|
''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.〔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.〕 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.〔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.〕 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''.〔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.〕 == Synopsis == The young female narrator, unable to sleep, walks out to an oak-grove and finds an arbour, where a goldfinch is singing in a medlar tree. There is also a nightingale in a laurel: The nightingale with so merry a note The narrator sees a company of ladies and knights arriving, dressed in white and wearing chaplets made of various kinds of leaf. The knights joust with each other, then join the ladies and dance with them in the shade of a laurel tree. Then a second company arrives, this time dressed in green and ornamented with flowers. They perform a ''bergerette'', a dance-song, in praise of the daisy, until they are overcome first by the oppressive midday heat and then by a storm. The company of the leaf, safely sheltered by their laurel, courteously come to the aid of the company of the flower drying their drenched clothes over improvised fires. And after that they yede about gadering The meaning of these events is explained to the narrator by a beautiful woman in white. The company of the leaf are devoted to virginity, or at any rate to faithfulness in love, and their queen is Diana. And as for her that crowned is in greene, The beauty of flowers lasts only for a season, but the beauty of leaves endures. The narrator finally decides that she will be of the company of the leaf. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Floure and the Leafe」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|