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curteisie Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Chaucer
...ultimately from the word ‘court’, are used in various senses in Chaucer . They are usually glossed respectively as ‘courtly conduct, courtliness, civility; graciousness’, and ‘courteous, chivalrous; gracious’, but the concept of ‘courtesy’ is a wide one which covers a range from table manners (as expounded in the ‘courtesy books’, manuals of instruction found from the 12th to the 16th c.) to spiritual grace. The words and ideas which cluster around it in Chaucer include debonaire (‘gracious; meek; kind, gentle, courteous’), debonairetee (‘graciousness,...
manners Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Chaucer
...V.546): Hypsipyle recognizes Jason and Hercules as ‘gentil men of gret degre’ by ‘hyre manere, | By hire aray, by wordes, and by chere’ ( LGW 1504–5). He also uses a number of other terms, such as fare (‘behaviour, conduct’; strange fare , VII.263, seems to mean ‘elaborate courtesies’), port (‘bearing, manner’), thewes (‘good qualities’). People may be gracious or hautein (‘haughty’) in speech or ‘port’, or hende (‘courteous, polite’). The courtly Squire is ‘of his port as meeke as is a mayde’ (I.69). Manners are inculcated by ‘nurture’. It is...
Roman de la Rose Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Chaucer
...The poet dreams that in May he finds a garden surrounded by a wall painted with images (Avarice, Envy, Sorrow, Old Age , etc.) . He is allowed in by a maiden, Idleness. It is the Garden of Mirth (Deduit), of extraordinary beauty. There he meets Mirth and his companions, Courtesy, Gladness, Beauty, and others, all beautiful young people dancing and singing. The God of Love himself is there, and he follows the dreamer like a skilful hunter. Coming to the the well of Narcissus ( Narcisus ), the dreamer sees a beautiful rosebud. The God of Love sends an...
chivalrie Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Chaucer
...has been described as an ethos in which martial, aristocratic, and Christian elements were fused. One element might sometimes be stressed at the expense of another, but they were intertwined. Although it was essentially an aristocratic set of ideals, true knightliness and courtesy (‘ curteisie ’) did not simply depend on noble birth but on worth and virtue ( see ‘ gentilesse ’). Chivalry flourished in Western Europe between the 12th and 16th c. Some men attempted to live up to its ideals, and some succeeded; others, as was well known, did neither....
visual qualities and visual arts Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Chaucer
...a medieval paradigm of how narrative poems are made, responded to, and remembered’. Chaucer's skill in bringing his matter ‘before our eyes’ was recognized by some early readers. Francis Beaumont in an often-quoted passage praised him for this gift: much earlier a 15th-c. courtesy book had also detected it—‘his langage was so fayr and pertynente | It semeth unto mannys heerynge | Not only the worde | but verily the thynge’. ( See also allegory ; beauty ; dreams ; mythography ; physiognomy ; ugliness .) Kolve, V. A. (1974), ‘Chaucer and the Visual...
