Whan That Februarie — Lucas Blogs About The Canterbury Tales: Part 9

The photo will never change!

 The Intro

Welcome back to Whan That Month, my ongoing blog-within-a-blog chronicling my year reading The Canterbury Tales. Last month, I covered the sixth fragment which also happens to contain the last of the tales which I've already read, so from now on I'm in uncharted waters. What does Chaucer have in store for me in the seventh fragment? Well, come aboard matey it's time to discuss—

The Shipman's Tale

So in St. Denis (a town just north of Paris) there's this wealthy merchant and his wife. His wife loves to party and is a spendthrift. And us girls know that borrowing money can get you in trouble (Chaucer has apparently forgotten that this story is supposedly being told by a man). In any case, the merchant's household frequently hosts daun John (daun is his courtesy title), a monk and bon vivant. So frequent are his visits that John and the merchant call each other "cosin" and John calls the merchant's wife "neece" (in case you are wondering how it is that a monk should have time to be making social calls all the time, apparently John is an outrider, a monk who — as his job title suggests — rides out from the monastery to take care of the order's business interests). In any case, the merchant is preparing to travel to Brugges on business and John's been staying over for a few days. Early one morning while the merchant is in his counting room, John takes a walk and who should he run into but the merchant's wife (no, she doesn't have a name, but I'll bet if she did, it'd be Alison), and they get to talking. In the course of conversation, John makes an untoward comment about the merchant keeping his wife up late at night (hint, hint) and immediately blushes, meanwhile the wife explains how unhappy is is because of how miserly her husband is. Oh, and she also owes someone one hundred francs (this might not sound like much now, but the footnotes say that Chaucer would have made about that much in a year as Clerk of the King's Works) and mentions that she'd do anything for John if he would help her pay off the debt. So John does what anyone would do in this situation. He goes to her husband and takes out a loan of one hundred francs. The merchant trusts John so implicitly that he tells him he can pay it back whenever. So when the merchant leaves for Brugges, John comes back and gives the merchant's wife the one hundred francs so that "he sholde al night/Have hire in his armes bolt upright." (The Shipman's Tale, line 315-316) The next morning he rides back to the abbey. When the merchant comes home, he has a few debts of his own that he needs to pay off, so he calls on John, who tells him, "Oh, I gave that one hundred francs to your wife while you were gone. By the way, tell her I said, 'Hey.'" So the merchant goes home, and says, "Honey, I'm a little miffed. When someone brings me payment while I'm gone, you should let me know. I just had a really awkward conversation with John." But his wife just says, "Oh, that was for you? John just showed up with one hundred francs and I thought that it was repayment for our hospitality. I used it to buy some new clothes, but if you want to even the tally I could make it up in bed." The merchant tells his wife to be more careful with money in the future. And if only we could all keep such a tally.

How'd Lucas like The Shipman's Tale?

By now we've already covered quite a few fabliau, and this one is pretty standard. Although, in the context of the other bawdy tales we've covered so far, this one is surprisingly mundane. Not that it isn't a fun story (well, we'll come back to that part), but the subterfuge isn't particularly clever, there's no divine intervention, nobody is assuming a false identity. There isn't really any kind of dramatic flair in the story. It's just a straightforward tale about a monk paying a merchant's wife for sex while the merchant is away on business.

So, with that in mind, what did I think about it? It's fine. As I mentioned above there's not really anything to make this stand out. Lawton points out that the ending contains a pun on tally, tale, and tail (tally is spelled "taile" in the tale) but I'm not sold on it. In fact, linguistically the thing that stood out to me was our Middle English word of the month: "portehors" - n. a portable breviary, or a liturgy of the hours, for monks to carry outside of the monastery, made to fit in a saddle bag. My first thought when seeing this word what that it referred to a portable horse which seemed pretty redundant, but upon closer examination it became clear that "hors" in this instance refers to hours, i.e. the schedule of prayer and observance maintained by monks.

In any case, this particular fabliau seems almost sweet; given that none of the characters are humiliated at the end. Then again, daun John is taking advantage of merchant's wife's desperation. Then again she offers to have sex with him after explicitly mentioning how unhappy she is in her marriage. Hmm. Anyway, I wasn't crazy about this one, it's certainly not the worst story in The Canterbury Tales but it isn't anything special either.

Oh, before we move on, I just want to point out that there are a couple of places where the narrator, presumably the Shipman, speaks as if he were a woman. So I'm guessing that Chaucer didn't originally intend for this to be the Shipman's Tale. The Wife of Bath seems a more likely suspect, but given that her prologue and tale were highlights both when I took my Chaucer class and reading Chaucer now, I think she definitely traded up.

The Prioress's Introduction

Harry Bailly commends the Shipman for his tale and condemns daun John for his treachery against both the merchant and his wife, and counsels the company to never again host monks in their home. He surveys the pilgrims and asks the Prioress to speak next. She responds with—

The Prioress's Prologue

—a paraphrase of the opening verses of Psalm 8. The Prioress goes on to pray to Jesus and the Virgin Marie that she might sing a song that, while not worthy of their glory, might guide people to it. This song being—

The Prioress's Tale

—an anti-Semitic screed. Um, yeah, this one is pretty grim. So there's this city in Asie (Asia) where among the Christians there is a Jewerye (Jewish quarter). At one end of the Jewish quarter there's a Christian school where one of the students, a seven-year-old widow's son, starts learning the Alma redemptoris (a hymn to the "Gracious Mother of the Redeemer") and has soon committed the first verse to memory. An older man hears the boy singing and tells him the meaning of the song (which is in Latin) and the boy vows to learn the whole song in honor of "oure Lady" by Cristemasse. As he learns it he begins to sing it while walking through the Jewerye on the way to school which pisses off Santanas who has (in the words of the Prioress, but really Chaucer) built a wasp's nest in Jew's hearts. So the Jewish people hire an assassin who cuts the boy's throat and throws his body into a public latrine. The widow, distraught at the disappearance of her child, goes looking for the boy and by some miracle he begins singing Alma redemptoris. So the Christians pull his body up out of the latrine and see his slashed throat and send for the provost. The boy and his mother are born to the church and the provost has all the Jews put to death. At the church, the abbot asks the boy how he can sing with his throat cut and the boy answers that the mother of God had placed a seed on his tongue that would let him live again until it was removed. The abbot removes the grain and the boy dies again. The priests all fall on the ground and pray before burying him in a marble tomb. The Prioress ends by invoking the name of Hugh of Lincoln (we'll talk about that below).

How'd Lucas like the Prioress's Tale?

This story is really gross. I know I harp a lot on the values dissonance between the contemporary reader and the Medieval English audience that Chaucer would have written for, but sometimes it's hard not to. Like back in Whan That Septembre, I talked about how the Clerk's Tale essentially ended with a disavowal of that story's misogyny. The Prioress's Tale instead ends by referring to a historical incident in which Jewish people were accused of torturing and murdering a young Christian boy named Hugh in the town of Lincoln in 1255 CE (Hugh's body was found in a well). While one Jew did confess to the murder, he did so under torture, and local officials claimed that influential Jews from around England had converged on Lincoln to ritually crucify a Christian child. The truth is that many Jews had travelled to Lincoln to celebrate a wedding. King Henry ordered ninety Jews arrested, and eighteen were executed for refusing trial by jury. When the trial was convened, the remaining seventy-one were condemned to death, though their sentence was overturned following intervention by religious orders and the Earl of Cornwall. Anti-semitism was pervasive in medieval Europe, and accusations of ritual sacrifices of Christian children were common (you've probably heard them referred to as the blood libel), as was mass violence against Jewish communities. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, Henry III required Jews to wear badges in public, and by 1290, his son Edward I, expelled all Jews from England. About a hundred years later, Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales and included this anti-Semitic garbage.

While some people might argue that Chaucer was a man of his time who merely regurgitated the anti-Semitism that permeated his society throughout his life, that doesn't mean we can't condemn that anti-Semitism as abhorrent and label it as something that detracts from the quality of his writing. Some readers might be inclined to give Chaucer the benefit of the doubt and suggest that the anti-Semitism is that of the Prioress, not that that of the author. But that doesn't really hold up. For one thing, there's nothing to suggest that the story is being held up as an object of mockery. In fact, it's clearly meant to glorify Saint Mary whose intervention reveals the horrible crime. The story is serious as the grave. While pilgrims receive it with silence their reaction is described as one of solemnity not shock. And although the General Prologue describes Madame Elgantine as being of somewhat less devout than you would expect a prioress to be, there's no suggestion that Chaucer condemns her or her views anywhere in the text. And what of the text itself?

The Prioress's Tale sees Chaucer returning to the rhyme royal (septets with an ABABBCC rhyme scheme) found in The Man of Law's Tale and The Clerk's Tale. This is a more formal style, that Chaucer has previously only used in more serious tales that are meant to give moral instruction. Rhyme royal has a slightly off-kilter feel which provides a fair amount of momentum making it easy to read (if that makes sense). It's also relatively short. And now I'm all out of nice things to say about it.

Oh, The Prioress's Tale contains the phrase "modre wol out" I'm not saying that Chaucer is the first person to say "murder will out," just that the expression dates back to at least the late 14th century.

The Prologue of Sir Thopas

After the Prioress finishes her tale, the company rides in solemn silence until Harry Bailly takes note of Chaucer. The fictional Geoffrey Chaucer, that is, not the real one. In any case, Geoff's been keeping his head down, possibly to avoid being noticed, and Bailly pokes a bit of fun at his weight and stature and describes his countenance as "elvissh." Bailly asks Chaucer to tell them a tale of mirth, to which the poet replies that he knows none save for—

The Tale of Sir Thopas

The First Fit

Sir Thopas (Topaz?), a knight-errant from Popering (Poperinghe) in Flanders, goes out riding in a forrest and goes mad with lovesickness when he hears the call of the thrustelcok (a male thrush). So when he stops and lays in the grass, he prays to Sainte Marie and ponders how he might relieve his ardor. The resolution is simple: take an elf-queen as a lover, forsaking all other women. So once again he takes to his steed until he is stopped by a giant named Oliphaunt who warns him to return whence he came, for he is indeed in the land of the Queene of Fairye. Oliphaunt attacks Sir Thopas with a sling, but the knight is able to make good his escape by God's grace and by his own skill.

The Second Fit

Thopas rides back into town where he regales his fellows with a tale of his encounter with a three-headed (citation needed) giant. He calls for his minstrels and jesters and generally has a pretty good time feasting and partying before he prepares to face Oliphaunt again. He girds himself in his armor and takes up a shield with his coat of arms (a boar with a ruby) and a spear of Cypress wood before riding off.

The Third Fit

Chaucer tells the company to listen close, because they may have read any number of popular romances, but the tale of Sir Thopas is gonna knock their socks off. He compares Thopas to the heroes of other romances and just when it seems like Thopas is actually gonna get around to doing something—

The Thopas-Melibee Link

Harry Bailly's had enough, he interrupts Chaucer to say to hell with this doggerel. Chaucer replies that it's the only rhyme he knows; but Bailly says that it isn't worth a turd. Maybe Chaucer knows a story in prose that might be more fitting. It turns out he does, but we'll talk about that next month.

How'd Lucas like The Tale of Sir Thopas?

While I wouldn't quite say that Chaucer won me back with this one. It is pretty fun. Unlike in The Prioress's Tale, there's ample evidence that the Tale of Sir Thopas is being offered up for mockery. First there's the shift in meter and rhyme scheme. Chaucer uses sextets with a AABCCB pattern, with the A and C lines in iambic tetrameter and the B lines in trimeter. While the verse flows well, the simplified poetic structure is notably accompanied by a simplified vocabulary and a lack of rhetorical flourish. The first several stanzas describe the most mundane details of Thopas's life (and specifically mention Flemish towns known for textiles, not knights—thanks for that detail in the footnotes, Lawton) and appearance. In other words, it's drivel. There's no point, other than poking fun at a popular genre of Chaucer's day.

I don't know successful this particular mock epic is (my only real point of reference for the type of thing Chaucer is mocking is "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" which might still be missing the mark since it's pretty sophisticated). I do know that even on its own it's still pretty funny. Here's a representative sample:

Sir Thopas wax a doughty swain:

Whit was his face as paindemain,

    His lippes redde as rose;

His rode is lik scarlet in grain,

And, I you telle in good certayn,

    He hadde a seemely nose. (The Tale of Sir Thopas, lines 724-729)

Oh, and "paindemain" is a type of "fine white bread" and "rode" refers to Thopas's complexion, according to the gloss. It's just so banal. This description doesn't so much reveal information about Thopas as it does indicate that the fictive Chaucer telling the tale lacks imagination and has to resort to "his nose was nice, I guess" while flailing about to find a rhyme for "rose."

The content — what little there is — of the story is also laughable. Thopas decides on a whim to marry an Elf-queen and flees at the first sign of opposition, then feels like he has to exaggerate the danger he faced by stapling two extra heads on Oliphaunt as soon as he gets back home. It's like something out of Monty Python and the Holy Grail  (I'd forgotten that the danger Robin runs away from in that clip is an actual three-headed giant, how appropriate). In any case, there is one big question I have about this story.

Is the fictional Chaucer just an unimaginative civil servant with no tale to share save for a bit of absurd doggerel, or is he an accomplished poet (and civil servant) intentionally letting the air out of a self-serious genre? I mean, I get that that's what the actual Chaucer writing The Canterbury Tales is doing, but is the real Chaucer poking some self-deprecating fun through his fictional avatar? I dunno. Anyway, at least this one isn't bigoted trash.

The Outro

Well, that's it for this month, I'll see you again in March for the next entry of Whan That Month. We'll continue with the Tale of Melibee, which has a reputation for being super boring. Sounds fun to me.