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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
The purpose of this paper is not to establish definite sources for Chaucer's Monk's Tale but to consider it as a representative of a general mediæval type. Professor Lounsbury declared that the Monk's Tale belonged to a “species of composition to which the men of Chaucer's age were exceedingly addicted.” In the Canterbury Tales, he continues, “the Monk's tale is introduced as a specimen of these collections of stories, and largely and perhaps entirely for the sake of satirizing, or at least of censuring, the taste that created and enjoyed them.” “In the Middle Ages,” writes Mr. J. E. Wells, “it was not at all uncommon to make collections of a single general type.…. These collections were.… of an encyclopædic character.” So Mr. E. Greenlaw: “It [the Monk's Tale] is.… an example of the many collections of tales having a didactic purpose which were characteristic of mediævalism.”
page 205 note 1 Studies in Chaucer, III, 332–4. J. R. Lowell, Study Windows, should be noted as the precursor of Lounsbury.
page 205 note 2 Manual of Writings in Middle English (1923), p. 185.
page 205 note 3 Selections from Chaucer (Lake Library Edition), p. 266.
page 205 note 4 Devel. and Chronol. of Chaucer's Works, Chauc. Soc. Pubs. 2nd Ser. 37, p. 167.
page 205 note 5 Tatlock, op. cit., p. 168.
page 205 note 6 Canterbury Tales, B, 3163–7. Note the repetition of this definition in B, 3951–6.
page 205 note 7 Quoted by E. K. Chambers in The Mediæval Stage, II, 209 n.
page 205 note 8 Ibid., p. 209 n.
page 205 note 9 Notices des Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale, XXII, 418.
page 205 note 10 “The Tradition of the Goddess Fortuna in Roman Literature and in the Transition Period,” Smith College Studies in Modern Languages, III–IV, April and July, 1922, and July, 1923. Chaucer's Monk's Tale uses Seneca, Lucan, Boethius, Roman de la Rose, Dante, Petrarch, [and Boccaccio]. See J. E. Wells, Manual, pp. 709ff. on the sources.
page 205 note 11 J. E. Sandys, A History of Classical Scholarship, I, 161. Dr. A. A. Hill of the Univer sity of Virginia has expressed to me some doubt as to whether the Fables were written by the librarian.
page 205 note 12 Ibid., p. 199.
page 205 note 13 Ibid., p. 137.
page 205 note 14 J. E. Wells, Manual, p. 596.
page 205 note 15 Chaucer Bibliography, p. 81.
page 205 note 16 It would be interesting also here to trace the possible connection of Chaucer with Hyginus, but that would completely transcend the purpose of this brief paper. For example, Fables 90–115 form the Trojan War group. Compare Troilus and Cressida?
page 205 note 17 For the rest of Book I of Boccaccio, Althea is Hyginus' 171st; Narcissus the 214th; Orithyia appears in 14 and 18; Hercules in the 30th; and Orpheus in the 14th, 251st, and 273rd. The only minor “falls” in Boccaccio's Book I that are not in Hyginus are those of Pyrrhus, Evander, Mirra, and Marpessia. I am overlooking, of course, Boccaccio's interpolated moral disquisitions, though these suggest fables in themselves.
page 205 note 18 H. Hauvette, Boccacce: Étude Biographique et Littéraire (Paris, 1914), p. 401.
page 205 note 19 Ibid., p. 402.
page 205 note 20 See Max Manitius, Geschichte der Lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters, pp. 55, 513.
page 205 note 21 D'Étienne de Bourbon, Anecdotes Historiques (ed. A. L. de la Marche, Paris, 1877), Introduction, p. xi.
page 205 note 22 Ibid., p. xiii.
page 205 note 23 B, 3181–88. And there are only three examples of moralizing in the Tale proper: B, 3282, 3357, 3820. See note 29, below.
page 205 note 24 Percy Society Publications, VIII (1842), Introduction, p. xiii.
page 205 note 25 G. Körting, B's Leben und Werke (Leipzig, 1880), p. 728 n. My Italian titles above were from the edition of 1565.
page 205 note 26 Adam, Sampson, Balthazar, Zenobia, Nero. It is true that Chaucer's rubric prints B's title, but my tables above have shown the common property of Latin titles in the Middle Ages.
page 205 note 27 It should be reiterated now, as already suggested above, that both of Boccaccio's direct followers, Laurent de Premierfait and Lydgate, maintained their master's moralistic tenor, though with a difference. The most recent comparison of the three men in their moralistic tendencies appears in M. Förster's article, “Boccaccio's De Casibus Virorum Illustrium, in englischer Bearbeitungen,” in Deutsche Literaturzeitung, 27. Heft, Oct., 1924, p. 1943. [But H. Bergen's Introductory note to his edition in 1923 of Lydgate's Fall of Princes gives more detailed comparison.] The hot-blooded Italian, he says, treats “den grossen.… ohne jede Sympathie oder auch nur Achtung.… Ein Fanal, die Menschheit aus ihrer Trägheit auf zurütteln, sollte sein Werk sein.” But the Frenchman is writing for a Prince, the Duc de Berry: “.… tritt er den grossen mit Ehrerbietung.… wo seine Vorlage von Tyrannei redet, wagt er kaum zu tadeln; mehr Klage ist es über die unglückliche Lage des Volkes.” “Eine mittlere Stellung nimmt der Engländer ein.” He is not so “kühn” as Boccaccio, nor so “untertänig” as the Frenchman. That these three men should be so generally related in purpose, however, is obvious when one realizes that Laurent was using Boccaccio's early version, which he translated into French literally in 1400 and then expanded in 1409, and this last version is the starting point of Lydgate. Then Wm. Baldwin's printer-friend interested in Lydgate inspired another famous moralistic collection of “falls,” the Mirror for Magistrates (1559) [See Baldwin's Preface].
page 205 note 28 Statement made in a Harvard classroom.
page 205 note 29 Note the predominance of direct references in the Tale to “fortune:” B, 3185, 3191, 3326, 3379, 3431, 3557, 3566, 3587, 3591, 3635, 3647, 3740, 3746, 3773, 3859, 3884, 3913, 3953.
page 205 note 30 Op. cit., III, 332.