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Chaucer's Poetry Themes

Love
In the prologue of The Legend of Good Women, Cupid and his wife reprimand
Chaucer for failing to write about the joys of love. They cite the Roman de la
Rose and Troilus and Criseyde, both of which parody love. Though both poems are
at least partially translations, Chaucer’s choice to render them in English suggests
he found this portrayal of love as absurd and tragic to be compelling. His own
short poem “To Rosamond” parodies the excesses of love poetry, even comparing
the speaker in love to a fish covered in sauce. The Legend of Good Women itself,
though ostensibly remedying the absence of positive depictions of love in the
Chaucer canon, is actually pretty ambivalent. The book recounts a series of
classical myths from the perspective of female characters, most of whom end up
betrayed by their male lovers and left to grieve or end their own lives. Though
somewhat positive towards these women, the stories depict love as something
destructive, and even suggest that it’s foolish to dive into love so completely
when it can only end in grief. Chaucer’s skepticism towards love comes to a head
in The Canterbury Tales. Many of the tales describe incidents of adultery and
trickery. Men who attempt to keep their wives faithful by restricting their
movement just make it even more likely that their wives will resent them and
seek an affair. Love comes off as a game with winners and losers.
Fortune
Fortune was an important idea in medieval philosophy, and the central focus
of The Consolation of Philosophy, which Chaucer translated into English. Boethius,
the author, has been imprisoned despite being innocent. He mourns the
fickleness of fortune. One day, he was a social and political success; the next, he
had fallen to the depths of poverty and imprisonment. Boethius falls asleep and
dreams about a personification of Philosophy, who advises him that rather than
hoping for better fortune, he should trust in God and believe that things will
eventually work out for the best. This is the message of the short poem “Truth.”
The “wheel of fortune” was another important idea in the Middle Ages. The
image visualized life as a great wheel. Successful people, like wealthy and popular
princes or knights, were at the top of the wheel. At the bottom were failures—
poor men, unpopular rulers, disgraced knights. But the wheel of fortune could
always turn. Eventually, those at the top would find themself at the bottom, and
vice versa. The Monk’s tale is a collection of tragedies clearly influenced by the
wheel of fortune idea. In the Middle Ages, the term tragedy didn’t have the same
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dramatic associations we bring. Instead, it referred to any story where someone

moves from high status to low status, or in which the wheel of fortune turned.
The Monk tells story after story adhering to this framework. Reading so many
similar stories in a row removes their emotional impact, encouraging us to adopt
a wry and distant attitude towards the ebb and swell of fortune.
Human Pettiness
Chaucer generally seems to have had a frequently cynical view of human nature.
We even see this in the short poem “To Rosamond.” At first, we think we’re
reading a genuine love poem, but by the end we realize this is really a parody of
the excessive passion of romantic poetry, especially when the speaker barely
knows the woman he claims to be in love with. The Legend of Good Women is full
of tales of people betraying each other. When we read these similar stories in
succession, it is hard to see the characters as just bad individuals—they come off
more as representative of a fundamental human tendency to be selfish. Finally,
human pettiness drives The Canterbury Tales, both within the stories, and
between the tellers. Again, there are numerous stories about adultery and
faithlessness. Many storytellers are also motivated by a desire to spite one of
their companions. For example, the Reeve (a kind of minor administrative figure)
and the Miller both resent each other, and their stories depict a member of the
other profession being shamed and humiliated.
Construction of the Author
Chaucer is often referred to as the father of English poetry. This is partially due to
his extraordinary influence and indisputable talent as a writer. However, it's also a
reputation Chaucer himself worked to construct. He often appears as a character
in his own fiction—this is true in the dream-vision poems, which claim to recount
Geoffrey’s own dreams, as well as in The Canterbury Tales, where Chaucer
appears midway through as one of the storytellers. In these depictions, Chaucer
emphasizes his own status as an author. In the Prologue of The Legend of Good
Women, Cupid and his wife reprimand Chaucer for failing to write about love. This
gives Chaucer an opportunity to have them list all of his previous works,
encouraging the reader to think about the poem they are reading not as an
isolated poem, but as part of a body of work by one of the nation’s most prolific
and adaptable authors. Yet he’s also not above making fun of himself. In The
Canterbury Tales, Chaucer appears and offers to tell a tale. His first attempt is the
Tale of Sir Thopas. Midway through, the host interrupts Chaucer and tells him
that the story is boring and shallow, and he needs to try something else. Chaucer
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here is parodying the worst parts of romance writing, but he’s also poking fun at
himself.
Storytelling
Storytelling is one of the most important ideas in the Chaucer canon. The Legend
of Good Women is all about the power of storytelling to change how we interpret
history. The House of Fame is partially about the stories we tell about ourselves,
and how they change with the passage of time. The Canterbury Tales is, at its
heart, a tale about the relationship between people and the stories they tell.
Stories are a tool of self-fashioning, or a way of shaping how other people see
you. But they’re also a way of escaping the self, of bringing up the kinds of big
questions ordinary life doesn’t have space for. The Knight’s Tale is a great
example of these two dynamics. The knight is the highest-ranking member of the
company, and his tale reinforces his status because it is so well-told. It features
allusions to classical philosophy and a complex plot whose ending elegantly ties
up all the loose ends. The tale thus showcases the knight’s learning and ability to
plan ahead and keep complex ideas straight in his mind. Yet the tale also brings
up some big ideas: at one point, the god Saturn, lord of death in Greek mythology,
rears up from the deep and announces that he rules everything in the world. The
knight himself couldn’t articulate this idea, which goes against the spirit of
Christianity and its emphasis on the triumph of life over death and the possibility
of redemption. Yet in the story, there’s space to test out an alternate way of
speaking about reality.
Christianity
In comparison to many of his contemporaries, Chaucer is a whole lot less
concerned with religious ideas. Several of his works, including The Legend of
Good Women, are set before Christianity, which allows Chaucer to write pagan
characters who worship their own gods. As we discuss in the theme “Storytelling,”
The Knight’s Tale uses this framing to propose a non-Christian view of death as
the final arbiter of all things. However, Christianity is still an important influence
on Chaucer. Many of his translations were of Christian texts, most notably The
Consolation of Philosophy. The cast of The Canterbury Tales features many
religious figures, including a Parson, a Prioress, and multiple nuns. Many of them
tell Christian stories, from miracle stories to dry overviews of the sins. In fact, the
Parson’s Tale, an extremely thorough (and pretty dull) overview of possible sins
and the rules for repentance, is the last story in The Canterbury Tales. We can see
it as Chaucer covering his tracks, repenting for his own bawdiness and
encouraging the reader to remember him as a man who is knowledgable about
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religious matters. Yet the story also feels at odds with the rest of the book—we
hear the Parson listing strict standards for behavior, and think that no one we’ve
just read about really lives up to his demands. Ultimately, Chaucer seems
interested more in Christianity as a social phenomenon than as an inviolable
source of truth.
Politics
Chaucer was a diplomat who served multiple missions to Europe. His writing
showcases his interest in political negotiation. The Parliament of Fowls parodies
parliamentary debate with an argument between a group of birds. Three male
eagles are petitioning a female eagle for her hand in marriage. Before they can
reach a decision, the “lower house” intervenes and begin a comic debate. The
poem suggests that Chaucer’s often-cynical attitude extended toward the political
world. However, the Tale of Melibee in The Canterbury Tales showcases a more
serious side to Chaucer’s political engagement. The story begins with a king
whose house has been broken into by his enemies, who maim his daughter and
beat his wife. He responds by promising violence, but his wife slowly and
methodically convinces him not to go to war. There might be a parodic edge to
this story—the wife’s sensible advice leaves the king looking a bit cold-hearted, as
he fails to avenge his daughter’s horrible fate. Yet from another perspective, the
tale emphasizes that avoiding war is both necessary and often difficult, and
suggests how one might maintain peace even when there are strong motives for
going to war. Given Chaucer’s own background as a diplomat, he was no doubt
aware of both the pitfalls and the value of diplomacy.