.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
The
Canterbury Tales
..
.
The Canterbury Tales
is at once one of the most famous and most frustrating works of literature ever
written. Since its composition in late 1300s, critics have continued to mine
new riches from its complex ground, and started new arguments about the text
and its interpretation. Chaucer’s richly detailed text, so Dryden said, was
“God’s plenty”, and the rich variety of the Tales is partly perhaps the reason
for its success. It is both one long narrative (of the pilgrims and their
pilgrimage) and an encyclopedia of shorter narratives; it is both one large
drama, and a compilation of most literary forms known to medieval literature:
romance, fabliau, Breton lay, moral fable, verse romance, beast fable, prayer
to the Virgin… and so the list goes on. No single literary genre dominates the
Tales. The tales include romantic adventures, fabliaux, saint's biographies,
animal fables, religious allegories and even a sermon, and range in tone from
pious, moralistic tales to lewd and vulgar sexual farces. More often than not,
moreover, the specific tone of the tale is extremely difficult to firmly pin
down.
This,
indeed, is down to one of the key problems of interpreting the Tales themselves
- voice: how do we ever know who is speaking? Because Chaucer, early in the
Tales, promises to repeat the exact words and style of each speaker as best he
can remember it, there is always a tension between Chaucer and the pilgrim's
voice he ventriloquisms as he re-tells his tale: even the "Chaucer"
who is a character on the pilgrim has a distinct and deliberately unchaucerian
voice. Is it the Merchant’s voice – and the Merchant’s opinion – or Chaucer’s?
Is it Chaucer the character or Chaucer the writer? If it is Chaucer’s, are we
supposed to take it at face value, or view it ironically? It is for this reason
that, throughout this ClassicNote, a conscious effort has been made to refer to
the speaker of each tale (the Merchant, in the Merchant’s Tale, for example) as
the “narrator”, a catch-all term which represents both of, or either one of,
Chaucer and the speaker in question.
No-one
knows for certain when Chaucer began to write the Tales – the pilgrimage is
usually dated 1387, but that date is subject to much scholarly argument – but
it is certain that Chaucer wrote some parts of the Tales at different times,
and went back and added Tales to the melting pot. The Knight’s Tale, for
example, was almost certainly written earlier than the Canterbury project as a
separate work, and then adapted into the voice of the Knight; and the Second
Nun’s Tale, as well as probably the Monk’s, probably have a similar
compositional history.
Chaucer
drew from a rich variety of literary sources to create the Tales, though his
principal debt is likely to Boccaccio’s Decameron, in which ten nobles from
Florence, to escape the plague, stay in a country villa and amuse each other by
each telling tales. Boccaccio likely had a significant influence on Chaucer.
The Knight's Tale was an English version of a tale by Boccaccio, while six of
Chaucer's tales have possible sources in the Decameron: the Miller's Tale, the
Reeve's, the Clerk's, the Merchant's, the Franklin's, and the Shipman's.
However, Chaucer's pilgrims to Canterbury form a wider range of society
compared to Boccaccio's elite storytellers, allowing for greater differences in
tone and substance.
The
text of the Tales itself does not survive complete, but in ten fragments. Due
to the fact that there are no links made between these ten fragments in most
cases, it is extremely difficult to ascertain precisely in which order Chaucer
wanted the tales to be read. This Classic Note corresponds to the order
followed in Larry D. Benson’s “Riverside Chaucer”, which is undoubtedly the
best edition of Chaucer currently available.
..
.
Plot
Overview
General Prologue
At
the Tabard Inn, a tavern in Southwark, near London, the narrator joins a
company of twenty-nine pilgrims. The pilgrims, like the narrator, are traveling
to the shrine of the martyr Saint Thomas Becket in Canterbury. The narrator
gives a descriptive account of twenty-seven of these pilgrims, including a
Knight, Squire, Yeoman, Prioress, Monk, Friar, Merchant, Clerk, Man of Law,
Franklin, Haberdasher, Carpenter, Weaver, Dyer, Tapestry-Weaver, Cook, Shipman,
Physician, Wife, Parson, Plowman, Miller, Manciple, Reeve, Summoner, Pardoner,
and Host. (He does not describe the Second Nun or the Nun’s Priest, although both
characters appear later in the book.) The Host, whose name, we find out in the
Prologue to the Cook’s Tale, is Harry Bailey, suggests that the group ride
together and entertain one another with stories. He decides that each pilgrim
will tell two stories on the way to Canterbury and two on the way back.
Whomever he judges to be the best storyteller will receive a meal at Bailey’s
tavern, courtesy of the other pilgrims. The pilgrims draw lots and determine
that the Knight will tell the first tale.
The Knight’s Tale
These
us, duke of Athens, imprisons Arcite and Palamon, two knights from Thebes
(another city in ancient Greece). From their prison, the knights see and fall
in love with Theseus’s sister-in-law, Emelye. Through the intervention of a
friend, Arcite is freed, but he is banished from Athens. He returns in disguise
and becomes a page in Emelye’s chamber. Palamon escapes from prison, and the
two meet and fight over Emelye. Theseus apprehends them and arranges a
tournament between the two knights and their allies, with Emelye as the prize.
Arcite wins, but he is accidentally thrown from his horse and dies. Palamon
then marries Emelye.
The Miller’s Prologue and Tale
The
Host asks the Monk to tell the next tale, but the drunken Miller interrupts and
insists that his tale should be the next. He tells the story of an impoverished
student named Nicholas, who persuades his landlord’s sexy young wife, Alisoun,
to spend the night with him. He convinces his landlord, a carpenter named John,
that the second flood is coming, and tricks him into spending the night in a
tub hanging from the ceiling of his barn. Absolon, a young parish clerk who is
also in love with Alisoun, appears outside the window of the room where
Nicholas and Alisoun lie together. When Absolon begs Alisoun for a kiss, she
sticks her rear end out the window in the dark and lets him kiss it. Absolon
runs and gets a red-hot poker, returns to the window, and asks for another
kiss; when Nicholas sticks his bottom out the window and farts, Absolon brands
him on the buttocks. Nicholas’s cries for water make the carpenter think that
the flood has come, so the carpenter cuts the rope connecting his tub to the
ceiling, falls down, and breaks his arm.
The Reeve’s Prologue and Tale
Because
he also does carpentry, the Reeve takes offense at the Miller’s tale of a
stupid carpenter, and counters with his own tale of a dishonest miller. The
Reeve tells the story of two students, John and Alayn, who go to the mill to
watch the miller grind their corn, so that he won’t have a chance to steal any.
But the miller unties their horse, and while they chase it, he steals some of
the flour he has just ground for them. By the time the students catch the
horse, it is dark, so they spend the night in the miller’s house. That night,
Alayn seduces the miller’s daughter, and John seduces his wife. When the miller
wakes up and finds out what has happened, he tries to beat the students. His
wife, thinking that her husband is actually one of the students, hits the
miller over the head with a staff. The students take back their stolen goods
and leave.
The Cook’s Prologue and Tale
The
Cook particularly enjoys the Reeve’s Tale, and offers to tell another funny
tale. The tale concerns an apprentice named Perkyn who drinks and dances so
much that he is called “Perkyn Reveler.” Finally, Perkyn’s master decides that
he would rather his apprentice leave to revel than stay home and corrupt the
other servants. Perkyn arranges to stay with a friend who loves drinking and
gambling, and who has a wife who is a prostitute. The tale breaks off,
unfinished, after fifty-eight lines.
The Man of Law’s Introduction,
Prologue, Tale, and Epilogue
The
Host reminds his fellow pilgrims to waste no time, because lost time cannot be
regained. He asks the Man of Law to tell the next tale. The Man of Law agrees,
apologizing that he cannot tell any suitable tale that Chaucer has not already
told—Chaucer may be unskilled as a poet, says the Man of Law, but he has told
more stories of lovers than Ovid, and he doesn’t print tales of incest as John
Gower does (Gower was a contemporary of Chaucer). In the Prologue to his tale,
the Man of Law laments the miseries of poverty. He then remarks how fortunate
merchants are, and says that his tale is one told to him by a merchant.
In
the tale, the Muslim sultan of Syria converts his entire sultanate (including
himself) to Christianity in order to persuade the emperor of Rome to give him
his daughter, Custance, in marriage. The sultan’s mother and her attendants
remain secretly faithful to Islam. The mother tells her son she wishes to hold
a banquet for him and all the Christians. At the banquet, she massacres her son
and all the Christians except for Custance, whom she sets adrift in a
rudderless ship. After years of floating, Custance runs ashore in
Northumberland, where a constable and his wife, Hermengyld, offer her shelter.
She converts them to Christianity.
One
night, Satan makes a young knight sneak into Hermengyld’s chamber and murder
Hermengyld. He places the bloody knife next to Custance, who sleeps in the same
chamber. When the constable returns home, accompanied by Alla, the king of
Northumberland, he finds his slain wife. He tells Alla the story of how
Custance was found, and Alla begins to pity the girl. He decides to look more
deeply into the murder. Just as the knight who murdered Hermengyld is swearing
that Custance is the true murderer, he is struck down and his eyes burst out of
his face, proving his guilt to Alla and the crowd. The knight is executed, Alla
and many others convert to Christianity, and Custance and Alla marry.
While
Alla is away in Scotland, Custance gives birth to a boy named Mauricius. Alla’s
mother, Donegild, intercepts a letter from Custance to Alla and substitutes a
counterfeit one that claims that the child is disfigured and bewitched. She
then intercepts Alla’s reply, which claims that the child should be kept and
loved no matter how malformed. Donegild substitutes a letter saying that
Custance and her son are banished and should be sent away on the same ship on
which Custance arrived. Alla returns home, finds out what has happened, and
kills Donegild.
After
many adventures at sea, including an attempted rape, Custance ends up back in
Rome, where she reunites with Alla, who has made a pilgrimage there to atone
for killing his mother. She also reunites with her father, the emperor. Alla
and Custance return to England, but Alla dies after a year, so Custance
returns, once more, to Rome. Mauricius becomes the next Roman emperor.
Following
the Man of Law’s Tale, the Host asks the Parson to tell the next tale, but the
Parson reproaches him for swearing, and they fall to bickering.
..
.
.