The Floure and the Leafe is an anonymous Middle English allegorical poem in 595 lines of rhyme royal, written around 1470. During the 17th, 18th, and most of the 19th century it was mistakenly believed to be the work of Geoffrey Chaucer, and was generally considered to be one of his finest poems.[1] The name of the author is not known but the poem presents itself as the work of a woman, and some critics are inclined to take this at face value.[2] The poet was certainly well-read, there being a number of echoes of earlier writers in the poem, including Geoffrey Chaucer, John Lydgate, John Gower, Andreas Capellanus, Guillaume de Lorris, Guillaume de Machaut, Jean Froissart, Eustache Deschamps, Christine de Pizan, and the authors of the "Lai du Trot" and the Kingis Quair.[3]
- ^ Margaret Drabble (ed.) The Oxford Companion to English Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) p. 369; Derek Pearsall (ed.) The Floure and the Leafe, The Assembly of Ladies, The Isle of Ladies (Kalamazoo: West Michigan University, 1990) p. 1.
- ^ E.g. C. S. Lewis The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition (London: Oxford University Press, 1975) p. 247; Douglas Gray, in W. F. Bolton (ed.) The Middle Ages (London: Sphere, 1970) p. 327.
- ^ Paul Battles, "In Folly Ripe, in Reason Rotten: 'The Flower and the Leaf' and the 'Purgatory of Cruel Beauties'", Medium Ævum, lxxii (2003), 238–258; Derek Pearsall (ed.) The Floure and the Leafe, The Assembly of Ladies, The Isle of Ladies (Kalamazoo: West Michigan University, 1990) p. 2; D. A. Pearsall (ed.) The Floure and the Leafe; and, The Assembly of Ladies (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1980) p. 18; G. L. Marsh, "Sources and Analogues of 'The Flower and the Leaf'", Modern Philology, iv (1906–1907), 121–168, 281–328.