We discuss the Franklin's Tale as the capstone to the "marriage group" and ultimately answering the question of the Wife of Bath's Tale: Who should have the power in a marriage?
We also review some of the tales that are not in our edition: The Tales of the Man of Law, the Friar, the Summoner, and the Squire.
As we have a few month's break until resuming our course series after Christmas, I encourage listening to the Canterbury Tales on LibriVox (especially the tales so far which are not in our printed edition) and reading the Prioress' Tale and the Pardoner's Tale. For additional enjoyment of medieval England, consider reading or listening to Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott -- this would be very helpful!
Listen online [here]!
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The Canterbury
Tales
Adult
Faith Formation Series, 2023 & 2024
Overview
of the first Tales in The Canterbury Tales
I. The Fragments of the Canterbury Tales
Chaucer never published his
Canterbury Tales in one edition – in fact, it is quite certain that the Tales
were never finished (though, this does not necessarily indicate that Chaucer
intended to write more tales or include a return journey).
The tales are in ten fragments,
which allows us to readily see the order of certain tales – scholars then
debate about how these ten fragments are to be arranged amongst themselves. The
main variation is the placement of the tales of the Second Nun and of the
Canon’s Yeoman (Fragment VIII), as well as of the Physician and of the Pardoner
(Fragment VI).
Fragment I: General Prologue, Knight’s, Miller’s,
Reeve’s, and Cook’s Tales.
Fragment II: Man of Law’s Tale
Fragment III: The Wife of Bath’s,
Friar’s, and Summoner’s Tales
Fragment IV: The Clerk’s and
Merchant’s Tales
Fragment V: The Squire’s and
Franklin’s Tales
Fragment VI: The Physician’s and
Pardoner’s Tales
Fragment VII: The Shipman’s,
Prioress’, of Sir Topas and Melibee, Monk’s, and Nun’s Preist’s Tales
Fragment VIII: The Second Nun’s
and Canon’s Yeoman’s Tales
Fragment IX: The Manciple’s Tale
Fragment X: The Parson’s Tale and
Chaucer’s Retractions
General Prologue
We are introduced to the time and place. It is spring, on the
edge of London (at the Tabard Inn in Southwark), as people prepare to make
pilgrimages to Canterbury to honor St Thomas Beckett.
We are also introduced to our various pilgrims, according to
their social status and state in life – 29 pilgrims, making 30 with Chaucer
himself. The Host of the Inn (in the Cook’s prologue, we find his name to be
Harry Bailley) offers to join them on there pilgrimage, and proposed a contest
in which each will tell two stories on the way to Canterbury and two on the way
home – whoever tells the tale that is most entertaining and has the best moral
will win a free meal at the end, paid for by all the others.
Overviews of the individual tales are taken from the Harvard
Chaucer page
Knights’ Tale
Theseus, duke of Athens, returning with Ypolita from his
conquest of the Amazons, turns aside to defeat Creon, the tyrant of Thebes, who
has unjustly refused burial for his victims. Among the wounded are Palamon and
Arcite, young Thebans of royal blood. Theseus condemns them to perpetual
imprisonment. From the window of their cell they see the lovely Emily,
Ypolita's young sister, with whom both fall in love. They argue over who shall have her, though
both are helplessly imprisoned. Perotheus, a friend of Theseus, obtains
Arcite's release on the condition he never returns to Athens. Arcite is so ravaged by love he is no longer
recognizable; he returns to Athens, disguised, and takes service in Theseus'
household. Palamon, by help of a friend, escapes from captivity. He hides in a
woodland where he comes upon Arcite bemoaning his love for Emily. The two
former friends engage in deadly battle. Theseus, hunting with his queen Ypolita
and Emily, comes upon the duel and stops it. The ladies plead for the lives of
the young men, and Theseus spares them and arranges for a great tournament,
with one hundred knights to a side, to determine who shall have Emily. The tournament is held a year later. Palamon
prays to Venus to grant him Emily and the goddess agrees; Arcite prays to Mars
for victory, and Mars agrees. Wise old Saturn finds a way to satisfy both Mars
and Venus. Palamon loses the tournament; he is captured, and Arcite rides
through the arena in triumph. But a fury sent from hell by Saturn frightens his
horse, who suddenly rears and fatally injures him. Medicine does not avail, and
he dies. All are deep in mourning, Theseus is so saddened that only his old
father Egeus can comfort him. But years ease the pain, and in Parliament
Theseus proposes the marriage of Emily and Palamon, which brings final peace
between Thebes and Athens. They live in perfect love, with never a harsh word
between them.
Chaucer's story of Palamon and Arcite is based on Boccaccio's Teseide.
Nevertheless the Knight's Tale is a romance, though a very unusual one, rather
than a pseudo-classical epic; its high style, learned astrological references,
and heavy infusion of philosophical, mainly Boethian themes set it apart from
most English popular romances of the time. Yet its emphasis on the noble life,
the courtly love of Palamon and Arcite for Emelye, and the concern with duels,
tournaments, and aristocratic ceremonial show its concern with matters of
romance in its broader sense.
Miller’s Tale
John, a rich old carpenter of Oxford has a young wife, the
eighteen-year-old Alisoun, whom he guards carefully, for he is very jealous. He
has a boarder, the clerk Nicholas, who makes advances to Alisoun; she quickly
agrees and they determine to consummate the affair. Absolon, the parish clerk
and village dandy, also lusts for Alisoun, but he woos her in vain, for
Nicholas is there first. Nicholas tricks John into thinking that Noah's flood
is coming again; John rigs up three kneading tubs, in which he, Nicholas, and
Alisoun can float until the waters recede. When the flood is due, all three
climb up into the tubs. John goes to sleep, Alisoun and Nicholas go back to the
bedroom. They are interrupted by Absolon, who has come to woo Alisoun at the
window. She promises him a kiss and puts her backside out the window. Absolon
kisses it. He soon realizes his mistake. He gets a hot coulter (plow blade)
from Gervase, the smith, and returns to ask for another kiss. Nicholas puts his
backside out, Absolon strikes it with the red-hot coulter, Nicholas yells for
water; the carpenter awakes and thinks the flood has come, cuts lose his tub
and falls and breaks his arm. The neighbors rush in, and all are convinced old
John is mad.
The Miller's Tale is Chaucer's finest fabliaux; indeed, it is
the best of all the fabliaux in English or French. It embodies two widespread
motifs -- "The Misdirected Kiss" and the "Second Flood."
The Miller is a churl who attempts to "quit" the
Knight's Tale, so admired by the "gentils." A good many critics have
thus been interested in the problems of class that the Tale seems to raise.
Reeve’s Tale
In Trumpington, near Cambridge, dwells Symkin, a proud, thieving
Miller. He has a wife, the daughter of the parish priest, an ugly daughter,
Malyne, and an infant child. Two students, Aleyn and John, bring the college's
wheat to be ground into flour, determined to outwit the thieving miller. Aleyn
watches the grain pouring in the hopper, John watches it coming out. The Miller
lets their horse run off into the fens; John and Aleyn run after it, and the
Miller steals some of their grain. They finally catch the horse and ask the
Miller to put them up for the night. All must sleep in the one room of the
house -- John and Aleyn in one bed, the daughter in another, and the Miller and
his wife in yet another, with the baby's cradle at its foot. Aleyn determines to
have recompense for the lost grain, and he gets in bed with the daughter. John,
not to be outdone, moves the cradle to the bottom of the bed in which he lies.
When the wife gets up in the night to go to the privy, she feels about for the
cradle, finds it, and gets in bed with John. In the early morning Aleyn returns
to his own bed but, finding the cradle, goes instead to the Miller's bed. The
Miller awakes, a fight ensues, and the Miller is beaten badly.
The acerbic Reeve's Tale, motivated by the teller's anger with
the Miller, is less congenial in tone than the Miller's Tale he so resents, but
it is no less skillful. The Reeve's Tale is, of course, one of Chaucer's
fabliaux, and it is apparently based directly on a previously existing French
fabliauz.
The Reeve's Tale is notable for its use of the Northern dialect
in the Clerk's speech. The Northern dialect was especially grating on the ears
of those who spoke the Midlands or Southern varieties of speech.
The Reeve's Tale -- motivated as it is by the Reeve's desire for
revenge -- presents a far less jolly view of the world than does the Miler's
Tale, and to some readers it suffers by the comparison. But it has its own
virtues, combining the farcical elements of the "mistaken beds" with
the slapstick humor of the conclusion and the intellectual trickery of the
clerks. The Reeve's Tale has little of
the "Merry Old England" that seems to be embodied in the Miller's
Tale, but it has its own hard-edged wit and in some ways is probably closer to
the life of the times than is The Miller's Tale.
Cook’s Tale
Perkyn Revelour, a dissolute apprentice of London, is discharged
by his master for theft. He moves in with a fellow thief whose wife runs a shop
as a front and swyved for her livelihood (i.e. a prostitute).
This tale is left unfinished.
Man of Law’s Tale
Syrian merchants carry home to their Sultan news of the
beautiful and virtuous Custance, daughter of the Emperor of Rome. He loves her
unseen and agrees to adopt Christianity if she will be his wife. The Emperor
agrees and Custance leaves sadly for Syria. The Sultan's mother, enraged that
her son has determined to take a new faith, arranges a massacre at a welcoming
banquet. All are slain except Custance, who is set adrift in a rudderless
boat. She drifts to Northumbria. She is
taken in by a constable and his wife Hermengild, both of whom become Christian.
An evil knight slays Hermengild and blames Custance for the deed. King Alla
holds court, and the knight who accuses Custance is struck dead. Alla marries
Custance. They have a male child, Maurice. Donegild, the king's mother, by
falsified letters makes Alla think Custance has borne a monster, and she
contrives the exile of Custance and her son. They are set adrift in the same
rudderless boat in which she arrived. Alla learns the truth and slays
Donegild. Custance drifts near a castle,
where the lord's steward comes aboard and tries to rape her; aided by heaven,
she knocks him overboard and drifts on. A Roman senator, returning from a
punitive expedition to Syria, comes upon Custance in her boat and brings her
and her son to Rome. Meanwhile, King Alla has set out from for Rome to do
penance for killing Donegild. Alla and Custance are reunited when Alla sees
Maurice and recognizes his resemblance to Custance. She is then reunited with
her father, the Emperor. Later Mauruce succeeds to the imperial throne. Alla
and Custance return to Northumbria. When Alla dies, Custance returns to her
father in Rome.
The Tale told by the Man of Law also appears in John Gower's Confession
Amantis. That fact is important to the Introduction to The Man of Law's
Tale: in that introduction, the Man of Law first praises Chaucer for his
exaltation of women and he lists the heroines of Chaucer's Legend of Good Women
(along with others who may or may not have been intended for later inclusion in
that work). Then he says that Chaucer would never tell such "cursed
stories" as the tales of Canace and Machaire and of Appolonius of Tyre. The
story of Constance belongs to a tradition of stories of "exiled
queens".
The Tale of Constance is a tale that Gower also tells in his
Confessio, and this is the first of a number of tales in The Canterbury Tales
that have analogues in Gower's work: The Wife of Bath's Tale, The Physician's
Tale, and the Manciple's Tale, like the Man of Law's Tale, have their
counterparts in The Confessio Amantis. It is almost as if Chaucer is
challenging his friend to a tale-telling contest of the sort that Harry Bailey
establishes for the pilgrims themselves.
The most notable difference between Gower's and Chaucer's
versions is obvious even on a casual reading of the two texts: Chaucer's
version is cast in the elegant rime royal stanza, which Chaucer first employed
in English verse, and his tale, unlike Gower's rather plain style, is cast in
the elaborate high style, which his contemporaries and imitators regarded as
his principal contribution to English poetry.
Wife of Bath’s
Prologue: Alisoun,
the Wife of Bath, has been married five times and is ready for another husband:
Christ never specified how many times a woman should marry. Virginity is fine
but wives are not condemned; the Apostle said that my husband would be my
debtor, and I have power over his body. Three of my husbands were good and two
bad. The first three were old and rich and I picked them clean. One of my old
husbands, emboldened with drink, would come home and preach against women; but
I got the better of him. My fourth husband was young and he had a mistress. I
pretended to be unfaithful and made him burn in his own grease. I already had
my eye on young Jankin, pall-bearer for my fourth, and he became my fifth and
favorite husband. He beat me. Once when he was reading aloud from his Book of
Wicked Wives, I tore a page from his book, and he knocked me down (so hard I am
still deaf from it). I pretended to be dying, and when he leaned over to ask
forgiveness, I knocked him into the fireplace. We made up, and he gave me full
sovereignty in marriage; thereafter I was kind and faithful, and we lived in
bliss.
The Wife of Bath's Prologue is in the genre of what one might
call the "apologia," an explanation (and defense) of one's occupation
and life -- in her case, marriage (weaving being a minor part of her life, at
least insofar as it is presented here). Like the Pardoner and the Canon's
Yeoman (to whose prologues this should be compared), Alisoun explains the
tricks of her trade and defends a life style that might be shocking if it were
not presented with such energy and (in her case, good humor).
Tale: In Arthur's day, before
the friars drove away the fairies, a lusty bachelor of the king's court raped a
young maiden. He is taken and condemned to die (such was the custom then) but
the king, in deference to Queen Guenevere's pleas, allows the ladies to judge
him. They tell him he can save his life only if a year and a day later he can
tell them what it is that women most desire. He wanders long without finding
the answer; he is about to return disconsolate when he comes upon an old and
remarkably ugly woman. She says that if he swears to do whatever she will next
ask him, she will tell him the answer. He agrees and returns with the answer:
women most desire to have sovereignty over their husbands. Guenevere and her
ladies are amazed; they grant him his life. The old woman then makes her
demand: that he marry her. She will accept no less. On their wedding night; he
turns away from her. She asks him what is the matter. He answers that she is
old and ugly and low born. The old woman demonstrates to him that none of these
matter -- especially noble birth, since true gentilesse depends on deeds rather
than birth. She offers him the choice: he can have her old and ugly and
faithful or young, beautiful, and possibly unchaste. He tells her to choose; he
grants her the sovereignty. When he does so she turns into a beautiful maiden,
and they live thereafter in perfect joy.
The Wife of Bath's tale is a brief Arthurian romance
incorporating the widespread theme of the "loathly lady," which also
appears in John Gower's Tale of Florent. It is the story of a woman magically
transformed into an ugly shape who can be restored to her former state only by
some specific action -- the feminine version of "The Frog Prince" in
fairy tales.
There are two long digressions in Alisoun's tale -- the story of
Midas' ears and the pillow lecture on gentilesse. The tale of Midas is her
version of the story told by Ovid in his Metamorphoses; he tells both the story
of Midas' golden touch and the story of his ass's ears. The Wife of Bath uses
only the second, with characteristic changes.
The second digression, the lecture on true nobility, reflects a
variety of sources, since her position is that of most moralists in Chaucer's
time. Chaucer names Dante among his authorities, including Dante's Convivio.
Though the Wife of Bath's tale has the form of the traditional tale of the
"Loathly Lady," it also embodies some surprising traces of the
courtly tradition: It illustrates the transforming power of love. This is the effect of love: that the true
lover can not be corrupted by avarice; love makes an ugly and rude person shine
with all beauty, knows how to endow with nobility even one of humble birth, can
even lend humility to the proud; he who loves is accustomed humbly to serve
others. Love can overcome poverty, old
age, and even ugliness. It is almost as
surprising to find this doctrine of love in The Wife of Bath's Tale as it is to
find her quoting Dante. Her tale considerably complicates the character that
shines through in her lively prologue.
Friar’s Tale
An avaricious archdeacon has in his employ a sly summoner, a
thief and pimp. This summoner, out to serve a false summons on a poor widow,
meets a gay yeoman, clad all in green. The summoner (ashamed of his true
occupation) claims to be a bailiff; the yeoman says that he too is a bailiff.
They swear to be brothers and share all that they get. The yeoman, the summoner
learns, is a devil. They come upon a
carter who curses his horses. Take them, says the summoner; they are ours. No,
says the devil, the curse did not come from the heart. Then they come upon a
poor old woman on whom the summoner tries to serve a false summons. She curses
him; it comes from the heart, and the devil carries him off.
The mendicant friar is a frequent figure, often satirical, in
later Middle English. The Friar's Tale
is directly aimed at the Summoner, who is his professional rival (in that both
prey upon the poor in the parishes), and he characterizes the Summoner in his
prologue as a "rennere up and down/ With mandementz for fornicacioun"
(III.1283-84). Ecclesiastical courts, Archdeacons, and Summoners were frequent
objects of complaint and satire. The Friar is a preacher and his tale employs a
favorite device of preachers of the time, the exemplum.
This is a brief story told to illustrate a moral point.
Summoner’s Tale
In Yorkshire, at Holdernesse, a friar making his rounds, begging
from householders, calls upon old Thomas, who is very ill. The wife tells him
Thomas is grouchy, and the friar preaches a sermon on the evils of anger. Then
he presses Thomas for a rich gift; Thomas says he has already given all he can,
but the friar persists. Finally Thomas says he will give him something only if
he swears to divide it equally among the members of his convent. The friar
swears to do so. Thomas tells him the treasure is by his backside; the friar
reaches down and Thomas lets a fart in his hand. The friar is so angry he cannot speak; he
goes to the lord of the manor to complain, though the lord is more fascinated
by the intellectual problem of dividing an indivisible. The lord's squire
provides the solution: each of the twelve members of the friar's convent is to
lay his nose at the end of a spoke on a wheel, with the friar seated in the
middle; when he breaks wind, the fart will drift equally to each of the waiting
noses.
The Summoner's Prologue and Tale belong to the extensive body of
contemporary literature attacking the Friars, so-called
"Anti-Fraternal" texts.
As Janet Richardson's note in the Riverside Chaucer says:
"The squire's solution seems to parody iconographic representations of the
descent of the Holy Spirit to the twelve apostles at Pentecost" (p. 879,
note to 2255, which see for bibliographical references). If so, the blasphemy
in the final scene nicely balances with that in the prologue.
Clerk’s Tale
The noble Walter enjoys his freedom as a bachelor, but his
people implore him to marry and beget an heir. He agrees, provided the choice
of a wife is entirely his. His people assent, and he chooses Griselda, daughter
of the low-born serf Janicula. Before the marriage she swears never to disobey
him, whatever he may ask, nor complain of anything he may do. She bears a
daughter, and Walter, to test her obedience, sends a servant to take away the
child (apparently to put her to death). Griselda accepts this. She bears a son,
and again the child is taken away, and again Griselda accepts it without
demurral. Finally Walter sends Griselda away, apparently to take a new wife. He
sends for the son and daughter, telling Griselda the girl is to be his new wife
and asking her to prepare for the wedding. Griselda patiently does so. Walter
announces that Griselda has passed the test, and that her children live. He
welcomes her back as his wife, and Griselda's son succeeds Walter as Marquis.
The Host pleads with the Clerk not to use the high style, and
the Clerk complies with a tale told in a simple and straightforward manner (as
compared to the Man of Law's Tale, which the Clerk's Tale generally resembles).
Chaucer draws on a literary source, on a tale first written down
by Boccaccio: Decameron ; Tenth Day, Tenth Tale. Petrarch, Boccaccio's good
friend, was much taken with this tale, and he decided to translate it into
Latin. Chaucer follows this version of the tale very closely and takes few
freedoms with Petrarch's text.
The Clerk's Tale has always fascinated readers and critics,
primarily perhaps because it seems so intractable to criticism. Most
interpretations of the tale assume it is a "religious fable," as
Petrarch seemed to believe. The tale is taken as purely symbolic and Griselda
is regarded as a type of Job. Yet there are suggestions of depth to the
characters of Walter and Griselda that make it difficult to dismiss her as
merely a symbol of Christian patience in the face of adversity.
Merchant’s Tale
January, a noble sixty-year-old bachelor, determines he must
marry and beget an heir; he insists on a young wife and settles upon the fair
and youthful May. The issue of January's marriage is debated by Justinus, who
argues against it, and Placebo, a flattering courtier who agrees with January's
determination to marry. January loses his sight, and May conspires with a young
squire to cuckold him, which she does in a pear tree. Pluto restores January's
sight; Prosperine gives May the wit to convince the old man that he should not
believe what he has seen with his own eyes.
The central episode of the Merchant's Tale is like a fabliaux,
though of a very unusual sort: It is cast in the high style, and some of the
scenes (the marriage feast, for example) are among Chaucer's most elaborate
displays of rhetorical art.
The most important sources of the Merchant's Tale appear among
the Canterbury Tales themselves. The debate on marriage draws upon the Prologue
of the Wife of Bath, which is itself cited by Justinus (VI.1685), and January's
idea of a good wife seems to be based on the Clerk's Tale (cf. IV.2345-46 and
IV. 351-57). Some of the ideas set forth in the debate on marriage echo those
in the Parson's Tale (see n. 1441-55, p. 886 in The Riverside Chaucer) and the
good wives cited are those listed in the Melibee (VII. 2551-74). St. Jerome's
Adversus Jovinianum, especially his argument against marriage, is cited almost
as often here as in the Wife of Bath's Prologue.
There has been considerable critical disagreement over the
degree to which this tale is dramatic -- how much (if at all) the tale reflects
the Merchant's own unhappy experiences with marriage. Some critics have found
the tale darkly and deeply ironic; others have been troubled by the mixture of
style and genres and the apparent violation of decorum (esp. IV.1685-87).
Squire’s Tale
Part I -- In Tartary, king Cambuskan, who has two sons by his
wife Elpheta; Algarsyf and Cambalus, and a daughter, Canacee, holds his
birthday feast. At the third course a knight rides in bearing four gifts from
the king of Arabia and India -- a mechanical brass steed, a magic mirror, a
ring that enables its bearer to understand the language of the birds, and a
sword that will cure any wound it makes. The ring and mirror are gifts for
Canacee.
Part II -- Canacee finds a wounded falcon, lamenting her sad
lot. Canacee, whose ring allows her to understand the bird, hears the story of
her betrayal by a false lover. Now, the narrator says, I shall tell the
adventures of Cambuskan, Cambalus, and Algarsif.
Part III -- Here the poem ends.
The Squire's Tale is left unfinished; perhaps that is just as
well: the plot implied in the final lines would require a tale longer than the
Knight's Tale for its completion. No
source is known for the Squire's Tale. Clearly it owes something to the late
medieval interest in the exotic Orient. It
is not clear whether the Squire's Tale is really unfinished (abandoned or left
aside for later completion) or is meant to be interrupted by the speech of the
Franklin that immediately follows.
Franklin’s Tale
Dorigen and Averagus marry, swearing that neither will ever
exert absolute power over the other. Aurelius, a young squire, in Averagus'
absence, courts Dorigen, who rejects him by setting what she thinks is an
impossible task: remove the threatening rocks from the coast, she promises, and
I shall grant you my love. With the help of a learned clerk (to whom he
promises an immense fee), Aurelius succeeds (though perhaps only by illusion)
and he then demands her love. She tells Averagus, who orders her to keep the
assignation with Aurelius. Aurelius, impressed with Averagus' action, in turn
releases Dorigen from her promise. The learned clerk, impressed by Aurelius'
action, forgives the squire his debt. The question remains: who was the
"most free"?
The Franklin labels his tale a Breton lay (The "Breton lays" are short
romances, often (but not always) based on the earlier French lais of Marie de
France. Most often they involve love and the supernatural). Although the Franklin's Tale is a very
unusual "Breton lay," it does have elements of romance.
The Franklin's Tale has long been regarded as the culmination of
"The Marriage Group," the discussion of marriage that extends at
least from the Wife of Bath's Prologue to the Franklin's Tale, which has
traditionally been taken as in some sense resolving the "marriage
question" proposed by the Wife of Bath -- who should rule in a marriage?
