{"collection":"Sacred Texts: Legends and Sagas","full_text_available":false,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/sacred_texts_v1_neu_eng_mect_mect67_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_neu_eng_mect_mect67_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_neu_eng_mect_mect67_htm","license":"unknown_pending_legal_review","rights_basis":"sacred_texts_v1_preview_gate_primary_text_only; acquisition-method/ToS and compilation-copyright questions still open, not resolved by this gate","source":"sacred_texts_v1","source_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/neu/eng/mect/mect67.htm","summary":"\"The Complaint Unto Pity\" is a short lyric poem by Geoffrey Chaucer (14th century), written in the medieval courtly love tradition of the *complainte* \u2014 a formal lament addressed to an allegorical or beloved figure. The poem's speaker has long sought the personified figure of Pity, hoping she will intercede against the Cruelty that Love inflicts on him, only to arrive and find Pity already dead and buried within his lady's heart. Standing at Pity's bier, he discovers that virtues like Beauty, Youth, and Wisdom have allied themselves with Cruelty rather than with Pity, making his written petition useless \u2014 there is no one left to receive it. The poem's distinctive conceit is this paradox of bureaucratic futility: the speaker has drafted a formal legal \"bill\" or complaint to present to Pity, but Pity herself has died before he could ever file it, leaving him trapped in a system where mercy is structurally absent. Chaucer closes with the speaker vowing eternal faithfulness even so, pledging service to Pity beyond her death while acknowledging his total hopelessness. It is a self-consciously ironic exercise in the conventions of courtly complaint, using allegory to explore how unrequited love renders even the most earnest appeal meaningless.","tags":[],"text":null,"title":"The Canterbury Tales and Other Works of Chaucer (Middle E...","tradition":"Sacred Texts: Legends and Sagas","translated_text":null,"word_count":955}