Acknowledgments
All non-fiction authors include acknowledgments. Like most others, I have many debts. But my chief debt is an odd one: I owe Elizabeth and Patricia Rosenberg for teaching me what trouthe is. The word is Chaucer’s, but I learned to understand it from them. I know Dorigen’s dilemma; I have felt Griselda’s pain. I could not have written this book without the Rosenbergs. To them it should be dedicated, save that I have already dedicated books to them.
There seems to be a tendency for Chaucer scholars to be folk song scholars as well. So I also wish to thank to my Ballad Index colleagues, David Engle, Ed Cray, Ben Schwartz, Paul Stamler, and Don Nichols. I would also thank Wendy M. Grossman and Kamakshi Tandon. And my parents, who kept me going as this work was written. Ben, David, and my father also proofread the work.
I also owe credit to J. R. R. Tolkien and his biographers, for showing that there are others who still seek trouthe. Tolkien’s motto, like mine, was the tag from the Franklin’s Tale, “Trouthe is the hyeste thyng that man may kepe”; when I first read the line with understanding, it was world-changing for me.
And, of course, I owe even more to Geoffrey Chaucer.
I should note that I am not a Chaucer scholar; most of my understanding is derived from the many scholars cited in this work. I’m not an expert on autism (including the kind formerly known as Asperger’s Syndrome), either, except in the sense of having lived it. But I am an expert on trouthe, for having lived with it, and I recognize it in Chaucer’s work. I can only hope that is justification enough for writing. And that Chaucer scholars will accept that I have pitched this paper primarily at people who are not Chaucer experts, because, while I want to make a point about Chaucer, I want even more for everyone to understand trouthe.
As this book will show, the work of John Stevens was largely responsible for my realizing that the emotion of loyalty and devotion that I felt was the same as Chaucer’s trouthe. I do not know Stevens, who was a very old man before I even came across his book, but I owe him much. I suspect, if he had felt trouthe as I feel trouthe, there would be little need for this book, because he would already have written it.
The cover illustration is from Wikimedia Commons, and shows Edward Burne-Jones’s image of “Dorigen of Bretagne Waiting for the Return of Her Husband” (1871). The internal image of the Wheel of Fortune and those of the Knight and the Franklin are also from Wikimedia. The other images of Chaucer manuscripts are from the Digital Scriptorium. The image of a pilgrimage is not from a copy of Chaucer; it comes from a reproduction of Richard Pynson’s 1511 printing of the Pylgrymage of Sir Richarde Guylforde.
Today, Middle English is, if not a closed book, at least a very dimly lit volume for most readers. Different authors have handled this in different ways. In this book, I have chosen to print Middle English in the text (the Chaucer texts being from The Riverside Chaucer), with “translations” in the footnotes. My goal in these translations — which are often inspired by the Riverside glosses — is to convey the “feel” of the texts rather than to supply the most accurate translation.