1) "Nature’s rule" plays an interesting variation on the personification allegory we saw in Venus’ court, where characters act in ways that explicate the significance of their names. When Chaucer says he saw the following cluster of characters standing together, their close association obviously suggests that they "belong together" in life: Beaute withouten any atyr, / And Youthe, ful of game and jolyte; / Foolhardyness, Flaterye, and Desyr, / Messagerye ["message sending"], and Meede" [bribery] (225-8). Some of the associations are ironic (youth and foolhardiness) and some brutally honest about the kinds of things which can occur in love affairs (flattery, desire, love-note-sending and bribery). Far from being an idealized view of love, this first set of allegories exposes a rather skeptical view of it, a view reinforced by the sad stories alluded to in the portraits of classical lovers on Venus’ temple’s wall.

     When we get to the birds, Chaucer’s double tone switches to accommodate the peculiar properties of the beast fable. Sometimes the fable’s truths relate to the animals’ natures (geese are foolishly confident), but at other times they clearly are meant to expose human foibles. (For another famous example of this, see the "Nuns’ Priest’s Tale" of Chauntecleer the rooster, Pertelote the hen, and "daun Russell" the fox.) A close reading of Chaucer’s alternation between the animal and human elements of his satire might reveal clues to his well-hidden intentions in creating this peculiar Valentine’s Day confection. Note the narrator’s strange reluctance to reveal what’s on his mind in the opening (ll. 20-21 and 90-91). Does the beast fable’s satire give us grounds for guessing his true intentions? Or are those two attempts to obscure a personal motive merely lures to conceal the fact that Chaucer’s purpose is public, not privately motivated at all?

2) The narrator’s summary of the vision in Cicero/Macrobius’ Somnium Scipionis repeats with notable emphasis the importance of "commune profit" (ll. 47 & 75). RC glosses this as "public good, welfare of the state" (385) and much has been made of the importance of this concept in the literature of Chaucer’s time, where it becomes a kind of code used by political reformers who urge both king and parliament to put aside their feuding to act according to this concept. In particular, Chaucer’s contemporary John Gower specifically addresses the importance of "commune profit" in two of his three major works, Confessio Amantis ("The Lover’s Confession") and Vox Clamantis (The Clamoring Voice [of the Populace]). Think about Parliament as a playful meditation on the problem of detecting and acting for the public good in a feudal culture which, until now, has operated far more upon the principles of loyalty and obligation to individuals in a strictly ordered hierarchy. How does a poet go about suggesting that nobles, for all their long-established power, might not "naturally" have the right to dispose of all affairs as their mighty ancestors would have done? Before the existence of opinion polling, national elections, and other means of representing such a collectivist world-view, how can you cause those in power (and the powerless!) to look beyond their own traditional interests?

3) How would you analyze the three tercel eagles’ reasons for why the formel should pick them? If we were talking about who should rule the nation rather than who should marry the bird, how would these three claims translate into political reasoning? Where might you look to find those three "eagles" in England?

4) The seed-fowl, water-fowl, and worm-fowl debate often turns upon the peculiar mating behaviors of the representative birds who speak. However, many of these arguments can be found in the literature describing debates in the so-called "courts of love" which we find in Andreas Capellanus’ The Art of Courtly Love. How does the addition of attributes of bird-nature affect our reaction to these amorous arguments from the courts of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Marie de Champagne? What might Chaucer want us to conclude about them as a result?

5) The judgment rendered by Nature is complex, involving as it does the formel’s own will as well as a consideration of the suffering tercels’ conditions. When the goddess says "If I were Resoun, thanne wolde I / Conseyle yow the royal tercel take," what is Chaucer saying about the difference between conclusions reached by reasoning and conclusions reached by following Nature?