After the Host,Harry Bailey, has interrupted the Pilgrim
CHAUCER’s recitation of his burlesque TALE OF
SIR THOPAS, the poet’s persona responds with a
lengthy moral allegory in prose known as The Tale of
Melibee. In the past critics of The CANTERBURY TALES
saw Melibee as a deliberately bad tale, one chosen
specifically to bore the Host in revenge for the interruption
of Thopas. More recent scholars have seen
little sense in this interpretation—why should
Chaucer’s readers suffer through a bad tale so that
the fictional pilgrim may avenge himself on the fictional
Host? In fact the Host is not bored with the
tale at all, but rather wishes his wife Goodelief had
heard it, an intimidating shrew who seems to be the
opposite of Melibee’s wife, Prudence.
In the tale a band of his enemies breaks into Melibee’s
house, where they attack and beat his wife,
Prudence, and daughter Sophie, leaving the daughter
with five mortal wounds. The furious Melibee
wants vengeance, but his wife counsels him to receive
his suffering in patience. She says he should
call a council of his friends, which he does, and they
advise him to go to war to avenge himself.
Though Melibee agrees to their advice, Prudence
once again steps in and speaks for patience.
Overcoming his initial reluctance to listen to a
woman, she delivers a long admonitory speech on
the proper use of counsel, as well as of wealth and
power. Though concerned with the harm it will do
to his reputation and his honor, Melibee finally is
convinced by his wife to seek peace. He ultimately
thanks God for sending him a wife of such “discretion,”
and on her advice, he summons his enemies
and forgives them openly, praying at the same
time that God will forgive all of his own trespasses.
Chaucer’s tale is a rather close (by medieval
standards) translation of Renaud de Louens’s
French work, the Livre de Melibée et de Dame Prudence
(ca. 1336), itself a freer translation of the earlier
Latin Liber consolationis et consilii by
Albertanus of Brescia (1246). Renaud’s text was
popular, and was included in the book of the Ménagier
de Paris (1392–94), compiled as a manual of
advice for the Ménagier’s young wife. The tale’s
contemporary popularity, then, suggests that more
recent critics’ contempt for Melibee hardly reflects
the tastes of Chaucer’s own age. Though the tale
has not been a critical favorite, some scholars who
have seriously considered Melibee have seen it as a
pacifist political tract, applying possibly to JOHN OF
GAUNT’s proposed war in Spain, or a generally
pacifist warning to the English nobility to use caution
and seek wise counsel rather than act rashly.
Others have seen it as a distinctly religious tale, relating
consciously to other tales in Chaucer’s text,
particularly those concerned with marriage, and
those (like The KNIGHT’S TALE) that glorify war.
Bibliography
Benson, Larry, et al., eds. The Riverside Chaucer. 3rd
ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.
Collette,Carolyn.“Heeding the Counsel of Prudence:
A Context for the Melibee,” Chaucer Review 29
(1995): 416–433.
Cowgill, Jane. “Patterns of Feminine and Masculine
Persuasion in the Melibee and the Parson’s Tale.” In
Chaucer’s Religious Tales, edited by C. David Benson
and Elizabeth Robertson, 171–183. Chaucer
Studies 15. Cambridge, U.K.: Brewer, 1990.
Owen, Charles A., Jr. “The Tale of Melibee,” Chaucer
Review 7 (1973): 267–280.
Stillwell, Gardiner.“The Political Meaning of Chaucer’s
Tale ofMelibee,” Speculum 19 (1944): 433–444.
Strohm, Paul. “The Allegory of the Tale of Melibee,”
Chaucer Review 2 (1967): 32–42.