The Rhetorical Construction of Narrator and Narrative in Chaucer's the Book of the Duchess

The Book of the Duchess is Chaucer's poetic response to a problem that confronted the young poet following the death of his patron's wife, Blanche of Lancaster, in September of 1368. ¹ Faced with the task of comforting her grieving husband, yet unable to assume the appearance of superior emotional wisdom that would allow him to do so directly, Chaucer must work obliquely. By shrewdly manipulating the narrative persona he inherited from the French love-vision, Chaucer creates a suitably flattering memorialization of Blanche and of Gaunt's love for her. The strength and creativity of this use of character suggest a reading of the poem principally in terms of its psychological drama, from the Narrator's obtuseness in the beginning of the poem to his vexed attempts at communication with the Black Knight in the central dialogue. Such an approach, however, ignores the structural complexity that underlies two of the poem's most controversial moments: the conclusion of the tale of Seys and Alcyone at the beginning, and the conclusion of the dialogue at the end. I will argue that although the psychological drama of character often seems to dominate the poem, this drama depends critically upon an underlying, structural drama: that of the chiastic pattern of contrasting rhetorical styles that links the tale of Alcyone with the dénouement of the central dialogue. Only by examining these two aspects of the poem together can we appreciate the full emotional force of the work's conclusion, in which both are resolved in the space of a single climactic couplet.

Chaucer's manipulations of his French and Latin sources at the beginning of the Book of the Duchess first register the poem's distinctive use of both character and structure. D. S. Brewer, comparing the opening lines of Chaucer's poem to those of Froissart's Paradys d'amour, suggests that in contrast to Froissart's "sober, well-languaged, flat" opening lines, Chaucer's are "lively, conversational, emphatic, dramatic." ² Since Chaucer echoes Froissart directly, the difference chronicles how he invents his own narrator:

Je sui de moi en grant	I have gret wonder, be this lyght,
merveille
Comment tant vifs car moult	How that I lyve, for day ne nyght
je velle
Et on ne poroit en veillant	I may nat slepe wel nygh noght;
Trouver de moi plus travellant,	I have so many an ydel thoght
Car bien sachiés que par vellier	Purely for defaute of slep
Me viennent souvent travellier	That, by my trouthe, I take no kep
Pensees et merancolies	Of nothing, how hyt cometh or
	gooth,
Qui me sont ens ou coer liies.	Ne me nys nothyng leef nor looth.
Et pas ne les puis desliier,	Al is ylyche good to me--
Car ne voel la belle oubliier	Joy or sorowe, wherso hyt be--
Pour quelle amour en ce travel	For I have felynge in nothyng,
Je sui entrés en tant je vel.3	But as yt were a mased thyng,
(1-12)	Alway in poynt to falle a-doun;
	For sorwful ymagynacioun
	Ys alway hooly in my mynde.4
	(1-15)

Froissart's text is remarkably coherent in both meaning and sound. By the date of the poem's composition, probably 1361 or 1362, ⁵ the terminal "r"s and "s"s of lines 5-10 would not have been pronounced, so these three adjacent couplets rhyme with one another. The seamlessness of these middle lines is complemented by the similarity of the first and last couplets' rhymes, which lends a circular feel to the passage as a whole; the echo of the first line's "en grant" in the "en tant" of line 12 reinforces this impression. This "en tant je vel" recasts in a similar context several words from line 2 ("Comment tant vifs car moult je velle"), providing both aural and semantic closure...