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XIX.—The Prologue to the Legend of Good Women as Related to the French Marguerite Poems, and the Filostrato

1904; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 19; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/456512

1938-1530

John Livingston Lowes,

Renaissance Literature and Culture

In 1775 Tyrwhitt, speaking of the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women , suggested that “it is possible that le dit de la fleur de lis et de la Marguerite by Guillaume de Machaut … and the Dittié de la flour de la Margherite by Froissart … might furnish us with the true key to those mystical compliments, which our poet has paid to the Daysie-flower.” This suggestion of Tyrwhitt has been echoed and reëchoed by succeeding editors and commentators, but has never been seriously put to the test. Godwin, in his Life of Chaucer , called attention to the story told in Froissart's Dittié , of the birth of the daisy from the tears shed by Herés on the grave of Cepheï, but did not connect it with the transformation of Alcestis into the daisy. Mr. Skeat, in his discussion of the Prologue in the Oxford Chaucer , pointed out three specific passages in Froissart and Machault which are more or less closely parallel with certain lines of Chaucer. Vollmer added to Mr. Skeat's observations a reference to the balade at the close of Froissart's Paradys d'Amours . Beyond similar instances to these, no examination has apparently been made of Chaucer's indebtedness, in the Prologue, to the poems referred to. Yet such an examination seems to come very near doing just what Tyrwhitt suggested it might do, besides throwing welcome light on certain other problems connected with the poem.