The Short Poems (by V. J. Scattergood)

Abstract

Abstract But to take these statements with absolute literalness may be ill-advised, because lists so similar as to suggest a well-known formula appear in the writings of Machaut, Froissart, and Deschamps, and Chaucer attributes a similar repertoire of poetry to the love-sick squire Aurelius in the Franklin’s Tale, where it is asserted that he made ‘manye layes, / Songes, compleintes, roundels, virelayes’ (V(F) 747—8). If these lists are genuine attempts at description, they are not very exact in relation to what has survived. The implication that Chaucer’s short poems are all about love ignores the fact that a number treat religious and moral subjects. And, on a formal level, there is no surviving virelai (unless parts of Anelida and Arcite, 211—380, can be counted as such). Most of all, however, scholars have been puzzled by the impression that Chaucer is said to have written ‘many’ short poems, whereas only twenty-two are now usually accepted as canonical.