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Just found this in my docs folder...
Jan. 2nd, 2008 10:38 pmI can't now remember who dropped the line quoted at the top, but this was my response. Please note I know nothing of Sir Geoffroi de Wotnot and have only a nodding acquaintance with Chaucer...
“The spirit of mediaeval rhetorician Sir Geoffroi de Vinsauf is present in every line of Chaucer’s epic poem Troilus and Criseyde” - discuss in 500 words.
In addressing the proposition quoted above, the first consideration that occurs to the student is that five hundred words is nowhere near sufficient to do justice to such a theme. The bald statement of the premise barely hints at the richness and depth of its ramifications. How are we to encompass, in so short a span, the manifold implications of the verb “to be present” alone? How, in thirty lines, to separate out the influence of de Vinsauf (who, after all, was only one of numerous practitioners of the art of rhetoric which, according to some scholars, reached its finest flower in northern Europe at this time) from that of Chaucer’s other sources? Can it be possible to sift through the flowing lines of Troilus and identify here a construction, there a phrase, like a prospector seeking gold among a pile of iron pyrites? Were we to do so, would what remained still justify the name of poetry?
Surely the essence of Chaucer’s genius is not the earlier masters who shine through him, as a light shines through a pane of coloured glass, but the art by which he absorbed the gifts of those who went before and made them his own. Were we to find, among the stanzas of Troilus and Criseyde, a single trope or device that bespoke another man’s craftsmanship, then at that point we could be sure that Chaucer had nodded. We are not, after all, speaking here of a creator of centos, lame, stilted verses cobbled together from mismatched lines of older poems, as a shepherd may build a rude hut with stones that once formed a Grecian portico. Chaucer was, in every sense, a creator, and his creations partake of no spirit but the poet’s himself.
And yet, there is something to be said in the proposition’s favour, though we may look in vain for hard evidence to support it. Chaucer was a man of his time, well-read and learned, and it can scarcely be possible that he would not have known of de Vinsauf, and studied his works, as he would have known of and studied every master of the arts poetical of his day. His would have been no uncritical acceptance: de Vinsauf’s style had its flaws, and these would not have been lost on the shrewd, rigorous intellect of the later poet. In the end, though, Chaucer’s goal would not have been to echo another man’s voice, nor even to improve upon it, but to speak loudly and clearly in his own.
The proposition, therefore, stands, though not through any virtue of its own, but as a house of cards may stand, not by the solidity of its own construction, but by that of the table upon which it rests, and the floor on which the table stands, and so on. Let us not delude ourselves: our elegant hypotheses, our critical essays, are in themselves futile. What matters is the older, sounder edifice on which they stand: the work of Chaucer.
“The spirit of mediaeval rhetorician Sir Geoffroi de Vinsauf is present in every line of Chaucer’s epic poem Troilus and Criseyde” - discuss in 500 words.
In addressing the proposition quoted above, the first consideration that occurs to the student is that five hundred words is nowhere near sufficient to do justice to such a theme. The bald statement of the premise barely hints at the richness and depth of its ramifications. How are we to encompass, in so short a span, the manifold implications of the verb “to be present” alone? How, in thirty lines, to separate out the influence of de Vinsauf (who, after all, was only one of numerous practitioners of the art of rhetoric which, according to some scholars, reached its finest flower in northern Europe at this time) from that of Chaucer’s other sources? Can it be possible to sift through the flowing lines of Troilus and identify here a construction, there a phrase, like a prospector seeking gold among a pile of iron pyrites? Were we to do so, would what remained still justify the name of poetry?
Surely the essence of Chaucer’s genius is not the earlier masters who shine through him, as a light shines through a pane of coloured glass, but the art by which he absorbed the gifts of those who went before and made them his own. Were we to find, among the stanzas of Troilus and Criseyde, a single trope or device that bespoke another man’s craftsmanship, then at that point we could be sure that Chaucer had nodded. We are not, after all, speaking here of a creator of centos, lame, stilted verses cobbled together from mismatched lines of older poems, as a shepherd may build a rude hut with stones that once formed a Grecian portico. Chaucer was, in every sense, a creator, and his creations partake of no spirit but the poet’s himself.
And yet, there is something to be said in the proposition’s favour, though we may look in vain for hard evidence to support it. Chaucer was a man of his time, well-read and learned, and it can scarcely be possible that he would not have known of de Vinsauf, and studied his works, as he would have known of and studied every master of the arts poetical of his day. His would have been no uncritical acceptance: de Vinsauf’s style had its flaws, and these would not have been lost on the shrewd, rigorous intellect of the later poet. In the end, though, Chaucer’s goal would not have been to echo another man’s voice, nor even to improve upon it, but to speak loudly and clearly in his own.
The proposition, therefore, stands, though not through any virtue of its own, but as a house of cards may stand, not by the solidity of its own construction, but by that of the table upon which it rests, and the floor on which the table stands, and so on. Let us not delude ourselves: our elegant hypotheses, our critical essays, are in themselves futile. What matters is the older, sounder edifice on which they stand: the work of Chaucer.