Studies in Philology

In his 1598 edition of Chaucer's works, Thomas Speght added another dream vision, now known as the spurious Isle of Ladies , but then titled, "Chaucers dreame, neuer before this time published in print. That which heretofore hath gone vnder the name of his dreame, is the book of the Duchesse: or the death of Blanch Duchesse of Lancaster." ¹ Isle steadfastly remained in the canon until the late nineteenth century and has since posed two kinds of questions for modern critics. On the one hand, those who study Isle alone concern themselves primarily with issues of dating and authorship and with saving this "flimsy airy fantasy" ² from the neglect it has earned since being expelled from the Chaucer canon. On the other hand, those who work on the Book of the Duchess and attempt to trace the appearance of the text in print editions are "haunted by a doppelgänger of the poem, in title [End Page 207] though not in text." ³ These two poems, typically dealt with separately by modern critics, are undeniably linked by the realities of printing and reception.

Pursuing this link further, that is, actually reading the Isle of Ladies in connection with Chaucer, allows us to see the poem in a new light, at once historical and interpretive. For fifteenth-century poets who were writing in the shadow of Chaucer, a reading of their texts with an eye to the Canterbury poet can reveal what may not have been seen when these poems were considered on their own. Alice Miskimin long ago called for "a return to the texts of the folios themselves, so long despised and ignored, for the wealth of their evidence of 'error' Elizabethans took for truth." ⁴ These "erroneous" interpretations, instead of being tossed aside as soon as we discover the "correct" reading of the text, can be used to reassess and rediscover the work. From such a study we find that there is a reason why Isle and the Book of the Duchess were so easily linked: the Isle -poet consciously imitated Chaucer, using the rhetorical technique of invention to create his own elaborate story indebted to the Book of the Duchess . To begin this revaluation of the Isle of Ladies , I will first focus on the context connecting Isle and Book of the Duchess as they originally appeared together in Speght's editions and then on nineteenth-century and modern conceptions of Chaucer and Isle as compared to sixteenth-century conceptions of the same. These issues of context and reception will function as a preface to my discussion of the Isle of Ladies itself as a Chaucerian imitation.

Any reading of the Isle of Ladies and the Book of the Duchess together must begin with Speght's "arguments" to both poems, which provide an authoritative interpretation for the reader before he even begins the poems. The allegorical description of Isle that Speght gives can be found in both of his editions, unchanged except for punctuation:

This dream deuised by Chaucer, seemeth to be a couert report of the mariage of Iohn of Gaunt the kings sonne with Blanch the daughter of Henry Duke of Lancaster, who after long loue, during the time whereof the Poet faineth them to be dead, were in the end by consent of friends happily married; figured by a bird bringing in her bill an hearbe, which restored them to life againe. Here also is shewed Chaucers match with a certaine Gentlewoman, who although shee was a stranger, ⁵ was notwithstanding so well liked and loued of the Lady [End Page 208] Blanch, and her Lord, as Chaucer himselfe also was, that gladly they concluded a marriage betweene them.

(image 20) ⁶

Strengthening the link implied in the title that Speght gave to the poem, "Chaucers dreame," Speght's introduction argues that the Isle of Ladies functions as the story of the marriage of John and Blanche, forcing the unquestioning reader to read this poem as a companion piece to the Book of the Duchess . While Speght's description of Isle remains constant, the presentation of the...