Black Gold: The Former (and Future) Age

Despite their pretense of explaining beginnings, creation myths often if not always have ends in mind — a fact that certainly holds true for Chaucer’s “Former Age.” On the face of it, the poem is onlya creation myth: its verse tells the story of human community at its origins, of a freer life (with only “good feith the empeirice” [55])1 before complex estate hierarchies and the State. Its few stanzas have all the look and feel of a sad song whose melody the centuries have worn away, with all the misty revelation of prehistoric “folk” impulse that the “ballad” label still inevitably implies. This obscurity of age in turn lends the poem its own rusty darkness, over and above the darkness of loss that its narrative claims (however dimly) to recover and bring to light. Most readers, including me, encounter “The Former Age” mainly as a poem cataloging and expressing — simply about — great loss.