Well into The CANTERBURY TALES, CHAUCER presents his readers with a surprise. Breaking from
the pattern that gives each of the original pilgrims introduced in the GENERAL PROLOGUE a
turn to tell a story, Chaucer suddenly introduces
a dramatic variation when he depicts a Canon
(a cleric bound by the Augustinian rule) and his
servant Yeoman riding hard to catch up to the
group of pilgrims to join them on their route to
Canterbury.
After the Yeoman has greeted the company, he
begins to boast about his master’s skill and knowledge, saying the Canon could pave the road to
Canterbury with gold if he desired. When the Host
asks why, if that is true, the Canon is dressed in
such ragged clothes, the question seems to draw
the Yeoman into a true revelation of how his master’s obsession with alchemy has destroyed him.
The Canon tries to stop the Yeoman’s tongue, but
when this proves impossible, he rides off, leaving
the company. The Yeoman, now released from any
inhibitions, tells all his master’s frustrated attempts
to find the Philosopher’s Stone. The Yeoman also
chastises his own foolishness for sharing the
Canon’s obsessions.
In the second part of his tale, the Yeoman tells
the story of a different canon (he swears it is not
his own master) who uses alchemy to dupe ignorant and greedy people. In the story the canon convinces a priest in London that he has actually
found the secret of turning base metals into silver
(though in fact it is all a trick). He sells the “secret”
to the unwitting priest for 40 pounds, and the
priest never sees him again. The Yeoman ends by
admonishing his audience to leave the black art before it destroys them. Only divine revelation, not
alchemy, will reveal ultimate truth.
There are no specific sources for Chaucer’s
tale, and his portrait of the dishonest alchemist
was an unusual one for his time. Early critics
thought the vehemence of the Yeoman’s condemnation of alchemy to be evidence of Chaucer’s
personal antipathy toward the subject. Other
scholars have discussed thematic parallels and
contrasts between The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale and
The SECOND NUN’S TALE, which always precedes
it in Fragment VIII of The Canterbury Tales—
particularly the contrast of God’s Creation with
the pseudo-creation of the alchemist, and the
parallel between the hellish fire of the alchemist
and the divine fire of St. Cecilia in The Second
Nun’s Tale. Other scholars have focused on explaining the relationship between the first, autobiographical part of The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale
and the second part concerning the devious
canon and the London priest, a relationship that
depicts a kind of degeneration from obsession to
deliberate deception.
Bibliography
Cowgill, Bruce Kent. “Sweetness and Sweat: The Extraordinary Emanations in Fragment Eight of the
Canterbury Tales,” Philological Quarterly 74 (Fall
1995): 343–357.
Duncan, Edgar H. “The Literature of Alchemy and
Chaucer’s Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale: Framework,
Theme, and Characters,” Speculum 43 (1968):
633–656.
Grennen, Joseph.“Saint Cecilia’s ‘Chemical Wedding’:
the Unity of the Canterbury Tales, Fragment VIII,”
JEGP 65 (1966): 466–481.
Harwood, Britton J. “Chaucer and the Silence of History: Situating the Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale,” PMLA
102 (1987): 338–350.
Patterson, Lee. “Perpetual Motion: Alchemy and the
Technology of the Self,” Studies in the Age of
Chaucer 15 (1993): 25–57.