登陆注册
14725700000032

第32章 CHAUCER'S LIFE AND WORKS.(15)

In any case, neither of these poems can be looked upon as preparations, on Chaucer's part, for the longer work on which he was to expend so much labour; but in a sense this description would apply to the translation which, probably before he wrote "Troilus and Cressid," certainly before he wrote the Prologue to the "Legend of Good Women," he made of the famous Latin work of Boethius, "the just man in prison," on the "Consolation of Philosophy." This book was, and very justly so, one of the favourite manuals of the Middle Ages, and a treasure-house of religious wisdom to centuries of English writers. "Boice of Consolacioun" is cited in the "Romaunt of the Rose"; and the list of passages imitated by Chaucer from the martyr of Catholic orthodoxy and Roman freedom of speech is exceedingly long. Among them are the ever-recurring diatribe against the fickleness of fortune, and (through the medium of Dante) the reflection on the distinction between gentle birth and a gentle life. Chaucer's translation was not made at second-hand; if not always easy it is conscientious, and interpolated with numerous glosses and explanations thought necessary by the translator. The metre of "The Former Life" he at one time or another turned into verse of his own.

Perhaps the most interesting of the quotations made in Chaucer's poems from Boethus occurs in his "Troilus and Cressid," one of the many medieval versions of an episode engrafted by the lively fancy of an Anglo-Norman trouvere upon the deathless, and in its literary variations incomparably luxuriant, growth of the story of Troy. On Benoit de Sainte-Maure's poem Guido de Colonna founded his Latin-prose romance; and this again, after being reproduced in languages and by writers almost innumerable, served Boccaccio as the foundation of his poem "Filostrato"--i.e. the victim of love. All these works, together with Chaucer's "Troilus and Cressid,"with Lydgate's "Troy-Book," with Henryson's "Testament of Cressid" (and in a sense even with Shakespere's drama on the theme of Chaucer's poem), may be said to belong to the second cycle of modern versions of the tale of Troy divine. Already their earlier predecessors had gone far astray from Homer, of whom they only know by hearsay, relying for their facts on late Latin epitomes, which freely mutilated and perverted the Homeric narrative in favour of the Trojans--the supposed ancestors of half the nations of Europe. Accordingly, Chaucer, in a well-known passage in his "House of Fame," regrets, with sublime coolness, how "one said that Homer" wrote "lies,"Feigning in his poetries And was to Greekes favourable.

Therefore held he it but fable.

But the courtly poets of the romantic age of literature went a step further, and added a mediaeval colouring all their own. One converts the Sibyl into a nun, and makes her admonish Aeneas to tell his beads.

Another--it is Chaucer's successor Lydgate--introduces Priam's sons exercising their bodies in tournaments and their minds in the glorious play of chess, and causes the memory of Hector to be consecrated by the foundation of a chantry of priests who are to pray for the repose of his soul. A third finally condemns the erring Cressid to be stricken with leprosy, and to wander about with cup and clapper, like the unhappy lepers in the great cities of the Middle Ages. Everything, in short, is transfused by the spirit of the adapters' own times; and so far are these writers from any weakly sense of anachronism in describing Troy as if it were a moated and turreted city of the later Middle Ages, that they are only careful now and then to protest their own truthfulness when anything in their narrative seems UNLIKE the days in which they write.

But Chaucer, though his poem is, to start with, only an English reproduction of an Italian version of a Latin translation of a French poem, and though in most respects it shares the characteristic features of the body of poetic fiction to which it belongs, is far from being a mere translator. Apart from several remarkable reminiscences introduced by Chaucer from Dante, as well as from the irrepressible "Romaunt of the Rose," he has changed his original in points which are not mere matters of detail or questions of convenience. In accordance with the essentially dramatic bent of his own genius, some of these changes have reference to the aspect of the characters and the conduct of the plot, as well as to the whole spirit of the conception of the poem. Cressid (who, by the way, is a widow at the outset--whether she had children or not, Chaucer nowhere found stated, and therefore leaves undecided) may at first sight strike the reader as a less consistent character in Chaucer than in Boccaccio.

But there is true art in the way in which, in the English poem, our sympathy is first aroused for the heroine, whom, in the end, we cannot but condemn. In Boccaccio, Cressid is fair and false--one of those fickle creatures with whom Italian literature, and Boccaccio in particular, so largely deal, and whose presentment merely repeats to us the old cynical half-truth as to woman's weakness. The English poet, though he does not pretend that his heroine was "religious" (i.e. a nun to whom earthly love is a sin), endears her to us from the first; so much that "O the pity of it" seems the hardest verdict we can ultimately pass upon her conduct.

同类推荐
  • 古意

    古意

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 佛说楞伽经禅门悉谈章

    佛说楞伽经禅门悉谈章

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • Of Taxes

    Of Taxes

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 华阳博议

    华阳博议

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • Philosophy 4

    Philosophy 4

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
热门推荐
  • 修仙世界里的开挂者

    修仙世界里的开挂者

    红颜多娇,江山美丽,却是刹那芳华。古往今来,问世间谁能长生不死?
  • 三楼窗台的飘渺年华之落花

    三楼窗台的飘渺年华之落花

    一段真实爱情引发的一段又一段情感纠葛。她最爱的他在一场车祸中去世,事隔一年,他再次出现了,这让她有些欣喜,也很苦涩。她始终都忘不了他,他的出现让他成为了一个替代品。而他,对她百般的好,其实只不过是因为孪生哥哥的死而特意向她报复!
  • 诡行天世

    诡行天世

    她在天擘域里横行霸道,她不学无术,仅仅是,她终于是有家的感觉了。可以不用担心,可以随便,可以想做什么做什么,她所有以前有却不敢释放的天性在这里被全部释放,那才是,她想要的。过去的不能重来,她决心忘了她的童年少年。她是诡蜜蜜,月误珛,已死!本文纯属虚构,请勿模仿。
  • 万法魔尊

    万法魔尊

    浮空城中,螺旋城上,在监视一切的天网之下,王室势力蠢蠢欲动。全面教育下的魔法,在这里已是主流,魔法师,魔导师,魔圣,真理者。凭借一双能够看穿一切结界的瞳眸,林跃一步一个脚印,踏着自己的努力救红颜,战世界不负苍天不负卿独身一人入魔道。
  • 中药大辞典

    中药大辞典

    《中药大辞典》是中华人民共和国成立后出版的第一部大型中药专业工具书,共收载中药5767味,其中包括植物药4773味,动物药740味,矿物药82味,以及传统作为单位药使用的加工制成品等172味。第二版于2006年出版,共收载药物6008味,增补了初版后近30年来有关栽培(饲养)技术、药材鉴定、化学成分、药理作用、炮制、现代临床研究等方面的中药研究成果。
  • 华丽转身:亲密敌人

    华丽转身:亲密敌人

    每个女孩都是公主。我们都有娇气的一面,我们都肆无忌惮追求我们所爱的人,我们都曾淋漓尽致地受过伤害。也许你也曾像颜珞般懦弱地逃避过,但总有一天,我们会长大,抵过千军万马。我们不需要在爱的人庇护下无忧的生活,我们要与他们比肩。
  • 相思谋:妃常难娶

    相思谋:妃常难娶

    某日某王府张灯结彩,婚礼进行时,突然不知从哪冒出来一个小孩,对着新郎道:“爹爹,今天您的大婚之喜,娘亲让我来还一样东西。”说完提着手中的玉佩在新郎面前晃悠。此话一出,一府宾客哗然,然当大家看清这小孩与新郎如一个模子刻出来的面容时,顿时石化。此时某屋顶,一个绝色女子不耐烦的声音响起:“儿子,事情办完了我们走,别在那磨矶,耽误时间。”新郎一看屋顶上的女子,当下怒火攻心,扔下新娘就往女子所在的方向扑去,吼道:“女人,你给本王站住。”一场爱与被爱的追逐正式开始、、、、、、、
  • 浮乱的青春

    浮乱的青春

    谁浮乱了青春,青春又浮乱谁,在爱与不爱的年纪,又有多少人是走到白头偕老?
  • 未来通讯

    未来通讯

    身处在2016年的商振武,居然下载到了一款软件,这款软件叫做QQ2050。本来还以为是哪个家伙的恶作剧,可是当他联系那些通讯录和群里面的好友的时候,却发现事情没有那么简单。他发现那些好友一个个从年轻小伙变成了一个个年过半百的中年人。当年的那些通讯录和群里面的好友有的经商,有的从政,有的搞研究,当然有的最终也还是一个普通小老百姓。他真正的意识到了,这款QQ2050,居然真的能够联系到2050年的那些好友,这个让他马上感觉自己要发达了。
  • 迭天纪

    迭天纪

    世界既然有创世神,自然,也就有灭世神。既然,你可以创造这个世界,我,就可以毁灭这个世界。既然,这个世界容不下我,那我,就毁灭这个世界。