Poems Without Endings

Abstract

THE BIENNIAL CHAUCER LECTURE The New Chaucer Society Seventh International Congress August 6-11, 1990 The University ofKent CANTERBURY The Biennial Chaucer Lecture Poems Without Endings John Burrow University ofBristol T.COU.ECTED WORKS of Chaucer contain several "poems with: out endings" - poems, that is to say, which Chaucer began but appears never to have got to the end of. Chief among these are The House a/Fame, The LegendofGood Women, and two Canterbury tales, those of the Cook and the Squire. In this lecture I want to consider how scribes, editors, and readers have received these apparently incomplete texts. I say "apparently incomplete" because in recent times many Chaucer scholars have come to regard them as being in fact complete. But I reserve that controversial question for the latter part of this survey. For the moment let me take them for what they certainly appear to be- poems without endings. There is, to begin with, the question of how such fragmentary texts might come to be published at all-under what circumstances, that is, they may have been first copied and put into circulation. About thisscholarscan only speculate, but, in the case of the two Canterbury tales at least, a possible answer is ready to hand. It is easy to imagine that Chaucer's literary executors, piecing together whatever they could find of what was evidently work in progress, would have included even those tales which Chaucer, for whatever reason, had left unfinished when he died. Such was indeed common practise in the Middle Ages: to publish texts left fragmentary at the time of an author's death, with or without continuations by other hands. This is the case, according to early witnesses, with the Perceval of Chretien de Troyes, the Tristan of Gottfried von Strassburg, the Roman de 17 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER la Rose of Guillaume de Lorris, the Miroir de Mariage ofDeschamps, and John Lydgate's version of the Secreta Secretorum. Thus Gottfried's Tristan breaks off in the middle of a speech, and his continuator, Ulrich von Tiirheim, laments the fact as follows: "We have suffered a great loss, and to the great detriment ofthis story, which has been left uncared for, now that master Gottfried who began this book is dead."1 It appears that works by named vernacular masters such as Gottfried, or Chaucer, were more likely to be publishedposthumouslyin their unfinishedstate than were the works ofanonymousorrun-of-the-millpoets.2 Was it perhaps a peculiar privilege ofthe acknowledged auctor to have such unfinished work copied and read? In hisArsversificatoria, Matthew ofVend6me includes in his list ofthe ways poems end what he calls the "preoccupata conclusio." This occurs fre­ quently among the auctores, he says, when death anticipates their conclu­ sion; but the result, he adds, is better called a terminatio than a true conc/usio. As an example ofsuch an abrupt and accidental "termination," he cites the last line of Lucan's unfinished Pharsa/ia. 3 The Achzl/eis of Statius was another text familiar in the schools which terminated in this fashion, partway through its second book. But not all such fragmentary texts were cut short by death. Dante's unfinished Convivio may well have circulated during the author's lifetime: Villani says that it remained unfinished because death supervened, but Boccaccio put its fragmentary state down to "mutamento di proposito o... mancamento di tempo," a change ofmind or lack oftime.4 In the case of 1 Cited by Michael S. Batts, Gottfried von Strassburg (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1971), p. 31. Compare Gerbert's continuation of Chretien's Perceval: "Ce nous dist Crestiens de Troie, I Qui de Percheval comencha, / Mais la mors qui l'adevancha / Ne Ii laissa pas traire affin"; Gerbert de Montreuil, La Continuation de Perceval, ed. Mary Williams, CFMA 28, 50 (Paris: Librairie Honore Champion, 1922, 1925), lines 6984-87. AlsoJean de Meun's contin­ uation of the Lorris Roman de la Rose, ed. Felix Lecoy, CFMA 92, 95, 98 (Paris: Librairie Honore Champion, 1965, 1966, 1970), lines 10517-60. The Mirozrde manage of Deschamps breaks off abruptly, with an explanatory rubric: "De la matiere de ce livre ne traicta l'acteur plus avant...