Chaucer's “Parliament of Fowls" (1370s to 1380s)

NET/SLET/TRB Study Guide
Date: 20-02-2018, subject: English

Chaucer's “Parliament of Fowls" :

This is a poem of 699 lines in rhyme royal with the theme of love and 'common profit'. 

With the belief that an old book brings new wisdom, Chaucer takes up an old book and starts reading the dream of Scipio by Cicero in which Scipio the younger visits his friend king of Numidia and there in his sleep he is taken to spheres by his dead grandfather Scipio Africanus who lectures on virtue, the rewards of virtuous man in the afterlife and the immortality of the soul.  He tells him that this life on earth is a kind of death and the real life is after death in heaven. 

Chaucer closes the book and falls asleep. In his dream he is taken by Scipio Africanus, as a reward for reading his poem, to the gate of a kind of beautiful ancient lovers park. Chaucer is afraid of entering the gate because it carries warnings that those who enter will have either happiness and peace or misfortune and unhappiness (that is generally promised for all lovers).  Scipio Africanus says that the warning is only for lovers not for Chaucer who, being a bookworm dreamer, lacks personal love experience. The park has two walls with poems written on them -one wall in gold and the other in black. There are all kinds of beautiful birds, trees and beasts of forest inside. Cupid is forging arrows under a tree near river on the one side and Venus is relaxing on a couch with transparent drape over her on the other side. There is a temple of brass on pillars which are filled with the sighing sounds of lovers and the  spirit of goddess fertility Priapus.

  It's a kind of Shangri la park where no one gets old or sick. Chaucer now sees passing of allegorical characters Pleasure, Deception, Beauty, Youth, Flattery, Desire and Message-sending which are all but love elements.  He now witnesses Dame Nature seated on a beautiful flowery hill surrounded by a parliament of all kinds of birds.  The day is St.Valentine’s Day.

On this lovers day, birds assemble here to choose their mates in the presence of Dame Nature. A female eagle (formel) is courted by three tercels (male eagles)' The debate starts. Each tercel, for hours together, talks of his love and faithfulness to formel to win her love but in vain. Other birds grow impatient since they have less time to choose their mates. Now the newly selected judge, a male falcon suggests that there should be a battle in stead of debate. Goose intervenes and says that formel should choose her mate herself. The unkind cuckoo suggests that all birds should remain single. After a great cacophony, Dame Nature orders silence.  She asks the formel to choose her mate herself but the formel says that it needs one more year to decide. Nature asks the three tercels to patiently wait with faith and love till the next Valentine’s day.  Now, their route being clear,  other birds choose their mates and joyfully sing a roundel.  Chaucer wakes up from his sleep and, not satisfied with his dream, continues to read the book to learn something better.

Chaucer, the earliest feminist, speaks for women’s rights and the female eagle is granted the right to choose her mate on her own choice. Think why Love dispute on the lover’s day takes place and is settled in the park in the universe.  Is not love a binding force of the universe? The formel is , on the other hand, a typical woman in real life who generally takes, of course, more than a year to decide over love. Another notable thing is that birds are here divided by rank just as the medieval society was decided by rank.  Chaucer's involvement in the negotiations of marriage of young Richard  and Anne of Bohemia is also reflected in the poem. As Victoria Rothschild unfolds, this poem is undoubtedly “Chaucer's mirror up to Nature.”