Chaucer and Malory

Abstract

L et us take a final survey of chivalry as portrayed in two of the greatest achievements of English literature, Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde and Malory's Morte d' Arthur . It need not embarrass us that the one is in great part translated from Boccaccio, and the other from “the French Book” which Malory had to his hand. For each has made the stuff his own not only by deliberate choice here and rejection there, but by additions and changes which, in Chaucer's case at least, have greater literary and human value than anything in the original. If Chaucer's Troilus , which a good many readers have ranked even above the Canterbury Tales , is so little read in comparison, this is partly because it is so long. That is a very common defect in medieval literature, especially among the non-Latin nations: higher civilization means greater concentration. If every reader of Troilus would frankly mark off the parts that seem obviously redundant, these would probably amount to 1000 lines at least, and the different readers would be roughly agreed. And, on analysing these redundant passages, they would be found to fall under three heads, all of which are characteristic of Chaucer's time, and of the aristocratic society in which he moved as royal page and squire and member of parliament. First, the speeches are often too long. As we have seen, speech was studied among great folk as a fine art: a knight of Arthur's Round Table might be counted upon to display “the flawless terms of talking noble”, and it was for the new Round Table founded by Edward III that he had built the great Round Tower at Windsor.