Overview of the individual tales from the Canterbury Tales, taken largely from the Harvard University Canterbury Tales site [here].
The Canterbury
Tales
Adult
Faith Formation Series, 2023 & 2024
Overview
and Brief Notes about the 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 their 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.
Overview of the Characters who will tell Tales (with the order
of the Tales listed)
Knight (1) – a worthy man and noble.
Squire (11) – son of the knight, not so worthy or noble. Lusty.
Prioress (16) – depicted in a form of mock-praise.
Self-important and worldly.
Second Nun (21) – little said about her individually.
Nun’s Priest (20) -
little said about him individually, but his tale of Chanticleer is very
fun
Monk (19) – very worldly and unfaithful to his vows and prayers.
Friar (7) – a lusty and sinful person.
Merchant (10) – trades in furs and silks, part of a wealthy and
powerful new middle class.
Clerk (9) – a poor student of philosophy who loves learning and
prays for his benefactors. A good boy
Man of Law (5) – a successful lawyer who knows the law well and
upholds justice
Franklin (12) – given to excessive love of food and drink, a
glutton.
Cook (4) – a bit of a drunk and tends to be argumentative.
Shipman (15) – not a great person, almost more like a pirate.
Physician (13) – though he is a good doctor, he loves money and
cares little for the soul.
Wife of Bath (6) – lusty widow who has been married five times
and talks a lot.
Parson (24) – there is no better priest than this virtuous and
good parson.
Chaucer himself (17 & 18) – important to remember that he
speaks sometimes as the pilgrim in an ironical
way, intending us to recognize something different. “The pilgrim” is not “the
author”
Miller (2) – gruff and rough and a drunk.
Manciple (23) – his job is to get food and provisions for
lawyers, but he is very smart himself.
Reeve (3) – lean and thin and argumentative.
Summoner (8) – greedy and sinful man, sexually deviant.
Pardoner (14) – perhaps a homosexual, some sort of sexual
deviant. Sells fake indulgences/relics.
[Canon’s Yeoman, who joins the company later is not in the
prologue]
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?
The Physician’s Tale
Virginia, the daughter of
Virginius, is fourteen years old, beautiful, and virtuous. You who have charge
of lords' daughters, see that you teach them virtue. Assent unto no vice. You
fathers and mothers must give good examples by your own living. Appius, a
wicked judge, conceives a lecherous desire for Virginia; He gets his churl
Claudius to bring a suit, swearing she is his slave. Virginius is summoned;
Appius awards Virginia to Claudius. Virginius goes home, strikes off Virginia's
head and takes it to Appius. The people rebel, throwing Appius in prison, where
he slays himself. Claudius, the churl, is condemned to be hanged, but Virginius
pleads for his life and he is exiled. Here one may see the reward of sin.
Chaucer attributes his story of
Virginia and Appius to Titus Livius, the historian of Rome, but his principal
source is the version in the Romance of the Rose. Chaucer's friend, John Gower,
also includes a version of this tale in his Confessio amantis:
Appius and Virginia in Gower's Confessio.
The Physician's Tale is not among
Chaucer's finest works; the long digression on governesses and parents seems to
have no function; the relevance of the tale to its stated moral --
"Forsaketh synne, er synne yow forsake" (VI.286) -- is obscure at
best. Yet the tale is not without merit; the tenderness of the scene between
Virginia and Virginius -- when the father, ashen faced, looks upon his doomed
child -- is in Chaucer's best pathetic vein.
The Pardoner’s Tale
The pardoner describes his
professional tricks in his prologue and then delivers a sermon embodying an
exemplum of three riotous young men, frequenters of a tavern, who set out to
kill Death. They meet a mysterious old man and rudely demand that he tell them
where death is. He tells them to follow the crooked path; they will find death
under a tree. They find gold; and the youngest then goes into town for food and
drink. He poisons the wine. When he returns his two friends kill him and then
drink the wine. They too die. This, the Pardoner says, is the reward of
gluttony. Then the pardoner offers to sell his wares to the Host, who rudely
rebuffs him. The Knight must intervene to make peace, and the pilgrimage
continues.
The Pardoner's Prologue is, like
those of the Wife of Bath and Canon's Yeoman, an "apologia" or
"literary confession," in which a character explains his or her way
of life. The Pardoner's Tale embodies an exemplum. The old man in Chaucer's
version is a far more mysterious figure than in any of the other versions of
the tale. The most difficult problem, in both the prologue and the tale, is the
question of the Pardoner's sexual identity. There are no other clues to the
Pardoner's sexual identity in early comments on Chaucer's tales. And Chaucer --
who says only "I trowe" he is a gelding or mare -- leaves the
solution of this problem up to his readers. That may be the most important clue
of all. Nevertheless, critics remain fascinated with the figure of the
Pardoner.
The Shipman’s Tale
A rich merchant of Saint Denis
(near Paris) has a beautiful wife and maintains a splendid household. The monk
Dan John, who claims he is a cousin, is a frequent visitor. One day Dan John
comes to call when the merchant is busy in his counting house. He makes
advances to the wife, who says her wretched husband will not give her a hundred
franks, which she needs to pay a debt; if he can give her that amount, she will
show her gratitude. He says he will bring them, and he "caught her by the
flanks." When the merchant must go
on business to Flanders the monk borrows a hundred franks from him. He gives
the money to the wife, and he takes his pleasure of her. When the merchant
returns and asks for his money, Dan John says he repaid it to the wife. When
the Merchant later asks his wife for the money (which she has spent), she turns
the tables, telling him she spent it on clothing, since it is to his honor to
have her richly dressed. She will pay him back in bed -- "score it upon my
tail."
The Shipman's Tale is a fabliaux.
Its setting in France and even its use of French phrases, perhaps as a touch of
"local color," distinguish it sharply from works such as the Miller's
and Reeve's Tales, which are clearly set in Chaucer's own place and time. The
basic story in the Shipman's Tale -- "The Lover's Gift Regained" --
is ancient and widespread, and it remains in circulation today as an orally
transmitted "dirty joke." Chaucer's version may well have been based
on some oral version, or he may have drawn on one of a number of written
versions.
The Prioress’ Tale
In far-off Asia a little child
walks through the ghetto on his way to school, singing Alma redemptoris
as he goes. The Jews, outraged, hire a homicide who seizes the child, cuts his
throat, and throws the body in a privy. The child's distraught mother searches
for him throughout the ghetto. Wondrously the child begins to sing; the provost
comes, puts the Jews to death, and has the child carried to the church. There
the child explains that the Virgin Mary laid a grain upon his tongue and he
will sing until it is removed. When the grain is removed the child gives up the
ghost. He is buried as a martyr.
The Prioress' Tale is a
"miracle of the Virgin," a popular genre of devotional literature.
The stories are short, often like children's fairy tales, with the figure of
the Jew playing the part of the "boogie man," from whom the Virgin protects
the heroes and heroines. This tale is among the most tender in The Canterbury
Tales ; the brief vignette of life in a fourteenth-century grammar school is an
exquisite touch. It appealed especially to nineteenth-century poets and
critics. Matthew Arnold used a line from it to illustrate Chaucer's finest
verse, and William Wordsworth translated it into modern English. Yet, as
Wordsworth wrote, this tenderness is set in a context of "fierce
bigotry." The tale is violently anti-semitic. It is rooted in the ancient
and persistent myth of "blood libel," the story of Jews murdering
Christian children. Medieval popes denounced the libel and urged tolerance for
the Jews. Yet the Prioress probably knew no Jews (they were expelled from
England in 1290) and they exist for her mainly as a literary convention of the
"miracles of the Virgin."
As The Riverside Chaucer, p. 16,
puts it: "Chaucer was a man of his time, sharing its faults as well as its
virtues."
Chaucer’s Tale of Sir Topas
Sir Thopas, born in Flanders, is
a doughty knight whom all the maidens love, though he is chaste and no lecher.
He rides out one day; he is in love with an elf-queen whom he has seen in a
dream. He rides off to find her and encounters Sir Olifaunt, a giant, who tells
him to ride off, since the elf-queen is nearby. Thopas says he will get his
armor and fight the next day. In the second Fitt Thopas is armed; in the Third
Fitt he rides off on his adventure, "Til on a day --" The Host can stand this no longer and orders
Chaucer to tell something else. He agrees and tells the prose Tale of Melibee.
Sir Thopas is a delightful
send-up of the popular English romances. Hardly a line is without its parallel
in surviving romances. Chaucer's parody of the English popular romances is an
affectionate one; he could have written the work only after a long and close
acquaintance with the genre. Chaucer leaves the Tale of Sir Thopas unfinished,
like the Squire's Tale (another romance, though of a quite different stylistic
register). He turns then to the Melibee, and a greater contrast can hardly be
imagined. Perhaps that is part of the function of Sir Thopas.
Chaucer’s Tale of Melibee
Melibeus' enemies break into his
house, beat his wife Prudence and wound his daughter Sophie with five mortal
wounds. He is enraged. His wife counsels him to be patient in suffering. She
advises him to call his council. He does; and the majority advise him to avenge
himself by war. He agrees. Prudence advises him to reconsider; although he
scorns to be ruled by a woman's counsel, she convinces him to listen to her.
She tells him how to choose counsel and how to use it and she discourses on
such matters as the proper uses of riches and power. She advises him to seek
peace rather than war. Finally, he says that he will do as she wishes. She
tells him to summon his enemies and forgive them; he does so, thanking God for
sending him a wife of such great discretion.
The Melibee is a translation of
Renaud de Louens' French translation of the Latin Liber de consolationis et
consilii by Albertanus of Brescia. Until
quite recent years it was scorned by most critics. A standing joke among older
Chaucerians was that Chaucer tells the tale of Melibee to avenge himself for
Harry Baily's crude interruption of Sir Thopas.
But in fact Harry seems to be delighted by the tale.
The Monk’s Tale
The Monk tells a series of brief
tragedies, of which he has a hundred in his cell. He tells of Lucifer, Adam,
Samson, Hercules, Nebuchadnezzar, Balthazar, Zenobia, Peter of Spain, Peter of
Cypres, Bernabo of Lombardy, Ugolino of Pisa, Nero, Holofernes, Antiochus,
Alexander, Julius Caesar, Croesus -- at which point, the Knight can take no
more and calls for a halt. Harry joins in, asking for a tale of hunting. The
monk refuses to tell any more tales, and Harry turns to the Nun's Priest.
The Monk has seemed to many a
very bad monastic type, flouting all the rules of his order. The Monk may be
better than he seems. Certainly his tale shows him to be more monastic than we
may have thought: the wretchedness of this world is well displayed in his
collection of tragedies.
The Monk's Tale is usually
considered an early work of Chaucer, adapted for inclusion in The Canterbury
Tales. If so, it is an experiment in brief narrative. There is no one source
for the Monk's tale.
When the Knight interrupts, he
stops what threatens to be a very long performance (the Monk says he has a
hundred tragedies in his cell), and a very gloomy one (given the subject); many
readers are likely to agree with Harry Bailey's enthusiastic seconding of the
Knight's interruption. But Harry is hardly a perceptive critic of the works on
which he comments in The Tales, and the Knight bases his objection mainly on
the ground that he himself prefers comedy. More sympathetic or more
sophisticated readers may find a good deal to admire in the Monk's Tale and the
tragedies it presents.
The Nun’s Preist’s Tale
In a chicken yard owned by a poor
widow, the rooster Chaunticleer lives in royal splendor with his seven wives,
of whom his favorite is the fair Pertelote. He dreams that he is attacked by a
strange beast (a fox, which he does not recognize because he has never seen
one). Pertelote advises he forget the dream; dreams, she says, come from
indigestion. Chaunticleer insists on the power of dreams to predict the future.
But he takes her advice. Later that day a fox appears and by trickery seizes
Chaunticleer and carries him off, pursued by all of the old widow's household.
Chaunticleer tells the fox to taunt his pursuers; the fox opens his mouth to do
so, and Chaunticleer is free to fly into a tree. Chaunticleer, the fox, and the
narrator all draw morals from the adventure.
The Nun's Priest's Tale is
ultimately based on the fable "Del cok e del gupil" ("The Cock
and the Fox") by Marie de France. It is a fable in the tradition of Aesop,
told to point a moral: Marie's Fable of the Cock and the Fox. The simple
aesopian fables featuring the clever fox were soon expanded into the much more
elaborate Roman de Renart, an "epic version" of Reynard the Fox's
adventures. Chaucer seems to have known this version and drew upon it for some
details, as well, perhaps, for the mock-heroic tone of his work.
It may be that Chaucer is urging
us to read his tale of a Cock and a Fox allegorically, to discover the
"moralite." Or this may be one more joke in Chaucer's most elaborate
spoof.
The Second Nun’s Tale
Cecilia, a noble Roman maiden, is
wedded to Valerian, but she tells him her guardian angel will slay anyone who
touches her; to see the angel he must first be baptized. She sends him to Saint
Urban, who is in hiding. Valerian is converted; his brother Tiburce is also
converted. The prefect Almachius orders them siezed, but the officer sent for
them is converted by Cecilia. She refuses to worship the Roman gods; Almachius
commands her to worship the gods and boasts of his power; Cecilia shows him the
foolishness of his arguments. She is condemned to be burned in a "bath of
flames"; she survives a night and a day. A tormentor attempts to behead
her, striking three times. She survives for three days, preaching the faith.
Finally she dies; her house becomes the church of St. Cecilia in Rome, where it
survives "unto this day."
The Second Nun tells a 'saint's
life,' one of the most popular of medieval literary genres. The saint's life
typically tells of the life, miracles, and martyrdom of the hero or heroine.
The general resemblances between this genre and romance have often been noted
(though there is little of romance in the Life of Saint Cecilia).
Chaucer based his life of St.
Cecilia on the Legenda aurea -- The Golden Legend -- by Jacobus de Voragine,
one of the most widely read works, among both religious and laity, in the later
Middle Ages.
Chaucer's Life of Saint Cecilia
is introduced by the three-part prologue -- a disquisition on idleness (vv.
1-28), an invocation to Mary (vv. 29-84), and the interpretation of the name
Cecilia (vv. 85-119). The Invocation to Mary -- Invocacio ad Mariam -- is based
upon Dante's Prayer to the Virgin at the beginning of the last canto of his
Divine Comedy: Paradiso, Canto 33.
The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale
At Boughton under Blee (about
five miles from Canterbury) the pilgrims are overtaken by a Canon and his
servant, who have ridden hard to catch up. The Yeoman greets the company and,
on the Host's questioning him, boasts of the power of his master. The Canon,
fearing the revelations his Yeoman may make, rides away. Since he is gone, the
Yeoman says, he will tell all his master's business. In Part I of his tale, the
Yeoman tells of his master's failed attempts to find the Philosopher's Stone,
and he laments his own fascination with the craft. In Part II, the Yeoman tells
of the trickery of a canon (not his master, he says) who convinces a London
priest that he has the power to change base metals into silver and gold. The
greedy priest eagerly pays for the recipe; the tricky canon disappears. Lo, the
secrets of alchemy will never be found; the writers use terms too dark for our
understanding, explaining the unknown by the unknown. God does not want the
philosophers to reveal the secret; therefore, let it go; he who works contrary
to God will never succeed.
There are no existing tales on
which Chaucer might have based his Canon's Yeoman's Tale. Even the figure of
the dishonest alchemist was rare before Chaucer's time. The Renaissance rather
than the Middle Ages was the age in which alchemy flourished; however, alchemy
was becoming increasingly popular in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
Older scholars speculated that
Chaucer knew about alchemy from bitter experience, that he had been hoodwinked
by William Shuchirch, a canon at Windsor. This is only speculation; it does
seem likely that Chaucer had some personal experience of chemical processes --
one of the false canon's tricks depends upon the knowledge that mercury
evaporates at high temperatures.
The Manciple’s Tale
Phoebus, who slew Phitoun with
his bow, was the greatest musician and singer on earth. He had a crow white as
a swan, which sang beautifully and could speak. He had a beautiful wife whom he
deeply loved and of whom he was very jealous. It is a mistake to think one can
guard a woman. Birds, cats, she-wolves follow their nature. Phoebus' wife had a
leman (nay; that is knavish speech!) The crow tells Phoebus of his wife's
infidelity. Phoebus kills the woman. Then he repents his hasty deed, and for
sorrow he breaks his musical instruments and his bow. He turns on the crow,
takes away its beautiful song and turns its lovely white feathers black. The
moral: think on the crow; guard your tongue; be author of no new tidings.
Stories of "the tell-tale
bird" are widespread and take a variety of forms. The ultimate source of
Chaucer's tale is Ovid's account of Phoebus and the Crow in the Metamorphoses.
The Manciple's Tale is the last
work of fiction in The Canterbury Tales ; "And sithe th'ende is every
tales strengthe" (Troilus 2 260), this brief tale may have an important
function in the structure of the whole work.
The Parson’s Tale
When Harry Bailey calls on the
Parson for a final tale to fulfill "al myn ordinaunce, he demands "a
fable anon, for cokkes bones." The Parson refuses to tell any fable
(fiction). The tale he tells is in prose (he scorns verse) and is not a fable,
a tale, but rather a treatise on penance. The Parson begins in a sermon-like
manner, stating his text (from Jeremiah 6:16): "Stondeth upon the weyes,
and seeth and axeth of olde pathes (that is to seyn, of olde sentences) which
is the goode wey, and walketh in that wey, and ye shal fynde refresshynge for
youre soules, etc." (ParsT X.77-8)
This is what Chaucer's pilgrims
have been doing upon their "weyes," debating a variety of paths of
life. Repentance, the Parson says, is the true way.
He begins with a definition of
penance and part I of his tale (X.75-X.386) is a discussion of the various
sorts of contrition and the distinction between venial and deadly sins, which
leads to Part II, a discussion of the seven deadly sins and their remedies:
Pride (remedied by humility), Envy (love of one's neighbors), Anger (meekness),
Sloth (strength), Avarice (pity, mercy), Gluttony (abstinence), Lechery
(chastity). Part II itself is divided in three parts, the first of which is the
section of the Seven Deadly Sins described above. Part II (beginning at line
958) is on confession, Part III (beginning at line 1029) is on Satisfaction,
and the tale ends with a call for those who seek "the endelees blisse of
hevene" to repent and make satisfaction for their sins.
Chaucer appears to have taken
this advice, because what follows next is Chaucer's Retraction, in which he
repents his "guilts" in writing of "worldly vanities" and
prays that he have grace to bewail his sins.
The Parson's Tale is surely the
least read of the Canterbury Tales, not surprisingly, for it is not a literary
work. It is a straightforward treatise on repentance and sin. And it ends with
Chaucer's renunciation of the very works for which we admire him. Nevertheless,
even beginning students should at least scan a translation of the Tale; it is
not one of Chaucer's great works but it deserves more attention than it has
received.
Some earlier critics were
convinced that Chaucer could not have written the Parson's Tale and Retraction,
but there is no basis for that belief. The work is a translation from a variety
of sources drawn from the rich tradition of penitential treatises in Latin and
French.
The account of the Seven Deadly
Sins has something of the air of an "Estates Satire," of the sort
apparent in John Gower's Confessio Amantis, which is structured as an account
of the Seven Deadly Sins (sins against the god of Love, at least in the
beginning). As such, it provides a new view of some of the characters in the
General Prologue: the Squire's fashionable clothing, which seemed suitable to
an elegant young courtier are here seen as evidence of Pride, and the
Franklin's concern with good food and piquant sauces is here the work of
Gluttony.
Chaucer’s Retractions
In Chaucer's Retraction, which comes at the end of the Parson's
Tale, Chaucer asks that all who hear or read "this litel trettys"
pray that Christ have mercy on him, specifically because of his translations
and compositions of "worldly vanities." He specifies his major works,
including one, The Book of the Lion (which has not survived), "and many
another book, if they were in my remembrance, and many a song and many a
lecherous lay." Among his major works he includes the Tales of Canterbury
-- "thilke that sownen into synne." He thanks God for his moral
works, specifically his translation of Boethius and books of "legends of
saints, homilies, and morality and devotion" (most of which must also have
disappeared) and states that henceforth he will devote his life to bewailing
his guilt.
Some critics have held that Chaucer never intended the Tales to
end with the Parson's Tale and the Retraction, arguing that some scribe added
them on to Chaucer's own incomplete copy of the Tales. This is an attractive
solution for those who would prefer to ignore the problems the retraction
riases, but there is no basis for this argument, other than the critic's
discomfort with so medieval a conclusion. We might wish that Chaucer had left
it out, to spare our modern sensibilities. But he did not.
For the sake of his soul Chaucer had to repent the works that
"sownen into synne." As Chaucer writes at the end of the Manciple's
Tale: “But he that hath mysseyd, I dar wel sayn, / He may by no wey clepe his
word agayn. / Thyng that is seyd is seyd, and forth it
gooth, /
Though hym repente, or be hym nevere so looth. (MancT IX.353-5)
The theme of these lines is the same as that which appears in
Thomas Gascoigne's account (in his Dictionarium theologicum (LINK) , ca. 1457)
of Chaucer's repentance in his last years. A discussion of repentance that
comes too late, after the damage has been done and when it is too late to
remedy the consequences of the act. Thus Chaucer before his death often
exclaimed "woe is me, because now I can not revoke nor destroy those
things I evilly wrote concerning the evil and most filthy love of men for women
and which even now continue to pass from man to man. I wanted to. I could not.
And thus complaining, he died.”
Whatever the truth of Gascoigne's account (and most modern
biographers allow it little credit), he provides a valuable gloss on the
Retraction or at least on how he, a chancellor of Oxford University, read the
Retraction. Be that as it may, the Retraction ends the Canterbury Tales with a
final complexity; repentant or not, Chaucer, as usual, slyly leaves the
resolution to the reader.
