UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

Influences

Introduction to Influences | Descriptions of books with images

The Clerk’s Prologue (l. 26-33)

Chaucer spent most of his life living in and around London, but he was European in outlook. He travelled to France, Italy and Spain for months at a time, both as a soldier and as a diplomat entrusted with the ‘king’s business’. He was certainly fluent in French and probably conversant in Italian and Latin. As such, he was open to the rich literature of fourteenth-century Europe. His early works reflect his wide reading of and admiration for French courtly verse. The leading French author Eustache Deschamps in turn referred to that ‘great translator, noble Geoffrey Chaucer’ as praise for his work in making the French favourite Le Roman de la Rose accessible to readers in English. From the 1370s on, Italian poetry became the overriding influence for Chaucer’s work. Obviously familiar with the writings of Dante and Petrarch, Boccaccio especially was a major source. Amongst other influences, Troilus and Criseyde is indebted to Il Filostrato, Il Teseida is a source for the Knight’s Tale, and the story of Menedon in Il Filocolo is a model for the Franklin’s Tale. Chaucer, however, never mentions Boccaccio by name, and nor does he quote directly from his most celebrated work, the Decameron, even though The Canterbury Tales’ similarities with it strongly suggests that he had at least some access to a copy of it.

Stories from the classics were well known and loved in the medieval period, even though their overt paganism often resulted in Christianised retellings by ‘mythographers’. Chaucer evidently knew the Latin writings of Ovid, Cicero, Virgil, Macrobius, and Boethius, and he probably learned Latin at school. The House of Fame is one example of a poem in which stories from Virgil and Ovid are alluded to and adapted, along with a host of other classical and medieval writers. This writing is so imbued with references to the classics and its mythology that it could be assumed that Chaucer read the original texts widely. However, it is more likely that much of his knowledge came from compilations and anthologies of choice excerpts from the classical authors, as well as via translations. That Chaucer aimed to emulate the great poets of the past in his vernacular writings is quite clear from his line at the end of Troilus and Criseyde where he consciously places himself in the grand line of ‘Virgile, Ovide, Omer, Lucan and Stace’.

Beginning of text (folio 1r)

Francis Petrarch (1304-74) was the most distinguished literary author of his time. Regarded by Boccaccio as his ‘revered teacher, father, and master’, he was crowned poet laureate in 1341. Petrarch was as celebrated for his Latin works as for his Italian writings by his contemporaries. Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale closely follows this work, Petrarch’s elegant Latin adaptation of the last tale in Boccaccio’s Decameron. It is the terrible story of Patient Griselda, who meekly endures appalling suffering and humiliation inflicted by her husband in order, ultimately, to prove her obedience and loyalty. Although an extreme example, it is a chilling reminder that in medieval society a wife was completely subordinate to her husband, with no right to property or anything else.

This manuscript is a fairly utilitarian compilation of works by Petrarch, probably written in Florence. It also includes copies of his untitled book of epistles, the Secretum, and the Itinerarium.

Fortune and her wheel (vol. 1: folio 1r)

The De Casibus Virorum Illustrium consists of a series of moral stories about the falls of famous men. This manuscript is a copy of the 1409 translation of the work into French, by Laurent de Premierfait, secretary to Jean, Duc de Berry. The work was also translated into English by Lydgate.

The opening picture shows Boccaccio pointing to the goddess Fortune who stands beside a wheel upon which her victims rise and fall. Fortune, who dominates the second book of Boethius’ work, De Consolatione Philosophiae, was one of the central images of medieval culture. Traditionally depicted as a woman, she personifies the medieval belief that personal misfortune was less the result of individual action than a reflection of the inevitable turning of her wheel. In the Fall of Princes tradition, Chaucer’s Monk’s Tale is subtitled ‘De casibus virorum illustrium’. It relates a series of seventeen tragedies that tell of the unhappy ends of famous men: ‘For certein, whan that Fortune list to flee, / Ther may no man the cours of hire withholde.’

Two other illustrations from the first volume are shown below. In the first, Nimrod gives instructions to his master of works, while workmen flee the Tower of Babel as angels destroy its pinnacle; the second illustration is found athe beginning of Book 2 and it depicts the fate of Marcus Manlius. Three miniatures from the second volume are also displayed.The opening illustration at the start of Book 6 shows Boccaccio and Fortune in an interior while outside Saturnus' army approaches the Capitol. The middle illustration of Boccaccio's vision of Petrarch is placed at the beginning of Book 7. In the upper compartment of the final picture Boccaccio addresses Manutius; in the lower compartment Phocinus murders Manutius.

Nimrod and the Tower of Babel (vol. 1: folio 5r)

The fate of Marcus Manlius (vol. 1: folio 109r)

Boccaccio and Fortune, and Saturnus' army (vol 2: folio 1r)

Boccaccio’s vision of Petrarch (vol 2: folio 65r)

Boccaccio addresses Manutius, and Phocinus murders Manutius (vol 2: folio 104v)

Ornamental pages at beginning of work (folios iiiv - 1r)

Preface with illuminated initial 'E' (folio 2r)

Beginning of text (folio 1r)

The works of Virgil exerted an enormous influence upon Latin and later Christian literature. One of a number of classical Roman authors found in the medieval curriculum, many fourteenth-century schoolboys would have been familiar with his poetry. Virgil was especially revered in the Middle Ages as he was considered to be almost a Christian. His Fourth Eclogue was seen to be prophetic of the birth of Jesus, while the Aeneid was read allegorically: the voyages of Aeneas in leading the defeated Trojans to their new home in Rome became the Christian soul wandering through life searching for heaven. In Chaucer’s The House of Fame, the dreaming poet sees the story of the Aeneid written on the walls of the Temple of Venus. He paraphrases the famous beginning of Virgil’s poem as: ‘I wol now synge, yif I kan, / The armes and also the man / That first cam, thurgh his destinee’.

Beginning of Book 6 (folio 70v)

Ovid‘s vast Latin poem on the theme of transformation incorporates about 250 tales from Greek and Roman mythology. Of enduring popularity, it was widely read and well known in the medieval period. Many of Chaucer’s contemporaries would have been familiar with its stories via a fourteenth century French translation entitled the Ovide Moralisé. This allegorised version of the work imbued the stories with Christian overtones. Chaucer’s poetry is permeated by Ovidian allusions. Most famously, he adapts the story of Ceyx and Alcyone from Book Nine of the Metamorphoses in The Book of the Duchess, written to commemorate the death of Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster and wife of John of Gaunt.

Shown to the left is the opening to Book Six which tells of Arachne’s transformation into a spider. As can be seen from the pages displayed below, some sections of the work have been very closely read and annotated by a fairly early reader. The manuscript was made in Italy and the colophon at the end of the volume states that the scribe completed writing it on the third of October, 1380.

End of Book 1 (folio 19v)

Beginning of Book 2 (folio 20r)

Return to The World of Chaucer home page