Category: Departments & Disciplines

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Reading Chaucer in the Tower

Last week, I surveyed Chaucer’s representations of prison spaces throughout his corpus. Today, I consider one reader of Chaucer, for whom those images of imprisonment would have particularly resonated.

In January of 1549, John Harington of Stepney and Kelston was arrested and sent to the Tower of London.[1] Harington remained in the Tower with his master, Thomas Seymour (the brother of Henry VIII’s third wife, Jane) for more than a year.[2] What was a literary-minded gentleman/prisoner to do with all of that time? Harington may have read Chaucer. 

Harington was in the Tower following suspicion about the nature of Seymour’s relationship with the very young Princess Elizabeth. He was also questioned regarding his own role in setting up a marriage between Lady Jane Grey, the nine-days queen, and the young King Edward VI.[3] 

While in the Tower, Harington would have had access to books and illustrious, scholarly-minded company. The imprisoned Harington used this time to learn French, and he wrote a translation of Cicero’s De Amicitia.[4]  As he told Lady Catherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk, in the dedication to his translation:

Wherby I tried prisonment of the body, to be the libertee of spirite … and in the ende quietnes of mind, the occasion of study. [5]

Though the 1550 date on the front of Harington’s copy of Chaucer is not definitive evidence that he held the book while he was in the Tower, the long and idle days of imprisonment would haven given Harington the time he needed to thoroughly annotate his copy of William Thynne’s 1542 edition of Chaucer’s complete works. Harington’s copy is now housed at the University of Notre Dame’s Hesburgh Library.[6]  

John Harington’s dated signature on the opening plate of William Thynne’s 1542 edition of Chaucer’s complete works. The inscription reads “non Amo’ chi non Ama.” University of Notre Dame, Hesburgh Library, XLarge PR 1850 1542.

Nearly every page of the 1542 book shows evidence of Harington’s attentive reading. This post, of course, cannot cover everything involved in Harington’s copious marginal writing, but if readers are interested, they can consult my more detailed article — “Reading Chaucer in the Tower: The Person Behind the Pen in an Early-Modern Copy of Chaucer’s Works” — forthcoming in The Journal of the Early Book Society, volume 18.

One of Harington’s key concerns throughout was correcting ‘errors’ where he saw them in his book. He ‘corrects,’ or modernizes, spelling and adds commas or other marks of punctuation where he finds them appropriate.

Updating spelling in “The Knight’s Tale.” Harrington deletes “layde” and supplies “laid.” University of Notre Dame, Hesburgh Library, XLarge PR 1850 1542, f. xi.r

Though these meticulous changes may make Harington seem a bit finicky, they reveal how closely he paid attention to every word on the page. He desired to improve his book, certainly an indication that he valued Chaucer.

At times, even Harington’s annotations received meticulous corrections. Here, Harington marginally notes “a gate of ^whit^ marble in a description of the arena in “The Knight’s Tale.” University of Notre Dame, Hesburgh Library, XLarge PR 1850 1542, f. vi.r

However, his annotations are much more extensive than simple summary notes and spelling changes. Of particular interest to Harington was Chaucer’s Boece, a translation of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy. A full-page table of contents and summary precedes Boece on a blank verso page, and Harington marginally marks the translation throughout.

The table of contents and summary for Chaucer’s Boece. University of Notre Dame, Hesburgh Library, XLarge PR 1850 1542, f. ccxxxi.v

That Boethius wrote the Consolation of Philosophy while in prison might have resonated with the imprisoned Harington.[7]   The imprisoned gentleman may have found Boethius’s discussions of free will, predestination, and changeable fortunes particularly relevant as he lamented the downturn of his own fortunes in court. Certainly this was the case for the imprisoned King James I of Scotland when he wrote his prison poem The Kingis Quair, which drew on Boethius.[8]

Harington draws a manicule next to a passage concerning freewill in Chaucer’s Boece. University of Notre Dame, Hesburgh Library, XLarge PR 1850 1542, f. cclxi.v

Overall, Harington, who also occasionally wrote his own poetry, was an attentive reader, finding solace in careful study. He was meticulous, academic, and thorough in his annotations, but, it would seem, he was also attentive to the book’s correspondences with his own life and experience.

Mimi Ensley
PhD Candidate
Department of English
University of Notre Dame

Footnotes

1. Ruth Willard Hughey, John Harington of Stepney: Tudor gentleman (Columbus, OH: Ohio State UP, 1971), 28.
2. Ibid., 29-30.
3. Ibid., 22-4. See also Harington’s entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/12325
4. Ibid., 31-2.
5. John Harington, “The booke of freendeship of Marcus Tullie Cicero,” in Hughey, John Harington, 137.
6. Geoffrey Chaucer, The Workes, Newlye Printed: Wyth Dyuers Workes Whych Were Neuer in Print Before, ed. William Thynne (London, 1542).
7. For a similar suggestion, see the brief description of Notre Dame’s 1542 Thynne edition here: http://rarebooks.library.nd.edu/exhibits/fructus/middle_english/1542chaucer.html
8. http://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/mooney-and-arn-kingis-quair-and-other-prison-poems-kingis-quair-introduction

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Prison Break: The Permeable Prison Spaces of Chaucer’s Poetry

When we imagine imprisoned spaces, we often think of solitude, despair, and hopelessness. For medieval prisoners in the Tower of London or in London’s Newgate prison, this was often the case, particularly for debtors and the poorest inmates.

John the Baptist in Prison
John the Baptist pushed into prison and sitting, dejectedly, behind bars; Alsace, 4th quarter of the 12th century. London, British Library MS Additional 42497.

However, Chaucer, whose apartment at Aldgate was about a 10 minute walk from the Tower, often portrays prison as much more communal and permeable than we might imagine.

Take Palamon and Arcite of The Knight’s Tale for example. The knights share an imprisoned space, and though both are sentenced “to dwellen in prisoun / Perpetuelly,” they manage to leave their tower (I. 1023-4). Moreover, while imprisoned, the two characters have a close connection with the outside world. Emily’s garden shares a wall with their prison tower, and the two knights can gaze out at the seeming freedom of the beautiful maiden:

And so bifel, by aventure or cas,

That thurgh a wyndow, thikke of many a barre

Of iren greet and square as any sparre,

He cast his eye upon Emelya (l. I. 1074-7).[1] 

Even through this small, barred window, love’s arrow pierces the imprisoned knights. Though that arrow further ensnares the knights in a metaphorical prison of love-longing, the action also demonstrates that their physical prison space is not impenetrable.

Samson in Prison
Samson in his prison, looking out through a barred window like Palamon and Arcite in Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale; John Lydgate, Fall of Princes, England, c. 1450-c. 1460. London, British Library MS Harley 1766.

Julia Boffey details several other depictions of imprisonment in Chaucer’s corpus.[2] If we look closely at each of her examples, we again see the potential for permeability and/or community in an imprisoned space.

There is Perkyn, the protagonist of the Cook’s Tale, who is “somtyme lad with revel to Newegate” (l. I. 4402). Newgate prison was notorious for its vile conditions.[3] However, visitors were allowed inside the prison gates, and that Perkyn was “somtyme” in the prison could indicate that he was in and out of the space frequently.

Theseus’s prison in Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women is so accessible that Ariadne and her sister can hear him “compleynynge” from their chambers (l. 1971). And though Philomela, in the next LGW narrative, initially seems conquered, she is still able to give a woven cloth to a serving boy and communicate with her sister (ll. 2335-70).

Queen Imprisoned
A queen looks out of her prison cell upon the bustling world around her. The gate to the prison is open and her window is unbarred, perhaps indicating, along with the busy scene, the permeability of her prison space; Chroniques de France ou de St. Denis, Paris, 1332-1350. London, British Library MS Royal 16 G VI.

In actual prison situations, those prisoners who had the funds to live comfortably were able to study, read, write and communicate with their fellow inmates.[4] [Tune in next week to see my post about an imprisoned reader of Chaucer!] And those who wrote poetry from prison often used the prison as much more than an image of enclosure.

Prison could be a space of community and a space for creativity. Boethius, whom Chaucer translated, ultimately found answers to important philosophical questions through his prison experience. Moreover prison poets, like Charles d’Orleans and King James I of Scotland, wrote during their imprisonments to confront questions of fortune, providence, and even love.[5]

Paul in Prison
An imprisoned Paul gives a scroll to a messenger, demonstrating the creative and reflective possibilities of imprisonment; the Bible of Robert de Bello, England, c. 1240-1253. London, British Library MS Burney 3.

Notably, prison poets following Chaucer were often influenced by him and by Boethius mediated through him.[6] Chaucer, who was held captive briefly in 1360, had communicated something meaningful and perhaps even hopeful or positive about imprisoned experiences, and his writing inspired imprisoned poets in the medieval and early modern periods.

Mimi Ensley
PhD Candidate
Department of English
University of Notre Dame

Footnotes

1. Quotations are taken from The Riverside Chaucer. For a more extensive discussion of Palamon and Arcite’s prison space, see V.A. Kolve, “The Knight’s Tale and Its Settings,” in Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative (Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1984), 85-157.

2. Julia Boffey, “Chaucerian Prisoners: The Context of The Kingis Quair,” in Chaucer and Fifteenth-Century Poetry, eds. Julia Boffey and Janet Cowen (London: King’s College Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies, 1991), 84-103.

3. For details about the medieval Newgate, see Margery Bassett, “Newgate Prison in the Middle Ages,” Speculum 18.2 (1943): 233-46.

4. For one early modern prisoner’s experience building a reading and learning community in the Tower of London, see my article, “Reading Chaucer in the Tower: The Person Behind the Pen in an Early Modern Copy of Chaucer’s Works,” forthcoming in the Journal of the Early Book Society.

5. The TEAMS volume The Kingis Quair and Other Prison Poems is an excellent resource for these poets.

6. Mary-Jo Arn, “General Introduction,” in The Kingis Quair and Other Prison Poems, ed. Linne R. Mooney and Mary-Jo Arn (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2005).

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Super P[ow]iers

Avengers assemble!

First launched by Timely Comics 1941, and revived by Marvel in 1964, stories surrounding Captain America brought heroism to a new level as they combined contemporary needs with a superhuman figure (Howe 18).  While the popularity of the Avenger may have initially been based upon his status as a World War II super-soldier, the values that he exhibits stem from a long tradition of literary heroes and are still applicable today. Arguably defined as “personal values that philosophers since ancient times have put forward as defining personal excellence,” these attributes appear throughout heroic literature time and again (White vii). In fact, on their way through literary history from Aristotle to Captain America, they even make a pit stop in the fourteenth century alliterative poem, Piers Plowman.

In a comparison of Steve Rogers, alias Captain America, and the devout pilgrim of William Langland’s allegorical dream narrative, Piers Plowman, it is clear that their values conflate on multiple levels. In this blog post, I will address three moral values. These values — drawn from the construction of Captain America and explained throughout The Virtues of Captain America: Modern-Day Lessons on Character from a World War II Superhero by Mark White — are courage, responsibility, and humility.

Covetousness. William Langland, Piers Plowman; England, 1427; Oxford Bodleian MS Douce 104 fol. 27r.

While adherence to these values runs rampant throughout Piers Plowman, I am especially concerned with Passus VIII. Throughout lines 19-111, “Perkin the Plowman” (l. 1) converses with a knight and instructs him in the art of courage in the face of temptation, responsibility to himself and those he serves, and exhibiting humility with all beings that he encounters. (It could also be said that Piers is instructing the knight on how to defend himself against such “super villains” as Covetousness, Sloth, and Hunger.)

Sloth. William Langland, Piers Plowman; England, 1427; Oxford, Bodleian MS Douce 104 fol. 31r.

Thus, Piers challenges the knight to remain virtuous in the face of temptation and highlights the internal courage necessary for the promotion of pure judgement.

‘Sikerliche, sire knyhte,’ sayde Peris thenne,
‘Y shal swynke and swete and sowe for vs bothe,
And labory for tho thow louest al my lyf tyme,
In couenant þat thow kepe Holy Kerke and mysulue
Fro wastores and fro wikked men þat þis world struyen;’
…
‘And a ȝut a point,’ quod Peres, ‘Y preye ȝow of more:
Loke ȝe tene no tenaunt but treuthe wol assente;
And when ȝe mersyen eny man, late mercy be taxor
And mekenesse thy mayster, maugre Mede chekes.
And thogh pore men profre ȝow presentes and ȝyftes,
Nym him nat, and aunter thow mowe hit nauht deserue;
For thou shalt ȝelden hit, so may be, or sumdel abuggen hit.
Misbede nat thy bondeman—the bette may þou spede;
Thogh he be here thyn vnderlynge, in heuene, paraunter,
He worth rather reseyued and reuerentloker sitte:’
(Piers Plowman, ed. A.V.C. Schmidt, C.VIII.23-43)

‘Certainly, sir knight,’ said Piers then,
‘I shall toil and sweat and sow for us both
And labor for those you love all my lifetime,
On condition you protect Holy Church and me
From wasters and wicked men who spoil the world’
…
‘And still one point,’ I ask of you further:
Try not to trouble any tenant unless Truth agrees
And when you fine any man let Mercy be assessor
And Meekness your master, despite Meed’s moves
And though poor men offer you presents and gifts
Don’t take them on the chance your not deserving
For it may be you’ll have to return them or pay for them dearly.
Don’t hurt your bondman, you’ll be better off;
Though he’s your underling here, it may happen in heaven
He’ll be sooner received and more honorably seated.
(Economou pp. 70-71, ll. 19-44)

Hunger. William Langland, Piers Plowman; England, 1427; Oxford, Bodleian MS Douce 104 fol. 38r.

Ultimately, the values exhibited within this passage show that heroism does not necessarily mean that one has to be an Avenger or a devout pilgrim. Like Captain America, Piers is an advocate for the success of the common man, and their conflation proves that values and virtues can transcend both social classes and centuries.  The character of Piers is manifest as a plowman instructing a knight, proving that even in the fourteenth century—and like today—virtues can be found among all social classes and depend more on personal integrity than anything else. Furthermore, as possibly the most celebrated “knight” today, Captain America proves that these values have not been lost, despite the six centuries separating his wars from those of the Piers’ compatriot. Through the success of Captain America and the entire collective of the Avengers within pop culture today, it is clear that just as these values can transcend societal levels in Piers Plowman, so too can they transcend the centuries, remaining valuable to people throughout time, and even appearing in theaters today.

Angela Lake
MA Candidate
Department of English
University of Notre Dame

Sources:
Howe, Sean. Marvel Comics: The Untold Story. New York: Harper, 2012. Print.

Langland, William, and Derek Pearsall. Piers Plowman. Exeter, UK: U of Exeter, 2008. Print.

Langland, William, and George Economou. William Langland’s Piers Plowman: The C Version: A Verse Translation.Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania, 1996. Print.

White, Mark D. The Virtues of Captain America: Modern-day Lessons on Character from a World War II Superhero. John Wiley & Sons, Inc: UK: West Sussex, 2014. Print.