The Legend of Good Women

by Geoffrey Chaucer

The Legend of Good Women is a poem in the form of a dream vision by Geoffrey Chaucer. The poem is the third longest of Chaucer's works, after The Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde and is possibly the first significant work in English to use the iambic pentameter or decasyllabic couplets which he later used throughout the Canterbury Tales. This form of the heroic couplet would become a significant part of English literature no doubt inspired by Chaucer. The prologue describes how Chaucer is reprimanded by the god of love and his queen, Alceste, for his works-such as Troilus and Criseyde-depicting women in a poor light. Criseyde is made to seem inconstant in love in that earlier work, and Alceste demands a poem of Chaucer extolling the virtues of women and their good deeds. For thy trespas, and understond hit here: Thou shalt, whyl that thou livest, yeer by yere, The moste party of thy tyme spende In making of a glorious Legende Of Gode Wommen, maidenes and wyves, That weren trewe in lovinge al hir lyves; And telle of false men that hem bitrayen, That al hir lyf ne doon nat but assayen The poet recounts ten stories of virtuous women in nine sections. The legends are: Cleopatra, Thisbe, Dido, Hypsipyle, Medea, Lucrece, Ariadne, Philomela, Phyllis and Hypermnestra. The work is a similar structure to the later Monk's Tale and like that tale, and many of his other works, seems to be unfinished. Chaucer's sources for the legends include: Virgil's Aeneid, Vincent of Beauvais, Guido delle Colonne's Historia destructionis Troiae, Gaius Julius Hyginus' Fabula and Ovid's Metamorphoses and Heroides.

Genres: Poetry, Medieval, Classics, Mythology, Fiction, Historical, Geoffrey Chaucer

70 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343 – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for The Canterbury Tales. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He was the first writer to be buried in what has since come to be called Poets' Corner, in Westminster Abbey. Chaucer also gained fame as a philosopher and astronomer, composing the scientific A Treatise on the Astrolabe for his 10-year-old son, Lewis. He maintained a career in the civil service as a bureaucrat, courtier, diplomat, and member of parliament.
Among Chaucer's many other works are The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, The Legend of Good Women, and Troilus and Criseyde. He is seen as crucial in legitimising the literary use of Middle English when the dominant literary languages in England were still Anglo-Norman French and Latin. Chaucer's contemporary Thomas Hoccleve hailed him as "the firste fyndere of our fair langage" (i.e., the first one capable of finding poetic matter in English). Almost two thousand English words are first attested to in Chaucerian manuscripts. As scholar Bruce Holsinger has argued, charting Chaucer's life and work comes with many challenges related to the "difficult disjunction between the written record of his public and private life and the literary corpus he left behind". His recorded works and his life show many personas that are "ironic, mysterious, elusive [or] cagey" in nature, ever-changing with new discoveries.

Reviews

[Lukas · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone whose main focus is contemporary literature - specifically dramatic literature - Chaucer poses a challenge for a reader like me. I have to say that I am in love with Chaucer's legends. I am a fan of his narratives and giving a new breath to each tragic women in this piece. I highly recommend this to anyone. I am not sure if it modernly translated with have the same effect that I had....but give Middle English a try!

[Lizzy Brannan · Rating 4 out of 5]

What can I say? It's Chaucer. Yet, it's not his typical work. I was fascinated by the premise of this poetic piece.

Told in rhyming couplet, Chaucer places himself as the main character of the drama. He has a dream that he meets the god of love, Cupid, and Alceste. He praises Alceste for being the most beautiful of all women, to which, Cupid scolds him for approaching her. He tells Chaucer that his translations of "Romance of the Roses" and "Cressida" are disgraceful. Alceste steps in to the rescue and pleads with Cupid not to be so harsh. She grants Chaucer grace in her presence and tells him to write more about noble women, praising them and the beauty of love. Before the scene ends, she asks Chaucer to begin with Cleopatra. So, he does. Telling the bare bones stories of Cleopatra, Thisbe, Dido, Hipsipyle, Medea, Lucretia, Ariadne, Philomela, and Hypermnestra, he attempts to uplift love in these tragic love stories.

I've never read a piece of medieval literature like this. The culpable narrator seems to fail the quest given to him by Alceste. As in many ancient tales, the women who pity men in their situations, end up being extremely attractive, yet vulnerable. And men who see a damsel in distress are painted as charged predators. It appears that Chaucer could not perform his task. He even claims to leave out the whole story of each tragedy, stating that he doesn't have time to finish or that he needs to skip ahead to spare the reader of becoming bored with the details. Every woman in these stories is betrayed and every man rides off into the sunset with whatever or whomever he wishes. So, in once sense, there is a bit of comedy in it, because it is clear Chaucer is unable to do his task or he refusing. These stories are horrific. For the most part, they all end the same in Chaucer's version. Yet, we know that in these actual stories, a couple of these women end up just fine in the end. Could it be that Chaucer intentionally made himself look incapable or unwilling to demonstrate a point to writers in the medieval period?

[Léna · Rating 5 out of 5]

My King en fait

[Illiterate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chaucer praises & mocks women & their virtues. He adopts a courtly & playful stance to social & literary norms.

[Sinan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Çeviri çok başarılı.

[Adwitiya R Dixit · Rating 5 out of 5]

A perfect Chaucerian piece. One of the most influential books of its time and it has still not lost the touch. But has, as a matter of fact, lost some pages. :)

Evergreen and always touches the heart. A must read.

[Lulu]

dating it difficult but it is clearly placed between Troilus and the Tales around 1386/1388


The prologue describes how Chaucer is reprimanded by the god of love and his queen, Alceste, for his works—such as Troilus and Criseyde—depicting women in a poor light. Criseyde is made to seem inconstant in love in that earlier work, and Alceste demands a poem of Chaucer extolling the virtues of women and their good deeds. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_L...

[Oliver Brauning · Rating 3 out of 5]

The prologue is among the absolute best that Chaucer ever wrote, but the legendary itself is extremely uninspired. While there are interesting literary questions the book conjures up, there is not much interesting literature after the prologue.

[Shameeleon · Rating 4 out of 5]

is chaucer the og feminist lol

[Susanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good as The Canterbury Tales, but still worth a read.

[mumu · Rating 2 out of 5]

girl someone should have taken the pen and paper away from chaucer as soon as he wrote the title

[Carlye Krul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Being told that you're worse than a worm is a wild insult for the 14th century

[Delanie Dooms · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Legend of Good Women is a book of poetry by Geoffrey Chaucer attempting to reclaim the good name of women in romantic literature. The title was applied to the work throughout time, and, to me, is a misnomer: the book is not about good women broadly, but about good women in love or courtship. Saying that it is a book about good women seems only to suggest that a woman's value is only as a wife, whereas even in Chaucer's time this was not thought the case; many a nun or celibate woman was praised (and slandered), after all.

Chaucer introduces the text with a long praise of the daisy and a dream about Cupid and Alceste. Cupid considers him a foe of love because he wrote numerous poems abusing lovers and showing their evil actions, but Alceste not only shows that Chaucer wrote poems in favor of love and lovers--but also may not have wrote his works for the purpose of abusing love at all. (She, perhaps the most beautiful of women, is dressed like a daisy herself and her story includes her becoming a daisy.) Chaucer agrees with her in the latter part, but Alceste says that love cannot be reasoned with, and he still must repent; hence, she gives him a task to write poems that show the constancy of women in love, even in the worst circumstances. Instead of writing of the chaff, Chaucer must now write of the corn.

I will not here talk about all of the stories. Most of the poems are very good.

The Legend of Lucrece is one of my favorites. In it, the famous rape of Lucretia is given another rendering. Chaucer, of course, chooses to highlight Lucrece's chasteness, even going to the point of mentioning that she made sure no part of her body would be shown when she killed herself for fear of shame. What I like about this poem is that Chaucer seems to suggest that Lucrece is wrong in her actions. She is noble, sure, but she is following the mores of Roman society around women--that she is unchaste merely for having sex, even non-consensual sex; that she must feel shame for being exposed--and these mores are ultimately the cause of her death.

The Legend of Thisbe is one of that is somewhat odd in the collection. Indeed, if I am not mistaken, it is the only legend in the whole work that contains a truthful male lover. Piramus and Thisbe suffer a similar fate to Romeo and Juliet, only this time as a result of a misunderstanding surrounding a female lion. In this sense, Chaucer is saying that a constancy in love ought be expected from male and female, and hence gives Piramus' suicide the same nobility that he shows Lucrece or Thisbe herself. If we see different standards for men and women within the text, in the least that seems to be the same.

The battle scene in the Legend of Cleopatra is very nice.

A few of the stories in the book can (inevitably) be viewed as exploititive of female suffering. Sure, we are meant to sympathize with the women put in such dire scenarios; indeed, the point seems to be to show that men are untrustworthy or simply evil. I do not think, however, we can only view these poems through the lens of their moral purpose. They were created--(that Chaucer cared about metrical versification and humor suggests this)--as a means not only for schooling the reader in truth, but also for the pleasure of the read itself. It is a work of pleasure, therefore. In that sense, the inclusion of stories like the rape and sexual slavery of Philomela cannot simply be understood as a means to a moral end, but as something with a shock value that goes beyond sagacious example-giving. I suppose what I am trying to say is that we all ride roller coasters and enjoy them--but maybe this roller coaster is not as benign.

[Jane Minieri · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read the translation by Ann McMillan with a wonderful introduction by the same author. I had no idea what I was getting into, and in the end enjoyed it largely thanks to McMillan's commentary. I recommend this version as McMillan is able to illustrate well the historical context in which this was written and illuminate the purpose of such a satirical literary contribution with critical care.

[Miranda Black]

Was interesting reading one of Chaucer's earlier texts! I'm looking at it for an essay on suicide/ death within the medieval period-- should be good fun!