Chief among those who have worked for the betterment of the language, of course, is Geoffrey Chaucer. Thynne’s comments on Chaucer address his style as well as his works, but coming after a lengthy and sweeping discussion of other languages, it is clear that for Thynne Chaucer’s significance lies not in his poetry itself but in what his verses prove about the excellence and capability of English, in both the linguistic and national sense of the term. The architect of this excellence must be suitably accomplished. Thus, Thynne praises Chaucer as someone “in whose workes is so manyfest comprobacion of his excellent lernyng in all kyndes of doctrynes and sciences, suche frutefulnesse in words / wel accordinge to the mater and purpose / so swete and pleasunt sentences / soche perfection in metre / the composycion so adapted / soche fresshnesse of invencion / compendyousnesse in narration / suche sensyble and open style / lackyng neither majestie ne mediocritie / covenable in disposycion / and suche sharpnesse or quycknesse in conclusyon.”42 Although he begins with Chaucer’s learning, Thynne devotes most of this passage to describing Chaucer’s writing. Presented as a master of the superlative expression of literary values that Thynne believes his sixteenth-century audience will share, Chaucer sounds very contemporary here. Chaucer’s works matter not only because of what their content reveals about their author, but also because they are the evidence of the “beautifying and bettryng of thenglyshe tonge.” In this way, according to Thynne, Chaucer was not just a good poet, but an extraordinary one. As Thynne puts it, “it is moche to be marvayled / howe in his time / whan doutlesse all good letters were layde a slepe throughout the worlde / as the thynge, whiche either by the disposycion and influence of the bodies above / or by other ordynaunce of god / semed lyke as was in daunger to have utterly perysshed / suche an excellent poete in our tonge / shulde as it were (nature repugnyng) spryng and arise.”43 From a grammatical perspective, is not entirely clear what “thynge” is in danger of perishing without Chaucer’s aid, but what is certain is that in order to be the exceptional poet that Thynne presents him as, Chaucer’s poetic achievements must transcend their historical moment, making them temporally as well as literarily exceptional. And, indeed, Chaucer is presented here as a figure not just untimely but unnatural, springing forth despite “nature repugnyng.”
As the preface continues it becomes evident that, for Thynne, Chaucer’s significance lies not just in the unprecedented eloquence of his English poetry but, as the passage above suggests, more specifically in his ability to reach such heights at an unlikely historical moment. An air of untimeliness floats around Chaucer, whose works “semeth for the admiracion / noveltie / and strangenesse that it myght be reputed to be of in the tyme of the authour / in comparison / as a pure and fyne tryede precious or polyced jewell out of a rude or indigest masse or matere.”44 Rather than emerging from the “indigest masse” of late medieval England, Thynne suggests Chaucer belongs more properly to either the Greek and Roman past or to the Henrician present, the parallels Thynne finds between Chaucer and Greek and Roman exemplars making him appear more like the writers of the sixteenth century than the fourteenth. Thynne continues,
For though it had been in Demosthenes or Homerus tymes / whan al lernyng and excellency of sciences florisshed amonges the Grekes / or in the season that Cicero prince of eloquence amonges latyns lyved / yet had it ben a thyng right rare and straunge / and worthy perpetuall laude / that any clerke by lernyng or wytte coulde than have framed a tonge before so rude and imperfite / to suche a swete ornature and composyicion / lykely if he had lyved in these dayes / being good letters so restored and revyved as they be / if he were nat empeched by the envy of suche as maye tollerate nothyng / whiche to understonde their capacite doth nat extende / to have brought it unto a full and fynall perfection.45
In this passage, Thynne articulates a view of Chaucer that will be echoed in the works of later writers, including John Leland and Sir Philip Sidney. On the one hand, for Thynne, Chaucer is an extraordinary writer whose accomplishments are all the more remarkable because they occurred during a period when “all good letters were layde a slepe throughout the worlde.” Approached synchronically, in his own moment, Chaucer is exceptional. On the other hand, by setting Chaucer apart from his medieval antecedents and contemporaries, Thynne can also construct a diachronic narrative that not only links Chaucer to exemplars of classical eloquence but also imagines his reception (as if a living author) in the Henrician present in which “good letters” are “so restored and revyved” as to make “a full and fynall perfection” of the language possible. Although cut off from both the illustrious past and the glorious future by their medieval moment, Chaucer’s writings here are presented both as a continuation of classical learnedness and as something that might draw the “envy” of a lesser sort of contemporary reader. While Thomas Wilson might have had poetry in mind when he complained, in his 1553 Arte of Rhetorique, that “the fine Courtier wil talk nothyng but Chaucer,” Thynne’s preface suggests a variety of reasons why the English courtier—eager to demonstrate both loyalty and eloquence in the rapidly shifting environs of the Henrician court—might have found Chaucer, in particular, a useful focal point for courtly discourse.46
(Re)framing Chaucer
While Thynne’s preface did much to link Chaucer with the development of the English language (and, through it, Englishness itself), the 1561 edition more vividly shows how bibliographic features like title pages could convey specific ideas about how and why Chaucer mattered in sixteenth-century England. The title pages to the three Thynne editions use relatively sedate architectural borders, but John Stow’s edition of the Works introduces a new title page, featuring the Chaucer family coat of arms (thereby emphasizing Chaucer’s social status; see Figure 1), and on several interior title pages makes use of the extraordinary “tree of Jesse” woodcut frame originally produced for Edward Hall’s Union of the two noble and illustre famelies of Lancastre and Yorke, better known as Hall’s Chronicle (STC 12723), and used subsequently in Thomas Marshe’s 1555 edition of Lydgate’s Troy Book (STC 5580) (see Figure 2).47 The bottom corners of the frame depict the slumbering figures of John of Gaunt and Edmund of York, from whose torsos emerge rose bushes, blooming with the visages of various fifteenth-century luminaries. At the top of the frame, the two bushes join as Henry VII extends a hand from his bloom to greet his queen Elizabeth in hers. Above, in a double Tudor rose, Henry VIII presides over the entire scene. In the 1561 Works, where the woodcut prefaces the Canterbury Tales and the Romaunt of the Rose, it quite literally provides a historical frame for Chaucer’s text. The juxtaposition is striking: while the image quite clearly reflects the contents of Hall’s Chronicle, there is no self-evident link between the Canterbury Tales and the War of the Roses. Instead, the woodcut invites the reader to make the link between Chaucer, the historical figure, and the luminaries depicted in the woodcut, most notably Chaucer’s patron John of Gaunt.
The Hall woodcut provides a visual analogue to what had by the middle of the sixteenth century become an increasingly historicized and politicized frame of reference for reading Chaucer. The woodcut’s biographical connection to Chaucer depends upon the figure of Chaucer’s patron and brother-in-law John of Gaunt at the bottom left; its appearance here must indicate that whoever was responsible for the its appearance in this book was aware of the connection between Chaucer and Gaunt and wished to emphasize this. Joseph Dane and Seth Lerer have argued that evidence of a stop-press correction of a typographical error in Adam Scriveyn indicates that Stow himself was involved in the production of the Works, perhaps even present in the printing house.48 Stow certainly had the necessary historical background to recognize the connection between Gaunt and Chaucer, and he must have known Hall’s Chronicle as a source for his own historiography.49 I think it very likely that