section_path: Connection with romantic love/Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls
section_name: Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls
paragraph_text: Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls
  
  The first recorded association of Saint Valentine's Day with romantic love is believed to be in the Parliament of Fowls (1382) by Geoffrey Chaucer, a dream vision portraying a parliament for birds to choose their mates. Honouring the first anniversary of the engagement of fifteen-year-old King Richard II of England to fifteen-year-old Anne of Bohemia, Chaucer wrote (in Middle English):
  
  " For this was on seynt Valentynes day Whan every foul cometh there to chese his make Of every kynde that men thynke may And that so huge a noyse gan they make That erthe, and eyr, and tre, and every lake So ful was, that unethe was there space For me to stonde, so ful was al the place. "
  
  In modern English:
  
  "For this was on Saint Valentine's Day When every fowl comes there to choose his match Of every kind that men may think of And that so huge a noise they began to make That earth and air and tree and every lake Was so full, that not easily was there space For me to stand—so full was all the place."
  
  Readers have uncritically assumed that Chaucer was referring to February 14 as Saint Valentine's Day. Henry Ansgar Kelly has observed that Chaucer might have had in mind the feast day of St. Valentine of Genoa, an early bishop of Genoa who died around AD 307; it was probably celebrated on May 3. A treaty providing for Richard II and Anne's marriage, the subject of the poem, was signed on May 2, 1381.
  
  Jack B. Oruch notes that the date on which spring begins has changed since Chaucer's time because of the precession of the equinoxes and the introduction of the more accurate Gregorian calendar only in 1582. On the Julian calendar in use in Chaucer's time, February 14 would have fallen on the date now called February 23, a time when some birds have started mating and nesting in England.
  
  Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls refers to a supposedly established tradition, but there is no record of such a tradition before Chaucer. The speculative derivation of sentimental customs from the distant past began with 18th-century antiquaries, notably Alban Butler, the author of Butler's Lives of Saints, and have been perpetuated even by respectable modern scholars. Most notably, "the idea that Valentine's Day customs perpetuated those of the Roman Lupercalia has been accepted uncritically and repeated, in various forms, up to the present".
  
  Three other authors who made poems about birds mating on St. Valentine's Day around the same years: Otton de Grandson from Savoy, John Gower from England, and a knight called Pardo from Valencia. Chaucer most probably predated all of them; but due to the difficulty of dating medieval works, it is not possible to ascertain which of the four may have influenced the others.
  
  The first recorded association of Saint Valentine's Day with romantic love is believed to be in the Parliament of Fowls (1382) by Geoffrey Chaucer, a dream vision portraying a parliament for birds to choose their mates. Honouring the first anniversary of the engagement of fifteen-year-old King Richard II of England to fifteen-year-old Anne of Bohemia, Chaucer wrote (in Middle English):
  
  " For this was on seynt Valentynes day Whan every foul cometh there to chese his make Of every kynde that men thynke may And that so huge a noyse gan they make That erthe, and eyr, and tre, and every lake So ful was, that unethe was there space For me to stonde, so ful was al the place. "
  
  In modern English:
  
  "For this was on Saint Valentine's Day When every fowl comes there to choose his match Of every kind that men may think of And that so huge a noise they began to make That earth and air and tree and every lake Was so full, that not easily was there space For me to stand—so full was all the place."
  
  Readers have uncritically assumed that Chaucer was referring to February 14 as Saint Valentine's Day. Henry Ansgar Kelly has observed that Chaucer might have had in mind the feast day of St. Valentine of Genoa, an early bishop of Genoa who died around AD 307; it was probably celebrated on May 3. A treaty providing for Richard II and Anne's marriage, the subject of the poem, was signed on May 2, 1381.
  
  Jack B. Oruch notes that the date on which spring begins has changed since Chaucer's time because of the precession of the equinoxes and the introduction of the more accurate Gregorian calendar only in 1582. On the Julian calendar in use in Chaucer's time, February 14 would have fallen on the date now called February 23, a time when some birds have started mating and nesting in England.
  
  Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls refers to a supposedly established tradition, but there is no record of such a tradition before Chaucer. The speculative derivation of sentimental customs from the distant past began with 18th-century antiquaries, notably Alban Butler, the author of Butler's Lives of Saints, and have been perpetuated even by respectable modern scholars. Most notably, "the idea that Valentine's Day customs perpetuated those of the Roman Lupercalia has been accepted uncritically and repeated, in various forms, up to the present".
  
  Three other authors who made poems about birds mating on St. Valentine's Day around the same years: Otton de Grandson from Savoy, John Gower from England, and a knight called Pardo from Valencia. Chaucer most probably predated all of them; but due to the difficulty of dating medieval works, it is not possible to ascertain which of the four may have influenced the others.