Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: an overall view

Any attempt to provide a complete literary analysis of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in 1,000 words or so is doomed to failure. The book runs to some 17,000 lines of (mostly) verse, comprising 24 tales, a long introductory General Prologue and a number of other prologues to tales and other linking material. The analysis therefore has to be at a more general level, with examples brought in to illustrate the important points.

The first thing to be said is that the Canterbury Tales are incomplete. If we are to believe the original plan as described in the General Prologue, each of the 29 pilgrims was to tell two tales on the way to Canterbury and two on the way back, making 116 tales in all. As it happens, only 22 of the pilgrims get to tell a tale, with Chaucer himself being the only one to tell two. One of the tales, that of the Canon’s Yeoman, is told by somebody who turns up when the pilgrimage is well on its way and is therefore an “extra”.

Even then, a number of the tales we have are incomplete. On two occasions this is because the tales are interrupted by other pilgrims. Chaucer’s first tale, a piece of doggerel that is clearly a joke told against himself, is too much for “mine host” and he insists on Chaucer starting again with something else. The Monk is also interrupted. Other tales would appear to have fallen victim either to lost manuscripts or the poet running out of inspiration. Thus the Squire’s Tale is unfinished, and the Cook’s Tale, at only 58 lines, barely gets started.

However, even though the Canterbury Tales as we have them are only a fraction of what might have been expected, what we have is a remarkable and highly varied collection of medieval stories. There is everything here from classical romance (e.g. The Knight’s Tale) to bawdy romp (e.g. The Miller’s Tale) to fable (e.g. The Manciple’s Tale) to a long, involved sermon in prose (The Parson’s Tale).

Several of the tales are clearly re-tellings of those of other writers, such as Boccaccio and Petrarch. What Chaucer was doing was therefore taking some of the works of great European writers and making them available to an English-speaking audience. This was before the days of printing, so the audience would have been a small one, hearing the stories read to them by, for example, Chaucer himself. It is, however, notable that the Canterbury Tales was the first book printed at Westminster by William Caxton, in the 15^th century.

Some of the tales would appear to be original to Chaucer, or only very loosely based on others. The Miller’s Tale may be one of these, likewise the tales of the Friar and the Summoner.

What sets the Canterbury Tales on a different plane from being just a collection of stories is the “frame tale” within which they are set. The tales belong to their tellers, to whom we are introduced in detail before the first tale is told. The General Prologue is itself a masterpiece of 14^th century English poetry which can be read and enjoyed in its own right. After the opening scene-setting lines that explain the idea of the pilgrimage to the tomb of St Thomas A’Beckett at Canterbury, each pilgrim is described in turn. We get the impression that Chaucer has had a chat with each of them over a drink in the Tabard Inn on the night before they set off, and he has captured their characters from what they have told him.

Nearly all of them have a dark side, or a secret that is revealed thanks to a few pints of ale having been consumed. Chaucer is something of a Sherlock Holmes, spotting seemingly inconsequential details that go together to reveal the pilgrims’ true characters. We, the readers, are invited to read between the lines and appreciate that the apparent praise being heaped on these people by the poet has a very different purpose.

For example, the Prioress is a young lady who takes great pride in her appearance. She has smooth skin, is well-dressed, has excellent table manners, speaks French, and is clearly well used to polite society. But she is supposed to be in charge of a priory, having taken vows of poverty and chastity and responsible for the moral and spiritual welfare of her nuns. Clearly she is far more worldly than she should be, and presumably she is on this pilgrimage to flirt with whoever she may come across. Chaucer makes mention of how pained she is if she sees a mouse in a trap, and how she feeds her pet dogs with the choicest morsels. It is up to us to note that nothing is said about how she might react to a person in need, because clearly she stays as far away from the poor and needy as she can.

It is notable from the General Prologue just how many of the pilgrims make a living from the Church and how all of them, except the Parson, are thoroughly disreputable in their own way. The Pardoner is a conman, selling worthless pieces of paper to gullible people who believe that they will be saved from Hell by so doing. The Friar is similarly out for what he can get, and the Summoner’s job is to haul people before the Church courts unless they can buy him off instead.

As the pilgrimage proceeds, the characters interact with each other, notably the Friar and the Summoner who clearly loathe each other deeply. There is plenty of interplay in between their tales, and the tales they tell are aimed at each other, with the Friar telling a tale about a wicked Summoner and the Summoner returning the “compliment”.

Other pilgrims also tell tales that are in tune with their characters. The Knight’s Tale, although it has a classical background, is based on the medieval concept of “courtly love” which would have been familiar to its teller. This is followed by a parody of the courtly love story in the Miller’s Tale, a bawdy story in which a lively young woman gets the better of her husband and an unwelcome lover in a story that is very rude but also very funny. This is entirely in keeping with the character of the Miller as presented to us in the General Prologue.

There is a theme running through several of the tales that concerns the relative positions that husbands and wives should have in a marriage. Indeed, a sequence of the tales, beginning with that of the Wife of Bath, has been designated by critics as the “Marriage Group”. The feisty and much-married Wife (who is the only pilgrim not to follow a trade or profession) is an early exponent of “women’s lib” who believes that the woman should be the dominant partner in a marriage. She gives a long speech, saying just as much, before she even starts to tell a tale. This serves to make her the most complex and interesting of Chaucer’s characters, and the best-drawn female character in any work of literature before Shakespeare. Her Tale, which is a re-telling of the “loathly lady” fable in which a hag offers to be “fair or foul”, backs up her prologue by showing the wisdom of leaving the choice to the lady.

The Clerk tells a tale in which a husband has complete domination over an obedient wife, although the teller does not advocate such behaviour, and the Merchant then tells the story of January and May, which parallels the earlier Miller’s Tale with its story of a young wife cuckolding an older husband, but on this occasion not getting away with it. The Franklin’s Tale brings the group to a close by showing that dominance either way in a marriage is not to be recommended, but forgiveness and tolerance are the keys to married bliss.

As stated earlier, it is impossible to do justice to the whole of the Canterbury Tales in a short article. Suffice it to say that there is a whole wealth of humour, wisdom, adventure and morality in this collection, as well as a host of characters, both inside the tales and without, who serve to give the modern reader a very vivid picture of life in England more than 600 years ago.

© John Welford

See also:

The background to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales 
Sources used by Chaucer for his Canterbury Tales 

The background to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

In his Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1340-1400) explains that April is the month when people get the idea of making a pilgrimage to Canterbury to pay homage at the shrine of St Thomas Becket. The tales are those supposedly told by a motley set of pilgrims bound on just such a venture.

Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury during the reign of Henry II, had been murdered in 1170, and the practice of making a pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral, where the murder took place, had started almost from that date. Indeed, it was Henry himself who made the first pilgrimage, as penance for his angry words that had led to the murder of a man who had once been his best friend.

By the time of the pilgrimage of the Tales, some two hundred years later, undertaking a pilgrimage had become less of a religious rite and more of a vacation. As we read the General Prologue it becomes clear that only a few of these pilgrims have religious devotion as their motive. Most of these people are determined to enjoy themselves.

It is perhaps no coincidence that none of the pilgrims is accompanied by a wife or husband, so there is plenty of opportunity for flirting and bawdiness. Indeed, we learn later that the Wife of Bath is using the trip to find herself a new husband.

Whether Chaucer ever made such a pilgrimage is not known, but it is quite possible, given that we know that his wife was ill in the Spring of 1387, that he was probably not otherwise occupied on state business at the time, and that making a pilgrimage to Canterbury under such circumstances was a natural thing to do; he states explicitly that many of the more devout pilgrims (not necessarily among his current colleagues!) made the journey to pray for cures for illness.

The pilgrims gather at an inn, The Tabard in Southwark (the area south of the Thames opposite the City of London). They will stay the night there and start out on their pilgrimage the following morning. We can imagine Chaucer chatting with everybody over a drink and making many mental notes about each of them.

It has been suggested that some of Chaucer’s pilgrims were based on real people, and much energy has been expended on trying to find matches for them. There was a real innkeeper in Southwark called Henricus Bailly, who was also a Member of Parliament, and the knight, the shipman and the man of law have also been mentioned as having possible real models. However, it is extremely unlikely that most of the cast of characters that gathered at the Tabard Inn were anything other than the fruit of Chaucer’s imagination.

In the Prologue to the Tales Chaucer provides pen-portraits of most of the tale-tellers, who are a cross-section of English society at the time. It is noticeable that many of them earn their living from the Church, in one way or another, but only one of them (the parson) could be described as a sincere Christian. Chaucer is thus able to make a social commentary about English life in the 14^th century, warts and all.

The Canterbury Tales are therefore not just a masterpiece from the point of the tales themselves but they open a window on an age long gone.

 © John Welford

See also: 

Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: an overall view
Sources used by Chaucer for his Canterbury Tales 

The General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales

Prologues and introductions to works of literature are often paid very little attention, frequently being skipped so that the reader can get to the good bits as quickly as possible. However, in the case of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales that would be a grave mistake. The General Prologue is a wonderful piece of work in its own right, as well as being the scene-setter for what is to follow.

It opens with some of the most famous lines in all of English Literature:

“Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote

The droghte of March hath perced to the rote,

And bathed every veyne in swich licour

Of which vertu engendred is the flour;…”

(When April with his sweet showers

Has pierced the drought of March to the root,

And bathed every vein in such moisture

Of which virtue is the flower engendered;…)

(which admittedly sounds a lot better in Middle English!)

This is the prologue to the prologue, setting the time and the place of the pilgrimage that is due to make its way from Southwark (on the south bank of the Thames near London) to Canterbury. The first 18 lines explain why “longen folk to goon on pilgrimages”, and the next 24 lines set the scene of this pilgrimage in particular.

After the introductory lines, the other 29 pilgrims are described in turn, in varying amounts of detail, after which the host of the Inn, Harry Bailly, announces that he will ride with the pilgrims and, in order to pass the time, each of them will tell two stories on the way there and two on the way back. The Prologue ends with the Knight being asked to tell the first tale, based on the drawing of lots.

It should be noted that not all the pilgrims get to tell even one tale, although Chaucer himself tells two, and that one of the tales, that of the canon’s yeoman, is told by a latecomer who is not mentioned in the Prologue.

The main reason why the Prologue has been accorded such a high place in English literature is that Chaucer’s pen portraits give us a snapshot of English society at the time, with many of the trades and occupations of 14th century England being represented. However, these are not dry descriptions but well-honed observations that expose the many hypocrisies and idiosyncrasies of the characters. As Chaucer explains, he has spoken to all of them during the previous evening, and we can imagine him making many mental notes during these conversations.

Chaucer was England’s first great humourist, and he had a wonderful knack of getting a character to condemn him or herself out of his/her own mouth. The reader is often invited to put two and two together and get five.

All that is missing from the social spectrum is high nobility and royalty, which is hardly surprising. Apart from that we have minor nobility in the person of the knight, the squire, and even the prioress, professional people such as the man of law and the physician, tradesmen such as the miller and the merchant, people at various levels of the agricultural hierarchy, such as the franklin, yeoman and ploughman, and a large number who make their living, either directly or otherwise, from the Church.

This latter point is particularly interesting, because Chaucer uses the Prologue to point to many of the shortcomings of the Church at the time. The power of the Church can be seen from the sheer number of “religious” pilgrims, which was indeed a fair representation of the state of English society at the time. In all, eleven of the pilgrims fall into this category.

The first religious character we meet is the prioress, the head of a religious house, but she is clearly very interested in cultivating good manners and taking care of her appearance. She should not have had pet dogs, which are fed with the choicest cuts of meat, nor even have been taking part in a pilgrimage. She is well aware of her femininity, although she stops short of actual flirting.

The monk is clearly way out of order, as he has no interest in religion but spends his entire time hunting and feasting. In his view, the religious rules are “old and somewhat strict”, and thus best forgotten. Likewise, the friar is utterly corrupt, hearing confessions for payment, frequenting ale-houses and consorting with women. We can assume that his practice of paying for the marriages of young women must be because he was responsible for their pregnancies!

The summoner and the pardoner are described one after the other. These both make their living on the fringes of the Church, the summoner calling people to appear before the ecclesiastical court, unless they can bribe him well enough to be excused, and the pardoner selling fake religious relics and bogus pardons that have supposedly been signed by the Pope. Chaucer lets them have his satire with both barrels.

Nearly all the characters can be regarded as “types”, but they also have individual personalities, many of which are developed as the tales are told. However, one character strikes us as being less typical than the rest, and this is the “wife of Bath”. There is a sense in which she might have been typical, in that life expectancy was much lower than it is today and it would not have been unknown for a woman to outlive five husbands.

That said, this particular lady is a character in her own right, and is drawn as such rather than representing a trade or occupation, although it could be said that, for her, “wife” counts as a profession. Strangely enough, the Prologue says less about her than about some of the other pilgrims, but we learn that she is no longer young, or slim, or possessing all her own teeth, and is hard of hearing. She is however very aware of her personal appearance, even to being vain about it, and she is assertive to the point of aggression when it comes to her position in the local community. She is well-travelled, having made pilgrimages to Rome and three times to Jerusalem, and must therefore be fairly well-to-do, presumably from having married and been widowed by five rich husbands.

Chaucer clearly has much more to say about this interesting lady, and he drops a hint to this effect in his description of her. That she is Chaucer’s favourite character is evident from the fact that the prologue to her own tale is the same length as the whole of General Prologue, and we discover there that she is the first exponent of “women’s lib” in English Literature.

So the scene is set, the characters assembled, and we can sit back and enjoy what is to follow. We can expect interesting tales from this motley crew of heroes and degenerates, and possibly a few fireworks along the way as these people mingle with each other and discover where their personalities clash. Let the fun begin!

© John Welford

See also:

Sources used by Geoffrey Chaucer for his Canterbury Tales

Geoffrey Chaucer's Retraction of his Canterbury Tales

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer end on a rather strange note, namely 350 words (or thereabouts) under the heading “Heere taketh the makere of this book his leve”, which is usually referred to as “Chaucer’s Retraction”. This is both a revocation of all Chaucer’s works that might have caused offence and a dedication to God of those that have not. Chaucer thus appears to divide his works into two groups, those towards which he feels a degree of shame and those that he thinks are worthy of being dedicated to the praise of God.

The list for which an apology seems to be in order is particularly interesting. He groups them as “translacions and enditynges of worldly vanitees,” mentioning not only those Canterbury tales “that sownen into synne” but also some works that seem quite inoffensive. These include “The Book of the Duchess”, “The House of Fame”, “The Parliament of Fowls”, “The Legend of Good Women”, and “Troilus and Criseyde”, plus the unknown “Book of the Lion” which presumably was a work of which no manuscript has survived.

On the “good” side of the ledger are his translation of the “Consolations of Philosophy” by Boethius, “and othere bookes of legendes of seintes, and omelies and moralitee, and devocioun.” Chaucer seems to want to do a deal with Jesus, Mary and the saints of Heaven, to the effect that these works earn him sufficient grace to “biwayle my giltes” and undo the harm of those on the other side of the balance.

To our modern way of thinking, Chaucer seems to have got this all wrong. If the world had only been left with the “good” books, then it is highly unlikely that we would have heard of Geoffrey Chaucer at all. We can assume that the “sinful” Canterbury Tales would include those of the Miller and the Reeve, for starters, with their stories of bed-hopping, and of the Friar and the Summoner, with their coarse jibing at each other. However, the retraction is not just of downright sin but of all worldly vanities, and the common theme of the named “non-Canterbury” books is romantic love, in one guise or another. Take all these away from the Canterbury Tales, and nothing much is left apart from those of the Parson and Chaucer’s own “Tale of Melibee”, which are generally regarded as the two least readable of the Tales. We do not need such an apology.

However, this is to misread Chaucer’s intention. He was a highly moral person, indeed moralistic at times, but was also a great humourist and very human. He had a well developed sense of fun and mischief as well as a deep sense of respect for the foibles of his fellow travellers, not only on the Canterbury pilgrimage but on the journey of life. Many writers throughout history have combined these two aspects of personality, and some have been able to reconcile them better than others. I believe that this Retraction is Chaucer’s attempt to make this reconciliation.

Another possibility is that Chaucer underwent some sort of religious conversion towards the end of his life, possibly during the period of writing the Canterbury Tales, and that his growing sense of mortality (he died in 1400 at the age of about 60) had focused his mind on the fate of his immortal soul. This would not have been unusual for his age. Chaucer’s Italian near-contemporary Boccaccio, whose “Decameron” has much in common with the Canterbury Tales, renounced his frivolous and licentious works in middle life and wrote nothing but learned treatises in Latin in his later years. Can we put Chaucer in the same bracket?

If this is the case, and I am not convinced that it is, then surely Chaucer is being unduly hard on himself, certainly on the evidence of the Canterbury Tales. Agreed, there is vulgarity and indecency in places, but Chaucer is a realist, painting 14^th century life as he sees it, with all its earthiness, dirt and crudity. He is never morbid or unhealthy, and he sees life in a true perspective. He is always quick to point to the moral of a story, and those who do wrong usually get their comeuppance one way or another. There may be a few cases in which people who play cruel tricks get away with it, such as Alison in the Miller’s Tale, but Chaucer is happy to forgive the high-spirited deeds of a young woman who will doubtless settle down in later life. He is less sympathetic towards the Wife of Bath, for example, whose middle-aged feminist posturing stretches his liberalism just a little bit too far. As mentioned above, he is always a moralist as well as a humanist.

So was Chaucer right to “retract” or not? Did he really mean it? Or is this just a form of words designed to put him on the side of the sheep rather than the goats at the Day of Judgment? At a distance of 700 years, it is not easy to say. However, we can at least be grateful that Chaucer left us a body of work that we can still enjoy today, both “sinful” and otherwise.

© John Welford

The Parson's Tale, by Geoffrey Chaucer

The Parson’s Tale has to be the least approachable of all the Canterbury Tales, with the possible exception of Chaucer’s Tale of Melibee. For one thing, it is not a tale but a long digression on penitence and confession. It has been described as a sermon, but that is not an accurate description because, although it starts with a text from Jeremiah, it uses the text more as a general theme for a wide-ranging treatise. At some 1,000 lines of prose text, a sermon this long would send even the most dedicated congregation to sleep! According to the Tale’s prologue, the Parson starts speaking as evening is fast approaching. It must have been long after dark before he finished.

We have met the Parson before, in the passage that is generally headed “The Epilogue to the Man of Law’s Tale”. The Host invites the Parson to tell the next tale, and describes him as a Lollard, which, to the Host, is not a problem. However, the Shipman objects strongly to such a man being allowed to preach to them: “He schal no gospel glosen here ne teche. … He wolde sowen som difficulte, or springen cokkel in our clene corn.” There are a number of problems with this passage, but the point here is that the label of Lollard is not apparently objected to by the Parson, although there is clearly considerable antipathy on the part of at least one of the other pilgrims.

Lollards were followers of John Wycliffe, who was a near contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer. He had produced the first English translation of the Bible, to which he ascribed greater authority than to the Pope and the Church hierarchy; he believed in a greater role for lay people in the Church, and he questioned some basic Church teachings such as transubstantiation (i.e. that the communion bread and wine change to being the actual flesh and blood of Christ). The Lollards were therefore early back-to-basics reformers who excited strong feelings both for and against them.

It is not surprising that Chaucer treats his Lollard priest sympathetically. We know from his treatment of other members of the clergy (and religious hangers-on) on the pilgrimage that he is well aware of the corruption that played such a huge part in 14^th century religious life. He is perfectly happy to let the Monk, Friar, Summoner and Pardoner condemn themselves by their words and actions, and the Parson is the only religious pilgrim who is treated without a hint of irony in his General Prologue pen-portrait.

We also know that Chaucer was closely associated with John of Gaunt, who was at one time the most powerful man in England and also, towards the end of Chaucer’s life, related to him by marriage (the two men’s wives were sisters). John of Gaunt was known to have been John Wycliffe’s friend and protector.

The Prologue to the Tale, which unlike the Tale itself is in rhyming couplets, makes it clear that this is to be the final tale, because only the Parson has not yet obeyed the Host’s requirement. It may be that Chaucer intended this to be the very last tale on the return journey (although the internal evidence suggests otherwise), and that the original plan for each pilgrim to tell four tales, which may well have been reduced to two at one stage, has now come down to one apiece. As it is, we have to assume that some of the Tales have been lost to posterity, because several pilgrims, such as the Parson’s brother, the Ploughman, have not told tales that have come down to us.

The Parson complains that, being a Southerner, he is not adept at rhyming, as other pilgrims presumably would have been. This is an interesting footnote on the state of English at the time, in that the dialects spoken in different parts of the country were very different. This may be another piece of self-mockery by Chaucer, who was himself a Southerner! As it is, the Parson agrees to tell “a myrie tale in prose, to knytte up al this feeste, and make an ende”. “Merry” is not the word that most readers would assign to what follows.

The Tale

The text from Jeremiah is from chapter 6, verse 16. The Parson gives the text in Latin, which may sound strange for a Lollard, but a rough translation is “stand and see, ask for the old ways, the good paths, and walk therein; and you shall find rest for your souls”. This does sound appropriate for a Lollard, as it would for any reformist in the history of the Church who has claimed to be sweeping away the overburden of man-made distractions from the truth and getting back to basics.

It soon becomes clear that this treatise is going to be a very long-winded affair, because virtually every concept mentioned can be sub-divided into three or more categories, and most of those have two or more aspects that need to be considered. We therefore get a thorough analysis of penitence and its three “parts”, namely contrition, confession and restitution.

Under the heading of confession comes a very full discussion of sin, and in particular the Seven Deadly Sins (pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony and lechery) and their remedies. For each sin there is a long list of specific actions that constitute that sin, such that it seems impossible not to be committing deadly sins every hour of the day.

There are some surprising sins to watch out for. Being too healthy is not recommended, because the flesh is the enemy of the soul and the healthier the body, the more likely it is to commit sins. That sounds like a good excuse for not indulging in regular exercise, but taking that line too far will of course lead one to Sloth. You can’t win with sin.

As for the 21^st century’s favourite sin, lechery is given the full works. Even within marriage, having sex for the mere fun of it is a deadly sin. The Devil grabs men into his embrace with the five fingers of each hand, one hand being gluttony, the other lechery. Included among the lecherous fingers are “touchynge in wikede manere” and “kissynge”. Widows are urged to be “clene” and “eschue the embracynges of man”. The Parson and the Wife of Bath would clearly have been at odds on this one.

However, the Parson is careful to list the remedies as well as the sins. For example, the remedy for anger is gentleness or patience, and for lechery he recommends, not surprisingly, chastity and continence.

Having dealt with the Seven Deadly Sins, the Parson apologises that he is not qualified to discourse on the Ten Commandments. What a shame!

The terms of confession are then laid out, and how to ascertain the severity of the sin. It would appear that the Parson is thinking exclusively about sexual peccadilloes at this stage. There are apparently some sins of this kind for which confession will not easily absolve the sin. One of the oddest must be the priest who masturbates in church and must never sing Mass there again. This Parson thinks of everything.

Naturally enough, there is a list of conditions that mark a false confession, one of which is admitting to sins of which one is not guilty. Given the vast list of sins that the pilgrims have just been treated to, it would seem unlikely that any of them would feel the need to commit this particular offence.

The third element of penitence is restitution. This is possible through alms giving, or bodily pain, both of which have various manifestations.  It is slightly worrying that one way of absolving your sins is to suffer the loss by death of your wife or child, which is presumably meant thereby to be a cause of rejoicing.

After all is done, and true confession and expiation made, the fruits of penance can be enjoyed, namely the “endeless blisse of hevene”. Strange to tell, this final part of the “Tale” is the shortest section of all.

This account of how to live the good life and prepare oneself for Heaven is not an enjoyable read, and it is not the reason why posterity holds the Canterbury Tales in such high regard. It has interest insofar as it gives an insight to the religious sensibilities of the late Middle Ages, but not otherwise. It is doubtless a matter of regret to the modern reader that this tale survived whereas that of the Parson’s brother, the Ploughman, presumably did not. We feel that it must have been “merrier” than what we have, as it could hardly have been less so.

© John Welford

The Manciple's Tale, by Geoffrey Chaucer

A medieval manciple was in effect the quartermaster of an Inn of Court, responsible for buying and looking after the food supplies for the lawyers who lived and worked there. Chaucer’s Manciple looks after the needs of more than thirty men “that weren of lawe expert and curious”, but when it comes to doing deals over the price of food, he “sette hir aller cappe”; in other words, he was the real brains of the place.

The Manciple’s Prologue and Tale form a manuscript fragment of their own, so there is some doubt about where Chaucer intended the Tale to appear in his general scheme of things. We know that the setting is quite close to Canterbury (near the delightfully named village of “Bobbe-up-and-doun”) so it may have been destined to be told either near the end of the outward journey or the start of the return.

The conversation in the Prologue concerns the Cook, who has been lagging behind and falling asleep on his horse. The Host calls on him to tell a tale, although he has already told one (we only have a fragment of it, but within the context of the Canterbury Tales we have to assume that the pilgrims would have heard a full tale from him). The Manciple points out that the Cook is drunk, despite this being early in the morning, and that his breath stinks. The Cook promptly falls from his horse and has to be helped back on.

The host begs the Manciple not to be so insulting to the Cook, pointing out that, when sober, he might well repay the Manciple in like measure. The Manciple proposes to tell a tale in the Cook’s place, and even offers him another drink!

The Tale

The Manciple’s Tale is that of the Tell-tale Bird, a story that had appeared in many forms, both eastern and western, although Chaucer’s version owes most to Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”, considerably augmented with description, illustrative exempla and other digressions, despite still being only about 250 lines long and one of the shortest of the completed tales. The tone of the Tale is formal and somewhat pedantic, which suggests that it is an early composition of Chaucer’s, and not written originally with any of the pilgrims in mind.

Phoebus the sun god, also the god of poetry and the arts, lives on Earth as a young man, an expert bowman and a “lusty bachiler” given to singing and “mynstralcie”. He keeps a crow with white plumage which he has taught to speak, and which can also sing. Phoebus has a wife whom he guards out of jealousy, despite treating her well in all other respects. The Manciple makes the connection between the wife and the crow, pointing out that keeping a bird in a gilded cage is all very well, but its chief desire will always be to escape. In case the point has not sunk in, the Manciple also says that the same principle applies to cats and wolves in equal measure.

The wife therefore takes a lover, whom she invites to the house when Phoebus is away. The adultery is, however, witnessed by the caged crow, who tells Phoebus all about it. In his anger, Phoebus kills his wife with an arrow, after which he breaks his bow and his musical instruments. In his despair he then turns on the crow, whom he accuses of having told a falsehood against a guiltless woman, as well as blaming himself for his jealousy.

The crow’s punishment is to be turned black, by having his white feathers pulled out, to lose the power of speech, and also his beautiful singing voice, being reduced to an ugly “caw”. Hence, crows today are black and cannot sing sweetly like other birds.

The Manciple expounds the moral of the Tale, which is that it is good to be careful what you say. In particular, one should not tell a husband that his wife has been untrue to him, because “A wikked tonge is worse than a feend”. It is better to keep quiet and keep your friends. Indeed, the Manciple goes on at some length in advising his hearers not to say too much! He ends with the line, “Kepe wel thy tonge, and thenk upon the crowe”.

Discussion

This is a rather sad tale as the last-but-one of the collection; indeed, given that the final tale is the Parson’s interminable sermon, this is the final contribution that can really be called a tale. Perhaps there is a joke here in that the Manciple urges everyone not to say too much and the Parson promptly gives them a thousand lines of dense prose!

It is a tale the message of which is, “don’t tell tales”, which sounds strange given the whole “raison d’etre” of the Canterbury Tales. It is also an arguable moral, in that the Manciple thinks it best to keep unwelcome news to oneself and let a wronged person stay in ignorance of the truth and continue to live a lie. There is more than one way of looking at this dilemma.

However, the message is also confused by the second cause of Phoebus’s anger, which is his jealousy. That is what is at the heart of his anger, and had he not been so jealous it could be argued that what the crow said would not have had such fatal consequences. Phoebus bitterly repents of his deed immediately after it is committed, and refuses to believe the truth of what he has been told. Take away the jealousy, and we can imagine that his disbelief would have expressed itself before his angry violence and not the other way round.

As has been remarked in connection with several other Canterbury Tales, there are problems with “continuity” caused by the unfinished and unedited nature of the collection. Another one occurs here. It seems clear enough that the conversation between the Host and the Cook, that leads to the Manciple telling his Tale, takes place in the morning. The Host asks the Cook what he has been doing all night, for example. However, the Parson’s Prologue starts by commenting that the Manciple has just finished his Tale, but that the sun is descending and the time is around four o’clock. As mentioned above, the Manciple’s Tale is very short, and certainly would not have taken all day to tell! Something is awry here, surely!

© John Welford

The Canon's Yeoman's Tale, by Geoffrey Chaucer

The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale is one of the Canterbury Tales told by Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1340 – 1400). As with many of the tales in the collection, it is accompanied by the story of its telling; it has features that set it apart from the other tales.

The Canon and his Yeoman servant

The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale is the only one of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales that is not told by one of the original pilgrims who set out from Southwark. It is also unique in that the tale is, at least in part, told at first hand, meaning that the teller is part of the tale.

After the Second Nun has finished her tale, Chaucer relates that the pilgrims have journeyed on for another five miles when two horsemen, who have been riding very fast, catch up with them. These are a canon, in other words a person in holy orders attached to a cathedral as opposed to being a parish priest, and his servant, who is referred to as a yeoman.

It turns out that they had seen the pilgrims as they left their previous night’s lodgings and decided to join them, because they looked like an amusing bunch of people. The Host asks the Yeoman if the Canon can tell a good tale, and the Yeoman then praises his boss to the skies as “a man of high discretion”. At the Host’s bidding, he then goes on to tell the pilgrims that the Canon is more than he appears, and that he could pave the streets of Canterbury with gold and silver.

But why, asks the Host, is he dressed so badly if he is so skilled? The Yeoman answers that the Canon does not apply his skills as wisely as he might and will never be rich. The Host asks where they live, and the Yeoman replies that they are in the worst part of town, with thieves and robbers. The Yeoman goes on to reveal that the Canon is an alchemist who purports to make silver and gold, but that it is all a sham.

The Canon himself has not been part of this discussion, but he suddenly starts to show interest when he realises that his servant is spilling the beans and telling these strangers all their trade secrets. However, he is unable to stop the Yeoman’s tongue; he decides that joining these pilgrims was not such a good idea after all and he rides off, leaving the Yeoman behind.

The Yeoman appreciates that his employment is now at an end, but is happy enough to part company with somebody who has led him astray. He now offers to tell everything he knows about the craft of alchemy, as an act of confession and penitence. And so he begins his Tale.

A tale of dishonesty

In effect, the Yeoman tells two tales, the first being a personal account of the dishonest practices of the recently departed Canon. He begins by lamenting the state to which he been brought after seven years of working as the Canon’s assistant.

He then describes the “elvish craft” of mixing together and heating all sorts of strange ingredients. There is a huge amount of detail here, which shows that Chaucer was deeply knowledgeable and interested in science as it existed during his time.

The Yeoman goes on to say that the object of all this effort is to discover the “philosopher’s stone” that would produce the elixir to cure all illnesses. However, their experiments often fail because the crucible in which the metals and everything else are heated is not strong enough, so it breaks and all the precious ingredients are lost.

This is then followed by an inquest as to why the experiment failed, with the people who have been conned into supplying the metals advancing various reasons, none of them being the right one, which is that the enterprise was doomed from the start. The alchemist is always able to persuade his backers that things will be different next time, but there is clearly no intention of any money being refunded!

A new tale

The Yeoman now appears to tell a different tale, as it concerns “a canon of religion [who] would infect all a town”, without it being made clear whether or not this is the same person as in the first tale. We can take it as read that the Yeoman intends, through the telling of the tale, to implicate the whole class of alchemists as conmen and villains. However, the Yeoman also takes the trouble to point out that most canons do not fall into this category, so specifying a second canon as an alchemist does sound like a strange coincidence if his former employer is not intended to be the target of his anger.

The canon of the story goes to a priest and asks to borrow a gold mark, promising to return it after three days. This he does, thus convincing the priest that he is a man who can be trusted. To thank the priest, the canon offers to show him how he “can work in philosophy”. The priest agrees, at which point the Yeoman bewails his fate in advance, so that we know already that some foul deed is to be committed.

There is an aside at this point, as if the Host had asked the question that was asked above, namely are the two canons one and the same person? No, says the Yeoman, but the man I used to work for was a villain nonetheless who “has betrayed folk many a time”.

The canon asks the priest to supply him with three ounces of quicksilver (mercury), which he does. The canon offers to transform the quicksilver into real silver, but then performs a series of tricks that involve the use of silver filings, wax, and sleight of hand, to give the impression that solid silver has been produced. One of his tricks involves the transformation of copper into silver, performed by switching the copper for silver while the priest is not looking. The canon even “proves” his science by having the silver assayed by a goldsmith.

The priest is so impressed that he asks the canon for the “recipe”, and is told that it will cost him forty pounds, which would have been a huge sum of money at that time. The canon agrees to share the secret, but swears the priest to absolute secrecy on his part. Of course, the recipe is useless, the canon disappears from the scene, and the priest realises that he has been conned.

The moral of the tale

The Yeoman points out the moral of the story, which is that the promise of riches will lead gullible people into losing their money. He quotes several sources, including Plato, who state the impossibility of transforming one substance into another, and ends by stating that such work is evil because it is against God’s will.

There is something about the Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale that rings true for all ages, as even today there are millions of people who are willing to be duped and scammed due to their mistaken belief that vast riches lie just around the corner. There have always been snake oil salesmen, and fools who can be parted easily from their money. The trick of proving oneself honest, so that the victim will trust the conman when “the con is on”, has been the stuff of hustling for centuries. We can imagine the ghost of Chaucer reading about today’s Internet scams and saying “I told you so”.

The immediacy of this Tale derives in part from its universality, and also possibly from a real example of a canon who practised alchemy and who was known to Chaucer. This was William Shuchirch of Windsor, who may even have duped Chaucer, or perhaps Chaucer was wise enough not to have fallen victim to his tricks and wanted to warn others to be careful.

Be that as it may, the Yeoman, his employer, and the characters of the tale are particularly lifelike and human, and the tale works well on several levels. It is certainly one of Chaucer’s best.

© John Welford

The Second Nun's Tale, by Geoffrey Chaucer

There are several characters among the pilgrims who feature in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales of whom we know virtually nothing before they tell their tale. The “Second Nun” is one of these. In the General Prologue, we learn quite a lot about the Prioress, and at the end of the paragraph we learn that:

“Another nun with her had she

That was her chaplain, and priests three.”

The tale told by this other nun is far removed from the earthiness of many of those told by the other pilgrims, being an account of the life and martyrdom of St Cecilia. We can well imagine that this lady must have blushed considerably as she listened to the tales of the Miller and the Summoner!

The tale is usually considered to be the work of Chaucer before he had developed his full powers. It is virtually a straightforward translation of a Latin text from the “Legenda Aurea” or “Golden Legend”, which was a collection of lives of the saints, many of them of dubious authenticity.

The prologue to the tale is partly based on the prayer of St Bernard to the Virgin in Dante’s “Paradiso”. Although the tale itself may date from Chaucer’s early years as a poet, the prologue was probably written after he had made his first visit to Italy. It is interesting to note a small error made by Chaucer, in that he puts the prologue into the mouth of a female character but includes the line “And though that I, unworthy son of Eve…”

The prologue melds into the translation from the Golden Legend, concluding as it does with the original explanation of the name “Cecilia”. There are in fact several possible meanings listed here, such as “Heaven’s lily”, “the way for the blind” and “lacking in blindness”. The explanations are given as being descriptions of her character, although there is no indication here or later that the name was bestowed on her after her death. We have therefore to assume that her parents had considerable foresight in giving her the name that they did! Needless to say, these name derivations are completely spurious, as is typical throughout the Golden Legend.

The Tale

The nun continues with the story of Cecilia’s life, starting with her being brought up as a Christian in Rome. She is given in marriage to a young man named Valerian, but she is so afraid of losing her virginity that she tells Valerian, on her wedding night, that she is guarded by an angel who will kill Valerian should he attempt to have sex with her.

Valerian, needless to say, is somewhat taken aback by this and demands to see the angel. Cecilia sends him off to find an old man, named Urban, who baptises him into the Christian faith. On returning to Cecilia, he finds the angel with her, who gives each of them a floral coronet that they are commanded to wear for ever. These will be invisible to anyone who is not “chaste and hates villainy”.

The angel asks Valerian what he would most desire, and he replies that he would like his brother, Tibertius, to become a Christian as well. When Tibertius arrives he can smell the scent of the floral crowns but cannot see them. Celicia and Valerian urge him to put aside all false idols and turn to the true God, which he agrees to do. Tibertius is, however, alarmed to hear that the man who will baptise him is Pope Urban, whom he knows is being hunted by the Roman authorities, and that anyone found with him will also be killed.

Cecilia assures Tibertius that martyrdom will bring a reward in Heaven, and is therefore not to be feared. The baptism takes place, and Tibertius is also introduced to the angel.

It is not long before the brothers are arrested and taken before Almachius, the prefect, and sentenced to death. However, Maximus, the officer to whom they are committed for execution, takes pity on them, listens to what they have to say, and is himself converted by Cecilia. After the brothers are beheaded, Maximus testifies that he saw their souls ascend to Heaven and is himself beaten to death on the orders of Almachius.

It is now the turn of Cecilia to be questioned by Almachius, and a debate ensues between the two of them on the question of earthly versus Heavenly power and authority, with Cecilia accusing Almachius of being blind to the truth.

Needless to say her own martyrdom follows, the sentence being that she be boiled alive in her bath. However, after a night and a day she is still alive, without feeling a thing or even sweating a single drop. The executioner is then told to behead her, but after three strokes her head is still in place. It takes three days before she dies, which she spends teaching and preaching and sending converts to Urban for baptism. She is then buried by Pope Urban, with her house becoming a church.

Discussion

The nun ends her tale abruptly without any further adornment, and it is not followed by any discussion between the pilgrims. There is no mention, for example, of any connection between Cecilia and music, of which she is the patron saint. This association was made somewhat after Chaucer’s time, and was based on a legend that she sang as she died. However, this is mentioned neither in the Golden Legend nor Chaucer’s tale.

Chaucer’s skill in this tale is not in its characterisation or plot development, which derive almost entirely from his source, but in his versification, the translation being in the form of seven-line stanzas with an ABABBCC rhyme scheme. This is known as “rhyme royal”, a verse form that Chaucer used for three other Canterbury Tales, as well as works including “Troilus and Criseyde”. We know that Chaucer was familiar with the 14-line sonnets of Petrach, and this “half sonnet” form was clearly one that Chaucer was very comfortable with.

It is notable that one of the other tales that uses rhyme royal is that of the Prioress, the other “nun” on the pilgrimage, which was almost certainly written at a later date than that of the Second Nun. The other tales that use this form are those of the Clerk and the Man of Law, indicating that Chaucer regarded this as a suitable vehicle for people of refinement who had a tale to tell. The only other female story-teller is the Wife of Bath, and rhyming couplets are good enough for her!

© John Welford

The Nun's Priest's Tale, by Geoffrey Chaucer

The Nun’s Priest is one of the pilgrims in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales of whom we know virtually nothing before he tells his tale. In the General Prologue we are told that the Prioress has “another nun” with her and “three priests”. When we reach the point at which the Nun’s Priest is introduced, there is no mention of the other two.

The short prologue of his tale consists mainly of the epilogue of the preceding tale, namely that of the Monk. This has been a long series of accounts of people who have fallen from high estate, starting with Lucifer and including rulers closer to Chaucer’s time. The Knight has interrupted the Monk, saying that he would rather hear about people who have risen than fallen, and the Host asks the Monk to tell another, more acceptable, tale. However, he refuses, and so the Nun’s Priest is asked instead.

Apart from agreeing to the Host’s request, and apologising should his tale not be considered “merry” enough, the Priest says nothing in his own prologue. All we learn about him is in the final line, where he is described as “this sweet priest, this goodly man, sir John”.

The Tale is an animal fable, similar in nature to the classical fables told by Aesop, which would have been very familiar to Chaucer’s real and fictional audiences. However, it is brought up to date, in medieval terms, by its use of concepts from medicine, astrology and psychology, in such a way that the Tale gives us an excellent window on the 14^th century mind.

The Tale

We are introduced to an elderly widow, living a simple life on a small farm with her two daughters. Of particular interest is her cockerel, named Chauntecleer, who has seven hens in his harem, the most notable being Pertelote. It soon becomes clear that we are in a fantasy world here, because these “beasts and birds could speak and sing”.

One morning, Chauntecleer is not his usual perky self, and he tells Pertelote that he has had a bad dream, in which he was frightened by a strange dog-like creature, causing him to wake up groaning rather than crowing.

Pertelote has no sympathy for him, regarding his fear as pure cowardice, and declares that she can have no love for him any more. As hens go, she is clearly a highly-educated one, as she is able to quote the Roman writer Cato to back her case that dreams are the result of “bad humours” in the body, and that purging the body of all the bad stuff is the answer. Pertelote prescribes a list of readily available herbs that should do the trick. Presumably a 21^st century hen would have recommended a “detox” programme!

Chauntecleer is not convinced, and quotes other authors who had a different line to that of Cato. In particular, he recounts a story about two friends who sleep in different inns, one of whom has a dream about the other being murdered and thrown into a dung cart. In the morning, he discovers that this is exactly what has happened in the night. The conclusion is that “murder will out”, and dreams are God’s way of ensuring that justice is done.

The well-read cockerel continues by recounting the tale of a man who warned a friend not to take a sea voyage, because he had had a dream in which he had been told that the ship would sink. His friend ignored the advice and was subsequently drowned when the ship foundered. Further examples follow, with the cockerel quoting Saint Kenelm, the Old Testament, and classical mythology, as sources testifying to the power of dreams.

In short, says Chauntecleer, you can forget all about your poisonous laxative herbs, because I’m not touching them. With that, he hops down from his perch and gets on with the business of the day, which is finding corn and doing what cocks are supposed to do when surrounded by willing hens.

Several weeks pass by, and, on a day when all the chickens are busy in the yard, a fox sneaks in and hides in ambush, waiting for an opportunity to pounce. Chauntecleer notices the fox, but, before he can escape, the fox tells him that he means him no harm, but only wants to hear him sing. Chauntecleer falls for the flattery and is grabbed by the fox.

As the fox makes off with the cockerel in his mouth, the widow, her daughters, and all the farmyard animals set off in chase after them. Even a swarm of bees gets in on the act. Chauntecleer tells the fox that, were he in the same situation, he would turn to face his pursuers and tell them to back off. The fox tells Chauntecleer that this is a good idea, but by opening his mouth to speak he allows the cockerel to escape and fly high into a tree. The fox tries to inveigle the cockerel back down, but he will not be caught a second time.

The Priest then ends his Tale by pointing to its moral, which is to “take the fruit and let the chaff be still”. In other words, concentrate on what is real and ignore all the falsities that might surround it, whether one is talking about dreams or flattery.

  

There is also a short epilogue to the Tale, in which the Host thanks the Priest for his tale and remarks on his appearance, which is the only description given of the Priest at any point. However, these remarks about how the Priest has “so great a neck and such a large breast”, and that, if he had not been a priest he would be very attractive to women, are very reminiscent of the words said by the Host to the Monk before the latter began his tale. It is possibly for this reason that Chaucer apparently wished to cancel this epilogue, by crossing through the text in his manuscript. The Tale, however, is made no better or worse for the epilogue being either included or omitted.

Discussion

Many people regard the Nun’s Priest’s Tale as being the best of all the Canterbury Tales, and it certainly represents Chaucer in top form. He has produced a story that is so imbued with wit, so cunningly wrought at all points, artfully blending mockery with sympathy and irony with understanding, that the traditional nature of the materials is lost sight of in the brilliant finish of the performance.

This is the first notable example in English of the mock-heroic, a format that allows triviality to be blown out of proportion by the inclusion of classical allusions and long digressions, after which, in the current example, the teller has to bring himself back to the plot. At one moment the characters are chickens in a farmyard, and the next they are reciting Latin texts. Chauntecleer becomes an educated gentleman, and Pertelote is a practical and rather disillusioned woman of the world. The net effect of mock-heroic is to point to the absurdity of human aspirations and concerns. They matter no more, says Chaucer, than the scratchings of chickens in the dirt.

As with all stories of this kind, there is meaning on all sorts of levels, and every fresh reading reveals new satires and witticisms. This commentator agrees with those who give the Nun’s Priest’s Tale a very high ranking amongst the Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer.

© John Welford