Fortune is more malevolent. “Dame” Fortune is typi-
cally presented as bearing a wheel that is in constant
motion. Humans “travel” along the wheel, and as they
do so, their “fortune”—status in life—rises and falls,
and they may eventually be crushed underneath the
ever-spinning wheel. There is no way an individual can
tell how fast the wheel is turning; therefore, life is
always uncertain—a person may be king or queen one
day, and a peasant the next. GEOFFREY CHAUCER’s “The
Monk’s Tale” and JOHN LYDGATE’s The FALL OF PRINCES
both consist of a series of tales about prominent people
betrayed by Fortune.
See also MIRROR FOR MAGISTRATES, A.
FURTHER READING
Frakes, Jerold C. The Fate of Fortune in the Early Middle Ages:
The Boethian Tradition. Boston: E. J. Brill, 1988.
FORTUNES STABILNES CHARLES D’ORLÉANS
(1420–1440) Born on November 24, 1394, Charles
d’Orléans was imprisoned by the English after the Bat-
tle of Agincourt in 1415. During his captivity, he
learned English, wrote poetry, and read widely, includ-
ing works by GEOFFREY CHAUCER and JOHN GOWER.
Freed in 1440, the twice-widowed Charles married
Marie de Clèves and fathered the future King Louis XII.
Charles retired to Asti, Italy, dying in January 1465.
Written over a period of 20 years, Fortunes Stabilnes
includes many different types of poetry, but primarily
relies on BALLADEs and rondels within a DREAM VISION
framework. Composed during Charles’s imprisonment
in England, it is written in both French and English. It
features numerous plays on words—particularly their
sounds, spellings, and meanings—in the shifts between
languages. The story combines COURTLY LOVE and
authorship. A lovesick narrator, servant to the God of
Love, writes love letters to his lady, who fi rst denies
but later accepts his love, and then dies. Mourning
deeply, the narrator falls asleep and dreams about
meeting Age, who convinces him to regain ownership
of his own heart. The narrator awakens, works exhaus-
tively on poetry, and then falls asleep again, dreaming
that Venus appears, demanding that he choose a new
lady. He refuses. Then he glimpses the lady FORTUNE.
Alarmed by the height of her wheel, he cries out and
awakens to see the woman from his dream. He con-
fesses his love to her, and they commence an affair.
Charles’s ballades consist of three STANZAs and an
ENVOI, which use a central image to convey emotion. In
Ballade 26, for example, the narrator’s “burning heart”
expresses his desire; in the envoi, he feels that fi re
bringing death closer. Early scholarship focused on
biographical connections and imagery, but modern
studies have begun looking at Charles’s work in terms
of nationalist identity formation.
FURTHER READING
Fein, David A. Charles d’Orléans. Boston: Twayne, 1983.
Charles d’Orléans. Fortunes Stabilnes: Charles of Orleans’s
English Book of Love. Edited by Mary-Jo Arn. Binghamton,
N.Y.: Medieval/Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1994.
Spearing, A. C. “Prison, Writing, and Absence: Representing
the Subject in the English Poems of Charles d’Orléans.”
In Chaucer to Spenser: A Critical Reader, edited by Derek
Pearsall, 297–311. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999.
Susan CrisafulliFOUR HUMORS Medieval medicine taught that
the human body contained four fl uids—blood, phlegm,
black bile, and yellow bile. When all of these are in bal-
ance (eucrasia), the individual is healthy; imbalance
indicates infi rmity. These fl uids also determine a per-
son’s personality traits, depending on which is predom-
inant, and are related to the astrological four elements
as well as the four seasons. The complete schema of
these was set out in Galen’s On the Temperaments.
These could be interconnected to make more com-
plex personality assessments (e.g., choleric-sanguine).Humor Temperament Character Temperature Season Element
Blood Sanguine Optimistic, cheerful, fun-loving Warm and moist Spring Air
Phlegm Phlegmatic Calm, unemotional, shy Cold and wet Winter Water
Black bile Melancholic Considerate, creative, perfectionist Cold and dry Autumn Earth
Yellow bile Choleric Ambitious, dominant Warm and dry Summer FireFOUR HUMORS 191