Visions, Proclamations, and Courts of Love

Abstract

AbstractJoseph Warton claimed that The Floure and the Leafe, thought in the eighteenth century to be by Chaucer, was an ‘exquisite vision’ in itself, which ‘has received a thousand new graces from the spirited and harmonious’ version by Dryden. Dryden’s success with his Flower and the Leaf encouraged others to turn to the non-Chaucerian poems of Speght’s edition—some of them offered as genuine, others by writers other than Chaucer. They are mainly ‘visionary’ or ‘allegorical’ in nature and deal with the experience of love, seen from different viewpoints, mingling pathos with satire, and implying attitudes towards women which vary from religious veneration to contempt. The chapter begins by considering the anonymous Lamentation of Mary Magdalene and then compares two versions of The Court of Love: Arthur Maynwaring’s rakish rendering and the more restrained version by Alexander Catcott. John Dart renders The Complaint of the Black Knight in ways that highlight its pathos and affinities with Dryden’s Palamon and Arcite. George Sewell makes his Proclamation of Cupid something of a defence of all women. William Cooke’s The Cuckow and the Nightingale (1774), and Wordsworth’s version of this (1801) keep closer to the letter of their original. Wordsworth’s is a restoration rather than a translation, giving his impression of an old poem rather than an impression of an imaginary dream-walk in a real wood. Dryden had made his version of The Floure and the Leaf reflect on his own times, suggesting a visionary reconciliation of the troubles of his century.