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The Date of Chaucer's Medea
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
In the Publications of the Modern Language Association for March, 1909, I tried to show reason for believing that Chaucer's Legend of Medea was written later than the Man of Law's Prologue, and that hence the date of its composition must fall some time after 1390, when the poet was already engaged on the Canterbury Tales. In the following number of the same journal Professor G. L. Kittredge replied to my paper with a thorough-going denial. Professor Kittredge's name rightly carries with it so great an authority,—particularly in matters pertaining to Chaucer,—that, if I am still to maintain my position, I must consider his objections and show why I cannot hold them valid. Whatever may be the final verdict of scholars as to the date of Medea, the issue involves so many questions which throw light on Chaucer's methods of work that a full discussion of it cannot be without profit.
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References
page 228 note 1 24, 124–153.
page 228 note 2 24, 343–363.
page 228 note 3 Deianira, Hermione, Hero, Helen, Briseis, Laodamia, Penelope. I omit Alcestis, whose ‘wyfhod,’ though not exemplified by a story of her life, is at least ‘comended with the beste’ in the Prologue. Mr. Kittredge can hardly have meant seriously his suggestion (p. 361, n. 1) that since Helen, Hero, Laodamia, and Penelope are named in the balade and Deianira, Briseis, and Penelope are alluded to in the House of Fame, Troilus, or Anelida, Chaucer ‘could allege that he had at least spoken of every one of the heroines whom the Man of Law names (save Hermione alone)—“if not in o book,” then at all events “in another.”‘
page 229 note 1 ll. 14198–14203.
page 230 note 1 The Man of Law, however, refers to the two stories separately. Cf. my former article, p. 137.
page 230 note 2 P. 355.
page 230 note 3 Legend of Good Women, 1574. (Quoted by me, p. 124.)
page 230 note 4 It is not a case in point to adduce the Man of Law's inaccurate reference to Gower's story of Apollonius. We expect a poet to know his own writings more accurately than he does those of another. Moreover, Chaucer had an obvious motive for exaggerating (playfully no doubt) the immorality of Gower's tale.
page 232 note 1 Already pointed out by Skeat in his notes, where they are referred to Guido.
page 232 note 2 The story of Medea is told by Benoit in ll. 1199–2026.
page 233 note 1 P. 351.
page 233 note 2 For Chaucer's brief mention of Deianira cf. Roman de la Rose, ll. 9945–9952.
page 233 note 3 That Chaucer knew that the story of Medea was to be found in the Heroides I stated on p. 134 of my former paper.
page 233 note 4 Mr. Kittredge repeats the assertion on p. 353.
page 234 note 1 This is all that I meant to assert in my footnote on p. 134,—that there is nothing in Chaucer's allusions to the Medea story to show that he was acquainted with the version in the Metamorphoses or that he knew of its existence. By taking my note apart from its context Mr. Kittredge has. misunderstood my position.
page 234 note 2 Cf. Kittredge, p. 360.
page 234 note 3 Gower tells the unpleasant portion of his story with a good deal of reticence and delicacy. I agree with Tatlock (Development and Chronology, p. 173, n. 2) that Chaucer must have had a confused recollection of a horrible touch in the original Latin version of the story. This would suggest that he read Gower's version very hurriedly if at all.
page 235 note 1 We may compare Petrarch's letter to Boccaccio about the Decameron, written in 1373, more than twenty years after the Decameron was published. ‘Your book … has fallen into my hands, I know not whence or how. If I told you that I had read it, I should deceive you. It is a very big volume, written in prose and for the multitude. I have been, moreover, occupied with more serious business, and much pressed for time. … What I did was to run through your book, like a traveller who, while hastening forward, looks about him here and there, without pausing. … As usual, when one looks hastily through a book, I read somewhat more carefully at the beginning and at the end.‘ (Robinson and Rolfe, Petrarch, the First Modern Scholar and Man of Letters, pp. 191–192.)
page 236 note 1 P. 357. It is interesting to note that very recently, when Mr. Kittredge was himself engaged in combatting a received opinion (that Chaucer's praise of Alcestis was intended as a compliment to Queen Anne), he complained that ‘when a particular suggestion of this kind has been put into type, it becomes a kind of dogma, and everybody expects those who reject it to “preven the contrarye.”‘ (Modern Philology, 6, 435.)
page 236 note 2 Studien, p. 149. Repeated in his Hist. of Eng. Lit. (Eng. trans., 2, 116) and, qualified by the adverb ‘vermutlich,‘ in Eng. Stud., 17, 20.
page 236 note 3 Trial Forewords, p. 25.
page 236 note 4 Anglia, 5, 379.
page 236 note 5 Chronology, p. 45.
page 237 note 1 Studies in Chaucer, l. 418.
page 237 note 2 Oxford Chaucer, 3, xliii.
page 237 note 3 Chaucer's Legend of Good Women, London, 1902. Cf. Bech, Anglia, 5, 379.
page 237 note 4 Publ. Mod. Lang. Assoc., 20, 802–818.
page 237 note 5 Development and Chronology, p. 130.
page 237 note 6 Pollard, Chaucer Primer, p. 57; Ward, Chaucer (E. M. L.) pp. 99–100; Mather, Prologue, etc., p. xxix.
page 237 note 7 For his suggestion that Usk also knew the Medea, I tried to show in my former paper (pp. 138–139) that there is no sufficient ground.
page 238 note 1 Development and Chronology, pp. 128–129. Tatlock, however, states the argument more tentatively.
page 238 note 2 Mr. Kittredge speaks of this whole passage as ‘designedly reminiscent of Chaucer's Legend' (p. 362). Tatlock, more cautiously, says that the Confessio ‘betrays vestiges of its influence’ (p. 128). Mr. Macaulay, Gower's editor, who is not concerned with proving or disproving any thesis of Chaucerian chronology, while admitting that Gower may have seen the Legend of Good Women, is inclined to minimize the resemblance. After pointing out the considerable differences between the Legend and the passage in Gower, he concludes that ‘if our author had any particular model before him, it may quite as well have been the description in Froissart's Paradys d'Amours.’ He considers it ‘likely enough’ that the peculiar manner of Cleopatra's death may have been a reminiscence of Chaucer's Legend. (Works of Gower, 3, 545–547.)
page 238 note 3 He counts Progne and Philomela as one.
page 239 note 1 Pp. 362–363.
page 239 note 2 Cf. Tatlock, p. 129 and Kittredge, p. 359.
page 239 note 3 For the references see Macaulay's ‘Glossary and Index of Proper Names.‘
page 239 note 4 Confessio Amantis, 4, 1693, ff., and 5, 7591, ff.
page 240 note 1 If, as Mr. Kittredge thinks ‘quite possible’ (The Date of Chaucer's Troilus, Chaucer Society, 1909, pp. 51–52.), Chaucer had already begun to plan the Canterbury Tales as early as January, 1386, and at that time wrote a new stanza for his Tragedies with the intent of utilizing the work in his great collection, the whole of the Legend, including the earlier form of its Prologue, was written during the period of the Canterbury Tales.