A Literary History of the English People, from the Origins to the RenaissanceJusserand, J. J. (Jean Jules)
History
A Literary History of the English People, from the Origins to the Renaissance
Jusserand, J. J. (Jean Jules)
English literature -- History and criticism
[461] One of them has a sort of biographical interest as having belonged
to Sir Richard Stury, Chaucer's colleague in one of his missions (see
below, p. 284); it was afterwards purchased for Thomas, duke of
Gloucester, son of Edward III., and is now in the British Museum, MS.
Royal 19 B xiii. "Ceste livre est a Thomas fiz au Roy, duc de Glouc',
achates dez executeurs Mons' Ric' Stury." It has curious miniatures
exemplifying the way in which people pictured to themselves at that time
Olympian gods and romance heroes. The "Dieu d'amour" figures as a tall
person with a tunic, a cloak, and a crown, a bow in his hand and large
red wings on his back. See fol. 16, "coment li diex d'amours navra
l'amant de ses saietes."
[462] "A vous qui belles filles avez et bien les desirez a introduire a
vie honneste, bailliez leur, bailliez le Rommant de la Rose, pour
aprendre a discerner le bien du mal, que diz-je, mais le mal du bien. Et
a quel utilite ne a quoy proufite aux oyans oir tant de laidures?" Jean
de Meun "oncques n'ot acointance ne hantise de femme honorable ne
vertueuse, mais par plusieurs femmes dissolues et de male vie hanter,
comme font communement les luxurieux cuida ou faingny savoir que toutes
telles feussent car d'autres n'avoit congnoissance." "Debat sur le
Rommant de la Rose," in MS. Fr. 604 in the National Library, Paris, fol.
114 and 115.
[463] An incomplete translation of the "Roman" in English verse has come
down to us in a single MS. preserved in the Hunterian collection,
Glasgow. It is anonymous; a study of this text, by Lindner and by
Kaluza, has shown that it is made up of three fragments of different
origin, prosody, and language. The first fragment ends with line 1705,
leaving a sentence unfinished; between the second and third fragments
there is a gap of more than 5,000 lines. The first fragment alone might,
on account of its style and versification, be the work of Chaucer, but
this is only a surmise, and we have no direct proof of it. The "Romaunt"
is to be found in Skeat's edition of the "Complete Works" of Chaucer,
1894, vol. i. For Fragment I. the French text is given along with the
English translation.
[464]
Mais pran en gre les euvres d'escolier
Que par Clifford de moy avoir pourras.
For Des Champs, Chaucer is a Socrates, a Seneca, an Ovid, an "aigle tres
hault," "Oeuvres Completes," Paris, 1878 ff., vol. ii. p. 138.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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