AN INSPIRATION FOR CHAUCER'S DESCRIPTION OF CHAUNTECLEER
In the Nun's Priest's Tale, Chauntecleer is described in the following way:
His coomb was redder than the fin coral,
And batailled as it were a caster wal;
His byle was blak, and as the jeet it shoon;
Lyk asure were his legges and his soon;
His nayles whitter than the lylye flour,
And Iyk the burned gold was his colour.[1]
Medieval bestiarists who discuss the cock (gallus) do not describe its physical appearance; they are far more interested in the allegorical significance of the fowl. The same is true of Vincent of Beauvais, Hildegard of Bingen, and Hugh of St. Victor in their compilations of bestiary lore. Nor do we find a description of Chanteclere in Marie de France's "Del cok e del gupil," or in the French Roman de Renard, both of which are possible sources for, or at least starting points for, the Nun's Priest's Tale.
In attempting to account for particular details in Chaucer's description of Chauntecleer, critics have taken a number of approaches, from identifying an actual species of rooster upon which the description might be based, to citing correspondences with bestiary drawings of the cock.[2] Other critics are more inclined to regard Chauntecleer's impressive appearance as evidence of Chaucer's imaginative and descriptive powers, rather than something for which a definitive model can be found. For example, Nevill Coghill and Christopher Tolkien, in their edition of the Nun's Priest's Tale, account for the hyperbole by drawing parallels between the rhetoric used in the description of Chauntecleer and the rhetoric used by Geoffrey Vinsauf in his description of women in the Poetria Nova.[3] Claes Schaar comments on "the gorgeous scale of colours" and "dazzling hues" of Chauntecleer, and says that the description is rather like the descriptions of clothing and armor found in French romances.[4] And Elizabeth Salter compares the description to the "courtly painting of elaborate French style--an art of hard, brilliant substance and formal stance."[5] More recently, Karl P. Wentersdorf, without trying to trace the sources of Chaucer's description of Chauntecleer, notes "the incongruity of describing Chauntecleer and Pertelote in terms better suited to a royal prince and his consort."[6]
The language that Schaar and Salter use can be applied to verbal depictions of another bird that figures prominently in medieval literature: the phoenix. While I find the idea attractive that Chaucer has simply supplied us with a hyperbolic description of Everyrooster, I'd like to suggest that the description of the phoenix found in Mandeville's Travels influenced Chaucer.
Mandeville himself could have taken his description of the phoenix from the Physiologus or from Pliny, who writes in his Natural History:
. . . aquilae narratur magnitudine, auri fulgore circa colla, cetero purpureus, caeruleam roseis caudam pinnis distinguentibus, cristis fauces, caputque plumeo apice honestante.[7]
Of course, we find other descriptions of the phoenix after Pliny and before Mandeville, descriptions that both Mandeville and Chaucer could have borrowed. For example, in his Speculum Naturale, Vincent of Beauvais cites Solinus--"auis aquile magnitudine: capite onerato in comam plumis extantibus: cristatis faucibus circa colla fulgore aureo postera parse purpureus; extra caudem in que roseis pennis interscribitur nitor ceruleus."[8] And one of Mandeville's more important sources, Jacques de Vitry, writes "est ibi phoenix auis singularise & pulcherrima, magna corpore, plumis auterm, vnguibus, & oculis decora. Dicitur autem quod in capite cristem habent velut pang. Collum eius aureo colore refulget: roseas habet pennas, in posterioribus purpureas: caudem habet cerulei coloris."[9] Albertus Magnus also compares the crest on the phoenix's head to that of a peacock, and says its neck is ringed with purple and gold, and that its tail is "long and mauve-colored, marked with a geometric design resembling rosettes."[10]
These details have not found their way into surviving bestiary descriptions; for example, in the late twelfth-century Cambridge bestiary, it is simply said that "Fenix the Bird of Arabia is called this because of its reddish purple color."[11]
Chaucer could hardly have missed reading or hearing about Mandeville's Travels.[12] There are some 57 extant manuscripts in French, 20 of which are in Norman French (17 of the Norman French versions are in English hands). At least three separate English translations (late fourteenth or early fifteenth century) were made on the basis of French versions. Of English provenance are the approximately 50 MSS of the four Latin versions translated from French. Chaucer was most likely familiar with at least the 1356 Norman French version of the Travels that Josephine Bennett argues is the original.[13] According to Bennett, the best Norman French text is B.M. Harley 4383. This contains the following description of the phoenix:
Et nest "airs pluis grant dun aigle; et il ad vn crest sur la teste pluis grant qe vn pauon, et ad col toute iaune de la colour dun oriel bien lusant, et le dos de ynde, et les aeles de purpre colour, et la cowe reget de trauers de ieune et de rouge. Et est tres belle a veoir au solail, qar il tregluyt mult noblement.[14]
The Middle English Cotton MS (ca. 1410) of the Travels is a close translation of the French:
And [the phoenix] is not mecheles more *(This character cannot be converted in ASCII text) an Egle And he hath a crest of fedres vpon his hed more gret *(This character cannot be converted in ASCII text) the poocock hath & his nekke is *(This character cannot be converted in ASCII text) after colour of an Oriell *(This character cannot be converted in ASCII text) is a ston wel schynynge. And his teak is coloured blew as ynde And trig wenges teen of purpre colour And the tayll is *(This character cannot be converted in ASCII text) & red . . . And he is a full fair brid to loken vpon a *(This character cannot be converted in ASCII text) the sonne, for he schyneth full gloriously & nobely.[15]
Note the similiar, mannered quality of Chaucer's and Mandeville's descriptions. There are many other points of resemblance between Chaucer's Chauntecleer and Mandeville's phoenix: both birds are described as red and yellow (though it must be acknowledged that Chauntecleer has a red comb, and the phoenix a red tail); both birds are described as partly blue -- the phoenix has indigo and purple feathers, and Chauntecleer has azure legs; Chauntecleer shines "lyk the burned gold" and the phoenix, according to Mandeville, "schyneth full gloriously & nobely."[16]
The verbal parallels between the various descriptions of the phoenix and Chauntecleer are too striking to be dismissed. But why would Chaucer use the phoenix as a model in the first place? For those in Chaucer's audience who made the connection between the magnificent phoenix and the foolish Chauntecleer, seeing the parallel would have served to heighten the comic (and mock-heroic) elements of the poem. And an audience that was moved to think of the most marvelous bird in the bestiary would have gotten the message that this Chauntecleer, a common rooster, has an absurdly high opinion of himself. After all, Chauntecleer puts himself in danger because he succumbs to the flattery of the fox. One might even say that Chauntecleer is "reborn," phoenix-like, once the fox lets go of him and he escapes, quite literally, from the jaws of death.
[
NOTES
[1]
"His comb was redder than fine coral; crenellated, as if it were a castle wall. His bill was black, and shone like jet. His legs and toes were like the blue of lapis lazuli, his nails whiter than the lily, and his overall color like burnished gold." Geoffrey Chaucer, The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. L. D. Benson, 3rd ed. (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1987) lines 2859-64. All translations are mine unless otherwise noted.
[2]
For views on the description of Chauntecleer, see Lalia Phipps Boone, "Chauntecleer and Partlet Identified," Modern Language Notes 64 (1949): 78- 81, in which she identifies Chauntecleer as a Golden Spangled Hamburg. H. B. Hinckley points to the description of the partridge (which has purple legs and a coral beak) in the Phaedrus fable of the fox and the partridge in Notes on Chaucer (1907; New York: Haskell House, 1964) 128-29; Beryl Rowland notes the colorful bestiary representations of the cock in Blind Beasts: Chaucer's Animal World (Kent, OH: Kent State U P, 1971) 54.
[3]
(London: Harrap, 1959) 17, 46.
[4]
The Golden Mirror: Studies in Chaucer's Descriptive Technique and Its Literary Background, Acta. Reg. Societatis Humaniorum Litterarum Lundensis 54 (London, 1955) 353. J. Leslie Hotson comments on the "strong heraldic tint" of Chauntecleer's colors, and argues that they may represent Henry Bolingbroke's coat of arms in "Colfox vs. Chauntecleer," Publications of 1 Modern Language Association 39 (1924): 762-81, 774. Charles Dalhberg, in "Chaucer's Cock and the Fox," Journal of English and Germanic Philology 53 (1954): 277-90, argues that these colors are associated with the vita sacerdoti.
[5]
"Medieval Poetry and the Visual Arts," Essays and Studies 22, ed. Francis Berry (London:John Murray, 1969) 16-32, 19.
[6]
"Symbol and Meaning in Chaucer's Nun's Priest's Tale," Nottingham Medieval Studies 26 (1982): 2946, 33. See Kate Oelzner Petersen, On the Sources of The Nonne Prestes Tale (1898; New York: Haskell House 1966) 91, for a similiar comment.
[7]
". . . it is as large as an eagle, and has a gleam of gold round its neck and all the rest of it is purple, but the tail blue picked out with rose-coloured feathers and the throat picked out with tufts, and a feathered crest adorning his head." Ed. and trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U P, 1938) X.ii. In the The Histories, Herodotus says that it is "partly golden, partly red." Trans. Aubrey de Selincourt (1954; rev. 1972, A. R. Burn; Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin Books, 1976) II/157.
[8]
"The bird is as big as an eagle, its head weighted with abundant plumes, with a crested throat and a neck circled round with gleaming gold. Its hindquarters are purple; its tailfeathers are of rose-colored plumes mixed with bright blue." (Strassburg, 1475) 17.lxxiiii.
[9]
"This phoenix is a unique and beautiful bird, with a good-sized body, attractive feathers, claws, and eyes. Moreover, it is said that it has a crest on its head like the peacock's. Its neck gleams with gold; it has rose-colored plumes, purple hindquarters, and bright blue tailfeathers." Historia Orientalis (Douay, 1597) cap.90/190.
[10]
Man and the Beasts: de animalibus (Books 22-26), trans. James J. Scanlan, Medieval & Renaissance Texts and Studies 47 (Binghamton, New York: Center for Early Medieval & Renaissance Studies, 1987) 289.
[11]
The Book of Beasts, trans. T. H. White, (1954; New York: Dover Publications, 1984) 125. The Latin in the B.M. Royal 12 F xiii Bestiary is "Fenix igitur est arable avis. Sic dicta quod colorem phenicem habeas." Professor Peter Reid (Department of Classics, Tufts University) kindly provided me with a microfilm copy of this bestiary.
[12]
Much of the debate about Chaucer's knowledge of the Travels has been based on what sources Chaucer may have used for the Squire's Talc. The most complete and up-to-date discussion of these sources can be found in the Variorum Edition, ed. Donald C. Baker (Norman and London: U of Oklahoma P, 1990) 4-23.
[13]
The Rediscovery of Sir John Mandeville (New York: MLA, 1954) Part II passim and Appendices I and 11.
[14]
"And [the phoenix] is not much bigger than an eagle; it has a crest on its head very much like the peacock's, and its neck is yellow all over, like the color of a precious stone shining brightly. [It has] an indigo-blue back, purple feathers, and a tail crossed with yellow and red. It is very beautiful to see against the sun, for it shines so nobly." The Buke of John Mandevill, ed. George F. Warner (London, 1889) 7.25/39-41.
[15]
"And [the phoenix] is not much bigger than an eagle; it has a crest of feathers upon its head larger than that of the peacock, and its neck is yellow, like the color of a brightly-shining precious stone. And its back is colored blue as indigo, and its wings are purple. And the tail is yellow and red . . . It is very pleasing to look upon when it stands against the sun, for this bird shines gloriously and nobly." Ed. Peter Hamelius (E.E.T.S. O.S. 153, 154; 1919,1923; London, 1973,1961) VII.31/1-9. Compare the Egerton MS: "He has on his heued a creste as a pacock, but it es mykill mare *(this character cannot be converted in ASCII text)an *(this character cannot be converted in ASCII text) creste of a pacock. His neck es *(this character cannot be converted in ASCII text)alow, and his back es ynde colour; his wengs er reed." ("It has on its head a crest like a peacock's, but it is much bigger. Its neck is yellow, and its back is blue as indigo; its wings are red.") In Warner, 25/1417.
[16]
The phoenix in the Alliterative Alexander C (later than both the Nun's Priest's Talc and many of the English and French MSS of Mandeville's Travels) is described in a similar manner:
]
[*](this character cannot be converted in ASCII text) ar bade a brid on a boghe a-bofe in *(this character cannot be converted in ASCII text) topp, Was of a port of a pea with sike a proude crest, With bathe *(this character cannot be converted in ASCII text) chekis & *(this character cannot be converted in ASCII text) chanyls as a chykin brid, And all gilden was hire gory with golden fethers, All hire hames be-hind was hewid as a purpure. And all *(this character cannot be converted in ASCII text) body and *(this character cannot be converted in ASCII text) brest & on *(this character cannot be converted in ASCII text) bely vndire Was finely florischt & faire with frekild pennys
"A bird lived on a bough in the top [of the tree] with the appearance of a peacock with a proud crest and cheeks and folds like a chicken's. Its neck was covered with golden feathers, and its hindquarters were colored purple. And the entire body, breast, and belly were well-adorned and beautiful with spotted plumes." Ed. W. W. Skeat (1886; E.E.T.S. E.S. 47, London, 1973) lines 4982-88. Skeat supplies the corresponding Latin passage from the Historia de preliis in his notes, page 314: "Et auis gerebat in capite cristam similem pauoni, et fauces cristatas, et circa collum circulum aureum fulgentem. Postrema vero parse purpurea erat. Extra caudam vero roseis pennis in quibus ceruleus color erat." And compare to the fifteenth-century poem, "I haue a gentil cok," in Lyrics of the XIVth and XVth Centuries, ed. R. H. Robbins (1952; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), 41-42.
By Kathleen Ann Kelly Northeastern University
