The Physician and the theme of "pitee"

The Physician’s Tale has been largely ignored, and often censured. Its position between two of the favorite tales, the Franklin and the Pardoner, is only one of the reasons the tale has been dismissed. The main reason it has earned a negative reception is that it seems such a half-hearted and lacking modified retelling of existing good stories, such as The Legend of Good Women and, again, Roman de la Rose. The Physician is described in the General Prologue as a man of little knowledge, (ironically): “His studie was but litel on the Bible (ln. 438). From this the reader may expect a somewhat wanting tale, and may judge that the Physician is a man, like the Squire, whom does not understand his materials and therefore produces a story that emerges as relatively deficient.
This said, there are many interesting aspects of the tale. The analogues are noted in the notes of our edition and in various other places and I will not recount them here. However, after discussing the themes of “gentilesse”, humility, “pitee”, etc. in class over the last few weeks, I want to point out the theme of “pitee” in the tale. Thomas B. Hanson noted three uses of the theme in his article “Chaucer’s Physician as Storyteller and Mobilizer” (1972). First, when the knight Virginius makes his sorrowful speech to his young daughter, the Physician states that he had “pitee stikynge thurgh his herte” (ln. 211). Second, when Virginius brings Virginia’s head to Apius and is at first condemned, the people of the town intervene, “for routhe and for pitee” (ln. 261). Third, Virginius against exhibits his “pitee” when he asserts that the conniving Claudius shall be exiled, rather than hanged (ln. 272). Apparently, the Physician considers pity a noble quality, for he attributes it primarily to the knight Virginius, whom he has established as a very worthy man and an honorable knight (Hanson 135-136).
The Physician’s attached importance to “pitee”, differently from in other tales in which it does seem to indicate nobility, here seems misguided and/or misinterpreted, arguably due to the Physician’s own flaws. He emphasizes the virtue of the worthy knight, but dispatches his even worthier heroine, Virginia, with shocking haste. Virginius pities Claudius enough to let him live, unlike his ruling over his own daughter, who has committed no sin. Unlike the other tales which highlight these noble virtues, the virtue of “pitee” as demonstrated here does not translate as an admirable quality.

Hanson, Thomas B. “Chaucer’s Physician as Storyteller and Moralizer”. The Chaucer Review 7.2 (Fall 1972). Penn State University Press. 132-139. JSTOR. Accessed 10 Mar. 2009. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/25093221>.