Melissa Ridley Elmes

Abstract

“Geoffrey Chaucer’s Parliament of Fowles: Species or Specious?”

Chapter Proposal for In Hir Corages: Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts

When it comes to Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Parliament of Fowles”, literary scholars have tended to assume that Chaucer modeled the pecking order of his birds primarily on his ideas concerning the birds’ importance and on the human feudal system, or on models presented by earlier stories featuring animals in allegorical roles. It is generally agreed upon that he ordered the birds according to how he felt they corresponded best to human counterparts in the feudal system. My research for this chapter focuses on what, if any, scientific treatises on birds might have been available to readers in Chaucer’s time, and whether or not this subject might have been addressed in Chaucer’s schooling; the religious traditions surrounding the ordering of animals; and what other animal tales were circulating at the time of Chaucer’s writing of POF and what role they may have played in Chaucer’s authorial decisions. The completed chapter will explore what Chaucer might or might not have been able to know about scientific species classifications and the natural relations between bird species, either through reading or personal observation, will look at the role of religious doctrine and dream allegory in his ordering of birds (St. John as the eagle, for example, possibly serving as a model for the eagles’ placement at the top of the feudal system), will consider the influence of other literary texts, and will ultimately put forth a suggestion as to what degree the parliament is ordered along the lines of species, i.e. the natural sciences and classification of organisms, or along the lines of the specious, Chaucer’s aesthetic decisions made primarily from a literary and/or cultural standpoint and without regard for natural orders.