Chaucer's "The Book of the Duchess"

In lines 402 to 409 of The Book of the Duchess, Chaucer describes the path that the dreamer takes which leads him to the Man in Black. Although these eight lines do not describe the major plot, which is the sorrow of the Man in Black, they are important because they describe the end of the dreamer's strange journey to the Man in Black, and signify a change in the poem.

This passage begins with personification in which two components of nature are turned into deities. Flora is the goddess of flowers, and Zephyrus is the west wind. These personifications are interesting because the narrator/dreamer is describing his dream, but as the reader learns earlier on in the poem, the narrator had only known of one god until he read the story of Alcyone (line 237). Immediately after reading this story, he calls upon Morpheus, the god of sleep, to help him with his insomnia, and then, in his dream, he suddenly opens his mind to a world where nature is personified. This is one way in which Chaucer shows that reading can bring about new perceptions of life by lending knowledge of things previously unknown to the reader.

The meter of The Book of the Duchess is iambic tetrameter (octosyllabic). Iambic meters are a common form for poems written in English, since the English language flow is that of iambs. The use of eight syllables per line makes the poem flow more quickly than it would if it were written in ten syllables (pentameter). Since the majority of the poem, and this passage, are about a dream, it makes sense that Chaucer wanted it to flow rapidly, as if the reader was traveling hurriedly through a dream himself. There is also some inverted syntax in the passage, which, stylistically makes it more interesting than simple words strewn together would be. Chaucer intended, as always, for his readers to be above simple language.

Rhyming couplets hold consecutive lines together. The rhymes vary between masculine and feminine, but in this passage there are two masculine rhymes followed by a feminine one. The first and last lines of the passage are parts of masculine rhymes as well. It is hard to tell whether or not Chaucer changed the quality of the rhymes on purpose, or whether he was just choosing appropriate words that rhyme. I am also unsure as to whether or not "masculine" and "feminine" were terms used to describe rhyme in Chaucer's time.

The couplets are not only held together by their end-rhyme, but also by their context within the passage. The first entire couplet describes the flowery path and the dreamer's belief that the two personified deities must live there because it is so splendid. The second couplet describes how it was to look upon this paradise. And the third couplet continues to describe how beautiful the scene is.

This second couplet is the beginning of an epic simile, which is a prolonged comparison between earth and heaven and that there are seven times more flowers in this paradise than there are stars in the sky. At this point in the dream, the narrator has ceased to recount audio descriptions, and now turns to visual imagery to vividly describe what he sees on the path. This turn to only visual description brings a sense of detachment that one feels when in a dream. It also has a surrealist quality too, which is also characteristic of dreams.

However, this could also be considered a hyperbole, since the narrator could not possibly be able to fathom that there are seven times as many flowers as there are stars. This hyperbole is important because it is intended to convey the idea that this place has incomparable beauty, but, as the dreamer later learns when he meets the Man in Black, it is also a place where suffering can occur. Chaucer brings up the important point that there is good and bad to all life.

The "map" of the poem is a landscape as the dreamer walks down a path towards the Man in Black, although his meeting with the Man in Black occurs after this passage ends. This path is a lot like the tunnel in Alice in Wonderland, into which Alice falls after following the white rabbit. In this case, the dreamer follows a puppy down the path, but the puppy soon disappears. The path is like a doorway, and is representative of the journey that the dreamer takes further into the dream, and towards the Man in Black, which is important to the plot of the story. Paths are also representative of choices and change, a forked path would cause the traveler to choose one direction, and obviously going down a path is going to bring different experiences to the traveler. Before he goes on this path, the dream has been relatively normal, nothing too out of the ordinary has occurred (anyone could dream about a hunt), and the dreamer's senses are all intact until this point.

As a genre, the dream vision is an interesting one, because it often opens up the mind of the reader to unusual things. If one reads about a dream, one can interpret the meaning of a story in more ways than one can if one reads a history. A dream can approach difficult topics in a more acceptable manner while allowing the reader to take in such information with a grain of salt, and also to consider them from a different point of view than one would normally consider such topics.

One device that Chaucer often uses is the speech act, and this passage is no exception. The narrator says "I trowe," which can be translated as "I warrant," similar to a promise or vow. The speech act is able to finalize what the narrator previously said. In this case, he is affirming that Flora and Zephyrus must live in this place, which we know is not literally true, but it aids in Chaucer's description of such a paradise. If he had merely said "it was as though the west wind and the goddess of flowers might live there," then the point is not so strong as it is when the narrator seems certain that they must "had mad her dwellynge ther, I trowe" (line 404).

Although there are not many lexicons in this particular passage, there are several words that have to deal with astronomy and horticulture, or science in general. These words are Flora (flower goddess), Zephyrus (west wind), floures (flowers), growe (grow), erthe (earth), heven (heaven), welken (sky), and sterres (stars). The use of science-related words is strange since the idea of dreams is so unscientific. Dreams are completely abstract while science is about as concrete as one can imagine. Heaven is also an abstract idea, but in Chaucer's time religion was so important that it's teachings were taken much more seriously than they are today. However, Chaucer seems to want dreams to be taken more seriously, and in medieval times, dreams were often viewed as prophetic or at least tools to learn from. Science is also something that is important in regards to learning, so it is interesting that Chaucer puts such words into a dream vision.

An interesting word in this passage is "Zephyrus," which, although it is translated as the west wind, can have a slightly different meaning as well. A zephyr can be defined as an airy passing wind, which insinuates that it is something that is barely there and cannot be grasped, just as dreams can sometimes not be grasped, and are often faintly in one's memory.

Another important word in this passage is "floures," or flowers. Flowers play an important part in the entire story, both literally, and for what they represent. Flowers are mentioned throughout the story. For instance when the Man in Black describes Fortune, and uses the image flowers being strewn over filth in this description. Flowers are also extremely important because they are a major part of two things that The Book of the Duchess deals with: love and death. Flowers are given as tokens of love and some, like roses, symbolize love. At the same time, flowers are very short-lived and are used in funeral ceremonies, making them a symbol of death as well. Flowers are also often given as tokens of worship, either to a lover, or as a ceremonial offering. Love, worship and death are the main part of the Man in Black's story.

For my visual project I made a surreal kind of "television." Since this passage signifies the change in description from audio to JUST visual, I put the television on "mute." There are two knobs, a channel knob, and a volume knob, just like a real television has. However, these knobs cannot be adjusted by the "viewer." The reader of this passage of Chaucer will also not be allowed to change the settings of the poem. He may be tempted to want "volume" back, but he must settle for merely visual descriptions. Changing "channels" is also not an option because the themes that follow in the story, love and death, are unavoidable. Chaucer forces the reader to deal with these difficult topics by wrapping them in a dream vision.

The "screen" is made from the reflective side of a CD. The circular shape adds to the surreal quality, and the prism-like reflections are appealing to the eye, like Chaucer's description of all the flowers along the path. The CD is almost mirror-like, but like a dream is slightly distorts images and sometimes causes them to appear more colorful than they could possibly be in real life, just as, although there can be a place that is absolutely gorgeous, only in a dream could one see a paradise such as the one the dreamer sees in this passage. Someone who looks into this screen will see a colorful, distorted vision of himself, as dreams are often elaborate, confusing representations of thoughts within the self.

The fact that hearing is extinguished makes visual aspects more important. When people lose their hearing, they often develop exemplary eyesight. And as soon as the dreamer ceases to describe sound, the richness of the landscape becomes clearer and more fully appreciated, even to the point of what must certainly be an exaggeration (the number of flowers along the path).

Even though this particular passage lacks some of the ideas contained throughout the rest of The Book of the Duchess it is a pivotal point in the dream, and so it is worth looking into. The importance of flowers is very blatant in this passage, and flowers are a major image throughout the story. As far as dreams go, they are much like television programs or movies - they seem real, but are not factual (in most cases), and the dreamer/viewer often cannot change what happens in them.

Overall, this passage is rich in language and shows Chaucer's mastery at description. It also contains many devices typical of Chaucer, and is a good example of a dreamer's odyssey and perceptions. It is also a good example of the way in which dreams can bring about open-mindedness (the dreamer thinks of the personified deities when before he only thought of one god), and succeeds in making the reader more open-minded at the same time.

Work Cited

Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Book of the Duchess. Rpt. in The Riverside Chaucer. 3^rd Ed. Ed. Larry D. Benson. Houghton Mifflin Company: Boston, 1987. Pages 329-346.