Chaucer’s Dream Poetry: Sources and Analogues by Barry A. Windeatt

Abstract

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER and to the publishers for making this facsimile available m such an exemplary form. A. S. G. EDWARDS University ofVictoria BARRY A. WINDEATT, Chaucer's Dream Poetry: Sources and Analogues. Chaucer Studies, vol. 7. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer; Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1982. Pp. xviii, 168. $42.50. With this important collection of translations Barry Windeatt aims "to draw together conveniently in one place the more important narrative sources and analogues for Chaucer's dream poetry which are otherwise difficult of access" and "to enable the reader to gain an impression for himself of the intricate nature of the works...and thus to enable assess­ ment of what Chaucer has achieved creatively in his absorption of the French influences upon him" (p. xviii). This book fulfills both purposes well, and while it lacks original texts, it makes a worthy companion to William F. Bryan and Germaine Dempster's Sources and Analogues of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. As with that standard reference work, there are improvements that one might suggest, but the chief needs are filled. Until now students of Chaucer have had to ferret out and translate for themselves most of the French sources, whether they wished to know the background of individual passages or to determine the general nature of the materials with which he was working. Windeatt appropriately omits Chaucer's materials for the dream poems that are readily available in translation, notably the Aeneid, the Divine Comedy, the Romance ofthe Rose, and Ovid's poems. He also leaves out sources for minor passages. Most of the works that he includes, then, are French dits amoureux, the long love poems that filled the air that young Chaucer breathed but were forgotten even by the Renaissance. As one who has read more than once most of these works that are extant, I was particularly pleased to find the proof drawn together in one place of Chaucer's good taste in his choice ofFrench models. In my view he drew on the best of Machaut's dits in making use of the jugement dou Roy de 210 REVIEWS Behaingne, Remede de Fortune, the Dit de la Fonteinne Amoureuse, and the Dit dou Lyon. Of these poemsWindeatt presentsBehaingne complete, most of the Fonteinne amoureuse, the substantial portions of the Remede and the Lyon, all in the section on The Book ofthe Duchess. Also in that section is my favorite among Froissart's long poems, the Paradys d'amours complete. Parts of two other fine dits that are major sources for Chaucer and important in the history of Middle French love poetry, Nicole de Margival's Dit de la panthere d'amours and Machaut's]ugement dou Roy de Navarre, appear in the parts devoted to The House ofFame and The Legend ofGood Women respectively. All the works named clearly are sources for Chaucer. In his section on The Parliament ofFowls, for which the French background is uncertain, Windeatt provides a large set of analogues, some to the demande d'amour of the poem and others to the assemblage of birds. He gives complete translations of Lifoblel dou Dieu d'Amors, of great interest for its early date, andJean de Conde'sla Messe des oisiaus et li plais de chanonesses et des grises nonains, a lively work that shows how apparent irreverence is transformed into edification in a medieval poet's allegorization. Although these works can hardly be called near analogues to the Parliament, they are happily included. Making less of a contribution to the book are the three debates argued by birds on the question of who is the superior lover, clerk or knight. One of these poems would have sufficed. Only three non-French works are included, all in theParliament section. It is good to find there The Dream ofScipio complete, and also the passage of the Teseida which Chaucer draws on in the garden section. The small piece of Alanus de Insulis's De planctu naturae, however, is disappointing; it is not even from the part that Chaucer refers to. We are given only the passage about the advent of Nature, and nothing of her dress and visage, the matters for...