ABSTRACT
The Parliament of Fowls, wrote F. N. Robinson, "is one of the most charming occasional poems in the language. But what was the occasion?" 1 Decades ago most students of Chaucer thought they knew the answer: the poem concerns the negotiations for the marriage of Richard II to Anne of Bohemia; in the gathering of birds Anne is represented by the formel eagle and her three suitors - Richard, Charles of France, and Friedrich of Meissen - by the three tercel eagles that plead for the formel's hand. That theory, first advanced by John Koch and given its final form by Samuel Moore and 0. F. Emerson, was attacked by John M. Manly and even more vigorously by Edith Rickert, who argued that the historical facts disproved the theory. 2 Moreover, Manly offered what seemed to many convincing proof that the poem was written in May of 1382, after Richard and Anne were married and when "to represent her as unable to decide was not a compliment but a
joke, and not a joke in the best taste. " 3 Other historical explanations were proposed, by Rickert (who argued that the formel eagle was John of Gaunt's daughter even though she did not have three suitors) and by Haldeen Braddy, who dated the poem in 13 77 and argued that it concerned the proposed match between Richard and Princess Marie of France (though again there were not three suitors).4 None of the proposed identifications seemed to fit, and critics, perhaps with some relief, turned their attention away from what J. A W. Bennett called the "whole archipelago of supposition" on which the older theories were based;5 most accepted Manly's argument that Valentine's Day alone was sufficient occasion for the poem, with the courtship of the eagles merely a means of presenting a demande d'amours, and since the early 1930s criticism of The Parliament of Fowls has concentrated on a close study of the poem itself, its meanings and its literary relations.6
