Abstract
This article considers Chaucer’s treatment of the British past in the Canterbury Tales and other works, considering in turn each of his references to Brittany, Britons, and British literary sources. It argues that Chaucer leans lightly on Geoffrey of Monmouth’s De gestis Britonum (Historia regum Britanniae) as a source, though he certainly knew the text, because he preferred a popular idea of Brittonic literature as orally composed and recited by bards, in juxtaposition to Latin written texts and auctoritas. His depiction of the British past as a fanciful, romantic site of encounter, in contrast to other Canterbury Tales set in the historical past, creates a reassuring sense of distance between England’s contemporary present and the complexities of Britain’s past, and avoids the politics of Welsh colonization and conquest in the era of Owain Glyndŵr. It argues that Chaucer’s preferred method of recalling England’s classical inheritance is through references to Latin authorities and classical culture rather than through the Trojan heritage of the Britons, which would uncomfortably set English national history against the Welsh and Trojan past it had usurped.
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Notes
All quotations of Chaucer’s works are from Benson (1987).
In defining the “British” past, I follow the conception of “British” as it would have been understood by medieval readers, as referring to both Wales and Brittany. This is a more appropriate term than “Celtic” because it follows medieval usage and does not include Goidelic language-speaking countries.
For discussion of how this episode was treated in the fourteenth-century English-language history by Robert of Gloucester, see Turville-Petre (1996, pp. 89–90).
It is important to note that the Breton lai in this period was not restricted to Brittany and the Breton language; instead, it refers more broadly to a British (i.e. Welsh and Breton) literary tradition as well as an English one. Emily Yoder argues that “A brief inquiry into the semantic values which the term Bretun and Bretaigne held for Marie de France and an investigation of the meanings which the terms Britoun and Britaine held for Chaucer and the author of Lai Le Freine help to clarify the enigmatic nature of the ‘Breton’ lay and indicate its predominantly British, rather than Armorican, origins” (1977, p. 74). In other words, Marie de France’s terms Bretaigne and Bretun probably refer to “Britain” and “British” generally, i.e. both Brittonic-speaking peoples, the Bretons and the Welsh, who were understood to be the descendants of the Britons (in addition to the Cornish). For previous discussion of Chaucer’s use of the Breton lai genre, see Archibald (2000), Hume (1972), and Loomis (1941).
Chaucer’s preference for the written word as the best form of memory preservation is also expressed in The House of Fame, when the narrator Geffrey describes “famous folkes names” (l. 1137) scratched in pillars of ice. While names exposed to the sun melt away, other names are preserved by the shade of the castle. This passage is discussed by Meecham-Jones, (2009), pp. 22–24. He reads it as “an undisguised political comment … that the survival of textual culture is dependent on military success” (24).
Dimock, 1868, pp. 167–168: “Hoc etiam mihi notandum videtur, quod bardi Kambrenses, et cantores, seu recitatores, genealogiam habent praedictorum principum in libris eorum antiquis et authenticis, sed tamen Kambrice scriptam; eandemque memoriter tenent, a Rotherico magno usque ad beatam Virginem, et inde usque ad Silvium, Ascanium, et Eneam … Sed quoniam tam longinqua, tam remotissima generis enarratio, multis trutanica potius quam historica esse videretur, eam huic nostro compendio inserere ex industria supersedimus.” Translation adapted from Guy (2020, p. 52): “In addition, it seems to me that it ought to be noted that the Welsh bards and singers, or reciters, have a genealogy of the aforementioned princes in their old and authentic books, written in Welsh; and they preserve this in memory, from Rhodri Mawr to the blessed Virgin, and from there back to Silvius, Ascanius, and Æneas … But since recounting a lineage so remote and distant might seem, to many people, more ridiculous than historical, out of diligence I refrained from inserting it in my compendium.”
I am grateful to the anonymous reader for suggesting this interpretation of the passage. A related passage that evokes the material culture of early medieval Christian Britain is in the Man of Law’s Tale, which references an insular gospel book: “A Britoun book, written with Evaungiles” (II (B1) 666).
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Henley, G. Chaucer’s Vision of the British Past: Literary Inheritance and Historical Memory in the Canterbury Tales. Neophilologus 106, 331–347 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-021-09709-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-021-09709-2