Fragment I

The General Prologue:

As April comes, the narrator begins a pilgrimage to Canterbury from the Tabard Inn at Southwerk. Twenty-nine people make the pilgrimage toward Canterbury and the narrator describes them in turn. The pilgrims are listed in relative order of status, thus the first character is the Knight. Chaucer describes the knight as a worthy man who had fought in the Crusades. With him is a Squire, the son of the Knight and a 'lusty bachelor' of twenty. The Knight has a second servant, a Yeoman. There is also a Prioress, shy and polite. She is prim and proper, sympathetic and well-mannered. The Prioress wears a broach with the inscription "All things are subject unto love." With the Prioress is her secretary (the Second Nun) and a Monk. The monk is a robust and masculine man who loves to hunt. The Friar, Hubert, is an immoral man more concerned with making profit than converting men from sin. The Merchant from Flanders is a pompous man who speaks endlessly on how profits may be increased. He seems grave, yet there is no better man, according to the narrator. The Clerk follows the Merchant. As an Oxford student without employment, he is impoverished and wears threadbare clothes. The Man of Law is a man who deserves to be held in awe. He knows the law to the letter and gives the impression that he is far busier than he actually is. A Franklin travels with him. He is a man who lives in comfort and is interested simply in pleasure, particularly culinary delight. There are also five guildsmen: a Weaver, a Dyer, a Carpenter, a Tapestry-maker and a Haberdasher. With them they bring a Cook. A Shipman is the next traveler, who comes from the port of Dartmouth, and with him a Physician. The Wife of Bath is next; she is a weaver who wears bright red clothing. She has been married five times (and had several companions as a youth). The Parson is an honorable, decent man who cares for his congregation and adheres to the teachings of Christ. With him is his brother, a Plowman, who is equally kind. The final travelers are a Miller, a Manciple, a Reeve, a Summoner and a Pardoner. The Miller is a large man with an imposing physique. The Manciple is from a lawyers' college and knows every legal maneuver. The Reeve is a slender man with a fiery temper. The Summoner is quite unfair in his job (he is responsible for serving summons to court for church crimes). If he likes a scoundrel, he can ignore the man's sins. The Pardoner is an effeminate man. Each of these travelers finds themselves in the Tabard Inn, where the Host, a bold and merry man, suggests that on their way to Canterbury each traveler tell two tales, and on the way back each traveler tell two more. They draw lots to decide who will tell the first tale, and it is the Knight who has the honor.

Analysis

In the General Prologue, Chaucer sets up the general structure of the tales and introduces each of the characters who will tell the tales. The characters who tell each of the tales are as important as the characters in the tales that they tell; a significant portion of the action of the Canterbury Tales takes place within the prologues to each of the tales. The General Prologue in essence serves as a guide for the tales, giving some explanation for the motivation behind each of the tales each character tells.

The introductory imagery of the General Prologue mixes the spiritual with the secular and moves between each form with relative ease. The Canterbury Tales begins with the famous lines "Whanne that Aprill with his shoures soote / The droghte of March hath perced to the roote," setting up imagery of spring and regeneration. Yet he does not continue with the logical outcome of this springtime imagery. Instead of conforming to the cliché "in springtime a young man's fancy turns to love," Chaucer veers into more spiritual territory. In springtime these travelers make a religious pilgrimage to Canterbury. Yet Chaucer is equally uninterested in the religious details of this journey, and keeps the beginning passages of the General Prologue focused on nature and not on the human society with which the travelers will deal.

Chaucer gives relatively straightforward descriptions of the characters and has some inclination to show their best qualities. Chaucer describes virtually each pilgrimage as an exemplar ­ a number of these pilgrims are described as 'perfect' in some way or another, most often in their craft. Furthermore, these pilgrims exist almost entirely in terms of their profession. Chaucer gives only a few of them character names, and these emerge only in terms of conversation between the characters during each tale's prologue, and not in Chaucer's description in the General Prologue.

Yet even within these descriptions he allows for subtle criticism and sly wit. The description of the Prioress in particular, is overtly flattering yet masquerades a sharp criticism of her foolish sentimentality and oppressive attention to manners. Although she strives to be polite and refined, she spoke French "after the school of Stratford-at-Bow," the vulgar rural pronunciation compared to elite Parisian French. Furthermore, she weeps at the mere sight of a dead mouse, a gross overreaction to a small tragedy.

The descriptions of the upper members of the clergy deserve special note in context of the tales. Each of the clergymen defy traditional expectations; the Monk is a rough laborer, while the Friar is resolutely immoral. Chaucer lists the various sins of the Friar: he sells pardon from sin for a price, seduces women who ask for pardons, and spends more time in bars than he does aiding the poor. His concern for profit is a stark contrast with that of the Merchant. While the Merchant merely dispenses advice on how to attain profit, it is the Friar who applies his entire existence to its pursuit. The Friar further contrasts with the later description of the Parson, a man who performs his duties honorably and cares for his congregation. In his description of the Parson, Chaucer lists the various admirable qualities, none of which are held by the Friar.

The description of the Merchant is also notable, for it shows the disparity between how the narrator overtly appraises a character and what he describes. After listing a number of unflattering qualities in the Merchant, the narrator still judges him to be a fine man; in these descriptions, the details and anecdotes are far more important in defining character than the final stated opinion of the narrator.

Chaucer indulges in comic criticism in his portrait of the Clerk. This Oxford student, however educated, is not worldly enough for any normal employment. He has studied only impractical knowledge, and even carries among his few possessions several volumes of Aristotle.

Most of the travelers engaged in a profession receive little description; as the travelers move down the social scale Chaucer gives them less and less detailed descriptions. The Wife of Bath is the most significant of the travelers low on the social scale. Chaucer describes her as lewd and boisterous. Her clothing, all variations of bright red, is ostentatious, meant to attract attention from others. Chaucer even indicates that she is quite promiscuous ­ she has been married five times and had an undetermined number of lovers. The other traveler who merits a lengthy description is the Pardoner. He has a very effeminate manner, with a high voice and soft features. Chaucer even compares him to a gelding (a castrated horse) or a mare, which may be a subtle comment on his sexuality.

The prologue sets up the general design of the Canterbury Tales. Each character will tell four tales during the journey, leading to a grand total of 116 tales. Chaucer never completed all of the tales, starting only about one fourth of the possible stories, not all of which remain in their entirety. Some of the stories that remain are only fragments which have either been lost or were never completed by the author.

When the travelers draw lots to decide who will tell the first story, it is the Knight who has the first choice. Although the order is supposedly random, the Knight draws the first lot and thus randomly receives the rank appropriate to his status, which indicates that the Host may have fixed the lots in order to curry favor with the Knight.

The Knight's Tale, Part I:

The Knight begins his tale with the story of a prince named Theseus who married Hippolyta, the queen of Scythia, and brought her and her sister, Emelye, back to Athens with him after conquering her kingdom of Amazons. When Theseus returned home victorious, he became aware that there was a company of women clad in black who knelt at the side of the highway, shrieking. The oldest of the women asked Theseus for pity. She told him that she was once the wife of King Cappaneus who was destroyed at Thebes, and that all of the other women with her lost their husbands. Creon, the lord of the town, simply tossed the dead bodies of the soldiers in a single pile and refused to burn or bury them. Theseus swore vengeance upon Creon, and immediately ordered his armies toward Thebes. Theseus vanquished Creon, and when the soldiers were disposing of the bodies they found two young knights, Arcite and Palamon, two royal cousins, not quite dead. Theseus ordered that they be imprisoned in Athens for life. They passed their time imprisoned in a tower in Athens until they saw Emelye in a nearby garden. Both fall immediately in love with her. Palamon compares her to Venus, and he prays for escape from the prison, while Arcite claims that he would rather be dead than not have Emelye. The two bicker over her, each calling the other a traitor. This happened on a day in which Pirithous, a prince and childhood friend of Theseus, came to Athens. Pirithous had known Arcite at Thebes, and on his request Theseus set Arcite free on the promise that Arcite would never be found in Theseus' kingdom. He now had his freedom, but not the ability to pursue Emelye, and lamented the cruelty of fate. Palamon, however, envied Arcite, since he could presumably raise an army against Theseus to conquer Athens. The Knight poses this question: which has the worse case: Arcite, who has his freedom but not access to Emelye, or Palamon, who can see Emelye but remains a prisoner?

Analysis

The Knight tells a tale of courtship and chivalry, focused on the deeds of soldiers and princes, the social milieu in which the Knight travels. Even the structure of the tale obeys the structure and hierarchy within society. The Knight does not start with the main characters of the tale, Arcite and Palamon; instead, he begins at the apex of society, describing the exploits of Theseus of Athens, working downward until he reaches the less distinguished Theban soldiers.

The Knight's Tale adheres to traditional values of honor in which there are strict codes of behavior which one must follow. This code of chivalry is not necessarily polite and decent. In the morality of the tale, Theseus' sudden decision to ransack Thebes to right a wrong is perfectly acceptable as punishment for a transgression against the honor of the dead soldiers.

The dynamics of the Knight's tale are relatively simple. The tale is instructive, positing the question of which knight ­ Arcite or Palamon ­ has a superior situation. The situation and the moral questions that it poses thus become more important than the qualities of the individual characters. They exist to be moved by the events of the story: to be imprisoned and set free whenever the plot demands, or to fall in love at first sight when it is dramatically convenient. Even the characters acknowledge their lack of free will within the story. The two knights pray to Venus for a literal deus ex machine, for they are unable to control their own fate. The Knight's Tale even acknowledges the role of fate through the gods. Palamon leaves his fate to theology, blaming his fate on Venus, Juno and Saturn.

Arcite and Palamon are thus virtually indistinguishable from one another. There is no information on which a reader may base an opinion on their respective virtues, thus the focus shifts to their situations. Emelye is equally standard. The Knight describes her as a typical fairy-tale maiden ­ the only inversion of the formula is that her suitors are the ones imprisoned. She is even first seen in a garden, a pastoral symbol that balances both purity and fertility.

The Knight's Tale, Part II:

After two years in Thebes, one night Arcite dreamed that he saw Mercury stand before him, bidding him to be free of hope and care. He told Arcite to go to Athens to relieve his grief. Arcite thought that he might disguise his rank in Athens and pass unknown. He came to the court and offered his services, and fell into a post with Emelye's steward under the name of Philostratus. Arcite worked as a page in Emelye's house and was beloved, so Theseus made him soon squire of his chamber and furnished him from Thebes. Meanwhile Palamon had lived for seven years in his dungeon. It soon occurred that Palamon escaped from the tower and fled the city. He meant to hide himself and head toward Thebes. That morning Arcite went horseback riding. In the area outside of the city, he dismounted and began to speak to himself, lamenting his situation without Emelye. He did this around the area where Palamon was hiding, and he revealed himself to Arcite. Since neither has weapons, they vow to meet in the same place tomorrow and fight over Emelye. They returned the next day armed for battle. While they prepared, Theseus, Hippolyta and Emelye were hunting. They reached the area where Arcite and Palamon were fighting, and Theseus stopped the battle. Palamon admits to Theseus that Arcite is the man who was banished and returned, disguised as Philostratus, while he is the escaped prisoner. He also admits that both love Emelye. Theseus ordered the death of both, but the queen and Emelye took pity on the two men, and begged Theseus for mercy. He considers how much they loved Emelye to risk death by not escaping to Thebes. He asks them to swear that they will never make war against any realm of his. He decides that the two will wage war on each other, each with one hundred knights, in order to decide whom Emelye will marry.

Analysis:

The escape of Palamon from prison soon after Arcite is released puts a quick finish to the question posed at the end of the first part of the tale. Both soon have the autonomy to pursue Emelye and relatively equal access to her, even if both are still forbidden in Athens. Yet the schematic structure still prevails. The tale thrives on improbable coincidences. When Palamon is hiding, not only does Arcite happen to be in the same area, but he also happens to talk to himself, indirectly revealing his identity to Palamon. A similar coincidence occurs when Arcite and Palamon stage their duel. Theseus, his wife and the knights' beloved, Emelye, happen to find themselves in the same forest at the same time that Arcite and Palamon are fighting, the first instance in which the two have direct contact with Emelye.

Emelye proves a problematic character in the scheme of the story. Arcite and Palamon are prepared to fight to the death for her love, despite the fact that neither have had significant contact with her and cannot be assured that she would love either man. Yet even Theseus accepts this code of conduct and offers the queen's sister as a prize for the two men, whom he previously had imprisoned and had threatened with death only moments before.

The Knight's Tale continues to establish rules of honor and chivalric conduct. Theseus condemns Arcite's and Palamon's actions not because they were fighting one another, but because they did not do so under the proper rules set for a duel, such as the requirement for a superior to judge fair conduct.

The Knight's Tale, Part III:

Theseus commissioned the building of a theater for the duel between Arcite and Palamon that would be a mile in circumference. This stadium was opulent, featuring carvings and portraits as well as temples honoring Mars, Diana and Venus. When the day of the duel approached, Palamon brought Lycurgus, the king of Thrace, to fight with him, while Arcite brought Emetreus, the king of India. The night before the duel, Palamon prayed to Venus to solace his pains of love. He asks Venus, the goddess of love, to let Arcite murder him if Arcite will be the one to marry Emelye. The statue of Venus shook, an omen that the goddess was listening. Emelye prayed to the shrine to Diana, the goddess of chastity. She prays that she wishes to remain a maiden all her life and to not be a man's lover nor wife. She wishes for peace and friendship between Arcite and Palamon. But if it is her destiny to marry one against her will, she asks to have the one who wants her most. The statue of Diana shed tears of blood, another omen. Then Diana herself appeared to Emelye and told her that she will marry one of the two. Arcite prayed to Mars. He prayed for victory in battle, and the statue of Mars whispered the word 'victory' to him, the third omen. Mars and Venus thus warred upon one another, but aged Saturn found a means to satisfy both of them. He tells Venus that Palamon shall have his lady, but Mars shall help his servant.

Analysis:

The battle between Arcite and Palamon assumes epic dimensions with the construction of a great arena where the two may wage war upon another under Theseus' guide. Yet the outcome of the tale of the two cousins is not in their individual hands. Both Palamon and Arcite place their respective destinies in the gods to whom they pray. It is here that the difference between the characters emerge. Palamon prays for success in love, while Arcite prays for success in war.

The role of Emelye in the battle between Palamon and Arcite finally becomes clear in this section of the tale. She does not wish to marry either of the knights, preferring a life of chastity to marriage. However, she acknowledges her role as a pawn in the situation. She accepts the destiny proscribed to her by the goddess Diana and the mortal king Theseus.

If Emelye takes a passive role in the plot of the Knight's Tale, the same must be said for Palamon and Arcite. The outcome of the battle will not be decided by the two knights, but rather by Saturn, who will affect the proceedings in order to placate both Venus and Mars. The actual situation among the mortals is not significant compared to the struggle between the two gods.

The Knight's Tale, Part IV:

Theseus sets the rules of the battle between the two opposing factions. He orders that during the war between the two sides, nobody shall suffer a mortal blow. If an opponent is overcome, he shall leave the battle. The people raised their voices in exultation. The two armies were equal in prowess, age and nobility. Arcite pursued Palamon viciously, and Palamon returned with equal severity. But Emetreus seized Palamon and pierced him with his sword. In the attempt to rescue Palamon king Lycurgus was struck down, and then Emetreus himself was wounded. Theseus declared that Arcite had won. Venus was disappointed at the outcome, but Saturn told her that Mars was now appeased and she would receive a similar appeasement. Suddenly, as Arcite was proclaimed victorious, there was an earthquake sent by Pluto that frightened Arcite's horse, which swerved and fell, throwing off Arcite and mortally wounding him. Before he died, Arcite tells Emelye that she could have no more worthy husband than Palamon. His last word before he died was her name. Theseus orders Emelye to marry Palamon after a funeral ceremony honoring Arcite.

Analysis:

The final section of the Knight's Tale resolves all of the conflicts between both mortals and gods. Both Palamon and Arcite receive that for which they prayed before the battle: Arcite wins the battle, but Palamon wins the wife. Only Emelye does not receive that which she truly desired, for Theseus orders that she be married, despite her intent to remain a maiden. Saturn sets the situation right between the rival gods Venus and Mars, appeasing each in turn. Even in a more mortal dimension the conflicts are set right. Arcite and Palamon forgive one another for their long-standing quarrel before Arcite dies, each recognizing the other's worth. The section continues the symmetrical alignment that has marked the story. Even the two armies that battle each other are perfectly equal in rank, prowess, age and ability. The conflict therefore is not in the armies' hands, but rather Palamon's and Arcite's, and these two knights merely act as pawns for Venus and Mars.

The overall structure of the tale gives priority to certain values. Theseus, the arbiter in the conflict between Arcite and Palamon and thus the character in the tale who determines the moral significance of the characters' actions, places great emphasis on honorable codes of conduct; he sets specific rules for the battle meant to ensure justice, and even orders that no soldier shall die in the battle (which then descends from a contest among gladiators to a rough approximation of modern sports). Compounding these values is a tendency toward displays of wealth and power. Each of the final events in the story are punctuated by great pageantry. On the orders of Theseus, the simple duel between Arcite and Palamon transforms into a gala event requiring the construction of a massive coliseum for two armies to wage war on one another, even bringing in the kings of two foreign nations.

Prologue to the Miller's Tale:

When the Knight had finished, everybody decided that he had told a noble story. The drunken Miller claims that he has a tale as noble as the one the Knight had told. The host tried to quiet the Miller, but he demanded to speak. He claims that he will tell the tale of a carpenter and his wife. His tale will be one of infidelity. The narrator attempts to apologize for the tale that will follow, admitting that the Miller is not well-bred and will therefore tell a bawdy tale.

Analysis

It is in the prologues to the various tales that Chaucer comments on the tales that his characters have told. This serves as an internal critique of the tales that Chaucer has written. In this prologue, the Miller constructs the author's reaction to the Knight's Tale. The Miller mocks the noble messages of the Knight's Tale, and prepares to tell a tale that he finds equally uplifting. The tale that will follow is unreservedly bawdy and lowbrow, a necessary antidote to the oppressive sense of epic honor that permeates the stodgy Knight's tale.

The Canterbury Tales offer Chaucer an opportunity for experimentation, for he has created characters who create their own stories. Therefore the stories are not simply an extension of Geoffrey Chaucer's imagination. The story of Palamon and Arcite is a tale that a man such as the Knight might tell; the inflated pomposity of the tale is a deliberate move by Chaucer, purposely adhering to the Knight's personality even at some dramatic and narrative expense. This also affords Chaucer the opportunity to engage in forms of disreputable humor, as the Miller's Tale will demonstrate. Chaucer even separates himself from the tale that the Miller has told, claiming that it comes from the imagination of a vulgar and indecent man who is nevertheless entirely Chaucer's creation.

The Miller's Tale:

There was once an old oaf living in Oxford who took in boarders. Now living with him was a poor student who studied astrology (astronomy) named Nicholas. He was sly, demure and well-versed in love. The carpenter had wed a much younger wife and Alison. She was fair and slim, good enough for any lord to have as a mistress or any yeoman to honestly wed. While John the carpenter was away, Nicholas made a pass at Alison, then proclaimed his love for her. She warned him that her husband was jealous, but swore that she would meet him when she could do so safely. One day Alison was heading to the parish when she met Absolon, a jolly man known for singing and playing guitar. That night he came to Alison's home to serenade her, for he had fallen in love. Alison could only laugh at Absolon's attempts to woo her, for she loved Nicholas. One Saturday when John had gone to Oseney, Nicholas and Alison agreed that he should use his wit to trick the carpenter. If their ruse worked, then Alison would be free to spend the entire night with Nicholas. Nicholas spent an entire day confined alone in his room, and the carpenter wondered what was wrong. He told John that he had been studying his astrology and found that there will be a downpour equal to Noah's flood, and in less than an hour the world shall drown. Nicholas tells John to get three kneading tubs that the three can use as boats. The tubs shall be placed on the roof so that they will remain unseen. When the rain comes, only Nicholas, John and Alison shall survive. John believed Nicholas and did as he instructed. The three went up on the roof that night, and when John fell asleep Nicholas and Alison left to have sex. The next morning right before dawn, Absolon went to serenade Alison. She tells Absolon to leave, but he persists. She agrees to one kiss, and tells him to close his eyes ­ then she pulls down her pants and he kisses her rear end. Nicholas and Alison mock Absolon, who leaves embarrassed. He went to a nearby blacksmith and borrowed a hot forging iron. When he returned, he asked for another kiss. This time, Nicholas strips to have Absolon kiss him, and even intends to fart in his face ­ but Absolon instead burns his behind with the forging iron. Nicholas cried for water, waking John, who thought that the flood had come and cut the rope holding the tub. John fell from the roof. The entire town came to see what had happened. They declared that John had gone mad and laughed over the proceedings. Each man got his punishment ­ John was injured and declared insane, Absolon was humiliated, and Nicholas burned.

Analysis:

The Miller's Tale takes the form of a fabliau, a familiar medieval literary genre that concerned the bourgeois and vulgar classes. The traditional form of a fabliau concerns a bourgeois husband who is duped into aiding a clever young man receive sexual favors from his wife. The young sexual intruder is typically a student or cleric and thus belongs to no definable class. These tales were not simply a middle- and lower- class diversion; elite audiences of Chaucer's time appreciated the tales for painting condescending and vulgar portraits of the lower orders. The tale even acknowledges these class differences. The Miller remarks that Alison would be acceptable as a yeoman's wife, but she could also be the lowly mistress of a lord. The elite viewpoint also is reinforced by the character of Nicholas. He is the one educated character, and it is his intelligence and scholarship that give him the advantage over the uneducated ruffian that is the carpenter.

The Miller's Tale takes the traditional form of the fabliau, but it also approximates the structure of the Knight's Tale. The Miller's Tale is a gross parody of the Knight's moralistic story, bringing the tale down to lower orders and stripping it of the honor and chivalry that marked the Knight's story. Like the story that preceded it, the Miller's Tale concerns a romantic struggle that ends with each of the parties receiving what they deserve. However, the romantic protagonists in the Miller's tale are a foolish young man, a cunning student, and a cuckolded husband, not the interchangeable and indistinguishable knights. Both tales also rely on convenient coincidences that drive the plot, such as the sudden appearance of Theseus in the Knight's Tale and the shout "water" that awakens the carpenter in the Miller's Tale.

Whereas the Knight's tale prizes morality and piety toward the gods, the Miller's Tale values different attributes. Courtly romantic love is mocked mercilessly; Absolon, the one suitor whose behavior would fit traditional romantic standards, is the victim of Alison's scorn and receives only one vulgar 'kiss' for his efforts. In the tale, Absolon's romantic affectations mark him as foolish and effeminate. The Miller sarcastically notes how Absolon combed his curly blond hair to prepare himself for Alison, a parody of courtly love and romance for which the Miller has no use. The steadfast devotion that John the carpenter holds for his wife is equally subject to derision. It is love for his wife that causes John to be tricked by Nicholas into taking tubs onto the roof. Only Nicholas does not suffer for his romantic pursuits. He does not court Alison ­ rather, in his first encounter with her Nicholas grabs her crotch before even speaking. Nicholas only receives a form of punishment when he attempts to trick Absolon with a 'kiss' for the second time, and in this occasion Nicholas suffers not because he has broken any moral codes, but because he was foolish to try the same trick twice. Only Alison escapes any form of retribution, for she is the one who is consistently cunning and wily. She receives no punishment for her infidelity, while the characters who are the most overtly virtuous (John and Absolon) are the ones who suffer the most. The Miller's tale thus prizes the characters who are the most shrewd rather than those who hold more sentimental emotions or obey traditional standards of behavior.

Prologue to the Reeve's Tale:

The reactions of the crowd to the Miller's Tale were mixed, although many laughed. Only Oswald, the elderly Reeve was offended. He claims that with age the qualities of boasting, lying, anger and covetousness fade away. He vows to repay the Miller's Tale.

Analysis

The prologue to the Reeve's Tale continues the pattern established with the prologue to the Miller's Tale. Just as the Miller told his tale as a reaction to the Knight's tale, the Reeve vows to tell a tale as a reaction to what the Miller has told, offended by his satiric description of aged carpenter in comparison to the younger characters of the Miller's Tale. He believes that the Miller's Tale was an attack on him, and will so tell a tale that is an attack on the Miller.

The Reeve's Tale:

At Trumpington, near Cambridge, there is a brook where nearby stands a mill. There is a miller who lived there once who wore ostentatious clothing and could play the bagpipe, wrestle and fish. He always had a knife with him, and had a round face and flattened nose. His name was Simon, and nicknamed Symkyn. His wife came from a noble family; her father was the parson. Symkyn was a jealous man and his wife pretentious. They had a daughter who was now twenty and a toddler. The miller was dishonest in his business dealings. He cheated the college worst of all, and stole meal and corn from the dying steward of Cambridge. Two students, John and Aleyn, received permission from the provost to see the corn ground at the mill. Aleyn tells Symkyn that he is there to ground the corn and bring it back, since the sick steward cannot. While they ground the corn, Symkyn found the students' horse and set it loose. When the students finished, they rush after the horse, forgetting both the corn and the meal. While they were gone, the miller took part of their flour and told his wife to knead it into dough. The students returned to find their meal stolen. They begged the miller for help, and he offers them a place to stay for the night. The miller's daughter slept in the same room alone. The miller himself fell asleep and began to snore, annoying the students. Aleyn vows to seduce the daughter, Molly, as revenge for the stolen corn. John warns him that the miller is dangerous. Aleyn seduced her, while John felt humiliated that he was merely sleeping while Aleyn was having sex with the miller's daughter. John himself seduced the miller's wife. That morning, Molly told Aleyn where he could find the bread that she helped her father steal. Aleyn goes to tell John of his exploits, but Symkyn hears and grabs him by the neck. Aleyn punches him, and the two fight, until the miller tumbles backward on his wife, breaking her ribs. John sprang up quickly to find a staff. The miller's wife found one, and tried to hit Aleyn with it, but instead struck her husband. The students left him lying, got dressed and took their meal. So the proud miller got himself a beating, lost his labor, was cuckolded and had his daughter seduced. The proverb rings true: "Let him not look for good whose works are ill," for a trickster shall himself be tricked.

Analysis:

The Reeve's Tale is a vulgar comic tale intended to humiliate the Miller. The Reeve pursues an obvious vendetta in his story, which he indicates in the story's prologue. Symkyn, the central character of the tale, is meant to represent the Miller, and consequently has no redeemable characteristics. Symkyn is a miller who has a sense of incredible vanity with regards to his high-born wife, he is violent and vulgar, and resorts to thievery. His pride in his wife is mere foolishness, for as the daughter of a parson, Symkyn's wife is, strictly speaking, illegitimate. Even his wife and daughter are subject to intense ridicule. The Reeve describes the daughter as 'thick' and 'round,' while the wife is an empty, passive character who freely submits herself to John. But even though the other characters exist only as targets for the Reeve's scorn, the force of the plot concerns heaping scorn on the Miller. The story exists primarily for the purpose of setting up and developing a situation in which Symkyn will be humiliated.

The Reeve's tale therefore lacks any degree of compassion toward any of its characters. The nominal heroes of the tale, Aleyn and John, are more sympathetic than Symkyn and his family only to the degree that they are more intelligent, yet even this distinction is minor. Although they are students, they come from the more rustic northern area of England and show little of the savvy that Nicholas displayed in the previous tale. They are cheated out of their corn and lose their horse through the miller's deception. When they seduce the miller's wife and daughter, they do so merely out of opportunity and jealousy, and their actions seem to be little better than rape. The two students even lack that measure of lust that is present in the Miller's Tale and which might make the characters more sympathetic. In the end, most of the characters suffer some physical injury, but most of all the miller. For deceiving the students he found himself cuckolded, his daughter deflowered, and himself robbed and severely wounded. Even the means by which he is wounded is comic ­ his wife conks him on the head with his staff.

The Cook's Tale:

Chaucer only completed fifty or so lines of this fragment. The tale begins by describing an apprentice who spent most of his life in the pursuit of pleasures. He secured from his master leave for the night, which he spent in drunken revelry. The tale ends here. It is likely that the tale would continue the pattern of the previous tales in telling a comic tale, possibly in the fabliau mold.

Fragment II

The Words of the Host to the Company and Prologue to the Man of Law's Tale:

The host speaks to the rest of the travelers, telling them that they can regain lost property but not lost time. The host suggests that the lawyer tell the next tale, and he agrees to do so, for he does not intend to break his promises. He says that we ought to keep the laws we give to others. He even refers to Chaucer, who works ignorantly and writes poorly, but at the very least does not write filthy tales of incest. The Man of Law tells the company that he will tell a tale by Chaucer called the tale of Cupid's Saints. The lawyer prepares for the tale he will tell about poverty, and does so in a pretentious and formal manner.

Analysis

In the prologue to the Man of Law's Tale, Chaucer once again plays with the divergence between the actual author and the narrator of each tale with the lawyer's critical reference to Chaucer, as if he were not the actual architect of the tale's words. The lawyer's critique of Chaucer is playful, little more than a sarcastic jibe at Chaucer's own abilities and a critique of Chaucer's contemporaries not meant to be taken seriously. In fact, little that the lawyer says is momentous or significant. Chaucer portrays the lawyer as pompous and formal, addressing the motley crowd as if he were speaking to the court.

The Man of Law's Tale, Part One:

In Syria there dwelt a company of wealthy traders who made a journey to Rome. After a certain time there, they beheld Constance, the emperor's daughter, who was renowned equally for her goodness and beauty. When the merchants returned to Syria, they reported to the sultan what they had seen; he immediately was taken with lust and wonder for Constance. The sultan met with his advisors and told them of his intent, but they could conceive of no way that he could marry Constance, for no Christian emperor would allow his daughter to marry a Moslem. The sultan thus decided that he would convert to Christianity and that his baronets would follow him in his conversion. With this conversion the Roman emperor gave Constance away in marriage, but she was overcome with sorrow, for she did not wish to be sent to a foreign country. She accepts, however, thinking that women are made to be subject to men's governance. The mother of the sultan (the sultana), however, learned of his intentions to convert, and sent for her own council.

Analysis:

The Man of Law's Tale exalts the sacrifice and honor of Constance, the daughter of the Roman emperor who will suffer a number of injustices during the years over which the story takes place. It is an overtly religious tale that does not even reach for the subtlety of allegory. Constance depends on her religious faith for her survival throughout a number of events in the story, while those characters who do not share her Christian faith are uniformly evil, whether pagan or Muslim. The tale takes a narrow view of humanity in which Christianity represents unadulterated purity and any other religious tradition is pure evil. Yet the Man of Law's Tale places a significant emphasis on fate;

Her virtue and honor stem from her devotion to Christian principles, while those who adhere to other religious beliefs are automatically suspect. This holds true for the Syrians and even their sultan. The Lawyer describes them as covetous and, in the case of the sultan, lustful. He wishes to marry Constance before he has even met her, desiring the power that comes from her status as Roman royalty. The sultan is only redeemed when he chooses to convert to Christianity, but even when this occurs Constance still faces dancer from the sultana, whose villainy is shown by her devotion to her faith and unwillingness to accept Christian principles.

The Man of Law's Tale, although the introduction claims it will be in prose form, actually is in rhyme royal.

The Man of Law's Tale, Part Two:

The sultana and her confidants agreed never to renounce the Islamic faith, and she compared Constance to Eve, tempting her son to sinful action. The mother of the sultan and her advisors will pretend to accept Christianity and host a feast for the sultan and his new wife. During this feast, the sultana had her followers massacre all of the attendants. Only Constance survived; they placed her on a rudderless boat heading back to Italy, with enough food to survive but no means of navigating to Rome. On this ship Constance remained for years. It was only through her prayer that she remained safe. The ship finally crashed on the shores of Northumberland. The warden of a nearby castle found Constance and gave her shelter, but she refused to reveal her identity. He and his wife, Dame Hermengild, were pagans, but Constance soon secretly converted the wife to Christianity in this heathen land. Christians could only practice their faith privately and secretly. While walking on the beach, Constance, Hermengild and her husband came upon a blind Christian, who identified her. Although Hermengild feared that her husband would reproach her for the conversion, he too became a Christian. The warden was not the lord of the castle. Instead, it was Alla, the king of Northumberland, who was at war against the Scots. A young knight, influenced by Satan, fell in love with Constance, but she would not return her favors. In an attempt to exact revenge upon her, he broke into the bedchamber where Constance and Dame Hermengild slept, slit Hermengeld's throat and placed the knife beside Constance. Soon after the warden came home with Alla and found his wife murdered. The knight blamed Constance for the crime, but everyone supported Constance, unable to believe that she would murder Hermengild. Still, with the knight's accusation Constance was to be put to death. She prayed for a miracle and, moved by her pleas, Alla decided to make the knight swear on the Bible that Constance was the murderer. When he did so, the knight was struck down and his eyes burst. Upon witnessing this miracle, Alla converted to Christianity himself and sentenced the knight to death. Alla took Constance as his wife, but Lady Donegild, his mother, was distressed at the development. After their marriage, when King Alla was in Scotland, Constance gave birth to a child named Mauritius. She sent letters to him, but Donegild intercepted them and replaced them with a different letter, claiming that the new child was foul and wicked. Alla, however, wrote back that he vowed to love the child. She intercepted the new letter, and replaced it with one that banished Constance and her child on the same boat from which they came.

Analysis:

Although the sultana compares Constance to Eve, this comparison is entirely wrong. In the context of the story, Constance does not tempt others to sin, but instead acts as the one bastion for moral behavior. If anything, she is incapable of tempting other characters; Constance is an unwavering, passive character who is moved by the plot and only in rare occasions is an active character. The sultana, however, is irredeemably wicked, ordering her son and his fiancée's murder. That Constance survives is a testament to her Christian faith. During the numerous times in which she faces fatal consequences, Constance relies in prayer for her survival and, without fail, this technique is successful. Therefore her survival during the massacre in Syria can be attributed in part to her Christianity; she is the only Christian among the group and the only survivor.

The Lawyer's tale is essentially one that glorifies Christianity and its values. The warden of the castle and Hermengild prove their worth through conversion, and the narrator makes clear that Christians in England are persecuted for their beliefs. Their adherence to the faith thus becomes a noble sacrifice, for they risk their own lives by becoming Christians. Yet without fail each of the pagan characters is ignoble. The narrator describes the knight who murders Hermengild and attempts to frame Constance as influenced by Satan, while Donegild, a pagan who refused to convert to Christianity, schemes to have her son's wife banished.

The scheming Donegild shares obvious similarities with the murderous sultana. Both design to prevent Constance from marrying their sons, fearful of the Christian influence that Constance brings to their respective nations. The two mothers fall into the same fairy-tale mold as a wicked stepmother, cardboard villainesses with no redeeming qualities. The defining characteristic of both women that mark them as evil is their paganism, which drives them to murderous action.

The Man of Law's Tale, Part Three:

When Alla returned home, he learned what had happened and murdered his mother for her cruelty. But Constance had already set sail, and ended up in another foreign kingdom, where she happened to find the warden's steward, who came to her ship and attempted to rape her. Fortunately, he suddenly fell overboard and was drowned. The story returns to the tale of the sultana. The emperor of Rome sent an army to Syria in response to the massacre of the Christians. On their way home, the senator who led the army in Syria met Constance. They brought her back to Rome, but nobody remembered her, not even the senator's wife, who was Constance's aunt. Meanwhile, King Alla made a pilgrimage to Rome to make penance for what had happened with his mother and his wife. The senator went to feast with King Alla, who saw young Mauritius and vaguely recognized him. He was thus reunited with his wife and son. Constance is also reunited with her father, who did not recognize her after so many years. Alla and Constance returned to England, while Mauritius (Maurice) later became emperor of Rome.

Analysis:

An unwavering devotion to Christian belief saves Constance once more, when she fends off an attack by a (pagan) rapist through divine intervention. Fate and coincidence play a defining role in the story, exposing the knight as a ruthless murderer and preventing the steward from raping Constance. These coincidences always occur in a religious context; the knight suffers divine harm when he swears on the Bible, while Constance's prayer is rewarded when the steward attacks her.

Yet despite her travails ­ several murder plots against her, banishment and attempted rape ­ Constance survives and remains devoted to her faith. She is thus comparable to biblical characters such as Jonah and Job. Her final reward for her steadfast faith comes when she reunites with both her father and her husband upon her final return to Rome. Even in the fate of Maurice is the influence of Christianity felt. He becomes emperor of Rome only when the pope gives his assent.

Epilogue to the Man of Law's Tale:

The Host praised the Lawyer for his tale, and urged the Parish Priest to tell a tale. The Parson chides the Host for swearing, and he in turn mocks the Parson as a "Jankin" (a contemptuous name for a priest). The Shipman decides that he will tell a tale next. In the fragments that remain of the Canterbury Tales, however, the Shipman's Tale exists later in the manuscripts, in the seventh set of stories. The Wife of Bath's Tale follows instead.

Fragment III

Prologue to the Wife of Bath's Tale:

The Wife of Bath begins the prologue to her tale by boasting of her experience in marriage. She has married five men already, and ignores the idea that this is a reproach to Christian principles. She is merely adhering to the Christian principle of "be fruitful and multiply." She cites the case of King Solomon, who had multiple wives, and tells the group that she welcomes the opportunity for her sixth husband. She also points out that Jesus never lays down a law about virginity, and essentially states that we have the parts for sex and should use them as such. The Pardoner objects to the Wife of Bath's musings on marriage, but she decides to tell about each of her husbands. Three were good and two were young men. The good ones were kind, rich and old. She would withhold sex from the old ones to get the riches they might offer her. She would use guilt and jealousy against them, along with other manipulative techniques. Yet the fourth husband that she married was young. He was a reveler and had a mistress as well as a wife. He was a match for the Wife of Bath, sharing some of the similar qualities, but he soon died. The fifth husband was the most cruel to her, kind in bed but otherwise violent. He had been a student at Oxford, and came to be a boarder at the home of the Wife's best friend, Alison, while she was still married to husband number four. Soon after he died, she married Jankin, who was, at twenty, half the Wife's age. She gave him all of the property she owned, but he never let her have her way. Once he struck her so hard on the ear that she lost hearing simply because she tore a page from one of his books. He would cite examples from Roman history and the Bible that indicated a wife should be submissive, and it was one of these passages that she tore from the book. She complains that the stories in the Bible that denigrate women are written by monks who have no experience with them, and that the stories would be far different if women were to write them. After Jankin struck her, she appeared dead, but when she revived he was so penitent that he ceded all authority in the marriage to her. From that point onward she was kind to him, for he had given her what she truly wanted.

Analysis

The Wife of Bath is perhaps the most fully realized character in the Canterbury Tales. Headstrong, boisterous and opinionated, she wages a perpetual struggle against the denigration of women and the taboos against female sexuality. She issues a number of rebuttals against strict religious claims for chastity and monogamy, using Biblical examples including Solomon to show that the Bible does not overtly condemn all expressions of sexuality, even outside of marriage. Those who use religious texts to argue for the submission of women are the most fervent targets of scorn for the Wife of Bath. She claims that the reason for the bias against women in these texts is due to the lack of experience and contact with women of those who write the text. It is this antipathy to intellectual arguments against femininity that causes her to tear the pages from Jankin's book.

The Wife of Bath's crusade to prove the worth of women does open the prologue to modern interpretations that reconfigure the Wife of Bath as a feminist icon, but she is no unabashed modern heroine. She is overtly manipulative, using her sexuality as a weapon against her husbands in order to shame them into providing for her. She can be a harridan and a harpy, cruelly accusing her husbands of ingratitude and withholding sex to extract gifts from her husbands. Yet in the Wife's boasts of these strategies, she indicates that they were a necessity; she has been afforded so few benefits that she must use her sexuality, the one great weapon that she has, to gain a dominance over her husbands. Within her posturing there is also the indication that the Wife of Bath is in a very precarious situation. She uses her intensity to mask the fact that, as an aging woman who is rapidly losing her appearance ­ the one asset that she can use ­ the Wife of Bath is in danger of losing her place in society.

The Wife of Bath uses a language of commerce throughout her tale in reference to marriage. While this could be conceived of as a comparison of marriage to prostitution, it better refers to her conception of the marriage 'debt.' The Wife of Bath's manipulations can be seen as an economic shrewdness. She recognizes marriage for what it is and brings that quality to the fore. Her perceptive nature extends even to herself; she recognizes what sins she may have committed and the social norms she has transgressed, but this quality is most important for allowing her to realize what marriage truly entails for her.

The theme of the Wife of Bath's Tale is thus not female equality in marriage, but rather the power struggles between the husband and wife. She does not seek an equal partnership with a husband, but a situation in which she has control over her spouse. The Wife of Bath even indicates that it is only in a marriage where the wife has control over her husband that true happiness can be attained. When Jankin attempted to exert control over her and struck her down, she reasserted her control over him through guilt. This shift of the balance of power lead to her first truly happy domestic arrangement. Since she was the dominant partner in the marriage, the Wife of Bath no longer saw it necessary to struggle with her husband or withhold sexual favors from him. According to the Wife of Bath, even her husband was more satisfied with this arrangement, although considering her previous boasts one must consider the extremely biased point of view that she gives.

The Wife of Bath's Tale:

The Wife of Bath's Tale tells a story from a distant time, when King Arthur ruled the nation and fairy queens and elves were common. However, now friars are common where elves once were. King Arthur had a knight who, when riding home one day from hawking, found a maiden walking alone and raped her. This crime usually held the penalty of death, but the queen intervened and begged her husband to spare the knight. She told the knight that she would grant his life if he could answer the question "what do women most desire?" She gave him one year to find the answer. The knight went on his journey and could find no satisfactory answer. Some said wealth, others jollity, some status, others a good lover in bed. The knight was despondent that he could not find an answer. When he reached the end of the twelve months before he must return to meet his fate, he found an old woman and asked her the question. She agreed to give the answer and assured him that it was the right one, but would only tell him the answer if he would marry her. She told him that women desire to have sovereignty and to rule over their husbands. When the knight faced the queen and gave the correct answer, the old woman announced the knight's pledge, which constrained him to wed. The knight, although pardoned, was miserable that he had to marry such an old crone. She realized his unhappiness, and confronted him about it. He criticized her for not only being old and ugly, but low-born. She scoffed at his snobbery as a definition of a 'gentleman' and defended her poverty as irrelevant to God. She then gave him a choice: he could have her as a wife old and ugly, but humble and devoted, or young and fair, but independent. He replied that she should choose between the options herself. When he kisses her, she transforms into a young and beautiful woman. They lived happily together; he was devoted to her, while she tended to his pleasure. The Wife of Bath ends the Tale with its moral: let Christ grant all women submissive husbands who sexually satisfy their wives.

Analysis:

The Wife of Bath's Tale centers around feminine issues, posing the question "what do women want most?" and ending with the moral that wives deserve kind and devoted husbands who will cede dominance in a marriage to them. The hand of the Wife of Bath is thus omnipresent in the tale as is no other narrator. The old crone voices the opinions that the Wife of Bath herself gave during her extended prologue before the story, and can be seen as a veiled representation of the Wife of Bath. Like the Wife of Bath in her struggle with Jankin, the old woman marries a younger man, and the two only find happiness when the young husband cedes control to the older wife. The personalities of the Wife of Bath and the old woman of the story are even identical; the old woman is prone to argumentative speeches, such as her defense of poverty and low status, similar to the Wife of Bath's defense of female sexuality in the prologue. The old woman even has rhetoric skills perhaps greater than the Wife of Bath. Her tirade against the knight defending her supposed faults uses nearly impregnable logic. The story even represents a scenario of wish-fulfillment for the Wife of Bath, for the old woman suddenly transforms herself into a young and beautiful woman at the story's end. It is a fairy-tale transformation story in which a kiss turns a hideous creature into a princess.

However, some of the dynamics of the story are problematic. The tale has a fairy-tale structure, but offers discordant elements. The nominal hero of the tale is a rapist. Even after the old woman saves him from execution, he behaves coldly and dismissive toward her. He seems hardly worth of the woman, even in her most aged and haggard form. Still, this opens up the knight for his own transformation. He chooses to cede to the woman sovereignty in marriage and it is when he does this that she becomes young and beautiful. The tale poses her newfound beauty as an incidental effect of her independence, a physical manifestation of her internal qualities.

The final 'moral' of the tale is comic but disturbing. It fully reflects the Wife of Bath's sensibility of exaggerated aggressiveness. The ending makes an ambiguous statement. The wife who has full sovereignty, but still she obeyed him in everything to his liking. This may indicate that she was sexually obliging once she received the sovereignty she wanted, a more comic notion, or may indicate that the gift of sovereignty instituted a state in which there could finally be some mutual interaction impossible when the husband asserts dominion over the wife.

Prologue to the Friar's Tale:

The Friar commends the Wife of Bath for her tale, and then says that he will tell a tale about a summoner. He does not wish to offend the Summoner who travels with them, but insists that summoners are known for lewd behavior. The Summoner does not take offense, but does indicate that he will repay the Friar in turn. The job of the Summoner to which the Friar objects is to issue summons from the church against sinners who, under penalty of excommunication, pay indulgences for their sins to the church, a sum which the summoner often pockets.

Analysis

The Friar's Tale will continue the pattern of reciprocity that had earlier been established before the interruption of the Wife of Bath's Tale. The Friar will tell his tale about a summoner, while the summoner will in turn repay the friar with a tale about a man of his profession. However, compared to the earlier pattern of tales repaying one another for insults, the interaction between the Friar and the Summoner is more muted and less personal. The Friar insists that he does not wish to insult the Summoner personally, while the Summoner's reaction to the Friar is rational and relatively muted.

The Friar's Tale:

The Friar's Tale tells of an archdeacon who boldly executed the Church's laws against fornication, witchcraft and lechery. Lechers received the greatest punishment, forced to pay significant tithes to the church. The archdeacon had a summoner who was quite adept at discovering lechers, even though he himself was immoral.

The Summoner interrupts the Friar's Tale with an objection, but the Host allowed the Friar to continue his tale. The Friar tells that the summoner of his tale would only summon those who had enough money to pay the church, and would take part of the charge. He would enlist the help of prostitutes who would reveal their customers to the summoner in exchange for their own safety (and offer of sexual services). One day, the summoner was traveling to issue a summons to a yeoman, who had been hunting. The summoner claimed to be a bailiff, knowing that his actual profession was so detested. The yeoman claimed to be a bailiff, and offers hospitality to the summoner. The two travel together, and the summoner asks where the yeoman lives, intending to later rob him. The summoner asks the yeoman how he makes money at his job, and the bailiff admits that he lives by extortion. The summoner admits the he does the same, and they reveal to each other their villainy, until the yeoman finally declares that he is a fiend whose dwelling is in hell. The summoner asks the yeoman (the devil) why he has a human shape, and he claims that he assumes one whenever on earth. The summoner asks him why he labors as such, and the devil says that sometimes he and others are God's instruments. The devil claims that the summoner will meet him again someday and have more evidence of hell than had Dante or Virgil. The summoner suggests that the two continue on their way and go about their business, each taking their share. On their travels they found a carter whose wagon loaded with hay was stuck in the mud. The carter cursed the devil for his troubles, and the summoner suggests to the devil that he take all of the carter's belongings as retribution. The horses pull the wagon from the mud when he prays to God. The summoner suggests that they visit a stingy old crone, but the devil suddenly leaves him and tells the summoner that they may meet again. The summoner gives her a notice to appear before the archdeacon on the penalty of excommunication, but she claims that she is sick and cannot make it there. She asks if she can pay the summoner to represent her to the archdeacon, but he demands twelve pence, a sum that she thinks is too great, for she claims she is guiltless of sin. She curses the summoner, saying that she would give his body to the devil. The devil hears this and tells the summoner that he shall be in hell tonight. Upon these words, the summoner and the devil disappeared into hell, the realm where summoners truly belong.

Analysis:

The Friar's Tale, like the Reeve's Tale, seems to exist for a single purpose: the humiliation and degradation of members of a certain profession. The Tale begins by exposing the means by which summoners blackmail and extort persons, but does not attack the church system that allows this to happen, but rather the men who represent this system and exploit these workings of the church. Yet the Friar's Tale surpasses the Reeve's Tale in its vitriol for its main character. While Symkyn, the immoral miller of the Reeve's tale, is hardly an exemplary character and exists only for ridicule, he at least is given a proper name that separates him from his profession. The main character of the Friar's Tale is an impersonal representation of all summoners and the fate they deserve.

The comic twist to the Friar's Tale is that, when he meets the devil, the summoner is neither shocked nor overcome with fear. Rather, the summoner regards the devil as a curious colleague. In fact, the narrator seems to hold a higher opinion of the devil than of the summoner. When the devil leaves the summoner, the devil tells him that they shall hold company together until he forsakes him. This may be a chance for redemption that the devil offers the summoner when he visits the old crone, but he does not take it.

The end of the tale is pious and overblown. In the end, the Friar returns to his diatribe against summoners, leaving the specific tale that he has told for a more broad attack on their profession.

Prologue to the Summoner's Tale:

The Summoner was enraged by the tale that the Friar told. He claims in response to the Friar that friars and fiends are one and the same. He tells that a friar once was brought to hell by an angel and remarked that he saw no friars there. However, Satan lifted his tail and thousands of friars came out from his ass and swarmed around hell.

Analysis

The Summoner becomes insane with anger upon hearing the Friar's Tale, which, although it was told with great vitriol against summoners, had a measured manner and refrained from personal attacks. Where the Friar was intensely contemptuous yet civil, the Summoner becomes a brutish and ill-tempered barbarian. Rather than combating the image that Friar's Tale had given of his profession, the Summoner confirms the worst about the low qualities of his kind.

The Summoner's Tale:

A friar went to preach and beg in a marshy region of Yorkshire called Holderness. In his sermons he begged for donations for the church and afterward he begged for charity from the local residents. He went to the house of Thomas, a local resident who normally indulged him, and found him ill. The friar speaks of the sermon he gave and essentially orders a meal from Thomas's wife. She tells the friar that her child died not more than two weeks before. The friar claimed that he had a revelation that her child had died and entered heaven. He claims that his fellow friars had a similar vision, for they are more privy to God's messages than laymen, who live richly on earth, as compared to richly spiritually. He speaks about how, among the clergy, only friars remain impoverished and thus close to God, and tells Thomas that his illness persists because he has given so little to the church. When Thomas remarks that his wife is angry, the friar launches into a tirade about the ill effects of ire in men of high degree. He tells the tale of an angry king who sentenced a knight to death because he returned without his partner and automatically assumed that he had murdered him. When a third knight lead the condemned knight to his death, they found the knight that he had supposedly murdered. When the third knight returned to the king to have the sentenced reversed, the king sentenced all three to death: the first because he had originally declared it so, the second because he was the cause of the first's death, and the third because he did not obey the king. Another ireful king, Cambyses, was a drunk. When one of his knights claimed that drunkenness caused people to lose their coordination, Cambyses drew his bow and arrow and shot the knight's son to prove that he still had control of his reflexes. The friar then tells of Cyrus, the Persian king who had the river Gyndes destroyed because one of his horses' drowned in it. The friar then asks Thomas for money that should be divided among all of the monks. Thomas, annoyed by the friar's hypocrisy, told the friar that he had a gift for him that he was sitting on. When the friar reached for the 'gift,' Thomas let out a great fart. The servants of the house chased the friar out. The enraged friar found the lord of the manor and told him of the embarrassment he suffered, claiming that Thomas promised to divide his riches equally, but only gave the friar a fart. The squire of the lord of the manor said that all will be corrected: the lord of the manor will make sure that the fart will be divided among all deserving friars.

Analysis:

The Summoner's Tale is the third tale thus far in the Canterbury Tales to focus its narrative thrust on a single purpose of humiliation. This tale is a response to the Friar's Tale and its description of fiendish summoners, but this tale employs a far different tone to achieve its effect. The Summoner's Tale also uses a less schematic structure; the tale stands alone as a narrative, as compared to the Friar's Tale, which is significant only in the context that it attacks summoners.

The friar that is the center of this tale is a caricature like the summoner of the Friar's Tale, but this tale grants its character a collection of human foibles and mannerisms, however negative, that create a more rounded character. The friar is a relentless beggar and a leech, yet contrary to his lowly position he is arrogant and demanding. Despite his boasts that friars are the closest men to heaven because of their poverty, he demands a meal from Thomas and his wife and gives her detailed instructions about what he wants. He prefers demanding service to asking for charity. Subtle details illustrate the friar's lack of respect for others; when he arrives at Thomas' house, the friar immediately makes that house his own, pushing the family cat out of the way to get the most comfortable seat.

While the Friar's Tale gives little indication why summoners would be tolerated even with their mandate from the church, the Summoner's Tale places friars in a more realistic context. The friar of this tale is overtly well-mannered and educated, and even can feign concern for others. Where this friar oversteps his bounds is in his relentless obviousness to others' suffering. He chides Thomas and his wife for not attempting church recently, even when the reason is the recent death of their small child. He berates them with lofty tales inapplicable to their situation. The tales of men of ire are exaggerated instances of men driven to homicidal madness having nothing to do with the legitimate distress that Thomas and his wife feel.

The climax of the story in which the friar receives the 'gift' of a fart keeps the story in a strictly comedic vein, removing any pretenses of a high-minded critique on friars. The fart continues with the fixation on bodily functions prevalent in the Summoner's Tale and Prologue. The early anecdote about friars contained in Satan's ass is complemented by Thomas' gastrointestinal difficulties and the final fart given to the friar.

Fragment IV

Prologue to the Clerk's Tale:

The Host remarks that the Clerk of Oxford sits quietly, and tells him to be more cheerful. The Host asks the Clerk to tell a merry tale of adventure and not a moralistic sermon. The Clerk agrees to tell a story that he learned from a clerk at Padua, Francis Petrarch. He then praises the renowned Petrarch for his sweet rhetoric and poetry. The Clerk does warn that Petrarch, before his tale, wrote a poem in a high style exalting the Italian landscape.

Analysis

In the Prologue to the Clerk's Tale, Chaucer indulges yet again in a mild critique of his contemporaries. Here he analyzes Petrarch's stories and finds fault with his overindulgent descriptions of the Italian landscape, yet nevertheless he finds Petrarch's story good enough to adapt for his own Canterbury Tales. Geoffrey Chaucer did adapt most of these tales from outside sources, modifying them as he saw fit and often making significant changes in tone and plot points. Nevertheless, many of the stories in the Canterbury Tales did not originate with Chaucer himself.

The Clerk's Tale:

The tale begins with the description of Saluzzo, a region at the base of Mount Viso in Italy. There was once a marquis of this region named Walter. He was wise, noble and honorable, but had one major flaw. He refused to marry, choosing careless pursuits instead. His refusal was so steadfast that the people of his realm confronted him about this, pleading with him to take a wife. They offer to choose for him the most noble woman in the realm for him to marry. He agrees to marry, but makes this one condition: he will marry whomever he chooses, regardless of birth, and his wife shall be treated with the respect accorded the emperor's daughter no matter her origin.

Near the palace lived among the humble folk a man named Janicula, who had a daughter Griselde, who was exceedingly virtuous, courageous and charitable. While hunting the marquis found Griselde and immediately decided that this exemplary woman was the one he should marry. On the day of the wedding Walter had not revealed to the public the woman he would marry, and the populace assumed that he would not marry at all. But he came to Griselde's home and asked Janicula for his permission to marry his daughter. The marquis' servants took Griselde and dressed her in preparation for the wedding; she appeared as if she had been born as nobility, not from her actual humble origin. Her virtue and excellence became renowned throughout Saluzzo, for she was essentially a perfect wife. Soon she gave birth to a baby girl, although she would have preferred a son who could be his father's heir.

Soon after his daughter was born, the marquis decided to test his wife. He told her that although she was dear to him, to the rest of the nobility she was not. They objected to the new daughter, and wished that she be taken away from Griselde and put to death. The marquis instead sent the child away with one of his sergeants to be raised Walter's sister, the Countess of Panago, in Bologna. Walter did pity his wife, who remained steadfast and dedicated to him, silently accepting her fate and that of her child whom she believed dead.

Walter and Griselde soon had another child, this time a boy, and Walter repeated the same test. She accepted it, and told him that she realizes that she was of low birth and would consent to die if it pleased him. However, she does acknowledge that she has had no benefits of motherhood, only the pain of childbirth and a continued pain of losing her children. Yet when this was done Walter thought of more tests to prove his wife's faithfulness. The people came to loathe Walter, thinking that he had murdered his children. Walter devised his next test: he contrived a counterfeit papal bull that ordered Walter to divorce Griselde and take another wife. Upon hearing this, Griselde remained steadfast.

Walter ordered that Griselde return to her father's house. She was stoic upon hearing this, and protested her love for Walter, but will not repent for loving him. She only asks that she not be sent naked from the palace, but will be given a simple smock to wear to spare her from suffering the indignity of returning home completely unclothed. Walter denied her even this, but she did not complain, despite the embarrassment.

The Countess of Panago arrived at Saluzzo with Griselde's two children. Walter sent a message to Griselde that he would be married soon and wished for Griselde to plan the ceremony. When the people saw the supposed new wife, they at last ended their complaints, thinking that the new wife was as fair as Griselde but had the virtue of youth. When Walter introduced Griselde to his new wife, she pleaded with him not to treat the new wife as unkindly as he did her, but had no malice in her words. Walter kissed Griselde and claimed that she had always been his wife. He reveals to her the actual fate of her two children ­ the supposed new wife was actually Griselde's daughter. Walter returned Griselde to the castle where he from then on treated her kindly. The Clerk claims that Petrarch's moral to this story is that all women should strive to be as steadfast as Griselde, but not necessarily have to suffer the same torture.

Analysis:

The Clerk's Tale serves primarily to applaud the virtues of patience and noble suffering in women, as represented by Griselde. She suffers unimaginable tortures at the hands of her husband, losing her two children and finally her husband merely to prove that she is capable of bearing any burden placed upon her. However, although the story is a celebration of Griselde's fortitude, the Clerk accurately judges that it would be impossible for any woman to legitimately withstand the suffering that Griselde faced with such resignation. Furthermore, her extreme behavior is not even commendable, for she allows her husband to murder her two children without struggle. The Clerk indicates that women should strive toward the example that Griselde sets, but not necessarily follow her example in such an extreme form.

Chaucer does humanize Griselde at several points in the story. Although she is a passive character, she is self-aware and realizes that she suffers nearly inhuman torture. When she gives birth for the second time, Griselde laments that she has never experienced the joys of motherhood, and she pleads with Walter to allow her to leave his estate with some dignity. She does not beg for mercy from Walter, but merely asks to be spared some of the indignation that he has inflicted upon her. Without this realization that her situation has been so wretched, Griselde would seem not steadfast, but rather dull and dim-witted. Griselde even breaks from her normal passive state at one point in the story, in which she asks Walter to be kinder to his new wife than he was to her. Although the Clerk takes pains to show that this advice contained no hatred toward Walter, this action is nevertheless more bold than Griselde's normal patterns of behavior. The only point in the story in which her actions do not seem plausible is at the conclusion of the tale in which all is restored. She registers no sense of anger at Walter, whose behavior was far beyond abusive. She only appears grateful that her children have been returned to her.

The great affection that the narrator has for Griselde makes Walter a problematic character. At the beginning of the tale Walter is the ostensible 'hero,' and the narrator frames his choice as honorable. He marries Griselde for love rather than status. This is no small gesture; Walter expects that the people of his realm will demand that he marry a wealthy and respectable woman. Even here, however, the portrayal of Walter is less than positive. At the beginning of the story he has no wish to marry, choosing the easy life of a bachelor over adult responsibilities. His choice of Griselde, the action in the story which speaks most highly of Walter, does not even do much to redeem him. The portrayal of Griselde is so overwhelmingly positive that Walter's affection for her only proves that he is sentient.

Once Walter does begin to test his wife, any sympathy for Walter vanishes immediately. His first test ­ taking away Griselde's first child ­ is a mean-spirited prank with the ostensible purpose of proving Griselde's worth. The means by which he demonstrates Griselde's fortitude is callous and inappropriate to the purpose. The following tests that Walter inflicts on his wife appear to serve a different purpose. Walter's motivation seems to shift from demonstrating his wife's capacities to breaking down his wife. This may be due to envy for Griselde, a woman universally beloved by his people, who at the outset of the story consider Walter irresponsible and immature. By the time Walter sends Griselde naked from his home he has become wholeheartedly sadistic.

The reconciliation that concludes the Clerk's Tale is therefore unsatisfying, for it restores to Walter what he does not deserve. The reconstruction of the family that occurs when Griselde and her children return to Walter's estate is at best tenuous, bringing together a wife and a husband who tortured her, and children and the parents who did not raise them.

Prologue to the Merchant's Tale:

The merchant claims that he knows nothing of long-suffering wives. Rather, if his wife were to marry the devil, she would overmatch even him. The Merchant claims that there is a great difference between Griselde's exceptional obedience and his wife's more common cruelty. The Merchant has been married two months and has loathed every minute of it. The Host asks the Merchant to tell a tale of his horrid wife.

Analysis

The prologues that link the various Canterbury Tales shift effortlessly from ponderous drama to light comedy. The lamentable tale of Griselde gives way to the Host's complaint about his shrewish wife. This prologue further illustrates how each of the characters informs the tale he tells. The travelers largely tell tales that conform to their personal experiences or attitudes, such as the Merchant, whose awful marriage is the occasion for his tale about a difficult wife. In most cases the influence of the narrator on his tale is apparent, but the authorial touch lightly felt. The Merchant's Tale, for example, gains little from the prologue's information that the Merchant is disenchanted with his own marriage. Only a few of these tales exist largely as extensions of the characters who tell them; the Wife of Bath's Tale is the most prominent of these stories.

The Merchant's Tale:

The Merchant tells a tale of a prosperous knight from Lombardy who had not yet taken a wife. But when this knight, January, had turned sixty, whether out of devotion or dotage, he decided to finally be married. He searched for prospects, now convinced that the married life was a paradise on earth. Yet his brother, Placebo, cited the advice of the scholar Theophrastus, who advised men never to wed, for servants show more diligence and do not claim nearly as much. To this the knight retorted with Biblical stories that state a man without a wife is bent on ruin. These stories cites the creation of Eve for Adam as proof that a wife is man's support, as well as examples of humble and devoted wives. January, wished to have a young wife of no older than thirty, for a young wife would be more pliable, but Placebo warned him that it takes great courage for such an aged man to take a young wife. He warned him of the misery that can come from taking a wife, for she could be shrewish or a drunkard, facts that a husband will not learn until well into the marriage. Despite the common opinion that Placebo has a wonderful wife, he knows what faults she has. They argue about the merits of marriage, with Placebo predicting that January will not please his wife for more than three years, but Placebo eventually assents to January's plan. January finally decided to take a young and pretty wife, foolishly believing that nobody would find fault with his choice. He spoke to Placebo and his friends about his choice, praising his intended wife. January, however, worries that a man who finds perfect happiness on earth as he would with his wife would never find a similar happiness in heaven, for one must choose between one perfect happiness and another. Justinus countered by stating that it is more likely that married men will get to heaven than single men. He muses that marriage might be January's purgatory.

January thus married his intended, May, in a joyous ceremony. On their wedding night January, consumed with lust, ravaged his wife. He essentially forced himself on May, believing himself justified because they were now married. However, Damian, January's squire, was infatuated with May. He wrote a love letter to May that he pinned in a silk purse next to his heart. One day Damian was not attending January, and to cover for him the other squires told January that Damian was sick. May and January went to visit Damian, and during this visit Damian slipped May the purse with his love letter. She read it and then tore it up to destroy the evidence. May took pity on Damian and gave him a letter in return. Damian felt better the next day, and groomed himself to look presentable for May. January's house had a garden so magnificent that even he who wrote Romance of the Rose could not describe its beauty, nor could Priapus accurately describe its art. January loved this garden so much that only he was allowed to touch the key to it. In the summer he would go there with May and have sex. January became increasingly possessive of his wife, which caused Damian great grief. May made a double of the key to the garden in warm wax which she gave to Damian. January came to the garden looking for May, wishing to have sex, when Damian covertly entered. Damian hid in a tree. It so happened that at this time Pluto, the king of fairies, and Queen Proserpina were walking in this garden, discussing the injustices that women do to men, yet while one man in a thousand is good, no woman is worthy. He gives as an example Damian, May and January. Damian remained in the pear tree, waiting for January to be finished with his wife. May claimed that she was hungry and wanted a pear. Since January was blind and could not climb the tree, he hoisted her so that she could climb to where Damian was hiding. While she was in the tree, she and Damian had sex. At this point Pluto came upon the three and witnessed this injustice. He restored January's sight. Trying to deny what had happened, she tells him that he must still be blind, for if he truly had sight he would never had seen her having sex with Damian. Foolishly January believed this.

Analysis:

The structure of the Merchant's Tale is somewhat lopsided. While the Merchant prepares the reader for a story of a villainous wife, he instead begins the tale with an extended dissertation about the benefits and drawbacks of marriage. The debate between January and Placebo is a relatively dry collection of classical and biblical anecdotes, but it serves to frame the comic sex farce to come as a more serious look at marriage. The beginning passages of the tale also serve as a warning against marriage. When the aged January decides to take a wife he is already sixty and rapidly approaching senility. His wish to marry stems from a realization of his own mortality rather than any love for a wife ­ in fact, he decides to marry before he has found a fiancee. The Merchant even indicates that January's life to this point has been fulfilling, leaving dotage as the only reason for him to take a wife. His arguments for marriage therefore appear empty in comparison of those by Placebo. While both Placebo and January can cite literary references to back up their claims for their respective positions, only Placebo has the weight of experience to support his claims against marriage. Furthermore, January holds irrational expectations for his wife. He expects to marry a young and beautiful woman who will care for him, not expecting any ill effects from this arrangement ­ he even foolishly believes that he will be so happy that he may ruin his chances for heaven.

The Merchant therefore dooms the marriage of January and May from the outset. Even in their calendar names they are mismatched: the elderly January is in the winter of his existence, while the young May represents the birth and fertility that comes during the spring. The marriage moves the story into a different realm. The literary tone of the story gives way to the conventions of fabliau.

Each of the three central characters in the tale fit most of the established conventions for fabliaux, although there are significant adaptations in tone and plot points. January is an aged buffoon oblivious to the sexual cravings of his young wife. May is a youthful wife, lusty and crafty in her deception. Damian is equally cunning and fits the fabliau profile of an interloper in a marriage who does not fit into a fixed social class. The plot hinges on the interloper (Damian) contriving to have a sexual tryst with the wife (May) only to have the cuckolded husband learn of the affair and be humiliated. The major aspect of the story that departs from the traditional fabliau mold is the station in which these characters fit. However absurd the character behaves, January is not a lower-class barbarian equal to John the carpenter in the Miller's Tale.

The authorial condemnation of May also departs from the other fabliaux of the Canterbury Tales. Like Alison of the Miller's Tale, she is crafty, but May is also wicked. She escapes without punishment from her husband, but unlike the Miller's Tale this is not a satisfactory conclusion. While the Miller's Tale prized cunning and crafty behavior, the Merchant's Tale adheres to more traditional values. Therefore, May's escape from punishment is a dissonant element of the story, for she behaves contrary to the established values that the Merchant has set for his tale.

Although January is a more sympathetic character than May, he is by no means commendable. Although the narrator does not treat him with the same moralistic condemnation as he heaps upon May, January is still a vulgar object for the audience's mockery. His sexual exploits are grotesque and animalistic. The description of his first conquest of May is replete with violent sexual imagery. January's repeated insistence that their intercourse includes a rationalization that a man and wife are one person, and no man would harm himself with a knife, an unpleasant phallic image. January uses May only as a sexual object; he hammers away upon her, bringing her only pain and boredom.

The Merchant's Tale also stretches the conventions of fabliau through the climax of the tale in which Pluto and Proserpina intrude upon the sexual intrigues among January, May and John. Proserpina and Pluto discuss the virtues of men and women in marriage, coming to the conclusion that few men are commendable, but absolutely no women are worthy. Their intervention in the situation gives divine sanction to the condemnation of women, purposely giving January his sight so that he can condemn his wife (although in a mordant twist, January can literally not believe his eyes).

Fragment V

Epilogue to the Merchant's Tale and Prologue to the Squire's Tale:

The Host laments the Merchant's tale, praying that he would never find such a terrible wife. The Host admits that he also has a wife that he laments marrying. He advises the Squire to tell a tale next. The Squire's Tale is not complete, ending after only six hundred lines.

The Squire's Tale:

The Squire tells the tale of Cambyuskan, the king of Sarai in Tartary. With his wife Elpheta he had two sons, Algarsyf and Cambalo, and a daughter Canacee. In the twentieth year of his reign on the Ides of March his subjects celebrated his nativity. During a great feast with the king and his knights, a knight with a gold ring and a sword entered the hall. He was sent from the king of Arabia and India, and offers him a steed of brass that can, within twenty-four hours, transport a person safely anywhere on the globe. He also presence to Canacee a mirror that foresees impending mischance and can determine the character of friends and foes, a ring that enables the wearer to understand the language of any bird, and the healing properties of all herbs. He also offers a sword whose edge will bite through any armor but whose flat will cure the wounds inflicted by the edge. The knight was led to a chamber and the ring given to Canacee, but the brass steed would not move until the knight taught people how to move it. The horse was a source of wonder for the people, compared alternately to the Pegasus and the Trojan horse. All one needed to do to move the brass horse was to twirl a peg in its ear, according to the knight.

After the revelry of the night before, the next morning everybody but Canacee remained asleep until late. She had dreamed of the mirror and the ring and thus had her first satisfying rest in a very long time. As she went out walking that morning with her maids, she came across bleeding peregrine falcon that cried in anguish. It had maimed itself. Canacee picked up the falcon and spoke to it, a power she had gained from the ring the knight had given her. The falcon told her a tale of a handsome tercelet as treasonous and false as he was beautiful. Yet the tercelet fell in love with a kite as well as with the falcon, but could not choose between the two. Canacee healed the bird with herbs. The tale then returns to King Cambyuskan, but the tale abruptly ends.

Analysis

Since the Squire's Tale exists only in a fragmented form, it is difficult to determine certain aspects of the tale. The tale may be a fragment because Chaucer never finished the tale or because the later section of the tale was lost in the manuscripts from which the Canterbury Tales were taken. What remains of the Squire's Tale gives only minor indication of the structure and themes of the tale. The tale is an adventure with elements of fantasy similar to the Knight's Tale ­ not surprising, for the Squire is the son of the Knight ­ but with a less bombastic tone and elements of magic instead of the divine intervention that drives the later sections of the Knight's Tale. Part of the difficulty in deciphering where the tale may continue lies in its loose structure. There are a hodgepodge of plotlines that the story could follow, including the mysterious knight, the mechanical horse, and the injured falcon.

Prologue to the Franklin's Tale:

The Franklin praises the Squire for his eloquence, considering his youth. He tells the Squire that he has no peer among the company and that he wishes that his own son were as commendable as the Squire. The Host suggests that the Franklin tell the next tale. The Franklin begins by apologizing in advance for his rough speech and lack of education.

The Franklin's Tale:

The Franklin's Tale begins with the courtship of the Breton knight Arviragus and Dorigen, who come to be married happily. Their marriage is one of equality, in which neither of the two is master or servant. However, soon after they marry Arviragus is sent away to Britain to work for two years. Dorigen wept for his absence, despite the letters that he sent home to her. Her friends would often take her on walks where they would pass the cliffs overlooking the ocean and watch ships enter the port, hoping that one of them would bring home her husband. However, she was distressed by the rocks that were near the shore. She feared that whatever ship brought her husband home would crash on these rocks and sink. These friends would also have garden parties in which they would invite singers and squires to dance. One of these squires, Aurelius, had been in love with her ever since she arrived in Brittany. Eventually he declared his love for her. She agrees that she would be his lover if he would find a way to clear the rocks that endangered incoming ships. Aurelius lamented this condition, thinking that such a task would be impossible. His brother suggested that Aurelius meet a student of law at Orleans who was versed in the sciences of illusion. Aurelius made a journey to Orleans to meet this student; he found in the student's house the most fantastic luxuries. The student asked for one thousand pounds to remove all of the rocks from the shore off of Brittany. The student consulted his tables and contrived to make the rocks disappear for a week. When Dorigen learned of this, she was overcome with grief, realizing that she must forfeit either her body or her fair name. She thinks about the numerous instances in which a faithful wife or a maiden destroyed herself rather than submitting herself to another. She cites the maidens of Lacedaemon who chose to be slain rather than defiled, and Hasdrubal's wife, who committed suicide during the siege of Carthage, and Lucrece, who did the same when Tarquin took her by force. Arviragus returned home and Dorigen told him the truth of what had happened. He tells her that he will bear the shame of her actions, and that adhering to her promise is the most important thing. He therefore sends her to submit to Aurelius. When Aurelius learns how well Arviragus accepted his wife's promise, Aurelius decides to let Dorigen's promise go unfulfilled. He claims that a squire can be as honorable as a knight. Aurelius then went to pay the law student, even though his affair remained unconsummated. The law student forgave Aurelius' debt, proving himself honorable. The tale thus ends with this question: who was the most generous? Arviragus, Aurelius, or the student.

Analysis

The Franklin's Tale presents one of the few examples of a functional marital relationship. There is no overt strain in the marriage between Dorigen and Arviragus. The only difficulties that their marriage faces are external to the couple, and the problem that drives the plot of this story even derives from the overwhelming love and concern that Dorigen feels for her husband. The relative idealization of the marriage conforms to the sense of goodwill that the Franklin shows for each of his characters. Arviragus and Dorigen are both exemplary characters. Her greatest fault is a penchant for dramatics, as when she becomes incapacitated when Arviragus leaves, weeping and wailing over his absence. Arviragus is noble and generous, treating his wife with the respect of an equal. Even Aurelius is a benign presence. He is not a forceful intruder into the marriage; he is honest about his love for Dorigen, but does not pressure her, as other interlopers do during the course of the various Canterbury Tales.

The main story of the Franklin's Tale is a common folktale often known as "The Damsel's Rash Promise." The tale traditionally tells of a wife who agrees to be unfaithful if the prospective suitor performs an impossible deed which, through some trickery, he does in fact perform. Chaucer makes a significant change to the standard structure of this tale: the promise that Dorigen makes to Aurelius is meant to ensure her husband's safety. She promises to harm her marriage by submitting to an affair if Aurelius helps keep her marriage safe. Dorigen's promise is therefore less flighty. It is rather a promise that Dorigen makes to sacrifice her honor in exchange for her husband's safety. That she never suspects that Aurelius would be able to actually rid the shore of these rocks becomes less significant in this case.

The relative moral parity of each of the characters sets up the conclusion in which each acts according to his most noble intentions. Arviragus allows himself the humiliation of being cuckolded so that his wife may fulfill her promise. Aurelius forgives Dorigen's promise, allowing her to remain faithful to her husband. And the student absolves Aurelius of his debt for removing the rocks. This last noble act is the most surprising, for it breaks a simple contract that has no external moral implications. For each of the other noble acts, there is the sense that to behave otherwise would be immoral, yet the role of the student was a simple business transaction.

There can be no definitive answer to the question that the conclusion of the story poses, yet a legitimate case can be made for each. The case for the law student was previously stated; a counter-argument to the claim that he was the most noble is that his sacrifice was purely monetary. He gave up nothing of substance when he absolved Aurelius of his debt, while Aurelius and Arviragus gave up something that legitimately mattered. One could argue that Arviragus behaved most nobly because he risked his reputation and gave up what was rightfully his, yet for Arviragus there may not have been another reasonable option‹the other solution that Dorigen considers is suicide. And Aurelius made what was perhaps the largest sacrifice, for he gave up what he desired most, yet what he gave up he had no legitimate right to have.

A final option is that Dorigen was the one who behaved most nobly throughout the course of the story. She sacrificed her honor for the safety of her husband and was honest to both Aurelius and Arviragus. However, this does not consider the inherent foolishness of her initial promise and the fact that her behavior after Aurelius fulfilled this promise was highly constrained.

Fragment VI

The Physician's Tale:

As Titus Livius tells us, there was once a knight called Virginius who had many friends, much wealth, and a loving wife and daughter. The daughter possessed a beauty so great that even Pygmalion could not create her equal. She was also humble in speech and avoided events in which her virtue could be compromised. There was a judge, Appius who governed the town who saw the knight's daughter, and lusted after her. He believed that he could take the daughter by force. He plotted against the daughter with a churl named Claudius. In Appius' court Claudius accuses Virginius of stealing his servant (the daughter), and Appius immediately decides that Virginius must hand over his daughter to Claudius. Virginius tells his daughter, Virginia, that she must now suffer one of two pains, shame or death. Virginius would rather have her dead, however. He chopped off her head and brought it to Appius, who immediately sentenced Virginius to death. However, when the people realized what had happened, they themselves took Appius off to jail, where he committed suicide. Claudius was to be hanged, but Virginius intervened and spared his life. He was merely banished. The moral of this story: forsake your sin ere you will forsake.

Analysis

The Physician's Tale is not among the most notable of the Canterbury Tales, significant primarily for the way in which it continues to develop themes more fully realized in other tales. The tale centers around the noble suffering of Virginia, who chooses to be murdered rather than to submit her chastity to a fraudulent man. The Physician's Tale thus resembles the Man of Law's Tale and the Clerk's Tale. But unlike Constance or Griselde, Virginia is not the central character of her story. She exists only for the purpose of a single sacrifice, unlike the constant barrage of torment that the other two women suffer. The stature of Virginia's sacrifice is therefore diminished.

Furthermore, the mechanics of this sacrifice are distasteful. The story focuses primarily on the schemes of Appius and Claudius, who are no more than one-dimensional villains. The sacrifice that Virginia makes is perilously close to murder ­ the choice that her father offers her between shame and death is nearly a threat, and the means by which her death is achieved is unfortunately brutal.

The conclusion of the story is further dramatically unsatisfying, for although it serves the appropriate punishment to the villains, the conclusion shifts the story from Virginia's sacrifice to the villain's mistake. The Tale becomes an exceedingly simple warning for moral behavior ­ those who contrive to rape the daughter of a powerful man will be punished ­ instead of a meditation on sacrifice.

Prologue to the Pardoner's Tale:

The Host thinks that the cause of Virginia's death in the previous tale was her beauty. To counter the sadness of the tale, the Host suggests that the Pardoner tell a lighter tale. The Pardoner delays, for he wants to finish his meal, but says that he shall tell a moral tale. He says that he will tell a tale with this moral: the love of money is the root of all evil. He claims that during his sermons he shows useless trifles that he passes off as saints' relics. He proudly tells about how he defrauds people who believed they have sinned. He states explicitly that his goal is not to save people from sin, but to gain money from them. The Pardoner says that he will not imitate the apostles in their poverty, but will have food, comfort, and a wench in every town.

Analysis

Among the various pilgrims featured in the Canterbury Tales, the Pardoner is one of the most fully realized characters. The only character to whom Chaucer gives greater detail is the Wife of Bath. The Pardoner is a fraudulent huckster who shows no qualms about passing off false items as the relics of saints, but he also demonstrates a great sense of self-loathing. The Pardoner shifts from moments of direct honesty to shameless deceit, openly admitting the tricks of his trade to the travelers but nevertheless attempting to use these various methods on these travelers who are aware of his schemes. The Pardoner is in many senses a warped character, unable to hold to any consistent code of moral behavior. Even in his physicality he is deformed. The General Prologue, suggesting that the Pardoner resembles a 'gelding or a mare,' hints that the Pardoner may be a congenital eunuch or, taken less literally, that he is a homosexual. In his deformity the Pardoner becomes a shell of a person. Although he is one of the most developed characters, he is the character perhaps most defined by his profession. The Pardoner has substituted a system of values with a rote performance, which conforms to his profession, which substitutes a meaningless monetary transaction for penance for sin. The Pardoner therefore suggests a traditional Vice character who behaves strictly out of the most impure motives, but where he departs from vice characters, who shamelessly commit misdeeds for their own pleasure, is that he lacks the necessary amoral quality. The Pardoner is not a moral man, but he nevertheless has a moral system to which he most certainly does not adhere.

The Pardoner's Tale:

There once lived in Flanders a group of three rioters who did nothing but engage in irresponsible and sinful behavior. They were blasphemous drunkards who, while in a tavern one night, witnessed men carrying a corpse to its grave. A boy told the rioters that the dead man was one of their friends, slain by an unseen thief called Death. They remark that Death has slain thousands, and vow to slay Death themselves. The three drunken men go off to find Death, but only come across an ancient man shrouded in robes. He claims that Death will not take him, and says that they can find Death underneath a nearby oak tree. When they found the tree they only found bushels of gold. They decide to take the treasure and divide it evenly, but realize that if they immediate went into town with it they would be presumed robbers. They therefore draw lots; the one with the shortest straw shall go into town and fetch food and drink for them. They shall stay in the forest with the gold until they can leave in the middle of the night. The youngest drew the shortest lot and was sent into town. The two that remain decide to murder the third once he returns, for they would then be able to divide the gold by two instead of three. However, while the third rioter was in town, he bought poison from an apothecary which he poured into the wine bottle. When he returned, the two rioters stabbed the third, murdering him. They then drank the poisoned wine and died themselves.

The Pardoner interrupts the end of his tale with a diatribe against the sin of avarice, then launches into a sermon in which he attempts to sell relics to the other travelers. The Host argues with him, telling him that the only relic he would want from the Pardoner is his testicles enclosed in a hog's turd. The knight mediates the conflict.

Analysis:

The Pardoner's Tale is a direct extension of the personality of the narrator, an overtly moralistic tale that serves primarily to elicit a specific response. It is a particularly shameless tale, a condemnation of avarice that stems from the avarice of its narrator; by condemning the sin, the Pardoner hopes to motivate the travelers to pay the Pardoner to absolve their sins. The character of the Pardoner is omnipresent throughout the tale, which is told in an intimidating oratorical style that intends to create a sense of horror at the consequences for sinful action. Throughout the tale the narrator drifts in and out from the story, as the Pardoner occasionally leaves the plot of the tale to launch into sermons against sin. Finally, at the conclusion of the tale, he reveals the rationale for this authorial intervention, preaching against avarice for the sole intention of selling phony relics to the travelers. The tale is thus less of a fully formed narrative than a performance given by the Pardoner in which he never submerges his presence in the story.

The importance of the narrator is reflected in the relative unimportance of the characters in the story. The three rioters are anonymous hoodlums to whom the narrator gives no distinctive characteristics. The one distinction that the Pardoner makes among the three is that the rioter who is sent for food and drink is younger than the other two. Their characteristics are uniformly negative, but relatively broad ­ they are avaricious, but also drunkards and murderers, which gives the Pardoner opportunity to condemn a vast array of sins.

The old man that points the rioters in the direction of death is the single developed character in the story, a grotesque figure who waits to die out of extreme weariness for life. When he tells the rioters that he wishes to die, he claims that he walks on the ground, his 'mother's gate,' and asks to return to the earth (in the form of a decayed corpse). This conforms to the idea of rebirth, as the old man asks to return to the earth (his mother's womb) presumably to be born once again. However, for the old man this is only his second choice. He would prefer to exchange bodies with a young man, but can find no man willing to trade. He suffers the misery of a man who does sees no hope for redemption. He does not consider the possibility of heaven and Christian redemption, but rather adheres to ideas of earthly reincarnation. Quite significantly, this is the only expression of any spirituality contained in the Pardoner's Tale. The Pardoner has little concern with actual religious matters and makes no real reference to Christianity. His concern is money, and the Christian religion is only the means to achieve this end.

The Tale itself is a relatively simplistic moral fable that hinges on the distinctions between literal and figurative language. The initial personification of death that the young child uses as a metaphor and euphemism leads to the actual physical manifestation of Death as a tangible object: the piles of gold that the three rioters find. The plot of the tale derives from the rioters' literal interpretation of euphemism ­ since death has taken their friend, they must find death. This personification of death finally becomes metaphor once again when the piles of gold represent the death that they find.

Fragment VII

Introduction to the Shipman's Tale:

The Host asks the priest to tell a tale, but the Shipman interrupts, insisting that he will tell the next tale. He says that he will not tell a tale of physics or law or philosophy, but rather a more modest story.

The Shipman's Tale:

A merchant at St. Denis foolishly took a desirable woman for a wife who drained his income by demanding clothes and other fine array to make her appear even more beautiful. Since his wife demanded so many costs, the merchant was forced to take in guests; one of these was a monk. John, a young monk no older than thirty, claimed to be the cousin of this merchant, and when he did stay with them he was quite generous with tips to the servants. Before he was going to make a journey to Bruges, the merchant invited John to visit him and his wife. On the day that the merchant was ready to leave St. Denis, he awoke early and went to his counting-house to balance his books. John was also awake early and went into the garden to pray. The wife went into the garden, worried that something was bothering the monk. He in turn worries about her; he thinks that she did not sleep well, for the merchant kept her up all night in sport. She admits that she has no lust for her husband. John realizes that she is keeping something from him and promises to keep whatever she could tell secret. He admits that he is not a cousin to the merchant. She complains that her husband is stingy and tells that wives want six things: their husbands to be hardy, wise, rich, giving, obedient and good in bed. She tells him that she must pay a debt of one hundred francs to her husband. He agrees to get that sum for her, and the two end the transaction by kissing. The merchant leaves on his journey, advising both his wife and John to be diligent with money while he is gone. Before he leaves, John asks the merchant for one hundred francs so that he can buy cattle. When he gives the wife the one hundred francs, she repays John by engaging in an affair with him. Later, when Dan John and the merchant meet, he tells the merchant that he repaid his debt to him when he gave the wife one hundred francs. The merchant therefore scolds his wife when he gets home, telling her that she must be careful when others give her money to repay debts, for he needs to take accurate measure of who owes her what. The wife realizes the monk's trick, but remains silent. She instead tells the merchant that she is his wife and will repay her debt to him in bed.

Analysis

The overriding concern of the Shipman's Tale is money and its relationship with sex. The story uses terms relating to business and monetary transactions in reference to all of the sexual dealings of this story, and money is found to be virtually interchangeable with sex. The wife agrees to have an affair with Dan John as a business transaction, and she claims at the end that she will repay her debt to her husband in bed. The story never stoops to condemn the wife for her actions by finding them the equivalent of prostitution, but merely constructs the parallels between sex and business as a natural and normative fact. Chaucer illustrates the parallels through a series of double entendres, such as the wife's order to her husband to 'score [her debt] upon my tail,' as well as the rhyme of 'francs' and 'flanks' that illustrates the transaction between the monk and the wife.

The Shipman's Tale seems to have the proper qualifications for a fabliau, but the story is instead a light comic anecdote. There is no moment in which the infidelity is revealed, and no character suffers for his behavior. The actions of the tale have a perfect symmetry. The money that changes hands finally returns to the proper source, without the husband knowing the particular circumstances of this interaction.

The merchant of this tale is a notable figure in the Canterbury Tales, for he is industrious and concerned with money without resorting to avarice. He is the single entrepreneur of the tales; if he is stingy, as his wife complains, he still does not refuse money when he believes that it will serve a constructive purpose. His admonitions to his wife to be careful with money are not meant as parody; they are simple, instructive maxims. The problems between the merchant and his wife do not stem from any inherent moral defects in either character, but instead from incompatibility. The wife also deviates from the norms of the unfaithful spouse established throughout the other Canterbury Tales. She is not a devious manipulator; her turn to infidelity comes out of what she perceives to be necessity. Her situation generates genuine pathos, for she is trapped in a loveless marriage. Furthermore, she suffers a private humiliation. Her husband does not know that she was unfaithful, but she nevertheless realizes that she has been deceived.

The extraordinary sympathy that the Shipman gives to the merchant and his wife softens the satiric remoteness that marks many of the comedic Canterbury Tales. The Shipman's Tale therefore removes the pleasure that most of the tales offer in mocking the characters' fate and replaces it with a more abstract and palatable pleasure in the themes of the tale and the symmetry of the action.

The Prioress' Tale:

The Prioress tells a tale set in an Asian town dominated by the Jewry in which usury and other things hateful to Christ occurred. The Christian minority in the town opened a school for their children in this city. Among these children was a widow's son, an angelic seven year old who was, even at his young age, deeply devoted to his faith. At school he learned a song in Latin, the Alma redemptoris, and asked the meaning of it. According to an older student, this song was meant to praise the Virgin Mary. As he was walking home from school one day singing this song, he provoked the anger of the Jews of the city, whose hearts were possessed by Satan. They hired a murderer who slit the boys' throat and threw the body into a cesspool. The widow searched for her missing child, begging the Jews to tell her where her child might be found, but they refuse to help. When she found him, although his throat was slit, he began to sing the Alma redemptoris. The other Christians of the city rushed to the child and carried him to the abbey. The local provost cursed the Jews who knew of this murder and ordered their death by hanging. Before the child was buried, he began to speak. The Virgin Mary had placed a pearl on his tongue that allowed him to speak, despite his fatal wound, but when the pearl was removed he would finally pass on to heaven. The story ends with a lament for the young child and a curse on the Jews who perpetrated this crime.

Analysis

The Prioress' Tale is overtly a religious tale centered around Christian principles and a devotion to the Virgin Mary, but within the warm affection that the Prioress shows for her Christian faith is a disquieting anti-Semitism that will be immediately obvious to the modern reader. The tale is an overwrought melodrama, replete with scenes of such banal sentimentalism and simplistic moral instruction. The tale is an unabashed celebration of motherhood. The guiding figure of the tale is the Virgin Mary, who serves as the exemplar for Christian values and the intervening spirit who sustains the murdered child before he passes on to heaven. Her mortal parallel is the mother of the murdered boy, who dearly loves her son and struggles to find the boy when he is lost. The depiction of the mother is the most realistic and harrowing section of the story, for the Prioress finds in the mother a legitimate fear and concern that transcends the more sentimental and reprehensible portions of the tale.

Yet surrounding the kernels of legitimate pain and suffering in the Prioress' Tale are sections that are nothing more than shallow sentimentalism and vicious bigotry. The child is angelic, at seven years old more devoted to Christian teachings than any of the clergymen throughout the Canterbury Tales. The final moments of the tale in which the Virgin Mary sustains him after his throat is slit are a shameless exploitation meant to engineer false tears. The Prioress extends warmth and sympathy only to the mother and her child, while heaping unabashed vitriol upon the Jews of the city, who are portrayed as nothing less than allies of Satan. The details of the murder are gruesome: the child is murdered for singing the praises of the Virgin Mary and dumped in a pool of excrement. The logical conclusion of this tale is the Prioress' curse on the Jews for their actions.

Despite the anti-Semitic propaganda that the Prioress offers during her tale, this does not represent Chaucer's view. The Prioress is a grotesque comic character and the tale conforms to the portrait that Chaucer offers in the General Prologue. Chauce