The tragedy form was popular in the Middle Ages; this one comes from Boccaccio. Like Chaucer’s tales, these are fairly monotonous tragedies and the moral–that Fortune takes away as well as gives–is obvious.
^^^^^^^^^^CANTERBURY TALES: THE SECOND NUN’S TALE
To combat idleness, which encourages vice and the devil, the Second Nun offers a translation of the life of St. Cecilia. She invokes a prayer to the Virgin Mary to help her present the tale.
Cecilia of Rome wishes to remain a virgin but is promised in marriage to Valerian, a pagan. On their wedding night she tells him anyone who touches her will be killed by her guardian angel. He wants proof (wouldn’t you!), but she says he must first go to Pope Urban and be baptized. He goes and a vision appears. Convinced, he returns to find an angel with roses and lilies with Cecilia. Eventually Valerian’s brother is also baptized, and both are caught and die martyrs’ deaths. Cecilia too is supposed to die but she lives for three days after the pagans try to cut off her head. Pope Urban buries and canonizes her, and turns her house into a church.
The tale is in the popular form of a legend about a saint’s life, as you might expect from a nun. This version of St. Cecilia’s life is from Latin, and includes devices often found in legends, such as derivations of the meaning of the saint’s name, which in this case are mostly wrong.
^^^^^^^^^^CANTERBURY TALES: THE CANON’S YEOMAN’S TALE
Two strangers ride up, one in black, assumed to be a Canon (a churchman connected with a cathedral) and his Yeoman (servant), who has an odd-colored face, he says, from blowing in the fire. It turns out that the Canon is an alchemist (who tries to turn other metals into gold, usually in fire, a process which early medieval society believed happened naturally over time). The Canon dashes away in shame, but the Yeoman rambles on about the technical jargon the alchemists use, about how none of the experiments work, and about how, at this rate, he’ll never get out of debt.
The tale is about a crooked alchemist who fools a priest into thinking he really can turn baser (lower) metals into gold. Through a series of tricks, he makes gold and silver appear out of coals and wax in the fire, and the priest is so impressed he buys the alchemist’s “secret” formula for forty pounds. Needless to say, the alchemist does one more “magic” trick–he disappears, fast. The Yeoman then knocks the field of alchemy and ends with a mess of technical nonsense.
The tale is hard going for anyone who isn’t an expert in alchemist terminology. Even by Chaucer’s day, alchemy was considered by most to be a fake science, and many clerics disapproved of it as contrary to God’s will.
^^^^^^^^^^CANTERBURY TALES: THE MANCIPLE’S TALE
The Host asks the Manciple for his tale while the pilgrims are busy trying to keep the drunken Cook on his horse.
A man named Phoebus embodies every virtue–gentleness, kindness, bravery–but is very jealous of the wife he loves dearly. He has a white-feathered crow that can speak, and when he goes away, the wife’s lover comes over. When Phoebus returns, the crow tells all. In a jealous rage, Phoebus kills his wife, then regrets it bitterly. Angry now at the bird for opening its beak, Phoebus pulls its white feathers and changes them for black, takes away the bird’s voice, and kicks it out. The tale ends with advice against wicked gossip, in favor of keeping your tongue.
The tale is retold from a well-known fable in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. (As in classical times, tales revolving around why something is so–here, the crows black feathers and raucous voice–were popular in the Middle Ages.) It’s the shortest of all the complete tales, perhaps because Chaucer meant the Manciple to take his own advice about keeping his words down to a minimum!
^^^^^^^^^^CANTERBURY TALES: THE PARSON’S TALE
The Host urges the Parson to be quick, since it’s dusk, but the Parson produces a long sermon in prose about the Seven Deadly Sins, not really a tale at all.
The Parson touches on penitence, confession, grace, pride, envy, anger, laziness, greed, gluttony and lechery. His lengthy sermon, which most people probably wouldn’t sit through in church, nevertheless ties together all the arguments of the other pilgrims by putting them on a higher plane, and serves as a fitting end to the Tales. His tale emphasizes the spiritual values underlying the pilgrimage.
Like the Knight, the Parson is an ideal figure, so it also makes sense that one should begin the Tales and the other end them. However, because of the plodding and unpoetic quality of the Parson’s Tale, some readers doubt it is written by Chaucer. Take a look and see for yourself how it compares with the other tales.
^^^^^^^^^^CANTERBURY TALES: CHAUCER’S RETRACTION
At the end Chaucer puts in a modest note asking readers to forgive him if there’s anything in the tales they disapprove of. Anything displeasing, Chaucer says, comes from my lack of ability, since I’d have said it better if I could. (Yet at the start he tells us he has no choice but to write exactly what the pilgrims say!) He asks God to pray for him and forgive him the “worldly vanities” he has written or translated: Troilus and Criseyde, the House of Fame, Parliament of Fowls, Book of the Duchess, and other “lecherous” tales, even the Canterbury Tales. He revokes them all, asking Christ and Mary to save him on Judgment Day. It’s not clear why Chaucer wrote this, but it serves again to remind us of the ultimate seriousness of Chaucer’s tales and faith.
^^^^^^^^^^CANTERBURY TALES: GLOSSARY
Here is a short glossary of the names that appear in the tales examined in this book.
ABSALOM The prissy, proper clerk in the Miller’s Tale who is after Alison but can’t get her.
ALISON The wife of John the carpenter in the Miller’s Tale, who is young and flirtatious and decides to sleep with Nicholas behind her husband’s back.
ARCITE One of the two knight “heroes” in the Knight’s Tale, who gets released from prison and returns for the love of Emelye.
BOETHIUS An early Christian philosopher who wrote The Consolation of Philosophy, which Chaucer translated, about the divine order that exists behind the swings of fortune.
CHANTICLEER The self-assured rooster hero of the Nun’s Priest’s Tale. He doesn’t listen to his dreams and so gets carried away by a fox.
EMELYE The object of desire in the Knight’s Tale; Duke Theseus’s sister-in-law.
FORTUNE Often personified as a fickle goddess, especially by Boethius, she raises people up or throws them down.
JOHN The cuckolded carpenter in the Miller’s Tale. He believes in God and in the astrology dupe that Nicholas pulls on him. (Also the name of the Nun’s Priest.)
MARS God of war in the Knight’s Tale, but also used to represent the planet Mars and its astrological influences. Arcite prays to Mars for victory.
NICHOLAS The “hende” (pleasant and sly) clerk of the Miller’s Tale who concocts a scheme for John so that he can sleep with Alison.
PALAMON The other young knight of the Knight’s Tale, vying with his cousin Arcite for Emelye’s love. He prays to Venus for victory.
PEROTHEUS An old friend of Arcite’s and Theseus’ in the Knight’s Tale, who intercedes to get Arcite sprung from prison.
PERTELOTE Chanticleer’s lady love who doesn’t believe in the psychic power of dreams.
SATURN The god and planet of doom and chaos in the Knight’s Tale (and elsewhere in Chaucer). He arranges that Venus’ knight, Palamon, shall win Emelye.
THEBES The ancient city where Arcite and Palamon are from. Theseus of Athens conquers Thebes by defeating the tyrant Creon.
THESEUS Duke of Athens, conqueror of Thebes, he is the ruler who imprisons Arcite and Palamon, and later releases Arcite on Perotheus’ request.
VENUS The goddess of love. Her “day” is Friday, when the tournament takes place in the Knight’s Tale, and when Chanticleer gets caught in the Nun’s Priest’s Tale. Both Palamon and Chanticleer are described as servants of Venus.
^^^^^^^^^^CANTERBURY TALES: ON THE GENERAL PROLOGUE
To realize the exact extent of Chaucer’s achievement in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, it is necessary to remember that the Middle Ages were not a time of portraits. It was a time of patterns, of allegories, of reducing the specific to the general and then drawing a moral from it…. What Chaucer was doing was entirely different…. He did not even set out to be entertaining. He merely set out to be accurate.
-Marchette Chute, Geoffrey Chaucer of England, 1958
Chaucer, like other debate narrators, takes no stand except in comic or ironic terms…. In all the tales, all human points of view have something to be said for them and something to be said against them.
-John Gardner, The Poetry of Chaucer, 1977