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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
The present study of Chaucer's unaccented final -e, particularly his final -e in rhyme, must clearly be understood to be a study in phonology, not one in morphology. The question is not whether or not most of the forms surviving in spelling were at one time pronounced; it is the question of whether or not they were still pronounced in Chaucer's day (particularly by Chaucer in his poetry), and whether or not the grammatical forms furnish the best hypothesis for a possible pronunciation. An acceptable hypothesis, I think everyone would agree, not only should explain the majority of cases covered by it, but should not be unduly hampered by exceptions, and exceptions to exceptions. I believe that the generally accepted hypothesis of pronunciation on the basis of historical grammar is so hampered. When originally enunciated, this was not the case. Child recognized certain exceptions, Kittredge greatly expanded these, and recently Mrs. McJimsey has enlarged them still more. Material now available, though not available to the early investigators, warrants a thorough reinvestigation of the entire theory. Enough rules for the suppression of final -e within the verse have been accepted until at the present time only about 20 per cent of such final -e's are pronounced. The supporters of a theory that demands so many suppressions should be willing to examine a hypothesis based on additions rather than suppressions, especially when the exceptions to the basic rule are only 20 per cent of the whole rather than 80 per cent, and that 20 per cent can be simply explained.
1 F. J. Child, “Observations on the Language of Chaucer,” in Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, N. S. viii, Part I (1861). G. L. Kittredge, “Observations on the Language of Chaucer's Troilus,” in [Harvard] Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature (1902), iii, 389.
McJimsey, Chaucer's Irregular E (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942).
2 Joseph Payne, “The Use of Final -e in Early English, with Especial Reference to the Final -e at the End of the Verse in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales,” in Philological Transactions, 1868-69, p. 90.
3 Chaucer, Specimen extracts from the nine known imprinted mss. of Chaucer's Troilus etc. Edited by Sir Wm. McCormick and Robert Kilburn Root (London and New York, 1914) ; Chaucer, A parallel-text print of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. Put forth by F. J. Furnivall (London, 1881, 1882).
4 Thomas Tyrwhitt, “An Essay on the Language and Versification of Chaucer,” in The Poetical Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, 6 vols. (Pickering, 1845), i, 146-251.
5 Another possible source was the medieval Latin lyric. See F. Brittain, The Medieval Latin and Romance Lyric to A.D. 1300 (Cambridge, 1937).
6 Quoted in Alden, English Verse (New York, 1903), p. 178.
7 Ibid., p. 178.
8 The Foreign Sources of English Versification. Quoted in Alden, p. 178.
9 Alden, p. 178.
10 P. 94. See also W. P. Kerr, Form and Style in Poetry (London : Macmillan, 1928), p. 54.
11 Joseph and Elizabeth Mary Wright, An Elementary Middle English Grammar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1923), p. 69.
12 H. C. Wyld, A Short History of English (London: John Murray, 1924), p. 229.
13 P. 219.
14 The analogy has been made between Chaucer's -e mute and that of French poetry. This seems to me to be an imperfect analogy because of the general difference in tone between Chaucer's five-stress couplets and the heroic couplet of French poetry with which comparison is frequently made. Chaucer's poetry, being preeminently conversational and informal in tone differs greatly from the frequently aloof, highly wrought, and definitely stylized tone of the French. Bernhardt, for example, I have been told, never read lines in a naturalistic way or used realistic gestures. Everything about her performance was self-conscious artistry. I have myself noticed her highly stylized reading in a recorded passage from Rostand's L'Aiglon. To read Chaucer in this way would be little short of the ludicrous.
But what actually are the facts of the pronunciation of -e mute in French poetry? I recently had the opportunity of discussing this problem with a Frenchman for many years connected with French opera and with a former French actress who not only had appeared with Bernhardt but who had studied for many years with the finest members of the Comèdie française. Both maintained that the -e mute was not pronounced in poetry, although it is pronounced in singing. The actress read several passages of poetry for me, lyric as well as dramatic, selecting those in which -e mute frequently occurred. The thing that most impressed me was that this -e mute performs a function different from that possible in English. It not only alters the quality of the preceding vowel, tending to raise it, but it also gives the subtle sensation of suspending the consonants. It is this quality of the suspended consonant that might lead the not strictly attentive into believing that the -e mute was sonant, particularly if heard from a distance.
The question has also been asked why, if this is true, the poets were at “such pains to alternate masculine and feminine rhymes.” It is true that couplets ending in -e mute do alternate fairly regularly with those in a consonant, but isn't the reason rather, as I have said, to influence the quality of the preceding vowel and to suspend the consonants? The rhymes in -e mute remain masculine rhymes. To say that they are feminine begs the question by assuming as true the thing to be proved. A glance at Boileau's Satire xii, however, indicates that this alternation of couplets is not invariable, although it is largely so in Molière. It is, moreover, my own recollection of performances of Molière witnessed at the Comèdie Française, that the -e mute was not pronounced.
15 Wright, pp. 8; 39.
16 Wyld, p. 116.
17 Ibid., 451.
18 At a definite caesura: herte. A. Prol. 811, A. Kn. 1097, 1790, 2213, 2270, 2371, 2629, A. Rv. 4087, B. Ml. 614, 660, B. Sh. 1229, B. Mk. 3619, B. Mp. 4393, C. Doc. 126, C. Pard. 838, D. WB. 531, 599, 977, D. Sum. 2217, E. Cl. 173, 672, 806, 811, 1025, E. Mch. 1237, 1244, 1286, 1336, 1752, F. Sq. 138, 525, 535, F. Fkl. 122, 1238, 1450, 1515, 1520, G. SN. 251, 397, H. Mcp. 246. Not at a definite caesura and pronounced: A. Kn. 2649, A. Mil. 3349, B. Ml. 1056, C. Doc. 126, E. Mch. 2075, F. Sq. 120, 483.
leve (after 4th syllable) A. Kn. 1217, 1879, A. Rv. 3916, B. ML. 867, B. Sh. 1550, D. Sum 1823, E. Mch. 1690, F. Fkl. 1339, 1490; (after 6th syllable) B. MK. 3136, B. NP. 4288, D. WB. 112, D. WB. 918, E. Mch. 1456.
19 George R. Stewart, Jr., Technique of English Verse (N. Y.: Holt, 1930), p. 31.
20 James Russell Lowell, My Study Windows (London: Walter Scott, n.d.), pp. 245 ff.