Lancaster,
daughter of the Duke of Lancaster, and inherited the large estate. Blanche’s father and sister died of the plague
in 1361 and 1362, respectively, making Blanche the sole heir. Blanche died in 1369. John was left not only with enormous power
(their son was to become the future king Henry IV) but also enormous
grief. He ordered great memorials for
her in
Chaucer wrote The Book of the Duchess in her honor almost immediately, but his presentation to the Duke has not been recorded: scholars think he should have read it in John’s court shortly after, others think it could have been read eight years later at an anniversary, or even just given to John. One argument in favor of the early date relates to John’s second marriage which occurred three years after Blanche’s death: it would have been awkward to read about Blanche in the presence of the new wife, and the elegy contained a good amount of consolation for the Duke, an indication that the grief was still present at the time of the reading. Another argument supporting the early date is the amount of text some say was practically copied (translated) from French works by Machaut (in particular Le jugement dou roy de Behaingne, ca. 1371), a sign that The Book of the Duchess may have had to be put together quickly. Grief in the Middle Ages was assumed to be short, and people had to “move on” probably because sudden death was not so uncommon.
Because it
talked about people of a much higher rank, Chaucer had to write the elegy in a
way that would not upset the hierarchical conventions, which is why he created
distance in the poem between the speaker/dreamer (that many would have assumed to
be Chaucer himself) and the Duchess. It
would also be the reason why he would let the Knight (assumed to be John of
Gaunt) speak the larger part of the elegy addressed directly to the Duchess,
and contain all of it in a dream vision to detach himself even further from it. By including the story of Ceyx and Alcyone in
the poem, Chaucer addressed the issue of inconsolable grief in a manner that
was at the same time far enough from the current case (the gender roles being
inverted) but still reminiscent of it.
Finally, it was only for a few verses at the very end that the speaker
revealed, almost coded, the identity of the houses at play,
In Ovid’s original tale of Ceyx and Alcyone, the two are transformed into birds, namely kingfishers, or kyngys fyschare in Middle English, literally meaning king’s fisher. Alcyone first takes flight towards her drowned husband and “fishes” him up. He also turns into a bird and flies away with her into eternity. In Chaucer’s version, Queen Alcyone dies three days after learning of her husband’s drowning, and no metamorphosis occurs:
212 With that hir eyen up she casteth,213 And saw noght; ‘A!’ quod she, ‘for sorwe!’214 And deyed within the thridde morwe.
We can
speculate that Chaucer’s adaptation of the tale to the needs of his elegy may
have been to insist on abbreviating the grieving period. Had he transformed the two into birds roaming
the oceans forever, he would have developed the concept of eternal love
further, possibly not a desired effect.
Instead, it is said that the search for a new wife for John of Gaunt had
started shortly after Blanche’s death and that his second marriage had been
celebrated three years later. By shortening
the story and not launching it on an eternal path, Chaucer suggests that grief
should be resolved. The choice of three
days, the time it took Christ to resurrect, seems to suggest that grief should
come to an end quickly. In this way, Chaucer
could proceed to the next part of the poem, the dream vision, without leaving
any lingering images of two kingfishers roaming forever over the sea. The suggestion that a story of grief
influenced the dream that followed is enough to detach the dream vision from
the reality of the Duchess’s death and of John’s sorrow. The legend, not real events, influenced the
dream, and the dreamer, even if he is assumed to be Chaucer himself, saves
himself from errors and faux pas.
The dream can be visualized in four tableaux. First the dreamer awakes in a room decorated with Greek legends of tragic love and Le Roman de la Rose, the 13th century French courtly love reference work that Chaucer himself had translated. From there, the scene moves to a hunt, where symbolically the hart, spelled the same in Middle English as the word “heart,” cannot be found until the dreamer is led by an inexpert hunting dog to an idyllic setting where harts and hinds have gathered peacefully. In the middle of it, he finds the black Knight grieving, and the principal part of the dream, the telling of the courtship, can be told. At the end, once the tale has been told, the fruitless hunt terminates.
It is worth mentioning that the word “hert” (meaning “hart” or “heart”) occurs 52 times in the text. Hunting and courtly love are both chivalric activities, and it would not seem to be coincidental that no harts could be found except where the black Knight was resting under the oak tree: the broken heart among the harts. He is the true owner of his courtly love tale, including a rather hunt-like image of a troop of ladies from which he could choose his own:
805 ‘Hit happed that I cam on a day806 Into a place, ther I say,
807 Trewly, the fayrest companye808 Of ladies that ever man with ye809 Had seen togedres in oo place.
The hart that eluded the hunting hounds:
381 This hert rused and stal away382 Fro alle the houndes a prevy way.
is reminiscent of the way a lady being courted would send the pretending Knight on a long voyage:
1024 Ne sende men in-to Walakye,1025 To Pruyse, and in-to Tartarye,1026 To Alisaundre, ne in-to Turkye,1027 And bidde him faste, anoon that he1028 Go hoodles to the drye see,1029 And come hoom by the Carrenare;
and of how the Knight described the initial difficulties of winning his lady’s heart until she gave him a ring, finally conceding victory:
1285 In alle my youthe, in alle chaunce,1286 She took me in hir governaunce.
The Dreamer has let the Knight speak about his lost heart, carefully inserting his questions mostly intended to keep the story moving forward. He seems to ignore every allusion to her death until the very end, probably so that the elegy could be completed. But it may be important to remind the reader of the book that this is an elegy and not really a tale of courtly love. The Knight is wearing black under an oak tree (a symbol of death), speaks of death in his initial monologue not assumed to be heard by the dreamer, and occasionally in the remainder of his tale:
577 I wrecche, that deeth hath mad al naked578 Of alle blisse that ever was maked,
It is only at the end that the dreamer expresses surprise at the death of the Lady, a fact that has puzzled some critics: how could Chaucer make such a naive error as showing surprise at the news of her death? Any reader would know at that moment that Blanche had died both in the dream and in reality, making the dreamer’s surprise somewhat odd:
1309 `She is deed!' `Nay!' `Yis, by my trouthe!'1310 `Is that your los? By god, hit is routhe!'
The declaration also calls for the end of the hunt, as there was neither hart nor heart to be found. The king returns to:
1318 A long castel with walles whyte,1319 Be seynt Iohan! on a riche hil,
which seems to be representing Lancaster (long castel), Blanche (whyte in French), John (Iohan), and Richmond (riche hil), an insertion of reality at the end of the dream, perhaps simplistic, as if to say “if you have not yet understood, I was talking about John and Blanche.” The poem developed from remote references to grief to the reality of daily life, and from remote references to courtly love to the reality of grief. The elegy has been delivered with the necessary authorial remoteness.
Works Consulted
G. Chaucer, The Book of the Duchess (original Middle
English version) http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/OMACL/Duchess/duchess.html
G. Chaucer,
“Book of the Duchess,” in Love Visions,
trans. B. Stone,
Ovid, “Ceyx and
Alcyone” from the Metamorphoses, in Chaucer: Sources and Backgrounds, R.P.
Miller, ed.,
D. Brewer, Chaucer and his World,
D.R. Howard, Chaucer: his Life, his Works, his World,