The Canterbury Tales, and Other Poems by Geoffrey Chaucer
page 21 of 1215 (01%)
page 21 of 1215 (01%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
the poet, in the very next lines, slides into an address to his lady: "The heart within my sorrowful heart you dreads And loves so sore, that ye be, verily, The mistress of my wit, and nothing I," &c. When, therefore, the Clerk of Oxford is made to say that he will tell a tale -- "The which that I Learn'd at Padova of a worthy clerk, As proved by his wordes and his werk. He is now dead, and nailed in his chest, I pray to God to give his soul good rest. Francis Petrarc', the laureate poete, Highte this clerk, whose rhetoric so sweet Illumin'd all Itaile of poetry. . . . But forth to tellen of this worthy man, That taughte me this tale, as I began." . . . we may without violent effort believe that Chaucer speaks in his own person, though dramatically the words are on the Clerk's lips. And the belief is not impaired by the sorrowful way in which the Clerk lingers on Petrarch's death -- which would be less intelligible if the fictitious narrator had only read the story in the Latin translation, than if we suppose the news of Petrarch's death at Arqua in July 1374 to have closely followed Chaucer to England, and to have cruelly and irresistibly mingled itself with our poet's personal recollections of his great Italian |
|