Medieval English Poetry
Geoffrey Chaucer: The Legend of Good Women
14th century, Middle English. Numerous printed copies.
Zephyrus and the goddess Flora give to the flowers, softly and tenderly, their sweet breath, as god and goddess of the flowery mead.
In his prologue to The Legend of Good Women, Geoffrey Chaucer tells us: 'A thousand times have I heard men tell, that there is joy in heaven and pain in hell, and I accord well that it is so; but nonetheless' – he cautions – nonetheless, there is no one alive today who can testify to the existence of these places by ever having been to them and returned to tell the story. A remedy is at hand, however. We must believe what we read in old books. But which old books? Pagan or Christian?
Geoffrey is constantly immersed in his old books, and they are often books of classical myth and legend. Only one thing will draw him away from these manuscripts and that is the sight of the daisy opening her flowers at the start of the day – he tells us. Geoffrey wakes before dawn and rushes down to his garden to see the daisy opening her petals to the sun. Geoffrey remains all day (in his finest, figurative form) worshipping this flower. Zephyrus and the goddess Flora give to the flowers, softly and tenderly – he tells us – their sweet breath, as god and goddess of the flowery mead. In the evening, as the daisy closes her petals, Geoffrey has a servant cut a mound of turves for him to sleep on. He asks the servant to place flowers beside his head as he lies supine upon this tomb-like mound where, in the morning, he will awake as the daisy opens her petals again, once night has passed.
But during this particular slumber upon his mound of turves, Geoffrey has dreamed a dream. He was in the presence of the god and goddess of the flowery mead and the goddess was in the shape of a daisy. He asked her to tell him who she is and she replied that she is Alcestis. Alcestis, who, as the ancient Greek dramatist Euripides showed us, died for love and was then rescued from the underworld by Heracles and restored into the human world once more. And is this good Alceste, the dayesye, and myn owne hertes reste?
Now she is a daisy, opening and closing her petals in a daily cycle.
She instructs him to write a Legend of Good Women and he promises to do so, writing nine verse biographies in all, perhaps inspired by the nine Muses of classical myth.
Chaucer's poem The Legend of Good Women recounted from: Skeat, Walter W, edited from numerous manuscripts, 1912, reprinted 1973. Chaucer: Complete Works. Oxford University Press. The Legend of Good Women, written c. 1385.