ABSTRACT
The years of business at the Customs House were thus extraordinar ily full o f literary activity, both reading and writing. Chaucer’s intel lectual interests led him to delight in knowledge for its own sake, and for the sake of understanding the full spectacle of life. In this period he translated the great work o f Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy. His interest in astronomy and astrology (the two were almost indistinguishable in his day), based on his command of arith metic, now clearly appears as an important element in his thought. His interest in the psychology of dreams and in physics is shown in The House of Fame. The many references to the natural sciences and to medicine in The Canterbury Tales reflect reading o f which at least part was done at this period. None o f these many subjects can be considered as diverging from, or hostile to, his poetry. They were in part the very material o f his poetry; and they helped to focus his view of the world, of human character, of the course of good and ill in human life. The desire for a total view, a Summa, o f earthly knowledge and experience, is a characteristic of the men of the High and Late Middle Ages, whether they wrote in prose or verse. They are such encyclopedists as Vincent o f Beauvais and the Englishmen Alexander Neckham and Bartholomew; the great theologians, St Albertus Magnus and St Thomas Aquinas; and chief among poets, Dante. Chaucer’s contemporary Langland and his friend Gower each attempted similar syntheses, and The Canterbury Tales is partly to be understood in this light. The House of Fame and the Parliament are also probably attempts at synthesis, for when a learned and courtly poet wished to gather in the whole created universe, he bound it together with ‘the fayre chain o f love’.
