Social Chaucer (Paul Strohm)

Unlike Patterson's Chaucer and the Subject of History, Strohm's Social Chaucer is more interested in anchoring Chaucer within his social milieu. However, the complexities and ambiguities of social order in the late 14th century permitted Chaucer to observe many levels of his culture closely, while remaining flexible in his associations with any one level. His main points:

The 14th century saw an eroding of the strict permanent hierarchy of feudal vassalage (the classic "Three Estates"). The peerage, whom Strohm terms "aristocrats", became distanced from the knights, the lowest level of the "gentle" class; that lowest level also became accessible to those born common through government and contractual (indentured and non-indentured) service for salary, not just military service for land (fiefdom). Meanwhile, merchants, burghers, and citizens grew in importance, creating a more distinct upper level to the common class. These low-level gentles and upper-level commons formed a growing middle class, engaged in the business of the kingdom and aristocracy, which permitted greater freedom of upward and lateral social mobility. While the three estates remained an accepted concept in social discourse, the day-to-day business of the kingdom was increasingly shaped by horizontal relationships within the "middle strata", instead of the vertical hierarchy of feudalism. Within this context, Strohm characterizes Chaucer's status as a royal squire (though born a vintner's son) as gentility, albeit non-aristocratic; given that Chaucer was an armiger, I wonder whether he would have accepted this distinction.

Chaucer was a member of the tightly-knit court faction Strohm dubs the king's affinity. The affinity is a "series of concentric circles" with Richard II at the center, surrounded by officers of state (such as the chamber knights), salaried servants (chancery officials, sergeants-at-arms), and the general retinue (knights and esquires). Chaucer had close ties with knights of the first ring, while serving (at different points) in both the second and third rings. Within this broader circle of affinity, Chaucer enjoyed a certain freedom of place, not by being apolitical, but by cannily judging the political climate: connected to John of Gaunt through his wife, Chaucer maintained ties with the Lancastrian faction, and when things looked bad for Richard, resigned his post as customs official to distance himself from the king. (This is Strohm's characterization. But doesn't the purse lament come in around here?)

While Strohm concedes that Chaucer did not write with a single audience in mind, his literary audience is, in fact, largely to be found among his actual social circle(s), many of them in the king's affinity, even if only "tacitly". The Book of the Duchess dramatizes Chaucer's relational possibilities with John of Gaunt through the interchange between the solicitous yet deferential dreamer and the courteous, condescending king; yet while this drama is tacitly performed before John of Gaunt, it is overtly directed at a gentle audience, presumably of Chaucer's equals -- those sympathetic of both characters' situations and appreciative of Chaucer's skillful negotiation of a sensitive interaction. Troilus and Criseyde has as many implied audiences as it has implied narrative voices (Derek Brewer!); however, the address to "moral Gower" and "philosophical Strode" in the conclusion indicates Chaucer's interest in engaging a particular and real audience in the work. ("Moral Gower" is presumably interested in the depiction of love's fleeting nature, while "Philosophical Strode" is meant to notice Troilus's incomplete citation of Boethius, which leaves out free will: Strode contended on the subject with Wyclif.) The (presumed) inception of the Canterbury Tales during Chaucer's time away from London (1386-1389), severing him from direct ties with his close London circle of poets and readers, would seem to be a problem for Strohm's theory; however, he posits that the Canterbury pilgrims were devised as an imagined audience with whom the stories' narrators interact, in the absence of real, extra-narrative listeners. This seems tenuous.

There's more stuff too, particularly a discussion of the pilgrims' differing values systems (selflessness/feudal loyalty vs. selfishness/middle class pragmatism), but they seem less central than the previous stuff.