Seeking Fortune
by Jenny (Walicek) Clendenen
San Jose State University, 2015
The noun fortune has always had romantic connotations for me, of young men going out in the world to seek success – whether fairy tale peasants or American adventurers looking for hidden gold. I grew up thinking that to seek one’s fortune was to brave new frontiers in the quest to better one’s condition – to make one’s own way in the world, to not be dependent. I’ve shrugged off the word’s modern associations with unearned wealth – she inherited a fortune, he made a fortune in stocks, we lost a fortune in Las Vegas -- as misuses of a noble noun. Fortune isn’t money that lands in your lap! It’s any success one dreams of and works hard for, not something to be mysteriously bestowed.
In my college years, though, encountering the word in medieval (and Spenserian knock-off medieval) texts, I’ve learned that fortune – sometimes spelled fortoun or fortun – has, indeed, always meant luck. In fact, its Latin origin is the word Fortuna, a proper noun, the name of an Italic goddess of happenstance (OED, Carter 61). It was probably created from fors, which means chance, and the verb ferre, which means to bear; literally, then, Fortuna brings by chance (OED, Garlanda 47). The original source of Fortuna’s cult has never been fully resolved, though much has been learned about her cognamina, the individual cult-titles by which she was invoked, and this helps to date the original word as well. Plutarch, in his Quaestiones Romanae No. 74 of the first century C.E., discusses the cult of Fortuna Brevis and lists several other cognamina as well (Carter 61). Additional mentions of Fortuna cults in literature – generally considered older and more reliable than inscriptions -- can be traced to Plautus, Tertullian, Augustine, Vitruvius, Cicero, and other luminaries of the Roman empire. A temple to “Fortvna Mvliebris” is reputed to have been built in B.C.E. 486, according to records in both literature and stone (65, 67, 63).
However, though fortune’s etymological evolution spans well over two thousand years, it turns out it has scarcely done more in that time than exchange its final vowel. In its passage from Latin to Old French in the 1200s, the a was dropped for an e, but the meaning of “chance, luck as a force in human affairs” was retained (OED). When it arrived in Middle English in the 1300s, it appeared and meant exactly what it always had, though the goddess had by then become a Lady or a Dame. In a Northumbrian poem of the 1300s, Cursor Mundi, “Dame fortune turnes þan hir quele / And castes vs dun vntil a wele,” and in 1340 Ayenbite of Inwyt refers to Dame Fortune numerous times, along with her gifts of prosperity, goods, and success (McSparran).
Chaucer, writing the Canterbury Tales in the late 1300s, devotes the “Monk’s Tale” to biographies demonstrating the vicissitudes of Fortune -- a word he uses 31 times within that tale alone. The same poet wrote a ballad to Fortune in 1390, soon after he was beaten twice and robbed (Galway 187). The poem, “Fortune: Balades de visage sanz peinture,” is actually comprised of three ballads: the narrator’s lament, Fortune’s response, and their back-and-forth argument. In the end, Fortune points out that her gifts come and go like the ebb and flow of the sea, and are therefore subject to the Natural Law of God. Who is the complainant – who is anyone – to argue with God? The narrator is left, in an envoy, begging on behalf of his friend “That to som beter estat he may atteyne.” Most scholars concur that the ballad was influenced by Chaucer’s translation of the Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius, a sixth-century philosopher whose own poem mentions fortune 112 times.(Rossignol 99, 100). The personification of fortune is a common motif of medieval poets, and of Renaissance poets like Spenser who emulate medieval spelling and motifs.
Throughout the Renaissance and beyond, the form and definition of fortune did not change. The Oxford English Dictionary lists the first definition, in use since 1300, as “Chance, hap, or luck, regarded as a cause of events and changes in men's affairs;” its second, employed since 1375, as “A chance, hap, accident; an event or incident befalling any one, an adventure;” its third, after 1374, as “the chance or luck (good or bad) which falls to any one as his lot in life or in a particular affair;” the fourth, in use since 1390, as “Good luck; success, prosperity;” the fifth, ever since Shakespeare’s use in 1616, as “One's condition or standing in life [often prosperous]; to win a good position in the world;” the sixth, after Spenser’s use in 1596, as “Position as determined by wealth; amount of wealth;” the seventh, first applied in 1655, as “A woman of fortune; an heiress;’ the eighth, used after 1671, as “A name for the planets Jupiter and Venus” (OED).
Since the word was invented, it has never had anything to do with free will – at least not in the etymological sense.
As a fan of the ancient and modern Heroic Quest, it is disappointing to discover that a word I had even remotely linked with self-determination is actually all about luck. I have always bristled a little at the idea of good or bad fortune, at the blaming or crediting of luck for circumstances, at the categorization of events and people as fortunate or unfortunate. But I can hardly defend my impression that one’s fortune is earned, when the word was literally coined as a name for the ancient goddess of chance – and its only real change sine adorning her has been to drop its a.
I don’t like the notion that fate has the upper hand. Though we are born into or otherwise arrive within certain circumstances, I believe we all have multiple options within those parameters. Aren’t we supposed to make our own “luck,” while having the foresight to mitigate “bad luck,” with education, planning, and work? Or is that idea, like my perception of fortune, right out of a fairy tale?
Perhaps our destinies, like Fortune herself, are created by humans and granted divine grace and power.
Works Cited
Carter, Jesse Benedict. "The Cognomina of the Goddess "Fortuna."” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association. 31 (1900): 60-68. JSTOR [JSTOR]. Web. 20 September 2015.
“fortune, n.” The Middle English Dictionary. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Digital Library Production Service. Web. Updated February 2006. 20 September 15. <http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mec/med-idx?type=id&id=MED17306>
"fortune, n." OED Online. Oxford University Press, September 2015. Web. 22 September 2015. <http://www.oed.com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/view/Entry/73751?>
Galway, Margaret. “Chaucer Among Thieves.” 20 April 1946. Times Literary Supplement.
Garlanda, Federico. The Fortunes of Words: Letters to a Lady. New York: A. Lovell, 1887. Web. Accessed 19 September 2015. <https://books.google.com/books?id=UDlAAAAAYAAJ&dq>
McSparran, Frances, ed. “A Corpus of Middle English.” The Middle English Compendium. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Digital Library Production Service,. Web. Updated February 2006. Accessed 9/19/15. < http://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cme/ >
Plutarch. “Quaestiones Romanae No. 74.” Moralia. Web. Accessed 9/20/15 . <http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/Roman_Questions*/D.html>
Rossignol, Rosalynd. Critical Companion to Chaucer: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts on File, 2006. Web. Accessed 9/18/15. <https://books.google.com/books?id=TQHw98Pn16IC >
San Jose State University, 2015
The noun fortune has always had romantic connotations for me, of young men going out in the world to seek success – whether fairy tale peasants or American adventurers looking for hidden gold. I grew up thinking that to seek one’s fortune was to brave new frontiers in the quest to better one’s condition – to make one’s own way in the world, to not be dependent. I’ve shrugged off the word’s modern associations with unearned wealth – she inherited a fortune, he made a fortune in stocks, we lost a fortune in Las Vegas -- as misuses of a noble noun. Fortune isn’t money that lands in your lap! It’s any success one dreams of and works hard for, not something to be mysteriously bestowed.
In my college years, though, encountering the word in medieval (and Spenserian knock-off medieval) texts, I’ve learned that fortune – sometimes spelled fortoun or fortun – has, indeed, always meant luck. In fact, its Latin origin is the word Fortuna, a proper noun, the name of an Italic goddess of happenstance (OED, Carter 61). It was probably created from fors, which means chance, and the verb ferre, which means to bear; literally, then, Fortuna brings by chance (OED, Garlanda 47). The original source of Fortuna’s cult has never been fully resolved, though much has been learned about her cognamina, the individual cult-titles by which she was invoked, and this helps to date the original word as well. Plutarch, in his Quaestiones Romanae No. 74 of the first century C.E., discusses the cult of Fortuna Brevis and lists several other cognamina as well (Carter 61). Additional mentions of Fortuna cults in literature – generally considered older and more reliable than inscriptions -- can be traced to Plautus, Tertullian, Augustine, Vitruvius, Cicero, and other luminaries of the Roman empire. A temple to “Fortvna Mvliebris” is reputed to have been built in B.C.E. 486, according to records in both literature and stone (65, 67, 63).
However, though fortune’s etymological evolution spans well over two thousand years, it turns out it has scarcely done more in that time than exchange its final vowel. In its passage from Latin to Old French in the 1200s, the a was dropped for an e, but the meaning of “chance, luck as a force in human affairs” was retained (OED). When it arrived in Middle English in the 1300s, it appeared and meant exactly what it always had, though the goddess had by then become a Lady or a Dame. In a Northumbrian poem of the 1300s, Cursor Mundi, “Dame fortune turnes þan hir quele / And castes vs dun vntil a wele,” and in 1340 Ayenbite of Inwyt refers to Dame Fortune numerous times, along with her gifts of prosperity, goods, and success (McSparran).
Chaucer, writing the Canterbury Tales in the late 1300s, devotes the “Monk’s Tale” to biographies demonstrating the vicissitudes of Fortune -- a word he uses 31 times within that tale alone. The same poet wrote a ballad to Fortune in 1390, soon after he was beaten twice and robbed (Galway 187). The poem, “Fortune: Balades de visage sanz peinture,” is actually comprised of three ballads: the narrator’s lament, Fortune’s response, and their back-and-forth argument. In the end, Fortune points out that her gifts come and go like the ebb and flow of the sea, and are therefore subject to the Natural Law of God. Who is the complainant – who is anyone – to argue with God? The narrator is left, in an envoy, begging on behalf of his friend “That to som beter estat he may atteyne.” Most scholars concur that the ballad was influenced by Chaucer’s translation of the Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius, a sixth-century philosopher whose own poem mentions fortune 112 times.(Rossignol 99, 100). The personification of fortune is a common motif of medieval poets, and of Renaissance poets like Spenser who emulate medieval spelling and motifs.
Throughout the Renaissance and beyond, the form and definition of fortune did not change. The Oxford English Dictionary lists the first definition, in use since 1300, as “Chance, hap, or luck, regarded as a cause of events and changes in men's affairs;” its second, employed since 1375, as “A chance, hap, accident; an event or incident befalling any one, an adventure;” its third, after 1374, as “the chance or luck (good or bad) which falls to any one as his lot in life or in a particular affair;” the fourth, in use since 1390, as “Good luck; success, prosperity;” the fifth, ever since Shakespeare’s use in 1616, as “One's condition or standing in life [often prosperous]; to win a good position in the world;” the sixth, after Spenser’s use in 1596, as “Position as determined by wealth; amount of wealth;” the seventh, first applied in 1655, as “A woman of fortune; an heiress;’ the eighth, used after 1671, as “A name for the planets Jupiter and Venus” (OED).
Since the word was invented, it has never had anything to do with free will – at least not in the etymological sense.
As a fan of the ancient and modern Heroic Quest, it is disappointing to discover that a word I had even remotely linked with self-determination is actually all about luck. I have always bristled a little at the idea of good or bad fortune, at the blaming or crediting of luck for circumstances, at the categorization of events and people as fortunate or unfortunate. But I can hardly defend my impression that one’s fortune is earned, when the word was literally coined as a name for the ancient goddess of chance – and its only real change sine adorning her has been to drop its a.
I don’t like the notion that fate has the upper hand. Though we are born into or otherwise arrive within certain circumstances, I believe we all have multiple options within those parameters. Aren’t we supposed to make our own “luck,” while having the foresight to mitigate “bad luck,” with education, planning, and work? Or is that idea, like my perception of fortune, right out of a fairy tale?
Perhaps our destinies, like Fortune herself, are created by humans and granted divine grace and power.
Works Cited
Carter, Jesse Benedict. "The Cognomina of the Goddess "Fortuna."” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association. 31 (1900): 60-68. JSTOR [JSTOR]. Web. 20 September 2015.
“fortune, n.” The Middle English Dictionary. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Digital Library Production Service. Web. Updated February 2006. 20 September 15. <http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mec/med-idx?type=id&id=MED17306>
"fortune, n." OED Online. Oxford University Press, September 2015. Web. 22 September 2015. <http://www.oed.com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/view/Entry/73751?>
Galway, Margaret. “Chaucer Among Thieves.” 20 April 1946. Times Literary Supplement.
Garlanda, Federico. The Fortunes of Words: Letters to a Lady. New York: A. Lovell, 1887. Web. Accessed 19 September 2015. <https://books.google.com/books?id=UDlAAAAAYAAJ&dq>
McSparran, Frances, ed. “A Corpus of Middle English.” The Middle English Compendium. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Digital Library Production Service,. Web. Updated February 2006. Accessed 9/19/15. < http://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cme/ >
Plutarch. “Quaestiones Romanae No. 74.” Moralia. Web. Accessed 9/20/15 . <http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/Roman_Questions*/D.html>
Rossignol, Rosalynd. Critical Companion to Chaucer: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts on File, 2006. Web. Accessed 9/18/15. <https://books.google.com/books?id=TQHw98Pn16IC >