"Sir Thopas" and "The Tale of Melibee"

Perhaps more than with the Squire, it seems strange Chaucer this pilgrim would tell such tales. I posted early in the semester regarding estate satire; possibly here Chaucer is mocking the overly- romanticized tales of quests and jousts and battles: the second estate. In “Sir Thopas: The Puppet’s Puppet”, originally published in The Chaucer Review, Ann Haskell asserts that Geoffrey Chaucer the author used his own character as the mocker of and a mockery of his Tales themselves. She says “Chaucer the Pilgrim as a puppet, manipulated by Chaucer the Poet, whose action was perhaps relayed to the public with appropriate motions by Chaucer the Reader” (253).

“Sir Thopas” is a poorly expressed burlesque, or a mockery of romance. Other analogues of the tale are noted in the back of our book. In “The Narrator of The Canterbury Tales” Ben Kimpel draws a comparison between this “humble, stupid narrator” and narrators in other works such as The House of Fame, The Parliament of Fowls, and The Legend of Good Women and suggests that Chaucer the poet used this literary device in both “Sir Thopas” and “The Tale of Melibee”. Though “Melibee” is not a burlesque, it is logically told by a simple teller, and like “Sir Thopas” it is expressed not as Geoffrey Chaucer’s original ideas but as something he’s heard: “it reflects his taste rather than his talents” (Kempel 84). “Melibee” drags along slowly and the reader is left to wonder why this tale is allowed to be told in its entirety. Has Chaucer the pilgrim tricked his fellow travelers, blinding their reason with intelligent-sounding proverbs? I’d like to ask what my fellow blog posters make of Chaucer’s largely uninteresting tales and why he of all pilgrims would tell them.

Haskell, Ann S. “Sir Thopas: The Puppet’s Puppet”. The Chaucer Review 9:3 (Winter 1975). 253-261. Penn State University Press. JSTOR. American University Library. 20 Mar 1009. < http://www.jstor.org.proxyau.wrlc.org/stable/25093312>.

Kimpel, Ben. “The Narrator of the Canterbury Tales”. ELH 20:2 (Jun 1953). 77-86. The Johns Hopkins University Press. JSTOR. American University Library. 24 Mar 2009. < http://www.jstor.org.proxyau.wrlc.org/stable/2872071>.

The Prioress's Prerogative

I just wanted to say more about my claim in class to see The Prioress's Tale as an Easter fable. I say fable because the story cultivates a clear villain in the Jews, which though I think chosen particularly, has an obvious tone of untruth with regard to their illustration (though not obvious to the Prioress). This feeds into the notion of a phantasmagoria Prof Wenthe discussed early on in class such that Jews, in this story, are spectre-like, more metaphor than actuality, a perfect "other" to embody a threat to Christianity.

I think Jews were chosen as the villain in this story for - what seems to me to be - an obvious reason: the denial of Christ as Messiah. I do not claim to know the biblical historicism involved with this age-old, mythologized and propagandized notion that the Jews were "the cause of Christ's death" and that is obviously important because this Christian propaganda is ignorant and scornful because, though it trys to validate Christianity it really just condemns Jews, but the idea that Judaism must maintain itself (or something important about itself) only by denying Christ - even more earnestly since Christ himself was a Jew - is more applicable here. Since I see this tale as an Easter fable - in the redemption of the innocent lamb of a child from his violent death, maintained post-death in life as a message to the Christian mother and Abbot who rescue him (read the Church) - the implicit message of her tale (not Chaucer's) is that death is not the end of life...for Christians.

This is not to excuse the overt anti-Semitism but to put it more into context. I don't know: would Chaucer play off the idea of Jews as Christ-deniers in order to make a Christian tale more poignant to Christian readers? I thought it was interesting at the end of class when Prof Wenthe discussed the usage of Jews killing Christian children while invoking King Herod and the Massacre of the Innocents, flipping it on its head for what? To further the metaphor of the Judeo-Christian tension over the Messiah? Herod killed innocent Jewish children because he was afraid of the Messiah coming to usurp his throne so it is fitting for Chaucer to illustrate Jews killing Christian children in a tale about Christian redemption?

Geoffrey the Pilgrim

The character of the pilgrim, Geoffrey Chaucer, is a subject of limitless possibilities for discussion. The tales he tells are disappointing, because the reader expects Chaucer the pilgrim to reflect the talent of Chaucer the poet. Here I discuss why we have these standards and why they are unmet.
The most interesting analysis I found regarding Chaucer the narrator of the Tales traces the presence of the narrator throughout the poems, citing his first identification in the “General Prologue” (Kimpel 78). In “The Narrator of the Canterbury Tales”, Kimpel immediately argues that the prologue introduces Chaucer the pilgrim as congenial and approachable, for he must have spoken to these pilgrims in order to have gleaned such rich descriptions. He concludes from Chaucer the pilgrim’s interspersed comments on the other tales that he is a man who holds virtue over vice, simple and good-hearted (81-82). His humility is foreshadowed when he excuses himself, “My wit is short, ye wol understonde” (“General Prologue” ln.758). He is portrayed as a man who sees and then faithfully reports, for obvious reason (81). As narrator, too much opinion or even intelligence could change the dynamic of the story. By telling tales without the poet's trademark ironic rhetoric, etc. the pilgrim establishes a quality of omniscience, presence without opinion.
I am not the first to note the irony of Chaucer telling such dreary tales with excessive irrelevant detail. From the start the rhyme of “Sir Thopas” is flat and simple, a sharp contrast not only to the Prioress’ heartfelt faith just preceding but to the varied rich rhyme schemes throughout the Tales. “The Tale of Melibee” is literally difficult to read, for me mostly because as soon as it begins to pick up, you suddenly realize you have been reading the same thing for 200 lines. As with the Squire, the interruption is welcome. The Host’s involvement is, I think, much more pointed and interesting that the sniveling Franklin: “Namoore of this, for Goddes dignitee” (“Sir Thopas” ln. 2109). But unlike the young and pretty Squire, Geoffrey responds indignantly and yet with frank composure (in keeping with his character, as I discuss below), demanding his just turn like the other pilgrims. Then Geoffrey Chaucer exposes his intentions; the one section I highlighted when reading the conversation between Chaucer and the Host was his ominous declaration, “As thus, though that I telle somwhat moore/ Of proverbes than ye han herd bifoore/ Comprehended in this litel tretys heere,/ To enforce with th’ effect of my mateere” (lns. 955-958). I think he knows he can command the audience as others have before him with an exemplum, however deficient, and by exposing his intelligence through a kind of “auctoritee”; of course the use of proverbs as a representation of intelligence is ineffective, but characteristic, perhaps, of this man who repeats faithfully what he has heard without cogent judgment.
I will continue my discussion of the tales in a following post.

Kimpel, Ben. “The Narrator of the Canterbury Tales”. ELH 20:2 (Jun 1953). 77-86. The Johns Hopkins University Press. JSTOR. American University Library. 24 Mar 2009. < http://www.jstor.org.proxyau.wrlc.org/stable/2872071>.

The Pardoner and the Prioress

Bracketing the Shipman's Tale (wherein the questions of sex and money dealt with more disturbingly or didactically in the surrounding tales receive a more lighthearted and tongue-in-cheek treatment), I want to see what happens when we align the Pardoner's and the Prioress's tales. These two make for an odd couple indeed, with agendas, mentalities and narrative styles in more or less direct conflict. The Prioress straightforwardly and sentimentally advances ideas and themes that the Pardoner thoroughly and systematically unsettles: the stability and effectivity of language, seen in the ability of the little clergeon's song to name and evoke the Virgin whom he praises; the possibility of a miraculous triumph over death, denied to the Pardoner's deluded rioters but achieved by the Prioress's little hero; and the validity of relics, affirmed at the end of the Prioress's tale when the "litel body sweete" (682) is apparently enshrined as such. Also, there seems to be an unusually pronounced gender differential between the two. Despite (or because of?) his ostensible emasculation, the Pardoner seems to possess a thoroughly and exclusively masculine imagination. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think his is the only tale we've seen so far without a single identifiable female character. This makes the contrast with the Prioress's Tale all the more dramatic; not only does a woman narrate this tale, she does so in the name of and with constant reference to another woman, the Virgin Mary.

This point highlights the larger point of contrast and connection that I want to discuss. The Virgin is the ultimate embodiment of (pure and non-sexual) fertility: "the roote / Of bountee," as the Prioress calls her (465-466). Unfolding thus under the sign of the "mooder Mayde, . . . mayde Mooder" (467), the Prioress's Tale dwells recurrently on related themes and ideas of inspiration, growth, and rejuvenation: the Prioress's opening appeal for divine guidance in her "song" (487), the schoolhouse setting and emphasis on education, the centrality of the figure of the innocent child (Lee Edelman and reproductive futurism, anyone?), the movement from death into life, and above all the miraculous song seeded into the dying body of the boy by the "greyn" (662) planted on his tongue by "Cristes mooder" (656). In its emphasis on the miracle and mystery of fertility, of the ability of seeds to animate life and words in apparently dead matter, the Prioress's Tale thus connects right back to those famous opening lines of the General Prologue.

Seed, however, is, if we take seriously the Host's threat to his testicles or Chaucer's earlier implication that said testicles were absent to begin with, exactly what the Pardoner lacks. The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale emphasize sterility, not fertility; the "venym" of the Pardoner's words (421) and the "poysoun" featured in his tale (867) instead of divine inspiration, miraculous "greyn," or shoures soote. If the Virgin Mother praised by the Prioress is the root of spiritual bounty, the material bounty unearthed in the Pardoner's Tale yields only death, and the only root the Pardoner describes is the radix malorum, cupiditas. The Pardoner's repetitive fixation on that theme - "My theme is alwey oon, and evere was" (333); "Therefore my theme is yet, and evere was" (425) - itself demonstrates his sterility and lack of spiritual/linguistic seed. 

And yet it can just as easily be said of the little clergeon that his theme is always one, and ever was. Alma redemptoris comes to be every bit as repetitive and monotonous as was Radix malorum est cupiditas, and if the little clergeon supposedly recites his formula with all the authenticity and guilelessness that the Pardoner so conspicuously lacks, he also does so "by rote" (545), without comprehending what his words mean. The ability of this rote formula still to convey meaning and achieve its effect thus echoes the ability of the Pardoner's empty words to inspire belief and contrition in others. And if we note that, we must also note that, among these two speakers, it is the sole prerogative of the supposedly sterile Pardoner to bring about repentance and change. The Prioress describes a remarkably flat and static world: the Jews (and Satan) are evil and irredeemable, while the Christians are pure and sinless. The "grete mercy" of God that the Prioress ends by invoking (689) actually has no place in her story; it is not permitted to the demonic Jews and not needed by the innocent clergeon or his pure and blameless coreligionists. The Prioress refuses to recognize or acknowledge the broader possibilities of the fertility, potentiality, and openness to change that she invokes. Repentance, conversion, and the movement from sin to grace apparently have no reality or at least no necessity for her - as they do, in a perverse but compelling way, to her otherwise sterile and seedless counterpart.   

The Existential Gauntlet

More on the Pardoner's Tale...Prof Wenthe asked in a follow-up question to my assertion that the Pardoner is essentially offering the pilgrims a choice between despair and hope, which, however quaint an analysis, I think moves toward answering his question which was, in effect: How does the Pardoner's quandary (or contradictory personage) offer any bigger challenge to the pilgrims than they've already had?

I think the Pardoner's Prologue and Tale are the most challenging to us -and, if the Host's reaction is any indication, though he is personally attacked, one could presume to the pilgrims - is because he provokes, one can only guess with what ultimate intention, the crisis of existence when immaterial (or ultimate) truth and faith in those truths is confounded by or reduced to the material (either in language or relics). He claims, (since he is material of flesh and language and what is material corrupts the immaterial because of the material limitations of difference*) that he is corrupt, but it shouldn't surprise us or the pilgrims since they are not excluded from this predicament; we are also corrupt (we sin; we are delimited by our limited faculties in difference or separation from ultimate truth*), but since he is also a seller of pardons (or of hope, of faith) he maintains a belief, however tenuous, in the existence of immaterial truths which are worth investing in material relics. He acknowledges that material things both have and have not value and it is our decision to give or deny value thereby challenging our beliefs to be described or known to us through language (or relics). This is the ultimate problem for the believer who questions his/her beliefs. And since this is a holy pilgrimage, it is a problem for each pilgrim which questions or quytes! all of them.

*The content of this rationale utilizes however roughly the logical form of Thomas Aquinas's Being and Essence.

The Pardoner and the Commodification of Religion

Looking back on my first blog entry, where I discussed the economic aspects of pilgrimages to Canterbury, I have noticed the reemergence of this theme in the character of the Pardoner and his tale.
It is interesting that the Pardoner openly admits that the relics he peddles are fakes and forgeries (pig bones and common metals). The selling of religious items and relics, along with the related distribution of indulgences and pardons, was an important part of the medieval pilgrimage. Chaucer’s pilgrims would have encountered numerous examples of these practices en route and at their destination. Not only would it have been common along their path, it would have formed an important and integral part of social and economic practices in villages along the way. Canterbury itself would have been a veritable religious marketplace full of Pardoner-like characters.
Because the Pardoner is presented as such a poor example of spiritual purity, it is difficult not to view Chaucer’s inclusion of this character and his “business” as an indictment of the overt commodification of spiritual practices. When this is combined with the content of the Pardoner’s tale, the implications become even more damning. If greed for material possession is sufficient to lead to the demise of the three men, then what fate awaits those that combine this same greed with the corruption of religious traditions and offices?
I think that at this point in the tales Chaucer offers an indirect but scathing criticism of this commodification and by implication the inherent and growing corruption of the church.

The placement of the Physician's Tale

The content of the Physician's Tale — a recycled story of a virgin killed to maintain her sexual honor — makes for interesting discussion, but even more so when we consider it within its textual context. Its placement in our text between the Franklin's Tale and the Pardoner's Tale suggests thematic connections with both tales. 

Although in our text, the Physician's Tale follows the Franklin's Tale, some manuscripts have placed it after the Canon's Yeoman's Tale, a story of alchemy, greed, "trouth" and trickery. The scholar Robert Pratt uses manuscript evidence to argue against this particular ordering in his article "The Order of the Canterbury Tales," available on JSTOR. 

The content of the Physician's Tale further supports the conclusion that our text contains the more appropriate placement, as its plot echoes Dorigen's list of women who commit suicide or die rather than sacrifice their virginity or honor. The allusions to Roman anecdotes in the Franklin's Tale and the Roman setting of the Physician's Tale — disregarding the anachronistic references to Christianity — remind the reader that "female sexual honor ... was of supreme importance in Roman culture, and as the stories of Lucretia and all those other women cited by Dorigen indicate, its loss was literally a fate worse than death" (Cooper 252). However, Chaucer's treatment of these two Tales cast doubt on this belief in the primacy of sexual honor. The seeming excess of Virginius's murder of his daughter echoes the sense of hesitation in the Franklin's Tale about valuing too highly tales of virginal martyrs. Chaucer's apparent disagreement with the degree of "gentilesse" emphasis on virginity and sexual honor echoes the confusion within the medieval Church about sexual honor and morality, and whether suicide or murder, when conducted to avoid loss of honor, is theologically justifiable (Cooper 253). 

Furthermore, both Dorigen and Virginia are assigned passive roles in their fates. While Dorigen takes a more active role in putting herself in a difficult situation by making a flippant promise — as opposed to Virginia, whose natural beauty is her downfall — both women wind up subservient to male authority. Dorigen lays her problems at Averagus's feet and abides by his judgment that she keep her honor/promise, and Virginia accepts her father's decree that she must die rather than surrender her honor/virginity. She tells her father humbly, "Dooth with youre child youre wyl, a Goddes name!" (250). An elemental difference between these two women rests in what their male guardians believe about honor and which they value more, troth or sexual purity. Thus, the Physician's Tale naturally follows and engages in a debate with the Franklin's Tale about honor and sexual purity — the Physician seems to be challenging the Franklin's stance that keeping troth is more valuable. And, both tales cast light on the unenviable position of women as passive and powerless to solve problems created by male lust.

Although the Pardoner's Tale does not address the issue of sexual honor, it is a natural successor to the Physician's Tale. Both tales deal with the dangers inherent in gifts of Fortune and Nature. After the physician completes his tale, the Host grieves for Virginia and says, "I seye al day that men may see / That yiftes of Fortune and of Nature / Been cause of deeth to many a creature" (294-296). Virginia's "beautee was hire deth" (297). The Host further opens the door for the Pardoner to craft a tale of the dangers of gifts of Fortune, by saying, "of bothe yiftes that I speke of now / Men han ful ofte moore for harm than prow" (299-300). As someone who makes a living on sermonizing, the pardoner can hardly pass up this opportunity to use his skill to "quite" the physician and Host on this particular issue and, perhaps, make some money off the other pilgrims, especially when these pilgrims shout down the Host's request for a funny tale. After a prologue in which he ill-advisedly reveals his strategy and greed, undercutting his moral authority, the pardoner recycles an oft-told tale of three foolish men who meet their deaths through a gift of Fortune. Thus, the Pardoner's Tale dovetails nicely with the physician's story of a fatal gift of Nature.  

Pratt, Robert A. "The Order of the Canterbury Tales." PMLA 66:6 (Dec. 1951). 1141-1167. 

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

Two Tales Enter, One Post Leave

For this blog post I thought I would present some final thoughts on the pre-Spring Break tales. Both the Squire’s Tale and the Franklin’s Tale present a few concepts we have already seen in new ways.

First of all, I think the Squire’s Tale was purposefully made to be so “interesting” to reflect the youth of the teller. We’ve got talking birds that wear sandals, magical mirrors, and a sword that is literally double-edged. Chaucer is either poking fun at the Squire or poking fun at the sort of tale the Squire is telling. There is just way too much going on for the tale to fit properly within Chaucer’s format. It reflects the noble education of the teller while also proving that too much education can be downright boring. If the Squire is to be taken at face value as a generalist and future master in the tradition of his father, he also has to be viewed as a punk kid with a hell of an imagination and a short attention span. Chaucer not only opens up the Squire to be interrupted by the Franklin, he is also providing an example to support his own monopoly on tale-telling. He appears to be reinforcing the idea that though many of the pilgrims are more than capable of telling well-constructed and entertaining tales, at the end of the day it is best that tale-telling is left to professionals, or at least those mature enough to stick to the plot and keep the time reasonable. It is both a criticism of over-eager youth and the misuse of education.

As far as the Franklin’s Tale goes, it is refreshing to see a tale where no one gets swyved, literally or figuratively. It is the first tale where no one gets punished, destroys themselves or others, tricks someone into doing something they dont want to, or generally making a mess of things. Everything comes out happy in the end and everyone demonstrates self-control and mutual respect. Therefore it is probably the most boring tale and I can almost picture the pilgrims rolling their eyes at one another as the Franklin tells of Aurelius' change of heart at the end. It provides a solution to many of the issues with marriage we have seen up to this point, but it stops short of allowing the woman complete agency. Despite having an “ideal” marriage, she is forced to give up her public rights in order to maintain this private arrangement. Also, a large measure of her capital is committed to preserving her husband’s reputation and the sanctity of her marriage, which is the primary source of conflict in the tale. In many of the previous marriage tales (Wife of Bath, Clerk, etc.) we see a marriage that starts with conflicts of social status, beauty, and behavior that must be reconciled with marriage, while this tale starts with a marriage that must be reconciled with external conflict. The tale presents an opposing conflict to the others we’ve seen because the marital chicken comes before the social egg. Instead of figuring out how to get along with each other, like Walter and Griselda or the Knight and the Old Woman, Arveragus and Dorigen have to figure out how to make their arrangement work within their social context.

Heere taketh the makere of this post his leve.

Three ways of seeing the Pardoner

The Pardoner is a complex pilgrim but that's not to suggest he's also shrewd, though his humor is possibly misinterpreted. And why should the host have the final say of the Pardoner's intention? I propose that there are at least three ways of reading the Pardoner and his tale with no evidence for any particular interpretation:

1-He is a drunk fool who decides to do a little truth-telling, forgets all that he's said and proceeds to act as if he were anywhere and asks for a contribution. His tale, after all, reads very much like what we might expect his business to sound like. He was drunk, forgetful, foolish to begin with, and caught up in his act.

2-He is wise and crafty but merry-making like the others and - read as irony - the end to his tale, since he clearly remembers that he has told all the others his scheme, is a funny way of capitalizing on the absurdity of his job (and his performance), self-aware and on the look-out for fools who would still buy a pardon but careful by being so obvious. The anger he displays after the anger shown by the host would then be interpreted as anger at the host, not for calling him out as the fool "he really is" but going so far with the condemnation without seeing the humor of the intention. In this case the host is the fool.

3-He is a desperate fool, who might be a little drunk and really does try to pull one over on the other pilgrims. In this case he is too stupid to think they might have remembered his admission and tries to get a little money out of them after telling, what he thinks, is a solidly intimidating tale apt to convince the pilgrims of their sin. In this case the host is totally justified in his anger and the anger the pardoner shows is boarder-line psychotic.

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>.

The Decameron

Here is a link to the London Review of Books which reviews a recent translation of Boccaccio's Decameron. It is an interesting review, as are most LRB reviews (typically real academics write reviews of books in their field) which mentions the last tale of Decameron as the basis for Chaucer's Clerk's Tale. Interesting 1350's foundation for Chaucer's 1390's tales.

I am a member of the site and I signed in for this link; hopefully it works.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n05/burr01_.html

It's not working so here is my user name and password if you want to log-in to read it in full:
Username: jcclarkeru@yahoo.com
Password: 84SN9ZC5

Textual authority and the Franklin's Tale

Scholars tend to focus their analysis of the Franklin's Tale on either of two themes: its role in the marriage group or the franklin's focus on status and gentillesse. However, Chaucer incorporates in this tale another, minor theme shared with other tales in the Canterbury Tales as well as some of Chaucer's other works. Amidst the franklin's depiction of a loving marriage and questioning of the connection between gentillesse and nobility, Chaucer weaves a sarcastic thread of a questionable dependence on textual authority that leads its adherents down the wrong path, spiritually and morally. 

The Franklin's Tale could qualify as one of Chaucer's most sarcastic in the Canterbury Tales, and he applies his irony with a liberal brush to the issue of text. During the Franklin's Prologue, the franklin appears humble and self-deprecating, portraying himself as "a burel man" (716). While the footnote offers disparate meanings — uneducated man or layman — the implication is that the franklin wants to depict himself as uneducated. He adds that he "lerned nevere rhethorik" and that "colours of rhethoryk" are strange to him (719, 726). We need not wait to hear his tale to sense his duplicity; sandwiched between these two statements are references to Mt. Parnassus and Marcus Tullius Scithero. An uneducated, rude man would hardly be familiar with these elements of Greek and Roman history. 

The franklin further undercuts his assertion of burelness throughout his tale. While he begins his tale plainly enough, without incorporating any references to myths or texts, he surprises the reader with an aside on line 813: "the book seith thus." The franklin is telling his fellow pilgrims and us a tale straight out of a book! As he proceeds with the tale, as more plot details emerge, Chaucer's contemporary readers — particularly those in his circle of friends — would have recognized the story as very similar to one by Boccaccio, which he wrote in two versions, one for his Decameron and another for Filocolo (Cooper 233). Thus, less than a hundred lines into his tale, the franklin has betrayed himself as at least middling educated. 

The franklin, however, waits a couple hundred lines to begin completely dismantling his image of himself as burel. During Aurelius's plea to Apollo, he refers to a less well-known Greek goddess, Lucina, and as he languishes in grief, the franklin refers to a thirteenth-century poem about Pamphilus and Galathee (1110). During Aurelius and his brother's visit with the magician-clerk, the franklin again attempts to portray himself as ignorant, but Chaucer quickly and sarcastically reveals his falsehood. The franklin claims, "I ne kan no termes of astrologye" (1266). A few lines later, he rushes headlong into a manic list of astrological terms: tables Tolletanes, collect and expans yeris, rootes and geeris, centris and argumentz, proporcioneles convenientz, Alnath and Aries, and the heavenly spheres (1273-1282). Then, on line 1243, he again reminds us he's repeating a story he read: "this was, as thise bookes me remembre." The fatal blow to the franklin's posture of ignorance and illiteracy comes during Doringen's anguished lament, in which myth after story after myth about suicidal women tumbles out, again, "as the bookes telle" (1378).

Through the mouth of the quite educated franklin, Chaucer reintroduces the question of textual authority. It's a theme he has raised earlier in the Tales, particularly during the Wife of Bath's prologue in which Alison verbally espouses experience over education, but undercuts her own argument by citing Scripture and other texts. He continues this theme outside of the Tales, as well, in his shorter poems and envoys. Specifically, in Envoy to Bukton (see earlier blog post "Getting Personal: Chaucer's Envoy to Bukton"), he sarcastically cites the five-times-wed Alison of Bath as an established textual authority on marriage. 

In the Franklin's Tale, Chaucer portrays the use of texts as dangerous and potentially misguiding. Aurelius goes astray by pleading with Apollo, a heathen god straight out of Greek mythology with whom educated people would be familiar. For Christians, this act is tantamount to making a deal with the devil. The squire Aurelius's brother, a clerk, further leads him down the path of self-destruction through the aid of book-learning. While trying to figure out how to help his brother with his grief, the clerk remembers his studies at Orleans, where clerks eagerly pursue arcane topics, and specifically recalls a book "of magyk natureel ... Which book spak muchel of the operaciouns / Touchyne the eighte and twenty mansiouns / That longen to the moone" (1125, 1129-31). The moon's 28 stations is a Far East, Buddhist tradition, and contradictory to Christian doctrine and teaching. Chaucer further emphasizes the danger of magic and astrology in connection with learning by portraying the magician-clerk Aurelius and his brother meet on the way to Orleans as a young, learned clerk who greets them in Latin (1174). This magician-clerk has a study full of books, a fact Chaucer tells us twice in 10 lines, on lines 1207 and 1214: "In his studie, ther as his bookes be" and "Into my studie, ther as my bookes be." With the aid of unChristian learning and texts, the magician-clerk enables Aurelius in his folly, and Aurelius' foolish trust in textual authority to win him his desire leads him to make a rash promise of 1,000 pounds of gold.

Aurelius is not the only character who textual learning leads astray and to a nearly tragic end. Dorigen, after Aurelius informs her the rocks are gone and reminds her of her troth, recalls a dozen examples from mythology and history of women who commit suicide rather than lose their virginity or honor. She uses these examples to support her argument with herself that she should also commit suicide to get out of the trap she built for herself through her hasty, foolish promise to Aurelius. What she is forgetting, and what Chaucer's contemporary readers would have known, is that suicide is prohibited by Christian doctrine. The franklin earlier establishes Dorigen as a Christian woman who laments to the Lord about the rocks (876), so her forgetfulness of Christian doctrine is inexcusable. Her reliance on the wrong kind of textual authority nearly leads her to commit a grievous sin. 

With a couple twists, the franklin manages to end his story happily. Aurelius has a change of heart and releases Dorigen from her promise, and the magician-clerk subsequently releases Aurelius from his bond. However, Chaucer's warning is clear. Relying on the wrong kind of textual authority is dangerous and leads only to trouble and woe. 

It is beyond ironic, then, that the franklin (and Chaucer) attempt to teach us a lesson by using a story from a text. 

The Squire Shows His Rank

It is clear from the General Prologue that the Squire is a young man, twenty years of age, and that he is the son of the Knight. Not all squires became knights in the 14th century but one could assume that Chaucer's squire not only represents his rank as a group of men in the 2nd estate but further represents the inchoate knight because he as a young squire (some men only became squires later in life after proving the worth of their service) has as his aim to mimic the courtly solidarity and narrative panache of his father and other famous knights.

It might be expected - because of his familial tie to knighthood - that his tale would imitate the style of the The Knight's Tale and it does: there is a knight who comes to a foreign court presenting enchanted objects of war and plunder i.e. the exclusively obedient, machine-like brass horse, the omniscient mirror, the undefeated sword, etc. We also get the impression that he's heard many knight's tell their tales as in many spots the squire refers to them, "Eek in that lond, as tellen knyghtes olde," as his predecessors, "That Gawayn, with his olde curteisye" as his influences, "Who koude telle yow the forme of daunces...No man but Launcelot, and he is deed," as his ideal.

We also see his limitations as a courtly story-teller but the extent and reasons for which the squire seems at least partly aware as when he describes the characteristics of the brass horse's powers: "The hors vanysshed, I noot in what manere,/Out of hir sighte; ye gete namoore of me, " shows his inexperience as a knight (or his lack of authority as a squire) and, "The knotte why that every tale is toold,/ If it be taried til that lust be coolde...I sholde to the knotte condescende,/And maken of hir walkyng soone an ende" for his inexperience as a courtly narrator.

The most glaring imitation is the reuse of the line, "That pitee renneth soone in gentil herte" spoken by the enchanted, injured she-falcon in Canacee's lap but there is an elaboration which seems to depart from the usage in The Knight's Tale. It is firstly interesting that the Squire would put these words into the mouth of an enchanted creature, perhaps because he had heard it used so often before that it had become garnished with a sprig of idealism and history beyond his years so somewhat immortal rather than political as its connotation seems to be in The Knight's Tale; but the she-falcon extends the ideal of what constitutes a "gentil herte" as "Is preved alday, as men may it see,/As wel by werk as by auctoritee;". This seems significant in that it extends the characteristic to being "preved alday" (by giving it a broader scope of time, it lends the ideal to a broader scope of people?) by "men" and through "werk" (not just noble authority). This has the flavor of a proletariat - or a young, more modern and future knight - ingeniously voiced via an enchanted animal so not to disrupt the human hierarchy or disturb his father's sensibility.

The structure of the tale further indicates the "inchoateness" of the Squire's narrative art. There are two stories here; one, about a valiant knight with a dusting of enchantment (there's a rather fascinating, long-winded tale); and one about Canacee, the beginning of which is all that is managed. They are two concentric circles in orbit but barely overlapping instead of engulfing one, another. He is saved from his disorganization by the Franklin who, at the moment of the third onslaught of loquacity, his knightly ambitions are relaxed, "In feith, Squier, thow hast thee wel yquit/ And gentilly. I preise wel thy wit,". The host steps in as to say, "Franklin, don't interrupt, he's not finished!" but we get the sense that this is just a deferral to the young Squire's pride and the Franklin takes over the narration.

Getting Personal: Chaucer's Envoy to Bukton

During class on Thursday, Professor Wenthe mentioned briefly a short poem Chaucer wrote to a friend referring to the Wife of Bath. My curiosity piqued, I decided to ferret out this poem — known as the Envoy to Bukton — and any information surrounding it and Chaucer's other short poems.

Chaucer apparently was fond of penning shorter verses to his personal friends, offering them advice in a very tongue-in-cheek, familiar, playful manner, and participating in a literary culture of poetic exchange at the Ricardian court. A few of Chaucer's poems survive, including Envoy to Scogan, Envoy to Bukton, The Balade de Bon Conseyl (Or, Truth) and Wordes unto Adam. In The Balade de Bon Conseyl, for instance, Chaucer cautions his friend Sir Philip de la Vache about the ups and downs of life at court (Epstein 2).  Chaucer's poems were addressed to specific individuals, but this was a pretense and rather than being private, the poems would have circulated among Chaucer's friends in London. The existence of these poems "confirm the existence of an 'inner circle' of Chaucer's audience which was on intimate and confidential terms both with Chaucer's store of literary devices and with Chaucer the person" (Strohm 12). Furthermore, the voice in the poems seem to echo that in the Canterbury Tales and Chaucer's other works, a point Robert Epstein uses to support his argument that "the continuity of this poetic voice with that in the Chaucerian opus at large and the allusion in Bukton to his great work in progress provide further evidence that Chaucer's primary audience, real and ideal, was in that shifting coterie of friends and associates — educated professionals, minor aristocracy and servants of the royal bureaucracy" (2).  

Thus, we can imagine a 'Chaucerian circle' of friends who read and exchanged not only Chaucer's shorter poems, but also drafts and copies of his Canterbury Tales. Tentative dating of some of these shorter poems suggests Chaucer wrote them while or after he wrote the Canterbury Tales. In Envoy to Scogan, Chaucer refers to weather events taking place in fall 1393, and he alludes in Envoy to Bukton to an English expedition to Friesland in 1396 ("so may hap, / That thee were lever to be taken in Frise") (Pollard 46). The timeline in our textbook estimates Chaucer wrote the "marriage group" between 1392 and 1395, shortly before he wrote the Envoy to Bukton (xxv). So, the Wife of Bath would not only have been on Chaucer's mind when he referred to her in Envoy to Bukton, but she would also have been a familiar figure to Chaucer's friends and audience. 

In his Envoy to Bukton, Chaucer warns his friend against wedded life, playfully referring to the "sorrow and woe that is in marriage" and contradictorily says he "will not say how that it is the chain / of Satanas, on which he gnaweth ever." This attitude to marriage seems to echo that of the narrator in the Canterbury Tales, but more strikingly, Chaucer includes the maxim — which we've discussed in class — "lest thou do worse, take a wife; / bet is to wed than burn in worse wise." However, although he concedes it's better to marry than to burn in hell, Chaucer returns to hammering home his point that married life stinks, saying that experience will teach his friend Bukton such lessons that he would rather be taken captive in Friesland than marry again. 

In a completely satirical remark in the final stanza, Chaucer tells Bukton to go read the Wife of Bath as further proof of his argument: "The Wife of Bath I pray you that you read, / of this mattre which that we have on hand." By referring to Alison of Bath as a published authority, Chaucer imitates and mocks her (and his own) approach to her prologue of supporting her claims with scholarly works by referring to Scripture and classical texts. Much as she haphazardly tosses out those references in her prologue, Chaucer, seemingly as an afterthought, appends his reference to her near the end of his Envoy to Bukton.

Thus, in the Envoy to Bukton, Chaucer continues at least two themes from the Canterbury Tales — the trap of marriage and the debate about textual versus experiential authority — and polishes it all off by resurrecting the very recently invented Wife of Bath character as an 'established' textual authority. 

Epstein, Robert. "Chaucer's Scogan and Scogan's Chaucer." Studies in Philology. 96.1 (Winter 1999): 1-21. 

Pollard, Alfred William. Chaucer. Ayer Publishing, 1970. 

Strohm, Paul. "The Social and Literary Scene in England." Piero Boitani and Jill Mann. The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer. Second Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 1-19. 

The Debate on Marriage in the Merchant’s Tale et. al.

By now, the debate on marriage that comprises the first half of the Merchant’s Tale is obviously part of a series of such debates. The Wife, the Clerk, and now the Merchant have presented cases of marriage rife with irony, double meaning and with dream-like/fairy tale qualities. The actual voiced debates on marriage in the Merchant’s Tale between Justinus and Placebo and later Pluto and Prosperene reflect the debates between the pilgrims themselves. We begin to identify two sides, those who believe women and men are implicitly good and faithful and those who view marriage as a never-ending journey of mistrust and chicanery. An incomplete and possibly controversial listing:
Pro- marriage: The Wife, the Clerk, Placebo, Griselde, The Franklin
Anti-marriage: The Merchant, Justinus, Emelye, Walter, Prosperene
Some of the conflicts between men and women in marriage include the propriety or otherwise of marrying more than once (the Wife), whether the old ought to marry the young (Januarie), and the tendency of women toward adultery/sin (Alison, May) or complete lack thereof (Griselde).
Marriages were arranged mostly for economic reasons, and the Church’s position was that marriage was for procreation, according to an essay on marriage and divorce in the Middle Ages by Jo-Ann McNamara and Suzanne F. Wemple. Few married for love, and we can see in the Tales that lust and desire not to sin are more often reasons for marriage than mutual love and respect. Indeed, the Merchant’s Tale is essentially a tale about sexual opportunists: both Damyan and Januarie can be described this way. Like the other tales in the “marriage series”, including the as yet un-discussed Franklin’s Tale, the married couple at the end eventually find peace with one another. What differs is the mode of this eventual stalemate (cynicism intended, both by me and Chaucer, I believe). The Wife of Bath suggests that only after the surrender of maistrye to the woman can a marriage be at peace. The Clerk paints the simplest marriage as one in which the women is obedient to the point of supplicating, then mocks this ideal of his in his brilliantly- crafted envoy (as Max has interestingly shown above). The Merchant highlights the sins of women using both Biblical and pagan references (the Garden of Eden, Prosperene ate the pomegranate seeds). The Franklin concludes the set with a situation readers can finally accept, but I’ll leave that until later.

While the methods of obtaining contentment in marriage differ, the much larger theme of the tale reflecting the thoughts and desires of the teller binds them together into a set.