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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
It has long been known that Chaucer translated portions of Pope Innocent III's De Miseria Humane Conditionis for use in the Man of Law's Prologue and Tale, but his artistic reasons for doing so have never been determined. If the translated passages from the De Miseria were short and all in one place, there might be no compelling reason to search for an artistic purpose: Chaucer may simply have wanted to insert a passage from a work that he was translating at the time out of his love for authorities—a love shared by almost all medieval writers. But the facts are that Chaucer made more extensive use of the De Miseria in the Man of Law's Prologue and Tale (nearly fifty lines) than anywhere else in his works, that the translated passages are from five different chapters and two different books in the De Miseria, and that they are scattered in five places throughout the Man of Law's Prologue and Tale. It is therefore highly likely that Chaucer added the passages from the De Miseria for particular artistic reasons, and it is the purpose of this paper to determine what those reasons were.
1 See Emil Koeppel, “Chaucer und Innocenz des Dritten Traktat De Contemptu Mundi sive De Miseria Conditionis Humane,” Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Litleraturen, lxxxiv (1890), 405-418; Thomas R. Lounsbury, “Chaucer's Sources,” The Nation, xliv (4 July 1889), 10–11; Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer (New York, 1892), ii, 329-334.
2 There is very little known about Chaucer's translation of the De Miseria. From the reference to it in ll. 413–415 of Prologue G to the Legend of Good Women, it would seem that Chaucer made a prose translation of the whole work under the title “Of the Wreched Engendrynge of Mankynde,” but the translation has never been found, and only portions of it appear, in verse, in the Man of Law's Prologue and Tale and in the Pardoner's Tale (ll. 481-587 passim). The likeliest date for the translation is between 1385–86 and 1394–95, and probably after 1390. For a discussion of these problems see my unpublished dissertation, “Chaucer and Pope Innocent III's De Miseria Humane Conditionis” (University of Pennsylvania, 1964), especially Ch. ii.
3 Specifically, ll. 99-121 are from Book I, Ch. xv; ll. 421-427 are from Book I, Ch. xxii; ll. 771-777 are from Book ii, Ch. xix; ll. 925-929 are from Book ii, Ch. xxi; ll. 1132-38 are from Book i, Ch. xxi. For the text of Innocent's treatise see the recent edition by Michele Maccarrone, Lotharii Cardinalis (Innocentii III) De Miseria Humane Conditionis (Lugano, 1955); all subsequent quotations from the De Miseria are from this edition.
4 All quotations from Chaucer's works are from F. N. Robinson's edition, The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, 2nd ed. (Boston, 1957).
5 Why Chaucer decided to assign a new tale to the Man of Law has never been determined. John H. Fisher, in his recent book, John Gower: Moral Philosopher and Friend of Chaucer (New York, 1964), p. 290, suggests that, “If Chaucer had been influenced by Gower [at the end of Group A of the Canterbury Tales] to desist in his cultivation of naturalism and return to more ‘moral’ literature, and if he were even slightly annoyed at the implication that, by finishing the Confessio, Gower had somehow surpassed him in poetic achievement, what would have been more natural than that he demonstrate both his return to the strait and narrow and his poetic superiority by outdoing Gower at one of his own stories?” The fairly certain verbal borrowings by Chaucer from Gower's version of the story of Custance, the probable allusions to Gower in the Introduction to the Man of Law's Tale, and Gower's possible legal connection all help to give credence to such a notion.
6 Ten Brink, “Zur Chronologie von Chaucers Schriften,” ES, xvii (1892), 22-23, and History of English Literature, trans. William Clarke Robinson, ii, Part i (New York, 1892), pp. 157-158; Koch, The Chronology of Chaucer's Writings (London: Chaucer Society, 1890), p. 68.
7 “Wilful and Impatient Poverty,” The Nation, xcix (9 July 1914), 41. See also Tupper's “Chaucer and the Seven Deadly Sins,” PMLA, xxix (1914), 102-103.
8 The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (Oxford, 1894), iii, 406.
9 The Development and Chronology of Chaucer's Works (London: Chaucer Society, 1907), p. 188.
10 The Text of the Canterbury Tales (Chicago, 1940), iii, 448.
11 Robinson, p. 691.
12 “The Man of Law's Head-Link and the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales,” SP, xxxiv (1937), 16.
13 From the De Miseria, Book i, Ch. xv: (1) Pauperes autem premuntur inedia, cruciantur erumpna, fame, siti, frigore, nuditate; vilescunt et contabescunt, spernuntur et confunduntur. O miserabilis conditio mendicantis: et si petit, pudore confunditur, et si non petit, egestate consumitur, sed ut mendicet necessitate compellitur. Deum causatur iniquum quod non recte dividat, proximum criminatur malignum, quod non plene subveniat; indignatur, murmurat, imprecatur. (2) Adverte super hoc sententiam sapientis: “Melius est mori quam indigere.” “Etiam proximo suo pauper odiosus erit.” “Omnes dies pauperis mali.” “Fratres hominis pauperis oderunt eum, insuper et amici procul recesserunt ab eo.”
14 The passage on poverty is followed by these lines in the De Miseria, Book i, Ch. xv: “Dives autem superfluitate resolvitur et iactantia effrenatur, currit ad libitum et corruit ad illicitum, et fiunt instrumenta penarum que fuerant oblectamenta culparum.”
15 Some New Light on Chaucer (New York, 1926), pp. 131-157.
16 “Chaucer's Man of Law as a Literary Critic,” MLN, lxviii (1953), 1-8.
17 The figures are from Edward A. Block, “Originality, Controlling Purpose, and Craftsmanship in Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale,” PMLA, lxviii (1953), 574.
18 Block has a convenient list of the earlier studies on p. 572, n. 2. Some more recent studies are Bernard I. Duffey, “The Intention and Art of The Man of Law's Tale,” ELH, xiv (1947), 181-193; Paull F. Baum, “The Man of Law's Tale,” MLN, lxiv (1949), 12–14; John A. Yunck, “Religious Elements in Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale,” ELH, xxvii (1960), 249-261. All three articles discuss some of the additions that Chaucer made, but not with any thoroughness.
19 Block, p. 585, n. 36.
20 See, besides the words from the Knight's Tate, the Nun's Priest's Tale B2 4395–96; Merchant's Tale 2055–56; Troilus and Criseyde iii.813–833, and iv.834–836. The phrase was a popular one in the Middle Ages, probably originating in Proverbs xiv.13: “Risus dolore miscebitur et extrema gaudii luctus occupat,” which Pope Innocent quotes in Book i, Ch. xxii, of the De Miseria. In addition to the passage from the De Miseria, Chaucer was familiar with the notion from the Consolation of Philosophy, Book ii, Prose 4: “Quam multis amaritudinibus humanae felicitatis dulcedo respersa est!” (see L. Bieler's edition [Turnhout, 1955], p. 24), which Chaucer translates by “The swetnesse of mannes welefulnesse is spraynd with many bitternesses.” The opposite notion, “joye after wo,” is also a favorite of Chaucer's; see, besides the line already quoted from the Man of Law's Tale, Knight's Tale 3068 and Troilus and Criseyde i.952.
21 “Chaucerian Tragedy and the Christian Tradition,” AnM, iii. (1962), 81-99.
22 “Chaucerian Tragedy,” ELH, xix (1952), esp. 9–11, 36.
23 Mahoney, p. 94.
24 Mahoney does not distinguish clearly enough between tragedy as a literary genre and the Christian pattern behind tragedy. The extensive evidence collected by Willard Farnham in The Medieval Heritage of Elizabethan Tragedy (Oxford, 1956) and by R. W. Babcock in “The Mediaeval Setting of Chaucer's ‘Monk's Tale’,” PMLA, xlvi (1931), 205–213, indicates that the Monk's stories are in fact literary tragedies. The Knight's interruption of the Monk in the Nun's Priest's Prologue, which is the point of departure for Mahoney's argument, is therefore prompted not by a wrong definition of tragedy, but by the Monk's failure to see tragedy in Christian (and/or Boethian) terms. Mahoney's article goes beyond literary tragedy to its philosophical, or Christian, meaning for a medieval audience, and this is its importance.
25 John A. Yunck, in “Religious Elements” (see n. 18, above), pp. 258-260, has pointed out some of these additions, but in a different context.
26 The best example of the alternation of joy and woe used thematically is in the Knight's Tale, for which see Robert A. Pratt, “ ‘Joye after Wo’ in the Knight's Tale,” JEGP, lvii (1958), 416-423. See also the references in n. 20, above.
