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The
Canterbury Tales
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The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and
Tale
The
Wife of Bath gives a lengthy account of her feelings about marriage. Quoting
from the Bible, the Wife argues against those who believe it is wrong to marry
more than once, and she explains how she dominated and controlled each of her
five husbands. She married her fifth husband, Jankyn, for love instead of
money. After the Wife has rambled on for a while, the Friar butts in to
complain that she is taking too long, and the Summoner retorts that friars are
like flies, always meddling. The Friar promises to tell a tale about a
summoner, and the Summoner promises to tell a tale about a friar. The Host
cries for everyone to quiet down and allow the Wife to commence her tale.
In
her tale, a young knight of King Arthur’s court rapes a maiden; to atone for
his crime, Arthur’s queen sends him on a quest to discover what women want
most. An ugly old woman promises the knight that she will tell him the secret
if he promises to do whatever she wants for saving his life. He agrees, and she
tells him women want control of their husbands and their own lives. They go together
to Arthur’s queen, and the old woman’s answer turns out to be correct. The old
woman then tells the knight that he must marry her. When the knight confesses
later that he is repulsed by her appearance, she gives him a choice: she can
either be ugly and faithful, or beautiful and unfaithful. The knight tells her
to make the choice herself, and she rewards him for giving her control of the
marriage by rendering herself both beautiful and faithful.
The Friar’s Prologue and Tale
The
Friar speaks approvingly of the Wife of Bath’s Tale, and offers to lighten
things up for the company by telling a funny story about a lecherous summoner.
The Summoner does not object, but he promises to pay the Friar back in his own
tale. The Friar tells of an archdeacon who carries out the law without mercy,
especially to lechers. The archdeacon has a summoner who has a network of spies
working for him, to let him know who has been lecherous. The summoner extorts
money from those he’s sent to summon, charging them more money than he should
for penance. He tries to serve a summons on a yeoman who is actually a devil in
disguise. After comparing notes on their treachery and extortion, the devil
vanishes, but when the summoner tries to prosecute an old wealthy widow
unfairly, the widow cries out that the summoner should be taken to hell. The
devil follows the woman’s instructions and drags the summoner off to hell.
The Summoner’s Prologue and
Tale
The
Summoner, furious at the Friar’s Tale, asks the company to let him tell the
next tale. First, he tells the company that there is little difference between
friars and fiends, and that when an angel took a friar down to hell to show him
the torments there, the friar asked why there were no friars in hell; the angel
then pulled up Satan’s tail and 20,000 friars came out of his ass.
In
the Summoner’s Tale, a friar begs for money from a dying man named Thomas and
his wife, who have recently lost their child. The friar shamelessly exploits
the couple’s misfortunes to extract money from them, so Thomas tells the friar
that he is sitting on something that he will bequeath to the friars. The friar
reaches for his bequest, and Thomas lets out an enormous fart. The friar
complains to the lord of the manor, whose squire promises to divide the fart
evenly among all the friars.
The Clerk’s Prologue and Tale
The
Host asks the Clerk to cheer up and tell a merry tale, and the Clerk agrees to
tell a tale by the Italian poet Petrarch. Griselde is a hardworking peasant who
marries into the aristocracy. Her husband tests her fortitude in several ways, including
pretending to kill her children and divorcing her. He punishes her one final
time by forcing her to prepare for his wedding to a new wife. She does all this
dutifully, her husband tells her that she has always been and will always be
his wife (the divorce was a fraud), and they live happily ever after.
The Merchant’s Prologue, Tale,
and Epilogue
The
Merchant reflects on the great difference between the patient Griselde of the
Clerk’s Tale and the horrible shrew he has been married to for the past two
months. The Host asks him to tell a story of the evils of marriage, and he
complies. Against the advice of his friends, an old knight named January
marries May, a beautiful young woman. She is less than impressed by his
enthusiastic sexual efforts, and conspires to cheat on him with his squire,
Damien. When blind January takes May into his garden to copulate with her, she
tells him she wants to eat a pear, and he helps her up into the pear tree,
where she has sex with Damien. Pluto, the king of the faeries, restores
January’s sight, but May, caught in the act, assures him that he must still be
blind. The Host prays to God to keep him from marrying a wife like the one the
Merchant describes.
The Squire’s Introduction and
Tale
The
Host calls upon the Squire to say something about his favorite subject, love,
and the Squire willingly complies. King Cambyuskan of the Mongol Empire is
visited on his birthday by a knight bearing gifts from the king of Arabia and
India. He gives Cambyuskan and his daughter Canacee a magic brass horse, a
magic mirror, a magic ring that gives Canacee the ability to understand the
language of birds, and a sword with the power to cure any wound it creates. She
rescues a dying female falcon that narrates how her consort abandoned her for
the love of another. The Squire’s Tale is either unfinished by Chaucer or is
meant to be interrupted by the Franklin, who interjects that he wishes his own
son were as eloquent as the Squire. The Host expresses annoyance at the
Franklin’s interruption, and orders him to begin the next tale.
The Franklin’s Prologue and
Tale
The
Franklin says that his tale is a familiar Breton lay, a folk ballad of ancient
Brittany. Dorigen, the heroine, awaits the return of her husband, Arveragus,
who has gone to England to win honor in feats of arms. She worries that the
ship bringing her husband home will wreck itself on the coastal rocks, and she
promises Aurelius, a young man who falls in love with her, that she will give
her body to him if he clears the rocks from the coast. Aurelius hires a student
learned in magic to create the illusion that the rocks have disappeared.
Arveragus returns home and tells his wife that she must keep her promise to
Aurelius. Aurelius is so impressed by Arveragus’s honorable act that he
generously absolves her of the promise, and the magician, in turn, generously
absolves Aurelius of the money he owes.
The Physician’s Tale
Appius
the judge lusts after Virginia, the beautiful daughter of Virginius. Appius
persuades a churl named Claudius to declare her his slave, stolen from him by
Virginius. Appius declares that Virginius must hand over his daughter to
Claudius. Virginius tells his daughter that she must die rather than suffer
dishonor, and she virtuously consents to her father’s cutting her head off.
Appius sentences Virginius to death, but the Roman people, aware of Appius’s
hijinks, throw him into prison, where he kills himself.
The Pardoner’s Introduction,
Prologue, and Tale
The
Host is dismayed by the tragic injustice of the Physician’s Tale, and asks the
Pardoner to tell something merry. The other pilgrims contradict the Host,
demanding a moral tale, which the Pardoner agrees to tell after he eats and
drinks. The Pardoner tells the company how he cheats people out of their money
by preaching that money is the root of all evil. His tale describes three
riotous youths who go looking for Death, thinking that they can kill him. An
old man tells them that they will find Death under a tree. Instead, they find
eight bushels of gold, which they plot to sneak into town under cover of
darkness. The youngest goes into town to fetch food and drink, but brings back
poison, hoping to have the gold all to himself. His companions kill him to
enrich their own shares, then drink the poison and die under the tree. His tale
complete, the Pardoner offers to sell the pilgrims pardons, and singles out the
Host to come kiss his relics. The Host infuriates the Pardoner by accusing him
of fraud, but the Knight persuades the two to kiss and bury their differences.
The Shipman’s Tale
The
Shipman’s Tale features a monk who tricks a merchant’s wife into having sex
with him by borrowing money from the merchant, then giving it to the wife so
she can repay her own debt to her husband, in exchange for sexual favors. When
the monk sees the merchant next, he tells him that he returned the merchant’s
money to his wife. The wife realizes she has been duped, but she boldly tells
her husband to forgive her debt: she will repay it in bed. The Host praises the
Shipman’s story, and asks the Prioress for a tale.
The Prioress’s Prologue and
Tale
The
Prioress calls on the Virgin Mary to guide her tale. In an Asian city, a
Christian school is located at the edge of a Jewish ghetto. An angelic
seven-year-old boy, a widow’s son, attends the school. He is a devout
Christian, and loves to sing Alma Redemptoris (Gracious Mother of the
Redeemer). Singing the song on his way through the ghetto, some Jews hire a
murderer to slit his throat and throw him into a latrine. The Jews refuse to tell
the widow where her son is, but he miraculously begins to sing Alma
Redemptoris, so the Christian people recover his body, and the magistrate
orders the murdering Jews to be drawn apart by wild horses and then hanged.
The Prologue and Tale of Sir
Thopas
The
Host, after teasing Chaucer the narrator about his appearance, asks him to tell
a tale. Chaucer says that he only knows one tale, then launches into a parody
of bad poetry—the Tale of Sir Thopas. Sir Thopas rides about looking for an
elf-queen to marry until he is confronted by a giant. The narrator’s doggerel
continues in this vein until the Host can bear no more and interrupts him.
Chaucer asks him why he can’t tell his tale, since it is the best he knows, and
the Host explains that his rhyme isn’t worth a turd. He encourages Chaucer to
tell a prose tale.
The Tale of Melibee
Chaucer’s
second tale is the long, moral prose story of Melibee. Melibee’s house is
raided by his foes, who beat his wife, Prudence, and severely wound his
daughter, Sophie, in her feet, hands, ears, nose, and mouth. Prudence advises
him not to rashly pursue vengeance on his enemies, and he follows her advice,
putting his foes’ punishment in her hands. She forgives them for the outrages
done to her, in a model of Christian forbearance and forgiveness.
The Monk’s Prologue and Tale
The
Host wishes that his own wife were as patient as Melibee’s, and calls upon the
Monk to tell the next tale. First he teases the Monk, pointing out that the
Monk is clearly no poor cloisterer. The Monk takes it all in stride and tells a
series of tragic falls, in which noble figures are brought low: Lucifer, Adam,
Sampson, Hercules, Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Zenobia, Pedro of Castile, and
down through the ages.
The Nun’s Priest’s Prologue,
Tale, and Epilogue
After
seventeen noble “falls” narrated by the Monk, the Knight interrupts, and the
Host calls upon the Nun’s Priest to deliver something more lively. The Nun’s
Priest tells of Chanticleer the Rooster, who is carried off by a flattering fox
who tricks him into closing his eyes and displaying his crowing abilities.
Chanticleer turns the tables on the fox by persuading him to open his mouth and
brag to the barnyard about his feat, upon which Chanticleer falls out of the
fox’s mouth and escapes. The Host praises the Nun’s Priest’s Tale, adding that
if the Nun’s Priest were not in holy orders, he would be as sexually potent as
Chanticleer.
The Second Nun’s Prologue and
Tale
In
her Prologue, the Second Nun explains that she will tell a saint’s life, that
of Saint Cecilia, for this saint set an excellent example through her good works
and wise teachings. She focuses particularly on the story of Saint Cecilia’s
martyrdom. Before Cecilia’s new husband, Valerian, can take her virginity, she
sends him on a pilgrimage to Pope Urban, who converts him to Christianity. An
angel visits Valerian, who asks that his brother Tiburce be granted the grace
of Christian conversion as well. All three—Cecilia, Tiburce, and Valerian—are
put to death by the Romans.
The Canon’s Yeoman’s Prologue
and Tale
When
the Second Nun’s Tale is finished, the company is overtaken by a black-clad
Canon and his Yeoman, who have heard of the pilgrims and their tales and wish
to participate. The Yeoman brags to the company about how he and the Canon
create the illusion that they are alchemists, and the Canon departs in shame at
having his secrets discovered. The Yeoman tells a tale of how a canon defrauded
a priest by creating the illusion of alchemy using sleight of hand.
The Manciple’s Prologue and
Tale
The
Host pokes fun at the Cook, riding at the back of the company, blind drunk. The
Cook is unable to honor the Host’s request that he tell a tale, and the
Manciple criticizes him for his drunkenness. The Manciple relates the legend of
a white crow, taken from the Roman poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses and one of the
tales in The Arabian Nights. In it, Phoebus’s talking white crow informs him
that his wife is cheating on him. Phoebus kills the wife, pulls out the crow’s
white feathers, and curses it with blackness.
The Parson’s Prologue and Tale
As
the company enters a village in the late afternoon, the Host calls upon the
Parson to give them a fable. Refusing to tell a fictional story because it
would go against the rule set by St. Paul, the Parson delivers a lengthy
treatise on the Seven Deadly Sins, instead.
Chaucer’s Retraction
Chaucer
appeals to readers to credit Jesus Christ as the inspiration for anything in
his book that they like, and to attribute what they don’t like to his own
ignorance and lack of ability. He retracts and prays for forgiveness for all of
his works dealing with secular and pagan subjects, asking only to be remembered
for what he has written of saints’ lives and homilies.
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