Sometimes called the ‘last of the Romans, first of the Scholastics’, Boethius (c.475–c.525) was among the most influential writers in medieval Europe. He devised a grand scheme to harmonize Aristotelian and Platonic thought, but he was best known for his prosimetric De consolatione philosophiae, which describes a dialogue between an imprisoned Boethius, falsely accused and awaiting execution, and the figure of Lady Philosophy. In alternating sections of prose and verse, she explains the transitory nature of earthly goods like wealth and fame and assures Boethius of the universe’s just, hierarchical order. Translated as the Boece by Chaucer, who drew on a French translation and Latin commentary sources as well as the Latin original, the Consolation and its ideas pervade his poetry, especially the Knight’s Tale and Troilus and Criseyde.

Thomas Hoccleve referred to Chaucer as the ‘firste fyndere of our faire langage’. The word fyndere is carefully chosen, as a modified translation of the first ‘canon’ of classical and medieval rhetoric, the ancestor of present-day English invention. Any assessment of Chaucer’s ‘poetic art’ requires us not just to identify the linguistic choices available to him, it also requires us to ask how those choices relate to his broader poetics. Chaucer’s use of ‘pronouns of power’, for example, do not only characterise particular choices from the linguistic resources of London Middle English, they are also a matter of style, a notion for which classical and medieval literary theoreticians had their own terminology, distinguishing high, middle and low styles, widely recognised as having distinct functions relating to social status and roles. It is conceivably as a metrist, however, that Chaucer’s skill as a ‘finder’ is perhaps most subtly demonstrated, as examples from his works show.