Geoffrey Chaucer and Cultural Confidence - Part 1

Geoffrey of Monmouth and Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer and Cultural Confidence, by William Lyon Shoestrap

Part 1 - Geoffrey of Monmouth and Geoffrey Chaucer

Have you ever thought about where the English language, that we speak today, came from?

In school, we were told that there was some indigenous Celtic language, and when the Romans invaded, the Celtic got mixed in with the Latin. And when the Romans left, the Angles and Saxons invaded, and some Germanic words got mixed in too. And when the Normans invaded, some French got mixed into the pot as well.

But with all this mixture of different languages, Latin remained the language of public documents, of the churches, and of teaching. Some people point to a Greek influence on English, but any knowledge of Greek thought would have come through Latin translations.

A more serious study of Greek in England’s universities didn’t begin until after 1499, when Erasmus visited England and drew around him some like-minded thinkers, like Thomas More, and a revival in the study of Greek thinking began.

But by the question – where did the English language come from? – I didn’t mean, where did English come from ‘technically’, but where did it come from ‘ideally’ – i.e. the idea of having a modern English language, an English that could be spoken by the average person, and not only the administrators, but a language that could build a culture for all the people.

But today, the English-speaking world seems to be descending into a cultural civil war, forcing us to steer between the Scylla of neo-liberalism and the Charybdis of neo-conservatism. Only a proper cultural confidence of English/American history may provide us with a safe passage to our past and to our future.

Geoffrey of Monmouth

Around 1136 AD, just before the start of the civil war among the Norman rulers of Briton, known as the ‘Anarchy’ that lasted from 1138 to 1153, and that brought the Plantagenets to the throne, a story was written (in Latin) that came to be called ‘the History of the Kings of Britain’ (Historia Regnum Britanniae) by a Welsh clergyman, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and it was written in much the same manner as Homer :

“Thus it is that our poet [Homer], though he sometimes employs fiction for the purposes of instruction, always gives the preference to truth; he makes use of what is false, merely tolerating it in order the more easily to lead and govern the multitude ... In this manner he undertook the narration of the Trojan war, gilding it with the beauties of fancy and the wanderings of Odysseus; but we shall never find Homer inventing an empty fable apart from the inculcation of truth.” [Strabo]

Using a limited amount of historical facts, Geoffrey of Monmouth tells a wonderful story of Aeneas’s great-grandson, Brutus, who sailed from Rome to Briton, and founded New Troy (London); and of the kings of the Britons (including Lear) before the Roman invasion; and after the end of the Roman occupation, of the Germanic invasion of the Angles and Saxons.

And, it is here that Geoffrey of Monmouth tells the story of King Arthur, and the attempt to unify the Britons and fight against the barbarians and invaders. Perhaps, seeing the coming Norman civil war in his own time, Geoffrey of Monmouth tells this story of the great King Arthur, a story that could one day be used as a beginning of a cultural confidence for England, and perhaps end the Norman ‘Anarchy’.

Geoffrey of Monmouth died around 1155, and Henry II Plantagenet became the king of Briton and of the western half of France - with his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1152.

Eleanor had been married to King Louis VII Capet of France, but when their marriage was annulled, she re-married, to Henry II - less than 2 months after her marriage annulment to Louis VII !!!

Eleanor sponsored a Norman cleric, Robert Wace, who wrote (around 1155) the ‘Romance of Brutus’, a Norman poem that tries to imitate Geoffrey of Monmouth’s ‘History’, but that begins to bring in a romantic version of Arthur and his Round Table. Wace later writes the ‘Romance of Rollo’ about the history of the Norman kings, and of William the Conqueror and the Norman conquest of Briton.

Eleanor’s daughter, Marie, became the sponsor of Chretien de Troyes, who began writing his ‘Arthurian’ romances around 1170.

And so, during the later Middle Ages and the age of the Crusades, we came to have these two different myths of Arthur – the ‘heroic’ Briton myth of Arthur by Geoffrey of Monmouth, and the Norman ‘chivalric’ myth of Arthur by Wace and de Troyes.

Geoffrey Chaucer

Now, this chivalric, romantic imitation of the ideas of fate and love, was a problem for a proper and truthful English ‘cultural confidence’ – a problem that began to be addressed ‘ideally’ by Geoffrey Chaucer (1340 – 1400), at a time just before another civil war, known as the ‘War of the Roses’.

A good look at the history of this period can be found by reading Shakespeare’s history plays:

‘Edward III’ and ‘Richard II’ – the Plantagenet kings;

‘Henry IV’ and ‘Henry V’ – the Lancaster kings;

and ‘Henry VI’ and ‘Richard III’ – the kings during the ‘War of the Roses’ – before the Tudors came to the English throne.

As the Lancastrians could be seen as a bridge from the Plantagenets to the Tudors, so in a similar way, Geoffrey Chaucer could also be seen as a bridge from the Middle Ages of Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Age of Spenser and Marlowe.

And Chaucer would be very close to the political fights that were ongoing during this time of change. He lived during the reigns of Edward III, of Richard II, and after Richard’s abdication (for a very short time) of Henry IV, the son of John of Gaunt (the Duke of Lancaster) – who was Chaucer’s good friend.

Chaucer was born (possibly) around 1340, the son of a vintner in London, and lived during the years of the ‘black death’ in the British Isles, 1348-1351. He was (possibly) schooled at St. Paul’s, where he (possibly) learned Latin, French, and later, Italian. At around the age of 16, he became a page to the wife of Prince Lionel, Duke of Clarence, and upon her death, he became a page for the Queen.

Later he (possibly) studied law at one of the Inns of Court, and (possibly) at Oxford. Afterwards, he became a valet and squire to King Edward III, and he married Philippa Roet, a lady-in-waiting of the Queen, that he had first met while both were working for the household of Prince Lionel.

Sometime during this period, Chaucer would become friends with Prince John of Gaunt, who became the Duke of Lancaster after marrying Blanche of Lancaster. After Blanche’s death in 1368, Chaucer would write a poem ‘The Book of the Duchess’ as a consolation to John.

Lancaster’s third wife, Katherine, was the sister of Philippa, Chaucer’s wife, and so Chaucer and Lancaster would become brothers-in-law. Lancaster’s son, the future King Henry IV, and his grandson, the future King Henry V, would (possibly) have met and spoke with, and (possibly) also have studied and learned from Chaucer.

Lancaster would die eight months before the 32-year-old Henry IV became king, and Chaucer would die, of unknown causes (???), one year after Henry IV became king, when Henry V was 13 years-old.

Lancaster’s and Katherine’s great-grand-son (and Chaucer’s great-grand-nephew) would become Henry VII, the first Tudor king of England !!!

In December 1372, Chaucer was sent, as part of a trade mission, to Genoa in Italy, and he also visited Florence, where he was able to learn about Dante and his ‘Divine Comedy’ – and where it is thought that he (possibly) may have met Boccaccio at Florence or may have (possibly) met Petrarch at Arqua. And it would be this ‘Italian’ influence that helped Chaucer in his attempts at a beginning of an English school of poetry.

In 1374 Chaucer became a comptroller of the wool customs in the port of London, and now having more time at home and less time at court, he wrote another poem ‘The House of Fame’.

In 1378, Chaucer was sent on another mission to the Lord of Milan, where Chaucer could have experienced this lord’s great library, and maybe here he became acquainted with the poetical works of Petrarch and Boccaccio, because he brought back to England with him, copies of Boccaccio’s poems. Afterwards he wrote another poem, about true love and St. Valentine’s Day, ‘The Parliament of Fowls’.

While most of us know Chaucer as the author of the ‘Canterbury Tales’, we should also remember him for these three poems, and for what these three poems all have in common – a dream. And in all three poems, he directly references ‘Scipio’s Dream’ by Cicero.

[ next week - part 2 - the ‘Book of the Duchess’ ]