Chaucer's conversion
Subtitle: allegorical thought in medieval literature
By: Heiner Gillmeister.
Series: Aspekte der englischen Geistes- und Kulturgeschichte,; Bd. 2
Publisher: P. Lang
Published: 1984
Place of publication: Frankfurt am Main; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 281
Subjects: Chaucer, Geoffrey, d. 1400.; Truthfulness and falsehood in literature.; Civilization, Medieval, in literature.; Truth in literature.; Allegory.
Description: Starting point: the intriguing Vache, leeve  in the envoy of Chaucer's peom "Truth". This is a pun on the French form of Chaucer's name, CHAVSIER, meaning shoemaker. This name, when reversed (an instance of the so-called palindrome), results in a medieval French phrase, reis vach{e]!, 'leave cow'. It suggests that Chaucer summoned himself to leave his "old wretchedness", namely his former sinful life. The poem is therefore dealing with Chaucer's conversion as a result of which he entered the Benedictine order and lived in a house within the precincts of Westminster Abbey at the end of his life. (He was buried in the Abbey at a place now referred to as the Poets' Corner.) The image of the cows leaving the country of the Philistines was by medieval Biblical exegetes believed to denote the Benedictine monk or men of religion on their way the  Heavenly Jerusalem.