Chaucer, Books, and the Poetic Library

Introduction Though books have a prominent role in Chaucer's fiction, the library does not. Chaucer coins the word "library" in his translation of The Consolation of Philosophy--known as the Boece--and uses that word just twice throughout his fictional corpus. He uses the word "study" as a synonym but employs that word just twice also, both times in The Canterbury Tales. As Chaucer is perceived as a great commentator on the pains and salvations of reading, and since libraries are a fountainhead for medieval reading, there is an interesting discord in his benchmarking literacy while invalidating the reading center. That Chaucer should be almost incognizant of the preservers of textual knowledge shows the library as a virtual nonentity for English readers of the 14th century. It is as though the library is an empty estate, a medieval orphan to a new birthright of reading reestablished by Chaucer by a melding of thought between traditions of classical and Christian reading. It is obvious to the 21st century that the reading space should accommodate texts if readers have a stake in suitable collections. Chaucer wrote when the library was a vested fulcrum to language and education. Although public libraries did not make their appearance until the early 1400s, as the literacy of the growing merchant class increased, there was an attachment between public life and private reading. [1]. Church and legal administrators required the study of history and theology, and Cambridge and Oxford universities flourished as collections increased for their scholars. [2] In the 14th and 15th centuries, the new "secular mind" became appreciative of classics after a long decline of Greek and Latin study. [3] A vigorous collection of manuscripts revived classical learning while preparing discussions on religious, moral, educational, and political issues. The personal library began to appear in this time, although lay and church writers had small collections of books before 1400 that functioned as libraries. [4] Depositories were increased regardless of location, funds, size and function. Raymond Irwin writes, "It is in Chaucer that we first meet with the word 'study,' the history of the study and the history of the domestic library after all, are much the same thing." [5] Thomas Kelly notes that Chaucer was "the possessor of a considerable library," and this acquisition of books was part of the transformation of English letters, the "revival of English as a literary language." [6] If one reads The Legend of Good Women's "sixty bokes olde and newe / Hast thow thyself" (LGW Text G 273-274)[7] as autobiographical, then Chaucer's library was a "considerable collection" in the fourteenth century, especially since a single "book" could actually have been a multivolume compilation of many independent works. [8] It would be worthwhile to synthesize the records of royal decrees, letters of appointments, diplomatic itineraries, wills, purchases and transfers of property, lawsuits, and other public documents to embed Chaucer's fiction with biographic fact. Such research could identify where Chaucer read or how he procured his materials. [9] As he had multiple sources of The Consolation of Philosophy, the conditions in which he read become pivotal, particularly if he translated at a site whose purpose was to facilitate reading by offering multiple texts and scholars who could access them. Those who were trained to collect and catalog would have been a harbinger of expression for a fictional transmission of texts. Did Chaucer own the copies of The Consolation in a personal library, or did he access them at a cathedral, monastic, university, private, or royal library? If he had read inside the facilities at Canterbury, which held collections of depth, he would have found it a receptive institution "in the habit of lending books to persons who were not members of it, and even to laymen." [10] He could have requested interlibrary loans, as it was a "common method" to borrow through a "pledge" of security. …