Parlement of Foules

The poem begins with the narrator reading Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis in the hope of learning some "certeyn thing". When he falls asleep, Scipio Africanus the Elder appears and guides him up through the celestial spheres to a gate promising both a "welle of grace" and a stream that "ledeth to the sorweful were / Ther as a fissh in prison is al drye" (reminiscent of the famous grimly inscribed gates in Dante's Inferno). After some deliberation at the gate, the narrator enters and passes through Venus’s dark temple with its friezes of doomed lovers and out into the bright sunlight. Here Nature is convening a parliament at which the birds will all choose their mates. The three tercel (male) eagles make their case for the hand of a formel (female) eagle until the birds of the lower estates begin to protest and launch into a comic parliamentary debate, which Nature herself finally ends. None of the tercels wins the formel, for at her request Nature allows her to put off her decision for another year (indeed, female birds of prey often become sexually mature at one year of age, males only at two years). Nature, as the ruling figure, in allowing the formel the right to choose not to choose, is acknowledging the importance of free will, which is ultimately the foundation of a key theme in the poem, that of common profit. Nature allows the other birds, however, to pair off. The dream ends with a song welcoming the new spring. The dreamer awakes, still unsatisfied, and returns to his books, hoping still to learn the thing for which he seeks. ==Manuscripts==

Fairfax 16 (f.120r) There are fifteen manuscript sources for the poem: • British Library, Harley 7333 • Cambridge University Library Gg. IV.27 • Cambridge University Library Ff. I.6 (Findern) • Cambridge University Library Hh.IV.12 (incomplete) • Pepys 2006, Magdalene College, Cambridge • Trinity College, Cambridge R.3.19 • Bodleian Library, Arch. Selden B.24 • Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 416 • Bodleian Library, Fairfax 16 (fols. 120r–129v; c.1450) • Bodleian Library, Bodley 638 • Bodleian Library, Tanner 346 • Bodleian Library, Digby 181 • St. John's College, Oxford, J LVII • Longleat 258, Longleat House, Warminster, Wiltshire William Caxton's early print of 1478 is also considered authoritative, for it reproduces the text of a manuscript now considered lost. The stemma and genealogy of these authorities was studied by John Koch in 1881, and later established by Eleanor Prescott Hammond (1866–1933) in 1902, dividing them into two main groups, A and B (last five MSS), although the stemma is by no means definitive. Concerning the author of the poem, there is no doubt that it was written by Geoffrey Chaucer, for so he tells us twice in his works. • The first time is in the Introduction (Prologue) to The Legend of Good Women: "He made the book that hight the Hous of Fame, / And eke the Deeth of Blaunche the Duchesse, / And the Parlement of Foules, as I gesse". • The second allusion is found in the Retraction to The Canterbury Tales: "the book of the Duchesse; the book of Seint Valentynes day of the Parlement of Briddes". ==Artistic representations==

• The Parliament of Fowls (2008) is a one-act comic opera by American composer John Craton ==Translations and editions==

• Parlement of foules (1914). Translation, with an introduction, notes and glossary, by Charles Maxwell Drennan (1870–1935). • Parlement of foules. In The complete works of Geoffrey Chaucer (1937), pp. 101–110. Edited from numerous manuscripts by the Rev. Walter William Skeat (1835–1912). ==See also==