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Chaucer And Trivet
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
In 1895 (Acad., Sept. 21, p. 227), Professor Liddell announced that he had in preparation conclusive evidence to show that Chaucer in his translation of Boethius had used (in addition to the Latin text) the French prose translation ascribed to Jean de Meung. In 1897, again (Nation, Feb. 18, pp. 124 f.), Professor Liddell declared his belief that Chaucer, as well as the French translator from whom he borrows, in making their Boethius translations, worked with the Latin commentary wrongly ascribed to Thomas Aquinas. And last year, having occasion to examine the Latin commentary on Boethius by Nicholas Trivet, I found there ample evidence, as I think, to give Trivet's commentary an important place among the sources of Chaucer's Boethius. Two commentaries in addition to the Latin text and a French translation make an equipment which seems extraordinarily elaborate for the circumstances. However, an examination of the two commentaries discovers the fact that Trivet's commentary includes the glosses of the other, in most of the cases in which Chaucer is concerned; and it is the object of this note to furnish evidence which points to Trivet's commentary as the single source of this material in Chaucer's Boethius.
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References
Note 1 in page 173 Cf. the suggestion of Mr. H. F. Stewart, Boethius, 1891, p. 204.
Note 1 in page 174 Even the argument of Obbarius (though Professor Liddell accepts it without question) to prove that the Pseudo-Aquinas compilation could not have been written so early as 1274, the date of Aquinas's death, is no longer valid. For Obbarius (Boethii de Cons. Phil., p. 1) rests his argument upon the theory that Alanus de Insulis died a. 1294, instead of nearly a century earlier. Obbarius also quotes the suggestion that the word, ungelt, used in the explanation of coemptio (bk. i, prose iv) indicates some German as the author of this compilation. And I suppose a reference to a certain Richardus in librum xii Patriarcharum shows that the compilation was made after Grosseteste's Latin translation had made the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs accessible to Western Europe (1242 ?). The following list of names which appear in this Pseudo-Aquinas compilation may be of interest: Alanus de Insulis, Albertus, Alcibiades, Alexander (and Aristotle), Alexander (Grammarian?), Ambrose, Apuleius, Aristotle, Avicenna, Augustine, Bernardus, Boetius (De Disciplina Scholarium; De Summo Bono; Super primo Perihermenias), Cato, Catullus, Chrysostom, Cicero, Commentator, Daniel, De Anima, De Causis, De Plantis, De Pomo, De Regimine Principum, Donatus, Elenchi, Eleys, Empedocles, Ethica, Euripides Tropius (narrat ... in Hystoria Rhomanorum quod Demetrides in suos seviens filios duos, etc. Cf. the corresponding sentence in Trivet's commentary: Eutropius in Historia Romanorum, li. 6, narrat de Metridate qui ... in suos deseviens duos filios, etc.), Eustracius, Florus, Preculfus (Freculphus, cf. Trivet and Migne, Pat. Lat., tom. 106, col. 1131), Gaufredus (de Vinsauf?) in Poetria, Gregory, Hieronymus, Henricus Pauper (Samariensis), Homer, Horace, Huguitio, Juvenal, Laborintus, Lincolniensis (Grosseteste), Lucan, Macrobius, Marquardus, Martianus Capella, Methaphysica, Nestor, Ovid, Persius, Physica, Plato, Porphyry, Ptolemy, Remigius super Donatum, Richardus in librum xii Patriarcharum, Sallust, Seneca, Socrates, Termegistus, Theodolus, Themistius, Thopica, Thomas Indiae, Valerius, Virgil.
Note 1 in page 175 In the Nation article, of course, Professor Liddell does not attempt to give a complete list of the glosses in Chaucer's Boethius for which the French translation has no equivalent, and for which, Professor Liddell believes, Chaucer is indebted to the Latin commentary. Meanwhile, the list of such glosses, which I have made, must stand open to more or less modification until the parallel-text edition, so long promised, of the French and English versions appears. Of one metre of the French translation, however, I have a copy, and, therefore, so far as this metre is represented in my list, I can speak without reservation. Comparing, then, the glosses in my list with the French translation of this metre, I find that no qualification is necessary so far as this small extract is concerned. For the three important glosses in Chaucer's version of this metre which are found in Trivet's commentary have no French equivalent (see Appendix, pp. 191, 193, below).
Note 2 in page 175 In trying to find in the Pseudo-Aquinas compilation a parallel for each of these three hundred and seventy correspondences between Trivet and Chaucer, I have come across five cases in which Chaucer's correspondence with the Pseudo-Aquinas text is closer than with Trivet's. It does not necessarily follow, however, that these five passages are borrowed from the Pseudo-Aquinas compilation. They may yet be explained by the French text when it is published. And if we accept Obbarius's theory of the origin of the Pseudo-Aquinas compilation (p. 1: Mihi hi commentarii e variis glossis, et fortasse sec. xv, quo omnes quod sciam illorum codd. exarati sunt, compositi videntur), an explanation is easy for them all: we have simply to suppose that Chaucer's copy of Trivet's commentary had received marginal glosses here and there, as, in fact, is the case with the copy from which I quote (Addit. ms. 19585, fol. 18, e. g.). These five correspondences are: (No. 1) I, prose iv, 7: ... loci facies; the face or the manere of this place [i. prisoun]; (Trivet) facies, i. qualitas loci in quo notat exilium suum; (Ps.-Aq.) facies, i. dispositio hujus loci, sc. carceris. (No. 2) ii, prose vii, 77: ... toti moriuntur homines; that men dyen in al, that is to seyn, body and sowie; (Trivet) sc. quod anima non remaneat post mortem; (Ps.-Aq.) corpore et anima. (No. 3) iii, prose ix, 44: ... dispertit; departeth and devydeth it; (Trivet) dispertit, sc. querendo unum sine alio;
(Ps.-Aq,) i. dividit. (No. 4) iv, prose iii, 14: Quantumlibet saeviant mali; shrewes wexen as wode as hem list ayeins goode folk; (Trivet) sc. irrogando bonis nocumentum; (Ps.-Aq.) mali contra bonos. (No. 5) iv, prose iv, 108, . . . validis rationum . . . firmamentis; by a stronge foundement of resouns: that is to seyn; (Trivet) et manifestans quid est illud, subdit; (Ps.-Aq.) rationum, scilicet.
Note 1 in page 176 For the Latin text I quote from the Teubner edition (R. Peiper, 1871), for Trivet's commentary from Addit. mss. 19585 and 27875 in the British Museum, and for the Pseudo-Aquinas compilation from the printed edition of 1497.
Note 1 in page 178 Cf. Lounsbury (Studies in Chaucer, ii, 154): “Every one who examines carefully the poet's version of Boethius will be struck by the frequency with which a single noun or verb of the Latin is rendered into English by two which have little or no difference in their meaning.” Cf. nos. 22, 33, 36, 37, 52, 53, 58, 62, below.
Note 1 in page 181 This is interesting. For Chaucer, having translated eight lines of his text, now turns, apparently, to the corresponding passage in Trivet's Commentary, and translates the whole section again; but, this time as it is rendered by Trivet,—the text everywhere interwoven with the glosses. The text I indicate by plain type, the comment by italics.
Note 1 in page 189 For there is, in the British Museum, no copy of the French translation to which Professor Liddell refers.
Note 2 in page 189 On every page appears a portion of the Latin text, and beside it, the corresponding French translation, and running below, the commentary of Trivet.
Note 3 in page 189 ms. Lat. 18424: Consolation de Boèce, avec le commentaire de Nic. Trivet et la traduction de Jean de Meung. Boetius, De Disciplina Scolarium. XIV S. Professor Liddell has cited this manuscript as containing one of the variants of his French translation, but he does not notice the Trivet commentary. Instead, he seeks the supplementary material of his theory in the Pseudo-Aquinas compilation.
Note 4 in page 189 This manuscript, however, is pretty certainly not the actual manuscript which Chaucer used (and perhaps its Latin text is not even the original of the French translation written beside it; cf. bk. ii, metre v, 1. 18, arida for horrida, quoted, p. 192, below; and bk. i, prose i, 1. 38, exitum). For while in some cases ms. Lat. 18424 shows an exceptional reading of the Latin text (cf. bk. i, prose i, 1. 38, exitum; ibid., metre ii, 1. 4, acta; bk. iii, prose vii, 1. 10, lasciviam; bk. iv, metre vii, 1. 10, inani) which is peculiar to a few manuscripts and to Chaucer's translation, in one case, at least, where Chaucer follows such an exceptional reading, Ms. Lat. 18424 keeps to the usual one (cf. bk. ii, metre v, 1. 18, quoted, p. 192, below, ana for the arma which Chaucer translates, the reading of Addit. ms. 27875, etc.). The French text, moreover, in ms. Lat. 18424 fails to give one of the glosses, which, as Professor Liddell has shown, is derived from the French translation (cf. bk. i, prose iv, 11. 80 ff.).
Note 1 in page 191 Cf. no. 26, p. 180, above.