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.