Chaucer’s Complaint to His Purse and Authority in the World Available to Purchase

Chaucer’s Complaint to His Purse concerns more than the poet’s financial need under the new Lancastrian administration. It speaks to the limits of Henry IV’s royal authority and, through irony, to the limitations of Chaucer’s purse’s power. Underlining royal limits, Chaucer petitions the king as one who holds office through election and line but not conquest, which is Henry’s position on his office as well. In speaking ironically of the purse’s authority, the poet addresses the gold that the monarch might grant him as if it constituted a human or divine patron, but he does so in a hierarchy of ascending irony that shows gold’s limits. In the envoy, Chaucer drops irony and turns seriously to the monarch and government that can, with their limited powers, help him.