Whan that June — Lucas Blogs About The Canterbury Tales: Part 3
The Intro
Welcome back to Whan That Month — Lucas Blogs About The Canterbury Tales. As you might have guessed, this is my new monthly feature about my plan to read Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales in a year or less. Last month I wrote about The Miller's Tale, The Reeve's Tale, and The Cook's Tale, which I collectively dubbed The Canterbury Tales of Ribaldry. This closed out what's known as the first fragment — did I mention that although I'm planning to finish reading all of The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer never finished writing all of The Canterbury Tales? This month I'm going to cover the second fragment which begins with:
The Man of Law's Introduction
This is the start of the Second Fragment (at least in the Ellesmere manuscript) and we begin with Harry Bailly noticing that it's 10 in the morning on April 18th. He then gives a relatively lengthy speech about the need for them to hurry up if they're all going to tell two tales by the time they get to Canterbury and selects the Man of Law to tell the next one. The Man of Law is reluctant, given that he's traveling in the company of such a well known poet as the Geoffrey Chaucer. He then goes on to detail many of the stories of woe befalling women that one might find in Chaucer's writings and declares that he will tell his tale in prose rather than rhyme so as not to be compared unfavorably with his companion.
The Man of Law's Prologue
The Man of Law immediately forgets his declaration and begins to speak in rhyme royal (a septet in iambic pentameter with the rhyme scheme ababbcc). He borrows a bit from Pope Innocent III's On the Misery of the Human Condition decrying the evils inflicted by poverty before mentioning that he heard the story he's about to tell from a merchant.
The Man of Law's Tale
Part One
A group of prosperous merchants from Surrye (Syria) were travelling through Rome when they happened to espy Custaunce (Constance) the beautiful daughter of the (Holy?) Romain Emperour. Their tales of her beauty so enrapture the Soudan (Sultan) that he decides the only way he can be happy is to convert his court to Christianity and marry Custaunce. Everyone seems cool with this with two notable exceptions: A) Custaunce, who's not too thrilled about the idea of travelling outside of Christendom, and 2) the Soudan's mother who feels that her son has betrayed their faith. So the Soudanesse plots to fein her conversion and murder her son at the wedding feast.
Part Two
So when the day comes and Custaunce and the Soudan are married, the Soudanesse carries out her plan, killing her son and all the Christians at the wedding feast. However, by the grace of God, Custaunce is not killed, so the Soudanesse sets her adrift on a rudderless boat. For "yeres and dayes" Custaunce is alone at sea sustained only by (you guessed it) the grace of God. She drifts through the Strait of Gibraltar up around Spain and is washed ashore in Northumberlond (I'm pretty sure you can figure out what that's Middle English for) where she's taken in by a local constable and his wife Hermengild. So at this time, Northumberlond is ruled by a pagan king named Alla, but Custaunce's virtue sets such a god example that both Hermengild and her husband convert. However, there's also this knight who falls in love with Custaunce and tries unsuccessfully to woo her. So he sneaks into the constable's house, murders Hermengild and leaves the bloody knife in Custaunce's bed. Brought to trial before King Alla, Custaunce calls upon God for assistance and the knight who tried to frame her gets smote so hard that his eyes pop out of his head immediately after he swears to her guilt on a book that happens to contain the gospels. And you know that means that all the witnesses, including Alla, convert and that knight is put to death. Oh, and that Custaunce and Alla are wedded to the chagrin of Donegild the queen mum. While Alla has traveled Scotlandward to face his foemen, Custaunce bears him a son, Maurice (sometimes Mauricius). However, Donegild intercepts the birth announcement and replaces it with a forgery claiming that Custaunce is an elf and Mauricius a fiend. Alla is taken aback, but he writes back that Custaunce and Mauricius should be kept at the castle until his return, but wouldn't you know it, Donegild intercepts this letter and replaces it with a forgery calling for the constable to set Custaunce and her child adrift on that selfsame boat that she washed ashore in. The constable thinks this is a weird response from the king, but obeys. Custaunce also obeys and prays to the virgin Marie that she and her son will be safe.
Part Three
Alla returns to find that his wife and son have been banished, seemingly at his decree and he does what anyone would do: he tortures the messenger until he finds out everywhere he stopped along the way. Using the messenger's testimony, and the fact that he can recognize his mother's handwriting, Alla kills Donegild and goes into mourning. Meanwhile Custaunce and Maurice are beset at sea by thief who attempts to rape her, but is thrown overboard after Custaunce prays to the virgin Marie. After five years at sea, Custaunce and Maurice are eventually rescued by a fleet of Romans sailing home from Surrye. You see, the Romain Emperour heard about what had happened at his daughter's wedding feast and, several years later, dispatched a senatour to oversee a campaign of vengeance. This senatour adopts Custaunce and Maurice into his household in Rome where no one recognizes the Emperour's daughter, not even her aunt who is married to the senatour. Meanwhile, Alla comes to Rome to pay his respects to the Pope and the senatour goes to a feast in his honour with Maurice in tow. Alla immediately notices the child's resemblance to Custaunce and asks to visit the senatour at home. Custaunce, understandably reluctant to meet the man who set her adrift at sea, swoons multiple times during his visit but everything is set right: Alla explains his mother's deception, Custaunce reveals her true identity to her family, and Maurice is named the heir to the Emperour's throne. Custaunce and Alla return to Engelond, but Alla dies a year later and Custaunce returns home.
The Man of Law's Epilogue
Harry Bailly loves the story so much that he stands up in his spurs and calls on the Parson to speak next for the sake of God's bones! The Parson, scandalized by Bailly's casual blasphemy, declares that they all need Jesus and is about to deliver a sermon when who should interrupt him but the Wife of Bath (more on that later) who says that her "joly body" will tell a tale so merry that it will "waken all the compaignye." End second fragment.
How'd Lucas Like The Man of Law's Tale?
The first thing to say about the Man of Law's Tale is that it's completely fucking bonkers. It's like one of those Korean period dramas my mom watches: divine intervention, evil mothers-in-law, anachronisms, you get the idea. I mean, on one level it's a morality play about the importance of faith and trusting in the grace of God and illustrating human suffering. But on another level it's a melodrama where God literally smacks someone's eyes out of their sockets.
Which I guess doesn't answer how I felt reading the story. It's a gripping narrative. You probably noticed all the twists and turns. That said, it also contains a lot of tropes that the modern reader will view as absurd: like Custaunce (yes, I'm even going to call her that in this part of the blog) being set adrift on a boat with no rudder and not washing up anywhere between Syria and Northumbria. But on the whole it's an easy read that maintains a fairly brisk pace.
Part of what makes the story read so quickly is the rhyme royal structure. I'll admit that in some of the tales I read previously—particularly if I wasn't as into the story—seeing an unbroken column of Middle English verse on the page could be daunting. With the Man of Law's Tale it's easy to get a rhythm going because it's broken into stanzas. The rhyme scheme of ababbcc also gives the stanzas a sort of weird momentum. It's hard to describe, but they move along trippingly.
But let's talk about the actual content of the story. Custaunce is an unusual protagonist for her passivity, her primary action throughout the course of the story is prayer. And you could argue that this is entirely in keeping with the story's message: God will provide strength to help you through the misery of the human condition. However, as I mentioned earlier, the story that unfolds around Custaunce is bonkers enough that it's hard not to get drawn in, even if the protagonist herself is a bit of a non-entity.
So I guess that leaves us with the question of what the modern reader can take out of the Man of Law's Tale. Well, the messaging and the plot contrivances are . . . dated. It's hard to ignore the fact that the four female characters are portrayed either as passive victims defined by their virtuous acceptance of their ordeals or as conniving, blood-thirsty pagans who would rather see their sons dead instead of converted. Similarly, the implication that people shouldn't take action to address injustice themselves but trust to God for redress. And while you do have to engage with a piece of writing on its own terms, you don't have to leave behind your own perspective or values to do so. That said, that bit with the eyeballs was dope! Oh, that reminds me, I wanted to expand on something.
Okay, so remember how the Man of Law says that he's going to speak in prose and then he starts telling the story in verse (and with a more complex rhyme scheme than most of the story)? That's one of the things that indicates how incomplete The Canterbury Tales was in Chaucer's lifetime (there's apparently some speculation that originally the Man of Law was going to tell the Tale of Melibee which is in prose and is told by Chaucer himself later in the manuscript). Another indicator is (obviously) the incompleteness of the Cook's Tale, but there's actually another clue right here in the Man of Law's Tale. So I mention that the Wife of Bath interrupts the Parson in the Epilogue, but that's not quite true. See, various surviving manuscripts attribute this interruption to a number of different pilgrims, but David Lawton (the editor of this edition) follows the example set by a previous editor by ignoring all the manuscripts and giving the dialogue to the Wife of Bath whose tale comes next in the Ellesmere manuscript (and in this edition as well). I like that. Look, Chaucer left us with a fragmentary, unfinished collection of stories, so why can't we have a little fun with them. And, as you'll see next month, the Wife of Bath is exactly the type of person you'd expect to refer to herself as a jolly body (okay, so according to the gloss there's been a bit of semantic shift, but you get the idea). Anyway, we'll talk more about that when we jump into the third fragment next month.
Which I guess doesn't answer how I felt reading the story. It's a gripping narrative. You probably noticed all the twists and turns. That said, it also contains a lot of tropes that the modern reader will view as absurd: like Custaunce (yes, I'm even going to call her that in this part of the blog) being set adrift on a boat with no rudder and not washing up anywhere between Syria and Northumbria. But on the whole it's an easy read that maintains a fairly brisk pace.
Part of what makes the story read so quickly is the rhyme royal structure. I'll admit that in some of the tales I read previously—particularly if I wasn't as into the story—seeing an unbroken column of Middle English verse on the page could be daunting. With the Man of Law's Tale it's easy to get a rhythm going because it's broken into stanzas. The rhyme scheme of ababbcc also gives the stanzas a sort of weird momentum. It's hard to describe, but they move along trippingly.
But let's talk about the actual content of the story. Custaunce is an unusual protagonist for her passivity, her primary action throughout the course of the story is prayer. And you could argue that this is entirely in keeping with the story's message: God will provide strength to help you through the misery of the human condition. However, as I mentioned earlier, the story that unfolds around Custaunce is bonkers enough that it's hard not to get drawn in, even if the protagonist herself is a bit of a non-entity.
So I guess that leaves us with the question of what the modern reader can take out of the Man of Law's Tale. Well, the messaging and the plot contrivances are . . . dated. It's hard to ignore the fact that the four female characters are portrayed either as passive victims defined by their virtuous acceptance of their ordeals or as conniving, blood-thirsty pagans who would rather see their sons dead instead of converted. Similarly, the implication that people shouldn't take action to address injustice themselves but trust to God for redress. And while you do have to engage with a piece of writing on its own terms, you don't have to leave behind your own perspective or values to do so. That said, that bit with the eyeballs was dope! Oh, that reminds me, I wanted to expand on something.
Okay, so remember how the Man of Law says that he's going to speak in prose and then he starts telling the story in verse (and with a more complex rhyme scheme than most of the story)? That's one of the things that indicates how incomplete The Canterbury Tales was in Chaucer's lifetime (there's apparently some speculation that originally the Man of Law was going to tell the Tale of Melibee which is in prose and is told by Chaucer himself later in the manuscript). Another indicator is (obviously) the incompleteness of the Cook's Tale, but there's actually another clue right here in the Man of Law's Tale. So I mention that the Wife of Bath interrupts the Parson in the Epilogue, but that's not quite true. See, various surviving manuscripts attribute this interruption to a number of different pilgrims, but David Lawton (the editor of this edition) follows the example set by a previous editor by ignoring all the manuscripts and giving the dialogue to the Wife of Bath whose tale comes next in the Ellesmere manuscript (and in this edition as well). I like that. Look, Chaucer left us with a fragmentary, unfinished collection of stories, so why can't we have a little fun with them. And, as you'll see next month, the Wife of Bath is exactly the type of person you'd expect to refer to herself as a jolly body (okay, so according to the gloss there's been a bit of semantic shift, but you get the idea). Anyway, we'll talk more about that when we jump into the third fragment next month.
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