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RACE AND CRIME
Geographies of Injustice

Elizabeth Brown and George Barganier

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Illustrations

1.1. International rates of imprisonment, per 100,000 3.7. “Perceptive group” of organs: supposed gender
residents 4 differences based on phrenological head size 84
1.2. State and federal imprisonment rate 3.8. Types of criminals, from Lombroso, L’homme
(excluding jails) in the United States per 100,000, criminel, 1888 93
1925–2014 4 3.9. Skulls of criminals, from Lombroso, L’homme
1.3. Rates of incarceration (including prison and jails) criminel, 1888 94
by race and ethnicity, per 100,000 6 3.10. Family tree of Kallikak Family of New Jersey
2.1. Papal bull of Pope Urban VIII, 1637 36 created by eugenicist Henry Goddard following
2.2. Enslaved people arriving in the North American the methodology developed in Dugdale’s The
colonies and the United States, 1620–1866 46 Jukes 101
2.3. Runaway slave advertisement placed by Thomas 4.1. Immigration to the United States, 1870–1930, by
Jefferson in the Virginia Gazette, Williamsburg, VA, region of origin 112
September 14, 1769 47 4.2. U.S. urban to rural shift, 1860–1920 116
2.4. Increase of cotton cultivation and number of 4.3. Growth of major U.S. cities, 1860–1900 117
enslaved people in the United States, 1790–1860 47 4.4. Legislative status of eugenical sterilization, by U.S.
2.5. “Auction & Negro Sales,” Whitehall Street, state, 1935 123
Atlanta, Georgia 48 4.5. Eugenics social reformers 125
2.6. Manifest destiny illustrated by John Gast’s 4.6. William Charles Flynn, a winner of perfect
American Progress, 1872 52 “eugenic baby” contests 127
2.7. Map of the historical territorial expansion of the 4.7. Political propaganda, Mann Act, warning against
United States of America 53 the dangers of urban amusements 130
2.8. Map of removal of native peoples from 4.8. Political propaganda, Mann Act 131
their land 55 4.9. Number of states with “white slavery” laws,
2.9. White man’s burden cartoon 59 1890–1920 132
2.10. Advertisement for Pears’ Soap from the 1890s, 4.10. Black men, possibly freedmen, ambushed by a
instructing whites to promote cleanliness among posse of white slave patrollers 145
other races 59 5.1. United Welfare Association postcard, 1915,
2.11. School begins. Uncle Sam teaches newly acquired encouraging a vote for mandated racial
U.S. territories, including the Philippines, Hawaii, segregation in Baltimore, Maryland 168
Puerto Rico, and Cuba 61 5.2. “Hell’s Half Acre” in Birmingham, Alabama,
3.1. Carl Linnaeus’s taxonomy of humans 75 1910 170
3.2. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach’s five races 77 5.3. Residential security map of Baltimore, Maryland,
3.3. Herbert Morris, “Types of the Races” 77 1937 176
3.4. Polygenism based on region 80 5.4. Levittown house 180
3.5. Phrenological chart of the faculties 82 5.5. Concrete wall in Detroit, Michigan, separating a
black neighborhood from a new suburban
3.6. “Reflective group” of organs: supposed racial
development for whites, August 1941 181
differences based on phrenological head size 83

vii
viii Illustrations

5.6. Advertisements for San Francisco redevelopment, 7.1. People killed by police by race, number per
“reclaimed from blight,” 1947 186 million, 2016 249
5.7. San Francisco neighborhood ratings example, 7.2. People injured due to law enforcement
1955 188 intervention, by race and gender, per 100,000,
5.8. Redevelopment plan for the Western Addition 189 2000–2015 249
5.9. Vacant lots between Post and Geary Streets, San 7.3. Investigatory Stop Receipt from Chicago Police
Francisco, after redevelopment 189 Department 255
5.10. CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) pickets in front 7.4. Reasons for stops by police in Ferguson, Missouri,
of 125 North St., New York City(?), protesting by race, 2013 258
slum housing conditions 191 7.5. Ferguson’s population by race compared to police
5.11. The Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago 192 department by race 258
6.1. Joseph Jarrow, “The Queen of Chinatown” 205 7.6. People killed by police during arrest, by context
and race, 2010–2012 260
6.2. Chinatown Squad of the San Francisco Police
Department posing with sledgehammers and axes 7.7. LAPD Gangster Squad, ca. 1948 262
in front of August Pistolesi’s grocery store at 752 7.8. Zoot suiters lined up outside Los Angeles jail en
Washington Street 206 route to court after feud with sailors,
6.3. Map of San Francisco’s Chinatown showing June 9, 1943 267
businesses of disrepute—gambling, prostitution, 7.9. Results of complaints against police in large
and drugs 208 municipal departments, 2002 270
6.4. Advertisement for cocaine tooth drops, 7.10. New York City population, summonses, and
March 1885 210 misdemeanor arrests by race, 2001–2013 281
6.5. “Negro Cocaine ‘Fiends’ Are a New Southern 8.1. Percent of prosecutors by race and gender, United
Menace,” New York Times, February 8, 1914 210 States, 2006 296
6.6. “Smoking Weed Turns Mexicans into Wild 8.2. Percent of judges by race, California, 2016 296
Beasts,” Cheyenne State Leader, March 29, 8.3. Percent of court defendants charged with felonies
1913 212 by race, 2009 298
6.7. Aerial view of two buildings on fire on Avalon 8.4. Length of prison sentences for black and white
Blvd. between 107th and 108th Streets during prisoners, in months 298
Watts Riots, 1965 225 8.5. Detention status after arraignment for felony
6.8. Armed police officers guard street in Watts 226 convictions, New York County 302
6.9. Race of individuals targeted in SWAT 8.6. Mean bail amount by race, 2011–2015 303
deployments, 2011–2012 232 8.7. Plea offer types for felonies, by race, New York
6.10. Disparities in use of force when SWAT is deployed County 305
and not deployed for drug searches, 2011–2012 232 8.8. Use of public defense by incarcerated people, by
6.11. LAPD battering ram after being used on a race and ethnicity 308
suspected crack house 239
8.9. Race and mandatory minimums in the federal
6.12. U.S. incarceration, 1920–2008 241 system, 2016 312
6.13. Average sentence length for federal drug and 8.10. Average length of prison sentence, in months,
other crimes, 1980 and 2011 241 for federal offenders, by race and ethnicity,
6.14. Sentences of prison or probation for federal drug 2007 313
crimes, 1980 242 8.11. Rates of conviction by race of defendant
6.15. Sentences of prison or probation for federal drug with all-white jury versus jury with one
crimes, 2014 242 black juror 317
6.16. Prisoners in state and federal prisons and local 8.12. Percent of jurors struck from jury pools by race 318
jails for drug crimes, 1980 and 2015 243 9.1. Number of people incarcerated in U.S.
6.17. U.S. states’ expenditures on corrections, state and federal prisons (excluding jails),
1985–2015 244 1926–2014 335
 Illustrations ix

9.2. Imprisonment rates by gender, race, and ethnicity, 10.1. Number of people sentenced to death in the
per 100,000, 2014 335 United States, 1968–2016 377
9.3. Population under control of U.S. corrections 10.2. Number of executions in the United States since
system, 1980 and 2015 336 1976 377
9.4. Cumulative risk of death or imprisonment by 10.3. Race of death row population in the United
age 30–34 for black and white men, 1979 States, 2017 378
and 1999 336 10.4. Race of people executed in the United States since
9.5. Percentage of black and white men experiencing 1976 378
major life events 336 10.5. Race of victims of those executed since 1976 378
9.6. Race of correctional officers, jailers, and 10.6. Executions for interracial murders since 1976 379
bailiffs 342 10.7. Impact of aggravating factors in jury decisions 382
9.7. Chain gang of convicted persons engaged
10.8. Percent of white and nonwhite juveniles executed,
in road work, Pitt County, North Carolina,
by race, 18th century 383
1910 348
10.9. Percent of white and nonwhite juveniles executed,
9.8. Juvenile chain gang, 1903 351 by race, 19th century 383
9.9. Indeterminate sentencing in months by 10.10. Percent of white and nonwhite juveniles executed,
race and charge, 1931 355 by race, 20th century 383
9.10. Race of people serving life sentences, 10.11. Number of lynchings versus death penalty
2013 360 sentences, United States 391
9.11. Percent of applicants called back, by race 10.12. Top ten executing states, 1976–2018 392
and criminal record 366
10.13. Death penalty prosecutors, by race, 2015 398
9.12. Percent of applicants called back, contact versus
10.14. Death row population, by race, 2017 398
no contact 366
10.15. Death penalty support, by race, 2015 399
9.13. Felon disenfranchisement, 1960–2010 368
Preface

Th is book emerged from our collective experi- more than a series of outcomes in the system,
ences of teaching a course at San Francisco State produced primarily through the lack of controls
University called Race, Crime, and Justice. on discretion or the perceived pathologies of
Taught to over two hundred students each year, incarcerated communities.
this course examines how race impacts the Our training as scholars of race, first and
workings of the criminal justice system. While foremost, and not as criminologists means that
seemingly a simple task, from our perspectives we see this picture of race, crime, and justice as
as interdisciplinary scholars of the crime, law, severely limited. Race is something that
and justice systems, this was anything but. emerged just over five hundred years ago with
Instead, we came to view this course as a pre- the birth of colonialism but has often been
liminary introduction, not just to how race is approached in books on race and crime as an
experienced in the criminal justice system but ahistorical concept. Connections between his-
to why this topic is important for understanding torical lineages of race and the emergence of
the very workings of the criminal justice system racialized mass incarceration today have been
today. few and far between in introductory books. Fur-
Any student of criminal justice knows just ther, issues of race in the criminal justice system
how important race is to the system—the stag- have often been treated as merely one issue in
gering statistics showing that the United States the system and not as constitutive of the system
leads the world in incarceration, and that this itself. We longed for a text that understood that
incarceration is concentrated among black and how we view crime today is inseparable from
Latinx* communities. Yet, in comparison to the the history of race in the United States and colo-
wealth of textbooks on criminal justice systems nial conquest more broadly. We sought a text
in general, only a few books examine just how that was not limited to a tour of criminal justice
this came to be and why this reality in the crim- institutions and their racial outcomes but rather
inal justice system is so important to the history provided a strong foundation for understanding
and idea of race. Even fewer direct this at an what race is, where it comes from, how it
undergraduate audience and not at scholars of changed over time, and why it has come to so
race in the field. Textbooks that do examine easily dominate the criminal justice system
race and crime tend to consider race nothing today.

* We use the term Latinx in order to provide a gender-neutral term for referring to communities commonly referred to as
Latina/o; we also refer to people as Latino, Latina, or Latinx instead of Hispanic as the latter term originated in the tactics
of colonization we discuss in this book. Graphs that refer to Latinx communities often use this term even when the original
data source uses the term Hispanic.

xi
xii Preface

These limitations in texts meant that we were explicit, though nonetheless trenchant, racial
tasked with teaching a subject with very few structures of today. As a result of this redefi ni-
introductory primers for students. We each cob- tion of state power, critical criminal justice
bled together a series of readings and lectures institutions emerged, such as the juvenile court
that represented a more holistic approach to the and the uniformed urban police. As we trace at
understanding of race and the criminal justice the end of this chapter, these institutions identi-
system, but students still did not have access to fied poor, nonwhite communities as the primary
any readings that translated our overarching source of social problems, an identification that
approach into a single text. This book emerged continues today.
from that gap. Chapter 5 turns to the geography of race that
In chapter 1, we introduce readers to the emerged in the post-WWII period with the
macrostructural perspective of race in the crim- advent of the suburb and the decline and disin-
inal justice system by introducing the idea of vestment of urban spaces. This chapter sets the
racialized mass incarceration and the key terms stage for understanding how geography contin-
and theoretical construct of the book. Drawing ues to play a critical and necessary role in the
on scholars of colonialism and race, we develop continuation of mass incarceration and how our
the key term of coloniality to guide readers as to ideas about space and place are critical forces
the practices that reproduce racial hierarchies within practices of racialization.
today. In chapter 2, we embark on an in-depth In chapter 6, we move to the emergence of
exploration of how race emerged from colonial- the logics of crime control buildup in the 1960s
ism, and how this created a structure of human/ by tracing the role of political elites in respond-
nonhuman imbued throughout emerging Euro- ing to political protests and crises. In the 1960s
pean and U.S. state forms. We discuss in this and the 1970s, we get our fi rst glimpse of the
chapter where race came from, how race was logics of the “law and order” discourse and a
conceived, and how these trends shaped what fundamentally new way of thinking about the
we know about racial history in the United role of the state relative to social issues. Here we
States today. detail the emergence of the war on drugs, the
Chapter 3 examines explicitly the role of race redefinition of federal law enforcement, and the
in the field of criminal justice historically. reallocation of state resources toward prison
Beginning with the scientific invention of race, building, policing, and incarceration.
this chapter traces the emergence of regimes of We then turn in chapters 7–10 to examining
scientific racism from the early 1800s to eugen- how these historicized power relations affected
ics in the 1930s. These histories of race, while the various institutions of criminal justice. The
antiquated, are nevertheless instructional as to fi rst agency we examine is law enforcement in
how certain behaviors, bodies, and places are chapter 7. Urban policing is arguably one of the
infused with racial meanings today. most important agencies for how criminal jus-
Chapter 4 builds on this history by examin- tice institutions act to produce race and often
ing how racial science influenced the develop- one that is overlooked. This chapter details the
ment of social science and the birth of what role of various geographical policing schemes
today are known as “social problems.” Social critical to understanding policing in the twenty-
problems were integral to redefi ning the state first century. From “broken windows” and com-
and to transitioning the state from the explicit munity policing to SWAT team drug raids, the
racial apartheid of the slavery era to the less police act as a critical agency for furthering
 Preface xiii

colonial power relations into the seemingly that even as the power of coloniality and race-
color-blind postracial era. making shifts and restructures, it is likely to
Chapter 8 looks at the role of courts in con- continue influencing the criminal justice system
tinuing the colonial order through practices of for generations to come.
public defense, inadequate counsel, and what
has come to be known as tactics of spatial gov- Th is book is the product of so many conversa-
ernmentality. By using space and one’s presence tions and intellectual debts that are not named
in it as an arbiter of criminality, tactics of spatial or cited in this text. We especially thank all of
governmentality created “no-go” and hyperpo- those whose insights, arguments, and pointed
liced zones that in many ways mimic the spatial commentaries helped us to grapple with the
restrictions of well-known racist political world around us—from our very first instruc-
projects of the past. tors in undergraduate to our mentors, inspira-
Chapter 9 examines the role of race in tion, and cheerleaders today—and eventually
imprisonment and considers how the contem- resulted in this book. We hope to provide this
porary prison system mimics the institutional opportunity to our readers. We especially want
and racial structures of chattel slavery. Practices to thank the many reviewers who read drafts of
of dehumanization first mastered in the slavery this book and provided exceedingly helpful
era are reborn within the dehumanizing prac- comments, even those that were critical of its
tices of imprisonment that extend beyond even first iterations. We are especially indebted in
the walls of the prison. Chapter 10 examines the this regard to Randall G. Shelden, Sandra
ultimate act of dehumanization by examining Browning, Natalie Byfield, Gary Smith, Joseph
race and the death penalty. Unsurprisingly, Margulies, Brian Jordan Jefferson, Fawn Ngo,
given the history of race in the United States, and Tim Robicheaux. Without reviewers advis-
the death penalty was critical to continuing ing us to consider the work of particular schol-
what commentators call “legal lynching” even as ars, concepts, and historical events, we would
lynching became explicitly criminalized. Here, not have deepened our own understandings of
the connection between colonialism and vio- the twists and turns that led to race and crime
lent, sovereign elimination of the racial “other” today, and as such, this book. Many thanks as
is most clearly on display, but execution also well to Maura Roessner and the entire editorial
provides a telling look into how the larger struc- team at UC Press, whose encouragement and
tural trends examined in each previous chapter enthusiasm for the project guided us through-
are amplified in the use of the death penalty. out. We could not have completed this book,
Finally, we conclude by looking at how the however, without the expert guidance and
city is changing today, and the role that larger advice of Sarah Calabi, whose patience, gentle
forces play today in remaking race. As we dis- questioning, and organizational suggestions
cuss in the conclusion, mass incarceration has made this a stronger and clearer book than we
somewhat plateaued nationally, and we may be could have done on our own. All the omissions
moving toward a decarcerated era. Yet, as the and errors are ours alone. Many thanks as
practices of decarceration and the remaking of well to Tony Sparks, Askari Barganier, and Ami-
the city today both show, race, class, and gender rah Qureshi, who endured our late nights of
remain salient, entrenched, and consequential writing, weekends without us, and constant
in criminal justice practices. Thus, we contend inattention.
 CH A P T ER

Race, Crime, and 1

Justice: Definitions
and Context

W
LEARNING OUTCOMES hite nationalist protesters in the United States
 Explain what mass incarceration is marched through the streets with torches, wan-
and how it impacts race in the
United States today.
tonly inflicting violence and even death when a
 Summarize the connection between member charged the group. As they marched, they
racialized mass incarceration and chanted, “Blood and Soil,” a Nazi slogan. One protester
strides toward racial justice in the plowed into a group of counterprotesters, hurting at least
United States. twenty people and killing one. Racial taunts, shoving, and
 Define terms key to understanding
race, crime, and justice in the
fighting led the governor to declare a state of emergency
United States. and the National Guard to descend upon the city. The
 Demonstrate how race and crime are president of the country refused to condemn the violence
socially constructed. and instead noted that “bad dudes” on “both sides” were to
blame for the violence. He further sided with the protest-
KEY TERMS ers, declaring monuments to white supremacy “beautiful”
 mass incarceration and part of the “history and culture” of the United States.
 coloniality No, this is not sometime in the 1800s or even the 1960s
 sovereign force but August 2017, when white nationalists amassed to pro-
 state power
 knowledge production
test the removal of a statue that commemorated the slave-
 premature death holding southern United States in Charlottesville, North
 social construction Carolina.
 white supremacy You might ask why we would open a book titled Race
and Crime with a discussion of white nationalist violence
and its resurgence in the United States. Seventy years ago,
though, this question might not have been asked. One of
the first “wars on crime” in the 1940s sought not to fight
drugs or gangs, as we often declare today, but to defi ne

1
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2 Race, Crime, and Justice

crime as white racial violence and the criminal justice system as the responsi-
ble state institution for protecting the nation against these acts (Murakawa
2014). For reformers in the 1940s, the events in Charlottesville would have had
everything to do with race and crime.
The events in Charlottesville themselves, though, might have seemed odd to
reformers in the post-WWII era. At the end of the 1940s, the United States
was embarking on an era where the traditional structures of race-based
exclusion—such as explicit racial segregation in housing and schools—would
be eroded and ultimately overturned. Over the next two decades, Supreme
Court decisions would mandate protections for those most disenfranchised,
especially in the criminal court, by providing state-funded attorneys for poor
people and requiring Fourth Amendment protections against the actions of
local (not just federal) police. And in 1964, the nation would pass the Civil
Rights Act, which explicitly prohibited racial discrimination. This time would
be remembered as a period when the civil rights movement made extraordi-
nary inroads in exposing and changing the systems of white supremacy that
marked the pre–civil rights era. For the reformers in the 1940s seeking to
define the criminal justice system as the foremost institution in the fight
against racial hatred and violence, the events in 2017 in Charlottesville would
not have seemed likely.
With the passage of the Civil Rights Act, affirmative action remedies in the
1970s and 1980s, and the election of Barack Obama as president in 2008, many
today were even poised to declare the ascendance of the “postracial” moment
in the United States. The New York Times headline the day after the election
proclaimed “Obama Elected President as Racial Barrier Falls.” Time magazine
asserted that his election signaled that “the economy is trumping race” and
that “worried white voters [were] turning toward Obama.”
Yet, only a little over eight years separate the events in Charlottesville from
the election of Obama. Arguably, Obama’s election was generations in
coming—starting with the fi rst moments of the civil rights movement (and
likely earlier). Could something with that amount of historical significance
really change in just eight short years? Could the events of today really be such
a backlash to Obama’s election that the prior half century of racial justice work
would be obliterated? Could we really have gone so quickly from a postracial
future to the resurgence of a violent, white supremacist past? Or is something
else going on?
We argue that something else is going on, and this something else is found
within the criminal justice system. By examining the institutions of criminal
justice, we reveal how and why the criminal justice system emerged as the par-
amount institution of racial governance in the United States. We also explore
why this happened at a time when reformers might not have expected it, and
when many were primed to declare the past few decades as the ascendance of a
postracial future.
 Race, Crime, and Justice 3

POSTRACISM AND MASS INCARCERATION

Let’s consider a critical transformation in the criminal justice system that hap-
pened at the same time as the postracial future was being built. For an entire
century prior to the civil rights movement, the rate of incarceration was nearly
constant (Cahalan 1986). And while black and brown communities were cer-
tainly recipients of undue criminal justice attention, policing, and violent force,
whites routinely made up the majority of people in prison (Cahalan 1986; John-
son, Dobrzanska, and Palla 2005). With this historical background, we might
have expected the criminal justice system to be the exemplar institution of the
postracial era, emerging out of the civil rights moment in the 1960s as a model
of racial equality, justice, and fairness. Something else happened, though.

Mass Incarceration
That something else is what is often called mass incarceration. Mass incar-
ceration is defined by David Garland (2001, 1) as “a rate of imprisonment . . .
that is markedly above the historical and comparative norm” for a given soci-
ety. With mass incarceration, imprisonment “ceases to be the incarceration of
individual offenders and becomes the systematic imprisonment of whole
groups of the population.”
Today, 25 percent of the world’s total prisoners are held in the United States,
though it has just 5 percent of the global population (Sentencing Project 2015).
Its rate of incarceration is far above any comparable nation, with almost 700
people incarcerated per 100,000 residents (see figure 1.1). The next highest rate
among OECD countries is Chile’s 256 per 100,000. (The Organization for Eco-
nomic Cooperation and Development, begun by the United States, Canada,
and European countries in the 1960s, includes thirty-five nations.) Among all
the countries in the world, the United States remains the leader, with Rwanda
coming in second with 492 people incarcerated per 100,000 (Sentencing
Project 2015). Indeed, the United States incarcerates more people than the top
thirty-five European countries combined! And the United States’ incarceration
rate does not include the 360,000 people incarcerated in immigrant detention
facilities in 2016 (Detention Watch Network 2018).
Th is level of incarceration is unprecedented compared not only to other
countries but also in the history of incarceration in the United States. Figure
1.2 shows the rate of incarceration, or how many people are incarcerated rela-
tive to the total population, in this case, per 100,000 people. Just like the total
number of people incarcerated, the rate of incarceration also substantially
increased and demonstrated that even with population increases, incarcera-
tion in the 1980s was both historically unprecedented and drastic. Between
1900 (when reliable national record keeping began) and the 1970s, the rate of
incarceration including jails was also relatively constant, averaging around 100
4 Race, Crime, and Justice

800
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
0

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Figure 1.1 International rates of imprisonment, per 100,000 residents. Source: Data from
Sentencing Project, Trends in U.S. Corrections, 2015.

600

500

400

300

200

100

0
19 5
19 9
33

19 7
41

19 5
49

19 3
19 7
19 1
19 5
69

19 3
19 7
81

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20
Figure 1.2 State and federal imprisonment rate (excluding jails) in the United States per
100,000, 1925–2014. Sources: E. Ann Carson and Daniela Golinelli, Prisoners in 2012: Trends in
Admissions and Releases, 1991–2012, Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin (Washington, DC: U.S.
Department of Justice, December 2013 [revised September 2014]); Danielle Kaeble, Lauren
Glaze, Anastasios Tsoutis, and Todd Minton, Correction Populations in the United States, 2014,
Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, December
2015 [revised January 2016]), www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpus14.pdf; Margaret Warner
Cahalan and Lee Anne Parsons, Historical Corrections Statistics in the United States, 1850–
1984, NCJ-102529 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics,
December 1986), www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/hcsus5084.pdf.

per 100,000. Yet, after the 1970s, this rose to a global high of 755 per 100,000 in
2008 (the peak) and about 693 per 100,000 today.
The current U.S. rates of incarceration are certainly unprecedented, unpar-
alleled, and anomalous. Yet measures of incarceration do not reveal the entire
story. As incarceration rates rose, so did probation and parole. Today, over
 Race, Crime, and Justice 5

6 million people are under some sort of criminal justice supervision—a number
that shows just how widespread and entrenched the mass incarceration com-
plex is in U.S. society.

Race and Mass Incarceration

The term mass incarceration suggests a widespread application, yet mass incar-
ceration is not widely applied, and it does not apply to an amorphous, nonracial-
ized conception of society. In a country that is over 77 percent white, more than
60 percent of people in jail and prison are persons of color. In 2013, whites made
up just 34.3 percent of the prison population, while black people made up 37.4
percent and Latinxs 22.3 percent (Sentencing Project 2015). The chance of incar-
ceration for a black person is six times that of a white person, and Latinxs are 2.3
times more likely to be incarcerated than whites (Sentencing Project 2015).
At the height of mass incarceration, among every 100,000 residents, almost
2,300 black people were incarcerated and almost 1,100 Latinxs, compared to just
over 320 whites. In 2016, 274 whites per 100,000 were incarcerated, compared to
almost six times more blacks at 1,608, and over three times as many Latinxs at
856 per 100,000 (see figure 1.3). Among every 100,000 male U.S. residents, 2,724
black men are incarcerated, 1,091 Latino men, and just 465 white men. For white
women, just 53 in every 100,000 are incarcerated, compared to 64 in 100,000
Latinas, and 109 in 100,000 black women. Today, one in three black people and
one in seven Latinxs are under some sort of criminal justice supervision, but only
one in twenty-three whites! Indeed, in some cities, such as Baltimore, Milwau-
kee, and Washington DC, the rate of criminal justice supervision for black men is
one in two (Mauer 2006). And this increase in incarceration, probation, and
parole for black people and Latinxs happened at a time when the postracial
moment was seemingly building in other areas of the country.

Incarceration and the (Racialized) Life Experience

There is no doubt that the management of crime today plays a significant, if not
defi ning, role in creating the racial experience (Cole 2000). The most com-
monly cited incarceration statistics provide just a glimpse of one aspect of the
carceral complex that is directed at black and brown communities (Mauer
2006). It fails to include the effects of living in a hyperpoliced community or
among unregulated criminal markets or under a general pattern of suspicion,
distrust, and extraordinary attention—not just violence—directed at one’s
community (Chesney-Lind and Mauer 2003; Travis and Waul 2003).
Bird’s-eye views of incarceration statistics fail to convey how incarceration
has become a normal part of the life course for some groups (Petit and Western
2004). For example, while white men have a one-in-seventeen chance of being
incarcerated in their lifetimes, Latino men have a one-in-six chance and black
6 Race, Crime, and Justice

2,500

2,000

1,500

1,000

500

0
black white Latinx
Figure 1.3 Rates of incarceration (including prison and jails) by race and ethnicity, per 100,000.
Source: E. Ann Carson, 2018. Prisoners in 2016, US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice
Statistics, table 6. www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p16.pdf.

men have a one–in-three chance (Mauer 2006). For black men ages 30–34, the
age group with the most concentrated incarceration, 6,412 men per 100,000
are incarcerated. For Latinos in that age bracket, the rate is 2,457; for whites, it’s
just 1,111 (Carson 2015).

Postracial? The Case of Crime

When viewed from the vantage point of racial gains, the emergence of racial-
ized mass incarceration seems anomalous. Many might not suspect that racial
disparity would pervade a government institution as thoroughly as it has done
in the criminal justice system. To the extent that race did emerge as a defining
feature, we might expect that this could be easily corrected by appeal to the law
or through court cases, congressional lobbying, or some other remediation.
Yet, there has been no comprehensive reform package, congressional action, or
presidential mandate to end racialized mass incarceration. Even in the era of
plateauing incarceration rates, racial disproportionalities in the incarceration
experience remain trenchant.
How can this be, particularly when so many see such strides being made in
racial justice? The answer to this question is the subject of this book. Robert
Allen (2005) has argued that two strategies developed simultaneously to main-
tain white racial power in the wake of the civil rights movement: (1) a mecha-
nism of inclusion that permitted the development of a black and nonwhite
intermediary class consisting of professionals and bureaucrats and (2) the
expansion of the punitive state to target and continue the subjugation and
oppression of a nonwhite disenfranchised populace.
 Race, Crime, and Justice 7

While the number of black elected officials has increased from a few hun-
dred in the early 1960s to around 10,000 today, black politicians hold only 2
percent of the total number of elected offices in the United States (Brown-Dean
et al. 2015). The disparity is especially stark next to numbers of people incar-
cerated and suppressed by the criminal justice system cited earlier in this chap-
ter (Allen 2005). The election of Obama and the gains of the civil rights move-
ment were certainly significant, but they were set amid a larger expansion of
political disenfranchisement due to the effects of criminalization. Thus, politi-
cal gains by the black middle class have been relatively insignificant compared
to the much larger, often hidden processes by which black and brown commu-
nities became embedded within the criminal justice system.
This book tells the story of how the criminal justice system became the new-
est institution managing racial governance in the United States. The criminal
justice system is part of a broader legacy of state institutions—from slavery to
Jim Crow—through which race has been created, reproduced, and managed.
This book tells how this happened and explains why we should not be entirely
shocked by the events in Charlottesville in 2017. Instead, we argue, Charlottes-
ville represents an extreme example of what has been one of the most continu-
ous trends in the history of the United States—white racial domination.
Though Charlottesville is considered extreme and unrepresentative of the U.S.
populace, it is connected to the ways that white racial structures are subli-
mated through the institutions of everyday life. Even while many—including
whites—work toward a postracial future, the policies, practices, and assump-
tions underwriting state institutions reflect this racialized worldview.
This happened even though the policies and structures of state institutions,
including the justice system, are formally race neutral. Th is race neutrality,
however, is not divorced from the broader social context, and thus the race-
defined ways we think about crime are baked into the ways policies are imple-
mented, even in the seemingly postracial era. To demonstrate, let’s consider
how the criminalization of race happens through the emergence today of
seemingly race-neutral, “objective,” and “rational” approaches to policing.

POSTRACIAL POLICING: COMPSTAT AND

THE CRIMINALIZATION OF RACE

Criminology and criminal justice practice today take a seemingly much more
objective and scientific approach to the study of crime than in generations past.
Police, for instance, have embraced forms of policing based on statistical mod-
els and evidence-based practices. This, we might hope, more evenly distributes
policing across the population, reflecting an even distribution of criminal
activity across racial lines (Hagan and Foster 2004; Beckett and Sasson 2007).
8 Race, Crime, and Justice

Yet, even one of the most celebrated and seemingly objective, rational
approaches to policing was embedded in a racialized imagination of the world.
One widely known example of this new form of policing is COMPSTAT,
which was developed in New York (McDonald and Greenberg. 2002; Smith and
Bratton 2001). COMPSTAT stands for “compare statistics” and is a police man-
agement practice of using statistical information to identify “hot spots” of
crime and then targeting enforcement accordingly. Prior to COMPSTAT,
policing was riddled with examples of racially discriminatory policing, and
police regularly used force to subjugate and oppress communities of color,
some of which we describe in subsequent chapters. COMPSTAT was intended
to allow police to focus on areas where they were most needed. As a result,
police embarked on a new model of policing based on crime rates and their dis-
tribution over urban areas.
With COMPSTAT, authorities could identify hot-spot neighborhoods
where crime concentrated (Braga and Bond 2008). Th is move made policing
more “rational” and less tied to stereotypes and subjective assumptions consid-
ered a product of earlier models of policing. This also moved policing into what
many considered a color-blind or postracial era, where police are deployed
strategically in response to crime rates and not because of the racial threat of a
particular community.
COMPSTAT, for many, is an achievement of the values of democracy, equal-
ity, and justice in policing. Yet, the data used to produce crime maps in COMP-
STAT is not reflective of objective rates of crime. The data in COMPSTAT is
based primarily on reports of crime to the police, not on actual crime taking
place. Thus, the data is in actuality a measure of police activity, not of crime.
Consider how the data is compiled. COMPSTAT does examine all reports
of crime, but most crime is reported to the police in one of two ways. The first
way is when people call the police to report a crime. This leaves out the many
crimes that go undetected or unreported. Measures of crime victimization
show the actual crime rate is almost three times higher than measures of police
activity indicate (Beckett and Sasson 2007). COMPSTAT data primarily
focuses on crime that happens in public places—those hot spots of criminal
activity. Much crime, however, happens behind closed doors, in private spaces.
These types of crimes are least likely to be reported. For instance, if a person is
assaulted in public by an unknown assailant, the person is likely to call the
police. However, if the person is assaulted by a loved one in their home, there is
a good chance that the person will not call the police. Data plotted on crime
maps thus overrepresents crimes people are more likely to report to the
police—that is, crimes committed by strangers—but these are the crimes we
are least likely to be victimized by (e.g., Bachman and Saltzman 1994).
The second source of reports of crime is from police patrolling and making
arrests as a result of their surveillance. Police patrols, however, are not evenly
distributed across a jurisdiction. Consider this question: where in an urban
 Race, Crime, and Justice 9

area are police most likely to be found, outside of police stations? Most people
would suggest a neighborhood that likely is poor and less white; few would
respond with a predominantly white, wealthy neighborhood. It would be quite
strange to find regular police patrols in these neighborhoods. But police don’t
encounter crime on patrol in neighborhoods they aren’t surveilling, so crime in
wealthier, whiter neighborhoods often goes undetected. Consequently, where
police patrol largely determines who gets targeted, surveilled, and arrested—
and thus, which places end up in police data. COMPSTAT thus has a circular
effect: increased police activity in a neighborhood results in higher rates of
crime which then justifies further policing in those same places.
New York’s COMPSTAT is often seen as a rational and objective source of
evidence for police activity, yet this evidence also reinforces a racially disparate
experience of criminal justice agencies. A notable recent example was the use
of “stop and frisk.” Stop and frisk was developed as part of the COMPSTAT
crackdown on crime and was used extensively by the New York Police Depart-
ment to stop and search almost anyone. The intention was to combat weapons
and drug crimes, but relying on COMPSTAT data, the police focused their
efforts on “high-crime neighborhoods”—where the population was more likely
to be black or brown and lower income (Ward 2014).
With COMPSTAT and other criminological technologies, the “objective” or
“rational” coding of space thus hides deeply contextual, relational, and embed-
ded forms of knowledge. What is “objective” is actually the result of highly
mediated processes—such as determining what constitutes crime, what types
of crime are the most deserving of attention, and how to respond to crime.
These processes all have important consequences for who gets policed, how
they get policed, and why they get policed. Without a doubt, COMPSTAT is
considerably more sophisticated and often based on much larger and different
types of data than earlier policing efforts. Yet, the result is the same—the
deployment of police in the very same communities and against the very same
individuals that have historically borne the brunt of policing.
The story of COMPSTAT is a microcosm of the story we tell in this book
about race and crime. It’s a story that considers how good intentions, racial
redress, and an entire national history predicated on equality and liberty result
in centuries of racial subjugation. Thus, even though criminal justice agencies
embraced newly emerging scientific techniques of crime investigation, the
problem of racialized mass incarceration continued. Indeed, we argue that
what we see when we look at criminal justice is not the workings of a funda-
mentally just but somewhat flawed criminal justice system in need of reform.
Rather, it is the effect of the systematic equation of race and crime and the
criminalization of race in the United States, a history that began several centu-
ries ago.
The cause is not racist police, nor other racist criminal justice officials, but
rather the ways in which the narratives of white racial domination have been
10 Race, Crime, and Justice

sublimated into structures and institutions. Narratives of white racial domina-

tion were explicitly demonstrated in Charlottesville, but they can also be found
in the institutions that make up our everyday lives, from the school to the
economy to the criminal justice system. This began when race was invented in
the era of colonialism and continues to shape how we address crime and justice
today.

CRIMINALIZING RACE: COLONIALISM, RACE, AND CRIME

Colonialism may seem an odd place to start a textbook on the intersections

between race and crime, especially as the supposed date of “discovery” of the
Americas in 1492 was almost five centuries ago. Many likely see colonialism as
far removed from contemporary politics of race and crime. Yet the origins of
colonialism are critical for understanding the emergence, ascendance, and
continuation of race in society today.

Coloniality
Racial inequalities today are the result of practices that began in the colonial
era and make up what we call coloniality. This term, coined by Aníbal Quijano
(2000), refers to the processes by which colonial-era mechanisms of power
were subsumed and integrated into the social order. Coloniality has been
described as the “darker side of modernity,” where “human lives became
expendable to the benefit of increasing wealth, and such expendability was jus-
tified by the naturalisation of the racial ranking of human beings” (Mignolo
2007, 41). Coloniality consists of two dominant practices: (1) violent geographi-
cal appropriation of resources, places, and people and (2) racial and patriarchal
knowledge production.

Sovereign Force
Colonialism was ultimately a geographical project—centered on the conquest,
acquisition, and shaping of space, place, and people. Closely linked to the idea
of colonial conquest is the notion of sovereign force. Sovereignty refers to the
power of a ruler over land and territory. In a monarchy, the king is sovereign
and holds sway over the land, while in a democracy, the people’s rule is sover-
eign. Sovereign force refers to the process by which rulers use instruments of
violence—conquest, war, and even the criminal justice system—to rule over
others. In colonial conquest, sovereign force meant the violent appropriation of
people and places for the health, wealth, and continued domination of the sov-
ereign. In this book, we will examine how sovereign force—or what we will
call more simply state power—is used to protect the health, wealth, and
 Race, Crime, and Justice 11

continued appropriation of people and places for the continuity of white racial
domination.

Knowledge Production
Colonialism is also about what we say and think about colonized places, or
what we call, in shorthand, practices of knowledge production. Knowledge
production refers to the methods by which truth claims are asserted and the
processes by which those claims are bolstered and disseminated. Knowledge
production is going on around us all the time, such as when someone makes a
truth claim about another person and then disseminates that to others. This is
often called “gossip.” But it is a practice of knowledge production, with a
method of dissemination. It also, importantly, has a broader impact, shaping
the relational structures between friends, which can even alter the future
social, political, and economic contexts of those involved. For instance, con-
sider how a rumor can lead to someone losing social standing. In this book, we
are concerned with the practices of knowledge production about race and
crime and how these practices shape the social, cultural, political, and eco-
nomic contexts of colonial conquest, both historically and today.
Knowledge production was integral to colonial conquest. Colonialism initi-
ated the Age of Enlightenment, as contact with new places and people resulted
in an explosion of interest in the mapping, classification, and ordering of places,
people, animals, and plants (Mitchell 2002). Colonialist appropriation and
practice continued not because the use of sovereign force continued to expand
but because the techniques of classification and ordering produced evidence
for the colonial order.
It was much easier, for instance, to appropriate the bodies of black people
when Africa was classified, even by very smart people like the philosopher
Georg Hegel, as a place “properly understood” as the “Unhistorical, Undevel-
oped Spirit, still involved in the conditions of mere nature” (1857, 103). Think-
ing of an entire continent and its people as “mere nature” meant that they could
be transplanted, weeded, cultivated, and even abandoned and killed, just as one
would treat a flower bed. Th is knowledge production about Africa allowed
whites to reconcile claims of equality with racial subjugation, even as this sub-
jugation was intended to “liberate,” “civilize,” and otherwise enact seemingly
benevolent outcomes.

Coloniality and Criminal Justice

COMPSTAT gives us a glimpse into how the techniques of sovereign force are
deployed domestically through law enforcement. Criminal justice systems are
domestic institutions of sovereign force and use the same tactics and tech-
niques as colonial powers, such as police patrols, courts, and administrative
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Exploring the Variety of Random
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 example, over the defeat of the Scots by English archers at Halidon Hill, in
1333, but he merely babbles in the vague, and does not give a single detail as
to the fighting. When he promises to tell of the battle of Bannockburn, in place
of doing that he glories in the recovery of Berwick by Edward III.
The best praise we can give him is that he loved to celebrate the victories of
his countrymen; and had at his command many metres that were ready for
some better poet to use. It must also be admitted that there are very few
successes in our British essays in patriotic poetry, and that an enemy of the
Scots, as Minot was, may be not impartially judged by a critic of that race.

CHAPTER VII.

THE ROMANCES IN RHYME.

When romance "is in," and, after Geoffrey of Monmouth, romance

was in, every other kind of literature "is out"; is unfashionable and
little regarded. The English rhyming chroniclers, and even religious
writers such as the author of the "Cursor Mundi," felt constrained to
make their works resemble fiction as nearly as possible; owing to the
supremacy of French romances and English translations and
adaptations of French romances, in the late twelfth, thirteenth, and
fourteenth centuries.
Many of these productions grouped themselves round the Table of
King Arthur, "matter of Britain"; others dealt with "matter of Rome,"
that is all the ancient world; others with "matter of France"; others
with legends or fancies, English or foreign. Their subject was often
the chivalrous theory and practice of love, as a kind of religion, a
fantastic semi-idealized devotion to the beloved, who, as a rule, was
another man's wife. This breach of recognized religion and morality
was often set down to fate, to the power that the Anglo-Saxons
named Wyrd.
The two greatest cycles of romantic love are found in the lives of
Tristram and Iseult (the wife of King Mark of Cornwall, and aunt by
marriage of Tristram), and of Lancelot and Guinevere, the wife of
King Arthur. Tristram (whose name seems to be altered from the
Welsh name Drysdan), has but little original connexion with the
Court of Arthur, though he is a mythical hero of a very old Welsh
"triad". He and Iseult love each other because they have by
mischance drunk together of a love potion intended for Mark and his
wife; their love is fatal and inevitable, and immortal.
Lancelot, on the other hand, has been sent to bring the bride
Guinevere to Arthur, and they fall in love before the lady has seen
her lord. Every one knows their joys and sorrows, from Malory's
"Morte d'Arthur," (1470)—a prose selection and compilation of "the
French books," which excels them and supersedes them—and from
the poems of Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, and Mr. Swinburne.
The romances of love and tournament are pervaded and darkened
by the influence of the Celtic Merlin, the enchanter and prophet
whom men call Devil's son; he represents Destiny. A wide circle of
romances, "Merlin" and the "Suite de Merlin," attributed to Robert de
Borron, at the end of the twelfth century, are concerned with him.
As if to counteract the fanaticism of love which, in the romances,
becomes a non-moral counter-religion, the mysterious story of the
Holy Grail came into literature, French, German, and English. The
Grail is perhaps originally one of the many magical things of Celtic
legend, a vessel as rich in food inexhaustible as the purse of
Fortunatus in gold, but conceived by the romance writers to be a
mystic dish or cup, used by our Lord before His passion, and still
existing, but only to be seen by the pure of heart, such as Sir
Percival, and Sir Galahad, the maiden son of Lancelot.
By accident or design the romances fall into a tragic sequence: the
youth of Arthur, and his unconscious sin; the mysterious birth of
Merlin; the fatal loves of Lancelot and Guinevere; the coming of the
Grail and the search for the Grail by many knights; the failure of all
but Galahad and Percival; the falling of Lancelot and Guinevere to
their old love again; and the sorrows and treacheries that precede
and lead up to the king's last battle in the west, and his passing to
Avilion.
France and Ireland, like England, have their own romances on the
adventures of knights under the feudal sway of a chief king; in
France, Charlemagne; in Ireland, Conchobar or Fionn; in England,
Arthur, and in all these cases the king becomes much less interesting
than his knights, such as Roland and Oliver in France; Cuchulain and
Diarmaid in Ireland; Lancelot, Tristram, Gawain, and Percival in
England. Yet Arthur, at first and at the last, is the supreme as well as
the central figure in the epic, or cycle, of romances. These are a
great treasury of brilliant imaginations, rising from Celtic traditions of
unknown antiquity, and then transfigured, first by the chivalrous
counter-religion of love; next by the reaction to celibacy, and the
yearning after some visible and tangible Christian relic and sign, "the
vision of the Holy Grail". From this hoard of mediaeval fancies later
poets have taken what they could, have placed the jewels in settings
of their own fashioning.
The romance writers were by no means restricted to "matter of
Britain," with Celtic traditions; or to "matter of France," the epics of
Charlemagne and his peers, or even to "matter of Rome," ranging
through all antiquity. Material came in from popular tales of all
countries, and from recent historical events, as in the romance of
Richard Cœur de Lion. In the fifteenth century there was a romance
of Jeanne d'Arc, as fantastic as any; the matter of it survives partly
in the prose of the "Chronique de Lorraine," and has drifted into
"Henry VI," Pt. I. In France the most famous and fashionable
novelists of the late twelfth century were Chrétien de Troyes and
Benoît de Ste.-Maure, author of the great romance of Troy, whose
manner, long-winded and elaborately courtly, was strangely revived
by the French romancers of the years preceding Molière.

Tristram.
The earliest English romances, or novels of chivalrous adventures,
are couched in metre. Among the first is "Sir Tristrem" (usually
spelled Tristram); certainly this has been the most popular in
modern times. Sir Walter Scott edited it, from the copy in the
Auchinleck Manuscript (a collection of early poems once in the
possession of Boswell of Auchinleck, father of Dr. Johnson's Boswell).
[1]

Sir Walter was persuaded that "Sir Tristrem" was written from local
Celtic tradition, by the famed Thomas of Ercildoune, called the
Rhymer. Thomas, who dwelt at Ercildoune (Earlstone on Leader
water), was a neighbour, as it were, of Scott at Abbotsford; he died
between 1286 and 1299, and he had great though obviously
accidental fame, as a prophet.
The poem on Tristram begins with the words,
I was at Erceldoune
With Thomas spake I there,
There heard I rede in roune
Who Tristram gat and bare,
(that is, "I heard who the father and mother of Tristram were")
Who was King with croun;
And who him fostered yare;
And who was bold baroun.
As their elders ware,
Bi yere:—
Thomas tells in toun,
This auventours as thai ware.
The English poet uses this difficult stanza in place of the simple
rhymes of a French original which knew nothing of Ercildoune. In
similar stanzas, of French origin as usual, the whole romance is told.
Throughout "Tomas" is mentioned as the source of the story—"as
Tomas hath us taught".
There are fragments of an earlier French romance in which Tomas is
also quoted as the source, and an early German version, by Godfrey
of Strasbourg refers to Thomas of Britanie.
Scott was well aware that the story of Tristram was popular in
France long before the time of Thomas of Ercildoune, but he liked to
believe that Thomas collected Celtic traditions of Tristram from the
people of Leaderdale and Tweeddale, though they, by 1220-1290,
were English in blood and speech.
In the romance, Tristram is peerless in music, chess-playing, the fine
art of hunting, and of cutting up the deer; and his main virtue is
constancy to Iseult, wife of his uncle, King Mark. This unfortunate
prince is not the crafty avenger of his own wrongs, as in Malory's
"Morte d'Arthur," but a guileless, good-natured being, constantly and
ludicrously deceived. Iseult is treacherous and cruel, but everything
is forgiven to her, and, as the manuscript, is defective, we do not
know how the poet handled the close of the tale, the episode of the
other Iseult "of the white hands". Scott finished the tale in the metre
and language of the original. Tristram is dying in Brittany, only Iseult
of Cornwall can heal him, as only Œnone could heal Paris. Tristram
sends for her, the vessel is to carry white sails if it bears her; black,
if it does not. The idea is from the Greek saga of Theseus. The
second Iseult, wife of Tristram, falsely reports that the sails of the
vessel are black. Tristram dies, and Iseult of Cornwall falls dead
when she beholds him.
Swiche lovers als thei
Neer shall be moe,"
concludes Sir Walter.

Havelok.
In "Havelok" we naturally expect, thinking of our historical hero
Havelock, to find a true English romance. The scene is partly in
England, the tale is of a Danish king's son kept out of his own by
one of the most fearsome guardians of romance (who chops up the
hero's little sisters), is saved by the thrall Grim, who was ordered to
murder him, and, after adventures as a kitchen lad, marries an
English princess who is in the hands of another usurper. The story is
truly English in sentiment and style. The poet curses Godard, the
murderous oppressor of Havelok, in a thoroughly satisfactory
fashion. The noble birth of the hero is recognized by the "battle-
flame" of the ancient Irish romances; the flame with which Athene
crowns Achilles in Homer shines round Havelok. This light warns
Grim not to drown Havelok, and teaches the oppressed lady whom
he wins that her wooer is no kitchen-knave but a prince in disguise.
The story has abundance of spirit, and may be read with more
pleasure than the romance of the perfidies of Iseult. It is written in
no affected and entangled rhymes, but in rhyming couplets.

King Horn.
In "King Horn" we have a novel that must have been reckoned most
satisfactory. The course of true love is interrupted by accidents
which caused the utmost anxiety to the readers, who probably
looked at the end to see "if she got him". "He" was Prince Horn, son
of Murry, King of Saddene; the realm is "by west," and is invaded by
Saracens. They spare Horn, for his beauty's sake, but launch him in
a boat with his friends, Athulf and Fikenhild; his land they overrun,
and disestablish the Church, being themselves professors of the
Moslem religion. Horn drifts to the shore of the realm of Westerness,
under King Aylmar. Here the king's daughter Rymenhild, falls in love
with Horn, but cannot have an opportunity of declaring her passion.
In the romances the lady, as a rule, begins the wooing. By
Athelbrus, the steward, Athulf is brought to her bower, apparently in
the dark, for she addresses him as Horn.
"Horn" quoth she, "well long
I have thee loved strong."
Athulf undeceives her; Horn is brought, in the absence of King
Aylmar: Rymenhild again speaks the secret of her heart, and when
Horn alludes to their unequal ranks, she faints away—one of the
earliest faints executed by any heroine in English fiction. Horn kisses
her into consciousness, and she devises that he shall be knighted.
The king consents, giving him a ring which secures him from "dread
of dunts," sends him to win glory. Horn at once kills a hundred
Saracens. But Fikenhild, his false friend, finds Horn consoling
Rymenhild for a dream of a great fish that burst her landing net.
Fikenhild, in jealousy, warns King Aylmar, who discovers Horn and
his daughter embracing. Horn is exiled, and bids Rymenhild wait
seven years, and then marry if she will. Like the daughter of "that
Turk," in "The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman," she "takes a vow and
keeps it strong".
At another court Horn, now styled Cutberd, not only slays giants, but
encounters and routs the very Saracens who had invaded his father's
dominions. The king of the country offers Horn his daughter and
realm: he, however, is true to his vow, but, at the end of seven
years, Rymenhild is betrothed to a king. She sends a boy to Horn
with a message. In returning with Horn's reply the boy is drowned;
the princess finds his dead body. Disguised as a palmer, like Ivanhoe,
Horn returns to Westerness, and, like Odysseus, sits on the ground
at the palace, as a beggar. Rymenhild does not recognize him, asks
him if he has met Horn, and is shown her own ring. Horn, she is
told, is dead. She had secreted a knife to kill her bridegroom, like
the Bride of Lammermoor. Then Horn reveals himself, the pair are
wedded, but he has still to recover his own kingdom. This he does,
but Fikenhild has carried off Rymenhild. Disguised as minstrels, Horn
and his friends surprise him in his new castle, and all ends happily.
"Horn" is a fair example, happily short, of the novels of the period,
which, in essence, are like all good novels that end well. Assonance
(rhyme of vowels but not of consonants) occurs in the verse:—
He lokede on his rynge,
And thogte on Rymenhilde.
It is not necessary to analyze the plots of all the romances: two or
three enable us to estimate the kind of fiction that was popular with
ladies in bower.

Beues of Hamtoun.
"Sir Beues of Hamtoun" is another English romance, concerning the
son of the Earl of Southampton and his wife, a princess of Scotland.
The Earl is old, and his bride proposes to the Kaiser to kill the Earl
and wed herself. The Emperor promptly invades England and cuts
off the head of the good Earl. The Scottish traitress orders the
murder of her son, Beues, but is deceived by her agent, and Beues
knocks down the Kaiser.
The boy is sold and sent to Armenia, where he refuses to worship
Apolyn (Apollo). The pagan king has a fair daughter, Josian, who
becomes the mistress of Beues, while he has a conquered giant,
Ascopart, for page. After a thousand adventures, Beues and Josian,
being true lovers, make a good end, and die together. The English
writer, prolix as he is, has shortened his French original, in places,
made additions in others, and generally writes with freedom.

Guy of Warwick.
The same happy end, simultaneous death, rewards the hero and
heroine of "Guy of Warwick". The hero's unexplained forgetfulness of
his lady, Felice, is borrowed from the ancient popular tale in Scots,
"The Black Bull of Noroway," where the forgetfulness is explained.
Many stock incidents of the romances come from popular tales
("Märchen") of unknown antiquity. Felice is a very learned and rather
hard-hearted maiden, and Guy, when in love, faints frequently. The
romance contains every kind of adventure with dragons, lions, and
human foes, and as much religion as devout damsels could desire,
or even more, for Guy, in a devout mood, deserts the learned Felice
for a life of chastity and military adventure. As usual he returns in
the guise of a palmer.

Arthur and Merlin.

The "Arthour and Merlin," a rhymed romance of the old story, from
the Auchinleck manuscript, about 1320, has not the gleams of true
poetry that shine in Layamon's "Brut," and is verbose and
incomplete—the tragedy of Arthur is absent. We find, however, the
story of how Arthur won the sword Excalibur, thereby proving
himself a true prince, for no other man could pluck it from the stone
into which it was driven. King Lot (Llew, a historical personage
apparently), could not draw forth Excalibur. Sir Kay, one of Arthur's
companions in the oldest Welsh tales, appears, with Sir Gawain,
whose character, as in the Welsh romances, is far above that which
he displays in the "Idylls of the King"; Merlin continually exercises
the art of glamour, appearing in various forms, and Arthur loves
Guinevere, but the poet wearied of his toil long before the last battle
in the west.
He professes that, as many gentlemen know not French, and as
Right is that Inglische understand
That was born in Inglond.
he sings in English of the glory of England, Arthur. The final English-
form of the great Arthurian tale may best be considered when we
arrive at the date of Sir Thomas Malory and Caxton. In Malory's
"Morte Arthur" the long dull wars of the king against the Anglo-
Saxon invaders are much compressed, while the epic, tragic, and
mystic elements, the great character of Lancelot, the mournful
victory of the winning of the Grail, and the end of all, are handled
with genius.

The Tale of Troy.

The story of Troy had a hold on the mediaeval mind only less strong
than the story of Arthur. In early English, at the end of the
fourteenth century, we find the romance in the revived Anglo-Saxon
alliterative form; it is the "Geste Hystoriale" concerning the
Destruction of Troy, and the story is told once more in the rhyming
couplets of the "Troy Book". The manuscript of the "Troy Book" is
marked "Liber Guilielmi Laud, Archiepiscopi Cantuar et Cancellarii
Universitatis Oxon 1633". (The book of William Laud, Archbishop of
Canterbury and Chancellor of the University of Oxford.)
The author of the alliterative romance begins by saying that learned
men wrote the history in Latin, but that poets have corrupted it by
fables and partisanship. Homer, he says, was notoriously partial to
the Greeks; moreover, he introduced incredible gods fighting like
men. Ovid, on the other hand, was "honest"; Virgil was true to the
rightful cause, that of Troy; but the best authority is Gydo (Guido de
Colonna).
Such was the nature of historical criticism as understood by the
mediaeval romancer. For love of lost causes, and, as descendants of
the Trojans through the Brut of mediaeval myth, the romancers
detested the Achæans, the conquering Greeks.

The Story of Troy from Homer to Shakespeare.

The history of the development of the "Tale of Troy," as Chaucer and
even as Shakespeare knew it, is very curious. Homer himself,
perhaps living about 1100-1000 b.c., tells, in the Iliad and Odyssey,
parts of the "Tale" as it was known to his own people, the
conquering Achæans, who were to the older dwellers in Greece what
the Normans were to the English. They finally melted into the older
population, who, about 800-700 b.c., wrote poems of their own
about the "Tale of Troy," altered the facts, and blackened the
characters of Homer's greatest heroes. Later, again, the great
Athenian tragedians, of the fifth century b.c., wrote dramas more on
the lines of the conquered population of Greece than on those of
Homer, and they still more deeply degraded some of the heroes of
Homer. The Romans, looking on themselves as descended from the
Trojans, persevered in the same course, and a Greek, after the
Christian era, wrote a prose version of the "Tale of Troy," pretending
that it was a manuscript by Dictys of Crete, who was a spectator of
the Trojan war. A similar prose book was attributed—to another
spectator, Dares of Phrygia. These books tell the story of Troilus and
Cressida, of Palamedes, and many other tales unknown to Homer.
But, in Western Europe, Homer was unread, and unknown in
England till Chapman translated him: and all the romancers about
Troy—Lydgate, Chaucer, Caxton, and the rest, down to Shakespeare,
—depend on the false tales whose growth we have described.
Probably the first romancer who expanded the bald prose narratives
of Dares and Dictys, was Benoît de Sainte-Maure (1160) in a long
French rhyming poem. He unites the fates of Briseida (Briseis,
daughter of Calchas, the Greek priest who is made a Trojan), and
Troilus, son of King Priam. Briseida, through a confusion with
Homer's "Chryseis," daughter of Chryses, the Phrygian priest of
Apollo, later becomes the "Cressid" of Chaucer and Shakespeare.
Meanwhile "Gydo" or Guido de Colonna, did the French of Benoît
into Latin prose (1287) and Guido is the source of the English
authors of the alliterative and the rhyming romances of Troy. The
pedigree of the story is
Pseudo-Dares—Pseudo-Dictys
|
Benoît de Sainte-Maure
|
Guido de Colonna
|
The English Romances.
Through Caxton's printed "Book of Troy," the story continued
popular, a cheap edition appeared in the eighteenth century.
Each of Homer's poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, deals but with
the adventures of a fortnight, or six weeks, but the mediaeval
readers wanted, and from the romancers received, the whole history
of the ten years' siege, and more, with Christian legends thrown in,
with minute descriptions of all the characters—Cassandra "gleyit a
little," had a slight cast of the eye like Mary Stuart. The heroes fight
as mounted knights, not in chariots; they use cross-bows as well as
long-bows; and Hector kills men by the thousand, with more than
Irish exaggeration. As Hector must be killed, Achilles suddenly
charges him in front, while his shield is slung behind. Had a Trojan
poet left an epic on the war he would not have told the story
otherwise. The poet of the Laud "Troy Book" bids God curse Æneas
as a traitor, forgetting, apparently, that the British are descendants
of Æneas.

King Alisaundre.
The history of Alexander with all manner of romantic and fabulous
additions, under the name "King Alisaundre," is in rhyming couplets
of eight syllables to each line; the couplets are often irregular, as in
Coleridge's "Christabel," and the story, like most of the English
romances of this period, is borrowed through the French, from a late
fabulous Greek work.
This kind of versified romance endured till Chaucer thought it
tiresome, and parodied it, in "Sir Thopas". These rhyming English
romances, in various forms of verse, were made for ladies and
gentlemen who, already, were not able to read the more artistic and
elaborate French romances for themselves; but were very well able
to take pleasure in stories of true love and miraculous adventures.
The romances set a fashion which was continued in the endless
heroic novels in prose, French, and English, down to the end of the
seventeenth century. The Middle Ages had no taste for novels of
ordinary life, about people of their own time. These, in England, do
not begin to appear till the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and then nearly
a century and a half passed before they became really popular.
If much has been said about these old romances it is because they
have so powerfully impressed themselves on the fancy of all later
English poets, from Shakespeare and Milton, who dreamed of an
epic on Arthur, and delighted in the sonorous names of Arthur's
knights, to Tennyson and William Morris.
The romances, composed of fancies from so many sources and
times, Greek, Celtic, Roman, and French, and English, are like that
Corinthian bronze composed of gold and silver, copper and lead, all
molten together at the burning of Corinth. In this rich metal poets of
later times have moulded figures in their own fashion.
 [1] Scott's edition of 1819 is the fourth, while other romances in
verse are to be read in the volumes of learned societies. No doubt
people bought the book for the interesting essays and notes of Sir
Walter; few of them would look at the old romance itself.

CHAPTER VIII.

ALLITERATIVE ROMANCES AND POEMS.

Though English poets, in the fourteenth century, had a full command

of rhyme, and of many forms, simple or complicated, of rhyming
verse, there began a return to the old Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse,
sometimes combined with rhyme. Chaucer, later, makes his parson
say,
I am a Southren man,
I can nat geste—rum, ram, ruf—by lettre;
Ne, God wot, rym holde I but litel bettre.
The parson's Opinion is his own, not that of Chaucer, who certainly
"liked rhyme," whether he liked alliterative rhythm or not.

Gawain and the Green Knight.

A famous and really amusing alliterative romance, with a rhymed
close to each passage, is "Gawain and the Green Knight". This tale is
found in a manuscript which also contains two devout poems,
"Patience," and "Cleanness," with an elegy of remarkable merit, "The
Pearl". All four poems are attributed by several critics to the same
author, and some of the Scottish learned believe that author to have
been a very prolific and accomplished Scot. A few words may be said
on this question later, meanwhile "Gawain and the Green Knight" has
the merit of being readable. Though Gawain is best known in
modern times through Tennyson's "Idylls of the King," in the
romance he was by no means the "false, fleeting, perjured" knight of
the great Laureate. In the Welsh Triads and other early Welsh
versions, he is one of the three "golden-mouthed heroes," one of the
three most courteous. He was the eldest son of King Llew, Loth or
Lot, a contemporary of Arthur, from whom he received Lothian. In
Geoffrey of Monmouth, Gawain appears as Walwainus. The figure of
Lancelot comes later, as we saw, into romance, and Lancelot and
Gawain then become foes. When Tristram (or Tristan) was
introduced into the circle of Arthur, later, the authors of the Tristan
(under Henry II and Henry III) had, for some reason, a bitter spite
against King Lot and all his family; and calumniated Gawain on every
occasion. This vein of detraction pervades Malory's "Morte Arthur,"
where Tennyson, looking for a false fleeting knight, found the
Gawain of the "Idylls".
In "Gawain and the Green Knight," Arthur's friend displays great
courage, courtesy, tact, and chastity under severe temptations,
while, if he falls for a moment short of heroic virtue, he redeems his
character by frank confession. The story is too good to be spoiled by
a brief summary: grotesque as is the figure of the gigantic Green
Knight, who suffers no inconvenience from the loss of his head, the
trials of Gawain are most ingeniously invented, and he overcomes
them like the Flower of Chivalry. He is rewarded by the magical
"green lace" which may, it has been suggested, symbolize the Order
of the Garter (about 1345), though the ribbon of the Garter is now
dark blue.

Pearl.
In the manuscript volume containing "Gawain and the Green
Knight," is the singular poem, "Pearl," which has been described as
the "In Memoriam" of the fourteenth century. It is, indeed, an elegy
by one who has lost a "Pearl," probably a Margaret, who dies before
she is two years old. The poet bewails his loss, and speaks, in a
vision, with his Pearl, concerning religion and the future life. The
poem (edited, paraphrased, and annotated by Mr. Gollancz) was
praised by Tennyson as "True pearl of our poetic prime".
"Pearl" is written in stanzas of twelve lines, with some resemblance
to the form of the Italian sonnet (in fourteen lines), with which the
author may have been familiar. The system of rhyming may be
roughly illustrated thus,
Pearl that for princes' pleasure may
Be cleanly closed in gold so clear,
Out of the Orient dare I say,
Never I proved her precious peer;
So round, so rich, and in such array,
So small, so smooth the sides of her were,
Whenever I judged of jewels gay
Shapeliest still was the sight of her.
Alas, in an arbour I lost her here,
Through grass to ground she passed, I wot,
I dwine, forsaken of sweet love's cheer,
Of my privy Pearl without a spot.
The same rhymes persevere through the first eight lines, as in a
sonnet, the rhyme of the second, fourth, sixth, and eighth lines
continues in the ninth and eleventh; a new rhyme appears in the
tenth and twelfth lines: and throughout there is much alliteration. In
stanzas 1 to 5, "pearl withouten spot" comes always as a "refrain" at
the close, and other refrains end each set of five or six stanzas, as in
the old French ballade. The form is thus difficult and highly artificial,
the making of the poem was, as Tennyson says, "the dull mechanic
exercise" to deaden the pain of the singer.
The poet, fallen on the grassy grave of the lost child, lies entranced,
but his spirit floats forth to a strange land of cliffs and woods, where
the leaves shine as burnished silver, and birds of strange hues float
and sing. He comes to a river crystal-clear, whose pearls glow like
sapphire and emerald, but that river has no ford, and may not be
crossed by living man. On the farther shore he sees a maiden clad in
white and in pearls, fresh as a fleur-de-lis; she is the Blessed
Damosel, the Lady Pearl. Her locks are golden, and her crown is of
pearls and gold. She tells the dreamer that she is not lost: his Pearl
is in a coffer; safely set in the garden of Paradise. She comforts him
with the hope and comfort of Christ. Henceforward her discourse is
religious: he strives to cross that River, and to reach the shining city
of the Apocalypse; but he wakes on the grave of his child; and
consoles himself with the promise of the Communion of the Saints.
The machinery of the Dream, and the River, are borrowed (as all
poets then borrowed), from the famous French "Roman de la Rose"
(1240) with its allegorical characters. This fashion of poetry, always
beginning with a dream, in which the dreamer has visionary
adventures with allegorical personages, became a kind of literary
epidemic, terribly tedious and conventional, as time went on.
The poet has given to his lay the charm of sorrow not without hope,
and a dainty grace of artifice that is not insincere; "of his tears are
pearls made".
As to the author of "Pearl," there is much difference of opinion.
Nothing in the two edifying poems in the same manuscript,
"Cleanness" and "Patience," makes it improbable that he wrote
them. "Gawain and the Green Knight" is a very different
composition, yet of lofty character; the author of "Pearl" may have
written it, just as the author of "The Lotus Eaters" wrote "The
Northern Farmer," and "The Charge of the Light Brigade".

Huchown.
With a number of other poems, "Pearl" has been claimed for a Scot,
Huchown, Sir Hugh of Eglintoun, an Ayrshire laird, known as a
fighting man, a diplomatist, and a judge, in the reign of David II of
Scotland; he "flourished" between 1342 and 1377. Or perhaps
Huchown was a priest, nobody knows.
The process of argument is this; some forty-three years after Sir
Hugh died, in 1420, a Scottish writer of history in rhyme, Wyntoun,
produced his "Orygynale Cronykil" (his spelling is original enough).
He says that "Huchown of the Awle Ryale," wrote learnedly, on the
Brut and Arthur themes, in his "Geste Hystorialle," that is a rhymed
romance named "Morte Arthur". Wyntoun also says that Huchown
made the "Gret Gest off Arthure" (apparently the "Morte Arthur"),
the "Awntyre off Gawaine" (perhaps "Gawain and the Green Knight,"
or perhaps the "Awntyrs of Arthur"), and the "Pystyll of Swete
Susane" (a poem still extant, on Susannah and the Elders, the story
in the Apocrypha).
Some claim for Huchown not only these pieces, but "Pearl,"
"Cleanness," and "Patience," and long poems on Alexander the
Great, and the Tale of Troy, and much more. Huchown, on this
theory, must have been a professional poet, yet he has been
identified, we saw, with Sir Hugh of Eglintoun, a soldier, diplomatist,
and man of affairs.
It is certainly improbable that a man so busy as Sir Hugh of
Eglintoun wrote such a huge mass of poetry unless he were as
energetic as Sir Walter Scott.
The great alliterative "Morte Arthur" wanders from the true way,
pointed out in the ancient Welsh verses on "The Graves of Heroes,"
and by Layamon. "The Grave of Arthur" is no mystery to honest
Huchown; of the King it cannot be said "in Avalon he groweth old,"
he does not dwell with "the fairest of all Elves": he is buried at
Glastonbury, a fable invented late, in the honour of that beautiful
and desolate home of old religion.
Huchown shows that he was intimately familiar with minutiæ of
English law, which Sir Hugh of Eglintoun was more likely to know
than an obscure parish priest. Many other curious arguments in
favour of Sir Hugh of Eglintoun as author of the "Morte Arthur" have
been set forth (by the learned ingenuity of Mr. George Neilson, who
also claims for him "Pearl"), but we still marvel how a busy man like
Sir Hugh, living in a rough age, found time for all his labours.
The "Pistyl of Susan" adds little, save in one passage, to the laurels
of Huchown. It is a tale of Susannah and the Elders, told in stanzas,
both alliterative and rhyming, of eight lines, followed by one short
line of two syllables, then come three, rhyming lines of three feet,
and a fourth rhyming to the first in this set: thus,
And told
How their wickedness comes
Of the wrongous dooms
That they have given to gomes (men)
These Judges of old.
The garden of Susan is described in a manner both copious, florid,
and inconsistent with botanical science, but there is a touching
scene between the falsely-accused Susan and her husband.
Huchown is also credited with the "Awntyrs (Adventures) of Arthur";
which contains a curious appearance of the ghost of Guinevere's
mother to Sir Gawain and "Dame Gayenour," Guinevere. This is
certainly "the gryseleste gaste,"—the grisliest of ghosts, but she has
all of Huchown's delight in theology and edification, prophecy,
heraldry, and hunting. The metre is not unlike but is not identical
with that of "Susan".
By Scottish critics the "Morte Arthur" and "Susan," at least, are
claimed for the Ayrshire bard, Sir Hugh, and, if they are right,
Scotland was civilized enough, and fortunate enough, to have a
considerable poet before Barbour, author of "The Brus" (1376), a
rhymed history of King Robert Bruce, the great hero of his country.
But the literature of Scotland is more conveniently to be treated in a
separate chapter.

CHAPTER IX.

CHAUCER.

Hitherto we have known scarcely anything about the lives, and

usually have not even known the names, of the writers in English
verse and prose. About
The Morning Star of Song who made
His music heard below,
about Geoffrey Chaucer, we know more than we do of Shakespeare.
Chaucer is the earliest English poet who is still read for human
pleasure, as well as by specialists in the studies of literature,
language, and prosody. A few of his lines are part of the common
stock of familiar quotations. Coming between two periods of literary
twilight—the second saddened rather than cheered by notes more
like those of the owl than of the lark and nightingale,—Chaucer is
himself the sun of England during the age of the glory and decline of
the Plantagenets. His "Canterbury Tales" show us the world in which
he lived, or at least part of that world; his pilgrims are personages in
that glorious pageant which Froissart painted—kings, ladies, nobles
and knights in steel, or in velvet and cloth of gold; tournaments
glitter in all the colours and devices of the heralds—while the horizon
is dim with the smoke of burning towns and villages.
It is not really possible to say what conditions produce great poets:
they may arise in times of peace or war; in times quiet or
revolutionary; at prosperous Courts or in the clay-built cottages of
peasants. At least Chaucer lived a long time in an age eagerly astir,
lived through the light cast by the great victories of Edward III,—
Crécy and Poitiers,—the years when London knew two captive Kings,
John of France and David of Scotland; the years when Edward
turned away from the all-but conquered Scotland to fight the France
which he could not conquer. Chaucer knew the Court triumphant,
and the Court overshadowed by the discredited old age of Edward
III, the fatal malady of the Black Prince, the troubles of the minority
of Richard II, and the peasant rising of Wat Tyler. He had his part in
the patronage of that art-loving King, by character and fate more
resembling a Stuart than a Plantagenet; and he was in friendly
relations with the rising House of Lancaster. He marked the dawn of
the religious and social revolution in the doctrines of Wyclif and of
the Lollards, the hatred of the rich and noble, the scorn of priests
and monks and friars. He felt the poetic influences of France and
Italy, and, if not in Italy, certainly in France, had poetic friends. He
bore arms in France: in Italy and France he fulfilled diplomatic
duties; at home he held a courtly place; he sat in Parliament; he was
a complete man of the world and of affairs, as well as a man of
learning and of letters. He was always of open, kind, and cheerful
humour; still, when nicknamed "Old Grizzle" by his friends, dipping a
white beard contentedly in the Gascon wine; still "not without the
lyre," not a deserter of the Muse. His portrait, as Old Grizzle, white-
bearded and white-haired, a rosary in his hand, shows a face
refined, kindly, and humane.
The father of the poet, John Chaucer, was a citizen of London, a
prosperous vintner, or wine-merchant. The date of the poet's birth is
unknown, that he died an old man in 1400 is certain. His birth year
was for long given as 1328, when his father was scarcely 16, and
was unmarried. The date 1328 for the poet's birth must be wrong,
and the year 1340 is uncertain. In a trial of 1386, to decide whether
the Scropes or Grosvenors had the better right to blazon the famous
"Bend Or," Chaucer was described as "of the age of forty years and
more, having borne arms for twenty-seven years". "And more" is
vague, we cannot be certain that it means "just over forty years of
age," though that (as far as I have observed) is the usual meaning
in old records of ages of witnesses. In some cases, on the other
hand, they are given most incorrectly. Chaucer's own remarks about
his "eld" in late poems, tell us little; at 40 Thackeray wrote of himself
as if he "lay in Methusalem's cradle".
As, in 1386, Chaucer had borne arms for twenty-seven years, that
takes us back to 1359, when he went, under the standard of Lionel,
Duke of Clarence, on a far from triumphant expedition of Edward III
against France. He is unlikely, at that date (1359) to have been
under 15 years of age; he may have been born as late as 1343, or
anywhere between 1340 and 1343. The household accounts of the
wife of the Duke of Clarence prove that Chaucer was a member of
her household, and, in 1357, she, and Chaucer, were staying with
John of Gaunt, at Hatfield, in Yorkshire.
In the campaign of 1359, when Chaucer bore arms, Edward III
failed to take Rheims and Paris: he wasted the country vainly, and
made peace, at Bretigny, in 1360. Somewhere and somehow
Chaucer was taken prisoner by the French, whether in a skirmish, or
while foraging, or when visiting his lady, or absorbed in a book, or
meditating the Muse, and contending with the difficulties of rhyme.
His captors thought that there was money in his case, or they would
have knocked him on the head. There was money. Edward III paid,
sixteen pounds, whether as the whole or as part of his ransom (1
March, 1360). The sum (equivalent to our £200) was not then
insignificant for a youth not of noble birth, though, in 1368, an
Esquire.
Account books show Chaucer (1367) as a valet of the Royal
chamber, like Molière (and Shakespeare!) in France during the time
of war in 1369; salaried by the King; a married man; pensioned by
John of Gaunt in 1374, and receiving a daily pitcher of wine,
commuted for money in 1378. In 1372-1373, he went on a mission
to Genoa and Florence. Whether he then met the famous poet
Petrarch or not, is uncertain: in his "Clerk's Tale," the Clerk says that
he met Petrarch; it does not follow that Chaucer was so fortunate. In
1374 he got a good place in the Custom House, in the wool
department, and, 1375-1376, had valuable gifts from the King. In
1377 he went on a mission to Flanders, and on another to France.
Froissart the delightful chronicler mentions him in this connexion. In
the following year he went on a mission to Visconti in Milan, and to
the celebrated English commander of mercenaries, Sir John
Hawkwood.
His experiences made Chaucer equally fit to sing of "the Court, the
camp, the grove": his various posts in the Civil Service brought him
acquainted with merchant-men, architects, all sorts and conditions of
men. In 1386 he sat in Parliament for a division of Kent. Parliament
made an attack on the Court, and Chaucer lost his offices, which he
had for some time performed by deputy. Later he received valuable
appointments, but by 1398 he needed and obtained royal protection
from his creditors; probably he was never a frugal man, he was not
in the best circumstances towards the end of his life, but neither
Richard II or Henry IV let Old Grizzle starve. Henry was no sooner
on the throne (30 September, 1399) than (3 October) he gave the
poet a pension of forty marks and ratified a pension given by the ill-
fated Richard five years previously. If Chaucer's wife, Philippa, was
the sister of Catherine, mistress and (1396) wife of John of Gaunt,
father of Henry IV, the poet had a friend in the Lancastrian party.
But the fact is uncertain, unimportant, and a great cause of the
spilling of ink. Chaucer died on 25 October, 1400.
We only know, as regards Chaucer's children, that he had a little
boy, Lewis, whom, in his prose work on the astrolabe, he addresses
in a style that makes us love him. He gives him, at his earnest
prayer, an astrolabe and writes for him, in English, a little treatise on
its use, "for Latin can'st thou but small, my little son". The poet, the
friend of that less charming minstrel, "moral Gower," left a fragrant
memory.
When we open Chaucer's works at the Prologue to the "Canterbury
Tales," usually placed in the forefront, and when we remember the
wilderness of long romances through which we have wandered, the
happy change of scene, the return to actual human life, is surprising.
Chaucer is by no means free from the blemishes of "middle English"
literature. If he is not to be called prolix in his narratives, "when his
eye is on the object"—the main object,—he is none the less profuse
in digressions. His mastery of verse was not born fully armed; he
had to acquire it by effort, by experiment; he had to feel his way. An
unusually large number of his poems are unfinished: some he seems
to have abandoned, like the "Legend of Good Women," because he
felt that he was on the wrong path; that his task was no longer
pleasant to himself, and therefore certainly could not give pleasure
to his readers. He was, at first, eager to impart information, as the
early scops conceived it their duty to do. Gathering his materials
from all sources, Latin, French, and Italian, he, in "The Book of the
Duchess" (about 1369), makes the bereaved husband not only
allude to many classical tales of sorrow, but actually give his
authorities for each case; "And so seyth Dares Frights," or "Aurora
telleth so". Even the old habit of preaching at great length, the habit
of edifying, clung to Chaucer. He was a man of the world, the last
man to risk martyrdom for any advanced theological ideas which he
might be inclined to entertain; and not the first to suppose that any
set of opinions contained the absolute truth. In his day a fierce
attack was made against the wealth of the Church and the luxury
into which many members of the Regulars, of the various monkish
Orders, had fallen. The curse of a parson was no longer so much
feared as it had been. The exhibition of saintly relics for money, the
arrival of pardons "hot from Rome," could safely be derided. The
friars had been the butts of the French authors of fabliaux, tales of
coarse popular humour, for two centuries.
Such censures were not heterodox, they did not assail matters of
faith, and the satire of Chaucer is always as good-humoured as it is
humorous. To him the Pardoner and Summonour of the "Canterbury
Tales," and the rest of the riff-raff of the Church are amusing
knaves: he has Shakespeare's smiling tolerance for such a rogue as
Parolles. He is earnestly sympathetic in his famous portrait of the
good and gentle parish priest, a man of "true religion and undefiled,"
a man of "the Order of St. James," like the ladies in the "Ancren
Riwle".
It were much more pleasant, perhaps more profitable, to linger over
and lovingly enumerate the charms of Chaucer at his best, than to
trace him through his early experiments to such masterpieces as the
blending of old Greek romance and manners with the manners and
romance of chivalry in "The Knight's Tale," and in "Troilus and
Criseyde". But it is customary to trace the "making" of Chaucer, not
only through his experiences of Court, and camp, and grove, and
city, but through his literary work. It is certain that in youth he
translated that great popular French poem, the "Roman de la Rose,"
for he says so in his prologue to his "Legend of Good Women". The
French poem was begun by Guillaume de Lorris about a century
before the birth of Chaucer, as an allegory on the refinements of the
doctrine of Love, as taught in the Courts of Love. Guillaume says
that he has the warrant of Macrobius, in his "Dream of Scipio," for
supposing that dreams are not wholly to be neglected: so he
dreams, of course in May, of how the birds sang, and how he walked
beside that very stream which the author of "Pearl" borrowed, and
converted into the River that sunders the living and the dead. He
encounters allegorical works of art, representative of all things evil,
outside the walls of a beautiful garden, within which are Love and all
things good. The ideas have a sweet vernal freshness, on their first
presentation, but by repetition become as artificial as those of the
"Carte du Tendre," the map of Love's land which amused the
"Précieuses," the affected literary ladies, in the youth of Molière
(1650-1660). The dreamer desires a lovely Rose, watched by a
squire "Bel Accueil" (Fair Welcome) and the adventures, and fables
from Ovid, are of a kind so taking to mediaeval readers that
henceforth every poet had his May dream, birds, river, Love, Venus,
allegorical personages, and the rest of the "machinery". De Lorris
left the lover in despair, but Jean de Meung continued the poem at
enormous length, and in a spirit far from chivalrous: he introduced
every kind of new heresy against the feudal ideals, and so began a
controversy in which Gerson, who lived to befriend the cause of
Jeanne d'Arc (1429) took up his pen in defence of Christianity and
chastity.
This "Roman de la Rose," or much of it, Chaucer assuredly did
translate, but on the question as to whether the "Romaunt of the
Rose," printed in his works, is wholly, or only in part, or is not at all
from his hand, scholars dispute endlessly. It is not possible, here, to
follow the mazes of the dispute, which turns on the quality of the
work, the closeness or laxity of the translation in various parts, the
presence or absence of traces of the northern dialect (Chaucer wrote
Midland English), the correctness or incorrectness of the rhymes,
and other details. The opinion that the first 1700 lines or so are
Chaucer's, that his manuscript was defective, that the later portions,
some 6000 lines, were filled up from manuscripts by other hands, is
not certain, but is not improbable. Many other views are defended.
Early Poems.
Though we do not often know the dates of Chaucer's poems, the
development of his genius can be traced with much probability.
Roughly speaking, in his first period he is mainly inspired by French
influences; in his second are added Italian influences; he was always
reading such Latin authors as he could procure; he was suppling his
style by experiments in French measures demanding much search
for rhymes; and finally, in the "Canterbury Tales," his best work is
purely English in character, though he still introduces translations
from other languages when it suits his purpose.

The Dethe of the Duchesse.

is of 1369-1370, for it deplores the decease of Blanche, wife of John
of Gaunt (Lancaster), and the lady departed this life in 1369. Here
Chaucer works in accordance with the usual formula of the "Roman
de la Rose". He begins with a dream, but his sleep is a respite in a
period of eight years of insomnia, described so pitifully that the
passage seems autobiographical. He cannot tell, he says why he is
unable to sleep,
I holdë hit be a siknesse
That I have suffred this eight yere.
Perhaps his nerves were shattered by the circumstances of his
capture and durance in 1360, for prisoners of war were treated with
great cruelty, placed in holes under heavy stones, or locked up in
wooden cages.
Unable to sleep, Chaucer has Ovid's story of Ceyx and Alcyone read
to him. He says elsewhere that in youth he made a poem on this
tale; now he probably utilized his old material in the poem on the
Duchess. In the Ceyx tale, Alcyone prays to Juno for the grace of
sleep and dream, and Chaucer, humorous always, vows that he will
even risk the heresy of presenting gifts to heathen gods, Morpheus
and Juno, if they will give him slumber. His prayer is heard, and this
prologue is by far the best part of "The Dethe of Blanche the
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