Monk’s Tale, The. Geoffrey Chaucer (ca. 1373–1386). Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature

CHAUCER’s Monk’s Tale is one of the lesser-known
CANTERBURY TALES. It takes the form of a series of
vignettes illustrating the fall of important figures
in history, beginning with Lucifer and Adam, and
extending through 15 more notables from biblical
or classical times, or in a few cases from nearcontemporaries, like Pedro the Cruel, king of
Castile (d. 1369), and Ugolino of Pisa (d. 1289).
The stories range from one stanza for Lucifer or
Adam to 16 in the case of Zenobia, third-century
queen of Palmyra. The point of the stories is to illustrate the power of Fortune in human affairs
and, at least implicitly, to remind the reader that
the only true stability lies not in this world but in
the world to come.
Such collections were popular in the Middle
Ages. Chaucer’s was inspired chiefly by B
OCCACCIO’s Latin text De Casibus Virorum Illustrium (The
Fall of Illustrious Men
), and in the 15th century the
English poet John L
YDGATE wrote a poem of 36,000
lines on the subject called
The Fall of Princes. It
seems likely that Chaucer was also drawing on a
section of the
ROMAN DE LA ROSE, wherein Reason
condemns Fortune for her role in the downfall of a
number of historical personages.
A number of scholars have suggested that
The
Monk’s Tale
is an early work, from the early 1370s,
after Chaucer’s first Italian journey (1372–73). The
stories of some of the contemporary figures cannot have been written before 1385, but it has been
suggested that Chaucer added them when he revised the earlier poem to include among the
Canterbury Tales. However, since he does not mention
the collection when he lists his own works in the
prologue to
The Legend of Good Women, and since
the influence of Boccaccio doesn’t become pervasive in his poetry until after his second visit to Italy
in 1378, some have argued that Chaucer wrote
The
Monk’s Tale
later, even while he was beginning the
Canterbury Tales.
The tale ends when the Knight interrupts the
Monk, saying he has had enough of the gloomy
stories (the Monk has said that he has 100 such
stories to tell, and the threat of that many more
seems too much for the Knight). The Host agrees
that the tales are monotonous, and many readers
have likely concurred. However, the individual
short narratives with which Chaucer is experimenting in
The Monk’s Tale are often quite powerful in their brevity. The collection is also
interesting as an illustration of the medieval concept of tragedy, which is quite different from the
classical sense. As the Monk explains:
Tragedie is to seyn a certeyn storie,
. . .
Of hym that stood in greet prosperitee
And is yfallen out of heigh degree
Into myserie, and endeth wrecchedly.
(Benson 1987, 241, ll. 1973–77)
That is, tragedy is defined as a fall from prosperity,
through the whims of Fortune—something outside of human control.
Of interest, as well, is the stanza used in
The
Monk’s Tale:
a stanza of six decasyllabic (10-syllable) lines rhyming ababbcbc—it is a form that
Chaucer uses nowhere else in his narrative poetry,
and may be utilized here specifically because the

couplet in the middle of the stanza suggests the
high point of Fortune’s wheel, and the end of the
stanza falls off from its climax as Fortune’s wheel
turns down from its height.
Bibliography
Benson, Larry, et al. The Riverside Chaucer. 3rd ed.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.
Knight, Stephen, et al. “Colloquium: The Monk’s
Tale,”
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 22 (2000):
379–440.
Ruud, Jay. “ ‘In Meetre in Many a Sondry Wyse’: Fortune’s Wheel and
The Monk’s Tale,” English Language Notes 26 (1989): 6–11.

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