Conjugal Rights in Flux in Medieval Poetry Page: 47
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Scipio the Elder's advice to Scipio in his own dream vision but decides to expose the challenging
nature of this principle by applying it to courtship and conjugal rights. After all, the plot in his
dream vision concerns a formel's marriage. As David Aers argues, Chaucer complicates Scipio's
absolute assessment of such a notion in the poem through his addition of the boisterous bird
parliament and a feminine authoritative voice.111 As is illustrated in the historical fight amongst
King John and his barons, which resulted in the drafting of the Magna Carta, the interests of one
group of people did not always benefit all.
Chaucer, much like the barons, looks to the medieval common law as a medium that
should support an ideal such as common profit but reveals how it fails to do so since it normally
protects the rights of the wealthy over those of the poor as well as the rights of men over women.
Since Scipio's dream is one that is devoid of a female voice, Chaucer's insertion of multiple
female authorities obscures Scipio's idea of common profit. Since this gender power shift
destabilizes normative medieval practices, Chaucer decides to also have his narrator resist any
form of conclusion, which subverts the traditional authorial practice. Rather, he decides to
conclude his poem in an open-ended and optimistic manner that appears to be more curious than
condemning of a tale that gives voice to the third estate and adheres to a feminine form of
authority. Even though the noble male eagles' desires were not realized at the end of the dream
vision, those of the lesser ranked birds' and the formel were, which results in the happy ending
that describes the birds as all going their separate ways in "blisse and joye" (1. 669).
Chaucer juxtaposes Nature's Parliament, which includes all different ranks of birds, with
the English Parliament, a primarily lay committee made up of members from the nobility."2
Instead of maintaining a masculine authority in his dream vision like Scipio the Elder, Chaucer
i Aers, "The Parliament of Fowls: Authority, the Knower and the Known."
112 Frederick Maurice Powicke, The Thirteenth Century: 1216-1307 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953),
222.47
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Ward, Jessica D. Conjugal Rights in Flux in Medieval Poetry, thesis, May 2014; Denton, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc500176/m1/52/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .