BOOK OF THE DUCHESS, THE

byGeoffrey Chaucer

(ca. 1370)

CHAUCER’s first extant sustained literary effort,The Book of The Duchessis a DREAM VISION in octosyllabic couplets that is concerned with the death of Blanche, duchess of Lancaster and wife of Chaucer’s very powerful patron, JOHN OF GAUNT. The poem, a narrative of some 1,334 lines, was purportedly written at the request of the bereaved widower.Whether it was written shortly after the duchess’s death from the plague in 1369 or sometime later is a matter of some scholarly debate. In the poem an insomniac narrator is finally able to fall asleep after reading the tale of Ceys and Alcyone from Ovid’sMetamorphoses. He dreams that he is awakened by the song of birds to find himself within a chamber adorned with stained glass windows that tell the story of the fall of Troy, and frescoes that depict scenes from theROMAN DE LA ROSE. From his chamber, he rides out with a group of hunters to seek the “hert”—a pun on “hart” and “heart.”While in the wood, he encounters a knight dressed in black. The mourning knight speaks to the poet about his sorrow, which he describes figuratively as a chess match during which his opponent Fortune has destroyed his happiness by taking his queen. The literal-minded narrator sees no great sorrow in this loss, and the Black Knight goes on to describe at great length the beauty of “fair White,” the woman he loved (Whiteis the English translation of “Blanche”), and how he met and wooed her. The apparently slow-witted narrator still cannot understand the knight’s grief until the frustrated lover blurts out plainly “She ys ded!” (Benson 1987, l.1309), at which the narrator expresses his own pity and thus ends the “herthunting.” The knight returns to his “long castle” (a pun on Gaunt’s title, the duke of Lancaster—that is, long castle), and the dreamer awakens. While no extant manuscript of the poem attributes it to Chaucer, it is clearly his work, and he refers to it both in the prologue to theLEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN, where he calls it “the Deeth of Blaunche the Duchesse” (l.F 418; G 406) and in hisRetractionto theCANTERBURY TALES, where he calls it “the book of the Duchesse” (X, 1086). Scholars have noted that Chaucer owes much to courtly French sources, including theROMAN DE LA ROSE; Jean FROISSART’sParadys d’amour; Guillaume de MACHAUT’sDit de la Fonteinne amoreseandRemede de Fortune; and in particular Machaut’sJugement dou Roy de Behainge, in which a noble woman mourns the death of her lover. The consolation for the lady’s death in the poem has been compared to that offered in BOETHIUS’sCONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY, though Chaucer’s translation of that work was probably not made until well after he wroteThe Book of the Duchess.

Critics have focused on a number of aspects of the poem. The relationship of the Ceys and Alcyone story to the knight’s grief is unclear, though it certainly sets an appropriate mood for the poem. The question of the poet’s own troubled mind that prevents his sleeping is another area of critical concern. Chaucer’s use of the allegory of the chess game has interested some critics, while others have debated whether or not the knight in the poem is intended to represent John of Gaunt. But most important is the question of whether the dreamer is naïve and therefore blunders into the knight’s final declaration or is a subtle psychologist whose naïve pose deliberately draws the knight out. In any case the realistic psychology of the poem has particularly impressed modern readers of the poem.

The most significant aspect ofThe Book of the Duchessis Chaucer’s deliberate decision to write a courtly elegy in English. It was the first time that English had been used for serious poetry of the court, and Chaucer’s success in the genre—his poem, dealing as it does with a serious event of real significance, is much more widely admired than any of his French models—ensured the establishment of a true, serious literary tradition in English.

■ Adams, Jenny. “Pawn Plays with Knight’s Queen: Playing with Chess in theBook of the Duchess,”Chaucer Review34 (1999): 125–138.

■ Boardman, Phillip C.“Courtly Language and the Strategy of Consolation in theBook of the Duchess,”English Literary History44 (1977): 567–579.

■ Bolens, Guillemette, and Paul Beekman Taylor. “The Game of Chess inChaucer’s Book of the Duchess,”Chaucer Review33 (1998): 325–334.

■ Butterfield, Ardis. “Lyric and Elegy inThe Book of the Duchess,”Medium Aevum60 (1991): 33–60.

■ Bronson, Bertrand H. “TheBook of the DuchessReopened,”PMLA67 (1952): 863–881.

■ Clemen,Wolfgang.Chaucer’s Early Poetry. Translated by C. A. M. Sym. London:Methuen, 1963.

■ Shoaf, R. A.“Stalking the Sorrowful H(e)art: Penitential Lore and the Hunt Scene in Chaucer’sThe Book of the Duchess,”JEGP78 (1979): 313–324.

■ Travis, Peter. “White,”SAC22 (2000): 1–66.

■ Wimsatt, James.Chaucer and the French Love Poets: The Background of the Book of the Duchess. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968.