Chaucerian Conflict: Languages of Antagonism in Late Fourteenth-Century London (Oxford English Monographs)

OXF O R D E N G L I S H M O N O G R A PH S General Editors HELEN BARR

DAVID BRADSHAW

CHRISTOPHER BUTLER DAVID NORBROOK

HERMIONE LEE

FIONA STAFFORD

DAVID WOMERSLEY

This page intentionally left blank

Chaucerian Conflict Languages of Antagonism in Late Fourteenth-Century London MARION TURNER

CLARENDON PRESS · OXFORD

1

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Marion Turner 2007

The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by Laserwords Private Limited, Chennai, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 0–19–920789–5

978–0–19–920789–3

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

For my parents, David and Sheelagh Turner

This page intentionally left blank

Acknowledgements This book began as a D.Phil. thesis at the University of Oxford. The AHRB provided funding for this project, and I also received scholarships and research grants from St Anne’s College, Oxford. In later stages, Magdalen College, Oxford and King’s College London provided congenial research environments. I would also like to thank the staff of the Bodleian Library and the British Library for help over the years. Many academics have provided inspiration and advice, in particular Helen Barr, Caroline Barron, Chris Baswell, Ardis Butterfield, Chris Cannon, Helen Cooper, Rita Copeland, Christine Ferdinand, John Ganim, Simon Gaunt, Vincent Gillespie, Clare Lees, Laurie Maguire, Bob Mills, Alastair Minnis, Roger Nicholson, Felicity Riddy, Miri Rubin, Peter Travis, Stephanie Trigg, and David Wallace. I have given papers based on the work in this book on numerous occasions, at Kalamazoo, Leeds, York, Oxford, Swansea, Bristol, London, Harvard, San Diego, and Washington D.C. I have particularly enjoyed presenting my work at New Chaucer Conventions in Glasgow, Boulder, London, and New York. The engaged and intelligent audiences that have responded to my papers have given me much to consider, as have OUP’s excellent anonymous readers. Chapter 2 appeared in a slightly different form as ‘Troilus and Criseyde and the Treasonous Aldermen of 1382: Tales of the City in Late Fourteenth-Century London’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer 25 (2003): 225–57; a section of Chapter 4 is published as ‘ ‘‘Certaynly his Noble Sayenges Can I Nat Amende’’: Thomas Usk and Troilus and Criseyde’, Chaucer Review 37 (2002): 26–39; and small sections from other parts of the book appear in different form as ‘Greater London’, in Chaucer and the City, ed. Ardis Butterfield (Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 2006), 25–40. I would also like to thank the Biblioth`eque nationale de France for permission to reproduce the cover image. My friends have provided invaluable support over many years. I’d like to thank Rachel and John Wevill, Ant Bale, Tim Phillips, Kirstie Blair, Matthew Creasy, Jessie Shattuck, Mark Flugge, Isabel Davis, Clare Loughlin-Chow, Lara McClure, Julia Reid, Dan Scroop, Devyani Sharma, Julia Timpson, Katherine Day, Andy Swiss, Ed Davis, Kiran Chitta, Guy Thornewill, Emma Kendall, Fraser Stephen-Smith, Camille, Joe and Geetha Mazarelo, Claire Harman, Alex Gillespie, Tim

viii

Acknowledgements

and Hannah Wise, Ned Fletcher, and Natalie Walker, for long-term friendship. Life would be dull without you. My sister Katie and her family, Damon, Michael, and Ruth, are another inexhaustible source of interest, fun, and support. I’d also like to thank my other family in New Zealand, Bernard and Diane Kendall, for all their kindness. It is difficult to overstate the debt which I owe Paul Strohm, who supervised my thesis, and has been a constant source of friendship and counsel, in the eight years that I have been lucky enough to know him. My work would have been very different, and much less interesting, without his interventions and encouragement. Another debt difficult to quantify is owed to Elliot Kendall, who has read my work several times and whose intelligent ideas have always helped to improve it. More importantly, he has improved the quality of the rest of my life immeasurably. I reserve my last and most heartfelt thanks for my parents, David and Sheelagh Turner. They have educated, loved, and supported me throughout my life, and my achievements rest on the shoulders of their laborious attention to my wellbeing. This book is dedicated to them, with my love.

Contents Introduction: Chaucerian Conflict 1. Discursive Turbulence: Slander, the House of Fame, and the Mercers’ Petition

1 8

2. Urban Treason: Troilus and Criseyde and the ‘Treasonous Aldermen’ of 1382

31

3. Idealism and Antagonism: Troynovaunt in the Late Fourteenth Century

56

4. Ricardian Communities: Thomas Usk’s Social Fantasies

93

5. Conflicted Compaignyes: The Canterbury Fellowship and Urban Associational Form

127

6. Conflict Resolved?: The Language of Peace and Chaucer’s ‘Tale of Melibee’

167

Conclusion Bibliography Index

192 195 209

This page intentionally left blank

Introduction: Chaucerian Conflict This book is about discourse and about the textual environment of London in the 1380s and 90s: it is about the language of betrayal, surveillance, slander, treason, rebellion, flawed idealism, and corrupted compaignyes.¹ Texts produced in and around late fourteenth-century London are everywhere informed by discourses of conflict and social antagonism. I am interested in the ways that discourses function in different kinds of texts produced at the same time and in exploring how various texts engage with concepts of social fragmentation and breakdown. Chaucer’s writings are a lynchpin of this book not because of their canonical status but because these texts are especially concerned with conflict and are unusually open about the impossibility of social amelioration. Chaucer’s texts are, in my view, defiantly ‘anti-social’. If ‘languages are the matrices within which texts as events occur’ and texts themselves ‘are actions performed in language contexts that make them possible, that condition and constrain them but that they also modify’, then studying discourse is inseparable from the study of specific texts.² In order to engage most respectfully and most fully with a piece of writing, one must attempt to explore the environment that produced it and that it helped to produce. Here, I am concerned with examining a diverse range of texts to try to gain a sense of how concepts such as ¹ I borrow the term ‘textual environment’ from Paul Strohm, Hochon’s Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Century Texts (Princeton, N.J., 1992), 6–9. His ‘acknowledgement of a text as just one component of a less prioritized array, one that might itself stand nowhere near the center of any recognized textual universe’, is particularly useful (8). ² J. G. A. Pocock, ‘Texts as Events: Reflections on the History of Political Thought’, in Politics of Discourse: The Literature and History of Seventeenth-Century England, ed. Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1987), 21–34, 28–9.

2

Introduction

betrayal or associational form or slander were treated in late fourteenthcentury London. Disciplinary boundaries are not germane to such an investigation (although it is always crucial to remember the functions and audiences of diverse kinds of material). Thus poems by Chaucer, Gower, the anonymous St Erkenwald poet, and Richard Maidstone are compared with parliamentary petitions, judicial letters, guild returns, and civic proclamations. Texts that straddle the historical/literary divide (and reveal the problematic nature of such divisions), such as the writings of Thomas Usk, are also a focus. Chaucerian Conflict is a synchronic study, focusing on languages of antagonism in two decades of London’s history and exploring texts not usually considered together. It examines the way that the same anxieties and ideas are articulated across different texts, sometimes in identical or very similar language, while also being concerned to tease out the different agendas and emphases of diverse texts. Specifically, my contention throughout this book is that Chaucer’s texts, unlike those of his contemporaries, propose no social solutions, no Golden Age, no hope of progression. Instead, his poetry and prose are concerned with depicting the inevitably destructive nature of human fellowship and society. A desire to like Chaucer, to idealize him, to believe in a Chaucer who laughs ‘with, not at human weakness’ has constructed a solid critical edifice of ‘amicable or congenial ‘‘reading’’ and rewriting of Chaucer’.³ The longstanding Victorian image of jolly Chaucer emphasized the idea of the author as ‘the most genial and humourful healthy-souled man’.⁴ In the new wave of criticism of the mid-twentieth century, Chaucer’s conservative decency and religiosity became his most favoured traits: apparently ‘there could be no misanthropy’ in the late fourteenth century.⁵ Writing in the 1960s, D. W. Robertson famously dwelt on the ‘quiet hierarchies’ of Chaucer’s world, a place ‘innocent of our profound ³ Stephanie Trigg, Congenial Souls: Reading Chaucer from Medieval to Postmodern (Minneapolis, 2002), pp. xxi, 37. ⁴ The words are Furnivall’s, cited in Caroline Spurgeon, Five Hundred Years of Chaucer Criticism and Allusion 1357–1900 (London, 1914–25), 5 parts and introduction, 5: 114. For discussions of Furnivall see Steve Ellis, Chaucer At Large: The Poet in the Modern Imagination (Minneapolis, 2000), 18–20, and Trigg, Congenial Souls, 159–66. See also George Kittredge’s comments that Chaucer ‘knew life and loved it’, that he ‘had an immense enthusiasm for life in this world, for the society of his fellow men’, that he was an ‘idealist’ in Chaucer and His Poetry (Harvard, 1915; reprinted 1970), 2, 32, 218. ⁵ Ralph Baldwin, The Unity of the Canterbury Tales, Anglistica 5 (1955), 39. Baldwin argues that the Tales celebrate plenitude and completion, writing that the ‘gloriously unific pilgrims’ representing ‘a relatively homogeneous and stratified society’ ultimately ‘gaze on Truth itself’ (39, 41, 104).

Introduction

3

concern for tension’.⁶ Much has changed in recent decades, but the idea that Chaucer was something of an idealist—and a concomitant elision of the conflict within his texts—is still central to Chaucer criticism. Critics frequently make it clear that they like Chaucer, that he ‘has long been admired for such immediately attractive attributes as clarity, humanity, sharpness of perception, and humour’.⁷ A brief consideration of two of the most influential and innovative Chaucerians writing today will illustrate my point. These critics are especially interested in the associational tendencies of the pilgrim commonwealth or polity, focusing on horizontal rather than vertical modes of social interaction. Paul Strohm’s Social Chaucer consistently emphasizes the ‘quest for coherentia’ in the Canterbury Tales, the ability of the community to resolve conflict and tensions.⁸ The final lines of the book describe Chaucer’s ‘commonwealth’ as ‘implicitly utopian’, suggesting that the example of the Tales ‘allows readers in posterity a continuing opportunity to refresh their own belief in social possibility’.⁹ More recently, David Wallace has stressed ‘natural amiability’ as the defining trait of the Canterbury compaignye. He suggests that communication, the engine of the pilgrim company, is inherently amiable: The emphasis upon natural amiability is maintained as the poem turns from divine to man-made governance. The second sentence brings us to a solitary individual—Chaucer—who is soon joined by 29 other individuals viewed as a preformed corporate entity, a compagnye or felaweshipe. The impulse that moves the pilgrim Chaucer to communicate with this group is both entirely natural and peculiarly human.¹⁰

Like Social Chaucer, Chaucerian Polity ultimately suggests that Chaucer’s work is essentially optimistic in its promotion of associational polity, that the formation of the ‘felaweshipe’ is a socially positive and progressive act. Those critics who have foregrounded the less ‘amiable’ aspects of Chaucer’s texts have nonetheless tended to admire Chaucer as an idealist of a sort. Bertrand Bronson, for example, writes that Chaucer ‘depends ⁶ D. W. Robertson, A Preface to Chaucer: Studies in Medieval Perspectives (Princeton, N.J., 1962), 51. This comment has frequently been criticized in recent years. See, for example, David Aers, Community, Gender and Individual Identity: English Writing 1360–1430 (London, 1988), 12. ⁷ Helen Cooper, The Structure of the Canterbury Tales (London, 1983), 2, emphasis mine. ⁸ Paul Strohm, Social Chaucer (Harvard, 1989), 145. ⁹ Strohm, Social Chaucer, 182. ¹⁰ David Wallace, Chaucerian Polity: Absolutist Lineages and Associational Forms in England and Italy (Stanford, Calif., 1997), 67.

4

Introduction

on hostility for the dynamics of his ‘‘drama’’ ’, but he simultaneously maintains a reliance on Chaucer’s ‘good nature’ and ‘heart-warming humanity’.¹¹ R. A. Shoaf explicitly claims that he is ‘not writing to tell the story of ‘‘genial Chaucer’’ ’ but goes on to tell us of Chaucer’s ‘aspiration if not also inspiration for wholeness’, stressing the ‘reconciliation’ and ‘spiritual communion’ in the link-passages of the Tales.¹² Peggy Knapp focuses on ‘social conflict’ and ‘contention’ in the Canterbury Tales, while describing the author as a poet of ‘good cheer’ and as a ‘lover of his disordered world’.¹³ Christian Zacher suggests that in depicting social fragmentation, Chaucer is criticizing the pilgrims and pointing out to his audience how they ‘ought’ to have behaved, as he laments the ‘contemporary decline’ of religious values.¹⁴ David Aers is less ‘congenial’ than these critics as he does not attribute to Chaucer attitudes that he himself admires, but he still imagines Chaucer as an idealist, a social conservative who depicts conflict being ‘marvellously resolved’.¹⁵ Similarly, Stephen Knight’s energizing short book on Chaucer emphasizes many of the themes with which I am concerned, but ultimately concludes that the ‘forces of conflict’ in the Canterbury Tales ‘are neutralized in a number of ways’ as Chaucer moves towards an idealizing ‘religious and conservative conclusion’.¹⁶ The idea that Chaucer was some kind of social idealist, then, is almost omnipresent in the ever-expanding baggy monster of Chaucer criticism.¹⁷ In contrast to the work of critics such as Strohm and Wallace, which assumes that an essentially positive idea of the social underpins Chaucer’s texts, this book argues that an awareness of ‘natural antagonism’ rather than ‘natural amiability’ informs his writings. Focusing on the depiction of social conflict and division in diverse texts, ¹¹ Bertrand Bronson, In Search of Chaucer (Toronto, 1960), 61, 62, 67. ¹² R. A. Shoaf, Chaucer’s Body: The Anxiety of Circulation in the ‘Canterbury Tales’ (Gainesville, 2001), 3, 135, 106. ¹³ Peggy Knapp, Chaucer and the Social Contest (Routledge, 1990), 4, 9, 141. ¹⁴ Christian Zacher, Curiosity and Pilgrimage: The Literature of Discovery in FourteenthCentury England (Baltimore, London, 1976), 90–1. ¹⁵ David Aers, ‘Vox Populi and the Literature of 1381’, in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. David Wallace (Cambridge, 1999), 432–53, 448. ¹⁶ Stephen Knight, Geoffrey Chaucer (Oxford, 1986), 69. Knight argues that the House of Fame is a ‘pungently critical’ poem (23), refusing both secular and Christian consolation, but that in later poems Chaucer escaped somewhat into Christian consolation and resolution. ¹⁷ Trigg has discussed the critical idealization of Chaucer, but her critique has focused on medievalism, on attitudes to Chaucer, and she has not examined Chaucer’s texts or suggested an alternative way of reading his poetry.

Introduction

5

I argue that Chaucer’s engagement with the idea of antagonism is more profound than that of his contemporaries. Chaucer, I suggest, holds out no hope for social amelioration. The idea that human society is founded on antagonism is certainly not the preserve of modern political and psychoanalytical thinkers, but is at the heart of aspects of early Christian thought.¹⁸ The idea that postlapsarian society is inevitably conflicted was expressed by early medieval Christian thinkers such as Augustine. In the City of God, he writes: ‘human society is generally divided against itself [ … ] the earthly city is generally divided against itself by litigation, by wars, by battles, by the pursuit of victories that bring death with them or at best are doomed to death’.¹⁹ In this book, I seek to demonstrate that Chaucer’s texts too present a vision of the social as fundamentally conflicted rather than coherent. Chaucer was writing at a historical moment with particularly obvious and manifold social and political problems. One of this book’s primary concerns is to examine the ways in which one could write about conflict in the 1380s and 90s, and to probe the flexibility of the discourses and ideas available to writers of texts at this time. As Fredric Jameson writes: ‘the historical moment is here understood to block off or shut down a certain number of formal possibilities available before, and to open up determinate new ones’.²⁰ The discourses available to writers in these decades shaped what they could say and they themselves shaped those discourses by using them in innovative ways. The years in which Chaucer produced the bulk of his opus were years of extraordinary upheaval in the country as a whole, and in London in particular. His own life must have been touched by the Great Revolt, by the factional rivalry that dominated city government in the 1380s, by the struggle between the king and his nobles, by the horrors of the Merciless Parliament and its purges, and by the final deposition of the king.²¹ Chaucer’s texts frequently reflect the chaos of the London that he knew, and those ¹⁸ For recent discussions of the idea that society is inevitably antagonistic see Slavoj ˇ zek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London, 1989) and Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Ziˇ Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, trans. Winston Moore and Paul Cammack, 2nd edition (London, 2001). ¹⁹ Augustine of Hippo, City of God, trans. Henry Bettenson (London, 1984), Book XVIII, chapter 2, 762; Book XV, chapter 4, 599. ²⁰ Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as Socially Symbolic Act (London, 1983), 148. Jameson also suggests that all texts are born out of antagonistic, dialogical relationships with other texts (84–5). ²¹ For historical background on these events see Ruth Bird, The Turbulent London of Richard II (London, 1949) and Nigel Saul, Richard II (New Haven, London,

6

Introduction

texts are themselves part of the ‘discursive turbulence’ that dominated the capital in these years.²² By setting Chaucer’s texts alongside other London poems and London documents, we can appreciate all of these texts in dynamic new ways and can gain a clearer perspective on the ideologies and imaginative constructs that they reflect and with which they interact. The ‘textual environment’ of 1380s and 90s London was a locus of debate, rivalry, aggression, and suspicion. Exploring a range of texts written in these tumultuous and dramatic decades can give us some insight into the discourses of conflict in Chaucer’s London. Writers are often drawn to consider the nature of society and its potential for change. Radical social movements, for instance, tend to promise a state of future improvement and, for many writers, suffering and conflict is only comprehensible if it is a necessary and temporary state. Many fourteenth-century authors depict the conflict within their society as a temporary condition, suggesting that society used to be better, or that it could be better in future with the right kind of governance. Texts such as St Erkenwald, Usk’s Testament of Love, or Philippe de Mézières’s Letter to Richard II, all ostensibly promise better things for society (although these social hopes may seem unconvincing). Other texts, such as the guild returns, seek to cover up and to deny the conflict that they everywhere expose. My argument is that Chaucer’s texts, in contrast, constantly reveal not only the conflict in contemporary society but also the futility of hoping for change. He roots his texts firmly in the turbulence of late fourteenth-century London, but also shows us that there has not been and will not be a superior time of social harmony. In this, Chaucer’s texts differ from other literary and historical texts produced in the 1380s and 90s, which generally try to maintain a belief in social possibility. Chapter 1 examines the House of Fame, the Mercers’ Petition, and some proclamations made in 1380s London. It focuses on the idea of surveillance and on attempts to control what can be said, and discusses the way that violence was played out through language in the 1380s. This chapter also considers the extent to which discourse can rebel against political control. Chapter 2 compares some letters written in 1382 1997). See also Marion Turner, ‘Politics and London Life’, in A Concise Companion to Chaucer, ed. Corinne Saunders (Oxford, 2006), 13–33. ²² Sheila Lindenbaum, ‘London Texts and Literate Practice’, in Cambridge History, ed. Wallace, 284–309, 288. For discussions of Chaucer and the city, see Ardis Butterfield (ed.), Chaucer and the City (Cambridge, 2006).

Introduction

7

accusing London aldermen of betraying the city to the rebels in 1381, with Chaucer’s great poem about urban betrayal, Troilus and Criseyde. The deployment of the language of truth and treason is a particular focus. The next chapter looks at ideas of civic idealism and their inevitable breakdown. It explores the ideology of New Troy and the depiction of the fragmentation of this idealized city in works by Gower, Chaucer, Maidstone, and the Erkenwald-poet. One area of interest is the slippage between the concepts of treason and of peace-making. In Chapter 4 I focus on the writings of Thomas Usk, early reader of Chaucer and notorious London factionalist. I discuss Usk’s problematic attempts to harness both the discourse of honesty and the discourse of service and his flawed bids to enter a variety of Ricardian communities—textual, civic, and courtly. The next chapter takes urban associational form as its subject. It considers the language of fellowship and company, comparing the London and Lynn guild returns with the Canterbury Tales. I argue that the Canterbury compaignye is a decidedly suspicious and antagonistic urban group, and focus on the angry exchanges between urban pilgrims. The ‘Pardoner’s Tale’ is discussed as a lens on the Canterbury fellowship and pilgrimage as a whole. Finally, in Chapter 6, I think about antagonism in a different way, considering what happens when authors explicitly try to write about peace in these decades, focusing on Chaucer’s ‘Tale of Melibee’ and also discussing de Mézières’s Letter to Richard II. Chaucerian Conflict focuses on a specific historical moment and examines how poets and politicians wrote about social conflict and social possibility. I am interested both in fˆeted texts such as Troilus and Criseyde and the Vox clamantis and in sidelined texts such as Richard’s 1387 proclamation against slander or the letters of accusation against the aldermen of 1382. It is crucial for our understanding of medieval culture to examine such texts alongside each other: in Pocock’s words, ‘our history has become less a history of individual performances and acts of authorship than a history of languages or … of continuities of discourse’.²³ In the course of exploring such discourses and imaginative structures, new ideas about the emphases in Chaucer’s work have become increasingly clear to me. Thus, while examining discursive representations of social conflict in texts of the late fourteenth century, I hope specifically to show that pessimism about social possibility is everywhere apparent in Chaucer’s texts: his writings are dependent on a heart of darkness at their very core. ²³ Pocock, ‘Texts as Events’, 28.

1 Discursive Turbulence: Slander, the House of Fame, and the Mercers’ Petition SLANDER AND STRIFE London texts of the 1380s betray an insistent anxiety about the power and effects of linguistic conflict. Statutes, proclamations, petitions, and poetry dwell on careless talk, spying eavesdroppers, and verbal sparring, as the king and the mayoralty try to constrain speech and writing, and the makers of texts use their suspect linguistic strengths to resist such discursive oppression. A proclamation issued in 1387, and recorded in LetterBook H, for example, illustrates the king’s attempts to silence dissenting voices during this hazardous period of his reign. The proclamation reads: Oure lord þe kyng, þat god saue and loke, comaundeth to alle his trewe liges in þe Cite of london and þe suburbes, of what condicion þat euer þei ben, up þe peyne of here liues and forfaiture of here godes, þat non be so hardy to speke, ne mouen, ne publish, en priue ne appert, oni thyng þat might soune in euel or dishoneste of oure lige lord þe kyng, ne of our ladi þe quene, or ony lordes þat haue bien duellyng with þe kyng bi-for þis time, or of hem þat duellen aboute his persone nowe, or shul duelle, in hinderyng of here state in any manere; ne þat non of his trewe liges melle hem of suche matirs, but þat oure lord þe kyng; our souereyn juge, mowe ordeyne þer-of þat him semeth best.¹ ¹ ‘Proclamacio ne quis male loquatur de Rege, Regina, nec alijs dominis’, MS Guildhall, Letter-Book H, f. ccxxiii v. Printed in R. W. Chambers and Marjorie Daunt (eds.), A Book of London English 1384–1425 (Oxford, 1931), 92–3. This document is not dated, but appears in the Letter-Book between a document dated 28 November 1387 and one dated 3 December 1387. It was cited in the trial of Brembre in 1388; see L. C. Hector and Barbara F. Harvey, eds. and trans., The Westminster Chronicle (Oxford, 1982), 266–7.

Discursive Turbulence

9

Fear of rumour, and aspirations towards arbitrary rule dominate this document. In 1387, Richard’s position was extremely precarious as both his personal rule and his judgement in choosing advisers and friends were under threat. The turmoil of these months was to result in the deaths of his closest allies, and in a substantial loss of power for himself, as the Lords Appellant took matters into their own hands. London politics were closely implicated in the conflict between the king and the lords—one of the casualties of the Merciless Parliament was Nicholas Brembre, erstwhile mayor of London. In this proclamation, Richard seeks to silence criticism of himself. He attempts to halt the gossip that must have been rampant in London at this most dramatic political moment, when Richard’s favourite was literally up in arms against the greatest nobles of the land, and there was ominous talk of the example of Edward II.² He commands not only that no one should speak ill of the king, but that no one should say anything about the queen, or about any of Richard’s associates, or anyone who used to be his associates, or anyone that might be his associates in future: ‘ony lordes þat haue bien duellyng with þe kyng bi-for þis time, or of hem þat duellen aboute his persone nowe, or shul duelle’. As it would be impossible to know who might be ornamenting the court in future, the proclamation in essence tells Londoners and suburbanites not to say anything about anyone. Nor does the regulation stop at speaking; they must not ‘speke, ne mouen, ne publish’. In other words, they must neither initiate nor repeat comments, and it is just as culpable to do so in ‘prive’ as it is to do so openly, ‘appert’. These directives, then, are extremely detailed and wideranging, seeking to control the minutiae of everyday speech between intimates, as well as public debates. A throwaway comment, as much as a rousing speech, could be punished according to this proclamation. Moreover, the punishment itself is extraordinarily harsh, encompassing the death penalty and the forfeiture of goods. This penalty sounds like a penalty for treason, which now seems to include making a derogatory comment in private about a future friend of the king. The penalty is stated at the beginning of the proclamation, before the crime itself is mentioned, to emphasize its importance. The proclamation also stresses ² For de Vere’s battle against the Appellants at Radcot Bridge, see Nigel Saul, Richard II (New Haven, Ct., London, 1997), 172, 187–8. Gloucester and Arundel allegedly threatened Richard with the fate of Edward II when they remonstrated with him in 1386 during the Wonderful Parliament, ibid., 158.

10

Discursive Turbulence

the king’s absolute power in these matters, specifying that no lord can meddle in them, but that the sovereign king will deal with them as ‘him semeth best’. The king has arbitrary power to deal with rumour-mongers as he will. This proclamation was part of the ongoing revision of legislation against slander in the last quarter of the fourteenth century. The statute concerning Scandalum Magnatum, passed in 1275, which legislated against insults to high status members of society was twice revised in the late fourteenth century, in 1378 and 1388.³ In 1378, it was redrafted to extend the list of those who were protected under this law, to include the Chancellor, Treasurer, Clerk of the Privy Seal, Steward of the King’s House, and Justices of both benches.⁴ According to the 1388 revision, those who disseminated as well as those who invented slander were considered culpable. The existence of these two revisions suggests that slander was a particular concern of those at the highest levels of society at this time. In the Statutes of the Realm, the first revision immediately precedes a statute against confederacy and maintenance: both slander and maintenance offered opportunities for constructing matrices of power disruptive to traditional hierarchies. The king clearly felt profoundly threatened by the potential for rebellion and autonomy that idle talk and discussion opened up. He desperately tries to maintain his own sovereign voice as the only possible voice in London society. In Louise Fradenburg’s useful formulation, this is the totalized discourse of the sovereign that ‘refuses the idea of pluralized discourse, of debate’.⁵ Richard will brook no disagreement or challenges in his realm. His inability to take advice, and his desire for a more sacral and ‘absolute’ status than was accorded to English monarchs has often been discussed. In particular, his obsessive redefining of what constituted treason was part of his refusal to hear other opinions.⁶ The 1387 proclamation might be seen as a precursor to the 1397 declaration that: Si aliquis, cuiuscunq; status seu condicionis fuerit, moverit vel excitaverit Communes Parliamenti, aut aliquam aliam personam, ad faciendi remedium sive reformacionem alicuius rei que tangit nostram personam, sive nostrum Regimen, aut Regalitatem nostram, teneret’ & teneat’ pro proditore. ³ See Statutes of the Realm, ed. A. Luders, 11 vols (London, 1810–22), 2: 9, 59. ⁴ This is discussed by Richard Firth Green in A Crisis of Truth: Literature and Law in Ricardian England (Philadelphia, 1999), 244. ⁵ Louise Fradenburg, ‘The Manciple’s Servant Tongue: Politics and Poetry in The Canterbury Tales’, Journal of English Literary History 52 (1985), 85–118, 89. ⁶ See in particular Green, Crisis of Truth, Saul, Richard II.

Discursive Turbulence

11

if anyone at all, whatever his status or condition, should encourage or incite the commons of Parliament, or anyone else, to remedy or reform anything which concerns our person, our rule, or our regality, he should, and shall, be held a traitor.⁷

In effect, Richard made disagreeing with him an offence punishable by death. Richard’s totalizing desires, however, remained fantastic. He could not close down debate; his own voice was silenced by the Lords Appellant in 1387–8, and permanently by his cousin in 1399. Rather than being authoritative, his 1387 proclamation slots into a highly charged, unresolved ‘discursive turbulence’ that dominated London politics and society in the 1380s as guilds, political allies, nobles, tradesmen, and writers jostled for authoritative positions. Brembre and Exton, the mayors closely associated with the king’s party in the middle of the decade, also attempted to crush debate, maintaining their favoured guilds in positions of power, reversing Northampton’s civic reforms, banning informal associations, and even going so far as to burn the Jubilee Book.⁸ The literal destruction of this book of regulations about the city reveals a brutal and spectacular intolerance of different points of view—especially when those views were expressed in textual form. The Mercers’ Petition, written in 1387–88,⁹ one of a group of anti-Brembre petitions, showcases a voice of opposition and resistance to the dominant discourse.¹⁰ In these petitions, the guilds found a way to manipulate documentary culture for their own ends—and the mercers did so most dramatically and daringly as they used English to voice their complaints.¹¹ Such city conflicts, enacted through textual culture, participate in ‘a discursive ‘‘turbulence’’ ⁷ Revd. John Strachey, ed., Rotuli Parliamentorum; ut et petitiones et placita in Parliamento tempore Ricardi II (London, 1767–77), 3: 408. This translation is Green’s: Crisis of Truth, 222. ⁸ The mayors were able to wield a great deal of power. Caroline Barron writes that the mayor of London ‘within his small domain of three square miles [was] a king with many of the powers and some of the prestige of that office’. See Caroline Barron, London in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 2004), 147. ⁹ The Rolls of Parliament, and Chambers and Daunt, Book of London English, wrongly date the petition to 1386. See Saul, Richard II, 193 n. 69. See below for a detailed discussion of the dating of the petition. ¹⁰ The petition participates in a ‘widespread conviction among Londoners that official forms of writing had been abused by privileged interests’, but it ‘successfully restores a sense of validity to documentary practice’ while emphasizing the ‘abuses of such practice’. See Sheila Lindenbaum, ‘London Texts and Literate Practice’, in David Wallace, The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature (Cambridge, 1999), 284–309, 286, 290. ¹¹ Mark Ormrod writes that ‘it is particularly to be noted how frequently English tends to crop up in written submissions to the Crown of the 1380s, 1390s, and 1400s

12

Discursive Turbulence

as intense as the Guildhall wrangles and streetfighting chronicled by Ruth Bird’.¹² Indeed, debates about discourse—about who has the right to speak, and what one is allowed to say, about who controls the preservation or destruction of documents, about the abuse of documentary culture, about whose voices are privileged, and how one can get one’s voice heard—were central to political conflict in the late fourteenth century. These issues were at the heart of London politics of the 1380s: they dominated complaints against the king that tended to focus on his inability to choose good advisers,¹³ and they animated the frustrated rebels of 1381 who ritually destroyed symbols of documentary culture.¹⁴ Discursive conflict cannot be separated from social and political conflict in the turbulent London of Richard II: language and texts mattered, and could determine life and death issues.¹⁵ In this context, London’s greatest poet chose to write a poem about the inconsistencies of language, fame, and slander.¹⁶ that themselves deal with criticism, opposition, and outright treason against church and state: such cases demonstrate how a vernacular deployed by polemicists as a means of articulating the authenticity of their complaint could also, ironically, be exposed by juries and manipulated by courts to emphasize the subversive nature of such sentiments’. See W. M. Ormrod, ‘The Use of English: Language, Law, and Political Culture in Fourteenth-Century England’, Speculum 78:3 (2003): 750–87, 783. ¹² See Lindenbaum, ‘London Texts and Literate Practice’, 288. See also Ruth Bird, The Turbulent London of Richard II (London, 1949). Ralph Hanna comments on ‘that propensity towards slanderous confrontationalism perceived as a besetting urban sin’, in London Literature 1300–1380 (Cambridge, 2005), 33. ¹³ See Saul, Richard II, 112. ¹⁴ Richard Firth Green writes that the rebels ‘destroyed archives and legal documents with all the fervor of luddites smashing weaving frames’. See Green, Crisis of Truth, 199. Steven Justice has pointed out that the rebels ‘aimed not to destroy the documentary culture of feudal tenure and royal government, but to re-create it; they recognized the written document as something powerful, but also malleable, something that, once written, could be re-written’. In other words, the rebels’ widespread destruction of documents was focused and calculated rather than indiscriminate, and they wanted documents that suited their views to be recovered, or created. See Steven Justice, Writing and Rebellion: England in 1381 (Berkeley, 1994), 48. Green also compares the mercers’ and the rebels’ attempts to harness the language of ‘trouthe’ (Crisis of Truth, 1–8, especially 6). ¹⁵ Carl Lindahl comments that ‘medieval Londoners, for all intents and purposes, considered words and deeds to be of equal significance’, adding that ‘the spoken word had powers to exalt and damn that extend almost beyond our comprehension’. See Carl Lindahl, Earnest Games: Folkloric Patterns in the Canterbury Tales (Bloomington, Ind., 1987), 77, emphasis his. ¹⁶ The date of the House of Fame is uncertain. It was written between 1374 and 1386 while Chaucer worked at the customs house, and was traditionally dated to about 1379–80. This date, however, has recently come under scrutiny. Helen Cooper has persuasively argued for a later date, suggesting that it was written in the mid-1380s,

Discursive Turbulence

13

Throughout the House of Fame, Chaucer consistently compares speech, slander, and noise to violence and war, imagery which appropriately connects the power of discourse to physical attacks. In Book III, Slander’s swift movement is said to be like a ‘pelet out of gonne’ (l. 1643).¹⁷ This idea of slander racing round the world with the speed and force of a cannonball is supplemented three hundred lines later by the description of the noise of the House of Rumour. Chaucer writes that this noise is like ‘the rowtynge of the ston | That from th’engyn ys leten gon’ (ll. 1933–4). In other words, it is like the roar of a stone sent forth from a catapult. Again, Chaucer explicitly compares language to weaponry. More generally, sound itself is described in violent terms by the eagle in Book II, when he explains that sound is ‘air ybroke’ (l. 770) and that when noise is made ‘the air ys twyst with violence | And rent’ (ll. 775–6). Fourteenth-century Londoners were well aware of the dramatic power wielded by language and textual culture. The Mercers’ Petition is addressed to the Lords—those who should have the ear of the king in traditional terms. It is a litany of complaints against the rule of Brembre and his successor Exton. Brembre, the mercers claim, was elected ‘with stronge honde’, and has destroyed true, good vassals of the king. He has corrupted elections, using force, and around the same time as Troilus and Criseyde. She notes that Skeat proposed 1383–4 as a date for the poem, and that Minnis has suggested that a post-Troilus date is possible. Cooper suggests that the idea that Chaucer would not have returned to the octosyllabic line after ‘inventing’ the pentameter is unconvincing (and is disproved by the existence of the early ABC in pentameter form). She argues that Chaucer himself is ‘English Gaufride’ (l. 1470) and is therefore emphasizing that he is a poet of Trojan tales—in other words he must already have written, or have been writing, Troilus and Criseyde. Cooper also discusses the apocalyptic elements of the poem at length, pointing out that judgement was traditionally discussed on the second Sunday of advent, which fell on 10 December, Chaucer’s proclaimed date for his dream, in 1384. See Helen Cooper, ‘Four Last Things in Dante and Chaucer’, New Medieval Literatures 3, ed. Rita Copeland, David Lawton, and Wendy Scase (Oxford, 1999), 39–66, 59, 64. See also Alastair Minnis, Oxford Guides to Chaucer: The Shorter Poems (Oxford, 1995), 171. He writes: ‘Personally, I believe that the House of Fame just might have been composed after Troilus and Criseyde.’ Internal evidence would also support a later date for the poem. The movement from the House of Fame to the House of Rumour strongly suggests a movement from writing poems about the classical world to writing a poem about the present day—i.e. from Troilus and Criseyde to the Canterbury Tales. The early emphasis on the story of the fall of Troy and the poets who wrote about it contrasts greatly with the later emphasis on contemporary tidings, pilgrims with tales to tell, and competing discourses. The House of Fame reads to me as an obvious ‘bridge’ between Chaucer’s two long poems, pre-empting the concerns of the Canterbury Tales. ¹⁷ All references to Chaucer’s works are to The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry Benson, 3rd edn (Oxford, 1987).

14

Discursive Turbulence

allowing only his partisans to vote. He has prevented people gathering for legitimate purposes, and has ‘openlich disclaundred’ good men. His successor had the Jubilee Book burnt. Brembre has also tried to close down discussion, and to silence complaint and dissenting voices. This aspect of the mercers’ complaint is of particular interest here. They claim: And thus yet hiderward hath the Mairaltee ben holden as it were of conquest or maistrye, & many othere offices als. So that what man pryue or apert in special, that he myght wyte, grocchyng pleyned or helde ayeins any of his wronges, or bi puttyng forth of whom so it were, were it neuer so vnpreuable, were apeched, & it were displesyng to hym Nichol, anon was emprisoned. And, though it were ayeins falshede of the leest officer that hym lust meynteigne, was holden vntrewe lige man to owre kyng; for who reproued such an officer, maynteigned bi hym, of wronge or elles, he forfaited ayeins hym, Nichol, & he, vnworthy as he saide, represented the kynges estat. Also if any man bi cause of seruyce or other leueful comaundement approched a lorde, to which lorde he, Nichol, dradde his falshede to be knowe to, anon was apeched that he was false to the conseille of the Citee, & so to the kyng.¹⁸

The petition paints a picture of a claustrophobic city, dominated by scandal and whisperings, where careless words could indeed cost lives. At the centre of the text is the fact that Brembre harshly punishes anyone who makes a complaint, thus stifling debate by inculcating a fear of spies and eavesdroppers in public and even in private places. The mercers assert that anyone who complains about Brembre is accused, and imprisoned if Brembre so wishes. This is done even if the alleged offence is utterly unprovable (‘were it neuer so vnpreuable’), as Brembre’s will seems to be the only law that counts. Moreover, it is not only Brembre himself who cannot be discussed. Any complaint about even ‘the leest officer that [Brembre] lust meynteigne’ is punished, as Brembre claims that his officers represent him, and that he represents the king himself. Criticizing the most lowly of Brembre’s servants is thus termed tantamount to slandering the king. Brembre further attempts to silence dissent by arresting anyone who tries to tell any of the lords what is going on in the ¹⁸ ‘A Petition of the Folk of Mercerye’, MS Pub. Rec. Off., Ancient Petitions, File 20, No. 997. Printed in Chambers and Daunt, Book of London English, 33–7, 34–5. Subsequent references appear in the text. For a discussion of the flexible use of elements of curial prose in the Mercers’ Petition, and also in Chaucer’s ‘Tale of Melibee’, setting such texts in their London context, see J. D. Burnley, ‘Curial Prose in England’, Speculum 61 (1986): 593–614. Green discusses the influence of vernacular speech on the Mercers’ Petition, in Crisis of Truth, 2.

Discursive Turbulence

15

city, and accuses such honest petitioners of being ‘false to the conseille of the Citee, & so to the kyng’.¹⁹ Words are as dangerous in the world of the Mercers’ Petition as they are in the House of Fame. P R I V E O R A PE RT Richard’s proclamation and the Mercers’ Petition describe a city where no utterance is safe. One can be arrested for saying things in private, even if it cannot be proved, and the accused has no recourse—Brembre and Richard have absolute power and exercise it arbitrarily. They seem to exist in a medieval version of a Panopticon, a place: Ryght even in myddes of the weye Betwixen hevene and erthe and see, That what so ever in al these three Is spoken, either privy or apert, The way therto ys so overt, And stant eke in so juste a place That every soun mot to hyt pace; Or what so cometh from any tonge, Be hyt rouned, red, or songe Or spoke in suerte or in drede, Certeyn, hyt moste thider nede. (House of Fame, 714–24)

Fame too can hear everything, prying into private places, hearing secret utterances, even if they are whispered—‘rouned’—and whether they are spoken ‘in suerte or in drede’ (with confidence or doubtfully). In this description of Fame’s palace, Chaucer imagines a place where entering a linguistic world is dangerous, a place where ‘certeyn’ there can be no privacy. In describing such a place, he uses the same kind of language as is deployed in the city documents, petitions, and proclamations of the time. It is particularly notable that he here uses a phrase that has the tone of a formula, and that also occurs in Richard’s proclamation, in the Mercers’ Petition, and in other contemporary London documents such as Brembre’s proclamation against congregations and his proclamation against fishmongers. That phrase—‘prive or apert’—encapsulates the ¹⁹ See also Lindenbaum, ‘London Texts and Literate Practice’, 286, 290.

16

Discursive Turbulence

blurring of the boundaries between private and public in late fourteenthcentury London, the atmosphere of distrust and suspicion, the fear of spies, the feeling that the city was a place of betrayal and instability.²⁰ Chaucer departs from his sources in these lines. There are similar descriptions of Fame’s residence both in the Aeneid and in the Metamorphoses. Virgil writes: Extemplo Libyae magnas it Fama per urbes […] nocte uolat caeli medio terraeque per umbram stridens, nec dulci declinat lumina somno; luce sedet custos aut summi culmine tecti, turribus aut altis, et magnas territat urbes, tam ficti prauisque tenax quam nuntia veri (Aeneid IV, ll. 173, 184–8)²¹ At once, Rumour runs through Libya’s great cities [ … ] By night, she flies through the shadows, midway between earth and the heavens, screeching, nor lowers her eyes in sweet sleep; by day she sits on guard either on high roof-top, or elevated towers, and terrifies great cities, holding to the false and wrong while heralding truth.

Ovid’s version is closer to Chaucer’s reworking: Orbe locus medio est inter terrasque fretumque caelestesque plagas, triplicis confinia mundi unde quod est usquam, quamuis regionibus absit, inspicitur, penetratque cavas vox omnis ad aures ²⁰ Mary Flowers Braswell also discusses the language of the House of Fame in the context of discourses of fourteenth-century London, arguing that the poem is deeply embedded in legal language of the time—and that legal language itself was often self-consciously ‘literary’. In particular, she focuses on the importance in lawsuits of being ‘de bone fama’. See Mary Flowers Braswell, Chaucer’s ‘Legal Fiction,’: Reading the Records (London, 2001), especially 50–3. Lindenbaum points out that Londoners in the late 1370s and early 1380s were ‘crossing discursive boundaries—particularly the barriers between the official languages and English and between legal and literary forms’: ‘London Texts and Literate Practice’, 286. Chaucer’s piebald discourse is very much of its time. Equally, the mercers use ‘literary’ tropes—for example, their punning on Brembre’s name to term him a bramble, extending the metaphor to discuss certain wrongs as branches emanating from this root. ²¹ Virgil, Opera, ed. R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969), translation mine. Subsequent references to Virgil are to this edition.

Discursive Turbulence

17

There is a place in the middle of the world, ’twixt land and sea and sky, the meeting-point of the three-fold universe. From this place, whatever it is, however far away, is seen, and every word penetrates to these hollow ears.²²

Neither description dwells on Fame’s ability to hear different kinds of comments as Chaucer does: ‘what so cometh from any tonge, | Be hyt rouned, red, or songe | Or spoke in suerte or in drede’. Nor does either classical source specify that what is said both privately and publicly comes to Fame’s notice. These are additions of Chaucer’s, details that firmly root his poem in the chaotic textual anxieties of the 1380s. Richard specified that ‘non be so hardy to speke, ne mouen, ne publish, en priue ne appert’ anything to the detriment of him or his; the mercers asserted that Brembre would punish anyone who complained, whether ‘pryue or apert’. Chaucer uses this same phrase—‘privy or apert’—to describe what Fame can hear; everything that is said in secrecy or openly reaches her palace. He uses this formulaic phrase in a poem written while he lived over the gates of the city of London, associated with Brembre at the customs house and, in all probability, employed the very scribe (Adam Pynkhurst) that penned the Mercers’ Petition.²³ His poem is fundamentally engaged with the troubled discursive environment of contemporary London. The phrase ‘prive or apert’ encompasses public and private speech in the texts cited, making it clear that the private life is not exempt from scrutiny. This is emphasized elsewhere in the House of Fame through the ²² Ovid, Metamorphoses, with a translation by Frank Miller, 2nd edn (Cambridge, Mass. 1984), Book XII, ll. 39–42. The subsequent few lines are very similar to Chaucer’s description of the House of Rumour; Ovid emphasizes the permeability of Rumour’s crowded house. ²³ See Linne Mooney, ‘Chaucer’s Scribe’, Speculum 81 (2006): 97–138. I discuss some of the implications of her discovery in Marion Turner, ‘Conflict’, in Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature: Middle English, ed. Paul Strohm (Oxford, forthcoming 2007). On scribes and the book trade in London see A. I. Doyle, and M. B. Parkes, ‘The Production of Copies of the Canterbury Tales and the Confessio amantis in the Early Fifteenth Century’, in Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts and Libraries: Essays Presented to N. R. Ker, ed. M. B. Parkes and Andrew G. Watson (London, 1978), 163–210; Graham Pollard, ‘The Company of Stationers Before 1557’, The Library 18:1 (4th ser.): 1–38; Francis W. Steer (ed.), The Scriveners’ Company Common Paper 1357–1628 (London, 1968); C. Paul Christianson, A Directory of London Stationers and Book Artisans 1300–1500 (New York, 1990), and ‘A Community of Book Artisans in Chaucer’s London’, Viator 20 (1998): 207–18. For Chaucer’s connection with Brembre, see Strohm, Social Chaucer, 28–32.

18

Discursive Turbulence

frequent contrast of ‘lowd’ or ‘open’ and ‘prvye’. In his general discussion of sound, the eagle contrasts ‘lowd or pryvee’ (l. 767) speech, and forty lines later again mentions ‘every word, ywis, | That lowd or pryvee spoken ys’ (ll. 809–10). Towards the end of the poem, the narrator describes the jostling crowd, every one of whom is telling tidings and spreading rumours: And every wight that I saugh there Rouned everych in others ere A newe tydynge prively, Or elles tolde al openly (ll. 2043–6, emphasis mine)

All of these tidings increase with their constant re-telling, morph in various ways, escape from the House of Rumour and then fly to Fame to take their chance with her. The explicit division of kinds of speech highlights the fact that whispers and private speculations are just as available for judgement by the higher authority—in this case Fame—as are open declarations. Language is always public and available for judgement in this poem, despite any attempts to keep it ‘prive’. In the Mercers’ Petition and in Richard’s proclamation against slander, the phrase ‘pryve or apert’ is used in the context of perceived sedition. Both documents are about the imposition of surveillance on what is said either privately or openly, and that surveillance is explicitly aggressive and punitive. One document is promoting, the other protesting against such surveillance, but they both depict the same environment of relentless, prying scrutiny. In other documents, the same formulaic phrase is used to describe seditious behaviour as well as seditious speech. In a proclamation about alien fishmongers—whose privileges Brembre had in fact severely curtailed—Brembre orders that such tradesmen should not be disturbed or intimidated ‘in priue or apiert’.²⁴ Brembre’s proclamation against congregations orders that ‘no man make none congregaciouns, conuenticules, ne assembles of poeple in priue nen apert’.²⁵ Informal associations were commonly seen as breeders of rebellion at this time (and more formal associations also came under attack in the request for the guild ²⁴ ‘Alia proclamacio de extraneis vitallariis ueniendis & uendendis absque impedimento pisces suos’, MS Guildhall, Letter-Book H, f. clxxii. Printed in Chambers and Daunt, Book of London English, 32–3, 32. ²⁵ ‘Proclamacio de congregacionibus conuenticlis & conspiracionibus non faciendi’, MS Guildhall, Letter-Book H, f. clxxii. Printed in Chambers and Daunt, Book of London English, 31–2, 31.

Discursive Turbulence

19

returns in 1388).²⁶ Here Brembre is aiming at Northampton’s discontented supporters, who were outraged by Brembre’s high-handed policies and by his increasingly tyrannical rule.²⁷ Thomas Usk’s testimony tells us that Northampton’s coterie did contrive to meet up in just such an coven to plot their next moves in ‘J[ohn] Willynghames taverne in the Bowe’.²⁸ In the House of Fame the scandal-spreaders are also described as a ‘congregacioun | Of folk’ (ll. 2034–5, emphasis mine)—a garrulous group that would have been viewed with deep suspicion in 1380s London. Their gossipy discussions—some private and some open—are implicitly associated with urban sedition when Chaucer writes: Thus north and south Wente every tydyng fro mouth to mouth, And that encresing every moo, As fyr is wont to quyke and goo From a sparke spronge amys, Til al a citee brent up ys. (ll. 2075–80)

In a comparison very similar to that used in Troilus and Criseyde, when noise spreads like fire in Troy, here tidings are yet again associated with violence and damage. Chaucer himself might have witnessed the burning of the Savoy in 1381, when the rebels’ anger about the misuse of documentary culture, and their own seizure of discursive power to mobilize a large group of protesters, destroyed John of Gaunt’s palace.²⁹ ²⁶ See Chapter 5. ²⁷ Brembre’s harsh attitude towards gatherings of Northampton’s supporters is demonstrated in his treatment of John Constantine. This cordwainer, who urged his associates to close their businesses and support Northampton after the forced election of 1383, was executed and his head displayed at Newgate. See Barron, London, 37. ²⁸ The Appeal of Thomas Usk against John Northampton, Appendix 2 in The Testament of Love, ed. R. Allen Shoaf (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1998), 423–9, 423. All subsequent references to Usk’s works are to this edition and appear in the text. ²⁹ J. Stephen Russell argues that lines 935–49 are ‘thick with allusions to the Peasants’ Revolt’. He points out that Watling Street ran from Tower Hill to St Paul’s, connecting with Fleet Street at Ludgate, and that from the royal family’s perspective in the Tower, Watling Street would have been the sight line for seeing the burning of the Savoy and the attack on the Temple. He also draws connections between ‘Watlynge’ (l. 939) and Wat Tyler, ‘Algate’ (l. 943) and Aldgate, ‘Pheton’ (l. 942) and Richard II. See J. Stephen Russell, ‘Is London Burning? Chaucerian Allusion to the Rising of 1381’, Chaucer Review 30 (1995–6): 107–9, 107, 108, 109. The Anonimalle Chronicler describes Richard’s watching the fires from the top of the tower. See Saul, Richard II, 65. See Justice, Writing and Rebellion, especially 40–66, for a discussion of the rebels’ destruction of legal documents and their attempts to insert themselves into literate space.

20

Discursive Turbulence

In an arresting simile, Chaucer here imagines the whole of a city being burnt up and destroyed by the power of speech. This image encapsulates the political situation of 1380s London where high-stakes politics were played out in textual culture—and where some of those who tried the hardest to control texts (Brembre and lowly Usk) were ultimately put to death. Geffrey himself, Chaucer’s persona in the House of Fame, shows awareness of the fact that acting or speaking publicly and gaining fame for one’s utterances is not necessarily desirable, and can lead one into dangerous territory. He asserts that he has not come for fame, and that: ‘Sufficeth me, as I were ded, That no wight have my name in honde. I wot myself best how y stonde; For what I drye, or what I thynke, I wil myselven al hyt drynke,’ (ll. 1876–80)³⁰

This speech stands as a plea for the absolute necessity of the private life, of maintaining a sense of self that is beyond the reaches of political authority. Geffrey insists that he alone can know his position best, and that what he experiences and thinks must remain known to himself alone. Such comments resonate with particular power if one remembers that the king and the mayor (like Fame herself ) were both attempting to erode a sense of the private at this time, and were insisting on their right to spy on and to punish utterances and actions intended to be private.

T H E S OV E R E I G N VO I C E Fame’s arbitrariness and her absolute power also connect her to Richard and to Brembre, both of whom were criticized for their tyrannical tendencies.³¹ In the proclamation against slander cited above, it is made manifest that no one else can determine penalties or should intervene in any way; rather ‘oure lord þe kyng; our souereyn juge, mowe ordeyne þer-of þat him semeth best’. Richard—as was so often his wont—will ³⁰ Minnis calls these lines ‘somewhat startling’ and ‘curious’ (Shorter Poems, 162). But the political context of the 1380s renders them easier to understand. ³¹ Piero Boitani points out that Chaucer’s Fame is excessively arbitrary, even within the tradition of Fama; she is ‘even more arbitrary than the ‘‘claritas’’ of Boccaccio’s De Mulieribus Claris’, for example. See Piero Boitani, Chaucer and the Imaginary World of Fame (Cambridge, 1984), 172.

Discursive Turbulence

21

take no advice, but will simply do what seems best to him. Similarly, the mercers assert that if anyone attempted to complain about their treatment to a lord, Brembre would immediately have them arrested (35). They further add that they have now all been forbidden from approaching the king with their grievances in any way (36).³² Brembre, according to the mercers, wishes to have total power: if people behave in a way ‘displesyng to hym Nichol’ (35), they are imprisoned. One must not criticize anyone whom Brembre ‘lust meynteigne’ (35). Both Richard and Brembre act according to their desires and pleasures, not according to transparent law, nor will they take advice from the lords of the realm. Brembre and Exton had the Jubilee Book destroyed ‘wyth-out conseille of trewe men’ (35), we are told. The mercers also feel that Brembre is making new regulations that trample on traditional rights for which he has no respect. Thus he ignores customs that by ‘[tyme] out of mynde hath be vsed’ (35), and implements rules that suit him instead. Such tyranny can also be seen in the God of Love in the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women, a figure whose absolutist tendencies have been compared to Richard’s.³³ In the House of Fame too, Fame consistently acts only according to her own desires. The phrase ‘me list’ is often used: ‘me lyst hyt noght’ (l. 1564), ‘Hem that me liste’ (l. 1582), ‘Me lyste not to doo hyt now’ (l. 1821). She is the most terrifying absolutist imaginable: entirely unpredictable in her desires, ruled solely by whim, and with access to every utterance her subjects make. Fame is a tyrant ruler writ large. The tyrannical nature of Fame, and of Richard, is further illustrated by their parallel unconcern with separating fact and fiction. Both are determined that their will alone should count, and truth is an inevitable casualty of such determination. In the House of Fame, Chaucer makes it clear that Fame allots honour and dishonour arbitrarily, and has no regard for the truth or for justice. Similarly, in the proclamation cited at the beginning of this chapter, Richard has nothing to say about falsity ³² In a letter from the king to the mayor, aldermen, and commons, dated 7 October 1387, Richard charges Brembre and his associates ‘to see that no one trouble him with petitions to show greater favour to the traitors John Norhamptone, John More, and Richard Norbury’. A proclamation to the same effect was made nine days later. See Reginald R. Sharpe, Calendar of Letter Books: Letter-Book H, c. 1375–1399 (London, 1907), 317. ³³ For a brief survey of critical opinion on this issue see Riverside Chaucer, 1064, n. to F 341–408. Lynn Staley has recently argued that the F prologue ‘will work only if the sovereign is not dangerous’; see Lynn Staley, Languages of Power in the Age of Richard II (University Park, Pa., 2005), 22.

22

Discursive Turbulence

or truth. He wants no one to say anything critical of him, regardless of whether or not what is said can be proved. This proclamation is not about slander at all, in the real sense of the word, as Richard refuses to distinguish between true and false criticism of him. He is trying to control language completely, to prevent any inroads on his own sovereign discourse, his own view of the world. According to the mercers, Brembre too is not interested in truth—he accuses people of unprovable offences, and calls true men false, according to his interests. All three of these texts depict a world in which the powerful brush aside questions of truth and impose their own authority to determine what can and cannot be said. Chaucer’s poem goes one step further than this: the startling image of ‘fals and soth compouned’ (l. 2108) suggests that truth itself does not exist. But the House of Rumour also shows us that discourse cannot be controlled by anyone, as we see these unreliable tidings coming to life, speaking to each other, and making their own decisions. The unruliness of the House of Rumour stands against the sovereign discourse that Richard sought to maintain, while also exposing the sullied character of any tiding at all.

C O N F L I C T I N 1 3 8 0 s LO N D O N The House of Fame is a poem of great complexity and diversity: it moves easily from desert to temple, from Ovid to Dante, from parody to literary theory. Here, I am particularly concerned with it as a poem that is rooted in its specific historical moment and in its place of production. Chaucer gives it a date—twice repeating the 10th of December in the opening lines (ll. 63, 111)—and he names himself (l. 729). He locates himself in the London customs house and in his lodgings above Aldgate. The House of Fame famously evokes the atmosphere of the city in the eagle’s description of Geffrey’s neighbours, ‘That duellen almost at thy dores’ (l. 650), whose discourse he ignores after a busy day of ‘rekenynges’ (l. 653) in order to go to his ‘hous’ (l. 655) where he ‘sittest at another book’ (l. 657).³⁴ The poem is explicitly about recent culture and ³⁴ As Sister Margaret Teresa writes: ‘What we do hear from Chaucer, repeatedly reflected in The House of Fame, is Aldgate, its nights of reading, its sky-highness, its daytime bustle and noise. Of an evening, nobody intrudes: he has the city-dweller’s experience’. See Sister Margaret Teresa, ‘Chaucer’s High Rise: Aldgate and The House of Fame’, American Benedictine Review 33:2 (1982): 162–71, 165.

Discursive Turbulence

23

new ideas. Chaucer mentions a fourteenth-century vernacular author (Dante, l. 450), and indeed, the whole poem can be read as a response to the Divine Comedy. The very subject of the House of Fame is the search for new tidings, the need to find something different to write and to talk about. In addition to this, the poem is structured by a general movement from the old to the new, from the House of Fame to the House of Rumour, from classical authors to recent gossip, from the court to the city, from established ways of composing poetry to innovative, chaotic ideas. About two-thirds of the way through the final book of the poem, Geffrey explains to an interlocutor that he is here ‘Somme newe tydynges for to lere | Somme newe things, y not what, | Tydynges, other this or that’ (ll. 1886–8). He is eager for the new, and has been promised new tidings by his guide. However, he complains that in the House of Fame he has found no such thing: ‘these be no suche tydynges | As I mene of ’ (ll. 1894–5). Rather disparagingly, Geffrey then asserts that he has known about the longing for fame ‘Sith that first y hadde wit’ (l. 1998). The world of Fame—which is very much the world of classical lore and literature—is tired, boring, out-of-date. The innovative movement from the House of Fame to the House of Rumour signifies, in very broad terms, Chaucer’s move from courtly poetry and the ambience of the Book of the Duchess to the city marketplace in which the Canterbury Tales could gestate. Stephen Knight has suggested that the castle-like House of Fame represents ‘the old world of feudal power’ while the House of Rumour represents ‘a pullulating commercial marketplace’. It reflects ‘the world of medieval productivity of peasants and artisans and merchants, with all its contemporary complexity and inherent threat to the feudal world’.³⁵ Similar understandings of the nature of the two locations are at work in Kittredge’s comparison of the ‘factory’ or ‘laboratory’ of the House of Rumour with the ‘court’ or ‘castle’ of the House of Fame, or in Bennett’s characterization of the House of Rumour as ‘suburban’ and ‘plebeian’, populated by ‘commonplace people’ in opposition to the ‘grandiose’ ‘palace’ or ‘castle’ that is the House of Fame.³⁶ The House of Rumour is, as all of these authors suggest, an urban place of production. Bennett writes that the movement from the House of Fame to the House of Rumour is ‘like stepping from the decorum of rooms ³⁵ Stephen Knight, Geoffrey Chaucer (Oxford, 1986), 22. ³⁶ G. L. Kittredge, Chaucer and His Poetry (Cambridge, Mass., 1915), 106, J. A. W. Bennett, Chaucer’s Book of Fame: An Exposition of ‘The House of Fame’ (Oxford, 1968), 100–15.

24

Discursive Turbulence

and audiences in the great hall of Westminster to the crowded streets of Thames-side’.³⁷ The House of Rumour is specifically recognizable as the medieval city—medieval London, indeed, was the place that provided the setting for the composition of this poem. Where else would one find a ‘congregacioun | Of folk’ (ll. 2034–5) squashed so much together that each had hardly ‘a fote-bred of space’ (l. 2042)? The scene towards the end of the poem depicts the jostling city in all its chaotic rivalry: And whan they were alle on an hepe Tho behynde begunne up lepe, And clamben up on other faste, And up the nose and yen kaste, And troden fast on others heles, And stampen, as men doon aftir eles. (ll. 2149–54)

This image of men climbing onto each other’s backs and half-tripping each other up, sharply evokes the crowds on a city street, pushing each other out of the way to try to get the best view. Like the Mercers’ Petition, the House of Fame depicts the contemporary city, characterizing it as a place dominated by discursive turbulence and conflict, ruled arbitrarily, and controlled by unceasing surveillance. But the poem positions itself politically in a very different way to the Mercers’ Petition. They are, of course, generically diverse texts: a courtly dream poem does not function in the same way as a parliamentary petition. Furthermore, the petition is specifically partisan, while Chaucer’s poem makes no overt claims to political meaning. The declared specificity of the mercers’ critique changes the nature of that critique. It is focused only on the government of Brembre’s party in London. The mercers seem confident that such corruption and oppression can be ended, by the actions of some men of great authority. If the lords to whom they are appealing will listen to their complaints, remove Brembre’s coterie from office, chastise the king about his protection of such men, and establish a different kind of rule, then the atmosphere in London could change completely. They rely on the lords to enact ‘coreccion of alle the wronges bifore sayde’ (37). But the House of Fame explicitly refuses to suggest that men of great authority can right political or discursive wrongs. Instead, the poem dissolves into silence as Chaucer’s persona, peering through the clamouring, chattering crowd sees a man who ³⁷ Bennett, Chaucer’s Book of Fame, 171–2.

Discursive Turbulence

25

‘semed for to be | A man of gret auctorite’ (ll. 2156–7). The uncertain nature of this man, and his failure to manifest himself fully, or to impose any kind of authority, suggests that Chaucer is reluctant here to make any claims for the possibility of change or reform.³⁸ While the mercers rely completely on the actions of men of authority, the House of Fame suggests no alternative to the oppression and turbulence of the Houses of Fame and Rumour. The House of Fame makes no pretence of hoping for change. Instead, by refusing to suggest that things either were or will be better, Chaucer depicts discourse at war as a timeless concern, while also making clear its specific importance in his own time. The poem suggests that in every historical period there will be arbitrary decisions, lost utterances, unfair judgements, conflicting accounts, and warring tidings. The vagaries of speech and texts and the connections of discourse to violence are issues relevant to any society. But by expressing these ideas in politically resonant language, by engaging with discourses also used in contemporary proclamations and petitions, and by writing such a poem in the midst of a maelstrom of discursive turbulence, Chaucer places his text firmly, although ambiguously, in the political domain. His readers are free to draw what political conclusions they choose from his participation in this maelstrom, and from his engagement with issues so politically volatile at this time. He is careful, however, to make no statements that could incriminate himself.³⁹ As always, he allows no one to have his ‘name in honde’ (l. 1877). Chaucer is no voice crying in the wilderness; he does not set himself up as a social crusader or a moral reformer. Rather, his texts reflect the turbulence and antagonism amongst which he lived, and present an image of society and communication as inevitably fractured. There is no man of great authority to counteract capricious Fame, a tyrant who can make black seem white in her amoral linguistic universe. Events subsequent to the penning of the Mercers’ Petition proved that men of great authority could indeed change things in London—and in England. Their own rule, however, was hardly less ‘tyrannical’ than that which they replaced. The brutal purging of Richard’s favourites, the vicious execution of men such as Usk, Gloucester’s refusal to grant clemency even when the queen went down on her knees to him, earned ³⁸ Minnis’s suggestion that had the man arrived he might have turned out to be ‘a mere gossip’ is interesting. See Shorter Poems, 251. ³⁹ This is, of course, typically Chaucerian. See Paul Strohm, ‘Politics and Poetics: Usk and Chaucer in the 1380s’, in Lee Patterson (ed.), Literary Practice and Social Change in Britain, 1380–1550 (Berkeley, Calif., 1990), 83–112.

26

Discursive Turbulence

the parliament of 1388 its ‘merciless’ tag. The execution of Brembre was particularly unjust: an appointed group of twelve great lords found no cause for the death penalty, nor did a group consisting of two representatives of every London craft.⁴⁰ A closer reading of the Mercers’ Petition suggests that they expect the Lords Appellant to be just as tyrannical as Brembre and Richard. They are hoping not so much for a different kind of government as for a government sympathetic to them. The mercers frequently use phrases which imply that the lords themselves act purely according to their own desires: ‘if it lyke to yow’, ‘by yowre leue’, ‘lyke it to yow’, ‘if it lyke to yow’, ‘that it lyke to yowre lordeship’(33–4, 36, 37). Such language does not appeal to moral rectitude or to the rule of law, simply to a set of desires different from those of Brembre and Richard. The mercers address the lords as the most appropriate people to give counsel to the king and to prevent the misuse of his power by Brembre, comments which suggest that they are writing from a desire to end abuses and to reinstate ‘proper’ rule.⁴¹ But the petitioners are really men who were strongly attached to Northampton’s faction, who know that they are allying themselves with an ascendant group of nobles, and who are hoping for a change in the balance of power in the country as a whole and in the city. They mask a desire for a change in rulers with the pretence of a desire for a change in rule. As Lindenbaum comments, the mercers ‘disguise the partisan nature of their complaint and claim to speak for common profit’.⁴² A fac¸ade of social optimism and morality covers the cynical politicking of the document. In fact, the duplicity of the document goes even further than this. Although the petition is entered into the Rolls of Parliament for 1386, this date cannot be correct (as the new edition of the Rolls makes clear).⁴³ The petition must have been written after 16 March 1387, on which date the Common Council decreed that the Jubilee Book was ⁴⁰ Westminster Chronicle, 310–12. ⁴¹ It was, of course, customary to blame not the king himself but his advisers for misleading him. The mercers emphasize the idea that the king does not know what is being done in his name, and will be horrified when he realizes the iniquities of the rule that he has been sponsoring. Similarly, the rebels of 1381 roundly asserted that they were acting with the king and against his evil ministers. Saul discusses the familiar strategy of medieval oppositions of claiming that ‘the accused had taken advantage of the favour shown to them ‘‘to accroach the royal power’’: that is to gain such a hold over the king as to allow them to make illegitimate use of his authority’. Richard II, 191. ⁴² Lindenbaum, ‘London Texts and Literate Practice’, 290. ⁴³ See Appendix 1a to the rolls of the Merciless Parliament in Chris Given-Wilson, P. Brand, A. Curry, R. E. Horrox, G. Martin, W. M. Ormrod, J. R. S. Phillips (eds.), The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England CD-ROM (Leicester, 2005).

Discursive Turbulence

27

to be burnt (an event referred to in the petition).⁴⁴ The petition must also have been written after the proclamation made on 16 October 1387 (based on a letter of 7 October) in which Richard demanded that no-one trouble him with petitions asking him to show greater favour to Northampton, More, and Norbury. The mercers refer to this embargo on petitions in their own petition (36).⁴⁵ Further, the mercers’ reference to having been commanded ‘oft tyme vp owre ligeaunce to vnnedeful & vnleueful dyuerse doynges’ (36) probably refers to the oath of allegiance to the king against anyone opposed to him, extracted from the city around 5 October 1387.⁴⁶ The document was clearly written before the trial of Brembre et al., which began on 3 February 1388. On 18 January, a meeting was held with the London guilds at which indictments against Brembre were solicited.⁴⁷ It is possible that the petitions were handed over at this point, or shortly afterwards although they might have been prepared in advance.⁴⁸ The Westminster Chronicler tells us that: in principio parliamenti quidam merceri, aurifabri, pannarii et alii inquieti in civitate London’ porrexerunt billas in dicto parliamento contra piscarios et vinetarios, asserentes eos fore vitallarios, judicantes eos indignos tam celebrem regere civitatem … majorem eorum Nicholaum Exton’ pecierunt deponi at the beginning of the parliament certain mercers, goldsmiths, drapers, and other restless elements in the city of London presented in the parliament bills of complaint against the fishmongers and the vintners, whom they described as victuallers, unfitted in their judgement to control a city so illustrious … they petitioned that their mayor, Nicholas Exton, should be deposed.⁴⁹

It is highly likely that the chronicler is here referring to the petitions usually dated to 1386. The petitions are dominated by complaint against the victualling guilds and by a desire to exclude them from office.⁵⁰ Antipathy against Exton and a wish to deprive him of his position is another constant complaint. Overall, then it seems certain that these petitions ⁴⁴ For the destruction of the Jubilee Book see Sharpe, Calendar of Letter Books, 303. ⁴⁵ Ibid., 317. ⁴⁶ Ibid., 314–15. ⁴⁷ Saul, Richard II, 190–1. ⁴⁸ See Westminster Chronicle, 232–4 for the meeting between the London guilds and the Appellants. (According to the chronicler, however, few complaints were produced at this meeting.) ⁴⁹ Ibid., 334, 335. ⁵⁰ The mercers complain that ‘sith the gouernaunce of this Citee standeth as it is bifor saide, & wole stande whil vittaillers bi suffraunce presumen thilke states vpon hem, the which gouernaunce of, bifor this tyme to moche folke yhidde, sheweth hymself now open whether it hath be a cause or bygynnyng of dyuysion in the Citee & after in the Rewme, or no’ (37). Bird discusses the emphasis on anti-victualler feeling in the petitions in Turbulent London, 80.

28

Discursive Turbulence

should be associated with the Merciless Parliament rather than the Wonderful Parliament; based on the evidence given above, I would suggest a date between late October 1387 and late January 1388 for the production of the Mercers’ Petition. In other words, it was written after the balance of power had shifted, when the Appellant Lords were gaining control, and Richard’s supporters were in disarray. Nigel Saul has written about the lords ‘soliciting’ petitions against Brembre from the guilds, suggesting that the Mercers’ Petition and the other contemporary guild petitions ‘have their origins in the Appellants’ search for evidence against Brembre’.⁵¹ Far from being a document of protest and rebellion, then, the Mercers’ Petition in fact seems to be a document written at the demand of, and in the interests of, the dominant political power. The language of the document, with its frequent emphasis on Brembre’s accroaching to himself the power of the king, fits in rather too neatly with the Appellants’ prosecuting needs to be coincidence.⁵² This petition is written for the new sovereign voice—that of the Lords Appellant—and is masquerading as a brave voice of protest. As a cheap legal recourse, petitions were traditionally vehicles for the disempowered; they were ‘colloquially understood as a proper remedy for those who had few remedies of any other sort’.⁵³ The mercers present themselves as oppressed victims, eliding their powerful position both as a rich guild and as supporters of the ascendant side. The lords were aping Richard’s own aspirations to totalized discourse so thoroughly that at the meeting with the guilds they explicitly told the Londoners to say nothing against the lords themselves. According to the Westminster Chronicle, the Londoners were told (by the brother of one of the Appellants) ‘quod nullus obloqueretur aliquod sinistrum de predictis dominis propter malam gubernacionem regis et regni iam ⁵¹ Saul, Richard II, 184, 193. ⁵² For example: ‘owre lige lordes power hath ben mysused by the forsaid Nichol & his vpberers’ (36). The other petitions written at the same time by other guilds, all penned in Anglo-Norman, frequently repeat the phrase, ‘acrochant fur luy roial poair’. The final accusation of Brembre et al. in the Merciless Parliament often uses this exact phrase. Some of the Anglo-Norman petitions that use this phrase have been printed: the Cordwainers’ Petition is in the Rolls of Parliament 3: 226–7; the Drapers’ Petition is in A. H. Johnson, The History of the Worshipful Company of the Drapers of London (Oxford, 1914), 1: 208–11; the Cutlers’ Petition is in Charles Welch, History of the Cutlers’ Company of London (London, 1916), 1: 263–71. For the accusations against Brembre see Rolls of Parliament 3: 229–36, or Westminster Chronicle, 236–68. ⁵³ Justice, Writing and Rebellion, 60. See also A. Harding, ‘Plaints and Bills in the History of English law, mainly in the period 1250–1350’, in Dafydd Jenkins (ed.), Legal History Studies 1972 (Cardiff, 1975), 65–86.

Discursive Turbulence

29

motis’ (that nobody was to speak any evil in detraction of those lords who had lately been moved to action on account of the misgovernment to which the king and the kingdom had been subjected) and that as a result, ‘videbatur eis non equaliter eos stare cum omnibus prout decet’ (it seemed to the citizens that the members of the tribunal were not as impartial in their sympathy for all parties as they should have been).⁵⁴ Like Richard and Fame, the lords were open about their lack of concern for truth. The House of Fame differs from the Mercers’ Petition in its depiction of a realm (the House of Rumour) where divergent voices wrestle with each other, and tidings find a place to play and to fight before they come under the mono-vocal control of the powerful monarch of posterity. Chaucer’s text suggests that there is a space and a time for discursive conflict and aggression before the oppressive machinery of government weighs in with its powers of censorship. The Mercers’ Petition, on the other hand, proves to be a tool of that very machinery of government rather than another demonstration of the possibilities of voices of complaint. The petition stands as a testament to the sinister control over discourse that was at times wielded in late fourteenth-century London and Westminster, a control that could make officially commissioned texts read like the protests of the oppressed (so much so that the petitions were later dated to a politically very different moment). Fame herself could not have wrought a more effective change of reputation. However, despite the lords’ control over the substance of the petition, Adam Pynkhurst (the scribe) and his mercer masters nonetheless did contrive to find some space for a different voice. While the criticisms of Brembre’s overweening powers and tyrannical behaviour articulate exactly what the lords wanted to be said, other parts of the petition reveal that the mercers tried to use this occasion to their own advantage—without taking any real risks. Hence they pushed for the exclusion of the victuallers from office, and included Exton in their critique. These aspects of the petition were not attended to—the lords refused to sanction the statute prohibiting victuallers from holding office, and instead explicitly approved earlier statutes. They also left Exton alone. There is thus still some turbulence to be found within the petition itself, as the claims of the mercers and those of the lords vie for narrative space. For example, in the middle of a long discussion about Brembre’s behaviour during his mayoralty, the mercers insert a brief complaint about Exton’s ⁵⁴ Westminster Chronicle, 232–3, 234–5.

30

Discursive Turbulence

burning of the Jubilee Book (35). This seems to be an attempt to blur the distinction between the two men, implying that Exton is complicit in Brembre’s guilt. Similarly, the mercers move quickly from a specific condemnation of Brembre to make the general point that allowing victuallers to hold office is the root cause of all these problems (36–7). Indeed, this is the dominant cry of all the petitions, which tend to end with a plea for the 1383 statute against victuallers to be upheld (37). The guildsmen thus managed to make their own voices and requirements heard—albeit their demands were totally unsuccessful. They did what the lords wanted, but they added their own pleas too; their tidings were not silenced by the power of the sovereign voice. The mixture of agendas in the petitions, as well as the mixture of discourses in the Mercers’ Petition in particular, might remind us of the mongrel tidings, randomly united, at the end of the House of Fame, and of that poem’s own use of manifold discourses.⁵⁵ The way that the Mercers’ Petition and the House of Fame use the same phrasing, and both engage with political and literary tropes reveals the importance of looking at such seemingly diverse texts side by side. They were produced in the same textual environment—and might well have been written out by the same hand (Pynkhurst’s).⁵⁶ The Mercers’ Petition and the House of Fame are both concerned with social antagonisms and problems: surveillance, tyranny, the need for private space, and conflict between different points of view are key issues in both texts. But Chaucer’s poem is more open than a document like the petition could be about revealing both the inevitability of tyrannical rulers, and the perennial nature of conflict, subversive behaviour, and antagonistic voices. The House of Fame does not even pretend to hold out hope for social amelioration, nor to suggest that such change is possible or desirable. Indeed, its reliance on the matter of Troy reminds us of the recurrence of social conflict, a strategy that Chaucer was fully to exploit in his great poem, Troilus and Criseyde, the focus of the next two chapters.⁵⁷ ⁵⁵ On the mixture of discourses in the Mercers’ Petition see Turner, ‘Conflict’. ⁵⁶ In my ‘Conflict’, I explore further the way that overtly political documents, especially broadsides and petitions, are embedded in the same web of textual production as texts by Gower, Chaucer, and Langland. ⁵⁷ For a discussion of the resurgence of the matter of Troy at moments of social conflict, see Christopher Baswell, ‘Aeneas in 1381’, New Medieval Literatures 5, ed. Rita Copeland, David Lawton, and Wendy Scase (2002): 7–58.

2 Urban Treason: Troilus and Criseyde and the ‘Treasonous Aldermen’ of 1382 Like the House of Fame, Troilus and Criseyde is a product of Chaucer’s time at the customs house, and its concerns are embedded in the politics of late fourteenth-century London.¹ Prominent among these concerns is an anxiety about betrayal and urban division, a concern that could easily be explored through the story of Troy—indeed, Chris Baswell has discussed the fact that the Aeneid and the Peasants’ Revolt were compared by one late-medieval annotator.² While scholars have drawn connections between Troilus and Criseyde and the Wonderful Parliament of 1386,³ little has been said about the implications of the Peasants’ Revolt for the ‘textual environment’ of Chaucer’s poem. Troilus and Criseyde can profitably be read alongside a coeval set of texts, also produced in 1380s London, and also dealing with issues of urban tension and betrayal. These texts accuse certain London aldermen (namely John Horn, Walter Sibyl, and Adam Carlisle) of betraying the city during the Peasants’ Revolt by opening the gates of the capital to the rebels (accusations which were almost certainly without foundation and politically motivated).⁴ Both the accusations of the aldermen and Troilus and Criseyde serve to illustrate the changing allegiances and betrayals that dominated ¹ Strohm suggests that Chaucer may have worked on Troilus and Criseyde from late 1381 to late 1386, arguing that it was probably completed by late 1385. See Paul Strohm, Social Chaucer (Harvard, 1989), 207 n. 41. ² Christopher Baswell, ‘Aeneas in 1381’, New Medieral Literatures 5, ed. Rita Copeland, David Lawton, and Wendy Scase (2002): 7–58. ³ See, for example, Lee Patterson, Chaucer and the Subject of History (London, 1991), 158. ⁴ John Fresh, a mercer, and William Tonge, a vintner, are also implicated. See Ruth Bird, The Turbulent London of Richard II (London, 1949), 53, 57–61.

32

Urban Treason

London politics in the 1380s.⁵ Reading these texts side by side allows us to situate Troilus and Criseyde within contemporary discourses of treason and urban fragmentation, discourses that were under particular pressure in the closing decades of the fourteenth century.⁶ In this chapter, I examine both the similarities and the differences between Troilus and Criseyde and the accusations of the aldermen, and explore the differing ways in which these texts deal with ideas of social antagonism, betrayal, and stasis; ultimately, I offer a reading of Troilus and Criseyde as a poem about the inevitability and omnipresence of social fragmentation and betrayal.⁷

THE ‘TREASONOUS ALDERMEN’ OF 1382 The Rolls of Parliament record John More’s accusation against Walter Sibyl, John Horn, and Adam Carlisle. More, a prominent supporter of Northampton, says: ⁵ Northampton, for example, was allied to grocers in 1371, a group that were later to become his great enemies; he was variously supported by Gaunt and by Richard; he was twice arrested, once only a year after being the king’s declared favourite; and he was pardoned in the wake of Richard’s anger against Exton (Brembre’s successor and Northampton’s principal opponent), who had allowed the Lords Appellant to enter London. See Pamela Nightingale, ‘Capitalists, Crafts and Constitutional Change in Late Fourteenth-Century London’, Past and Present 124 (1989): 3–35, esp. 6–7 and 26–31, and Bird, Turbulent London, p. xxii. ⁶ See Richard Firth Green, A Crisis of Truth: Literature and Law in Ricardian England (Philadelphia, 1999). The idea of a ‘crisis of truth’, which Green himself modifies in his introduction to Crisis of Truth (p. xiii) in order to stress the ‘chronic’ nature of the phenomenon, is in some ways misleading. I do not claim that ‘trouthe’ disappeared at a certain point in history. Rather, I would suggest that fragmentation is expressed at this specific moment in the pressured arena of sworn relations: in the language of ‘trouthe’ and ‘treason’, and in critiques of new forms of affinity and association. ⁷ My argument is thus very different from the claim that Troilus and Criseyde acts as a warning or moral lesson. Eugene Vance, whose depiction of Troilus and Criseyde as a fragmentary text depends upon the idea that Chaucer was a stern moral idealist, claims that Chaucer believed that the city could progress. He writes: ‘this war will be perpetrated yet again and again through successive erotic transgressions in that ‘‘future’’ which is our past and also (unless we use signs properly) the future of England itself.’ See Eugene Vance, Mervelous Signals: Poetics and Sign Theory in the Middle Ages (Lincoln, London, 1986), 283, emphasis mine. Equally, C. David Benson says that Troilus and Criseyde contains ‘pertinent lessons’ for Chaucer’s London (C. David Benson, Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde (London: 1990), 71). In Vance’s interpretation, Christian teleology is celebrated in the poem, and the message of Troilus and Criseyde is basically religious and moralistic. This point of view is in direct contrast with that outlined here. I argue not only that divided Troy reflects contemporary London itself in many ways in this text, but also that the text demonstrates the inevitability of social fragmentation in any and every city.

Urban Treason

33

sist il je ne die mye expressement que einsi est, mais je die, que commune fame & parlance est en nostre Citee, que Johan Horn, Fisshemonger, & Adam Karlill de Londres estoient en dit rumour les primers & principalx conseillours, confortours, abettours, & excitours que les Communes de Kent & de Essex nadgairs treiterousement levez & assemblez encontre le Roi & son Roialme approcheassent leur Citee, & entrassent en ycelle: Et que le dit Wauter suist le primer & principal destourbour a William de Walleworth lors Mair, & a diverses autrez persones foialx nostre Seignur le Roi q’ils ne poaient a cell foitz clore les Portz de la Citee, ne lever le Pount, ou defendre mesme la Citee, encontre les ditz Treitours.⁸ If I did not say my express reasons thus, it is merely because what I said is common rumour and talk in our city, that John Horn, fishmonger and Adam Carlisle of London were, by the said rumour, the major and principal counsellors, advisers, abettors, and instigators, when the commons of Kent and of Essex recently traitorously rose and assembled against the king and his realm; they approached their city and entered into there. And that the said Walter was the main and principal disturber against William Walworth, our mayor and against many other people loyal to our master the king who were not able on this occasion to close the gates of the city, nor to raise the bridge or defend the said city against the said traitors.

An investigation was made into these aldermen by the sheriffs and jurors of London, the results of which appear in two letters dated 4 November and 20 November 1382. The letters serve as damning indictments of the aldermen, and as dramatic descriptions of urban betrayal, conspiracy, and deceit.⁹ In the letter of 20 November, particular pains are taken to emphasize the treachery of the aldermen. John Horn ‘cum principalibus insurrectoribus conspiravit’ (conspired with the principal rebels), and Walter Sybil was ‘de suis coniva, consilio et conspiracione precogitatis’ (of his covin, council, and premeditated conspiracy).¹⁰ Their specific treason to the king is shown by the fact that Horn is ‘capiens super se regalem ⁸ Revd. John Strachey, ed., Rotuli Parliamentorum; ut et petitiones et placita in Parliamento tempore Ricardi II (London, 1767–77), 3: 143. Abbreviations have been silently lengthened. Translations are my own. ⁹ For the later report and part of the report of 4 November, see Andr´e R´eville, Le soulevement des Travailleurs D’Angleterre en 1381 (Paris, 1898), 190–9; also Charles Oman, The Great Revolt of 1381 (London, 1989), 206–13. The earlier report is printed in B. Wilkinson, ‘The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381’, Speculum 15:1 (1940): 12–35, 32–5. Wilkinson comments that neither account can be accepted as ‘anything but a biased and misleading representation of events’ (13). ¹⁰ R´eville, Le soulevement, 190, 192. Translations are my own. For published translations see R. B. Dobson, The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, 2nd edn (London, 1983), 213–26.

34

Urban Treason

potestatem’ (taking upon himself the power of the king), and acting to the ‘adnullacionem regie dignitatis ac legis terre ac pacis regis’ (annulment of the royal dignity and the law of the land and the peace of the king).¹¹ Horn’s treachery is summed up decisively: ‘sic idem Johannes Horn fuit unus principalium insurrectorum contra regem et principalis eorum malorum consiliator’ (in this way the same John Horn was one of the principal rebels against the king and a principal counsellor of those evil men).¹² There are also many references to conscious oath-breaking, a manifest demonstration of treachery and bad faith. Thus John Horn: in contemptum ejusdem domini regis, felonice, false et proditorie contra ligeanceam suam, dixit eisdem: Venite Londonias, quia unanimes facti sumus amici et parati facere vobiscum que proposuistis, et in omnibus que vobis necessaria sunt favorem et obsequium prestare, sciens regis voluntatem et majoris sui mandatum suis dictis contraria fore.¹³ In contempt of that same master, the king, feloniously, falsely, and treacherously against his allegiance, he spoke in these very words: ‘Come to London, because, sharing a common purpose, we have become friendly and ready to do with you that which you have proposed and to show compliance and favour in all that is necessary to you’, knowing that his words were spoken in opposition to the inclination of the king and to the order of the mayor.

Blame is further heaped onto the accused by the impressive list of crimes which is attributed either to them, or to their agency. More than once it is claimed that all of the most heinous and notorious offences of the revolt occurred because of the aldermen’s perfidy. For example: sic per predictum Johannem Horn et Walterum Sybyle predicti felones et proditores domini regis introducti fuerunt in civitatem, ob quam causam carcera [sic] domini regis de Newgate fracta fuit arsiones tenementorum prostraciones domorum, decapitaciones archiepiscopi et aliorum facte fuerunt, et alia plura mala prius inaudita perpetrata per ipsos tunc fuerunt.¹⁴ In this way, through the aforesaid John Horn and Walter Sybil the aforesaid felons and traitors to the king were introduced into the city, by which cause the king’s prison at Newgate was broken open, buildings were burnt, homes razed, the archbishop decapitated and other things done, and many evil things previously unheard of were perpetrated then through them. ¹¹ R´eville, Le soulevement, 192. ¹² Ibid., 193. For example, when Sir John Gerberge was accused of treason, his crime was ‘ ‘‘against his allegiance usurping to himself royal power within the king’s realm’’ ’. Cited in Green, Crisis of Truth, 206. ¹³ R´eville, Le soulevement, 192, emphasis in R´eville’s. ¹⁴ Ibid., 192, emphasis mine.

Urban Treason

35

These sweeping accusations, which state not that the aldermen personally committed all these crimes, but that they occurred because the aldermen enabled them, rely on the premise that the aldermen betrayed London by inviting the commons of Kent and Essex into the city, and by opening the gates to them. Thus, ‘Willelmus Tonge portam illam male aperuit’ (William Tonge evilly opened that gate), and Walter Sybil ‘reliquit portas civitatis apertas’ (left the city gates open).¹⁵ The eagerness of the aldermen to encourage the rebels to enter the city, and to stress the support of the city is a central theme; John Horn is said to have reassured the rebels, insisting: quod ad civitatem cum turmis suis venirent, asserens quod tota civitas Londoniarum fuit in eodem proposito sicut et ipsi fuerunt, et quod ipsi deberent in eadem civitate ita amicabiliter esse recepti, sicut pater cum filio et amicus cum amico.¹⁶ that they might come to the city with their company, claiming that the whole city of London had the same intention as themselves, and that they themselves ought to be received in the same city just as lovingly as a father with his son, or a friend with his friend.

The untruth of such a statement—that the whole of London was in agreement—and the divisiveness of the actions of the ‘traitor aldermen’ is asserted with descriptions of these aldermen repulsing those who were loyal to the crown and to the mayor. Walter Sybil, about to give to the rebels the freedom of ‘introitum et egressum’ (entry and exit) to the gates, is portrayed impeding those who come to resist the Kent men.¹⁷ The aldermen are also accused of having attempted to prevent members of the city from opposing the revolt on other occasions. Walter Sybil and John Horn are said to have ridden back to London when the king was at Smithfield, in order to try to close the gates and to delay any help reaching Richard: they ‘impediverunt homines ad succurendum domino regi et majori’ (impeded men from assisting the king and the mayor).¹⁸ Even more explicitly, in a strong accusation of treachery, the letter asserts that: si cives civitatis festinancius se non expedivissent, auxilium domino regi et majori minus tarde advenisset, causa verborum et factorum predicti Walteri Sybyle et Johannis Horn.¹⁹ ¹⁵ Ibid., 196, 194. William Tonge was accused of opening Aldgate, location of Chaucer’s house, where he lived from 1374–c.1386. See Chaucer Life-Records, ed. Martin M. Crow and Clair C. Olson (Oxford, 1966), 147. ¹⁶ R´eville, Le soulevement, 190. ¹⁷ Ibid., 193. ¹⁸ Ibid., 194. ¹⁹ Ibid., 194.

36

Urban Treason

if the citizens of the city had not hurried with all speed, help would have come to the king and the mayor too late, by the cause of the words and deeds of the aforesaid Walter Sybil and John Horn.

The jurors claim that the peasants ‘prius in proposito fuerunt ad hospicia sua revertendi’ (before had in mind to turn back to their lodgings), and were only persuaded to enter the city by John Horn’s urgings.²⁰ Further: per ipsum et per predictum Walterum Sybyle felonice et proditorie malefactores prenominati excitati et procurati fuerunt veniendi Londonias.²¹ Through [John Horn] and through the above-mentioned Walter Sybil, the felonious and treacherous malefactors above named were aroused and incited to come into London.

The inference is that the ideology and meaning of the revolt originated with the aldermen themselves, and that the specific grievances of the peasants are immaterial. The aldermen do not merely fail to protect the city or to dissuade the rebels; the letter implies that, were it not for the treachery of the aldermen, the peasants would not have been a threat at all. Indeed, the authors’ determination to condemn the aldermen was so strong that the first version of the accusation was re-written within a fortnight to damn the aldermen more conclusively.²² The accusations made against the aldermen have their roots in very specific historical circumstances. London of the 1380s was a site of highstake faction-fighting and political intriguing, most notably between John Northampton’s and Nicholas Brembre’s ‘parties’ (as examined in Chapter 1).²³ In 1381 and 1382, Northampton and his supporters (prominent among whom was John More), held sway, and his opponents, in particular the fishmongers (including among their number Walter Sybil and John Horn), suffered. Northampton sought to implement anti-fishmonger measures and to exclude the victuallers from office. During Northampton’s trial, the suggestion was made that the accusations against the aldermen were trumped up by John More, and that he suppressed evidence in their favour.²⁴ Indeed, More accused them in the ²⁰ R´eville, Le soulevement, 206. ²¹ Ibid., 193, emphasis mine. ²² See Wilkinson, ‘Peasants’ Revolt’, 13. ²³ See Bird, Turbulent London, 2. However, the changing alliances and betrayals that dominated London politics make it difficult to talk of any one specific political party: such groups were formed, operated for a while, and were soon altered or discarded. ²⁴ See Edgar Powell and G. M. Trevelyan, eds., The Peasants’ Rising and the Lollards: A Collection of Unpublished Documents Forming an Appendix to ‘England in the Age of Wycliffe’ (London, 1899), 30 for a transcription of the relevant document (Coram Rege

Urban Treason

37

context of a debate about the ordinances against the fishmongers. Pamela Nightingale has also posited a direct connection between these events. She writes that: To quash the opposition which the London fishmongers raised in parliament, John More accused the two fishmongers Horn and Sybil and the grocer Adam Carlille, all three of them aldermen, of treachery by opening the City gates to the rebels.²⁵

The fact that in the Gloucester parliament of 1378, dominated by John of Gaunt, the victualler adherents of the Calais staple had been attacked, aliens supported, and special privileges given to the drapers (such as Northampton) and the mercers, might seem to give the aldermen a motive.²⁶ After all, the principal targets of the rebels included Gaunt and his palace, the Savoy, and immigrant traders and workers. The accusation of these merchant-capitalists nonetheless seems deeply untenable but it could be made and sustained under the protection of Northampton’s mayoralty, especially when he enjoyed the support of the king, who personally recommended his re-election in 1382. It is highly improbable that the ‘conservative’²⁷ merchant aldermen would have supported a subversive mob, and the indemnity and continued civic importance of the accused reveals that they were not generally viewed as traitors.²⁸ The existence of these accusations suggests that a fear of urban collapse was being manipulated by More and others, who were exploiting contemporary anxieties in order to further a political agenda. The letters thus serve to demonstrate two layers of urban intrigue: first, the aldermen are accused of treachery and, second, these accusations appear to have been trumped up to be used in pursuit of factional advantage. The matter Roll, Hill. II Ric II 507, Rex 39). Wilkinson describes the jurors who authored the report as ‘strongly and unscrupulously partisan’ (‘Peasants’ Revolt’, 19). ²⁵ See ‘Capitalists’, 26–7. However, rather surprisingly, Nightingale seems to take the accusations against the aldermen at face value in her more recent book, A Medieval Mercantile Community: The Grocers’ Company and the Politics and Trade of London 1000–1485 (New Haven, Ct., London, 1995). She writes that ‘The evidence certainly suggests that the alderman-fishmonger, John Horn … actively encouraged [the rebels], and even brought back several of the leaders to lodge at his house’ (266–7). ²⁶ See Nightingale, ‘Capitalists’, 22–4. ²⁷ These aldermen were generally part of the group described by Bird as ‘wealthy merchant capitalists’ (Turbulent London, 1). Although the groups and factions in London politics were perhaps more fluid than Bird implies, this term is still useful: the fishmongers and their associates were certainly among the richer and more prominent London citizens. ²⁸ Adam Carlisle, for example, was alderman of Aldgate in 1390, 1391, and 1393, sheriff in 1388, and MP for the City in 1388. For an account of the civic offices subsequently held by the accused aldermen, see Bird, Turbulent London, 60.

38

Urban Treason

of the (un)reliability of the documents is of secondary importance here, however; the crucial issue is the availability and easy deployment of the idea and language of civic betrayal and treachery.²⁹ The accusations seem to have become common currency, as versions of them occur elsewhere. They are transmitted, however, in distorted form. Froissart states that: En la ville de Londres avoecques le maieur a XII eschevins. Li IX estoient pour ly et pour le roy, sicom il le monstr`erent et ly troy de la secte de ce mescheant peuple. together with the Mayor, the City of London has twelve aldermen. Nine were with him and the King, as their actions showed, and three were on the side of those evil men.³⁰

When Froissart accuses Londoners of inviting in the rebels, it is the commons and not the aldermen that he specifies, but his phrasing is significant. Going a step further than the letter of 20 November, cited above, Froissart claims that the entire impetus for the revolt originated in London, and that the rebels only rose at all because they were told to do so by the city dwellers: De la parolle de la vie et des oeuvres de Jehan Balle, furent aviset et enfourmet trop grant fuisson de menues gens en la citt`e de Londres, qui avoient envie sus les rices et sour les nobles, et commenchi`erent a` dire entre euls que li roiaulmes d’Engleti`ere estoit trop mal gouvern`es et que il estoit d’or et d’argent desroeub`es par ceulx qui se nommoient nobles. Si commenchier`ent ces mescheans gens en Londres a` faire les mauvais et a` yaulx reveler et segnefyer a` ceulx des contr`ees dessus dites que il venissent hardiement trouveroient Londres ouverte et le commun de leur acord. The things [John Ball] was doing and saying came to the ears of the common people of London, who were envious of the nobles and the rich. These began saying that the country was badly governed and was being robbed of its wealth by those who called themselves noblemen. So these wicked men in London started to become disaffected and to rebel and they sent word to the people in the counties mentioned to come boldly to London with all their followers, when they would find the city open and the common people on their side.³¹ ²⁹ The unreliability of all of the documents surrounding this issue is such that, in relation to the account in the Letter-Book, for example, Bird comments that ‘it is impossible to believe that it was not censored’ (Bird, Turbulent London, 53). ³⁰ The original is from Jean Froissart, Chroniques, in Oeuvres, ed. Baron Joseph Marie Kervyn de Lettenhove, 25 vols. (Brussels, 1867–77), 9: 402. The translation is from Jean Froissart, Chroniques, trans. and ed. Geoffrey Brereton (Harmondsworth, 1968), 219. ³¹ Original from Chroniques, ed. de Lettenhove, 389–90; translation from Chroniques, trans. Brereton, 213.

Urban Treason

39

Froissart’s interest is primarily in class division, rather than on the ‘traitor aldermen’, but urban division and betrayal remain the focus of the account. T H E ‘ T R A I TO R S ’ I N TROILUS AND CRISEYDE The accusations of the aldermen ( John Horn, Walter Sibyl, and Adam Carlisle in particular) are especially resonant if we read them alongside Troilus and Criseyde, another text of the 1380s concerned with a city destroyed through internal corruption and betrayal. Both resort to equivalent strategies of highlighting urban division, and demonstrating its catastrophic results. In both texts, the infiltrator, the alien attacker of the city (the rampaging rural peasantry, the marauding Greeks), is partially (and crucially) elided: blame is allocated to the traitors within the city, and the classic idea of a Sinon preying on a town is ejected from the text. The silence of Chaucer’s text on this point speaks volumes. Sinon is glaringly absent from this Trojan tale. The emphasis on Trojan traitors in Troilus and Criseyde is especially significant in the context of other Chaucerian texts that refer to Troy, in which the dominant emphasis seems to be on the figure of slippery Sinon (just as many accounts of the Peasants’ Revolt focus on the rural peasants). The demonizing of Sinon serves to emphasize Troy’s innocence and credulity, and to detract from the idea of Troy destroying itself, stressing Greek rather than Trojan guilt; the guilt of the outsider not the betrayer. Of the several references to Troy in Chaucer’s work (excluding Troilus and Criseyde), six focus on (or imply a focus on) Sinon, two more also focus on Greek penetration of the city, and the rest are generally incidental, or simply refer to Troy’s destruction. There are three specific references to Sinon bringing Troy to destruction: Whan Troye brought was to destruccioun By Grekes sleyghte, and namely by Synoun, Feynynge the hors offered unto Mynerve, Thourgh which that many a Troyan moste sterve; (Legend of Good Women, ll. 930–3) O newe Scariot, newe Genylon, False dissymulour, o Greek Synon, That broghtest Troye al outrely to sorwe! (‘Nun’s Priest’s Tale’, ll. 3227–9)

40

Urban Treason Or elles it was the Grekes hors Synon, That broghte Troie to destruccion, As men in thise olde geestes rede. (‘Squire’s Tale’, ll. 209–11)

In these references, the blame is unambiguously attributed to Sinon as agent of Troy’s downfall; he is accused in all of them of actively bringing misery to Troy, which itself is helpless, has no agency, and is the innocent victim. His culpability is also emphasized in the House of Fame: First sawgh I the destruction Of Troye thurgh the Grek Synon, [That] with his false forswerynge, And his chere and his lesynge, Made the hors broght into Troye, Thorgh which Troyens loste al her joye. (House of Fame, ll. 151–6)³²

Here the guilt of the Trojans is pointedly ignored.³³ In Troilus and Criseyde, however, internal division and betrayal is consistently decried as the cause of the war and Sinon is written out of Trojan history. Instead of stressing the guilt of the (quasi-)outsider, this ³² There is another reference to the Trojan horse (‘Squire’s Tale’, ll. 306–7) and an implied reference to Sinon in the ‘Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale’, when the teller claims that the Canon ‘wolde infecte al a toun’, even if it were as great as ‘Rome, Alisaundre, Troye, and othere three’ (‘Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale’, ll. 973, 975). The audience is left in an uncomfortable position, unsure whether it is the Canon, or the storytelling Yeoman, who is the real Sinon. (This is pointed out by David Wallace in Chaucerian Polity: Absolutist Lineages and Associational Forms in England and Italy (Stanford, Calif., 1997), 251.) The other two references to the destruction of Troy by outside forces come in the ‘Man of Law’s Tale’, in a mention of Pyrrhus breaking the walls of the city (ll. 288–9), and in Boece, when Agamemnon is blamed for the ‘destruccioun of Troye’ (Book IV, Metrum 7, l. 4). In the other passing references to Troy, there is no implication that Troy destroyed itself and was itself guilty. The exception to this is the reference to Antenor as the ‘traytor that betraysed Troy’ in the Book of the Duchess, l. 1120. ³³ It is important to note, however, that the language of betrayal sneaks into the characterization of Sinon. Despite the fact that Sinon is a Greek, and a loyal Greek, many Chaucerian references emphasize his treachery: he is ‘newe Scariot’ and a ‘false dissymulour’, who destroys Troy through ‘false forswerynge’, ‘feynynge’, and ‘lesynge’. Sinon can be classified as a partial insider, and therefore as a traitor, but he also remains a foreigner, unassimilated to the system: the town evades guilt, and blame is attached to the lying Greeks, and to this one adopted Trojan. Troy itself is merely a dupe, but, even in these Trojan references which seem to be emphasizing the guilt of the outsiders, there is still a hint of betrayal, of treason as the inevitable cause of urban collapse.

Urban Treason

41

poem shifts the emphasis onto bona fide Trojans: Calchas, Antenor, and Criseyde, all of whom are depicted as faith-breaking traitors—while the Greeks are sidelined.³⁴ The subject of Calchas’s treachery is broached near the very beginning of Troilus and Criseyde. We are told how he, a man of ‘gret auctorite’ (I, l. 65) (an interesting detail given the supposed treason of the authoritative aldermen), decided ‘out of the town to go’ (I, l. 75) and ‘ful pryvely’ (I, l. 80) stole away. (We might also remember the failure to materialize of the man of great authority in the House of Fame, as discussed in the previous chapter.) Calchas is then described as a ‘traitour’ (I, l. 87) and as ‘hym that falsly hadde his feith so broken’ (I, l. 89); his actions are a ‘false and wikked dede’ (I, l. 93). After this, Criseyde is oppressed by ‘Hire fadres shame, his falsnesse and tresoun’ (I, l. 107) until Hector tells her to ‘ ‘‘Lat youre fadres treson gon’’ ’ (I, l. 117). Shortly after this, Troilus and Criseyde have their first encounter at the festival of the Palladium (a resonant occasion if we bear in mind Antenor’s later treachery in selling the Palladium to the Greeks).³⁵ The lovers’ relationship is engendered at the site of political betrayal, and Criseyde is marked out as the daughter of a traitor. When Criseyde abandons Troilus, her actions are described in language very similar to that used to portray Calchas’s acts. Troilus asks: ‘Where is youre feith, and where is youre biheste? Where is youre love? Where is youre trouthe?’ (V, ll. 1675–6)

Criseyde’s breaking of her oath and her faith is stressed, just as Calchas was described as one who had ‘his feith so broken’. Pandarus goes on to describe Criseyde’s behaviour as ‘ ‘‘this tresoun’’ ’ (V, l. 1738), and, just as Criseyde earlier had to deal with her father’s shame, now Pandarus is ‘shamed for his nece’ (V, l. 1727). Her ‘treason’, like her father’s, is a symptomatic betrayal of Troy from within. Criseyde is also specifically linked with Antenor, the Trojan traitor for whom she is exchanged, and their betrayals are implicitly juxtaposed. ³⁴ Of course, it could reasonably be suggested that Chaucer is following Boccaccio in this exclusion of Sinon. However, the fact that Chaucer inserts into his text many extra intimations of internal betrayal reveals Troilus and Criseyde’s specific concern with internal, Trojan deceit rather than Greek guilt. These added intimations include the anticipation of Antenor’s treason, in Book IV, ll. 197–210, the dinner party at Deiphoebus’s house with its manifest implications of internal division, in Book II, ll. 1569–1757 (see below) and Criseyde’s excessive oath-swearing in Book IV, ll. 1534–54, which serves later to stress her oath-breaking. ³⁵ See Riverside Chaucer, 1045, note to lines 202–6.

42

Urban Treason

In Book II, mention is made of the fact that ‘Antenor and Eneas’ (II, l. 1474) have been allied with Poliphete in a campaign against Criseyde. Aeneas, legendary betrayer of women, is referred to not for his heroism or his later founding of New Troy (Rome) but in connection with Antenor, his partner in betraying Troy.³⁶ This selective and unique mention of Aeneas can be read as an attempt to hint that the betrayer of women was also a betrayer of the city, a political as well as a personal traitor.³⁷ Antenor’s treachery is emphasized much more explicitly. In a section with no source in the Filostrato, Antenor is demonized as one that brought hem to meschaunce, For he was after traitour to the town (IV, ll. 203–4)

Chaucer’s text explicitly foregrounds the treason of this figure. The names of Antenor and Criseyde—the two ‘traitors’—are frequently linked in this passage: for example, ‘axed was for Antenor Criseyde’ (IV, l. 149); ‘For Antenor how they wolde han Criseyde’ (IV, l. 177); ‘ ‘‘That al oure vois is to forgon Criseyde.’’ | And to deliveren Antenor they preyde’ (IV, ll. 195–6); ‘For Antenor to yelden out Criseyde’ (IV, l. 212). The recurrent association of Criseyde with traitors and treachery gains resonance if we consider that ‘treason’ in the fourteenth century was a concept ‘sufficiently expansive to embrace court and bedchamber, state policy and personal desire’.³⁸ As Strohm points out, a woman’s private challenge to a man could be seen as a challenge ‘to commonly held notions of civil order and the state’.³⁹ Just as, in the Westminster Chronicle, a woman’s murder of her husband is juxtaposed with accounts of the 1388 treason trials,⁴⁰ so Criseyde’s betrayal of Troilus could arguably be described as the same basic crime as Antenor’s betrayal of Troy. Many years ago, Robertson commented that: Like most medieval men, [Chaucer] regarded political and social problems as moral problems, not as difficulties to be overcome by reorganization and ³⁶ This episode appears in Dares, De excidio Troiae historia. See Barry Windeatt, Oxford Guides To Chaucer: ‘Troilus and Criseyde’ (Oxford, 1992), 75. ³⁷ Aeneas’s personal treachery is, of course, emphasized in the House of Fame, especially in ll. 256–387. He is specifically called a traitor in line 267. ³⁸ Paul Strohm, Hochon’s Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Century Texts (Princeton, N.J., 1992), 122–3. ³⁹ Ibid., 123. ⁴⁰ Ibid., 121–44.

Urban Treason

43

legislation. And moral problems in a Christian society were essentially problems of love.⁴¹

There is no simple division between the personal and the political in late medieval texts: indeed, in Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer uses a romance plot to comment on sociopolitical behaviour and, in particular, on treason.⁴² Contemporary legislation and chronicles tell us that political structures were seen to depend upon—or at least to mirror—familial ones.⁴³ A narrative about personal betrayal could not escape political relevance in the 1380s. In Troilus and Criseyde, treason extends into the heart of Trojan society, and is not contained within the obvious ‘traitor’ figures. As Calchas attests, the gods are angry with all of the ‘folk of Troie’ (IV, l. 122) as they refused to pay for the building of the walls. Troilus openly asserts that the corruption within Trojan society is to blame for the conflict with the Greeks, saying that: ‘First, syn thow woost this town hath al this werre For ravysshyng of wommen so by myght,’ (IV, ll. 547–8) ⁴¹ See D. W. Robertson, A Preface to Chaucer: Studies in Medieval Perspectives (Princeton, N.J., 1962), 462. ⁴² In Troilus and Criseyde, the narrator maintains a fac¸ade of not being interested in history/politics, but the personal story is made to tell the political one nonetheless. This is done through occupatio (‘how this town com to destruccion | Ne falleth naught to purpos me to telle’, I, ll. 141–2), through direct, seemingly incidental references (‘ ‘‘Se, Troilus | Hath right now put to flighte the Grekes route!’’ ’, II, ll. 612–13), through the language of war constantly employed by the characters to talk about love (‘ ‘‘desir so brennyngly me assailleth’’ ’, I, l. 607), and through the movement of the plot. As the poem progresses, it exposes the impossibility of constructing a ‘private’ world, as history proves inexorable and the scene of the action shifts from private chambers to the battlefields outside Troy. See Vance, Mervelous Signals, for an excellent discussion of the role of history and language in Troilus and Criseyde. Gayle Margherita comments that ‘the poem seems committed to forgetting the past. The narrator, Troilus, and Pandarus all contribute to the poem’s disavowal of the historical real and its deferral of historical knowledge’, and goes on to discuss the ‘feminization and marginalization of the past’, in the poem. See Gayle Margherita, The Romance of Origins: Language and Sexual Difference in Middle English Literature (Philadelphia, 1994), 111, 112. This ostensible forgetting and marginalization of the past is problematized throughout the poem: the tragedies of the poem can happen precisely because the characters ignore history, and participate in an inexorable traffic in (and therefore marginalization of ) women. ⁴³ Strohm writes, ‘if the master or husband or priest is understood to occupy a position ‘‘like’’ that of the king, then his position must be protected lest the king suffer analogical or derivative slights’ (Hochon’s Arrow, 125).

44

Urban Treason

The irony of Troilus’s comment lies in the fact that his own ‘ ‘‘ravysshyng of wommen’’ ’ has caused him to neglect the welfare of his city and, in a sense, to betray Troy and Priam, who is both his own father and the king. Eugene Vance has commented on the ‘politically anarchic force of Troilus’s very conventional sentiments of love’.⁴⁴ Troilus’s love is so excessive that it leads him to neglect his city and the war, and to prioritize his personal desire over every other concern. This is evident throughout his speeches; he asserts he would rather have Criseyde’s love than ‘ ‘‘a thousand Troyes’’ ’ (II, l. 977) and he laments that: ‘desir so brennyngly me assailleth, That to ben slayn it were a gretter joie To me than kyng of Grece ben and Troye.’ (I, ll. 607–9)

In Book IV, Troilus’s words to Fortune express explicit disloyalty to his father: ‘Why ne haddestow my fader, kyng of Troye, Byraft the lif, or don my bretheren dye’ (IV, ll. 276–7)

Discussing this speech, Larry Scanlon comments that Troilus values Criseyde beyond his patrilineage [ … ] It reveals the extent to which that desire enacts itself precisely as a conflict with the Law of the Father, as an attempt to wrest control of a woman outside the normal channels of exchange. This characterization will surface twice more in this lament, first in the invocation of Oedipus two stanzas later, and in the final, abrupt attack on Calkas.⁴⁵

These lines involve Troilus in treason: he ignores the duty which he owes to his brother and his father and, at the same time, flouts the duty that he owes to his king. The juxtaposition here of ‘ ‘‘fader’’ ’ and ‘ ‘‘kyng of Troye’’ ’ neatly encapsulates just how close personal and political betrayal can be: for the son of the king, they cannot be divided. Troilus’s desire makes him traitorous, as he rebels against the patriarchal power that ‘should’ control the exchange of women, and to which he should submit himself as son and as subject. ⁴⁴ Vance, Mervelous Signals, 288. ⁴⁵ Larry Scanlon, ‘Sweet Persuasion: The Subject of Fortune in Troilus and Criseyde’, in Chaucer’s ‘Troilus and Criseyde’: ‘Subgit to alle Poesye’: Essays in Criticism, ed. R. A. Shoaf and Catherine S. Cox (Binghampton, N.Y., 1992), 211–23, 221.

Urban Treason

45

T RU T H A N D T R E A S O N Both the accusations of the aldermen and Troilus and Criseyde situate their investigations of division within the troubled discourse of truth and treason. Richard Firth Green has recently and persuasively described the pressures on the semantics of ‘trouthe’ and ‘tresoun’ in the late fourteenth century. He considers the two terms to be closely related to each other, frequently referring to treason as the ‘antonym’ of truth.⁴⁶ A citation from the ‘Parson’s Tale’ illustrates the interdependence of the two words: he that wikked conseil yeveth is a traytour. For he deceyveth hym that trusteth in hym. (‘Parson’s Tale’, l. 639)⁴⁷

Green emphasizes that the word ‘traitor’ ‘meant primarily someone who had betrayed a trust’.⁴⁸ Throughout his book, he argues that both terms were sites of contention and shifting semantic possibilities in the late fourteenth century. Green contends that the meaning of ‘trouthe’ shifted from ‘integrity’ to ‘conformity to fact’ at this time, and that this change was connected with a growing emphasis on the written over the spoken, encouraged by the spread of vernacular literacy. Trothplight began to be replaced by written contract, trust in people by trust in documents, as these decades saw a ‘widespread loss of faith in the word of trusted neighbours’.⁴⁹At this time, the development of so-called ‘bastard feudalism’ and the trend for the formation of temporary affinities and opportunistic groups (appropriating the associational modes of bastard feudalism) may have led to a devaluing of the notion of sworn allegiance.⁵⁰ Green also describes ⁴⁶ Green, Crisis of Truth, pp. xiv, 207. ⁴⁷ Green cites this in ibid., 214. ⁴⁸ Ibid., 214. ⁴⁹ See ibid., 1–4 and 40. ⁵⁰ For discussions of bastard feudalism and the livery and maintenance debate, see K. B. McFarlane, England in the Fifteenth Century: Collected Essays (London, 1981), 23–43 and The Nobility of Later Medieval England: The Ford Lectures for 1953 and Related Studies (Oxford, 1973), 102–21, and Maurice Keen, English Society in the Later Middle Ages 1348–1500 (London, 1990), 1–24. See also R. H. Britnell and A. J. Pollard, eds., The McFarlane Legacy: Studies in Late Medieval Politics and Society (New York, 1995). In McFarlane Legacy, G. L. Harriss and Linda Clark voice useful correctives warning against emphasizing ‘bastard feudalism’ too much. Harriss comments that: ‘The proclivity of bastard feudalism to escalate gentry disputes has perhaps been exaggerated’, Clark (discussing parliament) that ‘we should be careful not to exaggerate the role played by magnates in determining the composition of the lower house’ as the majority of

46

Urban Treason

the meaning of ‘tresoun’ as shifting from ‘personal betrayal’ to ‘a crime against the state’ in these decades, arguing that ‘the overriding political issue in the last two decades of the fourteenth century was the legal definition of treason’.⁵¹ In Troilus and Criseyde and the letters accusing the aldermen, ‘truth’ and ‘treason’ function as key concepts and terms, as a struggle emerges for control over the meaning of these words. In Troilus and Criseyde the language of truth is crucial. Troilus is concerned with the idea of truth as reputation and integrity, in other words with the ‘older’ notion of ‘trothplight’. He urges Criseyde to ‘ ‘‘thynketh on youre trouthe’’ ’ (V, l. 1386), claims that her ‘ ‘‘name of trouthe | Is now fordon’’ ’ (V, ll. 1686–7), because she ‘ ‘‘nolde in trouthe to me stonde’’ ’ (V, l. 1679), and accuses her of having ‘ ‘‘bytrayed’’ ’ (V, l. 1247) him by failing to keep her ‘ ‘‘trust’’ ’ or ‘ ‘‘feyth’’ ’ (V, l. 1259). Yet, if we think of truth as ‘conformity to fact’, Troilus himself has hardly behaved ‘truthfully’ throughout the courtship which has, as Robertson points out, been ‘grounded on a tissue of lies, rather than on ‘‘trouthe’’ ’.⁵² Criseyde too is deeply concerned with the issue of her ‘trouthe’, as is demonstrated in her lament in Book V (ll. 1051–85). It opens: But trewely, the storie telleth us, Ther made nevere womman moore wo Than she, whan that she falsed Troilus. She seyde, ‘Allas, for now is clene ago My name of trouthe in love, for everemo! For I have falsed oon the gentileste That evere was, and oon the worthieste!

After another stanza in which she mourns her approaching notoriety, Criseyde worries about future generations of female readers who will berate her for her lack of truth: ‘Thei wol seyn, in as muche as in me is, I have hem don deshonour, weylaway! Al be I nat the first that dide amys, What helpeth that to don my blame awey? members ‘lived lives largely untouched by ‘‘bastard feudalism’’ ’. See G. L. Harriss, ‘The Dimensions of Politics’, in McFarlane Legacy, 1–20, 4, and Linda Clark, ‘Magnates and Their Affinities in the Parliaments of 1386–1421’, in McFarlane Legacy, 127–53, 134, 136. ⁵¹ Green, Crisis of Truth, pp. xiv, 213. With his revision of the Statute of Treason, Richard tried to silence all attempts at criticizing him, terming anyone who purported to advise or to counsel him a traitor. This is discussed in Chapter 1. ⁵² Robertson, Preface, 496.

Urban Treason

47

But syn I se ther is no bettre way, And that to late is now for me to rewe, To Diomede algate I wol be trewe. ‘But, Troilus, syn I no bettre may, And syn that thus departen ye and I, Yet prey I God, so yeve yow right good day, As for the gentileste, trewely, That evere I say, to serven feythfully, And best kan ay his lady honour kepe.’ And with that word she brast anon to wepe. ‘And certes yow ne haten shal I nevere; And frendes love, that shal ye han of me, And my good word, al sholde I lyven evere. And trewely I wolde sory be For to seen yow in adversitee; And gilteles, I woot wel, I yow leve. But al shal passe; and thus take I my leve.’

The passage is informed by an awareness of untruth and falsity. In the first stanza, the word ‘falsed’ is twice repeated within four lines. Criseyde goes on to lament her ‘ ‘‘deshonour’’ ’ and the loss of her ‘ ‘‘name of trouthe’’ ’, promising to be ‘ ‘‘trewe’’ ’ from now on—within these few stanzas the word ‘ ‘‘trewely’’ ’ is repeated three times. Having acknowledged her own falsity and the loss of her reputation for truth, Criseyde goes on to assert that she will be ‘ ‘‘trewe’’ ’ to Diomede, and to qualify her assertions with the word ‘ ‘‘trewely’’ ’. She simultaneously admits her ‘untrouthe’ while depending on a belief in her ‘trouthe’ to make her words meaningful. Criseyde is saying that, although she has lost her ‘name’ for truth—that is, society’s idea of truth—she can personally still be true to Diomede. She acknowledges the validity of two different semantics of truth; in one sense it refers to public honour and permanent integrity, or appearance of integrity, in the other meaning, it refers to a changing, but honestly meant, intent.⁵³ However, Criseyde’s intent is not even clear in her words; we cannot know if she ‘truly’ intends to keep her faith with Diomede, or if she means what she says. She also uses the word with the meaning ‘conformity to fact’, when she declares ⁵³ See also Elizabeth Archibald, ‘Declarations of ‘‘Entente’’ in Troilus and Criseyde’, Chaucer Review 25 (1991): 190–213.

48

Urban Treason

that Troilus is ‘ ‘‘trewely’’ ’ the ‘ ‘‘gentileste’’ ’ man, and when she says that she would ‘ ‘‘trewely’’ ’ be sorry to see him in ‘ ‘‘adversitee’’ ’. This meaning of ‘truth’ coexists with the idea of truth as ‘trothplight’, and both meanings are available in these lines. Moreover, the disingenuous narrator himself uses the term ‘trewely’, and repeats it immediately after the conclusion of Criseyde’s ‘untruthful’ lament. He comments: But trewely, how longe it was bytwene That she forsok hym for this Diomede, Ther is non auctour telleth it, I wene. (V, ll. 1086–8)

Here the word ‘trewely’ means ‘conforming to fact’, but we know that the narrator is profoundly unreliable in this poem. The dissimulation and ‘untruth’ of the narrator (on the matter of his sources, for example), has already been made clear; he too is a prevaricator when it comes to the idea of ‘trouthe’.⁵⁴ In Troilus and Criseyde, the word ‘trewe’ proves to have multiple meanings, and the importance of gaining control over its meaning is demonstrated in Criseyde’s attempts to harness it to her own behaviour and in Troilus’s forgetfulness of his own untruth. With its emphasis on the way that personal division and sexual deviancy lead to political dissent, and on the connections between petty and high treason, as evinced in the insistent connections between political traitors (Antenor, Calchas) and a personal traitor (Criseyde), Troilus and Criseyde also draws heavily on the differing conceptions of treason available at this time. The poem suggests that fragmented personal relationships imply a fragmented society and city, and that macrocosmic, as well as microcosmic, groups are corrupted and treasonous. In this text, the meaning of treason is often unclear: Criseyde betrays both Troilus and Troy as she goes over to the Greeks and indirectly causes Troilus’s death. This seals the fate of Troy, which cannot survive without Troilus.⁵⁵ The ⁵⁴ My argument—that in Troilus and Criseyde (and in the culture in which it was produced) the meaning of trouthe is contingent and fluctuating—is very different from Vance’s belief that trouthe functions as a metaphysical absolute in the poem. See Vance, Mervelous Signals, 309. Green too suggests that Chaucer feels ‘nostalgia for the vanished stability of the old trouthe’ (Crisis of Truth, 164). I would argue that Troilus and Criseyde can be read as a meditation on the absurdity of nostalgia itself. ⁵⁵ See Sylvia Federico, New Troy: Fantasies of Empire in the Late Middle Ages (Minneapolis, 2003), 152 n. 5. She writes, ‘Criseyde’s betrayal of her lover, Troilus [ … ] was seen as a direct cause of the fall of Troy, since Troilus’s survival was thought necessary for the survival of the city.’

Urban Treason

49

‘older’ conception of treason as personal betrayal remains crucial in this text, and is emphatically connected with high treason itself. Equally, within the textual accusations of the aldermen, a struggle can be seen for control over the terms of truth and treason. In the reports of the actions of the aldermen, the same, clearly emotive words of accusation frequently recur: they act ‘felonice, false et proditorie contra ligeanceam suam’ (feloniously, falsely, and traitorously against their allegiance), ‘false, felonice et proditorie, contra fidem et ligeanciam suam’ (falsely, feloniously, and traitorously against their faith and allegiance), ‘contra ligeanciam et fidem suas domino regi debitas’ (against the allegiance and faith owed to their king).⁵⁶ Throughout the text, the ‘traitors’ are insistently described as ‘false’, as acting against their ‘fidem’ or ‘ligeanceam’, men who break their word and oath, and fail to do what they ‘deberent’. The key words and concepts are insistently repeated, hammering home the idea of the ‘untrouth’ and deceitfulness of the accused. Throughout the letter of 20 November, the aldermen are accused of high treason, of betraying their allegiance to their king. Yet, at one point in the text, we can glimpse both a different conception of treason, and a different construction of where the treason in society is to be found. Thomas Farringdon is depicted saying: ‘Vindica me de illo falso proditore priore, quia tenementa mea false et ffraudilenter de me arripuit.’⁵⁷ ‘Avenge me on this false, treacherous prior, because he has falsely and fraudulently seized from me my houses.’

In this short phrase, the language of accusation is bounced back from the rebel-figures to the objects of their attack, who become the traitors. Farringdon is here portrayed as twice using the word ‘false’, and he also uses the key term of ‘treacherous’ (proditore). The prior and his ilk are false, and therefore the rebels, by implication, are ‘trewe’. Moreover, the words attributed to Farringdon introduce a competing construction of treason, as he accuses the prior of being treacherous because he has seized his house. Farringdon is clearly here trying to settle a personal score, and is making use of the older conception of treason as personal betrayal. In this attribution of a voice to the rebels, the report taps into some of the linguistic and political issues that most troubled the rebels and, ironically, it provides matter for their defence. The peasants, after ⁵⁶ R´eville, Le soulevement, 192, 195, 194.

⁵⁷ Ibid., 195.

50

Urban Treason

all, insisted on their self-identification as the ‘trew communes’,⁵⁸ and on defining their enemies as traitors.⁵⁹ The multivalency of the concepts of ‘truth’ and ‘treason’ in these letters complicates the attribution of blame to specific individuals. While the idea of betrayal and high treason implies that there is a coherent and unified society to be betrayed, the faction-fighting and multiple divisions evident in the body of these texts, as well as in the circumstances of their production, suggests that division is deeply rooted in society. In the accusations of the aldermen, a more general sense of social division is evident in what has been suppressed : the factional circumstances of the texts’ production, the suggestion of a more widespread urban guilt during the revolt. Indeed, Wilkinson has suggested that it was in the jurors’ interests to indict a few specific traitors, rather than implicating a more ‘considerable section of the citizens’, who may have been to blame.⁶⁰ Further, inside the texts themselves, the imagined Farringdon, who implies that there is a more general treachery within society, and the imagined Horn, who claims that many Londoners support the peasants, voice what the text is trying to silence. Their words infiltrate the structure of the text and chip away at its edifice, by introducing the possibility of a broader urban division. The mere suggestion of such division, and its strident denial, might encourage readers to imagine a guilt that extends much further than the authors wished to allow. However, overt references to the general urban fragmentation that may have contributed to the revolt and that certainly motivated the production of the letters are excluded from the text (presumably because of the agenda of the jurors). The emphasis remains strongly on the individual traitor aldermen. In Troilus and Criseyde, as has been shown, specific figures of social importance—Calchas, of ‘gret auctorite’ (I, l. 65), Criseyde, ⁵⁸ See, for example, V. H. Galbraith, ed., The Anonimalle Chronicle, 1333–1381 (Manchester, 1927), 139. ⁵⁹ Green argues that the insurgents were trying to lay claim to traditional notions of truth, oaths, and trothplight that were being supplanted by judicial writing and centralized authority. See Crisis of Truth, especially 163–4 and 201. See also Jesse M. Gellrich, Discourse and Dominion in the Fourteenth Century: Oral Contexts of Writing in Philosophy, Politics and Poetry (Princeton, N.J., 1995), esp. ch. 5, ‘The Politics of Literacy in the Reign of Richard II’, 151–91, and Steven Justice, Writing and Rebellion: England in 1381 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1994), esp. 94, 188. Other marginalized groups also took as their agenda the reclaiming of ‘trouthe’; see Anne Hudson, ‘A Lollard Sect Vocabulary?’, in Lollards and Their Books (London, 1985), 165–80, 166–7. ⁶⁰ See Wilkinson, ‘Peasants’ Revolt’, 19.

Urban Treason

51

and Antenor—are singled out for blame. But, as my brief discussion of Troilus’s ‘treachery’ implied, Chaucer’s text is more expansive than the accusations of the aldermen can be. In Troilus and Criseyde, internal division resonates throughout urban society and is not confined to specific ‘traitors’: rather, the emphasis is on the culpability of all the Trojans, and on division within the protective/exclusive walls. The traitor figures are not essentially different from the other characters; rather, they are representative of the chaos within Trojan society.

T H E D I V I D E D C I T Y: C H AU C E R ’ S T ROY Urban division is exemplified in the episode in Book II at Deiphoebus’s house, in which the idea of betrayal within the walls of the house—a microcosm of the city—is crucial. This is particularly demonstrated when Troilus and Pandarus use a ruse to get Helen and Deiphoebus out of the way, and make ‘ ‘‘the townes prow’’ ’ (II, l. 1664) (the town’s profit), the excuse. The ideal of common profit is opportunistically invoked to allow Troilus and Pandarus the chance to pursue their private intrigues. Throughout this section, all of the characters seem to be duplicitous and divisive in some way. Pandarus is the most obvious example as he has lied his way into Deiphoebus’s house, and is masking his entente, as he ‘Deiphebus gan to blende’ (II, l. 1496), saying ‘ ‘‘For I right now have founden o manere | Of sleyghte’’ ’ (II, ll. 1511–12). The hosts are explicitly described as ‘they, that nothyng knewe of his entente’ (II, l. 1665). Pandarus is manifestly using and manipulating his host and abusing his trust. He has also deceived Criseyde, who is ‘Al innocent of Pandarus entente’ (II, l. 1723)—although we can never be sure of how much or little she understands—persuading her that ‘ ‘‘some men wolden don oppressioun, | And wrongfully han hire possessioun’ (II, ll. 1418–19). Troilus too is complicit in the general deception: he acts ‘His brother and his suster for to blende’ (III, l. 207). This is even more significant in the context of the fact that Deiphoebus is Troilus’s most beloved brother (II, l. 1398) and Pandarus’s second most beloved friend (II, ll. 1403–4). Pandarus’s and Troilus’s conduct demonstrates their lack of concern for the bonds of fraternity in the face of their selfish needs. This unconcern for the ties of brotherhood can also be seen in a seeming declaration of the importance of common profit: ‘ ‘‘Anhonged be swich oon, were he my brother!’’ ’ (II, l. 1620), a sentiment declared by all present.

52

Urban Treason

An added sense of intrigue, incest, and internal secrets and division is suggested by the choice of Deiphoebus and Helen as hosts and counsellors of the session.⁶¹ Far from being the innocent parties, they may be easy to deceive because they themselves are intent upon their own deception. According to tradition, Deiphoebus was Helen’s second Trojan husband, killed by Menelaus in their bedchamber after the Greek entry into Troy.⁶² In the House of Fame, reference is made to Aeneas meeting Deiphoebus in the underworld; in the Aeneid, this meeting involves Deiphoebus telling Aeneas about Helen’s treachery to Troy and to him, her husband.⁶³ Perhaps the depiction of the close relationship between Deiphoebus and Helen and their obvious intimacy in Troilus and Criseyde implies something more, and that they too are eager to seize on the ‘ ‘‘townes prow’’ ’ as an excuse for disappearing together. Their putative affair could be seen as a mirror to that of Troilus and Criseyde, especially as both relationships involve women who are unfaithful to their lovers ⁶¹ From the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, incest was defined as sexual intercourse between those related to the fourth degree: thus one was proscribed from having sex with one’s parent, sibling, aunt, uncle, first, second, or third cousin. These rules also applied to relationships of affinity (e.g. one could not marry someone who had previously slept with one’s sibling) and of spirituality (e.g. one’s godparents). It was a commonplace to associate incest with social division and destruction. Georgiana Donavin, for example, discusses the fact that Thomas Aquinas defended exogamy on the grounds that it cements social relationships by encouraging ties outside the family and by discouraging exploitation within it, and comments that in the Confessio amantis, there are many ‘tales of incest resulting in social chaos’ and that ‘the actually incestuous family is a microcosm of and a catalyst for social decay. Actualized incestuous desire both represents and contributes to the discord.’ Georgiana Donavin, Incest Narratives and the Structure of Gower’s Confessio amantis (Victoria, B.C., 1993), 10, 11, 51. The best article on incest in Troilus and Criseyde is Richard W. Fehrenbacher, ‘ ‘‘Al that which chargeth nought to seye’’: The Theme of Incest in Troilus and Criseyde’, Exemplaria 9 (1997): 341–69. Much can be gained from adding a consideration of Helen and Deiphoebus to his argument. See also H. Angsar Kelly, ‘Shades of Incest and Cuckoldry: Pandarus and John of Gaunt’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer 13 (1991): 121–40. For a discussion of British founding legends’ use of ideas of endogamy and exogamy, see Michelle R. Warren, History on the Edge: Excalibur and the Borders of Britain 1100–1300 (Minneapolis, 2000), 48. For more general discussions of the incest taboo, see Claude L´evi-Strauss, The Elementary Structures of Kinship (London, Boston, 1969), Gayle Rubin, ‘The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘‘Political Economy’’ of Sex’, in Toward an Anthropology of Women, ed. Rayna R. Reiter (New York, London, 1975), 157–210, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York, Guildford, 1985). ⁶² See McKay Sundwall, ‘Deiphobus and Helen: A Tantalizing Hint’, Modern Philology 73 (1975–6): 151–6. ⁶³ See the House of Fame, l. 444, and Aeneid VI, ll. 509–29. Deiphoebus here recounts how Helen, his wife, removes all the weapons from his house and his sword from next to his head, and invites Menelaus into his bridal chamber to murder him.

Urban Treason

53

and also to Troy itself, women whose autonomy and motivation remain always opaque. One more incident clearly demonstrates the falsity of the appearance of fraternity and honesty at the meeting in Deiphoebus’s house. In reaction to Criseyde’s worries about her enemies: Pleynliche, alle at ones, they hire highten To ben hire help in al that evere they myghten. (II, ll. 1623–4)

Yet this declaration proves hollow when Criseyde faces a real threat—her expulsion from Troy—and neither Deiphoebus, nor Paris, whom Helen ‘may leden’ (II, l. 1449), nor even Troilus speaks out for her or supports Hector in the parliament. Indeed, in the parliament scene, the selfdestruction of the Trojans and the unreliability of group opinion is clear. The deceptive nature of unity is demonstrated in the use of the chorus-like group, termed the ‘peple’, who represent ignorant public opinion and provide a commentary on the action.⁶⁴ They are characterized thus: The noyse of peple up stirte thanne at ones, As breme as blase of strawe iset on-fire;⁶⁵ For infortune it wolde, for the nones, They sholden hire confusioun desire. ‘Ector,’ quod they, ‘what goost may yow enspyre This womman thus to shilde and don us leese Daun Antenor—a wrong wey now ye chese— ⁶⁴ The exact social level of the people is ambiguous. Those who argue that they are a figure for the parliamentary commons would raise them to a level above the general mob. Patterson, for example, says that the Trojan parliament provides a ‘mordant commentary’ on the Wonderful Parliament of 1386: if the ‘peple’ represent the people of the English Commons they are by no means of low class. I would not agree that they are such a straightforward reflection of the English parliament, as the specificity of Patterson’s political analogy is rather strained. The ‘peple’ do not seem to me to be a figure for the peasantry either; rather they represent group opinion or thinking. See Patterson, Chaucer and the Subject of History, 158. ⁶⁵ The possible reference to Jack Straw and the Peasants’ Revolt is significant here: the present investigation has discussed the transference of blame for the revolt to those within the city in the accusations of the aldermen and in some chronicle accounts. In the above-cited stanzas too, if a reference to the revolt is implied, it is again the urban dwellers who are blamed, rather than the rural peasants. John Ganim discusses the allusion to ‘straw’ and also suggests that the ‘peple’ could here reflect both the rebels and the parliament of 1386. See John M. Ganim, ‘Chaucer and the Noise of the People’, Exemplaria 2 (1990): 71–88, 74.

54

Urban Treason ‘That is so wys and ek so bold baroun? And we han nede to folk, as men may se. He is ek oon the grettest of this town. O Ector, lat tho fantasies be! O kyng Priam,’ quod they, ‘thus sygge we, That al oure vois is to forgon Criseyde.’ And to deliveren Antenor they preyde. (IV, ll. 183–96)

Here the people are depicted as blind and thoughtless, obeying a mindless mob mentality, which will lead them to destroy themselves.⁶⁶ They disregard Hector—‘ ‘‘holder up of Troye!’’ ’ (II, l. 644)—and invite the return of Antenor, who will betray the city through his removal of the Palladium. The idea of the folly of the people is emphasized by this stress on Antenor’s behaviour, as the ‘cloude of errour’ (IV, l. 200) of the masses is described. The unreliability of popular opinion is also referred to at other points in the poem. For example, Pandarus declares in Book II, at Deiphoebus’s house, that ‘In titeryng, and pursuyte, and delayes, The folk devyne at waggyng of a stree’ (II, ll. 1744–5)

Yet the views of these people are frequently held up as important throughout the poem and Criseyde, in particular, often relies on their opinion.⁶⁷ As well as the ‘peple’, a group which illustrates the dangerous aspects of social ‘unity’, many other social groupings—or factions—within the poem are portrayed as divided. Trojan society, like contemporary London, is splintered into a wide variety of ‘meynees’, affinities, and ⁶⁶ Depictions of mob madness are, of course, common in the wake of the Peasants’ Revolt, in particular in chronicle accounts, and, famously, in Gower’s depiction of the peasants in the first book of the Vox clamantis. In an article about Chaucer’s reference to the Peasants’ Revolt in the ‘Nun’s Priest’s Tale’, Peter Travis says of the chroniclers of the revolt that they were apparently ‘as disturbed by the revolting noise of the peasants as by the fact that the peasants were revolting’. See Peter W. Travis, ‘Chaucer’s Trivial Fox Chase and the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381’, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 18 (1988): 195–220, 217. See also Justice, Writing and Rebellion, esp. ch. 5, ‘Insurgency Remembered’, 193–254 for a discussion of the ways in which the peasants’ actions were memorialized as inarticulate and insane. ⁶⁷ See, for example, II, ll. 730, 748.

Urban Treason

55

fraternities.⁶⁸ Both Troilus and Criseyde have their own social groups, or ‘meynees’, that they systematically deceive, hiding the truth of their relationship and feelings under a mantle of overt friendship and honesty. Troilus acts: ‘his meyne for to blende’ (V, l. 526), and Criseyde feels ‘wo and wery of that compaignie’ as ‘hire herte on othir thyng is’ (IV, ll. 707, 696). The scene at Deiphoebus’s house analysed above acts as a paradigm for the way that Troilus and Criseyde consistently treat their closest companions throughout the text. Troilus and Criseyde reveals what the accusations of the aldermen imply: that the discourse of treachery and the scapegoating of individual traitors is a smokescreen to cover up a more general and pervasive social antagonism.⁶⁹ One level of the text emphasizes Criseyde’s treachery to Troilus (and to Troy), in accordance with antifeminist tradition. But the attribution of blame to individuals such as Criseyde, Antenor, or Calchas is consistently undermined by the depiction of Troy’s own self-destructive tendencies: its refusal to face history, its incestuous selfobsession, its wilful blindness, the treacherous feelings of Troy’s own namesake, Troilus. The scapegoat figures are revealed to be representative of—rather than different to—the rest of Trojan society. Chaucer’s poem questions and problematizes the idea of containing blame for civic division within a few individuals—a pertinent issue indeed in the 1380s—and suggests that urban fragmentation is more widespread than this. The next chapter will go on to explore the differing ways in which late fourteenth-century texts about New Troy—including Troilus and Criseyde —dealt with the conflict between an awareness of social fragmentation and a desire for social stability, and will examine the depiction of ‘social impossibility’ in Troilus and Criseyde. ⁶⁸ See McFarlane, Nobility of Later Medieval England, 105, for a discussion of the meaning of ‘meinie’. ˇ zek, The Sublime Object of ⁶⁹ For recent discussions of scapegoating, see Slavoj Ziˇ Ideology (London, 1989), e.g. 5, 125, 127. See also Ren´e Girard, The Scapegoat, trans. Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore, 1986).

3 Idealism and Antagonism: Troynovaunt in the Late Fourteenth Century Communities seek a sense of coherence through the construction of myths of wholeness; myths that are always already inhabited by potential division. The ideological concept of civic progress, manifested in the Janus-like image of New Troy, was a potent sociopolitical tool in late fourteenth-century London.¹ In this chapter, I am interested in the ways in which civic fantasy functions in texts produced in the last two decades of the fourteenth century, and in the ways in which different texts deal with the problem of civic antagonism while deploying the idea of Troynovaunt. ‘New Troy’ was used and exploited by many different figures—both politicians and poets—and made to serve a variety of agendas.² Yet the idea, famously expressed by Humpty Dumpty, that a word can mean ‘just what I choose it to mean’ cannot hold.³ Words and images do not come without their own baggage; rather, they exist within semantic matrices of connotations and meanings, and carry these meanings latent within themselves. ‘New Troy’, appropriated, exploited, imbued with alternate meanings, refuses to be claimed or to be separated from its other contexts and meanings. As Chaucer suggests at the end of the House of Fame, in the spectacle of tidings come to life and acting ˇ zek writes that ‘The fundamental level of ideology, however, is not of an ¹ Slavoj Ziˇ illusion masking the real state of things but that of an (unconscious) fantasy structuring our social reality itself .’ The Sublime Object of Ideology (London, 1989), 33. ² Strohm comments that propositions produced and sustained within ideology ‘are available … for varied appropriation and use in a variety of tactical situations’. See Hochon’s Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Century Texts (Princeton, N.J., 1992), 71. ³ Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass in ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ and ‘Through the Looking Glass’ (Bristol, 1975), 109–220, 173.

Idealism and Antagonism

57

beyond the control of any speaker,⁴ language and ideas cannot be limited or constrained by a dominant ideological perspective.⁵ When Richard II, for example, tries to use the image of New Troy to promote an apotheosized vision of London in the late fourteenth century, he cannot excise the negative connotations of sexual immorality and inevitable disaster that surround Troy and its successors.⁶ In the same way, authors cannot control the meanings of their texts, or exclude nuances and associations antithetical to their projects. In Kristeva’s terms, ‘every text is from the outset under the jurisdiction of other discourses which impose a universe on it’.⁷ In the previous chapter, the interpenetration between Chaucer’s Trojan poem and city politics in 1380s London was discussed. This chapter will examine the poem through a different lens in an attempt to explore the textual environment of Troilus and Criseyde more fully. First, I examine the deployment of the idea of New Troy in some texts of the late fourteenth century: Gower’s Vox clamantis, Maidstone’s Concordia and St Erkenwald.⁸ In all of these texts, myths of civic idealism are undercut by the insistent presence of social fragmentation. The ways in which the authors of these poems allow—perhaps even encourage—competing ideological possibilities to flood into their texts are of particular interest. In the second part of the chapter, I focus on ⁴ The extraordinary image of talking words comes at lines 2096–109. ⁵ The idea of univalent and determinative ideology has surely now been discredited, as Elizabeth Bellamy writes: ‘And if the Foucaultian dramatic personae of ideology, the pervasive forces of surveillance, power, domination, and control, can be properly perceived as having their limits in that they tend to oversimplify ideology as monolithic, it may be because the unconscious, as a site of resistance within the sociocultural, exerts a more heterogeneous influence than has yet to be [sic] fully charted.’ See Elizabeth J. Bellamy, Translations of Power: Narcissism and the Unconscious in Epic History (Ithaca, N.Y., London, 1992), 18–19. ⁶ Sheila Lindenbaum, ‘The Smithfield Tournament of 1390’, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 20 (1990): 1–20, 10. ⁷ Julia Kristeva, cited in Jonathan Culler, The Pursuit of Signs (London, 1981), 105. ⁸ See John Gower, Vox clamantis, in The Complete Works of John Gower, 4 vols. ed. G. C. Macaulay, 4 (Oxford, 1899–1902), Richard Maidstone, Concordia inter regem Ric II et civitatem London, ed. T. Wright, Camden Old Series, 3 (London, 1838) or, for a more recent edition and translation, Charles Roger Smith, ‘ ‘‘Concordia: Facta Inter Regem Riccardum II Et Civitatem Londonie Per Fratrum Riccardum Maydiston, Carmelitum, Sacre theologie Doctorem, Anno Domine 1393.’’ Edited with an Introduction, Translation and Notes’, dissertation, Princeton, 1972, and St Erkenwald in A Book of Middle English, ed. J. A. Burrow and Thorlac Turville-Petre, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1996), 203–14. Maidstone’s text and a translation are also now available online at www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/maidfrm.htm.

58

Idealism and Antagonism

Troilus and Criseyde, and argue that it can be read as a text that attacks and undermines idealism—whether social and civic or personal. Troy, as an emblem of the social fantasies (and disasters) of the late fourteenth century, is a potent image and tool for an interrogation of myths of plenitude and fulfilment. T ROY N OVAU N T I N T H E L AT E F O U RT E E N T H C E N T U RY For Western civilization, the translatio imperii et studii has long been, as Richard Waswo has commented, the occident’s ‘central vision’ of itself.⁹ The paradigmatic text of the Aeneid sets out the myth of imperial movement and destiny; a myth that was eagerly taken up and promulgated by national propagandists all over Europe as emergent nations sought to legitimize any claim to imperial power by alleging descent from the founders of Rome itself.¹⁰ In Lydgate’s Troy Book, the idea that the fall of Troy was the cause that ‘many regioun | Be-gonne was, and many gret cite’ (I, ll. 822–3) is emphasized: Lydgate lists Aeneas’s founding of Rome, Francus’s of France, Antenor’s of Venice, Sycanus’s of Sicily (I, ll. 826–52).¹¹ He also, of course, mentions Brutus: After whom, if I schal nat feyne, Whilom þis lond called was Breteyne. (I, ll. 833–4)

Similarly, the Gawain-poet tells of the journeys of ‘Romulus to Rome’ (l. 8), ‘Tirius to Tuskan’ (l. 11), ‘Langaberde in Lumbardie’ (l. 12), and ‘Felix Brutus’ (l. 13) to ‘Bretayn’ (l. 14).¹² The history and significance ⁹ Richard Waswo, The Founding Legend of Western Civilization: From Virgil to Vietnam (Hanover, London, 1997), 2. Bellamy adds that the very idea of translatio imperii itself implies an absence, as metaphor can only point to absence and loss. See Bellamy, Translations, 72. The idea of translatio imperii is discussed in J. H. Burns, ed., The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought c.350–c.1450 (Cambridge, 1988), 249. ¹⁰ Patterson comments that ‘while on the Continent the claim to Trojan origin was asserted perfunctorily in the course of pursuing other interests, in England it remained a powerful instrument of royal propaganda’. See Lee Patterson, Negotiating the Past: The Historical Understanding of Medieval Literature (Madison, 1987), 203. ¹¹ John Lydgate, Troy Book, ed. Henry Bergen. E.E.T.S., e.s. 97, 103, 106, 126 (1906–35). ¹² Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. J. R. R. Tolkien and E.V. Gordon, 2nd edn, ed. N. Davis (Oxford, 1967).

Idealism and Antagonism

59

of the idea of London as New Troy promulgated most influentially in the medieval period by Geoffrey of Monmouth has been much documented.¹³ Geoffrey firmly established the idea of the Trojan ancestry of the British, linking the myth of Brutus, descendent of Aeneas, with the ‘Trinovantes’, an English tribe mentioned by Julius Caesar.¹⁴ He claims that Brutus founded a city, Trinovantum, and granted to its citizens a law code: this is the origin of London and its statutes.¹⁵ The idea of Troy and Trojan origins has traditionally been used to validate cities and nations, to bolster and to reshape civic and corporate ideologies. Yet the problematic nature of the myth of Troy, and the dualism inherent in invoking the city as foundation and origin of Western culture is a crucial and vexed issue. Troy represents both the ideal city, prototype of imperial Rome,¹⁶ and a fallen city which destroyed itself through lust, deviant desires, and the misuse of power.¹⁷ ‘New Troys’ founded by great heroes, who were also great losers, inherited this ambiguous identity: the city of origin symbolized both strength and treachery, courage and cowardly desires.¹⁸ ¹³ Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain, trans. Sebastian Evans, rev. Charles W. Dunn (London, 1963). See also John Clark, ‘Trinovantum—the Evolution of a Legend’, Journal of Medieval History 7 (1981): 135–51, Francis Ingledew, ‘The Book of Troy and the Genealogical Construction of History: The Case of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae’, Speculum 69 (1994): 665–704, and Heather James, Shakespeare’s Troy: Drama, Politics and the Translation of Empire (Cambridge, 1997). ¹⁴ For the ‘Trinovantes’ and their city, see Clark, ‘Trinovantum’, 138–9. ¹⁵ Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings, 27. ¹⁶ Rome too is haunted by a myth of internal division: just as Cain is the founder of cities, so the fratricidal Romulus, murderer of Remus, founds Rome. See Ingledew, ‘Book of Troy’, 672. ¹⁷ Patterson comments that ‘the tension that at once animates and inhibits the Aeneid is a struggle between, on the one hand, a linear purposiveness that sees the past as a moment of failure to be redeemed by a magnificent future and, on the other, a commemorative idealism that sees it as instead a heroic origin to be emulated, a period of gigantic achievement that a belated future can never hope to replicate. Thus the past is endowed with a double, contradictory value: it is at once a guilty, if potent origin to be suppressed and forgotten, and a heroic precedent to be reinvoked and reenacted.’ See Negotiating the Past, 160. ¹⁸ This dualism participates in the more general problem of the city itself, variously depicted as apotheosized ideal or walled inferno. On the one hand: ‘The image of civilization is the city, usually in the synecdochic form of walls and towers’ (Waswo, Founding Legend, 3), but on the other, the creation of the city is itself ‘an act of divisiveness’, symbolizing the failure of civilization. See Louise Fradenburg, City, Marriage, Tournament: Arts of Rule in Late Medieval Scotland (Madison, 1991), 12. As Kathryn L. Lynch points out, Virgil and Ovid emphasize the fact that walls were not necessary in the Golden Age, and they function as a reminder of the unruly forces of nature. See Kathryn L. Lynch, ‘Partitioned Fictions: The Meaning and Importance of

60

Idealism and Antagonism

In the late fourteenth century, an upsurge of interest in Troy is evident. Chris Baswell has pointed out that the ‘second half of the fourteenth century witnessed a revival of interest in classical story and particularly in the Aeneid ’.¹⁹ He comments that, at this time, the first significant group of Virgil manuscripts since the end of the twelfth century was produced, that there are many annotations on Virgil manuscripts dating from this period, and that copies of the Roman d’Eneas and the production of Chaucer’s Troy poems also point to a multiplication of interest in Trojan legend. A brief survey of some of the literature of this period further attests to a strong awareness of the myths of the Trojan origins of the nation: Gower’s Vox clamantis and Confessio amantis,²⁰ Maidstone’s Concordia, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and St Erkenwald all refer to the idea of London or England’s Trojan beginnings. In addition to this, Chaucer is concerned with the matter of Troy in poems such as the House of Fame and the Legend of Good Women as well as in Troilus and Criseyde. In texts of the late fourteenth century, Troynovaunt is often deployed as a very mixed metaphor: Troy is upheld as a perfect origin for London, but also serves as a warning about what can happen to immoral or divided cities and nations. New Troy is supposed to be a perfected version of its point of origin, but it also represents the contemporary, flawed capital. Troy and New Troy often tend to become confused in the late fourteenth-century imagination. In St Erkenwald, London is often referred to simply as ‘Troie’ (ll. 251, 255), and in the Concordia too it is ‘Troja’ (l. 39). Gower and Maidstone both make direct comparisons between Trojan/Greek figures and personages living in late fourteenthcentury London. Chaucer depicts a city that is at once London and London’s so-called ‘origin point’, and in doing so calls into question the very concept of a social ideal. There is no straightforward binary between Troy and New Troy, or between real London and fantasy-New Troy-London. In many texts written at this time, Troy is a complex and divided image.²¹ In the Concordia, St Erkenwald, and the Vox clamantis, Walls in Chaucer’s Poetry’, in Art and Context in Late Medieval English Narrative, ed. Robert. R. Edwards (Cambridge, 1994), 107–25, 108–9. ¹⁹ Christopher Baswell, Virgil in Medieval England: Figuring the Aeneid from the Twelfth Century to Chaucer (Cambridge, 1995), 220. ²⁰ See Gower, Confessio amantis in Complete Works of John Gower, 2–3, Prologue i, and ll. 37–8*. ²¹ In ch. 1 of New Troy: Fantasies of Empire in the Late Middle Ages (Minneapolis, 2003), Sylvia Federico has described the manifestation of the dualism of Troy in Gower’s

Idealism and Antagonism

61

idealism struggles with antagonism in depictions of London and its inhabitants.

T H E K I N G ’ S U N RU LY C I T Y: R I C H A R D M A I D S TO N E ’ S CONCORDIA In Maidstone’s Concordia—a poem describing London’s reconciliation with Richard in 1392 after the taking of the city into the king’s hand—‘Trenovantum’ (l. 11) has sinned and is now penitent, has been divided, but is ostensibly now unified and integrated in idealized civic wholeness. The poem begins with a Ciceronian eulogy to friendship: Tullis in laudem tantam sustollit amicos, Quod licet, hiis demptis, optima nil valeant: ‘Stes,’ ait, ‘in cœlis, videas ibi quaeque beata, Hauriat auris in hiis utraque dulce melos, Quicquid adhuc sensus poterit tibi pascere quinos Nil valet acceptum, si nec amicus adest’ (ll. 1–6) Cicero commends friendship to high honor because, truly, the best things are of no value without friends. ‘Though you stand in the heavens,’ he says, ‘seeing all things blessed and imbibing sweet song with each ear. Whatever your five senses feast upon will be without value if no friend is present.’²²

As these lines open the poem, there is an immediate suggestion that social harmony will be a crucial theme. The poem goes on to claim that the ‘tota cohors sociatur’ (l. 55) (the entire city unites) and, in some ways, it depicts a coherent urban mass. Indeed, the people in the city are likened to the citizens of the New Jerusalem, as well as to those of the New Troy: the guilds are ‘formas ordinis angelici’ (l. 97) (the forms of an angelic order), Cheap is adorned by ‘divitiæ, vultus et angelici’ (l. 268) (rich ornamentation and angelic faces), and the king’s Vox clamantis and in Maidstone’s Concordia, both of which texts employ the idea of London as feminine New Troy. ²² All translations are from Smith, Concordia. For a discussion of Richard’s quarrel with the city, see Caroline M. Barron, ‘The Quarrel of Richard II with London 1392–7’, in The Reign of Richard II: Essays in Honour of May McKisack, ed. F. R. H. Du Boulay and Caroline M. Barron (London, 1971), 173–201.

62

Idealism and Antagonism

divine appointment is consistently stressed.²³ New Troy is depicted as an angelic, united city, but it is also described as utterly debased. The reconfigured city contains not only heaven, but also the wilderness, the place of temptation (l. 357). Richard attacks London’s degeneracy and pours forth an ‘ubi sunt’ lament, demanding: ‘Nunc ubi sunt justæ leges, ubi rectaque jura, Quo timor in dominos, quo modo fugit amor? Quo bona nunc pietas, inopum protectio grata, Quo socialis amor omnis abhinc periit?’ (ll. 505–8) Where now are just laws, where good rights, whither fear in lords, whither now flees love? Whither now true faithfulness, where a welcome cover for the poor, why are all bonds of love broken?

These words suggest that London has descended from a previous ideal state into anarchy—rather than having progressed, it has regressed. The repetition of ‘ ‘‘nunc’’ ’ implies that the city’s problems are immediate, and that they have not always been there. The lament for ‘ ‘‘pietas’’ ’ and ‘ ‘‘timor in dominos’’ ’ suggests that social structures have broken down in contemporary London: now ‘ ‘‘omnis’’ ’ (all) ties of friendship are broken, and it is each man for himself. This is a very different image of the city to that described earlier in the poem. London is here characterized as a place which lacks friendship, love, and fidelity, and Richard demands that in future the city will be docile: ‘ ‘‘contentio nulla, | Nec conventiculum fœderis insoliti’’ ’ (ll. 527–8) (with neither contention nor an assembly of uncustomary compact). He thus bans the Londoners from dissent, and from general plotting against him. The image of the city as an antagonistic locale is strong indeed, and Richard’s wish—‘ ‘‘Vos quoque spero per hoc ad meliora trahi’’ ’ (l. 516) (I hope also that through this you are to be drawn together for better things)—seems unlikely to be fulfilled. His words suggest that the pageants of the day have not convinced him, and his hope for future peace seems weak. The text encodes within itself intimations of a civic ideal—in the united guilds and the procession of the city, in the elaborate pageants, in the image of a better past, and even in Richard’s vague hope for the future—but these intimations are opposed by the ²³ John Bowers discusses Maidstone’s poem alongside Pearl in a suggestive comparison between London and the New Jerusalem, in John M. Bowers, ‘Pearl in its Royal Setting: Ricardian Poetry Revisited’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer 17 (1995): 111–55, 145.

Idealism and Antagonism

63

images of division that inform other parts of the poem. Even the united guilds are described in military terms, constituting them as a threatening presence²⁴ and reminding us of their own conflicts with each other. Richard too is portrayed in confused and ambiguous language. He is admiringly described as a Solomon (l. 38), a Troilus (l. 112), as ‘pius’ (l. 28) and, ‘Pacificum’ (l. 32), but is also Greek-like, as he enters and invades the city.²⁵ At one point, Richard’s tyranny over London seems to be emphasized and contrasted with the egalitarianism of that most famous of New Troys: Rome. In lines 73–4, the reference to Rome’s submission to its elected officials invites a comparison with London, which was being ruled by Richard’s chosen men.²⁶ The very presence of this controlling, resentful king, who is responsible to no one and yet who can warn Londoners against ‘ ‘‘contentio’’ ’ (l. 527) in any circumstances, reminds a reader of the basic civic separation between king and city, and of Richard’s divisive treatment of that city.²⁷ At another display two years earlier, which also could have been a model for communal solidarity, the idea of the New Troy proved similarly ambivalent. Richard termed his city the New Troy at the Smithfield tournament, but within the context of a pageant that promoted a select group and divided it from the citizenry. Sheila Lindenbaum has described the failure of the attempt to create an idea of togetherness and unity through civic display at the tournament as Richard employed strategies of exclusion, such as the use of the livery of the white hart.²⁸ The idealized city was again undercut by division and exclusivity, as Richard failed to use the language of urban promise successfully for his own ends.²⁹ The idea of Troy as both perfected origin/promise and as a ²⁴ See Federico, New Troy, 21, 23–4. ²⁵ Lynn Staley suggests that Maidstone is encouraging Richard to surpass these legendary figures, and that the poet ‘offers Richard a portrait of himself as triumphing over both the powers of time and of rebellion’. Languages of Power in the Age of Richard II (University Park, Pa., 2005), 170. ²⁶ This is pointed out by Federico in New Troy, 26. ²⁷ See Chapter 1 for a discussion of Richard’s attempts to exert extreme control over the city. ²⁸ Lindenbaum, ‘Smithfield Tournament’, 16–17. ²⁹ Indeed, as his reign progressed, Richard antagonized communal groupings more and more through his increasingly despotic tendencies, which manifested themselves in such strategies as his excessive use of livery, and his employment of a favoured retinue (the Cheshire archers). In this context, it is worth considering to what extent urban cohesion was actually desirable for the crown. Pamela Nightingale has said that: ‘The really disruptive force in the community of London was the crown’ in ‘Capitalists, Crafts and Constitutional Change in Late Fourteenth-Century London’, Past and Present 124

64

Idealism and Antagonism

simultaneous refraction of contemporary, divided London, was deeply problematic. Maidstone too struggles to maintain the idea that the New Troy is both perfected and fragmented, at once fantasy London and ‘real’ London. The omnipresence of division clashes with a desire for an ideal city, with a longing for civic integrity.

‘ T RO U BU L L I N þE PE P U L’ : ST ERKENWALD St Erkenwald is another text contemporary with Troilus and Criseyde which engages with the idea of London as New Troy and faces the problem of the present’s relationship with the past. This alliterative poem, probably written in the late 1380s or 1390s, tells the story of an episode from the life of St Erkenwald, an early English bishop.³⁰ The poem opens with a discussion of the paganism and conversion of England, referring to the capital as New Troy. It then describes the building of St Paul’s on the site of a pagan temple, and the discovery of a royal-looking tomb there. When the tomb is opened, the body inside is incorrupt, and dressed as a king, but nothing can be found out about the man in chronicles or records. The whole city is in a fever of anxiety about this corpse, and St Erkenwald is summoned back from Essex. He returns, prays and weeps, and orders the body to speak and tell its story. This command is obeyed, and the body reveals his secrets: he was a righteous judge, who lived in New Troy after Brutus had founded it and several hundred years before Christ. He was so wise and fair that after his death the people revered him and honoured his body. But, because he did not know Christ, he has not been able to go to heaven, and instead suffers in limbo, to his extreme distress. The bishop wishes to baptize him and, articulating his desire while weeping, inadvertently performs (1989): 3–35, 34. She describes Richard and John of Gaunt as exploiting the conflicting interests between trade groups for their own purposes, in other words of pursuing a divide and rule policy, arguing that the king depended on a bitterly divided citizenry for his own viability. Richard’s behaviour at Smithfield, and later on in his reign, suggests that he failed to grasp or to act on this concept. Instead of setting different groups against each other, as Gaunt did, Richard succeeded only in turning large groups against his own select affinity. ³⁰ Clifford Peterson, in his edition of St Erkenwald (Philadelphia, 1977) dates the poem between 1380 and 1410 (11–15). Frank Grady suggests a date between 1388 and 1392; see Frank Grady, ‘St Erkenwald and the Merciless Parliament’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer 22 (2000): 179–211, 191 n. 32 and 210 n. 86.

Idealism and Antagonism

65

the sacrament. The judge’s soul flies to heaven, his body decomposes, and the people process out together through London. St Erkenwald is staged around a confrontation with otherness. The pagan past is incomprehensible to the citizens of New Troy, who cannot understand the runic letters written on the tomb: ‘all muset hit to mouth and quat hit mene shuld’ (l. 54), and cannot decode what has happened through their oral or written histories (ll. 101–4).³¹ This encounter has an extraordinary effect on the Londoners: hundreds of people of different ranks abandon their work to gawp at the wonder, and the result is deep unrest: ‘troubull in þe pepul | And suche a cry aboute a cors crakit evermore’ (ll. 109–10). The opacity of this artefact is something that the citizens simply cannot accept, they demand to understand the meaning of this body, buried at the centre of their city, rising to challenge their world from the heart of St Paul’s itself. What the poem suggests, however, is that this is not in fact an encounter with otherness, but an encounter with the repressed basis of London society.³² The poem is concerned with three different periods: the pagan past, the time of St Erkenwald in which the poem is set, and the time in which the poem was itself written. The insistent ‘Now þat London is nevenyd hatte þe New Troie’ (l. 25) (What is now known as London was called ‘the New Troy’),³³ foregrounds contemporary London and would remind readers that in the 1380s and 1390s too, London was often called ‘New Troy’—an illustration of the similarities between the different periods. The city of the poem functions as a refracted image of contemporary London.³⁴ Frank Grady comments ³¹ D. Vance Smith focuses on the unknowable nature of the text in ‘Crypt and Decryption: Erkenwald Terminable and Interminable’, New Medieval Literatures 5, ed. Rita Copeland, David Lawton, and Wendy Scase (2002): 59–85, esp. 61. ³² Ralph Hanna comments that ‘assertions of differences from the past always minimize the lurking inevitability of the same repeated’, in ‘Alliterative Poetry’, in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature (Cambridge, 1999), ed. David Wallace, 488–512, 506. ³³ This translation is suggested in Burrow and Turville-Petre, A Book of Middle English, 203, note to l. 25. ³⁴ Frank Grady and Ruth Niss´e both discuss in detail the politics of the poem. See Grady, ‘St Erkenwald ’, and Ruth Niss´e, ‘ ‘‘A Coroun Ful Riche’’: The Rule of History in St Erkenwald ’, Journal of English Literary History 65:2 (1998): 277–95. Niss´e suggests that the Erkenwald-poet is responding to the chaos of English politics in the 1380s and 1390s by lauding an ‘anti-absolutist model of government’ (288). Grady, on the other hand, sees the poem as a ‘royalist response to the perceived aristocratic excesses of 1388’ (180). Both concur that the poem offers what Grady calls an ‘idealizing version of a London community’ (180) and Niss´e calls ‘a myth of social and political unity’ (287).

66

Idealism and Antagonism

that ‘the poem is careful to represent Troynovaunt as a recognizable facsimile of the fourteenth-century metropolis’.³⁵ The similarities between pagan London and Erkenwald’s London are revealed throughout the poem as the ‘otherness’ of the body collapses into sameness. The first lines of the poem describe the conversion of England to Christianity, and the vocabulary used is that of violent change and disruption: verbs such as ‘convertyd’ (l. 14), ‘turnyd’(l. 15), ‘hurlyd’ (l. 17), and ‘chaungit’ (l. 18) contribute to a sense of upheaval. But what is actually being described is a troubled continuity: the temples become churches, and the similarities between the two religions are underlined by the fact that churches are dedicated to saints whose names sound like the names of the pagan gods whom they are replacing. Thus: ‘Mahoun to Saynt Margrete oþir to Maudelayne’ (l. 20) and ‘Jubiter and Jono to Jesu oþir to James’ (l. 22).³⁶ Christianity exploits the pagan past and uses both pagan sites and pagan gods as a foundation on which to build. Furthermore, the kind of society depicted in the pagan era in which the judge lived is very similar to the society of the time of St Erkenwald. In both, there is a veneer of civic solidarity and unity: the judge tells of his own righteousness and the unanimous respect he gained for it; similarly, St Erkenwald seems to unite the people behind his own wisdom and devotion. The judge says: ‘And for I was ry twis and reken and redy of þe laghe, Quen I deghed for dul denyed all Troye; Alle menyd my dethe, þe more and the lasse, And þus to bounty my body þai buriet in golde, Cladden me for þe curtest þat courte couthe þen holde, In mantel for þe mekest and monlokest on benche, Gurden me for þe governour and graythist of Troie, Furrid me for þe fynest of faith me withinne. For þe honour of myn honest´e of heghest enprise þai coronyd me þe kidde kynge of kene justises ³⁵ Grady, ‘St Erkenwald ’, 199. ³⁶ Of course, the constraints of alliterative form encourage such linguistic similitude, but the idea that Christianity can best work in England by using rather than destroying pagan forms, and by emphasizing sameness rather than difference has a long history. Bede comments that the Pope urged ‘the temples of the idols in that nation ought not to be destroyed; let holy water be made and sprinkled on the said temples, let altars be erected, and relics placed … it is impossible to efface everything at once from their obdurate minds’. See Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, trans. J. Stevens (London, 1910), 52–3.

Idealism and Antagonism

67

þer ever wos tronyd in Troye oþir trowid ever shulde, And for I rewardid ever ri t þai raght me the septre.’ (ll. 245–56)

He describes a scene of total civic integrity: the people are united in their admiration and love for the judge and his acts. There is no differentiation: ‘ ‘‘alle’’ ’ feel the same, ‘ ‘‘þe more and the lasse’’ ’ and they act as one, an undivided ‘ ‘‘þai’’ ’. No voices of differing opinion or dissent intrude on this display of mourning and admiration. Their unity is further expressed in the fact that they robe and adorn the judge’s body. As Grady points out: rather than identifying him as an adherent of any one king or lord, his clothes show that he has earned the unusual (and in fourteenth-century terms, entirely fictional) distinction of having been literally robed and metaphorically retained by all the citizens of New Troy.³⁷

The divisive effects of livery, a serious problem in the 1380s and 1390s, are neutralized in this poem, as the livery does not attach the judge to a certain set of interests, but demonstrates the oneness of the whole community. Similarly, the audience listening to the judge’s tale in Erkenwald’s London act as one—‘alle wepyd for woo þe wordes þat herden’ (l. 310)—and the poem ends with a forceful display of community spirit: þai passyd forthe in procession and alle þe pepull folowid, And all þe belles in þe burgh beryd at ones. (ll. 351–2)

The poem’s depictions of pagan London and of St Erkenwald’s London both seem to describe a whole and integrated New Troy. But the two societies are also similar in their underlying tensions. Only a few lines before his magisterial description of the community livery ceremony, the judge describes the people as ‘ ‘‘felonse and fals and frowarde to reule’’ ’ (l. 231) adding that he ‘ ‘‘hent harmes ful ofte to holde hom to ri t’’ ’ (l. 232). This is a completely different image of the society, but can be compared to the ‘troubull in þe pepul’ (l. 109) in Erkenwald’s society. Both New Troys have a surface image of unity—a unity that is manifested most clearly after each of the two ‘deaths’ of the judge, an ³⁷ Grady, ‘St Erkenwald ’, 188.

68

Idealism and Antagonism

event that pulls the people together into a display of overt integrity.³⁸ Both, however, also manifest divisions and discord underneath this seeming togetherness. There are many hints that the London of St Erkenwald is problematic, and fraught with conflict. This conflict is most apparent in the relations between different power groups in the capital: the civic authorities, in particular the mayoralty, and the ecclesiastical authorities, associated more with the aristocracy. A consideration of some of the political contexts of St Erkenwald can help to illuminate its concerns. The civic politics discussed in the previous chapters are relevant here. In the 1370s and 1380s in particular, London was the site of dramatic power struggles between competing mayors and their factions, further complicated by the conflicting interests of great nobles such as John of Gaunt, of the king himself, and of bishops (such as Sudbury and Arundel). The king, aristocrats, bishops, mayoral candidates, and competing crafts all wanted to consolidate their power and influence in the capital. London’s unity was severely tested and found wanting in the Peasants’ Revolt, and also in the viciously fought mayoral contests of the day. On the surface, as I have already suggested, the secular and ecclesiastical social groups in the poem seem to complement each other. The ‘maire’ (l. 65) only orders the tomb to be opened, ‘By assent of þe sextene’ (l. 66) and, while the mayor is here an agent in the progress of the narrative, it requires the bishop’s presence to make the corpse speak. The different power groups in the poem seem to be working in harmony, and this concept is reinforced by the show of unity in the final lines of the poem. However, the poem also contains intimations of tension between these competing groups. These tensions are particularly resonant in the context of contemporary conflicts between bishops and nobles on the one hand and mayors and their affinities on the other. Before the confrontation between Erkenwald and the body of the judge, the dignitaries of London gather at the tomb—Erkenwald ‘him barones besyde’ (l. 142) and the mayor ‘with mony ma ti men and macers before hym’ (l. 143). Not only do the two groups seem to be arraigned quite separately, but the mace, symbol of civic power and on at least one occasion in the 1370s a bone of contention between bishop and mayor, is ³⁸ In England’s Empty Throne: Usurpation and the Language of Legitimation, 1399–1422 (New Haven, Ct., London, 1998), Paul Strohm discusses the Lacanian idea of the ‘two deaths’ with reference to Richard II’s reburial, on 102–3. On death and St Erkenwald, see also Smith, ‘Crypt and Decryption’.

Idealism and Antagonism

69

specifically mentioned.³⁹ The gathering of the ecclesiastical/aristocratic forces and the urban/civic ones appropriately prefaces what could be seen as a major urban conflict, as a bishop and a judge vie for the role of peacemaker, man of authority in London. Baswell has discussed the encounters and conflicts between ‘emerging urban identities and entrenched aristocratic and ecclesiastical assumptions in the later fourteenth century’, centring his investigation on manuscripts of the Aeneid and the deployment of Trojan tropes and ideologies.⁴⁰ One of his foci is the idea of the peacemaker: ‘Virgil’s image of the grave and pious man calming an urban rabble’ in the first book of the Aeneid.⁴¹ This pious man is characterized by verbal authority: he subdues the unruly mob with his ‘dictis’ (words). St Erkenwald ’s anxieties about competing urban and ecclesiastical/aristocratic interests and power manifest themselves in a struggle for the role of the calming, pious man of ‘great authority’ who can subdue the urban mob and resolve problems through speech. Indeed, as discussed in the earlier chapters of this book, this fantasy haunts many texts of the 1380s. The first lines of the poem declare Erkenwald its hero, and a reader might suppose him to be the authoritative figure. It is he who returns to London and ‘pes he comaundit’ (l. 115), it is he who makes the corpse reveal his secrets, and it is he who baptizes the judge. A closer analysis of the poem, however, suggests that Erkenwald’s role is not so simple as this, nor his authority so absolute or effective. Initially, of course, he is absent when the chain of events begins to unfold and it is the mayor who is in control. His command of peace is not enough; he cannot calm the people through his own words but knows he must make the corpse speak. It is not Erkenwald’s words, but those of the judge which soothe the rabble and encourage peace—this alone suggests that the judge is the true figure of authority with power in his speech. Moreover, throughout the conversation between the two men, Erkenwald is consistently wrong-footed. He is confused about the judge’s position, bewildered by the possession of the ‘ ‘‘croun’’ ’ (l. 222) and ‘ ‘‘septre’’ ’ (l. 223) by one who is not a king and who ‘ ‘‘hades no londe of lege men ne life ne lym aghtes’’ ’ (l. 224). This confusion reveals more than Erkenwald’s misapprehension. It exposes the fact that he cannot conceive of civic ³⁹ The story is told by Thomas Walsingham (Chronicon Angliae, ed. E. M. Thompson [London: Rolls Series, 1874], 139–40) and involves Henry Despenser and John Brunham; it is discussed in Christopher Baswell, ‘Aeneas in 1381’, New Medieval Literatures 5, ed. Rita Copeland, David Lawton, and Wendy Scase (2002): 7–58, 9–17. ⁴⁰ Baswell, ‘Aeneas in 1381’, 11. ⁴¹ Ibid., 8. See also Aeneid I: 148–56.

70

Idealism and Antagonism

power, and thinks solely in terms of regality and feudalism, emphasizing the idea that the only people who have authority are those who have land and vassals—‘ ‘‘londe of lege men’’ ’. He then stumbles into error again: ‘þi body may be enbawmyd, hit bashis me noght þat hit thar ryne no rote ne no ronke wormes; Bot þi coloure ne þi clothe—I knowe in no wise How hit my t lye by monnes lore and last so longe.’ (ll. 261–4)

Erkenwald here states that he is not surprised by the unchanged body, as he thinks it was embalmed, but that he cannot understand how the man’s clothes have survived so long or what ‘ ‘‘monnes lore’’ ’ has effected this. The judge’s response begins with an emphatic ‘ ‘‘Nay, bisshop’’ ’ (l. 265) as he begins to explain just how wrong Erkenwald is. The reasons that the bishop has supplied, for which he has not even asked confirmation, are entirely false—the judge was not embalmed. Furthermore, the premise of Erkenwald’s reasoning is mistaken. In considering the preservation of the body and the clothing, Erkenwald sought an explanation in the laws and knowledge of man; he has failed yet to understand that he is dealing with a miracle. The judge has to set him right with the declaration that ‘ ‘‘monnes counsell’’ ’ (l. 266) is irrelevant here, and that it is through God’s agency that his body and clothing are incorrupt. This turns the bishop’s thoughts—ever directed and prompted by civic figures in this poem, first by the mayor who opens the tomb and now by the judge who leads and directs the conversation—onto thoughts of God and heaven, and he reveals his mistaken premises again, as he asks the body where his soul is located. The bishop confidently declares: ‘He þat rewardes uche a renke as he has ri t servyd My t evel forgo the to gyfe of his grace summe brawnche. For as he says in his sothe psalmyde writtes: ‘‘þe skilfulle and þe unskathely skelton ay to me’’.’ (ll. 275–8)

In this speech, Erkenwald claims that it is a certainty that God would have rewarded the virtuous judge, and he uses Biblical citation to justify his belief. Again, the judge corrects him and explains why his theology is wrong, lamenting his own suffering in the afterlife. Erkenwald is thus

Idealism and Antagonism

71

shown that his conception of God is itself mistaken, for God could indeed ‘ ‘‘forgo [ … ] to gyfe of his grace’’ ’ to the judge, despite the fact that Erkenwald says that this would be ‘ ‘‘evel’’ ’. The conversation between the two figures serves, in many ways, to undermine the idea of Erkenwald as a potential man of great authority who can soothe and calm people with his wise words. He is consistently mistaken, and corrected by the wise words of the judge. Indeed, the narrative space given to the judge’s words and the judge’s story seems to write him into the role of civic peacemaker and hero of this poem, especially as he has the power to bring some kind of harmony to the people, both in his first life and death, and now with his second death. The final couplet reinforces this idea, as the people process to the ringing of bells: the poem ends with the words, ‘And all þe belles in þe burgh beryd at ones’ (l. 352). In one edition of St Erkenwald, the editors note that the miraculous ringing of bells often signals the death of a saint, adding that the final line of St Erkenwald ‘is probably to be understood accordingly’.⁴² This line, however, is not about the death of the saint of the poem (Erkenwald), but about the final death of the judge. The implication is that the man who has died is indeed the saint and focus of the poem, and that the bells are ringing and the people processing in unity not because Erkenwald has performed a miracle, but in honour of the life and death of the judge, who is now elevated to the status of civic emblem of London. With his words he has quelled the unrest and seems to have united the discordant people, just as in his lifetime he managed to control and to contain—if not to eradicate—the tensions within the city. In the last section of the poem, between the judge’s last speech and the end, Erkenwald is not mentioned at all. The struggle staged between ecclesiastical/aristocratic interests and civic/urban interests has been won hands down by the latter. The bishop, of course, has a crucial mediating role, but it is the judge who has all the knowledge and the ability to unite and to calm the people. The message of the poem could be that the difficult, divided people of London, who have always caused trouble from pagan times to Erkenwald’s times to the fourteenth century, can only be controlled by strong civic authority within the city itself. The people of New Troy are ‘troubull’ (l. 109), but they can be subdued. ⁴² Burrow and Turville-Petre, A Book of Middle English, 214, note to l. 352.

72

Idealism and Antagonism

T H E F R AG M E N T E D C I T Y A N D T H E F R AG M E N T E D S E L F I N J O H N G OW E R ’ S VOX CLAMANTIS Book I of Gower’s Vox clamantis deals in detail with the image of New Troy, with urban idealism and division, and with the idea of the peace-bringer. This dramatic, apocalyptic text is dominated by Gower’s raging desperation and horror at the events of the Peasants’ Revolt. The ‘nouam [ … ] Troiam’ (ll. 879–80) of the poem is both raped and a prostitute, sinner and sinned against, betrayed and treacherous. The opposed cities of Babylon and the New Jerusalem, the whore and the bride dramatized in St John’s Apocalypse, are here conflated. Federico writes that: By allegorizing his city as a chaste and vulnerable widow, Gower attempts to smooth over London’s internal conflicts in a mirage of completion, to construct cohesive boundaries, and to explain away violations of those boundaries in terms of the sexual impropriety of outsiders.⁴³

She then describes the way that Gower goes on to depict this chaste city as a ‘merry widow’, voluntarily opening her gates: Omnia traduntur, postes reserauimus hosti, Et fit in infida prodicione fides (ll. 903–4) Everything was surrendered. We unlocked our doors to the enemy and faith was kept only in faithless treason.⁴⁴

Indeed, throughout the Vox, Gower is highly critical of London, lamenting, for example: O denaturans urbis natura prioris, Que vulgi furias arma mouere sinis! (ll. 979–80) O the degenerate nature of our former city, which allowed the madly raging rabble to take up arms. ⁴³ Federico, New Troy, 6. ⁴⁴ All translations are from The Major Latin Works of John Gower, trans. Eric W. Stockton (Seattle, 1962).

Idealism and Antagonism

73

Affection for the city is never straightforward in this text. When social optimism does enter the text, it is always partial and problematized. The Old Man acknowledges the goodness of the citizens, but with a major caveat: ‘Non magis esse probos ad finem solis ab ortu Estimo, si populi mutuus esset amor’ (ll. 1981–2) ‘[Yet] I do not think there is a worthier people under the sun, if there were mutual love among them.’

These lines reveal a longing to believe in social unity and possibility, undercut by a hopeless awareness of the people’s mutual aggression. The emphasis in his speech is on the perfidy of the Britons, prone to ‘ ‘‘dissona’’ ’ (l. 1966) (‘quarrelling’) rather than ‘ ‘‘amore’’ ’ (l. 1966) (‘love’), devising ‘ ‘‘fraudes, scelus, arma, furores’’ ’ (l. 1973) (‘treachery, crime, fighting, uproar’)—a land which ‘ ‘‘cruor et cedes bellaque semper habent’’ ’ (l. 1978) (‘bloodshed and slaughters and wars always control’).⁴⁵ Similarly, later on in the book, although Gower claims that, after the Revolt: ‘Crevit amicicia vetus’ (l. 2065) (Friendship flourished as of old), we are aware that the past of the island does not include any examples of unproblematic amity. Gower even goes on to stress the fact that although, after the rising, Satan’s power was subdued, nonetheless ‘indomita rusticitate latet’ (l. 2098) (it lurked in hiding among the ungovernable peasantry). At other points in the text, the social pessimism is more straightforward. The prologue starkly announces that: Qui magis inspiciet opus istud, tempus et instans, Inueniet toto carmine dulce nichil (ll. 41–2) One who looks further into this work and into the present time will find nothing consoling in the whole poem.

Towards the end of the book, a celestial voice explicitly states that: ‘ ‘‘Munera [ … ] mundus nulla quietis habet’’ ’ (l. 2026) (‘the world holds out no peaceful rewards’). In keeping with this ideological pessimism, the blame for the Peasants’ Revolt itself is laid at the door not only of the bestial peasants, who are ⁴⁵ Emphasis mine.

74

Idealism and Antagonism

described with revulsion and horror, but also of the great men of the city, as internal cowardice and division is stressed.⁴⁶ This is a place where the ‘gubernator’ (l. 1727) (helmsman) loses his nerve when faced with the chaos: ‘Perdidit hiis viis audacior intima cordis | Robora’ (ll. 1725–6) (When he saw this, even a bold man lost the inner strength of his heart). The Tower of London, symbol of the king’s affinity and advisers in this poem, is a place ‘ubi porta sibi seras ferre recusat’ (l. 1747) (where the gate would not close its bars), where ‘patula furiis via restat’ (ll. 1749) (an approach for the madmen was wide open), ‘Turris, ubi virtus non iuvat ulla viros’ (l. 1752) (a Tower where no bravery came to men’s assistance). By the time Gower writes that the Tower is ‘diuisa linguis Babilonis ad instar’ (l. 1763) (divided like Babel with its tongues), and ‘pressa vicii sub gurgite’ (l. 1765) (overwhelmed in a whirlpool of vice), he could be referring to the inarticulate invaders, or to the panicking inhabitants. The boundaries between guilty and innocent are decisively broken down in this poem. Internal fragmentation is dwelt upon to such an extent that, despite Gower’s raging rhetoric against the peasants, at some points they seem to be somewhat exculpated. For example, the reason that they can behave so badly is that ‘nec frenis quis moderauit eos’ (l. 184) (no one checked them by the bridle)—the overlords are failing to do their job properly and keep the peasants in their place. Much of the text is taken up with criticism of men of authority: ‘Consilium sapiens nec sapientis erat’ (l. 826) (no wise man has a wise plan) and ‘manu medici curaque cessat ibi’ (l. 830) (the physician’s hand has no cure for it). At one bewildering moment of the text, Gower suggests that the important figures in London are traitors, but inadequate traitors. He compares them to Calchas and Antenor, saying that London’s Calchas, the wisest of all, ‘nullum tunc sapuisse modum’ (l. 962) (then knew no course of action), and Antenor ‘ex pactis componere federa pacis’ (l. 963) (did not know then by what means to arrange peace treaties). Gower here singles out the two great traitors of Troy—and the same two singled out by Chaucer in Troilus and Criseyde. The implication is that their ancient treachery was a form of wisdom and peace-making, and that in the case of London, no one managed to effect such truces. Gower also suggests, through his choice of images, that treason exists at the heart of the court and the city. Having compared the peasants to a succession of animals, Gower turns to describing foxes. ⁴⁶ See Chapter 2.

Idealism and Antagonism

75

The fox was, as is well known, frequently associated with lawyers, one of the major targets of the revolt. In the ‘Nun’s Priest’s Tale’, it is the fox who is the enemy of the peasant-like beasts. In the Vox, Gower emphasizes the fact that the fox ‘in aulas | Scandit’ (ll. 487–8) (climbed up into palaces), suggesting—perhaps inadvertently, perhaps not—that he is talking not about the rebels any more, but about the king’s advisers, and that there are bestial elements within the city itself. Gower’s text is savage in its assessment of social/civic possibility. Sickened by the hopelessness of the city and society, Gower—or his persona—dwells at length on the individual, interrogating the idea of personal possibility. He becomes aware that he has a strong longing for death: Est michi vita mori, mors viuere, mors michi vita Dulcior est, redolet viuere mortis amor (ll. 1583–4) To die was life to me, to live was death; death was more welcome than life, and love of death smacked of living.

He dwells at length on his desire to die, and makes it clear that what he hopes for is closure—‘ ‘‘Omnia soluit | Mors’’ ’ (ll. 1525–6) (‘Death releases all things’). He seeks completion, wholeness, an end to fragmentation: ‘ ‘‘Da michi vel plene viuere siue mori’’ ’ (l. 1528) (‘Let me either wholly live or die’).⁴⁷ Gower is miserably aware of the division, the imbalance within the self, and he longs for his sense of internal rupture to end, so that his life may be no longer death-infused and fragmentary. He asks for the completion, the stability, of the subject. Indeed, Gower seems to be able to cope with the idea that society is inevitably divided by hanging on to a hope for the individual. The celestial voice warns him that the world holds no prospect of peace, but ‘ ‘‘interiori | Pace, iuuante deo, te pacienter habe’’ ’ (ll. 2027–8) (‘with God’s help control yourself patiently by the peace within you’). This is the consolation offered—the city and society may be inevitably antagonistic, but the city of the soul can be integrated and whole. Even ˇ zek’s recent work on the death drive. He writes: ‘The subject is ⁴⁷ See also Ziˇ constituted through his own division, splitting, as to the object in him; this object, this traumatic kernel, is the dimension that we have already named as that of a ‘‘death drive’’, of a traumatic imbalance, a rooting out. Man as such is ‘‘nature sick unto death’’, derailed, run off the rails through a fascination with a lethal Thing.’ Sublime Object, 181.

76

Idealism and Antagonism

this hope is undermined by Gower’s admission that ‘nec dum tamen inde quietus’ (l. 2137) (I am not yet at peace): we see no evidence that his death-drive has been extinguished. N E G OT I AT I O N A N D B E T R AY A L : T H E M A N O F G R E AT AU T H O R I T Y In all of these poems, the figure of the healing peace-bringer—the Gower-prophet figure, Richard II (in the Concordia), St Erkenwald/the judge—has a central role. Baswell has analysed the late fourteenthcentury annotations on a manuscript of the Aeneid, and has commented particularly on the notes alongside the lines in Book I about the peacemaking man of great authority calming the urban rabble’s uncontrolled behaviour with his measured words.⁴⁸ I suggest that these lines are also a source for the Vox, and that an awareness of source further problematizes the ever-blurring polarities of Gower’s text. In the Aeneid, Virgil writes about a storm at sea, and compares it to a seditious crowd who, when they see an authoritative man, are silent and listen to him ‘arrectisque auribus’ (with ears set upright).⁴⁹ In Gower’s text, a speaker comes and calms the mob, Gower compares them to the sea, and then emphasizes the fact that the people are listening: ‘Auribus extensis’ (l. 717) (with ears pricked up). The man of authority, however, is Wat Tyler, and Gower is ostensibly criticizing him for stirring the people up into a storm and ordering them to commit violence and murder. An awareness of source undercuts Gower’s text, and suggests meanings antithetical to those expressed by the narrator. The Vox has repeatedly shown the failure of the dignitaries of the city to impose any kind of order, yet Wat ⁴⁸ See Baswell, Virgil, 144–6 and ‘Aeneas in 1381’, 23–9. ⁴⁹ The lines in question are Aeneid I, ll. 148–56 (translation mine): ac ueluti magno in populo cum saepe coorta est | seditio saeuitque animis ignobile uulgus | iamque faces et saxa uolant, furor arma ministrat; | tum, pietate grauem ac meritis si forte uirum quem | conspexere, silent arrectisque auribus astant; | ille regit dictis animos et pectora mulcet: | sic cunctus pelagi cecidit fragor, aequora postquam | prospiciens genitor caeloque inuectus aperto | flectit equos curruque uolans dat lora secundo (and, just as, often, when a crowd of people arises in mutiny and the common people rage in their minds and now firebrands and rocks fly; madness supplies weapons; then, if, by chance, they see a man who is important with his piety and service, they are silent and they stand with ears set upright; he rules their spirits with his words and soothes their hearts: in this way all the noise of the sea ceased, after the father, looking on the waters and riding in the open sky, turned his horses and with speeding chariot, used the whip and made conditions favourable for travel).

Idealism and Antagonism

77

Tyler does so, and is configured in the mould of the Virgilian pious man of authority. Gower’s troubled text implies a mixed view about where the rights and wrongs of the revolt lie, despite his overt, strident denunciations of the peasants. The annotator on these lines of the Aeneid in MS London, B.L. Additional 27304 writes ‘Hic ostendit quid facit talis populus quando insurgit. Iohannes latimer in Norwico. et horyn londoniis’ (Here he shows what such a throng does when it rises up. John Latimer in Norwich, and Horyn in London).⁵⁰ Horyn is John Horn, who figured so centrally in Chapter 2. Is Horn being referred to as insurgent or peacebringer? Baswell ultimately suggests that Horn’s work can be seen, from within a ‘broad-based urban perspective’, as ‘peacemaking and containment’.⁵¹ But he adds that the nature of Horn’s actions—‘loyalty or treachery’—is ‘a question of highly interested perspective, of hermeneutics in effect, not fact’.⁵² A comparison can be made between Horn and Criseyde in this context. Carolyn Dinshaw comments that: When [Criseyde] chooses to shift her allegiance from Troilus to Diomede, she in fact acts in the best interests of Troy in the repair of its losses in battle and in the reestablishment of truce.⁵³

In pragmatic terms, there is often little difference between betrayal and negotiation—consider, for example, the Londoners’ peaceable welcome of the Lords Appellant in December 1387 when in October they had pledged their exclusive support for the king.⁵⁴ The briefest overview of the crisis of late 1387 reveals the complexity of the alliances between competing civic groups, the king, and the aristocracy. In October, the Londoners took an oath of allegiance to the king, promising ‘secum tenere aliis postpositis quibuscumque’ (to support him without regard to anybody else whatever).⁵⁵ Then, having refused lodgings to the king’s supporters, as soon as the Lords Appellant arrived, the mayor and the aldermen ‘predicte continuo exierunt ad illos suscipientes eos pacifice’ (promptly went out to give them a peaceable reception).⁵⁶ Three days ⁵⁰ Baswell, ‘Aeneas in 1381’, 24. ⁵¹ Ibid., 29. Obviously, the perspective of this annotator seems very different to that of the jurors, whose reports were discussed in the previous chapter. ⁵² Ibid., 27. ⁵³ Carolyn Dinshaw, Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics (Madison, 1989), 57. Furthermore, at the end of Book IV, Criseyde advocates and predicts peace (ll. 1345–58). ⁵⁴ L. C. Hector and Barbara F. Harvey, eds. and trans., The Westminster Chronicle (Oxford, 1982), 226 and 206. ⁵⁵ Ibid., 206–7. ⁵⁶ Ibid., 226–7.

78

Idealism and Antagonism

later (on 30 December), the Lords explained themselves to the ‘majoris et communitatis’ (mayor and the commonalty) and they processed together but, soon after the Lords and the king began discussions, they withdrew away from the civic powers and into a separate chamber because of the ‘tumultum populi’ (uproar from the people).⁵⁷ Thus was the city put in its place. The Lords then claimed that the king was protecting ‘falsissimos proditores’ (the falsest traitors).⁵⁸ They went on not only to humiliate the king but to attack civic figures such as Brembre as well. In this thumbnail sketch of events, the twists and turns of allegiance and betrayal are immediately evident—and this is further emphasized by the fact that London, which was treated in this drama as one entity was itself a deeply fragmented site. The whole performance was a complex web of treachery/negotiated interests, in which antagonists could also be allies, and oppositions were never straightforward. The idea of urban peace is problematized by its basis in treachery and compromise. Perhaps it is no coincidence that pious Aeneas, the ultimate bringer of civilization, is also known as a traitor who sold his city. The annotator of MS London, B.L. Additional 27304 seems to recognize, as perhaps did many of his contemporaries, that civic idealism is often unhelpful, and that cities can only survive through compromising and, sometimes, through what could be termed betrayal and treason (that is, Horn’s supposed actions). St Erkenwald (like the Aeneid ) remains optimistic about the power of a man of great authority to soothe dissent and to impose (uneasy) unity onto the city. Gower and Maidstone produce texts split between a longing for wholeness and an awareness of fragmentation—and indeed of betrayal. In Troilus and Criseyde, the man of ‘gret auctorite’ (I, l. 65) is the great traitor, Calchas. Throughout the poem, figures of authority are traitors (Calchas, Aeneas, Antenor), ultimately powerless (Pandarus, Priam), driven by personal desires (Troilus, Paris, Deiphoebus, Pandarus), malicious (Poliphete, Antenor, Aeneas) or ignored (Hector). All—save perhaps the impotent and innocent Hector (‘ ‘‘We usen here no wommen for to selle’’ ’, IV, l. 182) who wields no authority whatsoever—are concerned with their own personal interests rather than those of the city, and this is particularly true of the king’s sons (Paris, Troilus, and Deiphoebus). The town makes its own political decisions in the parliament, and, although it makes ill-advised ones, it is clear that the aristocrats would generally do no better. There are no peace-bringers, ⁵⁷ Westminster Chronicle, 226–7.

⁵⁸ Ibid., 228–9.

Idealism and Antagonism

79

only politicians. Through a depiction of both contemporary London and fantasy Troy as internally antagonistic, Troilus and Criseyde interrogates the idea of civic possibility. Furthermore, the city and the individual prove to be analogous in their fragmentation—the drive to destruct infects the individual soul as well as social groups in this poem. Chaucer’s deployment of the idea of New Troy, his meditation on the relationship between Troy and London, and his investigation into the idea of urban idealism form the focus of the rest of this chapter. TROILUS AND CRISEYDE

The Impossibility of Society While the Vox, the Concordia, and St Erkenwald are set in London/New Troy, Chaucer ostensibly sets his poem in Troy itself, shifting the focus onto the repressed basis of Western society—the ‘Troy that is always already repressed’.⁵⁹ The overt paganism of the poem (‘Lo here, of payens corsed olde rites!’ V, l. 1849), and the pointed references to Troy’s difference and to the difference of the past in general (‘in forme of speche is chaunge/Withinne a thousand yeer’, II, ll. 22–3), imply a displacement between the cities. But the Troy of Troilus and Criseyde also stands for the contemporary capital; the walled city of Troy is given the attributes of fourteenth-century London⁶⁰ and the issues in which Troilus and Criseyde is interested are germane to London’s political machinations. The poem’s deployment of the language of fourteenth-century urban dissent, its close engagement with contemporary issues—the politics of ‘trouthe’ and ‘tresoun’, the penetration of city walls, the formation of temporary social alliances—and the frequent connection made at this time between London and Troy, suggest that Chaucer’s Troy is a palimpsest of London.⁶¹ By conflating the fantasy city and the contemporary city, Troilus and Criseyde suggests that there is no disparity between the two—all cities are inevitably divided. The ⁵⁹ Bellamy, Translations, 70. ⁶⁰ C. David Benson comments, for example, that ‘the Troy of Troilus and Criseyde is also familiar and medieval. Its architecture and furnishings are those of fourteenth-century London.’ See Benson, Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde (London, 1990), 60. ⁶¹ The text also bears a relation to contemporary London in that both claim false origins, i.e. Lollius and Troy, and occlude their true sources. Of course, in Troilus and Criseyde, the ‘deception’ is made clear; in some ways the same could be said of contemporary London.

80

Idealism and Antagonism

contemporary city is not demonized in contrast to a nostalgic ideal or future hope, and nor does Troy act as a warning to contemporary London, as some critics have suggested.⁶² Chaucer’s poem does not warn about what might happen, rather it demonstrates what has already happened.⁶³ The impossibility of civic progress is demonstrated by the persistent references to Thebes and to Troy’s involvement in a cycle of fallen cities: Troy appears to be inevitably embroiled in history.⁶⁴ At the beginning of Book II, Pandarus explicitly exhorts Criseyde to forget the ominous example of Thebes—‘ ‘‘lat be this [ … ] | Do wey youre book’’ ’ (ll. 109–11)—and to dance and think about love instead, as he refuses to learn from history. But, as Patterson comments, ‘the Theban story cannot be so easily dismissed: the narrative continually reverts to it as if, in typically Theban fashion, to a guilty origin’.⁶⁵ The recurrent references to Thebes illustrate the fact that Troy/London cannot progress. Indeed, the insistence of Thebes (in the opening of Book II, in Troilus’s dream in Book V, ll. 1233–41, and in numerous other references) serves to suggest that history is cyclical and unprogressive—a suggestion that invalidates the very concept of the translatio imperii, as repetition replaces progress. The poem therefore reveals the impossibility of contemporary Londoners’ desires for social progression (as shown in their use of the idea of New Troy),⁶⁶ while at ⁶² See Eugene Vance, Mervelous Signals: Poetics and Sign Theory in the Middle Ages (Lincoln, London, 1986). I discuss this book above on p. 32 n. 7. ⁶³ Windeatt writes that ‘it has been suggested that in Troilus Chaucer is drawing analogies—in the fate of the hero and his city—between this traditional moral interpretation of Troy and the political and moral instability of England in the 1380s’. See Barry Windeatt, Oxford Guides to Chaucer: ‘Troilus and Criseyde’ (Oxford, 1992), 8. ⁶⁴ Richard W. Fehrenbacher argues that as ‘Chaucer’s allusions to Thebes call into question the foundational moment of Troy, so do his allusions to incestuous desire confound the originary moment of the incest taboo and the patriarchal society it authorizes’, in ‘ ‘‘Al that which chargeth nought to seye’’: The Theme of Incest in Troilus and Criseyde’, Exemplaria 9 (1997): 341–69, 355. Lee Patterson writes that ‘Chaucer seems to have intuited what it was about Theban history that might well have caused its strategic marginalization: he shows that the Trojan origin, and all historical origins, are undone by a subtext that repudiates the very idea of originality’, in Chaucer and the Subject of History (London, 1991), 99. ⁶⁵ Patterson, Chaucer and the Subject, 132. ⁶⁶ Troy functions both as nostalgic origin and hope for the future: it is the ideal city in remembrance, and the projected end of the translatio imperii. Thus, paradoxically, an emphasis on a Trojan past is also a hope for future progression.

Idealism and Antagonism

81

the same time exposing the nature of contemporary London. The poem can be read as a challenge to idealism itself—urban, social, personal, and imperial. The fragmentation of social groups is a central theme of the poem. Within Troilus and Criseyde, an integrated community can only exist if it is based on exclusion and repression. This is evident at the start of the poem, when Hector advises Criseyde to ‘ ‘‘Lat youre fadres treson gon | Forth with meschaunce, and ye youreself in joie | Dwelleth with us’’ ’ (I, ll. 117–19). Criseyde must forget and ignore what has happened, in order to continue living happily. At the end of Book III, the peak of Fortune’s wheel, the moment of the greatest plenitude and completion in the poem, the falsity of imagining a perfected community is made manifest. Troilus’s ecstasy is described in this way: In suffisaunce, in blisse, and in singynges, This Troilus gan al his lif to lede. He spendeth, jousteth, maketh festeynges; He yeveth frely ofte, and chaungeth wede, And held aboute hym alwey, out of drede, A world of folk, as com hym wel of kynde, The fresshest and the beste he koude fynde; That swich a vois was of hym and a stevene, Thorughout the world, of honour and largesse, That it rong unto the yate of hevene; And, as in love, he was in swich gladnesse That in his herte he demed, as I gesse, That ther nys lovere in this world at ese So wel as he; and thus gan love hym plese. (III, ll. 1716–29)

Picking up Troilus’s own characteristic hyperbole, the narrator idealizes the group that he collects, describing them in superlatives as the ‘fresshest and the beste’ and terming Troilus the happiest lover ‘in this world’. The language of these stanzas emphasizes the fact that Troilus has cocooned himself in a little group which he believes constitutes the whole world: he has ‘A world of folk’ and the talk of him that penetrates ‘Thorughout the world’ clearly only has resonance within this very specific social milieu. He keeps these people with him ‘alwey’

82

Idealism and Antagonism

and lives ‘al his lif ’ in this joy—there is a pretence that such happiness can be sustained. The most notable aspect about these stanzas is their incongruity: this seemingly ideally happy little community exists in a war zone, in a besieged city overshadowed by the threat of death every day. The reality of the horror and trauma going on throughout Trojan society is repressed by the desperately partying, leisured few, who try to excise all awareness of the pervasive fragmentation and destruction in Troy. The poem suggests that a happy community is deceiving itself—the very structure of the text emphasizes the idea that Fortune’s wheel is ever turning, destruction always overshadowing social groups, and that they can only construct a veneer of coherence through repression. The bleak idea that society is inevitably divided is further born out by Troilus and Criseyde’s examination of the nature of fellowship. The idea that social idealism per se is undermined in this text is demonstrated in the fact that Pandarus, master of linguistic duplicity and fragmented relationships, is the defender of social ideals. He is loud in his approval of ideologies of fellowship, but exposes the ultimate destructiveness inherent within such idealism through the extremity of his beliefs. In Book I, Pandarus is a passionate defender of fellowship, arguing strongly for the importance and validity of fraternal bonds. He yokes the language of proverbs to his service, giving his words the character of time-honoured maxims, as well as his personal approval. He says: ‘Men seyn, ‘‘to wrecche is consolacioun To have another felawe in hys peyne’’ ’ (ll. 708–9)

The fact that such words are spoken by Pandarus encourages us to question the validity of these ideas themselves—especially as he later contradicts himself, revealing the easy manipulation of proverbial wisdom, declaring that the ‘ ‘‘firste vertu is to kepe tonge’’ ’⁶⁷ (III, l. 294) and adding that he can prove this through ‘ ‘‘Proverbes’’ ’ (l. 299). In his defence of fellowship, he asserts: ⁶⁷ Such proverbial wisdom is also manipulated in the ‘Manciple’s Tale’, when the verbose mother repeatedly insists that her son must ‘keep wel thy tonge’ (ll. 319, 333, 362).

Idealism and Antagonism

83

‘The wise seith, ‘‘Wo hym that is allone, For, and he falle, he hath non helpe to ryse’’; And sith thow hast a felawe, tel thi mone;’ (I, ll. 694–6)

This passage finds no source in the Filostrato.⁶⁸ By putting such words in Pandarus’s mouth and making him the advocate of the concept of fellowship, Chaucer’s text fundamentally problematizes such beliefs. Moreover, such moral musings on the value of friendship and brotherhood are greatly undermined when Pandarus takes his friendship to its logical extreme, and unwittingly exposes its perversion. His sense of the importance of fellowship is so strong that he will condone incest and Troilus’s betrayal of his own brother if necessary (I, ll. 676–9). Similarly, when Pandarus acknowledges that he has become ‘ ‘‘swich a meene | As maken wommen unto men to comen’’ ’ (III, ll. 254–5), Troilus reassures him, partly by offering to be the same kind of man himself and giving Pandarus the choice of his sisters, but also by a manipulation of the language of fellowship: he insists that ‘ ‘‘bauderye’’ ’ (l. 397) is ‘ ‘‘compaignie’’ ’ (l. 396, emphasis mine) and encourages Pandarus to ‘ ‘‘calle it gentilesse, | Compassioun, and felawship, and trist’’ ’ (ll. 402–3, emphasis mine). Pandarus’s own idea of fellowship seems to be both violent and selfish, a bond that overrides all other considerations and is demonstrable through bloody conflict. The most damning expos´e of his concept of fellowship comes in Book IV, when he swears that: ‘Theigh ich and al my kyn upon a stownde Shulle in a strete as dogges liggen dede, Thorugh-girt with many a wid and blody wownde; In every cas I wol a frend be founde.’ (IV, ll. 625–8)

The viciousness implicit in Pandarus’s concept of fellowship is shown here in his use of violent images of death and destruction, and is further demonstrated by his total lack of understanding of Troilus’s plight. The ⁶⁸ The proverbial tone of the passage comes from its source in Ecclesiastes 4:10. See Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde: A New Edition of ‘The Book of Troilus’, ed. Barry Windeatt (London, 1984), 129.

84

Idealism and Antagonism

implication of his early use of words of friendship is that these words and ideas are deployed to mask internal selfishness and corruption—as demonstrated in the episode in Deiphoebus’s house.⁶⁹ In this episode, in the parliament scene, in the depictions of social cliques, of close friendships, and of sexual relationships, division and antagonism are pervasively evident. The consistent depiction of fragmentary social groups in this text implies that there is no possibility of escape from a social antagonism that proves to be relentless: the text offers no hope of an alternative society, it contains no social group or relationship that is undivided or non-destructive. The text’s examination of endings and goals further calls into question the concept of progress—both social and personal. Indeed, Pandarus’s defence of teleology reveals the problems encoded within concepts of progress and closure. Vance characterizes Pandarus as ‘a strategist without telos’.⁷⁰ It can alternatively be argued that Pandarus is obsessed with goals, and that the idea of progression and finite endings is itself problematized by the text. Pandarus often discusses sexual teleology and consequently is bewildered by Troilus’s grief in Book IV, when he has already achieved his sexual goal. Thus Pandarus asks: ‘Whi listow in this wise, Syn thi desir al holly hastow had, So that, by right, it oughte ynough suffise?’ (IV, ll. 394–6)

Broader statements about the concept of focusing on a goal are also given to Pandarus: ‘How so it be that som men hem delite With subtyl art hire tales for to endite, Yet for al that, in hire entencioun Hire tale is al for som conclusioun. ‘And sithe th’ende is every tales strengthe, And this matere is so bihovely, What sholde I peynte or drawen it on lengthe To yow, that ben my frend so feythfully?’ (II, ll. 256–63) ⁶⁹ See Chapter 2.

⁷⁰ Vance, Mervelous Signals, 281.

Idealism and Antagonism

85

His overt purpose here is to criticize those who fail to make their intentions and aims clear, and to emphasize the importance of ‘ ‘‘th’ende’’ ’, and of explaining one’s telos. The reader is, of course, aware of the irony that Pandarus is himself failing to reveal his true purpose—to achieve the sexual union of Troilus and Criseyde —and that he is himself one of those whom he purports to criticize in lines 256–9.⁷¹ His own words, then, are not teleological, and fail to intend towards their goal, but he does have a clear goal in mind, and believes in progression. In this passage, just as in his words on fellowship discussed earlier, he is again making use of highly conventional wisdom, and Pandarus’s deployment of these ideas makes them appear extremely spurious.⁷² Furthermore, Pandarus’s enthusiasm for closure serves to stress the idea that all endings—including the troubled ending of this poem itself—are problematic; that closure and completion are false goals. After all, the end is emphatically not this tale’s strength.⁷³

‘Evere Dye and Nevere Fulli Sterve’: The Living Death Troilus too is in search of an ending.⁷⁴ He is a desperate idealist; indeed, the plot of the poem is centred around his blind adherence to a false ideal: his self-centred obsession with a ‘ ‘‘goddesse’’ ’ (I, l. 425). His language is characterized by his use of absolutes and superlatives and his expectations are far from realistic. Freud has written about ⁷¹ See also Elizabeth Archibald, ‘Declarations of ‘‘Entente’’ in Troilus and Criseyde’, Chaucer Review 25 (1991): 190–213, 200–1, for a discussion of the importance of the idea of the ‘fyn of his entente’. ⁷² See the Riverside Chaucer, 1032, note to l. 260 for a brief discussion of the conventionality of Pandarus’s teleological ideas. ⁷³ The text itself fails to end: Rosemarie P. McGerr has argued that the ending demonstrates a ‘resistance to closure’; that it is ‘conventional but inconclusive’; and that its incongruity reveals the difficulties encoded within the idea of an ending. She adds that the poem ‘ultimately makes clear the difficulty of determining meaning and the need for resisting the illusion of closure in our pursuit of understanding’. See ‘Meaning and Ending in a ‘‘Paynted Proces’’: Resistance to Closure in Troilus and Criseyde’, in Chaucer’s ‘Troilus and Criseyde’: ‘Subgit to alle Poesye’, ed. R. A. Shoaf and Catherine Cox (Binghampton, N.Y., 1992), 179–98, 181, 180, 198. E. Talbot Donaldson famously described the ending of Troilus and Criseyde as ‘a kind of nervous breakdown in poetry’. See ‘The Ending of Chaucer’s Troilus’, in Early English and Norse Studies, ed. Arthur Brown and Peter Foote (London, 1963), 26–45, 34. Patterson also makes an illuminating comment that the scornful laughter from the spheres, at the end of the poem, mirrors the scornful laughter in the temple at the beginning. See Patterson, Chaucer and the Subject, 151. ⁷⁴ Patterson comments that both Troilus and Criseyde are seeking ‘unmediated mutuality’ and ‘completeness’. Ibid., 137.

86

Idealism and Antagonism

the parallels between individual and national myth-making: fantasies of social plenitude and stable origins function in a similar way to the individual’s construction of an object of personal desire.⁷⁵ Troilus and Criseyde engages with personal and social/civic loss, the loss of a woman and the loss of a city.⁷⁶ In the context of fourteenth-century London, this text also impacts upon the image of Troynovaunt and the problems inherent in idealizing the city in the troubled climate of the 1380s. The poem deals, in parallel, with Troilus’s personal loss and the communal loss of a belief in civic integrity. Desire—whether personal or social—arises from the idea of the division of the whole, it is driven by a sense of incompleteness, and a regressive wish to return to an earlier state, to find wholeness.⁷⁷ Many critics have argued that the poem promotes a renunciation of the world and reliance upon individual morality and personal truth:⁷⁸ I would argue that the poem suggests that personal wholeness is just as much of a fantasy as social unity. Troilus is seeking personal completion, seeking to fill the lack that drives desire. Lacan writes that courtly love has ‘left traces in our unconscious … a whole imagery, that we continue to inhabit as far as our relations with women are concerned’.⁷⁹ He argues that ‘Courtly love marked the rise to the surface in European culture of a problematic of desire’; by surrounding the object of (male, heterosexual) desire with ‘cultural elaborations’, she became ‘inaccessible’ and ‘depersonalized’, ⁷⁵ See Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents, in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey, Anna Freud, Alix Strachey, and Alan Tyson, 24 vols (London, 1953–74), 21: 64–145, 81, and below. ⁷⁶ Louise Fradenburg comments that Troilus and Criseyde ‘is Chaucer’s most profound engagement of personal and communal disaster … [of ] the inevitability of loss’. See ‘Voice Memorial: Loss and Reparation in Chaucer’s Poetry’, Exemplaria 2 (1990): 169–202, 179. She goes on to argue that the Canterbury Tales is ‘a massive attempt at reparation’ (180), an argument with which I take issue, as will be clear in the later chapters of this book. ⁷⁷ See Jonathan Dollimore, Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture (London, 1998), 185–7. ⁷⁸ Vance, for example, maintains that there is a metaphysical ‘truth’ to be found, and that Troilus and Criseyde advocates a renunciation of the world and a devotion to prayer, through which one can find true fulfilment and illumination. See Mervelous Signals, 309. In a sense, I think that this argument could be made about Book I of Gower’s Vox clamantis, but Troilus and Criseyde, in my view, rejects the idea that the individual can find completion. ⁷⁹ Cited in Henry Staten, Eros in Mourning: Homer to Lacan (Baltimore, 1995), 177.

Idealism and Antagonism

87

a representation of das Ding.⁸⁰ Woman was reconfigured as absence: this seems especially relevant in the context of Troilus and Criseyde’s sustained examination of the conventions of courtly love. Pondering the nature of love, Troilus exclaims, ‘ ‘‘O quike deth, O swete harm so queynte’’ ’ (I, l. 411). Love is here described as a ‘living death’, which implies a concept of the death drive, an always present death. The use of the word ‘queynte’ is important; the Riverside Chaucer translates it here as ‘strange’, but in the context of a meditation on sexual love, it is crucial to consider the sexual connotations of the word. It is probable that a pun is here intended: the ‘ ‘‘quike deth’’ ’ is the ‘ ‘‘swete harm’’ ’ of sex. Troilus’s often expressed desire for death is also a desire for the telos that Pandarus espouses: sexual fulfilment. The feminization of death participates in the idea of woman as other, an idea crystallized in the ideology of courtly love that informs Troilus and Criseyde. This eroticization of death in Troilus’s expressions of his desire is crucial in this poem: the interpenetration of eros and thanatos resonates throughout the text. Troilus believes in teleology, he is obsessed with the idea that death is the ultimate object of desire. At various points in the poem he exclaims, ‘ ‘‘God wold I were aryved in the port | Of deth, to which my sorwe wol me lede!’’ ’ (I, ll. 526–7); ‘ ‘‘O deth, allas, why nyltow do me deye?’’ ’ (IV, l. 250); ‘ ‘‘O deth, that endere art of sorwes alle’’ ’ (IV, l. 501); ‘ ‘‘sely is that deth’’ ’ (IV, l. 503); ‘ ‘‘I nothing so desire. | O deth’’ ’ (IV, 508–9); ‘ ‘‘Wel may myn herte longe | After my deth’’ ’ (V, ll. 690–1); ‘ ‘‘thorugh the deth my wo sholde han an ende’’ ’ (V, l. 1273); ‘ ‘‘deth may make an ende’’ ’ (V, l. 1393); ‘ ‘‘Myn owne deth in armes wol I seche’’ ’ (V, l. 1718). Death is consistently characterized as the end, and as the other, as that which is essentially different to life. As Patterson comments: Of course he wants more than mere extinction … He desires a conclusion appropriate to the experience it consummates, a closure that will shape his past so as to confirm his highest conception of himself and his beloved.⁸¹

He is seeking the same kind of inner peace as Gower sought when he asked to be allowed to die, or to live fully: what is intolerable is ⁸⁰ Ibid., 179, 177. In Lacanian terms, das Ding represents the traumatic kernel, what ˇ zek terms, ‘the impossible-real object of desire’ (Sublime Object, 194). It is, then, the Ziˇ originary lost object. ⁸¹ Patterson, Chaucer and the Subject, 127.

88

Idealism and Antagonism

the ‘living death’—which nevertheless proves to be the only option. In Troilus’s words, he fears that he must ‘ ‘‘evere dye and nevere fulli sterve’’ ’ (IV, l. 280). This living death is the state of internal division. Troilus’s internal fragmentation is suggested through images of the fragmented body:⁸² he is ‘thorugh-shoten and thorugh-darted’ (I, l. 325), his love causes him to ‘brende’ (I, l. 448) and his heart to ‘blede’ (I, l. 502), he knows his heart may ‘ ‘‘breste’’ ’ (I, l. 599), he threatens to ‘ ‘‘wreke upon [his] owen lif ’’ ’ (III, l. 108), and he finds himself unable to speak, ‘Although men sholde smyten of his hed’ (III, l. 81). This continual use of images of the fragmented body demonstrates the aggressivity at the heart of desire. In Lacanian terms, the death drive expresses itself in primal aggressivity, and the image of the fragmented body is symptomatic of ‘aggressive disintegration in the individual’.⁸³ The conventional tropes of the violence of love are taken to graphic extremes in Troilus and Criseyde, as Troilus consistently describes his love as self-destructive. His use of imagery of death to describe his love is accurate not because of the fact that love is causing death in war, but because desire is death-like, and demonstrates the death drive that pervades life.⁸⁴ Troilus cannot reach the consummation, the completion that he desires because it is an ontological impossibility: while Gower holds out some hope for the completion of the individual, Troilus and Criseyde exposes the fact that, as Kristeva comments, ‘foreignness is within us, we are our own foreigners, we are divided … [one is] a stranger to oneself ’.⁸⁵ Even Troilus’s greatest moments of seeming completion—‘In suffisaunce, in blisse, and in singynges, | This Troilus gan al his lif to lede’ (III, ll. 1716–17)—are predicated upon repression and fantasy. ⁸² Lacan writes that aggressivity is expressed in ‘images of castration, mutilation, dismemberment, dislocation, evisceration, devouring, bursting open of the body … imagos ´ of the fragmented body’. See Jacques Lacan, Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis in Ecrits: A Selection, trans. Alan Sheridan (London, 2001), 9–32, 13, emphasis Lacan’s. ⁸³ Lacan, The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I As Revealed in Psy´ choanalytic Experience, in Ecrits, 1–8, 5. ⁸⁴ See Dollimore, Death, Desire and Loss. The desire for death and sexual desire can both be seen as manifestations of an instinct to destroy and to annihilate the self. This complicates Freud’s attempt to oppose eros and thanatos as forces locked in opposition: in fact, in the course of his work, both urges are seen as forces for destruction and unbinding, and he defines any instinct as ‘an urge inherent in organic life to restore an earlier state of things’. See Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, in Standard Edition 18: 7–64, 36 (emphasis Freud’s). ⁸⁵ Julia Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York, London, 1991), 181–2.

Idealism and Antagonism

89

Troilus’s idealization of Criseyde—and the fracturing of that ideal— bears comparison with Trojans’/Londoners’ idealizations of their cities, which also prove to be fragmented. Indeed, the comparison between the city and a woman is a central image in Christian culture. St John’s Apocalypse established the idea of the city as bride/whore, and in texts such as the Vox or the Concordia, New Troy is a feminized image. In Troilus and Criseyde, Criseyde comes to be associated with Troy itself, that other flawed ideal. This comparison is crystallized at the moment when Troilus rides around the city and remembers his lover.⁸⁶ In Book V, Troilus wanders around Troy and finds that: every thyng com hym to remembraunce As he rood forby places of the town (V, ll. 562–3)

He laments over Criseyde’s palace, personifying it as ‘ ‘‘disconsolat’’ ’ (l. 542) like himself,⁸⁷ and kissing its doors (l. 551–2) as if it were Criseyde. When he sees ‘hire dores spered alle’ (l. 531), he is devastated—seeing the barred doors as a representation of Criseyde’s unavailability since access to her is also now denied to him. Both Criseyde and Troy are idealized figures that cannot live up to the image of themselves constructed by others; both fall victim to the desire for perfection. The text consistently reveals the fragmentation of both of these sublime, overvalued objects of desire; an internal fragmentation that ultimately becomes apparent in both of them through their submission to—even encouragement of—Greek invasion and conquest. Criseyde sees herself as a city with Troilus as her ‘wal | Of stiel’ (III, ll. 479–80)—when that wall fails to protect her, she is invaded by a ⁸⁶ The idea of memory itself as a city is developed by Freud. See Civilization and its Discontents, 69–71. Freud’s obsession with memory and Rome, and the intersection of this concern with the Aeneid and Troy is insightfully discussed in Bellamy, Translations, ch. 2, ‘A Disturbance of Memory in Carthage’, 38–81. The idea that ‘the association between the fall of Troy and the faculty of memory has become so conventional throughout cultural history that it is almost as if Troy existed only to the extent to which it was remembered’ (Bellamy, Translations, 56) is clearly relevant to the Aeneid, particularly to the first two books, and it is also worth considering the House of Fame in this context. This poem likewise deals directly with the remembered-status of the Troy story. See also Francis A. Yates, The Art of Memory (London, 1966) and Mary J. Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1990) for discussions of the architectural mnemonic in the medieval period. ⁸⁷ Troilus (little Troy) can, of course, also be compared to Troy. Vance writes: ‘by spatializing his love, Troilus underscores the tragic bond between his individual fortune and that of the city for which he is named’. Vance, Mervelous Signals, 300.

90

Idealism and Antagonism

Greek, just as the failure of the walls of Troy (and of Troy’s coherence) allows Greek entry. Throughout the text we are told that neither the integrity of the city nor that of Criseyde can be sustained: the poem is laced with references to the city’s impending fall, and to Criseyde’s impending betrayal. Right at the beginning of the poem, the facts that Criseyde ‘forsook [Troilus] er she deyde’ (l. 56) and that ‘Troie sholde destroied be’ (l. 68) are categorically asserted, and are often repeated and implied throughout the text. As readers, we are never allowed to forget the unreality of the idealized images of these objects of desire. S O M E C O N C LU S I O N S The idea of the desire for absent perfection can be applied to the wish for the absent city, to the myth of Troy as origin-point for London. Ned Lukacher writes that man is condemned to mourn: to be unable to remember the transcendental ground that would once again give meaning to human language and experience, but also unable to stop mourning the putative loss of an originary memory and presence that doubtless never existed.⁸⁸

The idea of loss and lack—psychic/sexual, social, or imperial—is rooted in this ontological fallacy, and the search for wholeness is motivated by a wish to recover this false plenitude. The myth of Troy, for the fourteenth-century European political unconscious, acts as such a deceptive absence; it is the city of exile whose reality exists only in its dispossession. [ … ] Troy can be represented only after it has been lost.⁸⁹

The lack which drives desire is the absent love-object, city, or death itself. These integral connections between differing fantasies of plenitude are resonant in the context of the late fourteenth century. Associations between personal and sociopolitical fragmentation can be seen in contemporary myths of division, which often blame political disaster on personal immorality, in debates about the personal and the political connotations of terms such as treason, in the myth of the sexual corruption that caused the fall of Troy, in the similarities between Calchas, ⁸⁸ Ned Lukacher, Primal Scenes: Literature, Philosophy, Psychoanalysis (Ithaca, London, 1986), 11. ⁸⁹ Bellamy, Translations, 51.

Idealism and Antagonism

91

Criseyde, and Antenor within Troilus and Criseyde, or in Maidstone’s construction of the city as Richard’s marriage bed.⁹⁰ Freud describes the correlation between the individual unconscious and collective desire, between an individual and a ‘national’ or social attempt to construct and master the world: It is asserted, however, that each one of us behaves in some one respect like a paranoic, corrects some aspect of the world which is unbearable to him by the construction of a wish and introduces this delusion into reality. A special importance attaches to the case in which this attempt to procure a certainty of happiness and a protection against suffering through a delusional remoulding of reality is made by a considerable number of people in common.⁹¹

Indeed, it seems that all civilizations are permanently in such a state of ‘paranoia’, constructing myths of origins and endings that serve to structure the world, although at moments of political/social crisis such paranoia may become more acute. Freud adds that: one can try to re-create the world, to build up in its stead another world in which its most unbearable features are eliminated and replaced by others that are in conformity with one’s own wishes. But whoever, in desperate defiance, sets out upon this path to happiness will as a rule attain nothing. Reality is too strong for him.⁹²

This insistence of ‘reality’ is crucial: it pushes through in Gower’s, Maidstone’s, the Erkenwald -poet’s, or Richard’s attempts to promulgate the myth of social possibility in the face of contemporary London’s (and fantasy London’s) fragmentation, in the parallel Trojan ignorance of the lessons of history in Troilus and Criseyde, or in Criseyde’s betrayal of Troilus. One could say of social fantasists, as of fetishists, that ‘They know very well how things really are, but still they are doing it as if they did not know’.⁹³ The non-Chaucerian texts discussed in this chapter reveal a belief in the possibility of an ideal even as they evince a sense of hopeless division. The image of New Troy frequently gains its valency from its promise of unity, its suggestion that the city can be idealized and integrated—the Vox, the Concordia and St Erkenwald all promote a desire for a united metropolis. Troilus and Criseyde forces ‘reality’ to the surface, insisting upon fragmentation and denying a hope in a social whole. This text suggests that there is no possibility of fulfilling desire or ⁹⁰ ⁹¹ ⁹³

See Federico, New Troy, 20 for a discussion of the city as Richard’s thalamum. Freud, Civilization and its Discontents, 81. ⁹² Ibid., 81. ˇ zek, Sublime Object, 32. Ziˇ

92

Idealism and Antagonism

of redeeming loss. It depicts the existence within society of a pervasive antagonism that cannot be covered up by idealism. Troilus and Criseyde can thus be read as a ‘reality check’ to fourteenthcentury London, an expos´e that remains resonant today. As such a reality check, it participates in, and comments on, contemporary debates about fragmentation and idealization, and exposes the inevitable divisions within both the contemporary capital and within any aspirational idea of an apotheosized city. Neither the self nor the emergent English nation can fill the lack that drives desire, and a refusal to acknowledge the fragmentation inherent within the object of desire—whether it is a sexual object or a social ideal—proves to be deeply destructive. A profound pessimism, a suspicion of ideals and ideologies, informs this text. In this context, it is wonderfully ironic that, in the fifteenth century, Chaucer and Troilus and Criseyde were constructed as emblems of the English nation, symbolizing plenitude and internal coherence, as myths of nationhood were formed through appropriating national poetry, and Chaucer’s texts were conscripted to serve an imperial agenda.⁹⁴ Founder member of Poets’ Corner, Chaucer has himself become part of our urban and national myths, appropriated and reappropriated to serve an ongoing succession of dubious arguments.⁹⁵ ⁹⁴ For discussions of the famous ‘Troilus frontispiece’, for example, see James H. McGregor, ‘The Iconography of Chaucer in Hoccleve’s De Regimine Principium and in the Troilus Frontispiece’, Chaucer Review 11 (1977): 338–50; Derek Pearsall, ‘The Troilus Frontispiece and Chaucer’s Audience’, Yearbook of English Studies 7 (1977): 68–74; M. B. Parkes and Elizabeth Salter, Troilus and Criseyde: A Facsimile of Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS 61 (Cambridge, 1978), 15–23. Patterson discusses the Campsall MS of Troilus and Criseyde, a deluxe manuscript made for the future Henry V, in Negotiating the Past, 203. ⁹⁵ See Derek Pearsall, ‘Chaucer’s Tomb: The Politics of Reburial’, Medium Aevum 64 (1995): 51–73. Appropriations of Chaucer by different interest groups have been discussed in detail recently by Thomas A. Prendergast, Chaucer’s Dead Body: From Corpse to Corpus (New York and London, 2004); see especially ch. 2.

4 Ricardian Communities: Thomas Usk’s Social Fantasies One of the earliest readers and appropriators of Chaucer’s poetry was Thomas Usk, a writer and minor politician who tried hard to carve a niche for himself in the discursive and political maelstrom of 1380s London. A man who experienced at first hand—and participated in—the treachery, self-interest, and violence of London society, Usk both fantasized about social coherence, and proved unable to sustain that fantasy. The crossfire of accusations and self-justification that so characterized London factional politics in the 1380s is illustrated at the point at which Usk’s writings intersect with the accusations of the ‘treasonous aldermen’ (discussed in Chapter 2). Usk’s Appeal castigates John More for his initial accusation of these men: Also, atte procurement of John More, Walter sybile John horn & Adam Carlett wer endited, & altheigh ther wer take many inquisicio[ns], we that serued our lord the king best wer returned; & truly, Robert Franceys & other, I not whiche now, wolden haue endited Sir Nichol Brem[bre] of meigtenance of Thomas Farndon, and John More ferst was ther-to assented, & afterward he letted it, so that it nas noght execut; & her-of I apele John More. (426)

John More, previously the accuser of others, whom he was attacking as traitors to the city, is now accused of betraying the city by that very act of accusation. More is explicitly denounced, along with John Northampton, Richard Norbury, and William Essex, for causing ‘the gret stryf, that yet ys regnyng in the cite’ (428). Usk was to get a true payback for this allegation when the political climate changed for, in his turn, he was accused of betraying the city and executed as a traitor.¹ ¹ Paul Strohm discusses the fact that Usk died refusing to retract his allegations and insisting that he had told the truth about Northampton. See ‘Politics and Poetics: Usk and Chaucer in the 1380s’, in Literary Practice and Social Change in Britain, 1380–1550, ed. Lee Patterson (Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford, 1990), 83–112, 89.

94

Ricardian Communities

Usk’s magnum opus, the Testament of Love, engages strongly with the ‘ebbs and flows of identity and membership’ that so dominated the insecure, factional city of the 1380s in which its author tried to make his way.² Usk’s attempts to negotiate the complexities of the factional strife that characterized this period of London history result in a desperately precarious text, as he ties himself up in contradictory webs of social structures and ideas. Usk tries throughout to imagine coherent communities of which he can be a part. But he has too many social fantasies: he wishes to join textual, civic, and courtly communities, yet these communities often prove mutually incompatible. The discourse of the city and the discourse of the court undermine each other, and Usk’s self-construction as civic politician sits uncomfortably with his self-construction as courtly cypher. This chapter charts Usk’s bids to enter political and textual communities: Chaucer’s textual community, the world of city governance, and a courtly Ricardian community. In each case, his text works against his overt desires, and complicates his political and social constructs: an awareness of social antagonism seeps through the interstices of Usk’s text, challenging an idea of social coherence and fragmenting his imagined community. His attempts to write himself into unified textual and political communities falter, as his text reveals the impossibility of such stability.

‘ C E RTAY N LY H I S N O B L E S AY E N G E S C A N I N OT A M E N D E ’ : U S K A N D TROILUS AND CRISEYDE Usk’s attempt to enter Ricardian textual communities can most clearly be seen in his deployment of quotations from Troilus and Criseyde. One of Usk’s most obvious strategies in the Testament of Love is his attempt to position his work alongside that of Chaucer. The Testament of Love intersects with Troilus and Criseyde in many ways: Skeat and Shoaf have both listed many of the passages quoted and redeployed by Usk.³ His ² See Barbara Hanawalt, ‘Of Good and Ill Repute’: Gender and Social Control in Medieval England (New York, Oxford, 1998), 18. ³ See Thomas Usk, The Testament of Love, in Chaucerian and Other Pieces in The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. Walter W. Skeat, 7 vols (Oxford, 1897), and Usk, Testament of Love, ed. Shoaf. Ramona Bressie suggests that Usk may have known

Ricardian Communities

95

engagement with this poem is commensurate with his political agenda; it seems probable that Chaucer, as a prolific poet and royal servant, occupied the kind of position—both in literary and in political terms—to which Usk aspired.⁴ Chaucer is inscribed into the heart of Usk’s text as Usk tries to write himself into a Chaucerian textual community, a community which we might imagine encompassing men such as John Clanvowe, Lewis Clifford, Philip la Vache, and John Montagu, all royal servants (chamber knights) and owners, writers, or readers of books.⁵ Such a community would be very attractive to someone trying to gain a royal appointment, and also trying to compose a literary work. In the Testament, Love calls Chaucer, ‘ ‘‘myne owne trewe servaunt the noble philosophical poete in Englissh whiche evermore hym besyeth and travayleth right sore my name to encrese’’ ’ (Bk 3, Ch. IV, 266). Chaucer, like Usk, is depicted as a servant of Love, participating in the same general project. Usk imagines that they are both clients of the same patron: this is particularly appropriate as Usk is seeking the favour of Richard II, and Chaucer had long been an esquire of the king’s household. As Love is here referring to ‘ ‘‘a treatise that he made of my servant Troylus’’ ’, and explaining that she will not discuss certain questions in this text, as they are dealt with by Chaucer, Usk also places his own text in the same ambit as Troilus and Criseyde (Bk 3, Ch. IV, 266). Discussing Chaucer and his Trojan poem, Love claims that ‘ ‘‘Certaynly his noble sayenges can I not amende’’ ’ (Bk 3, Ch. IV, 266)—but in fact, the Testament is punctuated by manifold quotations from Troilus and Criseyde that have been altered and recontextualized. Troilus and Troilus and Criseyde as a work in progress; see ‘The Date of Thomas Usk’s Testament of Love’, Modern Philology 26 (1928): 17–29, 29. Usk’s text also intersects with poems written by Gower and Langland; see Joanna Summers, Late-Medieval Prison Writing and the Politics of Autobiography (Oxford, 2004), ch. 1, and Anne Middleton, ‘Thomas Usk’s ‘‘Perdurable Letters’’: The Testament of Love From Script to Print’, Studies in Bibliography 51 (1998): 63–116. ⁴ Strohm argues that Usk sought to use the Testament ‘in his courtship of Chaucer’s own political faction’ (‘Politics and Poetics’, 84). ⁵ John Clanvowe was an early reader of Chaucer and the author of the Book of Cupide and The Two Ways; Lewis Clifford was a book-owner and the go-between for Deschamps and Chaucer; Philip la Vache is addressed by Chaucer in ‘Truth’; and John Montagu wrote poetry which was praised by Christine de Pizan. For discussions of these figures, see V. J. Scattergood, ‘Literary Culture at the Court of Richard II’, in English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages, ed. V. J. Scattergood and J. W. Sherborne (London, 1983), 29–43; Derek Pearsall, The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer (Oxford, 1992), esp. 130–1, and 181–3; and Paul Strohm, Social Chaucer (Harvard, 1989), esp. 24–46. See also Richard Firth Green, Poets and Princepleasers: Literature and the English Court in the Late Middle Ages ( Toronto, 1980).

96

Ricardian Communities

Criseyde, as is well known, finds much of its inspiration in Boethius, and Boethian ideas are often transferred to a context of earthly romantic love, while Pandarus apes the role of Lady Philosophy. Usk then takes parts of Troilus and Criseyde and inserts them into his pseudo-Boethian Testament, a text that has pretensions to consolatio status, but is also driven by decidedly worldly motives (Usk’s desire to win friends and influence people).⁶ Usk’s deployment of Chaucer’s just-written text demonstrates both how Troilus and Criseyde was received and how it was manipulated. It becomes clear that Usk is not trying to participate in a literary community of equals; rather, he aims to promote himself at the expense of his contemporary (and ultimately overreaches himself).⁷ Usk frequently lifts quotations from Troilus and Criseyde which refer to Troilus’s sexual love for Criseyde (or Criseyde’s for Troilus), and uses them to describe his own spiritual love. The Testament addresses—and comments on—the common interplay between religious and romantic terminology and tropes. While Troilus says of Criseyde, ‘ ‘‘youre absence is an helle’’ ’ (V, l. 1396), Usk speaks of Margarite when he declares, ‘Certes, her absence is to me an hell’ (Bk 1, Ch. I, 55). Similarly, Criseyde asks: ‘What is Criseyde worth, from Troilus? How sholde a plaunte or lyves creature Lyve withouten his kynde noriture?’ (IV, ll. 766–8)

and Usk says of Margarite: ‘Howe shulde the grounde without kyndly noriture bringen forthe any frutes?’ (Bk 1, Ch. I, 57). Troilus’s lovelament—‘ ‘‘And wel the hotter ben the gledes rede, | That men hem wrien with asshen pale and dede’’ ’ (II, ll. 538–9)—becomes Usk’s lament for Margarite: ‘ ‘‘I bren in sorouful anoy as gledes and coles wasten a fyre under deed asshen. Wel the hoter is the fyre that with asshen it is ⁶ Indeed, the worldliness of the text could be surmised from the use of the consolatio itself: Pearsall suggests that ‘the quintessential courtly form is the complaint’. Cited in Lee Patterson, ‘Court Politics and the Invention of Literature: The Case of Sir John Clanvowe’, in Culture and History: Essays on English Communities, Identities and Writing, ed. David Aers (New York, London, 1992), 7–41, 27. Strohm adds that, ‘In his Testament, Usk sought to turn literary form to personal account, importing materials of personal and factional apology and complaint into an apparent consolatio’ (‘Politics and Poetics’, 84). ⁷ For a discussion of the relevance of Bloom’s work on the anxiety of influence to Chaucer’s successors and imitators, see A. C. Spearing, Medieval to Renaissance in English Poetry (Cambridge, 1985), esp. 59–60, 84, 107–9.

Ricardian Communities

97

overleyn’’ ’ (Bk 3, Ch. VII, 284). Frequently, meditations on the nature of sexual love are directly transposed to the context of (philosophical) Love in the Testament. A reference to Cupid: ‘ ‘‘O Love, O Charite! | Thi moder ek, Citheria the swete’’ ’ (III, ll. 1254–5) becomes a eulogy to Love it/herself: ‘O love, whan shal I ben pleased? O charyt´e, whan shal I ben eased?’ (Bk 1, Ch. I, 59). Criseyde’s comment that ‘ ‘‘He which that nothing undertaketh, | Nothyng n’acheveth’’ ’ (II, ll. 807–8) and Diomede’s: ‘ ‘‘he that naught n’asaieth naught n’acheveth’’ ’ (V, l. 784) metamorphose into Love’s advice that ‘ ‘‘Who nothyng undertaketh and namely in my servyce nothyng acheveth’’ ’ (Bk 1, Ch. V, 89–90). The use made of Antigone’s words on sexual love is typical of Usk’s textual strategy. Antigone says to Criseyde: ‘But wene ye that every wrecche woot The parfit blisse of love? Why, nay, iwys! They wenen all be love, if oon be hoot. Do wey, do wey, they woot no thyng of this!’ (II, ll. 890–3)

Antigone is here talking specifically about sexual love: her words come after an address to Cupid (l. 848) and specifically refer to ‘ ‘‘loveres’’ ’ (l. 886). She differentiates between types of sexual love, saying that for some lovers, the relationship is only ‘ ‘‘hoot’’ ’, that is, only sexual, but others have a more perfect idea of love. Crucially, there is no implication that this more perfect love excludes sex. In the Testament, her words become Love’s comment that: ‘What, trowest thou every ydeot wotte the menynge and the privy entent of these thynges? They wene, forsothe, that suche accorde may not be, but the rose of maydenhede be plucked. Do waye, do waye. They knowe nothyng of this;’ (Bk 1, Ch. IX, 120)

While Antigone says that not everyone who is in a sexual relationship is in love, Love claims that no one who is interested in sex understands love—that ‘ ‘‘ydeots’’ ’ believe that sex is necessary for true union. She explicitly puts her words in the context of a discussion of marriage (‘ ‘‘spousayle’’ ’, Bk 1, Ch. IX, 121), and gives the example of Joseph and Mary, emphasizing the fact that sex is unimportant in the marriage bond. The subtle changes to Chaucer’s text here imply a criticism of Troilus and Criseyde, as the idea of love as a sexual feeling is demeaned—and the concept of love outside the marriage bond is silently excluded. Antigone describes the ideal love as a passionate feeling that is not solely sexual; Love imagines it as an unconsummated marriage. Usk thus critically

98

Ricardian Communities

recontextualizes Chaucer’s words and claims that sexual love has nothing to do with true love. Usk seems to be condemning the topic of Chaucer’s text and to be reproaching him, as he takes his words and puts them in a less ‘frivolous’ context. The Testament could be read not as a plagiarism of Troilus and Criseyde, nor as a flattering imitation, but as an attempt to ‘better’ Chaucer by endeavouring to imbue his words with greater moral ‘seriousness’. Indeed, this reflects a classic reaction to the anxiety of influence: Usk tries to enter a literary community on the heels of Chaucer’s text, and cunningly attempts to overtake him in the process.⁸ The transference of words from Pandarus’s mouth to Love’s is particularly resonant. Pandarus assures Troilus that he can win Criseyde by wearing her down, saying: ‘Think here-ayeins: whan that the stordy ook, On which men hakketh ofte, for the nones, Receyved hath the happy fallyng strook, The greete sweigh doth it come al at ones.’ (II, ll. 1380–3)

In the Testament, the sexual object is replaced by a spiritual object. Love encourages Usk about the possibility of obtaining grace with these words: ‘So ofte must men on the oke smyte tyl the happy dent have entred, whiche with the okes owne swaye maketh it to come al at ones.’ (Bk 3, Ch. VII, 287)

In the same way, Pandarus’s words about sex are used by Love to talk about God’s grace. He tells Troilus that: ‘he That ones may in hevene blisse be, He feleth other weyes, dar I leye, Than thilke tyme he first herde of it seye.’ (III, ll. 1656–9)

Love’s truncated version is that ‘ ‘‘he that is in heven felyth more joye than whan he firste herde therof speke’’ ’ (Bk 2, Ch. IX, 193). Again, Usk seeks to wrest authority away from Troilus and Criseyde and to ⁸ For an interesting comparison, see Nicholas Watson, ‘Outdoing Chaucer: Lydgate’s Troy Book and Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid as Competitive Imitations of Troilus and Criseyde’, in Shifts and Transpositions in Medieval Narrative: A Festschrift for Dr. Elspeth Kennedy, ed. Karen Pratt (Cambridge, 1994), 89–108. See also Spearing, Medieval to Renaissance.

Ricardian Communities

99

imbue Chaucer’s words with a different import by setting them in a philosophical context. However, as Strohm points out—in a discussion of Troilus and Criseyde —an awareness of source ‘offers insights not to be achieved by other means’, in this case, an insight into Usk’s strategy of recontextualization.⁹ Usk tries to pull the wool over the reader’s eyes, by maintaining that Love’s words have a purely spiritual connotation, but the repressed source and context problematize his endeavours by suggesting that other meanings lurk at the edges of his text, meanings that destabilize and diminish Love’s authority. Indeed, the interplay between Love and Pandarus signifies in ways that might have dismayed Usk. In Book I of Troilus and Criseyde, Pandarus famously asserts that ‘By his contrarie is every thyng declared […] Eke whit by blak, by shame ek worthinesse, Ech set by other, more for other semeth, As men may se, and so the wyse it demeth.’ (I, ll. 637–44)

These words illustrate many aspects of Pandarus’s character: his linguistic perversity, his fondness for substitutions, his amorality, and his belief in the efficacy of ‘wordes whit’ (III, l. 901) are all demonstrated in this speech. What, then, is to be made of Love’s deployment of almost the exact same words? She declares that: ‘Blacke and white sette togyder every for other more semeth, and so dothe every thynges contrary in kynde.’ (Bk I, Ch. VIII, 111)

Here the bizarre aspects of Usk’s use of Chaucer’s text are crystallized. Although one effect (or intended effect) of reworking Troilus and Criseyde might be to demonstrate the ‘superior’ morality of the Testament, it seems clear that exactly the opposite effect could ensue. The moral platitudes of the Testament are subverted because they are often taken from the lips of Pandarus, a character who lacks moral authority. Careful readers of Troilus and Criseyde would be aware that Pandarus’s words on love, for example, are sophistic and opportunistic, and this awareness would undercut Love’s auctoritas. At the very least, Pandarus’s words enter Usk’s text in an equivocal way, and are vulnerable to ‘misreading’. Usk could therefore be seen not as overtaking Chaucer but as overreaching ⁹ Paul Strohm, Theory and the Premodern Text (Minneapolis, Minn, 2000), 84.

100

Ricardian Communities

himself; his text is internally challenged by its own sources and influences and his inappropriate recontextualizations serve to remind readers of the original, unsettling context. Usk attempts to use Chaucer’s complex and ambiguous text in a context of absolutes, in which Love is supposed to be authoritative and impartial. However, her authority is undermined by its origins. This seems peculiarly appropriate since, to a reader’s eye, Love may seem to be as partisan as Pandarus himself: a determined factionalist.¹⁰ The fact that her wisdom originates in the quintessential calculating opportunist seems entirely suitable—although such a view moves the ground from under Usk’s feet. Usk’s efforts to enter a textual community, and to construct himself as a figure of superior stability are continually problematized in the Testament. Even his overt eulogies on community and social coherence are undermined if we remember Pandarus’s deployment of the same concepts. Pandarus declares: ‘The wise seith, ‘‘Wo hym that is allone, For, and he falle, he hath non helpe to ryse’’; And sith thow hast a felawe, tel thi mone’ (I, ll. 694–6)

In Chapter 3, I suggested that such ideas are problematized because they are articulated by Pandarus, whose own views on fellowship are violent and perverse. These words are echoed at various points in the Testament: Love declares ‘ ‘‘wo is him that is alone’’ ’ (Bk 1, Ch. II, 68) and, later, attests that ‘ ‘‘Certes, he is greatly eased that dare his prevy mone discover to a true felowe’’ ’ (Bk 3, Ch. VII, 283–4). Again, an awareness of Chaucer’s deployment of such comments undermines Love’s words, and reminds us of the problems inherent in social relationships. At another moment in this often-contradictory text, the above-cited passage is again echoed, but to quite different effect. Talking ¹⁰ See Strohm, ‘Politics and Poetics’, for a discussion of the idea of Love as a factionalist. Strohm’s interpretation of the text suggests that Usk is motivated by a ‘positive expectation of a fresh and profitable tie to the royal faction’ (87) and that he writes the Testament ‘in order to persuade the members of the royal faction that he was in full control of his actions and choices and ready for significant service’ (97). For an alternative view—that the Testament is essentially apolitical—see David R. Carlson, ‘Chaucer’s Boethius and Thomas Usk’s Testament of Love: Politics and Love in the Chaucerian Tradition’, in The Centre and its Compass: Studies in Medieval Literature in Honor of Professor John Leyerle, ed. Robert A. Taylor, James F. Burke, Patricia J. Eberle, Ian Lancashire, and Brian S. Merriless (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1993), 29–70.

Ricardian Communities

101

about kings and lords, Usk says, ‘ ‘‘hadden they ben underput with any helpes they had not so lightly fal’’ ’ (Bk 2, Ch. VII, 177). In this case, Love disagrees, criticizes evil counsellors and convinces Usk that it is better to be ‘ ‘‘alone stonding upright’’ ’ (Bk 2, Ch. VII, 178). Thus, Love’s words about the positive character of fellowship are challenged both by other parts of the text and by an awareness of Troilus and Criseyde. While Pandarus and Love both take on an advisory role, as a kind of ‘Lady Philosophy’, there are also many parallels between Pandarus and Usk himself. Pandarus is obsessed with the importance of intent; he constantly emphasizes his ‘ ‘‘good entencioun’’ ’ (II, l. 295) and criticizes those who hide their intention (II, ll. 256–9) when he is doing exactly that himself. This strategy allows him both to evade responsibility for consequences and to mask his true motives. Similarly, Usk often talks about his moral intentions—‘the cause with whiche I am stered and for whom I ought it done, noble forsothe ben bothe’ (Bk 2, Ch. I, 136)—probably because his actions are so easy to condemn. Both Usk and Pandarus try to use language and texts to shape their worlds, but ultimately fail. Pandarus is a linguistic master, celebrated for his use of rhetoric and persuasive words, who is forced to recognize the ultimate shortcomings of language as events slip out of his control in Books IV and V. The experience of Usk is parallel to this; Strohm writes that he had a remarkable and touching faith in the power of the written word to reorganize social reality. At critical junctures of his life, he repeatedly created texts that asserted his personal control over vagrant and uncertain circumstances.¹¹

Yet, Usk’s career ‘demonstrates both the power of a text to organize external reality and the ultimate limitations of that power’.¹² Both of these duplicitous figures—Pandarus and Usk—have much in common with the figure of the courtier. Gervase Mathew has pointed to Pandarus as a representation of a courtier: his predilection for flattery and persuasion and his chameleon-like nature are typical of the court. He is ‘an experienced English courtier of the late fourteenth century, [ … ] a man of cultivated sensibility, facilely expressed emotions and quick stratagems—all qualities then prized’.¹³ Pandarus exemplifies the ¹¹ Paul Strohm, Hochon’s Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Century Texts (Princeton, N.J., 1992), 145. ¹² Ibid., 158. ¹³ Gervase Mathew, The Court of Richard II (London, 1968), 68 (cited in Patterson, ‘Court Politics’, 22).

102

Ricardian Communities

common idea that a courtier cannot be a truth-teller.¹⁴ It seems apt that Usk, who was struggling to enter the court, should demonstrate similarities to Pandarus and should actually use his words in an ostensible attempt to convince his superiors of his morality, intelligence and essential trouthe. In seeking the role of a flattering and sophistic royal servant, Usk uses the words of exactly such a figure to demonstrate his own upstanding and moral nature, unwittingly demonstrating an ability to construct a public persona while simultaneously revealing his pragmatism. In the context of the Testament’s strong reliance on Troilus and Criseyde, its own insistence on the importance of the goal is undermined by Pandarus’s problematic attachment to the belief that ‘th’ende is every tales strengthe’ (II, l. 260), as discussed in Chapter 3. Love declares that ‘For many tymes he that loketh nat after th’endes, but utterly therof is unknowen, befalleth often many yvels to done, wherthrough er he be ware, shamefully he is confounded. Th’ende ther of neden to be before loked.’ (Bk 3, Ch. II, 240)

Love’s words are precarious if we remember that Pandarus also is deeply attached to a belief in the importance of endings and final consequences. The importance of focusing on the fulfilment of a journey is one of Usk’s favourite themes: every creature has an ‘appetyte to their perfection’ (Prologue, 49) and he is therefore seeking ‘ ‘‘that Margaryte perle’’ ’ that promises him fulfilment (Bk 1, Ch. II, 67). Usk’s attachment to imaginary conclusions is complicated by the fact that Margarite represents both a divine ideal and an earthly political figure: Usk’s desire for worldly, material advantage is veiled in the language of religious desire. At times, Usk explicitly stresses the fact that his aims are purely spiritual. In the final lines of the Testament, for instance, he declares that Margarite ‘betokeneth grace, lernyng, or wisdom of God, or els holy church’ (Bk 3, Ch. IX, 305). Earlier in the text, he makes a distinction between spiritual and worldly advancement, emphasizing that the ‘perfection’ that he is seeking is different from, and better than, ‘al the treasour, al the richesse, al the vainglory that the passed emperours, prynces, or kynges hadden’ (Prologue, 51). However, as Usk is writing to further his political career—and did indeed succeed in gaining the favour of ¹⁴ Patterson points out that ‘in the fifteenth century a courtier poet included Pandarus’s warnings about the dangers of unbridled speech (3, 302–22) in a poem on the dangers of truth-telling and the burdens of service at court’. See Patterson, ‘Court Politics’, 38–9 n. 83, and Odd Texts of Chaucer’s Minor Poems, ed. Frederick J. Furnivall, Chaucer Society, 1st series, no. 23, 60 (London, 1868–80), pp. xi–xii.

Ricardian Communities

103

the king—the political and the spiritual become tangled as his real goal surfaces in Love’s royalist imagery: ‘Every cause is more and worthyer than thynge caused, and in that mores possessyon al thinges lesse ben compted. As the king is more than his people and hath in possessyon al his realme after. Right so the knot is more than al other goodes.’ (Bk 2, Ch. IX, 191)

The king is here placed in apposition to the love-knot, Margarite, the summum bonum, as Usk shows his hand, revealing that it is indeed the king’s favour that he seeks. Moreover, the love-knot and the king are associated with materialism: with ‘ ‘‘possessyon’’ ’ and ‘ ‘‘goodes’’ ’. Andrew Galloway has argued against the idea that the Testament is a politically partisan text, suggesting that Usk takes the language of faction and uses it to ‘refer to broader social intimacies and affiliations’ which are ‘defined against narrow or factional configurations’. He uses the image of the knot in the heart as an example, arguing that Usk takes this image from Troilus and Criseyde but uses it to encompass ‘a more general range of social contract and commitment’.¹⁵ But, while Usk may ostensibly present himself as impartially moral, his text everywhere exposes his ambition to enter Ricardian political and textual communities.¹⁶ Indeed, I suggest that the use of Troilus and Criseyde is itself highly political, because it exemplifies Usk’s attempts to locate himself within a specific literary group and to better his contemporaries within that community.¹⁷ His pretence of being interested in a ‘more general range of social contract and commitment’ is unconvincing not only because his political desires frequently surface in the text, but also because he cannot control and neutralize his sources in this way—the alert reader will not forget the failure of the knot in Criseyde’s heart. Usk’s endeavour to recontextualize Chaucer’s language reminds us of the ambiguous moral status of his sources and indeed of language itself, and it therefore undermines and exposes his ostensible attempt to shroud his factional yearnings in the terminology of philosophical consolation. Usk’s efforts to participate in ¹⁵ Andrew Scott Galloway, ‘Private Selves and the Intellectual Marketplace in Late Fourteenth-Century England: The Case of the Two Usks’, New Literary History 28 (1997): 291–318, 297. The image of the knot, however, has many sources: see Shoaf ’s brief mention of the image of the knot in Testament, 10–11; he refers to ‘the extraordinary history of the image of the knot’, mentioning (among others) Horace, Dante, and the Gawain-poet’s use of the image. ¹⁶ See Strohm, ‘Politics and Poetics’, 97–8. ¹⁷ This use of Troilus and Criseyde seems to me to be demonstrated more convincingly in the examples quoted above than in the example of the love-knot.

104

Ricardian Communities

a Chaucerian textual community ultimately serve to destabilize the ideas that underpin his text. USK AND POLITICAL COMMUNITIES

Usk and Fourteenth-Century London Politics¹⁸ One of Usk’s principal problems in his endeavours to construct himself as part of an urban political community is that his contemporaries came to see him as a traitor. Indeed, Usk was particularly unfortunate in finding himself on the losing side on two occasions. In 1384 he was arrested as part of Northampton’s party, and turned informer against them, admitting that their actions had been treasonous, and joining Brembre, who had taken over from Northampton as mayor in 1383. Through his betrayal of Northampton, he became a traitor to his associates and friends.¹⁹ As he had to acknowledge his own involvement in Northampton’s activities, which he himself calls treasonous, he was forced to admit that his previous political activities had been traitorous to the city and to its officials.²⁰ For example, his words that he ‘wol neuer more trespace a-yeins the town in no degre’ (Appeal, 428) confess his prior treason.²¹ The Westminster Chronicler labelled him an opportunistic turncoat: ¹⁸ Our knowledge of Usk’s engagement with London politics has been expanded recently by Caroline Barron’s important discovery of his name in the records of the goldsmiths’ company. Barron realized that the name transcribed previously as ‘Vok’ is in fact ‘Usk’. It transpires that Usk was clerk to the company, that he was married, and that he was particularly close to Adam Bamme (attacked by Usk in the Appeal). See Caroline M. Barron, ‘Review of Wardens’ Accounts and Court Minute Books of the Goldsmiths’ Mistery of London 1334–1446, ed. Lisa Jefferson. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2003’, Urban History 32 (2005): 173–5. On the goldsmiths, see also T. F. Reddaway and Lorna E. M. Walker, The Early History of the Goldsmiths’ Company 1327–1509 (London, 1975). ¹⁹ Usk’s involvement in city politics had a devastating effect on him throughout his career and ultimately caused his death. See Ruth Bird, The Turbulent London of Richard II (London, 1949), esp. 63–85, for the political background to Usk’s career. ²⁰ An approver had to admit that he had committed the crime which he accused others of having committed. See Frederick C. Hamil, ‘The King’s Approvers: A Chapter in the History of English Criminal Law’, Speculum 11 (1936): 238–58, 240. Approvers, as self-confessed felons, were therefore seen as untrustworthy: Hanawalt comments that ‘jurors were suspicious of the word of a person who confessed to being ‘‘of ill repute’’ ’. See Hanawalt, ‘Of Good and Ill Repute’, 5. ²¹ Strohm comments that, ‘for all the assurance with which he inhabits the role of a public-spirited citizen, Usk would have been legally hampered in that role by the fact that he was himself a conspirator and thus technically unfit to testify on a matter of treason’. Strohm, Hochon’s Arrow, 148.

Ricardian Communities

105

qui videns viam evadendi sibi fore preclusam ac illos quibus antea coherebat carcerali custodie deputari nec sibi posse in aliquo suffragari, caute votis illorum cessit quos protunc noverat prevalere. Satagebat namque astu et arte illorum amiciciam sibi attrahere quos proculdubio ante capitales hostes sibi fuisse bene cognovit. Seeing that the way of escape was barred to him and that those to whom he had formerly clung had been clapped into prison and were unable at all to help him, he prudently bowed to the wishes of those whom he knew to be now in the ascendant, and set shrewdly and craftily to work to win the friendship of those whom earlier, without a doubt, he had clearly recognized to be his chief enemies.²²

The chronicler here implies that Usk changed side purely to help himself, to support those whom he ‘protunc noverat prevalere’. Usk then attempted to gain Richard’s patronage, wrote the Testament, and ultimately gained preferment. But in 1387–8, when the Lords Appellant gained ascendancy, those seen as the king’s party—including Brembre and Usk—were accused of treason and executed. After this final arrest, it was easy for contemporary commentators to demonize him as one of the ‘proditores’ (traitors) who threatened to destroy the kingdom with ‘ ‘‘cecis insidiis et a laqueis mortiferis’’ ’ (‘treachery lurking unseen and the snares that spell death’).²³ Perversely, the proof of his treachery lay in the fact that he acted ‘par comandement de son dit Seigneur lige’ (‘by the order of his aforesaid liege lord’).²⁴ In the Merciless Parliament, the Lords Appellant transferred blame onto a group of scapegoat ‘traitors’, singling out individuals as the cause of social discord. The extremity of this scapegoating is demonstrated by the fact that the ‘traitors’—among whom they name Alexander, Archbishop of York, Robert de Vere, Duke of Ireland, Michael de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, Robert Tresilian, and Nicholas Brembre—are pointedly accused of betraying not only the king, or the Lords, but the entire social edifice, of threatening ‘ ‘‘totum regnum’’ ’ (‘the entire kingdom’).²⁵ The Lords could in this way maintain an idea that they (the Lords) were acting with and for the misled king, against the intruders who were attacking society. The final events of Usk’s life were thus to damn his conception of a coherent society poisoned by one group of ²² Westminster Chronicle, 90–1. ²³ Ibid., 210–11. ²⁴ Strachey, Rotuli Parliamentorum, 3: 240. ²⁵ Westminster Chronicle, 210–11. Usk allegedly uses the same words about himself, saying that he is ‘ ‘‘proditor civitatis London’ et tocius regni Anglie’’ ’ (‘traitor to the city of London and to the whole realm of England’). See Westminster Chronicle, 90–1.

106

Ricardian Communities

traitors (Northampton’s party), as the tables turned again and a new set of ‘traitors’ (Brembre’s coterie) was demonized. The officials within the city of London and, later, the Lords Appellant themselves, tried to deny the reality of the deeply rooted political and social antagonism rife in the English court, nobility, and city, by centring their attacks on specific individuals. Although Usk’s accusers varied from city officials to great nobles, his own sociopolitical community and the site of his political activities and ‘treachery’ was the city of London. Hanawalt points out that ‘Londoners [ … ] were very conscious of the need to maintain balance in the city for the sake of peace and order. They stated their shared, cohesive values over and over again.’²⁶ Londoners were particularly obsessed with articulating their peaceful values for, if their disagreements spread outside of the city, they faced the possibilities of their charter’s revocation or of the king’s intervention.²⁷ Hanawalt adds that there is something suspicious in Londoners’ continual insistence on harmony: ‘Repeated injunctions reinforcing desirable behavior [ … ] means that slips from the ideal were frequent.’²⁸ Yet, in order to maintain the illusion of a generally healthy society in which social problems were limited to certain individuals, miscreants were labelled and exiled, and the ‘expulsion of the offenders returned the body politic to a clean and healthy wholeness’.²⁹ While a rhetoric of scapegoating is a common device used to repress an awareness of a broader form of social antagonism, such rhetoric is given even more urgency in an environment such as late fourteenth-century London, in which the city wanted to maintain an illusion of civic possibility in order to escape intervention. Usk’s Testament of Love is concerned with addressing these problems of the competing discourses of scapegoating, social possibility, and social antagonism. The Testament is Usk’s bid for rehabilitation and preferment.³⁰ Struggling against his identity as a traitor, an identity with which he had to concur in his Appeal, he now tries to repudiate the role of expelled other and to re-inscribe himself within the social whole—to trace a trajectory ‘from outside to inside, from periphery to center’.³¹ For much of the text, he locates the site from which he has been expelled as the ²⁶ Hanawalt, ‘Of Good and Ill Repute’, 36. ²⁷ Ibid., 37. ²⁸ Ibid., 38. ²⁹ Ibid., 27. ³⁰ It is likely that the work was written in 1385–6, a time when Usk was cooling his heels after turning approver and before he gained the king’s favour. See Strohm, ‘Politics and Poetics’, 97. ³¹ Strohm, Theory, 14.

Ricardian Communities

107

city, and tries to re-enter the urban community. His strategies for doing this are manifold and often contradictory. He acknowledges his own exiled condition but ricochets between attesting that he, along with all other good elements, has been exiled by corrupt members of society, and bewailing the fact that he has been driven out of paradise. In the first chapter, he writes: I endure my penaunce in this derke prisone, caytisned fro frendshippe and acquayntaunce, and forsaken of al that any wode dare speke. Straunge hath by waye of intrucyoun made his home there me shulde be if reason were herde as he shulde. (Bk 1, Ch. I, 56)

He laments the fact that society is corrupted and dominated by ‘straunge’: that which should be exiled from society is brought into its centre, while noble Usk has been pushed out. This concept is emphasized by Usk’s references to other virtuous beings and ideas that have also been jettisoned from the diseased city. ‘ ‘‘Pit´e’’ ’, for instance, has been driven ‘ ‘‘out of towne’’ ’ (Bk 2, Ch. III, 148) and Love declares that the powerful lawyers ‘ ‘‘wolde for nothyng have me in town’’ ’ (Bk 2, Ch. II, 140). Usk thus aligns himself with the moral values that have no place in the contemporary city, stressing the idea that society is currently fragmented.³² At other points in the text, however, Usk laments his exile from the idealized city: he is now ‘outcaste of al welfare’ (Bk 1, Ch. I, 59). Mourning for the loss of his sovereign’s presence, and for his exclusion from society, he compares himself to sinful Adam, ‘ ‘‘driven [ … ] out of paradise’’ ’ (Bk 1, Ch. I, 57). The text exhibits profound confusion about whether society should be desired or condemned. Usk is trying both to maintain an idea of a coherent social body from which he has been unfairly exiled and to depict contemporary society and friendship as deeply flawed. Society must be perverse—or else why would it have exiled him?—but it is also the focus of his desire, a place to which he wishes to return, so it must be good. Usk’s posture of determined idealism in the face of social antagonism desperately resonates throughout his text. He insists, for example, that peace is the natural state for Christians on earth: ‘ ‘‘God by His comyng made not peace alone betwene hevenly and erthly bodyes, but also amonge us on erthe’’ ’; and immediately adds that Athens was named after ‘ ‘‘the god of ³² Usk suggests that the world has been turned upside down by ‘slydyng chaunges that misturnen suche noble thynges’; now ‘is nyght turned into daye and daye into night, wynter into sommer, and sommer into wynter, not in dede but in miscleapyng of folyche people’ (Bk I, Ch. X, 124, 125).

108

Ricardian Communities

peace [ … ] shewyinge that peace moste is necessarye to comunalties and cytes’’ ’ (Bk 1, Ch. VI, 98).³³ Even more emphatically, Love demands, ‘ ‘‘Is not, in general, every thynge good?’’ ’ suggesting, like Usk, that virtue and social harmony are natural states, and that social disruption can only be caused by a perversion of the norm (Bk 2, Ch. XIII, 217). Usk’s views are specifically located within the cityscape in the Testament, as he stresses the idea that cities must be ruled by ‘love, philosophy, and lawe, and yet love toforn al other’ (Bk 3, Ch. I, 233). Usk reconciles this belief in essential goodness and social coherence with the contemporary situation by suggesting that social possibility can be thwarted by temporary problems and corrupted individuals. Love’s eulogy to a Golden Age encapsulates the common nostalgia topos that life was better in the past. She says: ‘Somtyme toforn the sonne in the seventh partie was smyten, I bare both crosse and mytre to yeve it where I wolde. With me the pope went a fote, and I tho was worshyped of al holy church. Kynges baden me their crownes holden. The law was set as it shuld: tofore the juge as wel the poore durste shewe his grefe as the ryche, for al his money. I defended tho taylages and was redy for the poore to pay. I made great feestes in my tyme and noble songes and maryed damoselles of gentyl feture withouten golde or other rychesse. Poore clerkes for wytte of schole I sette in churches and made suche persones to preache: and tho was servyce in holy churche honest and devoute in plesaunce bothe of God and of the people.’ (Bk 2, Ch. II, 138–9)

This idealized past is then sharply contrasted with the here and now, as Love continues: ‘But nowe the leude for symonye is avaunced and shendeth al holy churche. Nowe is stewarde for his achates, nowe is courtyour for his debates, nowe is eschetoure for his wronges, nowe is losel for his songes personer, and provendre alone with whiche manye thrifty shulde encrease. And yet is this shrewe behynde; free herte is forsake, and losengeour is take.’ (Bk 2, Ch. II, 139)

A long disquisition on contemporary corruption ensues. However, Love’s depiction of the Golden Age suggests that there is a possibility for social plenitude and cohesion, and that the problems of the day are transient and specific, rather than perennial and inescapable. In other words, she here implicitly denies the idea that social antagonism is inevitable. Similarly, Usk describes London itself as naturally peaceful and harmonious, but suffering from a temporary malaise: ³³ This is a rather unusual construction of Athena.

Ricardian Communities

109

‘Also the cytie of London, that is to me so dere and swete, in whiche I was forthe growen; and more kyndely love have I to that place than to any other in erthe, as every kyndely creature hath ful appetyte to that place of his kyndly engendrure, and to wylne reste and peace in that stede to abyde: thylke peace shulde thus there have ben broken—and of al wyse it is commended and desyred. For knowe thynge it is, al men that desyren to comen to the perfyte peace everlastyng must the peace by God commended bothe mayntayne and kepe.’ (Bk 1, Ch. VI, 97)

Specifically, Usk blames Northampton and his supporters for this aberrant disruption of the peace: ‘debate and stryfe they maynteyned and in distruction on that othersyde, by whiche cause the peace, that moste in comunaltie shulde be desyred, was in poynte to be broken and adnulled.’ (Bk 1, Ch. VI, 97)

He suggests that social antagonism is by no means inevitable, but could be excised by the eradication of certain members of society, figuring them (just as so many people figured Usk himself) as the social symptoms or traitors. It is not society that is impossible, rather his enemies are to blame—expelling the corrupt element can restore the social order to health and coherence. However, Usk frequently seems to get carried away with bitterness and resentment, and openly to embrace an idea of perennial social antagonism, thus implicitly undermining his own assertions of social possibility. He writes: ‘I say that janglers evermore arne spekynge rather of yvel than of good, for every age of man rather enclyneth to wickednesse than any goodnesse to avaunce. Also false wordes spryngen so wyde by the steeryng of false lyeng tonges that fame als swiftely flyeth to her eares and sayth many wicked tales, and as soone shal falsenesse ben leved as truthe, for al his gret sothnesse’ (Bk 1, Ch. IV, 84–5, emphasis mine).

This cynical indictment on human existence and society—‘ ‘‘every age of man rather enclyneth to wickednesse than any goodnesse to avaunce’’ ’—stands in opposition to the idea of a Golden Age, or of contemporary decline. Further, it makes the idea of social change or improvement irrelevant. This assertion of social despair is elsewhere reinforced by scathing and pessimistic references to the ‘ ‘‘false opinyon of varyaunt people’’ ’ (Bk 2, Ch. VIII, 184), the ‘ ‘‘varyaunt opinyon in false hertes of unstable people’’ ’ (Bk 2, Ch. VI, 173), and the ‘ ‘‘dyvers sentences in janglynge of these shepy people’’ ’ (Bk 1, Ch. VI, 100). The Testament also voices the declaration that, ‘ ‘‘false for aver is holde

110

Ricardian Communities

trewe’’ ’ (Bk 1, Ch. X, 123), and Love rhetorically demands, ‘ ‘‘Wenest there be any thynge in this erthe stable?’’ ’(Bk 2, Ch. X, 201). Such ideas escape Usk’s attempts to construct an image of social possibility and paint a much bleaker picture than is perhaps intended at other points in the text. At these moments, it seems that Love’s persona as lady of philosophical consolation, emphasizing the perennial falsity of the world, conflicts with her political agenda—to re-inscribe Usk into a positive social whole. The second problem with Usk’s strategy of scapegoating is his inability to contain his critiques. Usk’s attempt to contain social problems by focusing them on certain individuals proves to be a precarious strategy. He finds himself in the difficult position of trying to reconcile a vicious critique of Northampton and of his own past factional allegiances with assertions of the nobility of the factions of Brembre and Richard, and of attacking his former employers while maintaining his own essential innocence. He tries to assert that his critiques of fellowship and company are applicable only to a certain kind of fellowship, although his words imply a broader relevance. He had the same problems in his Appeal. In the troubled climate of contemporary London, the eagerness of all of the mayoral factions to demonize their opponents functioned as part of an attempt to valorize themselves and to separate themselves from any idea of social antagonism by pinning all blame on their opponents. In his Appeal, Usk claims that Northampton’s party called their antagonists (Brembre and his supporters) ‘Enemys to alle gode menyng’ (424) while he emphasizes the fact that they themselves had a ‘fals and wykked menyng’ (427). He deploys the same rhetoric on both sides, revealing the parallel strategies used by both parties and thereby stripping his own words of credibility. His declaration that Northampton’s party sought to criticize their enemies and to have them ‘de-voyded owt of towne’ (424), so that Northampton and his cronies could ‘haue had the town in thair governaile’ (424), inevitably leads us to suspect that such self-interest motivated all of the ‘factions’ in London city politics—after all, Brembre had his own enemy, Northampton, driven out of town into exile. London seems to be ridden with social unrest and antagonism and all of the parties involved seem equally corrupted. In the Testament, Usk again destabilizes his own rhetoric by applying it to both sides. At one point, he attacks the false rhetoric of Northampton’s party, repeating what they said about Brembre and his ilk:

Ricardian Communities

111

‘ ‘‘The governementes,’’ quod they, ‘‘of your cyt´e, lefte in the handes of torcencious cytezyns, shal bringe in pestylence and distruction to you, good men’’ ’ (Bk 1, Ch. VI, 99)

Yet only forty lines earlier, Usk himself deployed similar language about Northampton’s faction, saying that they would destroy the city: ‘the under hydde malyce and the rancoure of purposynge envye, fornecaste and ymagyned in distruction of mokyl people.’ (Bk 1, Ch. VI, 96)

The repetition of the idea of malicious conspirators causing ‘destruction’ of the people, reveals the easy availability of such terminology, and the insistence on the falsity of Northampton’s rhetoric necessarily throws suspicion on Usk’s. In the same way, Usk attacks Northampton for cynically using the language of ‘ ‘‘comune avauntage’’ ’ (Bk 1, Ch. VI, 98), but he too frequently emphasizes his own belief in ‘ ‘‘commen profyte’’ ’ (Bk 1, Ch. VI, 95). He adds that he was sucked into Northampton’s schemes because ‘ ‘‘tho maters werne so paynted and coloured that, at the prime face, me semed them noble and glorious to al the people’’ ’ (Bk 1, Ch. VI, 95). Earlier in the Testament, in an allegorical section comparing Usk’s time with Northampton to a storm at sea, he writes that ‘ ‘‘under colour of kyssynge is mokel olde hate prively closed and kepte’’ ’ (Bk 1, Ch. III, 75). This rhetoric of deception—in both passages he uses the idea of Northampton colouring matters so that they appear other than they are—exposes Usk’s own unreliability, as he is either admitting that he can be deceived, or lying himself, and thus reminding us of his own strategies of deceit. It simultaneously shows us that such deceit can easily be practised. Usk’s attempt to limit this idea of deceit to the activities of one political party collapses when his own text uses the same phrase about men in general: ‘ ‘‘under colour of fayre speche many vices may be hyd and conseled’’ ’ (Bk 2, Ch. III, 147). The text reveals the more general applicability of Usk’s words on political betrayal. Indeed, Usk’s attempts to condemn renegade members of society inevitably seem to rebound upon himself and to reveal the pervasiveness of that which he criticizes. Love attacks those who: ‘profred him nowe to my servyce, therin is a while and anon voydeth and redy to another and so nowe one he thynketh and nowe another and into water entreth and anon respireth.’ (Bk 1, Ch. V, 87)

These words could be a description of Usk’s own actions: his political life was characterized by his turncoat nature, and his refusal to be a

112

Ricardian Communities

‘ ‘‘stynkynge martyr’’ ’ (Bk 1, Ch. VII, 108)—that is, to stick by his associates. At this point, Love justifies Usk’s betrayal, an action implicitly criticized by her earlier words on the perfidy of changing sides. Usk himself even defends his changing allegiance by the odd declaration that many ‘ ‘‘sayntes in holy churche’’ ’ were themselves turncoats (Bk 1, Ch. VI, 94). The textual contradictions which pepper the Testament suggest that betrayal and fragmentation inform all communities, that Usk himself and his new friends are indistinguishable from their enemies. Usk’s endeavour to enter political communities, to write himself into a vision of social wholeness backfires as his text refuses the idea of a coherent society.

The King and I: Usk and Courtly Communities Civic importance in a peaceful city is not Usk’s only social fantasy: he wants to be an urban politician but he also wants a royal appointment and his text exposes a marked conflict between courtly and civic communities. In Troilus and Criseyde, the city and the court exist in a generalized urban space, and they can co-exist because the king wields little power, and subdues his will to that of the city. In the parliament scene, the ‘peple’ argue against the prince, Hector. They then address the king: ‘O kyng Priam,’ quod they, ‘thus sygge we, That al oure vois is to forgon Criseyde.’ (Bk IV, ll. 194–5)

This nominal address to the king seems to be symbolic only, as they continue to debate and the proclamation is made by the ‘president’ of the parliament and cannot be withstood because the ‘substaunce [majority] of the parlement it wolde’ (l. 217). The democracy of the parliament is explicitly stated, and Priam has no say, while his son is ignored. Although the courtliness of the poem is often stressed, the power of the king is absent in Troilus and Criseyde. But Usk promotes the incompatible ideas of a strong civic community and an all-powerful king, presenting himself both as a good ‘republican’ and as a good ‘imperialist’. On the one hand, he eulogizes London as a site of natural peace, and fashions himself as a truthful, honest politician who is interested in urban peace, common profit, and good reason, while, on the other, he mystifies kingship, advocates the unlimited power of the king, and effaces himself in fantasies of sycophancy. Sometimes he evokes a city in which the ‘ ‘‘governementes’’ ’ (Bk 1, Ch. VI, 99) are the mayor and aldermen, and

Ricardian Communities

113

claims that he works there for ‘ ‘‘commen profyte’’ ’ (Bk 1, Ch. VI, 95). At other moments in the text, Usk emphasizes the omnipotence of the king, attesting that he will act out only the king’s desires, as he is merely ‘ ‘‘thynge caused’’ ’ by the ‘ ‘‘cause’’ ’ (Bk 2, Ch. VIII, 191) which is the king. The internal logic of the text is flawed, as Usk imagines himself as an honest, urban politician and as a flattering, courtly petitioner, willing to be controlled by the king.³⁴ If the king is constructed as ‘absolute’, the city can be seen as fundamentally different from the court and from the king. As Fradenburg writes, the king, by granting a city its rights, gives it ‘the gift of difference’.³⁵ The city can only maintain its coherence if it avoids kingly intervention and retains its charter rights: ‘absolutism’ must be anathema to contemporary London. On a conceptual level, the incompatibility of Usk’s two desires (to enter the city and to enter the court) fractures the centre of his text—the abundance of his social fantasies destroys his credibility. The job which this text may have helped Usk to secure, and which became his downfall, was a job which precisely reflected Usk’s split allegiance.³⁶ Letter-Book H records that on 2 September 1387, the king bid the Mayor and Sheriffs of London to appoint Usk, the king’s Serjeant-at-Arms, as Under-Sheriff of Middlesex.³⁷ His position was thus one under the jurisdiction of both king and city. Richard ordered his appointment, but it had to be done through the city officials, and involved working in an area under London’s control—the king promised that his appointment would not ‘form a precedent to the prejudice of the City’s franchise’.³⁸ This comment encapsulates the tensions inherent in the job. While Usk’s ³⁴ The text functions rather like a debate poem in which one character is playing both parts. In ‘Court Politics’, Patterson discusses the role of the truth-teller and the role of the courtier in contemporary texts; he also discusses the fact that the courtly voice must inevitably be fractured and self-conflicted. For a view on the ‘I’ of Usk’s text, focusing on the truth-teller rather at the expense of the courtier, see Anne Middleton’s influential ‘The Idea of Public Poetry in the Reign of Richard II’, Speculum 53 (1978): 94–114. For a meditation on the instability of the ‘I’ in late-medieval texts see Ardis Butterfield, ‘Chaucer’s French Inheritance’, in Piero Boitani and Jill Mann (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 20–35. ³⁵ Louise Fradenburg, City, Marriage, Tournament: Arts of Rule in Late Medieval Scotland (Madison, 1991), 12. ³⁶ The way in which this job became Usk’s downfall is recorded in the Rolls of Parliament. At the Merciless Parliament, in the context of the accusation of treason made against Richard’s supporters, Usk was branded a ‘faux & malveise person’ de lour covyne’, one who had been placed in this job in order to facilitate false arrests, indictments, and treasons in London and Middlesex. See Strachey, Rotuli Parliamentorum, 3: 234. ³⁷ Sharpe, Calendar of Letter-Books, 316–17. ³⁸ Ibid., 317.

114

Ricardian Communities

earlier positions, as scrivener for Northampton and for the goldsmiths, had been city roles, the Testament of Love was written when Usk was trying to jockey for position, to gain an appointment from the king that would eclipse his previous career. He is in a state of transition between his posts within the city, and the royal appointment he hoped to gain. The Testament reflects this division, as Usk is concerned with proving his ability to work for the city and for the king. At the heart of Usk’s text is his need to flatter the king. There are various admiring references in the Testament to ‘absolutist’ forms of kingship (references which are challenged at other points in the text). At one point, Usk seems to yoke his civic and courtly desires in a vision of powerful kings as founders of cities and omnipotent rulers, a vision in which the king ‘ ‘‘creates’’ the city’³⁹ and wields absolute power. Usk connects this with his own longing for political preferment (Bk 1, Ch. V, 91–2). Love praises Usk for his perseverance in her ‘ ‘‘servyce’’ ’, pointing out that those who do not have solid foundations for their actions cannot achieve ‘ ‘‘the ende’’ ’. Using politically resonant language, she says that ‘ ‘‘in longe contynuance is the consynance of my lyvery to al my retynue delyvered’’ ’. She then discusses the kind of people she will and will not help and concludes: ‘Thus by these wayes shul men ben avaunced; ensample of David that from kepyng of shepe was drawen up into the order of kyngly governaunce, and Jupiter, from a bole, to ben Europes fere, and Julius Cesar from the lowest degr´e in Rome to be mayster of al erthly princes, and Eneas from hel to be king of the countr´e there Rome is nowe stondyng. And so to thee I say, thy grace by beryng therafter may set thee in suche plyght that no janglyng may greve the lest tucke of thy hemmes, that their jangles is not to counte at a cresse in thy disavauntage.’⁴⁰

This passage reinforces the idea of Love as a politician and Usk as a job applicant with strong political ambitions. The examples that she gives are all people renowned for their political power: David was a king, Jupiter king of the Gods, Julius Caesar ruler of Rome, Aeneas prince of Troy and founder of Rome. In her descriptions of David (‘ ‘‘drawen up into the order of kyngly governaunce’’ ’), Julius Caesar (‘ ‘‘mayster ³⁹ Fradenburg, City, 12. ⁴⁰ The use that Usk here makes of traditional stories is idiosyncratic. Skeat comments that: ‘This idea, of Jupiter’s promotion, from being a bull, to being the mate of Europa, is extremely odd; still more so is that of the promotion of Aeneas from being in hell’ (Chaucerian and Other Pieces, 458 n. 127). Shoaf believes that here ‘Usk may be inventing images for his own particular use’ (329).

Ricardian Communities

115

of al erthly princes’’ ’), and Aeneas (‘ ‘‘king of the countr´e there Rome is nowe stondyng’’ ’), Love only refers to their political greatness. Her use of the example of Jupiter is somewhat different since the attribute that she mentions (that he was ‘ ‘‘Europes fere’’ ’) is partly a reference to one of his sexual adventures, although it seems clear in this context that she is referring to the political symbolism of his union with, and dominance of, Europe itself, as Greek culture spread across the continent. The four examples that she cites are all kings, and, furthermore, are all associated with empire: David was known as the king who ‘established Israel as an independent power with a small but significant empire’,⁴¹ Jupiter is traditionally omnipotent, and is here associated with European empire, as of course are Julius Caesar and Aeneas (prime figure in the translatio imperii). Moreover, they are all figures who overthrew a barbaric/corrupt predecessor in order to found a new regime: David fought Goliath and the Philistines; Jupiter his father, Chronos; Julius Caesar Pompey; and Aeneas Turnus. In terms of the foundation of western Europe, all are key players. David established Israel, ultimate foundation for Christianity, Jupiter is here depicted as the force which brought Greek culture to Europe, Aeneas founded Rome, and Julius Caesar cemented Rome’s power. The implied next step is the continued translation of empire—the foundation of New Troys. It is also notable that David is a type of Christ, and Aeneas is here described as rising ‘ ‘‘from hel’’ ’ and is hence implicitly associated with Christ (returning from the harrowing of hell).⁴² Jupiter too is a god, and Julius Caesar was worshipped as a god. They are all figures for a divine kind of kingship, and are all associated with the progression of power from the east to the west, the translation in which London, as New Troy, could play a part.⁴³ The implied grandiosity of Usk’s assimilation of his desire for advancement to the careers of men who became gods and emperors is breathtaking. These are clearly extreme examples of the extent of Love’s power, examples which should reassure Usk that his case is not hopeless, and which associate Usk with the potential for great success. The elevation of these four towering political figures is nowhere associated with love, and it is not at all apparent why or how Love would have helped them. ⁴¹ F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone, eds., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd edn (Oxford, 1997), 452. ⁴² Usk’s association of himself with these figures thus bears the astonishing implication that he himself is Christ-like, suffering unjustly for crimes he has not committed, and that he too will ultimately be raised in glory. ⁴³ See Chapter 3.

116

Ricardian Communities

It is true that they are all at least sometimes associated with nobility and morality, but it is also true that all were noted betrayers in their affairs of sexual love, and that here no mention is made of their good qualities. The focus is entirely on political importance and on changes in political circumstances. Love here seems to be constructing herself as an emblem of political machinations, and to be suggesting that the help which she can offer Usk is entirely career-oriented. After listing the examples of David, Jupiter, Julius Caesar, and Aeneas, she tells Usk that he may soon be ‘ ‘‘in suche plyght’’ ’ that no one will have the power to harm ‘ ‘‘the lest tucke of thy hemmes’’ ’. The implication is that political preferment awaits, and is the ultimate goal which Usk can reach through Love. The fact that David, Jupiter, Caesar, and Aeneas all inaugurated new political regimes is also significant—perhaps Usk is hinting that he can participate in civic renewal now that Northampton and his party have been purged, and can assist Richard in his attempts to establish the divinized kind of kingship that all of these rulers exemplify.⁴⁴ His text suggests that royal intervention in the city is worthwhile and noble: that the king creates and dominates the city. This emphasis on strong, quasi-absolutist kingship also appears at other points in the Testament. For instance, as part of his bid for royal preferment, Usk explicitly eulogizes social hierarchy as natural, divine, and harmonious, an idealization which is radically undermined by other parts of his text (discussed below). Early in the text, an elevated concept of kingship is outlined: For I trowe this is wel knowe to many persones that otherwhyle, if a man be in his soveraignes presence, a maner of ferdenesse crepeth in his herte not for harme but of goodly subjection, namely as men reden that aungels ben aferde of our savyour in heven. And pard´e, there ne is ne maye no passyon of disease be, but it is to meane that angels ben adradde not by ferdnes of drede, sythen they ben perfytely blyssed as affection of wonderfulnesse and by servyce of obedyence; suche ferde also han these lovers in presence of their loves and subjectes aforne their soveraynes. (Bk 1, Ch. II, 62–3)

The sovereign is elevated to a position analogous to God, and there is certainly no suggestion that the power of the king is contingent upon his ⁴⁴ The symbolism is confused: on one level, Usk is himself being compared to these rulers as a deserving man whose fortunes will change, but given the emphasis in other parts of the Testament on the divinity of kingship, and the fact that these figures are all king-like, a comparison between David et al. and Richard himself is also suggested.

Ricardian Communities

117

own self. Indeed, Shoaf has suggested that this passage could be used by a monarch as a treatise ‘in support of royalty against unruly Londoners’.⁴⁵ The passage serves to mystify and to elevate the idea of the presence and the gaze of the king, as ‘ferdenesse’ creeps into the heart in the presence of the sovereign.⁴⁶ The fact that ‘ferdenesse’ is the subject suggests that one cannot help but feel this way; it is natural and inevitable that such awe should arrive. The monarch is even compared to the ‘savyour in heven’, in an explicit reference to the divine origins of kingship. Earlier in this chapter, Usk’s comparison of the king, ‘ ‘‘more than his people’’ ’, to the knot, ‘ ‘‘more than al other goodes’’ ’ (Bk 2, Ch. IX, 191) was cited. The king is defined by the fact that he is ‘more’: excess, plenitude, unlimited in value.⁴⁷ Marx famously wrote that one man is king only because other men stand in the relation of subjects to him. They, on the contrary, imagine that they are subjects because he is king.⁴⁸

Usk’s words demonstrate this perfectly; he describes the king as a ‘ ‘‘cause’’ ’, the people as ‘ ‘‘thyng caused’’ ’ (Bk 2, Ch. IX, 191), emphasizing the fact that the king is ‘more than his people’. The subjects of the king seem to emanate from him, as if the king is himself the creator of his people (an idea which manifestly questions the nature of subjectivity itself ).⁴⁹ Usk—perhaps because, in his precarious political situation, he has an urgent need to flatter the king—constructs the king as a god-like figure and imagines the king’s favour as the greatest possible good. His search for Margarite is a metaphor for his desire for the king’s favour. Usk wants to be a royal servant—and indeed, he ended up as one, if only for a few weeks—and his discourse is radically constrained by his ⁴⁵ Shoaf, Testament, 22. ⁴⁶ The Eulogium writer describes Richard’s absolutist tendencies, saying that ‘he ordered a throne to be prepared for him in his chamber on which he sat ostentatiously from after dinner till vespers, talking to no one but watching everyone; and when his eye fell on anyone … that person had to bend his knee to the king’. Cited in Nigel Saul, Richard II (New Haven, Ct., London, 1997), 342. ⁴⁷ Fradenburg discusses depictions of the court in Edinburgh as ‘source of plenty [ … ] all is surplus’. City, 15. ˇ zek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London, 1989), 25 and ⁴⁸ Cited in Slavoj Ziˇ in Jean-Joseph Goux, Symbolic Economies After Marx and Freud, trans. Jennifer Curtiss Gage (Ithaca, N.Y., 1990), 33. ⁴⁹ See Louise Fradenburg, ‘The Manciple’s Servant Tongue: Politics and Poetry in The Canterbury Tales’, Journal of English Literary History 52 (1985): 85–118, 85–6, for a discussion of Freud’s retelling of a courtier’s joke regarding the meanings of ‘subject’.

118

Ricardian Communities

social vulnerability and aspirations. Fradenburg has commented on the fact that: The discourse of the sovereign is totalized: it refuses the idea of pluralized discourse, of debate, of personally motivated symbolism. [ … ] There can be no legitimate speech that is not already forespoken by, and speaking for, the sovereign.⁵⁰

The role of the subject is therefore determined by the Master, as the individual ‘becomes a signifier in the totalized discourse of the sovereign’ and thus ‘ceases to be an individual and becomes a symbol in the service ˇ zek writes of his master’s meanings’.⁵¹ Similarly, discussing flattery, Ziˇ that it involves a ‘radical alienation’, that by ‘flattering the Monarch’ we submit ourselves to a compulsive disrupting of our narcissistic homeostasis, we ‘externalize’ ourselves completely [ … ] The flattery achieves a radical voidance of our ‘personality’; what remains is the empty form of the subject—the subject as this empty form.⁵²

Through the Testament of Love, Usk reveals, consciously or not, that he can empty himself in this way, and can act as an agent for a Master. Love assists Usk’s self-fashioning by stressing his willingness to achieve an identity constructed by the ideology of service: in this text, Usk portrays his metamorphosis from troubled individual to part of Love’s identity, subsumed by her ideals. Usk fashions himself as one who serves the will of others. The importance of service is repeatedly stressed in this text. Good will and reason are not sufficient, unless they ‘ ‘‘be in good servyce longe travayled’’ ’ (Bk 3, Ch. VI, 282). Service is valuable for its own sake: ‘ ‘‘through servyce shul men come to the joye’’ ’ (Bk 3, Ch. VI, 282). Here, Usk prioritizes the idea of service above all else; it is through serving a superior that one can reach fulfilment. Love emphasizes the fact that she, as a ‘Master’-figure, can control Usk’s will. She says that ‘ ‘‘if thou chose contynuance in thy good servyce, than thy good wyl abydeth’’ ’ (Bk 3, Ch. V, 269)—in other words, his will is only valid as long as he is subject to her. She implies that she is controlling and retaining his very personality with the words, ‘ ‘‘there I made thy wyl to ben chaunged, whiche now thou wenest I argue to witholde and to kepe’’ ’ (Bk 3, Ch. V, 274, emphasis mine).⁵³ In Book 2, she explicitly ⁵⁰ Fradenburg, ‘The Manciple’s Servant Tongue’, 89. See also Chapter I of this book. ⁵¹ Fradenburg, ‘The Manciple’s Servant Tongue’, 89. ˇ zek, Sublime Object, 211. ⁵² Ziˇ ⁵³ See Patterson, ‘Court Politics’, for a discussion of ‘withholding’ (retaining) and the Book of Cupide.

Ricardian Communities

119

emphasizes the fact that he has been consistent in the ‘ ‘‘contynuaunce of thy servyce’’ ’ (Bk 2, Ch. III, 150)—an important point given Usk’s actual history of inconsistency—and then invites him to enter ‘ ‘‘into myne housholde’’ ’ and to become one of her ‘ ‘‘privy famyliers’’ ’ (Bk 2, Ch. III, 151). This is the language of a feudal lord, and Usk is here being presented as a reliable, loyal retainer who wants to bend his will to that of the Master. Despite the fact that free will is often mentioned and emphasized,⁵⁴ there is also a strong insistence on the idea that service —a submission of the will to that of the sovereign—is the path to fulfilment. The Testament appears, on occasion, to be a manual for the sycophantic royal petitioner. Love gives the following sage advice: ‘whan any of my servauntes ben alone in solytary place, I have yet ever besyed me to be with hem in comforte of their hertes, and taught hem to make songes of playnte and of blysse, and to endyten letters of rethorike in queynt understondynges, and to bethynke hem in what wyse they might best their ladyes in good servyce please, and also to lerne maner in countenaunce in wordes and in bearyng, and to ben meke and lowly to every wight, his name and fame to encrease, and to yeve gret yeftes and large, that his renome maye springen.’ (Bk 1, Ch. II, 69)

This is a surprisingly blatant admission of the deceit and self-emptying involved in the practice of service. Love urges those seeking preferment to employ the following strategies: to make songs up of complaint and happiness, to compose letters of rhetoric, to think how they can best please those whom they wish to please, to learn how to adjust their expressions, words and appearance to accord with manners, to be meek and humble, and to give extravagant gifts. This exemplifies the emptying of the subˇ zek. ject or voidance of the personality described by Fradenburg and Ziˇ Love advises her followers to behave in an entirely premeditated way, and to act ‘ ‘‘in what wyse they might best their ladyes in good servyce please’’ ’, rather than according to principle or honesty. Her unashamed advice about the usefulness of present-giving further underlines her concern with self-interest and flattery. The fact that she lays such emphasis on learning ‘ ‘‘maner’’ ’ would have been particularly resonant in the late fourteenth century, as Richard II’s court was notorious for its emphasis on manners.⁵⁵ This stress on form rather than conviction, surface rather than depth, is profoundly contradicted at other points in the text: the ⁵⁴ See, in particular, Bk 3, Chs. III, IV, VII, VIII, IX. ⁵⁵ See Fradenburg, ‘The Manciple’s Servant Tongue’, 90 for a discussion of manners in the late medieval period.

120

Ricardian Communities

very first lines repeatedly insist that ‘sentence’ is all-important and can frequently be obscured by exactly the kind of ‘ ‘‘rethorike’’ ’ and ‘ ‘‘maner [ … ] in wordes’’ ’ that is here being urged. The Testament begins: Many men there ben that with eeres openly sprad so moche swalowen the delyciousnesse of jestes and of ryme by queynt knyttyng coloures that of the goodnesse or of the badnesse of the sentence take they lytel hede or els none. (Prologue, 47)

In these lines, Usk repudiates exactly the kind of language use that Love later recommends. The purposes of the text are in conflict: Usk wants to appear to be a moral, plain-speaking man, but he also wants to be a cunning courtier. Of course, the repudiation of rhetoric is itself a common rhetorical device and perhaps only serves to reinforce the idea of Usk’s slippery persona of service. In Love’s ‘advice to courtiers’ speech, Usk presents Love’s servants—including himself—as the ideal courtiers: people who can take on any role, any opinion, any position, and whose integrity can be utterly subsumed by the desire of the sovereign. A quintessential example of the emptying of the subject in the ideology of service is the use of livery badges at the end of the fourteenth century, the acceptance of a sign that marks one’s body as belonging to someone else. A month or two before Usk’s first arrest, the Westminster Chronicle mentions a complaint about livery in the Salisbury Parliament: Interim isti per communitatem electi pro communi utilitate regni de veniendo ad parliamentum graviter sunt conquesti super potentes homines in partibus dominantes, scilicet quomodo per dominos regni signis quasi ornamentis diversis prediti ac eorundem favore protecti et profecto ex hoc nimis elati pauperes et inopes in patria minus juste opprimunt ac confundunt legesque pro communi utilitate regni editas ac eciam promulgatas conantur evertere, ipsorum eciam subtilitatibus ac amicicia dominorum freti non permittunt eas suam rectitudinem tenere In the meantime those who had been elected by the commons to attend the parliament to promote the general welfare of the kingdom complained bitterly about the tyranny of certain locally powerful persons who, furnished with badges (taking various forms of embellishment) by lords of the realm and sheltered by their favour, and having in natural consequence an exaggerated conceit of themselves, unjustly oppressed and dismayed the poor and helpless of their neighbourhoods, trying to overthrow laws passed and published for the common weal of the realm, and, in full reliance on their own smartness and the

Ricardian Communities

121

friendship of their lords, refusing to allow those laws to hold to their straight course.⁵⁶

Richard’s use of livery, especially the white hart, was frequently criticized: it was said that he attempted to distribute his livery in the countryside to raise troops against the Lords Appellant, and the Cheshire archers became notorious in the final years of his reign.⁵⁷ When Richard was under threat in 1387 (just before Usk’s final arrest): misit quendam clavigerum in Estsex’ et comitatum Cantebrig’ ac in Northfolk’ et Southfolk’, qui faceret virtute commissionis sue valenciores et potenciores cujuslibet patrie predicte sibi jurare quod postpositis ceteris dominis quibuscumque cum ipso utpote eorum vero rege tenerent, datisque eisdem signis, scilicet coronis argenteis ac deauratis, ut ad dominum regem cum eorum armis parati venirent quandocumque inde fuerant requisiti. he sent into Essex, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk a serjeant at mace, who was commissioned to cause the more substantial and influential inhabitants of those counties to swear that to the exclusion of all other lords whatsoever they would hold with him as their true king, and they were to be given badges, consisting of silver and gilt crowns, with the intention that whenever they were called upon to do so they should join the king, armed and ready.⁵⁸

Furthermore, the importance of the trappings of livery to Richard is suggested by the fact that, in the Wilton Diptych, the court of heaven itself is associated with Richard’s livery (compare Usk’s reference to the ‘felowshyppe of angels’ [Bk III, Ch. VIII, 298]). Love’s similarity to a fourteenth-century liege lord is demonstrated in her own distribution of livery: she emphasizes her wish that her ‘ ‘‘retynue’’ ’ should wear her ‘ ‘‘lyvery’’ ’ (Bk 1, Ch. V, 91) and criticizes those who are ‘ ‘‘not clothed of my lyvery’’ ’ (Bk 2, Ch. XIV, 224). Throughout the Testament, Usk uses Love as an ‘ideal ego’ with which he can identify and ultimately he identifies with her so completely that he gains a sense of self through taking her persona into himself. Towards the end of Book III, he writes: ⁵⁶ Westminster Chronicle, 80–3. ⁵⁷ In Saul, Richard II, Richard’s formation of a royal affinity and use of the white hart is discussed on 265 and psychoanalysed on 460; on 392–3 Richard’s ‘growing affinity with the north-west’ (393) is examined. ⁵⁸ Westminster Chronicle, 186–7.

122

Ricardian Communities

And with that this lady al at ones sterte in to myn hert: ‘here wol I onbyde,’ quod she, ‘for ever and never wol I gon hence and I wol kepe thee from medlynge while me lyste here onbyde:’ (Bk 3, Ch. VII, 290)

This idea—that Love can split herself up to enter the hearts of her servants—represents a very forceful kind of livery. Usk is so much Love’s servant that he is ruled by her even within himself. He becomes a part of a higher identity, which can contain him. Livery here is presented as something alive: it is not a symbol, rather it is a ‘real presence’—the Master can give a piece of him/herself to his/her servants, and this representation of the Master can control the servant. Hence Love ‘wol kepe thee from medlynge’. Usk will no longer have free will, as Love will direct his actions. The power rests with Love so completely that, although she claims she will stay there forever, she adds the imperious disclaimer that she will only stay as long as ‘me lyste’. Her desire remains crucial, and Usk is helpless when confronted by it. Usk uses his submission to the desires of his superiors to validate his text. In a manner reminiscent of Dante’s authenticating procedures, Usk constructs himself as a vates, who is merely copying down Love’s words. She says to him, ‘ ‘‘I charge thee, in vertue of obedyence that thou to me owest, to writen my wordes and sette hem in writynges’’ ’ (Bk 1, Ch. II, 72) and, ‘ ‘‘Take forth [ … ] thy pen and redily write these wordes’’ ’ (Bk 3, Ch. III, 245). Usk claims that he is merely a translator: Love ‘ganne she synge in Latyn’ and he has translated her ‘sentence’ into ‘our Englysshe tonge’ (Bk 2, Ch. II, 137). He tries by this tactic to imbue his work—and in particular Love’s elevated, partisan praise of Usk himself—with a degree of authority. Love, indeed, is an eager participant in Usk’s self-fashioning. Her comparisons of Usk to a lost sheep, to Adam, and to David, seek to assign to him a prophetic role, to construct a place in history for him that can contradict and override ‘traitor Usk’. Through his emphasis on the fact that the ideal servant can empty himself completely, Usk inadvertently destabilizes the idea of community, by making it clear that only the desire of the king is important, and by emphasizing the fact that a courtly community is devoid of depth or honesty. The conceit that he is a trustworthy man of integrity who can participate in a community and who is consistently motivated by common profit and the good of the city, is undermined by his contradictory insistence that he will serve the desires of the king and has no subjectivity or inner worth whatsoever. In other words, he cannot

Ricardian Communities

123

maintain simultaneously the persona of loyal servant of the king and man of civic spirit and integrity. Another layer of textual inconsistency emerges when, in contrast to the mystified, ‘absolutist’ idea of kingship often promoted by the Testament, Love emphasizes the fact that respect in office has to be earned, and that such respect can easily be withheld. Her critique initially seems to focus—appropriately given Usk’s personal circumstances—on city politics: ‘dignytes of offyce here in your cyt´e is as the sonne; it shyneth bright withouten any cloude, whiche thynge, whan they comen in the handes of malycious tyrauntes, there cometh moche harme and more grevaunce therof than of the wylde fyre though it brende al a strete. Certes, in dignyt´e of offyce the werkes of the occupyer shewen the malyce and the badnesse in the person.’ (Bk 2, Ch. VI, 167)

In this speech, the reference to the idea of the sun, a trope applied to kings and emperors (notably in Gower’s Confessio amantis), and the use of the word ‘ ‘‘tyrauntes’’ ’ suggests that the implications of Love’s comments extend beyond the mayoralty and have general application to those in any kind of official role.⁵⁹ Indeed, Love goes on to say that ‘ ‘‘honoure and reverence shulde ben done to dignyt´e bycause of encreasynge vertue in the occupyer, and not to the ruler bycause of soverayntie in dignit´e’’ ’ (Bk 2, Ch. VI, 168). Here, the reference to the ‘ruler’ implies that her comments could apply to the sovereign himself. The image of the ‘ ‘‘sonne’’ ’ is particularly resonant for Richard II since the king used two main badges: the white hart and the sunburst.⁶⁰ It has been noted that the rising sun was a badge of Edward III, used also by the Black Prince, and Richard’s use of it can be seen in his tomb, his plate, and in contemporary illustrations.⁶¹ He was therefore personally ⁵⁹ See John Gower, Confessio amantis in The Complete Works of John Gower, 4 vols, ed. G. C. Macaulay, 2–3 (Oxford, 1899–1902), VIII, ll. 2985–3019∗ In these lines, Gower explicitly compares Richard II to the sun. ⁶⁰ See Saul, Richard II, 440. ⁶¹ See John Gough Nichols, ‘Observations on the Heraldic Devices Discovered on the Effigies of Richard the Second and his Queen in Westminster Abbey, and upon the Mode in which those Ornaments were Executed; Including Some Remarks on the Surname Plantagenet, and on the Ostrich Feathers of the Prince of Wales’, Archaeologica 29 (1842): 32–59, 47, 48. See also Revd. John Webb, ‘Translation of a French Metrical History of the Deposition of King Richard the Second, Written by a Contemporary, and Comprising the Period from his Last Expedition into Ireland to his Death; from a MS. Formerly Belonging to Charles of Anjou, Earl of Maine and Mortain; but Now Preserved in the British Museum; Accompanied by Prefatory

124

Ricardian Communities

associated with the image of the sun. In Gower’s commendation of Richard, he compares him to ‘the Sonne’ that is ‘evere briht and feir’ and is ‘noght empeired’ despite the ‘clowdes’ which ‘derked and bischadewed’ it (Confessio amantis, ll. 3006–11∗ ).⁶² Indeed, the fact that Love refers to the sun shining ‘ ‘‘bright withouten any cloude’’ ’ could be read as an explicit comment on Richard’s ‘absolutist’ ambitions: while the Black Prince had favoured an image of the rising sun, emerging from clouds, Richard used both this symbol and also ‘adopted the whole sun, or sun in splendour’ as a motif.⁶³ Richard could easily be construed as one of those ‘ ‘‘malycious tyrauntes’’ ’ causing ‘ ‘‘moche harme and more grevaunce’’ ’ than even ‘ ‘‘the wylde fyre though it brende al a strete’’ ’. Indeed, an alert reader who was aware of the text’s debt to Troilus and Criseyde might be reminded of the ‘blase of strawe iset on-fire’ (IV, l. 184) in that poem, a reference to the power of the mob, perhaps even to the Peasants’ Revolt. The implication of Love’s words could be that Richard’s brand of tyranny is even more dangerous than the anger of the masses. Love’s words potentially contain an extraordinarily specific attack on Richard, an attack which works against Usk’s agenda of defending the divinity of the monarchy. A few lines later, these subversive implications are made even clearer, when Love embarks on an attack on Nero, Herod, and King John, as an urban and a courtly/monarchical critique are conflated. She declares that ‘Had Nero never ben Emperour, shulde never his dame have be slayn to maken open the privyt´e of his engendrure. Herodes, for his dignyt´e slewe many children. The dignit´e of kyng John wolde have distroyed al Englande. Therfore mokel wysedom and goodnesse both nedeth in a person the malice in dignit´e slyly to bridel, and with a good bytte of arest to withdrawe, in case it wolde praunce otherwise than it shulde.’ (Bk 2, Ch. VI, 169)

In this surprising passage, Love comes very close to saying that ‘all power corrupts’ and intimates that kings are accountable, and that they are often sinful simply because they are kings; in other words, that it is difficult to hold the highest office and not become corrupted by it. She goes Observations, Notes, and an Appendix; with a Copy of the Original’, Archaeologica 20 (1824): 1–423, illumination VII at 74–5, showing the sail of Richard’s ship bearing a large sun emblem. ⁶² I would like to thank Elliot Kendall for turning my attention to this passage. ⁶³ Nichols, ‘Observations’, 47.

Ricardian Communities

125

much further than denying the divine right of kings, and even suggests that monarchy is full of ‘ ‘‘malice’’ ’ in itself and needs a ‘ ‘‘bridel’’ ’. The suggestion is that this restraint can be applied by the king himself, but there is a dangerous implication that others might need to restrain the king: if this had not happened, John ‘ ‘‘wolde have distroyed al Englande’’ ’.⁶⁴ Is this not the argument of the Lords Appellant themselves? This idea, that kingship is fraught with the constant possibility of corruption, sits uncomfortably with Love’s comments on the sacred nature of sovereignty. Furthermore, despite various suggestions that Love’s comments are focused on the mayoralty, the references to kings, and the continued use of the imagery of the sun and the moon, strongly point to the relevance of these comments to the monarchy itself.⁶⁵ Again, Usk seems to lose control of his text, as his specific criticisms of factional corruption run wild and suggest a much more wide-ranging attack on the institutions at the heart of the political system. The text contradicts and undermines its earlier claims as the implication of social chaos, inherent in the social system and even in the institution of monarchy itself, challenges the endeavour to portray the divinity of the social order. Usk’s attempts to limit his violent critiques to specific factions and to maintain a belief in social possibility fail over and over again. His material proves resistant to his moulding, and it becomes hard to avoid the idea that his attacks are applicable to all social groups, indeed to society itself. Usk fantasizes about the natural goodness of people, the natural state of urban peace, and the divinity of the monarch—fantasies that are crystallized in the idea that the city can ⁶⁴ This is also reminiscent of the rat fable in Piers Plowman, when the rats consider restraining the cat-king by placing a bell around the cat’s neck so that they can know where he is and what he is doing. See William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman: A Complete Edition of the B-Text, ed. A. V. C. Schmidt (London, 1987), Prologue, ll. 146–74. ⁶⁵ References to civic, mayoral politics include these: ‘But though a wight had ben mayre of your cytie many wynter togyder and come in a straunge place there he were not knowen he shulde for his dignyt´e have no reverence’; and ‘Lo, howe somtyme thilke that in your cytie werne in dignyt´e noble, if thou lyste hem nempne, they ben nowe overturned both in worshyp, in name, and in reverence’ (both in Bk 2, Ch. VI, 172). On pages 170 and 171 much use is made out of the idea of the sun and the moon as metaphors for worldly power and office. The idea of the sun and the moon as images for church and empire is discussed at length by Dante in De monarchia, Bk III, ch. IV. See De monarchia, ed. E. Moore, with an Introduction by W. H. V. Reade (Oxford, 1916), and A Translation of the Latin Works of Dante Alighieri, trans. Alan George Ferrers Howell and Philip Henry Wicksteed (London, 1904).

126

Ricardian Communities

be ruled by ‘love, philosophy, and law’ (Bk 3, Ch. I, 233). Yet a reading of this text could only support a negative answer to Love’s demand: ‘ ‘‘Is not, in general, every thynge good?’’ ’ (Bk 2, Ch. XIII, 217). Rather, it seems manifest that ‘ ‘‘every age of man rather enclyneth to wickednesse than any goodnesse to avaunce’’ ’ (Bk 1, Ch. IV, 84). Usk’s text works against him to produce a chaotic and hopeless vision of social impossibility.

5 Conflicted Compaignyes: The Canterbury Fellowship and Urban Associational Form U R B A N A S S O C I AT I O N A L F O R M The idea of social (im)possibility that I have been exploring over the last few chapters is at the heart of the Canterbury Tales and the guild returns of 1388–9, texts that take the nature of associational form as a key concept. Concern about conflict, antagonism, and nonconformity is insistently evident in all of these texts. Examining Chaucer’s most famous work alongside far less well-known contemporary texts illuminates some of the concepts and language deployed in the Tales and helps us (to some extent) to reconstruct the textual world in which the Canterbury Tales was produced. Both kinds of groups—the Canterbury compaignye and the guilds—were concerned to maintain an idea of themselves as coherent, an idea that reveals its inadequacy in its very inception. The terms ‘debate’ and ‘rebel’, for example, are key in both the Tales and the guild returns, and are used in similarly oppressive ways. Using language extremely reminiscent of the writings of the mercers, Brembre, and Chaucer (as discussed in Chapter 1), the London carpenters state: Also, is ordeined þat, if any debate be bytwene any of þe brotherede, þat non of hem schal folwe a en oþer in none maner, til þe wardeines & þe bretheren han asayed wheþer þey mowe accorden hem in gode manere, & if þey nulleth nou t accorden in þis maner, uche do his beste by þe lawe, & þat no broþer meynteyne eyþer of hem preueliche ne apertliche in none manere.¹ ¹ PRO C 47/46/465, printed in R. W. Chambers and Marjorie Daunt (eds.), A Book of London English 1384–1425 (Oxford, 1931), 41–4, 43–4.

128

Conflicted Compaignyes

The carpenters are anxious to prevent disputes—‘debate’—between members, to control any such disputes, and to prevent factions forming either secretly or openly (‘preueliche ne apertliche’). Above all, the officials of the guild want to ensure that they control the guild members’ behaviour, that no private loyalties or associations should supersede the commands of the guild. Guilds were under suspicion at this time—as the demand for the guild returns attests—and the guild officials are presumably anxious to demonstrate their probity and the strict control that they exercise over their members. Through using the term ‘meynteyne’ and explicitly condemning maintenance, the carpenters separate themselves from another form of liveried informal association much criticized at this time—groups ‘maintained’ by a lord that often served as private, lawless armies. The same parliament that demanded the regulation of the guilds and prompted the guild returns to be written also expressed concerns about livery and maintenance, and accused guilds of maintenance. The carpenters also make it clear that they have careful procedures for dealing with ‘debate’ and for ensuring that conflict between guild members does not get out of hand. Other guild returns reveal a more draconian attitude to the problem of aggression between members. Another London guild, the guild of St James at Garlickhithe states starkly that, ‘ne broþer ne suster of þe said bretherhede ne schal noght debat with oþer’.² With this phrase, the guild closes down the possibility of protest, of disagreement or difference of opinion of any kind. The officials are determined that guild members should abstain from all conflict. This anxiety about maintaining homogeneity chimes with the preoccupations of that most famous leader of a fourteenth-century felaweschipe —Harry Bailly. He boldly asserts to his straggling association that ‘In compaignye we schal han no debaat’ (‘Friar’s Prologue’, l. 1288). The emphatic ‘schal’ and the use of the term ‘debaat’ strongly echo the regulations of the Garlickhithe guild. Harry too is constantly anxious to prevent discord and to maintain a fac¸ade of harmony and agreement in his troublesome, unruly ‘compaignye’. Yet for Harry, as for the guild, such homogeneity and affection could only be an illusion. Immediately after prohibiting debate, the Garlickhithe guild return continues: And if it be so þat eny debat chaunselich falle among eny of hem, þat god defende, þey beyng in debat shul shawe & come þe cause of her debat to þe ² PRO C 47/41/191, printed in Chambers and Daunt, Book of London English, 44–7, 46.

Conflicted Compaignyes

129

wardeins of þe forsaide broþerhede, & þe most wyse þerof, & þe same Maistres & breþeren shul do her diligence trewly to redresse it, & make bytwene hem a good acord. And if þat eny be rebell a eins þat acord & ordinance, he shal be put out of þe bretherhede, & þe oþer have his accion by þe lawe, & þe forsaide bretherhede shul be helpyng a eins þe rebell & unboxhum. (129)

The masters of the guild are principally concerned with controlling the debate that they cannot legislate out of existence, and they want to normalize things as quickly as possible. Any protest against them is termed a ‘rebellion’—a word which potentially politicizes such behaviour—and they are keen to exclude and to isolate anyone who engages in such acts. Such a person will be evicted from the guild and everyone must actively support the action against him, which will now be carried out through law if necessary. Similarly, as soon as the Canterbury fellowship has come into existence, Harry Bailly is warning the members about the penalties for rebelling against his rules: ‘ ‘‘Whoso be rebel to my juggement | Shal paye for al that by the wey is spent’’ ’ (ll. 833–4). Like the guild of Garlickhithe, he terms anyone who opposes the rules a ‘rebel’ and is insistent about their punishment. Both associations—the guild and the Canterbury compaignye —are defined by an intolerance of difference, and by an insistence on conformity. Grumbling or complaining is even cited as a reason for expulsion in the return for the fraternity of St Anne’s Chantry, St Lawrence, Old Jewry, London. If anyone ‘grucche’ to pay a penalty, ‘he schal be put out of companye’.³ Dissenting voices are violently pushed out of these associations. Associations, brotherhoods, confederacies, and fellowships were viewed with decided suspicion in the 1380s.⁴ The guilds epitomized the ³ Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS London Rolls 2, printed in Caroline Barron and Laura Wright, ‘The London Middle English Guild Certificates of 1388–9’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 39 (1995), 121–4, 121. ⁴ The burgeoning of the religious guilds at this time is extraordinary: only five London fraternities appear to have been in existence prior to the Black Death of 1348–9, the earliest dating from 1339, five more were founded in 1349–50, then 74 between 1350 and 1400. Many possibilities have been suggested to account for this. It has been mooted, for example, that the Black Death caused a greater fear of death among the population, together with a fear of indecent burial, and the formation of guilds was thus motivated largely by the wish for funeral provision. The wage rises after the plague could have enabled a wider range of people to form such groups; and the establishment of these groups with their provision for collective chantries came in the wake of a trend for individual chantries (only affordable for the rich). See Caroline Barron, ‘The Parish Fraternities of Medieval London’, in The Church in Pre-Reformation Society: Essays In Honour of F. R. H. Du Boulay, ed. Caroline Barron and Christopher Harper-Bill (Woodbridge, 1985), 13–37, 23–5. The growth in popularity of the parish

130

Conflicted Compaignyes

idea of problematic association and they became a focus of scrutiny in the wake of the Cambridge Parliament of 1388.⁵ During this parliament, held from 9 September to 17 October, the Commons presented a list of petitions. The first called for the abolition of livery and badges, the second for the abolition of guilds and fraternities, except for chantries. The Westminster Chronicle reports this petition: Item qe touz lez gildes et fraternites et lour comune boistes soient oustez et adnullez pur touz jours et les biens et chateux en possessioun disposez pur la guerre par discrecion des seignurs du parlement, salvant toute foitz chaunteries ordeinez dauncien temps pur lalmes de lour fondours et autres amortisez par licence du roy et autres choses ordenez al honour de seint esglise et encres de divine servise sanz livere, confederacie, meintenaunce ou riotes en arrerissement du ley Also, that all gilds and fraternities and their common chests shall be abolished and done away with for all time and the goods and chattels in their possession laid out upon the war at the discretion of the lords of parliament, saving always chantries ordained in ancient time for the souls of their founders and others acquired in mortmain by royal licence and other things ordained to the honour of Holy Church and the increase of divine service, without livery, confederacy, maintenance, or riots in hindrance of the law.⁶

In this demand, it is manifest that the guilds are an object of suspicion both because of their wealth and because of fears that they are conspiratorial and exclusive. In response to this petition, the guild returns were required, in which guilds had to describe their purposes and give their charters—in essence, the returns are documents of self-justification. This was not the first time that antipathy towards associations had been expressed, and in the politically turbulent climate of London it was especially common. In the early 1380s, Brembre went to great lengths fraternity was also coeval with a general concern with forming horizontal alliances and associations, as has been much documented. Paul Strohm has demonstrated that, from the late thirteenth century, ‘a novel and disturbing proliferation of associative forms’ was noted and such groupings continued to multiply in the subsequent hundred years (‘Appendix 2: The Literature of Livery’, in Hochon’s Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Century Texts (Princeton, N.J., 1992), 179–85, 179). Indeed, by the 1380s, such groups included associations of menial workers, such as farriers, butchers, and agricultural workers, as evidenced by the Yorkshire Partisans. See Strohm, ‘The Literature of Livery’, 180–2, and Select Cases in the Court of the King’s Bench under Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V, 7, ed. G. O. Sayles, Selden Society, 88 (1971), 83–5. ⁵ See J. A. Tuck, ‘The Cambridge Parliament, 1388’, English Historical Review, 84 (1969): 225–43, 237–8. ⁶ Westminster Chronicle, 356–7.

Conflicted Compaignyes

131

in London to prevent his opponents from meeting and forming groups. His proclamation (discussed in Chapter 1) that noman make none congregaciouns, conuenticules, ne assembles of poeple, in priue nen apert, ne no more than other men, with oute leue of the Mair; ne ouer more in none manere ne make alliances, confederacies, conspiracies, ne obligaciouns, forto bynde men to gidre, forto susteyne eny quereles in lyuingge and deyengge to gidre⁷

criminalizes fellowship and association in all their forms. Such antagonism towards informal associations inflects our understanding of the Canterbury group. The Canterbury compaignye is constructed as an unruly, rather disreputable urban fellowship. In this period, the London area was a magnet for people from all over the country, and so it is appropriate for this motley crew to form their bond in the outskirts of the metropolis. Indeed, a fellowship like the Canterbury compaignye could only be formed in an urban location, taking advantage of the ‘greater flexibility in the sociability of the city than the country’.⁸ In the city, many people depended ‘wholly or in part on the service provided by inns and taverns’ and, as a result, a diverse range of people of varied social backgrounds could come together in a public space in a way that would be unthinkable in a rural area.⁹ Their tavern association intensifies the disreputable nature of the fellowship. Langland’s description of a London tavern is one of the most memorable scenes in Piers Plowman: men and women from Cock Lane, Chepe, and Garlickhithe and also from as far afield as Flanders and Wales, socialize in a sea of ale and vomit, a location populated by prostitutes and rat-catchers (V, 297–357). Glutton is led further into debauchery specifically because his ‘love of tales in tavernes’ (l. 377): tales and conversation in a tavern setting were viewed with suspicion in the late fourteenth century. Anxiety about secret meetings in pubs was longstanding in the capital: in 1368, a group of London skinners stood trial for meeting in a tavern and forming a coven.¹⁰ Contemporary texts such as Sir John Clanvowe’s The Two Ways deploy traditional invective against tavern life to condemn ‘swich curside felashipe’ (l. 586) as that ⁷ H. T. Riley, ed., Memorials of London and London Life (London, 1868), 480. ⁸ Felicity Heal, Hospitality in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1990), 86. ⁹ Ibid., 85. ¹⁰ This is discussed by Barbara Hanawalt in ‘Of Good and Ill Repute’: Gender and Social Control in Medieval England (Oxford, 1998), 104–23, 113.

132

Conflicted Compaignyes

formed in an inn and based on games and drinking.¹¹ Within the discourses of the day the Canterbury group establishes itself as a suspicious confederacy, not dissimilar perhaps to Usk’s associates who met in a large group ‘in John Willynghames taverne in the Bowe’ (Appeal, 423, discussed in Chapter 1).¹² Yet this company has generally been interpreted as an essentially positive model of community. For Strohm, the compaignye is Chaucer’s ‘commonwealth’; for Wallace it reveals man’s ‘natural sociability’.¹³ On the surface, the ‘felaweshipe’ (‘General Prologue’, l. 32) that Chaucer the pilgrim joins may indeed seem to be a unified and essentially positive group—the predominance of the first person plural in the description of the formation of the company suggests as much: This thyng was graunted, and oure othes swore With ful glad herte, […] and thus by oon assent We been acorded to his juggement. (‘General Prologue’, ll. 810–18)

As is so often the case with Chaucer, however, things may not be as they seem. A cursory reading of the ‘General Prologue’ introduces the reader to the unreliable narrator, and alerts us to the fact that his professions are often duplicitous. His comments on the pilgrims, as is well known, are deliberately disingenuous: the wanton Friar is ‘vertuous’ (l. 251), the corrupted Pardoner ‘gentil’ (l. 669), the adulterous Wife of Bath a ‘worthy womman’ (l. 459). He says of the lecherous, drunken, ignorant Summoner that, ‘A bettre felawe sholde men noght fynde’ (l. 648). The language of fellowship is densely packed in the depiction of this character: he will allow ‘a good felawe’ (l. 650) to sleep with his mistress for a year in exchange for a ‘quart of wyn’ (l. 649) and, when he finds a ‘good felawe’ (l. 653), teaches him not to worry about excommunication. This emphatic and negative description of fellowship ¹¹ See Sir John Clanvowe, The Two Ways, in The Works of Sir John Clanvowe, ed. V. J. Scattergood (Cambridge, 1975), 57–80, 72. ¹² See Richard Firth Green, A Crisis of Truth: Literature and Law in Ricardian England (Philadelphia, 1999), 190 for a brief discussion of the association of suspicious fellowships and taverns. ¹³ Paul Strohm, Social Chaucer (Harvard, 1989), 182; David Wallace, Chaucerian Polity: Absolutist Lineages and Associational Forms in England and Italy (Stanford, Calif., 1997), 67.

Conflicted Compaignyes

133

informs the reader’s perceptions of the pilgrim fellowship itself. The terms ‘felawe’ and ‘felaweshipe’ were loaded terms in the 1380s and 90s.¹⁴ Chaucer’s close associate Clanvowe mounted an extended attack on the idea of ‘felashipe’, describing its adherents as those who: woln waaste þe goodis þat God hath sent hem, in pruyde of the world, and in lustes of here flessh, and goon to þe tauerne and to þe bordel, and pleyen at þe dees, waaken loonge any tes, and sweren faste, and drynken, and ianglen to muche, scoornen, bakbiten, iaapen, gloosen, boosten, lyen, fi ten, and been baudes for here felawes, and lyuen al in synne, and in vanitee. (The Two Ways, ll. 577–84)¹⁵

He goes on to declare that: ‘alle swiche felashipe walkeþ in þe broode wey þat leedeþ to losse of body and of soule’ (ll. 587–8).¹⁶ Clanvowe adds that such so-called ‘ ‘‘goode felawes’’ ’ (l. 577) are the antithesis of those who ‘fynden þe nargh wey’ (l. 589).¹⁷ In the Canterbury Tales, the most memorable ‘felawes’ are the self-seeking rioters of the ‘Pardoner’s Tale’—men not merely drunken and enjoyment-seeking, but corrupted, violent, and profoundly individualistic. The connotations of the idea of felaweshipe at this time, and Chaucer’s own use of this word with a pejorative meaning, immediately arouse the reader’s suspicion when the narrator joins a ‘felaweshipe’ (l. 32) in the Tabard Inn.¹⁸ Is it the coherent community that is so often assumed? Furthermore, an awareness of the narrator’s unreliability may encourage a reader to question the seemingly unified and happy formation of the social group. The Host’s ominous, twice-repeated warning—‘ ‘‘And whose wole my juggement withseye | Shal paye al that we spenden by the weye’ (ll. 805–6; see also ll. 833–4)—emphasizes the fact that a veneer of commonality is crucial, and that anyone who breaks the party line will be heavily punished. The fellowship already seems repressive and fraught with anxiety. ¹⁴ Wallace discusses the ‘multiplicity of meanings, connotations, and inferences generated by the word felaweshipe’, and comments that this ‘attests to the immense importance of this process, namely, the construction of associational forms’ (Chaucerian Polity, 73). My emphasis is rather on the overwhelmingly negative connotations of the word, which suggest a contemporary preoccupation not with the construction of associational forms, but with the destructive and cynical character of such groups. See also Green, Crisis of Truth, especially 190–1 for a discussion of contemporary suspicion of felaweshipe. ¹⁵ See Clanvowe, The Two Ways, 72. ¹⁶ Ibid., 72. ¹⁷ Ibid., 72. ¹⁸ The group is also termed a ‘compaignye’, another word which could have pejorative connotations. In The Two Ways, Clanvowe repeatedly refers to ‘euel companye’, associating such companies with worldliness, sin, and tavern life specifically. The phrase ‘euel companye’ is used five times within sixteen lines in lines 535–50.

134

Conflicted Compaignyes

Wallace’s account of the ‘General Prologue’ stresses the positive values of community, referring specifically to the urge to communicate. He claims that Chaucer’s ‘incorporation’ into the ‘felaweshipe’ reveals: the unique importance that language—more specifically the human voice— must assume for Chaucer [ … ] as the source and sustenance of social and political life [ … ] the necessity of work and language argues that humankind is a political animal, not an aggregate of atomized individuals.¹⁹

An examination of another part of the ‘General Prologue’, however, suggests a very different conception of language. In one of the most famous passages in the Tales, Chaucer the pilgrim says: But first I pray yow, of youre curteisye, That ye n’arette it nat my vileynye, Thogh that I pleynly speke in this mateere, To telle yow hir wordes and hir cheere, Ne thogh I speke hir wordes proprely. For this ye knowen al so wel as I: Whoso shal telle a tale after a man, He moot reherce as ny as evere he kan Everich a word, if it be in his charge, Al speke he never so rudeliche and large, Or ellis he moot telle his tale untrewe, Or feyne thyng, or fynde wordes newe. He may nat spare, althogh he were his brother; He moot as wel seye o word as another. Crist spak hymself ful brode in hooly writ, And wel ye woot no vileynye is it. Eek Plato seith, whoso kan hym rede, The wordes moote be cosyn to the dede. (ll. 725–42)

The tone of this passage is anxious and defensive. The speaker is aware that speech can cause dissent and is worried that his language will cause people to accuse him of ‘vileynye’. The word ‘vileynye’ here primarily means ‘rudeness’ or ‘discourtesy’, but it is etymologically associated with the word ‘vileyn’ or ‘vilein’—a ‘peasant’ or ‘churl’.²⁰ Language is ¹⁹ Wallace, Chaucerian Polity, 67–8. ²⁰ The Middle English Dictionary defines ‘vilein’ as ‘An unfree tenant holding land in villeinage or doing villein service; a bondsman’, and as ‘one who is low-born, a commoner; also one who lacks the manners of a gentleman, a boor; a scoundrel, a rascal’. ‘Vileini’ is defined as: ‘The condition or state of being a thrall to sin’ and as ‘churlishness,

Conflicted Compaignyes

135

divisive, it is a sign of social class, and one’s speech defines one’s social position. This divisiveness is emphasized in the penultimate line of this quotation—‘Eek Plato seith, whoso kan hym rede’. Most people, of course, would have no ability or opportunity to read Plato. The linguistic communities that one can access are determined by one’s social and educational background—and, of course, by gender: in this extract the speaker/reader can only be male. Primarily, Chaucer the pilgrim’s disclaimer is concerned with the opacity of language, and the difficulty inherent in communication. The final line is a masterpiece of ambiguity: words ‘moote’—must or should?—be ‘cosyn’—a close relation, a relation once removed, or even a cozen, a deceit?—to the deed. By encapsulating such complex linguistic ambiguity within a line that professes to be about clear meaning, the narrator draws the reader’s attention to the impossibility of conveying an idea clearly, of closing down alternative meanings. As P. B. Taylor comments, the passage is ‘a brilliantly contrived and multilayered piece of ambage’.²¹ The specific mention of the fact that even changing the words spoken by one’s own brother is not acceptable reminds us of the limits of fellowship. An interpreter can never be sure that he or she has understood meaning ‘proprely’, even if the words have been spoken by his/her brother; therefore one must always remain faithful to the original—and cannot claim to understand even one’s nearest connections. Nor is this fidelity really possible. The storyteller can only ‘reherce as ny as evere he kan’—a reiteration can, at best, only come ‘ny’, and can never replicate what was previously said. Having emphasized the importance of trying to repeat exactly the words of one’s source, Chaucer the pilgrim then contradicts himself by adding, ‘He moot as wel seye o word as another’. These words imply that language is actually unimportant; that words are somehow interchangeable. The tone of the passage becomes more dictatorial as it progresses. The initial, polite, ‘I pray yow’, is succeeded by more forceful addresses to the audience: ‘this ye knowen’, ‘wel ye woot’. The bullying tone is matched in the terms used about language use: ‘He moot reherce’, ‘he moot telle’, ‘He may nat spare’, ‘He moot as wel seye’, ‘The wordes moote be cosyn’. This rudeness, discourtesy’. See Hans Kurath, Sherman Kuhn, and Robert E. Lewis, eds., Middle English Dictionary (Ann Arbor, 1952– ). ²¹ P. B. Taylor, ‘Chaucer’s Cosyn to the Dede’, Speculum 57 (1982): 315–27, 320. For a definition of ‘ambage’, see Diomede’s comment in Troilus and Criseyde, V, ll. 898–9: he terms ‘ambages’, ‘double wordes slye’ and ‘a word with two visages’.

136

Conflicted Compaignyes

emphasis on coercion and obligation problematizes an idea of communication as honest and natural. Moreover, the reader is aware that all this is duplicitous; that what we are reading is in fact crafted by one man, who is demonstrating the ability to ventriloquize, to adopt any number of registers and styles; that language does not, in fact, reveal the man. This initial warning about the slippery nature of language anticipates the ‘Manciple’s Tale’, in which Plato’s aphorism will be repeated (l. 208). Furthermore, that tale will teach us one of the cornerstones of Chaucerian literary theory: ‘Thyng that is seyd is seyd, and forth it gooth’ (l. 355)—no one can control how his/her words will be interpreted, and communication is therefore inherently dangerous. We may be reminded of ‘Geffrey’s’ insistence in the House of Fame that he wishes no one to ‘have [his] name in honde’ (l. 1877), because ‘what I drye, or what I thynke, | I wil myselven al hyt drynke’ (ll. 1879–80). While communication undoubtedly has its pleasures, they are hardly those of ‘natural sociability’:²² ‘Geffrey’s’ words imply a fear of social interaction, an anxiety about communication.²³ Indeed, the conflict within the Canterbury fellowship is played out through language, through tale-telling and insult, through parody and self-assertion. In the Canterbury Tales, as in the House of Fame, words are weapons. It is worth remembering that in the late fourteenth century there was no clear dividing line between verbal and physical violence. The word ‘debate’, for example, which in Modern English retains only its verbal connotations, in Middle English could refer to argument or to violence. It occurs in many documents that emerged from the turbulent London of the 1380s. When Usk describes ‘the debates & the grete stryf, that yet ys regnyng in the cite’ (Appeal, 428), he could be referring to verbal or to physical conflict with the word ‘debate’. In the ‘Man of Law’s Prologue’, the word is opposed to ‘pees’, suggesting that it refers to warfare (l. 130), and ‘debate’ is also opposed to ‘pees’ in the Mercers’ Petition: ‘debate & strenger partye ayeins the pees bifore purueyde’ (34). The fight between Palamon and Arcite in the ‘Knight’s Tale’ is termed ‘debaat’ (l. 1754). Generally, the word refers to an indeterminate conflict: ‘For youthe and elde is often at debaat’ (‘Miller’s Tale,’ l. 3230), ‘Wythynne hymsilf is such debat’ (Romaunt of the Rose, B, l. 4902), ‘The lambish peple, voyd of alle vyce | Hadden no fantasye to debate’ (‘The Former Age’, ll. 50–1). Distinguishing between verbal and physical sparring does not seem to be important; ²² Wallace, Chaucerian Polity, 67.

²³ See Chapter 1.

Conflicted Compaignyes

137

indeed, Carl Lindahl has discussed the fact that words and deeds were of equal force and import in late fourteenth-century London.²⁴ In the Canterbury Tales, communication between the pilgrims is often fraught with aggression and suspicion, and communication is the foundation of their society. This aggression is crystallized in the behaviour of the pilgrims associated with London. Some of the most dramatic and vicious ‘debates’ in the Tales involve these pilgrims: the Host and the Cook, the Cook and the Manciple, and the Host and the Pardoner are involved in aggressive altercations. All of these confrontations are based around trade insults. All seem aware of each other’s corrupt practices, and they insult each other in familiar, trade-centred ways that locate them all within the same London linguistic community, and remind us that they are all members of trade groups. The characteristics of the fellowship are revealed most clearly in these scenes of antagonism that pepper the Tales. A conversation between a guild employee (the Cook) and the ruler of the temporary Canterbury group (the Host) provides a representative scene of guild-like ritual and aggression. When it opens, the Cook is laughing uproariously at the upshot of the ‘Reeve’s Tale’: ‘Wel seyde Salomon in his langage, ‘‘Ne bryng nat every man into thyn hous,’’ For herberwynge by nyghte is perilous. Wel oghte a man avysed for to be Whom that he broghte into his pryvetee.’ (‘Cook’s Prologue’, ll. 4330–4)

He draws the moral that one should be very careful of fellowship or hospitality. The specific insult in his comments is directed against the Host: he interprets the story not as a mockery of the Miller but as a joke against those who allow strangers to sleep in their houses—hostelers like the Host. By saying that ‘ ‘‘herberwynge by nyghte is perilous’’ ’, he suggests that untold mishaps may have befallen the Host through his profession. His words gain extra currency if we consider their context in late fourteenth-century London. In 1381, it was decreed that a hosteler must ‘harbour no one for whom he will not answer’,²⁵ and ²⁴ Carl Lindahl, Earnest Games: Folkloric Patterns in the Canterbury Tales (Bloomington, 1987), 77. ²⁵ Riley (ed.), Memorials, 453.

138

Conflicted Compaignyes

in 1384, the mayor and aldermen claimed that an increase in crime in London and in its suburbs was caused by innkeepers’ harbouring of criminals.²⁶ The Cook’s barbed words contain an accusation of the Host: perhaps he encourages and harbours criminals, perhaps even now he is offering his protection to very dubious characters? Shortly after this the Host—presumably responding to this veiled attack, and jealous of the Cook as their professions are somewhat similar—launches into a vicious attack on him, listing all kinds of ways in which the Cook cheats his customers, by re-heating his pies, keeping them too long, and so forth. Such specific, trade-based insults are typical of London invective: Langland singles out ‘brewesters and baksters, bochiers and cokes’ as the men in the world that cause the most damage through their unreasonable prices and because ‘thei poisone the peple pryveliche’ (III, 79, 82). Fear of the money-based economy, of secret trade practices, and of unprincipled Londoners on the make informs Langland’s description of London life. Chaucer has no such didactic agenda, but the London that he depicts is similarly corrupted. The Host’s seven-line critique of the Cook is followed by an address in which the Host calls him ‘ ‘‘gentil’’ ’ (l. 4353), presumably with savage irony, and insists that he must not be ‘ ‘‘wroth for game’’ ’ (l. 4354).²⁷ The Cook proves to be able to give as good as he gets and retorts by promising to tell a tale of a ‘ ‘‘hostileer’’ ’ (l. 4360)—Harry’s profession—adding that Harry himself must not be ‘ ‘‘wrooth’’ ’ (l. 4359) because of this. He ends his speech by insisting that Harry ‘ ‘‘shalt be quit’’ ’ (l. 4362) before they part. The Cook then bursts into laughter again—‘therwithal he lough and made cheere’ (l. 4363)—framing the whole exchange in seeming good will that fails to detract from the ‘jangling’ and quarrelling that we have witnessed. This incident is typical of the link passages of the tales, in which rivalry and hatred between individuals often dominates, and is often expressed within forms of unity. Ritual laughter, drinking, kissing, and polite, formulaic words can all be important. This scene is also, more specifically, typical of the behaviour of London-based pilgrims. The confrontations between these characters epitomize the pilgrimage which itself gestated in the London area. It is notable that the urban pilgrims are all specifically connected with informal associational forms. The ²⁶ See Martha Carlin, Medieval Southwark (London, 1996), 194. ²⁷ Lindahl comments on the Host’s knack for ‘rubbing in an insult at the same moment he is tempering it’. See Earnest Games, 117.

Conflicted Compaignyes

139

‘Cook of Londoun’ (‘Cook’s Prologue’, l. 4325) is attached to a guild, the five liveried guildsmen seem to hail from London, the Man of Law (associated with the ‘Parvys’ [‘General Prologue’, l. 310], the porch of St Paul’s Cathedral) tells a tale which begins with a marked emphasis on guild life,²⁸ the Canon’s Yeoman betrays the secrets of one guild in order to enter the Canterbury fellowship,²⁹ the Manciple is involved in the most guild-like incident in the text (the argument and ritual drinking with the Cook), the Pardoner resides in suburban Charing Cross, at the home of the Fraternity of Our Lady of Roncesvalles, and the Host forms and controls the Canterbury group. These pilgrims are all Londoners, and all seem to embody or to engage strongly with the very concept of compaignye. Of course, non-urban pilgrims such as the Miller and Reeve are similarly involved in antagonistic encounters that focus on trade-based insults. But the London pilgrims’ participation in guild-life and their aggressive, self-interested behaviour are emphasized especially strongly and consistently in the text; the London pilgrims expose the tensions within compaignye with particular power. It is often suggested that ideas of social fragmentation are crystallized in an urban environment: the polis frequently acts as an image for society or civilization.³⁰ Augustine uses the city as an image of community: ‘the ²⁸ The tale begins: ‘In Surrye whilom dwelte a compaignye | Of chapmen riche’ (ll. 134–5). There is a significant change in emphasis from the sources. Here, the tale begins with a reference to a guild, to merchants, and to economic advantage; in other versions ( Trevet’s and Gower’s), the tale begins with Constance’s imperial geneology. This is pointed out by Robert W. Hanning in ‘Custance and Ciappelletto in the Middle of It All: Problems of Mediation in the Man of Law’s Tale and Decameron 1:1’, in The Decameron and the Canterbury Tales: New Essays on an Old Question, ed. Leonard Michael Koff and Brenda Deen Schildgen (London, 2000), 177–211, 198. Thus the focus is shifted from a religio-imperial agenda to an economic and mercantile one. The guild here does not have the religious surface of the parish guilds; rather, it is a monetary craft/trade guild, initially structured by mercantile concerns. But throughout the tale, religion and economics are closely connected: analysing this tale, Hanning writes of Chaucer’s ‘awareness of [his] age’s widespread anxieties about the complex, highly mediated, and therefore easily exploited practices of the Church and of international commerce’ (187). Emphasizing the problem of mediation in Christianity and in commerce, he goes on to characterize the whole tale as a kind of ‘counterfeit letter’, pieced together from different texts and ideas, divorced from their origins and contexts (200). ²⁹ See James H. Landman, ‘The Laws of Community, Margery Kempe, and the ‘‘Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale’’ ’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 28 (1998): 389–425, 389–90. ³⁰ Giorgio Agamben is a recent participant in a long line of writers who discuss the (Aristotelian) idea that the city is associated with civilization, the human, while the forest is linked with savagery and the animal. See Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford, Calif., 1998), 105. See also Jacques Le Goff,

140

Conflicted Compaignyes

society whose common aim is worldly advantage or the satisfaction of desire, the community which we call by the general name of ‘‘the city of this world’’ ’.³¹ He emphasizes the fact that the ‘city’ is particularly associated with antisocial activity, commenting that: ‘The first founder of the earthly city was [ … ] a fratricide’³² and going on to discuss ‘the division of the earthly city against itself’.³³ Elaine Scarry connects the ‘unequivocally negative connotations to city-dwelling’ in the Old Testament with the Old Testament’s prohibition of ‘Human acts of building, making, creating, working’.³⁴ In other words, living in a city is associated with being a social/political animal; the city foregrounds ideas of society/community, with their concomitant problems.³⁵ Indeed, the urban guilds were more extreme than other guilds: they were more prosperous, more active, had more prominent public profiles, promised more charity (although they may not have given it), and they were more concerned with policing the behaviour of their members. Reputation and conformity were crucial to the leaders of these guilds, and their regulations often evince an obsessive insistence on good behaviour, and on uniformity at all costs.³⁶ In this chapter, the guild returns examined are from two urban centres, London and Lynn, all written in the same English dialect.³⁷ The examples drawn from the Tales involve urban pilgrims—the Host, Pardoner, Cook, Manciple, and Canon’s Yeoman. G U I L D S A N D T H E C A N T E R BU RY COMPAIGNYE The fragmented nature of the Canterbury group as a whole connects it to the guilds that were such a focus of attention in the 1380s. Like ‘L´evi-Strauss in Broceliande: A Brief Analysis of a Courtly Romance’, in The Medieval Imagination (London, 1988), 107–31, esp. 110, 115. ³¹ Augustine of Hippo, City of God, trans. Henry Bettenson (London, 1984), Book XVIII, chapter 2, 762. ³² Ibid., Book XV, chapter 6, 600. ³³ Ibid., Book XV, chapter 6, 601. ³⁴ Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York, Oxford, 1985), 221. ³⁵ The city is associated with human endeavour and social groupings, and these groupings are always already destructive and negative. Fradenburg comments ‘The idea of the city seems so often to raise the specter of ontological crisis’, and adds that ‘the city—not exclusively, but with a particular kind of power—poses the problem of how human beings construct and produce their world’. Louise Fradenburg, City, Marriage, Tournament: Arts of Rule in Late Medieval Scotland (Madison, 1991), 3, 9. ³⁶ See Ben McRee, ‘Charity and Gild Solidarity in Late Medieval England’, Journal of British Studies 32 (1993): 195–225, 201. ³⁷ As there are only ten extant London guild returns, the evidence is somewhat scanty if one relies solely on these documents.

Conflicted Compaignyes

141

the self-regulating guilds, Chaucer’s group is a self-governing entity ‘reuled’ (‘General Prologue’, l. 816) by the ‘juggement’ (l. 818) of their ‘governour’ (l. 813). The compaignye constitutes itself as a ritualistic association, employing the same rites and traditions as contemporary guilds.³⁸ The members bond together by the swearing of binding ‘othes’ (l. 810) and the ‘Pardoner’s Tale’ ends with the ritual kiss—‘Anon they kiste and ryden forth hir weye’ (‘Pardoner’s Tale’, l. 968). Similarly, in some returns the importance of the idea of brotherhood is demonstrated in symbolic rites: the guild of St Katherine, Aldersgate, London, demands that new initiates swear the oath of the guild and then kiss. It explains: The furst poynt is this, þat whan a brother or a suster schal be resceyued, þat þey schul be swore upon a book to þe brotherhede, for to holde vp and meyntene þe poynt and the articles þat be write after folwynge, eche man to his power, sauynge his estat; and þat eueriche brother and suster, in tokenynge of loue, charite, and pes, atte resceyuynge schule kusse eueri other of þo þat be þere.³⁹

Ritual drinking is also important in both kinds of group. Guilds had to meet on regular occasions to drink together, and immediately after agreeing to form the group, the Canterbury pilgrims seal the pact with ritual drinking: And therupon the wyn was fet anon; We dronken, and to reste wente echon. (ll. 819–20)

Moreover, I argue that the guilds and the Canterbury compaignye are both groups with an ethos of religious and social cohesion that masks mutual suspicion and individualism.⁴⁰ ³⁸ In Chaucerian Polity, Wallace compares the Canterbury compaignye to guilds, writing that ‘Chaucer’s devising of his pilgrim compagnye coincides with a moment of unprecedented self-consciousness and self-scrutiny for associational forms in England [ … ] it is in their totality (as a grammar of governance, as a fund of collective culture, as a strange amalgam of worship and drink) that these guilds offer the most instructive analogies with what happens in Chaucer’ (Chaucerian Polity, 83). He argues that both groups demonstrate ‘continuous corporate experience’ (97). ³⁹ PRO C 47/41/198, printed in Toulmin Smith and Lucy Toulmin Smith, eds., with an essay by Lujo Brentano, English Gilds, E.E.T.S. original ser. 40 (1870), 6–8, 6. ⁴⁰ This point of view is in opposition to that of many critics. As Wallace accurately observes: ‘The general trend has been to represent the guilds as a lost Eden of associative polity, religious purity, or both’ (Chaucerian Polity, 89, see also the notes on 416–19 for an excellent outline of the ways in which the returns have been used to serve different

142

Conflicted Compaignyes

The function of drinking for both guilds and Chaucer’s fellowship illustrates the way in which the illusion of fellowship covers self-interest and antagonism. In the ‘Manciple’s Prologue’, the Cook falls from his horse as he is viciously abused by the Manciple, but is subsequently raised up and offered a drink by his tormentor. Commenting on this ‘reconciliation’, the Host, laughing, claims that drink ‘ ‘‘wol turne rancour and disese | T’acord and love’ (‘Manciple’s Prologue’, ll. 97–8) and praises Bacchus’s ability to ‘ ‘‘turnen ernest into game!’’ ’ (l. 100). Wallace describes the moment when the Cook is re-seated as his return to ‘social consciousness’ and compares this reintegration, which uses wine as its agent, with guild-sponsored reconciliations.⁴¹ However, this interpretation occludes the divisive and sinister aspects of the exchange, which is characterized by ritual cruelty. The use of the language of fellowship in this episode is ironic: while insulting the Cook, the Host calls him ‘ ‘‘oure felawe’’ ’ (l. 7), and the Manciple addresses the Cook as ‘ ‘‘sweete sire’’ ’ (l. 42) in the midst of a long string of personal insults ideologies). The contemporary and specific agendas of the early commentators are exemplified in Lucy Toulmin Smith’s introduction to English Gilds, when she describes her father’s views. She writes: ‘In the midst of the perplexing problems presented by modern Trades-unionism, and the dangers to enterprise and manly liberty threatened by its restrictive rules, my father, who knew that Englishmen can ‘‘never appeal to their fathers in vain, when they earnestly invoke the spirit of solid freedom,’’ saw how the ancient principle of association, more than a thousand years old, had been in use as a living practice among the common folk, that it had been ‘‘a part of the essential life of England and always worked well till forcibly meddled with;’’ ’ (p. xiii). Even more recent comments on the guild returns often seem to assume that the guilds were essentially positive and altruistic in some way, and that they demonstrate medieval community and togetherness. Thus Barbara Hanawalt discusses the ‘emotional benefits’ of the guilds (‘Keepers of the Lights: Late Medieval English Parish Gilds’, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 14 [1984]: 21–37, 36); Wallace comments on their ‘solidarity’ and ‘continuous corporate experience’ (Chaucerian Polity, 92, 97); and Ben McRee emphasizes the ‘strong bonds’ and the ‘powerful acts of social union’ in the guilds, while acknowledging that the evidence is ‘sparse’ (‘Charity and Gild Solidarity’, 224, 225). Miri Rubin terms the guilds ‘groupings which were solid in friendship and mutual help, careful in self-regulation and punishment of lapses, regular in adherence to the effort of intercession, and above all, flexible and open to new modes of religious thought and devotion which could assist and promote their search for unity in piety’ (‘Corpus Christi Fraternities and Late Medieval Piety’, Studies in Church History: Voluntary Religions 23 [1986]: 97–109, 109). In general, the critical treatment of the guilds still seems to me to be touched with nostalgia, with the idea, articulated by McRee, that the guilds should act as a ‘salutary reminder’ for us today (‘Religious Gilds and Civic Order: The Case of Norwich in the Late Middle Ages’, Speculum 67 [1992]: 69–97, 97). Such interpretations of the guilds are a testament to the convincing nature of the returns: the guild returns surely set out to encourage exactly this kind of positive response. ⁴¹ Wallace, Chaucerian Polity, 176. R. A. Shoaf terms it ‘secular communion’ (Chaucer’s Body: The Anxiety of Circulation in the ‘Canterbury Tales’ (Gainsville, 2001), 106).

Conflicted Compaignyes

143

which (as Fradenburg points out) represents an attempt to silence the Cook and to prevent him from joining the social/symbolic order.⁴² The subsequent ‘reconciliation’ is illusory. The ostensible motivation for the Manciple’s attempt to make peace is fear that, as the Host suggests, the Cook might pay him back at some future point, by speaking ‘ ‘‘of smale thynges, | As for to pynchen at thy rekenynges,’’ ’ (ll. 73–4). When the Manciple realizes that the Cook might catch him ‘ ‘‘in the snare’’ ’ (l. 77), a desire for self-preservation takes over, and he immediately declares a wish to make up with the Cook and to proffer wine to him. Moreover, the overt gesture of friendship is itself infused with spite: the Manciple describes it as ‘ ‘‘a good jape’’ ’ (l. 84) to offer the dead-drunk Cook yet more wine, and maliciously says, ‘ ‘‘Up peyne of deeth, he wol nat seye me nay’’ ’ (l. 86). The Manciple takes advantage of the Cook’s senselessness and speechlessness to continue to taunt him by making him even more inebriated under cover of a gesture of friendship, and his reference to death again underscores the violence of his intentions. The Host is, as usual, the undiscerning reader, and his optimistic interpretation of the incident as reconciliation is exactly what the Manciple seems to wish, but the Cook, humbly thanking the Manciple (l. 93), has been made a fool of, and is still being mocked. The offering of wine and the Host’s comment that ‘ ‘‘ernest’’ ’ is thus turned into ‘ ‘‘game’’ ’ also make the incident reminiscent of the ‘Pardoner’s Tale’, when death is hidden within wine, symbol of fellowship, and within ‘ ‘‘game’’ ’ (l. 829), a demonstration of that fraternity.⁴³ Similarly, feasting and drinking within guilds were activities often dominated by tension and coercion. The bad faith that characterized the late medieval fraternities is especially evident in regulations about ostensibly convivial communal occasions. Drinking together is traditionally a symbol of community: the Fraternity of the Light of St Mary, St Stephen’s, Coleman Street for example, insisted that when the guild went out en masse, those who did not want to eat must ‘atte leste ⁴² See Fradenburg, ‘The Manciple’s Servant Tongue’, 95. ⁴³ Lynn Staley suggests that the wine-fuelled confrontation between the Manciple and the Cook, the fake alchemy in the ‘Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale’, and the poisoning scene in the ‘Pardoner’s Tale’ are three moments that parody sacrality. See Languages of Power in the Age of Richard II (University Park, Pa., 2005), 140. See also Maura Nolan’s comment that, ‘modes of behaviour designed to promote social cohesion not only conceal deep divisions within a culture but are also subject to inversion and subversion’, in John Lydgate and the Making of Public Culture (Cambridge, 2005), 83.

144

Conflicted Compaignyes

drynk’.⁴⁴ Drinking together is again enforced, a ritual to demonstrate a united front. The evidence of the returns suggests that the drinking occasions did little to promote religious feeling or brotherly love. Indeed, there was a great deal of mutual suspicion on such occasions: some ordinances go to great lengths to legislate against violence, noise, greed, and stealing. The best example of such anxieties about feasting and drinking can be found in the return for the guild of St Thomas of Canterbury, Bishop’s Lynn—a guild that sent people on exactly the kind of pilgrimage in which Chaucer’s pilgrims are participating. Its ordinances declare that: who-so entre in to ye chambre yer ye ale lithe inne, wiht-outen leue of men of officis, schal paye, to amendement of ye lite, ij.d [ … ] Also yt noman come be-forn ye alderman and ye gilde breyeren and sisteren, in time of drynk, in tabard ne in cloke, ne barleges, ne barfote; [and if he] mowe be wyst, schal paye, to amendement of ye lit , j.d. And [qwho-so] make ani noyse in time of drynk, or in tyme of mornspe[che holden], and wil nouth be stille, ye alderman schal don taken him [ye yerde; and] if he wil nowth reseyuen, he schal payen, to amende[ment of the lit ], iij.d., or lesen his fraternite for euere-more, but he [haue grace. Also yat] noman slepe in tyme of drynke, ne late ye cvp[pe stonde nere him, up] ye peyne of j.d. Also yt noman duelle in ye hous [after yat ye] alderman rised, but men of office; and if yei don, [yei schul paye, to amendement] of ye gilde, eueri persone j.d.⁴⁵

These regulations anticipate many different eventualities. The emphasis on keeping away from the chamber that ‘the ale lithe inne’ implies a fear of dishonesty and stealing, as does the stipulation that no one but men of office must stay after the alderman has left—this also serves to stress the hierarchical divisions of the fraternal group. The clothing rules suggest a fear of fighting: no one can wear a tabard or cloak ‘in time of drynk’, presumably because it might conceal a weapon. The other sartorial gaffe—coming ‘barleges’ or ‘barfote’—seems to be a question of status and suggests hierarchical tensions. The guild does not wish its members to look poor or badly dressed. Other stipulations also suggest a fear of discord. Noise is prohibited totally during the drinking time: while some guilds merely prohibit quarrelling or jangling during the feast, the Guild of St Thomas outlaws ‘ani noyse’ whatsoever.⁴⁶ This is ⁴⁴ Bodleian Library, MS London Rolls 4b, printed in ‘London Middle English Guild Certificates’, 128–31, 129. ⁴⁵ PRO C 47/43/270, printed in English Gilds, 80–2, 81. ⁴⁶ See, for example, the return for the Guild of St John the Baptist, Bishop’s Lynn, PRO C 47/43/252, English Gilds, 78–9, which threatens punishment for ‘who-so is

Conflicted Compaignyes

145

an extraordinary pronouncement; it is likely that the guild had serious discipline problems if it needed to resort to such extreme proclamations. Yet, although members are not allowed to make any noise, they are not allowed to sleep either, so some effort is being made to maintain the vigour of the silent occasion. Finally, the guild seeks to prevent people from monopolizing the ale cup, presumably out of a fear of drunkenness and greed: the ordinance betrays a desperate wish to ensure that no one has any more than anyone else has. With all of these regulations, it is hard to imagine that this feast was much fun for anyone, or that it fostered brotherhood in any way. In the guild returns, suspicion and selfishness are often lurking beneath gestures of social drinking, a fact which is resonant for the ‘Manciple’s Prologue’. Cruelty, self-interest, and aggression dominate the ‘Manciple’s Prologue’. The Manciple seeks to ‘other’ the Cook: by removing his agency and ability to speak and to tell a tale, the Manciple is ‘subjecting the Cook to signification [ … ] the Cook cannot speak [ … ] he can only be spoken’.⁴⁷ Fradenburg also describes the Manciple’s desire for mastery over the body of the Cook, emphasizing the Cook’s corpse-like aspects.⁴⁸ The description of the Cook—his ‘lakke of speche’ (l. 48), his face ‘ ‘‘ful pale’’ ’ (l. 30), his ‘ ‘‘eyen [which] daswen’’ ’ (l. 31) and ‘wrooth’ feelings (l. 46)—corresponds with Lacan’s description of primal aggressivity. Drawing on Augustine’s description of a jealous infant in the Confessions, Lacan writes that: with the infans (pre-verbal) stage of early childhood, the situation of spectacular absorption is permanently tied: the child observed, the emotional reaction (pale), and this reactivation of images of primordial frustration (with an envenomed stare) that are the psychical and somatic co-ordinates of original aggressivity.⁴⁹

The Cook exhibits these exact attributes: silence, pallor, staring eyes, angry feelings. The anti-social impulses that the Cook personifies are common to all individuals: in his drunken state he typifies the aggressive nature of mankind, when it is not hidden by social norms. The Manciple tries to ‘other’ the Cook so that he does not have to acknowledge his own likeness to the Cook. But, in ll. 70–5 the Host points out that the rebel ageyns ye alderman, or ageynes sistere or bretheren, in tyme of drynk’ and for ‘qwo-so jangle in time of drynk’ (79). ⁴⁷ Fradenburg, ‘The Manciple’s Servant Tongue’, 96–7. ⁴⁸ Ibid., 95, 98. ´ ⁴⁹ Jacques Lacan, Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis, in Ecrits: A Selection, trans. Alan Sheridan (London, 2001), 9–32, 22–3.

146

Conflicted Compaignyes

Manciple is as vice-ridden as the Cook, that he is ‘ ‘‘nat honest’’ ’ (l. 75) and that ‘ ‘‘Another day’’ ’ (l. 71) it could be he who is in the Cook’s position, while the Cook takes the Manciple’s place. This mirroring of the two characters makes it clear that destructiveness cannot be contained in an-other; rather it rebounds upon all. The Cook is not the ‘other’ to a coherent group, he is the Manciple himself, and all of the pilgrims: his aggression is common to all. Furthermore, this conflict is not an isolated occurrence: destruction is located within and throughout the text as the entire ‘pact’ proves to be illusory.⁵⁰ Compaignyes, however, cannot acknowledge this primal aggressivity, this inevitable failure of social forms. Instead, a strategy of maintaining an illusion of comradeship through scapegoating individuals is apparent in the Tales and in the guild returns. The Manciple attempts to alienate the Cook (‘Manciple’s Prologue’, ll. 25–93), the Host tries to demonize the Pardoner as the outsider to his coherent group (‘Pardoner’s Tale’, ll. 948–59), the Canon’s Yeoman suggests that a rotten apple or Judas figure must be prevented from damaging a fellowship (‘Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale’, ll. 964–5, ll. 1002–5). In all of these examples, social antagonism is displaced onto an-other. Utilizing this classic strategy for masking antagonism, aggression is also turned outwards by the guilds, as they seek to deny their own fragmentation by focusing aggression on to an outsider figure. The return for the Fraternity of St Anne’s Chantry, St Lawrence, Old Jewry, declares that the purpose of this guild is to ‘norische good & trewe companye in destruccioun & amendement of men of wikked fame & of euel berynge’.⁵¹ The fact that others must be demonized to maintain a company is here made explicit—there can be no nourishing of good company without a concomitant attack on the disreputable. Indeed, the returns frequently set up a dichotomy between those who are of ‘good fame’ and those who are of ‘evil fame’, starkly polarizing insiders and outsiders. (This language is also, of course, reminiscent of Chaucer’s House of Fame, and of slander cases in the fourteenth century.)⁵² The behavioural regulations and penalties detailed in the guild returns often emphasize the importance of ‘othering’ for the guilds: ⁵⁰ For other moments of conflict see, for example, the ‘Miller’s Prologue’, especially ll. 3118–49, the ‘Reeve’s Prologue’, the ‘Epilogue to the Man of Law’s Tale’, especially ll. 1166–83, the ‘Friar’s Prologue’, the ‘Summoner’s Prologue’, the ‘Squire’s Tale’, ll. 673–708, the ‘Tale of Thopas’, ll. 919–35, the ‘Prologue of the Nun’s Priest’s Tale’, ll. 2767–807 and the ‘Canon’s Yeoman’s Prologue’, ll. 685–719. ⁵¹ ‘London Middle English Guild Certificates’, 121. ⁵² See Chapter 1.

Conflicted Compaignyes

147

Also is ordeined þat if any brother or soster, after þat he be receyued in to þis Fraternite, by-come of euel fame oþer of euel name, as thef, or comune barrettour, or comune questmonger, or meyntenour of quereles, or be atteint of any falshede, þat anon he be put out of þe fraternite & neuermore come þer-inne in no manere.⁵³

The emphasis on the carpenters’ guild’s disapprobation of those who stir up quarrels and disputes, and the use of the vocabulary of maintenance explicitly separates the upright guildsmen from other kinds of associations, and stresses the fact that disturbers of the peace will be thrown out of the group. Many of the anticipated crimes involve language—telling lies, quarrelling, becoming an object of gossip. The return for St Anne’s Chantry, Old Jewry, lists being ‘rebell of his tonge’ as a reason for expulsion, emphasizing the seriousness of speaking out of turn.⁵⁴ Reputation and avoiding slander are obsessive concerns in the guild returns. Guilds are open about their need to preserve their good name at all costs and about their willingness to sacrifice suspect guildsmen for that cause. The return for St Anne’s Chantry goes on to say that ‘he schal be put of for euermor so that the godemen of this companye ne be nat sclaundred bi cause of hym’, explicitly citing fear of slander as the cause for expulsion.⁵⁵ Similarly, the Garlickhithe guild states: Also, if þer be in bretherhede eny riotour, oþer contekour, oþer such by whom þe fraternite myght be ensclaundred, he shal be put out þerof, into tyme þat he haue hym amended of þe defautes to-fore said.⁵⁶ Many of the returns lay great emphasis on the fact that guild members must not betray the secrets and private business of the guild to strangers or outsiders. The return for the Guild of St John the Baptist, Bishop’s Lynn, states that ‘who-so discuret ye counseil of ye gilde to ani straunge man or womman, he shal paye j.li wax to ye li t’.⁵⁷ Symbolically too, the guild must maintain its recognizable difference from the rest of society by guarding its livery. The bretheren of St Anne’s Chantry, St Lawrence, Old Jewry, London are warned: yif any of the companye yyue awey the hood of his lyuere with inne to yeer to any other that is nat of the companye ne of the lyuere of the fraternite he schal paie the double that it coste to the almesse or elles he schal be put of the company for euermor.⁵⁸ ⁵³ ⁵⁴ ⁵⁵ ⁵⁷ ⁵⁸

Chambers and Daunt, Book of London English, 43. ‘London Middle English Guild Certificates’, 123. Ibid., 123. ⁵⁶ Chambers and Daunt, Book of London English, 46. PRO C 47/43/252, printed in English Gilds, 78–9, 79. ‘London Middle English Guild Certificates’, 122.

148

Conflicted Compaignyes

Such stipulations ostensibly stress the idea that the guild must be tightly-knit, self-contained, and exclusive. Indeed, it was fear that this kind of secret confederacy could work against the wider community that seems to have prompted the call for the guilds’ dissolution: the commons’ petition quoted above attacks the guilds’ ‘livere, confederacie, meintenaunce ou riotes en arrerissement du ley’.⁵⁹ The implication is that these are private groups, connected by livery, forming a private coven in opposition to, and in seclusion from, the rest of society. The regulations of the guild of the Light of St Mary, St Stephen’s, Coleman Street, state that if there is discord between members, it must be sorted out within the guild ‘with outen mellure of any other straunge cleped ther to’.⁶⁰ Many of the regulations express suspicion of the law, and a prioritization of guild law over the law of the land. The care taken to ensure that guild members did not go outside the guild to the law reveals the anxieties of the guild officers and their wish to keep guild problems private, perhaps in order to maintain the image of harmony within the fraternity. The returns make it clear that going to the law should be a last resort: the Carpenters and the Garlickhithe guild mention going to the law as a possible eventual consequence of ‘debate’ between guild members. Such references to going to the law as a result of disputes within the guild suggest that guild arguments could be very serious, but that the guild wants to keep this secret and to conceal antagonism behind a fac¸ade of fellowship. Yet such acknowledgements of the disputes within guilds reveal the discord dominating such groups. The evidence of the regulations suggests that the guilds failed to direct their aggression outwards on to outsider figures or individual rotten apples, just as, in the Canterbury group, attempts to scapegoat individuals ultimately only reveal the fragmentation of the whole company. While the Canon’s Yeoman, for example, suggests that the Canterbury fellowship can confirm their unity through identifying an individual traitor, the implications of his words reveal the omnipresent division in the group. He describes the Canon as one who: … wolde infecte al a toun Thogh it as greet were as was Nynyvee, Rome, Alisaundre, Troye, and othere three. (‘Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale’, ll. 973–5) ⁵⁹ Westminster Chronicle, 356. ⁶⁰ ‘London Middle English Guild Certificates’, 130

Conflicted Compaignyes

149

The Yeoman makes explicit the relevance of this paradigm of (urban) treason to the Canterbury company, with the advice that if there is a traitor within their own group, they must ‘Remoeveth hym bitymes’ (ll. 1008). His insistence that ‘al a compaignye’ (l. 996) should not ‘rewe o singuleer mannes folye’ (l. 997) and that there was even a traitor within Christ’s apostles drives home the pervasive and dangerous nature of treason. Wallace has noted that the Yeoman himself could be a traitor in their midst: certainly, he is betraying his master and may have been intending to swindle the whole group.⁶¹ Furthermore, the entire compaignye is implicated in this guilt, as his text undercuts his overt declaration that the rest of the group is ‘giltlees’ (l. 1005). The word ‘infecte’ (l. 973) implies that many people can be corrupted by one, and the declaration that there was a traitor within the apostles suggests that all groups will suffer from such problems. The Yeoman’s determination to emphasize the guilt of an individual is itself suspicious, and seems to be a strategy to divert attention from the wider guilt of the group by focusing all blame on one individual. Indeed, the reference to Troy, which fell not only because of a traitor but also, traditionally, because of its inner division, is resonant.⁶² We might also remember the earlier description of London, which stressed the thievery and corruption all around (‘Canon’s Yeoman’s Prologue’, ll. 657–62), and the rhyming of ‘compaignye’ and ‘folye’ (ll. 996–7)—a common rhyme in the Canterbury Tales —implies the problematic nature of the whole group.⁶³ Within the tale itself, it is clear that the canon is not the only corrupting presence, despite the Yeoman’s strenuous assertions that this is so. To the reader, the covetousness and corruption of the priest makes it clear that this is not an example of a Judas figure betraying a Christ-like one. A typical example of the deceptiveness of the Yeoman’s narrative strategy comes in lines 1076–7, when his apostrophe to the priest’s innocence is immediately followed by a reference to his ‘coveitise’. The Yeoman is consistently concerned to stress the demonic guilt of the canon, while his text reveals the broader corruption in the town. Indeed, only a few lines after extolling the infectious nature of the traitor canon, the Yeoman explicitly refers to the ‘worlde of falsehede’ (l. 979), giving the lie to his previous and subsequent description of innocent gulled companies. His exhortations to the Canterbury group and his insistence ⁶¹ Chaucerian Polity, 251. ⁶² See Chapters 2 and 3. ⁶³ See, for example, the ‘Physician’s Tale’, ll. 63–4 and the ‘Pardoner’s Tale’, ll. 463–4.

150

Conflicted Compaignyes

on the relevance of this story of treachery to their own group ultimately, then, serves to suggest that the Canterbury group itself bears similarities to the ‘world of falshede’ described in the tale: it is corrupted through and through. The guild returns too reveal that the guilds were ridden with an internal antagonism that could not be suppressed or displaced. Many of the returns include injunctions about intra-guild quarrelling and debate; some even feel the need to legislate against physical violence, imposing penalties ‘if ony brother smyte oyer’.⁶⁴ The frequency and detail of many of the regulations about discord between brethren suggests that there was a great deal of tension amongst guild members. Members are not only accused of quarrelling, but also of maliciously abusing and betraying their fellows. The return for the Guild of St Edmund, Bishop’s Lynn, warns that: if any broþer or sister maliciouslike or dispisauntlike lye his broþer or his syster, in wrecche, in present of þe aldirman and of here gilde breþeren, scal paie, to amendement of þe gilde, vj.d. And qwo-so be rebele of his tonge a ein þe aldirman, or dispise þe aldirman in time þt he holden here mornspeche, scal paien, to amendement of þe gilde, vj.d. And if any broþer or sister bere his broþer or his sister any falsed or wronge on hande, and it may be prouid be þe gilde breþeren, scal paien vj.d. to amendement of þe gilde.⁶⁵

This extract demonstrates the potential for dissent and malice within the group. Both disputes among equals and challenges to the hierarchy of the guild are mentioned and condemned. The emphasis on the need to prove the errors of the accused—‘and it may be prouid’, an oftenrepeated phrase—suggests that guild members might even maliciously accuse their brethren. This absence of community feeling is revealed in the guild members’ obvious reluctance to do anything for each other: one of the most striking aspects of the returns is the lack of good faith within the guilds. The evidence of the ordinances suggests that careful regulation and the threat of financial penalties were necessary to persuade guild brothers and sisters to perform any kind of communal duty. The return for the Guild of Sts Fabian and Sebastian, Aldersgate, London, urges members to attend meetings with these bullying words: ⁶⁴ Guild of the Holy Cross, Bishop’s Lynn. PRO C 47/42/242, printed in English Gilds, 83–5, 84. ⁶⁵ PRO C 47/42/247, printed in English Gilds, 94–6, 94–5.

Conflicted Compaignyes

151

Also, þat euery brother and suster schul be boxom, and come, whan þey be warned, to a certeyn place whider þat þey be assigned, foure dayes in the eer, vpon the oth þt þey haue maad, and on þe peyne of xl.d. to paie to þe box; and þis schal be peyne for alle manere defautes þat þe breþeren falle inne. And þese ben þe foure dayes of oure assembles:—The day of seint ffabian and sebastian princpaliche, herynge a masse of þe foreseid seint , and offre in worschepe of hem, on þe peyne forseid. The seconde day, þe sonday next after Pask. And þe sonday next after missomer day. And þe sonday next after micheles day. Vpon þe peyne afore-seid, but he haue a verrey enchesoun wherfore þt þey mowe be excused.⁶⁶

The penalty is stressed twice here, both before and after the description of the feast days; this reiteration serves to emphasize the reality of the fine. The reference to the oath is pointed: the members have all sworn to attend these meetings, but the enforcement of the penalty is clearly still vital. The word of the guild members cannot be relied on but must be backed up by financial inducements. Some guilds are even stricter about attendance at meetings. The ordinances of the Guild of St Edmund, Bishop’s Lynn, rule that if any broþer or sister be somund to here mornespeche, and yei ben in towne, and wil not come, ne make non attrne for him, ne no leue axen of þe aldirman, scal payen j.d. And if he come after prime be thriis smeten, he schal paie j.d.; and if he sette him doun and grucche, he scal payen j.d.⁶⁷

This guild insists not only that people attend, but that they are on time and that they are not disgruntled: tardiness and complaining are considered to be as objectionable as not attending at all. These regulations suggest that guild members will only do something with an incentive: if there’s something in it for them, or if they will lose out financially by not taking part. In the guild returns and in the Canterbury Tales, the importance of making members adhere to behavioural codes is frequently stressed. In the showdown between the Host and the Pardoner, the behavioural regulations, which Harry has tried so hard to enforce, crumble and the dissent and malice in the Canterbury group explodes. Harry cannot maintain the fac¸ade, and he himself cannot sustain his own amiability. In the gaps between the tales, Harry’s self-imposed duty is to chastise, to regulate, to maintain an illusion of unity. In the ‘General Prologue’ he ⁶⁶ PRO C 47/41/196, printed in English Gilds, 9–13, 10. ⁶⁷ PRO C 47/42/247, printed in English Gilds, 94–6, 94.

152

Conflicted Compaignyes

warns the compaignye that ‘ ‘‘whoso wole my juggement withseye | Shal paye al that we spenden by the weye’’ ’ (ll. 805–6) and, less than thirty lines later, repeats this sentiment almost verbatim: ‘ ‘‘Whoso be rebel to my juggement | Shal paye for al that by the wey is spent’’ ’ (ll. 833–4). His emphasis on conformity and harmony, coupled with his politic insistence on stiff financial penalties for transgressors, demonstrates the similarities between this fellowship and the late medieval guild. Harry’s role in the link passages is to criticize the rowdy, to select whose turn it is to tell a tale, to encourage peace. His inevitable failure in these duties—his lack of control over the pilgrims and the order of tales, his inability to contain aggression, and his own slippage into disruptive behaviour—reveals the impossibility of taming the behaviour of a fellowship. The fact that Harry spends so much time in the link passages attempting to force the fellowship to be harmonious suggests that the group is fundamentally flawed. His unsuccessful attempts to control both the behaviour of the group and his own behaviour can be compared to the behavioural regulations in the guild returns. The stipulations about dining and drinking etiquette are only one aspect of the behavioural regulations that guilds often imposed, and which were sometimes extraordinarily detailed. Ben McRee comments that it is ‘peculiar that organizations pledged to pious goals should have felt the need for stringent behavioral controls’ and asks: ‘Why were they so distrustful of their gild brothers and sisters? [ … ] Why did ostensibly pious organizations find it necessary to legislate against misbehavior by their members?’⁶⁸ It was, perhaps unsurprisingly, the richer, urban guilds that were most concerned with behaviour, appearance, and reputation.⁶⁹ Guild members often had motives for being in a guild that were far from religious: McRee comments that ‘religious gilds provided an attractive meeting ground for the partisans of urban conflict’.⁷⁰ Many religious fraternities had craft associations; moreover, Caroline Barron has pointed out that certain guilds, such as that of St James at Garlickhithe, give no hint of their actual trade associations.⁷¹ This ⁶⁸ Ben R. McRee, ‘Religious Gilds and Regulation of Behavior in Late Medieval Towns’, in People, Politics and Community in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Joel Rosenthal and Colin Richmond (Gloucester, 1987), 108–22, 109. ⁶⁹ McRee comments that guilds concerned with behaviour were ‘overwhelmingly urban in origin’. See McRee, ‘Charity and Gild Solidarity’, 201. ⁷⁰ McRee, ‘Religious Gilds and Civic Order’, 95. ⁷¹ See ‘London Middle English Guild Certificates’, 114 and Barron, ‘Parish Fraternities’, 14–15.

Conflicted Compaignyes

153

occlusion of the true nature of the association provides an excellent example of the way in which guilds could hide their economic motives under cover of fraternal ideologies. The commons’ fear that the guilds had amassed much wealth and were involved in livery and maintenance, confederacies, and flouting the law also suggests that at least some of the guilds were assembled for purposes that could not be termed religious. The Canterbury pilgrims similarly have mixed religious and economic motives. While they have ostensibly taken the Canterbury shrine as their goal, the pilgrims also have other, individualistic goals. They are all, of course, competing for the free meal, a symbol of material gain. Moreover, some pilgrims have their own, private aims: the Pardoner wishes to ‘ ‘‘wynne gold and silver’’ ’ (‘Pardoner’s Prologue’, l. 440), and some would argue that the Canon’s Yeoman also initially hopes for financial gain from the group. The Wife of Bath wants to ‘ ‘‘Welcome the sixte’’ ’ husband (‘Wife of Bath’s Prologue’, l. 45), a plan at least partly economic, and the Cook is presumably a hired hand, making money from his guild employers on the trip, as he is there ‘To boille the chiknes with the marybones’ (‘General Prologue’, l. 380).⁷² Indeed, the liveried guild representatives’ need to have a Cook ‘with hem for the nones’ (l. 379), coupled with the anxious parade of their social appearance, emphasizes their irreligious motives. It is clear that the guildsmen are acting out of concern for their own appearance (with their ‘fressh and newe’ equipment and their ‘silver’ knives, ll. 365, 367) and, of course, for the appearance of their ‘solempne’ and ‘greet’ fraternity (l. 364).⁷³ This guild could have paid for them to go on the pilgrimage, both to promote the religious well-being of the guild members, and to further an appearance of religiosity and wealth (there are numerous examples of guilds helping their members to go on pilgrimage).⁷⁴ The Canterbury pilgrims, then, evidently have economic ⁷² Peter Lisca points out that the description of the ulcerous cook suggests that the guildsmen have employed someone cheap and disgraced; see ‘Chaucer’s Gildsmen and their Cook’, Modern Language Notes 70 (1955): 321–4. ⁷³ Jill Mann emphasizes the fact that the guildsmen are not satirized for the usual mercantile vices—fraud, usury, avarice—rather, self-importance is their defining feature. See Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire: The Literature of Social Classes and the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (Cambridge, 1973), 104. ⁷⁴ For example, the Gild of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Kingston-upon-Hull, releases members from their yearly payment if they wish to go to the Holy Land. The return stresses that the guild does this so that ‘all the gild may share in his pilgrimage’ (English Gilds, 157). The Gild of St Benedict in Lincoln demands that all members give a penny

154

Conflicted Compaignyes

and social reasons for going on pilgrimage, as well as religious aims. This aspect of Chaucer’s compaignye adds to the sense of the group as guild-like, as both groups use charity and religion as a forum for fulfilling individual, often economic, desires. The relevance of examining the guilds alongside the Canterbury group is illustrated by a comment by the Host during his confrontation with the Pardoner. The Host swears ‘ ‘‘by the croys which that Seint Eleyne fond’’ ’ (‘Pardoner’s Tale’, l. 951), as a prelude to enunciating his vicious fantasy of castration (discussed below). The oath is pertinent because it fits in with the Host’s general tendency to swear by fragments, and because it refers to relics which the Host considers as ‘real’. Furthermore, Walter Rye has pointed out that ‘The Cross that St. Helen Found’ was the title of a Lynn guild.⁷⁵ The Host, as symbolic head of his compaignye, swears by a guild at this moment of tension. This connects his fury with a more general fear for his guild-like group; with a concern that the Pardoner is exposing and foregrounding the antagonistic character of that group. In response to this fear, he reaches for the ‘stability’ of the guild as his reference point. But, just as the guild-like ritual drinking in the exchange between the Manciple and the Cook actually serves to emphasize the antagonism within the group, so the Host’s oath further reveals the instability of the pilgrimage, both because it implicitly places ‘real’ relics (such as the Canterbury relics themselves) alongside the Pardoner’s fakes, and because it re-emphasizes the guild-like—and therefore essentially antagonistic—character of the Canterbury group. We may also be reminded that the Pardoner is himself connected with a guild, and that this connection was so important that he was initially described as a ‘gentil Pardoner | Of Rouncivale’ (‘General Prologue’, ll. 669–70).⁷⁶ He is more, not less, of a guildsman than any of the other pilgrims and cannot be ‘othered’ from guild-life: he is, as he insists to the Canterbury group, ‘in youre felaweshipe’ (‘Pardoner’s Tale’, l. 938). Indeed, the Pardoner and his tale expose the true nature of the Canterbury compaignye and its journey. to a brother or sister wishing to go to the Holy Land, a halfpenny to those wishing to go to Rome or St James (PRO C 47/40/147, translated in English Gilds, 172–5, 172). ⁷⁵ Walter Rye, Chaucer, A Norfolk Man (Norwich, 1915), 70. ⁷⁶ The Fraternity of Our Lady of Roncesvalles came into existence in 1385; see H. F. Westlake, ed., The Parish Gilds of Mediaeval England (London, New York, 1919), 93, for a description and history of this guild.

Conflicted Compaignyes

155

T H E PA R D O N E R A N D T H E C A N T E R BU RY COMPAIGNYE The Pardoner epitomizes the pilgrim company and its conflicted character. His place of residence and affiliation, St Mary Rouncivale, was a hospital in Charing Cross, situated between London and Westminster, which was founded in 1231 to help sick travellers and pilgrims on their way to the Confessor’s Shrine. It was also a dependency of the Hospital of Our Lady of Roncesvalles in Spain, located on the road to Compostela.⁷⁷ The Pardoner lives in a suburb, on the edges of a town, just as the pilgrims are presented to us in Southwark. He is also associated with pilgrimage: he belongs to an institution that is predicated on the existence of pilgrims and pilgrimage (and he himself, as a hawker of relics, claims to be a portable pilgrimage site). The hospital was connected with a local guild, formed in 1385 to support the hospital:⁷⁸ the Pardoner—like other Londoners such as the Canon’s Yeoman, the Cook, and the five liveried guildsmen—is immediately linked with suspect associational forms. Further, just as the fellowship is strongly associated with tavern life and alcohol—as it is formed in the Tabard and the members drink to cement their contract—so the Pardoner returns the group to an ‘ ‘‘alestake’’ ’ (‘Introduction to the Pardoner’s Tale’, l. 321) and ensures that he can ‘ ‘‘drynke’’ ’ (l. 328) while he plans out his tale. The Pardoner is customarily viewed as an outsider, somehow ‘other’ to a coherent group. Harry Bailly singles him out for attack, and many critics subscribe to the belief that he is the ‘one lost soul’ in the corporate pilgrimage.⁷⁹ The critical isolation of the Pardoner has traditionally served to confirm the coherence of the group as a whole, constructing it as a social body that can maintain its own unity through exclusion. Similarly, it has been argued that the Pardoner mocks the pilgrimage ⁷⁷ See David K. Maxfield, ‘St Mary Rouncivale, Charing Cross: The Hospital of Chaucer’s Pardoner’, Chaucer Review 28 (1993): 148–63 and Timothy Baker, Medieval London (London, 1970), 66. ⁷⁸ See Maxfield, ‘St Mary Rouncivale’, 154. ⁷⁹ G. L. Kittredge, Chaucer and his Poetry (Cambridge, Mass., 1915), 180. Glenn Burger notes that ‘the queerness of the Pardoner’s character has been a driving force in Chaucer criticism’. Glenn Burger, Chaucer’s Queer Nation (Minneapolis, 2003), 140.

156

Conflicted Compaignyes

ideal by offering portable relics and trying to render the pilgrimage to Canterbury unnecessary.⁸⁰ In this critical view, the tale can be read as a parody or inversion of the Canterbury fellowship and pilgrimage, and thus, by contrast, as re-emphasising the coherence of the greater pilgrimage frame. The Pardoner can, however, be seen as typical of rather than different from the rest of the pilgrim company.⁸¹ As a figure associated with the city area (Charing Cross), and with guild life (Rouncevale), rooted in the tavern locale which defines the origins of the pilgrim group as a whole, he is very much associated with collective life and identity. The ‘Pardoner’s Tale’ attacks the ideals of fellowship and of corporate, affirmative pilgrimage by taking such ideals to their logical extreme and revealing their deceptiveness. Henry Louis Gates writes that ‘each literary tradition, at least implicitly, contains within it an argument for how it can be read’.⁸² The ‘Pardoner’s Tale’ will here be read as a blueprint or metatext for the Canterbury Tales, as a text which demonstrates, in miniature, the anxieties and tensions of the Tales itself. The ‘Pardoner’s Tale’ opens with a description of a corrupted fellowship which bears striking similarities to the Canterbury fellowship: In Flaundres whilom was a compaignye Of yonge folk that haunteden folye, As riot, hasard, stywes, and tavernes, Where as with harpes, lutes, and gyternes, They daunce and pleyen at dees bothe day and nyght, And eten also and drynken over hir myght, Thurgh which they doon the devel sacrifise Withinne that develes temple in cursed wise By superfluytee abhomynable. Hir othes been so grete and so dampnable That it is grisly for to heere hem swere. Oure blissed Lordes body they totere— ⁸⁰ See, for example, W. Kamowski, ‘ ‘‘Coillons,’’ Relics, Skepticism and Faith on Chaucer’s Road to Canterbury: An Observation on the Pardoner’s and the Host’s Confrontation’, English Language Notes 28 (1991): 1–8, and Eugene Vance, ‘Chaucer’s Pardoner: Relics, Discourse, and Frames of Propriety’, New Literary History 20 (1989): 723–45, 741–2. ⁸¹ I am in agreement with Burger’s comment that ‘What is transgressive about the Pardoner, what provokes the violent response of his audience, is precisely the way that he is not other’ (Chaucer’s Queer Nation, 150). ⁸² Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism (New York, Oxford, 1988), pp. xix–xx.

Conflicted Compaignyes

157

Hem thoughte that Jewes rente hym noght ynough— And ech of hem at otheres synne lough. (ll. 463–76)

Both compaignyes are characterized by eating, drinking, and the use of oaths, and the association of ‘compaignye’ and ‘folye’ in the rhyme of the opening couplet echoes throughout the Tales. Both groups are initially described as gathering in a tavern, a fact further emphasized by the fact that this tale is preceded by another reference to a tavern. More specifically, the words ‘stywes, and tavernes’ insistently return us to Southwark, location of the ‘stews’, perhaps its most famous attribute, and characterized in the Tales by Harry Bailly’s tavern. Within the tavern, the rioters play games (‘hasard’ and ‘dees’), and this may remind readers of the tavern game suggested by Harry to the pilgrims—the tale-telling contest itself.⁸³ The reference to the rioters’ way of swearing (‘Oure blissed Lordes body they totere’), is reminiscent of the Host’s oath in the ‘Introduction’ to this tale, when he swears ‘ ‘‘by nayles and by blood!’’ ’ (‘Introduction to the Pardoner’s Tale’, l. 288). Indeed, the Pardoner’s attack on those who swear ‘ ‘‘By his nayles,’’ | And ‘‘By the blood of Crist that is in Hayles,’’ ’ (‘Pardoner’s Tale’, ll. 651–2)—ostensibly a criticism of the characters within his tale—has specific resonance for the Host and therefore for the company in which he belongs, as well as for the rioters within the tale itself. The oaths which punctuate the ‘Introduction’, ‘Prologue’, and ‘Tale’ usually refer only to an isolated part of Christ’s body divorced from the whole and, through their promiscuous usage, from signification. This kind of language typifies the speech of the Host, and is a sterile manner of expression—just as the Pardoner’s fake relics fail to signify beyond themselves. The words ‘Oure blissed Lordes body they totere— | Hem thoughte that Jewes rente hym noght ynough’ have more implications for the idea of community. Here, the Pardoner suggests that the Jews (the outsider figures) are less culpable than the insiders, who continue to attack Christ’s body and, by implication, the social body itself. This is an early intimation that fragmentation resides inside society, and cannot be displaced onto the alien other. The resonance of this passage for the Canterbury compaignye is also revealed through the Pardoner’s use of tense: he moves continually from past to present in these lines which ⁸³ Taverns were ‘places for games, and, although those we know about often ended in homicide or accusations of cheating, we must assume that most games went on in an orderly fashion’. See Hanawalt, ‘Of Good and Ill Repute’, 112.

158

Conflicted Compaignyes

suggests the immediacy and relevance of his description. The use of the present—‘They daunce’, ‘it is grisly’, ‘ech of hem at otheres synne lough’—gives an impression that the Pardoner is speaking about events occurring around him. This idea is backed up by the final line of the above citation: throughout the Tales, the pilgrims, like the rioters, ‘at otheres synne lough’, and there is an example of this in the final few lines of this tale itself, when ‘al the peple lough’ (l. 961). These similarities between the group within the tale and its ostensible audience become more acute when the rioters form a fraternity, solemnized in a tavern setting, and motivated and united, like the Canterbury group, by the adoption of a common telos: in the ‘Pardoner’s Tale’ this is death, in the Canterbury Tales the Canterbury shrine. Forming the fellowship, one of the rioters says: ‘Herkneth, felawes, we thre been al ones; Lat ech of us holde up his hand til oother, And ech of us bicomen otheres brother’ (‘Pardoner’s Tale’, ll. 696–8)

Three lines later, the Pardoner then reiterates this with the words: Togidres han thise thre hir trouthes plight To lyve and dyen ech of hem for oother, As though he were his owene ybore brother. (ll. 702–4)

The fact that they have sworn an oath is insistently repeated, underlining the importance of the fraternity, and reminding us of the oath sworn by the Canterbury group (‘This thyng was graunted, and oure othes swore’ [‘General Prologue’, l. 810]).⁸⁴ The language of brotherhood is also emphasized—their promise to ‘lyve and dyen ech of hem ⁸⁴ The language of division in the Canterbury Tales, with its emphasis on oath-breaking and splintering affinities, has its roots in social and cultural changes and disputes that dominated the late fourteenth century. See Green, Crisis of Truth, for a discussion of the devaluing of trothplight in this era. For a brief discussion of bastard feudalism, see above, 45. These trends seem to be echoed in the stress that is placed upon oath-breaking here. Of course, I am not arguing that the existence of division is specific to the late fourteenth century, but that the ways in which such fragmentation expresses itself is a product of its historical moment. For discussions of bastard feudalism and livery and maintenance, see K. B. McFarlane, England in the Fifteenth Century: Collected Essays (London, 1981), 23–43 and The Nobility of Later Medieval England: the Ford Lectures for 1953 and Related Studies (Oxford, 1973), 102–21; and Maurice Keen, English Society in the Later Middle Ages 1348–1500 (London, 1990), 1–24.

Conflicted Compaignyes

159

for oother’ is reminiscent of the proclamations in the 1380s against fraternal groups who were bonded together by the promise of ‘lyuingge and deyengge to gidre’.⁸⁵ The words ‘felawe’ and ‘felaweshipe’ are frequently repeated in the tale, and are given extra resonance when the Pardoner reminds his audience: ‘I am in youre felaweshipe’ (l. 938, emphasis mine). The idea of felaweshipe itself thus falls under scrutiny, and what happens within the tale seems uncomfortably relevant for the tale’s audience. The corruption and disintegration of the fellowship within the ‘Pardoner’s Tale’ is shown when one of the protagonists says: ‘Thow knowest wel thou art my sworen brother; Thy profit wol I telle thee anon. Thou woost wel that oure felawe is agon. And heere is gold, and that ful greet plentee, That shal departed been among us thre. But nathelees, if I kan shape it so That it departed were among us two, Hadde I nat doon a freendes torn to thee?’ (ll. 808–15)

The words ‘brother’, ‘felawe’, and ‘freende’ are all used here in a sophistic display of self-interest, and the idea of a corporate movement is turned into a farce, as ‘us thre’ metamorphoses into ‘us two’. The speaker implies that he will not betray his ‘sworen brother’ and that he is fulfilling his bond of friendship to him (‘ ‘‘Hadde I nat doon a freendes torn to thee?’’ ’), when the action that he is proposing is to double-cross and kill their companion, to whom he owes an equal bond of loyalty and fellowship. His accomplice also reveals his selfinterest in his very words of fraternity, saying ‘ ‘‘by my trouthe, I wol thee nat biwreye’’ ’ (l. 823), demonstrating that the ‘trouthe’ earlier plighted can easily be cast aside as the third man is betrayed. The third man, at the same time, is planning how to ‘sleen his felawes tweye’ (l. 846, emphasis mine) and, having poisoned their wine, ‘To his felawes agayn repaireth he’ (l. 878, emphasis mine). The breakdown of the idea of fellowship, shrouded in the language of brotherhood, is neatly exemplified when the two conspirators go on to stab their ‘felawe’ in the back, under cover of ‘ ‘‘pleye’’ ’ (l. 827) and ‘ ‘‘game’’ ’ ⁸⁵ Riley (ed.), Memorials, 480.

160

Conflicted Compaignyes

(l. 829), just as he plots to poison them by offering them wine in a gesture of friendship.⁸⁶ The parallels between the ‘Pardoner’s Tale’ and the Canterbury Tales are also evident in the treatment of death in both works. The rioters in the ‘Pardoner’s Tale’, like the pilgrim compaignye in the Canterbury Tales, are unified in their pursuit of a common goal, located at the end of a projected journey. In the ‘Pardoner’s Tale’, this search is focused on ‘ ‘‘traytour Deeth’’ ’ (l. 699), contained first in a personification, later in the ‘floryns fyne of gold ycoyned rounde’ (l. 770).⁸⁷ In the Canterbury Tales, the journey ‘progresses’ to the Canterbury shrine: literally towards the bones of a dead saint, the ‘hooly blisful martir’ (‘General Prologue’, l. 17), metaphorically towards ‘Jerusalem celestial’ (‘Parson’s Prologue’, l. 51). The death-seeking aspects of institutionally endorsed Christian practice are crystallized in the ideology of pilgrimage, which usually centres on the cadaver and bones of a saint, or the location of his or her death.⁸⁸ As Henri Lefebvre shows: The great pilgrimages drew the crowds to shrines, to relics, to objects sanctified by death [ … ] This was a religion which ‘coded’ death, ritualizing, ceremonializing and solemnizing it.⁸⁹

In the ‘Pardoner’s Tale’, the rioters’ journey towards death mimics and challenges the ostensible ethos of the Canterbury pilgrimage: ‘Jerusalem celestial’ represents the perfect ending, or consummation of death. By locating death at the end of a journey, medieval culture utilized the pilgrimage motif to ‘other’ death⁹⁰ and to separate it from the ⁸⁶ See the discussion of the ‘Manciple’s Prologue’ above, 142–6. ⁸⁷ See M. Pittock, ‘The Pardoner’s Tale and the Quest for Death’, Essays in Criticism 24 (1974): 107–23, for a discussion of death within this tale. ⁸⁸ Christianity could also be described as death-loving in its tendency to emphasize the mutability of mortal life: Dollimore has investigated Christianity’s linking of desire and death. See Jonathan Dollimore, Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture (London, 1998), 48. Christianity sought to characterize mortal life as death by contrasting it with the eternal life that was to come. The negativity within mortal life, then, was contrasted with the telos, the moment of bodily death that would herald the arrival of utopian bliss. Thus, despite the recognition of the destruction within mortal life, death is still othered and envisaged as utterly divided from temporal existence. ⁸⁹ Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford, 1991), 254. ⁹⁰ In terming death the other, I am drawing on Lacanian theory, in which the other can be understood as that which is other to consciousness, that which is excluded.

Conflicted Compaignyes

161

rest of life.⁹¹ Discussing the Monk’s tragedies, Ramazani comments that he is transforming the horizon that individualizes us—death—into a thing, a thing that happens to everyone and therefore to no one in particular. In the words of a last ‘auctoritee,’ Freud, the Monk seeks to play a game of presence and absence or fort/da with death, representing and reducing it often enough that he masters it, traps it, turns it into something within the control of his will.⁹²

By taming death, one can try to negate death’s sting. The rioters of the ‘Pardoner’s Tale’ and the pilgrims of the Canterbury Tales seek to make death something that they can understand, can contain within a certain location and form—they want to conquer, to ‘know’ death. The construction of this goal implicates the groups in a need for a common ending. As Fradenburg writes: ‘Discourses of catastrophe, including tragedy, produce the group body—a body made by (anticipation of ) a common, ‘‘indifferent’’ trauma.’⁹³ The rioters’ goal-oriented journey, like the Canterbury Tales itself, is structured by a movement towards purported knowledge (of death), a movement that is problematized in Chaucer’s works by the fact that the desired ending is never achieved. ⁹¹ This idea of the separation of death may seem to be contradicted by the importance of the macabre in the late fourteenth century. Philippe Ari´es, for example, claims that ‘the man of the late Middle Ages was very acutely conscious [ … ] that death was always present within him’. Ari´es explains that this preoccupation with macabre themes was caused by a defiantly strong love of living, stating that ‘The truth is that probably at no time has man so loved life as he did at the end of the Middle Ages’. See Philippe Ari´es, Western Attitudes Toward Death from the Middle Ages to the Present, trans. P. M. Ranum (London, 1976), 44 and The Hour of Our Death, trans. Helen Weaver (London, 1981), 132. In similarly all-encompassing claims, Johan Huizinga, on the other hand, says that this concern with corruption and decomposition reveals the decline of the Middle Ages. See The Autumn of the Middle Ages, trans. R. J. Payton and U. Mammitzsch (Chicago, 1996), 156–72. Rather than arguing that there was indeed a change from corporate ideologies to personalized forms of belief and conceptions of death in the late fourteenth century, I argue that the change is merely one of representation, and that the seeming emphases on the individual actually amount to a search for community and fellowship. Both the decaying ideology of pilgrimage, which places death at the end of a voyage, and images life as a teleological journey towards death, and the growing preponderance of macabre imagery and bodily loathing, which emphasizes the commonality of death as a unifying force, serve as attempts to other death and to locate oneself in a death-loving community, which is separated from death. ⁹² Jahan Ramazani, ‘Chaucer’s Monk: The Poetics of Abbreviation, Aggression, and Tragedy’, Chaucer Review 27 (1993): 260–76, 265. ⁹³ L. O. Aranye Fradenburg, Sacrifice Your Love: Psychoanalysis, Historicism, Chaucer (Minneapolis, Minn, 2002), 135.

162

Conflicted Compaignyes

Community is formed through exclusion: in this way death functions not merely as a biological fact but as a representation of negativity, of that which is excluded. Jean Baudrillard writes: At the very core of the ‘rationality’ of our culture, however, is an exclusion that precedes every other, more radical than the exclusion of madmen, children or inferior races, an exclusion preceding all these and serving as their model: the exclusion of the dead and of death.⁹⁴

In the ‘Pardoner’s Tale’, however, death proves resistant to such exclusion. After the rioters find the gold, ‘No lenger thanne after Deeth they soughte’ (l. 772)—just as the Canterbury pilgrims do not reach their ‘goal’ of Becket’s bones. In the rioters’ destruction of each other and themselves, the death instinct manifests itself as an all-pervasive force within each person. Each man kills and is killed—‘Thus ended been thise homycides two, | And eek the false empoysonere also’ (ll. 893–4). Both the social body (their fellowship), and the individual body, disintegrate: death ‘finds’ the rioters because it exists within them, and they destroy themselves. The construction of a separate, othered death is subverted by the manifestation of a ‘death drive’, an unruly social antagonism that surfaces throughout Chaucer’s texts, challenging the very idea of sociality, and situating ‘death’ at the heart of society.⁹⁵ The character of the associational group in the ‘Pardoner’s Tale’ can be read as a paradigm of the Canterbury fellowship, which is similarly ridden by an uncontrollable ‘death drive’.⁹⁶ This antagonism erupts throughout the Tales, in depictions of fellowship and compaignye. The text is punctuated by moments of conflict which recent critics have generally ⁹⁴ Jean Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death, trans. Iain Hamilton Grant (London, 1993), 126. ˇ zek’s post-Lacanian concept of the death drive as a ‘dimension ⁹⁵ I am thinking of Ziˇ of radical negativity’ that ‘defines la condition humaine as such’; an antagonism that ˇ zek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London, 1989), 5. cannot be excised. See Slavoj Ziˇ ⁹⁶ My argument is that the idea of deferred death—symbolized by the goal of pilgrimage—is subverted by the antagonism located throughout the text and the journey. In contrast, Pearsall suggests that Chaucer reconsidered his plan for the text and invented a new structure which could not be completed, and that his inevitable failure to complete this ostensible plan reveals a more ambitious deferral of death. He writes: ‘It is almost as if the impending completion of the original scheme of The Canterbury Tales would have signalled the approach of death, and so Chaucer evolved a new scheme that held closure at bay almost indefinitely.’ See Derek Pearsall, ‘Pre-empting Closure in ‘‘The Canterbury Tales’’: Old Endings, New Beginnings’, in Essays on Ricardian Literature in Honour of J. A. Burrow, ed. A. J. Minnis, Charlotte C. Morse, and Thorlac Turville-Petre (Oxford, 1997), 23–38, 35–6.

Conflicted Compaignyes

163

read as incidents of division leading to reconciliation. Strohm describes the pilgrim body as a ‘temporary res publica or polity’, and comments on its ability ‘to accommodate new social groups, reconcile disputes, and chastise antisocial impulses’, emphasizing that reintegration and coherentia is the usual outcome of dramas and disputes.⁹⁷ Wallace agrees that the ‘integrity of the group’ is ‘tested and confirmed’.⁹⁸ I suggest, however, that conflict, rather than resolution, is the dominant characteristic of the fellowship, as it is of the fellowship in the ‘Pardoner’s Tale’. The dramatic and violent confrontation between the Host and the Pardoner is a moment when the suppressed antagonism of the Canterbury group bursts out from under the surface. The Pardoner’s bleak depiction of a fraudulent and antagonistic world and his disparagement of moral stability and religious truth challenges the Host’s idea of his compaignye and of himself. Through his bodily presence, and through his intricate tale, the Pardoner opens up ideas of discord and fragmentation that the Host and the Knight are striving to sublimate. The Pardoner also threatens to expose Harry’s own fragmentation, when he urges him to reveal himself, to ‘ ‘‘Unbokele anon thy purs’’ ’ (‘Pardoner’s Tale’, l. 945). In the context of Harry’s frequent use of similar phrases, these words gain metaphorical, as well as literal import: the Pardoner is asking the Host if he can show us his own manly credentials.⁹⁹ In this way, the Pardoner turns the audience’s gaze towards the Host, as he invites Harry to reveal himself. In response to this demand, the Host panics and loses his control utterly: ‘Thou woldest make me kisse thyn olde breech, And swere it were a relyk of a seint, Though it were with thy fundement depeint! But, by the croys which that Seint Eleyne fond, I wolde I hadde thy coillons in myn hond In stide of relikes or of seintuarie. Lat kutte hem of, I wol thee helpe hem carie; They shul be shryned in an hogges toord!’ (ll. 948–55) ⁹⁷ Strohm, Social Chaucer, 144, 152. ⁹⁸ Wallace, Chaucerian Polity, 97. ⁹⁹ Harry tells the Parson to ‘ ‘‘Unbokele and shewe us what is in thy male’’ ’ (‘Parson’s Prologue’, l. 26), and after the ‘Knight’s Tale’ he proclaims ‘ ‘‘unbokeled is the male’’ ’ (‘Miller’s Prologue’, l. 3115).

164

Conflicted Compaignyes

The Pardoner threatens the Host not only in his genital ambiguity; he threatens the very idea of progression, of fixed origins (in his production of fakes, in his assertion that there is no final goal, and in his devastating critique of male bonding). His vision of social antagonism is an open challenge to the Host’s attempt to rule a coherent compaignye dominated by manly men. The Pardoner’s body and his sexual appearance—‘a geldyng or a mare’ (‘General Prologue’, l. 691)—is a cypher of incompleteness, and the fragmentary, meaningless relics which he traffics are often interpreted as substitutes for his physical lack.¹⁰⁰ In his body, and in his ambiguous tale, the Pardoner foregrounds ideas of antagonism and fragmentation. For the Host, the Pardoner threatens the coherence of his compaignye: Harry has been striving to deny the presence of discord and ‘debaat’ and to maintain an illusion of integrity. In Harry’s words to the Pardoner, he piously calls on a religious goal (‘ ‘‘the croys which that Seint Eleyne fond’’ ’), underlining the coherent focus of his group, and attacks the Pardoner’s anus (‘ ‘‘fundement’’ ’) and testicles (‘ ‘‘coillons’’ ’), imaging the Pardoner as a piece of shit (referring to his breeches ‘ ‘‘with thy fundement depeint’’ ’ and fantasizing about placing his testicles in ‘ ‘‘an hogges toord’’ ’). His vicious attack focuses on the unmanliness and inappropriateness of the Pardoner. What Harry says to the Pardoner is really about himself and his own anxieties. The Pardoner, at this point in jocular mood, is violently attacked by the angry Host, and becomes angry. Harry then triumphantly and selfrighteously declares, ‘ ‘‘I wol no lenger pleye | With thee, ne with noon oother angry man’’ ’ (‘Pardoner’s Tale’, ll. 958–9). But it is Harry who is really the angry man, and the Pardoner has only become angry because Harry has made him so. The Host’s words demonstrate his fear that he has seen himself in the Pardoner, and that the Pardoner will destroy everything in which he wants to believe. Just as the confrontation between the Manciple and the Cook exposes their similarities, so this confrontation reveals the parallels between the Pardoner and the ¹⁰⁰ See Carolyn Dinshaw, ‘Eunuch Hermeneutics’, Journal of English Literary History 55 (1988): 27–51 (revised and reprinted in Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics, 156–84), for a discussion of the Pardoner’s fragmented body: she argues that the Pardoner and his audience have a fetishistic desire to believe in his wholeness. See also Robert P. Miller, ‘Chaucer’s Pardoner, the Scriptural Eunuch, and the Pardoner’s Tale’, Speculum 30 (1955), 180–99, for a discussion of the idea of the eunuchus dei and the eunuchus non dei, and Larry Scanlon, ‘Unmanned Men and Eunuchs of God: Peter Damian’s Liber Gomorrhianus and the Sexual Politics of Papal Reform’, in New Medieval Literatures 2 (1998), ed. Rita Copeland, David Lawton, and Wendy Scase, 37–64 for a discussion of the blurred boundary between the celibate and the sodomite.

Conflicted Compaignyes

165

Host.¹⁰¹ In their aggressive tendencies, all of the pilgrims mirror each other. The Pardoner’s imitation of the Host’s way of swearing, and his open assertion that the Host is full of sin cuts close to the bone. The Host is deeply resistant to the idea that he is as fragmented (and perhaps as impotent, as unable to reproduce, to ‘progress’) as the Pardoner, and so are all the others within his compaignye. Harry therefore attempts—unsuccessfully—to ‘other’ the Pardoner from the group, to declare that he is different and, in the process, reveals his own aggression and fragmentation. The Knight senses the danger, the fear that the Pardoner has exposed the lack in the individual, the inevitability of social fragmentation and the emptiness of the idea of the ending. The Knight’s conciliatory words seem bizarre: he sees that ‘al the peple lough’ (l. 961) and exhorts them all to ‘ ‘‘laughe and pleye’’ ’ (l. 967). In other words, he realizes that they are laughing at each other —at the Host and at the Pardoner—and wants them to direct their laughter outwards, to reconstitute the group body in order to prevent them from realizing their difference. Yet not only is the one line of reconciliation (‘Anon they kiste and ryden forth hir weye’, l. 968) singularly unconvincing but it also suggests stasis masquerading as progress: they behave as they did before and continue in the same way. The nervous, inappropriate laughter, which is frequently used to paper over moments of cruelty and division, is reminiscent of the end of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, when the response of the ‘childgered’ (l. 86) court to Gawain’s description of human fallibility is to ‘La en loude þerat’ (l. 2514), indicating their inability to develop, to learn, to move on. Similarly, the most noticeable aspect of the end of the ‘Pardoner’s Tale’, like the end of the ‘Manciple’s Prologue’ and multiple other moments in the text (principally at the end of tales), is the lack of progression.¹⁰² The pilgrims remain locked in their hatreds and anxieties, suspicious of each other and desperate to promote themselves. The Pardoner—like the Tales as a whole—reveals ¹⁰¹ Burger comments on the problems of essentializing the Pardoner and the Host as opposites, and points out that the Host’s ‘extreme assertions of ‘‘authority’’ and ‘‘normality’’ attract notice as constructed acts’. He goes on to write that ‘the Host, by fostering his own desire to establish his virility and material success under the pretence of substituting the true Body of Christ for the Pardoner’s false relics is acting out exactly what the Pardoner stands accused of: representing the material and ephemeral as the true and eternal.’ Chaucer’s Queer Nation, 141, 143–4. ¹⁰² See, in particular, Fragments 1 and 2, in which all of the completed tales have similar endings (calling on God to save or keep the company), and so keep returning to the same idea.

166

Conflicted Compaignyes

the inevitably conflicted nature of compaignye itself. Like guildsmen, the pilgrims are held together by a shaky self-interest that could at any moment induce one of them to stab another in the back. The Canterbury Tales depicts the aggressivity rampant within associational form itself. Of course, in this chapter there has not been space to examine every part of the Tales, and it might be suggested that other parts of the text have different emphases. To test the persistency of the depiction of this antagonism, in the final chapter of this book I examine what happens in the Canterbury Tales, and in other contemporary texts, when writers try to talk about peace and social harmony.

6 Conflict Resolved?: The Language of Peace and Chaucer’s ‘Tale of Melibee’ T H E L A N G UAG E O F PE AC E What happens to discourses of antagonism when the subject of discussion is peace? In the late fourteenth century, a plethora of texts was produced which condemned war and (at least ostensibly) eulogized peace and reconciliation. The concept of social harmony was a preoccupation for many writers at this time. Texts focusing on this theme include Chaucer’s ‘Tale of Melibee’, Clanvowe’s The Two Ways, Philippe de M´ezi`eres’s Letter to Richard II, Gower’s ‘In Praise of Peace’, Thomas Brinton’s sermons, and parts of Piers Plowman.¹ The idea of peace with the French constituted one of the principal bones of contention between the Lords Appellant and the king’s party,² and peace was also an issue taken up by the fledgling Lollards. Many of the so-called Lollard knights, with whom Chaucer was closely connected, were implicated in the peace negotiations with France (negotiations in which Chaucer himself may have played a part),³ and contemporary criticisms of tournaments, chivalry, and crusades all participated in the ¹ See R. F. Yeager, ‘Pax Poetica: On the Pacifism of Chaucer and Gower’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer 9 (1987): 97–121, esp. 109–13. ² See, for example, Judith Ferster, Fictions of Advice: The Literature and Politics of Counsel in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia, 1996), 100. ³ Paul A. Olson discusses the ‘Lollard knights’’ involvement with the peace negotiations in The Canterbury Tales and the Good Society (Princeton, 1986), 52. See also V. J. Scattergood, ‘Chaucer and the French War: Sir Thopas and Melibee’, in Court and Poet: Selected Proceedings of the Third Congress on the International Courtly Literature Society, ed. Glyn S. Burgess (Liverpool, 1981), 287–96, 294 for a discussion of Chaucer’s probable connection with William Beauchamp’s negotiations with the Flemish in 1387.

168

Conflict Resolved?

popular promotion of peace.⁴ One might imagine that texts about peace would be a counterpoint to the texts discussed throughout this book, texts that engage with turbulence, antagonism, and conflict. But in fact, an examination of some of the discussions of peace produced in these decades demonstrates that the ideology of peace tends to be built upon an awareness of aggression and a desire to channel violence. Peace with the French was a controversial issue in the 1380s. The Westminster Chronicler reports that Consideravit namque rex cum suo consilio quia si oporteret ipsum contra regem Francorum continua bella fovere, necessario haberet suum populum novis imposicionibus videbatur a bellorum tumultu ea parte aliquantulum respirare et in pace quiescere quam continuis guerrarum vexacionibus anxiari. Et quamvis ista non sortiebantur effectum, nichilominus tamen pro hiis et aliis premissis et inferius specificandis exorta est causa quare domini surrexerunt In common with his council, the king had concluded that if he was going to have to maintain a ceaseless state of war against the king of the French, he would inevitably be compelled to be for ever burdening his people with new imposts, with damaging results for himself; he therefore thought it better to secure a short breathing-space from the tumult of strife in that quarter than to be harassed by the unending troubles of war. Although it came to nothing, it was nevertheless this project (with other matters already mentioned or to be particularized below) that formed a reason for the lords’ rising.⁵

The Chronicler is describing a kind of antisemitism in reverse—remove the ‘other’ on to which aggression is focused, and internal dissent immediately erupts. For Richard II, the idea of peace with France was always beset by problems, and accompanied by violence. In the articles of appeal of Alexander, archbishop of York, Robert de Vere, Michael de la Pole, Robert Tresilian, and Nicholas Brembre, peace with France plays a somewhat peculiar role. The articles suggest that peace-making is motivated purely by treasonous desires. They contend that the king’s party offered to surrender lands to France in return for the French king’s help in murdering the Lords Appellant, and that the murder of the lords was to take place at a parley between the French and English kings at Calais. The language of the articles closely intertwines peace and treason: Item lavantditz Alexandre etc. et ces autres compaignons, acrochantz a eux roial poair, firent le roy promettre al roy Franceis par les ditz lettres et messages pur eide et afforcement avoir du dit roy Franceis et de sa poair pur accomplir ⁴ See Scattergood, ‘Chaucer and the French War’, 291. ⁵ Westminster Chronicle, 204–5.

Conflict Resolved?

169

cestez hautez tresouns de prodicion et murdre de doner et a suisrendre a dit roy Franceis la ville et le chastell de Caleys et toutz ces autres chastell et forcelettes en la marche de Pycardie et Artoys, les chastelx et villez de Chirebourgh et de Brest, a tresgrant deshonour, trouble et arrerissement du roy et de son roiaume Also, the aforesaid Alexander etc, and others his fellows, accroaching to themselves royal power, caused the king to promise to the French king by the said letters and messages, in order to gain the aid and support of the said French king and his power for the accomplishing of these high treasons of betrayal and murder, that he would give up and surrender to the said French king the town and castle of Calais and all his other castles and fortresses in the march of Picardy and Artois, the castles and towns of Cherbourg and of Brest, to the very great dishonour, disturbance, and detriment of the king and of his realm. (262–3)

This accusation claims that Richard made moves for peace for the purpose of obtaining the French king’s help in committing treason against his own realm; peace is overtly associated with betrayal, violence, and murder.⁶ The syntax itself suggests the difficulty of separating peace and treason. We are told that Richard and his agents made a promise in certain letters and messages, the treasonous motives of the king’s party are foregrounded, and only then are the contents of the letters finally revealed: we learn that the letters to the French king suggested peace and offered to surrender lands. When we expect to hear what the contents of the letters are, we are instead led on a detour, and told of dastardly plots and treasons, which we may then associate with the contents of the letters themselves. The final part of the sentence—‘a tresgrant deshonour, trouble et arrerissement du roy et de son roiaume’—is brilliantly positioned, throwing maximum opprobium onto the king’s party, as it is unclear whether the plot against the lords, or the surrender of lands to France, is being condemned. These two quite separate political projections blur together in this clause, and the reader is left rhetorically nonplussed, with the idea that peace with France is treasonous per se —especially as peace seems to involve the surrender of vast tracts of land with no benefit to England. The general strategy of the articles of appeal is to make all of the actions of the accused seem suspicious and traitorous. The actual accusation contained here—that Richard would go to the trouble of making peace with France purely to engineer the deaths of the lords during the truce parley—is manifestly absurd, and no effort is made to explain why ⁶ In 1395, Richard was to request that the option of French military help against English subjects be part of the marriage agreement with France, although Saul argues that this was of little importance. See Nigel Saul, Richard II (New Haven, Ct., London, 1997), 228–9.

170

Conflict Resolved?

this would be attempted, or why the death of the lords would be better accomplished at such a parley than at any other time or place. Instead, through a fudged association of giving up French lands—a deeply emotive issue—with a betrayal of the lords, the article manages loosely to associate peace with treason, shame, and deceit. There is no suggestion that the king might have other reasons for making peace, or that peace could serve any purpose that would be advantageous to the country (for example, a diminution of taxes). Instead, the language of treason is densely packed. Within a few short paragraphs, the phrases ‘pur accomplir cest haut treson’ (to accomplish this high treason), ‘a tresgrant trouble de tout le roiaume et grant deshonour du roy et du roiaume’ (to the great disturbance of the whole realm and the great dishonour of the king and of the realm), ‘accrochantz a eux roial poair’ (accroaching to themselves royal power), ‘cestez hautez tresouns’ (these high treasons), ‘des ditz traitours’ (the said traitors), ‘par tresoun’ (by treachery), ‘pur accomplissement du cest haute treson’ (for the accomplishment of this high treason), and ‘malveis purpos et treson’ (wicked purpose and treason), emphasize the treasonous nature of the pact with France. Setting aside the elision of the difference between plotting to kill the greatest magnates in the country and making peace with France, the truce itself could be perceived as treasonous because it involved giving up English territory and assets, as described above. The close connection between peace and treason has already been discussed in Chapter 3—both John Horn and Criseyde could be termed traitors or peace-bringers; fraternizing with the ‘enemy’ can be interpreted as pragmatic and sensible or as treason. In the 1380s, taxation for the war with France was one cause of civil unrest, but making peace was another—either strategy could provoke and maintain inner dissent and antagonism. Nonetheless, the movement for peace with the French gained many influential supporters, and a multitude of texts promoting peace were penned at this time. Sir John Clanvowe’s The Two Ways is an important example. Although Clanvowe himself fought and commanded in the French wars, this text is stridently against war, the activities and values attached to fighting, and the romances written to celebrate it. Clanvowe writes: ffor þe world holt hem worsshipful þat been greete werreyours and fi teres and þat distroyen and wynnen manye loondis, and waasten and euen muche good to hem þat haan ynou , and þat dispenden oultrageously in mete, in drynke, in clooþing, in buyldyng, and in lyuyng in eese, slouþe, and many ooþere synnes. And also þe world worsshipeþ hem muchel þat woln bee venged proudly and

Conflict Resolved?

171

dispitously of euery wrong þat is seid or doon to hem. And of swyche folke men maken bookes and soonges and reeden and syngen of hem for to hoolde þe mynde of here deedes þe lengere heere vpon eerth, ffor þat is a þing þat worldely men desiren greetly þat here naame myghte laste loonge after hem heere vpon eerth. (69–70, ll. 485–99)

Clanvowe here explicitly criticizes the search for worship and the thirst for revenge, as does Prudence in ‘Melibee’, and he also attacks romance conventions and the importance of reputation, which reflects the concerns of ‘Thopas’. This sweeping, passionate attack on the core values of knighthood exposes the luxurious and idle realities of the rich warrior’s life. In a description of the best way to achieve heaven, Clanvowe eschews the imagery of the Christian soldier, and replaces the miles Christi with the mercator Christi, advising his readers to ‘marchaundise wysily’ (60, l. 150) and to be ‘wyse marchaunt ’ (61, l. 166) in the spiritual investments that they make. In a cold calculation of profit incongruous (but not unusual) in a religious context, Clanvowe compares virtuous behaviour with laying out twenty or thirty pounds; heaven with winning one or two hundred pounds. Clanvowe’s use of this vocabulary of bourgeois life illustrates the importance of urban, mercantile discourse at the close of the fourteenth century.⁷ However, Clanvowe’s attitudes to knighthood may have been more complicated than this. He was closely involved in a network of men who desired peace with France in order to make war in the Middle East. His own text is casually prejudiced against the Jews, characterized by ‘evel | heberewe scoornes, repreues, bacbitynges, chidynges’ (ll. 738–9). There would be nothing surprising at this time in despising warrior values while promoting war, as crusade was often viewed as quite a different activity to internecine European wars. Philippe de M´ezi`eres was the most outspoken and fervent promoter of peace between France and England as a means towards mounting a crusade. A French politician, writer, and counsellor who lived from c.1327 to 1405, he fervently longed for a united Christendom, for the formation of his brainchild, the Order of the Passion, and for the destruction of the infidel. Otto de Graunson, an important figure in the English court, mentioned by Chaucer, was one ⁷ Throughout Chaucerian Polity: Absolutist Lineages and Associational Forms in England and Italy (Stanford, Calif., 1997), David Wallace discusses the conflict between ‘magnate militarism and merchant exchange’ (9). One of the most important ideas of this book is the separation of these social forms in Italian states, and their anxious co-existence in England and, specifically, in Chaucer’s life (see, for example, 13).

172

Conflict Resolved?

of Philippe’s four ‘evangelists’ for the Order, and the list of those who signed up makes it manifest that many great men were whipped into a fervour of enthusiasm for the cause.⁸ In England, the Order was joined by luminaries including the duke of York, the earl of Rutland, the earl of Northumberland, and the Despenser brothers, and was supported by the dukes of Gloucester and Lancaster and the earl of Northampton.⁹ Another member was Lewis Clifford, one of the most prominent ‘Lollard knights’,¹⁰ who moved in the same closely-knit circle as Clanvowe.¹¹ At this time, there was clearly nothing incompatible about holding ‘Lollard’ or extreme ascetic views (Sir John Oldcastle was one of Clifford’s executors and his will was particularly notable for its ‘Lollard’ elements), and supporting crusade. Clanvowe might well have had similar views to his associates; his journey to the east which resulted in his and William Neville’s deaths at Constantinople could have had a crusading motive. The idea that the aim of peace (with the French) was war (with the infidel) was most fervently and influentially expressed by de M´ezi`eres in his Letter to King Richard II: A Plea Made in 1395 for Peace Between England and France. De M´ezi`eres was horrified by the war between France and England, and expended much energy on violent condemnations of those who opposed peace: Ilz soient acravante, et soient fuians devant la face de Dieu, et leur dos soit tousjours encourbe. Sire Dieux, dissipe et destruis tous ceulz qui vuellent les ⁸ See J. N Palmer, England, France, and Christendom, 1377–99 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1972). ⁹ A list of members is included in Aziz Suryal Attiya, The Crusade of Nicopolis (London, 1934), Appendix II, 133–5. ¹⁰ For discussions of the so-called ‘Lollard knights’, see K. B. McFarlane, Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights (Oxford, 1972); J. I. Catto, ‘Sir William Beauchamp between Chivalry and Lollardy’, in C. Harper-Bill and R. Harvey (eds.), The Ideals and Practice of Medieval Knighthood (Woodbridge, 1990), 39–48; J. A. F. Thompson, ‘Knightly Piety and the Margins of Lollardy’, in Margaret Aston and Colin Richmond (eds.), Lollardy and the Gentry in the Later Middle Ages (Stroud, 1997), 95–111; Michael Wilks, ‘Royal Priesthood: the Origins of Lollardy’, in The Church in a Changing Society, Proceedings of the CIHEC Conference in Uppsala (1977), 63–70. ¹¹ Both men, of course, had multiple connections with Chaucer: Clanvowe helped to release him in the Cecily Champaigne case and wrote a poem imitating Chaucer’s work, and Clifford took Deschamps’ ballades to England for Chaucer. For Chaucer and de M´ezi`eres, see Thomas J. Hatton, ‘Chaucer’s Crusading Knight, A Slanted Ideal’, Chaucer Review 3 (1968): 77–87, especially 86, and Olson, Canterbury Tales and the Good Society, 52–3. Both Hatton and Olson argue that Chaucer was in sympathy with de M´ezi`eres and that Chaucer’s Knight is an embodiment of the idea of the Order of the Passion. See Hatton, ‘Chaucer’s Crusading Knight’, 87 and Olson, Canterbury Tales and the Good Society, 60.

Conflict Resolved?

173

batailles encontre leurs freres crestiens. La clamour des mors et des navrez soit oye de leurs maisons, et leurs femmes soientfaites vesves et leurs enfans | orphelins Let them be crushed and let them flee before the face of God. Let their backs be bowed down for ever. Lord God, scatter and destroy all those who seek war against their Christian brothers. Let the cries of the dead and wounded by [sic] heard in their houses, their wives made widows and their children orphaned.¹²

Philippe terms the war between France and England ‘une plaie ouverte et mortele, et si plaine de venin que elle a envenime toutes les parties de la crestiente’ (‘an open and mortal wound so full of poison that it has infected the whole of Christendom’ [6, 78]) and, in the context of the uneasy state of truce, describes the aggression between the countries as ‘une apostume, qui n’apert pas dehors et se nourrist dedens, cavant et pourrissant la char entour luy’ (‘a tumour, which does not show on the surface, but grows within the body, undermining and rotting the surrounding flesh’ [80, 8]).¹³ Philippe’s intense, horrifying images of bodily decay and corruption suggest a desperate awareness of out-of-control aggression, an aggression which he fears will destroy Christendom. When he bemoans the schism, which he sees as closely connected to the conflict, he describes the church as a damaged woman, ‘qui gist en son lit malade, plaie, et detranche, et en ii. moities partie’ (‘[who] lies in her bed, sick, wounded, in fragments, divided in two’ [93–4, 21]). He imagines the kings as two warring brothers, and describes them as each possessing one half of his mother, and abandoning the other half ‘as chiens et as oysiaux, afin qu’elle soit devouree’ (‘to be devoured by dogs and birds of prey’ [94, 21]).¹⁴ The idea of scavengers gnawing on maternal flesh strikingly reinforces Philippe’s sense of desperation at what he perceives as the degeneracy of contemporary politics. The image of the torn-apart mother specifically calls to mind certain psychoanalysts’ work on the child’s idea of the mother’s body: Lacan describes the child’s image of ¹² Philippe de M´ezi`eres, Letter to Richard II: A Plea Made in 1395 for Peace Between England and France, intro. and trans. by G. W. Coopland (Liverpool, 1975), 50, 124. ¹³ The recurrent image of the wound, the diseased body, suggests Lacan’s concept of primal aggressivity, which is expressed in ‘images of castration, mutilation, dismemberment, dislocation, evisceration, devouring, bursting open of the body [ … ] imagos of the ´ fragmented body’. See Jacques Lacan, Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis in Ecrits: A Selection, trans. Alan Sheridan (London, 2001), 9–32, 13, emphasis Lacan’s. ¹⁴ Such treatment of a mother closely resembles Orestes’s treatment of Clytemnestra: Gower writes that he ‘rente out fro the bare bon | Hire Pappes bothe’ and then ‘tok the dede cors | And let it drawe awey with hors | Unto the hounde and to the raven’ (Confessio amantis in The Complete Works of John Gower, 4 vols., ed. G. C. Macaulay, 2–3 (Oxford, 1899–1902), III, ll. 2072–3, 2075–7).

174

Conflict Resolved?

the innards of the mother, ‘in which the imagos of the father and brothers (real or virtual), in which the voracious aggression of the subject himself, dispute their deleterious dominance over her sacred regions [sic]’.¹⁵ This precisely reflects Philippe’s depiction of Charles and Richard as brothers who tear their mother apart. In Philippe’s text, it is tempting to see this primal aggression being played out on the battlefield;¹⁶ at the least, his choice of imagery implies that Philippe sees the war between France and England as a projection of a fundamental and shocking instinct to attack and destroy one’s very origins. This description of the wounding and division of the mother’s body is also an Oedipal, incestuous image, suggesting a jealous desire to possess the mother wholly. Curiously, Philippe’s idea for the way in which these warring ‘brothers’ can heal their breach is also (figuratively) incestuous—he suggests that Richard should marry Charles’s daughter, ‘sa propre niece’ (‘his own niece’ [143, 69]) and even asserts that Richard could say of this girl, ‘C’este est m’espouse, ceste est ma fille’ (‘This is my wife, this is my daughter’ [142, 68]). He implies that the two kings can join together in one, closely-knit, mutually supportive family. But the recurrence of the motif of incest, a traditional trope for social division,¹⁷ acts against Philippe’s overt intentions, insidiously implying that antagonism will remain, that it is inherent even in the very concept of this reconciliation, predicated as it is upon an image of incestuous union. Philippe has no intention of giving up on Christendom, and believes that he has a solution for its woes, a cure for its diseases, a strategy for making it whole again. Throughout his life, Philippe hoped to develop the Order of the Chivalry of the Passion of Jesus Christ, and the promotion of this Order forms part of his Letter to Richard. His principal aim in this tract, however, is to further peace between Charles VI and Richard, and to cement this peace with a marriage, in order to encourage ¹⁵ Lacan, Aggressivity, 23 emphasis Lacan’s. Melanie Klein comments on the child’s ‘sadistic appropriation and destruction of the interior of the mother’s body’. See Melanie Klein, ‘The Importance of Symbol Formation in the Development of the Ego’, in The Selected Melanie Klein, ed. Juliet Mitchell (London, 1991), 95–111, 111. ¹⁶ Klein discusses the ‘sadistic appropriation and exploration of the mother’s body, and of the outside world (the mother’s body in an extended sense)’ in ‘Importance of Symbol Formation’, 110. ¹⁷ For a discussion of this see, for example, Georgiana Donavin, Incest Narratives and the Structure of Gower’s Confessio Amantis (Victoria, B.C., 1993). See 52, n. 61 of the present study for further references and for a brief discussion of incest and its connections to social fragmentation.

Conflict Resolved?

175

Charles and Richard to go on crusade. Fradenburg comments that in pogroms, crusades, and chivalry, ‘both the militant Christian group and the individual knight are rendered sacrificially just’.¹⁸ She goes on to say: The fantasy of chivalry is a sublime economy that powerfully recuperates the jouissance of aggressivity by rewriting it as incalculable, inscrutable love; it is a structure through which a certain obscene destructivity may be glimpsed and enjoyed, but only to the extent that the gift of death is offered in payment thereof.¹⁹

Extreme aggression equals extreme love; for the Christian crusader, war can equal peace.²⁰ At this time, there was a general discontent about the fact that European wars were distracting kings from crusade. Mandeville writes, for example: But now pride, covetyse & envye han so enflawmed the hertes of lordes of the world þat þei are more besy for to disherite here neighbores more þan for to chalenge or to conquere here right heritage before sey.²¹

Philippe’s driving passion throughout his adult life was the recovery of the Holy Land for Christendom, and he thought that the strife between the English and French kings, and the division in the Church, were conflicts which distracted Christian kings from their crusading duties. Moreover, he believed that these conflicts were evil in their tendency as they involved the shedding of Christian blood. Thus he writes: ‘Et pour ce auxi qu’il ont tant attendu du recouvrer la terre sainte, en espandent le sanc l’un de l’autre, par le moien de la parabole dignement il puent estre apelez les roys malavisez’ (‘And, further, because they have so long delayed the recovery of the Holy Land while occupied in shedding the blood of one another, in the sense of the parable they may truly be called roys malavisez’ [100, 27]). For Philippe, the occupation of the Holy Land by non-Christians was an affront to God; he exhorts his readers: ‘il vous souviengne du Mont de Calvaire, du sainte sepulchre, et des sains lieux arousez du precieux sanc de l’Aignelet occis, qui sont souilliez chascun jour par la faulce generacion de Mahommet, devant ¹⁸ L. O. Aranye Fradenburg, Sacrifice Your Love: Psychoanalysis, Historicism, Chaucer (Minneapolis, Minn., 2002), 35. ¹⁹ Ibid., 160. ²⁰ The ‘just war’ was much discussed, in particular by figures such as Aquinas and Augustine; there is a useful collection of sources in C. T. Allmand (ed.), Society at War: The Experience of England and France During the Hundred Years War, 2nd edn (Woodbridge, 1998). ²¹ Mandeville’s Travels, ed. P. Hamelius, E.E.T.S. original ser. 153–4 (1919–23), 2–3.

176

Conflict Resolved?

Dieu reprouvee’ (‘Remember Mount Calvary, the holy sepulchre, and the sacred places, watered by the precious blood of the Lamb, which are befouled every day by the false followers of Mohammed, condemned in the sight of God’ [101, 28]). Philippe hopes that the two kings will be en esperit sont conjoins en leurs cuers a vraye paix et amour l’un a l’autre; voire en entencion de vengier en leurs personnes royales l’injure du Crucefix et la grant vergoingne envieillie de tous les roys crestiens, au propos malavisez apelez united in heart and mind in peace and love the one to the other with the aim of taking upon themselves the task of avenging the wrongs done to the Crucified One, and the ancient shame born by all Christian kings. (101, 28)

Their actual ‘entencioun’ (aim) in making peace is supposed to be making war against Islam. The juxtaposition of the language of peace and love with that of vengeance and violence is striking: peace within Western Europe is inseparable from war against the heathen. At another point in the letter Philippe lists three aims: ‘empetrer la vraie paix de la crestiente, [ … ] l’union de nostre mere sainte eglise, [ … ] delivrer la terre sainte de la main du faulz prophete Mahommet’ (‘the quest for true peace in Christendom, [ … ] the unity of our mother, Holy Church, [ … ] the deliverance of the Holy Land from the false prophet Mohammed’ [123, 50]), saying that the mingling of the two kings ‘en grant humilite et amoureuse fraternite’ (‘in great humility and brotherly love’ [123, 50]) is necessary to accomplish these aims. In Philippe’s terms, the point of making peace is making war: truce is desirable to enable Charles and Richard to fight a crusade together, and, following the traditional teaching of the Church fathers, Philippe also asserts that ‘Nous faisons guerre pour avoir paix’ (‘the object of war is peace’ [136, 62]). His tract only advocates peace in one war in order to clear the way for a much bloodier, more vicious conflict, one which he hopes will accomplish world domination, and will encompass the conquest of ‘Turquie, Egypte et Surie’ (‘Turkey, Egypt, and Syria’ [145, 71]). This is war on a genocidal scale; war which promises to eclipse the petty wars within Europe itself. Philippe’s attitude to aggression reads like a textbook illustration of ˇZiˇzek’s theories about the social displacement of antagonism. Just as ˇ zek suggests that antagonism within society cannot be resolved, only Ziˇ displaced onto hatred of the outsider (the Jew, the traitor), so Philippe proposes to ‘heal’ the breach between England and France by uniting them against a common enemy, encouraging the two nations to channel their violent desires into war against the Muslims. He is here ‘transposing the perception of inherent social antagonisms into the fascination

Conflict Resolved?

177

with the Other’—rather than acknowledging that the kings and their followers cannot tame their antagonism, he simply supplies them with a ready-made object for their hatred.²² The slippage between peace and war in Philippe’s rhetoric verges on the comic; as he frequently suggests that peace can only be obtained with an iron fist. His comments are at times absurd, for instance, he portentously asks: ‘Qui pourroit escripre les examples et vengences de Dieu encontre ceulz qui ont murmure et destourbe la paix des crestiens? (‘Who can number the countless examples of God’s vengeance upon those who have murmured against and disturbed Christian peace?’ [119, 46]). The difference between war and peace has been comprehensively elided. The articles of appeal in the Westminster Chronicle talk about peace in a different way to de M´ezi`eres, but both texts are underpinned by similar assumptions. First, both texts see peace with certain enemies as essentially treasonous: for de M´ezi`eres, Christian kings are obliged to make war on Islam, for the Lords Appellant, England is obliged to hold onto its holdings in France. Compromise on these issues is a betrayal. Both texts also suggest that making peace is motivated by the perception of a bigger, more threatening enemy. De M´ezi`eres advocates peace between England and France so that the two countries can fight against the occupiers of the Holy Land, who not only pose a great threat, but from whom great rewards can be won. The articles of appeal suggest that the king’s party tried to make peace with France because they perceived the Lords Appellant as a threat to their monopoly on the royal prerogative, and decided to join forces with France to destroy them. In both texts, peace is politic in the extreme, and has nothing to do with altruism, or with the concern for human lives: it is purely self-interested. C H AU C E R ’ S ‘ TA L E O F M E L I B E E ’ Chaucer had many points of contact with de M´ezi`eres, and with the peace-making ‘king’s party’. It would have been impossible for him to avoid an awareness of the peace-debates of the 1380s and 90s. Men amongst his circle of acquaintance wrote tracts against war (Sir John Clanvowe), supported the Order of the Passion (Sir Lewis Clifford, Sir Philippe de la Vache), and negotiated for peace with France (Sir Richard Stury, Sir John Clanvowe, Sir William Neville, Sir Philippe de la Vache, ˇ zek, Tarrying with the Negative (Durham, N.C., 1993), 206. ²² Slavoj Ziˇ

178

Conflict Resolved?

Sir Lewis Clifford).²³ Chaucer’s texts have frequently been interpreted as ‘pacifist’ in some way: Paul Olson says of Fragment 1 that ‘[Chaucer’s] version of the Order of the Passion’s vision demonstrates how peace within the nation and between nations may be established through language’; V. J. Scattergood writes that the tales ‘make the case, indirectly, but unequivocally, against war’; R. F. Yeager asserts that ‘Chaucer’s preference for peace seems permanent, if somewhat inchoate; implicitly apparent throughout his work is a ubiquitous skepticism about the claims of chivalry, though held perhaps more staunchly at the end of his life’.²⁴ Yeager, moreover, overtly places a strong and specific moral value on Chaucer’s attitude to war and peace. He writes: The eirenic arguments which we notice in their works ought rather to provide us fresh examples of how we can admire Chaucer and Gower and help us see anew how estimable were English letters at the close of the Middle Ages, how morally worthy, and above all, how humane.²⁵

It is certain that Chaucer translated a ‘peace’ tract, and that he chose to put this tale in the mouth of his own persona. But the ‘moral worth’ of peace is a vexed issue, as a reading of de M´ezi`eres’s Letter, or of the accusations in the Westminster Chronicle, makes clear. What, then, does the ‘Tale of Melibee’ actually suggest about the value and function of peace? Chaucer’s text is explicit in its acknowledgement of social antagonism. Prudence’s stark statement to Melibee, ‘ ‘‘certes ye ne been but allone’’ ’ (l. 1365) encapsulates her attitude to society and fellowship. She goes on to explain that Melibee has no sons or close male relatives—but does not suggest that such connections would necessarily have offered unequivocal support to Melibee, merely that his enemies would have ‘ ‘‘drede’’ ’ (l. 1368) of them. She then emphasizes the fact that his ‘ ‘‘richesses mooten been dispended in diverse parties’’ ’ (l. 1369) and that when every beneficiary has his part ‘ ‘‘they ne wollen taken but litel reward to venge thy deeth’’ ’ (l. 1370). In other words, they will not receive much return for avenging Melibee, so they are unlikely to bother. The implication is that even relatives will only fight for you if they, their inheritance, and their own position are implicated; if there is something ²³ See Clanvowe, The Two Ways, and Olson, Canterbury Tales and the Good Society, 52. ²⁴ See Olson, Canterbury Tales and the Good Society, 84; Scattergood, ‘Chaucer and the French War’, 292; Yeager, ‘Pax Poetica’, 121. ²⁵ Yeager, ‘Pax Poetica’, 121.

Conflict Resolved?

179

in it for them. This is restated, in reverse, by Melibee, who asserts the folly of helping other people, or involving oneself in troubles which are not of personal import. He says: ‘For the lawe seith that ‘‘he is coupable that entremetteth hym or medleth with swych thyng as aperteneth nat unto hym.’’ | And Salamon seith that ‘‘he that entremetteth hym of the noyse or strif of another man is lyk to hym that taketh an hound by the eris.’’ | For right as he that taketh a straunge hound by the eris is outherwhile biten with the hound, | right in the same wise is it resoun that he have harm that by his inpacience medleth hym of the noyse of another man, wheras it aperteneth nat unto hym.’ (ll. 1541–4)

He makes it clear here that one should not interfere with other people’s problems, as it will only result in needless injury to oneself. Melibee goes on to emphasize that he is only interested in responding to what has happened because it ‘ ‘‘toucheth me right ny’’ ’ (l. 1545): he would not be interested in assisting anyone else. The general emphasis on the essential isolation of the individual is further demonstrated by the atmosphere of suspicion that pervades the tale. This tale, which is ostensibly concerned with peace and reconciliation, is starkly unforgiving. Prudence lectures Melibee thus on forgiveness: ‘And eek thou shalt eschue the conseillyng of thyne olde enemys that been reconsiled. | The book seith that ‘‘no wight retourneth saufly into the grace of his olde enemy.’’ | And Isope seith, ‘‘Ne trust nat to hem to whiche thou hast had som tyme werre or enemytee, ne telle hem nat thy conseil.’’ | And Seneca telleth the cause why: ‘‘It may nat be,’’ seith he, ‘‘that where greet fyr hath longe tyme endured, that ther ne dwelleth som vapour of warmnesse.’’ | And therfore seith Salamon, ‘‘In thyn olde foo trust nevere.’’ | For sikerly, though thyn enemy be reconsiled, and maketh thee chiere of humylitee, and lowteth to thee with his heed, ne trust hym nevere. | For certes he maketh thilke feyned humilitee moore for his profit than for any love of thy persone, by cause that he deemth to have victorie over thy persone by swiche feyned contenance, the which victorie he myghte nat have by strif or werre. | And Peter Alfonce seith, ‘‘Maketh no felawshipe with thyne olde enemys, for if thou do hem bountee, they wol perverten it into wikkednesse.’’ ’ (ll. 1182–9)

This speech goes much further than simply urging caution: Prudence asserts that ‘ ‘‘certes’’ ’ the enemy’s demeanour will be ‘ ‘‘feyned’’ ’ (twice repeated) and that his interest will always lie in his own ‘ ‘‘profit’’ ’, entirely discounting the idea that he might be motivated by affection (‘ ‘‘any love of thy persone’’ ’). Prudence makes it clear that believing in true reconciliation is absurd and self-destructive, exhorting Melibee ‘ ‘‘ne trust hym

180

Conflict Resolved?

nevere’’ ’ and, in her usual rhetorical style, swamping the audience with the weight of her auctorites. There are other moments in the text when Prudence contradicts herself about a wide variety of issues, but this speech is particularly difficult to reconcile with the fact that the main emphasis of the tale seems to be on the promotion of ideas of reintegration and forgiveness: Prudence’s advice is all geared towards the idea that Melibee should ‘ ‘‘accorde with youre adversaries and [ … ] have pees with hem’’ ’ (l. 1675).²⁶ Yet the key to understanding Prudence’s policy can be found in the speech quoted above. Towards the end of her anti-forgiveness rant, she says: ‘ ‘‘For certes he maketh thilke feyned humilitee moore for his profit than for any love of thy persone, by cause that he deemth to have victorie over thy persone by swiche feyned contenance, the which victorie he myghte nat have by strif or werre.’’ ’ Here, she is warning Melibee about the behaviour of enemies who seek reconciliation. Melibee himself, however, is later to seek reconciliation with his own enemies, and he does so for exactly these reasons—more ‘ ‘‘for his profit’’ ’ than for ‘ ‘‘love’’ ’ and because he can gain more power and ‘ ‘‘victorie’’ ’ by this method than he could by ‘ ‘‘strif or werre’’ ’. Prudence repetitively insists to Melibee that he must act for his ‘ ‘‘grete profit’’ ’ (l. 1706), urging him to do what is ‘ ‘‘best for youre profit’’ ’ (l. 1120) and to do that which is ‘ ‘‘bettre and moore profitable’’ ’ (l. 1211). She is confident that, if Melibee shows a countenance of forgiveness, he will indeed have the ‘ ‘‘victorie over [his enemies’] persone[s]’’ ’, insisting that ‘ ‘‘God wol sende youre adversaries unto yow | and maken hem fallen at youre feet, redy to do youre wyl and youre comandementz’’ ’ (ll. 1717–18). Prudence is also fully aware that ‘ ‘‘the which victorie he myghte nat have by strif or werre’’ ’. She states this openly: ‘I seye ye been nat of myght and power as now to venge yow, | for if ye wole maken comparisoun unto the myght of youre adversaries, ye shul fynde in manye thynges that I have shewed yow er this that hire condicion is bettre than ²⁶ Wallace comments on Prudence’s contradictions in Chaucerian Polity, on 233. See also Daniel Kempton, ‘Chaucer’s Tale of Melibee: ‘‘A Litel Thyng in Prose’’ ’, Genre 21 (1988): 263–78. On 266–8, Kempton discusses the multiple contradictions between different auctorites in ‘Melibee’, terming the tale ‘a game of Solomon Says’ (267) and suggesting that the proverbs and words ‘do not mean to mean’ (268). In particular, he mentions the fact that Prudence ‘contradicts herself on what we supposed was the central moral idea of the treatise’ (268), referring to her views on reconciliation with old enemies, discussed above. Celia R. Daileader, in ‘The Thopas–Melibee Sequence and the Defeat of Antifeminism’, Chaucer Review 29 (1994): 26–39, suggests that the tale reveals ‘the fallibility of all textual authority (29), and that Prudence ‘challenges the notion of a single, unified, patriarchal authority’ (34).

Conflict Resolved?

181

youres. | And therfore seye I that it is good as now that ye suffre and be pacient.’ (ll. 1478–80)

Her views here are wholly pragmatic; as Melibee is not strong enough to wreak a proper vengeance ‘ ‘‘therfore’’ ’ it is good to be patient. The fact that she advises Melibee to practise the very behaviour that she has warned him to treat with scepticism discloses the importance of self-interest in the tale. Prudence is not advocating a ‘moral’ code of behaviour, simply the behaviour that will be most in her own and her husband’s interests.²⁷ Suspicion of social interaction is also evident in Prudence’s attitude towards language and communication. The ‘plot’ of the tale is centred around the idea of advice; of using language to work out how to respond to problems. Yet Prudence is fully aware of the dangers of communication (rather like the vocal mother at the end of the ‘Manciple’s Tale’). She urges Melibee: ‘Whan ye han taken conseil in youreself and han deemed by good deliberacion swich thyng as you semeth best, | thanne rede I yow that ye kepe it secree. | Biwrey nat youre conseil to no persone but if so be that ye wenen sikerly that thurgh youre biwreyyng youre condicioun shal be to yow the moore profitable. | For Jhesus Syrak seith, ‘‘Neither to thy foo ne to thy frend discovere nat thy secree ne thy folie, | for they wol yeve yow audience and lookynge and supportacioun in thy presence and scorne thee in thyn absence.’’ | Another clerk seith that ‘‘scarsly shaltou fynden any persone that may kepe conseil secrely.’’ | The book seith, ‘‘Whil that thou kepest thy conseil in thyn herte, thou kepest it in thy prisoun, | and whan thou biwreyest thy conseil to any wight, he holdeth thee in his snare.’’ ’ (ll. 1138–45)

Underlying these words is a fundamental suspicion of human nature. Prudence assumes that any confidant will have selfish motives, and implicitly denies that there is any difference between ‘ ‘‘foo’’ ’ and ‘ ‘‘frend’’ ’. The repeated use of the word ‘ ‘‘biwrey’’ ’ (three times) with its connotations of traitorous activity suggests that communicating is ²⁷ David Aers writes that ‘Prudence’s finally successful arguments naturalize, justify, and protect Melibee’s thoroughly secular obsessions with class status and the strengthening of dominion. She shows him that his ability to withhold revengeful violence will strengthen his power—has he not already seen his enemies prostrate at his feet?’ See David Aers, ‘Chaucer’s Tale of Melibee: Whose Virtues?’, in Medieval Literature and Historical Inquiry: Essays in Honour of Derek Pearsall, ed. David Aers (Cambridge, 2000): 69–81, 79. Lynn Staley has recently termed both Prudence and Philippe de M´ezi`eres ‘hard-headed’. See Languages of Power in the Age of Richard II (University Park, Pa., 2005), 135.

182

Conflict Resolved?

somehow disreputable.²⁸ Prudence ultimately suggests that it places you in someone else’s power, using the language of hunting and ensnarement to emphasize the dangerous nature of speech—your confidant will hold you ‘ ‘‘in his snare’’ ’. Her general attitude to society and friendship suggests a distrust of human motives and behaviour. The only circumstances in which communication is excusable is if it is ‘profitable’. The language of profit is a constant characteristic of Prudence’s speech, and profit is usually associated with that which is good, honourable, worthwhile. She explains that women’s counsel is ‘ ‘‘ful hoolsome and profitable’’ ’ (l. 1095), and repeats a few lines later that their counsels are ‘ ‘‘goode and profitable’’ ’ (l. 1109). She insists to Melibee that she speaks ‘ ‘‘for youre beste, for youre honour, and for youre profite eke’’ ’ (l. 1237), saying to him, ‘ ‘‘I love youre honour and youre profit’’ ’ (l. 1688). Other advisers are objects of suspicion because they are interested in their own ‘ ‘‘profit’’ ’ (l. 1188), and because they give counsel rather ‘ ‘‘to youre talent than to youre profit’’ ’ (l. 1251). In a stark association of truth and profit, Prudence explains that ‘ ‘‘The trouthe of thynges and the profit been rather founden in fewe folk’’ ’ (l. 1069), and that many counsellors do not speak words ‘ ‘‘that been trewe or profitable’’ ’ (l. 1152). Lack of attention to one’s own interest is equated with idleness: ‘ ‘‘yet shaltou nat been ydel ne slow to do thy profit, for thou shalt in alle wise flee ydelnesse’’ ’ (l. 1588); ‘ ‘‘And he that is ydel and slow kan nevere fynde covenable tyme for to doon his profit’’ ’ (l. 1592). The specifically material nature of the profit that Prudence envisages is made explicit. The problem with war for a rich man is that: ‘the richer that he is, the gretter despenses moste he make if he wole have worshipe and victorie. | And Salomon seith that ‘‘the gretter richesses that a man hath, the mo despendours he hath.’’ ’ (ll. 1652–3)

Prudence goes on to contrast war and peace, claiming that ‘ ‘‘by concord and pees the smale richesses wexen grete, | and by debaat and discord the grete richesses fallen doun’’ ’ (ll. 1676–7). Her argument for peace is simple: it is the best way to make money. A product of developing mercantile, urban society, she is not interested in the kind of profit that magnates saw in the increase of their worship through going to war, nor ²⁸ See the previous chapter for a discussion of attitudes to language in the ‘General Prologue’.

Conflict Resolved?

183

is she interested in moral profit; rather, she focuses on literal, material wealth. The original context for Albertano’s story was thirteenth-century Italy: the writer was trying to promote the survival of the city-state, which was threatened by warlike knights, who brought feudal-style, summary justice from the countryside.²⁹ Maurice Keen comments that ‘habits of violent independence had been bred into the nobles over long generations’.³⁰ Indeed, the cultural investment of the knightly classes in war has been much discussed: the desire amongst this part of society to win worship may have been even greater than the desire for the profits of pillage.³¹ We can posit a general opposition between such higher-class land owners and the urban-dwelling merchants, guild-members, and bureaucrats. Similarly conflicting interests are apparent in late fourteenth-century England where, on the one hand, knights and nobles sought glory and reward through wars and, on the other, merchants struggled against taxation and longed for freer trade opportunities. In the early decades of the Hundred Years’ War, some London merchants had made vast profits, principally because a small group of financiers had been given control over the whole, lucrative, wool trade in return for bankrolling the war, and also because of the profits to be made from supplying armies with provisions.³² But, as Eileen Power comments, the fortunes that were ‘rapidly amassed’ were ‘as rapidly lost’, and in 1351 the monopoly was abolished, and parliament ²⁹ Wallace, Chaucerian Polity, 217. ³⁰ Maurice Keen, Chivalry (New Haven, Ct., London, 1984), 245. ³¹ Keen, for example, discusses the fact that ‘ambitious young men of good family’ could gain ‘social cachet’ through fighting (Chivalry, 227). See also Allmand, Society at War. ³² See Eileen Power, The Wool Trade in English Medieval History Being the Ford Lectures for 1939 (Oxford, 1941). She comments that ‘war, indeed, was the parent, the opportunity and sometimes the downfall, of the medieval financier’ (107). Power discusses the monopolist financiers on 83–5, 90, and 97, and the profits to be made as army contractors and purveyors on 114. In The Merchant Class of Medieval London (Chicago, 1948), Sylvia Thrupp sums up Power’s conclusions thus: ‘The climax of the merchants’ power coincided with the outbreak of the Hundred Years’ War. As Eileen Power showed in her Ford lectures, this nurtured a succession of adventurous financiers who were able to use political influence in manipulating the trade, to their own advantage, through small closed syndicates. Unfortunately for them, these privileges could be enjoyed only on condition that they constantly advance the king loans that ran into four and five figures, and in the course of two decades the ensuing risks proved to be ruinous. The profits of the wool trade and the risks of financing the government were thereafter more evenly divided among a larger body of men, organized as the Merchants of the Staple’ (53).

184

Conflict Resolved?

plus a larger group of wool-traders took over responsibility for subsidizing the king.³³ By the last two decades of the century, the merchants were thoroughly jaded: their ships had been requisitioned, their goods taxed, their trading opportunities reduced. In 1381, three of the four parliaments refused to make any grants for the war; in 1382, the merchants refused to finance a loan for the war; in 1387, William Beauchamp (possibly accompanied by Chaucer) was negotiating with the Flemish to resume trading agreements which had been disrupted by the war.³⁴ These snapshots reflect a general disenchantment with the war, and a frustration with its economic effects. In the Westminster Chronicle, mercantile interests are set against militaristic ones as a matter of course. Discussing the men of Ghent, for example, the chronicler writes, ‘amicicias affectabant pocius cumulare quam inimicicias aggregare, cum sint artifices et operarii’ (it was their aim, as craftsmen and artificers, to accumulate friendships rather than to lay up a store of enmities [150–1]) and he contemptuously describes ‘mercatores Anglie satis locupletes’ (well-todo English merchants) falling in with the enemy and declining ‘viriliter se defendere’ (to defend themselves like men) as they ‘veluti vecordes elegerunt pocius cum eis tractare’ (cravenly preferred to parley [180–1]). Keen has compared war’s negative social and economic effects to those of plague, and certainly by the 1380s and 90s, war and trade/economic prosperity came to be seen as incompatible.³⁵ The personal fame that gave so much cultural capital to knights, the looting that gave so much financial capital to soldiers meant nothing to those who found their trade reduced and/or their taxes increased. ³³ Power, Wool Trade, 114, 97. ³⁴ Saul, Richard II, 206; Power, Wool Trade, 119; Scattergood, ‘Chaucer and the French War’, 294. ³⁵ Keen, Chivalry, 228. The incompatibility of trade and war was still more important an issue in France. De M´ezi`eres writes that ‘es temps passez et d’orez, et ou temps du Vieil Pelerin, quant marchandie avoit son plain cours ou royaume de Gaule, le roy et les eglises, les nobles et le peuple, estoient riches et de tous biens rempliz comme l’oeuf. Mais depuis que mon Pere, pour les pechiez de Franche, usa de sa verge corrective, et que par les Francois les marchans estranges et privez furent mal traytez et les boutiques vides, la pauvrete par tout entra en seignurie ou royaume de France. Pour laquelle pauvrete maintes choses ont este faictes qui sentoient tyrannie’ (in former times, when trade was active in this kingdom, king, church and people were as rich as an egg is in meat, but because of the war and because merchants, both French and foreign, have been abused and their shops have been emptied, poverty reigns throughout the land, and many things have happened which smack of tyranny). Philippe de M´ezi`eres, Le Songe du Vieil Pelerin, ed. G. W. Coopland, 2 vols (Cambridge, 1969), 2: 419–20, English summary on 91.

Conflict Resolved?

185

The importance of both trade and military aggression in contemporary urban life is dramatically apparent in the prose tale that Chaucer allotted to his own persona, a tale that does not explicitly focus on London, but that reflects ideas of urban conflict with great power—and that is, of course, told by a Londoner. The ‘Tale of Melibee’ is a profoundly urban tale, detailing the conflict that takes place when people live in close quarters and try to set up violent power bases within cities. Melibee’s plan to ‘ ‘‘warnestoore myn hous with toures, swiche as han castelles and othere manere edifices, and armure, and artelries, | by whiche thynges I may my persone and myn hous so kepen and defenden that myne enemys shul been in drede myn hous for to approche’’ ’ (ll. 1333–4) conjures up a claustrophobic atmosphere in which town-dwellers live in perpetual bloody conflict with their neighbours. The construction of an urban fortress also points to the clash of cultures in the contemporary city: Melibee’s solution is inappropriately aristocratic. Such edifices would be incongruous in a city, as they were designed to control expanses of countryside, and needed many retainers for their defence—which Melibee does not have.³⁶ Melibee can be associated with both ‘knightly’ and ‘mercantile’ cultural values, as his social position is ambiguous. He is described in the opening line of the tale as ‘myghty and riche’, which gives us no clear sense of his background. His leisured play in the fields (l. 968), his concern for ‘ ‘‘myn honour [and] my worshipe’’ ’ (l. 1681), and the final scene of submission in which he plays the role of autocratic lord, suggest that he is associated with knightly values. We are, however, aware that he is merely playing a role in this final scene, and are told that he ‘ ‘‘mighte nat putten it to execucioun’’ ’ (l. 1853)—which implies that he is not a feudal lord.³⁷ The fact that Melibee has no close male relatives reveals that he is ‘nouveau riche’, and hence lacks the network of relatives and alliances so crucial to the aristocracy.³⁸ There was, of course, a certain amount of fluidity in class demarcation: through marriage and patronage merchants could receive titles and landed property; gentlemen, equally, ³⁶ Prudence points out that such building would be pointless as it would not be ‘ ‘‘defended by trewe freendes that been olde and wise’’ ’ (l. 1336). She also emphasizes the fact that Melibee has no son, brothers, first cousins or other close relatives (ll. 1367–8). ³⁷ In Social Chaucer (Harvard, 1989), Paul Strohm discusses Melibee’s dual role as a member of the ‘upper bourgeoisie’ and as a ‘feudal lord’ (162). ³⁸ See ‘Melibee’, ll. 1367–8 and Wallace, Chaucerian Polity, 217.

186

Conflict Resolved?

might dabble in trade.³⁹ Various parts of the text specifically associate Melibee with mercantile values, however; in particular Prudence’s emphasis on the importance of growing richer and pursuing investment and profit is stolidly bourgeois—in Wallace’s words, her advice could come ‘straight from the pages of Weber’s Protestant Ethic’.⁴⁰ She particularly opposes knightly ideas of gaining honour and worship through feats of arms. Instead, she is utterly single-minded in her interest in money, telling Melibee, ‘ ‘‘ye sholde alwey doon youre bisynesse to gete your richesses’’ ’ (l. 1632). In keeping with the general mercantile attitude of the time, she encourages a little bit of charity—‘ ‘‘to hem that han grete nede’’ ’—but is quick to warn against being too open-handed: ‘ ‘‘thy goodes shullen nat been so opene to been every mannes goodes’’ ’ (l. 1623). Indeed, Prudence is profoundly unchristian in her obsession with money and in many of the arguments she deploys⁴¹—and her words are also anathema to aristocratic ideas of largesse. In Felicity Heal’s words, good lordship and largesse were ‘the most material forms of that quality of magnanimity that the Aristotelian tradition placed at the heart of true aristocracy’.⁴² Prudence’s overt concern with money and profit strongly align Melibee with urban, mercantile values. Even reconciliation itself is something that can be bought: ‘ ‘‘ye sholde han purchaced the pees’’ ’ (l. 1690). Throughout the tale, it ³⁹ Thrupp has a chapter on ‘Trade and Gentility’ in which she discusses the affinities between merchants and gentlemen and the ways in which the categories could blur. See Merchant Class, 234–87. The way in which economic, mercantile culture could problematize and expose knightly, military values is suggested in Scattergood’s comments on Sir Thopas: ‘By giving his romance an unheroic, mundane setting, and by making his hero the product of an urban, bourgeois, mercantile and essentially contemporary culture, Chaucer is emphasising the irrelevance in the late fourteenth century of the values romances traditionally celebrate’ (‘Chaucer and the French War’, 290). Helen Cooper terms Thopas’s lineage ‘suspiciously bourgeois-sounding’ (Helen Cooper, Oxford Guides to Chaucer: ‘The Canterbury Tales’, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1996), 307). ⁴⁰ Wallace, Chaucerian Polity, 241. ⁴¹ In ‘Chaucer’s Tale of Melibee’, Aers comments at length on the ‘extraordinary’ (73) absence of the Church in this tale, and on Prudence’s ‘secular pragmatism’ (76), suggesting that the absence of the Church is ‘perhaps even more dismissive than the obsessive, violent attacks on the Church in Wycliffite writings’ (80). Discussing the treatment of wealth and poverty in the tale, Aers argues that Prudence’s stance is ‘prophetic of much to come in Christianity’s largely joyful accommodation with capitalism and its desires for global dominion’ (80). ⁴² Felicity Heal, ‘Reciprocity and Exchange in the Late Medieval Household’, in Barbara A. Hanawalt and David Wallace (eds.), Bodies and Disciplines: Intersections of Literature and History in Fifteenth-Century England (Minneapolis, Minn., 1996), 179–98, 180. Heal specifies both the Church and works of charity as some of the ways in which good lordship and largesse could be enacted.

Conflict Resolved?

187

is manifest that Prudence has no interest in common profit, she is only concerned with Melibee’s (and therefore her own) profit. Another aspect of Prudence’s self-interested focus is her explicitly anti-democratic stance; she asserts that ‘ ‘‘the trouthe of thynges and the profit been rather founden in fewe folk’’ ’ (l. 1069). Although Prudence repeatedly contradicts herself in order to attain her end, that end itself remains clear throughout—it is the increase of her husband’s power and influence. ‘Sophie’—taken as a religious, moral ideal—is truly absent from Melibee.⁴³ Prudence’s goal is clear, but it is short-term and does not seem to include the restoration of Sophie. It has often been noted that one of Chaucer’s few obvious additions to his source was the naming of the wounded daughter—Sophie, or wisdom—which he does in the first sentence of the tale.⁴⁴ This daughter is then foregrounded by Prudence, who claims that if Melibee listens to her she will restore his ‘ ‘‘doghter hool and sound’’ ’ (l. 1110). Yet Sophie is not mentioned again, she disappears into the margins of the text, and we never learn her fate.⁴⁵ At the end of the tale we are given no reassurance that she has even survived her injuries, never mind been restored to health. We are aware that Prudence’s early assurance that she would restore Sophie counts for nothing as we have repeatedly witnessed the sophistic and unreliable ⁴³ I do not mean to imply that there is any suggestion that Sophie ‘should’ be there, or that ‘wisdom’ is a ‘better’ guide than Prudence. Much of the criticism of this tale is uncomfortable with the cold cynicism and rapaciousness of Prudence and seeks to interpret the tale morally. For instance, Ruth Waterhouse and Gwen Griffiths ask ‘Does the tale genuinely advocate that the end justifies the means, that is, that pragmatism is the most acceptable form of behavior; or is the audience being warned to be on guard concerning the power which words can wield?’ (Ruth Waterhouse and Gwen Griffiths, ‘ ‘‘Sweete Wordes’’ of Non-Sense: The Deconstruction of the Moral Melibee Part II’, Chaucer Review 24 (1989): 53–63, 57. Part I is in Chaucer Review 23 (1989): 338–61). This presents us with a false choice: the tale need not be read as approving or as pejorative; it could be a reflection of perceived reality, with no moral judgment attached. I find Olson’s comment that Prudence ‘speaks as Sophia in the form of Christ’ difficult to comprehend (Canterbury Tales and the Good Society, 117). ⁴⁴ Other notable alterations to the source include Chaucer’s replacement of the viper with ‘wesele’ and the addition of the ‘hert’ in l. 1325 and his omission of the criticism of child kings. In ‘Inverse Counsel: Contexts for the Melibee’, Studies in Philology 87 (1990): 137–55, Lynn Staley discusses the weasel and the hert, comparing them to Robert de Vere and Richard II (149); Scattergood argues that the suppression of the child king passage suggests Chaucer’s awareness of the political relevance of the tale (‘Chaucer and the French War’, 292). ⁴⁵ Patterson comments on the naming of Sophie, the severity of her injuries, and our ignorance of her fate, referring to ‘a wisdom that has disappeared and a prudence that takes its place’. See Lee Patterson, ‘ ‘‘What Man Artow?’’: Authorial Self-Definition in The Tale of Thopas and The Tale of Melibee’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer 11 (1989): 117–75, 141–2.

188

Conflict Resolved?

nature of Prudence’s claims. Furthermore, the ending of the tale does not suggest that the breach in social relations has been satisfactorily healed. Melibee’s extreme desire for revenge and violence in ll. 1834–5 reveals that his instincts have not been tamed even after Prudence’s interminable speeches of advice and explanation. It is also clear that the enemies have not been reformed, and that their willingness to submit to Melibee is perceived as politic, rather than sincere, even by Prudence. She explains that if he imposes too harsh a penalty, he ‘ ‘‘mighte nat putten it to execucioun’’ ’ (l. 1853), and goes on to tell Melibee that if he wants men to do ‘ ‘‘obeisance’’ ’ (l. 1855) to him, he must give them ‘ ‘‘moore esy sentences and juggementz’’ ’ (l. 1856). This cynicism makes a mockery of Prudence’s and Melibee’s final speeches on God and mercy, as ‘forgiveness’ has been revealed as a materialistic and pragmatic act. Prudence’s words on the limits of the punishments that Melibee can exact suggest that the episodes in court are entirely staged—both parties know that it is in their best interests at this time to make peace, but the enemies’ declaration that they will submit to Melibee is false: they will only submit if the penalties suit them. There is no guarantee of their future behaviour; nor of Sophie’s future safety. Prudence has effected a short-term solution that has prevented Melibee from losing life or money, but we have no promise that peace and profit will remain in the long term. The tale and its frame suggest that antagonism cannot successfully be channelled into one particular direction (in this case a focus on economic acquisition). The eruption of Melibee’s aggression in its most unreconstructed form—‘ ‘‘Certes’’ quod he, ‘‘I thynke and purpose me fully | to desherite hem of al that evere they han and for to putte hem in exil for evere’’ ’ (ll. 1834–5)—starkly reveals his inability to repress or to divert his instincts. His subsequent submission, following in the pattern of all his earlier submissions to his wife throughout the tale, does not hold the promise of permanence.⁴⁶ The unruliness of antagonism is further emphasized by one of Chaucer’s additions to the tale; namely, ⁴⁶ For a different view, see Lynn Staley, ‘Chaucer and the Postures of Sanctity’, in David Aers and Lynn Staley, The Powers of the Holy: Religion, Politics, and Gender in Late Medieval English Culture (University Park, Pa., 1996), 179–259. Staley writes that, ‘Just as the end of Prudence’s counsel is designed to emphasize the need for mercy, diplomacy, and liberality in responsible and informed rulers, so the end of the tale is intended to point up the more general reversal that has taken place in Melibee himself [ … ] Chaucer thus closes the tale by implying that our impulses to penance, on the one hand, and mercy, on the other, help to bring our earthly relationships and societies into closer alignment with their heavenly referent’ (222–3). I see no evidence that Prudence

Conflict Resolved?

189

the Host’s ‘reading’ of it in the subsequent ‘Prologue of the Monk’s Tale’. Harry Bailly reads ‘Melibee’ as a tale for women, with the moral of encouraging women to be patient, and contrasts his aggressive wife with Prudence. The irony is supreme—the reader cannot avoid seeing the similarities between these two dominating women, and the similarities between the two angry men (Melibee and Harry).⁴⁷ Yet Harry refuses to read the tale as applicable to him, as relating at all to his own aggression. Read allegorically, the tale is fundamentally about an individual’s internal fragmentation, and the division within the self.⁴⁸ Prudence suggests that Melibee has become seduced by the things of the world and has ‘ ‘‘forgeten Jhesu Crist’’ ’ (l. 1412). His three enemies are ‘ ‘‘the flessh, the feend, and the world’’ ’ (l. 1421) and he has allowed them to enter the windows of his body and to attack him. Throughout this tale, the different levels of meaning coexist to uncomfortable effect, as Melibee is both victim and aggressor.⁴⁹ In particular, if Melibee is responsible for the attack, he is implicated in the (possibly sexual) assault on his daughter.⁵⁰ The blurring of the boundary between self and other, a common feature of allegory, in which different characters are both part of the hero is interested in ‘responsible’ rule, nor that Melibee has undergone a true reversal. More generally, I would refute the moral idealism that underpins this reading of the tale. ⁴⁷ In ‘ ‘‘What Man Artow?’’ ’, Patterson discusses the Host’s misreading (156) and the fact that neither Melibee nor the Host learn anything (158); see also Daileader, ‘The Thopas–Melibee Sequence’, for a discussion of the Host’s misreading (37). Many critics have commented on Prudence’s aggression. Wallace, for example, compares her to the Wife of Bath (Chaucerian Polity, 216), as does Daileader (‘The Thopas–Melibee Sequence’, 26–7). Owen writes that ‘Prudence has her most vivid reality finally in the imagination of Harrie Baillie, where a place has been prepared for her by his virago of a wife’ (‘Tale of Melibee’, 270) and Kempton comments that ‘Goodelief and Prudence have much in common, and much in common with the powerful, morally dubious heroines of the Old Testament—Rebecca, Judith, Esther, and Abigail—whom Prudence uses to authorize her wifely counsel’ (‘Chaucer’s Tale of Melibee’, 273). ⁴⁸ For allegory in the tale see Paul Strohm, ‘The Allegory of the Tale of Melibee’, Chaucer Review 2 (1967): 32–42. D. W. Robertson’s discussions of medieval allegory are well known; see A Preface to Chaucer: Studies in Medieval Perspectives (Princeton, N.J., 1962), 286–390. Articles that build on Robertson’s comments on the ‘tretys’ include Glending Olson, ‘A Reading of the Thopas–Melibee Link’, Chaucer Review 10 (1976): 147–53, and Thomas J. Farrell, ‘Chaucer’s Little Treatise, the Melibee’, Chaucer Review 20 (1985): 61–7. ⁴⁹ For a discussion of the flexibility of the levels of meaning in ‘Melibee’, see Charles A. Owen, ‘The Tale of Melibee’, Chaucer Review 7 (1973): 267–80. Cooper comments on the ‘inconsistency of [Melibee’s] allegorical subtext’ (The Canterbury Tales, 317). ⁵⁰ See Daileader, ‘The Thopas–Melibee Sequence’, for a discussion of the relevance of rape to the tale and for a discussion of the implication of Melibee in the attack on Sophie (31).

190

Conflict Resolved?

and his external enemies, implies an identification between Melibee and his opponents. Discussing Lacan, Fradenburg comments that: When we recoil from the obligation to love our neighbor, we do so because of the ‘evil’ that dwells within the neighbor, the ‘jouissance’ we do not dare go near, but of which we have an inkling because some form of unspeakable evil dwells also within us.⁵¹

In the case of Melibee, this self-recognition is transparent because he is his own enemy. If we respond to the literal and allegorical levels simultaneously, the three ‘enemies’ have acted out Melibee’s own desires. The ‘evil’ that dwells in his neighbours is indeed the same ‘evil’ that dwells within himself. Lacan writes that we retreat ‘From assaulting the image of the other because it was the image on which we were formed as an ego’.⁵² According to the famous theory of the mirror-stage, the subject constitutes him- or herself through a perception of the difference of the other (represented by the mirror image) which is also, of course, the self.⁵³ The ‘formation of the individual into history’ is experienced as the ‘assumption of the armour of an alienating identity’: the play between self and other continues to be represented in particular in the image of the fragmented body.⁵⁴ In ‘Melibee’, the boundaries of the subject remain undefined. If the three enemies represent aspects of Melibee, the fact that he cannot ultimately control them fully, and that he is advised to accommodate with them solely for profit, implies that internal division cannot be healed. The unruly elements within oneself cannot be crushed or reformed; only an uneasy, temporary rapprochement can be attempted. Sophie’s wounds are a disturbing, absent presence at the end of the tale. The wounds remain outside the scene of politic reconciliation; on the edge of the reader’s consciousness, repressed by Melibee. These wounds are both fundamental to Melibee (his damaged wisdom) and external to him (his daughter’s injuries). Through their very existence they symbolize his, and society’s incompletion. The image of the wound ˇ zek is resonant in medieval texts and for modern critics and theorists. Ziˇ describes the real kernel, the traumatic core thus: ⁵¹ Fradenburg, Sacrifice Your Love, 184. ⁵² Jacques Lacan, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis 1959–1960, The Seminar of Jaques Lacan VII, ed. Jaques-Alain Miller, trans. with notes Dennis Porter (London, 1992), 186. ´ ⁵³ Lacan, ‘The Mirror Stage’, in Ecrits, 1–8. ⁵⁴ Ibid., 5.

Conflict Resolved?

191

The symbolic order is striving for a homeostatic balance, but there is in its kernel, at its very centre some strange, traumatic element which cannot be symbolized, integrated into the symbolic order—the Thing. Lacan coined a neologism for it—L’extimit´e —external intimacy.⁵⁵

He uses the example of an externalized wound (in Parsifal), referring to this wound as the real, as that which is ‘in [him] more than [him]’.⁵⁶ Fradenburg describes Arcite’s wound as ‘the Thing’, ‘that inert stuff of the real’, ‘that which is in him more than himself’.⁵⁷ Sophie’s wound, too, is the essence of Melibee—character and tale—the leftover matter that seeps into the text and poisons the idea of wholeness; that reveals the rip at the centre of society and in the depths of the self; that proclaims the fragmentation at the heart of the text. It is at once part of Melibee and something that he himself has damaged; it resists interpretation and reconciliation together; it has vanished from the text but insistently lurks in the reader’s memory. This wound, which has so little textual space, serves as a symbol for the tale (or even the Tales) as a whole; a hole that stands for the heart of darkness in society and in the self and that reminds the reader of the necessarily politic, partial, and precarious nature of peace. ˇ zek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London, 1989), 132. ⁵⁵ Slavoj Ziˇ ⁵⁶ Ibid., 78. ⁵⁷ Fradenburg, Sacrifice Your Love, 167.

Conclusion In this book, I have tried to explore some of the ways in which social antagonism was articulated and addressed in Chaucer’s textual environment. It is apparent to me that producers of texts in the late fourteenth century were profoundly concerned with problems of civic dissent and social division. Writers of generically diverse texts were influenced by the same issues, and used overlapping discourses. The explosiveness of the climate in which Chaucer lived and wrote is dramatically exemplified in the example of John Constantyn, a cordwainer in the city of London. After the controversial election of Brembre to the mayoralty in 1383, Constantyn, a supporter of Northampton, apparently closed his shop and encouraged others to do the same. As a result, he was summarily executed, and the king later ratified this extraordinarily harsh action. Letter-Book H records Richard’s confirmation of the City’s draconian behaviour. Even in this document of support for the actions of Brembre’s party, the case against Constantyn seems negligible. He is accused of going about encouraging others to close their shops, and of contriving ‘rumour, commotion, disturbance, and insurrection’. As he was the first to close his shop, he set a bad example to others, and there were also unspecified ‘other reasons’ for his execution. Constantyn is seen as a threat because he encouraged others to rebel, going among other shop-owners and ‘counselling, comforting, and inciting’ them to close their shops and to protest. The king approves of the City’s strong-arm tactics because Constantyn’s execution will serve as a deterrent, and as a spectacular demonstration of power: ‘strengthening from henceforth the governance of the said city, and of repressing and checking conspirators and contrivers of such covins and congregations’. The violent death of Constantyn was pursued ‘for the preservation of our peace’. Despite the use of language about peace and the prevention of riots, the unpalatable

Conclusion

193

fact remains that a man was beheaded for closing his shop early, and encouraging others to follow suit.¹ The hard fate of Constantyn bears witness to the heightened atmosphere of anxiety about rebellion, gossip, and faction in the 1380s.² It is particularly interesting to note the City’s concern about language. Constantyn spread gossip, he whispered to others that they too should close their shops, he put heart into them with his words of comfort. The cordwainer is depicted as an aspirant leader of a ‘congregation’ where insurrection could be discussed and plotted. Brembre legislated against these kinds of groups, and the guilds had to work hard to justify their existence in the atmosphere of the 1380s, as we have seen in Chapter 5. Usk too participated in, and memorably condemned, such a congregation, a group that gathered in a tavern and plotted to overthrow Brembre after his seemingly forced election.³ In his Testament, Usk went on to express great anxiety about false rumour and scandal, writing, for instance, that ‘nowe than the false fame which that clerkes sayn flyeth as faste as dothe the fame of trouthe shal so wyde sprede tyl it be brought to the jewel that I of meane, and so shal I ben hyndred withouten any measure of trouthe’ (Bk 1, Ch. VI, 102). The prevalence of false fame is particularly bad ‘nowe’; it encroaches onto the territory of true fame, spreading misinformation and damaging Usk’s prospects. Chaucer too is persistently interested in the slipperiness of truth and in the power of language, as we see in Troilus and Criseyde, in the Canterbury Tales and in shorter poems such as the House of Fame. But figures such as Fame herself and Harry Bailly, who try to control and to regulate discourse, expose the difficulties inherent in trying to limit what people can say. The House of Rumour and the Canterbury pilgrimage remain places where discursive conflict can run riot. They are locales in which closure and the imposition of authoritative meaning, or peaceful resolution, are resisted. The example of Melibee suggests that antagonism will always force its way to the surface, and that reconciliation can at most be a temporary, politic state of affairs. The existence of the Testament of Love, like the letters accusing the aldermen, or the Mercers’ Petition, bears witness to the continued ¹ Letter-Book H, f. clxxiv (Latin). The document is translated in H. T. Riley (ed.), Memorials of London and London Life (London, 1868), 482–3. ² It is, of course, an extreme example. ³ Usk discusses this in his Appeal.

194

Conclusion

propaganda war in 1380s London. It is Usk’s attempt to rewrite his own life according to a noble, Boethian model, and to style himself a defender of purity and truth against those who would accuse him of lies and betrayal. Yet it is also a petition, a plea for personal preferment, articulated through a condemnation of Northampton and his supporters. Had he lived, Usk would have had to submit to his erstwhile colleague Adam Bamme’s 1391 proclamation: that no man, great or small, of whatsoever estate or condition he be, shall speak from henceforth, or agitate upon any of the opinions, as to either of them, the said Nicholas and John, or shall by sign, or in any other manner, shew that such person is of the one opinion or the other.⁴

In desperation, the mayor legislates against any discussion whatsoever of Northampton or Brembre. Imposing silence is the only solution that he can find for taming the discursive turbulence within London. Chaucer’s writings suggest that discursive turbulence cannot be tamed, that voices of aggression and dissent will make themselves heard, that societies will repeat the self-destructive behaviour of their predecessors, that people will betray each other, and that social groups will always fragment. While Usk tries to hold out hope for a united city, and the Erkenwald -poet claims that this could be achieved through strong rule, Chaucer suggests that conflict is inevitable, and that dissenting tidings and rebellious tales will always escape the House of Rumour to spread like wildfire through the streets.⁵ ⁴ Letter-Book H, f. cclix (Norman French). This document is translated in Riley (ed.), Memorials, 526–7, quotation at 526. Usk was connected with Bamme through the goldsmiths; see Caroline Barron, ‘Review of Lisa Jefferson, Wardens’ Accounts and Court Minute Books of the Goldsmiths’ Mistery 1334–1446, ed. Lisa Jefferson. Woodbridge; Boydell Press, 2003’, Urban History 32 (2005): 173–5, 175. ⁵ See House of Fame, ll. 2075–80, and Troilus and Criseyde, Bk IV, ll. 183–5.

Bibliography M A N U S C R I P TS Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS London Rolls 2 Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS London Rolls 4b Public Record Office: C 47/40/147 C 47/41/191 C 47/41/196 C 47/41/198 C 47/42/242 C 47/42/247 C 47/43/252 C 47/43/270 C 47/46/465 P U B L I S H E D P R I M A RY S O U RC E S The Anonimalle Chronicle, 1333–1381, ed. V. H. Galbraith. Manchester: The University Press; Longmans, Green & Co, 1927. Augustine of Hippo, St, City of God, trans. Henry Bettenson. London: Penguin Books, 1984. Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, trans. J. Stevens. London: J. M. Dent, 1910. Burrow, J. A. and Thorlac Turville-Petre, eds., A Book of Middle English. 2nd edn. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996. Carroll, Lewis, ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ and ‘Through the Looking Glass’. Bristol: Purnell Books, 1975. Chambers, R. W. and Marjorie Daunt, eds., A Book of London English 1384–1425. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1931. Chaucer, Geoffrey, ‘Troilus and Criseyde’: A New Edition of ‘The Book of Troilus’, ed. Barry Windeatt. London: Longman, 1984. The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry Benson. 3rd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. Clanvowe, Sir John, The Works of Sir John Clanvowe, ed. V. J. Scattergood. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1975. Crow, Martin M. and Clair C. Olson, eds., Chaucer Life-Records. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966.

196

Bibliography

Dante Alighieri, A Translation of the Latin Works of Dante Alighieri, trans. Alan George Ferrers Howell and Philip Henry Wicksteed. London: Dent, 1904. De monarchia, ed. E. Moore, with an Introduction by W. H. V. Reade. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1916. de M´ezi`eres, Philippe. Le Songe du Vieil Pelerin, ed. G. W. Coopland, 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969. Letter to Richard II: A Plea Made in 1395 for Peace between England and France, intro. and trans. by G. W. Coopland. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1975. Freud, Sigmund, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey, Anna Freud, Alix Strachey, and Alan Tyson. 24 vols. London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1953–74. Froissart, Jean, Oeuvres, ed. Baron Joseph Marie Kervyn de Lettenhove. 25 vols. Brussels: Victor Devaux, 1866–77. Chroniques, trans. and ed. Geoffrey Brereton. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1968. Furnivall, F. J., ed., Odd Texts of Chaucer’s Minor Poems. Chaucer Society, 1st ser., nos. 23, 60. London: N. Tr¨ubner, 1868–80. Given-Wilson, Chris, P. Brand, A. Curry, R. E. Horrox, G. Martin, W. M. Ormrod, and J. R. S. Phillips, eds., The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England. CD-ROM. Leicester: Scholarly Digital Editions, 2005. Gower, John, The Complete Works of John Gower, ed. G. C. Macaulay. 4 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1899–1902. The Major Latin Works of John Gower, trans. Eric W. Stockton. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1962. Klein, Melanie, The Selected Melanie Klein, ed. Juliet Mitchell. London: Penguin, 1991. Lacan, Jacques, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis 1959–1960, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan VII, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. with notes Dennis Porter. London: Routledge, 1992. ´ Ecrits: A Selection, trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Routledge, 2001. Langland, William, The Vision of Piers Plowman: A Complete Edition of the B-Text, ed. A. V. C. Schmidt. London: Dent, 1987. Lydgate, John, Troy Book, ed. Henry Bergen. E.E.T.S., extra ser., vols. 97, 103, 106, 126. London: Kegan Paul, 1906–35. Maidstone, Richard, Concordia inter regem Ric II et civitatem London, ed. T. Wright, Camden old ser., vol. 3. London, 1838. See also www.lib. rochester.edu/camelot/teams/maidfrm.htm. Mandeville’s Travels, ed. P. Hamelius, E.E.T.S., original ser. vols. 153–4. London: Kegan Paul, 1919–23. Middle English Dictionary, ed. Hans Kurath, Sherman Kuhn, and Robert E. Lewis. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1952– .

Bibliography

197

Monmouth, Geoffrey of, History of the Kings of Britain, trans. Sebastian Evans, rev. Charles W. Dunn. London: Dent, 1963. Ovid, Metamorphoses, with a translation by Frank Miller, 2nd edn, vol. 2. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984. Powell, Edgar and G. M. Trevelyan, eds., The Peasants’ Rising and the Lollards: A Collection of Unpublished Documents Forming an Appendix to ‘England in the Age of Wycliffe’. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899. Riley, H. T., ed., Memorials of London and London Life. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1868. Rotuli Parliamentorum ut et petitiones et placita in Parliamento tempore Ricardi II, ed. Revd. John Strachey, vol. 3. London, 1783. 6 vols. St Erkenwald, ed. Clifford Peterson. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977. Sayles, G. O., ed., Select Cases in the Court of the King’s Bench under Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V, vol. 7. Selden Society, vol. 88. London: B. Quaritch, 1971. Sharpe, Reginald R., ed., Calendar of Letter-Books, Letter-Book H, c. 1375–1399 London: Guildhall Corporation, 1907. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. J. R. R. Tolkien, E. V. Gordon, and N. Davis. 2nd edn. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967. Skeat, Walter W., ed., The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. 7 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1897. Smith, Charles Roger, ‘Concordia: Facta Inter Regem Riccardum II Et Civitatem Londonie Per Fratrum Riccardum Maydiston, Carmelitum, Sacre Theologie Doctorem, Anno Domine 1393. Edited with an Introduction, Translation and Notes’. Ph.D. thesis. Princeton, 1972. Smith, Toulmin and Lucy Toulmin Smith, eds., with an essay by Lujo Brentano, English Gilds. E.E.T.S., original ser., vol. 40. London: N. Tr¨ubner, 1870. Statutes of the Realm, ed. A. Luders. 11 vols. London, 1810–22. Usk, Thomas, The Testament of Love, ed. R. Allen Shoaf. Kalamazoo, Mich.: TEAMS, Medieval Institute Publications, 1998. Virgil, Opera, ed. R. A. B. Mynors. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969. Walsingham, Thomas, Chronicon Angliae, ed. E. M. Thompson. London: Rolls Series, 1874. Westlake, H. F., ed., The Parish Gilds of Mediaeval England. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1919. The Westminster Chronicle, ed. L. C. Hector and Barbara Harvey. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982.

S E C O N D A RY S O U RC E S Aers, David, Community, Gender and Individual Identity: English Writing 1360–1430. London: Routledge, 1988.

198

Bibliography

Aers, David, ‘Vox Populi and the Literature of 1381’, in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. David Wallace. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 432–53. ‘Chaucer’s Tale of Melibee: Whose Virtues?’, in Medieval Literature and Historical Inquiry: Essays in Honour of Derek Pearsall, ed. David Aers. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000. 69–81. and Lynn Staley. The Powers of the Holy: Religion, Politics, and Gender in Late Medieval English Culture. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996. Agamben, Giorgio, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998. Allmand, C. T., ed., Society at War: The Experience of England and France During the Hundred Years War, 2nd edn. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1998. Archibald, Elizabeth, ‘Declarations of ‘‘Entente’’ in Troilus and Criseyde’. Chaucer Review 25 (1991): 190–213. Ari`es, Philippe, Western Attitudes Toward Death From the Middle Ages to the Present, trans. P. M. Ranum. London: Marion Boyars, 1976. The Hour of Our Death, trans. Helen Weaver. London: Allen Lane, 1981. Attiya, Aziz Suryal, The Crusade of Nicopolis. London: Methuen & Co., 1934. Baker, Timothy, Medieval London. London: Cassell, 1970. Baldwin, Ralph, The Unity of the Canterbury Tales. Anglistica 5 (1955). Barron, Caroline M., ‘The Quarrel of Richard II with London 1392–7’, in The Reign of Richard II: Essays in Honour of May McKisack, ed. F. R. H. Du Boulay and Caroline M. Barron. London: Athlone Press, 1971. 173–201. ‘The Parish Fraternities of Medieval London’, in The Church in PreReformation Society: Essays In Honour of F. R. H. Du Boulay, ed. Caroline Barron and Christopher Harper-Bill. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1985. 13–37. London in the Later Middle Ages. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. ‘Review of Wardens’ Accounts and Court Minute Books of the Goldsmiths’ Mistery of London 1334–1446, ed. Lisa Jefferson. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2003’. Urban History 32 (2005): 173–5. and Laura Wright, ‘The London Middle English Guild Certificates of 1388–9’. Nottingham Medieval Studies 39 (1995): 108–45. Baswell, Christopher, Virgil in Medieval England: Figuring the Aeneid from the Twelfth Century to Chaucer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. ‘Aeneas in 1381’. New Medieval Literatures 5, ed. Rita Copeland, David Lawton, and Wendy Scase (2002): 7–58. Baudrillard, Jean, Symbolic Exchange and Death, trans. Iain Hamilton Grant. London: Sage, 1993. Bellamy, Elizabeth J., Translations of Power: Narcissism and the Unconscious in Epic History. Ithaca, N.J., London: Cornell University Press, 1992. Bennett, J. A. W., Chaucer’s Book of Fame: An Exposition of ‘The House of Fame’. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968.

Bibliography

199

Benson, C. David, Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde. London: Unwin Hyman, 1990. Bird, Ruth, The Turbulent London of Richard II. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1949. Boitani, Piero, Chaucer and the Imaginary World of Fame. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Bowers, John M., ‘Pearl in its Royal Setting: Ricardian Poetry Revisited’. Studies in the Age of Chaucer 17 (1995): 111–55. Braswell, Mary Flowers, Chaucer’s ‘Legal Fiction,’: Reading the Records. Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, London: Associated University Press, 2001. Bressie, Ramona, ‘The Date of Thomas Usk’s Testament of Love’. Modern Philology 26 (1928): 17–29. Britnell, R. H. and A. J. Pollard, eds., The McFarlane Legacy: Studies in Late Medieval Politics and Society. New York: St Martin’s Press, 1995. Bronson, Bertrand, In Search of Chaucer. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1960. Burger, Glenn, Chaucer’s Queer Nation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003. Burnley, J. D., ‘Curial Prose in England’. Speculum 61 (1986): 593–614. Burns, J. H., The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought c.350–c.1450. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Butterfield, Ardis, ‘Chaucer’s French Inheritance’, in The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer, ed. Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 20–35. ed., Chaucer and the City. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2006. Carlin, Martha, Medieval Southwark. London: The Hambledon Press, 1996. Carlson, David R., ‘Chaucer’s Boethius and Thomas Usk’s Testament of Love: Politics and Love in the Chaucerian Tradition’, in The Centre and its Compass: Studies in Medieval Literature in Honor of Professor John Leyerle, ed. Robert A. Taylor, James F. Burke, Patricia J. Eberle, Ian Lancashire, and Brian S. Merriless. Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University, 1993. 29–70. Carruthers, Mary J., The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Catto, J. I., ‘Sir William Beauchamp between Chivalry and Lollardy’, in The Ideals and Practice of Medieval Knighthood, ed. C. Harper-Bill and R. Harvey. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1990. 39–48. Christianson, C. Paul, A Directory of London Stationers and Book Artisans 1300–1500. New York: The Bibliographical Society of America, 1990. ‘A Community of Book Artisans in Chaucer’s London’. Viator 20 (1998): 207–18. Clark, John, ‘Trinovantum—the Evolution of a Legend’. Journal of Medieval History 7 (1981): 135–51.

200

Bibliography

Cooper, Helen, The Structure of the Canterbury Tales. London: Duckworth, 1983. Oxford Guides to Chaucer: ‘The Canterbury Tales’. 2nd edn. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. ‘Four Last Things in Dante and Chaucer’. New Medieval Literatures 3, ed. Rita Copeland, David Lawton, and Wendy Scase (1999): 39–66. Cross, F. L. and E. A. Livingstone, eds., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Culler, Jonathan, The Pursuit of Signs. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981. Daileader, Celia R., ‘The Thopas–Melibee Sequence and the Defeat of Antifeminism’. Chaucer Review 29 (1994): 26–39. Dinshaw, Carolyn, ‘Eunuch Hermeneutics’. Journal of English Literary History 55 (1988), 27–51. Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989. Dobson, R. B., The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. 2nd edn. London: Macmillan, 1983. Dollimore, Jonathan, Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture. London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1998. Donaldson, E. Talbot, ‘The Ending of Chaucer’s Troilus’. Early English and Norse Studies, ed. Arthur Brown and Peter Foote. London: Methuen, 1963. 26–45. Donavin, Georgiana, Incest Narratives and the Structure of Gower’s Confessio Amantis. Victoria, B.C.: English Literary Studies, University of Victoria, 1993. Doyle, A. I. and M. B. Parkes, ‘The Production of Copies of the Canterbury Tales and the Confessio amantis in the Early Fifteenth Century’, in Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts and Libraries: Essays Presented to N. R. Ker, ed. M. B. Parkes and Andrew G. Watson. London: Solar Press, 1978. 163–210. Ellis, Steve, Chaucer At Large: The Poet in the Modern Imagination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. Farrell, Thomas J., ‘Chaucer’s Little Treatise, the Melibee’. Chaucer Review 20 (1985): 61–7. Federico, Sylvia, New Troy: Fantasies of Empire in the Late Middle Ages. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003. Fehrenbacher, Richard W., ‘ ‘‘Al that which chargeth nought to seye’’: The Theme of Incest in Troilus and Criseyde’. Exemplaria 9 (1997): 341–69. Ferster, Judith, Fictions of Advice, The Literature and Politics of Counsel in Late Medieval England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996. Fradenburg, Louise, ‘The Manciple’s Servant Tongue: Politics and Poetry in The Canterbury Tales’. Journal of English Literary History 52 (1985): 85–118. ‘Voice Memorial: Loss and Reparation in Chaucer’s Poetry’. Exemplaria 2 (1990): 169–202.

Bibliography

201

City, Marriage, Tournament: Arts of Rule in Late Medieval Scotland. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991. Sacrifice Your Love: Psychoanalysis, Historicism, Chaucer. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002. Galloway, Andrew Scott, ‘Private Selves and the Intellectual Marketplace in Late Fourteenth-Century England: The Case of the Two Usks’. New Literary History 28 (1997): 291–318. Ganim, John M., ‘Chaucer and the Noise of the People’. Exemplaria 2 (1990): 71–88. Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. Gellrich, Jesse M., Discourse and Dominion in the Fourteenth Century: Oral Contexts of Writing in Philosophy, Politics and Poetry. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995. Girard, Ren´e, The Scapegoat, trans. Yvonne Freccero. Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986. Goux, Jean-Joseph, Symbolic Economies After Marx and Freud, trans. Jennifer Curtiss Gage. Ithaca, N.J.: Cornell University Press, 1990. Grady, Frank, ‘St Erkenwald and the Merciless Parliament’. Studies in the Age of Chaucer 22 (2000): 179–211. Green, Richard Firth, Poets and Princepleasers: Literature and the English Court in the Late Middle Ages. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980. A Crisis of Truth: Literature and Law in Ricardian England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. Hamil, Frederick C., ‘The King’s Approvers: A Chapter in the History of English Criminal Law’. Speculum 11 (1936): 238–58. Hanawalt, Barbara, ‘Keepers of the Lights: Late Medieval English Parish Gilds’. Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 14 (1984): 21–37. ‘Of Good and Ill Repute’: Gender and Social Control in Medieval England. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Hanna, Ralph, III, ‘Alliterative Poetry’, in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. David Wallace. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 488–512. London Literature 1300–1380. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Hanning, Robert W., ‘Custance and Ciappelletto in the Middle of It All: Problems of Mediation in the Man of Law’s Tale and Decameron 1:1’, in The Decameron and the Canterbury Tales: New Essays on an Old Question, ed. Leonard Michael Koff and Brenda Deen Schildgen. London: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000. 177–211. Harding, A., ‘Plaints and Bills in the History of English Law, Mainly in the Period 1250–1350’. Legal History Studies 1972, ed. Dafydd Jenkins. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1975. 65–86.

202

Bibliography

Hatton, Thomas J., ‘Chaucer’s Crusading Knight, A Slanted Ideal’. Chaucer Review 3 (1968): 77–87. Heal, Felicity, Hospitality in Early Modern England. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. ‘Reciprocity and Exchange in the Late Medieval Household’, in Bodies and Disciplines: Intersections of Literature and History in Fifteenth-Century England, ed. Barbara A. Hanawalt and David Wallace. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. 179–98. Hudson, Anne, Lollards and Their Books. London: The Hambledon Press, 1985. Huizinga, Johan, The Autumn of the Middle Ages, trans. R. J. Payton and U. Mammitzsch. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Ingledew, Francis, ‘The Book of Troy and the Genealogical Construction of History: The Case of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae’. Speculum 69 (1994): 665–704. James, Heather, Shakespeare’s Troy: Drama, Politics and the Translation of Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Jameson, Fredric, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as Socially Symbolic Act. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1983. Johnson, A. H., The History of the Worshipful Company of the Drapers of London. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1914. Justice, Steven, Writing and Rebellion: England in 1381. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1994. Kamowski, W., ‘ ‘‘Coillons,’’ Relics, Skepticism and Faith on Chaucer’s Road to Canterbury: An Observation on the Pardoner’s and the Host’s Confrontation’. English Language Notes 28 (1991): 1–8. Keen, Maurice, Chivalry. New Haven, Ct., London: Yale University Press, 1984. English Society in the Later Middle Ages 1348–1500. London: Penguin Books, 1990. Kelly, H. Angsar, ‘Shades of Incest and Cuckoldry: Pandarus and John of Gaunt’. Studies in the Age of Chaucer 13 (1991): 121–40. Kempton, Daniel, ‘Chaucer’s Tale of Melibee: ‘‘A Litel Thyng in Prose’’ ’. Genre 21 (1988): 263–78. Kittredge, G. L., Chaucer and his Poetry. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1915. Knapp, Peggy, Chaucer and the Social Contest. New York, London: Routledge, 1990. Knight, Stephen, Geoffrey Chaucer. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986. Kristeva, Julia, Strangers to Ourselves, trans. Leon S. Roudiez. New York, London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991. Laclau, Ernesto and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, trans. Winston Moore and Paul Cammack. 2nd edn. London: Verso, 2001.

Bibliography

203

Landman, James H., ‘The Laws of Community, Margery Kempe, and the ‘‘Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale’’ ’. Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 28 (1998): 389–425. Lefebvre, Henri, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991. Le Goff, Jacques, ‘L´evi-Strauss in Broceliande: A Brief Analysis of a Courtly Romance’. The Medieval Imagination. London: University of Chicago Press, 1988. 107–31. L´evi-Strauss, Claude, The Elementary Structures of Kinship. London, Boston: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1969. Lindahl, Carl, Earnest Games: Folkloric Patterns in the Canterbury Tales. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. Lindenbaum, Sheila, ‘The Smithfield Tournament of 1390’. Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 20 (1990): 1–20. ‘London Texts and Literate Practice’, in David Wallace, The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 284–309. Lisca, Peter, ‘Chaucer’s Gildsmen and their Cook’. Modern Language Notes 70 (1955): 321–4. Lukacher, Ned, Primal Scenes: Literature, Philosophy, Psychoanalysis. Ithaca, N.J., London: Cornell University Press, 1986. Lynch, Kathryn L., ‘Partitioned Fictions: The Meaning and Importance of Walls in Chaucer’s Poetry’, in Art and Context in Late Medieval English Narrative, ed. Robert R. Edwards. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994. 107–25. McFarlane, K. B., Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972. The Nobility of Later Medieval England: the Ford Lectures for 1953 and Related Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973. England in the Fifteenth Century: Collected Essays. London: The Hambledon Press, 1981. McGerr, Rosemarie P., ‘Meaning and Ending in a ‘‘Paynted Proces’’: Resistance to Closure in Troilus and Criseyde’, in Chaucer’s ‘Troilus and Criseyde’ ‘Subgit to alle Poesye’: Essays in Criticism, ed. R. A. Shoaf and Catherine Cox. Binghampton, N.Y.: Pegasus Paperbooks, 1992. 179–98. McGregor, James, ‘The Iconography of Chaucer in Hoccleve’s De Regimine Principium and in the Troilus Frontispiece’, in Chaucer Review 11 (1977): 338–50. McRee, Ben, ‘Religious Gilds and Regulation of Behavior in Late Medieval Towns’, in People, Politics and Community in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Joel Rosenthal and Colin Richmond. Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1987. 108–22. ‘Religious Gilds and Civic Order: The Case of Norwich in the Late Middle Ages’. Speculum 67 (1992): 69–97. ‘Charity and Gild Solidarity in Late Medieval England’. Journal of British Studies 32 (1993): 195–225.

204

Bibliography

Mann, Jill, Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire: The Literature of Social Classes and the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973. Margaret Teresa, Sister, ‘Chaucer’s High Rise: Aldgate and The House of Fame’. American Benedictine Review 33:2 (1982): 162–71. Margherita, Gayle, The Romance of Origins: Language and Sexual Difference in Middle English Literature. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994. Mathew, Gervase, The Court of Richard II. London: John Murray, 1968. Maxfield, David K., ‘St Mary Rouncivale, Charing Cross: The Hospital of Chaucer’s Pardoner’. Chaucer Review 28 (1993): 148–63. Middleton, Anne, ‘The Idea of Public Poetry in the Reign of Richard II’. Speculum 53 (1978): 94–114. ‘Thomas Usk’s ‘‘Perdurable Letters’’: The Testament of Love From Script to Print’, Studies in Bibliography 51 (1998): 63–116. Miller, Robert P., ‘Chaucer’s Pardoner, the Scriptural Eunuch, and the Pardoner’s Tale’. Speculum 30 (1955): 180–99. Minnis, Alastair, Oxford Guides to Chaucer: The Shorter Poems. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. Mooney, Linne, ‘Chaucer’s Scribe’. Speculum 81 (2006): 97–138. Nichols, John Gough, ‘Observations on the Heraldic Devices Discovered on the Effigies of Richard the Second and his Queen in Westminster Abbey, and Upon the Mode in which Those Ornaments Were Executed; Including Some Remarks on the Surname Plantagenet, and on the Ostrich Feathers of the Prince of Wales’. Archaeologica 29 (1842): 32–59. Nightingale, Pamela, ‘Capitalists, Crafts and Constitutional Change in Late Fourteenth-Century London’. Past and Present 124 (1989): 3–35. A Medieval Mercantile Community: The Grocers’ Company and the Politics and Trade of London 1000–1485. New Haven, Ct., London: Yale University Press, 1995. Niss´e, Ruth, ‘ ‘‘A Coroun Ful Riche’’: The Rule of History in St Erkenwald ’. Journal of English Literary History 65 (1998): 277–95. Nolan, Maura, John Lydgate and the Making of Public Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Olson, Glending, ‘A Reading of the Thopas–Melibee Link’. Chaucer Review 10 (1976): 147–53. Olson, Paul A., The Canterbury Tales and the Good Society. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986. Oman, Charles, The Great Revolt of 1381. London: Greenhill Books, 1989. Ormrod, W. M., ‘The Use of English: Language, Law, and Political Culture in Fourteenth-Century England’. Speculum 78:3 (2003): 750–87. Owen, Charles A., Jr., ‘The Tale of Melibee’. Chaucer Review 7 (1973): 267–80. Palmer, J. N., England, France, and Christendom, 1377–99. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972.

Bibliography

205

Parkes, M. B. and Elizabeth Salter, Troilus and Criseyde: A Facsimile of Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS 61. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1978. Patterson, Lee, Negotiating the Past: The Historical Understanding of Medieval Literature. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987. ‘ ‘‘What Man Artow?’’: Authorial Self-Definition in The Tale of Thopas and The Tale of Melibee’. Studies in the Age of Chaucer 11 (1989): 117–75. Chaucer and the Subject of History. London: Routledge, 1991. ‘Court Politics and the Invention of Literature: The Case of Sir John Clanvowe’, in Culture and History: Essays on English Communities, Identities and Writing, ed. David Aers. New York, London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992. 7–41. Pearsall, Derek, ‘The Troilus Frontispiece and Chaucer’s Audience’. Yearbook of English Studies 7 (1977): 68–74. The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992. ‘Chaucer’s Tomb: The Politics of Reburial’. Medium Aevum 64 (1995): 51–73. ‘Pre-empting Closure in ‘‘The Canterbury Tales’’: Old Endings, New Beginnings’. Essays on Ricardian Literature in Honour of J. A. Burrow, ed. A. J. Minnis, Charlotte C. Morse, and Thorlac Turville-Petre. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. 23–38. Pittock, M., ‘The Pardoner’s Tale and the Quest for Death’. Essays in Criticism 24 (1974), 107–23. Pocock, J. G. A., ‘Texts as Events: Reflections on the History of Political Thought’. Politics of Discourse: The Literature and History of SeventeenthCentury England, ed. Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1987. 21–34. Pollard, Graham ‘The Company of Stationers Before 1557’. The Library 18:1, 4th ser. (1937): 1–38. Power, Eileen, The Wool Trade in English Medieval History Being the Ford Lectures for 1939. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1941. Prendergast, Thomas A., Chaucer’s Dead Body: From Corpse to Corpus. New York, London: Routledge, 2004. Ramazani, Jahan, ‘Chaucer’s Monk: The Poetics of Abbreviation, Aggression, and Tragedy’. Chaucer Review 27 (1993), 260–76. Reddaway, T. F. and Lorna E. M. Walker, The Early History of the Goldsmiths’ Company 1327–1509. London: Edward Arnold, 1975. R´eville, Andr´e, Le soulevement des Travailleurs D’Angleterre en 1381. Paris: Picard, 1898. Robertson, D. W., A Preface to Chaucer: Studies in Medieval Perspectives. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1962. Rubin, Gayle, ‘The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘‘Political Economy’’ of Sex’. Toward an Anthropology of Women, ed. Rayna R. Reiter. New York, London: Monthly Review Press, 1975. 157–210.

206

Bibliography

Rubin, Miri, ‘Corpus Christi Fraternities and Late Medieval Piety’. Studies in Church History: Voluntary Religions 23 (1986): 97–109. Russell, J. Stephen, ‘Is London Burning? Chaucerian Allusion to the Rising of 1381’. Chaucer Review 30 (1995): 107–9. Rye, Walter, Chaucer, A Norfolk Man. Norwich: Roberts & Co., 1915. Saul, Nigel, Richard II. New Haven, Ct., London: Yale University Press, 1997. Scanlon, Larry, ‘Sweet Persuasion: The Subject of Fortune in Troilus and Criseyde’, in Chaucer’s ‘Troilus and Criseyde’ ‘Subgit to alle Poesye’: Essays in Criticism, ed. R. A. Shoaf and Catherine Cox. Binghampton, N.Y.: Pegasus Paperbooks, 1992. 211–23. ‘Unmanned Men and Eunuchs of God: Peter Damian’s Liber Gomorrhianus and the Sexual Politics of Papal Reform’. New Medieval Literatures 2, ed. Rita Copeland, David Lawton, and Wendy Scase (1998): 37–64. Scarry, Elaine, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. Scattergood, V. J., ‘Chaucer and the French War: Sir Thopas and Melibee’, in Court and Poet: Selected Proceedings of the Third Congress on the International Courtly Literature Society, ed. Glyn S. Burgess. Liverpool: Francis Cairns, 1981. 287–96. ‘Literary Culture at the Court of Richard II’. English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages, ed. V. J. Scattergood and J. W. Sherborne. London: Duckworth, 1983. 29–43. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. New York, Guildford: Columbia University Press, 1985. Shoaf, R. A., Chaucer’s Body: The Anxiety of Circulation in the ‘Canterbury Tales’. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001. Smith, D. Vance, ‘Crypt and Decryption: Erkenwald Terminable and Interminable’. New Medieval Literatures 5, ed. Rita Copeland, David Lawton, and Wendy Scase (2002): 59–85. Spearing, A. C., Medieval to Renaissance in English Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Spurgeon, Caroline, Five Hundred Years of Chaucer Criticism and Allusion 1357–1900. London: Chaucer Society, 2nd ser., 1914–25. 5 parts and introduction. Staley, Lynn, ‘Inverse Counsel: Contexts for the Melibee’. Studies in Philology 87 (1990): 137–55. Languages of Power in the Age of Richard II. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005. Staten, Henry, Eros in Mourning: Homer to Lacan. Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. Steer, Francis W., ed., The Scriveners’ Company Common Paper 1357–1628. London: London Record Company, 1968. Strohm, Paul, ‘The Allegory of the Tale of Melibee’. Chaucer Review 2 (1967): 32–42.

Bibliography

207

Strohm, Paul, Social Chaucer. Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1989. ‘Politics and Poetics: Usk and Chaucer in the 1380s’, in Literary Practice and Social Change in Britain, 1380–1550, ed. Lee Patterson. Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press, 1990. 83–112. Hochon’s Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Century Texts. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992. England’s Empty Throne: Usurpation and the Language of Legitimation 1399–1422. New Haven, Ct., London: Yale University Press, 1998. Theory and the Premodern Text. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. Summers, Joanna, Late-Medieval Prison Writing and the Politics of Autobiography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Sundwall, McKay, ‘Deiphobus and Helen: A Tantalizing Hint’. Modern Philology 73 (1975–6): 151–6. Taylor, Paul B., ‘Chaucer’s Cosyn to the Dede’. Speculum 57 (1982): 315–27. Thompson, J. A. F., ‘Knightly Piety and the Margins of Lollardy’, in Lollardy and the Gentry in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Margaret Aston and Colin Richmond. Stroud: Sutton, 1997. 95–111. Thrupp, Sylvia, The Merchant Class of Medieval London. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948. Travis, Peter W., ‘Chaucer’s Trivial Fox Chase and the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381’. Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 18 (1988): 195–220. Trigg, Stephanie, Congenial Souls: Reading Chaucer from Medieval to Postmodern. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002. Tuck, J. A., ‘The Cambridge Parliament, 1388’. English Historical Review, 84 (1969): 225–43. Turner, Marion, ‘Politics and London Life’, in A Concise Companion to Chaucer, ed. Corinne Saunders. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. 13–33. ‘Conflict’, in Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature: Middle English, ed. Paul Strohm. Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2007. Vance, Eugene, Mervelous Signals: Poetics and Sign Theory in the Middle Ages. Lincoln, London: University of Nebraska Press, 1986. ‘Chaucer’s Pardoner: Relics, Discourse, and Frames of Propriety’. New Literary History 20 (1989): 723–45. Wallace, David, Chaucerian Polity: Absolutist Lineages and Associational Forms in England and Italy. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997. Warren, Michelle R., History on the Edge: Excalibur and the Borders of Britain 1100–1300. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. Waswo, Richard, The Founding Legend of Western Civilization: From Virgil to Vietnam. Hanover, London: University Press of New England, 1997. Waterhouse, Ruth and Gwen Griffiths, ‘ ‘‘Sweete Wordes’’ of Non-Sense: The Deconstruction of the Moral Melibee’. Chaucer Review 23 (1989): 338–61 and Chaucer Review 24 (1989): 53–63.

208

Bibliography

Watson, Nicholas, ‘Outdoing Chaucer: Lydgate’s Troy Book and Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid as Competitive Imitations of Troilus and Criseyde’, in Shifts and Transpositions in Medieval Narrative: A Festschrift for Dr Elspeth Kennedy, ed. Karen Pratt. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994. 89–108. Webb, Revd. John, ‘Translation of a French Metrical History of the Deposition of King Richard the Second, Written by a Contemporary, and Comprising the Period from his Last Expedition into Ireland to his Death; from a MS. Formerly Belonging to Charles of Anjou, Earl of Maine and Mortain; But Now Preserved in the British Museum, accompanied by Prefatory Observations, Notes, and an Appendix; with a Copy of the Original’. Archaeologica 20 (1824): 1–423. Welch, Charles, History of the Cutlers’ Company of London. London: Cutlers’ Company, 1916. Wilkinson, B., ‘The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381’. Speculum 15 (1940): 12–35. Wilks, Michael, ‘Royal Priesthood: The Origins of Lollardy’, in The Church in a Changing Society, Proceedings of the CIHEC Conference in Uppsala, 1977. Uppsala: Uppsala University Department of Church History, 1978. 63–70. Windeatt, Barry, Oxford Guides to Chaucer: ‘Troilus and Criseyde’. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. Yates, Francis A., The Art of Memory. London: Routledge, 1966. Yeager, R. F., ‘Pax Poetica: On the Pacifism of Chaucer and Gower’. Studies in the Age of Chaucer 9 (1987): 97–121. Zacher, Christian, Curiosity and Pilgrimage: The Literature of Discovery in Fourteenth-Century England. Baltimore, Md., London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976. ˇ zek, Slavoj, The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso, 1989. Ziˇ Tarrying with the Negative. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1993.

Index Aeneas 42, 52, 58, 59, 78, 114–16 Aeneid 16–17, 31, 52, 58, 60, 69, 76–7, 78 Aers, David 4 Albertano of Brescia 183 aldermen (accused of treason) 31–9, 45, 49–51, 55, 77, 93, 193 allegory 189–90 Anne of Bohemia, queen of England 25 antisemitism 168, 171, 176 Apocalypse 72, 89 Arundel, Thomas (bishop of Ely, archbishop of York, archbishop of Canterbury, chancellor) 68 associational form 3, 45, 79, 127–66, 193–4; and contemporary suspicion of 11, 14, 18–19, 128–33, 153, 193; and Troilus and Criseyde 53–5, 79, 80–4; and Thomas Usk 94, 100–1, 103, 109–12 Augustine of Hippo 5, 139–40, 145 Babylon 72 Ball, John 38 Bamme, Adam 194 Barron, Caroline 152 bastard feudalism 45 Baswell, Christopher 60, 69, 76 Baudrillard, Jean 162 Beauchamp, William 184 Bede 66 n. 36 Bennett, J. A. W. 23 betrayal, see treason Bird, Ruth 12 Black Prince, see Edward, the Black Prince Boccaccio, Giovanni, Il Filostrato 42, 83 Boethius 96, 194 Brembre, Sir Nicholas, mayor of London 9, 11, 13–22, 24–30, 36, 78, 93, 104, 105, 106, 110, 130–1, 168, 192, 193, 194 Brinton, Thomas 167 Bronson, Bertrand 3

Brutus 58, 59, 64 Caesar, Julius 59, 114–16 Cambridge Parliament, see Parliament Carlisle, Adam 31–9, 93 Charles VI, king of France 174–5 Chaucer, Geoffrey: as Chaucer the pilgrim 132, 133, 134, 135; and the customs house 17, 22, 31, 167, 172 n. 11; and Poets’ Corner 92; and reception (fifteenth-century) 92, (modern) 2–4; and his social circle 95; and Usk’s Testament of Love 94–104 works: Book of the Duchess 23; ‘Canon’s Yeoman’s Prologue’ 149; ‘Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale’ 146, 148–50; Canterbury Tales 3, 4, 7, 23, 127, 133, 136–7, 149, 151, 156, 158, 160, 161, 162, 165–6, 191, 193; ‘Cook’s Prologue’ 137–8; The Former Age 136; ‘Friar’s Prologue’ 128; ‘General Prologue’ 129, 132, 133, 134, 135, 139, 141, 151–2, 153, 154, 155, 157, 160, 164; House of Fame 6, 12–13 n. 16, 13, 15–25, 29–30, 31, 40, 41, 52, 56–7, 60, 136, 146, 193; ‘Introduction to the Pardoner’s Tale’ 155; 157; ‘Knight’s Tale’ 136, 191; Legend of Good Women 39, 60; ‘Manciple’s Prologue’ 139, 142–6, 154, 164, 165; ‘Manciple’s Tale’ 136, 181; ‘Man of Law’s Prologue’ 136; ‘Miller’s Tale’ 136; ‘Monk’s Tale’ 161; ‘Nun’s Priest’s Tale’ 39, 75; ‘Pardoner’s Prologue’ 153, 157; ‘Pardoner’s Tale’ 7, 133, 141, 143, 146, 151, 154, 155–66; ‘Parson’s Prologue’ 160;

210 Chaucer, Geoffrey (cont.) ‘Parson’s Tale’ 45; ‘Prologue of the Monk’s Tale’ 189; Prologue to the Legend of Good Women 21; ‘Reeve’s Tale’ 137; Romaunt of the Rose 136; ‘Squire’s Tale’ 40; ‘Tale of Melibee’ 7, 167, 171, 177–91, 193; ‘Tale of Thopas’ 171; Troilus and Criseyde 7, 19, 30, 31–2, 39–55, 57–8, 60, 64, 74, 77, 78–92, 94–104, 112, 124, 170, 193; ‘Wife of Bath’s Prologue’ 153; see also Harry Bailly Cicero 61 Clanvowe, Sir John 95, 131–2, 133, 167, 170–2, 177 Clifford, Sir Lewis 95, 172, 177, 178 compaignye, see associational form congregations 15, 18–19, 24, 131, 192–3 Constantyn, John 192–3 cordwainers 192, 193 court 9, 42; and the House of Fame 23–4; and Otto de Graunson 171; and St Erkenwald 66; and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 165; and Thomas Usk 94, 102, 106, 112–26; and the Vox clamantis 74 courtiers 101–2, 108, 120 courtly love 86–7 crafts, see cordwainers; drapers; fishmongers; goldsmiths; mercers; skinners; vintners crusades 171–7 Dante Alighieri 22, 23, 122 death drive 75–6, 87–8, 162–3 debate 10–11, 14, 107, 118, 127–9, 136–7, 148, 150 deposition (of Richard II) 5, 11 desire 44, 86–92 Dinshaw, Carolyn 77 drapers 27, 37 Edward II 9 Edward III 123 Edward, the Black Prince, his badges 123–4

Index Essex, William 93 Exton, Nicholas 11, 13, 21, 27, 29, 30 faction, see London and faction Farringdon, Thomas 49–50, 93 Federico, Sylvia 72 fellowship, see associational form fishmongers 15, 18, 27, 33, 36, 37 Fradenburg, Louise 113, 118, 119, 143, 145, 161, 175, 190, 191 fragmented body 88–9, 157, 163–5, 173–4, 189–91 Franceys, Robert 93 fraternities, see guild returns Freud, Sigmund 85–6, 91, 161; and fort/da 161; see also death drive Froissart, Jean 38–9 Galloway, Andy 103 Gates, Henry Louis 156 Gaunt, John of, duke of Lancaster 19, 37, 68, 172 Geoffrey of Monmouth 59 Gloucester, Thomas of Woodstock, duke of 25, 172 Golden Age 108–9 goldsmiths 104 n. 18, 114 gossip, see slander Gower, John: works: Confessio amantis 60, 123–4, 173 n. 14; ‘In Praise of Peace’ 167; Vox clamantis 57, 60, 72–7, 78, 79, 87–8, 89, 91 Grady, Frank 65, 67 Graunson, Sir Otto de 171 Great Revolt 5, 12, 19, 31–9, 49–51, 53 n. 65, 68, 72–6, 124 Green, Richard Firth 45 guild returns 18–19, 127–66, 193; Carpenters 127–8, 148; Guild of the Holy Cross, Bishop’s Lynn 150; Light of St Mary, St Stephen’s Coleman Street 143–4, 148; St Anne’s Chantry 129, 146, 147; St Edmund, Bishop’s Lynn 150, 151; Sts Fabian and Sebastian 150–1; St James Garlickhithe 128–9, 147, 148, 152; St John the Baptist, Bishop’s Lynn 147; St Katherine’s, Aldersgate 141; St Thomas of Canterbury, Bishop’s Lynn 144

Index Hanawalt, Barbara 106 Harry Bailly 128–9, 133, 137–43, 145–6, 151–2, 154, 155, 157, 163–5, 189, 193 Heal, Felicity 186 Horn, John 31–9, 77–8, 93, 170 household 95, 119 Humpty Dumpty 56 Hundred Years’ War 183 incest 52, 174, 189 Islam 175–7 Jameson, Fredric 5 Jews 157, 171, 176 Jubilee Book 11, 14, 21, 26, 30 Keen, Maurice 183, 184 Kittredge, G. L. 23 Knapp, Peggy 4 Knight, Stephen 4, 23 Kristeva, Julia 57, 88 Lacan, Jacques 86, 88, 145, 173–4, 190; and das Ding 86–7; and the mirror stage 190 Langland, William, Piers Plowman 131, 138, 167 Latimer, John 77 LeFebvre, Henri 160 Lindahl, Carl 137 Lindenbaum, Sheila 26, 63 livery 67, 114, 120–2, 128, 130, 147, 148, 153 Lollards 167 Lollard Knights 167, 172 London: and Geoffrey Chaucer 5–7, 12, 17–20, 22–5, 31, 60, 78–9, 79–92, 131–2, 137–40, 155–7, 185, 192–4; and John Constantyn 192–3; and faction 5, 7, 11, 13–16, 18–22, 24–30, 32–3, 36–8, 68, 93–4, 104–14, 116, 123–5, 127, 130–1, 192–4; and John Gower 60, 72–6, 78, 89, 91; and (parish) guilds 7, 127–31, 137–40, 141, 143–4, 146–8, 150–3; and the Hundred Years’ War 183–4; and William

211 Langland 131, 138; and Richard Maidstone 60, 61–4, 78, 89, 91; and proclamations 8–10, 15, 18, 20–1, 194; and Richard II 5, 7, 8–11, 12, 61–4, 77–8, 113, 192; and St Erkenwald 60, 64–71, 78, 89, 91; and its textual environment 1–2, 6; and Troy 31, 54, 56–92, 115; and Thomas Usk 93–4, 104–14, 116, 122–3, 124, 132, 136, 193; see also aldermen (accused of treason); Brembre, Nicholas; cordwainers; drapers; fishmongers; goldsmiths; Jubilee Book; mercers; merchants; Mercers’ Petition; Northampton, John; Peasants’ Revolt; skinners; vintners; wool trade Lords Appellant 9, 11, 25–6, 28, 29, 30, 77–8, 105, 106, 121, 125, 167, 168–70, 177 Lukacher, Ned 90 Lydgate, John 58 McRee, Ben 152 Maidstone, Richard, Concordia 57, 60, 61–4, 76, 78, 79, 89, 91 maintenance 10, 128, 147, 148, 153 Mandeville, John 175 Marx, Karl 117 Mathew, Gervase 101 mayors, see Bamme, Adam; Brembre, Nicholas; Exton, Nicholas; London and faction; Northampton, John mercers 11–30, 37, 127; see also Mercers’ Petition Mercers’ Petition 11, 13–15 17–30, 136, 193 merchants 23, 37, 171, 182–6; see also cordwainers; drapers; fishmongers; goldsmiths; mercers; skinners; vintners Merciless Parliament, see Parliament M´ezi`eres, Philippe de: and the Order of the Passion 171–2, 174 works: Le Songe du Vieil Pelerin 184 n. 35; Letter to Richard II 167, 172–7 miles Christi 171 Montagu, Sir John 95 More, John 27, 32, 36–7, 93

212 Neville, Alexander (archbishop of York) 105, 168–9 Neville, Sir William 172, 177 New Jerusalem 61, 72, 160 New Troy 7, 42, 55, 56–92 Nightingale, Pamela 37 Norbury, Richard 27, 93 Northampton, John 11, 19, 26, 27, 32, 36, 37, 93, 104, 106, 109, 110, 111, 113, 116, 192, 194 oaths 27, 34, 41, 49, 77, 141, 151, 154, 157, 158; see also truth Old Testament 140 Oldcastle, John 172 Olson, Paul 178 Order of the Passion 171, 172, 174, 177, 178 Ovid 16–17, 22 Parliament: Cambridge 130, 148, 153; Merciless 5, 9, 25–6, 28, 105, 168; Wonderful 28, 31, 53 n. 64 Parsifal 191 patronage 95, 105, 185 Patterson, Lee 80, 87 peace 62, 69, 71, 72–9, 87, 106, 107–9, 112, 125, 143, 147, 152, 166, 167–91, 192 Peasants’ Revolt, see Great Revolt petitions 28, 194; see also Mercers’ Petition pilgrimage 160–1 plague 184 Pocock, J. G. A. 7 Pole, Sir Michael de la 105, 168 Power, Eileen 183 Pynkhurst, Adam 17, 29, 30 reception, see Chaucer and reception Richard II: and the Appellant crisis, 5, 8–10, 11, 15, 25, 26, 28, 77–8, 105; and the Cheshire archers 121; and John Constantyn 192; and his court 119; and deposition of 5, 11; and France 168–70, 174–7; and quarrel and reconciliation with London 61–4, 76, 91; and the sunburst 123–4; and treason legislation 10–11; and

Index tyranny 8–12, 15, 20–2, 26, 124, 192; and Thomas Usk 95, 105, 110, 113–25; and the white hart 63, 121, 123; see also court; courtiers; London; Parliament; Smithfield tournament; Wilton Diptych Robertson, D. W. 2, 42 Roman d’Eneas 60 Rome 42, 58, 59, 63, 114–15 Rye, Walter 154 St Erkenwald 57, 60, 64–71, 76, 78, 79, 91, 194 Saul, Nigel 28 Scandalum Magnatum 10 Scanlon, Larry 44 Scarry, Elaine 140 Scattergood, V. J. 178 schism 173, 175 scribes, see scriveners scriveners 17, 29, 114 Shoaf, R. A. 4, 94, 117 Sibyl, Walter 31–9, 93 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 58, 60, 165 Skeat, Walter W. 94 skinners 131 slander 8–22, 28–9, 137–8, 139, 142–7, 150, 193 Smithfield tournament 57, 63, 91 social fantasy 56, 59–60, 86, 90–2, 94, 108–12, 174–5 Southwark 155, 157 Strohm, Paul 1 n. 1, 3, 4, 42, 99, 101, 132, 163 Stury, Sir Richard 177 Sudbury, Simon 68 taverns 131, 132, 155–7, 158, 193 Taylor, P. B. 135 textual environment 1, 6, 31, 192 Thebes 80–1 Tonge, William 35 translatio imperii et studii 58, 80 treason 9, 10, 11, 31–55, 59, 72–79, 90, 93, 104–6, 109, 111–12, 148–50, 168–70, 176, 177, 181 Tresilian, Robert 105, 168 Trinovantes 59 Troy 19, 30, 31, 39–55, 56–92, 114–15, 148–9

Index truth 21–2, 29, 32 n. 6, 45–51, 86, 102, 109–10, 182, 193; see also oaths Usk, Thomas: and Chaucer 94–104; death of 20, 25, 93; and the goldsmiths 104 n. 18, 114; and London faction 93–4, 104–12, 125–6, 132, 136, 193; and Richard II 95, 103, 105, 112–26 works: Appeal 19, 93, 104, 106, 110, 132, 136, 193–4; Testament of Love 94–126, 193 Vache, Sir Philippe de la 177 Vance, Eugene 44, 84 Vere, Robert de, earl of Oxford and duke of Ireland 105, 168 vintners 27 Virgil, see Aeneid

213 Wallace, David 3, 4, 132, 134, 142, 149, 163, 186 Walworth, Sir William 33 Waswo, Richard 58 Weber, Max 186 Westminster Chronicle 27, 42, 104–5, 120–1, 130, 168–70, 177, 178, 184 Wilkinson, B. 50 Wilton Diptych 121 Wonderful Parliament, see Parliament Woodstock, Thomas, see Gloucester, Thomas of Woodstock, duke of wool trade 183–4 Yeager, R. F. 178 Zacher, Christian 4 ˇ zek, Slavoj 118, 119, 176–7, Ziˇ 190–1