Counterfactual Conditionals in the Avian Debate: Ars Obligatoria and Possible Worlds Semantics in the Parliament of Fowls

Abstract

In the Nun’s Priest Tale, Chaucer defers to “the hooly doctour Augustyn, / Or Boece, or the Bisshop Bradwardyn” (VII.3232–3) for a detailed discussion on the topic of God’s foreknowledge. After this apparent dismissal of material that he cannot sift to the husks (NPT, VII.3238), the poet nonetheless finds it here necessary to pause for a moment to distinguish between “symple necessitee,” “free choys,” and “necessitee condicioneel.” Interestingly, Chaucer recasts the “greet disputisoun” as it relates to modal logic (NPT, VII.3238). In the poet’s own version of simple necessity, he isolates the modal adverb “Nedely,” which qualifies the copula “to doon” in the kind of modal construction “A is necessarily B” (as opposed to non-modal propositions that exclude such words as “necessarily” and “possibly”). Moreover, the far more complicated conditional necessity reads, “if A, then necessarily B.” Boethius employs conditional necessity for the argument that God’s knowledge of future events does not bridle man’s free choice.¹ In this chapter, I will examine these and other such modal statements in another poem, the Parliament of Fowls. In fact, conditional “if… then…” statements and imaginative conjectures embedded in the oft-repeated word “wolde” permeate the poem’s dialogue and draw attention to the poetic potential for actualizing the possible within the reality of the inner dream.

Wheither that Goddes worthy forwityng

Streyneth me nedely for to doon a thyng—

“Nedely” clepe I symple necessitee—Or elles, if free choys be graunted me

To do that same thyng, or do it noght,

Though God forwoot it er that I was wroght;

Or if his wityng streyneth never a deel

But by necessitee condicioneel.

(Nun’s Priest Tale, VII.3243–50)