the Rossignox. The nightingale fights the parrot to support the clerk's claim, and wins the combat.

Geste de Blancheflour et Florence.66 A king presides over the discussion, which is again over the merits of clerk and knight as lovers, and the birds form a court. The decision by combat is favorable to the knight.

67

Melior et Idoine. There is no presiding god here. After the dispute by two damsels, the case is laid before the birds, and the verdict is in favor of the clerk.

Li Fablel dou Dieu d'Amours.68 The author has a vision on a May morning. The birds around him hold a debate, and the nightingale calls the others together to complain of the degeneration of love. Different birds have different opinions. The hawk lays blame on the villaine gent, the thrush objects to confining love to the gentry, and the jay favors democracy in love. The nightingale dismisses the assembly.

La Messe des Oisiaus et li Plais des Chanonesses et des Grises Nonains, by Jean de Condé.69 The author dreams one night in May that a papegai as messenger of Venus flies through the forest and bids the birds assemble in court to pay welcome to the Goddess of Love. Venus sits on a throne, and complaints are heard before her. The cuckoo is a renegade, and flies over the kneeling lovers, crying, "Tout cuku!" Everybody is angry, and the sparrow-hawk gives chase, but the cuckoo hides in a tree. A detailed account of a banquet follows.'

70

The human parts played by the birds as deliberators in parliaments and attendants to a queen or a god are striking enough. Professor Neilson thinks that inconsistencies early crept into the poems, since Cupid was first a god and then became a king. For the birds he traces an evolution from a position merely as attendants to the God of Love to a state

Meyer, Romania, XV: 332ff; Neilson, p. 38.

47 Meyer, Romania, XV: 333; Neilson, p. 38.

es De Venus la Deese d'Amor, ed. Foerster; Neilson, pp. 42ff.

69 Scheler, Dits et Contes, III: 1ff.; Neilson, pp. 67ff.

TO All of these works have been mentioned briefly by Professor Manly, who argues that along with the Vogelsprachen, they might have been of some inspiration to Chaucer. (Work cited, p. 285.) The material has been given here for the sake of completeness.

in which they are "barons" with deliberating power."1 Certain it is, at any rate, that here are found birds who discuss problems and express opinions made to fit individual characters much as the ideas of Chaucer's birds are made appropriate to their natures. They are even willing to fight for their opinions, and the discussion in the Parlement comes near being settled by combat. It is also certain that this love-vision poetry in which the birds are so conventionally used influenced Chaucer in works other than the Parlement. In short, we can hardly escape the fact that serious consideration is due the French court-of-love and love-vision poems as very possible sources from which Chaucer could have drawn some hints, at least, for his birds.

A brief survey has been made of different sorts of animaland bird-lore which may possibly be indicated by the bird actors in the love drama of the Parlement. One thing stands out with clarity. It is not easy to say how many elements went into the composition. And this is what we might have expected from our knowledge of the ways in which Chaucer the literary artist uses everything at hand which is available for his purpose.

To summarize: The Contending Lovers becomes a beasttale, and more than that, a bird-tale. It seems pretty certain after an examination of the Jātaka telling of a bird svayamvara that such a tale as this helps to furnish a plausible explanation for a composite tale like the Parlement. We have hints in other tales showing how lovers or skilful companions may take on other than human shapes. Furthermore, we know that beast-tales of Oriental origin were enormously popular in medieval Europe and especially in England. We might then expect a tendency toward an elaborate and sophisticated use of animal actors in the literature of Chaucer's time. We find it in other poems than Chaucer's, in such works as The Owl and the Nightingale, for instance."

71 Work cited, p. 38.

72

72 The Owl and the Nightingale, ed. Wells, John E., 1907, Int., p. lxiv: "It is probably to these popular sources, the Fable, the Bestiary or Physiologus, and works such as Neckham's De Naturis Rerum, that is to be traced the influence that ultimately led to the use of animals as actors

But we come back to an interesting problem. How much has Chaucer reworked the story? How much is the combination due to him?

The first possibility would seem to imply the following: Chaucer may have encountered already made a combination of the bird material with The Contending Lovers. Both this tale and The Skilful Companions, for which it possesses an affinity, actually do occur with bird or beast characters. The story of the Parlement may be much older than Chaucer, and may have been in Chaucer's original of exactly the same broad outlines as his own story.

The second possibility is that Chaucer himself may have received the happy inspiration to make disputing suitors birds. Normally there is a parliamentary discussion in The Contending Lovers, and a bird parliament would fit into the story admirably. For this conclave of fowls Chaucer could have drawn hints from several very likely sources. The bird svayamvara, like other Jātakas, may have been in the medieval folk-literature which Chaucer would have known, and may have been used. Also, many tales of bird parliaments in which problems other than those aroused by the claims of the rival lovers are discussed certainly existed in Chaucer's time. The formal Vogelsprachen helped to disseminate the conception of birds assembling in parliaments. Finally French court-of-love poems and other sophisticated medieval poems afford very suggestive birds who play prominent parts as disputants, spectators, or servants to the deity of love.

The merits of the possibilities are rather hard to decide. But emphasis deserves to be laid upon the fact that the method of composition indicated by the second possibility is in no way inconsistent with Chaucer's character. Chaucer was wholly capable of making the combination himself; we can imagine just how he could have mixed together the tale of bird lovers and the tale of contending suitors, adding handy

in The Owl and in such later animal poems (e. g. The Thrush and the Nightingale and The Fox and the Wolf, Clanvowe's Cuckow and Nightingale, Dunbar's The Merle and the Nightingale, Henryson's The Lion and the Mouse, etc.) as were produced in England in the thirteenth and the following centuries."

and pertinent bits of lore, and then have infused the whole with the results of his own wisdom and observation. It must be remembered that even a composite tale of contending bird lovers may have come to Chaucer with but the barest outlines of a story, and that in that case all the sources of bird-lore which have been discussed would have been possible aids to elaboration.

Chaucer's Parlement furnishes the same object lesson that has been afforded by others of his works when they have been analyzed for "elements". The peculiar genius and originality of his craftsmanship become clearer the more his sources are identified. Even if he received the plot and characters of the Parlement love story in their present outlines, it is certain that their clever handling is as much his own as anything could be. The skilful characterization bestowed upon the birds and the inimitable speeches of the birds argue pretty convincingly for themselves as contributions from Chaucer. Sophisticated literature and folk-literature have contributed many bits to the Parlement, but Chaucer himself, "glening here and there", is to be thanked for a delightful poem.

ASPECTS OF THE STORY OF TROILUS AND

CRISEYDE

KARL YOUNG

Although the majority of Chaucerian scholars may now agree in interpreting Troilus and Criseyde as a manifestation of mediaeval courtly love, probably no one would contend that this particular subject of investigation has been exhausted. The element of courtly love in Chaucer's poem

1

That Chaucer's Troilus is in some way related to the doctrine of courtly love was observed at least as early as 1862, in which year Adolf Ebert published (Jahrbuch für romanische und englische Literatur, IV: 85-106) his review of E. G. Sandras' Etude sur G. Chaucer (Paris, 1859). This relation Ebert conceives (pp. 92-93) through the character of Pandarus, whom he interprets as representing Chaucer's irony toward "fantastical chivalric love". Alfons Kissner (Chaucer in seinen Beziehungen zur italienischen Literatur, Marburg, 1867, pp. 53-54) combats Ebert's view of Pandarus, and ten Brink (Chaucer: Studien, Münster, 1870, pp. 72-73) reaffirms it. A. W. Pollard (Chaucer, London, 1893, p. 85) views the matter somewhat more comprehensively, and in regard to "the theory of life and love that underlies" Troilus writes as follows:

"This theory is that of most of the romances of chivalry

It is small wonder that Love also was erected into a religion with its own code of morality. We shall be mistaken, indeed, if we think that this code was either an easy or a base one. To be a good lover a knight had to be brave unto death, courteous to all men, humble to his lady, pure of thought, modest of speech, ready to sacrifice all, even his love itself, for his lady's honour. Whom he loved was reckoned a matter of destiny, and this was held to excuse all."

W. J. Courthope (A History of English Poetry, Vol. I, New York, 1895, p. 263) speaks still more specifically in regard to the element of courtly love in Troilus:

"In the first three books Cressida's conduct is regulated in strict conformity with the standing rules of chivalrous society. She resists her own inclinations, and withstands the solicitations of Fandarus on behalf of Troilus, with all the oppositions of argument required by the science of the troubadours and the regulations of the Courts of Love. André le Chapelain himself could have found no fault with her behaviour. When she finally surrenders to Troilus, she has as yet been guilty of no offence according to the moral code of the time, which merely required her to be true and steadfast in her attachment to one preferred lover."

Carlo Segre (Fanfulla della Domenica, Rome, Nov. 25, 1900, p. 2, col.