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4 - Old books brought to life in dreams

the Book of the Duchess, the House of Fame, the Parliament of Fowls

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2006

By
Piero Boitani
Edited by
Piero Boitani  and
Jill Mann
Piero Boitani
Affiliation:
Università degli Studi di Roma 'La Sapienza', Italy
Jill Mann
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame, Indiana
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Summary

When, in a May dream, the mighty God of Love appears to the poetic persona of Geoffrey Chaucer in the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women, he angrily reproaches the writer for having translated the Roman de la Rose ('an heresye ageyns [Love's] lawe') and composed the 'bok' of Troilus and Criseyde, which shows 'how that wemen han don mis' (G 256, 266). In the tirade that follows, Love asks the poet whether, among all the books he owns, he could not have found 'som story of wemen that were goode and trewe' to serve as a literary model (G 271-2). The God is quite specific in his description of these books:

Yis, God wot, sixty bokes olde and newe

Hast thow thyself, alle ful of storyes grete,

That bothe Romayns and ek Grekes trete

Of sundry wemen, which lyf that they ladde,

And evere an hundred goode ageyn oon badde.

(G) 273-7
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer , pp. 58 - 77
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2004

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