ABSTRACT
In his Retraction [149], commonly printed at the end of The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer refers to ‘many a song and many a leccherous lay’ which he has written over the years. While the impression of prolific output created by this phrase fits with similar phrases used for Chaucer by Gower and Lydgate, it is hardly borne out by the relatively few short poems (twenty-two, not all strictly songs or lecherous) which have survived and are generally agreed to be Chaucer’s. The answer may lie in part with the very similarity of phrase – it seems to have been common to refer to a poet as having written many such short pieces and indeed Chaucer makes use of this habit when referring to the ‘manye layes,/Songes, compleintes, roundels, virelays’ Aurelius composes in The Franklin’s Tale, as Scattergood points out (Minnis 1995: 455). This appears to be an entirely positive reference, in contrast to the much-mocked Absolon of The Miller’s Tale, who merely sings the songs, he does not write them. It may also be that such short pieces were regarded as enjoyable, but essentially ephemeral and so not worth recording.
