The Owl and the Nightingale

Written anonymously (sometimes attributed to Nicholas de Guildford of Dorsetshire)

in Dorset at the middle of the thirteenth century, The owl and the nightingale,, is an
interesting account of the attempts to find a proper literary form. The poem betrays the
hesitation of English poets between the Old Anglo-Saxon devices and those imported
from France. Written in 2,000 lines of octosyllabic couplets, it describes a debate
between the sober owl and the merry nightingale as to their respective merits. The
debate follows the rules of the scholastic disputations, as they were held in the law
schools and universities. Both contestants use every device of medieval rhetoric to
prove that they are of the highest use to mankind. During the debate they touch upon
nearly every topic of contemporary interest: fore-knowledge, music, confession, papal
missions, ethics and morals, happy marriage and adultery, and so on. In the end the
birds set out to meet the judge whose verdict remains concealed. 1The owl symbolises
the old serious manner of singing, whilst the nightingale stands for the new minne-
poetry. Later in the story, the nightingale fights for outward beauty, while the owl
aims at worldly life and moral beauty. The allegory may represent the argument
between asceticism and pleasure, philosophy and art, or the older didactic poetry and
the newer secular love poetry. Conversational diction, humor, and dramatic touches
make this poem one of the best of the period. 2 Critics have also suggested that the owl
stands for the religious poet and the nightingale for the poet of love.

Pearl
Pearl3 is a Middle English alliterative poem written in the late fourteenth century and
attributed to the Gawain poet.4 The poem, a dream vision, is composed of 101 stanzas
of 12 lines each with the ababababbcbc rhyme scheme. Stanzas are grouped in units of
five (except for XV, which has six). The poem may be divided into three parts: an
introduction, a dialogue between the two main characters in which the Pearl instructs
the narrator, and a description of the New Jerusalem with the narrator's awakening.
In sections I - IV (stanzas 1- 20), the narrator, distraught at the loss of his Pearl,
falls asleep and begins to dream that he is transported to a beautiful country.
Wandering by the side of a beautiful stream, he thinks that paradise is on the other
shore and he attempts to cross the stream. He meets a young maid whom he identifies
as his Pearl. She welcomes him.
In sections V - VII (stanzas 21 - 35), he asks the maid whether she is the pearl he
has lost. She explains to him that he has lost nothing, that his pearl is merely a rose
which has naturally withered. The narrator expresses his wish to cross to her side, but

1
http://user.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/~holteir/companion/Navigation/Anonymous_Texts/
Owl_and_the_Nightingale/owl_and_the_nightingale.html, last accessed on January, 3, 2006.
2
The Owl and the Nightingale, in The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-05, retrieved from
http://www.bartleby.com/65/ow/OwlNNigh.html, last accessed on January 3, 2006.
3
The manuscript, Cotton Nero A.x is in the British Museum. J.R.R. Tolkien and E.V. Gordon began the first
modern edition of the text in the 1920s, but it remained unpublished until 1953.
4
Apart from having created Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Pearl, he may have written also Patience,
and Cleanness and St. Erkenwald.
she says that he must resign himself to the will and mercy of God. She also tells him
that the Lamb has taken her as His queen.
In sections VIII - XI (stanzas 36 - 60), the narrator wonders whether she has
replaced Mary as Queen of Heaven. She responds that all are equal members of the
body of Christ and recounts the parable of the vineyard. He does not agree with her
saying that God rewards every man by his works, yet she re-asserts that God gives the
same gift of Christ's redemption to all.
In sections XII - XV (stanzas 61 - 81), she instructs him on several aspects of sin,
repentance, grace and salvation. She wears the Pearl of Great Price because she has
been washed in the blood of the Lamb. That is why she advises him to forsake all and
buy this pearl.
With sections XVI - XX (stanzas 82 - 101), the poem ends. The narrator asks
about the heavenly Jerusalem and he hears that it is the city of God. He would like to
go there, but, according to the beautiful maid, this is forbidden by God. They walk
upstream, he sees the city across the stream – described in a paraphrase of the
Apocalypse. In his desperate attempt to cross, he plunges into the river and thus he
awakes from the dream. The conclusion of the poem is that he will resolve to fulfill
the will of God.

The Age of Chaucer

The fourteenth century marked the formation of the English nation. Feudalism
disintegrated rapidly, the first element of bourgeois society appeared on the stage of
English history, the various regions of the country were unified in one state.
An extremely important element concerning the fourteenth century English
literature is that the works of this age were written primarily in English. This resulted
from the fact that law courts and schools started to use English instead of French.
Irrespective of the way literature was being produced in England during this time
and, whatever was written in England, expressing English thought and reflecting
English social and intellectual conditions can rightly be considered a part of the
national literature. Medieval literature was highly didactic, since almost everything
written had a moral purpose, and it was highly impersonal.
Most of the fourteenth century works was anonymous and the main interest was
in the poem rather than in the poet and reproduction by hand gave literature a
communal character. The use of old, authoritative sources was considered something
that added value to books.

The Land of Cockaygne

The Land of Cockaygne is an anonymous poem composed in the fourteenth century and
connected with the Peasant’s Rising. It survived in only one manuscript, London,
British Library, Harley MS 913. There are three main traditions that are drawn on in the
poem: classical tradition: going back to Lucian's True History, a Greek work of the
second century AD, Christian Tradition, as the poem includes descriptions of both
Heaven and the Earthly Paradise and Goliardic verse. The Land of Cokaygne contains
one Latin poem of the twelfth century (Carmina Burana 222) which is recited by an
abbas Cucaniensis, an 'abbot of Cockaygne' who presides over drinking and
gambling, and the descriptions of the two abbeys in Cockaygne, which invert the
usual norms of religious life, echo themes found elsewhere in Goliardic poetry (e.g.
the description of the ordo vagorum in Cum in orbem universum, Carmina Burana
219).5

John Gower
John Gower (1328-1408) is a writer who used three languages in order to create his
poetry, which is enough proof to demonstrate that the fourteenth century was an age
of linguistic transition, when writers eventually started to use English. His poems are
political, historical or moral. John Gower wrote Speculum Meditantis (Miroir de
l’Homme) in French, Vox Clamantis in Latin and Confessio Amantis in English. Vox
Clamantis focuses on different events that happened in the state of England and
includes commentaries on the Peasants’ Revolt. Gower seems to take the side of the
aristocracy and to appreciate Richard II’s techniques of suppressing the revolt.
Gower’s most admired work, Confessio Amantis, a 30,000-line poem, written in
octosyllabic rhyming couplets, is structured similarly to a Christian confession which
represents the narrative frame within which the narrator introduces individual tales.
Confessio Amantis is a dialogue first between the poet as a lover, and Venus, and
afterwards between the poet as a penitent, and Genius, whom Venus assigns to him as
a confessor. The seven deadly sins are discussed and illustrated by tales borrowed
from Ovid, Josephus, Vincent de Bauvais, Statius, the Gesta Romanorum, the Bible,
and other sources. Double-edged epigrams mark the divisions in the text.

William Langland
William Langland (?1332-?1400) wrote The vision of Piers Concerning Piers the
Plowman,6 a poem revolving around the theme of the dream and which combines
social satire with religious allegory.
The poem shows Langland’s sympathy with the peasants oppressed by the feudal
lords and by the clergy. The name of Piers has become a by-name for an honest, hard
working, simple living labourer. As late as the seventeenth century – on the eve of the
English Bourgeois Revolution – Milton described Langland as a master of anti-feudal
satire.7 Therefore, the various adventures of Lady Meed (Bribery), the search of Piers
for Do-Well, Do-Bet and Do-Best, the confession of the Seven Deadly Sins represent
a glimpse into the corrupt ways of fourteenth century society. Even if the characters
are not flesh-and-blood characters, Langland succeeds in picturing them as real people
who are well individualised both physically and morally. The poem contains frequent
allusions to John Wyclif, Wat Tyler and John Ball.
5
Information provided at http://www.soton.ac.uk/~wpwt/trans/cockaygn/cockaygn.htm, last accessed on
January 3, 2006.
6
William Langland is generally thought to be the author of Piers Plowman, but there is little proof
demonstrating Langland's existence. The single-author hypothesis of Piers has been disputed by several
medievalists and text critics. John Matthews is the first one who considered Piers as the work of 2-5 authors.
Charlotte Brewer suggests that scribes and their supervisors could be regarded as editors with semi-authorial
roles in the production of Piers Plowman and other early modern texts.
7
Valeria Alcay (ed.) (1972), p. 58.
 The structure of the poem is a commonplace in medieval literature; it is a vision,
meaning an allegorical work of a religious, didactic or satirical character presented by
means of a succession of pictures seen in the form of a dream. It is written in
unrhymed alliterative verse, divided into sections called passus (Latin for step) or
cantos. There are three dream visions: the first one in which Holy Church and Lady
Meed (representing the temptation of riches) woo the dreamer, the second one in
which Piers leads a crowd of penitents in search of St. Truth, and the third one as the
vision of Do-well (the practice of the virtues), Do-bet (in which Piers becomes the
Good Samaritan practicing charity), and Do-best (in which the simple plowman is
identified with Jesus himself). The structure of the poem is the following:
In The Prologue Langland falls asleep on a May morning on Malvern Hills, from
which, in his dream of vision, he sees the field full of folk, the high tower of Truth and
the deep dungeon of Wrong.
In passus 1-4 The Holy Church tells the poet about Falsehood and Lady Bribery
who are going to get married. The seven deadly sins are associated with the lives of
nuns and monks, merchants, etc. while Truth becomes a supreme aim of all the
penitents. Piers Plowman appears now for the first time, assuring all the company that
he knows the way leading to the tower of Truth. In passus 6 he puts them to work.
Passus 7 introduces the bull of pardon sent to Piers by Truth. A priest declares that it
is not valid and the discussion between the two is so hot that the poet awakens.
The second part speaks about the supreme aim of life: to do well, to do better and
to do best. Against a background of extremely complicated allegories, the poet falls
asleep several times, contemplates and criticises the low moral standards of his time.
Plowman leaves wisdom to his son. This social wisdom is intellectual wealth, and it is
as significant as any physical property: heuristics preserved in wisdom can be as
effective a tool for social reproduction as the plow is for the generation of physical
sustenance.8
The Vision of Piers Concerning Piers the Plowman may be considered both a
theological and a religious work which blend medieval allegory with numerous
folklore allusions, such as proverbs and references to the rural life.
Leviţchi considers that a novelty of Langland’s poem, apart from the stylistic
devices that he used, is the theme of empathy, illustrated by the participation of all
the social classes and strata in fieldwork, “the way to Truth”. Its implications found a
belated reflection in A King’s Leason, a story by William Morris, who was so familiar
with the fourteenth century England; with the difference that by making Matthias
Corvinus oblige the noblemen to fieldwork under the peasants’ mocking eyes, Morris
places his narrative in the service of transparent revolutionary ideals, in accord
either with the ideals of the Peasants’ Revolts of 1381, or with such literary imitations
as Pierce the Ploughman’s Crede (ab. 1394), for which Langland’s poem was a guide
and a stimulus.9
8
Michael D. C. Drout, "Piers's Good Will: Langland's Politics of Reform and Inheritance in the C-Text" , in
Thomas H. Bestul and Thomas N. Hall (eds.), Allen J. Frantzen (online ed.), Essays in Medieval Studies, vol 13,
Social Practice in the Middle Ages, Proceedings of the Illinois Medieval Association, 1996, p. 53, retrieved
from http://www.illinoismedieval.org/ems/VOL13/13ch5.html, last accessed on January 10, 2006.
9
Leon Leviţchi (1974), p. 99.
 We will take a look at the poem’s several variants, as the number of passus
varies. In the second chapter of The End of the Middle Ages of The Cambridge History of
English and American Literature, we can see that what is now called the A-text of Piers
the Plowman is not the first version of the poem. It seems that, encouraged by the
success of his work and impelled by his increasing indignation at the corruptions of
the age, William Langland took up his poem again in 1377 and expanded it to more
than twice its original length. The lines of the earlier version he left essentially
unchanged; but he inserted, here and there, additions of greater or less length,
suggested now by some word or phrase of the original text, now by events in the
world about him and his meditations on them; and he rejected the whole of the final
passus, containing an imaginary account of his death, to replace it by a continuation
of the vision of Do-well, Do-better and Do-best longer than the whole of the original
version of the poem.10 If we try to differentiate between the three texts, we may say
that the A-text had contained twelve passus in all, with a total of 2567 lines and it is
made up of a prologue and four passus of the vision of Lady Meed, four passus of the
vision of Piers the Plowman and four passus of the vision of Do-well, Do-better and
Do-best. The B-text includes the 2567 lines of the A-text, and then continues for nine
more passus, making a total of 7242 lines. Around 1393 (according to Skeat) or 1398
(according to Jusserand), Langland revised the text for the second time, and wrote the
third variant, known as the C-text which numbers 7357 lines. Its relation to the B-text
may be roughly stated as consisting in the insertion of a few passages, the
rearrangement of a considerable number and the rewriting of a number of others with
more or less change of content or of emphasis, but, on the whole, as involving no such
striking differences from the B-text as exist between that and the A-text.11
The same Skeat and Jusserand ascribe to William Langland another poem in
alliterative verse, Richard the Redeless, which draws on the last years of the reign of
Richard II. Whether William Langland is or is not the author of the poem, we cannot
know for sure; if we attempt to compare The vision of Piers Concerning Piers the
Plowman with Richard the Redeless, we can easily notice huge differences in diction,
in metre, in sentence structure, in methods of organising material, in number and kind
of rhetorical devices, in power of visualising objects and scenes presented, in topics
of interest to the author and in views on social.12 The poem is otherwise unfinished.

Prose Writers
Sir John Mandeville is the author of Voyages and Travels of Syr John Mandeville, a book
dealing with adventures outside England: Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Babylon,
Jerusalem, India, etc.
Immediately popular when it first appeared around 1356, The Travels of Syr John
Mandeville became the standard account of the East for several centuries—a work that
went on to influence luminaries as diverse as Leonardo da Vinci, Swift, and
10
A. W. Ward and A. R. Waller (eds), The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18
Volumes (1907–21), Volume II. The End of the Middle Ages, I. “Piers the Plowman” and its Sequence, §
3. Theories concerning Authorship; The Three Texts, fragment retrieved from
http://www.bartleby.com/212/0125.html, last accessed on January 10, 2006.
11
Ibidem.
12
Ibidem.
Coleridge. The book is in fact a literary fraud as it includes a series of lies and
exaggerations. Mandeville claims to have served in the Great Khan’s army and to
have journeyed to the lands beyond—countries populated by dog-headed men,
cannibals, Amazons, and pygmies.

Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400) is honoured as England’s first poet of world stature.

He brings a new spirit to fourteenth century English literature, a spirit equally
opposed to the theological and scholastic interpretation of the phenomena and to the
traditional versification of medieval poetry.13
When Chaucer was born, Edward III of the House of Plantagenet was on the
throne. Edward III was the son of the weak Edward II and of Isabella of France, who
had both misruled the country. Although guilty of breaches of good faith, frivolity,
extravagance, and self-indulgence, Edward III made a sincere effort to reform the
government and we may say that to a large extent he managed to be a fairly good
ruler.
Because of the royal house’s interest in warfare and its
willingness to employ innovations instead of the traditional
methods of fighting, England in Chaucer’s century became the
dominant military power of Europe; it achieved its supremacy
in the fourth decade of the century and held it for a hundred
years.14 The feudal system was based on the idea that the king
was the owner of lands, yet he did not hold the entire realm but
apportioned it out to the most important lords on the basis of
favour and friendship. In their turn, the lords usually granted
their lands to sub-tenants. The other social class was
represented by peasants. There were peasant freemen, some of
whom owned their own land, but most of whom held land from superior lords under
certain conditions, there were also villains (called in this way as they were attached to
a vill or a manor), who were neither free nor slave.
At the time of Chaucer’s birth, according to critical and historical accounts in
1343, England was inhabited by less than 3,000,000 people. Among the important
landowners were the monasteries, as the clergy constituted an important element of
the feudal system. As continuing corporations, monasteries never relinquished what
they owned; and, by no means of gifts and purchases, they constantly increased the
size of their estates. But not all of the land of England was in large holdings, for the
peasants had a tremendous hunger for property. Slowly, but with almost a constant
acceleration, many peasants rose from near slavery to full freedom.15
An important unfortunate event which occurred between 1348 and 1349 was the
first visitation of the Black Death, a combination of pneumonic and bubonic plagues,
13
Valeria Alcay (ed.) (1972), p. 63.
14
Edwin J. Howard (1964), p. 17.
15
Idem, p. 21.
a dreaded disease which killed between a third and a half of the whole population of
England during the fourteenth century. The immediate result of so many deaths was a
great shortage of labour, which brought about a consequent increase in wages after
1349. This made it possible for the villains to desert their ancestral lands to look for
better working conditions and better wages, in spite of the fact that Edward II tried to
keep the wages stable by issuing an ordinance in 1349, in cohesion with the
Parliament that enacted a Statute of Laborers in 1351 to fix the price of labour at the
rate that prevailed before the plague.
Another event to be mentioned is the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381, which has been
described by Edwin Howard as an effort to get rid of unjust taxation (characterized by
the hated poll taxes initiated by the Chancellor, Archbishop Sudbury), to commute
labour services into a payment of 4 d.a an acre and to allow the serf to work for
wages.16
Many books hold the view that the Middle Ages was a time of great spirituality.
Just by taking a glance at The General Prologue of The Canterbury Talesone can easily
notice that, with the exception of the Parson, who is rather an atypical character, the
representatives of the church had their eyes very much on things of the terrestrial
world. In fact, in Chaucer’s time mysticism had been replaced by the steady growth of
materialism and the great religious movements, with their contempt for the joys and
sorrows of earthly life, were a thing of the past.17
We know almost nothing of Chaucer’s education, with the exception that at an
early age he learned French, as it was the language that he had to speak at school, and
that he also studied Latin. He must have learnt Italian as well, as several sources of his
poems are to be found in Italian literature and they were not available in translation at
the time.
In 1357 he became a page in the household of Elizabeth, Countess of Ulster and
Connaught, and wife of Prince Lionel, Duke of Clarence. Then he started his military
service with the English army in France in 1359. The next step in his career was when
he became an esquire in 1368. This is also the year when he had his first mission to
the Continent.
In 1369 Chaucer was in the army under the command of John of Gaunt when it
went on a raid into Picardy. In the same year Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster and the
first wife of John of Gaunt, died, quite a significant event in Chaucer’s career, as her
death was the subject of his first lengthy poem.
In 1374, at Windsor on St. George’s Day, April 23, Edward III granted Geoffrey
Chaucer a pension of a daily pitcher of wine, a gift granted to him on account of his
civil service which had nothing to do with his poetry.

16
Idem, p. 25.
17
Idem, p. 33.
 The starting date for The Canterbury Tales is 1387, which is believed to be the
year of his wife’s death. It has even been suggested that Chaucer made a pilgrimage to
Canterbury in connection with Philippa’s death, although we do not have any proof.
We would rather adopt the second theory concerning his trip to Canterbury, that he
had often travelled the Pilgrims’ Way to Canterbury when passing between London
and Dover to Calais, the first
important town in France which was
after crossing the Channel.
Chaucer was appointed deputy
forester for the Royal Forest of North
Petherton in Somerset in June 1391.
The coronation of King Henry
IV occurred on October 13, 1399. One of
Henry’s first acts on the very day that he
received the crown was to renew
Chaucer’s annual pension for 20 pounds
granted in 1394 and the butt of wine
granted in 1397. Henry added to these
grants an annuity of 40 marks “for
services rendered and to be
rendered.”18
According to the inscription on his
tomb, at Westminster Abbey,
Chaucer died on October 25, 1400,
when he was fifty-six or fifty- seven.
This is also the year of a plague which
struck, yet we cannot connect
Chaucer’s death to it. Therefore, we
may say that the keynotes of
Chaucer’s life are its variety and comparative comfort. First a page, then a squire, and
then one of King Edward III’s own personal attendants, later on a soldier fighting in
the Hundred Years’ War with France, in he became a Controller of the Custom on
wool and later wine in the port of London.
The sheer variety of his experience of life, the world of books mingling with the
world of affairs, the tactful subservience of the diplomat, the elegant refinement of the
courtier, the more straightforward practicality of the businessman, the expectations of
a sensitive yet privileged medieval male – all these must figure in any full estimation
of who Chaucer the man was.19

18
Idem, p. 51.
19
Rob Pope (2001), pp. 8-9.