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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
At the end of Chaucer's Parson's Tale (I, 1081–92) the writer, speaking in his own person, asks the prayers of his readers that he may be forgiven, especially for his “translacions and endytings of worldly vanitees, the whiche I revoke in my retracciouns”; he gives a list of the principal ones, adding “and many another book, if they were in my remembrance”; and thanks Jesu Christ and all the saints for the works of edification which he has written. The question as to the genuineness of this passage may be approached from a new and more a priori point of view, if it still is a question; if it is not, the following facte will still throw light on the subject. I propose to discuss the history and implications of the word retracciouns, and certain parallels to Chaucer's list of his works and expression of dissatisfaction or satisfaction with them.
page 521 note 1 It is needless to review opinion on the subject, since this has been. done by Dr. Spies in the Festschrift Adolf Tobler … dargebracht (Brunswick, 1905), pp. 383–394. Of late years the tendency has. been to regard the passage as genuine. The textual argument against it is not at all convincing.
page 522 note 1 Urry in 1721 was the first to use the longer form of the word for the Chaucerian passage. It has since become general, but we may well revert to Chaucer's own form, even though it may have more of the meaning of the other than of its own modern meaning.
page 522 note 2 Retractationum libri duo, ed. Pius Knöll, 1902, in the Vienna Corpus, vol. xxxvi; Migne, Patr. hat., xxxii, pp. 583–656. The work is studied by Professor Adolf Harnack in the Sitzungsberichte of the Berlin Academy, 1905, pp. 1096–1131.
page 522 note 3 As of his Ad Emeritum (bk. ii, 72), Die fide (ii, 89), etc.
page 523 note 1 Vienna Corpus edition, p. xxi; Harnack, p. 1130.
page 523 note 2 Harnack, p. 1124.
page 523 note 3 Ed. Giles (London, 1844), xii, pp. 96–156; Migne, Patr. Lat., xcii, pp. 995–1032.
page 523 note 4 Giraldus Cambrensis (Rolls Ser., 1861), i, pp. 425–7. He wrote also more than one other list of his works (vol. i, pp. 409–423).
page 524 note 1 He also mentions Bede's histories.
page 524 note 2 It is practically that, the passage being called “my retracciouns”; unless we are to suppose, as Tyrwhitt suggested, the reference is to a work lost or never written.
page 524 note 3 There seems a certain irony, possibly gentle cynicism or merely formal piety, in appending it to the most extensive of them. St. Augustine gives the impression of being more in earnest,— “Scribere autem mihi ista placuit, ut haec emittam in manus hominum, a quibus ea, quae iam edidi, reuocare et emendare non possum” (Prologus, §3). I am aware that some believe large parts of the Canterbury Tales were out of Chaucer's hands before his death; if so, there may be a slight chance, perhaps, that it was possible to append this passage to mss. which it was impossible to expurgate or suppress. Yet Monc. T., save for its moralizing end fully as worldly a vanity as most of the works recanted, is indissolubly joined to Pars. T. (cf. my study MS. Hl. 7334 and Revision of the C. T., Ch. Soc., 1909, p. 21). The Retractions seem to occur in all mss. which contain the immediately preceding part of Pars T. unmutilated. I have examined two-thirds of the existing mss. of the C. T. (cf. the above-mentioned study, pp. 4, 24–5), and have seen the passage in the following: (in London) HI. 1758, Roy. 18C, Add. 5140, Egert. 2726; (in Oxford) Arch. Seld., Bodl. 414, Hatt., Eawl. 149 and 223, New Coll., Trin. Coll. 49 (from my notes I cannot be positive as to this ms.); (in Cambridge) Cm. Ii and Mm, Trin. Coll. 3. 15; Lichfield. The latter part (or all) of Pars. T., including the Retractions, is wanting in all the nineteen other mss. listed on p. 4 of my study, except ms. Laud 600; in this the end of the tale was lost, and replaced in a later hand only through v. 1080. i. e., as far as the Retractions, which proves nothing except some independence on the part of the mender. The passage is or was in five of the eight published mss.
page 525 note 1 He shows elsewhere, I believe, no acquaintance with Gerald. St. Augustine he frequently names and quotes, usually no doubt at second-hand. Cf. Skeat's index of names and add Phys. T., 114–7.
page 526 note 1 Cf. Fletcher in Publ. Mod. Lang. Assoc, xxvi, p. 452. But his use of the word retractation puts him in the line headed by St. Augustine.
page 527 note 1 Letter to Maghinardo dei Cavalcanti; cf. De Gen. Deor. xiv, 19; Petrarch, Lett. Sen. I, 5.
page 527 note 2 Eleanor Hull, Text Book of Irish Literature, ii, 175; Douglas Hyde, Literary History of Ireland, pp. 477–8.
page 527 note 3 Obras (Royal Academy, Madrid, 1890), i, 496.
page 527 note 4 Scott-Saintsbury edition, xviii, p. 166. Dr. Root also refers to parallels in Ruskin and Tolstoi (Poetry of Chaucer, p. 288).
page 528 note 1 A. G. Hyde, George Herbert and his Times (London, 1906), p. 255. A distinguished modern artist is known by his friends to have destroyed a number of his valuable early works because he considered them likely to have an immoral effect.
page 528 note 2 Hales, Folia Literaria, pp. 110–1.
page 529 note 1 It has sometimes been suggested that they were added by one of those vaguely-conceived denizens of the past, cthe old monks.“ This reflects the discredited notion that in the later Middle Ages most of the copying was still done in convents. Adam the Scrivener was no monk. But late in his life Chaucer, who the year before his death rented a house from the monks of Westminster, might have got into the monkish point of view. Even when he finished the Troilus he had enough of it to summon young folk home to God from worldly vanity and carnal love (v. 1722 ff.); which is very like a Retraction of the Troilus and Criseyde.