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Trohetsvisan and Chaucer's Lak ofStedfastnesse 297
The device is found in classical antiquity, known in
Carolingian poetry58; illustrated in fourteenth-century
French poetry, exemplified elsewhere in Middle English;
and Chaucer's phrase recurs in poems printed by
R. H. Robbins and in a late Latin poem within the genre:
'Totus mundus est subversus'. 59 "Vpsedowne - subversus"
says the Promptorium Parvulorum, 60 the English­
Latin word-list of about 1440.
The phrase in line 19, "The worlde hath made a
permutacioun", has its equivalent in the Scandinavian
Latin collection Pice Cantiones, "Totus mundus se
mutavit", and is immediately identified by Chaucer in the
contraries: "Fro right to wrong fro trouth to fikelnesse".
Such contraries are found elsewhere within the genre, for
example, in a thirteenth-century Latin poem which
translates: 61 "Judgement is for sale; Justice is neglected;
Vices usurp power to themselves; Virtue and Vice are
seen to be a pair from the deeds of all because they are
contrary."
There is further identification with the literary type in
the use of stock verbs or verbal phrases to create the
personifications. The most notable example is the verb
'to exile' (line 19) which appears to have been very
popular. Its popularity obviously opposes the remarks of
Pollard and Cowling on precise reference in the phrase to
political event. 62 The illustrations to lines 15-16 offer
a number of verbal phrases which Chaucer might have
chosen.
Perhaps however enough has been said to indicate that
Lak of Stedfastnesse exhibits the marks of its genre. There
is nothing internal which suggests that Chaucer need have
58 Curtius, op. cit., 95-96 .
.. See Appendix B, note to I. 5.
8' Promptorium Parvulorum ... auctore Fratre Galfrido Grammatico dicto ...
A.D. circa MCCCCXL, ed. A. Way (1843-1845), III 512 col. 2.
81 See Appendix B, note to I. 20 for the Latin•
.. See above note 22.