The Legend of Good Women
Encyclopedia
The Legend of Good Women is a poem in the form of a dream vision
by Geoffrey Chaucer
.
The poem is the third longest of Chaucer’s works, after The Canterbury Tales
and Troilus and Criseyde
and is possibly the first significant work in English
to use the iambic pentameter
or decasyllabic couplet
s which he later used throughout the Canterbury Tales. This form of the heroic couplet
would become a significant part of English literature
no doubt inspired by Chaucer.
The prologue describes how Chaucer is reprimanded by the god of love and his queen, Alceste, for his works—such as Troilus and Criseyde—depicting women in a poor light. Criseyde is made to seem inconstant in love in that earlier work, and Alceste demands a poem of Chaucer extolling the virtues of women and their good deeds.
The poet recounts ten stories of virtuous women in nine sections. The legends are: Cleopatra, Thisbe, Dido, Hypsipyle
, Medea
, Lucrece, Ariadne
, Philomela
, Phyllis
and Hypermnestra
. The work is a similar structure to the later Monk's Tale
and like that tale, and many of his other works, seems to be unfinished. Chaucer's sources for the legends include: Virgil
's Aeneid
, Vincent of Beauvais
, Guido delle Colonne
's Historia destructionis Troiae
, Gaius Julius Hyginus
' Fabula and Ovid
's Metamorphoses
and Heroides
.
The incomplete nature of the poem is suggested by Chaucer's Retraction
from the Canterbury Tales which calls the work the xxv. Ladies. Fifteen and nineteen are also numbers used to describe the work. In the prologue several women are mentioned—Esther
, Penelope
, Marcia Catonis (wife of Cato the younger
), Lavinia
, Polyxena
and Laodamia
—whose stories are not recorded and the nineteen ladies in waiting
of Alceste mentioned in the prologue might suggest an unfulfilled structure.
The command of queen Alceste is said, by John Lydgate
in The Fall of Princes, to be a poetic account of an actual request for a poem by Anne of Bohemia
who came to England in 1382 to marry Richard II
. If true this would make Chaucer an early poet laureate
. Joan of Kent
, Richard's mother, is also sometimes considered a model for Alceste. The supposed royal command is one suggested reason for the poem's unfinished state as Chaucer got bored with the task and gave up. Several passages hint at Chaucer's dissatisfaction:
These lines, late in the poem, could simply be occupatio or paralipsis, the rhetorical device
common in Chaucer of bringing up a subject merely to say you will not mention it.
Whether the poem's state is due to Chaucer becoming bored with it is uncertain, but it is not now regarded among his best work, despite being popular when first written. One early fan is Chaucer's own character the Man of Law
who praises Chaucer and the poem which he calls Seintes Legende of Cupide. The work is rather inconsistent in tone, with tragedy mixed rather uncomfortably with comedy and the legends are all rather similar with little of the characterisation which is key to the Canterbury Tales. Some scholars have conjectured that the work is deliberately poorly written and the work is actually a satire
against women although this is not widely agreed with. Another idea is that it is a satire on the idea of taking stories of classical origin and twisting them to give them contemporary moral meanings. This would suggest that the poem is not only an early use of heroic couplet
s but also one of the first mock-heroic
works in English.
The nature of the poem with its separate legends makes dating it difficult but it is clearly placed between Troilus and the Tales around 1386/1388. Chaucer seems to have returned to the work a decade later to rewrite the prologue, but the latter text, which survives in only one manuscript, is generally considered inferior to the original.
Tennyson
used the poem as theme for his own poem A Dream of Fair Women.
Dream vision
A dream vision is a literary device in which a dream is recounted for a specific purpose. While dreams occur frequently throughout the history of literature, the dream vision emerged as a poetic genre in its own right, and was particularly popular in the Middle Ages. This genre typically follows a...
by Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
.
The poem is the third longest of Chaucer’s works, after The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century. The tales are told as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at...
and Troilus and Criseyde
Troilus and Criseyde
Troilus and Criseyde is a poem by Geoffrey Chaucer which re-tells in Middle English the tragic story of the lovers Troilus and Criseyde set against a backdrop of war in the Siege of Troy. It was composed using rime royale and probably completed during the mid 1380s. Many Chaucer scholars regard it...
and is possibly the first significant work in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
to use the iambic pentameter
Iambic pentameter
Iambic pentameter is a commonly used metrical line in traditional verse and verse drama. The term describes the particular rhythm that the words establish in that line. That rhythm is measured in small groups of syllables; these small groups of syllables are called "feet"...
or decasyllabic couplet
Couplet
A couplet is a pair of lines of meter in poetry. It usually consists of two lines that rhyme and have the same meter.While traditionally couplets rhyme, not all do. A poem may use white space to mark out couplets if they do not rhyme. Couplets with a meter of iambic pentameter are called heroic...
s which he later used throughout the Canterbury Tales. This form of the heroic couplet
Heroic couplet
A heroic couplet is a traditional form for English poetry, commonly used for epic and narrative poetry; it refers to poems constructed from a sequence of rhyming pairs of iambic pentameter lines. The rhyme is always masculine. Use of the heroic couplet was first pioneered by Geoffrey Chaucer in...
would become a significant part of English literature
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
no doubt inspired by Chaucer.
The prologue describes how Chaucer is reprimanded by the god of love and his queen, Alceste, for his works—such as Troilus and Criseyde—depicting women in a poor light. Criseyde is made to seem inconstant in love in that earlier work, and Alceste demands a poem of Chaucer extolling the virtues of women and their good deeds.
- For thy trespas, and understond hit here:
- Thou shalt, whyl that thou livest, yeer by yere,
- The moste party of thy tyme spende
- In making of a glorious Legende
- Of Gode Wommen, maidenes and wyves,
- That weren trewe in lovinge al hir lyves;
- And telle of false men that hem bitrayen,
- That al hir lyf ne doon nat but assayen
The poet recounts ten stories of virtuous women in nine sections. The legends are: Cleopatra, Thisbe, Dido, Hypsipyle
Hypsipyle
In Greek mythology, Hypsipyle was the Queen of Lemnos, daughter of Thoas and Myrina.During her reign, Aphrodite cursed the women of the island for having neglected her shrines. All the women developed extreme body odor that made them repugnant to the men of the nation. The men took up with...
, Medea
Medea
Medea is a woman in Greek mythology. She was the daughter of King Aeëtes of Colchis, niece of Circe, granddaughter of the sun god Helios, and later wife to the hero Jason, with whom she had two children, Mermeros and Pheres. In Euripides's play Medea, Jason leaves Medea when Creon, king of...
, Lucrece, Ariadne
Ariadne
Ariadne , in Greek mythology, was the daughter of King Minos of Crete, and his queen Pasiphaë, daughter of Helios, the Sun-titan. She aided Theseus in overcoming the Minotaur and was the bride of the god Dionysus.-Minos and Theseus:...
, Philomela
Philomela
In Greek mythology, Philomela was a daughter of Pandion I and Zeuxippe, and a sister of Procne. Despite Ovid's fanciful etymology as "lover of song" , the name means "lover of fruit," "lover of apples," or "lover of sheep."-Myth:Procne's husband, King Tereus of Thrace In Greek mythology,...
, Phyllis
Phyllis
Phyllis is a character in Greek mythology, daughter of a Thracian king . She married Demophon, King of Athens and son of Theseus, while he stopped in Thrace on his journey home from the Trojan War....
and Hypermnestra
Hypermnestra
Hypermnestra , in Greek mythology, is a name that refers to several characters.-The Danaid:Hypermnestra was the daughter of Danaus. Danaus was the twin brother of Aegyptus and son of Belus. He had fifty daughters, the Danaides, and Aegyptus had fifty sons. Aegyptus commanded that his sons marry the...
. The work is a similar structure to the later Monk's Tale
The Monk's Prologue and Tale
The Monk's Tale is one of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.The Monk's tale to the other pilgrims is a collection of seventeen short stories, exempla, on the theme of tragedy...
and like that tale, and many of his other works, seems to be unfinished. Chaucer's sources for the legends include: Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
's Aeneid
Aeneid
The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter...
, Vincent of Beauvais
Vincent of Beauvais
The Dominican friar Vincent of Beauvais wrote the Speculum Maius, the main encyclopedia that was used in the Middle Ages.-Early life:...
, Guido delle Colonne
Guido delle Colonne
Guido delle Colonne was an early 13th century Sicilian writer, living at Messina, who wrote in Latin...
's Historia destructionis Troiae
Historia destructionis Troiae
Historia destructionis Troiae or Historia Troiana is a Latin prose narrative written by Guido delle Colonne, a Sicilian author, in the early 13th century. Its main source was the Old French verse romance by Benoît de Sainte-Maure, Roman de Troie...
, Gaius Julius Hyginus
Gaius Julius Hyginus
Gaius Julius Hyginus was a Latin author, a pupil of the famous Cornelius Alexander Polyhistor, and a freedman of Caesar Augustus. He was by Augustus elected superintendent of the Palatine library according to Suetonius' De Grammaticis, 20...
' Fabula and Ovid
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
's Metamorphoses
Metamorphoses (poem)
Metamorphoses is a Latin narrative poem in fifteen books by the Roman poet Ovid describing the history of the world from its creation to the deification of Julius Caesar within a loose mythico-historical framework. Completed in AD 8, it is recognized as a masterpiece of Golden Age Latin literature...
and Heroides
Heroides
The Heroides , or Epistulae Heroidum , are a collection of fifteen epistolary poems composed by Ovid in Latin elegiac couplets, and presented as though written by a selection of aggrieved heroines of Greek and Roman mythology, in address to their heroic lovers who have in some way mistreated,...
.
The incomplete nature of the poem is suggested by Chaucer's Retraction
Chaucer's Retraction
Chaucer's Retraction is the final section of The Canterbury Tales. It is written as an apology, where Geoffrey Chaucer asks for forgiveness for the vulgar and unworthy parts of this and other past works, and seeks absolution for his sins....
from the Canterbury Tales which calls the work the xxv. Ladies. Fifteen and nineteen are also numbers used to describe the work. In the prologue several women are mentioned—Esther
Esther
Esther , born Hadassah, is the eponymous heroine of the Biblical Book of Esther.According to the Bible, she was a Jewish queen of the Persian king Ahasuerus...
, Penelope
Penelope
In Homer's Odyssey, Penelope is the faithful wife of Odysseus, who keeps her suitors at bay in his long absence and is eventually reunited with him....
, Marcia Catonis (wife of Cato the younger
Cato the Younger
Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis , commonly known as Cato the Younger to distinguish him from his great-grandfather , was a politician and statesman in the late Roman Republic, and a follower of the Stoic philosophy...
), Lavinia
Lavinia
In Roman mythology, Lavinia is the daughter of Latinus and Amata and the last wife of Aeneas.Lavinia, the only child of the king and "ripe for marriage", had been courted by many men in Ausonia who hoped to become the king of Latium. Turnus, ruler of the Rutuli, was the most likely of the suitors,...
, Polyxena
Polyxena
In Greek mythology, Polyxena was the youngest daughter of King Priam of Troy and his queen, Hecuba. She is considered the Trojan version of Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. Polyxena is not in Homer's Iliad, appearing in works by later poets, perhaps to add romance to Homer's...
and Laodamia
Laodamia
In Greek mythology, the name Laodamia referred to:* Laodamia or Deidamia, daughter of Bellerophon and Philonoe, sister of Hippolochus and Isander and the mother of Sarpedon by Zeus. She was shot by Artemis one day when she was weaving...
—whose stories are not recorded and the nineteen ladies in waiting
Lady in Waiting
Lady in Waiting is the 2nd album by American southern rock band Outlaws, released in 1976. -Track listing:#"Breaker-Breaker" – 2:59#"South Carolina" – 3:05#"Ain't So Bad" – 3:48...
of Alceste mentioned in the prologue might suggest an unfulfilled structure.
The command of queen Alceste is said, by John Lydgate
John Lydgate
John Lydgate of Bury was a monk and poet, born in Lidgate, Suffolk, England.Lydgate is at once a greater and a lesser poet than John Gower. He is a greater poet because of his greater range and force; he has a much more powerful machine at his command. The sheer bulk of Lydgate's poetic output is...
in The Fall of Princes, to be a poetic account of an actual request for a poem by Anne of Bohemia
Anne of Bohemia
Anne of Bohemia was Queen of England as the first wife of King Richard II. A member of the House of Luxembourg, she was the eldest daughter of Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor, and Elizabeth of Pomerania....
who came to England in 1382 to marry Richard II
Richard II of England
Richard II was King of England, a member of the House of Plantagenet and the last of its main-line kings. He ruled from 1377 until he was deposed in 1399. Richard was a son of Edward, the Black Prince, and was born during the reign of his grandfather, Edward III...
. If true this would make Chaucer an early poet laureate
Poet Laureate
A poet laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for state occasions and other government events...
. Joan of Kent
Joan of Kent
Joan, Countess of Kent , known to history as The Fair Maid of Kent, was the first English Princess of Wales...
, Richard's mother, is also sometimes considered a model for Alceste. The supposed royal command is one suggested reason for the poem's unfinished state as Chaucer got bored with the task and gave up. Several passages hint at Chaucer's dissatisfaction:
- But for I am agroted [stuffed] heer-biforn
- To wryte of hem that been in love forsworn,
- And eek to haste me in my legende,
- Which to performe god me grace sende,
- Therfor I passe shortly in this wyse;
These lines, late in the poem, could simply be occupatio or paralipsis, the rhetorical device
Rhetorical device
In rhetoric, a rhetorical device or resource of language is a technique that an author or speaker uses to convey to the listener or reader a meaning with the goal of persuading him or her towards considering a topic from a different perspective. While rhetorical devices may be used to evoke an...
common in Chaucer of bringing up a subject merely to say you will not mention it.
Whether the poem's state is due to Chaucer becoming bored with it is uncertain, but it is not now regarded among his best work, despite being popular when first written. One early fan is Chaucer's own character the Man of Law
The Man of Law's Prologue and Tale
The Man of Law's Tale is the fifth of the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, written around 1387.-The Summary:...
who praises Chaucer and the poem which he calls Seintes Legende of Cupide. The work is rather inconsistent in tone, with tragedy mixed rather uncomfortably with comedy and the legends are all rather similar with little of the characterisation which is key to the Canterbury Tales. Some scholars have conjectured that the work is deliberately poorly written and the work is actually a satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
against women although this is not widely agreed with. Another idea is that it is a satire on the idea of taking stories of classical origin and twisting them to give them contemporary moral meanings. This would suggest that the poem is not only an early use of heroic couplet
Heroic couplet
A heroic couplet is a traditional form for English poetry, commonly used for epic and narrative poetry; it refers to poems constructed from a sequence of rhyming pairs of iambic pentameter lines. The rhyme is always masculine. Use of the heroic couplet was first pioneered by Geoffrey Chaucer in...
s but also one of the first mock-heroic
Mock-heroic
Mock-heroic, mock-epic or heroi-comic works are typically satires or parodies that mock common Classical stereotypes of heroes and heroic literature...
works in English.
The nature of the poem with its separate legends makes dating it difficult but it is clearly placed between Troilus and the Tales around 1386/1388. Chaucer seems to have returned to the work a decade later to rewrite the prologue, but the latter text, which survives in only one manuscript, is generally considered inferior to the original.
- A thousand tymes have I herd men telle,
- That ther is Ioye in heven, and peyne in helle;
- And I acorde wel that hit is so;
- But natheles, yit wot I wel also,
- That ther nis noon dwelling in this contree,
- That either hath in heven or helle y-be,
Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, FRS was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom during much of Queen Victoria's reign and remains one of the most popular poets in the English language....
used the poem as theme for his own poem A Dream of Fair Women.