Paper Topic

Hey Jason...I am doing my paper on the Pardoner and the notions of sympathy, revulsion, terminality (meaning the state of being a body which is terminal, not reproductive) and homosexuality. I am trying to blend the scholarship I've read to get a clean picture, however vague, of the Pardoner and why the description of his body - and questionable sexual disposition - fits well with his admission of his deceitful practices and his tale of death, essentially a tale of what it means to be a terminal body.

SO far that's the best I can do to describe this paper.

Paper Topics

I would assume everyone has already at least started their paper, and a few of the more ambitious among us may have even finished it already. Since part of the stated purpose for this blog is to encourage discussion, I thought it might be helpful to post our paper topics here in case any of us are doing parallel research so we can compare notes, help each other out, or maybe even spark ideas for those that haven't started yet or for any undergrads who actually read this thing.
For mine I am covering the religious and religously affiliated characters in the tales.
My thesis is:
The Canterbury Tales’ multiple religious characters, from the tale tellers themselves to characters in their narratives, display a wide range of attributes but share a common theme of a clergy becoming increasingly self-involved and over-indulgent towards the end of the Ricardian era.
In my paper I am hoping to explore how the attitudes of the nobility and their hangers-on (like Chaucer) had begun to shift away from unquestioning loyalty to the traditional Catholic church. I think some of the attitudes and themes Chaucer expresses in the tales are subservisive at worst and "constructively critical" at best against the church and clerical figures.
On a related note, I will not at all be surprised if I'm the only one that's still checking the blog, let alone posting his paper topic.

Preachy Chaucer

Frankly I think it's pretty funny that the Canterbury Tales doesn't end with a tale, but instead a sermon about penitence. It was probably a good thing that the entire reading of Parson's Tale since the structure stayed the same the whole time, and there wasn't much different between the tale itself and a Medieval Sunday mass.

Chaucer's intentions with this piece were, as always, a bit unclear. Maybe G.C. wanted the reader to walk away remembering to live a sin-free life. Maybe he wanted to establish himself as a religious man and give props to Jesus for the completion of the tales. It can't be for certain, but what Chaucer does accomplish with this tale is completing small anthology of the various types of tale-styles. Looking back through the Canterbury Tales, we definitely read through a gauntlet of genres (the hag tale, the martyr tale, etc.) and the last horizon for Chaucer needed to explore at the end of the Canterbury Tales was the full-blown sermon. Obviously Chaucer had further intentions with his religious dialogue at the end of this piece, but at least he completed the genre set.

The Rejoysynge of the Devel

The word “devel” and its derivatives pop up repeatedly in the Parson’s Tale. It is not only a frequently used word in the tale, but probably the most frequently used noun in all the tales based purely on its repeated usage in the Parson’s Tale.
I thought it might be helpful to explore the medieval concept of Satan to provide a fuller context to its usage in this tale. And if my previous posts haven’t been obvious enough, I’m all about context.
Since Satan’s physical appearance is never discussed in the Bible, depictions of the devil and his characteristics have been the subject of considerable improvisation over time. During the Middle Ages, depictions of Satan were usually based on pagan traditions of horned gods such as Pan and Dionysus. In this way, the devil both embodied evil and chaos while avoiding being so sinister as to overshadow the medieval concept of “fear of God”.
A number of medieval Gnostic groups, such as the Cathars, identified Satan with the Old Testament God, asserting that the character of the Old Testament God was markedly different from that of the New Testament God, and was in some ways incompatible with the teachings of Christ. This idea obviously didn’t sit well with the Catholic Church
I think that the “devel” repeatedly referenced in the Parson’s Tale is in line with the medieval concept of Satan following pagan traditions. Though all of the sins referenced are serious, the way the “devel” is referenced as being amused or interested with them all suggests more of a mischievous and roguish manipulation of the human soul than an insidious and evil force. It would also be difficult for Satan to assume a truly polar opposite composition and power to God without diminishing God’s power through this juxtaposition. If Satan were truly as powerful as God then there would be little incentive to avoiding the seven deadly sins in favor of the Parson’s seven virtues. But I am not a theologian.
I think the bottom line is that we see the word “devel” so much because the Parson is looking to repeatedly present this concept of sin and evil and define its parameters. In this way, the “devel” we know is less fearsome than the God we do not.

When to Speak

What I found intriguing in the Manciple's tale is the conundrum that questions when exactly it is good idea to speak and when it is a good idea to keep your mouth shut. For example, if the crow hadn't blabbed about Phoebus's wife's indiscretion, Phoebus's wife would not have been murdered, the God of Poetry wouldn't be brought down to a human level and maybe we'd have a couple different colored crows in the world.

However, the irony lies in the fact that the moral "know when to keep quiet" is presented after reading twenty-some tales from people who felt like sharing stories. There is a sense of caution to be derived from the tale that story telling can only take you so far. At the end of the day words can have consequences, and sometimes they're consequences that are beyond your control.

Chaucer seems to preach against what many of his pilgrims are doing, and warns the reader about when storytelling is appropriate. Yet, for some reason, Chaucer feels that his Canterbury Tales are appropriate to tell. Chaucer definitely describes some taboo subjects for the time, but feels that he should tell his stories.

I can't think of Chaucer's justification for when it is not appropriate to tell except in the situation where it will damage someone's reputation and/or put his or her life at risk. Still, that seems too simple.

Artistic representations of Chaucer

The 1410 Ellesmere portrait of Chaucer

For my tenth post, I thought I'd do something a little fun — not that the first nine posts haven't been fun in their own right — something a little off the beaten path of academia. 

Throughout the semester, we've been talking about Chaucer's textual representations of everything — the various pilgrims, the characters in their tales, elements of English society, himself, et cetera et cetera. However, Chaucer's representations have served more than one role in the afterlife of the Canterbury Tales. Not only has his text helped readers imagine his world, and the individuals within it, but it has also played a role in helping various artists continue the tradition of manuscript illustration of the Tales by creating their own representations. In Chaucer as Children's Literature, Velma Bourgeois Richmond surveys adaptations of Chaucer's Tales into children's literature from Victorian England through modern America, mainly around the turn of the century, and she includes a great deal of discussion about art and illustrations in those books. It's fun to look at how painters, illustrators and lithographers translate their own ideas of what Chaucer's pilgrims and characters looked like onto canvas and paper, particularly for children who aren't quite up to the task of reading the original. 

I've pulled some of these images off the Internet for you all to enjoy, along with the appropriate lines from our text. Click on links for the image sources — some of which offer prints for sale!

First, Walter Appleton Clark's illumination-like paintings that appeared in the 1904 The Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer, by Percy MacKaye. 

"The Pilgrims Set Out"

Amorwe, when that day bigan to sprynge,

Up roos oure Hoost, and was oure aller cok,

And gadrede us togidre alle in a flok,

And forth we riden a litel moore than paas

Unto the Wateryng of Seint Thomas.

(p. 18, 822-826)

"The Wife of Bath"

Upon an amblere esily she sat,

Ywympled wel, and on hir heed an hat

As brood as is a bokeler or a targe ...

In felaweshipe wel koude she laughe and carpe

Of remedies of love she knew per chaunce,

For she koude of that art the olde daunce. 

(p. 13, 469-471, 474-476)

"The Knight's Tale"

In goon the speres ful sadly in arrest;

In gooth the sharpe spore into the syde.

Ther seen men who kan juste and who kan ryde;

Ther shyveren shaftes upon sheeldes thikke;

He feeleth thurgh the herte-spoon the prikke. ...

Ne in Belmarye ther nys so fel leon,

That hunted is, or for his hunger wood,

Ne of his praye desireth so the blood,

As Palamon to sleen his foo Arcite.

(p. 42, 2602-2606, 2630-2633)

"The Squire's Tale"

Whil that this kyng sit thus in his nobleye,

Herknynge his mynstralles hir thynges pleye

Biforn hym at the bord deliciously,

In at the halle dore al sodeynly

Ther cam a knyght upon a steede of bras,

And in his hand a brood mirour of glas.

Upon his thombe he hadde of gold a ryng,

And by his syde a naked swerd hangyng;

And up he rideth to the heighe bord.

(p. 152, 77-85)

"The Pardoner's Tale"

"If that yow be so leef

To fynde Deeth, turne up this croked wey,

For in that grove I lafte hym, by my fey,

Under a tree, and there he wole abyde" ...

And everich of tise riotoures ran

Til he cam to that tree.

(p. 182, 760-763, 768-769)

Next up, W. Heath Robinson's illustration of Griselda and Walter for the 1906 Stories from Chaucer Told to the Children, by Janet Kelman. Richmond writes that the two figures are separated "to sign both social difference and romantic longing in the 'Clerk's Tale'" (84). 

"She Rose to Curtsy to Him"

Upon Grisilde, this povre creature,
Ful ofte sithe this markys caste his eye,
As he on huntyng rood paraventure.
And whan it fil that he myghte hire espye,
He noght with wantowne lookyng of folye
Hise eyen caste on hir, but in sad wyse,
Upon hir chiere he wolde hym ofte avyse,
Commendynge in his herte hir wommanhede
And eek hir vertu, passynge any wight
Of so yong age, as wel in chiere as dede.

(p. 122, 232-241)

A more thorough explication of various artistic and literary re-representations of the Clerk's Tale can be found at "Retelling the Clerk's Tale."

The 1912 edition of The Modern Reader's Chaucer contains magical fantasy renderings by Warwick Goble of various tales, such as the Squire's Tale, the Tale of Sir Thopas, The Clerk's Tale and the Merchant's Tale. 

"Cancee and the Falcon"

Ther sat a faucon over hir heed ful hye,
That with a pitous voys so gan to crye
That all the wode resouned of hir cry …
She swowneth now and now for lakke of blood,
Til wel neigh is she fallen fro the tree.
This faire kynges doghter Canacee,
That on hir fynger baar the queynte ryng,
Thurgh which she understood wel every thyng
That any fowel may in his leden seyn,
And koude answeren hym in his ledene ageyn,
Hath understonde what this faucoun seyde,
And wel neigh for the routhe almoost she deyde.
And to the tree she gooth ful hastily,
And on this faucoun looketh pitously,
And heeld hir lappe abrood.

(p. 156, 411-413, 430-441)

"January Helping May into the Tree"

"Thanne sholde I clymbe wel ynogh," quod she,
"So I my foot myghte sette ypon youre bak."
"Certes, quod he, theron shal be no lak,
Mighte I yow helpen with myn herte blood."
He stoupeth doun, and on his bak she stood,
And caughte hire by a twiste, and up she gooth --
Ladyes, I prey yow that ye be nat wrooth;
I kan nat glose, I am a rude man --

(p. 149, 2344-2351)

Anne Anderson also did watercolor paintings for the 1912 Gateway to Chaucer, images of which can be found at the Children's Books Illustrators and Illustrations Gallery. Too many of those for me to post here! 

In parting, I'll leave you all with one final image, of Dorigen and Aurelius, from the Franklin's Tale, by Mary Haweis, in 1876, for Chaucer for Children.

"Dorigen and Aurelius in the Garden"

So on a day, right in the morwe tyde,
Unto a gardyn that was ther bisyde,
In which that they hadde maad hir ordinaunce
Of vitaille and of oother purveiaunce,
They goon and pleye hem al the longe day.
And this was in the sixte morwe of May,
Which May hadde peynted with his softe shoures
This gardyn ful of leves and of floures …
Upon this daunce, amonges othere men,
Daunced a squier biforn Dorigen
That fressher was, and jolyer of array,
As to my doom, than is the monthe of May.
He syngeth, daunceth, passynge any man
That is or was, sith that the world bigan ...
This lusty squier, servant to Venus,
Which that ycleped was Aurelius.

(p.162-3, 901-908, 925-930, 937-938)

For analyses of these illustrations and paintings, you should check out Richmond's book. She goes much more into depth about each artist, as well as a dozen others, and analyzes why they chose to create their representations of settings and characters the way they did. 

Richmond, Velma Bourgeois. Chaucer as Children's Literature. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, 2004. 

"The word moot cosyn be to the werkyng"

Whereas in the Canon's Yeoman's Tale, with alchemy, we got a metaphor for authorship, in the Manciple's Tale, we get a blunt argument about language, meaning and the relationship between the two. 

The Manciple begins his argument by digressing from his story just as he is relating the wife's affair with her "lemman," or lover. He begs the other pilgrims to forgive him his "knavyssh speche" — his error in applying a churlish term to a gentlewoman, or lady, and not a commoner (205). He pursues this digression by explaining the theory that words must match their meaning, action or subject. Referencing Plato, he says, "The word moot nede accorde with the dede. / If men shal telle proprely a thyng, / The word moot cosyn be to the werkyng" (208-210) Basically, "lemman" belongs to the sphere of fornication among commoners, not to the sphere of love among nobility — he should have used a word that carried with it implications of nobility and "gentilesse." 

The phrase that the word must be cousin to the working, or deed, was actually coined by Boethius, through whom Plato's arguments in the Cratylus "came down to the Middle Ages" (Cooper 60). The question of the relationship between language and meaning is one that has been debated by philosophers for centuries, and Helen Cooper briefly touches on this debate in her review of John Fyler's work, Language and the Declining World in Chaucer, Dante, and Jean de Meun. She writes that Aristotle disagreed with Plato, "arguing in On Interpretation that names are bestowed ad placitum, at the whim of the individual language, effectively at random" (60). 

Chaucer would seem to agree with Aristotle that words are assigned arbitrarily. Through the manciple, he undercuts Plato's argument about language by baldly saying that, whether noble or common, cheating is cheating and differences in words can't conceal that common element:

"Ther nys no difference, trewly,

Bitwixe a wyf that is of heigh degree,

If of hir body dishonest she bee,

And a povre wenche, oother than this—

If it so be they werke bothe amys."

(l. 212-216)

The manciple then proceeds to discuss the arbitrary application of specific terms according to class and status. A noblewoman has a lover, and is still called a lady, but a poor woman is called a wench or lemman. Fundamentally, the manciple says, men lie the one as low as the other, and sex is all the same, whatever the appellation (222). He continues this argument about arbitrariness in lines 223 through 234, but steps back by claiming that he's not a learned man: "I am a man nought textueel / I wol nought telle of textes never a deel" (235-236). Here, we again see Chaucer forcing his characters to falsely testify their ignorance and causing us, as readers, to realize that the manciple, among other characters who've recanted, are themselves arbitrary creations through which Chaucer the narrator/author is speaking. 

Chaucer creates a metaphor for this falseness when Phebus accuses the crow of lying and strips him of his ability to speak. Ironically, we are now aware that words don't accord with the actions they refer to, and that the sign can be divorced from the thing. This principle allows the manciple/Chaucer to create a scene in which Phebus calls the truth a lie, a scene the manciple follows up with a warning to "taketh kep what that ye seye" because once spoken, words escape the speaker's control and can be manipulated and re-labeled. 

Perhaps Chaucer, near the end of his Tales, is cognizant of the fact that once he completes his written work and releases it upon the world, "he may by no wey clepe his word agayn. / Thyng that is seyd is seyd, and forth it gooth" (354-355). Thus, the copious amount of denials and retractions he writes into his characters' tales — either he is covering his bases, or he is playing with the reader, pointing to the malleability and arbitrariness of language. Funnily enough, he refuses to listen to the manciple's advice to "be noon auctor newe / Of tidynges, wheither they been false or trewe ... Kepe wel thy tonge and thenk upon the crowe" (359-360, 362). Like the crow, Chaucer tells his reader all the flaws and foibles of medieval English society. But unlike the crow, he seems to have avoided punishment for his "wikked tongue." 

Cooper, Helen. "Untitled review." Essays in Criticism. LIX:1, January 2009. 59-65. 

Ernest into Game

I was interested by Euge's post below unpacking some of the eucharistic implications of the Canon Yeoman's Tale - another resonance of the theme of transmutation and changing one substance into another. In particular, this struck me because I had been thinking about the Manciple's Tale in exactly these terms.

I remember flipping through this book once as an undergraduate (it was a friend of mine, a philosophy major, who was actually reading it), and one of the points made therein is that whenever any characters in a story share food and drink, it's communion. Specifically, I have in mind the reconciliatory gesture made by the Manciple to the Cook:

And wite ye what? I have heer in a gourde
A draghte of wyn, ye, of a ripe grape,
And right anon ye shul seen a good jape.
The Cook shal drynke thereof, if I may,
Up peyne of deeth, he wol nat seye me nay (82-86).

This sharing of the "wyn...of a ripe grape" restores the communal bonds frayed by the Manciple's first abusive speech, an imperilment of the associational form that the Manciple himself will revisit at the end of his tale: "A tonge kutteth freendshipe al a-two" (342). As partaking of the eucharistic wine makes members of the Church into one body, so the Manciple's sharing of wine with the Cook reintegrates the two into the harmonious body of the pilgrimage. Indeed, the "good drynke" (96) (echoes of the miracle at Cana here too) works a transmutational miracle precisely like eucharistic transubstantiation, of the kind, moreover, that so conspicuously evaded the Canon and his Yeoman: it turns lead to gold, "rancour and disese," to "acord and love" (97-98).

Of course, the mystical solemnity of the Eucharist could not be farther from the mood of this scene, in which the Manciple, in the spirit of a "jape" (84), gets the already sodden Cook still more drunk. But this is precisely the point, too: "Bacus," besides turning the dross of communal discord into the gold of renewed "freendshipe," also "kanst turnen ernest into game," solemnity into a jape - sentence into solas? The Manciple's Tale works such a transmutation on its predecessor, turning the embittered declamations of the Yeoman into a general air of lighthearted japery. The narrative styles of the two speakers, for example, are both highly non-linear and digressive, but for opposite reasons: the Yeoman couldn't stick to his story and the Manciple, it seems, won't. Where the Yeoman tells his tale as he lives his life, methodically trying to conclude and perpetually unable to, with the Manciple we get a sense, as we did with such other consummate performers as the Wife of Bath or the Nun's Priest, of the sheer pleasure of tale-telling, the joys of delaying the conclusion and prolonging the "game." Where the Yeoman spoke "for noon oother cause" than to deliver his sentence about the impossibility of transmutation, the Manciple, I propose, subordinates sentence to solas and thereby effects a transmutation of the Yeoman's "ernest" into "game."

What clinches this, for me, is the manner in which the Manciple delivers his sentence at the end of his tale. He repeats, rephrases, and stretches out his moral in a way that I find impossible to take seriously. It's moral overkill, to a parodic extent. This highly overstated and overdramatized conclusion satirizes the Yeoman's failure to conclude, as the Manciple packs all of the Yeoman's repetitive restatements of his "poynt" into the kind of emphatic narrative and moral climax that eluded his predecessor.

It may seem difficult to square this interpretation of the Manciple as performer, a narrator who speaks more for the joy of narrating than to deliver any particular point through his narration, with the content of the tale itself. The story of the crow is an injunction against unguarded speech, a warning to "taketh kep what that ye seye" (310), and, in an important sense, a story about the end of story that sets the stage for the end of the Canterbury tale-telling itself. After the crow learns his lesson about the perils of unpragmatic speech, the rest, except for the Parson's very pragmatic and sentence-driven tale, is silence. I think it's important to note, though, that the crow only gets into trouble when he tries to deliver a message. It his attempt to convey a sentence to Phebus that ruins everyone - crow, Phebus, and Phebus' poor wife. When the crow is just singing - "Therwith in al this world no nyghtyngale / Ne koude, by an hondred thousand deel, / Syngen so wonder myrily and weel" (136-138) - there's no problem. What is more, when all it is doing is performing beautifully like this, the crow is described in terms altogether relevant to the Canterbury narrators: "And countrefete the speche of every man /He koude, whan he sholde telle a tale" (134-135). The crow here sounds, if anything, like Chaucer himself, counterfeiting the speech of twenty-eight different personae as he composes the Canterbury Tales. The point, I think, is that the point isn't everything. "Singing" should not simply be a means of delivering morals or messages: pleasure, beauty, solas, the joy of telling a tale for its own sake, matters as well.

The Manciple's Tale, in other words, close to the end of the pilgrimage and the collection, is still engaged in the debate over the proper roles and functions of narrative that has been going on since the beginning, when the Host requested "Tales of best sentence and moost solaas." The Manciple transmutes the Canon's Yeoman's sentence into solas, "ernest into game," and thereby demonstrates the ability to transmute that the Yeoman sought and never found. But it is surely significant that this miraculuous transmutation and the mock-eucharist that signals it takes place under the sign of "Bacus." Practically a stone's throw away from Canterbury, "worshipe and thank" is being offered not to Becket but to this pagan "deitee" (101). This implies that the narrative theory offered in the Manciple's Tale, as attractive and powerful as it may be (particularly compared to its predecessor), falls short in its own way, thereby setting us up for the Parson's Tale.

Le Roman de la Rose

Chaucer references this French poem in many of his tales. For more information about the background and authorship of the poem, as well as excerpts: http://romandelarose.org/#rose
To briefly catalogue, utilizing the notes provided by Larry D. Benson in our text, (and I’m sure this is not exhaustive):
In the General Prologue, the portrait of the Squire, especially the descriptions of Mirth and Love and the list of accomplishments at court owe much to Le Roman de la Rose. The Prioress’s table manners are modeled on the advice of La Vieille (the Old Woman) in a speech she makes advising young women how to attract a husband. A character called Faus Semblant in Le Roman de la Rose is a direct literary ancestor to the Friar. When the narrator of The Canterbury Tales is describing the Clerk, he says, “Somnynge in moral vertu was his speche,/And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche.” In Le Roman de la Rose, Plato is said to have taught a similar sentiment, that man was given speech to teach and to learn (345). The list of medical authorities in the description of the Physician is a lengthier version of a similar list in Le Roman de la Rose. The Wife of Bath’s portrait is based upon a monologue delivered by La Vieille, with other references to the poem as well (“oother compaignye”, “la vieille daunce”) (352). The apology/confession/”disclaimer” offered by the by the narrator himself is similar to one in Le Roman de la Rose:
“But first I pray yow, of youre curteirsye,
That ye n’arrette it nat my vileynye,
Thogh that I pleynly speke in this mateere,
To telle yow hir wordes properly,
For this ye knowen al so wel as I:
Whoso shal telle a tale after a man,
He moot reherce as ny as evere he kan
Everich a word, if it be in his charge,
Al speke he never so rudeliche and large,
Or ellis he moot telle his tale untrewe,
Or feyne thing, or fine wordes newe.
He may nat spare, although he were his brother;
He moot as wel seye o word as another.
Crist spake himself ful brode in hooly writ,
And wel ye woot no vileynye is it.
Eek Plato seith, whoso kan hym rede,
The wordes moote be coryn to the dede.” (lns. 725-742)

References to Le Roman de la Rose also pervade the Tales themselves. To keep this relevant, I’m going to note the references just in the last few tales we’ve read.

“The Monk’s Tale” is essentially a collection of tragedies befalling great men (and a few women). Le Roman de la Rose is one of Chaucer’s closest models for the tale. Additionally, the emphasis on Fortune and its unlimited power seems to be taken directly from the French poem, “where modern as well as ancient instances are used to illustrate the capricious workings of the goddess” Fortuna, who operates independently of both the divine and the agency of man (452). Chaucer also frequently references Boccaccio in this tale.

The references to Le Roman de la Rose in “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” lie in the references to trusting a woman (or hen, I suppose):
“But for I noot to whom it might displese,
If I conseil of women wolde blame,
Passe over, for I seyde in it in my game.” (lns. 3260-3263)
and the desires held dearest by a true lover:
“And in thy seryce did al his poweer,
Moore for delit than world to multiplye” (lns. 3345-3345)

I expressed confusion over the Second Nun’s warning against “ydelnesse” in her Prologue. I briefly addressed this in an earlier post, but the explanatory notes of our edition offer another important point. Idleness, in Le Roman de la Rose, is the gatekeeper of the Garden of Love, where ydelnesse is “the yate of all harmes” (463). This exemplifies its status as a sin, and indeed sloth is one of the seven deadly sins.

The exempla involving a caged bird, cat, and wolf used by the Manciple in his tale can be found in Le Roman de la Rose, as well as in other sources. Chaucer references the poem especially in his description of the she-wolf . The sentiments expressed in lines 148-154,
“A good wyf, that is clene of werk and thought,
Sholde nat been kept in noon awayt, crtayn;
And trewly the labour is in vayn
To kepe a chrewe, for it wol nat bee.
This holde I for verray nycetee,
To spille labour for to kepe wyves:
Thus written olde clerkes in hir lyves”
are similar to those found in Le Roman de la Rose.

Obviously, Chaucer was greatly influenced by this poem, begun by Guillaume de Lorris around 1230 and continued by Jean de Meun approximately forty years later. I urge you to check out the website I linked above.


Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales: Complete. Benson, Larry D., ed. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston: 2000.

Connecting the Beginning and the End of "The Canon's Yeoman's Tale"

To go along with my previous post, I found an article by William Komowski discussing the connection between alchemy and religion, as well as providing some connection between the beginning and the end of the entire tale.

"To a large extent, the Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale is a sequence of scenes in which clergymen attempt to change one substance into another. But their failures to do so, along with their deliberate feigning of the transformation, suggest that they do not entirely believe in the very miracle they seek to perform. In other words, their situation comically parallels the graver predicament of some priests" (Komowski, 17).

Early on in the tale, the Yeoman discusses the failures of his master and of the alchemist in their works. Also there is a the mention of God and how even though God has given the alchemists hope, they continue to fail in their tasks. At the end of the Tale, the Yeoman advises to end the pursuit of the philosopher's stone.

"How that a man shal come unto this stoon,
I rede, as for the beste, lete it goon.
For whoso maketh God his adversarie,
As for to werken any thyng in contrarie
Of his wil, certes, never shal he thryve," (1474-1478).

Therefore, there is a connection between the hunt for the philosopher's stone and the quest of the alchemist.

"Thus, the Yeoman’s tale ends with a comment on the alchemical miracle that parallels comments emerging elsewhere in the Canterbury Tales concerning spiritually related miracles: they do not happen anymore; the contemporary clergy are incapable of working any such miracles for either material or spiritual ends" (Komowski, 18).



Komowski, William. (2002). Chaucer and Wyclif: God's miracles against the clergy's magic. The Chaucer Review, 37(1), 5-25.

Ignotum per Ignocius

The Canon Yeoman's Tale is a moral one, so far, in my opinion, one of the most clearly moral of all the tales. It is about deceit in art, in words, in life and relationships which "concluden everemoore amys". I don't see the art of transmutation, in this context, as a distinct metaphor for writing but a metaphor for all pursuits which attempt to explain truth. It is the interminable art of multiplication that confounds the beholder but - because of its allure to explain the truth of things - provides a tempting source for hope: "But that good hope crepeth in oure herte/Supposynge evere, though we sore smerte" (lines 870-871). The Canon - whoever he is - can tempt even the most innocent priest into believing in his craft so much so that the priest participates in a kind of witchcraft, renouncing all he should hold dear in the name of god. Fortunately this yeoman, however exceedingly bitter, has seen the truth of the lie, and perhaps even a glimmer of the Truth. He says in lines 842-849:

In lernyng of this elvysshe nyce loore,
Al is in veyn, and parde, muchel moore.
To lerne a lewed man this subtiltee --
Fy! Spek nat therof, for it wol nat bee.
And konne he letterure or konne he noon,
As in effect, he shal fynde it al oon.
For bothe two, by my savacioun,
Concluden in multiplicacioun

This learning (any learning?) concludes in multiplication meaning it concludes by never concluding, never distilling itself into one pure, rarefied thing. There's no gold to come. Gold is gold and coal is coal. That's all the learning that is made finally. But men are not made of gold; they are made of carbon, more like coal. And since we have an unmitigated desire for our own bodily transmutation - perhaps through Christ - we seek it out, this power, in ourselves to no avail. And we look to the philosopher to enlighten us but also to absorb our disdain for his craft. He/She is expected to carry the burden of human confusion but simultaneously be rid of it. The philosopher (whatever form he/she takes: writer, artist, politicain, etc.) is both indispensable and meaningless. The Yeoman has mostly words of spite for the philosopher, however, he/she is a bit rectified at the end: honor restored to the philosophical pursuit. It is at this point that Plato is brought into the scene, who, famously was a philosopher of the spirit, of the intellect and he has the penultimate word:

The philosophres sworn were everychoon
That they sholden discovere it unto noon,
Ne in no book it write in no manere.
For unto Crist it is so lief and deere
That he wol nat that it discovered bee,
But where it liketh to his deitee
Men for t'enspire, and eek for to deffende
Whom that hym liketh; lo, this is the ende. (lines 1464-1471)

So the secret is something protected by Christ, by god himself and philosophers are its keepers here on earth but they are sworn to "discovere it unto noon" and can only describe it by multiplying the message, describing the unknown with more unknown. We ought not to look to the philosopher for the answers, not only because he won't tell us but because he is incapable of doing so. We must seek an explanation for ourselves. And wherever we look, we must be careful not to believe anything too innocently.

The Canon's Yeoman is subdued:

Thanne conclude I thus, sith that God of hevene
Ne wil nat that the philosophres nevene
How that a man shal come unto this stoon,
I rede, as for the beste, lete it goon.
For whoso maketh God his adversarie,
As for to werken any thyng in contrarie
Of his wil, certes, never shal he thryve,
Thogh that he multiplie terme of his lyve.
And there a poynt, for ended is my tale.
God sende every trewe man boote of his bale!

At last the Yeoman essentially says, since god will not allow the philosophers to name the secret, it is best to give it up if you are not a philosopher, but all one can hope is for god to grant each deserving man "boote of his bale" or as the notes explain, a remedy for his suffering. There's only one thing to remedy man's spiritual suffering and that's philosophy.

Also about the Yeoman

Though I agree with Tara in that alchemy in Cannon's Yeoman's tale is metaphor for writing, along with the art of storytelling, I am hesitant to say that Chaucer is subtly making a reference to himself in the tale. Reason being is that there the language referencing alchemists is often scathing. The Yeoman claims that the alchemist seem to always fail, "We faille of that which we wolden have,/ And in oure madnesse everemoore we rave" (958-959). I doubt Chaucer considered himself such a failure, and think that this tale is more to serve as a critique on many of the pilgrims in the story. I say that simply becasue of the recurring concept of money in the tale.

In the second part of the tale, a Canon makes money off of trickery and decet, and in the end escapes any and all punishment. Who's to say that any of the pilgrims aren't wrongly profitting from their crafts. Physicians from Chaucer's day based their medicines off religious teachings, and characters like the Pardoner made a living from swaying people from sin. These acts were just as treacherous as alchemy, but still were highly profitable. The Yeoman says that nothing is what it seems - "He that semeth the wiseste, by Jhesus,/Is moost fool, whan it cometh to the preef;/And he that semeth trewest is a theef" (967-969) - so it seems like Chaucer is presenting the question of what exactly constitutes decet and what is considered honest.

The Alchemy of Writing

Max commented that while he was reading the Canon's Yeoman's Tale, he was struck by the issue of narrative sterility, inconclusiveness, repetition and failure. I was also struck by the issue of language in the Canon's Yeoman's Prologue, and read the newest pilgrim's description of alchemy as a metaphor for the art of writing — both require labor and control, are seemingly creative acts but ultimately deceptive.   

The yeoman begins describing his master, the alchemist, with these words: 

"Ye wolde wondre how wel and craftily

He koude worke, and that in sondry wise. 

He hath take on hym many a greet emprise,

Which were ful hard for any that is heere

To brynge aboute, but they of hym it leere"

(603-607).

Like the alchemist, who takes on large projects, Chaucer has tackled the gigantic Canterbury Tales, and is now, through the yeoman persona, reflecting on himself as a writer and perhaps even flattering himself a little, very subtly. He's taken the English's vernacular, or the ground/dirt, and turned it "up-so-doun, / and pave it al of silver and of gold" (625-26). With Chaucer's craftiness, the vernacular has become beautiful and valuable. 

Chaucer then admits his deceptions — he passes himself off as lesser in public, and lets his products shine rather than taking the glory for himself. Like the Canon, he rides in dirty, "sluttissh" clothes, and the yeoman responds, "he shal nevere thee! ... He is to wys, in feith, as I bileeve. / That that is overdoon, it wol nat preeve / Aright" (641, 644-45). In short, the Canon knows, wisely, that making his actions accord too well with the yeoman's accounts of him would not turn out well — it'd be seen as a vice. Like the Canon, if Chaucer showed off his power with words too much, he'd put himself in danger because of the widely-thought maxim that "For whan a man hath over-greet a wit, / Ful oft hym happeth to mysusen it" (648-49). Too much preening and showing off could trip up both the Canon and Chaucer. 

More comparisons can be drawn as the yeoman continues describing his master to the other pilgrims. The alchemist and his helper, like an author and his language, "to muchel folk ... doon illusioun" (673). And, like alchemy is an imperfect science, so is language slippery and difficult to control: 

"Yet is it fals, but ay we han good hope 

It for to doon, and after it we grope. 

But that science is so fer us biforn,

We mowen nat, although we hadden it sworn,

It overtake, it slit awey so faste."

(678-82). 

Both alchemists and authors are constantly in danger of their materials and work exposing themselves for what they are: illusions and deceptions. We've seen throughout the Tales incidents in which Chaucer slyly reveals various pilgrims' attempts to create illusions through language. The alchemist demonstrates this concern with the maintenance of his deceptive image as he rides over to see what his yeoman is up to, and meantimes handily provides us the notion that language is dangerous and potentially deceptive when he threatens the helper: "Spek no wordes mo ... Thou sclaundrest me heere in this compaignye, / And eek discoverest that thou sholdest hyde" (693, 695-96). 

In the Middle Ages, language "represented a human equivalent to the Word that had created the world, and humankind and language within that" (Cooper 59). Like an alchemist, Chaucer creates a whole little world of his own through language, and like the Canon tries to turn dirt to gold, Chaucer tries to turn vernacular English into the Word for a fictional world.

Maybe it's force-fitting two pieces of a puzzle that don't match to try to read this prologue as a metaphor for the magic of writing, but I couldn't resist. We've seen too many examples of slippery language, deception and illusions and failure to control meaning throughout the Tales for me to relinquish the notion that Chaucer might view writing as similar to alchemy — illusory and even dangerous if taken too far beyond one's limits of wit, or knowledge. 

Cooper, Helen. "Review: The Word and the World." Essays in Criticism, LIX:1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, January 2009. 

The Second Nun's Stand

Like Jason and Euge, I think that many of the discussions of the second nun in class deserve further comment. Because I completely missed the references to idleness in the tale, I reread it knowing to look for warnings against idleness in the praise of its opposite: business, activity, agency. Another topic we addressed in the class discussion was, for lack of a better term, exactly “how much” agency Cecile exhibited. Jason mentions in his post below, and I agree, that she may have acted less defiantly if she were not certain of the eventual affirmation of her faith. In class, someone else recommended Cecile as a foil of Custance. Which female lead commands more respect at the end of the tale? Which is more memorable? The Man of Lawe idealizes Custance in a very different but equally passionate manner, but the reverence of the nun to the saint recommends Christianity in a way, I argue, unseen so far in the Tales. The prominent position of this hitherto ignored nun’s tale is one of the first things I noticed when reading the tale. Thematically, it recalls other tales. Chaucer wrote other tales of religion in rime royal. Why another tale of the same sort? Knowing, at this point, Chaucer’s tendency for layered menaings, we must search further.

First, the tale provides another warning against sin and recommendation to virtue. Second, Cecile is another female fated to die at the hands of unworthy men, as so she joins the other active and passive heroines as a proponent of woman and her rights. Third, at the end of the tale it’s hard not to be inspired. Whatever one’s personal leanings, Cecile trusts and never wavers, while representing herself as a woman who acts of her own accord and without fear of consequences.

To idleness and Cecile the “bisy bee”. The notes at the back of Benson’s edition of the Tales mention the first 28 lines only to say that they are “conventional and may be based on a variety of sources” (462). This warning against idleness could be directed at Christians who maybe are not as strong or as dedicated in their faith as they should be… but why would the nun direct this warning at those voyaging to a cathedral? Unless, perhaps the nun, having listened to the bawdy fabliaux and the tiresome exempla throughout the tales, as well as many tales dealing with very earthly vices, she has concluded that what the pilgrimage truly needs is a reminder of God’s greatness and the power he bestows upon those that blindly trust Him. This also serves as a response to Euge's post below: perhaps the tale is situated so close to their destination to remind both the pilgrims and the readers of the true purpose of their pilgrimage.

"We concluden everemoore amys"

I amused myself while reading the Canon Yeoman's Tale by identifying the ways in which his complaint could basically be a description of life as a graduate student. Serving a rigorous apprenticeship/servitude for "seven yeer" (not quite at that length yet, but I will be before this is over), toiling away continually in arcane pursuits that consume monetary resources with no return to show for it, amassing and rattling off a huge repertoire of professional jargon ("termes...so clergial and so queynte" [752]) with little or no practical utility... it all hit pretty close to home. As we roll into term paper season, it's nice to know that Chaucer understands our pain.

Anyway, there's plenty more than just self-pitying personal identifications to hold one's interest here. In particular, the marked sterility and inconclusiveness of the Yeoman's life and work, so insistently reiterated throughout his prologue and tale, casts a rather sinister shadow when we remember that both characters and author are, at this point, approaching their own conclusions: the pilgrims of their pilgrimage (the Canon and his Yeoman join the party just five miles shy of Canterbury) and Chaucer of his work. The Yeoman's embittered admissions of failure - "For evere we lakken oure conclusioun" (672); "we concluden everemoore amys" (957) - raise the possibility of a similar inability to find a determinate or satisfying ending on the part of both pilgrims and poet. And, in fact, both pilgrims and poet will lack or be denied (deny themselves) the conclusion we have expected or anticipated for them: the pilgrims will never reach Canterbury because Chaucer will retract and disavow the narrative that promised to take them there. So in that sense, the Yeoman does seem to diagnose a generally applicable condition: pilgrims, author, and readers all lack "oure conclusioun," at least in one obvious and expected way. Whether this lack also implies that the pilgrimage/Chaucer have concluded "amys" is a different question.

Sticking with the Yeoman a little further, though, his professional dissatisfaction opens out onto a more general and more troubling skepticism about, and failure of, narrative and fiction. Beyond applying (maybe) to the Canterbury Tales as a whole, the Yeoman's complaint that "we concluden everemoore amys" characterizes his own tale equally well. The emphatic "poynt" (1480) on which he finally decides to end has in fact been stated, in its essentials, any number of times in the previous 900 lines: alchemy doesn't work, and you will waste your money and life trying to make it work. The way in which the Yeoman keeps constantly circling back to this "poynt" and reiterating it in itself substantiates the point: he really cannot conclude, and cannot structure his thoughts and words in such a way as to conclude. Tellingly, he says things "as they come to mynde, / Thogh I ne kan nat sette hem in hir kynde" (788-789). The Yeoman, in fact, might be the most digressive and nonlinear narrator we've seen since the Wife of Bath, straying several times from his invective against alchemy to wearingly catalogue various alchemical accessories and terms of art. His speech becomes more straightforward and coherent only when he shifts from his personal cri de coeur to his fictionalized narrative, and even then he returns again and again to belabor the mendacity of his fictional canon. The Yeoman himself recognizes how repetitive and narratively sterile he is being: "It weerieth me to telle of his falsnesse, / And nathelees yet wol I it expresse, / To th'entente that men may be war thereby, / And for noon oother cause, trewely" (1304-1307). And his self-diagnosis about being unable to conclude satisfactorily applies also to this mini-narrative, which has a curiously anti-climactic ending. The revelation to the dupe of the canon's duplicity is telescoped into a few terse and prosaic lines: "whan that this preest shoolde / Maken assay, at swich tyme as he wolde, / Of this recit, farwel! It wolde nat be" (1383-1385). Then it's back to the invective against alchemy, with a fresh inconsistency: the Yeoman continues to insist that there is no profit to be had in the practice, despite the fact that his own story has just shown someone who does pretty well for himself by it. 

The fictional canon, of course, profits from alchemy only by embracing its unreality and emptiness; instead of vainly seeking after the real secret of transmuting substance and producing precious metal, this canon contents himself with pretending to do so in order to deceive others. This constant condemnation of the fictional canon's fraudulence, "his falshede" (1274), seems to indicate yet another connection between the Canon Yeoman's Tale and Chaucer's larger project. Does the Yeoman - does Chaucer himself - invite us to equate the fictional canon's falsehood with the falseness of narrative fiction, the kind of stories that produce no true gold, no genuine moral or meaning, stories of the type exemplified by "Sir Thopas" that are all solas without sentence? The Yeoman, conversely, appears to value narrative for its sentence alone and pays little heed to solas. To return to the lines I quoted a little earlier, the Yeoman continues to hold forth about the canon's falsehood, even though it wearies him and, most likely, his audience, "[t]o th'entente that men may be war thereby, / And for noon oother cause, trewely" (1306-1307). Narrative, speech, language are delivery mechanisms for morals and messages, nothing more; pleasure, emotional effect, and aesthetics don't enter into it and would, I think, in the Yeoman's eyes be of a piece with the canon's reprehensible "falsehede." The Yeoman's deficiencies as a narrator, in other words, really indicate his suspicion of narrative - a suspicion that is hardly confined to his own character and that may, in fact, contribute to or parallel Chaucer's own imminent failure or refusal to conclude his collection of narratives.

And, since it's late and I'm tired, and in the spirit of form following content, I also will conclude this post inconclusively - "amys," if you like. 

 

False Idols and the End of the Journey

Out of all the intriguing aspects about the Second Nun's Tale, the one issue that I still am struggling to understand is why the placement of the tale is close to the end of the Canterbury Journey. It is interesting that we are presented with a Saint's tale, but I've tried to analyze the morality of the tale to perhaps get a better grip on the entire tale's purpose.

Although the tale has a focus on faith and religion, like numerous tales before it, this tale explicitly preaches one lesson: don't worship false idols. I hate to latch on to the most obvious moral of the story, but I can't help thinking it has something to do with the fact that our pilgrims have almost reached their destination.

Diverse Folk Diversly They Post

And now, for the most eclectic blog post thus far:

First of all, in reference to the Second Nun's Tale and today's class discussion, I think there is a very large difference between the martyrdom of the little Clergion and Cecelia. The little boy's death does not strictly meet the traditional definition of martyrdom. According to the Catholic Church (and most other Christian churches that recognize martyrdom) in order to become a martyr, one must be killed for one's religious beliefs, knowing that this continuation of the religious practice or belief in question will most certainly result in death. Because the little boy in the Prioress' Tale dies more so because he ignorantly wanders through a "bad" neighborhood arbitrarily singing a song he doesn't understand, he would not actually be considered a martyr. The bottom line, martydom must be the result of a deliberate choice, and not simply a set of unofortunate circumstances. Also, there is no evidence that the anonymous Jews killed the young boy simply for being a Christian. The text (ie. the Wasp's nest quote and references to Satan) suggest they killed him because of their own evil status.

In reference to discussion of Cecelia as being one of the few female characters thus far with true individual agency, I think it is worth noting the source of that agency. Just as chivarly provided a sort of agency to earlier female characters in the tales, Cecelia's agency in this instance is provided by Christianity. It is difficult to imagine she would have been as brave and upright if she had been standing up for anything other than her Christian beliefs. Especially when viewed within the context of her continued "life after death" to preach the gospel, it is difficult to determine where Cecelia's agency ends and her "holy spirit" provided by Christianity begins. Therefore, I think in some ways that her agency is much less than other female characters because she derives this agency from a universal application of Christian righteousness to believers.

Lastly, I looked up the Simon and Garfunkel song "Cecelia" after class. Apparently, Paul Simon named the song in reference to St. Cecelia, patron saint of music in Catholic tradition. The romantic connotations in the song are more an allusion to the difficulties an artist has maintaining his relationship with the muse than any actual physical liasons. The best way I can relate this to class is that St. Cecelia's connection to music led to the connotation "way for the blind" and her blind faith in the church is what led to her martyrdom. Therefore, Paul Simon may be at risk of becoming a martyr of pop music. Just kidding. Cecelia's blind devotion demonstrates the Christian concept of maintaining a relationship with Christ at all costs, just as Paul Simon struggles to stay in touch with his muse.

What Dreams May Come

The Nun's Priest's Tale incorporates several themes running throughout the Canterbury Tales, such as textual authority, what women desire in marriage, and the value of wifely advice. However, in this tale, we also get an emphasis on another theme: dreams and their significance. Chaucer's incorporation of dreaming is significant because it is an addition to the original sources we've looked at in class — Marie de France and Robert Henryson's poems mention nothing about dreams as messages from God or warnings of disaster. Whereas, Chaucer expends more than 200 lines focusing on Chaunticleer's dream and providing several "swiche ensamples olde maistow leere / That no man sholde been to recchelees/ Of dremes" (3106-08).

The lewed take

Chaucer's examples give us a good feel for how his contemporary common folk viewed dreams as harbingers of joy or fearful portents sent by God (predominantly the latter, however). The first thing Chaunticleer says when he's awoken by Pertelote is, "By God, me mette I was in swich meschief / Right now that yet myn herte is soore afright. / Now God ... my swevene reeche aright, / And kepe my body out of foul prisoun!" (2894-97). In this statement, he both attributes the dream to God and pleads with him for protection from what he views as "notice in advance, explicit warning of what will come" (Raffel 466, lines 293-95). Pertelote ridicules Chaunticleer, using textual authority by quoting Cato's dismissal of dreaming: "Catoun, which that was so wys a man, / Seyde he nat thus, 'Ne do no fors of dremes'" (2941-42). Chaunticleer defends himself by quiting her use of textual authority, asserting that even more texts argue the contrary, saying:

"men may in olde bookes rede
Of many a man moore of auctorite
Than evere Caton was, so moot I thee,
That al the revers seyn of this sentence,
And han wel founden by experience
That dremes been significaciouns
As wel of joye as of tribulaciouns
That folk enduren in this lif present.
Ther nedeth make of this noon argument;
The verray preeve sheweth it in dede."
(2974-82).

Chaunticleer follows this by quoting several examples of men who failed to heed their dream-warnings and wound up the worse for it — stories we probably can assume were traditional tales among the commoners of Chaucer's time. Chaucer suggests that Chaunticleer may be reciting anecdotes he overheard rather than read — even though the rooster attempts to prove his literary acumen by pointing out that the second story specifically follows the first in the same book. However, Chaunticleer mistranslates the Latin phrase "In principio, / Mulier est hominis confusio." Anyone with sufficient textual learning to read books most likely would be able to tell the difference between confusio (woe, ruin) and felicitas (happiness). The Oxford English Dictionary shows that the Middle English for ruin (confusion) was almost exactly identical to the Latin, so any reader of the Nun's Priest's Tale would be able to recognize immediately that Chaunticleer was either faking his learning or deliberately insulting Pertelote — which, if she is also even just a little educated, as she seems, would not have been a wise move. Thus, Chaunticleer seems to be repeating tales he's heard elsewhere, a circumstance reminiscent of the Pardoner's statement that he tells his audience "many oon / Of olde stories longe tyme agoon. / For lewed peple loven tales olde; / Swiche thynges kan they wel reporte and holde" (Pardoner's Prologue, 435-38). The exchange between Chaunticleer and Pertelote about his dream and dreaming in general is reminiscent of a commoner, worrywart husband henpecked by his wife, who has more earthly concerns than to worry about intangible portents and signs.

Talking theology

After establishing this dynamic of Chaunticleer-Pertelote, Chaucer then moves away from the chickens, digressing into a theological discussion about dreams as signs from God. Before I analyze this section, I'll provide some context from the religious culture in medieval England:

Dream poems were part of medieval literary culture, whether originating from saints or laymen. The Church recognized that lay people could have significant dreams full of divine implications or meaning, and incorporated documentation of some of those dreams into Church culture. Although the most focus remained on saintly dreams, some recognition was given these lay dreams: "It is commonly stated, and correctly so, that the most frequently reported dreams of Antiquity and the early Middle Ages were those of saints and kings. However, the unprofessed laity, 'ordinary' Christians of the Christian community, were also dreaming religious dreams that were represented in Church writings, if less often than saintly dreams (Moreira 1). The fact that some of these dreams were included in Church documents and texts lends them some significance to contemporary religious authorities: "That lay dreams were recorded in religious writings of the era ... suggests that they held a noteworthy place in Christian religious culture and that the religious elite believed these dreams to be worthy of religious interpretation" (Moreira 2).

Medieval dream poems were very unlike much of the narratives about dreams we have seen since the early modern age. They were "rooted in classical and biblical concepts of dream and vision that imbued dreaming with the potential for august, profound, even divine meaning" (Phillips 374). Helen Phillips argues that with the Roman de la Rose, or Romance of the Rose, dream poetry began to be taken more seriously, as a:

"visionary and learned genre ... used for exploring the subject of human sexual passion, taking the experience of desire as a subject for serious literature in a serious genre. ... It is within the dream genre that medieval writers were able to treat the subject discursively as well as experientially, and to sift, debate and contemplate the complexities and contradictions of passion and the states of consciousness it creates. By the late medieval period the dream poem and other types ... were also arenas for the exploration of further subjects such as masculine identity, unhappy marriage, misogyny and feminism. Dream poetry seems also to have stimulated self-conscious and metafictional experimentation in the treatment of issues like the relationship of reader and writer to text, time in narrative, the fictional self, textuality and fiction" (Phillips 374).

This passage from Phillips raises interesting questions about Chaucer's use of dreaming, and subsequent theological discussion about it. Chaucer uses Chaunticleer's dream and debate with Pertelote to explore the theme of misogyny and female authority — "Wommennes conseils been ful ofte colde; / Wommannes conseil broghte us first to wo / And made Adam fro Paradys to go" (3256-58).

He overlaps that theme with a humorous monologue reflecting on the lay and spiritual perception of the value of dreams. In a mocking tone, Chaucer, through the Nun's Priest, admonishes Chaunticleer for failing to heed his dream: "Thou were ful wel ywarned by thy dremes / That thilke day was perilous to thee" (3232-33). He touches on the practice of recording dreams and interpreting them as irrevocable portents of divine origin: "What that God forwoot moot needs bee, / After the opinioun of certein clerkis" and interjects himself into the debate among learned scholars about whether "that Goddes worthy forwityng / Streyneth me nedely for to doon a thyng," by declaring that "if free choys be graunted me / To do that same thyng, or do it noght, / Though God forwoot it er that I was wroght" (3243-44, 3246-48). Burton Raffel translates these lines sardonically as:

"Or even determine if God, with his future knowledge,
Obliges me to go where his knowledge knows. ...
They say that freedom of choice has been granted me,
So I can do my thing, or refuse to do it,
Despite God's knowledge — in any case, I'll rue it!"

Thus, through discourse about dreaming, Chaucer questions the omnipotence and omniscience of God, the free choice of humanity and the value of dreams ... but at the last minute backs away from making any claims, interjecting that "I wol nat han to do of swich mateere ; / My tale is of a cok" (3251-52). However, he's opened the Pandora's box, and it is up to the reader to draw what he may from the tale as a whole answers to several questions:

1) are dreams really portents of what will happen?
2) are they of divine origin?
3) if they are, are they unalterable? Do we have free choice?
4) if they don't come true, what does that say about God's power? Is he really infallible?

Chaunticleer's dream stops short of showing his final fate, so Chaucer leaves the door open for us to conclude what we may. The cock doesn't die in the dream, so there is no final, incontrovertible answer for us about whether dreams can tell us our fate. However, interestingly enough, the dream portents a reddish-orange fox, while the actual fox that seizes Chaunticleer is coal-black.

Perhaps the devil's in the details?

Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. Trans. Burton Raffel. New York: The Modern Library, 2008.

Moreira, Isabel. "Dreams and Divination in Early Medieval Canonical and Narrative Sources: The Question of Clerical Control." The Catholic Historical Review, Vol. 89, No. 4 (Oct., 2003), pp. 621-642

Phillips, Helen. "Dream Poems." A Companion to Medieval English Literature and Culture, c. 1350-c. 1500. Ed. Peter Brown. Wiley-Blackwell, 2007. 374-386. 

The Tale the Monk Doesn't Tell

First of all, I must apologize for being so far behind the curve on this one - I'm still playing catchup from several weeks of studying for the comps. (Apologies too if any or all of this has already been brought up in class.)

The Monk, alone among the Canterbury narrators that we've seen, second-guesses his initial choice of tale. (Chaucer and the Man of Law both apologize for having only one tale to tell, but all others seem pretty certain of their stories when they begin.) Before he decides to recite his litany of tragedies, the Monk broaches the possibility of telling "the lyf of Seint Edward" (1970). I found this change of narrative, together with some of the implications and associations of the original choice, very striking - doubly so because of the poor quality and unfavorable reception of the tale the Monk does end up telling. His original option is a suggestive road not taken; would it have made for a better and more congenial story?

The Monk's proposed "lyf of Seint Edward" is particularly interesting in historical and narrative context. The saint in question is probably Edward the Confessor, last king but one before the Norman Conquest and legendary for his piety. Edward's insular English associations, particularly with the insular English monarchy, made him a resonant political symbol. The critic Lynn Staley has written about the Confessor's appropriation by later English kings eager to consolidate their power and give it a religious luster (one already possessed, to their great political advantage, by the kings of France): "Henry III had perceived the need for a royal cult and had attempted to create in Westminster Abbey [originally built by Edward the Confessor and rebuilt by Henry] an embodiment of English royal identity. His efforts to use the figure of St. Edward as a model for English kingship did not outlive his own reign" (264). "Seint Edward" had a renewed symbolic presence and force at Chaucer's time, however, thanks to the efforts of Richard II to redeploy him in a similar effort to give the English monarchy a divine role and justification. By pointing to this precedent of an English saint-king, Richard can claim that his office is innately holy and that its authority derives not upward from the people (who, in the 1380s and 90s, are being unruly at just about every level) but downward from God. Hence the presence of Edward the Confessor in such (admittedly gorgeous) pieces of Ricardian propaganda as the Wilton Diptych, wherein he is the second of three saints (including another English monarch, Edmund the Martyr) presenting Richard to the Virgin Mary as her representative on earth.

With all this in mind, it is surely significant that the Monk eschews the tale of an English national saint and emblem of what amounts to an early bid for the divine right of kings in favor of a generalized and universal history. A saint's life, which by definition ends in sanctification and heavenly glory, seems the generic opposite of the Monk's tragedies; by telling the tragedies "first" (1971), does the Monk want to heighten the contrast with Edward's redemptive life, to which the contemporary English monarch has laid claim? Or, conversely, does he want to cast the shadow of various other once-proud "kynges" (1986) and their inevitable downfalls over this current emblem of divinely-sanctioned royal power?

It's also worth thinking about the Monk's change of mind in the context of the wider narrative pattern of Fragment VII (although I freely concede I'm probably over-reading here no matter how you look at it). Immediately previously is the Tale of Melibee, which, among other things, is a treatise on the art of government with advice to spare on how rulers should act, whom they should consult for advice and when, how they should treat subjects and defeated foes, and so forth. The Melibee, it seems, reaches a kind of middle ground between (to use terms we have been periodically returning to) absolutist and associational politics: Melibeus wields authority alone, of himself, with an obligation to "[b]iwrey nat youre conseil to no persone" (1140) and a responsibility not to be swayed by "the moore part and the gretter nombre" (1256), but he also emerges from the tale with various responsibilities to consult the right people, act patiently and with forgiveness instead of arbitrarily, and to "have moore love of the peple than drede" (1191). This enunciation of a political theory with direct relevance to contemporary England may be not least among the factors that give the Melibee such appealing "sentence."

Similarly, following the Monk's Tale we have the Nun's Priest's, which, in Lynn Staley's interpretation, advances another politically relevant point. Staley reads the Nun's Priest's Tale as a humorously disguised allegory of Ricardian claims to sacral kingship and their political cost: "Chauntecleer is the very image of a royal rooster," but his "fascination with his own magnificence almost brings his realm into utter ruin" (293) - an uproar that Chaucer describes in part through a reference to that real violent upsurge of associational politics, the 1381 Rising.

Bracketed by these two relevant and politically charged stories, the Monk's Tale seems conspicuously apolitical, concerned to demonstrate the way in which impersonal and inevitable forces brought about the downfall of various luminaries either long ago or far away (or both). The Monk's narrative inconsistency and incoherence mute any political moral one might take away from his examples; sometimes Fortune is a force of providential and even divine justice, punishing the hubris and tyranny of people like Antiochus and Nero, and at other times she is "False Fortune" (2669), piteously reducing great and honorable men to shameful deaths. The Monk flattens the difference between these two outlooks into a monotonous and fatalistic picture of inevitable mutability without coherent political content. In marked contrast to the echo of a real political crisis in the Nun's Priest's Tale, when the Monk describes a popular revolt - "The peple roos upon [Nero] on a nyght" (2527) - it is due to the will (whim?) of Fortune, who "lough, and hadde a game" (2550). There is no lesson here that might be at all relevant or interesting to the Canterbury pilgrims and the real world they inhabit, just lachrymose and abstract speculations that deprive them of agency.

The point, I guess, is that by foregoing a tale about a highly charged political symbol and choosing instead to drone on and on about tragedies, the Monk sacrifices the political relevance and applicability to contemporary England that the tales around him demonstrate and that, judging by the positive reception accorded to those tales and others like them (the Knight's or Clerk's, for example, with their similar political subtexts), the audience of pilgrims looks for. He opts out of the conversation and debate - out, that is, of associational politics itself.

Works Cited: Staley, Lynn. "Translating 'Communitas.'" In Kathy Lavezzo, ed. Imagining a Medieval English Nation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004. 261-303.

Further Commentary on the Nun's Priest

“The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” is certainly one of the funnier tales. There is a very interesting juxtaposition between the qualities fitting an elaborate fable, such as humor and morality, and the elusive “other quality” the reader recognizes as depth. This “meaning”: the debate on the significance of dreams, the irony of the choice of tale teller, and/or the conflict between Chauntecleer and Pertelote is concealed beneath a simple type of tale, the fable. This is a literary device used by Chaucer with the fabliaux and the knightly romance as well. He plays with the reader’s idea of what to expect from a tale that seems familiar and predictable.
From the handout distributed on Monday, we can see the variety of meaning attached to the story of the fox and the cock. According the Ann Payne in Medieval Beasts, the fox is symbolically the deceitful Devil and the cock is symbolic of hope and optimism. The fable’s moral end both warns of false flattery and praises cunning. The joining of the beast epic characteristics and the heavier undertone at the end is characterized in the Nun’s Priest’s reaction to his tale’s receptions. R.T. Lenaghan wrote in “The Nun’s Priest’s Fable” that “Chaucer's speaker meets the objection that his tale is frivolous by enjoining the good men who object to heed the moral. He does not, it should be noted, specify precisely what that moral is. He affirms his general seriousness simply and pleasantly. As a result, although only a hundred lines back he was making an elaborate joke and only twenty-five lines ago he was putting morals in the mouths of the cock and the fox, his devout conclusion is now entirely credible” (302).
Essentially, the Nun’s Priest somehow manages an inoffensive, enjoyable, mirthful tale that also contains a legitimate moral and much interesting discourse. In class many of us pointed out the possible meanings of Chauntecleer and Pertelote’s arguments. It is, as Professor Wenthe suggested, often difficult to remember the the main characters are animals. Not only are they animals, but a cock and a hen which neither by their typical position in our minds as stupid nor their actions seem respectable. This assumption is corrupted again and again as while reading the wide-ranging thoughts of Chauntecleer the responses and his favored swevening partner one forgets these are animals. Only with the introduction of the fox does the plot seem to suit animals and our preconception of moralistic fables. This conclusion rejects the distinction of the tale as a fable, even an elaborate or exemplary one. Unlike Chaucer’s use of the fabliaux, with which he employs conventions of the genre, the fable-like characters and structure are secondary to the themes and discussion within the tale.

The final forty or so lines of “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” offer a final useful message: be vigilant, be wary, keep your eyes open and your mouth shut. This man barely mentioned by Chaucer the pilgrim in “The General Prologue” manages to end the lengthiest fragment of the Tales with the mirthful and yet impressive story the Host has been asking for.

Lenaghan, R.T. “The Nun's Priest's Fable”. PMLA 78:4. (Sep., 1963): 300-307. Modern Language Association. JSTOR. 08/04/2009. .

Fortune Favors the Church

The Monk’s Tale reintroduces the idea that God or the gods exert a large amount of authority on the lives of mortals. As we had previously seen in The Knight’s Tale and The Merchant’s Tale, the gods are more than capable of assuming a direct role in the unfolding of events in these tales. Instead of providing us with a fictional account of such an intervention, the Monk provides part of a long list of real-life examples of this occurrence.
With the exception of Lucifer, all of the protagonists the Monk introduces were considered mortal men. The tragedies of all these men can be attributed to them becoming victims of their own fortunes. What is most interesting is that none of these are “average” tragedies concerning freak accidents or unfortunate mistakes. Each of the protagonists the Monk mentions experience rises and falls with immense repercussions for their given circumstances. Drawing a line of connection between the tragedies of biblical figures like Lucifer and Adam and Roman emporers and Egyptian pharaohs accomplishes two things.
First of all, it continues a tradition of Western civilization based on a line of succession from Adam to the emperors, with each bearing a part of the burden of inherited responsibilities associated with great patriarchs. Second, it provides a context where the tragedies of great man can be equated with those of commoners. Though this connection is not explicitly drawn, the acknowledgement that kings are subject to the same concept of fortune as peasants reinforces the idea of a higher power than any earthly office.
This suggests that a great chain of being applies the principle of fortune to us all equally, even a fallen angel like Lucifer. Also, the idea that fortune can inflict tragedy on anyone, no matter whether high or low, deserving or undeserving, reinforces the authority of the church as the only authority capable of providing meaning to tragedies great and small.

The signifier and the prologue to the "Tale of Melibee"

“When Chaucer excuses himself, something suspicious is always happening.”

In this case, we can suspect Chaucer in his prologue and “Tale of Melibee” of taking liberties with language, mocking allegory and reliance on textual authority, separating signifier from the signified and exposing the unreliability and elusiveness of language by manipulating his translation of a translation of a collection of quotes. In this post, I’ll focus on the prologue to the tale, and throw out a bit of graduate student, Derridaean gobbledygook.

Chaucer’s play with language begins in the precursor to the “Tale of Melibee,” when he claims that the same story told by different people and in different ways are basically the same “sentence,” or their substance and essential meaning are the same (see footnote for line 947). He plays with the meaning of the word “sentence,” confusing the reader as to whether he means substance or essential meaning, or even wise saying or maxim. Does he mean the content (words) or meaning (message) of his tale, the elusive signified, remains the same, whether the verbal expression, or the signifiers, change? This issue evoked in my mind an image of the signified as an arrow, the signifiers on a partitioned, spinning wheel and Chaucer as Pat Sajak, spinning and choosing words arbitrarily and telling us that every word earns the same amount of money. (Maybe a bad allegory, but you get the idea.)

This arbitrary declaration becomes even more so when Chaucer uses the example of the four gospels to argue that “hir sentence is al sooth, / and alle acorden as in hire sentence, / al be ther in hir telling difference … douteless hir sentence is al oon” (946-48, 952). Basically, according to Chaucer, even though the apostles tell the story of Jesus differently, the substance is all the same. However, the gospels are told differently, with different anecdotes and using different words, which forces the reader to determine whether these differences alter the gospels’ substance or their general meaning. This echoes Chaucer’s treatment of “Tale of Melibee,” in which he translates from the French translation of a Latin treatise, arbitrarily choosing which English words to use. Despite his denials — “blameth me nat; for, as in my sentence, / Shul ye nowher fynden difference / Fro the sentence of this tretys lyte / After the which this murye tale I write” — Chaucer’s choice of words decidedly influences the ‘sentence’ or substance of the tale (961-64).

Thus, before he launches into the long-winded, rambling “Tale of Melibee,” Chaucer declares the premise that whatever his arbitrary word choices in translating, the substance/meaning/message of his tale is identical to the Dominican friar Reynaud de Louens’ translation of Albertanus’ Liber consolationis et consilii, a collection of wise sayings, or “sentences.” I don’t know about contemporary readers, but modern readers are well aware of the errors and mistranslations that can occur, as well as mistakes in transcription when copying manuscripts. Chaucer’s adamant (but sarcastic) avowal about sameness places the issue on the table for us readers to judge, and we would do well to keep in mind Helen Cooper’s statement that “when Chaucer excuses himself, something suspicious is always happening” (311). Chaucer tells us he’s not distorting or changing anything in the tale, but as we will see in the Tale, he then goes on to manipulate language, playing at will with sign and signifier, creating anxiety in the reader about his meaning and intentions.

Cooper, Helen. "The Tale of Melibee." Oxford Guides to Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996. 310-322.

Textual authority, continued

In my post "Textual authority and the Franklin's Tale," I discussed in depth textual authority in the Franklin's Tale, touching briefly on the Wife of Bath, and suggest that Chaucer seems to be questioning the value of depending on and referring to texts to lend authority to statements and stories. Throughout the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer portrays the use of texts as potentially dangerous and misguiding.

What, then, are we to think of the Tale of Melibee and its bombardment of quotes, proverbs and references to classical and biblical authorities? 

In the prologue, the host passes judgment on Chaucer-the-Pilgrim's language and genre, criticizing his choice of rhyme in Sir Thopas: "Myne eres aken of thy drasty speche. / Now swich a rym the devel I biteche! / This may wel be rym dogerel" (923-25). He then begs of Chaucer a moral tale in prose, a tale that at the least "ther be som murthe or som doctryne" (935). Seemingly offended, Chaucer quites the host in the extreme, launching a loquacious, long-winded bombardment of name-dropping, classical and scriptural wisdom, advice and proverbs. 

The host's request and the structure of the Tale of Melibee is reminiscent of something the Pardoner said during his prologue — while betraying his methods and strategy, the Pardoner tells his traveling companions that he tells his congregation old stories of long-time-ago because it's what they like, remember best and repeat. Insultingly, he says, "Thanne telle I hem ensamples many oon / Of olde stories longe tyme agoon. For lewed peple loven tales olde; / Swiche thyngs kan they wel reporte and holde" (435-39). Thus, references to classical and biblical tales and authorities appeals to the "ignorant and unlearned" (footnote, 177). The Oxford English Dictionary offers several other meanings of "lewed" in use during Chaucer's time — "Belonging to the lower orders; common, low, vulgar, ‘base'." Essentially, Chaucer in an earlier tale to Melibee suggests that people who love tales olde, or references to textual authority, are potentially idiots. Thus, by quiting the host with the Tale of Melibee, Chaucer questions his intelligence and status by exposing his preference for "tales olde" of morality. 

The excess of textual referents in the Tale of Melibee is also reminiscent of the Wife of Bath's prologue, in which Alison both deplores and uses textual authority. Peppering her monologue with references to Solomon, the apostle Mark, Ptolemy and Darius, Alison subverts her criticism of male usage of textual authority to subjugate women. The Physician's Tale also exposes a concern with textual authority, striving to convince his (lewed?) companions and us readers that his story "is no fable, / But knowen for historial thyng notable" (155-56). The Franklin emphasizes that his narration is based on text, repeating "as the bookes telle" (1378).

The Tale of Melibee is just another link in the chain Chaucer is slowly building of a sentiment against textual authority, as well as a questioning of the stability and reliability of language. In the prologue to Melibee, Chaucer begs his listeners/readers to trust his translation of Melibee, asserting that "as in my sentence, / Shul ye nowher fynden difference / From the sentence of this tretys lyte / After the which this murye tale I write" (961-64). Chaucer asks us to believe that he has translated directly from the origin its perfect meaning. Even if the language, the sentence itself, the structure of his utterances, is different from the original, the meaning supposedly remains the same. We can quite his claim by asking him, again: Even if the sentence (word choice, grammar) changes, the sentence (meaning) does not?  

The Oxford English Dictionary also lists under "sentence," the meanings "opinion, authoritative decision, judgment, quoted saying of some eminent person or a maxim." Thus, if Chaucer's sentences change, but his sentence remains the same, do his sentences change or remain the same? Is he conveying accurately the sentences of these wise people, learned sources, classical and biblical figures and stories? 

There are at least two examples in which he is not. By introducing changes and alterations from the originals into his tale, Chaucer directly questions his listener's/reader's dependence on his use of textual authority and quality of his translation from the translation of the original. Cooper writes that "Chaucer's claim that different versions of a story proclaim the same message despite the verbal forms tthey take, as the Gospels do, is irrelevant to the change of language involved in his translation of Melibee (311).

The first example: Cooper points out an omission from the original Tale of Melibee — Among all his advice on politics and war, Chaucer leaves out a quote from Solomon "found in the original, that laments the state of the land where the king is a child: a text that would hardly have been tactful in late fourteenth-century England" (311). This omission from Chaucer's translation cannot help but alter the total sense of the corpus of wisdom/opinion in the Tale of Melibee by subtly altering the political judgment of the text. By using the Tale of Melibee to convey a political message, Chaucer places himself "among the wise counselors of the treatise, not among the flatterers" (Cooper 311). However, by altering a key element of the translation, Chaucer calls into question the reliability of his own advice. Chaucer, by interjecting himself into his tale, has extrapolated it to apply to reality, and his questionable treatment of textual authority brings into question the whole message of the Tale of Melibee. 

A second example comes in Chaucer's merging of two different proverbs into one maxim: "What is bettre than gold? Jaspre. What is bettre than Jaspre? Wisedoom. And What is bettre than Wisedoom? Womman. And what is bettre than Womman? Nothyng" (1107-08). The original proverb in Latin gloss is, "Quid melius auro? Jaspis. Quid Jaspide? Sensus. Quid Sensu? Mulier. Quid Mulier? Nihil" (Explanatory notes, page 448). In Chaucer's version, mulier, or "good" is substituted with Woman. So, here, we have at least one example each of sentence (structural) change and sentence (meaning/opinion) change. 

One last thing I want to point out before I wrap this up is to point out the humor of the husband-wife dyad relationship, in which Prudence adopts the guise of a masculine know-it-all, bombarding her hen-pecked husband with proverb after maxim after quote after name. Ovid, Seneca, Jesus ... practically all the poets, philosophers, disciples and apostles who ever penned a sentence of advice. After several pages of this inundation, Melibee protests, "Certes ... I se wel that ye enforce yow muchel by wordes to overcome me in swich manere that I shal nat venge me of myne enemys ..." and goes on to dissent from her opinion on vengeance (1426). And he ultimately issues a smackdown, telling her that after all her blathering and quoting and citing, she has yet to advise him on how to act in his emergency: "I see wel, dame Prudence, that by youre faire wordes and by youre resounds that ye han shewed me, that the weere liketh you no thying; but I have nat yet herd youre conseil, how I shal do in this nede" (1672-73). Prudence has inflated her language, repeated the same basic ideas over and over, expended much energy only to make the simple point that she doesn't like war. Chaucer's mocking of this repetitive waste is visible underneath Melibee's reminder that Prudence has yet to give him her advice simply and in a nutshell, so to say. 

Much like Prudence, Chaucer uses bombastic language, excessive references to textual authority, inflates language, all to make the point that people should not rely on incessant references to long-dead philosophers and religious authorities, but come to the point and give their advice, straight-up. It's up to us, now, whether to separate Chaucer the author from Chaucer the pilgrim and take his advice to heart, or dismiss it on the same basis we are inclined to dismiss Chaucer-the-pilgrim's moralizing. 

Cooper, Helen. Oxford Guides to Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996.