Attar & Chaucer

John Baldock is probably referring less to a direct “copying” and more to a shared literary structure and spiritual-literary atmosphere between The Conference of the Birds and The Canterbury Tales.

The comparison usually rests on several parallels:

1. A journey as the framework

   
   

   In Attar, the birds travel together in search of the Simorgh, and along the way each bird reveals its weakness, psychology, and spiritual limitation.

   
   

   In Chaucer, the pilgrims travel together to Canterbury, and each pilgrim’s tale gradually reveals the teller’s character, desires, class, morality, and spiritual state.

So in both works:

• the road itself is the organizing principle,

• the travelers symbolize different human types,

• storytelling becomes a mirror of the soul.

• A “conference” of many voices

  
  

  Attar stages a spiritual parliament of birds. Chaucer stages a social parliament of pilgrims. Both works create a mosaic of personalities rather than one single hero.

This polyphonic structure was innovative:

• many speakers,

• contrasting temperaments,

• stories nested inside a journey.

Scholars sometimes call both “frame narratives.”

3. Allegory mixed with realism

   
   

   Attar’s birds are symbolic:

4. the peacock = vanity,

5. the parrot = desire for immortality,

6. the nightingale = attachment to earthly beauty.

Chaucer’s pilgrims are more realistic and social, but still highly representative types:

• the Knight,

• the Pardoner,

• the Miller,

• the Prioress.

Both authors use travelers as embodiments of human tendencies.

4. Bird imagery and Chaucer’s known interest in bird parliaments

   
   

   Chaucer definitely knew the medieval “bird parliament” tradition. His Parliament of Fowls is itself a dream-vision gathering of birds debating love and order. Scholars have long compared that work with Attar’s bird assembly.

5. Possible indirect Eastern influence

   
   

   There is no evidence Chaucer directly read Persian. But medieval Europe did absorb Eastern storytelling forms through:

6. Arabic Spain,

7. crusader contact,

8. trade routes,

9. Latin and French intermediaries.

Many literary historians think some narrative structures and mystical motifs migrated westward over centuries. Baldock, writing about Sufi influence, likely sees Attar as part of the broader background from which European frame-tale literature eventually benefited.

However, most mainstream Chaucer scholars would say:

• direct influence is unproven,

• resemblance does not equal borrowing,

• Chaucer’s nearer models were probably works like The Decameron and other European frame narratives.

So Baldock’s statement is best understood as:

Attar pioneered a spiritually symbolic journey-of-many-voices structure that resembles and may have indirectly anticipated what Chaucer later did socially and psychologically in Canterbury Tales.

Not as:

Chaucer directly adapted Attar.

An interesting deeper parallel is that both works ask:

• What blocks human transformation?

• What does the journey reveal about the traveler?

• Is the destination external or internal?

In Attar the travelers finally discover the divine reality within themselves. In Chaucer, the pilgrims rarely achieve transformation, but the tales expose the inward condition of each soul.