Thwarted Sexuality in Chaucer's Works

Geoffrey Chaucer repeatedly depicts himself as a poet of love — love frustrated, perhaps, more often than love fulfilled. The image of the poet that has been passed down through the centuries is that of a m e diaeval Ovid: a chronicler of a m o r e s , even a chronicler of that mediaeval myth, courtly love. So much attention has been paid over the last century to mediaeval romantic love that some students of the past are apt to forget that romantic love is but one arena, after all, in the incredibly spacious realm of human sexuality. Or, to put the matter in terms that are Chaucer's, the temple of Venus is but a palace of brass within the much larger confines of the extensive garden of Nature. There, as The Parlement of Foules makes clear, most of the inhabitants are not allowed the luxury of considering so specialized a phenomenon as romantic (courtly) love. The realm of eroticism, of the erotic in life, goes far beyond that of courtesy or romance. Today we generally agree that the erotic element, that core of the self that constitutes human sexuality, may be characterized as the life-force itself, intent on self-preservation and the p r e servation of the species.