Sources of the Monk’s Tale
(from Cooper, Oxford Guide, 329-30)
Lucifer: Church
tradition, itself based on a hint from the Bible (Isa. 14:12).
Adam :
The account owes nothing directly to the ultimate source, Gen. 1-3. The details
come from more abstruse sources such as the De casibus
or Vincent of
Beauvais for the 'feeld of Damyssene',
and Innocent III or Vincent (or homiletic tradition) for 'mannes sperme unclene'.
Samson: Judg.
13-16, supplemented by Vincent and perhaps the Roman de la
rose 16677-88.
Hercules: Boethius,
Consolation IV. m. 7, probably supplemented by Ovid (Metamorphoses ix, or Heroides ix).
Nebuchadnezzar and
Belshazzar: Dan. 1-5. Some
of the misinformation about Daniel in Nebuchadnezzar may derive from
ambiguous phrasing in Vincent of Beauvais.
Zenobia: Boccaccio's
De claris mulieribus (a series
of Latin prose biographies of famous women),
supplemented for the final stanza by the De casibus.
Pedro
of
Castile: Contemporary
information.
Pierre de
Lusignan: Contemporary
information. The factually incorrect account of
his death is common to both
Chaucer and Machaut's Prise d'Alexandrie, but
it is more likely that both poets drew on
a version in oral circulation than that Chaucer
copied Machaut.
Bernabo Visconti: Contemporary
information. An English chronicler also records the lack
of certainty as to the means of his
murder.
Ugolino of Pisa: Dante,
Inf. xxxiii; the variations are more likely to be due to memorial
knowledge or deliberate alteration than to use
of another source. Chaucer changes Dante's
story drastically, making Ugolino a guiltless
victim and omitting the cannibalism of
his children at which Dante hints.
Nero: Primarily from
the Roman de la rose 6183-488, which
includes the reference to Suetonius repeated by Chaucer. The Roman
does not include the
details of the second stanza, most notably the imagination'-catching 'nettes of gold thread'
he used for fishing (2476), which may be derived from Vincent of
Beauvais or the De casibus .
. . .
Holofernes: Book
of Judith.
Antiochus: 2 Macc.
9.
Alexander: As
Chaucer says (2631- 3/3821-3), the story was
common knowledge. His version
lacks particularizing detail from any specific
source apart from I Macc. 1 (2655/3845).
Julius Caesar: Again,
most of the material is commonplace; it is
found, for instance, in Valerius Maximus and Vincent.
Croesus: Roman
de la rose 6489-622.