Abstract
The two earliest poems of Chaucer which we have are An ABC or La Priere de Nostre Dame and the Book of the Duchess, probably an elegy on the death of Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster, the first wife of John of Gaunt. She may have commissioned the former poem, as well as inspiring the latter. According to Speght’s edition, it was produced ‘as some say at the request of Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster, as praier for her privat use, being a woman in her religion very devout’.1 The prayer and the elegy are linked in presenting ideals of women, the religious and the courtly. Despite Chaunticleer’s ruin/bliss antithesis and the Wife of Bath’s rebellion against clerical misogyny, these ideals overlap and influence each other. They express similar emotional needs, they respect the same virtues. They often use identical language: courtly literature redeploys theological concepts of grace, penance and salvation in the service of romantic love; religious works accommodate the vocabulary of erotic poems. The fit can be so close that it is impossible to determine whether a short poem is pious or secular, addressed to the Virgin Mary or to an earthly mistress.
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