A Conduct Book for Richard II (1994)

So Chaucer identifies, in one of his more explicit source references, the book which he has used for the description of Nature her parliament of fowls.(1) Unlike the olde bok totorn (110), the Macrobius text of commentary on Cicero's Somnium Scipionis, which is given at the outset as the basis for his vision, the Pleynt of Kynde reference appears halfway through the poem, midway through the dream vision, after the dreamer's guided tour through Venus' temple of brass coinciding with his identification of the time as St. Valentine's Day.(2) The mention of Alain (1125/30-1203) may seem important only insofar as it affords an opportunity to refer to the description of birds on Nature's gown, which the poet uses as the take-off point for five-stanza catalogue, bird by bird, of the avian assembly. But we suggest that Chaucer's allusion points to Alain's full discussion of love, the main points of which are incorporated into the Parliament composed for the young Richard II. The birds are like people. Dame Nature arranges their biological proceedings, the males' choosing of females the females' right of refusal, ritual that occurs on the traditional day of love. Nature is the vicar of God on earth. Her law is God's law. And if certain standards of conduct directly related to Alain's text are not met, the poet implies, the transgressors will be punished. Thus are the main outlines of Alain's thought incorporated into the story. In our view, then, the Parliament becomes an early type of conduct book, one which discreetly warns even as it praises, does so, as if in contention for a soper at oure aller cost, by fusing so much solas with its sentence as to render the teaching painless. The boy king - only thirteen years old in 1380-is very tactfully being prepared for marriage. There is no question that the primary theme of the poem is love,(3) notwithstanding some scholarship that identifies political polemic. The opening stanza with its first main clause, Al this mene I by Love (4) the narrator's dream experience in the garden of love both stress the importance of love in the poem. Nevertheless, there are also warnings about violations of the natural law. In speaking of Macrobius' (or Cicero's) book, Chaucer identifies the law of commune stressed by Scipio Africanus to the younger Scipio. Breakers of the law, and likerous folk (79) will be condemned to whirle aboute th'erthe alwey in peyne (80) until, many worlds later, they will be forgiven their wicked deeds. Such law its punishment are identified with love only indirectly at this point in the phrase, likerous folk, but the phrasing of the law is echoed in the later dream when the cuckoo says forthrightly that the tercels had better make up their minds, For comune spede (507), an explicit reference to the law of love as it works in the springtime, when the birds will procreate. Nothing is said in the dream of those who violate the law, only that the aristocratic eagles will defer the decision for year - naturally enough, since the law which Nature lays down as vicar of God on earth requires the lady's consent to any liaison the lady here says no. The earlier harsh judgment against the breakers of the law is not expressed in the resolution of the parliament, though it would be fair to say that Nature is fully in charge: the delay for the formel eagle is granted through Nature's mercy but must be ended in year's time, the extravagant gratitude the other fowls feel toward the goddesse of kynde (672) is for the opportunity to love, with the intent to procreate; both the noble birds the lesser birds are subject to Nature's law. The formel will probably choose the royal suitor in the end, then he will finally work for common profit - sire an heir, that is, so contribute to the stability of the realm. The reference to Alain's Complaint in such central position is critical to this reading of the poem. …