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CHAUCER AND PETRARCH: TWO NOTES ON THE

"CLERKES TALE"

I. THE ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF INDEBTEDNESS TO PETRARCH

The words which Chaucer puts into the mouth of his Clerk, expressing obligation to Petrarch for the story of Griselda, have hitherto figured in discussion chiefly in their bearing on a matter of biographical detail—as evidence, accepted or rejected, for the actual meeting of the two poets. In this aspect the passage has been debated back and forth for nearly two centuries, and has become stereotyped at length into one of those haunting problems from which excessive treatment has banished all interest and profit. In what I have to present concerning the form of Chaucer's acknowledgment, I wish that it were possible to avoid allusion to this biographical question altogether, for I am truly not concerned with it, but only with the explanation and illustration of the artistic or literary technique employed. Still, since it is true that my conclusions have a bearing upon the matter, not revolutionary nor even novel-for they will only confirm the attitude of conservative scholarship since Tyrwhitt, which is merely agnostic-I shall not perhaps wholly escape some entanglement with the literature of the controversy.

Among the arguments of those who have seen in the Clerk's Prologue satisfactory evidence for the actual meeting of Petrarch and Chaucer, no stronger one has been found than the contention that the form of Chaucer's acknowledgment is exceptional and unique, and corresponds, therefore, to exceptional circumstances in his relation to the author from whom he has drawn, viz., personal acquaintance. To M. Jusserand' in 1896, as to Godwin' in 1803,

1 Jusserand, in the Nineteenth Century for June, 1896, p. 996: "A statement of this sort is of a very unusual kind. Chaucer derived the subjects of his tales and of many of his minor poems from a variety of authors, living or dead, and he never went into so many particulars. It seems prima facie obvious that this unusual way corresponds to an unusual intention, and that, instead of merely giving his authority, he wanted here to commemorate and preserve the remembrance of an event the souvenir of which was dear to him."

2 Godwin, Life of Chaucer, Vol. II, p. 150: "We may defy all the ingenuity of críticism to invent a different solution for the simple and decisive circumstance of Chaucer having 179]

this is one of the two considerations which seem to raise a possibility of much imaginative appeal to the level of an historical certainty. I have no biographical interest in challenging this conclusion, but the premise upon which it is based affords me a convenient foil against which to define my purpose in touching upon this question: It is, to show that the acknowledgment which Chaucer makes to Petrarch corresponds exactly to a general method used in the citation of literary sources in a related form of ancient literature, the Ciceronian dialogue.

The suggestion that the conclusions, drawn from a study of the method of citing literary sources in the ancient dialogue might be of service to students of modern literature, I owe to my colleague, Professor Manly, who pointed out to me the similarity of Chaucer's expression of obligation in the Clerk's Tale to certain typical instances which I had adduced from ancient literature and presented in a paper read1 before the Philological Society of our university.

I there explained that the dialogue, as a dramatic reproduction of conversation, seeks to maintain the fiction that oral communication is the normal method for the exchange of ideas between contemporaries, and that therefore, so far as possible, it avoids allusion to books even in acknowledgment of literary obligations. When such acknowledgment is to be made, it places the characters of the dialogue in some relation of personal communication with the sources of the ideas presented. This usage I illustrated in some detail from the dialogues of Cicero, which I grouped into two classes: (1) dialogues the dramatic setting of which lies wholly in the past; (2) dialogues contemporary with the time of the writer, in which he himself participates; here I differentiated again between expressions of obligation (a) attributed

gone out of his way, in a manner which he has employed on no other occasion, to make the clerk of Oxenford confess that he learned the story from Petrarca, and even assign the exact place of Petrarca's residence in the concluding part of his life." M. Jusserand (pp. 997 f.) also makes much of this last point, showing by new evidence that, contrary to the usual belief, Petrarch was actually at Padua, and not at Arqua, just at the time of Chaucer's sojourn in Italy. But Petrarch whether at Arqua or Padua was still Petrarcha Patavinus.

1 At the second meeting of the winter quarter, 1906: "Literary Sources of Cicero's Brutus and the Technique of Citation in Dialogue." It is published in the American Journal of Philology for July, 1906.

to other interlocutors, and (b) those which the author himself, as a speaker in the dialogue, makes.

Of the first type the De oratore affords a good illustration. Here, in Book I, the scholastic discussion concerning the nature of rhetoric and its relation to philosophy and statesmanship is set forth. From other sources we know that this problem was discussed with special zeal in the second half of the second century B. C. by Greek philosophers and rhetoricians in Athens and in Rhodes. It is certain that from their writings Cicero had his knowledge of this controversy and drew from them the materials which he places in the mouths of his characters. They, however, in the dramatic mechanism of the dialogue do not once refer to these writings, but profess to have their knowledge of the subject from actual conversations and debates with the philosophers or rhetoricians in question. This is the consistent method of allusion to sources contemporary with the dramatic date of the dialogue employed throughout the treatise. Conspicuous writers of an earlier time are cited freely enough (“Aristoteles, Isocrates, Theophrastus ait, dicit," etc.), but wherever allusion or acknowledgment is made to a contemporary or to some one of the immediate past, it is through some dramatic device of personal association or communication.

Of the second class (2, a) the Academica priora (Lucullus) affords a conspicuous illustration. In this dialogue we have a treatise drawn from a work of the Greek philosopher Antiochus, which Cicero has, in fact, almost transcribed. This obligation, however, he does not acknowledge directly, but through the means of a dramatic situation, as follows: Lucullus is represented as having come to Alexandria as proquæstor with Antiochus, where they met one Heraclitus of Tyre, a friend of Antiochus and a fellowphilosopher. They had just received a remarkable book of Philo, the master of Antiochus, which was so revolutionary in its doctrine that for several days it afforded material for discussions between Antiochus, Heraclitus, and other philosophers, to which Lucullus listened with great interest and participation. As a result he mastered the subject thoroughly and so explains his ability to present the views of Antiochus in the dialogue, the

scene of which is laid some years later at Rome. This case is one of peculiar interest, because Cicero later became dissatisfied with the setting he had given the matter, since the person of Lucullus seemed on reflection inappropriate for a display of interest and erudition in such matters. Accordingly, in a second edition of the work (Academica posteriora) he allotted the principal rôle to Varro. But Varro in turn does not acknowledge a literary obligation to Antiochus, but professes to reproduce from memory the lectures which he had heard in his youth.

cases.

The last type (2, b), in which the writer himself as an interlocutor in the dialogue refers matter derived from a literary source to oral communication or personal intercourse with the author of the literary source in question, was, for the purposes of my investigation into the sources of the Brutus, the most important of all. Examples of this type were also found where it was possible to show with reasonable certainty that the same method of acknowledgment of literary sources was employed as in the former That is, as soon as the author himself steps into the scene of the dialogue drama which he has created, he becomes subject to the same rule as he applies to the other characters of the dialogue. For the purposes of our present inquiry it is not necessary that I should illustrate this form by detailed examples. I will only add that by recognition of the nature of this method (which was yielded by a comparison of examples from Cicero's philosophical dialogues) it was possible to recover important fragments of pre-Ciceronian literature, which have hitherto passed for narratives derived from Cicero's boyhood acquaintance with the men from whom he professes to have heard them.

The principle of dialogue composition thus set forth is a natural one: it rests upon the universal psychology (so to speak) of the situation, rather than upon any recognized rule or tradition of art. It is not, so far as I am aware, alluded to in any ancient discussions of the theory of dialogue, unless it be implied in the suggestive phrase of Demetrius (De elocutione 224): ó diáλoyos μιμεῖται αὐτοσχεδιάζοντα — “the dialogue reproduces the tone of extempore or improvised speech." Neither has it been formulated by any modern students of the ancient dialogue, though in practice

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