Introduction
Magna est veritas, et praevalet.1
The words are from the book called 3 Esdras, and are no longer considered canonical by the Roman Catholic Church. And they are only a translation anyway, the Latin Vulgate version of the Greek book known as 1 Esdras, itself an expanded and modified translation of the Hebrew book of Ezra. But they are in the Bible that Geoffrey Chaucer knew. Today we would translate, “Great is truth, and it prevails.”
But what is truth? The question is Pontius Pilate’s,2 but simple as it sounds, different societies give slightly different answers. There is “truth.” There is “The Truth.” And, in Middle English, there was trouthe.
Trouthe is the same word as Modern English “truth.” But continuity of meaning doesn’t necessarily suggest that a word has the same meaning now as in Chaucer’s time! Take, for instance, the verb “doubt.” It used to mean “I am convinced” — a usage still familiar, for instance, in the King James Bible. Now it means “I am not convinced”!
Trouthe has not changed as dramatically as that. In Chaucer’s time as in ours, it could mean “something that is factually verifiable.” But it is better to think of it as (at least) two words — words we now know as “truth” (something correct and real) and “troth” (a pledge of constancy).3 And because those words are themselves rich and full of meaning, it took on a very great constellation of secondary meanings not found in the Modern English versions of the words:
“Trouthe”… means at least four things [to Chaucer].... The first three meanings, which shade into one another are:
(1) trouthe as a “troth,” a pledged word, the promise you give another person;
(2) trouthe as integrity, the truth to your own inmost self;
(3) trouthe as loyalty, the bond of dependence that keeps society stable and united....
[4] Behind these shifting connotations lies, finally, a much deeper concept. In Chaucer, “trouthe” is a philosophical and religious term for the ultimate reality, the “universal.” It is this final, transcendental Truth which gives the lesser “truths” (of human fidelity and integrity) their validity.4
Or, as E. Talbot Donaldson put it, “it has the moral meaning of ‘integrity’ and the philosophical meaning of ‘reality....’ [I]t is perhaps permissible to identify the quality with everything that is godlike in man.”5
It is the sort of pledge that wishes
To hold togider at everi nede
In word, in werk, in wille, in dede.6
It is this virtue, not our pedestrian facts, to which Chaucer refers when he makes his amazing statement “Trouthe is the hyeste thyng that man may kepe.”7
This is an extremely strong and an extremely interesting assertion on Chaucer’s part. And it isn’t just a passing comment; the whole Franklin’s Tale is about trouthe, and as we shall see, it plays a role in the other Chaucerian romances as well.
I wonder if Chaucer meant this as a practical demonstration. There is reason to think that Chaucer doubted the value of poetry in society — The Parson’s Tale (which is in prose) directly attacks story-telling in verse, and there are other instances of Chaucer seemingly questioning what he was doing.8 How else to justify his work if not by using it to make a case for a high form of virtue? And how better to make that case than by producing brilliant romances about it? “When we talk about such words [as the nobler virtues], we find ourselves in heated, convoluted discussions that come to no conclusion: we define them best by telling stories.”9 It appears that that is just what Chaucer did with trouthe.
Chaucer’s Prioress wore the motto “amor vincit omnia,” “love conquers all,”10 which we tend to think of as the key belief of romance. But just as the Prioress seems to fall a little short of her vocation,11 so does her motto. Love does not conquer all for Chaucer. We see this in the vision of Venus’s temple in The Parliament of Fowls; much of the imagery there is of blighted, disastrous, ugly love12 — and what attractive love there is is usually the faithful sort. An even more extreme example of the imperfection of love is Troilus and Criseyde, which is so masterful an examination of failed passion that some have suggested that it was Chaucer’s last word on romantic love.13 Yet Chaucer returns to the theme of love in the Canterbury Tales — and still doesn’t show it succeeding. Consider The Knight’s Tale, in which there are three love relationships: Palamon and Arcite, Palamon and Emelye, Arcite and Emelye. Two of the three fail. If love conquered all, then either Palamon or Arcite would have stepped aside for the other, or Emelye would have chosen and the one who was not chosen would have accepted. Neither happened.
Nor do medieval romances in general involve the theme of love conquering all. Love themes in the romances are common but by no means universal.14 “The conflict between… loyalties or their testing was to provide both the psychological tension and the plot of most fourteenth century romances.”15 What we see instead in the romances is a restoration of what “ought to be.” Much of the power of romance, indeed, derives from this striving to make things right; it is why many even in our cynical modern world still admire the romances of writers such as J. R. R. Tolkien (who deserves much of the credit for reviving the medieval-type romance)16 and J. K. Rowling.
One well-known and noteworthy feature of the Canterbury Tales is that it contains a mixture of story types. In most cases, Chaucer writes standard tales of whatever type he is using — brilliant examples, but not atypical ones. The romances are an exception. “It is as if Chaucer, who seems so much at home in the fabliau, the miracle of the Virgin, and the saint’s life, felt less easy with the very genre which we regard as most characteristic of the period, the knightly romance.”17
I don’t think this is quite right. The Host called on his tellers to balance depth of meaning and pleasure — “Tales of best sentence and most solaas.”18 We shouldn’t expect all the parts to yield the same moral; “the method of the work is not additive.”19 Rather, the different genres allow us to experience different feelings; by telling many types of tales, Chaucer keeps everyone interested.20 For fun, Chaucer has the fabliau, “short comic tales in verse, dealing mainly with sexual or other advantages won by tricks and stratagems”21— The Miller’s Tale, The Reeve’s Tale, and so forth. But — it seems to me — Chaucer wants the romances to do something more, and hence made them much more complex than most romances before him. What makes him a genius is not that he makes his romances more complex but his ability to do so without making them obnoxiously long. Chaucer was certainly able to write a romance; Troilus and Criseyde, the Wife of Bath’s Tale and The Franklin’s Tale clearly show that! And these are among his most-loved tales, and seem to be among the stories which he has given the most attention.
Some might object that Chaucer would not have included so many other tale-types if he intended his romances to present a unified theme. Of course, it might be that Chaucer wasn’t deliberately portraying a theme, simply that his definition of a romance involved certain characteristics. But I don’t think we need such a qualification. Great writers will mix elements of many types in their works — as Shakespeare might put some comic relief in a tragedy, or Mark Twain would make a serious point in a funny tale.
It seems to me that the real difference between Chaucerian and other romances is not some alleged defect in the Chaucerian romances but the fact that Chaucer was trying for more. Sometimes, at least, the goal of a romance is to educate,22 and Chaucer wanted to teach. The ideals in many romances are pretty low — in Gamelyn,23 for instance, we in essence see a younger son fight his way into an inheritance with brute strength and massive ignorance.24 Even the love romances produced before Chaucer are often pretty feeble. The one of Chaucer’s tales that resembles a standard romance is The Squire’s Tale, which is unfinished. It looks as if Chaucer wanted to use the romances to show the triumph of something greater than mere force or even ordinary love. And that something seems to be trouthe. It is trouthe that conquers all; each of the stories Chaucer tells is of how trouthe somehow came to be set aside, and how in the end trouthe triumphs.
“Trouthe is exalted again and again in [Chaucer’s] works, positively as the Knight’s principle virtue and, in the Franklin’s Tale, as the highest contract that man may keep, and negatively as the quality that Criseide most offends.”25
But why is trouthe so important? To me at least, it matters because it is a genuine virtue. To paraphrase Stevens in his summary, it is fidelity, it is responsibility, it is truthfulness, it is being what one ought to be. This is certainly an emotion I have felt — and toward more than one person. This feeling seems to be hard for some people to understand. I think Chaucer felt it, though. Else he would not have written as he did. The following chapters try to examine just how trouthe is revealed in the completed Canterbury romances.
Note to Readers: If you are not a Chaucer scholar, or are not overly familiar with the Canterbury Tales and Chaucer’s other works, note that the Dramatis Personae at the end of this book (page 63) gives short biographies of most of the major Chaucerian characters cited here, while the Catalog of Chaucer’s Works (page 67) describes the major works of Chaucer discussed below.