Prophetic authorial reputations do not always persist in the same manner that they began. Although we now know that Langland was not a Wycliffite and that Chaucer never wrote “Chaucer’s Prophecy,” their prophetic authorial personae, crafted in light of these earlier misconceptions, still influence interpretations of their works in indirect ways. For Langland, the lingering Reformation-based interpretations of Clergy’s prognostication have presented impediments to understanding the satirical nature of Piers Plowman’s prophecies. Chaucer’s reputation as a prophet of the Protestant Reformation subtly influences comparative readings of his works alongside Dante’s. Modern audiences may not be fooled by Gower’s presentation of the Viso of the Vox clamantis or the Cronica Tripertita as having been composed in advance, but they continue to be convinced that Gower foretold Richard’s deposition. Authorial prophetic reputations endure in subtler ways in literary criticism, but they often come to the forefront in pedagogy.
When the introductory guide to Piers Plowman on the British Library’s webpage asks, “Was Langland a prophet, foreshadowing Henry VIII’s spearheading of the English Reformation and the Dissolution of the Monasteries (1536–41)?” it is trying to draw students into the text in an exciting way.1 Because the value of medieval literature is often subject to scrutiny by contemporary audiences (perhaps especially by students who are more comfortable reading more-contemporary works), those of us who teach the works of past authors may be most apt to jump to authorial prescience to defend its relevance and vitality. The danger in fixating on prophecies within canonical literature is that we almost inevitably appropriate them to fit into our preferred narrative of history. Longstanding traditions of viewing authors as prophets are often tied to an underlying conviction that God has been guiding the fate of England – a fate that was witnessed by the authors of “great works” who could see its inevitable future. Scholars who stress the prescience of Langland, Gower, or Chaucer to argue for the merits of studying them have unintentionally latched onto this belief, irrespective of their own investments in its nationalist agenda. An instructor highlighting Gower’s uncanny ability to predict Richard II’s downfall may be completely unconcerned with promoting the reign of Henry IV or the notion of a teleological, providential model of English history. Nevertheless, that vestigial ideology is still present in this approach to Gower. Ideally, this is an ideology that we should be challenging rather than replicating within the classroom. One can acknowledge that Langland has been considered a prophet, but one should also acknowledge the political and religious investments that have motivated that reading of Langland. Because it is a second-hand authority, prophecy is an easily appropriated discourse. Those of us who study medieval literature are poised to teach students about the history of literary criticism – especially how authors and texts have been manipulated to support a variety of agendas.
Literary critics and instructors should approach medieval authorial prophetic personae with caution and scepticism, even when the authors themselves adopted prophetic roles and speculated about future events. The predictions that medieval authors “got right” deserve careful discussion. For instance, within the Mirour de l’Omme, thought by G.C. Macaulay to have been written between 1376 and 1379, Gower complains:
Mais certes c’est un grant errour
Veoir l’estat superiour
El danger d’un vilein estant
Me semble que la litargie
Ad endormi la seignourie,
Si qu’ils de la commune gent
Ne pernont garde a la folie,
Ainz souffront croistre celle urtie
Quelle est du soy trop violent.
Cil qui pourvoit le temps present
Se puet doubter procheinement,
Si dieus n’en face son aïe,
Qe celle urtie inpacient
Nous poindra trop soudainement,
Avant ce q’om la justefie.
Trois choses sont d’une covyne
Qui sanz mercy font la ravine
En cas qu’ils soient au dessus:
L’un est de l’eaue la cretine,
L’autre est du flamme la ravine,
Et la tierce est des gens menuz
La multitude q’est commuz:
Car ja ne serront arrestuz
Par resoun ne par discipline. (26482–505)
[But truly it is a great wrong to see the upper class in the power of the peasant class. It seems to me that lethargy has made the nobles go to sleep, so that they take no heed of the folly of the common people but rather allow the nettle to grow, which in itself is very dangerous. He who reflects on the present time may soon fear, unless God sends aid, that this impatient nettle will very suddenly sting us before it is brought to justice.
There are three things with a single behaviour that ravage mercilessly when they get the mastery. One is flood waters. Another is wild fire. The third is the multitude of little people when they are stirred up, for they will not be stopped by reason or by discipline.2
Of this prophecy, John Fisher has observed, “The startling clarity with which [Gower] foresaw the Peasant’s Revolt was sober fact.”3 G.C. Macaulay similarly calls the passage “a rather striking prophecy of the evil to be feared.”4 In his historical account of the Rising, R.B. Dobson remarks, “After 1381 a large number of English writers were prepared to generalize, with benefit of hindsight, about the causes of the Peasants’ Revolt. The poet John Gower is apparently unique in actually foreseeing the probability of a major social cataclysm several years before it occurred.”5
Macaulay’s dating of the Mirour encourages this reading because it seems that Gower was anticipating the possibility of a public revolt just before it occurred. However, more recently, R.F. Yeager has convincingly argued that the work was produced as early as 1360.6 Placing the composition of the work a decade earlier means considering that Gower may have simply noticed that the peasant class was capable of revolting, which is potentially true at any time. Furthermore, even if Gower added this observation to the text in the late 1370s, his prediction is wrapped up in highly subjective class politics. He is arguing that the upper class should be more vigilant in correcting the follies of the peasants. Any assertion that this passage accurately predicts the Rising of 1381 must be tempered with caveats that Gower’s fears of insurrection, although well founded, were not necessarily based on an accurate assessment of the class politics at stake. Although the violence of the Rising was appalling, the rebels were reacting to deeply unfair economic systems like serfdom. Had the nobility attempted to bring the peasant class more firmly under their power, as Gower suggests, this may not have prevented a rebellion but incited an earlier one. Somewhat unavoidably, the medieval English literary canon is largely limited to the writings of upper-class men. To credit their works with genuine prophecy is to (often unwittingly) embrace ideologies related to the stations of those authors. Even these moments of seemingly real prescience warrant healthy scepticism.
Although Chaucer adopts a moral prophetic stance in The House of Fame and engages in prophetic citation, he avoids this kind of discussion of the future. Chaucer’s implied criticisms of monks, friars, and clergy have been read as an anticipation of the Reformation, but no specific passages appear to prognosticate politically. In Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer anticipates the future, considering:
And for ther is so gret diversite
In Englissh and in writyng of oure tonge,
So pretty I God that non miswrite the,
Ne the mysmetre for defaute of tonge;
And red wherso thow be, or ells songe,
That thow be understonde, God I biseche! (V.1793–8)
Like a prophet, Chaucer considers the future, but unlike one, Chaucer sees himself as relatively powerless in the face of its whims. Like Troilus or Criseyde, his own works and his own reputation will be subject to future scrutiny that he cannot control. Rather than powerfully asserting what is to come, Chaucer humbly admits his own powerlessness. It is in this sense that we may see some foresight in Chaucer, although one can hardly imagine his apprehensions to be uncanny or shockingly prescient. Chaucer anticipated the danger of misinterpretation by future audiences, and due to this, he seems to have tried to avoid any semblance of political prophecies. Ultimately, Chaucer could not protect his reputation from being intermingled with political prophecies, but it was a fate that he had attempted to avoid.
Medieval political prophecies were and are enticing to readers. They enact a communication between the past and present that is innately compelling, especially when the subjects are topical, the language is cryptic, or the speaker is renowned. The convergence of the fame of a canonical author with the magnetism of political prophecy is especially powerful. There is no need to abandon considerations of the politically prophetic author when writing or teaching about medieval literature. Nevertheless, one must acknowledge the extent to which scribes, publishers, readers, critics, and the authors themselves (via proleptic alterations) have been complicit in retrospectively transforming medieval English authors into prophets.