The Floure and the Leafe
Encyclopedia
"The Floure and the Leafe", is an anonymous Middle English
allegorical
poem in 595 lines of rhyme royal
, written around 1470. During the 17th, 18th, and most of the 19th century it was mistakenly believed to be the work of Geoffrey Chaucer
, and was generally considered to be one of his finest poems. The name of the author is not known but the poem presents itself as the work of a woman, and some critics are inclined to take this at face value. The poet was certainly well-read, there being a number of echoes of earlier writers in the poem, including Geoffrey Chaucer
, John Lydgate
, John Gower
, Andreas Capellanus
, Guillaume de Lorris
, Guillaume de Machaut
, Jean Froissart
, Eustache Deschamps
, Christine de Pizan
, and the authors of the "Lai du Trot" and the Kingis Quair
.
The narrator sees a company of ladies and knights arriving, dressed in white and wearing chaplets made of various kinds of leaf. The knights joust with each other, then join the ladies and dance with them in the shade of a laurel tree. Then a second company arrives, this time dressed in green and ornamented with flowers. They perform a bergerette, a dance-song, in praise of the daisy, until they are overcome first by the oppressive midday heat and then by a storm. The company of the leaf, safely sheltered by their laurel, courteously come to the aid of the company of the flower drying their drenched clothes over improvised fires.
The meaning of these events is explained to the narrator by a beautiful woman in white. The company of the leaf are devoted to virginity, or at any rate to faithfulness in love, and their queen is Diana
.
The beauty of flowers lasts only for a season, but the beauty of leaves endures. The narrator finally decides that she will be of the company of the leaf.
poems held at Longleat House
in Wiltshire
, mentions in its contents list a poem whose title is given in the Latinised form "De folio et flore" (Of the Leaf and the Flower). Unfortunately the pages of the manuscript that contained this poem are now missing, but there is little doubt that it was "The Floure and the Leafe". The poem was first published in 1598 in Thomas Speght's edition of Chaucer
's works, and there are reasons for thinking that it was printed from a faulty transcript of the separated Longleat pages. In the absence of any ancient manuscript of the poem Speght's book is the only authority for the text.
. John Dryden
was the first major writer to pick out "The Floure and the Leafe" for special attention, writing a modernized version of it for inclusion in his Fables, Ancient and Modern
(1700), and writing that
Dryden's advocacy was the making of the poem's reputation, and for nearly two centuries praise came unstintingly. Alexander Pope
reported that "every body has been delighted" with it, and on his own account called it a masterpiece.
William Hazlitt
thought the opening section "one of the finest parts of Chaucer" and spoke of the poem's "enchanting simplicity and concentrated feeling", while Thomas Campbell judged that "No one who remembers his productions of the House of Fame
and the "Flower and the Leaf", will regret that he sported for a season in the field of allegory."
Keats
read the poem and wrote an admiring sonnet about it, "This pleasant tale is like a little copse", which included the line "What mighty power has this gentle story". It has been suggested that his "Ode to a Nightingale" was in part inspired by the Middle English
poem, or by Dryden's modernization of it. The musician and poet Sidney Lanier
outdid them all when he declared "The Floure and the Leafe" was worth all the Canterbury Tales
put together. In 1868 scenes from the poem were represented in the memorial window (destroyed in World War II
) placed above Chaucer's tomb in Westminster Abbey
. The same year, the scholar Henry Bradshaw
gave reasons for thinking the poem to have been written too late to be Chaucer's work. The pioneering Middle English scholar Thomas Tyrwhitt
had published his own doubts as early as 1778, and been universally derided for this heresy. Now, however, Bradshaw's judgement was seconded by ten Brink
, who produced many arguments for rejecting it from the canon of Chaucer's works. Attempts to counter these arguments were unavailing, and thereafter the poem had to make its own way in the world, without the protection of Chaucer's name. The great philologist Walter Skeat
accepted Bradshaw's judgement, and spoke of the poem's "tinsel-like glitter…which gives it a flashy attractiveness, in striking contrast to the easy grace of Chaucer's workmanship". On the other hand, The Cambridge History of English Literature
in 1908 found its charm undiminished:
As late as 1936 the poem was so well-known that C. S. Lewis
, in The Allegory of Love
, could claim that "The story is probably familiar to every reader." He saw the poem as "a hybrid – a moral allegory wearing the dress of the Rose tradition", and praised the author, though in rather condescending terms:
In recent years Derek Pearsall
has produced two editions of "The Floure and the Leafe", but relatively few critics have published studies of it, and, as Kathleen Formi has noted, "To my knowledge, the poem has not been anthologized."
Middle English
Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
allegorical
Allegory
Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...
poem in 595 lines of rhyme royal
Rhyme royal
Rhyme royal is a rhyming stanza form that was introduced into English poetry by Geoffrey Chaucer.-Form:The rhyme royal stanza consists of seven lines, usually in iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme is a-b-a-b-b-c-c. In practice, the stanza can be constructed either as a terza rima and two couplets...
, written around 1470. During the 17th, 18th, and most of the 19th century it was mistakenly believed to be the work of Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
, and was generally considered to be one of his finest poems. The name of the author is not known but the poem presents itself as the work of a woman, and some critics are inclined to take this at face value. The poet was certainly well-read, there being a number of echoes of earlier writers in the poem, including Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
, John Lydgate
John Lydgate
John Lydgate of Bury was a monk and poet, born in Lidgate, Suffolk, England.Lydgate is at once a greater and a lesser poet than John Gower. He is a greater poet because of his greater range and force; he has a much more powerful machine at his command. The sheer bulk of Lydgate's poetic output is...
, John Gower
John Gower
John Gower was an English poet, a contemporary of William Langland and a personal friend of Geoffrey Chaucer. He is remembered primarily for three major works, the Mirroir de l'Omme, Vox Clamantis, and Confessio Amantis, three long poems written in French, Latin, and English respectively, which...
, Andreas Capellanus
Andreas Capellanus
Andreas Capellanus was the 12th-century author of a treatise commonly known as De amore , and often known in English, somewhat misleadingly, as The Art of Courtly Love, though its realistic, somewhat cynical tone suggests that it is in some measure an antidote to courtly love...
, Guillaume de Lorris
Guillaume de Lorris
Guillaume de Lorris was a French scholar and poet from Lorris. He was the author of the first section of the Roman de la Rose. Little is known about him, other than that he wrote the earlier section of the poem around 1230, and that the work was completed forty years later by Jean de Meun.-...
, Guillaume de Machaut
Guillaume de Machaut
Guillaume de Machaut was a Medieval French poet and composer. He is one of the earliest composers on whom significant biographical information is available....
, Jean Froissart
Jean Froissart
Jean Froissart , often referred to in English as John Froissart, was one of the most important chroniclers of medieval France. For centuries, Froissart's Chronicles have been recognized as the chief expression of the chivalric revival of the 14th century Kingdom of England and France...
, Eustache Deschamps
Eustache Deschamps
Eustache Deschamps was a medieval French poet, also known as Eustache Morel . Born at Vertus, in Champagne, he received lessons in versification from Guillaume de Machaut and later studied law at Orleans University. He then traveled through Europe as a diplomatic messenger for Charles V...
, Christine de Pizan
Christine de Pizan
Christine de Pizan was a Venetian-born late medieval author who challenged misogyny and stereotypes prevalent in the male-dominated medieval culture. As a poet, she was well known and highly regarded in her own day; she completed 41 works during her 30 year career , and can be regarded as...
, and the authors of the "Lai du Trot" and the Kingis Quair
The Kingis Quair
The Kingis Quair is a fifteenth-century poem attributed to James I of Scotland. It is semi-autobiographical in nature, describing the King's capture by the English in 1406 on his way to France and his subsequent imprisonment by Henry IV of England and his successors, Henry V and Henry VI...
.
Synopsis
The young female narrator, unable to sleep, walks out to an oak-grove and finds an arbour, where a goldfinch is singing in a medlar tree. There is also a nightingale in a laurel:The nightingale with so merry a note
Answered him that all the wood rong,
So sodainly that, as it were a sote,
I stood astonied; so was I with the song
Thorow ravished, that, till late and long,
I ne wist in what place I was, ne where;
And ayen, me thought, she song even by mine ere.
The narrator sees a company of ladies and knights arriving, dressed in white and wearing chaplets made of various kinds of leaf. The knights joust with each other, then join the ladies and dance with them in the shade of a laurel tree. Then a second company arrives, this time dressed in green and ornamented with flowers. They perform a bergerette, a dance-song, in praise of the daisy, until they are overcome first by the oppressive midday heat and then by a storm. The company of the leaf, safely sheltered by their laurel, courteously come to the aid of the company of the flower drying their drenched clothes over improvised fires.
And after that they yede about gadering
Pleasaunt salades, which they made hem eat
For to refresh their great unkindly heat.
The meaning of these events is explained to the narrator by a beautiful woman in white. The company of the leaf are devoted to virginity, or at any rate to faithfulness in love, and their queen is Diana
Diana (mythology)
In Roman mythology, Diana was the goddess of the hunt and moon and birthing, being associated with wild animals and woodland, and having the power to talk to and control animals. She was equated with the Greek goddess Artemis, though she had an independent origin in Italy...
.
And as for her that crowned is in greene,
It is Flora, of these floures goddesse.
And all that here on her awaiting beene,
It are such that loved idlenes
And not delite of no busines
But for to hunt and hauke, and pley in medes,
And many other such idle dedes.
The beauty of flowers lasts only for a season, but the beauty of leaves endures. The narrator finally decides that she will be of the company of the leaf.
Textual history
Longleat 258, a manuscript of Middle EnglishMiddle English
Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
poems held at Longleat House
Longleat
Longleat is an English stately home, currently the seat of the Marquesses of Bath, adjacent to the village of Horningsham and near the towns of Warminster in Wiltshire and Frome in Somerset. It is noted for its Elizabethan country house, maze, landscaped parkland and safari park. The house is set...
in Wiltshire
Wiltshire
Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It contains the unitary authority of Swindon and covers...
, mentions in its contents list a poem whose title is given in the Latinised form "De folio et flore" (Of the Leaf and the Flower). Unfortunately the pages of the manuscript that contained this poem are now missing, but there is little doubt that it was "The Floure and the Leafe". The poem was first published in 1598 in Thomas Speght's edition of Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
's works, and there are reasons for thinking that it was printed from a faulty transcript of the separated Longleat pages. In the absence of any ancient manuscript of the poem Speght's book is the only authority for the text.
Reception
For nearly 300 years after Speght's edition it was almost universally accepted that "The Floure and the Leafe" was the work of Geoffrey ChaucerGeoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
. John Dryden
John Dryden
John Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden.Walter Scott called him "Glorious John." He was made Poet...
was the first major writer to pick out "The Floure and the Leafe" for special attention, writing a modernized version of it for inclusion in his Fables, Ancient and Modern
Fables, Ancient and Modern
Fables, Ancient and Modern was a collection of translations of classical and medieval poetry by John Dryden interspersed with some of Dryden’s own works. Published in March, 1700, it was his last and also one of his greatest works...
(1700), and writing that
There is another [tale] of hisGeoffrey ChaucerGeoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
own Invention, after the manner of the ProvencallsProvenceProvence ; Provençal: Provença in classical norm or Prouvènço in Mistralian norm) is a region of south eastern France on the Mediterranean adjacent to Italy. It is part of the administrative région of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur...
, call'd "The Flower and the Leaf", with which I was so particularly pleas'd, both for the Invention and the Moral, that I cannot hinder my self from recommending it to the Reader.
Dryden's advocacy was the making of the poem's reputation, and for nearly two centuries praise came unstintingly. Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...
reported that "every body has been delighted" with it, and on his own account called it a masterpiece.
William Hazlitt
William Hazlitt
William Hazlitt was an English writer, remembered for his humanistic essays and literary criticism, and as a grammarian and philosopher. He is now considered one of the great critics and essayists of the English language, placed in the company of Samuel Johnson and George Orwell. Yet his work is...
thought the opening section "one of the finest parts of Chaucer" and spoke of the poem's "enchanting simplicity and concentrated feeling", while Thomas Campbell judged that "No one who remembers his productions of the House of Fame
The House of Fame
The House of Fame is a poem by Geoffrey Chaucer, probably written between 1379 and 1380, making it one of his earlier works.-Overview:The House of Fame is over 2,000 lines long in three books and takes the form of a dream vision composed in octosyllabic couplets. Upon falling asleep the poet finds...
and the "Flower and the Leaf", will regret that he sported for a season in the field of allegory."
Keats
John Keats
John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
read the poem and wrote an admiring sonnet about it, "This pleasant tale is like a little copse", which included the line "What mighty power has this gentle story". It has been suggested that his "Ode to a Nightingale" was in part inspired by the Middle English
Middle English
Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
poem, or by Dryden's modernization of it. The musician and poet Sidney Lanier
Sidney Lanier
Sidney Lanier was an American musician and poet.-Biography:Sidney Lanier was born February 3, 1842, in Macon, Georgia, to parents Robert Sampson Lanier and Mary Jane Anderson; he was mostly of English ancestry. His distant French Huguenot ancestors immigrated to England in the 16th century...
outdid them all when he declared "The Floure and the Leafe" was worth all the Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century. The tales are told as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at...
put together. In 1868 scenes from the poem were represented in the memorial window (destroyed in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
) placed above Chaucer's tomb in Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey
The Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, popularly known as Westminster Abbey, is a large, mainly Gothic church, in the City of Westminster, London, United Kingdom, located just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is the traditional place of coronation and burial site for English,...
. The same year, the scholar Henry Bradshaw
Henry Bradshaw (scholar)
Henry Bradshaw was a British scholar and librarian.Henry Bradshaw was the son of Joseph Hoare Bradshaw, a banker. He was educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge, where he became a fellow in 1853...
gave reasons for thinking the poem to have been written too late to be Chaucer's work. The pioneering Middle English scholar Thomas Tyrwhitt
Thomas Tyrwhitt
Thomas Tyrwhitt was an English classical scholar and critic.-Life:He was born in London, where he also died. He was educated at Eton and Queen's College, Oxford . In 1756 he was appointed under-secretary at war, in 1762 clerk of the House of Commons...
had published his own doubts as early as 1778, and been universally derided for this heresy. Now, however, Bradshaw's judgement was seconded by ten Brink
Bernhard Egidius Konrad ten Brink
Bernhard Egidius Konrad ten Brink was a German philologist.Born in the Netherlands, he attended school at Düsseldorf and Essen, studied for half a year at the University of Münster, and then moved to the University of Bonn, where his teachers included Friedrich Diez and Nikolaus Delius...
, who produced many arguments for rejecting it from the canon of Chaucer's works. Attempts to counter these arguments were unavailing, and thereafter the poem had to make its own way in the world, without the protection of Chaucer's name. The great philologist Walter Skeat
Walter William Skeat
Walter William Skeat , English philologist, was born in London on the 21st of November 1835, and educated at King's College School , Highgate School, and Christ's College, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow in July 1860. His grandsons include the noted palaeographer T. C...
accepted Bradshaw's judgement, and spoke of the poem's "tinsel-like glitter…which gives it a flashy attractiveness, in striking contrast to the easy grace of Chaucer's workmanship". On the other hand, The Cambridge History of English Literature
The Cambridge History of English and American Literature
The Cambridge History of English and American Literature was originally published by Cambridge University Press in 1907–1921. The 18 volumes include 303 chapters and more than 11,000 pages edited and written by a worldwide panel of 171 leading scholars and thinkers of the early twentieth century...
in 1908 found its charm undiminished:
There is a singular brightness and freshness over it all, together with a power of pre-RaphaelitePre-Raphaelite BrotherhoodThe Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets, and critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti...
decoration and of vivid portraiture—even of such action as there is—which is very rare. Indeed, out of Chaucer himself and the original beginning of Guillaume de LorrisGuillaume de LorrisGuillaume de Lorris was a French scholar and poet from Lorris. He was the author of the first section of the Roman de la Rose. Little is known about him, other than that he wrote the earlier section of the poem around 1230, and that the work was completed forty years later by Jean de Meun.-...
in the Roman de la RoseRoman de la RoseThe Roman de la rose, , is a medieval French poem styled as an allegorical dream vision. It is a notable instance of courtly literature. The work's stated purpose is to both entertain and to teach others about the Art of Love. At various times in the poem, the "Rose" of the title is seen as the...
, it would be difficult to find anything of the kind better done.
As late as 1936 the poem was so well-known that C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis , commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland...
, in The Allegory of Love
The Allegory of Love
The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition , by C. S. Lewis , is an influential exploration of the allegorical treatment of love in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance....
, could claim that "The story is probably familiar to every reader." He saw the poem as "a hybrid – a moral allegory wearing the dress of the Rose tradition", and praised the author, though in rather condescending terms:
If she cannot claim wisdom, she has a great deal of good sense and good humour, and is guided by them to write a poem more original than she herself, perhaps, suspected. A similar merit, and a similar limitation, appear in her execution. She describes what interests her, selecting rather by temperament than by art; and she finds considerable difficulty in getting the right number of syllables into each line.
In recent years Derek Pearsall
Derek Pearsall
Derek Pearsall is a prominent medievalist and Chaucerian who has written and published widely on Chaucer, Langland, Gower, manuscript studies, and medieval history and culture....
has produced two editions of "The Floure and the Leafe", but relatively few critics have published studies of it, and, as Kathleen Formi has noted, "To my knowledge, the poem has not been anthologized."
Modern editions
- F. S. Ellis (ed.) The Floure and the Leafe; and, The Boke of Cupid, God of Love; or, The Cuckow and the Nightingale Hammersmith: Kelmscott Press, 1896.
- The Flower and the Leaf London: Edward Arnold/New York: Samuel Buckley, 1902.
- Walter W. SkeatWalter William SkeatWalter William Skeat , English philologist, was born in London on the 21st of November 1835, and educated at King's College School , Highgate School, and Christ's College, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow in July 1860. His grandsons include the noted palaeographer T. C...
(ed.) Chaucerian and Other Pieces, Edited from Numerous Manuscripts…Being a Supplement to the Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1897. Reprinted by Oxford University Press, 1935. - D. A. PearsallDerek PearsallDerek Pearsall is a prominent medievalist and Chaucerian who has written and published widely on Chaucer, Langland, Gower, manuscript studies, and medieval history and culture....
(ed.) The Floure and the Leafe, and The Assembly of Ladies London: Thomas Nelson, 1962. Reprinted by Manchester University Press, 1980. - Derek Pearsall (ed.) The Floure and the Leafe, The Assembly of Ladies, The Isle of Ladies Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University, 1990.
External links
- Complete annotated text of "The Flower and the Leaf"
- Full text of Dryden's adaptation
- Translation into Modern English
- Introduction by Derek PearsallDerek PearsallDerek Pearsall is a prominent medievalist and Chaucerian who has written and published widely on Chaucer, Langland, Gower, manuscript studies, and medieval history and culture....
- Discussion from The Cambridge History of English and American LiteratureThe Cambridge History of English and American LiteratureThe Cambridge History of English and American Literature was originally published by Cambridge University Press in 1907–1921. The 18 volumes include 303 chapters and more than 11,000 pages edited and written by a worldwide panel of 171 leading scholars and thinkers of the early twentieth century...
- "In Folly Ripe, in Reason Rotten: 'The Flower and the Leaf' and the 'Purgatory of Cruel Beauties'", by Paul Battles